The Smell of Telescopes (27 page)

The Purple Pastor

Of my trousers and my soul I have little to say. Poor fabric and logical positivism have divested me of the one, and argued me from the other. Am I ranting? Surely, for none of this is true. I’m still attached to both, though I know not where they are. Let me start my tale afresh! I cannot, for my soul, or my trousers, remember how, when or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the Lady Myfanwy. Long ears have elapsed, and my donkey is feeble through much suffering. But this too is a lie! I met her in a decaying town on the River Wye called Monmouth, as you well know. Will the right words forever elude me? I’m in a daze, having eaten my own blueberry pie in the extremity of hunger. A poison now circulates in my blood, for the pie was stale. I’m sick unto death with that horrid filling, and for the wild, yet most homely jam which I’m about to vomit, I neither expect nor solicit a bucket. 

There were three of us, heading south from Shropshire, following an unwound turban which had lately belonged to a yellow imp. Myfanwy and my verger took the lead; I trailed behind with bare legs. Our planet was no longer scalene, but it still wasn’t round, and it was my fault, so I had the responsibility of tucking up the loose corner, which was flapping in space, to make a parcel, a world-pie containing the future. To be blunt, the task seemed beyond my talent, which is modest and clumsy, but lovely Myfanwy had faith. I could not resist her belief, though I shuddered and sweated at the enormity of the scheme. We passed into the Malvern Hills, and here the turban was snagged on crags and chewed by hermits, until we were obliged to navigate by the stars instead, glittering over the snow, ascending all the while, as if we determined to ask Orion for directions in person, or else to borrow his belt.

I chafed, thighs and tolerance, but protested not, partly because I was too far behind to be heard. The way appeared curiously strenuous. It is rare for Malvern peaks to tax the heel; often they have been hammered to gentle slopes by aeons of weather. The flora was unexpected also: the gorges were filled with Arolla Pine, which is native to the Carpathians. Before I could marvel overmuch at the incongruity, there was a commotion among some boulders, and dark shapes swooped from the shadows. The odour of garlic was extreme, the twang of crossbows untuned, and I surmised we had been ambushed by traditional
banditti.
By the time I reached Myfanwy and my verger, the skirmish was concluded. An old duelling pistol smoked in her dainty fist. She replaced it in a secret pocket and my admiration was tinged with horror. Such a violent and competent and tasty woman! No sulphur cloud might obscure that fact.

And such a feminine weapon, with a trigger like a batted eyelash of a mistress! They did not sell flintlocks in the markets of Monmouth, not since the days of Charles Rolls, inventor of the limousine, who required one to power his first prototype, so it was clear she had obtained it on her travels. Pressing her on the point, I learned she had bought it from a squonk in Pennsylvania, the western point of the world. She patted the bulge in her jacket and sighed. “I don’t care to use it much, because it feels like murder.” And when I kicked the leaking bandit at my feet, she added: “Murder of the pistol, I mean.”

“You postulate that the firearm is animate?”

She nodded. “The squonk said something to that effect. No matter: I perceive the tethered mounts of our assailants. Let us borrow a horse or three before they return with reinforcements. Listen here, Gruffydd, you lack pants, so take this scrawny ass.”

“It has flared nostrils. How unfashionable!”

But I didn’t resist, pulling myself into the saddle and clinging to the greasy mane. The going was barely easier; we staggered up summits so lofty that an aurora borealis flickered in a nephelococcugic vale below, and inched along ledges littered with crossbow bolts. Instead of passing into the lowlands which border the Severn estuary, we entered a range of yet taller peaks with cognac-hued sides. Any pretence that we were traversing the Malverns was now impossible, and indeed it was my verger who claimed these as the Orchat Mountains, best seen in the season of Opora, when an aerial armada of phoenix alight on branches and burn the stalks off ripe fruits, which drop into the laps of itinerants, but he was unable to say exactly where in the calendar of the year this enigmatic season resided, beyond resorting to some drivel that it was generally between the rising of Sirius and the bedtime of Arcturus.

“Definitely the Orchats,” he avowed, “and those others up ahead are the heights of Kunlun Shan. Beyond them, the Hindu Kush, the Julian Alps and what are probably the Kaatskills.”

“The Kaatskills?” I objected. “Ridiculous!”

“By no means. Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember them. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and like to lord it over the surrounding country. A good place for a game of ninepins; a very aged fellow told me.”

