“Hello, sweety. Or is it sweeties? Gosh, excuse me for staring, I thought you were one of the exhibits. Oops! Bite my tongue. Please don’t take offense. Oh, must I always, always put my foot in it?”
A fat young girl in a tutu ceased inspecting Exhibit 30, Man Trap, and began inspecting us.
“Mr. Nickel,” her father said, and stuck out his hand.
My right hand seemed to be occupied, as it often was these days, in sorting a number of small invisible objects. With some difficulty, I persuaded it to clasp the clammy offering. Something’s going to happen, I thought. The still scenes glowing in the stacked boxes around me were like happy dreams into which a nightmare was about to intrude. The squirrels did not notice the sawdust falling from their sleeves, the beetles quarrying in their waistcoats. The dead kittens in straw boaters handed their dead lady friends into stilled boats on dull glass ponds and did not observe that their fur was falling out in patches. But they were about to, I felt. I willed Mr. Nickel to go away, before what was coming came.
“Ready for tea, punkin?” he said to the girl, as if he had heard me. He turned to me. “Deb is a bottomless pit when it comes to scones and jam. Will we see you around the groaning board at the hotel? How’s about I squirrel away one of the scones de la maison for you in case you don’t make it? They grow legs pretty fast.” He put his hand on the girl’s back and scooted her away. Her head swiveled to keep us in view.
As he passed between the banks of luminous cubes I saw that his right leg had a hard unlikely shine. Only then did I notice the exposed steel workings of his knee. Every time it straightened it gave a quiet gasp.
I turned my head and saw Exhibit 28. It was even more distasteful than the postcard had suggested. Resignation and foreboding emanated from the unhappy monkey in the necktie of a male stripper, hunched in a saddle on top of a billy goat against a background of painted bluffs and, in the middle ground, a blurry tree, leaves all the same size. The goat was alert, pop-eyed, menacing. Its nose and horns shone as if wet. Its coarse hairs appeared individually erect. A number of birds, probably vultures enthralled by a death, wheeled around the cliffs, emitting hoarse cries that echoed eerily off the cliffs. The monkey’s huge, somber eyes with their almost comically long lashes did not turn in their direction, but his black fingers tightened on the riding crop he held in his right paw, and the goat seemed to sense this and rolled its eyes warily, gnawing at the bit.
Could I simply walk away?
I actually did manage to take a few steps.
My right hand still felt the cool of the glass dome when the crash sounded on the other side of the room. On the shelf in front of me was a circle where no dust was. On the other side of the room, a stuffed two-headed kitten stood on six scrawny shanks in a cloud of sawdust and the shards of its erstwhile firmament, a furious assertion frozen on its faces. From its shoulder blades, it raised a doubled fist at me, as if to say, “Solidarity!”
I heard something in the stairwell, and a hand appeared, gripping the banister, then the head of one of the docents. It rose no higher than the level of my feet. I saw her see my feet, then look up, then make a face that was more like a sudden lack of expression. I believe that if I had had only the one head, she would have thrown me out straight away, but she didn’t know whom to address. Now the sound of the crash had died away, the moment had passed. The docent’s hand appeared to fiddle with a hearing aid. Could she possibly hear what I heard? It was a faint sound, easy to miss, like the hiss of a punctured bike tire. After a while it grew clearer. The kitten seemed to be making some kind of noise. In fact the more I listened, the more it sounded like singing, in a sort of buzz of two voices that now and then veered apart into harmonies. Yes, it was definitely singing.
The Two-Headed Kitten Performs
“The Song of One and a Half”
Some people are born with too little,
Some people are born with too much.
At the College of Surgeons Museum in London
You can behold many such.
There’s a boy who was born with no fingers,
And a girl who was born with a beak,
And a boy with a head on top of his head
Like the crown of the king of the freaks.
The duplicate head was much smaller,
And stiff as a porcelain doll;
The delicate mouth only opened to drool
And the eyes never opened at all.
His mother decided to keep him
See what kind of luck he might bring
And as he was falling asleep every night
This is the song she would sing.
Well it’s under the blanket with you, my dear
And it’s under the blanket you’ll stay
The world’s already so ugly, dear
So we’ll hide your face away, away
We’ll hide your face away.
One and a Half’s what she named him
And she gave him a box for a crib
The only possessions he had in this world
Were a short piece of string and a bib.
She covered the box with a blanket
Which she would remove for a fee
And once in the morning and once before bed
She fed him on gruel and tea.
That boy loved the smell of his mother
And the tread of her two horny feet
Sometimes she blew him her cigarette smoke
As a rare and particular treat
The crack of her ankles was music
The sound of her farts was a bell
Except for the roaches that lived in his bed
There was no one he loved quite so well.
When the blanket came off with a flourish
She taught him to lower his eyes
So he lay in his bed and was looked at instead
And he basked in their fear and surprise
Not the one pair of eyes nor the other
Returned the inquisitive stares
Then the blanket came down and with barely a sound
He whistled the following air:
Well it’s under the blanket with you, my dear
And it’s under the blanket you’ll stay
The world’s already so ugly, dear
So we’ll hide your face away, away
We’ll hide your face away.
