—Mr Jones, she said, was that your friend?
—No, said Madame Jocasta sharply.
—Yes, said Virgil Jones. He was.
—You must tell me all about him, said Media.
Madame Jocasta felt impotence replacing her fury. It seemed Flapping Eagle was now to come between her and her favourite. Life could be very unfair sometimes.
The second person he met was Flann O’Toole, on his way from a session with Boom-Boom de Sade to the Elbaroom. They met at the door.
—Oho, boomed O’Toole. So there you are. I hear ’tis a great success you’ve had with the Cherkassovs and the Gribbs. Shouldn’t you be drinking to celebrate your arrival amongst us? Sort of a welcome to the fold, eh?
—Lead me to it, said Flapping Eagle.
They left together; and it was only when they arrived at the Elbaroom that Flapping Eagle remembered the message he should have given Virgil Jones—the message from Liv.
XLIII
—HOW MANY GENIUSES have you ever heard of who were in no way obsessive? declaimed Ignatius Gribb. Obsession is the path to self-realization. The only path, Mr Eagle, the only path.
—Virgil Jones says it reflects a fear of the workings of the mind, said Flapping Eagle. He was sufficiently drunk not to care what he said, and the Gribbs sufficiently proper to pretend he wasn’t drunk at all; though Elfrida sat in distressed silence at the lunch-table.
—Virgil Jones is a human wreck, said Ignatius Gribb. A living testimony of the idiocy of what he is pleased to call his ideas. I am glad you have dissociated yourself from him, Mr Eagle, very glad indeed. You must now detach yourself from his ramblings, too.
—Virgil Jones says that doubts are preferable to certainties, mumbled Flapping Eagle.
Ignatius Gribb drew a deep breath. —Hamlet’s disease, he said. Doubt, I mean. It got him killed. The old story of Doubting Thomas is another case in point. Where there are certainties it is laughable to doubt. Don’t you agree?
—Er … said Flapping Eagle, the mists of alcohol settling upon him, but Ignatius Gribb was not to be denied.
—The crucial distinction to draw, he said, is between obsession and possession. The possessed man is out of control of himself; it is a form of insanity. Possession leads to tyrannies and vile crimes. Obsession leads to the reverse. It composes symphonies and creates paintings. It writes novels and moves mountains. It is the supreme gift of the human race. To deny it is to deny our humanity. What purpose is there in immortality if it is not to be used to explore in depth one’s deepest preoccupations? What purpose is there in Calf Island?
—Virgil Jones says, said Flapping Eagle, that the boot is on the other foot. He says the island creates the need … he says the Grimus Effect can only be survived by obsessed minds.
—And that, said Ignatius Gribb, is the myth your prime interest is intended to explode.
Elfrida Gribb spoke for the first time.
—Flapping Eagle, she said. You don’t mind if I call you that, since we are all friends now? … I think you are too easily influenced by others. This Mr Jones should not prey so on your mind. Forget him and his lunacies … you do not need him now.
Again, the note of desperation in her voice.
—Forget him, said Flapping Eagle, and passed out into the soup.
XLIV
—ELFRIDA, SAID FLAPPING EAGLE, did you know my sister Bird-Dog?
Elfrida’s eyes widened; eventually she stammered:
—I… I know the name … your sister? Flapping Eagle nodded, and saw a steely composure return to Elfrida as she said:
—I’m afraid I have bad news for you. Bird-Dog is dead.
Flapping Eagle said in a quiet voice: —How do you know?
—Ignatius, she said. Ignatius said … she disappeared … she must be dead. I’m sorry.
She fled from his worried stare, dropping her needlework.
—Come over this afternoon and play croquet, said Irina Cherkassova.
—I don’t know the game, replied Flapping Eagle.
—Then it will be instructive, she smiled. When you play a game you don’t understand, it teaches you a great deal about yourself. And your limitations.
—I’m sure Flapping Eagle knows his limitations. (Elfrida, sharply.)
