Polystom by Adam Roberts Page A

books about her, on the floor, on the arm of the couch, on the table, no books at all except the myriad volumes tucked away on their shelves.
    She came back to bed with him, but when he woke up in the morning light he was alone again. It seemed that she had risen early. Stom, guided by Nestor, found her in the kitchen, huddled against the wood-cooker in the early morning chill. The servants looked embarrassed to have their mistress slouching in their space. Did she understand nothing? How could she embarrass herself in front of the servants like this?
    She looked up when he came in and her face seemed almost pleased to see him. For a moment his heart bubbled with possibility; come to me, he thought, love me and I’ll repay it! I swear I’ll repay it sevenfold. ‘What are you doing in here!’ he said in tones of mock-rebuke, as one might with a child. ‘Getting in the way of the servants!’ He helped her to her feet and embraced her, to the further embarrassment of the cook. Then he led her gently away, up the steps, and into the breakfast room. But somewhere, on that short journey, his heart swelling with hope and the possibility of being loved – somewhere on that journey he lost her. Her face came over vacant, her steps absent. She slotted herself into her chair before Nestor had time to pull it away from the table. She was so slender that she could slip between the fat oak edge and the heavy arm-rest.
    Polystom was tired from his interrupted night’s sleep,but nevertheless he made a conscious decision to try to reach her. To find a piece of common interest. She kept staring out of the window, so she presumably liked nature. She could share his love for the forest.
    ‘Do you like trees?’ he blurted out, reaching for a bread-sweet, and breaking it with both hands. The hot sugared dough steamed.
    There was a little silence.
    ‘Trees?’ she echoed in her small voice, as if from far away.
    ‘I love trees. My father loved trees, and I have inherited that love. Most of my estate is woodland,’ Stom said. ‘Beautiful trees,’ he continued, hoping to reach her with his enthusiasm. ‘You’ll love it.’
    She looked up at his face, as if about to speak; paused. Polystom had the sudden rush of hope, that he had touched her. She drew a breath, let it out. ‘I like open spaces,’ she said in her sing-song voice. ‘No walls.’
    ‘There are no walls in my woodland,’ said Stom, a little over-eagerly, still trying to reach her.
    ‘Trees are like walls,’ she said. The sentence was spoken with an enormous quietness that implied grave, sad wisdom. She waited a heartbeat, and said: ‘trees are walls.’ She looked away.
    How wrong! For days Stom could think of nothing else than this little speech by his wife, rehearsing possible replies in his mind, circling round and round the little dialogue over and over until it had condensed into a sort of rage inside him. How could she be so blind? He thought he had been granted an insight into her; saw her spirit fleeing for ever over endless plains, over grasslands, running and running. But this was an illusion, this sense of escape. Because what did it boil down to in the end? Beeswing’s tiny body, her too-rapidly beating heart, her own being-in-the-world, it was
that
she yearned to escape. And there was no escape from selfhood, it was a responsibility, not a burden. Couldn’t she see? And even though the two of themhad not quarrelled
as such
, even though no voices had been raised or cross words spoken, nonetheless this little exchange had revealed to Stom the sheer unbending stubbornness at the heart of Beeswing’s mind. The stubbornness of the child who has not yet learned (as Cleonicles would have put it) that the gap between wish and world must be accepted or it will shred us to pieces. That wishing is not a crime, but wish – like a metal – only becomes
useful
if alloyed, tempered, with a sense of
how the world is
. That was what growing up involved. Didn’t