by B Catling
Any further questioning the Frenchman may have been tempted towards had been silenced. They parted ways, agreeing to meet the next morning and begin their journey to the lip of the Vorrh.
He returned to his servants and found their hotel, solidly located at the centre of the city, on sturdy roads where all dust was banished. That night, the Frenchman had hardly spoken to Charlotte. Lying on his bed, listening to the moonlit sounds outside, he had prayed for sleep. He wanted to dream in biblical weight and in the brightness of a lush garden, untenanted by man for thousands of years. But the dreams that awaited him were without pity, and had the predatory grace of a jackal.
* * *
The quietness of the house thrilled her, heightening her expectations and making tiptoeing from room to room all the more delicious. She opened doors slowly against her discovery, moving with a certitude that caressed the moment. Searching in the complete freedom of night only served to increase her pleasure.
Some years before, she had read ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ in its third impression, taking in Poe’s description of cunning, and standing alongside as his protagonist crept in to watch the victim sleeping. She had marvelled at his ability to describe such a contained act of evil against the common, dull speed of life; how he had known the precision of stealth, and could put into words the silent, skilful malice. The modern American author’s little story had moved her and given her hope. Even though it had almost been spoilt by a suggestion of mania, she knew that he truly understood the control and vision of a superior intellect, one which was ultimately engaged in the divinity of its own development.
Now, in this old, empty house, she could practise her own talent. Armed with a bullseye lamp, she listened for the sound of humans, that whisper of movement and breath that always betrayed their presence. Her ears strained for any sign of them, but heard none of the faintness of life. Convinced she was alone in the mansion, she let her feet settle out of stealth. As she moved quickly through the lower passage, she almost missed the locked door to the basement.
Raising her lamp to inspect her collection of steel pins, she found two that were twisted in the right deception, and applied them to the brass eye. She made the usual turns of leverage, yet nothing shifted. She changed the picks for a sturdier set; this lock was different, its inner workings more resistant, possibly newer. She mumbled under her breath as she strained. It should not be this difficult; what was she doing wrong? She stopped, and listened to the empty house again. Nothing had changed, so she inserted the picks and suddenly realised what was different: it was a sinister latching, a set of left-handed tumblers, cunningly set in a right-handed lock. She turned the probes upside-down and twisted them against all logic. It yielded.
She opened the door and found herself in a distinctly separate space at the top of a flight of stairs, peering into the murky depths of the basement. Its entrance was in keeping with everything she’d already seen, but the difference in its atmosphere was plain – something in it lived. The palms of her hands became damp and her mouth was suddenly parched. She felt thrilled and nauseated at the same time. She had not seen, heard or smelt the change, but every fibre of her sentient being told her she was no longer alone. Another indicator tinged her already heightened senses, poised, as they were, on the brink of discovery: warmth. A minute rise in temperature had perfumed the static, neutral musk of absence. Someone was down there, hiding under the house.
* * *
Ishmael’s demands to practise mating had increasingly punctuated their daily lessons; his diet had been adapted accordingly, to compensate for his change in habits and his loss of fluids and minerals. The eternality of Luluwa’s patience had been clarified by her limitation of function, a trait which had, evidently, endowed her with a continuous enthusiasm for all things.
Some days they mated for hours. The others walked around and about their action, carrying food and lessons, ignoring them or sitting and watching, mildly bewildered by the energy and repetition of the acts. On one occasion, Seth adjusted their angle, to prevent them from sliding off the table on which they shuffled so.
Ishmael still learned from the crates, but his preference was for the damp, wordless classes, his enthusiasm limitless, until fatigue slowed him to sleep. Luluwa would then put him to bed, darkening the room and lowering the heat. She swaddled him in a deep, aching sleep before leaving the sanctity of their chamber to go into the house itself, silently entering the basement kitchen, where humans had once lived. She removed the casements of her internal mechanisms and cleansed them in the ancient porcelain sink. She did this in the dark, because machines do not need light to function, even when they have been given only one good eye.
