Grimus

XXXI Stones

K BY NIGHT: houses huddling together as though clustered for protection, drawing warmth from each other. Rough exteriors, stained by damp and mist and time, dirty-whitewash crudities, architectural cripples, surviving defiantly for all their crooked tiles and ill-fitting doors.

Around the houses, the streets. Lifelines of dust, eddying and swirling among the deformed homes, coming from nowhere, circling aimlessly, existence itself their only purpose. A place must have streets; blank spaces between the filled-up holes.

One street, and only one, could hold its head high. An avenue of cobbles bifurcating the eddies of dust, it stalked through the night town from end to end, proclaiming its seniority, a roman among barbarians.

A man, decrepit as his clothes, stained as the houses, dusty as the streets, on all fours, crawling the length of this majestic thoroughfare, a pilgrim on the road to Rome, engaged for all appearances in an act of worship.

This was Stone; he answered to no other name and rarely enough to his chosen soubriquet. Silence was his way, the road his hill and the stones the stones of Sisyphus. He counted them daily, one by one, enumerating the cobbles for posterity. A task without end for a man with a poor memory, an infinite series of numbers without a sum. At first, so long ago that he had forgotten, he had tried; his parched tongue would stumble over the large, ungainly figures; they would slip his mind; and patiently he would return to the beginning. Now the counting was only an excuse; his real purpose was the constant renewal of his friendship with each single stone. He greeted them like old friends, coming with pleasure across a favourite cracked cobble here, a particularly round and pleasing one there. To some of them he gave names; others were the scenes of great adventures in his dreams. The street was his microcosm and afforded him all his delights and pains. Small and attenuated, he was as much a part of the road as any of his stones. In one of his rare sorties into the spoken word he had said earnestly to Elfrida Gribb, wife of Ignatius Q. Gribb, the town thinker, -If it weren’t for me the road would crumble. Stones need love as much as you. And in a practical sense he did protect the road, guarding it zealously against the onslaughts of dust from the side-streets, and against the injuries of animals on its progress through the fields. He washed it and nurtured it, It was his. In return for this labour of love, he was fed by whomever he was nearest to when hungry and housed by whomever he was nearest to when tired. It was his road along which Virgil Jones and Flapping Eagle made their way into the ill-made community.

As they passed the occasional farmhouse, Flapping Eagle felt his pulse quicken. Lights glowed in windows through thin curtains, warm islands where a traveller might shelter. He glanced eagerly at Virgil and was about to voice his new-found exhilaration; but his companion’s face was clouded and immobile. It was a time to keep one’s peace: Flapping Eagle restrained the bubbling enthusiasm within him.

Home: that was the word that had done it. It crept into his head as he stood looking at the town from the breaking waves of the forest. It had come announced, filtering into him on a shaft of light from the distant windows. Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill. Flapping Eagle was coming home, to a town where he had never lived. He saw home in the mist lying softly over the fields; he scented it in the perfume-laden night; he felt it in the cobbles; but most of all it was the windows that were home, the closed eyes of a protected life, glowing with contentment, the closed windows.

Flapping Eagle stopped for a moment. Virgil looked at him curiously, and then, unknowingly, returned his compliment: restraining his words, which would have been an intrusion.

The farmhouse stood at the side of the road. It was long and low and white. No doubt animals were sleeping in the shed; it was the closed window that had transfixed Flapping Eagle. People were moving behind it, lives were being led. Abruptly, he vaulted the gate and crept up to the yellow light. Virgil Jones stood in the road, watching.

Slowly, Flapping Eagle raised himself from the ground to look through the glass; and found himself staring into an unblinking granite face. The farmer must have drawn back the curtains just as Flapping Eagle looked in. It was a face filled with crevices; deep valleys and pocks scarred it, but the eyes were strong and showed no anger or astonishment. They stared through Flapping Eagle as though he wasn’t there. Shaken, mumbling wordless apologies, he backed away to the gate, the road and Virgil, who fell into step beside him. They walked away from the stone face in the window and Flapping Eagle discovered that his hands were quivering. The eyes had done it: they had told him that he was still pariah. The untouchable.

Pariah. That word rose from his past to increase his discomfiture.

– Virgil, he hesitated, where shall we stay?

Virgil shrugged. -We’ll find somewhere, he said. Or other. His tongue slobbered in the corner of his mouth.

On the very outskirts of the town itself stood its tallest building, the only one Flapping Eagle had seen that stood two storeys high. It was in immaculate condition, which fact alone set it apart from the rest. Its walls rose straight and true, gleaming white in the blue-mist dark, a spotless sentinel and guardian of the town. It was a brothel. Madame Jocasta’s House of the Rising Son, a discreet wooden plate by the door proclaimed. And by the plate someone had scrawled an inexplicable phrase. Tomorrow, no doubt, a new coat of whitewash would expunge it, but tonight it stood, blemishing the whitewalled purity of the house of pleasure. A Rushian Generals Welcom, it said.

Virgil saw the phrase and muttered to himself: -Alex got out tonight, then.

– What does it mean? asked Flapping Eagle.

– Childish joke, said Virgil. Product of a child-mind.

Flapping Eagle was forced to repeat his question, since Virgil offered no more.

– The Russian Generals, said Virgil, are called Pissov, Sodov, Bugrov and Phukov. Childish.

But Flapping Eagle, already disconcerted by the stone eyes in the granite face, felt even more uneasy for knowing the meaning of the jejune phrase.

In the town now; flurries of activity around them, sporadic because the hour was late. A glimpse through another window: an old woman gazing at a photograph album, immersed in her past. It is the natural condition of the exile-putting down roots in memories. Flapping Eagle knew he would have to learn these pasts, make them his own, so that the community could make him theirs. He entered K in search of a history.

They saw ahead of them on the street the crawling form of the man called Stone, greeting the cobbles. Flapping Eagle could also hear a clip-clop of hooves, somewhere near at hand, hidden by the clustering houses; and every so often the noise of laughter came to them on the breeze, muffled by the mist.

At the far end of the cobbled road, the opposite axis from Madame Jocasta’s stood the source of the laughter. This was the moment Virgil had been dreading and which he knew must be faced. This was the Elbaroom, home of the drinking community of K, centre of village information. According to his plans, they would have to go in, not just to find a place to stay, but to show Flapping Eagle to K; so they would have to meet its keeper.

His name was O’Toole.

– Able was I ere I saw Elba, murmured Virgil Jones. Apart from the language called Malayalam, it was the only palindrome he could ever remember.

XXXII Blink

FLAPPING EAGLE SAW her first; and an eerie shape she made, half-woman, half-quadruped, coming at them through the circling mist. As she drew nearer, it struck him that she was one of the most palely beautiful women he had ever seen.

Elfrida Gribb suffered, albeit infrequently, from insomnia. When it struck, leaving her dry-eyed and awake in the midnight hours, she would get up, don her warmest shawl and ride through K on a small velvet donkey. Wrapped up well to spite the mist and damp, she found it a soothing thing to do. One had to keep oneself occupied, after all.

Elfrida: the name suited her, and she abhorred all diminutives. -A name is a name, she said. Elfin-faced and elf-boned, there could have been no other name for Mrs Gribb. She was delicately roseate skin fitting perfectly over soft rises and falls of flesh; her mouth small and softly-pursed and her eyes like sparkling water. Her clothes were old lace, her shawl embroidered with lilies, her hats as wide-brimmed as her wide green eyes, drooping across her face like long quiet lashes. Often she wore a veil. Mostly she was happy, her lightness of spirit infecting all around her; and when she was sad she kept it to herself. Other people had their own worries to fret at, she told herself stoically. She could cope with herself perfectly well.

Thanks to Ignatius. Ignatius Gribb provided her with a secure, immovable centre for her being. Her entire life and all her delight revolved around him. I thank whatever brought us together, she would tell him. If marriages are made in the heavens, then ours was made in the seventh. And he would grunt and nod and she would sniff his reassuring new-socks smell and be comforted and whole. A woman needed a love like this in a place like K. It kept away the darkness.

Shored up by the strength of this love, she felt it her duty to do her level best to impart something of her strength to the weak. To nurse the halt and feed the hungry was to her a privilege and a debt paid. This zeal made her as many enemies as friends. Not everyone likes to be helped; not everyone in K responded to her cosy goodwill. And the obverse of her sunny life was that Elfrida Gribb was something of a prig.

She was, however, beautiful, even through a veil; and Flapping Eagle stood entranced for a moment at the entrance to the Elbaroom, framed with Virgil in the filtering yellow light of the doorway and the flicker of the lamp above their heads, silhouettes watching the pale, lovely ghost on its night ride.

An instant when their eyes met; and at that instant, the universe went out for an instant, freezing the inhabitants of the town in a series of characteristic positions, a tableau fixed in the aspic of a blink in time.

The most unlikely duo in the Elbaroom sat at a low round table about halfway down the long, narrow hostelry. One of them was enormous, a bear of a man, an impression he heightened by wearing a bearskin coat practically all the time, for all that it was rarely very cold in K. Perhaps it was the coat that gave his face its bright red colouring. It was a face like a craggy tomato. Beads of sweat stood excitedly on its brow. Its eyebrows beetled inwards and downwards towards the rough peak of his nose, spilling over gleaming eyes on their way. He spoke rapidly; his hands swung in huge, dangerous, clawing arcs.

His companion was as slim as he was wide, as slight and elegant as he was cumbersome; a dainty man with a young face and Calf Island’s traditional ancient eyes. At present, these eyes held a look of infinite boredom-held it, moreover as though accustomed to doing so. They were discreetly downcast, watching his tapered hands pulling the legs off a spider, sharply, cleanly.

The dainty man was called Hunter. His full name was Anthony St Clair Peyrefitte Hunter, but his companion called him The Two-Time Kid. The name had stuck, not particularly because of the insult latent in it, but thanks to Hunter’s frequent avowal that he would ‘try anything twice’. The bear-like man, with his unerring gift for the obvious, had asked, why twice? and Mr Hunter had replied, with the slight disdain of centuries of good inbreeding:

– Once to see if one likes it; twice to see if one was right.

– Wal, guffawed the bear, you little two-timer! His bellow had effectively overpowered Hunter’s dainty sneer.

The bear was called Peckenpaw. K knew him as ‘One-Track’ Peckenpaw. He told stories no man questioned; he was too big to be accused of telling tall tales. His stories were full of the legends of the Old West; the time he stood up against old Wild Bill and stared him down; the time he bent William Bonney’s rifle into a knot with his bare hands; gold rush tales of mining towns where men were men and women were grateful. But at the time of the blink he was boring Mr Hunter with his favourite story, told a thousand times before, that was one reason for the title of ‘One-Track’. His repetitive, compulsive tale-telling was the other.

One-Track Peckenpaw had once spent centuries of his life hunting the North American counterpart of the Yeti: Big-foot. He had never caught him. His tales were full of the aggressive melancholia of failure, sterile inventions about how the big one got away. It was to catch Bigfoot that he had accepted the burden of immortality; it was the grudging certainty that he never would which eventually made him a Candidate for Calf Mountain.

– There was this time, he was saying, I got sure he was a woman. It was the cunning of him, the way he played me along, the bastard. I got to thinking, if he’d been a human-been he’d’ve been a woman for sure and a cockteaser to boot. It was a fool idea, him being a female, but it climbed in my head and wouldn’t get out. Once I dreamed I fucked him… her. Jesus that was a wrestling match. Woulda broken you in two at the least, Mister Two-Time.

– I’ll try anything… began Hunter mildly.

– Twice, bellowed One-Track Peckenpaw, drowning his audience’s voice. Yeah. Anyway. It was a pleasure to track him. Like being on the heels of a wilful woman needing taming. I’d think how a woman would behave when I saw his footprint near a stream. Was it a bluff or a double-bluff? Which way was he really going? I’ve always trusted to instinct. You get a feel of your quarry stronger than any scent. If the signs don’t add up with the feel you ignore the signs. That’s the difference between a lousy tracker and a great one.

– You never caught it, though, interposed Two-Time sweetly.

– Saw him twice, said Peckenpaw from a distance. This shape, huge like a mountain, going through thick forest growth like it wasn’t there. When I got to the spot it was like a tank had gone through. It gives a man respect seeing a thing like that.

He was silent for a moment.

– The second time, he went on, was the time he came to visit me. Sleeping’s a risky business in Bigfoot land. I used to put an alarm system round my campfire-tripwires everywhere to ring bells and clatter my pans. One night I wake up and there he is, just standing there, looking down at me. Walked through all the alarms as neat as you please just to take a good look. That’s when I stopped thinking he was a woman. I lay there still as the grave and he nodded and walked away so then I turn to grab my rifle, IT WASN’T THERE. He moved it to the other side of the fire. O he was clever all right. And I’ll tell you something else, Mr sophisticated Hunter. I may not have caught the motherfucker but he made me more of a man than You’ll ever be. COME AND GET ME, he meant when he gave me that stare, CATCH AS CATCH CAN. YOU see: he showed me a point of no return. didn’t matter that I was the best tracker that ever lived with ten lifetimes’ experience. He had a million years’ practice at running away. So now? Now I respect his privacy.

One-Track Peckenpaw leapt to his feet suddenly, his arms windmilling as he shouted: -COME AND GET ME, YOU BASTARD! CATCH AS CATCH CAN I and burst into convulsive laughter, great gulping laughs that shook his eyebrows; while Two-Time Hunter pulled the last leg off his spider, leaving it a round, wriggling, dying core.

Blink.

Elfrida Gribb had always thought the trouble with Flann O’Toole had to do with two things: his preoccupation with being such a disgustingly uproarious broth of a boy, and the fact that his middle name was Napoleon. An Irish Napoleon was a concept so grotesque it had to end up like O’Toole.

O’Toole made potato whisky in a back room and seduction attempts upon the person of every female who entered the Elbaroom; he swore oaths regularly and broke promises unfeelingly; he was prone to fits of violent temper, but thought himself a reasonable man; he was likely at any moment of the day or night to keel over in an alcoholic stupor, but he considered himself a man of power; he was carried to his bed every night in a haze of obscenity and vomit, but was convinced he was a leader in the community; he quoted poetry as he did ugly things. To Elfrida, his presence darkened a room and denied the beauty of life; to himself, he was a lightning-rod, conductor of electricity, Prometheus unchained, raw, carnal man in his prime, the very vitality of life. There was, too, a strong religious streak left in him; on mornings-after he could be seen mortifying his flesh with a cane, or heard crying in agony through the door of Mlle de Sade’s chambers at the House of the Rising Son. It was one of the reasons Dolores had left him; those who undergo physical suffering or mutilation involuntarily naturally loathe those who inflict it upon themselves in the name of God. Her only possible reaction had been flight.

– Holy Mary, cried O’Toole to a farmer’s wife, who had shrunk away in fear, you look about ready for it, me darlin. What wouldn’t you say now to a large dose of O’Toole’s hot cock, eh? There, don’t shrink away. ’Tis the Organ O’Toole I offer, you Protestant whore. And that’s no mean gift I can tell you surely with the stops pulled out and all.

The farmer sat bridling by his wife, but made no attempt to defend her; a bellyful of potato whisky makes a mean fighter.

– There now, observe your husband, lurched O’Toole, if he isn’t being more sensible than yourself, then I don’t know what. Compliance is a virtue; resistance is an act o’ violence and me I’m a hater of all that. Come now, up with your skirts, down with your underwear and Napoleon O’Toole will give you an evening to remember him by. ’Twould be an act of true pacifism. For which I believe the Sanskrit word is Ahimsa. Mr Gandy himself’d be proud of you.

The woman shook her head imploringly at her husband.

– Now then, he said, half-rising from his seat. O’Toole shoved him back.

– Would you deny me my due, sir, would you? This place is my land and a seigneur on his land has droits. Do not cross me. Do not. In the morning no doubt I shall chastise meself as once I chastised meself for years upon years through a holy union with a broken hag of a wife. That was a religious thing to do if you like, to pleasure the crippled and suffer agonies in the doing. Have you ever screwed a hunchback, farmer? Then do not deny me my freedom. My time is served.

– I will not go with you, said the woman.

– Will you not? roared O’Toole. Will you not now? You come to the Elbaroom and will not go with its master? Is that manners, woman, to treat your host so? The name itself gives you fair warning, El Barooom! The blast of the rocket and the prick of Napoleon. Have you no wish to roll with emperors? I would give you children of genius. If I could.

– I will not go, insisted the woman tearfully.

– Then go to the devil, cried O’Toole, and raised the small table that sat between the peasant couple over his head, scattering glasses and drinks. He made to throw it across the room.

Blink.

(In O’Toole’s version of the breakdown of his marriage to Dolores, he held that when he had suffered long enough, been tortured long enough by her deformity and ungratefulness, he had thrown her out. The truth was a different matter. Dolores O’Toole had left her husband because he could not satisfy her. Flann Napoleon O’Toole had only half a testicle, having lost the rest in a fight with a dog; his limp penis was but an inch long and, owing to the depredations of the demon drink, he could only rarely stiffen it to twice that size. These circumstances are offered in extenuation of his behaviour.)

When Jocasta had replaced Liv as Madame of the town’s brothel, it was Virgil Jones who had suggested the ironic play on words that was now its name. But though she insisted on keeping a spotless house, it possessed none of the expansive, trellised, wrought-iron elegance of the city that New Orleans had once been; nor did the Madame resemble the tragic queen, wife and mother to the oedipal Rex, in any wise but their shared name. Thus both arms of the pun were somewhat truncated, and the House of the Rising Son forged its own style.

One of the first innovations she had made, once she felt strong enough to move out of the all-encompassing shadow of Liv, was to increase the specialization of her employées’ functions. Liv had thought it enough that they should all be dedicated exponents of the horizontal arts in general; Jocasta had always disagreed, perhaps because she was herself best at being an all-rounder, jack-of-all-trades, and had always felt a nagging dissatisfaction with herself. So she gave her employees new names on the same day as the brothel; and with the new names went extremely precise sexual functions. She believed the change had paid dividends; people said the House of the Rising Son was an altogether lighter, more open, less embarrassing, more rewarding place to visit than Liv’s ménage. (It is easier to ask for the services of a lady whom you know to be an expert in your favourite variations than to ask an anonymous whore to indulge your whims.) And Jocasta had the feeling that her girls took a greater pride in their work these days.

The one employee who gave her cause for concern was the single male whore, Gilles Priape. He was lazy for his size; she knew men needed longer rest-periods than women, but she suspected Monsieur Gilles of malingering. Specialization again, you see: he was the only one practising the male arts and was therefore forced into versatility. Still, his customers seemed content enough. Speciality of the House, they called him, much to the irritation of the girls. Especially when his customers were men.

Jocasta was walking the corridors of her empire. Behind closed doors, the staff were busy. Jocasta liked nothing better than these muffled sounds, the grunts of real ecstasy mingling with the far more expert sighs of simulation. She sometimes thought she preferred this aural stimulation to the act itself… but then she put the unprofessional thought firmly in its place.

Certainly she was a desirable woman; she knew that all right. Not, perhaps, in the same visual class as some of the girls, but definitely a class lady. Her features were as classically Grecian as her name; and if her breasts were a trifle too heavy, she had stopped worrying about them aeons ago. They looked well enough, swelling through her long, floor-length, white lace nightgown, shadowed by the light from the candle she held as she toured the building. She enjoyed dressing like this. It made her feel pure.

Whereas, as every one of her staff was fully aware, anything they could do, Madame Jocasta could perform twice as erotically. She was the best; and if she undervalued her all-round gifts, her cohorts did not. On the rare occasions when she performed herself, they would crowd to the observation-holes in the walls of her room, and learn.

The sound of the whip was unmistakable. It came from the door behind which “Boom-Boom” de Sade was in full cry. Her hungry voice drawled something about a red-hot poker and Jocasta moved on contentedly.

