Nightspawn, page 2
5
I wandered without purpose, listening to the teeth grinding in my head. Cataleptic noon pressed down upon the village out of a hot white sky, bruising the parched earth, torturing the trees, pouring light like acid through the streets. I thought of going home, but home was an armchair with ape-tufts of horsehair under its arms, a broken bed, and a window looking down upon the rear of a café. In the open at least, it was possible to join battle with the sun. There, in the violet splashes of shadow, one could find release. High in the heavy air a bell tolled slowly, and a pale man with horn-rimmed glasses, hovering by a gift shop window, peered owlishly at me as I went past. Sweat ran unheeded into my eyes, and my hair was hot and damp. I came to a little square with dusty olive trees. The tiny bright white houses were closed against the day. The sun came down there at its angle like a burning blade, and to cross from one side to the other was to feel the hot sky fall. I shuffled to a halt in the shadow of a balcony, and stood with my mouth open, panting slowly. In the hills, the cicadas throbbed relentlessly. An ugly black bird with a sick look in its little eye stumbled from the roof tops into the tree beside me. Thunder crepitated faintly in the distance, and then the silence returned. Something began to happen in my ears, a strange sensation, as though the minute fur of hairs inside them were stirring, realigning itself to a variation in the silence. I realized that I was listening intently for a sound, a word; I knew only that it was about to reach me. I was rewarded. A sharp crack set the air aquiver like a dancing nerve, a little noise that was, in its crisp precision, oddly at variance with the plump moist heat, the crystal light, that cat asleep on the windowsill, and for a moment I thought that I had imagined it. I looked across the square, and the mouth of an alleyway revealed momentarily a fat man in a red shirt dancing a jig. He hopped out from behind the angle of a wall, lifted his knees in a few high-kicking steps, and then retreated backward out of my view. Some seconds of complete silence followed, during which I was conscious of my left eyebrow travelling in rapid jerks up my forehead, then came another crack, and a roar, and the fat man shot out of the alley and charged toward me across the square, his arms flapping, ankles wobbling, a scarlet blossom bursting in his throat. Suddenly he halted. I swear I could hear his breathing. Time passed. He looked from right to left, leaning slightly forward, with his head bent. A crafty gleam flashed from his spectacles, and one of his plump hands stole to the back of his neck. What his fingers found there was too much for him. He rose up on his toes, threw back his head and let fly at the sky a howl of woe, groaned, gagged, there was blood in his mouth, came a tinkle of glass and six spilled coins as he spun through a pirouette and crashed to the ground spraying dark gore and the contents of his pockets before him into the dust. His legs twitched. The bird above me in the tree flapped its wing and sang a little song.
I did not move. It was not that I could not move, no, none of your paralysis of shock or any of that nonsense, just, I did not move. I was waiting for something, as I had waited for the sound of the first shot. Once again my patience had its prize. It must have been one of my better days. Another figure came from the alleyway into the square. He was short and stringy, with a scarred mouth, and the blank still eyes of a bird. A sailor certainly, he brought no hint of the sea, but of the back streets of a hundred seaport cities, the mean bars, the whores, the gutters rife with discarded prophylactics. A great deal to perceive in a split and violent second? I came upon him again, of course, of course. He did not see me, or if he did he chose to regard me as an hallucination. He crept across the square and knelt beside the fat man, and his hands went scurrying swiftly from pocket to pocket. Then I moved. The sailor lifted his head at my slow approach, and we gaped at each other in something like astonishment, though why I should have been surprised, I could not, and can not say. He turned, crouched like a sprinter, and fled soundlessly.
