As she stood up Dowd said, “You won’t get out that way.”
She turned to see him standing at the kitchen table, bearing a tray of supper dishes. His laden condition gave her hope that she might yet outmaneuver him, and she made a dash for the hallway. But he was faster than she’d anticipated, setting down his burden and moving to stop her so quickly she had to retreat again, her hand catching one of the glasses on the table. It fell, smashing musically,
“Now look what you’ve done,” he said, with what seemed to be genuine distress. He crossed to the shards and bent down to gather them up. “That glass had been in the family for generations. I’d have thought you’d have had some fellow feeling for it.’5
Though she was in no temper to talk about broken glasses, she replied nevertheless, knowing her only hope lay in alerting Godolphin to her presence.
“Why should I give a damn about a glass?” she said.
Dowd picked up a piece of the bowl, holding it to the light.
“You’ve got so much in common, lovey,” he said. “Both made in ignorance of yourselves. Beautiful, but fragile.” He stood up. “You’ve always been beautiful. Fashions come and go, but Judith is always beautiful.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about me,” she said.
He put the shards on the table beside the rest of the dirty plates and cutlery. “Oh, but I do,” he said. “We’re more alike than you realize.”
He’d kept a glittering fragment back, and as he spoke he put it to his wrist. She only just had time to register what he was about to do before he cut into his own flesh. She looked away, but then—hearing the piece of glass dropped among the litter—glanced back. The wound gaped, but there was no blood forthcoming, just an ooze of brackish sap. Nor was the expression on Dowd’s face pained. It was simply intent.
“You have a piffling recall of the past,” he said; “I have too much. You have heat; I have none. You’re in love; I’ve never understood the word. But Judith: we are the same. Both slaves.”
She looked from his face to the cut to his face to the cut to his face, and with every move of her pupils her panic increased. She didn’t want to hear any more from him. She despised him. She closed her eyes and conjured him at the voider’s pyre, and in the shadow of the tower, crawling with mites, but however many horrors she put between them his words won through. She’d given up attempting to solve the puzzle of herself a long time ago, but here he was, spilling pieces she couldn’t help but pick up.
“Who are you?” she said to him.
“More to the point, who are you?”
“We’re not the same,” she said. “Not even a little. I bleed. You don’t. I’m human. You’re not.”
“But is it your blood you bleed?” he said, “Ask yourself that.”
“It comes out of my veins. Of course it’s mine.”
“Then who are you?” he said.
The inquiry was made without overt malice, but she didn’t doubt its subversive purpose. Somehow Dowd knew she was forgetful of her past and was pricking her to a confession.
“I know what I’m not, “she said, earning herself the time to invent an answer. “I’m not a glass. I’m not fragile or ignorant. And I’m not—”
What was the other quality he’d mentioned besides beauty and fragility? He’d been stopping to pick up the pieces of broken glass, and he described her some way or other.
“You’re not what?” he said, watching her wrestle with her own reluctance to seize the memory.
She pictured him crossing the kitchen. Now look what you’ve done, he’d said. Then he’d stooped (she saw him do so, in her mind’s eye) and as he’d begun to pick up the pieces, the words had come to his lips. And now to her memory too.
“That glass had been in the family for generations,” he’d said, “I’d have thought you’d have had some fellow feeling for it.”
“No,” she said aloud, shaking her head to keep the sense of this from congealing there. But the motion only shook up other memories: of her trip to the estate with Charlie, when that pleasurable sense of belonging had suffused her and voices had called her sweet names from the past; of meeting Oscar on the threshold of the Retreat and knowing instantly she belonged at his side, without question, or care to question; of the portrait above Oscar’s bed, gazing down on the bed with such a possessive stare he had turned off the light before they made love.