The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix

by Paul Sussman

  My intention was to swivel round, shuffle back to the skylight and drop the vast fruit through on to Keith’s Lilo, which was on the floor directly beneath. Unfortunately, as I turned, I somehow lost my footing, crashing sideways against the slope of the roof and, in my desperation to break my fall, releasing the pumpkin, which thudded down on to the edge of the parapet. For a moment it wobbled back and forth as though undecided which way to fall. Then, however, as though in slow motion, it rolled outwards into space and down, plummeting earthwards like a small orange comet. There was a hushed silence, and then what sounded like a loud squelch, followed closely by an ear-piecing scream.

  I pushed myself upright, cursing, and peered over the edge, hoping the pumpkin hadn’t hurt anyone. Unfortunately it had, for with a degree of accuracy I could never have achieved had I been aiming for it, my pumpkin had landed slap bang on top of Keith’s head, the latter disappearing right inside the monstrous fruit as though into a large diving helmet. Amazingly, considering the weight of the thing and the speed at which it must have been travelling when it hit him, he was still on his feet, tottering to and fro across the pavement whilst Marcie, her face and clothes covered in freckles of pumpkin pith, screamed hysterically and tried to wrestle the rindy sphere off her lover’s head. They continued thus for some seconds, swaying back and forth as though engaged in some bizarre dance, before Keith eventually slumped to his knees and, arms twitching manically, pitched face forward on to the pavement, dead, the pumpkin hitting the concrete with a resounding thud. Marcie’s screams redoubled, and a crowd began to gather.

  ‘Oh shit,’ I mumbled. ‘Oh shit.’

  My immediate thought was to get out of the house for a bit and clear my head.

  With a quick pat to ensure The Pill and The Photo were safe, therefore, I clambered back through the skylight, descended to our front door and slipped unnoticed out on to the street. Several police cars had by now arrived, and an ambulance. Marcie was still screaming loudly, and punching at a Chelsea pensioner who was trying to console her.

  ‘Oh shit,’ I mumbled, hurrying into the night. ‘Oh shit!’

  I didn’t really know where I was going, and wandered aimlessly for an hour before eventually finding myself in Trafalgar Square. My head felt thick and woozy and, crossing to one of the fountains, I dunked it in the icy water, leaving it submerged for almost a minute before throwing it back and shaking a shower of droplets into the cold night air.

  Which is when I noticed Emily, sitting between the paws of one of the ornamental bronze lions, her golden hair shining in the pale moonlight.

  At first I could hardly believe it was her.

  ‘Emily!’ I cried, running over and standing at the foot of the plinth upon which she was seated. ‘Emily, is that you!’

  ‘Hello, Raphael.’

  ‘Well, don’t sound too surprised, will you!’

  ‘I’m not surprised. I’ve been watching you since you came under Admiralty Arch. Come up and sit beside me.’

  I struggled on to the plinth and stretched out at her side.

  ‘It’s unbelievable,’ I said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Meeting like this, of course. It must be the biggest coincidence since . . . well, since the last time we met. I always seem to bump into you after I’ve . . .’

  ‘What?’

  I was going to say ‘killed someone’, but, of course, Emily knew nothing of my murders, and I thought it best to keep it that way.

  ‘After you’ve what?’ she repeated.

  ‘Been thinking of you,’ I said quickly. ‘You always seem to pop up right after I’ve been thinking of you.’

  ‘Perhaps you conjure me up, like a spirit,’ she laughed. ‘Perhaps I’m your magic genie.’

  ‘You’re my love, Emily,’ I said, taking her hand. ‘I love you. I miss you. I can’t live without you.’

  She put her arm around me and I snuggled down beside her.

  ‘What rubbish you talk, Raphael. You’ve always talked rubbish. I don’t know why I put up with you.’

  ‘It’s because you love me too.’

  ‘Do I now!’ she laughed.

  ‘Marry me,’ I said, closing my eyes. ‘It’s not too late. I’m only 71. And you don’t look a day over 18.’

  ‘Flatterer.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  She tickled my nose.

