by Hughes, Rhys
Down in the old town, lovers waltzed to clockwork gramophones and lepers lent a hand to jugglers and usurers. There were a million candles illuminating the dusk. Well we sauntered along the cobbles... Well we overwound our hearts... From a balcony a woman cried. An asthmatic played a 12-string catarrh. We listened. He blew it. We moved on. We ate tropical fish from the pink pages of National Hagiograph and Yak Hatred Yearly. The candles died and the colours dropped an octave.
In a bar grown soiled with long exposure to drunken laughter and tall stories, we sipped vermouth and crême de la neige. A blind crooner played Gnat King Cole numbers on his dislocated trombone. I say... I mean, do you play any... Indigo blues only eh? Well when you’ve been stung once... His voice buzzed through the curved air, as warped as the beams, our vision. Posters on the walls winked tired eyes. We dropped our glasses and trod them to an adequate sugar.
Wilson wondered aloud whether it would be possible to replace the waters of the indoor swimming pool (cheap rate, Wednesday) with some corrosive mixture. A bare bones solution. A churning yearn. Newby suggested monstrous puppets, worked from behind. Grant had been won over to Dalton’s concept of self-mutilation. I procrastinated with my face in my hands, my ears full of micropolyphonic rhythms. Grant tried to win me over to Dalton’s concept of self-mutilation. Dalton chained himself to a tram while we held onto his legs. We travelled across half the city...
Well the management was firmly on my back now... The others had shirked their responsibilities. They fled one night in a hot air balloon bound for some land far away. The Svelte Veldt. I could not stop them. So I was alone. And I bore up the weight of the entire management. All alone. I picked up the telephone, many telephones, and begged relatives, friends, strangers. I tried to look a chicken in the neck. I tried to squeeze a rainbow from my eye.
(This is always the way, is it not, when deadlines cannot be met? I managed a feather-lick, but not a rumination. I completed a spectrum, but not a rainbow. Through the window rickshaws hurried to the hospital (a leprosarium that charged an arm and a leg (cheap rate)) and vendors hawked basted voles and cheese omelettes. Herders chased grasshoppers into vats of cider with long poles.)
At last, on the eve of the great event, I collected together a package of dubious merit. They included a family of migrant workers, paid in advance, and thirty-three beekeepers press ganged from a local Variety Theatre (“The Fable Of The Wannabees”, cheap rate) not to mention a couple of split-infinitives, split down the middle; very beautiful, very wise. I turned to them and waved my bamboo cane in the humid air. I say... I mean, do you have any... Amateur experience only eh? Well when you’ve experienced one amateur... How can we balk? There is life to resist yet.
What has gone wrong with the world? Do you think I could find a single freak in all the ranks of the unemployed? Not one, not a lonely boobie, not a solitary oddball. So I study my package of dubious merit, my last chance, and I weep. There is The Overzealous Lounge Lizard, The Male Female-Man, The Gigolo As Old As His Mistress, The Tallest Midget In Christendom, The Microscopic Giant. There is The Radical Reactionary and The Glummest Of Optimists. There is The Bearded Lady After A Shave. Tears stalking my lips, I dismiss them all with vigorous strokes of the cane...
So the day dawns and I make a final attempt to please. Well it is painful but I don’t complain... I don’t complain... The sun breaks its shell in the west and the fireworks crack over our heads. Hancock, the futures tycoon, is roaring; and Grimes the natural death baron. There is food and drink and dancing girls and fountains and music and gossip and McGuire the incest comedian (“you know your sister’s menstruating when your father tastes different”) and Purdy Absurdy, the actress, and her latest boyfriend, Philip Pew, pedicurist to the stars and lots and lots of needy gerbils shipped over from the islands.
And I ache. And I throb (pulse rate.)
And there I am, at the top of the hill, and I make a perfect loop with my body and I roll down, away, faster and faster, gathering momentum until I am no more than a blur. But at the same time a balloon comes into view and Wilson, Newby, Grant and Dalton are seen to be paddling furiously with their hands and I suddenly know that a change of wind has scotched their plans. And the gerbils burst into spontaneous applause and the management are still on my back, which I presented to them in a plastic bag that very morning, a tiny suited figure on each vertebrae.
