Free Athena by John Banville Page B

come to me this moment – because he reminded me of myself. Well, that’s a surprise; I shall return to it when I’ve given it some thought. Meanwhile he is standing in his Rodin pose with a hand in his pocket and his head thrown back, looking at me down the sides of his broad nostrils and smiling in his glintingly jovial way.
    ‘Yes,’ he said almost gaily, ‘we’re running a few checks on you. A few scans. Francie here thinks you may not be the thing at all. He thinks he’s come across you somewhere before, in another life. Don’t you, Francie? There’s talk—’ lowering his voice to a conspiratorial growl ‘– there’s talk of serious misdemeanours, of grave misdeeds.’
    And he laughed, still eyeing me merrily, as if it were all a grand joke. Francie said nothing and sat with lowered gaze, sucking his teeth and turning and turning his beer glass slowly in its own puddle on the bar top. I want you to see the scene: evening, the crowded, chattering pub, smoke and dust motes coiling in the last, thick rays of sunlight slanting down over the roofs of Gabriel Street, and the three of us there in that little pool of stillness, Francie and me facing each other perched on our stools with our knees almost touching and Morden standing at his ease between us with a hand in the pocket of his jacket as if he were cradling a gun, admiring his reflection in the flyblown mirror behind the bar. You were there too, of course, I could feel your presence vividly, the ghostly fourth of our quartet. Already, you see, I was carrying you with me, my phantom, my other self. And nothing else mattered very much.
    ‘What do you say?’ Morden said to Francie in the mirror. ‘Is he the real thing or not? Because if he’s not …’ He took his hand out of his pocket and with finger and cocked thumb shot me silently and grinned. ‘Bang. You’re dead.’
    I am always surprised and gratified by the composure I am capable of in the face of shocks and sudden perils. Morden in his menacingly playful way had brought my past, my buried past, sitting bolt upright out of its coffin, wide-eyed and hideously grinning, and there I was sipping my drink and looking at the ceiling with what I considered an admirable show of unconcern. It is not always thus, of course, but when it is it’s wonderfully convincing, I believe. At least, I hope it is. Francie still had not spoken and Morden nudged me and said, ‘Sherlock is silent.’ He waved a hand in which a glass has suddenly appeared: mineral water – he does not drink, remember? ‘Well, in that case, case dismissed,’ he said and tapped the base of his glass gavel fashion on the bar. The dog is there too, lying on the floor beside its master’s stool with front paws extended and ears pricked up, doing its Anubis impression. Francie scowls. Everything seems small and distant in the tremulous, gin-blue air. For no reason at all I felt suddenly, fatuously, cheerful. Morden put his gun-hand on my shoulder; extraordinary grip, have I said that already? ‘Listen,’ he said into my ear with mock-sincerity, ‘don’t worry, I like a self-made man.’
    Now everything shifts again, the false panels and secret compartments slide this way and that with an oiled, surreptitious smoothness, and it is another day and we are somewhere else, and the sun is shining steadily as before but from a different angle and not thick but piercing in white-gold filaments through shutters, is it? or wooden blinds? We must be having an indian summer. Morning, I believe, calm and bright, with that clear-edged, headachy look to things as if they were exhibits set out under polished sheets of glass. We are in the lounge of one of those imitation grand hotels that had begun to spring up on the edge of the quarter, all chrome and honey-coloured wood and the woolly smell of expensive bad dinners. I was delivering a small, well-rounded lecture on the pictures, sitting with my hands clasped between myknees and frowning at the