  ‘Not tonight, Raphael. But thanks, anyway.’

  I pressed my head against her thigh.

  ‘Where have you been these last couple of years?’ I asked, breathing her in.

  ‘Oh, here and there. Nowhere exciting. You seem to have been enjoying yourself.’

  ‘Yes,’ I sighed. ‘I’ve had a lot of fun. I’ve been a pop-star, you know. I’m feeling a bit rough now though. God, I feel rough.’

  She said nothing, just shifted a little closer. The sound of her breathing lulled me, and although I tried to stay awake, to make the most of the few moments we had together, it wasn’t long before I’d drifted off. And then, when I awoke, she was gone. And in her place . . . Walter. Poor Walter, his chin cupped in his hands, peering soulfully upwards at the greying sky of dawn.

  ‘You’re on my lion,’ he said.

  Another day. Another victim. Another life. Off we go again.

  A little story to end a story; another of those bizarre coincidences that pepper my life like rivets down the hull of an ocean liner.

  Two years after the events described above I was lurking among the book stacks of Weston-super-Mare Municipal Library, looking for the best place to secrete a turd-filled paper bag, when I noticed an open book lying on a nearby table. Had it been any other book, or any other page, I would doubtless have ignored it. This particular one, however, caught my eye, prompting me to put the turd back in my pocket and go over and look. There was, you see, a photo of Marcie on it.

  The book, a slim volume, was entitled Lady Murderers of Our Time and, in a chapter entitled ‘The Black Widow of Rock’ recounted the strange story of Marcie Goodfellow. The latter, I discovered (not entirely to my surprise), was a ‘psychopath in the classic mould’, who’d been in the habit of picking up unsuspecting men at rock concerts, wooing them and then bumping them off. She’d been doing this for several years, and might well have continued for several more had she not been foolhardy enough to commit her final murder in so eye-catching a manner (i.e. by slamming a pumpkin down on her victim’s head) and in so public a place (i.e. the middle of a busy London street). At her subsequent trial she had pleaded guilty to six counts of murder, although she always maintained she was innocent of the death for which she’d actually been arrested, insisting the offending pumpkin had simply dropped out of the sky. No one believed her, however, and she was committed for an indefinite term of detention to a secure unit for the criminally insane.

  I read all this both with interest and, also, with some considerable relief. Not just because it got me off the hook for Keith’s death, but also because it unburdened me of any lingering feelings of guilt I might have harboured about the affair. He was going to be murdered anyway, I thought to myself. All I did was speed the process up a bit. Indeed by dropping the pumpkin I’d probably actually saved lives. God knows how many people the black widow of rock might have gone on to murder had she not been arrested that night. The whole thing made me feel quite good about myself, and I set off to plant my bag of dogshit with a carefree step and a big smile on my face.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I DECIDED I had wings at about the age of four, although I’d suspected as much almost from the first moment I was capable of thinking of such things.

  Most children, of course, at some time or other, imagine themselves possessed of magical powers. In my case, however, it was more than mere idle speculation. I do have wings. Or, at least, two small, knotted humps at the top end of my back, to either side of my spine, which I certainly know contain wings. Folded-up wings, ready to burst out and flap at the appropriate moment.

  I’ve poss
essed these humps since birth. Father once took me to see a doctor about them, the latter pronouncing, with a lack of insight typical of the medical profession, that they were, in fact, simply misshapen bones. I know better, however. I know they’re wings.

  They’ve never hurt, my wings, nor ached, nor, indeed, done very much at all. They are simply there, folded up, waiting. I never talk about them. Even Emily, who knows more about me than any other person in the entire world, doesn’t know about the wings. To look at me, you wouldn’t even think I had them. They’re my special secret.

  I still hope they might come out one day, although I suspect it’s now too late and after all these years they’ve probably shrivelled up and withered. I never stop dreaming, though. It would be nice to fly, if only for a moment. Life on the ground can be so dull and painful. I yearn to ascend to some greater contentment.

