by B Catling
The next course smelt like the crystals that the servants used to clean the water-chamber porcelain. He started to gag. The movement roused him and he awoke in the damp mulch of leaves and the naked surface roots of the tree that signified his despair. The glowing table and the gentle candles were gone; twilight had begun to exhale from the trees. Dread swamped him as he bolted into the understanding that this was not the dream.
He stood up and tried to collect himself, tears filling his eyes and choking his swallowing breath. He walked aimlessly away, needing to escape this immediate place that had been the site of declaration, the horrible trees that had witnessed the realisation of his sentence; he had to rid himself of their mocking indifference.
The aftertaste of the acrid food lingered as he pushed through the cool, wet leaves. He found a hollow in one of the long-dead oaks and crawled inside its stiff embrace, the hard fungi breaking off against his shoulders. He scrabbled around to face the outside, the Derringer in one hand and a small camping knife in the other. By the time night finally arrived, he had steeled himself for its attack.
The forest grew dim as the shadows lengthened into one continuous form. The world outside of the tree was beyond dark, but constantly moving; blue blurs matted with the dense blackness of distance. Things slid and rustled, crawled and flapped, in the infinite depth of closeness. He held his hand before his face to test the old adage. It was true – he could not see it – yet the ebony fluid in his eyes sensed all manner of things swirling within a terrifying proximity. A prayer almost found its way to his lips. It began in the icy fear of his heart, the ventricles white with the frost of anticipation, and travelled outwards to become a pressure, like wind against the meat sails of his lungs. Funnelling up, it passed like a shadow through the rehearsal of his vocal cords, up into his mouth, tongue and lips, before being garrotted by the thin, taut wire of his mind. No heart word would ever pass that frontier unchecked; not even a hollow, sapless tree was allowed to hear that hypocrisy.
Towards what might be dawn, he slept. By the morning, no creature had worried him, and a vague sense of hope had begun to return. Perhaps he could survive? Maybe he had some deep, inspired understanding of the wilderness. Many great explorers underestimated their gift until confronted by extreme adversity; his inventive mind may be capable of transcending these base afflictions. Other, lesser beings had triumphed before when tested thus.
He was beginning to feel the warm flood of confidence, when he saw his boots. They had been hand-made in Marseille, adventure boots, worn to confound and conquer the savage lands. The straps that held them in place had been eaten through, gnawed away, so that only stubs remained either side of the nibbled leather tongue. He sat bolt upright to observe the outrage, wiping the morning dew from his eyes and face. It was sticky and pungent. He looked at what he had removed and sank with the realisation that it wasn’t dew: it was saliva. He was soaked in it. He scrabbled to his feet, banging his head and knees against the rough interior of the gnarled oak, causing a shower of dry fungi to crumble and snow about his departure. He lurched out of the tree’s vertical enclosure, flailing at his wet clothes and his soggy hair in a pathetic attempt to wipe the mess away. His indifferent boots became loose and vacant, twisting away from his agitated feet, so that he stumbled over them on the wet, thorny ground, which grabbed at his socks and bare ankles. He yelped, hopped and slid, falling face down into a gully full of mud and harsh stones, the Derringer firing a deafening, burning blast.
He lay there, hoping he was dead. Nothing had ever been as bad as this; his Paris apartment seemed like a dream he had never had. Then, with the pistol’s fire still ringing in his ears, he heard Seil Kor’s voice, far off but distinct.
‘Seil Kor!’ he bellowed frantically. ‘Seil Kor!’ He called again and again, and then got a clear reply.
‘Do not move, effendi! Just call, I will come to you.’
This they did for hours, without success. Sometimes his voice seemed further away, lost in the depths and twists of the vast, impenetrable forest’s endless animal trails. Two or three times, the Frenchman heard something move in the thickets of trunks and leaves, but it was not his salvation; more likely, it was his demise stalking him, the recent taste of his body on its breath. He plucked the reloaded Derringer from his pocket and turned a full circle. Then he saw it. Far back in the trees, a hunched, grey creature was watching him. He could not make out its form; it might even have been human. A twig snapped behind the Frenchman and he span in the opposite direction.
