The Paper Grail

by James P. Blaylock

  “Only what I found out after I looked into this sketch business. He was a photographer, mostly. Michael Graham’s … what? Grandfather?”

  “That’s it. He’s the connection. He was a member of Ruskin’s crowd, very pious and dissipated both. He spent a long time in the Holy Land, taking photographs in the name of God. Lived in a tower overlooking Jerusalem. Holman Hunt lived there off and on, too, along with a couple of other Pre-Raphaelites who had gone native. Now, what were they looking for? What sort of pilgrimage were they on? It was Ruskin that sent them, and it was a long damned way into a desolate country. They were all engaged in a search, a quest. What were they looking for, though, really? The answer to that question is the key.”

  Howard shrugged. He didn’t have the answer. “History has it that they were painting and taking photographs, that it was an artistic expedition.”

  “History,” Uncle Roy snorted. “You can have history. Don’t pay more than a dime for it, though, or you’ve been cheated. This Holy Land quest was passed off as an artistic expedition, but what it really was, was a modern-day crusade, and nothing less. And I’m not talking metaphor here. I mean what I say.”

  “What?” Howard said. “A crusade? In what sense? They were looking for the Grail?”

  Uncle Roy widened his eyes and blinked, laying his hands out in front of him, palms up, as if to say that he couldn’t be blamed for their pursuits; he was only relating what he had heard.

  “Did they find it?”

  “They found something, and brought it back, too. And let me clarify a few things. It wasn’t just industrialization that the Guild of St. George wanted to annihilate. They weren’t pitted against a generality or an abstraction. History has seen these lads as political and social failures—Ruskin and Morris and all the rest of them—and it’ll see us as failures just as surely. The work we do will have to be its own reward.”

  “I’d be surprised to find that history can see us at all,” Howard said.

  “Who can say? Anyway, and more to the point, half of their story has never been told. It’s too fantastic, too many high mucky-mucks brought low. Most of it was suppressed by people in power, who stayed in power, and later mapped out history in their own invented images.”

  “What did they find, then, Graham and Hunt and all of these people who went East? The machine?” Howard was anxious to drag the conversation back down to earth. He thought he knew the answer to the question, but he wanted to hear it from Uncle Roy himself.

  “The piece of paper. The sketch.”

  “The Hoku-sai?”

  Uncle Roy gestured. “There’s some that guessed it was a Hoku-sai. I don’t think so.” He squinted at Howard, like a man who had secret knowledge, smiling just slightly, like a moon man with a Mona Lisa grin.

  “You don’t think it’s a Hoku-sai? That’s what I understood it to be. It’s pretty clearly one of his sketches of the Takara-mono, the luck charms. And that’s what Graham told me nearly fifteen years ago, too, when I was staying up at his place. That’s what the hell I came up here for, to bring back a Hoku-sai sketch. Now you’re telling me it’s not a Hoku-sai at all? What is it, then? An imitation? A piece by someone nobody’s ever heard of?”

  “That’s a good way to put it. Exactly that Someone nobody’s heard of, just like you and me. Although the one who made the sketch wasn’t the imitator, he was the originator. And if Hoku-sai was influenced by it, well … what great artists aren’t influenced in one way or another? As for why Graham lied about it, he’ll have to tell you that much himself. That’s not my duty.”

  “Is it valuable, then?”

  “To a museum? How do I know? You’re the expert. It’s old—predates Hoku-sai by a long damned time. So it has a certain value as an antiquity. Now, you wouldn’t guess it to look at him, but Bennet is something of a scholar, in his way. He’s looked into this, gone to … sources. Bennet says this piece of paper was folded into the shape of a cup. Legend has it that it was inked with blood—not painted on, mind you, but splashed on. At Golgotha. It was smashed flat and smuggled out in someone’s robe, probably. Later when it was unfolded, it was found to have been … sketched, so to speak, with fundamental shapes. It could be folded again to derive other shapes, other pictures—a changeable pictograph, if you follow me. A sort of paper kaleidoscope inked with blood, entirely randomly. And yet the images that fall together are perfect representations of essential order.”

