The Peculiar. Stefan Bachmann

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      Mr. Jelliby took a small, gasping breath. The green fumes wriggled in his throat, making his lungs feel as if they were being stuffed with silk. A fog began to creep about the corners of his vision. The room felt suddenly unsteady. The floor swayed, bucked, like wooden waves in a wooden sea. Vaguely he heard Mr. Throgmorton asking after the weight of Mr. Lumbidule’s mechanical hunting boar. “It must be shot with a special sort of gun,” Mr. Lumbidule was saying. “… has real blood inside, real meat, and if you are tired of hunting it, it will lie down on its iron back and …”

      Mr. Jelliby could take it no longer. Wiping his brow he said, “Forgive me, Mr. Lickerish, but I am feeling unwell. Is there a water closet nearby?” The two other men stopped their blathering long enough to smirk at him. Mr. Jelliby barely noticed. He was too busy trying not to vomit.

      The faery’s mouth twitched. He regarded Mr. Jelliby sharply for a moment. Then he said, “Of course there is a water closet. Left of the door you’ll find a bellpull. Someone will come to escort you.”

      “Oh …” Mr. Jelliby lurched out of his seat and stumbled away from the chairs. His head was spinning. On his way across the room he thought he might have knocked something over—he heard a clatter and felt something delicate grind to glassy shards under his feet—but he was too dizzy to stop.

      He staggered out of the library, fumbling along the wall for the bellpull. His fingers brushed a tassel. His hand closed around a thick velvet cord and he tugged it with all his might. Somewhere deep in the house a bell tinkled.

      He waited, listening for the sound of footsteps, a door opening, a voice. Nothing. The bell faded away. He heard the rain again, drumming on the roof.

      He pulled a second time. Another tinkle. still nothing.

      Fine. He would find the privy himself. Now that he was out of the green library, he was feeling better anyway. His head was beginning to clear, and his stomach had settled. A splash of cold water, perhaps, and he’d be well enough. He began wandering back the way he had come, down the winding staircase and into the passageway below, trying the doors as he passed them to see if there might be a privy behind one. His mind went back to the brightly lit corridor, the woman hurrying down it. He wondered who she was. She hadn’t been a servant. Not with those rich clothes. Nor had she looked like a faery.

      Mr. Jelliby came to the end of the hallway and turned down another one. It was the same one he had been in not twenty minutes before, but now that he was alone it looked somehow darker and more forbidding. It led to a large dingy room, with furniture all covered in dust sheets. That room led to another hallway, which led into a room full of empty birdcages, and then a smoking room, none of which looked any-thing like the rooms he remembered passing through earlier. He realized he wasn’t looking for a privy anymore. He was looking for the gaslit corridor, wondering if the woman might still be there, wondering if he could find out who she was. He was just about to turn back and search in a different direction when one room opened into another and he found himself standing at the mouth of the brightly lit corridor.

      He could have sworn it had been in a different place before. Hadn’t there been a pot of withered roses to the left of it? And a sideboard with a bone-white bowl? But here it was—the long, narrow corridor that looked so very like those in railway carriages. It was not as if it had moved.

      The corridor was empty now. The doors on both sides were closed, no doubt locked by the goblin Mr. Jelliby had seen earlier. He stepped forward, listening. The distant patter of the rain was gone. There was no sound at all. Only a slight vibration, a hum more felt than heard. It was in the paneling, and the floor, and it tickled the inside of his forehead.

      He walked all the way down the corridor, passing his hand over each door as he went. The wood of the last door was warm. A fire must be lit in the room beyond. He laid his ear against the door, listening. A heavy thud came from the other side, as if some large object had fallen to the floor. Was the lady there, then? was she the object that had fallen? Oh dear. Suppose she had tumbled from a chair while reaching for some-thing and was now lying broken on the floor. He turned the doorknob. It was locked. Gripping the knob with both hands, he began to shake it. Another sound came from behind the door, quick breaths and something like scratching. He began pounding. She certainly isn’t unconscious. But is she deaf? Or mute? Perhaps he should run and fetch a servant. But before he could rightly entertain this idea, there was a tremendous noise of splintering and breaking, and then the door lay in pieces at his feet. He was looking into a room that had a beautiful blazing fire and a desk carved with toads. It was empty. Far, far away he thought he heard a cry. So very far away he didn’t know if he had imagined it.

      And then the faery butler was at the mouth of the corridor, his one green eye blazing, the machinery across the side of his face skippering madly. “What is this?” he cried. “What have you done?” He began to run, long arms stretched out in front of him like the talons of a horrible insect.

      “Oh. Oh, good heavens,” Mr. Jelliby stammered. “Do forgive me, I didn’t mean to—”

      “Mr. Lickerish!” the butler screeched. “Sathir, el eguliem pak!” His voice rose to such a desperate height on the final word that it made Mr. Jelliby wince. A door opened somewhere in the house, then another. Footsteps sounded in the passageways, on the stairs, not loud but steady, approaching quickly.

      Oh dear, thought Mr. Jelliby.

      The faery butler reached him and took hold of his arm, his face so close Mr. Jelliby could smell his putrid breath.

      “Come away from here this instant!” the butler hissed. “Come back into the house.” And he practically dragged Mr. Jelliby down the corridor, out of the blazing gaslight, into the solid gloom beyond. Someone was waiting for them there. A whole group of someones. Mr. Throgmorton and Mr. Lumbidule, a wide-eyed Mr. Lickerish, and in the shadows, a huddle of lower faeries, whispering “Pak, pak” over and over amongst themselves.

      “It—it was not the water closet,” Mr. Jelliby said weakly.

      Mr. Throgmorton gave a bark of laughter. “Oh, the surprise! And yet you broke down the door. Mr. Jelliby, privy doors are locked for a reason, I think. They are locked when they are being used, when they are not meant to be used, or when they are not, in fact, a privy.”

      Mr. Throgmorton started laughing again, fat lips quivering. Mr. Lumbidule joined in. The faery folk only watched, faces blank.

      Suddenly Mr. Lickerish clapped his hands, producing a clear, sharp sound. The chortles of the two politicians lodged in their throats.

      The faery turned to Mr. Jelliby. “You are leaving now,” he said, and his voice made Mr. Jelliby want to shrivel up and fall through the cracks in the floorboards.

      Mr. Jelliby couldn’t remember afterward how he came to be back in the hall with the mermaid staircase. All he remembered was walking, walking through endless corridors, head lowered to hide the burning of his face. And then he was at the front door again, and the butler was letting him out. But before stumbling into the streaming misery of the city, he recalled looking back into the shadows of Nonsuch House. And there, on the staircase landing, stood the faery politician, a flicker of white in the darkness. He was watching Mr. Jelliby. His pale hands were folded across the silver buttons of his waistcoat. His face was a mask, flat and inscrutable. But his eyes were still wide. And it struck Mr. Jelliby that a wideeyed СКАЧАТЬ