A World Elsewhere (7 page)

A wing of a Cornish hen should have done Deacon for a week, though Landish had yet to encounter the amount of food that would do him for a day. The boy was always flushed from hunger. His body didn’t so much digest food as destroy it in the blast furnace of his belly.

Landish told the boy that even though Deacon Carson Druken had three names, he had the appetite of a boy with many more, so he called him by twelve names: Deacon Carson Bacon Touton Onion Mutton Capon Chicken Lemon Melon Cinnamon Druken. But that didn’t work. So Landish took Deacon Carson Druken to a puniatrist, a doctor who specialized in “robusting” puny babies. But Deacon did not robust in spite of all the doctor did. The doctor told Landish not to worry because the boy would probably “spontaneously robust” when he was older. He said that cases of spontaneous robustion were not as rare as most people thought.

“Deaconian measures are called for,” Landish said. He explained to Deacon that he was named after Deaco, who was the brother of Draco, the first legislator of ancient Greece who imposed, and wrote down for the first time, the laws of Athens. Punishment for the smallest crimes was severe, he said, usually death. But under the less stringent, less exacting Deaconian system, Deaco granted an instant pardon to anyone who misbehaved. Then he granted universal pardons in advance and therefore made it impossible to break the law. Not even Draco had been able to accomplish this.

But Landish—though he joked about it with Deacon—knew that there was something wrong with the boy, not an illness per se but a seemingly innate weakness of body that nothing, so far, could rid him of, something at the very core of him that could not stand up against the world. Landish wondered if the grief that Deacon’s mother had endured during the last months of her pregnancy had so weakened her body that it also weakened her soon-to-be-born child. Perhaps the grief itself had somehow seeped into Deacon while he was in the womb, into his very bones where it still resided, an enervating agent for which no one could find the antidote.

There was a library called the Athenaeum in which Landish had spent much time as a boy. Not long ago, it had been damaged in the fire that destroyed much of the city. It had been partially restored and Landish took the boy there some afternoons. They could not afford the small subscription fee but the librarian let in them in anyway, telling him she had fond memories of watching him with his face pressed to within inches of books that he could barely lift. Landish told Deacon her name was Library Ann—even though Ann was not her name. He said that she worked for the rights of the poor and encouraged the poor to vote. The poor, he told him, were known as the Scruff. The Clout were on the top and the Scruff were on the bottom. He said Library Ann was a scruffragette.

Library Ann said almost no one went there anymore because it smelled too smoky from when they had the fire and people were afraid it would collapse. But it didn’t smell as smoky as the attic and it wasn’t as dark. Library Ann told Deacon that Landish had spent a lot of his life there before he went to Princeton, and he was the most unlikely looking bookworm she had ever seen. His voice echoed even when he whispered. But he had been her best customer. Now he and Deacon were almost her only customers and she was very afraid her beloved Athenaeum’s days were numbered because it wasn’t safe. She said they would have nowhere to store the books, so when the time came they could have their pick.

They went in the afternoons and sat side by side at a long, bare table. Using books that were smudged with soot and had little holes burned into them, Landish taught Deacon how to read. They skipped printing and went straight to writing words. They did arithmetic. In the winter months it was warmer than the attic. Sometimes he sat beside Landish and slept, curled or slumped in his chair, while Landish read—though he was restless even as he read, surrounded by shelves of unburned books written by writers who, often against odds greater than the ones he faced, had succeeded. “The Athenaeum’s books burned by accident,” Landish told Library Ann. “I burn my book on purpose.”

But one afternoon the doors were locked, a notice, pinned to the wall, stating that the condemned building was about to be torn down. They banged and heard a key turning in the lock. Library Ann peered around the door at them. Her eyes were red and she dabbed them with a handkerchief as she pulled Landish and Deacon hastily inside. She told Landish they could take as many books as they could cram into the wooden wheelbarrow she had put beside the steps.

Landish pushed the barrow up the hill. I look like a book peddler, he said. They stood the books on the floor along the wall. They had to lie on their bellies to see the names. In a library, he told Deacon, the shelves of books are called the “stacks.” And we have a Smokestack. You’ll have the Attic School from now on.

