Mooncranker's Gift Read online

  Yes, high-priest of time and rule during that summer. But now too human and complex, dazed with drink, rambling in speech. Your status of umpire is gone for ever.

  ‘Come and see,’ Mooncranker said, and Farnaby followed him into the adjoining room and over to the head of the bed where, set into the wall a little to one side were three bell-pushes one below the other in a faded, red-plush panel.

  ‘It concerns the nature of the persons summoned by these bells,’ Mooncranker said.

  Stooping, Farnaby read the word Service in dim sepia copperplate against the top bell, with Bonne below it and finally Groom.

  ‘It is the last one that interests me,’ Mooncranker said, and his speech was quite clear now. ‘What meaning can the word groom have for us, Farnaby?’

  It was at this point that Farnaby departed from a life-long habit of caution, and acted in a completely unauthorized way. He had always done what was expected of him, more or less. His sense of propriety was highly developed. Passing at night for example he would not have peered into lighted interiors. He always shut gates after him in case the cows got out. But talking to Mooncranker had been a strain; just keeping them both more or less decorously there and not yielding to some force he felt threatening to sweep them into limbo had involved him in a series of expedients, like trying to hold down a table-cloth with all the tea things on it in the midst of a picnic disrupted by sudden inexplicable gales. In these circumstances the limits of the permissible are extended. A reckless impulse rose in Farnaby. He looked tensely at Mooncranker, then he said, ‘We can jolly soon find out, sir,’ and pushed his thumb against the bell.

  ‘Don’t ring it, you’re not ringing it are you?’ Mooncranker said and made a jerky sort of gesture as if to restrain him. He looked rather frightened. ‘Don’t ring it,’ he said again, but by this time of course it was too late. Farnaby removed his thumb. They stood there beside the bed, regarding each other.

  ‘No immediate effect,’ Mooncranker said, after a moment. ‘No immediate effect, Farnaby.’ His high-shouldered frame relaxed a little, drooped. He moved some steps away. ‘Probably disconnected years ago,’ he said. ‘What earthly use could there be for a groom?’

  Once more in the sitting-room, Mooncranker sat in the armchair he had first offered to his visitor. He smiled kindly across at Farnaby. ‘Tell me something about yourself,’ he said. ‘What have you been doing over the years?’

  His voice was clear and slow, his manner collected. With a feeling almost of disbelief Farnaby realized that he and Mooncranker were about to have a chat. For the first time in his visit their mutual attitudes were going to be more or less in accordance with his sense of fitness. Perhaps something could be salvaged after all. He began to tell Mooncranker about the latter years. Filling in the picture, Uncle George would have called it. It was a placid tale. Farnaby was conscious himself that his life had been lacking in dramatic incident. There were no peaks in it much. Nor could it be described as a plain really, but rather as a sort of flattened-out trough. He had always done what was expected of him. Ever since that summer. That summer had marked the end of several things, though he did not explain this to Mooncranker at present. The end of his religious phase certainly – the thought of Christ’s person filled him with horror even now; the end of his acquaintance with Miranda and with Mooncranker too; the end of tennis; the end of his expectation of similar summers. Yes, quite a lot of ends. Each of them contained a beginning too, but the beginnings were not so easy to discern. He did not speak of this to Mooncranker, of course.

  After school, where his faulty coordination, the slightly maimed grace of his movements, were the despair of games masters, he went on to university, where he read modern history. A creditable, by no means brilliant degree. Some months of idleness and indecision. Taking Stock, Uncle George would have called it. A loafing, dandruffy period.

  ‘I thought I’d better have a look round first, you know,’ he said, aware from experience that this sentiment was unimpeachable.

  ‘Absolutely right, dear boy.’ Mooncranker had placed the tips of his fingers together and his chalk-white face looked benignantly over the cage thus formed. ‘Absolutely essential when it comes to choosing a career. A choice which after all, let’s face it, is a choice which … I mean, absolutely crucial.’

  ‘Then I applied for a research scholarship from my university.’

  “‘Making a recce”, we called it, in my army days.’ Mooncranker continued in brisker tones. Fired upon, flat on your face, make a recce.’

