by Jeffrey Ford
"Look now," he said.
I tilted back my head and witnessed a red splotch, like a bleeding wound, spreading out across the resilient blue. It was not long after that we began to ascend in the same uneven manner as we had been lowered.
"Where does Anotine get the strength to lift us?" I asked.
"Nunnly's gears make the job easy. Turning the crank is no harder than reeling a bucket of water out of a well. Still, it would be a mistake to underestimate Anotine's strength," said the Doctor with a laugh.
I handed him back his small portion of the mercury sea and went to the side to get one last look. We were almost too far away for me to perceive the detail of the etched surface, but I managed to make out one final scene. A prodigious curl carried on its back a tableau of the Master and his demon son wrapped in an embrace. Then the wave fell into itself, devouring the portrait, and, with two more upward tugs on the rope, I could no longer make out any details.
Doctor Hellman and I again took up our positions resting on the floor of the gondola. Wearing a look of contentment, he held the jar nestled in his arms as if it were his own child. I thought his mood might make him talkative, and I asked him to tell me about the ocean's dream.
"A love story, you said?" I asked him.
"I was joking in a way when I said that, but what I meant was that my interpretation of what I have seen, the silver chronicle of what seems to be every single moment of one particular man's life, has a meaning that is greater than the sum of all its individual scenes. It is a total concept that lies just beyond my powers of description. This is why I call it a love story, because Love is a word I am familiar with, a word that haunts my own dreams, but for the life of me I can no longer grasp the concept of it. The significance of the story in the ocean and my inability to remember the meaning of this term leave me with an identical, unquenchable yearning. I feel they are one and the same thing."
"Are you any closer to them now from when you started?" I asked.
"I'm so close," he said, laughing. "So close now that everything is disintegrating. Perhaps if I had a long enough glass rod and jar with which I could dip into myself, I could bring out the answer."
I hadn't realized how badly I needed a cigarette until I found myself puffing on a lit Hundred-To-One that, without warning, materialized between my fingers. It tasted so good, I didn't bother to question its appearance.
"What about this man in the story?" I asked. "Who is he?"
"He's a man of great power and great weakness with the potential for both good and evil—a scientist and magician. The ocean has shown me this in detail. Once I saw him crack an egg and a cricket jumped forth, and once he built a crystal egg that held within it a world."
The wind rocked the basket in a circular motion. This and the Doctor's conversation made my mind spin. For the remainder of the ascent, I suffered from a sense of unreality as if I were the ghost of a ghost. All I had to anchor me was the insubstantial smoke of the cigarette. I pressed my hand against the pocket containing the green veil and remembered my own yearning.
13
When we finally reached the island, and I stepped out of the basket, Anotine was there to take my arm. The moment my foot touched the ground, I realized that our strange journey had wrought some change in me. It was as if the mnemonic world had gained a great measure of authority or validity, for everything appeared more vibrant, and I felt, for the first time, comfortable with my existence there.
All of the doubt I had felt while ascending in the basket was now gone, carried off by one of the clouds we had passed through. The urgency of my mission, which had been a constant nagging companion, had mysteriously vanished like the breakfast plates in Anotine's dining room. I concentrated now on the touch of her hand, and that thrilled me like nothing from my rapidly diminishing memories of Wenau ever had.
We left the Doctor sitting on the base of the giant winch, gazing into his sample of the ocean, and headed through the wood, walking side by side in silence. Anotine had let go of me by then, but I wanted desperately to take her hand. The leaves fell around us, and every so often a beam from that immaculate sun would pierce the canopy overhead and illuminate her face.
I was on the verge of touching her when I looked up and saw something approaching. It flew above the ground at shoulder height, threading a swift, treacherous path in and around the bases of the trees. My first thought was that it was a large bird of some kind, but I quickly came to realize it was the Fetch.