Boom-Boom was a great favourite of Flann O’Toole’s, since she made him positively enjoy his self-mortifications; but Flann O’Toole was no favourite of Jocasta’s. He was too liable to turn sadist himself and damage the staff.

The next door yielded only silence. This was Mile Florence Nightingale’s chamber. She exuded a comfortable, homely sexuality, so peaceful as she displayed an accidental nipple, so demure as she undressed. Florence always did it, never screwed or fucked or shafted or banged; did it with grace and in the dark. As Jocasta paused, a tuneful hum welled up from within. Florence was singing her client to sleep with a soft lullaby.

From Gilles’ room came the sound of music. It could be that he was trying to conceal his lack of effort; but Madame Jocasta decided not to interfere tonight. She would, however, have to speak to Gilles soon.

The Indian girl, Kamala, was not in her room. Madame Jocasta remembered the presence next door, in the bed of the Chinese contortionist Lee Kok Fook, of a very special guest. Count Cherkassov had requested the company of his two favourite ladies, and while Madame the Countess Cherkassova slept unknowing in her bed, the two mistresses of the arts of the East were persuading the amiably stupid Count’s aristocratic blood to flow somewhat faster than usual. Lee Kok Fook and Kamala Sutra made a perfect team.

– Come in, Madame.

Media’s voice brought a glow of pleasure to Jocasta’s face. This one was her favourite; the only one who truly understood her. Media was the talent nearest Jocasta’s own. To avoid competing with her protégée, Jocasta had allotted her the task of pleasing only women; which she did with great zest. -I like women, she said. I get on well with them.

Jocasta entered her lieutenant’s room.

– It would appear we’re both free tonight, said Media. She was standing with her back to the window, naked, displaying herself to the night.

– Shut the window, Media. The mist. You’ll catch something.

Media obeyed unquestioningly. Madame knew best.

– Since we have this little time on our hands, she suggested, I was wondering if you felt like a little practice, Madame?

– That’s what I like, Media, said Madame Jocasta, letting her nightgown fall to the floor. Devotion.

– It’s a pleasure, Madame, replied Media, coming to her.

Blink.

Mr Norbert Page was a small man.

He wore small silver-rimmed bifocals.

He took small steps.

He drank small drinks.

His hands made small movements of nervousness as they discovered that the door to the shed was unlocked. Alex was getting far too good with his golden toothpick. He pushed the door open, and Alex grinned up at him, all innocence and childish charm.

– Alex, said Norbert Page, wagging as stern a finger as he could muster, you haven’t been out, have you? It was a forlorn question; Alex nodded the answer happily: -Yes.

– Did anyone see you?

Alex shook his head, still smiling beatifically.

– Alexy, said Mr Page in great relief, You’ll be the death of me, you will. If you’d been seen… if your mother had found out I went to have a little drinkie…

He gave up; Alex’s grin widened. -Play, he commanded. Play game.

Norbert Page loved indoor games; his armchair athleticism had earned him the title of “Sports” Page. This love made him Alex’s ideal guardian.

They played draughts on a chessboard, with chessmen. This enabled Mr Page to add a secret level of difficulty for himself. When the draughts reached the queening square, he would replace a pawn by a major chess piece. To Alex, these signified no more than a normal doubled draught; but Sports Page meticulously observed the seniority of Queen over Rook, Rook over Bishop and so forth, never permitting himself to take a great piece with a lesser. It made the game more interesting for him and gave Alex a chance of winning.

– Your move, said Mr Page.

Blink.

There were, of course, some who slept through the blink. Irina Cherkassova for instance lay unmoved in her large, if crude, four-poster, oblivious to this as she was to her husband’s nocturnal retreat.

If the Rising Son was the tallest house in K, the Cherkassov residence, somewhat distant from the main body of the town, was the most sprawling. It also had a fine, large garden. In fact, it was as near to an old dacha as they could make it; but since the family was not nearly large enough to fill it, they were obliged to share it with one P. S. Moonshy, about whom the standing joke was that he had been an afterthought on the part of his parents- hence his initials. P. S. Moonshy was the town quartermaster, and the continual battle that raged between him and the Cherkassovs was one of the wonders and hilarities of the town. -’Tis a happy irony, O’Toole had been heard to say in a sober moment, that that nest of gentility should be afflicted with so potent a viper of levelling.

P. S. Moonshy slept every night with Marx under the pillow. It was uncomfortable, but he did it, as a mark of respect. He was sleeping now. Badly.

So, in the neighbouring house, was that other possessor of meaningful initials, Ignatius Quasimodo Gribb.

Elfrida Gribb, being a prig, was filled with a faint nausea as she turned on to the Cobble-way and approached the Elbaroom. She could tolerate it no more than she could Madame Jocasta’s hell-hole; and if she had a complaint to level at her sleeping husband, it was that in his all-embracing love for the town where he had made his home, he could find no place for a condemnation of those two mansions of corruption.

It was, then, an ill-assorted quartet that found itself outside the Elbaroom… Virgil Jones, all of a shamble, slouching beside Flapping Eagle, squinting into the mist; the man called Stone crouching up the cobbled way; and the pale woman astride her pliant donkey.

Elfrida’s eyes met Flapping Eagle’s. She caught her breath.

Blink.

XXXIII Outside the Elbaroom

HOW LONG is an interlude in being? The blink had gone -or so it felt to those who experienced it-almost before it had had time to happen; and yet it had happened, and Elfrida shivered with the chill. She found herself thinking hard about Ignatius, holding his face in her mind’s eye, making him solid enough to clutch. Elsewhere, Jocasta and Media continued their practice with unwonted ferocity; and in the Elbaroom, Flann O’Toole put down the table he had been about to hurl and retreated behind his bar, where his Alsatian bitch stared up at him in confused silence.

– Virgil? asked Flapping Eagle; but Virgil Jones shook his head, uncomprehending. -Some sort of blackout, he said. We must be tired.

– But both of us, Virgil? At the same time?

Virgil shook his head again. -I don’t know, he said, his voice grating on Flapping Eagle’s jangled nerves.

– Let’s go in, said Flapping Eagle. We may as well try and find beds.

Elfrida had heard the name Virgil. Surely not, she thought, surely Mr Jones has not returned? And yet one of the figures in the doorway had a distinct air of Virgil Jones about it. The other… his companion… the one who had stared at her… the face… no, it was the mist and her imagination. He was a stranger. The feather, that proved it. He was a stranger.

One thing is now certain, Elfrida told herself. Whatever hopes of sleep I entertained are in utter disarray. Perhaps the night would be best used in arriving at a solution of this mystery.

Flapping Eagle and Virgil had gone into the Elbaroom.

Elfrida dismounted, and pulling her shawl tightly about her, she stole to the wall of the Elbaroom, to stand between the door and window.

For the first time in her life, Mrs Gribb was deliberately eavesdropping.

XXXIV Inside the Elbaroom

THE SILENCE SPREAD with them as they walked through the long, narrow room. It was as though they exuded some invisible, deadening substance to kill words on people’s lips and stifle movements at their source. It was also a magnetic substance, since the eyes of the numbed were capable only of following the two walking men. Quiet was an alien condition here; the entry of Virgil and Flapping Eagle had somehow altered the element in which these late revellers habitually had their being. Under the shock, too, Flapping Eagle sensed the presence of something more slippery, more dangerous, less predictable in its effects: the emotion of the prison guard whose escaped charge has just returned to his captors of his own free will, or that of the lion faced with a suicidal Christian. Puzzlingly, this emotion seemed to be directed at both of them. Not for the first or last time, Flapping Eagle was consumed with curiosity about his companion’s past. Moreover, though, he was shocked by the looks, almost of recognition, he was receiving himself. And subsequently he found himself-equally confusingly-utterly ignored. As though he shouldn’t have been there, and all present wished he weren’t.

Once they know me, he reassured himself, they will not be hostile. In the face of the blank hush of the Elba-room, it was perhaps an overly optimistic thought.

Noise returned to the bar as abruptly as it had left; and with it, every eye snapped away from the two newcomers. It was an unnerving reversal; they might not have existed as the denizens of the drinking-house exploded into an effusion of speech.

Hunter was gazing at One-Track Peckenpaw with a desperate interest.

– Tell me, he said, a shade too earnestly, about your hunting techniques.

Peckenpaw burst into a voluble speech about trap-laying, stalking, shooting and survival in the wild. All trace of boredom was gone from the Two-Time Kid’s features, replaced by a new-found passion for the hunt. One-Track himself had rarely been so passionate; he spoke of his past as though his life depended on it.

Meanwhile Flann O’Toole seemed to have collapsed completely. He stood, eyes squeezed shut, fists drumming on the bar-top, repeating monotonously: -Holy Mary Mother of God I swear I’ll never drink again. Holy Mary Mother of God I swear I’ll never…

He broke off to be sick into a bucket under the bar.

– Jesu Maria, he groaned.

It was at this point that O’Toole’s Alsatian did an unexpected thing. Worming her way past her vomiting master and under the bar, she launched herself at Virgil Jones, tail wagging, tongue licking, to give the returning man his first taste of welcome. O’Toole looked up, grey-faced; his eyes widened.

– Certainly I don’t believe it, he said. But then the dog always liked him; being closer to animals than human beings he always had a way with ’em. ’Tis Virgil Jones himself an no miasma. Jones the Dig. The grave fool is returned.

Eyes slowly drifted back across the room to Virgil and Flapping Eagle and the big friendly animal leaping about them as they stood stock-still halfway along the bar, next to Peckenpaw and the Two-Time Kid. Flapping Eagle watched the eyes and saw them run through a fast series of expressions. Disbelief first, to echo O’Toole; then wonderment; and finally relief.

– Wal, said Peckenpaw. Jones and a stranger. He gave the word a heavy emphasis.

– Well, well, said Two-Time, two times. Jones and a stranger.

And there were other similar exclamations along the length of the room. Gradually, joviality returned to the night.

Flann O’Toole came out from behind the bar, recovering fast, his ebullience already restored. There was a smile on his face that looked friendly. Looked friendly, Flapping Eagle warned himself. Looking isn’t being.

– His friend, bellowed One-Track Peckenpaw obviously, got a feather in his hair. Reminds me when I scalped an Indian chief. (Laughs, cheers, boos.)

And that sparked a memory in Flapping Eagle. Not of an experience, but of a history. He knew what their arrival reminded him of: old films in the fleapit at Phoenix, illicitly visited. The Redskin enters the Saloon. The boys make fun of him before shooting him. We don’t dig Redskins in this town. We dig holes.

– Dog, said Flann O’Toole to the bitch, be in order. The rebuke heightened Flapping Eagle’s growing qualms, but there was still that pleasant-looking smile carving its way across O’Toole’s face. The Alsatian skulked away behind the bar.

Flann O’Toole’s hands: great hams hanging at the ends of his arms. Strangler’s hands, thought Flapping Eagle. He would remember that thought at another time and place. At the moment they were spread in a gesture of friendship.

– Virgil, boomed O’Toole. Virgil me lad. Is it you it is?

His left hand flashed forward and pinched Virgil mightily on the arm. He had been standing immobile for some time now. Flapping Eagle saw the pain fly across his face and vanish again. His eyes were vacant.

Flann O’Toole was roaring with laughter at his trick.

– It’s either a fool or brilliant you are, Mr Jones, he said. Only a fool would let a thing like that go unpunished. A fool or a man who knows his weakness. At least I’m sure of this now, you’re flesh and blood. Come now and let me make amends. Have a drink on me.

Virgil did not move.

– Come on, come on, chuckled O’Toole, now fully himself again and enjoying his needling of the fat, blinking man, I was merciful enough; I could have used the right. After all we have to be sure, eh? Come and drink with O’Toole and introduce your baleful friend while you’re at it. Drinks on O’Toole I he shouted to the room at large. Cluster round and welcome home the wandering soul!

Virgil spoke.

– Before I drink with you, O’Toole, I must talk to you.

– Ridiculous, cried O’Toole. Why, we’ll talk as we drink.

– Privately, said Virgil.

Flann O’Toole assumed an air of mock-seriousness. He treats Virgil like the village idiot, thought Flapping Eagle, and wondered why that was Virgil’s chosen rôle here. Perhaps, he guessed, it was not choice that had allotted him the part.

– Hoomph, exhaled O’Toole. Serious is it? But these are my friends here, my close and valued comrades. I’ll have no secrets from them. So spill it, man. I’m thirsty with the thrill of seeing you again.

– Your wife Dolores, said Virgil Jones, who left you. With good reason, I might add. She and I are lovers. I cannot drink with you. Everything she said about you was true. It was true then, before she fled. It is true now. We’re not here to drink with you. Just looking for rooms, you follow. So if You’ll excuse me…

The rumble began low in Flann O’Toole’s chest and swelled slowly to a wild, shaking noise. His eyes grew red and large in his head. He stood thus for a moment, roaring and reddening, and then his hands lunged for Virgil Jones. Before Virgil could move, he was held in a constricting grip around the throat. He wheezed for breath.

– Excuse you indeed! yelled O’Toole. O you’re a fine fool all right, Mr Virgil Casanova. Saints spare me if I don’t strangle you here and now, choke you slowly to your well-deserved death. To come into the house of O’Toole himself and accuse him of being a cuckold, ’tis the true folly of the madman you are. Seduce my wife! Lucky you are I don’t believe you. You could not seduce a sausage, which saves your life.

– I thought you said your wife was a trial to you, said Two-Time Hunter with interest.

– You’ll keep out of this, said O’Toole. My wife is my wife and I’ll not have her name insulted for it insults me in the association. It’s time Mr Jones acquired some manners. Even idiots are not spared that.

His hands released Virgil who staggered back a step, drawing lungsful of air into himself. Flapping Eagle saw the big right hand clench and begin to travel. He found he was rooted to the spot. In slow-motion he saw the fist glide through the air towards the gasping Virgil; and the noise Of impact seemed less than it should have been. Virgil folded from the knees, wordlessly, and fell to the floor.

Still Flapping Eagle stood stock-still. O’Toole turned, a bull after his second matador. -Aren’t you going to help your friend, what’sy ourname? he said, still speaking at maximum volume. Flapping Eagle felt his head nodding from side to side: -No. O’Toole laughed.

– Virgil never did make close friends, he said. You’re a wise man to keep your distance. Flapping Eagle felt a sickness in the pit of his stomach.

– Give him the rush, called a voice from the back of the room. The bum’s rush for him.

O’Toole grinned. -One-Track, he called. Your assistance, if you please. They hoisted Virgil Jones between them and dragged him towards the door. Flapping Eagle watched them go.

One.

Two.

Three.

And Virgil had gone to clatter on the cobbles.

Elfrida Gribb, alarmed, rushed to him and cradled his head in her lap; but when he gained his consciousness he stood shakily, replaced his hat and, without thanking her, made his way down to the far end of the Cobble-way, falling once, over the crouching Stone.

Elfrida pursed her lips, full of the injury of the unappreciated helper. Ignatius had always said Virgil Jones was out of his mind. He had evidently been right.

It was the voice in his head that had paralysed him. It had been as persuasive as it ever had been, and it left Flapping Eagle disgusted with himself. This is what it had told him:

He was already a suspected outsider in the town where he had resolved to settle. He needed the people in the Elbaroom-needed their trust and help if he was even to find a bed for the night, let alone a place in the town’s life. To ally himself with Virgil Jones now would be to kiss goodbye to his hopes of reaching, at last, the end of his road; of finding his haven. It nauseated him as he thought it: for he was already allied to Virgil and in his debt to the tune of two lives. And yet the voice was persuasive. He knew himself now; knew that the urge to fit in, to be accepted, had taken over as the spirit of adventure and the passion for his long-time search waned in him.

– Tomorrow, he told himself. Or later tonight, maybe. I’ll go and find Virgil and apologize. Yes, that’s it. Tomorrow.

He could hear Virgil’s plea, made only hours ago: -I really am very vulnerable to any wounds you may care to inflict. Already the fears under those words had been realized. Flapping Eagle knew that he had hit his friend a great deal harder than Flann O’Toole, and in a more sensitive spot. The guilt was there; but it seemed he did not wish to atone. Not yet. He had to introduce himself first.

Guilt. My fault. Mea maxima.

He shook himself into awareness of his surroundings.

All around him, unsmiling faces; except for O’Toole’s, which was grinning its violent grin.

– Where will he go? asked Flapping Eagle.

– O, Jocasta’s, where else? said a beetling-browed, red face. She’s the only one’ll have him.

– I suppose, said a narrow, elegantly-boned face, we’ll have to accustom ourselves to him once more.

– Not in here, said Flann O’Toole, he’ll not enter Napoleon’s Empire.

– May I sit down? asked Flapping Eagle.

– You may, said Flann O’Toole. And You’ll answer some questions as well.

Cynicism in the elegant face, violence in O’Toole’s. O’Toole: the conscious face of violence, brute strength revelling in itself, a masturbation of power. God, thought Flapping Eagle, where have I come?

– I should be happy to answer, he said, and bit his tongue in shame.

– What’s your name? asked O’Toole.

– Flapping Eagle. I am an Axona Amerindian. (Rank and serial number. He could feel blood on his mouth. And Virgil’s on his hands. Another human being damaged by contact with him.)

– Never heard of them, said Peckenpaw, shaking his head slowly.

– Age, said O’Toole.

– Seven hundred and seventy-seven. (How ridiculous it sounded; how divorced he was from all his life before these last days. And here on Calf Island he had already suffered this change: his immortality was no longer important, no longer even a subject for thought or discussion, let alone sadness. Strange to think it had once driven him near suicide. Among geniuses intelligence loses its currency; they vie with each other at cooking or sex. So with immortals. When age becomes a constant, it becomes irrelevant.)

– Profession?

– Sailor… I was a sailor. (That, too, seemed now to be a description of some other Flapping Eagle.)

– Prime interest?

– I… excuse me?

– Prime interest, repeated O’Toole.

– I don’t quite understand, said Flapping Eagle.

– Will you do the explaining, Two-Time, sighed O’Toole, and I’ll get meself some liquid nourishment.

The elegant face replaced O’Toole’s. -We in K, it said in a voice heavy with cynicism, like to think of ourselves as complete men. Most, or actually all of us have a special area of interest to call our own. I don’t think we could accept anyone who thought otherwise. It’s the difference, you see, between casual sex and love. The more you love, the more closely you get to know, the more profoundly you see, the more you are enriched. We like to think of ourselves as being enriched. We’d like to think you agreed.

– Yes, said Flapping Eagle, I agree, (…to any wounds you may care to inflict, Virgil had said. -Agreed, Flapping Eagle had answered.)

O’Toole was back. -Now then, he said, let’s try again, why don’t we? Prime interest?

The faces waited.

Flapping Eagle, dizzy and confused, and without knowing the origins of the thought, said: -Grimus. It’s Grimus.

– Ah, said O’Toole, at a loss for words.

– Tsk, tsk, said Hunter. You have, unhappily, a gift for touching nerves. We don’t say too much about that… about that here.

The faces looked sullen. If O’Toole were to advocate violence now, there would be no chance.

It was One-Track Peckenpaw who sided unexpectedly with the “Redskin”.

– Hell, he said, live and let live. Don’t see why it shouldn’t be allowed just on account of he’s a queer looking Indian. Some of my best buddies was Indians. There’s no reason for objecting, right? He’s different, right? It fills a gap, right? So why the shit not?

Peckenpaw was the one man who could stand up to Flann O’Toole on his own patch. O’Toole’s glazed expression relaxed into that two-way grin.

– O.K., he said, we’ll let it be for the good Count to say. I don’t mind if we do speak of Grimus. I like fairy-tales.

– They say he couldn’t hold his drink, said a voice seriously. Everyone laughed.

– They say he was good at games, said another voice, and the laughter redoubled.

