The Curator, page 17
The famous rowboats, each carved to resemble a different king, were available for rent, with or without a boatman to act as pilot. In prior times, on a sunny day like this, even in the middle of the week, Ike might have expected to see half a dozen of them on the water, carrying couples, men in straw hats and women with upraised parasols. The one boat was out near the center of the pond, stirring counterclockwise. Ike didn’t know the name of the king whose face was carved into the prow—probably Zak, or Macon, like the current edition run from town in his gold-plated carriage, that was what most of them were named—but by the style and the weathering he could tell that it was an older one. A gash of rotted black wood marred the king’s broad nose and beneath his protuberant glare the tips of his outmoded mustache curlicued like springs. Take away the elaborate whiskers and the gilt-painted diadem above his widow’s peak, Ike didn’t think the monarch would have looked out of place in Miss Dora’s museum. It was as easily the face of a herder or a wheelwright as a king.
Ike’s tread shuffled softly through the deadfall in the culvert.
There actually was something wrong. Ike didn’t like to admit it, but there was. That was why he’d resisted the story of the Morgue Ship that the flies had told. Everything felt like the path he was walking alongside: big patches of dimness, with just a few spots of bright.
There had been a revolution, but somehow it didn’t seem like it. A few buildings had been burned down. Some shots had been fired. A number of people had left. That was it. The city felt unsettled without anything much actually having changed. Now there was this Provisional Government, and they were hanging up posters like there was no tomorrow, and serving up ashy bread, and walking around with green armbands, but it didn’t feel quite real. He thought again of Dora’s wax people and the way they weren’t quite real, the way it was like they were stuck just on the verge of real. What if it turned out that the fighting, in fact, wasn’t nearly over out on the Great Highway? What if the real fighting was still to come?
And what if, somehow, someone—not the Charm, of course, that was impossible—was out there, kidnapping people for their own reasons.…
Where the footpath curved, there was the sound of snapping branches. At the same moment, the stables that had been Ike’s destination came into view beyond the pavilion, and hitched at the posts he glimpsed several horses and a pair of black-and-gold-painted carriages.
In the culvert, he ducked to fold himself behind the octopus screen of a tall tree’s exposed roots.
An elderly man, smartly decked in white shoes, a pinstriped suit, and a beautiful white silk scarf, was assisted from the woods and up the side of the culvert to the arterial by a husky man in a checkered suit. A third man, lanky and hollow-cheeked, dressed in a military uniform spangled with medals, stumbled after them—he was looking at a paper as he walked.
“—I know the other door was a good deal more convenient, but we do what we must,” the elderly man was saying breathlessly. The sheeny white fabric of his marvelous scarf fully glowed under the shadowy canopy of the trees.
“You won’t hear a word of complaint from me, sir,” his assistant said.
“I know I won’t, Minister. I appreciate that. You’ve been loyal, very loyal.”
Five others, three more well-dressed men and two women in matching seafoam-green gowns, came after them. Like the man in the scarf, all of these individuals were distinctly elderly, white hair sprouting from beneath their various hats, and they exited the woods and managed the valley of the culvert with careful steps. It struck Ike as peculiar, such old and upscale folk taking a gambol in the woods. He squinted and realized the women were twins.
“I was just looking at these orders again, sir,” the military man said. “They say to check with you again about the surrender negotiations.…” He sounded wearied.
“Listen to him. What a little darling,” one of the twins said.
Her sister laughed. “Listen to you. You’re a little darling.”
“Yes,” said the old man wearing the scarf, apparently in charge despite the general’s medals. “I believe we can grant the exiles another week to consider the proposals we’ve made for our diplomatic team. Isn’t that what you wrote in your recommendation, General?”
“Oh?” The general peered again at his paper. “Yes, that’s right, sir.”
Ike shifted and his shoulder bumped the tree roots. A clod of dirt plopped loose into a bed of leaves at the bottom of the culvert with a crackle. He reached for the handle of the razor in his sock; no sooner did he have it in hand than it spurted out of his sweaty fingertips. The blade went crackling into the same bed of leaves.
