by Anna Tambour
He repositioned the tossed blanket so that it covered her, and his sides. She was better than a quilt.
“You are beautiful to me,” he said for the hundredth time.
“You only say that.”
What can a man do? He shrugged.
“See?” She pushed herself up and the V of space acted like a bellows, sucking in icy air. “You think I’m ugly.”
Before he could wrap his arms around her, she collapsed upon his chest in another spasm of grief. When his breath returned, he repositioned the blanket again. It didn’t reach past his feet, but she did.
Two cars down, Valentin shivered and cursed. He always consumed alone in bed at night whatever casual pilfering he’d brought off that day. Tonight, it was a bag of Smith’s crisps.
A hellish night, the bag had spilled its sharp, delicious contents between his sheets.
Faldarolo’s nose
OH, THE STONES! Oh, the steepness! Oh, Faldarolo’s heart, thudding as if it sees the depths of the ravine when just moments ago, a laden donkey passed on the inside of this path wide enough for two flies.
Faldarolo would sit against the mountain to compose himself, but he cannot stop. Cannot rest.
Oh, the curses of the bladder-pipe!
The strawberry-mark is livid as ever. Faldarolo’s feet bleed, and he starves because of her. She travels strapped to his chest, his belongings on his back, mostly medicaments for her condition (not that they work) and the last dab that he possesses of the ass’s butter emolument she demands.
At the top of the ridge he stops. To his right, the path drops down to a valley and the first town he has seen since he was driven from home by the torments of the bladder-pipe. Perhaps she will play.
Always Faldarolo hopes, but in the meantime, a scrawny tree stands unluckily beside him.
With apologies, he strips some bark and eats it.
Sweet-smelling town-smoke enfolds Faldarolo. He swallows.
“A musician?”
The bladder-pipe in Faldarolo’s arms wears her blue velvet cloak with arrogant modesty, exposing a bit of neck.
“A musician for the Haczi!”
“Come, musician.”
“No, come with us!”
Faldarolo lets himself be led by a band of boys to a house with great carved and studded doors. He is silent, but his eyebrows are busy, and his ears.
The head boy bangs a knocker in the shape of a cat’s head and in a moment, Faldarolo is in a courtyard filled with roses and orange trees.
An imposing man comes forward. He must be the Haczi, whatever that means. “Water,” he says, to Faldarolo’s relief. A servant scurries forward with an ewer and towel. Faldarolo washes his hands and face and the servant leaves. The sweet music of a fountain tinkles maddeningly.
“You will play here tonight?” says the Haczi.
Faldarolo is weak with hunger, parched as a rusk. “I would be honoured.”
The Haczi, a well-oiled man who would dwarf a buffalo, turns to leave when Faldarolo speaks. “My pay,” he asks humbly. “What will you pay me?”
The servant reappears carrying a glass of water. Faldarolo wishes he had not asked. So crude, and now it is too late.
“Why, half before,” says the master, “and half after. The usual.” And he sweeps away.
The servant rushes after him. Drops of water fall from the glass.
The roses emit their perfume while Faldarolo stands in the courtyard feeling stupid as a post. Half before? He hopes he has not offended. The bladder-pipe’s behaviour has been a blessing, forcing him to leave the place of his birth.
Faldarolo tries to listen past the fountain. Somewhere in the house a woman wails, sweet and bitter. Faldarolo cannot make out words.
The servant returns with the glass, now half-full. Faldarolo drinks politely.
The servant leaves and Faldarolo remains standing, waiting for the half-pay. He hopes, selfishly, that it will buy him a piece of bread and a glass of tea.
The wailing continues. He dare not sit, but he wavers faintly like a distant tree in the desert.
Billows of smell envelope him. A great feast is being prepared, and his tongue prickles. Sputtering lamb, quince, cinnamon, rice, almonds, honey, fresh loaves of toothsome bread. Sizzling butter, roast pistachios, fried spice.
The wailing continues and the smells increase. Servants carry things back and forth.
