The Palace Of Curiosities Part 32

'It is indeed an evocative aroma,' she agrees.

I close my eyes, and this time am taken to a river-bank, floodwater shimmering over emerald fields, flashing like a thousand knives laid together side by side. On the far side is a huddle of mud-brick dwellings shivering in the noon heat, more than I can count at a glance. The place seems deserted, except for the spiralling twine of smoke from a cooking fire.

I shade my eyes and scan the line of crumbled walls, soft at the edges like kneaded dough without a mould. In the distance, beyond the irrigation, the desert spreads its red cloak into the west, league after league without end. I make my way towards the village, the ground yielding beneath my feet as I walk. A short distance down-river a boy stands in the water up to his ankles; he lifts a long cane and thrashes the sodden ground with it, raising a slow shawl of spray.

'Abel?'

I fly back into the room.

'Yes?' I blink.

'Are you well? You were like a man turned into stone. Where were you gone to?'

'You knew I had gone somewhere?'

'A great distance, by the set of your features.'

'Men call me an idiot for this way of mine.'

In my ears I hear dead fish, dead man, corpse-kisser.

'You do not seem like a fool to me. Thoughtful, rather. Different, of course.'

'Yes?' I look away, waiting for her to throw names.

'Abel, remember I am different also. I have fought to feel no shame.' She lifts up one of the locks of hair spilling from the side of her nose. 'It has been a long war with many battles. I shaved myself once I thought to please my husband.' She grimaces. 'I will not do it again.'

'I am glad,' I say. 'For you would lose more than your fur. I should not like to see that.'

As I speak it, I know it for the truth. She pauses, and stares at me most intently.

'You are different to the others,' she says, and does not hide her pleasure. 'Abel, I am very glad indeed that you are my friend,' she adds, leaning across the table and brushing the back of my hand with her own.

I quiver with antic.i.p.ation. I want to be read, but the fear of being thought grotesque remains. The look of disgust on the face of my Italian master swims before my eyes.

'Ah,' she murmurs.

'What is it?' I ask, fearing her response.

'I am not sure. I felt it before.' She shakes her head, and her hair swings about her face. 'I can read you: like the others, yet nothing like them. They unwind a few years and come to the end of their spool. You are-'

I wait for monstrous.

'Marvellous,' she sighs. 'Even a brief touch and I can see you stretching back and back. You were a slaughter-man.'

'Yes, but everyone knows this. Even George.'

'Before that, a clock-mender.'

'Yes.'

'And before that, an anatomist of sorts.'

'I was!' I gasp. 'I have told no-one of it.'

'Those few things I have uncovered after a moment's touching. There is a great deal more. In all the pictures I see you grow no younger. The images change; you are unchanging.'

'Now you will tell me they are perverted imaginings.'

'No. Why would I do that?'

'Everyone else has done.'

'Have they?'

'If you see what I contain, what I am, then you will push me away.'

'Why?'

'Because I am full of horrors,' I whisper.

'I do not think I could hate you, Abel. If that is all you fear-'

'It is not all. I cannot make the pictures stop,' I say, glancing at her and then away. 'They pursue me everywhere. I fear that if you open the book of me, I will be overwhelmed. That I will never be able to shut them away again. I will drown in the flood.'

'Abel, my friend.'

'I think I have changed my mind. I am sorry. One minute I want to understand the secret of myself, the next I do not.' Then it comes to me. 'Eve, these memories of mine. Can you take them away?'

'No! All I can do is read them.'

'But I do not want them.' I am visited by a stabbing image of a tent in a fair, an old man demanding to gut me of my memories and then to leave me burst open and helpless. 'If you read me, I am afraid that you will know more than I do, that it will be too heavy for me, that I will not want to know your answer. I am afraid it is what I guess. I am afraid it is nothing like I guess. I have been this close before, I think. I do not remember, but the fear tastes familiar.'

'That is a lot of fear.'

We smile at each other, as though for the first time. I bathe in its simple warmth, feeling myself washed strangely clean. I lean forward and wipe the stub of my thumb along her moustache. She does not start away.

'You have coffee stuck to your lip,' I say. I think of George, and if he came into the room, now. 'Eve. Do not tell your husband we have drunk coffee together.'

