Stories From a Lost Anthology

by Rhys Hughes

  There were windows at ground level. I lurched up to one and peered through the glass. Perhaps I was hoping to glimpse the Maid of Sker from that old legend. It would be an education to view a girl who had expired for love, because nobody has done that for me, and won’t ever willingly. She wasn’t there, but plenty of other spirits were. The whole population of old Kenfig, not to mention every other phantom which Aluminium Dewi had ever drawn into himself. They drifted along, tumbling and knocking into furniture and bannisters. The water refracted their warped features and cancelled out the twists, so they seemed like standard people, but ones cursed with a defiance of gravity. Seems I was right, they had remained inside the bard all this time. And if sucking hauled them in, only right and logical that blowing would release them again. I moved away, and all of a sudden the door burst and the water flooded back out. Thing is, my lame foot had carved a channel for it, back to the edge of the lake. The fluid rushed and filled the pond.

  Aluminium Dewi had no chance. I didn’t go to check. It meant that I had won the duel by default! As I went along, it was good to make a tune about it:

  Way down here on Kenfig dunes

  Is a shallow bottomless pool.

  If you drink from its waters,

  You’ll swell and lose a duel.

  That’s what I sang and the way I sung it, and not pretty it was, no more than anything else I’d ever composed. I rushed to get away from it.

  Reaching Porthcawl in the late afternoon, I walked along the broken promenade slabs, passed a wedding reception in a seaside hotel, kept the lighthouse in my view. But soon I skirted that and entered the funfair, with plenty of trepidation. A little man with a hammer was wandering the place, tapping at structures, maybe to test their closeness to collapse. The sun had set, but the gala lamps were not yet lit, and the stars were brighter than anytime I’d known them.

  I even believed I discerned Uranus, mostly too dim to perceive with the naked eye, vulgar and bubbling as the note of a backward trumpet. It reminded me of music again, so I stood my harp on the rail of the Tunnel of Love and played an old dance song:

  Choose your phantom as you go,

  Choose your phantom as you go.

  But I got no further than that before a tent flap was opened and an addled face peered out at me. Behind him was a glow, aureate but demonic too, and I silenced the strings with my palm. He was a funfair type, but he hadn’t come out to call the dance steps such as “twp as a sledge!” or “ronk as a bwgi!” or “exorcise your rites!” No, reader, he was gaping at me for the reason of simple greed.

  “What a weird harp! With a metal frame and tin wires! If I pay you, will you let me dunk it in vodka?”

  “Ach! Get away!” I roared. “Heresy, that is!”

  He recoiled and sighed, and I stepped forward, gazing into the tent itself. I knew then he was Dippy Lavengro, and that he had circled round all the other fairs until he was back here. There was a furnace going. A vat of some alcoholic drink waited to receive an instrument suspended by cables from a strong frame. It was a calliope, a steam organ, all brass, bronze and zinc, and it was glowing red. Dippy had heated it up, and now was about to quench and temper it.

  “Mr Bloat still collects instruments?” I blurted.

  He paled and licked his gypsy lips. Then he answered: “No, not now, as far as I know. But I got the bug from working for him. I do it for a hobby. It’s more than that. An obsession. I can’t help myself. And this is the ultimate expression of all I’ve strived for. It’s a solitary life to wander the fairs. I am lonely, without sensual experience, but here’s my belated consummation, the event I always dreamed of making come true. I’m about to dip my organ in cider!”

  “Depraved and childish!” I roared, but maybe I was jealous, because my ears burned like saucepans or cheeks. I hastened beyond, sweating and not from the heat. Behind the funfair, new darkness. And more sand dunes on the eastern side of that town.

  I had to acknowledge that I’m fated always to leave. This time here I am, but in time there I might be.

  Cockatrice At The Door

  He liked being disturbed, but he pretended to hate it. The importance of image to his career could not be exaggerated. He was a timid man, but he acted like a daredevil. The strain was immense. He dreamed of a world in which he had won fame purely for his work. Only his agent understood the irony. Rival artists had already adopted gentle or generous natures. Arrogance was the only face left.

