by Rhys Hughes
‘You fly like a bat. Ha!’
There is yet more pounding and then a general uproar. Other voices join in; demented laughter, cries of rage and despair. Above the babble of chaos, the words of the first speaker rise, high and thin now, as if from far away.
‘I did not mean to do it!’
Herr Wyeth reaches the double-doors, heaves the key into the lock and struggles to turn it. The door opens like a dread season; it is colder within and illuminated by moonwash alone.
Normally the fools fall silent when he enters—they well know the price of disobedience. But this time, they flaunt the rules, racing round and round the vast space, crouching low, flapping arms and screeching. ‘Stop!’ he cries. ‘Stop at once!’
One madman alone is immobile. He sits in the centre of the Hall with his face held towards the gaping hole in the ceiling. ‘It entered and took him away,’ he says. ‘He should not have been here. Perhaps it knew that and came to release him.’
‘Who?’ Herr Wyeth demands. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘My friend, Cardillac. He was a goldsmith; a virtuous man. One bright morning a toymaker and her father brought him an automaton for his furnace. It was broken and there was gold in its brain. But Cardillac was shortsighted and hurled in father by mistake. It was an accident.’
Holding his lantern up high, Herr Wyeth sneers. ‘What stupidity is this? It calls for a dunking, I believe. No-one is missing; you are all here, wallowing in your own filth as always.’
‘No, he was taken. By a demon!’
For a brief instant, Herr Wyeth feels a sliver of wonder, as if double-doors are opening in his own head. But he shrugs. To validate this lunatic’s story would require the counting of all six hundred inmates, one by one. An absurd way of disproving a delusion!
His words are tinged with cruelty and boredom. Already he is imagining the fool’s submersion—it will also be a drowning of his own troubles.
‘We shall see! We shall see!’
v
In the very centre of the town, in a large old house in the shadow of the truncated Cathedral, the vampire family Hoffmann are holding a reunion.
There is much feasting by the light of black candles; and the dishes and red-blood wines come and go with unnerving regularity, for the undead are particular about such things. Grandfather Martin—most stately of the brood—breaks black bread and dabs his thin lips with a satin napkin.
‘Hans is late again.’ He indicates the moondial in the corner of the room. A cunning combination of mirrors reflects the lunar light all the way through the mansion and focuses it here, in the dining room. ‘Every year he is late.’
‘He has a long way to come!’ Greta is always willing to defend her youngest son. ‘From Africa—where he is fighting the Hereros.’
Grandfather Martin shakes his long pale head. ‘Cousin Wilhelm flew all the way from the jungles of Peru, where he is seeking the orchid of forgetfulness. No, it is half past three already. Dawn will come before he does.’
‘He’s young!’ protests Greta, nibbling the breaded fingers. Despite her size she is quite frugal in her dietary habits. Not for her the whole raw ox that Brother Einar is fond of polishing off at these annual celebrations—or even the skewered limbs favoured by hirsute Wolfgang. Thumbs dipped in rum sauce are enough for her. ‘He’s full of the joys of death!’
‘Reprobate!’ sneers Grandfather Martin. He pours Adam’s apple cider and sniffs petulantly. ‘What will his excuse be this time?’ He dips the black bread into the cider, eases it between his jaws, coughs and raises the napkin once more to his mouth. When he removes it, a yellow maggot is squirming in the satin. ‘My, what a fat one! Juicy enough to hang from a watchchain!’
Wilhelm picks at a noxious toadstool. ‘Did I tell you about that time in Lima when I caught typhoid?’ He shrugs. ‘Poor typhoid!’
There is a scraping on the roof. Tiles break loose and slide free. An upstairs window is rattled. Greta meets the gaze of all those assembled—Martin, Klara, Wilhelm, Edgar, Sonya, Einar, Eva, Wolfgang—and beams. ‘It is Hans. I knew he would come!’
‘I will let him in.’ Pushing back his chair, Grandfather Martin stands and makes his slow way out of the dining room and up the stairs. Greta nods triumphantly to herself while most of the others sit quietly and Einar helps himself to another bowl of person broth.
There is a crash and a muted scream from above. Greta looks upwards in some confusion, Einar drops his spoon. The others are as frozen as ideas in amber.
