The Moor shook his head.
“Of course not,” said the Frenchman. “He doesn’t exist anymore!”
“Then why are we yabberin’ about him? Thanks for the batteries, though.”
The Frenchman was about to protest, but shrugged instead. He still had some pretty jarring news to impart and wasn’t sure how his companions would take it. “By the way,” he said, as conversationally as possible, “since, as you say, Cooper never existed, neither of you do, either.”
The comment was received with skepticism.
“It’s all part of Euler’s new theory. It happened in the dream equation, you see. I told Euler about you and he accidentally figured you out of a subsidiary cipher. He asked me to extend his apologies. Turns out every universe thinks it’s the master template, when in point of fact, none of them is. Stands to reason.”
“But, what about your family?” said the Mongol anxiously, reminding the Frenchman of his end of the bargain, even as he began to become faded and filmy about the edges.
“Oh, they’re taken care of. We’re rich, as a matter of fact,” said the Frenchman with a comfortable smile. “I deposited most of the money the landlord had given me in a Swiss bank account, with a letter of credit to be forwarded to me on my 21st birthday.”
The Moor, too, was becoming transparent and ghostly. “This is a wonderful science!” he said, his voice hollow and weak, but nonetheless enthusiastic, as he disappeared. “One could mistake it for magic!”
Tortusse approached, waving the ephemera of her former customers away with her towel. “Glad you made it back safely.”
“Oh, I’m not here,” the Frenchman replied with a kindly tilt of the head. “Not really. While I was on my way to Cleveland, I directed an archaeologist to the location of my ashes in Paris. Told him he’d find someone important there.” He laughed. “Well, I am! To my wife and daughter, anyway.”
“But the remains have to be identifiable,” said Tortusse. “A bone, an eye, something.”
“It’s amazing what they can do with DNA!”
“Well, whatever,” said Tortusse with a lethargic swipe of her rag at the table. “Did you get the answer to Papa’s puzzle?”
“I did,” the Frenchman replied with a grin. “Tell him if he said it’s impossible, he’s rich.”
“I’ll do that.”
Already the Frenchman had begun to fade from sight.
“Goodbye,” said Tortusse.
“Goodbye,” said the Frenchman. “By the way,” he added when there was nothing left of him but lips, “this isn’t heaven!”
The room was neither here nor there. Its walls oozed from one thing to another, none of them distinct enough to identify. No sooner did Rat’s eyes draw them into focus, than they became something else: wood or stone, daub and wattle, thatch and mud, glass and steel, or straw and brick. Likewise the other equipment and furniture in the room shape-shifted and transmogrified through a seemingly endless repertoire of possibilities. Only the rack and rope bed with its goose feather mattress upon which he woke remained constant. Somewhere though, he knew, there was one other object in the room that would be unchanging, if only his hungry eyes could fix upon it.
As a result of his most recent experience, Rat was thinking thoughts he’d never entertained before. Thoughts that roamed the unsteady borders of reason and brought back to his overwrought senses only poor fragments of logic that, like snowflakes, dissolved under the heat of close inspection. Nevertheless, they sponsored activity in hitherto uncharted regions of his brain, regions that writhed with a comparative host of newborn abstractions struggling for breath and life in the poorly-tended soil of his imagination.
His brain had never reached too far. It had been an instinctive apparatus, the prime directive of which had been to bring to his mouth, hands, ears, and eyes that which would satisfy their various appetites. It had been an unblown balloon, capable of great expansion, but untried, content to hang as limp and damp as a Poohsian party favor. Now, inflated by the breath of possibilities beyond itself, it squeaked and stretched in loud complaint as the midwife of those possibilities drew it from the safe, primordial womb of comfortable thoughtlessness into a greater awareness.
“Ah, you have bestirred yourself at last, sir!” said Cummings as he entered the room. That is, Rat assumed he’d entered. One moment the place was stuffed with the butler’s absence, and the next there he was.
To say that Cummings, for his part, was relieved to find his guest visibly cogent after what must have been two difficult nights in the present room, would be a severe understatement. Despite professional prohibitions to the contrary, he had formed, if not an attraction, at least an interest in the Resident and wished him not only to survive—especially since the task of cleaning up after those who didn’t was one of the less enviable aspects of his job—but to succeed.
Very few succeeded. This fact accounted for the abundant statuary scattered aplenty throughout the mansion’s sweeping lawns and parks. For it was statuary that the failures became.
“I can’t find the mirror,” said Rat.
Cummings closed the door behind him, on the reverse of which was a full-length edition of the object under review. “It is here, sir,” he said.
And so it was.
Rat’s heart sank. The creature revealed therein was familiar and, at first blush, less altered than Rat had hoped. It still had far more in common with a subspecies of gargoyle or a child’s pencil sketch of the boogie-man under the bed than with anything deserving of the title ‘human,’ however liberally applied. Yet, upon closer inspection, he realized its few feeble wisps of hair had propagated a new crop that overlay its pointy crown with something resembling a coiffure, though badly in need of grooming.
