Black Diamond Page 8

  ‘He isn’t invited.’

  ‘If they try to turn him away, you leave with him.’

  ‘But it’s for dinner. And I can’t bring an extra guest anyway, if I don’t even know the people.’

  ‘You can and you’ll have to,’ Mrs Schuyler said.

  Beatrice recalled her schooldays, the incident in the shop and the effect it had had on her. Of course, it had been the old woman, not the girl, who had spoken to her. Even so, she began to sense again the mixture of curiosity and panic the event had aroused in her. The prospect of visiting her father’s collection no longer appealed to her. She thought about entering the Cristo-Marquez house. She tried to imagine what it would look like inside, and what the people would be like, but she couldn’t. All she could think of was that everything there would be dark. She said, ‘Well, I can’t say I’m very anxious to go now. I’d be glad if Jack could come along.’

  Jack took the affair as a joke. ‘That old place‚’ he told her. ‘We used to believe it was haunted. Mother’s always distrusted the family. It probably goes back to sometime in the past when they managed to outbid her at an auction. Something like that.’

  ‘Didn’t someone mention singing? That they sang at night?’

  ‘Yes. Chanting. Wailing. Religious, I guess.’

  ‘At night?’

  ‘Yes. I used to hear it myself.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘Rather like … like what I said: the kind of chanting you’d hear at a religious ceremony.’

  ‘Just the thing to brighten up a dinner table.’

  ‘Should I go armed?’

  ‘That’s another thing – don’t start me laughing. I’m beginning to feel nervous about it. I’m quite capable of bursting into laughter the moment we get in the door. So don’t make jokes.’

  He promised, and then told her several terrible old jokes that doubled her up with giggles.

  They held hands on the drive to the house. A friend of hers in Switzerland – not a very close friend – had once accused her of being interested in the past because she was afraid of the future. The comment had hurt her deeply; she’d feared that it might be true. Now she knew that it hadn’t been true at all. It had simply been a spiteful remark. She loved the past because she was able to imagine it. She could see it clearly. And now, all at once, she saw her own life too, as it was and as it could become.

  The driver deposited them outside the railings of the garden fence. He left as soon as he was paid. There was a small, inadequate streetlight above the gates. Jack looked for a bell. There was nothing. Through the open ironwork they could see the path, the trees, the gigantic, partly-lighted house beyond. He pushed the gate, which opened in the middle and gave a loud, wrenching squeal. ‘Come on,’ he said.

  She stumbled along beside him over uneven stones. They went up a flight of steps and stopped at the front door of the house. Again he hunted in the dimness for a bell, and at last found the button. They waited a long time. Just as she was feeling relieved at the delay and thinking that they could leave, the door was thrown open and it was too late.

  ‘Mlle Norbert and Mr Schuyler,’ Jack said.

  The servant who had opened the door stood back to let them in. As they passed him, Beatrice thought there seemed to be something wrong with his back or shoulders. He held himself stiffly.

  The corridors weren’t so dark as she’d imagined. On the other hand, they were extremely narrow, without room for decoration or hangings other than the light brackets, and the ceilings were so high that it was like being in some vast, underground cave.

  They had to walk in single file, the servant leading, over an old rag carpet; in several places it wasn’t securely attached. Twice Jack had to catch Beatrice as she skidded to the side. The floor underneath was stone. And the house was quiet enough so that as they shuffled forward, the only sound other than that of their moving feet was the wheezing of the man in front.

  They came out into a space that in another house would have been the hallway by the main door: well-lighted, with plenty of room to stand. There were chairs against the wall and carpets on the wooden floor. A large Venetian mirror hung from a ceiling rail. Beatrice wondered how old the place was. The curiously labyrinthine entranceways might have had something to do with an ancient system of defence.

  A butler took their coats and showed them down two steps and through a door, into a reception room filled with people talking and raising glasses to their lips. An Egyptian in his mid-forties came up to them; he introduced himself as Hassan, the son of the house. ‘My mother is resting,’ he told them. ‘But you must meet my sister and my uncle, Constantine.’

