Page 84 of The Bedlam Stacks

‘I’m ornamental.’

‘Sit down and don’t touch anything.’

Harry sat down obediently next to the stove. Even sitting he seemed tall. The lamplight had turned him all gold, sunspun. People called him that – Sunny, Inti – and he was. He didn’t look like a human. He was too broad and too bright.

Raphael put a plate down in front of him and folded into the chair opposite, aware as he did of the stiffness in his joints. They didn’t hurt. It felt as though whoever had made him had come back and tightened all the screws. He was starting to find that he couldn’t slouch. Or not couldn’t; but he could let his weight hang forward without moving his spine, and each vertebra felt as if it were strong enough to lift much more than it was.

Harry was editing some notes, probably about the mouse, going through in red ink and adding things in the margins. Raphael watched him write. He did it easily and quickly, for fun. It wasn’t an unfamiliar idea, but there was still a novelty in seeing it.

‘So the thing about mice here,’ Harry said, without looking up, ‘is that they rather resemble European voles, which is interesting, because they can’t possibly be related. It implies that the shape of animals happens in the way bubbles do. A bubble will form in a sphere in Europe or Peru. They don’t suddenly go square when you hit the tropics. It’s starting to look like a mouse will always be mouse-shaped.’

‘As opposed to tiny fluffy octopuses?’

‘Well, exactly. Where are the cyclopes? Where are the one-legged men or the tripods, and why are there never mice that are blue or in possession of eight legs? You know? More things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy – except there aren’t.’ He paused. ‘You don’t care,’ he laughed.

‘I don’t.’

‘Happily that doesn’t bother me at all. Are you turning into a markayuq?’

‘What?’

‘Well,’ said Harry, as if they were still talking about mice. ‘Odd thing number one: walking statues who are in fact men and women. Odd thing number two: you have lost almost as much time as you’ve lived – more if you count these smaller spells of yours. And they’re getting longer.’ He smiled a little. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than in my philosophy, but there are not many more. It would be extraordinary to find two at once and unrelated. It seems to me that it would make more sense for them to be in fact one, larger, odd thing. No?’

‘Yes.’

Harry looked pleased. ‘And all this stop-start exponential catalepsy is in fact a kind of stop-start metamorphosis, and each time you’re a little different and a little stronger and one day different altogether. What a lovely creature you are.’

Raphael felt himself redden. ‘Eat your bloody quinoa.’

‘I am, I am.’ He did for a while, then looked up suddenly as if a thought had bumped into him sideways. ‘You swear damn well for someone who’s only learned English for a year. You do all sorts of things well.’

‘Languages get easier the more of them you speak—’

‘No, no, no. You’ve got an incredible memory. Graven in stone, isn’t it? You’re made of different stuff and it works differently. You utter stinking cheating bastard.’ He kicked him under the table. ‘Oh, Harry’s so stupid, Harry can’t learn Quechua, look at my fancy English.’

‘Ow.’

‘I’m going to read this essay to you,’ he said vengefully. ‘Tell me if it sounds clunky.’

‘Oh, I don’t want to hear—’

‘Part One,’ Harry said over him. ‘On the idiosyncratic features of the lesser Peruvian mouse.’

Raphael sat still to listen. He had never known it till recently, but he liked being read to. The pollen lamps were running down by the time Harry had finished. He let them. Harry faded almost to sleep before he jerked awake and apologised and started getting ready for bed. It was only the ordinary routine but Raphael watched him while he still could, awake because of the lost hours. Once Harry was gone, it would be back to knowing the exact time to wind up the lamps in the evening, and noticing how that moment retreated or advanced by its weekly minutes as it tided up to and away from midsummer.

Harry dropped Don Quixote into his lap. They had been working through it in an effort to improve Harry’s horrible Spanish. ‘Your turn.’ He sat down again and shifted his chair closer so that he could follow the text too, smelling of soap and a fresh shirt for bed. He wound up the lamps again.

Raphael found their place and didn’t say there would be no need for it soon. Harry wouldn’t stay much longer and he wouldn’t come back. He had a wife at home, and a little girl. He wasn’t a natural expeditionary; he worried about them and wrote letters he couldn’t send. The quinine men watched the post.

‘Still with me?’ Harry asked after a little while.

‘Yes. Just finding the place.’

‘It’s there.’

‘I know that.’

‘Read it then.’