I showed a threatening foot to the drowsy cat which had left its windowsill to investigate with sly sidelong glances the figure upon the ground. The fat felled man lay on his back with his legs flung wide and both arms trapped under him. One of his shoes had come off, and stood now beside the deserted foot, where a plump pink toe sprouted from a hole in the sock. He wore a baggy pair of trousers, and a gay red shirt, across which a troupe of dusky maidens danced, evoking the far south seas. His spectacles, shattered, dangled from his ear, and his wide eyes stared heedlessly at the luminous sky. There was a neat round puncture in his chest, which left a dancing girl decapitated, and a second ragged mouth gaped in his throat, marking the last bullet’s exit. His attitude was one of extreme embarrassment, at being caught in such a helpless and undignified position. An angry red stain was spreading beneath him in the dust, and an ant with a broken leg staggered through the mire. Bright coins lay scattered around him, and there was a little phial of blue-tinted glass, violet almost, the lid and neck of which had been shot away. The broken points were tipped with beads of blood, like a tiny crown of rubies. The memory of a drowned man seen long ago came to me. Querulous and strident voices approached, in the streets or in my head, I knew not which, it was all one, I turned and ran.
6
Some of my happiest times on the island were spent sniggering in secret at the newly-arrived tourists wandering through the maze of the village, in lost blithe circles, toward a harbour they would never reach, unless deflected by someone in the know. How precious was that look of surprise dawning on the face of a blue-haired matron, clad in indecent shorts, as she glimpsed for the third time my solemn face (only a tic in the eyelid to betray the boiling glee) caught like a minor moon in the shadowed pane. Confronted everywhere by such an unsettling abundance of twins and triplets, what conclusions they must have reached, those poor wayfaring strangers. Did the islanders have a genetic strain, unknown to science, which multiplied to grotesque abundance each little fish within the womb? Was the ground a warren of passageways by which these grinning urchins scurried from corner to identical corner, intent on driving the foreigner away gibbering and mad? Oh, the times I had. Consider, then, my plight when I found myself hopelessly lost in the very streets where I had laughed at the helplessness of others. Covered with sweat, nerves in tatters, a hot scald squeezing my bladder, consider all this and pride besides and there I was, reeling through the village, calm confidence twitching on my haughty mouth while my little strabismic glinty green eyes searched on all sides for a set of steps, a rickety but welcoming doorway. At length I could go no further, and sat down in the burning dust beneath a ruined tree. I was finished. In a moment they would arrive with their glittering gats. My bowels writhed in anticipation of the bullets. Then I lifted my head and looked to the other side of the street. These things are so simple. I climbed the steps, on my knees I suspect, crawled along the corridor and flopped into the room. Erik lay spreadeagled on the bed like a dead horse, his mouth open and eyes closed. He was naked. I looked at his great pink lolling sex where it reared out of its bush, and then I went galloping across the room, through the open windows and out to the roof. I struck the parapet of the wall with a soft plop, and found myself gaping down into a ragged garden two storeys below. A startled turkey gobbled and fled out of my range, crimson comb aquiver, a wise bird but too wary, for my stomach was not yet ready to give up its treasures, not yet. I turned away from the garden and wiped the sweat from my eyelids. Andreas sat in a deckchair beside the window and gazed at me placidly, his hands folded in his lap.
‘Ah,’ he murmured. ‘The white man.’
I nodded to him.
‘Hello.’
I went back into the room, my lips forming the German’s name. He was gone. The bed still bore the imprint of his bones, but of the man himself, there was not a sign. In the second or two while I stood there staring, my mind went back to search for a lapse in the time I took to gag above the garden. Andreas came in and found me with one finger raised, the smile of the ‘r’ in Erik still lingering on my jowls.
‘Has something happened?’ he asked.
I turned to him, and my teeth, of their own will, clenched themselves. I was not capable of telling him about that blood and death. It was a shyness almost.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing, I felt sick for a minute. Where has he gone? He was here a minute ago.’
‘Was he? You are very pale.’
He was humouring me. I wanted to kick him in his fine gleaming teeth.
‘For Christ’s sake yes, he was here, on this bloody bed.’
