The footsteps walked up the ramp. A hand twisted the door latch.
She smiled at the door.
The door opened. She stopped smiling.
It was her husband. His silver mask glowed dully.
He entered the room and looked at her for only a moment. Then he snapped the weapon bellows open, cracked out two dead bees, heard them spat on the floor as they fell, stepped on them, and placed the empty bellows gun in the corner of the room as Ylla bent down and tried, over and over, with no success, to pick up the pieces of the shattered gla.s.s. "What were you doing?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said with his back turned. He removed the mask.
"But the gun-I heard you fire it. Twice."
"Just hunting. Once in a while you like to hunt. Did Dr. Nlle arrive?"
"No."
"Wait a minute." He snapped his fingers disgustedly. "Why, I remember now. He was supposed to visit us tomorrow afternoon. How stupid of me."
They sat down to eat. She looked at her food and did not move her hands. "What"s wrong?" he asked, not looking up from dipping his meat in the bubbling lava.
"I don"t know. I"m not hungry," she said.
"Why not?"
"I don"t know; I"m just not."
The wind was rising across the sky; the sun was going down. The room was small and suddenly cold.
"I"ve been trying to remember," she said in the silent room, across from her cold, erect, golden-eyed husband.
"Remember what?" He sipped his wine.
"That song. That fine and beautiful song." She closed her eyes and hummed, but it was not the song. "I"ve forgotten it. And, somehow, I don"t want to forget it. It"s something I want always to remember." She moved her hands as if the rhythm might help her to remember all of it. Then she lay back in her chair. "I can"t remember." She began to cry.
"Why are you crying?" he asked.
"I don"t know, I don"t know, but I can"t help it. I"m sad and I don"t know why, I cry and I don"t know why, but I"m crying."
Her head was in her hands; her shoulders moved again and again.
"You"ll be all right tomorrow," he said.
She did not look up at him; she looked only at the empty desert and the very bright stars coming out now on the black sky, and far away there was a sound of wind rising and ca.n.a.l waters stirring cold in the long ca.n.a.ls. She shut her eyes, trembling.
"Yes," she said. "I"ll be all right tomorrow."
BANSHEE.
IT WAS ONE OF THOSE NIGHTS, crossing Ireland, motoring through the sleeping towns from Dublin, where you came upon mist and encountered fog that blew away in rain to become a blowing silence. All the country was still and cold and waiting. It was a night for strange encounters at empty crossroads with great filaments of ghost spiderweb and no spider in a hundred miles. Gates creaked far across meadows, where windows rattled with brittle moonlight.
It was, as they said, banshee weather. I sensed, I knew this as my taxi hummed through a final gate and I arrived at Courtown House, so far from Dublin that if that city died in the night, no one would know.
I paid my driver and watched the taxi turn to go back to the living city, leaving me alone with twenty pages of final screenplay in my pocket, and my film director employer waiting inside. I stood in the midnight silence, breathing in Ireland and breathing out the damp coal mines in my soul.
Then, I knocked.
The door flew wide almost instantly. John Hampton was there, shoving a gla.s.s of sherry into my hand and hauling me in.
"Good G.o.d, kid, you got me curious. Get that coat off. Give me the script. Finished it, eh? So you say. You got me curious. Glad you called from Dublin. The house is empty. Clara"s in Paris with the kids. We"ll have a good read, knock the h.e.l.l out of your scenes, drink a bottle, be in bed by two and-what"s that?"
The door still stood open. John took a step, tilted his head, closed his eyes, listened.
The wind rustled beyond in the meadows. It made a sound in the clouds like someone turning back the covers of a vast bed.
I listened.
There was the softest moan and sob from somewhere off in the dark fields.
Eyes still shut, John whispered, "You know what that is, kid?"
"What?"
"Tell you later. Jump."
With the door slammed, he turned about and, the grand lord of the empty manor, strode ahead of me in his hacking coat, drill slacks, polished half-boots, his hair, as always, windblown from swimming upstream or down with strange women in unfamiliar beds.
Planting himself on the library hearth, he gave me one of those beacon flashes of laugh, the teeth that beckoned like a lighthouse beam swift and gone, as he traded me a second sherry for the screenplay, which he had to seize from my hand.
"Let"s see what my genius, my left ventricle, my right arm, has birthed. Sit. Drink. Watch."
He stood astride the hearthstones, warming his backside, leafing my ma.n.u.script pages, conscious of me drinking my sherry much too fast, shutting my eyes each time he let a page drop and flutter to the carpet. When he finished he let the last page sail, lit a small cigarillo and puffed it, staring at the ceiling, making me wait.
"You son of a b.i.t.c.h," he said at last, exhaling. "It"s good. d.a.m.n you to h.e.l.l, kid. It"s good!"
My entire skeleton collapsed within me. I had not expected such a midriff blow of praise.
