Calabash

by Christopher Fowler

  I had only ever been inside the ghost train in a carriage, but had ridden it so many times that I knew every square inch of its route. There was an acrid tang of zinc as the entrance doors banged apart and the little steel car rattled past, sparking and shaking. Malcolm and Laurence were squashed into a single carriage beside each other. They looked ridiculous. The car began twisting back and forth on its miniature track with a crackle of voltage, and I readied myself behind the skeleton’s plywood tomb lid. Just as they reached the ghost, I pushed hard. The ‘tomb’ divorced itself from its moorings with a creak and fell on top of them, jamming itself across the track and stopping the car, and both Laurence and Malcolm screamed like terrified toddlers. Shocked at the effect of my own actions, I stood upright and cracked my head sharply on an angled steel beam.

  It was all I could do to stop myself from exploding into peals of hysteria as I flew from the back door of the haunted house into the pelting rain. I galloped around the black-painted hardboard sheets at the rear of the attraction, skidded across the steel-plate floor of the dodgems and made my way towards the fisherman’s platform at the undamaged L-end of the pier. Below this reserved section was another platform, similar in construction but half the size, a rusted metal matrix built close to sea level that I had never descended to because there was a padlock and chain across the top of the steps, and a sign that read ‘DANGER KEEP OUT This Area Declared Unsafe by Cole Bay Council’, but now I dropped beneath the chain and ran down until I was just above the height of the waves, praying that my pursuers would not be able to free themselves in time to see where I had gone.

  I was surprised to find that the area was protected from the wind and rain by the overhang of the pier. It was suddenly calm and quiet, and I was alone with the water heaving and falling like a great green meadow, inches below the grill upon which I stood. Here the stench of brine and old seaweed was overpowering. I looked over the edge of the rotting iron lattice into the ocean, hypnotised by its closeness as the clouded olive crests rocked back and forth, almost touching my feet. Something opaque passed below the surface, a large domed jellyfish trailing tendrils, transparent and opalescent. I felt the chill of the wind on my neck as it changed direction with the shift of the tide. I briefly closed my eyes and sensed the sway of the sea, lapping coronas of phosphorescent life and refracting light. My stomach rolled over. For a moment I thought I was going to be sick.

  And something happened…

  Because when I opened my eyes I was looking at the jetty, but now it was made of pale scoured wood and its smooth posts were bound with reeds; the sky was the brightest blue I had ever seen, and I stepped forwards from the rocking boat as if finally reaching home after a long ocean voyage.

  And there, lining the top of the harbour, were dozens of smiling people, whose faces broke into grins as they watched. Some actually began laughing and applauding, as if I had achieved some momentous feat. They beckoned, and raised their caps in greeting, and I started forwards for the stairs, their arms reaching out as if they wanted to pull me up and help me to the top. Then they were touching me, and I was surrounded by raucous delighted people who patted me on the back and pressed my arms encouragingly, and one of them stepped forwards to lead the way, as if he had anticipated my puzzlement. His barrel-shaped body swayed on stick-thin legs as he strode forwards. He wore a stovepipe hat, wire-rimmed spectacles and a purple velvet suit, and was nearly in tears as he cried out, ‘My dear boy! We’ve been expecting you! The stars themselves are blessed! I’m so pleased, so very pleased!’ and the others laughed and congratulated him, too, as if he had somehow been responsible for bringing about my long-awaited arrival.

  I looked around and saw that the men were wearing white linen shirts open to their navels, with bands of red satin around their waists, and baggy muslin trousers tied with ropes and knots of shiny red cotton. The women had similar bands loosely woven through their hair, but more intricately arranged and richly patterned. And all around I saw white teeth, black hair, olive skin, silken tulips, sapphire sky, darting yellow birds like scraps of windblown gauze, topaz sea behind me, emerald hills in front, and clothes like collisions of rainbows, people moving through prisms of brilliance, the very air shimmering with diamond light, and the warm, dry smells of fruits and flowers and spices, the scent of a safe haven.

  Sensing my confusion, the man in the stovepipe hat threw out his right hand and gripped my fingers, shouting above the tumult, ‘I am Doctor Trebunculus.’

