Worming the Harpy and Other Bitter Pills

by Rhys Hughes

  ‘Well I’m not passing these over in silence!’ I cried. ‘Although you are quite welcome to do so. It seems that I shall have to take all of them.’ And I pulled away from his clutches and tried again to leap into the pit.

  This time, Mellors barred my path with his litter stick. He snarled a challenge. The point grazed the nape of my neck and I twisted, shielding my face with my free hand. I raised my umbrella and parried his next thrust. Frustrated and incensed by my refusal to concede the star pearls, he attacked a third time with increased savagery.

  I weaved under his inexpert blows and sliced at his shin, handling my umbrella like a sabre. He jumped over my thrust and struck at my head. The vicious spike narrowly missed my face and I bared my yellow teeth. I was determined to enter fully into the spirit of the thing. ‘En garde!’ I cried. ‘Zut alors! Beaujolais Nouveau!’

  These taunts merely angered him further, but this was precisely the effect I was hoping to achieve. As he lunged forward, I ducked, drew the real sword concealed in my umbrella, shifted it to my left hand and pierced the lobe of his ear. His fury made him not only careless but oblivious to pain. He whirled round and his ear came off with a rip of fibres.

  I opened my mouth to laugh, but now it was his turn for vengeance. His spike came up, pierced the taut skin under my chin and continued upwards, transfixing my fleshy tongue to the roof of my mouth. When he withdrew the spike, a dozen drops of blood came with it, solidifying into rubies in the cold air. Words followed the rubies. Words of more than a little annoyance.

  ‘Scum! Wheelbarrow licker! Ugli-fruit!’

  ‘Now, now!’ He clutched his ear and circled me warily. He eyed my rapier and muttered ruefully.

  ‘Very distasteful,’ he said. ‘If only I’d known! But I have an ace up my sleeve as well. . . .’ He smiled a sly smile and aimed his stick at me. ‘Would you like to see it?’

  I frowned, and as I did so, he depressed a stud on the base of his handle. There was a click and the whirr of a spring. Before I knew what was happening, the tip of the spike was spinning through the air towards me. I felt it strike the centre of my forehead, boring a third eye into my cranium. There was no pain, but more rubies rolled down my brow to join the diamonds of my tears and the emeralds of my nose. The air was indeed very cold.

  I tugged at the spike, but it was stuck fast in my skull. I winced. Mellors was rubbing his chin. ‘You must have a very thick skull,’ he observed. ‘Hardly surprising, considering your nature. Ah well! I shall have to beat you to death with the other end of my stick.’ He shrugged.

  I dropped my sword, fell to my knees and feigned unconsciousness. When Mellors approached, I snatched up my blade and pierced his groin. He screamed and fell back. I twisted the handle and pulled it free, slicing at him again and again. Fingers flew loose, the tip of a nose, an eyelid. I slashed until his skin hung off in shreds and he was crawling in a pool of his own blood.

  ‘Right!’ He was furious, albeit in a soprano sort of way. ‘That does it! Now you’re for it, my friend! I’ll have you bound and gagged, boiled in a metal tank, liquefied and then sprayed onto my flowerbeds as plant food!’

  For good measure, I sliced his lips off. They slid across the frozen ground like blubbery half moons. With an arrogant heel, I stamped them to putrid jelly. Never again would they swell to the delicious ache of a vindaloo. As if suddenly aware of this prospect, Mellors became petulant. His face wore such a lugubrious expression that I started to laugh. He attempted to point an accusing finger at me, but for the most part they lay on the ground next to his oozy lips.

  ‘I have made my point,’ I said, waving my rapier and carving Möbius strips in the fabric of reality. ‘And now the debate is over. I will take the star pearls and leave you to mull over the folly of greed.’ I turned my back and stalked off in the direction of the crater. Something small landed by my feet. I whirled round. ‘What now?’ I demanded, my frown of annoyance impeded by the spike that protruded from my forehead.

  With his left hand, Mellors was scooping up the severed digits of his right, thrusting them one by one into random nostrils and then snorting them at me. Enraged by this desperate show of contempt, I slashed at the missiles as they span towards me. With singular misfortune, I managed to deflect one away from a relatively harmless course into my left eye. The ugly gnarled nail scratched open my retina and my world partly dissolved in a flood of pain and salty mucus.