* * *
The sound of the water made Ghertrude start. Now she really knew there was someone else there, that she was the trespasser. She also knew that, whoever they were, they did not wish to be found out; their clandestine tenancy was evidence enough. Yet her excitement outweighed any trepidation over her crime, and anyway, nobody would ever lay a hand on a Tulp.
The water stopped. Her attuned hearing caught the sound of a door’s latch and she followed it down the staircase, elevating her long body and trying to become weightless, her toes delicately testing each step for betrayal before trusting it with her load.
It took her over an hour to make the descent, by which time dawn had begun to murmur through the night. The old basement kitchen was vast and empty. Dim spider-light filtered in from the high windows on the east side. The garden above was overgrown at its edges; matted vines, dusty leaves and a gauze of webs flavoured the light on its journey downwards into the still room. She stood in the doorway and listened. Nothing. For the first time, she felt a chill of unease – not fear, but a slight soaring of the thrill that she was so enjoying. She looked around the room to gauge its current purpose and count the doors. Between the marble table and the hatchway of the dumbwaiter were the remains of a crate. Splinters of wood and a short crowbar had been discarded, probably by that fool Mutter. Then she saw the light in the cupboard; the door was too small to be anything else. She crouched down to examine its closeness. There was no keyhole or handle; it sat flush against the wall. It would once have been undetectable, so snug that it would have been impossible to see. But age had loosened its boundaries, so that now a sliver of light proclaimed its other side.
Putting the lamp down, she picked up the crowbar and, without hesitation, levered the stoic door open. Not a cupboard, but a curving, downwardly spiralling corridor appeared before her. She bent her height into its tunnel and started to walk-crawl, making her way down its length.
Unaware of her imminence, Abel and Luluwa were in the dim sleeping room with the quietly snoring Ishmael, tending to various details for the next day’s class – ‘Lesson 314: The Signatures of Trees’. Aklia was in an adjacent room, her concentration engaged with an open crate, her head cocked and staring into it, as if reading something contained within. Seth was charging in the rack, receiving energy for the next day.
Neither Abel nor Luluwa noticed the door in the wall begin to open; they did not register its occupant, as she attempted to make out their form. As her eyes became accustomed to the room beyond the light of the corridor, her brain tried to make sense of her discovery. It allowed for tricks of perspective, it suggested illusions brought on by tiredness, it even prompted dream as an explanation for what she now saw. But reality slid its frozen tentacle along her spine and she winced with a reaction of revulsion, fear and hunger.
Her involuntary spasm unhinged the door, sending it flapping into the startled room. The brother and sister jumped to attention, blocking her view of the waking boy, adopting a predatory stance of defence, half-crouching, braced like cats. Ghertrude eased herself into the room, propelled by the wonder of this unique moment and too fearful to turn her back on the small, lithe creatures. She slowly unfolded herself into the space, holding the crowbar poised at breast height like a hesitant truncheon. Her head touched the ceiling; the
creatures came up as high as her shoulder. As the morning light continued to rise, she saw that they were not creatures but machines, and the twisted reflex of her superiority felt secure. Her rind of confidence was gaining a voice, and she was just about to speak when Abel opened his jaws and let loose a high, sibilant shrill. Aklia and Seth appeared at once in the far doorway, both in the same stance as their kin. Ishmael, awakened by the commotion, rubbed at his face and turned sleepily into the conflict. His somnolence evaporated the moment he saw Ghertrude blocking the exit. Her face provoked horror, and he drily retched at her deformity: she had two eyes.
For a moment, everything in the room was locked rigid in an icy tension. Only Ishmael’s gagging divided its glacier of time.
Then he feebly warbled, ‘Oh, oh help!’
