Those mountain dwellers practice beliefs recognisable as a decayed form of Buddhism and still hold with a doctrine of eternal return, which, given the many auguries of the apocalypse, would seem absurd. Though the most horrific omens – seething seas turgid with dead fish, howling dust storms, caustic rains which defoliate forests and ulcerate the skin – aren’t seen there, there are still portents – the mountain climate has not proved impervious to change: once-freak winter thaws, which cause devastating avalanches, are now common, and the shades of the air are perhaps even more garish there than elsewhere. It would seem mere obduracy, even in that haven, to deny history is at a close and claim the principle governing existence is cyclical. The creed, though, is less foolish, I have to own, than that of the age I was born in. It held sacred, against all evidence, the notion of ineluctable advancement, for nature, for organisms, for human knowledge; I can testify history does not move towards one great goal – from time to time things start over, and it’s back to square one. But the notion perpetual return governs existence is, while less idiotic than the teleological attitude, still entirely implausible.
The main reason, I suspect, the Himalayan faith has proved tenacious, where others have faltered, is that it doesn’t require a belief in a benevolent Omnipotence – life is too cruel for such a conviction. Indeed, now the world has waxed so desolate, so quiet, it seems to me, were there a deity, or pantheon of such beings, it would be possible to hear breathing in the void. It is not, so I can only assume either the Earth has been abandoned, or void was all there ever was.
The sun sets, and the sky grows dim. Looking out over the river, I see it glows like tarnished gold still, as if it has enticed and drowned straggling rays of daylight. I watch the corpses of rats, and feral cats and dogs float past, for a moment, before the water too darkens. Night lugs its bulk into the firmament and squats there, blotting all out. Then slowly opens its myriad eyes. A short while later the moon rises – waning gibbous, bloated, wan, and mottled, sickly. But bright enough to work by, so I set up the typewriter on my makeshift desk, a piece of driftwood resting on two oil drums, pull up my chair, an actual chair, plastic, that I found in the corner of a shipping container on board this hulk, and settle down to compose this prologue.
And now I can’t put it off any longer. I prevaricate only because I’ve no desire to relive the events about which I feel bound to write. But I must now send beaters into the brakes of my brain, flush out cowering memories. These fragments I will shore against my ruins. And so I begin.
That’s the Way to Do It!
As it had been a long and tiresome day, I went for a pint in the Saracen’s Head after work. The evening was cold and the breath of the few pedestrians fogged in the air. In the pub’s grate, a fire crackled; I was glad of its warmth. A quiz programme was showing on the television in the corner of the room, sound low, but just audible. The presenter, a clean-shaven, jowly old man, wearing a suit in a sheeny fabric, fired questions at a chubby young woman hanging upside down by her ankles from a contraption that looked like something the Inquisition might have used to torture heretics. Distracted by efforts to keep the hem of her floral dress clamped between her knees, she was struggling to answer the simple riddles the gamesmaster posed. Then the image cut to a shot of an audience member: a scrawny young woman, crying with laughter. Catching sight of herself on the studio monitors she shrieked, ‘She ain’t got no knickers on!’ A close-up on the contestant’s face, now flushed, followed.
While I sat sipping my lager and gawping at the screen, a bearded old man sidled up and perched next to me, in one gnarled fist, a pewter tankard of ale, in the other, an unlit cigarette, loosely rolled, shedding tobacco all over the table-top.
‘The wolves are coming back,’ he said, in a hoarse voice, knitting his brow.
‘Ah,’ I replied, noncommittal.
‘Mark my words, they’re coming back. You can count on it.’
In those days I hated to be accosted if it was a quiet drink I sought (now, of course, I pine for company, any company), so turned, meaning to rebuff him. But this, I saw, was unnecessary; he then seemed barely aware of me, ran his fingers through his hair, stared into his glass like a crone scrying in the leaves at the bottom of a teacup. Reaching under my seat, I took the novel I was reading, At the Mountains of Madness,1 from my bag, found my place, settled back in my chair.
