The Smell of Telescopes

by Hughes, Rhys

  I retreated as he explored the room, altering the angles of objects and rearranging ornaments. He was dressed in a flamboyant style, antique cane grasped in one hand as he poked among the papers in my bureau. Then he was fiddling with the radio, losing the station I had found with such difficulty. I viewed his waistcoat, with its amethyst buttons and dragon motif, in a kind of numbed astonishment. In his other hand, he carried a wooden box of exquisite workmanship which he laid on the mantelpiece. He briefly surveyed the kitchen and bedroom before returning to confront me with the results of his investigation.

  “Ah, so this is a typical English residence?”

  The question confused me. “Well, yes, I suppose so, but most people don’t live in them.” Aware I had contradicted myself, I began stuttering my way deeper into absurdity. “They have cottages elsewhere like this or different which are quite as typical.”

  “Your wife blends well with the décor, but you are anomalous. Tweed suit and spats would be preferable, though your head catches reflections in an unfortunate way. I have a patent medicine for your stammer. Pay me later, if you like. I’m very thirsty.”

  Emily was more composed. “Dr de los Rios, I presume?”

  “One and the same, Señora. Now where’s the wine?”

  Carefully testing the chairs with his hand, he selected the most comfortable and pulled it close to the fire. He removed his boots and rested his heels on the warm hearth, wriggling his toes in ecstasy.

  I hastened to fetch a bottle of 1985 Le Montrachet from the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, a top white burgundy. Following the pastor’s advice I had stocked up on all kinds of expensive consumables, travelling daily to a delicatessen in Coxwold. I poured the nectar and our saviour gently pushed his nose into the rising fumes.

  “A little young for me. Do you have anything else?”

  My jaw slackened, but I procured an alternative, a cobwebbed bottle of Château Latour 1961. After a careful sip, he exhaled despondently. “I still rate sherry as the finest wine.”

  I controlled my anger and resisted a temptation to break the bottle over his skull. These two wines, together with a Krug 1949, Château Haut Brion 1945 and fin de siècle armagnac brandy had almost crippled my bank balance, to say nothing of the Monte Cristo cigars and Edam cheeses with chives. But for the sake of my manhood, I would have to agree with every one of his opinions, however mistaken.

  “Did you enjoy your flight?” Emily asked.

  The doctor plucked thoughtfully at his forked beard. “Travelling by air is the root cause of much disease, Señora. Consider the case I had a year ago: a balloonist fell to his death over Cádiz and broke a fountain in a square. From that instant, the buildings were terrified of airborne objects, shivering every time a cloud passed overhead. Social disruption was considerable; the citizens were disadvantaged. I treated this phobia with lengthy sessions of psychotherapy. Cádiz regained its senses and is now a liberated and ambitious locale.”

  “We hope you’ll be equally successful here,” I said.

  He dismissed the tremor in my voice with a wave. “I’ve cured worse. Allow me to describe the plight of Doña Micaela Valverde, a woman with a passion for cadavers. She visited mortuaries to stare at them, sometimes to take darker liberties. But as with all addictions, tolerance built up until she became immune to death. She kept growing older, but her mortal coil was too tangled to shed. I eased it off with a parsley compress and skeleton-keyhole surgery. I’m clever!”

  “Perhaps you can examine my wife now?” I suggested, feeling sure he would grumble at having to go to work.

  To my surprise, he acceded. He rose from the chair, fumbling in his pockets for a stethoscope. After listening to Emily’s inner workings for a suspiciously long time, he chuckled.

  “What was the name of your lover, Señora?”

  “The shameless wench didn’t even learn it,” I muttered.

  Emily told him the whole story, including details she had kept from me, and Dr de los Rios nodded smartly.

  “I know the fellow in question. He is Juan Chinelato, a gambler and wrestler who has a mysterious power over butterflies and ladies. He does this kind of thing on a regular basis, seducing innocent girls and dying in their arms, to ensure his rebirth.”

  This news cheered me up. It seemed to indicate that Emily wasn’t in possession of her senses when she committed her treason. But she quickly dashed my hope. “I was quite willing!”

  “Maybe so,” the doctor conceded. “But the point is that he won’t be easily enticed out of your womb. It’s a matter of resurrection and every time he’s reborn he enjoys life more.”

