Grimus Read online

  Flapping Eagle had to tense his muscles to prevent his hand from quivering. Without knowing about it, Livia Cramm had reiterated the curse of his birth and his given name.

  She looked up and smiled as if to comfort him.

  —But you are very attractive, she said in her usual voice.

  Deggle smiled too.

  Mrs Cramm’s dependence on Deggle grew unceasingly. Whenever Flapping Eagle made a suggestion, that they should sail here, or winter there, or even eat at such and such a place, it irked him to observe the slight questioning inclination of her head in Deggle’s direction before she delightedly agreed or gently demurred. There was no appeal from her decisions.

  Two phrases usually formed the focal point of Flapping Eagle’s irritation. One was Livia Cramm’s. Whenever Deggle let drop some dark conversational flower from those saturnine lips, she would clap her hands excitedly, like a pubertal girl shown a naughty thing behind a rosebush, and exclaim (meticulously cultivated accent slipping in her transport) —Ain’t that the Deggle himself talkin’ to you. And she would look gleamingly pleased with the wickedness of the pun. At which Flapping Eagle clamped his mouth shut and stifled his thoughts.

  The second phrase was Deggle’s own. He came and went his unknowable way, sauntering in and out of Mrs Cramm’s villa on the southern coast of Morispain, and every time he left, he would wave unsmilingly and say: —Ethiopia!

  It was a complex and awful joke, arising from the archaic name of that closed, hidden, historical country (Abyssinia … I’ll be seeing you) and it drove Flapping Eagle out of his mind every time it was said. Ethiopia. Ethiopia. Ethiopia.

  Deggle made Flapping Eagle wonder if he could bear his chosen fate.

  He had been with Livia Cramm now, her personal gigolo, for twenty-five years. His reasoning was very simple: He had time, more than any in the universe but he had no money. She had a great deal of money and very little time. Thus, by sacrificing a small amount of his time he could very likely acquire a large amount of her cash. It was his most cynical decision, born of desperation, born from the future of dead possibilities that stared him in the face when Mrs Cramm had noticed him in Phoenix. He would have felt a great deal of guilt about it except for one thing: he did not like Livia Cramm.

  Livia had been forty-five when she first met Flapping Eagle, and was then a ruined beauty of still-considerable sexual attraction and magnetism. Now, at seventy, the sexual attraction had gone. The magnetism had become an obnoxious, claustrophobic clinging. She clutched Flapping Eagle fiercely, as though she would never let go until he died on her as the unlamented Oscar Cramm had done so many years ago. In public her bony claws of hands never released him; in private she lay, her head eternally on his lap, gripping her own legs till her knuckles stood out whitely; in bed, she squeezed him with a strength so remarkable, it often left him winded. If she saw him speak to another woman she would descend upon them and in her cracked old tones deliver herself of a ringingly vulgar insult which sent the unfortunate female scurrying for shelter. Then she would apologize to Flapping Eagle, trying to look little-girl-coy (which was a sickening sight) and say: —I’m sorry, loveliest, did I spoil your fun then, did I?

  There was no escape from Mrs Cramm.

  Deggle had arrived on the scene comparatively recently: only eighteen months or so. This had made life even less supportable because Flapping Eagle was now no longer even the one who helped Livia decide the next step in her trivial, perpetually-dying life. He was just a symbol of her pulling power, male physical beauty incarnate, and thinking was no part of his duties. He was her refuge from the lonely blasts of antiquity.

  —My Eagle never grows old, she would say proudly. Look at him: fifty-one (Flapping Eagle had lied to her about his age when they first met) and doesn’t look a day over thirty. Wonderful what good screwing can do.

  Her politer acquaintances replied: —He’s not the only one, Livia. You’re incredible yourself, you know. Which had been the point of her comment. There were less and less of these acquaintances left.

  Flapping Eagle’s only permitted source of regular human contact was, of course, Nicholas Deggle. And so cramped, so enclosed by the engulfing Mrs Cramm did he feel, that every so often he would make use of this source. He tried to tell himself that he treated Deggle as a social whore, in the same way as he was Livia’s sexual whore; but Deggle got the better of their exchanges too regularly to be so described.

