Ollie's Cloud

by Gary Lindberg

  Or perhaps Ollie has not forgotten at all but stubbornly refuses to acknowledge these and many other mileposts of his life.

  The carriage is passing the institution. Oliver dreams of the future and tries to bury the past. It is one way to conquer pain—the simple act of sweeping aside the cause. If Ollie were to remember, the pain would surface and blister his consciousness.

  Ollie has almost buried the past, but not quite. And so, before the carriage rounds the corner, Master Chadwick turns to look backward one more time, just before the newly named Tim Shaw Orphanage disappears from sight.

  Chapter 28

  Kazim scoops a handful of dirt. He packs it gently around the base of a rose bush in the garden outside the Shaykhi school in Karbala. A great sadness weighs on him. He looks up, wipes a trickle of perspiration from his forehead, and notices the subtle shape of a spirit approaching the school. The slow, trudging figure, made thin and watery by the rising heat waves, slowly advances.

  Kazim sits back on his haunches, feels an odd buzzing in his head. An expectation of something. A recognition.

  The solitary figure continues to advance and Kazim feels the sadness draining from his body. How he can identify a man he has never met he cannot understand, but he is quite certain that the approaching figure is someone who has been expected for quite some time.

  He wants to rush out and embrace this person but instead merely rises and brushes the soil from his hands, his stomach rumbling with excitement.

  The figure is now close enough to see that he is a young man wearing the garments of a mulla. The anticipation is killing Kazim but he holds his ground.

  What if this is just some road-weary cleric passing by? Don’t make a fool of yourself! He remains motionless.

  The young cleric approaches and speaks. “Is this the Shaykhi school?” he asks with a smile.

  “Yes it is.” Kazim’s throat is suddenly dry and he has to push out the hoarse words.

  “I’m looking for a friend of mine, Muhammad Kujiri. I’ve traveled a great distance to see him.”

  “Then you must be Jalal. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Mulla Jalal,” the young man says, smiling proudly. “I’ve completed my studies in Mashhad.”

  “Congratulations! I am Siyyid Kazim.” The school master reaches out at last and embraces the young man, who seems suddenly surprised.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I had no idea who you were or I would have shown more respect,” Jalal says, dropping to his knees.

  Embarrassed, Kazim pulls the young man to his feet. “I appreciate the gesture, but it’s unnecessary. As I understand it, you will be joining us here.”

  “I’ve been waiting a long time. I hope I won’t disappoint you.”

  “I’m sure you won’t. There were times, you know, when Kujiri seemed to think that you might be the Promised One.”

  “The Qa’im? I can’t imagine why—”

  “No matter. He certainly held you in high regard.”

  “I’d like to see him. Is he here?”

  Kazim looks at his feet for a moment, then with sad eyes gazes at Jalal, who understands immediately.

  “When did he die?” Jalal asks.

  “Last week. More than anything in the world he wanted to see you again, but he had grown very old and weak. Finally he passed away working in the garden, right here. But he’s still here with us,” Kazim says.

  “You mean his spirit?”

  “I mean Kujiri.” Kazim looks down at the garden. “He is buried here, among his cherished flowers. He wanted the garden to be in its most glorious condition when you arrived.”

  Jalal looks down at the soft soil and says, “What garden can be more glorious than this?”

  PART 3

  New York 1841

  Chapter 1

  The image is bright and clear but upside down. The corpse seems tethered to the ground by a taut rope, as if it were being lifted feet first into the air, pulled upward perhaps by the hand of God but held earthbound by the connivances of Satan. Caught in the void between heaven and hell.

  The red-haired man seems satisfied with his composition but fiddles with the focus of his lens. There! Now even the mop of hair that hangs from the dead man’s puffy head is sharply defined. You could almost count the strands.

  The photographer stares intently at the viewing glass, studying the bloated face, feeling safe behind the projected image as if he were somehow shielded from the reality of the gallows. Seeing the image inscribed by light on glass is very much like viewing a daguerreotype at an exhibition. It is one step removed from the physical object that bent light into its own faithful reproduction.

