Dan Vyleta - Smoke

“Sin, Master Renfrew.” It’s Swinburne who interrupts him. His voice, familiar from the thrice-weekly sermon, has a shrill intensity all its own. He sounds like the man who ate the boy who ran his fingernails down the blackboard. “It is sin that blackens the soul. Not sickness .”

Renfrew looks up, annoyed, but a glance from the headmaster bids him swallow his reply.

“Sin, then. A difference of nomenclature.” He pauses, collects his thought, digs his fingers into the shirt’s linen. “Smoke, in any case, is easy to read. It is the living, material manifestation of degeneracy. Of sin . Soot, on the other hand, well, that is a different matter. Soot is dead, inert. A spent symptom, and as such inscrutable. Oh, any fool can see how much there is and whether it is fine like sea sand or coarse as a crushed brick. But these are crude measures. It requires a more scientific approach”—here Renfrew smooths down his jacket—“to produce a more sophisticated analysis. I spent my morning bent over a microscope, studying samples from both shirts. There are certain solvents that can cancel the inertness of the substance and, so to speak, temporarily bring it back to life. A concentrated solution of Papaver fuliginosa richteria , heated to eighty-six degrees and infused with—”

Renfrew interrupts himself, his calm self-possession momentarily strained by excitement. He resumes at a different point and in a different voice, gentler, more intimate, drawing a step closer to the boys and speaking as though only to them.

“I say I spent the morning analysing these two shirts and I found something unusual. Something disconcerting. A type of Soot I have seen only once before. In a prison.”

He draws closer yet, wets his lips. His voice is not without compassion. “There is a cancer growing in one of you. A moral cancer. Sin ”—a flicker of a glance here, over to Swinburne, hostile and ironic—“as black as Adam’s. It requires drastic measures. If it takes hold — if it takes over the organism down to the last cell. . well, there will be nothing anybody can do.” He pauses, fixes both boys in his sight. “You will be lost.”

ф

For a minute and more after this announcement, Thomas goes deaf. It’s a funny sort of deaf: his ears work just fine but the words he hears do not reach his brain, not in the normal manner where they are sifted for significance and given a place in the hierarchy of meaning. Now they just accumulate.

It’s Julius who is speaking. His tone is measured, if injured.

“Won’t you even ask what happened, Master Renfrew?” he asks. “I thought I had earned some measure of trust at this school, but I see now that I was mistaken. Argyle attacked me. Like a rabid dog. I had no choice but to restrain him. He rubbed his filth into me. The Soot is his. I never smoke.”

Renfrew lets him finish, watches not Julius but the other teachers, some of whom are muttering in support. Thomas, uncomprehending, follows his gaze and finds an accusation written in the masters’ faces. He, Thomas, has done this to one of theirs, they seem to be saying. Has covered him in dirt. Their golden boy. Thomas would like to refute the accusation, but his thoughts just won’t latch on. All he can think is: what does it mean to be “lost”?

“I have had occasion,” Renfrew replies at last, “to collect three separate statements concerning the incident you are referring to, Mr. Spencer. I believe I have a very accurate impression of how events unfolded. The facts of the matter are these. Both shirts are soiled — from the inside and out. The Soot is of variable quality. But I took samples of this”—he picks from his pocket a glass slide at the centre of which a few grains of Soot hang suspended in a drop of reddish liquid—“from both shirts. I could not determine the origin.

“Both shirts,” he continues, now turning to the teachers, “also bear marks of being tampered with: one very crudely”—a nod to Thomas—“the other rather more sophisticatedly. Almost inexplicably, Mr. Spencer.”

Julius swallows, jerks his head. A crack of panic now mars his voice.

“I wholly reject. . You will have to answer to my family! It was this boy, this beast. .”

He trails off, his voice raw with anger. Swinburne rescues him: rushes up, with a rustle of his dark gown, taps Julius on the shoulder, ordering him to shut up. Up close Swinburne smells unaired and musty, like a cellar. The smell helps Thomas recover his wits. It is the most real thing in the entire room. That and a knocking, like a hard fist on wood. Nobody reacts to it. It must be his heart.

“Mr. Spencer is innocent.” Swinburne’s voice brooks no dissent. He speaks as though delivering a verdict. “I too made inquiries about the incident last night. The situation is quite clear. It’s that boy’s fault. His Smoke is potent. It infected Spencer.”

“ Infected? ” Renfrew smiles while the knocking grows louder. “A medical term, Master Swinburne. So unlike you. But you are quite right. Smoke infects . A point only imperfectly understood, I fear. Which is why I insist that both these boys join the Trip tomorrow.”

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about the roar of shouts and voices that answers this announcement is that Thomas’s heart appears to stop: it gives a loud final rap and then falls silent. “It mustn’t be,” one of the teachers — Harmon? Winslow? — keeps repeating, high-pitched, squealing, as though giving voice to Thomas’s dismay. A moment later the door is thrown open and the small, dishevelled figure of Cruikshank, the porter, stands on its threshold. He pokes his head into the sudden silence of the room.

“Beg pardon. Knocked till knuckles are raw. No answer. Message for Mast’r Foybles. Ur-jent, like. If yous please.”

The person thus named is mortified.

“Not now, you fool!” Foybles cries, running across the room and dragging the porter out by the arm. Their whispered exchange in the antechamber is loud enough to focus all attention on the pair.

“You says, ‘ At once ,’ you did,” Cruikshank can be heard declaiming.

“But to burst in like that,” Foybles berates him. “You fool, you fool.”

All the same he seems elated when he closes the door on the porter and re-joins the company of his peers.

“The delivery has arrived,” he declares, beaming, rubbing his hands in triumph before the room’s atmosphere recalls him to the events that have just transpired there. Rather crushed, he withdraws into a corner and buries his face in a handkerchief for the purpose of clearing out his nasal passages. Like a compass needle momentarily distracted by a magnet, everybody’s focus returns to Renfrew, who remains standing at the centre of the room. But the outrage at his announcement has spent itself, and Thomas’s mind is clear at last.

He is lost .

But he will be going to London.

“There are objections?” Renfrew asks calmly.

Swinburne glares at him, then turns his back and addresses the headmaster.

“Master Trout. That boy is a sickness in our midst. He should be sent down at once.”

Swinburne does not even condescend to point a finger at Thomas. But Trout shakes his head.

“Impossible. He has a powerful sponsor. I will hear no more of it.”

Swinburne makes to speak again, but Trout has heaved his heavy figure out of his armchair.

“It is for the Master of Smoke and Ethics to determine the punishment. The government guidelines are quite clear. If Master Renfrew thinks these two boys will benefit from tomorrow’s outing, so be it. Beyond that—” He glances questioningly at Renfrew.

“I will work with each of them upon our return, Headmaster. An intensive programme of reform.” Renfrew’s voice sounds notes of reconciliation. “And, if it will set your mind at rest, dear colleagues, I have a list of pages here from the Book of Smoke that I shall ask them to copy. From the third volume.” He glances at Swinburne. “Passages whose findings have been confirmed by the latest research. Which is more than we can say for much of the book.”