by Rhys Hughes
There was a stampede, a desperate flight away from the composite actor and his outpouring of drool, a scramble for the streets of Spittle, wet and oily in name alone, for the fresher but not fresh air, the higher but not high skies. Open burst the doors of the auditorium and through the lobby surged the crowd and Gold and Myrrh rode their chariot like reluctant warriors entering a conquered metropolis, bouncing and showering sparks on the surface of the uneven road as the frantic herd attempted to put as much distance between themselves and the theatre as feasible, dragging the box along behind them.
Horses peeled away from the main mass. Some tripped and remained on the ground or slowly stood and dusted themselves down before sauntering off in some other direction, removing their heads and slipping into the shadows. Now there were only the steeds that had become entangled in the tassels. Some of the tassels broke and the chariot slowed down. At last it came to a halt as those who still pulled it gave up the flight and sagged from fatigue.
Gold and Myrrh climbed out and began heading home, which was only a couple of streets away. They were shaken but still capable of post-play analysis and they discussed what they had seen all the way to their front door. Clearly it had been a big ironic joke: a chaotic play of all plays for a chaotic city, and yet the joke had backfired, because at the present time there was temporary order, stasis even, and Spittle was not a city of all cities but merely one variation in the interminable list of possible places. And the saliva had been a primitive device, spit without polish, a violation of all the drools.
“But the horses? What was that about?”
“We should have dressed up too. We weren’t warned.”
“Yes, but why? To see that play!”
“No one would have come if it had been advertised truthfully,” Myrrh said thoughtfully. “Apart from you and me.”
“Not even us,” said Gold as they reached their house.
Before inserting the key, they kissed on the doorstep, exchanging saliva with tongues. The play hadn’t finished yet.
The Mouth of Hell
On the evening of the Summer Solstice the brave explorers finally set off on the expedition that had been planned for so long by the university. When I say ‘so long’ I am referring to a subjective feeling they shared rather than any precise measurement of time. Anxiety had made the days seem long and unbearable but now the dramatic moment had arrived.
The longest day of the year had been chosen because there was less night and this was regarded as a comforting fact by most members of the team. Not that any moonlight would penetrate far into where they intended to delve. The date was purely of psychological benefit, for they were still human beings with the superstitious instincts of their ancestors.
I say ‘they’ but in fact I was also part of the expedition. However, my role was to stay behind and wait for their return, so I barely consider myself to have made a real contribution to the mission.
Collins, Fumble, Rigby, Lister, Ripple, Masson and Blister were their names. Seven heroes willing to risk everything in order to add just a little to the universal store of knowledge that belongs to us all. I admired them then and I admire them even more now. And I recall with acute feelings of bitter nostalgia the last sunset they ever saw as it reddened their faces in a cosmic blush on the steps of our university.
Then we walked slowly out of the town, and over the landscape, and soon the entrance of the mystery loomed ahead. This was the portal of fame or doom, depending on what destiny decided; but I do not believe in fate and it seemed of no great menace to me as I approached.
We stopped before it and made final preparations.
The idea had originally been to tether the explorers securely so they could be hauled back out in the event of an emergency but unmanned probes that had already been sent in indicated that ropes would snag on the superabundance of objects that crammed the enigmatic space.
None of the probes had returned, by the way, but they were designed for a one way trip, so this fact did not worry us. Farewells were brief and every team member shook solemn hands with every other: Collins with Fumble, Rigby with Lister, Ripple with Masson, Blister with me, and so on. The explorers were equipped with food to last several months.
“Switch on your torches please!” cried Collins.
The group had no official leader but I guess someone had to give orders at certain points during that perilous mission. Beams of powerful, yet oddly unconvincing, light appeared to emanate from every hand and a complex mesh of insubstantial girders was suddenly created. Then the beams swivelled to point in one direction only, namely into the mouth of the anomaly.
“Good luck!” I called to them, wiping away a tear.
“Don’t cry in public!” someone said.
I stiffened to attention but who was there to witness my dishonour? What shame is there in weeping anyway? My tears glinted very faintly in the starlight and only the moths knew anything. They fluttered past and tickled my ears and the powdery sensation of their wings on my lobes made me sob harder but with an unhealthy and involuntary mirth. And then—
They were gone. Not the moths but the explorers.
They had entered the object.
I did everything that was required of me. I sat on a portable camping chair and boiled milk for hot chocolate on a little gas stove. I twiddled my thumbs. In the morning I began reading the first of the books I had brought with me. That is how I passed the time. Every so often a university official would come to check but I never had anything to report.
No journalists ever arrived to interview me.
The story simply had no value for them at this stage. Only if the explorers returned blinking, arms loaded with mementoes, from that undoubtedly hellish region, would the press care about the mission. And they never came back out. That is the thing that needs to be stressed.
None of them ever emerged. The days and weeks became months and the months eventually joined hands into a year.
The funding ran out at that instant. I was required to stand up and fold the chair and take it back to the university. Everything felt heavy, especially a vague feeling of guilt I had, and I walked as if through molten lipstick, wearily and in despair of my shoes. The town seemed unfamiliar to me when I reached it and I entered the campus grounds like a stranger.
