Snuff Fiction

5

I have never, before nor since, seen a man quite like Professor Merlin. He wore a purple periwig upon a head so slim it made you shiver. His nose was the beak of a fabulous bird and his eyes were turquoise studs. Above a smiling mouth, which glittered with a treasury of golden teeth, sprang slender waxed moustachios. And beneath this mouth was a chin so long that, when the merry lips were closed, it all but touched his hooter.

He was dressed in the style of a Regency blade, with a high starched collar and white silk cravat. His waistcoat was red and a—twinkle with watch-chains. His tall-coat was green, with embroidered lapels. He was old and tall and skinny. He was weird and wonderful.

At our approach he extended a long, thin, pale and manicured hand to shake the grubby mitt belonging to the Doveston.

‘My dear little Berty,’ he said.

‘Berty?’ I whispered.

‘And this would be your brother?’

‘Edwin,’ said the Doveston. ‘And this is my good friend Norman.’

‘Berty?’ said Norman. ‘Edwin?’

‘Norman is the son of Brentford’s pre-eminent purveyor of tobacco and confectionery.’

‘Fiddle dee, fiddle dum,’ went the professor. ‘I am honoured indeed.’ He fished into his waistcoat pocket and brought to light a marvellous snuffbox, silver and shaped like a coffin. This he offered in Norman’s direction. ‘Would you care to partake?’ he enquired.

Norman shook his tousled head, which in profile resembled a pear drop. ‘No thanks,’ said he. ‘I find that stuff makes me sneeze.

‘As you will.’ The professor now grinned goldenly upon the Doveston. ‘Would you like a pinch?’ he asked.

‘Yes please, uncle,’ said the boy.

Professor Merlin leaned forward. ‘Then you shall have one,’ he said and pinched him hard upon the ear.

The Doveston howled and clutched at his lug-hole. Norman dissolved into foolish mirth and I just stood there, boggle-eyed and gaping.

‘Fairground humour,’ explained the professor. ‘What do you think of it?’

‘Most amusing,’ said I.

‘And what say you, Berty?’

The Doveston wiped away tears from his eyes and managed a lopsided smirk. ‘Most amusing,’ he agreed. ‘I must remember that one.

‘Good boy.’ Professor Merlin handed him the snuffbox. ‘Then take a little sample and tell me what you think.’

The boy gave the lid three solemn taps before he flipped it open.

‘Why do you do that?’ I asked.

‘Tradition,’ the Doveston told me. ‘For Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’

‘Born to the art,’ said the professor.

The boy took snuff and pinched it to his nose. He inhaled deeply through his nostrils and then made a thoughtfiil and satisfied face.

Professor Merlin cocked his head. ‘Let us see if he can identify the blend. A form says he will not.’

The Doveston’s nose went twitch twitch twitch and I awaited the inevitable explosion. But none came. Instead he just smiled, before reciting a curious verse.

‘Thai [went he,] and light as nutmeg.

One part sassafras, one part sage.

Strawberry seasoned, blueberry blended.

Grad from the stock of the Munich Mage.

Daintily dusted, finely ground.

Bought in Bradford, two quid a pound.’

‘Remarkable,’ said the professor.

‘Rather too fussy for my taste,’ said the boy. ‘And more a winter blend, I would have thought. Would you like me to name both brand and supplier?’

Professor Merlin nodded.

‘Crawford’s Imperial, from Cox’s Tobacco Emporium, High Street, Bradford.’

‘Incredible.’ Professor Merlin wrung his slender hands. ‘Even down to the hint of Grad. The boy is a gemus.

‘Poo,’ said Norman, who wasn’t impressed.

‘It was rather clever,’ I said, ‘and in a poem too.’

‘Poems are poofy,’ said Norman.

I noticed now that the professor’s snuffbox was sliding into the Doveston’s pocket. The professor noticed this too and snatched it back. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

The Doveston grinned. ‘That’s a form you owe me.

