Kitabı oku: «Abarat», sayfa 2
2
WHAT HENRY MURKITI LEFT BEHIND
IT WAS DARK INSIDE the room; the air still and stale.
“Why don’t you go ahead and open the drapes, honey?” Norma said, taking the key back from Candy.
Candy waited a moment for her eyes to become accustomed to the gloom, then she tentatively made her way across the room to the window. The thick fabric of the drapes felt greasy against her palms, as though they hadn’t been cleaned in a very long time. She pulled. The drapes moved reluctantly along dust-and dirt-clogged rails. The glass Candy found herself looking through was as filthy as the fabric.
“How long is it since anybody rented the room?” Candy said.
“Actually I can’t remember if there’s been anybody in it since I’ve been at the hotel,” Norma said.
Candy looked out of the window. The view was no more inspiring to the senses or the soul than the view out of the kitchen window of 34 Followell Street, her home. Immediately below the window was a small courtyard at the back of the hotel, which contained five or six garbage cans, filled to over-brimming, and the skeletal remains of last year’s Christmas tree, still wearing its shabby display of tinsel and artificial snow. Beyond the yard was Lincoln Street (or so Candy guessed; the journey through the hotel had completely disoriented her). She could see the tops of cars above the wall of the yard, and a Discount Drug Store on the opposite side of the street, its doors chained and padlocked, its shelves bare.
“So,” said Norma, calling Candy’s attention back into Room Nineteen. “This is where Henry Murkitt stayed.”
“Did he come to the hotel often?”
“To my knowledge,” Norma said, “he came only once. But I’m not really sure about that, so don’t quote me.”
Candy could understand why Henry would not have been a repeat visitor. The room was tiny. There was a narrow bed against the far wall and a chair in the corner with a small black television perched on it. In front of it was a second chair, on which was perched an over-filled ashtray.
“Some of our employees come up here when they have half an hour to spare to catch up on the soap operas,” Norma said, by way of explanation.
“So they don’t believe the room’s haunted?”
“Put it this way, honey,” Norma said. “Whatever they believe it doesn’t put them off coming up here.”
“What’s through there?” Candy said, pointing to a door.
“Look for yourself,” Norma said.
Candy opened the door and stepped into a minuscule bathroom that had not been cleaned in a very long time. In the mirror above the filthy sink she met her own reflection. Her eyes looked almost black in the murk of this little cell, and her dark hair needed a cut. But she liked her own face, even in such an unpromising light. She had her mother’s smile, open and easy, and her father’s frown; the deep, troubled frown that Bill Quackenbush wore in his beer-dreams. And of course her odd eyes: the left dark brown, the right blue; though the mirror reversed them.
“When you’ve quite finished admiring yourself …” Norma said.
Candy closed the bathroom door and went back to her note-taking to cover her embarrassment. There is no wallpaper on the walls of Room Nineteen, she wrote, just plaster painted a dirty white. One of the four walls had a curious abstract pattern on it, which was faintly pink. All in all, she could not have imagined a grimmer or more uncomfortable place.
“So what can you tell me about Henry Murkitt?” she asked Norma.
“Not that much,” the woman replied. “His grandfather was the founding father of the town. In fact, we’re all of us here because Wallace Murkitt decided he’d had enough of life on the trail. The story goes that his horse upped and died on him in the middle of the night, so they had no choice but to settle down right here in the middle of nowhere.”
Candy smiled. There was something about this little detail which absolutely fit with all she knew about her hometown. “So Chickentown exists because Wallace Murkitt’s horse died?” she said.
Norma seemed to get the bitter joke. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess that about sums things up, doesn’t it? But apparently Henry Murkitt was very proud of having his family’s name on the town. It was something he used to boast about.”
“Then they changed it—”
“Yes, well, I’ll get to that in a moment. Really, poor Henry’s life was a series of calamities toward the end. First his wife, Diamanda, left him. Nobody knows where she went. And then sometime in December 1947, the town council decided to change the name of the town. Henry took it very badly. On Christmas Eve he checked into the hotel, and the poor man never checked out again.”
Candy had guessed something like this was coming, but even so it made the little hairs on the nape of her neck prickle to hear Norma say it.
“He died in this room?” Candy said softly.
“Yes.”
“How? A heart attack?”
Norma shook her head.
“Oh, no …” said Candy, beginning to put the pieces together. “He killed himself?”
“Yes. I’m afraid so.”
The room suddenly felt a little smaller, if that were possible, the corners—despite the sun that found its way through the dirtied glass—a little darker.
“That’s horrible,” Candy said.
“You’ll learn, honey,” Norma said. “Love can be the best thing in life. And it can be the worst. The absolute worst.”
Candy kept her silence. For the first time she saw how sad Norma’s face had become in the years since they’d last met. How the corners of her mouth were drawn down and her brow deeply etched with lines.