  Rather surprisingly, he had succeeded in obtaining the scholarship, and was now committed to producing a thesis on Ottoman Fiscal Policy in regard to the Foreign Millyets. Precisely what aspect of this, however, after three months in Istanbul he had still not determined. The field was so vast. His mind groped among mounds of facts randomly yet patiently assembled. The suspicion had been growing in him lately that he was not really cut out for academic work. In the meantime, however, it was activity of a sort, and it gave him a certain sense of purpose, albeit intermittent. Mornings in the library; solitary walks about the city after lunch, making Mental Notes; haphazard reading in the evenings. He knew almost no one in the city.

  All this he was trying now, as tactfully as possible in view of Mooncranker’s well-known interests and abilities, to explain and Mooncranker was sitting back in his chair and nodding to denote continued attentiveness, having grasped his role at last, as it seemed to Farnaby, which was not that of a dishevelled vomiter in bathrooms, but courteous subserver of a distant evil, mature now in years and experience, interviewer of the celebrated for the benefit of a listening nation – himself listening now with a kindly irony in reserve to a promising young protégé – when there was a sudden loud and most disconcerting scraping sound at the door as though some dog or cat were scratching at it, but higher up than dogs or cats would normally be expected to scratch.

  Farnaby’s voice tailed off into silence. The smile of kindly interest disappeared without trace from Mooncranker’s face. He looked for a moment slightly anxious, as if he were striving to hear distant music. Then Farnaby saw his mouth slacken and fall open a little. ‘Go and see who it is, will you?’ he said. There was a sound now from the door as of someone attempting to insert a key but in a very fumbling fashion as though the person beyond was encumbered or handicapped in some way. ‘No, wait a minute,’ Mooncranker said, in a curiously hurried and indistinct voice as if he had some obstruction in the throat. ‘Don’t open it, put the catch on. Hurry up for God’s sake, before it gets in.’

  Farnaby went to the door. After a momentary hesitation he opened it, and at the same time almost without thinking pressed down a switch at the side of the door. Light from the chandelier flooded the room with a dazzling brilliance. Farnaby felt for a moment as if he were at the soundless flaring centre of an explosion. He heard Mooncranker speaking indistinctly behind him, and he was aware of enormous responsibility in shedding this bright light on Mooncranker’s person. He held the door open and looked out. A strangely accoutred, veiled creature was fumbling on the threshold. It staggered a little, having apparently been leaning lightly against the door in its efforts to gain an entry, hampered in this by black leather gauntlets and by a sort of cylindrical weapon terminating in a nozzle, which it had been holding high up against black mackintoshed chest during the struggle with the lock. It must have been this that made the initial scraping sounds, Farnaby thought, regarding speechlessly this horrific, fumbling visitant whose features were entirely concealed beneath a thick black veil attached to the brim of a sort of helmet, like a large solar topee, also black, enclosing the whole face and head in a box-like, cage-like structure to some extent reminiscent of the apparatus worn by beekeepers but altogether sturdier and more impenetrable. Tall rubber wading-boots completed the picture and muffled syllables issued from behind the mask as the figure, having now regained its balance, confronted Farnaby. Eyepieces, in the form of glasses or goggles, gleamed disconcertingly from
behind the veil. Farnaby heard a high-pitched voice, barely recognizable as Mooncranker’s, shout, ‘It’s the groom!’ and a moment later a door slammed. The figure commenced to back towards the opposite wall but before reaching it turned away from Farnaby. It held the cylindrical instrument in both hands now. Raising its legs high off the ground with each step it began to walk away down the corridor.

  Farnaby closed the door again carefully, retaining as he turned back into the room a very vivid image of that high-stepping black figure retreating down the brightly lit, empty corridor. ‘He’s gone now,’ he called loudly towards the bedroom door, surmising that Mooncranker must have taken refuge in there. After a moment or two he repeated the call. The door opened a few inches and Mooncranker peered out. Seeing only Farnaby he opened it wider, straightened himself, and stood in the doorway, blinking rapidly and smoothing the hair back over his ears.

  ‘Please put off that light, dear boy,’ he said.

  Farnaby obeyed, but even when the room was restored once more to its roseate dimness, Mooncranker did not move from his position in the doorway.

  ‘There must be some perfectly good explanation,’ Farnaby said.

  ‘You rang for the groom,’ Mooncranker said, and for a moment his expression appeared vindictive.

  Farnaby said, ‘I intend to follow the matter up.’ He felt this utterance to be irreproachable, but it elicited no immediate response from Mooncranker who had lowered his head and seemed to be pondering. ‘I shall phone down to the management,’ Farnaby said.

