The Unfinished World

by Amber Sparks

  Am I a mystery? asked Set. Do I belong with the spirits?

  Oliver shifted in surprise, then smiled. He kissed the top of Set’s head. This is your world, too, he told Set. You belong here. Set was not so sure about that. He loved the cabinet, but he also loved motorcars and moving pictures and the momentum of modern life. Why don’t you go to museums, like Cedric? he asked. Why keep these things here?

  Oliver laughed. This is more than a museum, he said. These cabinets are live things, can’t you feel it? These aren’t Ced’s dead relics, dug up and put on display for the learned. These are the things that matter to me; this is the strange wide world, right here, and he gestured at the long wall of cabinets. Well, the unfinished world, anyway. As much of it as I could fit into Mother’s parlor without her scolding, he said, and unfolded himself from the floor in an elegant gesture.

  Set had made a list once, of all the things he knew about Oliver. He rolled it up like a parchment and tied a blue silk ribbon around it and gave it to Desmond for his birthday. To Set’s surprise, the big man began to weep when he read it, fat tears landing on the page and smearing the careful ink.

  It’s the best present anyone has ever given me, Desmond told him. Desmond put Set on his lap while he and Oliver sang the happy birthday song, and Oliver gave Desmond a silver pocket watch, and Desmond kissed Oliver and ruffled his pretty black hair. You’re so good to me, he said. What a damned waste.

  Why a waste? asked Set later, alone with Pru. Why doesn’t Oliver marry Desmond?

  Pru’s face went as red as Desmond’s, and she shook her head. You don’t understand anything at all, she said.

  Things About Oliver

  Mustache that dances

  White teeth

  Quite small

  Curiosity cabinet is for mysteries

  Calls Pru “Mother”

  Has a pony

  The pony is named Maria

  Loves Desmond

  Loves paintings of battles

  And ladies singing loud

  On the nights the wind howled fiercest through the manor, making the windowpanes shudder and the spiders scurry back into the wainscoting, Inge left her drafty bedroom to wander the wild grounds. On these nights, everything seemed to quicken and jump, jittery and glimmering in the savage moonlight. These were heathen nights, full of half-magic. On these nights, Inge was on the lookout for a faerie circle or a forgotten spell, or perhaps a doorway to someplace else entirely.

  One of these nights, when she must have been about ten or eleven—old enough to be brave, young enough to be foolish—Inge had climbed out onto the roof to watch the stars light the shivering grass. She saw, so close it was like a small fire, a star plummet to earth just outside the village. She held her breath until it was down, then raced to find it.

  She scoured the ground for any fading light until—yes, there, just outside the old blacksmith’s barn, a small flickering lump in the overgrown grass. The damp was already killing it. She put a scratch down the paint on the side of the barn to mark the spot, then ran to the house to find a jar. But by the time she was back, the little star’s light had gone out for good.

  Curiosity #798: Ballet shoes, circa mid-eighteenth century. Worn by Marie Camargo of the Paris Opera Ballet; first non-heeled ballet shoes in the history of the dance.

  Of all the women his elusive father maintained boisterous and public affairs with, Set liked the principal ballerina of the Ballets Russes the best. His father took him to see her dance in Prince Igor, elbowing Set each time her skirt flared high over her shiny pink thighs. She was very kind to Set afterward, tousling his hair and smiling a dimpled smile for him. She smelled like melted sugar and rose petals. And she gave him gifts: candies from Paris and furs from Moscow, little wooden dolls from the Ukraine that nestled inside one another like a puzzle. He sat in the corner of her dressing room and released the dolls, one by one, while his father whispered something to the ballerina that made her laugh. Set was in awe of this ability that adults seemed to possess—the creation of mirth in another human being. His father wasn’t good for much else, as Pru wryly observed from time to time, but at this, he excelled. He could pull a coin from behind a child’s ear, or tell jokes that even Cedric fell about laughing over, or make a pretty ballerina shake with helpless giggles. In the carriage on the way home, his father turned to Set and asked him what he thought of the dancer.

