Hymn Read online

  Sylvia opened and closed her mouth. Celia stayed where she was, her hands in her raincoat pockets, watching Sylvia with just the faintest touch of a smile on her lips, her eyes masked by those two black circles, black as the Bible-paper that the pirates in Treasure Island had cut out to make the black spot.

  ‘Fine way to welcome your best friend,’ she said, and her tone was quite vinegary. ‘Now, you have something of mine. Something I need. I’d appreciate it a whole lot if I could have it back.’

  ‘You’re dead,’ Sylvia hissed at her. ‘I’m imagining this. You’re dead.’

  Her feet and ankles felt as if they had grown cold clinging tentacles which had wound around the balcony and left her powerless to move. Celia stepped closer, and Sylvia’s brain said run, but she couldn’t even step back. Run, she’s dead! Run!

  ‘I followed you out to the lighthouse,’ said Celia. She didn’t take off her dark glasses, didn’t smile. She was so much like Celia, yet there was something about her which was unnervingly unfamiliar. ‘Then I followed you back here. Of course I’ve still got that key you gave me.’

  She paused, and then she added, ‘Lloyd gave you my music, didn’t he?’

  ‘You’re dead,’ gasped Sylvia, breathlessly. Her voice sounded as if she had somehow spoken into her own ear—intimate, secretive, but utterly hopeless. She had never felt so frightened in her entire life. She couldn’t bring herself to move a single inch, couldn’t even raise her swan’s-head umbrella. Celia approached so close that Sylvia could have lifted her mouth and kissed Celia’s smooth grey cheek, but still her muscles refused to work. She wondered in dumb lungless panic if she would ever be able to move again.

  ‘I was waiting for you to go to bed,’ said Celia. ‘I was hoping so much that you wouldn’t see me.’

  Sylvia at last managed to take one stiff step away from her, then another. ‘You’re . . . dead,’ she repeated. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Celia moved past her into the living-room—moved strangely and silently, her raincoat rustling. Sylvia caught a distinctive smell as she passed her by. A smell of heat, like a burned ironing-board cover.

  She turned around and watched in fascination and horror as Celia bent over the Wagner libretto. With one black-gloved hand, Celia sorted quickly through the pages, obviously making sure that none of them were missing.

  ‘It was very wrong of Lloyd to give you this,’ she remarked, without looking up.

  ‘I’m sorry. I was only borrowing it, out of interest,’ Sylvia replied. Then, ‘You’re not dead, then? Are you all right? Were you really burned? Or wasn’t it you at all?’

  Celia gathered up the pages and stood up straight. ‘Do I look dead? I’m more alive than ever.’

  ‘I don’t understand. You don’t seem like yourself at all.’

  Celia almost smiled. ‘On the contrary, my dearest, I’ve blossomed at last.’

  ‘You’re going to tell Lloyd that you’re okay? He’s so upset he’s almost crazy.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Celia told her, dismissively. ‘Not yet. But I will, as soon as I can. Believe me. I miss him as much as he misses me.’

  Sylvia came back into the living-room and managed to sit unsteadily down on the arm of her sofa. ‘Celia . . . you must tell me! What’s happened to you? Where have you been? If you weren’t burned, then who was? Whose body was it that Lloyd had to go to identify? And if you weren’t burned, why have you put everybody through so much anguish?’

  Celia stared at her for a long time with those smoke-black glasses, saying nothing.

  Sylvia said, ‘We love you, Celia. We care about you. If something’s wrong . . .’

  Celia hesitated a moment longer, and then she said, ‘The truth is, Sylvia, that I was given the chance of a lifetime, and I took it. There was no other way.’

  ‘A chance? What chance?’

  ‘Look,’ said Celia, ‘I’m very sorry for all the pain that I’ve caused you, and everybody else. But I had no choice. It had to be done secretly. It had to be done without anybody knowing in advance. And until it’s truly finished, it has to remain secret.’

  ‘But what’s the secret?’ Sylvia demanded.

  ‘Life, Sylvia. That’s the secret. Life.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Celia said, as if she were quoting, ‘There is one sure way to everlasting life, and that is the baptism of fire.’

