Einstein

by Einstein (retail) (epub)

  Einstein had shown him the way to the garden. Forbidden to enter the house and bored in the pavilion, he had spent the greater part of his time running through the long grass, barking and jumping at Charlie or scratching for beetles and spiders. It was Einstein who had led him to the pond. At the time it had been no more than a shallow ditch filled with leaves and a vinegar of winter rain. But it held the promise of a clean pool that might flash with fish and dragonflies. A marvellous and secret place. So Charlie bought himself a spade and went out one weekend to cut the ditch into shape.

  It felt good to be working in the open air with the cold wind stinging his face and the wet soil under his fingernails and soon he found he’d dug a series of ponds, and the earth from these excavations would become the banks and terraces that he’d fill with fruit and flowers.

  When he’d first lifted the turf with his spade and peeled it back to reveal the bare soil he had felt a vague unease, as if he’d exposed the floor beneath a vast green carpet and could expect to confront, beneath the bare floor, all the heavy machinery that made the planet spin in space.

  As the section of lawn was lifted Baxter had screamed and scolded him from the safety of the ranch style dream home, but he knew she never left the house and would have to be content to shout at him from the windows.

  ‘Why are you digging up the grass, you crazy bastard?’ she had shouted from her throne beneath the rafters. She’d been washing her hair and her head was still wrapped in a turban of towels. She looks like a dyspeptic sultan.

  ‘I want to plant it,’ Charlie had shouted back at her.

  ‘It’s already planted!’

  ‘I wanted to plant a proper garden.’ He paused, squinting up at the house, shielding his eyes with his hand. He thought she’d get the idea. He naturally thought she would share his vision.

  But Baxter didn’t understand him. ‘We already have a proper garden—it’s called a lawn!’ she screamed, pulling at her turban in rage.

  ‘It’s not a lawn, it’s just the remains of the field,’ Charlie had shouted back at the window and he bent once more to his spade. It was going to take a lot of hard work to bring this soil back into condition.

  ‘That’s a fully-landscaped lawn you’re destroying! There’s nothing underneath but dirt. Do you know how much they cost to put down? Do you realise the damage you’re doing?’

  ‘Cow pasture. It’s just cow pasture,’ Charlie had argued, slashing at the grass with his spade.

  ‘Don’t be such a pain! You’re wearing your best office shoes and you’ve managed to cover yourself in mud! Do you think I’m going to clean that jacket? Are you drunk or what? Have you gone mad?’

  ‘I’m planning to grow fresh vegetables. Good wholesome food whenever we need it. And a goat for the milk and perhaps a few chickens for their eggs.’ There was stunned silence for a moment while the full meaning of his words were absorbed by his unhappy audience.

  ‘Why are you trying to frighten me? Is it because of my friends? Is that it? Are you jealous of my friends? If you don’t stop this nonsense at once, I’m warning you, I shall go and phone daddy!’ Baxter had screamed and then, because she was shouted hoarse, she had slammed down the window and sulked.

  Everything Charlie planted had flourished. Rare tropical fruits and vines miraculously thrived among the potatoes and turnips. There were orchids in the spinach beds and jasmine trailing through the onion patch. Charlie didn’t know the rules of gardening so he planted everything he could find, buying countless packets of seed, sprinkling the wizened specks of life into the dark and clinging soil, watching the seedlings unfurl themselves, sprouting towards the sunlight. Nothing disappointed him.

  He loved this quiet garden as he’d loved nothing else in his life. He loved the creeping thistle and ragwort as much as the precious buds or the first magnolia flowers. He loved the blackbirds in the apple trees and the mice in the strawberries and the deep-throated frogs in the gloom of the grottoes. It was his work. It was his small patch of paradise.

  ‘It’s good to be back,’ Einstein sighed, bracing himself against his front legs and stretching his spine so taut that the knot in his tail uncoiled like a spring.

  ‘Yes,’ Charlie whispered. ‘It’s good to see it again.’

  ‘You’d better make the most of it,’ the future Einstein said, turning to his earlier self who had fallen asleep in a clump of marigolds.

