The Doubleman

by Christopher Koch

  Artemis, as Darcy had reminded me, was both virgin huntress and goddess of childbirth — her paradox symbolised by her plant, artemisia, whose juice is ‘the milk of the virgin’. Desiring to be untouched, she’d never marry; and yet Diana of the silver bow had been transformed into Diana of Ephesus. (‘The one with all the tits,’ Darcy said, and leered.) Like the fairy women of legend, she promised fruitfulness and ecstasy — but only at one remove, never in reality. And in Hecate, goddess of crossroads, the link with Faery became clear. The underworld that claimed Persephone, where Hecate nurtured the poppy, the flower of forgetfulness — wasn’t this also the Faery Otherworld?

  Very likely, Darcy said, since the Otherworld was the land of the dead; but weren’t fairies perhaps those spirits of the dead unable to leave the earth?

  ‘Have you ever seen a fairy, Dick?’ He demanded this seriously.

  I told him I’d had an imaginary companion as a child whom I’d thought to be a goblin. ‘He had a suit of dried leaves,’ I said. ‘I probably got him out of a storybook. I called him Pooka.’

  ‘Really? Now that’s very interesting, Dick. Have you heard of the Phouka? That’s his name in Irish. And his English name’s Puck — who lives in the forest, and has goat’s legs. And do you know who that is?’

  He paused dramatically. ‘Yair — he used to be called Pouk. But he’s not your Devil at all. He’s the old god of nature.’

  One afternoon, in a rash moment, I told him about my affair with Deirdre Dillon. I gave few details; I somehow felt that to reveal any intimacy to Darcy was to give him an advantage he might use. But he questioned me eagerly.

  ‘So she’s Bob Brennan’s daughter,’ he said. ‘Lots of money there, mate.’

  This brought me up short, filling me with disgust. We were no longer discussing Artemis; we were merely two poor young men in a menial job, gossiping of things beyond our reach, in our cave under the streets of the town; a town where Deirdre’s father was a merchant prince.

  But soon I’d escape; I’d reach Sydney within a few months, I resolved, even if it meant starving there. Then, Deirdre would become a reality.

  4

  I still went round to Lovejoy’s on most evenings, and we continued to have seances, always with Denise in our circle. I kept up my air of scepticism for a time, but it was more and more a pretence; I had entered a frame of mind where I assumed the spirits were real. I looked forward to each session with a secret, inward tremor, as though I were involved in a perversion that answered some need in me. I told myself it was mere curiosity, but it was more. I’d made contact at last with the unseen, I said. God didn’t reveal himself, but the spirits did, signalled always by the delicious and authentic sensation of cold, flowing over my neck.

  One night when Brian was out with one of his many girls, I found myself alone with Darcy, who offered me a cup of coffee. We went to his room, which I’d not seen before.

  It was upstairs at the back, and its single, tall old window looked out on to the clotheslines and brick outhouses of the Harrigan Street backyards, and the nearby red drum of the gasometer. But it contrasted strongly with these and with the jumbled shop below, since Burr had managed a sort of seedy elegance here, furnishing it like the den of an Edwardian gentleman, with a rolltop desk like Broderick’s and a leather couch. An old lute hung on the wall.

  I was particularly interested to see an array of pictures tacked to the pine wall next to the desk, where Darcy sat in a swivel chair — also like Broderick’s. Some were figures from the Tarot cards: the Fool, the Empress, the Magus. Others were pictures of fairies, taken from books illustrated by the Victorian and Edwardian artists I knew well: Rackham, Doyle, Dulac, Huskisson, Simmons.

  Following my gaze as we sat with our instant coffees, Burr said: ‘You probably know most of those fairy pictures.’

  I said I did, and went on examining them as we talked. One of them troubled me; it didn’t quite fit with the others. Then I realised that it wasn’t an illustration at all, but what appeared to be an actual photograph of a fairy.

