With a room to herself, and an endless supply of paper, she began to write her memoirs again, from the beginning.
It was late summer, and the nights were getting chilly. Sometimes, to warm herself, she would lie on the floor, (she’d asked them to remove the bed) and will her body to ripple like the surface of a lake. Her body, without sex, became a mystery to her again; and she realized for the first time that physical love had been an exploration of that most intimate, and yet most unknown region of her being: her flesh. She had understood herself best embracing someone else: seen her own substance clearly only when another’s lips were laid on it, adoring and gentle. She thought of Vassi again; and the lake, at the thought of him, was roused as if by a tempest. Her breasts shook into curling mountains, her belly ran with extraordinary tides, currents crossed and recrossed her flickering face, lapping at her mouth and leaving their mark like waves on sand. As she was fluid in his memory, so as she remembered him, she liquefied.
She thought of the few times she had been at peace in her life; and physical love, discharging ambition and vanity, had always preceded those fragile moments. There were other ways presumably; but her experience had been limited. Her mother had always said that women, being more at peace with themselves than men needed fewer distractions from their hurts. But she’d not found it like that at all. She’d found her life full of hurts, but almost empty of ways to salve them.
She left off writing her memoirs when she reached her ninth year. She despaired of telling her story from that point on, with the first realization of on-coming puberty. She burnt the papers on a bonfire she lit in the middle of her room the day that Pettifer arrived.
My God, she thought, this can’t be power.
Pettifer looked sick; as physically changed as a friend she’d lost to cancer. One month seemingly healthy, the next sucked up from the inside, self-devoured. He looked like a husk of a man: his skin grey and mottled. Only his eyes glittered, and those like the eyes of a mad dog.
He was dressed immaculately, as though for a wedding.
“J.”
“Titus.”
He looked her up and down.
“Are you well?”
“Thank you, yes.”
“They give you everything you ask for?”
“Perfect hosts.”
“You haven”t resisted.”
“Resisted?”
“Being here. Locked up. I was prepared, after Lyndon, for another slaughter of the innocents.”
“Lyndon was not innocent, Titus. These people are. You didn’t tell them.”
“I didn’t deem it necessary. May I close the door?” He was her captor: but he came like an emissary to the camp of a greater power. She liked the way he was with her, cowed but elated. He closed the door, and locked it.
“I love you, J. And I fear you. In fact, I think I love you because I fear you. Is that a sickness?”
“I would have thought so.”
“Yes, so would I.”
“Why did you take such a time to come?”
“I had to put my affairs in order. Otherwise there would have been chaos. When I was gone.”
“You’re leaving?”
He looked into her, the muscles of his face ruffled by anticipation.
“I hope so.”
“Where to?”
Still she didn’t guess what had brought him to the house, his affairs neatened, his wife unknowingly asked forgiveness of as she slept, all channels of escape closed, all contradictions laid to rest.
Still she didn’t guess he’d come to die.
“I’m reduced by you, J. Reduced to nothing. And there is nowhere for me to go. Do you follow?”
“No.”
“I cannot live without you,” he said. The cliché was unpardonable. Could he not have found a better way to say it? She almost laughed, it was so trite.
But he hadn’t finished.
“— and I certainly can’t live with you.” Abruptly, the tone changed. “Because you revolt me, woman, your whole being disgusts me.”
“So?” she asked, softly.
“So. . .” He was tender again and she began to understand. “. . . kill me.”