So he had returned to England, to conceal his knowledge of the brass creature that engineered the invisible and to avoid the native curiosity and gawping interest of the Americans, which he had previously exploited so brilliantly. He wanted the surly indifference of England to hide in, to be unseen, even while apparent.
A long time ago, what now seemed like hundreds of years, he had visited the Isle of Man, a derelict rock in the Irish sea between England and Ireland, ignored by both antagonistic islands. His parents had taken him there to see the peasants working the thick, dense earth and the violent, ragged sea, and to avoid the questions of a smouldering family horror at home. On a rare, blistering afternoon, without shadows or any other form of shade, he had been trusted to explore alone as they wandered the beach, and not to move from the place in which he winched and roamed without finding interest.
In a shelter of cupped rock, nailed with white painted cottages to the cliff, he had met a fisherman. His boredom had been like bait to the old seaman, who was hiding his own endless tedium in the morbid actions of work. They had talked intermittently, dribbling sentences into the sand for each to watch without comment. The tide had receded and given a bellowing space to their breath, letting speech occur in salty bubbles. The highlight of the interaction had been in the contents of a battered pail of slopping brine, fetched by the fisherman and dramatically screwed into the sand for the boy’s attention. A clunking, pissing sound had come scratching from the bucket. The boy’s attention was instantly hooked. Walking over to look inside, he saw five crabs of various sizes, struggling against the limited water and the steep tin sides of their containment.
‘Are they trying to escape?’ stuttered the boy. ‘Trying to get out?’
‘Aye,’ nodded the fisherman, after a tobacco pause.
‘But why can’t they do it?’ asked the boy. ‘There are more of them than the water.’
‘They be Manx crabs,’ said the man. ‘See – every time one crawls up an’ nearly escapes, the others drag it back down.’
The boy had recognised this, known it to be as true as the ocean, and he had been instantly grateful for an adult fact. He had known, even then, that he would use it all his life.
The only time he had let it go was in his marriage, where overpowering love had happened twice and shaken his terse tree of knowledge to its roots.
His young wife had strolled into the hard sinew of his single life like new blood, warming and radiating every part of his ordered existence, bringing a joy that he could not own, and for the first time had not wished to. The birth of his son had overwhelmed him with more feelings than he had been able to understand; a ball of life burned and writhed inside him whenever he held the child in his bony hands. But they had been diversions – things that were never meant to last, moments of deception
to rob him of purpose. Now his bitch wife was dead, the bastard child given to a home, and he was free once more. Free to continue, and to never again allow such treacherous emotions to poison his will. When friends tried to update him on the growing child, or on the striking resemblance to him which it had apparently begun to bear, he had cut them dead, severed them from his righteous mind. He moved home again and again, wandered into the deserts and high mountains without a whiff of Christ or Satan as companions. He had never looked back.
* * *
The Frenchman was the only modern being to have explored the Vorrh, to enter its interior and scribble down some of its detail. The only one – and all his perilous journey had been fiction. What better way was there to trespass on the sacred and the forbidden?
He had, of course, read or held the weight of every volume related to its existence. He had absorbed all the obscure and fantastic accounts of travellers who had returned by the skin of their teeth, having been hunted by the anthropophagi, the Artabatitai, the dog-headed Hemikunes, and all manner of fabulous denizens, representative of every forest in the world, which had been sucked into the mythical whirlpool of the Vorrh. He knew of the saviour of the forest, the fabled Black Man of Many Faces, and saw in it another reworking of the Green Man of Europe; he owned copies and private translations of Euthymenes the Massilian, and late medieval renditions of Scylax of Caryanda; he had marvelled at the tall tales of Sir John Mandeville, stories of the horrors and wonders to be found in the uncharted depth of unknown lands. He had ploughed through the works of Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta, even tried to find the famous mummies that had been bought by René Caillié and shipped,
on a torturous route through Timbuktu, back to France, where over the latter years of forgetfulness they had become ‘misplaced’. He had read all the fact and all the fiction and, in later days of need and intrigue, he had created his own version, cut out of the jungles of all the other words, their slippery shadows of meaning translated into a rich weft of description. He had re-seen each moment and the backdrop of the eternal, savage forest. His writing had given it life, with all the detail of its population.