– They say he was a mighty hunter, said Peckenpaw, and led the third gale of laughter.

Flapping Eagle said: -Gentlemen, it really isn’t necessary to make fun of me. I am in good faith; I wish to settle here.

– At least you’re in better company now, said O’Toole. Have a drink, Mr Flapping Eagle. ’Tis Count Cherkassov’s province to decide, not ours. You’ll see him tomorrow. In the meanwhile I’ll find you a place to sleep right here.

Relief flooded into Flapping Eagle, but it was tempered with caution.

– I’d like to ask… he began.

– Fire away, said O’Toole.

– Well, then, what day is it?

This time O’Toole’s laugh was good-natured. -You see what comes of hanging about with the likes of Jones, he said. A man loses all track of time. Tuesday is what it is, though ’tis more likely Wednesday a.m. by now. You have any more of these brain-teasers?

– Yes, said Flapping Eagle. Who is Virgil Jones?

Flann O’Toole gaped for a moment and then shattered Flapping Eagle’s eardrums with his guffaw. -Well, there’s a joke if you like. He’s your friend, that’s what he is, and the more fool you. Drink up, Mr Eagle, drink up now.

Perhaps it was the potato whisky or fatigue, but Flapping Eagle felt a surge of nausea and giddiness. -I’ll just go and get a breath of fresh air, he said and made his way to the door, a dirty tramp with a skewed feather in his hair, at the end of his tether. The faces parted to let him through. The room was full of mist.

Flann O’Toole and Dolores O’Toole in bed. He sodden-drunk, she wide-eyed, reaching for him. Flann Napoleon O’Toole grunted in his sleep:

– Not tonight, Josephine.

– Dolores, she corrected him coldly and went to sleep.

O’Toole, remembering, crushed a glass in his hand.

XXXV Invitation

THE LISTENING ELFRIDA GRIBB had made a decision; her delicate jaw was firmly set. She waited, anxious but resolved, for the emerging Flapping Eagle.

He dragged himself out of the bar and immediately fell against the wall. His head rolled slightly; for all the world to see he was a man in the last stages of physical and mental exhaustion. And so badly dressed, too, thought Elfrida. So dirty.

– Sir, she said as firmly as she could.

Flapping Eagle’s head rolled in her direction. The woman… it was the beautiful woman… yes, there, the donkey… He couldn’t understand what she wanted.

– Sir, persisted Elfrida, you cannot stay here.

– Uh? he asked.

– You must come with me, said Elfrida categorically. If you are indeed in earnest about wishing to settle in K, you could not have made a worse start. First Mr Virgil Jones and now this… this unruly, wanton rabble. No, sir, you come away with me. My husband and I have a guest room where you can sleep. Does the thought of clean linen please you? And good meals, too, though I say it myself. Do come, sir. The Cherkassovs are our friends and neighbours. Count Cherkassov values my husband’s advice highly. I assure you it is quite the best thing you can do. Only do make haste, please, or they will come for you.

Flapping Eagle understood that this beautiful woman was offering him her hospitality. Not knowing her addiction to good works, he had no idea why, and was too tired to think. What he was quite clear about was that she was a great deal prettier than Flann O’Toole, so his choice was clear. Even if he had heard the word “husband”.

He attempted to draw himself up. -Flapping Eagle, he mumbled.

She laughed under her breath. -You do look comic, Mr Eagle, if You’ll forgive my saying so; but a night’s rest will work wonders. I am Elfrida Gribb. My husband is Mr Ignatius Gribb, the philosopher.

– And I, attempted Flapping Eagle, am the philosopher’s millstone. He lurched.

– What, she said, can this be wit? I’m sure that in your condition you could do no more than transmute base metals into fool’s gold. Now hurry, do.

– I… I’ll need your help.

Half-leaning on her he made his way to where the donkey stood; after some more trouble they were both astride her, Mrs Gribb in front; and they moved off down the Cobble-way to that place which had haunted Flapping Eagle earlier in the evening: home.

By the time they passed the House of the Rising Son, Flapping Eagle was asleep, one arm round Mrs Gribb’s waist to hold himself on to their mount, his head resting against the back of her neck.

– My, my, thought Elfrida Gribb, this is an adventure.

The long night was nearly over.

XXXVI Gribb

THERE WAS A gnome at the foot of the bed. -Remarkable, it said. Remarkable. It was a very clean gnome and it hopped up and down with an air of insatiable curiosity exacerbated by acute impatience. It wore, spotlessly, a silk shirt and cravat, a smoking-jacket, a rather incongruous pair of very aged (but immaculately hygienic) cord trousers and carpet slippers. Its eyes lit up, bright and violet, when it saw that Flapping Eagle was awake. -Ah, it said, Mr Eagle. Be the well-arrived, as they used to say in La Belle France. Permit me to shake you by the thumb.

Flapping Eagle decided he was either still asleep, or else had misheard.

– By the thumb?

– Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, rushed the gnome. Like this, you see?

He skipped round to Flapping Eagle’s side and stuck out his hand. Flapping Eagle’s own hand went out in automatic politeness. The gnome locked thumbs with him and folded his fingers around the hand. -There, he said. Local usage is terribly important, you know. Be in command of local usage and doors will open. Ignatius Quasimodo Gribb at your service, sir. Sometime professor of philosophy at, ah, but it’s unimportant. Unlike, as I was mentioning, local customs. Which are. I trust you are quite recovered?… His mouth hung open and his eyes glistened as he hopped from foot to foot awaiting Flapping Eagle’s answer.

– Thank you, Mr Gribb, said Flapping Eagle. You and your wife have been most generous.

– Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense! Now you have a bath and we’ll find you some clothes that haven’t been shredded by angry savages. Smart and spic it, that’s the ticket. Spic and span makes the man. Eh, eh?

– Yes, said Flapping Eagle dubiously. But I’m not sure if your clothes would fit… He stopped; Mr Gribb was waving him down violently.

– Not mine, not mine, not mine, he said. Courtesy of the good Count Cherkassov. A neighbourly act, wouldn’t you agree? Bodes well, too. No harm in wearing a man’s clothes when asking his consent, eh, eh? He nudged Flapping Eagle sharply in the ribs with one violet eye closed.

– No, indeed, said Flapping Eagle hastily.

Elfrida Gribb came into the room. She looked none the worse for her sleepless night; if anything, the surroundings of her own home and the misty daylight only served to heighten her ethereal loveliness.

– You must forgive my husband, she said. It’s so exciting for him to have you here; I’m afraid he gets a trifle frenetic. You two must have a long talk. As for me, I shall be pottering about if you need me.

She kissed her husband on the dome of his balding head (or rather, a head petrified for ever in a state of moulting), bending over him to do so; and left.

– So this was where the new life began, thought Flapping Eagle as he bathed. A night between expensive linen on a feather mattress. He had to make it work. One thing, at least: the Gribbs lived a great deal better than his last benefactors, Virgil Jones and Dolores O’Toole.

The bath-water was black. He must have been absolutely filthy. His hair had been a tangled, matted wilderness. He decided to have a second bath; this time the water ran cold, but no matter. He blackened the water again. Only after a third bathful did he declare himself clean. When he emerged, Ignatius Gribb was waiting with a selection of clothes laid out on the bed. Flapping Eagle chose a modest dark suit and tie; they fitted tolerably well. He refused a hat: -I hope I didn’t use too much water, he said.

– Nonsense, nonsense, said Gribb. We have a large tank on the roof. Now come and display your shining self to Elfrida. She’ll be transfixed.

They went out of the bedroom into a perfectly neat chamber. Elfrida lay with her petit-point on a chaise-longue. As they entered, she sat up and clapped.

– My, my, she said, now we see you in your true colours, Mr Eagle.

– Thanks to you, Madame, he said and bowed.

She allowed a touch of crimson pleasure to creep into her cheeks. -Off with you both now, she said. I’m awfully busy.

There was an old, even antique, wind-up phonograph by her side; and she placed the needle on a record. Music played. Music, which Flapping Eagle had not heard in an age. Flutes and violins: an interlude of almost forgotten peace. He stumbled upon a lump in his throat.

– My study, Mr Eagle, said Ignatius Gribb. Will you join me for a drink?

Tearing his eyes with difficulty from the enchanted scene, Flapping Eagle followed the small, bright, wrinkled man.

– You are evidently a man of much worldly experience, Mr Eagle, said Ignatius Gribb. It sings from your every action.

– Your home reminds me constantly of the past, said Flapping Eagle. Of its sweetest moments. This sherry, for instance. I have not tasted sherry in over a century.

– Elfrida, among her many virtues, is a prudent woman, said Gribb. When we decided to make the journey to Calf Island, she insisted that every perquisite of a civilized household should accompany us. So we have a small cellar, you understand, for use on occasions as rare as this is. For the most part we drink the local wine. A bit underweight, perhaps, but better so than obese.

Flapping Eagle choked back his laugh: Mr Gribb was looking delighted with his critique.

– As I was saying, the philosopher continued, I have found it possible to determine the extent and nature of a man’s experience from his eyes. A man whom life has beaten will have narrow slits of eyes; his opposite, the conquering hero, perhaps, will hold his eyes wide and proud. I am pleased to see your eyes so wide, Mr Eagle. It means we may be friends.

In confusion, Flapping Eagle stammered a word of thanks. To himself, he thought: the man’s a fool, and dogmatic with it; but no doubt that would prove tolerable in return for the unstinted hospitality.

Mr Gribb was just getting into his stride, and when Flapping Eagle asked, -To what school of philosophy do you belong, sir?

Gribb needed no further encouragement.

– Many years ago, he said, I became engrossed in the notion of race-memory: the sediment of highly-concentrated knowledge that passes down the ages, constantly being added to and subtracted from. It struck me that the source-material of this body of knowledge must be the stuff itself of philosophy. In a word, sir, I have achieved the ultimate harmony: the combination of the most profound thoughts of the race, tested by time, and the cadences that give those thoughts coherence and, even more important, popularity. I am taking the intellect back to the people.

– I don’t quite… began Flapping Eagle.

– But don’t you see, my dear fellow? The cadence, the structure, the style: it’s all there to use, in old wives’ tales, in tall stories, and most of all… (he flourished his right hand dramatically and raised a manuscript aloft from his desk)… in the cliché!

O my God, thought Flapping Eagle.

– This, said Gribb, jabbing a finger at the pages, is my great endeavour. The All-Purpose Quotable Philosophy. A quote for all seasons to make life both supportable and comprehensible. A framework of phrases to live within, pregnant with a truly universal meaning. As for instance, my very first entry, perhaps the most perfectly all-purpose quote of all:

The sands of time are steeped in new

Beginnings.

– That’s incredible, said Flapping Eagle.

– You think so, you think so? Yes, yes, yes: consider this. An old aunt at a wedding seeks a phrase to put it into perspective. She would use this phrase and the ceremony would gain a new and deeper context. The same woman cooks a disastrous meal; she uses-with stoic fortitude-the same quote and immediately she has linked two quite disparate events. In this way the all-purpose quote increases our awareness of the interrelations of life. It shows us precisely how a wedding is like having to cook a second meal. Thus illuminating both events.

– Remarkable, said Flapping Eagle.

– Dear, dear, dear, said Ignatius Gribb. I can tell we shall be the best of friends. Cherkassov will like you, be in no doubt of that. I shall instruct him that he must.

– There may be some trouble, said Flapping Eagle, over my choice of prime interest.

– Pooh, said Gribb. Tchah. Cherkassov’s never turned one down yet.

– It created quite a stir at the Elbaroom when I mentioned it.

Gribb grunted dismissively. -Well, well, well, what is this dangerous interest of yours, eh, eh?

– Grimus, said Flapping Eagle. Ignatius Gribb sat down and was silent. A grandfather clock ticked off the pause. A fly buzzed in conspicuous intrusion.

– Elfrida mentioned something of the sort, said Gribb. Nevertheless. Don’t you fret yourself. And he nodded his head as if to reassure. Flapping Eagle didn’t feel entirely calmed.

Elfrida sat on the chaise-longue; Ignatius was beside her; the petit-point lay carelessly on the ground, the one jarring note of untidiness in the meticulous room. The phonograph played an old, old song.

It was afternoon and the mist had turned from the morning’s gold to the post-meridian yellow. Yellow for life, remembered Flapping Eagle, sitting opposite them in a rather-too-upright wicker chair. A slow haze lay over the room. Time is passing more slowly now, thought Flapping Eagle, and felt very nearly happy. To be in K was to return to a consciousness of history, of good times, even of nationhood: O’Toole, Cherkassov… like them or not, the names conjured a past world back to life. Here in the womb of the Gribb drawing-room he felt-and found-comfort.

Here, the trappings of the past were jealously guarded. It made a big difference to the home-seeking man.

He watched Elfrida as with downcast eyes she listened to her husband’s voice. That was a further source of pleasure. Her long fingers wound a piece of thread slowly and elaborately in and out between themselves. It was a hypnotic sight.

Ignatius was saying:

– The one aspect of K I love above all else is the absence of scientists. I always found it shameful that mere technologists should have arrogated to themselves the right to be called that, scientists, men of knowledge. In their absence, science is returned to its true guardians; scholars, thinkers, abstract theoreticians like myself.

However, the absence of the technocrat does not mean a relapse into superstition, my dear Flapping Eagle; on the contrary, it places upon us an even greater duty to be rational. The world is as we see it, you know; no more, no less. Empirical data are the only true grounds for philosophy. I am no reactionary; in my childhood I would have laughed at the idea of immortality, but now that I know it can be bestowed I accept it. For that at least I thank the technologists; credit where it is due. To have eternity to study one’s subject is a grace and a blessing; to have the sure environment of this town about one is what I would call a miracle if I were a superstitious man. Here one may indulge one’s prime interest and want for nothing; one has a home, and food and company. With that and the eternal interplay of thesis and antithesis a man must be happy. I am a happy man, Mr Eagle; and do you know why? Permit me to tell you in a roundabout way.

We, too, are relatively recent arrivals, you see, Mr Eagle; I say relatively, for it is a matter of some centuries now. When I arrived I found a certain number of unfortunate myths in the process of forming; myths which I have made it my business to expunge from the minds of the townspeople. It is, incidentally, an interesting corollary study to my work on race-memory: the growth of a mythology in a single, long-lived generation. At any rate, Mr Eagle, I do not know what line you propose to take in your chosen field; may I simply hope you will do nothing to perpetuate that particular myth?

Flapping Eagle suddenly felt on very thin ice.

– Are you saying sir, he asked, that Grimus does not exist?

Ignatius Gribb looked annoyed.

– Yes,yes,yes,yes,yes, he said. Naturally that is what I say. And nor do his precious machine, nor his supposed dimensions, nor any of it. It’s all the babbling of an idiot like Jones; sound and fury, signifying nothing.

– I am astonished, Mr Gribb, said Flapping Eagle; and I can’t agree.

– You’ve spent too long with that trickster… that charlatan. He has no place in this town. Gribb was now definitely angry. A red dwarf.

– Darling, said Elfrida, I’m sure it might be interesting for you to have a man of Mr Eagle’s undoubted experience investigate the matter.

Gribb collected himself. -Yes, of course, he said. Dear, dear, dear. It would be… most amusing.

Flapping Eagle was thinking hard: certainly it seemed no-one in K ever succumbed to dimension-fever; and since his own experience of it, the dimensions no longer intruded into his own consciousness. And he had been ill in Virgil’s company. He wished passionately that he knew more about Virgil.

He was now sure of one thing: he intended, if permitted, to find out as much as possible about Grimus, whether he was fact or fiction. It was the only way to understand what had happened to him.

And where was Virgil Jones now?

To Mr Gribb, he said formally: -Please rest assured, sir, that I shall be the soul of impartiality in my studies. It is a debt of honour to you for housing me. Scholasticism breeds a scholarly attitude.

– Well,well,well,well,well, said Mr Gribb, mollified.

– Heavens, said Elfrida, if we are indeed dining with the Cherkassovs, I must fly and dress.

XXXVII The Rising Son

A BRUISED MAN in a torn suit knocks at the door of a brothel, seven times. Exactly on the seventh stroke, the door flies open. A hollow noise as it strikes against a darkened wall. Candlelight: a woman in a long lace nightgown, her dark hair a cascade upon her shoulders, her face glowing. The man stumbles inside; the door closes. There is no wilderness without an oasis.

The man lies in the lap of a lady with a lamp, sleeping as she sings. Behind her stands a girl, naked and motionless; at their feet the woman in the long lace nightgown lies watching. These are some of the words of the song:

And shall ye attempt to climb

The inaccessible mountain of Kâf?

It bruises all men in its time

It shatters the strongest staff

It brings an end to all rhyme

And crushes the lightest laugh

O do not attempt then to climb

The inaccessible mountain of Kâf.

In time all must climb it, in time.

Awaking, the man asks for refuge; and since a brothel is a place of refuge, asylum is given. And food and new clothing.

– Your namesake Chanakya, whispered Kamala Sutra to Virgil Jones, could place his right hand upon a brazier of coals and his left hand upon the cool breast of a young girl, feeling neither the pain of the fire nor the pleasure of her skin. Ask yourself if it is your luck or your misfortune that you could feel both. And now that the fires have scalded you, allow the woman to heal you.

She lay beside him; from her throat came low clucking noises. She drew her hands over her eyes to close them and held them, fingers spread, at the corners of the sloe-shaped lids. When Virgil made no move, she took his hand in hers and put it on her breast. Slowly, it began to move.

– Be comforted, she said.

And he was.

– If you fix your eyes upon a black dot at the centre of a sheet of white paper, said Lee Kok Fook, it will either disappear or grow until it gives the illusion of filling the page. In the ancient symbol of yin and yang, the yin hemisphere contains a yang dot, and the yang hemisphere a yin dot, to show how each half contains the seeds of its opposite. If you fix your eyes upon the dot, it will grow into a cloud, and create an imbalance in the mind, such as the desolation you feel now. I will help you to avert your eyes from the cloud; by our love-making the harmony can perhaps be restored.

She wound around him like a snake, her legs and arms seemingly spiralling around his, until they were irretrievably interlocked; and he could do nothing but respond.

That night, Florence Nightingale sang him to sleep once more; and again the naked Media stood behind them silently while Madame Jocasta reclined at their feet. It was a rippling song, full of clear waters and quickly-running streams, fresh and soothing. He slept better.

– There are some men, said Lee Kok Fook, whose curse it is to be different from the rest. Among thinkers, they see only a lack of practicality; among men of action, they mourn the absence of thought. When they are at one extreme, they yearn for the other side. Such men are habitually alone, unloved by most others, incapable of making a friend, since to make a friend would be to accept the other’s way of thinking. But perhaps it is not such a curse to be alone; wisdom is very rarely found in crowds. And then, she added, melting around him, there are always times when even such men are not wholly alone.

Madame Jocasta raised the flap of an observation-hole. Kamala Sutra was showing Virgil an exercise in yoga tantra. He sat naked and cross-legged on her bed; she sat on his lap, her legs locked about his waist, their sexes conjoined, their eyes closed. Jocasta nodded her head in satisfaction.

Virgil Jones lay peacefully on Florence Nightingale’s bed. On the bedside table stood a gleaming bronze pitcher of wine. Jocasta, Media, Kamala and Lee stood in a semicircle around the two people on the bed.

– Welcome home, Virgil, said Madame Jocasta.

– I propose a toast, said Virgil Jones, to the House of the Rising Son and its resident angels of mercy.

– And we shall drink to your renewed good spirits, said Jocasta.

Virgil drained his glass. Florence refilled it instantly.

– Shall I play, Madame Jocasta? she asked.

– Yes, please, said Virgil. Play and sing.

Florence picked up her lute and began to sing. Looking at her, Virgil remembered a verse from another poem:

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw

He watched the black-skinned Nightingale sing and forgot all other songs and poems.

