The Vorrh (30 page)

The rumours arrived just ahead of the police. Her hypochondriacal visit to the doctor had occurred two days before she disappeared, leaving her home and servants without money or explanation. The Die Kripo officers told the doctor all the details, and he told them even more: cysts, headaches, womb pains, night perspirations; varicose veins, haemorrhoids, allergic distress; breast lumps, vapours and all of the other symptoms he had been invited to probe over the years. He showed them files and medical records and they left, satisfied, but with no new directions. He sat down in the consulting room, a blackness flapping in the pit of his stomach. The beating fear had a shape, and it was brightly embroidered.

‘We must ask him,’ he pleaded of the Scotsman.

‘Ask him what?’

‘What they did with the bag.’

Maclish no longer found the Limboia’s appropriation of the bag so amusing. The herald was brought down into the central hall, where he stood vacantly, like one hanging on the thickness of the air. His speech had deteriorated since the last time they met; he was not reluctant to answer their questions, but his replies were slow and suspended.

‘You give Orm scent from looking, looking inside. After Orm wear it,
went out, hollowed for you, all gone.’

Maclish and Hoffman looked at each other, desperately hoping they had misunderstood. They whispered to each other and Hoffman asked, ‘Was the scent that of a female?’

‘Scent is spoor, is animal trail for looking out.’

‘Where did it go to?’ cried Maclish.

‘Vorrh.’

‘That’s impossible,’ the doctor said incredulously. ‘Mrs Klausen would never go there – I don’t think she’s ever left Essenwald!’

‘Orm hollowed out for you and looking one. Hollow to nothing, nothing left inside, only the rind walked into Vorrh to nothing,’ the herald said, smiling. He bowed to the startled men as the understanding of what they had done began to seep into them, their eyes meeting in the fearful perception of what they had released, and how its hunger could end up devouring them all.

As they left the building, the herald remained in his stooped pose, head bent obsequiously and the smile fixed to his unwavering face.

* * *

Ghertrude was feeling lonely and out of step with her life. Since the end of the carnival, and Ishmael’s departure, everything had seemed dimmer and without flavour. She felt flat and unexcited by the city and her diminishing secret in it.

She turned the corner into Kühler Brunnen and was nearing the house, head down and mind elsewhere, when she almost collided with a figure standing at the gate. The woman was taller and older than Ghertrude, with eyes she would never forget. They looked down at her, absorbing every particle of sight, every ounce of meaning. She had obviously been
waiting for her.

‘Mistress Tulp!’ she beamed, in a triumph that seemed without reason. ‘Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Cyrena Lohr,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘I believe our families are already acquainted? May I call you Ghertrude?’

She had heard of this woman: everybody had; if not before the miracle of the carnival, then certainly after. She suddenly knew that they had met once before, when she was a child and the beautiful, blind stranger was put in her care at one of the grand parties of the city’s gentry. Or perhaps it had been the other way around? But there was certainly a memory of vast rooms and music, of being separate and in the company of an elegant, blind woman. She remembered being able to stare at her, to examine her without politeness, and to think about what blindness meant for the first time. Her sight then had probed the blackness of the beautiful, dead eyes, which were now more than alive and staring down at her.

‘Of course, Miss Lohr,’ she answered to the barely remembered question.

‘Then you must call me Cyrena, if we are to be friends.’

Ghertrude was taken aback by the speed of this assumption, and was about to answer when she realised that Cyrena was staring at the locked door.

‘Oh, I am sorry, please do come in,’ she said, fumbling for the keys in her pockets.

Inside, they sat at the kitchen table and talked about their mutual acquaintances, their memories and experiences of being the city’s chosen daughters. Ghertrude’s uncertainty at their introduction was beginning to pass when, without warning, Cyrena smiled and broke all the rules.

‘Forgive me, my dear, for asking such a taboo question, but I simply must know: who did escort you to the beginning of the carnival frivolities?’

Ghertrude fluttered and flushed, while trying to remain calm and indifferent. The hungry eyes saw all and pressed harder.

‘I am not asking you to be indiscreet or break a confidence, but I owe
something to the gentleman concerned and I am anxious to pay.’

