Idea in Stone

by Hamish Macdonald

  Neither of them had any sense of time, except for the slow arc of the moon. Peter cleared their empty cans and their current half-full ones from the blankets and pulled them over him and Stefan. They dozed until a huge bang woke them up. A flaming red shape like a fiery palm tree filled the sky, with tiny green fronds around it.

  “Oh my God!” said Stefan.

  Peter laughed with perverse pleasure. “Cheers,” he said, lifting a can of beer.

  Stefan grabbed one and clunked it against Peter’s. As he sipped it, he watched the lights fading in the sky. Looking at the moon-like landscape around them, it dawned on him slowly. “This is a dream.”

  “Yeah,” said Peter, smiling, “it is.” He kissed him.

  No, thought Stefan, I dreamt this. A year ago. But he didn’t correct Peter, because he was right, too.

  Eighteen

  Misplaced

  Peter pulled on his coat, then climbed back onto the bed where Stefan was reading a newspaper.

  “Seems there was a riot in Rome last week following the performance of a play,” said Stefan.

  “So?”

  “It was my dad’s play,” he added.

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Nope. It’s right here: ‘Show Sparks Demonstration’,” said Stefan, holding up the paper.

  “I don’t have time, Ste, I’ve got to get to the restaurant. The posh folk are hungry, and it’s up to me to make sure they’re properly fed.” He stopped as he saw the excitement in Stefan’s face. “It’s great, though. That must really be some show. Tell me more about it later. I just—I really have to go.” He wrapped a scarf around his neck. “Can you believe we slept outside just a week ago? And today it’s threatening to snow.”

  “Any word from the newlyweds?”

  “Yeah, they called last night after you went to bed. Barry says hi—expressive as always. But Christine wanted me to tell you how happy she was that you were at the wedding.”

  “Aww, that’s nice.”

  “Well, it was good of you to be there.” He kissed Stefan on the cheek. “So what are you going to do with yourself today?”

  “Well, this article has got me thinking. I’m going to try to find my father... Somewhere.”

  “Er, okay,” said Peter. “Good luck. I’ll see you when I get home.”

  ~

  Stefan sat in the grey cavern that was Saint Giles Cathedral. The space was nearly empty, except for a few tourists who occasionally snapped pictures. Though he didn’t have a religious background, an instinct told Stefan that photographing a holy space was taboo, or at least in poor taste.

  He heard singing from several directions, hymns and chanting, intermixed with some mumbling. These sounds weren’t coming from the tourists, or the tidy, wizened woman who sat at an information table. The songs and utterances came from the statues and carvings around the cathedral. No one else reacted to them, so Stefan figured he was the only one who heard them. His mother always told him how sensitive he was, and went to great lengths to expound on the richness of their aboriginal culture’s spiritual traditions. It had occurred to him on several occasions that he might just be insane and Delonia overcompensating. But events lately had fallen together in a way that reassured him that not only was he of sound mind, perhaps things were also working out as they were supposed to. His experiences had been tumultuous, but the payoffs—seeing his father, working with the theatre company, and now finding Peter—made it all worthwhile.

  His father was nowhere to be found here in the church. Somehow he knew this. He stood up from the small wooden chair in the side chapel where’d he’d been sitting. He put a hand on the armoured glove of the marble man who lay there with a sword across his chest, and mentally thanked him for letting him stop for a while in his space. Stefan didn’t know why, but statues of the dead, laid out and resting, didn’t speak or stir in any way. The statuary in Edinburgh seemed to be growing more and more restless, so Stefan appreciated the relative quiet of this space.

  Stefan walked across the bridges into the New Town. A small group of soldiers from the Great War stood on a plinth halfway across, mounted to one side of the pavement. They shouted battlefield instructions to each other and looked around, confused.

  “The enemy is out there,” said one.

  “Where?” asked another. He reloaded his rifle, knelt down, pulled his wide-brimmed bowl of a helmet down and adjusted to keep from sinking into the mud.