  “What a decadent upstart!” I blurted. “A total cad!”

  “Quite so, Señor, but he adds colour to Toledo and is tolerated for that reason. His wife disapproves of his behaviour, they argue and smash plates but she always takes him back.”

  “She’s welcome to him! What an extreme philanderer!”

  “Calm yourself, Señor. Her name is Tia Mariquita and she lives in a house that coughs. There is no other female willing to accept the foetus once it is extracted from your bride.”

  “Tell me your plan, doctor. How can you remove him?”

  “He is quite comfortable inside Emily. He must be lured out with an irresistible temptation. He is fond of butterflies; we’ll capture one in a jar and parade it in front of your wife’s womb. If the example is good enough, he’ll bound through her abdomen to inspect it more closely. Once he’s inside the jar I’ll screw down the lid and carry him back to Toledo where he can be transplanted into Tia Mariquita. It’s not the first time she’s been pregnant with her husband.”

  Emily was dubious. “Trap a phantom in glass?”

  “Of my own manufacture,” Dr de los Rios explained. “Holy water ice, shaped accordingly. A barrier to spectres.”

  I was eager to search the garden immediately for a suitable insect, but our visitor discouraged me with a yawn.

  “It’s too late tonight, Señor. In the morning, I will assist you. I am exhausted and need sleep. Escort me to the double bed, if you please. You may take the sofa near the grate.”

  Emily supported him out of my sight while I fumed at his insolence. When he was on the threshold, I approached the mantelpiece and picked up the box he had left there. It was heavy and satisfying to the touch, but served no evident purpose. I sent my voice after him; it turned into the bedroom. “You’ve forgotten something.”

  “The box? No, Señor, that is your wedding present.”

  Emily returned, having tucked him up. “What a nice gesture! What do you think is inside? Open it, Joseph.”

  I shook my head. “It’s inappropriate. When this horrendous business is all over, I’ll be happy to accept the gift. Until then, the box stays locked. For the sake of our marriage.”

  We snuggled up on the sofa, but our embrace remained chaste. Dreams did not come, nor an untroubled sleep; I lingered in a state between the worlds, my head throbbing, my manhood cowering. I grew nervous and paced the room, waiting for the first stars to fade and take my cowardice with them, to the other side of the planet.

  It was dawn. I descended into the garden and wasted my time chasing butterflies. Despite his promise, Dr de los Rios did not help, and Emily was almost as useless, sitting on the grass and reciting the Latin names of those which fluttered out of my clumsy fingers. When she tired of the sport, she slipped indoors to attend to the doctor, who was shouting for his dinner. I was resigned to becoming a pauper, and the enormity of his appetites was shocking to the eye as well as the purse. His waistcoat tightened hourly.

  A similar routine was observed the following day and though I honed my skills to the point where I caught a dozen Cabbage Whites, the doctor adjudged them too bland to interest the spirit and I set them free. What was required, according to Emily, was something more colourful, a bright Danaus plexippus, Nymphalis antiopa or Apatura iris. Part of the problem lay with the restrained markings of our indigenous insects, which surely
held scant interest for Juan Chinelato, a connoisseur familiar with such unusual jungle types as Morpho didius.

  Eventually, after a week of prancing, I netted a remarkable Pyronia tithonus, a feat even Emily judged worthy of praise. Dr de los Rios held up his jar, kept solid with an intricate web of tiny refrigeration pipes and we persuaded the butterfly to enter by dropping a flower inside. Now there was no time to lose: before it flew away again, we had to pass the jar near to Emily’s bulge. When the ghost jumped out of her and into the icy prison, the doctor would seal its fate by screwing on the lid. I was uncomfortably aware that tears were streaming down my face. Soon I would have a second chance to be a real man.

  However, Dr de los Rios had other ideas. Before lowering the jar to the level of Emily’s womb, he arched a bushy eyebrow, stroked his forked beard with a finger and grinned slyly.

  “I haven’t been offered money for my services yet, Señor. There may be no better time to settle accounts.”

  Stupefied by his tactlessness, I involuntarily reached in my pocket and removed my wallet. As I’ve already insinuated, I am naturally a very thrifty fellow and only the direst circumstances can ever persuade me to abandon the habits of a lifetime. Although I had accepted the great cost of the operation, my wallet had not. When I opened it, a gargantuan moth rose into the air, a repeat of the restaurant incident. It flew straight into my wide mouth and I swallowed it.

