Fossiloctopus (4 page)

Object 2:Brass kaleidoscope, 8” long by 1” in diameter, belonging to the late British explorer, Doctor James Widdekind.  The object chamber of this instrument is filled with tiny dried arctic flower blossoms suspended in whale oil.  This kaleidoscope was discovered on the body of Dr. Widdekind, who had been overwhelmed, while travelling through German Togoland, stung to death and subsequently consumed by a massive tide of fire ants, as evinced by the entirely flesh-less skeleton of the late doctor and by the presence of several dead fire ants – still well preserved – in the view piece of the instrument.

Object 3:Wooden Kaleidoscope, 6” long by 2” in diameter.  This instrument, constructed of maple, bears a carved inscription, in Arabic, of these lines from a traditional West African poem:

As the sun by day, so the moon by night

Breaks forth and gleams, lets our herds go to pasture.

Where once it was cold, the chill’s now departed.

See – is there aught as bright as the moon?

Gentle one gliding aloft in the heavens.

Not hard to describe – like a flufflet of cotton.

Break from the clouds, set thyself in the sky

‘Twas Allah appointed thy journey, thy grazing.

All the world knows it’s the truth I am telling.

Gentle one gliding along on the breeze, in all the wide world none with thee

Can compare.

This kaleidoscope belonged to Ali Mamadu N-diaye, a Tukolor corporal of the
Tirailleurs Sénégalais
who received it as a gift from his commanding officer, Lieutenant Lamine Chardigne, only days before N’diaye was killed, along with all but thirty members of his company, during a German night-time assault on Dixmude, Belgium, in 1914.

Object 4: Platinum kaleidoscope, commissioned by Debeers LV, belonging to central African Dictator John Mungwane.  Chips of ruby, emerald, opal, sapphire and diamond provide the object chamber elements for this piece.  An etching around the eyepiece reads “Best regards, J.F. Kennedy.”  It is suspected that Mungwane’s assassination in June, 1971, was carried out by a CIA operative under orders from American President Richard Nixon.

Exhibit 2:An excerpt from an account given to the UN war crimes tribunal, 1998:

“ We ran into the village church, hopeful that our neighbors might take pity on us in God’s sanctuary.  I had to step over several bodies to make it through the chapel’s doors.  I crouched near the altar, praying for deliverance, as was everyone who was crammed into that little building.  We could hear the machine guns outside, but were relieved to hear them stop, until something came crashing through the stained glass window, showering me with glass.  Someone in the middle of the crowd screamed “Grenade!” and an explosion threw me to the ground.  Bodies flew over me and blood spotted up onto the broken stained glass window, staining Mary, Queen of Africa’s dress.  The sun shone through that window, spraying colors over everything – the candlesticks, the altar, the bodies, the blood . . .”

Keys I Don’t Remember

The Last Key in Sodom

Lot detested the thing, but it was, after all, a domestic necessity.  Heaven forbid that a man of God use a stylized phallus for his incomings and outgoings, but it was so.  He felt guilty, one step away from damnation, whenever he inserted the thing into the labial lock that adorned his front door.  But once inside he could feel the holiness of his dwelling – a home is a man’s temple, no less – and delighted in being enveloped in the warmth of hearthside security.  He was a devout man, though, and counted his blessings.  At least the keyhole was gender-specific.

The key passed through many hands the day after Abraham’s pleading.  Lot’s absent-minded daughter met a pair of angels on the street that day and brought them home.  Unfortunately, in letting them in, she completely forgot the key in the lock. 

By this time, as the story goes, the townsfolk took an interest in Lot’s visitors and came knocking.  As soon as their hairy knuckles hit wood, though, they were struck blind.  Someone on the outside, though, remembered seeing the key in the door and started to feel up the door to find the means to get in.  One of the angels – more erudite than Lot’s daughter, obviously – went to the window, gave a reach-around, and grabbed the key, pulling out just as a mass of hands grabbed at the spot below the brass handle.  A collective “Awww!” rose from the crowd.  Soon the Sodomites were on their hands and knees grubbing about for the key.  “Bugger it all!” someone called out.  The angel turned and closed the window forthwith, not wanting to witness what followed.  He handed the key to Lot’s wife who, he hoped, had more sense than her daughter.

After a quick debriefing, the family exited the back door and headed out of the city.  As they walked out onto the plain, the angels explained that they must not turn back to the city, not even for a peek.  The Lord was going to destroy the city, and they expected Lot and his family to leave it all behind them.

About halfway across the plain, as the ravens, sensing something spectacular about to happen, headed towards the city, Lot’s wife decided to backturn.  Thankfully, in her sudden circling swoosh of skirts, the key flew out of her pocket and landed near her husband, who dutifully picked it up as a token in remembrance of her – she had turned to salt, he somehow sensed, before the key even hit the ground.  So it was.

The group retired to a cave in the amber glow of the burning plain.  Once inside, Lot, in his sorrow, drank himself into a stupor and slept on the floor.  He awoke the next morning to find his girls moping guiltily in the corner.  When asked what the problem was, both ran off into the cinder fields that once surrounded his fair city. 

Lot sighed – it had been a hard day and night.  The magnitude of the things he had seen weighed on him, and he questioned his grip on reality.  Then he remembered the key, his only anchor to sanity, given all he had been through.  He reached into the folds of his garments.  Gone.  The girls had taken the key from him, right out of his pocket.  His grip on reality slipped ever so slightly.  He didn’t know where the key had been, nor where it was, nor whether it was ever really there at all.

It is now stuck in Palestine.

The Schloss Key

We very much want you to have it, but it is clearly not yours to have.  It is beautiful to behold.  You must behold it.  You will behold it, hold it.  Soon.  Soon.

Perhaps.

If you stay within procedure.