The twins, walking at the rear of the procession, stopped.
“Sister…,” one said.
They both swiveled around, the hems of their seafoam dresses swishing across the packed dirt of the path. At a distance, Ike could see no difference between the two. Both had tight, papery faces and, approaching, seemed less to walk than to slide on well-greased wheels hidden beneath their skirts.
The rest of the group had continued forward, except for the general. He looked after the twins. “Something wrong, my ladies?”
“Only a little wrong,” the left sister said.
“If at all,” the sister on the right said.
The general grunted and went ahead with the rest of the group in the direction of the stables.
Ike had decided to run, and when the left twin extracted a pearl-gripped pistol from her clutch at the same moment that the right twin extracted a matching pearl-gripped pistol from hers, his good judgment was proven. The women were thirty feet down the path; if he bolted into the woods, it would take a lucky shot.
They passed through a spatter of light that rained through a gap in the canopy and Ike saw them clearly. His legs filled up with water, and instead of running into the woods, he sank lower behind the tree roots.
The Misses Pinter, they were called, and he remembered how the Lodgings head man had lined them all up to be inspected. Great benefactors to the Juvenile Lodgings were the Misses Pinter, and anyone who shamed the head man by complaining to them about the two excellent meals a day or begging for blankets would experience a form of regret that they would wear on their bodies for the rest of their lives, yes indeed.
The two sisters had gone from child to child, petting their cheeks with calfskin gloves, and softly asking each a question. “Have you ever felt terribly happy?” they asked some of the children. “Do you have nice dreams? Would you tell us one?” they asked some of the children. “What do you love?” they asked some of the children.
One of the Misses Pinter—there was no difference between the two that he could find—asked Ike the question about whether he’d ever felt terribly happy. They’d brought their smiling faces close to his, and the Misses Pinter’s breath had smelled like pork and onions, and their hazel eyes, set widely apart on their narrow faces, seemed to tickle his skin like insect legs.
Ike had thought of a visit by a charity group and the gifts they’d brought, and replied, “I got one of the new blankets.”
“Let’s take the girl who dreams of meeting her parents in heaven,” the other sister murmured, even as she smiled and nodded at Ike.
“But you’re amusing too,” the first sister said to Ike. She pinched his cheek hard before straightening up and announcing to the head man that they’d have Toni, a black-haired girl a bit younger than Ike. They’d take her away that morning. She’d be trained as a maid in their rich house, the lucky girl. But first they’d have her for “a good, big lunch,” one of the Misses declared, and the Lodgings head man had clapped for Toni, and so had the rest of them. She’d blushed and waved good-bye and promised to write her friends, and skipped off with the sisters.
No one ever heard from Toni again, though, she hadn’t written after all. Perhaps that was to be understood, that she’d want to put the Lodgings behind her, but Ike remembered how one of the sisters had announced to Toni, “We’ll have you for a good, big lunch!” and he knew it was just a funny way to put it, they hadn’t meant that the girl would be the meal, they meant she would have a meal with them.
He did know that, didn’t he?
The twins passed from the light into shadow. They held their pistols at the ready. Ike thought, No, it wouldn’t take a lucky shot to hit me. It would take a good shot, and by the way they level their guns, I believe they’re good shots. He heard the heels of the shoes concealed beneath the bells of their long dresses grinding the path.
Ike closed his eyes, and pictured Dora in her bonnet in the first-floor gallery beside the gears, wearing that cool, keen look of hers. He hoped she’d know he wouldn’t just have disappeared on her, not this Ike, not the way he felt for her.
Four shots rang out, and Ike found himself on his knees in the dirt.
* * *
After the carriages departed, Ike opted to abandon the stables for another day. Dora’s wax surgeon could keep. He went in the opposite direction, into the woods, to compose himself.
