‘Yes?’
And he proceeded to tell me about the events after his return to Oxford.
Later, we walked without incident back to the institution, where we parted: he to his bed, I to Gullane. Now I am seated at my desk. Twilight is spreading through the attic, creeping into the corners, mouse holes and dusty spaces under the floor. Outside, leaves shiver in the gutter. The sea lets out a sigh, and at once everything turns sombre, lonely and late. In the relative quiet I will attempt to finish this third chapter, using what my grandfather told me earlier today, together with the stories I heard from Father in my childhood.
…
It was late evening on 15 February 1939 when Mr Rafferty returned to Oxford. Across Europe nations were building giant monsters of war. Engineers were dreaming dreams of destruction which those monsters could excrete and simultaneously raising defence lines against them. On my grandfather’s return he and my mother began a different kind of blockade adumbrated by the build-up of arms. They sealed the upstairs entrance to the workshop, spread a rug over the trapdoor. They hung heavy curtains across the basement window, scattered sawdust on the rough boards. Blankets, books, towel and tea-set each found a place there, in that nocturnal bunker where Mr Rafferty installed himself.
Whether or not my mother believed the predicament in which my grandfather claimed to be embroiled, whether she understood how deeply and inexorably he had retreated from practical affairs, she must have felt that he was in danger, because she made a great effort to hide him from the outside world. No one, she understood, was to know of his presence – not even Rex. In the waking hours Mr Rafferty was to remain silent, emerging from his hiding place at dusk for an hour or two, after which he would descend once again to the workshop, in whose dank light a strange, complicated and unnatural affair was taking shape.
It began with the reading of scientific treatises. Mr Rafferty concentrated on the writings of Jacques de Vaucanson, who in 1737 constructed a mechanism in the shape of a fawn, which could play the flute. Over the following weeks he consumed innumerable books and manuscripts. He noted particular sections on loose sheafs then pinned these fragments, to which he added illustrative diagrams, on to the walls. His reading matter became increasingly technical, including manuals on anatomy, alchemy and mechanics, the writings of the Italian Futurists and Pavlovian reflex theory. He ate infrequently, slept only for a few hours in the afternoon. His complexion acquired the tarnished hue of an old euphonium.
It was at this time that Mr Rafferty began to receive visitors (so he told me this afternoon in Edinburgh). Men wearing dark suits made their way to Ingolstadt Place, then vanished into the back entrance of the workshop. There they would remain throughout the night, drinking cocoa, conversing in hushed tones, observing demonstrations, remonstrating with one another, conducting their business with complicated handshakes. Later, when Mr Rafferty had ceased to appear above ground altogether, other darkly clad figures came to that fusty vault, human shadows conveying stiff and weighty packages.
And slowly, during the course of this midnight activity, this sinful undertaking brought to my grandfather the subtle, strange-smelling vapour of death; slowly – Evelyn did not notice the change – 16 Ingolstadt Place became enveloped in a blue haze. This strange mist originated from the small hearth Mr Rafferty had set into the wall and from which he drew brightly gleaming substances. By April, when Rex was nearing the end of his civil service training, the mist had started to creep up into the shop. Rex told Evelyn that he was to travel to Nigeria, his first posting abroad, but she hardly took in the news. She had too much to think about, keeping the shop by day, tending to her hideaway at all other times. What is more, she was harbouring a pair of secrets in the shape of my father and grandfather.
Secrets are like shadows; they transform the one who bears them, they flit and flicker behind the eyes, grow longer and more difficult to command by evening-time and disperse at night, only to appear with renewed authority during the day. Perhaps it was for this reason – the incorrigibility of secrets and shadows – that one afternoon my mother closed the shop early and invited Rex to supper. Perhaps it was good fortune that Mr Rafferty was working at the hearth. Maybe Evelyn really did feel faint and go to bed, telling Rex to show himself out. Whatever the truth, chance (chance yielding to my mother’s will) led Rex towards the trapdoor. A great heat was emanating from beneath his feet as he stepped on to the rug. There was a sulphurous smell whose pungency grew stronger as he raised the rug, prised open the trapdoor and walked down the basement stairs.