She was an Abyssinian maid

And on her dulcimer she played

Singing of Mount A bora.

They lay in bed, Greek-named gravedigger and Greek-faced whore.

– At first, said Virgil, I was wounded by Flapping Eagle’s desertion. But now I really don’t care.

– You must stay, Virgil, said Jocasta. Stay with us and look after us. You’ve been wandering far too long, up and down this wretched mountain, and done quite enough. Nobody can carry the guilt for an entire island. It’s time you rested. Let your Flapping Eagle travel on if he must; you’ve taken him as far as you can.

– Or as far as I want to, said Virgil. At the moment his mind is full of settling down. Settling down! But who knows, perhaps that’s all there is to it, all there is to do, all there is to him. It’s just that I thought…

He fell silent.

– You thought he was the one to do what you can’t, said Jocasta. Virgil didn’t reply.

– Revenge isn’t a very worthy emotion, said Jocasta softly. You know as well as I do that nobody can touch Grimus now.

Virgil shrugged. -Probably, he said. Most probably not.

– What is it in Liv, asked Jocasta bitterly, that leaves such a cancer in people? You would never have hated Grimus if Liv hadn’t made you do so.

– Probably not, repeated Virgil.

– Liv, spat Jocasta. You’ll have to forget her, Virgil. Her, and Grimus, and Flapping Eagle. I can’t go to bed with your ghosts.

Virgil laughed.

– You’re a tolerant woman, Jocasta, he said. Give me some wine; there’s absolution in it. I’d love to stay.

– Jocasta?

She stirred in her sleep.

– Jocasta, listen.

Virgil was sitting bolt-upright in bed. He could see himself, blurrily, in the dark, reflected in the mirror on the far wall.

Jocasta raised herself on one elbow. -Whatever have you thought of now? she asked. For the last few nights, this had been a regular occurrence; Virgil would be brought abruptly awake by his dreams. -It takes longer to exorcise the unconscious, he had apologized.

– I’ve just remembered, he said. Night I came here. Do you recall… something happening? Something odd.

– Lord, she said, I forgot. The jolt.

– Yes. What the devil was it?

– It’s never happened before, she said.

Virgil stared out of the window at the dark bulk of Calf Mountain above them, clouds enveloping its summit.

– What the hell is that fool up to now? he said angrily.

– Perhaps he can’t control it, said Jocasta quietly.

– It was like… began Virgil, and stopped.

– Like a flash of death, finished Jocasta.

Neither of them slept again that night.

– On the way back here, said Virgil, I regained the gift, you know? And then I lost it again. Just once, I travelled.

– You shouldn’t have tried, said Jocasta. The rest of us are lucky; being immune, I mean.

– Like the king who took poison regularly to make sure it couldn’t kill him, Virgil said with heavy irony.

– Yes, said Jocasta seriously, exactly like that.

Virgil fell back on his pillow. -That’s one thing You’ll never understand, he said. There’s nothing like travelling. Nothing ever invented.

– Forget it, Virgil, said Madame Jocasta. Come here.

XXXVIII At the Cherkassovs’

XXXIX Sodomy

THE GRIBBS’ DONKEY, perhaps the most obedient, least mulish donkey that ever was, jogged demurely along the Cobble-way with a divided Flapping Eagle upon its back. He had spent most of the day exploring his new home, and his mind was filled with a struggle between his desire to get to the bottom of the contradictions and anomalies he had already found, and his desire to stay, uncomplaining, in the bosom of his new circle of friends. The two were, it seemed, mutually exclusive. To accept his own recent experience and Virgil Jones’ explanation of it was to put himself outside the ethos of K, which denied Grimus and his effect; to accept the authorized Gospel according to Gribb was to deny the evidence of his own senses, or else to view Virgil Jones as both mad and evil; Flapping Eagle could not quite do that, nor understand how, if he did, he could explain his inner voyage. Perhaps a drug? But then, how to explain the vision of Bird-Dog? Had Cherkassov laced the wine with something more narcotic? The battle raged and fluctuated within him; he felt as ignorant, as stupid as his uncomplaining donkey, and wished his horizons were as narrow.

– How do you refute the Grimus myth? he had asked Gribb.

– Tchah, had been the reply. I have no time for creation myths. I must impress upon you that this preoccupation with simplistic explanations of origins-which is all creation myths are-is a very counterproductive business.

– Perhaps you could tell me, asked Flapping Eagle, as politely as he could, how you and Mrs Gribb-and for that matter the rest of the townspeople-came to Calf Island?

Gribb said: -At times, Mr Eagle, you show a degree of perversity… as I just said, origins, beginnings, are valueless. Valueless. Study how we live, by all means. But leave, for goodness’ sake, this womb-obsession of yours, this inquiry into birth. Surely maturity is of greater interest than birth? Please excuse me now: I must collate a few more clichés before lunch.

The donkey jogged along the Cobble-way.

More puzzles came into Flapping Eagle’s bursting head.

There had been no unit of currency on the Axona Plateau; but that had been a society born and bred to communal living. It was extraordinary that so motley a collection as the K-dwellers, so separate from each other, should find it possible to accept a similar form of commune with such apparent ease. Could a man like Flann O’Toole, aggressive, competitive, ever agree with the notion that he was worth no more and no less than any other member of the community? And, though the Cherkassovs had acquired a nominal pre-eminence, the concept was surely alien to them as well. To dispense with rewards, to distribute the produce of K’s fertile farmland according to need rather than rank or status or wealth… it must have been hard to swallow. Talking to a farmer here, a butcher there (and often struck by the incongruity of man and job), Flapping Eagle gathered that Jocasta’s whores were unpaid; so was Peckenpaw the ex-trapper, now the village blacksmith. They did their work and in return were free to use the services of any other resident, and to collect generous rations of food from Quartermaster Moonshy. The town provided services, the farms provided food, and the two were freely given and taken. In a sense it was Utopian; but how on earth had it become workable? The Cherkassovs were still aristocrats, Gribb was still Gribb. Only in the matter of social organization did K display this out-of-place fellow-feeling; for the rest it was a place divided into small groups, even of isolated individuals, with few of the festivities and group activities usually associated with tightly-knit communities. And no crime. Flapping Eagle could not help feeling that such a system, for such people, could only work in the presence of some overwhelmingly powerful enemy force, some thing they all feared so much that differences were sunk in the common search for a means of survival. Which led back to Virgil Jones’ explanations-and to Grimus. The whine was still there when he thought about it, there in the corners of his head. He had argued himself into thinking that the absence of Dimension-fever in K could be taken as a final disproof of Virgil’s theories; but the alternative was even more probable. Obsessionalism, “single-mindedness”, the process of turning human beings into the petrified, Simplified Men of K, was a defence against the Effect, Virgil had said: -concentrate on the forms of things, the material business of living, and on “prime interests”, and the inner and outer universes would be blocked out. It all fitted: that was why Gribb and the rest resolutely refused to discuss origins-to do so would be to admit the presence of the enemy which they had driven from their minds. That was why Cherkassov had treated Gribb with that mixture of respect and insult: Gribb, as perpetrator of the Grimus-denying school of thought, had to be respected; but since all of K knew it to be a convenient sham, the respect was only external; probably they despised him for his pomposity. Flapping Eagle wondered how Elfrida felt. Probably she simply adored him for his cleverness.

Elfrida, Irina: there were the two most powerful weights in favour of K. No town which contained them could be easily dismissed. And perhaps two days was too short a time in which to decide to break his vow to himself. Yes, perhaps.

But while he was reassuring himself, the face of Bird-Dog crept back into his head and refused to leave. It was not easy to be an ostrich, even in a town full of them.

The donkey paused, by habit, outside Moonshy’s Stores. P. S. Moonshy had struck Flapping Eagle as a man worth talking to, if only because he had questioned the sovereignty of Gribb’s ideas. But when they sat in the spartan back room of the Stores, which was Moonshy’s retreat, he became less certain. Yellowing posters clung to the walls, screaming defiance at long-gone tyrannies. The clenched fist of solidarity was much in evidence. Moonshy differed from the rest only in choice of obsession. He was Opposition Man. That was what gave him the strength to question the shaky edifice on which rested the sanity of K. He questioned, but he was a part of it; so that when Flapping Eagle raised the crucial question of origins-and Grimus-he received only a stony stare and the official doctrine.

– These things, pah! said Moonshy. They do not matter. I spit upon them. What is of importance is Cherkassov’s privileges, is Gribb’s indolent scribblings, which the deprived workers are obliged to support, is the sinecure given to the woman Liv in consideration of her mental state. She is not deranged, nor is she talented. She is a passenger. These things are important.

– But you continue to work within the system?

– The time is not yet ripe, declaimed Moonshy. When the workers become politicized, the time will come.

His accents betrayed his words. He was secure in his attitudes, as he would never have to carry them to their logical conclusion. Flapping Eagle made an excuse and left, feeling disappointed.

Evening was drawing on when Flapping Eagle saw Bird-Dog again. And this was no hallucination, nothing which could be explained away as a trick of the eyesight. It was her, his sibling and mother-substitute, Bird-Dog herself, large as life and just as plain.

Nothing was out of the ordinary in K; Mr Stone was busy at his counting, the cloud hung over the mountain-top, the mist hung over the plain. Flapping Eagle dismounted from his donkey to one side of the House of the Rising Son. He wanted to see Virgil again. Leaving the donkey tethered there, off the Cobble-way, he walked round to the front door. There was a woman leaning against it, her face in shadow. He called to her: -Is Virgil Jones in?

The woman moved into the street. -Come, little brother, she said. Come catch me. And she was off, running as fast as ever she did, around the brothel, away from the parked donkey. The surprise rooted Flapping Eagle to the spot for a vital moment and then he was after her. But she turned each corner as he turned the previous one, holding her lead easily, calling: -Next time, little brother. May be next time. He raced round the back of the house after her and then returned to the side where his donkey stood bellowing-but Bird-Dog was nowhere.

The donkey was bellowing because the Two-Time Kid, Anthony St Clair Peyrefitte Hunter, was in the process of sodomizing it, and even for a docile donkey, there are limits.

Fighting back anger and nausea, Flapping Eagle asked: -Did you see her?

– Who? asked Hunter conversationally. The donkey bellowed louder.

A woman leaned out of a window of the House.

– Get away from here, she shouted. Hooligans!

– For pity’s sake stop that, shouted Flapping Eagle, hauling Hunter off the tethered donkey.

– All right, said Hunter mildly, it’s disgustingly unpleasant anyway.

– Then why…

– Ill try anything twice, said Hunter as if by rote, dusting himself down fastidiously. Last time the beast kicked me. Broke my leg, damn nearly. At least I shan’t have to do it again.

Flapping Eagle forced his thoughts away from this lunacy. Bird-Dog had disappeared again; but, more importantly, she had appeared again. Where did she come from? Was it some kind of taunt? It was as though she-or someone-was reluctant to allow him to settle in K. He felt a surge of contrariness. If that was so, perhaps he just would.

Hunter had gone now, but more explicably, through the mist towards the Elbaroom. Flapping Eagle patted his poor, confused donkey. -Poor donkey, he said, and mounted. Enough had happened this evening; he didn’t feel up to his intended confrontation with Virgil Jones. In a way, he felt as sodomized by events as his unfortunate steed.

In the Elbaroom, Hunter said to Peckenpaw: -Benighted town, this. If you want to try something new you’re reduced to raping donkeys. Thus survival doth make cowards of us all.

Peckenpaw said: -Eh?

– It shouldn’t have been like this, said Hunter.

– Eh? said Peckenpaw.

– One-Track, said Hunter. Why did you come to the island?

Peckenpaw considered the question, gravely. He said:

– I got used to being alive.

XL The Swing

THE SWING. ELFRIDA on it, Flapping Eagle behind it, Irina leaning against the great ash which bore it. Elfrida’s parasol leaning beside Irina’s, closed and unnecessary in the soothing shadow of the tree. Elfrida smiling in innocent child-pleasure, Flapping Eagle half-smiling to keep her company, Irina unsmiling, eyes grey behind closed lids, halfway between dreams and waking. The swing, swaying in restful sweeps, queenly as the tree. Not even in the garden of the Cherkassovs was there a tree to match the ash, nor a swing to compare with this. The mist was light today, the sun warm and the air humming with bees about their business. There: a butterfly, glinting wings and flutters in the shafting shaded light. An elegiac day, graceful as the arcing swing, fresh and clean as new-baked bread, delicate as lace or a pale woman’s skin, a day to match the beauty of the women at the swing. Flapping Eagle woke at dawn, wide-eyed and refreshed; he had slept well and remembered no dreams. The dawn, like the succeeding day, had been a cheering thing, blinding him to his concerns. On a day, by a tree, at a swing, with two women like this spirits could not help but rise. Flapping Eagle’s were high.

Elfrida on the swing. -Higher! she commanded. Flapping Eagle pushed harder, the swing soared. Irina’s lids, closed like her parasol, censored the scene from her sight. Such ostentatious innocence held little attraction for her. Elfrida Gribb was her constant companion and her neighbour; and yet, she thought, the two of them had few enough common attributes, excepting their beauty. It had been a long time since Irina had thought this; a long time since Elfrida’s act of child-woman had irritated her. Today, it did. No-one could be so pure, no innocence so well-protected, no action as lacking in calculation as Elfrida’s claimed to be. Hers was the artifice that concealed artifice, thought Irina, and the subterfuge annoyed. She laughed, ate, slept, wondered like a child-and Irina Cherkassova was no lover of children. So she closed her eyes and let them play.

The soaring Elfrida had quite a different effect on Flapping Eagle. She had been awake early as well; and before the arrival of the Countess for a surprise breakfast visit, they had talked for a long time. Flapping Eagle had found that to look into those green eyes was to agree with their thoughts, just as Irina Cherkassova’s grey eyes could hypnotize him to their will. Talking to Elfrida, he had found himself willing to dismiss all his qualms of the previous night, all his doubts, and regain the courage of his conviction that K was the place for him. There were worse fates than that of spending an eternity with those eyes. And listening to Elfrida he even felt a certain sympathy with Ignatius Gribb. In her eyes, he was a considerate, loving man, and the eyes were unanswerable. But flickeringly they grew shadowed, as though her certainty wavered… and then the shadow was banished, and they sparkled again. Even her dislike of Jocasta and her house failed to arouse any objection; Flapping Eagle had distasteful memories of his own whoring past and embraced her dislike with the zeal of the convert. He found himself thinking less of Virgil Jones for staying there. Which was, of course, a convenient salve for his conscience. The chameleon adaptability within him, the symbiotic expertise had taken control once again, stimulated by the gaze of Elfrida Gribb.

– Irina, said Elfrida. Come, it’s your turn.

– No, no, said Irina Cherkassova. I’ll forgo it.

– Nonsense, said Flapping Eagle. We’ll have no spectators here.

And Irina submitted. She took Elfrida’s place. Elfrida sat on the grass and hummed.

The thought struck Flapping Eagle that it had been too long since he had had a woman. And in the same instant he wondered about Irina Cherkassova, with her weak husband and idiot son and petrified pregnancy. Elfrida Gribb was attractive in spite of (because of?) her innocent airs; Irina Cherkassova’s charms were more freely displayed. She was the more likely of the two. But second best, he told himself, and was surprised by the thought. Surprised and then worried by its implications for himself, a guest in her husband’s house. Unconsciously he pushed the swing too hard.

– Mr Eagle, reproved Irina, kindly take care. Mr Eagle: public decorum or a rejection of the intimacy of the other night?

– Sorry, he said.

Elfrida, too, was finding her neighbour a trial today. Again, it was an unusual feeling; and again, like Irina, she failed to put her finger on its source. Or perhaps she avoided doing so, as she had banished her jealousy of the night before last by thoughts of her dear Ignatius. She forced herself to picture him now, poring over his books and minute handwriting, sitting poised as a stone for hours and then darting a line down upon the elderly exercise-book he filled so entirely, not liking to waste a blank millimetre of paper, since his stocks were not inexhaustible. The picture made her smile; and then it dissolved, and the tallish, firm figure of Flapping Eagle filled it once more. -He is certainly beautiful, she thought.

Irina dismounted from the swing. -And now, Mr Eagle, she said firmly, since you dislike spectators so, Elfrida and I shall have to make sure you take your turn.

– O, yes, cried Elfrida, jumping up. On you go, Mr Eagle.

Then he was in their hands, flying up and down and back, whistling through the almost-clear air, at the mercy of the two pale mannequins. At their mercy, because he too was gradually becoming obsessed, and they were to be the objects of his obsession.

There was nothing for it. He must see Virgil today. He had put it off too long already, and it had to be done. Perhaps his gradual introduction into the ways of K would mean seeing little of his erstwhile guide, but that was no excuse for ingratitude. And perhaps K was not the place… there were still those unanswered questions, that ostrich-view of things.

– I must go into town, he said.

– I’ll accompany you to the Cobble-way, said Irina. I was thinking of a short walk myself.

They left Elfrida feeling ill-humoured again, and angry with herself.

Out of sight of the Gribb house, trees obscuring it from view.

Irina Cherkassova said: -Are we still friends, Flapping Eagle?

– Yes, he replied. If you like.

She put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth.

– Then that cements our friendship, she said, and walked away from him without looking back.

There were too many fluctuations within him-between his feelings for Virgil and his feelings for the new life to which Elfrida had introduced him; and now an emotional wavering between Elfrida and Irina, brought on by that kiss. He had to start settling things irrevocably, he told himself, and walked purposefully towards the House of the Rising Son.

XLI Black Rider

THE HOUSE OF THE RISING SON rose gleaming from the roadside. Outside it, stationary on the cobbled way, a figure on a donkey. As he drew closer, Flapping Eagle saw that the figure wore a flowing black garment, covering it from head to toe, with a kind of grill arrangement at eye-level, criss-cross woven bars across this one window. He could not tell whether it was male or female and felt a shiver of fear as he commanded it silently to be anything other than a third vision of Bird-Dog. Then it spoke to him and he relaxed slightly; the voice was a woman’s, low and toneless, and certainly not his sister’s.

– Who are you? it asked.

He introduced himself, seeing no reason not to; the hidden woman did not return the compliment. So he spoke more curtly when he said:

– Are you from the House?

– Yes, after a fashion, said the voice; and now it seemed amused.

– Then tell me, please, if Virgil Jones is here.

The figure nodded slowly, continuing to stare at the brothel as it had done all the while.

– Where else? it said tonelessly.

– Good, said Flapping Eagle shortly and walked up to the door.

– Flapping Eagle, the figure said.

– What? He stopped at the door and turned; the woman remained impassive.

– Nothing, she said. I was just accustoming myself to your name. But since you’re going to see Virgil, you can tell him I called.

– Who shall I say? said Flapping Eagle, curious now. The figure contemplated for a moment, then pointed with her right arm.

– I live there, she said.

The black house sat on the outcrop of rock above the town and beneath the wall of cloud, black as the concealing garments of its owner.

– I expect to see you soon, she said and kicked her donkey into motion.

– What is your name? said Flapping Eagle.

The donkey was moving away at a sedate walk.

– Mrs Virgil Jones, said Liv, and scornful amusement had once again replaced tonelessness in her voice.

XLII Madame Jocasta

MR VIRGIL JONES no longer needed his trouser-belt. He was not wearing any trousers.

He wore a towel around his waist, a necklace of beads around his neck, and a bowler hat upon his head. In his right hand was a pitcher of wine. In his left hand was a quantity of the bottom of Kamala Sutra. On his lap was a bowl of fruit. A thin line of red dribbled from his tongue into the newly-shaven cleft of his chin. He sat upon a low bed; Kamala Sutra lay beside him and Madame Jocasta’s head was on his knee. He was drunk as a lord.