The shots had shaken him, and the sight of what they had done to the black cat that had been watching the ducks had not helped. In the Lees you saw plenty of dead animals—and, for that matter, dead people on occasion—but it had been bad, the tattered fur and remains of the sacred creature.
A few yards into the trees Ike came upon the ruins of a woodsman’s cottage. There were two hip-high walls, a collapsed chimney webbed in lichen, and a large icebox with its door hanging open to show its inside walls. He perched on a pile of chimney stones and listened to the woods and felt his heartbeat.
The Misses Pinter had shot the cat to bits. It was not only awful; it was an invitation to a curse. The talk between the old man and the diffident general had been strange somehow, and that was on top of the peculiarity of such people coming out of the dense woods in the first place. Stronger than before, Ike recognized the shape of something wrong, of an ill thing. He knew, too, that their business didn’t concern him, and it would do best to make sure their business never became concerned with him—or any of his friends, for that matter—Dora, his love, most of all. Here was actual danger, not some ghost boat that sailed through the sky.
The shade cooled Ike. His heart was slowing. Flies circled a tacky umber stain on the ground beside the yawning icebox, but their sound was soothing. Around the bottom at the sides of the icebox were countless scratches filled with rust. It looked like the work of years of animals trying to get into it. How disappointed they must have been when someone had left the door open for them to discover that it was empty.
Now that he considered it, the door of the box didn’t match the box itself: it was a heavy wood door painted white to match, but the box was metal. It was huge too, tall enough to hang a cow inside, an icebox for a great house, not a cabin. What a lot of work it must have been, dragging it out here.…
Ike’s thoughts drifted on. The churning buzz of the flies continued to soothe and he felt better. Nothing had to come of what he had seen.
When he rose to leave, his interest in the massive icebox expired, and he left without ever seeing the front of the door, where someone had marked a number of triangles in silver paint.
FROM ACT 1.3 OF A LITTLE WOLF BOX BY ALOYSIUS LUMM
Elder Gray leads the mule and the cart to the yard of a decrepit cabin.
Tomas maliciously whacks a stick against the cage. The demon, squashed inside the small cage, moans.
TOMAS: Ha! You steal souls and sicken the livestock. I don’t feel sorry for you.
DEVIL: Who cares? I feel sorry enough for us both!
Aunt Carina appears at an open window.
AUNT CARINA: What is this?
ELDER GRAY: We’ve caught a devil. Didn’t I tell you I would?
AUNT CARINA: He doesn’t look like a devil to me.
DEVIL: She speaks the truth! I’m not! You’ve got to help me!
Elder Gray points at the red-skinned monstrosity in the cage.
ELDER GRAY: He looks like he was boiled! He has horns! (Grabs the devil’s tail, which lolls between the bars of the cage.) He has a forked tail!
The Devil hisses and snatches his tail back.
AUNT CARINA: He’s probably just got a disease.
DEVIL: I thought you were on my side!
ELDER GRAY: —Listen to me. I placed the cat under the tree where the bandits used to meet, the one with the triangle carved in the wood, and we hid in the brush. Out of the dirt he came slithering, the pig—and went for it! Drawn by the scent, I expect. Does that sound like any sort of man?
TOMAS: Dropped the cage right on him, Auntie!
Tomas chortles and demonstrates with his hands how the trap fell on the Devil.
DEVIL (aside to the audience): Let me tell you about me and cats. A long, long time ago, they used to be a part of me, but they crawled out of one side of my mouth while I was telling a very beautiful lie out of the other side to a woman I admired. Now I just want to put them back where they belong, whereas they want to scratch me to death, the little beasts.
AUNT CARINA: Wait… cat… what cat? Not—
ELDER GRAY: —Shadow, yes. She was already dead.
DEVIL (aside to the audience): Indeed, the cat was not as fresh as I might have liked.
Aunt Carina screams and disappears from the window.
TOMAS: Father?
ELDER GRAY: Yes, son?
TOMAS: Well…
ELDER GRAY: Ask your question.
