The Smell of Telescopes

by Hughes, Rhys

  “Zazazaoy, Zothzazoth, Thozaxazoth!”

  A papyrus sandal dropped from one foot, exposing toenails as curved and sharp as damascene scimitars. The shoe struck a Victorian gentleman, perhaps a physician, who lingered below. He carried his own selection of blades and beckoned to my wife as if she was a prostitute. Further along the pavement, a traditional impalement was in progress. A telephone pole had been uprooted and sharpened with an axe. It was being replanted with a burden even more vocal than the lines it had previously held. The wiry form of our newsagent, recently engaged, now hung up, undulated over the smoky street like a tapeworm kebab.

  I was tempted to rush to his aid, but the appearance of the man who stood under the stake quickly discouraged me. Perched above the vomit on a mound of crimson cushions, he managed to blend uncouth mannerisms with elegant apparel, like the king of a remote medieval principality, which is what I suspected he was. He chided his lackeys, who flopped in the vomit as they righted the pole.

  “Înca un rînd, va rog. Imediat, noi grabim.”

  I gripped Odette’s hand and we skated past the grisly vista, but as we came within range of the sadistic king, he reached out and pinched my nude buttocks between finger and thumb. Then he winked at me with a slow eye and through simple reflex I found myself returning the dalliance. My cheeks burning, heart brimming with self-disgust, I left him for another horror. In one of the myriad potholes neglected by the City Council, now overflowing with sick, a miniature submarine floated unsteadily, while a businessman with the starched grin of a double agent accepted money from rival groups of sunburnt murderers.

  “I’ve seen his face before,” Odette cried. “He was a notorious arms dealer active during the Boer War.”

  “We’ve been sent to Hell!” I replied.

  “No, Donald, I think Hell has come to us.”

  We struggled up Constitution Hill and when we turned at the apex to stare across the city we beheld a panorama worthy of the lunatic artists of Holland, an animated combination of Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Brueghel and Hugo van der Goes. The Mumbles lighthouse span its wounded cyclopean eye over the sub-Neapolitan bay, but it irradiated only muttering filth. The devastation was broad and unique. The Guildhall, the only attractive edifice in the sprawl, was crusted with vultures, while elephants on the sward below stamped men in turbans. From the Vetch, the football ground, came sundry dog Latin sounds: the jabbing of a thousand inverted thumbs, the roaring of unspecified animals.

  Odette swallowed with difficulty. “I never imagined it was feasible for Swansea to sink any lower.”

  Pressing on to St Jude’s, we entered the church and stumbled to the altar. An impossible staircase led upward from the ciborium, higher than the loftiest steeple, into a metaphysical region that my eyes refused to define in terms of honest perspective. We shuddered in each other’s arms as we estimated the length of the bannisters—precisely that of levers to shift the Earth off its orbit. And there was a place to stand for the job, a location which met Archimedes’s criteria. A bistro in the sky. An ontological eaterie. Vomit cascaded down the steps, eroded cubes of meat and bones rolling in rainbow slush.

  I began the daunting ascent. My wife tugged at my shirt to restrain me, but I broke into a run, chest heaving, stomach likewise. And finally the flock wallpaper, almost a hypothetical concept at the bottom, an act of faith, came into sight, expanding from a glowing dot into an unstable square flooded with twenty shades of scarlet, the pattern saturated with this sanguine spectra, like a beermat for the Holy Grail. I ran for half an hour. And something vile came down to greet me—a sheep born not in Wales but in a vat of stomach acid.

  Exhausted and delirious, I kneeled and waited for the half-digested lamb to reach me. It bleated and pranced in a jerky rhythm, as if auditioning for an epileptic’s nightmare. This spot was the midpoint between my wife and the origin of the vomit, and I judged it to be the happiest position I had ever attained, equidistant from two purgatories. Squinting between the haze of capsicum gas, I watched the gigantic morsel splash closer, a second helping of panic cooling on its scaphocephalic visage. It wobbled competently on two legs, and I wondered whether it was trying to imitate the shepherd who had sold it to the cook, or the gourmand who had forced it whole down a bourgeois gullet.

