by Anna Tambour
Party of three
EKMEL LIES ON A SOLID-GOLD COUCH. The mattress is a soft woman. “Another lips of love,” he says, and she places his favourite helva upon his tongue. His strong white teeth crush—
“Oooh, Ahh. What—”
Ekmel’s eyes could not pierce the darkness, but he smelled Burhanettin, and that grip!
Burhanettin pulled Ekmel out of bed. A scuffle ensued (a misunderstanding really, Ekmel having tripped over his own feet), ended when Burhanettin rolled Ekmel in a rug.
Burhanettin left Ekmel’s house as stealthily as he had entered, yet he could have sung. Everyone’s ears were stuffed with cotton.
The baker’s first loaves of the day were perfuming the town when the stork couple looked down upon the man and donkey on their way out of town, not that the storks were interested in these two who were steps from the just-opened town gate.
There! Behind the donkey, a rat skittered. The male stork swooped, plucked the rat before anyone else got it, and dropped it in the nest, where she shredded it for the chick and lost not a drop.
Soon enough, it was day. Burhanettin was a strong walker, and though the bag slung over his back was filled with heavy nougat, it might as well have held whipped eggwhites, such was the burden he felt.
They travelled up and down and up and down till they were so far from town that the sheep spoke a different tongue.
When they reached a stream shaded by willows, Burhanettin halted.
The donkey rubbed the small of his back with her forehead, and reached for the sack of delights.
He turned to her. “Do you love me?”
“Rwlzghooee eeeyytt,” said the carpet. Really, it was impossible to make out words. Burhanettin unstrapped the roll from the donkey’s back and laid it on the ground, where he restored Ekmel with such a flourish that the round little man rolled into the stream.
“Fputh!” Ekmel spluttered—outraged, terrified, and in his nightgown.
Burhanettin threw Ekmel a robe, slippers and cap. They were Ekmel’s.
Ekmel dressed with his back to Burhanettin. He trembled so much that he didn’t know what to do, so he kicked the donkey.
Burhanettin kicked him, and then the donkey kicked him into the stream.
“Enough!” cried Burhanettin. “Nough ough,” repeated the hills.
He pulled Ekmel onto the bank with one hand as his other hand reached to the donkey’s mouth. A crunching sound tickled the hairs in Ekmel’s purple ears.
“You will lead me to the Kirand-luhun,” said Burhanettin.
Ekmel opened his mouth, and closed it.
“Excellent,” said Burhanettin. “Lead on.”
Ekmel felt himself being pulled upright, not roughly, but as he imagined Burhanettin pulled toffee.
A bird called from a tree across the stream, so Ekmel picked up the dripping skirts of his robe, and led that way—as good as any.
Nick joggled to the rhythm of the donkey’s steps, the roughness of the trail. He cursed his lack of sight and smell, but he could hear, and finally, communicate—a blessing and another curse.
Before Burhanettin had kidnapped Ekmel, he ransacked
Ekmel’s storeroom for the stock of Kirand-luhun. All he found was the half-full one-occa sample jar, so he took that and packed his half-full sample jar and Ekmel’s into one of Ekmel’s baskets.
Nick and Nick felt their proximity, and were overjoyed to almost meet again. They compared notes. What an adventure! What secrets Nick had learnt (especially about nougats), what travelogues they would be able to write, if only they weren’t confined.
Soon:
“It’ll be impossible to scale up the production if we don’t get equipment made for each type. Very expensive.”
“That goes without speaking, so I trust you noted down all we need to know about timing and all.”
“Of course,” said the one part of Nick, now very uncertain. “Of course it all depends on you having paid attention to the honeys. Did you?”
“Probably more than you did,” said the other part, not being sure at all, “So if the venture fails it’ll be all your fault . . . ”
Lost for good
TALON TO TALON, beak to throat, two birds tumble through layers of wind. Teetering above the cinnamon sticks in the nest, the ungainly head and selfish squark of the cinnamologus chick belies the grandeur of its father, the dedication of its parents, though it smells incomparable. Nick is barmy with desire since the hatching of the two eggs. The day that this chick killed its brother (sister?) and ate it was the worst.
