Her brother was courteous that day. No mention of the Institute, but as he showed them the red-brick farmhouse he had converted, the wall-garden, his orchards, pools and bees, the vintage car idling in the garage, he seemed to be saying—look, you see how I have survived them, all those colleagues whom I gave jobs, the people that betrayed me! Then at lunch his heir, David, nineteen years old with features that might have been too perfect if it had not been for the country-blushed face, almost as red as apple-skin on the cheekbones.
Lyn walked over to the console, turned it on and checked the recent search history. All so innocent! Then he examined the settings. There were some moments when you hold what you have always wanted unopened in your hand and know that you simply have to put it back in the cupboard. He logged off.
It was odd that the room was almost exactly as it was when David had arrived. Not a single picture had been discarded; there were no photographs or mementos of sporting achievements or proudly framed certificates. The only change was that a few books on technology, grid navigation, and the folders containing information about the Institute, were now on the bookshelf next to a row of the Northern Noir novels. It was also strange that he hadn’t bothered to take his tattler with him; there it was on the side-table by his bed.
Lyn was just about to open the wardrobe when he heard the sound of voices in the hall. He took several unladylike strides towards the door, edged out and closed it gently. They were unpacking food and gadgets in the kitchen by the time he reached them.
‘I’ve just been explaining to David that there’s no need to come into work whilst he’s preparing for the Institute exams,’ said Kelvin, ‘he can do everything right here on the grid. Isn’t that so?’
‘Absolutely. In my student days there were no lectures to attend. Most professional courses were delivered on the grid even then. The only possible reason for one to go in was to borrow rare books from the library. If there are any out-of-print or off-grid texts you need, I’ll take them out on my card and bring them home for you.’
‘That’s so kind of you, Aunt Lynne.’
That evening he handed Kelvin a knife. David had retired to his room after supper. They were in the lounge that looked across the river to the great buildings on the northern side, the domes, towers and steeples illuminated in fleeting red-gold, a glass and steel tower gleaming with counterfeit fire. There was movement on the river: barges on the black water; a pleasure boat with flickering lights; a yacht slipping through small waves with swan-silk smoothness: all moving downwards towards the estuary—only a solitary ferry cutting across the tin ripples on its way to the far bank.
‘There’s no point in putting it off,’ Lyn told him.
‘But I thought you said we should leave it for a month or two. After all, he’s not due to go into the Institute until . . .’
‘I’ve been thinking it through. All young men are naturally curious. It surely won’t be long before he’s tempted by the freedoms of the grid. What if he makes mistakes? One simple error and he could lose unfiltered status or have his console confiscated altogether. I checked his search history this morning and everything’s fine. But that could change in an instant. No, we have to do it now.’
‘I don’t know. He seems a placid, self-contained young man. It’s not easy to imagine him . . .’
‘Are you saying he’s innocent? That’s such a very rare quality. I mean, after all the years of research what conclusions have the Institute’s best minds reached? How often when we’ve thought we were on the verge of a discovery, it’s turned out to be ignorance, impotence or stupidity?’
Lyn reached into her shoulder bag and took out a long, slightly curved blade, sharper and more slender than a skewer. In some respects, Kelvin was right. There was something odd about David, a barely discernable hesitation in the way he moved and a sense that his enthusiasms were not fully felt. Perhaps he was slightly autistic. Such a condition was not uncommon in people with high mathematical ability. Anyway, none of this would make any difference. Right now they could be sure of winning back all the access they had lost and enjoying the riches in the grid that had been denied them.
‘I checked this morning,’ she said, standing up. ‘There’s no doubt about it. It’s all there, Kelvin. In our house. We’ll be able to go exactly where we like in seconds.’
Kelvin’s mouth was open and she could see the suppressed desire of decades flooding back into his face, his eyes wide and brilliant with longing. As he rose, she saw his fist whiten around the knife, heard the breath of resurrected opportunities.
‘Are you ready?’ he said.
In fact it was just before midnight when they called David through to the kitchen for his last cup of hot chocolate. A bucket waited in the corner; a mop, a cloth and three sponges also in attendance. And suddenly one’s self was vanishing into action, the moment of atrocity. As Kelvin went for the throat, Lyn put out an eye. She had been expecting blood. Strange how translucent plasma was—and how it smelt of apple juice.
***
They would ring him back when more information became available; and so, before he went out into his fields and orchards, Mr Berrow slipped a tattler into his jacket pocket. He would not go near the hives until after lunch. For a moment he stood on his back lawn and stared straight ahead at the rows of strawberry plants and pickers, one crouched, as if ready to take a low catch. There was a sweet smell in the air that reminded him of ripeness and cream. To his right lay foothills, geological ripples from the blue wave of Welsh mountains in the far distance, wooded with ancient deciduous trees on the lower slopes. On a grassy summit stood an early twentieth-century obelisk, a monument to the dead who had fallen in a half-forgotten war that Mr Berrow associated, for a reason he could no longer recall, with red roses. And now his son had been killed. The one cloud in summer’s loft of blue sky was still.
