The Empire of Ice Cream (33 page)

“One moment,” said August as he scribbled madly. “You are saying that everything in existence is merely a product of the breakdown of light?”

“More or less,” said Larchcroft. “This theory led me to a deep enough understanding of my subject to perform some feats of illusion that caught the attention of the public. But after I had gone to university and learned the mathematical formulas that neatly boiled down into numbers my youthful, groping discoveries, it seemed I could go no further with the subject. I'd come up against a kind of impenetrable wall, blocking me from the quintessential secrets. What it came to, I realized, is that light communicated with us through the eyes, but the eyes were merely receptors, so it could tell us, lecture us, demand of us, but there was no recourse for dialogue. I could manipulate the processes of light to some degree, as it would allow me, but the cold, hard fact remained: my relationship with the mind of light would always remain limited.

“Then one night, during the months in which I was suffering a kind of depression from the realization of this limitation, after a late dinner of curried lamb, I took to my bed and had a vivid dream. I found myself attending a party in the one-room schoolhouse I attended when I was a child. There were about a dozen guests, including myself, and the teacher, who was no teacher I remembered but a very lovely young woman with golden hair and a peaceful countenance. All of the desks had been removed and there was only one table with a punch bowl on it. We conversed for I'm not sure how long. The strange thing was, no candles had been lit, and we stood in the dim shadows, able only to see by the moonlight coming in through the windows. Then someone noticed that the teacher was missing. An old fellow with white hair went to search for her, and he soon came upon her lying next to a window, bathed in moonbeam. He called to us to come quickly for it was evident she'd been murdered. There was blood all over, but this was weird blood with the consistency of string or thread, and it wrapped around her like a web.

“All present somehow came to the conclusion that I had killed her. I didn't remember doing it but felt very guilty. While the rest stood in awe, staring down at the odd condition of the body, I very quietly sidled away, one small step at a time. Upon reaching the side door of the schoolhouse, I silently let myself out, walked down the steps, and fled. I didn't run, but I walked quickly. Instead of heading for the road, I went in the other direction, behind the school, through the trees, toward the river. There was snow on the ground. It was chilly, and the night sky was brilliant with the full moon and thousands of stars. The silhouettes of the tree trunks and barren branches were so visually crisp. I felt great remorse as I moved toward the riverbank.

“Once at the river, I removed all of my clothing. I now found myself holding a very large, round wicker basket without a handle, its circumference wide enough to cover the area from my head to my waist. I stepped into the water of the river, which came to my upper thighs, expecting it to be frigid. It was not. Then I leaned forward onto the basket and let myself be taken by the flow of the river. I passed beautiful snow-covered scenery lit by the resplendent night sky above. This smooth journey seemed to go on for hours, and then I watched the sun come up before me, as if the river was heading directly into its fiery heart. The light from the sun washed over me and whispered that all would be well. I stood up and left the river, and thought to myself, ‘You've made it, Larchcroft, you're free.' Then I woke up.

“An odd dream, but no odder than most. The instant I opened my eyes, the thing I focused on was not its symbolic meaning. Instead I wondered, and this was the greatest revelation of my entire career as a lightsmith, ‘Where does the light in dreams come from?' Within an hour of pondering this question, it came to me that there must be two types of light in the universe, the outer light of suns and candles, and the inner light, originating from our own idiosyncratic minds. Eureka! Mr. Fell. There it was!”

August wrote madly for a time, trying to catch up with his subject's story. When he was done, he looked up at Larchcroft's face and said, “Excuse my ignorance, sir, but there
what
was?”

“Don't you see? I knew that for me to plumb the depths of the soul of light, I needed to somehow intermingle my inner light with the outer light. In order to, as I said earlier, ask the big questions. But how? That was the dilemma. As astonishing a creation as they are, eyes were no good for this effort, for they are strictly organs of reception. For a solid year, I researched this conundrum.

