Chapter Forty-One
Once the content of the note was made public, as was only just, other guests debated its significance with all the passion they might muster when considering the chance it would rain on the morrow. Herra Brotherus, for example, maintained that the “fuck” was intended to be taken literally, while Glen Stoupes plumped for a more figurative reading. Philip La Paiva read the dash preceding the “arsehole” as a typographic pause, interpreting the note’s intended recipient (whomever that might have been) as the putative anus, whereas a watery-eyed Swede named Leksén contended that the dash indicated “from”, as a sign-off, meaning that the name of the note’s writer was “Arsehole”. The indignity of bearing such a scandalous handle might be enough, this Leksén ventured, in his capacity of armchair psychologist, to submit, to push Arsehole over the thin line which divides socially constructed sanity from socially constructed insanity, with potentially murderous results. On Leksén’s insistence, the hotel’s register was brought over, and ruthlessly scanned by all present, only to disappoint them with no such record of a “Monsieur Arsehole” to be found.
With unnoted irony, then, the modest ripple of excitement caused by the enigmatic note served to draw more guests out of their rooms, and back into social contact, rather than the perhaps more expected effect of, given the news of yet another murder, scaring them further away. Aside from the intriguing note, however, the reaction to the actual death of Alan Brigeiboit Sanns was little more than a collective shrug, and a—to share the rude diction of our mysterious note-maker—half-arsed one at that.
Enid had more or less forgot the note. Gangakanta had nothing meaningful to say about it, and didn’t seem terribly interested in discussing it—perhaps finding himself unable to shake off the undignified circumstances in which it had been discovered—and withdrew to his chambers for a nap, so Enid jumped at Genevra’s invitation to drinks in the latter’s room. Her mind wilfully trained on other matters, including times table chants and potted biographies of great artists of the Renaissance, she left herself no mental headroom for explaining to herself why she was bathing herself so thoroughly beforehand. Her younger self—even the Enid Trojczakowski of a month ago—would have been, if asked to explain the actions and mindset of the Enid Trojczakowski of this moment, positively stumped. It was not just that she had never been, at least consciously, drawn to a woman before, but that the possibility of such a thing, outside vague allusions to continental decadence in some of the saucier novels unobtainable from the town’s library but which she’d righteously confiscated from behind the textbooks of a certain number of her adolescent female scholars, had never set foot into her skull. If she’d been asked to explain such a phenomenon—and she had never been asked; for who would have asked her?—the best she might have come up with was an evasive smattering of scientific jargon on the subject of unnatural mutation; and if challenged on who, if not nature, had instigated said mutation, she would have attempted a clumsy segue to another topic entirely, such as the weather or an anodyne compliment towards the baby in the passing pram of Parson Shimmy’s niece.
Many minutes were spent, hardly of their own accord, on grooming and dress-choosing. Facing herself with ruthless honesty in her mirror, Enid concluded that, while the finished product was undeniably several fathoms from perfection, all such appearances could never be anything other than works-in-progress, and, besides, who was perfect? In short, she, Enid, would not have found the image in the mirror attractive. But who was to question the taste of a great artist like Genevra?
And then, the doubts leapt like termites from the woodwork, scurried round her feet, tickled their way up her legs and bored into her skull: What if she was misreading the whole situation disastrously? What if Genevra intended their friendship to be a picture of innocence, or was maliciously mocking her? Either way, Enid was exposing herself to ridicule, shame and dishonour.
“Ridicule”—this word still held some meaning, Enid supposed. But “shame”? “Dishonour”? These words were fish, these days, slipping from the hands of a pernickety fishmonger who insisted on their dissection and wrapping before being handed simperingly to his customer.
She knocked on the door. Someone said “Come in”. She took a deep breath, entered, closed the door, and proceeded to the sitting room, where she found Rosella, lying on the settee, bereft of clothes, on display for her, though clearly, judging from the look on her face which combined contempt for Enid with contempt for herself, not by choice.
We talk of “first instincts”. Enid’s first instinct, in this scenario, was to look away. To avoid meeting Rosella’s eyes and, certainly, her body. But this impulse was really, she was half-aware, her second instinct, lowered upon her like an upturned glass over a captive bug. But, to use an unrelated metaphor, the public notice placard plastered on a pole disintegrated in the elements, peeling away to reveal last season’s; so did Enid’s natural impulse revive out of hibernation, and she looked into Rosella’s eyes, savoured the hatred which flashed there, and took in, in long, deep, ocular draughts, her body. It was the first female form, unclad, she’d beheld, saving her own; the sight, by replicating the attributes of her own body, albeit with significant variation in size, shape and quality, heartened her, and made her feel, for once, yoked to the wider world.
