Classics Mutilated

by John Shirley

The Stranger looks from the bull-men to M'ling to the Ape Man to me, and shows his blunt teeth, sharp tongue. His eyes burn us. He offers to pay for his lodging, and to make himself useful however he can.

  Taller than the Other, younger than the Master, skin burned red and blistered. Dark hair covers his weak chin, but he walks erect, in tight circles when nowhere else to go. He was never an animal. Perhaps he was never a child.

  The Stranger puts a stick of paper in his soft mouth. Fire sprouts from his hand and sets the stick alight. We gasp. He has fire in his hands, and smoke spills from his thin lips. Perhaps he is a machine.

  The Master asks of his education. “We are both scientists, and this is a biological station, of a sort.”

  Still chewing us with his eyes, the Stranger says, “I have some experience with running complex operations, and I’m a quick study. I was raised on a farm, and I drove an ambulance in the War … after the Armistice was signed. I’m not afraid of a little blood.”

  “Our work here is of great import, but of too delicate a nature to take you into our confidence, just yet.”

  “I’m in your hands, Dr. Moreau,” the Stranger says.

  We have peace and order on our island. The Master tells us it is not so in the wider world. We are humble before the Law. Until he comes among us, we can dream of no other life.

  The Master leaves the Stranger in an outer apartment of the compound, and locks the inner door to the courtyard. He summons me to attend to his initial examination of the new specimens.

  He needs me. The Other drinks poison to make his mind weak and his notes are sloppy, and though my blunt forelimbs are clumsy, my trunk can do the fine work, even sometimes with the Knife, and the Master says I have an extraordinary head for figures. I have seen pictures of my ancestors, of the clay from which the Master made me. I am stunted, a dwarf. The House of Pain made me small, but bright.

  I do not carry a whip or a gun, but the Master gave me a blue serge suit like his, and I work with him. The others in the compound must wear white. They are proud of their status but hate the white, which hides no dirt. The beasts in the ravine despise me, for though many of them have better hands and truer voices, I live in the House of Pain. I was made to teach them to speak and to read, but they have come as far as the Knife and the Needle can take them. To learn more only teaches them that they are still beasts.

  The Stranger hunts us.

  While the Master begins to remake the puma with Montgomery, the Stranger leaves his apartment and ambles into the jungle. He has shaved the fur from his face, but kept a tiny strip of hair just above his lips. It makes him look less like an animal, and yet more dangerous.

  I cannot keep up with his long-legged strides without giving myself away, but he stops and sits beside the creek and blows smoke into the air.

  The secret of fire is not in making it, but making it work. The burning in his head comes out on the paper in his lap. With swift stabs and slashes of the pencil, his fine fingers make a window in the paper. The creek and the canebreak beyond are trapped in it; and then, as if summoned, Darius skulks out of the shadows, eyes greenly flashing.

  Most of them cannot recall or even speak the names I gave them, but this is of little import to me. Was it not Adam’s first task to name the beasts of the field? Even if they failed this simple test, I did not fail mine.

  Darius stoops on all fours to slurp water from the creek. He knows no shame. Time and again, the Master has ripped out his claws, but they always grow back. Even his flesh hates the Law. His tawny flanks heave with panting. The faded spots on his piebald hide flush. His muzzle and paws are speckled with red.

  Fear. I would trumpet and run on all fours, so strong is my terror. But the Stranger only says, “Hello,” and draws the leopard man in the depth of his sin.

  With a coughing growl, Darius leaps the creek and coils, ready to pounce. The Stranger stands erect and stares Darius down with his redly flashing eyes.

  The leopard man runs away into the green jungle. The Stranger shakes his head and turns to a fresh page. Then he turns on me.

  “Hello, little fellow. You’re a shy one, aren’t you? Well, you needn’t be frightened of me. Here….” His teeth flash, but not in threat. He reaches into his pocket and holds out a handful of peanuts.

  I trample out of my hiding place. My ears flap and my trunk unfurls in a vulgar display of threat, but the Stranger barks until he coughs and spits on the ground. “You really are some sort of a beast-man, aren’t you? Not a hoodoo or a gaff, at all. Now, what would be a good name for you…?”

