Fandango and Other Stories

by Bryan Karetnyk

  “Don’t uncover this in the open air,” the man said. “Uncover it when you arrive and set it on the table. When you leave, wrap it up again, but don’t take it with you. It will find its way back to me, all right. Well, farewell, brother—if we’ve said something wrong, don’t bear us any ill will.”

  He retreated toward the door, beckoning the women to leave.

  “But tell me, who is Bam Gran?” I asked. But he only shrugged.

  “Ask him,” said the old woman, “we won’t tell you any more.”

  The gypsies anxiously and cautiously left, talking quietly with one another. I had startled them. I saw that their amazement was great; their bewilderment and haste to please mixed with the fear that their lives had been marked by some event. I myself was so greatly agitated that the spirits had no effect on me. As I was leaving, I collided with the barman, who had peered in at the door several times already, though never interrupting us—a fact for which I was most grateful to him. The gypsies usually take a profitable client behind a door or into some other secluded corner, where they make him look into water while they repeat some simple incantation; so the barman might well have thought that I had changed my mind about drawing them and succumbed to the temptation of knowing the future.

  “Pharaoh’s tribe has run off!” he said, looking at me with gloomy interest. “They were served tea, but they didn’t drink it. They just made a bit of a ruckus and left. Were they afraid of you or something?”

  I supported this conjecture by telling him that gypsies are very superstitious and that it is difficult to convince them to let a stranger draw them. With that, we parted, and I stepped out into the street, which was wrenched out of obscurity by an array of shadows. The moon was not visible, but a bright fog adorned the sky, imparting a sleepy whiteness that passed into gloom.

  I walked on and paused to extract from my inside coat pocket the dark-blue handkerchief. I could feel the cone within it. I still had to find out why the gypsies forbid me to uncover this object before arriving at my destination—that is, at Brock’s—for their instructions in this regard had been quite explicit. By “had to” I infer a degree of skepticism, which lingered in me despite the day’s strange occurrences. Besides, a striking surprise that presents itself and in so doing refutes doubt is always sweeter than barefaced certainty. This I knew for sure. But I did not know what was going to happen, otherwise I should have been patient for many an hour yet.

  Stopping at a corner, I undid the handkerchief and saw that the glint of green in the cone had the strange appearance of a distant light—just as if the cone were an aperture through which I could observe the approach of a lamp. The line would vanish, leaving behind a bright spot, or else appear on the very surface, glaring so brightly that I could see my own fingers as though by the light of a green coal. The cone was rather heavy, about four inches tall, and with a base like a cross-section of an apple, perfectly smooth and regular. Its color—old silver with an olive hue—was remarkable in that with the intensification of the greenish light, it appeared a dark lilac.

  Fascinated and enchanted, I watched the cone, noticing a vague pattern forming around its greenish radiance, a movement of parts and shadows, similar to the papery black ash that flutters about a stove against the light of its coals. Inside the cone there was a depth, a gloom in which a hand-held lantern with a green flame was distinctly moving. As it approached the surface, the lamp seemed to be emerging from a third dimension. Its movements were capricious and magnetic, as if it were searching for a hidden way out, lighting its own way above and below. At last the lantern undeniably began to increase in size, rushing forward, and, as on the silver screen, its contours grew to such proportions that they fell beyond the confines of the cone itself. A brilliant green ray of light shone directly and piercingly into my eyes. The lantern disappeared. The whole cone lit up with the most intense brightness; no sooner had a second gone by than a terrible green glow, surging out of my fingers, spilled over the roofs of the city, turning night into a blinding brilliance of walls, snow, and air—a green day dawned, in whose light there was not a single shadow.

  This silent blow lasted only a moment, the length of time it took for my fingers to clench convulsively and conceal the surface of this amazing object. And still, this moment was fraught with incident.

