The Fountains of Neptune (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))

by Ducornet, Rikki

  “He looks like a fairy princess!” the Cod’s wife says, rocking the cradle on the bar. It is not true. In his white half-shell, dressed in lace, Charlie looks more like a monkey than ever.

  Because it is snowing, the Cod’s wife covers Charlie’s face with a clean linen napkin. We are six to pull on our jackets and stomp out into the sharp daylight; seven counting Charlie.

  “WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” the Cod calls from upstairs. “WHAT’S GOING ON?” he booms, piteously. Everyone pretends not to hear him.

  By the time we arrive at the breakwater we are dusted in snow.

  “Like whiting dredged in flour –” Gilles begins.

  “And on queue for frying!” cries Gillesbis. As the sea’s steely pan swells beneath us, we stand together and watch the Marquis carry the cradle down the steep stone steps to the water.

  “Say something first,” the Cod’s wife calls down to him. “Say a little prayer. Say . . . how does it go – ashes –”

  My mind is wandering. I am thinking about how time for the men of the Ghost Port Bar is counted out in the sea’s abundant loose change; how the seasons have these names: Sardine, La Drague, Skate, Mackerel, Sardine – and how December – too dangerous for these men’s small boats – has no name. Charlie Dee is being launched on his last voyage some time after Sardine and before Dredging.

  “Dew to dew,” the Marquis says gently as he sets Charlie down upon the ocean’s Great Way. “All things dissolve.”

  “All things are dew –” says Gilles.

  “Charlie Dee, me and you,” says Gillesbis.

  The Cod’s wife and I are weeping when he gives Charlie a push. Compressed in death, the chimp lies huddled in his white ferry, the antimacassar preceding him like an altar.

  For several instants the bark glides forward, but then turning suddenly upon itself, it circles back, tips, and capsizes – projecting Charlie into the water. Charlie sinks like a loaf of lead. He sinks so swiftly we see nothing of him – not even a trail of whiteness. We watch as the crib’s pale underside is carried out to sea.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Feeling cheated and a little foolish, we tread back through the quickening snow to the Ghost. On the way I hear a hammer and catch a glimpse of sparks leaping beyond a blacksmith’s window. As Totor and the others walk on, I stop to admire the mysteries of fire. The room is dark, the smith invisible. The ringing sparks strike my eyes and ears with the force of a full-blown hallucination. In that room fire is the embodiment of sound.

  The cry of a fishwife pulls me back to the frosty reality of the street. Shaking the snow from my hair I set off to explore the city’s ancient quarters, a secret itinerary traced out by cobblestones so humped they hinder walking. These regions embrace the Ghost and the Galaxy and, further on, a curious establishment of precarious solidity: the Snail and Shark, wedged between a sinister-looking bottling works, and an abandoned bindery. A handsome devil is painted in diluted colours directly on the wall. He holds a toddy in one hand, and a glass of black coffee in the other:

  COFFEE BLACK AS SATAN

  TODDY HOT AS HELL!

  The devil faces a small square, and a fountain which plays by fits and starts. Worn by more than weather, a featureless figure surges from the foam like a frost-bitten finger. A trickle of water sputters in the dirty ice crusted at its feet. When the season goes well this object is rewarded with the kisses of seamen’s daughters, but once I saw a priest climb into the fountain with a whip. As he lacerated the statue, he held his skirts up with his teeth.

  This square also boasts a junk shop with a receding roof of sparse slate tile. And if I never pay much attention to the clutter in the window, today, the day of Charlies funeral, a handsome china monkey catches my eye. I stare at him, my face pressed to the glass, and he stares back at me. The pupils of his blue eyes are intensely black. His body is a pale yellow, he has a white belly, a butter-yellow beard, and a violet nose. He is sitting on a fanciful throne of violet-glazed rockery. He looks shiny and new, like an expensive piece of marzipan.

  A seascape has been propped up behind him. In the ocean’s depths the Heavens are reflected: the brightly burning spheres of the planets, the moon, the blazing stars. I look at the painting and wonder if Charlie’s body must fall as far to reach the bottom of the sea as his soul must rise to reach the gates of Paradise. And I think that the monkey is intended for me; that we are intended for one another. What I feel for him is no less than passionate love. His face, animated by a gently mocking smile, seems to say:

  “So! You’ve come at last! Can you do it? Do you dare?”