Abel became unleashed by the pathetic command and took three fast paces towards Ghertrude, his eye glaring at her pale, looming face. The other Kin converged behind him. He was within a metre of her, and closing, when the crowbar splintered his neck and shoulder. His head clattered across the floor, still attached to a sliver of his upper torso, the mouth chattering wildly, the single eye spinning in his cracked face. His body fell to its knees and stiffened, causing a judder to slop his interior cream out of the jagged rim of his fractured body. Even in the midst of action, Ghertrude was instantly reminded of her dissections of beetles, years before. The same brittle carapace splitting under her blade, the same white pus escaping from the hollow of the shell. It had slipped over the chocolate-brown edge and splashed on the tiled floor.
The others were now making the same sound as the splintered head, chattering their hard gums together, working uncontrollably. Ghertrude’s teeth rattled in unison, infected by the noise coming from these devices and the horribly deformed child, crouching in its metal cot. But the staccato of her teeth was imbued with the adrenaline of exhilaration, so that its insistence dominated the choir.
The boy moaned and covered his eye against the ugliness of the giantess’ symmetry. Suddenly, the Kin retreated, walking backwards, without turning, towards the far door; stepping with delicate poise, never taking their eyes from the invader, still half-crouched as if for attack, but reversing, rewound. They reached the door and disappeared beyond it. Luluwa was the last to leave and, just before she disappeared forever, she glanced at the boy, who felt her eye but turned too late to see her. All that was left of his protectors was the door, closing behind them.
* * *
He had awoken drenched in sweat, his pillow turned pink – dazed, he searched his head and body for a wound which might explain the stained fabric, but nothing could be found.
The dream had hollowed him; no trace of rest remained as he crawled into the morning, defeated and abused. Hot water did nothing; the stain of the night was indelible. He dressed grudgingly, tightly buttoning himself into a costume of scratchy, irritant lies. With one gulp of black, bitter coffee, he walked out of his room and into the day, speaking to nobody. Outside the hotel, the heat had waited, ready to pounce.
Seil Kor stood in the shadow of a palm tree across the street. ‘Bonjour, effendi!’ he called, one hand waving in the intense blue sky, as the blindingly white suit stepped into the sun. The Frenchman, barely able to get into his stride, had found himself exuberantly propelled along the street.
‘We go directly to the Vorrh,’ said his acquaintance. ‘But on our way, I want to show you something.’
He mumbled agreement but was inwardly horrified by the idea of walking. He had had no intention of making the journey on foot, yet discovered himself being dragged down the main road of the filthy town by a stranger. His irritation began to rise with the heat of the day; the claws of his previous night were prickling, envious and alive.
Walking on the raised wooden pavement, under arcades of curved sandstone, he was reminded of the precise architectural splendours of Bern, where he had spent some time with his mother, shopping in the days before Christmas, the snow falling without intention, light and constant. Not a single flake had touched them as they moved from shop to precious shop, the vaulted Altstadt offering a snug tunnel of civilised proportions, the pleasure of warm cinnamon wine and pine trees scenting the frosted air.
As suddenly as he’d fallen into the fantasy, the perversity of the comparison had spat back, giving him no time to relish or ponder; his own mechanism of creative invention had turned on him once again. It had begun to happen more and more by then; the brilliance of his literary deceit had a vindictive twin, who could not see why his little word game, if it was so clever, should only function in his languid fiction. Each day it had started to apply the same rules of composition and invention to his life, twisting pleasure and experience into worthless jokes. It grabbed at his memories and perverted them with elaborate motivations, succulent in their weirdness, making stupidity and pride fuck on the hallowed ground of his genius. Here, everything was made of rotting wood and was held together by the stink of collapse. It was nothing like the elegance of Switzerland; even the grand stone houses paled into insignificance.
His irritation had mounted, turning inwards with a voracious glee. It chased him with accusations: the base of the comparisons had been exhaled from some dim childish sentiment – surely it should have been beaten out of him years earlier? And what was he doing there, anyway? He never left his rooms or his car, why had he agreed to meet this stupid savage?
