Crandolin

by Anna Tambour

  And what had he seen on the way up to this teetering village? Terrace after terrace with not a soul to protect them. Not only that. Last autumn’s crop was here for all to see and take. Bunches of what looked like small stones hung inside a casketry of vines—stones coated in sooty black. And instead of wide green leaves, the vines had flourished, ingrowing mostly, with a few dry grey tendrils grotesquely reaching out. The weavings were too tight to reach in and steal a grape, but who would want to? It would be bitter as burnt bread. A widows’ vintage, eh?

  Crush bitter widows to make the Evil One’s wine.

  As for the jug of wine that is his due after his exertions to reach this place, it would be an hour’s walk once he got down the mountain again, till he could have a drink.

  So that is this year’s play on me? he chuckled. What better time to arrive?

  Even on good years, spring was a long wait for a full belly. But their killing of their sustenance to foil him this time is their boldest deception yet, and will be their undoing.

  After such a strenuous morning, this game of theirs put him in a splendid mood. To have done this—this year’s virgin crop must be the best yet. He had never questioned why the virgins of this village gave the right hair, but they always had. Perhaps it was the hardness of the life. The hair was strong, and black, to be sure, but there were virgins in every town with strong black hair. Why here? What does it prosper me to wonder?

  “I’ll be generous,” he sang. “I’ll hand out another ribbon, for amusement.” He felt in his pocket to see if he had an extra ribbon, but he always travelled light.

  That was moments ago. He is thirsty and winded after the long climb up, and impatient to get back down the mountain and on his way.

  He lifts the stone from the basket, but instead of the long thick tails of hair that he expects, shiny and midnight black and fragrant with virginity—what is under the stone but the sour rats’nest combings of a grandmother—a thin pad of hair, the colour of peed- on cotton.

  “What’s this?”—as if he didn’t know.

  A crone leans out of the hole in the wall that the basket had been dropped from. You could not call it a window any more than you could picture her plump and fresh. Yet her breasts swing above him in a manner that would have been coquettish half a century ago. “You liked my hair well once,” she giggles.

  “Where have you hidden them, old fool?” Munifer’s tongue sticks, and he is suddenly fed-up with this annual runaround.

  “Ayeee!” she laughs delightedly. “Who’s the fool? They’ve died.”

  “That’s a new one. Let’s have it.”

  “Starved, I tell you.”

  He shakes his walking stick at her. “I’m not playing.”

  “You’ll have to dye it,” she says airily. “That is all I have.” She pulls herself back into her decrepit tower as if she were a tortoise and could walk away, her home on her back. He can hear her laughing, as if he were just anyone.

  Munifer jumps up and down, enraged beyond need. After all, she’s only an old woman. “You don’t care for your life!”

  “Why should I?”

  “I’ll give you a reason.”

  Half of him says, “Just go to the next house up,” and the other half of him says that he so badly needs to beat this woman, he can already hear the sounds of her fruitless begging.

  He looks around him on the stony ground, and finds something that will do, though his better half hates having to put himself to such measures. I’m an artist. That I must be the collector as well is quite insufferable. But the need for secrecy had loaded him with this burden, for his status.

  An old beam. Possibly from a cart, or a woman’s yoke. He picks it up and swings it like a ram—knock, knock, knock . . . crack. But the wood is hard. “Open this door,” he yells, as the beam is heavy. “Open this door or I’ll—”

  “Come in, come in, wherever you are!”

  “Hiyahh!”

  In fury, he backs off, kicks up dust, repositions himself, and runs at that door, the heavy beam jutting out from under his arm like some giant’s head readied to butt any opposition into the heavens, or hell. The timbers burst through, and he falls upon splinters and rubble. One of his knees must have hit a pointed stone. Sharp pains shoot up to his groin, and he screams.

  Above, laughter tinkles.