"It needs a little cutting, of course!"
My skeleton rea.s.sembled itself.
"Of course," I said.
He bent to gather the pages like a great loping chimpanzee and turned. I felt he wanted to hurl them into the fire. He watched the flames and gripped the pages.
"Someday, kid," he said quietly, "you must teach me to write."
He was relaxing now, accepting the inevitable, full of true admiration.
"Someday," I said, laughing, "you must teach me to direct."
"The Beast will be our film, son. Quite a team."
He arose and came to clink gla.s.ses with me.
"Quite a team we are!" He changed gears. "How are the wife and kids?"
"They"re waiting for me in Sicily where it"s warm."
"We"ll get you to them, and sun, straight off! I-"
He froze dramatically, c.o.c.ked his head, and listened.
"Hey, what goes on-" he whispered.
I turned and waited.
This time, outside the great old house, there was the merest thread of sound, like someone running a fingernail over the paint, or someone sliding down out of the dry reach of a tree. Then there was the softest exhalation of a moan, followed by something like a sob.
John leaned in a starkly dramatic pose, like a statue in a stage pantomime, his mouth wide, as if to allow sounds entry to the inner ear. His eyes now unlocked to become as huge as hen"s eggs with pretended alarm.
"Shall I tell you what that sound is, kid? A banshee!"
"A what?" I cried.
"Banshee!" he intoned. "The ghosts of old women who haunt the roads an hour before someone dies. That"s what that sound was!" He stepped to the window, raised the shade, and peered out. "Sh! Maybe it means-us!"
"Cut it out, John!" I laughed, quietly.
"No, kid, no." He fixed his gaze far into the darkness, savoring his melodrama. "I lived here ten years. Death"s out there. The banshee always knows! Where were we?"
He broke the spell as simply as that, strode back to the hearth and blinked at my script as if it were a brand new puzzle.
"You ever figure, Doug, how much The Beast is like me? The hero plowing the seas, plowing women left and right, off round the world and no stops? Maybe that"s why I"m doing it. You ever wonder how many women I"ve had? Hundreds! I-"
He stopped, for my lines on the page had shut him again. His face took fire as my words sank in.
"Brilliant!"
I waited, uncertainly.
"No, not that!" He threw my script aside to seize a copy of the London Times off the mantel. "This! A brilliant review of your new book of stories!"
"What?" I jumped.
"Easy, kid. I"ll read this grand review to you! You"ll love it. Terrific!"
My heart took water and sank. I could see another joke coming on or, worse, the truth disguised as a joke.
"Listen!"
John lifted the Times and read, like Ahab, from the holy text.
""Douglas Rogers"s stories may well be the huge success of American literature-"" John stopped and gave me an innocent blink. "How you like it so far, kid?"
"Continue, John," I mourned. I slugged my sherry back. It was a toss of doom that slid down to meet a collapse of will.
""-but here in London,"" John intoned, ""we ask more from our tellers of tales. Attempting to emulate the ideas of Kipling, the style of Maugham, the wit of Waugh, Rogers drowns somewhere in mid-Atlantic. This is ramshackle stuff, mostly bad shades of superior scribes. Douglas Rogers, go home!""
I leaped up and ran, but John with a lazy flip of his underhand, tossed the Times into the fire where it flapped like a dying bird and swiftly died in flame and roaring sparks.
Imbalanced, staring down, I was wild to grab that d.a.m.ned paper out, but finally glad the thing was lost.
John studied my face, happily. My face boiled, my teeth ground shut. My hand, stuck to the mantel, was a cold rock fist.
Tears burst from my eyes, since words could not burst from my aching mouth.
"What"s wrong, kid?" John peered at me with true curiosity, like a monkey edging up to another sick beast in its cage. "You feeling poorly?"
"John, for Christ"s sake!" I burst out. "Did you have to do that!"
I kicked at the fire, making the logs tumble and a great firefly wheel of sparks gush up the flue.
"Why, Doug, I didn"t think-"
"Like h.e.l.l you didn"t!" I blazed, turning to glare at him with tear-splintered eyes. "What"s wrong with you?"
"h.e.l.l, nothing, Doug. It was a fine review, great! I just added a few lines, to get your goat!"
"I"ll never know now!" I cried. "Look!"
I gave the ashes a final, scattering kick.
"You can buy a copy in Dublin tomorrow, Doug. You"ll see. They love you. G.o.d, I just didn"t want you to get a big head, right. The joke"s over. Isn"t it enough, dear son, that you have just written the finest scenes you ever wrote in your life for your truly great screenplay?" John put his arm around my shoulder.
That was John: kick you in the tripes, then pour on the wild sweet honey by the larder ton.
"Know what your problem is, Doug?" He shoved yet another sherry in my trembling fingers. "Eh?"
"What?" I gasped, like a sniveling kid, revived and wanting to laugh again. "What?"