The Spirit Cabinet

by Paul Quarrington

  Rudolfo is marching down the hall once more, toward the front door. Samson falls in beside him. Samson walks with an aged, twisted gait, his hindquarters swinging in a wide, sloppy arc. The albino leopard’s tongue is caught between white lips and fangs. There are animals hidden in the shadows that line the hallway. Little grey eyes dot the way like markers on a runway, but Samson pays no attention. He has too much dignity to turn and recognize these critters, these stupid squawkers and mewlers.

  The front door yaws up suddenly, blocking Rudolfo’s path. He certainly hadn’t expected it to appear so soon; he thought the door was miles and miles away. But here it is and he’s so startled that he doesn’t think to turn and flee. Besides, maybe it is someone Rudolfo wants to see. It might be Miranda, for example, who appears periodically with groceries and little presents for the animals. Or it might be Jurgen; after all, he disappeared, so he could reappear. Rudolfo remembers Einstein’s symbols, the pencil scratches the physicist made on the walls at Kramgasse 49, and thinks that Jurgen’s unvanishing is within the realm of possibility. So he takes hold of the solid gold knob (a huge thing as big as a cantaloupe; Rudolfo has to use both hands to twist with all of his might) and makes a crack into the night. The October wind does the rest, blowing across the desert and nudging the door open with great force.

  A little figure stands in front of Rudolfo, a horrifying spectre. The face, small and pale, is slashed and half-hidden by a huge moustache, the ends curled and waxed into sharp swordpoints. The figure’s torso is wrapped in a crimson jacket, festooned with brass buttons. Cutting diagonally across the chest is a Sam Browne, and holstered at the connection to the belt is an oversized gun. In one hand the tiny figure holds a whip. It raises the handle and jerks it, making the length of leather snap in the air.

  Rudolfo screams.

  Samson faints.

  Rudolfo slams the door shut and joins the big cat on the floor.

  Chapter Nine

  When Rudolfo returned from Los Angeles, Jimmy was not there to meet him. The airline people, always eager to participate in surreptitious activities, had hustled Rudolfo through some back corridors. He wore a nylon shell, the hood pulled up around his head, and walked with a slight hunch, pinching his shoulders together as though he could be identified at a distance merely by his phenomenal physique. The airline people—joined by a couple of policemen who strutted alongside with their hands resting on their pistol butts—banged through a doorway far away from the usual pedestrian traffic. They pushed Rudolfo outside and then turned away abruptly, dispersing into the airport; that was part of the game plan, to act suddenly as though nothing were unusual. No one except Rudolfo noticed that the long white limousine was not sitting where it should have been.

  Rudolfo set his travelling bag on the ground. He cursed silently and determined to fire Jimmy.

  Actually, firing Jimmy was not necessary. Jimmy had already quit. Jimmy was far away at that moment, down in Mexico drinking too much tequila and consorting listlessly with dark young beauties. Jimmy was wracked with guilt. Jimmy, you see, had accepted a monstrous amount of money to dismantle the security system at the mansion, this act of disloyalty being accomplished by the simple pressing of a button. Then he fled and would spend the rest of his days in alcoholic misery, never knowing that no one suspected him of playing a part in the break-in, because no one, almost no one, was ever aware that a break-in had even taken place.

  Though Rudolfo was standing beside one of the roadways that girded the airport, there was no traffic on it. He suspected that there was a cabstand somewhere and, had he been braver, might have launched himself back into the river of humanity inside the airport, in hopes of emerging ultimately through the appropriate doorway. But that seemed drastic, dangerous. That asshole Kaz, he knew, was forever getting molested in airports. True, Kaz brought it upon himself, never attempting to disguise his outgrown features, not even removing those eyeglasses that made him look retarded.

  Rudolfo also had a terrible hangover, the result of a single glass of champagne, forced upon him by one of the suicidal musicians comprising Sturm and Drang. When one is in such great shape as Rudolfo Thielmann, one’s system becomes very finely tuned, and anything out of the ordinary sends it for a loop.

