by Odo Hirsch
Amelia’s father waited a moment longer. Then he laughed. He rubbed his hands together. ‘Well, I’ve got work to do. I’ve had an excellent idea! The lamp’s given it to me. It’s about getting a flare to burn better underwater.’
‘How would you light it?’
‘Easy. It can already be done, that part isn’t the problem.’
‘But if it can already be done, why would you want to . . .’ Amelia stopped. Her father was looking at her with an expression of intense interest, waiting for her to go on.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Nothing,’ said Amelia.
‘If we didn’t think about getting underwater flares to burn better, Amelia, we’d still be in the Stone Age.’
Amelia nodded.
Her father smiled, rubbing his hands together again. ‘Right. Don’t disturb me! I may be some time.’
He headed past the lamp to the invention shed at the end of the garden. Amelia watched him go. She didn’t understand her father. Sometimes he seemed the most intelligent person she had ever met. But let him in sight of the invention shed, and you’d think he was completely insane.
The door of the shed closed behind him. Amelia looked at the lamp sculpture. It stood in the garden, tall, twisted, with grass poking through the gaps between its curving metal struts.
Amelia walked around it, considering it from the other side. Maybe you really could light it. Put a candle in the middle. Or a lantern. At night. There’d be shadows from the struts. Curving all over the garden walls and the back of the house. And from the undulating ring at the top. Its wavy shadow would run high up there . . .
Amelia saw her mother in the window of the sculpture room. She was beside the hoist, watching. Amelia smiled. Her mother smiled back, and disappeared.
Amelia looked at the sculpture again. She frowned. Suddenly it seemed to Amelia that she had underestimated her mother. She did show her sculptures to people. Maybe it was only to her husband, and her daughter, and her housekeeper, and the yoga master who lived on the ground floor, but maybe they were the only people whose opinions mattered to her. And so what if the sculptures never left the backyard? It was still something to put them there where at least some people could see them, it was still braver than leaving them in a drawer – or under a drape, or behind a screen, or whatever the equivalent for sculptures would be.
It was a lot braver than what Amelia had done with her story about the bitter princess. Even giving it to Mr Vishwanath, she knew, was a way of not taking a chance, getting someone to look at it privately before showing it to anyone else.
She regretted that now. Almost as soon as she had given the story to Mr Vishwanath, as soon as the pages left her hand, she had realised why she had left it hidden for so long before deciding to do even that. It wasn’t a good story. She was ashamed of it. It was nasty and childish. The more she thought about it, the more she cringed.
And she had given it to Mr Vishwanath. Mr Vish-wanath, of all people! What would he think of her when he read it? She only hoped he’d lost it, or forgotten about it, or something, so he’d never see what she had written.
But he wouldn’t have lost it, Amelia knew. And he wouldn’t forget to do something once he had said he would, not Mr Vishwanath.
CHAPTER 19
Slowly, Mr Vishwanath’s head turned. Amelia stopped. She had hoped she might slip past without him noticing. Although she couldn’t keep trying to sneak around him forever.
‘Hello, Mr Vishwanath,’ she said.
‘Hello Amelia.’
He continued to watch her. Expectantly. There was no point trying to put it off any longer. She went and sat beside him.
Mr Vishwanath turned back to look at the garden. Amelia stole a glance at him, wondering when he was going to say something. It would be almost a relief to get it over with.
But he was silent, staring at the sculpture.
‘My mother says it’s a new interpretation of the old,’ said Amelia at last. ‘Of the lamp. In our house.’
‘So that’s what it is.’
‘It’s the torsion,’ said Amelia. ‘Apparently that’s the important bit.’
Mr Vishwanath nodded.
There was silence.
‘What do you think about new interpretations of the old?’ asked Amelia eventually.
‘Many old things are the inspiration for the new,’ said Mr Vishwanath. ‘There is nothing strange about this. All through history, this has been the case.’
Amelia looked at him in surprise.
‘What?’ said Mr Vishwanath. ‘Did you think I would oppose something just because it is new?’
‘No,’ said Amelia hurriedly.
