Amber Sparks - The Unfinished World - And Other Stories

The last Arctic film proved, finally, a commercial and critical success for Cedric. He was hailed an innovative new storyteller, the best working in this new nonfiction film medium. With close-ups, panoramic shots, reverse angles, and tilts — he immersed the viewer in a wholly new way. He planned to follow up his success with a new film shot in Alaska — but the War made that impossible and curtailed, rather painfully, his wanderlust. He took a job in Hollywood as a studio director — one he made very clear was a temporary position— with Polytone Pictures. Polytone was second-rate, but still impressively large, with two stages and an underwater tank for filming.

Cedric was tasked with directing a picture about two friends who become obsessed with — what else — Arctic exploration. It was supposed to be a comedy. Set received frequent, dyspeptic letters from Cedric that winter.

My god, he wrote, the things that pass for humor with these dreadful picture people.

You wouldn’t believe, he wrote, the depths I’ve sunken to.

My dear boy, he wrote, I have become the Mack Sennett of remote places. I may as well put my native ladies in bathing costumes and hire a ragtime band.

When Cedric came home for a visit, Set asked if there might be a place for him at the studio. I’ll do anything, Ced, he said. I need to get off the Island. Off this coast.

You don’t want to come to Los Angeles, said Cedric darkly. These people are infernally stupid. They think the Eskimo people eat something called Eskimo pie.

I don’t think people actually believe that, Set said, laughing. I think they just want to be part of a fashion.

Who needs fashion? Those natives have lived that way for hundreds of years.

Except for the guns, Set said. And the clothes. And the phonograph, and—

White men gave them those things, said Cedric, cutting him off curtly. It’s not part of their culture, no more than Eskimo pies.

You want them to go back to how things were? asked Set. He wasn’t asking in jest — he mostly believed in Cedric’s backward vision. He’d been trained up to it.

But of course it was a silly question, anyway. Cedric wanted everything to go back. He wanted his savages noble and his civilizations autocratic. He saw the modern world as a series of trivialities, increasing in insipidness, humanity an idiot scourge, etcetera, etcetera. Set had heard the endless refrain, countless times. The people were better and the world was profound. The vulgar saxophone had not yet been invented. There was art, and mystery and there were no crossword puzzles, no silk stockings, no fast women, no rouge pots, no jazz bands, and certainly, certainly there were no Eskimo pies.

You sound like an old man, Set said.

Laugh all you want, said Cedric. He preferred a world spinning slowly, a world where history was carved into heavy stone. This fleeting life, this fractured, spasmodic present — it was hardly being alive at all. One of multitudes, so much din to wade through. So little opportunity for greatness.

Pru had been certain that Cedric would rush to join up, that he would feel called to fight in some sort of outmoded patriotism. She had been absolutely sure of it. But when Set asked Cedric if he would volunteer, he spat. The War, he said, was a machine thing, an ugly new kind of fight. Chivalry won’t save them, he said grimly. Valor won’t save them. The whole damned world has gone mad.

Once, Inge’s favorite aunt came to Larne for a longish visit. Her husband had died and she wanted to be with her niece for a while, to be reminded of her eldest sister. Inge lived for her letters and now she basked in the diminutive but powerful presence of her aunt, and absorbed all the stories she could take in about her mother and her sisters and their cheerful childhood in Germany. Her favorite story was the one about the Gypsies: her aunt always began with how Inge’s maternal grandmother gave birth to three daughters while living in the little village of Ludwigshafen. It sounded like a sort of fairy tale. The eldest daughter took after her father and was very pretty; the second took after her mother and was plain, but strong and good; and the third (the aunt in question) was left wanting entirely, her sick body and solemn mood bearing the hallmarks of long childhood illness: thin, weak limbs, pockmarked face, pale, wan pallor; though she was also — perhaps in some cosmic compensation — quickest and smartest. And she would marry before the second, and the second would marry before the first, and the first would not marry until her mother was dead and her father had given her up as a spinster.

One sweltering summer day the girls heard their father, who was the village Polizeichef , complaining about a band of Gypsies who had set up camp just outside the village. He and his friends were sitting on the porch, drinking from steins of beer in their shirtsleeves, cold rags draped over their heads.

Well, you’re the Polizei , said Herr Baumann, the butcher. Why don’t you chase them out?

It’s too hot, the girls’ father said. Let them keep there until it’s cooler. It’s too hot to go running around after a bunch of Roma , he said, and all the other men nodded and grunted in assent. The girls, listening through the window of the parlor, looked at one another. Gypsies! They would be dancing, singing, telling fortunes perhaps — maybe making spells! We have to go, said the eldest. Tonight, before they drive them out.

When their mother was asleep and their father had passed out in the big porch swing, the girls put on their pinafores and crept down the stairs to see the Gypsies. When they got to the Gypsy camp, they found it disappointingly small and quiet — no singing, no dancing, only a few women in brightly colored skirts cooking over a crackling fire. Four caravans, painted red and white, parked among the trees, and drying laundry was strung on lines between them. It didn’t look magical, or mysterious, or particularly wicked — but for the caravans it could have been their own backyard.

The girls were about to creep away, unseen, when one of the women — a very old lady, with hair tucked under a kerchief over dark, hard eyes — put her fingers in her mouth and whistled loudly. A group of men emerged from the caravans, and one of them grabbed the eldest daughter, twisting her arm behind her back. Bring her here, said the old woman. The eldest wanted to cry out, but she was known for being brave as well as beautiful, and so she said nothing. The second, even braver than her sister, and more stubborn, too, crossed her arms over her starched white pinafore and glared at the grinning men. If you’re going to eat our hearts, then get on with it, she said. We’re not afraid of you.

The youngest, though, thinking quickly, pretended to cry. Let us go, she sobbed. Don’t magick us, don’t eat our parts, please. We only wanted to have our fortunes told.

Ah, said the old woman. You should have come in the front way like good little children. You are in luck, for here is my daughter, Nadya, who can read your life in the lines of your hand. The young woman stirring the pot over the fire nodded shyly. Come closer, child, said the old woman to the youngest, but she flinched and hid behind the second, still pretending to sob. The youngest had a certain self-preservation that would allow her, alone of all her family, to escape marriage, childbearing, and two wars unharmed.

I want to hear my fortune, said the eldest, and she shrugged free of the Gypsy’s grip and held her hand out over the fire. What will happen to me?