“Where are you going?”
I immediately regretted the question but he answered as if he had ceaselessly rehearsed the line. “To where monsters roam. Where you have consigned me.”
“You were not here when I explained my own confusion about the storyline. You must forgive me as I am trying to get a complete picture of –”
“How can any picture ever be complete until you step into the frame?” He made a circle with his thumb and forefinger and peered within as if he was watching through a camera’s viewfinder. “Didn’t you tell me with your own deceitful lips that nothing is complete unless it is viewed? Did you not? Be forewarned that the next view will not be pleasant.” He walked away, chattering to himself and laughing.
Following his departure, everyone was silent. I felt that some of Kothar’s despair had been transferred to the group because they were all staring at me sullenly. Eventually Balzac said, “Just when you think you have seen everything, a fearsome grappler returns with his bag of tricks.” The Stenographer did a swift swoosh that resembled a question mark. Balzac shook his head and recited, “Atomic elbow, cobra-hold, camel-lock, clothesline, testicular claw, smoke and salt in the eyes. You name it.” I had no idea what he was talking about but everyone seemed alarmed.
Sitting in the corner, his hat over his face, the man who called himself the Inquisitor and Fakir said, “Time is running out. If you say the phrase in the dappled moonlight, you can actually see the grains falling away. It’s a harlequin spin.”
I looked around at each of the carriage’s occupants. I saw impatience, irritation, confusion and skepticism all overlaid with craziness. They seemed to be waiting for me to say something. Until I uttered the phrase, “It’s time, then,” I had no idea what I was going to say but my statement had the desired effect. “I don’t have the ledger any longer so we will have to play it by ear. Impromptu performances.” Now you may say that this was an act of stupidity, stringing along all these demented actors in a film that was a mystery to me, but I ask you: What choice did I have? In fact, I was surprised I had not thought of this before. In a sense, the loss of the ledger made no difference because I could never make sense of the storyboards and also because everyone in the carriage already seemed to have some understanding of their roles. Who knows? Perhaps the director, you and a group of pranksters might suddenly stream out from a carriage. This is the sort of unreality that has accompanied me since I found myself in the terminal.
“When will we leave?” the Inquisitor asked. “It must be soon because I can feel the turbulence a-gathering.”
Why wait? “In the morning. We will gather in this carriage.” The minute I left the canteen, I felt some disquiet about my decision to string along a group of actors in a film with no screenplay, director, cameramen and so on. I bolstered myself by thinking it would be better than doing nothing and witnessing the group growing more impatient each day. Maybe we would even find our way out of this abandoned terminal into some little town.
Alone in my carriage, I recalled the little girl’s talk of a bus at the end of the track and my own explorations of the area and I decided that I would lead them to the field where I had seen her. Doubtless they would be angered by the fruitless trek, but I would deal with that situation when it arose. Perhaps this resolve to change my situation was overdue because that night I had the most restful sleep since I awoke in the terminal close to a month earlier.
When I got to the canteen, I saw Balzac with a broad grin, his ears high and erect. “You, my friend, are amazing,” he told me almost immediately. I noticed Toeman looking over a sheet of paper and in the corner the Spiritmaster woman and the so-called countess glaring at one another. Fingers emerged from the kitchen with a great whorl of scarf and overcoat, leaped onto a table and squatted there. The countess woman seemed amused by all this but there was a trace of delectation, too, as if we were all putting on an act for her entertainment.
“What do you think of our group?” Fingers asked.
“Is everyone here?” The man who called himself the mathematician or whatever began to count, pausing several times only to begin once more. “Never mind,” I told him. “It’s time to leave.”
“The Inquisitor is missing,” Balzac said. “The erudite man wants to trust him, but it is not in the nature of the brute to trust someone who never shows his face.”
Twenty minutes or so later, I stepped out of the carriage and the group followed me. I heard the Spiritmaster woman saying, “something going to happen. Something bad. My left eye jumping.”
On our way, Kurt emerged from another carriage. In his arms was the Stenographer. He was holding him like a child. “What is our mission?” he asked.
“How many people will we have to kill? I can easily draw and quarter a dozen.” Fingers said.
“Do you have a plan? or a map?” someone asked.
“Is only spirits does talk without anybody seeing them.”
They kept up their chatter as we walked down the platform and into the tunnel. Soon we were out of the terminal. I expected they would put up some protest as we headed for the forest but everyone was silent. As we approached the hill, I saw someone sitting at the brink and at first I assumed it was the man who had leaped off the other day but when we drew closer, I saw it was Kothar. He must have heard our conversation because he got up to face us and I saw leaves stuck onto his goggles and sprigs between his teeth.
“We mean you no harm, my friend.” Kurt stepped forward, a hand held out, palm upraised in a stopping gesture.
Kothar took two clanking steps forward. Both men were equal in size and I felt for sure there would be a great struggle. “No harm?”
“Please step aside, sir.”
“You have returned to mock me.”
“I can assure you this is not our intention. Now, please step aside.”
Kothar now seemed angrier. “Is it because I am a monster? A deformed replica?”
