The Absolute Book

by Elizabeth Knox

  It been nearly twenty-four hours since Taryn had had anything to eat so, for a time, her attention was totally devoted to the filled roll in front of her. While she ate her father began a desultory lament. He began by saying how well she’d looked in New Zealand. ‘You seemed better than you have in years. Since Beatrice died, really. You have no idea how frightened I’ve been for you on and off over the years. I’ve never wanted to hover or press you. It’s been hard to know what to do.’

  Taryn took his hand and squeezed it and, for a few minutes they both quietly shed some tears.

  Finally Basil went on. ‘It seemed to me that you collapsed after you parted ways with Alan. In slow motion and in two stages. I think you postponed falling apart while your mother was dying. And then you did. And I did at the same time and wasn’t much use to you. Then you got yourself hitched to Alan and spent the next few years pampered, and dashing around the planet. I relaxed for a bit. But that came to an end, and once Alan wasn’t propping you up you subsided again. I know you have the doctorate and the book, and they’re good things. But—darling—my Taryn wasn’t a sober, hard-working soul who lived for her work. She was shrewd and tart and sparky. You both were. My girls.’ Basil teared up again, and wiped his eyes on the back of his hands, then sat swivelling his teacup in its saucer, his tea poured but not yet tasted.

  ‘Dad,’ she said, with love.

  He got out his handkerchief and blew his nose. ‘So what about this McFadden fellow? Is there any truth in what the detective with the moon boot was saying?’

  ‘They think I persuaded McFadden to kill Webber when Webber got out of prison. And it’s true, Dad. I did.’

  Basil’s tears ran again. For long moments he just wept and squeezed her hand. Then he simply said, ‘Good on you.’

  ‘Not so good for McFadden,’ she said. Or Jacob, she thought.

  ‘Can they prove it?’

  ‘Not without Jacob’s testimony. He heard the little McFadden had to say to me. But Jacob’s changed his mind, I think.’

  ‘And if he hasn’t?’

  ‘Let’s deal with that when it happens.’

  They sat in silence for a time, punctuated now and then by Basil’s solid nose-blowing.

  Taryn finally said that she’d decided the saltwater crocodile was an endorsement from the universe.

  Her father laughed. ‘I would.’

  Taryn wiped the grease from her fingers and dabbed her eyes again. Then, to calm them both, she got her father to talk about himself. Talking about himself always centred Basil Cornick. She asked about the screen test. ‘There were animatronic animals?’

  Basil Cornick was accustomed to everyone being interested in what he had done, was doing, or planned to do. He brightened, and began to expand.

  ‘The only disappointment for me in the Wellington side trip was that the timing meant no one was at home. No old friends. The bonus however was that the young manager they’d put in charge of the operation, who picked me up at the airport and took me to the Stone Street Studios and oversaw the whole thing was—oh goodness!—I want to say “the most beautiful animal I ever saw”, like “the hippy woman” in your grandfather’s fairy hound story. This unbelievably glorious creature picked me up and took me to a restaurant for a bang-up lunch. It was just ourselves, but she was utterly charming company. We went over the pages she’d sent me. Then she drove me to Stone Street—and I have to say I felt quite nostalgic. A group of very personable technicians met us and conducted us to a soundstage. It was an oddly compartmentalised place, which they explained as being about the technology.’ Basil performed a wheezing silent laugh which made his shoulders heave. It was one of a whole repertoire of laughs. ‘They’re perpetually improving the bloody technology, when everything depends on the performances. Anyway, they blinded me with science. Past a point I always just nod and look impressed. While we were on our way to our set—a shadowy void with a single fibreglass rock—I had a glimpse of some extraordinary projects, about which I’d heard not a whisper. And, Taryn, I’m always hearing whispers. There were sets with astonishing lighting, indoors that looked and even sounded like outdoors. It made my head spin. At one point we were edging across a smooth ramp made to look like the walls of a lava tube. I don’t suppose you’ve been to the Jenolan Caves in New South Wales? It was like that, but more multihued and crystalline. And the art department had been tinkering with some kind of light effect that made snow in the air. Honestly, the snowflakes looked solid. But they couldn’t be, because the snowfall was streaming upwards, from below a ramp and up into the darkness that hid the ceiling. It was utterly eerie.

