The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  It was almost nine o’clock.

  He ate a large breakfast of bread and cheese and butter and fruit, together with four cups of strong black tea. After eating, he felt both refreshed and dilatory and he thought for a long moment of taking advantage of the morning and the unnaturally quiet house to read in some of the new volumes of botanical studies that had arrived during the past few weeks.

  But when he remembered the new specimen awaiting him in the museum, these impulses evaporated and he left the house quickly. It was another fine day. The sky was cloudless, a mild, mild blue. Where the east grove cast its shadow on the lawn, dew still remained, and he smelled its freshness as he passed. He fumbled the latch excitedly, and then he swung the museum door open.

  His swift first impression was that something had caught fire and burned, the odor in the room was so strong. It wasn’t an acrid smell, a smell of destruction, but it was overpowering, and in a moment he identified it as having an organic source. He closed the door and walked to the center of the room. It was not only the heavy damp odor that attacked his senses but also a high-pitched musical chirping, or twittering, scattered on the room’s laden air. And the two sensations, smell and sound, were indistinguishably mixed; here was an example of that sensory confusion of which M. Diderot had written so engagingly. At first he could not discover the source of all this sensual hurly-burly. The morning sun entered the windows, shining aslant the north wall, so that between Linnaeus and his strange new plant there fell a tall rectangular corridor of sunshine, through which his gaze could not pierce clearly.

  He stood stock-still, for what he could see of the plant beyond the light astonished him. It had opened out and grown monstrously; it was enormous, tier on tier of dark green reaching to a height of three feet or more above the table. No blooms that he could see, but differentiated levels of broad green leaves spread out in orderly fashion from bottom to top, so that the plant had an appearance of a flourishing green pyramid. And there was movement among and about the leaves, a shifting in the air all around it, and he supposed that an extensive tropical insect life had been transported into his little museum. Linnaeus smiled nervously, hardly able to contain his excitement, and stepped into the passage of sunlight.

  As he advanced toward the plant, the twittering sound grew louder. The foliage, he thought, must be rife with living creatures. He came to the edge of the table but could not see clearly yet, his sight still dazzled from stepping into and out of the swath of sunshine.

  Even when his eyes grew accustomed to shadow, he still could not make out exactly what he was looking at. There was a general confused movement about and within the plant, a continual settling and unsettling as around a beehive, but the small creatures that flitted there were so shining and iridescent, so gossamerlike, that he could fix no proper impression of them. Now, though, he heard them quite clearly and realized that what at first had seemed a confused mélange of twittering was, in fact, an orderly progression of sounds, a music as of flutes and piccolos in polyphony.

  He could account for this impression in no way but to think of it as a product of his imagination. He had become aware that his senses were none so acute as they ordinarily were; or rather, that they were acute enough, but that he was having some difficulty in interpreting what his senses told him. It occurred to him that the perfume of the plant—which now cloaked him heavily, an invisible smoke—possessed perhaps some narcotic quality. When he reached past the corner of the table to a wall shelf for a magnifying glass, he noticed that his motions were sluggish and that an odd feeling of remoteness took power over his mind.

  He leaned over the plant, training his glass and trying to breathe less deeply. The creature that swam into his sight, flitting through the magnification, so startled him that he dropped the glass and began to rub his eyes and temples and forehead. He wasn’t sure what he had seen—that is, he could not believe what he thought he had seen—because it was no form of insect life at all.

  He retrieved the glass and looked again, moving from one area of the plant to another like a man examining a map.

  These were no insects, though many of the creatures inhabiting here were winged. They were of flesh, however diminutive they were in size. The whole animal family was represented here in miniature: horses, cows, dogs, serpents, lions and tigers and leopards, elephants, opossums and otters….All the animals Linnaeus had seen or heard of surfaced here for a moment and then sped away on their ordinary amazing errands—and not only the animals he might have seen in the world but the fabulous animals, too: unicorns and dragons and gryphons and basilisks and the Arabian flying serpents of which Herodotus had written.

  Tears streamed down the botanist’s face, and he straightened and wiped his eyes with his palm. He looked all about him in the long room, but nothing else had changed. The floor was littered with potting soil and broken and empty pots, and on the shelves were jars of chemicals and dried leaves, and on the small table by the window his journal lay open, with two quill pens beside it and the inkpot and his pewter snuffbox. If he had indeed become insane all in a moment, the distortion of his perceptions did not extend to the daily objects of his existence, but was confined to this one strange plant.

  He stepped to the little table and took two pinches of snuff, hoping that the tobacco might clear his head and that the dust in his nostrils might prevent to some degree the narcotic effect of the plant’s perfume, if that was what had caused the appearance of these visions. He sneezed in the sunlight and dust motes rose golden around him. He bent to his journal and dipped his pen and thought, but finally he wrote nothing. What could he write that he would believe in a week’s time?

  He returned to the plant, determined to subject it to the most minute examination. He decided to limit his observation to the plant itself, disregarding the fantastic animal life. With the plant, his senses would be less likely to deceive him. But his resolve melted away when once again he employed the magnifying glass. There was too much movement; the distraction was too violent.

