He asked, “Are you angry with me about something?”
“No,” she said.
“Will you tell me what’s the matter?”
“Nothing is.”
Lucy was watching the side of her face. “Has there been some news of Adolphus?”
Klara ceased chopping. She was shocked he had simply asked it. It took a moment for her to answer: she shook her head, no.
“Is it very hard for you, Klara?” said Lucy.
Another pause, when she set her knife aside and turned to Lucy, clutching him, pressing herself against his chest. She was trembling; he thought she was crying, though she made no sound. He asked her again what was the matter but she only said that she was sorry. She wouldn’t say why she was sorry.
Later that night they drank some of Memel’s wine, after which she became friendly and loving once again. She was simply tired, she explained, and she had missed Lucy, and was worried for her father. They retired to her room, and all was as it had been before. In the morning Lucy fed Memel some broth, along with the castle gossip; the old man was pleased for both, and did seem heartier when Lucy bid him good morning.
Klara kissed him at the door, helping him into his shirt. She framed his face with her hands, peering into his eyes with a determined adoration before saying her fond goodbyes. Lucy’s heart was full as he crossed the village, and he told himself he mustn’t let so many days pass without visiting, as the time apart was not healthy for his and Klara’s courtship. That was surely what the problem had been, he decided; and yet, some small voice doubted his reasoning. And then, too, why did the wily butcher leer at him so knowingly as he passed the stall?
5
The Baroness sat upright in her bed, reading a book. Lucy entered with her breakfast tray and stood at a distance. She knew he was there but didn’t raise her eyes right away; exhaling sharply, she clapped the book shut and said, “I for one find it an annoyance when a story doesn’t do what it’s meant to do. Don’t you, boy?”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean, ma’am.”
“Do you not appreciate an entertainment?”
“I do.”
“And would you not find yourself resentful at the promise of entertainment unfulfilled?”
“I believe I would, ma’am.”
“There we are, then.”
“We are here,” Lucy agreed.
The Baroness set the book on her bedside table and looked at Lucy. “So, this is the infamous letter writer.”
“Am I infamous, ma’am?”
“In that you’ve been on my mind, yes. May I ask what prompted you to write it?”
“I felt it justified. Are you displeased with me?”
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“I suppose you must.”
“It upset me greatly, your letter.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“I dislike urgency of any kind.”
“Neither am I fond of it. But all was not well here, and as your absence seemed the source of the problem, then I took my small liberty.”
“You call it a small liberty.”
“I do, ma’am.”
“I spilled tea over my dress reading it.”
“He was eating rats, ma’am.”
“What?”
“The Baron was eating rats. All was not well here.”
She gave him a queer look. “Is that meant to be funny, boy?”
“It’s not meant to be, no.”
“You’re a strange one.”
“Possibly I am, ma’am, yes. Probably I am.” He considered it. “I am,” he said.
She drew back her blanket and sat on the edge of the bed, her bare feet hovering above the floor. A shiver ran up her spine, and she yawned, and asked, “What is your aim, here, exactly?”
“I have no one aim, ma’am, other than to perform my duties agreeably. In regard to the present moment, my hope is that you’ll forgive me my imposition.”
“It seems likely that I will.”
“That’s my hope.” He held up the tray. “Where would you like me to put this?”
The Baroness didn’t answer, having drifted into some private mood, gazing dreamily at the wall, or through it. Lucy set the tray on a side table and said, “If you don’t mind my saying, ma’am, it’s good that you’ve come.”
“Good for whom?” said the Baroness absently.
“For everyone.”
“I don’t know about that.” She came away from her reverie and turned to Lucy with an expression of amusement, as though he had said something humorous.
“What is it, ma’am?”
“I don’t know what,” she said. “I just felt so happy all at once. Strange.” She touched the pads of her fingers to her fine, pale forehead. There was something in this small gesture which startled Lucy; and he suddenly understood how this person could drive a man like the Baron to the depths to which he had recently sunk.
Lucy wished to mark this understanding of her powers, to comment upon it. He said, “You’re just as Mr. Olderglough claimed, ma’am.”
She slid off the tall bed and moved to sit on the bench before her vanity mirror. “Is that so,” she said, her ribboned hair halfway down her back. “And just how did he describe me, I wonder.”
“He said that you were a light in a dark place.”
She was stealing glances at herself, from this side and that; and now she studied her face directly. What entered into a beautiful woman’s mind when she considered her reflection? Judging by her expression, she was not thinking in admiring terms. “Anyway, it is dark here,” she told him. Taking up her tresses in both hands, and in an uninterrupted corkscrewing motion, she coiled and stacked her hair into a tidy pile atop her head; and pressing the bun down with her left hand, she pinned it in place with her right. Lucy had never before seen such effortless feminine pruning, and was impressed by the seamless brutality of it. The Baroness was watching him in the mirror. “So we’re to be friends, you and I, is that right?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“All right, then, friend. Bring that tray over here and feed me while I get ready.”
