Adjacentland

by Rabindranath Maharaj

  The calypso began with a scratchy brass prelude. Then there was the singer accompanied by a guitar. His voice was steely yet humorous.

  Late last night while I was walking down the street.

  You wouldn’t believe who I happen to meet.

  Was a fella with a face just like mine

  And rightaway this fella start to opine.

  Nothing is old and nothing is new

  Even me standing in front of you.

  We meet one time and we go meet again

  Everything we do is already ordain.

  As he continue his nonsense I say mister stop

  You talking in parable like old Aesop.

  He start looking around anxiously

  As if he trail by twenty jumbie.

  He say the only thing he could confide

  Is that they looking for something they cast aside.

  I ask him what this thing could be

  And he say Tawny is your melody.

  I couldn’t determine the chorus because the needle was jumping over the grooves. Maybe the musician upstairs knew the words. I called once more before I walked up the stairs. I anticipated coming across an ailing musician or items of a personal nature, perhaps clothes or diaries. The last thing I expected was a dead body, appearing so natural and peaceful on the bed I thought at first the man, his grey hair and beard neatly groomed, his hat on his chest, had been sleeping.

  I left in a hurry, running along the street and bolting the door to my room. All night I thought of my discovery. How long had this body been there? Was there a mourner hidden in another upstairs room? Was the old man really dead? I had not looked closely and perhaps he was in need of some assistance? I could have waited till the morning to verify this and as I was walking out of the chapter house into the dark street, I tried to convince myself I had been unnecessarily frightened simply because I had been so shocked. Twenty minutes later, I was able to confirm that he was indeed dead, although it appeared his body had been shifted so that his hands were now crossed over his chest rather than at his sides. I could not remember, either, a mandolin at his side. His face seemed familiar and I realized I had seen it on the cover of the calypso album.

  I called a few times before I walked down the stairs. On my way to the chapter house I heard a shuffling alongside me, behind a hedge. I shouted and when there was no answer I decided it was the cat snuffing around. As I passed the house where I had seen photographs of trains and steamboats I noticed the front door was slightly ajar. I walked up to close it and decided to check the upstairs rooms. Again, there was a corpse, this one outfitted with a mariner’s cap and some sort of blue uniform. A whistle hung over his chest.

  That night I entered every house I had previously explored and in each I discovered a dead body. And in each upstairs room the body matched the paraphernalia I had discovered on the lower floor. A man wearing a one-shoulder wrestler’s costume. An old woman plastered with kohl and lipstick. Another woman wearing a necklace of birds’ eggs. A body encased in a pink dress, its face hidden by a black veil, two dolls beneath its masculine arms. It was early morning when I returned to my room. None of the bodies showed any signs of decomposition and I could not understand how they could all have died at the same time. Since they were the only occupants in the houses, who could have groomed and arranged them? The only people I had seen were the woman and the idlers at the gate and none gave the impression they would engage in such an onerous task or that they had the skill to preserve the bodies. But there was someone else. The mortician! It had to be.

  I had decided to avoid the men at the gate, but my unease at being the only living occupant in a town of old preserved men and women overrode the irritation they aroused. When I got to the enclosure the gate was locked. I called a few times and when there was no response I considered climbing over. The gate was more than twelve feet high and I placed my feet on one of the lower bars and tried to hoist myself to the upper crossbar. I was halfway there when I heard a distant growl and noticed a horrible black beast running so quickly toward me I felt it would crash against the gate. I jumped down in a hurry, tumbling on my back. The beast was too big to get through the bars, but I immediately got up and moved away some distance. From its massive head and muscular shoulders and haunches I felt it was a boxer. It was interesting that inside my faulty memory still resided some knowledge of canine breeds. Surprisingly, the animal was wagging its stumpy tail and its low growls now seemed playful. I took a few tentative steps forward and the dog pushed its snout up as if to greet me. Some of its teeth were missing and I felt it was in some distress. “Here, boy,” I said, clicking my fingers. “What happened to your mouth?” I was now a few steps away from the animal, holding my hand out as if I had some treat. Suddenly, the dog reared up, its bark no longer playful. Foam was dripping from its mouth.

  As I hurried away I considered my luck in not making it to the other side. I wondered what it was guarding. Perhaps the place was an abandoned prison. The rows of cellblocks and some sort of turret at the far end certainly suggested something of this nature. I decided I would restrict my explorations to the town. Over the following days, I made my way to side streets leading to little culde-sacs and crescents where the plants were stragglier and the flowers curled like mauve snails on the paths, and in each of the houses I found a dead body on the upper floors. Once more I thought of an epidemic that had raged through the town, even though I knew this couldn’t be the case as the bodies on the beds were all dressed and decorated. Could they have been strangled by a homicidal maniac or by a vengeful group of thugs? Again, this seemed unlikely.

