Weaveworld

2

They climbed a long slope. He thought maybe a tide of crickets leapt before their feet; the earth seemed alive.

At the top of the slope they looked across a field. At the far side of the field was an orchard.

‘Almost there,’ said Ganza, and they began towards it.

The orchard was the biggest single feature he’d seen in the Fugue so far; a plot of maybe thirty or forty trees, planted in rows and carefully pruned so that their branches almost touched. Beneath this canopy were passages of neatly clipped grass, dappled by velvet light.

‘This is the orchard of Lemuel Lo,’ Boaz said, as they stood on the perimeter. His gentle voice was softer than ever. ‘Even amongst the fabled, it’s fabled.’

Ganza led the way beneath the trees. The air was still and warm and sweet. The branches were laden with a fruit that Cal did not recognize.

‘They’re Jude Pears,’ Boaz told him. ‘One of the species we’ve never shared with the Cuckoos.’

‘Why not?’

‘There are reasons,’ said Boaz. He looked around for Ganza, but she’d disappeared down one of the avenues. ‘Help yourself to the fruit,’ he said, moving away from Cal in search of his companion. ‘Lem won’t mind.’

Though Cal thought he could see all the way down the corridor of trees his eyes deceived him. Boaz took three steps from him, and was gone.

Cal reached towards one of the low-slung branches and put his hand on one of the fruits. As he did so there was a great commotion in the tree and something ran down the branch towards him.

‘Not that one!’

The voice was bass profundo. The speaker was a monkey.

‘They’re sweeter upstairs,’ the beast said, throwing its brown eyes skyward. Then it ran back the way it had come, its passage bringing leaves down around Cal. He tried to follow its progress, but the animal moved too fast. It was back in half a dozen seconds, with not one but two fruits. Perched in the branches, it threw them down to Cal.

‘Peel them,’ it said. ‘One each.’

Despite their name, they didn’t resemble pears. They were the size of a plum, but with a leathery skin. It was tough, but it couldn’t disguise the fragrance of the meat inside.

‘What are you waiting for?’ the monkey demanded to know. ‘They’re tasty, these Giddys. Peel it and see.’

The fact of the talking monkey – which might have stopped Cal dead in his tracks a week before – was just part of the local colour now.

‘You call them Giddys?’ he said.

‘Jude Pears; Giddy Fruit. It’s all the same meat.’

The monkey’s eyes were on Cal’s hands, willing him to peel the fruit. He proceeded to do just that. They were more difficult to skin than any fruit he’d encountered; hence the monkey’s bargain with him, presumably. Viscous juice ran from the broken skin and over his hands; the smell was ever more appetizing. Before he’d quite finished peeling the first of them, the monkey snatched it from his grasp and wolfed it down.

‘Good –’ it said, between mouthfuls.

Its pleasure was echoed from beneath the tree. Somebody made a sound of appreciation, and Cal glanced away from his labours to see that there was a man squatting against the trunk, rolling a cigarette. He looked back up to the monkey, then down at the man, and the voice from the beast made new sense.

‘Good trick,’ he said.

The man looked up at Cal. His features were distressingly close to mongoloid; the smile he offered huge, and seemingly uncomprehending.

‘What is?’ said the voice from the branches.

Confounded as he was by the face below him, Cal pursued his assumption, and addressed his reply not to the puppet but the puppeteer.

‘Throwing your voice like that.’

The man still grinned, but showed no sign that he’d understood. The monkey, however, laughed loudly.

‘Eat the fruit,’ it said.

Cal’s fingers had worked at the peeling without his direction. The Giddy was skinned. But some lingering superstition about stolen fruit kept him from putting it to his lips.

‘Try it.’ said the monkey. ‘They’re not poisonous –’

The smell was too tantalizing to resist. He bit.

‘–at least not to us,’ the monkey added, laughing again.

The fruit lasted even better than its scent had promised. The meat was succulent, the juice strong as a liqueur. He licked it off his fingers, and the palms of his hand.

‘Like it?’

‘Superb.’

‘Food and drink all in one.’ The monkey looked at the man beneath the tree. ‘Want one. Smith?’ it asked.

The man put a flame to his cigarette and drew on it.

‘D’you hear me?’

Getting no response, the monkey scampered back up into the higher reaches of the tree.

Cal, still eating the pear, had found the pips at its centre. He chewed them up. Their slight bitterness only complemented the sweetness of the rest.

There was music playing somewhere between the trees, he now noticed. One moment lilting, the next manic.

‘Another?’ said the monkey, re-appearing with not two but several fruit.

Cal swallowed the last of his first.

‘Same deal,’ the monkey said.

