The Paradise War Page 10

  “I’m familiar with the theory,” I put in defensively.

  “Good. We will continue.” He folded the socks and shoved them into the pack, brought out another pair, frowned, and tossed them back into the drawer. “Now then, important as the idea of beauty is, the Otherworld is a thousand times more so. And its loss would be that much more devastating.”

  Ooops! Sharp turn. Lost me again. “This is the part I’m having trouble with,” I said, breaking in.

  “Because you’re not using your head, Mr. Gillies!” the professor bellowed. He reached into the closet, brought out a thick-soled walking shoe, and pointed it at me. “Think!”

  “I am thinking! I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it.”

  “Then listen carefully,” Nettles said with tired patience. “If you think of the Otherworld as a repository—a place of safekeeping, a storehouse, or treasury—of this world’s archetypal imagery . . .” He must have seen from the frown on my face that he was losing me again, because he stopped.

  “I’m trying, professor. But I’m a little fuzzy on this archetypal imagery storehouse stuff. It sounds Jungian.”

  “Forget Jung,” Nettles admonished, placing the shoe on the desk and turning the whole of his attention on me. I sat up straight and tried to pay attention.

  “Around AD 865, an Irish philosopher by the name of Johannes Scotus Erigena proposed a doctrine which conceived of the natural world as a manifestation of God in four separate aspects, or discernments— that is, distinct divisions which are nonetheless contained in the singularity of God.” He raised his eyebrows. “Anyone at home?”

  “I’m here,” I muttered. “Barely.”

  “Erigena’s doctrine recognized God as the sole Creator, Sustainer, and True Source of all that exists—this is the first of God’s aspects. Secondly, Erigena recognized a sort of Supernature, a separate, invisible other nature, wherein reside all primordial ideas, forces, and archetypes— the Form of forms, as he called it—from which all earthly or natural forms derived.”

  “The Otherworld,” I murmured.

  “Precisely,” confirmed the professor with relief. “The meat of the matter,” he continued, “is that, for human beings, the Otherworld performs several crucial functions. You might say that it informs and instructs our world in certain important lessons, mostly having to do with human existence.”

  “It supplies the meaning of life,” I volunteered shakily.

  “No,” Professor Nettleton said. He pulled off his glasses, peered through them, and replaced them. “That is a common misunderstanding, however. The Otherworld does not supply the meaning of life. Rather, the Otherworld describes being alive. Life, in all its glory—warts and all, so to speak. The Otherworld provides meaning by example, by exhibition, by illustration if you will. Do you see the difference?

  “Through the Otherworld we learn what it is to be alive, to be human: good and evil, heartbreak and ecstasy, victory and defeat. It is all contained in the treasury, you see. The Otherworld is the storehouse of archetypal life imagery—it is the wellspring of all our dreams, you might say.”

  “But I thought you said the Otherworld exists as an actual place,” I pointed out, returning to an earlier point.

  “It does,” he replied, reaching into the closet for the other shoe, “but its existence in actuality is secondary to its existence as a concept, a metaphor, if you like, which informs, enriches, and illuminates our own world.” He peered into the shoe as if looking for elves.

  “Really, I’m not stupid,” I insisted. “But I’m struggling here.”

  “We see our own world,” Nettles explained patiently, “in large part only by the light cast upon it from the Otherworld.” He placed the shoe next to its mate on the desk, turned, and stared into the closet as if it were the entrance to the Otherworld. “I ask you, Lewis,” he continued abruptly, “where does one first learn loyalty? Or honor? Or any higher value, for that matter?”

  “Such as beauty?” I asked, bringing up his previous point.

  “Very well,” he agreed, “such as beauty—the beauty of a forest, let us say. Where does one learn to value the beauty of a forest and to revere it?”

  “In nature?” I gave the most obvious answer, which was most obviously wrong.

