Mr Cassini

by Lloyd Jones

Mr Cassini never bothered with that sort of thing; he just made a great big show of killing the biggest snake in the jungle (as he described the act of shaking his whatsit before he put it back in its cage). No wonder Mrs Cassini always looked startled. She always looked as if she’d just seen the biggest snake in the jungle.

  ‘I can’t decide what sort of funeral I’d like,’ said Mr Cassini. Being a funeral photographer and all that, Mr Cassini was always going on about death.

  ‘Ya gotta say goodbye to the dead, Porky, you gotta do it proper or they comes back to haunt yer boy.’

  Swaying in his cubicle, killing the biggest snake in the jungle, he told PC 66 about the scattered tribes who live in a vast area stretching from mid-Russia to Siberia.

  They believe that death is foretold by the unusual behaviour of birds. When people are dying the birds become agitated: some want different foods, others want to drink water from a different well. After a death all mirrors and reflecting surfaces are covered. Anyone who dies with his head on a feather pillow will have to count all the feathers in the otherworld and will never be absolved. Witches must confess their misdemeanours and pray. A witch can die only after someone has agreed to take over her skills. Then the witch spits three times into the apprentice’s mouth. For forty days after the death, while the soul is still around, fresh water and bread are put out every day. Some believe that during this period the dead revisit all the places they’ve been to during their lifetime.

  ‘Me too,’ said Mr Cassini. ‘I’m going to visit everywhere, I’m going to visit you all, you jus’ remember that boy.’ And surely to God, PC 66 saw a tear roll down his friend’s cheek. Mr Cassini wiped it away mighty quick, mind you. Mr Cassini wasn’t a man to be seen crying. Mr Cassini was a real man.

  The Estonians have an unusual custom. The hands and feet of the dead are tied until the burial, when the limbs are freed again, so the deceased can move around in the otherworld. Afterwards the bonds are either placed in the coffin or used for magic: they can cure diseases, or sometimes the bonds are secretly sewn inside a drunkard’s pockets to put him off alcohol, or sewn into a wife-beater’s clothes to prevent him from harming his wife ever again.

  The Harries family had an astrological almanac and a book of incantations which told them how to make spirits appear. Years later a powerful invocation was found in the Harries library; apparitions could be made to appear in a crystal ball – the wizards could expect to see travellers on a beaten road: men and women marching silently along… there would be rivers, wells, mountains and seas, after that a shepherd on a pleasant hill with a goodly flock of sheep, and the sun shining brightly; and lastly, innumerable flows of birds and beasts, monsters and strange apparitions, which would all vanish with the appearance of the genie of the crystal ball…

  A discourse on vampires: The sharks at the Blue Angel believed Mr Cassini was a vampire. One of them claimed that Mr Cassini had cried in the toilets and his tears had been red. No one believed this story, because Mr Cassini never cried.

  You don’t believe in vampires? Before you dismiss the notion completely, listen to the story of Nicolas Strathloch. With a Welsh father and a Russian-Romanian mother, Nicolas lives in Los Angeles today, but he was raised by his grandparents in Wales. Three of his 14 brothers are also ‘vampires’. Every lunchtime Nicolas, a print shop foreman, goes to a nearby park where he ‘feeds off’ human energy. Strathloch is one of 300,000 or so people worldwide who follow a vampire religion. They come from all walks of life; some are scholars, artists and teachers, some are members of the clergy (allegedly). They ‘feed off’ other people’s emotional energies, though many will only feed off willing donors. Killing is strictly forbidden, as is taking energy from the sick.

  Los Angeles has a large concentration of vampires, but there are many living in Japan, Rome, Vienna and London. India has a large following of vampires devoted to Kali, the Hindu goddess of creation and destruction. Modern vampires are drawn to the darker forces and enjoy a nocturnal lifestyle. Many claim psychic powers, saying they can leave their own bodies and occupy others. Some say they can actually fly and enter people’s dreams. Some vampires say they suffer from porphyria, a rare metabolic disorder which causes reddening, pain and blistering of the skin in direct sunlight.

  Vampires believe they’re immortal. When their spirit leaves the body it seeks out a new host. ‘The greatest punishment there can be is to lose immortality,’ says Strathloch, who is a high-flyer in the Temple of the Vampire, a Washington-based international organisation. Other organisations, such as the Order of the Dragon, the Vampire Church and the Vampire Grove, also follow the vampire religion.

