by Joan Aiken
So: he never made that second model, thought Frost, after a blank, shocked moment. If he had, perhaps the neighbours would not have found him yet; Carloman II would still be stumping about the apartment, switching lights on and off at random intervals.
He re-read the paragraph, waiting for guilt and remorse to bite. But all he felt was a kind of dreary satisfaction; even guilt seemed wasted on that pair. Aveyrand would hardly have lasted much longer, with all the wealth in the world; nor would Menispe, and it was unlikely that anybody regretted her passing.
But what, now, should he do with Aveyrand’s invention? Enter the patent in his own name and give the proceeds to charity? Search for other family connections? Or—his strongest impulse—do nothing, smash the model to smithereens with a hatchet?
The train pulled up at his station. He put the Times in his briefcase, got out, and walked up the long and muddy lane towards his cottage.
Yes: a hatchet might be the best solution to Carloman. On the other hand—he might just keep the model, which was proving quite useful. There had been a number of burglaries lately in the district; he had formed the habit of leaving Carloman switched on, to create the effect of human activity in the house.
Indeed the lights changed as Frost approached the cottage: the kitchen window went dark and, after a short interval, the bedroom was illuminated. Handy though the model was, Frost thought, opening the gate, it was hard to conquer the slight unease of entering the house, aware that somewhere inside this mindless but human-seeming object was plodding slowly around, carrying out its programmed tasks.
Then, glancing through the window of the ground-floor bedroom, Frost was startled to observe that, this evening, Carloman had performed a task for which he had not yet been programmed: he was just moving away from the bed, having, with his gauntleted hands, twitched back the covers.
With a suddenly accelerated heart, and a dry mouth, Frost opened the front door, which led straight into the dining room. The table was laid for two.
Now he could hear slow, thudding steps as the model negotiated the short passage from bedroom to hall. Soon the thing came in sight, moving deliberately with its slow, swaying gait. The closed bars of the visor looked straight ahead: blind, expressionless. But inside them—Frost was visited by a mad notion—inside, if he were to lift the visor, he believed that he would reveal not a random-seeming mass of wires and terminals but the mocking, hostile features of Menispe Aveyrand.
The Monkey’s Wedding
FAMOUS PICTURE DISCOVERED AFTER FIFTY YEARS: said the headlines. The Monkey’s Wedding located at last.And, underneath, in smaller type, the newspaper stories told how Jan Invach’s celebrated, almost legendary picture of a street scene in the town of Rocjau, the people in the street, the man running with the dove, the girl with red hair, and the high-arched, 700-year-old bridge over the river Fos—well, anyway, this wonderful picture, which had sold on its first showing for £8,000, and that was in 1939, and soon after, in World War II, it had been lost in France, looted by the Germans, taken to Berlin, looted again by the Russians, taken to Moscow, lost again, and had only recently come to light after having been smuggled over the frontier between Kikl and Soubctavia. Well, this historic picture had now been reclaimed by its painter, Jan Invach, who had made a special journey to Soubctavia (now torn asunder, alas, by disastrous civil war and dire internal strife) to identify the painting, of which, since it was lost, he had done two more versions from memory, but had always wished to recover the original if it were possible to do so. “The Monkey’s Wedding” of course, in colloquial idiom, means a scene with sunshine viewed through rain, or rain seen through the sun’s rays. Jan Invach painted the original picture at the age of eighteen. Now in his 70s but hale and well, he is world-famous and his pictures fetch astronomic sums. What The Monkey’s Wedding first version must be worth now is almost impossible to compute . . .
Old Mrs Invach sniffed, reading this news story as related by various daily papers while drinking elderflower tea in her large, dark, shabby, cluttered Hampstead kitchen.
“Untold millions, ha! Money’s not worth the paper it’s printed on these days. In 1939, with what that picture sold for, you could have bought a couple of islands. Now you couldn’t buy a tub of ice cream. And if you could, it wouldn’t be worth eating.”
