Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Keats (1795–1821)
THE FIRST TIME he had seen her she was doing yoga and she was naked. He was looking through his telescope, cursing the city glow that reflected off the night sky, when somehow the scope was knocked off balance; and there she was.
She was in the house on the other side of the road, but she seemed close enough that he could reach out and touch the hollow in her throat. The room she was in was lit by candles only and her throat and neck were ice cream in the sepia light. She was so close, he could see beads of sweat on her collarbone; he could lick them off: the taste was in his mouth even as he watched.
And she knew it. She knew he was watching. Stretching, folding her limbs—white flesh and dark shadows—she smiled. And then she had looked over her shoulder straight at him.
She had allowed him to watch her every night, but she never allowed him to touch her. They became companions. Companions of the soul and spirit—far more erotic than companions of the flesh could ever be. Denial, he came to realize, was the most sensual thing in the world. ‘Like that picture on a Grecian urn,’ she said, ‘the nymph just out of reach of the satyr’s grasp: a mad pursuit that never ends, an ardour that never cools.’
She smiled gently. ‘In chivalric love, the knight may at times share a bed with his lady, but she would still be forbidden to him. If their love were to be consummated, his passion would wither. I know. That’s what happened with him.’
Him. Justin Temple. Her voice sometimes sad when she spoke about him, sometimes angry and shrill. He darkened their lives. If it hadn’t been for that man’s shadow, he and Alette could have been happy. They were soul mates, the two of them. They had so much in common.
They shared a passion for roses. Alette with her straw hat and her rebellious red hair thrust underneath it. Alette with the scissors in her hands cutting back the tough, prickly stalks. ‘You shouldn’t cut them back so hard,’ he told her. ‘You have to be cruel to be kind,’ she replied in return. She had accompanied him to his mother’s house; tackling the soulless, formal garden with its straight garden paths and hemmed-in squares of grass and turning it into a riot of jubilant colour and heady scent. His mother had not been grateful. She had stared at the flowers, her mouth stiff. She had found the wildness, the wanton lushness of it all, overwhelming.
They shared a love for poetry, although Alette loved poems that sang of dappled light and full-throated nightingales. Wordsworth. Keats. The poets his mother had dismissed. Their wistful melancholy did not appeal to one who preferred the work of men who wrote of death with unsentimental wit.
Roses, poetry. And they had shared another passion: a fascination for what lies beyond this life; the mystery and fire of what cannot be seen and hardly comprehended. So many times they had talked about the tenuous, shimmering link that yokes together the quick and the dead. So many times had they sat shoulder to shoulder, paging through books that smelled of must and disuse, whispering together, sharing notes.
He was in awe of her gift. When Isa first told him of Alette’s calls, his first emotion had been exhilaration. After his initial reaction of delight, he had felt apprehension. What would Alette tell Isa? Why was she calling?
Temple did not like roses. He was scornful of Alette’s gift. He did not understand her: did not deserve her. But he was the one Alette loved, even though she continued to take into her life a string of lovers who could never satisfy her. ‘I hate him, Michael.’ Her face flushed and her eyes tearful. ‘I love him so.’
He had tried to cure her of her obsession, had begged her not to throw herself at the man. But her fixation with Temple was out of control. She was losing her dignity: stalking Temple, intercepting his mail. When a gossip columnist reported that Temple was seriously dating another woman, Alette had sent the woman a package in the post. Before sending it off, Alette had shown him the contents: pale, strawberry-coloured strands of pubic hair. Coarse to the touch. Unmistakable in its message.
Towards the end she had become almost a recluse. Sitting in her chair, wrapped in her throw, watching the phone constantly; hoping for a call. It was painful to watch, but he could also feel the anger building up inside of him. That very last day he had begged her not to follow Temple to the country. Did she have no shame? She was humiliating herself. Her life was becoming irrelevant. She was turning into a ghost. A malevolent ghost. She talked about revenge constantly. It was simply the other side of obsession: the midnight side.
He had never believed in revenge. Revenge was not self-empowering, it was self-defeating: a cold fire, a necrosis of the soul. Alette seemed incapable of grasping this truth.
That was when he had started plotting her death. Only death could cure her of the sickness. His love for her was that strong. He would willingly deprive himself of her presence to save her soul from the spreading rot. It was up to him to help her.
Obsession is an open wound. Revenge keeps it festering. Uncompromising action was what was called for. Soft hands make stinking wounds, as his mother was fond of saying, and she was right. A break has to be clean and final. Absolute.
With no possibility of a comeback.
But he should have known. He could sense her leaning over his shoulder. Her hand rested lightly on his arm. He smelled her perfume. Against his cheek he felt her breath.