  Uncle Constantine was a dessicated old gentleman who immediately attached himself to Beatrice and began to tell her about his young days in Paris. She enjoyed his stories, despite the fact that occasionally he’d repeat phrases or ask all at once, ‘Where was I?’ or, ‘What was I saying?’ The daughter, Ernestine, was also presented. Beatrice didn’t recognize her until a few minutes after they had been introduced; she now wore her hair pulled back into a knot. Her face was thin, the skin dried out, and the light eyes – which had made such a startling effect in her youth – had lost their clear, open look; they seemed sunken into her face and their color no longer appeared remarkable. Her hair was lighter than before. Beatrice suspected that she’d been putting henna on it. That was surprising, but merely a detail. What troubled Beatrice was the greater change that had taken place: from the striking-looking girl to this unsmiling, charmless woman.

  Two waiters circulated through the room with trays of wine. Jack engaged Ernestine in conversation. Like all the Schuylers, he could talk to anyone, and on any subject. Beatrice said to Hassan that she hadn’t realized there was to be such a large gathering.

  ‘Every week‚’ he told her. ‘They come for the ceremony.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Recitations from the classical texts. My mother started the custom years ago. This is just the usual crowd.’ As he finished his drink, one of the waiters whispered to him. ‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ he said to Beatrice.

  She could see Jack edging towards her. He waited until Ernestine and Uncle Constantine were drawn into larger groups and then eased himself away from them.

  ‘I recognize the son,’ he told her. ‘We used to see him at the bank. He’s got a reputation for business transactions that go a bit wrong for other people. He always seems to come out of them all right. Quick on his feet. Makes a lot of money and loses a lot, too.’

  ‘Hush,’ she said. ‘He’s coming back.’

  Hassan bowed to Beatrice. ‘My mother would be very happy to show you the sanctuary now. Will you come this way, please?’

  Beatrice and Jack moved forward together. Hassan said that it wasn’t necessary for the gentleman to come: he could stay and amuse himself with the other guests, if he so wished.

  ‘I’m looking forward to seeing the statues,’ Jack said. ‘Immensely.’

  Hassan hardly paused. He said that his mother would be delighted. He led them up a staircase, down a long corridor and up another flight of stairs. Beatrice had to stop for a moment to catch her breath. At the end of the hallway two men who looked like bodyguards stood to attention in front of studded double doors.

  ‘Are you not well?’ Hassan asked.

  ‘Very well, thank you. Too much dancing and champagne this week, I’m afraid. I’ll be all right now.’

  They moved to the doors, which now seemed to Beatrice like the entrance to a tomb. The guards swung the doors open to reveal a long, high, wide room like the main showroom of a museum. She recognized the sitting hawk and baboon, the two rams, and in the far distance the torso of Tuthmosis the Third. She did not recognize the woman who glided towards them, but felt that she ought to have.

  ‘Mother,’ Hassan said, ‘this is Mlle Norbert. Mademoiselle, allow me to present my mother: Mme Cristo-Marquez.’

  Beatrice stepped forward, smiled and took the woman’s
hand. She tried not to stare at the long, square-cut, dead-black hair that must have been a wig, or at the extraordinary, flamboyant make-up on the face in front of her. Mme Cristo-Marquez was painted to resemble an ancient Egyptian queen or goddess: the eyes were heavily outlined with black, the lids azure-shaded. The eyes themselves never stopped moving. She greeted Beatrice and Jack, looking at them and away again – at a stone jar, at a blue bead necklace, at Hassan, and at Ernestine and Uncle Constantine, who had followed them in. It took Beatrice a few moments before she realized that the woman was insane.

  Mme Cristo-Marquez described an outward arc with one hand. ‘He would have wanted me to have them,’ she said.

  ‘It’s wonderful to see them again,’ Beatrice told her. ‘But shouldn’t they be on the ground floor? The weight –’

  ‘The weight of the past,’ Mme Cristo-Marquez said portentously, ‘is always with us.’

  ‘They might actually go through the floor. We had a bad accident at home with a granite cat – quite a small statue, but it weighed –’

  ‘It weighs on my mind,’ Mme Cristo-Marquez said. She laughed. Beatrice heard Jack draw in his breath. ‘Do you see my daughter there? My daughter, Ernestine. She looks like an Arab, doesn’t she? And sometimes she looks almost like a Nubian. Do you know why? It’s because of our association with the past. With history.’ She prowled towards a lidded sarcophagus in the center of the room and turned back without warning. ‘It’s caused by thought‚’ she declared.