He saw nothing at first, or nothing tangible, since the room was filled with smoke. As it dispersed, Rex made out a figure bent over a large wooden table, a broad, round-faced semblance of a man with unkempt hair and black shiny eyes under-arched with greying bags, eyes which, as they turned towards the stairs, Rex knew immediately. Basements, unlike attics, rarely accentuate sound; rather everything that stirs is muted, dampened by the inevitable moisture in the air, so that as Rex stood staring into the eyes of the stranger Mr Rafferty he felt strangely calm. Despite the muted though frankly appalling scene – a woman, or rather the likeness of a female form, white, bloodless, prostrate on the table, parts of her covered with a sheet, others simply missing – Rex spoke.
‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think we’d …’
‘We have never formally introduced ourselves,’ said Mr Rafferty.
‘You already know my name. I know several of yours.’
‘My name,’ said Mr Rafferty, ‘is Mr Rafferty.’
He held out his hand. Rex stepped back and lowered himself into the armchair, averting his eyes from the hideous form over which Mr Rafferty now drew a sheet. He spent a few minutes poking the fire, with his back to Rex, then joined him in a neighbouring armchair, and, settling, declared, ‘Before you say anything more, please allow me to explain. Much has happened since that day on the train to London. If you recall, I was in a keen state of anticipation. I had conceived a plan that would enable me to return to Oxford, where, as you will hear, I could restore my former happiness.’
Mr Rafferty paused and gazed out into the distance. After some time he said, ‘In the weeks following Julia’s death, you see, I had been unable to forget one thing. The fact that my clockwork heart had functioned perfectly. I had managed to manufacture a human heart, one of the most complicated anatomical structures – why should I not repeat the feat for each of the vital organs? After all, what is a lung if not a sanguine bellow? And the eye – how faithfully it corresponds to a scientific instrument! Might I not forge each of the vital organs and clothe them in the likeness of my wife!
‘I faced a major difficulty. I needed a base from which to begin my work, yet I was on the run. I had to get back to Oxford. For several months I considered this problem. It was not until, several days before our meeting on the train, I came across an article in The Times, that I saw my opportunity. In 1935, said the article, a group of scientists and engineers had developed a method for detecting flying objects by shooting invisible waves towards the sky. And the government had supported this absurd idea! They also, it was said, offered £1,000 to anyone who could demonstrate a ray that would kill a sheep at a range of 100 yards. How far the government errs! What desk-ridden imbecile supported this mad imagination? Still, I thought, I could use this governmental madness to my advantage. Such is the fear of conflict in Europe, so inadequate is our readiness for war, that Whitehall is willing to assist anyone who volunteers to help. So I contacted the Chiefs of Staff. After explaining my state of affairs, that is my enforced itinerancy, I proceeded to describe my skills as a maker of clockwork and automata. I put to their dreaming minds the image of a battalion of soldiers, each like the next, a defence force to which fear was as alien as hunger, an army of expendable automata whose glassy eyes would strike fear into the enemies of our little island. I arranged for the reply to be covertly announced in The Times. The reply came. I returned to Oxford and into the arms of my daugh
ter.
‘Of course, I concealed my true motive: to realize the plan to which, ever since Julia fell sick, I have dedicated my life. So, I first set about making each of the components necessary for life, all of which I have either built from clockwork or plucked from the corpses of criminals, which the War Office have brought me. You see, I cannot hope to forge every part of Julia from metal. There are certain structures, such as the organs of reproduction, not to mention the hair and skin that, through a strange alchemy, I plan to integrate with the manufactured articles. I do not expect Julia, upon waking, to function as before. I imagine her to be like one who enters into life for the first time. And just as the new-born learns to call his creator Mother, so Julia, with the right instruction, will learn to call me Husband. But there is more! I will not simply replicate Julia – that’s the easy part – but improve on her! Just as our missionaries bring the torch of culture and progress to the dark people of the earth, so I, a Stanley in my own right, will mould Julia in my own image. Soon I will have a perfect simulacrum of my wife, the true likeness of myself in female form, Julia, my love!’
