The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (57 page)

In the midst of this he
completed, but then put aside, a very personal novel about loss and love.
Le Château des Carpathes (The Castle of the Carpathians)
is
usually dismissed as an over sentimental gothic romance. Set in Translyvania
(and written several years before Bram Stoker completed
Dracula),
it
tells of strange events happening at the eponymous castle once owned by the
Barons de Gortz but long believed to have been abandoned. The villagers suspect
that the manifestations are supernatural but two more pragmatic locals set out
for the castle to discover the truth. We eventually learn that the Baron de
Gortz had fallen in love with the voice of a great singer, La Stilla, who had
died.

The scientist, Orfanik,
had invented a recording device that captured La Stilla’s voice and, using her
portrait, de Gortz arranges for Orfanik, to project the vision and sound of La
Stilla throughout the castle, where de Gortz retreats to be alone with his
memories. Biographers believe that the novel is a projection of Verne’s own
views at this time as his friends and loved ones died. In the following story
Tim Lebbon captures that mood admirably as he explores the further work of
Orfanik.

In the beginning, I
turned away.

I’m not sure why. I’m
normally a helpful person, compassionate, and the sight of a man in such a
state would usually urge me to aid him as much as I could. He was injured,
though still alive; the twitch of an eyelid, a foot moving in circles as if
dreaming a dance. Before I realized what I was doing I was back on the
pavement, seven steps and a lifetime of guilt separating me from the prone figure.

Perhaps it was the shock
of what I had seen. Walking along the canal the last thing I expected to come
across was someone lying across the towpath, apparently bleeding to death.
Maybe it was the sight of flies buzzing around him. Or perhaps subconsciously I
had already realized the danger. He exuded strangeness like the warmth of a
dying breath. I must have picked up on that long before my morals kicked in.

Even then I did not
return straight away. I looked around for help, but there was none to be had. The
countryside was quiet, its solitude broken only by the bleating of new-born
lambs and the mournful cries of a single buzzard circling high overhead. I
wondered where its mate had gone, and whether it regarded this man as a
possible source of carrion.

Standing at the top of
the steps leading to the towpath, I was suddenly certain that the man would be
gone. When I skirted the wild undergrowth and reached the level of the canal
once more there would be nothing there; no body, no blood, no promise of pain.
I would be left with the fact of
my hallucination, but I would
rather live with that than be marked by this stranger’s blood and problems. And
then there was that guilt again, flicking at my memories with its stale breath.
I would much rather be without the guilt.

If he
had
been an
hallucination, should I still feel remorseful for turning away? The thought
troubled me, as if someone else were thinking it.

I went back down to the
towpath. The man was very old. His forehead was badly gashed and bruised, and I
saw the splash of blood on the rock he must have hit when he fell. But it was
the weirdness of this fallen man that shuffled my thoughts, and fear was yet
another consequence of my shock.

He was foreign, perhaps
Eastern European, and his clothing set him aside. I had never seen clothing
like that beyond a movie screen. His trousers were of sackcloth, rough and
snagged, held up by a belt of rough animal skin. His shirt was colourful and
bright, even though it was obviously aged and weathered. Cuts here, rips there,
all of them added to the garment’s mystique. I could see no bottle, but I was
already certain that he was not a drunk. Nearby on the towpath a long, heavy
coat lay like a slaughtered shadow, arms askew, the material so strange that I
could not place it. Not cotton, not wool, it reminded me most of rough elbow
skin.

The man coughed. His
eyes sprang open and fixed right on me, as if he already knew I was there. He
smiled.

I stepped back. There
was so much blood on his face, and his smile looked fearsome. Something
scurried in the bushes beside the towpath and I turned, ready to face whatever
came out. Perhaps it was a wild animal drawn by the smell of blood; a rat, a
fox. But it was only a bird startled by my movement.

The man was still
smiling at me. Ridiculously I smiled back, having no idea what else to do. He
was bleeding copiously from the head. It can’t have been more than a few
minutes since he had fallen.

“Here,” he said, “take
this.” He sat up awkwardly, swaying. He looked so
old. I
thought of
broken ribs or crushed hips, but there was little I could do about that right
now. He held up a long object wrapped in an oily cloth, and beckoned me over
with a tilt of his head.

I obeyed. It was that or
turn and run, and I could not allow that a second time.

“Lie still,” I said, “don’t
move, I’ll go and get help.”

“Hmph!” He tried to
laugh, but it descended into more coughing. He looked up at the trees and down
at the canal. “I’ll be fine. My time’s not just yet.” His voice was heavily
accented and distorted by pain, but still I understood every word.

“What happened?” I
asked.

“I fell. I’m tired. I’ve
been looking for weeks.”

“I don’t understand.
Looking for what?”

“For you, Alex Norfan.
Take it. You’ll understand.”

“I . . . I don’t think I
can.”

“You must!” His
vehemence brought on more coughing, and blood dropped from his nose on to the
ground between his knees. “This is no simple trinket,” he whispered, trying to
remain calm.

“It’s not mine,” I said,
unable to ask what I was really thinking:
Why was he looking for me?

“It is, it is.” Still he
proffered the object.

“What is it?”

“The future,” he said. “It’s
been mine for so long, and now you’re the last of the line, so it’s yours. It’s
from the old castle in the Carpathians ... haunted, haunted by miracles from
the past . . .” He closed his eyes. He looked so pale, so ready to die, and
suddenly so familiar. The shape of his brow, the curve of his cheek, the hook
nose. I put my hand to my own face, and wondered.

