Crandolin Page 5
He’d only shown her the once. After all, he didn’t want to give her ideas. And he’d never shown her where he’d got his from. A little perk, a human weakness, it could be called, entirely innocent, and common as grass on a lawn, yes it is. That glorious, debouched evening of love and truth had taught him that.
“My flat is safer than that termite-eaten igloo,” he’d said to Simon International-Conflict-Resolution-Museum-Archives.
“Heathens, all of them these days,” Simon had said. “You want to see some good stuff, ask me.”
And the whole evening had been like that. The really special collections were, these days, in the loving hands of specialists.
The murder mystery that Giles was writing was something he found in . . . but he’s got the book, the only copy in the world.
Giles Moneyfeather had the idea to bring it into the present day so that no one could accuse him of plagiarism if anyone had ever noticed the small, handwritten volume. He’d removed it from the catalogue, easier than stealing candy from a baby. Thinking of that, he was sure it had been much easier than that. A computer system can’t scream.
He carried the book she’d been examining to his Special Collection Reserved shelf behind his desk.
Then, with a jolt, he remembered that he wasn’t finished for the day. He walked around to the other precious-manuscript- examination table where a typical self-important foodie, this one with an Australian accent, had been looking for the past few days at items from the Ardeith Bequest. Rude bugger, he’d left without even stopping by to say “Thank you, Mr Moneyfeather” for having granted him permission.
And the book!
Moneyfeather’s heart beat. Kerflump. and again. Whah-hoo. His forehead pulsed. The book was lying skewiff on the table, and in the centre of the right-hand page, a pucker! Mauled and twisted as a piece of pie-dough.
“The lout!”
It wouldn’t matter with most books, but cookbooks are perversely popular; even the most obscure ones are known.
“Bloody Australians. No wonder we sent them there.” Moneyfeather changed his spectacles so feverishly that he dropped his reading glasses down his bare chest instead of under his jersey and into his shirt pocket. Why should I need to watch? Skin a brick! I’ll be—
“Calm down,” he said.
That helped. Always so quick to jump to conclusions. “Just plonk some weights on it.”
Of course!
If there was a chuckle emitted from the hovering migraine, Moneyfeather didn’t hear it over the noise of his own ragged breath.
Trembling, he closed hypercarefully, the medieval cookbook that was hideously, pervertedly, too bloody known, dammit for him to delete it from the library’s files. O! how he wished that safely before his time, it had been souvenired by some collector.
His lips were a clenched rictus as he picked up the damned thing. With all that parchment or vellum or whatsit, it was heavy as a sheep—oversized yet slippery, covered by acres of ancient leather smoothed by time to the texture of suede. He clutched the book to his chest. One of its great hanging buckles caught the cableknit of his mother’s handknitted jersey (damn her and her knitting), but no matter. He would extricate the buckle at his desk. With his bum, he pushed the chair toward the table, but something sounded wrong.
Bending down, he saw: sprawled from chair seat to floor, a jacket, shirt, pants . . . and shoes, with the sockfeet still in them.
A bladder-pipe in arms
HERE! Take, for your pleasure, this rotten egg and throw it at the fool who first said: Time heals all wounds.
It has been already four whole sleepless nights and sleepless days since Faldarolo woke to find the red blotch on the bladder- pipe’s beloved skin.
Despite Faldarolo’s frantic, and then exhaustive and methodical efforts, the mark not only remains, but seems to Faldarolo, and more importantly, to the bladder-pipe herself, to have spread its hideous blush.
A pink sugared almond hits Faldarolo on his right eyelid. A green one thuds against the bladder-pipe’s skin. Faldarolo’s eyes are closed in a concentration new to him. His eyebrows don’t dance, and his body doesn’t sway to the commands of the songs that the bladder-pipe makes him play. Now his body is rigid, his brows flat and heavy as an iron bar laid across his head. The joints of his fingers are white, and he could almost be made of wood, he moves with such mechanical particularity.
Auy! That was a sheep’s head with the cushioning meat chewed off.