  She seems like a very generous lady, said Set, after careful consideration. His father liked this response.

  She is, he said. She is full of generosity. And—Set thought he winked, but it may have just been sunlight hitting his father’s monocle—she’s soft in just the right spots.

  It wasn’t until Set was almost a young man that he realized she was his mother.

  Or rather, his almost-mother, as he came to think of her. After all, Cedric said, it was hardly genetics alone that made one a parent, and in Set’s case (and Cedric’s, and Constance’s, and Oliver’s) genetics had failed rather spectacularly or at least had been a one-sided affair at best. It was widely understood (but never spoken of) that Pru was uninterested in the business of having children, though she was very much interested in the business of raising them. She was a children’s book author, and as such she had very firm ideas about the way to bring up useful adults. Her books were the sort of moral tales disguised as anthropomorphic animal stories that were so fashionable then, and whenever one of her children behaved badly they were forced to learn the appropriate tale by heart. Osmosis through story. Pru had similar ideas about genetic inheritance; she had hoped her children would be artists, musicians, dancers—but none of them showed the slightest leaning toward their birth mothers’ talents.

  Set was the last hope—Pru paid for dance lessons as soon as he could walk—but he was bored by dance and Pru’s plans for him were dashed. Like everything else, she took this setback in stride. She summoned her eldest, Cedric, and arranged for Set to go with him on his next expedition to the Canadian Arctic. Set, said Pru, was finally old enough at twelve to travel with Cedric. You’ll have a real adventure, she said. You’ll get a chance to see the heathen up close. Set was disappointed. He wasn’t sure what heathens were, but he supposed they must all be children, very careless indeed with their souls—since the sour-faced ladies at the church were always trying to save them.

  Cedric was much older than Set, and in those heady days of Antarctic exploration—the age of men like Amundsen and Shackleton—Cedric, too, had distinguished himself. He’d been in high demand for his survey work, and led several expeditions to map the Antarctic coastline between Cape Adare and Mount Gauss. Before the family moved to Long Island, he’d dined with the great men of science at 1 Savile Row, had given lectures in London for the Royal Geographical Society.

  But that was before the world was laid bare, the last dust blown loose from the darkest corners. Now there were no strange places, only strange peoples, and the demands of the public for their secrets. The public couldn’t get enough of the exoticism of the east, the hot wilds of the south, the strange remoteness of the north. Cedric, who’d lived among the native people and depended on them for guides, for trade, and often for protection, did not like the way the so-called primitives were often portrayed in newsreels and print. He wanted to introduce Westerners to the complex societies and customs of these peoples, to show them in what he called a “humanistic light.” He became fixated on this notion. And so he took a three-week film course, bought a camera, and began making documentary films about these far-flung inhabitants of the earth. Set could hardly believe it; to Cedric, mechanical marvels like film were anathema. Ced had scorned Oliver’s dreamy love for this new art form. Oliver, he said, only wants to surround himself with shiny objects, like some kind of magpie. But now Cedric saw it as a way back to the past. He told Set this wasn’t about the new or novel: this, he said, was about preserving the oldest ways of living.

  This was Cedric’s fifth trip north, to the Canadian Arctic. A certain se
gment of the public was wild for his films about the Innu people there. And the big fur company, Northland Trading, was happy to bankroll his efforts. But there was another reason he spent so much time with the Innu: he was trying to pin their legends down to history, to track down the ruins of a great northern city, lost and hidden. Of late, he was fixated on it. He spoke to Set constantly about it, his chance at a real discovery.

  There couldn’t possibly be a city here, Set said. Who would have built it?

  Cedric shook his head. No one knows. The elders of the tribe speak of a place somewhere on the north coast. They say the people who built it abandoned it long ago.

  The coast was a barren tundra. No trees, no rocks, just frozen ground and sea. What would they build it with?

  Cedric smiled. Earth and whalebone, he said. The natives say these people built an entire city in the frozen ground, and stretched hides over the bones of whales for roofs. You see why it will be bloody difficult to find—an ancient city, buried in the cold earth.