‘Yes, I think you did.’
‘No . . . Yes. I did.’
‘Why? If there is never any new interpretation, Amelia, we would stand still. Nothing would ever get any better.’
‘We’d still be in the Stone Age?’
Mr Vishwanath smiled. ‘If we were not prepared to create new interpretations, we would have nothing new to say. Our voices would be taken away by the generations that came before us, even before we had learned to use them.’
Amelia frowned. That would make a lot of people unhappy, if their voices were taken away. She could think of half a dozen without even trying, starting with a certain mythmaker called Eugenie Edelstein.
‘The thing is . . .’ said Amelia, ‘I mean, I don’t think the sculpture’s necessarily that bad, I just think I like the original version of the lamp better.’
‘Not every new interpretation is an improvement,’ murmured Mr Vishwanath. He glanced at the sculpture standing in the garden, and then he looked back at Amelia, with just a twinkle of a smile in his eyes.
Amelia laughed.
‘Still,’ said Mr Vishwanath, ‘that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. In some cases, ways that are new may be good.’
‘Then what about advertising for students, Mr Vish—’
‘But in other cases,’ continued Mr Vishwanath solemnly, ‘the ways that are old are better.’
Amelia sighed. ‘Well, the original lamp is so beautiful, Mr Vishwanath, I don’t think you could ever improve on it.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Mr Vishwanath. ‘Still, your mother has not done a bad job.’
‘There are five more to come! And every one of them is going to be different.’
Mr Vishwanath didn’t reply, but Amelia thought she saw one of his eyebrows rise. Just slightly.
There was silence again. Amelia didn’t feel awkward any more, as she had when she first sat down. Perhaps Mr Vishwanath hadn’t read the story, after all.
‘I think I can understand why the Princess feels like she does,’ said Amelia, gazing at the sculpture. ‘Not just because of the lamp. That’s only one example. Her whole life was perfect.’
‘No one’s life is perfect,’ said Mr Vishwanath.
‘True, but that’s probably how it seems to her. Her life was perfect, just like the lamp. You couldn’t improve on it. And then it was gone. Like the lamp. She loved the lamp, and all of sudden, it’s gone. Forever.’
‘Gone from her,’ said Mr Vishwanath. ‘But not gone. Someone else enjoys its beauty. Now it’s you who loves the lamp.’
‘But that doesn’t help her.’
‘It inspired your mother also,’ said Mr Vishwanath. ‘That’s another thing. By inspiring your mother, it gave her something very precious.’
Amelia remembered the look on her mother’s face when her father said he liked the sculpture. ‘Yes, that’s true. But the Princess doesn’t know about that. And even if she knew, she wouldn’t care.’
Mr Vishwanath was silent. He got up. He held up a finger, to tell Amelia to wait, and went inside. When he came out again, he was carrying a sheaf of pages.
Amelia’s heart sank.
‘You really don’t need to worry about that, Mr Vishwanath.’ Amelia forced a laugh. ‘It was silly. I’m sure you didn’t waste your time reading it, did you? I don’t know why I even gave it to
you. It was just a . . . just a . . .’
Mr Vishwanath held out the pages.
Amelia took them. ‘What did you think?’ she asked softly.
‘I do not think you should give it to the Princess.’
Amelia nodded. ‘It’s not very good, is it?’
‘I am not a judge of writing,’ said Mr Vishwanath. ‘I cannot say if it is good or bad. But I think it is a story you wrote out of anger. Maybe it’s a story you wrote as a kind of revenge because you didn’t like the Princess or the way she treated you.’
‘I didn’t like the way she treated me, if you want to know the truth. Or Kevin. Or Eugenie. Although you wouldn’t know it,’ added Amelia in exasperation, ‘not if you hear Eugenie tell the story.’
Mr Vishwanath didn’t reply.
Amelia frowned. She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. She was angry again, but this time at herself. She was so embarrassed. Mr Vishwanath was right. She had written the story as a kind of revenge. But what kind of a revenge was that? It was pathetic.
‘Amelia?’