  Yet the lamb turned out to be neither oviform nor macerated, but an old man wrapped in dirty woollens. He strongly resembled the thaum- aturge who hovered over our street, though there was a weariness in his motions not negated by his obvious haste. He called to me in a voice deader than myrrh, each letter of his sentence pronounced with a different accent. I struggled to interpret his words. At least with the foreigners, tone had provided context, but there were no clues here: the meaning was unaided. It was like listening to a cedar.

  “Turn back! We are evacuating the restaurant!”

  “You speak English? That’s a relief.”

  “I know every language in which mortals can argue, save Volapük and Euskara. Now hurry up and run down.”

  “Not before you tell me who you are.”

  “I am Cartaphilus, the Wandering Jew. But Satan is coming! His guts are empty. Do you want your head chomped?”

  At the top of the stairs, the square of wallpaper was eclipsed by a hairy shape, immense and awkward. Yet it did not betray a purely bestial outline. It was more rococo than that. The impression it gave was one of filigreed evil, utmost depravity with a gilded shell, a Fabergé devil. I envisaged topaz horns, braided eyebrows, powdered cheeks, though details could not be confirmed at this range.

  I preceded my new comrade on the descent, until we rejoined my wife at the altar. Ludicrously, we paused here, as if level ground was secure from the demented Prince of Darkness.

  I made polite introductions. “This is Odette.”

  He offered a hand. “Call me Ahasuerus.”

  “You said your name was Cartaphilus!”

  “So it is! And Giovanni Buttadeo. I have as many names as countries and favour none of them. Striking Christ on the route to the crucifixion was an unlikely beginning to the adventure holiday of the aeon! One tiny blow, the sort of thing anyone might try, and there I was, off on a tour of all the kingdoms of the world.”

  “Have you been to Peru?” inquired Odette.

  “I was present when Pizarro ordered the murder of Atahualpa. He had mild breath for a conquistador, but his ears stank. Doubtless he is here now, with his ruffians, digging for gold in Cwmdonkin Park. Nonetheless, we must leave the church and hurl ourselves into the tumult. A respected eccentric, I am quite safe. Unfortunately, you don’t share the necessary attributes to mollify the damned.”

  I choked. “Will you aid us? For payment?”

  “What need have I for money?”

  “I’ll show you something you’ve never seen in all your centuries of travel. Consider it: a new sight!”

  While Odette frowned at me in stupefaction, Cartaphilus stroked his forked beard and nodded. I had chanced on his one weakness. He was jaded to such an extent that his kidneys almost passed green stones. With only a brief glance back up the steps, he ushered us onto the street. Panting back to our home, I indicated the spectacle of horror, my gesture taking in the flames, screams, tears, stains, decay and blades. The environs of the Guildhall were strewn with skin and unravelled turbans. And vultures squabbled bloatedly, like gloves.

  “Ah yes! Emperor Aurangazib. He often trampled his own citizens. He was the only sober man in Hindustan in the seventeenth century. Totally insane, of course, but a snappy dresser.”

  I pointed at the stadium. “And there?”

  “Another despot, but a different age. I conclude it is Commodus and one of his special circuses. He enjoyed fighting gladiators himself, but only after they had been drugged. However, he was an accurate archer. He is shooting giraffes, by the sound of it. First time real skill has been demonstrated at the Vetch for decades!”

  Thus we were provided with a commentary on the most terrible rogues from times past. All
were there—Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel rode past us on a white stallion, with a string of tongues dangling from his pommel, which he poked out at us in sequence by jerking the cord, an insult only he laughed at. Cartaphilus lowered his voice. I learned that this was perhaps the most cruel man who had ever lived. When Pope Pius V excommunicated the entire population of the Netherlands in 1567, valiant Fernando was sent to carry out the sentence of death. He was diligent in his work, with pokers and shears.

  Our street had changed for the worse. The submarine was burning and sinking in its pond of sick, while the bearded arms dealer counted a wad of roubles. Cartaphilus hailed him in Greek and the icy fellow held up a Mauser pistol for inspection. I doubted the value of bullets against the devil and shook my head. No sale.

  “Basil Zaharoff, a most intriguing scoundrel. Started wars and sold weapons to both sides. One of the richest men who have ever lived. Satan was especially fond of him. And the medieval king is Stefan cel Mare of Moldavia. He will attend any party where there are sausages and gherkins on sticks. Clench your buttocks in his presence. You rarely know when he might slip a stake between them.”