  The all-rending brilliance was still flickering in my startled eyes, full of blind spots, but, like an enormous wall, darkness came crashing down on me—it was so dark, because of the momentary transition from maximal radiance to dense gloom, that I lost my balance and very nearly fell over. I reeled but remained standing. Trembling all over, I wrapped the cone back in the handkerchief, feeling like someone who has just thrown a bomb and managed to hide around a corner. Scarcely had my numbing hands achieved this, than a commotion of alarm arose in various parts of the city. I could but imagine that everyone who was in the streets at this hour was shouting, since from every quarter a distant “ahhh” could be heard, followed by the rapping sound of gunfire. The previously rare barking of dogs now rose to a frenzy, as if all the dogs had come together to chase some rare, lone beast that had wearied of its narrow warrens. Frightened passers-by ran past me, filling the street with frantic, pathetic cries. Breaking into a nervous sweat, I somehow walked on. A red light blazed amid the darkness; a din and ringing leaped out from around the corner as a fire engine cut across the road, racing willy-nilly to where it was needed. Along with smoke and sparks, the disturbing blaze of fire flew from the torches, reflected with an infernal quivering in the glittering helmets. The little bells on the shaft bow beat a shrill tocsin, the carts thundered, the horses tore along, and everything galloped past and vanished, like a blistering attack.

  I never did find out what else befell the frightened populace that evening, for I was nearing the building where Brock lived. As I walked up the stairs with my heart beating violently, it was only with an extreme effort of will that I forced my legs to obey me. Eventually I reached the landing and recovered my breath. Amid total darkness I groped for the door, knocked, and entered, without a word to the fellow who let me in. He was one of the tenants who knew me from before, when I lived in this apartment.

  “Have you come to see Brock?” he asked. “I think he’s gone out. He was here just a moment ago and was expecting you.”

  I said nothing, fearing to utter so much as a single word, since I had no idea what would happen if I did. I chanced upon a happy idea: I placed my hand to my cheek and began to roll my tongue and groan.

  “Ah, toothache!” said the tenant. “I myself have a bad filling that often has me climbing the walls. Perhaps you’ll wait for him?”

  I nodded, thereby solving a difficulty that, though trifling, might have dashed all my further doings. Brock never locked the room, since with his many commercial dealings he was interested in the notes left for him on his desk. Thus, nothing stood in my way, but, on the off chance that I found Brock at home, I had already come up with a good way out: without a word, I would give him a gold coin and signal to him that I should like some wine.

  Cradling my cheek, I entered the room, thanked the man who let me in with a nod and a sour smile, as befits a person in the throes of pain, and carefully closed the door behind me. Once the footsteps in the corridor had died away, I turned the key, so that no one should disturb me. As soon as I turned on the lights in Brock’s quarters, I ascertained that the painting of the sunny room was standing on the floor between two chairs, by a pillar beyond which lay the nocturnal street. This detail bears an undoubted significance.

  I walked up to the painting and examined it, trying to fathom the connection between this object and my visit to Bam Gran. Despite the forceful jolt to my mind caused by my terrible experience outside, even a brain three times as stimulated as mine would not have arrived at any reasonable hypothesis. Once again I marveled at the grand though delicate exuberance of the beautiful painting. It was replete with a summer air that diffused an elegant midday somnolence; its
details, impossible under even the most stringent mastery, were now especially striking. Thus, on one of the window ledges lay a woman’s glove—not in plain sight, as one seeking cheap effects might have placed it, but behind the wooden frame of an open window; through the glass I could see it: diminutive, with a distinction of its own, just as every object on this wondrous canvas had a distinction of its own. Moreover, casting my view along the window with the glove, I marked a bronze hinge of the sort used to hold window frames in place, and the heads of screws in the hinge; what was more, you could see that the slots of the heads contained the vestiges of dried-out white paint. The detail of the image was no less than in those colored reflections of the mirror-like balls that are placed in gardens. I had already begun to reflect on this level of detail and wonder whether my eyes were not deceiving me; recollecting myself, however, I took out the cone from the handkerchief and, rooted to the spot, began scrutinizing its surface.

