Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & (14 page)
Read Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & Online
Authors: Anna Tambour
Tags: #Fiction, #Short Stories (Single Author), #Literary Collections, #General
Then he tried a different tack altogether, with a biography—
The Secret Life of Plants
, so popular that the old Nottingham told Tim to get this fellow Attenborough to come to the valley for some tutoring. When he didn't arrive, even the wise old Nottingham could not understood why, and regretted the loss. Such a promising student.
Next, Tim tried some cross-cultural experiments. Aristophanes was enjoyed by some, so on to Gogol's
The Nose
. The medlars appreciated it after the Russian Giants explained some aspects of human strangenesses, but it was above the heads of the other fruits.
Midsummer Night's Dream
went down well with everyone, but it is a chestnut of an old crowd-pleaser. He next tried some contemporary, fast-paced American humour. No one liked it, including himself.
~
It is now five years later. Time enough for changes, but, since these changes involved humans and their strange habits of leaving important matters till "tomorrow", there was much abruptness and pain that is now collective memory.
It began with a little pain that Tim woke with one day in the orchard. The Royals immediately saw it, but it took the Nottinghams to nag him till he went to town to have it "checked out".
He came home, and then took off immediately again in his ramshackle car, on a long trip. He arrived home, very tired, a week later, but with a calm look on his face. The day after he arrived, without Tim having to have called for it, a general meeting was convened. When everyone was assembled, Tim announced that the next door farm—the one with the cattle—was going to be part of the community. The cattle would be gone by the end of the week, the next door farm no longer next door, but theirs, within five weeks. This would make the whole valley theirs.
Most importantly, the Frawleys would be coming. Tomorrow, Tim would give a lick-and-a-promise clean to "The Shack". He could do no more, but at least the Frawleys would have a shelter to move into, and later they could fix up the unloved folly to suit themselves.
"The Farm now belongs to the medlars," Tim announced, "as they are the wisest. But the Frawleys will be the caretakers, and will do your bidding as long as you rule best for all: the kangaroos, the eucalypts; the Frawleys, too. This is to last for perpetuity—as long as long—and I have arranged matters as well as I can, considering it involves humans."
The medlars were uncharacteristically solemn on receiving this news. The teller of epics delegated herself to give their thanks. All the trees who had known the Frawleys thought that Tim could not have done better.
"That boy, Bram?" they asked. "Is he still with them?"
"Not only that, but his wife—her name is Rachel—and their baby girl are coming, too," he answered, and thought, not the first time, that life would have been different if he had met a woman like Rachel.
"We have high hopes for Bram," said the thin Nottingham. "Then you'll love his wife," smiled Tim, as well as he can smile these days.
"What was Rachel's parents' name," asked a rather rude apple.
"How would Tim know?" the Smyra quince snapped back. "We'll find out when she comes."
~
It is now a week later, and the Frawleys have just arrived. They've brought all the tree family they had from Timespast Nursery, who Tim assured them would have a happy home at the Farm. He had said it with an odd grin, but the Frawleys thought he just meant that with the next door farm now going to be part of the whole, there would be more space to plant.
The Frawleys have their doubts about what they are getting into with this wildman and his millions bequest and his designation of the Farm as a reserve in perpetuity with strict forbiddance on killing any of the inhabitants.
Tim hasn't told the Frawleys about language. He knew that if he had spoken of these things in the Frawleys' shack in Victoria, they would have chosen their poverty over his insanity.
Instead, Tim told them to move into the house and then to meet him in the orchard that evening. His own belongings left in the house do not cramp the Frawleys because they consist almost entirely of books, to the delight of Stephen.
The sun throws long, late afternoon shadows from the bare trees. The human congregation has assembled at the orchard.
Tim has told everyone to be very quiet, and now he begins to explain. He speaks from the entrance of his Royals home, the most curious growth the Frawleys have ever seen.
At first, the Frawleys are afraid. This man is so sick that this must be hallucinations.
But there is something about his eyes that says he is more well than any of them.
The animals begin to appear.
Suddenly, the baby begins to laugh, and she reaches out her arms, not to her mother Rachel, but to the nearest tree.
