Chapter the Thirty-seventh. Friday, July 4, 2003
fter pouring the beverage from several cans upon mountains of ice within our tumblers we each took an appraising sip.
“I’ve never tasted anything quite like it,” said Upwitch, smacking his lips and holding the clear glass away from him to examine the umber colouring of its contents.
“Quite sweet,” said his companion Graham. “A little syrupy, but quite good.”
The attention of my scholastic and bibliophilic friend was now drawn to the discarded cans from which the liquid had been decanted. He picked one up and assayed its weight upon his palm. “What is this? It cannot be tin. It’s much too light.”
“It isn’t tin,” responded Miss Wolf. “It’s aluminum. Or aluminium in the parlance of the Brits.”
Graham squeezed the can; it gave way, readily crumpling in the centre. “That’s quite impossible.”
“And why do you say that?”
“Because aluminium is more precious than gold or silver. Bars of it were, in fact, exhibited alongside the French crown jewels at the Exposition Universelle of 1855.”
“Yes, and Napoleon III reserved a set of aluminum dinner plates for his most favoured guests,” rejoined Miss Wolf.“I’m familiar with the illustrious history of this metal. Back in that day, Mr. Graham, it was prohibitively expensive to extract the metal from bauxite ore. But that has changed. Nowadays we turn aluminum into beverage cans and sell it by the roll for kitchen use in even the poorest of homes.”
“Remarkable!” Graham examined the crushed can in his hand as if it were some new species of miniature mammalian fauna that he could not wait to take home to dissect and give taxonomic name to.
I picked up a can myself and ran my inquisitive fingers along the contour of this sculpted element of nature, which I’d never before seen (for there was nothing within the Dell made of aluminium to my knowledge— not a single, blessed thing). It was as if I were holding a golden ingot in my palm, or clutching a cluster of shimmering diamonds. Here was the Terra Incognita in metallic form: the precious made commonplace. I was curious to see how else that equation manifested itself in the land beyond the Dell. What else of value had the Outlanders diminished in worth and merit? I knew for one thing that there were those within that large tribe of humanity who placed far less value upon human dignity, upon selfrespect and self-determination, upon human life itself. I was ready to hear everything else that Miss Wolf was willing to impart about people who would make aluminium into toss-away cans and humans into mammalian refuse.
And she could see it. In my eager eyes. In the corresponding looks of anticipation upon the faces of each member of the Fortnightly Poetry League. “Sit back. Relax,” said Miss Wolf. “I’m about to tell you a story which, in the cant of some of my fellow Beyonders, ‘will knock your socks off.’”
“Where to begin now. Where to begin.” Miss Wolf paced back and forth with tumbler in hand, the beads of condensation from the ice cubes trickling down the side of the glass. “Once upon a time — oh, let’s not start it out like that.”
“You may begin with the orphans if you please,” said Miss Bocker. “Why were they brought here in that very first year?”
“Is it not your wish to know first just where in the world you are?”
“We reside somewhere in either the state of Ohio or the state of Pennsylvania in the United States of America.” This from Muntle who spoke for all of us except the vicar, who still held out hopes of our being in Italy (where glorious campaniles grow up like toadstools — or so he supposed).
“And how have you come to this conclusion? I’m curious.”
It was Graham who offered the answer: “Because even a child — sorry, Slingo — can deduct from all the empirical evidence that we reside somewhere about the Allegheny Plateau.”
“I will offer more specificity than that,” struck in Antonia with no small measure of pride. “That we are situated in the county of Lycoming, the largest such geographical division in Pennsylvania. Have I guessed correctly?”
Miss Wolf broke into a smile. “You are precisely right. And how have you come to this accurate conclusion?”
“A friend of mine from my workhouse youth surmised it in notes he made and which I gathered together after his death. I expected to find some truth in what he had taken from the mouths of some of our early forefathers — many of whom were still alive when he was a young man — but it isn’t until this very moment that I finally receive confirmation that the first of his several hypotheses is true.”
“And how specifically did it come to his ken?”
“From his kin, it turns out,” returned Antonia, grinning at her homophonic cleverness. “It was his own grandfather who told him. He was one of the original orphans, and as a child had quite audaciously asked of the conductor of the train that brought him to the edge of this valley wither it was that he was going, and the conductor whispered the destination to him when no one was looking. So you see, Miss Wolf: there are a few things about the Outland that some of us have known, which do not happen to come from The Encyclopædia Britannica.”
“Ninth Edition,” added Mr. Graham helpfully.
“Ninth Edition. Thank you, Mr. Graham.”
Miss Wolf considered this fact for a moment and then asked what else Antonia’s friend had learnt from the elders.
“This and that. Surely you don’t expect me to speak so freely about everything I know, but I will say that I shall not hesitate to use what my dear late friend Mr. Traddles has written upon his dirty paper scraps as that gauge by which I shall keep you honest.”
Ruth Wolf seemed wounded. “Miss Bocker! I have no reason not to speak with you honestly and forthrightly.”
Antonia elevated an eyebrow. “We shall see.”
And with that, the obscurant mummified shroud, which had swaddled Dingley Dell for well over a century, began layer-by-layer to be peeled carefully away. Those salient facts that had been as unknown to the residents of our fair valley as all the mysteries of the night sky and every infinitesimal secret locked within the most miniscule molecule upon a microscopic slide now found illumination and explication and life and breath and free and unfettered airing within that simply-appointed sitting room, whose attendant lay in ignorant drug-induced slumber upon her bed up-stairs.
Never before had a Dinglian been privileged to hear the deepest secrets of his existence revealed and explained. Perhaps those who left this valley came to understand a few things prior to their demise or their ill-fated return, but never had a Dinglian been placed into such a glorious position of unqualified receptivity. We would take every advantage to learn all that we could and would try our best (and fail) to keep our tongues silent through the unveiling except when a point demanded further elucidation, or commentary was wholly called for. But first…