  ‘Celia,’ Sylvia persisted. She was still afraid, but she was becoming irritated, too. She had seen the distress that Lloyd had suffered, because of her apparent death. She had experienced that same distress herself. She didn’t consider it at all funny that Celia should now reappear, without regret, without apology, and behaving in the oddest, most arrogant way imaginable.

  On the other hand (and here’s where she had to be careful) it was possible that Celia had gone through some kind of mental breakdown. She had always been a brilliant musician, effervescent but highly strung, and she could have been suffering a nervous crisis without anyone realizing that anything was wrong. Sometimes it happened that way. She remembered Giorgi Boutone disappearing, the night before he was due to play Truffaldino in Prokofiev’s Love For Three Oranges. The musical director had found him by accident three days later, on a child’s swing in Balboa Park, unshaven and filthy, singing muh-nuh-muh-nuh from the Muppet Show.

  ‘Celia . . .’ said Sylvia. ‘Maybe I should drive you back home. You owe it to Lloyd, if nobody else.’

  Celia shook her head. ‘It isn’t time yet. We have to wait until the solstice.’

  ‘The solstice? What’s the solstice got to do with anything. How do you think he’s going to feel?’

  ‘How do I think he’s going to feel about what?’ Dead words, deadly spoken.

  ‘About your being alive, of course!’

  Celia said, almost with regret, ‘I was hoping very much that you wouldn’t tell him.’

  ‘How could I not tell him?’

  ‘Even if I begged you not to?’

  ‘Celia, Lloyd’s been through hell, thinking you killed yourself. I couldn’t let him suffer a moment longer.’

  Celia turned away. Sylvia said, ‘Celia? Celia?’ But Celia was plainly thinking very deeply about something, and didn’t even appear to hear her.

  ‘Celia, I have to tell Lloyd. I simply have to.’

  Celia looked back at her. When she spoke, her voice was measured and quiet and chillingly matter-of-fact.’You know something, Sylvia, fire has two properties. The ability to destroy, and the ability to recreate. Do you know why the Germans burned the bodies of all the Jews they slaughtered?’

  Sylvia was perplexed. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘The guards at the concentration camps didn’t know why they had to do it,’ said Celia. ‘Nor did the SS officers. But higher up it was policy. When Jews are exterminated, they must be burned.’

  ‘Celia . . .’ Sylvia protested. ‘What on earth does this have to do with . . .’

  ‘Everything!’ Celia retorted, and her voice came out in a soft, threatening roar. ‘If your body is burned, your soul will be damned. The Germans were determined to torture the Jews not only in this world, but the next, for ever and ever, for time everlasting.’

  ‘Celia, you’re sick,’ said Sylvia. ‘Why don’t you let me call Lloyd, or maybe your doctor?’

  ‘No!’ roared Celia. ‘Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? Fire can condemn you to hell, but it can save you, too! If the proper rites are observed when your body is burned, and if the proper sacrifices are made at the next changing of the year, your soul won’t be damned, but saved. Saved! And not for a month or a year, or ten years, or even one human lifetime. Your soul will be saved for ever!’

  Sylvia was trembling. ‘Are you trying to tell me you did burn yourself?’

  Celia nodded, triumphantl
y.

  ‘And are you trying to tell me that what I’m seeing here . . . this is just your soul?’

  ‘I’m a Salamander, Sylvia. A life everlasting, made of fire and smoke and human soul. A creature of perfect purity. Superior in mind, indestructible in body. The ultimate race that humankind was always meant to become.’

  ‘A Salamander?’

  ‘That’s what we call them. That’s what we are.’

  ‘Who’s we? Is Marianna one of these Salamanders too?’

  Celia circled the room, until she was standing quite close. ‘Marianna and many others. Scores of others.’

  ‘So that bus . . .?’

  ‘That’s right! Burned on purpose. Burned happily. The time has almost arrived!’

  Sylvia glanced up at her nervously. ‘Celia . . . this is very hard for me to believe.’

  ‘It was hard for me, too, when I first heard about it,’ said Celia. ‘In fact, I dismissed it. But then I met Otto and Helmwige and then I understood.’

  ‘What are you going to do next?’ Sylvia asked her. ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘With Otto and Helmwige,’ Celia replied.

  ‘And you won’t talk to Lloyd?’

  ‘Not yet. Not until the solstice. He mustn’t see me yet. I’m not . . . well, I’m not stable. Physically, I mean. Not mentally.’

