The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

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

  “Oh, a lot…” The young master didn’t pick up on the irony.

  “Nothing, nothing at all!” Conrad snapped. “For you, love ends at the point where it just begins for a normal person! Beyond the sea of tears, beyond those ‘ohs’ and ‘ahs,’ beyond the Weltschmerz, beyond the bullet in the skull, beyond the bleak poems and the weeds plucked in the meadow! That is where life is found—gray, boring, but real. More real than that love of yours!”

  “Enslaved to the world of things, you see not the world of loving…” The outraged poetic ghost of Fortunato set the wheels in motion, but Conrad immediately hit the Stop button.

  “Stop talking crap already! If you want to sigh and debate till the end of the world about whether something is friendship or whether it’s love, and write nonsense in ten…”

  “…nine…”

  “…however-many-canto ottava rima, be my guest! But touch my computer, my texts, or any of my private things again, and I swear, I’ll find your grave and I’ll organize wild orgies on it! Every week!” He banged his bony fist on the table and, for a fraction of a second, he saw stars. “Son of a…And then you’ll discover not one, not two, but dozens of faces of love that you’d never have dreamt of! Now get out of my sight!”

  “Happy to oblige!” His pride greatly and palpably wounded, with a flutter of his tailcoat, the young master marched out of the library at what was in principle a dignified pace, right in front of the workers.

  “Look at this guy! He’s wearing gaiters!”

  “Ha, what a freak! Hey, mister, you dropped your parchment!” came the voices down the corridor.

  Conrad tensed his muscles and flung the door closed with relish.

  By the time he’d managed to placate his agent with fairly tortuous explanations and a copy of the correct text that he had prudently saved on a pen drive, it had grown dark and silence had fallen on Bugaboo Hole. With nothing more to lose and nothing better to do, Conrad dug out the final bottle of last year’s quince liqueur and got absolutely hammered. Just before dawn, genuinely worried, Bugaboo found him sleeping under the library table and somehow dragged him to the bedroom.

  * * *

  —

  “Shepherdess from a celestial village, she bears a sheaf of flowers and wears an angel’s visage…”

  Conrad, who was clutching a big bowl in his arms, Bugaboo, who was sitting on the cupboard slowly sprinkling grated lemon peel, and Crackers, who was whipping cream enthusiastically, froze like a culinary Laocoön group.

  “Flighty, free as a butterfly…An enchanted princess floating by,” continued Fortunato, who had been loitering beside the kitchen window since morning, attached to the glass like an overgrown sucker fish. Outside, the renovation crew were packing up their gear into a battered Beetle, but that wasn’t what had caught the young master’s attention.

  From the other direction, a piece of the landscape was approaching along the sandy road.

  “Holy shit, it’s Birnam Wood…” said Conrad.

  “No, it’s Marianne,” said the angel. “We’re starting the clean-up today. Keep going, Crackers, or the cream will curdle.”

  “You know her?”

  “Uh-huh.” Bugaboo stuck his finger in the cream and licked it with visible pleasure. “Since she was little, achoo.”

  The girl wobbling on the bike had already reached the house. On her head was a straw hat with a wide brim, and from under the hat trailed two thick, untidy braids. She wore a soft, shaggy, bluish sweater and shockingly tight-fitting green leggings. The look was completed with pastel flowery sneakers and a heavily-worn artificial leather backpack.

  With the grace of a ballerina afflicted with gout, Marianne jumped down from the saddle and, demonstrating the full extent of her figure, trudged across the veranda and up the hall, straight to the broom cupboard under the stairs.

  “A luminous face, lips like corals!” The young master was enraptured. “An angel…”

  As one angel, extremely streamlined in certain places, squeezed herself into a housecoat and headed off to the bathroom with a bucket, the other brushed the remains of the lemon peel from his hands.

  “Ah-choo!” This time he wasn’t sneezing, but chasing Dammit away from the tin of cocoa. “Hallelujah, where are the sponge fingers?”

