‘Is it? I might have gotten him off with a couple of years if he’d pled some version of diminished capacity.’
‘Yes, but that’s what makes it so brilliant, the fact that everyone knows that’s so. They’ll say to themselves, God, the man must be innocent or else he wouldn’t stick to such a far-fetched tale.’
‘I’d hardly call it far-fetched.’
‘Oh, very well! Let’s call it inspired then, shall we?’
Growing annoyed, Korrogly thought, you pompous piece of shit, I’m going to beat you this time.
He smiled. ‘As you wish.’
‘Ah,’ said Mervale, ‘I sense that a trial lawyer has suddenly taken possession of your body.’
Korrogly drank. ‘I’m not in the mood tonight, Mervale. What are you after that you think I’m willing to give away?’
Displeasure registered on Mervale’s face.
‘What’s wrong?’ Korrogly asked. ‘Am I spoiling your fun?’
‘I don’t know what’s got into you,’ said Mervale. ‘Maybe you’ve been working too hard.’
‘These little ritual fishing expeditions are beginning to bore me, that’s all. They always come to the same thing. Nothing. They’re just your way of reminding me of my station. You drag me in here and butter me up with the old school smile and talk about parties to which I haven’t been invited. I expect you believe this gives you a psychological advantage, but I think the false sense of superiority it lends you actually weakens your delivery. And you need all the strength you can muster. You’re simply not that proficient a prosecutor.’
Mervale got stiffly to his feet, cast a scornful look down at Korrogly. ‘You’re a joke, you know that?’ he said. ‘A tiresome drudge without a life, with only the law for a bed partner.’ He tossed some coins onto the table. ‘Buy yourself a couple of drinks. Perhaps drunk you’ll be able to entertain yourself.’
Korrogly watched him move through the crowd, accepting the good wishes of the law clerks who closed around him. Now why, he thought, why did I bother doing that?
He waited until Mervale was out of sight before leaving, and then, instead of going directly home, he walked west along Biscaya Boulevard, heading nowhere in particular, moving aimlessly through the accumulating mist, his thoughts in a despondent muddle; the dank salt air seemed redolent of his own heaviness, of the damp dark moil inside his head. Only peripherally did he notice that he had entered the Almintra quarter, and it was not until he found himself standing in front of the gemcutter’s shop that he suspected he had tried to hide from himself the fact that he had intended to come this way. Or perhaps, he thought, I was moved to come here by some vast and ineluctable agency whose essence spoke to me from The Father of Stones. Though that thought had been formed in derision, it caused the hairs on the back of his neck to prickle, and he wondered, what if Lemos’ story is true, could I also be vulnerable to Griaule’s directives? The silence of the dead street unnerved him; the peaks of the rooftops looked like black simple mountains rising from plateaus of mist, and the few streetlamps left unbroken shone through the haze like evil phosphorescent flowers, and the shop windows were obsidian, reflective, hiding their secrets. It was still fairly early, but all the good artisans and shopkeepers were abed . . . all except the occupant of the apartment above Lemos’ shop. Her light still burned. He gazed up at it, thinking now that Mervale’s insulting and accurate depiction of his life might have motivated him to visit Mirielle, thereby to disprove it. He decided to leave, to return home, but remained standing in front of the shop, held in place, it seemed, by the glow of the lamp and the sodden crush of the surf from the darkness beyond. A dog began to bark nearby; from somewhere farther away came the call of voices singing, violins and horns, a melancholy tune that he felt was sounding the configuration of his own loneliness.
This is folly, he said to himself, she’ll probably kick you down the stairs, she was only playing with you the last time, and why the hell would you want it anyway . . . just to be away from your thoughts for awhile, no matter how temporary the cure?
That’s right, that’s exactly right.
‘Hell!’ he said to the dark, to the whole unlistening world. ‘Hell, why not?’
The woman who opened the door, though physically the same woman who had sprawled brazenly on the sofa during their first meeting, was in all other ways quite different. Distracted; twitchy; pale to the point of seeming bloodless, her black hair loose and in disarray; clad in a white robe of some heavy coarse cloth. The dissolute hardness had emptied from her face, and she seemed to have thrown off a handful of years, to be a troubled young girl. She stared for a second as if failing to recognize him and then said, ‘Oh . . . you.’
He was about to apologize for having come so late, to beat a retreat, put off by her manner; but before he could frame the words, she stepped back from the door and invited him in.
