Mr Cassini

by Lloyd Jones

  Merlin: Fine, that’s enough. You’ve told us enough now. We know the scenario. Nothing special after all. A nasty little control freak like the rest. Just the same old story. Ah well...

  Mr Cassini (rising to his feet, infuriated) It might be the same old story to you pal, but it’s my story all the same, so don’t take the piss. Fuck off the lot of you. Think you’re all perfect? Don’t make me laugh.

  Mr Cassini reserved a special look of anger for me, as good as to say that he would get me later. His eyes snarled at me, and I started shivering.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Merlin. ‘He’s guilty, and he hasn’t even tried to hide it.’

  ‘What shall we do with him now?’ asked Huw Llwyd of Cynfael.

  ‘Send him to the Towers of Silence!’ cried the Rev Griffiths. ‘Make him lie for ever among the Parsee dead and let the vultures eat him alive!’

  I was warming to this idea when Huw Llwyd of Cynfael suggested: ‘Send him into space like Clough Williams Ellis!’

  ‘Pardon?’ we all said, simultaneously.

  ‘Clough Williams Ellis – the man who built Portmeirion. They sent his ashes into space in a rocket, a special firework... something like that.’

  But Williams Ellis was a nice bloke, I complained. ‘We could always give him to Cloacina, goddess of the sewers,’ I added lamely.

  ‘Listen, listen to me,’ said Arthur Machen, who was almost at the end of his tether.

  ‘Why do you think I invited the White People? Who could deal with him better than they?’

  ‘’Tis true,’ added Merlin, ‘they’re the best in the business.’

  Arthur Machen cleared his throat and addressed the encircling throng of White People, asking them how they might deal with the tyrant Mr Cassini.

  There was a brief hush, and then the Queen of the White People stepped forward.

  She was as beautiful as The Green Book portrayed her. She was whiter than any of them and taller; her eyes shone like burning rubies, and she spoke movingly about the secrets of the secrets, and about the ceremonies of the White People: the White Ceremonies, the Green Ceremonies and the Scarlet Ceremonies. Read Arthur Machen, he’s the one who invented them.

  The Queen of the White People produced an aumbry – a great golden bowl – and a green jar containing wine. She poured some of the wine into the bowl and then she laid a mannikin – a little man made of clay – very gently in the wine and washed it in the wine all over. We were frightened. A great ring of snow-topped hills appeared, encircling the hills of Wales, the little hills I loved so much. I had never seen these outer hills before. The entire world became very still and silent. The sky was heavy and grey and sad.

  ‘What will you do now?’ I asked the Queen of the White People.

  With a look of utter contempt she tossed the mannikin on the symbolic fire I had made from nine sticks collected by nine men from nine different types of trees. Mr Cassini gave a cry of pain, and as he did so the fire went out with a startling hiss.

  ‘Fools,’ he cried, clutching the left side of his body. ‘You can hurt me but you can never, ever kill me. Be aware of that fact – I am eternal. I will live in your heads for ever...

  ‘And you,’ he said, turning to me. His eyes screamed at me in a very angry way.

  ‘Don’t ever relax, not once. One day I’ll come to get you. You’ll hear a knock on the door and it’ll be me, coming for you. Remember that, always.’

  I shuddered. He sounded as if he meant it.

  Stepping quickly onto the knoll, which had been used as a witness stand during the trial, Merlin cried: ‘But we have other ways of getting rid of you, Cassini!’

  From then on everything happened very quickly.

  The Rev Griffiths sprang forward, grabbed Arthur Machen’s brass telescope, and unscrewed the eyepiece as quickly as he could. He ran forward and took a stand immediately in front of Mr Cassini, who was still groaning with pain.

  Merlin produced a vial, poured some white powder into his right palm, and threw it over Mr Cassini. There was an enormous flash, and Mr Cassini disappeared in an explosive burst; the sight and smell was very much like a reeking, noisy firework being set off. Briefly, a small black dot floated in the air, and upon seeing this the Rev Griffiths – who had very keen eyesight, evidently – swung unto action. Darting forwards with the telescope in one hand and the eyepiece in the other, he entrapped the black dot and held the telescope aloft, triumphantly.

  ‘Behold!’ he cried exultantly. ‘The monster is ensnared!’

  We all rushed forward to examine his catch. There was a bit of pushing and shoving as we all tried to catch a glimpse of the fly-sized Mr Cassini inside the telescope. Only the White People, full of decorum as usual, maintained their dignity by stepping back and standing in a placid, patient ring around us.

  A faint buzz came from within the telescope. For a few seconds I was allowed to view its contents. As the black dot came into view I could see, clearly, that it was a tiny version of Mr Cassini, hovering waspishly inside his new prison. I could hear his tinny, hornet voice buzzing shrilly.

  Then the Queen of the White People stepped forward and held out her hands, as if she were a priest taking the communion bowl. I gave her the telescope reverentially.

  ‘What will you do with it?’ I asked.

  The Queen studied it for a few seconds.