“A doppelgänger. We are nearing the other place. I knew –”
Kothar flicked aside Toeman and redirected his attention to Kurt. “And you have brought along all your friends. Yet there is no place for me. For the beast.”
“You are free to join us. If your heart is pure,” Kurt said placatingly.
Kothar thumped his chest. “I clean it every morning.”
“Then you can join us, my friend.”
I felt I should step in. “But you will have to amend your behaviour.” He turned to me. “We cannot have you running around like a madman.”
I expected he would be offended but he unleashed a horrible burst of laughter that ebbed into a suffocating wheeze. When he had recovered, he said, “You really don’t know, do you? Not even you,” he added, pointing directly to me. “The deformed man is the only normal one here. What joy!” He laughed wildly again.
“Would you mind explaining what you are talking about?” I asked.
He adjusted his goggles and spat out a piece of twig. “All of you are mad. Every single one of you. You, you, you, you, you and you.”
“That is a harsh assessment,” Balzac lisped.
The countess woman added, “You seem to be the only one mad here.”
Then Kothar said something that was quite surprising. He said, “In a lopsided landscape, a symmetrical tree may seem crooked. Do any of you understand? Let me be more direct, then. Sanity seems like madness to a mad person.”
“This could very well apply to you,” I told him.
“I refuse to believe this. It’s impossible. We are all gifted.” This was Kurt.
“Well, here is another gift. You are all criminals. Felons and malefactors. Racketeers and arsonists. Murderers and abductors. Even you, Mr. Perfect,” he told Kurt. “Scooped up from the hoosegow to have bolts of electricity shot into your brain. Only Kothar the Magnetician escaped because he is immune to electricity.” He raised his head to the sky and bellowed like an overreaching performer.
“This is going too far, my friend,” Kurt tol
d him. “I will admit that Fingers and Balzac and the Inquisitor all have their dark sides, but to impugn everyone with that label is unfair. What proof do you have?”
“Proof? You want proof? Why do you think no one can remember anything? Why do you think you were sent here on this little field trip? Why do you think this terminal is deserted?” He then began to describe a compound from which he had escaped during an early round of treatment and a house he stumbled upon. “I can tell you things,” he said. “Things they did to me. I hold you responsible,” he added, pointing to me. “And you, too.” He now gestured to Kurt and to the others. “But I escaped. And I have been free ever since. Free!” He spread his arms and his coat jangled.
I noticed he had not backed up his criminal claim but I was nevertheless struck by the fact that I was not alone in my memory loss. This was something I had not thought of before. Both Kothar and the orphan had used the pejorative done and I now considered they may have heard of – or been witness to – a particular procedure. They were the only ones not confined to the carriages and I could not help wondering what else they knew. Not that I believed Kothar, but I was beginning to wonder whether my companions were truly frustrated actors or if perhaps their psychoses ran much deeper.
While I was preoccupied with this thought, Kothar moved toward us. Fingers immediately sprung at him but reeled back, holding his hand and wailing. Most likely he had struck some steel armour or chain mail that Kothar wore underneath his jacket. Balzac rushed forward and unleashed a flurry of blows: jabs, uppercuts and a roundhouse right. Kothar staggered from the assault but suddenly he straightened his long arms and grabbed Balzac’s ears and pulled upward. “That’s an illegal grapple you have applied to me,” Balzac screamed, unexpectedly turning erudite. “It merits an immediate disqualification.”
Kurt stepped forward. “Leave, my friends,” he said to us. “I will give you enough time.” Both men began to strike one another, with straight blows, neither attempting to duck or evade the other’s fists. As they plugged away it seemed like a battle of endurance. The blows appeared real enough but I glanced around to see if there were hidden cameras somewhere around. I saw a movement ahead of me and ducked when something landed at my feet. It was the girl’s boomerang and she was gesturing from behind a thorny bush.
I picked up the boomerang and scrambled down the hill after her, but she had hurried away and I now saw her some distance ahead. I followed her once more and when I heard the crackling of bushes behind me, I turned to see the group hastening after me. I increased my pace and when I came to a sudden decline, it was too late to stop. The smooth shale was covered with some red mossy plant that made it impossible to slow my fall and once I got up, I had to step out of the way quickly because, one by one, the rest of the group rolled down. Soon the entire group, minus Kurt, was there.
“Get out of the way.” Fingers brushed past us, leaped onto the hill and immediately toppled down. He tried a couple more times with the same effect. “It’s too slippery,” he said. The Stenographer made it halfway before he too rolled down. Fingers began to shout Kurt’s name but stopped when we heard a conversation on the other side. At first, the voices were low and almost amicable, but this was soon replaced by shouting that in turn gave way to what was unmistakably a struggle. Someone was saying, “Hold him down.” There was a thud and the sound of metal against rock.
“I am going up,” Balzac said. As I expected, he landed right at our feet. He got up and began pounding the hill until his hands were completely red from the shale. He stopped when pieces of twigs and pebbles rolled from the top. Soon the sounds from above ceased.
