The Fahrenheit Twins (33 page)

‘No, it is a cuckoo clock,’ Marko’cain assured her. ‘I even know which cuckoo clock it is. Didn’t you recognise it?’

Tainto’lilith closed her eyes tightly, chasing the echoes through her brain.

‘Yes,’ she said, almost at once, surprising herself. ‘It is the smallest one, with the two little hunters on either side, and the upside-down rabbits with the tied-up feet and the purple door.’

‘Yes,’ affirmed Marko’cain. ‘The one that went missing from our house a long time ago.’

‘Mother said it got broken.’

‘And we said, Can father not mend it.’

‘And she said, Don’t bother your father about this, or I will be angry with you.’

‘Then she said, One less clock makes no difference to the universe.’

‘We wrote that down in the Book.’

‘Yes. It feels like yesterday.’

‘It was a long time ago.’

Cautiously, they steered the dogs in pursuit of what could no longer be heard: the invisible sonic footprints of a tiny automated thrush, which might prove to be a figment of their own delirious memories.

Once the turn was taken, however, very little searching was required. In a small snowless clearing, hidden from the wider world by towering stones, stood a single Guhiynui dwelling. In all respects it was identical to the drawings their mother had made of such dwellings in her notebooks: the whaleskin exterior, stiffened by tanning and tarring, the whalebone framework, interwoven with rope, the absence of windows, the thong-tied entrance slit, and the thin central chimney, poking up like a smoke-blackened wick. Only, there was no smoke coming from the chimney just now, and no sounds of life within – no evidence at all, in fact, of the communal bustle and vigorous manly activity Una Fahrenheit had often praised, shortly before a big argument with her husband.

The children dismounted from their buggy and walked straight up to the house. There was no more need for caution. The universe had them in hand, after all. The entrance flap was knotted loosely, in a shoelace-style bow. Marko’cain tugged it free, and he and his sister squeezed inside.

‘Ho!’

There was no-one at home. Instinct had told them there wouldn’t be, but a quick glance confirmed it, for Guhiynui houses were simple things, undivided into separate rooms. This one didn’t even feel lived-in, in the sense that there was no mess or clutter whatsoever. It was a place meant for visiting.

There was no furniture to speak of, only a bed and, in the centre of the room, a potbelly stove of burnished green iron. The rest of the floor space was bare, but because the walls tapered inwards rather sharply, the whole house was still scarcely big enough for a grown-up to walk around in, and far too cold to be cosy.

And yet, from the moment the Fahrenheit twins stepped inside, they were intoxicated by the mysterious potency of the place. This was unquestionably where the universe wanted them to be. This was the message, delivered not in a voice of thunder but in the barely audible fluting of a familiar automaton.

It wasn’t just the presence of the missing cuckoo clock, defiantly keeping its exotic brand of time with its delicate pendulum. No, the mystique of this place went beyond that. The whole interior seemed to glow much brighter than the single ray of sunlight through the entrance slit could explain, and the air, for all its chill, seemed aromatic with intimacy.

Perhaps, more than anything else, it was the paintings. Everywhere on the curvaceous walls, warmly-hued cloth paintings were mounted, sewn close against the whaleskin with twine. There were images of adventure: top-heavy Guhiynui warriors sailing the seas on toy boats, or slicing each other up like sausages. There were images of hunting: seals and beluga whales spreading attenuated flippers in surrender to a hail of spears. There were images of birds, carrying tiny sleeping humans towards the sun. And, directly above the bed, there was the largest painting of all, a dynamic full-length portrait of a dark-skinned male and a slender, creamy-white female. From her stylised hairdo and the blush of rose on her cheek, it was quite obvious that this woman was meant to be Una Fahrenheit.

Admittedly the Guhiynui’s style of illustration was very different from what the twins had grown up with in their mother’s antique storybooks. Both bodies seemed to be floating in space, surrounded by an intricate pattern of stars or snowflakes. The feet were impossibly tiny, the legs bonelessly contorted and intertwined. No clothes had been attempted, not even underpants, leaving the figures naked but apparently impervious to the elements. The man had some kind of extra limb growing from between his legs, and Una had two mouths, one on her face and another, much larger one, on her belly. And yet, for all the primitive eccentricity of the image, its colours were lush and vibrant, and something of their mother’s nature had been captured – the best side of her nature, the way she’d tended to look when she was in her happiest mood. On her face, here in this Guhiynui tribute to her, the twins recognised the expression that always came over her when she was about to wash them and pamper their skins with whale oil.

