Fandango and Other Stories

by Bryan Karetnyk

  The beer made his head spin, as the cold weight flowed into his stomach. The blue quadrant of sky smacked of sadness. Horn said:

  “It goes straight to your head, just like Esther … Isn’t that what you said?”

  “Quite so.” Guppy nodded. “Only you can’t drink Esther, as you can the contents of this tankard. Astis’s daughter. What bad luck the chaps have in these parts. When young Dribb marries, he’ll make more enemies than you and I have. It’s Friday today, and she’ll come. If you see her, don’t make a fool of yourself, like all the rest of them; she’s well used to it.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Horn. “People still fascinate me.”

  “There you go,” said Guppy, looking askance at Horn, “I like you. Though you scarcely say a word, good God! What do you plan to live on?”

  Horn slowly finished his drink.

  “There’s plenty of food in the forest,” he smiled, examining the bridge of Guppy’s nose. “I’ll get by.”

  “All the same,” Guppy continued. “Playing around with a rifle and catching indigenous fevers … I swear by that boar outside, you’ll waste away within a month.”

  Horn shrugged impatiently.

  “That’s neither here nor there,” he said. “In any case, I must be on my way. Coffee and gunpowder await me, and I’ve been sitting here too long.”

  “What’s the rush!” cried Guppy, flushing with embarrassment at the idea that Horn should leave without having told him anything. “Would you really be happier on your own?”

  Before Horn had the time to reply, there came a knock at the door, and Guppy, pulling the sweetest face, turned to face it with a look of impatient expectation.

  “Take a look, Horn,” he said, his little eyes flashing. “The head-turner has arrived—come now, don’t drag your heels!”

  Horn’s ironic smile melted, and, with a serious face, with the blood slowly flowing back to his heart, he looked upon the girl. The idea that she might be beautiful had not even occurred to him. He felt a heavy, painful sense of unease, just as he had done before, when music presented him with unexpected melodies, after which he would want to spend the whole day in silence or else get drunk.

  “Guppy, you’ll have to wait a little longer,” said Esther, glancing at Horn. This outsider made her feel uncomfortable, causing her to lend her voice an involuntarily grand tone. “My father hasn’t any money.”

  Guppy turned green.

  “You jest, my beauty!” he hissed, smiling unnaturally. “Just cough up what you’ve hidden there … Come now!”

  “I haven’t time for joking.” Esther went over to the table and leaned her palms on its edge. “No and no! You’ll have to wait a month or so.”

  In that brief moment, while Guppy took a deep breath, preparing to curse or shout, the girl smiled. This was the final straw.

  “Gloat then!” Guppy shouted, jumping up and running about. “You may laugh! But will your father give me a brass farthing while I die of hunger? I shelled out thousands, and now I have to wait? I swear on my grandmother’s head, I’m sick of this! I’ll drag you through the courts, do you hear, you minx?”

  Horn got to his feet.

  “I’m disturbing you,” he said.

  “Esther,” Guppy said, “here is a man from a land of honest people. Why don’t you ask him whether it’s not possible to keep one’s word?”

  The girl scrutinized Horn’s face. Embarrassed, he turned his head away; those lusterless black eyes seemed to bear down on him. Guppy ran his hands through his hair.

  “Farewell,” said Horn, holding out his hand.

  “Drop by sometime,” Guppy muttered, “even if you do get on my nerves. Ah, money, money!” He made an effort and continued: “I hope you’ll be more talkative in future. If only you’d take a plot of land!”

  Horn went out into the yard and, pausing, listened. Heated voices were coming from above. He went on his way, stepping through puddles of water and mud riddled with hoofprints.

  The sound of rapid breathing made him turn around. Esther appeared at his side, slightly hitching up her short striped skirt and animatedly waving her free hand. Horn tried to find the words, but she anticipated him.

  “Are you the man who came ashore a week ago?”

  She had a pure and lingering voice, the sound of which seemed to suffuse her entire body; her face and gaze seemed to express exactly what her mouth was saying.

  “The very same,” Horn confirmed. “And you’re Astis’s daughter?”

  “Yes.” Esther fixed her braids, which had become tangled under her peaked native hat. “But living here won’t suit you.”