  ‘We went from that place, through a couple of murky voids and into what looked like the most exquisite art installation. A field of grey grass and white flowers. I swear I could almost smell the flowers. A powerfully nostalgic scent; something like crumbled carnations wrapped in old lace. I asked my lovely guide whether I was the object of some pretty effective showing off, and she said why yes, of course.

  ‘Honestly Taryn, I can’t wait to tell Peter what I think. Because no one hits you with stuff like that without wanting your opinion.

  ‘We ended up in a dark soundstage. Then someone turned on a key light. And someone else trundled in the rock, with the animatronic ravens already attached to it.’

  Basil stopped speaking when he saw his daughter jolt. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I just keep having reactions. Please keep talking, it helps.’ Then, ‘Ravens?’ she prompted.

  ‘They looked like a first-class diorama display in a natural history museum—actual mounted specimens, but sleek, not dusty or faded. The camera crew came out of the dark to introduce themselves and shake my hand. Then my guide trotted me off into a roofless room where the makeup team spent about two hours giving me more hair, messing with my beard, adding a bit of greenish pallor. Then they dressed me in a long coat that hid my clothes, plus a pair of chewed-looking fingerless gloves like something they’d pinched off a hobo. They bandaged up my left eye, stuck a battered leather stockman’s hat on my head, and I was done.’

  ‘Who were you supposed to be?’ Taryn asked, and patted her hair, which was prickling all over her head.

  ‘Odin. Hence the ravens. Anyway—we went back to the rock where the ravens were being put through their paces by concealed controllers. They were so lifelike I felt they’d been replaced by real birds. But then some card of a controller got one to perform some actorly vocal exercises. Shortly after that Peter came online, in raven as it were. It’s quite disconcerting to hear the voice of someone you know well issuing from the mouth of a robot. Peter said he hoped I didn’t mind all the mystery and that I wouldn’t be shocked by several things being incomplete.

  ‘“If you’re not, why would I be?” I said. “Or perhaps I should say maybe too complete,” said Peter, and had a bit of a laugh. Then he told me what he wanted from me in the way of the performance and we rehearsed for a time.

  ‘Then it turned out it wasn’t going to be just me and the ravens. No, they had a whole magic door effect set up. It was like something from Disneyland. That water-vapour screen in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride? Another actor came through—kind of materialised in the frame. It wasn’t anyone I knew. Not that there was much chance of penetrating his layers of latex. He was a stuntman, I’d say, one of those giants who play monsters. I don’t know how they got the lighting on him to work the way it did. He looked digital. Latex, even when it’s painted and covered in hair, still manages to look waxy. This person was convincingly monstrous and, for a stuntman, he had considerable presence.

  ‘Perhaps the whole point of this was a show-offy riposte to my complaints about acting with blue screen. Because the staging was more like cutting-edge theatre than film. It was just as well I was under strict instructions to stay in character, no matter what. Peter must have wanted me to do that, and still have some kind of reaction, because this fellow was vast, totally naked, and had a huge Johnson—which I guess was what
Peter meant by “too complete”. Anyway, I was thinking that this was all very strange because it’s been a long time since Peter has wandered—not very successfully I might add—into Restricted territory. There was that early puppet movie. A great big dick is definitely an R. This one was probably a joke. That, and a directorial desire for me to have to make an effort to maintain my dignity. I was supposed to not react, but Pete must have wanted something to show in my eyes.

  ‘So—I was iron. I just stood there being as grey-eyed as I could with just the one eye. I stared at this velvety, chrome, yellow and peacock blue mottled monster with the hard-on.’

  Basil Cornick paused and his daughter gave him an encouraging nod. The movement hurt. Her neck was stiff with a mix of injury, anticipation and outrage.

  Basil continued. ‘You can appreciate my difficulties. I had lines. But beyond my own lines I had no brief about the content of the scene. What was supposed to be happening between Odin and this monster. And though I knew what I was supposed to say, I didn’t know what would be said to me. I imagine the aim was to have me improvise all my non-verbal reactions, rather than anticipate them. I’d been confronted by this—spectacle—in order to turn in some kind of spur-of-the-moment performance.

