The World and Other Places (14 page)

It is true that certain mines on the island are still young, and these are highly prized. The richest women wear coal earrings and coal necklaces and the coal merchants of Erde are the wealthiest men in the world. Tourists are taken round the filthy, black coal-cutting studios near the mines, and marvel at the treasures on display. The King of Erde has a crown made entirely of coal, including the largest lump of coal ever brought up from the coveted mine. The cut lump is two feet by three feet and weighs as much as a Tamworth Sow. On state occasions, when the precious crown is carefully blacked and sooted, four men must walk beside the king to support the fabulous glory. To be covered in coal-dust is thought a great honour.

For the most part though, the people are modest and content, sitting quietly by their winter fires, poking the diamonds.

Visitors to the island come for the caving and the hunting. The underground passages of Erde are hung with stalactites and furnished with stalagmites. Carving is a national hobby, and the growths of minerals, deep in the caves, have been fashioned into beds and chairs, elephants
and whales, making a world within a world. Cavers drink their coffee out of fossil cups.

Beasts of every kind still roam Erde and hunting parties are organised throughout the season. The guides and beaters are strict; no one must stray from the route. If the prey reaches the interior, it is given up for lost.

There have been stories of foolhardy hunters who have rushed ahead into unmarked places of Erde, and they have never returned. The guides are silent. No search party is sent out. The guides themselves would not return.

What is the mystery of Erde? It is said that when a man or a woman of that place has done all they wish to do in the world, they set off, without warning, drawn as if by a magnet, towards the interior.

If the people of Hydor are known for clairvoyance, the people of Erde are known for prophesy. It is said that the Norns live in the interior, weaving their fateful rope.

Perhaps they do. The traveller has seen three sisters beckoning to him, as he nears the magnetic pole of the island. There is a tree there, whose top stretches up to heaven and whose roots push down to hell. The tree is eloquent. In its branches seem to be the tracings of the whole world. The traveller rubs his hands against the thick bark and his hands are sapped with time. He puts his head against the tree, glad to rest, and hears the rumble of history coursing through the trunk.

Perhaps it is the World Ash Tree. Perhaps it is the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil. Perhaps it is the alchemists’ tree, under whose shade the self will grow again. The traveller does not know but he starts to climb.

The island of Aeros.

Where to begin? Aeros is not to be found in the same place for a week together. There are stories of travellers who set out to find the island, and when they arrive at where their destination should be, the island has gone.

The people of Aeros use their island like a magic carpet, propelling it first here, then there, packing up at a moment’s notice, disappearing with quicksilver grace. To their credit, they usually leave a note pinned in mid-air.

To find the island it is necessary to travel by plane, balloon, or to carry an extension ladder. The island hovers. Many a person has discovered it, only to find that it remains out of reach.

The four winds home here. The mountain air of the region develops the lungs of the inhabitants, who are known for singing, juggling, making musical instruments, and building elaborate windmills to tilt at. This is a talkative island, and when they are not talking to each other, the inhabitants shout encouragement at the other islands, as Aeros flies by.

The constant movement of the place is such that solider travellers complain a rough sea is stiller.

The people of Aeros are great story-tellers. Even the simplest action is bound into a story. It is common for a queue of people, waiting for a cable car, to become so much part of the story they are hearing, that they transform themselves into it. Only last week, a dozen listeners, intent on the story of ‘How the Genie was trapped in the Copper Vase,’ forgot their own lives entirely. Six of them became the genie, and sat wrapped up, as if in a vase, while half a dozen became the market stall holder who bought the copper vase by mistake.

The city rerouted the cable car stop, and the story-teller was left to run through the streets, bringing the families of the transformed to join their new lives.

No one worries. Sooner or later, another story, more powerful than the last, will free them; free them into other selves or back into their own.

And this is part of the mystery.

As one travels through the island, street by street, mountain by mountain, story by story, it is the stories that begin to dominate. A man sits down, cooks himself a story and eats it. A woman falls asleep on a bed of stories, a story drawn up to her chin.

Deeper into the island, where the cable cars stop and where the nimble ponies are left far behind, the only way for anyone to travel is by story.

Some stories go farther than others. Some take the traveller as far as the line of mountains bordering a vast forest.
At this place, lonely and silent, the story falters. The traveller turns to look back at the distance and while he or she is busy with other thoughts, the stories disappear into the forest from where they came.

It is well known that all the stories in the world come from this dense dark forest, come out of the regions of silence into the government of the tongue. Anyone who sits for long enough and narrows his eyes on the strip of forest he can penetrate will see strange shapes moving in the half-light. Is that Hercules in a lion skin? Is that Icarus waxed into golden wings? Is that Siegfried’s horn in the distance? Is that Lancelot’s horse?

The traveller is tired now, and thinks he sees dwarves carrying iron hammers, and the old witch Baba Yaga stirring at her brew. He seems to hear the fi, fie, fo of the giants, and to smell trolls coming home though the wood.

The wind is up, carrying the Snow Queen across the frozen stars, the red sun sinks beyond the trees.