  Beatrice took Jack’s arm. She prepared to make an excuse to leave.

  ‘She’s your father’s daughter‚’ Mme Cristo-Marquez proclaimed. Ernestine showed no response, nor did her brother, nor the uncle. Beatrice began to feel angry as well as uneasy.

  ‘He loved me,’ Mme Cristo-Marquez murmured. She closed her eyes for a moment, displaying the blue color to the full.

  ‘He loved everyone‚’ Beatrice said. It wasn’t quite true. He’d had no time for women who were silly without being beautiful or charming enough to make up for it. He’d never had much patience with posturing and melodrama: he liked people who had some sense.

  Mme Cristo-Marquez swept towards the sarcophagus and draped herself against one of its corners. ‘I was the only love of his life,’ she said.

  Beatrice wanted to say: How long did you last? She felt herself being overtaken by the indignation of the legitimate. She tried to stop herself from saying anything that would hurt the woman. Mme Cristo-Marquez was repulsive, outrageous and offensive, but she was also ludicrous, pitiable, ill. And the rest of her family knew it. Her painted face, her stories about her daughter’s parentage, her collection of objects, were all for nothing. The things people will do out of despair, Beatrice thought. And then afterwards they sit there with a handful of trash, and tell themselves that they’re happy.

  ‘And in the end, he came to me. He came back to Cairo, to seek his final resting place. He died of love.’

  A sense of her father’s personality came to Beatrice so strongly that it was almost as if he were near her in the way people describe the presence of ghosts. How he would have detested the impertinence of this woman, she thought. How he would have disapproved of all these theatrical trappings. He liked reason, science, logic. It was impossible that these people could have known him. ‘He died‚’ she said, ‘of food-poisoning.’

  ‘There are poisons and poisons, you know. Some can work at a distance, and some over a period of time. Love is a poison.’

  ‘Love is a pleasure,’ Jack said. ‘Always.’ Beatrice squeezed his hand.

  ‘Not always,’ Mme Cristo-Marquez shrieked. ‘But he knows better now. Now he’s come home to me.’

  ‘He’s buried near Bagdad,’ Beatrice stated coldly.

  Mme Cristo-Marquez made a snarling noise. She slapped the side of the sarcophagus. ‘Here,’ she said. The other members of her family still hadn’t moved. ‘Shall I show you?’ she shouted.

  Although Beatrice was incensed, the fact that she hadn’t seen her father die – that she hadn’t even been able to look at the body – suddenly made her fear that there might be something inside the sarcophagus. It was even possible that a crazed woman with enough money could bribe people to dig up a corpse and transport it from one country to another. She said, ‘Jack, would you take me back to the hotel, please?’

  ‘Certainly. Will you excuse us? It’s been a delightful evening, but a long day. I’m afraid we must be going.’ He drew her away, heading towards the doors. Beatrice said, ‘Goodnight,’ as they turned.

  Hassan made a move to follow them. His mother screamed that they were to stay, but he didn’t try to stop them. He told Ernestine, ‘Stay with her,’ and ran ahead of Jack. ‘Let me show you the way,’ he said.

  They went down the staircases in silence, across the carpeted lobbies, down the narrow hallways. In the foyer where the mirror hung, a butler presented Jack with his cape and Beatrice with the velvet cloak she’d bought in Florence. Hassan proceeded to the last, dim corridor and the door to the garden. Jack put his hand on the latch and opened the door before the arthritic servant could move. The cool air came in to them.

  Beatrice stepped out so that she was halfway through the door, and turned. She asked Hassan, ‘What’s in the sarcophagus?’

  He shrugged. ‘My father or your father – perhaps more than one person. Why should it make a difference to you?’

  ‘Do you mean that she’d really go so far as to dig someone up in order to put him in there?’

  ‘And why not? It’s what archaeologists do all the time. That’s their job: digging up the dead.’

  ‘Their job is to add to the sum of human knowledge,’ Beatrice said.

  Hassan started to shut the door in her face. He’d forgotten that Jack was still inside. Jack threw him against the wall and pushed his way out of the door. He caught Beatrice by the hand.

