Charles De Lint - The Ivory and the Horn

— Too late for those of us left behind, maybe, but you still exist somewhere, or I wouldn't be talking to you, would I?

— Sometimes I can't decide if I am actually dead— or alive, but somehow become invisible. Unheard, unseen, unable to taste or feel...

— I can't see you, but I can hear you.

— Perhaps you are imagining my voice. Perhaps you are dreaming.

— I think I'd know if I was asleep or not. Besides, I never have dreams this interesting.

— I'm happy to realize I can still be amusing.

— I'm sorry. I don't mean to trivialize your situation. Is there anything I can do to help you?

— You could riddle me this: Is it still existence, when one resides in limbo?

6

"Okay," Jilly said. "I guess it started when Geordie got back from his last trip to England. I wasn't expecting him back for another—"

"Who's Geordie?" Tommy wanted to know.

Maisie sighed. "Tommy tends to interrupt," she apologized. "He doesn't mean to be rude."

"That's all right. It's ruder to just expect everybody to know who you're talking about, without stopping to explain. Geordie's a friend of mine," she added, turning to Tommy. "He plays the fiddle and that summer— I guess it was in the mid-seventies— he went on a busking vacation of the British Isles."

"What's—"

"Busking is when you play music on the street and hope people will give you money because they like what they're hearing."

"We've seen people doing that, haven't we, Maisie?"

"We sure have."

"Is Geordie good?" Tommy wanted to know.

"Very good," Jilly assured him. "The next time he's playing somewhere, I'll take you to see him." She caught Maisie shaking her head, and realized why. "It's okay," she said. "I wouldn't make the promise unless I was going to keep it."

"It's just that people mean well..."

"You'll have to trust me on this," Jilly said. Maisie shrugged noncommittally, which was about as much as you could expect, Jilly thought, given how they'd only just met. "Anyway," she went on, "I'm working in my studio one morning and right out of nowhere, Geordie shows up, weeks before I thought I'd be seeing him. Seems he got caught gigging with an Irish band in a London club, except he didn't have a work permit, so he got the boot."

"They made him come back home," Maisie explained to Tommy before he could ask.

"I never got the boot until Maisie found me," Tommy said. "Before that I never had a home."

"I know what you mean," Jilly said. "It's not fun, is it?"

Tommy shook his head. "But we have fun now."

"So did Geordie bring you the box back from England?" Maisie asked.

Jilly nodded. "He got it at something called a car boot sale— it's like a flea market, except it's out in a field somewhere and everybody just sells stuff out of the trunks of their cars"

"Why do they call car trunks 'boots'?" Maisie wondered.

"I don't know. Why do we call chips French fries and crisps 'chips'? Anyway, I thought it was very sweet of him to get it for me. It was pretty grungy, with oil paint caked all over the insides and the tray you use for a palette was broken in two, but I'd never seen anything like it before. If I closed my eyes I could almost picture the turn-of-the-century artist who'd owned it, out somewhere in the English countryside painting en plein— outside, on location as opposed to in the studio. The pochade box is like a little studio, really, only in miniature."

She opened the box as she spoke and showed Tommy how it worked and how everything could be stowed away in it once you were done painting.

"After Geordie left that night, I cleaned it up. Scraped away all the dried paint, glued the palette tray back together again and sanded it down so I could start off fresh with my own palette. It took me most of the day before I had it all fixed up— not quite new, but certainly serviceable. I loaded it up with some tubes of paint, rags and a few old brushes cut down to fit inside, and I was ready to head out myself, just the way I imagined its original owner had. But somehow I never did. I set it upon a windowsill, and except for taking it out into the country a few times, it's been sitting there collecting dust for years. Until I started using it again a couple of weeks ago."

Tommy looked at her expectantly when she fell silent. After a few moments, he couldn't hold it in anymore.

"Is that it? Is that the whole story?"

"Well, no," Jilly said, and then she hesitated again. "It gets a little weird after that."

"We can take weird," Maisie assured her.

The wirehaired terrier sprawled out on her lap looked up at Jilly and yipped as though in agreement. Jilly laughed and roughed the stiff fur on the top of its head.

"After I was done fixing the box up," she said, "I sat with it on my lap in the window seat of my studio. I wasn't thinking of anything, just holding the box and staring out the window, watching the light change in the alley below. I can't see the sunset from there, but that alleyway seems to hold the light long after the sun's actually set. I never get tired of watching it."

"I know places like that," Maisie said. "Doesn't matter if they're in the middle of nowhere and there's trash every-where, they just seem magical."

Jilly nodded. "I'm fascinated by what can't be explained— or at least what can't be explained through the facts most of us have decided are true. So when I had this... visitation, I wasn't scared or anything. Just curious."

"What kind of visitation?"

"I can't really explain it. I was alone, sitting there with the box on my lap, and then there was this ghostly presence in the studio with me, and I ended up having a long conversation with it. I can still remember most of what we talked about, word for word."

7

— I don't know about limbo, but I had a friend once— a dancer. She used to tell her boyfriends that every second step she danced, she danced for them.

— But that would only be half the dance.

— I know. She said you have to keep something for yourself. You can't give everything away.

— I'm not sure I understand how this relates to me.

— You put everything into your paintings. You didn't keep anything for yourself.

— I still don't see the relevance.

— I think you're still doing it, and that's why you're in limbo. You're not painting anymore, but even as a ghost, you're not hanging onto anything for yourself. Maybe if you did, you'd be able to let go and move on.

— I'm not sure I have the courage to move on.

— Unfortunately, I can't help you there.

8

"What happened then?" Maisie asked.

Jilly shrugged. "Nothing, really. We talked a little more and then he was just gone. He never came back— at least not so as I ever noticed. I don't know if he went on, or if he's still stuck in limbo and I just can't hear him anymore."

"Sad," Tommy said.

He looked so glum that Jilly began to regret having said anything about the pochade box having a story. But before she could think of something more cheerful to talk about, Tommy sat up straighter on the steps and suddenly brightened up on his own. He pointed down the pavement to where a vendor had setup a cart selling hot pretzels.

"Oh, look!" he cried.

He gave Maisie a long hopeful look until finally she relented. She carefully counted out the change he'd need, then stowed the remainder back in the pocket of her jacket. Jilly had been about to offer to treat them all, but reconsidered when she realized that it might be taken wrong. Maisie struck her as prideful enough to mistake generosity for charity, and Jilly didn't want to chance losing their new friendship over something like that. She was enjoying their company and wanted to get to know them better. So she sat back and let it play out, waiting there on the steps with Maisie and watching. Tommy run eagerly to the pretzel cart, the dogs scrambling about at his heels.