The Spirit Cabinet (31 page)

Rudolfo flipped through the magazine, searching for the accompanying article. He found it, four pages crowded with photographs. Most prominent was a picture that occupied the whole of one page. It showed Jurgen standing atop the hideous old Houdini Substitution Box. The photograph caught the instant of Jurgen’s sudden and startling arrival, his improbable replacement of Miranda. Rudolfo stood off to one side with a sleek silver microphone held up to his mouth. This photograph
interested Rudolfo very much. He stared at the image of his own face and attempted to decode the expression frozen there. His nostrils were pinched, flattened by a sudden inhalation of air. Rudolfo did this often, and for a variety of reasons—to convey superiority,
ennui
or disapproval of airborne pungency. Or horror.

Samson, meanwhile, was watching a television show because the two were in the Television Room, the huge machine surrounded by a mini-moat full of carp. The hungry fish kissed at the water, puckering the surface. Samson ignored them. He sat with his brow furrowed with feline concentration, his tongue lolling over the pale gums. Samson was, in truth, not so engrossed in the broadcast fare as he made himself out to be; it was a cooking show, and cooking shows made little sense to a creature whose custom was to inhale raw, blood-spurting victuals. But through concentration Samson could ignore, or pretend to ignore, the presence of the black-clad human beyond the oval windows. Samson had spotted the prowler many minutes ago, had been alarmed to see a shape materialize on the other side of a nearby pane of glass. The creature peeked into the room, made eye contact with Samson, and then disappeared in a twinkling. So Samson yawned and stretched and watched the schoolmarmish woman on the televison prepare a
ballottine
. He was struck, as he often was while watching such shows, by the fact that the woman herself, soft-skinned and nicely fatted, would probably taste much better than the meal she laboured over.

Rudolfo flipped to a photograph taken on the day of the auction. It pictured Jurgen, Rudolfo, Miranda and Samson standing in a corner with the world-famous asshole, Kaz. It was recent, only a few weeks old. Jurgen still possessed his rather bottom-heavy muscular substance. His hair was curled heroically. His eyes twinkled; well, that is not entirely accurate, Jurgen’s eyes never twinkled, but they emitted a light of some low wattage.
They evidenced
life
. Staring at this photograph, Rudolfo was forced to admit to himself how much had changed in just weeks, days. Because Jurgen’s eyes now possessed a kind of turbidity. They were very still, as though not functioning as eyes should.

Samson stuck out his tongue and lassoed the remote control, dragging it back and into his mouth. He jerked his head, tossing the box lightly between his teeth, until his left fang came to rest on the Δ button. He began to chomp lightly, travelling through the frequencies. He watched out of the corner of his eye until he saw something interesting. It was so interesting that Samson coughed out the remote like so much phlegm.

It was so interesting that Rudolfo, wandering around the Television Room staring at the photographs in
Personality
, dropped the magazine. It landed with a splash in the carp-filled water.

On channel 79 was Preston. It actually took Rudolfo a nanosecond to recognize him, because Preston had shaved or something; somehow his ruddy boiled face had been depilated. His hair was combed,
managed
anyway, drowned in cream and then forced backwards. His clothes were new and ironed and fit his peculiar body as well as any clothes might. All in all, Preston looked half-human. (Although, as Preston himself often pointed out, he
was
half-human.)

Preston sat behind a round felt-covered poker table and shuffled a deck of cards, his fat fingers working with improbable facility. Clustered around the table were tiny mewling children, and presiding over them, obviously older but not much larger, was Uncle Rupert. Uncle Rupert wore a cardigan, reading glasses and owned hair that wrapped around his head like seaweed bandages a drowned man. Rudolfo knew Uncle Rupert because—well, he couldn’t really remember, he had encountered him at a club or party somewhere. Occasionally, Rudolfo would feel stifled, irritated by Jurgen’s stiff-backed solemnity. (Although
Rudolfo was now rather nostalgic for that solemnity, the way Jurgen would march slowly into the kitchen for a glass of juice, not saying a word, unwittingly imbuing the simplest facets of his life with pomp and circumstance.) So, feeling stifled, Rudolfo would sneak out to some party or club. He wouldn’t do much, not in a sexual sense. Once or twice he kissed boys. He sat beside them on tall stools and took hold of the backs of their necks and drove their mouths forward to meet his own. He locked lips and twisted his own head, tilting it frequently like a bewildered dog. He would kiss the boys until their pale manicured fingers came creeping along his thigh, then he would shove them away brusquely and complain to the bartender about the freshness of his carrot juice. So it was in such a place that he met Uncle Rupert, who behaved abominably all night then rose at dawn to host a show for small children. And on the show this early morning was Preston, shuffling a deck of cards.

