Dark Carnival (3 page)

    'Timothy.' The wings spread and twitched and came in with a sound like kettle-drums. Timothy felt himself plucked up like a thimble and set on Einar's shoulder. 'Don't feel badly, nephew Timothy. Each to his own, each in his own way. How much better things are for you. How rich. The world's dead for us. We've seen so much of it, believe me. It's all one colour; grey. Life's best to those who live the least of it. It's worth more per ounce, nephew, remember that.'

    From midnight on, Uncle Einar bore him about the house, from room to room, weaving, singing. Late arrivals by the horde set hilarities off afresh. Great-great-great-great and a thousand more greats grandmother was there, wrapped in Egyptian cerements, roll on roll of linen bandage coiled about her fragile dark brown bird bones. She said not a word, but lay stiff as a burnt ironing board against one wall, her eye hollows cupping a distant, wise, silent glimmering. At the four a.m. breakfast, one-thousand-odd-greats grandmamma stiffly seated at the head of the longest table and red toasts were pantomimed to her.

    Grandfather Tom wandered about through the throng at all hours, tickling young nieces, holding them, gumming their necks, a look of unbearable desperation flushing his features as time passed. Poor grandpapa, in
his
profession, and no teeth!

    The numerous young cousins caroused at the crystal punch bowl. Their shiny olive-pit eyes, their conical, devilish faces and curly bronze hair hovered over the drinking-table, their hard-soft, half-girl, half-boy bodies wrestling against each other as they got unpleasantly sullenly drunk.

    Laura and Ellen, over and above the wine-sated tumult, produced a parlour drama with Uncle Fry. They represented innocent maidens strolling, when the Vampire (Uncle Fry) stepped from behind a tree (Cousin Anna). The Vampire smiled upon the Innocents.

    Where were they going?

    Oh, just down to the river path.

    Could he escort them along the way?

    He might if he were pleasant.

    He walked with them, grinning secretly, from time to time licking his lips.

    He was just preparing to attack one of them (at the river) when the Innocents, whirling eagerly, knocked him flat and drained him vacuum-dry of his blood. They sat down on his carcass as on a bench, and laughed and laughed.

    So did everybody at the Homecoming.

    The wind got higher, the stars burned with fiery intensity, the noises redoubled, the dances quickened, the drinking became more positive. To Timothy there were thousands of things to hear and watch. The many darknesses roiled, bubbled, the many faces mixed, vanished, reappeared, passed on. Mother moved everywhere, gracious and tall and beautiful, bowing and gliding, and father made sure that all the chalices were kept full.

    The children played
Coffins
. Coffins, set in a row, surrounded by marching children, Timothy with them. A flute kept them marching. One by one coffins were removed. The scramble for their polished interiors eliminated two, four, six, eight contestants, until only one coffin remained. Timothy circled it cautiously, pitted against his fey-cousin, Roby. The flute notes stopped. Like gopher to hole, Timothy made it, popped into the coffin, while everyone applauded.

    Once more the wine cups were full.

    'How is Lotte?'

    'Lotte? Did you not hear? Oh, it is too good to tell!'

    'Who's Lotte, mamma?'

    'Hush. Uncle Einar's sister. She of the wings. Go on, Paul.'

    'Lotte flew over Berlin not long ago and was shot for a British plane.'

    'Shot for a plane!'

    Cheeks blew out, lungs bulged and sank, hands slapped thighs. The laughter was like a cave of winds.

    'And what of Carl?'

    'The little one who lives under bridges? Ah, poor Carl. Where is there a place for Carl in all Europe? Each bridge has been devastated. Carl is either dead or homeless. There are more refugees in Europe tonight than meet mortal eyes.'

    'True, true.
All
the bridges, eh? Poor Carl.'

    'Listen!'

    The party held its breath. Far away the town clock struck its chimes, saying six o'clock. The party was ending. As if at a cue in time to the rhythm of the clock striking, their one hundred voices began to sing songs that were four hundred years old, songs Timothy could not know. They twined their arms around each other, circling slowly, and sang, and somewhere in the cold distance of morning the town clock finished out its chimes and quieted.

    Timothy sang.