I’d read six pages of the fastidious, yet overwrought prose, when I noticed an awed hush. Glancing about me, I found all gazes were fixed on the television set. The volume had been turned up, but not loud. Most of the patrons were motionless, their faces drawn and tense, though a couple of younger men at the bar mouthed, ‘Take the money,’ over and over, as if it were a petition in a litany. Looking up, I saw, on the screen, a young man standing before two plate-steel doors, supplicating the audience for help making a decision, while, at his side, the oily host grinned, rubbed his hands together.
At that instant, the reverent hush in the alehouse was broken by a loud shout. It was a colleague of mine, perhaps a little drunk, who had seen me through the open door. I turned, gestured, frantic, for her to be quiet, but she was unaware.
‘What’re you doing here?’ she called out. ‘We thought you’d gone home.’
Rapt piety disturbed, the regulars turned to glare. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the television screen; the male contestant, face twisted, bitter, was being strapped into what looked a dentist’s chair, by two lab-coated molls. I shook my head, then, pressing my lips firmly together, pointed at my mouth and raised my eyebrows. But to no avail.
‘We’re all just over the road in the Sheaves. Come on, join us.’
‘Why don’t you?’ the publican growled, from behind the teak bar. ‘Clear off.’
Abashed, I got up, crossed over to the young woman. Her name was Rachel. She took my hand in hers and looked up at me through dark lashes. Her greenish-grey eyes were startling. My chagrin waned, I bent down in mock gallantry to kiss her knuckles, was rewarded with a pert grin (when I think of that moment in these desolate surroundings, I am truly heartsick).
I followed Rachel across the street. We entered the Sheaves, a lively, noisy bar, with film and concert posters on the walls, and speakers in every corner playing loud music. I joined my coworkers. They were sat on sofas round a long table that looked as if it had been bought at a sale of second-hand school furniture: initials and expletives written on or carved into the timber. Rachel, who’d left the gathering to get money from a cashmachine, explained to the others how she’d seen me drinking in the Saracen’s Head. I greeted everyone, and they seemed glad to have me there. They shuffled up. Rachel motioned for me to sit by her.
We drank late into the night, increasingly soused, a binge. Rachel flirted with me, sitting close enough for her thigh to brush mine. Then, after the pub closed, the gathering dispersed. I escorted Rachel to the overground rail, we walked with our fingers interlaced. At the entrance to the station we parted, and she kissed me lightly on the cheek.
I didn’t have to wait long at my stop before a bus arrived, but it broke down before getting very far, on Mildmay Park. I was tired, very drunk, had the start of a headache, and longed to be in bed, so, in spite of the chill and the driver’s vow he’d have the engine fixed in no time, I decided to walk to Highbury Corner where several routes converged. The night had got even colder and now the air was heavy with damp; the streetlamps were hazed. Then, perhaps three or four minutes after I’d alighted, the bus passed by. A couple of teenagers leant out of a window to jeer. I swore bitterly. A moment later, I saw the sight that was to curse me.
On a Saturday afternoon, six weeks, or so, earlier, out shopping in central London, I was walking by way of Covent Garden from Neal Street to the Strand. On James Street, I was forced to weave through crowds of tourists queuing for cheap theatre tickets and watching street-performers bedizened as aliens, robots, classical statuary. Entering the Piazza itself, I heard, over the bustle, the harsh stridul
ation of a Punch and Judy man’s swazzle. It was some moments before I saw the booth itself, hunched in one corner of the square. Its chipboard surround was painted to mimic an ornate proscenium, two ivy-twined columns supporting an arch, keystone ornamented with a carving of Punchinello’s head, three cherubs, each cradling a lyre, perched atop, smirking down at the stage. The drapes around the fit-up were blue, not striped red and white as they usually are. A small group had gathered, elderly for the most part. There wasn’t a single child among them, which struck me as odd. I crossed over for a closer look.
The play was part-way through. Punch meted out blows to a portly man carrying a black doctor’s case.
‘I the medic now!’ screamed Punch, striking the other with his stick. ‘A littel of your own physic will do you a power of good.’
‘No more, I pray, Mister Punch,’ the good doctor pleaded. ‘I am quite cured now, I swear to it!’