  ‘Why?’ Einstein said, cocking an ear and tilting it in Einstein’s direction. ‘What’s going to happen?’

  ‘You’ll soon be driven out,’ Einstein said.

  Einstein sat up and sneezed. He was covered in grass seeds and prickly burrs. His whiskers were dusted with pollen.

  ‘We’re turned out of the garden?’ he said. He shook his head and his jaws fell open. He couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But where do we go from here?’ Einstein said. He was shocked to his marrow. He thought he was in the garden forever. He’d had enough of high adventure. He was nothing but an old seadog who had come ashore to rest his bones.

  ‘You wait,’ Einstein said, in a very superior tone of voice. ‘I can’t tell you. But you’ll find out when the time comes and, believe me, you’re going to hate it.’

  ‘Is he a Deep Time Mariner?" Einstein asked suspiciously, as he slobbered at the feet of the Jolly Green Giant.

  ‘That's right,’ Einstein said.

  ‘Good grief!’

  49.

  As he sat there in the long summer grass, mollified by the drone of bees and the monotonous rattle of insects, the Deep Time Mariner grew sentimental and was moved to tell Charlie something of his own people and their history beyond the stars.

  ‘Long, long ago,’ he began, ‘before this little solar system had been discovered, there was a time called the Time of the Ancient Gardeners. The Ancient Gardeners lived on a planet in the Cyclops Cluster where they mastered the mysteries of the universe. They made the first maps of the stars and unscrambled the chemistry of their sun. They taught the birds of the air to sing, the fishes to swim in the sea. They knew many secrets and exercised many wonderful skills that have long since been forgotten, even by the Deep Time Mariners. And while their nearest neigbours in space were still killing and eating each other in the mucilaginous swamp, the Ancient Gardeners used their gifts to create a paradise for themselves in a garden that covered six planets. They pacified the volcanoes and cured the boiling, sulphurous lakes. They filled the valleys with forests and covered the mountains with painted flowers. They were accomplished draughtsmen and architects. They built elaborate crystal fountains, mirrored halls and intricate puzzles and mazes. And, wherever there was shelter they raised immense crops of fruit and vegetables. They were especially proud of their cabbages.’

  ‘Cabbages?’ Charlie said.

  ‘Cabbages,’ the Mariner growled. ‘They might mean nothing to you, monkey-man, but they’re as rare as hens’ teeth in the gardens of the Cyclops Cluster.’

  ‘What happened to these Gardeners?’ one of the Einsteins asked.

  ‘They had already returned to the dust of the stars before the time of the Mariners. But the Mariners knew of the Gardeners and kept their laws and their gardens. It was the dream of the Mariners to continue the work by planting other planets in the great eternity of space. And so they embarked upon an epic voyage of discovery to the far corners of the universe, collecting all kinds of rare plants and animals to create their gardens of paradise.’

  ‘And the Earth?’ Charlie said, gazing around him at an extravagance of leopard mint and cow parsley. A butterfly, bright as a flake of rust, hung trembling from the lace of a flower.

  ‘The Earth was one of the first and most beautiful gardens to be established in this galaxy,’ the Deep Time Mariner said. ‘And will be the first to perish, if you don’t count the Great Moon of Mali.’

  ‘What happened to the Great Moon of Mali?’

  ‘It was destroyed,’ the Deep Time Mariner said, ‘by a ce
rtain kind of voracious weevil. The weevils ate the roots of the plants that sheltered the fruits that fed the birds that nourished the soil that supported the trees that caught the rain that filled the lakes that supported all the life on the moon.’

  ‘Shocking!’ the Einsteins muttered, shaking their heads. Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The terrible twins of Eden.

  ‘We were disappointed,’ the Mariner confessed. ‘But that was nothing compared to the shock of learning what had happened on Earth. Here we found that monkey-men had dropped from the trees and were everywhere trying to murder each other and shoot, net, harpoon, drown, gas and starve every other creature they found on the planet.’

  ‘Crazy!’ the Einsteins barked together.