  The green line was hardly showing now, as if waiting for the moment to blind me again with its emerald brilliance, the power and beauty of which were such that even lightning could not compare. The line flared up, and the green lantern raced out from the darkness of the cone. Entrusting myself to fate, I then set the cone in the middle of the table and sat down to wait.

  After a little time the cone began to emit a light that grew with the force and speed of a reflector shone in one’s face. I seemed to be inside the green lantern. Everything, with the exception of the electric lamp, appeared green. Bright green corridors stretched through the windows to the farthest roofs. It was an illumination of such intensity that it seemed the building would collapse and burn. A strange business! A yellow mass emitting golden steam began to condense about the electric lamp; it appeared to penetrate through the glass, eddying like boiling oil. The incandescent wire loop was no longer visible; the whole lamp looked like a glowing golden pear. Suddenly it shattered with the noise of a shot; shards of glass went flying in all directions. One of the shards landed in my hair, while fiery yellow clots rained down onto the floor, as though seething egg yolks had jumped out of a frying pan. They went out instantly, and alone the green light, which had scarcely flickered throughout all this, now surrounded me like a flood.

  Needless to say, my thoughts and emotions but remotely resembled ordinary human consciousness. Any comparison, even the most fanciful, would give an idea only of my efforts to compare, but essentially it would reveal nothing. One has to endure such moments oneself in order to have the right to talk of things that have never been experienced. But perhaps you will appreciate my intense, all-embracing bewilderment if I tell you that when I accidentally brushed the chair with my hand, I did not feel its touch, as though I were disembodied. Hence, my nervous system had been shocked to the point of physical insensibility. The memory of my psychological experience therefore ends here—anyone who has charged with a bayonet will know what I mean: you forget yourself but still act as the perilous battle demands.

  What happened next, I shall lay out in my sequence of events, without vouching for its authenticity.

  “Open up!” shouted a voice from an unintelligible world—as though over the telephone, at a distance.

  Someone was trying to force his way through the door. I recognized Brock’s voice. A knock followed. I stood stock-still. When I examined the door, the section of wall seemed unfamiliar. It had been raised higher and now had the appearance of an arch with locked iron gates, through the openwork of which I glimpsed a deep vault. I no longer heard knocks or voices. Now I saw dramatic changes wherever I looked. A massive bronze chandelier hung from the ceiling. A part of the wall giving onto the street had seemingly been destroyed by the light, and in the expanse that opened up I saw a vista of tall trees, beyond which the waters of a bay glittered. To my right a marble balcony rose up with flowers around the railing; from under it a matador appeared, sword drawn, and raced down through the floor, chasing a bull that was running away. Artwork glinted about the chandelier. This mixture of incongruent phenomena bore a resemblance to sketches left through laziness or reverie on paper, where profiles, landscapes, and arabesques are mixed arbitrarily, according to the mood of the moment. What was left of the room was hardly visible and had altered in essence. Thus, for instance, a number of paintings hanging on the wall to the right of the entrance had shed their figures; likenesses of dolls and objects had tumbled out of the frames, leaving a profound void. I reached into the painting by Gorshkov, which looked like a tea caddy from within, and ascertained that the fir trees in the painting had been joined to the wooden base with carpenter’s glue. I broke them off with ease, destroying along the way a wooden hut with a little light in the window, which turned out to be merely red paper. The snow was ordinary cotton wool dusted with naphthalene, and sticking out of it were two dried-out flies, which earlier I had taken for the classical “pair of crows.” In the very depths of the chest were a tin of shoe polish and handful of walnut shells.

  I turned around, uncertain of what to do, since my instructions had been to wait.