‘Are you sure we are talking about the same person?’ questioned Ghertrude, clutching at straws and finding it impossible to conceive of any situation where the unlikely pair may have met.

‘I do hope so,’ said Cyrena. She described the costume without ever having seen it. She described it well, and Ghertrude’s blush turned to an anxious pale. Cyrena saw the truth behind her blanching and knew her game had been cornered.

‘His name is Ishmael,’ Ghertrude said reluctantly. ‘He was my friend; he lived in this house.’

‘Lived?’ repeated Cyrena. ‘Where is he now?’

‘He left weeks ago, I don’t know where for,’ she lied.

The older woman stood abruptly, obviously agitated. Ghertrude approached her and touched her shivering arm.

‘Why do you need to find him?’ she asked.

The unwavering eyes locked on hers with an indescribable eeriness.

‘It was he who gave me my sight,’ she said.

The sharp, rank electricity stung her nose and slapped her brain. She instinctively tried to push the glass bottle away from her airway, but Cyrena held it there firmly until the smelling salts had proved to work. Ghertrude gasped for breath as the older woman held her firmly in the upright chair, one hand on Ghertrude’s forehead and her other arm hugging the woozy younger lady across her back.

‘It’s all right, my dear, you have only fainted,’ she said.

The nauseous zebra vision ceased and Ghertrude bounced back to the dazed reality of Cyrena’s revelation. ‘Ishmael did that,’ she whispered. ‘But how?’

Reseating herself at the table, Cyrena began to explain the situation of that amazing night. She explained it frankly, and perhaps with too much detail. This time, they both blushed but she continued with the
extraordinary story, and Ghertrude’s mind slowly accustomed itself to the depth of Ishmael’s festive experiences. As Cyrena related the exquisite interactions of their encounter, Ghertrude began to realise the terrible truth of the event, the one feature that couldn’t have been exchanged by their actions alone. She wished she could undo her involvement, but it was too late; nothing should be held back now. There was no place for deception or half-truths between them.

‘Did…’ Ghertrude hesitated, throwing a sidelong glance at her new friend. ‘I only wondered… did you never see his face?’

The younger woman took charge of the smelling salts. Cyrena had not fainted, but the news had sent her reeling back, like a short, sharp punch to the chest.

‘You mean he was born with only one eye?’ she gaped.

‘Yes. It is here, in the centre of his face.’ Ghertrude pointed to the area just above her nose. ‘It takes time,’ she said gently, ‘but you get used to it. After a while, you only see him.’

‘But, there was no sign that he was so deformed; I had no idea! The mask, the mask… it… he felt normal!’ Cyrena ran out of words as she remembered the events of that night and struggled to hold back tears.

‘He is not like us,’ Ghertrude said, shaking her head. ‘Not like us at all.’

The day passed. Ghertrude fetched a bottle of Madeira and two glasses. They sat by a window as they drank, watching the sun set over the Vorrh. She told the stranger, fast becoming a friend, much about their life together in 4 Kühler Brunnen, but not about the beginning. Though she ached to tell somebody of the abnormalities in the basement, to share that impossible truth, she knew that, without any evidence, she would sound deranged, incredible. Who would ever believe such a story? She looked at Cyrena: might it be her? Might this strong, clever woman, who made her feel child-like again and curiously protected, be understanding
of such a tale?

‘I must still find him,’ Cyrena was saying. ‘Whatever he is, wherever he has gone, he has changed my life completely.’

Ghertrude sighed and let the last crumbs of denial fall to the kitchen floor. ‘He said he was going to the Vorrh,’ she declared. It sounded like a pact.

* * *

The Bowman and Paulus were entering fast-running shallows at a place where the land rose up out of the thin water in broken blades of stone, vertical, resolute and overwhelming. They stepped out of the boat into three feet of water, wading the vessel aground on a long shingle beach and letting its weight wallow into the glinting pebbles. The Bowman walked up onto firmer land and looked about him: he had been here before. The gravity of the place spoke of an entwining outside of his memory. He looked around for visual signs, but found none: the place spoke to him through another vein.

