by D. P. Watt
It seemed a little over the top to me, but he clearly liked his work.
Another long silence, during which I managed to drain my drink. He held the bottle up questioningly and I nodded to another.
“It’s very nice wine,” I tried. “You don’t usually get good quality wine in theatres. It’s normally those horrid little individual bottles, often with a plastic glass.”
“I don’t frequent the theatre myself, sir,” he said, contemptuously. “Beyond my work, here, I collect toy theatres and my free time is spent with their maintenance, and the planning, rehearsal and production of shows for them. As my dear, departed mother—the divinities bless her and cherish her—used to say, “the devil makes work for idle hands”. I have a room in my flat entirely given over to toy theatre. It seats twenty—by invitation only!—and has space for three operators backstage. I have even acquired vintage backdrops, figures and scenery from the likes of Webb and Ballermann, even some rare Pütersheins. As for the quality of the wine, sir, I wouldn’t know. I never drink it.”
“That’s a nice pastime,” I replied, not able to muster anything better. His mother was beginning to sound quite irritating.
“Now, if you’re very good, sir, I’ll give you a special ticket after the show and you can come along and see my little production of Doctor Faustus next weekend,” he said.
“Faustus… in a toy theatre!” I laughed, almost choking on a mouthful of wine.
He was clearly offended and picked up a glass and began automatically wiping it with a white cloth.
I regretted my rude outburst. I’d had too much to drink, on top of the Prosecco from earlier, but as I was about to offer an apology a bell rang out.
“That’s the final bell, sir,” he said, mechanically. “You’d better return to your seat. The main show is about to begin.
I returned to my seat, rather ashamed of myself.
Scene VI—The Headliner
As I apologised my way to my seat and scanned the auditorium it was clear that the crowd for the Kokoschka performance was entirely different from that for the Salome. Everyone was even older than they’d appeared in the bar, and their clothes looked as though they would have been more appropriate for a fancy dress ball set in the Victorian era. Well, I’d be interested to see what they all made of such a controversial piece of theatre as Murderer, Hope of Women.
I sat down in my seat and was immediately struck by the people either side of me. The woman in the seat to my left was obese, and disturbingly so. I could see ripples and layers of fat bulging through her ivory silk dress, almost dripping down my side of the armrest. The man to my right was so thin as to be on the verge of emaciation. I struggled to supress a mean-spirited giggle, as all I could think about was that children’s nursery rhyme, Jack Sprat could eat no fat. His wife could eat no lean. And so between them both, you see, they licked the platter clean. As the houselights flickered out I had to try hard not to actually start saying it aloud.
The whole thing lasted five minutes, if that. It resembled Kokoschka’s play in some ways, but was, throughout, of an entirely different, and horrifying, malevolence.
The curtain opened on an almost bare, wooden stage, the rubbish from the previous performance having been replaced with a complicated structure of scaffolding. Then about twenty adolescents came running on, each wearing a sort of white robe, or maybe more of a loose-fitting poncho. Each had a gruesome primitive mask, whose elongated noses reminded me of the Chapman brothers’ statues with genitals on their faces. The heavy brows of the masks were so prominent that you could not see the eyes behind, just a heavy line of shadow from the bright spots that shone from almost directly above them, casting horrible, crazed shadows on the stage as they whirled their arms about in a frenzy.
The first thing they did was divide into two groups, on either side of the stage, screaming and yelling indiscernible words and phrases at each other. Then these sides hurled themselves at the scaffold like demented monkeys, throwing handfuls of paint powder at each other—blue and red. I guessed this was meant to be the male/female dualism from the play. As most of them looked rather androgynous, and you couldn’t see their faces, it would have been impossible to tell which “side” was which, without the colours.
So far, so dreadful. Emmanuel really had done it now. I looked about to see who had got up to leave, but the audience were loving every minute of it, jumping about in their seats and encouraging the chaos that was unfolding on the stage.
Then the real “fun” began. Another twenty or so of them arrived with flaming torches in their hands, passing them around to the others. At times I thought I could discern snippets of dialogue from all the screaming and shouting, in German, some French, maybe even Russian. Perhaps they were just doing an abstract version of the play, focused on its savagery.