  The champagne had been in celebration of the completion of the Sturm and Drang version of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony. Sturm and Drang were very pleased with their work, elated for at least twenty minutes, during which they forced champagne upon Rudolfo. Then Sturm and Drang plunged back into despair, because perfection had come tantalizingly close.

  Rudolfo was also very pleased. The music was perfect for the Show, so much so that he wondered why it had never occurred to him before. The Fourth started quietly—as quiet as Sturm and Drang ever got—and then grew in volume until a simple melodic line floated earthward like a heavy snowfall. Rudolfo got very excited, goosepimpled, imagining the entrance he and Jurgen would make with this regal fanfare pounding down upon their shoulders. That’s why he’d accepted the glass of champagne, had even, like Sturm and Drang, dashed the flute to the floor of the recording studio.

  And now, with his head buzzing and his tiny stomach full of acid, Rudolfo wondered what to do.

  Almost no one knew about the break-in the night before.

  Samson knew.

  The albino leopard had been prowling nocturnally, which made him feel a little bit wild and untamed. He was a different cat late at night, not quite so dandified. Running across other night creatures—the bushbabies were typically scampering around—he was likely to roar, quietly, and to bat the wide-eyed varmints out of the way with a huge paw. He would climb defiantly on the furniture (countenanced by Rudolfo, forbidden by Jurgen) and lick furiously at his ghost balls.

  That’s what he was doing when he was startled by the sight of a black-clad figure tiptoeing past him. It was an animated shadow, blended in with the night, but Samson had night vision enough to recognize it as human. The elbows were raised high, the toes tapping with the ginger thoroughness of a white cane. Samson realized that just as the dark human mixed with the blackness, so he was invisible upon the cream-coloured sofa. What he should have done was unleash a huge and mighty roar, then perhaps pounce and maul. He even licked his lips preparatory to the howling; the shadowy human spun around, alarmed by this sound like wet sandpaper. But there was no roar forthcoming because Samson had immediately pulled in his tongue and shut his eyes, hoping that he was therefore totally invisible. Samson was terrified. When he opened his eyes, the figure was gone.

  When they had met, Rudolfo and Samson, many years ago, Samson was a miniature version of himself, a puffy little white ball with fangs and claws. He was placed in Rudolfo’s hands and immediately started savaging, getting a nice piece of flesh between his teeth and tearing away with all his might. Then there came a pleasant sensation, Samson being cooled by a gentle breeze, and then there came an unpleasant one, Samson being crumpled up against a wall.

  He slid to the ground, then turned around to look at the human being who had done this to him. He had seen relatively few. There was the fat one who had taken him away from his mother, a dastardly act that actually worked out well, since Samson’s mother much preferred his brightly spotted brothers and sisters. And there was the young man who had attended to him on the ship, although this attendance only amounted to shoving thin strips of desiccated meat through the bars of his cage.

  In those days, Rudolfo Thielmann wore a wig of alarming blondness, long near-white strands that he had to keep pulling out of his face. Perhaps this was to cover the acne, or perhaps the acne was caused by it. Whichever, the nineteen-year-old suffered a horrible case, his face bubbled and pocked.

  Rudolfo was generally surly back then. He’d been with the circus for five years, years spent travelling from grimy town to grimy town. His purview was the care, maintenance and training of wild animals. He took the job very seriously, removing himself, as far as possible, from the society of people. The only pers
on he had anything to do with was General Bosco, the Lion Tamer.

  General Bosco stood about five-foot-four and looked even shorter because of an odd disproportion of his limbs. His arms seemed truncated, for example, and culminated in tiny fingers that lacked knuckles. And not only were his legs short, they were bowed in a dwarfish manner. So General Bosco gave the impression of severe tininess, an impression he did his best to correct through the discipline of bodybuilding.