  ‘Their brains were addled,’ the Mariner confirmed, fixing Charlie with a crimson eye. ‘And from the slobgollion sloshing around in their skulls they had created all sorts of fantastic lies to support their cruelty and conceits. They invented gods in their own image and asked them to bless the destruction. They shut themselves away in the vaults of vast cities and when they sensed the planet was dying they built crude and dangerous machines in a vain attempt to conquer the stars.’

  ‘Remember Laika,’ one of the Einsteins said. ‘The first dog to be shot into space.’

  ‘They strapped her into a Sputnik,’ the other Einstein said, ‘with wires sticking into her brain. Sailing in circles above the Earth while her masters watched her starving to death.’

  ‘Charlie built this garden,’ the first Einstein said, sensing now that it might be time to draw the Mariner back from the brink of a dangerous melancholy.

  ‘Indeed,’ the Mariner murmured. ‘Monkey-men were born to be gardeners.’ He took a huge breath and seemed to relax again. He tilted his head and blinked at the sky.

  ‘He laid all the paths and planted the orchard. He never stopped working,’ Einstein continued. ‘It was his dream. When it was finished he wanted to be buried here among the rhododendrons.’

  ‘Where is Charlie?’ the other Einstein said suddenly, sitting up and trawling the air with his snout.

  ‘He can’t be far away,’ Einstein said. ‘He always spends weekends in the garden.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Charlie said. ‘Leave me alone.’ He jumped up and plunged into the shrubbery like a man throwing himself into the sea. ‘We’ve seen enough. We don’t belong here. What will happen when I meet myself? I want to leave this nightmare.’

  ‘Wait and you might learn something,’ the Mariner told him.

  ‘No! I’ll go crazy,’ Charlie said. ‘The shock will probably kill me.’

  ‘Which one of you?’ grinned Einstein, turning to wink at himself.

  ‘What difference does it make?’ Charlie shouted, with his head spinning from the thought of it.

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ the Deep Time Mariner hissed. ‘You’re far too primitive to see the ghost of your future.’

  ‘I can see the two of them,’ Charlie insisted, pointing at the two dogs who were grinning at him with a most exasperating expression on their hairy faces.

  ‘It’s different for me,’ they said together. ‘I’m a dog.’

  ‘Concentrate,’ the Mariner said. ‘It’s really very simple. If he saw you it would mean that he had acquired the gift of looking into the future.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Charlie said.

  ‘Yes.’

  Charlie nodded and considered the implications of these words for a few moments. ‘So what?’ he said at last.

  'Do you remember meeting yourself while you lived here in the garden? Can you recall a warm summer’s morning, long ago, when you stumbled upon yourself sitting in the shrubbery talking to a Deep Time Mariner?’

  ‘No,’ Charlie admitted.

  ‘Exactly. And do you know what will happen in the next few minutes?’ the Mariner asked.

  Charlie shook his head.

  ‘You can’t look into the future,’ the Mariner concluded. ‘You have never, in the past, had the gift of looking into the future. It follows that your past self will not be aware of your present self but your present self will be fully aware of your past self since the experience of the past is already familiar to you. And that should be easy enough to grasp, even for you monkey-men.’

  ‘We’ll soon know if it works,’ one of the Einsteins said, yawning and stretching himself. ‘If he’s not in the pumpkin patch he’ll be sleeping in the summerhouse. Let’s go to look for him.’

  50.

  But the summerhouse was empty.

  They climbed the steps and tiptoed into the sunwashed studio. Charlie gazed around at the familiar, shabby furniture. The dusty easel. The makeshift kitchen. The horsehair sofa that had served as a bed. A pile of freshly cut flowers lay spread on the kitchen table. A cheap glass vase waited patiently beside them. Charlie stepped forward and placed the flowers in the vase. Sweet peas and small wild roses. Their fragrance filled him with a brief, delirious nostalgia.

  ‘You’re not here,’ the Mariner said. He sounded disappointed.

  ‘He must be in the house,’ one of the Einsteins said brightly, leaping onto the bed.

