The Smell of Telescopes

by Hughes, Rhys

  The captain growled. “Do ye mean to tell me this isn’t Lladloh? But I won’t be lulled by that simple trick. Here’s the old stone bridge, and also a fellow ugly enough to be Toby.”

  “Go on, Gruffydd. Prove you don’t eat folk.”

  I drew out my uneaten pie, the one I’d baked in a futile attempt to replicate Myfanwy’s speciality. “See!”

  “Sugar my timbers! This proves thy point. We must have turned right at the Isle o’ Lundy. Cast away, lads! Back to the briny deeps. Cool thy tongs, ’Ceti. Thimble all pins, ’Tology. Leeks in the kettle, ’Vado, not bullets. No joints today, ’Lin. Weigh anchor, ’Phagia! What’s that? Half a pound o’ tuppenny rice? Lighter than expected. Plus a half o’ treacle? That’s enough, give or take a weasel.”

  As the anchor came up, my verger spotted his pickling jar caught on one of the barbs. He gyrated in joy and begged for its return, a request the pirates were wary of granting, in case the contents proved valuable. I grew worried at this sight. It meant that Owain, if he hadn’t drowned, would be heading back to Monmouth to be reunited with his trousers. With outstretched cutlass, the captain rescued the bottle. “A message inside? ’Tis composed in obscure hieroglyphs.”

  While he struggled to decipher the breeches, my verger cried: “It’s a map of Lladloh. Give me the jar and I’ll tell you how to use it.” This bargain was acceptable to the buccaneers and the captain swung the empty bottle onto the riverbank. “Iron out the creases and follow it from back to front. Beware the shallow pockets!” Myfanwy leaned further to observe proceedings, and the stock of her pistol poked out from her jacket. The blunderbuss in the captain’s grasp noticed this and suddenly jerked up and aimed itself at my beloved! With less hesitation than a squonk invited to tune a mandolin from a major to minor key, she responded by drawing and pointing her own firearm. It was clear the pirate was struggling to control his weapon, and this was also true for Myfanwy. Neither wished to pull the trigger! The guns wanted to start the duel themselves. I flinched.

  “It’s as if the blunderbuss and pistol hate one another! As if they crave to resolve an enduring dispute.”

  With a cynical shrug, my verger hissed: “Like the wife and mistress of the same man? None of our business, Gruffydd. Leave them to it. It is time to return to your house. The Polar Pie must be ready. Don’t object! You promised to assist my plan if I removed Owain for you. I did so, and you must reciprocate. That is virtue.” Though my heart was reluctant to leave Myfanwy, my brain, which has respect for both gunpowder and pledges, told me to comply. I didn’t look back as I trailed him first to the river to collect his jar, and then to my home, which was sooty but still intact. Winter aromas wafted over the lawn. The miracle inside was finished, but it was gargantuan: an iceberg colder than interstellar gulfs, nestled in a pastry stadium. Oh Myfanwy! What inhuman daring to conceive such a pie! No tramontane tart, whatever pedigree of superconductive brumes swirled around base or topping, might compare with this noctilucent nouriture. It was as unique and terrifying as its creator. A glittering ziggurat of crystal tears! But how could we extract it through the narrow doorway?

  My verger pointed at a pair of hinges on the wall which had escaped my attention. And further along, he found a lever disguised as a bracket for a hanging-basket. He pulled it and the entire façade of the building swung open, exposing the upper rooms, and lower, which was bursting with pie. “Myfanwy was right! It’s an authentic oven.” Entering, and pressing his shoulder to the pastry, he puffed: “Far too heavy to move on my own. Go to the rear, Gruffydd, and heave. I’ll chain your donkey to the front and in tandem we might escort it out!”

  Behind the pie, I was granted a new clarity of vision. The mountain of ice acted as a lens. My nose and eyes were assailed with the two main effects of Myfanwy’s genius: spicy odour and access to remote images. It was as if I smelled a telescope. Through the lamenting facets, I saw the distant river in detail, the bridge and waterwheel, the pirate ship with its brutish crew, the captain with his arm around my sweetheart. Wait! A cruel mirage surely? No, it was true: far from shooting each other, they had somehow become acquainted in the passionate way. Risking my verger’s wrath, I dashed out and waved my arms.