The sight of the flying head so shattered my state of mind that I could do no more than grunt. For a second, I thought the monstrosity was going to collide with us, and I froze in place. Its face came hurtling directly at mine. I could clearly see the milky whiteness of the eyes and an open mouth I believed, in my fear, would swallow me. At the last second, it lifted its left eyebrow slightly, and this subtle motion directed its course up and over us. It moved so swiftly that when I turned to watch its departure all I saw were a few tendrils of its black hair whipping around the trunk of a tree some twenty yards off.
"The Doctor must be on to something," said Anotine with, what I thought, an inappropriate complacency.
"You mean she is going to stare his discovery out of him?" I asked.
"That's an interesting way of putting it," she said.
"Doesn't it bother you that your thoughts are not your own?" I asked.
"My thoughts are my own," she said defensively, and I could tell that I had touched a nerve that had to do with something more than the processes of the Fetch.
I put my hand out and touched her forearm. "I'm sorry," I said. She lowered her gaze and sighed.
"Cley," she said, "you're not a specimen, are you?"
"That designation lies solely with you," I told her.
She looked up and stared as if trying to see through me. I removed my hand from her arm. A minute passed; then she turned, and said, "In that case, come with me. I have an experiment I'd like to try." She set off ahead of me, walking with determination.
Rather dejected, I followed her, seeking solace in the memory of the night I had shared her bed. We left the wood, traversed the field, and took a short set of steps up into the maze of the terraced village. It was late afternoon by then, and the sun had begun its decline.
As we traveled the alleys and open-air corridors, I looked up, studying the Panopticon. Noticing that the light was off in the dome, I tried to peer through the glass and detect movement, but it was far too distant for me to see anything. What I did see was the Fetch, returning from having feasted on the Doctor's thoughts. It flew around the tower a few times and then directly into one of the darkened open portals in its side.
I imagined the Doctor trapped in the green gaze of that horrible visage. I saw those twin beams scouring the halls and rooms of his mind, uncovering all of the knowledge he had risked his life to secure. It was with this thought that I realized that the Fetch probably possessed the very ability I needed. When it examined the researchers, it was probably seeing through their symbolic nature. Its bleached eyes were most likely Below's tool for decoding the reality of the memory world, restoring it into the valuable ideas he had hidden there. The Fetch's activity could, I thought, be proof that he was still conscious even though his body was cocooned in the diseased sleep. Following this thought, it became evident that some manifestation of him must reside in the tower.
I felt that I was close to some revelation, when Anotine stopped, and said, "Here we are."
I looked up as if waking from a dream and saw her standing next to a wall that had a small arched entrance like a large mouse hole, no more than three feet high.
"Follow me," she said, and with the mischievous look of a child, got down on her hands and knees and scurried through the hole.
I followed her, but not as quickly, for the fit for me was a tight one. When I came through on the other side, her hand was there, extended to help me up.
"This is my special place," she said.
I looked
around and even before the beauty of it sank in, I smelled the perfume of the flowering plants that grew everywhere around the perimeter. The enclosure, which was open at the top, showing a view of the sky, was circular, about forty feet across. At the center of it was a large fountain in the shape of a scallop shell and rising from the middle of the fountain was a statue of a monkey, standing on one foot as if frozen in the middle of a dance. A steady trickle of water issued from the creature's penis and fell to slightly disturb the tranquillity of the pool beneath. Though the statue was rendered in bronze and covered with patches of a creeping oxidized green, I knew immediately that it was Silencio, the ingenious and good-natured monkey warder from my prison days on the island of Doralice.
"I am not a monkey" I said, a phrase that blew back to me on a memory breeze strong enough to cross two worlds. I laughed at the sight of him.
"The others have no idea this place exists," said Anotine. "Nunnly and Brisden would certainly think crawling through holes beneath them, and Doctor Hellman, who might do it, most likely has never seen it because he is always staring up into the clouds or down into the ocean."
"It's beautiful," I said.