- 5 -
It is now three months since the Frawleys moved in, and last night, it was the little green spiders who first sensed when Tim drifted off to death. The spiders' mourning was a terrible thing to watch. They rent their webs in grief. They hung from the limbs of the medlars just by their rappelling lines, vibrating, vibrating. No one had guessed the depths of the spiders' emotions. But then, no one else had believed in Tim as deeply from the very first. The medlars were just behind the spiders in their knowing, and the donkeys stopped their grazing, and set up a thunderous bray. The persimmons took the news gravely and silently, the
fenouillet gris
uttered a piercing cry; and all the other trees, in their own way; and all the other creatures, in their own ways, felt their own loss. The humans were by this time awake; and walked as one, down to the orchard, knowing the news without needing to have it spelled out further.
A heavy nightdew fell, and as the drops bent the browned winter tips of the grasses, the air reverberated with the sound of sadness. The
plop, plop
of tears falling from the eyes of the fruit bats—as loud as rain.
The wake began at dawn. Such a wake the world has never witnessed. All the creatures—animal and vegetable, human and otherwise—cried until—until they laughed. All the medlars worked so hard turning salt into sugar that they will need an extra-long rest period this year, just to recover.
~
For the humans, the learning has taken time. It was difficult for all, and oddly enough—for Gwyneth, the most difficult, as she had spent her whole life telling trees what to do and doing things to them—not listening to them at all. But eventually, all of Frawleys learned. Rachel is, indeed, the most fluent. She first met Bram because of her parents, who were the Frawleys' first clients.
Bram was never a reader but learnt technique from his mother and his own obsessive experimentation. He is superb as a doctor, possessing skills that the untutored Tim Thornbourne never had. The trees keep him busy dressing their windwounds with his soothing medicaments.
And Bram has the best memory for the stories told. This is good, because his father who reads five languages and was the scholar of the family, can understand everything the trees say, but is so poor at communicating that he feels like a nincompoop, even compared to a sapling. The human babies, each one as they come, are favourites of all the trees, and grow up in a creche of rivalrous care between tree and animal, learning early what a kangaroo's pouch feels like from the inside.
~
The tree family now extends to the far side of the valley, new residents voted in by old. The pruners and grafting knives are now only used when requested by the residents.
Of course, no residents are sold.
Shortly after Tim died and as soon as the medlars felt they could without seeming disrespectful of his name, they brought up a subject that they had avoided during his life because he was not social enough with his fellow man to be able to cope with it. Fire.
The medlars, as is their way, think much more deeply and further in advance than we, the smooth skinned two-trunks, are used to. They had known that as far as people are concerned, Tim had done his best, and the Frawleys would, too. But nature is a different story. And nature in the form of Fire worries them the most.
"We need to make children in case of disaster. Other cities, other places," they said when all the Frawleys had assembled.
"What are your parents' names, Rachel?" the rude apple asked again.
"The Crittendens," she said.
The medlars looked at each other in the way trees always have, without people noticing.
"They'll understand better than you've been giving them credit for," said the rather quiet Dutch. "Your father, especially. Summon him."
It took a remarkably short time, considering, for a list to be drawn up, of people whom the medlars thought had the capacity to listen and to hear. The niche was a subclass of the few true gourmets who had been the clients of the Frawleys back at Timespast. The Crittendens had driven from a ridiculous distance to sample the fruits of the Frawleys. They had bought medlars. They had bought apples of more types than populated the valley now. And they lavished the trees with love.
"I'll invite them next week," Rachel promised.
Then there was Stephano watsisname, the epic-telling Royal remembered.
"The one who sat in his grandfather's medlar tree?"
"The very one."
"And ..."
It wasn't a long list, but it was a good list. From it, the medlars were sure, new cities would spring up in different valleys, different continents. A fire could ravage the valley, but never raze what had grown.
~
All of the Frawleys neglect the mansion on the hill shockingly these days. There is much laughter in the city in the valley. But also a schooling like nowhere else on earth. Much of Stephen's time is spent working on the tome that Tim began—a book that will make the RHS
Encyclopedia
look like a skinny paperback. Its title will be
The Wit and Wisdom of the Medlar
.
The book, by popular demand, will be dedicated to Tim Thornbourne, and the dedication is a long, funny story about Tim, written by the tall, skinny Nottingham with the name that no two-trunk can yet properly pronounce.
