She broke down; the glacial control slipped; the tears flowed. She clutched at Flapping Eagle. —I love you, she said. I love you, I love you, I love you.
—You told him, didn’t you? said Flapping Eagle, understanding.
—Yes, she said, in a tiny whisper. I killed him.
It was not hard to reconstruct what had happened. Elfrida, goaded by jealousy, had taken the plunge she had fought so unwillingly but so effectively for so long. But, being Elfrida, the plunge had to be as final, as irrevocable as her previous dedication to Ignatius. So she had refused to accompany Flapping Eagle on his walk and while he was safely out of the way had bearded her husband in his lair and told him she no longer loved him. In Virgil’s terms, she had transferred obsessions from Ignatius to Flapping Eagle. Who thought: guess whose fault that makes it.
It had transfixed Ignatius like a thunderbolt. Even away from Calf Island it might well have broken him. These two had survived by their mutual interdependence, shielding each other from the wounds and calumnies of the world, two vulnerable people lying back to back in a marriage bed, for safety. No doubt her love had been the entire foundation of his arrogant air of self-certainty. The love of a beautiful woman can easily provide such a support for a stunted man. He had drawn from her the strength and courage which enabled him to form and hold, not just his theories and opinions, but his entire personality. She was his peace of mind, his alienable crutch, his perfect match, and she had withdrawn. Men had done away with themselves for less.
But this was Calf Mountain; and in the field of the Grimus Effect, suicide had been unnecessary. Flapping Eagle could almost see the gutted brain within the coined head. Because Elfrida’s words had done more than upset Ignatius. They had broken through the unconscious, ingrained defence mechanism, the mental barrier he had built for almost every member of the community of K. Elfrida’s withdrawal had removed the cornerstone of the persona he had built; and in that instant, when everything which had seemed sure was suddenly flung into a state of flux, the fever of the Inner Dimensions had swarmed over him.
What must he have felt like, Flapping Eagle asked himself, at that second, as he felt that inner multiplicity seizing him, soft and unprepared and unable to control it as he was behind those broken defences? What must it have been like to be possessed and annihilated by the very force whose denial he had made his primary contribution to the town? Death with dishonour indeed.
And what of K itself, K which rested on Gribb’s theories, on his technique of Prime Interest and on his preoccupation with the here-and-now of life? Ignatius’ death had shown that there was a Something, an invisible force at work upon them, and it had destroyed its arch-opponent with terrifying swiftness. Could their minds remain shut in the face of his death? Flapping Eagle was certain that some at least would not be able to remain so.
Guilt descended upon him like a soft dark avalanche, breaking the pale magical spell Irina and Elfrida had woven. He flagellated himself more cruelly than O’Toole could ever have managed. He, who had fallen so willingly into the way of K, subscribing to the illusion of permanence, betraying his own experience for the sake of a home and a triangular love. He, who had despised the man who had shown him the true nature of the island and helped him to survive it. Was social acceptability and the companionship of two beautiful women worth the damage he had wrought? Patently not; and even that was lost. Flung out by Irina, faced with a changed Elfrida, he was probably also in danger of his life. He shrugged. He could not find it in him to value his life very highly, not now that his ability to bring disaster upon those around him had reached this new peak. Selfish, Jocasta had said. That was the understatement of all time.
—I’ll look after you, Elfrida was saying. I promise. I’ll look after you for ever. If you will look after me.
—Elfrida … he said helplessly, but his voice trailed off into silence; he could think of nothing to say.
—I love you, you see, she said. You don’t need anyone else. You don’t, do you?
Light came in to the room. Count Aleksandr Cherkassov stood in the doorway. There was a curl of distaste on his lips, overlaying the shock in his eyes.
—It’s not murder, said Flapping Eagle. She didn’t murder him. There was no violence.
—Was there not, said Cherkassov and left the house.
Elfrida Gribb clung to Flapping Eagle as if her life depended on it. Which, in a sense, it did.
He held her there, and they stood for a long time by the corpse of the Way of K.
