Worming the Harpy and Other Bitter Pills

by Rhys Hughes

  My day job, of course, is much more prosaic. The digging of the underground railway system proceeds apace. Kingdom Noisette’s role has been filled by his bitter rival, République Nutt, whose canals were such a sensation last year. Among the teams he employs, the band of ghosts continues as before. I wander among them trying to sell death insurance. I have to remind them that theirs is a dangerous task, that there is a very real possibility their bodies will be recovered from the bed of the river and sent to Ingolstadt for re-animation. This worries them. As ghosts, not needing to eat or drink, they can just survive on their wages. As resurrected cadavers it would mean a return to anchovy and egg sandwiches and pickled onions. My policies generally cover them against this eventuality. It is impossible to be sure. It is not easy reading small-print in total darkness.

  As I roam the tunnels, I think of what lies above my head. Unless they have gone out of fashion during my subterranean exile, there must be gardens. A common garden plant used to be the one known as Lunaria biennis. (Yes I too can show off. Here is some more Latin: de omni re scibili et quibusdam aliis.) Another name for this plant, this Lunaria, is Honesty. But my Lune is not honest: the other day she told me there was no more Amontillado. She has been hoarding bottles. ‘For the love of God, Joris-Karl!’ she exclaimed when I pointed this out. I do not approve of such language. I do not have to put up with it. I am going to leave her. One of the workmen has a new pet; it has caught my fancy. I am conceiving a passion. It is an inanimate object, true enough. But inanimate objects are less shy with ghosts than with people.

  It is a killer peruke from Wigan.

  Grinding the Goblin

  If a city can go mad it can also die. Our city was mad almost from the beginning: its houses tall and awry, heat-lightning playing around the chimneys like dishevelled hair; the fogs rolling incessantly down its streets like foam on cruel lips; balloons rising and setting from its parks like bulging eyes. At night, the burning buildings lit the sky a deep carnelian and licked away the stars.

  I was dreaming again; my head was full of gigantic clocks tolling the centuries and vast pendulums smashing the suburbs. When I awoke, the pounding was real. My room was shaking, plaster spilled from the ceiling and settled on my forehead. I jumped out of bed; shards of chamber-pot made my feet dance. At the cracked mirror, I studied my body intently. In my dream, on the hour, a hatch had opened in my chest and my heart had wound out before me on a sort of lattice.

  We were at war. Benito von Clausewitz had levered his howitzers up the mountain passes, losing half in the process, arranging the others beyond the reach of our own artillery. His men, triumphant but weary, were content to bombard us to submission before moving in for the usual rapine pleasures. Chaud-Mellé was being reduced to rubble around my ears; an irony that afforded me little amusement. I had entered the city not a month previously, on request of the Municipality, to embark upon a radical redevelopment of the cluttered city centre.

  As a city planner, I was not made welcome by the populace, many of whom were inordinately attached to their crumbling dwellings. My sole friends had been my employers, the members of the City Council. Most of these were dead and my position was unenviable. Some of my neighbours even hailed me as harbinger of the evil. One polemical fellow, a minor subversive named Kropotkin Hardie, used to accost me on the stairs. ‘The age of the bourgeoisie is over,’ he would yell, above the roar of the guns. ‘The currents of history cannot be opposed!’ Unused to his accent, part Russian and part Scottish, I had difficulty gauging his meaning. Currants? What did Udolpho’s pâtisserie (on the other side of town) have to do with the ideals of revolution? It is true, however, the war had affected the cake business. Plaster is a poor substitute for flour at the best of times.

  Kropotkin Hardie was a true fanatic, rarely too busy to attribute every falling shell to the hypocrisy of the rich. On several occasions he invited me into his room for iced-tea. This was less an attempt to win a convert than a chance to practice his fiery oratory. He used to preach from a soap-box in Hauser Park; the shortage of detergents had ended such activity. Nonetheless, he was something of a celebrity among the Lumpenproletariat, handing out pamphlets on street corners, calling for the heads of the merchant classes to be arranged on the city walls, insisting that everyone address him as ‘comrade’ and spending much time cursing laissez-faire economics and growing his beard.

