by Rhys Hughes
I wanted to know about Eliza and my own watch-like heart. I would no longer be fobbed off with evasive replies about the latter. I also wanted to know about Sardinia. It did not take long to reach the shop in question. It was completely undamaged—one of the few structures in Chaud-Mellé that could claim the distinction. I stepped inside, pushed my way past the simpering assistant and emerged into a dim chamber. At a long table sat a host of assorted characters. I recognised Coppelia at the head, Maréchal Lore next to her, the impresario known as Monsieur le Purr. They did not seem surprised to see me. Coppelia rolled her eyes in exasperation and clucked her tongue.
‘At last! We thought you were never coming, darling. Really, you have been most obtuse about all this. Take a seat and I’ll introduce you to the others.’ I collapsed into a chair and returned the greetings of those I did not know. One by one, we were introduced. There was Alfred Carnacki, the reformed bank manager; Jilly Tolkien-Twigge, the mountain climber; the Reverend Douglas Delves, heretical vicar and possessor of an eldritch pickling jar (which he carried at all times); the sardonic Caspar Nefandous, pockmarked and sensitive; Xelucha Dowson Laocoön, a withered noxious sage; Rodin Guignol, sculptor and acrobat. Two places at the table were empty. I nodded at them.
‘Those are reserved for Kropotkin Hardie and Eliza Pippins.’ It was Monsieur le Purr who spoke. I told them that Eliza was dead (or broken!) and that Kropotkin was in almost as bad a condition. They seemed to take this well; they inclined their heads, a simple mark of respect. ‘They are not dead, as such,’ the impresario continued. ‘Eliza is in London and Kropotkin is living in Kiev. Do not grieve for them, Monsieur.’ When I responded that I was weary of metaphysics, he shook his head. ‘These are solid facts. They left Chaud-Mellé a week ago.’
Coppelia took pity on my confusion. ‘Listen, darling. It was Mark Xeethra Samuels’ idea. In Highgate, he discovered all the lost secrets of analytic philosophy. He formulated the idea of the Commune. When von Clausewitz blockaded the town, he devised a plan of escape for members of the movement. He enlisted my services—I have been replacing chosen citizens with automatons. The real members have been smuggled out of the city by cannon. That is why the Maréchal was such a bad shot. Really he was firing comrades into the safety of the hills.’
This seemed such a far-fetched idea that I burst into hysterical laughter. The mirage of Sardinia shimmered before my eyes again: I was preparing spaghetti. I resisted the temptation to give myself up to this stringy illusion. Coppelia did not heed my disbelief. She continued: ‘So now there are no real members of the Commune left in the city. They have all been blasted clear in protective hollow shells. Parachutes ensured they landed softly—one of the reasons for the acute shortage of ladies’ undergarments. Eliza was replaced before she ever met you; this is also true of myself. Do you really think we would have gone to bed with you in the flesh? You have nothing to offer a woman!’
This rang true. Yet why had I been adopted into the Commune? All my values were right wing. I did not think Mark Xeethra Samuels would have listed me among those to be saved. Unless, of course, he was in need of a new bathroom. Coppelia explained this also: ‘The simulacrum of Eliza fell in love with you despite her better judgment. She gave herself to you. However, being of a highly conventional upbringing, she could not accept the idea of a puppet-human relationship. The only option was to convert you also into an automaton. She has been an active Communard for longer than almost anyone; I owed her a favour. I followed you to the Theatre de l’Orotund and seduced you. I performed the operation when you fell asleep. Your real self was fired into the hills that same night, together with Monsieur le Purr. You both travelled south and started a new life in Sardinia, or so I believe.’
I clutched my chest. ‘An automaton! This is impossible! The real me is in Sardinia, you say? Then why has my consciousness remained behind?’ At the same time, I knew she spoke the truth. She suggested that, being of a prosaic turn of mind, my identity had fixed itself too firmly to my new body. ‘When you are destroyed,’ she said, ‘your consciousness will leap back into your real self.’ This was an utterly astounding concept. I could do little but dribble for a score of minutes. ‘We have scattered the members over Europe,’ she added. ‘We have new names and identities. You are no longer Gropius Klee; you are Giovanni Ciao. One day, when we are stronger, we shall reunite and rebuild Chaud-Mellé as a Utopia, full of crystal towers and citizens in togas. There will be aeolian harps on every street corner!’
Monsieur le Purr patted my hand. His touch was soft and velvety, but hinted of power. ‘The whole charade was carried out for the benefit of the Secret Police, mon ami. Had they discovered our escape method, they would have followed our example. We wanted them to remain behind to be butchered by von Clausewitz. That way, they are removed without any danger to us.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘It is a good life in Sardinia. We are partners in business, you and I.’
