Crandolin

by Anna Tambour

  “So now you don’t want its butter,” he mumbled.

  “Whatever made you think that I wanted its butter?”

  Faldarolo held his temper. He had learnt the hard way never to remind the bladder-pipe of something she had said.

  “You are almost there,” she said now.

  “Yes,” said Faldarolo, knowing what she meant because in some ways they still had perfect harmony.

  “Then you will show your true feelings,” said the bladder-pipe.

  “As if I haven’t?”

  “Only then will I know if you really love me, rather than just swearing it.”

  Faldarolo had never been a talker, so he just repeated what he’d said when he set out from Çimçim: “I’ll travel to the ends of the earth to find the best bladder-maker in the world to fix your delicate skin. And,” he added, “from what I understand this town to be, this trip has been worth the walk. The master we seek should be here, though he might be rather busy, so you might have to be—”

  “Tell me again about this town,” she commanded.

  “Well, that sweet master wants to go there because he thinks he’s got something to offer some famous beauty that will make her want him, though why she should want the bore I don’t know.”

  “I did not ask about him!”

  “No. Of course,” he rushed to say, stroking the bag. “There are many who have settled in the town for a sight of her, and there are more who hope to win her, and rush there as we do. They must have their entertainment, so the town has a festive air to it, and is famous, also for its airs. Where there are musicians, there must be instrument makers, and since any place that is famous for something becomes more famous because of that, this place must have instrument makers who are masters, and since the bladder- pipe is, above all, an instrument who needs a master—”

  “Yes, yes,” yawned the bladder-pipe. “I’m sorry I asked. “

  “This is why I go there,” he said, embarrassed at his wordiness.

  And, he most certainly did not say nor dare to think, because I have no other idea of a place to go. On their long trip they had not been to a single place that had been of good cheer, or of good taste.

  “Tell me about her,” said the bladder-pipe.

  “Who?”

  “The one all seek to win.”

  “Not I.”

  “I didn’t ask that. Tell me about her.”

  “She is more beautiful than a summer’s day, they say.”

  “Which kind of summer’s day?”

  “How do I know? The beautiful ones, of course.”

  Faldarolo strode on, making his feet ring against the stones.

  “Don’t pretend that you don’t hear me,” said the bladder-pipe.

  “What is it?” sighed Faldarolo.

  “What does she look like?”

  “I told you.”

  “You told me ‘beautiful’. Ask him.”

  Faldarolo wouldn’t have dared ask Burhanettin, for fear that the big man would take Faldarolo for a sneaky rival. “Her breath is like honey, he says. The look from her eyes would turn you to a pool of melted butter.”

  “If you continue in this vein, you’ll choke on your own spit.”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “If I told you that, could you play it?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Well?”

  “No one has seen her,” said Faldarolo. “So I can tell you no details, except for the fact that she was shut in the tower as a young girl, and she has never been touched by anyone including the sunshine since.”

  “That, Faldarolo, is what I was asking for.”

  Faldarolo gulped. She had never called him by his name. “It is?”

  “It is.”

  “My dearest,” she said . . .

  Light pink as the dawn

  “WHAT SHOULD I DO?” asked Mulliana of the creature that only now appeared on the hearth.

  “Let me look,” it said, scritching towards the window in its horridly lopsided way.

  “I’ll pick you up,” said Mulliana, and though the crandolin did not need to be picked up, and furthermore, had very sharp claws, Mulliana swept the crandolin into her arms and they looked out together while the crandolin hummed quietly, and hmmmed now and then.

  “You may put me down,” s/he said at last.

  It was once-upon-common-knowledge that crandolins were light pink as the dawn they imitated as they probed cracks in the shutters protecting pink virgins in their beds. Mulliana had never had shutters in the tower—only slats and cracks, but that was no barrier to a determined crandolin, especially the last crandolin in the world. And though it might not be true that the crandolin who lived with Mulliana was the last, this crandolin had never seen nor heard of another living crandolin.

