Alice Unbound Page 3

  “Hello, my travelling Canadian friend.”

  I looked up from my imaginings.

  The tove emerged from the spot where the sundial had stood. She brushed dirt from her forehead. She seemed surprised that I was not surprised.

  “I haven’t seen you since that night in my dorm.”

  “You broke my heart, you little bastard.”

  “Only your heart? Had you a pelvis you might not have been so fortunate,” I replied, smiling back.

  “Had I a pelvis you might not have gotten out of your room that night. I could have given you a night to remember. It would have been the last of your life.”

  “So, what are you planning to do to me now? Are you here to suck the life out of me?”

  “I’m going to toy with you awhile. Killing you right here, right now, well, what would be the pleasure in that? I want you to suffer, greatly, and for a long time, just like the one that was here long ago. We toves appreciate the painful process of justice.”

  “What have I done to deserve this?”

  The tove held up her hands; three fingers on one, and two on the other. “Little boys playing with shovels are terrible things. I will make you pay for my fingers, and perhaps more, just for the pleasure of it. But all in good time.”

  “If you are going to kill me, all in good time, I should know more about you. May I ask your name?”

  “Agatha.”

  “Well, Agatha, you have a charm for appearing in great works of art. There’s a point of literary symbolism that has always puzzled me. Is the serpent in the paintings Satan, or Lilith, or you? And how many of you are there in your species?”

  “Lilith was my sister. She was the one who ruined Eden. She was Adam’s first wife – did you know that? He threw her away, though not from a dorm room window. Great men were fascinated with her and felt honoured to know her, but they all cast her aside when she tried to touch them, to know what life inside them made them great. She went to Dodgson to seek his source of love and life one night, and I never saw her again! Do not patronize me with Darwinian categorizations such as ‘species.’ I would have ruined that laggard zoologist, Darwin, but he just stared at me and started taking notes. What kind of a man is more interested in finches than rare beings? Boring sod.

  She continued, “There were two of us. It’s only me now. That bastard, that man of two names took her. But I stole his diaries and ruined him. The world ate him. And because you follow in his footsteps, you flimsy knight of words and pens, I will destroy you, too. You think you’re a young man on the rise. But no matter how hard you may try to put the life of the world into words, you will never succeed because I will be there to pull you down into the shadows where no poetry can protect you.”

  “Just as you did to Lewis Carroll.”

  “I went to that horridly beautiful little girl as she lay sleeping in her room, and I told her that if she ever revealed the truth I would destroy her and her family. The frightened little bitch kept her silence, so I destroyed her, too, by making her hold her words until she finally choked on her silence. Dodgson struggled to tell the truth for the rest of his life, and everyone thought it fantasy.”

  “I see.” I looked the tove in the eye. “Agatha, I have a deal for you.”

  “No deals!”

  “Okay, your loss. You’ll never get the bones of your sister back.”

  “You have my sister’s bones! Where did you find them? Give them to me.”

  “Uh-uh. That is, unless you give me something in return. Something I need.”

  “What is that,” hissed the tove.

  “I think you still have Dodgson’s missing diaries. I suspect you’re a greedy tove at heart. All dragons and slithery things need trophies, shiny things to keep at the bottom of a lake or in your nest or wherever you hang out. You like to keep something you take so you can use it later and fawn over it. Well, Agatha, I’ll trade your sister’s body for the volumes. If you don’t have them, well, kiss Lilith goodbye. I’ll not go down without a fight. I was born on St. George’s Day and a bit of dragon play is part of my nature. And remember, bones are easily burned or ground-up, or, worse, put on display in the Museum of Natural History in London.”

  “Not that damned Darwin house!”

  “Do we have a deal, diaries for bones?”

  “Where and when?”

  “On Addison’s Walk behind Magdalen College at three a.m. tomorrow morning… Remember, no diaries, no tove carcass. And don’t plan on pulling any fast ones or Lilith goes to London!”

  The tove sneered, screaming, and burrowed beneath the earth.

