Ivoria by Tanith Lee (uplifting novels .txt) 📕

It had not been from Angela. It is not even a woman’s voice.

“I have something for you,” says the masculine voice which he does not recognise. “I have something that it is impert-iv you receive.”

That is all the new voice says. The number has been withheld. Nick plays it back twice more, taking in each time the clipped corruption of the word - presumably imperative - to impert-iv.

I have something for you. I have something that it is impert-iv you receive.

The voice has a vague accent. It might even be French, but Nick has no real idea. A wrong number is the most likely explanation.

He tries Jazz again about midnight, but gets nothing now, not even the recording, on either of her lines.

During the night Nick dreams the black waiter from Covent Garden, dressed as an African prince in leopard pelts, gold and ivory, tells him sternly that the piece of ivory he has passed to Laurence is a carrier of ill fortune. It must not be handled for more than a couple of seconds, and never given to anybody one cares about. In the dream Nick knows that he has given, or will be going to give, the ivory to Laurence for just that reason.

Asleep, Nick is uneasy. But none of the dream scenario is true. The waiter did not give him any ivory. No one gave him any ivory. And no one ever warned Nick that the ivory carried anything, was worth anything good or bad. It was a story he invented and tossed at Laurence and Laurence never even believed it. He had only kept it, and taken it away with him, as another joke.

6

Nothing else happens, and two further days pass, with adjacent nights. Nobody calls, which vacuum includes Jazz. Nick does not, now, attempt to contact her. He guesses perhaps he has been removed from her itinerary and she meant to tell him so in a nice way, but then more important aspects intervened. He remembers she paid him sixty pounds more than usual, after their last meeting. He does regret losing her, because she was rather charming and good company, and also he felt particularly pleased with her sexual response to him, the vast enjoyment he was able to give her. But then, this regret is only the sort of thing one might feel on leaving an interesting and lucrative job, when there are lots of others available that are similar, perhaps even superior.

He meets Phil on the third evening. She calls only occasionally. A vivacious sporty girl, but her take on sex is quaintly kinky. Nick is always entertained by Phil.

When he gets back, just before eleven, (Phil is an early riser for her job at the swimming baths), he has not been in the flat more than a minute when someone raps on his door. Nick has no bell, only the connection with the buzzer of the downstairs door in the lobby. This then is an internal visit from one of the building’s other tenants.

Inevitably Nick recollects the man with the stolen drawer, who had lived in Number 14 a while. But Nick really suspects the caller will be Pond.

Nick has a strong wish not to answer.

He does not.

But the rapping keeps being repeated, a trio of sharp thumps - a male fist certainly, or a woman in a metal glove.

Nick tries to ignore this. He could go upstairs; he might not hear the rapper from the bedroom.

Then again, probably his lights are visible from the street, floating high and honeyed in the octagonal moon window. If this is Pond, Pond is very determined. There it is once more. Rap clap snap. Perhaps it will never stop. Nick gives in.

It makes him feel weak and dispirited. Also very edgy. “Yes?”

It is not Pond.

No, it is the man who is so like Pond, if more slender and paler, crouching a little too, despite the assurance of his repeated knock.

“Sorry to trouble you,” says the drawer-man, exactly as he did before. “Only I saw you coming up. I’d just come out of 14. We’ve - er. Well, she and I, we’ve made it up.”

“Congratulations,” says Nick. He adds, “If you want to borrow some champagne, I don’t have any.”

“Er, no, no. Sorry and all that. I know it’s late.”

“Yes.”

“But I was wondering. My books…”

“You want your books back.” Nick is stunned by a sort of prickling worry he cannot quite explain.

“Well, er - you see - I find I don’t have extra copies. After all. And June - that’s my er, well she said I should say I need them.”

Nick wants to laugh. Again he is unsure why.

“OK. Look, they’re over there.”

The slightly phantasmal man slips into the flat with the gliding motion of a falling garment.

“Oh yes. Is that all right?”

“They’re your books.”

“I mean, I don’t mind if you want to finish them first.”

“I have.”

Nick goes to the table with the books, Chekov, Mansfield, some pieces by Joseph Roth. “Here. These were all there were,” he adds. “All I saw, anyway.”

“No, no,” says the man, who so far does not take up his books, but is now staring round the apartment with wide eyes. “It’s quite peculiar,” he says, “the way your place is so different from June’s.”

“Really.”

“I expect this is the best flat.”

Nick feels he has become an estate agent. It is surreal. He waits.

The man goes on staring all round. And next his gloomy palish eyes fall on Nick’s notebook, lying there with the glass of orange juice.

“That’s odd,” says the man.

Again, Nick waits.

“Just like one of the notebooks I lost,” says the man.

“They’re quite common, I’d think. WH Smiths.”

“True. But I get my office stationery from there as well.”

With no warning the man sidles forward, leans and plucks up the notebook, opens it, glances.

“Looks like a novel,” says the man. “You don’t use a computer, then?”

“No.”

“Wish I didn’t. Lost that too. Think I told you. Oh well. I’ll take my books.