  Deggle reclined on a brocaded sofa.

  —The issue is beyond doubt, he drawled. Livia Cramm is a monster.

  Flapping Eagle said nothing.

  —La Femme-Crammpon, said Deggle, and laughed, a shrill, falsetto noise.

  —What?

  —My dear Eagle, I’ve just realized. Do you know into whose clutches you have fallen? He was beside himself with laughter at his incomprehensible joke.

  Flapping Eagle gave him his feed-line. —Go on. Tell me who it is.

  —But my dear, c’est la Femme-Crampon! The clutching woman. Or, as you’d say, the Old Woman of the Sea! The Vieillarde herself!

  He clutched his sides in agonies of mirth. (I sat ashen-faced and silent. There were times when Deggle frightened me.)

  —It’s all true, he burst out between uncontrollable spasms. She’s old enough. She’s ugly enough. She lives for sea-travel. She picks up wandering youths like yourself, though you’re not as young as you look. And now she’s got you in her clutches, to squeeze and tighten and constrict until there’s no breath left in your body. Livia Cramm, the terror of voyagers! Why, she’s even taught you to love the sea to make it easier to rule you! Poor sailor, poor pretty-faced matelot that you are. You’re no more than a walking corpse with the Old Woman on your back, her legs gripping tightly, tightly, like the knot that tightens as you wrestle with it, tightly round your, ha ha, windpipe.

  I wouldn’t even bother to struggle, he finished, wiping away the tears.

  And this was another conversation with Nicholas Deggle:

  —Have you ever wondered about old Oscar Cramm?

  —Not really, said Flapping Eagle. He had had too many other things to wonder about.

  —He never had a chance with that old man-eater, said Deggle. They say he passed on while making love to her, you know. I wonder if there were any bite-marks in his neck.

  —Are you saying … began Flapping Eagle.

  —Possibly I am, smiled Deggle. He wasn’t all that old, you know. Now if Livia were to think that you were getting on a bit yourself, she might begin to fancy a change.

  —You have absolutely no reason … began Flapping Eagle, but Deggle interrupted again. It was quite remarkable how few of his sentences Flapping Eagle ever finished when in conversation with this dark smiler.

  —I merely mean, said Deggle, that for some unknown reason I feel quite attached to you, I shouldn’t like to see you come to any harm, pretty-face.

  After this conversation Flapping Eagle found himself watching Mrs Cramm; and when her legs constricted or her arms squeezed him, he remembered the passing of Oscar Cramm and became nervous. Which hampered his sexual duties on more than one occasion, and on these occasions he saw Livia Cramm frown thoughtfully and purse her lips before assuring him that it didn’t matter. She would sip from the jug of water that always sat by her bedside, surrounded by her army of pills, and turn away from him to sleep.

  One night, Flapping Eagle had a curious dream. Livia Cramm had both her attenuated hands fixed vice-like around his throat and was pushing, pushing with her thumbs. He was sleeping in his dream and awoke in it to find his life being squeezed away. He wrestled then, wrestled for his life, and as he did so she changed continually into all manner of wet, stinking, shapeless, slippery things. He could not grip her and all the time her hold was tightening. Just before he fainted he forced out these words:

  —You are old, Livia. Old hag. You’ll never find another.

  All of a sudden (he could see nothing now: it was black inside his eyes) the hold relaxed. He
heard Livia’s voice say: —Yes, my eagle, my soaring bird. Yes.

  When he awoke, he found Livia Cramm dead as a stone, both hands fixed clawingly about her own neck. The jug of water was upset; her army of pills was substantially diminished.

  It was only later that morning that Flapping Eagle discovered that his own precious bottle, the phial with the blue, release-giving liquid, had disappeared. He went to confront Deggle, who reclined as usual on the brocaded sofa in the drawing-room, his habitual dark clothing for once appropriate.

  —Livia didn’t seem the sort to commit suicide, he said.

