The Collected Connoisseur

by Valentine, Mark

  ‘The old man by my side faltered at this point in his narration and there was a brittleness in the room of the lost Café Lucifer. At length, he added only that at the dying of her smile he had felt a devastating surge of sadness sweep over him, a crippling melancholy which kept him chained to the place where he stood, seeing only as if through a delicate veil over his eyes. When this gradually receded a little, the girl with the green and prismed eyes had gone. He did not see her again. But the yearning, the dark sense of tragic loss, did not vanish so soon, and for many days afterwards he haunted the Hall, especially that upper room and the café, in the hope of seeing her at least once more. He asked after her feverishly, but found that few had noticed her, so that as the days wore on he even began to wonder whether in some way he had seen what others could not: only the occasional flicker of recognition at his description reassured him. Soon after the work of the Hall faltered, Zaska went back to Bohemia, he was himself faced with finding more remunerative work, then there was war and the slow desperation of the years after. Throughout this time the recollection of the figure he had fleetingly found, then lost, was rarely far from his thoughts, and at intervals he tried to seek her again, in the environs of the town, in the colour music he had pioneered and even in other Cubist buildings, but all to no avail.

  ‘He had hoped—he realised now it was too lame, too desperate a hope, that perhaps a replica of Zaska’s talisman and the revival, revitalising of the Hall, might just create the circumstances where she could return … but he added, as I remember only too well, so heavily said were the words: “But I am now old, very old. And she will still be young. For the light does not die and the colours do not age and there is no change in perfect symmetry. And it was from the sources of these that she came, I am sure.” ’

  The Connoisseur sighed. ‘I made no mention of the figure I passed on the stair in the immediate aftermath of my own intense apprehension of those sources he quoted. As I say, that encounter may be of no significance. Why rack him with such a remote hope? So, after we had remained silent for a little while longer, he thanked me for listening, visibly pulled himself away from that far memory he had nourished through the years, said he hoped I did not mind if he continued to mope around the place from time to time, and shuffled away, still casting glances at the far corners of the room.

  ‘I do not know what to make of Cleobury’s experience. I can only say that I think Zaska was right to see in the very highest architecture a kind of abstract mysticism, which can give us an unmediated and direct relationship to the essences of form, colour, light. And that we have only just begun to explore their inner properties. When we align our consciousness more truly with these high dimensions, who can say what we may not discover? Is it possible that the young Czech visionary’s design and the ardent experiments which took place within it opened up a way for other forms, other possibilities of the spirit to pass through? That Zaska’s talisman was all that he half-jestingly said it was? Well, if the Café Lucifer should ever be fully restored, and if there should gather again there artists and experimenters with just some proportion of the original inspiration and vision, then perhaps we may yet find out …’

  The Craft of Arioch

  A straw hat with a salmon and sap-green ribbon, a knapsack and a tall elderwood staff were propped in a corner of The Connoisseur’s study when I called one day in early spring. He was more carelessly attired than usual, in an open-necked, soft-collared shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbows, and breeches of a purplish heather mixture. He greeted me affably, beckoned me to my usual chair, and poured me a generous quencher of iced rosewater and sherbet, a Levantine receipt he was slowly perfecting. Perched on his battered writing-desk, legs swinging, he told me that he had just returned from a walking holiday in the quieter byways of the Sussex downs, with Rebecca, his cousin, who had made a good recovery some months ago from a cruel illness.

  ‘You might suppose,’ he began, ‘that there is nothing secret or secluded left of Sussex. But in fact once you leave the high roads and the dormitory towns, and take to the winding roads and nestling villages, it is possible to find as much loneliness as in any fenland or moorland region. We were idly exploring one such corner, a cluster of hamlets along the valley of a young stream, the narrow road following the contours of the rounded hills rising above: and after a morning’s walking, we stopped at a tea shop, not much more than the front parlour of an elderly lady’s cottage. As we sipped at a very passable Darjeeling and sampled her home-made preserves, we scanned a little green baize notice board placed just beside the door. This advised the visitor of the times of church services, of where farmhouse lodgings might be had, of a village bazaar a few weeks hence, and of a few other points of interest in the locality. One of these in particular caught our gaze: a white card inscribed with the words, “Arioch Woodley—Rocking Horses—The Old Barn”.

