The Kimota Anthology (32 page)

It was like piercing a raw egg and letting all the white run out, the way that liquid slime dribbled, then flowed through the hole and, down the sill, along the wall, and onto the salesman’s shoes. He screeched in terror as it crawled up his trouser legs, out through his pockets, up his chest and finally covering him from head to foot. At that moment I think he started speaking in tongues... anyway I couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying as I was peeping through the kitchen door by this time.

And then I noticed Colin. He stood there, roaring at it all. He looked a bit deranged actually, and when the salesman and the jelly-thing started to sink through the carpet and the floor I thought he was going to wet himself.

Then there was only a small patch of it left on the floor. Colin called me, still laughing. “It’s okay, Art, it’s gone - and it’s taken that nutter with it. My God, they won’t believe me down at the p-
aarrrggghhhh
!!!!!!!!!!!”

He must have been standing too close to it. The next thing I knew he’d gone through the floor as well.

And that’s about it, really. People keep asking where Colin is, and I tell them I don’t know. I called the window people, told them their salesman hadn’t turned up and the window was cracked. They were very apologetic and replaced it free of charge. I wonder if there’s any windows where Mr. Savage is now...

[Originally published in Kimota 13, Autumn 2000]

WAR STORY

by Caroline Dunford

“Dits-moi la reve encore une fois.”

Her brown eyes are wide with fright, still rimmed with the dark marks of insomnia. I repeat my question haltingly in bad schoolboy French and wonder what this young woman makes of it all. She has a dream that will not go away, which is ‘a nonsense’; she doesn’t believe in such things. I have to ask her to go slowly, her speech becomes increasingly slurred as her fear mounts.

“I am walking along a road. It is dark. I think it is near the cottage, but it looks a little different. I am tired. I have been working hard and I’m afraid; it is bad to be out so late. Then ahead of me on the road I see a group of men. At first I think it is soldiers and I am terrified. But then I recognise it is only Gustav and his men. I walk up to Gustav to greet him. Then as I look into his eyes I know that he means to kill me and I do not know why.” She is shaking with fear.

“And that’s it? That’s all there is to this amazing nightmare?” Peter desperately does not want to believe. His outburst in English frightens Marie. I send her away.

“You’re just going to let her go?”

I sink down into one of the pair of overstuffed chintz armchairs by the hearth. Peter is striding up and down in front of the hearth. Finally his emotions are too full for him to hold and his annoyance erupts in the ritual banging of his pipe, this time off the mantelpiece, sending a shower of glowing sparks down into the fire.

“You’re not going to ask her anything else?”

Peter never fails me. The tension flows away. I smile. “One minute you tell me this is all nonsense and the next you want to conduct the investigation yourself.”

“I could certainly do it a damn sight better than you.”

“Really and what would you do?”

“Ask the girl more questions. Who she is? Who’s Gustav? When is it? A hundred and one things.”

“She doesn’t know any more. I have tried.”

“Well, then let me try.”

I sigh and rub my hands across my stinging eyes. The bridge of my nose is sore from sunburn. “Peter, I’m glad of your company, but this situation is outside both our areas of expertise. Besides I think I know who Gustav is.”

He flops angrily into the opposite chair and fixes me with his pale blue eyes. “Who?”

“The gardener. Well, actually he owns the cottage.”

“How convenient.”

His tone makes me wince, but now I’ve started I see no choice but to tell him all. I know it sounds ridiculous. Perhaps I am hoping Peter’s laughter will shatter this dark, damn illusion. “This is no haunting, Peter, this is an attempt at possession and we are only at the beginning.” I feel the cold prickle of goose-bumps across my skin, a tense chilling sensation.

Peter doesn’t laugh. Our eyes meet.

“I think you had better start at the beginning,” he says very softly.

Peter and I work at the same university. This summer I am over here writing a book; Peter is travelling, stopping at many of the better known vineyards. he arrived, at my invitation, to add some much needed cynicism to this extra-ordinary situation.

“Peter, two weeks ago I wouldn’t have believed any of it either.” It’s a long story that takes us well into the twilight hours, with many questions and cross-examinings on Peter’s part.

