The Snow Pavilion-1
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The motor stalled in the middle of a snowy landscape, lodged in a rut, wouldnt budge an inch. How I swore! Id plao be snug in front of a r fire, by now, a single malt on the mahogany wiable (a oisseurs piece) beside me, the five courses of Melissas dinner savourously aromatising the kit; to plete the decor, a labrador retrievers head laid on my knee as trustingly as if I were indeed a try gentleman and lolled by rights among the tz. After dinner, before I read our ary pre-coital poetry aloud to her, my elegant and aplished mistress, also a oisseurs piece, might play the piano for her part-time pasha while I sipped black, acrid coffee from her precious little cups.Melissa was rich, beautiful and rather older than I. The servants slipped me looks of sly plicity; no matter how carefully I rumpled my sheets, they knew when a bed hadnt bee in. The master of the house had a pied-a-terre in Londohe House was sitting and the House was sitting tight. Id met him only o the same dinner party where Id met her -- hed been off-hand with me, gruff. I was young and handsome and full of promise; my relations with husbands rarely prospered. Wives were quite amother matter. Women, as Mayakovosky justly opined, are very partial to poets.
And now her glamorous motor car had broken down in the snow. Id borrowed it for a trip to Oxford, ostensibly to buy books, utilising, with my instinctual ing, the weather as an excuse. Last night, the old woman had been shaking her mattress with a vengeance -- suow! When I woke up the bedroom was full of luminous snow light, catg in the coils of Melissas honey-coloured hair, and Id experienced, once again, but, this time, almost untrollably, the sense of claustrophobia that sometimes afflicted me when I was with her.
Id said, lets read some snowy poetry together, after dionight, Melissa, a tribute of white verses to the iography of the weather. Any excuse, no matter how far fetched, to get her out of the house -- too much luxury on ay stomach, that was the trouble. Always the same eyes too big for his belly, as grandma used to say; grandma spotted the trait when this little fellow lisped and toddled and pissed the bed before he knew what luxury was, even. Cultural iion, I tell you, the gripe in the bowels of your spirit. How I get out of here, away from her subtly flawed antique mirrors, her French perfume deted ieenth-tury crystal bottles, her inscrutably smirking aresses in their gilt, oval frames? And her dolls, worst of all, her blasted dolls.
Those dolls that had never have been played with, her fine colle of antique women, part of the apparatus of Melissas charm, her piquant inality that lay well on the safe side of quaint. A dozen or so of the fi lived in her bedroom in a glass-fronted, satinwood et lavishly equipped with such toyland artefacts and miniature sofas and teeny-tiny grand pianos. They had heads made of moulded porcelain, each dimple aung underlip sculpted with loving care. Their wigs and over-lifelike eyelashes were made of real hair. She told me their eyes had been manufactured by the same craftsman in glass who made those terribly precious paperweights filled with magiowstorms. Whenever I woke up in Melissas bed, the first thing I saw were a dozen pairs of shining eyes that seemed to gleam wetly, as if in lacrimonious accusation of my presehere, for the dolls, like Melissa, were perfect ladies and I, in my upwardly social mobile nakedness -- a nakedhat was, ihe essential battledress for such storm-troopers as I! -- patently leman.
After three days of that kind of style, I badly o sit in a public bar, drink coarse pints of bitter, s double entendres with the barmaid; but I could hardly tell milady that. Instead, I must use my vocation to justify my day off. Lehe car, Melissa, so that I drive to Oxford and buy a book of snowy verses, siheres no such book in the house. And Id made my purchase and mao fit in my bread, cheese and badinage as well. A good day. Then, almost home again and here I was, stuck fast.
The fields were all brim-full of snow and the dark sky of late afternoon already swollen and discoloured with the fall. Flocks of crows wheeled endlessly upon the invisible carousels of the upper air, occasionally emitting a rusty caw. A glance beh the bo showed me only that I did not know what was wrong and must get out te along a lane where the mauve shadows told me snow and the night would arrive together. My breath smoked. I wound Melis<var>藏书网</var>sas husbands muffler round my ned dug my fists into his sheepskin pockets; his borrowed coat kept me snug and warm although the ade the nerves in my forehead hum with a thin, high sound like that of the wind in telephone wires.
The leafless trees, the hillside quilted by interses of dry-stone walling -- all had been subdued to monoe by the severity of last nights blizzard. Snow clogged every sound but that of the ironictuation of the crows. No sign of another presehe pastoral cows were all locked up ieaming byre, Clout and Hobbinol sucked their pipes by the fireside in pastoral domesticity. Who would be outside, today, when he could be warm and dry, inside.