  Bodybuilding was not a popular sport in those days. It was considered odd and was tainted by an aura of slightly squalid homosexuality. General Bosco likely had a lot to do with this general perception. In the gymnasium (these would have to be located, town to town, and were usually designed for boxing or gymnastic training, with a few free weights tossed over in a corner), General Bosco would traipse out of the change room in a skin-tight, old-fashioned one-piece bathing suit, with a lifting belt cinched so tightly that his torso seemed ready to pop toward the ceiling like a champagne cork. General Bosco would stop in the middle of the room and assume a pose, usually one that accentuated his strong points, his calves and biceps. He’d lick his fingers and stroke his moustache, exciting both sides into sharp, uplifted spears. Then he’d slap his hands together, announce his plan to the world at large and set about with furious industry. General Bosco did squats an awful lot, loading so many plates on either end of the iron bar that it formed a huge frown across the hump of his shoulders. And as he lifted he would not only scream and grunt, he would shout at invisible beings: “Ja, dat’s good!” he’d howl. “Ja, baby!”

  Rudolfo accompanied him, more often than not. At first he’d been reluctant to, but General Bosco needed a lifting partner, and he was able to intimate that accompaniment on weightlifting outings was part of Rudolfo’s job description. General Bosco was not Rudolfo’s actual employer, but he acted as though he were. It was General Bosco who had, that first day years ago, sent Rudolfo into the cage with meat for the irritable lion, Boris. General Bosco had been very impressed with the boy’s ability to not be savagely attacked and/or eaten alive, so he’d determined to make Rudolfo a protegé. He’d accomplished this through a combination of veiled threat and petulant remonstration. Slowly, Rudolfo’s attitude changed from a grudging tolerance to an odd admiration.

  It was not long before Rudolfo entered the cages because he was the only one qualified to do so. Soon, all of the animal trainers came to him for counsel, even Zofia Himmler with her lugubrious elephants. Rudolfo likewise benefited from his exposure to the discipline of body sculpting. Soon he too was hunkered beneath the iron bar, dropping down and then pushing heavenward with all his might, blasting his thighs into striated hams.

  Given the smooth sculpted bulk and the platinum-blond wig, Rudolfo presented an odd-looking figure. This was a vision that imprinted itself instantly on the young albino leopard’s retina. Samson, his mind still clouded from having been thrown against the wall, fell in love.

  A taxicab screamed up and came to a wailing halt in front of Rudolfo, the brakes applied so suddenly that the cab continued to shiver and shake for moments afterwards. It was an oversized contraption with puffed-up fenders, painted a bright silver that sang with light. On top a small unlit plaque announced “MERCURY.”

  Rudolfo bent over to look through the window and saw that the driver was concentrating on his own activities. Rudolfo realized that he’d been standing so still that he’d managed to blend in with the surroundings. This was, of course, habit from his animal training. He’d often remain motionless for hours and hours, until his presence meant no more to the beasts than the individual bars that made up their cage. Still, he was a little hurt to realize how easy he was to overlook. He was stung by the feeling that the entire planet was, at that moment, ignoring him.

  The cab driver’s own activities consisted of reading a paperback book and smoking a joint. He was a middle-aged man, black, dressed in what seemed to be ceremonial robes and adorned with a number of necklaces and bracelets, uniformly gold. He wore some kind of military or service headgear, perhaps what had once been an airline pilot’s hat. All that remained now, however, was the shiny black visor, held in place by a tattered ring of material. The driver’s scalp was decorated by thin, tiny rows of coarse hair, angled and curved intricately. The resulting design seemed to contain meaning, although Rudolfo could make nothing of it.

  The book-reading and joint-smoking were being conducted with furious industry. The driver’s fingers didn’t so much hold the joint as prevent it from being hoovered through his lips. The fingers on his other hand hovered above the book, trembling with raptorial excitement, so that page-turning could be executed in an instant. He was, Rudolfo saw, nearing the end of the book, but Rudolfo had little sympathy for readers. He took a step forward and rapped on the window.

  The bracelets and necklaces sent forth a musical clangour; the book shot up and collided with the roof just before the driver’s head did. When he fell back to earth he disappeared, lost beneath the ceremonial robes.