A priest who gave Communion to shut-ins came by with the nuns who were nurses too on Sunday afternoons to visit Hogan. Sometimes, Landish and Deacon were passing through Hogan’s kitchen when they arrived. The priest wore his vestments, the hems of which the two nuns carried as they trailed behind him. The holy vessel that contained the Host was covered in white cloth whose purpose Deacon fancied was to keep something warm until Hogan ate it. Deacon said he could tell that the priest was pretty high up in the Clout.

“That boy was baptized in the Catholic Church,” the older of the two nuns said one time. “There is the matter of his religious instruction and his preparation for the sacraments.”

“The Drukens are Anglicans, Father,” Landish said, “as I believe you know.”

“Mr. Druken may raise the boy as he sees fit,” Landish was very surprised to hear the priest say.

“Yes, Father,” the older nun said.

Landish and Deacon had left, Landish gently guiding Deacon by the back of his head with his hand.

Captain Druken had made it known throughout St. John’s that he had stipulated in his will that his estate, when he died, would be divided equally between the Churches of the city, doled out to them in annual stipends. Landish assumed that the priest was concerned that the stipends of the Catholic Church might be withheld if he took an interest in Deacon’s upbringing.

But the nuns began to come upstairs to check on the boy, who, they said, was dressed no better than the boys who all but lived outdoors. When Landish told them that Deacon’s face was bruised from the latest surprise hug he had staged on his leg, the older nun said it would be a shame if the boy’s face had got that way from the very hand that held his own.

The nuns asked Landish a lot of questions when Deacon was in the other room, and Deacon a lot of questions when Landish was in the other room.

When Landish spoke with the nuns who were nurses too, he was always sober and unLandishly polite, so time after time they went away, but each time seeming more reluctant than before. Landish feared that one day the nuns who were nurses too would tell him they had come to take the boy. He wasn’t sure what he should do.

He tried again to find a job, but scarce to the point of non-existence were employers who were unaware of both the Sartorial Charter and his reputation, the latter best summed up by one of the bishops who said he would rather choose his teachers from among God-fearing grade-school dropouts than from among men who, though they had gone to Princeton, lived like Landish.

Though Landish grew used to having Deacon on his shoulders, he tried everything he could to convince the boy to walk more often, short of punishing him or threatening to punish him or even getting angry with him, none of which he could bear to do. He had nothing he could bribe him with.

“It’s better up high,” Deacon said. When he was tired, he would rest his head sideways on Landish’s, entwine his arms up to the elbows in his hair, and go to sleep.

They walked for hours because there was not much else to do.

They wandered one night into the better neighbourhoods where there was electric lighting.

“Their lights go out every time there’s a storm of wind,” Landish said. “Then they have to use what we use in the attic.”

Deacon nodded.

“My father’s house has electric lights,” Landish said. “We got electricity long before I went to Princeton.”

“You don’t have it now.”

“No.”

“But you wish you did.”

“Not really.”

“Are electric lights nicer?”

“You don’t have to keep them lit like you do with oil and coal and wood and candlesticks. Less work. Cleaner. They don’t have any smell.”

“But smoke smells nice.”

“That’s right.”

Landish told him that electricity ran through the wires that were strung from pole to pole along the streets, and from the poles to the houses.

They heard the wires humming when the wind was calm.

Electricity ran like water did through pipes, Landish said. It flowed.

There were no poles or wires or even gas lamps on Dark Marsh Road.

One day Landish told him that a woman named Lucy would mind him for a while. Landish said that he was going for a walk with Lucy’s sister. Landish went down the stairs when Lucy was coming up. They didn’t say hello or look at each other. Landish was gone for an hour. Lucy had a wooden ballerina spinning top, painted white and red. They sat on the floor and the ballerina spun back and forth between them, one hand on her head, one arm stretched out. Lucy lay back on the floor and fell asleep until she heard Landish’s footsteps on the stairs. Sometimes Lucy’s sister, Irene, minded Deacon. She spun the ballerina too, but she talked more than Lucy and smoothed back Deacon’s hair.