Staring from the sockets in its skull were his own eyes, somewhat bovine, somewhat mongrelish, somewhat shaken, but no longer sharp and suspicious, no longer darting away from direct contact. They simply stared at him as he stared at them.
They had brows, he noticed, caterpillar-like appendages that seemed to float about their arches in search of the proper expression with which to portray the height, breadth, and depth of the emotions tugging at him.
Cummings dusted a book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales—unabridged—that lay on the provincial wooden table beside the bed. “Any improvement, sir?” he inquired hesitantly.
“Some,” said Rat, after brief deliberation. “Not as much as I’d expected, but some.”
“One must be heartened by progress, however slight,” said Cummings. “Small steps through perilous mountain passes are equal to great strides through flaxen meadows, in that each brings one nearer one’s destination.”
Rat thought about that. “As long as we’re throwing encouragement around like projectile vomit, Cummings, you’ve got panache.”
“Panache, sir?”
“A marked facility for the mot juste. The bon mot. The correct word spoken in season. If I have been critical of your propensity toward prolixity heretofore, I apologize in dust and ashes. Prolix away, my large-eared retainer, for a palette of few words paints but a poor picture.”
“You are too kind, sir,” said Cummings, with a modest tilt of the head. “May I infer that your . . . encounter . . . was a wordy one?”
“Not particularly,” said Rat, inserting himself between the sheets that Cummings held open. He sipped the juice of some tropical fruit from the crystal goblet with which Cummings always greeted him. “That subject was pretty well addressed in the episode of Shakespeare’s dog, Abedegdod. No. The lines of thought inspired by this most recent outing were abstract in the extreme and I find them not susceptible to distillation in a few words. They will require cogitation. Rumination. Ponderance.” He crooked an eyebrow. “Is that a word?”
“To the best of my recollection, its use in the present context is a novel one, sir.”
“Well, I’m gonna chew on it, mentally,” Rat declared.
“A commendable activity, sir,” said Cummings. Rat
’s chin was bedewed with juice, to which Cummings gently applied the corner of a serviette of hand-wrought Belgian lace.
“But I’ll tell you this much,” said Rat, sleepily, “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.” As if in proof of the assertion, he became aware that the room had once again changed around him. He knew that another day had passed, but its events were of no more interest to him than the fleeting vestiges of a night’s repose.
There were ripples of light on the plastered ceiling, indicating a body of moving water just outside the window. In the mirror, the image of his soul—poor, benighted creature that it was—gave way to that of a large, curiously dressed white man of comfortable means. He was folding an article of black cloth and placing it in a small, ornately-carved wooden box atop a massive oaken bureau. The box had a lock, into which the man inserted a little silver key. He turned it once to the left and twice to the right, and from within, a delicate metallic mechanism responded with a satisfying click. The man’s secret was safe, as were his other . . .
Ax of Kindness
The tenth night
A creature that might have sprung to life from the fevered imagination of some disgruntled gothic stonemason sat on a stool in the corner beside the bureau. It was writing with a ragged quill upon the pages of a little leather-bound notebook.
‘We inhabit untried places. Every moment, every approaching second, is packed with the power to invert our reality, to thoroughly alter our perception and turn our very soul upon its head. Every conversation is a foreign land, littered with explosive devices. Who knows when so little thing as a chance remark or a word spoken in jest might completely alter one’s life? The crossing of paths with a new acquaintance reveals a countryside of new trails that only strangers have traveled. This is life; the tyranny of untried places. Comfort and peace are found only in the past or the present. However we try to carry them forward, they are but leaky buckets, easily upset by the slightest whim of chance.’
“What are you writing?” said the man, carefully returning the box to its designated place atop the bureau. He tucked the key in the pocket of his paisley waistcoat that, truth be told, was a tad snug.
The creature didn’t look up from its labors. “Only such thoughts as occur to me while I watch you go about the business of deceiving yourself. These days a philosopher must scribe for himself if he hopes his words to become immortal.”
“Your arguments run in circles, Manfred. You’ll worry yourself into an early grave.”
“What better place to discover immortality, old man?” said the creature.
The man faced the creature, leaning back with his elbows on the bureau. “And what possesses you of the notion your thoughts are worthy of posterity?” He smiled indulgently.
“Laugh if you will,” said the creature, still scribbling. “My thoughts of your actions are certainly as worthy of posterity as the deeds themselves. Besides, there are no more circles to my logic than those in the locks of the Queen’s hair when her head fell to the ground.”
“She’s not the Queen, merely a pretender.”
“Only because she had the weaker army.”
“What more could she expect of the lowest cards in the deck?” said the man. He sniffed and sighed. “She had been justly tried.”
“You know what a just trial gets you around here.”
The man let the statement pass.
“Two strokes!” said the creature, nearly upsetting itself from the stool. “Two strokes for such a fine, fair neck! And a third, if you count the bit of gristle that remained when the job was done. I saw that, even if the crowd didn’t. I don’t miss these things. If the workmen who built this house had no more pride in their work than that, we’d best get ourselves outside before the roof falls in!”
“She turned at the last moment. She oughtn’t have done that.”
“It’s not a skill one can practice, is it?” said the creature. It resumed writing. “You should take the twitches into account.”