  They ran down the path to the gate. As soon as they were out on the street, they turned around to look back.

  ‘Those horrible people,’ she said. ‘Your mother was right. My God, what a nightmare.’

  ‘Not a nightmare. A farce. Listen,’ he said, freeing his hand and using both arms to imitate the dramatic movements of Mme Cristo-Marquez, ‘there are poisons and poisons.’

  Beatrice laughed. From the house, faintly, came a doleful wailing.

  ‘I suppose that’s from The Book of the Dead?’ he said. ‘They’ll get a surprise when all that masonry comes thundering down on them one of these days. That’ll really give them something to moan about.’

  He led her to broader streets, more densely populated, bursting with crowds and brightly lit. Every once in a while he made her laugh by leaning to the side and whispering into her ear, ‘Love is a poison.’

  Somewhere Else

  Beth was still working on the crossword puzzle when Alan finished his section of the paper. He reached for the pile of letters that looked like bills and throwaways. There was a time when the mailman delivered letters from living people, not just from organizations and offices. Of course nowadays practically everyone picked up the phone instead of a pen. Beth, and Alan too, preferred the telephone. Unless they had to send a contract somewhere, nearly all their business was done over the phone and by fax. They had answering machines at the office and in the house. The telephone dominated their lives. It was a blessing; and it was a nuisance.

  He lifted the heap of catalogues and magazines and dumped them at the right of her coffee cup. ‘Clothes, handbags, shoes‚’ he said. ‘Save the environment. One for jigsaws, one for music boxes, one that sells replicas of prehistoric animals. Two book clubs you can join.’

  ‘I don’t have time to read anything.’

  ‘Except the catalogues, and that’s a real waste of time.’ He shuffled through some more bills. She went back to her puzzle.

  ‘Hey‚’ he said. ‘I think I’ve won a prize.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Being good, of course.’

  ‘Oh, ha
-ha.’

  He held the paper up to her, but she didn’t bother to look. She was trying to think of a six-letter word meaning stop. ‘Listen to this‚’ he told her. ‘Two thousand dollars if I apply within forty-eight hours of receiving the enclosed. It’s got a date and a time-stamp on it. We’ve got a day more than they say.’

  ‘Desist‚’ she said. ‘Those urgent things are never important. Alan Q. Beasley, you could win a million dollars: remember?’

  ‘This looks okay. No pictures of Colonel Kentucky. No free stamps.’

  ‘Another bonanza from the black-diamond mine‚’ she said.

  The black diamond episode had been about three years before; they’d been carrying on a smoldering quarrel for a couple of months. She’d begun to think that they weren’t going to pull out of it – that this time their marriage would end: and she wouldn’t have cared a bit if it had. One morning, another of those prize envelopes arrived for Alan. He’d actually sent for it. How dumb could you be, she said. He told her huffily that he’d written back to them just to see if they were crooked. ‘And,’ he announced, ‘I’ve won a black diamond.’ He opened the envelope and took out a little transparent plastic packet, in one corner of which rested a tiny brown ball of something that might possibly have been a piece of low-grade coal. He held it up. They stared at it. Then, both of them burst into laughter. They laughed so hard that they had to hold their heads in their hands. ‘A putative diamond,’ he shouted. ‘An alleged diamond,’ she gasped. They stopped for breath and started each other off again. They laughed, uncontrollably, until they ached. And somehow the quarrel had ended.

  ‘Two thousand bucks,’ he said, ‘if I apply within the time-limit.’

  ‘What’s the hitch?’

  ‘You’ll never guess. It’s got to be used on travel.’

  ‘That’s a joke.’

  They ran a travel agency. They’d been in the business for six years. It took all their energy and thought. It was the reason why they didn’t have children: they kept figuring that next year they’d find time to plan their own lives. But they couldn’t even squeeze in the hours to work on future holiday schemes. They only just managed to keep up. Their range of vacation trips was still the same as when they’d started. If your standards were high, you had to spend money. Alan saw it as his job to make the past – from which we ought to be able to learn – usable and habitable in modern terms. There was no point in going to a quaint English village or a picturesque Greek temple if you were going to have to sleep in a place with no running water. That would be ridiculous. Even Beth, who tended to get worked up over authentic atmosphere, agreed with him about that.