Collins, Fumble, Rigby, Lister, Ripple, Masson and Blister already were statues on the steps leading to the main entrance. Skilled masons had been busy in that year of etiolated ambitions. And I had a statue too, but it was of a pigeon with my face perched on the head of Collins, who somehow had posthumously acquired the status of leader. I shuddered.
Nothing was ever the same after that. I started drinking. Not to excess but to a lack of success, which is nearly as bad, and now I am here, in this bar, and you are the first journalist to care about my story. I know I met you by accident here, that you didn’t seek me out, that we started talking randomly, but at least I have had a belated opportunity to tell the tale.
The journalist in question frowns and drains his brandy. His frown is imperfectly symmetrical. “A handbag!”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“How extraordinary! Lost inside a handbag!”
“Indeed. It is terrible.”
“They were your colleagues?”
“Yes and my friends.”
“Were they little men? I mean, to fit inside a handbag they surely must be tiny figures as small as thumbs.”
“They were of normal size. I knew them well.”
“In that case, the handbag must have belonged to a giantess! Was it an enormous example of the type?”
“It was a perfectly ordinary handbag.”
“I don’t understand...”
“What is there to understand? It was a woman’s handbag, no more or less, and they were men! And they will never return, never, and who knows what they are doing in there? Who outside can guess what inexplicable things they have found and are still finding? A woman’s handbag! Now you must go away a
nd leave me alone. I will say it one last time. They were ordinary sized men and the handbag was a typical handbag. They were men like me. That’s all you need to know. The conversation is over.”
He departs and I finish my whisky. Then I too get up and leave the bar and walk home along the dark streets.
And just in case the events of this true story seem no more than a jest based on chauvinism, let me put your mind at rest by declaring that before I reach my front door, both suspender buttons spontaneously pop and my black silk stockings slide down around my ankles.
The Strings of Segovia
It was a foggy night in Old London. Or perhaps it was the fog that was old, or just the night, or maybe only me, dressed as I was in antique garb. My jerkin and breeches were silken and rustled softly, my high boots and heavy gauntlets were leathern and squeaked pleasantly. As for my tricorne hat, I wore it with considerable aplomb. Even the sword that swung at my hip did not seem out of place. Only one item of clothing dissatisfied me and I wandered the streets in an attempt to remedy this defect.
Music emerged from the general fumy blur, the notes of a guitar carefully plucked, a haunting melody that evoked everything London was not. Although no words accompanied the playing I was reminded of balmy nights, iron balconies, dark women with flowers in their hair, the salty tang of olives, young wine. I am fond of street musicians. Indeed I am something of a patron to buskers and so I quickened my step toward the source of this acoustic magic. My present situation compelled me to engage the person responsible, but my motives were also partly altruistic.
I found a young man sitting in a doorway, his expression containing both the unquenchable hope of the compulsive dreamer and the feverish desperation of the chronically frustrated. He was poor, I noted at once, but not entirely without resources, strange reservoirs of inky self-belief. I loomed above him, listening quietly until his elegant song was concluded, then I reached into my pocket and deposited a handful of coins into the upturned cloth cap that gaped between his feet like the severed ear of a cyclops. His gratitude was a theatrical grin.
“You play extremely well – perhaps too well!” I announced.
He blinked at this compliment, and might have blushed into the bargain had not a tendril of cold fog suddenly turned the corner and tickled his face, discouraging all sunset cheeks, my own included. So he licked his lips instead and answered, “I have a good teacher.”
“Oh?” I responded, retreating a pace, “and who might that be?”
He studied me closely, his gaze travelling from tricorne to spurs and back again, before glancing left and right like a storybook conspirator. “Segovia. None other.”
I laughed: a short bark. “Come now!”
His voice was an urgent whisper. “It’s true. I keep it a secret, to myself, because I don’t care to be ridiculed but there’s something about you I find reassuring, I don’t know why. I trust you. Segovia really is my teacher. I’ve wanted to share this remarkable news with someone for many months but it was never possible until now. People would say I was mad. I imagine you are used to such comments, dressed the way you are. And so...”
“I am less eccentric than you think. I’m a man on a mission.”
He frowned as if upset by my nonchalance and the fingers of his right hand rapped a sharp rhythm on the body of his guitar. “Do you believe me or not?”
“I don’t, if that answer pleases you more...”
“Very well. I am due for my next lesson less than one hour from now. Come with me and see with your own eyes that Segovia is my teacher. My home isn’t far. That’s where we must go and it’s polite and important to be on time. Are you willing?”
I rubbed my chin with the back of a gauntlet. “Certainly. Lead the way.”
He stood and slung his instrument over his shoulder. Then he had vanished into the fog and it was no easy task to keep up with him and only the faint twang of strings in the currents of cold air betrayed his direction at each new corner. I steadily increased my pace, following these rogue harmonics, down countless streets and over several bridges, but only managed to reach his side after he paused in front of a door to wait for me.
