OLGA GRUSHIN
395
"for as long as 1 can remember" refused to be explained away, ringing
in his ears with the persistence of a dying fly.
Constantine stood up slowly.
"I ... 1 have forgotten to ... 1 must do something." He stammered,
but there was a calm of desperation in his heart, and he realized that he
must have meant to do this all along. "I will be back soon."
And, before Maria could say anything, he turned and left the parlor,
closing the door carefully behind him. In a moment he was striding up
the soggy path into the trees.
THE CAVE WAS DARKER THAN BEFORE; the glow of the candle inside the
amphora seemed reddish and erratic. This time he saw them right away,
kneeling before the stone in the depths of the cave. Both mother and
daughter wore loose white garments with irregular black swirls, and
their busily moving hands cast grotesque, many-fingered, wavering
shadows on the walls. For a brief moment he stood on the threshold,
peering in, trying to see what they were doing. The last traces of day–
light were gone, the sky was cloudy, and the sea rolled behind his back,
dim and hostile. He shivered. Then abruptly the girllifred her head.
"Mama, look!" she exclaimed, and her voice echoed in the cliffs.
"The nice man came to say good-bye to us. 1 told you he would!"
Unhurriedly the woman glanced up, and Constantine took a few hes–
itant steps toward her. He did not know what he was going to say, but
he had to see her again, had to look her full in the face, trace the imprint
of age on her features, take measure of his own sanity.... A step,
another step, his head felt suddenly light, his body weightless, the cave
seemed to be growing inward, stretching away from him, and there,
floating in a halo of unearthly red light, always remote, always unreach–
able, knelt the two white figures, one young, the other ageless, watch–
ing him calmly with eyes dark as the night, eyes radiant as the sea,
watching him now, watching him forever, through the ages full of terror
and beauty and the sonorousness of Homeric lines....
He tripped, cursed under his breath, and all at once felt as if he was
snatched out of a nightmarish dream; the disconcerting visions scurried
back into the shadows, and the haze in his head dissolved. He saw them
clearly now, crouching at the back of the cave in the dim candlelight.
The sweet, warm smell of decay assailed his nostrils in a sharp wave,
and suddenly he was sure that the black swirls on their dresses were
blood. Fear descended upon him in a hot, clammy burst, and he stood
still, barely breathing.
