Stories From a Lost Anthology

by Rhys Hughes

  The mist in his helmet cooled and dripped to the rim, so he was able to see the unfinished furniture bouncing and tumbling out of the hold, like rejected vegetable creatures, and twisting up and away. The collision with the seabed was relatively mild. They settled and sagged. There were other wrecks in the vicinity, ancient galleys and triremes. Snapped oars formed elaborate patterns, woven together unnaturally by mischievous currents. Eels lurked in amphorae; an olive-press rotated pointlessly, grinding lost cargoes of ivory, peacock feathers, sandals, cedarwood and saturated clepsydras.

  Maxim jumped from the ship, landing among scattered bronze shields and coins. He took a dozen unsteady paces, fighting the very notion of slowness. In the distance was a sunken city, all marble columns, erotic pediments and oblong agoras. None of the leaning caryatids was a typical classical statue, they were modelled instead on anxious subway commuters. They kept up their sides of the bargain: roofs.

  From the door of a temple emerged a figure. It was encased in a diving suit, but it wore an open jacket around its iron shell. It was Mr Genserico, but not quite the same one who had visited the ship. He made a gesture Maxim couldn’t decipher, and a bow which was probably intended to be apologetic. He shimmered behind layers of water, image refracted to appalling size, distorted, awkward, unreal. The scissors seemed bent, like a pair of clashing scimitars.

  Invisible cables were snipped.

  Walls of water drew back on all sides.

  The abrupt release of pressure burst the brandy glass.

  Ouch! That really hurt.

  Maxim was suffering from the bends. He writhed on the dry seabed, shards of glass sparkling on his face. A halo, brim pulled down. The sun hadn’t shone on this spot for 5,300,000 years, the last time the Mediterranean was above the waves. And it didn’t much bother to do so now, for a cloud took up residence in its lobby.

  What had happened exactly?

  Had the company let the sea go. . . ?

  Financial circumstances must be critical.

  When Maxim recovered, he dragged his quivering twisted body toward the coastline he had earlier spotted. It was now a towering cliff, but one easy to climb with his hands deformed into claws. He hauled himself up a displaced shore of pebbles and over a thick wall onto a promenade sprinkled with lovers and strollers.

  Beautiful girls trundled past on motorised scooters. There were no pavements. And few rules. Palm trees waved in the breeze, like octopus monsters squatting on giant pineapples.

  Maxim failed to remember his geography.

  “Where am I?” he asked a stranger, who lisped:

  “Non capisco! Sei fradicio! Come si chiama? Che cosa fai stasera? Vuoi ballare? Mi sono preso una bella scottata! Mi può spalmare l’olio solare sulla schiena? Molte grazie.”

  He wandered further. Banks were inefficient and confusing and they didn’t change traveller’s cheques, not that he had any in his sodden wallet. The bus station couldn’t give details about how best to travel to nearby landmarks, including a pair of stupendous nuraghi, whatever those might be. Various boatmen at the harbour wept because they could no longer sail to the Grotta di Nettuno unless they fitted wheels on their hulls, and wheels were in short supply because now it was siesta time and shops were shut tight. Besides, most stores only sold cheese studded with roasted chillies.

  A few cafés remained open. The coffee smelt wonderful, in tiny cups holding three sips at most. Ditto the girls, in tiny dresses. The narrow alleys broke the wind with strung washing. Mobile telephones chimed a series of twitchy tunes, but nobody danced until late afternoon and then only in circles, basting themselves in the sunset on the spit of long shadows and their own pointed shoes.

  “Must be the Sardo-Catalan city of Alghero!”

  He sat at a table outside a restaurant, La Muraglia, and ordered a jug of Ichnussa beer, paying for it with one of the coins scooped from the sunken city, which he now reasoned was Tharros. He scanned the roof of the building for another, secret café, but there was no need for that level of suspicion here, because the locals were too honest and cool to bother with sinister tricks.

  In the early evening, a crowd started to gather on the harbour in front of the Porta a Mare. There was an air of expectancy blended with the older one of nitrogen and oxygen. Maxim couldn’t imagine what might occur next but it was late anyway, for delays equate with manners in Alghero. It didn’t matter, for most people stayed until midnight and only those few who had retired to bed and could hear explosions through open windows without seeing the colours felt cheated. It was a fireworks display, wasteful and wondrous.