The traveller reaches out a hand to catch the sun and catches a chestnut. The case has split and the nut is smooth and burnished, giving out a faint light. He puts it in his pocket. She puts it in her pocket. They walk down into the closure of the forest, until they too become part of the story.

This is the story of Tom.

This is the story of Tom and his neighbours.

This is the story of Tom and his neighbours and his neighbour’s garden.

This is the story of Tom.

‘All of my neighbours are Classical Physicists,’ said Tom. ‘Their laws of motion are determined. They rise at 7 a.m. and leave for work at 8 a.m. The women take coffee at 10 a.m. If you see a body on the street between I and 2 p.m. lunchtime, it can only be the doctor, it can only be the undertaker, it can only be the stranger.

‘I am the stranger,’ said Tom.

‘What is the First Law of Thermodynamics?’ said Tom.

‘You can’t transfer heat from a colder to a hotter. I’ve never known any warmth from my neighbours so I would reckon this is true. Here in Newton we don’t talk much. That is, my neighbours talk all the time, they swap gossip, but I never have any, although sometimes I am some.’

‘What is the Second Law of Thermodynamics?’ said Tom.

‘Everything tends towards the condition of entropy. That is, the energy is still there somewhere but for all useful purposes it is lost. Take a look at my neighbours here in Newton and you’ll see what it means.’

My neighbour has a garden full of plastic flowers. ‘It’s easy,’ she says, ‘and so nice.’ When her husband died she had him laminated, and he stands outside now, hands on his hips, carefully watching the sky.

‘What’s the matter Tom?’ she says, her head bobbing along the fence like a duck in a shooting parlour.

‘Why don’t you get married? In my day nobody had any trouble finding someone. We just did it and made the best of it. There were no screwballs then.’

‘What none?’

She bobbed faster and faster, gathering a bosom-load of underwear from the washing line. I knew she wanted me to stare at it, she wants to prove that I am a screwball. After all, if it’s me, it’s not her, it’s not the others. You can’t have more than one per block.

She wheeled round, ready to bob back up the other way, knickers popping from every pore.

‘Tom, we were glad to be normal. In those days it was something good, something to be proud of.’

Tom the screwball. Here I am with my paperback foreign editions and my corduroy trousers (‘You got something against Levi’s?’ he asked me, before he was laminated). All the men round here wear Levi’s, denims or chinos. The only stylistic difference is whether they pack their stomach inside or outside the waistband.

They suspect me of being a homosexual. I wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t care what I was if only I were something.

‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ said my mother, a long time ago, many times a long time ago.

‘A fireman, an astronaut, a spy, a train driver, a hard hat, an inventor, a deep sea diver, a doctor and a nurse.’

‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I ask myself in the mirror most days.

‘Myself. I want to be myself.’

And who is that, Tom?

Into the clockwork universe the quantum child. Why doesn’t every mother believe her child can change the world? The child can. This is the joke. Here we are still looking for a saviour and hundreds are being born every second. Look at it, this tiny capsule of new life, indifferent to your prejudices, your miseries, unmindful of the world already made. Make it again? They could if we let them, but we make sure they grow up just like us, fearful like us. Don’t let them know the
potential that they are. Don’t let them hear the grass singing. Let them live and die in Newton, tick-tock, the last breath.

There was a knock at my door, I hid my Camus in the fridge and peered through the frosted glass. Of course I can’t see anything. They never remind you of that when you fit frosted glass.

‘Tom? Tom?’ RAP RAP.

It’s my neighbour. I shuffled to the door, feet bare, shirt loose. There she is, her hair coiled on her head like a wreath on a war memorial. She was dressed solely in pink.

‘I’m not interrupting am I Tom?’ she said, her eyes shoving past me into the kitchen.

‘I was reading.’

‘That’s what I thought. I said to myself, poor Tom will be reading. He won’t be busy. I’ll ask him to help me out. You know how difficult it is for a woman to manage alone. Since my husband was laminated, I haven’t had it easy, Tom.’

She smelled of woman; warm, perfumed, slightly threatening. I had to be careful not to act like a screwball. I offered her coffee. She seemed pleased, although she kept glancing at my bare feet and loose shirt. Never mind, she needs me to help her with something in the house. That’s normal, that’s nice, I want to be normal and nice.

‘My mother’s here. Will you help me get her into the house.’

‘Now? Shall we go now?’

‘She’s had a long journey. She can rest in the truck a while. Shall we have that coffee you offered me first?’

I don’t love my neighbour but still my hand trembled over the sugar spoon. They’ve made me feel odd and outside for so long, that now even the simplest things feel strange.

How does a normal person make coffee? What is it about me that worries them so much? I’m clean. I have a job.

‘Tom, tell me, is it the modern thing to keep books in the refrigerator?’

In cheap crime novels, you often read the line, ‘He spun round.’ It makes me laugh to imagine a human being so animated, but when she asked me that question, I spun. One second I was facing the sink, the next second I was facing her, and she was facing me, holding my copy of Camus.

‘I was just fetching out the milk Tom. Who is Albert K Mew?’ She pronounced it like an enraged cat.

‘He’s a Frenchman. A French writer. I don’t know how he came to be in the fridge.’

She repeated my words slowly as though I had just offered her a universal truth.