“Then one day while trying to rest my exhausted mind from the problem at hand, I flipped through a book of prints I'd purchased and never had time to peruse. There was one peculiar painting entitled
The Cure for Folly
. In this painting was a man sitting back upon a reclining chair, and standing behind him was what I took to be a physician. This physician seemed to be performing surgery, making a hole with a small instrument in the supine patient's forehead. A stream of blood was coursing down the patient's face, but despite this harrowing operation, he was completely wide-awake. It came to me eventually that this was a depiction of the ancient practice of trepanning.”

“Trepanning?” asked August. “Making a hole in someone's head?”

“That's the long and short of it,” said Larchcroft. “The practice goes back to the dawn of humanity. Its medical purpose is to alleviate pressure on the brain from either injury or disease. In occult circles though, in the rarified business of shamans, seers, visionaries, this same operation was performed with the design of opening a large direct conduit to the universe. Reports of these instances are rare, but I'd read a few by those who had undergone trepanning for these purposes. They attested to having experienced a continuous euphoria, an otherworldly energy, a deep, abiding confluence with all creation. As for myself, I didn't give a fig for euphoria. What I wanted was a way for my inner light to exit the cave of my cranium and join in conversation with the outer light of the universe.

“I made up my mind to undergo the surgery, and began searching about for a physician who could do it. In the meantime, I foresaw a problem. Once I had a hole in my head, how was I going to direct my inner light to flow outward? All of the testimony I'd read by patients of trepanning gave the impression that the aperture was a portal for the universe to
enter
. I needed some method of controlling my imagination. What I realized was that I needed to conceive of my messenger to the outside world in some symbolic sense, a figure for me to focus on and express my will through. So I sat down, and, with a modicum of grunting and a maximum of daydreaming, I impregnated my imagination with my desire.” Here, Larchcroft went silent.

August looked up, scanned the room, and then directed his gaze back to the head. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

Larchcroft shook his head. “It's just that you must assure me that you won't take offense at what I'm about to say.”

“Something about the nature of the messenger?” asked the young man.

“Well,” said the Man of Light, “my imagination gave birth to the concept of a young man, much like you—inquisitive, prepared to ask the big questions, toting a notebook made, like himself, from the substance of dreams.”

“I'm not offended by that,” said August. “It makes sense.”

“Yes, but I don't mean to imply that you are merely a messenger. You're a reporter, and proving to be a good one at that.”

“Thank you,” said August.

“That said, yes, my messenger was a young man much like you, and once he materialized, I began thinking about him constantly, so I would not forget him and I could call him forth at a moment's notice. I gave him a name, and then, over the course of many nights, trained myself to dream about him. Once I could insure his presence in my dreams, I worked on taking into sleep with me a command to give him. And so it was in my dreams that I'd see him, walking along a street, sitting at breakfast, lying in bed with a young woman, and I'd say in a low voice to him, ‘Take your notebook, go to the Master of Light, and ask him the questions you have written down. Receive his answers and commit them to the notebook. Then bring them back to me.' He would dutifully do as I'd instructed, passing old acquaintances of mine, blue poodles, snarling beasts of the night's devising, and all manner of dream images. Nothing would dissuade his progress until he'd come to a door, painted black. Try as he might, turning the knob, pushing and kicking with all he was worth, he could not open the door. This he repeated every night, and every night, without frustration, he'd come to the door and try to pass through.”

“There was no exit as of yet in your skull. Am I correct, Mr. Larchcroft?” asked August.

“Well put,” said the Man of Light. “Meanwhile, as I was training my messenger, I was given, by one of my many contacts, the name of a fellow who might perform a trepanning for purposes other than medical. There were surgeons close by to where I was living at the time who knew the procedure, but when I told them why I desired it, they refused to do the surgery, certain I'd lost my mind. The fellow in question was not a doctor at all but had battlefield experience and, as I was told, would perform just about any operation requested of him.”

“But what made him well-suited for your situation?” asked August.

