Weaveworld (36 page)

‘Any way’ll do. It’s not that big. If you want out, just walk in any direction.’

This simple solution seemed to pacify Norris somewhat. He turned his gaze on the burgeoning landscape.

‘I don’t know though …’ he said, ‘… maybe it’s better this way. At least I get to see what I would have bought.’

‘And what do you make of it?’

It’s not the way I’d thought it’d be. I’d expected something … tamer. Frankly, I’m not sure now I’d want to own the place.’

As his voice faltered an animal that could surely be found in no menagerie jumped from the flux of threads and snarled a welcome at the world before bounding off.

‘See?’ said Norris. ‘What was that?’

Shadwell shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. There’s things here that probably died out before we were born.’

‘That?’
said Norris, staring after the hybrid beast. ‘I never saw the like of that before, even in books. I tell you I want none of this fucking place. I want you to get me out.’

‘You’ll have to find your own way,’ said Shadwell. ‘I’ve got business here.’

‘Oh no you don’t,’ said Norris, pointing his shoe at Shadwell. ‘I need a body-guard. And you’re it.’

The sight of the Hamburger King reduced to this nervous wreckage amused Shadwell. More than that, it made him feel – perhaps perversely – secure.

‘Look,’ he said, his manner softening. ‘We’re both in the same shit here –’

‘Damn right we are.’

‘I’ve got something that might help,’ he said, opening his jacket, ‘– something to sweeten the pill.’

Norris looked suspicious. ‘Oh yeah?’

‘Have a peep,’ said Shadwell, showing the man the jacket lining. Norris wiped off the blood that was running into his left eye, and stared into the folds. ‘What do you see?’

There was a moment of hesitation, when Shadwell wondered if the jacket was still functioning. Then a slow smile broke over Norris’ face, and a look familiar from countless other such seductions crept into his eyes.

‘See something you like?’ Shadwell asked him.

‘Indeed I do.’

‘Take it then. It’s yours. Free, gratis and for nothing.’

Norris smiled, almost coyly. ‘Wherever did you find him?’ he asked, as he extended a trembling hand towards the jacket. ‘After all these years …’

Tenderly; he drew his temptation from the folds of the lining. It was a wind-up toy: a soldier with a drum, so fondly and so accurately remembered by its owner that the illusion
he now held in his hand had been recreated with every dent and scratch in place.

‘My drummer,’
said Norris, weeping for joy as if he’d taken possession of the world’s eighth wonder. ‘Oh my drummer.’ He turned it over. ‘But there’s no key,’ he said. ‘Do you have it?’

‘I may find it for you, by and by,’ Shadwell replied.

‘One of his arms is broken,’ said Norris, stroking the drummer’s head. ‘But he still plays.’

‘You’re happy?’

‘Oh yes. Yes thank you.’

‘Then put it in your pocket, so that you can carry me awhile,’ said Shadwell.

‘Carry you?’

‘I’m weary. I need a horse.’

Norris showed no trace of resistance to this notion, though Shadwell was a bigger and heavier man, and would constitute quite a burden. The gift had won him over utterly, and while it held him in thrall he would allow his spine to crack before disobeying the giftgiver.

Laughing to himself, Shadwell climbed onto the man’s back. His plans might have gone awry tonight, but as long as people had dreams to mourn he could possess their little souls awhile.

‘Where do you want me to take you?’ the horse asked him.

‘Somewhere high,’ he directed. ‘Take me somewhere high.’

V

THE ORCHARD OF LEMUEL LO

1

either Boaz nor Ganza were voluble guides. They led the way through the Fugue in almost complete silence, only breaking that silence to warn Cal that a stretch of ground was treacherous, or to keep close to them as they moved down a colonnade in which he heard dogs panting. In a sense he was glad of their quietness. He didn’t want a guided tour of the terrain, at least not tonight. He’d known, when he’d first looked down at the Fugue from the wall in Mimi’s yard, that it couldn’t be mapped, nor its contents listed and committed to memory like his beloved timetables. He would have to understand the Weaveworld in a different fashion: not as hard fact but as feeling. The schism between his mind and the world it was attempting to grasp was dissolving. In its place was a relationship of echo and counter echo. They were thoughts inside each other’s heads, he and this world; and that knowledge, which he could never have found the words to articulate, turned the journey into a tour of his own history. He’d known from Mad Mooney that poetry was heard differently from ear to ear. Poetry was like that. The same, he began to see, was also true of geography.

2

They climbed a long slope. He thought maybe a tide of crickets leapt before their feet; the earth seemed alive.

At the top of the slope they looked across a field. At the far side of the field was an orchard.

‘Almost there,’ said Ganza, and they began towards it.

The orchard was the biggest single feature he’d seen in the Fugue so far; a plot of maybe thirty or forty trees, planted in rows and carefully pruned so that their branches almost touched. Beneath this canopy were passages of neatly clipped grass, dappled by velvet light.

‘This is the orchard of Lemuel Lo,’ Boaz said, as they stood on the perimeter. His gentle voice was softer than ever. ‘Even amongst the fabled, it’s fabled.’

Ganza led the way beneath the trees. The air was still and warm and sweet. The branches were laden with a fruit that Cal did not recognize.

‘They’re Jude Pears,’ Boaz told him. ‘One of the species we’ve never shared with the Cuckoos.’

‘Why not?’

‘There are reasons,’ said Boaz. He looked around for Ganza, but she’d disappeared down one of the avenues. ‘Help yourself to the fruit,’ he said, moving away from Cal in search of his companion. ‘Lem won’t mind.’