The “compensation” from Van was long gone. It seemed clear that, despite Van’s promise, no further compensation would arrive. Landish vowed that he would hold out as long as he could before accepting
top-ups. That summer, by charging less than anyone else, he managed to find piecework here and there, digging holes for fence posts, clearing and burning brush. He was often paid in food from the gardens of his employers. He made mash from blight-blackened potatoes and called it “spudding.” Mimicking Deacon’s pronunciation, he called his rabbit recipe “rabid stew.” He made it from rabbits that he snared at the end of Dark Marsh Road. He made “turnip your nose.” He also made “homophone soup,” which was yellow pea.

He made cabbage à deux, shredding the cabbage and mixing it with thrice-soaked, thrice-baked, hard-boiled beans. It was one of Deacon’s favourites. They went outside and walked for a long time after eating it, “venting their gustations,” Landish said, which Deacon said was just a fancy way of saying farts.

“I’m not sitting on your shoulders,” Deacon said. He said a dose of Landish was ten times worse than a dose of Deacon.

“The flatulent are petulant,” Landish said. He could get the boy to walk more often if he could stand to eat cabbage à deux more often.

They had veg-edibles and Dark Marsh Fish. France’s bacon, henglish eggs. Cod au cretin. Black Forest Cram. Dark Marsh Toad. The traditional Easter Rooster.

But Landish got fewer jobs as winter came on.

“We’re down to the vestiges,” Landish said.

Landish milked goats and cows that belonged to others who let them roam to graze on whatever they could find. Deacon didn’t like it when Landish milked other people’s cows. “Well, you can’t unmilk a cow,” Landish said, “so you might as well drink up.” He gathered up the eggs of wayward hens whose legs bore the bands of their owners. “Just-laid eggs from unlaid hens.”

When the boy had a stomach ache from lack of food, Landish would lie beside him on the bed and rub his back and belly. The boy was paler than the newly perished. Landish pretended to eat so that Deacon could have more. He went to bed hungry and, unable to sleep,
made up food puns: The Merchant of Venison. Broth fresh from the brothel. A sacrificial lamb was a mutton for punishment.

Would the winter never end? Season desist.

He should write Van and tell him they had dined tonight on Sham Chowder, Lack of Lamb, Crazed Ham and Duck à Mirage. Steam of Mushroom Soup and Perish Jubilee.

Landish remembered the food they had when he was growing up, the holiday feasts. His father, who lived in the house once Gen of Eve was gone, spread a good board: imported fruits and vegetables, brightly coloured, many of them from the tropics, smoked meats, cheeses, jams and sauces, all manner of bread and cream-crammed pastries. He remembered the apparition on the Druken board of whole pineapples, coconuts, wreaths of grapes, bananas in layered bunches of fifty or sixty, brightly coloured and oddly shaped marrows. The board was as important a decoration as the Christmas tree and much of it was merely admired, never eaten.

Deacon asked Landish how you got inside your mother from the Womb of Time, and how you got from her womb to the world.

Landish told him about Dick and the happy couple. Deacon asked him what the happy couple did. Landish said they had no choice but to live in wedded bliss.

He answered all of Deacon’s questions. Deacon laughed until he coughed. Landish swore that it was true. He added that he wondered if he should have waited until Deacon was older because at his age he might get it all mixed up. He said he had known men who were still confused about it when they died of old age.

“You’ll see. But not until you’re older. If your parents hadn’t done it, you’d be purely hypothetical.”

“What’s that?”

“An idea in Just Mist.”

Landish looked at him. If the boy were purely hypothetical, he wouldn’t weigh much less than he did now.

Deacon looked inside his underwear and laughed again.

“It grows on you,” Landish said. “I hope to God that something does.”

Deacon knew when he was joking, so he knew that it was true. The father he had never met. The mother he could not remember. When he was hypothetical.

The “contribution,” Landish called what a father did. Deacon was not old enough to make a contribution. Landish said he wasn’t sure how many
he
had made but he was almost certain that none of them had worked.

If Deacon’s father hadn’t made a contribution, Deacon would still be waiting in the Womb of Time. More waited there forever than ever had or ever would be born.