Smoke

by Dan Vyleta

  “Don’t live your life afraid of yourself, Thomas. You are a fine boy.”

  “A fine boy? I killed your son, Lady Naylor. With my bare hands! Oh, he rose again, but I killed him all the same.” He swallows, shakes off her hand, straightens. “You don’t understand evil, milady. It runs in certain families. My father—”

  Now it is her time to scoff. “Oh, enough! Sons and their fathers. How silly it all is! Forget your father. What was he? An irritable drunk. It’s your mother you take after. How little you think of her. She was one of us. A nonconformist. If not for her cancer she would have been standing here, giving me a hand.”

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  They make preparations to leave. There is nothing else to be done. Lady Naylor is bleeding on the inside, her leg swelling to grotesque proportions, and a temperature now colouring her cheeks. It gives her an odd liveliness, both prophetic and diseased. Charlie casts around for something they can use as a stretcher, but the tabletop proves too heavy to lift and the chair too awkward. In the end he turns to Grendel, crooked-necked Grendel, Mowgli’s chin half buried in that crook. From the side, watching his little arms slung around Grendel’s shoulders, it looks like the boy is comforting him. But Grendel, Charlie reminds himself, requires no comfort: all this while he has been watching, impassive, untouched by events, like a butler awaiting orders. Now that Charlie waves to him, he rushes over without hesitation. Charlie has trouble looking at him, has noticed that Livia shares his revulsion, whilst Thomas stares at him with open disgust. Charlie keeps his eyes on the boy instead, but finds him illegible, beyond his understanding: a scrunched-up face, ugly and sallow, softening only for the stunted man who wishes to be his father. When Charlie finally speaks, he finds himself addressing the floor.

  “We need your help, Grendel. Lady Naylor needs a doctor. We must carry her. Thomas has hurt his shoulder and we cannot lift her without help.” But before Grendel can respond or even nod, Charlie carries on, incoherently and haltingly, moved by his horror of this man. “I don’t understand it, Grendel. Why did you help her? Was it to win custody over a child you don’t know how to love? Or did she sell you her dream of a future that you cannot hope to share?”

  Grendel considers this, his crooked neck tilting farther, his hand stroking the child’s back, gently and mechanically.

  “I have a strange fate, Mr. Cooper. I stand apart. All my life I have wondered why. She told me there was a purpose in it, a way of giving it meaning.” He dares a shy smile. “It was naughty, wasn’t it, Mr. Cooper? Almost a sin.”

  “Naughty?” Charlie echoes, no longer speaking to him but only to himself, picking through thoughts that, in tangled ways, connect Grendel to his father. “So that’s what it was. An angel playing at vice. But really you are on Renfrew’s side. The side of reason. He too would have shot Julius. And the other side? The other side would have bought off the witnesses and hushed up his crime.”

  Grendel nods, uncomprehending, walks past him, adjusts the boy to ride on his back, and crouches down to gather Lady Naylor in his arms.

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  Livia intervenes, won’t let him, is in no rush to release her mother from her pain. Instead she kneels, interposing her body between Grendel’s and Lady Naylor’s, daring him to interfere. Her hands take hold of her mother, not from solicitude, Charlie thinks, but to make sure of her attention.

  “Before we go,” she begins, “while we are still in this cave of your dreams: explain it to me, Mother. ‘A month of carnivals.’ ‘The reinvention of God.’ Pardon me, Mother, but it’s gibberish. Explain it to me, your vision. You won’t have another chance.” A twist of Smoke darts from her breath as she speaks. Charlie stands close enough to take it into his blood. All at once it is clear what she is asking. Livia wants to know whether it is possible to forgive her mother; whether there are grounds for appeal. Charlie imagines a similar situation: his asking his father for an accounting. But he would merely frown and send Charlie to his room.

  Not so Lady Naylor. She answers willingly, eagerly even, buoyed by her rising fever. It is as though she is speaking at her own tribunal, or on the executioner’s platform; as though the words are long prepared, different versions of the same speech, pouring out now all at once.

