The Betrayals(111)
But it’s her own fault, isn’t it? Why is he pitying her? It’s not as if she cared that he thought Carfax was dead, or that he blamed himself. She must have realised that he’d be devastated, but she never bothered to disillusion him. She even blamed him. Ten years of thinking he’d killed someone he loved! And she didn’t even care …
He wants to shout at her. He wants to spend the rest of his life shouting at her. He wants to spend every moment marvelling at how she’s alive and can shout back at him. He wants them to argue until they kiss, embrace until they draw blood. He wants their bodies to get used to each other. What they did … It makes him tingle at the memory, but it was awkward, full of false starts and laughter, crossing back and forth between hesitation and desire. He wants to do it again, better. Again and again, better and better. He wants to lie beside her, letting the sweat cool on his skin, hearing her breathe. He can imagine her in his apartment: flicking a finger along the spines of his books, raising an eyebrow at the dust on the piano, narrowing her eyes at the voluptuous nude over the dinner table. In his mind’s eye she’s wearing boyish clothes, her hair cut short and curling on the back of her neck – but gamine, not masculine, the slight curves of her body made even more enticing by her direct gaze, her assumption of equality. He grins at a sudden memory: he’d said, You don’t have friends, only enemies and inferiors, and she’d retorted, dry as a bone, at least we’re not enemies, then.
She could stay Magister Ludi and be his lover in the holidays. Surely the other Magisters had mistresses. A few months a year wasn’t enough, but it was better than nothing. Or … Could he stay here? What if, after all, he does want to devote the rest of his life to the grand jeu? He doesn’t care about anything else. He could be happy here, writing games and scholarly articles, planning research trips in the vacations that could take them anywhere in the world … Oh, yes, he’d be happy. Montverre is the only place he can be happy, now. The word is ridiculous, unfamiliar.
The clock strikes. He’s left it longer than he needed to.
He goes out into the corridor, adjusting his tie as he goes. He’s whistling as he goes down the stairs, through the library, and along the passage to the Magisters’ corridor, taking the long way around to avoid the crowd still milling outside the Great Hall. When he steps into the little cloister under the clock tower warmth hits him, full of the scent of earth and box. He tilts his face up to the sky, closing his eyes against the light. Dark circles spin in the orange glow behind his eyelids. Summer. He hasn’t felt like this for years. He breaks into a little shuffle-step, and for the first time he hears the melody he’s whistling. It’s the Bridges of K?nigsberg – but scumbled and jazzed. The repetitive tune has broken free of its foundations, like the bridges themselves rearing up off their arches and lumbering into a better position; so that now, perhaps, you could cross them all, and end up where you wanted to be.
37: the Magister Ludi
She rinses her face. For a while, after she got to her room, she couldn’t stop laughing: now she bends over the basin, breathing deeply, and washes the crusts of salt from under her eyes. Her skin is tight, and she doesn’t need a mirror to know that her lips and eyelids are swollen. She swills her mouth out. She waits until the water is still again and leans close. Would she see a difference, if her reflection were clearer? She feels different: raw and tender and afraid. There’s a heaviness inside her like menstrual cramps, but she doesn’t resent it. A deeper ache pulses in the same place, when she thinks about Léo. ‘I’m reliably informed that the first time generally leaves something to be desired,’ he said, afterwards, ‘not that I’m making excuses,’; and she said, smiling, ‘I hope there’ll always be something left to be desired.’
She splashes her forehead, undoes her hair and runs wet hands through it. She wants to cut it all off. Maybe she could. Why not? If Léo didn’t recognise her, then why would anyone else? He was the closest to her, after all; maybe she’s been too careful all along. Maybe she can turn into Carfax again, under their very noses, and no one will ever realise, because that would mean admitting they were blind or stupid. She feels freer than she’s ever been. Is this what happens, when you finally tell someone the truth? Or when you’re in love? She sweeps her arm through the air, scattering droplets in the sunlight like glass beads. It takes her by surprise and she does it again, wondering if she could use the movement in a grand jeu: what would that sense of abandon bring to a swell of melody, or a main theme? She could spend hours playing on her own, experimenting with the new feeling in her body, this shell-cracked-open intensity. Happiness.
But she doesn’t have time. She replaits her hair and pins it up again. It smells of Léo and the leather-salt scent of skin. She strips, wipes herself with a damp cloth, finds a clean shirt, and dresses again. No matter how she feels, she has to look respectable. Although … not too respectable. She moistens her collar and trickles some water down the front of her gown. With her flushed cheeks – and her hands, which are still trembling – she can convince them that she was taken ill. Temporarily, and not seriously.
She shuts her eyes. Her mind is whirling. She counts her heartbeats, trying to calm herself as if she’s about to begin a grand jeu. She has to stop thinking about Léo, at least for a little while. She is Magister Ludi, and she has walked out of her first Midsummer Game; right now she needs to concentrate. She has lied for years, but it’s never been as important as this.