“What’d he take to lie down?” Engelbrecht asks.
“Nothing less than a century and we couldn’t raise that between us, not if we was to live in training the rest of our lives. If I was you, kiddo, I’d turn it in. Lay everything you got against yourself and lie down snug before he clocks you to death.”
“I’ll not do that,” says Engelbrecht. “If I can’t frame, I fight. Never let it be said that I quit.”
“You’ll quit all right, kiddo. In a hearse.”
* * *
—
Comes the fight which, like all surrealist championships, is held at the Dreamland Arena round behind the gasworks, a vast desert of cinders and coal dust with an occasional oasis of nettles and burdock between two parallel canals that don’t even meet at infinity.
Engelbrecht as challenger has to be first in the ring and as he and the faithful Lizard Bayliss make their way through the crowd there is a dread chorus of alarm clocks, and a derisive yell of: “You couldn’t even box the compass!” This last is a little piece of psychological warfare on the part of Chippy de Zoete who doesn’t believe in leaving anything to chance and has hired a claque to undermine Engelbrecht’s morale. Lizard Bayliss blows a mournful raspberry back and helps his man up the ladder into the ring, which is the top of an old gasometer. Then they settle down in their corner to wait.
And how they wait. At last Lizard Bayliss complains to the committee of the Surrealist Sporting Club that if they have to wait much longer, Engelbrecht will be too old to fight. But soon after the New Year there’s a stir in the crowd along the canal side and Grandfather Clock and his gang are seen gliding along towards the ring in a barge. There is a roar of cheering from the crowd and the band strikes up “The Black Waltz” followed by “The Clockfighter’s Lament for His Lost Youth.”
Grandfather Clock is hoisted into his corner and he stands there during the preliminaries while they pull the gloves on his hands, wearing his dressing gown of cobwebs, looking a regular champion every minute of him. And when they hand him good-luck telegrams from Big Ben, the Greenwich Observatory chronometer and the BBC Time Pips, he strikes thirteen and breaks into the Whittington Chimes.
But over in Engelbrecht’s corner Lizard Bayliss is in despair. “The whole set up is against us, kiddo,” he says. “Every protest is overruled. They won’t even let me look inside his works. And who do you think you’ve got for ref? Dreamy Dan!”
“What! That schizophrenic tramp!” says Engelbrecht. “Why, he’d sell his grandmother for five minutes! Never mind, Lizard. I’ll go down fighting. Fix me my spring heel shoes and I’ll try and land one on his dial as soon as the bell goes.”
Dreamy Dan says “Seconds Out.” Chippy de Zoete whips off the cobweb dressing gown and just as the bell goes Tommy Prenderghast gives Grandfather Clock a shove that sends him gliding out of his corner sideways along the ropes. He’s got a nice classic stance, hour hand well forward, minute hand guarding his face. They’ve mounted him on castors with ball bearings, and his footwork is as neat as a flea’s.
“Time,” says Dreamy Dan, late as usual, and all that huge arena is one vast hush except for the quick breathing of little Engelbrecht, three foot eleven in his spring heel shoes, and the steady tick tock, tick tock, tick tock—with a nasty emphasis on the tock—of his giant opponent, ten feet of black bog-oak and brass, coffin-lead and hangman’s rope.
Engelbrecht gathers himself together, leaps up high in the air, comes down heavily on his spring heels, then bounds like a rubber ball straight for Grandfather Clock’s dial. But Grandfather Clock sidesteps light as a kitten and Engelbrecht sails harmlessly past his dial and falls flat on his face in the middle of the ring.
There’s a roar from Tommy Prenderghast of “First blood to Grandfather Clock,” and an answering yell from Lizard Bayliss, who claims it’s a slip, not a knock-down. They wake up Dreamy Dan and he awards the point to Grandfather Clock who, meanwhile, is standing over the prostrate Engelbrecht trying to drop his weights on him. But Engelbrecht comes to just in time, rolls over to one side and scuttles away to safety.