4
Map of the World, 1: The Tale of El-Edrisi
I have prepared myself a writing table: a wardrobe door, unhinged from its body, laid horizontal and supported at each corner with pillars of books – yellowing volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911, whose pages come apart like pressed flowers in my hands. Upon the desk sits my laptop computer. Purring, it emits a bluish haze, faintly lighting the darkness. It is the brightest colour in the attic. Everything else is dulled by dust, moth-eaten, mildewed, encrusted with grime, carious, verdigris, flaking. The most decrepit item in the attic is also the largest. It hangs on the far wall via a single hook attached to its top left corner. It is an early example of cartographic dreaming. A mappa mundi.
Stolen from Waltham Abbey late in the fourteenth century, it was acquired by Sir Henry Wrecksham in 1448 for his collection of unica, later sold to an unknown German, who, during the Thirty Years’ War, buried it then died; it lay four feet under earth for the next three hundred years, outlasting countless conflicts, including two World Wars, until it was discovered in 1948 by an American soldier in a field outside Nuremberg. Unsure of what it was, but perceiving its great age, the soldier brought it back with him to America. He showed it to an expert at the Metropolitan Museum, who verified its authenticity. This is the story my father chose to believe on purchasing the fake in 1963, not long after returning from Nigeria. He was suffering because the British had been ousted from the country. Half crazed on account of the loss of his illusions, he spent almost two-thirds of his inheritance on another kind of fantasy. Since then the mappa mundi has hung in the attic.
Although it depicts continents and seas, nations and towers, it is not only a map but a decorative altarpiece, an object of desire among collectors and unscrupulous cheats. Painted on vellum, it measures three feet high and two feet six inches wide. The map itself is almost perfectly round. Asia occupies the upper half, Europe the bottom left-hand quarter, and Africa the lower right of the world disk. This scheme, the tripartite division of the earth, is based on the biblical story of Noah. After one hundred and fifty days at sea, Noah sent his three sons to repopulate the land, giving a continent to each. Japheth received Europe, Shem received Asia, and Ham Africa. The continents (only three are depicted on the map), are named accordingly. Diverse images embellish the mappa mundi. Christ is nailed to the cross. The Apocalypse is revealed to St John at Patmos. The Sphinx, the elephant and the pelican are portrayed inhabiting the western region of the African continent. Of these, it is the fearsome image of the pelican which my mind returns to most often: she is perched on the edge of her nest teeming with her offspring, who feed from a gaping wound in her side. Ragged gaps, where the moths have feasted, disfigure the map: an elliptical fissure in the Dead Sea, a growing tear enveloping Edinburgh, a hole east of Syria where the Garden of Eden formerly lay. The Mediterranean covers almost one-third of the work’s surface. It is mottled with islands, notably Crete with its Labyrinth, and Sicily in flames. The rivers Don and Nile, which flow into the Mediterranean, mark the boundaries of Europe, Asia and Africa. Europe is dotted with cities and familiar landmarks. The greater parts of Africa and Asia are filled with pictures of fabulous cities and mythical beings. Africa, east of the Nile, is populated by a bestiary of monstrous races arranged in alphabetical order.
AMYCTYRAE·
I have a bottom lip that protrudes far from my face. It serves as an umbrella against the sun. I live on raw meat and am unsociable.
ANDROGINI·
I am a man-woman. My people make sacrifices to Osiris and the Moon.
ANTHROPOPHAGI·
I eat my parents when they are old, or anyone else I can find.
ASTOMI·
…
BLEMMYAE·
I am one whose head grows beneath the shoulders. I curse the sun and never dream.
CYCLOPS·
Round-eye, I am mistaken for treachery. Son of Cain.
DONESTRE·
I speak the language of any traveller I meet and claim to know his wife. Then I kill him and mourn over his head.
ETHIOPIAN·
I am named by Greeks. My face is burned black by the sun.
GORGADES·
I am a hairy woman. I will not tell you how I survived the Flood.
PANOTII·
My ears reach the ground and serve as blankets. Should I meet a traveller, I’ll unfurl them and fly away.
PANPHAGI·
I devour anything and everything.
PYGMIE·
I am but two cubits tall, as are my cows.
SCIOPOD·
I am one-legged but uncommonly swift. In summer I lie on my back and shade myself with my giant foot.
