Elementals - A. S. Byatt [14]
They walked in hostile silence out of the gallery and faced each other in the hot sun on its steps.
‘Please,’ said Patricia, English and icy, ‘just leave me alone.’
‘I think I should – ’
‘I am going to have to leave this town because of you. Because of your interference in my life.’
‘Because of my interference in your death,’ said Nils Isaksen.
Patricia began to walk away, brisk and furious. She did not look behind to see what he was doing or not doing. In the Place d’Assas there is no shade. There are many modern fountains, carved in the gold stone – a huge head spewing clear water into a long narrow channel, a naked pair of youth and maiden, in bronze, catching water from a columnar structure in a pale aquamarine circular pool. Patricia came to the middle of the square and began to shake. She stumbled towards the pale blue under the dark bright sky and fell on her face towards the water, like a desert traveller in a film. Her stomach heaved. The sun clanged in the sky like a gong. Tears squeezed between her hot lids. She fell forwards to drown in two inches of warm water. And the large bony fingers of Nils Isaksen gripped again, pulling her back by her shoulders. Between the sun and her eyes he was no more than a black space, a shadow carved with spikes. He pulled her to her feet and she fell into his arms, gulping and staggering. He put his arms round her for a moment, and then transferred the Van Gogh hat from his white curls to her bronze cap. She clutched him.
‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Out of the sun.’
They sat together in her bedroom, Patricia in the chintz chair, Nils Isaksen gawky on the pretty desk chair. The air-conditioning groaned. It was only the second time he had been in her room. He wiped her face with a cold flannel, and poured her a glass of water from the minibar. He said:
‘This cannot go on.’
‘It is not what you think.’
‘I will tell you a story. In Norwegian it is called Følgesvennen. In French it is Le Compagnon. The Companion? It is about a young man, who dreams of a beautiful princess and when he wakes, sells all he has and sets out in search of her. And when he has walked far, and farther than far, for months, in the deep winter, he comes to a church. And outside the church is a block of ice. And in the ice is a dead man, standing upright. And when the priest comes out of the church, the young man asks him what the man is doing in the ice. And the priest replies that he is a great sinner who has been put to death, and stands there to be spat at. And it would take more money than anyone is prepared to spend on such a sinner to lay him in the ground. So he just stands there.
‘When I think of you, walking up and down in the heat with no hat,’ said Nils Isaksen, ‘I think of the block of ice.’
‘How does it go on?’
‘Oh, the young man asks what the dead man’s sin was. He was a butler, says the priest, who watered the wine. Not so terrible, says the young man and gives the remains of his savings for the dead man to be chipped out of the ice and decently buried. So then he has nothing and goes on his way. And that night a man comes to him, and proposes to be his servant, and the young man says he has nothing left to pay a servant. So the other says he will come for fellowship. So he comes, as a companion. And they have many adventures. They meet three old women – troll women – in three caves. Each hag invites the young man to sit in a stone chair. Each time the Companion insists that the old woman herself sits there, and she cannot refuse, and the chairs do their work, and seize them, and will not let them go. And from each old hag the Companion takes a treasure in return for the promise of her release – a sword, and a thread, and a magic hat of invisibility. But then he leaves them sitting there and breaks the bargain. I have observed,’ said Nils Isaksen, ‘that Norwegian heroes are particularly given to bargain-breaking. They make compacts with trolls, and think nothing of cheating.’
‘It is not what you think,’ said Patricia.
‘What is not what I think?’
‘The body in the ice.