“Okay, Uncle Rupert …” began Preston.

“Ah-hmmm?”

“Tell us all the name of the card you chose.”

“It was the, what was it now, oh yes, it was the, what was it, the king of clubs.”

Preston abruptly threw the deck up into the air. He reached into the cloud of playing cards and came away with the king of clubs caught between his thumb and middle finger.

“Why,” ejaculated Uncle Rupert, his eyeballs bulging with hungover veins, “bind my BVDs!”

The children swarming around the table grinned with appreciation, impressed not so much with the magical aspects as by the fact that Uncle Rupert looked momentarily even more foolish than usual.

Preston lifted the card over his right shoulder, holding it there so that his assistant might replace it with a new deck.

Samson gasped. A moment later Rudolfo gasped, too, but
Samson had beat him to the gasping punch, opening his blanched mouth and emitting a gust of injured air. Because Preston’s assistant—wearing an outfit that was hurtling all of the little boys toward puberty—was Miranda.

Samson’s reaction was to inhale hugely, sucking in the remote control. He bit down hard, shattering the huge screen into a million dots of light which then slowly faded away.

“Time for bed,” said Rudolfo. He was a bit surprised to discover it was near dawn. He knew that he’d been avoiding the huge, empty bed, but he was amazed to find out he’d avoided it so successfully, and for so long.

Samson knew that he should stay up. There was a prowler outside the house, after all, a terrifying human wrapped in black, and Samson, the grandest of all the animals, should assume the role of protector. But Samson launched himself toward the bedroom, his gait a slack, butt-wiggling trot. Samson was very upset, because, although it was clear that Rudolfo wasn’t going to talk about it, Miranda had left them for Preston.

“I’m having a new idea for the Show,” muttered Rudolfo.

Samson nodded, rounding a corner and spinning out on the Mexican tile. He fell hard, lumbered back up and continued on his way. Samson was now extremely miserable, knowing full well what Rudolfo’s idea was—put the old white beast out to pasture, bring on one of those young cats, one of those saliva-dripping brutes with swollen testicles.

The pair arrived at the bedroom. The ceiling was high and vaulted, and on it was painted a parody of Michelangelo’s “Creation,” one with Rudolfo and Jurgen rendered in place of God and Adam. (This had been Rudolfo’s idea, so he was the one pictured to the right. Rudolfo had never asked for much, after all, so it was only fair that he should be God.) Rudolfo bent over to remove his clothes and was a little startled to see that he wasn’t wearing any. He then reached up to pull off his hairpiece, and
was even more startled to feel the cool smoothness of his head.

He picked up the pace then, heading for the round mattress. As he passed the hideous Davenport Spirit Cabinet, he thought again that he really should try to find another place to house the thing. There must be some other room that could accommodate it. It could even be used for storage; it could be filled with old clothes and jewellery. He was pleased with this thought and resolved to move the cabinet as soon as possible. Rudolfo could pretend his determination to move the Spirit Cabinet had nothing to do with the animals that were currently flying and crawling out of the crescent-shaped holes in the front panelling. And through these openings came animals, which a portion of Rudolfo’s mind catalogued without reflection: yellow-headed amazon, kittiwake, hamadryad.

Then the twin doors flew apart, and Jurgen emerged from inside.

“Hello, Rudolfo!” he said, a cheery and hale greeting such as acquaintances might exchange at a party.
“Wie geht’s?”

Jurgen floated to the ground, stark naked, his body glowing softly. His descent to the carpet was odd, as though it had been filmed and was being played back at a slower speed. His skin threw off light, light that chased away the gloom and shadow far more effectively than the dawn leaking through the cathedral-style windows.

Rudolfo smiled, nodded, and waved toward the round mattress; for some reason words were not forthcoming. Rudolfo yawned to illustrate the fact that he was very tired, exhausted even. He headed for bed.

The black-clad creature remained outside
das Haus
, working with a pry bar on a side window, although he obviously lacked expertise in this field. At one point the blade of the bar skipped out from under the window’s metal rim and flew backwards. The
creature, alarmed by the weapon it was now swinging, tried to duck out of the way. The metal bar bounced off his head with an audible
thwonk
, knocking a pair of thick spectacles into the shrubbery. He stumbled backwards, turning dizzy, woozy circles. During one of these spins the sun rose over the distant hills, bathing the creature in weak, golden light. He gave out a whimper worthy of Count Dracula, recoiling, covering the eyeholes in the raven-pitched hood.