  I made certain to follow this advice. I resolved to ransack laundry baskets, both Odette’s and mine, for trousers, the moment we reached our house. On the telephone pole, the newsagent still writhed. Soon he would be lonely no longer. King Stefan was preparing a dog and milkman to keep him company. And now the Victorian gentleman approached and leered at my wife, suggestively flexing a saw.

  “That is Francis J. Tumblety, quack doctor and pornographer, better known as Jack the Ripper. Does it surprise you he’s American? Misogynist all his life. Worked the canal banks as a boy, selling dirty pictures to navigators. Collected wombs even then.”

  “The flying chap above? Friend of yours?”

  “Simon Magus. A rival to Christ and the original Beast 666. I think he had a dispute with Crowley over the title. Played that trick once too often. Fell to his doom in Rome.”

  Odette gripped my arm. “We’ll have to go round the back. Don’t care to push my way through that lot.”

  The gang of hoods had erected another fire on the pavement directly in front of our door. One of the figures removed his mask and mopped his sooty brow with a voluminous sleeve. He was a coarse monk, with squashed nose and uneven tonsure, not the impressive features one associates with a chief inquisitor, who should be tall, slim and dark, with silver teeth and platinum earrings. I smirked.

  “Oh come on, he’s gouty and decrepit.”

  Cartaphilus growled. “Tomás de Torquemada. He has no love for Jews. I prefer your wife’s suggestion.”

  He shivered beneath his woollens, the first time he had shown fear. It was infectious. We detoured down an alleyway at the side of the house and climbed a wall into our garden. A solitary light revealed that Billy was still in his room, probably snoring through the apocalypse. The back door was ajar and we pushed into the kitchen. There was laughter and the whisper of a lute. I wiped my bare feet on the doormat. Vomit had forced itself under my ingrown toenails.

  Jacob Degen sat with the bishop at the table. Having cut his musket in half to carry it down the stairs, he was busy gluing it together. The barrel gouged furrows in the ceiling, another source of disbursement. No resentment at our escape glittered in their eyes. Cartaphilus joked with them in German and Langue d’oc and they nodded encouragingly. Turning to me, he identified the bishop, also a troubadour, as Folquet de Marselha, the crooning butcher of Toulouse. I was careful to give them both a wide berth, though I did offer to make a pot of tea. The Wandering Jew secured the back door and shook his head. “No time for that. Can’t you hear it? He’s reached the bottom step and is mincing out of St Jude’s.”

  Far away, a hollow booming intensified.

  “Hark, cobbles! His hooves are striking sparks.”

  Odette was more relaxed. “What are we supposed to do now? Just wait for the slob to diabolise elsewhere?”

  “He won’t leave. This city is ideal for him.”

  I pouted. “Suppose you tell us the whole story?”

  “As you wish. Ever heard of Origen?”

  “One of the Church Fathers,” announced Odette. “Gelded himself with a bronze sickle to avoid temptation.”

  “Quite right. His knackers were preserved in an Armenian chapel for the edification of infertile pilgrims. But his real claim to fame is his heresy, which maintains that God and Satan will settle their differences and become reconciled. Despite his great importance to the early Church, he was reprimanded by orthodox historians, though Eusebius speaks highly of him. The point is, his doctrine never faded. A core of followers kept it going down through the generations. At last they seized the chance to restore harmony between the kings of Heaven and Hell by inviting them to a special meal in a celestial restaurant.”

  “You mean the Stately Pleasure Dome?”

  “That’s the one. Plenty of business deals are made in the convivial surroundings of a first-class brasserie, so why not a theological truce? Anything can be sorted out over a curry, even the fate of the cosmos. It took centuries for the Origenists to save enough money, but coin by coin it accumulated. Because I owe allegiance to neither side, I was hired to wait on table. To the incalculable relief of my employers, God and Satan accepted their invitations. A date was set for the opening night and six trillion animals were slaughtered. As you know, Christian archetypes are carnivorous. They can’t abide vegetables.”

  “Why was Swansea selected for the venture?”