  It’s early afternoon on the fourth day of my note and I’m still feeling in tip-top condition. In even more tip-top condition than I did yesterday, when I in turn felt even more tip-top than the day before. As each hour passes I feel like I’m getting younger. I’m now scuttling up and down my ladder like a circus performer, and find that stretching upwards to reach the top of each wall, and crouching downwards to reach its bottom, no longer strains me as much as it did when I first started. Even my eyes are improving. This morning I was able to dispense with my candle for almost four hours. Things are becoming clearer.

  I’m still hardly sleeping, although I have had a couple of half-hour snoozes up in the dome. It’s almost as if, anticipating the eternal sleep into which I’ll soon be pitching myself, my body is determined to make the most of what wakefulness it has remaining. I’ve never felt so alive. My eyelids are light as ether; my mind as sharp as a scalpel blade.

  So far, my plan to coincide specific murders with specific spaces seems to be working pretty well. Walter’s story slots neatly into the left-hand side of the eastern gallery, Keith’s the right, with the door and windows acting as buffers between the two narratives. I’ve further emphasized the fact that they are two separate periods in my life by scoring a pair of thick lines across the dusty parquet flooring thus:

  My account of the events of yesterday, meanwhile, fitted almost perfectly in the space between the two windows. It brings warmth to my heart to see note and architecture working in such close harmony.

  Now, however, I have left the eastern gallery and, candle strapped to forehead, wax sploshing downwards across the bridge of my nose, am back in the gloom of the castle foyer.

  There haven’t, thank God, been any more memory crises like those of yesterday. A few slip-ups, yes – the chords to ‘Love Typhoon’ were, of course, Em C Am G, as opposed to Am F – but nothing too disastrous. Seven days from my hundredth birthday, I think I’m entitled to forget some things!

  Indeed, as if to expiate its earlier misdemeanours, my brain has been throwing up not just those memories relevant to the task in hand, but ones I didn’t even know I possessed in the first place.

  For instance, way back by the gallery windows, just prior to my encounter with Keith Cream, you may recall my shouting to Emily: ‘Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know!’ It was simply a turn of phrase, a chance remark. But then, as I wrote it, I suddenly remembered that as I child it had been my firm belief that money did grow on trees.

  In the garden of White Lodge, you see, there was an old plum tree, whose branches in spring unleashed a snowstorm of blossoms across the lawn. My father told me this was a magic tree, and that as well as producing big, fat, purple plums, money also grew amongst its branches.

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ I would say.

  ‘Oh yes, it does,’ he’d chuckle. ‘Look!’ And he’d reach up into the leaves and bring down a bright ha’penny piece clutched between his fingers. It was a simple trick, of course, the ha’penny having been concealed in his hand before he raised it, but it never failed to convince me.

  ‘More!’ I’d cry. ‘More!’

  And he’d reach up again and pull down a succession of pennies and sixpences and shillings and farthings whilst I ran around trying to see precisely where he was picking them from. And he’d do the same thing with jelly babies and cigarette cards and marbles, until eventually I informed Mrs Eggs, our housekeeper, that there was no need for her to go to the shops any more because everything she might possibly need could simply be plucked from branches of the magic tree.

  Some memories we know we possess, just as a librarian knows what books are kept in the library of which they are in charge. I know, for instance, that if I really thought about it I could dredge up a recollection of my first full day at Simsby’s Banking and Financial, or of the night I lost my virginity, or the afternoons I played tennis with Charlie Chaplin. They might not be at the forefront of my mind, but I know these memories exist, somewhere, waiting to be called upon if need be. I remember that I have them.

  There is, however, another class of memories, and those are the forgotten memories. The lost memories. The memories we had no idea we possessed in the first place, languishing deep within the repository of our minds like long-lost toys amidst the bric-a-brac of a dusty old attic.

  The money tree is one such memory. Since the waning of my childhood it hasn’t once entered my mind. It’s been all but eradicated. I wouldn’t have remembered it even if I’d wanted to.