Years before, he, Charlotte and the reluctant chauffeur had driven into Essenwald, through the outskirts of mud and rushes to its fired foundations of imported German dogma. Their huge car heaved and jolted on the deeply rutted road. It was the first ever motor caravan, a grandiose collision of baroque parlour and expensive, petrol-driven truck, which he had invented specifically for long distance travel. During the day, the three travellers would be separated, each sweating in a different compartment of the vehicle, the varnished dark brown interiors sweltering in the buckling heat. The chauffeur was forced to wear his uniform at all times, even in the blistering temperatures. Only at night would his nakedness be tolerated and his name allowed.
The Frenchman had ordered the car to stop when he first smelt the blood. They’d been passing through the outskirts of the city, swerving and bumping towards its stony European heart. A shrine tower, one of the many tall, red buildings with wound-like windows, had given off a pungent aroma, its dried-mud surface still showing the prints of the hands that had made it. Goats had been slaughtered there each day for centuries, and one side of the tower was saturated black with blood and milk. He stepped out of the car into the blinding sunlight, the dust still spinning in circles around the stationary wheels.
In this part of the fabled city, the streets were immaculate in their filth. Taking a pair of bone spectacles from their sealskin case, he arranged them over his eyes; the slits narrowed his vision and gated the sun. They
had come from Greenland, purchased from a recent explorer of that frozen, barren place.
He was the most ridiculous of travellers, brilliantly prepared for all events, so long as they never happened. His handmade shoes were instantly discoloured by the red earth, as was his cream suit. He stood and glared at the tower, waiting to be noticed by the throng of local passers-by. They had seen him, the little man stamping in the ground of arrival, but they were much more interested in his vast, grunting cart, enclosed on all sides. They slowed their pace and drifted towards its metal body, some daring to touch it on its blind side. Soon, the Frenchman would meet the young man who was to become the most significant person in his overcast life, but for that moment the crowd was pressed against the car’s windows, trying to glimpse the interior. The woman inside gripped her small clutch bag. Hiding in the perfumed darkness was her silver Derringer, a palm-sized pistol of American origin; it sat like a bright comma in the umbered pouch. It was made to fit snugly in the hand when discharged. It was blunt and inaccurate, but delivered a lethal slap at short range. The Frenchman had never had any feelings of masculine protection for the fairer sex, even the few he had tolerated and liked. He and his paid companion had been locked in a crude democracy forged from selfishness, desire and humiliation.
Turning his back on the angry chauffeur and the twitching woman, he walked towards the tower in the open street.
‘Which is your way father, are you lost?’ A young man had stepped out of the sun, the halo of his head blasted by brightness. ‘Where is your way?’ he asked again, in a French that reflected the rippling mirage of sand that surrounded them.
He stared at the young man, speechless as his face came into focus. There was a resonance in his tone that had stirred a place yet unravelled, but nonetheless known, in his scarred heart. In a voice that was eerily subdued, he told the young black man that he was here to see the Vorrh, to gaze on the fabled forest.
The man’s eager smile broadened, and he looked out over the dust and the Frenchman’s shoulder. He pointed a tattooed finger towards the horizon. The Frenchman turned quickly to follow his direction, to look through the crumbling gap between the rows of buildings, where a dark curtain closed off the most northern aspect of the city with shadow and solid contrast. The redness of earth, animals, plants and buildings ended at its massive edge.
Its suddenness instantly reminded him of a stage set and returned him to the opera he had seen as a child. Vivid and overwhelming, its story had been indistinct, its music brash and bellowing. But its set had transfixed him, a forest of painted darkness stretched across the stage, blindingly artificial, its leaves, roots and hanging tendrils filling his hungry imagination with a longing that had gnawed at all other realities with an unrelenting insistence – the same scene would pass through the last millisecond of his life, as he lay, seeded in oxygen, choking for absorption in the tiled indifference of a hotel bathroom.
