The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (20 page)

“My mother was not a well woman,” Greenblat continues as he produces a dog-eared and well-thumbed brown envelope. “She died last year after a sickly life that culminated in a long and wasting illness. She was not a wealthy woman, not by any means. But she did have one possession which had been passed down to her over the years. And which she passed on to me.”

He stops and opens the envelope, from which he pulls a folded sheet of notepaper.

Edgar Nornhoevan, for whom life comprises the solitary certainty of death — possibly from complications of an enlarged prostate — leans forward.

Jack Fedogan, jazz aficionado and one-time husband of his beloved Phyllis, leans forward.

His disastrous financial situation completely forgotten, Cliff Rhodes also leans forward.

And Jim Leafman, garbage-collecting friend of ghosts and one-time almost wife-killer, shifts sideways in his chair and stares.

With all eyes upon him, Meredith Lidenbrook Greenblat very carefully unfolds the piece of notepaper and, turning it around, holds it up for all to see.

“What is it?” is all Jack, suddenly realizing that Dave Brubeck has long since stopped playing, can think of to say.

“Is it stick figures?” Edgar offers. “Hieroglyphics?”

“That, gentlemen,” says Horatio Fortesque, “is a replica of the contents of a second piece of parchment prepared by Arne Saknussemm, a sixteenth-century scholar who worked out — with the help of a book written by Snorro Turleson, a twelfth-century Icelandic writer — the way to get to the centre of the Earth. It was copied thus by either Alec or Gretchen Lidenbrook in the late eighteen-sixties.”

Jim shakes his head. “You’re losing me here. A
second
piece of parchment? Did we hear about the first and I missed it?”

Jack looks across at Fortesque and raises his eyebrows. Fortesque nods.

“In his book, Verne talks about a piece of parchment falling out of a copy of Turleson’s book —” He looks at Fortesque. “What was it called?”

“Helms Kringla.”

“Right,” Jack says, reluctant to attempt a pronunciation.

“Anyway, the Professor finds this book in an old junkshop and when he looks at it with Axel, a piece of parchment falls out. It’s this parchment — with its runic symbols — that tells of a hidden entrance to the centre of the earth, and that’s what sets off the whole adventure.”

“The symbols — runes,” he adds, with a complimentary nod to Jack, “tell of a secret passageway to the depths of the Earth. The parchment itself was prepared by Saknussemm who made the trip first.”

“I remember the movie,” says Cliff Rhodes.

Jack chuckles. “Right, I’d forgotten that.” He shakes his head. “Pat Boone. Whatever happened to Pat Boone?”

“Yes,” says Fortesque with obvious disdain. “There was some serious artistic licence involved in that adaptation as I recall.”

“That’s show-biz,” Cliff Rhodes says, and he raises his glass in silent toast before taking a drink. The others follow suit.

“The first parchment — the one in Verne’s book,” says Fortesque excitedly, “tells of the crater of Sneffells Yokul in Iceland and how, when the shadow of the mountainous peak of Scartaris falls across it at a certain time of July, the way is revealed. This was the route taken by Saknussemm after he had written the parchment.”

“But what wasn’t in Verne’s book —”

“Probably because he didn’t know anything about it,” Fortesque interjects.

“— Was the existence of a
second
piece of parchment, this one suggesting an alternative route.”

Jack points at the notepaper as he gets up to bring more beers. “And that’s it?”

Fortesque nods. “It’s not the actual parchment, as you can see, but it
is
the same information, yes.”

“And where is it, this second entrance?” Edgar asks, his tone suggesting that he isn’t buying any of this.

Fortesque and Greenblat exchange glances and then face forward. “The corner of 23rd and Fifth Avenue, Manhattan,” Greenblat whispers, grinning.

“Right over there,” Fortesque adds, pointing to where Jack Fedogan is standing behind the counter. “So, getting back to my original question, do you have a back room?”

9 The back room

Jack starts Brubeck off again on the PA and the drinks are set out on the bar counter.

This kind of situation is not uncommon in The Land at the End of the Working Day, as you’ll know if you been here with me before. It’s like the world knows when all the players needed are already assembled and there’s no call for any more to come up on to the stage.

Outside, on the evening streets of Manhattan, the wind blows across the park and buffets the buildings, blowing down the avenues and across the streets, searching out points of weakness. Inside, Jack Fedogan leads his unlikely quintet across the floor and behind the well-stocked bar.