  I howled and ground my teeth. ‘Will you never learn?’ I resumed my calculated slashing, but this time he was more careful to evade my blows. Slipping on our displaced fluids, I followed him down the path and up a little rise towards the boating-lake. ‘Bum!’ I cursed, as he danced out of range each time I lunged.

  At the main gates to the park, a few faces peered eagerly through the iron whorls and spirals. They tapped their wristwatches impatiently as we passed. Mellors checked his own, held it up to me and motioned to the tiny crowd. Politely, I lowered my weapon while he removed a heavy set of keys from his belt and unlocked the gate. Grey and covered in wrinkles, the motley collection of joggers and yoga students flooded through to begin another day of mindless ritual.

  As soon as he had replaced the keys at his belt, I continued my offensive. Mellors mocked me as he retreated, thrusting his hips forward in a cryptic, though certainly obscene, gesture. Occasionally, he made a counter lunge with his litter-stick. I grew increasingly frustrated as my blows fell short. With a single working eye, I found it difficult to judge distance. Well aware of this, Mellors exploited his only advantage.

  Slowly, as we circled the perimeter of the park, the sun began to warm our wounds. The park started to fill up: old couples and single parents joined the joggers and lentil-eaters; students claimed benches for their revision; perverts in anoraks skulked through the undergrowth; dog-owners polluted the environment with a thousand colours and textures of canine excreta; truants dodged school and enjoyed a surly smoke on the rusty-chained swings of the woodchip playground.

  When we had completed half a circuit, Mellors suddenly dropped his guard and sighed. Although I was eager to skewer his ignoble heart and have done with him, I could see that he was on the brink of a revealing insight. We stopped beside a clump of bushes where a writer’s group was discharging the contents of the previous night’s revels. I recognised a host of prolific poets and poetasters, both male and female. Plodders with the pallor and ambitions of tadpoles attempted to outvomit pretentious book-reviewers and voluptuous editors from Sidcup.

  ‘This whole exercise is more profound than it appears,’ Mellors began. ‘We are living in a parable. Don’t you see? Our actions form part of an elaborate allegory. They are the products of conscious decisions but not of decisive consciousness. Our struggles are part of a much wider scenario.’

  ‘Oh really?’ I raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘And what, pray, is the message of this parable? And what is the key that can unlock its meanings?’

  Mellors sat down on a bench, shaded by a twisted cedar and not yet relieved of its frosty rime. He placed his litter stick by his side and spread out his hands, or rather what remained of them. ‘This park represents the entire universe. It is a microcosm of reality. The star pearls represent truth, absolute certainty amid chaos. The meteorite was its messenger, a prophet or philosopher. We represent orthodoxy and dissent, two factions who seek a monopoly on truth.’

  I grinned. His metaphysics was impressive. ‘Very apt, I’m sure. But I always win at monopoly. Indeed, I intend to mortgage your life this very morning. I would very much like to examine your liver, you see.’

  Mellors grunted. ‘Your overconfidence is truly startling. But you are right about one thing. There is more truth in viscera than in truth itself. I will eat yours with avocado and rose petals.’

  ‘Oh ho!’ Before he could regain his litter-stick, I had flicked it high with the tip of my rapier. It landed amid the circle of writers, where the tadpole used it to scratch his six-hundredth tale in the communal puddle of undigested
fish pizza and beer. As I bore down on Mellors with malice formidable, he jumped up and seized on my Adam’s apple with his rotting teeth. There was a crunch, as crisp as the morning itself, and the apple had been halved. He spat bloody red things, as analogous to pips as length is to breadth, and hooted.

  ‘Glib gargoyle!’ I rasped, with great difficulty. ‘Rancid rhabdus! Lousy loganberry! Your parable disappears up its own backside as shall the quartered segments of your limbs. Come here wretch! I shall unwind your intestines on a windlass and make black puddings from them.’

