Killing Violets by Tanith Lee (android pdf ebook reader txt) 📕

Ten days after she had read of the professor’s death, she was sitting in the café in the late afternoon. She had found no work at all, despite once going to a shop which required a typist. (A shop woman in a beige dress to her ankles had told Anna she was too slow and her spelling was ‘old fashioned’.)

With no prospect of an upsurge in her finances, Anna had ordered coffee and also chocolate bread, which she spread with white butter and sprinkled with cinnamon.

As she finished the last piece, the café door let in the young man.

He was as she recalled, slim, and a little more than average height. He had a clear, quite beautiful skin, just tanned from summer, and the mark shone like a cornelian in the shade of his hat tilted to hide it.

Either he did not see Anna, or did not remember her, or wished to forget her. He sat across the room in a corner, the birthmark to the wall.

Anna licked her fingers, and watched him covertly. Then she lit a cigarette. But the flash of the match didn’t attract his eye. Of course, people constantly struck matches.

Her coffee was all gone. She ordered a brandy.

Visitors to the café came and went. The young man sat in his corner. He drank two long drinks, and read a book. When the drinks were drunk, he closed the book and put it in his pocket. Then he put down some coins on the table and walked out.

He passed Anna’s table. He did not see her. She was sure he didn’t. His idea of making himself invisible appeared to be to see no one else. She recollected this from the tram-ride where she had first met him. The tram had lurched and he had bumped against her, uttering a low, stifled apology in his musical voice. This was how they had begun to talk.

Anna swallowed her drink. She got up and went to the door, and looked along the street.

Children were running and laughing in the gardens, and birds sang. Somewhere there was what sounded like a hurdy-gurdy playing. The sunlight had left the lower trees, which were draped in shadow, and hit their tops like golden powder.

She hadn’t been quick enough, for he was gone. His footsteps didn’t show on the street.

Anna returned inside the café. “That gentleman who just left…”

“Which gentleman?”

Anna said, awkwardly, “He has a mark on his face.”

But the girl shook her head. “I didn’t see.”

Anna stood a moment by his corner table. The coins and the glass were gone, but he had deposited the ashes of a cigarette. Anna put her finger into the ash, then brushed it away in irritation.

That night she dreamed she was talking to the corner table. “Which book was he reading?”

“Oh, a clever book. But I can’t tell you. I can’t read.”

“When will he come back?”

“Oh, any day.”

“Where did he go to?”

The table said, “Try clocks.”

When she woke up, this odd sequence was paint-fresh in her mind. She considered if it had any meaning.

But she had nothing to do, and when she was washed and dressed and had powdered her face, she went out and walked about, first to the armillary clock on the wall of the museum, and then to the black clock on the cathedral over the square.

She thought of the clock-tower at the end of the professor’s street, and wondered if that was what had prompted the dream-table’s oracular message. Anna did not want to go this way. She imagined meeting the fat cook in the street, and the woman striking her, saying she would get no money from the dead. Or even that at the last the professor had wanted his manuscript, and died in despair because Anna had thrown it in the canal.

Instead Anna wended back towards the café where she had seen the young man yesterday. En route, she entered a narrow passage, whose upper storeys overhung the path. Here, was a dark jeweller’s, with silver watches gleaming in the window like ticking eyes.

He stood in the doorway, his hat tilted, the birthmark turned from the sound of her approaching steps.

“Hallo,” said Anna. She added softly, because the dream had been magical and therefore it must be all right, “I knew where to find you.”

He half turned back, then darted his head away.

“Who are you?” he said. But she knew now he remembered her.

“Aren’t the watches strange,” she said, “they all say a different time.”

“Yes,” he said. The clear side of his face had faintly blushed. Something moved in Anna’s heart, and something ached a moment in her spine, first behind her head and then at the base of her pelvis.

“Were you buying a watch?” she asked.

“No… no. I do the old man’s books. His takings. His eyes aren’t good.”

Anna was always impressed by people who could add up, subtract. She collated the other remark more slowly. He did not like to be seen, so poor eyesight might be of great use.

“But you were leaving,” said Anna.

“Yes. I’d finished.”

“It’s so hot,” said Anna. “Shall we have a drink?”

“No. I have to catch the tram.”

They walked together, not hurrying, along the passage.

Neither spoke, like shy children. But some water had been spilled across the way, and when they came to it, he took her arm gently. Only for a moment. His hand, she saw, tanned, with long expressive fingers, trembled.

Then the day was there and across the street the tram lines glinted, hard as nails.

“I’ve lost my job,” said Anna.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, I don’t mind. I like walking about. And I can easily find something.”

“I thought,” he said, “you might be an actress. Or a dancer.”

Anna was amused, pleased. “Oh, no.” These occupations had always seemed to her to require talent.

“You move so gracefully.” he said. He blushed again.

Anna took his arm, and they walked down the street, and went to where the tram was already rolling towards them, separating as a knife.

But Anna got on