Worming the Harpy and Other Bitter Pills

by Rhys Hughes

  I knew she was right. But I can be stubborn. ‘I want to reclaim a sense of purpose,’ I told her, ‘but I can also succeed here. I need some more time. I need to complete my latest piece. Let harlequin lunge with the slapstick; I’ll be ready for it. Fuel for the fires of my fancies!’ She scowled. ‘Then you shall die,’ she replied. When my wife is feeling exceptionally vicious, she uses my name: ‘Diggory!’

  My fancies are my stories. I despise realism, I admire and wish to emulate the fabulists. There is more truth in delicate webs of fantasy than in the gutter or bottle. I would rather read about a talking cake than the struggles of an unemployed miner. The truths of the former are sweeter by far; tongue meeting tongue not in language but in taste. I denounce the Drawcansirs of fiction, thugs devoid of imagination and beauty. May they rot in Hull: may they not earn release until they learn how to scatter adjectives like stars, to stretch similes to the snapping point and nod in time to the music so plucked.

  I keep a thesaurus in my hip pocket. I am very particular about my pockets. Thesaurus in hip; dictionary in breast. Reference books are the weights of comfort, the bricks of form. Do not assume I am ever without them. My fountain pen shares not this security. Sharp as the bolt of a crossbow, it has gone missing. I cannot remember the correct term for a crossbow bolt; neither can Cora. Over this we quarrel.

  My latest story concerns a talking harp. There is an old man, an instrument-maker, who lives alone in a shop full of violins, trombones and tubular bells. The harp is his masterpiece. It is a small harp. Each string has been designed to sound not a note, but a phoneme of language. Thus the harp is able to relate stories at night. After a week of tales, the old man tells the harp that he believes nothing of what it has said. ‘Why not?’ cries the harp. The old man points an accusing finger at the inanimate raconteur and answers: ‘Because you are a lyre!’

  This is good. I have the beginning and the end; I lack merely the middle. What stories exactly did the harp tell the old man? One story a night for a week means seven originals. Am I capable of such invention? Will the stories be sufficiently different from each other or will I be harping on the same theme? An interesting question.

  I have six so far. The first is about a talking cheese. The second is about how February, the shortest month, takes umbrage and becomes the Napoleon of months, conquering the whole year. It is a talking month, this February. The third concerns a talking kiosk. Fourth, fifth and sixth: belfry, printing-press and legume respectively, all blessed with the gift of speech. Is this not variety?

  Harlequin shot at me again in the twilit garden. The same motley, the same arquebus. This time the shot was seedless grapes, young wine exploding against my chest as each purple torpedo struck its target. I fell backwards with a good nose, sticky fingers. I saw Parker staring at me from the highest oriel. These damned American butlers, they are far too traditional. Cora has his loyalty entire; I could never hope to buy it off him. While he gloated, I fermented. ‘Tush!’

  I said to my wife: ‘Is that harlequin really my conscience?’ She nodded. ‘Oh yes, I stole your conscience from your head one night while you were asleep. You felt nothing; it was a very small conscience. But I planted it in a window-box. I nurtured it and spoke to it. Strong it grew and archetypal. It has you in its sights.’ I trembled all over, I bit my fingers. ‘How can I evade it?’ I cried. ‘Return to engineering,’ my wife replied. ‘One more story!’ I implored. ‘One more!’

  I set up a mantrap in the garden. It will snap harlequin in two. It will teach him never to descend from the stage again. Wooden characters are best left as puppets. The mantrap I chose had big yellow teeth; I wondered if it would kill Cora or Parker. But Cora loathes grass; she takes her morning constitutional on stilts. And Parker is an indoors creature. To him the Hydrangea is fear of water.

  The harp’s seventh tale must concern Cora and myself. But I detest tales about relationships. How can I possibly hope to convey even a fraction of our misery, the shallow-fried taste of our present? I would have to mention that I was an engineer who had become a writer and that Cora wanted to kill me. I would have to begin with the incident in the twilit garden, the first incident. I would have to depict Parker as the sinister figure he is. I might forget to mention that the thesaurus in my hip pocket saved my groin during the second incident.

