Low houses to one side and the other, seemingly forever, and then the great threatening mass of a high-rise, studded with tiny lights to warn the low-flying planes, and far far away, in the curve of the land, the lights of the town, and out to sea the clouds curling in the moonlight.
Time to lock up and sleep, yes. But by the fire. Time to sleep that thin vigilant sleep she always enjoyed when she was alone and the fire was still burning. She'd hear the coffeepot click on at five-thirty; she'd hear the first boat that came near the shore.
Ash Wednesday. A lovely consolation came over her; something like piety and faith combined. Ashes to ashes. Stop for the ashes. And when the time comes cut the blessed palm for Palm Sunday. And take Mona with you and Pierce and Clancy and Jenn to church on Good Friday, "to kiss the cross" like in the old days. Maybe make the nine churches like they used to do. She and Ancient Evelyn and Alicia walking to nine churches, all of them uptown in those days, when the city was dense with Catholics, true believing Catholics--Holy Name, Holy Ghost, St. Stephen's, St. Henry's, Our Lady of Good Counsel, Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel, St. Mary's, St. Alphonsus, St. Teresa's. Wasn't that nine?
They hadn't always bothered to go as far as St. Patrick's or stop into the church of the colored on Louisiana Avenue, though they certainly would have, segregation not existing really in Catholic churches, and Holy Ghost being a fine church. The saddest part was Ancient Evelyn always remembering St. Michael's and how they had torn it down. Cousin Marianne had been a Sister of Mercy at St. Michael's, and it was sad when a church was torn down, and a convent, sad when all those memories were sold to the salvage company. And to think Marianne too had been Julien's spawn, or so it had been said.
How many of those churches were left? thought Gifford. Well, this year on Good Friday, she'd drive up to Amelia and St. Charles and challenge Mona to find them with her. Mona loved walking in dangerous neighborhoods. That's how Gifford would lure her out. "Come on, I want to find Grandmother's nine churches. I think they're all still there!" What if they could get Ancient Evelyn herself to come? Hercules could drive her along as they walked. She certainly couldn't walk now, she was far too old. That would have been foolish.
Mona would go for it, only Mona would start asking about that Victrola again. She had it in her head that now that First Street was refurbished, somebody would find that Victrola in the attic and give it to her. She didn't know that the Victrola really wasn't in the attic at all, but once again hidden with the pearls where no one--
The thought left Gifford. It went right out of her mind. She had just reached the top of the boardwalk and was looking down into her own house, into the warm rectangle of the living room, with its steady flickering fire, and the sprawling cream-colored leather couches on the caramel-colored tile floor.
There was someone in Gifford's house. There was someone standing right by the couch where Gifford had napped all evening, standing right by the fire. Indeed, the man had his foot on the hearth, just the way Gifford liked to put hers, especially when her feet were bare, to feel the inevitable cold that lingered in the stone.
This man was not barefoot or in any form of casual attire. This man looked dapper to her in the firelight, very tall, and "imperially thin" like Richard Cory in the old Edwin Arlington Robinson poem.
She moved a little slowly along the boardwalk, and then stepped down out of the wind into the relative quiet and warmth of the rear yard. Through the glass doors, her house looked like a picture. Only this man was wrong. And the truly wrong part of him was not his dark tweed jacket, or wool sweater; it was his hair; his long, shining black hair.
It hung over his shoulders, rather Christlike she thought. Indeed as he turned and looked at her, it was a dime-store Christ that came to mind--one of those blinding color pictures of Jesus with eyes that open and close when you tilt it, full of lurid color and immediately accessible prettiness--Jesus of soft curls and soft garments, and a tender smile with no mystery and no pain. The man even had the mustache and neatly groomed beard of the familiar Christ. They made his face seem grand and saintly.
Yes, he looked like that, sort of--this man. Who the hell was this man? Some neighbor who had wandered in the front door to beg a twenty-five-amp fuse or a flashlight? Dressed in Harris tweed?
He stood in her living room, looking down at the fire, with the long flowing profile of Jesus, and gradually he turned and looked at her, as if he had heard her all along, moving through the windy dark, and knew that she had come into earshot and stood now silently questioning him with her hand on the steel frame of the door.