Flapping Eagle stood in the doorway, speechless at the spectacle. Virgil Jones removed his left hand from Mile Kamala, doffed his hat and replaced the hand. -Ah, he said, my old friend, my old bucko, so eager, so enthusiastic. Flapping Eager, I presume. Greetings, salutations, felicitations, immigrations to you. Have a drink. Take your clothes off. Relax. Don’t you think I look smart? In the pink, you follow, in the proverbial pink. The pink djinn is what I am. Small pleasantry.

Flapping Eagle took a step forward, and stopped again. Kamala Sutra leapt up from the bed. She put her left foot on his right foot and wound her right leg around his waist. Then she put her right arm on his left shoulder and her left arm around his neck. Then she inclined her face up towards his and made cooing noises.

Virgil Jones spluttered gleefully, thumping his thigh with his emptied left hand, the rolls of his stomach oscillating happily.

– Look at that, he said. The climbing-up-the-mountain position! How singularly apposite, or appositely singular. Do you see, do you see, Flapping Eagle? You are the mountain and she is climbing up the mountain to beg for a kiss. Cooing noises and all. A genuine no-nonsense Kama Sutra technique.

– Cucucucucu, said Kamala Sutra.

Madame Jocasta pouted. -He seems not to like the offer much, she said. Shall we send for Gilles? Kamala Sutra detached herself and returned to the bed.

– O, do, said Virgil Jones, redoubling his laughter, drinking from the pitcher and choking. A fine spray of wine spread over the bedsheet. And over Madame Jocasta.

Madame Jocasta got up and walked by Flapping Eagle to the door, where she pulled a sash. On her way back to Virgil, she said dryly:

– How nice to see what you look like at last,

Flapping Eagle said: -I came to… to apologize…

Madame Jocasta interrupted: -To Virgil? Why, how perfectly sweet of you. She smiled stunningly and hit him as hard as she could in the face. -You took your time, she said, and the smile did not waver as she unleashed her other hand upon his other cheek. -There, that’s better, she said.

The door burst open behind them. There entered the most beautiful man Flapping Eagle had ever seen. Gilles Priape sidled in languidly stroking the preternaturally generous tool of his trade. It rose equally casually to a reasonably erect angle as he sized up Flapping Eagle.

– This one? he asked Madame Jocasta, pointing.

– That one, said Madame Jocasta, returning to Virgil’s knee.

– Here? asked Gilles Priape, making a superb professional moue at Flapping Eagle.

– Here, instructed Madame Jocasta.

– Would you like me to undress you? Gilles Priape asked Flapping Eagle. From his exhausted tone, it was evidently a question expecting the answer No.

– Don’t be so goddam lazy, said Jocasta. Do it. To Flapping Eagle she added apologetically: -He’s only slow until he begins.

Flapping Eagle shook off Gilles Priape’s resigned, limp hands and spoke to Virgil Jones, attempting to ignore the rest of the whole unexpected scene.

– Virgil, he said, and his voice faltered slightly, betraying his lack of success, I am very sorry about what happened at the Elbaroom. I should not have let them treat you like that. May I speak to you alone?

– O, my, flounced Jocasta, aren’t we starchy? Aren’t we severe? What right do you suppose you have to ask anything at all of Mr Jones?

Virgil hiccuped and then giggled. Flapping Eagle thought he looked totally pathetic, and anger mingled with his shame and disgust, making restraint impossible.

– Very well, he said. I don’t really know why I came here at all. From a sense of friendship, I suppose, a sense of obligation and, I admit it, of guilt. I had also thought you could help me… I wanted to ask you things, to ask your guidance… I see now there’s no point in any of that. Don’t you find it sad, Virgil, that you of all people should have sunk so low? You, who told me how you valued your dignity. “One tries by one’s life and actions to bring a little sense into an inane universe”… is this what you meant… this… this rag-bag of lascivious impotence? Have they persuaded you to wallow so completely in self-pity? Have they persuaded you to forget why you left Dolores? I wanted to ask you why, a dozen times, but I waited until you were ready. Now it seems I’ve missed my chance. You are ruined and I am settled. You’re more than ruined… you’re being embalmed, here. With a brothel for a pyramid. With…

Madame Jocasta said: -Shut up.

Flapping Eagle, the pent-up frustrations and guilt released, stammered to a halt and stood foolishly in the musky room as Virgil giggled, Gilles Priape looked unconcerned, Kamala Sutra kissed Virgil’s feet and Madame Jocasta blazed with fury, not realizing how much that fury had done to widen the rift between the two travellers.

– You, she said with stinging scorn, are a completely selfish man. You could see that Mr Jones was a good, giving person, so you extracted service from him like a tooth. Never mind the pain it brought him; never mind what he left behind; never mind what he returned to. You still want help, advice, guidance. Because you want these things, you resent the fact that he has at last found comfort. What does he owe you, Mr Eagle? It is you who owe him everything. There is no honour in a man who returns treachery for love. Virgil has come to his place of sanctuary; let him be.

– He owes me an explanation, said Flapping Eagle dully. An explanation of his motives in bringing me here.

– But my dear, exclaimed Virgil Jones, it was you who brought me here.

– But why? cried Flapping Eagle, helplessly. Why?

– Mr Eagle is leaving, Gilles, said Madame Jocasta. Will you show him the way?

Gilles Priape, showing an unprecedented burst of speed, grasped Flapping Eagle’s right arm and twisted it behind his back.

– No, said Virgil Jones in his old, sober voice. I’ll tell him.

– Nicholas Deggle was expelled from Calf Island by myself and Grimus, said Virgil Jones, because he believed that the power in Grimus’ possession should be destroyed. At the time I agreed with Grimus that the new knowledge was precious, that the forces of reaction that Deggle represented should be fought. Now, I don’t. The effect grows in strength… I’m not sure Grimus can control it any more. I wanted the source of the effect destroyed.

– So you were using me, said Flapping Eagle. So much for Madame’s righteousness.

– If you like, I was using you, said Virgil Jones. I no longer have the ability to approach Grimus. You have, since you conquered the inner dimensions so well. I also believed you had the will, the drive, because of your urge to find your sister.

– She is with him? asked Flapping Eagle.

– Of course she is, said Virgil tiredly. Where else could she be?

– I’ve seen her, said Flapping Eagle, here. In K.

– So, said Virgil Jones, and his eyes gleamed for a moment, then faded once more. So now you know what poor Dolores meant by a Spectre of the Stone Rose.

– What is the stone rose? asked Flapping Eagle. And where is Grimus to be found? Higher up the mountain, presumably?

– It doesn’t matter now, said Virgil Jones. You have made your decision and I mine. So the road ends here. For both of us. Goodbye, Mr Eagle.

Flapping Eagle had experienced so many emotions since entering this room that he had been forced to take refuge in anger.

– Tin glad, he said brusquely, that I haven’t ended exactly here, surrounded by whores and madness.

– Haven’t you? asked Virgil Jones.

– No, shouted Flapping Eagle. I damn well haven’t. I may not be sure of much but I am sure of that. I’ve done better than you.

– I disapprove of certainties, said Virgil Jones. They limit one’s range of vision. Doubt is one aspect of width.

Flapping Eagle left the room without the assistance of Gilles Priape, who was, to him, a grotesque nightmare of his own past… and in doing so, performed his most K-like act so far. He resolved to close his mind to the past, to close it to any guilt or humiliation, to close it to any pangs of truth he may have experienced under Madame Jocasta’s fierce, despising stare. Virgil was right: the decision was made.

He also decided that he disliked Virgil Jones.

All of which helped him to render his choice supportable.

He passed two people on his way out. The first was a beautiful, dark-haired and naked woman-Media hated wearing clothes within the walls of the House. She stopped dead, staring as he passed, immobilized. He went down the stairs without really having seen her; his eyes were looking far away. She went upstairs, into the room where Jocasta and Kamala were looking serious, though Virgil was laughing quite a lot. Gilles Priape had left, seeking a place to lounge in private.

– Mr Jones, she said, was that your friend?

– No, said Madame Jocasta sharply.

– Yes, said Virgil Jones. He was.

– You must tell me all about him, said Media.

Madame Jocasta felt impotence replacing her fury. It seemed Flapping Eagle was now to come between her and her favourite. Life could be very unfair sometimes.

The second person he met was Flann O’Toole, on his way from a session with Boom-Boom de Sade to the Elbaroom. They met at the door.

– Oho, boomed O’Toole. So there you are. I hear ’tis a great success you’ve had with the Cherkassovs and the Gribbs. Shouldn’t you be drinking to celebrate your arrival amongst us? Sort of a welcome to the fold, eh?

– Lead me to it, said Flapping Eagle.

They left together; and it was only when they arrived at the Elbaroom that Flapping Eagle remembered the message he should have given Virgil Jones-the message from Liv.

XLIII On Obsession

– HOW MANY GENIUSES have you ever heard of who were in no way obsessive? declaimed Ignatius Gribb. Obsession is the path to self-realization. The only path, Mr Eagle, the only path.

– Virgil Jones says it reflects a fear of the workings of the mind, said Flapping Eagle. He was sufficiently drunk not to care what he said, and the Gribbs sufficiently proper to pretend he wasn’t drunk at all; though Elfrida sat in distressed silence at the lunch-table.

– Virgil Jones is a human wreck, said Ignatius Gribb. A living testimony of the idiocy of what he is pleased to call his ideas. I am glad you have dissociated yourself from him, Mr Eagle, very glad indeed. You must now detach yourself from his ramblings, too.

– Virgil Jones says that doubts are preferable to certainties, mumbled Flapping Eagle.

Ignatius Gribb drew a deep breath. -Hamlet’s disease, he said. Doubt, I mean. It got him killed. The old story of Doubting Thomas is another case in point. Where there are certainties it is laughable to doubt. Don’t you agree?

– Er… said Flapping Eagle, the mists of alcohol settling upon him, but Ignatius Gribb was not to be denied.

– The crucial distinction to draw, he said, is between obsession and possession. The possessed man is out of control of himself; it is a form of insanity. Possession leads to tyrannies and vile crimes. Obsession leads to the reverse. It composes symphonies and creates paintings. It writes novels and moves mountains. It is the supreme gift of the human race. To deny it is to deny our humanity. What purpose is there in immortality if it is not to be used to explore in depth one’s deepest preoccupations? What purpose is there in Calf Island?

– Virgil Jones says, said Flapping Eagle, that the boot is on the other foot. He says the island creates the need… he says the Grimus Effect can only be survived by obsessed minds.

– And that, said Ignatius Gribb, is the myth your prime interest is intended to explode.

Elfrida Gribb spoke for the first time.

– Flapping Eagle, she said. You don’t mind if I call you that, since we are all friends now?… I think you are too easily influenced by others. This Mr Jones should not prey so on your mind. Forget him and his lunacies… you do not need him now.

Again, the note of desperation in her voice.

– Forget him, said Flapping Eagle, and passed out into the soup.

XLIV Ostriches & Intrusion

– ELFRIDA, SAID FLAPPING EAGLE, did you know my sister Bird-Dog?

Elfrida’s eyes widened; eventually she stammered:

– I… I know the name… your sister? Flapping Eagle nodded, and saw a steely composure return to Elfrida as she said:

– I’m afraid I have bad news for you. Bird-Dog is dead.

Flapping Eagle said in a quiet voice: -How do you know?

– Ignatius, she said. Ignatius said… she disappeared… she must be dead. I’m sorry.

She fled from his worried stare, dropping her needlework.

– Come over this afternoon and play croquet, said Irina Cherkassova.

– I don’t know the game, replied Flapping Eagle.

– Then it will be instructive, she smiled. When you play a game you don’t understand, it teaches you a great deal about yourself. And your limitations.

– I’m sure Flapping Eagle knows his limitations. (Elfrida, sharply.)

Irina cocked an eyebrow. -It was only a joke, she said gaily.

– I’d love to play, said Flapping Eagle.

Elfrida said nothing.

Elfrida and Irina formed a large proportion of Flapping Eagle’s life during the next few days. Gribb’s studies and Cherkassov’s indolence had always thrown the two women upon each other’s resources; they seemed glad of his company, both of them rejuvenated by his presence. In a way, they were as much a sanctuary for him, a sanctuary from his thoughts and fears, as the House of the Rising Son was for Virgil. While in their company, he found it both possible and pleasant to play the ostrich.

The attractions of the flesh were, naturally, prominent in his thoughts. Flapping Eagle knew he was not unattractive. He also knew he was some distance from being irresistible. If he was in the enviable position of heading a triangle whose two other corners were occupied by these women, there must be other reasons. He guessed his novelty value had much to do with it. He was the Stranger, the unknown, a new life to explore.

In Irina’s case, her explicit desire for him was relatively easy to understand. She obviously despised her husband; Flapping Eagle was probably a way out of the trap for her, a way of expressing her scorn for Cherkassov and escaping the tiresome monogamy of her marriage. A simple, classic case of a bored, unhappy wife given a new stimulus.

Flapping Eagle’s private judgement of her was that she almost enjoyed her unhappiness, that the double grief of her motherhood and the emptiness of her marriage had become emotional crutches, platforms from which to elicit sympathy and admiration. If he were to become involved with her, he would have to bear the weight of her woes. She was a siren, too: and a siren is a devourer of men. But for all that she was a beautiful, desirable woman and she had intimated already that she, too, desired him.

He found this willingness a small drawback. The unattainable held for him a greater fascination, and Elfrida, with her frequently-voiced attachment to her canting gnome, Elfrida was a great deal closer to being unattainable. He was not even sure if she was attracted to him. Nothing had been said; he based his hopes solely on a few glances, a few brushes of skin against skin, a few hesitations when speaking of her love for Ignatius, a few sharpnesses in her voice when Irina flirted openly with him. He might be imagining all of it.

If he was not, another worrying area opened up. Perhaps she did not love Gribb as much as she had convinced herself she did. If so, why was her dedication to him so intense? Was her seemingly natural, all-consuming love simply another of the necessary exaggerations of the Way of K? And if she, too, desired him, why did she? As a rebellion against Ignatius, a parallel to Irina and Cherkassov? He shook his head. Perhaps he should give himself more credit.

Of course, Flapping Eagle did not know the real reason why his arrival had unsettled the two pale beauties so; and so his musings encompassed only a part of the truth.

The mysteries of Calf Island intruded only once during these days, but, when they did, they answered the question of whether or not Elfrida was drawn to Flapping Eagle. For the rest no Bird-Dog appeared, and the whine in Flapping Eagle’s ears seemed to have faded for the time being. It was as though the island were biding its time. In retrospect it seemed to Flapping Eagle that he had been given enough rope to hang himself and several others besides.

This was how the one intrusion occurred:

Ignatius Gribb was having his afternoon nap, and thus managed once again to sleep through an important event. Elfrida and Flapping Eagle were at the swing. More precisely, they sat on the grass under the ash from which it hung. They were drowsy with food and wine; but the second blink jolted them wide awake.

It hit them like an electric shock. No living being can be removed from existence and then returned to it without feeling the effects.

It passed; Elfrida looked at Flapping Eagle, a helpless child filled with fear. He took her into his arms and they hung on to each other tightly, proving to themselves it was all right, they were there, solid, alive.

It seemed only natural that they should kiss.

Inside, in his study, Ignatius Gribb snored on.

XLV Media

EARLIER, AT THE House of the Rising Son.

Media was saying: -Madame Jocasta, might you not have been too hard on Flapping Eagle? People do get confused. Good people can do bad things under stress.

Madame Jocasta said: -You don’t even know the man.

Media tossed her head. -I’m just giving him the benefit of the doubt. Virgil’s always encouraging people to doubt.

Jocasta said: -Flapping Eagle is not welcome here. And remember, Media, your own speciality excludes him from your bed.

– Yes, Madame, she said. And added, after a pause: I like women.

– Don’t be sad, said Media.

– No, my dear, said Virgil absently.

– I’m sorry I asked about him, she said, full of contrition.

– It’s not that, he said.

The Gorf had warned him: he was irrelevant, redundant; he would take no further part in the story of Calf Mountain. The Gorf had warned him; and since Flapping Eagle had chosen the Way of K, it looked as if the Gorf was right.

– People sometimes get depressed in retirement, he said to Media.

XLVI The Pale Sorceresses

NO-ONE TO GUIDE him; no sister to forage, no sham-man to expel, no livia to command, no deggle to direct, no virgil to instruct. He had to choose-which of them? Either of them? And then to gamble on their choice. And to know what he wanted.

The white witches weaving their spell, binding him in silken cords.

Perhaps any choice, even the wrong one, was better than these agonizing, fluctuating self-examinations and inner debates.

Without being conscious of it, Flapping Eagle was falling into the natural thought-patterns of his adopted town.

The pale sorceresses circled and smiled.

– I know I’m a guest in his house, he said. But it’s yours, too. I know he’s been kind and generous to me. But it was you who brought me here. I don’t expect you to love me; I’m not sure if I love you. But I want you. I know it would be easier, more comfortable if I didn’t. But I do.

There: it was done.

– I love my husband, said Elfrida Gribb in a voice seized with panic.

Night. Irina Cherkassova lay awake in her bed, thinking about the blink. A spider crawled unseen along the hangings over her head, the rude canopy of her inelegant four-poster. Bats hung from the eaves outside her closed window.

For her, it had been the first blink, and the first time is the worst. She bit her lip and tasted the salty blood. Tonight she needed companionship, even if it was only Aleksandr. But how to go to him, proud Irina, how crawl into his bedroom after this age of partitioned nights, how to ask his warmth and protection in the face of her history of icy hauteur. No: she could not. No. Yes. Yes. She could. She got out of bed and drew her dressing-gown around her.

There was no answer when she knocked at his door. Sleeping, obviously; he probably doesn’t even remember it happened, addlebrained fool. She opened the door.

At that moment, at the House of the Rising Son, Lee Kok Fook licked Aleksandr Cherkassov on the ear-lobe.

She knew it, of course; in fact she expected that he should spend nights at the brothel. Having banned him from her bed, she would be naïve to think otherwise. Besides, a sated halfwit was preferable to a frustrated husband demanding his rights. But tonight, it hurt. Tonight, when she had been willing to come to him, to humble herself before him for the sake of his company. It is most galling for the sensitive to be spurned by the brutish. Irina Cherkassova returned to her own bed, now cold, and lay stroking the half-formed thing inside her and considered masturbation. The face of Flapping Eagle formed in her mind’s eye and she rejected self-help. It was so much nicer to be helped, and it was time she was. Her decision comforted her into sleep.

After their single kiss, Elfrida resisted Flapping Eagle with a passion so intense it gave him hope. She would explain to him at great length why it was impossible, why they could never repeat what they had done, and certainly never progress beyond that point; but she never said the kiss had been anything but a pleasure. -It’s just that there’s Ignatius, she said, and though she hastened to add that it was her love for him that made her suitor’s proposition unacceptable, Flapping Eagle gained the distinct impression that she had meant, perhaps just for the fraction of a second, perhaps just for the time it took her to say the words, that her husband was in the way.

He began to ask her to accompany him on long walks around the fields of K; and though she promised him fiercely after each walk that she would refuse his next invitation, she never did.

They stopped, on the first day, by a well. An ox circled it slowly, attached to a long beam of wood that worked a system of pulleys which hauled water out of the well in a continual circle of buckets, water for irrigation, flowing into the field. Elfrida, watching the animal, said:

– Animals are the luckiest of us.

Flapping Eagle waited. She patted the beast on its flank as it passed them and continued: -They die.

– You’re unhappy here, said Flapping Eagle, and knew it was true.

– Rubbish, said Elfrida briskly. I’m perfectly happy. And, for the first time, she thought those words seemed hollow and untrue. She turned, abruptly, and walked away from the well. -I’m going home now, she said, as if a return to familiar surroundings would be accompanied by a return to familiar feelings.

