The Other Side (28 page)

Far from these places of worship among the stunted bushes and low conifers, brightly painted wooden pillars had been driven into the soft earth. These too were sacred spots, but of a different kind. It was here that the ‘joyful nights’ were celebrated. On particular evenings at harvest-time the Dreamland farmers would take carts full of hay and flowers there, covering the ground to a depth of several feet with their sweetsmelling load. Fires were lit, the cider foamed from the barrel and the joy of the participants in their festive attire was unconfined. After story-telling, games, dancing and a copious meal, a warm wind with the scent of fruit on it usually blew out the fires. The couples, each in their cosy nest, stayed until morning.

Inside the large, ramshackle engine-shed at the station it still smelt like a menagerie. The acrid droppings of the animals that had sheltered here were mixed with the puddles of blackish sludge that covered the floor. Today there was movement in the damp, silted-up shed. A single figure wrapped in a hooded coat, a stoker, was tapping and tinkering with one of the old locomotives. He subjected each component to a thorough check and oiled it liberally. Then he raked the fire again, and as he opened the firehole door the glow of the red embers shone on his energetic, sweat-covered features: Hercules Bell.

Weeks ago already he had checked the track and set the points. The engine started to move, slowly and with a screech of metal at first, then with a full-throated roar. Bell drove it out of the ramshackle building, accompanied by a couple of startled owls. Using a turntable he had tested out previously, he slowly edged onto the main line. He had enough coal, and if the worst came to the worst, he could always replenish his stock at one of the intermediate stations.

He was hot from his exertions and took off his coat. Stoking up the fire again, he glanced at the pressure gauge and pulled the lever. The old engine started to move. It was a dangerous journey. The lower parts of the embankment had been damaged and in places long stretches of the track were under water from the marsh. A plume of spray was thrown up at the front, the wheels mowed down the luxuriant rushes and left a long wake behind.

He stoked up the fire until the boiler was almost bursting. The fire-hole shield and surrounding parts turned red as the engine bounced along on the twisted and corroded rails. He steamed past the abandoned farmhouses and deserted country estates, past the withered forests. Once he had to stop to drag the half-eaten carcase of a horse off the track. Then the engine puffed and panted along again for two hours until he stopped out in the open countryside. He stoked up the fire, spat on the boiler, making it sizzle, then jumped down. For a while he followed the railway track, then disappeared into a small valley where gigantic trees were growing. The withered tendrils and trailing lichens tried to hold him back as he hurried along. After half an hour he saw a dimly lit window in a black wall that seemed to rise up into the infinity of the sky. With a steady hand the American opened the garden gate, crept up to the window and looked in.

A paraffin lamp with a green shade was burning on an ink-stained table. Strewn around were sheets of paper covered in writing, forms, sealing wax, lead seals; on a low balustrade were various implements, nails, string. The centrepiece of the narrow room was a very poor half-length portrait of Patera which had been distributed in large numbers by an organisation in Pearl. This was the office of the Dream Realm’s warden of the frontier. The old man himself was asleep in an armchair upholstered in oilcloth. His bearded face, comfortably propped on his hand, suggested frailty. Following regulations, the key to the ‘Lesser Door’, a gate in the Great Wall for foot-travellers only, was hanging from a snap-link on his belt; the three-foot-long main key was kept in a special iron safe. The elderly man carried out the difficult duties of his office together with his two sons. Their house was next door, beyond that were the barracks of the border guards and customs officers. At the rear the buildings all abutted onto the colossal outer wall.

All these details were well known to the watcher outside. Suddenly, accustomed to permanent twilight, he looked round in amazement as it went dark with surprising rapidity. The clouds were almost down to ground level and he could hardly even make out the corrugated-iron roofs of the storehouses by the frontier terminus. With cat-like tread and pushing back his hood, he entered the overheated room. In his right hand he grasped the heavy iron lever from the locomotive. ‘One more or less doesn’t make any difference now’, he thought to himself, keeping his eye fixed on the sleeping warden, who, without waking up, moved his head, letting it fall onto the arm of the chair. There was a sound like a hand slapping into water as one powerful, well-aimed blow with the iron bar hit him right in the middle of the forehead, smashing the frontal bone and forcing his eyeballs out of their sockets, which, combined with the beard, left the murdered man with a gruesomely grotesque look. He didn’t move from the chair as a gentle quiver went right through his whole body.

The American made a comically elaborate bow before the portrait of Patera. ‘Too clever for you this time!’ Then with quick, sure movements he took the key from the dead man’s belt. On the ground beside the armchair was a dark lantern. As he bent down to pick it up he felt something take his wrist in a vice-like grip.
It was the dead man
. Or at least his yellow fingers, which he must have brushed against. The corpse lay there, lifeless and still, but such was the boundless strength in those terrible fingers they would have crushed even a piece of steel like dough. ‘Patera!’ Bell cried out. As if powered by a machine, the pressure was steadily increasing. In a few minutes his wrist would certainly be severed; it had already lost all feeling as it was squeezed tighter and tighter. He tore at the flesh at the base of his grisly assailant’s hand with his teeth, but it was too slow, his own hand was as good as lost. At that moment of horror he saw an opened garden knife lying on the balustrade. One leap and he was there, dragging the weight of the corpse behind him. With expert strokes he severed the dead man’s hand. Immediately it slackened and dropped off. Bell’s sigh of relief had an almost mystical note. Patera’s picture, with its pomaded locks and centre parting, looked down on him with its unchanging, friendly smile. Bell dashed off, carrying the dark lantern.