  When it was over, the perpetual breeze shifted the dense smoke into the network of alleys. It refused to disperse in the narrow channels and the city became a maze of choking fog. Maxim groped his way down the Via Roma, tripping over cats and broken sunglasses. He stumbled from wall to wall, but for every litre of vapour he inhaled and processed, other lost souls with cigarettes undid his work. Nothing was cleared. Now he turned a corner into the Via Arduino, and another into the Piazza Del Véscovo. Then there was a cutting sound.

  He caught his foot on a cobble and fell. Instead of hitting a wall, he found himself in a blank space, alone with fresh air. The fumes still existed, but not the houses which had formed the streets to guide them. All the buildings had gone. The city was now a gap, with only dirty smog to recall its layout. As he sat and nursed his ankle, a man stepped out of the swirling soup and nodded down at him. It was Mr Genserico and his scissors swung like a pendulum across his chest. Regretfully, he checked this rhythm with his own heart.

  “I’m almost as nervous as you, Maxim.”

  “What happened? What have you let go this time, sir?”

  “The background details, I’m afraid. The economic crisis just keeps getting worse. We simply can’t afford to retain any scenery, other than what’s necessary to stand on.”

  “How did the company ever come to own so much? Where did it acquire the rights to the sea? How did it get to lease locations? I knew none of this when I worked for you. Is it a scandal?”

  Mr Genserico shrugged. “I doubt it. Simply the beauty and horror of modern commerce. It’s no mystery. An outfit hopes to expand its concerns in a single area, but it ends up gaining all manner of peripheral assets along the way, some as gifts from grateful clients, others as bribes. In no time at all, it finds itself responsible for an entire universe. When business is slack, these ancillary claims are the first to be discarded. Didn’t we teach you that?”

  “No, and I’m pleased I left the company.”

  “That’s not true, but I understand. The rubber band which links an employee to a birthplace is a second umbilical cord. When the fin of the passenger jet cut yours, it left you without a surrogate mother. Being kicked out of the family home is one thing, but losing a mother is quite another. You have to convince yourself that you’re happier alone, with your fate in your own hands. The alternative is too traumatic to face. Basic psychology: we still own that.”

  “If you’re right, and I fear you are, I demand compensation from the cabin crew, for ultimate trauma.”

  “Let me reveal to you, Maxim, that I was the pilot of that jet. I was also the co-pilot, stewards and passengers. I even manned the radar station which guided me safely down to Crete. At the airport, I greeted myself and conveyed the rest of me to a hotel for a conference with the rubber barons. I know what you’re thinking. The rubber barons dwell in Malaysia. Sadly, we had to let that country go. Now we make rubber from lentisk trees. A poor substitute.”

  “Yes, that’s another issue I want to raise with you. How come you appear in so many places at once?”

  “Individual identity was one of the first things the company made redundant. Now all the remaining workers are me. A big saving, but the emotional cost was high. So you see, Maxim, you’re not the only one to suffer. I refuse to subject my agents to any humiliation I’m not first willing to tolerate myself, in duplicate, triplicate, indefinite! It’s no fun havin
g many identical egos.”

  Maxim stood and licked his lips. “Well, I’ve had enough of these uncertainties. I don’t want you to have any more influence on my life. I hereby intend to stop the process.”

  “Don’t be foolish. How will you do that?”

  Maxim lunged at his former boss. “By letting your scissors go! Wave farewell to your tool of disconnection!”

  “No! The consequences will be dreadful!”

  Maxim grasped the scissors by the handles. The cord around the neck was long enough so that he could snatch them up, reverse the blades and snip them free. They were attached to infinity by the strongest of all possible rubber bands. Out of his hands they flew, to a place beyond the reach and price of changed minds.

  “Now you can’t make any more cuts!”

  Mr Genserico collapsed to his knees. “Don’t you realise what you’ve done? By careful trimming in selected places, I stood a chance of saving the core of the company and all it stood for, which by extension is most of everything! By preventing these measures you have guaranteed the doom of TWANGS R US and the universe it owns. Now nothing can be preserved. I am impotent, and all is lost!”