Old Mrs Invach, now in her 90s, talked to herself all day long. It was a family habit. Her son did it as he painted his pictures. Sitters for portraits were frequently disconcerted, and sometimes tried to respond, but he paid them no heed. The Tate Gallery had a tape of the entire monologue that had accompanied his charcoal drawing of the Duchess of Cambridge.
“United Nations monitoring a cease-fire in Soubctavia. Ha! That won’t last long! I know those Soubs and those Dobrindjans—they’ll be at each other’s throats again in thirty-six hours.”
There were shots of the beautiful old town of Rocjau and the celebrated bridge—now shattered beyond repair, nothing left of its 700-year-old curve but some dangling fragments of masonry.
“If they ever want to rebuild it, they’ll need to look at Jan’s picture,” muttered Mrs Invach. “But will that time ever come? I very much doubt it.”
“The world-famous painter Jan Invach is in the town of Rocjau at present, on a mission to rescue his legendary picture The Monkey’s Wedding which was recently discovered not far away in a barn, just over the border in the province of Kikl. An unknown sum had been paid for its ransom by an unknown Japanese millionaire who wished to return the picture to the man who painted it. He plans to donate it to the National Gallery in London, but before that he intends to effect various necessary repairs to the canvas, which was discovered leaning against a damp wall behind a heap of turnips . . .
“A threatened strike of dentists has been averted by the junior Health Minister . . .”
The doorbell rang, and Mrs Invach switched off the weather forecast and shuffled into the front hall, muttering and grumbling. It took her a while to undo various bolts and Chubb locks; the chain she left on while she peered round the crack of the door into the face of a lad of perhaps eighteen who wore a brand-new tartan cap and carried a shiny briefcase.
“Evening, missus!” he said with cheerful confidence. “I represent McCustody home security systems and burglar alarms. I’ll be happy to survey your home here and now, and give you a free estimate for our complete scheme of protection—”
He was studying her intently all the time as he spoke, and she, meanwhile, was subjecting him to en equally gimlet-eyed scrutiny. Mrs Invach was a rugged-looking old lady with hair and skin almost completely pale, bleached as desert grass; her scanty hair was pulled straight back into a knot, she wore a rough woollen monk’s robe, and her eyes were like flint arrowheads.
“Why should you think I haven’t a security system already?” she demanded tartly.
“I checked round with all the main companies before I came.” The boy gave her a brash grin. “None had your name on their lists. And, just now, you’ll be wanting a fair deal of extra security—won’t you?”
“What do you mean by that?” she snapped.
Somehow, during this exchange, she had moved back a step or two, and he had contrived to twitch off the doorchain and enter her front hall, which he glanced round, taking rapid stock of its solid walls and massive Victorian mahogany stair rail. When he raised his eyes to the upper level he drew in a sharp breath, for there, facing each other across the stair head, were two Jan Invach paintings, explosions of dark, brilliant, menacing colour.
“When your son comes back to England with that picture,” he said with a candid grin.
“What do you know about my son?” the old woman demanded.
“I read the papers, don’t I? My firm expects me to scout about, finding likely customers. You want all the art thieves in Europe making a beeline for this house? Now, we can put you in a foolproof, sabotage-resistant, easy-care system exactly suited to your needs”—he tapped his fat briefcase—“in less than twe
nty-four hours; you can have it all installed and be able to snap your fingers at bandits.”
He snapped his fingers.
“All I need is to take a look at your ground-floor rooms—” He glanced with unconcealed inquisitiveness towards the two doors—drawing room, dining room, most probably, which opened on either side of the hall, and the third door at the rear, leading, no doubt, to the kitchen regions.
But Mrs Invach wasn’t having any.
“No. Thank you, young man. Not today. Not any day, for that matter. I do not need your security system, or anybody’s. I take my own measures. Thank you. Good day.”
She pushed him inexorably back through the crack of the door.
“You’ll be sorry—really sorry! You don’t know what a bad mistake you are making,” he called back through the crack.