  ‘Where am I?’ I called back, barely able to hear my own voice above the cheering crowd.

  The question caught him by surprise. He looked around, and suddenly a gust of exhilaration rippled over his features. ‘Why, you’re in Calabash, of course!’ he laughed, and the merriment ignited, tumbling through the crowd, catching from one face to the next until we were all roaring up at the cloudless, endless, impossibly indigo sky.

  Chapter 12

  A Cause for Jubilation

  I had arrived at the harbour that stood at the entrance to the city of Calabash. On either side of the quay, great sandstone athletes knelt facing the sea. Though proudly decorative, they also acted as lightermen, for their shields were beaten into concave discs of bronze and copper and angled to reflect the sun along the exact path of the harbour’s deep water channel as a guide to shipping. Trebunculus later informed me that the shields could also be tipped to blind enemies and burn their boats, but they had never been required to do so.

  I could see the city from where I stood, a kingdom of ivory-tipped minarets, domes and spiral towers. Rising within its crenellated walls were slender silver spires inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and at their heart, a great marble-tiled palace surrounded by gold-mosaic courtyards and glittering sapphire fountains. Beyond the city walls were twisting freshwater streams and banks of ancient cypress trees. My sense of disorientation lasted only a short time, for I had arrived in a paradise on earth, and it felt for all the world like coming home to a place that had long existed in my dreams. There was no sense of danger, only the warmth of belonging, and an eagerness to explore. The everyday fears I felt in Cole Bay had no hold on me here, and yet I was surrounded by strangers who, for all I knew, meant me some hidden harm.

  As our donkeys picked their way along the chosen route, farmers waved to me from their fields in welcome, and Trebunculus waved back, pointing gleefully at his guest. In just a few minutes we arrived at a wide limestone stairway that heralded the formal entrance to Calabash.

  I tried to understand what had happened, but my mind came up with nothing that made any sense. The breeze that ruffled my hair felt subtropical, and the air resonated to the ticking beat of distant samba music. I could smell nutmeg in the air. The city that rose before me appeared to be an amalgam of everything I remembered about the Ottoman Empire; a living painting of the Arabian nights. But there were so many anomalies—the doctor’s purple velvet suit, the samba, the modern language. Then there were the bare-breasted women who brazenly rose in the fields as we passed, shading their eyes to watch us. I knew from my studies that in a Muslim society their bronzed bodies would have been covered and locked away from male eyes, protected in paleness and privacy.

  Within the walls of Calabash, the colours and textures grew more prolific and intense. Instead of the dim narrow alleyways and souks I had expected to see were sun-glazed squares and fountains where fruit sellers sat with wicker baskets filled with oranges and pomegranates. Toothless brown women laughed together, rolling mounds of green figs from sacks. A pair of greyhounds lay beside one another in the shade, as motionless as clay statues. An old man poured fragrant tea into small metal cups at a wood-faced salon in a bazaar, the craquelure of his walnut face attesting to his years spent serving in sunlight. A lithe young woman passed by in drifting white cotton and slim gold sandals. On her head was a gold turban with a flamboyantly enamelled aigrette. ‘Cattir helu,’ Trebunculus muttered, smiling at me with a helpless shrug. ‘Very beautiful, no?’

  As a s
mall child I had owned a book filled with reproductions of oriental paintings by French travellers. What it was doing in my family and where it had gone remained a mystery—but what I saw all around me now was what I had seen in those pages. A mosque with orange-and-white-striped arches, its penumbral calm undisturbed by worshippers, a sun-mottled courtyard where scholars and students lounged, conversing and drawing on copper narghiles, a merchant selling tiger pelts, another offering kaftans sewn with crimson sequins and silver tissue, a dervish angrily peppering himself with dirt, a dromedary with its legs folded beneath its body, its tail rhythmically switching at flies, a cross-legged musician playing a gourd-like instrument with a long handle, producing long high notes that blended perfectly with the sound of the soft, hip-swaying samba that seemed to permeate the air.

