The Migration of Ghosts

by Pauline Melville

  ‘Oi-oi, Crazy-Horse. Come and meet my new pal. This man,’ he says with apparent deference, ‘is a writer. What is it you write exactly?’

  ‘Adaptations mainly,’ says the man, falling into the trap. ‘I’ve just adapted a Trollope for the BBC.’

  ‘Have you indeed? Was that problematic? I always find a little trollop is fine unless you happen to be dealing in stockings with no feet.’ Dave’s laugh gurgles up through his catarrh. The man tries to conceal his puzzlement. Jimmy gets the drinks in.

  ‘This is my mate, Crazy-Horse.’

  ‘Hi,’ says the man, unable quite to bring himself to say ‘Crazy-Horse’.

  ‘We’re the salt of the earth. Isn’t that right, Jimmy?’

  ‘Aye. The Sifta twins.’ Jimmy raises his glass and downs the smooth, sharp whisky.

  ‘What do you do?’ The man asks Dave.

  ‘Me? I’m third-generation unemployed from Liverpool and I’m fully expecting to pass on the business to my son.’ Dave’s mood is expansive and genial. Jimmy has seen him otherwise, delivering punches with the strength of an ox.

  ‘That must be rough.’ The man peers sympathetically from behind his spectacles, ‘Being unemployed.’

  ‘Rough? It’s a tragedy. I have to sit on the tube in the morning with a packet of sandwiches so it looks as if I’ve got a job. When I was a kid, the cockroaches formed a union and struck for better conditions. I think it’s your round.’

  Jimmy and Dave order doubles.

  ‘It must be nice to be a writer, an intellectual.’ Dave sounds wistful.

  ‘It’s not all roses,’ says Mr Gullible. ‘It’s bloody hard work, sitting down all day, trying to get a word right, trying to get an idea.’

  ‘How much do they pay you for sitting down all day trying to get an idea?’ Dave enquires innocently.

  ‘Well, the BBC doesn’t really pay too well. A grand or two in advance, maybe …’

  Jimmy interrupts, as Dave knew he would.

  ‘Just a minute there. I’ve been hanging on to a brick chimney-stack, two hundred-odd feet in the air, repairing it in a high wind for four pounds an hour. That makes a man sort of philosophical.’ There is a hint of menace in his voice. ‘I’ve noticed something in life. You can’t pretend to be a steeplejack. You can pretend to be a writer. But you can’t pretend to be a steeplejack. You have to do it. If you don’t do it well, you get your cards. They don’t pay you while you’re “on pause”. I suspect that you are a comma, waiting to be a full stop.’

  The man looks discomfited.

  ‘Ah, but you’re not a writer, are you, pal?’ chimes in Dave the disingenuous. ‘You’re just an adaptor, if I’m not mistaken.’

  The man rises to it and begins to bluster.

  ‘It’s quite a craft, you know.’

  ‘Oh it’s a craft, is it?’ Jimmy leans towards him and the man cannot tell threat from twinkle. ‘Well, in my trade you would be what is known as a labourer’s labourer, the lowest of the low.’ Jimmy can smell the man’s musk after-shave. There is a pulse beating in the writer’s throat. ‘Have you got any idea of the amount of thought that goes into creating a brick? Never mind your Trollopes and your Tolstoys. Did you know that the hole in a brick is called a “frog”? Do you know who first designed this marvellous thing we call a BRICK?’

  ‘No.’ The man’s eyes are flitting towards Dave for help which is not forthcoming.

  ‘Neither do I.’ Jimmy lets out a joyous hoot of laughter and slaps him on the back. The man makes his excuses and leaves.

  ‘I love winding people up,’ says Dave. ‘Where shall we go now?’

  An hour later, they are sitting in the maroon flock gloom of Harry’s Rehearsal Bar. Musack seeps out from speakers on the wall. Dave gives the speakers a suspicious stare.

  ‘Is that music or are they trying to gas us?’ he says as he rolls a cigarette. Sitting in one of the booths is an ageing blonde with her hair in a French pleat. Her name is Susan Shanks. That’s where she always sits. Rumour has it that she was a famous film star. The name always seems to ring a bell but nobody remembers the films.

  Jimmy and Dave are seated in another alcove getting steadily drunk. Conversation is intense.