So ends the first round. Grandfather Clock sidles back to his corner with a self-satisfied smirk on his dial. But Lizard Bayliss is more pessimistic than ever and as he flaps the towel, he says: “I suppose you know you’ve started going grey, kiddo?”
* * *
—
Soon after the start of the second round Engelbrecht tries another spring but Grandfather Clock smacks him down in midair with his minute hand. Then the door in his front opens and he lets drive with his pendulum. Wham! It catches Engelbrecht at six o’clock precisely and sends him spinning out of the ring into the canal. He swims ashore and climbs back in time to take the most fearful dose of punishment ever handed out in the annals of the surrealist ring. Grandfather Clock gives him everything he’s got: Hour Hand, Minute Hand, Second Hand, Pendulum, both Weights, the Dance of the Hours and Death’s Scythe. When at last Dreamy Dan falls asleep on the bell, Engelbrecht is in a very poor way indeed. And all over the town clocks start striking and alarms jangling in celebration of their champion’s prowess.
“He ain’t half clockin’ you, kiddo,” says Lizard Bayliss. “Do you know your hair’s gone quite white?”
But in round three Engelbrecht makes a surprise comeback. Putting everything he’s got left into one mighty spring, he lands right on top of Grandfather Clock’s works, bores in close to his dial and tries to put his hands back. Before he knows what time it is Grandfather Clock’s hands are forced back to midnight last Tuesday and he starts to strike. Dreamy Dan, prompted by Chippy de Zoete, invents a new rule and says: “Engelbrecht! You must come down off there and stand back while your opponent strikes the hour.”
By now the gameness of this dwarf on springs has caught the fancy of the fickle surrealist crowd and they are yelling to him to stay up there and never mind the referee, but Engelbrecht loses his hold and drops from the dial.
After that, for the next six rounds, it’s just plain murder all the way. Engelbrecht has shot his bolt and has to fight on the defensive. When he’s not being whammed into the middle of next week by the pendulum he’s back-pedalling to try and escape straight lefts from the minute hand and right hooks from the hour hand. Grandfather Clock goes after him round and round the ring, slap, bang, wham, clang, striking and chiming time out of mind. How Engelbrecht avoids the k.o. nobody will ever know. Perhaps it’s the vivifying effect of all those dips in the canal. Anyway, he just manages to keep on his feet.
At the end of the ninth round the gang are just a tiny bit worried. It’s in the bag, of course. Their Clock is way ahead on points and fresh as the dawn, but they’ve counted on a knockout long before this. Still, the last round in a surrealist championship can last as long as the winning side likes, so they look fairly cheerful as they go into a huddle over some grand strategy.
Not so Lizard Bayliss, who is begging Engelbrecht to turn it in while he’s still got a few days left. “If you could see yourself, kiddo,” he says. “You’re all shrivelled up. You look a hundred.”
Just then one of the oldest of all the old-timers of the Surrealist Sporting Club hobbles over and plucks Lizard by the sleeve. “I’ve got a tip for you,” he says. “It’s a chance in a million but it might come off. Tell your man…” And he whispers into Lizard’s ear. Lizard nods and whispers it to Engelbrecht. And, whatever it is, it seems to filter through the state of dotage that Engelbrecht is now in, for he nods his trembling head.
They come out for the last round and pretty soon Grandfather Clock gets Engelbrecht tied up against the ropes and starts measuring him for the k.o. The door in his front opens and the weights and pendulum come out for the coup de grace when suddenly, Engelbrecht darts forward, dodges between the weights, jumps inside the clock case and slams the door to after him. The next moment a convulsive tremor passes over Grandfather Clock’s giant frame, an expression of anguish crosses
his dial, and he starts striking and chiming like fury, but the tone doesn’t sound like his ordinary tone. It sounds much more like hiccoughs.
Engelbrecht isn’t in there long but when he pops out he looks fifty years younger, and damme if he isn’t brandishing Grandfather Clock’s pendulum and weights above his head. This, of course, means that Grandfather Clock’s works are running wild, lost control. His hands chase each other round his dial and he ticks and strikes so fast it’s like a stick being drawn along railings.
