Notorious (16 page)
For a moment he couldn’t make himself let go of the window sill. The cold air between his toes made his soles flinch. He hung, fingernails digging into the sill, feeling flakes of old metal – was the window rusting? With a gasp, he grabbed the sheets and fell a body’s length before he tightened his grip. He grazed his knuckles on the stone, which reassured him. He lowered himself, hand over hand, curling his soles around material already stiff with cold, feeling the wind at his back. He hoped it was a Polish wind.
The wind hauled at the sheets, making Czeslaw swing out from the wall. Returning, he hit the stone. He flattened his back, slowed and slid down the twisting rope, revolving in the black wind, his face going round and round. Two faces in the black wind.
Ripping sounded above him. He dropped half a body’s length and kicked out, desperate for a toe-hold. He felt himself falling before he actually fell. The wind was cold against his temple. The ground was coming up to meet him. It would show him its harshest face. He twisted and landed on his back. Rocky teeth cut his shoulder blades, he jolted, flipped over, fell further through air then hit hard ground. He was flung onto his back again, still moving. He slammed into a tough bush, grabbed at the stunted trunk with both hands. His lungs felt flattened. All he could do was swallow at the air, like a fish.
A long howl sliced the night and he forced himself onto his knees. He breathed.
Lights flickered above him. The outline of the tower was misty against the night sky; a few smaller buildings huddled in grey smears beneath it, more leaning away into the slope, their square lit eyes watching him. He had missed the houses as he fell and landed on the mountainside.
He shivered. It was not as cold on the ground but he was going to be ill without warm clothes or shelter. And he didn’t know what poison was in his system. He tried to stand, was too weak, and resorted to a half-scrabble, half-crouch. Rocks clattered nearby; he thought he heard breathing – panting – an animal sound. If he could find a cave or a hollow, he might stay there until first light. Hopefully they wouldn’t realise he was gone until after dawn.
His fingers touched threads of silk. For some reason he thought of the picnic basket at the base of the mountain. He was visualising thimbles and rose petals when his hand felt cold flesh.
He saw the red hair, the reflection of the moon in dead eyes. The body of an unknown man. There was a pair of driving goggles wrapped around the man’s wrist and nothing below the knees. The wolves or dogs had been at him, were probably nearby.
He sent up a prayer for the stranger and turned to go. Far above, a shout, and a rushing sound. He ducked, hands over his head. He thought a wolf was jumping at him.
A weight hit the ground nearby. Chips of rock cut his cheek, grit blinded him. He cleared his eyes, listened. The weight was not moving. Was it rubbish? Was this the village rubbish tip?
He slid gingerly over to the dark shape on the ground. He knew what he would find even before he turned the body over, before the moon caught the white in the old eyes, before he felt the wooden cross on the long metal chain. He knew even before the voices sounded nearby.
III
THE
GLASS HOUSE
OF
CASTEL MONTRANO
PART ONE
I
stand as close as I can to the edge of the cliff and look at the rapidly thinning line of light on the horizon. Swelling purple clouds fill the sky. Lightning pitch-forks into the black sea, funnels of black air revolve along the edge of the world. Black crows are stationary above me, battering the wind. Far out, towards Tunisia, the white crests of waves turn over like scrolls; a tanker is rolling, a whale at rest under the purple clouds. The rain comes down in flat sheets; the wind plucks my hair – my new blonde hair – and I close my eyes and lift my face to the hard cold needles.
A gust of wind tugs my skirt. Beside me, the man who calls himself Devlin curses. He stretches out a hand, drops it.
‘Would you goddamn come away from the edge?’ he says, pulling at the collar of his leather jacket. His hands are shaking, not with cold.
‘Like this?’ I say, stepping closer to the sea. He stares at me, not meeting my eyes. The blood ebbs under his tan.
‘You agreed,’ he shouts.
‘What about this?’ I say, stepping closer to the edge.
‘I don’t have time for your bullshit. We’ve only got two weeks.’
‘Your schedule.’ I turn my back on him.
‘I’m not saving you,’ he says. ‘I’m not.’
I tilt my head, opening my mouth to let the black air in.
‘It’s a trick,’ he shouts. ‘You won’t get your passport.’
A dull bang, and another. He is by the Mercedes, trying to open the driver’s side door, but the wind snatches it out of his hands. It is slamming and reopening. He heaves the door back and slams it shut so brutally the car rocks.
