Crandolin

by Anna Tambour

  He communicated and communicated and communicated, till he was sick of the attempt. But what else was there to do?

  And one day he knew: There are parts of me scattered in many—no, several places—and . . . times.

  And then, one day, Nick besmirching the Bladder-pipe knew it too.

  And Nick as the blemish on Galina’s face.

  And both parts of Nick in the side-by-side pots—they were shaken at first, having thought that they were the only two parts of Nick, easily merged if Burhanettin would only get on with it.

  Then Nick on the nest felt as hard as he could, “Converge!”— and he pulled. That part assumed that it was the real Nick, and the other parts just accessories to the fact. But each other part must have felt that he was the real Nick, and certainly the brains.

  Each part pulled till one day, something amazing happened. None of them were closer to the others, but they each knew where the others were.

  “Bugger!” said Nick on the cinnamologus’ nest. “Whatever made me suck that bloody book?”

  A blood-filled tick crawled up to him and over his fluffiness to burrow itself in his protective midst and digest its meal without being swallowed by a cinnamologus. Such was his preoccupation with converging (all mixed up in his mind with returning to what he still called real life) that Nick didn’t even smell the fragrant morsel. So many changes, so fast. Only recently he had nearly gone mad, craving those little blood puddings.

  Revelation

  “EUREKA!” shouted the Omniscient.

  Refreshed by the glass of tea brought by that curious little science-loving train attendant with the turned-up nose to whom the Omniscient had given an armloadful of magazines (that Savva had tossed out into the vast, incurious, snow-bloated night), the Omniscient set to work again to discover the Why and Wherefore of the Disappearance. Perhaps it was the mind-stimulating properties of tea, or Chance, or Fate, but in the middle of the next magazine he picked up from his pile, dated only one week later than the latest in that armloadful (but about a quarter century earlier than the present in this train) “Eureka,” exclaimed the Omniscient, again.

  “How unoriginal,” remarked the Muse, who had just returned, smelling of snow-laden air and tobacco.

  “Listen to this.” The Omniscient’s eyes were shining but he looked only at the magazine. He cleared his throat and stood, but fell heavily back on his bed when he unbalanced himself, brandishing his right arm Socrates-style.

  “ ‘The string theory landscape is populated’,” he read and paused to look at the Muse significantly.

  She folded her hands in her lap, composed her face, and prepared to count unicorns in an attempt to stay awake.

  “This will not be drearisome,” the Omniscient said.

  “Promise?”

  “Populated, the string theory that is, it says here,” he said, tapping the magazine as if it were the Stone of Qanxor, “ ‘by the set of all possible histories. Rather than a branching set of individual universes, every possible version of a single universe exists simultaneously in a state of quantum superposition.’ ”

  He stopped and gazed at the Muse with rapture. “The climax is coming,” he said, and dropped his eyes to the page.

  “ ‘When you choose to make a measurement, you select from this landscape a subset of histories that share the specific features measured.’ ”

  He stopped reading. For a while, the only talk that could be heard in 3C was the chatty song of the train.

  She broke in. “Is that yours?”

  “It’s the Phenomenon.”

  Kulakity lak—

  “You know. The library. The Disappearance!”

  “Um,” she said. “That. But what does that—”

  “All good things . . . ” he said, putting a finger to his lips.

  She pursed hers, but he was already reading aloud.

  “ ‘The history of the universe’.” He looked up, lifted a finger in the declamatory stance, and lost his place.

  “ ‘The history’ ”

  She stood and reached into her pocket.

  “Please wait,” he said. “ ‘the universe, for you, the observer’ it says here, and that means you, as you saw it. Sit, please.”

  “How ripping,” she said, but she sat.

  “ ‘is derived from that subset of histories.’ ”

  “No wonder,” she murmured.

  “Without interruption,” he said, “hark: ‘The history of the universe, for you the observer, is derived from that subset of histories.’ ”

  “What subset?”

  The Omniscient muttered something that sounded like What can one expect? He felt more exasperated than he had with his dullest writer. “Don’t you want to save your wasted mind?”