‘Oh, but you still look peaky, you bad still. Physic! Physic! Physic! Physic!’
With each repetition of the word, Punch laid a blow on the leech’s cranium.
‘Mister Punch, no more. One pill of that physic is a dose, I tell thee.’
‘Quacky, quacky, quack, quack,’ screamed Punch, a berserk mallard, chasing the physician around the stage, administering a vicious pummelling.
‘A few more and you’ll not want curing again, quacky, quack, quack. Maybe you don’t feel the medicine inside?’
And with this, the hook-nosed hunchback poked the doctor, hard, in his vat of guts, and the man fell down dead.
‘Hee, hee, hee,’ laughed Punch, casting the body over the front of the stage. ‘Heal thyself now, if you can!’
The antic capering continued, the bloodless, but brutal cudgelling, as Punch beat to death: a horse, a rich man’s servant, a ghost, and a milk maid and her cow, a glum beast with dangling udders, which yielded to fate with a doleful low and a slow shake of its massive skull. Finally two lawmen, dressed in tricorner hats, frock coats, and pantaloons, entered, and, managing to dodge Punches swipes, seized hold of him and took him to court.
The play was violent and bawdy, the drubbings savage, the puns lewd – in court, the judge, a puppet with a sagging face, wearing the full-length wig, described the hunchback’s mistress, Pretty Poll, as having, ‘on many occasions, suffered a good length of rod.’ It definitely wasn’t suitable for children, it was good there were none in the audience. I was surprised no one complained, but all just gawped on, listless.
Following the trial, a guilty verdict was delivered. Punch, sentenced to death, was strung up on a gibbet by a hooded hangman, kicking and screaming to the last.
‘Surely some mistake. I no bad man. I was just having a littel fun!’
After Punch’s burial, the curtains closed. The rest who’d been watching shuffled off, but I hung around, intrigued to see the puppeteer behind the bizarre, archaic show. After five minutes, when no one had emerged from the fit-up, I walked round to the rear; the curtain there was drawn back, the booth empty; it seemed he or she had somehow slipped away without my noticing.
Over the next few weeks I saw the booth on a number of occasions, in various places around town. Mostly I ignored it, walked straight past, but occasionally I’d a moment to spare and stayed to watch the buffoonery. It appeared the puppeteer was following a script, not improvising; there were minor changes to the dialogue at each performance, but the order of events remained the same. I never saw the Punch and Judy man, he never came out from the fit up to take applause, of which anyway, there was only a smattering, never passed round a cap. The audience was always, aged, and I recognized many of the same faces each time. It was all odd, passing odd, but I never suspected malignancy (perhaps because I was preoccupied by work: it was busy at the office then). It wasn’t till the evening I, lacking patience, got off the bus, broken down but soon fixed, I realized a weird evil was at work.
As I strode, irked, through London’s night-quiet, heading for Highbury Corner, I saw a primly-attired old woman coming towards me down the centre of the road. She was walking along the broken white line like it were a tightrope: feet splayed, painstaking, arms flung out as if for balance. From time to time, she stumbled. Overhead, in a clear sky, hung a moon like a dollop of bacon grease in a black pan. I crossed over and, drawing closer, saw the old woman was in a stupor. She threw her head back, jaws agape, and screeched, in a tone that possetted my blood, ‘That’s the way to do it!’ It was then I recognized her as one of the wonted spectators of the Punch and Judy show.
Letting her go on ahead, I followed after, allowing myself to believe I acted out of kindness: not rousing her, lest the abruptness of her waking caused distress, but keeping an eye on her, ensuring she didn’t come to harm. Thinking back on things now, I realize my true motivation was less noble: curiosity.