  “I don’t know,” said the first.

  “Where are we?” asked the third.

  “I don’t know!” said the first.

  Stefan pretended that he, like the others crossing the bridge, didn’t see them. He had an idea for figuring out what was happening with the statues. It was strange, but he was growing accustomed to strange. He walked through a small ravine formed on one side by a concrete mass containing a shopping mall and on the other side by a glass movie theatre that clung to the base of Calton Hill like a giant aquarium full of neon lights, escalators, and people.

  He crossed a busy street and walked to a statue he’d noticed a while ago. He looked up at the bronze man who stood on a concrete base. The man’s face was narrow and pensive. He wore a hunting cap with two peaks, a long cloak-like overcoat, and held a pipe. “Mister Holmes?” asked Stefan.

  “Hello, yes?” Statue-Holmes looked down. “You can see me?” he asked curtly and incredulously.

  “Yes, I can. I was wondering if you could help me.”

  “I’m not so sure that I can. I don’t feel quite myself.” He paused as if searching for something half-remembered. “My faculties are not what they once were. I—Where am I?”

  “You’re in Edinburgh, Mister Holmes.”

  He turned about and looked at the modern buildings around him. The dense traffic didn’t register in his carved-out eyes. The dark metal features of his face squinted. “I can’t recall—” he began, but interrupted himself, distressed by an emerging awareness. “I am not Sherlock Holmes.”

  “No, sir,” said Stefan, “you’re a statue of him.”

  “What do you know of this Sherlock Holmes?” the statue demanded.

  “He was a character. In books. A series of books by a man named Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It says on this plaque that he was born near here. Doyle, that is.”

  “Have you read these books?”

  “Uh, no,” Stefan admitted quietly. “But I did see a play once based on one of them!”

  “Was it good?”

  “Uh, not really.” Stefan buried his hands in the pockets of the heavy jacket he’d borrowed from Peter.

  “I’m not sure how helpful I can be to you,” said the statue. “I’m afraid I’ve very little with which to work.” He angled one foot on the pedestal and tapped his pipe against his lip as he thought, just as Stefan figured he might. The statue seemed to be balancing ideas against his moment-to-moment experiences of himself. Finally, he pronounced: “I am not even so much as a statue of this Sherlock Holmes. I am a statue of an artist’s idea of Sherlock Holmes—several times removed from even a fictional source of origin, I’m afraid. The fact that you know next to nothing about me is further limiting.”

  Stefan struggled to keep up with the statue’s line of thinking. The statue was clearly cleverer than he was. Or, rather, Stefan corrected himself, he was based on the idea of someone cleverer. “That’s it, what you said. You just answered my question. You’re an idea. Hume—another statue across town—he said something similar to me. He asked who I was, and when I told him my name, he said that was just an idea. I get it now: he didn’t know who he was because I didn’t have any idea who he was.”

  “Do people still read these books by Doyle?” asked the panic-stricken statue.

  “Oh yeah, they’re still very popular.”

  “Thank goodness. I’m safe.”

  “Yes,” said Stefan. An alarmed look took over his face. “You mean, if enough people forget... I’ve gotta go. Thank you!” Before the statue could respond, S
tefan ran away. His coat flapped open in the wind as he ran back across the bridges, back to the Royal Mile to the spot where he’d spoken to the statue of Hume.

  The statue was gone.

  ~

  Peter walked into the flat, still wearing his chequered kitchen-worker’s trousers and white smock. He hung his thin jacket on the wall over the heavy one he’d given Stefan. “What’s going on?” he asked. Fiona sat bouncing her son on her leg. She looked relieved to see him. Stefan sat on a footstool in front of her, leaning with his elbows on his knees. Roddy stared at the ceiling, bewildered.

  “Ste’s been explaining a theory to me about our city,” said Fiona, flaring her eyes and shaking her head.

  “Peter, the statues are disappearing,” said Ste, jumping up.