“But it wasn’t just love that broke Henry Murkitt’s heart,” Norma said. “It was—”
“—the fact that they changed the name of the town?” Candy said.
“Yes. That’s right. After all it was his family name. His name. His claim to a little bit of immortality, if you like. When that was gone, I guess he didn’t think he had anything left to live for.”
“Poor man,” Candy said, echoing Norma’s earlier sentiments. “Did he leave a note? I mean, a suicide note?”
“Yes. Of a kind. As far as I can gather he said something about waiting for his ship to come in.”
“What did he mean by that?” Candy said, jotting the phrase down.
“Well, he was probably drunk, and a little crazy. But he had something in the back of his head about ships and the sea.”
“That’s strange,” Candy said.
“It gets stranger,” Norma said.
She went to the small table beside the bed and opened the drawer. In it was a copy of Gideon’s Bible and a strange object made of what looked like brass. She took it out.
“According to the stories,” she said, “this is the only object of any worth he had with him.”
“What is it?”
Norma handed it to Candy. It was heavy and etched with numbers. There was a moving part that was designed to line up with the numbers.
“It’s a sextant,” Norma said.
Candy looked blank. “What’s a sextant?”
“It’s something sailors use to find out where they are when they’re out at sea. I don’t exactly know how it works, but you line it up with the stars somehow and …” She shrugged. “You find out where you are.”
“And he had this with him?”
“As I say: according to the stories. This very one.”
“Wouldn’t the police have taken it?” Candy said.
“You would think so. But as long as I’ve been working in the hotel that thing has been here in that drawer, beside the Gideon’s Bible. Henry Murkitt’s sextant.”
“Huh,” said Candy, not at all sure what to make of any of this now. She handed the object back to Norma, who carefully—even a little reverently—returned it to its place and slid the drawer closed. “So that and the note were all he left?” Candy asked.
“No,” said Norma. “He left something else.”
“What?”
“Look around you,” Norma replied.
Candy looked. What was there here that could have belonged to Henry Murkitt? The furniture? Surely not? The age-worn rug under her feet? Perhaps, but it was unlikely. The lamp? No. What did that leave? There weren’t any pictures on the walls, so—
“Oh, wait a minute,” she said, looking at the stains on the wall. “Not those?”
Norma just looked at her, raising a perfectly plucked eyebrow.
“Those?” Candy said.
“No matter how many coats of paint the workmen put on that wall, the stains show through.”
Candy went closer to the wall, examining the marks. A part of her—the part that her morbid grandmother could take credit for—wanted to ask Norma the obvious question: how had the stains got up there? Had he shot himself, or used a razor? But there was another part that preferred not to know.
“Horrible,” she said.
“That’s what happens when people realize their lives aren’t what they dreamed they’d be,” Norma said. She glanced at her watch. “Oh Lord, look at the time. I’ve got to get going. That’s the story of Henry Murkitt.”
“What a sad man,” Candy said.
“Well, I guess all of us are waiting for our ships to come in, one way or another,” Norma said, going to the door and letting Candy out onto the gloomy landing. “Some of us still live in hope,” she said with a half-hearted smile. “But you have to, don’t you?”
And with that she closed the door on the room where Henry Murkitt had breathed his last.
3
DOODLE
MISS SCHWARTZ, CANDY’S HISTORY teacher, was not in a pleasant mood at the best of times, but today her mood was fouler than usual. As she went around the classroom, returning the project papers on Chickentown, only her few favorite students (who were usually boys) earned anything close to good marks. Everyone else was being criticized.
But nothing the rest of the class had faced compared with Miss Schwartz’s attack on Candy’s paper.
“Facts, Candy Quackenbush,” the woman said, tossing Candy’s paper about Henry Murkitt’s demise down on her desk. “I asked for facts. And what do you give me—?”
“Those are facts, Miss—”
“Don’t answer back,” Miss Schwartz snapped. “These are not facts. They are morbid pieces of gossip. Nothing more. This work—like most of your work— is worthless.”
“But I was in that room in the Comfort Tree Hotel,” she said. “I saw Henry Murkitt’s sextant.”
“Are you hopelessly gullible?” said Schwartz. “Or are you just plain stupid? Every hotel has some kind of ridiculous ghost story. Can’t you tell the difference between fact and fiction?”
“But, Miss Schwartz, I swear these are facts.”
“You get an ‘F,’ Candy.”
“That’s not fair,” Candy protested.
Miss Schwartz’s upper lip began to twitch, a sure sign that she was going to start yelling soon.
“Don’t talk back to me!” she said, her volume rising. “If you don’t stop indulging in these dim-witted fantasies of yours, and start doing some real work, you’re going to fail this class completely. And I’ll personally see you held back a year for your laziness and your insolence.”