“I make my own mistakes!” she shouted. After re-locking the door behind him she moved slowly towards the kitchen to prepare her evening meal. On the dark-blue kitchen walls above the dirty braided rug glimmered half a dozen more Invach canvases, some framed, some unframed. The kitchen was roomy and dim, with a pot-bellied iron stove, a large old refrigerator, and a small Victorian bureau used by Mrs Invach as a bar, containing bottles of vodka, bourbon, bitters, wines, and liqueurs. Racks of tapes hung on one wall, and the old woman switched on a player as she mixed herself a drink, cut up onions, and chopped spinach.
Her son’s voice filled the room, arguing with itself in a low, collected murmuring monologue just louder than a whisper.
“Sky’s getting darker now—float of azure mist against distant hill—smoke rolling up from somebody’s bonfire—‘commentary-driving’ they used to make you do it on those advanced motor courses, opposing traffic, hazards, mirror, say I’m doing a moderate thirty in a built-up area—lemon-green in the ash flowers, splash of white on top of that mushroom shape, loose flecks of black in the angle—now there’s a woman walking along, throws up her feet like serifs on capital letters, put her in, back like a stick of celery just what I need, a vertical up there hooking into the sky—great wallop of white cloud like a walrus’s back arching up over the house tops—houses climbing the hill make a dark diagonal—something coming towards me, green on lighter green—”
Mrs Invach sighed and dropped her vegetables into a pot to sizzle and frizzle in oil. Later she would add milk and stock. She lived almost entirely on vegetable soup. Up above her in the gloom she heard a faint keening whistle.
“All right, all right,” she grumbled. “I got your bones, don’t worry.”
Some of the bones had gone into her soup stock, but some remained raw as a snack for Alpha and Beta, the two peregrines, who had their own entry in a round, east-facing window upstairs, their home in a dark cobwebby loft.
“Texture very important,” said her son’s voice. “And everything must be three-dimensional. Except the sky? Even the sky? Can you have three-dimensional sky? Don’t see why not. What else is there besides up, across, and sideways? Before? After? Alongside? Next door? Now, in that mass of black a red sun hanging—it needs to pierce the black like blood soaking through a bandage . . . Black must have texture, though, solid as rock all criss-crossed and veined with seams of fine, very dark brown . . . But the red comes clear through, round as a penny . . .”
Presently Mrs Invach went upstairs to bed. Her bedroom was virtually empty, save for the large flat bed, like a platform, covered by a Turkish rug and cushions. Inside the bedroom door a massive vacuum cleaner attached to the wall by a tangle of tubes and cords. On three walls, more of Jan’s pictures, severe, complex, and luminous. The fourth wall held two huge windows, oblong against blackness, with wide low sills.
Before her final descent into bed, Mrs Invach regularly devoted the last hour of her day to what she called “searching.”
The first stage was a physical search for all the items she had mislaid in the course of the day, in the course of the week: she lived in permanent arrears, carried out a nonstop quest for her scarf, her spectacles, the gas bill, the book she was reading, another book now due for return to the library, a letter from Cousin Anatol in Buffalo, her favourite pen, her membership card of the Foreigners’ Forum, an advertisement for Arthritis Oil, a newspaper clipping she intended to send to her niece in Tokyo, a packet of plant food, a scented candle somebody had given her which was supposed to be a specific against insomnia, an invitation to a private view of watercolours, a letter long overdue for an answer from a man who wanted to write her biography, and keys, dozens of keys . . . All these things needed to be found, and some of them, perhaps, would be found, but then, most probably, lost again in the hunt for others which were, or seemed, more instantly necessary.
And some would never be found.
The retrieval of even one, even two lost possessions would quickly operate a change of gear in Mrs Invach’s mental workings: she would steady down, restlessness replaced by an inward-looking process; she sat herself comfortably on the broad bedroom windowsill where found objects were first laid (before being lost again) and began to operate her majestic memory. The contents of her mind, a huge lumber room containing ninety years of accumulated events, were like an archaeologist’s treasure heap, like the buried cities of Troy. Into this heap she plunged a scoop and dragged out whatever she fancied. If only it could be so with the things in the house!