  Horn smiled, as adults do when they hear clever children talk.

  “And why not?”

  “People work here.” The girl knitted her high eyebrows thoughtfully. “You have hands like mine.”

  She stretched out her swarthy little hands, which were decorated with rings, and immediately lowered them again. She was comparing this man with the strapping youngsters who worked on the farms.

  “There isn’t anything for you to do here,” she said categorically. “You’re a city type, and you look like a gentleman. There’s nothing for you here.”

  “But there is,” Horn replied seriously. “The lake. And my house there.”

  His words stopped her in her tracks.

  “Your house? Five years ago people lived in that house, but it all burned to the ground.”

  “Esther,” said Horn, “now you’ll see that I can work. I rebuilt it in six days, as God created the heaven and the earth.”

  As they crossed the hedgerow on their way out, a deafening grunting bid them farewell; they walked side by side, their feet engulfed by the hot red sand. Esther burst into a laughter that was as slow as her voice.

  “City folk like to joke.”

  “Really, I’m telling the truth.” Horn turned his head and glanced at the girl’s radiant face. “Yes, I’ll live here. Idly.”

  He saw her mouth, half-open with respect, and her astonished eyes, and sensed that he would not be bored here. There was a pause.

  A cloud of dust, resplendent with bare feet and a bronze body, rushed to cut across their path. Horn stopped in his tracks. The dust settled down; something unimaginably dirty and ragged stood before him, stamping its feet and waving its long, monkey-like arms. These strange gestures were accompanied by gruff yelps and sighs that were like a sort of wailing.

  “Bekeko,” the girl said. “Don’t be afraid, it’s Bekeko. He’s half-witted, but a gentle lad … What’s the matter, Bekeko?”

  Bulbous, with bald patches, his head nuzzled into the girl’s skirt. Bekeko was enjoying himself, halting his caresses every now and then to fix his staring, off-white eyes on Horn. He was repugnant and aroused a feeling of cold pity. Horn retreated to the hedgerow.

  “Bekeko, go home, you beast!” Esther cried, having spotted that the halfwit was trying to bite her hand.

  Bekeko stood up, laughing and yapping like a dog.

  “Esther,” he said, continuing to stamp his feet, “I want to get a lot of striped skirts and bring them all to you. It hurts in my jaw!”

  Esther put on a frightened face.

  “Fire!” she shouted. “Bekeko, fire!”

  The effect of these words was deadly. Doubling over, Bekeko fell, clutching his head in his hands and trembling. His back heaved up and down.

  “What’s all this?” asked Horn, studying the man on the ground.

  “You see,” said Esther. “He’s impossible. He attaches himself to you, like a dog, and he’ll follow you around until you say one word: ‘Fire.’ His brother used to feed him, but he burned to death a while back, the drunkard. The halfwit’s afraid of fire more than he is of beatings. I don’t see him all that often; he prefers to hang around the swampland and eat God only knows what.”

  Horn lit his pipe.

  “I learned of your existence,” he said, knocking down the ash, “before you arrived.”

>   The girl flashed a smile.

  “From Guppy,” she drawled. “He calls me ‘the head-turner.’”

  “Yes,” Horn echoed. “You are a head-turner.”

  He looked at her again: not a shadow of embarrassment. Her face expressed neither coquetry nor gratitude, while he himself felt a certain awkwardness and inhaled the tobacco deeper than he ordinarily would.

  “I live over there,” the girl said, pointing to the left. “Do you see that yellow roof? My father loves visitors. Where are you going now?”

  “Coffee, tobacco, and gunpowder,” said Horn, raising three fingers. “That’s what I’m after.”

  “You’re going to see Szabó,” the girl corrected him. “You have a rifle?”

  “Yes.”

  Esther motioned with her eyes.

  “I have a carbine,” she said. “But it’s difficult to get cartridges here, so we have to go to town. I shoot from the hip and never miss a shot.”

  “What you mean to say is that you aren’t sure that I could do the same,” said Horn. “Well, I’m not shy. Step a little to the right.”

  He drew his revolver and, with a chuckle, bowed to the girl.