  Apparently the room beyond the window is empty. Ignoring a scowling griffin with wings and talons spread above the door casing, I peer through the dusty glass. I see more paintings in heavy, varnished frames, barometers and bells, a thicket of oil lamps, parasols, and canes. Holding my breath, I push the doorlatch down slowly with my thumb.

  I suppose there must be a bell strung to the door. I open it millimetre by millimetre until the space is just large enough for my face. Without thought, my heart leaping, my body follows my head – and I am standing in a low-ceilinged room, which smells of violet-scented tobacco; I am kneeling on The Lives of the Saints and Martyrs, I am reaching around the mysterious seascape, and I am seizing the monkey. And to the sound of my own violently drumming heart, running down the street as fast as those treacherous cobblestones and my own heavy clogs will allow – with my prize, cold as ice, tucked inside my jacket. But just as I pass the Snail and Shark, I am seized in turn by the scruff of the neck.

  “Thieving, are you!” Toujours-Là whispers hoarsely. With his free hand he cruelly twists my nose. I try to pull away but he has me captured. “You’re not going anywhere, Nini; I’ve been wanting to talk to you. Totor know you’re out stealing? And Rose?”

  “Not stealing,” I mumble. “Just taking care of it.”

  “Taking it, you mean. I should take care of you! Bah! Nini – don’t be so scared of me. I feel bad about Charlie Dee. Come on, son, the punch is on me. Sinners should look after one another.”

  I follow Toujours-Là inside the Snail and Shark. It’s a far bigger place than the Ghost, and nearly empty. The rectangular room with a worn, wooden floor, once painted black, is heated by a grotesque kerosene stove. As its fierce heat hits my face a tear tumbles to my lips.

  “Your victim,” Toujours-Là hisses, pointing to a small, silver-haired man who – arms dangling at his sides, his cheek to the table – appears to be asleep. “Now, if he’d been awake, Nini, and sitting where I’m sitting. . . .” I turn my head and across the square, see the façade of the junk shop clearly. I laugh giddily.

  “That’s the stuff!” Toujours-Là broadly grins. “One must be light in crime: light as a feather.”

  “But it’s not a crime, Toujours-Là!” I whisper. “Please! Don’t talk so loud!”

  “Have it your way, boy. That thing buttoned up in your jacket? You stick it down between your legs and take your jacket off. It’s hot as Hell in here.”

  Slamming a door behind him the barkeep appears. The junk dealer starts in his sleep and Toujours-Là shuffles over to the bar for two toddies, one weak on rum and strong on lemonade. I bed the monkey between my knees and cover him with my coat.

  “I could give him back,” I say when Toujours-Là returns.

  “You keep him. Takers are keepers.”

  The toddies are served in pewter cups. I notice dented brass spitoons in every corner of the room.

  “Witness to an extinguished race of fantastically powerful men,” says Toujours-Là, “who drank toddies of liquid mercury, and who spat lead bullets.” I sip my own brew feeling easier.

  “What’s that word – extinguished?”

  “Out. Like candles. Means a race don’t no longer exist. Pfft! They’s why the fog’s always so thick in this city. We is living among ghosts. They was once big and fearless, a race of monkey men – and that thing you stole is an effigy of their greatest ki
ng: Thingummy Ma’Hoot. Thingummy chewed bars of brass for breakfast!”

  “But he looks so kind!”

  “When you is as powerful as he was you can afford to be kind.”

  “Are you telling true?” I whisper. “Because he’s not a monkey man, he’s, as far as I can see, all monkey.” Peeling back my coat I ask Toujours-Là to take a look.

  “He’s got two arms, two legs; he’s sitting up like a man, he’s got this majestic, professorial expression on his face. Thingummy is a monkey man, Nini, of the race of Ma’Hoot. I’ve no doubt about it.”

  “You won’t tell?”

  “I’m not telling. I’ve thieved in my time.” I notice then that Toujours-Là is wearing an ancient, green coat, threadbare at the sleeves. If the coat is stolen property, I doubt the owner misses it.

  “How’s the Cod’s wife?” he asks. “I did her an evil turn,” he admits gloomily. “Times there’s no way escaping my evil temper. It’s alcohol makes me ferocious and queer. I’ve done worse than murder monkeys. Hell – I feel bad about Charlie Dee and intend to make up somehow. But how?” He tongues his gums thoughtfully.