The bed was a big nest of seal skins, all different kinds: hooded seal, ringed seal, bearded seal. It looked supremely comfortable, especially with two fluffy pillows at the far end, each covered in a pastel-coloured pillowcase embroidered with tiny edelweiss. Tainto’lilith removed one glove, and stroked the satiny braille of the coloured cotton. Then she gathered up some stray hairs, fine black ones with grey roots where the dye had failed to penetrate. Pressing her nose into the pillow, she inhaled the scent of Idyl-Geruch and Hyacinthe-Gesang, the heady perfumes of a long-lost Bavaria. Meanwhile, further down on the bed, Marko’cain allowed himself to test the softness of the seal skins under his sprawling body.

Both twins felt sick with desire to sleep in that bed, knowing very well that it was not intended for them. The perfect equation of two pillows and two children was almost impossible to resist, but resist they did. Troubled and enchanted, they struggled to their feet and looked away.

Kik-kik-kik-kik-kik
, the little cuckoo clock was saying, securely mounted on the whalebone wall.
Kik-kik-kik-kik-kik
…

Venturing up close, the twins examined the clock’s condition. Its fragile brass chain was unbroken; indeed, it had been pulled up quite recently, giving the mechanism plenty of time before needing another tug. Care had been taken, in bracketing the clock to its cetacean rib, to keep the little birdhouse straight, despite the curve of the wall. The wrought-iron pine-cone hung like a plumb-line on the end of the chain, confirming the correct orientation of the whole machine. For the clock to be working as well as this, it must, during the long intervals between Una’s visits, have been treated with the utmost respect and gentleness by the Guhiynui. Only the minuscule wooden barrel of one of the hunters’ guns was broken off, but that might well have happened
en route
between the Fahrenheit house and this, Una’s secret home away from home.

Without needing to confer on the decision, the twins helped each other unbuckle their mother’s body from the sledge and carry her into the Guhiynui house. Reverently they inserted her into the bed, wrapping the seal skins around her, smoothing her penumbra of wet hair evenly over the pillow.

‘Cuckoo!’ carolled the clock, once only. It had used twelve of its cries to call them here, and must begin again.

‘We must take the dogs home now,’ said Marko’cain.

‘And ourselves as well,’ said Tainto’lilith.

‘Father may not want us to come,’ said Marko’cain.

‘We have nowhere else to go,’ said Tainto’lilith.

‘Don’t we? The Guhiynui village is very close by,’ said Marko’cain.

‘We are not Guhiynui,’ said Tainto’lilith.

‘They liked Mother. They gave her a bed, blankets, and everything. Even a naked painting with her face on.’

‘We must go back to our Father’s house,’ said Tainto’lilith. ‘The Book of Knowledge is there.’

Marko’cain’s brow was knotted and his nostrils were flared, as though he were about to bark.

‘We know everything now,’ he said, with finality. ‘There is nothing more to know.’

Tainto’lilith was frightened by this new hardness in him, this loss of the natural curiosity that they’d shared since tumbling out of the womb.

‘Let us allow the universe to decide,’ she said. ‘Let us wait for another message.’

‘All right,’ said her brother. So they stood still, staring into the sunlit expanse of snow, and listened, and listened. The universe said nothing.

The twins lost patience and made their own minds up. They decided they would go straight home. There was, they felt, something not right about prolonging their adventures when their mission was accomplished, and the dogs seemed desperately keen to turn back. Moreover, there was a long, comfortable sledge free now, in which Tainto’lilith and Marko’cain could slumber the miles away, basking in the sun while the huskies pulled their lighter load homewards.

So that is what they did.

In one of her rare outbursts of nostalgic storytelling, Una Fahrenheit had once told her children of the express trains which carried people across the borders of deepest Europe, whisking them from country to country without anyone having to give a thought to the steering. People could play card games, read books or even sleep, and the trains would continue unerringly, drawn to the destination as if on a tight string. This was how the long journey back to civilisation felt to the Fahrenheit twins.

