Xas had compressed a good deal of casual needling into a few sentences. Sobran laughed at this and the angel looked back across his wing, hair scattering drops of water that hissed on the hot grate. ‘Apharah told me that she wrote you a letter. I wondered if you had received it. I’m worried about what she might say to you.’
Xas sat up and settled his wings around him so that Sobran could only see his head and a line of bare, clean, uncallused toes. ‘For the last year Apharah has nursed a crippled Russian fellmonger. I thought Kumiliev was Apharah’s hobby – or a part-payment on her place in Paradise. It turned out that she had acquired him for his French, wanting to write to you. People are so devious! Their weakness makes them astute. Think of it – it was men, not angels, who were able to discover that the planets orbit the sun.’
Sobran shook his head. He didn’t believe his ears.
‘Only someone with a telescope can see that planets orbit the sun. Nobody would invent telescopes who hadn’t needed spectacles. Disadvantaged, needy, so devious – that’s humanity.’ As if to illustrate the differences between people and angels Xas rearranged the fire. He put his hands into the flames to shuffle burning logs, then brought them out, sooty, and wiped them on his wings.
‘No letter yet,’ Sobran said. Then, ‘I want to embrace you, Xas – will you let me?’
‘I don’t like to be touched. Nor would you if your body was a two-way peephole with God’s and the Devil’s eyes applied to either end. For my next optical image I’ll do either periscopes or kaleidoscopes.’
Sobran said with dignity, ‘Very well, if you won’t stand up, nor will I sit on the floor. I would like to be able to report that after my night on the ground at midsummer I wasn’t able to straighten for a week. But I’m not so ancient that my aches and pains pushed themselves to the fore – given everything.’ Sobran unlocked his writing case and produced Léon’s suicide note, handing it to the angel.
‘Do I want to read this?’ Xas asked. He held the page by one corner, and seemed moved, but the paper betrayed not even the slightest tremor.
‘No. But are you suddenly a coward?’
‘I’ve never had to show courage, Sobran.’ Xas began to read. Turned the paper over, read the rest then looked up. ‘Is there another page?’
‘No.’
‘I think there is.’
‘Léon lived under my roof for years and I feel I know you better than I knew him.’
‘Your hospitality does seem to have been a point of contention for him.’
‘Léon didn’t have to deserve a place in our house. I thought he understood that. I thought I’d told him.’
‘We’ve all had to deserve you, Sobran.’
Sobran sat down on the end of the bed. As he did so his bare heel bumped the chamber-pot and made its lid rattle. Sobran found himself trying to recall whether or not he’d pissed after retiring to his room and listening for the slop of cold urine. Ashamed – again – of his body, of himself, he looked down at the nightshirt over his square bony knees and his rough-skinned, roped hands. ‘Léon didn’t kill himself because of anything I did. It was him. He was the murderer. I can’t understand it. I find I can scarcely even think about it.’
‘The murders are news to me,’ Xas said. ‘Which rather diminishes the shock of discovery. You’ve neglected to mention these murders.’ His eyes were momentarily opaque and reflective. ‘Except – thinking again – that I seemed like a murderer to you, who “goes about causing terror piecemeal”.’ He held the letter out to Sobran, who didn’t lift a finger, but instructed, ‘Burn it.’
Xas put the page into the fire. ‘It doesn’t read as though he were about to confess he’d killed Aline. But her death must have made it impossible for him to put his crimes out of his mind, despite his repentance.’
‘He said he sinned after repenting.’ The letter was now a fragile flake of carbon and Sobran had no more need to say ‘he says’ rather than ‘he said’ of his brother, even in discussing the letter.
‘Treachery, he says, not murder.’ Xas looked at the glossy black leaf as he said this, as though he could still read it – but of course he could remember exactly what it said, and never had cause to doubt his memory. ‘Perhaps Aline’s murder was just a tormenting coincidence.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought you believed in coincidences.’
‘I do – but they don’t happen to me.’
