He exhaled and worked his neck back and forth, trying to decompress. It ain’t like it would have been you, not really. Nathan ground his teeth together. He wanted to dissipate his anger, though he felt satisfied that his anger was righteous. But you don’t take what ain’t yours.
Two unheeding strangers passed by, a dozen paces apart. Nathan waited.
The form of the young beauty he’d first encountered on the track outside the town approached from out of the fog equally insensate of his presence. He extended his will calmly and asked her to stop. He didn’t turn her ‘on’ and didn’t make her see him. He stepped in front of her and studied the unblemished symmetry of her beauty.
She’s a projection. A stand-in. There’s nothing for me to do.
He felt he needed to say something, even if it meant nothing to either of them. It felt rude, keeping her, even though he knew the truth was he was only delaying himself. He sighed.
‘If I could . . . If it were within my power, I would let you go. I wish I could do that for you.’
Nathan stared at her a moment more, and then stepped aside. There was no point forcing her to acknowledge his emotion.
He walked down into the wide field. The slippery stubble of grass felt reassuringly real under his feet. He felt strength in his legs and he sucked the thick air deep into his lungs. By the time he began to climb the low incline back to the road, the fog had begun to thin, burned away by the blooming dawn.
Nathan was unsurprised that his car started at the first attempt. He drove north.
THE HOMUNCULUS IN THE CURIO
‘The strength of a cough is not determined by the virulence of the illness, but rather by what resistance the body may provide.’ The old man nodded proudly at his assessment. ‘You have doubtless noticed my cough is, of late, unremarkable; it is, in fact, terribly common.’ He chuckled, prompting the unfortunate malady, so that a sort of guttural fluttering spilled from his mouth, until he raised a snifter to his lips and between laboured breaths sipped at the sweetly pungent brown liquid therein.
This was Conrad McUlney, called ‘Bruce’ in a youth so distant the owner had forgotten the appellation, called ‘Master’ by the sole member of his audience. McUlney was born a Highlander and went to London to study; though he travelled throughout Europe and Africa after he was dismissed from university, and sporadically hopped northward through a series of English domiciles thereafter, he never again crossed Hadrian’s Wall. Some twenty years previously he had, of necessity for privacy, settled in the country, in a house surrounded by trees, and by others’ farmland, on the edge of the North York Moors, with Roseberry Topping’s layered bands of taupe and brushed green visible through a single gap in the boughs from one of the windows in the superfluous second storey. He had adopted an air of affable peculiarity, and the people in the nearby village soon grew accustomed to the recluse on the outskirts.
Bent and sunken into a leather recliner faded and rubbed to a matte finish, McUlney’s long limbs still hinted at the loping, wandering Scot he once had been. His face, too, though long retired from sun, was weathered properly, flat, red and raw, not folded by long, squinting hours of study. He retained the hawk’s gaze of men born near to the ceiling sky, even in his quiet, shadowed house, even between white brows above and ashen bags beneath. His accumulation of knowledge was indicated incongruously by his mid-section; while his body otherwise shrank, the bulb of his belly, swelled by liqueurs, bespoke a man who had absorbed truth as it must be absorbed, with considered rumination and alcohol.
McUlney’s library was originally the parlour of the house. As he neither expected nor desired company, he had decided that the large room should be repurposed. Bookshelves built long ago and affixed to the walls sagged with their acumen. Sheaths of paper were folded and stuffed in the cracks between covers like mortar. No surface was uncovered, save the narrow end table where he rested his glass (after having given up sleeping in his bedroom, he had subsequently abandoned the long couch and most nights simply leaned back where he sat). Charcoal husks left from late spring nights still rested in the fireplace, waiting to crumble at a touch. The books were brown, the walls had once been white, and the light of the late day was daffodil.
