We reach the boundary at last where Urbis runs out and Suburbia begins. Suddenly the weather lifts and shifts, weak haze turns to early summer morning light, scintillating bright. I hear birds begin to sing, as if some button has been pressed, the pause released, and now here’s the thing: Up ahead, as the deer both go through this elusive border, I see their colour wash from white to reddish brown. They trot a little more, then stop and turn around, watching me as if proud of this little trick. I feel some change come over me also, and look down at my chest and hands, but can find nothing tangible, only a feeling of joy as the clouds depart and the morning light expands. We have escaped the urban sprawl and reached green fields and moorlands.
My deer skip ahead and a new lightness fills my steps. I recognise this place, the outskirts of Suburbia where I started out my journey what seems now like oh so long ago. Soon I will reach the little town square and ask directions, give out a name, look for the girl named Thea and hope that my brother’s last words were not said in evil or in jest. Pray that she remembers me with such fervour as I her. Would that be too much to aspire to? On this summer’s morn, with all of Nature rising up in joy around me, birds and flies making busy haste, the scent of effulgent life bursting forth in flower and frond, it does not seem beyond the scope of hope that I might find her face again. Her grace, her tenderness that lets my spirit finds its calm at last.
Blast. I should have known fate would have a wicked card or two still shimmied up her sleeve. I can’t believe my eyes. Quelle cruel surprise. A van comes racing over the hill, the stag pauses on the tarmac, takes one last look back towards me, and is killed. Horrid sound of abrupt collision of bone and metal. I even hear the driver swearing from his open window, slowing only for a second, concerned for his beloved bodywork. His handiwork is done, Nature’s miracle unworked in a second of ignorance. My blood boils in my veins, I cry out and run forward, leaping over clumps of bracken. When I get there the road is quiet, the culprit long gone over the next rise. I kneel and touch the warm furred flesh, smell the red leaking blood. My guide was just a deer it seems, no more or less an angel or a miracle than any other, and yet truly: that is miracle enough. My eyes fill with tears.
My head clears and I stand up, backing away in recognition. I know this moment from before. I have come to some crossroads. I am expected to hoist the bleeding deer onto my shoulders and carry it down into the town centre of Suburbia. Expected? Who watches me here? As if in answer, I hear a rustle from the bracken and branches and glimpse a pale figure in a thicket nearby hurrying away. The hind bereaved, torn but resolved to leave her mate behind? I cry out and move about, trying to get a decent view, a better angle through all the tangle. I refute fate’s repetition. I will not hoist the bleeding carcass, but find out who observes me. I run along the road then see her at a turn in the woods: a woman in a long white dress has left the thicket and is hurrying across an open field, looking back occasionally in fear, hoisting the lower reaches of her cotton above the rotten mud. I have not forgotten. Her head is a glowing blonde or red. No, it is a light, no face at all. The lady Elissa moving ever further away, getting smaller. Just like the deer, does she mean for me to follow? And then in a strange moment she turns one last time before vanishing over the hillside, beyond which I know Suburbia nestles, and seems to whisper this phrase straight into my head (or perhaps it is but the wind among the nettles): Desire Is A Mirage.
Is she an oracle, a sphinx, a witch, a mage? What are we to make of such an aphorism? And yet, gazing upon the fond curves and lines of the backlands of Suburbia, the stage set of superimposed planes of hedgerowed fields and moors, I find the answer is there filling my eyes: horizons, and all that they comprise, have led me on through all of life’s great enterprise. We travellers are but stooges tossed upon the twisting back of Nature, a great she-serpent who lures and then awaits us, always contriving lest we become complacent with her fleeting prizes, to replace one race instantaneously with another goal, another face. You feel malcontent as you grow older with these deceptions? Have faith, her embrace in death is no disappointment, but more warm and more of an anointment than all the tawdry treasures of earthly wealth. She loves you as only a true mother can, modestly, misunderstood and unrequited, and with stealth. Her immortal gift is not the laughable po-faced sham paraded by religions, but being born again continually, recycled and resplendent in all your atoms.