“But —”

“Alex Norfan? Orfanik?”
the man said, and he must have seen the reaction that name inspired in me. “There
are more things than you know,” he continued. “You’re a man open to mystery,
yes? To exploration? And I came here for you, because this is yours by
birthright.”

I shook my head to
dislodge the strangeness, but it only tangled it more. “I need to get you to a
hospital.”

“I’ve never been to one
all my life, and I will not start now. It can do me no good. Now take this,
curse you!”

I held out my hand and
touched the thing he was offering. It was cold, even through the rag.

“I don’t want it —”

“Don’t you want to know
. . . about when . . . you will die . . . ?”

“What?”

The man seemed to sink
back into himself, as if shrivelling by the second. The flow of blood lessened
and he lay back down as if to sleep.

“The future . . .” the
man whispered, and I had to lean in close. “I saw the future in a beam of
light. That tree! That bird! That smell and sound! Now . .”

He died. One second he
was there, the next he was nothing but a ruined heap of flesh, blood, bone. I
stepped away. The canal fell silent but for the calling of the buzzard high in
the sky. It had drifted away above the fields, as if the man’s death had ended
the bird’s interest.

The corpse’s arm was
still raised. The weight of his offering should have dragged it to the ground.
There was so much wrong here that I expected him to rise up at any moment,
confound me some more. But he remained motionless, the arm raised, forbidding
me to leave without at least looking at the object he held.

I snatched it away, and
his arm sank slowly to the ground.

I should report this,
I thought,
I should tell someone.
But there was more to
this than normality could bear; the canal and the woods surrounding it were
painted with a bizarre hue, as if the man’s final exhalation had landed
everywhere.

I had always known the
presence of mystery. And now I would find it for sure.

Inside the oily rag lay
a torch.

I fled the scene of
death and ran into the woods, clutching the torch to my chest with one hand. I
had yet to switch it on.

Birds called out,
ruffled by my crashing through the woods. I made no attempt to keep quiet.

I’ve been looking for
weeks . . . for you,
the dead man had said. I must
have misheard him. I had only decided to walk here this morning, and even then
I had almost changed my mind.

I dodged between trees,
keeping to rough paths which dog-walkers had trodden into the woods over the
years. I met no one. If I had, perhaps I would have said something about the
body on the canal path. Or perhaps not. There was something so otherworldly
about what had happened that I had already set it aside from earthly concerns.

I tripped and fell,
gasping as the wind was knocked from me. Kneeling up, assessing my bruises and
scrapes, I realized that I had dropped the torch. It had rolled, shedding the
oily rag like a snake’s skin, and fetched up beneath a bank of brambles. The
thick carpet of pine needles pricked at my hands and knees as I forced my way
beneath the bushes. I winced as thorns pricked my shoulders and scalp. The
torch lay tantalisingly close, yet however hard I stretched I could not quite
reach it. I had a choice: leave it for a while and try to find something with
which to haul it out; or force my way into the thorny bush, and accept the pain
that would entail.

I thought of the dead
man, his bleeding head, his comments that I was open to mystery.

I pushed into the bush.

The torch was cool in my
hands, heavy, a weight in the world that should surely not exist. As I sat
beneath the tree in my back garden, turning the item back and forth in my
hands, I realized that the dead old man was right. There were more things . . .
always
more things, more than anyone could ever know.

Either the torch was a
brilliant forgery, or it had been made hundreds of years ago. Its shell was
beautifully wrought in iron, patterned with swirls of flowers and strange
sigils which could have been letters, or pictures representing letters.

Running my fingers over
these designs I could almost feel time inlaid in them, cast into their patterns
like air bubbles trapped in metal. They spoke of ages passed, and though there
were no revelations here, the weight of the torch’s age was obvious.

I opened the end. It
unscrewed easily, as though it had been made yesterday.
Such craftsmanship,
I
thought,
such care, none of that nowadays.
As I tilted the torch and
looked inside, time whispered around me. It flowed through the tree, leaves
kissing though there was no breeze. It ruffled the grass, shifted the air
around my garden, as if to gain a better view of whatever I was about to see.
The world had shrugged in defeat at something it sought to hide.

“Maybe it’s all true.”
Silence was my only answer as nature withheld its secrets.

Inside the torch was a
battery. It had the appearance of granite inlaid with large buttons of quartz.
It was fixed, not replaceable, bound in by thin strips of twisted steel. If
this was truly that old . . .

“It
can’t
be
true.” But inside, I knew that I had been living my life a lie. The dead man
had sought me out, spoken that mysterious name, and given me this weird and
wonderful creation for a reason. I knew the story of the Castle of the
Carpathians, and my own alleged common ancestry with the fictional inventor.
But now, sitting holding this torch, readying myself to turn it on and see what
it would reveal, I tried the name in my mouth.

“Orfanik.”

It sounded so familiar.

I did not switch on the
torch that evening. It rested by my bed as I tried to sleep, and in those dark
hours strange dreams visited me, whether nightmares or oddities of my waking
mind I could not tell. I saw flashes outside the uncurtained window, though the
sky was bare of clouds. They forked across the glass again and again, and I
began to believe that they were inside the room. I tried to close my eyes but
still I saw them, blood-red wounds etched against my inner-eyelids.

I remembered my father
telling me these tales when I was a teenager, handing me Verne’s classic novel
to read, and the weird feeling I had upon finishing it. “It’s only a story,” I
said to him, and he smiled and nodded, then shook his head. “There’s always
doubt,” he replied. His appearance changed to that of the dead man with his
severe Slavic looks, and in my dream their faces were not dissimilar. The dead
man spoke to me again, and though I could not hear the words I knew that he was
angry at my doubt.