Disturbed by Her Song by Tanith Lee
So that was St John Blaze’s taste. Ruth accepted it had been apparent enough. A man who didn’t like a woman to watch his moments of ecstatic weakness – or, maybe also, to witness hers, face to face.
Ruth lay along Emerald’s body, watching her now sidelong, her head on her arm.
The candle was fading. Soon it should be dark enough – for Sinny – but morning was also close, already the bloody birds were squeaking and trilling from the garden trees.
When Ruth reached out, gently to caress Emerald’s body, Emerald stiffened and pushed her hand away. “Don’t be greedy, Ruth.”
At that moment Ruth’s patience – if that was what it could be called – snapped.
“Only once then? Aren’t you good for more than once, Sinny?”
“I’ll show you what I’m good for when I’m good and ready.”
Ruth sat up. “Perhaps not.” It was worth a try.
And indeed Emerald – or St John – reacted, sitting up too. But she – he – they – only let out a laugh – that laugh of a boy.
“I’ll tell you a story. Shall I? Will that cool you down?”
This is all my own fault, thought Ruth. She bit her tongue which Sinny had married with her-his own.
Emerald got off the bed. She moved away, and blew out the candle suddenly with a snake’s hiss.
The thick curtains really did contain a little light, like a thinness wearing in the fabric of darkness. But Emerald had become only a blot of shadow. Ruth realized her own nakedness would show more vividly, and with fresh twinges of unease, she pulled the red coverlet up around herself, to hide.
“I killed three women,” said Emerald, said Sinny. “Of course, you’ll acknowledge I never meant to.” (Dear Christ, had he said this – if not to his child, then where his child could overhear?) “There was one woman who became scarred and later I heard, in a roundabout way, some fellow shot her. Or did he brain her? Can’t recall. Another – this was mentioned to you – died of poisoning. I think my dear little girl excused me by saying the woman drank lye. But in fact it was the confounded paint – tartar of quicksilver and yellow ochre, I’d deduce. Went into her crack. The third fatality though, that was a queer do.”
Ruth’s sexual glimmerings had gone out like the candle in the breath of these words.
She was already glad she hadn’t been able to have Emerald Blaze again.
“You see,” said Sinny, “she was a blackie. A whore from a brothel up Hyde Park way. Specialty of the house, she was. They called her by some outlandish name – what was that? Oh, yes, Thubeah. I bought her for an evening, not for sport, but to paint.”
(He was in the room. St John. Telling Ruth the third story. Telling it with a boy-girl’s voice, regretful, a touch, mostly fascinated at the eccentric flare of his artistic life.)
“I wanted this black whore for a canvas. A Nubian slave woman. You can see it, the composition, if you go to the National Gallery. Hecuba and Her Women. Some pedantic fool said they didn’t keep Negroes in Troy, but artistic license, old man. Wonderful, the effect of that blue-blackness in the corner, behind the other cowering rosy girls.”
Sinny left off. In the half-dark half-light, (where light surely must, by now, be winning over dark, but was not) Ruth saw the sulphur shot of another match. Sinny had lit him-herself a second cigarette.
“I had an inspiration,” said Sinny, thoughtfully. “I’d seen a zebra skin, all the way from Africa. They’re striped black on white, but here was this other animal, and My God was she black – quite pretty in her way, though less so than a monkey or a cat. And I thought, how about white on black? So, when I’d done the other stuff, I painted her, her back, you understand. She said, in some bizarre accent I can’t begin to imitate, What are you doing? I said, Mixing a color, Thubeah. I often do this. Skin makes a wonderful fixative, even yours.”
Another silence.
Then: “I worked very hard that night, exhausted myself actually – slept a whole day after. Of course I didn’t want to touch her in other ways, the blackie. I fell asleep too in my studio chair. When the servant woke me, she had gone. It seemed her keeper had come, from the whorehouse. That was the deal, after all. It seems she didn’t know I’d painted white stripes on her black back until others saw and laughed, and told her.”
Ruth sat, clutching the coverlet. She thought of the black woman, perhaps royal in her own country, as had been a black actress who had sometimes worked at Sabella’s theatre. She thought of her made into a slave, a sticking-place for white men. And finally made into one man’s exclusive canvas.
Ruth said, quietly, “That was what the black and white cloth on the gallery wall came from, was it? He painted her, then made a painting from the design he’d made on her?”
“No, it didn’t happen like that. You see, if you’d talk less and listen more, you’d get the facts much quicker. Thubeah went mad in her brothel, after she saw the white stripes on her back. Why? Who can say how the mind of such a woman – let alone a savage – works.”
“Who can say...” echoed Ruth.
She felt tears run down her face, and bowed her head, in case the lit cigarette or the slow rise of dawn might reveal them.
“She hanged herself,” added the story-teller. “I’d paid to have her cared for by then. Had to. They made a great fuss, and some most unreasonable threats – their specialty of the house spoilt for them, similar rubbish. So when she was found dead – well, the physician who cared for her was a pal of mine. I’d done a most flattering portrait of his stout wife for him, gratis.”