  “Return to me, Myfanwy! I’m your only beau.”

  “You jest!” she answered, thrusting a cigar between her teeth. Then I realised how neatly she fitted into this environment. Already her ripe bosom was straining at her bodice; daggers hung from her waist at jaunty angles, baroque gifts from her new paramour. Even her hair flowed in old curls, like blood, rum and smoke. Before the vessel turned a bend in the river and was lost to view, she pulled the pirate captain’s cutlass from his own belt (an action which had too much of the sensuous about it) and threw it at me. It stuck in the mud next to my foot, and I like to think she was presenting me with a memento, a souvenir of what had gone (clock and carrot) and what may have come (blueberry stain), rather than trying to wound me. But I’m probably deluded.

  I felt an arm on my shoulder. “Back to work, Gruffydd! The donkey’s exhausted.” Obeying, I wept. My tears splashed on the ice as I pushed at the dessert, fusing instantly to the crystals, maybe diluting the grief, for no human suffering, however acute, expressed in abrasive lachrymals, could parallel that of the average squonk. The strenuousness of the task helped to dampen my taut heartstrings. When the pie was fully out, I asked my verger why he also needed to employ my house as an oven. His reply was dramatic. With a fluid motion, he removed his surplice, reversed it and drew it back on. Superficially, in terms of texture and design, this other side was identical to what he had previously sported. But the way it swirled about his thighs revealed the fact of the matter. I was stunned.

  “You’re a priest! Not a humble verger at all!”

  “The Reverend Delves at your disservice. Yes, Gruffydd, I’ve fooled you for a year. It was necessary, of course, to implement my scheme. Two clergymen wandering the realm as equals would have excited comment. Your quest to find the pastors was also mine, but for different reasons. Tell me how many took over your home when you originally left for your corner of the scalene world? Seven? Well, I’ve got news for you. There was only one, a fellow known as Pastor Rowlands. He’s ruler of the evil Church: a schism in orthodoxy and also himself.”

  “But he came with a clock sold in the market.”

  “That was when he still had a fragment of goodness in him. After he lived in your house and abandoned all ethics, the Seven Deadly Sins grew too wide for his body. He split into seven replicas, each devoted to one of the vices. He’s a sort of gestalt decadent. When Tangerine Pan jumped out of your Trojan Pie, he thought the devil had come to claim him! That pushed him further into wickedness and he became a confirmed Satanist. A pastor, however, is too lowly to have much influence with the Arch-Fiend himself, which is what I require. So my plan is to cram all seven of his aspects into one chamber of the oven and fill the other with the concept purple. These I’ll bake into a Bishop Pie: a potent functionary of Hades which I can enrol as an intermediary.”

  “You seek an audience with Lucifer? What for?”

  “To petition him to relocate Hell. Listen now, Gruffydd, I know you feel nothing but awe for Myfanwy’s venture to make the planet round. But there may be unfortunate consequences. When bad men die, their souls and trousers fall down, toward perdition. The direction of this movement has always been inward, through the surface of the Earth. If Hyperborea does fold itself over Monmouth, a rough sphere will result, but we will dwell in its concavity, rather than on its convexity. Hell will suddenly exist outward, which is the direction where good souls and trousers fly. Don’t you appreciate the potential chaos? The moral order will be inverted and spirits and breeches will end up in the wrong place. Good will be jabbed with forks; sin serenaded with harps.”

  “What cosmic horror! You have my full support. How can we catch the seven pastors and the concept purple?”

  “I now conclude Pastor Rowlands has scattered in sundry directions. No
point looking for him: we’ll wait until each separate piece converges here. As for the purple, it is already present in my jar. When you added your sentences, I pretended the initial two weren’t balderdash. That was to ensure you recited three. It takes three measures of nonsense to make a purple passage. It’s ready for use.”

  We stood his bottle in one of the upstairs rooms and retired to the lawn, to bathe in the double shade of Zipangu and Pennsylvania, and idle away the days until the pastors returned. The Polar Pie shielded us from the hemlock vapours which occasionally drifted down from the upper tier. What minimal light flickered from the north was amplified by the immense confection and focussed over the river, which seemed to be swelling from day to day. This borborygmic borealis didn’t cheer me. I was so unnerved that when a delegation from afar arrived in Monmouth some weeks later, I hesitated to invite them into my house for coffee. An odd bunch in short trousers, dyed with tropical splashes. Also bare sternums, hair bleached blond, coral necklaces and surfboards.