Though Cal thought he could see all the way down the corridor of trees his eyes deceived him. Boaz took three steps from him, and was gone.

Cal reached towards one of the low-slung branches and put his hand on one of the fruits. As he did so there was a great commotion in the tree and something ran down the branch towards him.

‘Not that one!’

The voice was bass profundo. The speaker was a monkey.

‘They’re sweeter upstairs,’ the beast said, throwing its brown eyes skyward. Then it ran back the way it had come, its passage bringing leaves down around Cal. He tried to follow its progress, but the animal moved too fast. It was back in half a dozen seconds, with not one but two fruits. Perched in the branches, it threw them down to Cal.

‘Peel them,’ it said. ‘One each.’

Despite their name, they didn’t resemble pears. They were
the size of a plum, but with a leathery skin. It was tough, but it couldn’t disguise the fragrance of the meat inside.

‘What are you waiting for?’ the monkey demanded to know. ‘They’re tasty, these Giddys. Peel it and see.’

The fact of the talking monkey – which might have stopped Cal dead in his tracks a week before – was just part of the local colour now.

‘You call them Giddys?’ he said.

‘Jude Pears; Giddy Fruit. It’s all the same meat.’

The monkey’s eyes were on Cal’s hands, willing him to peel the fruit. He proceeded to do just that. They were more difficult to skin than any fruit he’d encountered; hence the monkey’s bargain with him, presumably. Viscous juice ran from the broken skin and over his hands; the smell was ever more appetizing. Before he’d quite finished peeling the first of them, the monkey snatched it from his grasp and wolfed it down.

‘Good –’ it said, between mouthfuls.

Its pleasure was echoed from beneath the tree. Somebody made a sound of appreciation, and Cal glanced away from his labours to see that there was a man squatting against the trunk, rolling a cigarette. He looked back up to the monkey, then down at the man, and the voice from the beast made new sense.

‘Good trick,’ he said.

The man looked up at Cal. His features were distressingly close to mongoloid; the smile he offered huge, and seemingly uncomprehending.

‘What is?’ said the voice from the branches.

Confounded as he was by the face below him, Cal pursued his assumption, and addressed his reply not to the puppet but the puppeteer.

‘Throwing your voice like that.’

The man still grinned, but showed no sign that he’d understood. The monkey, however, laughed loudly.

‘Eat the fruit,’ it said.

Cal’s fingers had worked at the peeling without his direction. The Giddy was skinned. But some lingering superstition about stolen fruit kept him from putting it to his lips.

‘Try it.’ said the monkey. ‘They’re not poisonous –’

The smell was too tantalizing to resist. He bit.

‘–at least not to us,’ the monkey added, laughing again.

The fruit lasted even better than its scent had promised. The meat was succulent, the juice strong as a liqueur. He licked it off his fingers, and the palms of his hand.

‘Like it?’

‘Superb.’

‘Food and drink all in one.’ The monkey looked at the man beneath the tree. ‘Want one. Smith?’ it asked.

The man put a flame to his cigarette and drew on it.

‘D’you hear me?’

Getting no response, the monkey scampered back up into the higher reaches of the tree.

Cal, still eating the pear, had found the pips at its centre. He chewed them up. Their slight bitterness only complemented the sweetness of the rest.

There was music playing somewhere between the trees, he now noticed. One moment lilting, the next manic.

‘Another?’ said the monkey, re-appearing with not two but several fruit.

Cal swallowed the last of his first.

‘Same deal,’ the monkey said.

Suddenly greedy, Cal took three, and started to peel.

‘There’s other people here,’ he said to the puppeteer.

‘Of course,’ said the monkey. ‘This has always been a gathering place.’

‘Why do you speak through the animal?’ Cal asked, as the monkey’s fingers claimed a peeled fruit from his hands.

‘The name’s Novello.’ said the monkey. ‘And who says he’s speaking at all?’

Cal laughed, as much at himself as at the performance.

‘Fact is,’ said the monkey, ‘neither of us is quite sure who does what any longer. But then love’s like that, don’t you find?’

It threw back its head and squeezed the fruit in its hand, so that the liquor ran down its throat.

The music had found a fresh intoxication. Cal was intrigued to find out what instruments it was being played upon. Violins certainly, and whistles and drums. But there were sounds amongst these that he couldn’t place.

‘Any excuse for a party,’ said Novello.

‘Must be the biggest breakfast in history.’

‘I daresay. Want to go see?’

‘Yes.’

The monkey ran along the branch, and scurried down the trunk to where Smith was sitting. Cal, chewing the seeds of his second Giddy, reached up and claimed a further handful of fruit from amongst the foliage, pocketing half a dozen against future hunger, and skinning another to be consumed on the spot.

The sound of monkey-chatter drew his gaze down to Novello and Smith. The beast was perched on the man’s chest, and they were talking to each other, a babble of words and grunts. Cal looked from man to beast and back to man again. He could not tell who was saying what to whom.

The debate ended abruptly, and Smith stood up, the monkey now sitting on his shoulder. Without inviting Cal to follow, they threaded their way between the trees. Cal pursued, peeling and eating as he went.

Some of the visitors here were doing as he’d done, standing beneath the trees, consuming Jude Pears. One or two had even climbed up and were draped amongst the branches, bathing in the perfumed air. Others, either indifferent to the fruit or sated upon it, lay sprawled in the grass and talked together in low voices. The atmosphere was all tranquillity.