Salamander (30 page)
Authors: Thomas Wharton
The maid returned to the house and woke him, told him in gasps what had befallen her mistress. So dull-witted was he that he did not even think to ask why his wife would be out of doors at night. He dressed in haste and rushed out into the rain, the maid running after him, babbling nonsense about river spirits. At dawn, after searching through the night, he found her at last, lying amid the reeds.
The ferryman fell silent, and gazed out into the black waves of the river.
– Her robe had come loose from her shoulder, he said at last, and when I lifted her in my arms I saw the mark of teeth, a bite no doubt inflicted during the heedless frenzy of passion.
The maid had fled, doubtless terrified of the punishment that would fall upon her for her part in all that had transpired. He never saw the woman again. And so he was left with only the memory of that livid bite mark as a clue, a mark so power-fully impressed into his mind that it was as if he himself had been bitten. A single character to lead him to the man he vowed to kill.
– But surely such a clue is not enough, Djinn could not help saying, given that one man’s teeth must be very like another’s.
– Except in this case, the ferryman said with a bitter smile. My quarry left a very distinctive bite mark, you see.
One of his eye teeth had been filed to an unusual double point, most likely to serve as a kind of seal, a sign of conquest on each woman he seduced. And it was only possible to see this
double point by two methods: close examination of the offending fang, or by the impression left by a bite.
– What could I do to catch the cowardly dog who destroyed my happiness? If I asked to see the teeth of every man who entered my shop, they would quite rightly consider me mad, and complain to the government, who would revoke my salt licence and probably behead me into the bargain.
He thought for a while of opening a tea house or a bakery, in which sort of establishment he might have the opportunity to examine bites left in cakes or crusts of stale bread. But could he always be certain whose teeth had left which bite in a discarded crust? That strategy was far too susceptible to error for his liking.
Guessing that the culprit must live near the river, he hit upon a different plan, one which seemed much more probable of success. First of all, he sold his prospering salt business and told all his friends and acquaintances that he was leaving to return to the far province of his ancestors. Then he vanished from the town and took up residence in his brother’s monastery in the mountains, where the monks were only too happy to conceal him in exchange for his generous donations. A year later, with a new name and his face disguised with a shock of wild hair, he established a ferry at the Ford of Amorous Longing.
– At first my hope was that
he
and his latest conquest would avail themselves of this boat some night, and I would have him for certain. But I have found that the nights are quiet on this stretch of the river. Suspiciously quiet.
He paused for a moment, as if listening to the frogs, the burble of the stream, the wind sighing in the trees.
– But day and night I greet every man who passes this way with an unholy grin and a pointless jest, he went on, in the hope of provoking a like smile, so that I may examine his teeth.
If that ploy fails, I tell indecent stories while I pole us across the river. My quarry is doubtless a man to laugh heartily at the weakness of the flesh and the humiliation of women. And those who take offence, well, what can they say? After all, if you don’t like the ferryman’s manners, you can’t very well tell him so halfway across the river, can you? The local magistrate has listened to numerous complaints about me, to be sure, but since he is nestled snugly in my still-capacious purse, I need not fear being removed from my post any day soon.
– And so I await my opportunity. Sooner or later this shadow, this wily demon in a man’s skin, will find it necessary to cross the river, perhaps on his way to another illicit conquest of the heart. Would he suspect that the rich and haughty merchant he so blithely cuckolded all those years ago would stoop to such an ignoble station in life? No, he will think what everyone who passes this way thinks, what you yourself no doubt thought when I first addressed you. This hairy wretch is insane, he will say to himself, and in order that I may hurry to a warm fire or to a good supper or to bed and the waiting arms of my lover, I will humour him. I will laugh at him while pretending to laugh with him, and then be on my way.
The boat bumped up against the wooden platform on the far bank.
– And that baring of white teeth, the ferryman said, driving his pole like a spear into the wet bank, will be his last false smile on this earth.
Djinn climbed unsteadily out of the boat and turned to the ferryman.
– What about all those men who never laugh?