Suddenly greedy, Cal took three, and started to peel.

‘There’s other people here,’ he said to the puppeteer.

‘Of course,’ said the monkey. ‘This has always been a gathering place.’

‘Why do you speak through the animal?’ Cal asked, as the monkey’s fingers claimed a peeled fruit from his hands.

‘The name’s Novello.’ said the monkey. ‘And who says he’s speaking at all?’

Cal laughed, as much at himself as at the performance.

‘Fact is,’ said the monkey, ‘neither of us is quite sure who does what any longer. But then love’s like that, don’t you find?’

It threw back its head and squeezed the fruit in its hand, so that the liquor ran down its throat.

The music had found a fresh intoxication. Cal was intrigued to find out what instruments it was being played upon. Violins certainly, and whistles and drums. But there were sounds amongst these that he couldn’t place.

‘Any excuse for a party,’ said Novello.

‘Must be the biggest breakfast in history.’

‘I daresay. Want to go see?’

‘Yes.’

The monkey ran along the branch, and scurried down the trunk to where Smith was sitting. Cal, chewing the seeds of his second Giddy, reached up and claimed a further handful of fruit from amongst the foliage, pocketing half a dozen against future hunger, and skinning another to be consumed on the spot.

The sound of monkey-chatter drew his gaze down to Novello and Smith. The beast was perched on the man’s chest, and they were talking to each other, a babble of words and grunts. Cal looked from man to beast and back to man again. He could not tell who was saying what to whom.

The debate ended abruptly, and Smith stood up, the monkey now sitting on his shoulder. Without inviting Cal to follow, they threaded their way between the trees. Cal pursued, peeling and eating as he went.

Some of the visitors here were doing as he’d done, standing beneath the trees, consuming Jude Pears. One or two had even climbed up and were draped amongst the branches, bathing in the perfumed air. Others, either indifferent to the fruit or sated upon it, lay sprawled in the grass and talked together in low voices. The atmosphere was all tranquillity.

Heaven is an orchard, Cal thought as he walked; and God is plenty.

‘That’s the fruit talking,’ said Novello. Cal wasn’t even aware that he’d spoken aloud. He looked round at the monkey, feeling slightly disoriented.

‘You should watch yourself,’ the animal said, ‘an excess of Judes isn’t good for you.’

‘I’ve got a strong stomach,’ Cal replied.

‘Who said anything about your stomach?’ the monkey replied. They’re not called Giddy Fruit for nothing.’

Cal ignored him. The animal’s condescending tone irritated him. He picked up his pace, overtaking man and beast.

‘Have it your way,’ said the monkey.

Somebody darted between the trees a little way ahead of Cal, trailing laughter. To Cal’s eyes the sound was momentarily visible: he saw the rise and fall of notes as splashes of light, which flew apart like dandelion heads in a high wind. Enchantment upon enchantment. Plucking and peeling yet another of Lo’s remarkable fruits as he went, he hurried on towards the music.

And ahead of him, the scene came clear. A blue and ochre rug had been laid on the ground between the trees, with wicks in oil flickering along its borders; and at its edge the musicians he’d heard. There were five of them: three women and two men, dressed formally in suits and dresses, in the dark threads of which brilliant designs were somehow concealed, so that the subtlest motion of the folds in the flame-light revealed a glamour that brought to Cal’s mind the iridescence of tropical butterflies. More startling, however, was the fact that this quintet had not a single instrument between them. They were singing these violins, pipes and drums, and offering in addition sounds no instrument could hope to produce. Here was a music which did not imitate natural sound – it was not bird or whale song, nor tree nor stream – but instead expressed experiences which lay between words: the off-beat of the heart, where intellect could not go.

Hearing it, shudders of pleasure ran down Cal’s spine.

The show had drawn an audience of perhaps thirty Seerkind, and Cal joined them. His presence was noted by a few, who threw mildly curious glances in his direction.

Surveying the crowd, he attempted to allot these people to one or other of the four Families, but it was near enough impossible. The choral orchestra were presumably Aia; hadn’t Apolline said that it was Aia blood that had given her a good singing voice? But amongst the rest, who was who? Which of these people were of Jerichau’s Family, for instance: the Babu? Which of the Ye-me, or the Lo? There were negro and Caucasian faces, and one or two with an oriental cast; there were some who boasted traits not quite human – one with Nimrod’s golden eyes (and tail too, presumably); another pair whose features carried symmetrical marking that crept down from the scalp; yet others who bore – either at the dictates of fashion or theology – elaborate tattoos and hair-styles. There was the same startling variety in the clothes they wore, the formal designs of their late nineteenth-century garb refashioned to suit the wearer. And in the fabrics of skirts, suits and waistcoats, the same barely concealed iridescence: threads of carnival brilliance in wait behind the monochrome.