XLVHI
FOUR GRAVES, VOID sentinels at the forest’s edge, fresh-made holes in Valhalla, stood at the spot where Flapping Eagle and Virgil Jones had looked across the plain an emotional age ago. It was a still morning, the light mists swirling, the mountain remaining impenetrable behind discreet clouds. Virgil, wet with fatigue, his feet complaining, his tongue licking feverishly at his lips, his eyes peering, watched the approaching procession. His limbs gathered their forces; soon they would have to undo their work. Piles of earth, dark and slightly moist, stood in attendance by the tombs.
Femme fatale. If the cap fits, wear it. One by one they fall around me; dead men around me, unborn life within. Poor, stupid count, lanced in his feeble head. I watched him die, leaving the house of death, so silent, so distant, passing without a word, into the garden, I behind, he ahead, looking ahead. A giggle from Alexei, idiot offspring laughing at bemused parent, a chess piece falling to the ground, and back, back to the house, to sit and stare. Poor hidebound anachronism that he was, finding comfort in the arms of whores, finding none in mine, and now, when I wished to, I could give him none. Staring and smoking, as if death would waft away on the fumes. There, in the past, pinching little Sophie Lermontov’s little rump, gallant he was at balls and in war, but the past was receding now, present horror ousting past pleasure, as he sat and stared and smoked. The triviality of it, to die for the death of a Gribb, his frail mind stabbed by the death of a Gribb. I watched him die, his eyes turned to some other world, his hands and lips as they moved in an unseen, unheard life, I watched it all: as he came to his feet, stiffly to his feet, erect and handsome, my idiot adonis, crumpling then before his ghostly executioners, no, no, no blindfold please, a cheroot before you shoot. The ghostly executioners—I did not see or hear them, the ghosts of his assassins, but it was them. I was not surprised to find him dead.
But Page, little worshipping Norbert, last of the serfs, who wanted only to serve us, so good with Alexei he was; small man that he was, good innocent Page, he would not die for a Gribb, yet for a Cherkassov to die so broke him. While the Cherkassov stood firm in the Way of K, all the Gribbs on earth could perish without harming him. But if the trunk of the tree should fall, there is little hope for the branches. He died when he knew, when he knew the Cherkassov had fallen, invaded by Grimus, there, I have said it, died as Alexei laughed and played.
Femme fatale. It is my lot. I accept it. The grief, accepted. The pain, accepted. Let them fall around me. I shall not fall, I shall bear the burden. But not the blame. Let blame fall where it belongs, upon the living occupants of the house of death, upon her, mealy-mouthed whited sepulchre, and him, the murderous eagle. The Countess Irina shoulders no blame.
Anthony St Clair Peyrefitte Hunter was in the Elba-room when the news of Gribb’s death arrived. His first reaction had been a savage delight. —Now we’ll see, he said. Now perhaps we can stop lying.
One-Track Peckenpaw gave him an uninterested glance. So Gribb was dead. So what? Peckenpaw could do without Gribb. A man did what a man had to do to stay alive. A man believed what a man had to believe to survive. One Gribb wasn’t going to change that.
The uninterested glance turned to alarm as the Two-Time Kid clutched his head suddenly and fell against the bar. His expression was one of total disbelief.
Self-deception operates at different levels, and Hunter was certainly unaware of the extent to which he had come to depend on his posture. He had become the Two-Time Kid, and an ele
gant, cynical disenchantment with K was a part of that role. Beneath it, he was just as afraid, just as unwilling to admit the reality of Grimus and his Effect, as Gribb or Aleksandr Cherkassov. The Dimensions took him unawares and gripped him with their fever only because his self-deception ran even deeper than the rest; he had convinced himself that it did not exist, that his mind was not closed to the implications of Grimus. The storm the Inner Dimensions unleashed upon him, scalding his nerve-centres, burning out the synapses of a brain which could not accommodate the new realities invading it, proved otherwise.
Peckenpaw saw him fall forwards, saw his head strike the floor; and no amount of shouting and shaking did any good. Hunter’s end was the quickest of all.
One-Track Peckenpaw was beside himself, in the grip of some great emotion. He would not let Hunter be dead. He would not.
—Come on, little bastard, he cajoled. Come on, you little two-timer, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. He shook the body like a limp rag.
