by Rhys Hughes
My cheeks burned. I could not stay, I could not linger on such a threshold of exquisite pleasure without gnawing my knuckles to pieces. I limped back down the ladder as rapidly as I dared, thrust it under my arm and unwound the other end of the hollow cable deep into the shadows of a nearby backstreet. With thumping heart I raised the tube to my lips and began to recite what I had been a week composing. The lyrics would travel the length of the cable, expand in the mouth of the horn and then explode like a lover’s tongue on her window, bending the thin glass as a diaphragm, filling her chamber with my metrical lusts.
It was impossible for me to remove the image of her finely sculpted features and slightly menacing smile as I breathed down the mouthpiece. I stumbled over my words—they were pitiful enough, it is true, poor echoes of my earlier productions (once collected in manuscript form as Twilight of the Anti-Idols). But I forged ahead. I would do anything now to possess that deathly maiden, even publicly decry the Universal Joint. I ranted my passions with more desperation than tact—I grew feverish, my fingers were aching to entangle themselves in her hair, play ghost xylophone on her ribcage, trace her tattoos to their logical and moist conclusion. I called: ‘When on your breast there weighs the scone / And your oven bakes with ravishment / When you impale my soul-cake on your sweetest fang / And aromas sickly invest an iced-bun air / Then shall I be your slave-meringue.’ It was adequate.
Just at that moment, I was startled by the point of an umbrella in the small of my back. I dropped the cable and turned around. It was none other than Beerbohm Soames, a sardonic smile creasing his face, dressed in his customary yellow. ‘Car le tombeau toujours comprenda le poëte,’ he muttered cryptically. And then: ‘I am reminded of the famous atheist philosopher, Salammbô de Balzac, who was caught attending Mass in a church on the other side of town. Your crime, however, is far worse. Wait till the others hear of this! What a jest! No more the poet who ventured into Engineering via Insurance. Now the hypocrite who came back! What joy we shall express as we sip our Grand Marnier.’ Though his tone was standard ironic, he knitted his brows furiously.
I held up my arms to protest my innocence. ‘Éclair de Lune!’ I cried. ‘I did it all for her!’ He regarded this with mocking contempt. I stooped to retrieve the cable as evidence, but it was vanishing around the corner. I stumbled after it, hands outstretched to snatch it back; it slithered out of my grasp and I fell. I heard a clattering on the cobbles behind me—Beerbohm Soames was also in pursuit. I regained my feet and together we flew down the twisting alleyways, the end of the cable retreating before us. I pulled ahead but the cable always eluded me. Finally I emerged in front of Udolpho’s pâtisserie to see it being wound up through Éclair de Lune’s window. I held my head in my hands and whimpered. Beerbohm Soames came puffing up behind; he mopped his brow with an ochre handkerchief and leaned heavily on his yellow umbrella. He had not seen enough to be convinced.
‘Anecdotes shall be born from this,’ he gasped. He made a gesture with his hand that dismissed my unspoken plea for mercy. I turned away sadly—I had been condemned to new depths. I would become a symbol for every poetaster who frequented a café and scratched rhymes on napkins. Beerbohm Soames would waste no time in embellishing events with his own florid conceits, seeing in my actions a justification for his belief that art was superior to science. I had betrayed myself and had gained nothing from the treachery. I could picture their faces and hear their laughter—Edwin Saltus Abbott, the defrocked priest and photographer, who wrote of little girls, rusty cymbals and talking cubes; Villiers le Gallienne, who composed vignettes on the labels of absinthe bottles; Novalis MacDonald, whose night-sweats formed the basis of his latest work in progress, The Freshman Faustus.
I reached Hauser Park and sat on a bench overlooking the blackly rushing river. If I kept my head down, grew a moustache and started to wear a hat, I might avoid them for a certain length of time. A genuine effort on my behalf to sell as many life-insurance policies as possible and I might save enough money to flee this accursed city. I would have to work hard; I would have to vary my route home each day. Furthermore I would have to abandon any thought of taking Éclair de Lune with me—the expense would prove prohibitive. Or would it? Something had fallen into place in my mind that would, if true, explain a great many things about her. I would soon have the opportunity to ascertain the validity of this revelatory notion—I had no choice now but to try to gain access to her room. I had to retrieve the insulating cable or else lose my job. And if I lost my job, I would be stuck in this City for the rest of my life, easy prey for Beerbohm Soames’ moribund witticisms.