Cal’s admiring gaze went from one face to another, and he felt he wanted each of these people as a friend, wanted to know them and walk with them and share his pittance of secrets with them. He was vaguely aware that this was probably the fruit talking. But if so, then it was wise fruit.

Though his hunger was assuaged, he took another of the pears from his pocket and was about to peel it when the music came to an end. There was applause and whistling. The quintet took their bows. As they did so a bearded man with a face as lined as a walnut, who had been sitting on a stool close to the edge of the rug, stood up. He looked directly at Cal and said:

‘My friends … my friends … we have a stranger amongst us …’

The applause was dying down. Faces turned in Cal’s direction; he could feel himself blush.

‘Come out, Mr Mooney! Mr Calhoun Mooney!’

Ganza told the truth: the air did gossip.

The man was beckoning. Cal made a murmur of protest.

‘Come on. Entertain us a while!’ came the reply.

At this Cal’s heart started to thump furiously. ‘I can’t,’ he said.

‘Of course you can,’ the man grinned. ‘Of course you can!’

There was more applause. The shining faces smiled around him. Somebody touched his shoulder. He glanced round. It was Novello.

‘That’s Mr Lo.’ said the monkey. ‘You mustn’t refuse him.’

‘But I can’t do anything –’

‘Everybody can do something.’ said the monkey, ‘If it’s only fart.’

‘Come on, come on,’ Lemuel Lo was saying. ‘Don’t be shy.’

Much against his will, Cal edged through the crowd towards the rectangle of wicks.

‘Really …’ he said to Lo. ‘I don’t think …’

‘You’ve eaten freely of my fruit,’ said Lo, without rancour. ‘The least you can do is entertain us.’

Cal looked about him for some support, but all he saw were expectant faces.

‘I can’t sing, and I’ve two left feet,’ he pointed out, still hoping self-depreciation might earn him an escape-route.

‘Your great-grandfather was a poet, wasn’t he?’ said Lemuel, his tone almost rebuking Cal for not making mention of the fact.

‘He was,’ said Cal.

‘And can you not quote your own great-grandfather?’ said Lemuel.

Cal thought about this for a moment. It was clear he was not going to be released from this circle without at least making some stab at recompense for his greed, and Lemuel’s suggestion was not a bad one. Many years ago Brendan had taught Cal one or two fragments of Mad Mooney’s verse. They’d meant little enough to Cal at the time – he’d been about six years old – but their rhymes had been intriguing.

‘The rug is yours,’ said Lemuel, and stood aside to let Cal have access to the performing area. Before he’d had an opportunity to run any of the lines through his head – it was two decades since he’d learnt them; how much would he remember? – he was standing on the rug, staring across the flickering footlights at his audience.

‘What Mr Lo says is true …’ he said, all hesitation, ‘… my great-grandfather…’

‘Speak up,’ somebody said.

‘… my great-grandfather was a poet. I’ll try and recite one of his verses. I don’t know if I can remember them, but I’ll do my best.’

There was scattered applause at this, which made Cal more uneasy than ever.

‘What’s it called, this poem?’ said Lemuel.

Cal wracked his brain. The title had meant even less than the lines when he’d first been taught it, but he’d learned it anyway, parrot-fashion.

‘It’s called Six Commonplaces,’ he said, his tongue quicker to shape the words than his brain was to dust them off.

‘Tell it, my friend,’ said the orchard-keeper.

The audience stood with bated breath; the only movement now was that of the flames around the rug.

Cal began.

‘One part of love …’

For a terrible instant his mind went totally blank. If somebody had asked him his name at that juncture he would not have been able to reply. Four words, and he was suddenly speechless.

In that moment of panic he realized that he wanted more than anything in the world to please this gracious gathering; to show them how glad he was to be amongst them. But his damn tongue –

At the back of his head, the poet said:

‘Go on, boy. Tell them what you know. Don’t try and remember. Just speak.’

He began again, not falteringly this time, but strongly, as though he knew these lines perfectly well. And damn it, he did. They flowed from him easily, and he heard himself speaking them in a voice he’d never have thought himself capable of. A bard’s voice, declaiming.

‘One part of love is innocence

,

One part of love is guilt

,

One part the milk, that in a sense

Is soured as soon as spilt

,

One part of love is sentiment

,

One part of love is lust

,

One part is the presentiment

Of our return to dust.’

Eight lines, and it was all over; over, and he was standing, the lines buzzing in his head, both pleased that he’d got through the verse without fumbling, and wishing it could have gone on a while longer. He looked at the audience. They were not smiling any longer, but staring at him with an odd puzzlement in their eyes. For an instant he thought maybe he’d offended them. Then came the applause, hands raised above their heads. There were shouts and whistles.