  A tentacle crept out from behind the cat flap and handed him a rustling packet. The young master, meanwhile, was sighing like a broken steam engine, his eyes bulging as he gazed in Marianne’s direction.

  Something idea-shaped sprouted in Conrad’s mind. No, it was too obvious to work. Definitely. In any case, surely one of the other owners of Bugaboo Hole had already come up with this idea and tried to implement it. Unsuccessfully, since the ghostly master was still lurking around the house. On the other hand, Conrad’s train of thought continued, the simplest solutions are often the hardest to find, and yet they turn out the best, because they’re almost impossible to screw up. The idea put down roots reaching at least as far as the Earth’s core and briskly started to form buds.

  The recently washed windowpane was completely steamed up from Fortunato’s unrelenting sighs. Finally, he peeled himself away from the window and drifted out of the kitchen like a sailboat, down the hall, where the shepherdess from the celestial village otherwise known as Marianne was wetting and vigorously wringing out a rag of undefined hue.

  The round-the-clock ban on entering the library had proved to be a very severe punishment for Fortunato, even though it had lasted only four days; much more severe than the password that blocked access to the laptop, or the meticulous paper rationing. As a result of this repression—yes, repression, because after all, only culprits are punished—the young master was bored to tears. And what was worse, he was bored ordinarily, prosaically, and very much not of his own free will—in other words, completely differently than usual. The silly, guileless Bugaboo had proposed games of pick-up sticks or dominoes, and Crackers had suggested freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies, as if vacuous play and titbits could replace the lost pleasure of reading. Posthumous life without books was an unimaginable torment.

  Until She appeared—“She” spelt with a big, curvy S.

  With his spirit in the clouds and his body on the stairs, Fortunato watched as his angel made of rainbows and alabaster climbed the ladder to remove the dirty shades from the chandelier. Conrad emerged from the kitchen smeared in cream and clenching a cup of steaming coffee.

  “How are you doing?” he asked as innocently as he could.

  “Violently beats my heart, my breath is fast of pace, sparks shoot through my pupils and pale is my face…” the young master mumbled.

  “Yes, I can see that. Listen…Do you ever get the feeling that fate is calling you? That some power, a supreme being, an emanation of…er…the Absolute is watching your life and…”—he racked his brain, unused to spinning this kind of nonsense—“…guided by some unfathomable whim…”—oh yes, that was good—“…has decided to give you one more chance?”

  “You couldn’t have put it any simpler, huh?” The higher power snorted with laughter. “When on earth will you humans learn to concoct a plan with an ounce of professionalism…”

  But it was enough for Fortunato, who had less exacting standards. Almost bursting with euphoria, he fixed his sparkling eyes on Conrad.

  “Ah, my savior!” he cried. “I have found the soul of the lover lost centuries ago, clothed in a new and graceful body! Oh, kind fate! Hope hath returned to my aching heart!”

  “So what are you waiting for? Run upstairs, take a few sheets from the desk and write an ode or a sonnet. The girls of today just love that romantic schmoozing…” Conrad watched as the young master dashed up the stairs. “No, this is far too easy…” he said under his breath.

  “Yup,” the higher power agreed. “Fortune favors fools.”

  * * *

  —

&nb
sp; “This is the way we wash the floor, wash the floor, wash the floor, this is the way we wash the floor, all day long.” Marianne was on her hands and knees, singing and scrubbing the floor with a heavy rice-root brush. The mop—the invention of an eternally lazy humankind—had proved incompetent when confronted with the layer of dirt that had accumulated during the renovation.

  The little turret room was already sparklingly clean, as were the master bedroom and the neighboring rooms on the first floor. Just the corridor to go, and then she could start cleaning the ground floor. There was no sign that the peace and quiet she’d enjoyed for the last few days was going to end. Nor was there any indication of the nightmare that was about to unfold.

  “This is the way we wash the floor…” She sang the same lines over and over, as she couldn’t remember how the rest of the tune went. She was retreating inch by inch toward the stairs, shuffling the brush in her wake and spraying copious amounts of soapy liquid. This method was working pretty well until Marianne hit something with her indecorously protruding rump. She turned around.