Along the centre of the wall opposite the fireplace was a wide Victorian curio in Rococo-revival style. In contrast to its surroundings, the cabinet was clean, the glass clear. The ivory-painted wood was so well-preserved that it looked as if the frame might not be wood at all. It stood on four squat, curved legs ending in clawed-ball feet. Feathery leaves hung like a fringed skirt from the bottom; complementary scalloped scrollwork roiled in larger brushstrokes across the arched top. Gold lacquer accents traced the crests of the intricate whorls. The curio was not lit inside, but welcomed the angled sunlight. In addition to the base, there were two other levels, both with a hole cut neatly from one back corner of the glass plate. The top level displayed two impeccably-groomed bonsai trees, and, between them, a shallow container of tiny pebbles and sand. The base level seemed piled with rags; closer inspection revealed the dominant mass to be several small cushions and silk handkerchiefs. A toy oriental screen across one corner hid a bureau overstuffed and piled atop with clothes for a male doll. The centre level emulated a gentleman’s study with furniture designed for an enthusiast of miniatures: There was a Chippendale armchair set at a roll-top desk (opened, and littered with tiny pieces of paper), a pianoforte with keys painted to appear as though there were more than the actual functioning octave, a globe, a chessboard on a square table, and a rose and white-diamond patterned chaise lounge, on which sat the homunculus.
Given little choice, he was, as always, attentive to his master’s thoughts. Nevertheless, he tugged at the sleeves of his shiny black jacket. Designed with the idea the wearer would not move about on his own, doll’s clothes never had sufficient give to satisfy the homunculus, though his dissatisfaction had more to do with presentation than utility, as it was impossible for him to be physically uncomfortable. He was about seven inches tall, bald, and toffee-brown with blonde highlights along the ridges of his rough features. His proportions were nearly ‘normal’, but not quite, as though his body had been formed with the intention of human mimicry, but the detail work was left to the owner to make due as best he could. As his body was slightly oversized for the furnishings, there was no illusion of a separate reality within the curio; his residence instead gave the impression of a comfortable but unavoidably patchwork prison. The homunculus’s tiny eyes blazed brightly, one iris blue, one green.
‘Oddodd.’
The homunculus looked up from his distracted tugging, thinking how rarely co-habitants bother to say each other’s names.
‘I am going to die.’
Oddodd knew his master’s mortality had been much on his mind of late and had noted a recent deterioration in his health, but was surprised to hear him voice the concern explicitly. ‘Such is the way of the flesh,’ he replied.
McUlney chuckled until it again turned to ruffled coughing. He appreciated the irony of his companion’s comment, as the homunculus’s ‘flesh’ was comprised primarily of grave wax, in its own way belying the transitory nature to which he alluded. McUlney sipped his drink and sputtered, ‘You’ll kill me with such kindness.’
Oddodd bowed slightly by way of mock apology. Of normal timbre, his mellifluous voice carried easily across the room (by what unnatural means neither man nor homunculus had ever divined): ‘At the risk of endlessly repeating myself, you seem but little worse than you did yesterday.’
McUlney kept his breath steady and merely smiled at this gentle jab. He let his arm down to rest and swirled the liquid in the glass. He nodded and sighed with resolute acceptance. His eyes grew moist and he rubbed them with his free hand. ‘I am embarrassed,’ he said, ‘that I should care about this,’ he waved his hand over his belly. ‘And I know I am a fool—oh, that it matters that I know I am a fool!—but I am afraid of my body’s impending failure. And it is true; I feel it: I am ve
ry near the end.’ He wiped his eyes again.
Oddodd kept silent for a time. He could see that his master believed it, and he had no reason to doubt the assessment. ‘But you are wrong.’
McUlney shook his head, thinking his companion yet refused to accept the inevitable.
‘Ah! Let me explain,’ Oddodd said. He stood and drew close to the glass of the curio door. ‘Yes, you are going to die.’ Oddodd paused, as though his throat could catch with emotion; he himself was surprised by it. ‘Of course you are: All things do. But you are not close to death. You are too far from it.’
McUlney sniffled and looked at him alertly.