Too white. It is too white, out. Silend whiteness at such a pitch of twinned iy you know what it must be like to live in a try where snow is not a charming, sinfrequent, visitor that puts its cold garlands orees so prettily we think they are playing at blossoming. (What an aptly fragile simile, with its Botticellian nuance. I gratulated myself.) No. Today is as cold as the killing cold of the perpetually white tries; todays atrocious dour is that of those white freckles that are the stigmata of frostbite.
My sensibility, the exquisite sensibility of a minor poet, tingled and crisped at the sight of so much whiteness.
I was certain that soon Id e to a village where I could telephone Melissa; then she would send the village taxi for me. But the snow-fields now glimmered spectrally in ahiing light and still there was no sign of life about me in the whole, white world but for the helmeted crows creaking down towards their s.
Then I came to a pair ht-iron gates standing open on a drive. There must be some mansion or other at the end of the drive that would offer me shelter and, if they were half as rich as they ought to be, to live in such style, then they would certainly know Melissa and might even have me driven back to her by their own chauffeur in a warm car that would smell deliciously of new leather. I was sure they must be rich, the try side was lousy with the rich; hadnt I flattened a brace of pheasants on my way to Oxford? Enced, I ?urned iweee-posts, on whiarled iron gryphons sp circumcision caps of snow.
The drive wound through an elm copse where the upper limbs of the bare trees were clogged with beastly lice of old crows s. I could tell that nobody had e this way sihe snow fell, for only rabbit slots and the eiform prints of birds marked surfaces already crisping with frost<cite></cite>. The drive took me uphill. My shoes and trouser bottoms were already wet through; it grew darker, colder and the old woman must have given her mattress a tentative shake or two, again, for a few more flakes drifted down and caught on my eyelashes so I first saw that house through a dazzle as of uears, although, I assure you, I was out of the habit .
I had reached the brow of a hill. Before me, in a hollow, magically surrounded by a snowy formal garden, lay a jewel of a mansion in a voluptuous style of English renaissand every one of its windows blazed with light. I imagined myself describing it to Melissa- "a vista like visible Debussy". Enting. But, though lights streamed out in every dire, all was silent except for the crag of the frosty trees. Lights and frost; in the winter sky above me, stars were ing oubbr></abbr>t. Especially for my cultured patroness, I made an elision of the stars in the mansion of the heavens and the lights of the great house. So who was it, this snowy afternoon, whod bagged a triad of fine images for her? Why, her clever boy! How pleased shed be. And now I could declare the image factory closed for the day a on with the real business of living, the experience of which that lovely house seemed to promise me in such abundance.
Yet, sihe place was so well lit, the front door at the top of the serpeaircase left open as for expected guests, why were there still no traces of arrivals or departures in the snow on which my footpriended backwards to the lane and Melissas abandoned car? And no figures to be glimpsed through any window, nor sound of life at all?
The vast empty hall serenely dominated by an immense delier, the faceted pendants of which ked faintly in the currents of warm air and stippled with shifting, prismatic shadows walls wreathed in white stucco. This delier intimidated me, like too grand a butler but, all the same, I found the bellpull and tugged it. Somewhere inside a full-mouthed bell tolled; its reverberatiohe delier a-ti even whehiled down again, nobody came.
I hauled again on the bellpull; still no reply, but a sudden wind blew a flurry of snow or sleet arouo the hall. The delier rocked musically in the draught. Behind me, outside, the air was full of the taste of snow -- the storm was about to begin again. Nothing for it but to step bravely over the indifferent threshold and stamp my feet on the doormat with enough eclat to announce my arrival to the entire ground floor.
It was by far the most magnifit house Id ever seen, and warm, so warm my frozen fihrobbed. Yet all was white inside as the night outside, white walls, white paint, white drapes and a faint perfume everywhere, as though many rien iiful dresses had drifted through the hall on their way to drinks before dinner, leaving behind them their spoor of musk and civet. The very air, here, mimicked the caress of their naked arms, intimate, voluptuous, rare.
My nostrils flared and quivered. I should have liked to have made love to every one of those lovely beings whose presence here was most poignant in her abse was a house built and furnished only for pleasure, for the indulgence of the flesh, for elegant cupisce. I felt like Mignon in the land of the lemon trees; this is the place where I would like to live. I screwed up suffit wing ce to shout out: "A home?" But only the delier tinkled in reply.
Then, a sudden creak behind me; I spun round to see the door swing to on its hinges with a soft, inexorable click. At that, the delier above me seemed to titter untrollably, as if with glee to see me locked in.
It is the wind, only the wind. Try to believe it is only the wind that blew the door shut behind you, keep a strong hold on that imagination of yours. Stop that shaking, all at oneasy; walk slowly to the door, dont look nervous. It is the wind. Or else -- perhaps -- a trick of the owners, a practical joke. I grasped the notion gratefully. I khe rich loved practical jokes.