The professor made mystical motions with his hands and produced a coin from thin air. The Doveston took it, bit it, examined it, slipped it in his pocket and grinned a little more.

‘Fiddle dee fiddle dum.’ Professor Merlin bowed. ‘You have impressed me as ever, my boy. So what have you come to see?’

‘Norman would like a look at the dog-faced boy.’

‘I would,’ said Norman. ‘I want to see him biting the heads off live chickens.’

‘Well you can’t,’ said the professor. ‘Doggart has been taken to the vet’s.’

‘As if,’ said Norman.

‘No, he truly has. And you’re wrong about the description, Berty. He’s not a dog-faced boy. He’s a boy-faced dog.’

‘As if’ said Norman once more.

‘I kid thee not.’ Professor Merlin crossed his heart. ‘The body of an Alsatian dog and the head of a boy. I purchased him several months ago in this very borough, from a chap called Jon Peru Joans.’

I looked at the Doveston.

And he looked back at me.

‘So why’s he at the vet’s?’ asked Norman.

‘Ah,’ said the professor. ‘An embarrassing incident occurred today. We had been invited to lunch by the lady mayoress, who’d expressed a desire to meet Doggart. We arrived at her house somewhat early and her secretary informed us that she was still upstairs taking a shower. We were sent to wait in the lounge, but Doggart somehow got off his lead and ran upstairs. The bathroom door had been left open and the lady mayoress was still in the shower. She was just bending down to pick up the soap when Doggart entered. He must have misunderstood the situation, because the next thing you know he—’

‘No!’ said Norman. ‘He never did!’

‘He did. It’s the nature of dogs, you see. He couldn’t help himself. The lady mayoress demanded that Doggart be taken off to the vet.’

‘To be destroyed?’

‘No,’ said the professor. ‘To have his paw-nails clipped. We’ve been invited back again for supper.’

We all looked at each other and then began to laugh. These were, after all, the 1950s and Political Correctness was still many years away.

No-one, of course, would dare to tell a joke like that nowadays.

‘So, what have you got?’ asked Norman. ‘Anything worth seeing?’ Professor Merlin golden-grinned. ‘You really are a very rude little boy, aren’t you?’ he said.

Norman nodded. ‘Very. That’s one of the benefits of having a dad who runs a sweetie shop.’

‘Ah, privilege.’ Professor Merlin made a wistful face. ‘So, what can I show you? Ah yes, indeedy-do. I know just the very thing.’

And with that said he turned upon a merry heel and led us across the great circle towards his caravan. We shuffled after the curious gent, the Doveston whistling and grinning away, Norman secretively unwrapping Gooble’s Gob Gums in the pocket of his brown shopkeeper’s coat and sneaking them into his mouth and me scratching at the family of ticks that had recently made their nest in my navel.

Perhaps this had me thinking about families, because, I chanced to wonder whether one of the straining hirsute gypsy women might be Norman’s wayward mum.

‘Here we go,’ said the professor as we approached a particularly grand caravan. It was a glorious antique affair, its sides decorated with the swirls and flourishes of the Romany persuasion in golds and silvers and pearly pastels. The words ‘PROFESSOR MERLIN’S GREATEST SHOW OFF EARTH’ were writ in letters big, and elephants and ostriches and dancing girls and jugglers were painted on in rich and dashing fashion.

‘Gaudy,’ said Norman, munching on a sweetie.

‘Inside now, come on.’ We pressed together up the steps and I pushed open the door. As I looked inside, I recalled the words of Howard Carter, who, having chiselled a little hole into the tomb of the boy king and shone his torch through it, was asked what he could see. ‘Wonderful things,’ said Howard. ‘I see wonderful things.’

We bundled into the professor’s caravan.

‘Sit down. Sit down.’ And we sat.

On the walls were many posters of circuses and sideshows. Adverts for incredible performances and impossible feats. But these were not the wonderful things. The wonderful things were brass contraptions. Inexplicable Victorian mechanisms consisting of whirling ball governors and clicking chains, each puffing and turning and moving and busily doing something or other, although just what, it was impossible to say.