“Nineteen forty-one. Jan and I walking across Europe, dodging the Germans. The night we spent with Professor Crzvdgrad and talked about rainbows—then next day they caught him, arrested him, and put him in a camp. We heard of his death four years later . . . And it was on that walk that Jan painted the first Monkey’s Wedding; he carried it with him, rolled in his sleeping bag. I remember the man with the dove . . .”
The telephone rang, insistently. Sifting back into shadows, the man with the dove returrned to the year 1941. Mrs Invach had a phone extension on the bedroom windowsill. She picked up the receiver.
“Mrs Ludmila Invach? This is Sam Stoles of the Morning Post art page. I understand you were with your son Jan when he painted the original Monkey’s Wedding picture—when you were escaping from German-occupied Europe?”
“I was with him,” growled Mrs Invach. She detested newspapers and newspapermen but knew that it was not wise to antagonize them.
“You watched him paint the picture?”
“Oh, not all the time. It took him six days, you know.”
“Six days of great danger when the Germans were coming closer and closer.”
“You don’t have to tell me that, young man.”
“You have heard that he has retrieved the picture—is coming back to this country with it?”
“So the gossip runs—”
“Will he be coming to your house?”
“Possibly. I have not yet been informed. Perhaps he will take it straight to the National Gallery—to work on it there—”
So said Mrs Invach, but in fact she believed that Jan would come to Hampstead. Why not? In between his huge travels he generally did use her big top-floor studio.
“Your son has a home of his own? Is he married? Children?”
“No. Never. None.”
“And his father? Your—husband?”
“Gone. Long ago. He remained behind in Dobrin. Died, I heard, when Jan was ten.” These facts came from Mrs Invach like dregs of juice from an already-squeezed lemon.
“Young man, I am at this time expecting my son to telephone me. I would be much obliged if you would hang up. I can tell you no more. Good night.”
“Good night, Mrs Invach.”
She was not expecting her son to call, but in fact two minutes later the phone did ring again, a foreign operator asked a question.
“Pirhda? Ach—Jan, it is you! From where do you call?”
“Mother? I’m in Rocjau—in a callbox. Listen: things are quite rough here. Can you hear the gunfire?”
She could, like a spatter of hail against the windows. But it was June . . .
“They ha
ve snipers in the hills around, firing into the town, teasing the inhabitants . . . They watch a woman go to the well with her pail, they wait until she has returned within three steps of her front door, then drill a row of holes into the pail . . .”
That was so like Jan; he paid heed only to the inessentials, the small details.
“But did you get the picture? When can you come back here?”
“Yes, I got the picture. Mother, do you remember a girl called Amalcja? In Rocjau?”
Down plunged the accurate probe into the mass of memories.
“Certainly I remember her.” A girl with brilliant red hair and a brilliant razor-sharp mind. A combative, scrutinizing girl. A rival. “She died in a camp, we heard.”
“No,” said Jan. “She did not die. Not then, not there.”
“So? Is that so?” Mrs Invach playing for time.
“You were wrong when you told me that, Mother.”
Did he mean wrong in the moral sense, or merely mistaken?
She said, evasively, “So many untrue stories ran about at that time. You have news of her?”
“No, only that she did not die. She—”
“But when will you come back?”
“Tomorrow, if I can make it to the U.N. headquarters. If we can make it to the airport. They call that road Suicides’ Mile.”
“I wish that you were here, now,” she said, sounding, suddenly, her full age, and pitiful. “Why did you have to go back for that picture? It was lost for so long—”
“It was a part of me. I needed to take another look. Good-bye, Mother!”
“I shall see you back in London!” she called loudly, but the line had already gone dead, and she was left with the empty receiver in her hand, staring across a wide, dangerous distance in which a red-haired girl—not handsome, no, but with a keen scornful face like the prow of a ship—a redheaded girl had laughed and argued and teased, and made far too strong a bid for her son Jan’s attention.