The details of what Olivia showed me that night are shamefully sordid. Though God knows I have already related enough to alarm even the most jaded of listeners. I can only say that—even though at times I had to look away myself—it was a scene of such great passion and tenderness that I don’t have the words to convey it.
Olivia was in her bed. She held out her arms to Michael Searle, who was now naked and finally unashamed; he lay down with her, kissing the bruises and hideous bite marks inflicted by the old man—his own hideous, desiccated father—on her pale, lovely skin. The moonlight streaming through the windows cast much of the room in stark relief, but the reflection from the well-stoked fire was gold and lively on their flesh. I will tell you that there was no true consummation between them, because consummation wasn’t possible and had never been. But there was something more. There was an obvious, deep affection between them. Even, it might be said, love.
You may ask how such a thing is possible between two people such as they. I had seen Michael Searle clearly the night before, and my vision had confirmed a suspicion that I hadn’t dared admit to myself. Michael Searle was a man, but, perhaps, also a woman. A hermaphrodite. His member was quite small, but his breasts were also gently developed. As he embraced Olivia with a languor that was both sensual and feminine, I could see that his body was nearly hairless, like a young girl’s. There was no awkwardness, but only tenderness between them.
I felt no shock. Only pity. I saw the large corset lying over the chair, and I knew what pain Michael Searle must have endured every day of his life and why his chest was bruised and badly scarred. He had been forced to live completely as a man by the monster that was his own father—to hide his father’s shame in him. Seeing such tenderness between the two of them, I understood that there was no shame between Olivia and Michael Searle.
My heart filled with feeling for them. For Olivia.
When the door to the bedroom up on the screen flew open, Olivia screamed and held fiercely to Michael Searle. Terrance entered, with the old man leaning heavily upon him.
Michael Searle pulled away from the clinging Olivia and, with a fierceness he hadn’t shown the last time his father and Terrance had been in the room, flew at his father, Randolph, his hands reaching for the hideous wattled throat. But Terrance, who in the present I knew to be ponderously slow, was too fast for him and shoved Michael Searle hard so that he fell, his head hitting the massive blanket chest at the end of the bed. I—along with Olivia—waited for him to rise, but he did not. Because I had witnessed his later suicide, I knew that he wasn’t dead, but I think Olivia did not know.
The old man did not react beyond giving his son a rheumy glance, but fixed his gaze on Olivia. She was an object to him. A property. Though his own body was decrepit and dangerously fragile, everything about his presence spoke of confident ownership.
Terrance turned from Michael Searle and went to steady the old man, who was speaking to Olivia. His words, like all the words spoken on that white screen, were unintelligible, but I had the impression that he spoke slowly. Their effect on Olivia was immediate. She looked from the old man to Terrance.
What was she saying? I moved closer to the screen, feeling the increase in heat from the Magic Lantern, as though it were burning hotter.
After speaking, Olivia closed her eyes for a moment and then nodded.
As Terrance helped the old man up the bed stairs, a retainer helping a demon king onto his throne, I saw Olivia feel for the drawer in the bedside table. She took out a handkerchief, along with something else that flashed green and blue in the firelight.
When the old man was finally on his knees over her—and I will not describe how he was readying himself because it makes me ill even to think of it—Olivia grimaced and swung the jewel-handled peacock knife into the side of his neck: once, twice, three times in quick succession.
The screen went blank, and I was grateful. I had seen enough.
How alone Olivia must have felt for the rest of her life! For a short time she had been loved, but then had to raise her son—perhaps the result of that first rape—alone. Bliss House had been thick with fear and hopelessness, and she had turned that hopelessness into some kind of strength. I had witnessed her strength and had thought it hauteur or disdain. What she had shown me horrified me. But I was also humbled.
Chapter 33
Press Revealed
There was no more sleep that night. I huddled beneath a third blanket from the chest at the foot of Olivia’s bed, unable to get warm. In addition to turning on the bedside lamp, I also lighted a pair of candles, hoping for that much more heat. A book lay open beside me, but my mind was too filled with what I had seen.
“I saw your light on.” Press hadn’t bothered to knock.
Each of the preceding nights, I’d remembered to lock my door, and Press hadn’t—to my knowledge—tried the doorknob. My own complacency had betrayed me. Though I’d known I couldn’t put him off forever. In matters of sex, Press was rarely patient.