  “I have a name,” I tell him. I try to make my voice large. It cracks and he utters his strange bark again, like the hyena-swine’s mating call.

  My trunk reaches out to snort up a nut. “My name….” My remade throat closes, my tongue twists, spitting shells. “Diogenes.”

  The Stranger’s pencil carves a bloated, droopy ellipse, with a wilted triangle on either side, and a lazy S dangling from its belly. Then two smaller circles beneath it, and short, stubby rectangular limbs. The eyes are bigger than mine, the humors out of balance to drive this paper Diogenes mad with glee. My own eyes are small and weak and sad.

  He shakes his head again. “I can’t do justice to you. Nobody could believe it, nobody would fall in love with it. But you’re real enough, aren’t you, little fellow? D'you know any tricks?”

  My clumsy hands reach out for the book. He turns it around and shows it to me. I take his pencil in my trunk and write my name under his picture.

  Cradling it in my hands, I turn the pages with my trunk. He has seen many of us. The hyena-swine creeps up on a rabbit hutch. A wolf woman falls upon a swine man and destroys his crude cane-stick hut. The pink homunculi at play in the undergrowth. A headless rabbit sprawls in the grass, bejeweled with flies. The leopard man slakes his thirst after a murder. “He has broken the Law,” I grunt.

  Behind the picture of Darius, I find sketches of other beast men, with no claws or teeth—soft, like the homunculi, but with gloves and short pants. “It’s not … a good likeness … of a rabbit.”

  He barks again, but does not smile. “Animals are no fit judges of artwork,” he says. “And it’s a mouse.”

  “I’ve read Homer and Aesop … in the orig … original Greek … and Latin.” There are more sketches of this curious animal-baby, on the corner of each page. When the pages slip from my blunt thumbnail, the little rodent dances like a little live thing.

  “That … no, don’t look at that.” He snaps the book away and tears the page out, balls it up and puts it in his mouth. His red face dims almost purple. He chokes it down. “That’s over and gone. They stole it from me, but they won’t take anything from me again.” He sucks in fire and blows out smoke, and slowly grows calm again. “How does he do it, Diogenes? You’re a sharp one. You can tell Uncle Wilbur.”

  I don’t know what he means. He offers me more peanuts, but I know not to take them. His eyes are like whips.

  “You’re a true friend to your Master, aren’t you? Well, never mind. I’ll find out for myself.”

  We go back to the compound. The Stranger locks himself in his apartment and says he must sleep, but he does not sleep. From lying in his hammock staring at Aesop’s Fables—what kind of man cannot read Greek?—to pacing the room until it is filled with smoke, he wastes the day. I watch through the outer window that looks on the ocean, but I cannot imagine what disturbs him. He has the key to his cage.

  Inside, the puma cries out. Her cries send him pacing faster. She is a long way yet from being born.

  M'ling brings him his supper. The Stranger hides his book of drawings. Montgomery comes in and he and the Stranger share a glass of poison. He warns the Stranger to be careful in his wandering, for the island is dangerous, then leaves by the inner courtyard door, but he forgets to lock it.

  The poison overtakes the Stranger. He has bad dreams. Crying out in echo of the unmade puma, he says, “No, Father, don’t,” and covers his head. This stra
nge creature is no stranger to the Whip.

  In the morning, his hammock is soiled. M'ling sniffs at the stain and the Stranger’s discarded rags and says he has marked his place.

  The newborn woman cries out. The Stranger pokes at his breakfast for a while, then goes through the door into the compound. Slow on my flat feet, I follow.

  The dogs snarl and bark. The Stranger runs them to the span of their leashes, then ducks into the open back door of the House of Pain.

  Dark inside. Hotter than outside. Clean. White porcelain and polished steel. Chains. And the new woman on the table. Still red and wet and weeping, mewling lost in the throes of rebirth.

  The Master shouts, takes him by the arm and hurls him from the room into the courtyard, then drives him back to his apartment and slams the door.

  The Other is shamefaced. The Master almost whips him. “This uninvited guest will be our undoing. His meddling could ruin the work of a lifetime!”