  Howard sat in silence, trying to process this notion, but it was bothersomely schizophrenic to him. Suddenly he understood that there were patterns, whereas before there had seemed to be none—patterns, perhaps, in the random wash of gravel on a roadside, in the placement of leaves on a tree and stars in the night sky. Messages spelled out in hieroglyphics by a flock of birds passing overhead, by the ice fragments in the tail of a comet.

  What was most puzzling and troubling was that Howard seemed to have been sent for. Finding the paper lily—had that been just a happy blunder, or had it been a mystically contrived step in a centuries-old process? And the dreams, the sketchy clouds full of suggestion, of travel, of compulsion. Even the signifying pelican …

  Uncle Roy stood up and peered out through the curtains at the street, as if checking just for safety’s sake before drawing them open. “Let me say that you can no more avoid all this, now that you’ve thrown in your hand with us, than a meteor can avoid the gravity of a nearby planet. And I won’t mince words. I won’t lead you down the garden. Men have died in this struggle. Those were real bullets this morning. Lamey and her crowd aren’t just a real estate cartel or something. What I’m telling you here is that you’re the innocent pedestrian stumbling into the territory of a feud. You think you’re selling encyclopedias door-to-door, and then there you are one day with a gun in your hand and a bunch of hillbillies spitting tobacco past your shoulder and calling you Brother Howard. Do you follow me?”

  “I think so. Maybe you shouldn’t tell me any more. If the sketch isn’t what I thought it is, then there’s nothing holding me here. I could drive back south.”

  “Nothing holding you here but a car theft and a gimp knee … and Sylvia, I suppose.”

  Howard’s face got hot immediately, and he nearly denied it. There was no point in denying it, though. Silence was better. There was too much going on right now, and no room for complications. Uncle Roy looked monumentally grave all at once, and said, “I’m going to ask you once more, nephew. Think everything through before you answer. Are you in or out? You could have sat it out down at Winchell’s this morning, eating glazed doughnuts and thinking about that goddamn museum job of yours. Maybe you still can. Maybe we can rig it to get you out of here. There’s sides drawn up, and when that happens a man’s either in or he’s out. There’s nobody left on the fence except the stupid man when the hurricane blows. What do you say?”

  Sylvia came in just then, along with Aunt Edith, both of them heading for the kitchen. Sylvia was dressed for work, wearing a sweater and jeans, her hair combed out and lipstick on. When she caught Howard’s eye, she smiled, glancing down at his knee and shaking her head, as if his shenanigans confounded her. There was a rattling of cups out in the kitchen, and then a moment later the back door opened and closed.

  “I’m in,” Howard said, after taking a look at Sylvia’s face. “Of course I’m in.” He felt at once relieved and at the same time like some sort of Secret Service agent heading out into the cold with only bits and pieces of information, because he couldn’t be trusted with the whole business. “So the sketch fell into Michael Graham’s hands, and Jimmers, we guess, is keeping it safe. I understand that. But how about the machine?”

  “Built by the Guild of St. George hand in glove with Morris and Company. It was invented by a Morris acolyte named William Keeble, who later became a noted London toymaker. The man had very exotic notions. That was a few years after these sojourns in the Holy Land, when the battle was heating up. The sketch had been hidden at Red House, Morris’ place at Upton
, in Kent, which was built for no other reason than to hide it, although that’s something that the historians won’t tell you, probably because they don’t know it. There was a well in the front yard, a slate-roofed brick well, very pretty. That’s where they put it-down the well, in a bucket. Philip Webb, the architect, designed the whole shebang. Anyway, it’s my belief that the machine finally was used to transport certain … valuable objects out of the reach of the enemy at the time of Ruskin’s death.

  ‘That was in 1900, of course. The man had been stone crazy for ten years. There was a crowd that tried to stop them from burying him in Westminster Abbey. You can figure out why. He was laid out, finally, at Coniston, in the Lake District, but just between me and you, he didn’t stay there.”

  “He left?”

  “There’s some question about where his bones ended up. There was more than one attempt to get at them—a couple just recently. But they haven’t been in Coniston for years. Never were, for my money.”