  “Not at all. This can easily be proven by the fact that so many among us do not revere the forests at all—do not even see them, in fact. You know the people I am talking about. You have seen them and their works in the world. They are the ones who rape the land, who cut down the forests and despoil the oceans, who oppress the poor and tyrannize the helpless, who live their lives as if nothing lay beyond the horizon of their own limited earthbound visions.” He paused a moment and recollected. “But I digress. The question before us is this: where does one first learn to see a forest as a thing of beauty, to honor it, to hold it dear for its own sake, to recognize its true value as a forest, and not just see it as a source of timber to be exploited, or a barrier to be hacked down in order to make room for a motorway?”

  I knew what answer he wanted, and said it just to make him happy. “The Otherworld?”

  “Yes, the Otherworld.”

  My brain hurt. “How,” I asked almost desperately, “is this so?”

  The professor brought out a wide leather belt and began threading it through the loops of his corduroy trousers. “It is so because the mere presence of the Otherworld kindles in us the spark of higher consciousness, or imagination. It is the stories and tales and visions of the Otherworld—that magical, enchanted land just beyond the walls of the manifest world—which awaken and expand in human beings the very notions of beauty, of reverence, of love and nobility, and all the higher virtues. The Otherworld is the Form of forms, the storehouse, yes? The archetypes reside there, you see.

  “A fellow lecturer once asked me, ‘How can you see a real forest if you have never seen a fairy forest?’ Well? I ask you the same thing.”

  Remarkably, this made sense to me. Or perhaps I had parted with my senses altogether. “Because the Otherworld exists, we can see our own world for what it is,” I said, almost panting with the effort.

  “And for more than it is,” Nettles added, buckling the belt. “That is very important. For it is chiefly by virtue of the existence of the Otherworld that we recognize the ultimate value of this one—a value which extends far beyond its literal elements.”

  “In the same way as the value of a forest extends beyond the value of the logs it produces?” I suggested hopefully.

  “Very good, Lewis.” Nettles seemed pleased. “You’re making progress.”

  “Yeah, well, couldn’t we do that by ourselves? Couldn’t we recognize the value of this forest or whatever, whether the Otherworld existed or not? I mean, couldn’t we just imagine it all?”

  “God alone might. Human beings are not so gifted to create ex nihilo, out of nothing.” I watched, uncomprehending, as the professor began unbuttoning his shirt. “No, human creations must be grounded in something actual, however elusive and subtle.” He raised an admonitory finger. “Be assured, we do not come by this knowledge— this consciousness of higher things—naturally, Mr. Gillies. We must be taught. And the Otherworld is the principal instrument of our instruction.”

  He discarded his shirt, withdrew another from the closet, and began to put it on. The physique beneath was compact and remarkably fit.

  “Fine,” I said, “but what has it to do with this—this cosmic catastrophe you were talking about earlier?”

  “I thought that would have been self-evident.” He tucked the dangling shirttails into his trousers.

  “Not to me, it isn’t.”

  “Dear boy, anything which threatens the Otherworld threatens this world. It is as simple as that.” He took up the backpack and placed it beside the door. Then he retrieved the hiking shoes from his desk and brought them to the chair opposite me. “When the Form of forms becomes corrupted, our world and all that is in it becomes corrupted at the root.”

>   Good golly, this was tough going. I sucked in a deep breath, lowered my head, and slogged on. “All respect, Nettles, but I still don’t get it. How—how is the Otherworld threatened? This plexus thing—you said it has become unstable, or is unraveling. What does that mean?

  What is this all about?”

  “In simplest terms,” replied Nettles, stuffing his feet into the shoes, “the Otherworld is leaking through into this one.”

  “And this world is leaking through into the Otherworld. That’s bad, right?”

  “Catastrophic.” Nettles pursed his lips as he laced the right shoe. “A breach has opened between the worlds, and anything may stumble through.”

  “Anything—like an aurochs? Or a Green Man . . . ?” At last I understood. I felt my stomach tighten. It was true. All of it. True.

  “The aurochs, the Green Man,” Nettles echoed gently, “the wolf in Turl Street, and who knows what else?”

  “Simon? Did he stumble through?”

  “I think it likely, don’t you?”

  I pondered all he had said, desperately trying to take it all in. But there was too much; I bowed before Nettles’s superior intellect and abandoned myself to his judgment. “Well, okay, so what happens now?”

