The Cloven

by Brian Catling

  Below, the ailing city limped about, performing what duties it could find to occupy it now that all the major industries had closed. The sky smouldered and shaped vast cloud furnaces, being fed by the late-day sun. Swallows stitched the distance and proximity together. To the north the Vorrh was approaching in a stealth of magnitude that was unobservable to the few remaining citizens who moved at normal human speed. But the camera obscura gazed openly in a different time and saw everything. Meta knew the lens was already open and had been casting images to itself all that afternoon. She gathered the stone and the paper and went to do its calling, making herself comfortable on a low stool, looking at the device, trying to see it objectively. It occupied almost all of the room and the small space around it gave no means to stand back. Her back was touching the wall and her sandaled feet brushed the wooden planking of its circular base. Beside her were the stone and the paper. She put her hand under her skirt and began to feel the plump curves that had hardened over the last few years. The curved bowl of the obscura was above her eyeline. She did not want to see the outside world and did not want it to see her. Instead she set her dark eyes on the motes of dust that spun and spiralled in the projected beam. Twilight was near, and the soft dove light had relinquished its heat. Soon it would be dark and the camera would hold only invisibility and project that into its nude concavity. Her abuse in the warehouse had removed every trace of what had been her budding sexuality. Vengeance and care had taken its place and they had now both been satisfied. There was no hollow in Meta. No longing to fill and no absences. Her heart and her veins were full. So to have to invent this seemed unfair and backwards. Then something stirred in her memory. It was an overheard conversation between Ghertrude and Mistress Cyrena. They had been talking about Ishmael. It was not in Meta’s psyche to eavesdrop or linger around other people’s conversations, but in this case she’d had no choice. She had been in the adjoining room when they began in earnest. There was no escape without declaring her presence and she was already too embarrassed to do that, so she waited until they were finished and then left, feeling flushed and guilty. The Ishmael of their talk had little or nothing to do with the monster that was so implicit in her father’s death. And it was possible to visualise the one they spoke of without any reference to the condemned murderer. Ghertrude had started the conversation by belying the qualities that had so beguiled both women. They laughed together to exorcise their foolishness. They grew cross and spiteful at his deceits, then during a pause Cyrena mentioned his lovemaking. During the next whispered fifteen minutes each woman goaded the other to give up or share the intimate details of their couplings. There was some laughter, much sighing, and a little disbelief bordering on jealousy. They both agreed on the remarkable nature of his stamina and appetite. They were less verbal about his unique anatomy. The spiral barrel of Ishmael’s penis and its ability to extend and twist with his heartbeat still was beyond detailed discussion. Much of what they had said Meta did not understand. But something about their tone, the catches in their voices and hoarseness in their throats made her tingle and melt.

  She twitched in her core. Before she could contemplate what was happening, the first shudder made her feet scuff hard against the base of the camera while her hips twisted and the muscles in her legs clenched. A whisper of the drums spilt into the chamber. She clasped her hand to her mouth as the deeper wave hit, making her cry out. She was now in the total power of the orgasm and it made her body sing and scream, retreat and embrace, wrapped around her automatic hand as she was thrown adrift in the violently bobbing tide of her resounding body. Then the drawer slid open. She saw it out of the corner of her eye and one part of her went to examine it in triumph. The rest remained static around the root of her hand and the shudders of her breathing, and the pulse that filled the dimming room. Finally, out of anxiety that the drawer would vanish again, she withdrew her hand and combed back her consciousness. She arose and straightened her eyes. There it was, the wooden tongue in the tray of the drawer. She cautiously examined it, lifting it gingerly and touching the damp cleft beneath. There was an odd scent about. When she felt sure that she knew as much as possible about its simple but mysterious structure, she retrieved the stone and slotted it into the recess, letting the tongue lay back across it. She looked at the projected city fade as the drum of her aorta pulsed in time with the enclosure outside. The drawer slid back into hiding and the surface of the white disk changed forever.

