Armida stood proudly regarding me, all defiance.
'What right have you to say that? You knew very well what we were doing — you encouraged it. Why should I apologize? "Love freely received and given" — wasn't that your fine phrase? You told Guy you approved — you told him so again today. You wanted me to love him, you wished everything to be honest, and so it has been. You wanted me to love him' — Now she was confronting me, her eyes burning.
'Armida — love, yes, love, not fornication. I did, I admit. I did encourage you to be my friend's friend, but that was so you should not feel guilty —'
'Guilty!' She laughed in scorn. 'I don't feel guilty, nor does Guy. Did you imagine we went into the forest to discuss silviculture? What we did was natural and no more than you were doing all the time with your bitches.'
'But I had ceased philandering. You asked it of me. I told you, you knew, I stopped when I found how it hurt you. I realized it could have no part in our love. And now you — you — you deceived me so cruelly, you whom…' I clutched my throat, choking. 'Besides, you despised Guy! — remember how you demolished his silly arguments one afternoon, with such contempt!'
'Now you complain, when it doesn't suit you, eh? I can't help despising such a man. Before, I honoured you, thought you generous and noble because you understood my feelings for Guy —'
'Generous! Noble! I'd be mad to — to lend you, to give all my friends a slice as if you were a wedding cake— Guy was my friend — he's betrayed me too.'
'You're being dramatic again. If you think I will end this affair just because you wish it, you are much mistaken.' She was feeling angrily in a pocket of her dress, and brought out a crumpled piece of paper, which she smoothed with one scornful gesture and thrust at me, saying, 'I suppose you deny writing this?'
I looked at it. Even in the flickering light, I saw that it was a frivolous quatrain I had once written.
Dear Bedalar, of all girls I have laid,
Yours is the music that most wildly stirs
Me; while no marring discord joy defers,
Your instrument must never lie unplayed.
'That was ages ago. It's all over. Bedalar has betrayed me too!'
'For good reason, you have betrayal on the brain. I came across it in her rooms, and snatched it up. You've lain with all and sundry of my friends and you dare blame me for one little affair with Guy. Well, I won't give him up on your account.'
'But Guy! To do it with him, it's so dishonourable, as if there was nothing in the world but deception.'
'Oh, these words you use, as if you were at least a duke! I know he's faithless but I'm not jealous of him as I am of you. We just have a good time. I'll say no more or you'll regret it.'
She made as if to leave the room, but I stopped her. She drew away from my touch.
'Armida, now you are being dramatic. I will not blame you for this — I can't because I freely admit my own philandering. I am reforming, though without your encouragement. But you must see the difference in our attitude towards each other —'
'One law for you, another for me — that's it, isn't it?'
I clutched my jaw, feeling myself more enmeshed every minute. 'No, no, that's not it. But we have obligations to each other, our betrothal, and I did save your life —'
'Oh, I knew you would have to bring that up!'
'We have obligations to each other, my dear Armida. I have played about, admitted it, repented it —'
'Been found out, you mean.'
'Very well, then I have been found out. And have sorrowed to have wounded you, and have resolved to do better, and have never said other than that I loved you deeply —'
She flung out a spread hand. 'Oh, you're so virtuous. Look at your silly face!'
'Yours brims with spite. I repeat, when you discovered my affairs, I regretted my thoughtlessness and tried to comfort you. Now by your own careless tongue you are discovered. Do you regret, do you try to comfort me, do you have compassion on my suffering?'
Again she laughed, and there was general laughter down in the courtyard, where Piebald Pete and his fantoccini had begun a performance.
'Compassion! You should have thought of that big word when you were cheating with Bedalar. You're scared now you've found out about me and Guy, aren't you, and so —'
'Ah, "found out", is it?' I moved towards her again. 'So you were doing it secretly, while I was lying recovering from my wounds. You understood perfectly that I never wanted you to be more than my friend's friend — no man's that stupid! You knew that never for a moment would I say to Guy, "Go on, seduce her, deprave her, stuff her with your filthy semen".'