With not a little trepidation, I made my way back the way I had come. My mind was so occupied with my forthcoming ordeal that I did not realise for some time that I had taken the wrong turning at the end of Machen Street. I found myself wandering over crumbling Werther Bridge and then suddenly thrust into the midst of the Rue Discord. This was something I had not anticipated—though the avenue was quite deserted, I felt buffeted as by waves of savage pedestrians. I clung onto a nearby lamp-post for support. I choked back my nausea (I know a politico called Jean-Paul who cannot do the same) and reached inside my jacket pocket for my wallet. The satisfying thickness of the leather pouch, stuffed with paper francs and share-certificates, had a soothing effect on my nerves. I took an indefinite number of deep breaths and managed to keep my balance as I retraced my steps back into the security of streets both less significant and more harmonious to ear and soul.
The Rue Discord—so named because the wind whips down it at absurd speed and plays astonishingly creepy, atonal music on the cast-iron awnings of the shops (I know a composer called Karlheinz who bases all his work on this frightful phenomenon)—has been a thoroughfare I have scrupulously avoided since my accident. The dent in the road where my chin, borrowing the eagerness of the meteorite, came to respect both cobbles and gravity, is still visible. The impact loosened all my teeth; I had to have them re-sealed in my gums with a foul glue made from capers and debtors’ limbs. I had tried to think about the incident as little as possible—this chance meeting once more propelled it to the top of the agenda in my consciousness’ list of worries. It is true that everything had seemed subtly different after the accident. Strangers had ignored me; my friends were courteous but somehow remote, squinting at me whenever they spoke and tugging at their ears as if I were a distant figure obscured by swirling mists.
I was also much concerned with the question of why Éclair de Lune had stolen my insulating-cable. I could not imagine that anyone else was responsible for drawing it up into her room; she lived alone. There were a number of options, none particularly comforting. It was possible she had been so appalled by the quality of my poetry that she had removed the means of its transmission, hoping thereby to preclude recitation of more. This was a depressing idea—it was equally possible, however, she required the cable for some mysterious purpose of her own. Knowing what I did of her tastes and habits, this would almost certainly involve either cakes or music, though I could not see in what capacity a simple India-rubber tube might serve such pursuits. The mind boggled with the ensuing speculations. An apparatus for inserting clotted cream at high pressure into the heart of an hermetically sealed profiterole? A method of relaying tone-colours into the pâtisserie below?
As I crossed back over Werther Bridge, whose jagged stones were an unhealthy metaphor for my teeth—resembling them in colour, condition and means by which they were fixed—I pushed aside these two concerns (the meteorite, the insulating cable) and re-entertained the startling notion that had pricked me in Hauser Park. Éclair de Lune was both coy and obtrusive; though rarely venturing down from her attic, her profile was high. Everything she did—her exclusive diet, her waterless baths—seemed calculated to create a single impression in the minds of those who came across her. In the Park it occurred to me what this impression was supposed to be: the fact that she lived at all.
Let me explain. Her actions were not those of a woman
who wished to lead a full and useful existence; this much was obvious. They were, indeed, those of an entity that merely had pretensions to life. They were the bare minimum anyone (or anything!) could rely upon to preserve the deceit. What I am trying to say is this: I no longer believed in Éclair de Lune’s humanity. I was prepared to accept her earthly origin, but not the present vitality of her soul. The flask of her outer form, I suspected, was not brimming with anima mundi. (Yet I still desired to place my lips to that vessel and imbibe whatever stood in its stead.) In other words, I deemed her a ghost.
What else but a spirit would live on undunked madeleines, tease odd tone-poems from a strangely-tuned piano, bathe without water? What else but a phantom would eat confectionary by the steady illumination of an unequally convex moon, standing by a window as it did so, image hugely magnified by rising air (for the benefit of witnesses)? What else but an apparition would add a syncopated beat to the left hand accompaniment of a modal Gymnopédie? And surely only a shade would pretend to regular ablutions in a chilly and cobwebbed iron bath? In my mind the matter was settled: my love was dead. This did not quite affect my lust, nor did it explain the mystery of the insulating-cable, but it did lend a certain colour (funereal violet?) to anticipated events.