‘Your brute race—by force of will or by unearned providence, I know not which—has learned to live much longer than it used to. You are ever buttressing yourself against calamity; indeed, you will soon make dormant the seeds of destruction with which you are born. Though you have not yet learned to correctly harmonise the value of your manufactured miracles—as you continue to befoul the air and water that sustain you—but you have assuredly brightened and sanitised every corner until there are no shadows to creep on the edge of your vision. For you, the final horror is tedium: facing the bureaucracy of processing insurance claims under bright, unkind lights. You are, as always, kept busy on your path.’
McUlney shifted in his seat as though uncomfortable with its fit. ‘You condemn me as human,’ he grunted, ‘I think it lazy.’
Oddodd placed a brown hand on the glass. ‘Of course, you are different from many of your kind. And you have done much to keep yourself apart from the modern world. But I speak of a fundamental shift in attitude. No, my friend, it is with you, as well: no matter how unique you may be, you are still a member of your race, and while you dwell in the past, you live in this time. Call it Zeitgeist, species perspective; call it what you like.’
‘Bunk?’
Oddodd grinned. ‘As you please.’
‘Am I to understand you liked humans better when our nameless legions would rush headlong into the fray with neither . . . mmm-huh . . . neither care nor concern for our fates or those of others . . . emboldened by “virtues” like duty and honour? Is life not to be prized?’
‘Of course life is precious and should be valued. I can only guess that your bygone “nameless legions”, having watched their siblings wither in the cradle or fall to epidemic disease, valued most whatever “virtues” they could imagine simply because the investment in preserving life seemed less certain. As to why they chose to become wastrels of their good fortune and pursue the “art” of war? Perhaps they felt some measure of control when they embraced their folly and hastened their dooms. Regardless, you must admit their concept of the separation of life and death was that of a thin partition, or a narrow gap. This gap has become a gulf and the gulf widens with each passing generation.’
‘No.’ McUlney coughed and sipped. He took a long, controlled breath. ‘I reject the implication of your evaluation—the anointing of a beneficial “natural state” of lesser separation. I dislike, but will allow for discussion, the idea that the life of spirit is rewarded by contempt for the flesh when practiced as humble asceticism, but I fail entirely to see why it should be rewarded for violent disregard.’
‘Who says that it is? I don’t argue in praise of the primitive. As you point out, many of your theologies promote the refinement of spirit through suffering; it would seem a longer life would allow for . . .’
‘Extended torture.’
Oddodd opened his palms and cocked his head. ‘I was searching for a more positive way of putting it. In truth, I can speak little to these matters. I have no knowledge of your experience as spirit. I have met ghosts; dull, confused things every one. I cannot say if reward awaits your majority or if you all wander as shades waiting to be recycled. Regardless: Life is to be valued. But I think it is correct to live with death; death should be railed against and accepted daily. So I say again: You are too far from death. Let us abandon the general for the specific: You are an old man.’
‘Have you any proof?’
‘And so you come around again to non-life in your circle of existence. Death approaches, but the experience of non-life—whatever it is for you—approaches as a stranger. You were much closer to non-life when you were eight than now when you are eighty.’
McUlney nodded. ‘I understand you now. I thank you for your comments, but you must see that they explain their own vacuity: you have admitted you cannot comfort me. You have told me death is a mystery; this was the start of our discussion.’
Oddodd backed away from the glass and paced slowly around his study. The globe squeaked when he spun it. ‘Still,’ he ventured, ‘you are conversing with a homunculus.’
‘And you are the proof of something. Which I suppose I am, as well. I know. I know! Did I not say I know I am a fool? But even the faithful man may fear dying.’
‘The faithful man lives with certainty, but without proof.’
‘Ha!’ McUlney suffered a coughing fit. He tapped lightly on his chest. ‘But my way is different: I have the latter without the former! For you are a creature of magic, but not my magic. I procured you; I did not create you.’
‘But you cannot take two apples from the same tree, put them on different shelves, and label them different varieties. I am as I am no matter from which branch I am plucked. I hope banal vanity does not cause your fear to fester.’