  The hanging man suddenly gasps! Not dead, not yet. The photographer jumps! A great roar from the crowd announces the horror of it. The short fall through the trap door and sharp twang of the rope should have snapped the victim’s neck, bringing about a mercifully quick death, but the noose had been misaligned. The poor victim is strangling.

  Then all is still again. This is important, because the long exposure time for capturing the image on a metal plate requires the absolute absence of motion. That’s why the dead make such good subjects; they seldom move.

  The photographer waits to see if the hanging man moves again. Nothing. Good! He removes the viewing glass from the camera obscura, replaces the lens cap, reaches into a leather satchel and with graceful, practiced moves takes out a rectangular plateholder. Through a hinged opening on the top of the camera he inserts the plateholder, then pulls up the dark-slide to expose the magical plate itself.

  A small breeze has blown up and the dead man begins to rotate slightly at the end of his rope. Frustrated, the photographer abandons his position of safety and marches to the gallows, steadying the man.

  The breeze stops.

  Now the photographer can make his picture. The sun is shining into the opening beneath the gallows floor where the dead man hangs. Perfect light. It is all about light, this photography business.

  The photographer gently removes the lens cap, which acts as a shutter, and counts out five seconds. Experience tells him to add one more. One thousand six. Done! The lens cap is replaced. The dark-slide is plunged downward. Job finished.

  “Thank you,” he says to the patient New York City officials who quickly lift the dead man and slip him out of the noose. The crowd seems almost as entertained by the photography as by the hanging. They have seen executions before, but never a picture being made.

  As the red-haired man packs up his contraptions, a tall well-dressed gentleman approaches with a question. “Do you make pictures of living things, too?” the man says, his words crispened by a faint English accent.

  “So long as they don’t move,” the photographer replies. “Odd thing is, the few times I made portraits of living men, they looked dead. Something about holding a pose for twenty seconds that sucks the life out of you.” He continues to pack things away. “Do you find documenting the dead to be macabre or merely distasteful?” Clearly the photographer has suffered his share of verbal attacks on his chosen line of work.

  “Less macabre, I believe, than watching life expunged as an amusement. And what will you do with a picture of a hanging man?”

  “It’s for the newspaper. Dead murderers sell papers. I used to make drawings. ”

  “An artist, too?”

  “My true calling. Look, I had permission to make this picture so if you’re going to lecture me…”

  “I wouldn’t think of it, my good man.” Ollie’s affable interruption catches the photographer off guard. “I was hoping that you could lecture me. You see, I’m quite interested in this field of endeavor. It’s quite new, I’m sure. Even in London we’ve not seen it yet, though it’s been talked about. How on earth were you so fortunate as to fall into it here in New York?”

  The photographer stands up and looks at the Englishman skeptically. What does this fellow want? In New York, everyone has a selfish motive. The ingratiating smile that greets hi
m, though, seems genuine enough. He decides to play along for a time.

  “As I said, I was an artist. Illustrations, mainly, for the New York Times. Portraits. Buildings. The occasional corpse. But when I heard about this discovery, my curiosity got the better of me.” The photographer kneels down and continues to pack up his apparatus. “I was doing a sketch of Professor Morse at New York University. The paper wanted an article about that extraordinary man of science—quite an inventor, he is. They wanted a portrait to go with it. While I was sketching away with my little pencils the Professor suddenly looked up at me and said, ‘I have a better idea.’ My name’s Jonathon, by the way. Jonathon Fury.”

  Jonathon picks up two small metal images, the output of his camera, and hands them to the Englishman who looks at them in wonderment, and says, “I’m Oliver Chadwick, also in the newspaper business—London Times.” Ollie hands the pictures back to Jonathon. “Fury, that’s quite an interesting name.”