Full face. It was suddenly a bright redeeming beauty that impressed her; something that bore the weight of the extravagant hair and the precious clothes; and another element struck her, other than the seductiveness of his face. It was a fragrance, almost a perfume.
It wasn't sweet, however, this perfume. It wasn't flowers, and it wasn't candy and it wasn't spice. No. But it was so inviting. It made her want to take a deep breath. And she'd caught this scent somewhere else, only recently. Yes, known this same strange craving before. But could not now remember it. In fact, hadn't she remarked on it then, the strange scent...Something to do with the medal of St. Michael. Ah, the medal. Make sure the medal is in your purse. But she was thinking foolishly. There was a strange person here!
She knew she ought to be wary of him. She ought to find out who he was and what he wanted immediately, perhaps before she stepped inside. But every time in her life that something like this had frightened her, she had always come through it, half embarrassed to have made such a fuss. Nothing really bad had ever happened directly to Gifford.
Probably was a neighbor, or someone whose car had stalled. Someone who saw the light of her fire, or even the sparks flying from the chimney along this lonely stretch of sleeping beach.
It didn't greatly concern her, not half as much as it intrigued her, that this strange being should be standing there watching her in her own house, by her own fire. There was no menace in this man's face or manner; indeed, he seemed to be experiencing the very same curiosity and warmth of interest towards her.
He watched her come into the room. She started to close the glass door behind her, but then thought better of it.
"Yes? What can I do for you?" she asked. Once again the Gulf had fallen back into a whisper near silence. Her back was to the edge of the world, and the edge of the world was quiet.
The fragrance was suddenly overpowering. It seemed to fill the entire room. It mingled with the burning oak logs in the fireplace, and the charred smell of the bricks, and with the cold fresh air.
"Come to me, Gifford," he answered with a smooth astonishing simplicity. "Come into my arms."
"I didn't quite hear you," she answered, the forced and uneasy smile flashing before she could stop it, the words falling from her lips as she drew closer and felt the heat of the fire. The fragrance was so delicious, made her want to do nothing suddenly but breathe. "Who are you?" She tried to make it sound polite. Casual. Normal. "Do we know each other, you and I?"
"Yes, Gifford. You know me. You know who I am," he said. His voice was lyrical as if he were reciting something that rhymed, but it didn't rhyme. He seemed to cherish the simple syllables he spoke. "You saw me when you were a little girl," he said, making the last word very beautiful. "I know you did. I can't really remember the moment now. You can remember for both of us. Gifford, think back, think back to the dusty porch, the overgrown garden." He looked sad, thoughtful.
"I don't know you," she said, but her voice had no conviction.
He came closer to her. The bones of his face were gracefully sculptured but the skin, how fine and flawless was the skin. He was better than the dime-store Christ, certainly. Oh, more truly like the famous self-portrait of Durer. "Salvator Mundi," she whispered. Wasn't that the painting's name?
"I've lost those recent centuries," he said, "if ever I possessed them, struggling as I did then to see the simplest of solid things. But I claim olde
r truths and memories now, before the time of my Mayfair beauties and their fragile nurture. And must rely as men do upon my chronicles--those words I wrote in haste, as the veil thickened, as the flesh tightened, robbing me of a ghost's perspective which might have seen me triumph all the quicker and all the easier than I shall do.
"Gifford. I myself recorded the name Gifford. Gifford Mayfair--Gifford, the granddaughter of Julien. Gifford came to First Street. Gifford is one who saw Lasher, don't I speak the truth?"
At the sound of the name, she stiffened. And the rest of his words, going on and on like a song, were barely intelligible to her.
"Yes, I paid the price of every mewling babe, but only to recover a more precious destiny, and for you a more precious and tragic love."
He looked Christlike as he spoke, as Durer had in the painting, deliberately perhaps, nodding just a little for emphasis, fingers pressed together in a steeple for a fleeting moment and then released to appeal to the open air. The Christ who doesn't know how to make change and has to ask one of the Twelve Apostles, but knows he is going to die on the cross.
