Philomela’s house was musty and Claudia imagined it must be hard to breathe there if you stayed too long. Whether this was due to any property of the house or simply to its constant and close proximity with Philomela was hard to tell. The house was, she discovered, a gift from Philomela’s roguish elder brother. It was his consolation gift to a woman to drab to ever hope for a husband.
Philomela had no need to work for the money her piano lessons provided for her. This made her ideal in the eyes of the parents who employed her. After all who would want a working class woman in contact with their daughters? The daughters preferred her because she was neither ancient nor preachy. They had enough of moral lessons from crones elsewhere.
Claudia liked her less in her own house. She had expected some warming, some humanity to creep into the grey stiff woman. Nothing had altered in the slightest except the scenery. Claudia had a perverse urge to rip her own hair from her skull just to bring some sort of life to the room.
Instead she contented herself to let her fingers drone on over the piano keys. The house drained any life there might have been out of her renditions.
She was bored, a dragging penetrating painful boredom. This was the third time she’d braved the life sucking dullness of Philomela’s house. She feared if she did it too often she’d begin to reflect the same mechanical efficiency and ill looks as the house’s owner. Nothing ever brought life to the house. Nothing changed. It was either in a coma or dead.
Then somehow life surged into the house. A door slammed and an unmitigated male voice rang out. “Why don’t you keep a blasted servant, Phil.”
Claudia turned about and her eyes caught on him. Fresh from a brisk horse ride he had a towel up to his neck and sweat dampened the collar of his shirt. Ever so briefly his eyes slid over Claudia. Heat swept over her body leaving her trembling in the cool of its wake. Her world began in that instant and then it ceased again as his gaze drifted to his sister. Claudia was left trembling and disoriented.
“Brother, this is highly inappropriate.” Philomela said. Claudia did not hear her. She heard nothing. The world has stopped existing. All that existed was him and a pause between his one action and the next. He was darkness. The black of his hair, and the shadow he cast across the wall were more real than her heart surging inside her discarded flesh.
Claudia had forgotten herself. Perhaps she had ceased to be at all. She’d melted into an essence of adoration. To say that she loved him would be inaccurate. She existed for him. She was him. Everything she’d ever been had turned itself into just a facet of his glory. There was no right, no wrong. There was only him.
“Wouldn’t want to scandalize your ladies.” He laughed. His laugh was like the pounding of horses’ hooves on the cobbles. It was loud, sharp and it shook her. It was unrestrained power. She felt it inside her. He looked at Claudia again but his eyes did not see her. Claudia formed again into herself but she lay forgotten to the side. Until he saw her even her existence was pointless.
He was not a conventionally handsome man. He was nothing like her beautiful fiancée who seemed formed just to be sculpted and painted. No, Philomela’s brother was a man, not a work of art. His jaw line was strong and his dark eyes deep set. His frame was large and intimidating without any excess flesh. If Victor was an angel then this was a man who was more man than any man she’d ever seen. His hands were dirty and his neck threaded with muscle. Her hands shook. She had the urge to touch her lips, her neck, her breasts.
“You are the devil sent to plague me.” Philomela said. It was the most spirited thing she had ever uttered around Claudia but Claudia did not notice.
The devil, she thought, yes. He is the devil and I love him. Her conscious mind flowed away from him into the turbulent emotions he was causing. Her heart ached from the fierceness of her yearnings. And they were wicked yearnings, how could they be anything else when she’d given her life, her heart and her soul to the devil. I’m yours her eyes said plainly.
He did not see them. He did not see her.
Claudia fell into despair.
Then he turned to her with a half smile and made a small polite bow. “Mademoiselle.”
“Sir,” Her lips formed the word but what she was really saying was ‘take me, take me here and now. Make me real. I’ve forgotten myself and must be with you. I love you. Don’t leave me here. You are the devil and I’ve damned myself to hell for you.”
He turned and left.
“I apologize. Damon is…” Philomela’s voice trailed off. “Are you feeling well Claudia? You look pale? I hope he didn’t upset you too greatly.”
“No,” Claudia said. She didn’t hear herself. “Shall we continue?”
She had never played more beautifully. She only played his name. She played it over and over again. She saw his face and his body. She felt the illusory touch of his skin. He rode on top of her. She had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.
Her whole life had changed but the world around her didn’t know it yet. Claudia played quickly and heavily. She knew perfectly well that he hadn’t seen her, that she didn’t matter to him. Slowly as she began to remember herself as a separate entity this began to plague her. Her youth and her confidence in her own attractiveness convinced her that she could make him see her if only she was given the chance.
That he see her was imperative. How did not matter. Nothing mattered but him.
In and interminable amount of time her fingers finished their journey across the keys. Philomela escorted Claudia back to her carriage and Claudia climbed inside. She watched the house fading away as she drove. She waited for some sign of his existence. Some beacon. The world around her was the same. There was no evidence that the world had shattered and been rebuilt in his image. Only she appeared to know. Claudia smiled impishly.
Title Reference:
*Dostoevsky, Fyodor. “Crime And Punishment” Bantam Books, co 1866: 57