The white witches weaving their spell, binding him in silken cords, circling, circling, moths to his candle.

The croquet lawn was a long way from being flat and the balls some way from being round, but Irina played with the concentration of a professional. Flapping Eagle found concentration difficult, but avoided disgracing himself.

– You learn quickly, she said. It must be the sadist in you taking over.

– I’m not nearly as good as you, he said.

– Practice makes perfect. She used her mallet to line up a daring long shot.

– You’ll never hit it, said Flapping Eagle. The lawn’s too bumpy.

She hit it.

– It’s just a question of allowing for the slope, she said. I have an unfair advantage: I know every inch of this ground.

She despatched his ball into the bushes.

– O dear, she said in open hypocrisy, I’ve gone and lost it for you.

He went to find it, and was hunting in the thick shrubbery that ruled the bottom of the Cherkassov garden when he heard the rustling behind him. He turned to find Irina stepping out of her dress.

– It might catch on something and tear, she said. I’m better off without it.

– Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Irina? he said.

– I’m helping you look for your ball, she said. You didn’t seem to be doing very well on your own.

Despite Flapping Eagle’s earlier qualms, their love-making was a consolation to them both.

Norbert Page, in the shed at the far side of the garden, thought he heard a cry. He came out to look, but saw nothing.

On their next walk, Elfrida allowed him to hold her hand. On the next she suffered it to be kissed. And on the next, amid a loud buzzing of bees, she permitted him- and herself-a second kiss. She wouldn’t go further for a while; but eventually she let him fondle her, his hands caressing her at first through her clothes and then snaking beneath them to raise her to unbearable pitches of desire.

But there she stopped him, driving him to distraction.

– What’s the point of stopping now? he cried. You’ve been quite unfaithful enough… why not enjoy it, at least?

– As you say, she replied unhappily, I’ve been quite unfaithful enough.

She wasn’t teasing him; she was just as frustrated as he was. But she would not take the final step, would not make the final betrayal. Something stronger than Elfrida prevented that. Flapping Eagle refused to believe it was morality.

– I love him, I love him, I love him, she repeated over and over again, through clenched teeth.

– No, you don’t, said Flapping Eagle. You were comfortable with him. You never found him attractive. You don’t love him.

– I do, she cried. I know I do.

Then he watched her as the self-control returned and the tears dried in their ducts.

The swing. Elfrida on it, Irina watching. There are moments, thought Flapping Eagle, when they could be identical twins. So alike, so unalike.

Irina Cherkassova, who found it easy to despise, found herself despising Elfrida. Foolish, giggling woman. Elfrida Gribb, in the meanwhile, was gripped by the beginnings of a more powerful emotion: jealousy.

They smiled at each other through their veils.

It was the night of the great ball at her own home and Irina was refusing to cry. Downstairs, the music and the braided gallants; upstairs, she lay dry-eyed and fevered. To be ill on this of all nights, in this of all years, when she had budded and blossomed out of childhood and had stood for hours upon end before a mirror naked with a book on her head pulling in her stomach and pushing out her chest. There would have been no pats on the head this year, no understanding mock-adult chatter, no tolerant amusement when she flounced irritatedly to her room before midnight on her mother’s command. This year she would have danced till dawn and beyond and breakfasted by the willows on the river with some adoring swain… she thought of fat, pimply Masha downstairs, glowing with triumph, the ugly sister become the belle of the ball, whirling round the dance-floor with bored young men wondering where pretty Irina was, and the anger drove away the tears.

– May I come in?

Patashin. Grigor Patashin, eminence grise of her mother’s salon. A large man, bearing what must have been nearly seventy years carelessly on his broad shoulders, so square he scarcely had a neck. Patashin with the wart on the point of his nose and the voice like a crushing of gravel. Patashin whose notoriety had increased with age.

– Come.

– Irina Natalyevna, he said, hitching up his ill-fitting trousers as he entered. The evening is absolutely ruined by your absence.

– Sit down, Grigor, she said, patting the bed, deliberately eschewing the title of “Uncle” which she had given him all her life. Sit and tell me about it. Is Masha very beautiful tonight?

– Can Masha ever look beautiful, I wonder, said Patashin, eyes twinkling.

– Old grizzly, said Irina, you are a master of tact.

– And you, Irina, he said, holding her chin gently in his hand, you are too wise and composed for your own good. I look into your eyes and see knowledge. I look at your body and see anticipation. You must learn to dissimulate, to show less worldly wisdom in your eyes and more of it in your limbs.

– And die an old maid, laughed Irina. I act as I am.

– Yes, mused Patashin. His hand still rested against her chin; he moved it to her cheek. She leant against it. It was cold.

– They wouldn’t miss you, she whispered. Not for a little while.

Patashin laughed out loud. -No chance of seducing you, Irina Natalyevna, he said. If you want a man, You’ll make sure. If not… he grimaced.

– Turn the key in the door, she commanded.

Watching a great man undress is a depressing undertaking; Patashin left his genius with his wing-collar and waistcoat, draped over a chair, and stood before her, white hairs on his chest, leering. She closed her eyes, wishing fervently never to be old.

– I hope it wasn’t painful, he said later.

– No, she said without concern. One of the advantages of riding.

– I must go, he fretted and she watched him regain the stature of his clothes. As he straightened his hair and combed his beard, she said:

– Ravished by genius. What a beginning!

Grigor Patashin said as he left: -Which of us was ravished, I wonder?

That evening with Grigor Patashin did more than give Irina a hatred of old age; it led her directly into the arms of young, beautiful, stupid, young Aleksandr Cherkassov. Thus Patashin was to blame for the disasters of her children. She had married his opposite, and it was his fault. Perhaps, too, on another tack, there was something of her feelings for Masha in her present attitude towards Elfrida. Except for one thing: Elfrida Gribb was beautiful.

One more thing about Grigor Patashin. He left her with a passion for the illicit, because the illicit reminded her of that night, and therefore of being young-

Flapping Eagle was definitely illicit.

Elfrida Edge, she was then. Mrs Edge’s little girl. Dear Elfrida, such a darling one. Her father jumped off a roof, you know, and she saw him falling, past her bedroom window and she thought he was a chimneypot. So well-balanced, it hasn’t damaged her a bit. Lucky with money, of course, rolling in it, that’s what comes of ancestors with cattlefarms down under and worldfamous stamp-collections. Little penny black he called her, pale as a sheet as she is; mad, but the money’s a comfort isn’t it? So poised and self-possessed, little miss snowflake, butter wouldn’t melt, without wishing to be uncharitable, only little girls of nine should cry more. No, Mrs Edge doesn’t live here any more, she’s off somewhere in foreign parts getting done by natives, and why not, she’s still got her looks, you won’t hear a word against merry widows in this neighbourhood. Not since Elfrida grew up, such a treasure, helps the old folks, babysits the young marrieds’ howlers, reads a lot, sews a lot, cooks a lot, but young ladies of eighteen should gad more.

Elfrida Edge

Under the hedge

Plays with herself

Or she plays with Reg.

– O, Elfrida, come down the lane with me.

– No, I don’t think so, thank you.

– I’ll show you my thing if you do.

– I am entirely uninterested in your thing.

– Bet you’ve never seen one.

– Yes I have.

– No you haven’t.

– Yes I have.

– Well your ma has, that’s for sure. Black ones and brown ones and yellow ones and blue ones from those ayrabs who dye themselves.

– Leave Mama out of this.

– If it’s good enough for her it’s good enough for you.

– Reggie Smith you have the filthiest tongue in the school.

– And you’ve got the cleanest knickers.

… the big dirty man with the one-foot prick and an artist to boot lived with bohemian types on a sea-coast so probably very good at It there in bed with her and grunting so she said Why not you never know what you’re missing till you try so he said okay doll and unscrewed it there was a thread in the hole where his prick used to be and he screwed it into hers which had a thread too and she woke up feeling disappointed with the sheets all soaked in sweat…

Just because

Mother does it

Doesn’t mean I have to.

Just because

Daddy did it

Doesn’t mean I want to.

(E.E. aged 16)

When Ignatius Gribb wrote refusing her a place, she knew it was the end of the line. If she couldn’t get into that college, she couldn’t get into college, and that was that. Studious, gadless Elfrida, education ends here. His letter had said: “…if that seems harsh to you, may I attempt to alleviate the hurt by saying how charmingly presentable I found you, and adding that in the event of your failing to secure a University place I should be pleased to offer you the post of secretary in my Faculty Office. Please think about this seriously.”

They were a lost couple, the unfulfilled of the world. It was inevitable that they would marry. With her as his wife, her beauty dazzling the seedy campus, he was treated as a little less of a laughing-stock. With him as her husband, she could believe herself clever-if she could bring herself to believe in him. They knew their limitations and husbanded and wifed each other against the darts and gibes of the world. So Calf Island came as a happy revelation; here he found his self-respect and she nurtured her love. Ignatius, named for the darknighted saint, her centre and love. Love was the thing, to be in love. That was the thing.

The sands of time

Are steeped in new

Beginnings.

Elfrida and Irina, both bruised by youth, the one seeking to retain it by immersing herself in its innocent airs, the other by plunging into thoughts-and sometimes acts-of wickedness. Like and yet unlike. As like, as unlike, as Axona and K.

He had been living for the moment for several days, allowing events to take their course, following the dictates of his uncontrolled emotions, and being in their clutches had put all thoughts of Grimus and Bird-Dog and Virgil from him. Sufficient unto the day…

Living for the moment, a. curiously apt phrase. Later he would recall Virgil saying: -A life always contains a peak. A moment that makes it all worthwhile.

For Flapping Eagle, that moment arrived the seventh time he made love to Irina Cherkassova.

They were in her bed for the first time, Cherkassov was at the Rising Son again, and Irina had seized the opportunity to be comfortable. A single candle provided the only light in the room. Irina was hungry, demanding as an absolute monarch; and Flapping Eagle was in just the mood to fulfil those demands. It was a violent, frenzied thing that night, the two-backed beast; and in the midst of their battle Flapping Eagle saw his vision.

Her face in the candlelight, the face of Elfrida, elfbone pale; her writhing body the body of Elfrida; her moans, Elfrida’s moans. It was as though for that flash the two women had become one, joined by the intercession of his love. Then the vision faded, but the truth of it remained; and when their lovemaking was over Flapping Eagle lay in the yellow light amazed by the miracle.

Because it was so: in the unfettered lusts of Irina he looked for the elegance-yes, the primness-of Elfrida, the saintliness which gave her the edge in beauty over the Countess; and at the same time he longed for Irina’s freedom of the senses to infiltrate Elfrida’s self-denying morality. They were opposite and the same, Elfrida as innocent as Irina was not, Irina as free as Elfrida was trapped. In their relations to their husbands they were opposites. The unifying bond was Flapping Eagle himself. As Elfrida loved him, but would not consummate that love, so Irina lusted after him and acted upon her lust. In themselves, neither was complete; through him, they both attained completion. Their faces, bodies, even souls, superimposed and one in his sight. To make love to Irina was to remove Elfrida’s frustrations; to kiss Elfrida’s cheek was to release Irina’s lust. Elfrina, Irida, Elfrida, Irina.

And the converse, their completion of him, held true also. He lay in Irina’s bed, balanced between love of innocence and lust for experience, between denial and consummation, standing at the peak, from which the only direction was down. Elfrina Eagle. The triangle was not three points but one thing.

Then the moment was lost forever, because in his reverie he spoke a name.

– Elfrina, he said.

Irina Cherkassova stiffened beside him. Elfrida was the name she heard.

– Get out, she said.

Flapping Eagle came out of his mind and back into the candlelight to find his new-found perfection lying in ruins.

– Get out, said Irina Cherkassova.

The moment of perfection had spawned its own destruction.

It was after midnight as Flapping Eagle crept back into the Gribb residence, but Elfrida Gribb sat drawn and pale in the front room, and the glow of a single candle echoed the bedroom he had left.

– Good evening, Flapping Eagle, she said.

He shook his head wordlessly and sat down in a chair, opposite her.

– Irina? she asked, knowing the answer.

– What can you expect? he said and heard his words cheapen the memory of his vision.

– Ignatius is the soundest sleeper in the world, she said bitterly. So you might as well make love to me here and now.

– You don’t mean it, he said.

– Make love to me, she said. Damn you.

But again it happened; in his hands, filled with the wanting of him, she froze.

– I’m sorry, she said, it seems the flesh is weak.

– Or strong, said Flapping Eagle quietly.

Count Aleksandr Cherkassov, Countess Irina Cherkassova, Alexei Cherkassov and Norbert Page were having tea together in the salon. Irina fanned herself frequently, though it was not really very hot.

– Ma-ma, said Alexei happily.

– Mama’s here, Alexei, said Irina. Mama’s always here.

– Irina, said Cherkassov, you are a very strong woman.

– Yes, she said. Yes, I am. I know how to deny myself. And when.

Mr Page caught none of the undertones; he thought they were both rather marvellous.

– It’s a great gift, he said nervously, feeling he should offer some sort of conversation. A great gift. To know when to stop.

One word had thrown away the chance. He could have given Elfrida back her peace and contented himself with her soul. He could have given Irina the companionship she lacked and never worried about where her affections lay. Elfrina Eagle, they would have been, and it would have lasted into infinity. Instead of which they were three points again, no longer a triangular one. A single word, changing the course of history.

The farmhouse stood at the side of the road. It was long and low and white. Flapping Eagle felt the shock of recognition: here on his first journey into K he had vaulted this gate and peered through that window into that granite face; here he had been reminded he was pariah. He was different now; he was a part of the place of which the farmhouse was also a part, and so he was a part of the farmhouse. At least, he was today.

Elfrida Gribb was with him; this was the furthest they had walked, but neither of them had noticed the distance, walking in absorbed silence. Now Flapping Eagle told the story of the granite farmer with the face full of crevices and the basilisk eyes.

– Like a man who knew a hundred secrets and wasn’t going to reveal even one, he said. Elfrida smiled wanly. Her thoughts were elsewhere.

– Which is rather like everyone I’ve met in K, said Flapping Eagle. I wouldn’t say they keep their secrets to themselves-they simply behave as if they had never known them. There’s too much left unsaid. Too much.

Elfrida replied, without looking at him:

– Yes. I believe there is.

– Glad to have you aboard, Flapping Eagle, said Ignatius Gribb that evening. You’re doing Elfrida a power of good. I’m afraid I’m rather a recluse during the day. It must be difficult for her to fill her day, eh, darling?

Elfrida forced a smile.

Ignatius Gribb leant quasi-confidentially towards Flapping Eagle.

– Until you turned up, old chap, she wouldn’t have known what to do without me.

– Really, Ignatius… said Elfrida, but Gribb waved her down cheerily.

– Which is only proper, he went on. Because I wouldn’t know what to do without her.

– A happy marriage is a wonderful thing, said Flapping Eagle, feeling like a gargantuan bastard.

Elfrida Gribb left the room.

– One look and I knew, Irina was saying. He’s a bad influence on poor, innocent Elfrida. You’ve only got to look at him.

– Appearances are deceptive, hedged Aleksandr Cherkassov.

– I’m sure there’s something between those two, said Irina. In my opinion, you ought to have a word with Ignatius.

– Whatever for?

– Why, to warn him, of course. To warn him about his guest.

– I don’t think one…

– If you don’t, I will, she snapped.

– I tell you what, said Aleksandr Cherkassov worriedly. I’ll speak to Flapping Eagle. Straighten him out. You know.

– You stupid, stupid man, said Irina Cherkassova angrily.

Events, however, were to move faster than her anger.

For all that it is over. Flapping Eagle told the mirror, and despite the tragedies surrounding it, and whatever dark horrors may come, that was a supreme moment, a moment of clarity, a moment of light.

– No, said Elfrida Gribb, I don’t feel like a walk this morning. You go. I have one or two things to attend to here.

He left her reclining on the chaise-longue, as quiet music played.

XLVII Death

WHEN DEATH CAME to Calf Island, it came anticlimactically, without any warning, wearing soft shoes; it was even a beginning rather than an end. It came matter-of-factly, as though it had been there all the time and had merely decided to make its presence felt; but the consternation it created was entirely undiminished by its manner of arrival. Flapping Eagle returned from his walk to find a small crowd gathered outside the Gribb home. Norbert Page was there, and Quartermaster Moonshy. Irina Cherkassova stood still at the front door, as though mummified at the moment of entry. She moved mechanically to let him through. No-one spoke to answer his questions.

Count Aleksandr Cherkassov sat perspiring on the chaise-longue; he had picked up Elfrida’s petit-point and his hands toyed with it absently.

– What has happened? asked Flapping Eagle.

– We heard a scream, said the Count. One long scream.

Flapping Eagle looked around at the silent, empty room.

– WHAT HAPPENED? he shouted. Where is Elfrida?

Cherkassov nodded towards the study. -One long scream, he repeated.

Flapping Eagle lunged at the closed door and into the study. In the silence he imagined he could hear a whine in the corners of his mind.

The shutters on the window were closed, so that the only light in the room entered with Flapping Eagle through the door. There was Ignatius Gribb’s desk, littered with papers and files, quills and home-made ink. There were his books, scattered on desk-top, chair, floor, falling out of shelves and off ledges. The untidiness alone was a scandal to the eye in this house.

The bed was immediately beneath the window. A figure lay upon it, still, dead, shadowed in the shuttered gloom. Another figure stood by the bed, still, alive, also shadowed. An unlit candle stood at a table by the bedside.

The figure on the bed was the short, bent corpse of Ignatius Quasimodo Gribb, sometime professor of philosophy, bigot and sage.

The standing figure was his newly-widowed wife, Elfrida Gribb, who had been Elfrida Edge, who had thought her falling father was a chimneypot.

– I killed him, she said. It was me.

’Fr ida Gribb

’Fr ida Gribb

Killed her hubby

That’s no fib.

Flapping Eagle closed the door behind him. The room darkened; he moved to the bedside. There were old coins on Ignatius Gribb’s closed eyelids.

– His eyes were open, said Elfrida. I had to close his eyes.

He held her shoulders in his hands. -Look at me, he said. She continued to hang her head. -Elfrida! he said sharply and it lifted slowly.

– One less secret, she said. I love you.

He was looking at Ignatius Gribb’s body. It wore, spotlessly, a silk shirt and cravat, a smoking-jacket, a rather incongruous pair of very aged cord trousers and carpet slippers. Its mouth was puckered and slightly open, like a fish.

– Death with dishonour, said Elfrida. He didn’t just lose his life.

– There are no wounds on the body, said Flapping Eagle. No marks.

– Not his body, she said dully. I killed him in the head. I had to close his eyes. After opening them.

She broke down; the glacial control slipped; the tears flowed. She clutched at Flapping Eagle. -I love you, she said. I love you, I love you, I love you.

– You told him, didn’t you? said Flapping Eagle, understanding.

– Yes, she said, in a tiny whisper. I killed him.

It was not hard to reconstruct what had happened. Elfrida, goaded by jealousy, had taken the plunge she had fought so unwillingly but so effectively for so long. But, being Elfrida, the plunge had to be as final, as irrevocable as her previous dedication to Ignatius. So she had refused to accompany Flapping Eagle on his walk and while he was safely out of the way had bearded her husband in his lair and told him she no longer loved him. In Virgil’s terms, she had transferred obsessions from Ignatius to Flapping Eagle. Who thought: guess whose fault that makes it.

It had transfixed Ignatius like a thunderbolt. Even away from Calf Island it might well have broken him. These two had survived by their mutual interdependence, shielding each other from the wounds and calumnies of the world, two vulnerable people lying back to back in a marriage bed, for safety. No doubt her love had been the entire foundation of his arrogant air of self-certainty. The love of a beautiful woman can easily provide such a support for a stunted man. He had drawn from her the strength and courage which enabled him to form and hold, not just his theories and opinions, but his entire personality. She was his peace of mind, his alienable crutch, his perfect match, and she had withdrawn. Men had done away with themselves for less.