There was a lot of tittering from the back of the class, where the coven of Candy’s enemies, led by Deborah Hackbarth, all sat. Miss Schwartz threw them a silencing look, which worked; but Candy knew they were smiling behind their hands, passing notes back and forth about Candy’s humiliation.
“Why can’t you be normal?” Miss Schwartz said. “Give me work like this from Ruth Ferris.” She leafed through the pages.
Miss Schwartz held up the paper, so that everybody could see what an exemplary piece of work Ruth had done. “You see these graphs?” Miss Schwartz was flicking through the pages of colored graphs Ruth had thoughtfully provided as appendices to her paper. “You know what they’re about? Well, do you, Candy?”
“Let me guess,” said Candy. “Chickens?”
“Yes. Chickens. Ruth wrote about the number one industry in our community: chickens.”
“Maybe that’s because her father is the factory manager,” Candy said, throwing the perfect Miss R. Ferris a sour look. She knew—everybody knew, including Miss Schwartz—that Ruth’s pretty little charts and flow diagrams (“From Egg to Chicken Nugget”) had been copied out of her father’s glossy brochures for Applebaum’s Farms.
“Who cares about chickens?” Candy said.
“Chickens are the lifeblood of this town, Candy Quackenbush. Without chickens, your father wouldn’t have a job.”
“He doesn’t have a job, Miss Schwartz,” said Deborah.
“Oh. Well—”
“He likes his beer too much.”
“All right, that’s enough Deborah,” said Miss Schwartz, sensing that things were getting out of hand. “You see how disruptive you are, Candy?”
“What did I do?” Candy protested.
“We waste far too much time on you in class. Far too much—”
She stopped speaking because her eyes had alighted on Candy’s workbook. She snatched it up off the desk. For some reason Candy had started drawing wavy patterns on the cover of her book a couple of days before, her hand simply making the marks without her mind consciously instructing it to do so.
“What is this?” Miss Schwartz demanded, flipping through the pages of the workbook.
The interior was decorated in the same way as the cover: tightly set lines, hundreds of them, waving up and down all over the page.
“It’s bad enough you bring these morbid stories of yours into school,” Miss Schwartz was saying. “Now you’re defacing school property?”
“It’s just a doodle,” Candy said.
“Good Lord, are you going crazy? There are pages and pages of this rubbish.” Miss Schwartz held the workbook at arm’s length as though it might infect her. “What do you think you’re doing? What are these?”
For some reason, as Miss Schwartz stared down at her, Candy thought of Henry Murkitt, sitting in Room Nineteen on that distant Christmas Eve, waiting for his ship to come in.
Thinking of him, she realized what she’d been drawing so obsessively in her workbook.
“It’s the sea,” she said quietly.
“It’s what?” said Miss Schwartz, her voice oozing contempt.
“It’s the sea. I was drawing the sea.”
“Were you indeed? Well, it may look like the sea to you, but it looks like two weeks in detention to me.”
There was a little eruption of laughter from the back of the class. This time Miss Schwartz didn’t hush it. She simply tossed the defaced workbook onto Candy’s desk. It was a bad throw. Instead of landing neatly in front of the disgraced Candy, it skimmed across the desk, taking the paper about Henry Murkitt, along with several pens, pencils and a blue plastic ruler, off the other side and onto the floor.
The laughter halted. There was a hush while one of the pens rolled to a halt. Then Miss Schwartz said: “I want you to pick all that trash up.”
Candy didn’t reply, at least not at first. She remained in her seat, not moving a muscle.
“Did you hear me, Candy Quackenbush?”
The Hackbarth clique was in hog heaven. They watched with smirks on their faces as Candy sat in her seat, still refusing to move.
“Candy?” Miss Schwartz.
“I heard you, Miss Schwartz.”
“Then pick them up.”
“I didn’t knock them off the desk, Miss Schwartz.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said: I didn’t knock them off the desk. You did. So I think you should pick them up.”
All the blood had drained from Miss Schwartz’s face. The only color that remained was the purple of the shadows under her eyes.
“Get up,” she said.
“Miss Schwartz?”
“You heard me. I said get up. I want you down at the principal’s office right now.”
Candy’s heart was beating furiously and her hands were clammy. But she wasn’t going to let Miss Schwartz or any of her enemies in class see that she was nervous.
She was irritated with herself for letting Miss Schwartz escalate this stupid showdown. Maybe the principal would be more sympathetic to Candy’s researches than Miss Schwartz, but Candy doubted that she’d even get to show him her paper. All Miss Schwartz would want to talk about was Candy’s insolence.
Unfortunately it was a subject the principal took very seriously. Only a month ago he had talked to the whole school about that very subject. There would be a policy of zero tolerance, he told everyone, toward pupils who were disrespectful to teachers. Any student who crossed the line, he’d said, between civility and rudeness of any kind could expect serious consequences. He had meant what he said. Two weeks ago he had expelled two students for what he had called “extreme discourtesy” toward a teacher.