‘Effendi!’
Seil Kor was coming towards him, parting the leaves with a purposeful grace.
He rushed to the tall figure and flung his arms around him, bursting into tears, his diminutive, brightly robed body shaking against the protection of the quiet black man. He was saved. Then he remembered the thing watching him, and he untangled himself, looking back to see if it was still there. It had moved to a point a little further away, shadowed but still watching. He clutched Seil Kor with one hand and pointed with the other.
‘Do you see it?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but I wish I did not.’
‘What is it?’
There was a long pause while Seil Kor again made the gesture of moving his hand above his head. The creature moved into a patch of bright light. It was a kind of human. Its skin was grey and wrinkled, like that of a primate deprived of fur. It was motionless in their observation.
‘What is it?’ he asked again.
‘I fear it is Adam,’ answered Seil Kor.
The Frenchman coughed out a single, uncontrollable laugh. Its nervous splutter startled the creature, who loped into the foliage.
‘Adam?’ said the Frenchman, the sound of the laugh still wet in his mouth.
There was no sound from Seil Kor, whose drooped eyes were full of remorse.
‘Seil Kor?’
There was still no answer.
‘Seil Kor, that animal is barely human. How can it be Adam? He would be thousands of years old by now.’
‘The Bible says that Adam died,’ said Seil Kor. ‘It even says that the tree planted on his grave grew into the wood that became the true cross.’ He looked out into the trees and started to walk away from the place of the sighting. ‘We must go. We have come too far.’
The Frenchman tried to follow, but had to stop to retrieve his gnawed shoes, slipping them on loosely and trying to hold them in place with his bunched toes.
‘Please, wait!’ he called ahead.
Seil Kor stopped walking, his back towards the shuffling dandy. As the Frenchman drew near, he began to walk on, without a word or any indication that they were travelling together. His pace was slow to allow the Frenchman to follow. He seemed to know where they were and where he was going. After many awkward moments and several turns they reached a broader path. The widening space vented some of the tension between them, and the Frenchman’s queries bubbled uncontrollably to the surface.
‘Please, Seil Kor, tell me more,’ he implored. ‘I assure you I will listen this time.’ He looked beseechingly at his guide, who considered him evenly before slowly beginning to speak.
‘There are different Bibles, with different tales,’ said Seil Kor. ‘In these regions, the truth is told. Adam was never completely forgiven; his sons and daughter left this place and occupied the world. He waited for God, waited for forgiveness and for his rib to grow back. But he became tired of waiting, and walked back into the forest. The angels that protected the tree let him pass because there was nothing else for him to do in that sacred place. But, in his absence, God forgot him and so he has remained. Each century he loses a skin of humanity, peeling back through the animals to dust. This is what I was reading to you, when you went away.’
There was real upset in Seil Kor’s voice, and for the first time the Frenchman realised that his affections for the young man were reciprocated. All that nonsense about Eden had been his way of bringing them closer.
‘I did not understand bef
ore,’ he said. ‘Will you forgive me, and tell me more of your wondrous book?’
Seil Kor turned, looking deep into his companion. ‘You have much to learn,’ he said, smiling slowly, ‘and I will teach you. But we must leave this place quickly.’
The Frenchman took his outstretched hand and they walked together through the flickering foliage.
* * *
Exactly one hour later, they returned. The hall was empty and quiet. The thing’s eyes were mercifully closed.
‘It’s alright,’ said Hoffman, ‘they are content. Let’s take the child and lock up.’
Maclish conceded, but looked puzzled. ‘Where’s the bag?’ he said, his eyes scanning the room.
‘Oh god, not again!’ groaned Hoffman, stooping to look under the table.
‘They’ve taken it, haven’t they?!’ Maclish exclaimed. ‘The stupid fuckers have taken the bag!’ He was not a man famous for laughing and it sounded odd, somehow, solid and unused, as it erupted from him, the hallways listening to it in concentrated surprise.