  ‘Something about the card, perhaps its simplicity or the eccentric name, stirred our curiosity and we asked the tea shop lady how to find his workshop, and whether he would be open. She said that Arioch pretty much kept his own hours, being semi-retired, but never minded people looking around anyway, because (just between us) he always left the old door of the barn unlocked, so folk could just wander in if they wished. They were hardly likely to walk away with one of his horses, were they? Still less one of his other … She petered out at this point, and we were left to repeat back to her the directions she had given, make our farewells and set off to find the congeries of lanes she had tried to describe.

  ‘We certainly took quite a number of wrong turnings in finding him, but the narrow ways, newly brimming with green, often arched-over by trees and with wild flowers and grasses rife in the middle of the road, were pleasant in themselves and we did not much mind the circuitous approach. We had been told to look out for a weather vane—“with a sort-of cockerel, not exactly a cockerel, but something like”—which stood out on the roof of the Old Barn, and would be visible at intervals when we were not sure of our way: and we did indeed see its strange, spiked silhouette, with an almost lunging profile, dark against the brittle blue of the sky, when we craned our gaze ahead at the most puzzling points of our approach.

  ‘At last, as dusk began to settle upon us, a serpentine quirk in the road brought us to our goal, a red-tiled and flint-knapped thick old building, low-browed, with two windows crouched above the road and a wider dormer pane let into the roof, throwing the last shafts of sunlight back up to the heavens.

  ‘A wide, studded oak door with a black wrought-iron handle faced us and, remembering what we had been told, we opened it cautiously, called out a hullo, and stepped gently inside. We were in a dim, stone-flagged passage whose conclusion was not visible to us, and, aside from the mingled sweet yet sharp scents of paint, polish and freshly-planed wood, which wafted warmly around us, we could sense no sign of any presence: although, perhaps, for she was not sure, Rebecca may have heard a slight creaking. Accustoming our eyes to the gloom, we could make out two wide doors on either side of the corridor and, shouting again for attention, we tried first the right of these, which would not give, and then the left, which yielded stiffly to a slight shove. We tumbled into a wide, high-roofed room which was scarcely better lit than the passage, the one window diffusing a pale aura of what seemed like very old, weak light.

  ‘Yet we both gasped at what little we could see in the shadows: for here was gathered a chamber-full of beasts on curved rockers, yet not one of them purely a horse. We saw all around the room at chest height the shapes of curious heads, curved, rearing, bristling, flaring up; we caught in the wan, embered light, the glinting of wild eyes; our bewildered stares encountered the forms of wings, claws, couched limbs, tensed jaws.

  ‘Recovering a little from this startling pageant, we approached some of the pieces more closely, and regarded them with awe. The craft which had been lavished upon them was clearly of a very high order. Each of the hybrid creatures was carved in its main body from a single piece of w
ood, and its outer limbs were dovetailed almost imperceptibly into this. The wood was varnished and polished to a deep golden or shining white or sombre black finish, and the hoofs or claws or clenched paws were gilded daintily. Many of the beasts were enshrined in darting prongs of crimson and yellow flame which had been painted with such skill as almost to quicken to life. Others had lunging scarlet tongues, or sinuous pale horns. But as we marvelled repeatedly at each work we examined, it was the eyes most of all that caught our attention. Sapphire, jasper, opal, garnet, or perhaps brilliantly-faceted glass simulacra of these, seemed to have been embedded in the hollow sockets, and the scintillant stare possessed by each beast was remarkably vivid. We wandered around this heraldic menagerie in a trance of delight, stooping to dwell upon particularly fine details, stepping back to admire the fearsome effect of several pieces. All the while it was as if there was a certain tension in the room, as if it would only take the merest breath or whisper to set the creatures lurching forward of their own accord …