  And then, suddenly, there it was, popping up unbidden like a bubble in the middle of a millpond. Why it should appear now, at this time, with no warning, I have no idea. After all, I must have used the phrase ‘Money doesn’t grow on trees’ dozens of times previously without it triggering that particular recollection. I feel like an actor who, having rehearsed a play a hundred times, suddenly finds it’s sprouted an entirely new scene. My life, it would appear, is larger than I remember it.

  This is all very exciting. It does, after all, turn the note into something of an adventure. Who knows what’s waiting to happen in my past? Who knows what thrills are there to be discovered? Maybe there are daring escapades to be relived, exotic beauties to sleep with, distant places to visit. Maybe I once buried a large chest of treasure on some deserted beach, completely forgot about it, and am now on the point of miraculously recalling its whereabouts. The past, it would seem, is every bit as mysterious as the future, every bit as uncertain and pregnant with opportunity. I might only have seven days left in front of me, but behind there’s a whole life waiting to be lived.

  For the moment, however, I’ve no time for any more memory adventures, for the crunch of tyres on gravel and the tooting of a car horn alerts me to the arrival of Dr Bannen with the weekly provisions. I must remember to order a bottle of good claret to kill myself with. See you later.

  Dr Bannen, as I have already mentioned, is the local quack. I believe his first name is John, although I’m not a hundred per cent sure and, frankly, don’t really care. For 15 years I’ve only ever addressed him as Dr Bannen, and see no reason to get more familiar at this late stage in the proceedings.

  A big, red-faced man, with broad shoulders, a slightly off-centre nose and hypnotically large eyebrows, Dr Bannen is not, it must be said, the ideal advert for the profession to which he belongs, suffering as he does from the most appalling infirmity of the lungs. Whether this is because he smokes too much, or has some sort of allergy, I can’t say. He is, however, constantly wheezing, peppering every sentence with an unsavoury array of pants and gasps and puffs and coughs. Even at his least wheezy he still sounds like he’s got a Brillo Pad lodged in his oesophagus, and the pleasure of receiving my weekly supplies is always tainted by the fear that he might suddenly keel over and suffocate in the middle of giving them to me. I’ve often wondered whether I should enrol myself on a first-aid course, just in case.

  He’s a perfectly friendly man, somewhere in his mid-fifties, married with three children and born and bred in the village, where he’s now practised medicine for the best part of 30 years. He is, I gather, a leading light in the local rotary club,
and numbers amongst his interests golf, the Times crossword puzzle and tropical fish. Aside from that, there’s not really a great deal to say about him. He wouldn’t, I suspect, write a particularly engrossing suicide note.

  Dr Bannen is the only person on earth with whom I have any contact these days. In 15 years I’ve neither seen nor spoken to a single other soul. It was Dr Bannen who helped me move into the castle when I first arrived, and it’s Dr Bannen who keeps me up to date with events in the outside world (or at least events in the village, which, so far as he’s concerned, is the only part of the world that really matters). I suspect he thinks I’m batty, although he never actually says anything. I have noticed, however, that his wheezing tends to increase whenever I come close to him. I once brushed a greenfly from his shoulder and he coughed for upwards of two minutes.

  Every Friday Dr Bannen’s Land Rover comes clattering up the track from the village, bringing my supplies. I think he only intended this to be a temporary arrangement whilst I settled into the castle after first arriving, but it’s somehow become a permanent fixture and I am now reliant upon him. I suspect he’d like to stop doing it, but he’s too good a man to say so, and I’m too bad a one to give him the choice. He always comes at 3 p.m., never earlier, never later, and his visits have become the one fixed point in my otherwise timeless existence. Today, as always, he arrived on the dot, pulling up on the swathe of grass in front of the castle and tooting his horn to let me know he was there.

  ‘Good afternoon, Dr Bannen!’ I called, issuing from my abode and pulling the door to behind me. ‘Cold weather we’re having.’

  ‘It certainly is,’ he wheezed, clambering from the car, pulling open its rear doors and removing a box of goods. ‘I reckon we could be in for some snow soon. On the doorstep OK?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Absolutely fine. Just put it down anywhere.’