  “He doesn’t know the score,” hisses Montgomery, “but he wants to. Too eager by half, says I. In fact, when I riddle upon it, I wonder if his coming here was an accident, after all.”

  “That is my principal fear. He must be taken into our confidence or dealt with, but I can’t yet spare the time.”

  Montgomery chuckles. “If he’s as fine a specimen as you seem to think, perhaps you could turn his presence here to the good—”

  The Master looms over the Other. The puma’s blood on his smock is the only color on his white marble face. “This Wilbur Dixon is a singular creature, but imagine his blood in their bodies. No, they would walk erect and speak, but I doubt they could be less human.” The Master sees me watching, and orders me to find the Stranger.

  He has left his apartment. He races, but I can follow the trail of his smoke through the trees.

  Someone else stalks us. I scent Darius’ bitter musk on the rank morning heat. The Stranger can smell nothing but his own smoke. He is helpless before the hunched gray shape that drops out of a tree before him.

  I wheeze with relief. The monkey man bows and presents his fingers for counting. Amused, the Stranger returns the gesture, but he can make no sense of Virgil’s chattering.

  “You poor creature! You were a spider monkey, weren’t you?”

  “I am a man, like you, yes yes. We talk big thinks, yes yes?” Virgil prances and chatters around the Stranger, who makes the sound he calls laughter, and throws him nuts.

  “What has that monster done to your tail?”

  Angry Virgil tries to stand erect and puff out his chest. “I am a man like you! The Master made me, good Virgil, yes yes, a man!”

  The Stranger puts a hand on Virgil’s head and strokes his gray fur. “You had a tail once. He’s taken all of your God-given gifts, and for what? This Moreau is a butcher, and the worst sort of villain. Someone should make him pay for his crimes against you.”

  “Moreau a butcher, yes no,” Virgil chatters. “His is the hand that wounds! His is the hand that heals!”

  “Where are the rest of you?” the Stranger asks. “How many orphans are there?”

  Virgil turns and scampers down the trail. “I will take you to them, yes yes. You must learn the Law.”

  The Stranger blunders through the canebreak after Virgil and emerges on the yellow waste. Sulfur and steam rise from the hot springs, masking the mouth of the ravine. I wait for them to disappear into the mist, when something rakes my back with claws of fire.

  I forget myself, and trumpet wordless terror. My blood flows. I try to turn over, but I am pinned. I have no gun, no whip. I have never had tusks. I cannot even call for the Master.

  Darius sinks his teeth into my tough hide and flays my scalp, then flies away. The Stranger brandishes a bloody rock, then throws it at the leopard man. He strikes him on the temple and sends him howling into a thorny thicket.

  “You’re safe now, little friend.” He reaches out for my trunk, and lifts me up.

  He goes into the ravine.

  The stone walls draw close. They come out of their huts of thorns and palm fronds in the cracks of the rock to show fangs and claws and half-made hands. I count heads. Sixty-two. All but M'ling and Darius are here.

  Pan lowers his goatish head to show his curling horns, fondles himself and strikes the rock with his hooves. The swine-folk hoot and the wolves growl, the dog-man grovels and licks the Stranger’s boots.

  A man walks among them, unarmed. He tests the Law. It is too much.

  He shows no fear. The stink from him is not like an animal’s fear. I doubt anyone but me can smell it. It is the stink of a deeper fear, buried under a mountain of will.

  The gray-haired oldest one limps from his hovel and lifts himself upright on his staff. I call him Solon, for he speaks only the Law. His shaggy pelt hides his blind eyes, toothless mouth. “If it is a man, then let him say the Law!”

  “The Law of the Jungle is the only law I see here,” says the Stranger. “I see only animals stripped of their true nature and their gifts, and cast adrift.”

  The beast men roar and jeer. “Not to walk on all fours—that is the Law! Are we not men?”

  “Not to spill blood—that is the Law! Are we not men?”

  “Not to suck drink—that is the Law! Are we not men?”

  The Stranger rages. “No, you are not! Not to do those things is not to be an animal, but has he taught you what it is to be a man?”

  He takes out a little silver tool and blows into it. The single, piercing note traps every beast in the ravine. None of them have ever heard music.