  “You should tell her you’re sorry.”

  “Mmm – well, I’ll do that – I’ll get her another monkey. I’ll have to steal it, though.” He winks. “Well. It ain’t tragedy. Her heart ain’t broken. And if the Cod’s wife’s been kind to me, a woman’s kindness is a two-edged knife.”

  “That’s not true!” I cry, scandalized. “Other Mother’s kind. She’s good. She cares for me, she does, she –”

  “Yes. Rose is kind. But then she’s simple. You gotta admit she’s simple. The simple can afford to be kind.”

  “She cares for me!” I insist. “And the Cod’s wife cared for you!”

  “Bah! She’s just scared I’ll talk to the Cod. About her goings on. I could tell you a thing or two about her goings on. The goings on of a woman is fearful, Nini. Worse than what a drunken fool can do to a chimpanzee. So tell me – I hear they was a veritable funeral. A wake –”

  “Oh! Toujours-Là,” I cry excited. “Bottlenose! You knew Bottlenose!”

  “Folks was talking about Bottlenose at Charlie Dee’s wake?”

  “They was!”

  “About how he went off and damned well disappeared?”

  “Looking for treasure! They say he died.”

  “Last night I saw the ghost of Bottlenose,” says Toujours-Là, and his eyes of a he-goat, wicked and wild, burn into mine igniting the candles of my mind. “I saw him as he’d always been: a drinker, a seaman, and a dreamer; his nose a beacon shining like the perpetual fah! flame at the altar of desire! The rest of his ghost was pale and trailed his head like the tail of a comet; he moved like a sleepwalker, slowly, with arms outstretched; his body was a smoke. His face was a spherical cloud, and his eyes was blind. The Dead, you see, live in obscurity. His tongue was black. The Dead eat dust, Nini, and mud.

  “Old Bottlenose was as obsessed as ever, anxious, and dissatisfied. To tell the truth, I wouldn’t have recognized him – Hell – I wouldn’t have seen him, mist that he was, but for his nose, that blazing flag. If his shadow had abandoned him, his nose was still with him, more fat than thin, more long than short, more hot than cold, more red than white, more erectile than flaccid, more useful than most. This was the only nose I’ve ever known which could unlock doors; a regular shoehorn and once he’d caught a shark with it. There was a nick out the middle ever after that was handy for carrying the lantern back up the wine-cellar stairs. His nose was a shelf; he kept a pantry up there: a ham-bone, a plate, forks, and spoons; a breadboard it was; I’ve seen it pass the pickles and root out truffles, squirrels, foxes; why, once in Holland he stuck it up a hole in a dyke and saved that country from flood!”

  “I’ve heard about it! But, Toujours-Là – it was a little boy that did it. Stuck in his finger –”

  “Just goes to show how folks distort the truth. True, he was little then, his first trip out, a mousse – but it weren’t his finger, it were his nose. He was born with it. A Caesarean – cut from the womb like a plum from a pie. A beautiful baby, white as snow, looking like the angel screwed to the top of a Pope’s canopy. But the nose gave the toddler a diabolical aspect. His ma abandoned him on a convent’s stoop; the sisters took to him at once – there was no end to their dallying with the babe. He ran off, a mousse at seven because the nuns was suffocating him with their attentions. Anyway, last night I recognized my old friend’s proboscis at once.

  “ ‘I’ll find it now!’ cries Bottlenose’s ghost. ‘I’m sure to find it now.’ Even dead he dreams of treasure as he scales the shadows. But he’s after something far more precious than before.

  “ ‘The philosophical stone!’ cries Bottlenose. ‘Oh, there are celestial hierophants what will pay dearly for it! Once I find it I’ll buy back my life, my precious, precious life!’ Life is precious, Nini. . . . Why am I wasting mine away? I am wasting away. . . .”

  “What happened then, Toujours-Là? What did the ghost of Bottlenose say then?”

  “ ‘I mus’ find it and I will! I have all Eternity –’

  “ ‘An’ plenny of spirits to help you, too!’ I said to the ghost, trying to be friendly although my teeth was chattering fearfully. Hell is far more populous than earth!”

  “Why is one stone so precious, Toujours-Là?”