  I speculated they were from Bermuda or Guernsey. But my patois fell on empty ears. Then they corrected me:

  “No, friend, we’re Hyperboreans. Come to see the iceberg. Ah, there it is! So that’s what cold means, eh?”

  “You dress like that in the Arctic Circle?”

  “Sure enough. Well, it’s too hot up there for anything else. Do you assume the far north is a region of chills? It hasn’t been like that for decades. Not with the global warming.”

  “I expected you to tug the landscape along behind. But I see you’re not fused to anything. We were praying a variety of pastors would arrive before you, but if you haven’t got Hyperborea, I guess it doesn’t really matter. We won’t create an outside Hell after all! But what’s this about temperature? Is the Earth heating up?”

  “Certainly is. It’s all the cooking that’s taking place everywhere. Can hardly walk a mile without finding somebody preparing a stew or pie. Spicy vapours congealing in the atmosphere! Trapping sunlight, they are, melting the glaciers. The example here is probably the very last iceberg in the whole world, which is why we came so far to see it. It also means your town will shortly be deluged by gigantic waves, but I gather you’ve already started evacuating civilians.”

  “News to me! What inspires that judgement?”

  “We saw seven of them adrift in a boat shaped like a pot. The fools were still cooking as they sailed along! Purple pasta, I believe. Yes, a spaghetti and thistle dish. The leader introduced us to his wife. Called her La Santa Roja; a feisty woman with slack pantaloons. Heading for the highlands of Lladloh. A prudent move.”

  I was too depressed to smite my chest. “Purple pasta? His wife? Two more glacé nails in my pastry coffin!”

  My verger interjected at this point: “I don’t believe the planet is doomed to drown! What proof is there?”

  The Hyperboreans smirked. “Go to France and see for yourself. Waves struck Paris last week, stranding the Phantom of the Opera on a rooftop. Also Quasimodo, but he’s resourceful.”

  I could hardly doubt any of this. It was as if the world was crying for my shattered heart and broken tongue. I stood and saddled my donkey, oblivious to my verger’s protestation.

  “Off to Lladloh,” I muttered. “My destiny.”

  “Don’t be silly, Gruffydd! You don’t know where it is. Don’t listen to what these hoary hippies tell you!”

  “The barman in Shropshire will give me directions. He owned the pub there. Farewell, Douglas Delves! You were a charming fake. I hope you’ll be very happy with your pickling jar.”

  “I’ll conserve your hide, you slimy scamp!”

  Out of Monmouth I rode. Back toward the Caucasus and the Kaatskills and the other misplaced ranges. Always up: on the lookout for the yellow turban which would guide me over the passes. I found it snagged on Mount Ararat, together with a dove, raven and pelican. But even here my vision was obstructed by summits equally lofty. The ribbon of the turban didn’t follow the contours of the land, but slanted into the sky. Strumming the taut fabric, I produced a celestial note. As the hours passed, the angle of the slant increased. Soon the ribbon was useless to me, spearing into the clouds which boiled over the Julian Alps, a place I had no desire to visit. I rejected it and weaved without bearings into the Sierra Morena, where bulls and gallows parted for me.

  It was only when I gained the apex of the highest peak in the Hindu Kush that I had my first proper view of the horizon. Rather, what should have been my view. The mountains staggered down to the rolling plains of Shropshire; these plains undulated not gently onward but upward. My eyes followed the gentle incline: the vast tract of land was approaching in a wave, growing steeper all the while. At the same time, a shadow hastened toward me, blotting out Shropshire before the county itself was snatched up. The crest of the tectonic wave was almost directly overhead. The sun vanished. But in the last glimmer of solar radiation, I saw the ultimate beaches of Hyperborea curving high, leading the assault. White sands and deckchairs and not so good vibrations.

