He moved farther out into the courtyard and thought for a moment he’d glimpsed it, but no, what he saw was too big to be a human figure: it was instead a large, dark heap.
He almost turned and went back but he just couldn’t. Now, so close to it, he wanted to know.
He moved forward, wishing he had a tiny flashlight. When he came quite close, he could feel the warmth rising off it, and thought for a moment it was a compost heap or some other form of refuse, but then he came closer still and touched it and felt fur and realized it was a horse.
It was dead, or seemed to be. The body was still warm, but cooling rapidly. It must have been black, or a very dark brown, or he would have been able to see it better from above. But even close to it, even touching it, he had a hard time making it out clearly.
It wasn’t possible. It was immense in the darkness, the biggest horse he had ever seen. Where had it come from? And what had the heap been on the earlier night? Surely it couldn’t have been the same dead horse on both nights.
But what about the man who had leapt from the window?
He pulled back his hand as if stung and stood up. There, near the door now, between him and the door, stood a figure, apparently a man. At first he thought it was the concierge, but when it began to move toward him with a stuttered, broken stride, he was no longer so sure. For a moment he hesitated, wanting to understand what was happening, to give it a logical explanation. This turned out to be his undoing.
#
5.
When Miss Pickaver returned she had seen four countries in four days, but since they were not new countries to her, not countries she had not seen before, they hardly counted. What did count was that she had seen them in company with the German gentleman that she used to know, and who had footed the bill. She would not tell Hovell about that—he wouldn’t be likely to understand, not in the way he should. But she would tell him about the four countries and what she had seen over the course of those four days. Or, to be honest—which she would not be—two days, since she and the German had for the first two days not left his room in town. After all, she had told herself at the time, she was a Miss, not a Mrs.: what she did with her leisure time was nobody’s business but her own.
The concierge greeted her with a torrent of French, and gestures she could not understand. She just shrugged and nodded until he either thought he’d gotten his point across or decided to give it up—with the French, how could you know what they were thinking?
Upstairs, she found a man in grubby overalls, a maintenance man of some sort, at the door of their apartment, nailing the 6 in 306 back in place, the right way up, so it no longer could be read as a 9. Inside, Hovell was at the same window he’d been at when she’d left, still staring out into that deserted little courtyard.
“Hello, darling,” she said. “Have a nice time?”
He grunted in reply, turned just long enough to give her a wan smile and pat her arm. Same old James, she thought. And then, suddenly, he did something that surprised her.
He turned fully toward her. “Shall we take a walk?” he asked, in a voice so confident it seemed hardly his own. “A turn arm in arm in the twilight?” And then he smiled in a way that seemed to her not like him at all. “Come on,” he said. “It’ll be fun. Nothing to be afraid of.”
He stood and put his arm around her and began tugging her toward the door.
Neithernor
Richard Gavin
Vera was my only cousin and was a distant one in more than the usual way; genetically, yes, but also geographically, emotionally, and, I now see, in the character of what one might call spirit or soul. We had never shared any sort of kinship, or truly any acquaintanceship, to speak of. Best as my holey memory serves, Vera and I had met only a single time, at a stuffy family reunion that had taken place during my tenth Thanksgiving.
To suggest that any sort of foreshadowing had taken place during that soporific feast day would be prevarication of the highest order. I recall only that Vera had worn a plaid skirt and that her hair was very dark and very straight and rather short; not quite as short as I’d worn mine, but nearly. It is dubious that we exchanged any words beyond asking for a condiment to be slung down the chain of hands that lined the long banquet table.
Forearmed with this proem, I hope you might appreciate the dazed reaction I experienced when, on assignment, I came upon her name in conjunction with a tiny art gallery on the outskirts of the city.
“Yes, they’re very interesting aren’t they? Very interesting indeed. They’re made by a local woman, each piece is done by hand and each is one-of-a-kind.” This was the voice of the older man who was perched behind the tiny counter. His was the physique of an overfed pigeon and his eyes were large and rheumy. The wooden stool that braced him groaned woefully each time he fidgeted, which was often. His teeth were the grey of cooked mushrooms and they shimmered with saliva when he smiled, which, thankfully, he did but once.
“Unique,” I said, hoping that the proprietor would repast with something like ‘Oh, yes, very unique’ or ‘truly unique’ so that I could then correct him by saying that the word ‘unique’ implicitly means something singular and without equal and thus requires no modifiers to enhance it. I enjoy giving these sorts of lessons to my public. Language is so very important, dying though it may be.
But the droopy man’s only response was a wet-sounding sneeze. I moved further down the gallery’s aisle, pausing to study an especially complex and delicate-looking piece that sat beneath the smudgy glass of a display case.
“That the carousel you’re looking at?” the proprietor asked, returning his hanky to the inside of his vest. “A keen eye you’ve got, sir. I’m fond of that one myself.”
I nodded. “Yes...yes I suppose it is a carousel at that. Truth be told, I thought it was a scorpion at first.”
