29

We went to our rooms to change for dinner from our daily casual fashion—Elizabeth’s manner conveyed an expectation of at least a modicum of formality.

When we regrouped we were still informally dressed, but less so, Sonya in a gossamer violet dress that, as she moved, revealed slashes of golden flesh. As if, even in this, we were involved in competition—which annoyed me—both Paul and I wore khakis and white shirts (I rolled the sleeves up). Only Stanty had remained stubbornly as he had been.

Sonya arranged the table, casually as always, and lit the candles. Paul set the prepared dinner—thin-sliced filet mignon, a leafy salad, cheese, fruit, and, of course, excellent wine.

During dinner, there was none of the usual light talk among people who have not seen each other for some time. The sense of waiting stretched within the darkened glow of the candles, flickering occasionally when swept by the swirling of the electric fan.

Dinner was over. There was the usual lull in conversation as we waited for a hint of what would come next, drinking the wine, spearing pieces of fruit, and choosing cheese.

Stanty stood straight up in his chair, his military style of command recovered.

“Elizabeth, why are you here?” he asked.

“I love this wine, Paul,” Elizabeth said, sipping it slowly.

“I got it in anticipation of your visit, Elizabeth.”

“It’s much like the Sancerre we drank one night in Constantinople,” she said. Then: “Stanty, what did you ask me?”

I had seen Stanty wince at the mention of Constantinople. With a smile, Paul fixed his gaze on him, granting permission. His stance regained, Stanty repeated, “I asked you, Elizabeth: Why? Are? You? Here?”

“To see what kind of life you’ve been living on this isolated island,” she said.

In silence, disoriented by her ambiguous declaration, everyone stared at her as if, even without further clarification or direction from her, no more words were needed.

She sipped more wine. Another pause. She sipped again, delighting in its taste, commenting on it. She was withholding whatever she was about to say, keeping it in abeyance, feeding the attention she was demanding while asserting her composure. Taking another sip, holding the glass out, all in smooth motions. She said: “Please, Paul, a toast. We haven’t had one, a toast to this memorable evening.”

Equally assured—two generals who have measured each other’s strengths and weaknesses and are preparing to kill—Paul raised his glass: “To this fucken memorable evening, whatever it is.”

Out of context, or expectation, the bold word, pronounced in mockery of Elizabeth’s suggestion, did not jar her; she showed not even the slightest frown of displeasure: “Why is it, Paul, that you force yourself to become vulgar; usually that’s only in reference to sex. Why?”

“Sex?” he said. “Elizabeth, sex is vulgar, it has to have its own language. Without vulgarity—crassness, yes—sex is only tedious; you should know that, the tedium of exhausted desire. Some resort to dangerous games.”

“Like you, Paul; just like you.”

“Like us,” he corrected her. “Just like us.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “We played together.”

A time when, Paul had claimed, she had colluded in being cut with a knife, allowing blood to trickle onto her breasts, to be licked off by him—that recalled vision too was in total conflict with the woman before us.

She was looking at me, addressing me: “Has he enlisted you in one of his games? Perhaps not played yet? He plots them carefully, you do know?” It was clear she expected no answer as she held her glass out to be refilled by Paul, who did so.

What game, for me? I wouldn’t be a part of Paul’s maneuvers; I was never less than his equal, even more. I dismissed my brief displeasure—Elizabeth was moving only to separate possible allegiances with Paul.

She rose from the table and walked over to Stanty and touched his shoulder. He shook his head, rejecting her gesture.

“Stop that, I’m too old for that,” he protested angrily.

“But you’re not,” she said. To Paul: “Have you given any thought to his future? I don’t mean the scheming manipulation you’ve exposed him to; I mean a future without you.” It was as if words of anger, of accusation, had been borrowed to be spoken in a light drama, out of place. There would be more, I felt sure, much more about Stanty, more that was painful, cruel, beyond strange. That was why she was here.

“What will happen to him?” Paul responded easily. “At the end of summer he’ll go back to school, then he’ll return to me, always.”

What will happen to Stanty? After a series of expensive schools, what? I wondered. On this island, the two together, father and son, masters of their world, invaded only by invitation. Father and son.

“I stopped at the realtor’s office yesterday in the village,” Elizabeth said, moving to the open glass doors as if to sample the night. “I asked about the vacant island.”

Stanty tilted his head, to listen.

“You intend to buy it?” Paul said sarcastically.

