Figgs & Phantoms

by Ellen Raskin

  They were creeping,

  They were crawling,

  They were creeping, creeping—

  Crawling!

  Mona looked down at the vines twisted around her ankle. Vines, not snakes. The snakes had been the reflection of her own fears, the distorted memory of her parents’ duet.

  Trembling uncontrollably, Mona laughed and cried in a confusion of emotions. Her blood drummed in her ears in time with the distant tapping. At last she lay back, limp and silent.

  How strange that her fears were stronger than her dreams, she thought, the snakes more real than the unrealized horse. Mona looked about her. Perhaps the jungle, too, was painted out of fear. Closing her eyes, Mona willed the vines and the trees and the ferns to disappear.

  The jungle remained, and she remained its prisoner, shackled by vines, watched by a pair of gleaming eyes.

  Someone or something was near. Slowly Mona raised her head. A strangled cry escaped from her lips as she stared into the unblinking eyes of a leopard crouched on an overhanging limb.

  Straining at her vine-bound ankle, Mona tried to will the animal away as another incarnation of her own fear. The leopard hunched forward, ready to spring.

  The phantom of a leopard was about to savage the phantom of a young girl.

  “But I’m not alive,” Mona shouted, convincing herself of her own invulnerability. “I am dead and can’t be harmed. I am in Capri!”

  The leopard eyes narrowed in anger. From somewhere, from everywhere, a thundering voice replied:“Where all life dies, death lives,

  and Nature breeds,

  Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things.

  Abominable, inutterable, and worse

  Than fables yet have feigned,

  or fear conceived,

  Gorgons and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.”

  A deathly chill crept over Mona’s flesh as, unable to move, unable to scream, she watched the leopard change form.

  Its rosettes spun like pinwheels; its bulk exceeded its frame. And still it grew. The formless shadow floated toward her, its armless arms outstretched in a ghostly transfiguration of night. Then, with a flash of teeth and a glint of steel, the monstrous being gathered its substance into the shape of a magnificent wild-eyed man.

  “Uncle Florence?” Mona muttered hoarsely in the desperate hope that this was her uncle’s new form. “Uncle Florence, it’s me, Mona,” she babbled. “Uncle Florence?”

  “No,” the pirate roared, his teeth bared in anger and his black hair flying in a sudden howl of wind. Leopard eyes ablaze, he unsheathed his sword and flourished its razor-sharp blade.

  Mona tore wildly at the tangled growth.

  Tap-tap-tap echoed from the distance.

  Tap-tap-tappity-tap-tap. The noise rose to a clattering crescendo.

  With an agonized yell the pirate clapped his hands to his ears. His sword fell, slashing through the vines around Mona’s leg.

  Free, afraid to look back, Mona fled down the path that opened before her feet, trampling flowers and ferns as she ran toward the tapping, her arms held out trying to clutch the sound of the dancing feet.

  Tap-tap-tappity-tap. A blurred face appeared in the whiteness. Someone was holding Mona’s hand.

  “Uncle Florence,” Mona cried, straining to sit up. Still entangled in vines, she fell back into the soft sand. “Uncle Florence,” she whispered as the face faded into the fronds of the pink palm.

  Alone, bound only by the unknown, Mona sat up and stared into the curtained wilderness. She shuddered as she remembered the jungle of yesterday. Or was it a century ago? Shaking her head free of doubt and nightmare terrors, she struggled to think only of Uncle Florence. Not of his physical presence (she could not even guess at that), but of his hopes, his loves, his dream of “simple and quiet things.”

  A butterfly lighted on her shoulder and flitted away. Mona watched its colors change subtly from lavender to purple to violet.

  The butterfly fluttered through the peach trees and plum trees and disappeared. Mona crossed a Claude Lorrain landscape and walked through a small village. The streets were deserted; its shops empty.

  She turned the corner at Hemlock and Ash as the large mahogany doors of the opera house were closing. Mona was the last in a long line of shadowy shapes that climbed the carpeted stairway into a huge, triple-tiered auditorium. Crystal chandeliers twinkled from the gilt ceiling, then dimmed as Mona felt her way to a plush seat in the middle of the back row. She wished she had remembered to buy a box of popcorn on the way in.