  Set was not sure how he felt about the Arctic. He had longed to see something of the world, to seek out a place in it, but here he felt entirely removed. He was always cold and they were always on the move and the dogs smelled bad and the humans worse and the food was dreadful and unchanging. His brother was traveling with a small film crew and a few very rough men from the fur company. Once they were in the Innu village in Labrador, the fur men settled down to hard drinking, and complained about the slow pace of Cedric’s work. They refused to help with the camera or the lighting equipment, so Cedric instead trained the natives as his assistants.

  Set liked the natives much better than the fur men—they taught him how to kill and skin a seal and how to start a fire and how to build an igloo properly. They seemed strong and self-reliant and not at all in need of saving, despite what the church ladies at home said. His friend Agloolik, a boy about his age, taught him how to fish through the ice. They sat companionably around the ice hole, as Set fidgeted and Agloolik laughed at his impatience. Agloolik asked Set what his name meant, and Set shrugged: nothing, he supposed. The Innu looked disappointed; his name, he said, was that of a spirit who lived under the ice. The spirit helped men to fish and hunt, and—he slapped Set on the back—so wasn’t it right he was helping his friend to catch fish? Set pointed out that they didn’t seem to be catching much of anything. Agloolik put a little fish down the front of Set’s parka and rolled around, shrieking with laughter, as Set jumped and scrabbled and shouted that he would be tickled to death.

  But then Agloolik became serious and sad. My people, he said, they say you do not have a soul the same as other men. Set was uneasy. He remembered, but did not mention, the words of the Japanese lady long ago, the argument between Cedric and Oliver he’d overheard.

  Well then, he said, how do I get a soul?

  I do not know, said Agloolik. But you will need one when you die, to lead you back to your body.

  The fur men offered Set whisky and roared when he choked on the burn it left behind—though he did enjoy the way it warmed him from the inside, like a little candle. Pru was dead set against drink, and she always warned of its destructive powers. After that first sip, Set waited all night with dread for the signs of destruction to begin. He wasn’t sure if his toes would drop off, or his face burst into pustules, or his insides collapse like a tent in the wind. He wondered how he would find his way back without his soul.

  Cedric caught him staring into the fire and shook him roughly. Listen, you can’t go trance-eyed out here, or you die.

  But aren’t I already dead? Am I my own ghost? asked Set.

  Cedric’s eyes narrowed, and he did not answer the question. Take off your gloves, he said, and put your hands over the fire like this. This cold, why, this is nothing. Not like sailing through solid ice. Did I ever tell you, he said, about how I filmed the pack ice on the Intrepid?

  Set shook his head, even though Cedric had told the story many times. He liked to hear Cedric tell it.

  We made a little wooden seat, said Cedric, and we tied it below the jib boom. And there I hung, furiously filming the ship as we rammed that ice. We’d ram it once, just enough to put a wedge in it, to weaken it. Then we’d fire engines and drive full speed into that wedge. We’d break that ice apart with a great, groaning crash, boy, and me hanging on for dear life with that rope around my waist, cranking my camera like anything.

  While Albert was away at war, Inge’s eldest German cousin ran to Switzerland to avoid the fighting. Her father started calling him Fritz, though his name was Josef. Why do you call him that? she asked her father, too old to fight himself but happy to heap abuse upon the Hun at the intolerable meals he shared with her.

  He’s a coward, her father said, and speared his sausage.

  Yes, but why Fritz? Inge kept her opinion to herself, but she did not think he was a coward. She had seen boys, her brother’s age and younger, waving their hats at the women as they left, as though they were off to a great grand party. She felt a chill whenever the train left the station piled with all those young bodies. They said the war would be short, that Fritz would quickly be defeated. And why did they call the Germans Fritz, all of them, a whole nation of men and boys like the ones here in Ireland? Why did they call her cousin Fritz, when he wasn’t even fighting? Wasn’t her family glad of that—that he, at least, was not their enemy, that their cousin would not be the one to put a bullet in some poor Irish head? Did the Germans have names for the Irish, too? Were they mean, hard names, like the kind the Irish gave each other? And why did some of the Irish say we shouldn’t be fighting in this war at all?