He chortled. “That’s the rub of it. That’s Ms. Elan’s gift, you see? Your eye’s sharper than most, I daresay. She calls this series Neithernor, because they are neither one thing nor the other. One sees two things at once, you might say. Take that one, for example...”
He leaned forward on his stool and for a moment I feared he might try to rise, but he merely pointed to the case at the end of the show floor. I moved to it to save him further exertion. I studied the biggish piece featured there.
“For the longest time I thought that one represented a handheld mirror, then a young lady from one of the universities nearby told me that it was most definitely an Egyptian ankh. Now I don’t know which it is. I tell you, the funny thing is, when I leave here at night I will often think about Ms. Elan’s work, while I’m cooking my supper or lying in bed about to sleep. I think of it, but I can never remember exactly what these pieces look like. Isn’t that a puzzler? I sit here five days a week and I study them, trying to memorize every curl and bend, but once I leave this room, my memories change. The pieces become something different than what they were. Talented artist, she is. I’d like to show you my favourite of her creations, a sofa with teeth, but it sold in August.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell the man about my relation to the artist, but didn’t.
“It’s clear she’s been successful, given that this gallery showing is all hers.”
The man’s head drooped as if ashamed. “We’re a consignment gallery, sir. We’d pay our artists if we could though. Surely we would.”
“She lives locally you said?” I returned, changing the subject.
“Well, her representatives do at the very least. They deliver me new pieces every few weeks or so.”
“So her works do sell then?”
“Occasionally. To tourists mostly. Slow time right now, being the off-season.”
“Could I trouble you for Ms. Elan’s contact information. I’m the arts and culture writer for the Mirror and I’m always looking to educate my readers on the more unique goings-on outside of the city.”
“A writer! Well, well, well. But you have me at a disadvantage, sir. Ver
a is a very private woman.”
I nodded. “That’s fine. Might I leave you my information so that Vera or her representatives can contact me if they wish?”
“Yes, yes.”
I produced my card then made my way to the door.
Prior to exiting, I posed one last question to the owner.
“Yes,” the man confirmed, “yes, every piece is, sir. Copper wire and human hair, that’s Ms. Elan’s medium. As I said, sir, you’ve a keen eye. Very keen.”
2.
After I returned to the city and to the echo-heavy building that is the Mirror’s headquarters and to my tidy desk that is stationed within it I had every intention of drafting an official proposal concerning a local interest column on my cousin Vera, but two enmeshed events intervened kept me from forwarding the idea to my editor. The foremost of these was an electrical fire in the annex beside mine, which resulted in irreparable smoke damage to a number of my belongings, including the entirety of my music collection and a suede armchair that was very nearly a favourite. The next was my becoming engaged to a woman named Cara.
I am to blame entirely for this romance. Cara was a clerk at the music shop that sat between the Mirror office and my smoke-damaged home. For a period of a month, perhaps longer, I incorporated a stop at the music store into my lunch hour routine. Cara was not the reason for my frequent visits (though she would likely say otherwise). I was simply trying to not merely replenish but actually improve my lamented record collection and the shop’s location was convenient. My guilt in this crime of the heart was ordering Tchaikovsky, which women almost always equate with sensitivity. He is my own concession to the delicate, and it cost me. I have always theorized that women like men who like Tchaikovsky. I am living proof of this theory.
What shall I say about our courtship? We talked and Cara made recommendations for records I did not buy. Somehow we ended up at a cafe and later in her bed and much later in a townhouse that we shared. As to who proposed whom, my recollection is foggy, but Cara insists that I asked her in a manner that was “endearingly shy.” This is the version she tells her friends and her mother, at whose apartment we have lunch every Sunday. I suppose this version is accurate enough.
There were and are obvious advantages to my relationship with Cara. Companionship always puts one more at ease with one’s own eccentricities. Alone, one’s compulsions can become forces of anguish and alienation. Betrothed, they twist into endearing quirks in the eye of one’s lover. This of course is so much easier than the futile quest to entirely remake one’s self to fit an ideal.
Also, Cara received an employee discount for any records she purchased, so I was able to rebuild my collection much more quickly and inexpensively than I’d thought.
One Tuesday in November, a most unexpected thing happened. Cara walked through the door shortly after six, smiled, and then handed me a parcel. Its shape and thinness were obvious enough to render the brown paper wrapping a bit superfluous. But then the real question was, exactly which record had she gotten me?
I set my magazine aside and said “Thank you, my dove” and pecked her cheek.
The peeled wrapping revealed a cream album jacket. A slate-grey circle with a straight line underneath, akin to an underline used for emphasis, was its only adornment.
“Dear?” I said.
“Scelsi,” Cara replied, turning from me to remove her coat. “Put it on.”
I broke the seal and heeded.
What came leaking through the speakers was a warbled and creeping harmonic of brass, of strings being tediously bowed. I stood holding the record sleeve. Something cold and shapeless raised the hair on the back of my neck.
“This music,” I began.
“Do you like it?”
“It sounds as though it’s...melting.”
“It’s called Anahit. Scelsi wrote it for Venus. That’s why I bought it for you.”