The Big Lick
After all, it was a magnificent house. They could feel no regrets as they received the key from the plump fingers of the estate agent. A large detached modern dwelling; the house of the future. One kind of future, at any rate. As a light breeze ruffled the fur on the walls, Tony smiled and opened the door. The house purred. They had been accepted.
Inside, they saw that everything was waiting for them exactly as they had arranged. The old battered sofa was there; the one they had bought for their first flat. And the little ornaments from their many travels to exotic lands. And the books and musical instruments scattered over the floor. What more could they ask for? What doubts could they have now? They would be happy here, they would be safe.
Tony turned to Claire and embraced her. “Our new home,” he said simply. And then, as if determined to wax lyrical before the wax melted, he added: “Debt where is thy sting? Ground Rent where is thy victory?”
It was essential to satisfy a few outmoded traditions. Tony attempted to carry Claire over the threshold; he grunted but could not obtain sufficient leverage. So it was Claire who carried Tony over, dumping him in a contented heap before the inglenook of the authentic hearth, on an indigo rug all knotted with abstract designs in colours that should have clashed but did not.
They spent the rest of that evening watching the television, snug beyond good taste in each other’s company, nibbling shortbread or lobes or upper lips, while some cartoon rodent raced across a landscape as harsh and surreal as any by Dali. The house began to chatter and crouched low, as if ready to spring. With a sudden flash of terrible insight, Tony reached for the remote control and switched channels. Almost at once, the house lost interest.
“It’s the mouse,” Tony explained, referring to the cartoon. “The house was getting excited. We’ll have to be more careful.”
Claire nodded vaguely, her mind too frantic with serenity to pay much attention to his words. She had already hung her needlework above the mantelpiece over the grate, and was already planning a sequel. HOME NUTRASWEET HOME would be a project worthy of a six month energy package, made up of lots of little delicate motions and more thought. The votive lights in her eyes were at once bright and distant.
They had first chanced upon the house while gliding on a picnic quest down the road that led out of the city and into the hills. There it had napped, curled up tight, tail wrapped round the trunk of an old tree that lurched out of mossy ground. They had fallen in love with it immediately; the glistening black fur with the white ruff, the delightful expression and endearing sundries. They had stopped, noticed that it was for sale and had made enquiries.
The estate agent was a large oily man with an absurd hairstyle. Arnie Troppmann had been selling state-of-the-art houses for more than a decade. His experience revealed itself every time he smiled; a gold tooth encrusted with diamonds. He mopped his forehead with a contract, shook rancid buttery hands and showed them around the building, pointing out features with an enthusiasm that was not only infectious but positively septic.
“These latest models are self-regulating. They have a nervous system based on that of the domesticated cat. As you can see, the fur covers the inside walls as well as the whole exterior, minimizing heat loss. The house is extremely sensitive to outside changes and will warn you of the approach of intruders or rain. It has a superb sense of balance guaranteed to withstand the most violent earthquakes. Also it is self-cleaning. Every Monday night.”
And now as Claire and Tony blinked in surprise, two enormous eyes appeared on the ceiling from nowhere, flooding the room with soft yellow light. T
his was another fixture designed for the conservation of energy: reflected starlight amplified and focused wherever it was needed most. The house, they also quickly discovered, had a wonderful sense of smell and hearing. The rose garden seemed constantly within, rather than without, the enclosed lounge and the music of the wind playing the kazoo on separate blades of grass charmed them to sleep with Aeolian lullabies.
The following evening, at roughly the same time, the fur on the walls pricked up alarmingly and the house arched its roof. Tony and Claire were instantly aware that trouble was afoot. Bounding into the kitchen, Tony snatched a garlic crusher and bore it to the front door, which he threw open with a flourish, at the same instant daring any intruder to approach closer. He was startled by a mangy hound that — though no clove — was sufficiently impressed by the unlikely weapon to beat a hasty retreat.
