The Secret Book of Paradys by Tanith Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

first. Do you suppose the earth turns around you, monsieur?”
    “Around you,” I said. “ As I see it.”
    The candles lit her eyes, still veiled always from mine.
    “You observe,” she said, “how I am placed. I have a husband, and a position in society.”
    “And a lover, previously.”
    “There is
nothing
,” she said, “for you.”
    I could not mention that they had murdered Philippe, one or other or both of them, for she would then resort to the former accusation of blackmail. Otherwise everything just said was irrelevant. Neither the slab nor the box was very wide. I leaned across them and slid my hands around her throat and brought my mouth against her pale cool skin. Because she did not struggle, there was nothing turbulent or unwieldy, nothing to ruffle the deathly serenity of the tomb. It was also quite fitting that I should kiss her over his corpse.
    She let me, did not stay me or cry to implore help, but her lack of resistance was itself a stay. Neither did she concede. She had no scent, no odour at all, only perhaps the faintest fragrance in her hair, like the clean fur of a cat that has been out on a chill moonlit night. Her eyes were shut, to exclude me, no concession either there. Then they opened, and I saw them stare beyond me, to the horizon. I had only pressed her lips gently. I set my mouth to her cheek, and temple, and the smooth bone of the jaw beneath the ear. The lobe of the ear held no jewel, but a tiny incision remained in it, for a jewel’s piercing. With that, where I had not ventured to part her lips, I allowed my tongue an instant for its curiosity. Then I took her hands and kissed them in their turn, the palms, the strong and slender backs, where the two silver rings pressed against the knuckle-bones, the wrists; they were icy cold, dipped up from some lake within a piano of snow mountains, rinsed in liquid music, over and over, they burned ten freezing notes across my mouth, before I let her go.
    “You say to me,” I told her, “there is nothing for me, of you. Perhaps not, perhaps not.” I, now, did not look at her. It seemed to me that, this being the case, her eyes were fixed on me intently, terribly. “But there’s no use your telling me anything, or warning me in this conventional mode. I am beyond any such pale. What you say is meaningless. Do you think I have no spirit, Antonina, that I can be
told
, can be
instructed
, how I may or may not desire you? Do you believe my emotions are so volatile they will simply evaporate at one sensible soulless little word? What am I? Your servant? No. You are in my blood now. You’ve coloured everything, stained me, just the way blood stains. I’m marked by you indelibly. It will never come out, the bloody dye of what you are. Stained through and through.”
    Each act, even unfinished, or unbegun, knows for itself its proper completion. I left her at once, and went out, into the air and daylight which seemed neither.
    The wet heat almost struck me down, the darkness. Von Aaron was standing solicitously at my elbow.
    “Monsieur St Jean, you do not look well.”
    “How is it,” said I, “that you know my name?”
    “But you have been so good as to call on us, in company with your friend.”
    “Yes. I hardly thought it was through my literary glories.”
    “I must repeat, monsieur, you are not at all well. This shocking business of the gentleman who has died … Our carriage is below. May we have the pleasure of driving you to your home?”
    “Why did you come here?” I said. The rain teemed round me, making everything unstable, shifting and falling down; my condition would not matter.
    “To pay our respects, naturally.”
    “Naturally. You should dissuade your wife from wasting flowers on the dead. A silly custom. They do better in the houses of the living, or growing in the ground.”
    “Monsieur, monsieur, can’t I entreat you to reason?” He smiled, encouraging me. A wave of deadly nausea passed through me. I fought