  Her father waved away her questions with his sausage. Some cowards might not want to fight, he said. I’d hang them right now if I could. Their place, those traitors, is on the battlefield. Just like Albert. You’re a smart girl, God knows. You should understand.

  But Inge didn’t understand. How she could be asked to suddenly hate her cousins? Why was her father opposed to independence for Ireland? Why did the village children throw rocks at her family? Why did the butcher’s son and his friends attack the village priest and tear the collar from his neck? She knew there were two wars, one in Ireland and one out in the vague wide world, but she didn’t understand either one. She only knew they were taking away the only good things in her little life.

  Curiosity #1209: 24-inch tail feather, taken from peacock, circa 1884. Layered shades of gold, black, cobalt, navy, turquoise, viridian, teal. Brushed with the soft iridescence characteristic of the species.

  After Constance moved out, he heard Oliver refer to her as a “kept woman,” which seemed to mean that she lived in a tidy brownstone in the fashionable part of the city, dressed in expensive furs and jewels, and was never out of bed before noon. When Pru finally allowed him to visit Constance, she summoned him in her booming, imperious way to her bedroom, where he found a gentleman wrestling with his pants and a long, languorous Constance, eating chocolates from a gold box and clad in a frothy cream peignoir. Set was mildly horrified to see she was wearing nothing underneath. The gentleman without pants appeared to be equally horrified, but Constance smiled and held out the chocolates to Set. Have one, dear, she said, and her gown fell open on a vast expanse of white thigh. Set fled in terror.

  When Set was thirteen, Constance took him into the city to see a daring new showcase of very modern art. It’s upsetting all sorts of dignified people, said Constance, and Set could tell she heartily approved.

  The show was in a big armory on Lexington Avenue, and Set was fascinated by the strange, distorted figures. None of them were anything like the realistic paintings Pru had hanging on the walls of their home, food on tables and hunting parties and dour people looking down their noses. These were full of loud, impertinent color, of bold strokes, of strange shapes and impossible people. And the sculptures! They seemed to belong to another world entirely—so alien and unfamiliar they were.

  Matisse, shouted Constance, gesturing at a naked lady tinted
blue, lounging in front of a fringe of palm fronds. The fashionable people next to them glared. Constance ignored them and dragged Set over to another painting, a woman’s face, cut into sharp shapes and put back together all wrong. It gave him a muddled feeling to look at it, like looking at time coming and going.

  Picasso, said Constance. She smiled. Gertrude takes all the credit for him here, but I put in a good word with a certain gentleman as well. She can’t claim all his successes though lord knows she bloody well tries. Set nodded, hypnotized with horror over the scene she was making. Look, look at that damned painting, she boomed, and tell me he isn’t a genius. Her voice echoed through the hall and seemed to charm the paintings, colors leaping from their walls to be with her. Even these bold artworks couldn’t fill a room like Constance. People smiled despite themselves. Set shrank down to make more room for her, just as he did with them all. Constance made both the most and least sense to Set. She reminded him of his father, of what little he remembered—the laugh, the self-assurance, the great height and massive straight white teeth. She didn’t give a fig for anyone’s opinion, her family’s included, and Set knew that made Pru furious. She said so often. Constance seemed the most, of all his family, to belong to the outside world. Our family, she told him, their superstitions—it’s all bosh. They wanted me to be a dancer, and well—look how happy I’ve made myself on my own damn ambitions.

  No one ever quite said so, but Set at some point realized they shared a mother—for Constance was the spitting image of the pretty ballerina, though she was strong where the ballerina was soft, strident where their mother was graceful. But Constance inherited the same sweet smile and the same coaxing way with men. She told Set with pride that there were surefire ways for people to get what they wanted on this earth, and she was one of the few selfish enough to use those means—to use any means at all. It’s a good life if you own it, she told him. Be your own man.