The Paradise Engine

by Rebecca Campbell

  “I think I’ll bring in blackberries, as well. Very fine fruit from the Siberian blackberry. And Scotch broom, too, for hedging.”

  The drive wound through woods at first, but soon clearings emerged—filled with stumps and gravel—that were even uglier, to Liam, than the barbed wire. Still Reid gestured to one clearing and said, “I want to expand the orchard there, I think there’s room for another row along the back.” And of another, indistinguishable from the “orchard,” he said, “Goats, I think. Very efficient animals.” He mentioned pigs, sheep, an apple barn, cottages for weavers, a dairy.

  “You seem to be looking for self-sufficiency, Mr. Reid,” Liam said as they passed through the village, planned prettily around a little green, Simon said, though all Liam could see was stumpy ground full of turned-up stones and mud, mud everywhere. The cottages were coarse and new, the unpainted cedar shakes still red-gold and the air that crept in the window smelled of sawdust. Once out of the village they approached the house, and Liam saw a garden, though it too was embryonic. There were ponds, but the stones that paved their edges looked freshly broken, and the ornamental cherry trees were still spindly.

  “Yes,” Reid said as they passed between the low stone walls to the private garden that surrounded his house. It was yellow granite and half-timbering, with warm gold plaster between the artificially blackened beams that crossed the gables. There were many gables. “Yes, you have great insight. I do plan for self-sufficiency.”

  After touring the house and garden, they went into the dining room for lunch laid on a table that faced the water. This at least was as it should be, Liam thought, admiring the view down the cliffside, and agreeing about the dock Simon meant to modernize. After lunch they went into the library and sat as they had done in the hotel lounge.

  “With your permission, Mr. Manley,” Reid began, “I would like to continue our discussion. Last night my exhaustion prevented further explanations regarding this estate.”

  Liam glanced out the window rather than looking too obviously at the clock over the mantel. Still, it had been such a nice pork roast with baked apples and pear pie afterward. He liked pear pie. He should listen, and even ask questions. “I am eager to hear more, Mr. Reid,” he said.

  “Well then, I gave you to understand that this place is more than a refuge on the earth. It extends into other, subtler realms, ones that are not as widely known to the common sort of human. We are a community of believers, small but determined and—if I may say it—blessed.”

  Liam checked the clock as Reid closed his eyes and steepled his fingers once again. It was ten past two. He leaned back and took refuge in the texture of the Egyptian cotton he wore beneath his jacket, and the warmth of the fire on the hand that hung over the leather arm of his chair. It was pleasant, except for the sweet, lambish smell of the leather as it warmed.

  “Believers?” It seemed polite to ask after all the custard he had poured on his pie and the cigar that he had slipped into his pocket when Simon pressed him to take another. It was a very nice room, with so many impressive-looking books under glass. He noticed something called The Necronomicon and another called A First Encyclopedia of Tlön. On the top shelf there were black and silver spines bigger than church Bibles. Some were attached to the cabinet with fine bronze-coloured chains.

  “Yes, Mr. Manley—no, it is important that we speak honestly, and I call you by your first name. And you must call me Simon. I realize this disturbs your sense of decorum, but I hope you will allow me.”

  “Of course, Simon, you may call me Liam.”

  “Liam, I said last night that I knew you to be a gentleman, but it was more than that. I saw in you one who has fought with me in the past, though he may be blind to that history. I have known you before, Liam, and you have known me.”

  Liam was alarmed. He wondered how alarmed one had to be before one abandoned one’s good manners. “Mr. Reid, I’m not sure—”

  “Yes, you are right to resist such naked declarations, but please listen. You are a musician because you were drawn to your ancient tools. Long ago you had the gift to work magic by the sound of your voice. I knew that last night, when I saw you, but then I dreamed further of those days when we were together at Delphi, and even farther back, when I knew you on the island of Lesbos, and lost Carcosa before that! In those ancient days you were a high priest, and you have returned to us, though your eyes have been darkened in this incarnation. I know that you doubt what I say, though I am warmed by the flame that still burns within you. Think on it, Liam, and when you have thought on it, consider joining our great work here.”

