The Smell of Telescopes (29 page)

Now the captain’s voice became even gruffer:

“Where have ye hidden our gold, ye lubbers? Will we have to torture ye to learn the truth? Heat the tongs, ’Ceti! Sharpen the pins, ’Tology! Boil the oil, ’Vado! Out with the planks, ’Lin! Teach ’em to disturb our treasure. Map their kidneys, ’Phagia!”

The crew scurried about this business, not at all inconvenienced by such peculiar names. The captain puffed his cheeks and stamped his boots and swaddled his boasts in complaints:

“What a blasted crossing! Sailing up the Severn estuary, we saw the creation of a sea-monster. An orange goat was drowning in the waves when a giant fish gobbled it up. But not all o’ it! Nay, for that goat lodged in the fish’s throat, and they went swimming off together, a goat with a fishy tail. A triton! The fish was flat, like a skate; the goat was sick with the heavings. ’Twas a rum match.”

I prodded my verger. “Did you hear that? Tangerine Pan has become a green ray! That is so typical of him.”

He nodded. “Another transformation! Originally he was a tall fellow called Otho Vathek who dwelled in Chaud-Mellé, before the wizard Xelucha turned him into a blue dwarf. Then he was known as Cobalt Hugh, at least until a villain named Bartleby Cadiz converted him into a yellow imp. He came to Monmouth as Ochre Fingers and you baked him into an orange goat! I wonder what his new alias might be?”

“Verdigris Manta?” I cried. It corroded nicely on the ear, the same way the schooner rusted on the waters.

My verger spied a face pressed against a porthole. Not a pirate, or even human, but with a stowaway blink.

He blurted: “There’s a goblin hiding below!”

The captain heard him and glanced up. “Well? What of it? We’ve just sailed from Giovanni Ciao’s restaurant in Sardinia. Dozens of goblins in his kitchen. Bound to get one or two sneaking aboard. But we’re not here to debate illegal passengers. We want our gold and gems! All our plunder from the Sack o’ Panama. Buried here.”

I decided to help. “There isn’t a solitary Panama in our town, sir. But you can have this sack instead. Lubricated on the inside with squonk tears. Keeps regrets fresh for years.”

The captain jumped and chortled. “’Tis Toby! I knew he wouldn’t let us down! We’ve come for our trove, my fine young cannibal. Where have ye moved it? And where are thy trousers?”

It was Myfanwy’s turn to speak up. “Gruffydd is no cannibal! He’s a buffoon. You are in the wrong parish.”

The captain growled. “Do ye mean to tell me this isn’t Lladloh? But I won’t be lulled by that simple trick. Here’s the old stone bridge, and also a fellow ugly enough to be Toby.”

“Go on, Gruffydd. Prove you don’t eat folk.”

I drew out my uneaten pie, the one I’d baked in a futile attempt to replicate Myfanwy’s speciality. “See!”

“Sugar my timbers! This proves thy point. We must have turned right at the Isle o’ Lundy. Cast away, lads! Back to the briny deeps. Cool thy tongs, ’Ceti. Thimble all pins, ’Tology. Leeks in the kettle, ’Vado, not bullets. No joints today, ’Lin. Weigh anchor, ’Phagia! What’s that? Half a pound o’ tuppenny rice? Lighter than expected. Plus a half o’ treacle? That’s enough, give or take a weasel.”

As the anchor came up, my verger spotted his pickling jar caught on one of the barbs. He gyrated in joy and begged for its return, a request the pirates were wary of granting, in case the contents proved valuable. I grew worried at this sight. It meant that Owain, if he hadn’t drowned, would be heading back to Monmouth to be reunited with his trousers. With outstretched cutlass, the captain rescued the bottle. “A message inside? ’Tis composed in obscure hieroglyphs.”

While he struggled to decipher the breeches, my verger cried: “It’s a map of Lladloh. Give me the jar and I’ll tell you how to use it.” This bargain was acceptable to the buccaneers and the captain swung the empty bottle onto the riverbank. “Iron out the creases and follow it from back to front. Beware the shallow pockets!” Myfanwy leaned further to observe proceedings, and the stock of her pistol poked out from her jacket. The blunderbuss in the captain’s grasp noticed this and suddenly jerked up and aimed itself at my beloved! With less hesitation than a squonk invited to tune a mandolin from a major to minor key, she responded by drawing and pointing her own firearm. It was clear the pirate was struggling to control his weapon, and this was also true for Myfanwy. Neither wished to pull the trigger! The guns wanted to start the duel themselves. I flinched.