She couldn’t bear to look at him. She couldn’t imagine what he must think of her.
‘Amelia, it is alright to have written it. We all get angry.’
Amelia glanced at him disbelievingly.
Mr Vishwanath smiled. ‘When I was younger, I had quite a rage.’
Amelia shook her head. To listen to Mr Vishwanath, you’d think he was the wildest, most uncontrollable person ever. When he was younger.
Amelia shook her head again, eyes narrowed. ‘I’m never going to show anyone one of my stories again. Never ever ever!’
Mr Vishwanath didn’t reply.
‘It never works! It’s always a disaster! I’ll leave it to Martin Martinez.’
‘Who is Martin Martinez?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
Mr Vishwanath nodded. ‘Do you think your anger is gone? The anger you felt when you wrote this story?’
Amelia gazed at the pages in her hand. She sighed. ‘Maybe,’ she murmured.
‘Then isn’t there something better you can say to the Princess? Something that isn’t written for revenge?’
‘I told you, Mr Vishwanath, it doesn’t matter. I’m never going to show anything to anyone again.’
Mr Vishwanath turned back to the garden. It was a moment before he spoke. ‘I think, a girl who can write so wonderfully, isn’t there something more wonderful that she can write? Not anger and revenge, but something with hope, maybe, and understanding.’
Amelia didn’t reply.
‘A girl who has the ability to make a story come alive in such a way. There must be a more beautiful story that she can tell, if she wants to.’
Amelia frowned. ‘Mr Vishwanath,’ she said quietly, ‘I thought you said you’re not a judge of writing.’
Mr Vishwanath shrugged. ‘An amateur, at best.’
Mr Vishwanath got up and walked into the garden. He stopped beside the sculpture. He twisted himself around, and then twisted his arms around his twisted body, until he seemed like some kind of a human version of the twisted metal of the sculpture. Then he closed his eyes, and held the position.
Amelia stared at him. She hadn’t seen him do that pose before. It was a new one. Amelia knew what it was. It was an interpretation of the sculpture. Which was an interpretation of the lamp. And elsewhere, in the invention shed, at that very moment, her father was working on an idea he had got from the sculpture, which in a way was another interpretation of it. Suddenly it seemed to Amelia that the lamp had some kind of power that had been unleashed, inspiring people in all kinds of ways. There was something wonderful about it – a sculpture, an invention, a yoga pose, all drawing on the same source. And yet none of this would have happened, no one would have been inspired and none of these things would have been created, if there hadn’t been a revolution in Irafia and the Grand Palace of Ervahan hadn’t been destroyed and the lamp hadn’t been looted and sold from one person to another and ended up – somehow, through some chain of events that no one could remember any more – at the top of the stairs in the green house that Solomon Weiszacker had built on Marburg Street.
Amelia looked at the pages lying in her lap. The words that were on those pages, they weren’t the story. This was. The real story wasn’t about the Princess. It was about the lamp!
Amelia jumped up and ran inside.
In the garden, Mr Vishwanath opened one eye and watched her go.
CHAPTER 20
Amelia didn’t hesitate for a second. As soon as she got back to her desk she pulled out a piece of paper. She picked up her pen. There are times – very few, very rare – when you know with complete, crystal clarity what you are trying to say, and the words find themselves. It seemed that they were on the page before Amelia had even consciously thought them. And it didn’t matter that they were strange. She knew they were right, perfectly right.
I am a lamp.
Yes, thought Amelia. To be the lamp, that was the way to understand what had happened to the Princess. What had happened to her world. The lamp would tell.
I was made long ago by the most skilful lamp-maker in the ancient city of Ervahan. He made six of us, and when he had made us, he took us to the Grand Palace, and there we hung, each one of us in a different room. But we hang there no longer.
