Vellum

by Hal Duncan

  “These animals in the cave-paintings,” he says, “they’ve got no fences, no boundaries, no parameters, no perimeters, you see. It’s…it’s not where they run that matters, only that they run.”

  In ochre sketch, an antelope looks back over its shoulder, eyes wide, nostrils flared, seeing and scenting its own golden, pouncing death. The lioness’s teeth touch to its neck, claws dig into its shoulder blades.

  “There’s no ground to them, you see, no frame, no mud under their feet…no wire caging them. Look, see where these two bison here just overlap…”

  “Sure and the artist probably just ran out of space there, Tommy boy.”

  “No. No, it’s more than that. It’s like there is no space.”

  It is a dry, hot and sun-bleached day in the savannah, and a lion slouches slowly through the tall grass. A slender buck twitches nostrils at the scent of predator in the air, and looks at you, and blinks long lashes over deep dark eyes. Vultures wheel lazily overhead. All are aware, awake, in an acute sentience of the tensions of the situation. Turning to look around you, you can see the herd of aurochs grazing on the open skies and, superimposed like ghost-forms over this vision of a veldt, lithe copper-skinned and dark-haired villagers dance, recline and hunt. For each group it is the sense of community that sustains them. A dog lies curled up beside (beyond? behind?) a strange figure wearing animal skins, a beaked mask and what might be perhaps a feathered cloak or wings. It is known as the Shaman of Lascaux.

  Unbound by either frame or forum, the figure turns, and steps out of the moment.

  Tassili-n-Ajer or Lascaux, 1916 or today.

  YELLOW PAPER AND BROWN PENCIL LINES

  “Tommy boy, sometimes ye talk as much rot as I’ve got between me toes here. Sure and I don’t know what ye’re on about half the time.”

  Seamus looks at the small sketchbook that the boy treasures more than anything, more than any of them treasure anything, he thinks sometimes, more even than all the tattered, battered photographs of sweethearts and mothers, and the lockets, and the father’s watches, and all the decks of playing cards with the nudie women on them and all; and he thinks the boy’s daft, so he does, but, in a way, he understands. Seamus looks at the drawings that the boy spent so much time on, so much care, last month on leave in Lascaux when he could have been whoring it up with all the rest of them, whooping it up, sure, the way a boy his age stuck in this shite to fight for someone else’s King and Country should be; and all that Seamus sees when he looks at the little sketchbook is yellow paper and brown pencil lines. But Tommy now…

  Tommy reaches over and takes the book out of his hands, shaking his head.

  “Ah, you’ve got no soul, Seamus, no soul.”

  But the boy is blushing shame even as he tries to play the old game of young lads, sure, they way they bandy abuse about but with a twinkle in the eye and a nudge of the elbow, because, aye now, ye know I don’t really mean it. The boy can’t really carry it off—too shy, he is, and too much of a young gent even if he wasn’t quite born with a silver spoon in his gob, not that he comes on all Lord Muck-a-Muck, like. He’s just…ach, he’s just a good lad what misses his mother and his home like the rest of them, only he shows it more. O, but he gets a right roasting from the other lads of the pal’s battalion sometimes, he does, just like he got back home, and where would he be without Seamus sticking up for him, as ever?

  Seamus wanders over toward the door of the dugout where, apart from the mud and the mud and the fookin more mud, ye can just see a wee blue hint of sky up there, if ye’re hunkered down a bit so ye’re looking up at the right angle, sure, which ye are anyways on account of the fookin low ceilings. He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket to pull out a cigarette from the crumpled packet of Gauloises in there—fookin nasty shite that they are, but what’s a man to do when he’s smoked all of his and the quartermaster’s as crooked as a British politician, sure, and he’s just putting it to his mouth—

  DOOM!

  “Jesus Fookin Christ!”

  Tommy’s howling like a fookin wean and it’s fookin dark but Seamus can feel the fookin dirt raining down on him.

  “Jesus Fookin Mary and Fookin Joseph! Fookin shite! Fookin Hun fookin bastards!” Seamus is down on the ground, hands over his head—Christ, and he wasn’t even wearing his helmet—and he doesn’t even fookin remember diving down there, but he’s sure as fook happy to be there and he’ll just stay right where he is for the time being, thank you very much, ma’am, and…

  “Jesus. Tommy are ye all right there? Ye’re not hit or nothing, are ye?”