She struck me across the face. 'You alley-fodder! You encouraged us in every way, now suddenly you're jealous.'
'You're found out in a lie, so you lie again! As for jealousy, am I more jealous than you or Guy? Aren't you both blinded with jealousy and possessiveness? I have tried to hate my own jealousy. Couldn't you contain your lust, in the name of honour?'
She turned away and stared down into the courtyard where the wedding guests lolled. 'You'll be quoting your damned General Gerald speeches next. The play's destroyed, remember? We've had Disgrace and Compassion. Now it's Honour — one wonders which expensive virtue you'll parade next.'
'I had honour, Armida, I had honour,' I said, moving closer and wondering why I was having to plead when the offence was hers. 'You have dishonoured me — and that by playing out your role of Patricia to the full. Forget the play. I'm asking if you sorrow now that you see me cut to the heart. No, you rejoice like a harpy and gloat over your rutting. What do we do now?'
'Work that out for yourself.'
'I ask you again, do you care that I'm cut to the heart?'
'I told you. I'm enjoying Guy's company at present.'
She regarded me with tight lips, her nose high. The perfume of her patchouli came to me, sickening me. I was too ashamed to quarrel further. I still could hardly believe that my suppressed fears were realized. Nor, even then, did I find myself able to hate her; she had taken advantage of me; but foolishly I had encouraged her. I turned, defeated, to leave.
There stood Guy. I realized that her assignation had been with him; his had been the name she first spoke. Portinari had somehow got wind of it. Guy had overheard part of our quarrel, and was full of fright.
He trembled. His eyes resembled blackcurrant jelly. He was ash. I despised him.
'Perian, there's been some dreadful mistake,' he said. 'A misunderstanding. You and Armida have a wonderful relationship — I envy you more than I can say. I was sure you knew about us: only today you've been saying you valued what I was doing for Armida, helping her in every way, and that you wanted to see her happy with me.' He held out his hand. 'You've got your wish. I've only been doing you a favour, my dear friend.'
'You snake-throated liar! You twisted my words for your own ends. Who ever gives his dear love away to another man?' I knocked his hand down.
'I'm your best friend — I did it for your sake, to keep Armida away from your rivals, as you asked. Now you turn on me.'
'For my sake, you villain! You are my rival!'
He gave me a weak smile and gestured with his hands. Armida stole up behind him and took his arm.
'There's no competition in matters of love,' he said, attempting an air. 'We're all different, all having different qualities to offer. You know that from your own experience, which is not negligible, and encompasses Bedalar, I hear. I acted only from love of you, as well as of Armida.'
It very nearly robbed me of speech. 'You dare make such a claim to my face — you foul the word love twice over.'
'Come on, old fellow, you talk about love. I know you and your ways. Entirely decadent. Haven't you been working steadily through Armida's friends? Our affair is different — I respect her greatly.'
'I know you do,' she said.
Useless to report the mixture of venom and friendship he doled out. His face remained ashen; hers had gone crimson. Ever and an
on, like a chorus, came his phrase, 'I believe I have no need to justify myself; what followed was all self-justification. I turned to Armida with some spirit and said, 'Hear the real man speak. Don't you understand the noise he makes? Can you love a man like that?'
She tossed her head. 'Oh, he speaks so well — all that he says is true and noble.'
It was de Lambant's turn to laugh. A shaky noise it was.
'You'd better get out and rethink your life, de Chirolo, for all our sakes. Meanwhile, remember that I'm still your friend. We shall be laughing in Truna's over this incident in a few days.'
'Is that all she really means to you?'
'Stop maintaining one standard for yourself and another for the rest of humanity.'
'You whelp, you dishonour her — you deceive her — as well as me.'
