Salamander

by Thomas Wharton

  – What happens when they wind down, or stray off the road?

  Everyone knew the messengers were on important imperial business, so passersby always paused to crank them up again or set them back on course. Heaven and earth had to run efficiently.

  Back on board the ship Flood took his straight-edge rule and measured Djinn’s height.

  – You speak Chinese, don’t you?

  – Which Chinese?

  – How many languages do they have here?

  – Several, I believe.

  – As long as you know one of them.

  When the compositor understood what Flood wanted of him, he made no complaint.

  – I will meet my fate here, he said.

  It turned out that Djinn was slightly shorter and slenderer than Ludwig. Turini carefully dismantled the automaton, removed his cogs and gears, and fitted his porcelain shell around Djinn like a suit of armour. Ludwig’s painted metal eyeballs were replaced with transparent disks of glass to allow the compositor to see where he was going. A latch and hinge were fitted to the mouthpiece to allow him to eat and drink, and another similar trapdoor cut in the posterior for the subsequent necessities. As a final touch, Darka concealed Ludwig’s military paint behind Chinese garments, and placed a straw hat like that worn by the locals on his head to hide the automaton’s European features.

  They escorted him through the streets to the high whitewashed wall that enclosed the district of the traders, and saw him off at a gatehouse with a humpbacked roof of red tiles. All that Pica could glimpse before the doors shut was a low hedge glistening darkly in the rain.

  THE ADVENTURE OF DJINN

  After several days of solitary travel he came at dusk to the bank of a wide river, where a ferryman sat waiting in his boat. The fading light, the lonely slap of water against the side of the ferry, the dim red lantern of the ferry boat all produced in Djinn a feeling that his melancholy destiny was near, and he brightened at the thought. As he hurried down the steep, stony bank, the ferryman appeared, a naked sword in his hand.

  – An upside-down night, the bearded, red-eyed ferryman growled, his teeth bared in a terrible grimace. A moonlit day.

  Djinn hesitated at the sight of this apparition. Fearing to betray himself he remained silent. The ferryman repeated his salutation and then leaned closer, sniffing.

  – Ah. Only a wind-up messenger. I can’t see anything in this gloom.

  As the boat slipped out into the stream, the ferryman took a longer look at his passenger by the light of the stern lantern.

  – You’re not really an automaton, are you? he asked, his frightful red eyes narrowing.

  Djinn did not speak.

  – A foreigner?

  – Of course not, Djinn blurted in his best attempt at Cantonese. – You see, I’m actually from –

  – Another foreigner, the ferryman muttered, shaking his head. Tell me, why do you people persist in coming here? You will find only what you would find anywhere else. Pain and sorrow.

  The ferryman seemed to want to continue, and so Djinn said nothing, knowing silence to be the surest prompter of speech.

  – Three years ago, he said, my beautiful young wife drowned in this river. Here at this very crossing.

  Djinn slowly sat, abandoning all pretense of machinehood.

  – Years ago, the ferryman went on, I was a wealthy and respected salt merchant. I had been married since my youth to a kind and hard-working woman. When death took her suddenly from me, I mourned for a long time, certain that I would spend my remaining years in solitude, comforted only by memories of my dear helpmeet. If only heaven had seen fit to allow my old age this lonely but dignified retirement from the world.

  He ceased for a moment, and all around them in the humid night Djinn heard the croaking of multitudes of frogs.

  – As heaven willed it, the ferryman went on, one day I saw a face. A face that stopped me dead in the street. I stumbled home, forgetting my business. I made inquiries. The young woman was from a distant province, and her noble but impoverished family had come to my prosperous town in search of better fortune.

  Her name was Pool of Jade. At night her perfect white face hovered before him, driving away sleep. By day he tended his business in a state he had all but forgotten: the giddy drunkenness of infatuation. In a kind of fever he went again and again to her house, wooed her, lavished gifts on her family, and was at last accepted.