  Early the next morning, I stood in the damp beside a fire I’d lit in a garbage drum and watched as frost etched itself into every crevice and leaf. I found a sharp alder rod on the bank of the Isis and made it my lance, taking my Swiss Army knife out and whittling the end to a very handsome point. I wore heavy leather gloves. I also remembered a bottle of brandy to give me strength in case my courage faltered.

  Uncorking the bottle, I took a swig and set it open on the ground. I muttered the words “And lo, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” As I spoke, the image of Julia Cassidy popped into my mind and her words: “In your moment of greatest need, Rilke will provide the answer to your question.”

  I wasn’t there to think about Rilke. I had a beast to deal with.

  Agatha approached out of the fog, her head held high, as if in glory. She had an old blue and gold biscuit tin tucked under her arm.

  “That’s far enough,” I said, my back to the fire as I raised my lance. The flames illuminated the tove. “Put the cookie box down.”

  “It’s a biscuit tin, you stupid colonial.”

  “Whatever. That’s far enough.”

  “Show me the bones.”

  I held up the bag.

  “Open it!” she screamed.

  “Now show me the diaries.” She pried open the tin, her claws sounding like fingernails on a blackboard, as four purple-covered notebooks tumbled to the ground.

  “You know, you really are your own worst enemies,” I said as I shook the sack at her. “I found this thing in the ceiling of my room at Christ Church. It must have gotten stuck and died there when it came to torment Dodgson. He didn’t kill it. You’ve taken your temper out on the world and ruined a man for nothing. Your sister ruined the first man and woman. You are nothing but rage and hate. So was your sister. What had Eve done other than be like Adam? Lilith died behind the plaster because nothing can suck life out of stones.”

  The tove lunged. I reached down, grabbed the brandy, and splashed it in her eyes. She screamed, holding her claws to her face, tearing at her brow.

  “I will kill you,” she shrieked as her vision cleared. I tossed the corpse in the burning barrel.

  “No! No! Our deal! Our deal!” As Agatha lunged at my face, I ducked, and the slithy tove went flying over me into the flaming barrel, hissing, writhing, and clutching the bones of her sister. I emptied the brandy into the fire. It ignited her eyes, which became two meteors of wrath. I thrust my lance over and over into her belly.

  “Snicker snack!” I shouted.

  “Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe,” …said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity…

  “Of course, it is. It’s called ‘wabe’, you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it”

  “And a long way beyond it on each side,” Alice added.

  As the embers died, I looked over the barrel’s lip; there was nothing left of the slithy toves.

  I waited for curfew’s end. The porter finally opened the gate, grumbling about blighters being out all night. In my room I lay on my cot, thumbing through the lost diaries, one of the greatest literary finds of my era. I would redeem my lost author from his century of purgatory.

  May 5, 1862

  Went to see the Liddells today. I had so much more of the story of the looking gla
ss world in my mind since I last saw Alice. I wanted nothing more than to share it with her, to see her face light up with that rare sense of joy in discovery she possesses. Speaking to her in those moments was like prayer. One feels divinity is listening back.

  But as we were deep in our legend, a terrible thing happened. The creature that has pursued me all my life, the daemon that destroyed my childhood garden, appeared from beneath the sundial and accosted us. It tore Alice’s lovely dress and frightened both of us within an inch of our lives. I struck it repeatedly but it would not be beaten. I tried to photograph the thing, but it slithered away, slimy, and lithe, and active. It was that awful lizard with the head of a woman and the body of a serpent. Mrs. Liddell was the first on the scene. She assumed the worst and screamed and struck me. Mr. Liddell arrived and with a blow he grabbed me and cast me to the ground. He bent down as if he was about to strike me again, but I kept repeating that I was only protecting Alice, shielding her from the awful thing.”

  I needed to come up with a good story.

  “Well, a slithy tove and I traded for the bones of the serpent that brought about the Fall of Man.”

  Right. Not good.

