The Best of Electric Velocipede (15 page)

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Aside
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Wald.
The lips of Fräulein Baargeld are like chicken gizzards and the eyes of little Nuzzi no more attractive than a minnow’s!

Riem.
Well, then I suggest you take your opinions and the few filthy francs you have in your pocket over to the Grotto Wüste. Buy yourself a beer, because there is nothing for you to purchase here!

There were oaths, guttural, hoarse, and the man stormed out. Wilhelm explained to the doctor, in a well-regulated whisper, that this was indeed the custom of the village. He himself had heard of it, but never until now witnessed it firsthand: To a specified person, the subservience of a young woman’s numbers of things, but always less than the whole; the exchange of ladies’ living portions for coin of the realm.

The doctor raised his eyebrows in interest. In his life, he had seen, experienced many things. Very little shocked him; seldom was he surprised; but he certainly experienced satisfaction when his frontal lobe was peaked into a condition of wanting to know or learn about something. When his food had been consumed, he rose to meet the bill, taking note of the scrawled signs on the counter as he did so:

Eva Vögeli, Hand – Fr. 510

Patricia Ris, Waist – Fr. 700

Viola Hälg, Ears (set) – Fr. 420

Sibylle Gmür, Tongue – Fr. 980

Pocketing the change from the meal, he asked Frau Riemenschneider where he and his assistant might find lodging. The good woman suggested that they try a man on the edge of town by the name of Wolf Knellwolf, who had a spare room he sometimes rented out to summer hikers passing through the valley. Following her advice, they secured a room at the aforementioned location. It was small and dark (having only one minute window carved in the granite wall), but it would do for a short period. Knellwolf, who grazed a party of cattle nearby, gave them the run of the place and included coffee, bread and as much milk as they wished to drink for the board.

III.

May 14, Sun. – Weather too fair. The visible spectrum of the sky lying between green & indigo; radiant energy with wavelengths of approximately 420 to 490 nanometres. Awoken by yawning peals; vibrating object hanging from church tower. Burned D’Orsay & informed myself of vicinity: Rocks tremendous, vastly appealing: Highly deformed diorite xenoliths in granite misshapen by a right-lateral ductile shear zone.

May 15, Mon. – Improvement. Sky achromatic. Talked w/Knellwolf. Stories of viscous, pulpy substance descending w/brilliant light (check annual registers). Künzler & I drank coffee in front of shelter; gathered dirt samples. He deports himself in some degree clandestinely. Walking through village without apparent company.

May 16, Tues. – Weather ditto. Lunch w/Künzler; applied him to classifying samples. Keep youthful blood in check. To parochial house without luck, no discovering priest. Further examination of the igneous masses, foreign fragments. Conjugate normal faults cutting banded granite gneiss. Right-dipping fault is cut & displaced by left. Read from Anderssen’s
Aufgaben für Schachspieler
.

May 17, Wed. – Drama from sunrise to set. Künzler woke early; gone when I dressed. Sky achromatic in ante meridiem. Relatively strong upcurrent. Coffee and brioche w/Künzler. Alone to parochial house. Saw Father Tito (not far advanced in life, behaviour unnatural, rude, gestures effeminate). Request for annual registers flustered lit/beast. Produced thin volume of recent production: claims of fire: scarcely acceptable as genuine. Returned to shelter amidst atmospheric condensed moisture build-up, weakened up-current. Primo: a few small fine drops, cinnamon-coloured. Secondo: they grow (
B = µ H
!) Terzo: descent!

It was late in the afternoon when the wind began to blow and the pine trees which grew along the creek’s edge bent like fishing poles. A string of black clouds appeared on the horizon, lurching over the ridge of the mountains and light escaped from the land’s surface; Black’s mouth twisted to a half grin; he (
weight on slender left leg, right advanced taking but a part of the burden
); the fumes of his D’Orsay danced wildly from their cherry.

At first they appeared, just a few, like spots of red wax on the lanes. Farmers’ heads tilted back and village eyes turned upward. A sound, a slight drumming, filled the air and then the shower swept across the village. Black sprang towards the house of Knellwolf, his short legs working nimbly, his cigar poised protectively before him. He dashed through the doorway of the stone lodge just as the crimson deluge came sweeping behind him, a mad rush of scarlet mayhem which flushed from the skies like some supraglobal surgical operation gone awry.