  “The Smoke was never a problem,” she begins, haltingly yet, waiting for Charlie to fill her glass with wine. “It is simply who we are. What connects us, a thousand subtle threads of want and need. But for centuries now, we have been living a lie. The whole world has been living it, but we most especially, here on our little island, where we have made a devil of our Smoke. It shapes us, this lie: our relations, woman to woman, man to man; orders our polity; divorces us from any possibility of change.

  “Power,” whispers Lady Naylor, “is underwritten by morality. Those who rule, rule because they are better people than their subjects. It’s written on our linen. It cannot be denied. Oh, you will say that it’s because we have sweets. That we are faking our virtue. But the lie goes deeper than that. We spend a lifetime training ourselves against Smoke. We go to school, are punished, learn to watch our words, our actions, our very thoughts. It turns us into nuns. Miserable, cold-blooded nuns. Trapped in our Discipline; capable of meanness, of judgement, of greed. But not of love.

  “As for the ‘people,’ those we presume to rule because of the commonness of their sins, they are in awe of us. Oh, of course they make jokes about our manners, our fussiness, our mincing ways. There may even be small pockets of resistance. But who can watch the Smoke and deny it; see one person clean and the other mired in their messy desires; one regal and enjoying God’s good favour, rewarded for his goodness by his power and his wealth, and the other toiling and miserable, underfed, poor, his very skin scorched by diseases of bad hygiene—who can see all this and not feel the superiority of one and the inferiority of the other? It is as though two races walk our land, one blessed, the other cursed.

  “And so it has served us to perjure Smoke, misrepresent it. Cigarettes and sweets, vice and virtue, black and white: what a crude vision of our lives! And yet, how powerful it has proven, how deeply it has grown into our souls so that we routinely reject what we apprehend with our senses, and defend our crude fiction even against our own interests if need be.

  “No, our problem is not Smoke, it’s what we have grown to believe it means. We need to remake our sense of good and evil; learn to apprehend Smoke anew. But how? We need a sign. From the land itself. From the very heavens! A storm; a cauterising fire. Sweeping away the high and mighty; curing us of our self-told lies. We dreamt of a world where people would argue and make love without fearing they are making God mad.

  “Oh, it would have burned out soon enough. A few weeks, a month or two at most. Enough for a new beginning. Tabula rasa. A second childhood for mankind. We grew up stunted the first time around.

  “So again, Thomas: no monsters. We did not plan to release the black of cigarettes, that manufactured vice scraped off prison cells and the bodies of the mad. It’s a Puritan’s version of sin. My bottle, the pools here, they were to be mere ‘kindling,’ as Charlie put it so well: a spark that flares out the moment it has ignited the real flame. Out in the world, Soot lies weak, human, dormant. It lies in the water and the soil, in every brick that’s ever been baked. We wished to free it, quicken it; allow it to fill the air, communicate. Let men know one another. We wanted to fight the lie that we are filthy creatures; that all loss of control leads to murder, all passion to rape. Passion: flexible, complex, ever-changing passion, not dividing but uniting the land.

  “For what after all is Smoke? Yearning. Courage. Anger. The type of fear that coils itself into a fist. Defiance. Triumph. Hope. It’s the animal part of us that will not serve. That won’t do the homework. That won’t take orders. I dreamt of a world where people will not serve.

  “Tell me, Livia, tell me honestly. Was it not a beautiful dream?”

  It takes Livia some moments to answer. Her face is very dark. It is as though she has caught her m
other’s fever.

  “You wanted to make a world where nobody turns the other cheek,” she says at last.

  “Perhaps, my child. But who does it serve, all this cheek-turning of yours, who counts its profits? And after all, perhaps some would turn the cheek all the same. There is love in Smoke. And none in Discipline. I had hoped you would have discovered this by now.”

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  Thomas listens, grim in his scepticism; Charlie thoughtfully, stirred despite himself. As for Livia, she is not content with the answer, seems suspicious of its very eloquence, the facility with which it leaves her mother’s lips. Again Grendel stoops to gather Lady Naylor in his arms, again Livia intervenes, stops him, watches him cringe before her angry gaze.