  I am not skilful enough to write about such things. And yet the harp must have a seventh tale. Can I think of no more clever ideas with which to regale the hypothetical reader? At last I have it: a talking windmill. I am astounded by my own originality.

  I need my pen, my lethal dart, but it is missing. I instruct Parker to look for it. He nods with malice; he will not search far, he will merely look in biscuit-barrels and suchlike. I have his measure, it is less than a quart. That night, I hear the jaws of the mantrap clash together. I race out into the frost; Harlequin is dead. I tell my wife: ‘I have slain my conscience and now care naught for you.’ She smiles a sly smile, more secret than any garden. ‘You have killed yours, but mine is abroad still. They grew side by side.’ I scoff at this. ‘Yours will never be strong enough to wield a Gallic arquebus,’ I say.

  What was it about that yellow-and-black wight that makes me almost hope to glimpse his ill-mannered form again? Were the colours of his motley significant? Did they reflect my cowardice and heart of darkness in shameful lozenges? And the arquebus? An ironic symbol of progress, no doubt; a sardonic comment on those who forsake the true poetry of calculus for the lesser doggerel of language. I once sought the holy integral; I have broken my vows and must suffer.

  Columbine shot me in the twilit garden. She used an arbalest. I frowned. Arbalest? I reached for the dictionary I keep in my breast pocket. It was no use: the pen had fixed it to my heart.

  Éclair de Lune

  The girl who lives above Udolpho’s pâtisserie has earned her name many times over. For one thing, she lives entirely on cream cakes provided from below—devouring them solely by the light of a gibbous moon. For another, she keeps a piano in the corner of her dusty room on which she is forever composing melancholy nocturnes, sometimes with quite eldritch harmonies. Thirdly, she is quite mad.

  Signor Udolpho himself tolerates this strange denizen of his upper floors partly because of her compelling music and partly because of the bohemian credence it lends his establishment. His pâtisserie is really no different from a myriad other such places scattered around the city. But the fitful light of the demi-monde, his patrons, and the paler yet far more alluring light of his singular lodger combine to throw the shadow of his name in a grotesquely enlarged fashion over the fevered lips and undulating throats of the cake cognoscenti.

  Nobody knows her real name—even Beerbohm Soames, who once claimed to be her lover, is vague on this point. There are rumours, of course. According to one story, she was a Carmelite nun expelled from the order after conducting a torrid affair with a mysterious man often seen climbing over the rooftops of the abbey. Others would have it that she was once the leader of a group of roving banditti who lived the high life in the mountain passes. Both these tales are less popular than they were, though they still have their adherents. I happen to know that both are equally, shamefully false—I invented them.

  In those days, I still harboured ambitions to be a writer. I was a profound romantic at heart. ‘Joris-Karl,’ Signor Udolpho would say to me in a fatherly fashion, as he served scones and coffee, ‘one of these days you will end up shooting yourself for love, as did poor Herr von Kleist. Ah, but I remember him as if it was only yesterday! He had a watch that did not work and a cough. Also he never paid me for his last custard slice. I put it on credit for him and he blew his brains out in a park overlooking the river the following morning.’

  I soon grew out of that nonsense. Now if I kill myself for love it will be because I am loved, rather than because I am not (this is not quite true; as you shall see). And yet it was not Signor Udolpho’s wise words that prompted me to see sense. Rather it was a blow on the hea
d I received from a meteorite as I was walking down the Rue Discord. As my chin struck the cobbles, I remembered how I loved life too much to sacrifice it on the altar of an artistic movement. At once I picked myself up and became stoutly pragmatic—burning my poems and finding profitable employment selling life insurance to the employees of the Kingdom Noisette Engineering Co.

  We will discuss them in detail later. For the moment, suffice it to say that I have met Kingdom Noisette—and his charming wife, Morag—in the flesh. The first time was at a garden party thrown to celebrate the opening of the underground railway link between Hauser Park and the Town Square. A string quartet, more rococo than baroque, played us the charming melodies of Telemann and Lodovico da Viadana. A bit of nostalgia always goes a long way at such events. Morag even asked me to dance, though I was too nervous to do anything other than flap up and down like a shirt on a washing line. I will never forget the look on the old man’s face and his exclamation (in what I believe must be a northern British accent) when a waiter offered him some Beluga caviar: ‘Is there nae black puddin’ to be had here, lad?’