When he reached the wall he was swallowed up by the huge tunnel. The American was in a fever of excitement, now he would see whether his plan had succeeded or not. According to his calculations, help from Europe should be close. He needed it, it was essential. Alone he could not deal with the Dreamland mob, which was getting more dangerous by the hour.

He opened the Lesser Door and went out into the fresh, cold night air. Then he set off a rocket he had brought with him. A fountain of molten gold shot up into the night sky, described a few fantastic curves at the top and burst into a cascade of stars. The American waited, quivering with expectation. Would there be a response to his signal? … Nothing. Silence and darkness all around. He must have miscalculated! In a fury of disappointment he shone the lantern over the monumental bronze door with its heavy iron bands. Should he go back? He cast one more glance into the distance. There! A ghostly light suddenly flashed across the sky for a few seconds and disappeared just as quickly. But then a bluish gleam shone out again, like a comet.
The Russian searchlights!
For all his strength of will, he was filled with wild delight and proud satisfaction. Success! Bell ran back as fast as he could, leaving the gate open for the troops. The tiny light from his lantern disappeared behind the hills; breathless, he returned to his locomotive. The border guards, as true sons of the Archive, had not noticed anything at all.

The American set the engine going in reverse, stoking the fire constantly. A plume of fiery red smoke from the chimney moved rapidly across the darkened wilderness. Bold American enterprise had triumphed! In his exuberance, Bell operated the steam whistle and its mournful, melancholy cry echoed shrilly through the darkness. ‘And now we’ll sort this country out’, he vowed to himself. By this time his hand had swollen immensely and the pain was considerable. His attempts to soothe it by applying engine oil were vain, but that did little to diminish his triumphant joy.

A lurid red glare began to pervade the sky in the direction of Pearl. It rapidly grew stronger, reflecting off the bank of cloud and soon covering the whole horizon. The American observed this new glow with concern. Without any reduction in speed, the rusty monster plunged into the sea of mud, throwing up a high, black bow wave which drenched the driver in slimy water. The pieces of a grass snake that had been cut in two were thrown into the cab and wriggled at his feet, the hot ash-pan was almost half under water and hissed in the greasy wet, the pressure gauge was on ninety-nine, any moment the boiler might explode. With a heavy spanner the American pushed the valve down to stop the excess steam escaping. When the station came in sight he stopped and jumped down impatiently, abandoning the engine and rushing into the city.

The Archive was in flames, suffusing everything in an incandescent glow. All the time there were small powder explosions and the blaze flung scraps of burning paper high into the air, where they flew over the city like fiery birds. The streets were heaving with a howling, laughing throng.

The American was seized with a shuddering fit and had to sit down on a pile of stones. Weary, drained of all his energy, he muttered, ‘All Patera’s leaving for his successor is the excrement.’

XX

When the Archive with all its treasures went up in flames I was sitting in my favourite spot by the river, the glow in the sky reflected in its waves. The unprecedented events I had witnessed had shaken me out of my apathy. I felt my frozen heart begin to thaw; the overwhelming misfortune that had been visited upon the Dreamlanders threatened to crush me. I was hoping death would come and relieve me, whatever form it might take. It was clear that this night of horror was the end. But why was fate waiting so long, outdoing even itself in piling on the most agonising torture?

The Dreamlanders were now suffering from impaired vision. First of all it was a rainbow glare that surrounded objects; later on all proportions became distorted, for example they saw small cottages as multi-storey towers. The false perspectives thus created aroused fear. People would think they were hemmed in when they weren’t, fancy the buildings were hanging over the streets or balancing on narrow foundations. Single individuals coming towards them appeared double or multiplied, even turning into a whole crowd. They would lift up their feet to step over non-existent obstacles, or feel their way along on all fours, imagining they were on the edge of a precipice.

Many fell victim to mass suicide. Harassed to the point of complete exhaustion, they succumbed without resistance to dreams in which they were commanded to destroy themselves. Those that were left were so confused they probably didn’t even register the bitterness of their final hours.

Suddenly word went round that Patera had appeared himself. He had been carried by four servants in a litter to the Market Place, so the story went, wearing a tall tiara and a green velvet cloak richly embroidered with pearls, blessing the people like a cardinal. Seeing him, the American had picked up a cobblestone and hurled himself at the Lord like a madman. The head–it was actually a wax model–had burst like an eggshell. The eyes had been glass balls filled with mercury, the ceremonial attire stuffed with straw. The Master had been a hoax, nothing more.