Chippy de Zoete and Tommy Prenderghast are afraid he’ll run down and they chase after him, trying to wind him up and fit him with a new pendulum and weights, but Engelbrecht and Lizard Bayliss intercept and they’re all four milling round Grandfather Clock, when suddenly there is a terrible death-rattle, followed by a howl from Lizard Bayliss: “You’ve got him, kiddo! He’s stopped, I tell you! He’s stopped! The fight’s yours!” And Grandfather Clock, shoved this way and that as they mill round him, starts to totter and heel over. Then down he comes with a frightful jangling crash and Engelbrecht squats on his face and wrenches off his hands. The crowd goes wild and the sun turns black and all over the place clocks stop and time stands still.
Paul Bowles (1910–1999) was born in New York and from his late thirties to his death lived in Tangier, Morocco. Bowles first came to attention as a composer, writing music for various instruments, music for theatrical productions by Orson Welles and Tennessee Williams, and music for film and ballet, as well as an opera choreographed by Merce Cunningham and directed by Leonard Bernstein. When he was young, Bowles thought of becoming a writer but found more success with music. Inspired by his wife, Jane, an extraordinary writer herself, he returned in the 1940s to writing prose with the short stories that would become his most influential collection, The Delicate Prey (1950). After moving to North Africa, Bowles continued writing stories as well as his first novel, The Sheltering Sky (1949), which became a bestseller in the United States and the United Kingdom, and has remained in print ever since. His early fiction is richly informed by his travels to Mexico and Morocco, and it is mixed with a deep existentialism that sometimes borders on nihilism. (So much so that the British edition of The Delicate Prey, titled A Little Stone, did not include two of Bowles’s most famous stories, “The Delicate Prey” and “Pages from Cold Point,” because publisher John Lehmann was advised that if the stories somehow got past censors, readers would find them so repulsive that there could be a backlash.) Though his later work is masterful, he never repeated the popular success of his first books. “The Circular Valley” appeared in The Delicate Prey and various later selections and collections of his stories, including the two-volume Library of America edition of Bowles’s works. It draws from time he spent in Mexico before moving to Morocco and is a particularly fine example of a writer using fantasy to lend new power to a basic element of fiction: point of view.
THE CIRCULAR VALLEY
Paul Bowles
THE ABANDONED MONASTERY stood on a slight eminence of land in the middle of a vast clearing. On all sides the ground sloped gently downward toward the tangled, hairy jungle that filled the circular valley, ringed about by sheer, black cliffs. There were a few trees in some of the courtyards, and the birds used them as meeting-places when they flew out of the rooms and corridors where they had their nests. Long ago bandits had taken whatever was removable out of the building. Soldiers had used it once as headquarters, had, like the bandits, built fires in the great windy rooms so that afterward they looked like ancient kitchens. And now that everything was gone from within, it seemed that never again would anyone come near the monastery. The vegetation had thrown up a protecting wall; the first storey was soon quite hidden from view by small trees which dripped vines to lasso the cornices of the windows. The meadows roundabout grew dank and lush; there was no path through them.
At the higher end of the circular valley a river fell off the cliffs into a great cauldron of vapor and thunder below; after this it slid along the base of the cliffs until it found a gap at the other end of the valley, where it hurried discreetly through with no rapids, no cascades—a great thick black rope of water moving swiftly downhill between the polished flanks of the canyon. Beyond the gap the land opened out and became smiling; a village nestled on the side hill just outside. In the days of the monastery it was there that the friars had got their provisions, since the Indians would not enter the circular valley. Centuries ago when the building had been constructed the Church had imported the workmen from another part of the country. These were traditional enemies of the tribes thereabouts, and had another language; there was no danger that the inhabitants would communicate with them as they worked at setting up the mighty walls. Indeed, the construction had taken so long that before the east wing was completed the workmen had all died, one by one. Thus it was the friars themselves who had closed off the end of the wing with blank walls, leaving it that way, unfinished and blind-looking, facing the black cliffs.
