by Steve Haynes
I sat in the Café Soleil on my own after work. I found myself gazing at the way the light shone through the door of the café, casting the coloured design onto the floor. Maybe somehow that projection could be harnessed to greater effect.
The beginning of an idea was coming to me. The Café Soleil must have the best light in all of Autumn City. But come to think of it, the place hadn’t been very busy at all, for a while now.
‘How’s business?’ I said to the old guy who brought me my drink.
‘Slow.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Very slow.’
‘Who owns this place?’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘I just had to let my best waitress go.’ He held out his hand. ‘Name’s Bigbury,’ he told me.
I shook his hand. ‘Powell.’
‘I see you in here a lot,’ he said. ‘Wish we had more like you.’
My idea was crystallising quickly in my mind. I mulled a few last details before speaking. ‘What would you say, Mr Bigbury, if I said I could double your business?’
‘I’d say, “Who do I have to kill?”’
‘Ha ha. Good one. Your takings have been steady the last few weeks?’ He nodded. ‘Let’s say I double it, I get thirty per cent of the extra. Deal?’
‘Thirty per cent of half?’
‘Thirty per cent of the extra. Maybe I’ll do better than double your income.’
‘All right, it’s a deal. What do you need, kid?’
I pointed in the direction of the window. ‘I just need permission to do whatever I want with your window.’
Mr Jackson was a decent man, and he said I could use the workshop in the evenings as long as it was all in my own time and I paid for any materials I used.
The clockwork mechanism was quite straightforward, though I wanted it to be sturdy enough to drive a selection of plates around. I figured it wasn’t much use to have the image projected onto the floor, but there was a lot of white wall space in the Café Soleil. A careful arrangement of mirrors and lenses would lift the image up to fill that space.
‘Understand, sir,’ I told Mr Bigbury, ‘this is just the first prototype. I’ll build something more elaborate. I just wanted to get us up and running. See what response we get.’
‘Right you are, Powell.’
The prototype cast simple abstract colour designs across the walls of the Café Soleil. A modest start but it seemed to impress the few customers who were in when I set it up. I showed Mr Bigbury how to wind the mechanism, which at regular intervals moved a new image in front of the lens.
We’d see how that went, and in the meantime I’d develop some more elaborate animations. I had in mind a kind of picture book, using coloured images or silhouettes to tell a story.
I carried out my normal work for Mr Jackson during the day, and worked on my own project in the evenings. For some reason I couldn’t quite decipher, Ivy was being rather cold and distant with me. It was something to do with the mechanism I was developing, but I thought it unlikely this was any kind of professional jealousy. She refused to discuss it.
I could prepare the plates in Mr Jackson’s workshop, and fit them to a duplicate mechanism, but we didn’t have the Café Soleil’s light. So I had only a sense of how well my first shadow mechanism would work once installed. Nevertheless as I sat in the workshop and watched the plates shifting around as the cogs turned, I had high hopes for it. The plates were intended to illustrate the story of Sholla, the warrior woman who single-handedly defended her King against an invading army. Silhouettes of enemy warriors with swords or bows, on foot or on horseback, rose and fell. Each came forward and was struck down by Sholla, while the sun and the moon and the stars rotated around and around.
When I went back to the Café Soleil, a week after first installing the prototype mechanism, there had already been an increase in trade. Mr Bigbury shook my hand and said he was delighted. ‘It’s working, Powell, it’s working!’ he told me enthusiastically. The spores in the room communicated a palpable sense of happiness and excitement.
I unfastened the device from its mountings against the window and took it down. There was a murmur of disapproval from the café patrons as I did so. It appeared people really were coming here to experience the display. I set about removing the older colour plates quickly, and fitted the new ones. I wound the mechanism, feeling a little nervous. Perhaps I should have tested it while the café was closed, but I could not do so in the dark, and the Café Soleil had always opened from daybreak till dusk.
I managed to find one unoccupied chair and sat down to watch. The scenes were projected onto the café walls exactly as I hoped. Whether or not the display proved popular remained to be seen, but I rejoiced in having achieved what I set out to. I was so captivated by my work that I forgot to take notice of how the other patrons were receiving it. When I did think at last to consider them, I saw they had become perfectly still and seemed entranced.
The display reached its end, the silhouette plates withdrawn into the mechanism’s housing for a minute or two till it would start over. A quiet hush had descended on the café – the spores in the room were unlike anything I had experienced before.
‘Wonderful,’ someone said, breaking the silence.
Others said the same. They came to me and shook my hand; congratulated me. Asked me questions about how it was done. Had I made the machine or only installed it? How marvellous it was!
I went home that night feeling elated, completely unable to sleep, planning what to do next.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said.’ I’d thought Ivy was engrossed in her work, but obviously not. ‘About images not seeming real because of the absence of spores.’
She had my interest. ‘Yes?’