Myfanwy, who had climbed them on her way to Pennsylvania, concurred with this analysis and wondered aloud:

“It appears that a number of separate ranges have gathered here for a crucial purpose. Do you think they’re holding a parliament of peaks? A literal kind of international summit?”

My verger poked his tongue like an uneaten host and hissed: “Highly likely. The Himalayas are absent. I dare state these others have come to conspire against them. That famous range is still growing, and must be a focus of resentment for its eroded cousins. Something similar took place in 1883, when a volcano cartel plotted the assassination of Krakatoa. It was soon annihilated in an explosion.”

“A natural catastrophe!” I cried.

He smirked. “No, they sent it a letter-bomb.”

Despite the grotesque implications of accepting this speculation as fact, I could sympathise with any geological formation, whether volcano, mountain or iceberg, which wanted a level playing-field with its rivals. The Himalayas were indeed rising above their station, something never to be said about the Malverns, nor any Welsh peak, including Snowdon, which would shortly glower below its rusty signals, warped rails and tasteless café, forcing lazy passengers to walk down to the top. But perhaps I was muddling two meanings of the same word, a bad habit which I hear can now be kept in check in a Prague sanatorium. I had no funds to go there, and was sick, or sock, of walking to boot.

As we stumbled from one spectacular range to another, the rumble of distant avalanches forever in our ears, my donkey tripped and cast me to the frozen ground. The ribbon of the unwound turban fluttered around its hooves. We had found our way again. I was jubilant and started to relax, becoming more responsive to my environs. The mountains really were up to some icy intrigue, and I expressed awe at my verger’s erudition. “How do you know so much about arcane topics?”

“I’m a perfect scholar, Gruffydd. I’ve read the whole of Papus Levi and Valentine Cheese, and most of Montague Winters, Raymond Lullabye and Friedrich Nightshirt. I collect wisdom, but not in my memory. I preserve old truths in balderdash vinegar.”

“You? Impossible! A pickler?”

“A pickler,” he replied.

“I have my doubts.” I said. “A sign.”

“It’s this,” he answered, producing a jar from beneath the folds of his vestments and uncorking it.

“You jest,” I exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. “That is naught but a Klein Bottle, with a defective map of the world etched on its surface. But let’s proceed to Monmouth.”

He snorted softly and turned to Myfanwy. “As for Gruffydd, he can’t tell a jar from a bottle!” There was no genuine spite in his tone, and I forgave his insolence. Perversely, I felt affection for him, even subtle reverence, as if I was the callow verger, and he my mentor. I approached him with a low bow locked in my spine. “We’ve been working together for almost a year, but still your name is unknown to me. Will you reveal it?”

He waved a tolerant hand. “Why not? The vowels are a joy to project down the chasms. I am Douglas Delves.”

Extreme bother seemed pickled in the echo.

To this day, I can’t work out how so many massive mountains were able to cram themselves between Shropshire and Monmouth, without crushing either or both, unless they had lost weight in the slide over the continents to meet at that point. We eventually escaped the drama, reaching the rim of the last range, the Caucasus, merely to plunge down its foothills into a crisis. The noble town of Monmouth had changed beyond recognition: there was no horizon anywhere, and it was futile to look for one sideways. The town was now tiered triple, with Zipangu and Pennsylvania mounted above, great sweeps of world curving away from both, inverted oceans and people waving at us from the dizziness of those atmospheric antipodes. Consider a samosa or triangular napkin, with two sides folded into the middle but supported over it. Humanity and other monsters, plain or fable, were the filling, or if you prefer, the sneeze. 

It was exhilarating to view lands previously familiar only in cheap atlases. Then it occurred to me that by aiming due west or east, I might reach a fold, cross it and be upside-down too, returning in the opposite direction. Myfanwy’s dream of a spherical planet had been implemented in such a way that a traveller was nearer his destination before he started his journey; a good reason for not going anywhere. Typically Welsh, that solution! While I frowned at this, and various imponderables, the vision of beauty herself gripped my arm and indicated we were searching for the tavern in whose cellars I had once lodged: my ovens played a part in her strategy. Accordingly, I urged my donkey to a forward totter, pleased to discharge this duty correctly without trousers or soul. On the outskirts of the tectonic stack, I noted that the upper tiers had been warped back to align them with Monmouth, the base.