‘No, no. I mean this—’ He paused to drain his snifter. ‘You spoke of a change in my species. I speak of a change in the world. There was magic, and so you are here with me. But I have not seen it for myself.’
‘But have I not answered your every question? Have I failed to disclose my full knowledge of the occult?’
‘Yes, yes. And so I know academically more than perhaps any other man alive today.’ He tapped his head. ‘But I have no gnostic knowledge, no internalisation from experience. You have told me stories that may well be lies—no, no; I do not doubt your veracity, I merely point out that words are not facts themselves, they can only speak of them. I have a Bible here somewhere that informs me God spoke to Moses, but the shrubbery outside my window has never spontaneously ignited.’
‘And you fear magic is gone from the world?’
‘Just so.’ McUlney leaned forward, coughed a little and struggled to his feet. ‘Just so.’ He shuffled across the floor, kicking a rolled map from his path. At a small table by a window, he poured himself another drink and left the glass stopper on the tarnished silver tray next to the decanter. He let a little sun onto his face and breathed deep as though the rays were inhalable fumes.
‘I tried once,’ he began. He lowered his head. He was confessing no offence, but it was a confession, and by nature of the act he couldn’t help but feel guilty for having kept the secret. ‘I tried once to create for you a companion.’
McUlney heard a small clattering sound behind him and knew Oddodd had knocked over the chessboard. He mused that after these many years together, they could still surprise each other. When he turned, Oddodd was pressed against the glass, and the last pawn still wobbled through a semi-circle. McUlney smiled bitterly. ‘I was unsuccessful,’ he said.
‘You never said—said anything—,’ Oddodd stammered.
‘Of course not.’ McUlney crossed back across the room and crumpled into his chair. ‘Imagine how disappointed you would have been if I failed.’
‘I could have helped you!’
‘You did. You told me everything I needed to know about the creation process. What else could you have done?’
Oddodd staggered back and sat on the front edge of the chaise. He stared at nothing while he thought.
Eventually, he said, ‘But I don’t mind at all, you know. I’m sorry only that your experiment didn’t work. To be truthful, I can’t imagine the embarrassment of meeting another of my kind, knowing what we’re made from.’ He looked at his master. ‘Still, I suppose we could adopt your custom of politely ignoring your means of creation. But how?
. . .’
‘I was the “beneficiary” of a middle-aged man’s unfortunate accident.’ The leather creaked drily as McUlney squirmed his way to comfort. Appeased, his speech flowed with languid whimsy. ‘Apparently, the thrill of self-pleasure had, for him, diminished intolerably, and he attempted auto-erotic asphyxiation. Successfully, to a point—or well past the point of success, it might be said. It was expensive to procure the ingredient, but I was able to make the acquisition far more quickly than I’d anticipated. A London hotelier I knew from my opium and absinthe days provided vital assistance in the endeavour. Surprisingly, it was more difficult to obtain the grave wax than it was the ejaculate of a hanged man.’ He sipped his drink, appreciatively remembering unpleasant ventures whose discomforts are consigned to the past. ‘I thought for a while that the means of hanging was at fault. Though neither your guidance nor my own research intimated any limitation of the ingredient’s origin to the execution of a criminal, still I questioned if that was the cause of my failure. As I have grown older . . . well, you have heard my doubts. I do not know if it could have been accomplished by any means.’
Oddodd restored the chessboard to its upright position and proceeded to reset the playing pieces. ‘I appreciate your consideration,’ he said, ‘though it would have become crowded in here—unless you know of another such construct.’
McUlney chuckled. ‘No. To my knowledge, the curio is unique. Of course, a homunculus of my creation would have been bound to me, whereas you are not. But I wouldn’t want you resenting me letting your companion roam about the place while you remained locked up.’
‘I shouldn’t; not now, anyway.’ He positioned the last piece and walked to the glass. ‘I don’t resent being locked up.’
‘Eh?’ McUlney sat up, setting off a prolonged fit of wet rattling. When it was over at last, he asked, ‘When did this change come about?’
The Hidden Back Room Page 12