  The red velvet curtain parted to reveal a grand piano on the center of a bare stage. A man and a woman in formal dress emerged from the wings and bowed to the welcoming applause.

  A box flew out of Mona’s hand, raining popcorn on the neighboring shadows. “Uncle Florence!” Mona shouted, but invisible bonds held her in her seat. Her cry went unnoticed; the show was about to begin and nothing could stop it.

  The man sat down at the piano, flexed his long fingers, and placed his gracefully arched hands on the keys. He played brilliantly. Mona recognized the left-hand accompaniment to Schubert’s “Who Is Sylvia?”

  Uncle Florence looked remarkably unchanged, Mona thought. He was perhaps slightly younger, and his feet reached the pedals of the piano, but she was certain that she was not dreaming him this time. She never would have invited Phoebe to Capri.

  Phoebe. Mona studied the singer with a critical eye. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was surely handsome, even noble, and glowing with warmth. Mona could not tell whether Phoebe was four-feet four-inches tall, but she was shorter than Uncle Florence. Standing side by side they bowed to thunderous applause. Mona’s jealousy turned to smugness as she realized that Phoebe’s presence in Capri proved that Uncle Florence had invented her. He had invented Phoebe to keep him company until Mona arrived in his dream.

  Now Florence sang while Phoebe accompanied his mighty bass-baritone on the piano. The Schubert cycle had never before been sung with such artistry, and for the first time Mona understood the German words.

  “And our grieving,

  Tears relieving,

  Purify from earthly stain,

  Borne to heaven, then forgiven,

  Tears eternal life obtain,

  Tears eternal life obtain.”

  Basking in her uncle’s magnificent performance, Mona imagined his delight on discovering her here in Capri. Her tears were a thing of the past, and she would now replace her stand-in, Phoebe, and live with Florence for the rest of their eternal lives.

  The recital ended to a standing ovation. The audience flowed into the aisles, cheering, applauding. Mona struggled in vain to get through.

  At last the curtains closed on the flower-strewn stage as the singers took their fiftieth bow. The lights went up; the audience turned to leave, and Mona now saw their familiar faces in three-quarter view.

  Pushing her way past the five hundred self-portraits, past the woman with the head of a pig, climbing over row after row of seats, clambering up the steps, Mona called to her uncle. She ducked under the curtain; the stage was bare. She ran through the wings, flung open the stage door, and blinked into the sun.

  Uncle Florence and Phoebe were strolling hand-in-hand through a field of violets. A ruby-throated hummingbird flitted around their heads.

  “Uncle Florence,” Mona shouted.

  Her way was blocked by a monstrous shadow brandishing a sword.

  The menacing pirate of Mona’s nightmare moved toward her, the shadow of his shadow creeping over her feet. Suddenly he stopped, grimaced in pain, and held his hands over his ears.

  Tap-tap-tappity-tap-tap. Mona heard it, too, and took advantage of her tormentor’s torment to slip out of his presence. Quickly she ducked into a dimly lit shop, slamming the door so violently that a book fell from the top shelf.

  Ebenezer Bargain swore softly and bent down to pick up the fallen book. The light from the shop’s single bulb reflected off his silver hair.

  Her hands b
ehind her clutching the doorknob, Mona watched the old bookseller resume his perch on the high stool. He no longer had his bald spot; otherwise he, too, appeared unchanged. And he, too, must have studied the map in Las Hazañas Fantásticas before he died.

  Resentful of old man Bargain, fearful of the savage pirate in the street, Mona tried to think of Uncle Florence, only of Uncle Florence. Slowly the knob turned in her hand. Once again she stood behind the opera house and saw Phoebe and Uncle Florence in the field of flowers.

  “Uncle Florence!” Mona shouted.

  A hand gripped her shoulder.

  “No!” The pirate’s voice was deep and stern. “No, let them be.”

  3. SOMEONE ELSE’S DREAM

  MONA SAT on the edge of a large carved chair, her eyes trying to escape the pirate’s intent stare. Fear had given way to confusion; unasked questions were stuck in her throat.