He had done well since his departure from the Institute. His fruit had thrived in this county of orchards. How much easier it was to avoid temptation when one was surrounded by nothing more alluring than apples. He had complained to himself that he was leading a life of enforced virtue. This was not true, but there were evenings when he had come closer to discovering purity of spirit than at any time during his years at the Institute for the Investigation of Innocence. When he had first set up the project, he had hoped to isolate the qualities needed to produce leaders and administrators who would be fit to wield power unsullied by self-interest, a first step to rooting out corruption and all manner of malfeasance. He hadn’t succeeded. All he had discovered was his own sticky darkness.
As he walked towards the orchards, the tattler in his pocket buzzed.
‘Mark Berrow . . . thanks for getting back to me . . . was it quick? . . . all three of them. . . . I can’t identify them remotely, I’m not on the grid. Yes, I agree that’s very strange . . . no I can’t think of any possible motive. . . . As it happens she . . . he . . . was due to visit me next week. Yes, that was unusual . . . he was my son by adoption . . . no, he didn’t say . . . the heart’s mechanism damaged beyond repair . . . the hard-drive . . . good, it may be possible to recover something . . . send it to me.’
As for his sister . . . it was foolish to pretend they had ever got on, although he had hoped finding her a job at the Institute would do something to allay her hostility. But it was she who had accessed his search results and passed them on to his colleagues when he was away at a conference. And what had the Institute become without him? A school for dirt-dredgers, grief-mongers, inquisitors and spies.
It was over. He’d had to make sacrifices. A great deal of money had been spent on importing the best model from America, with added software for extra empathy. Perfecting the skin hadn’t been easy, but at least having his own orchards reduced the cost of fuel. And, even if nothing could be recovered, he could always order another son.
Did they have time to understand—seconds before they triggered the explosion, as the knife scraped against a heart of innocent brass,
or splintered on cogwheel bone, and they smelt cider instead of blood—what David was?
Without having intended to, he was walking towards his orchards, as if sorrow were leading him towards consolation, the shimmer of apple blossom and his store of honey. Now, at noon, was the moment to see what progress he had made. His protective clothing was still in the house, but he pressed on, ducking under armfuls of gleaming red-green fruit offered from twisted boughs. The grass was long, sharp and lush. There were the hives. He threw off his jacket and slipped off his shirt. The tall sun gleamed on his apple skin. The hottest day of the year. His sweat was apple juice, fermenting. Within seconds, his raised arms were braided with bees. Only on his hands, where some human flesh remained, could he feel the stings. Next year his frame would be steel, brass and copper. He would invite the queen to live on the marrow of his derelict bones. One day he would take his memories out of his wooden skull. Only the sweetest and purest would be preserved. When he could no longer take a fully human breath, he would find out what it was like to live innocently on honey.
JULIE
L.S. Johnson
I
1749
Her name was Julie, and she was kept by Reverend Klüpfel.
She had known what it meant to be kept. Halfway between whore and wife, her aunt had explained. Less work than the former, with prettier jewels than the latter. And to Klüpfel, of course, she will need someone to dress her, watch over her. She’s a simple little thing, hardly the sense she was born with.
Later that night, bundling their clothes into the satchel he had hastily provided: Madame Klüpfel? Not likely, my girl, not this one. Wearing his collar to seduce a village girl. You just make sure you keep him interested.
Julie hadn’t argued, because her aunt knew better about such things. But all the way to Paris she had mouthed the name to herself, had stolen glances at his profile, tried to imagine what their children would look like.
Madame Klüpfel.
For the whole of the week-long journey her aunt prattled on about the city: the shops, the fine clothes that even the poorest people wore, the fairs and the balls, all that they would see and do. Klüpfel ignored them, keeping his nose in a book that looked proper on the outside, but Julie knew that it was filled with pictures of buxom women with their skirts hiked up. She had blushed when he showed it to her. Was that what she looked like at night, when he beckoned her to his room? Her aunt modestly averting her eyes, while giving her a little push.
As it turned out, Klüpfel was not only a debauched minister, but a poor one as well. He installed Julie and her aunt in a draughty garret in a neighbourhood reeking from the nearby tanneries. They walked past rows of skinned animals swarming with flies just to get their bread. Coarse men leering at Julie and her aunt alike. Every day the landlady made comments, the water-seller complained about his unpaid bill. And what happens when you lose your looks? her aunt had asked fretfully, though before Julie could answer she continued, we’ll be out on the street with nothing.
He did bring us to Paris, Julie said, because it made her uncomfortable to hear her aunt speak about Klüpfel in such a way.
But her aunt only shrugged. And he’s received plenty in return.
So late one night, while Julie pretended to sleep, her aunt and Klüpfel negotiated, and the next evening Klüpfel brought a friend back with him. He introduced his friend to her aunt, and when the money had changed hands he showed his friend to the bedroom, where Julie was waiting.