  ‘This is what we will do,’ she said in Xu. How softly and delicately she lisped the words. ‘We will take this telescope to a little stream of water running down the valley below us and we will drink the water with our hands, and it will taste like bright, yellow wine, and it will sparkle and bubble as it runs over beautiful red and yellow and green stones, and it will seem alive, and then we will take this thing through dark woods full of creeping thorns and whispers, and it will be a long, long way, and we will creep by a place that is bitter and dreary, through many bushes, under the low branches of trees, and through thorny thickets on the hills, full of black twisted boughs, and we will pass through a big bare place, and we will come to the kingdom of Voor where the light goes when it is put out, and inside a cave will be the great well, deep and shining and beautiful, and all around it the ground will be covered with bright, green, dripping moss, every kind of moss will be there, moss like beautiful little ferns, moss like palms and fir trees, all green as jewellery, and drops of water will hang on it like diamonds, and the water in the well will be so clear, we will try to touch the red sand at the bottom but it will be far below, and the water will bubble up but the surface will be quite smooth and full and brimming, a great white jewel, and we will leave him there. And all kinds of people will come to watch, there will be gentle folk and village folk, and some old people and some boys and girls, and quite small children, who will sit and watch, and it will be dark as they come in, except in one corner where someone will burn something that smells strong and sweet, and makes us all laugh, and the smoke will mount up red. Then there will be a singing and shouting and crying like nothing you have heard before.’

  That was good enough for us.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Merlin. ‘Just the job. Do you need any sort of payment?’

  ‘We wouldn’t consider it,’ said the Queen of the White People. ‘This is what we do. This is what we’re good at.’

  ‘Great,’ said Merlin, and then the White People left us, a long stream of excited little people, babbling in their Xu language, their Queen holding the telescope aloft in front of her. In no time at all they had disappeared in the direction of the Nant-y-Moch Reservoir. They blurred into a white, ghostly, shape-shifting mass and then disappeared over a ridge.

  ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,’ said Merlin, wiping his hands symbolically.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked, looking at me keenly. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Yes, I’m all right,’ I said, but I wasn’t. I felt quite ill. I was still coming down from the 27 seeds, and I wasn’t convinced that Mr Cassini’s reign of terror was over.
He could come back at any time, I thought. Merlin read my thoughts.

  ‘He’s as secure as he ever will be,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Come on, let’s have a picnic. Perhaps a slice of chocolate cake would do us all good.’ And he gave me one of his special winks.

  We had our picnic, and it was good – though I couldn’t eat anything myself. We chatted amiable about the banalities of life, under a noonday muster of clouds, as if nothing of import had happened, as if we were a ramblers’ club enjoying a day out. The chocolate cake went down very well. Combined with a few bottles of port and plenty of Montgomery Water it cast its own magic spell, and they all slumbered for a while afterwards, propped up against the cairn-stones as if they were dolls and teddy bears in a little girl’s make-believe world.

  At one time or another during that little feast, before we parted company, before all of us went our individual ways, I took the opportunity to ask Merlin a few questions.

  His eyes looked at me fondly from underneath his yucca eyebrows, and he took a few long puffs on his clay pipe.

  ‘I will have to return to the woods again soon,’ he said. ‘Every century or so I get the call again, and I have to return to my madness. It is never fully purged. No one is ever fully cleared of it. There is no such thing as catharsis, I think you know that already yourself. There are cycles, patterns, mandalas, culminations and expiations. Yes?’

  I nodded. As a mere mortal, my own cycles were shorter.

  ‘And where will I find her?’

  He knew who I meant.

  ‘Duxie, she’s beautiful and intelligent, and she’s in a strange town. She’s sad, and she’s trying to work things out. She smokes too much and she drinks too much coffee. Sometimes she cries at night in bed. You’ll find her very soon, OK?’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  ‘You don’t really mean that, because you can’t die.’

  ‘Duxie, you can be quite pedantic at times, can’t you? Relax. Take it easy for a while.’

  I cleared up the picnic things and packed them into the basket.

  ‘There’s one last slice of cake,’ I said to the company. But they were all asleep, all except Merlin and me.

  ‘Share it?’ he said. But I was full, and I waved my hand at the slice between us, indicating that he should have it. The hunger was leaving me; I had no need for food now.

  As he munched his way through the final slice I looked at Merlin and felt as if I’d found a father. A really nice warm feeling spread through me. I felt good.

  ‘Friends for ever?’ I said to him.

  ‘For ever and a day,’ he said, adding: ‘Can’t get over those White People – I wonder if they really do have red and yellow and green stones in their rivers.’ He contemplated this odd colour scheme.

  ‘Talking of colours,’ he said in his jokey Tommy Cooper voice, ‘how do you make a snooker table laugh?’

  ‘No idea,’ I said.

  ‘You put your hand in its pockets and tickle its balls. Boom boom!’

  Afterwards, as my composure returned, I walked down the flank of Pumlumon Arwystli towards home, with Gelert the dog by my side. It was snowing, and the land around me was losing its shape; the air was blurred and the pathways scrunched below me; little pyramids of snow formed on my boots. I looked round at one point and he was standing on the summit of Pumlumon Fawr, looking down at me. I waved to him. As he waved back I dwelt briefly on the three lines of poetry he’d left me with:

  Papery moths drift to the light,

  Churr in a hand’s cave,

  Then out, out.