  On fire, he married hastily, against the advice of his older brother, a monk, who tactfully reminded him of the wide river of years between his betrothed and himself, and cautioned him to maintain a stern lordship over her at all times. The salt merchant demanded of his cloistered brother what he could possibly know about love, and devoted himself entirely to his wife’s happiness.

  – I see now that I fussed over her far too much, made myself an obsequious and tiresome fool in her eyes. No doubt she soon wearied of such timid attentions from a man whose hair was already grey.

  After her death he found letters full of indecent hints and suggestions she could only have exchanged with some shameless libertine of the town. It was clear to him then that she had found what she really longed for, a youthful lover.

  – Who he was, I have not yet discovered. Not yet.

  He knew only that at night she would slip out with her devoted maid to meet this scoundrel at the river, where he waited with a boat to take them to their trysting place. There was no ferry at this crossing then. People in these parts had always called this the Ford of Amorous Longing and he had never known why.

  – I know now, to my sorrow, the ferryman said. Why was I not aware of her absences, you may well ask. It seems she had bought from some apothecary a vial of sleeping potion, a few drops of which in my evening tea would topple me like a stone into unhearing, dreamless slumber until the dawn.

  Toiling each day at his shop, mollifying customers and government inspectors, browbeating his labourers, he was too busy to be suspicious of this unusual drowsiness and only assumed that age was at last laying its heavy hand upon his shoulder.

  – One spring night, as my wife and her maid slipped out to their clandestine rendezvous, a thunderstorm rose up and hid the moon. My wife, not seeing her lover’s lantern in the rain and darkness, fell into the river and was swept away. I assume her brave paramour heard her screams for help and fled, rather than risk his own precious life to save her.

  The maid returned to the house and woke him, told him in gasps what had befallen her mistress. So dull-witted was he that he did not even think to ask why his wife would be out of doors at night. He dressed in haste and rushed out into the rain, the maid running after him, babbling nonsense about river spirits. At dawn, after searching through the night, he found her at last, lying amid the reeds.

  The ferryman fell silent, and gazed out into the black waves of the river.

  – Her robe had come loose from her shoulder, he said at last, and when I lifted her in my arms I saw the mark of teeth, a bite no doubt inflicted during the heedless frenzy of passion.

  The maid had fled, doubtless terrified of the punishment that would fall upon her for her part in all that had transpired. He never saw the woman again. And so he was left with only the memory of that livid bite mark as a clue, a mark so power-fully impressed into his mind that it was as if he himself had been bitten. A single character to lead him to the man he vowed to kill.

  – But surely such a clue is not enough, Djinn could not help saying, given that one man’s teeth must be very like another’s.

  – Except in this case, the ferryman said with a bitter smile. My quarry left a very distinctive bite mark, you see.

  One of his eye teeth had been filed to an unusual double point, most likely to serve as a kind of seal, a sign of conquest on each woman he seduced. And it was only possible to see this double point by two methods: close examination of the offending fang, or by the impression left by a bite.

  – What could I do to catch the cowardly dog who destroye
d my happiness? If I asked to see the teeth of every man who entered my shop, they would quite rightly consider me mad, and complain to the government, who would revoke my salt licence and probably behead me into the bargain.

  He thought for a while of opening a tea house or a bakery, in which sort of establishment he might have the opportunity to examine bites left in cakes or crusts of stale bread. But could he always be certain whose teeth had left which bite in a discarded crust? That strategy was far too susceptible to error for his liking.

  Guessing that the culprit must live near the river, he hit upon a different plan, one which seemed much more probable of success. First of all, he sold his prospering salt business and told all his friends and acquaintances that he was leaving to return to the far province of his ancestors. Then he vanished from the town and took up residence in his brother’s monastery in the mountains, where the monks were only too happy to conceal him in exchange for his generous donations. A year later, with a new name and his face disguised with a shock of wild hair, he established a ferry at the Ford of Amorous Longing.