"But this is my favorite part," she said, and took me by the shoulder to turn me away from the fountain. Behind me, at ten paces, I saw a tall shade tree, around the base of which was a circular stone bench like a marble ring on a wooden finger.
"Look there," she said, and pointed.
The branches were heavy with the white fruit of paradise. The sight of this tree, laden with potential miracles, made me want to speak so badly, but I held myself in check for the same reason I had in the gondola. My truth would be, to Anotine, like a poisonous serpent in this perfect place.
"Come sit down, Cley," she said.
We sat on the bench beneath the tree, and the fragrance of the fruit thickened the air with a sweet perfume that instantly put me at ease. It took no time at all before I felt a pleasant drowsiness descending over me. I looked to Anotine and her eyelids were partially closed, her lips turned up at the corners in a vague smile.
"I sit here and watch my monkey," she said. "If you sit long enough and stare, he begins to move." She giggled at herself.
"And what was the experiment you wanted to perform?" I asked in an intoxicated drawl.
"Experiment?" she said, and then after a moment of thought, "Oh, yes. Lie back on the bench," she said.
"As you wish," I said, and I could feel a sudden heat in my neck and ears.
"Roll up your sleeve," she said.
I did as I was told. When I was finished, she reached over and pushed it way up near my shoulder. Then she stood and moved over to sit next to me, resting my bare arm on her lap, palm up.
"I want you to keep your eyes fixed on the monkey over there," she said. "We are going to take a gentler course in order to find the moment this time." She pushed her fingernail into the exact center of the inner crook of my elbow. "Here is the spot that will stand for the present. I will start here, at the tip of your middle finger and brush my nails along the palm of your hand, across your wrist, and then up your inner forearm, moving in a circular motion that will make slow progress toward it. I will backtrack and continue and backtrack again, and you must wait until I reach the exact spot I indicated. At the instant I reach that spot, I want you to focus on the experience. Try to remember it clearly, so that I can question you about it."
The description of this experiment suddenly made me a staunch supporter of Science. I lay there submissively and stared at the bronze effigy of Silencio, remembering Below's enthusiasm for the creature. It was no wonder that he be immortalized, so to speak, in the Master's memory palace. My memory went back to Doralice and the nights I had spent there on the porch of Harrow's Inn, drinking Rose Ear Sweet and listening to the primate play his miniature piano. Another strange island in another place and time. I was considering the fact that islands seemed to be an important symbol in the story of my own life when Anotine began to skate the tip of her nail down across my palm in a circular motion. The sensation both tickled and satisfied me, an exquisite torture far more agreeable than the metallic chair.
"Something is changing me, Cley. I can feel it inside," she whispered. "I'm not sure if it is the death of the island or your arrival here, but it is as if I am rousing from some long waking sleep."
"I felt it today, myself," I said, "when I returned from my journey to the surface of the ocean."
"Perhaps Below has sent you to distract me in my final days," she said. "It's as if you have infected me with some disease."
"Never," I said.
"Yes," she murmured. "It is bringing the present within reach. I know it. Your appearance is no mistake."
I tried to speak, but she cut me off. "Shhh," she said as her nail doubled back across my wrist. "Concentrate."
The stone bench was as comfortable as a couch, and the scent of the white fruit, the splash of the fountain, the hum of bees among the flowers made me drowsy. It was growing late, and the dark was filtering into daylight. Her nails moved inexorably toward the present but never arrived and somewhere, perhaps minutes or hours after the experiment was begun, my eyelids barely open, I saw Silencio move. Then I realized that I was dreaming.
The monkey leaped down with a graceful somersault from his spot in the center of the fountain. He danced around the walled garden and climbed up into the tree. Sitting on a branch directly above, he picked one of the white, fleshy fruits and bit into it. When he had finished, he stood and, holding his member in one hand, directed a stream of piss down upon us.