  I peered more closely at this naked child with flowers in its hair, kneeling in grass, buttocks on heels, arms extended behind it in order to lean on its hands, its body arched; not quite child, not quite woman, neither sexual nor asexual. The face, turned slightly downwards towards the left shoulder, seemed to muse on something bewildering, something sad, locked outside life; and the grainy, ethereal quality of the black-and-white print almost made me believe that this picture, like the others, was Victorian or Edwardian; something from Sandy’s junk-shop. But the small, hurt mouth and the faint, injured-looking swellings of the early breasts had a remembered, worrying pathos. The circlet of flowers didn’t look festive; it might almost have been placed in her straight, grassy hair against her will.

  Turning back to Burr, I found him watching me, as always. ‘Her mother’s a drunk,’ he said softly. ‘Her old man ran off a year ago. Just like my bloody parents. Her teachers keep telling Sandy she’s got mental problems. But I know that’s bullshit. They don’t understand what she is. She’s really a changeling, Dick.’ His tone grew confiding and charged with significance, as though he tried to draw me into a crime. ‘That’s why the ordinary world’s too difficult for her; that’s why she knows too much. You should know about changelings. They ought to have a special meaning for someone who’s had Paralysis.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He must have heard the dryness in my voice, but his smile didn’t go. ‘You really don’t know? You’ve had Paralysis, and you don’t know what they used to do in Ireland?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘A hundred years ago, kids who had Paralysis were thought to be changelings. People said the fairies swapped the changelings for their true babies — so they’d throw the kids on the fire. The idea was that since they were fairies, they’d fly up the chimney.’ He chuckled. ‘You were lucky not to be born in Ireland, weren’t you Dick?’

  I stood up, and said I must go. I wanted to get away from him; to be gone from his room and his photograph, and the smells of mildew and gas.

  For a week after that, I didn’t see him. I didn’t call round to Lovejoy’s, and Burr didn’t come in to work at Varley’s. I was glad of it. The notion that he and I were kindred spirits had now become repugnant to me.

  Finally though, on a Friday, I went around to Harrigan Street again — mainly to see Brian Brady. It was a warm evening after work; late sun flowed into Sandy Lovejoy’s door, which was still open. There were customers: a man peering at a dressing-table; an old woman suspiciously turning over crockery. But no one was in attendance; there was no sign of Sandy, Brian or Darcy.

  I made my way through the corridor of wardrobes to the area at the back, beginning to suspect that something had happened, that things were no longer the same. I found Sandy sitting in his armchair, his brown felt hat on as usual, the dog Sarah huddled on his knees.

  He glanced up, but didn’t smile or move. ‘Hello, young Richard,’ he said.

  I asked him where Darcy and Brian were, and he shook his head as though I’d asked something in bad taste. The dog, in deference to her master’s mood, remained as still as he did, her muzzle resting on her paws; only her eyes moved, rolling sideways in my direction.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ Sandy announced. ‘Gone to Sydney, two days ago. Didn’t Brian contact you? He said he would, or else he’d write.’ His voice took on its old sing-song, almost accusing. ‘Well, what d’you expect? That’s what they’re like, those two. It’s off with the old, on with the new.’ He compressed his lips and nodded, glad that I must share his disappointment.

  ‘Why did they go so quickly?’

  He stared at me in silence, as though trying to formulate an answer, and I sat down on a bentwood chair and waited. Sandy was a talker; his grief and resentment wouldn’t let him be silent for long.

  ‘Just as well they went,’ he muttered finally. His mouth pursed, and I saw that he was fighting against grief, like a chi
ld meted out unfair punishment. ‘As far as Darcy’s concerned, it’s good riddance. I won’t miss him, Dick, even though he is my nephew. I knew he’d bring me trouble.’

  ‘What trouble?’

  ‘Young Denise,’ he said abruptly, as though we’d already discussed her. ‘I can’t get her to school any more, Dick. Not now he’s gone. She was always hanging around him.’ He shot a quick, apprehensive glance at me; then he stood up, holding the dog. ‘Come and see her,’ he said. ‘You might know what to do.’

  He led the way past the glass office into the ground-floor rooms at the back. We passed down a high, dark hall, and Sandy peeped around an open cedar door.

  ‘Here’s Richard come to see you, love,’ he said.

  But the invisible occupant made no sound.