  So—insofar as this crandolin and Mulliana were concerned, this crandolin was the last, and meant to last as forever as a crandolin is meant to, as A Crandolin (the crandolin had taught Mulliana) is Not Meant to be Perishable.

  Mulliana, of course, would never have told the crandolin, because the crandolin could be sentimentally stubborn, but Mulliana felt herself the happiest woman in the world, as she was protecting the most worthy protector—someone who also knew pain and suffering and loneliness, and had been horribly damaged, yet never talked of it.

  For the colour of this crandolin was indeed light pink, and anemia in crandolins is not natural any more than the loss of several limbs. Both states in this crandolin were due to incidents earlier in life—terriblenesses the crandolin had only ever alluded to darkly with the odd proverb.

  “Fear not,” said the crandolin. “I will continue to be your protector,” not saying until that Fateful day, when I must disappear from your life (and, the crandolin thought dreadingly, make my way in the world and hope to find another).

  “But without your father,” said the crandolin, “we cannot go on like this.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Tomorrow, I think,” said the crandolin.

  And so—as Mulliana was used to the unspoken with her protector, she bent to her work and sang in her normal way—too softly to disturb a sleeping baby in the town, but loud enough that no one heard the thud to earth of a nightingale who died of jealousy.

  Journey of self-discovery

  “I’M GOING OUT,” announced the Muse.

  The Omniscient coughed delicately.

  “Yes?” she said, and though her “Yes” sounded rather like, “Go drown yourself,” he asked delicately, “Would you like me to accompany you?”

  “No thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry,” she said, and left.

  He listened to her red-booted footsteps go crunch crush down the carpet. He heard the heavy latch of the carriage door give way to her impetuous rough pull. He heard the door slam closed. His cheeks were touched by a little cold fresh air that had slipped in and raced down the passage and into 3C.

  The train said shussssh as it travelled slowly but inexorably, onwards.

  The Omniscient’s eyes began to run—thick salty tears coursed down his saggy cheeks.

  I’m just an ancient, self-indulgent windbag.

  “What’s the use of being eternal?” he asked the window as if his reflection were someone to ask of, someone to discuss with. Someone ready to—yes—teach me! But with my memory, who would?

  “Why did I ever think I could be worthy of her?” he blubbered. “I can’t even fly in her slipstream.” And with that, he broke into great, choking sobs, till he grew so dizzy that he felt pleasantly drunk, which made him sob some more.

  “Enough is . . . ” (Never having had a childhood, he had always had to discipline himself, but being an only, he had always been late.) “ENOUGH!”

  “Remember the Web?”

  He did!

  “It’s ahead of this time, so what are you waiting for. It has Answers!”

  A little part of him asked, “If I improve my mind, do you think there’s hope with her?”
/>   All he got as an answer was the memory, for some reason, of the look on a child’s face the first time anyone tasted a burnt grain (though the Omniscient couldn’t help but qualify that first time as a presumption on his part, based on his observation).

  Then the look on its mother’s face popped into his mind.

  Distractions. But they focussed his mind, on now.

  And so he did improve. With Her gone, possibly forever (why should she come back? She’s not a nursemaid. She’s the Muse) he worked frantically. First of all, he managed with much more ease than ever before, to get on the Web. This time he linked up with no machine in sight—just his mind. I must be in a further future than we came from, but there was no time for thoughts about time when he had so much work to do, so much remedial self- improvement.

  First things first. And it was almost like a Muse story, like rubbing a lamp and shabam! The answer to his first wish was “The Memory Experience—A Journey of Self Discovery”.

  In just a few steps, he discovered his Amazing Memory.

  “Why have I never gone on this journey before?” he asked himself, and smiled ruefully because the answer lay in the text. I had to want to change and re-organise the way I think. “Isn’t it wonderful to have no choice?”