  ‘Let’s leave it,’ Charlie said, haunted by the sight of his old gardening shoes standing sentry beneath a chair. ‘It doesn’t feel right.’ If he was somewhere in the house then he would probably be with Baxter. He was nervous about meeting the ghost of himself and he was absolutely positive that he didn’t want to see Baxter again. His moment of sentimental regret dissolved into panic.

  But the Einsteins were already down the veranda steps with the Deep Time Mariner in pursuit.

  ‘Move, monkey-man!’ the Mariner shouted, when he sensed Charlie hesitate. ‘You can’t afford to be left behind. You’ve got enough problems.’

  Charlie sprang into life and chased them through the garden towards the back of the house.

  ‘There’s nobody home,’ he whispered with relief, as they peered through the kitchen windows.

  ‘It’s the perfect opportunity to look around the place,’ the Mariner said. He was impossible. You couldn’t argue with the creature.

  ‘It’s not very interesting,’ Charlie insisted, as he tried the lock on the door. To his dismay the door swung open and the little party entered the house.

  The kitchen was quiet. The remains of a meal were on the table. There was a stick of French bread, broken apart with its soft white interior pulled away; a block of butter, studded with crumbs, melting into a cracked saucer; a half-eaten tuna salad, smeared with congealing mayonnaise, composting in a china bowl. There were fragments of eggshell on the floor and the scorched smell of boiled black coffee lingered in the air. But Charlie and Baxter were missing.

  ‘I can hear them!’ one of the Einsteins whispered, suddenly freezing and cocking his ears.

  ‘Where?’ the second Einstein demanded scornfully. He had heard nothing. He was padding around the deserted room, lapping at crumbs, snuffling into the skirting boards.

  ‘They’re upstairs in one of the bedrooms,’ the first dog said in great excitement and, before Charlie could stop him, he’d shot through the kitchen, his claws clacking on the treacherous stretch of Spanish tiles, and was running towards the main staircase.

  There was a commotion in the master bedroom. Charlie and the Deep Time Mariner crept forward and peeked through a crack in the half-open door. The curtains had been drawn against the sun and the room was drenched in a warm twilight.

  A naked man, a pale and scrawny Romeo, a knobbly leprechaun, was sprawled on the bed with Baxter sitting astride him. There were clothes and pillows thrown on the floor and a tangle of clothes on a little chair.

  Baxter Pangloss, plump as a porpoise and wearing only a cotton vest, was squirming on her spindle-shanked lover and punching the mattress with her knees.

  It was a moment or more before Charlie, peeping at the door, recognised the man as himself. How skinny and foolish he looked! How different he was to the man he imagined. He wanted to rush forward and cover the sight with a
sheet.

  ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Baxter wheeled as she pummelled him hard amidships.

  ‘I can’t help it… ’ Charlie grumbled as he caught his breath. ‘I guess I need some encouragement.’ She was giving him such a pounding that his teeth had begun to chatter.

  ‘Help yourself!’ Baxter snarled and without moving from the saddle she wrenched the vest from her shoulders.

  Her big breasts swung loose as pastry and dangled over Charlie’s face. He reached out gingerly and rolled them around with his hands.

  ‘I can remember when you couldn’t wait to get me into bed,’ she continued, slapping her thighs against him.

  ‘That was different,’ Charlie gasped, busily tweaking her nipples as if he were tuning a radio.

  ‘You’re such a selfish bastard,’ she muttered.

  ‘I’m trying to co-operate,’ he said gloomily. He couldn’t concentrate. There was work to be done in the garden. He was worried about an attack of neck rot in the onion beds and a creeping leaf infection that had started to threaten the roses.

  ‘But she’s not wearing her oxygen suit,’ the Mariner whispered in some surprise.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ an Einstein whispered. ‘She doesn’t have an oxygen suit.’

  ‘I saw her wearing it,’ the Deep Time Mariner insisted. ‘It was red rubber with some sort of ventilation system around the vital organs.’

  ‘She threw it away.’

  ‘Why?’ the Mariner demanded. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ the Einstein grinned.

  ‘You’ve fallen out!’ Baxter screeched. She stopped pounding on Charlie and searched between her legs. She looked outraged. She scrambled from the bed and threw herself down on the floor.