  The muse’s hair writhed. “You mean put to sleep. No wonder so many left you.”

  “I say again, I did not write this, but truth is beauty. You are too truth-deprived to—”

  “There’s no beauty in the obtuse.”

  “This is not obtuse!”

  “Then what does it mean?”

  “What it says here: ‘In other words, you choose your past.’ ”

  “Then why didn’t you just say it?”

  The Omniscient smiled perseveringly. “I was getting there.”

  The Muse smiled back. “Did you, Knower of All, fathom any of that opaquity before that four-word statement, ‘You choose your past’?”

  “Of course,” sputtered the Omniscient, like a kettle boiled almost dry. He couldn’t remember, but her snide inference could have been correct.

  “And this revelation.” The Muse’s tone was aggressively interrogative. “You choose your past. You believe it?”

  The Omniscient’s arms drooped to rest on his skinny thighs.

  “You make your own history,” said the Muse gently. “That’s one of mine. Why didn’t you ask, if you wanted me to tell you a story?”

  The Omniscient had never before been subjected to her charm. He was so flustered that he had no reply. Instead, he fondled the top button of his waistcoat, harrumphed, and dropping his gaze to the magazine, read the article verrrrry carefully once again.

  It gave him so much of the strength he needed that he guffawed. Who would have imagined? Me, falling under her spell.

  He laid the New Scientist on the window table. “I know it has not been your experience,” he said in his most eminently reasonable tone. “But try to expand your mind.”

  “Ex—” she exploded. “Thou fow—”

  But the Omniscient was ready for emotional ballyhoo. He tapped the magazine. “Think like a physicist!”

  “A phys—”

  The Omniscient’s eyes sparkled. “Only known as the greatest since Newton.”

  The Muse’s eyes almost leapt from their sockets. The old man is serious. She suppressed a smile and put on a face that she’d never worn: Please, tell me more. Behind that mask she was more dismayed than she cared to think possible. The Omniscient was overly neat and no oenologist, but in the throes of excitement, not unattractive. But, to believe in physicists!

  Biliousness will out

  OUT OF THE BLACK NIGHT, another h’mph erupted from the Omniscient’s bunk, regular as hiccups.

  The Muse sat up violently. “Out with it.”

  “With what?”

  “If you’ve got a complaint, make it or get off this train and go back to your cave or wherever you normally groan.”

  “I didn’t know it showed.”

  “Only as bright as the sun.”

  “As your smile,” quipped the Omniscient in embarrassment.

  “I get that from them.” Now she sounded hurt.

  The last thing he wanted to do was talk. He was frightened of what he’d say.

  “You hold something against me,” she said. “Don’t you?”

  “How can you tell?”

  “My supernatural senses.”

  “I should have known.” I wish I had them.

  “I was joki
ng, you idiot. You’re as subtle as a foghorn. You were saying?”

  He sighed, but was cut off by “Enough.”

  “I’m waiting patiently,” she said after he’d barely taken breath.

  “I was thinking,” he said.

  “That can be dangerous,” she laughed.

  “Of a paranoid schizophrenic psychopath I met once.”

  She scraped a match against the wall and for a moment her face was lit, cleaned of expression.

  “You might remember him,” said the Omniscient. “It was some time ago, before such diagnoses. He heard a voice.”

  “Let me count the cases. What does that have to do with me?”

  “It told him to kill his son.”

  “So you think I whispered in his ear? Why do you care?”

  “I’m not saying you did anything, or that I care. But don’t you remember what happened next?”

  “Let me see. The father slew the son by having him ground between two stones, and was in turn scalded to death by his wife the son’s mother and lover, who took over the kingdom and lived extravagantly ever after. Is that the one? Really, there are so many, none of which add up to anything with me. Or do you think I moonlight as an accessory to murder?”

  “Of course not. But you don’t remember the one to which I refer?”

  “No, oh vague one. Humanity is a nutcake that I’ve never cared to plumb.”

