Logorrhea

by John Klima

  “Robin?”

  I had been studying the coffee. I wanted it ground, not in beans, and not too dark. I looked up. It was Laura, Melissa’s old colleague, her magnified eyes blinking behind her glasses. I smiled, remembered to blink, and then looked away again.

  “Is it you?” She stepped closer, peering through her glasses to see me. “I thought so. How are things?”

  When I didn’t answer she crouched beside me and we looked at the shelves together. I had been there a full five minutes already, a long, slow five minutes, and was on the point of giving up. “What are you after? This is good,” she added, not waiting for my answer. She pulled a packet from the shelf and put it in my basket, then stood up. “Why don’t we try it out together?”

  I blinked.

  “Well what do you say?” she said briskly. “Dinner at your place, or are you too busy?”

  I could tell by the way she wrinkled her nose that she could smell the milk souring in the fridge and the fruit rotting in the fruit bowl.

  “Forgive me for being blunt, but it looks to me like you need help,” Laura said, picking up potato peelings from the kitchen floor. She stopped and looked around her. “Look, maybe I can do something. I’ll pop round every night after work. Would you like that? I can give you a to-do list, like Melissa did.”

  I opened my mouth. How did she know Melissa did that? They must have known each other more than I thought. “And in return you can do some jobs for me. Actually I could really do with an extra pair of hands at the moment. I’m redecorating.”

  We grew close. It was all her doing. Beneath her prim skirt and cardigans Laura was all woman and I, of course, was all man. She stroked and purred with expert precision until we were combining genetic material on a regular basis. Laura’s eyesight was weak, I discovered, which was a godsend: she could see neither my disturbing eyes nor my skin and even missed the blossoming of fresh sloughs each morning on the white sheets.

  As soon as Laura’s decorating was finished she moved in with me. “Only sensible,” she explained. “We can live on the rent of my flat.” She had discovered the pile of cash underneath the mattress and it was getting no larger.

  The crows did not approve. They were watching me quite openly now. Even Laura noticed them at their window or standing by their gate: motionless, silent, waiting for me to pass by.

  “Why are they there?” she asked. “What are they doing? Is it some sort of sect?”

  I didn’t answer. There was no point. I didn’t know. It was only when I reached the end of the phial of drops that I realized I would have to speak to them again. I put it off until the itching became unbearable and even Laura had started to notice my writhing.

  The crows’ door opened before I knocked. It was the tall one, who seemed to be younger than the rest. I tried to speak to her alone but she led me to the front room, where the two other crows were sitting.

  “We can give you no more,” the small one said, before I opened my mouth.

  “But…”

  “That’s why you’ve come, is it not?”

  “Yes, but why? I need some, please.”

  “We can ease it for only so long.”

  “Please, I can’t stand it.”

  But they just shook their heads and looked at their hands.

  Cruel. Mean. Unfeeling. I marched out of their house cursing them, and slammed their door. With my jaw clenched I marched to the doctor’s office and stridently demanded immediate attention. There was, of course, an examination and a full barrage of tests.

  “A type of eczema, that’s all I can tell you. Until I get the results I can’t be sure. In the meantime use this.”

  It was a cream that stung but did nothing to help the itching. By the following evening I was desperate. Laura looked on as I marched wildly around, scratching myself and demanding that she scratch me too.

  “But your skin is coming away!”

  “Carry on,” I said through gritted teeth.

  I had ants crawling over me with fast impatient feet. I scratched and the feet became faster. I scratched again and they stung with poisoned little needles. By now I was removing great welts of flesh with every scratch. Pain was beginning to replace the itchiness and I couldn’t decide which I preferred.

  “There’s something underneath,” Laura said. “I can feel it. You can only go so far and then there is something that doesn’t come away like the rest. It’s dark, purple, like new skin. Look.”

  I looked at my arm. She was right. It was strange I hadn’t noticed it first. It was slightly shrivelled and looked wet, and it worried me. It was also worrying Laura. “What’s happening?” she said. “I’m scared.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe I should phone the hospital.”

  “No.”

  “But we have to do something.”

  “Leave me alone.” I shook her off.

  “What then?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Robin?”

  “Stop nagging.”

  “I’m not. Please Robin, let me help. Let me phone someone.” Her voice was high, plaintive, and getting on my nerves.

  “I’m going out,” I said.

  “Robin!”

  She tried to grab my arm. It burnt where she touched.

  “Leave me, for Chrissakes, leave me alone.”

  After I slammed the front door I paused—but there was only one place to go.

  The crows’ house was in darkness and had an empty feel about it—there was a complicated spider web stretching over half the doorframe, and the wind had blown a dune of leaves and empty candy wrappers against the door. Even though it had only been a day since I’d last been to see them, it looked like no one had been near the place for weeks. Time had changed again. I knocked on the door miserably and without much hope—I felt sure they must have moved or gone away—but it opened immediately. It was the tall crow, the one I thought of as younger than the rest, but she looked different: her shoulders were hunched like those of a vulture and even though she was still enveloped from head to toe in thick black cloth I could tell she had lost weight. Her gowns hung around her as if supported by a framework of sticks.