“Scat!” cried Tony, which was both completely unnecessary and unnecessarily complete. He pumped the garlic crusher handle a few times in sullen victory. “A stray,” he explained to Claire. “An unkempt mutt. Reminded me a little of Toasted Muffin.” And he fell into a redundant fugue, a nostalgic slice from the melon of his youth: his dog, his air rifle, the heel of a loaf, the nettle-itch and the doc-leaf wrap. Toasted Muffin, he recalled, had been run over by a tractor.
On Monday night, they decided to stay indoors yet again. It was cleaning night, after all. The estate agent had warned them to absent themselves at this time, but they were too curious to see what would happen. Besides, Troppmann had also suggested that if any problems arose they should come to see him and he would put matters right. So there was nothing to worry about. They waited for the show to begin. They waited and watched.
Thus it was that when Troppmann himself was pulled out of bed in the early hours, cursing and sweating, to answer the door, he knew that it would soon be time to start breaking promises. But at first he did not recognise the raw-red couple who leered through the glass door at him and he refused to let them in. They seemed to be covered in some sticky substance and they pounded on the door with a disturbing sort of squelch.
“Please may we have our skins back?”
There Was a Ghoul Dwelt by a Mosque
This is the story about ungodly deeds which Vathek, the mad caliph in Beckford’s novel, was hearing from one of the new arrivals in Hell, when his mother flew in on the back of an afrit to chide him for not enjoying the pleasures on offer. The tale is not given; Vathek’s acquaintance was damned soon after without having a chance of resuming it. Now what was it going to have been? Beckford knew, no doubt, but I am not bold enough to say that I do. I will offer a new story: one you will think made from scraps of other fables. Everybody should sew a patchwork coat from the materials he likes best. This is mine:
There was a ghoul dwelt by a mosque. His name was Omar and he was a potter with a shop built from broken vases. His doorway looked out on the Kizilirmak, the longest river in Asia Minor, and from his roof he could lean over and touch the mosque with his elongated arms. His wheel and oven had belonged to a human craftsman who died without heirs and was buried with his tools, but (this was in Haroun al Raschid’s day) ghouls were allowed to keep any items they dug up. The creature filed his teeth to stubs to reassure his neighbours — but never mind what they thought of him; he was skilled enough at his trade to make a living from the travellers who passed through Avanos. He rarely overcharged for his products and this frightened people most of all.
Omar lacked humanity in other ways: he kept an attic full of hair clipped from the heads of his female visitors. There were women pilgrims and merchants even then and they were politely requested to give up a lock or two for his archive. The monster labelled them and secured them to the ceiling on hooks, where they exuded a musty odour and shivered in the shifting air currents. Omar liked to imagine his attic was a cave beneath a garden — a garden of vegetable girls whose roots were pushing through into his subterranean kingdom. This unusual custom has persisted through the centuries; next time you are in Avanos, ask for the house of Master Galip and you will see what I mean. A single lamp also illuminates his modern collection.
The ghoul had a mother no less grotesque in her habits. She helped him collect the red clay from the riverbank, bringing him a supply each morning. Instead of cutting the clay into blocks, she would roll it in her hands and present it to him like a freshly exhumed intestine. Then he would divide it with a pair of shears and they would gather round the wheel with excited giggles, as if they were grilling sausages instead of preparing to throw another plate or saucer.
The attic was also the place where the ghoul kept all his rejects, the warped and flawed work. Heavy urns, twisted over like slaves; cups with no handles, or too many; pitchers with clamped mouths or leaking sides; shapeless mounds as tall as men which should have been coffins but were unusable, save for lepers; pipes with stems which curled back into the bowl; teapots without spouts, or spouts which poured tea into the lap of the drinker. All these, Omar packed into his attic, loathe to discard them. With the hair above and the failures below, the room became a sort of museum of imperfection — the former lacking complete substance; the latter lacking complete form.
