Galilee

  Would that change now? Did the fact that Galilee’s wretchedness had finally come close to devouring him (how else was he to interpret the wretched condition they’d found his father in? Men like Galilee didn’t come to such pitiful states by accident. It was self-willed); did that fact mark a radical change in the way their lives would be led henceforth? Was this Geary the last of the women he’d service? If so, what function would be left to Niolopua? None, presumably.

  He drew the last draught from the joint, and tossed the remains down onto the lawn. Then he got up and looked back into the house. By now, the last of the day had gone, and the interior was gloomy. He watched for some sign of life, but could see none. Rachel was probably still upstairs, tending his father. Perhaps he should leave, he thought; they had no use for him now. He could come back tomorrow and say his good-byes. He lingered on the veranda for a few seconds longer, then turned about and started down the steps to the lawn.

  He didn’t see the man coming at him until the very last; there was no time to speak, nor even cry out. The knife was in him too quickly, thrust into his body with such force that all the breath was pushed out of him. He tried to draw another as he pulled away from his assailant, but only one of his lungs would perform the service; the other had been punctured, and was already filling with blood. Before he could raise his hand to ward off a second wound the man was closing on him, thrusting the knife into his stomach. He doubled up from the agony of it, but the man caught hold of his face, the heel of his hand beneath his chin, and pushed him off. He stumbled backward, his hands returning to his body in the desperate hope that he might staunch his wounds long enough to get help. He didn’t have the strength to call out; all he could do was make for the house, though every step he took was an agony. From the corner of his eye he could see the knife-wielder three or four yards off from him, just watching now. Stumbling, Niolopua reached the veranda, and started up the steps. He threw himself forward when he reached the top, and for a heartbeat he dared hope that the noise he’d made would bring somebody down from above, and his attacker would turn tail and run. But even as he formed the thought the man came at him again, his form blurry to Niolopua’s eye, like a smeared photograph.

  Only at the last, when the man was upon him, and the knife buried in his body for the third and last time did he see the face of his killer closely. He knew the man. Not from personal contact, but from the covers of magazines. It was one of the sons of the House of Geary. There was no expression on his handsome features; he looked, in the two or three seconds that Niolopua saw him plainly, like a man in a trance: eyes glazed, mouth slightly open, face slack.

  With a little grunt he pulled out the knife, and Niolopua fell forward onto the veranda, his outstretched hand a few inches shy of the door. The Geary didn’t attempt to hurt him again; he had no need. He’d done his work. He simply waited on the steps, staring down at his victim. Niolopua had fallen face down, the blood that ran out of his mouth and nose soaking into the boards of the veranda. In the final seconds of his life he did not feel his spirit soaring up to some hurtless place, from which he could watch the scene below, but stayed there in his head, looking down at the grain of the wood on which he lay, as it soaked up the blood issuing from his nose and mouth. His body tried for breath one last, agonizing time, but it didn’t have the strength. He shuddered, and made a little moan as the life went out of him; then he was gone.

  Mitchell stood looking down at the body, mildly astonished at his own vehemence. He hadn’t anticipated the flow of rage he’d feel when he had sight—or thought he had sight—of Galilee Barbarossa. He’d almost felt led by the hand which clasped the knife; but oh, the satisfaction he’d felt as the blade had sunk into the man’s flesh; the sheer pleasure of the deed. Moments later, of course, he’d realized his error. But those few seconds when he thought he’d killed Galilee were so sweet, so blissful, that he was eager to have the bliss again, this time with the right man.

  He went back down the stairs onto the lawn, and crouched down, running his knife into the earth to clean it. A minute ago it had been a cheap little kitchen knife, plucked off a shelf in a general store. But it was on its way to becoming something altogether extraordinary. Initiated now, it was ready for its legendary work. He stood up, and turned to face the house. It was completely quiet, but he had no doubt that the felons were inside; he’d heard his wife earlier, Rachel, sobbing like a whore.