  ‘After a while, we succumbed to the urge that had not unnaturally roused itself in us almost as soon as we beheld this gallery of poised grotesques and unleashed chimerae. We chose a beast each, and, falteringly at first, a little abashed, and aware that we were perhaps taking a great liberty, we prepared to try them. Were such finely carven and embellished creatures really intended to be ridden like a nursery rocking horse? I glanced across at Rebecca, who had chosen one of the most austere and simple of the works, some subtle cross between a horse and a white dragon, almost the diagram or archetype of either, composed of a few swift, curving spars, a skull rather than a head, and on its narrow back no saddle but the merest flattening or smoothing of the pale wood, wood as bleached as bone. The waning light still lingered in the room a little and there was the faint spicy tang of resin in the air. She stood by the horse-dragon quietly, glanced across at me, paused, then hoisted herself quickly up, perching on the bony back and leaning forward onto the strong neck. She pushed forward slightly, flicking the hair from her eyes and temples, and the bowed wood rockers began to move. Crescents of a deep and wide dimension, they lunged far forward and tilted high backwards, quickening in motion with every swing. Rebecca closed her eyes, clung on tightly, and seemed to whisper to herself.

  ‘I spoke to her afterwards about her experience. Despite the gloom of the room, she had seemed to ride through wavering wefts of light, like the frailest skeins of amber, and through falling motes of purest illumination, like a soft slow rain of silver. It seemed to her that the inhabitants of the room, which she could flickeringly see when her eyes were briefly opened, were changed from their bizarre and gilded splendour to single flowing shapes of uttermost grace and power and that she was riding with them towards dimensions of perfection that they only dimly sensed, so that each stride was a fierce, instinctive homage to a scarcely-understood attainment. But when she closed her eyes again, it seemed that a whirlwind of impressions soared through her mind, as if she were passing rapidly through the heart of every hue we know, and some we do not, feeling the very essence, say, of cypress green and speedwell blue, like a touch: then as if the finest chrisms, incenses and oils were transformed to a supple lucency akin to fresh water, and laved her passing with haunting emanations; these and other unutterable experiences seemed to accompany her flight one after another, in the passing of moments, until she experienced a gentle descent back into the dimness of the room in the old barn, where she had begun.

  ‘For my own part, I did not hesitate much longer after I had seen Rebecca, as it were, depart. I rode a winged cat with preternaturally pointed ears and peridot eyes, an arrow-headed tail and painted coat of brooding indigo. As the plunging beast gathered pace, with a drumming like distant thunder, my head seemed to whirl and I saw around me the streaked, streaming impressions of the other beasts in the room, their poised limbs, craning necks, proud heads and weirdly glimmering eyes. I knew that to either side of me rested a basilisk and a manticore, yet as I lunged and reared back, it seemed to me sometimes that there were others as well, briefly glimpsed, equally exultant as they matched the racing pace of my sleek steed. For some while I was aware only of this clamorous sense of flaring colours and of a rushing like a strong gale roaring through old tall trees. But there came a point when we seemed to burst away from these and I was no longer aware even of the lurching of the beast I rode, almost as if it had lunged into some more ethereal flight. I felt a white chill wind sweeping through my limbs, alerting my flesh to a new awareness of the air and of our headlong passage through it. I clenched my eyelids even more tightly: and yet I still seemed to see with a sharpened clarity of vision. We flew, it seemed, through a land of eerily-lit darkness, stark and black, like stormclouds under a full moon’s pale gaze: and at intervals I glimpsed massy shadows which impressed themselves upon me as portals to infinitely deeper regions even than I had seen so far; and some of these were solemnly still and silent and others were seized with a convulsive shuddering as if they were about to yield up somewhat of their secrets. For how long we swept through this twilight domain, this silvered abyss I cannot say, but after what seemed a long time under its uncanny and unnerving demi-lustre I began to feel shivering and wearied and to succumb to a dazed state close to sleep. I fell forward onto my creature’s neck and at once felt again beneath me the jolting of the sickle-like rockers. The grey half-lit, terrain I had traversed gave way suddenly to images of sweet spring meadows, sunlit trees and quick, luminous streams and I gradually returned to myself. I opened my eyes to find I was staring straight into the crystalline, glinting green of the winged cat’s jewelled gaze. There was a final, kaleidoscopic tumult of images and I began to see again only the surroundings I had known when I first climbed aboard. Nearby, I was particularly glad to see Rebecca still proudly astride her austerely-shaped horse, a look of great fervour in her face.