1761
The book is called Julie and it is on the lips of every man and woman in Paris. Julie knows of it: she hears her name at the marketplace and the fair, she hears Julie, Julie, amidst the noise of the cafés, she sees the rapture on others’ faces as they speak her name. Soon the brothel’s customers come with its volumes tucked under their arms, they ask to call her Julie, they tell her their name is St Preux. That all of Paris is in love with her name seems at first a poor joke, nothing more.
It takes several nights for her to piece together the story: how the book-Julie falls in love with her tutor, St Preux, but is forced to marry another, so she and St Preux can only love each other in letters. It takes several nights, because her customers can barely get through a few pages at a time. The very words seem to stoke their ardour to a feverish pitch, and there are always extra coins on the table afterwards.
It takes Julie longer still to learn that the book-Julie dies without ever marrying her St Preux. It is almost as an afterthought that she thinks to inquire who wrote such a tale, which makes grown men weep even as they pant Julie in her ear.
‘Sweet girl,’ her customer said, stroking her face, ‘you will not know of him, though he is one of the great men of our age. His name is Jean-Jacques Rousseau.’
Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
She tries to dismiss it as coincidence, how many Julies are there in the world? She tells herself this, she tries to ignore it, but it gnaws at her. She hides the extra coins from the grasping hands of the brothel-keeper, Madame Travers, and she manages to save enough to buy the first volume of Julie, ou la Nouvelle Hëloíse, by J-J Rousseau, and what little she is able to read makes her feel faint.
Was she not also blonde? Was there not something of her aunt in the mother? Wasn’t this phrase, and this one, sayings of Klüpfel’s? She scrutinises the pages as if they are some kind of holy epistle, muttering the words to herself night after night after night, until finally she collapses from sheer exhaustion.
The other girls tell Travers, who at once confiscates the book and brings in a surgeon, who in turn prescribes bed rest and an end to so-called philosophes burdening Julie’s uneducated mind.
Thereafter the only customers permitted to see Julie are servants, often still in their livery, or young clerks who leave smears upon her body, chalk-dust and ink, the marks of their trades. Any scrap of paper, even a list or a chit, has to be left at the door.
But it is too late for her.
1749
There were three sets of footsteps on the stairs that night, and Klüpfel introduced two friends: Messieurs Friedrich Grimm and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Julie didn’t think anything of it, because her aunt was away visiting their village, and it had been agreed upon that no one would bed her save Klüpfel until her aunt returned.
The friends brought wine, and Klüpfel brought Julie a sweet cake with pretty icing, and they invited her to join their party. They talked about the theatre and the opera, and they took the time to explain the names and words to her until she felt giddy to be among them. When she closed her eyes she saw not the spinning garret but a grand room, and herself in silk and jewels and broad panniers, so that she swept proudly through the halls. And the music they sang! The sweetest melodies imaginable, the kind of music she had only heard in her dreams.
Klüpfel’s hand on the small of her back, steering her into the bedroom, and she had looked into his eyes as he kissed her and thought she might become Madame Klüpfel after all.
He was up her before she even had time to unlace her stays, taking her quickly atop the bed rug, her skirts bunching around her waist and his arm keeping her close. She giggled through it all, still thinking about going to the opera as Madame Klüpfel, and everyone bowing to her revered husband while only she knew just what a randy old goat he was. . . .
She was still giggling when he disappeared for a moment, and it had been some time before she realised that the man now caressing her was not Klüpfel but Friedrich, sniggering as if he was sharing the joke.
1761
Her name is Isabella but at Madame Travers’ they have assigned names, so she is Tulipe and Julie is Lilas. Welcome to my garden, Travers declares to their customers, look at all my beautiful flowers. Tulipe has been ordered to watch Lilas between customers, to make sure there are no more episodes. Throw a fit before one of their gentlemen and he would think the whole garden riddled with illness, and what would become of the rest of them?
To which Isabella rolled her eyes. ‘As if we g
ave up love when we gave up our virtue,’ she says after Travers has stormed off, for all the girls have decided Lilas has been jilted, why else would she carry on so? ‘You must learn to be less trusting, Lilas. A fellow will say anything for a little extra, but nothing they say can change what you are, now can it?’ She taps her pelvis, then makes a flicking gesture. ‘Once it’s gone, it’s gone.’
A fellow will say anything. Klüpfel’s easy conversation, his admiring looks. He had walked her to his carriage, or had there been an arbour—? She remembers sweet flowers, trees—
No, no. That was the book-Julie.
Isabella crawls onto the bed beside her, kicking off her slippers and producing, from the folds of her bedgown, one of the volumes of Julie. ‘What I cannot understand,’ she says, thumbing through the pages—as if she can read them easily, though Julie knows she has to sound out the words—‘what I cannot understand is what gets them so stiff? All these people do is write to each other. And the things they say!’ Her voice rises to a mocking falsetto. ‘You profane me by loving me too much. Your virtues are the last refuge of my innocence.’ She bursts out laughing. ‘His lordship’s pantry was the last refuge of mine. Monsieur Rousseau must be as strange as they say, to find pleasure in this bullshit.’
Strange Tales V Page 2