Calabash

by Christopher Fowler

  With the wind tearing at my navy-blue gabardine school raincoat, I edged my way around the platform until I could no longer see any light between the pier’s struts. I wondered how long it would take them to find my body if the sea rose to a full swell right now. I was a poor swimmer because I had trouble catching my breath when immersed in water. I had crept out of the house before anyone else was awake. Nobody knew I was here.

  I twisted around, hanging on to the corner post, trying to see if the world was changing, but there was only the shifting storm-mottled sky and the tilting, angry sea. It felt different this time; none of it was right. My mood and the landscape had changed. I was too desperate to make it happen. The idea that I had opened a doorway between the planet’s temporal and spatial dimensions was the stuff of science fiction. How could I fashion a workable explanation for what had happened to me? In Calabash all of my senses had functioned to produce a complete experience, and now the only way I could think of getting there was to duplicate what I had done before.

  I needed to open up my mind and cast the world I knew away from me like a bad dream. But as I looked about, trying to recall my exact movements on the platform, everything felt too calculated. All I could feel was the sharp brine on my face and the gloomy, oppressive mass of the pier. Releasing my grip on the handrail, I tacked to the rear edge of the platform and groped my way into the darkest corner, where the roar and suction of the tide boomed against the underside of the pier. I turned and raised my eyes to the horizon.

  And for a brief few seconds the cloud base broke, and I saw paths of light dancing out across the green water, and knew that they were made by the reflecting shields of the harbour warriors, converging beams of brilliance that would guide me back into the port of Calabash. I stared at the point where the lines crossed. There was a sharp stab of sunlight in my head, and a concoction of strong odours: old leather, metal, earth, sea. I gripped the iron post at my back. My stomach twisted and I felt consciousness slipping…

  —

  …And I was on the butte above the harbour with the azure sea spread below me, the hills at my back, and the tang of fish burning in my nostrils. My hair rose about my ears in the warming summer breeze, and it felt as though I had come home again. No longer afraid, I slowly turned and, sure of my way, began to walk.

  My senses opened to my surroundings. The low sweep of a seagull, lifting to hover in the air above my head. Ridged brown fields beyond, newly planted with maize. An ass tethered to a pump. Hares outrunning the breezes that feathered the meadows. A road that became a street built in ochre stone, with a faintly unkempt air. Rocket and dandelions sprouting between paving slabs.

  Dogs and chickens raised the alarm in courtyards as I passed. Girls with summer flowers braided in their hair turned slowly, so slowly, as I walked by, and smiled secretly at me. I had arrived in a village, oval in layout, within sight of the city of Calabash, with a well at its centre and arable fields to the west, gardens and the sparkling sea to the south. I had headed here instinctively, and now that I looked about myself, I knew exactly who I would see.

  Dr Trebunculus and his apprentice hailed me as though they were bumping into a neighbour on their way to the shops. ‘Ah, there you are,’ cried the doctor, striding up the path waving a walking stick. ‘We wondered where you’d gone. For a horrible moment I thought we’d frightened you off. This is Menavino.’

  I found myself facing a young man of similar build and height, but the top of Menavino’s head was as shaven and smooth as an olive. He had a little pigtail at the back and wore several engraved golden rings in each ear, but was more simply apparelled than his mentor, in a long white kilt with a sky-blue waistcoat. He was about to bow, but, remembering English courtesy, tentatively shook my hand.

  ‘I thought that before you settled yourself too comfortably you’d like to see my laboratory,’ said Trebunculus. ‘It’s not far from here.’ He made no further mention of my reappearance, and it seemed that any explanation of where I had been since the Sultan’s welcoming feast was unnecessary, so I followed the pair, happily taking each moment as it came. Being in Calabash seemed to encourage such an attitude.

  The laboratory was situated at the junction of two winding paths near the road into the village, which was differentiated from other roads by the large ditch running across it. This was supposed to be kept filled with water in order that anyone entering the village under the cloak of darkness would be heard by the splashing of their horse’s hooves, but as there was no threat of marauders from without, the practice had fallen into disuse.