Finally, Faldarolo can stand no more. “Please ask your master,” he says when he sees the water-carrier, “for my first-half pay.”
Haughtily, the water carrier rushes off.
“Musician!”
Faldarolo looks up. The master of the house leans over an inner balcony. “I am paying you now.”
Faldarolo waits, the smells getting ever stronger, richer. No one, however, appears with the pay. It will soon be night. His stomach makes sounds like a beaten gourd. Though his thirst was partly quenched, these smells have filled his nose till he must not breathe. So Faldarolo asks another servant to remind the master, in case the master’s message has become lost.
“I am paying you now!” the Haczi bellows from somewhere.
Faldarolo trembles and bids himself to be patient.
A great many people arrive. Through their babble in what must be the banquet room upstairs, Faldarolo hears the fountain and the woman’s wail.
Finally, the master appears.
Faldarolo removes his bunched-up sleeve from his face. He had been breathing through the thick, coarse cloth ever since the smells became unbearable.
“Come,” the Haczi says.
Faldarolo, experienced Faldarolo does not ‘come’. “My pay, sir,” he says with dignity.
The great man stops, stunned. “You’ve been paid. Half before—”
“That is what we agreed.”
“And now you want to change the agreement?”
“With respect, your Eminence, no one gave me—”
“I saw you take!”
Faldarolo answers with as much dignity as he can, given his honesty and his dress. “I took nothing.”
“You stuffed your nose till you were full!”
The Haczi mounts the first step. “You are worth it, aren’t you?” His eyes glitter with tears.
Faldarolo doesn’t know where to cast his eyes. They settle on the man’s fleshy hand clutching the banister.
“I am an honourable man,” he says “and my bladder-pipe is a treasure above rubies.”
“You’re greedy,” the Haczi sighs, “but you’re all we have at the moment.”
And you are all I have.
At the entrance to the banquet room, the master of the house pauses. “Sniff and chew, eh? No more of your nonsense?”
Faldarolo nods, confused as ever, but what else can he do?
“Good. Never before have I seen a man fill up till he couldn’t take any more first-half pay.”
The room drips with love.
Faldarolo and the bladder-pipe are as-one.
The town’s most celebrated eaters swallow without tasting, or sit with their hands in their laps.
Faldarolo’s eyebrows move like caterpillars in honey as the bladder-pipe moans in his hands.
A mouse stands on a tray, eating the congealed sheep-fat off the sides of a mountain of pilaf. The men sigh, shift their buttocks, hum, sway, tap their knees, rub themselves under their robes, puff out their moustaches as they breathe. Only the mouse’s eyes are open.
The wailing has stopped.
“I should have paid you twice as much,” the Haczi exclaims. He rushes out of the room, returning in moments with a huge apricot cat.
The cat sits on the master’s lap and stares at Faldarolo.
Faldarolo’s eyes are glazed, his breath and soul consumed by love. Thirst and hunger are forgot. And She! She has blessed him tonight. What hearts can make together . . .
Under the bladder-pipe’s elegantly worn cape, “Twice as much of nothing is nothing,” Nick screams.
Back in Faldarolo’s bi
rthplace, when Nick first realised that his struggles to escape the bladder-pipe hurt her and therefore Faldarolo, Nick stopped struggling. His second revelation was that maybe he could help Faldarolo, so he had decided that tonight he would keep the bitch in line if she decided to play up. “You hurt him, and I’ll hurt you.” He hadn’t needed to do anything, and frankly, had been as seduced by her as everyone else (except the mouse). Finally he saw what Faldarolo saw in her.
But shysters, this is crook. The man’s gotta eat.
Nick thinks of all the times in the restaurant trade that seedy deals were tried on him, and remembers an old story. “Half-pay now, and half-pay later.”—in food, the first half being smell. Nick adds up all the evidence against this Haczi character, who, upon closer examination, looks like an “all you can eat” abuser. The fur- covered blimp, too.
Nick twitches. You couldn’t see it, but the bladder-pipe feels punched.