He’s closed the front door and turned the sign but he’s well-versed in the ways of the Working Day and believes that everyone who needs to be here is here already. Furthermore, a small voice would tell him if he stopped to pose the question, if there
were
someone else to come then he wouldn’t have been able to close the door. It’s probably as well that Jack doesn’t pose that question because that answer would almost certainly prove to be a little disconcerting.

“You know,” Edgar says as he follows Jack under the raised wooden, counter-section, “all these years and I’ve never been behind here?”

“Why would you be?” is what Jack comes back with to that and it’s a reasonable response.

“He just doesn’t like to feel he’s missing out,” Jim says, his smile tugging at the words and bending them out of shape.

Jim is following on behind Horatio Fortesque while, behind him, Meredith Lidenbrook Greenblat is on Jim’s heels with Cliff Rhodes bringing up the rear.

To the strains of Brubeck’s Mexican-sounding piano on “La Paloma Azul” they drift, a Manhattan Wild Bunch walking in silence. Past the arrays of bottles and glasses, past Jack’s collection of polishing cloths down almost to the end of the bar where Jack pauses at a closed door on his left.

“I still think you’re wrong on this,” Jack says, turning to face the others as he takes a hold of the door handle. Behind him, at the end of the bar, an open door leads the way to Jack’s office, a small kitchen and his private restroom.

“Out of his tree, he is,” Edgar adds, also turning.

“We’ll see,” is all that Fortesque has to say on the subject.

Jack pushes the door open on to a narrow corridor, littered along its length with crates and cartons of bottles and cans stacked two, three and sometimes even four high. As the corridor moves further from the bar, the stacks become higher and, occasionally, wider, the light dimming all the way . . . and, Jim Leafman is sure, it seems to go downwards.

“Down
there?”
Jim asks as he stares into the dimly-lit corridor. “Jack, you can hardly see your hand in front of your face.” And just to prove it; Jim steps over the threshold, raises his hand and looks at it, disappointed to discover that he can see it perfectly clearly.

“Never use it,” Jack says, neither proudly nor despondently. It’s just a statement of fact as far as he’s concerned.

Fortesque and Greenblat reach the doorway and they look inside.

“What do you think?” Greenblat whispers croakily.

“Well, according to Snorro Turleson, it’s in here,” Fortesque says. He reaches into his pocket and withdraws an elaborate-looking compass which he jiggles from side to side, occasionally tapping the case.

“What the hell was here in the twelfth century?” Cliff Rhodes asks nobody in particular as he leans into the corridor and then, almost immediately, back out again.

Jack shrugs. “Indians?”

“What I mean is,” Cliff continues, “is what was a man from Iceland doing down here in the US?”

Meredith Greenblat says, “Well, many of the supposedly indigenous human species — Indians, if you will — can be traced back to having come down from the Arctic circle and through Canada to settle here in what was to become the United States. Perhaps —” He raises his eyebrows and jiggles his head from side to side,” — perhaps Turleson himself visited the area back when it was just a wilderness.” He shrugs. “Who knows.”

“May we go in?” Fortesque inquires.

Jack waves a hand magisterially. “Go right ahead.” Fortesque starts into the corridor closely followed by Greenblat.

“I must say,” Fortesque’s voice echoes back to the others, “it certainly is dark along here.”

“You got a flashlight you can give them, Jack?” Edgar says. “The sooner we show this idea to be a looney tune the better.”

“Jack, did it ever occur to you that your corridor wasn’t the usual kind of corridor you’d expect to find in a Manhattan premises?”

Jack shakes his head to Cliff and then looks down at the rapidly dwindling figures. “And I don’t know why,” he says. “I guess it is a little strange to have so long a corridor.”

“So long a corridor!” Edgar says, “it looks like it goes up into the next state. You reached the end yet?” he shouts into the gloom.

“It’s getting warmer,” comes back in Fortesque’s curious amalgam of accents.

“Hey,” says Jim excitedly.

“Don’t get too excited,” Jack says. “They’re probably under the kitchens of the Chinese restaurant two up the street.” “Oh,” Jim says, his voice dripping with disappointment. “There’s some kind of markings here,” Greenblat shouts. “The mark of Snorro!” says Cliff Rhodes, who immediately grimaces an apology to a pained-looking Edgar.

