Notorious (45 page)

I wake again or maybe I had never slept. The house is quiet; the room totally black. Then it fills with light but it isn’t the soft translucence of the moon or the shivering yellow of candlelight but a harsh whiteness as cold as stone. There is silver at the centre and flashes of orange. Everything in the room is whited out. The light bursts through the French doors and sears my eyes. It surrounds me in the double lines and shifting shapes of blue and silver and shadow and light that are made when air meets water, when I swim in the pool and in that other dimension with Devlin, the one which fills every cell in my body with liquid colour.

I can’t breathe. I think a plane is falling, is coming straight at me. The blazing light fills my eyes, my mouth, my ears. It is pure silent noise. It is coming from outside.

I lace my hands over my eyes, grope to the balcony doors and pull the curtains across. The light pulses against the heavy brocade, and a new sound of grinding.

I find my sunglasses, jamming them hard against my nose and cheek. Even then I have to cup my hands around the plastic as I open the door.

The grinding is much louder outside. It reminds me of the sound of the stone pestle on the ceramic bowl when I mixed paints as a kid.

Beyond the balcony the entire landscape is bleached into a map of extremes, just outlines now, every paler colour gone, as though in the flash from a cataclysmic bomb. The light obliterates the moon, the clouds, the stars. The sound is above me but closer than the sky.

Pietr’s tower is lit from within. The curtains are drawn back and the glass tower, filled with light, rises into the sky. The heart of the light – a ball of pure silver – comes from the library, where the raised dais is. The vibrations in its turning break the white into distinct rays. Now that I see the tower revealed in its true purpose, I know why it has always seemed so familiar. I have lived on the coast, near the turning beams sent out to sea.

It is a light turning in a glass tower.

I wonder whether it is a warning or a welcome.

A hand drags me back into the bedroom.

Rosza closes the curtains, switches on the bedside lamp.

‘There’s a storm coming,’ she says. ‘Get into bed. You’re sick.’

‘Has everyone gone?’

‘It’s all over.’ She looks at the half-empty glass of milk on the table.

I say, ‘I didn’t realise the tower was a lighthouse.’

‘We sometimes put on the light to help the coastguard. It was Pietr’s idea.’

My legs are trembling. Rosza helps me into bed. She says, ‘I’ll bring more milk.’

When she has gone, I lie for a moment, thinking. Then I get a towel from the bathroom and fold it up and put it over my stomach, under the sheets.

Outside, the light grinds its slow, relentless circles.

‘I hope it doesn’t keep you awake,’ says Rosza, coming back with a cup on a tray.

She gives me the cup and sits in the chair next to the bed.

I pretend to sip the milk. ‘Hot.’

‘I micro-waved it, I’m afraid,’ she says, watching as I raise the cup again. ‘You don’t mind that you’re still in your same room?’

‘Pietr’s being very good about – giving me some time.’

She purses her lips. ‘That’s one way to see your situation.’

‘He’s a good man. He’ll always do the right thing.’

‘And you’ll support him?’

‘Yes.’

She shrugs and goes to the window. The moment her back is turned, I lift the sheet and pour the milk onto the towel beneath. When she comes back to the bed, I have the cup at my mouth and am tilting my head back.

‘It wasn’t as hot as I thought.’ I hand her the cup and yawn. ‘I could sleep for days.’

I examine the diary entry now and I try to think what happened next. There isn’t too long to go to the end and I have to get it right. I think, I am sure, that I lay in bed and counted off time. To wait until the coast is clear. You always think in terms of water, I imagined Devlin saying.

I count to two hundred and go to the door. The floor is cool beneath my feet, chilly enough to keep me awake. On the landing, I hear a murmur of voices. Not many. I remember the staff was told to go home once they had cleaned up after the party.

I go back and pick up the wet towel, put on soft slippers that make my feet soundless.

The hall lights are off but there is enough light rising from the open door of the living room. I go down the stairs.

My legs are shaking; I hold tightly to the railing. I want to go back to my warm bed, to oblivion.

The wind hits the house. Rain is splayed over the glass roof; a broad shadow runs down the staircase wall.

Now I see my brother’s face. I know he is not alive but it is no delusion. I understand that nothing else matters – not Devlin, not Pietr. I have a euphoric sense that I know what ails me and have the solution to solve it. No-one, not even Devlin, is going to stop me.