When at last they sensed themselves coming to rest in a warm, dark place, it might have been one of those fabled tunnels leading into a railway station, the like of which they had struggled to describe for the purposes of the Book of Knowledge. It was, in fact, the huskies’ heated bunker, their concrete kennel, nestled behind the generator. The exhausted dogs were putting themselves to bed without even waiting to be untethered from their harnesses.

Tainto’lilith and Marko’cain prised themselves out of the sledge like a couple of imperfectly defrosted fish, falling onto the seagrass matting of the kennel floor. They were, they realised, half-dead. Only their instinctive huddling together, nuzzling their faces into each other’s furry hoods and locking torso to torso, had saved them from sleeping themselves into frostbitten oblivion.

‘Oh, oh, oh,’ they said, crawling dizzily on their hands and knees on opposite sides of their mother’s bier. Snuffel Junior lifted his head from his boneless slump, momentarily concerned for the twins’ welfare. Then he nuzzled back to sleep. They would live.

Boris Fahrenheit was thunderstruck at the twins’ return. A rowdy influx of polar bears would have surprised him less than the quiet re-entry of his two small children, padding into the kitchen in their damp and filthy socks. He looked from one twin to the other, noting the trickly red stains on their chins and the breasts of their jumpsuits, the halo of animal hair all over them, the pink irritations in their luminous eyes.

‘It’s done, father,’ said Tainto’lilith reassuringly, but the old man’s grey complexion only went greyer.

Perhaps his discomposure was caused by a difficulty in juggling two social challenges: that of welcoming his children home and that of entertaining a visitor. For Boris Fahrenheit was not a social creature, and the matronly-looking woman who was sitting at the breakfast table, tea in hand, was surely the first visitor they had ever had.

‘Oh, Bumsie!’ she cried, apparently addressing Boris. ‘You didn’t tell me you had children!’

Boris’s jaw was shuddering like an abused motor.

‘I – I was keeping it a surprise,’ he stammered. ‘They’re no trouble, really. They’re basically … self-caring.’

‘Oh, but they’re adorable!’ exclaimed the woman, springing up from her breakfast stool. She was a small thing, hardly taller than the twins themselves, and she had a fetchingly dishevelled abundance of blond hair. Her skin was so tanned it was almost caramel, contrasting vividly with her white bathrobe. Her face was uncannily similar to one of the many dolls their mother had given them over the years, an impish Scandinavian poppet intended (according to the Book) to dangle from the ceilings of automobiles. She radiated nurture.

‘This is Miss Kristensen,’ croaked Boris Fahrenheit. ‘She will be living with us from now on.’

‘How do you do,’ said the twins in unison, resorting to the language of the stories they had read. It seemed to be what was wanted.

‘Oh, very
well
!’ beamed Miss Kristensen, extending her hands in friendship, one for each twin.

Hunched behind the breakfast table, Boris Fahrenheit exposed all his teeth in a startlingly unbecoming smile.

The twins ate themselves sick on a lavish meal prepared for them by Miss Kristensen. They were too weak to sit at the table with their father, so she fed them on the floor, where they helped themselves to a cornucopia of steaming protein and starchy titbits.

‘You poor, poor things,’ she sang, bending down to serve them milk, not from the ample bosom that swung inside her bathrobe, but from colourful little cartons manufactured in Canada. Before they could thank her politely, she was back at the stove.

Miss Kristensen was in fact a dynamo of culinary energy, chattering in the steam of her own high-speed cooking, flipping eggs without even looking at them, happily bonding with all the utensils Una Fahrenheit had never used.

‘Here you are, you secretive rogue,’ she said, setting a plate of sizzling cutlets in front of the bewildered Boris. Then, in a raucous whisper, ‘I’m dying to know what else you never mentioned in your letters!’

Tainto’lilith and Marko’cain excused themselves to go off and vomit.

Hidden away in their own bedroom, feverish, hunched over a big metal bowl, they puked all the colours of the rainbow for what seemed like an age.

‘We smell bad,’ observed Marko’cain, during a little rest between exertions.

‘It’s all the tomato,’ sighed Tainto’lilith.

More than anything, they were desperate for a bath. This in itself was not a problem: they were well accustomed to bathing themselves, and washing their clothes, too. But unspoken between them was a bewildering new anxiety: the possibility of Miss Kristensen volunteering to bathe them. The thought was terrifying – more taboo, somehow, than anything they had yet encountered. So, stealthily, they spirited themselves into the bathroom, locked the door, and filled the tub.