He plays on, till a well-thrown wooden clog hits his skull just so, and with a screech from the bladder-pipe, he makes his final contribution to the hilarity of the party by falling onto his side, insensible as a plate of pilaf—but holding his instrument in his hands. One of the guests compares him to a dead cockroach, arms stiffened around a piece of cake.
He wakes in the street, when he feels the bladder-pipe being tugged from his hands.
“Ugah,” he cries, more of a whimper than a manly curse, but he could attract unwelcome attention. The little boy drops the bladder-pipe and runs with his friends. They disappear around the corner, faster than a scurry of rats. Who wants that ugly thing anyway?
Faldarolo is so weak from hunger that for a moment, he hates the bladder-pipe. “Drunkard,” he hears as he staggers to his feet. Dizzy, he falls.
A policeman makes his way like a cedar walking, through the crowd. He perches his giant hands on his hips, and stands over Faldarolo’s ragged form.
“In the name of public decency,” someone says.
The policeman picks up the bladder-pipe in his left hand and with his right, picks up the back of Faldarolo’s shirt, raising Faldarolo with it.
The policeman says, “Faldarolo, where is your robe?”
Faldarolo jerks as if he were a puppet and his behind was pricked by a puppetry sword. The crowd laughs. He cranes his neck to view the ground all round, but the crowd is too thick. His robe is missing, his only robe good enough to be worn to work. And his feet are bare. Faldarolo blushes, wondering how long the soles of his feet had stared out for all to see.
The policeman steadies him and hands him the bladder-pipe. “If I find any of the scamps with them . . . ” He glances at the richly carved door that had opened the night before, for an unconscious Faldarolo to be kicked out into the dust.
The policeman makes a cluck in the back of his throat. He reaches into his waist wrapping, pulls out a five-piastre piece, and pulls Faldarolo’s right hand free of its clutch on the bladder-pipe.
“Eat, Faldarolo,” the policeman says, earning the indignation of some prominent members of the crowd, and an official complaint (but his woes are another story).
That was days ago, and four piastres of the five went to the bladder- pipe. Lemons, white wine, salt, spirits of lead, mercury salve, the very finest ass’s butter massaged hourly into her skin; tincture of pearl-ash and moonstone made by the fakir in Akshehir Lane— each and all as effective as a wish.
In her rage, she paid Faldarolo dear. At each engagement after the appearance of the Stain, she sang like an angel, lulling the crowd into a mood of generosity and admiration—and then—blurt, squeak, fart, sniff, screech, peel, scream. No matter how much concentration Faldarolo put into blowing and controlling every note, no matter how much he showed her he loved her, no matter how much he starved himself for her—she made others listen, so that when their ears were most open to the flow, they could be most hurt.
Thus, she drew patrons to Faldarolo, and repelled them at the critical moment. Each night, Faldarolo blew into her with fear. He touched her with an even higher respect than normal, the respect he would pay to an angry asp. And at each engagement, she bit him again and again, till the night he was thrown out onto the street.
And now there were no further engagements, nowhere that he could take her to sing. Even before the Stain, she would no more tolerate singing in the street than he would expose her. Now, to the taunts of the crowd at the lurid blemish on her body, her cries were those of a mad
thing. But her demand to Faldarolo was not that of a madthing. Rid me of this mark! Or, as I feel, so shall . . .
Oh, she was logickful. Pain for pain for pain for pain . . .
The mirror that didn’t change its mind
GALINA EXAMINED HERSELF in her mirror, which was remarkably like Valentin—heartless and shallow. It showed her what had disgusted Valentin—a lipstick smear, he thought. Tears trembled on her eyelashes as she gazed at her mouth. The shame of it, the irony! Valentin must have thought that she had made herself up while she was drunk, or while she danced while her potatoes boiled and she imagined being kissed by him. Lipstick! None of her lovers had ever given her something for her femininity, not so much as a tiny bottle of scent. Her salary had never stretched to cosmetics—and certainly not now, not with her growing food needs. And the worst part of the shame is that Galina had always been so proud of not needing enhancement—all that white white skin and red red lips. Her mother had called her Gvozdika, little carnation.