I had little experience of phantasms. A patron of Udolpho’s whom I knew slightly, a grumpy scholar by the name of Mark Xeethra Samuels, had once shared his theories of spooks with me. He believed there were a great many dimensions parallel to our own, each slightly different from the other. All probable, possible and inconceivable things were true in at least one of them. For example, in one dimension, elm trees tasted of strawberries; in another, words left people’s mouths on feathery wings; in a third, ghosts were perfectly natural phenomena. He justified this last on grounds that genuine supernatural events rarely seemed strange to those who experienced them. There was a sort of acceptance that was not questioned until afterwards. Did this not indicate (he ventured) the likelihood that those who witnessed spirits had accidentally crossed over, for a brief instant, into that dimension?
I remember how he leaned towards me and lowered his voice. ‘In yet another,’ he whispered, ‘our city might be a fictional locale for the posturings of absurd characters. Chaud-Mellé itself may be nothing more than a sewer of gothic influences, and our own lives burlesque parodies constructed with the sole aim of entertaining the jaded reader!’ As the evening wore on, he continued to babble such nonsense into his cups. He jabbed a sharp finger at my chest. ‘You, my dear Joris-Karl, are being exploited at this very moment by a foolish postmodern humorist—you serve no purpose other than as a fulcrum on which to hang an orgiastic tale of cake-crossed lovers, set in a nightmare pâtisserie!’
At the time I paid little heed to his words; I assumed him at least as affected as the rest. Now I craved his wisdom, but in vain—he had recently left the city for the wilds of Highgate, where he hoped to find and unearth the remains of Thomas Caliban Ariel, whom he claimed as an ancestor, and upon whose brass bones were supposedly engraved, in ogham and other silly scripts, all the secrets of analytic philosophy. There was no-one else I could turn to for help. But it did not really matter; I had little choice but to confront Éclair de Lune in order to retrieve the cable.
As I made my cautious way back towards Udolpho’s establishment, I beheld a curious sight. A man I recognised as a local couturier rushed past with rolling eyes and foaming mouth. He wore a filthy coat and was being pursued by a small band of long-chinned fellows who wore extremely tall top hats. Even as I watched, one of these hats blew off in the wind of motion and exposed a ridiculous helical hairstyle. As they clattered into the distance, I shrugged my shoulders. It was none of my business and I saw no reason why I should intervene (though I did feel a little sympathy for the harried tailor—quite evidently I was not alone in having to avoid certain social groups).
I returned to the exact spot where I had left the ladder and again manoeuvred it back into position against Éclair de Lune’s balcony. I ascended as silently as was feasible—I tried not to exclaim with delight as I passed through the emissions of the flue. I reached the balcony, pulled myself over the railings and felt along the window for a method of ingress. To my amazement, the window was unlocked; I pushed and it yielded. With heart pounding like one of Kingdom Noisette’s patent toffee-breakers, I swung myself through the casement. Halfway, I became stuck; I wriggled the way of the worm and landed with a crash on the warped floorboards of the interior.
There was a grating and suddenly I found myself caught in the beam of a dark-lantern. She stood there with the ambiguous smile of a pastry merchant who confuses contango with backwardation on a stock of lemon curd tartlets. ‘Joris-Karl Jekyll,’ she said. It was not a question—neither was it an accusation. I shuddered, but took the opportunity of eyeing her up. This was definitely the girl I wanted, whether spectre, reanimated corpse or what-have-you. ‘You look a trifle pale,’ she added. She opened fully the dark-lantern and indicated a chair. Numbly, I did what was expected: I sat and waited to see what would happen next. She was evidently amused by my expression—burning lust co-meddled with extreme terror. ‘Yes, trifle,’ she repeated.
I held up my hands in resignation. ‘It is true that I love you and know you are a ghost, but at the moment I am only interested in the insulating-cable. May I have it back?’ Her eyes twinkled merrily as she set the lantern down and offered me a plate of croissants. In her lithe movements, she resembled a bed sheet that has been called into life by a runic whistle—she billowed and flowed. She took a seat opposite mine and forced a whole cake into her mouth; her cheeks were still pallid and beautiful, even when so grotesquely enlarged. She chewed with an air of superiority and danger and then grinned at my discomposure. ‘It is very important that I get it back!’ I persisted.