  The next week I went to London. I spent the night on a friend’s sofa, then took a taxi to the Bermondsey Market before dawn as the vendors set up in the half-light. On a table crowded with silver and bric-a-brac, I discovered four identically bound Victorian diaries belonging to a lady who loved mice. Coincidence? I call it blind luck. The dealer gave me a receipt with description and date of purchase. To bear out their authenticity now that I had their provenance, the British Library Reading Room became my best friend.

  A year later, the proofs for my groundbreaking Lewis Carroll biography arrived with the post as I was cleaning out my digs. I was on my way to Harvard where I had an appointment in the English Department.

  When I opened my desk drawer I found Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet hiding behind the paper clips and Post-it notes. I reread Julia Cassidy’s inscription: what was Rilke supposed to answer for me?

  I flipped through the pages. I had never noticed before, but in the same pen as Mrs. Cassidy’s handwriting there was a tiny star in the margin.

  “How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

  I tucked Julia Cassidy’s book in my coat pocket and put the box of page proofs under my arm. I stepped out the door, then turned to look over my shoulder. The orange, yellow, and pink flowers in the porter’s small garden bloomed brightly in the morning sun.

  WE ARE ALL MAD HERE

  Lisa Smedman

  “I’ve a feeling we’ll be going over the top in the morning,” Tom says as he clambers into the dugout and lets the canvas flap fall shut behind him.

  I shiver. Tom’s known for his “feelings.” They’re never wrong.

  The five of us are cramped together in the dimly lit dugout, exhausted, hungry. My wool greatcoat is soddened with mud, and feels like a heavy wet shroud. The boom-boom-boom of artillery shakes the ground I sit upon. The funk hole we’ve dug in the trench wall is just big enough to hold the five of us; my tin hat scrapes the ceiling. The air smells of wet earth and putrefaction, with a trace of an oniony scent: the mustard gas that left Jimmy blistered and screaming last week.

  Tom is grinning, teeth white in a mud-smeared face. That grin never leaves his lips. It matters not whether shells are raining down among us, blowing men to atoms; whether machine guns are scything down men before they make it one step beyond the parapet; whether the brown, choking gas is creeping towards us. It’s like he knows Jerry isn’t going to get him. Not yet.

  “How do you know there’ll be an attack?” one of the others asks.

  “I heard the brass hats complaining that things here at Passchendaele have bogged down. They want the 13th to ‘put some ginger into Jerry.’ Me, I don’t give a toss about that. But it’ll be a great chance for more souvenirs.”

  “And to crack some Boche skulls,” says Donny, pulling out the trench club he made for night raids – the one with the nails studded in one end. Donny’s small, with sandy hair, a weak chin, and a soft voice, but he’s a scrapper, for all that. It was at Pozières he got the nickname, after commenting on what a “lovely little donnybrook” that battle had been.

  He was a lot less jolly after the news that his brother was among the missing at Loos. Now, I think, he just wants to die. In the candlelight, his eyes look hollow.

  Tom deals the cards. My eyes widen as I see what’s printed on them: they’re racy as a French postcard. Women with creamy white breasts and open legs. Dark triangles of hair that make my pulse race. I think of that whore, back in Le Havre. The smell of her perfume as she walked past…

  “Souvenirs,” Tom says grinning. “Got them from the breast pocket of a dead Hun. They were a little bloody – he took a bullet clean through the heart. So mind, lads, when you’re betting, since some of the cards are marked. Still, they’re worth looking at, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Digger raises his cards and whistles. His Lord Kitchener moustache, still in tightly waxed curls despite the weather, twitches. “Too right, mate! I’d have a go wi’ these lassies,” he exclaims in a terrible attempt at an Australian accent.

  We all give a strained laugh.

  Digger’s real name is Malcolm, and he’s a Scot. He always has a trowel in hand when he’s not in the front lines, planting seeds and bulbs from home in the ruined villages. Roses and bluebells, delphiniums and hollyhocks – those are his true loves. And heather, a sprig of which he keeps pinned inside his breast pocket, given him by his wife Maude. Digger usually saves the false accent for when someone overhears his nickname, and asks if he fought at Gallipoli. But he’s laying it on thick now.

