The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

by Vandermeer, Jeff

  After a year of treatment—and, one suspects, protection from Mehler’s constant attacks—Ms. Abendroth’s condition improved to the point that the sisters of the abbey cautiously allowed her access to the tools of her trade, though always under their supervision. According to Kurtz, all the material she produced while incarcerated had one driving idea behind it, one unifying theme:

  Leitfaden der Kritik was to be Ms. Abendroth’s opus, the last word in her seemingly relentless feud with Mr. Klaus Mehler. In it, she told Gertrude Nadel, she would create something so perfect, so pure, so unassailable that Mehler would be forced to put aside his scalpel of a pen and concede it unimprovable, a job well done. That she told Gertrude this from within the sanatorium at Eberbach Abbey did nothing to dampen her enthusiasm, though it did somewhat dim her loved one’s confidence in her ability. Nevertheless, from 1862 until her death, most of her waking hours at Eberbach were spent in producing material for it.7

  And yet, Leitfaden der Kritik never saw print; to this day, it exists only as a series of scattered papers that have yet to be assembled into one coherent whole. Kurtz reproduces some in support of his thesis: illustrations include savage caricatures of Mehler as a little teapot spewing tar, a Mehler-faced cushion being kneaded by a cat’s extended claws, and a rather distressingly graphic image of Gren Ouille committing seppuku with a nib pen while Hop weeps over him. But the fact that Kurtz’s selections are so limited speaks volumes about the morass of mixed metaphors and half-remembered French from which he chose them, and certainly Rothschild and Nussbaum don’t consider the bulk of her creations during the Eberbach period to be anything more than the expiation of her tormented thoughts, finding the whole to be decidedly less than the sum of its remarkable parts.

  Der singende Fisch, however, is not reproduced in Kurtz’s book, and has never appeared in print until now.

  According to Ms. Abendroth’s will, only one copy was to be made of the image: the original was to be kept by Ms. Nadel, while the print was to be delivered, with compliments, to Mr. Klaus Mehler, beseeching his thoughts. Mehler received the letter and the print on Monday, May 10, 1869; by Monday, May 17, he had committed suicide. He was found slumped over a mess of illegible, blood-spattered notes, a pen embedded in his left eye, the copy of Der singende Fisch torn to shreds. An autopsy later found pieces of it lodged in his trachea. Gouged into the polished surface of his mahogany desk were the words Die Palette hat keine Farbe, which translates to “the palette has no colour.”

  Publicly, Ms. Nadel declared that his guilt over destroying Ms. Abendroth’s mind and health had consumed him; privately, she insisted to friends and family members that Der singende Fisch was a curse eight years in the making, that Edith had confided in her the instrument of her revenge, and instructed her to produce copies for whichever critic should desire one. We must recall, however, that Ms. Nadel was a consummate actress, and her grief may have led to undue dramatization of the facts.

  Still, it is surprising that there is no record of anyone publishing their thoughts on Der singende Fisch; Rothschild and Nussbaum remain far more interested in the facts of Abendroth’s private life and analysis of her journals, and in the wake of Mehler’s suicide, very few individuals applied to Ms. Nadel for copies, perhaps feeling that to succeed where he had so spectacularly failed would be unseemly. Nevertheless, it was rumoured that Stephen Kurtz had intended to produce a monograph focusing on Leitfaden der Kritik and Der singende Fisch alone, and had even applied to Ms. Nadel’s estate for permission to see the original—but that project, like many others since the publication of Frogs, Frocks, and Fol-de-Rol, has fallen by the wayside while he recovers from his unfortunate boating accident.

  Further Examination of The Singing Fish

  Why, then, is the fish singing?

  Certainly, divorced from its incredible history, Der singende Fisch is not particularly noteworthy: its lines are simple, its subject odd, if charming. All its cleverness lies in the recursivity of the meta-narrative—the fact that we, as critics, are observing a critic observing a fairly absurd creature, trying desperately to puzzle out its meaning. Just as the critic in the image is stymied by observing the fish, so must we be momentarily stymied by observing him observing the fish, and the dissonance produced by observing the fish in our turn, with all the calculated detail surrounding it.