  At last the pirate spoke. “Seems rather damp in here,” he said with surprising mildness.

  Now Mona felt the dampness and nodded in agreement. The pirate fanned the flames in the great marble fireplace and began pacing the palatial room. Mona wished she were sitting on something more comfortable.

  “Get that monstrosity out of my castle,” the pirate shouted as she snuggled into the broken springs of her old sofa. Mona quickly sat upright again in the carved chair. “I’m sorry,” she whispered hoarsely.

  “I haven’t decided on all the furnishings for this room,” he said, softening his tone again, “but that sofa was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.”

  Trembling, Mona nodded again and racked her brains for something to say, something casual and pleasant. She knew instinctively that she would have to please her eccentric captor if she were going to reach Uncle Florence. Clearing her throat, she made an awkward attempt at polite conversation. “How many rooms do you have here?”

  “It varies,” the pirate replied. “Anywhere from fifteen to one hundred and eighty-five, depending on my mood.”

  “I’d guess there are about fifteen rooms now,” Mona said, familiar with his wild swings of temperament.

  “You’re probably right. I do feel in a fifteen-room mood. Fifteen rooms, that is, not counting the sapphire ballroom I built for Phoebe and Florence. They love to dance, you know.” Anticipating Mona’s next question, he turned away.

  “We’ll discuss that later.”

  Mona would have to wait, but she wanted to keep her host in his fifteen-room mood. He was still wearing a sword, and his hand rested on the jeweled hilt. “How many bedrooms do you have?” she asked. It was the wrong question.

  “None!” The pirate’s face darkened as he pointed threateningly at Mona. “No bedrooms; no sleep; no dreams. Not while I have a stubborn, heartless intruder on my island.

  “I have had to watch your every clumsy step. I have had to listen to your whining cries and that ear-shattering tapping that follows you everywhere. I have had to blot out your philistine wishes and tasteless encroachments, your appleless apple tree and your crudely drawn sign.”

  “But I didn’t make that sign.” Mona’s protest went unheard as the pirate ranted on.

  “I have had to resort to threats and terrors, heat and hurricanes and the tongue of John Milton, and still you remain, uninvited, unwanted, a blemish on this, my most magnificent dream of dreams.”

  “This is NOT your dream,” Mona shouted, fearless with rage.

  The pirate laughed a loud, mocking laugh.

  “I belong here!” Mona screamed, lashing back at the pirate as she had wanted to lash back at the people of Pineapple. “I belong here, here in Capri with Uncle Florence and my pink palm.”

  “Pink!” His leopard eyes glared. The pirate seized Mona by the arm and dragged her across the marble floor to the high arched window. “Look! Look at your pink palm.”

  Alone on a stretch of sand in the distance the tall palm glowed a muted orange.

  “The color is coral, coral, a delicate shade of coral. Not PINK!” He clenched his teeth on the word pink as if to gnash it apart, then, his poise regained, continued. “That CORAL palm was drawn by my own hand, painted with my own brush, on my own island, on my own map, in my own book: The Imaginary Adventures of a Would-Be Pirate.”

  “But the book was in Spanish,” Mona challenged feebly.

  “I am speaking Spanish,” replied the would-be pirate.

  The Spanish map-maker and would-be pirate, Capitán Miguel de Caprichos, sat at the head of the banquet table waited on by faceless servants. At the foot of the long board Mona poked at her food, tortured by humiliation and uncertainty.

  “Eat,” he commanded. “You must be strong for your trip back.”

  “Back where?” Mona asked dejectedly.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, back where? Why did you dream up such a huge table for only two people? If I were dreaming up a dining room, I would put in....”

  “You would put in what?” Her host was open to suggestion.

  Mona didn’t know. She had never paid much attention to furniture, or houses, or horses. “I’d just have a smaller table,” she replied humbly.

  “Is that better?” he asked.

  The table shrank in size; silver platters of food tumbled to the floor and vanished.

  Mona smiled and wished herself a hamburger from Flabby’s. And a candle for the middle of the table.

  “Very good. You don’t look half as scraggly by candlelight.”