  He stood with her now in his studio, weighing a chisel in one hand. Responsive to all his needs, she tugged his beard. He was trying to earn breakfast for them both, but the single idea which came to him was based on a philosophical paradox. She had banned him from treating such themes since that day he had questioned the hidden mechanics of his inspiration and found them out of commission.

  A small block of chalk rested on a high table. For a loveless fake, it was the best material. He might paint veins on the finished item. The fools in the market would believe it was marble. As he raised his mallet and licked his lips, he had a brief hallucination. It was nothing visual or auditory. A phantom smell. The paradox was not going to depart simply because a tall woman was present.

  He lowered his tools. “I don’t know how to begin. I just can’t make that first cut. I have no spark.”

  “Surely another geometric solid will do?”

  He shook his head. “I’m tired of polyhedra, Cressida. My urge is to carve something naïve and archaic.”

  Her eyes glinted. “How about a nude?”

  “I doubt we could procure a model this early in the morning. Unless you have someone specific in mind?”

  She pouted. “Not really. Well, I mean that . . .”

  “Don’t tease! Who is she?”

  “No, I was right the first time. Not really. Not at all.”

  He smacked his thigh. “Thought so. The sun isn’t fully up yet. It’s cold. No girl with any honour would want to strip off before me in these conditions. Not even a prostitute. No, a nude isn’t what I’m hoping for. Something more basic than that.”

  She gasped. “You don’t mean a still-life?”

  “That’s it exactly! A bowl of something. Not fruit.”

  “What then? Petals? Shells?”

  He ventured timidly: “How about eggs?”

  She saw the trick immediately. “Rodin, you utter rogue! How can you earn our breakfast by carving it? What did I say about such absurdities? We are trying to buy eggs, and to do that we need a new work to exchange for them. No paradoxes! Remember how I love you best? With tolerance not included! Scotch that idea now!”

  “Sorry, Cressida, but allowances must be made. Artistic temperament is a capricious, cupidinous force. Mine insists on turning this block of chalk into a dozen boiled eggs.”

  She shrugged. “Can’t you do them from imagination?”

  He dropped his chisel, which bounced along the dusty floor, filling the studio with a disappointing melody, each note as flat and unexciting as a clean dish licked with a borrowed tongue. But he was unable to jump after it, to retrieve or kick it further down the room. He was jilted by his own limbs, the exhausted muscles roosting from his bones like senile bats rather than hoisting them up like sailors. Not that men who work so far inland and indoors know this.

  “No, I’m not trusting my muse again. Those were your orders! I have shut my mind tight inside my skull. It’s a locked head now. That’s best, you said. Inspiration goes out of it, travels to far impossibilities and comes back. That’s how purest fancy operates. Creepy cosmos! I refuse to sculpt my dreams again. I work only from life. Real topics and subjects. The odour of cooking eggs, their texture, the rumble of them rolling. My law is that they must be honest.”

  She touched his arm lightly. “I agree. You are a genius. Never have I doubted that. But as for practicalities: how shall we eat? We are both yolked to the plough that furrows the brow. There is no credit to be had in any city quarter, not for us.”

  “Yes, I’ve def
aulted on too many loans. Even the Café Worm conceals its sherbet when I walk past its door. And that is free! But I won’t carve polyhedra today. They are quite deplorable. Those icosahedra have a score to settle. Each one always asks me to take their best side! Take it where, I should like to know? And the dodecahedra are no better. They take sides too: against me!”

  She tried to soothe him, but his tongue was rampant. It was the one demonstration muscle left in his head and it intended to keep its wisdom roughly fit: “Twelve angry surfaces, that’s what they are. But octahedra are worse: we would regret anything we ate after dealing with them. What about cubes? I abhor modern art.”

  She looked up hopefully. “Tetrahedra. . . ?”

  “Don’t get involved in pyramid schemes. Prosperity will desert you. That was terrible, wasn’t it? I’m plainly sick. I have bad puns down the wrong side of my vocabulary. Maybe I should claim refuge in a sanatorium until they are better?”

