Chapter Twenty-Three
Enid didn’t see why she should be afraid to move about the hotel, in the daytime, when, even if many of the guests elected to stay in their rooms, at least the staff were about. Thus it was that after reclaiming her shoes from Gangakanta, she made her way to the lunchroom for a drink. Aloysius was behind the bar, and Genevra Bergamaschi was drinking alone.
“Good morning, Miss Trojczakowski,” she greeted, and raised her glass. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t find nine o’clock too early for a drink.”
The Italian lady smiled. Her chin jutted so emphatically towards Enid that the latter feared it might leave a bruise.
“Good morning. I think I’ll just have an orange juice, please.”
“My regrets, mademoiselle, but we have run out of all fruit,” the waiter replied.
“Have one of what I’m having,” smiled Genevra. “I insist.”
“Thanks,” Enid said, leaning against the bar beside her. “I suppose I haven’t any excuse not to, now.”
“I hear,” Genevra muttered out of the side of her mouth, a bit faux-conspiratorially, “you’ve resumed the investigation, now in the company of that Indian.”
“That’s right.” Enid took a sip, and the alcohol immediately fleshed out all her insides.
“And have you made any progress?”
Enid smiled. “Everyone’s a suspect. Until they’re not.”
Genevra nodded. “Until they themselves are killed, I suppose.” She wore a man’s jacket, which accentuated her already broad shoulders, and a Wild West-style string tie. “Would you do me the honour of walking with me, Miss Trojczakowski? Sometimes I require a feminine confessor, when I’m as tipsy as I am.”
“What about your friend Rosa?” But Genevra had already taken her arm and was walking her through the empty lunchroom, out somewhere else.
“Rosa? I’ll tell you about Rosa. She’s a sculpture! A perfectly exquisite sculpture, from a better world. But have you ever tried to make love to a sculpture, Miss Trojczakowski?”
They were walking down a deserted corridor. Enid wasn’t entirely sure what Genevra meant by that last question, but answered, truthfully, “No, Miss Bergamaschi, I can’t say that I have.”
She laughed. “That was a rhetorical question, my sweet. And please, Enid, call me ‘Genevra’.” They had found their way to a reading room. “I’ll tell you what it’s like: stone is cold. And, I hardly think I need say it: unreciprocating. You can chisel at it, denude it, break it to your will. . .but it’s still not alive, you know.”
Giggling, she threw herself down onto a sofa. Enid, arms around herself, remained standing, looking about.
“But that’s the life of an artist, I guess,” Genevra mused, closing her eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“Well—have you ever met a normal artist? I mean, if they were satisfied with the state of their life, and acclimatised to the world, well. . .why would they ever choose this path?”
“I don’t know, I. . .I never really had a drive to do much of anything.”
“You’re a schoolteacher, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but, as an unmarried woman, without a family of much means, that is. . .one must do something, to keep in clothes and under a roof and put food in your stomach.”
“And you were never married? Never had a beau?”
“Well, not as is. . .” She raised her glass to her mouth, only to discover that she’d finished her drink.
“What was that?”
“I was just saying. . .um. . .” She felt a little woozy, unused to drinking much alcohol at all.
“You’ve had a beau?”
“‘Not as is worth mentioning’, I think I was going to say.” She sat down on the sofa next to Genevra.
“But, at least, you’ve had the fulfilment of—how do they say it?—‘making a difference’, I believe. Wouldn’t you say?”
“How do you mean?”
“Your teaching, of course! Those charming blobs of clay, plopped in your schoolroom, ingratiatingly begging to be moulded into our parliamentarians and Knights Templar of tomorrow!”
Enid closed her eyes, steadying herself. “No, no, it’s not quite like that. Rather, to tell you the truth, it’s the very definition of tedium, cycling through the same seasons of identical brats you can’t wait to be rid of, as I wilt into decrepitude at roughly the same rate as the desks and blackboard.”
“Oh, now, it can’t be as bad as that!”
“For every line Billy Bannister digs into his desktop with his penknife, I acquire two across my brow, just as unlikely to ever be smoothed out until, I guess, my embalmment.”
Genevra laughed, slapping her knee, until she choked.
“Are you all right?”
Genevra nodded, coughing. “I don’t mean to laugh at your life, Enid. Poor Enid! It’s just that I’ve realised I needn’t go on feeling guilty—or, at least, affecting to—over my, all things considered, more selfish choice to become an artist! For if I’d become a teacher, and had your life, I would have hanged myself long ago! And what good would that have done the world, hm? I ask you.”
Enid, eyes still closed, nodded. She felt as if she’d fused with the sofa; she could no longer feel her body as a separate entity. “And I’ve never known the touch of a man. Not in that way. For that matter, I’ve never met a man whose touch I would have wanted to feel—not until, well, latterly. Life has utterly, utterly passed me by, Genevra. And I’ve never found the time to mourn it. It’s like I can’t feel the pathos of my own tragedy; like I’m outside myself, watching some actress perform it, without realising that it’s my life she’s inhabiting. As if somewhere inside me, I’m expecting the performance to begin again—another birth—and I’ll have a chance to do things right, next time. But there won’t be a next time, will there? Will there?”
Some small sober corner of her brain realised she was babbling like a madwoman, but it was shouted down by the other regions which had got caught up in this thrilling self-abasement.
“But you have so much to offer,” Genevra was soothing her, whilst stroking Enid’s thigh through her dress. “So much to offer!”
The alcohol was bubbling in her blood, and Enid felt not just herself, but the sofa, the room, the whole world shimmering with electricity. The cushion beneath her, the air in her mouth, and Genevra’s fingers upon her leg all radiated sensual must. Muscles deep within her, long fossilised but of late reluctantly drawn from slumber and recalled to the land of the living, oiled themselves and began to contract, when she stood up, mumbled an incoherent goodbye and ran out of the room.