The fire is lit in the living room. Rosza stands with her back to it, drinking from a brandy glass. She is as coiffed as ever, still in her black gown from the party, but there is a smattering of rain on her shoulders and water drops gleam in her hair. Pietr stands by the terrace door. He has changed from his tuxedo into jeans and a jacket but he is soaked through. His hair is wet, the colour dulled. The world beyond the windows is pure white.

I stop next to the doorway, my back against the wall. The rise and fall of words becomes sharper. They are arguing.

Pietr says, ‘You told me last time was the last.’

‘You’re living in a
fotutto
fool’s paradise,’ says Rosza. ‘You think that woman, she will make up for everything. The people we work with won’t let us walk away.’

‘I can make a deal.’

‘Deal?’ Rosza starts shouting in Sicilian, harsh vowels burrowing inside each other.

‘I don’t speak that peasant language,’ says Pietr, and for the first time I see how much he dislikes her.

‘Oh, just like Czeslaw,’ says Rosza. ‘Above everyone.’

‘I’d rather be like him than you.’

‘Stop worshipping a
fotutto
book lover who never accomplished anything except running away. He couldn’t even save himself to raise you.’

‘Well, you saw to that, didn’t you?’

‘Don’t blame that on me. The accident – ’

‘Another accident. Like the poisoned village. The ambulance driver’s report . . . ’

I edge into the room as Rosza throws her glass into the fire. The brandy flares purple above the logs; the cracking glass sounds like gun-shots.

‘That woman put you up to it,’ says Rosza. She turns the rings on her fingers. ‘Or did Stefano say something?’

Pietr frowns. ‘Why would Stefano say anything? He’s your creature not mine.’

I see Rosza’s expression of utter weariness. Or maybe resignation.

‘I tried to be a good mother to you,’ she says. ‘I treated you as someone valuable. I made sure I didn’t do to you what my mother did.’

‘You treated me like a business partner,’ says Pietr. ‘You eliminated anyone who was a threat – not to me, to the business.’ He pours himself a drink, downs half in a gulp. ‘I need to know how far you have gone.’

Rosza twists her hands together. Behind her, the last blue flames flare.

She says, ‘There’s no proof of anything.’

I step into the room and say, ‘There is proof.’ I hold out the wet towel to Pietr. ‘You should analyse this. I bet it is the same poison she used in the well in Santa Margherita.’

He is so surprised to see me that he doesn’t move. He looks at the towel but he doesn’t understand.

Rosza snaps her fingers. She says, ‘Oh, she’s mad.’ Then her eyes turn inwards. She is remembering standing in my room. How fast I had drunk the milk.

Pietr is still looking at me as Rosza snatches the towel and throws it into the flames. She grabs his glass and pours the brandy over the sodden material. The falling liquid catches fire; a purple flame runs over the surface of the towel; purple and red blazes into the chimney.

I say, ‘You have to get it back,’ but Pietr is still, watching the remnants curling into ashes.

He says, ‘She’s promised tonight is the last time.’

I recoil. ‘I thought you didn’t know. Or were forced into it. The slave-trading.’

His head jerks back. ‘Slave-trading? What are you talking about? It’s helping people get into the country.’

‘You know it’s more than Africans being brought over.’ I think of the cages I had seen beneath Koloshnovar. ‘It’s more than people-smuggling.’

He is shaking his head.

I say, deliberately, ‘It’s what your grandfather did.’

He says, ‘It’s nothing like that.’
Nothingk
. ‘These people need us. It’s domestic labour, construction workers.’

‘How do you know?’ I say. ‘Do you talk to them in their cages? Do you find out what happens to them?’

‘Oh, he would never get his hands dirty,’ says Rosza. ‘Even though he’s lived off it all his life. He wanted his fine wines, his cars. Things he can’t do without.’

Pietr is watching me. ‘I left it up to you. You’ve got the book.’

Rosza raises her fist. ‘That
ofanculu
black leather book. I should have burnt it years ago.’

‘Red,’ I say. ‘The book with the red cover.’ But they don’t hear me.

‘It was a reminder of my father,’ says Pietr. ‘You loved him.’

‘I hated him!’ shouts Rosza. ‘I hated him because he never loved me. Even when my father threatened him. That
fotutto
Pole couldn’t even pretend. How do you think I felt?’ Her voice rises to a scream. ‘Unloved. Unloved.’