  – At first my hope was that he and his latest conquest would avail themselves of this boat some night, and I would have him for certain. But I have found that the nights are quiet on this stretch of the river. Suspiciously quiet.

  He paused for a moment, as if listening to the frogs, the burble of the stream, the wind sighing in the trees.

  – But day and night I greet every man who passes this way with an unholy grin and a pointless jest, he went on, in the hope of provoking a like smile, so that I may examine his teeth. If that ploy fails, I tell indecent stories while I pole us across the river. My quarry is doubtless a man to laugh heartily at the weakness of the flesh and the humiliation of women. And those who take offence, well, what can they say? After all, if you don’t like the ferryman’s manners, you can’t very well tell him so halfway across the river, can you? The local magistrate has listened to numerous complaints about me, to be sure, but since he is nestled snugly in my still-capacious purse, I need not fear being removed from my post any day soon.

  – And so I await my opportunity. Sooner or later this shadow, this wily demon in a man’s skin, will find it necessary to cross the river, perhaps on his way to another illicit conquest of the heart. Would he suspect that the rich and haughty merchant he so blithely cuckolded all those years ago would stoop to such an ignoble station in life? No, he will think what everyone who passes this way thinks, what you yourself no doubt thought when I first addressed you. This hairy wretch is insane, he will say to himself, and in order that I may hurry to a warm fire or to a good supper or to bed and the waiting arms of my lover, I will humour him. I will laugh at him while pretending to laugh with him, and then be on my way.

  The boat bumped up against the wooden platform on the far bank.

  – And that baring of white teeth, the ferryman said, driving his pole like a spear into the wet bank, will be his last false smile on this earth.

  Djinn climbed unsteadily out of the boat and turned to the ferryman.

  – What about all those men who never laugh?

  – I am patient, the ferryman said. It may be that he has already passed here numerous times, and will again and again before I wrench a grin out of him. After all, the wicked must travel more than the virtuous.

  – Do women pass this way?

  – Often, the ferryman said with a shrug at the obvious. Out of respect for both my wives I refrain from offending feminine delicacy …

  The ferryman’s last words trailed off. His eyes opened wide, the pole slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor of the boat. And with the ferryman in that state, transfixed and speechless in the waning darkness, Djinn left him and went on his way.

  He reached a mountainous region and came to Ching-te chen, the City of Porcelain, where the mandarin had his palace.

  The narrow valley in which the city lay was clouded with the smoke of hundreds of kilns. As Djinn slowly made his way up along the main road, he witnessed the steps in the creation of an automaton. The manufacturing of each porcelain shell had been divided into a sequence of discrete operations, each of which took place in its own district, inhabited by labourers whose most common occupational hazard gave their city-within-a-city its name.

  In the City of the Maimed they hacked clay and rock out of the mountainsides and pounded it into paste.

  In the City of the Arthritic, artisans shaped the raw porcelain in moulds for the various sections of the automaton’s body.

  The pieces were fired in red-hot kilns in the ash-choked City of the Blind.

  In the City of the Hunchbacks they applied the delicate strokes and curlicues of paint and the final glaze.

  Beyond the City of the Disgruntled, where the porcelain was packaged, labelled, and loaded aboard barges, Djinn eventually reached the palace, but in his guise as a mechanical messenger, he found it impossible to contrive a way into the library or the printing house. The various functionaries and guards who barred his way, discovering he carried no official documents, considered him defective and steered him back outside onto the palace grounds. Here he stayed for several days, in rain and sun, furtively snatching nuts and fallen fruit when no one was about.