I must have been visibly nonplussed, for Cara explained that this music, which I found remote and coldly firm as a headstone, seemed to her to illustrate a kinship between myself and the composer.
“In what way?” I asked, feeling the edge creeping into my voice.
“Just listen. Scelsi felt the same about women as you do.”
“Did he?” I asked, now spinning in one of Cara’s eddies of insinuation.
“Did he?” she repeated before regressing into the unlit kitchen. A few moments later the scream of a kettle was added to the Italian’s razor-wire concerto.
Cara then told me something about Scelsi that I have never forgotten.
It was only natural that I felt impelled to reciprocate her gift, but after a few fruitless hours gazing through boutique windows and pacing the airless labyrinths of antique shop after antique shop I began to question exactly how well I knew my fiancée. Of all the curios I’d spotted, none seemed to represent her. But then, how well did the Scelsi recording represent me? Rather poorly in my candid opinion. I then began down a lane of thought that I admit I’m less than proud of taking. I started to suspect that Cara’s motive was less about gifting and more about challenging. The outré concerto was a gauntlet of sorts, a distorted mirror that was designed to confuse me about not only her but also myself.
As I said, I am not proud of the way I searched for Cara’s motives in dark corners.
I’m even less proud of the fact that I decided to best her at her own game. But it was as it was. Far be it from me to burnish reality. If the game was to be Presents Beyond the Pale, I knew just the bauble to use as my repast.
3.
I sought the phone number of the little gallery in the little town where Cousin Vera’s little creations could be had. I found no listing. My editor had long ago eliminated my off-the-beaten-path travelogues, but the gallery keeper didn’t know that. On a Friday I left the office after only a half day and drove north, hoping all the while that the gallery would be open.
I found it closed, permanently.
A cold spring rain began to fall as I stood on the sidewalk, peering into the showroom as though this would somehow alter its condition. Was I expecting the cold potted lamps to suddenly brighten, the showcases to fling back their dustcovers and once again be filled with Vera’s fetishes?
Like a petulant child I gripped the entrance handle and shook the door with violence enough to cause the little bell to rattle inside. Then I returned to my post on the sidewalk and tried to think of alternatives.
Had the day not been so gloomy I would likely never have noticed the light that went on in the second-storey window. But notice it I did, beaming like a small amber moon just above me. I took a few paces back and looked upward. The silhouette’s frame suggested that it was the gallery clerk. I waved and called hello and prattled something about being the newspaper writer.
The shape disappeared from the window. A few moments later it was standing in the little alley that divided the gallery from the organic bakery next door. My suspicion had been correct, it was the gallery owner. He was dressed in saggy pyjamas, a housecoat and tattered plaid slippers. The umbrella in his dirty fist was designed for a child.
“I wanted to ask you about my cousin,” I told him after he showed no inclination toward speaking.
“The gallery is no more, I regret to say. I’ve nothing to sell you.”
I wiped the rain from my face and approached him. “Yes, I can see that. But I’m hoping you can call Vera’s representatives for me. It’s important.”
“No way to call them,” he said. He gave me a beckoning wave and started back down the alley from which he’d emerged. I followed him to a flimsy wooden door, which he pulled back. I squeezed into the tiny landing, holding my breath as the man latched the sad-looking door. “This way,” he said. I didn’t need to be told this, for the landing only had two exits: the alley door or the bowing stairs of wood so worn it was ice-slick. I climbed with care, for there was no handrail to aid me.
My host unlocked and pressed open the black-stained door at the head of
the stairs. I followed him into an L-shaped apartment that smelled of old cooking and cat urine. The room had but two sources of illumination: a skylight of clouded plastic and, unnervingly, a nightlight in the shape of an antique streetlamp that glowed from a wall plug.
“Sit, sit,” urged the man. I was reluctant. In way of furnishings there was a tan sofa and a wooden glider chair. The sofa’s upholstery was bearded in long cat hair, so I chose the wooden glider. I never did spy the cat. He settled into the sofa and immediately lit a cigarette, producing an ashtray brimming with mangled butts. “What do you fancy?”
I cleared my throat. “I’m looking for a present for my fiancée. One of Vera’s sculptures...because they are so...highly unique.”
He nodded and nodded, reclining his head to spout smoke into the already cloying atmosphere. This caused his pyjama top to part at the seam. His breastbone was uncannily large and knotty. The sight of it distressed me.
“We was hoping for a newspaper story from you,” he returned, rather brashly. I noted that his accent, which had previously suggested the posh air of Knightsbridge, suddenly clanged with an antagonizing cockney lilt.
“Ah, yes. Well, I’m sure you can imagine how it is; editorial bureaucracy and the like. I pitched the idea, but my superiors turned me down.” I wondered why I felt the need to explain myself to him. “But I’d still like to purchase a piece, and to be put in touch with my cousin if that’s the possible.”
“The first bit is, aye. But as to Cousin Vera...”
“Nothing’s happened to her I hope.”
“Why do you say that, eh?”
Aickman's Heirs Page 3