He looks at me. There is maybe three coffins’ lengths between us. ‘Do it!’ he shouts. ‘I dare you.’ He waits, hauls the door open and climbs inside. He bends over the wheel, opens his briefcase. There is a flash of silver at his lips.
I am alone but I know, now that I can’t watch him, he is watching me. I raise my arms to the sky, enfolding the swollen clouds. The metal on my wrist flashes.
I shout, ‘Rise up, you black mottled sea. Rise up, you roiling boiling waters. Rise up from your labyrinth of canyons and caverns. Rise up past the splintered mast.’
I am encircled by the malevolent metal band around my left wrist and the wind which grasps my ankles, jabs between my fingers, under my nails. Rain flattens my eyelashes, pricks my tongue, runs down my throat. The grassless ground beneath me turns to mud. Below the cliff edge, the roiling water swallows the jagged rocks, an endless mouth shifting and swallowing.
‘Rise up,’ I shout to the black sea. ‘Rise up under the bloody sun. Play with your dice of bones. Play with the broken crockery on your shore. Roll out your deep black flint-backed bolts.’
My soaked skirt is heavy, weighing me down. But still a fierce gust sends me backwards, skidding on the slicked earth. I almost fall; the wind reverses direction, catches me across my spine. I am pushed forward, cold rings my neck. I raise my hands higher, see water drops flying from the silver bracelet. Beneath it, the bandage around my wrist is sodden and cold.
‘Roar with your mouth as big as the ocean,’ I shout. I am almost at the cliff edge. The wind hits the ground like a hammer. The white scrolls turn over and over, the black clouds wreathe my shoulders. There is black fog in my mouth. I can breathe clearly for the first time in months. I stretch my arms to the black mist. It looks solid enough to walk on. I think to myself, Why not?
I lean back into the wind, supported by it. The wind tugs at the bracelet on my wrist, trying to drag it off. Impossible, I think. I’ve tried.
Another dull bang. I smell salt, feel splinters of ice and rock; dirt hits my cheek. I take one last breath. I put out my left wrist. My stigma, my shame. A circle of pure anger.
‘Rise up,’ I shout, ‘and swallow everything I have known.’
I step out onto the black air. For one magnificent second, I am flying. My heart is empty. The relief of not having to remember is enormous, pure euphoria. Better than every drug. This is what I have been searching for, I think. For three years.
Then – I am earth-heavy again. Maybe the silver shackle around my wrist won’t let me go. Maybe it is the weight of my soul returning. Those twenty-one grams that should vanish from the body at the point of death. I fall through the black air. In a sour irony, the silver circle around my wrist is illuminated like a halo.
A hand grabs me by the throat, the other grips my arm. I am lifted and thrown, landing on my back, my skirt a lily pad around me. Devlin above me, his hand still at my throat. He puts one knee on my shoulder, grips my throat with both hands. I can barely see him through the rain. The set lines of his face are smudged, trembling. He could be crying but I know he is not.
He says, ‘Look at what you’ve done to yourself.’
I put my hand on his hand, so that the bracelet on my wrist cuts into him. A green shadow seeps from the bracelet’s inner rim. It turns the wet bandage green, it tints the grey air. I pull his hand into my throat. ‘Do it,’ I whisper. He can barely hear me but his grasp tightens. He knows what I am saying.
Banging sounds behind us. The car door slamming and bouncing. He turns his head. The rain lessens and I see his thin straight nose, the heavy jaw, the raindrops caught in the precisely cut sideburns, the thick cropped dark hair flecked with grey. Then he pushes back and stands.
‘You’ve really hit rock bottom,’ he says.
The rain is bending my lashes into my eyes. I see him through black lines across my vision. ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘I think I can fall further if I try.’
He says, ‘Your father was a criminal’ and what sounds like, ‘and so are you’, but the words dissolve in the wind as he turns away.
I sit up. The metal bracelet slides down. It always looks like it is going to slide off. But every time, it catches on the bandage, on the top of my thumb-bone. I hold it against me, feel the tiny pulse inside the green illuminated panel.
My dead hair hangs like seaweed over my shoulders. He is walking away. I wonder what meeting him would have been like without the disguises. The double acts.
‘I want to renegotiate,’ I shout after him.
He goes to the rear of the car.