This is a terrible time for the parents, too. There are others who smell the chick, who crave the precious red fluff.
The female cinnamologus stands guard on the edge of the nest, her wings outspread, but she’s no sunning cormorant. At the base of the tree, a dragonish creature has settled into the sand. Only its eyes are visible, and only when it blinks.
Above her, the male throats victory. Two feathers float gently to earth, and a body plummets. The female swoops to pick up this meal for their voracious chick. It only takes a moment, but so does a gust.
The little gust of wind plucks a piece of fluff.
The mother lands back on the nest to the sound of the chick’s hoarse cries. She is tearing the warm heart when the male lands with a cluck. He neatens the nest all round again, and takes out the trash.
The little gust raced away between thorn trees, over stones that look like tortoises and tortoises that look like stones, its prize held to its belly. When it came to a cleft between two mountains, it rested, rolling just high enough to keep the fluff from touching the earth.
On the two mountains, rival winds huffed. They roared as they raced down to the base of the cleft, where they smothered the gust and fought over the prize.
They attracted other winds, and in the tumult, sand was thrown into the sun’s face. And then it was over and the sun looked down upon the familiar earth again, the same mountains, clefts, trees, more or less.
Somewhere here and there, a wisp under sand, a glimmer under a rock, was the bit of fluff, as vulnerable (and lost) as a word once spoken.
Nick had felt the gust rip off a piece of him and saw the gust race away with it till all he could see was pitiless-blue sky. Then he felt that piece of himself being jerked to gossamer shreds.
Until then, he’d spent countless relatively-happy hours pondering:
A) When is this trip going to end—talk about hallucinogens!
and
B) If it’s not a trip, how much will I be able to take back?
Now he cowered on the edge of the nest.
How much have I lost? Percy? a hand? my tongue?
Unbound
“I’M DEEPLY SORRY,” said the Omniscient. “I’ve no taste for wines.”
“Don’t mention it,” the Muse replied, too lightly.
“Never could tell a sack from a malmsey. And as for worth?”
“It matters not,” she snapped.
“I’m sure that others who are experts, such as your Nick—”
“Gorgonna!”
A sound like a coil of ship’s rope hitting a dock made Savva bite his tongue as he tiptoed backwards from the other side of their door. He busied himself over the carpet, picking up sunflower seed shells one by one. He’d learned that often, after that sound, the door to 3C opened dramatically and the woman in red swept down the hall. He didn’t know that the sound was of her tossing her head, her hair hitting the wall in a writhe.
The mysteries in 3C
THE DRUNK from another carriage stumbled as far as the open doorway of 3C, reeled in, slapped a dried fish down on the window table, and staggered out into the hall, walking quite straight by the time he got to the far door. Savva, watching by the samovar, had heard the slap, and waited. Sure enough, the fish flew out and landed on the carpet. He scurried over and picked it up before anyone else could grab it.
He flipped the carpet and put fresh newspaper scraps on the toilet hook a
nd refilled the samovar, all in record time, keeping an eye on that doorway.
He was rewarded. She sauntered out past him and left for the space between the cars. He screwed up his courage.
She had just lit up when he arrived. Never had he seen anyone smoke with such hunger. He almost felt embarrassed to approach.
“Could I interest you in—”
“How could you?” Valentin laughed. He must have followed.
Valentin clicked his heels at the woman. They matched in beauty. She reminded Savva of a cover heroine for Onwards!
Why did I try? He went back inside. It was busy as a train station in the carriage. The oddest collection of people strolling through. The door to 3C was closed now, though the only working heaters were in the hall. And look who’s here?
“Galina!”
“Where is she?”
He glanced to his right.
“Is she too good to eat?” She shoved Savva aside and flung open the door to the smoking space.
