Radiance (41 page)

It was only that he had a hundred fine, long, coppery-golden hairs tangled in among his own, stuck to his skin, snagged in his boots. It was only that he smelled like sumac and ozone and coffee and possibilities; and his mother's callowmilk bisque; and Hesiod's cigarettes; and the tops of the twins' heads when they were first born; and thick, good paper that had been drawn on over and over and over so that it was all black from corner to corner. It was only that he hadn't been hungry for moth-steaks or fried nutcake or piglet pies or cassowary custard and had stuffed himself with callowmilk meringue and sweet callowmilk cheese with apricot (which is not really apricot, but a charcoal-coloured, crunchy, caramelly fruit that shrinks away from any human hand that tries to grasp it) and callowmilk pandowdy and blancmange and callowpudding and zabaglione and callownog, everything with cream and milk and cheese in it, everything with callowmilk thick and spicy and pale folded in and poured over it. He had eaten like he had never really known how to eat before. He had eaten like his bones were hollow.

In stowaway stories like these, the solution is often simple. Too simple for anyone to think of until later, when the kingdom is asleep and the spinning wheels are all burnt up and there are dwarves building a coffin of glass and a wizard has been buried in the foundations of a castle.
Oh. Oh. I should have known it. If only I had known.

A mother knows the smell of her young. Even when she is sick, even when she is mad, even when she cannot see her own hand before her, she knows her child. Her poor, tiny child—what can have gone wrong with this one? He's so little, impossibly little—no child so thin can be healthy. What can she do, what can she possibly do to make him grow? To make him strong, to make him
right
? Nothing could be more important than a child so ill he only has four pitiful, withered fronds and a tubule that looks like it couldn't hold a mouthful of milk.

Oh little calf, little bull, come to our breast. We did not see you there. It isn't your fault, poor lamb. We have only ourselves to blame. Hold still. Don't squirm. We will make it better. We will kiss it and kiss it and kiss it and kiss it until it doesn't hurt anymore. Until nothing can hurt anymore.

*   *   *

Little Doctor Callow did not fall asleep for a hundred years. He fell asleep for ten. But he did not sleep a person's sleep. A person did not tuck him in and tell him:
Close your eyes, my darling—don't open them; don't even peek. Say your prayers. Count sheep-which-are-not-really-sheep. Hush now. Soft now.
He slept the sleep of a callowhale. And, in sleep, a callowhale may move, may
quiver
. The sleep of a callowhale is not like our languorous, thick, sprawling, deathlike primate slumber. It is not really sleep at all. It is a spiky, spinning sword tip pricking the surface of the world a hundred times in a hundred places (though it is really an infinite, intangible intaglio of prickings) but never cutting.

It is not really sleep. It is not really milk. It is not really a whale.

Place a strip of film in a projector. Run it forward. Stop. Run it backward. Stop. Run it forward again. Now take it out and put it back in horizontally. Diagonally. Folded in half. Folded three times. Four. Twelve. One thousand and four. Put it in front of the light. Run it forward. Stop. Run it backward.

That is how a callowhale sleeps. It is like sleeping. It is also like
jumping
. It is a sleep like a panther.

But always, always, a callowhale dreams.

This is what Doctor Callow dreamed at his spinning wheel, in his glass coffin, in the roots of his tree:

Whales travel in pods. So did Doctor Callow. The sea he travelled in was every colour. He felt no arms or legs, though he knew he had them. He felt no effort in swimming. He felt large. Doctor Callow dove and spun through the waves, and each wave was a country like his own beloved Land of Milk and Desire, but he did not stop, could not stop, to look at them.

Beside him swam a whale, which was not really a whale but a dark, sullen child with raggedy hair and a sour expression. She wore a dress of poppies on her body that was a whale's body but also a child's body, like his own. She turned to him in the Sea of Every Colour and said:

Better run, Your Majesty, or I'll eat you all up
.

He swam harder after her. Harder and harder. She was so fast.

Come find me in two years
, she called back over her flippers that were not really flippers.

But I've found you now,
he answered her.

And then she was sitting at the bottom of the Sea of Every Colour, her lacy dress spread out all around her, the orange flowers opening and closing like bloody kisses. The water carried her hair up, fanning it around her head like a black serpent-crown. She drew in the sand of the ocean floor with a stick. This is what she drew:

She looked up at him.

Are we going to live here forever?
she asked.

I think so.

The little girl sighed. Bubbles flowed out of her mouth.
I miss someone.

I miss lots of someones
, Doctor Callow said, into the sea.

The girl nodded.
Do you know what this place is?

It's where the callowhales live.

Yes,
the girl said, though he could not tell if she was happy about it.

