The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  When the second beer arrived, Ercole sipped it and put it down. “Now I’ll tell you.”

  “Yes, all right. I shall have to leave at six. I have an appointment.”

  So after all Marthe (the “appointment”) would be his rescue. How very odd.

  “You’ll realize, I expect,” said Ercole, “I don’t have lodgings. I had a room, but then I didn’t any more. Sometimes I sleep in the old stables up the hill. But there’s a couple of horses there now, and they don’t like me about. So I find a corner, here or there. That’s how I saw it. Then again, y’see, I might have been the type to just sleep right through it, like most of them. It’s what’s in you, if you ask me, in yourself, that makes you wake in the night, about a quarter past midnight.”

  “And what have you seen?” Gregeris heard himself prompt, dutifully.

  Ercole smiled. He put his hands on the table, as if he wanted to keep them in sight, keep an eye on them, as if they might get up to something otherwise, while he revealed his secret.

  “The town goes away.”

  “You mean it disappears?”

  “Nothing so simple, Anton. No, it goes off. I mean, it travels.”

  * * *

  —

  Generally, I wake at dawn, first light, said Ercole. Like a damned squirrel, or a bird. Been like that for years. Sleeping rough’s part of it, but I grew up on a farm. It’s partly that, too. Well, when I woke the first time, which was about two months ago, I think it’s dawn. But no, it’s one of those glass-clear, ink-black summer nights. The moon wasn’t up yet, but the stars were bright, and along the esplanade the street lamps were burning cold greeny-white from the funny electricity they get here. Nothing to wake me, either, that I can hear or see.

  The moment I’m awake, I’m wide awake, the sort of awake when you know you won’t sleep again, at least not for two or three hours, and it’s better to get up and do something or you get to thinking. So presently I stand up. And then, well, I staggered. Which scared me. I hadn’t had anything in the way of alcohol for about five days, so it wasn’t drinking bad wine. And you can’t afford to get sick, in my situation. But then my head cleared, and I just thought, maybe I got up too quick. Not so young as I was.

  And then I go and take a stroll along the esplanade, like the leisured people do by day, which is when a policeman will generally come to move me elsewhere, if I try it. But no one’s about now.

  The sea is kicking away at the land, blue-black. It looks rough and choppy, which strikes me as strange really, because the night is dead calm, not a cloud. A sort of steady soft thin breeze is blowing full in my face from the mouth of sea and sky. It has a different smell, fresher, more starry bright.

  When I looked over, down to the beach, the sea was slopping in right across it. It wasn’t the tide coming in, I’ve seen plenty of those. No, the sea wasn’t coming in, falling back but constant, gushing in up the beach, hitting the lower terrace of the esplanade, and spraying to both sides. Drops hit my face. It reminded me of something, couldn’t think what. It looked peculiar, too, but I thought, after all tonight was a full moon and this moon would rise soon, maybe it was that making the sea act crazy.

  Just then, the clock strikes on the tower in the square. It’s one in the morning, and I can tell I’ve been up and about for around three quarters of an hour. That means I woke at a quarter past midnight.

  I mention this, because another time I was in the square and when I woke, I noted the clock. It’s always been that time, I reckon, that I wake, and the other ones who wake, they wake up then too.

  That minute, the first night on the esplanade, I see one of my fellow awakers—only I didn’t know it then, that we were a sort of select club. No, I thought there was going to be trouble.

  It’s a girl, you see, young, about 16, a slip of a thing, all flowing pale hair, and she’s in her nightwear—barefoot—walking slowly along the esplanade towards me. Her eyes look like veiled mirrors, and I think she’s sleepwalking or gone mad, and going to throw herself into the sea, and I’m asking myself if I should save her or let her do what she wants—have you got any more right to force someone to live that doesn’t want to than to kill someone?—or if I’d better just hide, because trouble isn’t what it’s best for me to seek out, I’m sure you’ll understand. Anyway, then she blinks, and she walks up to me and she says, “Where am I? What am I doing here?” And then I’m really scared, because she’ll start screaming and God knows what’ll happen then. But next she says, “Oh but of course, that doesn’t matter.” And she leans on the railing and looks out at the sea, calm as you please.

