‘We might as well call it by its right name: Beachy Head, where Lenore stepped off the edge. I didn’t know you were the one before me until I saw that painting.’
‘And I didn’t know you were her next one until you told me the Tar-Baby story.’
‘Why did you say you were the one this bus had come for, Peter?’
‘Because I killed Lenore.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘Yes, I did. The last time she came to my place we were on the edge of a cliff but I was too stupid to see it; I pushed her over as surely as if I’d gone to Beachy Head with her and done it with my two hands. Now this bus is going to the edge she jumped from and you shouldn’t be on it.’
‘Yes, I should. It wasn’t you, Peter – I’m the one who killed Lenore. When I tried to end it with her she wouldn’t let go: she was always ringing me up and she’d come round and make terrible scenes. One night I glimmed the two of us at Beachy Head – I hadn’t meant to pull her. There was a full moon shining on the sea and a cold wind blowing. Lenore was standing at the edge of the cliff and shivering. She said, “Happiness never worked for me and neither does unhappiness,” then suddenly there was empty space where she’d been. The next morning in the unglim she was found dead at the base of the cliffs.’
‘Amaryllis,’ I said, ‘you can’t be sure you made it happen – your glim could have been clairvoyance.’
‘But it wasn’t, and that wasn’t the first time I killed someone. Months after I’d left home I pulled my stepfather into a glim and stabbed him with a kitchen knife and in the morning he was dead from a heart attack. And before Lenore there were two others who died. Ron Hastings and Cindy Ackerman are alive because they didn’t try to hold on to me. So you see, Peter, I really am a deadly nightshade.’
‘All right, so I’m in love with a deadly nightshade. I don’t care what you’ve done, Amaryllis, and I don’t feel like going to Finsey-Obay just now so I’m going to say the d-word – I’m going to STOP THIS DREAM.’
Nothing changed. The candle flames fluttered and the paper walls rippled in the wind as the bus sped towards the end of its route. Amaryllis touched my face. ‘I’ve told you, this glim belongs only to itself now, and we haven’t much time. I’m no good, Peter – I’ve always needed to be in love and I’ve always fallen out of love before the other person was ready for it to end. I’ve gone from this one to that one, men and women both, whoever was available until I found you. Think what might happen if I fell out of love with you: I’d never consciously harm you but who knows what I might glim?’
I reflected on that, then I heard myself say, ‘If you fall out of love with me I don’t care what happens.’ I was surprised to hear that but I meant it.
‘I don’t know how to believe in permanence, Peter,’ she said softly, but I thought her words lacked conviction. She turned a little away from me, put her hand over her eyes, and withdrew into her thoughts.
The candle flames fluttered, the paper walls of the bus rippled in the wind, the silence rushed forward with us. What a ridiculous thing, I thought – to die in a glim! This bus would take us over the edge at Beachy Head and on Monday morning Mrs Quinn would find us dead and no one would know what had happened.
Think, I said to myself. If this glim has come out of both of us then the parameters of what’s possible and what isn’t are in our two minds. She’s thinking of what she’s going to do. What am I going to do? The motion of the bus was changing, twisting as it went.
‘We’re close to the edge now, Peter,’ said Amaryllis, ‘we’re passing through ourselves.’
I couldn’t speak. My stomach churned and all the nights and days, all the faces and voices, all the names and words, all the promises and lies of past loves surged up out of me in a vomiting that I couldn’t stop. My past heaved up and wracked me with the pains of regret, the pangs of shame. What had it all been about, this that would no longer stay down? What had I given, what taken? Had anyone been better off for knowing me?
The same thing was happening to Amaryllis, she too was open-mouthed and helpless, spewing out her self in a torrent of words and weeping as the bus shook and swayed towards the end of its journey. ‘Amaryllis!’ I gasped.
‘What?’
‘If we could…’
‘If we could what, Peter?’
‘If we could make it all be different…’
‘No, Peter.’ She was calm now, her face was so loving, so bright! ‘It’s too late for me but not for you.’ She turned and ran back down the stairs with me following. When she could reach the chandelier she grabbed a candle and thrust it into the paper wall. The paper burst into orange, pink, and yellow flames as she planted a foot in my back and shoved me through the fire. ‘Goodbye, Peter,’ she said, but I grabbed her ankle and pulled her with me and we fell to the ground at the edge of the cliff as the burning bus went over. The flames were pale in the dawn as the sun came up over the grey and shining sea and we woke up on the floor in a tangle of bedclothes.