TOMAS: What should we do with him, now we’ve caught him?
The fiddles in the orchestra start to play “The Devil’s Theme” and the lights dim above Elder Gray and Tomas, freezing them in silhouette.
DEVIL: Wait, did you think they actually caught me?
The Devil’s tail unfurls between the bars to find the lock. The cage door unlocks. The Devil climbs out. He takes a cat bone from the small heap at the back of the cage, brings it to his lips, and begins to play it like a flute. He plays wonderfully. The orchestra soon joins in on a fresh round of “The Devil’s Theme.”
In the shadows, Elder Gray and Tomas writhe to the music.
The Devil ceases his playing, but the orchestra continues at a lower volume.
DEVIL: It wasn’t any bandit who marked that tree. That mark is the entrance to my house. I love it when people bring lunch to my doorstep. Now I’m feeling refreshed. Want to spend the next two acts watching me convince these two yokels to kill each other? I hope so, because there’s no refunds now!
He squeezes himself back into the cage and uses his nimble tail to relock it.
The orchestra concludes “The Devil’s Theme.”
The stage lights come back on, and Elder Gray and Tomas regain their senses.
ELDER GRAY (as if no time has passed): What should we do with him? Well… I suppose we should skin him?
TOMAS: That makes sense!
DEVIL (seeming chastened and afraid): Listen, gentlemen, you’ve made a mistake. I’m not the Devil! If I was the Devil, my skin would be red—
He waves a red hand to show them.
DEVIL: See? It’s not red, is it?
The two men are confounded.
ELDER GRAY: I could have sworn.… Does it look red to you?
TOMAS: No, it sure doesn’t.
DEVIL (aside to the audience): You keep your mouths shut.
Before Entering the Museum
The museum’s first official visitors were a foreign couple stranded by the fighting. They were newly married, each bespectacled, no longer young but not old, dressed in breeches, vests, and boots, the uniform of hikers. Their manner was cheerful, bordering on hysterical. They spoke the language well, but with heavy accents. “A museum for workers!” the husband cried as he stepped through the first-floor gallery. “I hope there’s something about academicians!”
D welcomed them and demonstrated the movement of the enormous, interlocking gears. She’d oiled the teeth, and the wheels now turned smoothly, each propelling each in turn.
“It’s extraordinary how things go together,” the wife said, regarding her husband drolly, and pronouncing “go together” in a tone of reverence. They laughed uproariously.
It was after that the couple volunteered their situation. For D’s inspection they displayed two slivers of blue-gray stone. The fragments were chipped from one of the famous monoliths above the Great Highway; it was to take part in this tradition that the couple had traveled to the small country in the first place. Though she had never seen the columns in person, D had seen an illustration in a book: three rectangular rocks set in a diagonal line on a promontory, erected by some ancient folk for who-knew-what-reason. D was also aware of the tradition that held that chips tapped from the stones symbolized eternal devotion.
The rock pieces were thin and jagged, roughly the size of fingernails, and lightly silvered. Even at a touch D felt the density of the mother stone.
“For the rest of our lives, we’ll be able to look at these and know where our hearts belong,” the husband said.
“And when we do,” the wife said, “we’ll also be able to cast ourselves back to the time that we crossed the ocean and stumbled into the middle of a civil war so that we could hammer a rock.” They laughed at that too, and D joined in.
She might have guessed without being told that her guests were professors. D had encountered enough of them in her service at the university to recognize a commonality in how they spoke, and something professorial in the way they held themselves when they looked at things, frowning and bending awkwardly at the waist to see from this and that angle. She’d cleaned the rooms of plenty of professors too, so there was nothing much to imagine. D knew their small, fragile statues arranged on the edges of the crowded bookshelves, eager to commit suicide on the floor below; their framed degrees that never hung straight; their foyer floors warped where they carelessly let their wet boots and umbrellas drip-dry onto the wood; and their sickly yellowy spider plants.
