‘Dante, old friend, what’s wrong?’
The cat’s eyes were wide open and his body shuddered a couple of times as if racked by sobs. Something trickled from his mouth. Simon lifted the cat’s head and saw that it was water. A stream of water was trickling out of the cat’s mouth. Dante coughed and water spurted out. Then he lay still. His eyes stared blankly.
A movement in Simon’s peripheral vision. The insect was crawling along the jetty. He bent over it, studying it more closely. It was completely black, the thickness of a pencil and about the same length as a little finger. Its skin shone in the sunlight. Dante’s claws had made a scratch in one place, revealing pinkish flesh.
Simon gasped; looked around to see a coffee cup that had been left behind on the jetty. He grabbed it and upended it on the insect. He blinked a couple of times and ran his hands over his face.
It’s not possible. It can’t be…
This insect was not to be found in any insect book, and Simon was probably the only person for miles around who knew what it was. He had seen one before, in California forty years earlier. But that one had been dead, dried. If it hadn’t been for what had happened to the cat, it would never even have occurred to him.
Dante.
The original Dante, the one after whom all Simon’s cats were named. The magician, the greatest of them all. After decades spent touring and making films, he had settled down on a ranch in California. Simon had been granted an audience with him there when he was twenty-four years old and a promising talent.
Dante had shown him around his museum. Handmade props from different eras: the Chinese fountains that were his star turn for some years, the substitution trunk in several different versions, water-filled chests and cupboards from which Dante had escaped in circus rings all over the world.
When the guided tour was over, Simon had pointed to a small glass display case standing in a corner. There was a pedestal in the middle of the case, and on it lay something that looked like a piece of a leather shoelace. He asked what it was.
Dante had raised one eyebrow dramatically in a well-practised gesture and had asked Simon, in the Danish of his childhood, to what extent he believed in magic.
‘You mean…real magic?’
Dante nodded.
‘I would have to say that I am…an agnostic, in that case. I haven’t seen any proof, but I don’t discount the possibility. Does that sound reasonable?’
Dante seemed happy with the answer, and removed the glass top from the case. Simon realised he was expected to take a closer look, and did so. He was able to see that the leather shoelace was in fact a dried-out insect that resembled a centipede, apart from the fact that it had only a small number of legs.
‘What exactly is it?’
Dante looked at Simon for so long that it began to feel awkward. Then the magician nodded as if he had reached a tacit decision, replaced the glass cover, took out a leather-bound book and began to leaf through it. Brightly coloured pictures flickered before Simon’s eyes until eventually Dante stopped at a particular page and held out the book.
The picture, which covered the entire page, was hand painted. It depicted a worm-like insect, skilfully painted so that the light shimmered on its black, shiny skin. Simon shook his head and Dante sighed before closing the book.
‘It’s a Spiritus, or spertus as you say in Sweden,’ he said.
Simon looked at the glass case, at the magician, at the case once again. Then he said, ‘A real one?’
‘Yes.’
Simon leaned closer to the glass. The dried-out creature inside certainly didn’t look as if it possessed any extraordinary powers. Simon looked at it for a long time.
‘How can it be dead? I mean, it is dead, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know, in answer to both your questions. It was in this condition when I received it.’
‘How did that come about?’
‘I’d prefer not to go into all that.’
Dante made a gesture, indicating that the audience in the museum was over. Before dragging himself away from the display case, Simon asked, ‘Which element?’
The magician gave a wry smile. ‘Water. Naturally.’
Coffee was consumed, polite phrases were exchanged, then Simon left the ranch. Two years later Dante was dead, and Simon read in the paper that his belongings were to be auctioned. He considered a trip to California to bid for the object in the glass case, but for one thing he was in the middle of a tour performing at outdoor venues, and for another it would be too expensive, once you factored in the cost of the journey. He decided not to bother.
During the years that followed he sometimes thought about that meeting. Colleagues who heard that he had met Dante wanted to know everything. Simon told them stories, but left out the thing he remembered most clearly: Dante’s Spiritus.
It could have been a joke, of course. The magician had been famous not only for his magic skills, but also for his clever way of marketing himself with crowd-stopping public performances. He had created an aura of mystery around himself. His appearance, the goatee and the dark eyes, had for several decades been the accepted image of a magician. The whole thing could be a lie.
One thing that suggested this was not the case was the fact that Dante had never stated publicly that he owned a Spiritus; Simon had never heard anyone mention it. Dante was happy to add fuel to speculation that he had entered into a pact with the Devil, that he had formed an alliance with the powers of darkness. All good PR, of course, and utter nonsense. But the magician’s final reply that day in the museum had guided Simon’s speculations towards a different version, one which made a liar of Dante in a different way.
Simon believed Dante had been lying when he said that the Spiritus was already dead when it came to him.
Water. Naturally.