    He knew no words, no tune, yet he sang and the words and tune came correctly, round and high and good.

    At the verse end, he gazed at the stairs and the closed door at the top of the stairs.

    'Thanks, Cecy,' he whispered.

    He listened.

    Then he said, 'That's all right, Cecy. You're forgiven. I know you.'

    Then he just relaxed and let his mouth move as it wished, and words came out in their own time, rhythmically, purely, melodiously.

    Good-byes were said, there was a great rustling. Mother and father and the brothers and sisters lined up in grave happiness at the door to shake each hand firmly and kiss each departing cheek in turn. The sky, beyond the open door, coloured and shone in the east. A cold wind entered.

    Again Timothy was forced to listen to a voice talking and when it finished he nodded and said, 'Yes, Cecy. I would like to do that. Thanks.'

    And Cecy helped him into one body after another. Instantly, he felt himself inside Uncle Fry's body at the door, bowing and pressing lips to mother's pale fingers, looking out from the wrinkled leather face at her. Then he side-stepped out into the wind, the draught seized him, took him in a flurry of leaves away up over the house and awakening hills. The town flashed under.

    With a snap, Timothy was in another body, at the door, saying farewell. It was Cousin William's body.

    Within Cousin William, swift as a smoke puff, he loped down the dirt road, red eyes burning, fur pelt rimed with morning, padded feet rising, falling with silent sureness, panting easily, again over the hill and into a hollow, and then dissolving away. . .

    Only to well up in the tall cold hollows of Uncle Einar and look out from his tolerant, amused eyes. And he was picking up the tiny pale body of Timothy. Picking up himself, through Einar! 'Be a good boy, Timothy. I'll see you again, from time to time.'

    Swifter than the bourne leaves, with a webbed thunder of wings, faster than the lupine thing of the country road, going so swiftly the earth's features blurred and the last stars rotated to one side, like a pebble in Uncle Einar's mouth, Timothy flew, accompanied him on half his startling journey.

    He came back to his own body.

    The shouting and the laughing bit by bit faded and went away. Dawn grew more apparent. Everybody was embracing and crying and thinking how the world was becoming less a place for them. There had been a time when they had met every year, but now decades passed with no reconciliation. 'Don't forget, we meet in Salem in 1970!' someone cried.

    Salem. Timothy's numbed mind turned the word over. Salem — 1970. And there would be Uncle Fry and Grandma and Grandfather and a thousand-times-great Grandmother in her withered cere-clothes. And mother and father and Ellen and Laura and Cecy and Leonard and Bion and Sam and all the rest. But would
he
be there? Would he be alive that long? Could he be certain of living until then?

    With one last withering wind blast, away they all shot, so many scarves, so many fluttery mammals, so many sered leaves, so many wolves loping, so many winnings and clustering noises, so many midnights and ideas and insanities.

    Mother shut the door. Laura picked up a broom.

    'No,' said mother. 'We'll clean up tonight. We need sleep, first.'

    Father walked down into the cellar, followed by Laura and Bion and Sam. Ellen walked upstairs, as did Leonard.

    Timothy walked across the crêpe-littered hall. His head was down, and in passing the party mirror he saw himself, the pale mortality of his face. He was cold and trembling.

    'Timothy,' said mother.

    He stopped at the stairwell. She came to him, laid a hand on his face. 'Son,' she said. 'We love you. Remember that. We all love you. No matter how different you are, no matter if you leave us one day,' she said. She kissed his cheek. 'And if and when you die your bones will lie undisturbed, we'll see to that, you'll lie at ease for ever, I'll come and see you every Hallows' Eve and tuck you in the more secure.'

    The house echoed to polished wooden doors creaking and slamming hollowly shut.

    The house was silent. Far away, the wind went over a hill with its last cargo of small dark bats, echoing, chittering.

    He walked up the steps, one by one, crying to himself all the way.

IT was past time for him to see the doctor again. Mr. Harris turned palely in at the stairwell, and on his way up the flight he saw Dr. Burleigh's name gilded over a pointing arrow. Would Dr. Burleigh sigh when he walked in? After all, this would make the tenth trip so far this year. But Burleigh shouldn't complain; after all, he was paid for the examinations!

