 This
is the fourth chapter of what is evolving of its own accord into a
strange sort of mystery novel. The first chapter, Miro, is published here.
The second chapter, Letter to Ariela, is published here. The third chapter, the Faeries of Morpheus, is published here. Chapter five, Review of the Evidence, is in progress. The novel
consists of a set of fragments, recollections and memorabilia, that
are discovered by Inspector Tomás Moreno López in a carved box in the
home of Miro, an engineer who has mysteriously disappeared and is now
assumed dead. The carved box was apparently made by Miro's estranged
wife, a famous artist, who has turned up at a country inn, incoherent
and delirious, and fallen into a mute trance, oblivious and
unresponsive to everyone, including the couple's two adult children. So
Inspector Moreno must try to piece together the puzzle from the 'clues'
in the box, each of which is contained in a numbered envelope, and each
of which, as Moreno reads and ponders them, becomes a chapter of the
novel. Here is the contents of
the fourth envelope:
The
four of them -- Miro, his neighbours Wolf and Kristen (parents of the
delightful Birgit, who had brought him the abandoned Puppi and Kitti,
the wonderful creatures who filled some of the empty space left by the
departure of his beloved Ariela), and Elena, the community school
principal, who frequently borrowed Ariela's artwork and Miro's
architectural drawings as inspiration for her students -- met monthly
for a game of cards in Miro's solarium.
The game of cards was
just a pretext for their monthly get-togethers, which often evolved
into artistic and philosophic explorations that lasted well into the
night. Each 'game' evening had a different theme, and Miro prided
himself on creating an atmosphere in the entirely glass-surrounded
solarium that reflected the theme and inspired the evening's
activities. Tonight, the theme was Sensation and Intuition, and the
game played was a Basque bluffing game that used an unusual Tarot deck
-- each card was illustrated with a unique work of art that suggested the meaning of the card, so that readings could be entirely intuitive rather than based on 'learned' meanings of the cards.
The
card game involved the collection of runs and sets, using the Tarot
deck's four suits and the arcana as a fifth, higher-ranking suit, but
also involved a declaration in which not all the cards were revealed,
and, unless challenged (which carried a penalty if unsuccessful) it was
the best declared hand, not
the best actual hand, that won the round. But before a challenge,
potential challengers were permitted to ask questions of the declarer
and discuss with the other players whether they thought the declarer's
body language betrayed a bluff or not. Miro quickly discovered the
symmetry of ability to bluff and ability to suss out bluffing in others
-- since he lacked both.
He had positioned four clusters of
scented candles around the room, each representing one of the four
elements -- earth, air, fire and water. The breezes coming in through
the windows mixed the elements, and as the game proceeded the four
friends discussed what these combinations suggested to them and
reminded them of. The soft candlelight also created the evening's mood
-- one of camaraderie but also gentleness, tentativeness.
"Look,
this is your card, Miro", said Wolf. "It is a lost mariner, in heavy
seas, not sure who or what or where he is. See the compass -- it has
four points but none of them is identified. Before he can find his way
home he has to decide which point on the compass is which."
"
'Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?' " quoted
Elena. The others chimed in in unison: " 'That depends a good deal on
where you want to get to.' 'I don't much care where.' 'Then it doesn't
much matter which way you go.' '…so long as I get somewhere.' 'Oh,
you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.' " They laughed
and clinked wine glasses, and Miro performed a mime act that he had
seen years ago of a 'random walk', with the others cheering and
encouraging each time his walk took him closer to the conversation pit
where they were playing, and groaning each time it took him further
away.
"Take care, pajarito" said Kristen, "The drunkard's walk only eventually takes you home in two dimensions. As soon as you start to fly, each choice is sure to take you ever farther from where you want to go".
Miro stopped his walk by the stereo and put on a Procol Harum song:
In starting out I thought to go exploring and set my foot upon the nearest road;
In vain I looked to find the promised turning, but only saw how far I was from home.
This coup prompted applause from the group, and Miro bowed and ended his performance.
Elena
opened her bag and drew out a series of bottles, and three blindfolds.
After covering her companions' eyes, she challenged them to identify
the contents of her bottles, only by smell, by taste, by feel. The
group was chagrined at their inability to differentiate very different
scents and flavours without visual clues, and learned that familiarity,
recent exposure and knowing the precise name of a particular flavour or
scent's source all had a bearing on ability to identify it. They also
learned how to differentiate the smells of their companions' hands
without seeing or touching them, even when scents were applied to
disguise them. And they were most surprised at their inability to
identify objects by touch alone.
Wolf introduced the next event
of the evening, bringing out a set of goggles that, he explained, could
be programmed to shift the 'visible' wavelength of light and energy up
or down the electromagnetic spectrum. They took turns looking at
infrared and ultraviolet emanations in the room, and those coming from
each others' bodies. But when Kristen looked at Miro with the goggles,
she began to cry.
Later that evening, when Wolf and Kristen
had gone home, Elena stayed behind, lamenting the problems of the
educational system and how, despite her ideals of teaching students how
to learn and then letting learning be a self-initiated, self-directed
and self-paced process, she and her teachers kept falling back into
traditional 'teaching' roles. In some cases her students were too young
for this to be 'learned' helplessness, or co-dependent behaviour. Elena
speculated that it was role-based
behaviour, and that the only way she would be able to free her students
from the expectation that she would teach and they would passively
learn, was if she were to create the illusion that she was not a
teacher (or a principal), and allow herself not to be a teacher. She lay beside Miro, her head on his shoulder, imagining with him how this might be done.
Finally,
they grew weary, and, as they did when they were childhood friends,
they nestled innocently in each other's arms and fell asleep.
In
the middle of the night, Miro had a terrible dream that Ariela was
lying, unconscious, at the bottom of a deep well. And that, thanks to
Wolf's glasses and his heightened ability to sense things without
seeing them, he could feel and 'see' precisely the terror she was
experiencing. And, in his dream, their two children were standing
helplessly at the top of the well, unable to imagine what to do to
rescue their mother -- their faces in ghastly mime make-up, unable to
speak. Miro woke up shouting, and it took an unsettled Elena an hour to
calm him down.
And then he noticed, at his feet, a card that had somehow become separated from the rest of the deck.
Not the Lost Mariner, though. It was the Hanged Man.
Artwork above is from Sweden's Linda Bergkvist at furiae. Some of her extraordinary work is available for sale through her site. |
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