Here was the female form, unencumbered by clothes, those men-woven sails cinched around masts which choked women’s flesh; here were the parts of the body which go unpainted, never troubling the top-hatted gentlemen cane-strolling through the academy, opened like oysters, half-ashamed, half-proud of their pearls—the seaweedy hairs, the eerie tree bark folds gathering in waves like a Jovian storm, the crinkled nether navel, constricted fist-tight, palpitating with anticipatory beads of sweat, all guarded by the glaring, red snake eyes quivering above. A snake: Rosella, writhing under Enid’s gaze, coiled up like a snake; while a yearning to, like a snake, swallow Rosella in her entirety overwhelmed her.
She sank her fangs in the flesh like a vulture tearing the skin from a bone, and ravenously, feverishly, strove to consume it all.
Rosella thrashed under her, a bird with a broken wing, a sacrificial lamb. Enid burrowed into her, trawled her tongue along her as if dragging a river, clasped at her for dear life as she would at the handholds and finger pockets of a mountain face off which she were plummeting. Something elemental in her demanded to possess the pure, unaffected beauty of Rosella’s body; ordained in her was the need to give pleasure to that body, bring it to consummation, which could only be achieved by ingesting it entirely.
Rosella’s undisguised disdain for her, the disgust at herself for the pleasure she nevertheless suffered, and the shame she tried but failed to conceal, only urged Enid to attempt fusion with her all the more. Is this how a hunter feels, Enid might, if she’d retained rational sovereignty at this moment, have asked herself, when it sees a bear it wants to slay, and relishes the slaying, before skinning it and wearing its hide over his own skin? All her earlier visions of ineffable transcendence between women dribbled away, and in their place was the singular vicious lust of the wolf for the lamb.
Rosella’s cries and moans and obscene curses were smothered beneath Enid’s mouth; Rosella’s fingers scratched and pulled and pinched at her, merely whipping the boiling brew into more of an overflowing lather. Enid thought nothing; her brain had thrown its reins to her lust, which drove her deeper and deeper into Rosella’s convulsing body.
The whole field of her vision was awash with the particular tint of Rosella’s skin, every mark and mole rich with import, her tongue coated with Rosella’s sweat and nectar like a leaf trembling under the weight of dawn’s dew, and she could smell, in Rosella’s flesh, Rosella’s past, her identity, the core secrets of who she was, uncloakable, reeking overpoweringly about them both.
The wave crept up over Rosella—she fought against it, not wanting it, not wishing to give Enid the satisfaction of having given it to her, but her deer-like legs, exhausted from sprinting across the steppe, finally buckled, and the tiger pounced, and cleaved her with its claws.
Rosella’s past foamed up over her, and over Enid, who intuited it too: a past she divulged to no one, of a shack in the country, of brothers who beat her, of the saving grace of art she found in her one safe haven, the museum; of running off to Europe, and years of losing herself in its fathomlessly loamy culture, so delicately intertwined with decadence; until she fell in with Genevra, and slowly came to stand out amongst all her toady disciples, and she was picked, at last, to be her consort. She gifted everything, body, mind and soul, to her, casting her own dandelion tuft far from the family she’d once known. In thanks, Genevra squeezed and twisted and crushed her like a tube of paint. Now, she woke up after each night’s lovemaking sore and humiliated, but with no sense of there being anything else out there in the world which could fulfil her.
Enid knelt before the settee, watching Rosella, curled up, sobbing into her palms. Behind them came Genevra’s voice: “Oh, stop your bloody blubbering, will you?!” The artist then proceeded to command the model, as surely as she would pose a wooden manikin, to rise and remove each piece of Enid’s clothing, while Enid stood, abashed but dutiful. As each portion of her body was exposed, she at once was ashamed at its agedness, sagginess and manifest imperfection—in contrast to the youth, tautness and refinement of that corresponding part to be found on Rosella—and luxuriated in the aesthetic strength with which it was endowed, by Genevra, who was, behind the scenes, placing it on the same pedestal as Rosella’s. When Rosella had finished, Enid’s clothes lay like husks on the rug, unbuttoned, unlatched, unlaced, gaping in awareness at their insignificance when they lacked a body to enshroud. Enid felt light, shorn of her vestments, as if she might at any moment start to float. There was a sense of terrifying liberation, in being totally naked in front of another person, and in the sensation she felt in the eyes of that person gazing upon her—as if the gaze itself were, like a fingered thing, stroking and exploring and penetrating her. Even before Rosella, in compliance with Genevra’s bidding, began to touch her, Enid was forced, through no conscious intent, to touch herself.
