‘Harry, your plan is dangerous and it can’t possibly work,’ she said. ‘Anyway, don’t you realise what you’re doing? If it does work it will be murder, Harry! You’ll be no better than . . . than him!’ She turned her head of golden tresses and gazed fearfully at the house through eyes of blue crystal.
The house was a dark blot against a sky so blue that it hurt the eyes. It stood there like a mass of ink frozen against a green and blue background, as if fresh spilled in a child’s picturebook; and like a Black Hole of interstellar physics, no light shone out of it and nothing at all escaped its gaping, aching void. It was black because of what it housed, as black as the soul of the man who lived there.
Harry shook his head, dragging his own eyes from the house only with a great effort of will. ‘Not murder,’ he said. ‘Justice! Something he’s escaped for almost fifteen years. I was little more than a baby, a mere infant, when he took you from me. He’s got away with it until now. But now I’m a man. How much of a man will I be if I let it go at that?’
‘But don’t you see, Harry?’ she insisted. ‘Taking your revenge won’t put it right. Two wrongs never make a right . . .’ They sat down on the grass and she hugged him, stroking his hair. Harry had used to love that as a baby. He looked again at the inkblot house and shuddered, and quickly looked away.
‘It’s not just that I want revenge, Mother,’ he said. ‘I want to know why! Why did he murder you? You were beautiful, his young wife, a lady of property and talent. He should have adored you – and yet he killed you. He held you under the ice, and when you were too weak to fight let you go with the river. He killed you as coldly as if you were an unwanted kitten, the runt of the litter. He tore you from life like a weed from this very garden, except he was the weed and you a rose. What made him do it? Why?’
She frowned and shook her golden head. ‘I don’t know, Harry. I’ve never known.’
‘That’s what I have to find out. I can’t find out while he’s alive, for I know he’ll never admit it. So I’ll have to find out when he’s dead. The dead never refuse me anything. Which means … I have to kill him. And I’ll do it my way.’
‘It’s a very terrible way, Harry,’ it was her turn to shudder. ‘I know!’
He nodded, his eyes cold. ‘Yes, you do – and that’s why it must be that way . . .’
She was fearful again and clutched him to her. ‘But what if something goes wrong? Just knowing you’re all right, I can lie easy, Harry. But if anything should happen to you -‘
‘Nothing will happen. It will be just the way I plan it.’ He kissed her worried brow, but still she clung to him.
‘He’s a clever man, Harry, This Viktor Shukshin. Clever – and evil! Sometimes I could sense it in him, and it fascinated me. What was I after all but a girl? And him – he was magnetic. The Russian in him, which was there in me, too; the brooding darkness of his mind, the magnetism and the evil. We were opposing magnetic poles, and we attracted. I know that I loved him at first, even though I sensed his dark heart, but as for his reason for killing me – ‘
‘Yes?’
Again she shook her head, her blue eyes cloudy with memory. ‘It was something . . . something in him. Some madness, some unspeakable thing he couldn’t control. That much I know, but what exactly – ‘ and once more she shook her head.
‘It’s what I have to find out,’ Harry repeated, ‘for until then I won’t rest easy either.’
‘Shhh!’ she suddenly gasped, clutched him hard. ‘Look!’
Harry looked. A smaller inkblot had detached itself from the great black mass of the house. Manlike, it came down the garden path, peering here and there, worriedly wringing its hands. In its black blot of a head twin silver ovals gleamed, eyes which led it towards the fence at the bottom of the garden. Harry and his mother huddled together, but for the moment the Shukshin apparition paid them no heed. He passed by, paused briefly and sniffed suspiciously – almost like a dog – then moved on. At the fence he stopped, leaned on the top rail, for long moments peered at the river’s slow swirl.