  Thinking of the sound she’d been making, he climbed the stairs, stepped over the body of whoever it was his knife had killed, and sliding the door aside, went into the house.

  XX

  Galilee’s period of lucidity hadn’t lasted long. He’d come to the surface of his comatose state to say: we’re not alone, and then he’d sunk back into it again, his eyes flickering closed. But what he’d said had been enough to make Rachel feel uneasy. Who was here? And why hadn’t he been distressed at the fact of some other presence in the house? Reluctantly, she slipped him out of her, and climbed off the bed. The moment she was no longer touching him she felt cold; the room seemed almost icy, in fact. She went down on her knees to dig through her bag for something warm to wear. Shivering violently, she pulled out a sweater and put it on. As she did so the door creaked, and she looked up to see a shadow of a shadow, nothing more, flit across the room. It was so subtle a sight she wasn’t even certain she’d seen it; and when she studied the place where it had gone, she could see nothing. She got to her feet, deeply unnerved now. She looked at the bed. Galilee lay inert, his body still aroused, his eyes closed.

  She went to the table beside the bed—still keeping her gaze on the place where the shadow had come and gone, and switched on the lamp. The light was strong, but it illuminated the corners where the shape she’d seen had moved. The room was empty. Whatever she’d seen had either gone, or been a figment of her exhausted and overstimulated senses. She went to the door, and opened it. The landing was dark, but there was enough light spilling from the bedroom to allow her to find her way to the top of the stairs. Despite the sweater, she was still cold. Maybe it was simply fatigue, she thought; she’d go and find Niolopua, tell him she needed to sleep, and then go and lie down beside Galilee. As for what he’d said; she would disregard it, there was nothing here.

  As she formed the thought something brushed her shoulder, as though an invisible presence were passing her by, walking in the opposite direction. She turned, looking back down the landing to the open bedroom door. Again, nothing. Her body was simply so exhausted, it was playing tricks on her. She started down the stairs. There were no lights on below, but there was sufficient light from the moon to allow her to find the switch beside the kitchen door. As she did so she caught sight of a figure at the other end of the room, close to the front door. This time she didn’t doubt her senses. This was no corner-of-the-eye illusion; it was a solid reality. While she watched he finished what he was doing—locking the front door—and then turned back and looked at her. She knew him, even in silhouette. Her heart began to slam against her ribs.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “What does it look like?” he said. “I’m locking the door.”

  “I don’t want you here.”

  “You can’t be too careful, baby. There’s bad people out there.”

  “Mitchell. I want you to leave.”

  He dropped the front door key into his breast pocket, and then sauntered toward her. He was wearing a white shirt beneath his jacket, and it was spattered with blood.

  “What have you done?” she said.

  He looked down at his shirt. “Oh this,” he said, lightly. “It looks worse than it is.” He glanced past her, up the stairs. “Is he up there?’ She didn’t answer. “Baby, I asked you a question. Is the nigger up there?” He’d stopped walking now; he was maybe three strides from the bottom of the stairs. “Did he try to hurt you, honey?”

  “Mitchell . . .”

  “Did he?”

  “No. He didn’t hurt me. He’s
never hurt me.”

  “Don’t try and cover for him. I know how trash like that think. He gets his hands on someone like you, someone who doesn’t know how they work, and he manipulates you. Gets in your head, tells you all kinds of lies. None of it’s true, baby. None of it’s true.”

  “Okay,” she said calmly. “None of it’s true.”

  “See? You knew. You knew.” He tried on one of his smiles; one of those dazzlers he’d lavished on journalists and congressmen. It was designed to melt its recipient. But it simply looked grotesque; a death’s-head smile. “That’s what I told Loretta. I said: I can still save her, because she knows in her heart that she shouldn’t be doing this. You know it’s wrong. Don’t you?’ Rachel didn’t reply, so he pressed the point. “Don’t you?” he said.