Generation after generation, the friars came, fresh-cheeked boys who grew thin and gray, and finally died, to be buried in the garden beyond the courtyard with the fountain. One day not long ago they had all left the monastery; no one knew where they had gone, and no one thought to ask. It was shortly after this that the bandits and then the soldiers had come. And now, since the Indians do not change, still no one from the village went up through the gap to visit the monastery. The Atlájala lived there; the friars had not been able to kill it, had given up at last and gone away. No one was surprised, but the Atlájala gained in prestige by their departure. During the centuries the friars had been there in the monastery, the Indians had wondered why it allowed them to stay. Now, at last, it had driven them out. It always had lived there, they said, and would go on living there because the valley was its home, and it could never leave.
* * *
—
In the early morning the restless Atlájala would move through the halls of the monastery. The dark rooms sped past, one after the other. In a small patio, where eager young trees had pushed up the paving stones to reach the sun, it paused. The air was full of small sounds: the movements of butterflies, the falling to the ground of bits of leaves and flowers, the air following its myriad courses around the edges of things, the ants pursuing their endless labors in the hot dust. In the sun it waited, conscious of each gradation in sound and light and smell, living in the awareness of the slow, constant disintegration that attacked the morning and transformed it into afternoon. When evening came, it often slipped above the monastery roof and surveyed the darkening sky: the waterfall would roar distantly. Night after night, along the procession of years, it had hovered here above the valley, darting down to become a bat, a leopard, a moth for a few minutes or hours, returning to rest immobile in the center of the space enclosed by the cliffs. When the monastery had been built, it had taken to frequenting the rooms, where it had observed for the first time the meaningless gestures of human life.
And then one evening it had aimlessly become one of the young friars. This was a new sensation, strangely rich and complex, and at the same time unbearably stifling, as though every other possibility besides that of being enclosed in a tiny, isolated world of cause and effect had been removed forever. As the friar, it had gone and stood in the window, looking out at the sky, seeing for the first time, not the stars, but the space between and beyond them. Even at that moment it had felt the urge to leave, to step outside the little shell of anguish where it lodged for the moment, but a faint curiosity had impelled it to remain a little longer and partake a little further of the unaccustomed sensation. It held on; the friar raised his arms to the sky in an imploring gesture. For the first time the Atlájala sensed opposition, the thrill of a struggle. It was delicious to feel the young man striving to free himself of its presence, and it was immeasurably sweet to remain there. Then with a cry the friar had rushed to the other side of the room and seized a heavy leather whip hanging on the wa
ll. Tearing off his clothing he had begun to carry out a ferocious self-beating. At the first blow of the lash the Atlájala had been on the point of letting go, but then it realized that the immediacy of that intriguing inner pain was only made more manifest by the impact of the blows from without, and so it stayed and felt the young man grow weak under his own lashing. When he had finished and said a prayer, he crawled to his pallet and fell asleep weeping, while the Atlájala slipped out obliquely and entered into a bird which passed the night sitting in a great tree on the edge of the jungle, listening intently to the night sounds, and uttering a scream from time to time.
Thereafter the Atlájala found it impossible to resist sliding inside the bodies of the friars; it visited one after the other, finding an astonishing variety of sensation in the process. Each was a separate world, a separate experience, because each had different reactions when he became conscious of the other being within him. One would sit and read or pray, one would go for a long troubled walk in the meadows, around and around the building, one would find a comrade and engage in an absurd but bitter quarrel, a few wept, some flagellated themselves or sought a friend to wield the lash for them. Always there was a rich profusion of perceptions for the Atlájala to enjoy, so that it no longer occurred to it to frequent the bodies of insects, birds and furred animals, nor even to leave the monastery and move in the air above. Once it almost got into difficulties when an old friar it was occupying suddenly fell back dead. That was a hazard it ran in the frequenting of men: they seemed not to know when they were doomed, or if they did know, they pretended with such strength not to know, that it amounted to the same thing. The other beings knew beforehand, save when it was a question of being seized unawares and devoured. And that the Atlájala was able to prevent: a bird in which it was staying was always avoided by the hawks and eagles.
The Big Book of Modern Fantasy Page 3