  ‘This must all be rather new to you,’ Trebunculus called from his donkey. His English diction was formal and immaculate, without carrying the nasality of an upper caste. ‘Not, I suppose, what you are used to.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We have an audience with the Sultan and his daughter. They are most anxious to meet you.’

  I leaned back as a pair of bright blue parrots fluttered between us, aware that my thin limbs were as pale as the sand. ‘How did I get here?’

  ‘Ah, that is a matter of some…here we are.’ The mute palace guards swung to attention as a tiny brown girl appeared and began to tether our donkeys. I climbed down, and she indicated that I should bow my head. I looked to Trebunculus.

  ‘Just a formality.’

  She removed my blue nylon windcheater and cardigan, then slipped a tangerine-coloured satin sash over the narrow shoulders of my school shirt. Gathering my fingertips together, she guided them into a copper bowl filled with lavender-scented water. Finally, I was bidden to remove my shoes and don padded slippers of bright green cloth. Embarrassed, I tried to hide the hole in my sock.

  Trebunculus squinted approvingly. ‘Oh, you’ll do.’ He picked up my sweater and gingerly examined the lettering on the collar. ‘Marks and Spencer,’ he intoned solemnly, before dropping it back on the ground.

  ‘Am I to bow?’ I asked as we passed through a series of courtyards, each exquisitely decorated in iridescent tiles of turquoise, amber and jade. Intricate patterns covered every surface. There were no dead spaces. The corners of the courtyards were cut off, as if to exclude the possibility of shadows.

  ‘No salaams today,’ laughed the doctor. ‘The Sultan will want to show off his English manners.’

  Some courtyards contained bronze gazebos and shallow pools where mutes and buffoons played. Others had tall fountains glazed with the painted shells of ostrich eggs. In the most interior and spectacular of these rooms (although there were silks hung between the topmost corners of the walls, they were still open to the sky) was an area in the shape of an elongated oval, richly decorated with friezes encircled by a wide braid of hatayi blossoms. Here sat the Sultan, extravagantly enthroned on his marble divan, surrounded by pashas. These military commanders, I later learned, were distinguished in rank by the number of horsetails they displayed in times of war, and included the admiral, the vice-admiral and the rear-admiral of his fleet. The division generals of the Sultan’s army had not been invited to attend the welcoming ceremony in a deliberate snub that stemmed from the Sultan’s ongoing feud with the commanding officer of his land troops, General Bassa.

  The Sultan eyed me from beneath drooping lids and smiled, revealing a row of golden pegs. His face was virtually a caricature of an Eastern potentate, with its broad hooked nose and pendulous cheeks. His headdress of amber silk was so heavy and laden with bejewelled royal crests that it rested on his eyebrows. Into the pointed tip of his white goatee was woven a little ebony bar bearing a carved script. Rosamunde later informed me that it was there to remind her father of an ancient saying: that every man’s fate was written on his face.

  The Sultan’s smile turned to a grimace of pleasure. ‘We have no need of a dragoman, for today I speak the English,’ he shouted. ‘You are an English, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I managed nervously. The sharpened scimitars of the guards had not escaped my notice.

  ‘We teach it in our schools,’ he bellowed back. ‘You’re very white.’ He turned to the others. ‘He’s very white.’

  ‘There’s no need to shout,’ said the Sultan’s mother, fanning his voice away.

  ‘Come forwards, don’t be afraid. We’re not going to eat you.’ The Sultan released a burst of laughter and looked about appreciatively. ‘We’re not going to eat him, are we?’ His mouth gleamed gleefully. ‘May the Prophet of the Seven Burning Stars look down upon this most auspicious occasion. May the Goddesses of the Mystic Silver Moon-Chalice bless this meeting.’ He took a weary breath. ‘And so on and so forth. Now we shake the hands.’

  The Sultan made a sudden lurch forwards. Everyone fell back in alarm. His right fist vigorously pumped mine until I felt my arm loosening in its socket.

  ‘I am the Grand Sultan Mehmet Selim Bousaada Charenton Mustapha al-Hakim Raduan Sur-Guillaumet. I don’t expect you to remember all that. The Queen Mother, the Valide Sultan, our gracious Fathmir of Cordoba, my beloved daughter the Princess Rosamunde, and the Royal Concubine Carmelia, a gift from the Saracens for something-or-other.’

