The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [17]
I followed with a pair of silver candelabras that I set on the stones between the chairs; the air was so still, their flames scarcely moved. The summer odours of lavender and jasmine combined with the musk of honey from the candles and after a minute, with the sharp tang of coffee. Lulu set the tray on the table, then retreated to the kitchen to do the washing-up. By unspoken agreement, while she remained within earshot, we sat and drank and listened to the rumour of waves against the distant cliffs.
I watched our visitor out of the corner of my eye, as, I am sure, did Holmes. The years had brought substance to the man, while the beard, and the candle-light, transformed his fragile beauty into something sharp, almost dangerous. More than mere weight, however, he had gained assurance: Bohemian or no, this was a man that eyes would follow, both women's and men's.
Lucifer, I'd thought him earlier, and I sat now with my coffee and mused over the idea. Originally, Lucifer was the name of Venus at dawn (Vesper being the planet at dusk). The prophet Isaiah had used the morning star's transient brilliance as a metaphor for a magnificent and oppressive Babylonian king who, once the true sun rose across the land, would fade to insignificance. Jewish and Christian thought elaborated on Isaiah's passage, building up an entire mythology around the person of Lucifer, fallen prince of angels, beloved of God, brought low by pride. Lucifer is, one might say, a failed Christ: Where Jesus of Nazareth bowed willingly to Pilate's condemnation, accepting crucifixion as the will of God, Lucifer refused to submit: Subjecting himself to his inferiors, he declared, would be to deny the greatness of the God who made, loved, and chose him.
The story of Lucifer was, I reflected, a window on fathers and sons that Sigmund Freud might spend some time investigating.
The kitchen clatter had ceased. We now heard the sound of the front door opening, and closing; in response, Damian stood up and shrugged his coat onto the back of the chair, dropping his cravat over it and turning up his sleeves as he sat again. His left forearm bore a dragon tattoo, sinuous and in full colour. He hadn't had that when we had seen him before, I thought. He also hadn't had the muscle that rippled beneath it.
Holmes set his empty cup on the table. “You've been in the East,” he said. “Hong Kong?”
“Shanghai. How…?”
“The cut of your trousers, the silk of the cravat, the colour in that tattoo. How long have you been there?”
“Years.” He took out an enamelled cigarette case and a box of vestas: If he was anything like his father, tobacco signalled a lengthy tale.
The match flared and was pulled into the tobacco, then he shook it out and dropped it in the saucer.
“You remember meeting Hélène?” he asked us.
“Mme Longchamps, yes. The gallery owner.”
“She was a great deal more than that. She was my saviour. She died, just after Christmas 1919. I was … I had been going through a bad time. They ran in a kind of cycle, the bad times did, usually lasting two or three months before I grew sufficiently disgusted with myself to crawl back and let her nurse me to health. I no doubt contributed to her death—she was ill, with the influenza, but when I sent her a message to say I wanted to come home, she nonetheless got into a taxi and came to get me. A week later, I was sober and she was dead.
“I stayed for her funeral, and then I simply walked away. I knew that if I remained in Paris, I wouldn't last the year. And although a part of me felt that might be for the best, to remove my sorry self from the world, at the same time I felt I owed Hélène a life. So I saw her into the ground and then I turned and walked across town to the Gare de Lyon, and boarded a train for Marseilles.
“The sort of ship that will take on a man with neither suitcase nor identity papers is fairly primitive, but I found one, the Bella Acqua, and signed on to work my way across the globe. No drugs, no parties, no paints, nothing but hard work, bad food, sea air, and a drawing pad for