  The Wizards of Cwrt-y-Cadno also had the ability to know the movements of their enemies, and inflict harm on them. They could ‘freeze’ people with a look, make them see items appear or dance before their eyes, and force them to act irrationally.

  Abracadabra: Having been overcharged for meat at Swansea, one of the wizards cast a spell on the butcher, who was forced to dance and sing

  Eight and six for meat!

  What a wicked cheat!

  His wife, servants and children also succumbed. After removing the spell the wizard said: That’ll teach you to overcharge people!

  The wizards could also ‘mark’ thieves and malicious people. And they could retrieve stolen goods. Suspecting a servant, a woman who had ‘lost’ several spoons announced she would consult Dr Harries. Scared of being marked, the servant returned the spoons. Mirrors were sometimes used in magical ways to ‘reveal’ the culprit.

  But neither wizard was able to forestall death. One died young, the other died strangely.

  Do you ever die? Is it possible for your memory to live on for ever? Mr Cassini thought so. Mr Cassini had a system all of his own.

  One afternoon he whistled at PC 66 and lassoed his attention as the policeman cycled home. It had been a tiresome shift and he’d been busier than usual. The heat had brought out all the juvenile sharks, who’d shoaled in the Blue Angel beer garden. As usual, things got out of hand; one of them was sleeping it off in the cells. PC 66 had handled it pretty well, but his uniform had taken the full force of a trayful of full beer glasses, and he smelt like a brewery.

  ‘Psst!’

  PC 66 hadn’t seen his friend. The brakes squealed horribly as he wrestled his bike to a stop. Eventually his eyes found Mr Cassini, sitting with his back against an oak tree by the side of the road, on the banks of the Afon Ddu. He was shrouded in the deep shadow of the tree’s summer canopy. His cobra-rising hand waved PC 66 towards him.

  ‘You need some oil on that wheel, boy.’

  ‘U-hu.’

  ‘By the way, you smell like a brewery.’

  That was bloody rich, coming from him. Mr Cassini stood against the bole of the tree, a Cerne Abbas giant outlined in black. PC 66 could even see the silhouettes of his jutting lugholes.

  Mr Cassini lumbered out of the shadows.

  ‘Come on, I’ve got some oil in my workshop. Then we’re going on a mission.’

  He laughed, and lifted his eyes to the high meadows way above them.

  PC 66 followed his gaze. Shading his eyes, he searched for a small black dot. He knew Mojo the Fair, smooth-skinned and blond, was up there somewhere, a microdot among the molehills. Mr Cassini pointed, and PC 66 tried to follow the stubby brown finger, but he couldn’t see anyone. Mr Cassini laughed and said something. Then they made their way to Mr Cassini’s workshop, which was also his photographic developing room. PC 66 was seldom allowed in there. Mr Cassini found the oil and lubricated the bike-wheels. As he spun a wheel, testing it for squeaks, PC 66 pondered his companion’s manifold eccentricities.

  Was it possible to be remembered for ever?

  Mr Cassini certainly believed so. In his search for everlasting life, Mr Cassini engaged in some cunning stratagems – and they were curious to say the least.

  Some days he would catch a bus to the castle and he would loiter in the crowd. Then, when a photo was ab
out to be taken, he would press forward so that he was standing immediately behind the tourists being photographed. In this way he inveigled himself into countless holiday snaps. During one of their drinking bouts he informed PC 66 that many thousands of Japanese and American photograph albums contained at least one picture of him. Mr Cassini the hairy hominid grinned at grandparents, cousins, lovers, even total strangers in Tokyo and Nagasaki, Washington and Denver.

  ‘Think about that boy,’ he said to PC 66. ‘I’m all over the world.’

  And there was another ploy, even more bizarre. Knowing that call centres recorded voices for training purposes, whatever that meant, Mr Cassini frequently spent hours with the Yellow Pages on his lap, calling corporations at random. Some days he’d be Mr Angry, other days Mr Confused; he cultivated a whole repertoire of telephone archetypes.

  ‘That way I’ll live on,’ he said. ‘My voice’ll be played over and over again in rooms all over the world. Isn’t that marvellous boy?’

  And you had to concede, it was marvellous.

  ‘Mystery,’ he said. ‘Mystery is the key to it all. Make yourself into a mystery, an enigma, Porky. You’ll be remembered for ever if you’re a riddle.’

  Or a serial killer, or a complete bastard, thought PC 66.