—It’s no use, said Flann O’Toole, with unnatural gentleness. Leave him, One-Track, it’s no use. He put a hand on the giant bear’s shoulder.
Peckenpaw rose, taking Hunter’s body into his arms.
—Someone’s to blame, he said to the room at large. Someone’s paying for this, soon.
He carried the body to the door, then spoke to the room again.
—I’m taking him home now. The Two-Time Kid. He died with his boots on.
There were no coffins. Ignatius Gribb, Norbert Page and the Two-Time Kid had been wrapped in rough woollen blankets from the stores. Count Aleksandr Cherkassov had been swaddled in a sheet embroidered with his coat-of-arms. Each body was carried in a simple hammock, strung between two poles, a pall-bearer at each corner. Most of K followed the Chief Mourners in a tearful crocodile. The chief mourners were Elfrida, accompanied by Flapping Eagle, Irina Cherkassova and One-Track Peckenpaw.
Count Aleksandr Cherkassov had become titular head of K by default. Even Flann Napoleon O’Toole preferred to limit his empire to the alcoholic environment of the Elbaroom. But titular head he was, and now that he was dead, his duties passed naturally and without question to his son.
Leading the procession, smiling with the happiness of a child learning a new game, was Count Alexei Aleksandrovich Cherkassov.
The funeral service was short and simple, eschewing any pretence at religiosity. The chief mourners said a few words, earth was scattered, and that was that. Alexei Cherkassov, a fool at the head of the blind, stood smiling silently in the light mist, an epitaph incarnate.
—My husband, said Elfrida Gribb, was a man more sinned against than sinning. He was the salt of the earth, the flower of his generation, the rock on which we stood. He was a good man and a loving husband.
It was appropriate that the author of the All-Purpose Quotable Philosophy should be commemorated by a string of clichés. Elfrida moved away from the head of the grave to grasp Flapping Eagle’s arms. Irina Cherkassova glared.
One-Track Peckenpaw loomed hugely over the grave of Two-Time Hunter, a tragic goliath mourning the loss of his david. He could not have formed words to express what he felt, but he had become aware that amid the gibes and insults the two of them had habitually hurled at each other had been an important bond, the mutual need of opposites.
He said: —The Two-Time Kid was one of the best.
Irina Cherkassova had two speeches to make. She stood in the stillness with her chin tilted up behind her veil, the very archetype of bereaved pride. She spoke briefly of the loyalty and selflessness of Norbert Page, and Alexei Cherkassov clapped his hands as she spoke his name. Then, moving to her husband’s grave, she said:
—It would be a slur upon my husband’s memory if his death were to break down what we have built. The Way of K is a good Way. Nothing will change.
Flapping Eagle, listening to the defiant sentences, heard in them an echo of Dolores O’Toole; but he also heard a clue, a reason for the continued survival of most of K, which he had feared would fall under the spell of the Dimensions to the last man. Those who had survived the shock were those (like Irina) for whom the Way of K had become, not just a means of defence, but an end in itself, a way of life which preserved them in the cocoon of the past and the minutiae of the present. That was what they wanted. Thus Irina had simply assimilated her losses into her tragic self-image, and Peckenpaw had made Hunter a part of his own, often-told legends. For these people, the Grimus Effect was resistible. They had built an alternative to it, from necessity, and the alternative had become an independent thing. The Effect could not invade them: they had sunk too deeply into themselves.
—Fill the graves, gravedigger, said Flann O’Toole, and the ceremony was over.
Three things happened before the gathering dispersed which showed that despite Irina’s funeral speech, K would not remain entirely unaltered. The first of these occurred when Elfrida went up to Irina and said:
—I’m so sorry.
Irina looked at her with the practised contempt of generations and said:
—I do not speak to whores.
Elfrida, already pale, turned white as the Countess walked away.
The second event, offsetting this sharp estrangement of old friends, was a reconciliation. P. S. Moonshy approached Irina haltingly, avoiding her eyes, playing with a coat-button.
—Countess, he said, if Count Alexei should lack a games companion, I … I would be willing to … when time permits …
—Thank you, Mr Moonshy, said Irina.
K was closing ranks instinctively, reaffirming its unity against its resurgent enemy.
