The Book of Revelation by Rupert Thomson Page A

on tour, between performances. Vivian and Carmela were sitting behind him, talking about how sad it was. Turning in his seat, he interrupted them, saying that he didn’t know, he hadn’t heard. Was it really true?
    Oh yes, Vivian said, her eyelashes dark and wet. His heart just stopped .
    But I only saw him on Friday —
    I know, Vivian said. It happened really suddenly . She put her arm round Carmela, who had started to cry.
    He sat back and stared out of the window. The bus shifted into a lower gear. They were passing through mountains now, lush green mountains draped in mist. . . . He could see Milo so clearly—his pale, almost sickly complexion, and his compact, muscular physique. He thought of the histrionic stomach pains that Milo had in class most mornings—his nickname in the company was Milodrama—and yet, despite these afflictions, whether real or imaginary, despite his size too, Milo could jump higher than anybody else, Milo could make space crackle. . . . He remembered how Milo had drunk three glasses of champagne in a restaurant in Buenos Aires once, and how he had then danced an extraordinary, impromptu tango with Fernanda. When it was over, the people eating there had given them a standing ovation. . . .
    Little Milo, dead.
    When he woke up he lay there quietly. Though he was sure it wasn’t true, the dream had nonetheless disturbed him. It had the stillness of a premonition, the eerie tangibility of the future tense. Yet, at the same time, paradoxically, it felt like reality, or even memory, and because of that, perhaps, it reminded him of what he had lost. Most people have no knowledge of the dancer’s world—how small it is, how intimate, and how complete; it’s a world within the world, and everything you need is there—work, friendship, passion, laughter, love. It was the world he had lived in since he was fourteen years old, and now he had been torn away from it, and it was going on without him. He had no news of it, and he felt alone, so terribly alone. The dream had made that clear to him, more vividly than anything the three women had said or done. He kept going over it and over it, trying to bring back something else, another moment from the journey, another fragment of conversation, until at last the door-handle at the far end of the room turned slowly clockwise and the woman he called Maude walked in.
    •
    She kneeled on the mat beside him. “You’re unhappy?”
    “I had a bad dream,” he said.
    “You can tell me, if you like. . . .”
    He shook his head. “No.”
    “Well,” she said, “I’m sorry for your dream.”
    Perhaps it was her imperfect English, or perhaps it was just that she had tried to show him sympathy, but, in that moment, he felt as if he knew exactly what she looked like. Her face was round, with features that seemed to crowd into the middle—all cheeks, in other words, but no chin to speak of, and not much forehead. When she found something amusing, her eyes would half close like a cat’s, and small tucks would appear at the corners of her mouth. She would age well, he thought. In fact, she probably would not age at all.
    He allowed her to wash him, to clean his teeth, to take him to the toilet. The sight of the word Sphinx raised its usual, wry smile. Back in the room, she brought him his breakfast. They had started giving him the sort of food that he was used to: breakfast was cereal and fruit, for instance, and two or three cups of herb tea.
    Almost as soon as he had finished eating, the preparations for the banquet began. While the work was going on, he was kept blindfolded. He lay there and listened to the women talking quickly among themselves in Dutch. Every now and then they called out to him, as if they wanted him to share in the excitement, but he still felt weighed down by the melancholy that he had woken with that morning.
    On the removal of the blindfold an hour or two later he found that he was lying inside a structure that resembled