The Palace Of Curiosities Part 16

'Yes, yes. I have decided. You need company. Company that will make you feel more comfortable in your delightful strangeness. You will grow your hair back. Everything will be arranged.'

ABEL.

London, August 1857 I wake up with a gasp. As soon as there is enough light I read my doc.u.ment, frightened that the words will have been sweat-washed away in the night. But it is whole and, as I read, I remember. My belly urges me to go to the privy, but as I stand my trousers fall partway to my knees, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of those men who are already awake.

As I wonder why half the b.u.t.tons are opened, I recall last night, and Alfred: the brightness that burned between us. I turn to find him looking at me slantwise.

'I was drunk last night,' he says firmly. 'I believe you were, also.'

'I was not.'

'I remember nothing. You remember nothing,' he declares. 'You never do.'

I draw close to him and lower my voice. 'Why are you being so out of sorts with me? We are friends.'

'Don't know about that any more.'

He turns over on his mattress and refuses to speak any further. I look at my hands. After the time it would take to drink a cup of tea, he rolls over and regards me strangely.

'You still here? Can't a man get a bit of peace?'

'I have nowhere to go.'

'Hanging around me like a b.l.o.o.d.y shadow. A fellow can get tired of it, you know.'

'Shadow? That's unfair of you.' I search for the word to describe all that I owe him. 'You are my anchor.'

'So, I'm a millstone, am I?' he snaps. 'Drag you down to my depths and hold you there, do I? If you're so far above me, then fly away. Cut the chain that weighs you down so inconveniently if that's what you want.' He flaps his hand, almost striking me on the cheek.

'I did not mean that, Alfred. You do not weigh me down.'

'Seems I b.l.o.o.d.y do,' he mutters.

'You hold me steady. I am adrift without you.'

'Oh, will you shut your row!' He buries his face in his hands. 'Nag, nag, nag. You're worse than a b.l.o.o.d.y woman. My head is thundering.'

'Shall I fetch you some food? A drink?'

'A drink? Oh, p.i.s.s off, Abel.'

'Alfred, please,' I whisper.

'I said, hop it. Get out of my life. I never want to see you again. Got that, thick-head?'

I lace up my boots. Alfred watches through his fingers. I stand and he rolls away. I stagger up the stairs, on to the street and am a.s.saulted by the rough noise of the city going about its business; once a pleasure but now painful, as though I have been stripped of more than flesh. A wagon carrying barrels drives by so close I can smell the beer within.

'Are you blind?' yells the drayman.

Before I can shout an apology he whips the horses into a lather of speed and is away. Alfred is gone. In moments his friendship and desire burned away to be replaced with hatred. I do not understand why. I refused him nothing. Yet he turned away from what he wanted. My mind aches with confusion. And more.

Each step I take is one further from his anchor fastening me to my being. I scrabble at my shirt b.u.t.tons, feverish with worry that my paper might have deserted me also. Its rea.s.suring crackle greets my fingers as I draw it out and scan the words hungrily. I was a slaughter-man. The past tense carries a weight of story. Ah! I have it. I lost my job in the slaughter-yards because ... My recollection stutters. Because ...

I read on, the bare words reduced to splinters of driftwood on a stream which grows muddier with each line. My friend is Alfred. Yet he is no longer my friend. If my own words can lie to me, how can I believe anything I have written? The paper shakes and I fight the urge to crumple it into a ball and throw it far from me. Why did I not write more when I had the chance? I had something near, close. I can almost taste it. Truly, I am a fool.

I am terrified that I will lose everything. I cannot let myself slip back into the void. My dreams and memories are the key to myself, but without Alfred's friendship to tie me to each day how will I turn that key and find my way through this gathering darkness?

I wander for what seems like hours and find I am back at the fairground, drawn by something more compelling than the scent of grilled meat. I dawdle with my hands in my pockets, listening to the crowds making merry and wondering how I might find what I am seeking anything to divert me from the terrifying confusion that is creeping upon me.

The bear remains, or one much like it: as miserable, as bruised, as battered. There is a barrel-organ also, and a knot of women kicking their heels about. They might be the same but I do not recognise them, nor they me. They are as gaudy as before, but it is half-hearted stuff. In the daylight some glaze of enchantment has been rubbed off, leaving a child's playthings cut from bright paper. There was something else. I am already losing what it was.

The revellers flicker in and out of my line of sight, in and out, in and out, dizzying my mind so much that I have to lean against the wall. I close my eyes to gather up my wits and am carried to another fairground, another square, where I am watching a different group of females pace the flagstones, their dresses bright as ink poured. They turn this way and that, and their skirts swing about, as though a hand churned that ink for marbled paper into swirls of vermilion, carmine, indigo. They promenade up and down, fluttering their fans, hiding their faces and showing them and hiding again, like a child playing peek-a-boo with its nurse.

Their dance begins. Step and pause and step and pause, the iron taps on their shoes striking stars, a troupe of dancing princesses stepping perfectly in time, hand over hand, the powder on their wigs trickling on to their shoulders and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, breath shallow inside their tightly sewn bodices. I think of them under their clothes, beneath their powder and paint, and feel neither embarra.s.sment nor curiosity. I know they expect me to be bewitched, but I am stone.

My eyelids flutter and I return from my drowse. They have gone, of course. I sigh. Another dream: but as usual I am not sleeping. Another troubling thought surfaces through the sludge of my understanding: my memories are of people dressed outlandishly in the costume of many years ago. I yearn to return to Alfred, to talk to him. Beg him to be my friend again. Ask him to help.