Dante was most acclaimed for his magic involving water. He was a match for Houdini in his ability to escape from various water-filled vessels and containers. It was said that he could hold his breath for five minutes—at least. He was able to move water from one place to another, a trick that involved a large amount of water appearing where none had been a second before.
Water. Naturally
If Dante had owned a Spiritus of the element water, everything was easy to explain: genuine magic, which Dante had merely limited to prevent people suspecting what was really going on.
Or perhaps the powers of the Spiritus were limited? Simon did some reading around the subject.
His agnostic inclination gradually gave way to a belief in the fantastical, at least when it came to the Spiritus. It seemed as if a few people, over the course of history, had actually owned the genuine article. Always a black insect of the kind he had seen in Dante’s museum, whether it was a question of earth, fire, air or water.
He tried to find out what had happened to the Spiritus he had seen but he got nowhere. He bitterly regretted that he hadn’t taken the chance to travel over while the opportunity was still there. He would never get to see a Spiritus again.
Or so he thought.
His gaze moved between the dead cat and the coffee cup. It was an ironic twist of fate that Dante should find a Spiritus for him, and die as a result.
A few hours later Simon had put together a wooden box, placed Dante inside and buried it by the hazel thicket where the cat used to sit watching the birds. Only then did his excitement over the Spiritus begin to give way to a slight sense of sorrow. He was not a sentimental man, he had had four different cats with the same name, but still an epoch was going to the grave with this fourth Dante. A small witness who had wound his way around Simon’s legs for eleven years.
‘Goodbye, my friend. Thank you for all those years. You were a fine cat. I hope you’ll be happy wherever you end up. I hope there’ll be herring for you to fish out with your paws. And someone who… is fond of you.’
Simon felt a lump in his throat, and wiped a tear from his eye. He nodded and said, ‘Amen,’ then turned and went into the hous
e.
There was a matchbox on the kitchen table. Simon had managed to get the insect inside without touching it. Now he approached the matchbox cautiously, placed his ear against it. There was no sound.
He had read up on this. He knew what was expected of him. The question was, how much did he really want to do it? It wasn’t easy to work out from the books what was speculation and what was fact, but one thing he thought he knew: pledging oneself to a Spiritus carried with it an obligation. A promise to the power that had relinquished it.
Is it worth it?
No, not really.
As a young man he would have gone crazy at the very possibility, but he was now seventy-three years old. He had put his magic props on the shelf two years ago. These days he performed only at home, when friends asked him. Party tricks. The cigarette in the jacket, the salt cellar passing through the table. Nothing special. So he had no real need for genuine magic.
He could argue back and forth until the cows came home, but he knew he was going to do it. He had spent a lifetime in the service of drawing-room magic. Was he likely to back out now, when the very essence of the thing was at his fingertips?
Idiot. Idiot. You’re going to do it, aren’t you?
Cautiously he pushed open the box and looked at the insect. There was nothing about it to indicate that it was a link between the |human world and the insane beauty of magic. It was fairly disgusting, in fact. Like an internal organ that had been cut out and had turned black.
Simon cleared his throat, gathering saliva in his mouth.
Then he did it.
The globule of spittle emerged between his lips. He lowered his head over the box and saw the stringy phlegm finding its way down towards the insect. A thread was still connected to his lips when the saliva reached its goal and spread out over the shining skin.
As if the thin string of saliva connecting them had been a needle, a taste reached Simon via his lips. It immediately shot into his body, and it was a taste like nothing else. It most closely resembled the taste of a nut that had gone bad in its shell. Rotten wood, but sweet and bitter at the same time. A disgusting taste.
Simon swallowed, but there was nothing to lubricate his throat, and he smacked his tongue against his palate. The thin string broke, but the taste continued to grow in his body. The insect twitched and the sore on its skin began to heal. Simon stood up, his whole body nauseated.
This was a mistake.
He managed to get a beer out of the fridge, opened it and took a couple of gulps, swilling the liquid around his mouth. A little better, but the nausea in his body was still there, and the vomit began to rise in his throat.
The insect had recovered and was now crawling out of the box, on to the kitchen table, and heading in Simon’s direction. He backed away towards the sink, staring at the black clump as it crawled towards the edge of the table, then fell to the floor with a soft, moist thud.
Simon moved to the side, towards the cooker. The insect changed direction, following him. Simon could feel that he was about to be sick. He took a couple of deep breaths and rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers.
Calm down. You knew about this.
And yet he couldn’t make himself stand still when the insect was almost up to his foot. He fled into the hallway and sat down on the seaman’s chest where he kept wet weather gear, pressing his hands to his temples and trying to see the situation clearly. The nausea was beginning to subside, the taste was no longer as intense.
The insect crawled across the kitchen doorway, heading in his direction. It left a faint trace of slime behind it. Simon knew things now that he had not known five minutes ago. Knowledge had been injected into him.
