by Unknown
Goatwriter worked all morning, trying to reconstruct the fragments of the truly untold tale which whispered before dawn, but it was as taxing as tracking tacks in a jonquil junkyard. Mrs Comb mangled wrangled sheets. Pithecanthropus returned the engine of the venerable coach. Goatwriter finally got up from his writing bureau to look up the correct spelling of zwitterion in his dictionary, but got sidetracked by gustviter and lured farther away by durzi and theopneust. Drowsiness ambushed. Goatwriter’s last thought was that his dictionary was an impostor pillow, or possibly vice versa.
When Goatwriter awoke from his nap and returned to his writing bureau he thought he was still dreaming. The very pages he had written pre-snooze – they were gone! Impossible! Mrs Comb, he knew, never touched his writing bureau – there was only one explanation.
‘Thief!’ cried Goatwriter. ‘Thief! Thief!’
Mrs Comb rushed in, dropping pegs. ‘Sir! Whatever’s to do?’
‘Burglarized, Mrs Comb, while I lay sleeping!’
Pithecanthropus burst in clenching a French wrench.
‘My reconstructed truly untold tale – spirited away!’
‘But how could it be, sir? I was hanging out the washing but I seen nowt!’
‘Perchance the thief is diminutive, and gained ingress and egress through the exhaust pipe!’ This seemed rather far-fetched to Mrs Comb, but she followed Goatwriter and Pithecanthropus outside to the venerable coach’s stern. Pithecanthropus knelt, sniffed the tyre-track mud. He grunted.
‘An unwashed rodent?’ verified Goatwriter. ‘Slightly bigger than a mouse? Aha! Then we m-may conclude that the thief is a dirty little rat! Come, friends! We m-must apprehend this scallywag and teach him a thing or two about copyright law! My dear Pithecanthropus – lead the way!’
Pithecanthropus read the ground with his brow furrowed. An anvil cloud lugged past its sluggish mass. The tracks led off the beaten track, down the path not taken, through a sleepy hollow, over a tarn of brackish bilgewater. Mrs Comb caught sight of him first. ‘Whatever next by ’eck!’ A scarecrow, nailed to a ‘T’, staked into the lip of a dyke, in a sorry state. His eyes and ears were pecked away, and wispy hay bled from a wound in his side whenever the wind bothered to blow. Goatwriter approached him. ‘Ahem. Good day, Scarecrow.’
Scarecrow raised his head, slower than moons over mown meadows.
‘Frightfully sorry to trouble you,’ began Goatwriter, ‘but have you seen a dirty little rat scurry by carrying pages of a stolen manuscript?’
Scarecrow’s mouth twitched more slowly than violence of violets. ‘This day . . .’
‘Splendid!’ said Goatwriter. ‘Can you tell me which way the thief went?’
‘This day . . . we shall sit with my father in Paradise . . .’
At that very moment, two hellhounds hurdled the dyke, sank their slavering fangs into poor Scarecrow, ripped him off his T, and savaged him to windblown tatters. Goatwriter was knocked backward by a lashing paw. Pithecanthropus leaped and swept Mrs Comb into his arms. All that remained of the scarecrow were rags nailed to the wood. Goatwriter tried to recall what to do and what not to do with rabid dogs – play dead? Look them in the eye? Run like billy-oh?
‘That’ll learn ’im,’ growled the top dog, ‘to give the plot away!’
‘Wot shall us do with these three, boss?’ sniffed the underdog.
Goatwriter felt the heat of their breath. ‘Good doggies.’
‘Ee talks like a writer,’ growled the underdog. ‘Smells like one. Is one.’
‘Ain’t got the time,’ the top dog barked. ‘Our maker is getting away!’
‘I want to practise on Beardy first!’
Pithecanthropus got ready to defend his friend, but the hellhounds bounded away over the rises and falls of the margins until they were blots on the wizened horizon. ‘Well!’ exclaimed Mrs Comb. Then she realized she was still nesting in the arms of Pithecanthropus. ‘Put me down this very instant, you mucky lout!’