– I am patient, the ferryman said. It may be that
he
has already passed here numerous times, and will again and again
before I wrench a grin out of him. After all, the wicked must travel more than the virtuous.
– Do women pass this way?
– Often, the ferryman said with a shrug at the obvious. Out of respect for both my wives I refrain from offending feminine delicacy …
The ferryman’s last words trailed off. His eyes opened wide, the pole slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor of the boat. And with the ferryman in that state, transfixed and speechless in the waning darkness, Djinn left him and went on his way.
He reached a mountainous region and came to Ching-te chen, the City of Porcelain, where the mandarin had his palace.
The narrow valley in which the city lay was clouded with the smoke of hundreds of kilns. As Djinn slowly made his way up along the main road, he witnessed the steps in the creation of an automaton. The manufacturing of each porcelain shell had been divided into a sequence of discrete operations, each of which took place in its own district, inhabited by labourers whose most common occupational hazard gave their city-within-a-city its name.
In the City of the Maimed they hacked clay and rock out of the mountainsides and pounded it into paste.
In the City of the Arthritic, artisans shaped the raw porcelain in moulds for the various sections of the automaton’s body.
The pieces were fired in red-hot kilns in the ash-choked City of the Blind.
In the City of the Hunchbacks they applied the delicate strokes and curlicues of paint and the final glaze.
Beyond the City of the Disgruntled, where the porcelain was packaged, labelled, and loaded aboard barges, Djinn eventually reached the palace, but in his guise as a mechanical messenger, he found it impossible to contrive a way into the library or the printing house. The various functionaries and guards who barred his way, discovering he carried no official documents, considered him defective and steered him back outside onto the palace grounds. Here he stayed for several days, in rain and sun, furtively snatching nuts and fallen fruit when no one was about.
Eventually his curiosity led him to a walled-off area of the grounds, which he found to his surprise to be an artificial garden. The earth in this enclosure was covered in tiles of polished malachite to create a bright green lawn that would never wither or go to seed. Trees of copper and brass had been erected, painted in life-like colours and hung with censers, so that if any members of the mandarin’s staff chanced to walk that way they would inhale sweet odours of jasmine, peach blossom, and honey. The flowers that lined the marble pathways were fashioned of delicate shards of jade, crystal, and amethyst. Ceramic birds perched on metallic tree boughs, and in the ponds of glass bronze goldfish flitted.
Djinn imagined that here he would be free of vigilant eyes, since no one would be needed to tend a landscape of artifice, but it was not long before he realized his mistake. Gardeners were everywhere, with brooms, brushes, nets, and tongs, roaming through the enclosure at all hours, making sure everything was kept polished, free from stain or blemish. He watched them at their work, as any dry leaves, twigs, insects, or nests of mice that happened to stray over or under the walls were swiftly hunted down and rooted out.
One of these gardeners appeared so suddenly that Djinn was nearly caught in the unautomaton-like act of relieving himself through the lower hatch of the porcelain suit.
– I don’t know how you ended up in this place, the gardener said to him, but you are certainly at home here. I’ll wind you up presently, but you might as well stay for now, while I rest.
The gardener glanced around furtively, then sat down heavily on a nearby bench and leaned his broom beside him.
– Since I dare not tell my secret to anyone whose ears could really hear me, the gardener sighed, I will have to confide in you, my mechanical friend.
Djinn held his breath and tried his best not to move.
– You see, I cannot let the world know what I have found here in the Garden of Heavenly Perfection.
… I was picking straw blown over the wall by the autumn winds, when I saw the crimson tongue of its place-marking ribbon poking up between two slabs of stone. The sight was partially hidden by a mimosa of artfully wrought opal. Under pretence of inspecting the base of the plant for stray wisps of straw, I knelt and levered up a tile with my trowel, exposing one angular corner of the intruder. With much effort I was able to dig the book free of the thick, fibrous roots anchoring it to the dark earth. I only had time for a quick glance at my find before concealing it in my tunic. The book’s cover was made of wood, its damp, heavy pages giving off a pungent odour of earth, rain, leaf rot. As I hurried back to my cell, I debated what I should do with my find. Cart it, with all the other chaff, to the bonfire
outside the garden wall? Or give it to the superintendent to pass on upward through the clerks and ministers to the mandarin, to add to his unread library? After a morning of indecision, I did neither and instead kept my discovery hidden.