  “I didn’t think of that. Oh dear!”

  The smoke rushed away, and with it Mr Genserico, the light, ground, atmosphere, psychology: the stock of existence.

  Maxim drifted in the void for maybe an age. It was utterly dark. Slowly, points of light appeared, but they were so dim it was difficult to judge whether they were outside or inside his eyes. As they expanded and grew brighter, he recognised them as stars. Somehow they were different from those he had previously known. They quivered. Something else was strange about them. Wheeling in the sky, forming a new galaxy, they left visible traces behind, sticky tracks in the vacuum. Comets and planets and moons also appeared, molten and rippling. It seemed he was the hub of an unset reality. In fact he was host to a miraculous party, not confined to his dreams. The odds against that happening are astronomical, which in this instance means it’s almost certain.

  Beneath his feet a floor was coming into being, and under his rump the seat of a chair. Then a table replete with guests. It was the group of feasters from Vladivostok. The oddly familiar man with the demeanour of a hog gestured at him, but the motion was too liquid to have precise meaning. The smell of lemon and lime and orange and raspberry was sickly invigorating. The table was planted in a garden with lawns and croquet hoops. Then the nation of Australia appeared with the rest of the world. Servants blew trumpets. And Maxim knew that inside the house, which was his, there were mallets and a collection of jars containing the pickled heads of his rivals. A thousand rivals, but only one face. Mr Genserico. A new chance at the way it should be.

  “Where are we? Why are we here?”

  “This is your celebration, Maxim. We are honouring you for helping our company to attain its final aim.”

  “The jelly monopoly? But what have I done?”

  “Allowed us to inherit the cosmos, of course. As the recession grew more serious, OMNIWOBBLE INC seized the opportunity to buy up the assets of other companies at reduced prices. Every time TWANGS R US let one of its subsidiaries go, we took it over. Soon we had control over enormous quantities of its former assets, including seas, clocks, vicars, bones, monocles, disguises, gymnasiums, phobias, blossoms, rattles, directions, insults, lizards, communications, beds, morals, wounds, dialects, rains, gallows, numbers, warlocks, temperatures, crowbars, pavilions, flickers, critics, memories, crescents, beans, trilobites, modicums, protagonists, effigies, glaciers, tropics and secretions. But if it wasn’t for you, we would never have gained control over everything. TWANGS R US might have held on to a significant portion. In our wildest fantasies we only hoped to win a 51% stake in creation.”

  “And this is my reward? Who may I thank?”

  “I am the President of the World Bank and this is my daughter. We have been planning a financial coup of this nature for some time, but I never imagined it could be so successful. By permitting the recession to completely erase the old universe, you have given us an opportunity to demonstrate our main product. A brilliant propaganda stunt! Yes, we have recreated the cosmos in gelatine!”

  “Really? How marvellous. How fruitful!”

  “Down to the tiniest detail. There are no omissions. Even rubber bands can be duplicated in our moulds. But now you should try to enjoy yourself. This is your new home . . .”

  Maxim glanced around. “Is my wife here?”

  “We sent her on vacation. And let me stress the point by stating that even her absence is made from jelly!”

  “How thoughtful of you! The reason I asked, you see, considering you owe me so much, is that I was wondering, as part of my reward, if I might be allowed to dance with your daughter?”

  The President of the World Bank smiled benevolently. “Be my guest. She is the very least you deserve.”

  His life was now perfect. There was nothing else he could desire. But after several hundred twirls about the garden, he began to suspect that satisfaction itself is inadequate. And when exhaustion forced him to meekly abandon wild abandon, he noted that he still had alternative reserves of energy left. Vitality not destined for pleasure, but for an activity even more fundamental. He staggered back to the table, citric sweat dripping from his nose.

  “So what’s my first task, sir?”

  The President frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Well, I’m assuming I work for you now, and I’m eager to return to what I know best, which is selling a product. Dancing and croquet can’t be faulted in themselves, but they don’t appease the body and soul of a true salesman. I miss the daily grind.”