It revolves around Marie Chantrelle, a first year student at one of the higher education institutions that litter Paris, during Les Grande Vacances she acts as a hostess to holiday cottages for the British. This rather glorious title translates, roughly, as cleaner, dogsbody and even occasionally cook. Marie at once dazzled me with her life, her joie do vivre, and if she had been a little older or I a little younger, I would, probably, have tried to improve my French, considerably.

But by the end of my first week here I had seen a dramatic change come over the girl. She was nervous, always jumping at shadows. Previously she had been eager to chat, drink my coffee and bicycle slowly home in the fading light. Now she was in and out of the house in two hours. When it became obvious she was also dropping weight by the pound, I cornered her in this room and out came the story of the dream.

By profession I am a psychologist, my book is on some of the lesser understood symptoms of schizophrenia. Naturally I was eager to help the girl.

Peter finds my chivalry amusing. “Your avuncular feelings...” he murmurs.

“Actually her brown eyes. I invited her for some sessions. I suppose at the back of my mind was the unchivalrous thought that the least I would get would be a couple of extra chapters for my book. But this, this dream of hers goes beyond all imaginations... I have come to truly believe that someone is trying to communicate through her.”

“So we come to the conveniently named gardener-owner.”

“I don’t believe she even knows his name, Peter. Marie works for the agency that Gustav assigned his cottage to. He only comes round here occasionally. There are some rare plants in his garden that he trusts to no-one.”

“So when do we meet the illusive Gustav?”

I check my watch. “Any moment now. I invited him round for a drink, tonight, while Marie was still here.”

“What’s my role in all this?”

“You’re my witness, Peter.”

Gustav is old, grey and bent; a wisp of a man inside the shabby, bright clothes of the region.

Ensconced in one of the armchairs I expect him to crumple to dust at any moment. His voice is as thin as ice on a half frozen river, but his English is surprisingly good. It seems that he was involved with the Resistance during the war. Although he is not forthcoming about his role, Peter and I soon begin to understand that he was a key man in this area. I am about to involve a war hero in my silly imaginings. If I am to make a fool of myself I want to get it over with quickly. I call Marie in, ignoring Peter’s disapproving frown.

At once there is tension in the room. Marie stares at Gustav, puzzled, and the old man jerks upright in his chair, his hand shoots up to his left breast, then drops. 

Almost, he crosses himself; the room seems colder to me.

I explain in a bright, helpful voice about Marie’s dream, about the possibility of it being tied into local history, a half forgotten tale told to a child, surfacing in young adulthood. Marie’s gentle brown eyes watch Gustav as a barnyard cat watches a cornered mouse. I ask her to tell Gustav the dream; I give him no option to leave. She sits opposite him on a hard backed chair Peter places for her, she is suddenly intent, desperate to tell the dream she previously hid from the world so carefully.

She speaks quickly and in French. I cannot understand, but I watch Gustav’s face and the horror that gradually takes hold of him. He puts up a hand to halt the rapid flow of words, but Marie only speaks louder and faster, ending on a sob. Gustav tries to rise to his feet, but he is shaking too much. Peter is at his side in an instant, brandy in hand.

It is some time before the old man can speak.

“It was a long time ago, during the war. The Germans were looking for some airmen they believed were shot down nearby. They interrogated many people, but no-one seemed to know anything, so they decided to make an example of one family.” Gustav dropped his head into shadow, “I need not go into details. You may guess that that family is no more. I was in love with the daughter of the house; she was also called Marie.” He nods at the girl. “And when it was over they called for me and my men. We were the grave-diggers for the region. Some called us collaborators.”

“It was a cold hard night and it took us far longer than we expected to chip up the graves. When it was over, most of the men went down to the cafe-tabac to drown the memory. Pierre, Lou and I walked home alone. Walking under the trees, which stood like dark sentries of death all around us, I felt bitterness grow with every step. Each stride it surged through me and each time I thought I could take no more, but the tide continued to rise. And we saw them...

“Two soldiers around a campfire, I do not know what they were doing there. It was so unexpected, a gift from the gods. Their motorbikes and guns were leaning against a tree. They were drinking and laughing; perhaps they had arranged to meet local girls.

“But by then my rage was so strong and Pierre and Lou were with me. We rushed them and beat them to death with nothing but our shovels. At every blow I thought, this is for Marie.”

Gustav took another sip of brandy. Marie had not taken her eyes from his face. “Then?” she hissed, and I jumped. I did not think her English was good enough to understand the story. 