  “Ste, the city is disappearing,” he answered.

  “Och, not you, too,” said Fiona.

  “This is what I’ve been telling you,” said Peter. “These development sites that Rab’s been taking us to, the restoration contracts that are going out—they’re destroying the city.”

  “Thank you,” said Stefan, dropping back down to his seat, his hands in the air.

  “There’s a demonstration tomorrow, Ste, a protest against a new development that’s taking over a whole section of the Old Town. I’m going with Rab and the boys. I didn’t want to speak for you, but—”

  “No, I’m there,” said Stefan.

  ~

  Someone at the front of the crowd shouted into a megaphone. From where he stood, Stefan couldn’t make out the speaker's words.

  “What’s she saying?” asked Iain.

  “No idea,” said Peter.

  “This is rubbish,” said Calum. “Let’s go.”

  “Can we stay till the end?” asked Rab.

  “What are we protesting, Rab? It’s just two hundred hippies standing around on a Baltic day, freezing our bollocks off, yelling at—oh, no one in particular! When I agreed to come here, I thought there would at least be someone to protest at.”

  “There was supposed to be,” said Rab. “They were supposed to do the ground-breaking today, the official opening of this new project.”

  “What’s it going to be?” asked Iain.

  “A shopping mall built into this old site,” said Rab.

  “Great,” said Peter. “Just what we needed: more outlets for sweatshop clothes and slave coffee.”

  “I’m going,” said Calum.

  “Yeah, okay,” sighed Rab, “let’s go.”

  They walked a few short blocks and descended the stairs to Dig Nation. Fiona was behind the bar, and nodded to them as they came in, unsurprised to see them. They proceeded to their usual booth deep in the back. Peter went to the bar to get them a round of drinks.

  Fiona whispered: Pay for them. She nodded toward the back, where he saw the owner of the bar moving about the kitchen.

  “Hello, Peter,” said the owner as he came from the back. In his tidy Argyll jumper and crisp grey slacks, he looked strangely out of place in his own bar; but then, he was not its target audience. “How are you doing today?”

  “Alright, thanks. Just came from a protest. It was rubbish.”

  “Oh yes. I went to a few protests in my day. What was this one about?”

  “A development project that’s starting up in this area.”

  “Oh,” said the man, looking troubled. He was in the process of picking up a glass, but put it back down. “Yes, about that. I’ve been meaning to talk to you both.”

  “Why?” asked Fiona.

  “I’ve been offered a rather tidy sum for this place, and I’ve been thinking—”

  “You’re not!” said Peter.

  “You two know as well as I do that this place doesn’t make a profit. The people who come here don’t spend much, and they stay for a long time. It’s dark and murky in here, and young people today want lights and atmosphere.”

  “This place has loads of atmosphere!” insisted Peter.

  “Yes, but not the kind that draws people in. Besides, they implied quite unmistakably that if I didn’t sell, I would be crowded out. So I can either accept their generous offer now, or make nothing later on.”

  “So we’re out of work,” said Fiona.

  “Well, not tomorrow.”

  “You’ve already accepted the offer then?” asked Peter.

  “I have. I’m sorry.” He looked at the floor and walked back into the kitchen.

  Fiona looked at him and gave a heavy sigh.

  “We’ll talk about it at home,” said Peter. He held out a ten-pound note.

  “What’s that for?”

  “The drinks.”

  “Forget that,” she said. “They’re on the house.”

  Stefan came to help carry the drinks back to the table. “What happened here?” he asked, seeing their faces.

  “We’ll tell you later,” said Fiona.

  Peter and Stefan divided the different pints among them. “What are we talking about?” asked Peter.

  Iain moaned and said, “Rab’s being a nutter.”

  “I’m serious,” insisted Rab. “We’ve got to do something about this. What are we going to do, sit around and wait for some historic trust group to stop this? By then it’ll be too late. And these people have enough money to buy their way through any kind of opposition.”

