“Too late! He is already here. They were trying to vaccinate him with the worm when he got away. Did I pronounce the word correctly?”
The question was asked in such an infantile manner that I felt a renewed concern for the girl. I asked her, “When last have you eaten or had a shower, child?”
“Not going to answer any rude questions. Not even going to hear them. Right now I am pretending to stuff my fingers in my ears.” After a while, she said, “I can fly. I already told you this.”
“Yes, you did. You also mentioned the Citizen Brigade.” I felt she was referring to the ambulance’s attendants and I told her, “Maybe we should go inside and wait for them. There’s no need to be afraid of me.”
I noticed the fingers of one hand moving up and down as if I had reminded her of the door’s weight. “Have you ever killed anyone?”
“What sort of question is that?” I asked.
“It’s a very simple question. Now answer.”
“No!”
“Maybe you forgot. Have you ever tried to kill someone?”
“Listen, child. I think you knocked your head in the accident. You shouldn’t be out all by yourself.”
“I am not by myself. I am looking for my pet cat. It helps me get around. It tells me who to avoid.”
It occurred to me that she was afraid of me, a stranger. “Am I so scary looking?” I asked her and when she did not reply, I added, “Why would I do something so horrible like killing someone?”
“Because of the other voices telling you what to do.”
“What other voices, child?”
“Stop calling me a child. The voices from the other people you have joined up with.”
“I haven’t joined with anyone. If you move away from behind the door you will see I am alone.”
“Stop pretending. You know you can’t see the others. They are behind your forehead.”
“I see. Did I put them there?”
“They are always there.” She paused and I felt she was peeping at me through a chink in the door. “Or maybe you did. You look old and wrinkly.”
“Thank you. That makes me happy.”
I heard a low giggle before she said, “When everyone got joined together the voices started.”
“So everyone hears the voices?”
I saw a finger drumming against the door’s side. “Some were fixed and those who couldn’t be fixed were packed into Adjacentland. All the monsters.” Just then, there was a rumble of thunder and she whispered something about her monster.
“It’s only thunder,” I told her.
“It’s when the monster comes along.”
“There is no –”
I jumped back when the door fell forward and a ragged little thing stepped forward. She was wearing a hood that covered her face and a frayed serape studded with wilted flowers was wrapped around her shoulders. I guess I was too surprised to stop her when she turned the door over and jumped aboard. There were roller bearings on each end of the door and she kicked with one foot like a toboggan rider and sped down the road singing, “Round and round the mulberry bush.” When I collected myself, I shouted for her to stop but she continued kicking until the door gathered speed on the downward slope. She was wearing boots that were ridiculously big and there was a clutch of what looked like marigolds poking out from the top of each. A bird-engraved boomerang hung on a necklace almost to her waist. She shouted something about the monster. Then she was gone.
I stood there for a while, awaiting her return up the hill before I hurried in the direction she had disappeared. I saw a series of vents and tunnels and must have called out for close to an hour, stooping to peer inside the vents. I wondered if she had taken her rations to one of the tunnels and I recalled the passageway I had discovered in the basement. I hoped that she had somehow managed to locate another entrance to the house.
Eventually I had to give up. The sky was grey with dark pouches hanging beneath the clouds. The sacs resembled wreaths of buoyant jellyfish. All at once, the pouches seemed to explode and icy rain fell with such velocity I felt I was being pelted with leaking needles. I covered my head with my hands and called out once more to the child before I was forced into the old house.
12 KOTHAR THE MAGNETICIAN
The ice pellets were stinging my back when I ran onto the porch. I could hear the pellets crashing against the glass windows behind me like canister shots. Nevertheless, I stood there for a while, thinking of the little girl caught in the storm. I hoped she had found some safe spot to ride it out. Thrice I sprinted to the front gate hoping that she might be standing outside but rushed back to the house when a flurry of wind sent the leaves and twigs catapulting through the air. The wind also drove away the clouds and soon the storm let up a bit. I continued my watch from the porch before I opened the door. I couldn’t understand the nature of the storm and especially the ice pellets in such an unbearably hot place.
“You are becoming careless.” An imposingly tall man was standing before the fireplace waving two brushes in both hands like a conductor. His pupils were opaque through his dusty metalframed goggles and I could not determine the exact area of his gaze.
My first thought was you had showed up, so I said, “I am sorry I left the door open. I was trying to get to the accident site. There was a child on the road. How long have you been here?”
“Just as long as you have.”
“Is there anyone else? Where have you been all this time?”
“Waiting. For you.”
“Are the tools yours?” I motioned to the assortment of geological equipment on the desk.
He issued an abrupt whinnying laugh and goose-stepped his way to the desk. The drawers would not open and he grew agitated and pulled so violently I expected the cabinet to come crashing down on him. Eventually, he managed to free the lower drawer and from inside it, unhinged the upper. “A heretic’s fork,” he whispered. “Whips and restraints. Corkscrews and collars. A dame’s bridle. Dippel’s oil.” When he turned to face me, his neck seemed elongated by his plaid tie’s severe loop. “What do you have in store for me?” His overgrown Vandyke and his peaked homburg accentuated both his height and his face’s angularity. For a second, I imagined him silhouetted against a red sky, a battered flamethrower in his hands.