While he fumbled with a key, I studied the building he had guided me to.
“This is your home?” I asked.
“Absolutely – in a manner of speaking!”
I ignored the contradiction and cried, “Segovia comes here: to a house without windows?”
For an answer he unlocked the door and swung it open, stepping through rapidly and pulling me along with him. Then he was off again, and I was close on his heels, but no corridors or rooms did we pass through. Instead we rushed down more streets and turned more corners. I assumed I was still in London and that the door was some intact relic of ancient defences, a portal in a strong wall between two different quarters of the city, but slowly it became apparent that the simple crossing of the threshold had induced a profound change in the environment. For one thing, there was no fog here. None.
“This is not really your home,” I declared.
“Wherever I learn my music, that’s where my heart is. And where the heart is...”
I scowled furiously to prevent him from completing this maudlin utterance and then I slowed my pace to enable more careful scrutiny of my surroundings. He seemed irked by my tardiness but said nothing, following my gaze as I looked around, shifting his instrument to the other shoulder. This night was balmy and there were iron railings. Then a clock tower demonstrated that the time was one hour later than it should have been. When we turned another corner and a gigantic but curiously delicate aqueduct loomed before us, the truth could no longer be denied.
We were no longer in London, old or new.
“This is the city of Segovia – in Spain,” I announced tonelessly.
He was mildly flustered but did not pause, leading me up a flight of stone steps at the side of the impressive structure. “Of course. What else did you expect? I told you Segovia was my teacher, I’m not a liar. Don’t drag your feet now, we’re almost there!”
I chuckled horribly. “I thought you were referring to Andrés Segovia, born in Linares in 1893, who learned to play on a guitar once owned by Paco de Lucena. He died in 1987, Segovia I mean, and was awarded a high title in his old age – the Marqués de Salobreña, I think it was – in return for his services to music. It was often claimed that he singlehandedly rescued the Spanish guitar from amateur gypsies, a view he shared himself. He remains one of the greatest guitarists of all time.”
He gaped in bewilderment. “I don’t know about any of that but it’s critically important that I’m not late for my lesson. Segovia is my teacher, the city itself. That’s a simple fact.”
“I suppose the famous castle itself gives you lessons?” I mocked. “Or perhaps the church of Vera Cruz, built on mystic principles long ago by the Knights Templars?”
Now it was his turn to be annoyed. “Don’t be ridiculous... Those structures wouldn’t deal with a nobody like me. I’m just a commoner. My teacher is an ordinary house in a street leading off the Plaza Mayor. This way, please. Just a few more steps and then you’ll see...”
And so I did. We had reached the great main square of the city, with the vast cathedral silhouetted against the stars, and now hurried down a narrow alley. Next to a closed restaurant stood a house with stone arms. It cradled the most enormous guitar in the world in its powerful and implausible hands and its upper stories seemed to hold an expression, although in no way did the design of the façade resemble a face. I was unable to resist making a wide sardonic bow but it ignored me utterly and concentrated all its attention on my companion. I was left with the impression that the windows blinked, though in fact they moved not at all and remained unlighted, mysterious.
“I’m here,” the pupil called softly.
“Good,” said the house, “and for this lesson we’re going to focus mainly on chords and the execution of rapid but perfectly fluid key changes. We’ll start as always with some
scales, just to warm up the fingers. Are you ready? Take a deep breath and try to relax...”
I turned to leave, rubbing my jaw in consternation. The situation was too absurd. A house in Segovia that spoke English rather than Spanish? But I felt my sleeve plucked by an anxious hand and I was compelled out of politeness, the same politeness that matched my attire, formal and rigid but with a hint of lethal irony, to halt my departure and spend a few more minutes in conversation. My companion was very unhappy that he had to divide his concentration between myself and his teacher. He had already taken the urged deep breath and clearly did not want to expel it over me.
But finally he blabbered, “What’s wrong?”
“I feel deceived,” I explained simply.
“For what reason? I thought you wanted to listen to my lesson, hear my teacher play. I’ve never invited anyone else to accompany me here.”
I arched an eyebrow. “I am returning to London. I will walk northwards for many weeks. You have wasted my time. Sir, your teacher is merely a house musician!”
He suddenly lunged forward and clapped his palm over my mouth, heedless of the sword I wore and the personality that made using such a weapon perfectly feasible and even easy. Protecting his teacher from further insult was more important to him than life itself. His words tumbled out for now he was desperate to be rid of me and become a single unit with his guitar. His compassion was the fastest I have ever witnessed.
“Fair enough, if you truly feel like that, but you are mistaken, horribly so. Don’t return to London the long way, the real geographical route. Retrace our steps and pass back through the door. Close it behind you to stop the fog coming in. You wear your antique clothes with style, all expect one item. Farewell and good luck. One day you may regret your decision. Segovia plays like an angel, a stone angel. I love my teacher and believe my feelings are reciprocated, even though there is a small kitchen instead of a heart inside its dubious analogue of a chest. Furthermore...”