And so, at last, I am laughing. Alive in the sunlight and not daunted or worried by life’s strange riddles and repetitions. I break the pattern, I do as I please, free will is sweet. Leaving the road, and skirting the trees, I cross the field towards where last I saw Elissa. And in time I arrive at the top of the wooded ridge and look down into the valley beyond. Suburbia lies there, tranquil, familiar and fond. But now among the trees to my left I notice something new, which if I knew of once, its memory has long gone and this reacquaintance feels fresh as a breath of wind. A ruined tower, medieval at least, its ramparts interwoven with branches and bowers as if wrestling slowly with an ancient beast. Again, that déjà vu, the feeling that this picture has been renewed many times in many lives. I turn back to the horizon and there it is, the memory explained. That sea out there was once much further in. I dreamt of this in a ruined house in Sylvia, connected to that odd machine. It was the life of a seer many centuries ago. That tower was not so tumbled and jumbled then, but a well-built thing whose walls I walked and dwelt within. I venture closer and find a plaque of explanation, faded somewhat, but lovingly engraved, by the National Trust for the erudition of dog-walkers and jogger-stalkers:
The Ruins of the Tower of Erceldoune
Legend records that this site was once the palace of one Laird Thomas Learmonth, known to history as “True Thomas” and “Thomas The Rhymer”. He was said to have had the power of prophecy, gifted to him by the Queen of the faeries, who he met and kissed one day whilst out alone in the woods, and spent seven years with in her kingdom underground before returning to this world as if no time had passed. Thomas was said to have predicted the death of King Alexander the Third, the battle of Bannockburn and the union of Scotland and England under a king born of a French queen. He predicted that London will one day sink beneath the sea. Later in life, a servant came to tell him that a mysterious snow white hart and hind had been seen, walking along the streets of the village outside his tower. Thomas knew this to be a sign that the queen of Elfland was calling in her side of the bargain at last, in return for the powers she had gifted him. He quietly left the castle and followed the deer out of the town and was never seen or heard of again.
So. That makes me feel gey queer. I best be getting out of here. No sign of Elissa, or is that a flickering white light down there I see, twinkling for a moment, or just the windshield of a car in summer’s heat? I recognise her lighthouse, ornate glass palace on the distant outskirts of town, perhaps I see a door closing there as she withdraws herself, her trail of breadcrumbs having brought me home at last, my heart aghast. Her work is done. But my business lies elsewhere. Time for my feet to take me roving, scrambling, winding down, towards the edges of the well-appointed back gardens of privileged Suburbia, where happy complacency reclines intent on mowing and pruning neat-away each scowl and frown. Why fight it, just because we know in our guilt-ridden hearts that in night time on some other side of the planet or indeed the city, someone else is knifed or drug-addicted or suicidally drowned every minute? Don’t spoil our garden party with your rage, Nadir. Poverty and inequality are old as Carthage, part and parcel of civilisation’s thrills and spills. It’s just the vanity and ignorance of the privileged that kills. Let them satisfy me that they have seen and wept and understood, and I might consent to pass them by with my bloodied deer, my hoisted rood.
At last, my feet bring me full circle, back into the quaintly cobbled pedestrian precinct of Suburbia. And truth be told, after the cold nightmare of Urbis, I am overwhelmed just to see so many living people moving happily about. Their every breath is joy and c
elebration, life’s music manifest in endless invention, organised and harmonious as Bach, unfolding in mathematical precision across the stars, the confident beauty our planet has birthed. I feel as if I have walked right around the Earth, on these same humble feet, just to bring myself back again, exhausted, to this street. Everything looks the same, or does it? Can we be sure, gone once around the globe, that what we return to is the same? Or does not every journey, through time as through space, necessitate a different view, a different face? The statue of Athena is there, the war memorial, brassy, dipped in blood. But she is goddess of wisdom as well as war. A contradiction only a virgin could contain. I see now the hope she lifts skywards in her cup of flame, is not the glorification of bloodshed, but the hope that blood once spilt has not been so in vain. I stop and kneel. I am humbled. I must begin again.
