Figgs & Phantoms (14 page)

T
HE PINK-ORANGE PALM had multiplied into a green jungle. Orchids burst from mossy trunks; a cockatoo called. Mona stood in awe before the nameless fruits and perfumed flowers. She had never seen such wild beauty, not at home, not in books ... and then she remembered the words Uncle Florence had written in the diary:

This exotic paradise had not been created by Uncle Florence. Terrified, Mona spun around. Her way was barred by a thicket of tortured mangroves. The green dungeon was guarded by strangler vines and domed by a web of locked branches.

Mona was trapped in someone else's dream!

Triangles of apple-tree fire flickered through giant ferns; a parrot mocked her sobs. Suddenly something grasped at Mona's ankle, and she fell among the tangled vines. Among the writhing roots. Among the snakes.

Choking with terror, she felt the snakes creeping, crawling over her legs.

Mona looked down at the vines twisted around her ankle. Vines, not snakes. The snakes had been the reflection of her own fears, the distorted memory of her parents' duet.

Trembling uncontrollably, Mona laughed and cried in a confusion of emotions. Her blood drummed in her ears in time with the distant tapping. At last she lay back, limp and silent.

How strange that her fears were stronger than her dreams, she thought, the snakes more real than the unrealized horse. Mona looked about her. Perhaps the jungle, too, was painted out of fear. Closing her eyes, Mona willed the vines and the trees and the ferns to disappear.

The jungle remained, and she remained its prisoner, shackled by vines, watched by a pair of gleaming eyes.

Someone or something was near. Slowly Mona raised her head. A strangled cry escaped from her lips as she stared into the unblinking eyes of a leopard crouched on an overhanging limb.

Straining at her vine-bound ankle, Mona tried to will the animal away as another incarnation of her own fear. The leopard hunched forward, ready to spring.

The phantom of a leopard was about to savage the phantom of a young girl.

“But I'm not alive,” Mona shouted, convincing herself of her own invulnerability. “I am dead and can't be harmed. I am in Capri!”

The leopard eyes narrowed in anger. From somewhere, from everywhere, a thundering voice replied:

A deathly chill crept over Mona's flesh as, unable to move, unable to scream, she watched the leopard change form.

Its rosettes spun like pinwheels; its bulk exceeded its frame. And still it grew. The formless shadow floated toward her, its armless arms outstretched in a ghostly transfiguration of night. Then, with a flash of teeth and a glint of steel, the monstrous being gathered its substance into the shape of a magnificent wild-eyed man.

“Uncle Florence?” Mona muttered hoarsely in the desperate hope that this was her uncle's new form. “Uncle Florence, it's me, Mona,” she babbled. “Uncle Florence?”

“No,” the pirate roared, his teeth bared in anger and his black hair flying in a sudden howl of wind. Leopard eyes ablaze, he unsheathed his sword and flourished its razor-sharp blade.

Mona tore wildly at the tangled growth.

Tap-tap-tap echoed from the distance.

Tap-tap-tappity-tap-tap. The noise rose to a clattering crescendo.

With an agonized yell the pirate clapped his hands to his ears. His sword fell, slashing through the vines around Mona's leg.

Free, afraid to look back, Mona fled down the path that opened before her feet, trampling flowers and ferns as she ran toward the tapping, her arms held out trying to clutch the sound of the dancing feet.

Tap-tap-tappity-tap. A blurred face appeared in the whiteness. Someone was holding Mona's hand.

“Uncle Florence,” Mona cried, straining to sit up. Still entangled in vines, she fell back into the soft sand. “Uncle Florence,” she whispered as the face faded into the fronds of the pink palm.

Alone, bound only by the unknown, Mona sat up and stared into the curtained wilderness. She shuddered as she remembered the jungle of yesterday. Or was it a century ago? Shaking her head free of doubt and nightmare terrors, she struggled to think only of Uncle Florence. Not of his physical presence (she could not even guess at that), but of his hopes, his loves, his dream of “simple and quiet things.”

A butterfly lighted on her shoulder and flitted away. Mona watched its colors change subtly from lavender to purple to violet.

The butterfly fluttered through the peach trees and plum trees and disappeared. Mona crossed a Claude Lorrain landscape and walked through a small village. The streets were deserted; its shops empty.

She turned the corner at Hemlock and Ash as the large mahogany doors of the opera house were closing. Mona was the last in a long line of shadowy shapes that climbed the carpeted stairway into a huge, triple-tiered auditorium. Crystal chandeliers twinkled from the gilt ceiling, then dimmed as Mona felt her way to a plush seat in the middle of the back row. She wished she had remembered to buy a box of popcorn on the way in.

The red velvet curtain parted to reveal a grand piano on the center of a bare stage. A man and a woman in formal dress emerged from the wings and bowed to the welcoming applause.

A box flew out of Mona's hand, raining popcorn on the neighboring shadows. “Uncle Florence!” Mona shouted, but invisible bonds held her in her seat. Her cry went unnoticed; the show was about to begin and nothing could stop it.

The man sat down at the piano, flexed his long fingers, and placed his gracefully arched hands on the keys. He played brilliantly. Mona recognized the left-hand accompaniment to Schubert's “Who Is Sylvia?”

Uncle Florence looked remarkably unchanged, Mona thought. He was perhaps slightly younger, and his feet reached the pedals of the piano, but she was certain that she was not dreaming him this time. She never would have invited Phoebe to Capri.

Phoebe. Mona studied the singer with a critical eye. She wasn't beautiful, but she was surely handsome, even noble, and glowing with warmth. Mona could not tell whether Phoebe was four-feet four-inches tall, but she was shorter than Uncle Florence. Standing side by side they bowed to thunderous applause. Mona's jealousy turned to smugness as she realized that Phoebe's presence in Capri proved that Uncle Florence had invented her. He had invented Phoebe to keep him company until Mona arrived in his dream.

Now Florence sang while Phoebe accompanied his mighty bass-baritone on the piano. The Schubert cycle had never before been sung with such artistry, and for the first time Mona understood the German words.

Basking in her uncle's magnificent performance, Mona imagined his delight on discovering her here in Capri. Her tears were a thing of the past, and she would now replace her stand-in, Phoebe, and live with Florence for the rest of their eternal lives.

The recital ended to a standing ovation. The audience flowed into the aisles, cheering, applauding. Mona struggled in vain to get through.

At last the curtains closed on the flower-strewn stage as the singers took their fiftieth bow. The lights went up; the audience turned to leave, and Mona now saw their familiar faces in three-quarter view.

Pushing her way past the five hundred self-portraits, past the woman with the head of a pig, climbing over row after row of seats, clambering up the steps, Mona called to her uncle. She ducked under the curtain; the stage was bare. She ran through the wings, flung open the stage door, and blinked into the sun.

Uncle Florence and Phoebe were strolling hand-in-hand through a field of violets. A ruby-throated hummingbird flitted around their heads.

“Uncle Florence,” Mona shouted.

Her way was blocked by a monstrous shadow brandishing a sword.

The menacing pirate of Mona's nightmare moved toward her, the shadow of his shadow creeping over her feet. Suddenly he stopped, grimaced in pain, and held his hands over his ears.

Tap-tap-tappity-tap-tap. Mona heard it, too, and took advantage of her tormentor's torment to slip out of his presence. Quickly she ducked into a dimly lit shop, slamming the door so violently that a book fell from the top shelf.

Ebenezer Bargain swore softly and bent down to pick up the fallen book. The light from the shop's single bulb reflected off his silver hair.