Her mind was utterly blank, unable to proceed, to frame a response or a plan. Lasher. Her body told her suddenly how frightened of this strange man she was. She had lifted her own hands and was almost wringing them, a characteristic gesture with her, and she saw her own fingers like blurred wings in the corner of her vision.
In a rush of rampant pulse and heat, she could not see anything distinct about him suddenly, only the beauty itself, like a reflection marring the view through a window. Her fear surged, paralyzing her, while at the same instant forcing from her another gesture. She raised her hand to her forehead; and in a dark obliterating flash, his hand came out and locked itself around her wrist. Hot, hurtful.
Her eyes closed. She was so very frightened that she was not really there for a moment. She was not really alive. She was disconnected and out of time and out of any place; then the fear subsided and rose again, whipping her once again into terror. She felt the tightness and the pressure of his fingers; she smelled the deep warm inviting fragrance. She said willfully, in terror and in rage:
"Let me go."
"What did you mean to do, Gifford?" The voice was almost timid; mellow; lilting as before.
He stood now very close to her. He was nearly monstrously tall, a man of six and half feet perhaps. She couldn't calculate; just the right side of monstrous perhaps, a being of slender parts, the bones of the forehead very prominent beneath the smooth skin.
"What did you mean to do?" he asked her. Childlike, not petulant, simply very innocent and young.
"Make the Sign of the Cross!" she said in a hoarse whisper. And she did it, convulsively, tearing loose from him, and beginning again, In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. The words were spoken inside her. Then she steadied herself, and looked him full in the face. "You're not Lasher," she said, the word almost dying on her lips. "You're just a man. You're a man standing here."
"I am Lasher," he said gently as if trying to protect her from the coarseness of his words. "I am Lasher and I am in the flesh, and have come again, my beautiful one, my Mayfair Witch." Lovely enunciation, careful yet so rapid. "Flesh and blood now, yes, a man, yes, again, and needing you, my beauty, my Gifford Mayfair. Cut me and I bleed. Kiss me and you quicken my passion. Learn for yourself."
Again there was that disconnection. The terror couldn't become old, or tedious, or even manageable. Surely a person this frightened ought to mercifully lose consciousness, and for one second she thought indeed she might do that. But she knew that if she did, she was lost. This man was standing there before her; the aroma that flooded her was coming from him. He was only a foot or two away from her now as he looked down at her, eyes radiant and fixed and imploring, face smooth as a baby's and lips almost rosy as a child's lips.
He seemed unaware of his beauty, or rather not to be consciously using it to dazzle her, or distract her, to comfort or quiet her. He seemed to see not himself in her eyes, but only her. "Gifford," he whispered. "Granddaughter of Julien."
It was as terrible suddenly, as dismal and as endless as any fear in childhood, any moment of disconsolate gloom when she had hugged her knees and cried and cried, afraid to even open her eyes, afraid of the creaking house, afraid of the sound of her mother's moans, afraid of darkness itself, and the endless vistas of horror that lay in it.
She forced herself to look down, to feel the moment, to feel the tile beneath her feet, and the fire's annoying and persistent flickering, to see his hands, so very white and heavily veined like those of an elderly person, and then to look up at the smooth, serene Christlike forehead with its flowing dark hair. Sculpted ridges for his sleek black eyebrows, fine bones framing his eyes, making them all the more vivid as they peered out at her. A man's jaw, giving force and shape to the lustrous close-cropped beard.
"I want you to leave now," she said. It sounded so nonsensical, so helpless. She pictured the gun in the closet. She had always secretly longed for a reason to use it, she knew it now. She smelled the cordite in her memory, and the dirt of the cement-walled shooting gallery in Gretna. Heard Mona cheering her on. She could feel that big heavy thing dance upwards as she pulled the trigger. Oh, how she wanted it now.
"I want you to come back in the morning," she said, nodding emphatically as she said it. "You must leave my house now." She even thought of the medal. Oh, God, why hadn't she put the medal on! She had wanted to. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
"Go away from here."
"I can't do that, my precious one, my Gifford," he said as if singing to a slow-paced melody.