Irina cocked an eyebrow. —It was only a joke, she said gaily.
—I’d love to play, said Flapping Eagle.
Elfrida said nothing.
Elfrida and Irina formed a large proportion of Flapping Eagle’s life during the next few days. Gribb’s studies and Cherkassov’s indolence had always thrown the two women upon each other’s resources; they seemed glad of his company, both of them rejuvenated by his presence. In a way, they were as much a sanctuary for him, a sanctuary from his thoughts and fears, as the House of the Rising Son was for Virgil. While in their company, he found it both possible and pleasant to play the ostrich.
The attractions of the flesh were, naturally, prominent in his thoughts. Flapping Eagle knew he was not unattractive. He also knew he was some distance from being irresistible. If he was in the enviable position of heading a triangle whose two other corners were occupied by these women, there must be other reasons. He guessed his novelty value had much to do with it. He was the Stranger, the unknown, a new life to explore.
In Irina’s case, her explicit desire for him was relatively easy to understand. She obviously despised her husband; Flapping Eagle was probably a way out of the trap for her, a way of expressing her scorn for Cherkassov and escaping the tiresome monogamy of her marriage. A simple, classic case of a bored, unhappy wife given a new stimulus.
Flapping Eagle’s private judgement of her was that she almost enjoyed her unhappiness, that the double grief of her motherhood and the emptiness of her marriage had become emotional crutches, platforms from which to elicit sympathy and admiration. If he were to become involved with her, he would have to bear the weight of her woes. She was a siren, too: and a siren is a devourer of men. But for all that she was a beautiful, desirable woman and she had intimated already that she, too, desired him.
He found this willingness a small drawback. The unattainable held for him a greater fascination, and Elfrida, with her frequently-voiced attachment to her canting gnome, Elfrida was a great deal closer to being unattainable. He was not even sure if she was attracted to him. Nothing had been said; he based his hopes solely on a few glances, a few brushes of skin against skin, a few hesitations when speaking of her love for Ignatius, a few sharpnesses in her voice when Irina flirted openly with him. He might be imagining all of it.
If he was not, another worrying area opened up. Perhaps she did not love Gribb as much as she had convinced herself she did. If so, why was her dedication to him so intense? Was her seemingly natural, all-consuming love simply another of the necessary exaggerations of the Way of K? And if she, too, desired him, why did she? As a rebellion against Ignatius, a parallel to Irina and Cherkassov? He shook his head. Perhaps he should give himself more credit.
Of course, Flapping Eagle did not know the real reason why his arrival had unsettled the two pale beauties so; and so his musings encompassed only a part of the truth.
The mysteries of Calf Island intruded only once during these days, but, when they did, they answered the question of whether or not Elfrida was drawn to Flapping Eagle. For the rest no Bird-Dog appeared, and the whine in Flapping Eagle’s ears seemed to have faded for the time being. It was as though the island were biding its time. In retrospect it seemed to Flapping Eagle that he had been given enough rope to hang himself and several others besides.
This was how the one intrusion occurred:
Ignatius Gribb was having his afternoon nap, and thus managed once again to sleep through an important event. Elfrida and Flapping Eagle were at the swing. More precisely, they sat on the grass under the ash from which it hung. They were drowsy with food and wine; but the second blink jolted them wide awake.
It hit them like an electric shock. No living being c
an be removed from existence and then returned to it without feeling the effects.
It passed; Elfrida looked at Flapping Eagle, a helpless child filled with fear. He took her into his arms and they hung on to each other tightly, proving to themselves it was all right, they were there, solid, alive.
It seemed only natural that they should kiss.
Inside, in his study, Ignatius Gribb snored on.
XLV
EARLIER, AT THE House of the Rising Son.
Media was saying: —Madame Jocasta, might you not have been too hard on Flapping Eagle? People do get confused. Good people can do bad things under stress.
Madame Jocasta said: —You don’t even know the man.