  Mona had forgotten what she looked like. She had never been pleased with her appearance, but now that she could be whoever she wanted to be, she felt most comfortable inside her ordinary, everyday body, with all its faults. At least it was hers. Nothing else in this ghostly land was hers, not even the pink palm. Not even Uncle Florence.

  “Cheer up,” the pirate ordered. “Gloom is not allowed on Caprichos. You do understand that you will have to return to your home. You don’t belong here.”

  “But Uncle Florence....”

  “Florence and Phoebe will remain. They are knowledgeable and talented citizens, and companionable neighbors. I have learned a great deal from them.” He dismissed the subject with a monologue on candles and candlesticks.

  “There is a gold candelabrum, studded with emeralds and rubies, on a treasure ship I almost captured. I was defeated by Admiral One-Eye, an admirable adversary, but his ship will pass this way again. Then victory may be mine.”

  “That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” Mona said. “Losing a battle in your own dream.”

  “Defeat makes the final victory all the sweeter,” the would-be pirate explained. “In real life sweet moments are short and dulled by time. But here the mind can invent and reinvent. Here I can relive each battle until I have perfected every detail of my glorious triumphs.”

  “That’s childish,” Mona said, remembering with shame her childish parents. “Uncle Florence isn’t childish.”

  “Your charming uncle and my dearest friend, Florence Figg,” the pirate replied, “has married Phoebe twenty-six times since arriving in Caprichos.”

  Capitán Miguel de Caprichos rose from the table. “It is time for you to go.”

  “No, please,” Mona begged. “Please let me see Uncle Florence.”

  The would-be pirate was firm.

  “Then let me stay here,” Mona begged.

  “And what can you contribute here? A broken-down sofa, a hamburger, a candle?”

  “Books. I know books. I can build you a library.”

  “Come,” the captain said. Mona followed him into his library. Mahogany cases with glass-enclosed shelves lined the paneled room, filled with rare and exquisite volumes.

  “Make me a book,” he commanded.

  Mona strained her memory for a book, a book he had never seen, a book that would delight him. Ships, exotic scenes.

  The remembered first edition—dark green binding-decorated cloth—slight tear in ... (no, Mona quickly repaired the torn backstrap) ... slowly materialized in her hand
s. She presented it to her captor.

  The pirate turned to the frontispiece illustration of a ship in a raging storm and smiled. He read aloud from the title page. “Typhoon, by Joseph Conrad.”

  Mona breathed a sigh of relief; he could read English after all, or some language common to dreams. But as the would-be pirate turned the pages, a scowl distorted his handsome face. He slammed the book shut and thrust it back into her hands.

  “This is not a book,” he growled. “This is a package. A package of nothing.”

  Hands shaking, Mona examined her book. Except for the memorized title, not a word appeared on any page. She stared down at her unread blank pages. “I want to see Uncle Florence. Please,” she begged, and burst into tears.

  Torn between anger and pity, the pirate remained silent. He placed a hand on her trembling shoulder. “All right, you poor, dreamless, unchildlike child,” he said at last. “Dry those sightless eyes. I will let you see Florence once more. Just once more. But ... he must not know who you are.

  “He must not know who you are.”

  4. THE LAST DANCE

  COLORED LANTERNS danced on a string around the terraced balcony; brilliant orchids studded the jungle canopy below. Mona wished up a fruit bowl full of figs and pineapples for the table decoration. This was to be her last night in Capitán Miguel de Caprichos’ dream, and although she had promised not to reveal her identity when Uncle Florence arrived, she was determined to give him clues.

  “Now, what shall we call you?” the pirate mused.

  Mona thought of a Conrad title. “Narcissus. It’s my favorite flower,” she lied. “Narcissus Q. Holtzlump.”

  “Ridiculous. You shall be Señorita Narcissus Maria-Teresa Murillo y Olivares de Santiago. And twenty-three years old.”

  “I don’t know how to be twenty-three years old,” Mona complained. “And I’ll never remember such a long name.”

  “You don’t have to remember it, unless you plan to spend the entire evening talking to yourself. Now make yourself taller.”