“Eeooh,” she squeals.
“Sorry, my love,” Faldarolo mumbles, thinking that his chapped lips have pinched her. He smears forehead sweat onto his lips and takes her into his mouth again.
“Yuchgh,” she blurts. “Chrrghhhhhhhh.”
Faldarolo cringes, and blows down her throat with the most soothing of—“Chxxxgggheeee!”
The cat sits up, and wails.
“My beloved!” cries the Haczi.
The bladder-pipe screeches.
The cat shrieks.
Nick is satisfied that he saved Faldarolo from a worse humiliation: being a joke. Can he even add, Nick ponders as Faldarolo contorts himself for sleep in a field of stones. Unbelievably, he falls asleep, the bladder-pipe strapped to his breast, completely unsatisfied.
Back in town, the Haczi cries.
“Who now will soothe your cares, Kishkish my sweet?” Servants squat in the dark gorging on the feast: meaty pilafs and stuffed eggplant, cold and soggy fried fish; custard-oozing “nightingale’s nests” and sticky “sweetheart’s lips”—the great bulk of the feast, and all the half-down-the-throat that Faldarolo forfeited when he ran. Although he had failed (and ruined the party), this is an honourable town. An agreement’s an agreement, even with a prostitute or musician. Faldarolo had indeed managed to smell more than the Haczi had ever seen a man pull up his nose, so the second half of his pay would have challenged the biggest glutton.
“If only . . . ” the Haczi sighs to the apricot cat. “He’s greedy, but if he could make you happy, I would be willing to pay him anything his greedy heart desires.”
Quaintnesses
THE OMNISCIENT’S QUESTION broke into the train’s lullaby.
“Do you miss them?”
“No.”
If Savva had cracked open the door to 3C, he would have seen the man with the paisley waistcoat lying on one top bunk and the woman in red on the other, both as stiff as Lenin.
The Omniscient spoke again. “What do you think yours are doing?”
“Killing themselves.”
She didn’t ask about his.
Time passed.
“Have you ever met a man in which you were truly interested?”
“Whom.”
“I would have thought that, with so many—”
“If I’d have known you would be judgmental I never would have let you come along,” said the Muse.
“You wouldn’t have thought to come.”
A frosty silence reigned for so long that anyone listening at the door would have wished for a blanket.
“Come now,” said the Omniscient, “Have you ever met a man—”
“Nick Kippax. I told you.”
“An unlikely coincidence,” he said drily. “Tell me about the crandolin.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The crandolin portrayed on that page . . . on any page. “
“Ask yourself,” she laughed. “Or change your name.”
“No need to be snide, oh revered one.”
She turned on her side to observe him, but his arm obscured his face.
“Especially,” he said, “when I’m trying to examine variosities.
And your interests, and the products of your fecund mind, might lead to—”
“A plague.”
“I jest not.”
“No, I suppose you don’t know how.”
“No need to cut,” he said, hoping she didn’t know how close to his heart she’d thrust.
“No need to call me a fripperist.”
“I’m sure there’s value in your quaint creatures and unlikely tales.”
“Quaint?”
“Isn’t a cyclops quaint? And wolves that eat little girls, etcetera?”
She could feel his tolerant smile, the gloat of it. “Verily,” she agreed. “I’m always going on about them.”
“Naturally.”
“Did you hear the one about the Cyclops who ate the little girl?”
“See? We succour different tastes. I am not disparaging your rejection of truth, your light enter—”
“As fish that walk on their hands are fripperies, and left-eyed flounders are archaic. And noble rot is the mould on that statue of King Arthur. And nuclear fission is my fancy. And the big bad Cyclops opened its mouth with such a big DNA expression.”
The Omniscient sat up and turned on the light. “I was not aware of this facet of your structure.”
He was so embarrassed that his stiffness of expression only made him more ill at ease. He snapped off the light but that gave him no protection. The new day had dawned.
“A common misconception,” she said. Gorgonna! He’s like a sack of concrete that’s set in the bag. One knock on the paper and he shatters.