  He begins to play the swooning, swaying notes of a familiar tune—Saint-Saens’s Danse Macabre, I know it from the Master’s phonograph collection. Heads bobbing, eyes glazed, they become less than beasts, but Virgil knows at once what music is for.

  Bobbing his furry head to the woozy melody, he prances in circles around the Stranger in uncanny imitation of the Stranger’s stiff, inhibited gait. When he runs up the Stranger’s back to snatch his hat, the Stranger does not punish him, but only quickens the whirling, maddening tune.

  Virgil leaps to the ground and dances on his hands, holding the hat in place on his hindquarters, covering the stump of his tail. Then, flipping over and miming crapping into the hat, he offers it back.

  The Stranger drops his harmonica and again makes that strange, bloodcurdling bark. He slaps his palms together to make a thunderous sound that drives the beasts back into their burrows. But then his brow darkens, and he looks angry. “Your Master never taught you to laugh?”

  Silence, but a riot of scent. In the dim cave shadows, his eyes flash red.

  Solon bellows, “His is the hand that wounds—”

  The Stranger utters that frightening bark again. “Ask yourselves, if you are really men, what has he done for you? Your master, your creator, who rules by fear and pain, who left you to rot in sin and filth: what do you owe him?” He wipes his brow. The beasts are too captivated to rip him apart. It seems he must do it himself. His eyes shine, and stream down his face. “In the place I come from, you would all be celebrated for your gifts. Instead of a Master who whips and shuns you, you would have a loving father who gives you work and a purpose. And there would be no damnable House of Pain!”

  Only a few of them understand his words, but then Virgil takes up a new chant. “No Pain! No pain!”

  The others cannot even parrot his words, but they roar and stamp and crush their own huts in perfect imitation of his fury. My own trunk is lifted in the chorus.

  We are so loud that none sees the dogs until they fall upon us.

  The Master has returned. He holds the barking dogs to heel, but they have torn the hyena-swine’s filthy white tunic. Montgomery cracks his whip over our heads.

  A hairless pink sloth-child I call Claudius scurries up the Stranger’s leg. He scoops it up and cradles it to his chest to shield it from the dogs.

  Moreau holds out the Stranger’s sketchbook. The drawing of Darius. “This one has broken the Law! We will
have him.”

  “None escape! None escape!” The beasts chant.

  “Not to spill blood—that is the Law!”

  “That is your Law,” the Stranger shouts, “but why should it be theirs? You give them only pain and turn them loose in the jungle, and grant them only enough sense to recognize that their creator has forsaken them!”

  “You misunderstand my aim,” the Master says, in a lower tone. “Please come back to the compound. I would rather have you know all than—”

  “The Master is not a god. He is a man like all of you, and yes, an animal, too! He is not above the Law, is he? He and his lackey are only men, and they are only two, while you are many—”

  “For God’s sake, man, shut up!” the Other cracks his whip at the Stranger, who does not cower, but lunges at Montgomery, roaring, “Don’t you dare!” and clouts him across the face.

  The Master hurls the fire of death into the sky. Its thunderclap sends all of us down on all fours. “Mr. Dixon, we came here to save you from harm. But you have done us a mortal blow. Come with us now, before something transpires that cannot be undone.”

  The Stranger refuses to leave with the Master. Some of us growl and circle the arguing men, but the rest stand dumb, or cling to the earth as if it’s trying to shake them off. If either of them had eyes to see, they could tell now who is the most human among us.

  “If it will ease your suspicions,” the Master says, and turns over his pistol. Montgomery refuses to disarm, and lewdly slurps from his flask. “Where’s the leopard man?”

  “He attacked your poor pachyderm houseboy, when you sent him to spy on me. He could be anywhere.”

  “Mr. Dixon, if you please.” Bowing to the Stranger, he turns and walks down the ravine. The Other goes backwards after him with his pistol out before him. “Remember who’s the Master here, you rum bastards.”

  The Other steps on the paw of the cringing hyena-swine. It whines and strikes him with its gnarled claw-hoof. He shoots it through the head.

  The thunder is a long time falling away into silence.