Hylozoic (27 page)

Aleid nodded, and the maid gave each of them a raw June carrot, crunchy and sweet.

“How about a couple of chicken legs, too,” said Thuy. “We've had a long trip.”

Aleid raised her eyebrows, but gave Kathelijn the go-ahead. Jayjay and Thuy made short work of the big drumsticks. Relative to their dense Lobrane jaws, the meat was spongy and easy to wolf down. It tasted wonderful. The women laughed to see the midgets eat so heartily and so fast. Then Kathelijn handed them white bakery rolls the size of their heads, and they gobbled them down, provoking further expressions of wonder.

“Go see Jeroen,” reiterated Aleid when the eating was done.

 

 

Jayjay and Thuy followed Azaroth up a staircase to a sunny studio in the front of the house, clambering from step to step. As it happened, the studio windows gave directly onto the big triangular marketplace and its articulated hubbub. The room sounded with a hundred conversations, with vendor's cries, with the scuff of shoes and the clack of hooves—all of this overlaid by the vile drone of an incompetently played bagpipe.

A cluttered worktable sat in the middle of the studio, and beyond that was Jeroen Bosch, standing before the window, brush in hand, the light falling over his shoulder onto a large, square oak panel.

“Aha!” he exclaimed, seeing them. “Azaroth brings fresh wonders.” His face was lined and quizzical; his mouth and eyebrows flickered with the shadows of fleeting moods. His chin was stubbled. He looked to be in his mid-forties.

“These are my cousins, Jayjay and Thuy,” said Azaroth. “They're from the Garden of Eden.”

Bosch smiled, clearly doubting this.

“Your wife says they might stay here and work for you,” added Azaroth.

“I wouldn't have time to train them,” said Bosch, his gaze drifting back to his panel. “I'm very busy on my new work.”

Azaroth changed the subject. “How goes the progress on my harp?” The instrument was nowhere to be seen.

Jayjay looked around the studio, fascinated. The worktable held seashells and eggshells, drawings of cripples, a bowl of gooseberries, a peacock feather in a cloudy glass jar, and a variety of dried gourds. Upon the wall hung a cow skull and a lute. A stuffed heron and a stuffed owl perched upon a shelf.

Two newly painted panels leaned against the wall, facing toward Jayjay and Thuy, mottled microcosms, brimming
with incident and life. The panels were half the width of the big square that Bosch was working on, but the same height, four times as tall as the Lobraners. Thuy was avidly staring at them.

“I'm nearly done decorating the harp,” said Jeroen. “But she's locked in the attic. She's too precious to uncover with so many people about.” He made a gesture toward the bustling marketplace. “Conjurors, charlatans, jugglers.”

“I can't see it?” said Azaroth, incredulous.

Rather than answering, the painter set down his brush and walked over to them, keeping an eye on Jayjay and Thuy. He accepted the dogfish from Azaroth, set it on his worktable and propped its mouth open with a porcupine quill. “Hello,” he said to the dogfish, making his voice thin. “Do you bring a message from the King of Hell?”

Bosch was playing—seeking inspiration by enacting a little scene that he might paint. To ingratiate himself, Jayjay responded as if speaking for the fish, flopping his tongue to make his words soft and slimy. “The pitchfork wants to strum the harp,” he said, nothing better popping into his head. He reached out with his hand and waggled the fish's gelatinous brown tail.

Bosch nodded, appreciating the mummery, and then the artist fell to studying the singular objects on his table, nudging them this way and that with the tip of his delicate, ochre-stained finger—as if composing a scene. “Do you feel that all things have souls?” he asked Jayjay, turning his eyes upon him, brown eyes with flecks of yellow and green.

“Where we come from, it's obvious that everything is alive,” put in Thuy, speaking Dutch. She'd slowed her voice to Hibrane speed. “Nobody debates it. It's a fact of nature, not a heresy. We talk to our objects and they talk back. That shell
there, it might be saying, ‘I'm spiral, and my inside chambers are private. I used to have a slippery mollusk inside me, but then a dogfish ate her. The air is eddying inside my empty mouth; it's faster and thinner than water.' ”

“Very plausible,” said Bosch, still studying the Lobraners. “And your names are Thuy and—Jayjay?” He said the name like
Yayay
. “Why are you here?”

“To see the harp,” said Jayjay, finally finding his voice. “The harp is alive.”

“I know this,” said Bosch softly. “Her name is Lovva. I'd very much like to keep her.”

“If you kept her safe in your family, that would be fine,” said Jayjay.

Azaroth sharply cleared his throat, wanting to argue. Jayjay turned and addressed him in rapid English. “That's how your aunt gets the harp in the first place! Think it through. The harp is supposed to stay here and pass through the generations so that your aunt inherits her.”

“Um—maybe,” said Azaroth, confused. “But if I leave it here and come home empty-handed my aunt will—”

“It has to happen this way,” insisted Jayjay. “We're in your past, dog. We have to make sure all the same events take place.”

“You don't know Aunt Gladax,” said Azaroth, unhappily shaking his head.

Bosch was looking back and forth from one to the other as they talked English.

“Here's an upside,” continued Jayjay urgently. “If you give Jeroen the harp, you can ask him for a favor. Ask him to hire Thuy and me. That way I get a chance to play the Lost Chord and unfurl lazy eight for the Hibrane! It's all preordained.”

Azaroth glared at Jayjay for a moment, then looked over at Bosch. “You can keep the harp if you let my cousins stay with you,” he said in Brabants Dutch. “They need a home. They're
just as clever and strong as full-sized humans. They can help you in your studio and around the house.”