‘It’s a fine poem!’ Lo said, applauding heartily as he spoke. ‘And finely delivered!’

So saying, he stepped out of the audience again and embraced Cal with fervour.

‘Do you hear?’ Cal said to the poet in his skull. ‘They like you.’

And back came another fragment, as if fresh from Mad Mooney’s lips. He didn’t speak it this time: but he heard it clearly.

Forgive my Art. On bended knees

,

I do confess: I seek to please.

And it was a fine thing, this pleasing business. He returned Lemuel’s hug.

‘Help yourself, Mr Mooney,’ the orchard-keeper said, ‘to all the fruit you can eat.’

‘Thank you,’ said Cal.

‘Did you ever know the poet?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Cal. ‘He was dead before I was born.’

‘Who can call a man dead whose words still hush us and whose sentiments move?’ Mr Lo replied.

‘That’s true,’ said Cal.

‘Of course it’s true. Would I tell a lie on a night like this?’

Having spoken, Lemuel called somebody else out of the crowd: another performer brought to the rug. Cal felt a pang of envy as he stepped over the footlights. He wanted that breathless moment again: wanted to feel the audience held by his words, moved and marked by them. He made a mental note to learn some more of Mad Mooney’s verses if and when he saw his father’s house again, so that next time he was here he had new lines to enchant with.

His hand was shaken and his face kissed half a dozen times as he made his way back through the crowd. When he turned round to face the rug once more, he was surprised to find that the next performers were Boaz and Ganza. Doubly surprised: they were both naked. There was nothing overtly sexual in their nakedness: indeed it was as formal in its way as the clothes they’d shrugged off. Nor was there any trace of discomfort amongst the audience: they watched the pair with the same grave and expectant looks as they’d watched him.

Boaz and Ganza had gone to opposite sides of the carpet, halted there a beat, then turned and begun to walk towards each other. They advanced slowly, until they were nose to nose, lip to lip. It crossed Cal’s mind that maybe some erotic display was in the offing, and in a way that confounded his every definition of erotic, that was true, for they continued to walk towards each other, or so his eyes testified, pressing into each other, their faces disappearing, their torsos congealing, their limbs too, until they were one body, the head an almost featureless ball.

The illusion was absolute. But there was more to come; for the partners were still moving forward, their faces appearing now to press through the back of each other’s craniums, as though the bone was soft as marshmallow. And still they advanced, until they were like Siamese twins born back to back, their single skull now teased out, and boasting two faces.

As if this weren’t enough, there was a further twist to the trick, for somehow in the flux they’d exchanged genders, to stand finally – quite separate once more – in their partner’s place.

Love’s like that, the monkey had said. Here was the point proved, in flesh and blood.

As the performers bowed, and fresh applause broke out, Cal detached himself from the crowd and began to wander back through the trees. Several vague thoughts were in his head. One, that he couldn’t linger here all night, and should soon go in search of Suzanna. Another that it might be wise to seek a guide. The monkey, perhaps?

But first, the laden branches drew his eye again. He reached, took another handful of fruit, and began to peel. Lo’s ad hoc vaudeville was still going on behind him. He heard laughter, then more applause, and the music began again.

He felt his limbs growing heavier; his fingers were barely the equal of the peeling; his eye-lids drooped. Deciding he’d better sit down before he fell down, he settled beneath one of the trees.

Drowsiness was claiming him, and he had no power to resist it. There was no harm in dozing for a while. He was safe here, in the wash of starlight and applause. His eyes flickered closed. It seemed he could see his dreams approaching – their light growing brighter, their voices louder. He smiled to greet them.

It was his old life he dreamt.

He stood in the shuttered room that lay between his ears and let the lost days appear on the wall like a lantern show; moments retrieved from some stock-pile he hadn’t even known he’d owned. But the scenes that were paraded before him now – these passages from the unfinished book of his life – no longer seemed quite real. It was fiction, that book; or at best momentarily real, when some part of him had leapt from that stale story, and glimpsed the Fugue in waiting.

The sound of applause called him to the surface of sleep, and his eyes flickered open. The stars were still set amongst the branches of the Giddy trees; there was still laughter and flame-light near at hand; all was well with his new-found land.

I wasn’t born ‘til now, he thought, as the lantern show returned. I wasn’t even born.

Content with that thought, his mind’s eye peeled another of Lo’s sweet fruits, and put it to his lips.

Somewhere, somebody was applauding him. Hearing it, he took a bow. But this time he did not wake.