  In the silence that followed this extraordinary statement, Simon produced a small handbill. Liam recognized it as an advertisement for the next day’s concert, including a program and two photographs, one taken by that man Lyon some weeks before, on the stage of the Temple Theatre.

  Looking at himself—his dark eyes, his hair falling forward across his brow, his long fingers on the piano keys—Liam thought he recognized something of what Reid had said.

  Looking at his host, he saw, again, the stillness that had so arrested him the night before: the face immobile and the eyes gleaming in the firelight, the long yellow fingers at rest in his lap. He did not even seem to breathe, as though all his attention were fixed on Liam, as though what Liam said, what he was, mattered beyond all things.

  Simon said softly, “Liam, my friend, do you remember setting sail, a thousand ships on the tide?”

  He felt the little leap inside at each word—ships, sail, tide. Looking out the window, he didn’t see the grey water; he saw the wide stone terrace above the sea, the linen robe over his shoulder, and in his hands a lyre; below him the boats full of fighting men smiting the furrows, his song rising in their sails.

  Liam knew that Simon’s yellowish eyes were still fixed on his face, but he did not look. He caressed his cuff, and felt against one knuckle its silk and cashmere. “Simon, I think you have mistaken me for someone else.”

  “We live in a suspicious age, and I do not ask for an immediate commitment, only that you consider the memories that are—I can see it, Liam, in your eyes—rising to consciousness. We have long known one another, and I trust you. I only ask that you give yourself the opportunity to remember.”

  “Of course—”

  There was a knock on the door. Simon turned to face it. “Excuse me, Liam—yes, come.”

  Another man joined them, a roughish man with dirt under his nails and worn brown trousers. “Simon? Betty in the kitchen said you were back and I thought you might like to go over the new arrivals. I also need to talk to you about the orchard.” He looked at Liam and nodded.

  “Thank you Michael, I will be there in a moment. Liam, this is our very capable manager, Michael Sweeney. Now, Liam,” Simon said as he rose, “I hope you will take your time, and allow any memories to surface, if they will, and remember that this place is safe for you. It is good to have you back with us, friend. I’ve been waiting for you.” And then Simon was gone.

  Liam stretched out his feet to the fire and closed his eyes.

  He did not know how much later he woke. He was half out of his chair when it happened, finding himself in action before he was conscious. A nightmare, it must have been, though he could not remember what. He wondered as he dropped back to the chair whether he had shouted aloud, or if he had only stood. The room seemed the same, the shadows unchanged, the fire still burning. His watch said it was only twenty minutes since he had last looked, but for a moment he felt he had slept through a whole day and night.

  He stood at the window for a moment, then went to the door which opened into a long, still corridor. Far away someone sang, badly, so he only recognized the song when he heard the words of the chorus: the west a nest and you dear. Very far away, footsteps ran and stopped and ran again. He hesitated in the doorway, wondering what was expected of him—should he find Simon? Or did he have the run of the place? He decided that he was free to explore and cheered himself
up by remembering that Reid was obviously a nutter and one could not assume the civilities would be observed in all detail. Besides, he did not like to stay in the room where he had dreamed.

  It was more than the dream that had disoriented him, though, because the hallway felt different as well, its corners no longer true. He could not name the new strangeness, felt only the fretfulness of a sick child, ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed at his face. His heart— startled by the dream—still thumped painfully in his eyes and ears. At the end of the hallway, he found a door that let onto a porch, then a dismal greenish courtyard filled with the twigs and stumps of a young perennial border. Outside he took deep, slow breaths and began to feel square again.

  Simon was waiting for him when Liam returned.

  “I went for a walk. I went outside. But it was raining,” Liam said. “Did you—” he began, and could not remember why it was Simon had left. “Did you finish?”

  “You dream—yes?”

  Unaccountably, Liam’s mouth was dry. He couldn’t think of what to say, but he did not like silence, just then, and did not want to hear what Simon would say next if Liam allowed him the opportunity.

  “Yes, you dream. You should sit.”

  Liam sat in the chair he’d taken before.

  “Do you fear sleep?”

  Liam shook his head.