Amaryllis is one of those women who look good in the morning. On this particular morning she was more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen. ‘Be honest with me,’ she said. ‘Are we dead?’
‘I don’t think so. What would you like for breakfast?’
‘Boilermakers?’ she said shyly. What a woman.
Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges the following: Mazes and Labyrinths, W.H. Matthews (Longmans, Green & Co, 1922); A Walk on the Wild Side, Nelson Algren (Rebel Inc., an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd); Aphorisms, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (Penguin, 1990); and Notes from a Friend, Anthony Robbins (Fireside, 1995).
My thanks to:
Adam Lawson, my driver and companion on research trips to East Sussex and Oxfordshire; Graham Collins, Proprietor of the Birling Gap Hotel, East Sussex, for weather information for 31 December 1993 and 1 January 1994; the owners of Troy Farm, Oxfordshire, for permission to view their maze; and Roger Lade of the Little Angel Theatre, for showing me the Sleeping Beauty marionettes backstage.
I am very grateful to Martha Fleming who, in June 1999, guided me through her exhibition, Atomism and Animism, at the Science Museum, and put me in touch with Alan Bennett, the Klein-bottle artist. I am deeply indebted to Alan not only for the time and the information he gave me but also for his generosity in allowing me to involve him in a fictional dialogue with Peter Diggs.
Hearty thanks to Robert Ellis, whose remarks in our Klein-bottle discussions helped me to focus my own ideas and get this novel started.
My special thanks to Dominic Power, who read many drafts and revisions and gave me encouragement and useful comments; here I must also thank our friends at II Fornello in Southampton Row for years of amiable forbearance while manuscripts were read over very long lunches. They are, in order of appearance, Manolo; Bruno; Juliano; Paco; Jesús; Carlos; Rino; Mario; Jesús Díaz; María; Luigi; and (appearing nightly) Aldo.
R.H.
London, 22 February 2000
A Note on the Author
Russell Hoban (1925-2011) was the author of many extraordinary novels including Turtle Diary, Angelica Lost and Found and his masterpiece, Riddley Walker. He also wrote some classic books for children including The Mouse and his Child and the Frances books. Born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, USA, he lived in London from 1969 until his death.
By the Same Author
NOVELS
The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz
Kleinzeit
Turtle Diary
Riddley Walker
Pilgermann
The Medusa Frequency
Fremder
Mr Rinyo-Clacton’s Offer
Angelica’s Grotto
Amaryllis Night and Day
The Bat Tattoo
Her Name Was Lola
Come Dance With Me
Linger Awhile
My Tango with Barbara Strozzi
Angelica Lost and Found
POETRY
The Pedalling Man
The Last of the Wallendas and Other Poems
COLLECTIONS
The Moment Under the moment
FOR CHILDREN
The Mouse and His Child
The Frances Books
The Trokeville Way
Lines from ‘Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries’ Words and Music by
Lew Brown and Ray Henderson © 1931 DeSylva, Brown & Henderson, Inc.
Lyric reproduced by kind permission of Redwood Music Ltd (Carlin),
London NW1 8BD
Lines from ‘Walking Spanish’ by Tom Waits reproduced by kind permission
of Warner Chappell Music Ltd.
First published 2001
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © 2001 by Russell Hoban
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3DP
eISBN: 978 1 4088 3433 6
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
1 The First Time
2 Empty Spaces
3 The Second Time
4 Nameless Here
5 New and Strange
6 The Brass Hotel
7 Venice?
8 Old Woman as Black Cat
9 Everybody has One
10 On Buses
11 How Clever of God
12 Cliffs and Edges
13 Nice One
14 Memory’s Arrow
15 From Here on out to Where?
16 Listing
17 Late last Night
18 Walking Spanish
19 Memories of Yew
20 The Dark Road
21 Bird-Women
22 The Essential Amaryllis
23 To Maine or Massachusetts
24 The Borgo Pass
25 Bowl of Cherries
26 Unnatural Practices
27 The Beckoning Other
28 What Now?
29 Looking at Shapes
30 Souvenir
31 A Seaport
32 The Commedia Dell’arte
33 When I Remember
34 Absent Friends
35 The Wood-Daemon
36 Musical Interlude
37 It Happens
38 Finsey-Obay
Acknowledgements
A Note on the Author
By the Same Author
Imprint
Russell Hoban, Amaryllis Night and Day
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