  Notice, for example, the thorns. Observe how one’s gaze moves from left to right, to begin at the roses, tempting in the gentle wash of the watercolour, before thickening into thorns the closer one approaches the fish. Surely this symbolises the inaccessibility of the art object, the difficulty facing any critic who attempts to penetrate its mystery. Again, why is the fish singing? Why is it performing an act we cannot apprehend without the frame of the title? Is it triumphant? One could argue that its triumph is in its inscrutability, in the impossibility of seeing it as anything but what it is.

  But the critic does not look cowed, only frowning in thought; he is sainted, even, he wears a halo! Could that indicate that the critic is dead? Is the Singing of the Fish synonymous with the Death of the Critic? Can the one exist without the other? Finale, spell the ribbons—or are they scarves? The looping of the letters is rather noose-like—hearkening back, perhaps, to Odin’s gallows-heritage? The more answers one finds, the more thorns, or questions, one encounters!

  This is terribly exciting work, you must understand. There is a terrible burden to be shouldered here, in being the first to offer a detailed analysis of the fish in print. Mehler’s death-desk scribbles offer little in the way of illumination, except for his gouged-out exclamations about palettes and colour. These are useless. Of course the palette has colour on it—the whole piece is washed in a pale rose watercolour, and the palette is shaped for holding oils or acrylic. Ah, but is that irony at work? Oh, of course! It is a pen-and-ink drawing—and look, there, the inkwell and the feathers! She has appropriated the critic’s tools! That is why the palette has no colour on it—the palette is her vulnerability, the colours her Achilles’ heel! The palette has no colour on it. The fish has sprung fully formed from it—the fish is the palette’s colour! The only colour is in the end—Finale, in colour, in the colour that the palette lacks—the colour the fish brings! The devilish detail of it! Frogs begin as fish! They die and are resurrected as singing fish! Oh, I see it all, Ms. Abendroth, I do, I see! I can hear it clear as a bell!

  Such, at any rate, would likely have been Mehler’s statements, had he been able to communicate them in something other than the blood and wood-dust beneath his fingernails. The piece seems very nice, and it is testament to Dr. Lambshead’s discerning taste that he sought to preserve so excellent a thing in his Cabinet.8

  ENDNOTES

  1. Stephen Kurtz, ed. The Early Journals of Edith Abendroth, vol. III, p. 67 (Routledge, 1959)

  2. Ibid., vol. VI, p. 98

  3. Die Spitzer Feder, April 1856, p. 24

  4. Ibid., October 1856, p. 32

  5. Nussbaum, Ursula. Loves That Did Not Know Their Names: Lesbian Desire in Edith Abendroth’s Early Journals, p. 134 (Ashgate, 1979)

  6. Kurtz, Stephen. Frogs, Frocks, and Fol-de-Rol: The Mirth and Madness of Edith Abendroth, p. 91 (Routledge, 1961)

  7. Ibid., p. 113

  8. While the main body of this essay and all previous endnotes were the work of Amal El-Mohtar, the final paragraph was appended by a friend who has chosen to remain anonymous. This friend would like to make clear that Ms. El-Mohtar’s unorthodox approach to the essay’s conclusion is to be read as ironic, and certainly has nothing to do with the fact that she has since withdrawn into the seclusion afforded by a village in the southwest of Cornwall, where she spends her days in pursuit of garden fairies to dissect for her doctoral thesis, and her nights in tormented, guilt-wracked sobs for subjecting them to the cruelty of iron.

  The Armor of Sir Locust

  As Dictated to Stepan Chapman by Dr. Thackery Lambshead, 1998

  Until recently, I looked forward to catalogin
g my collection of souvenirs and curios. Now, in retirement, I finally have the time, and it turns out that the job is an endless drudgery. It further turns out that I know nothing worth recording about my possessions. I only know that I acquired some of these things during my years of constant travel. Others could explicate them with better success than I. My memory is not what it was.

