She stood in the centre of the room while he undressed her with his gloved hands. A foliage of flame, fern tongues, disturbed the grate: a demented tangle of blades. Crippled shadows, across the wall, uniting them in urgent and repeated acts.
She sat in the elbow-chair, waiting; he selected a pair of intricately laced boots from the cupboard. Nothing is said. Mumbled threats, instructions. The heavy cloth of his coat pressing on her, greasy with spilled food, old smoke.
Then he was at the window, worrying a corner of grey muslin between his finger and his thumb. She was on her knees, water steaming from the spout of an old black kettle: washing him. They were helpless, without breath, sunk in their poses — when the knock came. They were drowned.
An unyielding hand upon his elbow. The blind surgeon is led away. Out of the court, through the warren, and across the highway to the lit building, the source of his power. The opera house of all her dreams.
It could have continued indefinitely. I do not remember how it began or how long it endured, who had initiated the affair, or who had set its terms. Our meetings succeeded one another with the remorselessness of a black letter text. So long ago, so far back; voices beyond the court were calling to the shore. Sparks from the train, like fire-sprites released from a shattered stone; like sun-specks on water. Abandoned. Forgotten. My consciousness divided, bound, tied in brown paper parcels: jogging on a onehorse cart towards some mortuary shed.
There were times when it was his pleasure to sprawl in the elbow-chair, my linsey over his knees, my reflection beyond him in the grime of the window, my long hair a wig to his glistening white skull. He required me to brush him, powder him, to gently stroke the pulse in his temples. There were times when he fell to his knees — as in a seizure — clasping my foot to his lips, an alabaster gull chipped from a fallen monument; his dry mouth rubbing, a sand beetle in a nest of dead twigs.
It could have continued, it did, the years, ageing together, ghost-tryst, shadows miming desire in a house of the dead, a museum of trapped reflexes: masked, we enacted obscure rituals.
I understudied my own mythology; I was withdrawn, I surprised him, inspiring the grossest intimacies. My hands behind my head, beyond him, I lay on a bare mattress, plunged back into the current that ran through my bones, dragging him on to me, his beard-splintered skull down upon my belly. I learned to split the ceiling, to prise open the roof-tree, let the star threads cut my brain into Platonic segments. Babylonian histories swept over me: brass and thorn and crocodile. There was neither contentment, nor suffering. He moved only as I caused him to move. It could have continued, if I had not known from the beginning that he was my father. He had no choice. He did not want me to live. He had to follow me into his own extinction.
The frozen field is compressed. The knock of a spade. Ice creases me. I am drawn up through the earth. I rest my chin upon my knees. Without sight, I am pure. The scratching of voles. Oak and elm protect me. My chaplet of heartsease is gone. I float in the dust of my own skin. Who is that standing over my bed? The plan forms: over the bare trees, the dark buildings, a vein in the clouds. From the lattice of old pains I infect myself once more with venereal promptings. From beyond my death, I am guided.
The surgeon’s hand is become his emblem.
He entered; I crossed the room, barefoot — I slipped the bolt. He paused, uncertain. Divinatory shapes in a garden of flame; the decision was forming. I had oiled the lock, tried it, but still he was startled. Directly, I initiated the new rituaclass="underline" he was suppressed, stiff, anxious. He submitted. Rigid spine, fists clenched; the struggle etched stern lines around his empty sockets. A Mosaic will troubled his flesh: the skin of a glove left too long in water.
I would anticipate the motives of his actions, I would forestall him. If he lost his certainty he would no longer be my father. I would not have to kill him. The close walls rub my shoulders, powder me in fine bone dust. It is an obscene wedding, a blasphemy. The grey muslin bells around my nakedness. His black coat is grassed by firelight. The gold ring is my virtue.
Water has been boiled, it has cooled. I pour it carefully into a blue stone bowl, spilling no drop of it. The salt runs through my fingers in a vortex. I stir the surface of the water, setting the flow against the direction of the sun. Against nature.
I kept him standing where he was. Slowly I removed his coat, waistcoat, chains, cuffs, collar, the long cotton shirt. I laid out his things upon the table. An altar of offerings, touched by him, warmed with use. The turnip-watch had a seal and a red stone hanging from it. There was a key, a cigar cutter, some coins. I spotted his pale skin with water. I circled him, four times, dipping my fingers into the bowl. Four times I touched him.
He flinched, twisting, helpless, towards the direction from which he would be marked. Forehead, base of spine, liver, heart.
Behind him: I pressed myself against his back, my chemise between us, his as much as mine. My lips to his neck, whispering, whispering the names. I held him. My strength flowed out of me. Our veins were opened. My finger raced, rapidly, over his ribs. His nipples stiffened. I bound his wrists, lacing his thumbs together: a split sex.
He wanted, then, to turn. But I would not allow it. He was engorged; the thick vein pulsing in his neck. He was a painted statue. I saw the salt burn in him, his skin tightening to crystal scales. He was crowned with wild light. Priest, lion, sacrifice.
That autumn the skies over the city were scarlet, the market buildings and the tenements standing against them: plague islands. High windows were stained with this fire and the derelicts babbled millennial threats. It was the right time; I drained him, I milked his venom. The tower of the church, white ashlar blocks, was Egypt. His mouth was dry — he cried out — his tongue black: locusts. I fed him, dripping the salted water from the nipple of my finger. My tongue went into his mouth like a fish that becomes a knife. I wanted to slash his vocal cords, to make him speechless as well as blind. I wanted to give him rubies instead of eyes. To wrap him like a pharaoh.
Thunder shattered the mirror. A slate. Each segment, a forbidden syllable.
The hour had expired, his man was at the door. Yellow glove on the claw of the handle. A subtle pressure at his elbow. The surgeon hesitated, turning his great dim head towards me: a ceremonial ram caught in a thicket. My back was to him, I faced the fogged window. He was led away, slipping on the cobbles, unprotected, his face brushing through old sacks. This evening’s victim was already naked on the cutting bench. Hiss of naphtha. Sleeves rolled to the elbow, he washes; the audience is seated, expectant, the blade is placed in his hand. Twice as long as the neck is wide, without flaw. No break in its perfected edge.
Now he cannot leave my room. Stretched upon my bed, his hands behind his neck, his breath slow: out of his element. There is only light as we remember it. His man fidgets in the yard, muttering of appointments, digging at his groin.
Red incense in a brass mortar; smoke like the visible traces of an unheard sound. He loses all orientation. His man is dismissed, with no interval set for his return. Smoke scarfs the surgeon’s face, eroding his individuality — unsexing him. It is warm, it insinuates; it whispers. He seems to be on fire. The smoke connects him to the brass mortar. It is without origin.
She is moving, barefoot, circling; white chemise. Man without eyes, her equal. A night when neither sun nor moon are to be found. She has painted a tree of bones over his spine. And he is made to lie upon her bed, his face to the open sky. The incense is pure. It takes his breath.