A door bangs downstairs and the manuscript zooms out of focus. My heart goes seismic and I stop breathing. Somebody is here. Somebody is here for me. Buntaro would have called out by now. So soon? How did they find me? My survival instinct, so shredded by Morino, kicks in now. They are searching the living room, the kitchen, the garden, cranny by nook. My socks, which I left on the sofa. My empty cigarette box. I replaced the plyboard trapdoor and pulled up the rope, but did I close the slatted door? I can hand myself over and hope for mercy. Forget it. Yakuza just do not do mercy. Hide here, under books. But if I cause a book-slide I am done for. Is there anything up here that could serve as a weapon? I listen for footsteps on the shelves – nothing. The intruders are either working in silence, or I am only dealing with one. My default strategy is this: hold a three-ton three-volume set of A Critical Review of the Japanese “I” Novel above the trapdoor – when it opens wide enough, lob them through, and hopefully knock the guy backwards. Jump down, land on him – if he has a gun I’m in trouble – bust his ribs and run for it. I wait. And wait. Concentrate. I wait. Am I sure I heard the bang? I left the back window open an inch – suppose it was just the wind? Concentrate! I wait. Nobody. My arms are aching. I cannot stand this. ‘Hello?’
The flurry of violence never comes.
Scared by a story I told myself. I am in a bad way.
Later in the afternoon, I go back down. In the spare bedroom closet I find some sheets and towels, and arrange them on the step-shelves behind the slatted door, so hopefully the intruder will think it is just a linen cupboard. I gather up any sign of me, and stuff it into a plastic bag under the sink. I must clean up any traces of myself, as I make them. I should be hungry – when did I last eat? – but my stomach seems to be missing. I need a cigarette, but no way am I venturing outside. Coffee would be fine, but I can only find green tea, so I make a pot. I blow my nose – my hearing comes back, but snots up again – open the bay window, and drink my tea on the step. In the pond carp appear and disappear. Whirligigs bend but never puncture the liquid sky. A ruby-throated bird listens for earthworms. I watch ants. Cicadas muzzzmezzzmezzzmezzzmezzzmuzzzzzzzzz. Nowhere in the house is a single clock, or even a calendar. There is a sundial in the garden but the day is too hazy for a clear shadow. It feels three o’clock-ish. The breeze shuffles and flicks through the bamboo leaves. A column of midges hovers above the pond. I sip my tea. My tongue cannot taste a thing. Look at me. Four weeks ago I was on the morning ferry to Kagoshima, with a lunch box from Aunt Orange. I was sure I would find my father before the week was up. Look at who – what – I found instead. What a disaster, what an aftermath. The summer is lost, and other things too. The fax machine beeps. I jump and spill my tea. A message from Buntaro, telling me he’ll be over around six, if the traffic lets up. When is six o’clock relative to now? Hours need other hours to make any sense at all. Hanging on the wall above the fax machine is a shell-framed photograph of an old man and woman, maybe in their fifties. I guess they own this house. They are sitting at a café table in the shade on a bright day. He is about to break into laughter at whatever she has just said. She is reading my reaction to see if I genuinely enjoyed her story, or if I am just being polite. Weird. Her face is familiar. Familiar, and impossible to lie to. ‘True,’ she says, ‘we met before.’ We look at each other for a while, then I go back to her garden for a bit where the dragonflies live out their whole lives.
‘Are you quite sure, m-my dear fellow,’ prompted Goatwriter, ‘that the tracks stop in this mound of mired mulch?’ Pithecanthropus grunted a yes, waded in a yard and picked something up. ‘Kipper bones!’ squawked Mrs Comb. ‘Then I must conclude,’ said Goatwriter, ‘we have hunted our quarry to its lair.’