He went to where their bags lay in a corner with their guts out on the floor. I watched his fingers scrabbling inside one of them, and for an instant I glimpsed the beasts. Later they were to come in herds. He drew out a flat leather flask, unscrewed the cap (eek eek) and filled it to the brim with tawny liquor.
‘Here,’ he said, bringing to me the little cup. ‘Drink this.’
The brandy spread its thin hot roots along my nerves. I sat down on the bed. Eek eek, said the cap. Andreas watched me with a sidelong look as he put away the flask. I began to whistle soundlessly, tapping a finger on my knee. The cripple sat down on one of the straight-backed chairs and carefully arranged his misshapen limbs to fit the severity of the wood.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked irritably.
He continued to study me with mild curiosity. At length he said,
‘I am trying to … to place you, is that the word? But you do not fit. Tell me about yourself. You are Irish? They said you were a writer.’
‘I was.’
‘Not any more?’
‘Yes, yes, I’m still a writer. Is that all you want to know?’
My impatience amused him. He smiled and clasped his hands. The chair cracked its joints.
‘You don’t like me, Mr White, do you?’
‘I don’t dislike you. I have no reason to dislike you.’
‘Ah. You should be a politician.’
‘I leave that to others.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Nothing. It sounded right.’
Now it was my turn to smile. He touched the corner of his mouth with a fingertip, and said,
‘It is a pity you don’t speak Greek.’
‘How do you know I don’t?’
‘I do not know, of course, but you always speak to me in English.’
‘Always? This is the second time I’ve met you.’
‘Well, yes. But my English is not equal to yours.’
Ice crackled among his words.
‘You do all right,’ I said. ‘Of course, I’m keeping it simple for your sake.’
‘You are very kind.’
‘Think nothing of it.’
‘Do you trust me?’
‘No.’
I had not been prepared for the question, and the answer was out before I could check it.
‘Why not?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think I know.’
We said no more for a time. He watched me with his head held on one side.
‘What are you waiting for?’ I said.
He laughed. It was an oddly musical sound.
‘If we are to do this correctly, as the movies tell us, you should now say, “Look, what is this.”’
‘Look, what is this?’
‘I am trying to find who you are, what you are, why you are with us. Why are you with us, Mr White?’
‘Does it matter? What do I know about you?’
‘But I need to know.’
‘Why? Don’t you trust me?’
‘I also have no reason to distrust you. But there is something which tells me that you do not take seriously what we are trying to do. It is a game to you.’
I pursed my lips for a moment thoughtfully. Then I asked,
‘Do you take it seriously?’
‘Yes.’
‘To the point of melodrama, right?’
Without noticing it, we had been leaning steadily forward, until now our noses almost met. We retreated, and took a deep breath each.
‘The army, Mr White, the king … what is there to say? Perhaps you do not realize how things really are here.’
‘I realize.’
‘Then you agree that it is serious? You agree that the … the little thing for which we are searching is very important?’
‘If you say so.’
His calm cracked for the first time, and his hands began to tear at each other.
‘It is not because I say so, it is not —’
I stood up, saying,
‘I’m off.’
‘Mr White, you make me afraid. Cowards make me afraid.’
In the doorway I turned. This was my moment. I said,
‘You know, I have a notion that our friend Herr Twinbein will be the man to help you. Toodle-oo.’
Endgame. There are jaws that can really drop. Andreas had such a one.
