Elementals - A. S. Byatt [10]
‘I was passing by. I thought I would ask you to have lunch with me. I stepped forward to do that, and you plunged. So I was able to take hold.’
‘Thank you.’
They ate lunch under an ivory-coloured parasol, next to the fountain with the unmoving energetic crocodile. Patricia had quails’ eggs in aspic, pale little spheres in translucent coffin-shapes of jelly, flecked with sprigs of herbs. Her palms and her knees were stinging as they had not stung since school playgrounds. The sunlight packed down, dense and brilliant. The canvas was not enough protection. Sweat ran along her upper lip, between her breasts, in the crook of her elbow. Nils Isaksen had an angry red line between his hair and his shirt collar. Blood pulsed beside his Adam’s apple, ruddy where it should have been pale. He asked if she liked her aspic. He had chosen barquettes of brandade de morue. A northern fish, he said, the codfish. It seemed illicit and unnatural, made into a paste, would she say? – a purée? – with olive oil. And garlic. Excuse me, he said, you have dust on your cheeks, from your fall. May I? He touched her cheekbone with his napkin. All the same, he said, you took a plunge. I will say no more. But I was watching. You launched yourself, so to speak, from the plinth of the Maison Carrée. I would like to be able to help.
‘Help,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe in help. I believe . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘I believe in indifference,’ said Patricia Nimmo. ‘The flow of things. Anything. One thing, then another thing. Crocodile fountains. Dust. Sun. Eggs in aspic. I’m talking nonsense. The sun’s moved. It’s in my eyes.’
‘We could change chairs. I have dark glasses. I have a hat. Please – ’
They stood up. They changed places. Nils Isaksen said:
‘I understand you. You will think I don’t, but I think I do. To me indifference is a temptation, fatally easy. You will say that he is insensitive, he has understood nothing, he is a fool, everybody believes indifference is bad, but I, Patricia Nimmo, have secret wisdom, I know there is good in it. That is what you think, don’t you? Whereas, Mrs Nimmo, I dare to offend you by saying I have been there, I have tried indifference, it is a good station for changing trains, then it becomes – cement. Cement. You did not launch yourself into the path of that Corvette out of indifference.’
‘Out of the purest indifference. If it was a launch, it was out of indifference.’
‘We are in deep.’
‘Talking does no good.’
‘I should like to recommend curiosity. You must take an interest. Curiosity and indifference, Mrs Nimmo, are opposites, you will say. But not truly. For both are indiscriminate. You may sit there, glass-eyed while things slip past, what did you say, eggs in aspic, crocodile fountains, the stones of this city. Or you may look with curiosity, and live. I am trying to learn this city. It is not a trivial undertaking. I am learning these stones. You are right, in part, I believe it is a matter of indifference what you learn – or rather, it is a matter of blind fate, which has a creepy way of looking like destiny. But you must be curious, you must take an interest. This is human.’
The truth was, Patricia thought, with a trace of her old wit, he looked dreadfully inhuman as he said this, staring like a gargoyle, his pale skin flaking in patches, his yellow-white curls sweat-streaked, his lips stretched with evangelical fervour. He did not create curiosity about himself, by no means.
‘I take an interest in you,’ he said, plucking off his dark glasses and turning a dazzled blue stare on her.
‘I don’t want a guardian angel, I’m afraid,’ said Patricia, pushing back her chair.
‘Afraid?’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t want, that is what I mean, I don’t want – ’ She stood up and walked away in the white-gold air.
Because she forgot to pay for her lunch and also because she possibly owed him her life, she went with him two days later to the museum. The building stood, almost Roman, around an inner courtyard, round whose walls, in a kind of cloister, were partly