  The moon started to rise then. First a line like spilt milk on the horizon’s edge. Then the sky turns light navy blue and the disc comes up so fast it almost seems to leap out of the water.

  “I was in bed, wasn’t I?” says the girl.

  “Don’t ask me. You just came along.”

  “They call me Jitka,” she says. And then she says, “I think I looked out of the window at home. I think I remember doing that. And the hill wasn’t there. You know, the hill with the old palace on it.”

  I know the hill, because that’s where the stables are, my bedchamber of old. That big hill, about half a mile inland. Where all the historic splendour of the town is, the mansions and great houses and overgrown gardens of cobwebby, bat-hung cedars. And then the slums start all round it, either side.

  Gregeris mutters that he knows the area, he has his appointment near there.

  Well, I say to this girl called Jitka, “You’ve been sleepwalking, haven’t you? Best get back indoors.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” says Jitka. Not haughtily as you might expect, but kind of wistful. As if she’s saying, Just let me stay up half an hour longer, Dadda. But I’m not her father, so I turn away prudently, before I start trying to see through her flimsy nightie, past the ribbons to the other pretty things inside.

  Perhaps not very gallant to leave her there, but I didn’t go so far, only about 50 yards, before I find another one. Another Awaker. This was a gentleman sitting on a bench. He’s in his nightclothes too, but with a silk dressing-gown fastened over. “Good evening,” he says, and I can tell you, by day he’d have crossed the street not to see me, let alone exchange a politeness. But I nod graciously, and when he doesn’t say anything else, I walk on.

  The esplanade runs for a mile, no doubt you know that from that guide-book in your pocket. I amble along it, and after another few minutes, I see these two old ducks tottering towards me, hand in hand. He’s about 90 if he’s a day, and she’s not much less. He’s got on a flannel nightshirt, the sort grandfather would’ve had, and she’s in an ancient thing all yellow lace. And they’re happy as two kids out of school. We pass within a foot of each other and she calls out to me, “Oh isn’t it a lovely fine night? What a lovely trip. Do you think we’ll reach China?” So I generously say, “I should think so, lady.” And they’re gone, and I go on, and then I stop dead. I stare out to sea, and then down below the terrace again at the water rushing constant up the beach. What I’m thinking is this: But that’s just what it’s like, the way the waves are and the whole ocean parting in front of us—it’s like a bow-wave cutting up before a ship. A moving ship, sailing quite fast. But then I think, Ercole, you’ve got no business thinking that. And suddenly I feel dog tired. So I turn and go back to my place under the columns of the library building, where I’d been sleeping. I lie straight down and curl up and pull my coat, over my head. At first I’m stiff as a plank. Then I fall asleep. And asleep I can feel it, what I’d felt standing up when I thought I’d gone dizzy. It’s the motion of a ship, you see. Not enough to make you queasy, just enough you need to get your sea-legs. Then I’m really asleep. I didn’t wake again until dawn. Nothing up then, not at all. A street-sweeper, and a pony-cart with kindling, and then a girl with milk for the houses by the park. A couple of cats coming back from their
prowl. Moon down, sun up, rose-pink and blushing after its bath in the sea. That’s all.

  Gregeris says, “A memorable dream.”

  S’what I thought. Course I did. You don’t want to go nuts in my situation, either. They cart you off to the asylum first chance they can get.

  No, I went and scrounged some breakfast at a place I know, well, to be truthful, a garbage-bin I know. Then I went for my usual constitutional round the town. It was by the church I found them.

  “Found what?”

  Ah, what indeed. Sea shells. Beautiful ones, a big white whorled horn that might have come from some fabled beast, and a green one, half transparent, and all these little striped red and coral ones. They were caught in a trail of seaweed up in the ivy on this wall. People passed, and if they looked, they thought they were flowers, I suppose, or a kid’s expensive toy, maybe, thrown up there and lost.