  “I don’t believe you, Mother. I want to, you see, but it just doesn’t fit. You talk of change and a new Eden. But I know you too well. Deep down, you don’t give a fig about revolution, or power, and about the common people least of all. Then why, Mother, why? Just because Father went mad? You will remake the world because he took Discipline too far?”

  Her mother winces, looks up, cold fury in her one good eye.

  “You were too young to see it, Livia. How he changed. A happy, healthy man. Fond of his food.” She coughs, swallows. “He forbade the cook to put any salt in his food, lest it warmed his thoughts. He wouldn’t sleep, because the Smoke might come in his dreams. He even grew afraid to laugh. And he stopped coming to my bed.” She pauses, her tongue chasing for spit. “He cut me, Livia! Cut me open. Me, the woman he loved. And he did not smoke. Do you want to live in a world such as that?”

  Livia looks at her mother with an expression that fuses disparate emotions.

  Incredulity.

  Terror.

  Pride.

  Her mother studies it calmly.

  “I can see that you don’t understand,” she whispers. “You have never really been in love.”

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  For a third time Grendel stoops to gather her; for a third time Livia interposes her body and pushes him out the way.

  “Say it was noble,” she mutters. “Your revolution. Your dream. It does not justify it, Mother. The things you did to Mowgli. And to others. Sebastian told me about Lilith. It was wrong, Mother. Reprehensible.”

  Her mother shivers, holds Livia’s gaze.

  “I know, my dear. But I did it anyway.”

  Livia nods, bends forward suddenly, as though afraid her courage will leave her, kisses her mother full on her mouth. Smoke comes pouring out of her, Smoke of grief, of love. And slowly, painfully, something in her mother answers, a Smoke strangely damaged and shy, like a widow long shut out from the ways of the living, daring a peek past her front door. It lasts a minute, maybe two. When it ends, Lady Naylor is in tears.

  “Thank you, my dear.”

  “I cannot forgive you, Mother.”

  “I know. I read it in your Smoke.”

  Livia lets go of her mother.

  A moment later Grendel has carried her away.

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  They watch him take the lead, Mowgli on his back, Lady Naylor cradled to his front, a three-headed beast, lumbering across the uneven floor. They should help him, perhaps, but for once Charlie fails to summon his good nature, is sunk in thought. All the same he starts to follow, Thomas by his side. It’s Livia who holds them back; places a hand on each of their shoulders and arrests them in their steps. They watch Grendel go, never once stumbling under the weight. At the hall’s far end, by the entrance to the sewers, Grendel turns and sees they are not coming. He does not call to them and they offer no explanation; and within a heartbeat he has turned again and continued on his way.

  When Grendel is out of sight, Livia takes both boys’ hands and walks over to where Julius’s body hangs entangled within iron bars.

  GRENDEL

  I get her home, first carrying her by myself as far as I can manage, then hiring a man to help. I pay him with the money she thrust at me that very night, for services rendered. We are in luck: he is a kindly man, if drunk, and once he sees that she’s injured he carries her gently. Me the head, him the feet, trying not to dunk her bottom in the dirt. Throughout milady is faint, mutters to herself, not always in English. Mowgli watches her from over my shoulder; from the corner of my eye I can see his frown.

  I dismiss my helper on a street corner not far from the house. The staircase is hard work, the door bolted. Berta opens only when I call her by name. I ask her where her bruises come from, and the blood that stains her sleeves, but when she sees my load, the surgeon’s daughter takes over and she becomes deaf to all questions.

  “Put her in bed,” she commands. “Mowgli too, he has a fever.” Then: “Bring water.”

  In the kitchen a dog lies dead, dragged into one corner. Its hind legs are strapped to a cart. Its skull appears crushed. I call out, but again Berta ignores me; she rushes between her patients, barks at me to boil more water, to find a clean cloth and cut it into strips.

  It keeps my hands busy and my mind free. I watch as Berta applies a cold flannel to Mowgli’s head and sings to calm him; then crouches over Lady Naylor and cleans up her face. She sends me out when it comes to undressing her and examining her hip. Lady Naylor is conscious, watching me retreat across the length of the room.

  I stand outside and weigh that look.