  “Nor the ram that was murdered instead?”

  “Not a chicken? It’s usually a chicken. Are you trying to exasperate me? Now you’re saying the murderer didn’t murder, but you blame me for his insanity. You’ve picked up indigestion. Sleep it off.”

  “You don’t remember your role? She really doesn’t remember.”

  “She is here and that is rude. She didn’t have a role, you . . . you false accuser.” He couldn’t see her hair but could hear it slither, which only inflamed him more.

  “You falsifier! You can’t claim that you didn’t dictate that best- seller.”

  Their breath came in gasps. His. Hers. Little laboured gulps.

  “That,” she said. “I didn’t know it would be. A moment’s diversion.”

  “Did you have to make him a hero?”

  “I must remind you that he was centuries before Freud. I just gave personality to the voice. It was genre of the time. How did I know he would be a hero, and that book would be a hit? Neither of us controls the readers, do we?”

  “So you knew Freud?” he sneered.

  “Never had the pleasure. You’re just jealous.”

  “No I’m not.”

  He dug his fingers into his stomach till he felt physical pain. She shut her eyes so hard, blackness turned into rainbows that burst into swirling shards.

  “That book,” she said quietly. “I never got a thanks, not from any of the writers.”

  “Good,” he said before he could stop himself.

  “If it’ll make you feel better,” she said as if she never heard him, “I never got a thanks from any of the authors of my top three books. They not only used me, but said that someone else dictated the works.”

  His bunk creaked as he shifted, making more noise than just turning over would. “I am flooded with regret,” he said. “I overflow.”

  “Don’t be.”

  He could hear a sad smile in her voice, or maybe he just wanted to. What he was sure of was the sound of his heart, cracking.

  Faldarolo and the shepherd

  A STONE SHELTER, a sheep’s head, and a lively fire of pine cones dribbled with rosemary-scented sheep’s fat. What more could Faldarolo wish for?

  Sleet swirls into the shelter’s open side. Visibility is so poor that it would be impossible now for the shepherd to hail Faldarolo, as he had only two hours ago. Faldarolo was touched by the generosity of the old man who offered to trade shelter and a sheep’s head for a concert.

  The shepherd sticks his knife into the sheep, then slings it off the fire, onto its fresh skin. He cuts off the head and motions to Faldarolo. “And that ewe. It was her second lamb, see, and guess what it weighed? Young man, you would never know . . . ”

  Faldarolo motions his thanks and his blessings upon his host, but does not stop the flow of the story. He eats without seeing his food. He tears small pieces off and chews them slowly, keeping his eyes on the old man’s mouth as any polite guest does. Often Faldarolo stops eating to laugh and smile and sigh and shake his head at the demands of the story.

  “And that other ewe, the one I was telling you about . . . ”

  He eats the second eye, and gnaws the skull clean. Still, he is starving, but a prized titbit remains to be delved. He taps open the skull with a stone, all by feel. His host’s eyes are livelier than the fire.

  The delicious creamy brain, he pulverizes. He takes the blue velvet cloak off the bladder-pipe and lays her naked in his lap. And there he massages the brain into her pipes and her bladder till the wood is shiny and dark, and the bladder is supple and glowing pale cream (and bright blemish red, not that he looks).

  His fingers touch her lovingly. He cannot stop his body from swaying as he rubs the unguent into her skin, till Do not close your eyes! Without looking at the bladder-pipe, he cloaks her again and lays her in his lap. His stomach makes a rude noise: More!

  No food has passed the shepherd’s lips. His jaws are too busy otherwise.

  He had lied to Faldarolo, of necessity. Trapping an audience had been a tricky business at the best of times, but on this frigid night, a young strong wanderer was nothing less than two birds in one. Not only could the guest serve as an audience, but, come dawn, as a helpmate with the wayward sheep. The shepherd had endless fascinating tales to tell, all about the ways of sheep . . .

  Sharp dawn outlines the straightness of the shepherd’s back. “You wouldn’t like to guess the weight of that ram, would you?”