  Uncle Roy studied his fingernails for a moment, then said, “I got most of this from Jimmers, of course. And we both know what that’s worth. Could be end-to-end nonsense.”

  “Do we want the sketch, you and I?” Howard asked.

  “Best not to think in terms of ourselves.”

  “Fine. Practically speaking, though—do we want it? Do we need it?”

  “Not me, certainly. I wouldn’t touch it with a pole.”

  “How about me? I seem to have been invited up here to find it or take it or help protect it or something. I don’t know what.”

  Uncle Roy shrugged. “The old man might know. He’s probably fishing in the pond right now, trying to hook a salmon.

  Just as he said this, Howard became aware that his chair was moving. The air seemed full of a vague rumbling, and for an instant Howard thought that a truck was passing outside. Then there was the sound of the house creaking and of objects rattling in cupboards. The curtains tossed and coffee sloshed in a wave out of Howard’s still-full cup.

  “Earthquake!” Uncle Roy shouted, and he was up and out of his chair, weaving toward the nearest doorway as plaster dust rained down onto his head.

  20

  HOWARD stood up, testing his knee, and at that instant there was a second jolt, as if something huge had struck the earth. Howard sat down hard, holding on to the arms of the chair and expecting the roof to cave in. He staggered to his feet and tottered into a doorway, bracing himself against the frame. The old house swayed and creaked, crack lines shooting ominously across the ceiling plaster. Glasses clinked together furiously in the kitchen cupboards, and there was the sound of a cupboard door banging open and of something shattering on the countertop.

  Then it was over, and there was a dreadful, still sort of silence during which neither he nor Uncle Roy dared move. But the earth was solid. The morning had started up again. Outside, there was the sound of birds calling. A dog began to bark down the street. Howard stood up again and limped across to steady the chandelier, which was still swaying back and forth, dropping plaster dust from around the ceiling fixture.

  The dog quit barking. Howard and Uncle Roy stood still for a few moments, waiting for it to start up again, but there was nothing. Together they went into the kitchen. Lying on the countertop, having fallen out of the thrown-open cupboard, was Aunt Edith’s porcelain Humpty Dumpty, broken to pieces.

  “Hell,” Uncle Roy said softly, picking up the top of the thing’s head.

  “Super Glue?” Howard asked.

  “Could be useless in this case. Let’s keep the pieces, though, just in case Sylvia wants to have a go at it.” Silently they put all the pieces in a paper sack. “That was a good one,” Uncle Roy said, referring to the earthquake. “I bet it was a five or six. Epicenter was close, too. You can tell when they’re sharp like that. A real jolt.” They walked back out into the living room and sat down again, both of them edgy. For the space of a minute neither one of them spoke, then Uncle Roy said, “What the hell were we talking about?”

  “Fishing,” Howard said. “You told me that Graham spends his time fishing for salmon. How can there be any salmon in that little mud hole?”

  “There’s not now. In wetter years the pond connects by a tributary to Pudding Creek. Used to run the year round, and the odd trout could find its way back there. That was before all this drought. Anyway, that’s what he’s doing, whether there’s any salmon in there or not. He’s got used to fishing off the rocks below his place. Plenty of salmon out there in the ocean, or used to be. Fishing industry’s slow now, and going to get slower if all this offshore-oil nonsense starts up. That’s Lamey, too, and your man Stoat. She’s a hell of a squid, like I said—got a finger in every pie conceivable.” He shook his head, getting mad at the idea of Mrs. Lamey. “Anyway, used to be that the creeks were full of fish, back when they were full of water. Things change, though. Graham’s the man to answer your questions. He asked me just yesterday whether you were a man who liked to fish. Ain’t that something? Same question I asked you.”

  “Quite a coincidence,” Howard said.

  “Well, he seemed to guess that, about you being a fisherman. I’ll warn you, though, that talking with him is rough. He’s in and out, you know. Sometimes the light’s on and sometimes there’s nothing inside but a little flashlight bulb, sometimes outright darkness.”

  “In the cabin?”

