Juliette sat up and crawled to the end of the bed. Kneeling over my body, she began cradling my right foot in her hands. I watched her face, curious about her reaction to the foot’s deformity. However, her mien remained impassive and unreadable. She was tracing the line of the foot’s bony deformation as if it were a seashell that she had picked up from the shore.
‘You can keep it, if you like,’ I said.
She laughed. ‘You don’t accept it, do you? The asymmetry of your body.’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘It’s a misrepresentation.’
Juliette left later that morning. I watched her from my window run down the street. I lay down on my sofa and took out my pipe. Through the myth-making of its smoke the portrait of Justine had changed shape yet again. Her mouth was now wide open and her laughter sounded wicked.
TWENTY-TWO
I had not wanted to return to Waterloo. I had had enough glimpses into the sordidity of Juliette’s lifestyle, just from the outside, to last me. However, she had insisted that it was her turn to entertain. And I knew in my heart that I had to see her again. She answered the door to the pet shop in a dress splattered with sepia details (taken from Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus) of the goddess emerging from the sea in her shell. Juliette was just another impostor I thought of a different kind. Icons of love could only be worn by Justine.
I followed her reluctantly through the deserted pet shop. I could hear the animals quietly stirring in their cages. The staircase up to her flat, at the back of the shop, was narrow and steep and covered in a thick coarse carpet, the colour of dense mud. As I followed her up the stairs, a parrot in one of the cages from down below called up, ‘Silly Boy… Silly Boy’.
The plain white door at the top of the stairs had a smooth surface, empty of a number or letter. Juliette inserted her key into the small keyhole which was surprisingly low down in the door. The door was positioned very near the edge of the top step, making it awkward for me to get into her flat without stumbling, but Juliette took my hand.
The hallway was dark inside, but as I followed Juliette down the narrow corridor, I could just make out that the walls were papered in dark red flock. She opened a door at the far end of the passageway. Entering, it took me a while, because of the very dim light, to work out where I was. But as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, I slowly realized that I was standing in the middle of a pile of junk. I was surrounded by rubbish. Discarded mannequins, stuffed one-eyed owls, biscuit tins, old torn newspapers, and a stoat perched forever on a tree stump in an old glass case, lay all around. Was this some kind of joke? There was hardly enough space for my feet. Books, hand-written manuscripts, crusts of bread, broken-open piggy-banks and soiled underwear littered the ground. It was as if every conceivable used object in the world was lying on her floor. Worst of all, this room was lived in by a woman. There was not a single trace of feminine tidiness or nicety.
In the distance, in a neighbouring flat, someone had started to play hesitantly on the piano, ‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine’. I looked up at Juliette. She was now standing on the other side of the room, having quickly negotiated all the obstacles in her way with nimble feet. She was staring at me. In the dark saturated room I watched as she began to move her hands over the sepia print of the dress, stopping at her breasts to touch her nipples, or rubbing between her legs, the material crunching up wetly between her body. Her face was flushed and her mouth open, but her eyes did not leave mine once. The background noise of the chaos, the darkness, the warm smells, the inane tinkling of the piano were all insanely contributing to my heightening arousal.
I was oblivious to the broken chairs and pieces of glass that snatched and cut at my ankles, as I made my way over to her. Reaching out to her, I pulled her body to me, at the same time kissing the warm pale skin of her neck, tearing at her dress to kiss between her breasts, placing my hand between her soft open legs. My desire for her was making it difficult for me to breathe. Without undressing I took her standing up against the off-white peeling walls.
But afterwards, as I belted up my trousers again, I felt ashamed. Juliette torn and dishevelled, stood quietly watching me, her back still leaning against the wall. I felt degraded: for a moment my desire for Juliette had actually been real. I wanted to hit Juliette for what she had done, for her repugnant temptations, for being too much. For making me betray Justine.
I looked around the room again – who could live in a room like this? What sort of person? The debris, the lack of order, the smell, the constant assault to every civilized sense. It would require a kind of insanity or autism to tolerate it. Someone who lived only in the interior world of the mind.
A piece of handwritten manuscript lying on the floor caught my eye. I picked it up. The page was headed with the single word: plot. A diagram of a square had been drawn underneath. At each of the square’s corners had been written a name: Juliette, Justine, Jack, and my own. Who was Jack? Juliette snatched the paper from me.
‘You reading the plot is not part of it,’ she said, mysteriously.
Then, her clothes half-ripped off her, and covered in sweat and semen, she said the words that, at that moment, I had least expected her to say.
‘You haven’t fooled me for a second. Do you really think that I haven’t guessed who you’re really interested in? I’m just your way in, aren’t I? To finding out more about her. So you want inside information? Let me give it to you. Justine’s favourite colour? Green. Justine’ s favourite book? The Portrait of a Lady. I can give you all the clues that you want. But let’s cut out the crap. I haven’t got all the time in the world, you know.’
TWENTY-THREE
I looked at her, wondering if it was worthwhile bothering to conceal my shock and dismay that she had discovered the truth. Had she known the truth all along? My plot was being rewritten by her and I didn’t like it one bit.
Juliette seemed disinterested in my response. She also seemed indifferent to the fact that she was now writing the story.
‘Of course, you are making a dreadful mistake,’ she said, ‘I mean with regards to Justine. She’s dangerous. She is cold. She is without emotion. I may be neurotic, but at least the only person I hurt is myself.’
I watched her face as she spoke. Standing in the junkyard of her home, as the night grew closer, the fair hair that fell in tendrils about her face turned black in the shadows. The eyes set far apart in the face were opaque. I decided to try to get back in control of the events.
‘What makes you think it is Justine, not you, whom I want?’
‘The disappointment in your eyes in the National Gallery when I told you I wasn’t Justine – it has never left your face.’
I gave up then any thought of continuing my pretence.