Then I found heat from the centre of my frozen entrails and threw myself on him. I struck at his face with a quick double blow. I struck again as he parried. Armida's scream was merely an accompaniment goading me on. Once I went down when he hit me in the chest. I was up again, and punching over and over at his body as he grappled with me. We staggered to the balcony rail, and there I slowly forced his head back, determined to push him over if possible, until hands were grasping us, pulling me away.
De Lambant's face was dark, streaked with blood and rage. I had one glimpse of it as guests dragged me from the room. I was hurled downstairs.
Other people grasped me at the bottom of the stairs, menials, and I was carried kicking to the entrance, across a yard, and pitched out into the street. The gate slammed behind me, and I sprawled on hands and knees, groaning.
No sooner was I down than more hands seized on me. The noise of the de Lambant festivities, word passed on by the servants that immense quantities of food were being consumed inside, had attracted a crowd of beggars about the doors. They waited for what they could get, and the first thing they got was me. I was picked up and picked over.
Dirty hands dug into my pockets and tore at my new coat. My few coins were stolen. Then they stripped me of my finery. It would fetch a good price in the bazaar.
The beggars stood away, staring at me as I lay dazedly. I did not move. As if at a given signal, they all turned and ran or hobbled down the street into the darkness.
For a while, I sat in the gutter, my head between my hands. I staggered and vomited against a wall, collapsing back on my knees. Then I picked myself up and headed in the direction of Stary Most.
Well, I said to myself, I've played the General. Now I've played the Prince. At least he had the fortune to die. Living is a sordid business, it must be admitted. Knowledge kills.
Some time later, towards midnight or towards morning, I found myself by a bridge, and leaned over its parapet to view the dark water. I could feel a chill as black as the waters moving within me. If I became one with that moving water, then all would be one.
It was an intermittent squeaking noise which brought me to myself: a dull, dreary squeak frequently repeated, then ceasing, then beginning again. A stink was in my nostrils. Malacia's gongfermors were at their nocturnal work, emptying privies.
Voices of my recent torturers came back, telling me that even to die would be one more gesture belonging to the boards, without the cutting truth of reality. Yet I felt I could not continue; it was not so much that Armida had been with some man — and granting him, I hazarded from her words, more than she had ever granted me — it was that she had been with the man who professed himself my best friend. She had made us enemies.
Similarly, it was not so much that de Lambant had been with her, or even that he had defiled what is one of the basic understandings between friends. The offence was made worse — tenfold, a hundredfold worse — by the pretence on both their parts that their deception was no deception. What could be crueller?
That dreary squeak came nearer, as if the street itself got up and walked along itself. Presently, the night cart with its single lantern squealed its wounded way across the bridge. I lay flat on the parapet. The gongfermors, heads shrouded in sacking, nosegays pressed to their noses against the stench, did not observe me.
Then there was that shameful episode with Bedalar. But I had been mad, a hero, then — besides, de Lambant was not serious about her as I was about Armida. Despite which, I had done wrong in Armida's eyes and repented the error of my ways. Now I was made to suffer again, as if repentance was nothing — to suffer by a couple who gloried in committing the same sin over and over. If once was a sin, by what mathematics was ten times, or however often they had done it, no sin?
Driven by compulsion, I tried to compute the number of times they could have been alone together and done it. How often had I spoken in friendly terms to one or other of them just after their naked bodies had been clinging close? How many times had I blamed myself for harbouring unworthy suspicions of them?
On the far side of the bridge the night cart stopped. A fire was kindled in an old container. Rancid smoke drifted across to me where I lay, gazing down into the pitchy stream.
Though I wished to vomit up every part of Armida — and that despicable male creature — yet I loved her. How could I reject her for being shallow and crippled, for so I had been? And not only I, but almost everyone I knew, as my numbed mind sorted through other acquaintances. It lit on my sister; the dear thwarted girl was locked in her rotting castle for life. The curse was universal.