  Jack cuts in: “If we’re attacking at dawn, we’ll want some rum. I’ve got a jar or two tucked away.”

  I believe it; Jack’s a bit of a knave. Last winter, while at a field hospital due to frostbite, he stole a dozen mince pies that had been intended for the officers’ Christmas dinner. One of the nursing sisters caught him hobbling along with them, but he charmed her into keeping mum. And no wonder: he’s as handsome as any music hall actor, and with a voice to match. He claims to have royal blood, and with his smug bearing, that’s almost possible to believe. But the truth is he was just another employee at the Lever Bros. soap factory, one of the nearly 700 of us who rushed off in 1914 to enlist in the Sunlight Pals Battalion.

  Then there’s me, Private Roland Childe. Eighteen years old, and the surname still fits, despite three years of war and the beginnings of a beard. I stare down at my cards, trying to decide which beauty to discard. I want to keep them all. I want to lie with a woman, just once, before I die…

  Which I very well might, tomorrow, if there’s another assault planned.

  There’s not many of us left. The 13th Cheshires, as we’re formally known, lost a lot of good men at the Somme and Messines. But there’s still we five.

  We’re like the cards, I think. Donny’s the king of clubs, Digger’s the spades, and Jack’s the hearts. Tom, of course, could be no other card but the Joker. I suppose that makes me the diamonds – a diamond in the rough, waiting for the gemcutter’s blade to cleave me in two and reveal what’s within.

  There’s a poem in that, perhaps. And one day, when this bloody war is over, I shall write it.

  But for now, I sit in the dugout, scratching louse bites, deciding whether to hold onto my pitiful hand and bluff, or discard everything and hope for the best.

  Tom catches my eye and grins. “If you had a last wish before you died, what would it be? Luck or love?”

  That’s an odd question, I think. But for me, the answer’s an easy o
ne: love. Before I can answer, however, Tom’s dealing me five more cards.

  “Here you go, then. A good choice: luck will only go so far, and then it runs out.”

  I realize I haven’t discarded yet. I toss my hand onto the blanket and pick up what I’ve been dealt. I have to fight to hide the disappointment: this hand is even worse. Just a high card: the queen of hearts.

  The others discard and draw, and then we’re betting. Digger starts us off, then Donny, then Jack, and then it’s my turn. The shells are getting closer by the moment. If we’re going over the top in the morning, I may as well wager it all.

  “I’ll see your quid,” I shout at Jack, “and raise you two.” I’ve gotten rather good at bluffing – my hands are steady as I hold up two fingers, even though the shells are nearly upon us.

  We continue betting until someone calls, and then it’s time to show our cards. Tom lays down a royal flush, and we groan. I realize I can hear again; the shellfire has stopped.

  “Must be my lucky day,” Tom announces. He leans forward, reaching for the bank notes. “I’ll just collect my—”

  There’s a high-pitched whizz as a shell hurtles through the air. Then a loud bang. Shrapnel rips through the canvas we’ve hung over the dugout entrance and glances off my helmet. Something lands in my lap, and my trousers are suddenly warm and wet. For a second, I think I’ve caught a blighty in the thigh, or maybe pissed myself. Then I hear the others screaming.

  I look down.

  Tom’s head is in my lap, grinning up at me.

  The rest of his body is gone.

  I open my eyes.

  There’s an electric light above me, a ceiling. Softness under me, and a warm blanket covering me. I smell vomit and piss, bleach and Sunlight soap.

  The soap smell takes me back; for a moment, I wonder if I’m at Lever Bros. Then the sounds intrude: the groans, the wheezes, the coughs. I turn my head to the right and see, in the next bed, a figure whose face is heavily bandaged. His jaw is missing; blood-soaked bandages hold together what’s left of his face. He’s breathing noisily, staring fixedly at the ceiling with his one unbandaged eye.