Grotesquerie

by Richard Gavin

  “I wanted to ask you about Vera,” I told him after he showed no inclination toward speaking. “She’s my cousin, you know.”

  He was unfazed. “The gallery is no more, I regret to say. I’ve nothing to sell you.”

  I wiped the rain from my face and approached him. “Yes, I can see that. But I’m hoping you can call Vera’s representatives for me. It’s important.”

  “No way to call them,” he said. He gave me a beckoning wave and started back down the alley from which he’d emerged. I followed him to a flimsy wooden door, which he pulled back. I squeezed into the tiny landing, holding my breath as the man latched the sad-looking door. “This way,” he said. I didn’t need to be told this, for the landing only had two exits: the alley door or the bowing stairs of wood so worn they were ice-slick. I climbed with care, for there was no handrail to aid me.

  My host unlocked and pressed the black-stained door open at the head of the stairs. I followed him into an L-shaped apartment that smelled of old cooking and cat urine. The room had but two sources of illumination: a skylight of clouded plastic and, unnervingly, a nightlight in the shape of an antique streetlamp that glowed from a wall plug.

  “Sit, sit,” urged the man. I was reluctant. In way of furnishings there was a tan sofa and a wooden glider chair. The sofa’s upholstery was bearded in long cat hair, so I chose the wooden glider. I never did spy the cat. He settled into the sofa and immediately lit a cigarette, producing an ashtray brimming with mangled butts. “What do you fancy?”

  I cleared my throat. “I’m looking for a present for my fiancée. One of Vera’s sculptures…because they are so…highly unique.”

  He nodded and nodded, reclining his head to spout smoke into the already cloying atmosphere. This caused his pyjama top to part at the seam. His breastbone was uncannily large and knotty. The sight of it distressed me.

  “We was hoping for a newspaper story from you,” he returned, rather brashly. I noted that his accent, which had previously suggested the posh air of Knightsbridge, suddenly clanged with an antagonizing cockney lilt.

  “Ah, yes. Well, I’m sure you can imagine how it is; editorial bureaucracy and the like. I pitched the idea, but my superiors turned me down.” I wondered why I felt the need to explain myself to him. “But I’d still like to purchase a piece, and to be put in touch with my cousin if that’s also possible.”

  “The first bit is, aye. But as to Cousin Vera…”

  “Nothing’s happened to her I hope.”

  “Why do you say that, eh?”

  I couldn’t answer. “Um…would you happen to have any of Vera’s pieces left here?”

  The man kept his eyes on me as he extinguished his cigarette.

  “Cuppa first, yeah?”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “I’m afraid I must insist, ‘tis nearly four after all.”

  “Well in that case.”

  I scanned the room while my host put the kettle on. The sight of the myriad smudges and smears on the walls gave birth to imagined bugs crawling coldly across my skin. As I scrambled for a way to politely refuse any food or drink from the whistling man in the kitchenette, my eyes happened upon a plaque that was affixed to the moulding above another door, one that led perhaps to the bedroom or lavatory. The plaque was carved from a wood that was cayenne-red and was so thickly varnished it appeared wet. The word NEITHERNOR had been scorched into the wood by someone skilled in the art of pyrography. Each of the ten characters was modelled in Blackletter script. Given this, regardless of Neithernor’s meaning, I obviously couldn’t help but hearken back to Alighieri at the Gates of Hell.

  “Milk and honey?”

  I’d grown so lost in my contemplation that I first mistook my host’s query as an offering from Paradiso. Glancing sidelong, I discovered that my host was holding a tray upon which both these condiments were standing. I took my tea straight. It was bitter and the cup smelled as though it had been wiped with a dirty rag.

  I held my breath while I drank. I might have spewed out some banal chatter, I cannot recall. My next memory was of asking to be directed to the lavatory. I was peculiarly hopeful that it existed behind the Neithernor door, but it was at the end of a stout hallway.

  Closing the door behind me, I splashed some cold water on my face, and panicked over what my next move would be, for I now felt nothing at all like a visitor and more like a double agent on some life-or-death mission. Using the room for its true purpose, I stepped back into the living room in time to see a bird-like woman pressing the NEITHERNOR door shut behind her.

  “Vera?” I was surprised at how breathless my voice sounded. She turned to me.

  How time had ransacked my cousin. She stood before me dressed in a soiled white smock, her hair concealed beneath a knitted cap like a patient in the thick of her battle with cancer. Her face had slid from delicate to skullish. Of her complexion and the state of her teeth I shall not speak.

  “Come join us for tea, Vera dear,” called my host, rising to collect another stinking cup. Only then did it strike me that I did not know his name. The question leapt to the tip of my tongue but died there. The last thing our motley gathering needed was gaucherie.

  We sat and sipped and inhaled second-hand tobacco smoke. Vera gave me a lone glance. Furtive and fearful at first, she rectified it, or rather attempted to, by hitching the corner of her chapped mouth into a kind of grin.

  Distressed, I asked her bluntly if she was well.

  “Oh, yes. Just tired, I suspect.”

  The response came from the man, touching off my suspicions of a Svengali-like command over my cousin.