  At first, she saw the highly polished slippers, and surrounding them, leaves, petals, and other little scraps, including a fair bit of dried mud. Something in her, deep inside—in her soul perhaps, or in the region of her stomach—grated. She raised her head and took in the blue pants and tasteful tailcoat, the vest as yellow as a fluorescent marker pen, and the huge bunch of flora that the autumnal weather hadn’t managed to kill off.

  “A woman is born slave to the stars and flowers,” the young master began, thrusting the drooping, floral-leafy composition toward the girl. There were even a couple of nettles sticking out of it.

  Marianne blinked.

  Fortunato sighed. He realized he needed to express himself a bit more clearly, more directly—after all, the lass was a little on the simple side.

  “At my first sight of thee, my heart burst into flames,” he declared passionately, “as my curious eye beheld the acquaintance I have yearned for.”

  Marianne blinked again. She was a bit uncomfortable, on her hands and knees like that, with her bottom in the air and her neck strangely twisted, but she was afraid to move in case the young master became even more animated. Because you never know what kind of crazy ideas a freak like that could have. He could start foaming at the mouth any minute. It wasn’t the first time she’d been to Bugaboo Hole, but up until now, fate had spared her any close encounters with Fortunato, who very rarely left the library, except at night. But Momma always said that every dog has its day, and hey presto, this was Marianne’s day, though she was no dog…and she could swear she’d seen a cat round here earlier. Here she was, standing face-to-face with the deranged master—or rather, buttocks-to-face.

  “Though clothed as…er…a cleaner, ’tis clear that you’re a queen! Allow me, gracious maiden, to recite a few stanzas that I have composed for this momentous occasion. Though your ears are unworthy, the words shall pass directly to your pure, crystal-clear heart!”

  Queen Marianne, the gracious maiden, having basically no other choice, went back to her scrubbing—the cleaning wasn’t going to do itself, and it seemed so much safer than trying to establish a dialogue with a maniac in a tailcoat. After a moment of consternation, Fortunato, having no other choice either, thrust the bunch of flowers under his arm, yanked a thick wad of paper from his breast pocket, unfolded it and began to read out poem after poem.

  The girl scrubbed, the young master recited, the bunch of flowers got steadily crushed, and in this way, slowly, unhurriedly, they traversed the length of the corridor, the stairs, and the hall, all the way to the kitchen.

  * * *

  —

  Bugaboo’s mind wasn’t the sharpest. In fact, he was quite blunt across the board; but the mind, in particular, came in handy for life on Earth.

  It had actually been quite easy to convince him that Marianne would manage to clean the house without the slightest bit of help. With no major protest, he’d put on his rubber boots and a waterproof cape large enough to cover his wings and gone for a long walk with Conrad in the surrounding woods. Busy collecting bolete mushrooms and keeping an eye on the inquisitive Dammit, who had decided to accompany them, he hadn’t noticed that Conrad was incessantly looking around for something.

  But after four days in a row of these walks, Bugaboo became suspicious. He’d never felt this way before, he’d had no practice, so he concentrated on hunting boletes with great reverie. Finally, though, he plucked up the courage and decided to act.

  “You’re up to something, hallelujah,” he said to Conrad, who had just emerged from some badly tangled undergrowth. Bugaboo tried to give the impression of being very pained and resolute at the same time, though he hadn’t taken into account the fact that his appearance was getting in his way a little. True, the cape concealed his wings very well, but apart from that, it was far too big for one small Bugaboo. He resembled a miniature, red paraglider in rubber boots, with a wicker basket and a hood that was far too big and kept falling down over his nose. On the plus side, at least he’d rolled up his sleeves.

  “Why do you think that?” asked Conrad, feigning surprise, as he tried to free his pants from an exceptionally stubborn blackberry bush that seemed to have been deprived of human contact.

  “You won’t let me clean; you’re making me wander around the forest picking mushrooms.” There was a shy reproach in the angel’s voice.

