GLASS SOUP

by Jonathan Carroll

  He picked up the phone and absentmindedly said, “Hello?”

  “Glass soup.”

  The wording was so close to what he’d been thinking that Ettrich had to pause a moment to separate the two. Then another moment to remember and realize the import of what he had just heard.

  Glass soup.

  “Who is this?”

  “Someone who knows both Isabelle and what glass soup means.”

  Broximon came out of the guest room where Ettrich had put a child’s sleeping bag on the couch in there for him to use. “What’s going on?” He’d been taking a nap. His voice sounded yawny.

  Ettrich pointed to the telephone receiver and signaled for Brox to wait. “What do you want?”

  “It’s not what I want, Mr. Ettrich, it’s what you want.”

  Vincent surfed through his mind trying to place the voice. Had he heard it before? He didn’t think so. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then it would be good for us to meet so that I can explain, if you have time.”

  Broximon mouthed What’s up?

  Ettrich took the receiver from his ear and silently, slowly mouthed Glass soup.

  Understanding immediately, Broximon tensed.

  “Are you also a friend of John Flannery? We don’t need to meet.”

  The voice on the other end of the phone became coy. “You’re wrong. What would you say if I told you she was here?”

  “Isabelle?”

  “Yes, she’s in Vienna.”

  Outside of the apartment Broximon’s presence was a real problem. This became obvious immediately after he moved in with Ettrich and often accompanied him on errands around the neighborhood. People didn’t stop and stare at Broximon—they gasped and froze when they saw him. They covered their mouths with their hands at the sight of this perfectly formed, nattily dressed tiny man. He looked like something out of a fairy tale or a Fellini film. Broximon was slightly over nineteen inches tall. Bigger than when he had climbed out of an envelope in front of Simon Haden, he was nevertheless impossibly small in this environment. Despite his size, he had a man’s face and the only clothes he’d brought here were showy, elegant, and problematic. Ettrich shook his head emphatically no when Broximon showed them to him the first time.

  “What, you gotta problem with pinstripes?”

  “Broximon, you saw how people react to you on the street. If you don’t want to attract attention here, you cannot wear those clothes anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because in this world, nineteen-inch-tall people are children. But you do not look like a child. Do you understand how that can make things difficult? You’re not even tall enough to qualify as a midget, or at least I don’t think so. You said you don’t want to attract attention and I agree. You should keep a low profile.” Ettrich was sitting on the couch and Broximon was standing nearby. He was not even as high as Ettrich’s knee.

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  As if he’d been waiting for just that question, Ettrich reached for a red and black plastic bag next to him with the words Sports Experts written in white across it. “Here’s your new wardrobe.”

  Inside the bag were two new stiff pairs of indigo children’s jeans, two yellow sweatshirts, and a lilac-colored baseball cap that said across the brim HOME RUN BOY. Broximon’s eyes first widened in outrage and then sunk down through dismay into resigned disgust. But he didn’t say a word in protest because he knew that Vincent was right.

  “Around the house you can wear whatever you want, but when we go out this should be your uniform.”

  “Anything else, Commander?”

  “Yes.” Ettrich picked up a sheaf of papers that had been under the bag of clothes. “When anyone asks why you’re so small, tell them you have Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome.” He offered the papers to Brox who eyed them suspiciously. “I downloaded a couple of articles on the disease from the Internet. It’s all in there.”

  “What am I supposed to have?”

  “Progeria is a very rare genetic disease that ages a person seven times faster than normal. Kids who get it die of old age at thirteen. I know about it because my agency was hired to do an advertising campaign for one of their research foundations. When we are out on the street and anyone asks, tell them you’re my son and that you have progeria.”

  Broximon looked at Ettrich like maybe this whole thing was a joke and he was about to hear the punch line. On realizing that Vincent was entirely serious, Brox exploded. “Get the fuck out of here! Are you out of your mind? Progeria. I thought you made that name up. Do you really think anyone is going to believe that I’m your son and I have a disease that sounds like a planet in a science fiction movie?”

  “Well, Brox, no more than they believe seeing a two-foot-tall man dressed in a double-breasted suit and Gucci loafers.”

  Broximon looked down at his beautiful Gucci loafers, each the size of a large mouse. While he looked, his lips were all over the place with emotion. He knew Vincent was right about everything but that only made it worse.

  He had come here to help save Isabelle but failed immediately. He couldn’t go home to Haden’s world, and there was nothing for him to do now but fret, watch Austrian TV, and take naps. Broximon had never slept so much in his entire life.

  Worse was yet to come. The backpack was the last straw. Broximon was so bored staying inside the apartment that he went out with Ettrich every chance he got. Vincent didn’t object because he felt sorry for the little guy, but sometimes he wished he could do certain things alone. Another real problem with going out together was Broximon was so small that he had a hard time keeping up, even when Vincent walked slowly. Crossing a wide busy street as quickly as he could, Broximon still moved at the speed of an old woman. Cars were impatient and unforgiving. Their horns followed him everywhere. Hurrying along, he would look up furious at their loud obnoxiousness but all he would see were the menacing silver smiles of car grilles.

