A dying light in Corduba

XLVIII

The fat woman had gone. Nobody was about.

The building occupied a long, narrow plot running away from the street. It was arranged on two floors either side of an open-roofed passageway, then widening into a small terminal courtyard with a well in it. This was sufficiently confined to keep out the sun at hot times of year. At intervals pots were hung on the walls, but the plants in them had died from neglect.

The girl lived on the upper level over the yard, where there was a rickety wooden balcony which I reached by an uneven flight of steps at the far end. Outside her door was a pulley arrangement to facilitate drawing up water. There were wet dripmarks on the balcony rail. A shutter now stood open, one which I remembered had been firmly closed before.

I walked around the balcony the long way, that is on the opposite side from Selia's room. I trod easily, trying not to let the planking creak. When I came back to the part above the entrance passageway a bridge crossed the gap; I guessed nobody used it much for the whole thing sagged worryingly beneath my weight. I moved on gently to her room. She had killed, or tried to kill, two men, so she had thrown away her right to modesty: I went straight in and didn't knock.

The red wig lay on a table. The green tunic hung on a hook. The dancer was naked apart from a loincloth. As she turned to stare at me angrily, she made an appealing sight.

She had one foot on a stool and was anointing her body with what I took to be olive oil. When I stepped through the doorway she deliberately carried on doing it. The body that received the attention was well worth pampering. The spectacle nearly made me forget what I was there for.

'Well, don't be formal! Treat my place as your own!' She threw back her head. Her neck was long. Her own hair, which was an ordinary brown, had been pinned in a flat coil, close against her head. Her body was hard to ignore.

I cast a rapid glance around the place: one room, with a narrow bed. Most of the clutter was on the table, and it was predominantly female stuff. Occasional eating implements were jumbled in among the hairpin pots, cream jars, combs and perfume vials.

'Don't be shy; I've seen nudity before. Besides, we're old friends.'

'You're no friend of mine!'

'Oh come,' I remonstrated sadly. 'Don't you remember me?'

She did pause, with one palm held flat to the oil flask. 'No.'

'You should do. I'm the man who went home from the Society of Olive Oil Producers of Baetica safely in one piece – because I had acquired a large amphora of fish-pickle, with two slaves to carry it.'

She put her foot down on the floor. Her hand still moved slowly upon her gleaming skin, and as she massaged in the oil it was extremely difficult not to stare. She appeared not to notice that she was transfixing me. But the care with which she oiled her breasts told me she knew all right.

I waited calmly. When she jumped for the meat-knife that lay among the cosmetics pots I grabbed at her wrist. It would have been perfectly effective, had she not been so slippery.