‘Of course. I knew that all along. It is why I took it in the first place.’ She spluttered crumbs. ‘Oh, Joris-Karl, why did it have to come to this? Why were you so slow to pick up on my clues? Now it may be too late to do anything: Beerbohm Soames has not been idle.’ She reached out to smooth my frown with a cool hand. I began to tremble in my chair. I sat bolt upright and clutched my knees. But she continued massaging my brow, her fingers like chocolate flakes. What did she mean? What clues was she talking about? I was at a complete loss. I elaborated on my earlier assertions that I loved her and yet knew she was not a living being. ‘Hush now!’ she replied, raising a finger to her lips. She patted my hand and told me to prepare myself for a shock.
I shook my head. ‘No, it is you who must prepare, mon petite chou.’ I threw myself at her feet and confessed that I had loved her for a long time, weeks at the very least, and wished to elope with her. However, at this present moment in time, my first priority was to return the cable to the place from whence it had come: without it, the team of engineers digging a tunnel under Rubellastrasse would not be able to communicate with the surface. They would have to tunnel without any directions and might veer off course. ‘And then they could end up in Liechtenstein!’ I cried. On their wages this would be a disaster. And they would hold me responsible. It was too much to bear. ‘Please give me the cable,’ I whimpered. ‘Pretty please!’
She sighed and moved to a large globe near the piano in the corner of the room. It was one of those hinged models; she opened it to reveal an impressive array of alcoholic confections. She fixed me a stiff gin syllabub and came to sit on the arm of my chair. Draping an arm around my shoulders, she told me, in a calm voice, that she had been awaiting this moment even longer than had I. ‘I tried to excite your curiosity by acting the part of a ghost that in turn was acting the part of a living woman. Thus I hoped to gain your attention. But I overestimated your intelligence. You ignored all the hints.’
‘So you are not a real ghost?’ I struggled to make sense of this deception. ‘But why did you want me to seek you out?’ I hoped that she would cite love as a reason. I was to be disappointed. With a sudden quick movement, she pinched me sava
gely on the arm. It seemed to me then that I had been rudely awakened into knowledge. Tears filled my eyes. I had been such a blind fool! What I knew now I had known all along in the back of my mind—but my consciousness had rejected the truth. ‘So the meteorite killed me!’ I whimpered. ‘It is I who am the ghost!’ I bent over and thrust my face into her bosom, my tears running like globules of mercury down her exceptional cleavage.
She dried my eyes for me with a petit four and patted me on the head. ‘That is correct. However, it was not a meteorite that brained you on the Rue Discord. It was a well-aimed piece of masonry dropped from the roof of a private house by Beerbohm Soames. He knew that you walked down that street every morning at the same time—he rented out the building for the sole purpose of killing you.’ She then went on to relate a tale of treachery and intrigue which was so complex and vicious that I could scarce credit my ears. I was obliged to spoon the gin syllabub at high speed into my gaping maw to preserve enough composure to refrain from swooning. I asked for seconds.
It seems that Beerbohm Soames had been jealous of my talent right from the beginning. He had read my work, Twilight of the Anti-Idols, in manuscript form and had seen in my petulant pentameters a serious rival to his own planned masterpiece, Gods of Dusk and Mourning. At that time, Éclair de Lune really was his mistress—he kept their affair secret for a very good reason (more of which later). He was always sharing his thoughts and schemes with her—thus she came to learn of his plan to kill me. He was not alone in his nefarious designs; most of the patrons of Udolpho’s pâtisserie hated me as well. I had been blissfully unaware of all this, of course. I had not even realised my verse was rated so highly by them. (Now I understood why Signor Udolpho had tried to talk me into giving up Romanticism—he was also a member of this murderous brood.) What I had taken for a meteorite was really a bust of Xelucha Dowson Laocoön, the noxious sage, donated by sculptor, Rodin Guignol, and personally dropped by Beerbohm Soames. It had been designed to shatter into a myriad unrecognisable fragments on impact.