Needless to say, the streets of my youth were shrouded in darkness, for the only access to the sky, and thus sun, moon, stars, came from the unfolded, northern edge, the direction which I considered mine. And what minimal light glowed from the phosphorescent sky-seas was blocked by the overhanging vegetation of the two continents, acting as exotic drapes. I felt that Monmouth had retired to bed and was too prim to show its naked shoulders to men of the cloth and women of the pie. I saw that creatures with the texture of wood were floating down from the middle tier on silk parachutes made from kimonos, or else employing grappling-irons to climb back. These gnoles had inhabited every glade in all lands in the days of Slith, Nuth and the aforementioned Rolls. I didn’t like the crafty looks they offered us as we passed through the foliage curtains into the false cavern that was once Agincourt Square.

The market was devoid of imps, for gnoles had taken over all wheels of commerce, except the actual waterwheel by Monnow bridge, which didn’t rotate now, having been jammed by the cables which pulled in Zipangu and Pennsylvania. The poles of the stalls supported the first of these lands and they visibly bowed under the weight. Imps are wicked traders, as you have discovered to your cost, but gnoles are worse: they sell items that are no use to anyone. What purpose in buying a kettle with a spout which curls back into its own belly? Might as well order pottery from a ghoul! We ignored the banter and dismounted, groping toward the ‘Green Dragon’, my last place of abode. Dim lamps swung from external brackets, glinting on my verger’s jar. The interior of the pub was illumined by clay pipes, furiously puffed by patrons so they might see their drinks. Ales frothed in the murk like subterranean lagoons.

We went down into the basement through the hole of a dull, dark and soundless trapdoor. I lit a flambeau (the leg of a stool) and studied my surroundings. My possessions were in disarray, but none had been stolen, possibly because they’d been deemed valueless. The oven was still in its customary place, and Myfanwy ran her fingers over the knobs of the lucky burner. She pursed her lips and whistled: “So this is the finest furnace in Gwent? And I am the best pie-artist! What a superb combination! We’ll have Owain ap Iorwerth and Tangerine Pan out of your house in a lick!” I was grateful for her zeal, but troubled as to her real motives. Unlikely that affection for me formed any part of them. All the same, I was proud to announce the design of the oven as my own. Inspiration had come while dreaming of home, before returning to find it full of pastors. Long lost pudding times; superior to salad days!

“But all my recipes failed,” I meekly appended.

“Because you are a fool,” explained Myfanwy. “Don’t worry: I’m here now. You allude to similarities between oven and house. That’s precisely why I wish to gain entry to your residence. There are two upper chambers in this oven, connected by pipes to a third, lower compartment. Whatever is placed in these top chambers is combined into a pie down here. It’s a system which can mix anything and lock it in a crust. Now, Gruffydd, how many rooms do you have in your house?”

“Two upstairs and one down, connected by laundry-chutes. Grief! You intend to turn my house into an oven!”

“That’s what it always potentially was. You weren’t clever to build this machine at all: the house suggested it, and you were just a tool of its urge to have a child. You were a wife to your property, and a mother to this domestic appliance. Well then, let’s employ the house itself for a kiln, and bake Wales into the future at the same time! I’ve calculated an easier way of folding the loose corner of the world over Monmouth. It relies on producing a gargantuan pie.”

“You intend inviting Hyperborea to dessert?”

“In a manner of speaking. But first we must gain entry to the house by expelling its present occupants. And to do that, we need this smaller oven. I’ll bake a hundred pies and you must challenge Owain to a battle. His orange tang won’t stand a chance against my blueberry bite. So fetch me flour and eggs and a dark-lantern!”

I shuddered. “How do you know he’ll accept?”

“Because I’m the victor’s prize!”

This was a dismaying prospect, and a cruel one, a form of emotional blackmail, for I was very reluctant to face Owain on the field, or lawn, of honour, yet refusal would diminish my already minuscule reputation in the eyes of my beloved. I’ve always hated violence, and even my training in the Church hasn’t diluted my pacifism, though the hypocrisy is coming along nicely, but Myfanwy is a force equal to my principles. I wanted to impress her more than anything, and as she was already loading furniture into the oven, it seemed wiser not to complain. Also she was stirring us away on the errand with a wooden spoon. I comforted myself: whatever was lost in dignity, sentience and hygiene, if I went through with the duel, was certain to be replaced with piety.