In Babylon. Marcel Moring

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СКАЧАТЬ indicate the walls of books that surrounded us. ‘… is no ordinary library. This is a line in the sand. A boundary. The black hole through which we can navigate that other dimension.’

      ‘Herman …’ I said.

      ‘And nothing less than that.’

      ‘Okay.’

      ‘No, not: okay. Do I speak in tongues? This. This. This. Here! This is your ship to the other world. You don’t know it yet, but you’ll find out.’ He emptied his glass and rose unsteadily from his chair. ‘That is, if you’re made of the same stuff as …’ His voice dissolved in a peal of laughter that rang out from the kitchen. ‘Listen,’ he said, raising his right hand, ‘they’re enjoying themselves. Fine. That’s fine.’ He tapped on the pockets of his jacket, glanced down at the table next to his chair, and then rested his eyes on Sophie. She stood up hurriedly. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Let’s all laugh. This way, ladies and gentlemen, to the gas chambers. Everything’s fine.’ He offered Sophie his arm, and as they stepped into the darkness that lay outside the circle of firelight, he tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Yes. Laugh. But just remember where it all came from and where it’s going. Don’t ever forget …’He paused to enhance the dramatic effect of what he was about to say. ‘… we’re still a family of clockmakers!’

      They strode off into the dusk. My mother cast a confused glance at me over her shoulder, but when I grinned back, she frowned.

      And so, speaking in tongues, more than a little tipsy, leaning on my mother’s arm as if he weren’t my uncle at all, her brother-in-law, but an ageing Casanova, finally at peace in the company of the woman with whom he would spend his last years, my Uncle Herman left the library, never to return, and I was left behind, staring at the slow flickering of the fire, painfully aware of the walls of books that seemed to be whispering softly, ‘You’re all ours now. It’s you and us and the house. We’ll never let you go.’

      When I left the next morning Mrs Sanders was standing in the front doorway, at the top of the whitewashed stairs. She had one hand on her hip and the other raised halfway above her head, but she wasn’t waving. I waved to her, hoisted my suitcase onto my shoulder and walked down the path, towards the trees, on my way to the bus that stopped at the bottom of the hill. When I reached the edge of the forest I looked round one last time. Mrs Sanders had gone back into the house. The shutters on the first floor windows were closed and the library curtains drawn to keep out the morning sun. In the late August light, the house looked like the head of a giant whose body was the hill I now descended. I could see him, the Titan, crouched, his arms around his knees, sound asleep for centuries. Moss, grass, shrubs, and finally trees had sprung up all over his body. But there would come a day when he would feel the blood flowing through his limbs once more and his body would stir beneath the earth. The trees would shake and the thick layer of humus and woodland soil would burst open. He’d flex his muscles and rise up and look out over the lazy, elfin landscape of the East, over the rippling farmland, the slopes overgrown with broadleaved trees, the mossy banks and the drowsy little villages at the place where two roads meet.

      ‘Here we are …’ Nina had said, when the house came into view.

      The snowstorm screeched around us. Nina’s hair flew about wildly, only her pale forehead, and now and then part of her face, were visible in the stream of red flames.

      ‘This is it,’ I said.

      I crunched my way to the entrance, a green door at the top of a flight of stairs that was no more than a ripple in the snow, took the big key out of my pocket, and jiggled it in the lock.

      In the hall, where the air was grey with snowlight, the stale smell of emptiness leapt up and hurried towards us. I leaned over and began untying the rope around Nina’s waist. I sank down on one knee and tugged at the rope with stiff, cold fingers. I blew on my hands and fiddled with the knot, which had been pulled tighter by our struggle through the snow. Nina didn’t move. She stood bolt upright. When I looked up after a while to apologize for my fumbling, I saw her gazing down at me patiently. Several more minutes went by before I had freed her, and it felt as if I had set myself free. The warmth of her body escaped from her coat and glided around me. I was amazed, so much warmth from such a slender woman. As if she were ablaze, as if it were no coincidence that the red hair kept reminding me of fire, but the visible manifestation of a heat raging within her. I straightened up, the rope still in my hands, a hangman who suddenly lacks the conviction to fulfil his task. Nina laughed like an anaemic angel.

      We stood on the black-and-white marble-tiled floor and looked around in silence. The twilight hung about us like vapour, the cakes of snow that had fallen from our coats lay on the floor without melting. It was nearly as cold in here as it was outside. I took a few steps forward. ‘Welcome to Bluebeard’s Castle, Ninotchka.’ She followed the theatrical gesture with which I tried to encompass the space, our presence, everything that determined this moment. When my hand was poised somewhere above my head, her face froze.

      Upstairs, where the staircase ended, the staircase that plunged down from the first floor like a waterfall of turned wood and scroll-work, rose a solidified tidal wave of wood and upholstery. The landing was crammed full of cabinets and chairs and lamps. I saw a large sofa, a linen cupboard, the red plush sofa from the bedroom that overlooked the garden, the secretaire, a sideboard, chairs-chairschairs. I took another step forward, in order to see better. My right foot landed in a patch of snow and I slid across the slippery marble. As I fell over backwards, my arms flailing, I saw something black shooting through the air. Nina’s arms slipped under mine and slowly we sank to the floor. Only then, half in Nina’s embrace, my eyes still on the ceiling, did I see, looking down on us, unmoved, impassively gleaming in all its black sovereignty, the piano, the lid slightly open, and behind that lid, barely visible in the murky light of the stairwell, but I knew they were there, the grinning row of black and white keys, the rotting teeth of the music beast.

      ‘What …’ said Nina, ‘what … is … that?’

      We scrambled to our feet and stared up at the protuberance of furniture, the piano that hung there like an ebony cloud, a Dali vision come to life.

      I shook my head.

      In the grainy light I could see the faint lines of two thick ropes that had been tied around either side of the piano and disappeared behind it by way of a hook on the ceiling. I walked up a few stairs, until I was standing under the instrument, and peered through a gap between two pieces of furniture. The ropes ran down along the wall of the stairwell and had been secured to one of the pieces of furniture that formed the front of the barricade. One tug at the sideboard, the secretaire, or the linen cupboard, and the piano would come crashing down and flatten anyone standing below it.

      A trap, I thought, this is a trap. Everything was so precisely wedged together that it was impossible to push anything aside to get through. If we wanted to get past this barricade, we would have to deal with the piano first. It was the only way to prevent it from crashing down unexpectedly. Someone must have dragged the whole interior, piece by piece, to the stairwell, and then, slowly and deliberately, re-arranged it all. It must have been someone who knew Uncle Herman but didn’t have his best interests at heart. I ran my index finger along the sideboard.

      ‘Maybe we’d better sit down,’ I said. Nina was still staring at the barricade. I took her arm, pulled her along to the hunting room, and offered her the bed as a chair.

      The shutters at the front of the house were closed and the hunting room was so dark that the huge four-poster bed, where Uncle Herman used to sleep, stood in the shadows like a solid block.

      ‘N?’ Her voice came from far away. ‘What is that up there at the top of the stairs?’

      ‘I СКАЧАТЬ