  Says Jimmy, ‘If there’s one thing I hate more’n anything, it’s people who come up to me when I’m pissed and start telling me their sad stories. There I am, trying to have a nice time, and some Hoo Chief Duper comes up to me and tells me that his wife has left him or he’s dying of cancer of the arsehole or his hands got caught in the cement mixer and he’ll never be able to play the piano again.’ Jimmy’s grimace of dislike contains a hint of violence. ‘Why don’t they understand? I don’t care. I really don’t fucking care. Why do they always tell me crab stories? And I’m trying to be all nice to them. What I really want to say is “Bollocks”.’

  Jimmy is beginning to enjoy that feeling of mounting hilarity that a couple of hours in Dave’s company usually induces. Dave picks up the theme like a jazz musician, offering his variation.

  ‘Don’t tell me it happens to you too.’ He puts his hands on his hips mimicking a gossip. ‘I thought it was just me. I thought I was the only one they picked on, the no-hopers, the doom and disaster brigade. Look at that dog.’ The club-owner’s dog is staring sadly up at them from in front of the bar. ‘He’s one of them.’

  Jimmy tries focusing his eyes to consider the dog.

  ‘Either that or he’s secretly trying to hypnotise us into buying him a drink.’

  They are both laughing now, mellow.

  ‘That being said,’ says Jimmy, ‘have you got Evostick on your arse or are you going to get us something to drink?’

  Dave comes back with more drinks. He is just putting two shots of whisky on the table when there is a draught from the door and Fat Roger appears out of nowhere. He is accompanied by the collarless man with a face like an eighteen-pound hammer. Fat Roger is looking shifty.

  ‘All right, Jimmy? All right, Dave? Can’t stop now. Look after my mate Frank for a bit till I get back.’ And he’s gone.

  ‘That’s funny.’ Dave raises his eyebrows. ‘Our Roger doesn’t usually disappear when there’s a little light refreshment to be imbibed.’

  ‘Or when he’s owed a tenner,’ says Jimmy. ‘Sit down, cha. What’ll you have?’ The man joins them at the table. Jimmy returns from the bar with three drinks.

  ‘Did I tell you about the potatoes this morning?’ Dave kicks off with a story about two pounds of Edward’s potatoes tumbling from a hole in his pocket in the underground train that morning, while he sat trying to look as if nothing unusual was happening. Jimmy is chortling. The other man manages a ghost of a smile. Jimmy and Dave exchange glances. Dave spins another yarn that involves a five-pound note, a box and a rat. The man’s face doesn’t move a muscle.

  ‘It seems to me,’ says Dave, ‘that my stories are falling upon stony ground.’

  ‘Pebbles,’ says Jimmy.

  ‘Shale,’ says Dave.

  ‘Shingle,’ says Jimmy.

  ‘It seems to me that my stories are being sucked out to sea on a receding tide.’

  Jimmy strikes a pose and addresses the man.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Whoever You Are. Either smile or FUCK OFF.’

  Heads at the bar turn. The man’s eyes remain fixed on his drink. His shoulders sag and a look of apologetic despair crosses his face.

  ‘Sorry about this, folks. It’s difficult to explain.’ He speaks as though he was been winded. All he can muster is a whisper. ‘My fifteen-year-old son hung himself in the kitchen yesterday.’

  Jimmy shoots backwards in his seat, staring at the man with a look of horrified exasperation. Dave is looking at the man as if he has just done something offensive, like fart. There is silence at the table. Then Jimmy hears what sounds like the distant screaming whistle of an approaching train. The noise is coming from inside him. He glances at Dave. Dave’s shoulders are shaking. Jimmy’s face screws up in an effort to suppress what he has been waitin
g for all evening and what has finally arrived. He clenches the muscles at the bottom of his stomach, fighting to keep it down. Then his cheeks fill with air and the laughter explodes upwards and outwards with the force of a first oil strike in the desert, black gold spurting and bubbling skywards. He leans backwards, roaring. Tears of helpless laughter blur his vision. Dave is in paroxysms on the other side of the table. Their companion stares straight ahead towards the door.

  The Parrot and Descartes

  I had better tell you about the parrot.