  “Perhaps they were.”

  It didn’t happen again for seven days. I’d forgotten, or pretended I’d forgotten. And once when I went back to that church, the shells were gone. Someone braver or cleverer or more stupid and cowardly than me had taken them down.

  Anyway, this particular evening, I knew. Knew it was going to be another Night. Another Awake Night. I’ll tell you how I knew. I was at the Café Isabeau, to be honest round the back door, where the big woman sometimes leaves me something, only she hadn’t, but I heard this conversation in the alley over the wall. There’s a young man, and he’s trying to get his girl to go with him into the closed public gardens, under the trees, for the usual reason, and she’s saying maybe she will, maybe she won’t, and then I keep thinking I know her little voice. And then he says to her, all angry, “Oh please yourself, Jitka.” And then she says to him, “No, don’t be angry. You know I would, only I think I ought to be home soon. It’s going to be one of those nights when I have that peculiar dream I keep on having.”

  “Come and dream with me,” he romantically burbles and I want to thump him on the head with one of the trash pails to shut him up, but anyway she goes on anyhow, the way a woman does, half the time—if you were to ask me, because they’re so used to men not listening to them. “I keep dreaming it,” she says. “Five times last month, and three the month before. I dream I’m walking in the town in my nightclothes.”

  “I’d like to see that!” exclaims big-mouth, but still she goes on, “And seven nights ago, at full moon, I dreamed it. And I knew I would, all the evening before, and I know now I will, tonight. I feel sort of excited—here, in my heart.”

  “I feel excited too,” oozed clunk-lips, but she says, “You see, the town slips her moorings. She sails away. The town, that is, up as far as King Christen’s Hill. I watched it, I think I did, drifting back, like the shore from a liner. And then we sail through the night and wonderful, wonderful things happen—but I can’t remember what. Only, I have to go home now, you see. To get some sleep before I wake up. Or I’ll be so tired in the morning after the dream.”

  After she stops, he gives her a speech, the predictable one about how there are plenty of more sophisticated girls only too glad to go in the park with him, lining up, they are. Then he walks off, and she sighs, but that’s all.

  By the time I got round into the alley, she was starting to walk away too, but hearing me, she glanced back. It was her all right, even in her smartish costume, with her hair all elaborate, I knew her like one of my own. But she looked startled—no recognition, mind. She didn’t remember meeting me. Instead she speeds up and gets out of the alley quick as she can. I catch up to her on the pavement.

  “What do you want? Go away!”

  “There, there, Jitka. No offence.”

  “How do you know my name? You were spying on me and my young man!”

  Then I realize, a bit late, what I could be letting myself in for, so I just whine has she any loose money she doesn’t want—and she rummages in her purse and flings a couple of coins and gallops away.

  But anyway, now I know tonight is one of those Nights.

  In the end, I climbed over the municipal railings and got into the public gardens myself. There’s an old shed in among the overgrown area that no one bothers with. Lovers avoid it, too; there are big spiders, and even snakes, so I’m told.

  I went to sleep with no trouble. Woke and heard the clock striking in the square, and it was eleven. Then I thought I’d never get off, and if I didn’t I might not Wake at the right time—but next thing I know I am waking up again and now there’s a silence. By which I mean the sort of silence that has a personality of its own.

  Scrambling out of the hut, I stand at the edge of the bushes, and I look straight up. The stars flash bright as the points of gramophone needles, playing the circling record of the world. And now, now I can feel the world rocking. Or, the town, rocking as it rides forward on the swell of the sea. And then I saw this thing. I just stood there and to me, Anton, it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw till then. It was like the winter festival at the farm, when I was a child, you know, Yule, when the log is brought in, and I can recall all the candles burning and little silver bells, and a girl dancing, dressed like a fairy. That was magical to me then. But this.

  “What did you see?” Gregeris asked, tightly, almost painfully, coerced into grim fascination.