  She heard the rage, barely concealed, and decided it was best to nod along with what he was saying. His voice became softer. “You have to come home with me,” he said. “This is a bad place, baby.”

  As he spoke his gaze flickered toward the stairs and a look of puzzlement crossed his face.

  “All the things that have gone on here . . . ” he said, his tone a little distracted now as he watched the stairs things he did . . . to innocent women . . . ”

  He slowly moved his hand to the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a knife. Its blade had dirt on it.

  “It’s got to be stopped . . . ” he said.

  His eyes came back in her direction. She saw the same lunacy she’d glimpsed when he’d come to the apartment and taken the journal; but it was no longer a hint; it was clear as day.

  “Don’t be afraid, baby,” he said. “I know what I’m doing.”

  She dared a glance toward the stairs, afraid that Galilee had crawled out of bed and was there on the landing. But there was nobody. Just the dim light thrown from the bedroom. It was flickering a little, as though something was moving up there at the top of the stairs; its presence negligible, but its motion strong enough to make the light pulse. She was not entirely sure that Mitchell saw it. Nor did she want to ask him. She didn’t want to unseat what was left of his delicate equilibrium, if he went upstairs now, he’d find a completely vulnerable victim. And to judge by the state of the knife, and the blood on his shirt, he’d already done some violence.

  Only now did she think of Niolopua. Oh Lord, he’d hurt Niolopua. She was suddenly sure of it. That was why he had that crazed look in his eye; he’d already tasted the pleasure of bloodshed. If her face betrayed this realization, he didn’t see it. His gaze was still directed to the top of the stairs.

  “I want you to stay here,” he told her.

  “Why don’t we just leave,” she suggested. “The two of us.”

  “In a minute.”

  “If this is such a bad place—”

  “I told you: in a minute. Just let me go upstairs first.”

  “Don’t, Mitch.”

  His eyes flickered in her direction. “Don’t what?” he said. She held her breath, aware that his hand was tightening around the knife. “Don’t hurt him? Is that what you were going to say?” He moved toward her. She flinched. “You don’t want me to hurt lover-boy, is that it?”

  “Mitch. I was there when his mother came to the mansion. I saw what she was capable of doing.”

  “I’m not frightened of any fucking Barbarossa.” He cocked his head. “You see, that’s the problem—”

  As he spoke he jabbed the knife in Rachel’s direction, pricking the air between them to make his point.

  “—nobody’s ever stood up to these people.” He was suddenly all reason. “We just gave up our fucking women to that nigger up there, like he owned them. Well he doesn’t own my wife. You understand me, baby? I’m not going to let him take you away from me.”

  His empty hand reached out toward her, and he stroked her face.

  “Poor baby,” he said. “I’m not blaming you. He fucked with your head. You didn’t have any choice. But it’s going to be okay now. I’m going to deal with it. That’s what husbands are supposed to do. They’re supposed to protect their wives. I haven’t been very good at that. I haven’t been a very good husband. I know that now, and I’m sorry. Honey, I’m sorry.”

  He leaned toward her, and like a nervous schoolboy gave her a peck of a kiss.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said again. “I’m going to do what I have to do, and then we’re going to walk out of here. And we’re going to start over.” His fingers continued to graze her cheek. “Because honey, I love you. I always have and I always will. And I can’t bear to be separated from you.” His voice was small; almost pitiful. “I can’t bear it, baby. It makes me crazy, not to have you. You understand me?”

  She nodded. Somewhere at the back of her mind, behind the fear she felt—for Galilee, for herself—there was a little place in her where she’d kept enshrined the last remnants of what she’d once felt for her husband. Perhaps it hadn’t been love; but it had been a beautiful dream, nonetheless. And hearing him speak now, even in this crazed state, she remembered it fondly. How he’d made her feel, in the first months of their knowing one another, his sweetness, his gentility. Gone now, of course, every scrap. There was only the curdled remains of the man he’d been.