  For a while Mr Cassini contemplated a scheme so ambitious it was breathtaking. But in the final analysis he couldn’t afford it. Well, let’s put it like this, he couldn’t afford it and drink alcohol in the quantities he did.

  ‘I’ve struck on a brilliant plan,’ he said to PC 66 in the bogs at the Blue Angel, his plastic vampire teeth gleaming like jaundiced glow-worms. His overalls had acquired some extra splashes, and PC 66 was trying to pluck up enough courage to broach the subject.

  Mr Cassini’s brilliant plan? It was brilliant all right. He would ‘disappear’ like Lord Lucan – and then post ‘sightings’ of himself all over the world; he’d send letters, postcards, cryptic notes to newspapers. He’d create the biggest mystery story ever. He was going to sneak into the Millennium Stadium (nothing was beyond Mr Cassini) and he was going to plaster his own home-made banners over the advertising hoardings: WHERE IS MR CASSINI?

  ‘What d’ya think Porky? That’ll keep them guessing, won’t it?’

  ‘No doubt about it, Mr Cassini,’ he answered.

  But drinking twelve pints a day rules out world travel, even trips to Cardiff. Twelve pints a day discounts pretty well everything except dreams and cirrhosis of the liver (Mr Cassini had a small rowing boat which he’d named Cirrhosis of the River).

  Even Golly the pig had to go without occasionally. And he loved Golly the pig.

  Despite all his magical abilities, Dr John Harries failed to forestall his own tragic death – he’d had a premonition that he would die in an accident on May 11, 1839.

  In an attempt to cheat death he stayed in bed throughout the day. But during the night he was awoken by cries that the house was on fire and in his haste to extinguish the flames he slipped from a ladder and was killed. He was 54. Even in death he was unable to avoid controversy: it was said that his coffin suddenly and inexplicably became lighter while it was being carried to the churchyard. It was widely believed that the evil spirits which had taken his soul when he died had returned to take his body too; as the coffin ‘lost’ its contents, a herd of cows in a nearby field became frightened and stampeded: they didn’t stop running until they reached the waterfall at Pwll Uffern (Hell’s Pool) four miles away. John Harries is buried with his son Henry, who died of consumption at the age of 28, at Caeo churchyard.

  Mr Cassini, funeral photographer sans pareil, knew all about photographs – developing, printing and doctoring. He knew all about the power of photographs.

  He could have been Stalin’s right hand man (or left hand man, come to that, since he moved people around or rubbed them out altogether with breathtaking dexterity).

  In his workshop, hanging above the developing trays, he had a copy of the most famous ghost photograph ever taken – The Brown Lady who haunted the oak staircase at Raynham Hall in Norfolk. The ghost belonged to a wife who’d been locked away in a remote corner of the house after a sham funeral. Mr Cassini showed his collection of ‘doctored’ photographs to PC 66. They were quite frightening.

  ‘This is a secret, mind,’ he said. ‘Our little secret – you mustn’t tell anyone. Promise?’

  ‘I promise Mr Cassini sir.’

  And he revealed more of his wonderful theories to PC 66.

  ‘Some primitive people think their souls will be stolen if they’re photographed,’ he said. ‘They also believe their shadows and reflections are sacred, magical. They think they’ll die or get hurt if someone takes their shadow from them, or trample on it. Your shadow’s part of your soul, Porky. Your reflection in water, or in a mirror, is also part of your soul – that’s why breaking a mirror brings you seven years bad luck.’

  Some ancient cultures fear that water spirits can use the reflection to drag the soul underwater. Many people still fear the camera lens – the evil eye.

  ‘How many people do you know who won’t be photographed?’ he asked PC 66. ‘You think it’s vanity? Insecurity? You’re wrong, boy. We’re talking about ancient forces.’

  A photo captures and freezes you in a single moment in time, cutting you off from the past and the future too, he said. A photo can evoke strong emotions: tears, laughter. It can reveal a lot about your nature and your personality. It can paint a truer portrait of you than a psychologist can.

  Naked Lunch author William S Burroughs used a Polaroid camera to cast a ‘spell’ on a coffee shop he’d fallen out with. And since the photo ‘removed’ the shop from normal time and space, the shop became vulnerable to sorcery or enchantment. The Polaroid technique opened magical doors because the image could be seen developing slowly, and the image could be influenced as it formed on the paper, Burroughs believed. A sigil (magical sign) could be drawn onto the photo as it developed. Elements of the snap could be eliminated with a match, or with Mr Cassini’s skull and crossbones lighter, the one with red luminous eyes.