One day a viper discovered
A good place to hide from the sun
He slid in the crib so neat and so quick
The roaches did not even run
The boy was so happy to see him
He patted the snake on the head
The viper, surprised, sank its teeth in his thigh
And One and a Half was dead.
But the second head’s eyes started open
The minute the other one died
And the boy who had never once uttered a word
Opened his mouth up and cried
“Mother,” he said, “come help me,
“For I have a pain in my head.”
His mother strolled over and lifted the cloth
And saw that her firstborn was dead
He was curled like a cat round the viper
His lowered eyelashes at peace
But the head on his head
Lay awake in his stead
And his eyes all around him did feast
She trembled to see those eyes looking
She trembled to hear that mouth speak
“My brother was fond of his mother,” he said,
“I’m afraid that my brother was weak.”
His gaze was the law and the sentence
Her judgment was sorely beguiled
How sharper, in truth, than a serpent’s tooth
Is the gaze of an ungrateful child!
She squeezed herself into the cradle
And gathered the snake to her calf
And the very last thing she heard as she died
Was the Song of One and a Half:
Well it’s under the blanket with you, my dear
And it’s under the blanket you’ll stay
The world’s already so ugly, dear
So we’ll hide your face away, away
We’ll hide your face away.
Now his bones are hung in the museum
With the bones of a myriad more
Who fell with too little, or fell with two much
From the crotches of ladies and whores
A crooked and yellow stick figure
Two skulls eternally wed
Press button at right to turn on the light
The sign by the showcase said.
BEASTS OF BODMIN MOOR
Encore!” All around me animals were stirring, their stiff skins splitting as they beat their paws together. Teacups rolled. A crutch banged a chair leg. The two-headed kitten bowed and did a shuffling soft-shoe, six legs drawing a daisy in its own dust.
The three-eyed chick wheezed. “Hey! Lemme outa here! I go on next! Fzzz!” Sawdust pinged against the glass. “I’ve got to get changed,” it appealed to me. “Can I get a hand here?”
The goat raised its front hooves mockingly, and I saw the shriveled tuft of its cock.
I made for the stairs. The docent shrank back against the wall as I passed. Exhibit 4, 3, 2, 1. The little blue coffin was rocking. A tiny bell was ringing and ringing. Wings scraped on glass. And all the birds in the air fell a-sighin’ and a-sobbin’/ When they heard the bell ring for poor Cock Robin.
I was outside. I crossed the cobbled yard and plunged down a winding road worn so deep in the fields and edged with such heights of thorn and thistle that it seemed nearly underground. A muddy stream ran along it, swerving in and out of the messy fringe of grass, but sheeting the whole road at times with caramel.
At one flooded dip I grabbed a branch to pull myself up onto the bank, and out of the dark heart of the bush something flew at my face, shrieking. Wings beat my head with frightening force, claws scratched my collarbone, and then it had struggled through the gap between my cheek and Blanche’s and was reeling away, trailing a few strands of hair. My knees were trembling. I sobbed once. Just a bird, of course, an ordinary bird of hot flesh and feathers and tiny, quicksilver thoughts.
I had slid back down the bank and was standing ankle deep in water. There seemed no point in climbing up again, and my legs were so shaky I was not sure I would make it if I tried. I waded through the flood, against the muscular suck of the water. Now a boxy little car, red, in which the driver hulked (I expected to see his knees poking up through the bonnet) scooted around the corner and forced its way between the banks toward me. I stepped back into the long grass. My pants were instantly soaked to the crotch. The shadowy driver ducked his head to examine me and the car nearly rubbed my thigh as it sidled by, and spat back at me after it had passed. From among tasseled weeds and the mazes of thorny sticks I thought I saw foxy faces watching me, relics from the museum held up on sticks to taunt me. Beast of Bodmin Moor, Beast of Bodmin Moor, rang in my head like a jeer. I was that beast.
When I got back to my room there was a napkin-wrapped scone on the floor in front of my door.
In my sleep that night I dreamed that Mr. Nickel handed me his picture. It was upside down, but his face was the right way up. So that’s what’s wrong with him, I thought, he has a magic head. With that I looked up at the man himself, and I could make out a moist little mouth hidden in his hair. The mouth moved. It said, “Unity.” I tried to scream and woke myself up.
The light of a grey morning twilit the room. Outside beagles were bawling, hooves clattering. I lifted a corner of the window. A foxhunt? How corny and depressing. I curled up in bed again, clutching my knees. It took me a little while to turn over the word unity in my mind and remember where I had seen it last. The morning paper, the booklet about the Beast that I had flipped through over dinner, the brochure—what was the name of that health club?
Shit! I got dressed in a hurry and staggered downstairs.
But the brochures were gone. “A big pile of them, right here,” I said, bracketing the spot.
“Maybe interested parties picked them up, then,” offered the attendant. Not the woman from the night before, but an elderly man.