‘Nowt but an eyesore,’ said Mrs Comb, ‘and right whiffy to boot.’ Upon closer inspection the dwelling proved carefully constructed – bricks of cans, pans and mottled bottles, and mortar of spud skins, burnt rice crusts and ‘Vote for Me’ leaflets. A bicycle mudguard ascended ramp-wise, to a hole as black as a Hackensack m
ac. Goatwriter squinted inside. ‘So the burglar dwells in this hovel of stiltonic stench.’
‘Hovel?’ An irate rant shot back. ‘Give me my hovel and stuff ya geriatric rust-bucket bus, any day of da month!’
‘Aha! So you are in residence, thief! Unhand my manuscript forthwith!’
‘Take a ing hike, ya JoeSchmoe!’
‘Soap and water!’ gasped Mrs Comb.
Goatwriter lowered his horns. ‘Fiend, there are ladies present!’
A tiny hand appeared in the whole and flashed the finger. ‘If that scrawny bird is a “lady” I am Frank Sinatra’s I’m warnin’ ya, if ya ain’t skedaddled by da time I count to five I’ll slap harassment suits on ya so quick ya won’t know your X!X£s from Tuesday!’
‘Legality! Indeed. A most m-moot point! You broke into our venerable coach, and theived Zanzibar kippers and m-my truly untold tale! Furthermore, by Girton, we don’t intend to go back empty-handed!’
‘Oooh, a threat I’m ing in my didgereedungarees!’
Pithecanthropus grunted impatiently, waded up to the cone of rubbish and clefted the top quarter clean away. Inside was a shocked rat – who a moment later was a furious rat. ‘Are ya IXXX ing deranged? Ya nearly brained me, ya knucklescraping Neanderthal!’
Goatwriter peered through his pince-nez. ‘Remarkable – the thief is an apparent relative of mus musculus domesticus.’
‘I ain’t no domestic nuffink, punk! I am da One, da Only, ScatRat! Yeah, yeah, so I sampled ya mouldy kippers – where’s da big balooey, Huey? But I never lifted no stories. I got Japanese Scientific Whalers’ Weekly 2 wipe my hole. And I swear, ya slander my good name once again my lawyer’s gonna sue ya s up ya !#X$s!’
‘Scourers! Detergents!’ Mrs Comb covered her ears.
ScatRat hollered all the louder. ‘Act ya age, not ya egg size! Ya in da real world margins here!’ ScatRat saluted with one finger. ‘Rats, 4ever! In Union Are We Linked! ScatRat never never never, is extinct!’ With that, the rodent vanished into the benthic bowels of his pyrrhic pile.
Pithecanthropus grunted a question.
‘I agree, sir,’ said Mrs Comb. ‘Don’t care should be made to care.’
Goatwriter shook his head sadly. His arthritis hurt. ‘Certainly, friends, ScatRat is an exceedingly unpleasant character, but a lack of m-manners per se is no crime. I am afraid the m-mystery of my m-missing m-manuscript must go unsolved. Let us return to the venerable coach. I believe we will be leaving the m-margins tonight.’
Evening on the margins was an unrequited requiem. Mrs Comb was baking a burdock fairy cake to cheer Goatwriter up, and Pithecanthropus was repairing a hole in the roof. Goatwriter proof-read his last page, and laid it to rest in his manuscript tray. His rewrite lacked the magnificent glow that the original truly untold tale retained in his memory.
‘Dinner-time, by and by,’ called Mrs Comb. ‘You must be starving, sir.’
‘Peculiar to pronounce, I could not entertain a m-morsel.’
‘But, sir! You haven’t had a bite the livelong day!’
Pithecanthropus grunted in concern through the hole in the roof.
Goatwriter considered. ‘So I haven’t.’
‘Still fretting about your missing stories, sir? We’ll be leaving the margins and burglars and the like far behind.’
Pithecanthropus double-took and grunted frantically.
‘By ’eck, you savage! Clap that trap! Sir is out of sorts enough as it is!’
Goatwriter frowned. ‘M-my dear fellow, whatever is distressing you so?’
Mrs Comb dropped her cookery book. ‘Sir! What are you eating?’