‘What’s all this old toot?’ asked Norman.

‘The work of another age,’ smiled the professor. ‘A distant technology.’

‘Yeah, but what do they do?’

‘They don’t do anything, Norman. They don’t do, they simply are.

Norman shrugged and munched some more.

‘Refreshments,’ said the professor, pouring lemonade into tall green glasses. ‘And fags too. Name your favourites.’

‘You won’t have them,’ said Norman.

Professor Merlin handed out the lemonade. ‘Try me,’ he said.

‘MacGuffin’s Extra Longs.’

‘Easy,’ said Professor Merlin, producing one from thin air.

Norman took and examined it. ‘Good trick,’ he said, sulkily.

‘Edwin?’

‘I’m easy,’ I said. ‘Anything.’

‘Make it hard.’

‘All right.’ I thought for a moment. ‘I’d like to try a Byzantium.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ said the Doveston. ‘Except you can only buy them in Greece.

‘One each then.’ The professor snapped his fingers and we took the cigarettes. They were the genuine article and we hastened to light them up.

‘I’d like one of those as well,’ said Norman.

‘Well, you can’t have one. But’ — Professor Merlin reached over to a nifty little side table, crafted from an elephant’s foot, and took up a small and dainty box — ‘I’ve something else I think you will like.’

Norman puffed upon his cigarette.

‘Sweeties,’ said the professor, turning the box towards him. ‘This is a very special little box with very special sweeties.’

‘Give us them,’ said Norman.

Professor Merlin glittered out another grin. ‘It’s a very beautiful box, isn’t it? The tanned hide has been so perfectly prepared. The craftsmanship is exquisite.’

‘What about the sweeties?’ Norman asked.

‘You hold on to the box and help yourself and while you do, I will recount to you a tale that I hope will make your visit worth while.’

‘I’d rather have seen the dog-boy.’ Norman wrestled the lid from the box and got stuck into the sweeties.

‘I have been in the showman’s trade for many many years,’ said Professor Merlin, settling himself back into a throne-like chair all wrought from bones and buckles. ‘And I think I can say that, if it’s there to be seen, I’ve seen it. I have travelled all over this world of ours and visited many strange places. If I have heard rumours of some remarkable performer or human oddity, I have followed up these rumours. Tracked these rumours to their source. And I am proud to say that I have exhibited some of the greatest artistes of this or any age.

‘But, and it is a big but, every showman dreams that one day he will find THE BIG ONE. The most exotic, the most wonderful, the biggest greatest crowd-puller that there has ever been. Barnum found it with General Tom Thumb, but for most of us the search goes on.

‘These sweeties aren’t too bad,’ said Norman. ‘They taste almost meaty.

‘Shut up!’ said the Doveston, elbowing Norman. ‘Please continue, uncle.’

‘Thank you, Berty. As I say, we search and search, but mostly in vain. And maybe that is for the best. Maybe it is better to search than actually to find.’

‘How can that be?’ the Doveston asked. ‘If you want something, it’s better to get it than to not get it.’

‘You may be right, but I have not found this to be the case. Quite the’ reverse, in fact. You see, I found what I was looking for and I wish that I never had.’

The old showman paused, drew out his snuffbox and favoured his nostrils with Crawford’s Imperial. ‘I travelled with the carnival in India,’ he continued, ‘where I hoped to encounter a fakir who had mastered the now legendary rope trick. But I found something more wonderful than this. Something that I wanted, wanted more than I have ever wanted anything. Something, did I say? Someone. She was a temple dancer, so beautiful and perfect as to overwhelm the heart. She moved with such grace that it made you weep to watch her and when she sang it was with the tongue of an angel.

‘I knew at once that if I could persuade this beautiful creature to travel with me and perform around the world, my fortune would be made. The men of the West would fall at her feet. There would be fame and there would be fortune.’

‘And was there?’ asked Norman.

‘I’ll thump you,’ said the Doveston.