Coppelia grinned feverishly. ‘It does not matter what happens to us here. This is because we are really elsewhere! The real Eliza does not know you, nor would she want to. I am living in Paris and have never met you either. But you are certainly not my type. If you were less ugly and less stupid then perhaps . . .’ I gave way before her wisdom. We burst into peals of laughter. When I had recovered, I told them about the newspaper parcel Kropotkin had entrusted to me.
‘Oh, you mean the bomb?’ Monsieur le Purr yawned, reached into his pocket and produced an identical package. ‘We all carry one of these. If any of us feel like ending it here and now, we simply unwrap the device and bite off the fulminating cap. The explosion is identical to that of one of von Clausewitz’s shells. Why do you ask?’ I stood up and knocked over my chair. ‘Aretino Rossetti! The fool has taken it down into the tunnels! The methane! If one of the harpies bites him . . .’
There was a tremendous explosion, greater by far than anything I had yet experienced. The four walls of the room were drawn up around us. The world turned white and deaf. I was pounding peppercorns with a mortar and pestle; I was whisking white wine sauce. I picked myself up and gazed around. The entire city had vanished. A huge scoop had been wrested from the earth. Chaud-Mellé was high in the air, falling towards von Clausewitz and his men. As I watched, the first houses crushed his guns, crumpling on the hillside into dust. I recognised my own house, the printing-press, exploding like an ink-blot on the horrified heads of his lieutenants. A typographical terror?
The whole network of Kingdom Noisette’s tunnels had been exposed, like trenches in a ludicrous new game of war. Blind harpies struggled to take flight from the pits. Despite their withered wings, some managed to spiral upwards in a pale cloud, colliding with each other and screeching wildly. I looked around. Coppelia was lying some yards away in a heap. The others had been vaporised. I spotted a splinter of Xelucha Dowson Laocoön, noxious sage no longer—merely a noxious fragment. I watched Coppelia open her eyes. ‘There are two things I do not grasp,’ I cried. ‘How did you leave my room when the door was locked? And how did Eliza fly? Was she full of helium?’
She spluttered. Her mouth attempted to form words. I picked it up and fixed it to her face. ‘You left the key in the lock,’ she replied. ‘I am squeamish about keys, being a mechanical puppet. So I dismantled myself, piece by piece, passed myself under your door and reassembled myself on the other side. As for Eliza, I made her with hollow bones. Her dimples were designed to reduce drag.’ There was nothing more to be said. I turned and watched the rest of the city fall.
Something extraordinary started to happen. A ghost City began to rise up from the bare earth. First the foundations shimmered into view and then the buildings followed. I suppose if a city can go mad, it can also die. And if it can die, it can turn into a ghost. ‘Chaud-Mellé is saved!’ I shouted. Although more tenuous of substance, it was the same place I had come to love and despise. ‘It will make no real difference,’ Coppelia pointed out. ‘Ghost houses may be impervious to shells, but the Austrians will simply sen
d to Rotterdam for ghost-cannon. The siege will begin all over again. Life is a disappointment.’
I ignored her and skipped down the phantom boulevards, over the spirit bridges, weaving in and out of the misty arcades. Everything was as good as new—though considerably more eerie. I danced past cafés, through graveyards (are ghost graveyards full of the living?) and towards my old house. Would Eliza’s room be replicated in ectoplasm? Would there be ghost stockings in her ghost drawers? I was so eager to find out, I burst into her room without knocking.
Cuneiform de Sade, battered and bruised, was waiting for me on the bed. His eyes were like tarnished coins. He spoke with some difficulty, teeth like chisels on the clay of his tongue. Eliza’s ghost underwear did not suit him. ‘At last I will have some satisfaction!’ He took hold of the copper paper-knife in his belt and advanced towards me. I fell back and tripped over a purple umbrella. The next thing I knew he had inserted the blade between my artificial ribs and had severed the roll of paper tape that determined my actions. I screamed and screamed; the pain was unbearable. It was a burning sensation. . . .
I winced and licked my fingers. Red wine sauce had spattered onto my shirt. I sighed. The pirates in the restaurant were clamouring for their pasta. I was Giovanni Ciao, recently arrived in Sardinia—running this establishment was a thankless task. The harbour waters slapped the walls of my kitchen. Why did I have to do all the hard work? Where was Monsieur le Purr? We were supposed to be in business together. I had been awaiting his arrival for a week. I wondered if, like me, he had been given a new identity. How would I recognise him?
A year later, I am still waiting. At least I am not entirely devoid of company. In the evenings, an old grey cat comes to visit. I feed him milk and cheese and ground goblin, which is a popular local dish. There are many goblins around these parts. They are very powdery and easy to grind, but too highly flavoured for my taste. The old grey cat helps to catch them; we often see them peering at us from holes in the wall. One day, when business is booming, I will sell up and go in search of Eliza and Coppelia. We shall set up house back in Dessau. The old grey cat laughs at this. He is a cynical sort of feline, but I am fond of him. His name is Herodotus and he has a mouth full of stories.