“You truly grant me the harp?” said Bosch, his face lighting up, wrinkles wreathing his lively eyes. “That's wonderful.”

“She belongs with you,” said Azaroth, not liking this.

“I suppose I could make Jayjay an apprentice,” said Bosch. “My brother Goossen's sons avoid my studio. They chafe at my slow pace.” The bagpipe music droned on, just outside. “For certain jobs, it's essential to have someone nimble and young,” he continued. “Like painting escutcheons on the columns in the cathedral. Or decorating a house's gables. Or surreptitiously repainting a—” He squatted down, studying Jayjay, wearing an impish smile. “Would you be willing to desecrate an icon for me, boy?”

“I would.”

“What about me?” said Thuy. “I'm the artistic one. I'm a writer.”

“If you're in here, I'll always be thinking about your tiny slit,” said Bosch shaking his head. “Forgive me. I'm a weak and sinful man.”

“I'm staying anyway,” said Thuy firmly. “I'm Jayjay's wedded wife.”

“Oh, now they have the marriage sacrament in the Garden of Eden?” said Bosch. He cocked his head, staring at them. His green and brown eyes were amused. “Don't imagine you can gull me. Where are you really from?”

“California,” said Jayjay after a pause. “Not Eden, but, yes, it's in the New World, so far west that it's very nearly the Spice Islands, which is approximately where my wife's parents were born.”

“The world grows apace,” said Bosch.

“We were married in City Hall,” said Thuy. “In California, that's just as good as church.”

“Well, I suppose you can sleep here, too. But you'll have to busy yourself elsewhere during the days. Two gnomes underfoot is too much.”

“She can spend the days with me,” said Azaroth. “She'll help with my fishing and I'll show her around town.”

“Fine,” said Thuy. She was still studying the tall paintings leaned against the walls. “These panels—they're the wings of
The Temptation of Saint Anthony!
”

“Indeed that's the theme of my triptych,” said Bosch. “Very perceptive of you to read the iconography.”

“I recognized the panels, too,” lied Jayjay. Thuy and Bosch just laughed at him, neither one believing him.

“Is your husband at least good with his hands?” Bosch asked Thuy.

“I guess so,” said Thuy. “But, really, I might be the better one for you to—”

“Let's go, Thuy,” interrupted Azaroth. “We'll take the rest of my catch to the fish market. And I'll show you the tavern where I live. Lots of vibby types in town for the annual procession. Musicians, actors, acrobats.”

“The Muddy Eel,” said Bosch. “Alive with whores and music. Which reminds me—”

With no transition at all, he strode over to the room's window and began screaming Low Dutch imprecations at the unseen man who was playing the bagpipe. The music broke off, and a tenor voice called up, wheedling for alms. Bosch cursed again; the squealing resumed.

“Do you want me to get rid of him, Jeroen?” said Jayjay. “I'll show you how useful I can be.”

“Let it be so.”

Jayjay and Thuy descended the staircase hand-in-hand, hopping from one step to the next, both of them very excited. It was a kick to be in Hieronymus Bosch's studio.

The ground floor front room was full of painting supplies: oak panels, pots of pigment, a workbench for mixing paints, cupboards of rolled-up drawings. Azaroth went into the kitchen to flirt with Kathelijn, the maid.

Peering out the front door, Jayjay and Thuy saw the pesky bagpiper at the base of the house's stone steps, red-faced and smelling of wine. Surprised to see the two tiny figures on the threshold of Bosch's dwelling, he broke off his musical assault. Wiping his ropy lips, he favored Jayjay with a sneer. But not for long.

Jayjay was on him like a sped-up goblin, pummeling him in the ribs. Too cowed to fight back, the bagpiper hurried away. Some of the bystanders booed, some cheered, and Bosch grinned from his window.

Jayjay bowed from the doorway and announced himself. “I am the new apprentice of Jeroen Bosch!” He took Thuy's hand. “And this is my wife. We offer you friendship; we require respect! Hurray for 's-Hertogenbosch!” Just to dispel any scent of the diabolic about the curious figures they cut, Jayjay slowly crossed himself.

“Triangle,”
hissed Thuy.

“Oops.”

They made the correct sign in unison, touching left shoulder, right shoulder, navel, and left shoulder again. The people looked satisfied at this.

“I'll go upstairs now,” said Jayjay as they went back into the house. “I'll see about meeting that harp and playing the Lost Chord. I'll ask her and the pitchfork how we can drive off the Peng. Maybe tomorrow we'll be back home.”

“No big rush,” said Thuy. “I like it here. Good to be away from all the crap. Hey Azaroth, are we riding to the Muddy Eel in your boat?”

“I'll row to the harbor and walk from there,” said Azaroth,
still canoodling with Kathelijn in the kitchen. “If you like, you can ride on my shoulder like a Garden of Eden parrot.”

“Be careful,” said Jayjay, giving Thuy a kiss.

“Maybe it's all going to be okay?” said Thuy.

“I hope so.”

 

 

“That was good work driving off the bagpiper,” said Bosch when Jayjay rejoined him. “I shouldn't let him curdle my humors. I'm often guilty of the sin of anger. I myself play the pipes a bit, and to hear them mishandled that way—” His voice trailed off. He'd settled behind his painting once more; he was touching up the images of some tiny bas-reliefs depicted upon a temple pillar near Saint Anthony. “I fall into pride over my work,” he continued, evidently in a confessional mood. “And I lust as well, though less so than in my youth.”

“I don't see life that way,” began Jayjay. “It's—” But then he broke off, silenced by Bosch's profoundly knowing eyes. Why not confess to a fault? “I guess you could say I'm too greedy for thrills,” he allowed.