3
POSSIBILITY

We are trapped by the truth, and the truth was that it all built very slowly …

“There’s one boring thing,” Scheherazade said on the first afternoon as she led him up the tower.

But it wasn’t boring yet. For some fifteenth-century reason, the steps were bracingly steep, and on the half-landings, when she swivelled, Keith could see up her skirt.

“What’s that?”

“I’ll show you when we get to the top. We’ve got a while to go. It’s endless.”

High-mindedly, Keith averted his gaze. Then he looked. Then he looked away (and beheld, through the slit in the stone wall, a pale horse with its flanks shuddering). He looked, and looked away—until, with an audible click of the neck, he locked into position and went ahead and looked. How was it that he had never taken due note of this—the beauty, power, wisdom, and justice of women’s thighs?

Scheherazade said over her shoulder, “Are you a great seer of sights?”

“I’m on for anything.”

“What, mad keen?”

He already seemed to be in a film—a salacious thriller, perhaps—in which every line of intersexual dialogue was an irresistibly smutty pun. They kept climbing. Now he searched for a single entendre. “Keen enough. I’ve got all this reading to do,” he said. “Catching up. Clarissa. Tom Jones.”

“Poor you.”

For the record, Scheherazade’s lower undergarment was workaday and pale brown (rather like the kind of pants Lily used to wear—before). As against that, its hem was loosely neglectful of the right buttock, providing a slice of white in the crux of all that churning bronze. She said,

“There’s talk of the Passo del Diavolo.”

“What’s that?”

“The Devil’s Pass. Very twisty and scary. So I’m told. Right. Now you two are in this turret. And I’m in that turret.” She gestured on down the passage. “And we share the bathroom in between. That’s the boring thing.”

“… Why’s it boring?”

“Lily refuses to share a bathroom with me. We’ve tried it. I’m just too messy. So she’ll have to go halfway down the tower and turn right. But I don’t see why you should. Unless you’ve got a thing about messiness too.”

“I haven’t got a thing about messiness.”

“Look.”

The skylit bathroom was long and narrow and L-shaped, its left-hand turn presided over by a burnished towel rack and two wall-sized mirrors. They moved through it. Scheherazade said,

“We share. So here’s the drill. When you come in from your room, you lock the door to my room. And when you leave you unlock it. And I do the same … This is me. God I’m a slob.”

He took it in, the white nightdress aslant the tousled bed, the heaps of shoes, the pair of starched jeans, trampled out of, all agape, but still on its knees and still cupping the form of her waist and hips.

“It always staggers me,” he said. “Girls’ shoes. Girls and shoes. So many. Lily’s brought a whole suitcaseful. Why are girls like that about shoes?”

“Mm, well, I suppose the feet are the only bit of you that can’t possibly be pretty.”

“You think that’s it?”

They looked down at the ingenuous occupants of Scheherazade’s flip-flops: the curve of the insteps, the visible flex of the ligaments, the ten daubs of crimson in five different sizes. He always found it affecting—that girls bothered with that dot on the outer toe. The pinkie toe, like the runt of the litter. But you couldn’t neglect it, obviously—each little piggie needed its red beret. He said,

“You have pretty feet.”

“Not too bad.” The ten toes gave a self-conscious ripple. “As feet go. Feet. They’re such dumb-looking things.”

“I suppose. Some people claim it’s quite complicated. Girls and feet. May I?” He picked up the left-sided representative of a pair of shoes he knew to be characterised as court. “What could look less like a foot than that?” He meant the degree of stylisation or contrivance. “With that arch and that heel.”

“Mm. Feet. And to think some people have a fetish about feet.”

“Imagine what that says about you.”

“Terrifying. It’s very easy,” she said, as they came back through the already significant bathroom, “to forget to unlock. Everyone does it all the time. There’s even a little bell—see? If I’m locked out, I ring it.” She rang it: a soft but determined purr. “You’ve got one too. I always forget. Which is boring of me.”