But as soon as I realised it must be a practical joke, I knew I was not alone in the house because its appareiness art of the joke. Then I exged one kind of unease for another. I became terribly self-scious. Now I must watch my step; whatever happened, I must look as if I knew how to play the game in which I found myself. I tried the door but I was locked firmly in, of course. In spite of myself, I felt a faint panic, stifled it. . . No, you are not at their mercy.
The hall remained perfectly empty. Closed doors oher side of me; the staircase swept up to ay landing. Am I to meet my hosts in embarrassment and humiliation, will they all e boung -- "boo!" -- out of hidey holes in the panelling, from behind sweeping curtains to make fun of me? A huge mirror behind aravagant arra of arum lilies showed me a poor poet not altogether vingly rigged out in borrowed try squires gear. I thought, how pinched and pale my face looks; a face thats eaten too much bread and margarine in its time. e, now, liven up! You left bread and margarine behind you long ago, at grandmas house. Now you are a house-guest of the Lady Melissa. Your car has just broken down in the lane; you are looking for assistance.
Then, to my relief but also my increased disquiet, I saw a face behind my own, reflected, like mine, in the mirror. She must have known I could spy her, peeking at me behind my back. It ale, soft, pretty face, streaming blonde hair, and it sprang out quite suddenly from the refles of the backs of the lilies. But when I turned, she -- young, tricksy, fleet of foot -- was gone already, though I could have sworn I heard a carillon of giggles, unless my sharp, startled movement had disturbed the delier, again.
This fleeting apparitio me know for sure I was observed. ("How amusing, a game of hide-and-seek. All the same, do you think, perhaps, the chauffeur could. . .") With the sullen knowledge of myself as appointed , I opehe first door I came to on the ground floor, expeg to discover my tittering audience awaiting me.
It erfectly empty.
A white on white reception room, all bleached, all pale, sidetables of glass and e, artefacts of white lacquer, upholstery of thick, white velvet. pany was expected; there were deters, bowls of ice, dishes of nuts and olives. I was tempted to swallow a cut-glass tumbler full of something-or-other, to snatch a handful of salted almonds -- I arched and starving, only that pub sandwich since breakfast. But it would never do to be caught i by the fair-haired girl Id glimpsed in the hall. Look, shes left her doll behind her, fotten in the deep cushioning of an armchair.
How the ridulge their children! Not a doll so much as a little work of art; the cash register at the bay mind rang up twenty guineas at the sight of this floppy Pierrot with his skull-cap, his white satin pyjamas with the black buttons down the front, all plete, and that authentic pout of ic sadness on his fine a face. Mon ami Pierrot, poor old fellow, limp limbs a-dangle, all anguished sensibility and no moral fibre. I know how you feel. But, as I exged my glance of pitying plicity with him, there came a sharp, melodious twang like a note from an imperious tuning fork, from beyond the half-open double doors. After a startled moment, I sprang into the dining room, summoned.
I had never seen anything like that dining room, except at the movies -- not even at the dinner where Id met Melissa. Fifteen covers laid out on a tongue-shaped spit of glass; but I hardly had time to take in the splendour of the fine a, the lead crystal, because the door into the hall still swung on its hinges and I knew I had missed her by seds. So the daughter of the house is indeed playing "catch" with me; and where has she got to, now?
Soft, softly on the white carpets; I leave deep prints behi do not make a sound. And still no sign of life, only the pale shadows of the dles; yet, somehow, everywhere a sense of hushed expecy, as of the night before Christmas.
Then I heard a patter of running footsteps. But these footsteps came from a part of the house where no carpets muffled them, somewhere high above me. As I poised, ears a-twitch, there came from upstairs or downstairs, or miladys chamber, a spring of thin, high laughter agitating the deliers; then the sound of many, many runni overhead. For a moment, the whole house seemed to tremble with unseen movement; then, just as suddely, all was silent again.
I resolutely set myself to search the upper rooms.
All these rooms were quite empty. But my always paranoia, now tingling at the tip of every nerve, assured me they had all been vacated the very moment I ehem. Every now and then, as I made my increasingly grim-faced tour of the house, I heard bursts of all kinds of delierriments but never from the room o the one in which I stood. These voices started and stopped as if switched on and off and, of course, were part and parcel of the joke; this joke was my unease. In what, by its size and luxury, must have been the master bedroom, the polar bearskin rug throwhe bed was warm and rumpled as if someone had just been lying there and now hid, perhaps, in the ivorine wardrobe, enjoying my perplexity. And I could have wrecked their fun if only -- if only! -- I had the ce to fling open the pale doors and catch my relut hosts croug, as I thought, among the couture. But I did not dare do that.
The staircarpets gave way to scrubbed boards and still I had not seen anything living except the possibility of a fa the mirror, although the entire house was full of evidence of life. These upper floors were dimly lit, only single lights in holders at intervals along the walls, but one door was standing open and light spilled out onto the passage, like an invitation.
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