The city of dr moreau, p.19
The City of Dr Moreau, page 19
The light was dim at first and it was not golden but rather of pink and amber hues. No source for this illumination was immediately apparent.
It ought to be stressed that the City was a real place, an actual conurbation, a settlement built of stone and rock, timber and glass. The architecture was of a quaint kind, though studiedly so, as if it had been built by those who had never visited any town in Europe but had only read of such places in the faded pages of ancient books.
The street onto which Albert emerged in the wake of his brother was cobbled and the houses which flanked it upon either side were high and crooked, drawn seemingly from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth centuries. The crowd of men surged along it, stopping to gawp at the citizens of that place who were standing amongst them or at lighted doors or leaning from open windows into the perpetual night.
Ah, yes. The citizens. The people of the City. None of them was human, at least not wholly so. Every single one was a creature of the island, every one a beast-person. On that first vista alone, there were at least a dozen separate species. Young Albert looked about him, in both wonderment and terror, unsure at first whether he had simply fallen asleep in the car beside his brother and all that had befallen him since had been the product merely of bad dreams. The alternative – that every moment of it was real – seemed too bizarre to contemplate.
“Oh do try not to gawp so,” said Silas, who had turned around a yard or so before him. “You look like such an ingenue.”
“Sorry,” said Albert, purely on instinct since he did not in truth feel at all apologetic. “But what exactly is this place?”
Silas grinned. “Why, this is only the tip of it.”
“But all these… people. What are they? Actors? Performers of some kind? Clowns?”
“You know that they are not.”
“Silas… are you, sure… I mean, this is all just so deeply strange.”
“I think you’ll find that you can become accustomed to it. Sooner than you think.” Silas shrugged. “Look here, I don’t have the time for this. I’m here for my own pleasure too, you know.”
“Silas,” Albert began, though before he could say more a stranger linked arms with him, the gesture swift and proprietorial.
“Are you new here?” said a soft female voice, hot against Albert’s ear.
Albert turned to face the speaker whose form was now very close to him.
She was dressed, as had Mrs Anman been, in a long flowing cape and a great blue hood. Though the face of this person was not hidden.
On the contrary, she peered out with a wide smile and neat white teeth. Her eyes were, as the writers of romance would have it, made of pure sparkling blue. And every inch of all her visible skin was covered with fine, silky brown fur.
Albert looked back only to see his brother wink at him. “You’ve found a guide, Albert. Well done. Now be a good boy and try to enjoy yourself, won’t you?”
Without waiting for a reply, he pushed his shoulders back, adopted a forceful pose and walked away, into the crowd towards the end of the street.
The woman said, liltingly: “What is your name?”
“Albert.”
“It’s a nice name. I am Faun.”
“Faun?” Albert frowned, his senses reeling. But then, as he had been trained to do in all the years of his expensive education, good manners came into play. “Well, I’m jolly pleased to meet you.”
The woman linked arms with Albert Edgington. “Come, I will show all the marvels of our City.”
“Thank you. You’re very kind.”
She squeezed his arm. “You’ve arrived, let me tell you, upon the most interesting of nights…”
And with this, she led him away.
XIV
Although he would tell his story often and in great detail in the years which were to follow, Albert was always coy about what occurred in the hours between his meeting the woman who gave her name as Faun and the beginning of the violence.
They wandered, he said, through the streets of that strange subterranean place, and they ate and drank many odd things. Time seemed to him to become elastic and there were many pleasures to which he was that night introduced. His memory, he said, was affected by what he ingested.
The City at that time was most assuredly a miracle, though one underscored by darkness. Many and varied were its courtyards and palisades. Wondrous were the high staircases, the low temples, the narrow paths and the mighty thoroughfares. It had at once the quality both of a set and a dream. There was much which was illusory and much which was performed. Yet the great majority was real – tangible and visceral. It was this, of course, not the coating of make-believe but the substructure of undeniable reality, which brought wealth and privilege there in such quantities.
Albert’s most abiding memories of this odd lull were twofold. The first of them was the people of the City, of which Faun and Mrs Anman were amongst the least bizarre examples. For everywhere he looked were the most remarkable hybrid creatures, every one of them (though Albert himself did not yet know it) a descendant of the peoples of the Island. Here were cheetah-people and goat-men, women who were at least half antelope and those who were semi-hippo. After an early burst of shock, Albert simply accepted it all, much in the manner as certain mystics are said to accept without question the most unearthly visions.
The second memory from this period which stayed with him was something less immediately peculiar: the curious profusion of statues. There they were, at the end of every road, the centre of every cul-de-sac, raised high about street level in some places and placed almost upon the walkways themselves in another. It was not merely the sheer number of them which struck Albert as strange but also the fact that, although they differed widely in their individual details, they seemed to depict the same man. He was large, clean-shaven and dressed in what appeared to be a sort of white safari suit. He did not look quite like anyone whom Albert had ever met, though there was something dimly familiar about him all the same, as though he had encountered him long ago, back in some other life.