Savage it was, certainly, and it got worse. Some of them started to pull the scaffolding down as others were climbing up and down it. It would surely be only moments before someone got seriously hurt. Discarded torches were rolling about on the stage, threatening to ignite the curtains. Random couplings erupted into fights. The whole thing was deranged.
Then the cacophony stopped suddenly and all of the performers began to emerge from the broken scaffolding, apparently unscathed, and started to creep towards the audience. The place went up in cheers and shouts, people got to their feet crying, “hurrah! hurrah!” and “bravo! bravo!”. The performers were still taking their slow, quiet steps forwards, their hands reaching steadily towards their masks.
Something in that gesture terrified me. I couldn’t bear to look upon whatever faces lay beneath and so I closed my eyes.
The shout that went up as I heard the masks fall was deafening. This wasn’t a theatre crowd, it was a football match in full riot. Where on earth had Emmanuel got these performers from? Was there a local orphanage for the feral and ferocious, running classes in avant-garde physical theatre? Where were all his cronies and acolytes? Where had Sarah Willis been during Salome’s dance? Where, for that matter, was Emmanuel Golding?
God only knows what he had been thinking with this but it really was too much. I mean, only the previous month I’d seen one of the regular actors at The Enterprise slaughter Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. He’d mumbled his way through his lines, pretty much running it as a one-hander, going over passages time after time, losing his place and making a complete sham of the lot. Anytime the poor prompt attempted to intervene he’d shout over her, repeating the same words over and over again in an attempt to save face. At one point he had even walked off and had a blazing row with her—that the whole audience could hear—accusing her of “ruining my show” and “making me look an idiot’; he certainly didn’t need any assistance on that front. He returned, red faced and livid, to resume the ridiculous affair all over again. Those were the shows this place performed—self-indulgent iterations of old favourites for friends and family, not fiery, monstrous things like this.
I had found their Jeffrey Bernard hilarious. This wasn’t.
I waited for the din to die down, still with my eyes firmly shut. I listened to the excited voices burbling on about “genius directing”, “smashing acting” and “lovely set design”, thinking, each time, what it was these people had seen that I hadn’t. Once I was sure most of them had gone I opened my eyes again.
Scene VII—The Patter Act
I ambled out of the auditorium, feeling quite shaken, peering at the virtually empty stage and the broken heap of scaffolding and smoking torches. I could hear the last of the audience in the foyer, laughing and joking, probably making ready to go on to a bar or club, or maybe back to the residential home. I thought I’d just have one more drink in the theatre bar, and try to make sense of it all—also in the hope that Emmanuel might appear and explain. Then I would head home. It would also give me an opportunity to apologise to the barman, usher, or whatever he was.
The bar was empty though. He was in the same place behind it, still and unblinking.
“Oh, sorry,” I said. “Is the bar not open after the performance?” I turned to leave.
“Of course it is, my friend,” he said, cheerily. “The bar is open until midnight, when the theatre closes, whether for one customer or one hundred. Take a seat.”
“Look I’m sorry about earlier,” I said, edging onto the stool, as though I were a regular. “I didn’t mean to be rude, about the toy theatre…”
“Think nothing of it, that’s all old history now, my friend,” he interrupted, with a wave of his podgy hand. His excessively positive tone was disconcerting. “We don’t bear any ill will here at The Central. In fact I have been looking in the cellar for a lovely bottle of something to suit a fine wine connoisseur such as yourself.”
“Oh, yes,” I said suspiciously. “At fifty quid a glass, no doubt.”
“Not at all, my friend,” he said, proffering the bottle for me to inspect like a sommelier at a fancy restaurant. “This is on the house. The Black Wine of Callors, and this is a fine ’46.”
“1946!” I gasped.
“Oh no, 1246,” he said, pointing to the vintage on the label.
“What, seven hundred year old wine,” I laughed. “That’s ridiculous!”