‘Because you’re important. Conspired against, spied on, endangered. If only by poor incontinents hidden in vineyards.’ Sobran looked away from Xas and his shoulders slumped. ‘You know – my whole life is a downward slope following midsummer.’
‘Yes?’ Xas said, mildly. He got up and came over to Sobran, who kept his head down and despondent.
‘This last midsummer in particular? Or every midsummer? Sobran, the way you talk you tempt me to think I have it in my power to make you happy, which is an error, no matter what you imagine.’ Xas sighed. ‘But now I think I have to say to myself that this disaster is my future.’
Sobran meant to raise his face. But when his head was level he stopped, gazed at Xas’s navel, the stomach, smooth and radiant above the jewelled belt. He was not surprised to be moved in the same way as he had been twelve years before, but by exactly the same thing, that was surprising, the exact same body, as unaltered as a treasured memory.
Xas put his hands on Sobran’s shoulders and pushed, reclining with Sobran so that both their faces came clear into the light of the single candle on the chair by Sobran’s bed. It was abrupt, but done smoothly. The angel had no great weight to use so did not unbalance the man. He used muscle, didn’t hesitate, had decided, and nothing interrupted the impetus of his decision. If Sobran was going to talk about downward slopes the angel would increase the gradient till there was no gripping, till the slope was a cliff face without handholds and the man’s only salvation was in the angel’s arms.
Xas put his hands into the neck of Sobran’s nightshirt so that the buttons popped out of the buttonholes. ‘How old are you?’ the angel said. ‘Forty-five, is it? Is that old?’ Sobran felt the fine fingers of the angel’s callused hands touch his nipples, over his heart, his stomach, then – the nightshirt torn – his thighs on either side of his balls. Both hands, for the angel was leaning on his wings. Sobran moved his own hands, touched scaly leather, and nothing faintly moved there.
‘Why would I be?’ Xas read Sobran’s thoughts through his touch. ‘Do I need to get stiff to impregnate some female creature? No. I’m a fair copy of a man. My beauty is only armour – and to please God.’
Sobran pinched the pearl head of the lynch-pin on the jewelled belt. He drew the pin forth and the belt fell from Xas like a cut snake. Sobran pulled Xas by the hips, pulled the angel against him. He turned himself and the angel so that they lay side by side, face to face, and he looked into the angel’s eyes. ‘I know that you’re a virgin and as bodiless as any paralytic. I know I’m old and not as handsome as I once was. But I know you love me as I love you.’ And he kissed the angel.
Xas was trying to say something and Sobran was trying to listen, but was sleepy. He’d rebound into wakefulness in a moment. That was how it always was with him. No one was there but them, no peepers, sacred or profane. No past, brandy, tobacco, stubble, frostbite. He’d been weeping. The angel was an incubus – of course – thank God. The taste and scent of his body plunged Sobran into something like the thick, thickening dreams of his early manhood. Xas was saying, ‘I don’t – just because you do – love me. I don’t, Sobran. Sobran, I want you to wake up, please, and do something you did. Again, please?’
And inexhaustible, apparently, and inspiring.
Sobran’s throat was so swollen it pushed up under his ears, which were ringing. He could hear his voice, wild with exhaustion, a growl, stripped of all human expression. There was no filth in Xas, he said, though he liked to see his own flow out of the angel. But he could see no marks, only deposits, the thick pearls of his and sterile egg-white
of the angel’s, but not a bruise, not a red smear of rough handling, even though the angel’s hair was clotted beside one ear and there were flakes dried on his face.
Xas was praising every perishable inch of him, so Sobran answered, his hands on the move, ‘I still want –’ and went to sleep.
Sobran was telling Xas about the murders. How the old Comte had wanted him to look at Marie Pelet’s corpse – him and Léon and Jules Lizet – the three who had found the first dead girl, Geneviève Lizet. Would they notice something they had seen before? That was what was said, though now Sobran thought they were suspected of murder. The physician was still in the room, stooped over Marie, holding a candle by her hand. It looked as if he were about to set her alight.