“They can’t have. Not since last night. It was a big pile.”
“The brochures are popular with tourists.”
“A really big pile.”
“Are you sure it was here you saw this brochure?”
“Of course.”
He sighed. “Well, maybe someone threw them away. We prefer to vet the notices placed here, but sometimes people do smuggle them in. We frown on it. If the brochures were not approved…” He turned his back, finished with me.
I got down on the floor and peered under the closed door. I had remembered the fugitive brochure. I thought I could make out its edge in the shadows. I got up again, felt the knob, cracked the door open. Within was a jumble of buckets and mops. I could not see the brochure.
A throat cleared behind me.
“I thought this was the way to the dining room,” I said.
Under the attendant’s ill-tempered stare I had to give up and go to breakfast, where I poked distractedly at some resilient bundles of greasy matter—fried bread, a soft sausage, an elderly egg.
Mr. Nickel sat down next to me. I wondered where the little girl was. “Yeah, what about that Potter? Total freak show, right? No slur intended.” He scooted closer. “What’s the story there?” he said in a stage whisper, jerking his head at Blanche. “Not much of a talker, is she?”
“No.”
“I guess you’re tired of being asked that question, huh? Look, I’ve always wondered, let me know if I’m overstepping my, if I’m out of line here, but I am sincerely interested in hearing how you people do it.”
“Do what?” I ferried a wad of egg to my mouth on a square of the bread.
“Just, you know, get along, iron out the…I mean what if person A wants a gin and tonic and person B wants a warm Guinness? It seems to me you have all the difficulties of married people. Pardon me if I’m projecting, as someone who was once espoused—and I don’t mind telling you it wasn’t always birds in their little nests agree, which is why I am no longer with the lady, much as I esteem her. But divorce is not really an option for you, is it, or even a ‘trial separation,’ ha ha! Am I right?”
“Obviously.”
“Obviously! Which is exactly the problem, I take it? I mean that even though your bosom swells with sisterly love for each other, or—for I see your lips pressed together in vehement disagreement held in check only by the desire to maintain a cordial demeanor toward me, a total stranger, though a friendly and nice-guy type stranger, I hope you’ll agree—where was I?” He kept sliding his hand, with a movement at once stealthy and unconscious, under his collar down the back of his shirt. His collar was spotted with blood from scratched zits.
I have often noticed that one can observe with detachment sights that when put into words become disgusting.
“Right, sisterly love…or not…Regardless, the closer you get the more distant you feel, isn’t that true? I’m not afraid to admit it. My ex-wife, bless her, was not afraid to admit it. She took measures, which was her prerogative. But you two are bound by a Gordian knot that only Alexandrian death can sever!”
What an insufferable man. “Yes,” I said coldly.
He withdrew his hand from his shirt and looked at his nails. “But to get to my point. Welcome or unwelcome, you are assured of company whatever the haps, a condition many people who are unmarried paint to themselves in the rosiest colors, as greatly to be desired and in short, a very good thing—”
“Yes—”
“Oh! Hang on, I’ve got something here for you.” He rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a pile of creased brochures that he fanned out and thumbed through. “Daphne du Maurier walk: done it. The Men-an-tol, the Merry Maidens, John Wesley’s cottage, preapproved credit card, ha, what’s tha
t doing there. Somewhere—OK. The Old Operating Theatre. Now this is genius. Now you’ve just got to go there. You go for the morbid stuff, don’t you, the fetid breath of the beyond? I thought so. Bleeding bowls, leech jars, cupping kits, fleams, lancets, saws, you gotta love it. Have a look at this later on and see if you don’t agree. Now, what was I saying… yes. Because you’re ‘chained for life’—you just put that in your pocket, little lady—you are set free to hate each other, don’t you see, and hold each other in contempt and regard with distaste your personal grooming rituals and bass-ackwards way of doing things around the house, whereas perfect strangers, like for example the two of us, are so afraid of the separation that is our immediate destiny and that in fact already scents or flavors what closeness we temporarily achieve with the dank breath of the void, that we have to reassure one another with affectionate gestures and folderol of one kind or another that we each think the other is OK and that we forgive each other for each others’ imminent departures and promise implicitly that we will not backstab the departing or otherwise mistreat them either in person or in memory or in effigy, since while voodoo may not work, the knowledge that someone wishes to practice voodoo on one is a blow, as I can attest in the case of the former Mrs. Nickel.”
I grunted, not knowing how else to respond.
“Am I right? Yeah or nay?”
“You’ve said a mouthful,” I equivocated.
“And I thank you. But now I have to go.” He clutched his heart. “Feel it? What a poignant illustration of the point I was making! But Blanche, I forgive you for this impending separation. Do you forgive me? It’s important to ritualize our apologies and leave-taking.” He thrust his face toward me, panting eagerly.
“I’m Nora,” I said.
He sat back and covered his mouth theatrically. “Oops, my bad! Can’t seem to get my foot out of my mouth today! Are we still friends?”
Half Life Page 24