  There were two entrances to the doctor’s house, on different levels. The rear of the building was built into the hill that rose steeply behind it. The lower door was unlatched, as were the doors to all the houses in Calabash. The room we entered was filled with long wooden benches, the surfaces of which were cluttered with mechanical arms, cogs, ratchets, springs, toggles, sprockets, and the tools required to fix them in place. None of these items, individually or in combination, gave any clue as to what was being constructed. The floor was so entirely covered with charts and calculations that I found myself unavoidably walking on them. The doctor did not seem to mind. A piebald piglet and a half-bald cat lazed in a corner, following us with their eyes.

  The far wall, which backed into the hill, was lined with shelves containing dozens of turquoise glass jars, their contents obscured in murky fluids, their purpose forgotten even to the doctor. Beneath these were remnants of other failed investigations: the lenses from the experiment to gauge the power of the sun that had set fire to the rotunda of the royal conservatory; the honey-smeared arrows from the attempt to follow the paths of bees that had resulted in Menavino almost being stung to death; some perished elastic bonds from the test of gravity that had broken both of the cook’s legs; the pitcher of hyena’s urine intended as an aphrodisiac for the Royal Concubine, which had proven more useful in ridding the palace of an infestation of weasels; the jars of fine sand designed to measure time—well, it transpired that they had proven more successful than most of the doctor’s other plans.

  Beneath the central skylight stood a tall iron contraption which appeared in imminent danger of collapse. Its myriad arms sprouted concave mirrors set at angles to catch the light and redirect it about the room. In one corner stood an orrery made entirely of glass and calibrated to the brass workings of a clock. As the mechanism ticked, its crystal planets lurched past each other in their orbits, catching reflected beams of light and refracting them into prisms, fiery colours splitting and spitting into the corners of the room, splinters of crimson and indigo dancing across the walls. Medicine was not the only science that interested the doctor.

  The warm, heavy air made me pull off my coat. ‘What are you making?’ I asked.

  ‘Calculations, dear fellow, always calculations,’ the doctor answered, waving his hands about in a distracted manner. ‘How else would we have known that you were coming? Menavino, prepare some refreshment, will you?’ The boy hurried off into a curtained area as Trebunculus hung up his jacket. ‘Much of our work is hypothetical, of course, but the Sultan is only interested in results.’

  ‘You knew I was coming?’

  ‘We knew someone was coming. That was the whole point of keeping the doorway open.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘We’re not barbarians,’ exclaimed the doctor indignantly. ‘We live simply but we have enquiring minds. We know there are other times and places, it’s just a question of access.’

  It seemed inconceivable to me that anyone would want to open a doorway to my world. Calabash to Cole Bay felt like an unfair transaction. My mother had told me that in the 1950s many West Indians had travelled to London to become bus conductors. I thought they must be mad, giving up the beauty and abundance of the Caribbean for a dingy bus depot in Clapham.

  ‘You can teach us about your world.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do we look up into the nightly starfield and won
der what we might find if we could go there?’ Trebunculus seated himself on a stool. ‘To satisfy our curiosity. Expand our knowledge. Enrich our existence.’

  ‘What if you went there and found out that it was really horrible? If you came to where I live you’d hate it. It’s damp and boring and everyone’s miserable.’

  ‘Perhaps it only seems that way to you. Here.’ The doctor rolled open a hand-inked map, weighting down its edges with small clay pots. ‘This is what we know of the world.’ In the centre of the map was a neat pink circle labelled ‘Calabash’ in elaborate calligraphy. Several of the surrounding cities were familiar to me: Benghazi, Alexandria, Sofia, Baghdad—but the rest of the map was wrong. The countries were skewed in shape, as though viewed through a distorting lens. And as the chart progressed outwards it became more nebulous, until there were great bare patches of nothing at all. Its borders were cluttered with silly-looking sea serpents and fat cherubs blowing gales.

  Menavino arrived with the tea, which smelled of buttered flowers in hot brandy, scalded my lips and made me lightheaded.