He kept intending to ask his guide the reason for the repetition of this figure, again and again throughout the City, yet the moment for quiet conversation never came. Instead, Faun led him on to ever weirder locations, to parties which seemed to have been going on for days, to carnival processions which seemed to be entirely spontaneous, to mad jamborees which filled the boy up with sights and sensations of every kind. And so the impossible night wore on.
XV
The point at which Albert Edgington’s memories became more detailed and precise must have been around four to five hours after his entrance to the City and the moment when Faun first took his arm. He had become separated from his guide after they had left some extravagant gathering or other and taken once again to the streets. The specifics of this eluded Albert but somehow he had found himself alone at the end of an empty road, without any sign of any of the denizens of that place, let alone his brother or any other human visitor.
There was a path leading off from the main avenue into a small, shaded courtyard, centred around a single tree. Its leaves were an unearthly violet and weird vegetation flourished at its base, all the flora of the island transported here and changed in the long darkness.
Grateful for the chance of silence and respite, he walked on, down the lane to the courtyard and stood before the tree. In the distance he could still hear all the sounds of night-time merriment which typified the City, though it sounded comfortingly faraway. He thought of how he had come here, of the curious set-up of the village known as Eddowes Bay, of the crazy rigmarole of the entry and the forbidden tang of the underworld itself. He stood and sucked in sweetened air and thought of Silas’ glee and he had to admit, if only to the most secret part of his soul, that he understood entirely the dark allure of the place.
He noticed then that behind the tree stood an unmoving figure. Stepping forward to get a better view, Albert called out (“Hello!”) only to feel foolish a second later as he realised that he was facing nothing more than another of the City’s plentiful statues.
Then a voice came from behind him. “I met him once, you know.”
Albert, startled, spun around to see that there was a man standing in the shadows behind him. He must have been very silent and very still for the schoolboy had not so much as suspected his presence until now.
“Who are you?” Albert asked.
The man walked forwards, into the light. He was a small, slender man, white-haired. Ignoring Albert’s question, he nodded at the statue.
“Of course, he didn’t exactly look like that. And no statue can capture the way in which he moved: wild energy, focused and suppressed by iron control. I often wonder how quickly it took upon that island of his for all that control to ebb away. How swiftly he frayed at the edges.” The man turned away from the statue and directed his gaze towards Albert. It was as if he was only just seeing him now, for the first time. He shook his head, the very picture of a gentleman striving to restore order over himself. He forced a rictus smile, like an unwilling host greeting guests a party he’d avoided successfully for years. “I’m so sorry. How remiss of me. Who precisely are you?”
“I’m Albert Edgington. I’m… well, I suppose I’m a guest here really. And you?”
“My name is Vaughan,” said the other. “No first name. Not important.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr Vaughan. Are you a guest here too?” Even as he asked the question, Albert knew that the answer could scarcely be a simple “yes”. There was something wrong with the man, a vagueness suggestive of illness.
“Not exactly,” said Vaughan. “In a sense, I’m the owner. Or architect. Yes, perhaps that is a better, more accurate term.”
“I see,” Albert said and then found himself entirely unable to think of anything sensible to say next.
Vaughan was happy to speak without any need for prompting. He seemed, Albert thought, like a man in want of an audience. “You must be wondering how the idea for all of this came to me. What was the kernel of it? A night, long ago, years before you were born, before you were even thought of, I went into the laboratory of the man you see now before me, immortalised in stone.”
Albert found his voice. “What was his name?” he asked. “The subject of these statues?”
The answer came. “Moreau.”
Edgington shrugged. “My brother mentioned him before. But until then I’d never heard of him.”
“Truly?”
The schoolboy shook his head.
“You’ve never heard of The Moreau Horrors? The Ratcliffe Charnel-House? The monstrous dog?”
“Never.”
“How quickly the truth is lost. How swiftly history forgets.” Mr Vaughan sighed, apparently disconsolate. “And speaking of forgetting, I very much fear that your name has already escaped me.”
“Edgington, sir. Albert Edgington.”
“Of course it is, my boy. Of course it is. My own memory’s not what it was, you know. Everything’s starting to seem a little misty. And there are moments when the past and the present become in my mind quite tangled. Even times when I do believe I spy something like the future. A woman on some impossible train. A transformation in a hotel. Then, change on a scale undreamed of even by me.”
“I see, sir. That must be… jolly distracting for you.”
Mr Vaughan nodded, with unexpected enthusiasm. “That’s it. That’s it exactly. Distracting.” He smiled as if at a distant memory. “Do you think it’s something about this place, Edgington? Something eating me alive like this? Nibbling away at all I’ve ever known?”
The older man paused for a long while after this – so long, in fact, that Albert thought he was expected to reply.
“I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir.”
Vaughan showed not the slightest sign of having heard him. He went on speaking, as though unaware that there had been a gap of any kind. “Do you think it’s something essential in the soil and the rock that’s about us? Some poison or toxin? Or do you think it has to do with me? With the way in which I’ve lived my life?”
Albert swallowed and fidgeted, in just the way that he had always been taught not to. “I’m sorry, sir… I don’t have the knowledge to say.”