  ‘The relief of Scutari,’ prompted a short, elderly man with a bulbous nose and a gigantic blue turban pinned with a topaz.

  ‘The Semanticor,’ Trebunculus explained, close to my ear. ‘Former head scholar of the court of Shey Terrazin, now seconded to the Sultan to teach his children about the world. He is a man of many strange beliefs, one of which is that it is spiritually hazardous to wash the body. Best to stay upwind of him.’

  ‘Ahem.’ A cadaverous bald man in robes of black moiré silk cupped a cartoonish cough into his fist.

  The Sultan dropped his plump ringed hands to his kneecaps. ‘Ah yes, and my Lord Chancellor, Septimus Peason.’

  The Chancellor snaked a slim bony hand into the light and clutched at my fingers. ‘My father was once the British Ambassador to Calabash,’ he explained, ‘but he left his family here when he returned to London.’ One eye fluttered in a grotesque half-wink. ‘Certain delicate affairs of state diplomacy, you understand.’ I did not understand. Nobody else had tried to explain anything to me since I arrived, and I was just getting used to the idea. Peason withdrew his cold hand and slid back into the shade. For a moment the space he had occupied remained chilly. He reminded me of the man who had invaded my childhood dreams. Everything about him was so thin and distorted that even the bones beneath his robes appeared to be twisted. At well over six feet in his black satin slippers, he was the tallest man I had yet encountered in the kingdom.

  ‘Well, Trebunculus, I take back everything I said,’ the Sultan decided. ‘You did it. Septimus, you may reinstate the songbirds. Now perhaps we’ll have some peace and I can get on with the running of the state. Let us have sherbet.’ He waved his arm in the direction of a row of tall china vases, cut to expose their contents of rhubarb, tamarind, ambergris, rose and lemon. ‘So, what happens next?’

  ‘Next, Your Magnificence?’ asked the doctor, as if the thought had not occurred to him. ‘I hadn’t made any plans for our young guest.’

  ‘Whose name we still do not know,’ pointed out Rosamunde, whose scarlet robes only reached the winking ruby in her navel. Her bare breasts were capped with tiny cones of gold filigree. She watched me with steady frankness. I tried not to stare back.

  ‘Um, Kay Goodwin,’ I announced, adding preposterously, ‘of Balaclava Terrace, Cole Bay, southern England.’

  ‘England, Septimus, you’re hearing this? “Dreaming spires”. “Green and Pleasant Land”. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Yes?’

  ‘Quite so, Your Highness.’

  ‘You are hungry, Kay, yes? We use the first name, yes? Of course you are hungry. We don’t know much about English food except the sheep, and we have sheep, too, so
today a Calabash feast, yes?’ He clapped his hands and a glass gong boomed in the building behind us.

  The dining area was another oval courtyard similar to the one in which I had been welcomed, but this was enclosed and carved with panels of multifaceted rock crystal. The arched ceiling was faïenced with black and gold mosaics, and perched upon a dozen octagonal-sided cobalt pillars—a man-made celestial dome. Tall moulded windows released spiderwebs of light through gesso mosaics. I glimpsed mysterious doorways leading to other quarters, closed with fine gold chains and framed with incense burners.

  The members of the welcoming party seated themselves on embroidered bolsters while bare-chested young men in trousers of silver brocade poured mint tea from twin-spouted mataras. The Sultan’s mother sat behind him to one side, and the Royal Concubine was relegated to a place further behind her, clearly an establishment of the household’s pecking order. Rosamunde seated herself beside me.

  I had never appreciated the aptness of the term ‘almond eyes’ until I saw hers. They were large and luminous, like flames seen through a honey jar, and were drawn to such fine points that when I first looked at her I saw nothing else. There was no guile in her face, but a frank and unconscious beauty that I had never before imagined could exist in a girl. I fell instantly in love with her because she was impossible to attain, in the way that one can look upon a perfect memory and never fully capture it again. Rosamunde held the spirit of Calabash in her eyes. Even though the years would finally succeed in dimming my memories, I knew I would always see her almond eyes.