My hope it was you swiftly faded. But I had to be sure. I told him, “I am sorry. Have we met?”
“You do know that men like me are designed for dungeons. If we are lucky, we secure the employment of carnivals and circuses. Can you guess who told me that?”
I tried to steady my voice as I asked him, “I really cannot say. How did you manage to find yourself here?”
“I am here. You are here. Let’s begin.”
“Begin what?”
“Begin to repair your damage and return my life.” He stabbed a finger behind one of his goggles’ lenses and plucked out something. “Begin by weighing the efficacies of garrotting as opposed to poisoning. I am a master of both trades. I also dabble in basketry, cobbling, pottery, metalwork and magnets.” He whirled suddenly and I jumped back. I tried to determine if he was joking but his face was practically hidden by the goggles. “Let’s proceed, then.” He pointed to the couch near the fireplace.
“You must forgive me, but I don’t have the faintest idea who you are. Are you the owner of the house?” When he did not answer, I tried again, “Are you the caretaker or the gardener?”
“I purée mealworms and berries for nourishment but if you want me to be the gardener today, I can. Your move.” He gazed at me above an open drawer.
I tried to explain. “I was in a bus that crashed on its way here. I assumed I was the only survivor, but there may be others.”
“Where are the others?”
“This is what I have been trying to explain. I have been trapped in the house because of the wind and the sulphur or whatever it is that blows around. I believe I may have suffered an injury during the accident, as I cannot remember anything prior. You may have been travelli
ng with us, but if that was the case, I have no memory of it.”
He laughed deep and long as if there were a rusty spiral lodged in his long neck. “Once more, my name is Kothar and I am a magnetician. My aborted experiments are, as you well know, associated with electromagnetic pulses. You will get nothing more from me.”
“Tell me, Kothar –”
He clasped his hands over his chest and adopted a look of solemn pride. “I prefer, as always, to be referred to as Kothar the Magnetician.”
“I am afraid I have no knowledge of your field. Were you part of the team?”
“You know very well that I was.”
It occurred to me that he may also have been affected by the accident although his memory was better than mine. “What happened to the others? Did they survive?”
He pushed up his goggles, took out a snuff box from his coat and poured its contents over his eyes. “Helps with my blindness.” He continued rubbing the snuff over his face, then sprang up with a hearty bellow and glanced at me with bloodshot eyes before he eased back into the couch and replaced his goggles. I asked my question once more and he said, “They are around. Waiting for your call.”
“My call? Was I the leader of the team?”
“Are we going to go over that again?”
“I cannot recall anything, as I mentioned. Was that the cause of the accident? An argument?”
He stretched out on the couch and began to wave his hands above him. “You were assembling a squad of differently abled people. And I was a virtual lightning rod, magnetizing all the irrational voices troubling your team to create a perfect power source. Don’t you recall what you said to us over and over? That madness is the only pure state. That we were all gifted and you would make us famous? That there were those who wanted to drain and bottle our exuberance because they had lost every drop of it?” He seemed to be talking to himself and I was relieved that he had cooled down a bit. “Here is what you do not know. You did not give me my powers. Like every important discovery, mine was accidental. The discovery of reverse levitation by Baroness Simula Phykou. The kaleidoscopic uniscope by Professor Norman Ballard. The selfplaying violin by ErPhu. The oscillating speculum by Monsieur Amygdala Carafe. The exploding spirit stove by sir Rodney Hogarth.” He twirled his whiskers so that both ends were stiff on his cheeks.
I felt I had underestimated the extent of his trauma. “I am talking of the team from the bus. Geologists or volcanologists. I may have been the photographer?”
He dragged his goggles over his forehead and turned to stare at me with bloodshot eyes. “Can I tell you something? I am beginning to understand you better.” He grinned. “Much better. Would you like to know how?”
“Please do. I am just as confused as you are.”
“Kothar confused? Well, let me tell you that I learned things in the wilderness you have not dreamed of. Have you ever audited a spider’s web? I thought not. You believe you are smart, but I know how to deal with you now.” He tugged off his boot and removed some sort of metallic encasement from his toes. Next, he brought out a miniature cast-iron box from his pocket. There was a key at one side and when he twisted it, I heard a little tinkle. He held the box before his goggles, fiddled with the key and produced a strange little gadget. “Do you know what it is?”
I didn’t want to get too close to him, but I was able to see that within its recessed top were three cogs surrounding an unsteady hand. “It seems like a mariner’s compass. Perhaps a gyrocompass, judging from the wheels.” With my fractured memory, I was surprised I could recall such a precise object.
He grinned. “It’s my usher and soulmate.”
“So you were the team’s surveyor?”
He got up and told me, “You cannot break me because I am stronger now. My mind is a free-ranging fowl.” He seemed to be awaiting some comment but I allowed him to continue. “I know all your tricks. I learned things while I was waiting for you. I learned that, at a given moment, five people standing in a circle are always thinking the same things. I learned that soon we will dream in maps and decimal points. I learned that colours are not to be believed and that birds and locusts are news carriers. I have it all stored up here for the coming battles. Let them try to drain it! Let them try!”
