I watched as Juliette slowly got dressed again, not in the same dress, but in an elegant, deep green silk that wrapped itself round her body. She stood up straight and gracefully. The expression on her face had changed. It had become serene and distant. It had become Justine’s face. Justine then looked up and smiled at me. I turned from the window.
I noticed for the first time that sometime during the night a bed had been placed in the corner of the room.
SIXTY-SEVEN
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. The door opened and Justine entered. Her face was as smooth as alabaster. She bent down over me where I had lain down on the bare bed and clasped an iron chained ring round the ankle of my deformed foot. She padlocked the chain to the bed. I saw her breasts sway under the dark green silk of her dress.
She stood up above me and looked down without saying anything.
‘There are no twin sisters,’ I said slowly. ‘Or rather they are both you. All along it has always been just you. Just Justine.’
‘Did you know that man’s ability to manipulate his own kind is what distinguishes him from the other animals? That I manipulated Jack, and then manipulated you in order to wreak revenge on Jack, is what distinguishes me from the lower primates.’ She laughed. ‘I am a jealous god. You know jealousy too, don’t you? I mean know, intimate like a lover, the closeness of jealousy. Been as intimate with it as Christ was with his cross. A cauldron of blood, metal and wood. I have the stigmata too but it is on the inside.
‘Juliette fell in love with Jack. But she never trusted him. His eyes consistently strayed. Like the eyes of a lost dog. She decided to set him a test. She invented a sister: Justine. Justine was independent, omnipotent and unable to love. Juliette didn’t stand a chance against her. Jack fell. Poor Juliette. But more poor Jack. Jack didn’t believe in jealousy but you and Juliette did. That is why trapped between our singular desires he had to die.
‘In order to take revenge on Jack I had to be elaborate: I needed a murderer. You came along just at the right time. The image of Justine ensnared you, then Juliette came along to put the trap into operation. Juliette was necessary to give credence to the story of the abductor.’
‘But what about the ribbons? Who left those behind?’
‘Justine.’
‘Who wrote the letters? Those obscene letters?’
‘Justine. Juliette knew where you lived, remember.
‘But I don’t take full credit for the murder of Jack. It was your jealousy of my image that really did it. You wanted your notion of my beauty for yourself. It was not the abductor’s threat of my death, but the threat of the death of your fantasy that killed Jack. But the fantasy of the abductor did bring you out here. Of course, in your heart you know that you are the real abductor. The abductor of Justine’s identity. You wanted it for your own. So in the end it’s only fair that you are punished too.’
But I was still confused. ‘So which one are you? Justine or Juliette?’
‘Did either of you really think you could divide me up that easily? Like a child sorting out two colours of brick. But both you and Jack were always one for appearances. While the real me was climbing between the two phantoms of Justine and Juliette, living somewhere in the space between the two and neither you nor Jack noticing, neither of you concerned with who I really was.
‘You both really should have guessed, you know. The characterizations were so basic. Omnipotent Justine and needy Juliette, virgin and whore. Just enough to titillate the preconceptions. You were both one of a kind, the murderer and the murderee. It was inevitable in the end that you had to cancel each other out.’
SIXTY-EIGHT
Anger cracked open the hard shell of my obsession. It was as if my heart had been plucked out and swallowed up by the air around me.
‘So now you know,’ she continued, ‘My story was the real one. I’m not talking about Death is a Woman. It never existed. I’m not talking about words on pages, about my failed attempts to get published, about pale representations. I’m talking about the story I have really written, the story of Justine. The story I have got you, my ghost writer, to write for me. I’m talking about the real thing. I’m talking about the story of life. And the story of death. That’s where having a plot really counts. But you chose to ignore my story. As have all the men in my life. You were too busy making up your own. If I was to be the heroine of your book, you could at least have given me a speaking part. But now that you have acted out my story, I think it’s time that you put it down in writing too.’ She paused and smiled. ‘Just for posterity.’
For the first time since I had laid eyes on her I wanted out.
But what was the true identity of this woman? I had to call her Justine just to hook on to some kind of reality. I could not cope with more than one illusory woman at a time. Was she insane? How far was she in control of her own actions? How far was she in control of mine?
After she had left the room, I tried to look for signs of madness in the entangled intricacies of our shared history but I was met with a television shut-down of contradictory conversations and information.
She had certainly acted at all times as if she had been in absolute control. She even had her sense of control under control. For had she not acted out the implacable cold image of Justine just as she had acted out the passionate incoherence of Juliette, with equanimity? She was not mad at all. She was simply a woman possessed by a lucid sense of revenge. Hell hath no fury.
SIXTY-NINE
I cherished the fury that her revelations had generated in my heart. My anger was a reclamation of my identity: my rage fought against the world of Justine that I had slipped into, had been slowly sliding into like quicksand from the moment I had first seen her. All along, I had assumed that I had been bringing her into my world, so that I could put her in a glass case, a private exhibition of her which I could let out at my delectation to taste her sweet flesh. I had been tricked by the beautiful object that I had sought to possess. She had had her own thoughts and desires which had manipulated me. There was a parallel universe and it belonged to her. Worse, she had dragged me into it.
I nursed my anger as I once had nursed my love. My anger felt good, like a long lost friend who made me remember how I once was. The reality of the world around me suddenly took on new meaning again. It became imperative that I escaped.
Justine seemed oblivious or indifferent to the change in my feelings for her. She shouldn’t have been, as they were dangerous. In fact, instead of being on her guard she now seemed to relax. It was as if her confession had in some way absolved her. She began bringing me in food every day. I swallowed needily mouthful after mouthful, while she would just watch with cold appraising eyes. She would then take the tray away without uttering a word.
Weeks passed and I slowly began to despair at ever managing to escape. The room was devoid of anything that I might use as a weapon and I still doubted I was strong enough to overpower Justine without one.
One day as I was eating, Justine silently watching me as usual, the sun suddenly came out from behind a cloud and a bright beam shot across the room. With the fluid intuition of a dream, I lifted my head up as if someone had just walked into the room and was standing behind Justine’s left shoulder. Uttering a scream, I tried to stand up as if to take a step away, but the chain that bound my leg to the bed pulled me back and the tray and the cutlery fell crashing to the floor. A knife fell at my left foot.