  “Not in the cabin. In his head. He’s been going downhill pretty quick. He’s frail, like old cobweb. That’s one of the reasons he moved back into the woods, out of the họuse on the bluffs. His days had begun to look numbered. He was tired, worn out. The struggle had got too much for him. Just getting up and pulling on his boots had got too much for him. There was nothing left for him but fishing. Could be he caught something when he wrote that letter back to you. It took a while, but he’s finally reeled you in. He’s set the hook.” Uncle Roy winked at him.

  “Anyway, he’s been living in the cabin off and on for more than a year, although we tried to make it look like he was still in his house, out on the bluffs. They caught on that there was something up, and so Jimmers pulled the suicide gag. It wasn’t worth much. I would have done it different. Graham just wants some rest, and he deserves it, too.”

  Uncle Roy yawned and stretched. “I’m going to put in a couple of hours sleep,” he said, standing up and heading for the stairs. “Later on I’m going down to the harbor. Probably be there all day. Now that you’ve, ah … come to all these decisions, maybe you ought to mosey out to the cabin and have a confab with old Graham. You might get some answers. Then again, you might not.” With that he shuffled away up the stairs, but had gotten just out of sight when the back door slammed open, banging into the clothes dryer.

  “Father!” It was Sylvia, shouting. She ran into the living room, breathing hard.

  Howard jumped up thinking of the stolen car, the police, gunfire. He flexed his game knee. He could walk on it fine—a little stiff-legged, maybe, but …

  Uncle Roy appeared at the bottom of the stairs, ready for action. “What is it?” he asked, breathing hard. “What’s wrong?”

  Sylvia caught her breath. There was fear and grief in her eyes. “Graham’s dead.”

  Howard stood paralyzed, struck with the notion that the world had stopped spinning, that time stood still. He knew that on the instant everything had changed. A door had shut. Another had opened.

  “How?” Uncle Roy said, breaking the spell. “Foul play?” He pulled on his coat while striding toward the back door. Howard followed along behind. “Graham’s dead”—the words played through Howard’s mind like a closed-loop tape. He had heard the words more than once over the last few days, but now they signified—not only because this time it was true but because the truth had changed things.

  “No. I don’t think so,” Sylvia said. “We found him on the grass, sort of trying to sit up. He’d been fishing. We called to him, and he just … went. There was an earthquake; did you feel it? It might have been th
at, I guess. Maybe he was frightened by it. Except that he looked like he was in trouble before the earthquake, faint or something. I think he was dying when we saw him. That’s what it looked like. We tried to revive him—everything we could think of—but it wasn’t any good.”

  They hurried down the path, into the woods. The sun was up, but still below the tree line, and the woods were dark and dense. At least there was no fog. Within minutes they were there, at the clearing in front of the cabin. Howard must have gone far off course the other morning to have wandered for so long in the woods. The old man lay now at the base of the grassy hill, down by the pond. Aunt Edith knelt beside him as if guarding the body.

  “The king is dead,” Uncle Roy said quietly, standing over him. Clearly there was nothing anyone could do for him. His face was relaxed, as if he’d died in his sleep and was finally truly at rest. It was deeply lined, the face of a man who had spent his life on a sea cliff. Howard hadn’t realized that Graham was so old. He remembered him at something near eighty, still hale and hearty, sawing out rough planks with his chain-saw mill, running wheelbarrows full of cliff rock across the meadow. He looked frail now, and thin, although the lines cut into his face gave him a craggy sort of chiseled-out look, the face of a man sculpted by wind and ocean.

  Uncle Roy nodded grimly at Howard. “Let’s get him up to the cabin.” He bent over and latched on to the old man’s feet. Howard picked him up beneath his arms, surprised at how light he was. Gravity seemed to have given up on him already.

  They moved off, Howard walking backward and Uncle Roy redfaced and breathing hard with the exertion of it. Beneath where the body had lain there was an unseasonable scattering of white daisies, growing up through the stiff grass of the hillside as if a little fragment of spring had risen to the surface of the land where the old man had died. It smelled briefly like spring, too—like wildflowers on a breezy, sunlit meadow in April.

  Aunt Edith carried Graham’s cane, a gnarled piece of manzanita, polished to a deep bloodred and wet with dew from where it had lain in the grass.