Another cry: ‘No!’
There is a long pause, an open mouthed hiatus. Finally Grandfather Martin reappears at the door. There is a strange glint in his eyes. He is no longer pale; his face is deathly ruddy. ‘It was not Hans,’ he gasps.
‘Then who?’ Greta reaches for the tureen of traveller-soup, snatches up the ladle and holds it like a mace. The others fumble with knives, forks, bottles. Bared teeth glimmer.
‘It left something.’ Grandfather Martin clutches his chest. ‘My heart! I think it has started beating!’
‘Sit down.’ Greta is by his side in a blink. ‘Stay calm.’ She presses him back down into his chair and takes his pulse. His breathing comes in shallow gasps. While she cools his forehead with a cloth soaked in the ichor of frogs, he manages to blurt out:
‘It had the body of a demon!’
‘Eh?’ Wilhelm is pounding the table with his fist. ‘A demon you say? What did it bring? We must contact the authorities on the instant!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Greta orders Wilhelm back into his seat. ‘How can we possibly contact the authorities? They might want to search the house. Think about that—the cellars! No, we must keep silent.’
There is another commotion at another window—the downstairs casement. A tall, lean, very blonde figure stands there; impossibly arrogant with elaborate frilly white shirt and huge flapping unbuttoned cuffs. He holds his dramatic pose for ten long licks of his ascetic lips and then jumps nimbly down onto the floor, leaving the windows and drapes swinging behind him. It is Hans.
‘Sorry I’m late!’ He strides over to the table and empties half a carafe of brandy straight down his throat, blackguard style. ‘Horrendous journey! Just finished pickling the chief Baviaan’s head when I realised I had to fly. So I spread my wings over the Skeleton Coast and followed the Benguela current, with its flotsam of drowning sailors, all the way up to the dark continent’s armpit. Over the Aching Desert I stopped to unwind the black turban of a djinn-worshipping emir—and to ask his wife for a date! Then I soared again over the Middle Sea to the Alps. Eventually I approached our own dear Umber-Scone. . . .’
Oblivious of his surroundings, Hans brushes back his magnificent locks and continues: ‘But before I arrived, I dallied at a crossroads on the edge of town, to chase two sombre ghosts who were lurking under some gibbets. How they squealed when I dived at them! Something else had already frightened them. I then glided over the town itself. I spotted a couple strolling in their garden, one of them a very passable young girl. Her neck seemed destined for my mouth. But as I swooped she went inside her house and I had to settle for her companion—a hunched old man. My teeth clamped on his throat, but here’s the surprise: his neck was made of iron!’
Hans grins, to show the stumps of his two broken fangs. He waits for the usual gasps of astonishment at his exploits but none are forthcoming. Finally he notices the strained expressions of the family.
It is Greta who breaks the silence. ‘Your grandfather is very ill.’
With two gargantuan steps, Hans is by her side. ‘What’s wrong?’ He peers down at Grandfather Martin’s immobile face. There is no movement in that body, no flicker of undead vitality. A steady trickle of writhing maggots tumbles out of his mouth. Hans crosses himself; an inverted cross. ‘He’s not alive is he?’
A dazed figure, soiled shirt torn at the shoulders, staggers into the room. It passes a hand across its grimy brow. ‘I found the stairs. I did not tumble. I did not br
eak. I am very fragile, you must remember this. My body is made of glass!’
Hans narrows his eyes and studies the new arrival. Despite himself, he licks his lips again. Appetite must always precede family loyalty—he cannot help himself. He reaches out to the figure.
‘Seconds anyone?’
vi
The vet is a pinched man with glasses that magnify his eyes into the eggs of a cockatrice. Around him, in cages, grumble the reasons for his being: imps, basilisks, chimerae, perytons and baldanders, manticores and mermecolions, all lame.
Dawn’s left hand is scouring the eastern sky; over the rooftops the darkness retreats with claws that wind in the star-flecked cloak of night. Darkness himself shelters in the streets under the jutting gables, where no sun ever peeps.
The vet’s house, alone in all of choleric Umber-Scone, is made of rocks embedded with Silurian fossils, from a time when the mountains lay under the sea. Ammonites curl on the outside walls like hypnotic eyes, protective, ever watchful; and on the inside like a mural of spinning galaxies.