So it had continued. A swarm of flies buzzed around his head, a halo of carrion, just to emphasise the point. He spluttered one out of his mouth, waving his hands about wildly to fend the others off and dropping his cane, which clattered off the boardwalk and into the soiled road. Seil Kor only laughed at his new friend’s pantomime. Indignant at the best of times, the Frenchman was entangled by an instant rage, and spat abuse into the face of the ignorant black peasant. Nothing happened. Seil Kor did not register shock or anger. He hadn’t even flinched, but converted his open laugh into a serious, frowning smile and waited.
The hiss of the final expletives drained away; the Frenchman was ready to turn and stomp back to the hotel when, with a smooth and simple action, Seil Kor took a fine, silken scarf from his head, and loosely knotted it about the red and raging throat of the small man before him. The world dropped away. The blue of the linen and the sky melted together, a fresh breeze cooling his heart and soothing his mind.
With all the venom and distress gone, Seil Kor took his hand and led him on, bringing them to the doors of a nearby church. He directed his dazed companion inside, and they sat in the cool of the interior, on one of the dark, carved pews. The Frenchman tried to find words of apology, but it had been so long since he’d used them that he remained dumb.
‘I have brought you here to understand the Vorrh,’ said his guide. ‘This house of God is for those travellers who pass near its sacred heart. The Desert Fathers founded this church before one stone was laid on another, before even a single tree was cut. They came out of Egypt like the prophets of old, came to guard and wait, to protect us and those travelling through us.’
The Frenchman looked around the chapel. Images of trees dominated the iconography; trees and caves. Black, kohl-rimmed eyes stared out of a face that looked like it had been carved with an axe. Dark, shoulder-length hair and a tangled beard framed the whiteness of the Father’s staring expression. In one hand he held a bible, in the other a staff. He sat in a cave, surrounded by the deep green of an impenetrable forest. The scene had been set on a square piece of thick and gnarled wood. The Frenchman stared at the icon while the tall black man spoke over his head.
‘The Vorrh was here before man,’ he said. ‘The hand of God swept over this land without hesitation. Trees grew in its great shadow of knowing, of abundance. The old silence of stones was replaced by the silence of wood, which is not quiet. A place for man was made, to breathe and be thankful. A garden was opened at the centre of the shadow and the Vorrh was given an occupant. He is still there.’
The Frenchman’s eyes unlatche
d from the gaze of the saint. He turned to look up at Seil Kor. ‘The Bible says the children of Adam left the sacred lands and moved into the world.’
Seil Kor made a gesture over his own head, a cross between wafting a scent and stroking a halo. ‘Yes, so it is written – but Adam returned.’
They continued to talk while the heat of the day prowled around the chapel. The Frenchman had given up the last remnant of sexual desire for his companion. It had been present from the start, a rich, thick musk of fantasy that had excited their meetings. He had seen no reason, initially, why he should not possess the black prince, and add him to the list of urchins, sailors and criminals who had spiced the gutter of his sexual greed. He was handsome, and presumably well-endowed; his obvious poverty would have made him easy to purchase for a short time.
But the words in Seil Kor’s mouth – the certainty of his vision and the kindness in his eyes – had washed away those stewed perfumes, replacing them with an ethereal distance that shocked back the very pride and circulation of his vital cynicism. The tired ghost of his ennui had been offered colour and hope. He had begun to sense, with some fear, that Seil Kor tasted of redemption. He even found himself giving weight to the ludicrous myths of the Vorrh, and the salvation that might shudder in them. They talked of the serpent sin, of deliverance, of the starry crown, and the origin of purpose; Adam’s house in paradise, his generations, Eve’s punishment, and all the crimes of knowledge. During those moments, his eyes had wandered back to the saint, and to his brothers lining the walls. He took in the black and white prints of angels; some he’d recognised as being pages from a book, torn and framed excerpts of Gustave Doré’s visions of heaven and hell. The images were solid, almost marble in appearance, so different from the glowering Desert Father patriarchs of the icons, who all had the same eyes, an impossible combination of tempera infinity and point-blank, chiselled authority. It had occurred to him that Seil Kor had younger versions of the same eyes, and that they would mature into that same gaze of stern wisdom.