But Valentin, that snake in the form of a charming prince. I should put him out of my mind.
Fancy that wind pulling her coif to pieces in front of his eyes. Horrors, that she had put her face to his, awaiting his kiss, only to be rebuffed with not only, “That lipstick is wrong for you,” but “Half of it has missed your lips.”
Alone in the restaurant car, doors locked fore and aft, her hand- written CLOSED signs blocking prying eyes, Galina examined her face.
She spat on the little mirror and wiped it on her apron, but when she looked again, the mirror’s mind was quite made up. It showed her the same horror, with a spiteful little bonus of viscous snot flowing onto her upper lip. She blew her nose and wiped away her tears.
What Valentin saw (and how many others?) reminded her of her father. It sprawled anyhow like her father used to when he staggered home.
Galina touched herself on the skin between her lip and nose. A rash? She had eaten rather a lot of radishes this morning. But there was no blistering, no itch. No reason on her previously unblemished skin, for that splash of revolting colour.
“I look like a clown.”
Worse.
“Clown lips are symmetrical.”
A knock on the door reminded Galina that she had work to do. It was almost noon. She had to open the restaurant carriage for lunch. She had to find something to make the borscht with . . . something she hadn’t eaten. Two hours ago, she had finished the remains of the breakfast borscht, and all the meat.
A frowsy cabbage, two hairy carrots . . .
Galina grizzled as she chopped them to the sound of people pounding the doors. It was too much to ask of a woman: to invade her privacy when she needs it most. As she poured salt into bubbling water, she took a handful and rubbed it on her mark.
Madly, she scrubbed.
She looked into her mirror, and the mark was not only there, but surrounded by angry skin.
Furiously, the soup bubbled.
Ignominiously the windows fore and aft whimpered at the beating they were taking.
The door knobs fore and aft jiggled uncertainly . . . till . . . one door popped open, the traitor.
Lunchtime had come to the restaurant car—Galina was powerless to stop it. What could she do? Pour more water into the pot and dish out the contents.
There was only enough for nine bowls.
She served the soup.
Nine tourists.
She turned away quickly, not just because she was embarrassed to be seen. She always washed pots during the meal service, as the banging helped to drown out the complaints.
Three carriages away, in the car that Savva thought of as home, Valentin left the toilet with a smile on his face. Under his jacket, warm against his skin, the solid block of The Impossible Virgin sheltered, certain page edges neatly folded back.
At the other end of the carriage, in the compartment nearest the samovar, Savva spat a wad of sunflower-seed shells out the doorway, aiming for the heart of a certain faded rose on the strip of carpet.
He missed.
The physics of a poof!
IN THE COMFORT OF A LIBRARY, the Omniscient spent the morning fondly observing his latest, who had been writing like an author should, not letting anything get in the way of truth, not letting excuses such as paid employment distract. Such a panicky type, so forgetful (at his young age)—there was something to him that appealed to the Omniscient, who was glad to have chosen an unknown, Giles Moneyfeather (good name) to give story #*78JJJ* * * (a murder that the Omniscient had witnessed, and the subsequent travels of the incompletely dry skeleton from the Urals to the village of Little Bloxwich, Walsall, some centuries ago). The Omniscient planned (a fantasy?) that, having inspired Moneyfeather to find the written account (only mildly distorted by human error), he (the Omniscient) would enjoy a long-earned rest, no longer needing memory to do his job. He would be able to spend time in his favourite places, blotto between the leaves.
So, unobservant of the discontent sprouting in the aspiring author’s soul, the Omniscient spent the afternoon in The History of One Day out of Seventeen Thousand. When he emerged refreshed, he only glanced at Moneyfeather, whose back was bent, whose fingers clutched a writing instrument. The Omniscient commended himself. He idly surveyed the room, and observed: a snooty lady novelist who had never asked for his help; and a big muscular man, not what the Omniscient would have called bookish, but who was ogling at 6 pt reading range, a splayed-open tome. The Omniscient wafted over. And this curious man surprised him again. So solid, yet spending his interest in myth. Nonsense pictures and hocus-pocus formulae (typical rubbish that the Muse handed foolish swains). The Omniscient was thinking of leaving when the man bent even closer to the book and kissed (?) the page.