  She led me silently and slowly into the front room, where the two other crows slumped in chairs.

  “We can’t give you any more,” the one with glasses said quietly when I explained why I’d come. “It was the only bottle we had, and anyway it would be of no use. It’s too late for that.”

  “What do you mean? How do you know?”

  The older crow nodded to the tall one, who was still standing at the doorway. Taking her hood in both hands, the youngest crow threw back the hood and unclipped the cloth that was covering the rest of her face. She was maroon, bald, and had the same pale green eyes as me. We stared at each other for a full ten seconds without blinking. Then she undid something at her neck and the rest of the gown fell away. She was covered in a white sleeveless shift; her bare arms a mottled purple and red, with veins standing out in little tracks. She smiled and held out her arms. “Little brother,” she said. “You see, we know exactly how you feel.”

  She beckoned me to her with the tips of her fingers, but I stood where I was and looked around me. The other two crows had thrown back their hoods as well. The small one’s face was darker, with a drooping jowl, while the one with glasses had a face that was more square and pale, but we were all the same colour of plum and our eyes sparkled the same acid green.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  No one replied. When she saw that I was not going to go to her, the young one walked slowly to the wall and sat on nothing. I watched as a chair seemed to grow out from the wall to envelop her. I backed away. There was something wrong with me; I wasn’t seeing straight. Walls do not make themselves into chairs. They don’t flow and then solidify like jelly—and yet this one did. I touched something with the heel of my shoe and at once something enclosed me and pressed me down. I tried to get up but was pressed down more firm
ly. Another chair.

  “Listen,” said the short crow. “There is not much time.”

  They live in a land out of time, they told me, an island of sharp peaks separated from everywhere else not by sea but a greyness that is sometimes a little red like the sky. There are no other beings like them, and there have been exactly five thousand of them ever since the oldest one can remember, and that is a long time indeed. The deaths are infrequent but they do occur, and whether the death is caused by accident or disease, it is foretold seven months in advance by the arrival of an egg. The mother receives no clear warning of its arrival except for a little swelling in the abdomen the night before. The egg laying is painful and sudden and almost destroys the mother with the effort. From then on the egg is watched and the people watch themselves. Someone is about to die. They are wary of each other, especially kind to those who seem most vulnerable. It is a time of almost unbearable tension, and the first indication of fatal disease or injury is greeted with relief by almost everyone concerned. The dying one once identified is feted and then pampered. Prayers are said so that the sick one is assured of peace. This is what normally happens, but when Robin’s egg was laid it was different. Robin’s mother Elanoma had always been strange and willful. She had liked to go to the edge of the greyness where she could make out the voices from other worlds. She had been alone there when the egg had come. No one had heard her cry out at its painful passage from her body onto the ground, and then scream as the egg rolled off her world into the greyness beyond. Elanoma had watched as it had disappeared, gasped but then said nothing. She went back to the village and watched for someone to sicken but no one had. It was too much anxiety for someone to bear alone, but Elanoma told no one. She had become thin, ill-tempered, and then deranged, fit for nothing. From time to time she would wander around the settlement screaming and crying but no one knew what was wrong.

  It was only when she fell one night that anyone suspected what had happened. The doctor examined her and it was clear that she had recently been delivered of an egg. They asked her what had happened to it, and when she didn’t make sense, the island was meticulously searched. Meanwhile Elanoma sickened, and just before she died had an hour of serenity during which she was able to explain where her egg was gone. Of course someone had to go after it. With 4999 people instead of five thousand, life felt uneven and unbalanced. There were disturbances in the streets, fights among friends, and a strange persistent feeling of someone missing.

  After a year of this, Elanoma’s sisters decided that the only thing to do was to search for the egg again—or rather, what had been in the egg. They covered themselves and crept away in the night. It had been a long hard journey to the bottom of the chasm of greyness and then a run back up into the light of Robin’s world. The run was crucial, and had taken them a long time to perfect: the speed, the number of paces, all was quite specific. But at last they had done it. They had entered Robin’s world and smelt the air and knew they were only just in time. Robin was about to change and he would need help.

  “It is what we all go through,” the spectacled one said. “The change. It is the final phase, the final growth. Once adult, you have to become young again in order to grow old.”

  I shook my head in a futile effort to clear it. Nothing was making sense. I knew they were like me, that much was obvious, but the rest…

  “Show him.”

  The young one got up and stepped forward. She took my arm and held it in her hand and then with the other hand caught hold of a piece of my skin and pulled sharply. The pain was only slightly worse than the stripping away of a well-adhered Band-Aid. She pulled again and again and then stepped back. I peered at my hand. All of the old skin had gone and what was left was smaller and pinker: the hand of a child.