  Emily squealed with delight. “Hepialus humuli!”

  In my desperation to spit it out, I stumbled against my bride. With a hiss, her stomach deflated. My knees buckled; something was wrong with my sense of balance. I had acquired a mystifying burden inside me, as if a dwarf was standing on my intestines.

  “Ah, look, the spirit prefers the moth to the butterfly! See how it lovingly chooses you for a surrogate.”

  “What do you mean?” I held the radius of my belly.

  “You have a tortilla in the oven, Señor.”

  Evidently, I had become pregnant!

  “This is a terrible accident,” I whimpered. “We must hasten to coax it out of me and into the frozen jar.”

  Emily stamped a foot. “You’ve had your way, Joseph, and now it’s my turn. The foetus remains where it is.”

  To my dismay, Dr de los Rios agreed. “Yes, Señora.”

  I staggered to a chair near the window. It was a relief to take the weight off my feet. I stayed there until sunset, drinking the sweet cups of tea offered by my bride, pondering metaphysical matters until a display of the aurora borealis alerted me to the imminent arrival of Pastor Rowlands. Entering without knocking, he was a focus of instant fascination for our guest. Dr de los Rios raised his nose, still stained with wasted vintage wine, and inhaled.

  “I can smell ozone,” he remarked.

  The exorcist sighed. “I had an accident with a lightning-conductor. It converted me into a notional grid.”

  Dr de los Rios studied the pastor’s effulgent palms and clucked his tongue. “I have dealt with this sort of thing before. We shall earth you to a mandolin and effect a discharge.”

  “I don’t require your services. I’m also an expert.”

  Pastor Rowlands and the doctor were soon debating case histories as if they were old friends. They were two sides of the same rare coin; the former purged supernature with litany, the latter relied on scalpels. It appeared they had forgotten my existence. To attract attention, I had to use brute force, dividing them like an immature amoeba. The exorcist was joyful when appraised of my condition.

  “You’ll make an excellent mother, Mr Pickhill.”

  “I’m not sure about that. I can’t cook.”

  “Natural birth is out of the question,” claimed Dr de los Rios. “We ought to arrange a Caesarean section.”

  The pastor rubbed his chin. “There’s only one hospital in Yorkshire willing to deliver spectres in that fashion.”

  “Take me there!” I was already dreading labour, its attendant pains and discomforts. “I want anaesthetic!”

  “They use aether, rather than ether, Mr Pickhill. But the nurses at Phantomsville Maternity are highly trained. They’ll take care of you and your little bundle of gloom. Perhaps I can officiate at the christening? I’ve waited for ages to dunk a ghost.”

  “Do what you like. Just get me medical attention!”

  “I think it best if we register you there immediately. They’ll want to conduct tests and write research papers on your case. As a first-time mother, a primipara, naturally you’re anxious, but think what you’ll add to science—I envy you, Mr Pickhill.”

  “Did I ever do anything to deserve this?” I grumbled. “My condition hasn’t even got a proper name, I bet!”

  “The dark side of the honeymoon, Señor.”

  I don’t care to say much about what happened from that moment. When the ambulance arrived to carry me to Phantomsville, I was alarmed by its resemblance to a hearse. At the hospital, I joined a spirited ante-natal class and learned to stretch my credulity as well as my limbs. Dr de los Rios visited me once, on the eve of my big day, to make his farewells. A commission down south was beckoning; he related its sordid details while eating the grapes on my bedside table.

  “There’s a hotel manager who believes the only permissible delights are made from gelatine. I’ll recommend a kilogramme of Spanish Fly and a dozen Viennese Oysters, thrice daily.”

  Pastor Rowlands and Emily were more regular witnesses of my misery. They always came together, arm in arm, though I was too intent on myself to register the significance. They took a profound interest in the legal aspects of my predicament. I afterwards learned that Emily had spent the rest of my savings on marriage guidance sessions with Dr de los Rios. He decided it was best if she eloped with the pastor and claimed custody of the ghost. The law courts in Phantomsville are prejudiced against mortal litigants, but the pastor knows how to play the system. Her reincarnated lover was taken from my arms at birth.