A mumble at my side. I open my eyes and rouse myself back to everyday life, the Saturday crowds swirling past in tides. I am looking at a face I know. It is Weasel, grown older now, more grey and bent, the light within his playful eyes somewhat dim, but still brimming enough with mischief for me not to doubt it’s him. I stand and we embrace without reserve. Weasel, my dear friend. I am so sorry that I left. I thought it was you I hurt, when in fact I left myself bereft. Why do we not understand friendship until we forsake it and it us? Why do we miss that it itself is all, the prime ingredient even in what we call true love when the tide of age has swept all the dross away?
Zenith, he says, it is splendid to see you in these parts again. But you best be careful. Do you not see the scowls and scolding looks from all these passers-by, who recognise you from their televisions and Sunday papers? Zenith the racketeer, extortionist, drug-smuggler and rapist?
What?! I am stunned. What name did you just call me by?
Shhh! Don’t make me shout it louder. Did you not see that fellow passing there? Doctor Tolleson…remember him? I’m quite sure he identified you well enough, but chose to play all anonymous and gruff, averting eyes for fear of being recognised as once your confidante. Zenith, times like these you find out who your real friends are. Invariably ne’er do wells and losers with nothing more to lose like me, scarred and discarded, ancient and patient as trees. The likes of us, hit rock bottom, with nothing to lose, can do just as we please.
I gaze after Doctor Tolleson, older and greyer too as it happens, but something odd occurs to my eyes that makes me shake my head in disbelief, as if struggling to dispel an optical illusion caused by some contusion. He looks so like… another doctor… Stockbridge, and come to think about it, even Weasel, he looks… no, it makes no sense. Confusion for a moment, then I regain my composure, cover up my exposure, remember my mission and my most urgent disclosure. Weasel, I’ve come back here to find a girl I met in Oceania, who I’m told has found her way here. It is a small enough place and I recall you always had your ear so near the ground that folk were apt to stand on your head and crack it like a chestnut. Thea is her name, an unusual enough refrain and appellation for these parts. Is such knowledge outwith or within your crazed domain?
Follow me, Zenith, he says, wrapping his cloak around him and rolling his eyes around his shoulders like a penitent hoisting boulders, dramatic spy and thief in his own warped beliefs, taking me away from the now faintly-menacing crowds with a sense of palpable relief. Somewhere in the background I glimpse an antiquated bicycle creaking across the precinct, leaking oil like a dream of a memory of someone called Mary, limping up and down like a steampunk penny farthing, painful to watch and startling the starlings. Through many leafy lanes and avenues Weasel leads me past the hum of bees in hedgerows and the gently-heard clickings of tennis balls on secluded lawns and ice in jugs of orange squash on silver trays. Oh Suburbia has changed so blissfully-little as ever, since I’ve been away! Until at last we part again on a quiet doorstep, promising to meet up again that evening and strike up the old tunes together as of old, providing music in the pubs for the despairing and the cold, rekindling the warmth and romance of life’s dance in limbs grown loath and weary. Your face we might have to disguise, mind… he says, with a false moustache or a blind man’s glasses. That should help gain the coin and pity of the lassies.
Alone then, I ring the doorbell and wait. Weight. The tolling of ancient bells as of a church spire lost beneath the sea. Oh please Fate bring back my Aphrodite, Thea, across the waves of all my trials and travails, redeem our suffering as a madman marooned on an island spots white passing sails. The door opens and we both sharply take in our breath. Such recognition is both life and death. Out of sorts and full of tears, she retreats suddenly into the darkness of her home, but significantly I notice when I stop shaking… she has not closed or locked the door. This test, this enigma, is of my own making. I walk tentatively in, and hear her crying, and crying out a name. A husband, her husband? As I enter the living room, I hear footsteps cascading down the stairs, but more light and joyous than any adult. A beautiful child runs to her side and buries his little head among her arms and chest.
