Grimus Read online

  Deggle cocked his head and looked puzzled.

  —Sispy, he mused, Siss-pee. What is it, old eagle? Soup? It sounds awfully familiar.

  —You know very well. Sispy. Sispy the pedlar. With the bottles, Lokki. The blue bottle. You remember Livia.

  Flapping Eagle tried to make it sound like a threat, but Deggle laughed happily.

  —Mmm, he said. Of course, Livia—by which I take it you mean Mrs Livia Cramm, widow of Oscar Cramm, the tin-tack king—has been dead for such a very long time. Long before my time, of course. Now if only my illustrious ancestor Nicholas Deggle were still alive, I’m sure he’d know exactly what you mean.

  He smiled beautifully. Like the Deggle himself, Flapping Eagle remembered.

  —Now, he said, may I offer you a drink?

  The Great Lokki lived in a caravan just outside X. There was a horse between the shafts and an extremely beautiful and very stupid conjurer’s assistant between the sheets.

  —Lotti, explained Deggle, looking embarrassed. Lokki and Lotti, you see.

  Frustration was building within Flapping Eagle, the frustration of centuries.

  —Deggle, he said, ignoring the Great Lokki’s anguished protest, I think it’s time you stopped trying to make a fool of me.

  —But my dear, said Deggle and his eyes were not twinkling, that’s so easy.

  Flapping Eagle was on the verge of committing an act of physical violence when, abruptly, Deggle said: —Piss off, Lotti. His language seemed to have acquired occasional lapses, its quality reduced to suit his reduced way of life. There couldn’t have been a Livia Cramm for a very long time. At any rate, Lotti pissed off outside to chat to the horse, which was therefore able to feel intellectually superior to at least one human being.

  Deggle said: —I think you’re just about ready for Calf Island.

  Flapping Eagle didn’t entirely understand or believe what Deggle told him, about “making a gate” to the island. It had apparently taken centuries of trying, and even now might be dangerous. But despite his bewilderment, he didn’t care. This was undoubtedly the haven of which Sispy had spoken, so it was undoubtedly the place for which he was destined.

  Mrs Cramm had said it was his lot to be led; and he was filled with something approaching hate for Sispy, who had distorted his entire life in one casual stroke so very long ago. He found himself wanting not only his freedom from the chains of immortality, but some kind of satisfaction as well.

  He went for a walk alone the next morning, in the hills above X. He was saying goodbye to the world, since, if half of what Deggle had said was true, there was a good chance he would never see it again.

  In the afternoon he went down to the jetty and prepared the boat for departure. Deggle still disclaimed any need for it.

  In the evening, Deggle and Lotti came to see him off. —The evening is the best time to try and get through, Deggle had said. They waved.

  —Deggle, Flapping Eagle said as he pushed off, I’d love to know what motivates you.

  —Oh, well, shrugged the wickedly-smiling conjurer, perhaps I don’t like your friend Sispy very much either. But then, perhaps I do.

  —Byeee, squeaked Lotti.

  —Ethiopia, said Deggle.

  Flapping Eagle no longer knew whether he was mad, whether he had accepted Deggle’s story so unquestioningly, been so willing to follow his instructions despite the warnings of physical danger, just as an excuse for doing away with himself. He was, he told himself, doing the only thing he could do.

  —They go there, Deggle had said, from choice, because they chose immortality. Whereas you are after something quite different: old age. Physical decay. And, presumably, death. You should set the cat among the pigeons, pretty-face. Not to mention old Livia’s prophecy.

  The Deggle giggle lasted for a long while after that.

  The Mediterranean was calm, dark and calm. No wind. A clear sky. Stars. Flapping Eagle dozed for a moment. When he awoke, it was to feel a gale rushing at his face, a cloud rushing over his head, a crackle of electricity in the air. He was standing erect now, fighting to keep his craft from breaking under the force of the holocaust, when quite unaccountably dizziness swept over him and he fell from his yacht, Deggle’s yacht, into the angry sea. The last thing he heard was a loud drumming noise … like the beating of mighty wings.

  A few seconds later he fell through the hole in the Mediterranean into that other sea, that not-quite-Mediterranean, and was carried towards the misty beach in the first light of dawn as Mr Virgil Jones rocked in his chair.