  Now he observed that there were not only miniature animals, real and fabulous, but also a widespread colony, or nation, of homunculi. Here were little men and women, perfectly formed, and—like the other animals—sometimes having wings. He felt the mingled fear and astonishment that Mr. Swift’s hapless Gulliver felt when he first encountered the Lilliputians. But he also felt an admiration, as he might have felt upon seeing some particularly well-fashioned example of the Swiss watchmaker’s art. To see large animals in small, with their customary motions so accelerated, did give the impression of a mechanical exhibition.

  Yet there was really nothing mechanical about them, if he put himself in their situation. They were self-determining; most of their actions had motives intelligible to him, however exotic were the means of carrying out intentions. Here, for example, a tiny rotund man in a green jerkin and saffron trousers talked—sang, rather—to a tiny slender man dressed all in brown. At the conclusion of this recitative, the man in brown raced away and leapt onto the back of a tiny winged camel, which bore him from this lower level of the plant to an upper one, where he dismounted and began singing to a young lady in a bright blue gown. Perfectly obvious that a message had been delivered…Here in another place a party of men and women mounted on unwinged great cats, lions and leopards and tigers, pursued over the otherwise-deserted broad plain of a leaf a fearful hydra, its nine heads snapping and spitting. At last they impaled it to the white leaf vein with the sharp black thorns they carried for lances and then they set the monster afire, its body writhing and shrieking, and they rode away together. A grayish waxy blister formed on the leaf where the hydra had burned….And here in another area a formal ball was taking place, the tiny gentlemen leading out the ladies in time to the music of an orchestra sawing and pounding at the instruments….

  This plant, then, enfolded a little world, a miniature society in which the mundane and the fanciful commingled
in matter-of-fact fashion but at a feverish rate of speed.

  Linnaeus became aware that his legs were trembling from tiredness and that his back ached. He straightened, feeling a grateful release of muscle tension. He went round to the little table and sat, dipped his pen again, and began writing hurriedly, hardly stopping to think. He wrote until his hand almost cramped and then he flexed it several times and wrote more, covering page after page with his neat sharp script. Finally he laid the pen aside and leaned back in his chair and thought. Many different suppositions formed in his mind, but none of them made clear sense. He was still befuddled, and he felt he might be confused for years to come, that he had fallen victim to a dream or vision from which he might never recover.

  In a while he felt rested and he returned again to look at the plant.

  By now a whole season, or a generation or more, had passed. The plant itself was a darker green than before, its shape had changed, and even more creatures now lived within it. The midsection of the plant had opened out into a large boxlike space thinly walled with hand-sized kidney-shaped leaves. This section formed a miniature theater or courtyard. Something was taking place here, but Linnaeus could not readily discern what it was.

  Much elaborate construction had been undertaken. The smaller leaves of the plant in this space had been clipped and arranged into a grand formal garden. There were walls and arches of greenery and greenery shaped into obelisks topped with globes, and Greek columns and balconies and level paths. Wooden statues and busts were placed at intervals within this garden, and it seemed to Linnaeus that on some of the subjects he could make out the lineaments of the great classical botanists. Here, for example, was Pliny, and there was Theophrastus. Many of the personages so honored were unfamiliar to him, but then he found on one of the busts, occupying a position of great prominence, his own rounded cheerful features. Could this be true? He stared and stared, but his little glass lacked sufficient magnification for him to be finally certain.

  Music was everywhere; chamber orchestras were stationed at various points along the outer walls of the garden and two large orchestras were set up at either end of the wide main path. There were a number of people calmly walking about, twittering to one another, but there were fewer than he had supposed at first. The air above them was dotted with cherubs flying about playfully, and much of the foliage was decorated with artfully hung tapestries. There was about the scene an attitude of expectancy, of waiting.

  At this point the various orchestras began to sound in concert and gathered the music into recognizable shape. The sound was still thin and high-pitched, but Linnaeus discerned in it a long reiterative fanfare, which was followed by a slow, grave recessional march. All the little people turned from their casual attitudes and gave their attention to the wall of leaves standing at the end of the wide main pathway. There was a clipped narrow corridor in front of the wall and from it emerged a happy band of naked children. They advanced slowly and disorderly, strewing the path with tiny pink petals they lifted out in dripping handfuls from woven baskets slung over their shoulders. They were singing in unison, but Linnaeus could not make out the melody, their soprano voices pitched beyond his range of hearing. Following the children came another group of musicians, blowing and thumping, and then a train of comely maidens, dressed in airy long white dresses tied about the waists with broad ribbons, green and yellow. The maidens, too, were singing, and the botanist now began to hear the vocal music, a measured but joyous choral hymn. Linnaeus was smiling to himself, buoyed up on an ocean of happy fullness; his face and eyes were bright.

  The beautiful maidens were followed by another troop of petal-scattering children, and after them came a large orderly group of animals of all sorts, domestic animals and wild animals and fabulous, stalking forward in their fine innate dignities, though not, of course, in step. The animals were unattended, moving in the procession as if conscious of their places and duties. There were more of these animals, male and female of each kind, than Linnaeus had expected to live within the plant. He attempted vainly to count the number of different species, but he gave over as they kept pouring forward smoothly, like sand grains twinkling into the bottom of an hourglass.

