Pendergast [07] The Book of the Dead(92)

“Antoine was never a great appreciator of music. I learned the violin entirely on my own.”

“So you can appreciate the intellectual and sensual heft of the music. Just listen to it! And thank God the greatest musical philosopher was a romantic, a decadent—not some smug Mozart with his puerile false cadences and predictable harmonies.”

Constance listened a moment in silence. “You seem to have worked rather hard to make this moment agreeable.”

Diogenes laughed lightly. “And why not? I can think of few pastimes more rewarding than to make you happy.”

“You seem to be the only one,” she said after a pause, in a very low voice.

The smile left Diogenes’s face. “Why do you say that?”

“Because of what I am.”

“You are a beautiful and brilliant young woman.”

“I’m a freak.”

Very quickly—yet with exceptional tenderness—Diogenes took her hands. “No, Constance,” he said softly and urgently. “Not at all. Not to me.”

She looked away. “You know my history.”

“Yes.”

“Then surely you, of all people, would understand. Knowing how I’ve lived—the way in which I’ve lived, here in this house, all these years… don’t you find it bizarre? Repugnant?” Suddenly she looked back at him, eyes blazing with strange fire. “I am an old woman, trapped in the body of a young woman. Who would ever want me?”

Diogenes drew closer. “You have acquired the gift of experience—without the awful cost of age. You are young and vibrant. It may feel a burden to you now, but it doesn’t have to be. You can be free of it anytime you choose. You can begin to live whenever you want. Now, if you choose.”

She looked away again.

“Constance, look at me. No one understands you—except me. You are a pearl beyond price. You have all the beauty and freshness of a woman of twenty-one, yet you have a mind refined by a lifetime… no, lifetimes… of intellectual hunger. But the intellect can take you only so far. You are like an unwatered seed. Lay your intellect aside and recognize your other hunger—your sensual hunger. The seed cries for water—and only then will it sprout, rise, and blossom.”

Constance, refusing to look back, shook her head violently.

“You have been cloistered here—shut up like a nun. You’ve read thousands of books, thought deep thoughts. But you haven’t lived. There is another world out there: a world of color and taste and touch. Constance, we will explore that world together. Can’t you feel the deep connection between us? Let me bring that world here, to you. Open yourself to me, Constance: I am the one who can save you. Because I’m the only person who truly understands you. Just as I am the one person who shares your pain.”

Now, abruptly, Constance tried to pull her hands away. They remained gently—but firmly—clasped in Diogenes’s own. But in the brief struggle, her sleeve drew back from her wrist, exposing several slashing scars: scars that had healed imperfectly.

Seeing this secret revealed, Constance froze: unable to move, even to breathe.

Diogenes also seemed to go very still. And then he gently released one hand and held out his own arm, sliding up the cuff from his wrist. There lay a similar scar: older but unmistakable.

Staring at it, Constance drew in a sharp breath.

“You see now,” he murmured, “how well we understand each other? It is true—we are alike, so very alike. I understand you. And you, Constance—you understand me.”

Slowly, gently, he released her other hand. It fell limply to her side. Now, raising his hands to her shoulders, he turned her to face him. She did not resist. He raised a hand to her cheek, stroking it very lightly with the backs of his fingers. The fingers drifted softly over her lips, then down to her chin, which he grasped gently with his fingertips. Slowly, he brought her face closer to his. He kissed her once, ever so lightly, and then again, somewhat more urgently.

With a gasp that might have been relief or despair, Constance leaned into his embrace and allowed herself to be folded into his arms.

Adroitly Diogenes shifted his position on the settee and eased her down onto the velvet cushions. One of his pale hands strayed to the lacy front of her dress, undoing a row of pearl buttons below her throat, the slender fingers gliding down, gradually exposing the swelling curve of her breasts to the dim light. As he did so, he murmured some lines in Italian:





Ei's’immerge ne la notte,

Ei's’aderge in vèr’ le stelle…





As his form moved over her, nimble as a ballet dancer, a second sigh escaped her lips and her eyes closed.