Nightspawn by John Banville

Author:John Banville [Banville, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary
ISBN: 9781852355593
Google: 4imBngEACAAJ
Amazon: B00BOE1EKQ
Barnesnoble: B00BOE1EKQ
Goodreads: 358730
Publisher: Gallery Press
Published: 1971-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

3

There is, or was, a small restaurant which lies below the sheer cliffs of the Acropolis on Dionysus Avenue. It is a pleasant place, with a dusty courtyard shaded by a trellis of creeping vines. The charcoal spit stands almost on the pavement, and most nights of the week they roast a small piglet whole. The odour of crackling pork lends an air of light-headed hungry gaiety to the evenings there. Two waiters haunt the place, a fat one and an emaciated one, both equally solemn, speaking an odd malapropian brand of English which adds immensely to the general hilarity. They knew me as Mr What, and the querulous quality of that appellation appealed to my self-congratulatory sense of alienation. It was there that Helena and I had our first date of the new age, on a soft spring evening in March. She arrived an hour late, during which period I was reduced to a state comparable to what I imagine must be the fury of a nerve wriggling in the black hollow of a rotten tooth. But of course, as these things will go, when she stepped with that perfect aplomb under the arch of vine leaves, and illuminated the darkness, I was all smiles and tiny attentions, the picture of gibbering idolatry. God, how it burns me now. She had dressed with care for the occasion, in a black dress of severe simplicity, head bare, no jewellery, look on this poor helpless sinner. I held her chair, but she sat down before I could push it forward for her. I never could master the fine timing required by the task. I returned to my place opposite her. I offered her a cigarette, fumbled with matches, flame, smoke, ashes, it was pandemonium. She had still not spoken, but watched me with a thoughtful calm. I said,

‘Will you have a drink?’

‘No thank you.’

‘Coffee?’

‘No thank you.’

‘How about a screw? Ho ho.’

She laid her elbows on the table and put her hands, with fingers clasped, under her chin.

‘I want to warn you,’ she said evenly. ‘If you insist on speaking to me like this I shall see no reason to remain here. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

How, how could I take such solemn crap from her, meekly, with a little simpering smile, how could I do it, how? With the greatest of ease.

Spiro, the fat waiter, came and moaned at us. I ordered some food or other, god knows what, hot twat maybe, I cannot remember. It never did get eaten. Helena puffed delicately at her cigarette. She looked really splendid, her hair newly washed and glowing at the tips in the swaying light from the bulbs above us among the leaves. A cat leapt suddenly in silence on to the table between us. Helena did not stir. Any other woman would have squealed at that sudden blur of fur, but not my Helena. I gave the animal a punch in its surprisingly delicate rib-cage, and it went away (not without a last spiteful glance) as it had come, without a sound.

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