  This thing, for example. I had to wire it together from various pieces. Bought it in a canvas box from an antique store in Cairo. Got it for peanuts. Had it appraised at the London Natural History. The docent said it was priceless. Hard to know what that means, coming from a docent.

  Ivica Stevanovic’s “Armor Montage” incorporating Dr. Lambshead, as first published along with the doctor’s account in the magazine Armor & Codpiece Quarterly (Winter 2000).

  It’s unusual, these days, to own a suit of medieval armor, but this specimen is more than unusual, it’s downright peculiar. The metal’s been assayed. I’m assured that it’s an alloy of tin and bronze characteristic of the Second Crusade. Copper grommets—probably a later addition. Scraps of leather, hung with buckles.

  The first time you see this thing, a series of questions enter your mind. Such as: Is it armor for a man or for a horse? And if it’s for a man, why has it got armor for four arms? And if it’s for a horse, why has it got armor for six legs? That’s three questions already, and they just keep coming. For as long as the legend of Sir Locust has been recited, there have been variants, and the variants raise questions of their own. Was he originally a soldier? Was he a priest? Was he a locust that grew and grew and somehow, by some bizarre spontaneous recombinant mutation, took on human attributes? Was he a man who was cursed, at puberty perhaps, with the attributes of a locust? Too many questions.

  Sometimes I entertain the ghoulish notion that perhaps this armor is no artifact at all, but rather a mummified skeleton, scooped out subsequent to burial and grave robbery. But then I look closely at the hooks and loops and chain mail, and I remember that insects, of whatever size, are not made of metal. But a custom-forged spring-wound machine, an engine of war disguised as a person, that would be made of metal. Speculation is impossible. Let’s examine the written records.

  Sir Locust appears in several of the illuminated annals of the Second Crusade. His presence is noted at certain battles. One such text, which still exists in scattered fragments, is The True Chronicle of Sir Locust the Unlikely. It reports that Sir Locust had a nemesis, an opposite number on the Saracen side of the conflict, who was called the Mullah Barleyworm. This priest of Allah, so we’re told, sent a series of three assassins against Sir Locust. None returned. At this juncture, the mullah confronted the French knight directly. They joined combat, and neither survived. I’m leaving out all the good parts. My time is limited, and my collection is extensive.

  For instance, I’m leaving out the love interest. Evangelette of Lombardy was Sir Locust’s lady. After his death, she cherished a bloodstained silk scarf, and so on. I’m sure that he wrote her countless sonnets from the front. If the Second Crusade had a front. The Christians lost that crusade, as you may recall.

  So now we have a cast of characters all constellated around this dented suit of giant insect armor. Once, the Mullah Barleyworm traveled to France in disguise and kidnapped the Lady Evangelette. Word reached our hero. What a kick in the head for him. He followed his archenemy to Syria but could only effect his lady’s release by giving himself into Barleyworm’s power, as they say in gothic novels. Torture followed, and rooms filling with water, walls sprouting spikes, bottomless chasms, impregnable towers, the jaws of death, all the usual flummery. Also there was some question as to whether the lady actually wanted to be rescued, having fallen in love with her captor in the time-honored masochistic tradition. Legend has it she was drugged. That’s just what Crusaders would expect from an infidel.

  I remember one last thing about Sir Locust. I almost left this out. It’s an alternative-origin story, which hinges on the third-century Syrian mystic, Saint Simeon Stylites.

  Saint Simeon, as everyone knows, mortified his flesh by living for thirty-seven years at the top of a pillar. They say he subsisted on honey-dipped locusts, provided, I suppose, by respectful local peasants. I always wondered how the locusts got to the top of the pillar. Perhaps he had a bucket on a rope. I don’t see why not. Simeon was so holy, they say, that even the fleas and horseflies refrained from biting him.