  * * *

  Nebsuel had made that delivery to Meta and now had one more task to complete before he could return to the solitude of his leprous island. He took the other plum-coloured stone that came from the hyena’s eye to the coast, arriving at the Sea People’s home in the estuary just after dawn. There had been a ceremony the night before and many people were still asleep on the beach or outside their low huts. There were no guards to question him, so he found his way to what was obviously the most important dwelling in the village and sat down outside and waited. Hours later a vast ancient woman staggered out of the doorway. Her body was covered in tattoos and her hands were covered in blood. She glared down at the old shaman sitting cross-legged, calmly drinking water from a goatskin bag. He lifted one hand and rotated it above his head as if describing an invisible crown.

  “I have come to meet Oneofthewilliams,” he said.

  After the formalities had been performed and his credentials established, he was taken inside a more modest hut nearby. It was dark and smelt of seashells and cinnamon. Propped up against a wooden structure at the room’s centre was the holy being himself.

  Nebsuel spoke a few words in the language and then switched to a rare and obscure form of English.

  “Sacr’d being i has’t cometh to gift thee a most wondrous treasure. but in its giving i might not but touch thee. shall thee allow this and bid thy people hither yond t might not but beest so?”

  A weird textured atmosphere began to fill the small space. Not unlike bromide coarsely woven into seaweed and melancholy. Oneofthewilliams’s arms then lifted and made sweeping gestures that attracted the fast attention of a young man who held one of the offered hands, the fingers of which wrote and sliced touch into the translator’s hand. He then thought carefully and spoke clearly so that all might understand. They looked at Nebsuel and he nodded that it was right. Further discussion took place in the same manner until Tyc came and tugged the old shaman forwards, within reach of the collapsed bundle that lifted itself towards him on strong white arms. Nebsuel held out his hand and it was taken. Oneofthewilliams gently lurched forward, allowing its entire weight to fall across Nebsuel so that the arm and hand were free to communicate. The intimacy and strangeness of his gesture greatly pleased Nebsuel and greatly disturbed him.

  The head sack of Oneofthewilliams flopped to one side and came to rest tucked in near Nebsuel’s armpit. Its veins, sinews, and nerves were tied together, twisting with each breath from both bodies until they worked in unison. Nebsuel then spoke slowly in many languages while the sun crossed the sky. At twilight Nebsuel asked to move his body, to rearrange his arms and let his back rest for a while. This was gently done by Tyc and her acolytes. Food and drink were given and the conversation began again in the moonlight. Finally Nebsuel reached into his pocket and brought out the plum-coloured stone. He then spoke to Tyc directly and she came to stand close, already chanting deeply from her solar plexus. Her wrinkled nimble fingers undid the tie of Oneofthewilliams’s head sack and showed a gap that was large enough. Nebsuel quickly dropped the stone in, where it fell to nestle in the pink folds of the loose brain. Tyc then tied it back to close its containment. The deed was done. The ceremony was over. Nebsuel was treated with great care and dignity while he waited for the first vision to come to Oneofthewilliams. It then took the translator four days to be able to say it to the old shaman in a language that he might understand.

  “There are two beings who stand at the edge of a great forest. Who stand in a garden w
here they will always remain. Around them are the chosen ones who will tend that garden and will work for all that grows straight and sound. They look out but cannot see an empty city in an empty world. Because the great forest has grown and overtaken all. Every mile below the mountains is covered by it. The seas of memory have agreed to this and a balance has been made between the salt and the sweet. God’s spirit has again moved over the face of the waters. The trees have grown gigantic in this understanding and the animals in them have multiplied. Only a few of the gardeners exist now in the balance they were meant for. All the stories and equations, objects and sounds they made for themselves have vanished or been lovingly eaten by everything else. The great forest finally has reached its divine purpose and this telling of it like all others will be nothing but dust in the time that cleans and the winds that balm.”