Chamomile?

That's not my name.

What is your name?

Severin.

Severin?

Yes?

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.

Severin started. She gave him a strange, searching expression. Her voice sharpened, grew older.
Why did you say that?

I don't know. It seemed like a good thing to say.

You said it like you were quoting something. What's Kansas? Is it a planet?

Doctor Callow suddenly felt confused. He forgot how to swim in the Sea of Every Colour and dropped abruptly to the sand beside Severin.
I think so? Maybe? It sounds nice.

Maybe it's one of the other places.

What other places?

Mr Bergamot lives everywhere.

What are you talking about?

She gestured to the callowhales overhead, as massive as suns, and circling, circling forever.
Mr Bergamot loves teatime. At teatime he eats worlds. And egg salad.

I'm lonely,
whispered Doctor Callow.

Don't be. There's a million million worlds to play with.

I'm lonely,
he whispered again, because he didn't know what else to say.

That's okay,
Severin Unck answered. She put her small hand on his. The colours of the Sea-which-wasn't-really-a-Sea got so bright Severin and Doctor Callow had to shut their eyes, which were not really their eyes. Doctor Callow looked up through the waves-which-were-not-really-waves and saw a callowhale—thousands of callowhales—soaring through the surf. They looked back at him as one creature, their infinite faces-which-were-not-really-faces as radiant as the spasms of stars, as the first frame of a film that is perfect, that is impossible, that is complete.

That's okay,
Severin said.
I'm here. There's no place like Home.

 

PART FOUR

THE GOLD PAGES

Goddess, as soon as I saw you with my own eyes

I knew your divinity—but you gave me no truth.

Yet by aegis-wielding Zeus I beg thee—

do not make me live on, impotent, among men.

Have mercy on me, for well I know

the man who lies with immortal goddesses

is never left unharmed.

—Homer, “Hymn to Aphrodite”

A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.

—Diane Arbus

There lived an old woman

Under a hill

And if she's not gone

She lives there still

—Mother Goose

 

The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew

(Oxblood Films, dir. Severin Unck)

SC4 EXT. ADONIS, VILLAGE GREEN—DAY 16 TWILIGHT POST PLANETFALL 08:49 [3 DECEMBER, 1944]

[EXT. SEVERIN UNCK swims through the murky water, holding one of ERASMO ST. JOHN'S callow-lanterns out before her. ERASMO follows behind with her secondary camera, encased in a crystal canister. The film is badly stained and burned through several frames. She swims upward, dropping lead weights from her shimmering counter-pressure mesh as she rises. The grille of her diving bell gleams faintly in the shadows. Above her, slowly, the belly of a callowhale comes into view. It is impossibly massive, the size of a sky. SEVERIN strains towards it, extending her fingers to touch it, just once, as if to verify it for herself, that such a thing could be real.

The audience will always and forever see it before SEVERIN does. A slit in the side of the great whale, like a door opening. As the documentarian stretches towards it, with an instinctual blocking that is nothing short of spectacular—the suddenly tiny figure of a young woman frozen forever in this pose of surprise, of yearning, in the centre of the shot—the eye of the callowhale, so huge as to encompass the whole screen, opens around her.]

 

Production Meeting
The Deep Blue Devil
The Man in the Malachite Mask
Doctor Callow's Dream
And If She's Not Gone, She Lives There Still

(Tranquillity Studios, 1961, dir. Percival Unck)

Audio Recorded for Reference by Vincenza Mako

PERCIVAL UNCK:
I don't know how to end it. All this time and I still don't know. I can't change Rin's story. But I thought … I thought I could give
him
a better story. One where he had the means to search and find his fate, the way heroes do. One where he got saved. But answers are all that saves anyone, and I don't have any. I set the place for the ending, turned down the bed, lit the candles, and the bitch stayed out in the cold to spite me.

MAKO:
But it wasn't ever going to be a
real
ending. Remember? It was going to be better than the real world. That was the whole point. That was the gift we wanted to make for her. It was going to have weight. It was going to rhyme with the beginning in some ineffable way that real endings never do. We never set out to tell a true story, only a
mostly
true one. The ending we planned
is
elegant, if you follow the logic, and “elegant” is more important than “real.” That's always been our motto, really.

UNCK:
The fairy tale thing was never going to work. It's beautiful, but it can only come at the story obliquely. It can only tell how it felt. It can't say anything like: “Severin Unck died by electrocution.” It can't say she didn't. The language is all wrong. We have all the ambiguity we can eat already; we don't need more. And anyway, it's not a child's story. Or an adult's. It's not Anchises or Severin or anyone else, but all of them together, stuck in a room with no idea how to get out.