  Eventually his curiosity led him to a walled-off area of the grounds, which he found to his surprise to be an artificial garden. The earth in this enclosure was covered in tiles of polished malachite to create a bright green lawn that would never wither or go to seed. Trees of copper and brass had been erected, painted in life-like colours and hung with censers, so that if any members of the mandarin’s staff chanced to walk that way they would inhale sweet odours of jasmine, peach blossom, and honey. The flowers that lined the marble pathways were fashioned of delicate shards of jade, crystal, and amethyst. Ceramic birds perched on metallic tree boughs, and in the ponds of glass bronze goldfish flitted.

  Djinn imagined that here he would be free of vigilant eyes, since no one would be needed to tend a landscape of artifice, but it was not long before he realized his mistake. Gardeners were everywhere, with brooms, brushes, nets, and tongs, roaming through the enclosure at all hours, making sure everything was kept polished, free from stain or blemish. He watched them at their work, as any dry leaves, twigs, insects, or nests of mice that happened to stray over or under the walls were swiftly hunted down and rooted out.

  One of these gardeners appeared so suddenly that Djinn was nearly caught in the unautomaton-like act of relieving himself through the lower hatch of the porcelain suit.

  – I don’t know how you ended up in this place, the gardener said to him, but you are certainly at home here. I’ll wind you up presently, but you might as well stay for now, while I rest.

  The gardener glanced around furtively, then sat down heavily on a nearby bench and leaned his broom beside him.

  – Since I dare not tell my secret to anyone whose ears could really hear me, the gardener sighed, I will have to confide in you, my mechanical friend.

  Djinn held his breath and tried his best not to move.

  – You see, I cannot let the world know what I have found here in the Garden of Heavenly Perfection.

  … I was picking straw blown over the wall by the autumn winds, when I saw the crimson tongue of its place-marking ribbon poking up between two slabs of stone. The sight was partially hidden by a mimosa of artfully wrought opal. Under pretence of inspecting the base of the plant for stray wisps of straw, I knelt and levered up a tile with my trowel, exposing one angular corner of the intruder. With much effort I was able to dig the book free of the thick, fibrous roots anchoring it to the dark earth. I only had time for a quick glance at my find before concealing it in my tunic. The book’s cover was made of wood, its damp, heavy pages giving off a pungent odour of earth, rain, leaf rot. As I hurried back to my cell, I debated what I should do with my find. Cart it, with all the other chaff, to the bonfire outside the garden wall? Or give it to the superintendent to pass on upward through the clerks a
nd ministers to the mandarin, to add to his unread library? After a morning of indecision, I did neither and instead kept my discovery hidden.

  In private moments I take up the volume and the rough, thorny binding hums in my hand like a beehive. As I turn the pages coniferous sap sticks to my fingers. In the rustle of its paper I hear the nocturnal stirring of owls. Letters become iridescent beetles that uncase their wings with a click and whirr into the air. This book is a wild tangle of words, a shadowy ravine through which unseen beasts prowl, rustling the pages as they pass.

  In the middle of the book I found the story of an ancient hermit of the forest, and he too is reading by candlelight in the evening, and in the book he is reading there is described a still pool of water in the midst of aromatic night blossoms, where he imagines himself sitting at twilight, bending to cup his hands and drink, and when he looks at his reflection he sees staring back at him a youth of great beauty.

  As I read, each page slowly turns yellow and sere and falls softly from the book to the tiled lawn. I hurriedly gather these fallen leaves and bury them secretly in the place where I first saw the book. I have been reading all through the summer, and now approaches the time of year when not even imperial decree may halt the inevitable. This is the season when the mandarin takes flight to his summer house far to the south, to escape the sight of grey skies and trees, even artificial trees, laden with snow. This is the season when we gardeners must battle vigilantly against ice and sleet, against rust and rot.

  I have no doubt that in the spring the book will be the first sign of green to emerge from winter’s white sleep, the pale, dog-eared corners of its pages shivering in the cool wind. During the rains I will come out with my umbrella to inspect the tender shoots, watch the snails crawl across their delicately veined surfaces, knowing that soon I will be reading it again, a book both familiar and entirely new.