  ‘The ravens were preening and turning their heads to give the monster one eye or the other. And my guide was still there, running the scene, but almost in it. I mean, I could swear she was standing in the live area. You remember what I mean by the live area? Basically she was in shot. The actor playing the monster kept looking at her, talking to her as well as me and the birds, throughout the whole take. So it can’t have been just my test, you see. I mean, I know it was meant to be, but then I had to wonder why it was necessary for the man playing the monster to have gone through what would have been a many-hours-long process in makeup just to run lines.’

  ‘That’s very unusual?’

  ‘Yes. Well—I suppose they might have wanted a camera test on the makeup. But the whole thing was very irregular. I found myself opposite a character with lines that only corresponded with mine in a very few places. However, my background is theatre, so I improvised.

  ‘The monster’s opening salvo was to address me as “ancient one” and “failing god”. I didn’t have any thunder to throw so I just stood there maintaining my dignity. Then the monster offered to pluck out my other eye and eat it. At that, one of the ravens piped up—in, I might say, a voice that would never be described as piping. More like a French horn sounding through steel wool. The raven declared that my eye was the finest thing it had ever tasted, a sentiment seconded by the other raven. They opened their beaks and curled their tongues and made this off-putting sound of remembered pleasure. It was brilliant. Then the first raven launched into a little speech about how when I, Odin, first came to Mimir’s Well, asking to drink of its waters to obtain wisdom, there was a raven waiting with the Norn.

  ‘At this point the monster started in with some subterranean laughter. The ravens did their silent head-swivelling for a moment, looking with one eye, then the other, then the one who was speaking went on. It said that the raven waiting with Mimir was “the raven of no good news. Noah’s raven, who was released into the air at the rail of the Ark and flew away, out of myth, and into nothing. Nothing,” it croaked. “The promise of land, but no land.”

  ‘“Odin asked for wisdom,” said the second raven. “A god who wanted to be wise more than he wanted his full presence in the world of men, or in his heaven of heroes. It was eating Odin’s eye which changed that loneliest of birds into two birds, sisters; one raven to see and understand, and one to remember the fullness of the world lost to perfect vision, and that world’s value, which is the value of that which was once enough.” The voice talent behind the raven articulated exactly like that. Very emphatic.

  ‘The other raven took up the tale again. It said, “We were once one bird. The raven who flew through a terrible suspended promise.”

  ‘And then the monster spoke. It said, “Let us not speak of that sick and sequestered god.” A line which I recognised as my cue. I started in on the dialogue I’d learned. It commenced with some folderol politeness, then went, “Let us instead talk about that god’s cruel mechanics and how we might help you find an antidote to their poison.”

  ‘I have to say, when I first got the pages, I’d been interested in that “mechanics”. It wasn’t an abstract “mechanics”—fancy talk for machinations. The mechanics of the script seemed to be persons. Poisonous persons. Cruel mechanics.

  ‘The monster then said, “Do you know what it is we seek?” I was thinking so far so good, because I’d also wondered what the “it” in my lines was supposed to be, and now it was clear that the “it” was also the “antidote”. Plus the monster’s line gave me my next. Which was: “We need to know what it is in order to find it.” The monster began his reply. “Ancient rumour tells us . . .”

  ‘And that’s when I came over all weak. Years ago, when you were about four and Bea was eight, I had a gastric bleed. Which of course you girls were supposed to know nothing about. I lost about two pints of blood, but didn’t vomit, so wasn’t alerted to the fact I’d had a bleed. It was so sudden and catastrophic it felt as if I’d powered down. As if I was on full steam ahead and someone had ordered, “Cut all engines.”

  ‘The monster was saying something about a key. But he stopped abruptly and gave me a horrible stark stare. Up until then he had been on the other side of the magic mirror effect. A glossy plane of light, oval in shape, and green at its edges. He stared, then took a step over the sill of the oval. A weird perfume filled my nose. I’d decided at this point I must be having a stroke. My head was swimming and my ears were ringing. I remember feeling behind me for the rock—which felt very like rock, not fibreglass. I slid down its cold surface. There was a flurry of feathers above me, and then a moment of absolute silence, as if someone had shut me in a glass box.