“Then,” he said, “then we were afraid of what we had done, at what reprisals it might bring. So we hid our crime, we hid it well. We counted on the soldiers being off duty, perhaps even disobeying orders. That should have been the end of it, but walking home we met the local school teacher... remember we were afraid. We did not want anyone to know we had been near... even though we had hidden the bodies... and he wasn’t a local man... there was nothing else we could think of to do... I am sorry. It was after this I joined the Resistance.”

“You killed him,” said Peter quietly.

There were tears in Gustav’s eyes. “The worst of it was the look on his face. He never knew why...”

And then the door opens. Standing there is a man, youngish with round gold spectacles. He nods to Gustav. Marie faints. I run for the door. There is no-one in the hall and when I rush to the front door, all I see are fields and trees, Gustav’s dark sentries of death.

[Originally published in Kimota 4, Summer 1996]

A TOTALLY ORDINARY YOUNG WOMAN

by Hugh Cook

Her name was Valencia Cambridge. She
was
a perfectly ordinary young woman, apart from her name. (She really wished her parents had called her Mabel.) She was 14 years old when she got on the bus. The bus was a red bus. It was travelling in London, England, on a route which took it past three post offices, a police station, and a safe house for the Dutch secret service.

His name was Ted. Ted Blavern. He was carrying a pair of scissors when he got on the bus. Big scissors. Black. Old. They had once belonged to his grandmother. But his grandmother was dead now. He was 32 years old when he got on the bus.

He looked for the video camera. But he didn’t see one. No matter. He saw the girl, and he walked up to her, and he did what he had to do.

Her name was Valencia Cambridge. She was 26 years old. She worked in the office. She made coffee. And she did other things, as well.

“Your photocopying is ready,” she said. “Come and get it.”

But he was still dabbing at the stain on his tie.

His name was - -

He had forgotten his name. His head was still jangling with the chemical inputs of the night before. He knew which planet he was on, however, and he knew that there was a stain on his tie. Tomato sauce? And it was a silk tie! The label: Lanvin. The city of provenance: Paris. Should have shot that waiter.

Even though he had forgotten his name, he still remembered the waiter.

“Come here,” said Valencia, again. “Or I’ll cut off your tie.” Then added, “Someone did that to me once.”

“Really?” he said. “You were wearing a tie? When was this?”

“Oh, when I was a kid,” she said. “It was in England. It was part of my school uniform. The tie, I mean. I was on the bus, see. And ... this man came along with a pair of scissors.”

“And cut off your tie. What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything. You don’t argue with someone with a pair of scissors.”

“So what did your mother say?”

“I didn’t tell her. She would have... I had to get a new tie.”

“Ah,” he said.

His name is Ted. He is an artist: a failed artist. His bad move came when he missed the bus show. Clothes being cut open, the actresses screaming, the unsuspecting members of the travelling public frozen into shocked immobility. The video tapes were later sold to Tate Britain for half a million - - it was the big breakthrough for the Group. One in which he, of course, had no part.

“I got on a different bus.”

He still tells people that story, sometimes. Too often, in fact. This is one of the reasons why he has no friends, except the mad old woman who feeds stray cats and the guy from Brazil who steals umbrellas for a living.

He does not know Ted Blavern. He has never heard of him. He does not even know his own name. He thinks, for some reason, that it might be McDonald. But then he remembers that McDonald -- or, more exactly, McDonald’s -- is the name of a hamburger chain. He imagines that he might experience legal problems if he tried to call himself McDonald.

Then he bumps his knee against the photocopier.

The pain helps.

Now he knows what that stain is. The stain on his tie. It is blood. At the same time, he remembers his name. He is Egon Paplin, and he is an assassin in the service of the Dutch secret service.

(Most people do not know that the Dutch have a secret service, far less assassins. The Dutch are not like the Americans. They do not advertise, and they know how to keep their mouths shut. They are very serious people.)

Her name is Valencia Cambridge. She is a totally ordinary young woman. And then she opens the lid and this weirdness comes out.

“I like marmalade in my tea,” she says.

Nobody believes her, but it’s true. People are stranger than you think.

Now, this tie... no, it’s not going to come out. Okay. Get the silencer, put on the ski mask, walk in, pop. Do it tonight. These waiters... someone needs to make a stand.

[Originally published in Kimota 15, Autumn 2001