  I managed to learn something of the history of Chaud-Mellé from him between political tirades and metaphysical speculations. The city was founded in 1315 by a Scottish deserter, Wraith MacDonald, who fought for the English at Bannockburn and fled to the Continent to escape the dirks of his brethren. Among the mountaineers of the Alps, he found a few who wished to sample civilisation. The original settlement had spread like gangrene, sheltered in a narrow valley between low hills. The Austrian Empire now wished to annex it—there was a rich seam of chromium below the streets—and had commissioned Benito von Clausewitz, the mercenary lens-grinder from Rotterdam, to crush all resistance.

  Once, while I was perched on one of his uncomfortable chairs (made by his own hand, he proudly informed me), Kropotkin Hardie received a visit from the Secret Police. This was routine; they came at regular intervals to search for his illegal printing press. I was questioned as to my involvement with the bristling demagogue—despite my espousal of right-wing values, they saw an opportunity to try out the latest form of psychological torture, alternately snatching away and returning my glass of iced tea. ‘See what they are really like!’ Kropotkin declared, after they had left. I had to admit they seemed a little too enthusiastic, but I stoutly defended their basic methods.

  We shared the house with two other tenants: the demure and dimpled Eliza Pippins, a cockney, and Aretino Rossetti, who claimed to be the leader of an arts and crafts movement currently sweeping the cafés and studios of the Artist’s Quarter. Others I spoke to, however, denied his involvement. He was a Genoan spy, a saboteur, directly answerable to the Pope. This was a theory advanced by Kropotkin himself; it appears the Vatican had seen its own chance to seize territory. Already Papal Bulls were denouncing Vienna, that hive of sin and waltz—a poisoned bible had been sent to the Austrian Emperor. The whole of Europe stood poised on the brink of a swirling vat of greed and cream.

  As I had nothing to do during the day—von Clausewitz was making a fine job of clearing the condemned buildings—I devoted myself to a little intrigue of my own. Eliza Pippins had caught my fancy; I vowed to win her over before the city surrendered. Accordingly I lingered outside her room until she emerged. She was a sweet but savage creature, dressed in corduroy, her auburn hair pinned into a bonnet, a purple umbrella in her lace-gloved hand. I introduced myself—Gropius Klee, fresh from the renowned Staatliches Cathaus in Dessau—and proposed a cup of coffee in a café on a suitable boulevard. She agreed at once —howitzers loosen mores as well as mortar—and we strolled arm in arm to the Champs-Poe. Here we settled amidst the ruined pavement, duly received our coffee (actually sand, as this was wartime) and exchanged ideas about how we might live our lives to better effect.

  She worked for the Post Office; now that von Clausewitz had ringed the city with cannon, traditional methods of delivering mail had become untenable. There had been experiments with rockets—the results were disappointing. Balloons still functioned as one method of entering or leaving the city but their days were numbered. There was a shortage of ladies’ undergarments, the sole material used in dirigible construction. Eliza hinted she was working on an ingenious alternative. This was vital to the defence of the town; with the demise of all our councillors, we received our instructions from England. A former inhabitant of the city had set up a Government-in-exile in Highgate. Eliza informed me he was called Mark Xeethra Samuels and kept a tea chest full of brass bones, no-one knew why. He had once been her lover but had ended the affair, declaring that kissing her was like ‘biting a nectarine and discovering you’ve a mouth full o’ ashes’.

  While we chatted, a shell
exploded against the side of the café, knocking us to the ground, showering us with glass and croûtons. The waiter rushed out, to ensure we paid our bill before dying; but we were uninjured. ‘Apples and pears, guv’nor!’ Eliza cried. My hand was on her knee; she nibbled my chin. ‘Bless my crinoline socks!’ We made our way back to the house and straight to bed. Her flesh tasted neither like fruit nor tobacco—there was only honey and sweat and cinnamon. After she had tickled my gambrels and I had counted her secret auburn hairs, every one of them, both fore and aft, we fell asleep. That was when I had my first strange dream. Night descended; the window rattled open, I seemed to see Eliza launching herself high over the rooftops. ‘Pippins express!’ she chortled, as her umbrella caught the wind. There was a demonic sort of cackle and then she was gone.