The vet regards his patient, and its owner, with cautious disapproval. ‘It was not a good idea, bringing her in unrestrained. They always slip away at the first chance.’
A debauched cleric, all stomach and stained purple robes, waves a weary hand. ‘I could hardly bring her in a box. She would have been frightened.’ Lovingly he pinches the cheek of his pet. ‘She’s all I have, Dr Krespel. I couldn’t bear to hurt her!’
The vet removes his glasses and rubs his bloodshot eyes. ‘Up all night! With respect, Bishop, this could only happen here or in Zug—never in Königsberg, my home.’
‘I thought I could hold onto her. She wriggled out of my grasp and was gone in an instant! Yet I enticed her back: I played the harp. All night long! She loves the harp, does my Matilda. I played that new piece by Boccherini and she could not resist. Back she came, into my arms. Ah, Matilda!’ The Bishop scratches the fur under her chin. ‘How worried I was! How happy I am to have you safe again!’
The vet shakes his head cynically. ‘You know that the Town Council has an obligation to clear the streets of strays? If she had been spotted and caught, not even your influence could have saved her from the compound. These animals are mistrusted; they can cause a lot of damage. I suspect the moth population has been seriously depleted this night—and Umber-Scone is famous for its carnivorous moths!’
The Bishop stares coldly at the vet. ‘No harm was done. It was night, the town was abed. No-one noticed, no-one complained.’
‘You were lucky. A single report and you would have lost your licence. These animals are supposed to be kept on leads and muzzled in public. You remember the outcry last year, after that spate of attacks on children? Some members of the Town Council would like to see them outlawed. It’s a political issue now.’
‘But Matilda . . .’ The Bishop begins to shudder with rage; his huge bulk rumbles alarmingly. ‘Matilda wouldn’t hurt a flea. Come to think of it, you’d better de-flea her as well, while you’re at it. . . .’
‘That’s not the point. Next time you bring her to my surgery, make sure she can’t get away! I’ll not be so tolerant again. And you’ll pay for my time as well. A whole night!’ The vet moves to a cabinet and removes a bottle of pills. ‘Here, give her one a day before meals. Make sure she completes the entire course. Come back on the last day and I’ll make out a new prescription. That should do the trick. They’ll work for fleas as well, though it’s up to you to keep her fur clean. . . .’
‘You are a little arrogant, Dr Krespel. You are like those fools on the Council who accuse me of practising dark arts. They say I animate the gargoyles of my Cathedral with the blood of virgins! I won’t forget this. Come on Matilda, let me just put this lead around your neck. I know, darling, but it’s for your own good. We’ll be home soon. There’s a good girl. I’ll play you some nice Telemann once we’re back.’ Shouldering his miniature harp, the Bishop walks his pet towards the door. On the threshold he pauses and looks round. ‘It wasn’t really that bad was it? I mean, no-one noticed her. Nothing has changed?’
The vet sneers and turns away. ‘It’s people like you who give harpies a bad name!’ he cries. He shuffles some papers on his desk.
For a moment, the Bishop broods. ‘Are you married, Dr Krespel?’ Then his eyes light up. ‘Nice Matilda, you’re safe now.’ He steps through the door, closes it behind him and they venture out onto the street. Next time, he decides, the vet will come to him. There is a gargoyle on his north tower that will make a fine companion for Matilda. Suddenly he lunges at his pet and plants a ferocious kiss on her cheek. Together they throw back their heads and howl.
The Falling Star
Down in the park, the park of my impotent dreams, a star fell. I saw it streak purple across the sky: it scratched the edge of a lonely pink cloud before greeting the earth with a resounding kiss. I was standing outside the park at the time, making gamelan music on the railings with my umbrella. The sun was rising slowly. It was very cold. The notes of my music clattered through the silence like a tower of dirty dishes collapsing into a sink or like a row of icicles falling onto the heads of a dozen helmeted knights.
The star had crashed into a clump of dense bushes, pounding a hole in the rich soil beneath. A little reddish steam arose and dispersed on the very slight breeze. I was determined not to let this chance slip me by. Although the gates of the park were still locked, I resolved to gain entry. I clambered over the railings, taking care not to impale myself on the barbed points. I had no desire to become the focus of a new urban myth.