“You took some of Thubeah’s skin.”
“I cured it, and put it up on my wall. Oh, it’s macabre, I grant you, so I’ve never been too public with it. But it has a fine pattern, you see. If you look, you’ll find that pattern reproduced by me, here and there, in other canvases. Strangely inspiring, I found it.”
Silence once more.
Ruth said, “Does your daughter know, Sir St John Blaze?”
“Christ, of course she does. Knows all her Papa’s escapades, my little Emerald. It’s nice to have a woman to talk to sometimes, the right sort of woman. Not Vera, I have to say. She knows next to nothing about me, I can tell you.”
“Then why,” said Ruth, “if she knows, did Emerald say she didn’t know?”
“Oh, she thinks she don’t, if you like. She’s very ladylike, my girl, a proper womanly woman. She thinks she doesn’t know a very great deal. Getting light now,” he added. “Better get back to bed before that great ox Vera catches us. Thanks for the merry time, Ruthie. You’re a good bad girl.”
Naturally the dawn would not enter the room until he – she – that entity had left it. How sensible, the dawn.
Ruth sat in darkness and in darkness heard it stride out of the door, leaving behind only the trail of smoke, and the reek of hell.
“This is absurd,” said Vera, when Ruth had finished her account.
Ruth’s face was high-colored and taut, Vera’s pale, almost brooding. She spoke still without heat. She seemed to be interviewing it all over again, even as she denied its likelihood, thinking, questioning – not only Ruth’s memories from the previous night – but her own from the past.
Ruth now kept quiet. She prickled with shame and distaste. She didn’t know, as they said, ‘where to put herself.’
Vera said, “How does she know that story – about the poor black girl? She must have eavesdropped – he’d never have told her. It’s only gossip anyway, may not even be true.”
Ruth couldn’t maintain her quietness.
“Did you ever doubt it? Haven’t you ever seen the piece of black – skin – on the wall of his private gallery, marked with white paint?
“No.” Vera picked up her cup and set it down again without sampling it. “Tell me, what happened after Emily left you this morning?”
“I lay down and watched the daylight come.”
“You see,” said Vera. “I ask particularly, because of that maid who announced just no
Ruth said, hesitantly now, “But of course it would. He – Blaze – made her into this little pliable fragile maiden from one of his paintings – but she – she wants not to be a maiden at all – she wants to be him. Maybe it began innocently enough, when she was a child. She missed him so much when he was away, all she could do, other than demonstrate herself his faultless daughter, was to copy his presence for herself. Someone probably had said to her how like him she was...is she? I assume she is?” (Vera said nothing now.) “Or maybe she noted a likeness for herself. So she became Blaze, for herself in the only fashion possible. By becoming what he was. And is. And now she continues to act the role of her father. While at other times – Vera, Emerald is trying to kill off the part of herself that is the female. Oh not literally – even she sees if she really dies, they both do. So it must be symbolic. And once Emerald’s properly, spiritually dead and buried, then she’ll only have to be one person: St John Blaze.”
Vera got up. “Then she’s mad.”
“Perhaps. Or worse.”
“How could it be worse?”
“Because I think, though she is doing all this, she is horribly sane.”
“Be silent!” The roar of temper was powerful, like a slap. “This is my daughter we are talking about.”
Ruth too rose. She said, “I’ve packed my bag. I can walk to the station – I gather there is one, at Steepacre Hamlet.”
“Don’t be stupid. It would take you three hours.”
“I have been stupid, Lady Vera. I have allowed you to use me, and all we’ve achieved is more distress, and a most repellant certainty. As for time,” said Ruth, her heart hammering, her mouth thin as a thread, “we seem to have wasted such a lot of each other’s already, what will three more hours matter to me?”
The dog lifted his head, in an inquiring way. But Vera did not argue or attempt to restrict. She let Ruth walk from the room, and presently from the house.
It was a bright-feathered, glittering day, full of promise. For some.
Extract from a letter sent by Melisande (née Mabel) Crabtree to her friend, Lydiana (née Anne) Blenkinsop. Dated approximately one year after the preceding chapters.