  “Actually you’re not part of our staff . . .”

  Maxim’s face fell. “I didn’t realise. I don’t suppose, as another part of my reward, you’ll take me on?”

  “For sure, but we thought you wouldn’t want that . . .”

  “Oh please, please, please!”

  “If you insist. You appreciate what this means, don’t you? As an employee of OMNIWOBBLE INC you are subject to all our directives.”

  “Yes, yes! I accept all the usual terms.”

  “In that case, welcome to the company! Unfortunately we have some bad news. When we recreated the universe entire, down to every last detail, we accidentally included the economic recession. I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to let you go . . .”

  “Impossible! There are no rubber bands around me!”

  “That’s not how we operate redundancies, Maxim. We heat an agent up until he melts through the ground he’s standing on.”

  “Nonsense! How can you do that?”

  “With shame. Take another look at my daughter. You’ve been dancing with a girl made from gelatine!”

  Maxim felt his cheeks burn. The heat conducted down his bones to his feet. He ran but the ground grew sticky around his shoes. He started to sink. Soon he was held fast in one spot, up to his knees in fruity sludge. He flailed and flopped, calling for mercy, but the feasters had already returned to their meal. Now the jelly below him seemed to open up completely and he plummeted down. It reset above his head, sealing him in a global tomb. Gravity rushed him to the centre of the sweet world, where he would remain forever, for lifespans manufactured from gelatine are curiously resilient. It was horrible, but it wasn’t quite dark. Far, far away, through the thickness of half a planet, some light filtered down to his resting place at the molten core. The rocks were blackcurrant and translucent, and what should have been perpetual night was in fact a twilight, both of illumination and that brief age he had felt like all the gods.

  The Macroscopic Teapot

  I live on the roof of the hotel. I don’t have many provisions and the nights are very cold. I’ll never come to Birmingham again, if I’m ever allowed to leave. They lie when they say perpetual motion is impossible. I’ve seen it in action here: the sheets of rain are endless, swishing constantly from one horizon to another. I still have my bass guitar, a
1964 Rickenbacker, and I thumb the occasional riff to keep in practice. It’s not connected to an amplifier and sounds rather thin as a result, but I would rather endure that than be electrocuted. Voltage and water don’t care for each other’s company. I won’t play a note near moisture when I’m plugged in. I still remember our keyboards player, frazzled in a swimming pool in Barcelona.

  It was his own fault and my sympathies are muted. He was trying to impress a couple of girls by composing a catchy tune on his portable synthesiser. They ignored him and he climbed the ladder, still playing, to the high diving-board. I thought he was going to abandon the work, which was funky but uninspired, and come down again, but for some reason he plunged over the edge. Maybe he lost his footing. The somersault was conventional stuff, but the sparks when he hit the water were original. The girls were won over and stripped off, but to no avail. His charred corpse drifted toward them, knocking against the side of the pool a dozen times before sinking to the blue-tiled bottom.

  That was a long time ago, when our band were almost less unpopular than now. We managed to make enough money to keep our one and only European tour going, mainly by selling off our equipment on the way. We started our first gig as an impressive art-rock band with many banks of unnecessary keyboards and an enormous drum-kit complete with tubular bells and gamelan pots and Chinese gongs. We ended our last gig as a choral group singing a cappella folk songs. But I was too sentimental to trade in my Rickenbacker. I pretended to lose it before it could be sold, hiding it at the bottom of the communal laundry basket, which was fitted with wheels and towed behind the bus on a long rope. The abominable socks and underpants kept it safe.

  But the essences rubbed off and when I retrieved the instrument my practice sessions became more hurried. Now when I wake in the middle of the night I often believe my comrades are still with me, but it’s only the mingled odour of what they once exuded, throbbing on the strings. Even endless rain can’t purify that complex, ghostly stench. I guess I’m another of their rejects, worn out, reputation soiled. After visiting every sovereign state on the continent, a manager’s gross of gigs in total, similar to a baker’s dozen squared, but without the metaphorical bread, though plenty of crusts, mostly on the aforementioned laundry, we finally returned to Britain, sold the bus and bought new equipment with the money received in exchange.