They sat for a while and talked about their separate journeys, before and beyond, in a way that helped them arrive and depart. The Bowman was going inland; the boatman was returning to the mouth of the river. He would collect his self on the way back. Paulus explained that their landing place was the origin of both the river and the forest, and that it was a difficult place to walk; its ruggedness was not made for people, its steep ascents being full of declivities and unpredictable impasses. According to the unknown sources of history, the very name of the Vorrh came from its description.

They continued to talk for a few hours, letting their experiences waft and disperse until the moment came. It crept in during a pause,
announcing itself bodily with the stretching of cramped legs. The bow, quiver and other possessions were unloaded and placed safely away from the water. They rocked the boat gently out of the shallows and into deeper water; Paulus clambered on and punted it further out with the boat-hook, while the Bowman waded back to shore and watched The Leo join the stream, diminishing with its waving captain, beyond the range of sight. As it vanished, a light ripple dazed the air, a rhythmic shudder of ambience. He smiled to himself, realising that it was a farewell from his friend; a short, percussive rift, played on the rim of the boat’s wooden hull as it returned its captain to another world.

* * *

Cyrena sat in her favourite room, the one with the wrought-iron balcony outside. She used to spend hours there, over-sensing the city, its aromas and sounds shaping a landscape of poignant, knitted contentment and longing. One of her favourite times was the evening, when the city’s sounds folded down to allow the distant forest its full voice. She loved to feel the exchange, the tides of human and animal sounds passing each other in the growing dominance of night.

Her sighted friends (and all were) had always said that she had marvellous perception of the world they shared. Over the years, they had learned not to lead their conversations with descriptions of sight. Cyrena had never minded, but she could always sense their embarrassment when they inadvertently referred to appearance, or invited her to look at something; little words that created errors in their shared reality, small slips in perceptual reciprocation.

High above, the swallows turned into bats, foraging the sky for its shoals of insects. The birds’ tiny, sharp cries were like single stars, calling
for a fraction of a second out of a constellation of glittering darkness; they became the stars she had never seen. Her first sightings of the swifts in the bright air had delighted her. Their spinning and darting was faster than anything she could have ever imagined, their spatial acrobatics instantly displacing her previous image of pinprick chirps echoing from a vast distance. At first, it had been a more-than-adequate barter, but over the weeks their sky-weaving had become predictable; dismally, unimaginatively attached to the food chain. Other things in her eyes were also beginning to flatten and become commonplace. The colours of her furnishings had started to pall. They had invigorated her in the beginning, their richness accentuated by their textures, which had once been their greatest appeal. Now they seemed to jump unpredictably, or daze the depth of the room; with sight, things seemed smaller and somehow pinching.

Perhaps it was the recent meeting that had so depressed her. The Tulp girl had given a little friendship, but it had been a very slight compensation for the greater loss. Her expectations had been single-minded: their reunion that day had been the only option she had considered, she had pictured every detail of the moment. If ‘pictured’ was the right word; in truth, her anticipation had not been shaped by her visual imagination at all. It had been carefully sculpted from touch and sound, his presence bolder in the contours of those memories than anything she had seen since the miracle. Ghertrude’s descriptions had made it worse. How could she accommodate this ugly portrait with the sweeping clarity of the beauty of that night? Her new eyes were bringing more disappointment to her than she could have ever anticipated. They shunted in a continuous torrent of irrelevant detail for her to respond to and process; she feared that the profundity and articulation of her previous world was being frittered away, erased by an endless, low tide of brightness and an infinite shingle of pictures.

And yet, it must be sacrilege to think such things. Everybody gave
such enraptured sermons about ‘the prime sense’ and how wonderful it was that she had gained it – how could she be so ungrateful? How could she secretly long for the uninterrupted, dark containment of the world she had always known as reality? But sight made her lonely, and she had never been that before. The indifference of the world was jarringly apparent, and its knotted, adamant distance had begun to shrink everything she had ever achieved. It dwindled all she understood, and the intimacy where she once dreamt was engulfed by loud and vulgar light which always spoke of the space between things.