Whisper after whisper, snaking through the heady air from Genevra like a stage manager’s prompts, pulled, like invisible strings, Rosella’s hands and head, as she lay Enid down on the rug and played her unwanted role. Enid could feel Rosella’s hot tears against her cheeks as they kissed, cognizant of Rosella’s saliva dripping off Enid’s crooked, yellowing teeth. In every act, Rosella’s repugnance was evident. The more Enid sensed how her body disgusted Rosella, the more satisfaction she reaped in Rosella being forced to engage with it. She thrust herself into her, wishing to defile her perfection with the contaminating impurities of real life. Every action commissioned by Genevra seemed calculated to inflict the maximum pleasure on Enid, and the maximum dishonour on Rosella. Through all of this, Enid was sensible of Genevra’s eyes upon her, smearing up her legs like paint, scorching down the sweat of her back like flame over oil, tickling round her navel like a paintbrush’s bristles, splashing over her buttocks like a chamber pot’s innermost essence dumped from a window onto the caps and bonnets of unsuspecting passers-by below, seeping into her crevices like rain into cracked earth. Enid was a predator conscious that it, too, is prey.
With the stifling blanket of pride, which had been lain over her since first she was aware of her body as a possibly desirable object, thrown finally off, Enid could enjoy the electrification of her nerve endings without inconvenient reference to a Judeo-Christian code of ethics: Abraham, Moses, Jesus and company flushed swirlingly down into the sand, not a judgemental peep retained by the suddenly, thrillingly empty air they’d vacated. When her first-ever “little death” arrived, she as it were disembarked from her body and, floating above herself, looked down on the scene with a detached curiosity, wincing at the existential cry which erupted out of her body’s throat and resonated round the hotel, waking guests, interrupting card games and threatening to unstitch space from time. The scene of her and Rosella’s nude bodies fizzled out, and was replaced with the public square of the village where she’d grown up, the one-room schoolhouse in which she excelled, helping the younger pupils, idolising her mistress, and beaming with the answer to every question. The teacher, along with everyone else in the village, assumed she’d end up travelling the world and making of herself, within the accepted parameters for her sex, something to be admired—a modern, independent, flourishing woman, yet one who knew her place and would be far too timid ever to contemplate any course which might border on scandal; in short, the kind of woman of whom the village could decently approve. For her part, she dreamt of impossible romances with chivalrous men, fierce-browed yet unexpectedly chaste, as in the novels she wolfed down like a starved, mad-eyed dog slurping puddles of vomit behind a bar. In reality, she had neither the nerve, nor the money, once her father died, to make good on the promise of such adventures. Rather, she replaced the adored teacher, who finally retired to spend her few residual years nursing what was left of her nerves; her new life as a pedagogue procured, the grooves to arid spinsterhood laid, she had little to look forward to, save when, once a year, she made the drudging trek with her mother and sisters to the seaside, where she sat, costumed from neck to ankle, upon a bumpy towel astride the inconsequential pebbles of a doleful English beach; such was the extent of her global domination, up until this trip, for which she’d spent years breaking the wills of innocent children by coercing them to diagram sentences in order to save up, a trip she had never found the nerve to attempt until the death, earlier this year, of her mother suddenly uprooted the boundless hedgerows which had hemmed in her horizons. As for romance? There was none, unless you counted the few chaste kisses she bestowed on the village haberdasher, a widower she despised but felt obligated to thank, given the number of meals and dresses to which he’d publicly treated her. As well, we may feel safe in assuming that neither the young reader of romance novels she once was, nor the gnarled village elders who’d thought so much of her, would ever have imagined she would one day be lying on the rug of a hotel room with another woman, exploring each other’s most private orifices.
“I hate you,” whispered Rosella, without malice, without passion.
“I think you’re wonderful,” Enid whispered back.
Their limbs, boughs drained of sap, lolled across each other. Genevra, a shape in the shadows, looked down on them, with love.