  “Have you been working on new art, Vera?” I put a heavy emphasis on her name to indicate that I wanted her reply.

  “Endlessly,” she said. Her voice sounded as I’d feared it might.

  “Is that your studio beyond the door there?”

  She looked at the man in the sleepwear.

  “I should very much like to see it if I may,” I added, rising. I moved swiftly so as to carve the bearded man off before he could stop me. Vera did not even attempt to.

  NEITHERNOR was not a studio, nor even a room, but rather a closet.

  Shallow, lightless, and fragrant with old wood, the recess contained a stout metal stool and, upon the dust-studded floorboards, a spool of gleaming copper wire. Shelves lined either side of the closet and each was stacked with pastry boxes of thin white cardstock, all lidded and bound like caskets awaiting interment. A hatch door was set into the centre of the back wall. It was secured with a latch and padlock, both of which had also been slathered in the same eggshell primer.

  A hand reached in front of me and pressed the door shut.

  “Neither a studio nor a closet,” I said with deliberate impertinence to the bearded man. He stood regarding me with a diamond-hard gaze. His face began to redden and twist. I’ve no shame in admitting my fear. You too would have been afraid.

  “I would like to call on you again, Vera,” I called as I reached for my coat. “I am still interested in one of your pieces.”

  She sat on the sofa like one adrift in dementia. Her mouth moved but I did not hear what she’d uttered.

  “We’ll have something for you,” the man said. I closed the apartment door and took the stairs at a hare’s pace. Outside I clung to the street door with one hand while collecting the narrowest wooden slat I could find from amidst the alley’s debris. This I used to keep the door from clicking snug into its frame.

  4.

  I wrestled with whether or not to remain in the little village. My concern for Vera ran deep, regardless of how estranged we were. Sometimes women just need rescuing.

  Having nothing in way of a plan, I stopped into a tavern to phone Cara and say that I was chasing a story lead and would not be home until the following day. Her suspicion was palpable.

  Night fell and I tried to sort my thoughts into some semblance of a plan. I couldn’t even begin to judge whether or not my intentions were pu
re. Cousin Vera had become swallowed up in a life that I can only describe as leprous. If I could not free her, I could at least confirm that she was not in imminent danger. I believe people have the right to diminish themselves if they so desire.

  I buttoned my overcoat against the dropping temperature and once again crossed the little bridge. I stood across the street from Vera’s hovel and kept watch. Lamplight shone amber through the second-storey window, but not indefinitely. Shortly after eleven I watched as the bearded man’s ugly silhouette extinguished the light.

  I stood shivering for nearly an hour, affording Vera’s keeper time enough (I hoped) to doze off.

  Much to my relief, the wedge was still in the door. Scaling those ancient steps noiselessly was arduous and time-consuming, particularly because my most formidable obstacle stood at their summit.

  Exactly how I was going to unlock the apartment door was a problem I resolved to simply deal with by whatever means. Ultimately this meant, after attempting to wriggle it loose and to pop the lock using my driver’s licence and my lapel pin, kicking the flimsy door open.

  The bearded man had been snoring on the sofa where we’d had our dirty tea. The crash of the breached door woke him instantly, but he was too groggy and stunned to prevent me from tearing across the living room and flinging open the door to NEITHERNOR.

  As I’d dreaded, Vera was sealed up within the tiny closet. Her slight frame rested on the metal stool and for a beat I thought she was sleeping, until I noticed that her eyes were open…open yet rolled up in her skull like one in an epileptic throe. Her mouth gaped. In her hands she held the spool of copper wire. The glinting strand was taut before her, like a fishing line in the deep. It fed backward above her head and into the tiny hatch. This time the tiny door in the wall was unlocked and ajar. A fat band of shadow concealed whatever was rutting inside that cubby. Whatever it was, it possessed strength enough to tear at Vera’s hair, which caused her somnambulistic body to heave up and then drop down again onto the stool. Her scalp was missing much more than the knitted cap.

  The bearded man was growling as he grabbed me. Terror and adrenaline made breaking free easy.

  Less easy to escape is the memory of those neatly stacked white boxes beginning to rattle and shake and leap from their perch.

  Vera was careless or helpless to the whole nightmare. Not even my shrieking flight could lure her from her in-between.

  5.

  I drove aimlessly for the remainder of the night and when I came home the following morning it was to an empty apartment.

  Upon Cara’s dressing table, which was stripped clean of the little bottles and brushes and mirrors that littered it, a single leaf of notepaper had been taped:

  Forrest—

  I will write the things that neither of us has the courage to say aloud.

  Where to begin? By suggesting that we have grown apart?

  No. You cannot separate that which was never together to begin with.

  Your phone call yesterday afternoon was the tipping point.

  There was no story to chase; I called the paper and spoke to your editor. I hope this other woman, whoever she is, is able to give you whatever it is that I couldn’t, whatever it is you’re lacking. I doubt even you know what that is.

  Locking up the townhouse last night I found a parcel on our doorstep. I’m embarrassed to admit that I thought you had left it to surprise me with. But as soon as I opened it and saw the little fetish inside it became very clear to me that you’re walking down a road I would never even set foot upon. Just being in the same house with it last night gave me nightmare after nightmare, when I did manage to sleep that is.