“Of course it’s not that old, my friend. What is age though but a beautiful revelation?” he said, opening the bottle. The cork looked almost black, but more as though it had been burnt than from steady seepage of its dark contents. “This is about fifteen years old now, in perfect drinking condition. There is no need to decant it, it throws no sediment. As it matures the wine become blacker and richer.”
He poured a generous glass for me. It was thick and as dark as the name suggested. The bar filled with the aroma of hedgerow fruits, with a note of tar, or charred wood, behind it.
“It certainly smells intriguing,” I said, swirling the oily liquid in the glass.
“It has an exquisite bouquet, my friend,” he replied, a little stuffily.
“Lovely body, ‘as the bishop said to the actress’,” I grinned.
He did not react, but waited for me to taste it.
I had intended to take a small sip, but, as I did so, and the first burst of flavours hit me, I just carried on drinking. It seemed that this was not simply me swallowing but the liquid wanting to surge into me, rushing into my mouth and down my throat. Over half the glass was gone in a series of thirsty gulps. Then the different smells and tastes began. Now, I’ve heard a lot of rubbish talked about wine, all the “elderflowers on butterflies wings in lashings of goat’s cream and juniper berries” stuff, but this really was all things at once. A vivid childhood memory of mine was the first time I tasted a peach, and particularly the texture of its furry skin juxtaposed with the soft pulp of the juicy fruit. Here it was again, as powerful as that first time—with the textures too. But mixed in with it was the rich intensity of venison, the strangeness of truffles, and the dark bitterness of gourmet chocolate. It seemed to encompass every kind of wine I had tasted too: the mushroomy, leathery quality of good Burgundy; the effervescent delight of Champagne; the raisiny syrup, cut with a petrol tang of Eiswein; and the brandy-edged richness of aged Port.
“This stuff is gorgeous,” I said, sloshing another great gulp of it around my mouth in true “taster’s” fashion. I couldn’t have spat it out if I’d wanted to. He refilled my glass. “I’ve heard of the black wine of Cahors, but never of Callors. Where is it?”
“Well, my friend, I have heard of Callors, but never Cahors…” he said, flatly.
“Let’s call the whole thing off,” I joked. He didn’t seem to get it. “You know, the song—you say ‘Callors’, I say ‘Cahors’… Let’s call the whole thing off… No?”
He stared at me, a perplexed flicker of a smile fractured his face.
“But seriously, where is Callors?” I said, “And who has a 1246 vintage? It must be a joke, or a media stunt!”
“Oh, it’s no joke. There are so many times, my friend, so many years, so many vintages!” he said. “You must know that even in your little town there are places—environments, districts, suburbs, parishes—where years mean nothing, as though their peoples obeyed older laws, where the flow of other periods and the edicts of different doctrines hold sway. Just think of the possibilities of such anomalies in a city as vast as this one.”
I looked at him, as bewildered by his ramblings as he had been by my song reference. I seemed to have finished my second glass. He poured me another.
“Is it in France somewhere?” I said, starting to feel drunk. “You know, somewhere near Cahors, by any chance?”
“It is difficult to describe to you, my friend, maps will not help to discover such a place. It is merely intuited and then revealed,” he said, a distant expression on his face. “You have to go there, of course, to fully understand. It’s something of a necessary journey—a pilgrimage, if you will—to see the labour in it, and appreciate it properly. They cultivate the vines upon the old slag heaps of the Callors mines. Each vine takes forty years to properly establish their roots—to even bring forth one shrivelled grape. And then, twenty more to bear proper fruit. Each bottle requires the fruit of seven vines, it’s hardly what you’d call productive, my friend. So, what is a silly thing such as time, when weighed against this wine?”
I was confused by all manner of things: the potent drink—of curious vintage—that was playing nastily with my thoughts; the drivel about time and all its districts and parishes; and this “Callors mines” nonsense he was going on about.
“Look, I’m not in a fit state for all the philosophical stuff,” I said. “And besides, I’ve left my Stephen Hawking head at home, so maybe we should stop with all the “time’s a bit weird” thing.”
“As you wish, my friend,” he said, taking my empty glass. “But when you think you’ve figured it out maybe you’ll pay us a visit.”