‘The Comte stood by my shoulder and asked me if I noticed anything. I’d been away to war. I couldn’t recall how Geneviève Lizet had looked, my mind was full to the brim with corpses. Both women had been choked and bashed. Léon’s were the only other marks of strangling I ever saw. I noticed his on the morning of the day we found Geneviève. There was a connection I should have made. Yet I still don’t quite understand the connection.’
‘I think you do, Sobran.’
‘What then?’
‘Put your hands around my throat.’
‘…’
‘Go on.’
Fingertips on vertebrae, thumbs on the soft skin over ridged cartilage of windpipe.
‘How does it make you feel? Did you ever let anyone do that to you?’
‘You seem to be giving me your complete trust.’
‘Let me do it to you.’
‘No.’
‘Yes. Trust me.’
A turn about. Warm hands, faint pressure from cat-like pads. Sobran sighed. Xas moved his leg, said, ‘Yes?’
‘I didn’t want to know that.’
‘Must I remove my hands? I rather like this. But do remember, Sobran, that everything I do seems to work with you. Perhaps this is the only thing that worked for Léon. Those poor women discovered what he liked and he hated them for it. “It was I who killed Aline’s sister Geneviève because she did what I enjoyed and hated to enjoy,”’ Xas quoted, then said, ‘There. Don’t be ashamed.’
‘I’m sure that if ideas about carnal sin were out of the way, new schools of thought would flourish. About pleasure – you liking the feel of my hands around your throat. Léon’s pleasures. Léon’s hatred and shame. And about you and Céleste – the way you first told me about her it sounded as if you responded to her first because of her beauty and secondly for the contempt in which she held you. Or – consider this – you wanted me first either when I threw you to the ground, angry because you asked me to look for your daughter in Heaven, or when you discovered that Michael had made a pulp of my right side.’
‘Saint Michael the Archangel?’
‘There you go again with the inessentials. I feel as if I’ve discovered something to do with violence and desire – how dangerously close they can be – and you’re only interested in the identity of my assailant.’
‘I’m hungry.’
‘Go and find something to eat.’
‘Don’t go, Xas.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Are you joking?’
‘The first time I spoke to Aurora after her illness I realised what she feels for me. We embraced in her dressing room. We both felt a great tenderness, like that between a husband and wife.’
‘And now you think it was Aurora who hid and saw me. A pregnant woman, but not Céleste.’
‘She had some kind of crisis. Aurora is an atheist – which you probably think is very imaginative of her. What must she think now about her beliefs? And they are beliefs, atheism isn’t just a laxity. Aurora thought she knew me. What do you mean “Hmmm”? Xas, my hands can hear you being dubious deep in your chest.’
‘What will you do if she continues to refuse to see you?’
‘We’ll have to speak soon. Paul is courting Agnès. That can hardly be allowed to pass without comment. Though I shouldn’t permit it. I don’t want to infect the Comte’s line with the disorders of my family.’
‘So you’ll say “No” to Agnès, as your father said “No” to you. And beside the Jodeau disorder is the Jodeau luck. Do you no longer believe in your luck?’
‘You’re not my luck, fallen angel, or even my dearest friend. You’re my love. My true love.’
‘You’ve been asleep.’
‘I think you’ve said that to me before. I go to sleep and fall into gaps when my mind stops holding court like a king on his throne. For years on waking the first thing I’ve thought of was you – like this – calmly watching me. Sometimes I imagine a whole future made out of the moment after I’ve died and you are still sitting beside me.’
‘You imagine I’ll be there at your deathbed?’
‘Yes.’
‘And if I stayed away, would you live for ever?’
Xas told Sobran that fallen angels were very well read. Hell was full of transcripts, one copy of anything copied. Heaven was proof against reproductions of any kind. Angels were the only copies God tolerated. ‘That is, He tolerates the copies He makes. Our citadel in Hell has a static population, but keeps growing to accommodate the books. They’re everywhere – stacked up against the walls, until piled books fill room after room. But though well read, angels are almost impervious to experience. They’re thick. They’re made that way – durable, unchanging, placid.’