The Omniscient took the opportunity to close the door to #3 again, and stretched himself on the top right bunk. The door was a nuisance. They had to keep it open most of the time as per custom (not that an unheated compartment could have affected them), but “We don’t want to attract attention to ourselves, do we?” she’d said when they arrived. Quite true.
Despite his every attempt, she resisted telling him why she chose this train for their singularity. “This is a singularity,” he kept reminding her. “Our travelling this way, and as the rubberies.” She was uncommonly incurious. She made indecent faces when he called people ‘rubberies’. Yet for some reason, she had chosen this train, this time in history. He had never invaded history before, thought time travel another of her fripperies. Yet here they were in the twenty-five-years-ago. Twenty-five years till the poof! in the library that set the Omniscient on his quest. And did she care? She didn’t even know what year it was, it seemed. It was the Omniscient who observed, the Omniscient who yearned to know the how, the why. “The future?” he asked her. “A frippery?”
“You are tiresome,” she yawned. “I just thought ‘trains’, and here we are. How, I tell you, I know not. Can’t you just enjoy?”
He’d hoped to educate her in particulars. She was so set in her ways, so intellectually vacuous. She wallowed in her mire of ignorance—even at this unprecedented time when there were mysteries of the universe to solve—when they both had finally met, being to being, and were ensconced in a joint temporary abdication of their respective responsibilities. At this chance of a lifetime, as the rubberies say, when she could avail herself of wisdom instead of slopping out fantasies to men who . . . how could she waste her time on those failures?—the Omniscient was a trifle disappointed that she was even shallower than he’d thought. Now that she could learn from the world’s most experienced teacher, change her ways and serve truth, she had as little interest in learning as she did, facts. Disappointing, but hardly important. To science!
The Omniscient fluffed his pillow. She couldn’t dampen his thrill of being here disguised as a rubbery. She didn’t impede his quest. And as a travelling companion, she was no trouble. He’d seen many companions, not that he had ever had one.
She had habits that would annoy others, such as reaching into some concealed pocket in that red dress and making that flicking sound—a nervous habit of hers.
She is irrational, of course. About the crandolin, quite unnecessarily she had thrown at him, after only a preliminaria of questions: “Anything you want it to be!” She remembered not one detail, not that it mattered. The Omniscient had supposed she would want to remember her fantasications—after all, they were her work, and as such, he would have expected her to use them again, just as he had always done. When the Omniscient reminded her of a truth that the rubberies put well: There are only so many stories, she laughed—cruel Muse. Why can she invent rubbish (that is loved—oh, perpetually unfair world!) without any effort, whilst I . . . ?
He turned over on the bunk. Think not of this, for I am a gyroscope spinning in the joy of discovery, whereas she . . . Despite her lack of substantiality, she wasn’t easy as rubberies to divine, but the Omniscient detected flecks and blobs in her: remorse and embarrassment. “Quite understandable.” Just when her eyes would be their most unfocussed, giving her the appearance of a thinker, she would jump up and escape to the space between the carriages to smoke cigarettes like a common rubbery. She was there now, when she could be . . . Disappointing, but hardly important. To science!
The Omniscient tossed a Nature to the bottom bunk, and opened a New Scientist. Just as he found something interesting, he was jarred by a knock on the door. “Come in,” he sighed.
Savva entered with a glass of tea on a saucer that held two lumps of sugar. “You must be thirsty, sir.” He swept his eyes over the books and magazines.
“Capital,” the Omniscient proclaimed. His attention had been broken, but tea was something good to learn. He’d seen it drunk so many times that he knew he should blow on it first. He jumped down from the bunk with a grace that belied his bulk, and pulled out a little roll of suede-textured roubles.
The elaborately dressed tourist in 3C paid Savva just what a Soviet citizen might, if Savva were ever to make a comrade a glass of tea. Worse, the man was not a capitalist but an intellectual parasite. There was no food that Savva could see or smell in the compartment. No walkman, no spare pair of jeans lying to hand. Only a bunk piled with tossed magazines and books . . . of the sort that are burned for warmth. Not an Impossible Virgin amongst them, but Savva read ‘Science’ in the title of some. Savva noticed one magazine cover that showed a woman less sexy than a bust of Lenin. So much for the decadent West!