“It’s as if the blunderbuss and pistol hate one another! As if they crave to resolve an enduring dispute.”

With a cynical shrug, my verger hissed: “Like the wife and mistress of the same man? None of our business, Gruffydd. Leave them to it. It is time to return to your house. The Polar Pie must be ready. Don’t object! You promised to assist my plan if I removed Owain for you. I did so, and you must reciprocate. That is virtue.” Though my heart was reluctant to leave Myfanwy, my brain, which has respect for both gunpowder and pledges, told me to comply. I didn’t look back as I trailed him first to the river to collect his jar, and then to my home, which was sooty but still intact. Winter aromas wafted over the lawn. The miracle inside was finished, but it was gargantuan: an iceberg colder than interstellar gulfs, nestled in a pastry stadium. Oh Myfanwy! What inhuman daring to conceive such a pie! No tramontane tart, whatever pedigree of superconductive brumes swirled around base or topping, might compare with this noctilucent nouriture. It was as unique and terrifying as its creator. A glittering ziggurat of crystal tears! But how could we extract it through the narrow doorway?

My verger pointed at a pair of hinges on the wall which had escaped my attention. And further along, he found a lever disguised as a bracket for a hanging-basket. He pulled it and the entire façade of the building swung open, exposing the upper rooms, and lower, which was bursting with pie. “Myfanwy was right! It’s an authentic oven.” Entering, and pressing his shoulder to the pastry, he puffed: “Far too heavy to move on my own. Go to the rear, Gruffydd, and heave. I’ll chain your donkey to the front and in tandem we might escort it out!”

Behind the pie, I was granted a new clarity of vision. The mountain of ice acted as a lens. My nose and eyes were assailed with the two main effects of Myfanwy’s genius: spicy odour and access to remote images. It was as if I smelled a telescope. Through the lamenting facets, I saw the distant river in detail, the bridge and waterwheel, the pirate ship with its brutish crew, the captain with his arm around my sweetheart. Wait! A cruel mirage surely? No, it was true: far from shooting each other, they had somehow become acquainted in the passionate way. Risking my verger’s wrath, I dashed out and waved my arms.

“Return to me, Myfanwy! I’m your only beau.”

“You jest!” she answered, thrusting a cigar between her teeth. Then I realised how neatly she fitted into this environment. Already her ripe bosom was straining at her bodice; daggers hung from her waist at jaunty angles, baroque gifts from her new paramour. Even her hair flowed in old curls, like blood, rum and smoke. Before the vessel turned a bend in the river and was lost to view, she pulled the pirate captain’s cutlass from his own belt (an action which had too much of the sensuous about it) and threw it at me. It stuck in the mud next to my foot, and I like to think she was presenting me with a memento, a souvenir of what had gone (clock and carrot) and what may have come (blueberry stain), rather than trying to wound me. But I’m probably deluded.

I felt an arm on my shoulder. “Back to work, Gruffydd! The donkey’s exhausted.” Obeying, I wept. My tears splashed on the ice as I pushed at the dessert, fusing instantly to the crystals, maybe diluting the grief, for no human suffering, however acute, expressed in abrasive lachrymals, could parallel that of the average squonk. The strenuousness of the task helped to dampen my taut heartstrings. When the pie was fully out, I asked my verger why he also needed to employ my house as an oven. His reply was dramatic. With a fluid motion, he removed his surplice, reversed it and drew it back on. Superficially, in terms of texture and design, this other side was identical to what he had previously sported. But the way it swirled about his thighs revealed the fact of the matter. I was stunned.

“You’re a priest! Not a humble verger at all!”

“The Reverend Delves at your disservice. Yes, Gruffydd, I’ve fooled you for a year. It was necessary, of course, to implement my scheme. Two clergymen wandering the realm as equals would have excited comment. Your quest to find the pastors was also mine, but for different reasons. Tell me how many took over your home when you originally left for your corner of the scalene world? Seven? Well, I’ve got news for you. There was only one, a fellow known as Pastor Rowlands. He’s ruler of the evil Church: a schism in orthodoxy and also himself.”

“But he came with a clock sold in the market.”