  * * *

  After a year Cyrena Lohr was officially declared lost and presumed dead and her will was read. The business and properties were of course handed over to her brother. Servants and charities received wet-eyed handouts and a significant bequeath was given to Rowena for her education and future travel abroad. Thaddeus spat under the thank-yous. Even in her death the pious witch had extended her hand into what he now considered to be his family. To adjust and control and to wrench apart. To remove Rowena from the love of her mother, his steadfast guardianship, and the warmth of the home that they had made. Hadn’t the child been through enough without snatching her away and shipping her off to some foreign land, where she might learn how to be as snobbish as her benefactor? There were quarrels about the money and possible futures.

  Meta stayed clear, refusing to take part or give an opinion. She was living with her mother and Berndt, her younger brother, caring for their needs. She would move back into Kühler Brunnen only after her mother’s death, and the lonely Berndt was relocated to an uncle and aunt in America, where it was considered he would benefit by being removed from the pernicious influence of the war in Europe and its inevitable effect in Africa.

  Meta was spending more and more time in the high rooms of the attic and the tower, finally deciding to live up there. There was no dissuading her after she made up her mind. Turning down the much more comfortable rooms offered by her mistress and her brother, whose gratitude and affection never faltered, but she was set and determined on inventing her new home in and around the Goedhart device and the camera obscura.

  Meta was only nineteen and she knew that she had seen too much, already experienced more than she was ever supposed to, and had acted well and with significance in it all, even the bad things.

  The fleeing sounds of departure had faded. All the mechanical noise had gone, allowing the breath and utterance of the Vorrh to invade the streets and alleyways.

  As the years went on, Meta would watch the hushed city grow thicker with sleep and trees. She had first noticed the encroaching green after she installed the stone under the wooden tongue. It appeared around the edges of the circular porous dish that received the city in bent light from the lens and mirror above. She would recognise individual people growing old on the curved dish under the inspection of the long lens. She often hummed or sang to herself while gazing into the dish, and that’s when she saw them look up at her as if they had heard her small voice or as if they could see the camera watching them. So she sang more and more every day. Her voice, which was now part of the resonance, could be heard all over the house: faint and overwhelmingly sad. Sometimes she sang with the wires in the middle of the night, when the fierce stars insisted. Or with the summer winds or the storms that came with salt from the sea. She sang for the seasonal swallows who circled the roof and nested under her protection. But mostly she sang for Rowena, especially after her parents faded away to kind ghosts who forgot about life.

  * * *

  —

  Thaddeus was Rowena’s father, because her mother told her so. And it had been clear all her life that his care and presence were constantly meant for her. Ghertrude never stopped watching her daughter for signs and likenesses of Ishmael but found none. As the child grew older, Ghertrude tried to convince herself of the happiness of this proof but found only that its shadow of disappointment was becoming stronger. She had banished all thought and speculation of her own conception. What the Kin had told her had never been truly explained, but she had an unflinching hope that they would return, explain everything, and be with her on her deathbed. Meanwhile she ran Kühler Brunnen the way a good wife and mother should. She kept Rowena close, never letting her go away to school. Tutors and scholars had come to the house to teach her and Cyrena’s name had been constantly mentioned in those formative years after Ghertrude had found a loophole in the exact wording of her friend’s generous wishes for Rowena, and they were all happy to pass through it, especially Thaddeus, who used his long backwards hands to part the way.

  Ghertrude started to significantly fade a year before the crate arrived. She had been becoming less and less involved in the world outside and had now started to forget the names of those closest to her. During her last days she became agitated and demanded that all the doors of Kühler Brunnen remained unlocked, night and day. She also demanded that Thaddeus kept all the cellar rooms open. In her final hours she wept her way towards extinction. Bitterly disappointed that the Kin never came back to be at her side to explain the world to which they had told her she belonged, she made Thaddeus swear an oath that he would go and find them, even if they were in the Vorrh. Saying that her soul would never rest until somebody, especially him, understood everything and prayed the truth at her grave. He of course tried to dissuade her. Using Rowena as the excuse for his staying at home and never taking on such a mission.