I woke suddenly to find Anotine, lying asleep across my chest. Her finger pointed to the middle of my forearm a good two inches from the point she had been working toward. It was dark, but I could see well enough to tell that the monkey was back on his perch in the fountain. Still, I was getting wet. At that moment, a streak of lightning walked the sky, quickly followed by an explosion of thunder, and the rain came even harder.
"Anotine," I said, and shook her awake.
She sat up, surprised. "My goodness, it's raining," she said. "It hardly ever rains."
We were getting drenched. She got up and ran for the opening in the wall. I followed her, and she waited for me on the other side. We ran through the downpour, pursuing a meandering course across the terraced village. Her dress was soaked, and I could see her body beneath the transparent membrane. She sped on ahead of me, sure of every turn and step, and I tried to keep up. Although I knew I was now awake, the sight of her beauty ever receding before me, the flashes of lightning, and the cool rain made this seem more of a dream than the bronze Silencio dancing in the garden.
We arrived back at her darkened rooms just as the rain had begun to abate. Anotine lit the lamps and then lowered them. She stripped off her wet dress and flung it down the hall. I stood in the middle of the room and watched forlornly as she lay down on her bed. She curled up on her side and closed her eyes. When I believed she was asleep, I huddled myself down upon the brown rug.
A few minutes passed, and I listened to the water dripping off the eaves and down the innumerable steps of the village. Without opening her eyes, she said in a weary voice. "Take off those wet things and lie down here, Cley. I want to dream again tonight."
I did as I was told, and by the time I rested my head on half of the pillow, she was lightly snoring. As I lay there on my side, watching her again, I thought about my vision of Silencio eating the white fruit and remembered that I had actually eaten a piece myself before my journey into Below's memory. At first, I wondered why it hadn't as yet worked any magic for either good or ill on me, but as I stared at the complex weave of Anotine's wet braid, it came to me that perhaps she was my miracle. No matter how many ways I tried to return in my thoughts to Misrix and Below and Wenau, all of these paths wound back upon themselves like the strands in the braid, leading me always to her. I reached out and placed my open palm upon her back.
That night I had no dreams, and when I wok
e in the morning to bright sunlight, I found a lit Hundred-To-One waiting for me in the ashtray on the table across the room.
14
The next day passed with a smooth perfection that only memories edited by time can achieve. I was free of doubt and fear, and Anotine and I spent every moment together from breakfast on. There was no talk of work. She procured a bottle of Rose Ear Sweet from the dark closet in the hall, and we set out for the edge of the island.
There, sitting on a small rise that gave a clear view of both sea and sky, we played at finding faces, animals, cities, in the clouds while passing the bottle back and forth. My cigarettes appeared and she asked me for one. I told her those stories from Wenau that had nothing to do with Below. She was particularly interested in my role as a midwife and treated the idea of birth as some exotic concept, begging for me to recount in detail the looks and personalities of all of the children I had delivered.
"I'd like to go there with you," she said.
"That would be grand," I told her. "I have a house in the woods."
"Can I witness one of these births?" she asked.
"You could be my assistant," I promised.
She regaled me with stories of her associates, like the time Brisden, whose specialty was extemporaneous philosophy—a search for meaning through verbiage—had talked for two days straight and wound up his discourse at the exact place he had started. Or the time Nunnly and the Doctor had gone flyfishing off the edge of the island for a type of brightly colored bird whose migration path passed directly overhead once a year.
"They have been good companions" she said. "I can't think of what I would have done without them here. But they are so enmeshed in their work most days that at times it gets lonely."
"I'll be with you now," I told her.
Then the Sweet made her conversation expansive, and she told me her theories of existence, the past and present and future, a mixture of mathematical and philosophical concepts that whirled time and god in a circular design outward from the center of the moment. Intellectually, I was confused, but the sound of her voice added to my intoxication, and I saw it all with great clarity, a multicolored, perfectly symmetrical blossom, that spun like a pinwheel in the wind.