  At this Mooncranker looked up. ‘No,’ he said, ‘Go down in person. It’s the only way. I myself have always been noted for the intellectual rigour with which I have pursued everything and interred it, so to speak, enshrouded in its conclusion. Phoning is no good, you will only get at cross-purposes. Slip down and inquire.’

  ‘Very well,’ Farnaby said.

  Mooncranker said, ‘Excuse me one moment,’ and closed the bedroom door in Farnaby’s face, almost. Farnaby heard sounds of vomiting. Then complete silence. He left without attempting further speech with Mooncranker.

  His face seemed the same in the lift mirror: long, large-jawed, equable. The clerk watched his approach with what might have been an intensification of sadness, resting immaculate hands flat on the reception desk. Farnaby knew that his Turkish was nowhere near adequate to the situation. ‘You don’t speak English, do you?’ he said. ‘Oh, français. Well, s’il vous plaît, qui est l’homme masqué, avec les grands grants,qui a essayé d’entrer il y a quelques minutes la chambre numéro soixante-huit?’

  ‘Masqué?’ the clerk said, frowning slightly.

  ‘Oui, masqué, je vieux dire qu’il portait un chapeau avec une voile épaisse …’

  ‘On vous a volé?’the clerk said.

  ‘No, no. Not vol, voile.’Farnaby and the clerk regarded each other for several moments in silence. A sense of being inextricably entangled in Mooncranker’s life as in a web, a sense of enmeshment and imprisonment possessed Farnaby. The present toils were linguistic only, but they were symptomatic he felt of an entrapment that had begun in the first seconds of his visit to Mooncranker. ‘Yes,’ he said dully, ‘et il portait aussi des grandes bottes de pêcheur …’

  ‘Excuse me,’ a voice behind him said. ‘Can I be of service to you?’ The English was good except for an excessive sibilance. Turning he saw a slender, elegant middle-aged man with hair parted in the middle and luxuriant eyelashes. Slowly and carefully he described the visitation of the groom, then waited with a set and expressionless face while the matter was explained in Turkish to the clerk.

  ‘It seems that a mistake was made,’ his interpreter said, infusing these words with a courteous regret.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘It was thought that your room was unoccupied.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Farnaby, ‘but who actually was this person?’

  ‘It is of no importance,’ the other said, with a rather winning smile. ‘Permit me to introduce myself. I am Papazian. Here is my card.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Farnaby said. ‘James Farnaby. Look here, I should very much like to get to the bottom of this business.’

  ‘I am a dealer in antiques,’ Mr Papazian said. ‘You are welcome any time at my shop, for business or just to take a coffee.’

  ‘Thanks very much. Would you ask him again who the man was?’

  ‘It is no use to ask these people anything,’ Mr Papazian said. Nevertheless he turned again to the clerk and resumed his questioning. Farnaby assumed a look of conscious patience. He felt suddenly that he was living through the end of an era: nothing could ever be the same. Papazian was speaking to him again now, in his precise English. Farnaby listened gravely, head slightly inclined.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘Yes, I see.’ He looked up at this moment, to see Mooncranker in a long black overcoat, hair standing up wildly, go rapidly across the lobby, looking neither to right nor left, and pass through the swing-doors at the entrance.

  ‘Beetles you call them, I think,’ Mr Papazian said.

  ‘No, not beetles.’ Farnaby made as if to withdraw. ‘Thank you for your help,’ he said. In his mind he had retained a vivid image of Mooncranker’s wild, distraught pattern of movement against the rococo ornamentation of the lobby.

  ‘Not beetles? How do you call them, these little creatures that infest the cracks?’

  ‘I think they must be bugs, or termites perhaps. I shall have to be going I think.’

  ‘Bugs, termites,’ Papazian said to the clerk, reproachfully, as if he should have known that much English at least. ‘Are you interested at all in antique coins?’ he asked Farnaby.

  ‘Not at the moment, thank you.’

  ‘Icons?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I offer competitive prices,’ Mr Papazian said. ‘My telephone number is on the card.’

  ‘I will keep it in mind,’ Farnaby said, and they shook hands. Mr Papazian’s was small and hot and dry.

  3

  Outside on the pavement he looked up and down the street but there was no sign of Mooncranker. He did not know which way to go. He berated himself for his weakness in politely lingering there with the Armenian when he should have rushed in immediate pursuit. There was a peculiar desolation in having lost Mooncranker, particularly as he felt certain now that he had been sent to inquire about the groom so that Mooncranker could effect this escape.

