Moody and unsettled, Joe stops in at the corner shop to see whether Ari will sell him some cat poison.
When Ari arrived in London, he called the shop Bhred nba’a. He had come to the conclusion from watching English television that the people of London were fond of both puns and corner shops, and he reasoned that a combination must inevitably be a big success. Bread and butter became Bhred nba’a, and it emerged almost immediately that although Londoners do indeed admire both puns and convenience, they’re not keen on shop owners who appear to be taking the piss out of them while looking foreign. Correct use of the apostrophe to denote a glottal stop was not a defence.
Ari learned fast, and shortly painted over the offending sign. It’s not clear to Joe whether his name actually is anything like Ari, or whether he has just selected a comfortably foreign-yet-English noise which doesn’t startle the natives with complexity or suggestions of undue education.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ari is reticent on the poison issue. Ari regards cats as lessons in the journey through life. Cats, he explains, are divine messengers of patience. Joe, one shoulder still sore from a near miss two weeks ago, says they are Satanic messengers of discord and pruritus. Ari says this is possible, but by the workings of the ineffable divinity, even if they are Satanic messengers of discord and pruritus, they are also tutors sent by the Cosmic All.
“They are of themselves,” Ari says, clutching this morning’s consignment of organic milk, some of which is leaking through the plastic, “an opportunity for self-education.”
“In first aid and disease,” mutters Joe Spork.
“And in more spiritual things. The universe teaches us about God, Joseph.”
“Not cats. Or, not that cat.”
“All things are lessons.”
And this is so close to something Grandpa Spork once said that Joe Spork, even after a sleepless night and a bad cat morning, finds himself nodding.
“Thanks, Ari.”
“You are welcome.”
“I still want cat poison.”
“Good! Then we have much to teach one another!”
“Goodbye, Ari.”
“Au revoir, Joseph.”
II
Two Gentlemen of Edinburgh;
the Book of the Hakote;
Friend in need.
He is nearly at his front door when he hears the shout. It is a breathy, asthmatic shout, more a gasp, but it is penetrating all the same in the stillness of Quoyle Street. Pigeons scuttle nervously in the alley round the side.
“Hello? Mr. Spork?”
Joe turns, and beholds a rare and curious thing: a fat man running.
“Mr. Spork?”
He really is running. He’s not quick—although he’s light on his feet, as so many fat men are—but he has considerable momentum and powerful thighs, and he is not trotting, cantering, or jogging, but actually running. He reminds Joe at this remove of his mother’s father, the meat-packer, shaven-headed and layered with gammon and eggs. This specimen has his bulk, but not his heft, and is somewhere between thirty and fifty.
“Hello? I wonder if we could have a word?”
Yes, “we,” for indeed there are two of them, one fat and the other thin, the little one concealed behind his enormous companion, walking fastidiously along in the wake of the whale.
It is the fat one who is calling him, between breaths, as he hurtles up Quoyle Street. Joe stops and waits, hoping to avoid any kind of cardiac drama or collision, and by some curious trick, the two men arrive at much the same time. The thin one takes over the talking. He’s older, greyer, more measured and more unctuous.
“My dear Mr. Spork. I wonder if we might go inside? We represent—among other people, you understand—we represent the Loganfield Museum of Mechanical History in Edinburgh and Chicago.” But he has no Scots lilt, just a pure English diction with a hint of apology. His sentences do not turn upward at the end, in the modern American style, but conclude on firm, downward full stops. “It’s a matter of some delicacy, I’m afraid.”
Delicacy. Joe does not like delicacy. Oh, he likes it fine in clocks and mechanisms, but in real life it means courts and money and complication. It sometimes also means that another of his father’s debts or wickednesses has found its way home, and he will hear about how Mathew robbed a fellow of his life savings or stole a priceless jewel, and have to explain that no, the treasure of Mathew Spork is not his to disburse, that patrimony is nothing but an empty leather suitcase and a parcel of newspaper clippings detailing Mathew’s mostly unconvicted outrages. Mathew’s money is gone, and no one knows where to, not even his wife, not his son, and not his creditors. On this occasion, however, the matter appears to be related to Joe personally.
There is one person in Joe Spork’s small circle of friends whose life is occasionally complicated by issues of law.
Billy, you bald git, what have you got me into? Soot and sorrow, I know it.
Soot and sorrow: the Night Market’s invocation of desperate seriousness, of doom and disaster. He feels a powerful urge to run.
Instead he says “Please come in,” because it is his conviction that England is a just place, and his experience that even where the law has been bent or broken, a little cooperation and courtesy can smooth over some remarkably large potholes.
The fat one goes first and the thin one second, with Joe bringing up the rear to emphasise that he is not running, that indeed, they are entering his lair at his urging. He offers them tea and comfortable chairs, which they regretfully decline. So he makes tea for himself, and the thin one says that perhaps he will, after all, and helps himself to a macaroon into the bargain. The fat one drinks water, a lot of it. And when everyone is refreshed and Joe has shown them around the more interesting bits of his workshop (the half-assembled chess-playing robot he is making on commission in the style of the notorious Turk, the wind-up racehorses, the Edinburgh case clocks) the thin gentleman steeples his hands, as if to say it is time to begin.
“I am Mr. Titwhistle,” the thin gentleman says, “and this is Mr. Cummerbund. Those are our actual names, I’m afraid. Life is capricious. If you should feel the urge at any time to chuckle, we’re both quite big enough to share the joke.” He gives a demonstrative little smile, just to show he can. Mr. Cummerbund pats his stomach, as if to say that he, personally, is big enough for that one and a number of other jokes besides.
Joe Spork takes this for a species of test. He smiles politely, even contritely, a man who knows what it is to have an odd name and feels no need to laugh. Instead, he extends his hand to them both. Mr. Cummerbund takes it lightly. He has very soft skin, and he shakes gently but enthusiastically. After a moment, Joe unplugs himself, and turns to Mr. Titwhistle.
Mr. Titwhistle does not lean forward for the greeting. He keeps himself perfectly balanced, perfectly inside his own circle. He shakes hands as if mindful that Joe might at any moment slip and fall, that he might therefore need the solidity of his size eight feet on the carpet and the strength in his lawyerly thighs to lend support. He has very little hair; a mere haze embracing his head like the fuzz on a petrified peach. This makes his age impossible to judge. Forty-five? Sixty?
He looks directly into Joe’s face, quite calmly and without embarrassment. In his eyes—which are grey, and kindly—there is no flicker of dislike or disapproval. Indeed, they are more like eyes that proffer condolences, or mediation. Mr. Titwhistle understands that these little disagreements come along, and that persons of intelligence and determination can always get around them in one way or another. If Joe did slip, Mr. Titwhistle would not hesitate to bear him up. Mr. Titwhistle sees no reason for unpleasantness between those who are presently on opposite sides of the legal tennis net. He is before everything a pleasant man.