  “This stone’s a glass of wonders in which to see the past – perhaps the only thing that could entertain a celestial hierophant with an eternity on his hands to kill. And why do I kill time? I’ve got so damned little left!” He slams his fist down on the table.

  “And then?”

  “ ‘Alone!’ cries Bottlenose. ‘I’ll find it alone! The Prince of Night can’t give light to all the shades of Hell!’ ”

  “What happened on the Congo,” I asked. “Did your boat sink?”

  “ ‘FEVER!’ Bottlenose’s voice was like a dead leaf swept along a gutter in the wind. ‘Fever ’fore I had a chance to get my senses back, my bearings. I was misled. I listened to stories stead of following my nose. Had I followed it I’d be wallowing in gold coins now, stead of dew!’ ”

  “What’s gold smell like?” I asked, thinking to profit by the answer.

  “ ‘Gold has the reek of lions on it, fulvous, and hot, and an atom of soot. Above all: gold smells of bile. But I’m off! I mus’ be off! Give my best wishes for the New Year to the boys. Buy them all a drink in my name.’ He pulled a coin from the air and here it is. Keep it, Nini; spirit money brings luck.”

  The coin looks like a bent brass washer. I put it to my nose. It smells of Toujours-Là’s pocket. “Smells musty!”

  “Been knocking about in some subterranean digs. Think of it, Nini! We’re up here sitting on the crust enjoying life and just under our feet Bottlenose is plodding along day in and day out after his stone. Life is a twinkling and Death forever; down there when one shade meets another it says: Remember? Remember the hot sun? A burning glass of rum? And that reminds me. . . .” He pulls himself up from his chair and makes it slowly to the bar with his empty cup. I steal a look at the junk-store man. He looks the way the Cod’s wife’s goldfish look when their water needs changing.

  “Toujours-Là,” I ask once he is back, “you still not eating?”

  “Not eating.” He sucks on the brimming rim of his tumbler before sitting down. “I’m on my last legs, son, yet I haven’t felt better ’n weeks. Yesterday I felt like shit and God knows I’ll probably feel like shit tomorrow. But today I feel almost sprightly. It was watching you what done it!” He sits down laughing softly.

  “How did Bottlenose die? Did he tell you how?”

  “He did. Told me the entire story. How he’d chugged up the river Congo leaving direction to chance smells. How he inscribed his sensations in a little book. He was lonely, but then, who isn’t? Strange birds shat in his boat and filled the air with shrieks. The water was so full of fish it was like cruising a cotriade.

  “Then he began hearing
curious rumours. The folks he met up with during brief encounters on the river bank all had stories about something fearfully bizarre further up river. Something they venerated, but at a distance – something downright magical. Bottlenose, always exalted anyway, got fixed on this. He figured it had something to do with the treasure he was seeking. So he took out a map and made calculations, thought so long and hard he got feverish. Everywhere he saw clues, firefly arrows pointing out waterways in the dark. He’d get all steamed up over an unusual configuration of trees and when his rudder snared in weeds he decided it was time to leave the river and explore the land. Sure enough, a boy wearing nothing but a hummingbird’s wishbone told him there was something strange and powerful not a day’s walk into the bush. Bottlenose followed the boy to his village where he questioned the elders who all flocked around him wanting to rub his beak for luck. Bottlenose touched them too. Said their skins had a decidedly greenish hue and it came to him in a flash that they was the direct descendants of an amphibious race of mammals all as green as frogs. Too bad he didn’t have time to develop his theory because –”

  “CRABS!” comes a cry from the street, so loud it startles the junk-store man who bleets a little in his sleep. “Crabs! Crabs, crabs, CA-RABS!”

  “– it just could mean that old Charles Darwin was wrong and mankind descended from –”

  “CLAMS!” This time the cry comes from further away. “Clams! Clams, clams, CA-LAMS!”

  “– salamanders. Anyhow, maybe these green-hued natives egged Bottlenose on, maybe not; maybe they did believe there was something mythic and powerful haunting the jungle. They said it never slept nor moved, but only stood its ground and stared; a silent Cyclops this were with a weird, inhuman aspect, and three-legged to boot, though some argued its third leg was an inordinately long penis. Yes – a powerful demon, bright-eyed and intent; the guardian of some terrific secret, some enchantment, some open sesame, some (Bottlenose was sure of it) –”