  One night while I was on my bed, watching through the window, I saw the hedge separating the two houses on the opposite side of the street rustling. My lights were off and I was watching though the curtain. It occurred to me that I might be under some kind of observation and I remained there for close to an hour, hoping the person would reveal himself or herself. I went to bed with the distressing thought that the observer was waiting for me to die so I could be dressed and perfumed and placed in the upstairs room. “Do you think someone is spying on me?” I asked Little Clicker.

  The following morning, I walked to the hedge and even though I had managed to convince myself it had been a scurrying animal I decided to explore the outer reaches of the town. As in the residences closer to the chapter house, I also found bodies in those areas, but they were not as carefully coiffured, the arms stiff over faded clothes and the bedsheets rumpled. It seemed as if the mortician, or whoever, had been in a hurry. I still expected to find him and I had the feeling he was always one step ahead of me. I tried to walk gently as if I might catch someone powdering a corpse. One mid-morning, unexpectedly, I came across a house with a small group. They were not at all startled by my presence in the hallway and they soon resumed their quiet conversation while they brought miniature porcelain cups to their lips. They held this pose in their oversized overcoats, not drinking or moving, as if they were waiting for a photographer’s flash. There was something familiar about the group and I stood by the window trying to determine why this was so. “I am sorry to interrupt,” I told them in the gentlest voice I could summon. “Were you all moving from house to house fixing all the dead men and women?” They seemed so startled by the question I almost regretted asking, but I pressed on. “I can’t understand how there could be so many dead bodies in a place and all so carefully preserved.”

  “Are you here for the show?” This was a small man whose wrinkled chin seemed to be folded over his cardigan.

  “What show?” The man who had spoken looked toward a woman and she too looked to her left. The entire group performed this pantomime before they looked toward me. “Have I seen you all before? I cannot remember where exactly...” They relayed their glances once more as if each was expecting the other to reply but no one spoke. “Do you live around here?” I asked.

  “Oh no, no, no. We are here for your show.”

  “My show? I don’t underst
and.”

  They leaned closer to each other and a tiny man with freckles on his bald head said, “We have to leave now.” They all put down their cups, but so gently I could hear no clinks. I noticed they all had pale circles on their wrists as if a watch or bracelet had been recently removed. A tiny woman with a silver brooch on her coat got up, smiled sweetly at me and went into a room I assumed was the kitchen. She was followed by a man who could have been her brother. He offered a little bow and departed. One by one, they left and when they did not return, I went through the door and saw that it led to a backyard with an open gate.

  I was surprised, given their years, at how fast they sped along the road. At an intersection shadowed by a billboard with a silver eagle that resembled the gate I had seen at the end of the town, the painting badly frayed so that one wing seemed torn off, they diverged into different streets.

  As I tried to keep up with the group, I heard a faint scurrying sound like tiny lead boots on a tin crossway. I followed this sound, weaving in and out of alleyways for about twenty minutes and at a downslope, I was extremely startled by a prolonged gasp as if a reservoir had suddenly emptied of its last ounce of water. I froze and looked to the manholes but could see no gushing water. It was then that I noticed a flickering light on the horizon, blue and red spiralling waves that intersected into lambent crosses.

  I walked in the direction of the light until I came to an old railway platform. But the light was farther away and as I continued to what seemed like the end of the town, I wondered how the group of old men and women were able to manage this distance, particularly the steep hill before me. I had explored most of the town but had never come across an abandoned railway or a hill. When I climbed the hill, I was rewarded with the sight of a vast basin partially covered with a huge billowing canopy. On one slope, a bus was overturned and on the others, there were small craters that seemed to be caused by projectiles. The light I had witnessed earlier was coming from under the canopy and when I walked down, I saw an amphitheatre beneath the tent and the group I had seen in the house sitting next to skinny, robotic-looking objects. At that moment, the sky lit up and a booming voice said, “Prepare to be amazed. Witness the spectacle of a man driven to multiple worlds of darkness and despair. Not one world, not two, not even three...wait for it.” The last words were drowned by a crescendo of cymbals. I chose an empty seat at the back.

  The film began with a room enveloped in blackness, gradually lit to reveal an emaciated and bald man sitting in a cubicle surrounded by objects that all seemed to be oval. The camera focused on the objects one by one and the man, though perfectly still, eye-balled the camera’s focus. Then the camera pulled back and revealed that the room was bubble-shaped. And from this freeze-frame shot, a voice began to talk about machines. For the first few minutes, it seemed very technical and I wondered what the families in the theatre were making of this, then the narrator – or perhaps the person in the middle of the room – began to talk about how our trust in machines would lead to our extinction. He seemed to be struggling in his seat – as if he was strapped down – while he explained that machines granted too much power would draw resources for their own efficiencies rather than for what would always elude them: the coming climactic changes and to the diseases already on their way. “We have surrendered before the battle has begun. I have been punished for speaking the truth. They have stolen everything from me.” He got extremely agitated as he said this, looking this way and that. Eventually three men walked ponderously into the camera’s focus. The man in the middle was short and wide and he moved slowly, his pace matched by his companion on the right, a lanky man. The figure on the left was hopping about as if agitated. One of the trio stepped forward and sprayed something into the man’s ear, the second into his eyes and the third into his nose and mouth.