    The nurse looked Mr. Harris over and smiled, a bit amusedly, as she tiptoed to the glazed glass door, opened it, and put her head in. Harris thought he heard her say, 'Guess who's here, Doctor?' And didn't the doctor's acid voice reply, faintly, 'Oh, my God,
again?
' Harris swallowed uneasily.

    When Harris walked in, Dr. Burleigh snorted thinly. 'Aches in your bones again! Ah!!' He scowled at Harris and adjusted his glasses. 'My dear Harris, you've been curried with the finest tooth combs and bacteria-brushes known to science. You're only nervous. Let's see your fingers. Too many cigarettes. Let me smell your breath. Too much protein. Let's see your eyes. Not enough sleep. My response? Go to bed, stop the protein, no smoking. Ten dollars, please.'

    Harris stood there, sulking.

    The doctor glanced up from his papers. '
You
still here? You're a hypochondriac! That's
eleven
dollars, now.'

    'But why should my bones ache?' asked Harris.

    Dr. Burleigh addressed him like a child. 'You ever had a sore muscle, and kept at it, irritating it, fussing with it, rubbing it? It gets worse, the more you bother it. Then you leave it alone and the pain vanishes. You realize you caused most of the soreness, yourself. Well, son, that's what's with you. Leave yourself alone. Take a dose of salts. Get out of here and take that trip to Phoenix you've stewed about for months. Do you good to travel!'

    Five minutes later, Mr. Harris riffled through a classified phone directory at the corner druggist's. A fine lot of sympathy one got from blind fools like Burleigh! He passed his finger down a list of BONE SPECIALISTS, found one named M. Munigant. Munigant lacked an M.D., or any other academical lettering behind his name, but his office was conveniently near. Three blocks down, one block over. . .

    M. Munigant, like his office, was small and dark. Like his office, he smelled of iodoform, iodine, and other odd things. He was a good listener, though, and listened with eager, shiny moves of his eyes, and when he talked to Harris, he had an accent and seemed to whistle every word, undoubtedly due to imperfect dentures. Harris told all.

    M. Munigant nodded. He had seen cases like this before. The bones of the body. Man was not aware of his bones. Ah, yes, the bones. The skeleton. Most difficult. Something concerning an imbalance, an unsympathetic co-ordination between soul, flesh and bone. Very complicated, softly whistled M. Munigant. Harris listened, fascinated. Now,
here
was a doctor who understood his illness! Psychological, said M. Munigant. He moved swiftly, delicately to a dingy wall and rattled down half a dozen X-rays and paintings of the human skeleton. He pointed at these. Mr. Harris must become aware of his problem, yes. He pointed at this and that bone, and these and those, and some others.

    The pictures were quite awful. They had something of the grotesquerie and off-bounds horror of a Dali painting. Harris shivered.

    M. Munigant talked on. Did Mr. Harris desire treatment for his bones?

    'That all depends,' said Harris.

    M. Munigant could not help Harris unless Harris was in the proper mood. Psychologically, one had to
need
help, or the doctor was of no use. But (shrugging) Mr. Munigant would 'try.'

    Harris lay on a table with his mouth open. The lights were switched off, the shades drawn. M. Munigant approached his patient.

    Something touched Harris's tongue.

    He felt his jawbones forced out. They cracked and made noises. One of those pictures on the dim wall seemed to leap. A violent shivering went through Harris and, involuntarily, his mouth snapped shut.

    M. Munigant cried out. He had almost had his nose bitten off! It was no use. Now was not the time. M. Munigant raised the shades. He looked dreadfully disappointed. When Mr. Harris felt he could co-operate psychologically, when Mr. Harris really
needed
help and trusted M. Munigant to help him, then maybe something could be done. M. Munigant held out his little hand. In the meantime, the fee was only two dollars. Mr. Harris must begin to think. Here was a sketch for Mr. Harris to take home and study. It would acquaint him with his body. He must be aware of himself. He must be careful. Skeletons were strange, unwieldy things. M. Munigant's eyes glittered. Good day to Mr. Harris. Oh, and would he have a breadstick? He proffered a jar of long hard salty breadsticks to Harris, taking one himself to chew on, and saying that chewing breadsticks kept him in — ah — practice. See you soon, Mr. Harris. Mr. Harris went home.