“That was when he still had a fragment of goodness in him. After he lived in your house and abandoned all ethics, the Seven Deadly Sins grew too wide for his body. He split into seven replicas, each devoted to one of the vices. He’s a sort of gestalt decadent. When Tangerine Pan jumped out of your Trojan Pie, he thought the devil had come to claim him! That pushed him further into wickedness and he became a confirmed Satanist. A pastor, however, is too lowly to have much influence with the Arch-Fiend himself, which is what I require. So my plan is to cram all seven of his aspects into one chamber of the oven and fill the other with the concept purple. These I’ll bake into a Bishop Pie: a potent functionary of Hades which I can enrol as an intermediary.”

“You seek an audience with Lucifer? What for?”

“To petition him to relocate Hell. Listen now, Gruffydd, I know you feel nothing but awe for Myfanwy’s venture to make the planet round. But there may be unfortunate consequences. When bad men die, their souls and trousers fall down, toward perdition. The direction of this movement has always been inward, through the surface of the Earth. If Hyperborea does fold itself over Monmouth, a rough sphere will result, but we will dwell in its concavity, rather than on its convexity. Hell will suddenly exist outward, which is the direction where good souls and trousers fly. Don’t you appreciate the potential chaos? The moral order will be inverted and spirits and breeches will end up in the wrong place. Good will be jabbed with forks; sin serenaded with harps.”

“What cosmic horror! You have my full support. How can we catch the seven pastors and the concept purple?”

“I now conclude Pastor Rowlands has scattered in sundry directions. No point looking for him: we’ll wait until each separate piece converges here. As for the purple, it is already present in my jar. When you added your sentences, I pretended the initial two weren’t balderdash. That was to ensure you recited three. It takes three measures of nonsense to make a purple passage. It’s ready for use.”

We stood his bottle in one of the upstairs rooms and retired to the lawn, to bathe in the double shade of Zipangu and Pennsylvania, and idle away the days until the pastors returned. The Polar Pie shielded us from the hemlock vapours which occasionally drifted down from the upper tier. What minimal light flickered from the north was amplified by the immense confection and focussed over the river, which seemed to be swelling from day to day. This borborygmic borealis didn’t cheer me. I was so unnerved that when a delegation from afar arrived in Monmouth some weeks later, I hesitated to invite them into my house for coffee. An odd bunch in short trousers, dyed with tropical splashes. Also bare sternums, hair bleached blond, coral necklaces and surfboards.

I speculated they were from Bermuda or Guernsey. But my patois fell on empty ears. Then they corrected me:

“No, friend, we’re Hyperboreans. Come to see the iceberg. Ah, there it is! So that’s what cold means, eh?”

“You dress like that in the Arctic Circle?”

“Sure enough. Well, it’s too hot up there for anything else. Do you assume the far north is a region of chills? It hasn’t been like that for decades. Not with the global warming.”

“I expected you to tug the landscape along behind. But I see you’re not fused to anything. We were praying a variety of pastors would arrive before you, but if you haven’t got Hyperborea, I guess it doesn’t really matter. We won’t create an outside Hell after all! But what’s this about temperature? Is the Earth heating up?”

“Certainly is. It’s all the cooking that’s taking place everywhere. Can hardly walk a mile without finding somebody preparing a stew or pie. Spicy vapours congealing in the atmosphere! Trapping sunlight, they are, melting the glaciers. The example here is probably the very last iceberg in the whole world, which is why we came so far to see it. It also means your town will shortly be deluged by gigantic waves, but I gather you’ve already started evacuating civilians.”

“News to me! What inspires that judgement?”

“We saw seven of them adrift in a boat shaped like a pot. The fools were still cooking as they sailed along! Purple pasta, I believe. Yes, a spaghetti and thistle dish. The leader introduced us to his wife. Called her La Santa Roja; a feisty woman with slack pantaloons. Heading for the highlands of Lladloh. A prudent move.”

I was too depressed to smite my chest. “Purple pasta? His wife? Two more glacé nails in my pastry coffin!”

My verger interjected at this point: “I don’t believe the planet is doomed to drown! What proof is there?”

The Hyperboreans smirked. “Go to France and see for yourself. Waves struck Paris last week, stranding the Phantom of the Opera on a rooftop. Also Quasimodo, but he’s resourceful.”

I could hardly doubt any of this. It was as if the world was crying for my shattered heart and broken tongue. I stood and saddled my donkey, oblivious to my verger’s protestation.

“Off to Lladloh,” I muttered. “My destiny.”

“Don’t be silly, Gruffydd! You don’t know where it is. Don’t listen to what these hoary hippies tell you!”

“The barman in Shropshire will give me directions. He owned the pub there. Farewell, Douglas Delves! You were a charming fake. I hope you’ll be very happy with your pickling jar.”