"You're saying crazy things to me. I don't know you. I'm asking you again to leave." But when she went to step back, she did not dare. Some bit of charm or compassion had left his face abruptly. He was staring at her warily, maybe even bitterly. This was like the face of a child, all right, mobile and seductive, and endearing in its quick and abandoned flashes of feeling. How smooth and perfect the forehead; such proportion. Had Durer been born so perfect?
"Remember me, Gifford I wish I could remember you. I stood beneath the trees when you saw me. Surely I did. Tell me what you saw. Help me remember, Gifford. Help me weave the whole into one great picture. I'm lost in this heat, and full of ancient hates and ancient grudges! Full of ancient ignorance and pain. Surely I had wisdom when I was invisible. Surely I was nearer the angels of the air, than the devils of the earth. But, oh, the flesh is so inviting. And I will not lose again, I will not be destroyed. My flesh shall live on. You know me. Say you do."
"I don't know you!" she declared. She had backed away, but only a step. There was so little space between them. If she had turned to run, he could have caught her by the neck. The terror rose in her again, the absolute irrational terror that he would put his long fingers on her neck. That he could, that no one could stop him, that people did such things, that she was alone with him, all of this collided silently inside her. Yet she spoke again. "Get out of here, do you hear what I'm telling you?"
"Can't do it, beautiful one," he answered, one eyebrow arched slightly. "Speak to me, tell me what did you see when you came to that house so long ago?"
"Why do you want me?" She dared to take one more step, very tentative. The beach lay behind. What if she were to run, across the yard over the boardwalk? And the long beach seemed the empty deserted landscapes of horrid dreams. Had she not dreamed this very thing long ago? Never, never say that name!
"I'm clumsy now," he said with sudden heartfelt sincerity. "I think when I was a spirit I had more grace, did I not? I came and went at the perfect moment. Now I blunder through life, as do we all. I need my Mayfairs. I need you all. Would that I were singing in some still and beautiful valley; in the glen, under the moon. And I could bring you all together, back to the circle. Oh, but we will never have such luck now, Gifford. Love me, Gifford."
He turned away as if in pain. It wasn't that he wanted her sympathy
or expected it. He didn't care. He was anguished and silent for a long moment, staring dully and insignificantly towards the kitchen. There was something utterly compelling in his face, his attitude. "Gifford," he said. "Gifford, tell me, what do you see in me? Am I beautiful to you?" He turned back. "Look at me."
He bent down to kiss her like a bird coming to the edge of a pool, that swift, with the heady beat of wings, and the inundation of that fragrance as if it were an animal smell, a warm scent like the good scent of a dog, or a bird when you take it from its cage; his lips covered hers, and his long fingers slipped up around her neck, thumbs gently touching her jaw and then her cheeks, and as she tried to flee deep into herself, alone and locked away from all pain. She felt a swift delicious sensation spread out in her loins. She wanted to say, This will not happen, but she was caught so off guard by it that she realized he was holding her upright; he was cradling her in his fingers, by her neck, tenderly, and perhaps his thumbs were pressed right against her throat. The chills ran over her, up her back, down the backs of her arms. Lord, she was swooning. Swooning.
"No, no, darling, I wouldn't hurt you. Gifford, what is my victory without this?"
Just like a song. She could almost hear a beat to it and a melody, the way the words flowed out of him in the darkness. He kissed her again, and again, and his thumbs did not crush her throat. Her arms were tingling. She did not know where her own hands were. Then she realized she had placed them against his chest. Of course she could not move him. He was a man all right, stronger than she without question, and it was vain to try to move. Then the deep thrilling sensation engulfed her, rather like the fragrance, and a lovely spasm passed through her, almost a consummation, except that it promised a great rolling succession of consummations to follow, and when you had that many consummations, it wasn't a consummation. It was only a continuous surrender.
"Yes, give in to me," he said, again with childlike simplicity. "You are for me. You must be."
He released her, and then put his hands on her arms and lifted her tenderly off the floor. Next she knew she was lying on it, on the cold tile, and her eyes were open and she could feel and hear him ripping her wool stockings, and she wondered if the sweater wasn't scratchy and rough. What was it like to embrace someone in a sweater that was so thick and rough? She tried to speak, but the fragrance was actually sickening her, or disorienting her, maybe that was more truly it. His hair fell down on her face with delicious silkiness.