Tonight, though, something else hovers in the valley. An all too-familiar smell floats in the air—the gusty hot air. The late day's sun is red, announcing the blooming of fire, over the hills to the west.
There is confidence and fear and bravery and cowardice here, just as in the rest of the world. A flurry of burnt leaves carried from afar falls upon the medlars' open blossoms.
Catechismic Chaos
Did nature in creation spurt with math as part of One,
or are numbers a religion making all obey to Sum?
Whatever be the truth of it I never feel less grave,
Than when Nature to The Numbers, refuses to behave.
Dr. Babiram's Potentials
Two is S. Three is orange plastic anything. Four, the smell of burnt toast. Five, just five. Six, red, the color. Seven, a tiger lily. Eight and nine, just ordinary ordinals. One is something. I have a feeling about one, but it eludes me. Everything else is just your kind of substitution for so many oranges taken away, added to, etc. Except for the odd exception, like the salty taste of forty-three, the sick in the stomach lurch of one hundred and two.
It's not a code, if that's what you're thinking. Not a code any more than roses are. Or I wouldn't be here, any more than Albee would be, over there sitting sideways in that brown swivel chair.
Dr. Babiram asked me today whether I ever missed "the outside," but when I answered, "Have you?" he did his jumping eyebrow thing.
"Please answer the question."
I looked him in the forehead. He looked away first.
The door eventually slammed as much as Dr. Babiram could make it slam, which wasn't much because of the pneumatic glider on the top. But the crisp click of the hasp was a fraction of a second earlier than the thud of the full-metal door.
Albee screamed like a pig seeing a knife. He had my attention, so he smiled in my direction, then bent his head again and closed his eyes, his toes busy as always, syncopating. I call it syncopating. Babiram calls it algorithming. I call it syncopating because those toes do move. I tried to figure out the music but I can't. Once, I ripped five holes in two pieces of paper, and shoved his toes through the holes. When he moved them, I heard each movement. I expected music but a rat in the attic scratches a better song. After a few minutes, Albee tore off the paper. I like music, and do miss it. With Albee, there are no distractions allowed.
His monitor is housed in Block C. He doesn't need to see it, and it distracted him when he did. Distract might not be the word for it. The technical term is anaphylactic shock, but that's supposed to only happen with, say, peanuts. For Albee, being in the presence of feedback monitors produces instant rash, bloated features, and rapid suffocation.
So the usual imaging equipment MRI, fMRI, MEG, SQUIDS, PET and the electroencephalogram; the tests for change in blood pressure, hormone level, skin response, respiration rate, and electromyograms, all had to be scrapped unless there was some way that the data could be collected without Albee's interaction, even if only through his autonomic nervous system. And because Albee acts more autonomic than let's-do-it, cognitive/behavior scales had to be amended, because Albee doesn't speak or react or do anything on a daily basis, regardless of how actively his toes are dancing about. He doesn't open his eyes except for a moment now and then, and his verbals are that scream. Instead, he tolerates an electrocap for a couple of hours a day, has debraded eyelids with the translucency of watered milk; insists on wearing during the day, a pair of old boots that is cut off to leave his bare toes hanging out; and sleeps in a shortened bed with no covers in our tropically heated room. And, like all of us Potentials, Albee's skull is modulated, his face parafaced for the irregular biops imperative to the Center's funding needs.
In case you're thinking of trying to get in, don't. You can't recommend yourself. You have to be headhunted. And for that, don't try to put yourself in the way of the hunters. You will never find them. The whole point of the Center is Discovery. If you discover yourself, there is no Success in that. Dissertants trust their own proposals only, trust their own networks only, as there are so many false leads that it is not worth screening potential Potentials who submit themselves. So the best Potentials come from agents used by the most successful Dissertants, especially serial Dissertants like Dr. Babiram. And he is the high profile type of Dissertant who brings in the big grants. It is not considered odd that Babiram jobs headhunting out. He doesn't have the time to roam the world looking. Experts for experts.
I once tried to find out what Albee did in his past life, without success. I think that he grew up on a farm, but it may have been a metal scrapyard. That scream could be either pig or steel, when I think about it. I think he watches what is going on. He can hardly not see. But he has never spoken to me, and the only way I think these things about him are deductions.
