The Palace of Curiosities

by Rosie Garland

  Eager to find her, I peel myself off my sodden sheets and stumble to the kitchen. It is empty. Seized with a powerful thirst, I coax the fire in the range to light again.

  ‘There is not much in the way of wood left in the basket,’ she says, and I turn to find Eve watching me.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘George has gone.’ She smiles. ‘I heard the door slam.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I wonder at how mute I have become, when so many smart words were dancing in my head only moments ago. I lift the kettle, but my hands are trembling, so I put it down before it falls.

  ‘Abel, sit down. You’re all of a lather.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he speak so harshly?’ she asks with a small note of fury in her voice.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘George.’

  ‘Oh. I had quite forgot.’

  ‘Well, you are the talkative one, and no mistake.’

  I look at her and see the kindness I have been too frightened to trust. No longer. I open my mouth. She grasps the handle of the kettle and hefts it over the fire.

  ‘I believe I shall be making our tea from now on, Abel,’ she says. ‘The kitchen-girl has gone; and with her the plates, and knives, and spoons.’

  ‘Are we truly in trouble, Eve?’

  She raises her shoulders, and then lets them drop.

  ‘My husband is an angry man. There is this new show, and it is the talk of the city. However, I shall endeavour to put it from my mind and direct my reasoning towards a more productive conclusion. It does not do to dwell on unpleasant thoughts, does it, Abel?’

  Her eyes turn a key in mine. My mouth is still open, so I shut it.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  I must find the right moment to speak. She returns her attention to the range, raising the shutter, examining the flames and talking as she does so.

  ‘New acts, new thrills. I declare I am quite fatigued with all this bluster and fiddle-faddle. Some peace would be pleasant. What think you, Abel?’

  She glances at me hopefully.

  ‘I – Eve, there is much I would say.’

  My clever speech shrivels. She nods, and returns to peering into the fire. Lit from beneath, her face shimmers like the sun, her radiating curls its beams. When she straightens up, she carries the light with her.

  ‘It is fired up well enough. I shall make tea. We shall sit awhile and drink a cup, and talk of anything you wish. Ah, there are barely enough leaves for one person. I hope Lizzie brings some back. There is coffee.’

  ‘Coffee? Let us drink coffee, then.’

  I take it from her, grateful for the distraction. As I spoon a measure into the smallest pan left in the place, I see a new picture, plucked from my mind’s throng: a flat expanse of gritty sand; three stones set in a triangle with a smouldering stick set between them which I shuffle forward as it burns down. A small copper pot is wedged between the stones, sucking up the heat from the wood. I am hunched over the little fire; content.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asks, and I am back in the under-stairs kitchen, stirring water and coffee grounds in a little iron pan.

  ‘Making coffee.’

  ‘I did not know it was made like that.’

  ‘Nor did I. But you made me think of Lizzie when you spoke her name, and when I see her stomach-dance, it brings about a desire for coffee made this way. And a memory,’ I add, more quietly.

  She smiles. ‘That is not what men usually desire when they see that dance.’

  I heap sugar into the brew.

  ‘It will be very sweet,’ she says.

  ‘Coffee without sugar is a marriage feast without dancing,’ I reply, watching the pot begin to seethe. ‘And burnt coffee is a wedding night without weeping. Some things must be so.’

  She bares her teeth and laughs sadly. ‘Where is that from?’ she asks.

  ‘I do not know. The smell of the coffee brought the words into my head. I am sitting next to a small fire, and above me the moon is slung on to its side.’

  She stops laughing. ‘I felt that strange magic,’ she whispers, ‘when you were playing the pipe. I was fairly transported by it. I did not know you could play so well.’

  ‘Neither did I.’

  ‘You are too modest.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘What other skills are you hiding?’

  She runs her hand up and down the table-edge, as though it is an animal and she is stroking it.

  ‘It seems that my hands are full of knowledge, but they conceal it from me,’ I say, feeling a thrill to be opening the box of my self to someone who listens with sincere attention. ‘Then I undertake a new task, and I discover they know how to accomplish it. I have not yet come upon something I cannot do.’

