Читать книгу The Master - T. H. White - Страница 9
ОглавлениеFace to Face
He took them down in the elevator and along one of the gleaming corridors, with its lights in the curved ceiling, spaced like an underground railway station. If you walked on the right-hand side of the tunnel, each light made an arc on that side but not on the other, like a perspective of comets or star-shells growing smaller and smaller. It was a bit like the dazzle in a gun-barrel. The corridor was muted with thick felt matting. The silence of their footsteps and the unwavering stillness of the light gave them a feeling of something waiting. They could hear the silence, or feel it surging in their ears. In a way, it was obsequious—like a very Grand Hotel.
At the end of the passage, there was a black ebony door with heavy, discreet, eighteenth-century panels. It was out of place, like a bit of Blenheim or Chatsworth set down in an operating theatre. It glowed with secrecy and opulence, saying, “Yes, in here.” Behind such doors, in ancient universities, the President’s butler used to wait in white gloves, with a silver tray for the visiting cards.
Bonio pulled one of those polished brass handles which tinkle bells in distant kitchens—bells on metal whorls like watch-springs, operated by wires.
The door opened of its own accord, in slow motion.
He signed to them to go in. He stayed outside. He was the colour of cheese.
In the old-fashioned hall, there were antlers—a twelve pointer—and a kind of umbrella-stand made from an elephant’s foot with brass mountings. It had an alpenstock in it. There was an oil-painting by Landseer, showing a wise Newfoundland dog with its paw on a kitten, and a plaque underneath saying: Stable Companions. There was a mahogany hat rack with curly arms on which there hung a deerstalker hat and a plaid ulster. And yes, on the carved chest under the antlers, there was the silver salver for visiting cards with a pile of brown cards in it, weathered to the colour of tobacco. The top one said: Mr. and Mrs. Charles Darwin.
There were no doors out of this hall.
They went up a staircase with a worn Axminster carpet and found another door with bull-rushes painted on it. Some transfers of kingfishers were stuck on the rushes.
The second door opened and they went in.
The room was lit by paraffin lamps—what they used to call kerosene. They had pink silk shades with bows and flounces. The wallpaper was an intricate mixture of madonna lilies and tropical birds climbing on a trellis. There were Japanese fans on the walls and several paintings in heavy gilt frames—paintings in profile of ladies with copper hair and long, thick necks, mostly smelling sunflowers or kissing knights in armour. Water colours, in lighter frames, were of views at Zermatt, and there was a sepia photograph of the Colosseum in fumed oak. In one corner there was a container shaped like a drain pipe, made of papier-mâché, which was full of peacock’s feathers, and in another corner the same sort of container with pampas grass.
The main feature of the room was an enormous hand-made radio-phonograph, brand new.
They did not notice the furniture.
The Chinaman was in the room, standing silently in his dragon robe, half a pace to the right of another figure and half a pace behind it. His face had the unreadable look which Chinamen do have. The children did not see him.
It was the other.
He was dressed in a Norfolk jacket with cycling breeches and black stockings rolled into a kind of bangle below the knee. The high boots were protected by white spats. He was bald.
But he was as bald as an egg—worse, like a china egg—worse still, like cracklin china. For the skull and jowls and nose, and even the thin, yellow ears which you could almost see through, were traced with small lines or wrinkles, like millimetre graph paper which had wavered and set to the contours of the bone. If people keep their hands in the bath water for a long time, the fingers get puckered or wrinkled. This one’s face had no wrinkles. The myriad lines were etched on it as if on ivory. They were as close together as pores, like the little sacks on the pig of an orange when you skin it. The surface was blotched here and there with brown stains, similar to freckles. Old billiard balls sometimes get to look the same as he did.
The hands were mottled.
He held out his right arm stiffly like a T-square, without turning round, and the Chinaman put a full glass of neat whisky in the claw.
He drank the whisky in three continuous gulps—held out the lizard hand again—rather like the tone-arm of an automatic gramophone changing the records—and dropped the glass, which did not break.
The Chinaman picked it up, refilled it, and put it back on the tone arm, which drained it without a pause.
Then he beckoned to Judy.
She went to the Master in a daze. He had blue eyes, as blue as sapphires, and with these, leaning forward slightly, he looked into hers. Strangely enough, considering his age, he did not wear spectacles. He looked for two minutes. Then, without anybody saying anything, Judy walked three or four steps backwards, as if leaving the presence of royalty, and the old man turned round to the dragon robe. He and the Chinaman put their foreheads close together in silence, almost touching, and remained like that for a minute. Then the Chinaman went out of the room.
Nicky was brave enough to say, “What are you doing to my sister?” Or rather, he was brave enough to try to say it, but the last part of the sentence was inclined to peter out.
There was no reply.
When the Chinaman came back, they stood still—or rather, all of them did but Nicky. He edged to his sister, watching them like a set of waxworks, ready to freeze if they moved. He whispered, “Judy?” She did not answer. He managed to get a view of her eyes. They were set. The pupils were enlarged like the brown eyes of horses. “Judy!”
Five minutes later there was a scratching on the door. It was opened from the outside by the shaky hand of Bonio.
Then what a pandemonium!
It was Jokey, covered with diesel oil, wildly hilarious, prancing among the peacock’s feathers and pampas grass. Nicky dumped himself on his knees beside her for a hug, but she was too busy to attend to one person properly. She gave him a few sidelong licks in the face, as if to say, “Yes, yes: there, there: but let’s do everything at once.” Then she had wriggled free and was in the arms of Judy, who had wakened with the surprise. Next she was running round and round the room. In Judy’s arms she wriggled to be off to Nicky, in Nicky’s for Judy. She had no time to lick their noses before it was time to lick their ears. She panted while she licked and yapped while she panted. Even the Chinaman, watching the celebrations, almost smiled.
The Master halted the circus by raising his head from his breast—at which even Jokey, sensing the atmosphere, seemed to falter. This time it was Nicky who was beckoned to the presence.
He went resentfully, dragging his feet, scared, and raised his eyes to the blue ones against his will.
There was a long, seemingly endless look—two minutes, three, four, five.
The Master sighed. He seemed to take the air far down into his Norfolk jacket, his cycling breeches, his spats. He clicked his fingers, at which the Chinaman jumped as if he had been shot. He held out his arm, which was hastily provided with a third tumbler of whisky. He dropped the empty tumbler on the carpet.
Then, taking a deep breath, he said to Nicky in a voice of singular sweetness, “Non omnis moriar.”
These were the only words spoken during the interview, except Nicky’s.