  When Flapping Eagle arrived at Calf Island his body was thirty-four years, three months and four days old. He had lived for a total of seven hundred and seventy-seven years, seven months and seven days. By a swift calculation, we see that he had stopped ageing seven hundred and forty-three years, four months and three days ago.

  He was a tired man.

  VIII

  —INTRODUCTIONS WOULD BE proper, said Virgil Jones, at a time like the present. Would you care for a nice steaming bowl of Mrs O’Toole’s very own root-tea, as it is the hour? Never let it be said the decencies were not observed in the Maison O’Toole.

  —I’m wearing a frock, said Flapping Eagle in astonishment.

  —Certainly you are, certainly, said Virgil Jones. Allow me to explain. Always a rational explanation, as they say, or, that is to say, as they said.

  —Please do, said Flapping Eagle, feeling his throbbing head.

  —Ah yes, said Virgil Jones, the head. I expect it hurts, not entirely unexpectedly, if I might be momentarily tautologous. Half-drowned heads have a way of protesting, you might even say bellyaching, although obviously we are not speaking of your belly. You have, sir, my unrestrained sympathy and the offer of root-tea. Mrs O’Toole swears by the arrowroot for such malaises. It flies straight and true to the heart of the affliction and thunk! one is cured.

  —About the frock, said Flapping Eagle, raising himself from the prone position until he was jack-knifed, legs lying along the rush mat, torso and head leaning upwards into the room inquiringly, supported on a rubbery arm.

  —Now, now, said Mr Jones, if I were you I wouldn’t attempt the vertical just yet. The horizontal is a far more suitable position for recuperation. I have often wondered if those tragic cases of people buried alive did not spring from this: the horizontal helping them to recover, you understand. Possibly one should be buried standing up, if You’ll excuse the brief foray into necrology. Merely a small pleasantry, no morbidity intended, nor I hope taken.

  —The frock, said Flapping Eagle.

  —O, my sincere apologies, said Virgil Jones, if it seems I was ducking your inquiry. Far from it, sir, far from it. Nothing could give me greater pleasure than to elucidate the matter of the frock. The fact of the matter is one’s conversational partners have been rather limited of late and the opportunity is well-nigh irresistible. The affair of the frock is a trifle. Merely that when we fished you from the sea your garments were a little moist, not to say damp, not to say positively sodden. And the fact of the matter is my own wardrobe is somewhat limited; so on the whole we thought it best, if you take my meaning, to employ one of Mrs O’Toole’s garments. You have our unreserved apologies if it brings you any embarrassment, but I assure you all proper decencies were observed, Mrs O’Toole leaving the room during the process of disinvestiture.

  —I’m sure they were, said Flapping Eagle, trying to put the voluble, excited man at his ease; and, remembering his manners, went on: I owe you my thanks, sir, for saving my life. My name is Flapping Eagle.

  —Virgil Beauvoir Chanakya Jones at your service, said Mr Jones, approximating a bow from the waist, which he did with some difficulty, there being so much of his own flesh to impede him. —Mrs O’Toole will be here presently, he confided. She is at the beach retrieving my rocking-chair, which she was unable to carry back with us, owing to having yourself strapped across her shoulders.

  Flapping Eagle must have failed to conceal his puzzlement, for
Mr Jones added hastily: —As you will observe, I am sitting down. Were I to stand, you would see why I am unable to carry the chair myself. My belt, you follow. It serves as a strap; but tragically, when doing so, the efficiency of my trousers is somewhat impaired.

  It didn’t sound like a very good explanation, but then it was none of Flapping Eagle’s business. —Quite so, he said, and noticed in himself, not for the first time, a tendency to adopt the speaking style and speech patterns of others.

  His head reminded him of its existence; he lay back on the mat. —I think I would like that root-tea, he said.

  Mr Jones stood up laboriously, clutching at his trousers. He moved across the room, blinking in the direction of the fireplace, where a small pot hung above the winking embers. —Keeps it warm, he said; then added: Damnation. He had just knocked over a low, rickety table. The pieces of a large jigsaw puzzle dispersed themselves informally around the accident.