But this was Calf Mountain; and in the field of the Grimus Effect, suicide had been unnecessary. Flapping Eagle could almost see the gutted brain within the coined head. Because Elfrida’s words had done more than upset Ignatius. They had broken through the unconscious, ingrained defence mechanism, the mental barrier he had built for almost every member of the community of K. Elfrida’s withdrawal had removed the cornerstone of the persona he had built; and in that instant, when everything which had seemed sure was suddenly flung into a state of flux, the fever of the Inner Dimensions had swarmed over him.

What must he have felt like, Flapping Eagle asked himself, at that second, as he felt that inner multiplicity seizing him, soft and unprepared and unable to control it as he was behind those broken defences? What must it have been like to be possessed and annihilated by the very force whose denial he had made his primary contribution to the town? Death with dishonour indeed.

And what of K itself, K which rested on Gribb’s theories, on his technique of Prime Interest and on his preoccupation with the here-and-now of life? Ignatius’ death had shown that there was a Something, an invisible force at work upon them, and it had destroyed its arch-opponent with terrifying swiftness. Could their minds remain shut in the face of his death? Flapping Eagle was certain that some at least would not be able to remain so.

Guilt descended upon him like a soft dark avalanche, breaking the pale magical spell Irina and Elfrida had woven. He flagellated himself more cruelly than O’Toole could ever have managed. He, who had fallen so willingly into the way of K, subscribing to the illusion of permanence, betraying his own experience for the sake of a home and a triangular love. He, who had despised the man who had shown him the true nature of the island and helped him to survive it. Was social acceptability and the companionship of two beautiful women worth the damage he had wrought? Patently not; and even that was lost. Flung out by Irina, faced with a changed Elfrida, he was probably also in danger of his life. He shrugged. He could not find it in him to value his life very highly, not now that his ability to bring disaster upon those around him had reached this new peak. Selfish, Jocasta had said. That was the understatement of all time.

– I’ll look after you, Elfrida was saying. I promise. I’ll look after you for ever. If you will look after me.

– Elfrida… he said helplessly, but his voice trailed off into silence; he could think of nothing to say.

– I love you, you see, she said. You don’t need anyone else. You don’t, do you?

Light came in to the room. Count Aleksandr Cherkassov stood in the doorway. There was a curl of distaste on his lips, overlaying the shock in his eyes.

– It’s not murder, said Flapping Eagle. She didn’t murder him. There was no violence.

– Was there not, said Cherkassov and left the house.

Elfrida Gribb clung to Flapping Eagle as if her life depended on it. Which, in a sense, it did.

He held her there, and they stood for a long time by the corpse of the Way of K.

XLVIII Funerals

FOUR GRAVES, VOID sentinels at the forest’s edge, fresh-made holes in Valhalla, stood at the spot where Flapping Eagle and Virgil Jones had looked across the plain an emotional age ago. It was a still morning, the light mists swirling, the mountain remaining impenetrable behind discreet clouds. Virgil, wet with fatigue, his feet complaining, his tongue licking feverishly at his lips, his eyes peering, watched the approaching procession. His limbs gathered their forces; soon they would have to undo their work. Piles of earth, dark and slightly moist, stood in attendance by the tombs.

Femme fatale. If the cap fits, wear it. One by one they fall around me; dead men around me, unborn life within. Poor, stupid count, lanced in his feeble head. I watched him die, leaving the house of death, so silent, so distant, passing without a word, into the garden, I behind, he ahead, looking ahead. A giggle from Alexei, idiot offspring laughing at bemused parent, a chess piece falling to the ground, and back, back to the house, to sit and stare. Poor hidebound anachronism that he was, finding comfort in the arms of whores, finding none in mine, and now, when I wished to, I could give him none. Staring and smoking, as if death would waft away on the fumes. There, in the past, pinching little Sophie Lermontov’s little rump, gallant he was at balls and in war, but the past was receding now, present horror ousting past pleasure, as he sat and stared and smoked. The triviality of it, to die for the death of a Gribb, his frail mind stabbed by the death of a Gribb. I watched him die, his eyes turned to some other world, his hands and lips as they moved in an unseen, unheard life, I watched it all: as he came to his feet, stiffly to his feet, erect and handsome, my idiot adonis, crumpling then before his ghostly executioners, no, no, no blindfold please, a cheroot before you shoot. The ghostly executioners-I did not see or hear them, the ghosts of his assassins, but it was them. I was not surprised to find him dead.

But Page, little worshipping Norbert, last of the serfs, who wanted only to serve us, so good with Alexei he was; small man that he was, good innocent Page, he would not die for a Gribb, yet for a Cherkassov to die so broke him. While the Cherkassov stood firm in the Way of K, all the Gribbs on earth could perish without harming him. But if the trunk of the tree should fall, there is little hope for the branches. He died when he knew, when he knew the Cherkassov had fallen, invaded by Grimus, there, I have said it, died as Alexei laughed and played.

Femme fatale. It is my lot. I accept it. The grief, accepted. The pain, accepted. Let them fall around me. I shall not fall, I shall bear the burden. But not the blame. Let blame fall where it belongs, upon the living occupants of the house of death, upon her, mealy-mouthed whited sepulchre, and him, the murderous eagle. The Countess Irina shoulders no blame.

Anthony St Clair Peyrefitte Hunter was in the Elba-room when the news of Gribb’s death arrived. His first reaction had been a savage delight. -Now we’ll see, he said. Now perhaps we can stop lying.

One-Track Peckenpaw gave him an uninterested glance. So Gribb was dead. So what? Peckenpaw could do without Gribb. A man did what a man had to do to stay alive. A man believed what a man had to believe to survive. One Gribb wasn’t going to change that.

The uninterested glance turned to alarm as the Two-Time Kid clutched his head suddenly and fell against the bar. His expression was one of total disbelief.

Self-deception operates at different levels, and Hunter was certainly unaware of the extent to which he had come to depend on his posture. He had become the Two-Time Kid, and an elegant, cynical disenchantment with K was a part of that role. Beneath it, he was just as afraid, just as unwilling to admit the reality of Grimus and his Effect, as Gribb or Aleksandr Cherkassov. The Dimensions took him unawares and gripped him with their fever only because his self-deception ran even deeper than the rest; he had convinced himself that it did not exist, that his mind was not closed to the implications of Grimus. The storm the Inner Dimensions unleashed upon him, scalding his nerve-centres, burning out the synapses of a brain which could not accommodate the new realities invading it, proved otherwise.

Peckenpaw saw him fall forwards, saw his head strike the floor; and no amount of shouting and shaking did any good. Hunter’s end was the quickest of all.

One-Track Peckenpaw was beside himself, in the grip of some great emotion. He would not let Hunter be dead. He would not.

– Come on, little bastard, he cajoled. Come on, you little two-timer, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. He shook the body like a limp rag.

– It’s no use, said Flann O’Toole, with unnatural gentleness. Leave him, One-Track, it’s no use. He put a hand on the giant bear’s shoulder.

Peckenpaw rose, taking Hunter’s body into his arms.

– Someone’s to blame, he said to the room at large. Someone’s paying for this, soon.

He carried the body to the door, then spoke to the room again.

– I’m taking him home now. The Two-Time Kid. He died with his boots on.

There were no coffins. Ignatius Gribb, Norbert Page and the Two-Time Kid had been wrapped in rough woollen blankets from the stores. Count Aleksandr Cherkassov had been swaddled in a sheet embroidered with his coat-of-arms. Each body was carried in a simple hammock, strung between two poles, a pall-bearer at each corner. Most of K followed the Chief Mourners in a tearful crocodile. The chief mourners were Elfrida, accompanied by Flapping Eagle, Irina Cherkassova and One-Track Peckenpaw.

Count Aleksandr Cherkassov had become titular head of K by default. Even Flann Napoleon O’Toole preferred to limit his empire to the alcoholic environment of the Elbaroom. But titular head he was, and now that he was dead, his duties passed naturally and without question to his son.

Leading the procession, smiling with the happiness of a child learning a new game, was Count Alexei Aleksandrovich Cherkassov.

The funeral service was short and simple, eschewing any pretence at religiosity. The chief mourners said a few words, earth was scattered, and that was that. Alexei Cherkassov, a fool at the head of the blind, stood smiling silently in the light mist, an epitaph incarnate.

– My husband, said Elfrida Gribb, was a man more sinned against than sinning. He was the salt of the earth, the flower of his generation, the rock on which we stood. He was a good man and a loving husband.

It was appropriate that the author of the All-Purpose Quotable Philosophy should be commemorated by a string of clichés. Elfrida moved away from the head of the grave to grasp Flapping Eagle’s arms. Irina Cherkassova glared.

One-Track Peckenpaw loomed hugely over the grave of Two-Time Hunter, a tragic goliath mourning the loss of his david. He could not have formed words to express what he felt, but he had become aware that amid the gibes and insults the two of them had habitually hurled at each other had been an important bond, the mutual need of opposites.

He said: -The Two-Time Kid was one of the best.

Irina Cherkassova had two speeches to make. She stood in the stillness with her chin tilted up behind her veil, the very archetype of bereaved pride. She spoke briefly of the loyalty and selflessness of Norbert Page, and Alexei Cherkassov clapped his hands as she spoke his name. Then, moving to her husband’s grave, she said:

– It would be a slur upon my husband’s memory if his death were to break down what we have built. The Way of K is a good Way. Nothing will change.

Flapping Eagle, listening to the defiant sentences, heard in them an echo of Dolores O’Toole; but he also heard a clue, a reason for the continued survival of most of K, which he had feared would fall under the spell of the Dimensions to the last man. Those who had survived the shock were those (like Irina) for whom the Way of K had become, not just a means of defence, but an end in itself, a way of life which preserved them in the cocoon of the past and the minutiae of the present. That was what they wanted. Thus Irina had simply assimilated her losses into her tragic self-image, and Peckenpaw had made Hunter a part of his own, often-told legends. For these people, the Grimus Effect was resistible. They had built an alternative to it, from necessity, and the alternative had become an independent thing. The Effect could not invade them: they had sunk too deeply into themselves.

– Fill the graves, gravedigger, said Flann O’Toole, and the ceremony was over.

Three things happened before the gathering dispersed which showed that despite Irina’s funeral speech, K would not remain entirely unaltered. The first of these occurred when Elfrida went up to Irina and said:

– I’m so sorry.

Irina looked at her with the practised contempt of generations and said:

– I do not speak to whores.

Elfrida, already pale, turned white as the Countess walked away.

The second event, offsetting this sharp estrangement of old friends, was a reconciliation. P. S. Moonshy approached Irina haltingly, avoiding her eyes, playing with a coat-button.

– Countess, he said, if Count Alexei should lack a games companion, I… I would be willing to… when time permits…

– Thank you, Mr Moonshy, said Irina.

K was closing ranks instinctively, reaffirming its unity against its resurgent enemy.

The third thing that happened was this:

One-Track Peckenpaw and Flann O’Toole had been murmuring together. They now approached the departing Flapping Eagle and Elfrida Gribb.

Peckenpaw said: -I got something to say to you.

Flapping Eagle and Elfrida stopped.

– Seems to us, said Peckenpaw, this all began when you hit town. Folks are saying the two of you been screwing each other, too. We don’t care for that kind of thing in this town.

– What are you saying, Mr Peckenpaw? said Elfrida coolly. Please be explicit.

– What I’m saying, Mrs Gribb, said Peckenpaw, accentuating the title with heavy scorn, is it’s maybe time certain people got the hell out.

– You do understand, said Flann O’Toole.

– I love you, said Elfrida Gribb, because I’ve stopped being a child. I don’t need protection now. I need you. You made me see what I was clinging to in Ignatius: more a father than a lover. Whereas you, my love, will be a lover. I know it. We shall look after each other and make love. You’ve forced me to grow up and I’m glad. I don’t want to be good any more.

– Glad? said Flapping Eagle. Glad, when it killed the man who loved you?

– You love me, said Elfrida, attacking his clothes. Show me.

– It’s impossible, said Flapping Eagle. We’ve just buried him.

– I love you, now, said Elfrida. Now. This minute. This second.

– Not now, said Flapping Eagle.

She broke away from his embrace; and her love increased the burden of his guilt.

XLIX Retreat

FLAPPING EAGLE WENT into K the next day, to collect food and a few other things from Moonshy’s stores. From the moment he entered the town, he knew that Peckenpaw had not been making empty threats. People stopped and stared as he passed, as though aghast at his temerity. The flavour of those old films seen in the fleapit at Phoenix filled the streets; K had become Peckenpaw-land, a small town of the Old West; and Flapping Eagle was, after all, a Red Indian. He half-expected a sheriff to emerge through swing-doors and gun him down then and there.

P. S. Moonshy was busy behind a counter, weighing things on scales. There was only one other customer in the room, but Moonshy ignored Flapping Eagle completely. When the woman left, Flapping Eagle said: -It’s my turn, I think.

– Think again, said P. S. Moonshy.

– Look, just give me the food and I’ll go, said Flapping Eagle, offering his list.

– No food, said P. S. Moonshy.

One-Track Peckenpaw was in the street when Flapping Eagle emerged empty-handed. -Wal, he said, if it ain’t the Indian. He placed himself between Flapping Eagle and his donkey.

Flapping Eagle resolved on a policy of polite firmness. -If You’ll excuse me, he said, I’d like to get back to Mrs Gribb and tell her we’re to be starved out of town.

– Sure, said Peckenpaw. Wouldn’t dream of standing in your way. He didn’t move. Flapping Eagle tried to get round him to the waiting donkey; but Peckenpaw shot out one huge, clawing hand and grabbed Flapping Eagle by the neck. It was useless to struggle, so Flapping Eagle went limp. Peckenpaw glared at him.

– Now don’t get me wrong, he said. I ain’t prejudiced. But if you’re still around tomorrow, I’ll be coming looking.

With his free hand, he delivered a devastating rabbit-punch. Flapping Eagle was sick on the cobbles. Peckenpaw threw him down into the mess and walked away.

Flapping Eagle crawled on to the donkey and made his way home.

– We’ve got to leave here, he said to Elfrida.

– Why? she asked. It’s my house now. Our house.

– Look, they won’t feed us if we stay and they’ll probably try and force us out anyway. You can’t resist a whole town.

– If you go, my love, she said, I shall of course accompany you. Her face was reposed and calm, her manner collected if Subservient.

– We’ll go, then, he said.

– Where will you take me? she asked.

Where, indeed. She had the strength of obsession to survive the journey down the mountain again-if she could survive the effect in K, she could certainly do so where it was less strong. But Elfrida Gribb had not been made for rough journeys; and Dolores O’Toole would scarcely welcome the “Spectre of Grimus” back into her home. Besides, it smacked of deserting the scene of the crime. His crime. They could not go back. There was no going back for him. And if he was to go on, up the mountain, into the unknown clouds, what would he do there? Even worse, what would she do there? He shook his head. He needed guidance.

Guidance. Virgil Jones sweating at the graveside. Flapping Eagle had thought Virgil had winked at him, once, during the ceremony. Was it possible he bore no grudge? Virgil, whom he had slighted so callously?

– We’ll have to go to Madame Jocasta’s, he said, thinking aloud. I can’t think of anywhere else.

– I scarcely think she will welcome me, said Elfrida.

– We’ll both have to, um, eat a quantity of crow, said Flapping Eagle. I didn’t go down too well with her either.

– She probably didn’t like your face, said Elfrida enigmatically.

– There’s nothing for it, said Flapping Eagle. I must talk to Virgil again. And I don’t think they’ll come for us there, somehow.

– The brothel, murmured Elfrida. Why not, why not.

He had on his old, worn, travelling clothes. Ignatius Gribb, tidy as Elfrida until his last rage, had even preserved his headscarf and feather. Smiling wryly, he put those on as well. If he was to be in a bad Western, he might as well wear the full uniform.

He had to see Irina Cherkassova, since he had to return the late Count’s clothes. She took them from him in the doorway, making no move to invite him in.

– Don’t think I didn’t see through you, she said. Even in his clothes.

– What do you mean? asked Flapping Eagle. You made me your friend.

– I told the Count, she said. I saw it in your face. The evil.

She shut the door, and he never saw her again.

Exactly on the seventh knock, the door was opened. Madame Jocasta looked at the pair of them in amazement. Elfrida returned her gaze calmly, twirling her parasol. She was dressed entirely in white lace.

– Is there something you want? asked Jocasta, discouragingly.

– Yes, said Flapping Eagle. This was no time to stand upon one’s pride. We seek sanctuary.

Jocasta smiled without humour. -No, she said and began to close the door.

– What do you want me to say? cried Flapping Eagle. That I’ve seen the error of my ways? I have. That I was an inhumanly selfish bastard? I was. That I treated Virgil badly, and with every reason for treating him well? It’s true. I accept all of it. Will you not accept a genuine admission of guilt? How do you think it feels to be even indirectly responsible for four deaths?

– Murderous, I expect, said Jocasta, unrelenting.

– If you don’t let us in, said Flapping Eagle, You’ll be responsible for two more. They won’t let us have any food.

– O hello, said a voice. Media was looking over Jocasta’s shoulder in open pleasure.

– Media, go and fetch Virgil, said Jocasta. It’s up to him.

Virgil Jones came downstairs looking delighted.

– My dear Flapping Eagle, he said. My dear Mrs Gribb. How very nice.

– Virgil, said Flapping Eagle. You may think I’m only saying this because I’m in trouble, because I made a choice that didn’t work out, but it’s not so. I was very wrong. My behaviour towards you was morally indefensible. I can only say I know it, and I am sorry.

Virgil listened to this speech solemnly, but his eyes were not serious.

– Rubbish, he cried gaily when Flapping Eagle had finished. We all have to make our mistakes. Welcome to the fold.

– You want me to let him in? asked Jocasta, dubiously.

– Of course, said Virgil. He’s a friend of mine.

– What about her? asked Jocasta. Saint Elfrida, wearing white on the day after her husband’s funeral. I haven’t heard any note of contrition from her.

Elfrida said: -I am no better than you, and no worse.

– Please, Virgil, said Flapping Eagle. She’s not herself.

– That’s an improvement, said Madame Jocasta, giving in. Well, come in then, you two wretches, don’t just stand there.

Media’s smile of welcome more than compensated for Jocasta’s reluctant tone.

The room faced the rising mountain, whose occluded peak glowered through its one window. It was not a beautiful room; it would probably have seemed entirely nondescript but for the carvings.

The carvings were hideous.

It was not that they were grotesque, for the grotesque, expertly depicted, becomes beautiful. It was not that their subjects were hideous; even ugly heads can be moving, given the right treatment. The carvings were simply and without any question extremely ugly, seemingly lacking any purpose or aesthetic drive except that of making the world seem vile and hateful. Even that was pitching it too high. The carver had possessed less skill than even Flapping Eagle, who was no artist.

The carvings stared down from the walls and made the room a darker place.

– Liv’s room, said Virgil Jones. Hasn’t been used since, you know, she left with, er, me. Liv’s carvings, I hope you don’t mind them, I brought them back when, er, I stayed here some time ago. Before I left K, you know. But never mind that. It’s a bed.

One bed. Elfrida Gribb lay down on it at once. A moment later she was sound asleep. No doubt her nerves, on which she had been living ever since Ignatius’ death, had finally rebelled and demanded a period of regeneration. Flapping Eagle felt frankly relieved.

Virgil left him alone, saying: -Gather your strength, that’s the thing. He moved over to the window, averting his eyes from the misshapen objects on the walls, and looked out at the mountain. A fly settled on his cheek; he brushed it away. It settled on his other cheek; he brushed it away again. The third time, he slapped at it, and it was crushed against his face. He wiped the corpse away.