‘Not you.’
‘Perhaps that’s my garden, my communion with perishables.’
Rich men would pay fortunes for even one ounce of the angel’s spit. His every secretion a potent love potion, sweet-scented, innocent as snow, fresh after days in the warmth, the proved yeast of greasy sheets.
‘I knew I was in danger from the moment I proposed visiting you a second time. I knew because God warned me by sending the whirlwind that pulled a few feathers.’
‘But you still came every year.’
‘God is my maker but not my master. And I don’t think he was saying “Thou shalt not”, rather, “I think you’re going to regret this.”’
‘So, you go freely, with hints. If God made a suggestion to me I’m sure I’d take it. I mean, I assume He has, but I’ve misunderstood.’
Sobran found himself on the floor by the fire. He couldn’t keep his eyes open – felt like a fly trying to pull its feet out of a pool of honey. Then he felt warm water and rough cloth, his limbs lifted, spread and washed. Later he was in bed, the sheets crisp and clean. Xas lay on top of the covers and touched his face. ‘I have to go and water my garden. This blizzard is the only reason we’ve been left in peace for so long.’
Sobran freed his arms from the covers and caught the angel by his ears. He said, ‘Come back soon.’
‘Yes. Sleep for a week. Eat meat at every meal. Write a letter to Aurora.’ He moved Sobran’s hands. Stood with his wings crossed behind him, smiled, complained again about the low ceiling, and left by the door.
Rue du Bac
Paris
20th January 1835
Sobran,
I hardly know where to begin or what tone to take. Yes – Paul has spoken to me about Agnès. My only reservations concern their youth. They should not marry now, at fifteen and seventeen. They are both patient and biddable by disposition and could tolerate a long engagement. Their lives have been neither too active, nor too retired – yet I think both need more experience of the world. Paul has proposed a tour of the Alps and Piedmont with his tutor. And I should like, and am asking for, Agnès’s company on a pilgrimage I plan to Santiago de Compostela. I will of course write to Madame Jodeau to ask whether she can spare Agnès.
I take your reservations about the match as they are intended, a reminder to me of the variable stock of Paul’s own line. You ask me whether Vully would want to wed itself to a line ‘mired in dubious sanity and marred by a suicide’. Yet you know I have professed to beliefs that
find suicide an arguably rational act, and despair no sin but simply the result of the sometimes intolerable sorrows attendant on being human. As for Madame Jodeau – I think there is more calculation in her frailty than you are prepared to see. I think – and I will be daring and speak my thoughts – that it has suited you to doubt your wife’s sanity, so that she, with whom you should be most intimate, might be sealed off behind the glassy walls of your disappointment or distrust and muffled, as it were.
So, you see. I don’t accept your scruples as scruples. And – yes – your scruples remind me to mention Paul’s father’s consumption, and the fears you know I’ve always held for my son’s health. There – that is acknowledged. As for the differences in their stations – thanks to your foresight, ambition and luck your daughter has been raised as a gentlewoman – and I hope that the society of men and women will present her with no obstacle that her character cannot overcome.
Henri raised his brows on learning the direction of Paul’s affections, but, after all, he is a Baron while my son is a Comte. Besides – and by returning to it I admit it does trouble me too, but for her sake – even if Agnès doesn’t suffer ostracism, she will suffer anyway. How can she be secured against suffering? You should think about your safety and see how wrong it is that you take this tone of pious fatalism regarding your daughter’s life. How can someone with your privileges be so fatalistic?
I have written all this only to answer you. I have already counselled Paul to propose to Agnès. I told him not to wait, not to think it will happen tomorrow, that a better chance will present itself. Paul has not your divine charter to hesitate over right and wrong and virtue and vice and hold his tongue till his hair goes white.