  And so we went our separate ways.

  Part 3

  Reality

  Basho, coming

  To the city of Nagoya,

  Is asked to a snow party.

  There is a tinkling of china

  And tea into china;

  There are introductions.

  Then everyone

  Crowds to the window

  To watch the falling snow.

  Snow is falling on Nagoya

  And farther south

  On the tiles of Kyoto.

  Eastward, beyond Irago,

  It is falling

  Like leaves on the cold sea.

  Elsewhere they are burning

  Witches and heretics

  In the boiling squares,

  Thousands have died since dawn

  In the service

  Of barbarous kings;

  But there is silence

  In the houses of Nagoya

  And the hills of Ise.

  The Snow Party – Derek Mahon

  11

  THE TIDE GOES OUT

  The interview tapes (1)

  Let’s go back to the beginning, to the day you met. Where were you?

  In the café at the top end of town – it’s run by an Italian.

  Stefano’s?

  Yes, that’s the one.

  When was this?

  February.

  This year?

  Yes, I can’t remember the date exactly. Wales beat England on the Saturday.

  Rugby?

  Yes – Henson got a penalty in the last few minutes.

  Ah yes, I remember. But you’re not from the town, are you? What were you doing here?

  I was taking a break. It was here or Ibiza but I couldn’t afford the air fare. I’ve a relative living down by the harbour so I stayed with her. I needed to get away. I’d been studying too hard, and I had a few personal problems.

  You’re a student?

  Yes, I’m trying to get some A levels.

  So how did you get to know him?

  He was staring at me when I walked into the caff, so I noticed him straight away. The place was pretty full, so I had to sit at a table near him. He couldn’t keep his eyes off me.

  Dirty old man?

  No, not quite. He looked at me like he was seeing things. It turned out he thought I was one of his daughters – that’s what he told me later. Hadn’t seen his kids for years, apparently. He said I was the spitting image of his eldest. He was acting a bit weird.

  Still staring at you?

  No, he stopped after a while. He was staring at the window, with his hand in the air, like he was waiting for someone to pass so he could wave to them. But he was trying to kill a fly. After a while I saw it myself, the fly, standing very still on the window by his left hand. He tried to swat it but the fly was too quick for him. He made quite a loud bang on the glass, but he was wearing gloves so he didn’t hurt himself. Then he turned to me and smiled. He said: ‘I wonder if there’s a big hand in the sky, waiting to get me too.’ So I smiled back. Then he offered me a sweet... he was always offering me sweets. I realised fairly soon that he wasn’t as crazy as he looked, once he’d stopped staring.

  [That fly was a survivor, for sure. Everyone was in on the joke, now. For the first day or two it had irritated the hell out of everyone. It had escaped death repeatedly, as if by magic. Stefano the proprietor had tried every trick in the book, since the blue fly-killer on the wall had failed to attract the insect. Stefano had tried stealth, and failed. He’d tried sudden rushes from behind his counter, and failed again. He quit when he crashed into a table, sending a shower of crockery and hot coffee onto the floor. The patrons started a furtive, unofficial competition to see who could kill it. Mrs Griffiths, who was into the occult, tried to trap the fly in an empty bottle; the retired copper sprinkled a small pyramid of white sugar on his table and kept watch in a silent, malevolent stake-out – but the fly lived on. Eventually the fly was given a name – Mr Cassini.]

  Go on – what happened next?

  The man rested his head in his hand and closed his eyes. He was very tired, he said. His work had been very demanding. That’s what he told me, anyway. He said his name was Duxie and he lived in a flat somewhere in that big council complex at the tatty end of town, somewhere on the hill above the football ground. He’d sit at home, by his window, looking down at
the footie games. He said it was like playing Subbuteo. He liked watching the little men run about in waves of action. It reminded him of the sea, he said. Small tides of men swarming towards each goal and then falling back again. He described it to me in his own peculiar way.

  [On the wind, sometimes, Duxie heard whistle-blasts, child-screams, manly voices shouting manly things. The only thing that Duxie had ever wanted to be – really, really wanted to be – was a footballer. That was a long way back, when he was in his teens: before booze and fags, before wimmin. And now he was offside by about forty years, closing in on retirement. He wheezed when he climbed the stairs. Duxie was in a stale routine. He polished his shoes and kept his gaff tidy. Everything was in its proper place, and the kitchenette was woman-clean. He hoovered every evening at a quarter to seven, before going to the snooker club.]

  What did you talk about?

  Colours, at first. He couldn’t decide between magnolia and white. That was the main topic when we met. He asked me for advice. What colour should he paint his flat? He’d thought about it for quite some time, even consulted his mates at the snooker club. We finally agreed on white. Magnolia walls seem so corporate. White’s classier. Then we talked about colours. There was a big rainbow over the town. He was quite interesting, knew a lot about them. He said Honolulu was the rainbow capital of the world. He’d never been there, said he’d love to go there. I told him I’d stayed there once. He was fascinated by that. Hadn’t travelled much, by the sound of things.

  He was easy to talk to?