“Nothing really, beyond the fact that he was down on his luck; an opium addict in need of ready cash. His experience having tended to the sick and dying in wartime inured him to the sight of carnage, left him with nerves of steel or such a lack of concern about the outcome that geysers of blood, gaping flesh wounds, and the ear-piercing screams of his patients never made him flinch. For all procedures, he'd offer the same anesthesia—a half bottle of Barcher's Yellow Gulley. Abortions and amputations for the frantic and destitute were his specialty.

“I met Frank Scatterill (an unfortunate name to be sure) on an overcast day in late autumn in the lobby of The Windsor Arms, a sort of house of prostitution/saloon/hotel. In describing him, the word that comes immediately to mind is
tired
. He appeared exhausted, his lids half-closed, his hands slightly trembling. Even his face sagged, adorned with a long, drooping mustache. With his sallow complexion and air of utter fatigue, he managed a yellow-toothed smile for me as I handed him the cash advance.

“He led me to a small third-floor flat, half of which he had rigged out as an operating den with a reclining barber's chair and a table full of instruments and candles and half-empty bottles of Barcher's. On the floor were old sheets, still bearing the dried telltale gore of his last operation. While I drank my half bottle of the Yellow Gulley, a piss concoction that never really dulled the pain but made me nauseous and tired, Scatterill explained the operation to me. He held up each of the tools he'd be using: the scalpel, for tissue incision, cutting and laying back the folds of forehead flesh; the trephine, like a corkscrew with a circular saw at the bottom; a Hey saw, which appeared a tiny hatchet with one serrated edge; a file for smoothing the edges of the opening; a bone brush for removing the skull dust.

“I asked him where the incision is usually made, and he pointed to a spot somewhat higher up on the forehead than I'd imagined, near the hairline. I told him I wanted it lower, directly at the center of my forehead in the indentation between the two ridges of brow. ‘Whatever you like, Captain,' he said in response. I also told him I wanted the edges of flesh cauterized so they would not grow back. I then took from my pocket the emerald you now see embedded in my forehead and instructed him to use it to stopper the hole once the entire operation had been completed—”

“Excuse me, Mr. Larchcroft, but the emerald—where did you come by that?” asked August.

“It was given to me in exchange for a lighting job I once did for a dead woman. A wealthy matriarch requested that I light her casket so that it appeared her cadaver's eyes were still moving back and forth during her wake. She wanted to give the impression to her grasping children that though she was gone she would always be watching them. The job was easily done with a couple of flame-powered paddle fans and the surreptitious placement of reflectors.” Larchcroft pursed his lips and squinted, trying to remember where he'd been in the larger story.

“The trepanning …” said August.

“Oh, yes, Scatterill shook like a dried corn stalk in a January gale,” said Larchcroft. “It was obvious this was not from any nervousness associated with the task but from some physical ailment as a result of his affair with the poppy. He was so long at screwing that trephine, I thought he was heading to China. I can't recall the pain, although I know there was some. My blood flowed freely, and the Yellow Gulley nearly left the gulley of my stomach on more than one occasion. I passed out near the end of the procedure and woke a few minutes later to the fetid smell of my own seared flesh. As I roused, Scatterill positioned a hand mirror in front of my face and I beheld my blood-drenched countenance now transformed with a third eye of brilliant green.

“Baston ferried me home in a hired cab, and I took to my bed, sleeping straight through for three days. This time was not fallow though, for while I slept I dreamed constantly of my messenger, following him through his days, his comings and goings on the street, drinking in the ale house, quietly jotting notes for his future interview, and wooing a beautiful young woman named May. Funny thing, this figure of May was the same as the schoolteacher whom I'd supposedly murdered in the earlier dream. ‘Soon, very soon,' I promised the messenger as he went about his mundane life.”

“May?” said August quietly, staring at the wall behind the floating head.

“A common enough name,” said Larchcroft. “And so the time finally came to intermingle my inner light with that of the universe.” Here, he cleared his throat and waited for the young reporter to snap out of the sudden trance.