Charles De Lint: Memory and Dream

“Sure, I was unhappy growing up,” Kathy had told Isabelle once. “But I learned not to hang on to pain. I exorcise my demons through my stories.”

The letter that had arrived in Isabelle’s mail this morning made a lie of that claim now.

There is no hope, there is no real happiness. At the end, nobody really lives happily ever after, because nobody lives forever and underneath the happiness there’s always pain.

The moon rose as she sat there, picking out the caps of the waves and emphasizing their whiteness with the pale fire of its light. Isabelle looked down at the key lying in the palm of her hand.

She didn’t know if she’d ever have enough courage to go see what that locker held. Logically, she knew that the bus-depot management should have opened it years ago; whatever Kathy had left her should be long gone. But with Kathy, all things had been possible. Except in the end. There’d been no rescue possible, no salvation pulled out of the hat at the last possible moment.

That one failure notwithstanding, Isabelle knew that something waited for her at the Newford Bus Terminal. The years it had waited there would make no difference. But after the arrival of Kathy’s letter, she wasn’t sure she could muster the strength to find out what it was.

I

Newford, September 1973

He was the ugliest man Izzy had ever seen. Not homely. It was more as though he were a troll that had climbed cautiously out from under the shadows of his bridge only to find that the sun was a lie. It couldn’t turn him to stone. It could only reveal him for what he was, and since his ugliness was something he had obviously come to terms with, what did he have left to fear? So he carried himself like a prince, for all his tattered clothes and air of poverty.

But he was a troll all the same. Shorter than Izzy’s own five-three, he seemed to be as wide as he was tall. His back was slightly hunched, his chest like an enormous barrel, arms as thick as Izzy’s thighs, legs like two tree stumps. His ears were no more than clumps of flesh attached to either side of his head; nose broken more than once, too long in length and too wide where the nostrils flared like ferryboat hawseholes; lips too thick, mouth too large, forehead too broad, hairline receding; hair matted and wild as the roots of an upturned oak. It appeared to be so long since he’d washed that the grime worked into the cracks of his skin was the color of soot.

Under the same close scrutiny, his wardrobe didn’t fare any better. The heavy black workboots had holes in the leather and the left one had no laces; his trousers were a muddy brown color and bore so many patches that it was difficult to tell what the original material had been; the white shirt was grey, black around the neck; the long soiled trenchcoat trailed behind him on the ground, its hem filthy with dried mud and grime, its sleeves raggedly torn off to fit his short arms.

Now in her second year of city life, Izzy had become as blase toward some of the more outlandish street characters as were the longtime local residents, but the sight of this troll, shambling along the sunny steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, simply astounded her for its incongruity. He was obviously destitute, yet there he was, feeding the pigeons French fries. At times whole clouds of them would rise up and around him, as though circling a gargoyle in a bell tower. But always they returned to the scraps he tossed them.

Always he maintained control.

The moment was such that Izzy couldn’t pass it by. She sat down on the bench at the nearby bus stop. Surreptitiously, she took a stub of a pencil out of her black shoulder bag, then fished around for something to draw on. The back of the envelope containing an overdue phone bill was the first thing that came to hand. Quickly she began to sketch the scene, starting with bold lines before filling in the details and contrasts with finer lines and shading.

When he stood up and scuffled away—French-fry container empty, his admiring feathered courtiers all fled—she had enough on paper and in her head that she knew she’d be able to finish the piece from memory. Bent over the envelope, pencil scribbling furiously to capture the sweep of steps and shadowed bulk of the cathedral which had been behind him, she was completely unaware of his approach until a large dirty hand fell upon her shoulder.

She cried out, dropping pencil and envelope as she twisted out of his grip. They both reached down for the envelope, but he was quicker.

“Hrmph,” he said, studying the drawing.

Izzy wasn’t sure if the sound he’d made was a comment, or if he was just clearing his throat. What she was really thinking about was how odd it was that he didn’t stink. He didn’t smell at all, except for what seemed like a faint whiff of pepper.

Looking away from the envelope, his gaze traveled up and down the length of her body as though he could see straight through her clothes—black jeans, black T-shirt, black wool sweater were all peeled away under that scrutiny. She hadn’t noticed his eyes before, hidden as they’d been under the shadows of his bushy brows, but they pierced her now, pale, pale blue, two needles pinning a black butterfly to a board.

Izzy shivered. She reached for her envelope, wanting to just have it and flee, but he held it out of her reach, that cool needle gaze finally reaching her face.

“You’ll do,” he said in a voice like gravel rattling around at the bottom of an iron pail. A troll voice.

“I’m sorry?”

“I said, you’ll do. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

“No,” he agreed. “But you’ll learn.”

Before she could frame a reply to that he dug about in the pocket of his trenchcoat with his free hand and produced a business card, its smooth, white surface as soiled as his shirt. She accepted the card when he handed it to her before she realized what she was doing, and then it was too late. The grubby thing was already touching her thumb and fingers, spreading its germs. She looked down and read:

VINCENT ADJANI RUSHKIN

48-B STANTON STREET

223-2323

“I’ll expect you tomorrow morning,” he said. “At eight A.M. Please be prompt.”

The intensity of his gaze was so mesmerizing that Izzy found herself nodding in agreement before she remembered she had an eight-thirty class tomorrow morning. And besides that, she added, shaking her head to clear it, what made him think that she would ever want to see him again anyway?

“Hey, wait a minute,” she said as he began to turn away.

“Yes?”

He might be a misshapen troll, Izzy thought, with a voice to match, but he certainly had the air of royalty about him. He spoke with the certainty that whatever his demands, they would instantly be met.

And with that blue gaze of his pinning her, Izzy found herself unable to tell him exactly where he could stick his expectations.

“My, uh, drawing” was all she could manage.

“Yes?”

“I’d like it back.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But—”

“Call me superstitious,” he said, a smile crinkling his features until they were uglier than ever, “but my primitive side doesn’t hold with allowing anyone to walk off with an image of me, be it a photograph or—” He held up her drawing.

rendering. It feels too much as though they have acquired a piece of my soul.”

“Oh.”

“A disturbing prospect, don’t you think?”

“I suppose ...”