What he was experiencing as a taste within his body, the insect was experiencing as a smell. It would trail him, follow him until it was allowed to be with him. That was its sole aim. To be with him—till death do us part
—to share its power with him. He knew. With the saliva he had formed a bond that could not be broken.
Unless…
There was a way out. But it wasn’t relevant at the moment, with the insect on its way towards his foot once again. It was his now. Forever, until further notice.
He took a few rapid steps past the insect, which immediately changed direction, and picked up the matchbox from the kitchen table. He placed the box over the crawling black body and slid the cover over it. The boy on the label was marching towards a bright future as Simon weighed the box in his hand.
He clamped his lips together, suppressing the sickly feeling as the insect moved around in the box, and he felt its warmth against the palm of his hand. Yes. It was warm. It was feeling fine now, it had been fed and it had acquired an owner.
He put it in his pocket.
About the Shack
For such steeds find life difficult, those who cannot tolerate either the spur or the whip. With every pain that befalls them, they take fright and flee in terror towards the gaping abyss.
SELMA LAGERLÖF—THE STORY OF GÖSTA BERLING
The fern (October 2006)
It was the fern that clinched it.
Anders had been sitting and staring at it for twenty minutes, during which time he had smoked two cigarettes. He was looking at the fern through a veil of smoke and dust particles, drifting around in grubby sunlight. The window had not been cleaned for a long time, and its surface was marked with uneven greasy patches, a legacy of all those evenings when Anders had stood with his forehead resting on the glass, gazing down into the car park and waiting for something to happen, something that could change things. Something, anything, a miracle.
The fern was on the windowsill above the radiator. A long frond waved in the rising heat. The leaves were small and brown, withered.
Anders lit another cigarette to sharpen his thoughts, or perhaps as a reward for the fact that he had had a real thought, a clear thought. The smoke made his eyes smart, he coughed and kept looking at the fern.
It’s dead.
Most of its fronds were plastered against the side of the pot, pale brown against the red. The compost in which it had been planted was so dry it was almost white. Anders took a deep drag and tried to remember: how long had the fern looked like that, how long had it been dead?
He searched his memory for days and evenings in the past when he had sat on the sofa or wandered around the apartment or stood by the window. They drifted together to form a fog, and he couldn’t see a wilting fern through the mist. When he thought about it more closely, he couldn’t even remember when he had acquired the fern, why he had ever got the idea of buying a living plant.
Had someone given it to him?
Possibly.
He got up from the sofa, and his legs wouldn’t carry him properly. He thought about filling a bottle with water and giving it to the fern, but he knew there were so many dishes in the sink that he wouldn’t be able to get the bottle under the tap. In the bathroom it was impossible to get the bottle at the right angle for the water to run in. So he would have to unscrew the shower head and…
It’s dead anyway.
Besides which, he just didn’t have the strength.
In the pot he found eight cigarette stubs. Some were half-pushed down into the hard compost. So he must have stood here smoking. He didn’t remember that. As he ran his fingers over the dry fronds, some of the leaves came off and drifted down to the floor.
Where did you come from?
He got the idea that the plant had simply tumbled into the material world in the same way as Maja had tumbled out of it. Through a gap in time and space it had suddenly been there, just as his daughter had suddenly not been there. Gone.
What was it Simon used to say when he was doing tricks for them? Nothing here, nothing there…then he would point to his head… and absolutely nothing here.
Anders smiled as he remembered the look on Maja’s face the first time Simon had done some magic tricks for her, just a couple of months before she disappeared. A rubber ball in
one hand went up in smoke, and the ball Maja had just been holding suddenly became two. Maja had carried on looking at Simon with the same expectant expression: OK, what’s next?
Magic is not the same miracle when you’re five years old. It’s more like something natural.
Anders stubbed out his cigarette in the pot, making the eight cigarette ends nine, and at the same moment he remembered: Mum.
It was his mother who had brought the plant when she came to visit him four months earlier. She had cleaned the apartment for him and placed the fern there. He had been in the middle of a period of apathy, and had just lain on the bed watching her. Then she had disappeared, back to her own life in Gothenburg.
The fern had not been among the things he needed, and so he had forgotten it, paying it no more heed than a mark on the wallpaper.
But he was seeing it now. He was looking at it. He was thinking the thought once again.
That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.
Yes. That was what had occurred to him when he finally caught sight of it. The lonely, dead fern on the dusty windowsill against a background of dirty sunlight through an unwashed window. That it was the ugliest thing he’d ever seen.
For once the thought didn’t stop there, but continued and swept across the life that could end up producing such a monster, and it was an ugly life.
He could cope with that, the idea that his life was ugly. He knew that, he had arranged things that way, he had got used to it and was ready to die within a few years as a result of his ugly life.
But the fern…
The fern was too much. It was intolerable.
Anders coughed and dragged himself into the bedroom. It felt as if his lungs had shrunk to the size of a fist. A tightly clenched fist. From the bedside table he picked up the photograph of Maja and took it over to the window.
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