  This was a horrible image and I couldn’t understand the chuckles I heard around me in the darkness as the man bemoaned his loss of freedom. The chuckles grew into joyous laughter as, looking directly into the camera, the trapped man began to scream that all the material collected about him would ensure more would be known about his life long after he was dead than was identified at the present. “But what would they know? Will it be real? Will it be me or something else? What happens to the soul when minds are tied together?” He was quite riled up, although clearly weakening from whatever he was forced to ingest. The audience was enjoying it, even though the laughter had a canned quality. Before the subject began to convulse, he managed to sputter something about insanity being the only antidote. “Let them decode that,” he said before he grew still. For a while, there was only the crackling sound of a projector, then the canting head of a goateed man appeared. It was a close-range shot and he appeared to be the cinematographer examining the lenses. I was certain of this when his eye occupied the entire screen. “I touched them and they felt pain. But they grew used to the pain and turned it against me.” There was a sharp sound and the eye snapped shut. I heard an unspooling whir and I thought the film had ended, but the three men now reappeared in another scene sitting by a table. One of them, the centre man, looking directly into the camera, said in a low and regretful voice, “In times past, people like you were seen as special. Extraordinary. You saw spirits and gods and you spoke with angels. Your delusions made you remarkable, your craziness coloured the heavens, your paranoia gave you special insights. And so on and so forth.” He seemed to be speaking to the audience.

  The man to his right added gloomily, “You banned and banished and blackballed.”

  I assumed they were talking about the man who had been strapped in his chair and I felt that this bit had been spliced into the original movie, as the lighting was different. The centre man issued a prolonged sigh that seemed to expand his body like a toad’s and said, “You are a psychopath. Nothing more, nothing less.” The three men began to laugh as if a joke had been made. “Here is the result of some of your inspirations.” Once again, there was a whir, followed by two minutes of grainy footage that depicted a woman removing the limbs of a child and trying to graft them onto an eviscerated adult. She went about her task in a grandmotherly way while she fitted the bones. The scene faded slowly with the congested voice of the centre man saying, “It’s time to send you back...back...back.” The voice echoed until the screen went black.

  I heard someone before me saying, “That mamma is a miscreant. Even I do not have the lexicon to express my shock at this brutish act.”

  Another voice said, “Behold the return of –”

  “Should we hide?”

  “Shh,” another voice said, and I saw two floodlights crisscrossing the area above the screen. A ladder descended into the lit area and a man with a cape climbed down with some difficulty until he was able to stand on the top of the screen. He slowly loosened his hold on the ladder and placed his hands on his waist in a heroic pose. Then he set his feet farther apart and raised his hands over his head. Some sort of metallic wings flapped open but they may not have been properly attached because he began to teeter and when he realized he might fall, he tried to grab the ladder. There was a sickening crash and the lights went black. From the speakers came the voice of a man saying, “That’s the story of a man named When.”

  And another, “Whose closing act was to suspend.”

  “His failure to hitch.”

  “And stitch and bewitch.”

  “Has brought us now to the end.”

  I recognized the voices and felt I had wandered into a show meant for the inhabitants of the Compound. Yet I could see no one as I walked to the front. “Hello. Is anyone there?” I heard a stifled grunt and as I wanted to be certain the mishap was not a part of the show, I added, “Was this an accident?”

  “An accident, my friend, is simply an unexplored possibility.” I asked if he needed any help and he told me, “I am okay. I have broken a few bones and my wings are crushed but they should be mended by the morning. I fell on a blind woman. Now, I must be on my way. My herald is wai
ting.” There was an abrupt whoosh as he rose before me. One hand was clutching the rope and the other waved as he rocketed into the night. He plummeted briefly to ask if I had spotted a little girl running around the place before he ascended once more. When I recovered, I searched behind the huge screen but all I saw was some sort of pulley machinery. I looked around for the woman who had broken his fall, but she must have been carried away.

  I would have returned to the chapter house then because it was almost 10:30 p.m., but I saw a figure running up the side of the basin. I decided to follow it and half an hour later, I came upon what appeared, in the gloom, to be old carriages and discarded wagons and engines. At the far end of the junkyard was a huge billboard with a white, washed-out illustration of an orange-tinted man who seemed to be tap dancing with his cane. I was trying to distinguish the words on the billboard when I saw some movement to my left, a figure jumping out from a carriage. The person was followed or chased by a huge black beast. “Wait!” I shouted.

  He was wearing a cap and a long overcoat but I knew immediately that he was the performer with the defective wings. I shouted after him, “Wait! Where are you going? There was a group of old –” I stumbled on some kind of pinion wheel and when I got up, the man was gone.

  I walked back tiredly in the direction from which I had come. Half an hour later, I felt I should have brought along my mulberry markers because I was lost. I knew I would be going in an endless loop until the light of morning. At each street, I shouted even though I knew no one would respond. Then I saw the cathedral’s spire in the moonlight.