How could I have not understood his strangeness the first day at the inn—the map of Karlsruhe, the Baron with the Drais? Frau Helga says now that his mind is broken and she hates him, but later I hear them thumping in the night, dragging at each other like wild creatures, snorting and panting like the partners of a crime. Dare I admit—I would sell my soul for less.
In the morning I am shaken awake. Sumper has shaved, smooth as rock, and gleaming. His eyes are pebbles in a stream.
What he wishes me to understand, before the day’s work begins, is that all this is exactly as Albert Cruickshank had foretold.
He lays his hand against my cheek. Who would not shrink from him? He repeats that Cruickshank had predicted my arrival in Germany and my particular role in Sumper’s life. My eyes are stuck with sleep but his are clear, without the tiniest ripple of doubt.
This is one more lie. I have everything recorded exactly, as he told it—he has not seen Cruickshank since he set out for Buckingham Palace on that rainy night. At that time there was no talk of me. How could there be? Then he was deported and finally returned to Furtwangen from which place he despatched the ledger of drowned people to his former master. He received in return the blasphemous automaton with a “charming note” which indicated Sumper might now need the laughter more than Cruickshank.
If there had been some “prophecy” I would have noted it, just as I have noted all the other symptoms.
But Sumper, as from the start, is slippery as a Rhine fish. “I cannot tell you everything that ever occurred.” He opens the shutters, raises the windows to admit the howling wind. “No, I am not relating what Cruickshank WROTE to me but rather what HE SAID. Please pay attention to what I am telling you. When I left for Buckingham Palace the Genius already saw what my fate would be. I imagined I would save the Engine, but he knew the truth. At the moment, when I shook his hand, he said do not despair, another Englishman will come along. Only later did his words come back to me. I might lose him, but another Englishman would come along.”
I rise and stand with my back to the window to keep the storm at bay. He pushes himself towards me, eyes too close, too insistent.
He says: “Do you not remember how I sat waiting for you in Frau Beck’s inn? You did not know it yet, but I already had your foolish plans.”
“Herr Sumper,” I say, “this is not sensible. Mr. Cruickshank never knew me, nor could he know my circumstances, or the character of my wife, or the sickness of my son, or the artists overrunning our home. To speak in his own language, Mr. Cruickshank had insufficient data.”
“Henry, you have not the least idea of what that great brain thought. How could you?”
I am two inches taller but when I look into those jet black eyes I am but a snivelling beast. I pray that he will release me soon.
It is clear now that Frau Helga has let the villagers see the laughing Jesus. It is my fault that she sold it, but is the price enough for my own purpose? Certainly I saw Frau Helga counting money in the stable. I saw the fair down on her arms. Once I dreamed I might kiss her. Long ago.
I was at the stream washing, naked, teetering on razor shale which can amputate your toes. When Sumper touched my shoulder I jumped in fright. My private parts shrivelled like gizzards in a stockpot. He was armoured in his leather apron, a beak in his hand, but I did not know that then.
He said, “You will have been responsible for something far finer than you could ever conceive.”
“I wanted only a duck.”
“You were not born to have a duck. You were born to bring a Wonder to the world.”
And then he turned away and left me in my nakedness.
That night the mother threw the mashed potatoes across the floor. “You have no right to steal my son.” There was more of it, all very distressing, particularly to watch the Holy Child wring his hands, his long warty white fingers. In the lamp light his chin looked long, his knees high and these fingers entwining like a nest of baby eels.
“I have not come so far to hurt this boy,” said Sumper. “He is a Genius.”
“You shall not hurt him,” she said. Yet she surely knew what dangerous situation she had created at the inn where they had presumably witnessed Jesus rolling across the floor and laughing. “He is just a little boy.”
“He is a Genius,” repeated Sumper. “Here,” he said, “read this.” And from the pouch of his apron he produced the ebony beak on the underside of which I saw there was silver script inset in the coal-black wood.
“I cannot read.” She drew back from it. “You know I cannot.”
So he thrust the object to me.
Those awful eyes were upon me, waiting for me to understand the meaning.
I am a dunce, I thought, a total dunderhead.
“Quite,” I said. “Exactly.”
Catherine
ANNIE HELLER KICKED ME out at seven with the final pages still unread. I walked down the narrow Danish stairs, all golden at that time of day. Outside there was a warm wind lifting vagrant pamphlets in the air.
I arrived at the Annexe studio five minutes before lockdown, and there, in what we called the “Ikea box,” the swan’s beak was waiting amongst all those odd screws and washers, the mostly leftover pieces from our reassembly. Why I had treated it so offhandedly is a question for a psychiatrist. I had not even assigned it a catalogue number. M. Arnaud’s handiwork was exactly as I had last seen it, black as black, on a bed of cotton wool, inside a small cardboard box, with the word BEAK in magic marker on the lid.
Contrary to Henry’s account, nothing was written on the beak itself. I found this extremely, even excessively, disturbing, as if I had been lied to by a lover. Then I understood the obvious: Arnaud had inlaid the words in silver which would now be silver oxide, that is, the words would be black on black. I could have taken the mystery to the window. I could have used the raking lamp, but it was lockup time and I was agitated and frightened of being caught with my secret. So I wrapped the beak in Kleenex and popped it in an envelope and belted out of the building as if I was late for some grand, imaginary event.
It was a very strange evening, far too hot, with a strong dry wind that suggested Buckinghamshire had turned to desert. At Olympia, as at Lowndes Square, there were papers everywhere adrift, the Evening Standard wrapping itself with a nasty slap around the lamp post. AMERICA’S MESS NOT OURS. One could easily read it upside down.
There was an odd ammoniacal little pharmacy in a side street where I had already bought deodorant and shampoo. There was no cashier or shop girl, only the grey stooped little pharmacist who had a nasty cold. It was a shambles of cardboard boxes, electric fans and menstrual pads, and it took him a while to locate the cotton buds and methylated spirits.
“No bag,” I said, and tried to grab my purchases. But apparently a receipt must be written. When the old man spiked his yellow carbon copy I thought of my father, changing batteries, then upstairs to have a dram.
Finally I was in the street, and the Rose and Crown was just ahead, occupying its renovated corner with its blue tiles and bright green umbrellas and a surprising clustering of drinkers outside—English skin, sunburned half to death.
I attracted some attention which was a little bit OK. That is, one did not wish to be sexually invisible just yet. On the other hand there is something very nasty about a braying pack, and it was this sound that followed me up the stairs of the “Residence.”
I opened the window of my room and set up on the sill—it was quite wide enough to accommodate the meths bottle. I unpacked the cotton buds and laid them on a tissue. I sited the beak beside the buds. The rest was hardly brain surgery. Within three minutes the meths had revealed the silver inlay on the under-beak.