  ‘Your homeland is over there somewhere.’ Trebunculus gestured vaguely at the edge of the map. ‘But of course I have no proof. Your world is as invisible as the past, but I choose to believe in it. Life’s possibilities must be drawn out of us by others, Kay. Look.’ He rose and beckoned me to the ticking orrery. As we watched the circling crystal spheres, I realised that the glass of each globe was tinted a different shade, so that as they passed, they altered the light they threw upon each other; now mauve, now amber, now emerald. ‘Everything affects everything else,’ intoned Trebunculus. ‘When we stop learning, we start to die.’

  I studied the doctor through the shifting glass. ‘Did you bring me here?’

  ‘You brought yourself here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I would have thought the answer obvious.’ He smiled gently, old and wise. ‘To save a desperate situation.’

  ‘But how did you reach me? How did you know that I was—’

  ‘Your questions will be answered all in good time. Let me give you a piece of advice. You must think of Calabash as your means of escape. Come here whenever you are tired, whenever you are frightened, whenever you feel alone, and all will be well again.’

  I felt a hotness behind my eyes. For a moment I could not find the power to speak. ‘I don’t know how to show my gratitude,’ I said finally. ‘I always thought there might be somewhere—people who would—’

  ‘Oh, don’t think it’s all one way. We’ll do what we can for you, but I can assure you that you’re doing something just as vital for us.’ A chart on the floor caught his eye, and he bent down to study it.

  ‘I’ll help you in any way that I can,’ I offered. ‘Just tell me what interests you.’

  ‘Well, everything interests me, of course, but it is more for the sake of the Lord Chancellor. We could start by seeing him, if you like.’

  As we made our way back to the royal palace, Dr Trebunculus attempted to answer my questions. ‘The Sultan believes that wars destroy empires which are in mature stages of development, such as ours. Our kingdom is very old, and its ways are hard to change. That makes it vulnerable. The Lord Chancellor feels that a better understanding of the world’s scientific advancements would place us in a safer position.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can provide him with much technical detail,’ I warned. ‘But I’m sure I can find out some things if he makes specific requests.’

  The Lord Chancellor’s apartment was situated in a rectangular high-domed kiosk-pavilion to the rear of the royal harem, which at its height had housed four thousand sterile concubines for the sole pleasure of the Sultan’s great-great-grandfather.

  ‘He must have been quite a man.’

  ‘Oh, he was, but those were dangerous times. Fratricidal law meant that he had no cousins, brothers, nephews or uncles to challenge his authority, and the chances of surviving for long in high office were slim. Anyone suspected of acting as a threat to the throne was placed in a kafe, a suspended cage, and kept there.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Until they went mad. But now, mercifully, we are more civilised.’

  ‘You’ve done away with the cages?’

  ‘No, but prisoners are allowed to survive until the end of their natural days, mad or not. Ah, here is Septimus.’

  The Lord Chancellor drifted out of the gloom in a rustle of black silk. He held aloft a pale hand and shook mine with exaggerated solemnity. ‘How kind, how thoughtful, for you to come and visit my humble abode, Aslanim.’

  I shot Trebunculus a quizzical look. ‘It means “Little Lion”, a great compliment,’ he whispered. There was certainly nothing humble about Septimus Peason’s apartment, I thought, marvelling at the gilded baldachins and the pink porphyry walls revetted with blue faïences, each bearing inlaid mother-of-pearl inscriptions of indecipherable complexity. This was the only room in the palace that ever became cold, and where I was to find dark shadowed corners.

  ‘The boy is most eager to provide you with information,’ said Trebunculus, gesturing me to be seated. ‘For his knowledge may help you to ensure the safety of our kingdom.’

  Two small girls entered bearing trays of mint tea and tall clay pots in which burned sandalwood incense. We waited until they had completed their tasks and departed, then Peason bade me speak.

  ‘Our land is very different to yours,’ I explained. ‘Our main concerns appear to be more scientific, and perhaps less human.’

  ‘Ah ha.’ The Lord Chancellor gave Trebunculus a knowing look.

