“Everyone sees the Barley brothers,” he said puzzledly. He shrugged. “I have no opinion of them at all,” he said.
Were they practising these obliquities to frighten him? Ashlyme couldn’t tell. When he coughed and asked if he could go home, no one answered him. Each time they transferred him to another room it seemed to him that he was taken deeper into the building. Its inner architecture had a curious hollow quality which the dreary new passages and staircases could not quite fill up. If he closed his eyes he could easily imagine himself afloat on a ringing emptiness, in which strange old languages were being spoken. And he could get no idea of who lived here: empty bottles and rotting apple cores rolled about underfoot, yet every so often he glimpsed through some half-open door a richly furnished suite of rooms, or observed fleetingly a servant hurrying along the landing with a dog on a jewelled lead. Finally he found himself in an office equipped with a brass voice pipe, into which his answers were conveyed. When he mentioned his profession, this apparatus set up a tinny, excited squawking. He could not catch its drift, but his custodians listened carefully and then conferred among themselves.
“Ask him his name,” they advised one another, and after it had been given for the hundredth time, and repeated twice into the voice pipe, told Ashlyme: “His nibs would like to see you.”
The Grand Cairo was a very small man of indeterminate age, thick-necked, grown fattish in the middle. “I like to think of myself as a fighter,” he was always saying, “and a veteran of strange wars.” He did move with a light, aggressive tread, much like that of a professional brawler from the Plaza of Unrealised Time, and sometimes quite disconcerting: but he had too sly a glance even for a common soldier; and drinking bessen genever, a thick black-currant gin very popular in the Low City, had ruined his teeth, lent his eyes a watery, spiteful caste, and made his forearms flabby. Nevertheless he had a high opinion of himself. He was proud of his hands, in particular their big square fingers; showed off at every opportunity the knotted thigh muscles of his little legs; and kept his remaining hair well oiled down with a substance called “Altaean Balm,” which one of his servants bought for him at a stall in the Tinmarket.
Ashlyme found him waiting impatiently by a window. He had on a jerkin with heavily padded shoulders, done in gorgeous dull red leathers, and he had arranged himself in the curious hollow-backed pose-hands clasped behind his back-he believed would accentuate the dignity of his chest.
“Come here, Master Ashlyme,” he said, “and tell me what you see.”
By now it was dark outside. The windowpanes reflected the lamplight and furnishings like a pond. If he strained his eyes, Ashlyme could make out rooftops, some of them quite close, which he took to be those of the less fashionable side of Mynned, near Cheniaguine and the Hospital Coictier. Off to the left, hardly visible at all and looking like the preparations for some long-drawn-out nocturnal war, there were the strange trenches and abandoned foundations which had been visited on the district of Montrouge.
“If it were not for their interference,” said the Grand Cairo, giving the word a particularly virulent emphasis and at the same time glancing over his shoulder as if he suspected someone might be listening, “this part of the city would have been transformed by now. Transformed!”
“I know very little about town planning,” said Ashlyme, careful not to enlist himself in some quarrel between the Barley brothers and their dwarf.
The Grand Cairo tilted his head alertly on one side. “Just so,” he said in a flat voice.
Suddenly he threw open the window, letting in the warmish air from a small balcony, where some early roses, planted in curious old baptismal fonts and trained to the wrought-iron railing, gave off a heavy vulgar scent.
“Come out here and see if you can guess how I do this,” he invited. He gave a low, plaintive whistle, oulouloulou, which echoed away across the housetops like the call of a summer owl. Nothing happened. He laughed and tried to catch Ashlyme’s eye.
Ashlyme, embarrassed, avoided this by looking out over the balcony. “We’re not at all high up here,” he said, and found himself slightly disappointed.
“Look! Look!” said the dwarf gleefully. “See?”
The balcony was full of cats, purring and mewing, lifting themselves up momentarily on their hind legs to rub their heads against his knees. The dwarf picked them up one by one, chuckling and saying their names: “This is Nounoune… Sexer… here’s Zero with his bent tail… and here’s my fierce Planchette… Namenloss… Eamo… Elbow,” and so on, an eerie list spoken thoughtfully into the scented night. More than a dozen lean little animals had come to him out of the darkness. It was in its way quite impressive.
“Not one of these cats is mine,” he said. “They come from all over the city, because I speak their language.” He looked intently at Ashlyme. “What do you think of that? Of that possibility?”
“What lovely animals!” exclaimed Ashlyme evasively. He tried to stroke one of them but it turned on him such a cold, knowing glance that he moved his hand away at once. “Very impressive,” he said.
At this, the dwarf seemed to lose interest. He required Ashlyme to come and sit down next door in what he called his “side chamber,” a monstrously tall room, original to the tower, in which he looked like a spoiled child wandering about a palace at night. Even the furniture was too large, huge wing chairs and armoires with pewter fitments. There were intricately carved circular tables, old, heavy brocade curtains, and cushions embroidered with metallic thread. The walls had been done out in black and dull gold, with panels of red in which were mounted paintings by Audsley King, Kristodulos, and Ashlyme himself. “I am a collector, you see!” said the dwarf proudly. There was even a sentimental watercolour signed by Paulinus Rack, almost invisible against its overblown setting. The room smelled of incense and stale cakes, the smell of great age. The cats loved it: they filed in one by one and filled up the air with a drugged purring, but Ashlyme felt dizzy, and-when he saw his own work hung in those ancient spaces-a little uneasy.
The Grand Cairo sighed. He stared thoughtfully at an Audsley King landscape, done in oil and pencil, which showed an old swing bridge being mended at Line Mass Quay.
“What do you see when you look at me?” he said at last. “I’ll tell you. You see a man who has rubbed hard against the corners of the world; a man who has had to endure privations and attacks, and constantly fulfil the role of outcast.” He laughed scornfully. “Outcast!” he repeated, and went on: “Perhaps you look admiringly round this room and tell yourself, ‘A streak of the sinister is mixed in this man’s composition with many good qualities.’ You are right!” And he gave a satisfied nod, as if this dramatic assessment had indeed been Ashlyme’s. “Nevertheless: I am a man of strong sensibilities-do not forget that-who might once himself have been artist, athlete, mathematician!”
He gave the Audsley King a last admiring glance.
“If only we could be as she is! Still, we can only do our best. I’ll order some refreshments, then stand-or sit-wherever you want me to. Will you have the right profile or the left?”
And, when he saw Ashlyme staring at him helplessly:
“I want you to do my portrait, Master Ashlyme. You are the one to catch me as I am!”
He was an exasperating subject, full of nervous energy and forever dissatisfied with his pose. He began by standing up, one hand stretched out like a populist orator. Then he sat down and put his chin on his hand. But soon that was not good enough for him either and he had to stand up again to display the muscles of his upper back. At first he thought too much light was falling on him to emphasise the essential duality of his character, then too little to bring out the line of his jaw. He smiled until he remembered that this would reveal his teeth, then frowned. “I cannot decide how to present myself,” he admitted, with a sigh. He was talking constantly.