There was a scrap of cloth left on the table and the doctor used part of it to cover the face of the tiny form, fashioning the remainder into a weak sling to carry it away. The idea of the Limboia cherishing such a garish, effeminate bag was unbelievably comic, and they left in a mild hysteria, the keeper still smirking uncontrollably.
The doctor had been right. The Limboia were contented, working in the forest with an even greater vigour than before. All seemed to return to normal, in the most abnormal of situations. And then Mrs. Klausen was reported missing.
The rumours arrived just ahead of the police. Her hypochondriacal visit to the doctor had occurred two days before she disappeared, leaving her home and servants without money or explanation. The Die Kripo officers told the doctor all the details, and he told them even more: cysts, headaches, womb pains, night perspirations; varicose veins, haemorrhoids, allergic distress; breast lumps, vapours and all of the other symptoms he had been invited to probe over the years. He showed them files and medical records and they left, satisfied, but with no new directions. He sat down in the consulting room, a blackness flapping in the pit of his stomach. The beating fear had a shape, and it was brightly embroidered.
‘We must ask him,’ he pleaded of the Scotsman.
‘Ask him what?’
‘What they did with the bag.’
Maclish no longer found the Limboia’s appropriation of the bag so amusing. The herald was brought down into the central hall, where he stood vacantly, like one hanging on the thickness of the air. His speech had deteriorated since the last time they met; he was not reluctant to answer their questions, but his replies were slow and suspended.
‘You give Orm scent from looking, looking inside. After Orm wear it, went out, hollowed for you, all gone.’
Maclish and Hoffman looked at each other, desperately hoping they had misunderstood. They whispered to each other and Hoffman asked, ‘Was the scent that of a female?’
‘Scent is spoor, is animal trail for looking out.’
‘Where did it go to?’ cried Maclish.
‘Vorrh.’
‘That’s impossible,’ the doctor said incredulously. ‘Mrs Klausen would never go there – I don’t think she’s ever left Essenwald!’
‘Orm hollowed out for you and looking one. Hollow to nothing, nothing left inside, only the rind walked into Vorrh to nothing,’ the herald said, smiling. He bowed to the startled men as the understanding of what they had done began to seep into them, their eyes meeting in the fearful perception of what they had released, and how its hunger could end up devouring them all.
As they left the building, the herald remained in his stooped pose, head bent obsequiously and the smile fixed to his unwavering face.
* * *
Ghertrude was feeling lonely and out of step with her life. Since the end of the carnival, and Ishmael’s departure, everything had seemed dimmer and without flavour. She felt flat and unexcited by the city and her diminishing secret in it.
She turned the corner into Kühler Brunnen and was nearing the house, head down and mind elsewhere, when she almost collided with a figure standing at the gate. The woman was taller and older than Ghertrude, with eyes she would never forget. They looked down at her, absorbing every particle of sight, every ounce of meaning. She had obviously been waiting for her.
‘Mistress Tulp!’ she beamed, in a triumph that seemed without reason. ‘Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Cyrena Lohr,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘I believe our families are already acquainted? May I call you Ghertrude?’
She had heard of this woman: everybody had; if not before the miracle of the carnival, then certainly after. She suddenly knew that they had met once before, when she was a child and the beautiful, blind stranger was put in her care at one of the grand parties of the city’s gentry. Or perhaps it had been the other way around? But there was certainly a memory of vast rooms and music, of being separate and in the company of an elegant, blind woman. She remembered being able to stare at her, to examine her without politeness, and to think about what blindness meant for the first time. Her sight then had probed the blackness of the beautiful, dead eyes, which were now more than alive and staring down at her.
‘Of course, Miss Lohr,’ she answered to the barely remembered question.
‘Then you must call me Cyrena, if we are to be friends.’
Ghertrude was taken aback by the speed of this assumption, and was about to answer when she realised that Cyrena was staring at the locked door.
