Killing Violets, Tanith Lee [the two towers ebook .TXT] 📗

her head theatrically, her gigantic earrings jangling, acknowledging Anna’s presence, and the title, together.

The flat was very large, rather strange in arrangement. The bedroom, which Margot and the Great Love shared, opened directly from a vast cavern of a drawing room, with cricked chairs of bulging, faded, dark-pink brocade, tall lamps on taller stands of bronze, patterned rugs and hangings, and prints from Bakst’s Firebird. In the ceiling was an ornamental fan, and a huge Moroccan birdcage that had no bird in it, yet hung on a chain, door wide open, as if awaiting one.

Beyond the drawing room trailed like a stream a winding corridor. This took in an antiquated bathroom of luminous green-rusted marble, a stuffy study for Margot, something which was a sort of toy room, (where Anna slept), and a little dining chamber with red brocade walls. The corridor ended finally with five funny narrow steps down into a most dismal stone-floored closet, possibly meant as a kitchen, with a thick brown sink and grumbling water tap.

Food was seldom if ever prepared here. Meals were brought from a restaurant across the street, while coffee was ground and Russian tea concocted in the dining room.

The toy room had a slender bed, with white lace curtains. It was almost a doll’s bed, but the dolls had been moved from it. Now they sat on a chaise-longue by the wall, all the dolls, seven in number, and two toy animals, a cat upholstered in ‘fur’ with flame-green eyes, a wooden chicken, intricately carved and painted.

Sometimes all these personalities were carried out and solemnly placed in the drawing room, for an afternoon, or in the dining room for supper. The Great Love saw to this, also to replacing them in their room in seemly attitudes.

To Anna she remarked, “You think the old lady is crazy, yes? You think I have my dolls for babies, because I never get babies?” While the Great Love was saying this, Peepy, (Margot), stood across from them, stiff with unease, glancing at Anna over and over. But the Great Love only concluded, bleakly, “What are children? They tear you open and then ruin your life. And then they grow to men and women and leave you. But these dolls are my friends. My youth, when I was girl, like you.”

Anna nodded sympathetically. She saw nothing wrong, not even substitutional, in the dolls, the cat and chicken. They quite charmed her, well-groomed and attractive, demanding nothing.

Margot approached Anna presently.

“I’m so sorry. She forgets things. She’s so – not selfish – but wrapped up in her own body, her past. She’s kind, really. But she forgot.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Anna airily. She didn’t, not at all. What had been said to her at the hospital in Preguna seemed to have nothing to do with her, someone else’s news. She had never thought of it, before, and now it was as if the doctor first, and currently Margot, expected her to take seriously to heart something only read of, once or twice, in books.

“Shall I keep the dolls out of your room?”

“It isn’t my room, Margot. It’s your room. It’s a lovely room. I like her dolls.”

“Just as long as you’re quite comfortable.”

Anna said she was.

She was.

They let her live among them, both these women. They shared meals with her, very good meals, every day, the sort she and Árpád would have indulged in once a week, perhaps, or less. And they played cards with her, Margot patient and the Great Love cursing her and laughing, and pouring her tiny goblets of Kirsch, giving her spoonfuls of rose-petal jam. They lent her novels and volumes of poetry. Margot took her for walks in the gardens across the street, and glanced at her so repeatedly, worriedly, when children were playing on the grass, or by the fountain.

Her washing was done for her. Margot had even brought three dresses and some underthings from the shop. And shoes. And other items she would need.

Everything in the hospital had been arranged by Margot. Margot had lied and possibly given bribes. She had said to them all that Anna was her niece, that Anna had a fiancé in France. That Anna was called Annette.

Margot had brought flowers and fruit and chocolates, and once a dish of cabbage dumplings. She had sat with Anna. Indeed Margot was the first person, as the last, Anna saw, opening her eyes again out of the long sleep she began in the chair at the dress-shop.

There had been appalling dreams.

Margot said, as if apologizing for these, “I’m so sorry, sorry.”

But Anna felt not unwell, although painfully sore. She wondered, bewildered, if she had been run over by a tram.

“Where is Árpád?” she asked Margot.

But she had never told Margot, or anyone, about Árpád, so it was not extraordinary Margot did not apparently follow her. Then Margot said, sternly, “You mustn’t say anything to the doctors. Can you remember, Anna? It will only lead to trouble.”

“Do you mean don’t speak at all?”

“No. I mean don’t say a word to them about – who is it you said?”

“Árpád.”

“This man. Oh Anna.”

Anna felt wash in towards her, like a returning tide that could not be halted, some dreadful immanence. Not even memory, knowledge.

“It was in some of the papers,” said Margot. “Even before that, at once, it was quite obvious to me. What you must have done, and why. He nearly killed you, Anna, you were only defending your life. But it’s much too dangerous to speak of. Don’t tell them anything. They think you’re my niece and went dancing at the carnival, and drank a little too much, and then you were sleepwalking – which you had been used to do, but which hadn’t happened since you were a child – and you fell down the stairs at my flat.”

“But…” said Anna. She closed her eyes.

Margot said, “That was how you bruised your face and cut your mouth, you see. On the stone floor. And the bottom step hurt