  ‘You can do any job you set your mind to, I think.’

  ‘Perhaps I can.’

  She takes a considered breath. ‘I shall speak honestly with you, Abel. You are not the only one with mysterious skills, for I have discovered one also. I can read men through their hands.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I believe I can use this to help them. To help you. To help many others. I have plans, Abel. I have my face’ – she laughs – ‘I have my fascinating life, and it is no mean achievement.’ She tilts her chin in a mixture of pride and defiance. ‘I shall write the book of my life and present it with a fine frontispiece and it will be the sensation of the age. I shall write a yard of books. I shall be my own woman. I am my own woman.’

  She laughs again; her eyes are bright, and hold mine longer than is customary for women. I lift the pot and pour the syrupy grime into two cups.

  ‘Then let us drink to success. See. I did not think I could make coffee this way, but my hands are guiding me.’

  ‘Such a tiny amount?’ she says.

  ‘Coffee is not for quenching thirst. That is the task of water. This is a different refreshment.’

  I seem to be a book of proverbs. She does not notice, so I pinch the cup between thumb and forefinger, lift it to my lips, take a noisy sip. She does the same and sucks too hard, choking herself.

  ‘Gently,’ I say. ‘The first time must always be gentle.’

  She drops her eyes and takes a more careful taste.

  ‘Its perfume transports me to another place.’

  ‘It is indeed an evocative aroma,’ she agrees.

  I close my eyes, and this time am taken to a river-bank, floodwater shimmering over emerald fields, flashing like a thousand knives laid together side by side. On the far side is a huddle of mud-brick dwellings shivering in the noon heat, more than I can count at a glance. The place seems deserted, except for the spiralling twine of smoke from a cooking fire.

  I shade my eyes and scan the line of crumbled walls, soft at the edges like kneaded dough without a mould. In the distance, beyond the irrigation, the desert spreads its red cloak into the west, league after league without end. I make my way towards the village, the ground yielding beneath my feet as I walk. A short distance down-river a boy stands in the water up to his ankles; he lifts a long cane and thrashes the sodden ground with it, raising a slow shawl of spray.

  ‘Abel?’

  I fly back into the room.

  ‘Yes?’ I blink.

  ‘Are you well? You were like a man turned into stone. Where were you gone to?’

  ‘You knew I had gone somewhere?’

  ‘A great distance, by the set of your features.’

  ‘Men call me an idiot for this way of mine.’

  In my ears I hear dead fish, dead man, corpse-kisser.

  ‘You do not seem like a fool to me. Thoughtful, rather. Different, of course.’

  ‘Yes?’ I look away, waiting for her to throw names.

  ‘Abel, remember I am different also. I have fought to feel no shame.’ She lifts up one of the locks of hair spilling from the side of her nose. ‘It has been a long war with many battles. I shaved myself once – I thought to please my husband.’ She grimaces. ‘I will not do
it again.’

  ‘I am glad,’ I say. ‘For you would lose more than your fur. I should not like to see that.’

  As I speak it, I know it for the truth. She pauses, and stares at me most intently.

  ‘You are different to the others,’ she says, and does not hide her pleasure. ‘Abel, I am very glad indeed that you are my friend,’ she adds, leaning across the table and brushing the back of my hand with her own.

  I quiver with anticipation. I want to be read, but the fear of being thought grotesque remains. The look of disgust on the face of my Italian master swims before my eyes.

  ‘Ah,’ she murmurs.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask, fearing her response.

  ‘I am not sure. I felt it before.’ She shakes her head, and her hair swings about her face. ‘I can read you: like the others, yet nothing like them. They unwind a few years and come to the end of their spool. You are—’

  I wait for monstrous.

  ‘Marvellous,’ she sighs. ‘Even a brief touch and I can see you stretching back and back. You were a slaughter-man.’

  ‘Yes, but everyone knows this. Even George.’

  ‘Before that, a clock-mender.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And before that, an anatomist of sorts.’