Media tossed her head. —I’m just giving him the benefit of the doubt. Virgil’s always encouraging people to doubt.
Jocasta said: —Flapping Eagle is not welcome here. And remember, Media, your own speciality excludes him from your bed.
—Yes, Madame, she said. And added, after a pause: I like women.
—Don’t be sad, said Media.
—No, my dear, said Virgil absently.
—I’m sorry I asked about him, she said, full of contrition.
—It’s not that, he said.
The Gorf had warned him: he was irrelevant, redundant; he would take no further part in the story of Calf Mountain. The Gorf had warned him; and since Flapping Eagle had chosen the Way of K, it looked as if the Gorf was right.
—People sometimes get depressed in retirement, he said to Media.
XLVI
NO-ONE TO GUIDE him; no sister to forage, no sham-man to expel, no livia to command, no deggle to direct, no virgil to instruct. He had to choose—which of them? Either of them? And then to gamble on their choice. And to know what he wanted.
The white witches weaving their spell, binding him in silken cords.
Perhaps any choice, even the wrong one, was better than these agonizing, fluctuating self-examinations and inner debates.
Without being conscious of it, Flapping Eagle was falling into the natural thought-patterns of his adopted town.
The pale sorceresses circled and smiled.
—I know I’m a guest in his house, he said. But it’s yours, too. I know he’s been kind and generous to me. But it was you who brought me here. I don’t expect you to love me; I’m not sure if I love you. But I want you. I know it would be easier, more comfortable if I didn’t. But I do.
There: it was done.
—I love my husband, said Elfrida Gribb in a voice seized with panic.
Night. Irina Cherkassova lay awake in her bed, thinking about the blink. A spider crawled unseen along the hangings over her head, the rude canopy of her inelegant four-poster. Bats hung from the eaves outside her closed window.
For her, it had been the first blink, and the first time is the worst. She bit her lip and tasted the salty blood. Tonight she needed companionship, even if it was only Aleksandr. But how to go to him, proud Irina, how crawl into his bedroom after this age of partitioned nights, how to ask his warmth and protection in the face of her history of icy hauteur. No: she could not. No. Yes. Yes. She could. She got out of bed and drew her dressing-gown around her.
There was no answer when she knocked at his door. Sleeping, obviously; he probably doesn’t even remember it happened, addlebrained fool. She opened the door.
At that moment, at the House of the Rising Son, Lee Kok Fook licked Aleksandr Cherkassov on the ear-lobe.
She knew it, of course; in fact she expected that he should spend nights at the brothel. Having banned him from her bed, she would be naïve to think otherwise. Besides, a sated halfwit was preferable to a frustrated husband demanding his rights. But tonight, it hurt. Tonight, when she had been willing to come to him, to humble herself before him for the sake of his company. It is most galling for the sensitive to be spurned by the brutish. Irina Cherkassova returned to her own bed, now cold, and lay stroking the half-formed thing inside her and considered masturbation. The face of Flapping Eagle formed in her mind’s eye and she rejected self-help. It was so much nicer to be helped, and it was time she was. Her decision comforted her into sleep.
After their single kiss, Elfrida resisted Flapping Eagle with a passion so intense it gave him hope. She would explain to him at great length why it was impossible, why they could never repeat what they had done, and certainly never progress beyond that point; but she never said the kiss had been anything but a pleasure. —It’s just that there’s Ignatius, she said, and though she hastened to add that it was her love for him that made her suitor’s proposition unacceptable, Flapping Eagle gained the distinct impression that she had meant, perhaps just for the fraction of a second, perhaps just for the time it took her to say the words, that her husband was in the way.
He began to ask her to accompany him on long walks around the fields of K; and though she promised him fiercely after each walk that she would refuse his next invitation, she never did.
They stopped, on the first day, by a well. An ox circled it slowly, attached to a long beam of wood that worked a system of pulleys which hauled water out of the well in a continual circle of buckets, water for irrigation, flowing into the field. Elfrida, watching the animal, said:
—Animals are the luckiest of us.
