He stopped, and we all gasped. ‘It’s a true story,’ he said. ‘Set down in the Benedictine monastery at St Gall in Switzerland.’
By the time he had finished his tale the sun had slipped below the horizon and rendered the sky of the west the colour of plum. Although the heat had not lost its edge, a strange chill passed through us, causing us to shiver; we remained for a while in silence, each privately contemplating the terrible death agonies of that poor donkey from long ago.
Chapter 11
Doktor Gustav P. Essequibo and his lovely daughter Lucrezia stood patiently at the bus stop outside Aberystwyth station. It was a hot summer day and the doktor carried his tan-coloured macintosh neatly folded over his arm; he wore a light-blue Egyptian cotton shirt, open at the neck, and beige slacks. At his feet a small cardboard suitcase bore stickers of the North Surinam Passenger, Freight and Mail Steam Packet Company as well as those belonging to the British Overseas Airways Corporation. His daughter was about sixteen or seventeen with blonde hair braided into pigtails like a member of the Cherokee tribe. She wore beige jodhpurs tucked into black leather riding boots, a crisply starched white blouse and observed the bustle of the station through a monocle. At her feet was a small box that might have been called a steamer trunk had it been substantially bigger. The doktor examined his watch with the quiet patience of a man whose life has been spent on the periphery of the world in countries where all timetables are approximations and no great significance is attached to delays of less than half a day . . .
‘I’ve always wanted to be called Lucrezia,’ said Calamity.
‘I still think the monocle is over the top,’ I said. ‘In fact, I think everything is over the top.’
Calamity sighed. ‘Yeah, I’m sorry about the disguises, they were all Mooncalf had left. He said there was a fancy dress party on at the Football Club.’
I looked at my watch. ‘The buses were far more regular in Guyana.’
‘That’s out of character,’ said Calamity. ‘According to the instructions Doktor Gustav P. Essequibo is a patient man whose life . . .’ She took a small instruction booklet out of her jodhpur pocket and read: ‘. . . whose life has been spent on the periphery of the world in countries where all timetables are approximations.’
‘Not as approximate as in Cardigan.’
‘You’re doing research into the curative and restorative properties of ectoplasm. Remember there are only two known methods of harvesting ectoplasm. It can be found . . .’ She consulted the booklet again: ‘. . . in the outer corpus of the genus of sea creature vulgarly known as jellyfish. And at séances.’ She looked up from the book. ‘Keeping jellyfish in captivity is difficult because they have no swim bladders. In the ocean they drift with the current, but when kept in tanks they tend to end up in the corner where they cannibalise each other. Can you remember all that?’