  ‘I was!’ I gasp. ‘I have told no-one of it.’

  ‘Those few things I have uncovered after a moment’s touching. There is a great deal more. In all the pictures I see you grow no younger. The images change; you are unchanging.’

  ‘Now you will tell me they are perverted imaginings.’

  ‘No. Why would I do that?’

  ‘Everyone else has done.’

  ‘Have they?’

  ‘If you see what I contain, what I am, then you will push me away.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I am full of horrors,’ I whisper.

  ‘I do not think I could hate you, Abel. If that is all you fear—’

  ‘It is not all. I cannot make the pictures stop,’ I say, glancing at her and then away. ‘They pursue me everywhere. I fear that if you open the book of me, I will be overwhelmed. That I will never be able to shut them away again. I will drown in the flood.’

  ‘Abel, my friend.’

  ‘I think I have changed my mind. I am sorry. One minute I want to understand the secret of myself, the next I do not.’ Then it comes to me. ‘Eve, these memories of mine. Can you take them away?’

  ‘No! All I can do is read them.’

  ‘But I do not want them.’ I am visited by a stabbing image of a tent in a fair, an old man demanding to gut me of my memories and then to leave me burst open and helpless. ‘If you read me, I am afraid that you will know more than I do, that it will be too heavy for me, that I will not want to know your answer. I am afraid it is what I guess. I am afraid it is nothing like I guess. I have been this close before, I think. I do not remember, but the fear tastes familiar.’

  ‘That is a lot of fear.’

  We smile at each other, as though for the first time. I bathe in its simple warmth, feeling myself washed strangely clean. I lean forward and wipe the stub of my thumb along her moustache. She does not start away.

  ‘You have coffee stuck to your lip,’ I say. I think of George, and if he came into the room, now. ‘Eve. Do not tell your husband we have drunk coffee together.’

  ‘I tell my husband very little. But why should the drinking of coffee be a secret to be kept?’

  ‘You are a woman, therefore you understand. He is a man, and will not.’

  The room settles into the warm silence of companionship.

  Eve does not grasp at me with lip-licking curiosity nor does she thrust me away in horror. The word that comes to my weary mind is safe. I lie on my bed, concocting plans of how I may endeavour to find her alone again, and soon, and talk more. Conjuring romantic dreams of myself telling her how beautiful she is, and seeing her look upon me with more than friendship – with love. In such a dream I find her, fall to my knees and bury my face in her skirt. I inhale the delicious spice of her, something I know but cannot name.

  ‘Abel, you are the only one who does not wish to change me.’

  ‘You are Eve. That is enough.’

  ‘My dear Abel. This is a greater gift than you know.’

  ‘Eve, I—’

  ‘You know I can help you.’

  ‘I know. I am ready.’

  Her smile brushes my heart with an intimacy so intense I am made breathless. I gather her to me as though the action may restore breath to my lungs. As I do, her fur melts away and her face is replaced with that of another woman, whose hair is so dark a brown as to be black, coiled in braids about her head.

  I know this woman. I have unloosed her hair a hundred times. She laughs, and as she does so, changes once more. Her jaw sets, teeth grinding against each other as she is seized by a dreadful pestilence.

  Her whole body labours to expel the poison, pushing the foul matter into swellings which crowd about her neck: the size of hen’s eggs, the colour of raked ashes. In her armpit are further tumours, so great she can no longer keep her arm close by her side, but instead holds it away from her.

  I watch her hurled back and forth by the violent fever and can do nothing to draw her to safety. I wish to be spared this torture, but cannot close my eyes. Words of prayer burst from my mouth: that I might keep her by me; that she might be returned to wholeness through some miracle of healing. An answering rattle bubbles from her mouth, breath creeping narrowly between the swellings in her throat.

  Her teeth clench in a grimace that might be frowning or laughing. It is the smile of coming Death, which reveals what lies beneath the skin. Her head rolls from side to side and she lets out small piercing cries of surprise, hands grasping and ungrasping as her whole body wrestles the sickness. I try to catch her fingers and soothe her, but I cannot keep hold.