  ‘Piffle!’ Once more he bounced out of my reach and the absurd struggle resumed with fresh vigour. We passed through the herb garden, tastefully arranged in the shape of a sundial, and breathed in the heady scents of lemon balm and marjoram and the salad freshness of borage and mint. From here we descended a winding path to the boating lake, cobalt waters trapping the stately reflections of black swans. Ice-cream vendors gestured to us with chocolate flakes and canisters of raspberry sauce. Old women, smelling of mothballs and boiled sweets, tripped us up with improbably long leads fastened to dogs no bigger than their fists.

  As we skirted the shore, I noticed the large crows that had gathered on the railings and who appeared particularly interested in my ruined eye. Their beaks seemed connected to my weeping orb by lines of dark purpose. I scowled at them, but they did not flinch. Perched on the barbed spikes, their position was advantageous; fixed at a point between the known universe and the other side of knowledge.

  We threaded our way through a senile reunion of ex-servicemen who had gathered at the bandstand. On the covered platform, crusty musicians were forcing stale air into tarnished brass instruments. Bumbling tubas and ridiculous euphoniums assailed us with powerful exhortations, while a score of glockenspiels attempted callow counterpoint. The crowd grumbled at our intrusion, but I was loathe to acknowledge their discontent. Further on, we encountered a small group of children playing with exquisitely worked marbles.

  When we had reached the other side of the lake, Mellors paused again and I reluctantly lowered my blade. He indicated a shack that stood at the end of a narrow path. ‘That is my hut. I need to relieve myself. I won’t be a minute.’

  I nodded my rather exasperated assent and waited while he walked up the path and vanished inside the shack. I had often seen him glaring out of its window at fishermen and young lovers. I knew that he kept a teapot in there and a telephone, but I knew little else. Curious, I advanced up the path towards the window. I heard a bizarre grating noise and a series of grunts and I scratched my head. As I peered through the grimy warped glass, I gulped. I had suspected a trick, of course, but nothing of this nature.

  Mellors was busy sharpening a spade on a grindstone. Sparks flew and illuminated the gloomy interior in ghastly fits. It was a cluttered shack, stuffed full with ancient garden tools and machinery. With only one good hand, Mellors was finding it difficult to spin the grindstone and hold the spade down at the same time. He tried using his foot to whirl the heavy stone wheel and coughed the resulting iron filings out of his lungs. Each time he held the spade up, the edges of the blade reflected more and more silvery light.

  I tapped on the window and drew an insulting doodle in the dirt. Mellors glanced up and sneered. I pulled at the door handle, but the door was locked. I rattled it and screamed. ‘Open up you sneak! Come out and fight like a man!’

  I pulled at the door again and this time it came off its hinges and I fell backwards beneath its weight. My skull bounced thrice on the crazy paving of the path. Frightened woodlice raced from the gaps in the rotting wood and swarmed into my open mouth. I struggled to my feet just in time to confront Mellors, who was rushing headlong from the shack in savage glee, the spade uplifted above his head.

  Luckily the door took the full force of the first blow, splitting in twain and showering long damp splinters into my unprotected face. I dropped the two pieces of door and sidestepped the second blow, retreating a few paces backwards. The third blow, however, caught me completely by surprise, and the blade lodged deep into my neck. The pain was unbearable. Mellors yanked and twisted the spade, as if he were attempting to lever my head off its shoulders. My damaged eye popped from its socket and hung there, glistening. But my spinal cord remained intact and I managed to recover my senses enough to pull free and evade the fourth blow.

  Twenty blows later, Mellors was exhausted. I had been retreating all the while, reflecting on the irony of this reversal of fortune. The face of Mellors in near victory was even more grotesque than when I had pressed the advantage. He leered and belched, his cap wobbling like a gyroscope, his hips once more thrusting forward in the regular motion he had often observed but never before successfully used. My dangling eye irritated my cheek to such a degree that I pulled it completely out and hurled it away. Instantly crows swooped and carried this myopic prize back to their perches.

  ‘Look!’ Mellors bellowed, leaning on the spade and pointing. ‘We are back where we started! We have circumnavigated the entire park. We are pioneers of a sort. Trailblazers. Necessity has been the great-aunt of invention, if not its mother. What more can I say? I am delighted. It was a close race, but I have won.’

  Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw the clump of decimated bushes. Taking an enormous gamble, I turned and made my way through the papilionaceous shrubs, fitting my shoes into the footprints I had made earlier. Uncharacteristically, Mellors did not seize the chance to attack me from behind, but followed me into the foliage, swinging his spade like a machete.