It is, as I say, dear Lydiana, sumptuous here. Such a shame you could not join us. There can be no country to compare with Italy. Unless, perhaps, Greece, or France. Or Spain. Or England, in summer. Or apparently Upper Germany is quite a picture. Or the Himalayas, wherever they may be. Meanwhile I must relay some gossip I heard of a mutual – I cannot say friend – actually the daughter of Lady Vera Blaze, the wife of the great artist, who, as you know, I am acquainted with. My goodness! Such a scandal! It seems Emerald Blaze is now living in a villa just outside Rome, surrounded by ancient artifacts and young women of all types! She has long declared them her HAREM. (The women, of course, not the artifacts.) She lords it over them all, dressing in male attire, and even, so I am reliably told, affecting a small mustache – which surely must be glued on, for how could she grow such a thing? It appears she first arrived in Italy, as she said, in flight from her ‘termagant mother’ – that dear Lady Vera, who is so elegant and charitable – Do you know, she once donated TWO GUINEAS for some beads at a stall I was operating for the Northern Orphans – And then she, Emerald, fell into a decline in Italy. They say she is supposed to have died – or at any rate, been buried – truly BURIED – in an open grave out on some hillside. And in the morning – how dreadfully blasphemous – she came back to life. Her horde of females next led her down the hill, and from then on Emerald has become, and remained, ‘male.’ Her name, or so my source (I dare not reveal her name) avows, is Emidio. She – should I say he? – speaks such fluent Italian that everyone thinks her – him – a young Roman count. And a man. Who is scandalous only in having so many women at his house. I may add that, here, to have not only a wife, but three or four mistresses, is considered quite abstemious. But, my word, what can her father think of her, that great painter, Sir St John Blaze? No one knows what goes on there, although again, my source (I will confess more about her at a future date) tells me Sir S. turned up at the villa, whereat his daughter – the mustachioed Emidio – fired a gun at him! Point blank, from a window. The bullet only took off his hat, it seems. But in the village everyone took Sir S. – for Emidio! They are now, apparently, so alike.
I must now consign this to the postal service, of which, its being Italian, I have little hopes. You will doubtless not receive a line for several days.
Epilogos
Vera reentered my life three years after I had first met her. I’d been dragooned into helping at some book-stall, I can’t, even vaguely, remember why, but abruptly there she was.
Three years had changed nothing, only accentuated her powerful lioness allure. Although she had lost her name, having divorced her husband, the famous painter, for adultery – which he had allowed. There she stood, in a dark green costume, under a wheel of hat, staring down her lion’s nose at me.
My knees and my wrists dissolved, my eyes said everything that must never, ever, be said by the voice in public.
“Here you are,” she exclaimed, off-hand, as if we had been parted only half an hour and she had been looking for me. She stared next, imperious, at the other woman who was tending the stall. “Do take over, Daphne. Miss Isles and I simply must have a cup of tea.”
The teapot secured (it was a winter season, a London through the window sooty and full of rain, but oh, now burning like the Great Fire of 1666), we sat and talked for two hours.
To this day I can’t recall what was said, at least not much of it in actual dialogue. It was like a piece of exquisite music, a duet I had always wished to play, and now at last a golden piano sounded, and a violin of stars was put into my hands, and I became, as she was, a virtuoso.
“My daughter,” she did add, as we got up, and this I do recollect, “she has long removed herself from my life. I will say nothing of my feelings about that. Such things, like memories of the surgeon’s knife, are better left to decay. Therefore, we will not speak, from this moment, a single word of her.”
“Never,” I said. Though, years after, one other thing was said, of Emerald – but at this moment it had and has no place.
“I wronged you,” said Vera, with such dignity I saw only guilt had caused it.
I answered, “I loved you.”
“I’m glad, my Ruth... Ruth... Doesn’t that mean ‘Pity’?”
“No. It means love.”
“And what about these wet grey streets?”
“Love.”
“I have another house now. At Richmond. We can lounge about there and drink tea and smoke – and, my girl, if you’ll visit me there, no one will interrupt. Except perhaps the old dog, Bacchus. You didn’t mind him, did you?”
“No. He was yours.”
“He’s a gentleman. I tell you the truth, Bacchus sometimes reminds me of my father. One of the few fine men I have ever known. I once vexed Blaze very much by telling him how, if more men behaved with the honesty and discretion of Bacchus, the world would be a better place. But then. No more of bloody Blaze now, either. I’ve become again simply Miss Vera Tresky. Do you like that at all?”
“Yes. I like it more than I can say.”
And so we went to Richmond.
It was a fine old house that overlooked the reedy river, one silver spoon-like sweep. In the boating-house lay a new boat. Sometimes we would row out to a small island, leaving the dog behind, (since otherwise he would disturb our love-making, having wild interests in the ducks and swans).
Did Vera then, afterwards say anything more about her daughter, the daughter she so loved tha
Aside from this, over the years, I heard one or two things independently of Emerald Blaze. For one, that she’d tried to shoot her father through the head at some spot near Rome. This seemed not so far-fetched to me. For if she had by then become entirely St John Blaze, and legend had it this was so, he was finally redundant. Even, perhaps, a rival.
A last note I must (reluctantly and churlishly) add. I have seen a canvas which Emerald – or ‘Emidio’ – subsequently painted. It is called Three Muses. A weird work, and not very well done, getting the slight attention it did only because of the peculiar circumstances of Emerald’s later life. The muses are shown, each from the back. One is very pale-skinned and dappled oddly, like a leopard, one is more ruddy – as if her blood were not wholesome. One is black, with a jagged white striping, as if she had been lashed to the bone.
I never mentioned any of this to Vera. Nor, if she knew of it, did she relay any of it to me. Generally she had been right. It was better, definitely, that we didn’t speak of Emerald Blaze.
Vera and I knew each other always, from the day of our re-meeting, and lived often in each other’s company. We traveled, too – Bacchus is buried in a wood near Athens – the Midsummer Night Wood, Vera called it. He lived to be almost eighteen. A heroic age for a dog, though for a woman very little.