“There might be another way up,” Fingers said.
“Let’s just go,” I said tiredly.
For a while, no one said anything. Then the woman who called herself the Spiritmaster said, “It have a track there. I does see things.” She pointed to a very narrow trail bordered by bristly shrubs. We made our way slowly and I felt that everyone was thinking of Kurt. Once again, I was struck at how much our little journey resembled the unrealistic plot of a cheap B movie and I desperately hoped the group was following a script that I had been unable to glean from the ledger. Still, the battle between Kurt and Kothar had been very convincing.
“A bus,” the Spiritmaster shouted.
We began to run in that direction. The field was bigger than I imagined and it took a good twenty minutes before we got to the vehicle. No one seemed willing to get aboard and I wondered if, in their stifled memories, there was some anguish they associated with the vehicle. Perhaps we were all brought here, dazed and manacled. “Let me through,” I told them. I stepped onto the vehicle. At first I believed it to be empty, then I saw the girl sitting on the seat at the back.
21 THE DELUGE
“There’s only a child here.”
“This is amazing.”
The girl looked at us all red and ragged and smiled serenely.
“What’s your name, orphan? And where is the driver?”
“My name is Dyenne,” she said sweetly to the countess.
“A proper spirit name.”
I made my way to the back of the bus and the girl said, “We have to leave quickly before the paladin gets here.”
“Where will we go?”
“Away, but we have to hurry.” She stood on the seat and shouted, “Is there anyone who can drive this bus?”
Regrettably, it was Fingers who answered. “In the nights when everyone is roosting I dream of contraptions.”
“Anyone else?’ I asked.
“In another universe, I –”
But Fingers was already behind the wheel and cranking the engine. He tried several times until the bus began to reek of diesel. “Hurry,” the girl shouted.
“It’s no use,” he said. “There is no way to get this contraption to move.”
“It’s a harlequin spin. Should we stay on this spot and allow the turbulence to come to us or should we hasten along into the centre of the storm? Either way we shall arrive at the same spot.” It was the man who called himself the Inquisitor and I wondered how he had found us here. He stepped on board, got behind the steering wheel and started the truck. “Fasten your seat belts,” he said. “It’s going to be a rocky ride.”
Everyone sat. When I glanced back, I could not see the girl so I got up and spotted her hiding beneath the seat. “It’s okay,” I said, hoping to coax her to the seat but she refused to budge. I wondered whether she was frightened by the rocky driving and I was about to ask the Inquisitor to slow a bit when he stopped suddenly. The door opened and a rugged woman with khaki overalls got on board. I looked out and saw miles of abandoned fields and I wondered what the woman had been doing here.
From beneath the seat the girl asked, “Who was that?”
“A woman. I don’t know where she came from.”
“Does she have a cat?”
“Just a knapsack. And you should get out from there because you can knock your head in this rocky road.”
“I don’t want the driver to see me. Where are we now?”
We were passing through groves of spindly trees that interlocked from either side of the road to block most of the overhead light. The trees were wreathed in white and I thought of cotton balls. I described this to her and she asked why the bus was stopping once more. I turned to the front and saw the man who I had seen covered in cardboard. “Someone from the town. I don’t know how he got here. He said his name was the Conductor.”
“I knew this was a mistake. You got me into it. I should never have trusted you.”
“Why are you so upset?” I asked her. “Would you prefer that the driver leave these people behind?”
“Everything is just like the beginning. All the same old people.”
“Just be thankful we are going somewhere.”
She said nothing for a while. I heard Balzac at the front asking the Conductor, “What were you doing here all alone?”
“Waiting. A man is always waiting
, although if you would ask for what I will have to say it depends on the circumstances.”
“Brilliant,” Balzac said.
“What are they talking about?” the girl asked.
“I can’t hear properly.”
“Describe the view outside.” When I did she said, “We are going the wrong way. I knew it.”
“How do you know?” I asked her.
She eased a little from beneath the seat and glanced up. “Look at all the smoke getting out from the volcanoes.”
I followed her gaze and saw steam rising from what appeared to be thermal springs. The entire area was marked with fissures and vents. I was about to relay the child’s concern when I noticed that our worry was not shared by anyone; and once more I was rattled by my presence in this group. The Conductor was now leaning over Fingers’ shoulder but whatever he was saying was lost in the whine of the bus. About fifteen minutes later, I observed in the distance what appeared to be a coastline and when we turned a sharp bend, I saw several pools of water covered with writhing weeds. The pools flowed into a lake and I saw now the sprouts of water flowing from nicks in the hill before us. A ridge of mountains behind the lake was so perfectly positioned they seemed to have been placed there.
“Why don’t you do anything?” the girl asked me. “We are going right back to the start. I never should have trusted you.”
“Why are you so afraid of the man giving directions?”
“Because he looks like a spider and he wants everything to remain the same. He can talk to animals, too. He is a spy. He pretends to be asleep, but he is like a powerful armadillo watching everything. I don’t trust him. He tried to catch me, but I ran away. He was laughing and singing that he fell from heaven.”
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