  It was fish. Yes, fish. But they were in the air. Yes, Anton, I swear to you on my own life. They were wonderful fish, too, painted in all these colours, gold and scarlet, and puce, mauve and ice blue, and some of them tiny, like bees, and some large as a cat. I swear, Anton. And they were swimming about, in the air, round the stems of the trees, and through the branches, and all across the open space of the park, about five feet up in the air, or a little lower or higher. And then two or three came up to me. They stared at me with their eyes like orange jewels or green peppermints. They swam round me, and one, one was interested in me, kept rubbing his tail over my cheek or shoulder as he passed, so I put up my hand and stroked him. And, Anton, he was wet, wet and smooth as silk in a bath of rain. So I knew that somehow, now, we weren’t only on the sea, but in the sea, maybe under the sea. Even though I could breathe the air. And I thought, That’s how those shells got stranded up on the church wall.

  Well, I stayed sitting there in the park, watching the swimming, stroking them, all night. And once a shark came by, black as coal. But it didn’t come for me, or hurt the others. Some of them even played round it for a while. No one else came. I thought, Jitka will be sorry to have missed this, and I wondered if I ought to go and find her, I knew she wouldn’t be scared of me now, and find those others I’d seen, the rich man and the two old sticks, and bring them here. But they’d probably seen it before, and anyway, there were other things going on, maybe, they were looking at.

  I suppose I drifted off to sleep again, sitting on the ground. Suddenly I was blinking at a grey fish flying out of a pine tree and it was a pigeon, and the sun was up.

  “What’s that?” said Gregeris abruptly.

  The clock in the square, striking six.

  “I should leave, I have an appointment.” Gregeris didn’t move, except to beckon the waiter. He ordered another brandy, another beer.

  “Go on.”

  After that Night, I’ve had three others. I’ve always known, either in the afternoon or in the evening, they were coming on. Like you know if you have an illness coming, or someone can feel a storm before it starts.

  Only not oppressive like that. Like what the girl said, an excitement.

  Only it’s a sort of cool green echo in your chest. In your guts. It’s like a scent that you love because it reminds you of something almost unbearably happy, only you can’t remember what. It’s like a bittersweet nostalgia for a memory you never had.

  Oh, I’ve seen things, these Nights. Can’t recall them all, that’s a fact. But I keep more than the others. They think they dream it, you see, and I know it isn’t
a dream. We’re Awake, and God knows there are precious few of us who do come Awake. Most of the town sleeps on, all those houses and flats, those apartments and corners and cubby-holes, all packed and stacked with sleepers, blind and deaf to it. Those buildings become like graves. But not for us. I’ve only met ten others, there are a few more, I should think. A precious few, like I said.

  Jitka and I danced under the full moon once. Nothing bad. She’s like a daughter to me now. She even calls me Dadda, in her dream. That was the night I saw her. I do remember her. Never forget. Even when I die, I won’t forget her.

  “The woman who was on the plinth,” said Gregeris, “where the statue was taken down?”

  Oh but Anton, she wasn’t a woman.

  “You said ‘She.’ ”

  So I did. It was the last Wake Night, when I woke up in the square. Something had made me do that, like it always seems to make me choose a different place to sleep, when I sense a night is coming. Full moon, like I said, already in the sky when I bedded down, just over there, under those cut trees that look like balls on sticks.

  And when I woke and stood up, I was so used to it by then, the movement of the town sailing, and the smell of the sea and the wind of our passage—but then the scent of the ocean was stronger than before, and I turned and looked, across the square, to where the plinth stood. It was draped in purple, and it was wet purple, it poured, and ran along the square. It ran towards the sea, but then it vanished and there was just the idea—only the idea, mind—that the pavement might be damp. You see, she’d swum up from the sea, like the fish, through the air which is water those Nights, and she’d had to swim. She couldn’t have walked. She was a mermaid.

  Gregeris considered his drink.

  I won’t even swear to you now, Anton. You won’t believe me. I wouldn’t expect it. It doesn’t matter. Y’see, Anton, truth isn’t killed if you don’t believe in it—that’s just a popular theory put about by the non-believers.