  The darkness here is broken only by the opening he’s made but he faces away from it, so his eyes need time to see. Tenderly, he feels under his robe. Yes, the skin is broken and wet, but his bones are there, strong as staves and stones. He puts his hands out to steady himself, swearing to give this old hag to Providence. His leg isn’t working quite right yet, and he is unbalanced, the fingers of his right hand flail out in the murk, and stop, tangled in a mass of hair—the last straw of his good feelings about this village.

  He yells so loud, his ears hurt in this close stinking space: “So now you’re so poor you have sheep, do you?” He is so angry now that his voice squeaks. Worse, his weeping, swelling, burning, stiff and silently screaming knee will not let him climb the ladder and choke the hag into telling him where his virgins are (and everyone else, for that matter, not that he cares) for some time.

  He closes his eyes and tenderly touches, then clutches his knee, trying to deaden for a moment, the pounding pain.

  Soft sounds come from above—wet, old-womanish burbles. He wonders if she is too crazy to be made to tell.

  He must have dozed, for he wakes with a start. The moon is awake, lighting things in here with a peculiar glow. He turns his head to the sheepskin, and sees that it is not. It is, must have been, a virgin. And lying beside it is another. And another.

  His screams meet laughter from above.

  “I’m too old to die,” she says, maybe to herself, not that it makes a difference. He is halfway down the slope already, running and rolling, hands to his sides so that he can’t touch anything here again, not the stones nor the bones nor the rotted hair nor the naked, reaching vines.

  Tantrumic wrecks

  “NOT THAT WAY,” the Omniscient pointed out. “When the satellite tumbled, it flashed the moon’s reflection, not the sun’s.”

  The author by-lined as O.P. Mantz kicked a library book across the room and yelled incoherently at a dumb machine. Then he turned his face back to the screen. The mistake glared, but he did not correct it. Instead, his fingers pecked faster than a flock of chickens, and as indiscriminately.

  The Omniscient sighed, but only privately, in the professional manner of any doctor faced with a condition that bores him. The Omniscient’s eons of experience had made him rather proud of himself as a behaviour expert. His diagnosis? Tantrumic self- destructiveness—a fit that would blow itself out. Today Mantz’s tantrum was mild. Yelling at his computer was a piffle compared to the mess he’d made once with that .44 next to the thesaurus.

  The Omniscient waited, his nerves fraying—but as he was born to be and was destined to be forever, he was the soul of patience. This session had been trying, but that is the nature of rubberies.

  The END came very soon. Mantz SAVEd in his workmanlike manner and scrolled to the top of page 1. He read faster than the Omniscient, or possibly didn’t finish what was shriekingly so untrue that it isn’t worth finishing, not that the Omniscient had shrieked or been anything other than a model of forbearance.

  The author swivelled in his chair, cursed to a pattern that made the Omniscient wonder yet again, Why do modern rubberies use such a poor and simple stock of curses? No wonder they need physical violence, and treated another book like a football. (The Omniscient would have said he raged, which just shows another of the Omniscient’s multiplying problems.)

  Then finally, Mantz performed what the Omniscient recognised as the man’s calming routine. He grabbed a squeaky toy and poked a pencil up its bum, said “Fuuuuuuck,” put a hand to the back of his neck, gave it a vicious tug, and exhaled “Heh!”—bad air out. He squared his shoulders and poised his fingers over the keyboard. Tantrum
over.

  Truth will always out in the END. The Omniscient felt such a warmth of happiness, of empathy, that he wished he could “Heh” too. Instead, he only emanated: I forgive you.

  But the author pressed no DELETE key, began no fresh anything, corrected nothing, nought, absolutely zot. Instead, he turned his music (music!) on, sprawled back in his chair, stretched out his arms and smiled; and tripping down those paragraphs, he played with words. He laughed in delight at one insertion (why?)and took his hands off the keys. He must have liked this part in the music because he out-shouted the shouter and hit his desk violently with both hands, to a rhythm. The song ended (at last) and he turned off the noise and read the story again.

  His brow creased. Then he picked up an open book on his desk and looked up something, then flicked pages to some section in it, and began to read. It couldn’t have been a thesaurus, because this was taking too long.