  I woke and reached out for her and found that she really had gone. I closed the casement and dressed hurriedly because I was too fraught to sleep and needed to walk off my excitement. On the landing, I heard muffled sobs coming from Kropotkin Hardie’s apartment. The Secret Police were ransacking his room again. The door was ajar and I stepped inside. The sobs were not emanating from the revolutionary but from the officers. Kropotkin stood watching, arms folded, smiling fiercely into his beard. The room was in total disarray; cutlery littered the floor. In the middle of the chaos, two figures in leather coats trembled.

  Kropotkin noticed me and beamed. ‘See? Foolish capitalist agents cannot outwit the class hero. They have looked everywhere, but still they cannot find my printing press!’ I watched as one of the officers grappled with a laundry basket and tipped it over. ‘Och, it is not in there gentlemen!’ Kropotkin was taunting them. ‘You are getting warm. Now you are hot, but not hot enough to ignite!’ I decided to leave him to his entertainment. As I passed out of his room and down the stairs, my thoughts were all on the lusty motions of Eliza.

  The street was full of people. Each Quarter had been organised into a sort of home-guard. We took it in turns to douse fires and tend to the injured. I made my way through a line of sour-faced cobblers and millers who were passing pails of water from a street pump to remains of the Hôtel Crowley. In the roofless Theatre de l’Orotund, I found a small gathering of artistes performing a late night cabaret. This was a misguided attempt at boosting morale. I sat in the front row—one of only a dozen people in the audience—and watched the show with a growing sense of outrage. Von Clausewitz himself could not have devised a more fiendish secret weapon. Obviously the talented performers had all been killed or badly wounded by shrapnel. There was no other explanation.

  Seated on high stools, battered ukuleles in hand, a trio of faded operetta stars—Oscar Milde, Noël Novello and Ivor Timid—struggled with substandard material. They had toured Dessau while I was a student. Identical in physical appearance, it was only possible to differentiate them by their carnations. Between them, they had written one well-known song, ‘Don’t Put Your Somnambulist on the Stage, Dr Caligari’. I was openly contemptuous; I began to heckle, while shells rattled overhead. ‘If you can’t have Amontillado, you make do with Sherry,’ whispered a voice in my ear. ‘And if you can’t have Vindaloo, you make do with a Madras.’ It was a woman, as beautiful as her maxims, leaning forward over my shoulder. She introduced herself as Coppelia de Retz, wife of the Maréchal Lore de Retz, greenest of the Bluebeards and leader of the resistance. ‘I’ve seen you wandering the ruins with a slide rule,’ she crooned. ‘Perhaps you’d care to extend it in my direction?’

  I dribbled with anticipation. ‘Gropius,’ I said. She blushed and ruffled my hair with her fingers. ‘By all means, but not here.’ While we exchanged innuendoes, a shell arced through the open roof and exploded in the middle of the stage. When the smoke cleared, it was harder than ever to tell Oscar Milde, Noël Novello and Ivor Timid apart—their limbs were all mixed up. We stood to leave, but a sleek figure rushed from the wings and pressed us back into our seats. ‘Not going so soon, M. et Mlle.?’ He had a curious posture; he twirled his moustaches. ‘The night is young!’ With impatient gestures, he ushered on an orchestra armed with improvised instruments. ‘Voilà!’

  ‘Come, darling.’ Coppelia took me by the arm and led me outside. The curious fellow was attempting to coax harmony from the collection of drainpipes, saws and egg slicers that were substitutes for tubular bells, cellos and harps respectively. There was something odd about the baton he was using. Back in the street, I confided in Coppelia. ‘It looked as if he was conducting with a tail!’ She laughed at my seriousness. ‘Don’t be silly. That was Monsieur le Purr, the famous impresario. To think that he once produced the best! Cobalt Hugh, among others!’

  I remarked that war had lowered all our standards. ‘Oh absolutely,’ she cried, pinching my buttocks. We could not return to her house; the Maréchal had converted it into his office. Besides, he was already a jealous husband. I asked her why he seemed such a bad shot; it was his responsibility to direct our retaliatory fire, but all our shells missed their targets by an absurd distance. It was as if he was actually trying not to hit von Clausewitz. ‘He takes orders from Highgate,’ she informed me. ‘Mark Xeethra Samuels makes those decisions.’

