Gill Alderman - The Memory Palace

He squeezed my hand until it ached.

The Om Ren’s house was a shambling affair as squalid and dishevelled as himself. It did not look like a house but like a great faggot of branches someone had thrown against a tree.

‘The puvush of this tree’s earth is saintly,’ he told me. ‘Peace now, Iron Glance, it is only myself.’

I heard something scratching in the earth. Inside the ramshackle house lay a heap of straw and a long coil of straw rope.

‘My bed and my weapon,’ said the Om Ren proudly. He showed me his larder, a hollow in the tree, and took seeds and nuts from it.

‘Eat!’

I managed to swallow a few dry walnuts and a handful of green wheat. Noticing a big red nut amongst the remaining grains, I stretched out my hand.

‘No!’ the Om Ren suddenly cried. ‘Not that one. It should not be amongst these wholesome fruits. Let me put it away.’ He picked the red nut up himself and tucked it away under the long hairs which covered his belly. ‘That nut could kill you.’

‘I have never seen its like before,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

‘It is called the Ripe Nut of Wisdom. It is nothing of the kind of course, but the peasants tell stories about it. It looks so appetizing.’

‘It does indeed. Is it a deadly poison?’

‘A good one would bring on an attack of the megrims. The one you saw is addled: it is full of the eggs of the black worm and they are fatal if consumed.’

‘It is fortunate that you saw it in time.’

‘Oh, I am a careless fellow. Cankers, toadstools and belladonna arc my daily companions. Have the rotten nut if you will. It may help you. It will bring catastrophic changes if you use it well.’ He retrieved the nut from his body hair. ‘There! Here’s to a fresh intelligence and new wisdom in the world – if you discover how to use the nut!’

I tried, of course, to question him further, but he would not respond and diverted all my queries with uproarious laughter or with his vile bodily habits of scratching his private parts (not at all private in him but hanging there for all to see), his belly and his armpits. His body was obviously a pasture to herds of fleas and lice; for my safety I had to remain with him while the darkness lasted and sleep in his musty bed, where he snored and scratched all night. Yet I thought him a kindly creature, more bark than bite. What use as a weapon was a rope of straw? – and his house was like an unlit bonfire. The wolf in the children’s tale could easily have blown it away and any wildfire which coursed through the forest after a storm would burn it down.

We woke at dawn and breakfasted on the last of the seeds. The Om Ren shambled out to relieve himself against his house and, after a decent interval, I followed him. He glanced in my direction as I urinated and, leavening his words with one of his fearful smiles, said,

‘If I may say so without offence, you Wise Men are poorly endowed. How do your women pleasure themselves on such a tiny thing?’

‘They are very inventive,’ I said.

He laughed and offered me a drink of rainwater from his cupped hands. It was good water, he told me, collected from another hollow in his tree. Treading carefully, that we did not disturb Iron Glance’s slumbers, we left his home. We walked for a while, not long, and soon came to a broad track, which we followed. Though it was lined with tall bents and foxgloves, I did not recognize it.

‘Are you sure this is the way?’ I said.

The Om Ren replied with a wave of his arm. He pointed to a tree in the middle distance and this, I recognized: the chestnut which spread its branches low to the ground, like a woman’s skirt.

‘The Silver Dwarf waits there,’ he said. ‘In hiding. His kind are happier when they cannot see the sky. Listen! A woodbird sings. It is a good omen. Go safe on your way.’

What should I say? Not feebly ‘thank you’ nor yet suggest some temporal reward.

‘I hope you never find yourself the master of the Red Horse,’ I said, intending, by this obscure and convoluted compliment, to wish him a long life.

He laughed, or roared, through his hand – I think he hoped to mute his voice.

‘You mean to say “I hope your skin is never made into a bridle for the mightiest stallion,” I think. It is an honour, Master Corbillion, and I will be already dead, you know. The Ima have access to the power of my kind, even when the wielder of that power is dead.’

‘Well, I hope they have all they need, for a long while yet.’

He gently thumped me. It felt like one of the well-aimed blows of my sparring partner. ‘You won’t get to the battle,’ he said confidently. I protested:

‘I will. You have put me on my road!’

‘You will go to Pargur. I think you have a desire to see the city and a greater desire to interview its prince, the Archmage Valdine.’

‘Have I? I must follow my duty first, wherever it leads me.’

The Wild Man took my hand in his and squeezed it, much harder than he had before.

‘Does that hurt?’

‘Aagh!’

He let me go.

‘You are a self-deceiver, Koschei,’ he said. ‘You are already more than half way to abandoning your life as a Green Wolf, just as you abandoned your life in the cloister.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Certainly. But the dwarf waits under the chestnut tree. He is anxious. You forget how sharp his hearing is.’

I set off along the path, intending to turn and wave. When I looked back, the Om Ren had gone, camouflaged by the forest greenery like a puvush or a deer. I pushed my way under the branches of the chestnut. Erchon was sitting there on the ground, his back against the trunk of the tree and his goods spread out around him, rapier on top.

‘Who were you talking to, Master?’ he asked. ‘A gypsy was it, or an apparition? The Om Ren himself!’

‘Hush, you fool! It was he.’

‘You don’t say?’

‘It was the Wild Man indeed. I was lost in the forest – I have a tale to tell.’

‘It will sound better over breakfast.’ The dwarf got up and rummaged in a woven basket. He fetched out a length of smoked sausage, bread, mustard and beer.

We sat down to eat, safe enough beneath the chestnut tree. I told him as much of my tale as I judged fit, gratified to impress him at last.

‘Perhaps we should go to Pargur before we turn toward the battle and possible death?’ I suggested finally.

‘Perhaps we ought, Sir Green Onetime-Wolf. I should like to see my Lady. She journeys to Pargur.’

‘I should also like to see Nemione!’

‘Then we are agreed?’ said Erchon, and I felt that he had taken hold of my uncertain scheme and made it into a reality.

‘To Pargur!’ I said. ‘But where were you, Erchon, till now? What delayed you on the road?’

‘Oh that is another tale – not so grand perhaps as yours. I was detained in Tanter by a – hold, master. Be still.’ He leaned forward quickly and pressed his ear against the ground.

‘Hooves, wheels,’ he whispered. ‘The Romanies – no, it is a timber waggon. Rest easy. I’ll continue my tale.’

Guy heard the lorry changing gear before he saw it, one of those continental juggernauts sensibly barred from his own country, which now with lights blazing and engine growling threatened to engulf and crush him under its wheels as comprehensively as might any Hindu god-waggon. He jumped back into the hedge, only there was none, and found himself floundering in a dry ditch, strands of barbed wire clutching at his clothes.

When the lorry had gone and he had extricated himself from his predicament – lucky it was a dry night! – he turned back towards the village, comforted by the few lights still showing there, small yellow, homely stars.

‘I bet the bugger never even saw me,’ he muttered, ‘– another careful French driver.’