Candy half wondered if there was still time to apologize; but she knew it was a lost cause. Miss Schwartz wanted to see Candy squirming in front of the principal, and she wasn’t going to let anything keep her from witnessing that.
“You’re still sitting down, Quackenbush,” the woman said. “What did I tell you? Well?”
“Go to the principal’s office, Miss Schwartz.”
“So move your lazy behind.”
Candy bit her tongue and got up. Her chair made an ugly squeal as she pushed it back. There was more nervous laughter from one or two places around the class, but mostly there was silence, even from the loquacious Deborah Hackbarth. Nobody wanted to draw Miss Schwartz’s venomous attention in their direction right now.
“And pick up your workbook, Quackenbush,” Miss Schwartz said. “I want you to explain your defacing of school property to the principal.”
Candy didn’t argue. She dutifully went down on her haunches and gathered up all the things that Miss Schwartz had knocked off her desk: the pencils, the pens, the workbook and the paper on Henry Murkitt.
“Give that stupid paper and the workbook to me,” Miss Schwartz said.
“I’m not going to destroy them,” Candy protested.
“Just give them to me,” Miss Schwartz demanded, her voice almost cracking with rage.
Candy put the pens and pencils down on her desk and gave the book and paper to Miss Schwartz. Then—without looking around at the rest of the class—she made her way to the door.
Once she was outside the classroom in the eerie hush of the corridor, she felt a peculiar sense of relief. She knew she should be feeling full of regret and self-recrimination, but the truth was that a significant part of her was glad she’d said what she’d said. Miss Schwartz had picked on her one too many times.
She was a ridiculous woman anyway, with her endless snide remarks and her ludicrous obsession with chickens.
“Who cares about chickens?” Candy said, her voice echoing down the empty passageway.
The door at the end of the corridor was open. Through it she could see the sunlit yard, and beyond the yard the school gate and the street. It would be so easy, she thought, just to walk out of here right now and never have to hear Miss Schwartz pontificate on the Glories of Chicken Farming ever again.
What was she thinking? She couldn’t do that. She’d be expelled for certain.
So what? said a voice at the back of her head. Just walk out. Go on. Walk out.
For some reason, the doodles that she had drawn in her workbook came back into her mind. Only this time, instead of being black lines on gray, recycled paper, they were bright in her mind; very bright. And all kinds of colors, the way the sun appeared in your mind if you looked at it for a moment and then closed your eyes. Dozens of little suns: green and red and gold; then colors, too, that you couldn’t even name. That was the way the lines looked in Candy’s mind’s eye.
And they were moving. The wavy lines were rolling across the darkness inside her skull, rolling and breaking, the brilliant colors bursting into arabesques of white and silver.
Behind her she heard a familiar sound: the click, click, click of Miss Schwartz’s heels.
“What are you still doing in the corridor, Candy Quackenbush?” she yelled down the corridor. “I told you to report to the principal’s office.”
Everyone in the classes along the passage had heard the woman, Candy knew. Tomorrow she’d be the butt of every idiotic joke. Candy glanced over her shoulder. Miss Schwartz was gaining on her, her arms crossed in front of her bosom. Held captive behind them was the evidence for the prosecution: Candy’s workbook and the paper on Henry Murkitt. Poor Henry Murkitt, sitting in that cold little room in the hotel, waiting with his sextant for a ship to come and find him. Checking the stars, consulting his watch. Waiting and waiting until he could stand the wait no longer.
Candy looked away from Miss Schwartz, her gaze returning to the rectangle of brightness at the end of the corridor.
And still the lines rolled on in her mind’s eye. Rolled and broke. Rolled and broke.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Miss Schwartz demanded.
Candy’s feet knew, even if her brain was a little slow at catching up with the idea. They were taking her out of here.
“You head right back to the principal’s office!” Miss Schwartz called after her.
Candy didn’t really hear the woman’s words very clearly now. The lines in her head were making a sound, like the din of white noise on an untuned television. It washed away Miss Schwartz’s demands.
“Candy Quackenbush! Come back here!”
Her shrill voice was being heard from one end of the school to the other, but the person to whom they were directed was deaf to them.
Out she went, with Miss Schwartz pursuing her, inventing new threats and demands to throw in Candy’s direction. Candy took no notice of them.
She stepped over the threshold and out into the bright morning.
A little portion of her mind still said: Candy, turn around. What are you doing? They’ll expel you for certain, but the voice was too small to convince her feet.
At the threshold, she broke into a run. It took her thirty seconds to reach the school gate and get out into the street.
A few students caught sight of her as she made her departure. Those who knew her said they’d never seen Candy Quackenbush looking happier.
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