  She wrapped him in her arms. “I nearly love your word-games too! Do you understand nothing of what I’ve muttered in your ears when I thought you weren’t listening? I have so much love at this moment that I may not even slap you hard, very hard.”

  “Oh, Cressida Ludo! Where have you been all my life?”

  “Looming above. Does this hurt?”

  He nodded ruefully. “Had you been distant and romantic, in a remote land of peaks and pampas, I might . . .”

  “We have mountains here. No pampas, but I pant! I can tie red knots in my hair! Red loveknots! As red as this mark of the palm of my hand on your face. No, that’s already fading! Redder than that, much. I’m taller than you, but what of that? That’s your problem, not mine. Mostly I have no objections to a relationship.”

  He continued to be held. “Do you think. . . ?”

  “The nude? Oh yes, the nude! Why not? The nude? Yes!”

  He stepped toward the block of chalk. “I must adjust its angle now. A reclining figure . . . beauty. . . . Wait!”

  “What is it, my love? My desire? My stony Silenus?”

  His hands rustled like certain types of trousers worn in a gentle rain. Even back then, whenever: in any timeless place or parallel reality, tangential, cool. A relaxed age, where most anachronisms belong to the environment. And loops of sense to explain any other. Now a pause and sudden backwash of delirium.

  “The newspaper! In the newspaper!”

  “The wrapping for the chalk? It comes up from the quarry like that, for protection. What have you seen? A withering review? That’s old news. You’ll get another show at the Casino or the Pagoda. You might never win a trial in the Castle, but I’ll fix you a proper exhibition, even at the Academy. One day Rodin Guignol will be the most famous sculptor wherever there is geology and pedestals.”

  “No, it’s an advertisement. Final page.”

  She pouted. “The lonely hearts? You have answered mine already! Now come and disrobe me. Can you reach?”

  He ignored her. “What luck! No need to dine on whimsies. Here’s our chance to breakfast like constitutional kings, but without the bicycles. It’s a delivery company. For groceries. You call them up and they send a man with a box of supplies. Then you pay him, after you receive them. Do you get it? After we have them.”

  “Oh, you little. . . . They are so expensive.”

  “Don’t squirm. There are several companies listed here. This one is much cheaper than its competitors.”

  “Then there’s something wrong with it. But it still costs more than food in the markets. We can’t afford such an outrageous luxury. And it’s so bourgeois! Have you lost all reason? I’m almost dissuaded from liking you now, though I still love . . .”

  “What are you mumbling about, Cressida? Don’t you comprehend? First we order a box of eggs and wait for them to be delivered. The instant we hear a knock on the door, we open it and invite the fellow lurking there to come in and rest himself before he returns to the place he came from. During the lull, I take out the eggs and arrange them on the table. Then I sculpt their likeness from the chalk. When he demands payment, I offer him the carvings. Thus the paradox is resolved! I don’t have to earn our repast before we have it up here.”

  “Risky. What if he is stupid and hates art? He might turn nasty and hit you about the head, overmuch.”

  Rodin smirked. “Save you the trouble, you mean?”

  “I suppose so! But I would heal the damage with many kisses! That’s the fundamental difference. Besides, we can’t call the company to us. It seems our neighbour has grown suspicious. He locks his casement now when he goes out. He’s saving money!”

  They chuckled together at recent memories, when they had discovered it was possible to inch along the ledge outside, seventy yards above the road, and enter the adjacent apartment through its open window. They had enjoyed the bohemian thrill of exercising financial prudence by using the equipment of their relatively rich neighbour, and besides even if he was not truly wealthy, he was a boor because he went to work in an office, and it was unfair that artists and other creative spirits should pay tax: indeed the authorities ought to support them all the time, even paying for their wine, phëresli and jasmine tea, not to mention the most basic items of a sensitive life, such as gaudy trousers, copper mirrors, suede boots and secular incense.