  So then he careened around the Web, amazedly, non- creatively of course. He fully recognised the distinction between his skills and the Muse’s, but perhaps she could like him just a bit for maybe a crumb of fact that she might need to feed her Olympian imagination—just a crumb? (If he could only see himself, he might have laughed, because his face had the funniest expression—Amazing Begging Walrus) but anyway—

  He was so absorbed in researching and learning and remembering that the time flew, but it didn’t fly fast enough, for all of a sudden he thought he heard a noise and looked up hopefully, but he must have imagined the thrill of her step, the flick of her tresses. She had not returned.

  Will she?

  And what would she come back for. Me?

  The Omniscient began to cry, and admonished himself just before he reached the Antarctic state of what he’d only minutes ago assessed as a psychiatric disorder needing medication.

  Self medicating was not an option. “You need to work again.”

  “Doing precisely what?” This wasn’t a good time to remind himself that not a single writer had called for him since that day in the library, whereas the Muse . . .

  “It doesn’t do to compare yourself.”

  “But”

  “Facts.”

  “Just facts?”

  “Yes indeedy.”

  “Facts are cold. Why would anyone want them?”

  “You’ve seen people eat ice cream in the snow, and you ask?”

  Just then, he felt an unmistakable call, and without knowing how it happened, he was on his way to a new appointment, and possibly a new life.

  A network of electronic sensors could one day allow farmers to monitor every hectare of pasture and every animal using a laptop on the farmhouse veranda.

  —page 3 story,

  The Sydney Morning Herald

  Donor

  BETTER LATE THAN NEVER is such a comforting cliché. It should cover all inefficiencies, but in the Omniscient’s case—for this first client in his new career—lateness boded ill.

  Not that Ekmel cared. To him, this old man who’d sidled up to Faldarolo was a pest of the garrulous wanderer sort. He was glad not to have to lend an ear to him.

  By this time, the road had become so full of people of all garbs going in the same direction, that a worry that the Omniscient had harboured—of looking futuristic—was put to rest. Instead, the pattern of his waistcoat was strikingly in harmony with the magnificent, though road-soiled outer robe of Faldarolo.

  But this Faldarolo—the Omniscient’s first client—was in a state of nervous exhaustion. He had first called upon the Omniscient when he needed an answer about the ass’s butter. Now he despaired of getting good advice, and was walking quite hopelessly toward his doom.

  For the most recent demand of the bladder-pipe’s was— Faldarolo didn’t know what to think of it.

  So when the Omniscient introduced himself jauntily as “The Answer System Here,” it took a very confusing while for Faldarolo to get the idea that the Omniscient was sorry for arriving too late to be of service re the question of equine milk products, but had arrived to answer Faldarolo’s second question.

  The Omniscient felt let down that Faldarolo wasn’t exhilarated and striding with a sense of purpose towards this new Challenge (not to mention awed by the presence of the Omniscient himself). Instead, the troubled young man trudged on as if he were not only too exhausted to care—but as if he hadn’t called for help. Yet he certainly had.

  Faldarolo thought it no wonder that the old man had heard of the ridiculous quest to get butter from that beast’s stomach. He understood now how silly he’d been. Ass’s butter couldn’t come from an ass’s stomach any more than honey came from a bee’s. Probably everyone on the road had heard of the fight by now, and had a good laugh.

  But no one knew of the latest. The old man was harmless but conceited, thinking himself a seer. So Faldarolo asked him bluntly: “If you take the skin from a virgin’s face, does it hurt the virgin?”

  Faldarolo felt stupid because of course, he thought, virgins do feel pain. And furthermore, he had no slight to right against Mulliana. She had neither harmed him, nor did he wish to cause her harm. But the bladder-pipe was done accepting compromises, experiments, fixes that didn’t fix—and was now insisting upon the cure. Mulliana’s face-skin was the only membrane that could do. Now, a mere sheep’s bladder? Faldarolo could almost hear the bladder-pipe snort.

  According to her, all Faldarolo had to do was declare himself in love with this Mulliana virgin creature, and get up to that tower and into her bed and then he could cut her face skin off and take it to the master who would fix the bladder-pipe, and then they could go wherever Faldarolo wanted and they could live happily ever after.