'I tell my husband very little. But why should the drinking of coffee be a secret to be kept?'

'You are a woman, therefore you understand. He is a man, and will not.'

The room settles into the warm silence of companionship.

Eve does not grasp at me with lip-licking curiosity nor does she thrust me away in horror. The word that comes to my weary mind is safe. I lie on my bed, concocting plans of how I may endeavour to find her alone again, and soon, and talk more. Conjuring romantic dreams of myself telling her how beautiful she is, and seeing her look upon me with more than friendship with love. In such a dream I find her, fall to my knees and bury my face in her skirt. I inhale the delicious spice of her, something I know but cannot name.

'Abel, you are the only one who does not wish to change me.'

'You are Eve. That is enough.'

'My dear Abel. This is a greater gift than you know.'

'Eve, I-'

'You know I can help you.'

'I know. I am ready.'

Her smile brushes my heart with an intimacy so intense I am made breathless. I gather her to me as though the action may restore breath to my lungs. As I do, her fur melts away and her face is replaced with that of another woman, whose hair is so dark a brown as to be black, coiled in braids about her head.

I know this woman. I have unloosed her hair a hundred times. She laughs, and as she does so, changes once more. Her jaw sets, teeth grinding against each other as she is seized by a dreadful pestilence.

Her whole body labours to expel the poison, pushing the foul matter into swellings which crowd about her neck: the size of hen's eggs, the colour of raked ashes. In her armpit are further tumours, so great she can no longer keep her arm close by her side, but instead holds it away from her.

I watch her hurled back and forth by the violent fever and can do nothing to draw her to safety. I wish to be spared this torture, but cannot close my eyes. Words of prayer burst from my mouth: that I might keep her by me; that she might be returned to wholeness through some miracle of healing. An answering rattle bubbles from her mouth, breath creeping narrowly between the swellings in her throat.

Her teeth clench in a grimace that might be frowning or laughing. It is the smile of coming Death, which reveals what lies beneath the skin. Her head rolls from side to side and she lets out small piercing cries of surprise, hands grasping and ungrasping as her whole body wrestles the sickness. I try to catch her fingers and soothe her, but I cannot keep hold.

At last she is seized by a spasm as though a dog has bitten her in the lower part of her belly. She stretches her mouth wide and releases a long squeal; then the shriek is snuffed out and the room aches with silence. A crackling sound comes from her lips: the snapping of burning twigs. Her tongue spikes the filthy air and a corrupt stink buffets me as her bowels loosen.

I look upon the terrible face before me. This is not my beloved; it cannot be. This female has a quill pen of a nose, harsh jawbone, eyes fixed in a furious glare. Her mouth stretches wide in a final curse, tongue as grey as a ram's. I try to push this slug of a thing back into the mouth, but it will not fit.

I look from her blotched and pestilent skin to my own untouched flesh; I press my mouth to hers and suck at her last venomous breath in the hope that I might also be infected. But for all my desire to join her in the mortal grasp of the fever, I am unable to follow.

The voice speaks: Would you do this again? Have Eve melt before your eyes in sickness? I know its truth. Every woman I have touched, and every man also: all have shrivelled, died; and I have looked on, unaltered, and unable to hold them to this life for one breath longer.

Like the Morning Star, Eve has risen in the dark night of my existence. She warms me with the bright flame of understanding. All I need to do is stretch out my hands and receive the comfort she offers so freely. But how can I cause her the pain I have inflicted upon countless others? How can I inflict it upon myself?

I wake up. My courage stutters. It is dark, and I am alone.

EVE.

London, November 1858 'A prime s.p.a.ce, my dear. A prime location,' he said, loud enough for any pa.s.sers-by to hear. 'Sheltered from the wind. That is what is needed by persons of our standing.'

My husband tipped his hat on to the back of his head, winking at the fearsome man guarding the entrance and pushing a shilling into his handshake. The gate-keeper peered at me.

'What's that?' he growled, pointing at my heavy veil. 'We don't like women here.'

