Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

34. Magic No

So here I am — Jonathan Fitch on Chapter 34 of my story. I’m very superstitious and superstition creates its own rules: I knew it would be wrong to contrive to end this with a chapter total the same as that of Melencolia’s magic square but I thought it would be a good omen if it fell out that way. That’s not going to happen now: melancholy yes; magic no.

When I saw Mr Rinyo-Clacton step back and get caught in the carriage doors I said, ‘No! Wait!’ A useless thing to say, I know, but I was overwhelmed by a sense of this thing being cut off short, being stopped unresolved. I was shocked by the taking-away of his death from me by this weird deus ex machina. Dea, rather, this old woman who suddenly finished off a man who’d become some kind of a cornerstone of my existence. There were so many things to be worked out before I could be the hero of my story, and now the process would never be complete and I’d never be that hero.

Platform 4 was taped off and the station closed. People streamed out into Earl’s Court Road, marvelling at the drama that had heightened their reality. I told a London Transport policeman that I was a close friend and he directed Katerina and me to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

‘Kandis?’ I said to Katerina, ‘Theodor Kandis, was that his name?’

‘That was his name.’

‘Who was he?’

She stifled a sob and shook her head. We took a taxi, and all the way to the hospital she sat with her hands over her face, speechlessly rocking back and forth.