  The remaining corner of the world was folding itself over Monmouth. But there were no harpoons or trolls to reel it in! Then I realised what had happened: the conference of mountains had started a trend. Geography of every sort now felt an impetus to gather and chatter. Forcing Zipangu and Pennsylvania together had tricked Hyperborea into thinking a meeting was taking place in Wales to which it hadn’t been invited. It was coming to discover what the other two corners were saying about it. Dismounting and lowering my ear to the ground, I grimaced. The expected deluge would completely fill up the inside of a round world, drowning all within. The fashioning of a submarine was a priority. I had to bake one immediately, but I lacked oven and all ingredients.

  Nothing for it but to extract the filling from my mutant pie! There was a chance I might curl up small enough to replace the jam. If so, the marvels of a saturated planet awaited, the freedom to explore the wrecks of our culture, aquatic cities and markets. If not, my soul and trousers would soon be falling outward, to Hell. If Myfanwy wore the latter, this should leave her legs exposed. Better hurry to Lladloh to see! But there was a third possibility, the one I considered most likely: the pie might be large enough to contain my frame, but eating the filling would poison me fatally. Then I would possess a sarcophagus instead of a submersible; the coffin I previously referred to. Ashes to ashes, crust to crust. And spread a napkin. In pastry requiescat!

  The Hush of Falling Houses

  The sacred relics of Lladloh are stored behind the bar in the village’s nameless tavern. They include the ear of a monstrous rabbit, broad as a rudder, which, together with the rest of the beast, belonged to the very last druid, Barrington Burke; a volume of poems penned by legendary bard Dennistoun Homunculus; the stopper of the pickle-jar wielded by the Reverend Douglas Delves; a flintlock pistol left behind by a highwayman with bad teeth who fought the pagan god Beer’or and broke his hold on the region. This service earned the fellow extensive dental work from grateful local folksingers, but only in their lyrics.

  Despite the gravitas associated with each of these items, the most valuable of our ornaments remains the bottomless glass of Guinness cut from a fossilised demon’s tear by Yeats O’Casey, the Dublin rakehell who exhibited his treasure throughout the dives of Europe to general acclaim and specific envy. The subsequent adventures of this object can be found coded in my new recipe, a hotpot which cleverly utilises veins of stout to instruct the epicure. Of all our holy artefacts, the bottomless glass is the only one which attracts pilgrims.

  As the self-appointed antiquarian of the town, I see my mission to research our heritage as one of immediate concern to my neighbours. I am not paid for my pains, which are unofficial; perhaps in response to this affront, I am forever seeking to combine my studies with my day job. Any customer who ventures inside my restaurant is sure to leave with as much appreciation of the past as of pâté de foie gras. I can bake lectures on archaeology into casseroles or arrange noodles into family trees. I fee
d the belly with the stock of centuries. My secret motto is: “An aeon with every course.” My name is Giovanni Ciao.

  When the last diner departs the establishment, I hurry to the shore and sit on the edge of the pier, fishing in the gelid waters with a net. Heirlooms sometimes come my way, broken clocks and the like. I am hoping for one revelatory catch, a relic to rival O’Casey’s glass. When I have it, my hobby will finally be taken seriously—I’ll exchange cleaver and pancake for spectacles and lumbago. I am not the only villager to pursue a nobler calling. Since the construction of the real harbour, we have all harboured romantic yearnings, as if the stone quay has turned the locks of a collective repression. Only Olaf Smorgåsbord, the innkeeper, is satisfied. The nameless tavern is a focal point of the community and its supervision requires fanatical devotion.

  The chilly sea is not generous with its gifts; it can be likened to a sister. Drowned dogs form the bulk of my haul. These are passed to the local anatomist, Medardo, who dreams of dancing ballet. Flaying them, he varnishes the bones with a lacquer of his own devising. So many dogs are washed onto our shore that we have a surfeit of bones. These are used in place of timber for building purposes: the pier consists entirely of the femurs of chows. The more we hook, the further the pier extends. Soon it will reach the place where the animals originate.

  Lladloh was not always a seaside resort. In the distant past, when much of the ocean was locked away in polar ice-caps, it stood quite far inland. I am acutely aware, when I dangle my legs over the side and gaze south, how many civilisations lie below, visited only by the denizens of the deep. The names of these cultures still sound impossibly exotic when spoken aloud—Swansea, Tenby, Llanelli. What were they really like? I envisage shining towers of crystal; philosophers in togas; gardens full of musicians rehearsing unearthly melodies. A far cry from Lladloh, the malodorous, squat reality of my existence...