  They have set up home together, the three of them. I hear they save on electricity bills. But I can’t help wondering where it will end. When Juan Chinelato grows up, will Emily transfer her affections back to him? Will the pastor be forced to challenge him to a duel? I can picture them now, one with a sword forged from Toledo steel, the other with a burning net snaking from his fingers, weaving between draperies, smashing tables laden with fruit, leaping onto balconies. I don’t intend giving them the chance to fight it out. That’s my job.

  I have lodged an appeal with the Phantomsville courts for the right to visit my child. If I am successful, I’ll tarry until his twenty-first birthday before making a move. I can’t decide exactly how Dr de los Rios fits into the affair. Did he predict the outcome and act accordingly, or has he manipulated us from the beginning? In my hands I hold his gift, a heavy box with a clasp. Emily appears to have forgotten about it, but my memory is good. I turn the key slowly. It is a pair of flintlock pistols.

  Mister Humphrey’s Clock’s Inheritance

  The reader is asked to imagine a household of the gloomy sort, dominated by two eccentric pieces of furniture. The first of these is an enormous grandfather clock of polished black wood, its body warped in such a way that when viewed from the end of the hall it resembles the rotten tusk of a mammoth with a craving for sweets. Indeed, the instrument seems to palpably ache; there is an aura of throbbing misery about it, expressed most strongly in the somewhat nauseated face of overlapping dials. This device of charred ebony, green brass and dirty ivory seems to be suffering from a migraine.

  The second item, while no less stiff than the first, has a greater range of movement. This is the owner of the hall and clock; an obscure gentleman by the name of Humperdinck Pumpernickel. His tongue, unable to curl itself around this appellation, has settled for ‘Humphrey’ and this is how he is greeted by that small circle of acquaintances—I dare not term them friends—with which he shares a few mordant interests. There is a mustiness draped on his shoulders, like the ripped bridal veil of a jilted heiress, which
oppresses all but his fellow enthusiasts, who are familiar with the taste of damp books and the flavour of aged paintings. For Mr Humphrey is a member of that select group of collectors for whom the licking of antiques is common practice.

  The house in which this dubious pair have settled lies on the coast between two minor towns, tucked away behind a frown of sand-dunes which, according to legend, once swallowed an abbey and its bishop. It stands a little way back from the road, protected by a garden of broken artefacts which the occupant has drained of nourishment before casting out from an upstairs window. Because it is on my route, I am often to be found among these lethal objets d’art, picking my way through the Fabergé, Wedgwood and Stradivarius splinters which glimmer like the teeth of sophisticated gin-traps. Once or twice I have seen Mr Humphrey peeping at me through a parted curtain; at these times, my hand trembles as I feed my leaflet to his voracious letterbox, which devours all I can deliver, though no good comes of it. Pumpernickel cannot be solicited. One day I shall be free of this menial task—forcing badly printed leaflets on a reluctant public. Until then, I shall endure my daily task with reasonable grace. My peregrinations take me from the eastern hamlet to the western—to be specific, from Abell to Quinn—then back along a beach of crushed shell, over a dozen rotting groynes. As I walk, scaling the redundant sea-defences with considerable difficulty, I reflect on my impressions of the fellow. I can tell a great deal from a glimpse. There are few more jaded examples of that breed of men who seek out morsels of the past than Mr Humphrey. His appearance gives the impression of weary dilettanteism. He wears his whiskers long and bushy, in the style of the early industrialists, not caring to know the purpose they serve—that sideburns are a carpet-sample of a beard.

  His predecessor, in contrast, was a man of astounding energy, taste and wit; a credit to his obsession. It was he who stuffed the house with rarities. Abell boasts an antique shop of wondrous dimensions, with a proprietor eager to sell his wares at bargain prices. There is a silly rumour about this chap, a foreign gentleman, which has been of little help to his business: that he is a condemned soul waiting for the thousandth customer to pass into his store. Only then will he be set free—presumably to take up an alternative occupation—while the lucky thousandth customer is forced to take his place. The reason for the curse is never outlined. There is mention of him cheating the devil out of a Gainsborough; at any rate, he is generally avoided by the local population. Only the former owner of Humphrey’s residence was a regular client—he obtained most of his collection, including the tall ebony clock, from the dealer, whom we may henceforth dignify as Herr Fluchen.