  “So what are you thinking about?” asked Peter.

  Rab crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward. “Sabotage.”

  Nineteen

  Paper Chase

  Stefan leaned over Peter’s sleeping body, put an ear next to his open mouth, and listened. His deep, glottal breaths sounded like ocean waves. Stefan kissed Peter’s mouth. The ocean receded with a quick inhalation and Peter’s eyes fluttered open.

  Stefan smiled, then shuffled himself down to kiss Peter’s neck, making him shudder. Then he moved his lips lightly down Peter’s torso, following the thin line of hair to his belly button.

  “Huh?”

  Peter sat up slightly, leaning on his elbows. “What?”

  Stefan tugged at Peter’s navel.

  “What are you doing?” asked Peter. His eyes widened as he watched Stefan uncoiling paper from him like one of the rolls of caps he used to play with as a boy. “What the hell—?”

  “It’s okay,” Stefan assured him, smiling. “I guess my dad wanted to put this somewhere I’d find it.”

  “That tickles!”

  “Got it. Finished,” said Stefan.

  “You realise that this is weird for me, don’t you?”

  “Dad’s got a sense of humour,” said Stefan, uncurling the paper, which turned out to be several strips.

  “What is it?” asked Peter.

  “I’m not sure. Looks like someone tore across a bunch of papers, some kind of document. But I don’t know what it’s from.” He held up a strip, looking closely at it. “This one’s got my father’s name and signature on it.”

  Peter prodded his belly with his fingers. “Where did it come from?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Stefan. “Where does belly-button lint come from? I wear a white T-shirt, I get blue lint. This makes as much sense as anything else.” He sat cross-legged and laughed. “When I was little, my mother used to tell me that’s where they filled me with soul and tied me up so it wouldn’t leak out.”

  “She sounds like an interesting woman.”

  “Yeah,” conceded Stefan, “I suppose she is.”

  “Does she even know where you are?”

  “No.” He pictured Helen croaking a confession under duress. “I suppose somebody’s probably told her.”

  “You’re a bit of a jerk, aren’t you?”

  Stefan gave him a look of incredulity. “This, from you?”

  “What?”

  “Okay, let me illustrate my point: Peter, I love you.”

  “I love you too, Ste.”

  Stefan blinked. “Oh.”

  “You expected me to hit you or something?”

&nbs
p; “Yeah.”

  Peter took a pillow from behind his back and clobbered him.

  ~

  “How’s that?” asked the barber.

  Stefan sat up in the chair. He hadn’t been paying attention. “Perfect,” he said.

  He paid the barber and walked to the local co-operative grocery store. The older women and the teenaged boys working the tills were surly, but Stefan liked the idea of a co-op, even if it didn’t look any different than a regular store. He noticed that the music was generic, a succession of sound-alike singers covering popular songs. Discount muzak, he thought, we pass the savings onto you. He filled a basket with vegetables, taking advantage of several bags of “Reduced for quick sale” produce, paid for it all with some of his remaining money, then headed back to the flat. He’d offered to cook supper for Peter, Fiona, and himself, and was even tempted to lure out the other flatmate.

  He stopped to look at a tiny old church that caught his eye. Its spires were lower than the clay chimney-pots of the surrounding tenement buildings, and its eaves were covered in elaborate gables like wooden spider webs that had caught flowers. The body of the structure was surrounded with scaffolding. Like Peter said, a city on crutches. He wondered what was left of the inside of the building, and wished he could see it. Cute, was his final verdict: not so much a house of God; more like a cottage of God.

  A sign stood in front: “Modernisation by Morton”.

  He picked up the groceries and continued his walk home.

  ~

  Stefan and Peter walked over wet black cobbles, through a foggy night pierced only by the dull yellow of occasional sodium lamps.

  Supper went well, though the flatmate didn’t answer Stefan’s knocks, and Peter was preoccupied with the plan Rab had cooked up for the evening.