  Ettrich longed to say Look, just let me pick you up and help you here. As soon as we get to the other side of the street I’ll put you down again—it’s no big deal. But having lived with Brox for even this short amount of time, he knew that the little man was vain, argumentative, and not so secretly scared of this world.

  But one day when they were crossing Schonbrunnerstrasse he was hit. By a bicycle, thank God, and only a glancing blow. Some bike messenger wearing silver sunglasses and dressed all in orange swerved between cars, didn’t see Broximon in the hurly-burly, and hit him. The messenger felt only a slight bump when it happened but nothing more. He kept going.

  Broximon, shocked and shaken, got up slowly off the pavement. He knew now for sure that he would have to accept drastic changes here or else this place would eat him up. He didn’t leave the apartment or his room for two days after that, nor would he speak.

  Ettrich knew what had to be done and did it. He came home one afternoon with another bag from Sports Experts but put this one in the hall closet. He waited for Broximon to reemerge and bring up the subject. Three days later he did in a most truculent way but Ettrich was ready. He went to the closet, got the bag and brought it into the living room. He put it down on the floor near Broximon without a word and left the room again.

  Five minutes later while he was standing in the kitchen drinking a glass of cold grapefruit juice, Ettrich heard a wail followed by a long-drawn-out cry of “Noooooo!” come from the living room. He did not react. He waited to see if anything else came from in there. When it didn’t, he drank some more juice and looked out the window at the small garden planted in the Hof downstairs.

  More time passed until eventually someone cleared his throat behind him. Vincent turned and saw Broximon standing on the other side of the doorway holding the thing in both hands. It looked very much like he had been crying. Ettrich was so touched and embarrassed to see this that he averted his eyes.

  “You cannot be serious with this thing.”

  “Do you ha
ve a better idea, Brox? You’re the one who got run over. We have to do something.”

  “I wasn’t run over. I was knocked down.”

  Ettrich drank the last of the juice and smacked his lips before replying. “Yeah well, so the next time you’ll be run over, okay?”

  It was a backpack. But one of those specially designed backpacks used to carry small children in. The kind you pop junior into so that the baby can come along and see the world when you’re going out for a walk or a bike ride on a sunny day. The awfullest part was that before carrying the pack to the kitchen to confront Ettrich, Broximon actually tried it on and the damned thing fit. After making sure Vincent was nowhere about, he maneuvered the pack around so that he could climb in and see how it felt. It felt fine.

  “I’m supposed to ride around in this contraption on your back every time we go out?”

  “I didn’t say that, Brox. What I’m going to do is take it along so in case we do need it out there, we’ll be prepared.”

  “And by the way, did you happen to see the name of this thing? Did you see what it’s called on the label here?”

  Ettrich pretended there was more juice in the empty glass and tipped it up to his mouth again. Yes, he knew what it was called but it was the only pack of its kind he found that he thought would fit Broximon.

  “Babby Basket. I assume they meant baby basket, but they misspelled it. I’m supposed to go out on the street wearing these ridiculous horrible clothes and ride around on your back in something called the Babby Basket?

  “Look, I have an idea—why don’t you just kill me now? Save us all the fuss. Your apartment is up high enough; throw me out that window. Us little progeria people fall just as fast as you big ones.”

  Ettrich rubbed his nose. “Don’t be melodramatic. Do you want some grapefruit juice?”

  After that ominous phone call today, Broximon went to the hall closet and got out the Babby Basket without Ettrich having to say anything. Every time they returned home after using it, Broximon took the cursed thing and buried it as deep as he could in the back of the closet. That didn’t change anything but it made him feel microscopically better.

  Emerging from the dark land of coats with it in his hand, he was startled to hear Vincent’s vexed voice right behind him.

  “Know what else that fucker said? He asked in this very sweet, very docile voice if I knew that the word anijo was Eskimo for falling snow, and that anjou is both a kind of pear and a region of France. He knows what my son’s name is and was rifling on it. The fucker taunted me with how much he knows.”

  Brox said hotly, “Calm down! What the hell good is it going to do if you meet him all crazy and pissed off?”

  “He knows my son’s name, Broximon! He knows about Anjo and glass soup and that Isabelle is here. Chaos is here—it talked to me on the phone. I’m not pissed off—I’m scared for them.”

  “Well, don’t be—it does no good. Let’s go meet this guy and hear what he has to say.”

  “Know what he answered when I asked if I could bring you with me? He asked if progeria was anything like a profiterole. He wanted to know if he could eat you.”

  Isabelle, Leni, and false Broximon sat together on a brown park bench and stared up at the high oddity looming in front of them.

  “It’s called a flakturm.”

  “Say that word again.”

  “Flak-turm.”

  “Hmm.” False Broximon had never heard that word before but that was not surprising because he didn’t speak German.

  “It’s an antiaircraft tower. The German army built them during World War Two. They put big guns on top to shoot at American airplanes going by. It’s made of pure concrete. After the war it was discovered they’re so thick and indestructible that they couldn’t demolish them by dynamiting them or whatever, without damaging every building in the neighborhood. So they just left them standing. I think there’s something like five still left around town.”