My thoughts were draughts gusting in a darkened room; through the room echoed the phrases they had spoken, shaming me, shaming the speakers. If only Armida had showed one saving jot of penitence…
No, I could not live with such disgrace. I had tried to live more generously, where love freely received and given was no phrase for sarcasm — whereupon the fiends had descended. I could live not at all. I had been given the gift the magicians promised: the knowledge that aged me.
Smoke drifted across me. The dreary squeal began again as the team of gongfermors moved towards the quayside.
Frozen, I climbed onto the low parapet of the bridge, preparing to cast myself into the water. I knew not where I was. The look of the sewery water told me that it flowed from Founder's Hill, from under the dark pile of the Palace of the Bishops Elect. Now those black and indifferent bishops must have mercy on my soul.
Something drifted up in the water. There was a dim lamp burning at the head of an alleyway nearby. By its gleam, I saw what I took for a branch in the water, shaped like a human leg. I paused. It was carried away in the sluggish flood.
Again I gathered myself. Below the dark tide, another object flowed with the current. It drifted up towards the surface, turning as it came, weed floating about it. Despite myself, I crouched there petrified. It was a human head. The weed was hair.
The flesh was pallid. The mouth was open to the fishes. There was no pain in it, merely the blankness to which I aspired. As it came up, still turning, pouting lips broke surface for a moment.
Otto Bengtsohn looked up at me, beyond speech but still crying from that final severance. His head, floating solitary, still turned. Back came the hair like weed. An eddy took the dreadful object down into shadow, until it blurred and was gone from sight.
I crouched on the parapet. Somewhere, an owl cried and was answered.
A voice of pity said, 'Oh, Perian, my love, here you are!' Her arms came round me. I could not look away from the gliding flood. I wanted no one.
'Oh, Perry, when I heard they'd thrown you out I came to find you. Poor cherub, what are you doing? Don't stay here. Let me help you home.'
Slowly I looked about, not wishing comfort, even La Singla's. But she held me in her embrace and put her cheek against mine, murmuring how cold I was, whispering that she would see me home.
'Where am I?'
'Why, you're in Stary Most, and only a couple of streets from your room. There's a warmer bed there than in the mucky little Rosewater.'
'I've been betrayed by my lover and my friend, and it's more than I can bear. My heart is dea
d inside me, and the rest of me must follow.'
She laid her arm round my neck with a tender gesture, kissing my temple and giving a little laugh.
'I didn't know you were so unworldly, Perian. Come, such upsets happen all the time — life is made of them. You know what I have suffered.'
'I can't talk about it, if life really is so wretched. It is precisely because I am worldly that I'm hurt. The proper and worldly way of dealing with such a situation, when one's found out — oh, why say it?'
'Tell me. Have it out.'
'The woman weeps a little and says she meant no harm, and the friend apologizes for being such a swine but, alas, he was led on by the lady's beauty, etc., and then both of them swear the error will not be repeated — or not within a calendar month… That's the proper way. But these two bungling amateurs at love, Armida and that serpent de Lambant — why, from the moment of their deception being discovered, they embark on an entirely more hurtful policy. They dishonour themselves… Oh, I could weep myself into a pool of humiliation.'
Her pretty fluttering movements were round me. 'It's just the hurt. They aren't cold and shallow just because you are warm and loving — yes, for all your airs, my pet. Don't let chill pass to you. Come, this is no place to be…'
Clasping her, I stood up and looked about.
A cock was crowing, a pallor in the eastern sky spreading over the malformed rooftops. I recognized the place. I had been here before, not long ago, at the same dead hour, among the warehouses and smelly corners — yes, and with that self-styled friend of mine, de Lambant.
'Take me home,' I said.
She got me there, through the decaying alleys. On the way, I kept thinking to myself, if she wants me to sleep with her, I can't, I'm nothing any more. I should have jumped in after poor Otto.
La Singla was wise. She talked most of the way, saying that Pozzi had found an old flame among the Vamonal contingent, so that he would not miss her. That people made love with others with whom they really should not, that the world continued nevertheless, because love was only a game.