  Faldarolo shakes his head.

  The old man laughs, as crackly as the fire had been. “Wise choice, young man. When you know nothing, say nothing. But you’ll know soon enough, thank fate—”

  A lamb wanders into the shelter. “Where’s your mother?” asks the shepherd. The lamb jumps backwards, and runs out as if it saw its fate. The shepherd jumps up and follows.

  Faldarolo stands, trips on his robe. A horrible, muffled sound reaches his ears. The blue velvet cloak writhes on the piled-up coals. The bladder-pipe? Slipping off the cloak.

  Faldarolo leaps over the fire. He snatches up the bladder- pipe—cheh, she was so close to being burnt alive that Faldarolo’s knees shake.

  A stick clatters against a stone, and here’s the shepherd again. “What’s keeping you?” The old man starts out upslope. “Did I tell you about the time when . . . ”

  Faldarolo follows the shepherd.

  He doesn’t know how, without interrupting, to begin his concert. He cannot think. He cannot see the sharp stones before his feet as clearly as he sees what could have been: the bladder-pipe falling into the fire’s mouth. He cannot hear his host’s never-ending story as well as he hears his imagination: the cry of the burning bladder-pipe.

  “And the weight of that ram from her.” The shepherd pulls himself up a boulder. “What do you think . . . Hiya! Where are you?”

  Faldarolo’s arms are locked around the bladder-pipe, held safe.

  “Drop that useless—”

  The shepherd brandishes his crook at the beloved.

  Faldarolo steps back, closes his eyes, and puts the bladder-pipe to his lips. Finally, he is business-like. The concert is now, whether the shepherd listens or no.

  He blows with a will. He hopes (may his fault be forgotten) that the bladder-pipe is at her worst. He hopes she screeches to make all the sheep on the mountain run like water down its side, and the shepherd, cursing, after them.

  “What! You—take that plaything out of your mouth and get to work. There’s sheep to lead, you clod!”

  The shepherd’s curse fills Faldarolo’s ears so that he cannot hear the bladder-pipe.
He adjusts his lips.

  Hhhhh she says—a startling, pitiful hhhh no louder than a snowfall.

  “Obey me, you pile of sheep shit.”

  Where is her temper—those sarcastic, skin-stripping scracks that had forced Faldarolo to live as a vagabond? His eyes pop open as he blows, looking down. Hhhhhh. Her bladder is as wrinkled and flat as a crone’s breast.

  Faldarolo turns, just in time. A rock hits the back of his head. The old man screeches so shrilly that the sheep, fat with summer grass but stupid as stones, run—not in a herd but in a burst, catching their legs in rocks, forgetting their lambs, jumping like goats onto outcrops.

  Faldarolo runs, too—faster and more carefully than ever he thought he could. Love and urgency guide his steps. The bladder- pipe nestles against his chest hair, clamped in position by his right arm over his robe.

  By the time he gets to the bottom of the mountain, he and the bladder-pipe are slippery with sweat scented with sheep’s brains.

  Sacre something-or-other

  “MISTRESS!” burst the Omniscient as the New Dawn broke through the window and threw itself at the Muse, coating her face and figure with: Sacre memoire!

  That hair, wild and unbiddable. That nose. Those chests. He coughed and averted his eyes. Ever since he’d met her in the library in what already seemed like another’s life, she’d reminded him of someone.

  She stubbed her cigarette out on the wall, and raised an eyebrow.

  “You know of,” began the Omniscient (trying to keep a bygone irritation out of his voice) “that ship you call the Flying Dutchman, which is resting at a depth of . . . uh . . . ” He tugged helplessly at his moustache.

  “No matter,” he finally said, airily waving a hand. “You know. As you also must, the latitude and . . . ” Memory, why do you forsake me so?

  Not that the ship’s position mattered anymore. Or ever had!

  That was my past life. Forever work. Why did I never question Why? My life. What an ending. He shook his head.

  How did I not calculate? How many times when I got to the thrilling climax, did my author reject me, and call upon—