  ‘I came to surrounded by the camera crew and the lovely assistant. They’d moved me. I was outdoors. I was so grateful to be in full possession of my senses that everything seemed to be shining and musical and sweet-smelling. The sun, the birdsong, the grass, the flowers, the beautiful natural world. I was quite puzzled as to where I was, because it didn’t look like Stone Street, or anywhere in Wellington. Central Otago maybe, but not Wellington.

  ‘The assistant propped me up on her knee and gave me a drink and said soothing things about how the on-site doctor was on his way. And then I fell asleep. I woke up hours later in my hotel suite, with the lovely assistant on hand. She told me what the doctor had said, about heat exhaustion, and asked how hard the Auckland Writers Festival organisers had been working me. And then we had a room-service dinner. I felt in the pink by the time it turned up. We polished off a bottle of wine and she bade me goodnight and the following day put me on my plane to Sydney.’ Basil laughed. ‘In the past I have once or twice passed out while performing, but never during a screen test. They’re not that strenuous. This one wasn’t. Strange, yes. Strenuous, no.’

  ‘Have you seen your own doctor since you’ve been home?’ Taryn asked.

  ‘Yes, I have. And I’m in very good shape, so you’re not to worry. He just told me to call him if it happens again.’

  Taryn asked, ‘After you fainted, when your host gave you a drink, was it from a water bottle?’

  ‘Yes. But why do you ask? Do you suppose someone slipped me a mickey and the water contained a remedy? Oh, Taryn, you’ve been spending far too much time with your police detective.’

  Taryn was relieved to hear that Neve had thought to carry bottled water. She knew fairyland when she heard it described. The sun, the birdsong, the grass, the flowers, the beautiful natural world. She wondered if the demon that Neve and the ravens had summoned to a meeting with Odin had told the real sidhe and demigods and ersatz god what it was they were seeking. ‘A key.’ Did the box have a lock as well as seals? Whatever it was the demon said, Taryn’s human father had not been able
to hear. But the whole plan was so daring. Odin hadn’t come to the party, so the ravens had asserted themselves. They’d sought Neve’s assistance, then secured an imposing, grizzled, magnificently present character-actor, lent him dignity, opened a gate some dark place adjacent to the Sidh, and worked their con.

  ‘Have you spoken to Peter since the screen test?’

  ‘No. I thought he’d have called by now, at the very least concerned about my collapse. The lovely assistant followed through. She phoned me in Sydney to see how I was. I’m very surprised I haven’t heard from Peter.’ Basil looked a little uneasy.

  ‘I’m sure you will soon,’ Taryn said. Her problems were proliferating, but the flamboyant determination of the strange alliance of Neve and the sisters made her feel oddly hopeful about some of the things she cared about—not the nearest things, but hers nevertheless.

  23

  Mimir’s Well

  From the beginning they were involved in fog. But at least they were a they. A raven and a man, so Jacob wasn’t alone. Waterlogged, several shades lighter and degrees more diaphanous than his everyday self, Jacob felt that any company, even this strange attendant, was welcome. He knew Munin only a little. Nothing compelled her to bear with him or barrack at him, but she did. She made herself large and stalked behind him, fussing and flapping, a small black storm that couldn’t clear the air. Sometimes her agitation swept the vapour from the ground and Jacob saw that he was creeping forward over wet rock, as smooth and bare as the bed of a swift river.

  Once Munin judged that she’d got Jacob up to speed, she began to urge him with talk too. ‘This is your chance,’ she said. ‘Men think the quality of being a hero belongs to them, like something they’ve purchased. When, in fact, any heroic action belongs to its moment, the short moment or the long. You’re a man of modern times. A man who knows the price of things, material and immaterial, so you believe you have a purchase on your moment. But no one has a purchase on their moment. That is a fact for which we can be thankful. Unlucky are those whose moment pursues them, as Taryn Cornick’s moment pursued her.