  “Not my real name, to be sure. I was an orphan. Irish, which you can plainly see from my red locks. The family that took me in didn’t want to keep me, but figured I should have a name. Just not their name, seeing as how they were going to give me to someone else eventually. So they took a look at my angry hair and said I looked burnin’-up furious. I was a fury, they said. What a good name! I’ve been Jonathon Fury ever since.”

  “And are you? A fury?”

  “With a couple of pints in me.”

  “Could you use a pint now? I’m buying.”

  Under the load of two satchels, a large oak camera case and an iron center tripod, the pair trudges down the street to Wilkie’s, a local tavern favored by bankers and shopkeepers. Inside, a tart-tongued barmaid fetches two mugs of amber ale for Oliver and his new acquaintance.

  “You were saying about Professor Morse…” Ollie says.

  “Yes, yes, quite a gentleman. Great things yet to come from him, I’m sure.”

  “He invented the process you are using?”

  “Not actually. While he was visiting Paris in, let’s see, 1839—he made the acquaintance of Mons. Daguerre, who had discovered the method of fixing the image of the camera obscura. After Morse returned to New York, Daguerre sent him a description of the process, which the Professor was able to duplicate. While I was sketching the Professor, he suggested that instead of a drawing I should make a daguerreotype of him—that’s the word he used. In honor of the Frenchman. Once he showed me how light could be captured on metal, I begged him to teach me.”

  Ollie sips his ale. What a wonderful world America is—full of new ways to exhibit death.

  “Does the newspaper pay well?” Ollie asks. He knows this is a very personal question, but he has a concealed motive.

  “Yes, well—no. They pay me for each image that they print. It’s not so much, really, but it pays for the plates and the chemicals.”

  Ollie is captivated by this marvelous invention. He leans forward confidentially and says in a conspiratorial whisper, “I have a business proposition for you.”

  Jonathon leans forward hungrily. The paper pays less for his pictures than he has let on. “I’m all ears,” he says. “Does it involve money?”

  “Quite,” Ollie says. “And more than you are earning now. I’m here to write a series of articles on America for the readers of the London Times… which is behind the times, I’m afraid. Sans daguerreotypes. It would be absolutely ripping if you would hire on with me to illustrate my articles with your little pictures.”

  “How much, then?”

  “Money? Oh, let me see.” Ollie thinks about it for a moment, then leans forward and whispers into one of Jonathon’s ears. The photographer seems impressed. “Of course,” Ollie adds, “for that sum I’d expect you to assist me in other ways, too. We’d be a team, you and I.”

  He hands Jonathon some American money. “Here, a down payment. What do you say?”

  Ollie’s tale is only partly true. He intends to write articles about America, but he is self-funded. He has taken a year at his own expense to travel and write. To refresh his spirit. To recapture the journalistic spark that he had lost while languishing in sundry management duties at the Times. These are the reasons that he gives himself, whenever he bothers to ask. The truth is something else.

  “And where shall we go?” Jonathon asks. “Are you looking for adventure, romance, mystery, political intrigue—we have it all in America.”

  “Yes,” Ollie says.

  Jonathon laughs. “So you want it all,” he says.

  “Right now I only want another ale. Barmaid!” Ollie cannot explain the true purpose of his long journey to America. Not yet—perhaps never. But it is here, in this vast new land, that he hopes to find and finally bury one who has been long dead. And who knows? Maybe Jonathon can find a picture in it. Corpses, after all, are the man’s specialty.

  Chapter 2

  He opens the burgundy sheath and exposes the jeweled scabbard. Of the few objects he brought with him to the Shaykhi school ten years ago, this one—this gleaming sword—is his most cherished possession. Caught in its mirrored surface for all time is the reflection of his father. Each time Jalal gazes on the perfect arc of the blade he can see his father’s kind smile, and sometimes—when he swings the graceful blade and carves the air into quarters—he can hear his father’s gentle, resonant voice singing out.