  I thought this highly unsatisfactory. What would my Masters back in Dessau have said of such lack of co-ordination? Industry and Reason must merge into one substance; a thorough grounding in all disciplines of an art (and war is an art) is necessary in our tarnished age. I do not look back to the past—as Aretino Rossetti claimed to do—to find answers to the problems of the present. I find them in the idea of the Universal artwork, the Gesamtkunstwerk, in which all is in accordance with Nature, Spirit and Lust. I tried to show all this in an early architectural work entitled ‘Brickhouse in Cheese’, but it fell down.

  Back in my room, I took off my morals with my coat and hung them both on the back of my door. The house was alive with sounds. Kropotkin was shouting downstairs; the very walls seemed to be revolving. Before she could loosen her stays, I had Coppelia around the waist. ‘How now, gnädige Frau?’ I cried. She yielded to my lips. ‘But you must extinguish the light!’ she insisted. I was sorely disappointed by this; I was keen to view her naked flesh. ‘Shy, eh? But I wish to taste your mettle!’ At this, she proffered me a highly suspicious look.

  In the end, she had her way—we made love in a darkness punctuated only by the bursting of enemy shells. She was savage; cold to the touch, mechanical in her thrusts. It did not matter—I was having an excellent siege. We embraced and talked. She made toys for a living—automatons and suchlike. The business had been in her family for generations. She was a descendant of Coppelia Coppelius, who had sent a mechanical set of false teeth to George Washington. I knew nothing of such devices; I was too enamoured of glass and tubular steel. While she played raconteur, I drifted into sleep.

  Thus it was that I had the dream of gigantic clocks and pendulums that dangled from the Pole Star. When I awoke, Coppelia had gone; I was doing a poor job of keeping my women. I was stiff. Rods of iron had been inserted into my bones. My heart really did feel like the spring of an overwound watch. At the mirror, I inspected my chest. When I turned, Eliza Pippins was standing by the bed, hair loose around her shoulders, as if she too had been buffeted on waves of lust. I was both happy and fearful. ‘But how did you enter?’ I cried. ‘I always keep the door locked.’ She folded her umbrella and closed the window behind her. I could not fathom it. She must have sneaked past while I was intent on my body. ‘Recorded deliv’ry,’ she announced.

  She reached into her bodice and pulled out a letter. I was aghast. Recorded deviltry? Did a bureaucratic demon lurk in her cleavage? I was obviously still having problems with her language. I opened the letter and found a note signed by Mark Xeethra Samuels himself. ‘Welcome to the Commune,’ it said. That was all. I cast it aside and hugged Eliza; she could smell another woman on my skin, but returned my caresses nevertheless. ‘A right ol’ parvenu, God bless ’im,’ was her comment. I wondered at the cryptic message. Commune? Did Samuels mistake me
for one of Kropotkin’s accomplices? And what had this to do with the legitimate Government? Was the exile expressing anarchist sympathies?

  There were too many questions. My body still felt strange; I needed coffee and muffins, and to oil my insides with marmalade. I asked Eliza to join me for breakfast. ‘Absolutely knackered, guv’nor,’ was her characteristic reply. She climbed into bed and told me she would await my return. The door was still locked (so how did Coppelia depart?) and I turned the key and descended the stairs. Kropotkin Hardie was coming up to see me. He grasped my arm and gazed at me with sparkling eyes. ‘Well done, young laddie! I knew you’d join us sooner or later.’ He pressed a book into my hand. ‘My latest treatise, fresh off the press!’ I was now utterly dumbfounded. I took the volume, bade him good-day and headed towards the Champs-Poe. What was going on?

  While I was passing the shell of the Cathedral, two figures blocked my path. They were the officers who had tormented me with the iced tea. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ I cried, as they laid rough hands on me. Somebody must have been telling lies, for they guided me down a myriad of little lanes towards the ruins of the Police Station. Inside, I was blindfolded and led up stairways and along corridors. Finally, I was thrust into a room and the blindfold was removed.

  A swarthy man sat before me, stroking his corrugated beard with a hand heavy with ornate rings. His desk was strewn with papers and clay tablets. ‘Do you know who I am?’ The ringlets on his forehead danced as he stood and leaned forward. The two officers were behind me; I could smell the unwashed leather of their coats. I shook my head—it seemed to rattle as I did so—and regarded him more closely. He toyed with a copper paper-knife and smiled. ‘I am Cuneiform de Sade, the new Chief of Secret Police. Do you know why you are here?’