The handle is black and green apple, a representation of a beetle with the same fruit embedded in its putrescent broken back.  The tongue of the beetle – and of the key – is in the form of an etiolated Hungerkunstler, though few people care, past a certain point.  It is beautiful, indeed.  But they simply do not care.

You have submitted the requisite paperwork.  You are to be commended, K.  No, you are to be rewarded.  Behold the key.  Is it not as beautiful as we had given you cause to imagine it to be?  You will find we know much.  We share what we know.  Of you it is only required to submit to our good judgment.

Place the key near a lock – any lock will do – and you will notice the tongue of the key changing shape, metamorphosing into the proper zig-zag combination, dimension, and thickness needed to open the lock.  This key will open anything.  Anything.

You thrust toward a lock, watching the Hungerkunstler contort in a writhing dance of obedience to the approaching lock’s tumbler.  You guess – for you must, it is not given to you to know – that the bone-breaking spins and arches of the key’s tongue must match the lock.  Somehow, you just know, though you do not really know.

The key slides in, a perfect match.

Then flies out, as if from a gun, and tocks you in the forehead, leaving a raspberry smudge that will become, before the night is through, a small black bruise atop a knot.

You push the key in again.

And you find yourself with a sister bruise-to-be.  You are a holy, horned Moses-in-waiting.

You look around for the key, the beautiful key, but it is not beholden to you.  It is simply gone.

As we said, it is clearly not yours to have.

You will ask “where has it gone”?

We will answer: “This key was last seen on the streets of Prague, beneath a headless statue, where it was picked up by a man.  Man?  How does one know?  Perhaps it was several men, a mob, who can tell? – wearing a black suit, polished shoes, and a bowler hat.”

This is so far as you know.  Please apply to section K for more information.

Penderekey

One feels the Penderekey, one does not see it, though it has been seen.  It is an elusive thing – the object – but its presence is clearly felt.  Thankfully, this key travels well, far, and often.  The elusiveness of the thing itself it inversely proportional to the ubiquity of the thing’s effect.

The effect is here described by Monterro Tulume, a Spanish music critic who has followed the faint scent of the Penderekey from Northern Germany to Puerto Rico, San Francisco to Tokyo, Israel to Poland:

The audience is discomfited.  Those who do not sense the real change in atmosphere – the spiritual atmosphere of the hall – might attribute their unease to stiff tuxedoes and tight black dresses, to a heating system malfunction, or to the rising warmth of dinner’s Haut-Medoc, Bordeaux.  For some, it is the discordant screech, as they think of it, of out of tune violins.  But this is all calculated, not accidental.  Perhaps it is subject matter – our own mortality, the mortality of others, our own responsibility for the mortality of others.  For yet others, it must be the controlled repetitive chaos that reflects these events, the brain-scratching staccato followed by endless minor notes and flatness drawn out into a thin wire of frisson that threads its way up and through the listener’s spine to settle in the base of her skull.  In that place, dark thought foments.  Assumptions are challenged, comfort is stripped away, nothing is taken for granted.  She sees herself as herself, and the thought is terrifying.

She does not, however, even know that the key is there.  She feels it, but she does not see it jangling in the conductor’s pocket, a jagged quarter note, all strange angles and spiny protuberences, surrounded by a tiny cloud of key signatures, leger lines, semi-breves, and treble clefs.  Only the conductor knows of the key and its purpose, which is to open a basement vault in the Sparda Bank, Hamburg.  It is rumored that the “hidden” works reside there –
Gomulka Emigrates his Jewish Wife
and
ZOMO et KOR
– which are, it is said, written in the un-utterable keys of Ż and ę.  It is good that the key remains hidden.  Who knows what might happen to the woman, should she access those hidden works?  The possibilities are horrific.

Key to the Labyrinths

The key is crafted of iron, shaped in the form of the arabic letter
meem
, signifying mortal existence and its end, according to Abd’ al Ansab.  I remember it well, and if I had to tell a story about the key, it would be told in this manner:

On the 13th of August, 1944, I visited a noted journalist in Buenos Aires.  As most people do, I browsed his bookshelf while he retrieved rum from his cellar.  I was struck by the utter ordinariness of his collection – style manuals, classic works of Roman and Greek origin (many in their original language), Kierkegaard and his commentators, several thesauri, a Portuguese translation of Kafka’s complete works.

I turned from the bookshelf of the low coffee table that hunched before his sofa.  Atop the table rested a bulbous tome, thick as five fingers, seething to be read, though I did not, at the time, know the language.  The front cover was rounded from bulk, looking like a leather-backed turtle replete with knobs – thick leather embossments – into which were engraved short sayings in Arabic.  Only many years later did I realize that I was seeing a very rare, possibly unique copy of Ibn Arabi’s
al-Futahat al-Maghrib
.

I picked up the tome and held it above the table.  With my free hand I opened the pages, noting immediately the
horror vacui
evinced by the many hand-written illustrations, side-notes, and charts that filled every margin of the book.  I stopped on a page that had been book-marked by a small, thin iron key that mimicked the shape of one of the repeating characters in the text-body and notes.  For a time I admired the key as it rested on the page, but had to rub my eyes to rid them of the weariness-induced illusion that the key grew thinner with time.  I would surely have to take a taxi home.

I was startled, once the phosphora faded from my sight, to see that the key had, in fact, sunk into the book. Not merely into the crook of the binding, but through the pages and words, though the parchment and ink remained unchanged by its progress.  Again, I rubbed my eyes.

I looked for the key, but it had seemingly disappeared.  I checked behind me on the sofa – perhaps I had just laid it to the side and forgotten about it.  I looked at the floor, but it was not to be found.  I was most embarrassed and was thinking up an apology for the lost key when my host walked through the doorway, a tumbler of rum in each hand.