  After some hesitation he began walking back along the street the way he had come. The balconies were in darkness now. The night air was cold, too cold for sitting out of doors. He wondered whether the two girls were continuing their conversation elsewhere. There was a dankness in the atmosphere, no doubt emanating from the nearby waters of the Golden Horn; the street-lamps, old-fashioned and ornate in this part of the city, were faintly aureoled; they diffused their light. The fancy came to Farnaby that the lamps were bandaged with some gauzy material that muffled their light, and immediately he thought again of the figure on the cross that Mooncranker had handed him, which had actually been swathed in white bandage. Fashioned in sausage-meat and afterwards bound in white bandage. He could remember how pure the bandage had seemed to him. With a sort of familiar, almost cherished horror, as when some sequence in an evil dream or in delirium is recalled to mind, he remembered the clearing, the secret place at the far edge of the shrubbery, the seamed, grey trunk of the birch where he had pinned up the Christ. He had felt inviolable in that place because no one in the world knew of it. And yet it had been so close to the tennis-courts that he could hear the Umpire’s voice from there and the sharp, implosive sound of racquet meeting ball … The cobbles of the street appeared to be exuding moisture. Ancient cities have their own secretions – processes analogous to the glandular. Looking down the street he could make out pockets of brighter light at the thresholds of the nightclubs whose festooned portals he had passed earlier, but it was still too early for any great concourse there. The sky above the street was black, scattered with pale stars. A
feeling of alienation swept over Farnaby, a sense of being far from the source of any kindness. He thought of Mooncranker wandering distraught through the night in his long overcoat.

  Unwilling to pass once again the long gallery of nude artistes, Farnaby turned off suddenly to his right down a narrow street, little more than an alley, with high blank walls on either side. His steps put cats to flight. The street declined steeply for the first hundred yards or so then levelled off to a junction with a rather broader one at right angles, and Farnaby again turned to the right with the vague idea of remaining in the neighbourhood of Mooncranker’s hotel. After a minute or two the pavement widened into a semi-circular area with a small fountain set in the middle of it, enclosed on three sides by a railing. Farnaby paused at the fountain and conscientiously, by the light of the single street lamp, examined the panelling and sculpting of the two marble basins and the green and gilt Arabic characters above them informing the passer-by who built this fountain and in whose reign. From below him came the sudden, insanely brief whoop of a ferry boat. In unfrequented by-ways of the old City,the visitor will stumble upon antique fountains whose excellent state of preservation bears witness to Turkish Piety and Love of Water. Suddenly and quite unmistakably, from the darkness beyond the fountain, there came to Farnaby’s ears the strangled, inhuman sounds of a person vomiting. He started forward round the fountain railing, arousing as he did so, however, a series of muttered plaints from a person he now saw for the first time, who had been sitting, perhaps sleeping, with his back to the railing. ‘For the love of Allah,’ he heard this seated person say. A beggar obviously, but he took no notice for the moment, peering into the gloom beyond, where hunched against the wall he could make out a tall figure. He advanced some paces towards this. ‘Is that you, sir?’ he said. The figure at once straightened itself, moved away from the wall and stood upright and motionless for a moment or two, looking towards him. He saw at once, from the high-shouldered stance and slightly vulturous dishevelment, that it was Mooncranker. But when he attempted to draw nearer, the other made a violent movement with his left arm, as if fending him off, then began to move rapidly away round the fountain railing. He circled the fountain on the opposite side from Farnaby, evoking in his passage fresh supplications and references to Allah from the seated figure. Then he made off at a rapid shambling walk down the alley the way Farnaby had come. Farnaby began to follow, but this meant passing the beggar again and he now saw that this man had no legs. He was lopped off at the upper thigh, terminating in a mass of rags. The cap was familiar and the voice. It was the man he had almost trodden on earlier. At this moment the man raised his face and Farnaby saw that he had no nose either. His face was almost completely flat. What other features were missing or decayed he did not attempt to determine, keeping his own face averted while he fished in his pockets for kurus, then looking only at the outstretched palm into which he dropped the coins. The voice of the beggar did not change; the plaints continued behind Farnaby as he proceeded down the alley, reminding him now in some strange way of Mooncranker’s voice, the same patient, gentle quality, as though speech were a sustained despairing signalling, not an attempt to converse.