Lucy thought she had merely been acting playful in saying this; but as she sat by expectantly, now he saw that she was serious, and so he did as she asked, taking a seat beside her and feeding her fruit and porridge and sips of tea while she appraised her face, altering it here and there with creams and powders and coloring, these set out neatly before her in jars and canisters and spray-bulb bottles. Lucy enjoyed his feeding her to the utmost; there was in her eyes a sorrow so profound that it invoked a drop in his stomach. He had no wish to protect her from it, or alleviate it, as he did with Klara; he merely wanted to witness it, and to recall it later when he was alone. He admired her in the way one might admire an avalanche, and his mind meandered, for he was intoxicated by his nearness to so rare a person as she. At a certain point he realized the Baroness was pinching the top of his hand.
“Did you hear what I asked you, Lucy?”
“I didn’t, no.”
“I asked if you might accompany me on a walk later.”
“Yes, ma’am. And where shall we walk to?”
Her eyes became distant. “I will lead the way,” she told him, then asked him to leave, that she might dress for the occasion. Afterward Lucy stood in the hall outside her door, staring in wonderment at the smarting red smudge on his hand.
The Very Large Hole
6
The Very Large Hole was very, very large. From the moment Lucy saw it he was made apprehensive by its existence, for all about them was solid earth, and then this gaping and godless emptiness, and he felt he couldn’t credit it. It shouldn’t be called a hole at all, he decided, but a chasm, a canyon. He and the Baroness circumnavigated the expanse, walking together but saying nothing, the both of them eyeing the void as if something were meant to occur there. This created a tension of expectation in Lucy, so that when a bird shot free of the hole and into th
e sky, he flinched. The Baroness gripped his arm to hearten him, but Lucy couldn’t rid himself of the thought of Mr. Broom’s demise, so that he mistrusted the ground to hold them. “Perhaps we shouldn’t walk so near the edge, ma’am,” he said.
“And why not?”
“I’m thinking of Mr. Broom’s accident.”
She looked at him pityingly. “But there was nothing accidental about that.”
Lucy felt sickened at the thought of it. “How can you be sure?”
“I knew him well enough,” said the Baroness. Cheerily, then, as one making teatime conversation, she asked, “Do you yourself ever think of suicide?”
Lucy pondered this. “No more than what is customary, ma’am.”
The Baroness looked on approvingly. “That is a stylish reply.”
“Thank you.”
They stepped into a bank of sunlight, and she ceased walking to bask in this. She shut her eyes and Lucy could see the miniature cluster of pale blue veins branching across her eyelids.
“And do you ever think of it?” he asked.
“Mmm” was her answer. She opened her eyes. “It’s such an odd sensation, being back among you. I was so certain I’d never return.”
“But why did you leave here at all, ma’am?”
“Oh,” she said, “they were becoming impossible.”
“Who was?”
“The Baron. And Mr. Broom.”
She pointed at a patch of lush grass some distance back from the hole. “This is where Mr. Broom and I would come,” she said, and she sat, pulling Lucy down with her. Looking about, she seemed to be recalling the time she had passed there, and fondly.
“May I ask what the nature of yours and Mr. Broom’s relationship was, ma’am?” said Lucy.
“He was my young man, of course,” she answered.
“And what was it that drove him to such despair?”
Here she grinned impishly, but said nothing. Reaching down, she plucked a dandelion and blew away its seeds. These traveled on the air and over the Very Large Hole, where they were caught in its drafts. They drew up in staggered ascension, then hurried down, nearly out of sight, before climbing up, up again. This cycle went on for some time, and was a hypnotic thing to witness. When a downdraft yanked the seeds out of sight, the Baroness gasped. She asked, “How long has it been since I’ve been surprised by anything?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Far too long.” Pulling up a shock of grass, she said, “The guests will be here soon, Lucy.”
“Are you not happy about it, ma’am?” For when she’d spoken, there was in her voice some element of unease.
“I don’t know what I am,” she told him. The green blades of grass were slipping from her hand, and she and Lucy watched this.
“Why have you returned, ma’am?”
The Baroness shook her head. Leaning in, she kissed Lucy’s cheek, then stood and resumed walking, alone now, adrift in her strange and terrible beauty.
IX
THE COUNT & COUNTESS,
DUKE & DUCHESS
1
On the morning of the guests’ arrival, Mr. Olderglough had taken Lucy aside and told him, “I will look after the Duke and Duchess, and you will mind the Count and Countess. Is that quite all right with you, boy?”
Lucy answered that it was, but it struck him as curious, for Mr. Olderglough had never positioned an instruction in so accommodating a manner before. “May I ask why you prefer the Duke and Duchess to the Count and Countess?” he said.
Here Mr. Olderglough nodded, as if he had been found out. “We have been through a good deal together, you and I, and so I feel I can speak to you in confidence, and as a peer. Are you comfortable with that?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Very good. Well, boy, if I’m to address the truth of the matter, none of the coming guests is what might be called desirable company. Actually, I have in the past found them to be distinctly undesirable.”
“In what way, sir?”
“In many ways which you will, I fear, discover for yourself. But your question, if I understand correctly, is to wonder which of the two parties is the worse, isn’t that right?”
“I suppose so, sir.”