'That', said my husband loudly, broadening his shoulders, 'is my wife. A Non-Pareil of the Female Race. The only true and genuine Lion-Faced Woman, and Star Attraction at Professor Arroner's Marvels, which may be viewed-'

'Yes, yes, we've heard of you and have seen it all before,' our Cerberus muttered. 'Get along now, there's folk waiting.'

We made our way past men armed with staves who looked this way and that along the street, as if something admired or detested were about to appear round the corner and they must be ready to spring into attack or defence. I trotted at his side with a sprightly step, for his stride was longer than mine and not obstructed by tight-laced stays or the thick quilt of petticoats through which I waded.

My husband thumbed his coat lapels, clapping the shoulders of many a fellow as if they were all of his acquaintance and handing out playbills. The first man said, 'Seen it,' the second, 'Old hat,' and plenty more remarked on there being 'new thrills to be had'. After a while even he tired of the interminable humbug, and led me to his chosen spot down a pa.s.sageway barely the breadth of my shoulders.

A crowd of men far larger than my small self were streaming in, turning sideways and making themselves thin as doors to shuffle down the alleyway. I saw the most nimble transform themselves further, into Barbary apes, finding footholds in the bricks and perching in the empty mouths of windows. I did not know so many could be forced into so restricted a s.p.a.ce. You could not name it a square: rather, it was a pocket of dank air, bludgeoned into smallness by grimy walls.

'Why are we here?' I said, sliding my hand beneath the veil to sweep aside my eyebrows. They had refused to take the curl overnight and insisted on curtaining my eyes.

'You will see, soon enough.'

'I see nothing of any note, save a company of folk such as one might encounter in any public bar.'

He barked out a swift laugh. 'Ah, this is not any public place. Nor are these any men. Patience, Mrs Arroner. We are here for your instruction and edification.'

My heart sank a little. He rarely if ever took me out with him, and over breakfast had described this event as a diverting change, one where I might be entertained rather than providing the entertainment. The word 'instruction' cast it in a far less interesting light.

Still they packed in. The air seethed; I almost wished myself under the Baptist's paper mask, for the stink of glue would be better than this choking fog of sweat and beer, and flesh never washed. I clutched my veil to my nose and for once was grateful for its thick folds. My husband gripped my shoulder as though he guessed I wished to be away.

'What is this place?' I coughed.

'Be quiet,' he said, his voice strangling oddly. 'You are my wife and will conduct yourself as befits that elevated position.'

'But, Mr Arroner-'

'I said, be silent. Be obedient to my wishes.'

'Always, dearest,' I said, with as much submission as I could muster.

He stared at me and it was as though the look pierced my veil and my fringe of disobedient hair all the way to the depths of my soul.

'I wonder?' he murmured. 'George has whispered some pretty tales, I do declare.'

'Has he indeed?' I declared. 'Of course, George is a trustworthy man.'

I turned my head to look forward. He grasped my arm above the elbow and squeezed so harshly I let out a small cry.

'Do not toy with me, wife. You are mine, remember that,' he hissed. 'I'd see you stuffed and mounted in a gla.s.s case before I'd let another man touch you, do you hear?'

'Yes, dear husband,' I squeaked, for his grip was unyielding. 'But I am true to you. I do not know where George-'

'Be quiet. Your education is about to begin. I hope you find it bends your mind towards contemplation of how a wife should disport herself appropriately.'

As he spoke, the rumbling chatter of the mob was cut short. Although it did not seem possible, people shrank to the sides to make more room, creating a clearing in the forest of bodies. My husband straightened up and loosened his grip a fraction. Then the two men were dragged in. For all I thought my life had cooked me tough, I was peeled raw at the sight.

They were Negroes, arms tied behind their backs, mouths stuffed with rags. One had skin the colour of porter, and was so ragged as to be near naked; through the gag he was mumbling words I was neither able nor desired to hear. His neighbour wore a shirt and breeches that had once been expensive, but were now torn and bloodied; his face was paler and so swollen I was sure he could not see anything. I was grateful he could not see me.

They were shoved to their knees; collars were padlocked about their necks and fixed to a chain that ratcheted through a ring in the flagstones. The man in the shirt struggled to his feet only to be clouted back down, letting out a sound I did not think possible from the mouth of a man, till I saw how his jaw swung like a kicked gate.