The doctor chuckled merrily and Wilhelm looked up from the table, where he was busy with pen and paper.

“What is it, Sir?” he asked, rising in astonishment.

“Come see for yourself my boy—The blitz of rain has come!”

A moment later, at the door, Wilhelm Künzler stood

with mouth open wide

to facilitate a

pervading cinnamon condition:

hued,

by the long-wave end

of the visible, dimpling

spectrum, plashes, puddles,

ground a network of veins

and then night fell and the doctor stood smoking on the doorstep, the aroma of his D’Orsay mixing with the rich heat of countless corpuscles; and he thought of the meal of the Israelites after the battle of Gilboa; and further of the sacrifices, it caught in a basin, and then sprinkled seven times on the altar (consecrating the people to that being worshipped as having power over human affairs), and what issued from the Saviour’s side when it was pierced by the Roman soldier. . . . And through the cleared sky the stars were cast overhead.

IV.

For one even mildly dedicated to anthropology, the place held interest. The custom of the village, at least that promoted by the establishment of Riemenschneider, was odd indeed. Men could be seen walking through the lanes, hand in hand with a young woman—not because the latter was in any way fond of the fellow, but simply due to the fact that he owned her left hand. Another might be possessed of a lady’s eyes. He would call on her after his day’s labour, gaze into the other’s organs of vision for thirty minutes, and then depart, fully satisfied.

On occasion there was a conflict of interest. The doctor observed two men quarrelling in the street one day, a plump young woman between them.

“What is the cause of this bad-tempered differing of views?” he asked a wiry old man with a large, aquiline nose by the name of Viktor who stood near at hand.

“Oh, it is the usual,” the fellow answered nonchalantly, spitting off to one side. “Fräulein Hänggi has been split too many ways. Georg there owns her right hand and arm; he desires to take his property over to the chestnut grove. But her lips are possessed by Werner, who insists, that if the two go so far, he be part of the company so he might use his goods as he will.”

“This custom must make it terribly difficult for the men of the village.”

Old Viktor let out a short chuckle. “Oh, you can be sure it does,” he said. “But it is not much of a custom. It was not around when I was a young man. Certainly I never let go of a franc for any of the lips I joined to under the chestnuts.”

“Not a custom? Then who introduced this bit of now generally accepted behaviour amongst the social group?”

“Oh, Frau Riemenschneider; she was not making enough off her cutlets. . . . Joined by the other old widows of the area. . . . I suppose they fancied the men needed the fräuleins and would pay for the privilege of their glances if they must.”

May 18, Thurs. – Woke early, scoured lanes w/Künzler. Much blood. Some bits of flesh, particularly around the vicinity of Riemenschneider’s. Curious inconsistency in pattern. Dismay and some anger in village. Father Tito stirring trouble, directed at Riemenschneider. Watched feathered creatures circumnavigate shoulder of mountain: Passeridae or Emberizidae; possibly swallows gathering at some seed-rich niche. The forest is thick with the sound of the Cuculus canorus.

He watched the priest descend along the trail, now disappearing behind a mass of chestnut trees, now reappearing, walking stick in hand. The man was apparently coming down from somewhere on the face of the mountain; or higher: its shoulder or some unseen pass. . . . Presently the two met near the scree-strewn base; one short, with outcrop of hair the colour of printing ink, the other a scowling, narrow-limbed ecclesiastic streak. The doctor spoke first, and then the priest, in a jointly discourteous and beseeching tone, his voice thin, nasally: He had gone for a hike; he hiked often; it was all there was to do in the vicinity of that dreadful little village. . . . Would the doctor like a refreshment?

Dr. Black stood admiring the Papilionoidea mounted and hung on the wall, and then, on the mantle, a fine piece of Lebanese amber, undoubtedly a good one hundred million years old, containing a splendid example of Heterocera. His host came up from the cantina, his hand gripped white around the neck of a bottle. The doctor sat down and hooked one leg over the next. The young priest set two small glasses on the table, filled them with French white wine, and took a seat opposite. Health was proposed and the two men drank. The doctor, in measured tones, somewhat mellowed by the fermented juice of grape, asked the priest what his view of the situation was.

“My view? My view is that it is the Devil’s play.”

“Then you are proposing it to be a supernatural occurrence?”

“Yes, I am saying it is unnatural—that is clear enough. Blood showers and such things are obviously manifestations of evil; and you can be sure that to be the priest in such an ungodly place is no great fortune.”