Scheherazade gazed his way with her peculiar directness, the golden, idealistic eyes, the very level brows. When that look fell on Keith, he had the feeling that she had already dealt with every matter concerning him—birth, background, appearance, even stature. Important, too (he disconnectedly thought), was the fact that she called her mother Mum, and not Mummy (like all the other female members of her class). This spoke to Keith of her essentially egalitarian soul. But the strangest thing about Scheherazade was her smile, which was not the smile of a beautiful girl. There was too much collusion in the softly rippled lids—collusion in the human comedy. The smile of a beautiful girl was a sequestered smile. It hasn’t sunk in yet, said Lily. She doesn’t know. And could that really be? Keith said to Scheherazade,

“I’m not easily bored. Nothing’s boring. Looked at in the right way.”

“Oh I know that line,” she said. “If it’s boring, it’s interesting because it’s boring.”

“That’s right. Being boring’s interesting.”

“And it’s interesting that nothing’s boring.”

Aren’t they nice, the young? They’ve stayed up till dawn for two years drinking instant coffee together, and now they’re opinionated—they have opinions.

“Still,” she said, “repetition’s boring. Come on, it is. Like this weather. Sorry about that.”

“Never apologise for the weather.”

“Well I want to swim and sunbathe. And it’s rainy. And it’s almost cold … But at least it’s sweaty.”

“At least it’s sweaty. Thank you for having me. It’s fabulous here. I’m entranced.”

Keith knew of course that the psychological meaning of feet was itself twofold. These brutal trotters were a permanent reminder of your animality, your unforgiven, non-angelic status as a human being. They also performed the menial task of connecting you to solid ground.

So here was the castle, its battlements kept aloft on the shoulders of the four fat-girthed giants, the four towers, the four terraces, the circular ballroom (with its orbital staircase), the domed pentagonal library, the salon with its six sets of windows, the baronial banqueting hall at the far end of the implausibly and impractically long corridor from the barnyard-sized kitchen, all the antechambers which receded, like facing mirrors, into a repetitive infinity. Above was the apartment (where Oona spent almost all her time); below was the dungeon floor, half submerged in the foundational soil, and giving off the thinnest mist of what smelled to Keith like cold sweat.

“There’s an old word for the way she regards you, Scheherazade,” he said to Lily in the pentagonal library. He was up on a ladder, almost at dome level. “You’ll think it just means being patronising. But it’s a term of praise. And humble gratitude. Condescension, Lily.” From eccles. L., from con- “together” + descendere “come down” (“together” was the important part). “Her being a Lady and all.”

“She’s not a Lady. She’s an Honourable. Her dad was a viscount. You mean she treats you,” said Lily, “for all the world as if you aren’t a berk.”

“Yeah.” He was talking about the class system. But he was thinking about the looks system—the beauty system. Would there ever be a revolution in looks, where those who were last would now be first? “I suppose that’s about the size of it.”

“And you only give the nobs praise and gratitude because you know your proper place. You’re a good berk.”

Keith wouldn’t like you to think that he was forever oiling up to the girls of the aristocracy. In recent years (I should point this out) he had spent the vast majority of his spare time oiling up to the girls of the proletariat—and then the girls, or the girl, of the professional intelligentsia (Lily). Of the three strata, working-class girls were the most puritanical. Upper-class girls, according to Kenrik, were the most promiscuous, the fastest, as they themselves put it, faster even than the girls of the middle class, who, of course, would soon decisively outspeed them … He returned to the leather-decked davenport, where he was reading Clarissa and taking notes. Lily was on a chaise longue, and had before her something called Interdiction: On Our Law and Its Study. He said,

“Ooh, you didn’t like that, did you. Dear oh dear.”

“You’re a sadist,” said Lily.

“No I’m not. You’ll notice that I have no quarrel with other insects. Not even wasps. And I actually admire spiders.”

“You tramped down to the village to get the spray. What’s wrong with the swat?”

“It leaves a horrible smear when you use the swat.”

The fly he had just fatally drenched was now stretching its back legs, like an old dog after a long nap.

“You like the lingering death, that’s all.”

“… Does Scheherazade act like a boy? Is she promiscuous?”

“No. I’m far more promiscuous than she is. Numerically,” said Lily. “You know. She did the usual amount of necking and getting felt up. Then she took pity on a couple of dopes who wrote her poems. And regretted it. Then nothing for a while. Then Timmy.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it. But now she’s blooming and restless and it’s given her ideas.”