  Is it possible to love the dead – whilst also fearing them?

  Does love end when the coffin lid rattles; does something else take its place: a ghostly love, a spirit-love which floats up and down the stairs on windy nights?

  Mr Cassini loved the dead – and he feared the dead. He feared, more than anything else, retribution. Reprisals from beyond the grave.

  Mr Cassini was in the bogs. He was twelve pints maudlin.

  ‘I loved her you know,’ he said, killing the biggest snake in the jungle. ‘And I still talk to her every night, boy. She still loves me she says.’

  Mr Cassini believed that he could only talk to people properly when they were dead – when they’d reached the afterlife. He also believed he’d be able to communicate with the living when he was gone. He even toyed with the idea of having a microphone buried with him, connected to a loudspeaker on top of his gravestone.

  ‘That’d look rather dinky, don’t you thing so, Porky?’

  He told PC 66 how to treat the dead.

  ‘Close their eyes so their spirit can’t re-enter the living world. Burn their homes to prevent their souls from returning. Carry them out of the house feet first to prevent them from looking back, to stop them from beckoning to the living, saying follow me. Cut off their feet so they can’t walk. Cut off their heads too like the Aborigines do – the spirit will be too busy searching for it to haunt the living. Hew monumental tombstones to encumber ghosts and weigh them down. Make a maze around the tomb to frustrate the departed, since ghosts travel only in straight lines.’ Mr Cassini finished killing the biggest snake in the jungle. His vampire teeth glowed in the feeble light.

  A storm was blowing in from the north, driving a high tide onto the crumbling cliffs beyond Little Bay, onto the marshes. No one seemed to care. Everyone was drunk or drugged to the eyeballs; all the townspeople in their tawdry hovels had blanked out danger, turned a bli
nd eye to the mounting fury of nature. Mr Cassini had sent his children to patrol the margins of the marshlands; PC 66 feared for their safety, but Mr Cassini expected booty that night, another boat driven up on the shore, another hold full of contraband. PC 66 felt helpless: he should go to the marshlands, he knew it in his heart of hearts, but he had urgent business elsewhere. He had to appear in court again; a subpoena ad testificum had ordered him to the Coroner’s Court to give evidence in a strange and troubling case.

  The bells of the church rang wildly in the wind. There was an air of foreboding; all the dogs howled, the cats caterwauled and Golly the pig screeched and yelped in her sty. The tempest bullied and blustered. Children mewled and whimpered.

  Through the police station window PC 66 looked out on the wild sea, the fountains of the great deep, and he heard a faraway cry on the shore, eastwards, near the marshes.

  There were two new mannequins in Mr Cassini’s van, rolled up in a stolen carpet. The omens massed around him… PC 66 had to do something. They would expect him to do something.

  Tomorrow… when the storm subsided. When it was all over. When the looting was finished – he could hear the soldiers down by the museum, firing into the air. The sirens went off again, and he could hear feet scurrying past the police station as people headed for the shelters.

  He looked at himself in the mirror and pressed down his newly-ironed uniform with his hands. He combed his hair and adjusted his helmet. He found himself humming; it was a habit he’d caught from Mr Cassini. It was the same song too – If you go down to the woods today you’re sure of a big surprise – every time Mr Cassini hummed it PC 66 would sing out the last line: Today’s the day the Teddy Bears have their picnic… and they would have a laugh together.

  ‘Life certainly ain't no picnic at the moment,’ he said to himself.

  The impending inquest troubled him. A young farmer tending his flock by the shores of a lake in the high pastures – where Mojo the Fair ran among the birds – had met a beautiful girl at the water’s edge. She was dazed, and streaks of blood ran in the water draining from her flimsy clothes. A herd of splendid and unusual cattle surrounded her. She had been in an accident, it seemed. He comforted her and took her home; everyone marvelled at her beauty. She was under the impression that she had come from the water, together with the cattle. She was distressed; she talked constantly about her father, a dark and brooding presence beneath the water. They thought she was concussed; a bruise around her left eye seemed to show that she’d been struck. She recovered slowly but exhibited odd behaviour: she wept at weddings, laughed at funerals. Over the next year she received counselling, but she continued to experience night terrors; the rings under her eyes refused to fade, and she remained watchful, tense, insecure.