I walked down the hill toward the harbour. The heat was oppressive, and the still air crackled with static electricity. Far out over the sea, the sun had ripped the clouds, and below the rent, the water was alive with molten gold. Part of me knew where I was going, and part of me was trying desperately to deny that destination. But all my bravado had been expended on Andreas, and I was a leaf in the wind. I came again to the little square, so changed now by what it had lost, sunlight, silence, the dead man. A small group of villagers stood talking together in hushed voices, and a stout policeman kept guard over a dull brown stain in the dust. I walked slowly around the perimeter of the square, each step descending without a sound, as though I moved through water. By the stunted tree I halted. The waning day was luminous with silver light filtering down through the clouds. A small wind came up from the harbour and stirred my hair. I took a coin and a bit of broken glass from my pocket, and bending low, I scooped a hollow to bury them in the ground at the base of the tree. I should have chanted a spell or two. I turned, and turning halted. Something of the square was moving, some subtle thing was shifting through a tiny violence, as though the very light were rending itself asunder. From an alleyway came the flash of a fang and one red eye, there, gone. A bird rose from the tree, its wings disturbing the sky, and left behind it to float down the air a single, tufted feather.
I went to my room and crawled into the narrow bed, feeling like a very sick little old man. The sky lowered and pressed against the window with soft blunt insistence. Strange evening light was about me. I fell into a hot and horrible sleep as the thunder began to bellow.
7
In herds.
8
Epataphios, procession of death, wound snake-like through the streets, with little bells, and voices weeping in the dying light. First came the cross grotesquely leaping in the acolyte’s small hands, Christ recrucified in gold, ringed round by candle blades, and after that the bier, draped in a purple pall. Petals of flowers fell like snow among the wreaths of roses, the yellow lemon blossom. Came the shy girls and widows, the wives, old men and boys, the priests in robes of stately red and purple. Incense and wax, sweat, death, fire and flower, all these were brought together into the image of a tiny angelic child in white, singing plaintively, mourning with unconscious splendour the little lost hopes of men. I turned away, troubled by things which I dared not investigate, and took to the lanes and deserted back streets of the village, a three-legged dog at my heels. The storm had washed the air, and now a drenched limpid tenderness was abroad on the evening. Darkness drifted slowly down, like soft black glass, from out of a pale sky. With my hands in my pockets I wandered aimlessly, musing on the passage of time, death, the mystery of art. At least, if those were not my thoughts, they should have been, on such an evening.
I met Erik. He came stalking out of the darkness like some strange armorial beast, his lips drawn back from his teeth: a cemetery gate open in the moonlight. He was washed, and even shaved, and the deeper wrinkles had been shaken from his tubular suit. His huge boots banged on the cobbles. It took him a moment to remember me, to place me in the context of his awful morning. He halted uncertainly.
‘Hello Erik,’ I said.
He smiled, nodding ruefully, and jabbed a finger at me.
‘White, my friend, how are you?’
‘Fine.’
We set off down the alleyway. Erik clasped his hands behind his back, and pursed his lips. I suspect he was trying to think of something to say. Who knows what depths of groundless malice gave to my voice its careless inflexion when I said,
‘You heard about the murder, I suppose? It was our friend Black. I’m afraid you won’t be able to meet him now.’
Sea-sickness and drink had dulled the edge of his perception. It took him the space of two or three steps to realize the significance of what I had told him. He came to a standstill and looked at me like an inquisitive crow.
‘Black?’ he murmured.
I nodded.
‘Yes indeed. Hadn’t you heard?’
‘But they have not yet identified the body. How could you know?’
‘I was there.’
‘I see.’
I became bored with the game. He was too calm. Had he been better material, I would have kept him dancing for a good ten minutes more, shooting tiny fragments of tantalizing information at his toes like bullets. But Erik was a professional survivor, had seen more disasters than I could imagine, and he was too calm. Besides, he knew the rules of my game. I told him what I had seen, what I had done. I was proud of myself and my handling of the situation, I admit it, I was pleased as I could be. What did it matter if terror had for a moment made a gibbering imbecile of me? There was no need to mention that. Erik was silent for a long while, scratching his jaw, then he clicked his teeth, and said,
‘Fang.’
‘What do you mean, Fang?’
He stared at me as though he had forgotten, yet again, who I was.
‘Well?’ I cried.
He grinned. This would not do, by god, this was mutiny, now he was playing with me. He patted my arm.