‘Fame?’ said the professor. ‘Infamy, more like. I sought out the guardians of this girl. The villagers were not eager to tell me, but I bribed a few with strong liquor and the hut was pointed out to me.

A rude dwelling it was, nothing more than mud and reeds, filthy and wretched. I knocked and entered and there found an ancient fellow sucking upon a narghile. This old body spoke no English and so I conversed with him in his own tongue. I speak more than forty languages and I was able to make myself understood.

‘I informed him that I was an emissary sent by Queen Victoria, the Empress of India, who wished to honour the beautiful dancer of whom she had heard so much.’

‘You lied to him,’ said Norman.

‘Yes, Norman, I lied. I said that the Queen of England wished to meet her in person. I was greedy for this girl. I would have said anything. The old man wept greatly. He said that the girl was his granddaughter and that she was one favoured by the Gods. I agreed that she was very beautiful, but he said that this was not what he meant. She had been chosen by the Gods. He said that, as a girl, she had been sleeping beneath a sacred bodhi tree and she had been bitten by a king cobra.’

‘I hate snakes,’ said Norman. ‘There was this boy in Hanwell who slept in the park with his mouth open and—’

Smack went the Doveston’s hand.

‘Ouch, you bastard,’ went Norman.

‘The bite of the king cobra is fatal,’ said the professor. ‘But the girl did not die. The people of the village took this to be a sign that she was one blessed of the Gods. Possibly even a Goddess herself. Naturally, as a civilized Englishman, I scorned such nonsense, but I told the old man that Queen Victoria too was a Goddess and that she wished to meet one of her own. The old man could not bear to see the girl go, he pleaded and pleaded and I lied and lied. The girl would soon return, I said, with great riches, bestowed upon her by the Goddess Queen. He did perk up a bit at this. But he said that the girl must be returned to him before six months were up, because she was to sing at some religious festival or another. I readily agreed.

‘And so I took the girl from him. Her name was Naja and I determined that I would make that name world famous. We toured up through Persia to Asia, from Greece into Europe, and everywhere she sang and danced the crowds went wild. We played before crowned heads and were entertained in palaces and by the time we reached the shores of England I had no doubt at all that she would actually meet with Queen Victoria.’

‘And did she?’ Norman asked.

‘No, Norman, she did not. Five months had passed and Naja wanted to return home. I told her that she should soon meet the great Queen and that then I would take her back to her people. But of course I had no intention of doing that. You see, I had fallen hopelessly in love with her. I desired her. I wanted to possess her totally. Naja began to pine. She grew pale and drawn and would not eat. She would lock herself in her caravan and refuse to come out and she grew sicker with each passing day. I tended to her as best I could, but I watched with growing horror as her beautiful face drained of its beauty, as lines formed about her wonderful eyes and the voice that had been so, so sweet became a cracked whisper.

‘I called for physicians to aid her back to health, but these learned men examined her and shook their heads. There was nothing that could be done.’

‘So, she snuffed it, did she?’ said Norman.

‘No, Norman, she did not snuff it. She went home.’

‘That’s a pretty crappy story,’ said Norman. ‘And a pretty cop-out ending.’

‘Oh, it’s not the end.’ Professor Merlin shook his ancient head. ‘It’s not the end at all. I sat beside her bed and watched helplessly as she slipped away from me. I watched as that faultless skin began to wrinkle up and lose its colour and those eyes grow dim. She begged me to leave her alone, but I refused. I realized what I had done; how, in my greed, I had brought her to this. And then one night it happened.’

‘She did die,’ Norman said.

‘She screamed!’ cried the professor, making Norman all but wet himself. ‘She screamed and she began to writhe about on the bed. She tore the covers from her and she tore away her nightdress. I tried to hold her down, but as I did so she fought free of my grip and it happened. Her skin began to come apart; right before my eyes, it fell away. She rose up before me on the bed and shed her skin. It fell in a crumpled heap and she stepped from it, beautiful, renewed and naked. I staggered from the shock and fainted dead away and when I awoke the next morning she was gone. She had left a note for me and when I read it I truly realized the evil thing that I had done in taking her away from her village.