“Unwilling to make a diagnosis, eh?”
“I’m not a doctor, sir.”
Vaughan peered at him. “No, I don’t expect you are. You don’t have the look of a sawbones about you. And I’ve known a few in my time.”
“I think I should go, sir. My brother will be waiting. Is there anyone I should fetch, Mr Vaughan? Is there anyone who’ll be…” He found himself unable to complete the sentence.
Vaughan grinned and Albert received the strong sensation that his own discomfort was providing pleasure to the older man. “Yes?”
“I meant to say: is there anyone who’ll be missing you?”
Mr Vaughan said nothing. He seemed to be considering the question. At length: “No. And I’m not so sure that there ever has been. My mother, perhaps, when I was very young… A girl, once, long ago…” He winked rather grotesquely. “You should go, Mr Edgington. Find your brother. Enjoy the City. The peoples of this place can be very generous.”
With this, the conversation seemed done and the little man turned away and began to scuttle away. There was, Albert thought, something beetle-like in his gait.
“It was nice to meet you!” he called after him, though this was far from the truth.
Vaughan stopped short then and Edgington thought at first that it was because he meant to speak some more to him. He realised the truth a few seconds later. For all the older man’s evident confusion, certain of his senses were still unusually acute.
Faraway, in the distance, there could be heard the sound of screaming.
“What is that?” Albert asked. “Who is that?”
Vaughan blinked. “Sounds human,” he said. “I know the screams of the Beast People and that is not one of them.”
The first scream was joined now by others. And by other sounds also: cries of conflict, of steel upon steel and – once, twice, three times – the sharp retort of gunfire.
“Mr Vaughan?”
The man wore an expression of the most curious and paradoxical sort: suspicion, fear and what seemed to Albert to be something like relief. “At last,” he said. He sighed. “I knew this day would come. Any student of history would have said the same. I told them, Mr Edgington. Never let it be said that I did not tell them. Let it be recorded that they simply refused to listen.”
The sounds were very much less distant now. Whatever its cause, the violence was moving in their direction. More screams. The angry punctuation of gunshots. And fierce, strange cries, of exultant ululation, which were surely not formed by any human throat.
For a long moment, the two men stood in that secluded place as if frozen there, as if paralysed, able only to hear the fearful approach of the mob.
Then, as the ruckus drew near, Albert heard it, quite distinctly, rising up out of the melee, a voice filled with pain and fear: “Albert! Albert! Help me!”
XVI
For just an instant longer, Albert Edgington remained in a state approximate to paralysis. The strangenesses and horrors of the night seemed to him to be almost overwhelming. Then the desperate cry came again, audible even above the wild shrieks and hollers of the crowd.
“Albert! For God’s sake!”
The schoolboy turned, hesitated. The little man was watching him from his place at the edge of the square.
“It’s my brother. That’s my brother’s voice.”
Vaughan shrugged. “I wouldn’t go to him,” he said. “Not if I were you.”
“I have to.”
“They will, I think, be in a state of some considerable rage. Men such as your brother will not by them be received… kindly.”
“I have to help him.”
“You can come with me. I know all the secret places of the City. I can keep you safe until the rioters are quelled.” Vaughan looked as though he cared little for the answer, as though he were speaking these words purely out of courtesy.
Once more, the screams and antic shouts drew closer. Once more, the frantic cry of the eldest Edgington boy was heard.
“Thank you, Mr Vaughan. But I have to go.”
Albert did not wait for the stranger to reply but ran from that place, suddenly, and somehow almost excitingly, filled up with purpose.
XVII
The little man watched him go. “How sad,” he said, and then again: “How sad. We all of us did our best, of course. In our own ways.” He looked up at that ubiquitous statue which stood at the heart of the square. “You especially,” he said and nodded with careful politeness as though the figure were some acquaintance made of flesh and blood. Then he surprised himself: a single laugh bubbled out of him, a cracked, high, crazed thing. The sound of it scared him, as though he had truly heard it for the first time. And so, after that, he simply stood, and listened to the approach of the crowd and waited.
XVIII
Albert saw them almost as soon as he left the fragile safety of the square and ran back into the main thoroughfare. They must have numbered in the hundreds: a great, roiling mob of Beast People moving in a dense formation. The scientist in Albert thought it fascinating while the part of him which was drawn to the poetry of Ancient Greece thought it oddly beautiful.
Considerable damage had been wrought to the streets and houses of the City. In the distance, there was smoke and flames. It was as though he had emerged from momentary sanctuary to step into the frame of a painting of insurrection, some portrait of revolt.
In the midst of them was Silas, borne aloft by that raucous assembly as though he were a tribute, destined for sacrifice. He was struggling frantically yet was he held firm by the talons and claws of the mob. His clothes were torn and ripped. He had been cut and his face was bloodied. Every fibre of him was in a state of outrage and disgust.
Struggling upwards, he saw Albert. “Help me! Help me!”
Now that bestial collective took note of the schoolboy. They surged towards him, a phalanx of teeth and claws, and bloodied, matted fur. They bore down upon him. They shrieked in bloodlust and delight.