  He jerked his head at me to go in. ‘She might talk to you,’ he said; and I went in ahead of him.

  The room smelled stale. It had a tall old wardrobe and an iron bed, and the window looked on to a brick wall. The child sat on the edge of the bed in the white nightdress she had worn at the seances, hugging herself with crossed arms. A plate with crusts of toast sat humbly on the bedside-table.

  She darted a look at me from under her thick, fair fringe, and I greeted her. Her mouth winced in something like a smile, and she threw her bare arms back and leaned on her hands. She suddenly looked older than twelve; there were shadows under her shifting eyes.

  ‘Hello Captain,’ she said, and licked her lips.

  ‘Well at least she’s talking now,’ Sandy said. ‘But why are you calling Richard Captain, dear?’

  ‘He’s the Captain,’ she said. ‘But he’s not the Prince.’

  She continued to smile at me, and arched herself provocatively, her small, sad paps showing through the nightdress like bruises. Then her face became expressionless; her head dropped, and she hugged herself again, beginning to rock to and fro. She said no more, but hummed a tune under her breath. I tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t speak again.

  ‘She’ll be like that for hours,’ Sandy said. ‘I can’t do anything.’

  He led me back down the passage to the shop. ‘It’s Brian I’ll miss,’ he was repeating. ‘He was a marvellous feller — like a son to me. But he’s off to lead the big life now, and not a bloody thought for what I’ve done for him, I suppose.’

  He sat down in his chair embracing the wriggling Sarah, who yapped protestingly, and his voice resumed its self-comforting sing-song. ‘Well, I still have my little dog,’ he said.

  Two days later, Deirdre Dillon’s final letter came. I found it in the post-box on my way out to work in the morning, and read it on the tram.

  When I got to the shop, I vanished into the basement, going deep into the tunnels between the pillars. Switching on one of the bare, dangling lights there, I sat on a crate.

  She had used the same blue notepaper as always; the violet ink.

  Dear Richard,

  We must stop writing. My husband is beginning to suspect something, and it’s not good for either of us — especially not good for you, darling boy.

  You have to forget me. I’m just a silly, ageing woman — so you should be able to manage without me. You’ll find some nice, normal young girl, won’t you?

  I shan’t write again. All my love always.

  Deirdre

  I put my face in my hands. I could hear Mr Pringle’s mincing voice, calling me from the top of the stairs. ‘Richard! Are you serving?’

  I didn’t want to leave the basement; I didn’t ever want to go above ground again.

  5

  There’s a state of peace following despair which is like the aftermath of an accident. It was in this state that I walked across Newtown on my last afternoon in Tasmania — making for Quarry Hill, through an afternoon of clear spring sun.

  Wielding my grandfather’s stick, which I’d need on the slopes, passing through districts of peaceful tedium, I was filled with wonder at the continuing calm of the world. Changed, I walked through all the small streets that were stitched into my spirit: rows of neat bungalows whose styles ranged from the leadlight glass and terracotta tiles of the Edwardian era to those weatherboard economy boxes of the Second World War which Karl Miller had despised — houses which were of no style, and shrivelled the heart. But I said goodbye to them all.

  I had decided not to wait; not to save any more money, but to leave for Melbourne. I had no further interest in Sydney, now that Deirdre was lost to me. Walter Thomas had recommended me to his Drama Department colleagues in the Melbourne branch of ABS, and this would be enough to give me a start as a full-time actor: or so I hoped.

  Half an hour later, toiling up a stony, deserted bush road between gum-covered slopes, I had reached my private hilltop, just beyond the limits of the last suburb: a place I shared with no one.

  Quarry Hill was one of the highest bordering the town: the first of the lower foothills of Mount Wellington. Its larger, olive-coloured brothers and the blue mountain itself rolled upwards to the west behind it, densely grown with gums, drooping grey she-oaks and gold-flowering wattle. Rising above an old quarry, it was made still higher by a great barrow on top: a sort of flat-topped earthwork like those of the ancient Britons, created over the last fifty-odd years from deposits tipped there by the quarry-men. A rough dirt road for their trucks ran to its edges; yet I’d never encountered a truck here, or a single human being.