  —Fornication, Mr Jones swore further. It was a black day for mankind when my glasses broke. Your pardon for my foulmouthed speech, Mr Eagle; one’s bodily inadequacies are a constant affliction, are they not?

  —You do jigsaw puzzles, then.

  —Do them? Mr Eagle, I construct them. In these solitary years they have provided my one stimulation. One day, I expect, I shall be some good at the things. At the moment my skill in construction far surpasses my talents at reconstruction. And myopia does nothing to assist. O for a qualified grinder of lenses.

  He poured out a bowl of root-tea and carried it back, nearly slipping on the scattered jigsaw, and sat down by Flapping Eagle once more.

  How unlikely, thought Flapping Eagle, that surroundings as meagre as these should exude so comfortable, so friendly an atmosphere. The room in which he lay was little more than the interior of a hovel; two rush mats some distance apart, one of which currently bore his weakened frame, lying on a dirt floor—although it was a meticulously swept floor. The broom, a bundle of twigs, rested indolently against a wall. The walls were logs covered in caked mud, the roof as well. A fireplace and the upturned rickety low table. A few pots. In a far corner, an old trunk. Nothing on the walls; no decoration anywhere. It was as distant from the sumptuous residence of, say, Livia Cramm as was China. And yet it was friendly.

  Noises off: the twitterings of birds. A rustle of thick shrubbery. The occasional distant howl of a wild dog. No footsteps, no concourse of humanity. One window, with a piece of sacking drawn across it, flapping in the breeze; one door, covered in the same manner. It was the dwelling of a savage, or a castaway. Virgil Jones fitted into it about as easily as an elephant in a pepperpot.

  He sat solicitously on the floor, wearing a dark and aged suit. There was a bowler hat upon his head and a gold chain traversed his waistcoat. (There was no gold watch at the end of it.) Somehow, thought Flapping Eagle, in these unsavoury surroundings, he preserves an air of dignity. Short-sighted, clumsy, loquacious, large-tongued, slobbering dignity, the injured hauteur of the impoverished. He reminded Flapping Eagle of an old railway engine he had once seen, a giant of steam in its day, rusting in a siding. The form of power denied its content. A stranded hulk. Puffing Billy. Flapping Eagle finished his root-tea, put the bowl down and fell fast asleep.

  —That’s right, murmured Virgil Jones. Build your strength.

  The birds sang their agreement from the trees.

  When he awoke it was to find a different face staring down at him: the crinkled monkey folds of Dolores O’Toole’s physiognomy. At first he leapt in alarm, but then as wakefulness came subsided again, realizing that what he had taken for a snarl of hate was in fact a smile. Dolores O’Toole was the ugliest woman he had ever seen.

  He gathered himself. —May I ask an obvious question, he said. Where am I?

  —That’s a good question, approved Virgil Jones.

  —Among friends, soothed Dolores O’Toole, snarling her sympathy.

  Flapping Eagle felt highly confused.

  IX

  —YOU ARE AT the foot of a mountain, said Virgil Jones. This is Calf Island, and the mountain is Calf Mountain. The mountain is really the whole island.

  —Are you alone here? asked Flapping Eagle.

  —Here, yes. Yes, here we are alone. Relatively speaking, said Virgil Jones. There are the birds, of course, and the chickens, and a few harmless wild animals.

  —Do you mean there are no other human beings on the island at all?

  —O, said Virgil Jones, no, I can’t truthfully say that.

  —No, agreed Dolores, not truthfully.

  Flapping Eagle had the distinct impression that they spoke with reluctance.

  —Where are they then? he pressed.

  —Ah, said Virgil.

  —A long distance away, said Dolores.

  Flapping Eagle’s head hurt; he felt ill. Scarcely strong enough to force information out of the lip-biting pair.

  —Please, he said, tell me where.

  Virgil Jones appeared to make a decision. —The slopes of the mountain, he said, are mainly covered in forestation. I believe there are a few people wandering around in the woods, but we rather keep ourselves to ourselves, so I couldn’t truthfully say where.

  —And that’s all? asked Flapping Eagle.

  —N … n … no, admitted Virgil.

  —There are others, yielded Dolores.

  —Are you going to tell me about them? asked Flapping Eagle, his skull giving a fair impression of splintering into a million tiny shards.