  “It’s the only neutral location in the world. Everywhere else is an enclave of Paradise or Perdition, encompassing greater or lesser aspects of one or the other. Venice, for instance, is divine, while Bucharest is infernal. This is true for every city in creation, except Swansea, which is an earthly analogue of Limbo. It’s a void. That’s why the locals were also invited to dinner. It would have been awkward to have God and Satan sitting in an empty restaurant.”

  “An astounding account. But it doesn’t explain the vomit and damned souls flowing down the streets.”

  “Something went wrong. At first God and Satan chatted amiably. They had a great deal in common. The beer flowed, the plates came and went in rapid succession. Conversation grew more animated. Reconciliation seemed inevitable. Then the devil clutched his hirsute abdomen. He had terrible cramps and was barely able to lurch to a window before throwing up. This restaurant was in the sky, remember, so he disgorged the entire contents of his stomach over Swansea. Ordinary sinners boil in brimstone, but the worst are swallowed by Satan the moment they enter Hell. And now they’re free again, to mess the byways!”

  Odette curled a lock of auburn hair around a finger. “Did Satan eat too much or was the food poisoned?”

  “Who would wish to keep good and evil at odds?”

  “The Archbishop of Canterbury? To safeguard his job.”

  Cartaphilus was genuinely intrigued. “If true, it’s worked. Now the devil has decided to trump God by refilling his empty guts with virtuous mortals. Instead of gathering up Judas, Zaharoff, Hitler, Stalin and the others, he’s swallowing innocents!”

  I exchanged glances with my wife. “What about us?”

  “You’d better do something inhuman if you want to survive. He’ll be checking every home in due course.”

  “Think of an abominable crime, Donald!”

  Snapping my fingers, I hissed: “The imbecilic lodger!”

  Whooping in counterpoint, we bounded up the stairs and crashed into Billy’s bedroom. The student was not asleep but quaking under the quilt. My wife relied on her superior strength to drag him out, while I scooped his pet hamster from its cage on the dresser. He chuckled unconvincingly as Odette pinched him down the steps into the kitchen. Losing no time, I clutched the scissors and wielded them as a dagger, thrusting the closed blades upward into his throat, while my wife held him still in her arms. We fell back to monitor the result.

  It was unexpected. As the utensil penetr
ated his brain, the central rivet split and the blades parted. One severed his left optic nerve, the other sliced his right. With a slight slurping sound, his eyes fell out, spinning on the carpet, unable to blink at their misfortune. We recoiled from the bulging globules of jelly.

  More farce was to come. Billy remained erect, groping for his loose orbs like a blinded puppet. His hands flailed everywhere but the correct place. Finally he reached the salad bowl and felt within its confines. A gurgle of triumph erupted from his lips as he slotted the uneaten olives into his sockets. Now he turned to confront us, proudly folding his arms across his chest. But then he rubbed at his pitted vision with a knuckle and fled groaning down the hallway.

  Cartaphilus draped his ugly arm over my immoral shoulders. “Let him bluster his way into the lounge at the front of the house. That is where your monstrous act might be best displayed to Satan when he passes for a check. He’ll be here before long.”

  We trailed Billy and discovered him on his knees, spitting a pallid blend of blood and bile. The thunderous footsteps were much louder. With a sudden inspiration, Odette kicked him to the floor. She beckoned to me for the hamster. I threw it and she caught it with atrocious grace. Flat on his back, Billy pleaded for mercy, not for himself but his pet, as if trying to assure us that his Kalamáta peepers really could weep. My wife is rarely responsive to guile. Squatting on his ribs, she began to tread the olives into oil with the feet of the hamster. Viscous juice trickled along his despicable cheeks. It was such a pastoral scene that I fancied myself marooned on an Aegean isle.

  At the suggestion of the Wandering Jew, I urged her on with obscene imprecations. “Apply more pressure to the stale fresher!” The timing was perfect. While Billy’s death-rattle was still at the back of his throat, making its way forward to his teeth, an enormous eye appeared in the bay window. It was not slitted like a goat’s but layered like a flower, dark petals within petals, inexpressibly delicate, peeling open in a morbidly fecund spring. For a harrowing minute it studied us, passing over Degen, Marselha and Cartaphilus, fixing its iridial corolliflorae on Odette and myself. The lodger twitched thrice.