“Look at me,” he said, bravely facing her. “Rejected. Who is interested in a giver of truth, I ask you?”
So that’s what you call it, she thought, but said, “The ones—”
“It’s a fascinating truth,” the Omniscient cut in, “that flipped the wrong way, ‘fecund’ is ‘defunct’ . . . ”
Both of their faces worked away at something till they said at the same time, “No it isn’t.”
“The ones you helped,” said the Muse. “Do you have a private name for them?”
“My students?”
“That’s the problem,” she said gently. “Clients pay attention.”
“Did you have a private name for them?”
“Let’s change the subject.” She jumped down from her bunk. “I swear the crandolin is not something I created.”
“It’s too impossible otherwise. But I don’t blame you for forgetting,” smiled the Omniscient.
“Like I forgot the Bothidae?” she smiled.
“Like your Bothidae, I’m sure, and though I confess I have never kept up with your creations, I would have thought you did. But as I said, you are so fecund, it’s no wonder you forget.”
The train’s brakes squealed.
“You’re a fine one to talk about memory,” the Muse shot, just as the train drew into a small station.
You deserve that, the Omniscient chided himself. Would you be here, but for her? Would you be having that unnatural emotion—jollity—despite yourself, but for her? Is it her fault that you’re a teensy jealous—yes! You’re as stimulating as a breath of stale air.
She pushed up the window and hallooed the single hawker, an old woman who was waving a large army-green gherkin. They haggled, the train jerked forward, the old woman scuttled back, and the Muse shut the window with her elbow. Her left hand went to a pocket in her dress. The right held the dripping pickle.
“What did you use for money?”
“Baubles. I traded for this and cash.”
The Omniscient smacked his forehead. “Beads and mirrors.”
“I couldn’t think of anything else,” she said defensively.
“I deserve to have my ears boxed,” he said. “Truly! Your action was not only capitally efficient, but historically pungent in the extreme.”
“It wasn’t worth th
at much,” she said, but her eyes sparkled.
She held out the pickle. It smelt sour and fresh at the same time. “Want some?”
He shook his head No politely, though he wanted to say “Yes,” and eat it from her hand.
Krelch went the pickle as she bit off its top. It must have been sourer than a fairytale witch.
The Omniscient exploded. Those adorable wrinkles!
He laughed as no man ever had in the Muse’s presence— fruitcakily. There was no arrogance in it, no treacly worship, no begging with that taste of bitterness. His laugh was gloriously deep and rich and unseasonable and redolent of fruits that no one in eons had eaten; and a whiff of cat piss. A fruitcake for a goddess. A fruitcake for keeping.
The train sped through lands unknown with neither of them noticing.
She looked over at him on that other bunk, at the swell of his stomach in that relict of a waistcoat. He looked rather like a grape clothed in Botrytis cinerea, with vines coming out both ends.
“Would you like to taste my little efforts as a vintner?” she said in an offhand manner, reaching for that case she’d carried on—the one covered in spiderwebs.
The pain of baubles
BY A HUT IN A VILLAGE so small that it is on no map, an old woman digs a hole and curses her luck.
Haste caused me to make this bargain.
What is she to do with a pair of diamond earrings?
The kind of people who would know won’t pay me. They’d just murder me.
She’d traded all the cash in her skirt for it, and one excellent pickle.
In her wish not to have the earrings, she wasn’t alone.
The Muse had hated them since the first time they had come into demand. She had always dressed professionally; grinned (so to speak) and borne her various costumes, but sometimes she’d almost hated herself for acquiescing. When she’d arrived at the library, she hadn’t put them on yet and had even been considering brazening out the session as if she didn’t know he wanted them. Their American 1950s clamp style hurt her earlobes something awful. She was sure this was the reason for their popularity.
Good riddance!
The Muse unbuckled her spiderweb-covered case. She took out a bottle and displayed it to the Omniscient. Their eyes sparkled as she expertly, without looking at it, made the bottle go pop!