  Rudolfo pulled open the passenger door and tried to put the man at ease. “Baby!” he said, employing the tone of moronic heartiness he used in the Show. “Don’t get so jumpy with me!”

  Rudolfo threw his bag into the back seat and climbed in the front. The driver’s eyes were bugged open with apparent horror. “Was?” Rudolfo snapped, catching sight of this look. His first thought was that his wig had fallen off; it was his belief that without his wig he presented a truly hideous spectacle. He reached up and touched the curls and locks and then, reassured, became haughty and imperious. “You must take me to where I am living,” he said. “I am Rudolfo.”

  The driver thought about that for almost a minute. He then turned and formally addressed the dashboard, placing his left hand on the steering wheel and working the gear selector slowly through “R” and “N” before putting it to rest in “D.” Changing hands on the steering wheel, he depressed the signal indicator so that a loud ticking and flashing light announced his intention of pulling out to the left. He checked his blind spot many times, craning his head backwards, righting it, then snapping it back once more, ever wary that some madman could come screaming around the corner. Despite all this driving activity, the car did not go anywhere for many long moments. It was as though the man were awaiting clearance from an unseen tower, an impression he furthered by touching his ears occasionally.

  Finally, the silent word was heard, and the car screamed into the heat of Las Vegas.

  The driver began singing. Or making musical noises with his mouth, at any rate, because along with plaintive falsetto melodies and guttural lowings came odd percussive sounds, tongue-clicks and such. He began to drum along with his fingers, smacking them down upon the steering wheel with sufficient force to produce tympanic pops. Soon his whole body was involved, his neck jerking back and forth like a turkey with a full crop. His left foot began a steady tapping, his right foot a more erratic one. Seeing as how the man’s right foot rested on the accelerator, Rudolfo was tossed back and forth. He shouted, “Cool off!” but the driver seemed to interpret this as encouragement and exaggerated the jerky spurts.

  The airport disappeared abruptly and the vehicle sambaed into the desert.

  Samson grew at an alarming rate, his limbs sprouting visibly. He was a miserable beast, for the most part, shunned and reviled by the other animals. Total whiteness is freakish beyond conception. A God so absent-minded as to forget to put colour into a creature was capable of anything. So Samson was hissed and swatted at by the other big cats. General Bosco seemed to share this unkindly view. He would snap his whip with what was either very good or very poor aim—instead of cracking the air just above Samson’s head, the stinging tip would tear at his ear, or at the end of his snout, and for an instant the albino leopard would experience excruciating pain. The only moments of happiness came when Samson was close to Rudolfo, the boy with hair of similar colourlessness. It was to please Rudolfo that Samson learned the basic stuff, to rear
up on to his hind legs and paw in a mincing way at the emptiness before him. Samson learned to jump through a hoop, although he found it very boring to do so, no less so when the hoop was set aflame. He’d found that very surprising, the first time, but boring nonetheless.

  Samson found himself thinking of other, untried stunts. Somersaulting, for example. He’d seen the men with the painted faces do that, and it seemed to delight the human beings, especially the smaller ones. So Samson worked on somersaulting, although his head was too large to simply turn to the side, and his back end, comparatively puny, often waggled in the air in an unbecoming manner. Samson worked on this when perhaps he should have been applying himself to other things, and he worked on it with such single-mindedness that he was often unaware that other things were going on. Such as the time General Bosco, ramming his hands on his hips and staring daggers in Samson’s direction, shouted, “He, Schneewittchen! Mach dass du den Arsch hoch kriegst.”

  Samson continued his somersaulting. He’d developed a kind of sideways roll, pivoting on one of his shoulders and snapping his little pelvis mid-air to gather momentum. He was in the midst of one of these turns when the tip of General Bosco’s whip flicked his rear-end.

  For the first, and only, time in his life, Samson knew what it was to be wild. His mind was licked clean by a tongue of fire. The pain filled his being so completely that his claws seemed to give off sparks, his moist snout steam.