“Then I must tell you that the Count and Countess merit that prize, handily. And while I feel on the one hand duty-bound to take the heavier burden unto myself, I must also recognize that I simply haven’t the capacities I once did. To look after people such as those who are coming to stay with us is a young man’s game, and I am not young any longer, and so I take the simpler path, though you may rest assured that when I say simpler, I do not mean simple. The Duke and Duchess are no stroll in the park, and I can attest to that personally, and at length.” Mr. Olderglough stepped closer, his eyes filled with ugly memories. “Be on your guard with these people, boy. They answer to no one. They never have, and they never will.”
These words played in Lucy’s head as he stood on the platform awaiting the Count and Countess’s arrival. As the train came into the station, he could hear a man’s wild cackling; when the Count emerged from his compartment he was quite obviously drunken, swaying in place, a cigar planted in the fold of his slick, blubbery mouth. His skull was a softly pink egg, his eyes blood-daubed yolks—he drew back from the sunlight as one scalded. Once recovered, he focused on Lucy, gripping him by the lapel. “Ah, Broom, happy to see you again, boy.”
“Yes, sir, nice to see you, as well. Only I’m not Mr. Broom; my name is Lucy.”
“What?”
“My name is Lucy, sir.”
The Count stared. “You’re Broom.”
“I’m not he, sir.”
“Well, where has Broom run off to?”
“He has died, sir.”
The Count leaned back on his heels. Speaking over his shoulder and into the blackened compartment, he said, “Did you know about this?”
“About what?” said the Countess.
“Broom is dead.”
“Who?”
“The servant lad? Broom? You were so fond of him last time we visited.”
“Oh, yes, him. Nice boy—nice coloring. He’s dead, you say?”
“Dead as dinner, apparently.”
“How did he die?”
“I don’t know how.” The Count looked at Lucy. “How?”
Lucy said, “He was possessed by a wickedness and so cast himself into the Very Large Hole, sir.”
The Count made an irritable face.
“Did he say a very large hole?” the Countess asked.
“Yes,” said the Count.
“Large hole?”
“Yes.”
The Countess paused. “Well, I don’t want to hear another word about it.” And with this, she emerged: a corpulent, panting woman with frizzed black hair, a crimson neck, and a fierce displeasure in her eye which Lucy took to be travel fatigue but which he would soon discover was simply her root mood. When he held out his hand to help her from the train, she cracked him across his knuckles with her folding fan, a stinging blow that took his breath away. Pushing past him, she stepped up the path and toward the castle, murmuring vague threats or regrets to herself. Once she was clear of earshot, the Count addressed Lucy breathily, and through a shroud of bluish smoke.
“When is the dinner service?” he asked.
“Six-thirty, sir.”
“Unacceptable.” The Count pressed a coin into Lucy’s palm. “If you could scare me up some type of holdover, that would suit me.”
Lucy studied the coin. It was a foreign currency, and quite useless to him. “Holdover, sir?” he said.
“Something to chew on.”
“Something to eat.”
“I like salt. A meat. Don’t let the Countess see.”
“No, sir.”
“You’re on your own if she does.”
“Yes.”
“And I suppose a bath is in order. Can you see to it?”
“Surely, sir.”
?
??Fine. Now you fetch us our baggage and then get started on the rest. You seem a good lad, but how many have let me down in the past? Indeed: too many to name.” He trundled up the hill on stumpy legs, and Lucy turned to watch the porter off-load the trunks and cases. It was the same porter Lucy had seen before, when the Baroness arrived. They were much the same age, and Lucy approached to assist him.
“What did he give you?” the porter asked, and Lucy showed him the coin. The porter smiled, and produced an identical valueless coin from his own pocket. They each cast their coin to the ground, and as the train pulled away from the station the porter swung onto the caboose. He bowed at Lucy, and Lucy bowed at him, and the both of them returned to their work.
2
The Count was listlessly fingering the contents of his steamer trunk. He was naked as the day he was born, and other than his height, looked much as he had at that initial emergence. The Countess, on the opposite side of the room, sat at the vanity, admiring her toiletries, laid out in some obscure codification of her own hostile design. In the corner, unseen behind a folding screen, Lucy was pouring out the final cauldron of water for the Count’s bath. He had a sizable salami up his sleeve and was waiting for the moment when the Countess was not about, that he might unsheathe and present it to the Count. He was hopeful this would happen sooner rather than later, as the salami was cold and oily and felt repugnant against his bare flesh.
The Count held a white silken shirt up before himself. He turned to face the Countess, who told him, “You’ll want to go darker. You’re so ruddy these days.”
The Count sighed.
“You take too much tobacco,” she said.
“It’s more the drink, I fear.”
“Well, whatever the culprit, you mustn’t wear white if you can avoid it.”
He stood before the tilted looking glass, dolefully assessing his countenance. “So many pitfalls in a life,” he said.
“Yes.”
“The consequences of our appetites confound me. But, you know what my father said: ‘A modesty of appetite represents a paucity of heart.’” He swapped the white for a blue shirt, and appeared pleased, for it truly did mask his hue. “I find myself wondering what’s for dinner,” he said, to no one.