One day, a cowled traveller called at the shop. Veiled from head to foot, she betrayed her femininity by her poise and sibilant voice. She had come far and was taking her first holiday in many years. Her sisters were keen on stone figures for their garden and she had promised to take some back as gifts. But sculptors were rare in Asia Minor, the prophet had forbidden such art, and so, to make the best of a bad thing, she had decided to purchase pottery as a substitute. She wondered if she might view Omar’s most decorative examples.
“Well, my work is functional, not fine art,” said the ghoul. “But you’re free to look round. I’m self-trained and you mustn’t expect too much in the way of aesthetic gratification.”
“Come, these pots betray a certain flair,” cried the visitor. “Lead me through your shop and I will choose something.”
So he guided her along racks of ceramic utensils, which she studied with a slight wave, as if to indicate they were not quite suitable. When the conventional rooms were exhausted, they reached the attic. “The work in here is not really for sale,” apologised Omar, “but if you will enter and allow me to snip a strand of your hair...”
The visitor seemed about to refuse, but the door was swinging open and when she caught a glimpse of the mutated wares she forgot to voice an objection. Stepping forward in joy, she squealed: “Perfect! They are so delightfully strange. And this one is the oddest of the lot! I must have it at any price!” And she moved to the end of the attic and seized the ghoul’s mother, who was sleeping on a stool.
At this point, several things happened at once. The ghoul mistook his visitor’s cry for compliance with his request, and he reached across the room with his elongated arms to sever a lock with his shears. But the mother had jumped up in alarm, knocking over and smashing the single lamp. In pitch darkness, Omar felt under his visitor’s veil and detached it with clumsy fingers, whereupon he snipped the lock. While he groped his way to a hook to hang it up, his mother struck a flint in an attempt to relight the lamp; the attempt was unsuccessful, but the long spark which winked in the gloom was enough to illuminate the visitor, who was still bending over the mother. Then darkness came again, more intense for the momentary light: there was a groan, something brushed past the ghoul and clattered out through the shop.
When Omar’s slitted eyes had adjusted, he saw he was alone in the attic. No: his mother was there as well, but she was changed. Her arms flung up as if to cover her face, her body twisted away as if from some dreadful apparition, she was literally petrified. She had always had a stony expression; now it was real. Omar looked at the ceiling and his hearts raced madly; in place of a lock of hair was a very angry snake, hissing and writhing on its hook.
Well, he gnashed his filed teeth for many a moon, I can assure you. Without a mother, a ghoul is lost, like a bridge wit
hout a river or a pot without a price. Luckily, he dwelt by a mosque and the local muezzin was a sorcerer who made no secret of his skills. Standing on his roof at night, just after the evening call to prayer, Omar hailed the muezzin on his minaret and made a pact. He would sell part of his soul, the human part, to Eblis — the devil — in exchange for the return of his mother. So the muezzin lowered a glass tablet inscribed with arcane symbols on a gold thread and told Omar to place it between his mother’s granite lips, whereupon she would spring to life.
As he stumbled through the attic with this talisman, Omar happened to brush the snake, which bit him on the shoulder. He growled in pain and his great hands came together, crushing the glass tablet to powder. The sparkling shards flew up and settled on the warped and twisted pots. With a hideous scraping sound, they came alive — the urns, the pitchers, the cups, the coffins — tumbling awkwardly, snapping their lids, grating against each other, whistling, crowding round the ghoul like dogs round a master, or jackals round a corpse. With his fists and feet, he smashed them to pieces, then he went down and returned with the potter’s wheel, which he rolled among the wounded ceramics, reducing them to fine dust. The one place the magic glass had missed was the mother, who remained as motionless and igneous as before.
Unable to bear the loss of his soul for naught, Omar left his shop disguised as a minor prince and went searching for his visitor. But he succeeded only in passing into the domain of Hell. By now, his fears had altered. He was more frightened that another sorcerer would manage to reanimate his mother: she would be furious at being kept so long in such a condition and would berate him. Better to be damned, he decided, than to suffer the ill will of a ghoul’s mother, who would be certain to bend him over her knee and smack…