According to Lily, Scheherazade had an explanation for her particular metamorphosis. I was a pretty sixteen-year-old, she apparently confided, but after my father got killed I turned plain—I suppose because I wanted to hide. So her exterior, her outward semblance, was depressed or retarded by the death of the father. Came the plane crash, and then the years passed. And the fog slowly thinned and cleared, and her physical talents, stacked and circling in the sky, could now approach and make their touchdown.

“What sort of ideas?”

“Spreading her wings. But she still doesn’t know she’s beautiful.”

“Does she know about her figure?”

“Not really. She thinks it’s going to go away. As quickly as it came. How come you’ve never read one?”

As well as a sexual trauma, Keith also had a suitcaseful of remedial reading ahead of him. “Never read what?”

“An English novel. You’ve read the Russians and the Americans. But you’ve never read an English novel.”

“I’ve read an English novel. The Power and the Glory. Vile Bodies. I’ve just never read Peregrine Pickle or Phineas Finn. I mean, why would you? And Clarissa’s killing me.”

“You should’ve thought of that before you changed subjects.”

“Mm. Well I was always more of a poetry man.”

“… A poetry man. Who tortures insects. Insects feel pain too, you know.”

“Yeah, but not much.” He looked on as his buzzing victim twirled and drilled on its axis. “We are to the gods as flies to wanton boys, Lily. They pluck us for their sport.”

“You say you don’t like the smear. But you just like to watch them squirm.”

Were all flies hated by Keith Nearing? He liked butterflies and fireflies. But butterflies were moths with antennae, and fireflies were soft-bodied beetles with luminescent organs. He imagined, sometimes, that Scheherazade would be like that. Her organs would glow in the dark.

Keith took to going up to the tower, around noon, to read an English novel—and to get a little peace. This visit to his bedroom tended to coincide with the shower that Scheherazade tended to take before lunch. He heard it, her shower. The heavy beads of water sounded like car tyres on gravel. He sat there, with the morbidly obese paperback on his lap. Then he waited for five pages before going in to wash his face.

On the third day he unlatched and pushed on the bathroom door and it didn’t give. He listened. After a moment he reached for the bell with a ponderous hand (why did this feel so significant?). More silence, the click of a distant latch, a shuffling tread.

Scheherazade’s warmed face now emanated out at him from the folds of a thick white towel.

“See?” she said. “I told you.”

The lips: the upper as full as the nether. Her brown eyes and the balance of their gaze, her level brows.

“It won’t be the last time either,” she said. “I promise.”

She swivelled, he followed. She turned left and he watched the three of them retreat, the real Scheherazade and the simulacra that slid across the glass.

Keith remained in the L of mirrors.

… Dud, Possible, Vision. How many hours, how many very happy hours he had spent, with his mother Tina, playing Dud, Possible, Vision, in the Wimpy Bar, the coffee bar (the Kardomah), the art-deco milk bar.

What about those two over there by the jukebox, Mum?

The boy or the girl? … Mm. Both of them are Low Possibles.

And they graded not just strangers and passers-by but everybody they knew. One afternoon, as Tina ironed, it was asserted by him, and confirmed by her, that Violet was a Vision—fit to take her place alongside Nicholas. And Keith, who was eleven, said,

Mum? Am I a Dud?

No, dear. Her head went back an inch. No my love. You’ve got a face face, that’s what you’ve got. It’s full of character. You’re a Possible. A High Possible.

… All right. Let’s do a womie.

Which womie?

Davina.

Oh a Vision.

Mm. A High Vision. What about Mrs. Littlejohn?

But in fact he had more or less resigned himself to ugliness (and he stoically answered to Beak in the schoolyard). Then this changed. The necessary event came to pass, and this changed. His face changed. The jaw and especially the chin asserted themselves, the upper lip lost its niblike rigidity, the eyes brightened and widened. Later he came up with a theory that would disquiet him for the rest of his life: looks depended on happiness. A disinclined, a hurt-looking little boy, he suddenly started to be happy. And now here was his face in the rippled and speckly mirror in Italy, pleasantly unexceptionable, firm, dry. Young. He was happy enough. Was he happy enough to survive—to live with—the ecstasy of being Scheherazade? He also believed that beauty was mildly infectious, given close and prolonged contact. It was a universal presumption, and he shared it: he wanted to experience beauty—to be legitimised by beauty.

