ZITCHI - CHAPTER 21

And now - now they've gone into the bedroom and come back out again, now they're going to the library. What did we miss? Nothing much; it was momentous for both of them but in different ways, for different reasons. Henry will never tire of hearing Zitchi's voice, even if he has to shag Vanna. Vanna will never tire of Henry making love to her. Except - she's not stupid. She knows he wasn't making love to her.

Guildford Library smells of paint. Of white Snowcem, to be precise. And the woodblock floors have that back-to-school stickiness of bonfire toffee.

At the Witt microfiche machine, Henry's leatherbound notebook flashes out of his top pocket. Except - he's written it down wrong, so he wastes almost an hour looking for the wrong name, sliding the viewer in all directions, ironing the records. Because it's not Zitchi he wants, it's Zichy. Mikhail Zichy. And even then they don't find him straight away, because it seems Ellie has misled them. Not Mikhail Zichy, but Mihály.

"So why did she tell us Mikhail?" asks Henry?

And straight away the answer comes to Vanna inside her head, without Ellie spelling it out, just as she said: "That was his other name when he travelled to Russia. He disappeared there. Why Olga is the first zina." She looks at him, startled at herself.

"But look - he's far too late for Zitchi, and too early for Olga. He was alive 1827 to 1906, it says here. Zitchi was alive in the late 1500's."

"He died, then reincarnated. Kept the same first name, took Zitchi's as his surname, more or less, so they were married in name at least. A kind of pledge. Then he painted pictures which were from visions he had of rescuing her. But he still failed to save her in that lifetime."

Henry looks at Vanna, and even though he doesn't have a perceptive bone in his body, hadn't until now at least, he says, "This is my last chance then, isn't it?"

"Yes," she says.




And, "Here, let me have a go," she says, taking charge of Henry for the second time that day. And of course she's better at it than he is because she has none of his faffage. Her new calmness can't prevent his pacing though, or his pulling at imaginary threads on his cuffs. She ignores him, concentrates on the rows and columns, the pages of photographed text, the paintings. Ah, those paintings; most of them deeply erotic. Does she feel a new respect for Henry, for the soul who created that unusual beauty at a time when such art must have been mostly forbidden?

Or does she wonder whether this is all too fantastical for words, something she should discard as poppycock, or turn her back on as evil?

Vanna thinks all of those things, certainly, and also a smidgen of something else, which is this: how am I going to turn this to my advantage? He doesn't see, but she blushes to herself there in the library, silent save for his pacing. Well, there again, she thinks, he's happy enough to use me for his own ends; why shouldn't I? And he carries on pacing up and down and she carries on sliding the stick, until she's seen enough.

"Right," she says, "Come and look at this now." They both bend their heads to the darkened screen-hood. "It's like being at the cinema, isn't it?" says Vanna, then when she notes his frown, she says, "Are you ready for hot-dogs? Or popcorn?"

And if Zitchi's brow is white as any lover's, Henry's brow is the opposite of that right now. He tries to take the stick away from Vanna, but she's enjoying this. "Don't snatch!" she says, and she keeps possession of it. But relaxes her throat, feels the shiver climb her spine, and drops into Zitchi's register.

"Mihály?" she says.

Henry's eyes glitter. "Yes! Oh, Zitchi, is that you?"

"Can you tell me what you were doing here, my love? What were you thinking when you painted me so? You know that never were we together in this way, for my papa and mama forbade it."

But now Henry merely looks confused. "I don't remember," he growls, then louder, "I don't remember! I - DON'T - REMEMBER!"

The librarian's disapproving shoes approach across the woodblock. Vanna knows what she's going to say:

"If you can't be quiet, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave."

But there is another painting by Mihály Zichy, the one they came for, and Vanna shows it to him now. The Angel and Tamara. Except that it's called The Demon and Tamara. Why the girl in the painting is called Tamara, she doesn't know. Just because Vanna's a medium doesn't mean she knows everything in the whole world.

But both of them recognise the girl in the painting. And both of them recognise the face of the demon too.

The demon has Henry's face.