sleeveless dress pinched her at each bare armpit. The landing was a narrow, hot space, and we had to stand close together, we two tall ones and the tiny woman, swamped in each other’s heat and the cooking smell that was coming more strongly now from behind the closed door. I cast about for something more to say but could think of nothing, and instead swivelled on my heel and set off in mute fury and frustration down the stairs. At the first landing I stopped and turned and saw Cass Cleave and the dwarf woman still standing up there where I had left them, neither looking at the other, both with their eyes cast down, saying nothing, simply standing, motionless as a pair of manikins.
I was in the hall, waiting inside the door, when she came down at last, stepping from stair to stair with careful deliberation, watching herself as she did so, as if descending like this were a skilled manoeuvre she had only lately learned to execute. I thought, jarringly, of Magda. Slowly the girl came to meet me, avoiding my eye, or no, not avoiding, but looking through me as though I were not there. Yet I knew she knew what I would do. I seemed to be no longer drunk; on the contrary, I felt violently sober. She stood in the circle of my arms quite still and stiff; I might have been a cascade of water falling about her but not wetting her. Her lower lip stood a little prominent of the upper, so that she seemed in permanent expectation of receiving a drop of some sacred distillate from above, yet now when I leaned my head forward I had trouble finding her mouth; when I did, I took that soft, protruding bud of flesh between my teeth. As I kissed her she did not close her eyes, and neither did I, and so we stood and stared into each other, surprised, almost aghast. I caught again from her skin that faint, flat, medicinal smell. It reminded me of something: violets, was it? Her shoulder blades flexed under my hands like hard, stiff wings, flexed, and were still. Clear as if it were being projected before my wide-open eyes I saw myself in the house on Cedar Street sitting opposite Magda at the table in the breakfast nook, feeding her the tablets, picking them up one by one from my cupped palm and dropping them into her offered mouth. It was at midnight, I could faintly hear a clock chime in the next-door house; a moth was bumping against the black and shining window. All around was silence, not a sound save of that baffled, winged thing blundering against the glass. Magda’s hands rested flat before her on the table; her fingernails were chipped and there was grime under them. How calm she was, how docile, watching me steadily, with keen interest, it might be, as I poured out the glass of water and put it into her hands. Here; drink. I had told her the tablets were a special kind of candy. They were violet-coloured. I released Cass Cleave from my embrace. Still she did not stir, but stood and looked at me, calmly attending me and the possibility of what I might do next, with Magda’s very gaze.
At the hotel, when I followed her into her room she was already drawing the curtains against the glare of afternoon sunlight. Now, of course, came the last-minute faltering, and I did not want to be there. I was tired of myself and my hungers, my infantile need to clasp and squeeze and suck that the accretion of years seems only to intensify. “You realise,” I said, “that I am old enough to be your great-grandfather?” I laughed. She did not answer, only unbuttoned the neck of her dress at the back and pulled it over her head, becoming for a second a hooded black beetle with clawing antenna arms. The sound of her falling underthings rustled along my nerves. “Do you know that Cranach Venus in the Beaux Arts in Brussels?” I said brightly, leaning on my stick at an angled pose. “The one in the big dark hat and rather interesting black choker?” It had struck me how like the painted woman this living one looked, the same sinuous type, with the same
I was in the hall, waiting inside the door, when she came down at last, stepping from stair to stair with careful deliberation, watching herself as she did so, as if descending like this were a skilled manoeuvre she had only lately learned to execute. I thought, jarringly, of Magda. Slowly the girl came to meet me, avoiding my eye, or no, not avoiding, but looking through me as though I were not there. Yet I knew she knew what I would do. I seemed to be no longer drunk; on the contrary, I felt violently sober. She stood in the circle of my arms quite still and stiff; I might have been a cascade of water falling about her but not wetting her. Her lower lip stood a little prominent of the upper, so that she seemed in permanent expectation of receiving a drop of some sacred distillate from above, yet now when I leaned my head forward I had trouble finding her mouth; when I did, I took that soft, protruding bud of flesh between my teeth. As I kissed her she did not close her eyes, and neither did I, and so we stood and stared into each other, surprised, almost aghast. I caught again from her skin that faint, flat, medicinal smell. It reminded me of something: violets, was it? Her shoulder blades flexed under my hands like hard, stiff wings, flexed, and were still. Clear as if it were being projected before my wide-open eyes I saw myself in the house on Cedar Street sitting opposite Magda at the table in the breakfast nook, feeding her the tablets, picking them up one by one from my cupped palm and dropping them into her offered mouth. It was at midnight, I could faintly hear a clock chime in the next-door house; a moth was bumping against the black and shining window. All around was silence, not a sound save of that baffled, winged thing blundering against the glass. Magda’s hands rested flat before her on the table; her fingernails were chipped and there was grime under them. How calm she was, how docile, watching me steadily, with keen interest, it might be, as I poured out the glass of water and put it into her hands. Here; drink. I had told her the tablets were a special kind of candy. They were violet-coloured. I released Cass Cleave from my embrace. Still she did not stir, but stood and looked at me, calmly attending me and the possibility of what I might do next, with Magda’s very gaze.
At the hotel, when I followed her into her room she was already drawing the curtains against the glare of afternoon sunlight. Now, of course, came the last-minute faltering, and I did not want to be there. I was tired of myself and my hungers, my infantile need to clasp and squeeze and suck that the accretion of years seems only to intensify. “You realise,” I said, “that I am old enough to be your great-grandfather?” I laughed. She did not answer, only unbuttoned the neck of her dress at the back and pulled it over her head, becoming for a second a hooded black beetle with clawing antenna arms. The sound of her falling underthings rustled along my nerves. “Do you know that Cranach Venus in the Beaux Arts in Brussels?” I said brightly, leaning on my stick at an angled pose. “The one in the big dark hat and rather interesting black choker?” It had struck me how like the painted woman this living one looked, the same sinuous type, with the same
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