  —What sort is that, foolish boy? asked Deggle. She was old.

  —You don’t know about a certain bottle disappearing, do you? asked Flapping Eagle.

  —You’re overwrought, said Deggle. I like you, you know. What you need, my boy, is to get away from all this. Take the yacht. Sail into the, ha ha, blue.

  What can you say to a man who may or may not be a murderer, who may or may not have saved your life?

  —You really are remarkably well-preserved, smiled Deggle. You must have a guardian angel.

  Flapping Eagle thought: Or devil

  The will left me the money but it left Deggle the yacht. The verdict was suicide.

  Since Deggle didn’t want the yacht, and since I wanted desperately to get away, I accepted his offer and set sail, alone for the first time in a quarter of a century, for ports unknown.

  VI

  He was the leopard who changed his spots, he was the worm that turned. He was the shifting sands and the ebbing tide. He was moody as the sky, circular as the seasons, nameless as glass. He was Chameleon, changeling, all things to all men and nothing to any man. He had become his enemies and eaten his friends. He was all of them and none of them.

  He was the eagle, prince of birds; and he was also the albatross. She clung round his neck and died, and the mariner became the albatross.

  Having little option, he survived, wheeling his craft from shore to unsung shore, earning his keep, filling the empty hours of the hollow days of the vacant years. Contentment without contents, achievement without goal, these were the paradoxes that swallowed him.

  He saw things most men miss in a mere lifetime. He saw:

  A beach on which a maiden had been staked out, naked, as giant ants moved up her thighs towards their goal; he heard her screams and sailed on by.

  A man rehearsing voices on a cliff top: high whining voices, low gravelly voices, subtle insinuating voices, raucous strident voices, voices honeyed with pain, voices glinting with laughter, the voices of the birds and of the fishes. He asked the man what he was doing (as he sailed by). The man called back—and each word was the word of a different being: —I am looking for a suitable voice to speak in. As he called, he leaned forward, lost his balance and fell. The cry was in a single voice; but the rocks on the shore cut it and shredded it for him again.

  A beggar shaking with starvation on a raft, and the fish that leapt from the ocean into his begging bowl and died for him.

  Whales making love.

  And many other things; but nowhere in the seas, for all the solace of the waters, for all the wonders beyond the curved liquid horizon, could he see or sniff or feel his own death.

  Death: a blue fluid, blue like the sea, vanished down a monster’s throat. All that remained was to survive. Stripped of his past, forsaking the language of his ancestors for the languages of the archipelagoes of the world, forsaking the ways of his ancestors for those of the places he drifted to, forsaking any hope of ideals in the face of the changing and contradicting ideals he encountered, he lived, doing what he was given to do, thinking what he was instructed to think, being what it was most desirable to be, hoping only for what was permitted, and doing it so skilfully, with such natural aptitude, that the men he encountered thought he was thus of his own free will and liked him for it. He loved many women—being so easily able to adapt to the needs and pleasures of any woman.

  Several times he changed the name he gave to people. His face was such, his skin was such, that in many places he could pass for local; and pass he did, using what had once been his curse to his advantage. The change of name was necessary, if his immortality was not to be noticed. This immortality kept him moving, too: always seeking out places where he was unknown or forgotten.

  For a tyrant, he slew rebels; in a free state, he denounced tyranny.

  Among carnivores, he praised the strength-giving virtues

  of animal flesh; among vegetarians he spoke of the spiritual purity that abstinence from such flesh brought; among cannibals, he devoured a companion.

  Though he was kind by nature, he worked for a time as an executioner, perfecting the arts of axe and knife. Though he believed himself to be good, he betrayed many women. Few left him: he always moved on first.

  And after a while, he realized he had learnt nothing at all. The many, many experiences, the multitude of people and the myriad crimes had left him empty; a grin without a face. He was no more now than a nod of agreement, a bow of acquiescence.

  His body continued to keep itself perfectly; his mind never grew dimmer. He lived the same physiological day over and over again. His body: an empire on which there was no sun to set.