  A dynamic chaos of light sparkled all around. Beneath the piano stood a crude stone and a wooden stump grown over with grass. Everything was in flux, appearing and disappearing, metamorphosing. A donkey laden with wineskins trotted past me along a stony path; its driver—a dark, hefty, barefooted lad with a red cotton bandana tied about his head—ran along behind it. Opposite me a window with an iron grille opened into a room, and a woman’s hand splashed out slop from a dish. Unfamiliar people of a southern type, disappearing in an abyss of green brilliance, passed by in the air, at an angle, horizontally, vertically, in front of me, and from behind; all this was distinct yet transparent, like stained glass. There was no sound: just movement and silence. Amid this spectacle, the corner of the table with the glittering cone was barely noticeable. Having seen enough, and also fearing for the integrity of my reason, I threw my pocket handkerchief over the cone. But darkness did not descend, as I had expected; instead, only the green brilliance vanished, while my surroundings appeared again as they did before. The painting of the sunny room, which had become incomparably larger, now resembled an open door. It emitted the clear light of day, while the windows of Brock’s lodgings were as black as night.

  I say it emitted a light because a light truly did come from there, from the tall open windows in the painting. There it was day, and the day communicated its bright illumination to my domain. There also seemed to be a path. I took a coin and threw it into the background of what I continued to call a painting; I saw the coin roll across the entire floor toward a half-opened glass door at the end of the room. It only remained for me to pick it up. I stepped through the frame with a feeling as though I were meeting resistance from a headwind that silently stunned me as I drew even with the frame; day seemed to become night. I found myself standing on a solid floor and automatically took several petals from the round lacquered table, feeling their silky moistness. At this point exhaustion overwhelmed me. I sat down on a plush chair, looking back at where I had come from. Over there was an ordinary blank wall covered in lilac-striped wallpaper, and on it, in a thin black frame, hung a small painting that related—though I was unconscious of it—to my feelings. Having mastered the weakness natural for anyone in my position, I hurried to my feet in order to see what was depicted on the painting. What I saw was an exceptionally executed rendering: a view of a shabby, shabbily furnished room, immersed in a twilight that was barely pierced by a ray of light from the burning stove; it was the iron stove in that room, the very one from which I had come here.

  I rank among those people who are not stunned by the enigmatic, those for whom it does not provoke wild excitement or distraught gestures mixed with cries. That winter’s day, with the icy knife of frost stuck into its throat, had already yielded a sufficient quota of the enigmatic, yet nothing was so eloquently enigmatic as this phenomenon of a room vanished without trace and reflected in a painting. I finished by tying a small knot in my memory: I cal
mly went over to the window and with a firm hand flung it open to look at the city. It is not hard to imagine my calm, if now I get incredibly excited at its mere recollection. But then it was a calm—a state in which I was able to move and look.

  As you may have gathered from my previous descriptions, the room, bathed in a glaring golden light, was a wide gallery with large windows along one side that overlooked some buildings. I inhaled the cheerful air of the south. It was warm, as at midday in June. The silence came to an end. I began to hear noises, the sounds of a city. Wheels clattered, cocks crowed, and passers-by cried discordantly beyond the ledges of the roofs scattered beneath this building, as far down as ships’ masts and a sea that glittered with the toreutic blue of waves.

  A terrace, surrounded by an orchard whose green tips reached as high as the windows, lay below the gallery, jutting out from under it. I was in a real but unknown place, and in such a season or at such a latitude where January is scorching hot.

  A flock of pigeons flew back and forth from roof to roof. A cannon went off, and the slow tolling of a bell rang twelve o’clock.

  It was then that I understood everything. My understanding derived neither from calculation nor from proof, and my brain had no part in it. It appeared like an ardent handshake and struck me no less than my former amazement. This understanding contained so complex an essence that it could be clear only for an instant, like the feeling of harmony that precedes an epileptic fit. At the time I could have described my condition only in muddled, inarticulate terms. But within me a perfect understanding arose in and of itself, in sharp, clear lines that formed an unprecedented pattern.

  Then it began to recede into the depths, nodding and smiling like a woman bidding farewell from the steps of a staircase that gradually conceals her from view.