Pietr’s skin is as white as his hair. ‘But you had his child – ’

‘That
minchia
of a monk!’ shouts Rosza. ‘All he wanted to fuck was a crucifix. He was a neuter, a nothing. In-bred blue-blood.’ Her voice thickens. ‘We had to boil shoes in winter when I was a child. Those pig-fucking rich move their chess pieces and we eat shoe leather and ashes.’

Pietr takes a step away as though he can’t bear to be next to her. ‘So you got pregnant to get Koloshnovar?’

She goes over to the sideboard, pours herself another brandy, throws it straight down. She wipes her mouth. Her hand is shaking.

She hisses, ‘I’d fuck a wolf before I’d fuck a Pole.’

I look at Pietr’s face and start backing towards the door.

Rosza sees me, shouts, ‘How does it feel knowing you’re surrounded by everyone involved in your brother’s death?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘Stupid Australian boy. Stupid foreigner. You come onto our land, you get shot. Or poisoned. That’s the Sicilian way.’

Pietr rubs his forehead. There is a white sheen over his face. ‘You should go now.’

I say to him, ‘I’ll never believe you had anything to do with it.’ And I leave them.

I run across the hallway, out the front door. The rain has stopped; the entire world is filled with light, turning and pulsing and grinding, streaming past me to the sea. I wonder who is coming ashore.

Below, lights flare in the guard house. I run to the back terrace and down the steps. The forest sits, waiting for me. The hut, I think.

I could change, try to reach Julietta in the morning. She might know where Devlin has gone. On the back path, the air is white. As I reach the first trees, the grinding sound stops. The light is switched off. One of the shadows leaves the skeletal black outlines and comes towards me. In the last instant of illumination I see it is Devlin.

He grasps my hand, pulls me down through the trees. ‘Run.’

This is it. This is the final thing I will write. The final truth of what happened. Or will I lose my nerve and try not to incriminate myself? Will I feel some misplaced loyalty? Will I try to protect the innocent? And the guilty. Will I prefer to slip away into the darkness, into the heart of the fire, with my memories intact? Carrying Devlin’s heart. Carrying it in my heart.

We are running down through the trees, the branches breathing into the dark, the stars moving slowly. Behind us, I hear a sharp crack. Another one. It reminds me of the brandy glass exploding in the fire but this is a bigger glass, a bigger fire.

‘Shooting,’ says Devlin.

We don’t stop. My slippers are soaked, I can no longer feel my toes. But I don’t care. I keep running.

The wind swells again, the leaves stir restlessly. I imagine the sea whirling up its black points, its small angles of foam, trailing its dark-green dead hair.

We reach the road. It seems empty, a blank tongue in the dark. I assume we’ll go to the hut but Devlin points at a square shadow which edges the road. ‘I’ve got a car.’

He is unlocking the passenger door when the trees further along move out onto the road. Tall slender figures which merge with the macadam. I see woollen cloaks, feet bound with goatskins, the smaller humps of sleeping children. I see African faces.

A stocky shape surges out of the gloom. Stefano.

‘Do you have a gun?’ I say to Devlin.

‘No guns,’ he says.

I try to pull him away from Stefano. ‘He’ll hurt you.’

‘No,’ says Devlin and raises his hand. ‘How long were you meant to keep them in the hut?’

Stefano eyes me. After a pause, he says, ‘The buyers come tomorrow.’

‘Keep them in the hut until then,’ says Devlin. ‘We may sting the buyers, too.’

Stefano nods. ‘The deal is good?’

‘Yes.’

Stefano puts out his hand. Devlin doesn’t hesitate. They shake.

Stefano turns away.

‘Stefano,’ says Devlin. The other man stops, black and bulky. ‘There are cameras in the ceiling. Keep one of those tapes for yourself. As insurance.’

We watch the group cross the road, a small dark stream moving over the white ground, past the lake. They climb the ridge and merge with the trees around the hut.

‘Let’s go,’ says Devlin, opening the car door.

I am about to climb in. One more moment and I would have done it. I would have got in the car and driven away with Devlin. To a happy ending.

But a breeze passes across my face. I smell sulfur. Devlin says, ‘It’s nothing.’ Across the car roof, he has the same look of resignation that Rosza had.

I clamber up the slope.

The silver quivers in the distance. Cracks sound and all the lights go out. The house sits in the black night but it is no longer silver. The shell is turning gold, tipped with orange from the flames burning below it.