I tried to steady my voice. I told him, “Mr. Kothar, I think you have been wandering around too long. You need to simmer down.”
“Simmer down?” My suggestion seemed to rile him up. “You think you are clever, but you no longer control us. Hiding in your house and trying to joystick the world. Making us do things. Unmentionable things. I am going to be more thorough this time.” He rose from the couch and came at me with stiff outstretched arms. I tried to step back but his hands were too long. He held on to my ears, growling as he did so.
“Stop that!” I kicked his knee, but there was some metallic plate so I banged against his chest, which seemed encircled beneath his coat with some type of chain. All the while, he was laughing. In desperation, I reached into his coat, hoping there was a weapon within but only came up with a brass swivel locket.
He stepped back immediately. “Give me that. You have no right.”
I glanced at the locket. It was quite old and engraved with what appeared to be a kneeling ape. When I sprung the clasp, I saw that there was nothing inside, but Kothar put on a magnificent act: he backed away, shielding his eyes with his wrist. Then he fell on his knees. And it was in that pose that he reversed through the front door. I stood for a while, contemplating my near escape and rubbing my ears. When I looked outside, he was gone.
I stood at the window, gazing at the spirals of dust, trying to see where Kothar had disappeared. I remained there until night when it was impossible to see a few feet beyond the porch, all the while going over my encounter with him and with the child I had seen at the gate, trying to make sense of everything. We had all been affected but in different ways. It was unlikely that the crash could have altered all of our minds so there had to be another causal agent. The likeliest cause, I felt, was the red sulphurous dust that sprung from the vents and was blown about by the strong winds.
This determination brought me no joy because I had to consider the possibility that Kothar, in his maddened state, could easily have wiped out everyone else. In which case, neither you nor anyone else will read these entries I am making in your notebook. But at this time, I am more concerned about the little girl. She had mentioned a monster stomping around and I am convinced she was referring to Kothar. Poor child. That was why she had been hiding all the while. I decided that I would search for her in the morning.
I locked the windows but did not feel safe enough to sleep so I got some of the books I had placed aside earlier and went to the couch on which Kothar had stretched his long body. I began with one titled The Monster in a Circle, but when I opened it, I discovered it was a children’s book with squat illustrations of ogres peeping behind hedges at goats and turkeys and children at play. Nevertheless, I found its childish sincerity quite funny and I caught myself smiling at the ogre’s earnest speculations about the taste of everything arrayed on the other side of the hedge. I finished it in an hour or so, placed it aside and reached for another, The Exuberant Life.
It was thicker than the others and the illustrations, in fountain pen, were more detailed with lush, swerving strokes delineating the contours of every object. It began just as the others with fairies and monsters and ogres gambolling around but around the middle of the book, the young narrator began to doubt his own sanity when he realized that no one shared his visions or believed his accounts. Though the events described were fantastical, the descriptions – charged with anguish – had the feel of a memoir. Eventually, he grew to believe he was trapped in a topsy-turvy world where he was the only one outfitted with some kind of self-consciousness. He was hauled by his – in his account – unsympathetic parents from one expert to the other and they each prescribed the same remedies. Séances, special roots, peculiar baths, bloodletting, cauterization; one
quack after the other. He began to suspect that his parents were not interested in a cure but was hopeful that he would be institutionalized so they could wash their hands of him and turn their attention to his little sister. His anguish at this parental betrayal turned to outright hatred when he realized that the experts, so attentive to his accounts, were part of the plot. He ran away, was caught and locked in his room. He ran away again, getting farther this time, but once again he was apprehended. Now he was chained to his bed. Then, one day he escaped and managed to outrun his pursuers. He continued running, hiding in the bushes, slogging through ravines and hills, catching small animals and eating fruits that sometimes left him sick. He was so emaciated that by the time he arrived at a massive wall he was able to slip through a narrow tunnel at its base. Still, it took him close to an hour to get to the other side and when he emerged he gazed at the wild and wondrous land before him and thought: Is this the place everyone tried to scare me with?
Apart from five mostly undecipherable drawings that seemed to depict an enclosure of some sort, a topsy-turvy little town with a confusion of architectural styles, a castle that resembled this house, a derelict train station and a scene with fishes leaping over a stream and fruit-filled trees – most likely, a representation of this new land – the book ended there. I examined the spine to see if a part had been torn off, but it was so old and crumbling, this was difficult to determine. I was puzzling over the book when Kothar walked in. I sprung up immediately, wondering how he had entered so surreptitiously. I felt through my pockets hastily for the locket I assumed he had returned for and I was close to panic when I discovered it was not there. But Kothar pretended he did not see me as he walked to the centre of the room, folded his hands above his head and began what seemed like a lethargic dance. He seemed to be singing, too, and when I listened more closely, I heard him babbling about a boy who was dragged from hive to hive by his beekeeper mother. This went on for several minutes before he tried to do something dainty with his long legs, almost toppled over, and continued his song in a slightly crouched posture.
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