“Will you come in for coffee?” She smiled with a sudden startling tenderness, not at me, but at a memory. “Raymond discovered coffee in the Holy Land. He tried so hard to make it grow in France, but it never would.”
The building actually had a penthouse, and she used a key in the elevator to get us to the top floor. I can’t describe the apartment in any great detail, because I was so occupied in trying to deal with the notion of Melusine—the real Melusine herself—living in any apartment, in any building, in any century but the thirteenth or fourteenth, and in any locale but Southern France. But the walls of her living room—where she served our coffee, accompanied by madeleines that would have made Proust weep—were white, with an undertone of blue, and there were a lot of paintings and hanging tapestries, some surprisingly modern; most clearly as old as the books on her shelves. There was no loom visible, nor any sketchbook, nor so much as an embroidery frame; but there was a small keyboard, plainly meant to hook up to an organ of some sort, and I was reminded that aristocratic thirteenth-century ladies needed to have some demonstrable talent to entertain. Even if they could turn into a dragon at a moment’s notice, and avenge themselves properly against people who couldn’t.
Which reminded me . . . and I looked at my watch. Ten thirty, a bit before. She saw the movement and smiled, this time definitely at me, myself: a born professor, prematurely aged by the pointless pressures of his job, but with a magpie memory, completely unsystematized, for all sorts of myths, legends, and fairy tales. She said, “I have never harmed a human being in all my very long life. You would appreciate that statement more if you knew even one of the temptations that have been placed in my way.”
“Good to know,” I said lamely; and then, thinking it just as well to change the subject, “Do you need the chair all the time?”
“Only on Friday. Sometimes Thursday as well—lately, it varies.” She sighed. “The children never had any trouble remembering to leave me entirely to myself on Saturdays. I don’t think Raymond and dear Guy quite knew the days of the week, not really. And why should they have? That sort of thing was for women and priests, in those days.”
“Yet you left them both without giving either one a second chance, and without ever looking back. I always thought that a bit harsh of you.”
Melusine bridled somewhat. “I was simply too old not to see the end in the beginning. First, spying on your bath—then, the next thing you know, they are choosing your dresses, choosing their own mistresses, ordering the cook around, and demanding that you sing for their drunken friends when you have a headache. No, no, thank you, I offer no second chances, no atonements.” Yet the last words were, though not regretful, touched with something close to wistfulness. She poured more coffee.
“When they died,” I said, “when any of your descendants died, the legend was that you flew in dragon form around their castle towers all night long, weeping so that trees fell and rivers flooded. They still claim you in Lusignan.”
“So they should,” she answered, with a wry twist of that haunting, haunted mouth. “I am become a tourist attraction, like your time’s theme parks and my time’s holy relics—lies and pigs’ bones, either way.” She broke one of the madeleines in half and handed me my portion with the air of a queen granting a supplicant an earldom, or a monopoly. She said, “But I will fly once more only, whenever the last of my family dies in Canada. After that . . . after that I will be no one but a retired old Californian lady, living quietly on a side street with my books and my memories. Nothing more.”
“Except on Saturdays,” I said.
Her smile bared small, perfect teeth, remarkably white and just slightly pointed.
“Except on Saturdays. But remember, I am only half a dragon—the other half is as human as makes no matter. I know how to live here. Shall we have some wine?”
I am not a wine buff—an impossible, arrogant beer snob, yes—and I do not know how to describe the wine that she served me in crystal glasses that rang together for a toast as gently and distantly as wind chimes. All wine turns to vinegar beyond a certain age, no matter how fancy and expensive it is; and this vintage simply could not have been as old as she told me it was. But I have never had such wine again, which is a great pity, now that I know what wine is supposed to be. What wine is.
The earliest reference to Melusine that I have ever found dates from the late fourteenth century. The last woman I had been with was a university student (no, not one of mine, thank God; leave me a little honor, a smidgen of dignity). She seduced me—talk about falling off a log—and then told all her friends about it, and even put it up on the Internet. There has been no one since. Had been. Has.
I cannot tell you to this day whether or not I actually made love with Melusine, a creature perhaps far older than even the fairy tales tell us; perhaps as old as Lilith, as old as Ishtar or Isis. What I do know is that at some point I did lift her in my arms for a second time, and I did look down into a face fierce and beautiful, universes beyond my understanding of either word. There were dragons in her eyes; there were lilacs on her mouth; there were tiny thorns guarding the nipples of the round breasts so like those in erotic Indian bas-reliefs. And as for the legs—for yes, I am sure those sleek slacks came off . . . no, they were not human legs, not legs, really, not at all, and I did not care. I still have the occasional nightmare about them, but it was worth it. Whatever truly happened, it was worth it.
Obviously, I lost track of time. I didn’t care about that, either. But I will swear that it was not yet midnight when she rose through my arms in another form, so swiftly, and with such power, that knife-edged scales sliced my shirt open, great claws put marks on my back that I bear to this day, and a desert breath like a sirocco, a khamsin, a simoom, hurled me halfway across the room, where I sprawled as helplessly as she had done on the floor of the 29 bus. She rose over me—half-human, quarter-human, what price fractions?—the face still her face, after a fashion; the arms that had at once cradled and commanded me now shrunken against her chest, all but hidden in the shadow of the great wings spreading from her sides. The legs had fused completely into a tail curled like some sort of wasp poised to sting. When she spoke, I could understand her, but her speech itself was agonizing to hear, as though there were scales on the words too, raking against my eardrums. I can hear them yet, even though she only spoke three.
“Open the window . . .”
I picked myself up and hurried to obey, lest she should speak again. She went through with a rush that did not knock me over again, but did set my torn clothes flapping absurdly, and my head almost literally spinning on my neck. The old-style fire escape outside the window crashed onto the street below. No one was hurt, that I ever knew.
She did not fly off immediately, but hovered outside the window, looking back at me. The tail unfurled fully for the first time, glittering metallically in the light of the risen three-quarter moon. There are ancient woodcuts and etchings of Melusine that show her with two tails, but one is plenty. From her matted mane, gleaming like chain mail itself, to the very end of her body, she must have been a full twelve feet in length; yet in part she remained recognizably, terribly human, just as Medusa must have done. Her face looked more like metal itself than like flesh, but the twist of great grief was on it, on her mouth, as visibly as it had been on the 29 bus. I was terrified of her, and of what we had been about to do—or had already done? My body told me nothing—but I ached for her, and toward her, as I still do. Melusine . . .