  The boy’s panting like a dog, gasping for air like he’s fookin drowning, sitting there, just right there at Seamus’s elbow, with his arms wrapped round his knees and his teeth biting into his trousers, panting and kind of whining like a sick animal; and as Seamus touches his knee, he flinches.

  He looks at Seamus like he’s looking right through him, eyes wide, nostrils flared, seeing and scenting his own golden, pouncing death.

  DUMUZI’S DREAM

  He awoke from his dream, still trembling with the vision, rubbed his eyes, felt terrified. Dumuzi called out: Bring her…bring her…bring my sister, Geshtinanna. Bring my little sister, the wise singer with so many songs, the scribe of tablets who knows what words mean, my sister who can read my dreams. I have to speak to her, to tell her of my dream. So, he spoke of his dream to Geshtinanna, saying:

  “Sister, listen to my vision.”

  “I see rushes rising all around me, rushes thick about me, sprouting up out of my dream. I see a reed with one stalk, trembling in the wind, a reed with two stalks, one of which—and then the other—is removed. Then I am in a forest grove and trees rise all around me even as the fear rises within, tall shadows swallowing me. I see water poured over my sacred hearth; the base of my churn, broken, drops away. I see my drinking cup fall from its peg.

  “I look everywhere and cannot find my shepherd’s crook. I cannot find it anywhere, and I can only look on as an eagle swoops into the sheepfold, snatches a poor lamb. I watch a falcon catch a sparrow on the reed fence. Sister, I can see your goats, their lapis beards all dragging in the dust, your sheep scratching the soil with broken hooves.

  “Sister, the churn lies quiet, and no milk is poured into a shattered cup. Dumuzi is no more; the shepherd’s fold, like dust, is given to the winds.”

  THE GREAT WHITE HUNTER

  DOOM!

  Thomas trembles, flinches again as the tin mug falls from its hook—a rusting nail banged into the wood post of the bunk and bent up—as the tin mug falls to clatter rattling on his kit box, knocking a tin of boot-black off. He jerks away, pushes himself back to the wall of the dugout, back into the wall, into the rough wood shoring with the gaps where all the dirt comes trickling out each time a shell hits and—

  DOOM!

  “It’s all right, lad, come on now, calm down, hush now, sure and we’re safe as houses here and Jerry can do all he wants and—Jesus Fookin Christ!—O Jesus, aye and I nearly shat myself there, sure, and did ye see the look on my face there, aye, but it’s all right, see, we’re all scared, see, and we all just want to get the fook out of here alive but—hush now, come on lad, look, here, see, ye’ve gone and dropped yer drawings, here—aye, Tommy boy, I know, I know, come on, lad, don’t be crying like a babby for its mammy, here now, hush now—shhh—that’s right, that’s right, it’s all right—shhhhhhh—I know, Tommy, lad, I know it’s fookin shite it is, it’s all just fookin shite but—aye, that’s it, that’s it, lad, Tommy boy…come on now, sure and haven’t I promised yer darling sister, Anna, I’d look after ye?”

  And Seamus cradles the poor lad in his arms and just keeps talking to him, talking to him and rocking him like a mother with her wean, and it’s not fookin manly and it’s not fookin brave and it’s not fookin our fookin boys going out on fookin horseback, with their shiny fookin sabers flashing in the sun and cutting down the Huns all fookin noble-like, and fook that, fook that fookin shit
e and any shitebag who tries to tell you it’s like that and, Jesus, how he wishes he could have a good greet himself and just curl up in a corner and wish it all the fook away, but he can’t, he can’t, he can’t…

  “O Jesus, Tommy, Jesus, it’s all right. Don’t you worry, lad. I’ll see you safe home if it fookin kills me.”

  Tassili-n-Ajer or Lascaux, the Somme in 1916 or—

  DOOM!

  “Damn it, boi! Didn’t I tell you, not a sound. Bloody kaffirs!”

  Kenya. Pick a year.

  The hunter throws the rifle to the native boy—at the native boy?—sideways so that the boy can catch it, but with all the force of his frustration, making the boy flinch and fumble backward before he gets a grip. He doesn’t even look at the boi, but bites his bottom lip and glares out over the tall grass.

  “Reload it.”