  Simon’s voice pressed on in a monotone. He did not wait for responses; he did not require them. “You fear sleep. You should not. I, who am shown scenes of unimaginable horror, do not fear sleep. All that fear—Liam, you must meet my eyes when I speak or I can impart no true knowledge to you—all that fear is only a measure of His Greatness. To know Him is to know pain, yes, but He judges us by what we endure for Him. Suffering is only a measure of our exile from His subtle realm, prisoned as we are in this corporeal hallucination, this unsubtle flesh. When you feel dread, remember that it is His light, refracted through the prism of your body and be content with that little knowledge. We are not given to know Him. Even when I am in His presence, He hides from me behind a yellow silk mask.”

  Here Simon stood quickly, and as he moved his body looked suddenly counterfeit. His yellow-ivory eyes conducted the heat of his words, and Liam wanted to look away but felt himself hooked on that gaze. Simon saw, he thought, the texture of his skin, heard the new wheeze that dogged his deep breaths, saw a new grey hair surfacing at his temple.

  Simon stood as awkwardly as a masterless marionette. Then one hand raised by the wrist gestured to the fire, and he dropped to the hearth, marring the knees of his pale suit with coal dust.

  “We must feel things for what they are, feel the destruction of the body for joy, feel its pleasures for ash, feel the institutions of the earth for monuments to dust.”

  Here he turned back to the large, green-tiled fireplace. He stretched his right arm toward the coals, the knotted string and dry sticks that composed his wrist visible through his skin as his cuff fell back. He reached into the fire and picked up a dull orange coal with his right hand. He set it in the palm of his left hand. Before Liam could close his eyes he saw first the reddening, then the blackening skin around the coal, and the smoke rising from his fingers.

  Then Liam closed his eyes, but he could not escape the smell—first bitter coal smoke and burning hair, then burning flesh. Though he tried to hide his face, he knew Simon still gripped the bit of fire and that the man’s hands followed his evasion, so no matter how he turned, the coal was before him. He could hear its hiss, could smell, he could smell the burning—

  “Open your eyes, Liam.”

  The man was used to command.

  “Open your eyes,” he said.

  And Liam did, though he did not wish it. Simon held a lump of red coal on his outstretched palm. He dropped it back into the fire, and then showed Liam his skin, which was whole and yellow, not red and weeping.

  “You see the lesson. We burn only if we accept the premises of flesh and fire. I do not accept. I do not burn.”

  Liam looked away, and noticed the line of fine white cotton against his blue cuff, his fingertips pressed into the green leather arms of his chair until the skin around his nails turned yellow-white and dead-looking. Carefully he released his fingers, thinking he could not let them go into fists, and never unknot for days. He stretched them out, but as he did, they trembled. He glanced up to see Simon was still staring at him. He wet his lips. He tasted blood.

  “You do not burn,” he said.

  “No, Liam.”

  Still the quiet voice, and Liam again saw the tremor in his own fingers and felt how clammy the leather was, where his hands rested. Sweat, thick and rank, gathered under his arms, down his spine, soaking the waistband of his trousers and his underclothes.

  Still the man’s voice: “Do you remember? Do you remember, Liam?” Though he swallowed to clear his throat, he felt the familiar constriction, like the nightly return of a bad dream daily forgotten, and he could not breathe as one by one the alveoli in his lungs shut tight like the fingers in his own fist. He might have the next breath and if he was lucky the one after that, and if he stood, he would feel the prickle of white sparks in his eyes, and the black snow slowly filled the field of his vision.

  All the same, he stood. After a moment he made his way to the door, then out to the huge entrance hall where the stairs and gallery of the upper story seemed filled with people watching him. I do not burn, Simon said again and again in his head, or perhaps out loud, whispering in his ear, I do not burn. He flickered in and out of Liam’s peripheral vision, then ahead of him, around a corner, out the double doors and into the grey light of January. In the moments before the car arrived to take Liam away, they stood in the hall and that man Michael joined them, saying nothing, but watching Liam as though they knew one another. Finally he turned to the man and asked if there was anything he wanted.

  “No, sir,” Michael said and looked down.