Despite the ugliness of the carvings, despite the presence of Elfrida Gribb, despite the absence of any sense of direction, Flapping Eagle felt safe here. The brothel air was heavy with the scent of solace. But sanctuary was not for him, or at any rate not for long. If he had failed to achieve stasis-failed, that is, to ingrain himself into the Way of K-he would have to revert once more to kinesis. But that involved knowing what to do, not only with himself, but with Elfrida.

Flapping Eagle stared at the mountain. -You’re winning, he said aloud. He turned to the bed and flung himself down beside the sleeping Elfrida, to gaze emptily at the ceiling. Soon he, too, was asleep, tired and asleep.

Media came into the room to watch him dream. Looking at his face, the face that had changed her life, the firm-jawed face with the shadow of a beard and the closed, long-lashed eyes, she began to think heresy. Perhaps it had something to do with being in Liv’s room; Liv who had left the brothel and its safety for the sake of a man; (hard to imagine now that that man had been Virgil Jones) Liv who had placed herself and her desires above her duties, and seized her moment; but Media, watching the dreaming face, was forming this thought in her mind:

Where he goes, I go.

It was the face that did it.

She spoke softly to the sleeping Eagle:

– What you need is a woman who can cope with you, she said.

Madame Jocasta was pacing the corridors of her realm again; but she was not enjoying it, not listening for the sounds behind the doors, for, at Virgil’s request, she had closed the House’s doors. Silence everywhere. In her own room, a moody, pensive Virgil; in her predecessor’s room, the hidden forms of two people who, she was afraid, would change her small world, too much, far too much. Already Virgil was lost within himself; already Media was afflicted with Flapping Eagle, despite her allotted specialty.

She stood silently outside the door of Liv’s room, which was fractionally ajar, and heard Media’s voice speak its one sentence. She retreated quietly, her worries redoubled.

But she had given them sanctuary, she thought; she would not, could not break that pledge.

At the head of the mob were Flann O’Toole and One-Track Peckenpaw. There were perhaps a dozen more, all regular customers of the Elbaroom. They carried sticks, stones and a length of rope.

– The House is closed, said Jocasta from the door.

– ’Tis not your women we’re afther, said O’Toole in a thick voice, flowing with the fumes of potato-whisky. ’Tis that bastard Eagle.

– We got a harmless little lynching in mind, said Peckenpaw.

– I see, said Jocasta. You want a scapegoat.

– Jesus forbid, grinned Flann O’Toole. But the slightest consideration shows how all our troubles began with his coming. ’Tis entirely logical to speed his going, is it not, now?

– Flann O’Toole, said Madame Jocasta. You know what place this is. When anyone enters the House they leave the world behind. It is a place to escape to; no evil comes here. Flapping Eagle has sanctuary. If you take him by force, the House loses its meaning for you all. You will be hanging a part of your own town. Is that what you want?

The crowd shuffled morosely. Flann O’Toole stopped grinning.

– Now listen, Jocasta, he lurched. What in God’s name are you protecting him for? Now you know we wouldn’t do a thing like that, violating the sanctity o’ the House and all, but that Eagle, he’s no friend to you, or your Mr Jones.

– Go away, O’Toole, said Jocasta.

– Okay, said Peckenpaw. Okay, Jocasta. You win. But we’ll keep watch right here on your doorstep. And if he shows his pretty face outside, Virgil Jones’Ü have some more digging to do.

Bestowing a contemptuous look on him, Jocasta closed the door. The look made no impression on One-Track Peckenpaw.

L Kill or Cure

FLAPPING EAGLE SAT at Virgil Jones’ feet, or, more precisely, sat beside him on the low bed in Jocasta’s room as Virgil spoke. There was a satisfaction on Virgil’s face and an excitement in his voice, but of a faintly morbid kind, the satisfaction and excitement of a man who senses events are running his way once more, but is highly uncertain of his power to direct them. A spider wove its webs on the ceiling.

– More cases of fever, said Virgil Jones. Certainly there will be more. I’m afraid K is vulnerable now. The Achilles heel exposed. An object lesson in the fragility of the best defences. And make no mistake, the Way of K was a very expert defence. They practised their eyes-to-the-ground life for so long, it became second nature. Hence the confusing illusion of normality you succumbed to, and that entrancing, ethereal quality. They lived here, but they lived for their preoccupations, and thus seemed detached, intoxicating, complete. The expertise grew with the power of the Effect, keeping pace, and they might well have resisted it forever. Gribb’s death changed all that. Now there are many who find it an effort to keep their minds off Grimus. And they need to, whereas before the deaths they could even joke about him. Hence the determination of the lynch-mob. Hence the attitude of Mrs Gribb. I’m not sure she is so much in love with you. She needs to love, that’s more important. It will get worse; for now, the instant they relax, they will be open to the Dimensions. Some of them will die. Which will make the rest even more manic. A gloomy prospect, I’m sure You’ll agree.

– Jocasta and her girls don’t seem to suffer, said Flapping Eagle.

– Ah, said Virgil. There you have the extraordinary nature of this House in a nutshell. A refuge, you see, from the Effect as well as the mob. Because, as you hazarded earlier, it has become, for them, an end in itself. The only thing that matters to them. Though I fear you may be unsettling dear Media, you know. You do have almost as powerful an effect on women as, as Grimus, ha ha.

– I’m sorry, said Flapping Eagle stupidly.

– The simple fact, said Virgil Jones, is that Grimus is in possession of a stupendous piece of knowledge: that we live in one of an infinity of Dimensions. To accept the nature of the Dimensions involves changing, entirely, our ideas of what we are and what our world is like. Thus rewriting the book of morality and priorities from the beginning. What you must ask yourself is this: is there such a thing as too much knowledge? If a marvellous discovery is made whose effects one cannot control, should one attempt to destroy one’s find? Or do the interests of science override even those of society, and, indeed, survival? Is it better to have known, and die, than not to have known at all? A fair number of questions, I’m afraid.

– And you’ve decided, said Flapping Eagle, that science must yield.

– At this time, in this place, this piece of knowledge is an untenably dangerous thing, said Virgil Jones sadly.

Virgil Jones examined his corns, wiggling his toes. Flapping Eagle sat in silence, watching the spider. Eventually, Virgil spoke again.

– They treat me like an idiot here, he said, because I went through a phase of behaving like one. Just after my… disagreement… with the Inner Dimensions. And Liv. I ran around town once with my sex hanging out. I dyed my nose blue. I farted into women’s faces with my trousers down. Poor forked creature that I was. Am. I had something to prove, then. That they didn’t matter to me. That the island didn’t matter. That nothing mattered. Trouble was, I didn’t believe any of it myself. So the gestures lacked a certain conviction. In the end I went down the mountain and discovered dignity instead. The clothing of impotence. Until you arrived.

Flapping Eagle burst out: -Virgil, what shall I do? What is there to do?

– Ah, said Virgil, licking frantically around his lips. That’s what I’ve been getting round to. You can choose between withdrawal, inaction and action. No shame in any of them.

– I don’t understand, said Flapping Eagle.

– Withdrawal involves walking out there and getting lynched. Not pleasant. Or sneaking out somehow and going back down the mountain to let events take their course. The blinks, the fever, all of it. Leave it behind. Inaction involves staying put right here and waiting to see if Jocasta throws you to the wolves. Action, however, does rather involve doing what I say.

– You chose inaction, said Flapping Eagle. You haven’t done much recently.

– Naturally, said Virgil. I can’t do anything. You can.

– It’s not that the Inner Dimensions burnt my mind out, said Virgil. Or I couldn’t have danced the Strongdance successfully. Call it a kind of paralysis. A seized-up gearbox. It worked in extreme need, in the forest. But my little flutter with the Gorf undid that. And now, because I know it would be much easier for you, the need isn’t there. I’m not sure the will is either.

– But you said you’d made up your mind?

– Decisions are easy, said Virgil Jones. They’re the easy part.

– The field of what I’ll call Dimension-Chaos in which we find ourselves, said Virgil, tutorially, and indeed all Grimus’ powers, spring from an object called the Stone Rose. As you’ve probably guessed. This is what must be destroyed.

There is, actually, a considerable risk. It is possible that this Dimension cannot survive without the Rose. What is certain is that no-one will survive here, except for spiders, flies and animals, unless the Rose is broken. So it is a risk we must take.

– Kill or cure, said Flapping Eagle.

– Precisely, said Virgil. How well put.

– Deggle, you know, said Virgil Jones, unintentionally did the only thing that could have turned me against the Rose. When he broke that piece off the Stem, I mean. One has to ascribe both blinks and probably even the Grimus Effect to malfunctions of the mutilated Rose. It was only a small piece, so it went unnoticed. But it has, ah, damaged the dimension.

– If a small piece can create so much havoc, asked Flapping Eagle, wouldn’t we inevitably be destroyed if the whole Rose were broken up?

– Not necessarily, said Virgil. Half a loaf is not always better than no bread.

The weight of his guilt and the feeling of futility within him inclined Flapping Eagle towards agreeing to perform the task. His morale had been steadily declining ever since the death of Ignatius Gribb. Now, faced with the grim alternatives Virgil had offered, it was at its nadir. But something held him back from acquiescing, a fragment, perhaps, of the relatively innocent self he had brought to Calf Island; and, thinking about that self, he found a last glimmering of hope.

– I want your word on two scores, he said to Virgil. First, that Grimus possesses some means of undoing my immortality. There’s nothing for me on Calf Mountain, and I know eternity palls in my own world.

– So you’re back to that, said Virgil.

– Also, Flapping Eagle forged on, I must know that a way back exists: a way back to the place, world, dimension, whatever, that I came from.

– If we’re spared, you’d like to return.

– Yes.

– And if I give you my word, You’ll go to Grimus.

– If I can.

Virgil Jones smiled sadly.

– As far as I know, he said, the answer to both your questions is that there are no such certain ways and means of achieving either of your aims.

It was like a sentence of death, confirmed, with no appeal. No way back. The aim of centuries, to return to normal life, dashed; his recent aim, to live contentedly here in K, in ruins. Flapping Eagle was an empty man, a Shell without a Form.

– O hell, he said. I’ll do it anyway. Why not?

Virgil Jones smiled his sad smile again. It was tinged with triumph.

The time of action obliterates the process of evaluation. Virgil Jones, champion of doubt, had no time for it now. He was planning Flapping Eagle’s ascent to Grimus.

– The Gate to Grimus is similar in type to the one through which you entered the Sea of Calf. Though less crude. Impossible to find it unless you know where it is. Which, as it happens, I do. That’s where your conquest of the Inner Dimensions will come in handy. They cannot harm you now, so you can concentrate on moving through the Outer ones. It may not be pleasant, though. Grimus will certainly know you’re coming; he may well try and close the Gate. In which case you will have quite a battle to break through. He will also resist any attempt to tamper with the Rose. You’ll just have to do what you can, wait for the opportunity, you know, strike when the time is ripe and so forth. Remember this: he’s only a man.

– The odds do seem to be just slightly against me, said Flapping Eagle.

– About a hundred to one, said Virgil. And even if you get through… Grimus can be a very persuasive man.

– Where’s the Gate? asked Flapping Eagle mechanically.

– Ah yes, the Gate. Now that will involve escaping the mob. And climbing a little further. As far as, as far as, Liv. The black house, you know.

His voice trailed away lamely.

– I know, said Flapping Eagle. I met her. She sends you her regards.

Virgil jerked himself out of an incipient reverie.

– Met her? he said. Are you quite sure?

– No, said Flapping Eagle. She wore a black veil. From head to foot.

– That’s her, said Virgil. That’s Liv.

Flapping Eagle looked around the room. Creeping plants on the wall. Creeping spider on the ceiling. It was probably one of the last rooms he would ever see. Facing this, he discovered he didn’t particularly mind. He was a spent force now, Virgil’s tool, no more. Before coming to Calf Island, he had felt a suicidal urge born of desperation. He was not desperate now; he simply saw no particular value in remaining alive.

– Ah well, said Virgil Jones. It will be, ah, pleasant to see Liv again.

LI Stone

– BY ALL MEANS, said Jocasta. Go, by all means.

Virgil stood before her like an errant schoolboy, wringing his hands, opening and shutting his mouth as though eternally on the verge of producing an acceptable explanation of his misdeeds.

– Go, repeated Jocasta. If the things we have done for you, the things I have done, mean so little, then please go at once. Go back to her. She’ll shred you into tiny pieces, that one. This time there will be nothing left for me to patch up. She sits up there and spins her webs and of course you walk right in. Go, go, be done with it, if you have the urge to wound yourself, I will not stop you any more. Perhaps you are a fool. Perhaps you are mad. It is mad, to go back, after the shame she brought upon you, but go. I will not stand in your way.

– I have to, Jocasta, said Virgil, distressed. I must show Flapping Eagle the Gate.

– Flapping Eagle! she cried. Who returned your kindness with betrayal. Who returned my kindness by intoxicating Media. Who has brought nothing but trouble to all who took him in. You’ll do anything for him.

Virgil Jones said in a very quiet voice:

– It is Flapping Eagle who is doing this for me.

– All of you, burst Jocasta. Go, all of you. Leave me to my House again.

Elfrida Gribb in white lace, her face veiled, a fly crawling unhindered across the veil, standing at the window, carvings to her right, mountain at her back, Flapping Eagle at her left, disaster staring her in the face.

– You will not go, she said. You cannot, after what I did. I love you, Flapping Eagle. My place is at your side.

He closed his eyes and hardened his voice as much as he could.

– I loved you, he said.

Her eyes turned to stone, green marbles of blindness.

– Loved. The word was not a question. It was a bleak statement.

– Everything has changed, he said miserably. I must go.

– A whore, she said. You think I’m a whore. I do not talk to whores. You and her. You planned this, to make me love you, to make me jealous, to ruin me.

– No, he said.

– Whore. Elfrida the whore. Yes, why not. Yes, why not. If my love thinks me a whore, I must live up to his idea of me. Yes, why not. I shall be a whore and earn my keep. Yes, why not, why not.

Why not, thought Flapping Eagle, was the phrase of the moment.

Media, eavesdropping, heard the interchange; and was delighted.

In the kitchen of the House of the Rising Son, amid the desolate pots and pans, the man called Stone ate, the only guest of the night, the one who could not be turned away. Virgil Jones saw him, and the escape was planned.

Flapping Eagle left the house by the side door and crawled out on to the Cobble-way, decrepit as his borrowed clothes, stained as the houses, dusty as the streets, and began to count the cobblestones. He greeted them like old friends. Slowly, tattered hat pulled low over stooping face, he made his way down the night road, pail in one hand, cloth in the other, on his knees, mumbling, polishing.

Madame Jocasta lay in her bed, shut into her room, refusing to know what was happening in her house. Media had volunteered to keep the pebble-cleaner occupied, even though it was a breach of House rules; and while Jocasta turned her face to the wall, Media used every scrap of experience at her command to ensnare Stone, her first man in an eternity, long enough for Flapping Eagle to make good his slow, painfully deliberate escape.

Just before dawn, Virgil Jones left the brothel, bowler hat on head, watchless chain around his waist, humming innocently to himself. The mob had dispersed to its bed, for the most part; but the implacable Peckenpaw sat bearlike on the front doorstep. He looked at Virgil angrily, but let him pass. Virgil went humming up the street, and was interested to notice that it bore no crawling figure. Flapping Eagle had either been discovered or had reached his goal.

At the far end of the Cobble-way, at the point where the town of K yielded to the resurgent slopes of Calf Mountain, the forest regained its supremacy. Thick vegetation concealed the narrow path, more suited to donkeys than men, which led up to the last habitable point, the rock on which Liv’s house stood and looked down on K. Here, in the forest, Virgil and Flapping Eagle made their rendezvous.

– Just like old times, said Virgil Jones.

Media, gone. Flapping Eagle’s absence was a relief. Virgil’s absence she had fortified herself to expect. But to find a man, and a wretched man at that, in Media’s bed, and her nowhere to be seen, was almost more than Jocasta could bear. Media, poor, infatuated Media, Media of all her girls.

Gone, but where? To follow Virgil and Eagle, but how far? And had they asked her, and did they want her, and would she come back cowed and crawling and beg forgiveness? Jocasta wanted to think so but she, too, remembered Liv; and she knew Media would not return, not if she could help it, not if she could…

Jocasta walked out into the corridor, silent as it was, and was hit by the third blink there, alone.

She gasped when it passed and leant against a wall. Elfrida Gribb came out of her room, tight-faced, controlled.

And put an arm around her.

– Madame, she said. I should like to stay. To stay… and work.

Jocasta looked at her vacantly. Anything was possible now.

– Since we have a sudden vacancy, she said, you’re hired.

The two bereaved women stayed there a moment, clutching each other; and then Jocasta, eyes red-rimmed, went down to the front door. Peckenpaw stood as she opened it.

– The House of the Rising Son is open for business, said Madame Jocasta.

It was morning.

LII Mrs O’Toole

NICHOLAS DEGGLE WAS sitting in the rocking-chair among the early chickens, as he had become accustomed to doing. He was thinking about the blinks.

Mrs O’Toole had apparently been entirely unaware of them. Perhaps her wayward mind simply denied their existence, as it denied the evidence of her eyes and enabled her to see and hear him as Virgil Jones. Nothing changes.

But, thought Deggle with a tinge of fear, there was another explanation. Grimus. Grimus had acquired this new, devastating power and was trying to get rid of him. Perhaps Deggle had been the only one affected.

Nicholas Deggle rocked between impotence and paranoia, back and forth. Dolores O’Toole came out of the hut holding a knife. Time to assassinate another chicken.

Dolores sat down on the ground. With the knife in her right hand, and with intense concentration, she slit the vein in her left wrist. Then she transferred the knife to that hand and set about slashing the right wrist, equally methodically. Only now did Deggle emerge from his shock and lunge at the knife. She avoided his grasp and held the blade against her neck.

– What do you think you’re doing, for godsake? he cried.

– Every night since we made love, she said. Every night you have refused me. It is obvious, Virgil, that you despise my body. I can’t live with you hating me so.

Blood spurted on to the ground, creating small specks of red mud.

What does one do to stop a vein bleeding? Deggle looked around him helplessly. -Bandages, he said aloud.

– Leave me alone, she said, and began to sing, weakly.

Whitebeard is all my joy

and whitebeard is my desire, she sang.

Nicholas Deggle pulled his shirt off, over his head. When he could see again, Dolores lay prone on the ground, a second, red mouth grinning bloodily from ear to ear, beneath her chin. She had finished what she set out to do.

Deggle, bare-chested, shirt in hand, watched the blood until it ceased to flow. This thought crossed his mind:

– It is I who will be alone.

The rocking-chair rocked in the early morning breeze.

LIII Anagram

THE GORF, BEING determined to see Calf Island through to the end, had taken refuge from Virgil Jones’ successful accusations in the ever stimulating spectator sport of observing other people’s lives.

Gorfs, though their bodies move only with great difficulty, can transport themselves instantly from place to place by a process of physical disintegration and reintegration, supervised by their disembodied Selves. Thus the Gorf had eavesdropped with Elfrida at the Elbaroom and sat in her garden watching as she and Irina and Flapping Eagle took turns upon the swing. He had peered through the windows of the Rising Son and watched the travellers depart. He had been intrigued by the blinks and a dispassionate witness to the suicide of Dolores O’Toole.

Now, awaiting the Final Ordering, he returned constantly to the contemplation of the basic anagram which had given rise to so much of the essence of Calf Island- the Re-Ordering which could be made of the name Grimus.

This anagram was Simurg.

The Gorf looked forward to the imminent clash of the Eagle, prince of earthly birds, and the Simurg, bird of paradise, wielder of the Stone Rose. He found it very pleasing that the names should contain these primordial symbols. It added spice.