In private moments I take up the volume and the rough, thorny binding hums in my hand like a beehive. As I turn the pages coniferous sap sticks to my fingers. In the rustle of its paper I hear the nocturnal stirring of owls. Letters become iridescent beetles that uncase their wings with a click and whirr into the air. This book is a wild tangle of words, a shadowy ravine through which unseen beasts prowl, rustling the pages as they pass.
In the middle of the book I found the story of an ancient hermit of the forest, and he too is reading by candlelight in the evening, and in the book he is reading there is described a still pool of water in the midst of aromatic night blossoms, where he imagines himself sitting at twilight, bending to cup his hands and drink, and when he looks at his reflection he sees staring back at him a youth of great beauty.
As I read, each page slowly turns yellow and sere and falls softly from the book to the tiled lawn. I hurriedly gather these fallen leaves and bury them secretly in the place where I first saw the book. I have been reading all through the summer, and now approaches the time of year when not even imperial decree may halt the inevitable. This is the season when the mandarin takes flight to his summer house far to the south, to escape the sight of grey skies and trees, even artificial trees, laden with snow. This is the season when we
gardeners must battle vigilantly against ice and sleet, against rust and rot.
I have no doubt that in the spring the book will be the first sign of green to emerge from winter’s white sleep, the pale, dog-eared corners of its pages shivering in the cool wind. During the rains I will come out with my umbrella to inspect the tender shoots, watch the snails crawl across their delicately veined surfaces, knowing that soon I will be reading it again, a book both familiar and entirely new.
I used to wonder how this book reached me and who authored it, but I soon grew weary of pondering these unimportant matters. I know only that the book’s leaves have come from another garden, a far-off, legendary garden as thin as paper, a garden weaving across thousands of miles like a serpentine wall that keeps no one out and nothing in. A garden I dream of every night in my narrow cell, and which I know to be real, if unapproachable. It is not inscribed on any chart, you cannot see it, but when you pass unsuspecting through its shimmering verdant curtain you will know, and remember. There will be an instant, the most fleeting of moments, when all your senses will tremble with infinite delight.
In the evenings, when I tuck the book away under my straw mattress and blow out the candle, I can see, through my cell window, the tiled roof of the mandarin’s palace above the artificial forest. And on certain wet and gusty nights I see a light appear in a high window, a light that burns until morning. And then I know that in his great canopied bed, under sheets of
the purest peach-blossom silk, the mandarin too has dreamt of this garden, and has woken in terror.
Having come to the end of his confession, the gardener rose from the bench and gently wound the key of the automaton. Djinn made a feint of shuddering to life. The gardener smiled wistfully and stepped up close to his earpiece.
– Take my secret with you, foreigner.
One evening on his return journey Djinn was climbing a steep, rocky path along the edge of a pine forest. Two men carrying heavy sacks appeared over the brow of the hill, headed in the opposite direction. As they passed him one of them reached out, halted him, and spoke in a furtive growl.
– Hey, you ridiculous smiling teapot, how long ago did you leave the last traveller’s rest house?
– Should we take him with us? the other man asked. He could carry these blasted sacks.
– Probably not a wise idea. If we were caught interfering with an imperial messenger we’d be in worse trouble than we would be for having stolen all this stuff.
– Well, he’s lucky, the first man said. A machine doesn’t have to worry about the terror that stalks this forest.
Djinn carried on with great trepidation. Night fell, the moon climbed into a clear, starry sky, and the wind rose. The tops of the pine trees along the path tossed and scraped against one another. The cold fogged the lenses of his eyeholes so that he could barely see the path in front of him. Suddenly a silvery black shadow slipped across the narrow frame of his vision.