  In the Orinoco region, it is said, everything began with a wish and a smell. A hand stuck up out of the earth. An arm. The earth opened. A woman who was watching turned into a male parrot and began to scream a warning. Then all sorts of things happened. A man dropped a gourd of urine, scorching his wife’s flesh with it. Her skin was roasted. Her bones fell apart. Night burst over the world and something white like a capuchin monkey went running into the forest. That’s what they say. I wasn’t there myself.

  Centuries later, still in a state of shock, the same parrot that had screamed the warning was discovered in a guava tree by a certain Sir Thomas Roe. Sir Thomas was an English courtier, known as Fat Thom, who travelled up the Orinoco in 1611. He pulled back some foliage and discovered the bird, amongst the leaves, head on one side, returning his gaze with curiosity. The parrot was green. At first Fat Thom thought that sunlight was falling on the bird’s head, then he saw that it had a golden beak. In other words the creature was a traditional plain and not particularly fancy South American parrot.

  It was a shockingly easy capture. Fat Thom dispatched the parrot immediately to England as a wedding present for Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I, who was about to marry Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine in London.

  This was the wedding at whose celebrations Shakespeare’s The Tempest was first performed. Having survived a rough journey and upset by the climate, to his horror, the parrot was forced to sit on a lady-in-waiting’s shoulder and watch one of the worst productions of The Tempest the world has ever seen. The parrot’s genetic construction, however much he willed it to the contrary, ensured that every word sank ineradicably into his memory. Sensibly, he refrained from ever repeating any of it – including the sotto voce ‘Oh no’ from the bard himself, as Ariel slipped on a piece of orange peel and skidded across the apron stage into the wedding party. How the scions of literature would have torn that bird wing from wing had they known that Shakespeare’s own voice was faithfully transcribed on his inch-long brain. He kept his counsel and tried to look dumb.

  The parrot naturally developed a phobia about The Tempest. Why he should also have developed an irrational loathing of the philosopher and mathematician, René Descartes, is something I shall address later.

  It was the parrot’s destiny to find himself in Prague in 1619 at the momentous time when science started to split from magic. How did he get there?

  After watching that odious version of The Tempest, the parrot underwent a severe attack of the shits and members of the Royal Household preferred not to have him sitting on their shoulder. In disgrace, he made the journey in his cage when the Electress Palatine left England for Heidelberg. It was the 28th of April, 1613. The ship was bound for Flushing. A northerly breeze ruffled the bird’s feathers. The cold made him miserable.

  He looked out bleakly over the cold, choppy waters as the royal party was brought to shore in a barge decked with crimson velvet. Twenty rowers kept in time to a band of musicians rowing in the stern. The parrot sulked. He was, however, cheered up by the rapturous welcome of the Dutch citizens whose applause and roars of approval he faithfully recorded and repeated out loud to himself on those occasions when his morale needed a boost, as it often did on this unasked for, cold-arsed tour of Europe. From Flushing, the party went to Rotterdam, then on to Delft and eventually Heidelberg.

  Heidelberg suited the parrot. The castle was at the top of a steep ascent from the River Neckar. He besported himself in the formal gardens of the castle among magical curiosities such as the statue of Memnon, which emitted sounds when the sun’s rays struck it, and he recorded the pneumatically controlled speaking statues. He was carried around on the shoulder of Inigo Jones during the latter’s visit to the gardens and grottoes which were talked of as the eighth wonder of the world. Occasionally, he dipped his green tail feathers in the singing fountains. He listened half-heartedly to the debates of the Rosicrucians, Brotherhood of the Invisibles; yawned behind his wing at the arguments on Utopias and religious factionalism and disappeared into an ornamental box hedge whenever a troupe of actors arrived – even when it was known in advance that they were to perform an alchemical romance such as The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz and had no intention of doing The Tempest.

  It was at Heidelberg that the parrot first came in contact with Christianity. He was naturally sceptical. Hearing the story of the Annunciation, he was astounded by the ignorance of his human captors in not realising that the news had clearly been brought to Mary by a Great Parrot. When he compared what he heard about angels with what he knew about parrots, it was resoundingly obvious to him that parrots were the superior species. What does an angel have that a parrot doesn’t? Multi-coloured wings? Forget it. Ability to speak in tongues? No bid. Have you ever seen an angel hold a great big mango in its claw and nibble at it? No. They sit there with their wings folded and an expression on their face like they just shit in their pants or something. The parrot preferred his own kind any day. Parrots fight and squabble and sulk and drop bits of food on the floor like normal people. Parrots live in the real world. They get drunk on the fumes from rotten fruit and fermented corn. Bravo and brilliante for us, cried the bird.