  The spectators had gathered to the sides of the pathway and stood cheering and applauding.

  The animals passed by, and now a train of carriages ranked in twos took their place. These carriages each were drawn by teams of four little horses, and both the horses and carriages were loaded down with great garlands of bright flowers, hung with blooms from end to end. Powdered ladies fluttered their fans in the windows. And after the carriages, another band of musicians marched.

  Slowly now, little by little, a large company of strong young men appeared, scores of them. Each wore a stout leather harness, from which long reins of leather were attached to an enormous wheeled platform. The young men, their bodies shining, drew this platform down the pathway. The platform itself supported another formal garden, within which was an interior arrangement suggesting a royal court. There was a throne on its dais, and numerous attendants before and behind the throne. Flaming braziers in each corner gave off thick grayish purple clouds of smoke, and around these braziers small children exhibited various instruments and implements connected with the science of botany: shovels, thermometers, barometers, potting spades, and so forth. Below the dais on the left-hand side, a savage, a New World Indian, adorned with feathers and gold, knelt in homage, and in front of him a beautiful woman in a Turkish dress proffered to the throne a tea shrub in a silver pot. Farther to the left, at the edge of the tableau, a sable Ethiopian stood, he also carrying a plant indigenous to his mysterious continent.

  The throne itself was a living creature, a great tawny lion with sherry-colored eyes. The power and wildness of the animal were unmistakable in him, but now he lay placid and willing, with a sleepy smile on his face. And on this throne of the living lion, over whose back a covering of deep-plush green satin had been thrown, sat the goddess Flora.

  This was she indeed, wearing a golden crown and holding in her left hand a gathering of peonies (Paeonia officinalis) and in her right hand a heavy golden key. Flora sat at ease, the goddess gowned in a carmine silk that shone silver where the light fell on it in broad planes, the gown tied over her right shoulder and arm to form a sleeve, and gathered lower on her left side to leave the breast bare. An expression of sublime dreaminess was on her face and she gazed off into the far distance, thinking thoughts unknowable even to her most intimate initiates. She was attended on her right-hand side by Apollo, splendidly naked except for the laurel bays round his forehead and his bow and quiver crossed on his chest. Behind her, Diana disposed herself, half-reclining, half-supporting herself on her bow, and wearing in her hair her crescent-moon fillet. Apollo devoted his attention to Flora, holding aloft a blazing torch, and looking down upon her with an expression of mingled tenderness and admiration. He stood astride the carcass of a loathsome slain dragon, signifying the demise of ignorance and superstitious unbelief.

  The music rolled forth in loud hosannas, and the spectators on every side knelt in reverence to the goddess as she passed.

  Linnaeus became dizzy. He closed his eyes for a moment and felt the floor twirling beneath his feet. He stumbled across the room to his chair by the writing table and sat. His chin dropped down on his chest; he fell into a deep swoon.

  When he regained consciousness, the shaft of sunlight had reached the west wall. At least an hour had passed. When he stirred himself, there was an unaccustomed stiffness in his limbs and it seemed to him that over the past twenty-four hours or so his body had aged several years.

  His first clear thoughts were of the plant, and he rose and went to his worktable to find out what changes had occurred. But the plant was no more; it had disappeared. Here was the wicker container lined with oilcloth, here was the earth inside it, but the wonderful plant no longer existed. All that remained was a greasy gray-green powder s
ifted over the soil. Linnaeus took up a pinch of it in his fingers and sniffed at it and even tasted it, but it had no sensory qualities at all except a neutral oiliness. Absentmindedly, he wiped his fingers on his coat sleeve.

  A deep melancholy descended upon the man and he locked his hands behind his back and began walking about the room, striding up and down beside his worktable. A harsh welter of thoughts and impulses overcame his mind. At one point he halted in mid-stride, turned and crossed to his writing table, and snatched up his journal, anxious to determine what account he had written of his strange adventure.

  His journal was no help at all, for he could not read it. He looked at the unfinished last page and then thumbed backward for seven pages and turned them all over again, staring and staring. He had written in a script unintelligible to him, a writing that seemed to bear some distant resemblance to Arabic perhaps, but which bore no resemblance at all to his usual exuberant mixture of Latin and Swedish. Not a word or a syllable on any page conveyed the least meaning to him.

  As he gazed at these dots and squiggles, Linnaeus began to forget. He waved his hand before his face like a man brushing away cobwebs. The more he looked at his pages, the more he forgot, until finally he had forgotten the whole episode: the letter from the Dutch sailor, the receiving of the plant, and the discovery of the little world the plant contained—everything.

  Like a man in a trance, and with entranced movements, he returned to his worktable and swept some scattered crumbs of soil into a broken pot and carted it away and deposited it in the dustbin.

  * * *

  —

  It has been said that some great minds have the ability to forget deeply. That is what happened to Linnaeus; he forgot the plant and the bright vision that had been vouchsafed to him. But the profoundest levels of his life had been stirred, and some of the details of this thinking had changed.