  “Why don’t you go over there? Do you see, about thirty paces from here, that slender tree trunk? Walk past it, stop, and, if you find a bullet in it, come back.”

  He watched Esther’s back, the retreating crown of her raven-haired head, and, as he took aim, the sunlight playing on the polished steel of his revolver almost made him sneeze. A shot rang out and he lowered his arm. Esther was still walking, swaying gently, and stopped at the tree.

  Turning around, she gave a cheerful wave of the hand, and again Horn thought he saw her eyes, separate from her body, floating in the air.

  IV.

  Nobody woke Horn; he would get up by himself, suddenly and with complete clarity of consciousness, without feeling the body’s drowsy inertia, without yawning—as though he had not slept but lain there in wait with his eyes closed.

  Calm, slightly puzzled, he tried to imagine the reasons that had returned him to consciousness so completely. Through the window, the rose-colored haze of the morning exhaled a dewy mist, the brackish rot of the shallow waters, and a murmuring hush, which was as elusive as a train of thoughts belonging a man on the verge of sleep. A fog hung over the lake. The undulating vapors spread out over the water’s surface, unveiling bright little blue pools of still water by the shores.

  Horn stood by the window, lost in the melodious quiet of the sleeping air. The shimmering edge of the sun’s disc flashed over the bright face of the dawn with its closed eyes; mountains of clouds drifted over the horizon, the web-like thread of forest stretched over to the other bank, and Horn mused that this could be a throng of green knights, sleeping while standing up. The lances upon which they leaned were decorated with still, green feathers.

  All of a sudden everything changed. Myriad rays, like a hail of gold coins, scattered down upon the earth; the water began to glitter, and several of the rays—transparent, forged from light and air—fell at Horn’s feet. The verdure, glassy with dew, dried before Horn’s eyes. Clumps of brown flowers plumped up and flushed with color, straightening out like a child’s trembling fingers reaching for a toy. The thick smell of the earth tickled his nostrils. Green, blue, brown, and rose hues drenched the stalks of bamboo, quivering in a tangle of shadows among the fabric of foliage, and somewhere not far off, the throat of a forest bird emitted a low call, broken and uncertain, like the sound of an instrument being tuned.

  Horn stood there like an empty bottle being filled to the brim with the young, green wine of the earth, which was stretching out as it awoke. Milk, spraying from the tender, overflowing breast of some invisible woman, imperceptibly fell on his lips, and he imagined her, caught the smile that she had directed heavenward, and narrowed his eyes because of the golden web covering the world. His soul was cleft in two: he could have laughed but did not want to; he was ready to believe in green knights but made an effort and interrupted their quiet voices with persistent memories.

  The dispute between Horn and Horn came to a quick and abrupt end as the door creaked open slowly from the outside. The gap widened, and the man pulling it stood there, nearer to the corner and not yet visible.

  Horn waited, uncertain whether somebody was really there. The door had opened of its own accord before; this happened because of the slight crookedness of the hinges. Instinctively, rather from curiosity than wariness, he fixed his eyes on the spot where he most expected to meet a man’s eyes.

  But the very next moment he was forced to lower his gaze. An eye and a section of forehead covered with a tangle of white hair appeared four feet above the ground; somebody peered in while bending over, darted behind the door, and appeared almost immediately again.

  Unsteady on his feet, the man came in through the door, closed it, and, with an ungainly shake of the head, fixed Horn’s face with his eyes, which were dappled with wrinkles and red veins. He was manifestly drunk.

  As erect as a pole, with the dull, motionless gleam of faded eyes, barefooted and dressed in rags, he could have passed for a devil pretending to be a beggar. At a distance of several paces, his arms looked a deep blue, like those of a cadaver, but as he drew closer, it was possible to discern the solid pattern of a tattoo that covered his whole body, from his neck to his waist. Snakes, Japanese dragons, flags, ships, inscriptions, indecent scenes, and cynical images jostled against one another on his chest and arms, mixing with the whitish marks of scarring. Around his neck there hung a scarf that had been turned into a piece of rope by grime and time. The tattered crown of a hat covered his pointed, lupine ears and his face, which was the color of verdigris. His nose, which had been broken by the blow of a stick, curved sullenly down. His jacket, which had lost its sleeves, was open at the chest. His entire figure smacked of a suspicious past, the heart’s dark inner recesses, dive bars, the glint of knives, rasping malice, and human fur, which could be more awe-inspiring than a tiger’s coat. The old man had, as the saying goes, seen a thing or two.