  ‘We have, for example, put a man on the moon.’ This was, in hindsight, probably the wrong place to start, and the we part was a bit of an overstatement.

  ‘On the moon.’ Septimus Peason raised a bony forefinger to the heavens. ‘The yellow moon above us.’

  ‘That’s right. They went up in a rocket.’

  ‘Ah. Raised by gunpowder?’

  ‘Not exactly, no.’ I struggled with the concept of jet propulsion for a while, but finally had to abandon the topic. ‘I can find out more from a book,’ I finished lamely.

  The Lord Chancellor cricked his knees as he leaned forwards, steepling his fingers over one kneecap. ‘If I can explain the problem of life in Calabash,’ he confided, ‘it is one of overconfidence. Nothing has changed here in generations. The Sultan—may the heavens themselves be praised for bestowing him upon our unworthy people—believes that no harm can ever befall us. Since the loss of his wife he has grown—how can one best put this—complacent. Once his eagle eyes would spot the faintest stirring on our most distant borders. Now those eyes have turned inwards. Celestial warriors, smite me from this miserable life if I should suggest a particle of disrespect, but our people have been made too comfortable. Our soldiers have grown plump and lazy. Our outposts are gradually being withdrawn. Where once our ships plied trade routes across the seven seas, we now have little contact with the outside world. Our lives have become settled. We are ripe for attack. Only General Bassa knows this. He and his son regularly patrol our northerly quadrants, and they have seen the unrest for themselves. Dangers await at the edges of our land.’

  ‘Then why don’t you persuade the Sultan to allow his army a show of strength?’ I asked. ‘A series of border parades. Drills of the utmost military precision. Perfect lines of uniforms. Feats of great daring. Canter your horses fearlessly through cannon fire.’ I had read about such performances in my books on Mesopotamia. ‘Act as though you believe no-one is watching, but of course you will be observed with the greatest interest. This is something to make all invaders think twice before crossing your borders.’

  ‘Truly the boy has the wisdom of gods,’ cried Peason, raising his hands up to his face. ‘You speak sagely, but there is a difficulty, my dear Aslanim. Man for man, we are quite out-numbered. A parade would reveal our weaknesses as much as our strengths. Our supremacy can only be conveyed through displays of superior scientific advancement. If we
were able to show our might in a manner that has never been witnessed by infidels before, some invention of war from your world perhaps…’

  I thought for a moment, but the weapons that sprang to mind were far too terrible to contemplate: land-mines, hand-grenades, mustard gas, fragmentation bombs. There had to be something the Lord Chancellor and his General could display that would not undermine the stability of their own kingdom. After some further discussion, I agreed to give the matter more thought and return with my findings at a future date.

  ‘Dearest Doctor, you have done well to find someone of such obvious intelligence as this charming young man,’ fawned Peason as we took our leave. ‘I can hardly bear to wait until our next encounter.’

  ‘Come,’ gestured Trebunculus, ‘I will ride with you as far as my laboratory.’

  ‘Well, what do you make of our Lord Chancellor?’ he asked as soon as we had remounted our donkeys.

  ‘I don’t trust him,’ I replied. ‘He’s far too polite.’

  The doctor cackled happily. ‘I know what you mean. His deferential manner grates, but he is a diplomat, and he must place the welfare of the state above all other considerations. The Lord Chancellor’s loyalty to the kingdom is utterly beyond question. The Sultan has no male issue at present, and unless he remarries, which is unlikely, the safety of the kingdom will be compromised. It is true that he has never been the same since the death of Eliya. He is merely the faintest whisper of his former self. I wonder…’ He reined his donkey back until he had drawn close to my side. ‘In your land, have you perfected the grinding of crystal lenses?’

  ‘You mean like my glasses?’

  ‘No, we also have those. I was thinking of a more precise tool.’

  ‘Certainly. We have microscopes that can examine worlds inside a single grain of sand.’

  ‘And could you get me information on the precise construction of such an instrument?’ he asked eagerly.

  ‘I can do that easily.’