‘Suppose you put a group of people together in a room and show them an image that makes them laugh.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, they’re going to supply the spores, aren’t they? Because they’re amused. Once they get started they will supply the missing spores themselves. It’ll be self-fulfilling.’
Was she right? ‘I’m not sure,’ I said.
She cast a glance around to make sure we were alone. In a hushed voice she said, ‘What you’re doing at the café, you realise it’s – ’
‘What?’
‘It’s theatre, Powell.’
I blinked. ‘No it isn’t,’ I said, ‘it’s just a light show.’
Ivy looked very thoughtful. ‘Made from sunlight, yes. But in essence it’s theatre.’
‘But . . .’ I floundered, uncomfortable. ‘This isn’t people gathering in secret in dark rooms. It’s nothing like it.’
I remembered clearly when I’d first heard of the idea of theatre. I was just a child. One of the carers in the orphanage had whispered to me about it. There had been a brief attempt to legitimise the theatre, with performances held openly. This woman, she made it sound exciting but, soon after, she changed and never spoke of it again.
No one spoke of it except in hushed whispers. It was a perverse activity in which people allowed their mood to be manipulated, till they wallowed in a haze of their own sordid spores. ‘It’s not the kind of thing that goes on in Autumn City,’ I said.
‘Are you sure about that?’ Ivy asked pointedly.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was she implying she knew it did go on? She looked lost, her spores vague and cold, like she was clouded in a fog of sad weariness.
‘Maybe you’re right and what you’re doing is something different,’ she said at last. ‘But I think your café idea is going to work brilliantly, and I think the reason why it will work is that the people in there are going to feed off each others’ spores.’
I didn’t know what to say.
She shook her head, then went back to focusing on her work. She didn’t look at me for a long time after that.
The next time
I saw Eleanor she arrived with a minder at her side. He said he would leave us alone while we took a walk through the park, but in fact he followed discreetly some distance behind us; I couldn’t help glancing back at him from time to time. His presence was unusual and unnerved me.
‘Is something wrong?’ I asked her.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. She leant down and picked a flower and held it to her nose. ‘Things are impossible lately. I just want to be my own person, to be with the people I like. Is that so wrong?’
‘People?’
‘Artists, craftsmen, talented people.’
I smiled. ‘Is there none of that in your – ’
‘No,’ she said, cutting me off. ‘In my world they all believe so fervently in our traditions that you have no choice but to fall in line with them. I feel completely stifled, for days on end. But then when I escape for a while, to sit with a painter at work, or a sculptor, or a poet, then I feel . . . something more.’
‘Was that what you saw in me, the night we met?’
She laughed gently. ‘You were very drunk!’
That was true. I had gone out drinking with my friend Patrice, who was originally from Winter City and had decided to go back there to try to find work. We drank far too much and then went to eat. Patrice managed somehow to persuade Eleanor and her friend Catherine to join their restaurant table with ours. Neither of them knew us before that night, but we talked easily with each other. By the end of it I knew I had to see Eleanor again. I sometimes wonder if Patrice and Catherine might have . . . But anyway, the next day he left as planned.
‘It might be more difficult to see you for a while,’ Eleanor said. She cast aside the flower she’d been holding.
‘What? Why do you say that?’
She seemed so unhappy suddenly. I reached out and took her hand, half-expecting she would snatch it away. But she held mine tightly and leant against me as we walked.
‘No one explains anything to me,’ she said. ‘I’ll just have to hope these restrictions won’t last. Be patient, Powell.’
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘but you’ll see me when you can, won’t you?’
She nodded, and held my hand more tightly. After that the conversation turned to the latest gossip from her circle of friends, and she seemed happier.
I spent a lot of time in the City Library, looking for new ideas for my mechanism. What stories or illuminations might it show? In the southern reaches of Winter City there were feral cats clothed in fur the colour of snow. It might be amusing to imagine them as fierce tribes warring with each other.
Frequently I found myself pondering what kind of entertainment I was seeking to provide. I just wanted to tell stories, like those in books. What was wrong with that? At what point did this cross over into something forbidden?
Eventually I put aside the books I had been studying and instead directed my attention to some older newspapers. These were all filed meticulously, and surely if I hit upon the right date I would find journalistic coverage of the theatre performances I recalled from my childhood. I remembered it was in the Riverside area, perhaps ten years earlier?
I soon found a paper containing an advertisement for the opening of a theatre. That led me to the week of the opening itself and a report on the event. Fascinated, I read that the first night had been hailed as a compelling new experience. But weeks later an entirely different story was being told: lack of interest, financial losses. Eventually, just a small notice that the theatre had closed.
I made a note of the significant names: the owner of the theatre, the play’s leading performers, the name of the newspaper reporter. I left the library and set off in the direction of the Riverside district where the theatre had stood. Was it even there now, I wondered?
The sun shone brightly, as if determined to project this story before me. But I couldn’t see it clearly. Not yet.