I do not notice the old man stagger out of his patched booth until he tumbles over my feet, belching beer. He clutches at my coat, steadying himself, and peers up at me. The booth's sign reads 'Arturo the Astonishing, Fortune-Teller to Royalty'. He points at it, hiccoughing.

'That's me, kind sir!'

'You are not astonishing,' I say, trying to shake him off. 'Let go of me. I don't like fortune-tellers and they don't like me. And you stink like the dancing bear.'

'Oh, it's all in the smell, isn't it!' he cackles. 'Everything in the smell!'

He shoves his face into my sleeve and inhales a lungful of air; then he leans back, smacking his lips.

'What are you doing?'

'Oh, I can smell you out, sir! Your scent betrays all your hopes and dreams!' he leers.

He fumbles in my pocket, but it is empty, my small store of money being tucked into my boot.

'Are you a fortune-teller or a thief?' I ask, pushing his hand away.

'Both, I suppose,' he shrugs, and takes a slower sniff of me. 'Now, you are a curious one. I'll not let you go just yet. You smell lucky for me. It's all aromatics, sir: a man gives away his secrets through his sweat.' He snuffles at my elbow, grasping a piece of my shirt in his fist. 'Will you give me a few coins for what I can discover?'

His eyes scuttle over me; he blinks, suddenly confused.

'You smell deep. You're a special one and no mistake, are you not? Will you let me read you like a book, sir? Open you up? Watch you heal back up again?'

He affects a mime of unb.u.t.toning his belly and spilling his innards on to the ground. I grab his shirt and shove him back through the tent-flap.

'How do you know?' I growl. 'How can you see this?' I tighten my grip on his throat, watch his pupils bloom into soot. 'Tell me now.'

I squeeze, feeling the flex of his windpipe under my fingers. He splutters, breath rattling in his gullet, nodding his head wildly. I let go of him and he bends over, coughing mightily.

'I am sorry,' I say. 'I was angry. It is spent.'

He rubs his neck tenderly, tips his head on one side and shows an uneven hedge of teeth.

'Of course. I shouldn't have surprised you. Skittish as a foal. Still, you can't hide from this nose.'

He taps the organ in question, leans close once more and flares his nostrils. I lick my lips, for they are suddenly dry.

'Sir,' he says kindly. 'I shall not insult you with my old schmatter. No lies about bags of gold at the end of rainbows. In faith, I shall not fleece you. Come now. I believe I can help you.'

He coughs, spits phlegm on to the floor and kicks dirt over it with the side of his foot.

'Help me?'

'Yes. It is what you most desire, is it not?' He grins through battered teeth. 'Someone who will listen to you? Someone who'll understand?'

It is suddenly the hardest thing in the world for my legs to hold me up; I collapse on to a spindly chair. It creaks a little, but holds.

'You have me, Signor Arturo,' I sigh. 'I shall not hurt you again. I don't believe anyone can help me, for all you say you can. But I have no one else.'

'Not even Alfred?'

'What do you mean?' I demand. My stomach leaps. I grasp his tattered neckcloth again to pull him close once more.

'Enough. Let me go, please!'

I release him. It seems my anger is itching to be set free.

'How do you know his name?' I demand.

'Sir, listen. I can smell him on you.'

'Alfred was my friend.'

'I know. And you have had so many.'

'I have not. Alfred was my only friend.'

As I speak the words, I know them for a lie. But I do not know what the truth is.

'Don't you remember?'

'Remember what?'

'Don't you know where you have been?'

'I don't remember anything,' I grumble, crossing my arms across my chest.

'You must. It is not possible. You see nothing?'

'I see things,' I mutter. 'I do not wish to.'

'What things?'

I dip my fingers into my shirt and extract my paper, clear my throat and recite its secrets.

'I was a clock-mender, in Holland,' I say. 'I can speak Dutch, and Italian. I see myself at the top of a tower. I fall. When I cut, I heal.'

I fold my doc.u.ment and replace it. The old man's mouth hangs open.

'Is that all?'

'What else can there be? Isn't that enough for one man?'

He breathes me in again, as though I am the finest array of dishes ever laid before him.

'It is not possible. One like yourself, to be so blind. Sir, do you truly not know who you are?'

'Who am I?' I cry. 'Tell me now!'

'You are ...' He pauses and takes a deeper inhalation, fanning his hand to scoop my scent deeper into his nostrils. '... unplumbable. A well I could never drain dry. A mine whose gems I could never exhaust. Ah!'

He takes my hand and kisses it, snuffling as he does so. His eyes glow, and for an instant he is glamoured with youth.

'Oh! If I began merely with the list of your names the names men have given you I should be here a hundred nights! You are perfumed with so many pasts. I have never dined upon such a banquet as you! I could take years, tasting your delicacies.'

He stoops, taking sniffs of air around my body with little cries of pleasure.

'Here is a fine dance, with music and ladies dressed for the carnival! And here, a horse galloping across a broad plain and you upon it, spear in hand. Here, a swift ship creaking beneath your feet. Here, the hand of desire upon your breast and a kiss! Such sweetness! So many loves!'

'You see all these pleasures?'

'Of course.' Arturo opens his eyes very wide. 'Do you not see them? Their fragrance is so deeply grained into you. Ah! To glimpse into your unbounded soul, to be lifted into your great expanse of lives.' He sweeps his hand so that it brushes the canvas sky of the tent. 'You are the Morning Star: a bright comet fallen from Heaven, carrying light into the darkness and illuminating all around you. Who would not fall in love when touched by your spirit?'

His cheeks are wet.

'If I glimpse happiness, it lasts but a moment. The only constant is pain,' I say, my voice snapping like dry twigs underfoot.

'Pain?'

'Whatever injury I do to myself, I heal straightway.'

'Is this not a source of joy to you?'