  His face red, the great white hunter rearranges the fawn-colored hat he’s wearing, holds his hand out past the brim of it, shading his eyes from the savannah sun. He’s a good shot and he would have made it if it hadn’t been for the bloody native boy. And the bloody sun. The bloody sun doesn’t help one bit.

  Out in the tall grass, the Thomson’s gazelle—his bloody Tommy—bounds high and far, in leap after graceful leap, saved by the sun, away, away, away.

  MAD JACK CARTER

  The Somme.

  “That’s good, boy. Bloody good.”

  Thomas jumps, startled, dropping his sketchbook and fumbling the pencil, goes to pick up the book and stops, puts the pencil into his pocket and stands to salute, trying to do so many things at once he doesn’t do anything right.

  “Sir,” he says.

  “At ease, Messenger,” says Captain Carter.

  He smiles at Thomas with a sort of amused superiority for a second but clears it from his face quickly, looks away and back, jaw set now, eyes so intense that Thomas drops his gaze.

  Carter crouches down to pick up the sketchbook, flicks through it to the page of Thomas’s drawing. He looks up at him from down there—blue eyes with a piercing fire in them. Thomas feels uncomfortable, exposed.

  “Saint Sebastian, isn’t it? Mantegna’s?” says Carter, standing up with the book in hand, studying the picture for a moment before handing it back. On the yellow page, gray lines mark out the martyr in a classic contrapposto pose, the sensual snaking of one shoulder lowered toward a raised hip, face turned to one side and up. Arms tied to the Corinthian column behind his back, his soft shaded skin is pierced with arrows. Thomas takes the offered edge of the book, nods silently. Carter lets go and Thomas closes the book.

  “You recognized it?”

  As embarrassed as he is, Thomas is pleased at the compliment; working from his memory as he did, he’s surprised the Captain was able to place it.

  “I’m something of a classicist myself,” says Carter. “What is it Mantegna said? The works of the ancients were more perfect and beautiful than anything in Nature.”

  Of course. Mad Jack Carter is notorious for his obsession with the ancients.

  “I’m not sure I’d agree with that, sir,” says Thomas, relaxing a little. “Not that he said that, I mean, sir, but the sentiment, I mean. I’m not sure I agree with that.”

  Carter nods. He looks around the room absently, walks over to a small shaving mirror on the wall to take his hat off, brush his blond hair back and place the hat back on his head. It would seem like vanity except that Thomas notices the eyes studying him in the mirror rather than the Captain’s own reflection. He looks out the door of the dugout but you can’t even see the sky from here, just the sandbags of the wall of the trench outside.

  “Was…was there something you wanted, sir?”

  Carter turns back to him, those eyes scrutinizing like they’re looking for a weakness, like a predator studying its prey.

  “I just…heard you had a little…turn,” says Carter.

  Thomas bites his bottom lip.

  “I’m OK now, sir.”

  “Good. Good. Just wanted to be sure.”

  They stand for a while in silence.

  “You know,” says Carter, “you really do have quite a talent there.”

  He nods at the sketchbook Thomas still holds in his hand.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Saint Sebastian, eh? Interesting choice.”

  Thomas says nothing. The story of the Christian legionnaire put to death by his commander for refusing his advances is one of chastity and virtue, but it is one told down the centuries in sensual painted flesh of a body bound and twisted, sublime in surrender as the arrows penetrate the smooth and seminaked youth. Of all those ecstatic deaths of saints, Mantegna’s subject is either the most ambiguous or not ambiguous at all. So Thomas says nothing.

  “Interesting choice,” says Carter again as he leaves the dugout.

  OBJECTS OUT OF HISTORY

  “My brother,” Geshtinanna said, “I beg you not to tell me of a dream like this. Tammuz, don’t tell me of a dream like this. The rushes which rise up all round you, yes, the rushes sprouting thick about you are your demons, who will hunt you and assault you. The reed with one stalk which trembled is our mother, mourning for you. O my brother, and the reed with two stalks, one of which—and then the other—is removed…Tammuz, those stalks are me and you. First one of us, and then the other, will be lost.”