That was only the second time he had been to the theatre, though his mother had often told him of it. She would come to say goodnight while he was in the bath, his nanny stopping, mid-sponge, to stand back in admiration while the apparition wafted in. She was always dazzling, in her society gowns and gleaming jewellery. She would tell him of the theatres and balls she was going to; of ballet and the opera; their stories of princesses and kings, demons, maidens, magic and spells. Sometimes she would touch his back or arm with her silken gloves, sending a shiver through his damp, excited body. But she never stayed, and the nanny was always left to dry his cooling hope and dress it for sleep. His mother’s perfume stayed in his heart for hours afterwards.
At last, within sight of the Vorrh, he understood why he had travelled so far. Yet as he took an automatic step towards it and everything else that had unbalanced his life, his chauffeur had begun to pound on the horn of the car – his forgotten companions had become completely engulfed
by a solid wall of in-lookers. The discordant screech, his memories and his stumbling curiosity knotted against movement in time, cutting his next step away from beneath him, causing him to fall forward in stupid surprise towards the red earth. The young man swooped and caught his awkwardness in long black arms, before righting them both.
The Frenchman struggled against the embrace. He only liked to be touched when and where he commanded. He was about to shriek at the outrage, when something of its firm gentleness crept through his disgust. He looked into the face of the tall shadow who held him. His rescuer was now totally silhouetted against the blinding sun, his features and eyes hidden. Yet his expression could be perceived; his eyes radiated grace. Grace was holding him up, tottering on the sanguine earth. The young man said nothing, but extended a long, thin arm, shivering with bangles, towards the shade of a low building. The Frenchman leant into the grip of the other and allowed himself to be guided forward. Without speaking, they walked into the shade of a pungent bar, where they sat and drank mint tea and tried to talk. The young man started by introducing himself, explaining that, despite his rags, he was of noble blood.
‘I will call you Seil Kor,’ the Frenchman announced.
‘But that is not my name, Master.’
‘That does not matter. Seil Kor was a great hero and I know his name well. For this adventure, you shall be he.’
The young man had frowned at this strange way, but accepted his play name to make the little man more comfortable. The conversation became more serious, and when the Frenchman declared he would traverse the entire forest, the space between their knowledge and understanding broadened and split.
Seil Kor turned his gaze away from his new companion and looked out towards the horizon. ‘Thou canst walk to the derelicts of the saints,’ he said with firmness and distance, ‘but no further. More is forbidden. From there is barred, you must turn away. No son of Adam is allowed,
for God walks there.’
The Frenchman’s sense of intrigue and challenge was ignited by such bold and ultimate statements. ‘The gods and monsters that live there must be more savage at the centre,’ he smirked.
At this, Seil Kor’s countenance gained an expressive patience, and he turned to stare back into the conversation, while making a gesture over his heart. ‘Not gods of old people,’ he said gently. ‘The one God. Your God; my God; Yahweh. The great Father who made all things and gave Adam a corner of his clearing, so that he may dwell in it and grow. He walks there. It is His garden on earth. Paradise.’
A sudden silence opened around them.
‘Seil Kor, my friend, are you telling me that the Garden of Eden is located in the Vorrh?’
‘Yes, it is so. But Eden is only a corner of God’s garden; the rest of the clearing is where God walks, to think in worldly ways. It is impossible in heaven, where all things are the same, without form or colour, temperature or change. In His worldly garden, He wears a gown of senses, woven in our time. He lets rocks and stones, wind and water, clothe His invisible ideas. He pictures our life in the matter that makes us.’
The Frenchman was shocked and moved by such faith, and by the clarity which bound it. Delaying his cynicism, he tried desperately to shape his next question outside of his normal patronising indifference. ‘How do you know this?’ he asked.
Seil Kor was confused by the question. Could his companion really be so obtuse? ‘Because he has told us,’ he replied.