Amelia paused, savouring the magical feeling of having the pen in her hand and knowing she was about to write something wonderful with it, even if she didn’t know exactly how it was going to come out yet. There were so many things she wanted to say. She wanted to tell about life in the palace. She wanted to tell about each of the princes and princesses who lived there. She wanted to tell about the Shan and the Shanna and the people who served them. All of it seen from above, from the lamp hanging from the ceiling. Amelia could literally see it in her mind, as if she were looking down on a scene in the palace below her, even though she had never seen the palace or the people who lived there or anything at all, in fact, from the ceiling of a room. And yet she felt as if she could! She felt as if she had the soul and the mind and the memory of the lamp. Whatever that meant. She felt as if she had opened the tiny door in the panel of the lamp – the one she had tried to open so long before – and now she was sitting inside it. She jumped up and ran out of her room and gazed at the lamp and she still felt it! She went back but she didn’t close the door, so all she had to do was turn around from her desk to see the lamp whose memory she now inhabited.
She wrote. She wrote about the Shan and Shanna and the princes and princesses and the life of luxury they led in the room below the lamp. She wrote about the joy the lamp felt when the smallest princess gazed up at it with wonder, and when the big man called Ali El lifted her up and helped her find the peacocks and the monkeys and all the animals hidden in its panels. Then she wrote about the night when the princes and princesses ran away and a great crowd of people flooded into the palace, and when she wrote about that, she wrote as if she didn’t know what was happening at first, because the lamp wouldn’t have known, would it? It had never seen anything like that before, and it wouldn’t know that this was a revolution and that its life was going to change forever on that night. Then she wrote about the way someone brought a ladder and climbed up and cut her down, and how the mob pulled her this way and that, threatening to break her glass with its roughness.
Amelia paused again, and gazed at the lamp hanging outside her room. She felt sad. All the other lamps would have been cut down as well. She imagined the scene. All six of the lamps lay on the ground and the mob shouted around them.
‘Destroy them! If we can’t get the princes and princesses, this’ll have to do!
’ ‘Think of all the suffering those people caused us!
’ ‘Smash them up!
’ Left and right, the mob began destroying us. Wherever I looked, my brothers and sisters were being smashed. Their glass shattered. Their metal twisted and snapped. But I was saved. I don’t know why. I don’t know exactly
how. All I remember is that suddenly someone had me in his arms, and he was running.
‘Take me back!’ I cried. ‘Let me die with the others!’ But he wouldn’t take me back. He ran and ran. Fire was starting in the palace. I saw others running, carrying things they had stolen. And then we were outside, in the dark. It was the first time I had been out of the palace since my maker brought me there so many years ago. But where was he now? I was alone, carried away by a strange person, and what would become of me? At that moment, I wished I had died in the palace with the others.
Amelia stopped. She could feel the anguish the lamp must have felt, alone, confused, fearful, torn without warning from the only home it had ever known, its brothers and sisters lying smashed and broken in the ruins of the smoking palace.
But the man who took me did not want me for himself. He only wanted to sell me to make money. If only he had sold me back to the man who had created me! But he took me to a man who bought and sold lamps. Ordinary lamps. He hung me in his shop. Me! The peacock lamp. A lamp of the palace! When the other lamps spoke, I ignored them. I was too proud to speak to them. Some of them teased me. ‘Where is your palace now?’ they said. I grew angry. ‘Where do you throw your light now?’ they said. But I threw no light. I was dark, hanging on a dark wall, in a small, dark shop. Every day was a torture. Each day was worse than the last. I wished I was dead. That was my only thought. Every hour, every minute, I wished that I had died in the palace with the others.
Eventually a man bought me. He hung me in his house. It was a poor place. The room of the palace in which I had hung was bigger than the whole house. His wife would put one little candle in me, just to see me glow, but she would soon snuff it out, because they didn’t have much money and couldn’t afford to waste candles. One little candle! The humiliation was almost more than I could bear. I didn’t look at what happened beneath me, I didn’t care what the man and his wife and their four little children thought when they looked up at me, didn’t care if they took pleasure from my glow. Still I had only one thought, to have died with the others in the palace. Then the man got sick, and couldn’t work, and his wife had no money, so she sold me back to the man who bought and sold lamps. ‘Back again?’ asked the others, and I was so angry and humiliated that I couldn’have spoken even if I had wanted to.