The old woman walked on, south, back the way I’d come, her progress slow, halting. Due to the lateness of the hour, there were not many vehicles about, and the drivers of the few cars and vans that passed spotted her in time to slow, skirt round. As the warmth, if not the whirl, of the drink wore off, I began to shiver, my headache worsened. Looking at my watch, I saw it was half past midnight, heart of the witching hour. On Kingsland Road, I kept to the shadows, wary lest anyone see me creeping in the woman’s wake and presume my intentions were ill. Under the railway bridge near the junction with Old Street, a powerfully built man with close-cropped hair, dressed in a well-tailored suit, staggered out of a club. Sighting the old woman, he slurred a hail in an Estuary accent. Getting no response, he reached into his jacket, took out a gun. I stopped. Calling out again, he loosed off a round. The bullet caromed off the tarmac near the old lady’s feet. When she still did not react, he snorted, went back inside the seedy bar. My pent-up breath escaped me in a rush, and I ran to catch up with the woman.
She continued walking down Shoreditch High Street, turned onto Commercial Street, then stopped before Christ Church Spitalfields, stood looking vacantly up at the heathen obelisk that served as its spire. I also turned my gaze on it. It towered skyward to rend the veil of cloud shrouding the moon. Before, I’d remarked it seemed to bear down on an observer as if poised to topple; that night this caprice of perspective struck me as an ill augury (would that I’d listened to that mantic tremble and not followed the woman further). I concealed myself in one of the entrances to Spitalfields Market and watched the woman. She was motionless some time, then, with an agility and strength belying her seeming stiffness and frailty, hauled herself up and over the gate, dropped down, darted off, and disappeared out of view behind the church.
Running over, I too scaled the fence, though with greater difficulty than my quarry, and caught sight of her ducking into a mausoleum at the rear of the boneyard. I crossed the small cemetery plot, but paused, uneasy, if intrigued, on the threshold of the sepulchre. I stared up at the firmament hoping to compose and nerve myself by tracing patterns in the strewn disarray of the stars, but the sky was silted by the city lights, and only the very brightest of them were visible. But I found the mettle anyway, went in. Inside there were several memorial tablets and a marble sculpture on a granite plinth: a female angel in prayer, wings outflung, face raised to heaven. Water stains lined the statue’s cheeks, imparting a melancholy air to her devotions. In one corner of the sepulchre, there was an archway giving on to stairs going down into the dark. I descended and passed through a narrow entrance into a crypt. There was a sputtering taper set in a wall sconce that gave out a wan light, a large sarcophagus, whose stone surface was covered with intricately carved designs, and, in an alcove at the rear of the tomb, a pile of human bones, stacked neatly according to type: mandible with mandible, femur with femur, skull with skull…This arrangement struck me as antic, disquieting; some bones had fallen from the shelf and lay heaped on the floor – their confusion did not perturb half so much as the harmonious disposition of those in the nook.
And there was no sign of the woman. I was perplexed. I could a
lmost believe she’d lain down to rest on the jumbled bones piled on the floor, and, undergoing the processes of putrefaction and decay in an instant, been reduced to a tawny skeleton and lost among the other relics.
In all likelihood, I would have quit that place and returned home, had a rat not drawn my attention to a place of concealment so obtrusive, and so macabre, I’d not considered it. The rodent emerged, squealing, from a small crevice at the base of the sarcophagus. Upon closer inspection, I found a slight draught to emanate from the fissure and decided to try opening the stone coffin’s lid. I tried it, but it was too heavy to lift by hand. Realizing a tool of some kind was needed, I cast about and discovered, in a gloomy niche I’d previously overlooked, a crowbar. I supposed the elderly woman had moved the lid aside just enough to allow her to climb inside, chucked the crowbar into the nook, and, once lying prone, slid the lid back into place; a feat, though one she’d shown she’d the strength for, vaulting the churchyard gate.
Taking up the crowbar, I set to prising up the lid. Misjudging its weight, I was too forceful, and the slab overtipped, fell to the ground. There was a violent report, and the clay floor tiles crazed where it hit.
The sight confronting me when I leant over to look into the box confounded: a flight of stone stairs descended into abysmal darkness. At the centre of each step a shallow trough had been worn by the passage of many feet; they looked hands cupped to catch alms.
I can’t explain what I did next, save to say, intrigued, nerve bolstered by the drink still roiling my blood, I found it easy to deny my misgivings a voice; there was fanned within me a blaze of awe and curiosity that left fear and reason in ashes. Clambering over the side of the casket, I began to descend the staircase.
The Wanderer Page 2