  ‘How long we rode we do not exactly know. What remains with us both, thinking back to those strange swift journeys, is the sense of entering unknown regions, of passing rapidly through a plane of experience different to anything we may find in this world—and with a suggestion of the presence of companions stranger still even than those that Arioch Woodley had carved. But at last the rolling crescents of wood seemed to slow gradually, and the rushing sensation we both felt subsided and dwindled to a halt. We leant back, blinking and fumbling for a handhold. In the deep dusk of the room, we discerned a stolid figure standing between the two mounts. He raised his left hand and flickered his fingers backwards quickly, as if in a gesture of dismissal. Then he helped us in turn down from the horse-dragon and the winged cat, which rocked softly as we descended, and then came to a rest. We started to mumble explanations for having intruded in his workshop, but he waved these aside, and ushered us across the chamber to a flight of wooden steps. These led to simply furnished quarters, illuminated by lamps and candles, where a simple supper was set out on a long ancient table.

  ‘Arioch Woodley settled us down and stared at us for a few moments from eyes the colour of pebbles in a stream. He stroked a dark beard peppered with grey. He asked us, cautiously at first, what we thought of his work: and then how well the pieces had ridden, eyeing us more keenly. There was for a moment a constraint upon us, an uncertainty. But his gaze was so frank, and his interest so keen, that we soon found ourselves trying to explain, as I have done for you, what had passed as we “rode” his strange creations. He questioned us closely at intervals, then sighed deeply as our recollections began to fade.

  ‘After a brief silence, while we finished our meal, he stood up, heaved his shoulders, drummed his fingers on the old table, and thanked us for our attempts. Then he began what seemed to be a well-worn recitation. He told us how he had decided one day to try his hand at something a little different from the rocking horses which he could create so comfortably with a well-practised routine, and so had tried at first other terrestrial beasts—camels, elephants, even a giraffe. These too had found favour. But then he had found,
in the bookshop in town, a reproduction of a 12th century book of beasts and his mind had been fired by the new possibilities this offered. He gave his days to the making of the traditional toys, then at night would slowly work out how to create the stranger forms shown in the book. He dwelled upon these for so long and with such rapture that he began to see the suggestion of invocations concealed in the text and in the images: and concluded that possibly he had been intended to discover the hidden significance of these things.

  ‘For, as he put it to us then, leaning eagerly forward: “Did human imagination alone make these beasts? Or do they represent things seen in different domains than ours? When almost every civilisation has its legends of such hybrids, can we not conclude that they have a common source? When Mandeville placed them in the unexplored regions of this world, was this a cautious metaphor, a sly self-protection against accusations of sorcery or heresy? When the illuminators and bestiary-makers indited and indued their strange menagerie in such fervent hues, was it all fancy? Or did they, or their authorities, more ancient chroniclers still, draw on remembrances they chased through the caverns of their dreams, their visions? When so many of the very oldest gods have the same commingling of form, lion-bodied, jackal-headed, dragon-winged, serpent-twined or elephantine, might we not wonder why? What if we may find them, and their realm, that’s what I asked myself, what if … and so I thought if there were imaginative children still, or even untainted adults, who could ride these poor semblances of the true creatures, ride them in wonder and trepidation, ride them with minds wide open to what they might see, well then …”

  ‘Rebecca put a hand gently on his arm. “Children have ridden on these?” she inquired incredulously. “Certain children, yes,” he replied. “You see, I can tell. Some visitors, well, they’re just shown into the rocking horse room on the right. And very nice it is. Gives them all the pleasure they need. But others—” he jerked a thumb—“well, I can tell, you see. They’re ready for other wonders. They’ve maybe already seen them in their minds. You two, for instance. You’ve seen, haven’t you, things? So you’ll understand. You won’t sneer at my idea of carving a griffin, a manticore, a phoenix, a sphinx. Nor the other ones, the ones I am working on, the ones you won’t find in any bestiary, or in mythology or in heraldry: the ones I have seen, the ones that emerge when the room is quiet again after riders have been here, the ones that are further back in the region where they all come from, that need to be coaxed and enticed, that respond when we ride through their realm. I tell you, there are many more of them yet to be discovered… and their worlds.” ’