  And so, at the University of Heidelberg, where strange and exciting influences, both mechanical and magical, developed rapidly during the reign of Elizabeth and Frederick, the parrot passed a time of such intellectual stimulus that he rarely gave a thought to the quarrelling rapids, surging rivers and thorny bushes of his own South American continent.

  Despite a happy and settled life in Heidelberg, the October of 1619 found Monsignor Parrot (he had adopted a continental handle) in a covered cage, travelling clandestinely to Prague. When the cover was whipped off, he discovered that he had been the only one of the Royal Household travelling clandestinely and that everyone else was bowing and waving out of the carriage windows to the crowd, as the procession of magnificently embossed coaches swung giddily over the Vtlava Bridge, along the cobbled path and through the stone-jawed entrance to Prague Castle.

  The Protestant Elector and Electress Palatine, whose wedding gift he was, had become the Winter King and Queen of Bohemia – a name coined by the Jesuits who said, quite accurately, that the couple would vanish with the winter snows, which, after the Catholic Hapsburgs attacked in the Battle of the White Mountain, they did.

  However, before the Hapsburg attack, the wondrous city of Prague was host to every sort of cabbalist, alchemist and astronomer and housed the most up-to-date artistic and scientific collections. The parrot inspected the paintings of Arcimboldo the Marvellous (who had also been the Master of Masquerade) which showed men made of vegetables, tin pots and books. Tycho Brahe had discovered the fixed position of seven hundred stars and Johann Kepler raced to discover the periodic laws of planets. The Castle of Prague, through which the parrot fluttered nonchalantly, accustoming himself to his new habitat, contained Rudolfo’s Room of Wonders and the wooden floor of the Great Hall thrummed with men walking up and down, arguing and debating. The room was lined with books, maps, globes and charts. Men discussed sea routes, navigational passages and astronomy. Ideas were propounded which made men’s mouths dry with excitement and fear, giving them palpitations and erections, often at the same time.

  However, the servants in the great gloomy castle inexplicably took against the exotic pets that had arrived with Elizabeth of Bohemia, whose foreign dress they regarded with suspicion. A monkey frightened a waiting-man by leaping o
n his shoulder. Food was deliberately tipped off the plate before it could be served. A serving girl threw cake at the parrot.

  It all ended in a terrible scream.

  When exactly, at what precise moment, did the parrot scream? Historians have battled for doctorates over both the cause and the timing of the scream, which was only the second time that the parrot had found it necessary to utter such a cry of warning. There has been as much scholastic dispute generated by that shriek as there has over the snort of the Nilus camel.

  Some scholars say this:

  Whilst unpacking the royal baggage, a serving-girl looked round for a place to put the crystal ship that was the christening gift from Prince Maurice of Orange to the firstborn son of Elizabeth and Frederick of Bohemia, the infant Prince Henry. The parrot cast one eye on the glittering boat and let out a prophetic scream that reverberated through the castle foretelling the dreadful end that was to befall the young prince.

  What was this dreadful event? Well, years later, in exile in The Hague, the young Prince Henry and Frederick his father rode one winter’s day to the Zuider Zee to see two ships from the Caribbean brought there by Dutch pirates. They wanted to see the booty. All the way there, the horses slipped and slid sideways along the icy roads.

  It was dark when they arrived in the evening. Freezing mists caused chaos as oarsmen in soaking woollen mittens tried to outmanoeuvre each other to find the best position for boarding the galleons which towered overhead. There were shouts and oaths and the unstable light of lanterns through fog. Two small boats crashed in the dark. It was not until morning, in a grey lake bobbing with frozen horses’ heads, that they found the corpse of young Prince Henry. The galleon was covered in ice, his body was entangled in the rigging. His collar and ruff lay stiffly under layers of hoar frost and his cheek, frozen to the mast, seemed in its icy transparency to have turned to crystal.

  A life is always slung between two images, not two dates. Find the right image and you can foretell the manner of death. They say that the parrot foresaw the death as soon as he clapped eyes on the crystal ship, the sight of which caused him to shriek.