  Why exactly did I do it? Agree to help her when she asked? When I knocked on her door late that night I came only to plead for Mowgli. Berta had sent me. We thought he might be as I am, blighted, incapable of Smoke. I explained my condition and watched milady start in shock and recognition. She gave me more that night than the promise of a child. “I have use for you,” she said. “You cannot smoke. But you can be Smoke’s shepherd.” She did not pressure or cajole; did not see fit to explain her thoughts or confide the details of her plans. A noblewoman talking to a commoner: she never pretended we were equals. But she shook my hand when I left, long-fingered and firm. It was then I knew I would assist her.

  Can a man such as I be seduced by a courtesy?

  And so I lied to Livia. It made sense, ensured that she and the boys were safe from reproach. The lie came easily. What frightened me was how small was my capacity for shame.

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  Berta emerges. She is shaking her head.

  “It’s the top of her thighbone. I cannot set it. She needs a surgeon. If it infects—”

  “There is a dog in the kitchen.”

  “It went mad,” she answers, obscurely, as though that explains its presence. “I smoked and it went mad. Angry, snapping at me. But it was sad too. A mad dog with a broken heart.” She grimaces, shudders. “It seemed a mercy, Tobias.”

  “I will get rid of it.”

  “Leave it by the street corner. Someone will take it for its meat. It’s January. A hungry month.”

  When I return, I look in on Lady Naylor. She remains awake, tucked under sheet and blanket, her dress draped over the backboard flaring its skirts.

  Her eyes are wet with tears.

  “My son is dead,” she whispers when I draw closer. “But my daughter loves me.”

  I watch a shiver ripple through her frame, bend down to her mangled, bandaged face.

  “Your Smoke,” I tell her. “When you said good-bye to your daughter. It looked different.” I search for the right word, cannot find it. “Weak. Thin. Reluctant.”

  She nods, pulls away the blanket and displays her naked flank without shame. The scar is an ugly thing, rises mottled from her skin.

  “He damaged me. When he cut me. I am almost as broken as you.

  “It would be best if we both were dead,” she carries on. “We will give people ideas. Renfrew’s ilk.”

  Then Berta is there, walks over to the bed and pulls the blanket back to cover her.

  “You go on, die,” she tells Lady Naylor. “My son needs a father.”

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  We spend the rest of the night at Mowgli’s bedside. The boy drifts in and out of sleep. His face is serious.
At times he cries with some internal pain, quietly, not wiping the tears. I do it for him. He does not flinch at my touch.

  In the periods when he sleeps, Berta and I talk. I try to describe to her what happened. Berta is not interested.

  “I shot a man today,” I tell her. “I shot milady’s son.”

  “What does it matter now? It’s over and done with. Mowgli’s here.”

  “Miss Livia called me a monster. And then she would not look at me, not once.”

  “She is young,” Berta says. “She has a narrow view of life.”

  I nod, unconvinced.

  “It’ll be dawn soon. We should get some sleep.”

  But we stay. Mowgli wakes when light starts filling the room. His temperature is down, he is alert. Berta bends to him slowly, afraid she will startle him. His arm comes up, cautiously, his little hand grabbing at her face, her nose. It withdraws and displays between his index and middle fingers the little wedge of his thumb. Berta raises her hand to her face as though looking for her nose; mimes finding nothing there, only a blank; stares in mock terror at the boy’s raised-up thumb. He does something miraculous then. He giggles. And grabs for her nose once again.

  Emotion pours out of Berta. It pours out as a sob, as pale, hazy Smoke. The child sees the Smoke, waves at it, finds he can dance shapes into it with the movement of his fingers.

  And I?

  I sit there abject, smiling, yearning to feel as they do; contented and removed.

  BAPTISM

  “He looks like a statue.”

  “Like a saint. At prayer. Only, you know. Crucified.”

  “And evil.”

  But even as Charlie says it he realises it is not true. Julius is kneeling, arms out, his mangled face drooping halfway through the bars. It isn’t just that Thomas’s fists have cut loose his features. The Soot has come off where his temples and ears have slipped through the bars, along with something more substantial than skin. Livia is right then. Julius looks like a saint: whittled from a block of charcoal, or black burnt wood. Brittle to the touch.