‘Why, only a little paper cud—’ Goatwriter’s jaws froze. The truth dawned. Mrs Comb spelt it out. ‘Sir! You were eating your own pages as you wrote them!’
Goatwriter’s words stuck in his throat.
When evening comes I turn off all the lights and wait for Buntaro in the kitchen, so nobody knows I am here, and so I can see Buntaro arriving and know it is him and not anyone else. I stare at a wall-tile whorl as minutes spin by and die. Here come the headlights of Buntaro’s car now, swinging into the car porch. It still seems weird to think of Buntaro existing anywhere except the counter at the Shooting Star. I hate needing. I spent the last nine years trying to avoid needing – generosity, charity, affection, sympathy, money. And here I am again. I unlock the front door. ‘Hi.’
‘Sorry I’m late. Heavy traffic. Has your fever gone?’
‘It turned into this cold.’
‘So that’s why you sound like a parrot. Here, I bought you an emergency six-pack of Ebisu Export and a Hokka-Hokka take-out. Eat it before it gets cold and starts tasting like what it’s made of.’ He hands me the bag as he slips out of his sandals. ‘And some cigarettes. Wasn’t sure what you smoke, so I bought Peace.’
‘Thanks . . . I’m sorry, but I lost my appetite.’
‘No matter. I trust your nicotine craving rages unabated?’
‘Peace is fine.’
‘What are you doing all shut up in the dark?’
‘No reason.’ I switch the lights on as we go through to the living room.
‘Whoah!’ Buntaro looks at my black eye. ‘A beaut!’
‘Who’s looking after Shooting Star?’
‘My wife. Who do you think?’
‘But she should be taking it easy. Being, uh, pregnant, I mean.’
‘Worse than pregnant – bored and pregnant. In fact we had a mini-row this morning. She says she is tired of being treated like an invalid whale, and that if she sees another daytime TV programme about how to make pep bottles into traditional dolls she is going to buy a gun. Yes, if you are wondering, she knows what happened. But the good news is, it seems she is the only person in the whole wide world who does know.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing on the news. Nothing in the papers.’
‘Impossible.’
Buntaro shrugs. ‘Lad, it never happened.’
‘It happened.’
‘Not if it didn’t happen on the news.’
‘You do believe me?’
‘Hey! I drove around all night, remember, you idiot.’
‘So everything – the guns, the explosions?’
‘Censored. Or probably cleaned up before the police even heard about it. Yakuza clean up their own shit, if only to hide how much they eat. Be grateful, lad. It gives us one less thing to worry about.’
‘But what about the pachinko manager?’
‘Who knows? Fell through a window while changing a light bulb.’
We go outside and smoke on the step. Dusk fades away. A carp plishes, now and then. I switch off the lights to keep the insects away. The frogs croak and crike. ‘What’s the difference between frogs and toads, country boy?’ asks Buntaro.
‘Toads live for ever. Frogs get run over.’
‘My taxes went on your education.’
‘Buntaro, one other thing. You remember I told you about a cat—’
‘That animal? Yeah, her and my wife are already the best of friends. Her future is guaranteed. Time to feed the fish.’ He goes inside and emerges with a box of mealy stuff that smells the same as the Hokka-Hokka take-out. We take it in turns to chuck a pinchful into the pond. Carp thresh and slurp.
‘Buntaro, I really need to thank you.’
‘Fish feed? Dirt cheap.’
‘I’m not talking about the fish feed.’
‘Oh, the cigarettes. Pay me back later.’
I give up.
HUNGRY TOWN
Mrs Comb laid her final egg for the week. She nestled it in cotton wool, placed it with the others in her wicker basket, and covered them all with a tea towel. Then she ran through her shopping list a final time: size nine knitting needle, nit lotion, Indian indigo ink, Polish polish, Zanzibar marzipan, two cans Canadian toucan candles. A knock on her boudoir door was followed by Goatwriter’s ‘Ahem’.