  At last she is seized by a spasm as though a dog has bitten her in the lower part of her belly. She stretches her mouth wide and releases a long squeal; then the shriek is snuffed out and the room aches with silence. A crackling sound comes from her lips: the snapping of burning twigs. Her tongue spikes the filthy air and a corrupt stink buffets me as her bowels loosen.

  I look upon the terrible face before me. This is not my beloved; it cannot be. This female has a quill pen of a nose, harsh jawbone, eyes fixed in a furious glare. Her mouth stretches wide in a final curse, tongue as grey as a ram’s. I try to push this slug of a thing back into the mouth, but it will not fit.

  I look from her blotched and pestilent skin to my own untouched flesh; I press my mouth to hers and suck at her last venomous breath in the hope that I might also be infected. But for all my desire to join her in the mortal grasp of the fever, I am unable to follow.

  The voice speaks: Would you do this again? Have Eve melt before your eyes in sickness? I know its truth. Every woman I have touched, and every man also: all have shrivelled, died; and I have looked on, unaltered, and unable to hold them to this life for one breath longer.

  Like the Morning Star, Eve has risen in the dark night of my existence. She warms me with the bright flame of understanding. All I need to do is stretch out my hands and receive the comfort she offers so freely. But how can I cause her the pain I have inflicted upon countless others? How can I inflict it upon myself?

  I wake up. My courage stutters. It is dark, and I am alone.

  EVE

  London, November 1858

  ‘A prime space, my dear. A prime location,’ he said, loud enough for any passers-by to hear. ‘Sheltered from the wind. That is what is needed by persons of our standing.’

  My husband tipped his hat on to the back of his head, winking at the fearsome man guarding the entrance and pushing a shilling into his handshake. The gate-keeper peered at me.

  ‘What’s that?’ he growled, pointing at my heavy veil. ‘We don’t like women here.’

  ‘That’, said my husband loudly, broadening his shoulders, ‘is my wife. A No
n-Pareil of the Female Race. The only true and genuine Lion-Faced Woman, and Star Attraction at Professor Arroner’s Marvels, which may be viewed—’

  ‘Yes, yes, we’ve heard of you and have seen it all before,’ our Cerberus muttered. ‘Get along now, there’s folk waiting.’

  We made our way past men armed with staves who looked this way and that along the street, as if something admired or detested were about to appear round the corner and they must be ready to spring into attack or defence. I trotted at his side with a sprightly step, for his stride was longer than mine and not obstructed by tight-laced stays or the thick quilt of petticoats through which I waded.

  My husband thumbed his coat lapels, clapping the shoulders of many a fellow as if they were all of his acquaintance and handing out playbills. The first man said, ‘Seen it,’ the second, ‘Old hat,’ and plenty more remarked on there being ‘new thrills to be had’. After a while even he tired of the interminable humbug, and led me to his chosen spot down a passageway barely the breadth of my shoulders.

  A crowd of men far larger than my small self were streaming in, turning sideways and making themselves thin as doors to shuffle down the alleyway. I saw the most nimble transform themselves further, into Barbary apes, finding footholds in the bricks and perching in the empty mouths of windows. I did not know so many could be forced into so restricted a space. You could not name it a square: rather, it was a pocket of dank air, bludgeoned into smallness by grimy walls.

  ‘Why are we here?’ I said, sliding my hand beneath the veil to sweep aside my eyebrows. They had refused to take the curl overnight and insisted on curtaining my eyes.

  ‘You will see, soon enough.’

  ‘I see nothing of any note, save a company of folk such as one might encounter in any public bar.’

  He barked out a swift laugh. ‘Ah, this is not any public place. Nor are these any men. Patience, Mrs Arroner. We are here for your instruction and edification.’

  My heart sank a little. He rarely if ever took me out with him, and over breakfast had described this event as a diverting change, one where I might be entertained rather than providing the entertainment. The word ‘instruction’ cast it in a far less interesting light.