The foreigner spoke: “You are interested in science?” No sneer! Indeed, the man was more polite than anyone ever had been to Savva, and spoke such beautiful Russian. A worthless curiosity; he didn’t even smoke.
“Improve the mind, I always say,” Savva said. The tourist chuckled. He gathered up an armful of magazines and presented them to Savva as if they were, say, packs of cigarettes.
Another disappointment in a lifetime of them. Savva went back to his compartment where he threw the magazines on his bunk. He made a glass of tea and locked himself in, to suck noisily through his last sugar cube for comfort and chew salted fish for revulsion.
On consideration, those two passengers in 3C weren’t worthless. Galina hated that beautiful woman sleeping in Savva’s carriage despite his insistence that a woman with a figure like that could hardly be beautiful, let alone be worth anything in winter. And Valentin had sneered to Galina that the couple in 3C were ‘wasted on Savva’, that they were smugglers of a superior sort. Valentin was livid with jealousy.
Savva unlocked his door, smiling grimly. He’d have to get Galina into 3C to see for herself, how much Valentin knew about value. Sweetness almost as good as a sugar cube.
Then he remembered the magazines. He might as well cut them up for the toilet hook. But they were worthless for that, too. Thin, hard, shiny paper.
He unflapped his fake fur cap and tied it under his chin, narrowed his eyes against wind and snow, and pushed down his window. He tossed the magazines out, to flapping obliteration.
Why backless slippers are called mules
EKMEL AND THE DONKEY watched Burhanettin pick his teeth clean of every piece of olive and fig. Then unbelievably, he brushed his teeth. He did this after every meal, after each glass of tea, not that his audience complained. Burhanettin’s lengthy grooming sessions shortened the time spent journeying each day. He was a man of contradictions, feverish to reach the source of Ekmel’s Kirand- luhun, yet he could not pass a stream without stopping to wash himself, even his underarms.
Burhanettin dried his beard. “Your eyes are like twin moons that clasp the sun in their loins,” he sang, and noticed his companions.
“Lead, fool.” He pointed a staff at Ekmel that he’d made some days before by tearing a tree apart. “You and your
shorter route.”
Ekmel swallowed and stumbled forward. There were hours of daylight left. He narrowed his eyes at the path ahead. It was so steep that he’d slip out backwards from his slippers and tread on pointed stones, as he had so many times that he’d tried walking up backwards, till poked in the belly.
Burhanettin reached into his bag for a piece of nougat that he held out for the donkey, but Burhanettin’s eyes were on Ekmel’s back, so the donkey hesitated. Burhanettin dropped the nougat and strode away.
The donkey’s ears sagged. She picked up the nougat with her lips and cantered after Burhanettin, but she didn’t crunch the sweet. She held it in her cheek, where it degraded to base honey and bitter memory.
You are not alone
NICK MOURNED the loss of part of him from the cinnamologus’ nest till the chick was as tall as its parents, when another piece of fluff went the way of the first, torn to insignificant shreds and scattered in the glitter of a desert’s dust.
He first reaction was to panic—an unsatisfying emotion in his static state. So he obsessed upon his loss through the most delicious time of the chick’s life, but one day when the cries it made to satisfy its appetite vibrated with the monotony of a religious chant, he experienced a—revelation? Whatever, the word ‘converge’ popped into his mind, and then that hackneyed: ‘You are not alone.’
“Converge!” he repeated. “I am not alone.”
Others would have been comforted by the ‘not alone’ thing, but Nick felt it in a higher sense. “I’m not just here.”
The male cinnamologus continued tucking Nick neatly amongst the cinnamon sticks while the mother picked apart an eagle for their babe.
Nick tried to communicate in the only way he could, feeling that there might be other parts of him stuck on other nests. The attempt reminded him of the time when he was seven and stuck his hand up his sleeve, trying with all his seven-year-old powers to make an egg materialise.