  “Yes, based on the simple assumption that we won’t be able to find them in winter.”

  “But you’re looking for something. Other than mushrooms, hallelujah,” Bugaboo added. “And I think you might be pulling my leg.”

  Suddenly, lying to the runny-nosed Bugaboo seemed to Conrad the ultimate dirty trick.

  “Fine.” He extricated his foot from the rapacious plant’s embrace. “I’ll tell you. But don’t breathe a word to anyone, got it? It’ll be our secret; you have to promise!”

  “I promise, achoo.”

  “You see, my dear Bugaboo, I’m trying to find Fortunato’s grave.”

  The angel raised his drooping hood.

  “What for?”

  “Er…I promised him I would.” He was telling the truth, after all. Not the whole truth, but it was the truth. “I promised him that I’d find and…take care of…his grave…”

  Bugaboo smiled from ear to ear.

  “But it’s somewhere else entirely. Over there,” he pointed, “a little way off the road, between some birch trees. I’ll take you there and we’ll finally be able to get down to some good cleaning, hallelujah!”

  It took them much less time to reach their destination than it had taken to fetch Dammit down from the tree that she’d rashly decided to climb, forgetting that she was more of an ornamental, sofa-dwelling cat, and that tree trunks don’t have stairs, only weird branches. The sorry remains of the village cemetery were fairly inconspicuous, and Conrad would have had great difficulty finding them without the angel’s help; he’d probably never have reached the small, sunken, unfrequented grave of the unfortunate young master. The faded letters were unreadable now, and an unpleasant rain had begun to fall.

  “Achoo. My boots are full of water,” Bugaboo complained.

  The cat peeped out from under his unbuttoned cape. She meowed in a firm protest against the abomination falling from the heavens. He had no choice; Conrad ordered a return home.

  * * *

  —

  Bugaboo Hole was covered in fungus. Dozens of strings of drying mushrooms were hanging beneath the eaves. In a pot on the stove, a mushroom stew with garlic and cream was bubbling quietly. The table and the wide windowsill were filled with jars of marinated boletes. The latest basket of mushrooms had sent Crackers into a nervous tremor of tentacles.

  And it was mushroom soup for lunch again.

  The shivering angel toddled into the kitchen in his carpet slippers and fla
nnel robe and sat down to eat, sneezing repeatedly.

  “Bon appétit.” Conrad grimaced, pushing the plate away from him discreetly. “Do you want my portion?”

  A menacing gurgle came from the pantry.

  “Sorry, Crackers. You cook really well, honestly, but I can’t take any more mushroom soup. I feel sick at the very thought of it.”

  “Hell, you picked them yourself,” said Old Harry between one spoonful of soup and the next. He didn’t mind one bit whether he’d been eating mushroom soup for a week, or even two. His belly was full, that’s all that mattered.

  “Because I like picking them, not so much eating them…Oh, thanks.” A tentacle passed Conrad a bowl of instant borscht.

  Emptying his second bowl, Old Harry scowled at Bugaboo, who was tackling the dishes. He waited for the angel to finish and leave the kitchen, and only then did he speak up.

  “Mr. Romanchuk, what are you schemin’?”

  “Why do you think I’m scheming something? Why have you all got it in for me today?”

  “Don’t play the innocent.” Old Harry threatened him with a spoon. “You been draggin’ Bugaboo around them woods, sendin’ me into town for various bits of crap, so Marianne’s here on her own day after day.”

  “She’s not on her own!” Conrad snorted.

  “Exactly! Worse than on her own, she’s with Fortunato! You seen how he traipses round after her?”

  “Okay, so he’s traipsing around—so what? Like that’s something new, a boy pursuing a girl! Big deal! What is he, a leper, isn’t he allowed to go after a girl?”

  “Don’t you have no conscience? He’s tormentin’ her! Spoutin’ some kind of rubbish, bringin’ in them weeds from the field, not to mention the mud…” He broke off suddenly. His sweaty face showed his intense thought processes. “It’s the same thing all over again…”