  “What do they do with them now?”

  “Nothing. There’s not much you can do. An architect wanted to build a hotel on top of one, but the city refused. This is the only one that’s actually used, as far as I know. They made it into an aquarium. There are exotic fish and reptiles inside. There are even sharks. That big glass canopy coming off the side is a tropical rain forest. Inside it really is like a jungle. There are monkeys and parrots.”

  “Sharks and monkeys living inside an antiaircraft tower? Now that’s surreal.”

  After the failure at the café, the three of them had walked into this park with the flakturm in the center on their way to Isabelle’s apartment. They were only about ten minutes away now.

  They had gone to a café near Petras’s store because Isabelle remembered they served Mohr in hemd there. More than that, she wanted some time to think over what she had learned with Petras just now before seeing Vincent again.

  When they arrived the café was half-empty. They had their pick of tables. They chose a large one by a window that was filled with light. Isabelle looked for a waiter so they could order but none was about. She settled into the wide seat and looked around, smiling.

  Leni started to say something to her. Sitting on the windowsill, false Broximon sensed what she was about to say. He shook his head at her and glared. Let Isabelle find out for herself, his eyes said. Don’t you say a word. Leni looked away.

  Isabelle’s revelation came a few minutes later. At first she didn’t mind or really notice that when the passing waiters finally did appear, none of them paid attention to her, although she kept raising a hand or her voice to beckon them over. Waiters in Viennese cafés are known for being testy and self-directed. They come and go as they please and if you don’t like that, tough. Cafés are not hurried places. You don’t go there to have a quick one and leave. You go there to chat or read or dream. The waiters know this and act accordingly.

  In time though it became all too clear that these waiters weren’t ignoring Isabelle—they couldn’t see her.

  “They don’t see me.” Her voice was quiet and composed. She was only stating a fact.

  Leni nodded her head once in agreement, her eyes closed because she did not want to see her friend’s face. False Broximon did nothing.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Leni?”

  “Don’t you remember the guards at the border talking about that man on the bicycle that comes over here a few times a week to try and communicate with his mother? But he almost never succeeds. This is what it’s like for any dead person who returns here.”

  “But I’m not dead!”

  “You came here from Simon Haden’s land. That’s why Chaos tricked you into choosing to go there; because after you’ve chosen to experience that stage of death there’s no returning.”

  “But I brought Vincent back from death. I brought us both back. I did it before.”

  To her dismay both of them shook their heads this time. “Vincent had just died. You came before he created his world, which is the second part of death. If that had happened before you reached him, you never would have been able to save him.”

  “Then where is here? Where exactly are we?” Isabelle made an exasperated gesture meant to take in everything around them, everything real, her world, the world that she knew intimately.

  “This is the other side of the glass. Remember? You’re on our side of it now.”

  They were sitting in this park instead of finishing the short walk to Isabelle’s apartment because she was afraid of how she would react when she saw Vincent again. See him but not be able to touch him? Smell him but not kiss him? This was the worst part of being on the other side of the glass. She was back in her world, back to everything she knew so well. There it all was—right in front of her. She could see it, hear it… She was sure that if she had been able to order that Mohr im hemd she would have been able to smell its rich deliciousness. Everything from her life was here—except her in it.

  “Hello there, young fellow. What’s your name?” A hands
ome old man wearing a gray Tyrolean hat asked in German, looking delighted to see Broximon perched high up on Ettrich’s back in his Babby Basket.

  Broximon tried to ignore him but it was difficult because the traffic light was red and they stood together on the curb waiting for it to change. There was nowhere else to go and the old man was clearly waiting for an answer.

  “Vincent, what did he say?”

  Ettrich leaned his head back and translated, “He wants to know your name.”

  “Ah English! I speak English. Hallo, little man. What is your name?”

  “Marvin Gaye,” Broximon said in his deepest adult voice and turned away.

  A red and white city bus passed close by, drowning out whatever the old man said next. Broximon didn’t ask him to repeat it but he did anyway. His voice sounded completely different this time. He spoke with no accent at all. “I thought your name was Broximon.”

  The light changed to green but none of them moved. The old man smiled but the others didn’t.

  “Who are you?”

  “Vincent, we just talked on the telephone. Don’t you remember?”

  “That was you?”

  The old gentleman lifted his hat in the gallant/jaunty “how do you do?” manner.

  “What are you doing here? I thought we were supposed to meet at Heldenplatz?”

  “Change of plan. Would you like to see Isabelle? She’s right nearby.”

  Ettrich was instantly torn between deep suspicion and desire. Isabelle was here? She was near? He had missed her so much. And the baby? How was their child?

  “Where is she?”

  “In a park a few minutes from here. I’ll take you there right now if you’d like.”

  Broximon piped in over Ettrich’s shoulder, “Why should we trust you?”

  The old man reached up and tickled Broximon under the chin. “Why shouldn’t you? All I’m suggesting is that we walk over to a park.”