I scream, ‘I don’t want to know anymore.’
He hasn’t heard me. He is taking something out of the boot. It is my small suitcase, the one with my books. My art books, my poetry books. My diary. He goes past me, to the edge of the cliff. I see webbed fingers of black mist wrap around the polished wood handle, stroke the gold monogram.
‘Get in the car,’ he says. ‘Or . . . ’
He dangles the case over the edge. It swings through the black mist leaving a vapour trail. He is black in the rain. I can’t see the expression on his face.
‘Make yourself presentable,’ he says. He opens his hand, lets the suitcase slide an inch down his fingers.
I get up, unsteadily. He is watching my feet, waiting for me to move. But there is too much distance between us. Too much ground to cover.
‘I’ll go over the edge,’ I shout. ‘To spite you.’
‘You’re confusing me with someone who gives a shit.’
He opens his hand. The suitcase slides down to the tips of his fingers. He sways. The case arcs, back and forth, back and forth, higher and higher, wilder and wilder. His hand is shaking, his arm is growing tired.
I shout, ‘You can’t do the job without me.’
‘And you’ll do jail without me.’ He opens his hand and throws up his arm and lets the suitcase go. I scream his name. His real name. The case rises in the air, parting the rain. It contains everything I have. It rises and rises, turning in slow motion, seems to hover for a moment in the air. A strange drowned kite. I can’t see it, rain fills my eyes. The suitcase falls, turning in the mist, descending into the sea.
The suitcase is almost past Devlin when he reaches out, hooks his fingers through the handle, catches it and holds it above his head. He stands there, looking and not looking at me, the way he does.
‘It’s mine,’ I scream.
He throws the bag at me with both hands. I duck and the case lands beside me.
‘Go then,’ he says. ‘I dare you. It’ll be a relief.’
He gets into the car, slams the door.
I grab the suitcase, hold it to me, look around.
The clearing we are parked in narrows to jagged hillocks of dark treeless earth. I think: Childe Rolande to the dark tower came. The wind is trumpets in my ears. Black knights are among the rocks; the lacing of light is the chain mail on their chests. I know they are only shadows, only tendrils of mist, but I want them to be magnificent harbingers of doom.
It would make the whole thing a little less sordid.
The rain has soaked through my coat. With a feeling of inevitability, I open the case. It is as I thought. My diary is gone. It is a punishment. There is only one person he’s more furious at than me. Himself.
When I open the car door, he gets out without a word and stands under the umbrella while I change.
When I have finished, he gets back in. He looks at his watch – he doesn’t look at me – and starts the engine. There is a taint of Scotch in the air.
The windscreen wipers struggle against the falling torrents, the heater blast is a miniature thermal wind. I bend my head to dry my long blonde hair, watching the dead strands rise in fine silver lines. I hold my hand in front of the vent, warming the wet bandage around my wrist. The green panel fogs.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ says Devlin. He reaches across me to open the glove box. His thick hair has been made completely black by the rain. It is close enough to touch. But I don’t.
He sits back with the first-aid kit. ‘Take the bandage off.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘You’ve got five seconds,’ he says, ‘then I’ll handcuff you and do it myself.’
We look at the burns smeared scarlet around my wrist, the cross-hatching of red lines made by the knife. He takes out a new bandage. ‘You need to keep away from water.’
‘That’ll be hard,’ I say.
We move through the rain. On my left, the cliff drops into nothingness. I imagine all of Sicily un-tethered from the earth’s crust, sailing like a galleon through the black mist. The first Arab sailors landing here, struggling ashore, their ship more likely than not broken on the rocky teeth, watching the cold rain hit their brown skin in shattered blots, smelling the water: acrid, malevolent. Sulfurous.
We enter the tunnel. The engine mutes in the hollow; the sound of sea and rain is cut. Devlin switches on the headlights. The weight of the cliffs presses overhead. There are tiles on the tunnel walls, an exhausted cream crossed with black veins and shiny triangles of reflected water. Midway, a stone vase is bolted to the wall, a bunch of dried flowers inside; a fresh bunch is propped against the lower tiles. The car goes on. I hear his breathing.
I turn to him. I see the tight muscles at the corner of his mouth, the lines at the corner of his eye. The scar on his temple is raised in the light. He looks grim, haggard, worried. Not worried about me, worried because of me.