  One day, afloat and nowhere, he said aloud:

  —I want to grow old. Not to die: to grow old.

  A gull screeched its ridicule.

  Flapping Eagle began his search for Sispy and Bird-Dog as methodically as he could. He sailed back to Amerindia and made his way inland to Axona and Phoenix, where the whole cold trail began. But that led him nowhere. Sispy and Bird-Dog didn’t seem to have travelled anywhere at all. They had simply vanished.

  —Sispy? said people in Phoenix. That some kind of a pree-vert foreign name?

  After that, Flapping Eagle gave up any pretence of method. He sailed on through seas, channels, rivers, lakes, oceans, wherever his craft took him, asking, wherever he stopped, if anyone knew of the pedlar, or his sister.

  He knew it was almost certainly hopeless; they might be anywhere on the globe; they might use different names; they might have drowned, or died some other violent death; they might no longer be together.

  Only two things kept him going: the first was the knowledge that only Sispy would know if there was a way, not of dying, but of restoring his body to the normal, vulnerable state of human bodies: to allow him to grow old.

  The second was the message Sispy had sent him through Bird-Dog on his first appearance:

  Tell your brother Born-From-Dead that all eagles come at last to eyrie and all sailors come at last to shore.

  Sispy had said that before Joe-Sue had even become Flapping Eagle; and years before he had any notion of going to sea. Perhaps, thought Flapping Eagle, sailor, Sispy divined something of my future.

  It wasn’t much grounds for optimism, but it was something.

  He remembered another sentence of Sispy’s: For those who will not use the blue there is only one place I know of.

  Flapping Eagle told himself firmly, over and over again: there is such a place; it’s only a matter of time before you find it; and You’ll know when you do, because its inhabitants will be like you. Young or old, they cannot disguise their eyes from me. Eyes like mine, which have seen everything and know nothing. The eyes of the survivor.

  But the years passed. And more years. And more years.

  Flapping Eagle was beginning to wonder if he was sane. Perhaps there never was a Sispy, never a Bird-Dog or Sham-Man or Phoenix: perhaps not even a Livia Cramm or a Deggle. Yes. Madness explained everything. He was mad.

  So when his boat sailed into its home port, the port of X on the Moorish coast of Morispain, his eyes were glazed and distant.

  He was contemplating killing himself.

  VII

  NICHOLAS DEGGLE SAT on a bollard on the jetty, long and black, with an inordinately wicked smile playing about his lips.

  —I trust you had a nice sail, pretty-face, he said. Wind al
l right? Not too high? Not too low? I’m afraid I’m not an expert in these matters.

  Flapping Eagle raised his head slowly. Now he knew he was mad.

  —Deggle, he said.

  —The same. None other. Accept no substitute, said Deggle. But a word in your shell-like orifice: I’m not called by that name any more. Time flies, you know, and names with it.

  —Yes, said Flapping Eagle, bemused.

  —I’m called Lokki, actually. The Great Lokki at your service. Phenomenal Pheats of Prestidigitation Phantastically Performed. Dear me, how one does fall upon hard times. Straitened circumstances. I’ve become my own descendant, as a matter of fact, or my own ancestor, depending on your historical perspective. The legal problems were enormous. Anyway, I’ve been careful to keep leaving myself my own boat, so thank you for returning it.

  —Not at all, mouthed Flapping Eagle.

  —Lokki, said Deggle, rolling the L. It’s a good name, don’t you think? Echoes of the old Norse and so forth. Gives one’s act a kind of artistic respectability. Shame about Livia, wasn’t it? I’m sure you did the right thing, going off like that. It must have been a great shock for you, all that money at once. You’re quite better now, I hope?

  The eyes.

  Deggle’s eyes: the eyes of the survivor, filled with an ageless twinkle.

  —Deggle, if you …

  Deggle was still a master of interruption. He waved a ringed hand.

  —Please, my dear. I did tell you. Do call me Lokki. People might hear.

  —Lokki. If you’re still here after all this time, you must know about Sispy.