  But though I had successfully repressed my yearning for the gothic, the sublime, the fantastic, yet was I still curious about the girl who lived above Udolpho’s pâtisserie. The syllables of her name endlessly reverberated in the confines of my bruised cranium: Éclair de Lune. Why did she refuse to budge when all the other adjuncts of Romanticism—wild scenery, gravestones, poverty—had long since fled my mind? I had even torn into strips my frilly shirts. But that girl haunted me beyond the boundaries of reason and self control.

  It was not that she was especially beautiful or even elegant—her ankles were remarkable enough, it is true. Although she rarely descended from her lofty seclusion, I had witnessed her more than once standing at her window in the moonlight. Hidden in the shadows on the other side of the street, I had watched with a sort of horrible fascination as she had raised the cream cakes one by one to her small mouth, consuming them with restrained, yet curiously merciless, bites. The delicate probing of her tongue for rogue crumbs was visible as she swallowed, sensuous as the writhings of a snake. It was all strange, unhealthy and perfectly morbid and yet, at the same time, a little too obvious.

  She was up to something, of that I had no doubt. Below her window, a flue from Signor Udolpho’s ovens discharged hot scents into the hungry night. As the rising air passed her figure, it refracted and warped her form into a towering mirage. Ensconced in the protection of a doorway, I licked my lips twice: her body, the smell of macaroons. Fired by these twin lusts, I was almost engulfed by a purer form of rage. I had nothing that could possibly interest her; she would mock my attentions, ignore my overtures. Invariably, as I sweated in my febrile desire, she would turn away from the window and make for her piano. And then her music, more innovative than gingerbread devils (Signor Udolpho’s latest and most successful invention), would vibrate among the eaves, each chilly note like a drop of water falling forever upwards. Imagine, if you will, a combination of Satie, the latest jazz melodies and something yet more primeval and mysterious, the rhythms of cell division.

  I was not alone in my infatuation. Beerbohm Soames, whom I often met in the City Library, claimed to be of similar disposition, though with him it might have been mere affectation. He was still a poet—sense had not yet penetrated his wrinkled brow. A dapper fellow, it must not be denied, with a penchant for working cats and clouds into his lyrics. He was desperate to publish a slim volume between yellow covers before his printer discovered how to mix other inks. ‘I was her paramour for almost a year,’ he would say. ‘I know her body but not her mind.’ He was always describing the texture of her skin. Most women naked are two colours; he insisted she was only one, magnolia. I did not approve of the way he handled my fantasy, with the grubby fingers of a man who reads too many newspapers. ‘A pretty little cake,’ was his main comment.

  I more than half-suspected he was lying. But in those days, truth had gone largely out of fashion. The guiding spirit of the age, amongst artists at least, was insouciance and style. I was in that grey-green area between the studied wit of the writer and the smelly honesty of the engineer. I had forged links with both camps; I was a bridge of sorts, but one as yet untrampled by the felt slippers of the former or the hobnailed boots of the latter. A cantilever bridge over which failed poets threw themselves to their doom. In what other way has science and art merged with such verve and creativity?

  My evenings were thus spent at the Library, among the cafés of the Passage de l’Pretence, talking with dreamers, Nietzschean philosophers and print-makers in Udolpho’s pâtisserie, or lurking outside that creamy establishment, hoping for a glimpse of Éclair de Lune. My days, however, were spent deep underground with the employees of the Kingdom Noisette Engineering Co., as they extended the network of tunnels across the city. I had to remind them that theirs was a dangerous task, that buying life insurance might not be a bad idea in their circumstances. I would walk the line of workers, chatting to them about the probability of a roof-fall in the not too distant future. It was often a painful death, I would tell them; slow suffocation under tons of rubble. I was aided by the fact that the first attempt to dig under the river had resulted in the drowning of a score of men.