  The Omniscient wafted but it was a few moments till Mantz held the book up sufficiently so that the Omniscient could see its spine. THE SEVEN BASIC PLOTS.

  Plots. Seven. Basic. “And which are you?” he zzinged.

  “Yeow! Whadthe?”

  “Your life.” Stake, cesspit, garrotte, lightning strike. I’ve been pushed too far. The Omniscient yearned to be something other than a reporter. As it was, he’d only caused a power surge.

  The model author millions looked up to as “ineffably cool” picked up a paper cup and drank deeply of its one drop of coffee. His hand shook.

  The Omniscient was shaken, too. He was angry at himself for losing his temper. And worried. After all, he had broken at least one rule: Non-interference.

  That didn’t mean he wasn’t mightily peeved, and hurt. What non-observer wrote that trash, with its predictable seven? he asked himself but he couldn’t ask anyone else. And now he couldn’t see, either. The book was lying in a disordered state between the chair’s feet.

  The Omniscient left the room as unnoticed as he had been unheralded. Mustn’t I observe? Don’t they want new stories? They always did. Who will watch if not myself?

  Those thoughts should, logically, have reassured him.

  I should write The Seven Basic Rubberies. Fancy being ignored when I’m kind enough to correct. And to think I etc. etc.

  There had always been stupid storytellers, and those who babbled like babies in love with the sound of their own blubbering language imitations. But the Omniscient had never before put O.P. Mantz in those categories. After all, Mantz had—for his first six books—taken dictation almost always as faithfully as a secretary.

  If they no longer seek to know anything, what about me?

  Q. Do you remember to have lost a blue coat?

  A. Yes, it was taken out of my wardrobe; two volumes of Smollett’s works, and a silk handkerchief.

  —Proceedings of the Old Bailey

  Poached capercaillie

  WATCHING WITHOUT EYES, feeling without skin, smelling without nose, tasting without tongue and nose and throat; dry as the wind yet sparkling with bubbles of drool as undeniably appearing out of nowhere as the water that flows from a rock when struck by a magic rod—Nick (for lack of a better name) did all these things from his perch as a frill around the cinnamon-stick nest of the cinnamologus.

  He had never been so well cared for. Not even his mother had tucked him into bed as well as the male cinnamologus tucked the wind-loosed wisps of Nick (or more properly, in the cinnamologus’ eyes: the glossy red fluff).

  And what of the crandolin? That crandolin blood with Type Female Human Virgin blood, a part of the mysterious whole wakened in its every ‘cell’. That blood had sat for centuries— ever since the cook dropped a splotch of crandolin pudding in- the-making upon the parchment page. The splotch had aged and dried (trapping the blood in frustrated suspended animation). And the book was tossed, lost, found, and finally treasured by some. But the stain was viewed as a blemish that hurt the value of the illumination—till Nick, back in the library in his other life (how many days ago?) gazed at that ugly ancient dessicated splotch. And he saw, not a stain, but the ultimate romance: the most dangerous, delicious, adwentoursomme tasting of his life. And though the offering was frustratingly small—an amuse bouche—this was one amusement that could kill, or worse. So of course, he fell upon the stain and ravished it.

  And what of that crandolin? It was now a part of Nick as surely as he was the crandolin, flesh of my flesh, soul of my soul, a part of me as surely as I am a part of you, a part of myself—but what the hell are you?

  In this scrap of himself, as this flesh, if you could call it that, he sensed now as he had never sensed before. Smell and taste were tuned to such extremes that he would have wept if he could, from the joy of it, and the tragedy. The cinnamologuses would taste insane, inexpressibly divine, even though he hadn’t plucked their feathers, spitted them, torn their flesh with the traditional two forks in preparation for making a giant bastila, the pigeon pie redolent with rose petals, toasted almonds, cinnamon, black pepper, ginger, and orange flower water, the mess nestled in pastry so thin that when you take it from the oven and pour the clarified butter on it, the crispy, golden layers of pastry glow. He memory gorged; fingers ripping into pastry; fragrant, buttery pigeon juice running down to his elbow. The meat had been tender as an unborn, but needed all the extras. These cinnamologuses needed nothing but themselves. They would make roses pucker in jealous rage. As for other exotics, the macaw had tasted surprisingly domestic. The Madagascan hoopoe was a characterless fop. And the bird of paradise downright medicinal from the berries it had been gorging on, or possibly the poisoned arrow.