“No one will,” Elizabeth said flatly, turning to face us. “In the village there’s renewed talk about what happened there.”

“You listened to those people?” Paul asked in mock indignation, or to stop her from going on.

“I know their malice,” Elizabeth said. “They never liked us; we’re not their sort, too rich, too educated—and strange, they said”—she smiled—“remember, Paul?”

“You never cared,” Paul reminded her.

“I still don’t,” Elizabeth said. “But, now, there’s more. The rumors involve Stanty, and seriously.”

Stanty stood up abruptly. “What rumors?”

Elizabeth proceeded slowly, softly, unaroused. “That you claim you know everything about that island, that you insist there’s someone there now, and that you’ve seen him. There are wild suppositions, about a fire, about a possible drowning—and more, much more; you bragged about that in the village when Paul went to talk to the lawyer and left you in the restaurant.”

Sonya said, “That isn’t so, I was with both of them all that time.”

We were all standing now; the arena was changing.

“No, my lovely, you went with Paul.” Elizabeth tossed the words at her. “Stanty went to the restaurant.”

“I know that woman who talked about me,” Stanty said, and then to Paul: “Father, she’s that ugly waitress. She asked all kinds of dirty questions about what goes on on our island, and I said stuff to shut her up. She tried to kiss me, and I pushed her away—she stank awful—”

A drowning. My memory of the day on the rowboat—I turned away from Stanty in a rush of rage. A drowning—and more, much more.

“Why are you here, Elizabeth? We’ve been asking,” Paul said, with an edge of impatience, a signal of anger.

Elizabeth said: “I’m here to take my son away from you.”

Paul laughed, mirthless laughter.

Stanty turned swiftly to face Elizabeth: “I’m not going anywhere with you. You’re not my mother.”

“I am your mother.” Elizabeth moved closer to him; he jerked away. Elizabeth faced Paul: “With reliable and expensive advice, I have arrived at the decision that it is essential to tell Stanty the tawdry story before I take him away from you.”

“Father!” Stanty said in panic, swinging about to face Elizabeth. “You aren’t my mother…. Father!”

“I am your mother,” Elizabeth continued. “Paul tried to convince you that I’m not, I let him, I encouraged it, I didn’t want you, I detested you because you were his.”

I wondered: When will this woman’s iron composure crack? Can she sustain this icy calm throughout these damning declarations?

Smoothing her hair back carefully, she resumed addressing Stanty, who had moved close to Sonya, who hugged him. “I tried to keep you from being born. But you—and Paul—were determined. You clawed your way out of me, pulling yourself out with my blood.” She paused to assert her violent litany, the horror in benign words. She will stop; she can’t go on.

She went on, as if fascinated by the words she was flinging into the hot silence. “I wished you had drowned in the blood you drained from me.”

And then: another lethal pause, as if time must stop to allow more fatal words, which she aimed at Stanty. “Corina didn’t want you, either, but she took you because Paul convinced her that it would ensure her connection with him, make it permanent, bind them to each other,” she said in a sarcastic tone. “Of course he was lying. His goal was to ensure his fortune—and to keep you to himself, to own you. Only his—no despised women allowed. I’m sorry, my lovely”—she addressed Sonya—“but you do know he detests women, all women.”

Sonya flinched, as if physically wounded. Quickly recovering, she aimed her words at Paul: “How can you allow this woman to continue? Those dreadful lies.” She held Stanty closer to her.

“Because,” Paul said, “what she’s saying is true.”

“Father—” Stanty began, again beseeching, again frantic.

Of all the terrible things I had learned about on this island, what I was hearing was the most frightening. I longed to believe that this, like all the other damning scenes, would be gone by morning, forgotten. But as I look at the players in this drama, I know that this time it will not happen.

Elizabeth delivered her case like an expert prosecutor, convinced of her victory. “It may be difficult to believe,” she addressed us all, “that Paul is a man of strict morality, his own; he is capable, as few people are, of seeing himself, judging himself, the way he sees and judges others. You have surely heard him rant about the vileness of mankind”—all delivered with sarcasm—“the evil he sees everywhere, the greed, anger, yes, all that. But whenever he lists the horrors he sees in the world, he adds— Paul, please, your words; I couldn’t do justice to your refined audacity.”

Paul answered: “Rot and decay to which—”

“Yes. That’s it,” Elizabeth interjected with a tinge of excitement, “everyone, listen: to which—”

Paul finished: “—to which I have added more than my share.”