I did grow up on a farm. I remember how much my brothers and sisters wanted to get away. How good they were at counting how many chickens had died that day when Gene 'forgot' to top up the chickens' water, because the air was so hot that the metal faucet burnt his hand to turn it on. When they got to one hundred and two, I knew how many they had. The vomit many. When Dad asked me how many and I doubled over and gagged, he was so understanding. "You gotta get used to it, Jennifer. It's life and death." He stroked my golden braids. "Now how many? You were doing the counting when Gene was throwing them on the compost pile."
I straightened up to answer him, but bent again as the morning's scrambled eggs ejected from my mouth, spattering yellow spray onto his dusty boots. He smacked me across the head. "Stop being silly, girl. Now how many?"
"Sick many," I whispered as I ducked his horny hand.
I ran away from home as soon as my face looked good enough for me to hitch. I don't know how old I was, but I had breasts by then.
My life at work was not too good. Wherever you work, you have to add up things, and they don't add up to me same as they do to you. One was always the root of the problem. Like "I'll have a hamburger."
"One hamburger?"
"One. You think anyone else is with me?"
There would be sniggering and then anger. "Two hamburgers," and I got fired for serving some guy burnt toast, though it was only a little soiled from the garbage bin. Where else was I going to get it if I couldn't be the cook myself?
I tried all kinds of jobs but even though I look kind of cute people say, this number thing always gets in the way. The constant transmutation of numbers by you in your daily life is something that doesn't come natural to me, and makes me feel dirty for always lying, saying they are something they are not. If you can't be honest about the red of six, what can you be honest about. Not much, I was thinking as I was fired without pay yet again.
But Mr. Docent held open the door, gave me a lift, and when we got here, explained the deal. I don't have to wait tables that I can't do, count one of anything which gives me a headache of the worst sort, or do anything at all. Just tell them all when I know that there are more numbers that people are lying about. The people here think that if they know that, then they will be cracking the code of numbers that surrounds us. I hope they do.
Because Chaos cannot be allowed to rule. That is the secret message that I found under my pillow one day.
Chaos cannot be allowed to rule.
I couldn't tell Mr. Docent what I thought of Chaos and how it rules our lives, but when I got this note, I ate it. I hope for another message every day. Dr. Babiram hasn't asked me about Chaos ruling, any more than he would ask me if I objected to the sun coming up.
Even I learned the catechism perfectly,
Chaos rules the universe in all equations.
The title, then the equation. Like all our lessons. The title, then the equation.
My sister Cindy's cross-stitched Chaos equation probably still hangs near the family photos in the living room back home, though it was from a kit. "Your stitches are so neat, you should enter it in the State Fair," my mother said. My mother was right. Cindy's best friend Deb entered hers, and won, and her stitches weren't half as neat as Cindy's.
At school in City studies, I dutifully learned the City Definition equation, S
H
(t + 1) = F
t
[S
H
(t),
Su(H)
(t),S
A
(t),E(t)], and so on. As we live far from any city, it didn't matter what it meant. We just learned it. But in Human Studies, maybe because us country folks know more about natural life than they do in the city, Mrs. Ogden told us not to worry that the Krebs Cycle equation doesn't work. "It sounds so beautiful, children, doesn't it?" And another lie was learned, as equation after equation piled up in our brains, like flake after flake of snow.
Outside, the blizzard would be piling up these flakes, while inside we'd be learning our equations, burning these equations into our brains like salt on ice. Business studies, human studies, city studies, biology. Chaos. Chaos rules the world. Equation number 1, and number 256 in a much more complex form. School finished for the day. Three more years to go. I learned and I didn't learn. I was kept after school so much that my father started to complain that if I couldn't be good at school, I might as well come home and do something useful, like cleaning out pig troughs.
My brother Gene needled me one day. "What in heck do you expect to do in life?" We stopped what we were doing so I could face him. Steam rose from his mouth.
"Hey, you hate equations? How'd you expect to make sense out of the world, in these troubled times?"
In these troubled times.
That's what the broadcasts always said. That's what everyone always said.
In these troubled times.
We were both sweating at the time, though snowflakes stung our eyes, the long-haired cattle had their backs to the blizzard, and it was thirty below, barometer falling fast.