  The cinnamologus—all these years he’d thought that the nest was the reason for its name. Sure enough, the sticks were fresh, real cinnamon and not cassia. “Who knows the difference these days?” Nick asked himself, which brought on a wave of culinarist’s disgust until he veered into the question: What is these days?

  Nick salivated over the cinnamologuses in the only way he could. Their skin was thin as a raspberry’s, and the colour of the male’s: periwinkle blue.

  When Nick had had fingers, he had never touched anything so sublime. As a chef, he yearned to have them, pluck them, spit them; ah, forget the spit. He wanted to sink his teeth into them raw. Nick lusted after their reek. They rubbed their beaks on the cinnamon sticks and gave the cinnamon its scent. No flesh had ever invigorated Nick before, nor humbled him. Certainly, none had ever tortured him. He watched them, and every tick that climbed up onto their skin. He hated those ticks, who drank till they were sated and then unstuck their lips from their birds-as-bottles, falling onto ever-ready sofas of cinnamologus down where they slept off their stupor. What could they appreciate?

  Nick (for lack of a better name) was maddened with want and literally stuck—watching, smelling, tasting in the only way he could at the moment, for however long that moment was.

  Late for an appointment

  “YOR-MAY-OH,” (They don’t love me), the Muse exploded, as if she’d said “Eureka!”

  “A plague on your aspirations.”

  She’d yelled that many times, too, but at each fresh outburst she was the sole audience, so no one pointed out, You repeat yourself ad nauseam.

  She readied herself with many a moue in the mirror, and furious jerks of limbs, though expertly as ever.

  “Why me?” she demanded of the mirror.

  It reflected silently.

  She opened the lid of what she’d recently begun calling My Glory Box, and began tossing ribbons, corsets, sandals, jewels, veils and petticoats into the air.

  “Жæzox ψoowa bbrr . . . ” (To each, according to his need) she sang tunelessly as she chose . . . the red red dress. And the red rubber, thigh-high boots.

  Dressed and ready to go out, she pumped a fist in the air. “Sod them all!”

  Nick Kippax’s column in Oenologist’s Digest just had to be read again. She uncorked a bottle with her little white teeth. The librarian could wait. After all, he’
d been calling for three days. She’d never serviced him before, but already she hated his whine.

  The third daughter

  MULLIANA ALWAYS SINGS while she works. Her father has three daughters, one more beautiful than she is good, one more good than she is beautiful, and Mulliana, the youngest, whose voice is so lovely that before she lost her milk teeth, her father shut her in a tower so that he could enjoy her voice without being disappointed by either her goodness or her beauty.

  She kneels beside a grass mat, placing pieces of coloured felt down to make poppies and roses and a cinnamologus—a design she learned from her mother. Her back is warmed by a fire but her hands are cold. When the cinnamologus is finished to the last claw, she obscures it with layer after gossamer layer of wool that she has carded, till the mat is covered with a great white cloud.

  Over a fire hangs a cauldron of water. She unhooks it and tips it in dribbles all over the mat till the pot is empty and the white cloud flattened and grey as any waterlogged cloud. She kneels again and rolls the mat tightly, binding it with cords that she has also made, this of her own strong hair.

  And now she steps on the steaming roll, and stamps on it in a rhythm that she first felt in her mother’s womb.

  The water runs into a drain and escapes laughing into the face of the sky.

  Steam escapes the tower through filigreed windows cut in stone. Her voice flies through the openings; rises, and falls down upon a field of sunflowers, boys netting larks, women kneading dough in distant houses; and her ancient father dozing beside a pomegranate tree.