The man tucked his thumb behind his watch fob and strode casually to the window. Light danced on the river and, from the little dock at the water’s edge, a rowboat tugged gracefully at its tether. A cat rested watchfully on the limb of an overhanging tree. “You think I deceive myself?”
“Of course you do.”
“How, pray?” said the man, still looking out the window.
“You are sanguine. What better witness to your madness?”
“It’s a job that must be done and I do it well.”
“Two strokes!” the creature objected.
The man hung his head. “Quick strokes.”
“She tipped you to do it in one,” the creature reminded. “You ought to give the money back.”
“A bit late for that.”
“Then give it to charity. You didn’t earn it.”
There was a long silence. “Perhaps I will.”
The creature leapt from the stool and jumped around the room. “There, see! You deceive yourself, even in so slight a thing as this!” He grabbed the man by the knees of his breeches and tugged. “It’s just your entertainment, ain’t it? You can’t take being shut up here—for all it’s everything a normal man could wish for—so you take your little hood out of its little box and go about your deadly errands before the household awakes.”
“It is a duty. The deed must be done. Who better to do it?”
“Who indeed?” echoed the creature. “Do me the favor, please, if I should earn a sentence of death, which everybody around here seems to sooner or later, hang me.”
“Of course,” said the man, with a kindly nod. “I shall keep that in mind.”
The creature returned to the stool where it climbed up and resumed its seat. “Not that it takes much to earn such a sentence,” it grumbled.
The man turned. “You’re overstepping yourself, Manfred; calling into question the judgments of the Crown is not your place.”
“Ain’t the crown I’m judging,” the creature snapped, “it’s the head it’s squatting on.” He plucked his head from his neck and proffered it to the man with an outstretched hand. “It’s yours, if you want it.”
“Put it back,” said the man. “What if someone were to see you like that?”
Manfred replaced his head. “You know no one else can see me.” There was a sad dejection in his voice. “Ain’t fair.”
“Let’s not go into that again,” said the man, turning again to the window.
“Well, it ain’t!” said the creature, standing up on the stool. “How’d you like to go around with nobody seein’ you? Wouldn’t like that, would you? No! Everyone’s got to notice high and mighty you. I’ve got opinions, too! I’ve got feelings, and viscera, and eyelashes like everybody else!”
“There’s nothing I can do about that,” said the man. “You shouldn’t have offended that gypsy.”
“Not a gypsy!” said the creature vehemently. “A witch. I’ve told you that a thousand times.”
“Witch, then.” The man folded his hands behind his back. “Though why in cursing you she should saddle me with . . . your detritus . . . I can’t guess.”
“Here we go again!”
“Don’t,” said the man sharply. “Don’t let’s go over it. It’s done.”
They lapsed into silence during which the creature resumed writing.
“I suppose you think it’s a job that could be done by anyone,” said the man at last.
“Of course it could.”
“I don’t agree. Look at the job I did with the Earl. That was clean as a porcelain tea pot. One stroke. And he’d a thick neck!” There was more than a trace of pride in the man’s voice.
The creature relented. “That was a good piece of work,” it said. “Did he forgive you?”
“Of course he did. They all do. Then they pray for the Queen.”
“Why do you suppose that is? You think they know something others don’t?”
“No. The
y don’t.”
“Headsman’s very circumspect, ain’t he?”
“Very.”
“I’ll give credit where credit’s due,” said the creature, tapping the page of his notebook with his quill. “You’re better at it than you ought to be.”
“It’s my job.”
A white rabbit ran hither and thither about the lawn, followed closely by a little blond girl in a blue dress. She seemed to be chasing the rabbit but managed—under the influence of those mal-coordinated genomic influences that make it impossible for little girls to match a physical concept to its actual performance—to plant herself hither whenever the animal was thither, and vice-versa, so there was little likelihood of success. “She must be new to the neighborhood,” said the man to himself.
“Who?”
The man turned from the window. “What? Oh . . . a little girl just ran across the lawn. I don’t recall having seen her before. Where was I?”
“Nowhere of any consequence.”
“I remember. Pride in a job well done. It’s very important, that. Doesn’t matter what one’s job is, one must do it to the best of one’s ability.”
“Have you ever thought of writing greeting cards?” snipped the creature.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing.” The creature closed its book, climbed down from the stool and crossed to the window where, standing on tiptoe, it could just see over the sill. “I was better with fire that you are with the ax.”
The man exhaled heavily. “Don’t let’s go there again.”
“Well I was!” said the creature, twining its long ear-hairs around a bony finger.
The man laughed involuntarily. “Screams to wake the dead . . . and it sometimes takes forever.”
“No it don’t,” the creature protested. “If it’s done right, smoke gets ’em ’fore the flames do. Damp hickory’s best, seasoned with spruce boughs, still tender and green; all that nice, crackling sap. Besides, to the artist, the screams are an aria. Think of it! No words, but so much expression! All welling upward toward the crescendo of the soul’s release.” He breathed deeply, as if his olfactory organ had a memory of its own for the distinctive pungency of burning hair. “Take that trio of witches . . .”
Storyteller Page 16