  Mr. Reid smiled. “Michael confessed that he remembered you, and hoped you would feel the same familiarity. Do not trouble yourself, Liam, it is never easy to wake up.”

  In retrospect Liam wished he’d said something cutting like “quite.” But he had only nodded as though saying, of course, one always has trouble awakening to the true, terrifying nature of reality.

  Then the car pulled up and Mr. Reid shook his hand and then drew Liam close to him and clasped his head, pulling it down so his dry lips touched the skin beneath Liam’s ear. He spoke quickly, sharply, and his breath smelled old: “Prepare for the worst, for the chaos that is rising in the East will not recede without a great battle on both our parts. I have in my possession the plans for an Engine that can protect us, and the means to build it. If you have need of shelter, you will remember us?”

  Liam, wheezing, said nothing.

  “You will remember? And remember us to Mrs. Kilgour?”

  The lie came easily to him: “I will.”

  “Parach,” Simon said, and kissed him. The long fingers of his left hand unwound from Liam’s throat and jaw.

  Standing before the mirror two days later, Liam could still feel the kiss on his mouth, and he found himself rubbing at it, as though to wipe away the sensation of dry lips and beard-bristles, the barest hint of saliva. When he reached his hotel in the late afternoon he was not well, and he called for basins of hot water and extra towels. After many hours sitting up, he managed to sleep in the armchair beside his bed. The next day he took no risks, and by late morning the attack had passed and he was ready to join Mrs. Kilgour for lunch, though there were dark, purplish circles under his eyes, and Mrs. Kilgour remarked that he looked delicate, as Clive had been.

  As Liam left his room before dinner that evening, he glanced once more in the mirror over the dressing table and found himself arrested by the face he saw. In the lamplight it was the face he had seen in the handbill Simon had showed him. He thought suddenly of a novel he had found on a train and begun but never finished. Maria Corelli? L. Adams Beck? It was set in so
me ancient Mediterranean place full of gold-tinted gods and olive groves and cypresses, stony hillsides dropping down to waters of cerulean or aquamarine or (at sunset) wine-dark magenta. In general he preferred magazine articles detailing modern travel or developments in recording technology, but it was a very long train trip, and he had exhausted the two back issues of The Etude he carried. What he remembered just then was the hero, some musician with dark, tousled hair and fevered eyes (epithets repeated every chapter). The man was insipid, constantly thwarted in his pursuit of a shepherdess who was, secretly, a princess, and composing songs for birds and trees and things, neglecting to commit enough time to daily exercises.

  But there had been ships on the tide below a gold-hued sky, driven to Asia Minor on the breath of a song. In the mirror—for a moment—he had seen a face like that described in the novel, the face of a bardic magus in linen and purple, illuminated as though by sunset or stage lights, so his mouth was cast in shadow and his dark hair shadowed his brow.

  The next day Liam dressed for the evening concert in a suit carefully tended by his valet, whose careful and impressive work had so improved his toilet. Liam felt, finally, that he had learned to the handle the man.

  Downstairs Mrs. Kilgour was waiting in the great room (hired for their private use), already dressed in the long spangled gown of the Edwardian prima donna. Her hair was done up in feathers of some kind, very expensive feathers, he guessed. He stood patiently near her, waiting for the final adjustments to her headdress, and thinking of what her money and her will achieved: an eternal 1905 that rendered all her attendants children in a pre-war idyll.

  At least his suit was fashionably cut. That night’s recital was held in a Girl Guide Hall hired by Mrs. Kilgour’s agents under the name “The Orphic Society,” though it was a silly fiction: Mrs. Kilgour was the Orphic Society. Even knowing that, and knowing the power his employer had in Duncan’s Crossing, Liam still swelled a little when he saw that the house was filled with 350 souls seated and another fifty, at least, standing at the back. The quintet was in position when the lights went down. Then Liam made his way slowly to his place and bowed sharply. The crowd clapped. There were a few inappropriate whistles from the back of the room, but he greeted them with a formal little bow. Finally Mrs. Kilgour made her way across the floor and the applause trailed off as she reached centre stage. She raised her hands for silence and curtsied deeply.