  —O, you don’t want to know about them, said Virgil Jones hopefully.

  —They are completely uninteresting, assured Dolores.

  Flapping Eagle closed his eyes.

  —Please, he said.

  —He asks so politely, said Dolores despairingly.

  So they told him.

  From Dolores, he learned that K was a town of reprobates and degraded types; selfish, decadent people that no decent woman would want to be near; but then Flapping Eagle was no decent woman. From Virgil Jones he learned what he had hoped to learn. This was the place Sispy had spoken of. An island of immortals who had found their longevity too burdensome in the outside world, yet had been unwilling to give it up; with Sispy’s guidance they had come to Calf Mountain to be with their own kind.

  —Does the name Bird-Dog mean anything to you? he asked.

  —Bird-Dog, said Virgil Jones. (Was that alarm or concentration on his face?) Is the lady a friend of yours?

  —My sister, said Flapping Eagle.

  —No, said Virgil Jones. No, it doesn’t.

  Later that night Flapping Eagle suddenly realized it must have been a lie. How had Mr Jones known the name Bird-Dog was a woman’s name?

  And more importantly: why had he denied knowing her?

  He pressed the point the next morning.

  —My dear Mr Eagle, said Virgil Jones, I feel very strongly you should bend all your energies to the recovery of your health. You have been greatly weakened by your misadventure. When you are well, you have my word that Mrs O’Toole and I will answer all your questions. It’s a complex matter; I would be happier if you were in as fit a condition as possible.

  —All I want, said Flapping Eagle, is an answer to one question: are my sister and Mr Sispy on this island? The answer to that will not strain my health, I assure you.

  —Very well, sighed Mr Jones, the answer is Yes; yes, they are. After a fashion. And now I’ll say no more. Do get well soon, dear Mr Eagle.

  Flapping Eagle let the subject drop and drank another bowl of root-tea.

  Dolores O’Toole had hobbled off to collect fruits and berries. Virgil sat by Flapping Eagle’s bedside watching with ill-concealed jealousy as the convalescent man worked at the jigsaw puzzle.

  —You astonish me with your skill, he said, with as good grace as he could muster.

  —Beginners’ luck, disclaimed Flapping Eagle. He really was doing very well.

  —Dolores and I are very anxious to hear all about you, now that you’re so much be
tter. You must have had quite a time on your way here. But upon consideration perhaps it would be polite if I told you a little about ourselves first, so as to put you at your ease. If you’d like to hear about us, that is.

  —Please, said Flapping Eagle and fitted three more pieces into the puzzle.

  Virgil Jones frowned. —I think that one goes at the top, he said, a shade abruptly. Flapping Eagle tried; it didn’t.

  —O, I see, said Flapping Eagle; it fits here. The piece slid into place at the bottom of the puzzle.

  —I always wanted to be an archaeologist, you know, said Virgil Jones, changing the subject. Unfortunately life has a way of sidetracking one’s greatest ambitions. Painters, would-be artists, end up whitewashing walls. Sculptors are forced to design toilets. Writers become critics or publicists. Archaeologists, like myself, can become gravediggers.

  —You were a gravedigger? asked Flapping Eagle in genuine surprise. But it fitted: Mr Jones’ habitual lugubrious expression went well with that profession.

  —For a time, said Mr Jones. For a time. Before events conspired to bring me here. It was pleasant enough work; the most pleasing aspect being that everyone one met was happy. The corpses were content enough, and so, usually, were the mourners. It was a source of lasting comfort to me, the sight of so many tears of joy, so freely shed,

  —That’s a very cynical statement, said Flapping Eagle.

  —Alas, poor Yorick, said Virgil Jones; the worms long ago gnawed his romanticism to shreds.

  In the ensuing silence, Flapping Eagle fitted together all but three of the remaining pieces.

  —There’s not much for a gravedigger to do on Calf Mountain, said Virgil Jones; so I have retired into my true love—contemplation.

  —And Dolores? asked Flapping Eagle.

  —Ah, Dolores; there is a sad tale. To love life so much under such a physical burden … it is my belief she lives alone, or, that is to say, with me, because she finds she can only love human beings in their absence.

  —This last piece, said Flapping Eagle, doesn’t fit.