He handed me a business card. “The Metropole, A Gentlemen’s Establishment, 18 Rue Radość”.
“You’ll have to leave now, I’m afraid, my friend,” he said, straightening a bottle of brandy on the bar and pointing to a little clock beside it. “The Stage Manager will soon be round to lock up.”
I nodded, as best my drunken head would allow me to, and slid off my stool to follow him out.
Scene VIII—Getting Back My Pictures
My head was foggy, quite literally. As he’d opened the doors a misty vapour wafted in, with a curious yellow tinge to it, accompanied by an awful stench.
“Dirty weather, I’m afraid, my boy,” he said, stroking my shoulder. “You should have bought a thick coat with you rather than that flimsy little jacket. There’s a terrible chill in the air, and you know how unforgiving the city can be. Do have a safe journey home now, won’t you, and stay with us again soon.”
I tottered back and forth a little and was grateful for his presence, for a little support.
“Look, I know I’ve had a few,” I slurred. “But what’s with all the ‘city’ nonsense? We couldn’t be in a smaller, pissier backwater if you tried.”
“I think it’s time we went home now, don’t you, my boy,” he said, his tone firmer and his grip tighter, forcing me through the door. “I have warned you already, The Stage Manager will be round, at any moment, to put the chains on. All patrons must be out of the building by twelve, that’s The Law!”
There was something malevolent about the way he said “stage manager” and “the law” that I can only describe as chilling, it implied a threat to me, but also betrayed his own fear. Fuelled with drink, I had other questions to ask though.
“Just answer me this, tell me this one thing,” I said, slumping against the door as I swayed back and forwards. “What the hell was that show all about? That wasn’t what Emmanuel spent the last three months going on about. What was with the geriatric dancer? And where did everyone go before the interval, only to be replaced by an outing from the nursing home, in all their evening finery? And who has a troupe of performing kids, armed with flam
ing torches, in a bloody theatre? Haven’t you lot got a health and safety officer?”
He looked at me with a pity that went further than that reserved for the inebriated, maybe he even shook his head a little with disappointment. I felt foolish, as though I had misunderstood something fundamental—one of those rare chances one might have to obtain some real meaning.
Then the pity shifted, instantly, into a gleeful anger.
“Demand me nothing. What you know, you know,” he spat, and pushed me outside with a flourish, pulling the double doors back upon himself as a magician might conclude a vanishing act.
Scene IX—Playing to the Haircuts
I found myself on a grimy, rainy street, one transformed from that I had arrived on. Somewhere in the distance a clock, the like of which I had never heard before in our small town, chimed an ominous, dolorous midnight. There I stood, a strange, lost Cinderella—in another world entirely. It is a world whose monstrous, sprawling aberration has undone me.
In this street there was no tarmacked road, with cars parked bumper to bumper outside the theatre. Instead, a cobbled street heavy with dung, with thin, winding pavements that seemed to be constructed of banked earth, trodden firm by many feet. I looked up at the theatre sign—The Central Theatre, not “The Enterprise”—in ornate golden lettering, standing proud of the building, backlit in dim red, from flickering bulbs fitted behind each letter.
I heard a clattering sound approach me and a tall black carriage, drawn by two impressive white horses with triple red plumes, raced by, spraying me with a fine coating of manure-rich rainwater. In the compartment, illuminated by a grim, yellow, guttering candlelight, there cavorted a fat man in evening dress, with a monocle and ludicrously oiled black moustache, accompanied by three young women, each in identical ball gowns, differentiated only by their colour—rose, yellow and pale green. There was something tired and joyless about their frolicking. Such worn-out, passionless debauch is the nature of this never ending, restless city—a city I have come to know now in these months, or years—I no longer know which—from every corner of its seedy hovels to the tinted windows of its high-class restaurants, all simmering with an unquenchable thirst for excess and dissolution; each populated with faces as corpse-like and forlorn as my own must now appear. For this city is a place of eternal carnival and senseless abandon—a Roman orgy in a miserable post-coital fatigue, every one of us lifeless and worn-out; spiritless, paper figurines, blowing in a chill, relentless wind of depravity.