  Sylvia said, ‘Do you want a drink? I could use one myself.’

  ‘A glass of water would be good.’

  ‘Is that all? Just water?’

  Sylvia stood up, and circled around Celia, and went to the corner table where she kept her drinks. She poured herself a Kahlua, and then said to Celia, ‘Just going to the kitchen . . . get your water for you. And ice, too.’

  Celia was standing with her back to her, leafing through Wagner’s libretto. She gave the smallest nod of acknowledgement.

  ‘You know something . . . I was saying to Lloyd, that libretto must be worth a fortune,’ called Sylvia, opening up the refrigerator, and rattling the ice-tray. ‘Darn it, this ice is all stuck! I’ll have to put it under the hot water tap!’

  Celia said, ‘We were lucky to find it. In fact, we’ve found almost all of it now. All the pieces that matter.’

  ‘You mean there’s a whole opera?’ Sylvia dropped the ice-tray noisily into the sink and turned on the cold water tap at full volume. Then she quickly stepped across to the other side of the kitchen and unhooked the telephone. Holding her breath, she punched out Lloyd’s home number and prayed and prayed that he had managed to get back by now. Please Lloyd, please don’t decide to visit the restaurant, I don’t know the restaurants number. Please just be home.

  Celia said, ‘Wagner wrote it in 1883. He still hadn’t quite finished it when he died. He took it with him to Venice, and after his heart attack it disappeared. Not many people know about it. His widow Cosima mentioned it in one of her diaries, but not by name.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Sylvia. ‘Damn this ice! I think there’s something wrong with my thermostat or something.’

  Lloyd’s phone was ringing now. Please be there, Lloyd. For God’s sake, please be there.

  ‘In fact Otto was the first person to make any kind of serious search for it,’ Celia went on. ‘That was back in 1938, when Hitler was in power. Otto had Hitler’s personal approval to look for Junius, and as much Nazi party finance as he needed. And of course, Mussolini was only too eager to help.’

  Lloyd picked up the phone, and said, ‘Lloyd Denman here.’

  ‘Lloyd,’ breathed Sylvia, with her hand cupped closely over the receiver. ‘Lloyd—it’s Sylvia.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t hear you,’ Lloyd replied. ‘I just got in—the door’s open. Can you hold on for a moment?’

  ‘Lloyd, for God’s sake, it’s Sylvia!’

  Celia was saying, ‘Otto was given a team of five musical historians. They searched the whole of Venice . . . following every possible clue. It took them three years, until 1941. But they found it in the end. It had been hidden by the Roman Catholic priest who had taken Wagner’s confession on his deathbed.’

  ‘Lloyd!’ begged Sylvia.

  She could hear Lloyd closing the front door. She could hear his footsteps crossing the hallway. He picked up the receiver with a squeaking, jostling noise, and said, ‘I’m sorry about that. I just couldn’t . . .’

  Sylvia slowly lowered her phone. She wanted to shout to Lloyd CELIA’S HERE, CELIA’S ALIVE but her lungs were empty and she couldn’t breathe. Celia was standing in the kitchen doorway, staring at her with those black, black glasses. Without a word, she came over to Sylvia and lifted the phone out of her hand, and laid it down on the kitchen counter. Lloyd’s tiny voice said, ‘Hallo? Hallo? Is anybody there? Hallo?’

  Celia asked, ‘Is that Lloyd?’

  Sylvia nodded dumbly. She didn’t know why she was so frightened. Perhaps it was Celia’s black glasses. Perhaps it was the thought that she might take them off.

  ‘Celia, he has to know. You can’t . . .’

  Celia raised one black-gloved finger to her lips. ‘You promised me, Sylvia. You promised you wouldn’t tell.’

  ‘Celia, this is quite absurd. I don’t know what nonsense this Otto has been cramming into your head, but I really think this has all gone much too far . . .’

  ‘Sylvia! You promised!’

  On an impulse, Sylvia reached up and snatched off Celia’s glasses. She was prepared for almost anything—bruises, burns, blindness. But when she saw Celia’s eyes she screamed and screamed and screamed and couldn’t stop. They were as black and empty as her dark glasses, holes in the grey featureless skin of her face. They gave her an expression of utter deadness, like a death-mask. She was a thing which walked but shouldn’t walk.

