The Spirit Cabinet (43 page)

“My distinct pleasure.” He turned and shuffled out the door of the George. The old man sailed slowly down the sidewalk, turned the corner onto Paradise Road and—having checked over his shoulder to make certain there were no eyes upon him—faltered briefly, hitching his shoulders and stumbling forward, an old man’s version of kicking up one’s heels.

“So what’s the deal?” demanded Preston.

“Hmm?”

“Didn’t you recognize the voice?”

“Sounded familiar.”

“It wasn’t Houdini.”

“That so?”

“Shouldn’t we have told Mr. Collinger?”

“The way I figure it, he’ll take that tape to a television station or something, and he’ll find someone who believes him and there’ll be someone who doesn’t—someone who says
why are they both speaking German?
—and in a couple of weeks everyone will have forgotten about it.”

The two were ascending the circular stairs, leaving terry cloth bathrobes in their wake.

“And that would be good? That would be preferable to conclusive proof of life after death?”

Miranda tsked her tongue. “Man, you know that better than anyone.”

“I do?”

“It’s about wonder, right? Wonder. We need it.”

“We?”

“Humanoids.” She took the stairs two at a time now, drawing ahead of him. She mounted to the top and then dove for the fusty daybed. Preston swayed by the perimeter, breathing heavily—winded by the stairs, despite the fact he’d given up smoking—and staring hard. “Yeah,” he agreed, “we need it.”

“Come on, Preston,” said Miranda, “we’ve got work to do.”

“Work?” Preston waddled forward and fell, bouncing his bedmate into the air. “This isn’t work.”

“That’s what you say now,” said Miranda, landing on top of Preston’s belly. “But let’s hear from you in an hour or so.”

“An hour? What are we going to be doing for an hour?”

“We,” said Miranda, wedging her hand between their bodies, guiding Preston inside her, “are going to be creating little Preston. Preston the Wonderful.”

“Right,” grunted the Adequate. “Preston the Improbable.”

“Preston,” whispered Miranda, “the Splendiferous.”

“Preston the, uh, Marvellous.”

“Preston, uh, Preston, uh, the Stunning.”

“Uh Preston uh the Uh.”

“Uh the Uh.”

“Uh.”

And in that region of the blue world known today as Sri Lanka (but known once as
Cingal
, from the Indian word
sing
, for lion) two peasants, a young couple of the ancient Veddahs, crouch by the side of a snakelike, dusty road. In a small mesh basket before
them is their son, a few months old. The child is pale and labouring for breath. They have been to see the old woman who knows about remedy and ritual, but she told them nothing. The old woman merely touched the baby’s forehead, pursed her wrinkled lips until they vanished from sight, and then turned and hobbled away on the sides of her twisted feet.

So the couple are returning to their village. All will has abandoned them, leaving them hunkered, desolate and beyond tears, in the middle of nowhere.

Over a rise in the road comes a man wearing only a soiled loincloth, so loose and thinned by time that it does virtually nothing to hide his nakedness. The man’s body is odd; it is improbably muscled, every group, subgroup and ligament clearly visible just beneath the skin. And the skin itself is strange; it seems as smooth as glass or porcelain. The sunlight explodes on the man’s body; the Veddah couple shade their sore eyes with trembling palms.

The man’s face is ageless, or at any rate, the age is impossible to determine. There is evidence of decrepitude—hairlessness, chiefly, except for a thin topknot of gossamer hair—but there are no wrinkles on the brow or at the corners of the mouth, even though the mouth is pulled into the widest of grins. The man’s features are heroic somehow, his beauty all but perfect. The only thing amiss is a peculiar colouration around and across the eyes, where the skin tone changes from bronze to an ill-looking purple. The eyes themselves are shut, the lids sealed by a gum made of rheum and tears. The man carries a staff, working it along the road, displacing rocks that lie in the path of his naked feet. The young couple dismiss the man as a blind beggar; they turn away and look down to the ground, although they are both really looking into the deep pools of their own sadness.

The blind man stops before them. The young man and woman catch their breath. They try to remain as still as possible,
praying that the beggar will soon shrug and continue on his way. But the baby betrays them. Its breath breaks through a windpipe squeezed tight by illness. The wheeze is whisper-quiet, far softer than the breeze, but the blind man cocks his head and turns.

“Our son—” the young man begins by way of explanation, but he is cut short. The beggar opens his eyes, slowly lifting the mulberry lids. The couple is startled, almost panicky. The beggar’s eyes are not milky and lifeless, they are a radiant silver. At their centre are dots of denser metallic stuff like beads of mercury.

The beggar lowers his head, aiming these eyes at the baby. The woman starts forward, reaching toward the basket, but her husband places a hand on her arm. They exchange looks, and the wife slowly withdraws her hand. As she does so, the basket begins to rise.

The beggar’s face is set in concentration. Although his brow does not yet wrinkle, the skin itself seems to crack, marbling with taut veins. The old bruises that surround the beggar’s eyes become darker; the eyes themselves glow more intensely, giving out lambent pulsations.

The basket rises high into the air, above the hands of humankind, and begins to spin slowly. The silence is then broken by a sound, strange to the young couple because they haven’t heard it in such a long time. It is the child laughing.