“How moral, how perfectly moral, and how proud he is: to decry the forces that you join, to judge them and confess your allegiance to them. Paul, how brave!”

As if the anger had achieved a physical force, bombarding them, Sonya’s arms about Stanty seemed to want to shelter him.

“You love her?” Elizabeth asked Stanty. “Yes, I see that, and she will be allowed to love you, until Paul is through with her—is he yet?—and then you will hate her, too. Like Paul. No women will be allowed.” She smiled, a slash of pale color across the perfect whiteness of her face. “All that is over. I’m here to save Stanty from all that.”

Stanty fired at her: “You go away, leave me alone, leave my father alone, go away, Elizabeth, I hate you as much as you hate me, go away, leave me alone. Father!”—pleading for help. “Island!” he shouted in panic. “Island!”

“He won’t go with you, ever,” Paul said.

“I will fight you, Paul,” Elizabeth threatened.

“You won’t.”

Elizabeth sighed—a long sigh—and then she said: “It would be scandalous to reveal everything publicly, but if necessary, so be it. Of course, you do know that if that occurred, Corina’s powerful father”—she paused, as if considering deeply—“or even mine, would kill you. Both despise you.”

“Why do you want Stanty now, after all those years, after all that hatred even before he was born?” Sonya’s voice, the determined firmness with which she was questioning Elizabeth, surprised me.

Elizabeth separated herself from everyone. She faced us all. “Because,” she said—

She will break now, the composure will crash—

“—I want finally to be … a good mother. I want my son to be with me.”

Time stopped; all sound had stopped. Through the open glass doors, fierce, hot darkness invaded in slapping waves.

Then:

“I want,” Elizabeth said, “to undo the horror of it all, to undo—”

And then:

“To undo?” Paul threw his head back and laughed, a loud, harsh laugh. Slowly at first, then rapidly, he brought the palm of one hand against the other, then again, fast, again, faster, louder—applauding and laughing at the same time. “What a fucken performance, Elizabeth! Goddamn if you didn’t almost—I say, almost—have me!”

“I’ve done what I had to do.” It was an announcement that she had finished her delivery, precise, clear, steely.

“You’ve done what your lunatic psychiatrist told you to do, his stupid assignment,” Paul said, “stupidly to try to undo rancid years that we—yes, you and I—formed together. And you want to undo your guilt with this fucken reckless act? What a fucken performance!” He shook his head as if genuinely disappointed in her.

“Yes, of course, to everything, yes, yes, yes—and it’s all done,” Elizabeth said, and her voice had not changed. “I’ve undone it all, yes, and I’m leaving now,” she said. “I told the two zombies you employ to wait for me, to take me to the shore, to my car.”

Had this performance truly happened? Over now, it seemed impossible. But there was Paul, trying now to control his laughter, and there was Sonya with tears dampening her face, and there was Stanty looking pale, angry. On this island of extremes—an island that seemed to have the power of manipulation, as if it had created and allowed all that had occurred, and more that surely might occur—on this island, Elizabeth’s contrivance had assumed its place, one more heinous event to add to the others.

Elizabeth walked over to Sonya.

I thought: She’s preparing her exit, a part of her staged, redemptive scene, to restore—I almost laughed aloud—balance to the “universe.”

“You’re the most beautiful of Paul’s women,” she said to Sonya. “When Paul is through with you—he may already be—is he, my lovely, is he?”

Sonya seemed to freeze, as if she had stopped breathing.

I thought: Is Elizabeth right?—is that already happening?—what Sonya had suspected, and now Elizabeth had added her knowledge of his detestation of women; had Sonya ever heard that before? Had Paul gone that far? From her sudden look of bewildered anger at Paul, I knew Sonya was hearing those words of Paul’s total hatred for the first time—Elizabeth had struck expertly.

“—when that happens,” Elizabeth continued addressing Sonya, “perhaps you will look me up.” Holding her tightly as Sonya attempted to resist, Elizabeth kissed her on the lips, a long hungry kiss.

Sonya twisted forcefully away, rubbing the kiss off with her hand, then holding her palm open, staring down at it as if in shock, then wiping her hand furiously against her body.

As we heard the roar of the motorboat outside, Elizabeth walked to the door. She stood with her back to us. Then she turned to face us—

—and I saw this:

Her facade remained composed, she remained composed; but—

I saw this:

Her hands clenched into tight, angry fists that she held against her body as if to control them; and she said:

“I am not to blame. I have no guilt. I have reversed it all.”