SCIRITAE·
I am a noseless flat-faced man. I belong to the uninhabitable city.
TROGLODYTE·
Grrioeejubarbaraesdrthsjkslah.
WIFE-GIVER·
I honour travellers with wives.
Examining the mappa mundi in recent days, I have come to understand both its beauty and its menace, in a way that was not apparent to me when my fascination for the map was born.
The mappa mundi is like a travelogue, which reflects not the material world, but the fantasies of the traveller’s mind; as if the mapmaker projected his desires on to vellum. It is a spatial imagining of the world, just as an encyclopaedia is an alphabetical imagining of the world, or a chronicle is an arrangement of common happenings in temporal order. But forgetting for the moment the mappa mundi – and turning to an earlier map – I skip back through centuries.
…
to another island in Europe, smaller than Britain and warmer, where the Norman King Roger II has lately established an uneasy empire, a merging of three religions, four cultures and diverse sensibilities, where splendid cathedrals vie for space in the skyline with palaces and mosques.
…
to an airy courtyard in Palermo, where scholars and courtesans gather beneath bronze cupolas and towering fountains, shaded by date palms, cooled by eunuchs wielding peacock-feather fans.
…
where one man, taller than the rest, strolls among his attendants, impatient, tugging at his beard, a man whose eyes bear the feral mark of storms – the sandstorms of the Sahara. A man for whom a crisis is approaching.
Who is this man, so tall and thin-lipped?
El-Edrisi – geographer, beekeeper, savant, lover, tyrant, philanthropist, maker of maps.
Lean and sun-black, El-Edrisi is a man fashioned by weather. He has travelled in Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor and the Mediterranean. For twelve years Edrisi has been on the move. But now he is still, a city-dweller, residing in Palermo, where he is Chief Vizier to King Roger II.
I am getting ahead of myself, because this is not my story, or not entirely my own. I can tell it; punch the keys of my computer so as to arrange the letters on the screen. To re
cord Edrisi’s tale, however, is to distort it, because he cannot wholly be captured in words. He is, rather, a voice, a pursing of lips, the narrowing of eyes, sudden jerky hand movements – most of all a voice. Edrisi’s story first came to me via Father, who would lecture Mother’s belly, which was where I first heard the tale. Years later, sitting at the foot of my bed in Lagos, he would retell the story so that Edrisi became familiar again.
Here is Father. He is sitting in my bedroom after supper. Ben – our cook – is washing up in the kitchen. Ade – Ben’s son, our servant-boy – is, I suspect, listening at the bedroom door. Mother is in the grave in Botley Cemetery, Oxford. Father begins, as he always begins, with a narrowing of his eyes, a half-grin and the single word: Well …
There was a young boy called El-Edrisi, who lived in the city of Ceuta on the North African coast. He was the son of a rich and prominent family of the Hammudid dynasty. When he was seven Edrisi found himself orphaned, and rich. He spent a wild and extravagant youth, eating and drinking freely, dressing flamboyantly, passing his days with friends. He believed this way of life would last for ever. But Edrisi woke, aged fourteen and a half, to find he’d lost almost everything. He’d spent his money on wine and women and bees.
Edrisi lay on his cool bed in the hot Moroccan summer. He was sad and listless, but all the time his cunning brain was at work. Eventually he thought of a plan. He sold all he had of clothes and property. Then this spoiled and ruined lad, this Moorish Sinbad, took himself to sea.
‘Who’s Sinbad?’ I ask.
‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
Edrisi travelled in vain. Spending months at sea only increased his desire for his boyhood home. Or, second best, a city, any city. Arriving in Córdoba or Baghdad or Timbuktu, Edrisi saw – in the blue domes and pleasure-gardens, in the sandalwood ashes glowing in the braziers – only what differed from his native Ceuta. He noted these differences meticulously. He drew maps of his city, trying to recreate as much detail as he could muster. But the further he travelled the more obscure Ceuta became. He forgot details: the precise length of his garden, the location of that tiny door, always locked, on Meedan Street. He began to associate his native town with loss: the loss of his parents, his fortune, the city he hadn’t seen for two, six, eleven, years. Edrisi attempted to fill this emptiness through movement.
The Echo Chamber Page 4