  “So can you take the skin off a virgin’s face and not hurt her?” asked Faldarolo.

  “I’ll have to think about that,” said the Omniscient, who immediately searched his memory for this question, and didn’t find it. So then he searched laterally . . . and when Faldarolo had sighed in hopeless despair for only the third time in the Omniscient’s presence, the Omniscient said:

  “Yes! Though I should perhaps, qualify that.” He turned to Faldarolo. “You’re not taking her from her natural environment, are you?”

  “I don’t want to take her anywhere.”

  “Good.” Several hundred years from now, the Omniscient refrained from saying, “taking the example of horseshoe crabs— and I quote: ‘we bleed horseshoe crabs using highly controlled and monitored procedures that help to ensure that the donor crabs are returned to their natural environment unharmed.’ ”

  He smiled broadly at his first client after re-training.

  His satisfied expression met one of utter blankness.

  The Omniscient was shaken, but he remembered how dull so many of the clients in his former profession had been.

  “You look like a man who scorns paraphrases,” he said, trying to stimulate by flattery, “so I’ll quote: ‘Crabs are collected daily during specific seasons and brought to a nearby bleeding facility by truck.’ You plan to do it in-house, I think you said, eh?”

  The client did not respond. Gamely, the Omniscient proceeded. “ ‘Those crabs without visible injuries are placed on a bleeding rack and bled via a heart puncture using a large gauge needle.’ ”

  He tapped the young man on the arm. “Whereas you plan to do it on her bed. Quite the improvement, as you certainly couldn’t contaminate the donor material with sedatives.”

  “Blood. That was about blood.”

  “Absolutely,” said the Omniscient, whose broad smile was going limp around the edges. Were they all like this?

  “I asked about skin.”

 
The Omniscient slapped himself in the forehead. “I didn’t complete my quote as it was, I thought, obvious. So I quote: ‘On average, thirty percent of the crab’s blood is removed before the wound clots naturally.’ End quote. So there you have it. You’re home and hosed. Go for it!”

  “Skin.”

  “What’s more important,” huffed the Omniscient, “skin or blood? And what percentage of skin would be on her face? You’ve lost skin off the back of your hand, I see, and if it’s not bigger than a healthy young woman’s face, well . . . ” He rolled his eyes, delighted that the first job was really such a simple one to answer, and itching to be off to his next, hopefully more interesting client.

  Faldarolo looked at the back of his hand as if the hand belonged to someone else.

  “It hurts,” he said.

  “Forget your stupid hand!”

  The Omniscient thrust his hand in front of Faldarolo’s eyes, and executed a perfect mid-20th century fingersnap.

  “Young man,” he said, when Faldarolo picked up his head. “If only you’d listened. Doesn’t ‘donor’ mean anything to you? Donors make another well. Isn’t that what you wish for?”

  The client nodded fervently.

  “Well?” laughed the Omniscient.

  But his pun was wasted.

  “What is his problem?” muttered the Omniscient. To the dullard: “How much education did you have?”

  “My father taught me to play.”

  “Eureka,” sighed the Omniscient. “All play and no work makes Jack a—”

  But the client had begun to mumble. The Omniscient heard the word ‘hurt’, and almost lost his temper, but caught himself in the nick of time, for that would have been unprofessional. Instead, he assessed the mental age of this man who’d grown up in a deprived background . . .

  “Ranger Rick,” he cried. “Ages seven and up. Too bad you didn’t grow up with Ranger Rick. Listen to what he says: ‘Bet you’re wondering how a horseshoe crab gives blood?’ But you already know that so blah blah blah till he says: ‘The crabs aren’t harmed and their blood soon gets put to work!’ Now, that’s his exclamation, not mine, so isn’t that a marvellous win-win? And you can trust him because he’s from the National Wildlife Federation, though (the Omniscient chuckled) you wouldn’t know the National—”