Flapping Eagle waited. She patted the beast on its flank as it passed them and continued: —They die.
—You’re unhappy here, said Flapping Eagle, and knew it was true.
—Rubbish, said Elfrida briskly. I’m perfectly happy. And, for the first time, she thought those words seemed hollow and untrue. She turned, abruptly, and walked away from the well. —I’m going home now, she said, as if a return to familiar surroundings would be accompanied by a return to familiar feelings.
The white witches weaving their spell, binding him in silken cords, circling, circling, moths to his candle.
The croquet lawn was a long way from being flat and the balls some way from being round, but Irina played with the concentration of a professional. Flapping Eagle found concentration difficult, but avoided disgracing himself.
—You learn quickly, she said. It must be the sadist in you taking over.
—I’m not nearly as good as you, he said.
—Practice makes perfect. She used her mallet to line up a daring long shot.
—You’ll never hit it, said Flapping Eagle. The lawn’s too bumpy.
She hit it.
—It’s just a question of allowing for the slope, she said. I have an unfair advantage: I know every inch of this ground.
She despatched his ball into the bushes.
—O dear, she said in open hypocrisy, I’ve gone and lost it for you.
He went to find it, and was hunting in the thick shrubbery that ruled the bottom of the Cherkassov garden when he heard the rustling behind him. He turned to find Irina stepping out of her dress.
—It might catch on something and tear, she said. I’m better off without it.
—Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Irina? he said.
—I’m helping you look for your ball, she said. You didn’t seem to be doing very well on your own.
Despite Flapping Eagle’s earlier qualms, their love-making was a consolation to them both.
Norbert Page, in the shed at the far side of the garden, thought he heard a cry. He came out to look, but saw nothing.
On their next walk, Elfrida allowed him to hold her hand. On the next she suffered it to be kissed. And on the next, amid a loud buzzing of bees, she permitted him— and herself—a second kiss. She wouldn’t go further for a while; but eventually she let him fondle her, his hands caressing her at first through her clothes and then snaking beneath them to raise her to unbearable pitches of desire.
But there she stopped him, driving him to distraction.
—What’s the point of stopping now? he cried. You’ve been quite unfaithful enough … why not enjoy it, at least?
—As you say, she replied unhappily, I’ve been
quite unfaithful enough.
She wasn’t teasing him; she was just as frustrated as he was. But she would not take the final step, would not make the final betrayal. Something stronger than Elfrida prevented that. Flapping Eagle refused to believe it was morality.
—I love him, I love him, I love him, she repeated over and over again, through clenched teeth.
—No, you don’t, said Flapping Eagle. You were comfortable with him. You never found him attractive. You don’t love him.
—I do, she cried. I know I do.
Then he watched her as the self-control returned and the tears dried in their ducts.
The swing. Elfrida on it, Irina watching. There are moments, thought Flapping Eagle, when they could be identical twins. So alike, so unalike.
Irina Cherkassova, who found it easy to despise, found herself despising Elfrida. Foolish, giggling woman. Elfrida Gribb, in the meanwhile, was gripped by the beginnings of a more powerful emotion: jealousy.
They smiled at each other through their veils.
It was the night of the great ball at her own home and Irina was refusing to cry. Downstairs, the music and the braided gallants; upstairs, she lay dry-eyed and fevered. To be ill on this of all nights, in this of all years, when she had budded and blossomed out of childhood and had stood for hours upon end before a mirror naked with a book on her head pulling in her stomach and pushing out her chest. There would have been no pats on the head this year, no understanding mock-adult chatter, no tolerant amusement when she flounced irritatedly to her room before midnight on her mother’s command. This year she would have danced till dawn and beyond and breakfasted by the willows on the river with some adoring swain … she thought of fat, pimply Masha downstairs, glowing with triumph, the ugly sister become the belle of the ball, whirling round the dance-floor with bored young men wondering where pretty Irina was, and the anger drove away the tears.