The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,372

my mother’s eyes! And in this room filled with the very old, she is so young still …

She bent down. She withdrew her hands ever so gently from the Englishman. She laid them on her pale hands, her softly melting hands. Hard! Hard as the rosary beads. Cold and hard. She closed her eyes, and pressed her fingers into this unyielding white flesh. So absolutely dead, so beyond any breath of life, so firmly finished.

If Michael were here, could he know from her hands if she had died without pain or fear? Could he know why the secrecy? Could he touch this horrid, lifeless flesh and hear the song of life still from it? Oh, please God, whoever she was, why ever she gave me away, I hope it was without fear and pain that she died. In peace, in a sweetness like her face. Look at her closed eyes, her smooth forehead.

Slowly, she raised her hand and wiped the tears off her own cheek, and realized that her face was relaxed now. That she could speak if she wanted to, and that others around her were crying too, that the woman with the iron gray hair was crying, and that the poor black-haired woman who had been crying all along was sobbing silently against the chest of the man beside her, and that the faces of those who didn’t cry—everywhere she looked in the glow beyond the coffin—had become thoughtful and quiet, and rather like those faces in great Florentine paintings where the passive, faintly sad souls regard the world beyond the frame as if from a dream, gazing out from the corners of their eyes, languidly.

She backed away, but her eyes remained fixed on the woman in the coffin. She let the Englishman guide her again, away, to a small room that waited. Mr. Lonigan was saying it was time for them all to come up one by one, that the priest was here, and he was ready.

In astonishment, Rowan saw a tall old man bend gracefully and kiss the dead woman’s forehead. Beatrice, the pretty one with the gray hair, came next and whispered something as she kissed the dead woman in the same manner. A child was lifted next to do the same; and the old bald man came, heavy with his big belly making it hard, but he bent to give the kiss, whispering hoarsely for everyone to hear, “Good-bye, darlin’.”

Mr. Lonigan pushed her gently down in the chair. As he turned, the crying woman with the black hair suddenly bent near and looked into her eyes. “She didn’t want to give you up,” she said, her voice so thin and quick it was like a thought.

“Rita Mae!” Mr. Lonigan hissed, turning on her, taking her by the arm, and drawing her back.

“Is that true?” Rowan whispered. Rowan reached out to capture her retreating hand. Mr. Lonigan’s face flushed, his jowls shivering slightly. He pushed the black-haired woman away, out of the door, down a small hallway.

The Englishman looked down at her from the door to the big room. He gave her a little nod, his eyebrows rising as if it filled him with sadness and wondering.

Slowly Rowan withdrew her gaze from him. She stared at the procession, still coming one by one, each bending as if to drink from the cool splash of a low water fountain. “Good-bye, Deirdre, dear.” Did they all know? Did they all remember, the older ones, the ones who had come up to her at first? Had all the children heard, in one form or another, at some time or another? The handsome one was watching her from far away.

“Good-bye, sweetheart … ” On and on they came, seemingly without end, the rooms behind them dark and crowded as the line pressed in tighter.

Didn’t want to give you up.

What must it feel like to kiss her smooth hard skin? And they did it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the simplest thing in the world, the baby held aloft, the mother bending, the man coming so quick and then another very old one with spotted hands and thinning hair, “Help me up, Cecil,” her foot on the velvet prie-dieu. The twelve-year-old with the hair ribbon stood on tiptoe.

“Rowan, do you want to be alone with her again?” Lonigan’s voice. “That’s your time at the end, when they’ve all passed. The priest will wait. But you don’t have to.”

She looked into the Englishman’s mild, gray