  “You have to become young again in order to grow old,” the older one repeated. “It’s what happens.”

  I examined my hand. It didn’t seem like mine, but when I flexed my fingers they moved.

  “You have to come with us. Quickly. We went through the change long ago. It makes us less adaptable and we cannot stay much longer in this world. Already we are becoming weak. We have to go while we still can, and you have to come with us.”

  “But I don’t want to.”

  The crows looked at each other.

  “Why?” said the old one sharply.

  “Laura.” I was finding it difficult to make sense.

  “You have to leave her,” the spectacled one snapped.

  “I won’t.”

  The three women spoke hurriedly together. Then the old one spoke again. “You have to come. You can’t stay here and neither can we. This is not your land, not your time. You belong somewhere else, with us.” She looked at me expectantly as if she thought I was going to change my mind, but I wasn’t going to. Laura and I had plans.

  “We have to take you back,” the spectacled one said. “Without five thousand everything is wrong.”

  “I’m not coming.”

  They talked together again, their voices urgent, sharp, and agitated. Then the old one flopped back on her chair. “We have to go,” she said. “Soon.”

  Now that the skin had come off my hand it was no longer itching. I started to pick at the skin on my other hand.

  The spectacled one stood and examined her sister. Then she turned to look at me. “We will go now and you are coming too. No arguments. It is impossible for you to stay, whatever you think you want. Your world needs you and you need your world.”

  I sank back in my seat and it softened behind me. The old woman struggled from her chair and came towards me, her hand outstretched, her face set. I smiled. She was just an old woman. But then the two other women appeared beside her and together they seemed strong and determined. I shut my eyes.

  “Come, child,” the older one said. “Take my hand.”

  I knew where we were. Melissa had called it Robin’s Nest; everyone else called it the Queenside Quarry. They had finished extracting years ago and had left everything as it was. The hole in the ground was enormous, big enough to comfortably hold a small village, and most days a mist collected in the bottom, making it seem even deeper than it was; a great hole without end. Whenever I had looked at it I had always felt something pulling at my insides, and now I knew why: beyond the greyness was the place that had been my home. The three crows stopped a couple of feet above where my parents had found my egg. There was a wide ledge leading down into the quarry at one side. It was like a roadway disappearing into the mist.

  “Look,” the spectacled one said.

  There were footprints in the rock of the ledge. I’d heard about such things before—fossilized footprints of people who had lived long ago.

  “We left them for ourselves,” said the old one, and I wondered how long they had been in my world. “It is the only way back.”

  “It is important to match the pace,” the spectacled one said. “One foot and then the other. Keep it fluent, fast.”

  “But I’m not going.”

  “You must. You must run with us, back into your own world.”

  “No,” I said, and wrenched myself away. “This is my world now.”

  The spectacled one went to run after me but the older one stopped her.

  “No,” she said. “I’m too weak. If we don’t go back now, we never shall. It will be better to be missing one rather than four.”

  “And maybe another egg will come,” the young one said gently. The two older ones exchanged hopeful glances and then smiled at her.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Yes, perhaps.”

  The young one ran to my side. She was gentler than the other two. She caught my hand in hers, and for a second it felt so comfortable there I didn’t want to let her go, but I did.

  “Watch carefully so you know what to do in case you change your mind.”

  Then the three of them left me; picked up their gowns to above their knees and ran, one after the other, their feet finding each footprint, faster
and faster until, just before the mist, they disappeared. I followed slowly after them, down into the mist until I could see the bottom. It was empty. I tried calling out, but all I could think of calling was hello. I didn’t even know their names.

  By the time I reached home again the itching had eased. Skin was falling from me in great fleshy welts now and my arms and hands were the size of a child’s. Laura inspected me silently, her lips pursed. “Does it hurt?” she asked at last.

  I shook my head.

  “Why don’t you ask someone what’s wrong?”

  “I shall.”

  “When?”

  But when I wouldn’t say she banged down the dish she was drying and told me she’d had enough. She took her clothes into Melissa’s old room and slept the night there. I could hear her sobbing in the early hours but I left her alone. I needed to think.

  When I removed my pajamas in the morning a man-shaped piece of flesh came away too—every part of me: my legs, my chest, my face, and my hair, even my nails. Underneath the skin was like the skin on my hands had been yesterday—new, soft, and smooth. I touched myself in wonder, relieved that the itching had finally and completely gone. It took me a little more time to realize that the world around me was larger. I placed my new small foot in front of me and looked at it: I would need new shoes. Then, as I struggled to reach the handle of my wardrobe, I realized that I would probably need new clothes too. I grabbed at a shirt and pulled it down off its hanger towards me—it swamped me and the shirttails dragged on the floor. I shrugged it off, put on my dressing gown, opened the door and went into the kitchen to make myself some breakfast. Laura was in there already. When she saw me she opened her eyes wide and screamed.