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keep the place up,' said Otille, blithe and breezy. 'I've let it run down, but I've tried to maintain islands of elegance within it. Would you care to see one?' And before Jocundra could answer, she swirled out of the door, urging her to follow. 'It's just down the hall,' she said. 'My father's old room.'

It was, indeed, elegant. Gobelin tapestries of unicorns and hunts, dozens of original paintings. Klee, Kandinsky, Magritte, Braque, Miro. The black wood of the walls showed between them like veins of coal running through a surreal bedrock. Comfortable sofas and chairs, an antique globe, a magnificent Shiraz carpet. But opposed to this display of good taste, arranged in cabinets and on tables, was a collection of cheap bric-a-brac like that found in airport gift shops and tourist bazaars: mementos of exotic cultures bearing the acultural stamp of sterility most often approved by national chambers of commerce. There were ashtrays, enameled key rings, coin purses, models of famous landmarks, but the bulk of the collection was devoted to mechanical animals. Pandas, monkeys, an elephant which lifted tiny logs, a snake coiling up a plastic palm, on and on. A miniature invasion creeping over the bookshelves and end tables. The collection, said Otille, represented her father's travels on behalf of the Rigaud Foundation and his various charities, and reflected his pack rat's obsession with things bright and trivial.

The room appeared to have calmed Otille. She chatted away as if Jocundra were an old school friend, describin family evenings when her father and she would set all the toy animals in operation and send them bashing into one another. But Jocundra found this wholesale change in mood more alarming than her rage, and in addition, she was beginning to make eerie connection between the generations of Rigauds. Valcours with his anthropomorphic toys, Otille's father's animals, Otille's pets and 'friends.' God only knew what Clothilde had collected. It was easy to see how one could think of the family as a single terrible creature stretching back through time, some genetic flaw or chemical magic binding the spirit to the blood.

'I'm afraid I have a luncheon in New Orleans,' Otille said, ushering Jocundra out. 'Foundation business. But we can talk more another time.' She locked the door behind them and headed down the hall. 'If I see Donnell on my way to the car,' she called back, 'I'll send him along.'

It was said with such unaffected sincerity that for the moment Jocundra did not doubt her.

'An attic's the afterlife of a house,' said Otille, opening the door, 'Or so my mother used to say.'

The air inside was sweetly scented and cool. She stepped aside to let him pass, and as he did, her hip brushed his hand, a silky pass like a cat fitting itself to your palm. She shut the door, and he heard the lock engage. The gable windows were shuttered, the room pitch dark, and when she walked off, he lost sight of her.

'Turn on the light!'

'Why don't you find me like you did Dularde?'

'You might fall.'

She gave a frosty little laugh. Boards creaked. 'Damn it, Otille!'

'Take off your glasses, and I'll turn on the light.'

Christ! He folded the glasses and put them in his pocket. He imagined he could hear her breathing, but realized it was his own breath whining through clogged sinuses.

'What the hell do you want to show me?' he asked.

'You'll have to come to the window,' she said softly.

A rattling to his left made him jump. Metal shutters lifted from the row of gables, strips of silver radiance widening to chutes of dust-hung moonlight spilling into a long, narrow room, so long its far reach was lost in shadow. It must, he thought, run the length of the rear wing. The rattling subsided, and seven windows ranged the darkness, portals opened onto a universe of frozen light. Bales, bundles, and sheet-draped mysteries lined the walls. And then Otille, who had slipped out of her clothing, stepped from the shadows and went to stand by the nearest window. Her reappearance had the quality of illusion, as if she were an image projected by the rays of moonlight. Her skin glowed palely, and the curls of black hair falling onto her shoulder, her pubic triangle, these seemed absent places in her flesh.

'Don't look so dumfounded,' she said, beckoning.

From the window, Donnell saw white flickering lights beyond the conical hills. Welder's arcs, Otille explained. The copper had arrived, and the night shift had begun at once.