Dr. Black drank of his wine.

“So your theory is?” he asked, slightly raising his eyebrows.

“Witches.”

“Where?”

“Here—the fleisch shop and other places!”

“Explain.”

“Explain—The old women of this valley worship the Devil. See how they sell off the lips of one young woman, the thighs of the next? They are casting spells and bringing demons down to scatter us with their red gore!”

“Surely you exaggerate.”

“I tell you, it is all the work of Frau Riemenschneider and her cronies! They are witches, every one of them. In league with nefarious forces.”

“Though their practices regarding the young women of the town I cannot pass over without condemnation, they seem otherwise to live within the confines of proper conduct. To adhere all unexplainable phenomena to their persons, without adequate proof, seems to me to be an extremely unwise course, particularly for a man in your position.”

“Ah, it is easy for you to say such things. You are an outsider.”

“My dear Sir, I am an outsider to nothing. The world is my studio. I suggest you refrain from overly pungent comments.”

The doctor did not like Father Tito’s manner. He spoke without respect, with more emphasis than the occasion required. His wine was decent, but it was white. Black preferred red, and would rather have been alone with a smoking cigar than together with a fuming priest.

Father Tito slapped the table. “My house!” he exclaimed, and the glasses rattled.

Dr. Black rose from his seat. “So it is, Sir,” he said coolly, “and I do not believe that I desire the further advantage of its hospitality.”

A minute later he was outside, carefully pursuing his way along the side of a pasture. As a man of logic he did not put much store in the priest’s bitter paranoia, but at the same time he had to admit that the phenomena of the blood rains he could not as yet explain. Frau Riemenschneider and her fleisch shop were certainly bizarre; but that the woman was a practitioner of black magic!?!

Dr. Black extracted a cigar from his jacket pocket, bit off the end as if it were the head of a snake, and was soon industriously puffing away.

V.

Witches like mountains like flowers the sun like flowers the sun some souls without bodies maybe never had bodies and the devil has slaves little ants. Witches like mountains like flowers watch out they fly out the window fly out on pitchforks and go to kiss gnomes. Witches like mountains like roses what bodies of butterflies of gnomes wrapping themselves together with attenuated ropes ride on a reed and stealing the sperm from dead bodies ride on reeds. Witches like mountains like roses like mountains and tempests in bottles souls without bodies maybe never had bodies and the devil has slaves and the slaves are little ants which play flutes made from hollowed-out human hairs. Witches like hills like roses wringing hands out comes hail and whispering phasmata and the devil has slaves trimming three hairs from the udder of a cow.

VI.

“Oh, he’s got himself buried between her sheets!”

“It’s these Northerners, these blond boys—the women always throw themselves away over such trash.”

Old Viktor laughed. “From what I hear,” he said, drawing at his pipe. “From what I hear, it was a deal made out on the installment plan; for her left ear. A pretty price it is said he’s paying too!”

“You are right enough about the instalment plan,” a stout farmer put in, licking yeasty froth from his moustache. “But it has nothing to do with her little ear—it is her right hand he’s got.”

“Her right hand! Hear that Waldmüller? How much was it you offered Frau Riemenschneider for that item, and she refused to part with it?”

“Oh, it’s the usual thing,” Old Viktor added. “A northern franc is worth two of a local fellow’s.”

Waldmüller, who had been morosely silent during this dialogue, pushed away the mastodontic beer jug he had been sweating over for the previous thirty minutes and rose from his seat. There was the glistering night sky and his swinging steps; then circling, noctivagation, tracking around the fleisch shop, lurking in the shadows (he had always been laughed at, somewhat derided for remaining womanless, with some hinting, winks and half grins, at trips to Lugano brothels).

He had watched her grow, skipping around the village, braid swinging; then older, while he sat with his goats on the hillside, she passed, with friends, expressing certain emotions, mirth or delight, a series of spontaneous, unarticulated sounds accompanied by corresponding facial and bodily movements; he watched them graze and dreamed of her in an emerald cloud and then the saving: he had saved his silver and had a jar of it (five franc pieces) buried near the roots of a chestnut tree on the hillside. He watched as the two figures emerged, and then pressed together, soft words spoken and then a clasping goodbye. The figure walked off, wound through the lanes and Waldmüller followed, stalking, slowly gaining ground and then hurling himself forward.