Keith rinsed his face under the tap, and went down to the others.

Chill, moist clouds swirled above them, and all around them—and even beneath them. Slivers of grey vapour detached themselves from the mountaintop and slid lollingly down the slopes. They seemed to lie on their backs, resting, in the grooves and culverts, like exhausted genies.

Keith actually went and waded through one of these dropped cloudlets. Not much bigger than Scheherazade in her thick white towel, it reclined on a low terrace beyond the paddock. The steamy, smoky presence stirred and altered under his tread, and then flattened out again, with the back of its hand placed long-sufferingly across its brow.

A week went by, and the new arrivals had yet to avail themselves of the Olympian swimming pool in its grotto setting. Keith decided that it would do his heart good to see the girls enjoying themselves down there—particularly Scheherazade. Meanwhile, Clarissa was boring. But nothing else was.

I often wish,” said Lily in the dark, “I often … You know, I’d give up some of my intelligence for a bit more beauty.”

He believed her and he felt for her. And flattery was futile. Lily was too intelligent to be told she was beautiful. This was the form of words they had settled on: she was a late developer. He said,

“That’s—Lily, that’s old-fashioned. Girls are supposed to be clever careerists now. It doesn’t all depend on how good a husband you can pull.”

“You’re wrong. Looks matter even more. And Scheherazade makes me feel like a duck. I hate being compared. You wouldn’t understand, but she’s torturing me.”

Lily once told him that when girls turned twenty their beauty, if they were due any, would be coming in. Hers, she hoped, was on its way. But Scheherazade’s was in, it was here, it was just off the boat. The physical prizes being doled out to her—what Grammys and Tonys and Emmys, what Palmes d’Or. Keith said,

“Your beauty will be along very soon.”

“Yes but where is it?”

“Let’s think. Less intelligence, and more beauty. It’s like the line—What would you rather? Look cleverer than you are, or be stupider than you look?”

“I don’t want to look clever. I don’t want to look stupid. I want to look beautiful.”

He said slackly, “Well, given a choice, I’d like to be rougher and cleverer.”

“How about shorter and cleverer?”

“Uh, no. I’m already too short for Scheherazade. She’s way up there. How could I ever get it started?”

Lily came closer and said, “Easy. I’ll tell you how to do it.”

This was becoming the regular prelude to their nightly act. And necessarily or at least helpfully so, because Lily, here in Italy, for reasons that were not yet clear to him, seemed to be losing her sexual otherness. She was like a first cousin or an old family friend, someone he had played with as a child and known all his life. “How?” he said.

“You just lean across when you’re on the floor playing cards with her last thing. And start kissing her—her neck, her ears. Her throat. Then you know that loose little knot she has on her shirt when she’s showing off her brown midriff? You could just pluck at that. And it’ll all fall open. Keith, you’ve stopped breathing.”

“No, I was just suppressing a yawn. Go on. The little knot.”

“You pluck at that, and then her breasts’ll just tumble out at you. Then she’ll hoick up her skirt and lie back. And arch herself so you can peel off her pants. Then she’d go on her side and unbuckle your belt. And you can stand up, and it won’t matter that she’s taller than you. Because she’ll be safely down on her knees. So you needn’t worry.”

When it was over, she turned away from him, saying, “I want to be beautiful.”

He held her. Hold to Lily, he told himself. Hold to your level. Don’t—don’t—fall in love with Scheherazade … Yes, it was safest to walk the middle ground, content to be a Possible. That was the thing to hope for. Possibility.

“You know, Lily, with you I’m myself. With everyone else I seem to be acting. No. Working. With you I’m myself,” he said. “Effortlessly myself.”

“Mm, but I don’t want to be myself. I want to be someone else.”

“I love you, Lily. I owe you everything.”

“And I love you too. I’ve got that at least … Girls need looks even more now. You’ll see,” she said. Then she slept.