Afterword by E.F. Bleiler
Writing an afterword or postscript for you is either pointless or thankless, for you have already read Rhys Hughes’s Worming the Harpy and have your own ideas about it. If this were a conversation, we could talk about them. But it isn’t, and to point out brilliancies would be insolent and supererogatory.
As an epilogist I cannot prepare you for Rhys Hughes. In any case no-one reads epilogues, and I need not go into the strange and wonderful things to be found in his work, for you are already certain of them. Nor can I soothe you if you found Hughes too ferocious on occasion. But I can give you a very few biographical facts (hoping that you belong to the critical school that believes that authors really exist) and describe my own appreciation of his stories.
In an earlier paper (in Supernatural Fiction Writers, edited by my son Richard) I gave Hughes’s ideal biography in fanciful terms: his saturation in philosophy and history, his linkage to Borges, his connection with Celtic myth and folklore, his awareness of the Welsh literary tradition from Taliesin to Caradoc Evans (whose name should not be mentioned to loyal Welshmen), and his amused saturation in the fantasy worlds of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
For those of you who prefer a materialistic alternate world: Rhys Henry Hughes was born in Cardiff, Wales, on 24th September 1966; studied engineering in university; worked in a variety of jobs in a variety of places; travelled to many distant lands.
That is the formality: For us, his more significant education lies in thousands of hours reading hundreds of books that gloom in the shadowy side of Western culture: eccentrica, mythology, folklore, comparative religions, alchemy, Renaissance and modern occultism, abnormal psychology, psychopathica sexualis, fantastic fiction, and whatever else.
As you may have gathered from other sources, Hughes is a prolific writer, whose avowed intention is to create a matrix of one thousand interlocked stories that do—what? Perhaps serve as a mosaic of human strangeness? Perhaps develop a web in which motifs slide from strand to strand. Either, or not, this is worth waiting for. Will there be, after a thousand are completed, a thousand and first, an alf lailah wa lailah, a master document freezing the others in place?
What do I like about Rhys Hughes’s work? Fun. Hughes sees and precipitates in words the latent humour in almost anything. Ranging from what our culture considers pleasing and smilingly ridiculous to horrors that have to be laughed at if they are faceable at all. Hughes is a laughing observer, both inside and outside. With Hughes you get humour that is white, various shades of grey, black—and I don’t know why humour cannot be characterised by other colours. Is ‘One Man’s Meat’ green humour as the chlorophyll sputters out?
I am also enormously impressed by Hughes’s stylistic brilliance. The richness of language, the occasional Cambrianisms, the inexhaustible array of puns, weird metaphors that form the point of a story. And I envy him his netted imagination. As a man who sees connections where others do not, he offers enough ideas, if parcelled out, to fill a catalogue of fantasy for a generation of writers.
Most of all, I think, I delight in Hughes’s madness. (Since reviewers agree in calling him mad, he must be used to the term by now.) By madness, I don’t mean the pathology of a scarecrow numbed out of sensation by electric shock or dubious drugs. I mean what the early nineteenth-century Romantic, like E.T.A. Hoffmann, meant. Sensitivity to the weirdness of life, so that his world, though hyperbolically strange, is more profound and esoterically true than the world of two and two makes four. Hoffmann himself was one of these men, as are several of his characters. Hieronymus Bosch, William Blake, Odilon Redon, Salvador Dali, George MacDonald, David Lindsay. Some call them visionary. I respond to these men. I usually write stodgy textbooks, pedantic book reviews, stuffy academic introductions in the opposite structuring, but within me, I like to think, is something of Rhys Hughes’s madness that awakens me.
I could be wrong, but I think that much of Hughes’s work appears spontaneously from his unconscious; what might be dream in others, in Hughes is material accessible to his waking mind. Some of his stories are obviously closely planned, but others leap together unexpectedly as bizarre associations link out. I find this profound haphazardness attractive. If Edgar Allan Poe were living, he could probably analyse it and tell us something about the Rhys Hughes who amazes us.
Contents
WORMING THE HARPY
Contents
Cat o' Nine Tales
Worming the Harpy
The Falling Star
Quasimodulus
The Good News Grimoire
The Forest Chapel Bell
Flintlock Jaw
Velocity Oranges
A Carpet Seldom Found
The Chimney
One Man's Meat
The Man Who Mistook his Wife’s Hat for the Mad Hatter’s Wife
Cello I Love You
What To Do When The Devil Comes Round To Tea
Arquebus for Harlequin
Éclair de Lune
Grinding the Goblin
Afterword by E.F. Bleiler