Poof!
His clothes collapsed.
The Omniscient rushed to the book. Yowks! What a passionate kisser. The page was ravished. The Omniscient weltered with emotions. Never had he seen anything of his treated to a love so fierce.
Crandolin! A medusa of a Muse fancy. The Omniscient hrrred at the way Her creations interfere with the process of thought. This crandolin distracted him now, just when he needed to sharpen his mind to fathom the phenomenon of the disappearance.
The library is silent. The librarian has been so self-absorbed, he hasn’t lifted his head—same as the lady novelist.
Indeed, they were both as oblivious as if there had been no poof! To be fair to them, what he had observed was an absence of something, not a something as such. No actual poof. No bang, puff, swirl, nor cloud. None of your logickless magic that you shove down their gaping minds.
The Omniscient, though still affected by his time between the leaves, knew without a doubt that he had witnessed an extraordinarity. A man was as thoroughly not there as the missing riches in a pilfered tomb. The Omniscient had seen much, and told it in countless stories. But this!
He studied the page again. Crandolin? Like love poetry. The Omniscient had never followed the Muse’s balderdashes. Why should I? How couldst I? She was a fripperist, a serial fabricator. When he thought of how many men happily spread her lies for a gaze from her violet eyes . . . In his increasingly rare times of sobriety he admitted to himself that the Muse’s relationships disturbed him. She is to blame. He didn’t detail what he blamed her for, but if he were a fictional character, a narrator might have mentioned his forgetfulness, his crisis of confidence that had made him escape ever more till he had sunk to the depths of referring this Moneyfeather to a book—and if the narrator had been opinionated (perish that sort), the book idea might have been pejoratively referred to as a ‘dodge’, or ‘the ultimate abdication of responsibility’.
Gazing at the vacated apparel, he felt a surge of the unexpected—a jolt of confidence that he hadn’t felt since what did they call it, that excellent bunch that argued so . . . the Age of Reason. No, they didn’t call it that. They assumed that truth was the only tale worth telling . . .
Bad habits. Such wandering lately.
The book was probably a coincidence, the spot of moisture glistening on the page: cerebral sap exuded when in a perfectly natural though rare phenomenon, the corporal man imploded into a dimension that . . . I need to ponder.
These days real was getting so tenuous. What had he given out to whom? Memory makes reality as real as the animals and tales that the Muse invents. The Omniscient shuddered. To believe in fantasies!
At last, however, he had an anomalism to explore. Modern science would be able to explain. It’s high time I get back into science again. To observe is not enough. To extrapolate makes me great.
The Omniscient felt young again. He was rusty, however, in extrapolation, so he didn’t mind communing with human minds (He had never, to tell the truth, been able to get beyond them). So: To science minds, at once!
He was just dithering, preparatory for embarking on the quest, when he guiltily remembered his protégé.
“I’ll be ba—”
Out of the corner of his sensibilities, he saw a woman in red rush towards the book and snatch it up.
“You!” he roared, infuriated and hurt.
“You!”
She dropped the book where it had been and the pages opened to the same place as before and at that moment Giles looked at his watch and smiled for the first time that day. They watched him close his notebook and perform his paid-for duties and the minutes dripped stickily, one by one, till he discovered the Disappearance down to the shoes with the sockfeet still in them—and fell: a faint or heart attack. Whatever, the Muse grabbed the book and ran.
A meeting of minds
THE OMNISCIENT RAN AFTER HER, a random mess of flesh and blood, mismatched apparel, and waftingness. “Against the laws,” he puffed.
“What are laws?” she laughed, her high heels clacking on the pavement like any mortal woman’s.