‘Oh, I am sorry, please do come in,’ she said, fumbling for the keys in her pockets.
Inside, they sat at the kitchen table and talked about their mutual acquaintances, their memories and experiences of being the city’s chosen daughters. Ghertrude’s uncertainty at their introduction was beginning to pass when, without warning, Cyrena smiled and broke all the rules.
‘Forgive me, my dear, for asking such a taboo question, but I simply must know: who did escort you to the beginning of the carnival frivolities?’
Ghertrude fluttered and flushed, while trying to remain calm and indifferent. The hungry eyes saw all and pressed harder.
‘I am not asking you to be indiscreet or break a confidence, but I owe something to the gentleman concerned and I am anxious to pay.’
‘Are you sure we are talking about the same person?’ questioned Ghertrude, clutching at straws and finding it impossible to conceive of any situation where the unlikely pair may have met.
‘I do hope so,’ said Cyrena. She described the costume without ever having seen it. She described it well, and Ghertrude’s blush turned to an anxious pale. Cyrena saw the truth behind her blanching and knew her game had been cornered.
‘His name is Ishmael,’ Ghertrude said reluctantly. ‘He was my friend; he lived in this house.’
‘Lived?’ repeated Cyrena. ‘Where is he now?’
‘He left weeks ago, I don’t know where for,’ she lied.
The older woman stood abruptly, obviously agitated. Ghertrude approached her and touched her shivering arm.
‘Why do you need to find him?’ she asked.
The unwavering eyes locked on hers with an indescribable eeriness.
‘It was he who gave me my sight,’ she said.
The sharp, rank electricity stung her nose and slapped her brain. She instinctively tried to push the glass bottle away from her airway, but Cyrena held it there firmly until the smelling salts had proved to work. Ghertrude gasped for breath as the older woman held her firmly in the upright chair, one hand on Ghertrude’s forehead and her other arm hugging the woozy younger lady across her back.
‘It’s all right, my dear, you have only fainted,’ she said.
The nauseous zebra vision ceased and Ghertrude bounced back to the dazed reality of Cyrena’s revelation. ‘Ishmael did that,’ she whispered. ‘But how?’
Reseating herself at the table, Cyrena began to explain the situation of that ama
zing night. She explained it frankly, and perhaps with too much detail. This time, they both blushed but she continued with the extraordinary story, and Ghertrude’s mind slowly accustomed itself to the depth of Ishmael’s festive experiences. As Cyrena related the exquisite interactions of their encounter, Ghertrude began to realise the terrible truth of the event, the one feature that couldn’t have been exchanged by their actions alone. She wished she could undo her involvement, but it was too late; nothing should be held back now. There was no place for deception or half-truths between them.
‘Did…’ Ghertrude hesitated, throwing a sidelong glance at her new friend. ‘I only wondered… did you never see his face?’
The younger woman took charge of the smelling salts. Cyrena had not fainted, but the news had sent her reeling back, like a short, sharp punch to the chest.
‘You mean he was born with only one eye?’ she gaped.
‘Yes. It is here, in the centre of his face.’ Ghertrude pointed to the area just above her nose. ‘It takes time,’ she said gently, ‘but you get used to it. After a while, you only see him.’
‘But, there was no sign that he was so deformed; I had no idea! The mask, the mask… it… he felt normal!’ Cyrena ran out of words as she remembered the events of that night and struggled to hold back tears.
‘He is not like us,’ Ghertrude said, shaking her head. ‘Not like us at all.’
The day passed. Ghertrude fetched a bottle of Madeira and two glasses. They sat by a window as they drank, watching the sun set over the Vorrh. She told the stranger, fast becoming a friend, much about their life together in 4 Kühler Brunnen, but not about the beginning. Though she ached to tell somebody of the abnormalities in the basement, to share that impossible truth, she knew that, without any evidence, she would sound deranged, incredible. Who would ever believe such a story? She looked at Cyrena: might it be her? Might this strong, clever woman, who made her feel child-like again and curiously protected, be understanding of such a tale?