  But she would not have it. The last of Ghertrude Tulp’s iron resolve was set on this task being achieved and she would have it no other way. “Meta would take better care of Rowena than her Thaddeus ever could,” she had lashed out when sealing her determined command. Thaddeus must go and find them.

  So in a blistering hot wind two days after her funeral, he did. With tears and dust in his eyes he walked out of the almost ghost town of Essenwald. Never to return.

  On the day before the crate arrived, Rowena had a dream that disturbed her and she could not wait to tell Aunt Meta. She carried the breakfast tray to the top floor and put it on the polished table next to the wooden windlass in the wall. She wound it energetically and the flap in the ceiling opened and a cage on the rope descended. Her father had made this, so that food and other things might be ferried up into the attic without the need of a precarious balancing act on the attic ladder. She loaded the tray into the cage and winched it back up, then climbed after it.

  She and Aunt Meta made an odd pair as they sat in the glow of the shafted light with the sound of the wind and birds buffeting in around them. Her aunt had always been compact, solid proportions held in a smaller than normal framework. Now she was denser, her weight more profound. Rowena was willowy, she had grown long and narrow, her womanhood and natural beauty favouring the vertical. Her hair was like her mother’s and it glinted as it was caught by the warm breeze.

  As she told of her dream, she nibbled toast. “The tree in my dream was full of shadow, but the shadows were all white, like snow.”

  Meta devoured her words in silence while buttering the crumbling bread.

  “I have a picture of snow and it was just like that, white where the darkness should be.”

  Meta began to munch her toast noisily.

  “There was a tingly feeling about and it woke me up.”

  Meta appeared to have more interest in the bread.

  “Aunt Meta, what do you think it was? Does it mean something?”

  She put the crust down and looked at the young woman. Something of her old ability to see before and after things stirred.

  “It is a sign of God’s wisdom on earth and that you have been touched by it.”

&n
bsp; Rowena looked startled at such a large answer.

  “Imagination is a gift, prophecy a curse.” And with that, Meta again munched into the bread.

  Rowena said nothing while she pondered the meaning of what she had just been told.

  The second crate arrived two weeks later. They had ignored the first one, hoping it was a mistaken delivery, being so near the gate and all. Rowena told her aunt about the new one. This time it stood near the stables.

  “Where could it have come from, who could have delivered it?” she asked.

  Meta was very clear about what to do but never answered her questions. “Do not open them. Ignore them, pretend that that they are not there.”

  “Will you come and see, Aunt?”

  “No, child, I will never leave the attic now. You will have to do all things below.”

  The third crate was found standing against the far inside wall of the courtyard. The crates were all the same size, just a little taller than the long-limbed Rowena. She stood on tiptoe when she examined the oblong box.

  “It’s the same size as me,” she told Meta. “I could stand up inside it.”

  “Are there any labels?”

  “No, Aunt, nothing.”

  “Mmm…” said Meta.

  “I am going to watch to see who brings them, and find out who else has a key to our gate.”

  Her aunt said nothing and averted her eyes. She thought she knew who was bringing the crates. She had waited for so long for Mutter’s ghost to come. To beg forgiveness and see him again. She had tried to force every particle of longing into his shape, his presence. But nothing materialised and she exhausted herself trying. And now this. Why would his ghost still perform such hard, menial tasks? Where was he dragging the boxes from? The warehouse was rubble and ashes, she had seen to that. She imagined him puffing across the courtyard, standing the crates up on their end, and then retreating to the stables. She had been there many times, touching the workbench, the harnesses, the rusting tools. She could still smell him there: the dense acrid warmth of his cigars lacing the straw and the scent of the horses. Why had he not returned this way? The absence of her father had untethered her from the world. It had only been the act of vengeance in the rescue of Rowena that had saved her from being lost forever. She looked back at the girl and lit a smile in the darkness of her hurt.