  “I think we must have a look at that cairn of yours, Mr. Gillies.”

  Another trip to Scotland. Super. On the whole, however, jaunting up to Carnwood Farm seemed a lot more fun than regaling an angry Geoffrey Rawnson with a cockeyed tale about prehistoric oxen and fairy mounds. “Sounds good,” I agreed. “When do we leave?”

  “At once. I’m packed.” He indicated the backpack beside the door.

  “I’ll have to go back to my rooms and collect a few things,” I said.

  “That won’t be necessary,” the professor said. “What you have will suffice.” He stepped to his closet and withdrew a spare toothbrush and washcloth which he stuffed into the pack. “There,” he declared, “we’re ready to go.”

  10

  THE SERBIAN

  The train from Oxford to Edinburgh left half an hour late and packed end to end and wall-to-wall with Oxford United devotees. I have nothing against British Rail—only that they let all the wrong sort of people ride on their trains. I don’t suppose it’s BR’s fault, but it makes traveling by rail so tatty. At the end of four or five hours one would be hard-pressed to illustrate the difference between a second-class coach and a cattle car. Whoever esteemed the serving of alcohol to football hooligans in close confinement a good idea ought to be forced to endure a six-hour sojourn with the inebriate consequence.

  By the time we reached Birmingham, I had pretty much had my fill of empty Sköl lager cans and rousing football songs. “’Ere we go! ’Ere we go! ’Ere we go!” can only divert a body for so long, I find, and then the lyrics begin to pall.

  “Just once,” I murmured wistfully, “I would like to travel first class. I think I’m ready for that.”

  At Birmingham the footballers cleared out, however, and we had the coach to ourselves. I tried to read a newspaper someone had left behind, but the words kept jumping around, and I couldn’t make sense of what I read. So I gave up and looked out the window at the drab countryside racing by in a dull blur outside. It was as if the focus knob had gone on the fritz and the picture was all screwed up—color drained away and image reeling by recklessly. A world sliding sideways out of control.

  This is how it begins, I thought, and remembered Simon’s impassioned harangue in the car the night before he vanished. Perhaps he was more sensitive than I gave him credit for. He felt it—felt the distress in his soul. I didn’t, not then, at any rate. But I was beginning to feel something: if not the distress, then fear.

  I closed my eyes on such uncomfortable thoughts and went to sleep.

  In due course, the train arrived in Edinburgh. We retrieved our luggage and stepped onto the platform. It was cold. The air smelled of diesel oil and Casey Jones’s hamburgers.

  We tramped up the stairs to the shopping precinct above Waverly Station platform and jostled our way through throngs of cheerless shoppers. I noticed the spark and glitter of Christmas decorations in the shops and reflected that I would have to get some cards sent out before the rush. This time of year it could take three weeks for a holiday greeting to reach the States.

  Last Christmas Simon had invited me home with him, but then cancelled at the last minute because Aunt Tootie had come down with the ague and his sister and her fiancé had gone to Ibiza and his mother had volunteered to produce the village pantomime and the staff had been given the hols off and the whole familial frolic had gone quite sour. So I ended up spending a rainy Christmas alone in my room. The thought made me sad.

  Nettles hailed us a taxi. Edinburgh Castle, cold and forbidding on its high rock, loomed over us, eerily lit against the dark night sky. We piled into the taxi, and the professor gave the driver the address of a guesthouse he knew. “Inexpensive, but clean. And the food is good. You’ll like it,” he promised.

  I didn’t care if the place was filthy, cost a fortune, and the food was served by six-foot-tall cockroaches. I just didn’t care. I was tired and sore oppressed by all the vexing thoughts Nettles had put into my head. All I wanted was to crawl into a warm, soft bed and forget everything.

  The cab pulled up outside a narrow house, part of the sweeping arc of Carlton Terrace. A neon sign over the door formed the words “Caledon House.” A sign in the window informed us that it was a Private Hotel, a term I have always considered slightly self-contradictory.