It took some days of asking around and further delving into archives before I made much progress. The Autumn Theatre, as it was known, still occupied its original location in the northeast part of the city, near to the river, but it was completely derelict now. There was no sign bearing its name, no clue now as to its former purpose.
The owner denied any knowledge of the building’s use as a theatre, saying only that he had acquired it around the time in question; he would not say from whom. This would be a matter of public record, however, so I knew I could uncover that if I wanted. Was it relevant? It was hard to imagine that detail would turn out to be important. Why had he allowed it to fall into dereliction? He had lost money in other ventures, he said, and could not afford repairs.
The performers had common names and, since no further theatre performances had ever occurred openly in Autumn City, I struggled to trace any of them.
Only the name of the reporter, James Knox, stirred some recognition when I asked around the neighbourhood bars. The man was apparently not well regarded. Often dishevelled and rumoured to be untrustworthy. Nevertheless I traced him to a small flat in a less appealing neighbourhood a little further south.
‘Might I speak to you?’ I asked the man who answered the door. He had not shaved, had untidy hair, and his ragged clothing hung loosely on his thin frame.
‘Who are you?’
‘I am an apprentice clockmaker,’ I said. This seemed a wholly inappropriate answer given my recent activity, so I added, ‘amongst other things.’
‘Got no use for clocks,’ he said, and began to push the door closed again.
‘I’m also interested in theatre,’ I said, the words tumbling out as quickly as I could manage.
This stopped him completely for a moment, but then he recovered and pulled the door open. The stench of his spores was not pleasant, and I suppose the reaction in me must have been apparent to him.
‘Yeah, I’m not much these days, am I?’ he said.
I became acutely aware of the power dynamic between us. I was in a position of relative strength, which was new to me. In theory he should defer to me in most matters, within reason.
‘Let me in,’ I said. ‘I’d like to talk to you about what happened with the Autumn Theatre.’
He wavered for just a moment, then nodded and let me follow him back into the flat.
He slumped down into a sofa, scattering a cloud of dust as he did so. There was a chair opposite so I took that, reluctantly because of the general state of filth.
‘I guess what I really want to know is why people didn’t like it, why it failed.’
He snorted, like I had just said something incredibly stupid.
‘Didn’t like it,’ he mumbled. ‘Kid, people loved that show.’
‘They did?’
He nodded and smiled, like just the memory of it felt good to him.
‘Then why did it close? What went wrong?’
He paused a moment, then said, ‘Think carefully about why you’re asking me this. Look at what’s happened to me. Maybe this is what’s waiting for you, if you go down a certain path.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘All I’m saying is, maybe it would be better for you if you walked out of here right now and didn’t look back.’
I thought about what he was saying, trying to imagine what dire consequences might befall me. I felt sure that I would be better off knowing the nature of his concerns rather than not knowing.
‘If you’d just tell me what happened,’ I said.
‘All right then. You know what a theatre’s like, right? Big audience of people all looking at the same thing, following what’s happening on the stage. You ever experience anything like that?’
I thought back to what had happened in the Café Soleil. The show I had created there, and the appreciation I’d received. ‘Yes, Mr Knox. In a small way.’
‘Suppose in the play something amusing happens, or something sad perhaps. What happens to
the audience do you think?’
‘Well, they would react to it.’
‘In the same way, or each in different ways?’
‘In the same way, I suppose.’
‘Now, let’s for a moment look instead at this situation here, with you and me. You’re a respectable, intelligent young man, making your way in the world, I’m sure. Full of optimism, you are. You stink of it. Whereas I’ve gone down in the world, lost my standing, lost confidence in myself. That being the case you can dominate this situation, this dynamic between us, as in fact you have already demonstrated from the moment you got here.’
‘I didn’t mean – ’
He waved away my objection.
‘It doesn’t matter. But imagine there were ten people like me sat here, all ten feeling the same identical things as me, but still only one of you. Imagine a hundred of me, and one of you. Imagine a theatre full of me, and one of you. Well, do you see that the dynamic would be a little different?’
I did see. I saw it clearly.
‘Maybe I wouldn’t care about you,’ he said, ‘maybe I wouldn’t even notice you. Maybe the power you have over me would just melt away.’
‘In which case – ’
‘You’re starting to get it, aren’t you? Now, suppose a powerful man, like, say, the Autumn Duke, were to attend the theatre production one night. How do you think he would feel? The man who normally dictates and controls everything? Rendered powerless in comparison with the strength of everyone else combined? Powerless before the strength of the message conveyed by the play.’
‘Was the message of the play controversial?’
‘Not in our case, no, not at all. But the point is, it could have been. The point is, we were one step away from a mechanism for revolution.’
‘And the Duke understood this?’
‘I believe he did. In any case pressures were brought to bear on everyone involved. The theatre soon closed, and very few people ever spoke of it again. Most everyone involved drifted away, supposedly moved to other cities. I don’t know if that’s really what happened to them. They’re gone from Autumn City anyway.’