  But one day, a great grey locust lighted on his sun-blistered nose, as bold as you please. This locust called out to Simeon. “Now I shall bite you, old hermit,” it told him, “for excellent reasons. I can ignore your incessant consumption of my brethren bugs, soaked in the baby food of my cousin bugs, for such is the way of nature. But why should I excuse you from reciprocation? You may very well be considered a candidate for sainthood amongst the benighted Christians. But I, I’ll have you know, am a good Mussulman locust.” Whereupon the locust bit Simeon’s nose, drank his blood, and flew away.

  The saint might have been excused for cursing the locust. Being a saint, he did the opposite. He prayed for the proud heathen insect, and God was so impressed that He followed the saint’s suggestions and blessed the locust with three boons. First, it grew as large as a horse—a miracle! Then it grew a human face on its head—an egregious miracle! The third boon, longevity, would only become apparent as the years went on. Saint Simeon had assumed that the locust would be grateful for its transformation. He hoped that it would convert to the true faith and save its tiny soul. (Saint Simeon didn’t get out much.) The locust remained an unrepentant Muslim, and to compound its ingratitude, it outlived the saint by decades.

  In fact, it lived in Syria for eight centuries, doing whatever it did without making any impression on the historical record. Then came 1144, the fall of Edessa, and the Second Crusade. The ancient creaking locust purchased a sword, commissioned a fine suit of armor, and joined the army of defense. It marched into legend as an illustrious soldier of Islam and died, in due course, a soldier’s death.

  The Christians, far from home, heard the story of the pious old locust from their wretched prisoners of war. And one Frenchman liked the story so well he stole it.

  A Key to the Castleblakeney Key

  Researched and Documented by Caitlín R. Kiernan

  Excerpt from a postcard found among the correspondence of the late Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead, from Ms. Margaret H. Jacobs (7 Exegesis Street, Cincinnati, Ohio) to Lambshead; undated but postmarked January 16, 1979:

  . . . kind of you to give me access to the collection. Such marvels, assembled all in one place! It was like my first visit to the Mütter, so crammed with revelation. But the hand, the hand—well, I’ll have to write you at length about the hand. I had a dream . . .

  Excerpt from Archaeological Marvels of the Irish Midlands by Hortense Elaine Evangelistica (2009; Dublin, Mercier Press):

  . . . and is undoubtedly one of the more curious and, indeed, grisly side notes to the discovery of the “Gallagh Man” bog mummy. The hand clutching the key is severed just behind the wrist, bisecting the radius and ulna bones (short sections of which protrude from the desiccated flesh). The bronze skeleton key is held firmly between the thumb and forefinger in such a way as to give one the impression that the hand was lobbed off only moments before the key would have been inserted into the lock for which it must have been fashioned. The key measures just under seven centimeters, from the tip end of the shank all the way back across the diameter of the bow, and the bit has three prongs. As mentioned earlier, the hand clutching the key is exceptionally small, measuring not much more than nine centimeters, diminutive even for a small child.

  Littleway (2006) suggested the hand was not human at all, but, in fact, belonged to a species of Old World monkey (Cercopithecidae), probably a baboon or mangabey. This suggestion was subsequently rejected by Davenport (2007), who noted that no species of Old World monkey possesses claws, and even those few primitive New World species that do (Callitrichidae, the ma
rmosets, and tamarins) lack opposable thumbs. Certainly, the sharply recurved claws at the end of each finger remind one more of the claws of a cat or bird of prey than anything even remotely human. After his thorough examination of the hand, Davenport (ibid) concluded it to be a hoax, a taxidermied chimera fashioned from the right hand of a primate and the talons of a barn owl, then treated with various acids, salts, and dyes so as to give it the appearance of having been excavated from the peat deposits at Castleblakeney. Prout (2007) agreed with Davenport that the hand wasn’t that of a primate, but insisted it belonged to a three-toed sloth (despite the presence of five digits). Regardless, Davenport’s hoax explanation appears to have run afoul of carbon-dating carried out at Brown University (Chambers and Burleson, 2009b), which indicated the hand likely dates from between 300–400 B.C.E., which would make it much older than “Gallagh Man.” Also, a biochemical analysis of tissue samples taken from the hand reveal that it differs in no significant way from bog mummies known from Ireland and other locations across Northern Europe.