  We stood on the edge of the crater and looked down. The star pearls were gone. It seemed logical enough, but I joined Mellors in gnashing and weeping and pulling my hair. And then we pulled his hair and vented the cleansing grief together.

  ‘But who could have taken them?’ Mellors had become a moon-eyed fool, gangling, retching, eaten up with anxiety and disbelief. ‘Who? The magic will die in the wrong hands!’

  I snapped my fingers. ‘The children!’ I cried. ‘The children with the marbles! Don’t you remember? Those weren’t marbles after all! They were our star pearls.’

  Mellors shrieked a primeval shriek. ‘Let us be after them! We can recover the pearls and then roast the brats on a griddle. I have paraffin and matches at my disposal. Come, superbly boring one, let us combine our talents to a common purpose.’

  I was ready there and then to join him, but something made me reach out and restrain him. ‘I have been thinking,’ I said, ‘about your parable. If it is true then all our attempts to recover the pearls will be futile. Indeed, our struggles could never have been resolved.’

  ‘How so?’ He knitted his brows with the uneasy pride of a lecturer who has been outstripped by his own student. He peered again into the crater and then began to tremble.

  ‘The pearls represent truth and we represent orthodoxy and dissent. In that case, they do not belong to us. Truth is intended for innocence alone. Those children represent innocence. Thus the pearls are rightly theirs. . . .’

  Mellors looked down at my hand, which still gripped his shoulder, and then looked me full in the face. Suddenly he was only as ugly as my own reflection. Absolutely disgusting, instead of unspeakably repellent. He gave me a long slow nod and the faintest augur of a smile. ‘Then we have been made redundant,’ he said, and raised his spade. ‘Is that not so? But we cannot retire as individuals. We must leave together.’

  ‘Of course.’ I knew at once what he intended, but I made no attempt to avoid my fate. The spade completed the cut in my neck and released me from this life of sorrows. My head lifted up on a superb fountain of blood and bile, twenty or thirty feet into the air, while my body crumpled into the crater. I saw the layout of the park, the little paths and secret places. And as my head descended, Mellors turned the spade sideways and used the flat of the blade to knock it even higher. This time it span in a perfect arc and impaled itself on one of the barbed railings.

  As I dribbled and twitched, I watched Mellors return to h
is little shack. He reappeared ten minutes later, chained by the neck to a rusty lawnmower. Grunting and gasping, he carried this useless hulk of machinery over to the lake and threw it in with a jubilant cry. The chain pulled taut and he was jerked off his feet, vanishing into the deeps of the lake amid soggy breadcrumbs and waterlogged crisp packets. I saw the wavelets caused by his descent and how they lapped the shores like little tongues, but I did not see the bubbles.

  By that time, the crows had pecked out my other eye.

  Quasimodulus

  He dances in the wind on the roof of the opera house. His cloak lifts high behind him in a vast semi-circle, a dark moon. His pale face is framed by the black cloth; he laughs, he capers, he twirls his swordstick.

  ‘Dio del ciel in me raddoppia il coraggio!’

  Lapping the shores of his roof, the sea is a phosphorescent green. White stars burn the sky. The water level is still rising; toads and wading birds already occupy the lake in the attic. The other floors are flooded grottoes, the crumbling stone walls of the auditorium tickled by fingers of weed.

  A noise grows out of the night, a dull, insistent drone. He stops and squints and listens with his good ear. Visitors? Surely not! He replaces his mask and walks over to the little shelter he has erected on the roof. A battered harmonium stands next to his makeshift bed. Hardly a Church organ, but the best he could do.

  He crashes out a sequence of preliminary discords and then lunges into a gothic version of Moses und Aron. His opera hat falls at a jaunty angle over his eyes. The skin under his mask begins to itch. ‘Ohne Hoffung dient ihr und glaubt nicht an euch, noch an Gott. Euer Herz ist krank!’

  G natural has stuck. Petulantly, he strikes the keyboard with his fist. The bellows wheeze. What can I do? he wonders. His left fingers continue their serial run, flirting with the ideals of atonality. Soon, however, he abandons the Schoenberg for a Saint-Saëns.