"Does it help you shovel snow?" I spat.
He straightened for a moment. "Yeah, it does."
The path from the barn to the house had to be navigable, though it meant wading through this rising tide of white.
"It comforts me. Life is a pattern." he said. "It's there whether I break my back or not."
"Like chaos?" I asked.
"Ah, geez," He threw a shovelful my way. "Not that again."
He held himself back, but it mustn't be easy having a retard in your family, who sasses you about what she just can't get.
"We can't keep you here when you're grown up, you know," he said the obvious. I wasn't going to be a farmer, so there wouldn't be room. I knew but he didn't have to say it.
~
I don't have anything against Gene. He's a good man now, and a good farmer. I'm glad in a way that he doesn't know what has happened to me because it doesn't say anything good about life that he's building up his chances for a broken back while I'm living the good life as a precious retard. Sometimes I wonder if there's an equation for that.
So I live in this room with Albee, the deal with Albee being that I take physical care of him, like poke him till I can get him to concentrate long enough on food to eat a meal. Take him every three hours to our toilet whether he wants to or not. Put him to bed, wake him up, report anything that I think maybe won't show up in the audio/visuals. We walk, Albee and I, for an hour each day in a big room with a smooth wood floor. There is nothing there to distract. We walk around and around, and then we walk back to our room.
And in the meantime, I do my own thing. I have a touchscreen handpiece loaded with a full library. I can keep notes on the piece, and I can mindroam. I have found three more numbers since I got here, all from my immediate environment. I think I might be getting close to One.
Dr. Babiram originally thought that it was coincidence—the three being so much a part of my immediacy. But he now seems to be wavering. Today when he entered, he entered backwards, pulling a trolley. On it was an antfarm, and a bottle of wine and a corkscrew, a collection of small, rubber-stoppered bottles with liquids "that you must explore. Don't taste" he warned.
I think he's trying to stimulate, but he is pitiful. The stimulating is that note. It churns in my guts. "Chaos cannot be allowed to rule."
The ants are shoveling, shoveling. Their pathways clean and naked to my gaze. They farm so neatly in their calm society. The dirt behaves itself.
They stimulate as much as going home would, watching Gene, or listening to his children chanting homework. The same homework we had, preparing them, as it did us, "for a life of certainty in a world of uncertainty."
Nice try with the wine, but I don't need that. Nor the other stimulants that he's offered me, or that they've tried in various surreptitious ways. I don't like stimulants, but now that he's planted a thought ...
Albee. What about Albee?
~
It's night now, though our lights are on as usual. The room is just as unshadowed as in the day. The audiovisual in our sleeping/living room is on as usual.
I know the time because they put a clock in, to help me structure Albee's toiletings. It's now middle of the night, and time for Albee to go to the toilet.
"Albee," I shake. He screams. He smiles. The usual thing. I shove him into the bathroom. Sit him on the toilet. He wees into it and smiles at me. "Good boy," I whisper. "Albee!" I yell. "Not again."
I turn the taps on for the bathtub. Turn on the water for the sink.
Open the window above the toilet and pull myself up. "Albee," I whisper. And I put my finger to my lips and hope he knows what that means. I know he doesn't, but as this is going to be confusing, he will probably not want to do his happy scream anyway.
"Come," I whisper.
Albee does. He pulls himself up in some exaggerated quietness. His feet are naked, his toes gripping the cold concrete. We are stuck, the two of us, in this transomed window, and I have to drop out first. I hold out my arms and he drops out, too. He's caught his scalp on something sharp. I wipe the blood out of his eye, but he doesn't seem to notice. He looks frightened but trusting. I take his hand.
"Can you run?" I ask.
He doesn't reply. I run, pulling him. I have only my room slippers on, as we haven't been outside since we arrived.
Outdoors for the first time in years, I held Albee close. Who knew when Albee had last touched grass. I listened for people, but I could only hear water splashing into the tub. Out here, clouds threw shadows on the lawn. I couldn't see individual grass blades. The leaves on the trees ahead looked comfortingly darkening, but soft. Everything looked flannel. Nothing I had seen in years had been more than a few feet away. The world was fuzzier than I remembered.
