‘No,’ said Milena, tunelessly.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Wild Humours
(What Year is This?)
Milena was carrying parcels. She opened the door to her room, and on her bed, in the last of the daylight, sat Thrawn McCartney.
‘Get in here and sit down,’ said Thrawn.
Oh, that face. The devouring eyes, enraptured now that what Thrawn had wanted to happen had happened. The teeth were bared as if to rend flesh. The face could have been beautiful, if it had ever stopped eating itself. Milena the director felt the feathery brush of fear.
‘In a moment,’ said Milena, and found herself actually trying to smile. ‘Surely you’d be more comfortable on the chair?’ Meaning, get off my bed. Milena went towards her sink, to put down the rice and the peppers and the lumps of chicken flesh. She started to fill her bucket.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Thrawn demanded.
‘Putting my groceries away,’ said Milena dismally. What she hated most was the impossibility of being direct as soon as Thrawn was near. Everything was veiled, every gesture she made was masked as another, hiding one part of the truth with another. Milena was afraid, irritated beyond measure, weary and dishonest.
‘OK, Milena,’ sighed Thrawn. ‘You seem to like these little games.’
I hate them. I only ever play them around you.
‘You haven’t been to see me.’ Thrawn sounded hurt, vulnerable. ‘I have all kinds of new diddly boobs. I know you think it’s all right to neglect people. But you’re neglecting your work, Milena. That’s your job, isn’t it. To find out what I’m doing and see if the Consensus can use it?’
‘If you say so.’ Milena had just finished rinsing the peppers. Who would have thought it was such a long, complicated process to put away three pieces of food? Her back to Thrawn, Milena began to wash the chicken. She was thinking: this is my room. I did not ask you here. Do not think I am going to give you the full benefit of my attention.
‘One of them duplicates what you are seeing exactly, and overlays it. A wall say. You see a wall, and it looks the same as it always has done and then the stones grow faces.’
Why can’t I tell her to go? Milena was wondering. Is it because I don’t want to hurt her feelings? Is it fear? What am I afraid of? Why am I worried about telling her to go, when I have something so much bigger to tell her? Why is she conducting the conversation, when I am the one with something to say? Milena felt small, mean, weak and bursting with things that had been left unsaid.
‘I was talking to Sheer today,’ Thrawn went on. She had started to pace. What diversionary tactic now? What evasion now? Why is my life full of crazy people? ‘Oh really?’ said Milena, trying to sound if something neutral had been said. Unfortunately the chicken was now clean, and wrapped in moist cloths. Milena was wiping her hands. Am I going to suggest we go out? If I do, that means we won’t talk properly because we are in public. If I stay here, the hop skip and jump, the games, will be worse. Only in hop, skip and jump, the rules don’t keep changing underfoot.
‘He mentioned that you might have a new project. He didn’t seem too pleased with the idea.’
He wouldn’t mention it to you, Thrawn, because he hates you and only dislikes me. He doesn’t talk to you at all. Why, wondered Milena, is it so difficult to call someone a liar?
‘In the meantime,’ said Thrawn, her arrogance perfectly ludicrous, not so much in her words as in the way she swanned around the room, lip curled at its size, at the one cold bed. ‘I need a new production.’
‘Well,’ said Milena, still with a horrible neutrality. ‘I hear Toll Barrett needs a good technician. I think he’s doing The Last of the Mohicans?
One small trick she could always play back: take what Thrawn said at absolutely face value.
Thrawn snorted. ‘I know about that shit. I’m not interested. What about The Divine Comedy?’ A very small trick, when Thrawn could play it back for bigger stakes, and always seem to both of them to be more honest.
‘This is my room. Will you please leave?’ said Milena. It sounded feeble even to her.
‘Not until we have a few things straight.’
And I always end up saying the right things in the wrong place. Jumping when I should skip.
‘Milton tells me it’s all going ahead. Why haven’t I been told?’
Milena, dear heart, this is it. You have to ditch her. If you don’t, she’ll have you forever. Somehow she has a hold on you. The hold is a knot in her own head, a knot that uses her fearsome intelligence to tie itself tighter and tighter. And you are now bound up in it, and you have to get free. Basically, you are the stronger. You are the one playing with the full hand. Mother of God, mother of anything, don’t let me falter.
‘You’re not part of it, Thrawn.’ Direct enough. Blown by the performance, a nervousness from which psychopaths are exempt.
‘You know you can’t do anything on your own,’ sighed Thrawn.
‘I put on one hundred and forty-two productions,’ said Milena.
‘Hmmm,’ said Thrawn looking away half-interested. ‘But it was Crabs that was the success, wasn’t it. Now you’ve got hold of someone else’s music and someone else’s poetry. I suppose you think you’re on to a good thing. Do you really think you could cube like me?’
‘Yes,’ said Milena.
And part of her pre-rehearsed speech fell into place, as it had been delivered so often to the walls of her room. ‘You’re the one who can’t do without me, Thrawn. Until I came along, no one would work with you. Can you imagine yourself directing? Getting along with forty or fifty people? Not futzing around, not bursting into tears, not playing any of what you call your little jokes? You also have a very poor visual imagination, Thrawn. I know it sounds strange, but you’re only good at duplicating what is in front of you. When you reform from scratch, the images are muddy. Toll Barrett wouldn’t have you, Thrawn. Why should I be any better than him?’
Thrawn still mused, as if unconcerned. ‘So. You’re going to take my ideas and execute them badly at public expense. Vast public expense. Don’t you think that’s dishonest?’
‘No. I’m getting rid of someone who is deeply unreliable and who is likely to ruin a project at vast public expense.’
‘Getting rid of me, are you?’ Thrawn managed an absolutely convincing, confident chuckle. ‘I wonder what Charles Sheer thinks about that?’ Does she believe it herself, I wonder?
‘I don’t know what Sheer thinks. And neither do you.’
And Milena reminded herself. I am the stronger really. I no longer have to worry about hurting her. I am going to have to hurt her. I am going to have to break her.
‘But I do know,’ continued Milena. ‘That Sheer wasn’t much impressed by either out-theatre or the Crabs. So I am moving beyond those. Because this cannot be and will not be junk. And you can’t produce anything else.’
That’s right, Milena told herself. This is Rolfa’s. It isn’t mine. I don’t count. You will not get your hands on it, Thrawn. You don’t have your hands on it.
‘Why are you doing this?’ said Thrawn. She looked wounded. ‘I work with you. I give you the best I can. I’ve only produced junk, because that’s what’s been called for.’
And Thrawn sang, as accurately as her voice could manage, the opening of Inferno. Sang it with feeling. She could imitate any feeling.