  She added: “I must have left lipstick on the mouthpiece. Or perhaps it was the odour of your beard.”

  “Forget his telephone. There’s a web address too.”

  “Well, I’m suspicious of this modern technology. They claim it will soon become the most popular method of conducting business and flirting. But anonymity can be a problem.”

  “We despise that equally,” sighed Rodin.

  “Do you know how it works?”

  “I may learn as I go along, sweetheart.”

  The previous week an engineer had called round to fasten the studio to the city’s new communication service. High above the streets, strings were knotted between houses in a complex tangle. This was an alternative to the archaic telephone and postal systems. Because a glut of companies were now competing for the same custom, instalment charges were becoming increasingly favourable to the public. The artist and his agent had been offered a free trial period of one month. They planned to take advantage of the situation, without signing any contract at the end. When it comes to geniuses, signatures are potentially more valuable than the invoices. They desired not to make a loss.

  Rodin drew back the curtains on the little terminal stage, exposing the reclining puppets on their slack cords. “About time we tried it out. Where did I put the newspaper?”

  “I have it here, darling.”

  “What does the advertisement say?”

  She squinted at the address:

  “http://www.tartarusfoods.rot.”

  “Let’s watch what happens!”

  He hooked the lines from the puppets onto the ends, some frayed, of the relevant cords. Then he arranged two of the figures in the situation of hunger, with doleful mouths agape and swollen thumbs pointing inside. Checking with Cressida, he received confirmation there were no errors of expression and twisted the lever marked SEND. Hidden weights fell behind the stage. The strings went taut. The signal undulated along the cables, through the wall and out over the city, humming away on the aerial mesh, to the sinister heart of the metropolis, where it would animate matching puppets on a different but identical stage, replicating the gestures and anxious requests they contained.

  “What must we do now? Just wait?”

  “Of course. But what if the signal doesn’t arrive safely? What if a bird is perched on the web? What if the wind diverts the vibrations down other cables to a wrong address?”

  “We should idle as we wait. That’s always right.”

  “You go first. Sit on my lap.”

  “Isn’t that uncomfortable for you, Cressida?”

  “Be a darling or a fool, not both at the same time. It’s confusing. You’ve lost weight already. The effects of starvation are
getting greedy and ambitious. Chew on your mallet’s handle. No nutritional value, but I so enjoy watching you do that.”

  They waited. They idled some more. Outside, less talented folk were rushing to the markets with empty baskets and full purses. They returned with the opposite. Rodin and Cressida sat still and stared at the chalk. Its future form, a clutch, was presently beyond their grasp, but not its faith, for it seemed the block believed more deeply in them than they in it. That is the sort of nonsense which is best explained by hunger or by old delusions of grandeur which have slowly folded and turned themselves inside-out. But hunger is more tasteful. So they were doubting the worth of art for the very first time.

  There was a knock on the door. The sun was setting. Rodin had legs bored with their own cramps. He moved in an ungainly fashion, doubts included, and slid back the bolts. Two beings lurked on the threshold. One was the delivery man, but though he was far larger than his companion, it was the mythological creature which the sculptor noticed first.

  “You’re late,” he grumbled.

  Turning to consult with his agent, the novelty of what he had seen, plus a few ideas as to what might happen next, struck him with force. He said: “There’s a man at the door with a monster. It’s wearing a mask, so I can’t be sure what it is exactly.”

  The delivery man removed his cap. “It has to have a tight blindfold because it’s a cockatrice.”

  Cressida stepped forward. “They’re lethal with their eyes, I hear. A single blink and doom is instant.”

  Rodin frowned. “We don’t want one, do we?”

  “It’s not what we ordered.”

  The delivery man shuffled his feet. “Don’t be hasty. I can tell you what happened. A set of coincidences. When I received your order, I went to gather the eggs. I took them in good faith. Not my fault if Mr Slurp, he is my supplier by the way, crooked as they come and ugly with it, but the only corrupt zookeeper in the business and . . . now what was I saying? It has been a grim day, trust me.”