‘You see, she was sworn to the Gods. When as a child she had been bitten by the king cobra her mother had prayed to Shiva, offering her own life in exchange for that of her daughter. The Most High must have heard her prayers and taken pity upon her. The mother died, but the child survived. But the child was now the property of the Gods and from that day on she never aged. Each year she shed her skin and emerged new born. The old man in the village was not her grandfather, he was her younger brother.

‘She had taken all the money I had made from displaying her and bought a passage back to India. I made no attempt to follow her. For all I know, she is probably to this day still in her village. Still as beautiful and young as ever. I will never return there and I pray that no other Westerner will.’

We lads had finished our cigarettes and sat there struck dumb by this incredible tale.

Norman, however, was not struck dumb for long. ‘That’s quite a story,’ he said. ‘It’s a pity you can’t prove any of it.’

‘But you have your proof,’ said the professor.

‘What? That the story is true because you say it is?’

‘What more proof should you need?’

‘You could show us the skin.’

‘But I have.’

‘No you haven’t,’ said Norman.

‘Oh indeed, my boy, I have. I had the skin tanned and made into a box. The one you’ve been eating the sweeties from.’

I had never seen projectile vomiting before and I do have to tell you that I was impressed. Norman staggered grey-faced from the caravan and fled across the fairground.

Several very large dogs gave chase, but Norman outran them with ease.

The professor stared at the mess upon his floor. ‘If he made such a fuss about the box,’ he said, ‘it’s a good thing I didn’t tell him what the sweeties were made out of.’

‘What exactly were the sweeties made out of?’ I asked the Doveston as, a few weeks later, we sat night-fishing for mud sharks.

‘Beetles that bite, I believe.’

I tossed a few maggots into the canal. ‘I don’t think I want to meet any more of your so-called uncles,’ I told the lad. ‘They’re all a bunch of weirdos and they give me bad dreams.’

The Doveston laughed. ‘The professor is all right,’ he said. ‘He has the largest collection of erotically decorated Chinese snuff bottles that I have ever seen.

‘Good for him. But what about that tale he told us? Do you believe it was true?’

The Doveston shook his head. ‘No,’ said he. ‘But it had the desired effect upon Norman, didn’t it? He’s a much nicer fellow now.

And it was true. Norman was a much nicer fellow. In fact he had become our bestest friend and looked upon the Doveston as something of a mentor. Whether this had anything to do with the professor’s story is anyone’s guess. I suspect that it had more to do with what happened a day or two later.

It seems that during Norman’s ffight from the professor’s caravan he somehow dropped his keys. Someone had picked them up and that someone had let themselves into Mr Hartnell’s corner shop during the hours of night and made away with several cartons of American cigarettes, leaving the keys behind them on the counter.

Norman, who had not told his father either about losing his keys or visiting the fair, seemed likely to have had the truth beaten out of him had not the Doveston intervened on his behalf.

The boy Doveston told the elder Hartnell a most convincing tale about how young Norman had saved an old lady from being robbed in the street, only to be set upon and robbed himself

When pressed for a description of the villain, he could only say that the man wore a mask, but had ‘much of the gypsy about him.

Looking back now across the space of fifty years, it seems to me that the professor’s tale was not told for Norman’s benefit at all. Its message was meant for the Doveston. The professor was right when he said that ‘Maybe it is better to search than actually to find.’

The Doveston searched for fame and fortune all his life; he found both, but was never content. But the search itself was an adventure and I am glad that I shared in it. Much of it was fearful stuff As

fearful as were snakes and beetles that bit, but there were great times and long-legged women and I wouldn’t have missed them for the world.

‘All’s well that ends well, then,’ I said to the Doveston as I took out my fags.

‘It’s not a bad old life,’ said the lad. ‘But here, don’t smoke those, try one of mine. They’re new and they glow in the dark.’