Chapter Twenty-Two: Solomon and the Witch

Felix leaned his bike against hers and descended the stair. The ride home, full of food and happy, free of the job, still giddy from the convivial bar crowd, had been over rain-washed streets, in the calm, cool aftermath of a major storm. He drank a glass of water, brushed his teeth and swallowed his Paregane and then sat down on the chair by the bed as he had often done, to watch Veronica sleep. Only now he wasn’t tortured with jealousy and unhappiness. He didn’t wonder where she was, he knew. Veronica was in the garden. She wasn’t insane or vengeful or catatonic, not the creature of some mood altering drug but restored to a younger, simpler self. She slept so peacefully now. She didn’t clutch the blanket or thrash about and mumble or lie on her back snoring and drooling.

He looked at her and knew he was at a point of convergence and had been for some time. It reminded him of the Yeats poem, Solomon and the Witch, when the lovers joke that the world should end when the ideal and the real coincide. Yeats had only known loveless sex and love without consummation till in his 43rd year he married George. Felix and Veronica were in a time when true and magnetic north were the same. But he knew it was unsustainable, it was a moment of poise that would pass and they would after this have to live on the feeling, let it feed their sense of themselves, of the future, as a context that would sustain them, but which, like the garden, they could only visit. Because to stay there really would mean the end of the world, they would cease to function and the Bower of

Adonis would become the Bower of Bliss, a false paradise. To stay was infantile. Mystics who achieved union either returned, blinded, to expound their vision, or vanished into heaven, bodily, like Elijah or Enoch, or sinking, joined the Autocthons like Oedipus. But that was an individual vision, the self joined to god. He and Veronica had drawn a circle around themselves. The circumference was the known universe and at the center was their give and take. By means of their double vision they saw stereoptically, achieved depth of vision. The irreducible number of the universe was not one but two. What lay beyond that? Were there visions of families, clans, cultures? What did the many eyes see peering into the dark? What did they conceive and construct there, what did they receive? Duality of effect, unity of being. It was a radiant node of time that they contained and were contained by and they knew it.

Gently, so as not to awaken her, he climbed under the light cotton blanket and nuzzled up against her, shutting his eyes to sleep, already feeling the contours of the garden take shape beneath his eye lids. But something was not right. He stirred against her. She was perfectly balanced on her side, perfectly still. Then, she tipped over onto her back and the alarm rippled through him, though he didn’t move. His eyes popped open. After a while he reached over and touched her skin. It was cool. He lifted her eyelids. The pupils were fixed. No breath came from her body. Her lips were blue. And yet he lay there next to her most of the night, unable to move or cry, waiting. When it was morning he called the Emergency Medical Team and the crew arrived an hour later to pronounce Veronica dead, and take her away.

“What do you want us to do with the remains?” the doctor with the clipboard asked.

Felix mumbled, “Can I call you?”

“It’s Saturday morning sir. If you tell us now we can get the autopsy done and process her by Monday morning. If you wait it might take another week.”

“Why did she die?” He voiced his questions without energy or interest but the words came to his lips and he let them out.

“I can’t tell sir. There doesn’t appear to be an immediate obvious cause of death.”

“She was forty three.”

“It happens. Did she have any allergies?”

“No.”

“Heart condition?”

“No.”

“Strange or unusual insect or rodent bites?”

“No.”

“Was she on any medication?”

“No. Well, yes. Paregane.”

He frowned. “Transcryptasine. Well sir, I’ve seen a lot of these lately. That Paregane is terrific stuff, if you live. Have you thought about the remains sir?”

“The remains? Yes of course, cremate her after the inquest.”

“I’m sorry about your loss Mr. Clay.” He touched Felix on the shoulder. “Are you sure there’s no one I can call? A friend or a relative?”

He shook his head. “No. There’s no one.”

After they left all he could think was that he was now totally alone. There was no one to talk to and even if there was, what would he say?