  They were a stoic breed, no more nor less worthy of attention than the pampered rhymesters of my former life. I was somewhat repelled by their feeding habits: anchovy and egg sandwiches for lunch. But I was also impressed by their courage. A second tunnel was being driven under the river, parallel to the first. It was hazardous work; most of the surveyors believed they had not dug deep enough. This was a concern shared by Kingdom Noisette himself. When the tunnel was half completed, he descended to the bed of the river in a bathysphere and managed to drive a metal rod through the mud into the tunnel. When he resurfaced, he claimed to have heard the voices of the men, ringing faintly against the iron hull of his vessel like the despairing cries of aquatic ghosts. This information had little impact —I sold one or two more policies that day. They were either very brave or very miserly.

  The problems I suffered when I began to scheme a suitable way of wooing Éclair de Lune cannot be glossed over. To snare a woman who is all ethereal sensation and little corporality, it is necessary to fall back on the more abstract symbols of courtship. No use pacing outside her window, rustling a sheaf of my policies and discussing my improving finances with my bank-manager in stage whispers. My feathers would have to be preened by more aesthetic means. How I detested the conventions of the mating-game! I knew it would come down to poetry again—I guessed I might have to revert to the ode, the sonnet, the glossolalia of love. No spanner would turn her nut; no reliable feet would crunch the glass of her disdain. The feet would have to be shod in soft words, the armpits would have to sweat with sentiment.

  If I, Joris-Karl Jekyll, was ever to achieve my head’s desire, I would have to disguise it as my heart’s, fool her into believing I was still what I once was. If ever I was to make her my very own Bakewell, covering her lithe body with whipped cream and balancing cherries on her nipples, I would have to borrow a ladder and a morceau. There was no help for it. Loathsome creature that would result! I shuddered at the changes I would have to make—allowing hair to brush collar again, drinking coffee black, quoting Rimbaud in public urinals. No more greeting friends with savage blows on the back, no more dark beer or pickled onions. Back to the tender embrace, the unbuttoned cuffs, the roll of the chocolate liqueur on the glib tongue, washing teeth as rotten as amorality. The decadent poise.

  I did not know if I was capable of effecting the metamorphosis. I was rusty as a rain-swept tram—my cheeks had forgotten how to swell with rhythmic words. I spent a whole week in preparation, taking time off work and shutting myself away in my attic. I did not stir abroad during this time; I lived on thin gruel, neglected to wash and took opium. I forced myself to write poetry—I filled notebooks with the repellent stanzas. My progress was slow; I had largely lost the talent of young
er days. The spark had died, but I persisted. I stood in front of the mirror for long hours, holding the back of my hand against my brow. I composed with a quill and green ink.

  At last I was ready. I borrowed the ladder from work and also a length of india-rubber insulating cable used for conducting telegraphy between the tunnels. I waited until nightfall. It would have been far simpler to simply stand under her window and shout the poems up at her. But then I would be giving myself away. Signor Udolpho would come out to see what the fuss was about; my former friends would learn of the escapade and take it as a public recantation and amusing attempt to seek re-admittance to the fold. Besides, I was not at all confident of the quality of these new poems.

  Accordingly, I acted with extreme stealth. I placed the ladder gently against her balcony and scaled up it with careful steps. Over my shoulder swung the amplifying horn of my phonograph, and I trailed the hollow cable behind me. When I reached the window, I placed the horn on the balcony, facing inwards and just touching the glass. Next I affixed the cable to the horn and secured it to the wrought-iron projections of the balcony railings. I should then have immediately descended, but I was distracted by an alluring noise, a song fainter than the sigh of pleasure of a toad swallowing a moth. I climbed onto the balcony, placed my face against the glass and peered inside.

  What I saw startled me more than anything since a film maker from Berlin had screened an unusual reel about a contortionist named Thalia and a pair of Siamese twins the previous summer. It was Éclair de Lune—my desire—lying in a bath in one corner of the room. A single candle illuminated the gloom, but I could plainly see her naked form. She was crooning to herself as she wiped her arms and legs with a sponge (I could not discern the filling). As I blinked, and grew increasingly excited, she stood up and faced me with a sly sort of smile. Three things crucified my reason at the same instant: the raised tattoos that covered her thighs, skeletal figures, writhing orchids, coupling devils, stylised and interlocking cakes of every description, all completely colourless and visible only as a still paler white on her marble flesh; the size and lustre of her sex, swollen and hungry as a hothouse carnivore; the fact that her skin was as dry as my mouth. No water sparkled on her limbs: her bath had been a sham.