In Babylon. Marcel Moring
which I tried to encompass the space, our presence, everything that determined this moment. When my hand was poised somewhere above my head, her face froze.
Upstairs, where the staircase ended, the staircase that plunged down from the first floor like a waterfall of turned wood and scroll-work, rose a solidified tidal wave of wood and upholstery. The landing was crammed full of cabinets and chairs and lamps. I saw a large sofa, a linen cupboard, the red plush sofa from the bedroom that overlooked the garden, the secretaire, a sideboard, chairs-chairschairs. I took another step forward, in order to see better. My right foot landed in a patch of snow and I slid across the slippery marble. As I fell over backwards, my arms flailing, I saw something black shooting through the air. Nina’s arms slipped under mine and slowly we sank to the floor. Only then, half in Nina’s embrace, my eyes still on the ceiling, did I see, looking down on us, unmoved, impassively gleaming in all its black sovereignty, the piano, the lid slightly open, and behind that lid, barely visible in the murky light of the stairwell, but I knew they were there, the grinning row of black and white keys, the rotting teeth of the music beast.
‘What …’ said Nina, ‘what … is … that?’
We scrambled to our feet and stared up at the protuberance of furniture, the piano that hung there like an ebony cloud, a Dali vision come to life.
I shook my head.
In the grainy light I could see the faint lines of two thick ropes that had been tied around either side of the piano and disappeared behind it by way of a hook on the ceiling. I walked up a few stairs, until I was standing under the instrument, and peered through a gap between two pieces of furniture. The ropes ran down along the wall of the stairwell and had been secured to one of the pieces of furniture that formed the front of the barricade. One tug at the sideboard, the secretaire, or the linen cupboard, and the piano would come crashing down and flatten anyone standing below it.
A trap, I thought, this is a trap. Everything was so precisely wedged together that it was impossible to push anything aside to get through. If we wanted to get past this barricade, we would have to deal with the piano first. It was the only way to prevent it from crashing down unexpectedly. Someone must have dragged the whole interior, piece by piece, to the stairwell, and then, slowly and deliberately, re-arranged it all. It must have been someone who knew Uncle Herman but didn’t have his best interests at heart. I ran my index finger along the sideboard.
‘Maybe we’d better sit down,’ I said. Nina was still staring at the barricade. I took her arm, pulled her along to the hunting room, and offered her the bed as a chair.
The shutters at the front of the house were closed and the hunting room was so dark that the huge four-poster bed, where Uncle Herman used to sleep, stood in the shadows like a solid block.
‘N?’ Her voice came from far away. ‘What is that up there at the top of the stairs?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t been back here in five years.’
‘Why?’
‘Why all that junk?’
‘Why haven’t you been back in all that time?’
I looked around me, at the furniture that seemed so lifeless and grey. ‘It’s not the same any more,’ I said. ‘And I didn’t feel I should come back until I’d earned it. Now the biography is almost done. Now I’m allowed.’
She was silent.
I looked into the darkened room. ‘Whatever’s up there, it hasn’t been there very long.’ I lit a cigarette and blew out a puff of smoke. ‘There’s not much dust on that furniture. Someone’s been in here and … It couldn’t have been Mrs Sanders. She’s not strong enough to drag all those …’
‘Then who? A burglar?’
‘I don’t know. The lock was intact. He would’ve had to come in through the back … But why? Why would a burglar build a barricade?’
I held the cone of ash from my cigarette above my cupped left palm and looked around.
‘The fireplace,’ said Nina.
‘What?’
‘You could throw it in the fireplace.’
I went to the hearth and flicked the ash into the blackened hole. ‘Listen. You stay here, I’ll check around the back. And I’ll try to find some wood while I’m at it. If we don’t make a fire in here, we’ll freeze to death.’
She stared down at the floor. ‘I’ve got to go back,’ she said.
‘You can’t.’
‘Let’s call someone.’
‘There’s no phone.’
She raised her head and looked at me, her face expressionless. ‘I’ve got to get out of here.’
‘You’ll never find the car, and if you do it’ll probably be buried in the snow by now.’
I walked out of the room. When I looked back through the doorway, she was still sitting, motionless, on the big four-poster bed. She was peering down at her feet, as if she could see something that simply wouldn’t let her go.
The house smelled like an auditorium. I inspected the kitchen and then from the kitchen window, the white lawn with the wooden shed where the gardener kept his tools. The thermometer on the windowsill read seventeen below zero. It must have been about five below in here. None of the doors at the back of the house had been forced, none of the windows were broken. I went to the library and stared into the murky light at the flood of books. The shutters were closed, the windows appeared to be intact. When I was back in the kitchen, I opened the door to the cellar. Behind the door, one foot on the stairs, I fiddled in vain with the light switch. I took the box of matches out of my pocket, lit one, and groped my way into the receding darkness. Slowly the floor came into view, and then the walls, and glass and tin, walls of tin cans, glass jars, bottles, shelves piled high with provisions, a fat red Edam, a smoked cheese, dried meat, sugar, salt, onions, dried apples, a string of garlic, crackers, candied fruits, toilet paper, a large cardboard box with bottles of detergent, bars of soap, indeterminate tubes of toothpaste, two bottles of calor gas with burners and detachable parts, and an assortment of candles. I stared, in the light of the dying match, at the display. Outside of a supermarket, I had never seen this much food at one time.
I dropped the match, it went dark. I sat down on the stairs, elbows on my knees, hands folded, and let the chilly darkness stream around me, the cool, sweet smell I remembered.
Uncle Herman never kept much in stock, because he never stayed at the house for more than three months at a time, and if he was there, he had Mrs Sanders order in as much fresh food as possible. Now the shelves were filled.
‘Herman,’ I said, ‘Nuncle, what the hell is going on here?’
I struck another match, stood up, and walked on. The vaulted cellar extended over the length and breadth of the entire house, divided into rooms that were separated by white stucco walls with semicircular passageways. The first room, a kind of central hall beneath the real hall, was once filled with virtually empty shelves. Now they were crammed. I unpacked the candles and stuck a few in my jacket. I lit another and in the flickering light I inspected the vault to the left of the main hall. One half was taken up by a mountain of potatoes, held together by three partitions. In addition to that: tin cans and glass jars of baked beans, carrots, kidney beans, corn, red cabbage, beets, sauerkraut, ravioli, macédoine, pickled mushrooms, salmon, tuna, sardines, corned beef, canned brie and camembert, dried apples, condensed milk, powdered eggs, chicken soup, stock, green peas, candied fruits, herring in dill sauce. And in addition to that: packets of rice, pasta, potato starch, flour, jars of coriander, dill, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, pepper, oregano, ginger powder, chilli peppers, capers, horseradish, pesto. The vault to the right of the entrance, the wine cellar, was as I remembered it. Racks from floor to ceiling, not a single free patch of wall. Thick, white-grey shreds of cobweb, and fine dust, powdery as ash. There was no cellar book here, but no one would have trouble finding his way around.