  Celia seized Sylvia’s wrist and prized the glasses out of her fingers. ‘Stop screaming!’ she commanded her. ‘Stop screaming!’

  ‘Ah! Ah! Ah!’ Sylvia gasped, shuddering with terror.

  ‘Stop it!’ Celia shouted at her. ‘Stop it! Shut up!’

  ‘Oh God you’re not real, oh God you’re not real!’ Sylvia shrieked at her. ‘I’m having a nightmare! Go away! Go away!’

  Celia seized the lapels of Sylvia’s dress and shook her so hard that one of her earrings flew off. ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up! Shut up! You’re hysterical!’

  But Sylvia screamed and gibbered and dropped to her knees. Her brain felt as if it had fused, and she couldn’t stop herself. Seeing Celia alive when she thought she was dead had been frightening enough. But seeing her dead when she was obviously alive was more than her mind could accept.

  Celia hesitated, turned, then turned back again. She could hear footsteps outside the apartment, then the doorbell jangled. ‘Ms Cuddy?’ called a man’s voice. ‘Ms Cuddy, you okay in there?’

  Celia lifted her right glove and unbuttoned it, tossing it aside. Then her left glove. Her hands were as pale and as smooth and as grey as her face. Deftly, she unbuttoned her raincoat, all the way down, and slid out of it. Underneath the raincoat she was completely nude, except for her tightly-wrapped black turban, her black high-heeled shoes, and a wide black leather belt, cinched tightly around her waist. The skin of her naked body was the same pearly-grey—a grey that gleamed in the shadows of Sylvia’s kitchen like softly-polished aluminium, or the skin of a baby, three days dead.

  She took hold of Sylvia’s hands, both of them. ‘Come on, Sylvia,’ she coaxed her. ‘Come on, Sylvia, up.’

  Sylvia stared at her, wide-eyed. ‘You’re naked. You’re dead. . . .

  Go away.’

  ‘Come on, Sylvia, up you get.’

  ‘Ms Cuddy!’ the man’s voice repeated. ‘This is Ramone the Super, Ms Cuddy? Is everything okay?’

  ‘Everything’s fine, thank you, Ramone!’ Celia called, in a fair imitation of Sylvia’s Bostonian accent.

  Sylvia wa
s standing with her knees slightly bent, as if she couldn’t find the strength to stand up straight. ‘What are you going to do to me?’ she asked, in a voice as scattered as a burst-open bag of dolly-mixtures. ‘What are you going to do to me? Please! I won’t tell! I promise you, Celia! I promise you!’

  Celia held Sylvia close, wrapping her arms around, pressing Sylvia’s cheek close to her breast.

  Slowly, almost sensually, she began to stroke Sylvia’s hair.

  ‘You feel hot,’ Sylvia muttered. ‘I thought dead people were supposed to be cold.’

  ‘Ah, but I’m not dead,’ Celia told her, still stroking her hair, over and over. ‘I’m very much alive. I’m so much alive that I shall never die.’

  ‘Celia, you’re so hot. Don’t hold me so close. I can’t bear it.’

  Pale grey fingers stroked her hair, over and over. A first wisp of smoke, from the top of her scalp. A first smell of burning.

  ‘Celia, please! You’re hurting me! You feel so hot!’

  But Celia’s eyelids closed over those empty eye-sockets as if she simply didn’t choose to hear, and she kept on stroking Sylvia’s hair, her fingers running deeply and sensually into her

  curls. Another wisp of smoke, a small sharp crackle of burning ends.

  ‘I shall never die, Sylvia, my darling, and nor shall Marianna, nor David, nor Leonard, nor Carmen, nor Julie, nor any of us. We’re all pure now, every one of us. Salamanders! And we shall find more to purify, thousands more.’

  Her fingers stroked and stroked. Sylvia tried to struggle free, but Celia held her even more tightly. Celia’s arms were so hot now that Sylvia’s silk blouse began to scorch, and the flowery fabric shrivel up. Smoke was pouring from Sylvia’s hair, and filling the kitchen with an acrid, eye-watering stench. Suddenly, her hair burst into flame, and she shouted in pain. Celia instantly clamped her hand over Sylvia’s mouth, and her fingers were so hot that Sylvia’s lips sizzled and seared, like raw steak pressed against a red-hot skillet.