  This time, though, he does not send the blade into its dizzying routine. He merely looks at it. Truth is, he has done no more than look at the sword for the past year. A weakness and tremor in his limbs has made it difficult to hold and maneuver. The last time he had tried to practice with it, the blade had spun out of his hand and lodged in a wall.

  On this day he is feeling shaky and light-headed; still, the magnificent sword feels good in his hand—but so heavy. Now that he can barely lift it. Slowly he places it back into its scabbard and wraps it in the elegant pouch.

  As he attempts to stand, the convulsions begin. The sword drops from his hands onto the stone floor with a muffled crash. He falls on top of it, arms flailing, legs shaking. He bites his tongue. His eyes roll, showing only the whites. Agonizing pain shoots through his body. Still conscious, he tries to form words with which to make a plea for God’s help.

  At this precise time, Jahangir, a student who had arrived at the Shaykhi school six months earlier, appears in the doorway of Jalal’s room. He has been sent there by Siyyid Kazim to fetch the respected Mulla for a meeting. As the young man stares in alarm at the convulsing figure on the floor, he hears an awful moan that sounds like the words Oh God, what would you have me do? Mistaking the Mulla’s terrifying seizure for a kind of mystical ecstasy, Jahangir does nothing to interfere. In his suddenly awakened state, with excited visions of the imminent appearance of the Promised One whirling in his head, the student has his own revelation; so astonishing is it that he drops to his knees and covers his face in mortification at his profane intrusion, for in his confused mind he has become witness to a sacred conversation between God and his earthly manifestation, the Promised One, the Qa’im. He shivers with the thought that all this time, secluded in this simple school, the Qa’im has been present but unannounced, has embraced the young student with his holy arms, has breathed upon them all with his holy breath.

  Jahangir prays for forgiveness. He should not have witnessed this remarkable communion of God and his agent. Jahangir should be punished. Killed, perhaps. The time has not yet come for the Qa’im to be made known to men.

  And then the convulsions stop. Jalal turns, lies flat on his back, eyes closed. A great sigh like the exhalation of angels emits from him.

  The conversation with God is done.

  Jahangir leaps to his feet and flees for his life.

  Chapter 3

  They stroll down bustling Nassau Street, the city’s brain as it is called because along this busy thoroughfare are most of New York’s newspapers and a burgeoning industry of printers and publishers.

  “You can smell the ink,” Oll
ie says.

  “Smells like money to me,” Jonathon Fury replies. And then he stops, pointing to a complex of brick buildings across the street. The corner structure, which flies an immense American flag, is the largest. “Tammany Hall,” Jonathon explains. “Headquarters of the Democratic Party. Therein lies the black heart of politics. If you’ve got a vote to give, whether it’s yours or some long-dead fellow’s, Tammany Hall will exchange it for a promise.”

  Jonathon’s slender finger points to three narrow buildings attached like vertical stripes to Tammany Hall. “And next to Tammany we have the offices of three of New York’s best fish wraps, the Tattler, Brother Jonathon—no relation, mind you—and the Sun.”

  “I’ve read the Tattler. Wouldn’t wrap my fish in it,” Ollie remarks. “Which of these fine publications pays for your daguerreotypes?”

  “None of ‘em. My partner in crime, so to speak, is the Herald. Has a taste for the macabre. Just down the street a little further. They’re all around us here, the public prints, the pamphleteers, the dime novels. Take another sniff! The smell of ink and paper covers up the stench of the rottenness and repulsive filth they prey upon and regurgitate for the masses.”

  “You don’t seem to have much regard for your associates in the trade.”

  “Regard? None whatsoever. May God one day see the trail of slime left by James Gordon Bennett, and smell his foul breath that mildews everything fresh and fragrant in the city. But the Herald—it pays the bills. Would you like to see some of my personal work—the pictures that don’t earn a penny? Not a hanging man or rotting corpse among them.”

  “Very much.” Ollie is taken by this opinionated, fiery young man who is two or three years his junior.