The third thing that happened was this:
One-Track Peckenpaw and Flann O’Toole had been murmuring together. They now approached the departing Flapping Eagle and Elfrida Gribb.
Peckenpaw said: —I got something to say to you.
Flapping Eagle and Elfrida stopped.
—Seems to us, said Peckenpaw, this all began when you hit town. Folks are saying the two of you been screwing each other, too. We don’t care for that kind of thing in this town.
—What are you saying, Mr Peckenpaw? said Elfrida coolly. Please be explicit.
—What I’m saying, Mrs Gribb, said Peckenpaw, accentuating the title with heavy scorn, is it’s maybe time certain people got the hell out.
—You do understand, said Flann O’Toole.
—I love you, said Elfrida Gribb, because I’ve stopped being a child. I don’t need protection now. I need you. You made me see what I was clinging to in Ignatius: more a father than a lover. Whereas you, my love, will be a lover. I know it. We shall look after each other and make love. You’ve forced me to grow up and I’m glad. I don’t want to be good any more.
—Glad? said Flapping Eagle. Glad, when it killed the man who loved you?
—You love me, said Elfrida, attacking his clothes. Show me.
—It’s impossible, said Flapping Eagle. We’ve just buried him.
—I love you, now, said Elfrida. Now. This minute. This second.
—Not now, said Flapping Eagle.
She broke away from his embrace; and her love increased the burden of his guilt.
XLIX
FLAPPING EAGLE WENT into K the next day, to collect food and a few other things from Moonshy’s stores. From the moment he entered the town, he knew that Peckenpaw had not been making empty threats. People stopped and stared as he passed, as though aghast at his temerity. The flavour of those old films seen in the fleapit at Phoenix filled the streets; K had become Peckenpaw-land, a small town of the Old West; and Flapping Eagle was, after all, a Red Indian. He half-expected a sheriff to emerge through swing-doors and gun him down then and there.
P. S. Moonshy was busy behind a counter, weighing things on scales. There was only one other customer in the room, but Moonshy ignored Flapping Eagle completely. When the woman left, Flapping Eagle said: —It’s my turn, I think.
—Think again, said P. S. Moonshy.
—Look, ju
st give me the food and I’ll go, said Flapping Eagle, offering his list.
—No food, said P. S. Moonshy.
One-Track Peckenpaw was in the street when Flapping Eagle emerged empty-handed. —Wal, he said, if it ain’t the Indian. He placed himself between Flapping Eagle and his donkey.
Flapping Eagle resolved on a policy of polite firmness. —If You’ll excuse me, he said, I’d like to get back to Mrs Gribb and tell her we’re to be starved out of town.
—Sure, said Peckenpaw. Wouldn’t dream of standing in your way. He didn’t move. Flapping Eagle tried to get round him to the waiting donkey; but Peckenpaw shot out one huge, clawing hand and grabbed Flapping Eagle by the neck. It was useless to struggle, so Flapping Eagle went limp. Peckenpaw glared at him.
—Now don’t get me wrong, he said. I ain’t prejudiced. But if you’re still around tomorrow, I’ll be coming looking.
With his free hand, he delivered a devastating rabbit-punch. Flapping Eagle was sick on the cobbles. Peckenpaw threw him down into the mess and walked away.
Flapping Eagle crawled on to the donkey and made his way home.
—We’ve got to leave here, he said to Elfrida.
—Why? she asked. It’s my house now. Our house.
—Look, they won’t feed us if we stay and they’ll probably try and force us out anyway. You can’t resist a whole town.
—If you go, my love, she said, I shall of course accompany you. Her face was reposed and calm, her manner collected if Subservient.
—We’ll go, then, he said.
—Where will you take me? she asked.
Where, indeed. She had the strength of obsession to survive the journey down the mountain again—if she could survive the effect in K, she could certainly do so where it was less strong. But Elfrida Gribb had not been made for rough journeys; and Dolores O’Toole would scarcely welcome the “Spectre of Grimus” back into her home. Besides, it smacked of deserting the scene of the crime. His crime. They could not go back. There was no going back for him. And if he was to go on, up the mountain, into the unknown clouds, what would he do there? Even worse, what would she do there? He shook his head. He needed guidance.