  Oxford, 1936

  Professor Samuel Hobbsbaum—Sam to his friends—stops at the Olivetti, finger poised just touching the smooth, curved shape of the carriage-return lever…then quite suddenly slaps his hand down on the surface of his mahogany desk as a sharp breeze, drafting from some distant doorway, flicks at his notes, blowing one page into the air the merest fraction of a second before he would have caught it. Cursing, he gathers the cuneiform drawings and scribbled fragments of translation and places them under a paperweight before bending down, still seated on his chair, to claim the fugitive scrap. The gas light flickers on the wall, in the breeze.

  “In the forest grove, the tall trees which rise all around you are the terrible ugallu who will fall upon you in the sheepfold. The fire doused in your sacred hearth means that the sheepfold will become a cold and empty house. If the base of your churn is broken, dropped away, it means the ugallu will capture you. Your drinking cup falls from its peg; this means that you will fall into the mud, into your mother’s lap. And when your shepherd’s crook is gone…Tammuz, the world will wither under the ugallu then. The eagle snatching a lamb from the sheepfold is the ugallu who’ll scratch your cheeks. The falcon catching a poor sparrow on the reed fence is the ugallu who’ll leap that fence to snatch you.”

  Around the study of Professor Samuel Hobbsbaum, objects out of history—some real, some replica—litter the room with time and culture, as chaotic as the desk itself, on shelves and bookcases, filing cabinets and anywhere there is the smallest space: plaster reproductions of alabaster vases carved with ceremony in processional friezes; cylinder seals once rolled over soft tablets of damp clay, to leave behind an image in relief; a stele on which an ensi stands in victory over the bodies of his fallen enemies, twice their size; a scorpion king in victory on a palette; a black-and-white framed photo, detail of a statue of a youthful king whose soft round face and serene smile make him think of the kouroi and buddhas of much later sculpture, holding the architectural plans of a temple or palace. A calendar on the wall shows the month as July 1936, outdated because Sam has neglected to change it for the last few months. Ancient history holds as much meaning for him as current events, perhaps more.

  GIVEN TO THE WINDS

  A Phoenician carving in ivory colored with gold, where a youth—Adonis perhaps or some half-conscious reference to the imagery of his myth—supine and naked from the waist up, propped up on his arms, head lolling back, is caught in the moment of his death, as a lioness’s jaws clamp round his throat, the creature standing over him, embracing him, like a lover. This is his personal favorite, so ambiguous, so sensual, almost erotic in its portrayal of the i
ntimacy of victim and killer, predator and prey.

  The lioness is one animal aspect of the goddess Inanna, Dumuzi’s wife, who gives him to the demons that have followed her from the underworld, so that she herself can be free. And yet Inanna does love him. Even as she damns him she is recast in his story as his sister, Geshtinanna, so that she can try to save him. Dumuzi has his sister and his brother-in-law, Geshtinanna and the sun-god Shamash, both trying to save him. But in the maelstrom illogic of myth, Geshtinanna is also Inanna who damns him in the first place, and Shamash may well be the unnamed friend who tries to save him, and in the end betrays him.

  “Tammuz, you see my goats, their lapis beards all dragging in the dust. My head will swirl through the air, my hair will flail, as I wail. You see my sheep scratch at the soil with broken hooves. 0 Tammuz, tears will gouge my cheeks in misery for you.”

  And she looks at him with eyes wide, blinking back the tears that fill her heart, and Phreedom Messenger reaches across the wooden table of the roadhouse up in the mountains to take her brother’s hand.

  She doesn’t understand. Like Finnan, she’s still thinking linearly; she still thinks this is a simple tale of the three of them, all changed by the way they’ve touched eternity, touched the Vellum, all on the run from angels and demons, fleeing from state to state across America. She thinks maybe if they keep running long enough, the two warring factions of the unkin will just wipe each other out and, one day, they can raise their heads out of the ditches that they’re hiding in and the world will be empty of Metatron and his Covenant of angels, and all those others in endless rebellion against it.

  But Thomas has traveled so long, he’s slipped through so many interstices in reality, in the Vellum, that he’s beginning to realize just how deep the story runs. She thinks they’re on the run from death, but he knows that in the malleable and multifaceted reality of the Vellum it’s not a little temporal thing like death they have to fear, but oblivion. The angels want a world that’s stable, a history that’s sure and certain. Rogue unkin have no place in the story Metatron is writing in his little book of life. This year or that year, sooner or later, later or sooner, their futures will catch up with them. They have to weave, side to side, in and out. It’s all eternity or nothing.