  Oh Lord, it made her sad. And it seemed he saw the sadness in her, because when he spoke again, all the rage had gone from his voice. And with it, the certainty.

  “I didn’t want it to be this way,” he said. “I swear I didn’t.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know . . . how I got here. .

  “It doesn’t need to be this way,” she said, softly, softly. “You don’t have to hurt anybody to prove you love me.”

  “I do . . . love you.”

  “Then put the knife down, Mitch.” His hand, which had continued to graze her cheek, stopped in midstroke. ‘Please, Mitch,” she said. “Put it down.”

  He drew his hand away from her face, and his expression, which had mellowed as she spoke to him, grew severe.

  “Oh no . . . ” he murmured “I know what you’re doing . . . ”

  “Mitch—”

  “You think you can sweet-talk me out of going up there.” He shook his head. “No, baby. It’s not happening. Sorry.”

  So saying, he stepped back from her and turned toward the stairs. There was a moment of almost hallucinatory precision, when Rachel seemed to see everything in play before her the man with the knife—her husband, her sometime prince—moving away from her, stinking of sweat and hatred; her lover, lying in the bed above, lost in dreams; and in between, on the darkened stairs, on the landing, those spectral presences, whatever they were, which she could not name.

  Mitch had reached the bottom of the stairs, and now, without another word to her, he began to ascend. He left her no choice. She went up after him, and before he could stop her slipped past him to block his passage. The air was busy up here. She could feel its agitation against her face. If Mitch was aware of anything out of the ordinary, his determination to get to Galilee blinded him to the fact. His face was fixed; like a mask, beaten to the form of his features; pallid and implacable. She didn’t waste her breath on persuasion; he was beyond listening to anything she said. She simply stood in his way. If he wanted to harm Galilee he’d have to get past her to do so. He looked at her; his eyes the only living things in that dead face.

  “Out of my way,” he said.

  She reached out to the left and right of her and caught hold of the banisters. She was horribly aware of how vulnerable she was, doing this; how her belly and her breasts were open to him, if he wanted to harm her. But she had no other choice, and she had to believe that despite the madness that had seized him he wouldn’t harm her.

  He stopped, one stair below her, and for a moment she dared hope she could still make him see reason. But then his hand was up at her face, at her hair, and with one jerk he pulled her back down the stairs. She lost her grip on the banisters and fell forward, reaching out to secure another hold, but fa
iling, toppling. He held onto her hair, however, and her head jerked backward. She reached up to catch hold of his arm, a cry of pain escaping her. The world pivoted; she didn’t know up from down. He pulled on her again, drawing her close to him, then throwing her backward against the banister. This time she secured a hold, and stopped herself from falling any further, but before she could draw breath he struck her hard across the face, an open-palmed blow, but brutal for all that. Her legs gave way beneath her; she slipped sideways. He caught her a second blow, with sickening force, and then a third, which sent her into free fall down the stairs. She felt every thud and crack as her limbs, her shoulder, her head, connected with stairs and banister. Then she hit the floor at the bottom of the flight, striking it so hard that she momentarily lost consciousness. In the buzzing blackness in her head she struggled to put her thoughts in order, but the task was beyond her. It was all she could do to instruct her eyes to open. When she did she found herself looking at the stairs, from a sideways position. Mitch was staring down at her, grotesquely foreshortened, his head vestigial. He studied her for several seconds, just to be certain that he’d incapacitated her. Then, sure that she could not come between him and his intentions again, he turned his back on her and continued to ascend the stairs.

  XXI

  All she could do was watch; her body refused to move an inch. She could only lie there and watch while Mitch went to murder Galilee in his bed. She couldn’t even call to him; her throat refused to work, her tongue refused to work Even if she’d been able to make a sound, Galilee wouldn’t have heard her. He was in his own private world; healing himself in the deepest of slumbers. She would not be able to rouse him.