The two figures turn a bend about fifty yards distant, and Jim says, “You never checked it out, Jack?”

“Didn’t need to. I just stacked boxes in there.  Never used it for anything else,” Jack says. As Greenblat, following his companion, disappears from sight, he adds, “I’d better get that flashlight.”

Jack retraces his steps and, just for a few seconds, Dave Brubeck’s version of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust” waft through from the bar on a gentle cool breeze. And then again, a minute later, when Jack reappears carrying a long flashlight which he immediately turns on.

“You okay down there?” Edgar shouts.

No answer.

“Maybe they didn’t hear you,” suggests Jim Leafman. “Hey! You okay?” Edgar shouts, louder this time. Still no answer.

Jack arrives with the flashlight and Edgar, already partly into the corridor, takes it from him and moves forward. Jack follows, then Cliff with Jim at the back.

They pass a crate of Buds, a couple of boxes of Miller Lites, a case of Chardonnay, a tower of Mackeson stout. “Mackeson stout?” Jim says as he passes it.

“Not a big seller,” Jack agrees over his shoulder. And still they move forward.

“I think I can smell the Chinese restaurant,” Cliff says. “Smells good,” says Jim.

“All that beer has made me hungry,” Cliff says.

By the time they’ve gone another fifty feet or so, the only light is from Jack Fedogan’s flashlight.

“Somehow, Toto,” Cliff says, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

“I found some scratching on the wall here,” Edgar shouts back.

Jack is the first to respond. “What’s it say?”

Even unseen, Edgar’s shrug makes itself felt. “Just scratches,” he says.

“And the corridor seems to split here.”

Looking back over his shoulder, Jim Leafman is suddenly aware of two things: the first one is that someone is following through the darkness behind them and the second is a sudden need to pee. “Maybe we should get back,” he says, annoyed at the way his voice seems to sound like a whine.

“Hey, Fortesque!” Edgar’s voice booms. “Can you hear me?” And still there is no answer.

10 A parting of the ways

Turning around to face the way they’ve come, Jim Leafman, who can feel his bladder expanding under pressure, waves an arm into the darkness in front of him. He’s delighted when it doesn’t connect with anything . . . such as one of those scaly mole creatures in that old black and white movie starring John Agar. Suddenly, he backs into something and someone shouts out.

“Jesus Christ, who’s that?”

“Me,” says Jim. “Sorry.”

“You just started walking up the backs of my damn legs,” snaps Edgar.

“I said I was sorry.”

Jim hears Jack say, “Hey, yes: it does split two ways.” He turns around in time to see Edgar shine the flashlight on a short spur to the main corridor which ends in a door. The light judders across to the left and falls on a hole in the wall. In front of the hole is a sewing machine, cobwebbed and dusty, a pair of men’s shoes — a spider scurries out from one of the shoes and disappears out of the beam — a pickaxe, a length of what appears to be cable wrapped in a loop, and a clutter of broken bricks, masonry and concrete rubble.

“This is not your average bar back room corridor, Jack,” Edgar says, his voice soft as he kneels down and plays the beam over the hole.

“Which way you figure they went?” Jim asks.

Cliff shouts for Edgar to play the beam over the door again and he goes across and tries the handle. It opens. “What’s in there?” Edgar asks.

“Not another corridor,” Jim moans, increasingly convinced that he’s going to need to add to the musky odour down here any time soon.

Pushing the door wide to expose a railed ladder set into the concrete wall beyond leading up to a circular cover some ten or twelve feet above, Cliff Rhodes says, “That must be the street.” And, sure enough, the unmistakable sound of a vehicle moving over the manhole cover confirms it.

“They went that way,” Jack offers, “they could get their heads knocked off.”

Edgar returns the beam to the hole in the wall. “Well,” he says, “I’m not even sure anyone could get through here.” He reaches in and pulls at a piece of concrete. A soft rumble sounds and then another.

“Ed, I think maybe we —”

The corridor shudders beneath their feet and Jim Leafman grabs on to his crotch with both hands, applying pressure to prevent a sudden dampening of his spirits. Edgar turns the beam fully on to the hole and, way in front of them — or was it below? — they hear crashing sounds, and a cloud of dust billows from the opening.