    The next day was Sunday. Mr. Harris started the morning by feeling all sorts of new aches and pains in his body. He spent some time glancing at the funny papers and then looking with new interest at the little painting, anatomically perfect, of a skeleton M. Munigant had given him.

    His wife, Clarisse, startled him at dinner when she cracked her exquisitely thin knuckles, one by one, until he clapped his hands to his ears and cried, 'Don't do that!'

    The remainder of the day he quarantined himself in his room. Clarisse was seated at bridge in the living-room with three other ladies, laughing and conversing. Harris himself spent his time fingering and weighing the limbs of his body with growing curiosity. After an hour of this he suddenly stood up and called: 'Clarisse!'

    She had a way of dancing into any room, her body doing all sorts of soft, agreeable things to keep her feet from ever quite touching the nap of a rug. She excused herself from her friends and came to see him now, brightly. She found him re-seated in a far corner and she saw that he was staring at that anatomical sketch. 'Are you still brooding, darling?' she asked. 'Please don't.' She sat upon his knees.

    Her beauty could not distract him now in his absorption. He juggled her lightness, he touched her knee-cap, suspiciously. It seemed to move under her pale, glowing skin. 'Is it supposed to do that?' he asked, sucking in his breath.

    'Is what supposed to do what?' she laughed. 'You mean my knee-cap?'

    'Is it supposed to run around on top your knee that way?'

    She experimented. 'So it
does
,' she marvelled. 'Well, now, so it does. Icky.' She pondered. 'No. On the other hand — it doesn't. It's only an optical illusion. I think. The skin moves over the bone; not vice-versa. See?' she demonstrated.

    'I'm glad yours slithers, too,' he sighed. 'I was beginning to worry.'

    'About what?'

    He patted his ribs. 'My ribs don't go all the way down, they stop
here
. And I found some confounded ones that dangle in mid-air!'

    Beneath the curve of her small breasts, Clarisse clasped her hands.

    'Of course, silly, everybody's ribs stop at a given point. And those funny little short ones are floating ribs.'

    'I just hope they don't float around too much,' he said, making an uneasy joke. Now, he desired that his wife leave him, he had some important discovering to do with his own body and he didn't want her laughing at him.

    'I'll feel all right,' he said. 'Thanks for coming in, dear.'

    'Any time,' she said, kissing him, rubbing her small pink nose warm against his.

    'I'll be damned!' He touched his nose with his fingers, then hers. 'Did you ever realize that the nose bone only comes down so far and a lot of gristly tissue takes up from there on?'

    She wrinkled hers. 'So what?' And, dancing, she exited.

    He felt the sweat rise from the pools and hollows of his face, forming a salten tide to flow down his cheeks. Next on the agenda was his spinal cord and column. He examined it in the same manner as he operated the numerous push-buttons in his office, pushing them to summon the messenger boys. But, in these pushings of his spinal column, fears and terrors answered, rushed from a million doors in Mr. Harris's mind to confront and shake him. His spine felt awfully — bony. Like a fish, freshly eaten and skeletonized, on a china platter. He fingered the little rounded knobbins. 'My God.'

    His teeth began to chatter. 'God All-Mighty,' he thought, 'why haven't I realized it all these years? All these years I've gone around with a — SKELETON — inside me!' He saw his fingers blur before him, like motion films triply speeded in their quaking apprehension. 'How is it that we take ourselves so much for granted? How is it we never question our bodies and our being?'

    A skeleton. One of those jointed, snowy, hard things, one of those foul, dry, brittle, gouge-eyed, skull-faced, shake-fingered, rattling things that sway from neck-chains in abandoned webbed closets, one of those things found on the desert all long and scattered like dice!

    He stood upright, because he could not bear to remain seated. Inside me now, he grasped his stomach, his head, inside my head is a — skull. One of those curved carapaces which holds my brain like an electrical jelly, one of those cracked shells with the holes in front like two holes shot through it by a double-barrelled shot-gun! With its grottoes and caverns of bone, its revetments and placements for my flesh, my smelling, my seeing, my hearing, my thinking! A skull, encompassing my brain, allowing it exit through its brittle windows to see the outside world!