  I have nothing more to say. I’ve gone to stay at Mother’s and will arrange to have my things collected. I don’t expect this note to shock or pain you in any way, no matter how much I may wish otherwise.

  — Cara

  p.s. — I left your little bauble for you. You’ll find it inside your closet.

  I locked the townhouse door behind me and immediately relocated to the only hotel I could afford.

  I did not return to the house until the movers I’d hired met me there and carried out the furniture I singled out as being mine. Cara’s belongings appeared to have already been collected.

  The bedroom closet was never reopened, at least not by my hand. After settling into a small apartment on the far side of the city my first quest was to rebuild my wardrobe, to replace the dress shirts, trousers and various other pieces I abandoned for fear of parting the gate to my own little Neithernor.

  It seems my life waxes then wanes. For a time, my cup runneth over, then is drained, after which I strive and scramble to replenish that which has been lost.

  6.

  I had noted that Cara had once told me something about Scelsi that I have never forgotten. It is this: the eccentric composer refused to allow his photograph to appear in conjunction with any of his musical releases, for he maintained a conviction that his music was much more than a simple outgrowth of his personal imagination. The sounds were a transmission from the greater Soul that transcends all matter and masks. Scelsi was, in his own words, merely a conduit for the music that existed well beyond his own private abilities.

  In place of his own visage, distinguished though I later discovered it to be, Scelsi used the symbol (a circle hovering over a straight line) that appeared on the jacket of the recording Cara had presented me with. I have studied that symbol often and with vigour. Cara had always said that for her the image was a cleanly abstract vision of a sinking sun, but to my eye it appears as something else entirely.

  Deep Eden

  Ash Lake occasionally embodies its name. On November days such as this, when the sunbeams can scarcely press through the leaden clouds, the lake roils grey and ghostly, taking on the appearance of shifting dunes of ash, like incinerated remains of one who somehow survived the crematorium.

  How I loved days like this when I was a girl. In those distant autumns I would venture down to the lakefront, Dad and Rita by my side. Together we would toss stones and spy for any boats daring enough to brave the gales. Those days were buoyed by a feeling, very rare and very delicious, that my sister, father and I were the only three people left in Evendale.

  Of late this same feeling has become a constant, but it has lost its sweetness.

  Perhaps these pleasant memories sparked my desire to make the detour to the beach today. Was I clinging to the thin hope that somehow the sight of Ash Lake in late autumn might uplift me, give me the clarity to make sense of the senselessness that is now the norm in Evendale?

  Standing on the beach, I scoop up a handful of fog-moistened stones, then let them drop unhurled. As I make my way back to the jeep, I listen to the surf whose waves sound much like mocking asthmatic laughter.

  The fuel gauge begins to flash ‘E’ as soon as I turn the ignition, so I begin to woo the vehicle, coaxing it to carry me far enough to reach the Main Street filling station that still, as of last week, had fuel.

  Veering into the narrow station, I leave the engine running and run out to test the pumps. The first two are bone-dry, but the third valve spits out unleaded. As I fill the jeep, I wonder how much fuel is left in this town…how much of anything? The residents of Evendale had, up until recently, kept a routine, a choreographed pantomime of a sleepy but still functioning town. There seemed to be a rotation of sorts. A certain segment of the locals remained aboveground to man the fueling station, to switch on houselights on a rotating basis, to plow the main roads when the snow accumulated. But the concern over keeping up appearances to the outside world has waned now that everyone has gone Below.

  My memories of this town, pale as they are, paint Evendale as little more than a tangle of poorly paved roads lined with dreary structures. But neither the years nor the miles that I set between myself and my home can account for its present condition. The houses and shops all have the air of heaped wreckage, of withered husks that no longer shelter living things. Most of t
he spaces advertise themselves as being for lease. A few of them are boarded up with slabs of cheap wood, like coffins bound for pauper’s row.

  The street entrance to Venus Women’s Wear is sheathed in brown butcher paper. A sign in the display window advises potential customers that the boutique is closed for renovations. I make my way to the alley beside the shop and find the side door unlocked.

  There is no light inside the shop, but I do not require any. My time Below has sharpened my ability to see in the dark.

  It takes me several minutes to find the dress that Rita had described to me: purple silk with a dragonfly embroidered in glittering black thread over the left breast. This was the first time she had ever requested anything since going Below. How I had hoped that her desire could have lured her up and out, into the light. But Rita never comes above anymore.

  I zipper the dress inside a plastic garment bag with the Venus logo and the store’s address printed on the back, then I carry it back to the jeep and drive on.

  Loath as I am to admit it, I now find being above rather unsettling. The airiness, the brightness, after those first few heaves of revivifying oxygen, sours quickly. More and more I want to be Below. But I do not want to want that.

  I turn onto Apple Road to complete my errand. In addition to the purple dress from Venus, Rita has also requested that our late mother’s silver-handled mirror and hairbrush set be collected from our home.

  Hypocrisy abounds; after robbing Venus I fish out the keys for my childhood home. We keep it locked up snugly. Perhaps we are afraid to lose our past, meagre as it is.