The sun is out, the patio doors drawn wide. And there in due course Cynthia and I sit side by side on wicker chairs, each grown older, each grown wise. Why did you leave me, Nadir? Did you not hear afterwards that I was pregnant with your child? I sent out letters, messengers everywhere. But my husband despised me for the betrayal. Who could fail to understand that, or blame him after all? You ruined me, you brought about my fall. I was thrown out on the streets, reviled by this hypocritical town. I set out to find you, to deceive you, to bring you down. The most successful artist of his generation who had discarded me like a circus clown. And now around us, look at all this devastation, emotional debris, see how love thwarted has brought all the world come crashing down. And then you have the temerity, the incivility, the imbecility, to turn up on my doorstep declaring your undying love. Are you the same person or an impostor seeking to foster my son and rekindle my blighted love? Could two people forgive each other such transgressions? Would such intercession provoke celebration or laugher I wonder, from those who watch above?
The birds are singing sweetly, the bees going about their business with the confident patience that built Babel and Babylon. Our lives are short and all too soon we will be gone. The child plays at our feet among the geraniums and phormiums, in two voices, one stern and harsh, the other soft and sweet, fighting some imaginary battle or engaged in heated debate, one wishing to give peace and kindness, the other, afraid of rejection, seeking for such weakness to berate. He is two people I see, not yet fully formed or unified, his duality a fluid and dynamic state. He has his father’s eyes… Cynthia smiles, the first touch of sunlight returning to her eyes.
…And his imaginary friend, I append, understanding finally that in order to begin, I at last, the whole charade of self, must dissolve and end. I reach out my hand and close my eyes, and somewhere out there among the blind heat of summer, as when I was a boy lying in June meadows with my eyes closed and watching the changing patterns behind the lids: I ask and hope that there is love and tenderness up ahead, in the sky or in the world, in the indescribable excitement of another human being’s heart. Let me live and let me play my part. I have always seen the future, that is easy, but not the goal. Only now have I truly seen inside another person’s soul. We are here to carry each other, lame and frail, across this darkened land. I feel the touch upon my finger tips at last. She takes my hand.
I am Zarathustra. True Thomas The Rhymer, old timer, social climber. The supple shuttle of the present, master of the warp and weave, the bobbin through which the loom of time speaks, threading and knitting and sewing all past and future into my fabric, my soul. Black as coal and light as long white summer nights. Red hot and melancholy blue. I am Nadir, I am Zenith. And so, dear reader, are you.
~
An alphabetical thank you to all inspirers, encouragers and supporters…
Nina Allan. Allen Ashley. Calum Barnes (for Pynchon). Martin Bax (for Ambit). Alison Buck, Peter et Al at Elsewhen. Terry Grimwood
. Andrew Hook. Rachel Kendall (for feedback & input). Robert Leitch (for Flann O’Brien). Linda Jackson (for Rap). Adam Lowe. Jet McDonald. Rona MacDonald. Steve Rapaport (for Lethem). Agnes Rennie. David Rix. Sue Reid Sexton. Jacqueline Smith. Ally Thompson.
…and apologies to all those left out.
Elsewhen Press
an independent publisher specialising in Speculative Fiction
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Elsewhen Press
ENTANGLEMENT
DOUGLAS THOMPSON
Best described as philosophical science fiction, Entanglement explores our assumptions about such constants as death, birth, sex and conflict, as the characters in the story explore distant worlds and the intelligent life that lives there.
Entanglement is simultaneously a novel and a series of short stories: 24 worlds, 24 chapters, 24 stories; each one another step on mankind’s journey outwards to the stars and inwards to man’s own psyche. Yet the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts; the synergy of the episodes results in an overarching story arc that tells us more about ourselves than about the rest of the universe.
The Rhymer Page 18