  “What do you want?” asked Horn. He was somewhat puzzled. This figure did not inspire trust. Strange, like a fragment of a dream, it shifted from one foot to the other.

  “What do you want?” the wretch muttered back, winking and making an effort to hold himself straight. “If you ask me who I am, I’ll tell you openly and honestly. But have it your way: I was curious to see a man living as you do. I myself once lived like this … I did … about thirty years ago I hid myself away on a deserted atoll, fleeing from some diabolically curious kepi. True, they did get the better of me … but, ah! that was later—after much time had passed.”

  Spittle spumed from the old man’s mouth, and a lump rolled around in his dry, almost strangled throat. Horn asked:

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lanphier,” the guest croaked. “Lanphier, if you please.”

  Horn nodded his head thoughtfully. The old man amused him; the sense of self-importance with which he named himself concealed his devious and cunning expectation. Horn said:

  “Well, I’m Horn.”

  Lanphier roared with laughter.

  “Horn?” he repeated, winking his left eye, while the right one darkened, its pupil gleaming. “Well, yes—Horn, naturally, who else could you be?”

  Horn frowned. The convict’s undue familiarity stirred a slight impatience in him.

  “I,” he said, “could be someone else. Someone who isn’t used to getting up early. While you, quite apart from being Lanphier, could be someone who only by accident found me as I am—not asleep.”

  Lanphier silently bared his teeth. He made no reply; his drunken thoughts, crawling around on all fours, slipped into a desire to show off with unashamed presumptuousness and arrogance.

  “I was the first person to live in this hellhole,” he said provocatively, taking a seat on Horn’s firm bed. “Devil and beast cursed this colony before my shovel first took a bite out of the t
opsoil. I’d like us to get acquainted. People say an awful lot of things about me, but, upon my word of honor, I was sent down an innocent man!”

  Horn said nothing.

  “I’ve always respected hard work,” said Lanphier with an obvious disgust for what his lips were saying. “You don’t believe me? If only you’d seen me forty years or so ago …”

  An ambiguous smile crossed his dry mouth.

  “I relish the demise of fine young men,” the convict went on. “You’ve come here, found yourself this out-of-the-way corner, as an independent man, without asking for anything or anyone’s advice. You’re on your own. I also respect people like this; indeed, I’d give you a pat on the back if I knew you wouldn’t take offense at it. I’ll wager that you could crush a man’s skull with your fist and not give yourself over to remorse. There’s no other way in these parts; bear that in mind … If there’s anyone on the colony who hasn’t smelled blood, it’s harmless me; I give you my word, I’m the most upstanding chap in the world.”

  “Get to the point,” said Horn, losing his patience. “If you need something, then say so.”

  Lanphier’s pupils contracted and dimmed. He was pondering something. His drink-soaked brain was searching for something, no matter how small, to hook another’s soul.

  “I,” he began with a scowl, “have nothing, even if you were to throw me out. There’s only one road for a poor wretch, and that’s contempt. By fire and water, I swear I only wanted to look out for you and so I stopped by to see how you were getting on. I’m not a policeman, damn it. I’m not here to interrogate you, to see whether you haven’t left someone behind leering after you … somewhere over there, beyond this pool of brackish water. What do I care! To each his own, I say. I only want to warn you to be more careful. You see, there’s a lot of talk about you. Setting aside fools’ gossip, the people here will reach the following instantaneous conclusion: ‘He didn’t come here with empty hands.’ You see, when you buy coffee or tobacco, bandages, gunpowder, you have to pay in sterling. It’s best to change money on the mainland. The sun is hot here, and blood boils quickly, much quicker than butter in a frying pan. Oh! I don’t mean to frighten you, not in the least; there are some very good people here and half of them don’t have a prejudiced bone in their body. But what can you do? Not everyone can have so respectable an upbringing.”