  The professor and I climbed out of the car and assembled ourselves on the walk outside the guesthouse. “Ah, yes. Just as I remember it. Let’s go in,” he said. “Missus Dalrymple will be expecting us.”

  I hesitated. “Nettles?” I asked. “What happens next?”

  “Dinner, I hope. I’m famished,” he replied. “I could eat an aurochs.”

  Cute. It was good to see that at least one of us had retained a sense of humor. “I didn’t mean dinner,” I said, somewhat testily.

  “We will check in first,” the professor said, rubbing his hands eagerly. “Then we will take ourselves along to the Serbian.”

  The Serbian? What sort of restaurant was that?

  “What sort of restaurant is this?” I demanded.

  We stood outside a blank-faced brick building in the warehouse district. There was no window, no sign, no Egon Ronay plaque or VISA sticker on the exterior of the dour edifice to indicate that it was an eating establishment of any kind, let alone announce the fact to the world. A solitary lightbulb glowed under a rusted shade above a weathered wooden door. The doorknob was brass, blackened with age and use. On the doorpost was painted the number seventy-seven, one seven above the other, in white.

  “Are you sure you’ve got the right address?” I asked, glancing along the dark street at our taxi’s dwindling taillights.

  “Yes, this is the place,” Nettles replied—none too certainly, it seemed to me. He rapped on the door with his knuckles, and we waited.

  “I don’t think there’s anyone here, professor,” I pointed out. “Maybe we should go somewhere else.”

  “So impatient. Relax,” the professor suggested. “You’ll like this, Lewis. You need this.”

  He pounded on the door again, with the palm of his hand this time. Somewhere a cat yowled as it pounced on its long-tailed dinner. I could hear the wail of tires on the nearby overpass as the juggernauts sped toward the Forth Bridge somewhere in the dark distance. We waited. It was cold and growing colder. We would have to do something soon, or I, for one, would fall asleep and freeze to death on the warehouse doorstep. I was about to recommend we take our business elsewhere, when I heard a faint scratching on the other side of the door.

  The door creaked open a crack. A bright dark eye surveyed us for a moment, whereupon the door was instantly flung back and a bearded giant lurched out at us, bellowing, “Professor!”

  I stepped swiftly back, throwing my hands before me. But the p
oor professor was seized by this enormous man and crushed in a spine-popping embrace. He hollered something and the giant hollered back. Then he began kissing Nettles on both cheeks. Where are the police when you need them?

  The great hulk released Nettles and, to my astonishment, the professor was not badly maimed. He turned to me, straightening his coat and grinning. “Come here, Lewis. I’ll introduce you to our host!”

  I sidled cautiously closer. The giant thumped himself on his vast chest and said, “I am Deimos!” He thrust a massive hand at me.

  “Glad to meet you, Deimos,” I said tentatively, watching my own hand disappear into his fist. Deimos was all of seven feet tall and solid as a Volvo tractor. A beard—thick, black, wild, and curly—wrapped the entire lower part of his face and spilled down his neck. He wore old-fashioned farmer’s bib overalls and a plaid flannel shirt—the top two buttons of which would never meet their buttonholes. His hair, also gleaming black, formed a mane which was caught up and bound at the neck in a stubby queue. His eyes were lively and his smile wide and welcoming.

  He was not satisfied with shaking hands. He grabbed me and crushed me to him, as if I were an only son who had been lost since birth. I felt my shoulder blades compressed and pummeled under his welcoming thumps. At least he didn’t kiss me as he kissed the professor, so I counted myself fortunate to escape with minor contusions.

  Nettles and the giant began chattering in something closely resembling a foreign language, and we were whisked inside all at once, just scooped in with one of Deimos’s massive arms.

  The interior of the building suited its gigantic occupant. It was an empty warehouse. Unlit, virtually unfurnished, and, from what I could tell, unheated. In fact, it was largely untroubled by creature comforts of any description. Deimos retrieved a candle from a table inside the door and led us along a narrow runner of ornate flowered carpet. I peered into the distance and saw, illumined by candlelight, a curious assemblage of castoffs thrown together in the middle of the empty space.