    He wanted to dash into the bridge party, upset it, a fox in a chickenyard, the cards fluttering all around like chicken feathers burst upwards in clouds! He stopped himself only with a violent, trembling effort. Now, now, man, control yourself. This is a revelation, take it for what it's worth, understand it, savour it. But a
SKELETON!
screamed his subconscious. I won't stand for it. It's vulgar, it's terrible, it's frightening. Skeletons are horrors; they clink and tinkle and rattle in old castles, hung from oaken beams, making long, indolently rustling pendulums on the wind. . .

    'Darling, will you come in and meet the ladies?' called his wife's sweet, clear voice.

    Mr. Harris stood up, His SKELETON was holding him up. This thing inside him, this invader, this horror, was supporting his arms, legs and head. It was like feeling someone just behind you who shouldn't be there. With every step he took he realized how dependent he was upon this other Thing.

    'Darling, I'll be with you in a moment,' he called weakly. To himself he said, 'Come on, now, brace up. You've got to go back to work tomorrow. And Friday you've got to make that trip to Phoenix. It's a long drive. Hundreds of miles. Got to be in shape for that trip or you won't get Mr. Creldon to put his money into your ceramics business. Chin up, now.'

    Five minutes later he stood among the ladies being introduced to Mrs. Withers, Mrs. Abblematt, and Miss Kirthy, all of whom had skeletons inside them but took it very calmly, because nature had carefully clothed the bare nudity of clavicle, tibia and femur with breasts, thighs, calves, with coiffure and eyebrow satanic, with bee-stung lips and — LORD! shouted Mr. Harris inwardly — when they talk or eat, part of their skeleton shows — their
teeth!
I never thought of that.

    'Excuse me,' he said, and ran from the room only in time to drop his lunch among the petunias over the garden balustrade.

    That night, seated on the bed as his wife undressed, he pared his toenails and fingernails scrupulously. These parts, too, were where his skeleton was shoving, indignantly growing out. He must have muttered something concerning this theory, because next thing he knew his wife, in negligee, slithered on the bed in animal cuddlesomeness, yawning, 'Oh, my darling, fingernails are
not
bone, they're only hardened skin-growths.'

    He threw the scissors away with relief. 'Glad to hear that. Feel better.' He looked at the ripe curves of her body, marvelling. 'I hope all people are made the same way.'

    'If you aren't the darndest hypochondriac I ever saw,' she said. She snuggled to him. 'Come on. What's wrong? Tell, mamma.'

    'Something inside me,' he said. 'Something — I ate.'

    The next morning and all afternoon at his down-town office, Mr. Harris found that the sizes, shapes and constructions of various bones in his body displeased him. At ten a.m. he asked to feel Mr. Smith's elbow one moment. Mr. Smith obliged, but scowled suspiciously. And after lunch Mr. Harris asked to touch Miss Laurel's shoulderblade and she immediately pushed herself back against him, purring like a kitten, shutting her eyes in the mistaken belief that he wished to examine a few other anatomical delicacies. 'Miss Laurel!' he snapped. 'Stop that!'

    Alone, he pondered his neuroses. The war just over, the pressure of his work, the uncertainty of the future, probably had much to do with his mental outlook. He wanted to leave the office, get into his own business, for himself. He had more than a little talent at artistic things, had dabbled in ceramics and sculpture. As soon as possible he'd get over into Arizona and borrow that money from Mr. Creldon. It would build him his kiln and set up his own shop. It was a worry. What a case he was. But it was a good thing he had contacted M. Munigant, who had seemed to be eager to understand and help him. He would fight it out with himself, not go back to either Munigant or Dr. Burleigh unless he was forced to. The alien feeling would pass. He sat staring into nothing.

    The alien feeling did not pass. It grew.

    On Tuesday and Wednesday it bothered him terrifically that his outer dermis, epidermis, hair and other appendages were of a high disorder, while the integumented skeleton of himself was a slick clean structure of efficient organization. Sometimes, in certain lights while his lips were drawn morosely downwards, weighted with melancholy, he imagined he saw his skull grinning at him behind the flesh.
It had its nerve, it did!