Once over, I was on familiar ground. This park, with its little pathways and lake, its grass embankment and bandstand, had been my only source of comfort in an otherwise bleak life. I had known too well the gloom of long days with nothing to do, the aimless shuffle, the empty existence. The park had seemed to offer a salve for my tormented spirit. An empathy of abundance.
This time, however, its attractions seemed minor in comparison with the greater gift that had plummeted from the empyrean. A meteorite I could sell to a museum. There would be funds to fuel ambitions I had thought would never be realised. There would be joy a-plenty, limits a-topple. There would be yoghurt and honey, moons and daffodils, chimes and rhymes.
Almost unable to contain my excitement, I hurled myself into the foliage, seeking the crater of my salvation. Sure enough, there it lay; a shallow hole like the dent of a divine fist, branches and leaves scattered around it in pleasing profusion. But my expectations were to be exceeded beyond my imagination. For at the base of the crater lay not just a few fragments of a nickel-iron meteorite, but also a dozen spherical objects of unearthly lustre and beauty.
I stood enraptured by this sight, scarcely daring to draw breath. Thus it was that I did not notice the approach of one whom I had often sought to avoid in the past. How long he stood there, peering over my shoulder, I can hardly guess. Suffice it to say that when he spoke, I jumped with fright and nearly tottered over the brink of the crater.
‘Star pearls,’ he said, ‘that’s what they are. When a piece of dust gets into a star, the star forms a coating around it. Like an oyster. Star pearls are among the most valuable objects in the universe.’
I whirled around. It was Mellors, the park keeper. ‘Nonsense!’ I replied. ‘It was a meteorite that fell here. Meteorites do not contain pearls.’
‘Oh yes they do.’ He was emphatic. He span his litter-stick like a majorette. The end glinted in the early light. It had been sharpened to a fine point and appeared to be encrusted with dried blood. Mellors was well known as a tyrant: he saw the park as his own and he despised intruders.
‘You are an expert?’ I demanded with as much scorn as I could muster. He grimaced and then laughed, his cap wobbling on the crown of his overlarge head. With his painfully thin body and crow’s legs it did not seem that he could possibly bear the weight.
‘It doesn’t matter anyway. Believe what you will. With these pearls I will be s
et free. I will be able to retire and buy a park of my own. Oh, the things I will be able to do!’ His eyes twinkled with rare pleasure. ‘I’ll not let anybody in. . . .’
‘All very nice, I’m sure,’ I replied. ‘But completely hypothetical. A pipedream. The pearls are mine. I saw them first. I’m taking them home.’
‘Ho!’ Abruptly, he ceased spinning his infernal stick and leered towards me. ‘Is that so? Yet it is true, is it not, that this park is mine? And that, therefore, I am responsible for dealing with any unnatural phenomena that occur within its boundaries? The pearls are not yours. They are mine. I will buy a roof garden.’
‘No! No!’ I cried, waving my arms. ‘You are a fool! Can you not see what is under your very nose? I am the discoverer of this meteorite; it belongs to me alone. These luminous spheres also.’ And I crouched forward to leap into the crater.
I was restrained by a firm grip on my collar. I felt the hot breath of Mellors on the nape of my neck. He was struggling to control himself. I was reminded of a kettle whose owner had departed for a voyage around the globe, leaving it to boil itself to a frenzy.
‘Perhaps we can come to some arrangement?’ I suggested. ‘Supposing we split the discovery down the middle? Fifty-fifty? Or, to be more apt, six of one and half-a-dozen of the same. . . .’ Peering back over my shoulder, I saw that Mellors was shaking his head.
‘The pearls must never be separated. Otherwise they lose their magic. Is it not obvious? Together they can unlock the greatest mysteries of life; alone they are useless. Once taken out of context, their inner vitality begins to fade away. Truly, in this case, the sum is greater than the parts.’
I frowned. ‘But what exactly do they do? In what way can they unlock the mysteries of life?’
Mellors smirked. ‘That is one of the mysteries they alone can demystify.’ He paused, realising that he was venturing into the perilous deeps of paradox. ‘It is not for us to know,’ he corrected, quoting Wittgenstein: ‘What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence.’