  I limped up the last incline, panting, pushing heavily on my stick; then I was out on the open, grass-grown top: an area about the size of a football field, scattered with yellow everlastings and Scotch thistle. Halting on its eastern edge, I breathed in the air-currents of late afternoon; and a quarter of the quiet island lay at my feet. Southwards, the Derwent’s silver bends uncoiled towards the city and its port; on the other side of the valley of Newtown I could pick out the orange-tiled roof of my grandfather’s house. My spirits expanded; I threw my stick into the grass; I had a sense of liberation, as though I were flying.

  Quarry Hill was extraordinary: not just because it commanded all this beauty, but because of something else. There were fields of unknown force, unknown meaning, running through the body of the island. They gave to certain valleys, certain hilltops, a power and mystery that could plainly be sensed; that could almost be heard humming, like electricity. I had known of it since childhood; I even knew which points in the landscape were within its invisible tracks. There was no discernible reason why a particular hill, or a rise of dry grass to which a few last houses clung, should have this power. It was simply something that could be felt; and I had always had passionate prejudices about the landscape and its compass-points.

  The west had never invited me. There, hidden behind Mount Wellington, rolled the wilderness: five thousand square miles of majestically rotting rain forest: unexplored catacombs of Antarctic beech and Huon pine on which it rained and snowed eternally, its cold coasts unvisited, the long waves that rolled from Cape Horn booming on its empty beaches. The west was death. But the east was life: the mild, open east of farms and settlement. Out there, Mount Direction dreamed, its twin humps serenely enigmatic as ever; and the line of power ran straight across to them, and on to the eastern barrier of mottled ranges — cutting through the point where I now stood. That was the secret of the hill. Standing on the edge of its magic grid-line, looking north-east, I saw right to the centre of my mountain-haunted island: a hundred miles of green, farm-nested valleys, musing pastures and navy peaks. Neither Broderick nor Burr would ever know about this landscape, I said: this was a mystery of which they’d stay ignorant. I sensed something behind me, and spun round. I had a fear that someone was looking for me, following me.

  But there was no one here: no figure of retribution. Instead, I was confronted by what had happened to Mount Wellington, towering behind my back. The Organ Pipes, those fluted volcanic rocks on its pinnacle, were touched with pink; and the advancing sunset had deepened its colour to an astounding composite of blue and violet, deep as fatho
ms of water — so close, I could almost dive in. Nothing stood between me and those fathoms: up here on my barrow, I’d become the centre of some vast process of transfiguration.

  The island was saying goodbye to me.

  BOOK TWO

  The Abyss

  Nothing is more beautiful than a guitar — save perhaps two.

  FREDERIC CHOPIN

  In the fogs of that winter

  many hundred ships were sounding;

  the DP camps were being washed to sea …

  the misemployed, the unadaptable,

  those marked by the Abyss,

  friends who came out on the Goya

  in the mid-year of our century.

  LES MURRAY, Immigrant Voyage

  5. On the Arcade

  1

  Is there really some hidden significance in the number seven?

  It crops up again and again in the great ballads of Faery, those ballads the Rymers would revive and transform: seven sons, seven daughters, seven knights; seven years of penance; seven years of absence. Spans and combinations of seven were integral to the Faery Process. Seven was the number of years that Hind Etin kept his earthly mistress in Elmond’s wood. Seven years was the length of time the Great Silkie told his earthly wife to nurse his son, before he would return to claim him. A seven-yearly sacrifice of one of their number was made by the fairies to Hades; and seven years was the time that Thomas Rymer of Erceldoune spent in the Otherworld, with the Queen of Elfland. Yes, it was always seven years that mortals spent in that place, and always through wishing for what was forbidden — entering the spell which halts time, which turns reality to gauze, which thrills the nerves with a beauty dimly longed for and never found until now; a beauty like the inside of music, a dream that none could bear to wake from, but would wake nevertheless — to find reality shrivelled, savourless and dead. Seven was the penalty; seven was the payment; seven was the key. Pythagoras considered it the number most compatible with the Divine; and our bodies renew themselves every seven years.