The Unfinished World Read online

  It was decided that Set needed a holiday, so Cedric took him on the train to the World’s Fair in St. Louis. It was a marvelous dream for a small boy, and Set was enchanted from the first glimpse of the plaster-of-Paris Roman baths. Everything was massive; everything was built to scale for the gods. There was an enormous birdcage, a temple carved of teak, a vast Ferris wheel, great iron and stone statues lining the boulevards, and—Set’s favorite wonder—a huge organ, the largest in the world, where the famous French organist Alexandre Guilmant played recitals every day from memory. There were hundreds of exotic animals: tiny elephants and limber orangutans, big cats with snow-white fur, and sinuous, deadly snakes. And there were exotic people, too: from new territories like Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, and native peoples from the wilder parts of the American West. There were whole South African villages, filled with men and ladies wearing nothing but underclothes. There were Alaskan tribes with their own icehouses, Pacific peoples with totem poles and canoes. Shamans from Africa made great displays of making the old young again. Some sold shrunken heads. There was even a real live pygmy from the Congo, and Set was enchanted at his acrobatics, though Cedric complained that they exploited him shamefully. Set was reminded of nothing so much as Oliver’s cabinet at home, each pavilion jammed full of mystery and riddle. Secret magic in every corner.

  They attended what was billed as the greatest military spectacle in the history of the world—a reenactment of the Second Boer War—played out in an enormous, fifteen-acre arena. The whole battle took three hours and Set sat breathless until the final act, when the famous Boer General Christiaan de Wet “escaped” by diving thirty-five feet on horseback into a pool of water. After, Set was very tired and could hardly keep his eyes open as Cedric dragged him to the Japanese Pavilion. Which might explain why she seemed so indistinct, so soft and dreamlike, the pretty Japanese lady in the red silk kimono. She knelt so they were face to face.

  You’re different, she said quietly. Aren’t you? You have a different kind of life inside you.

  Set was speechless. What did this lady mean?

  My grandfather was special like this, she said, and smiled. You are, too. I can tell. You are friendly with the spirits.

  The lady had the blackest, straightest hair he had ever seen, and her skin shone like the surface of the moon. Her voice was so light, so musical, that it drove all thoughts of dashing soldiers and horseback and deeds of glory right out of his head. He didn’t know what she meant, but he would keep her words in his head like a lovely tune. He would keep them secret, his own small mystery to savor.

  Before he left for France, Albert brought Inge a book of poems by Hopkins. Trust in goodness, he told her, cheerful as ever, sure of himself. The first and the last siblings stood together, bookends of a closed family dynasty. Dark and light, tall and short, thin and plump. But they both had the same open, cheerful face, the same honest blue eyes, the same love for one another.

  Is the world a good place, Albert? she asked. She wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem, from her bleak vantage point here in the damp and the cold and the lonely, that it was.

  I think so, said Albert. But don’t take my word for it, love. Go see for yourself. Go and find out what the world is.

  And if you die? She swallowed the last word but still it came out a little, choked and cold.

  Albert bent down, took her small hands. If I die, he said gravely, I’m still here. Aren’t I? All the things I am now, they’ll still be here, right? I’ll never leave you, not really.

  She wondered then, if anyone really left you. Was the world crowded with ghosts? Was that the point of suffering: to understand, in some way, what you still had? To clarify it, to own it, to rip the stars from the sky and hold them in the hand like diamonds—to darken all the rest but the most glittering, glad memories? Was that the way to live a sunny life?

  Curiosity #36: Square coin made of beaten gold, imprinted with a woman’s image. She holds both spear and shield.

  For a long time after the bear, Set would wake with the feeling he’d forgotten something. He had strange dreams that felt like memories, like lost bits of other lives. For a long time after, before he got used to this hollow in himself, he would scream, would cry, would babble garbled dream descriptions to Pru: always such ordinary things like sailing or swimming or catching fireflies in jars, and yet they had the quality of nightmare because they seemed attached to someone else entirely. Pru told him not to worry. She told him he was different; she said he had lived another life and that he might remember it in sleep.

  Am I a spirit? he asked.

  Pru pursed her lips and shook her head. No, she said. You’re my son. And she refused to discuss it further. In time he grew used to the visions, but never to the sick feeling they gave him. He often woke, weak and drained, feeling he’d survived a small death.

  At such moments, it was up to Cedric and Oliver to distract Set properly. Set would have liked to play with the children who lived on neighboring estates, some of whom were his own age. But Pru forbade it. He didn’t even attend school; instead Set had a series of tutors, an interchangeable set of dreary, dry men. He desperately wanted to attend school, to play sports, to join clubs. But Pru said he was special, fragile, and only his family would be able to protect him. Only your family can know you, she said, over and over, and Set had no idea what she meant but he usually sighed and settled for Cedric’s chatter or Oliver’s quiet company then.

  Cedric liked to talk of gods and monsters; he spun tales for Set of what shaped the world eons ago, before man sailed its oceans and scaled its peaks. When Set was very small, Cedric told him about the last god to leave the earth. Once, said Cedric, there was a golden age, and men and gods lived peacefully together. There was great abundance of food and drink, and men lived long and wanted for nothing. The gods ruled well, and man in turn was obedient and loyal to his masters.

  But then man grew complacent, and greedy, and ignoble, and one by one the gods abandoned him. And as they left, the lights went out on earth, leaving man in deep confusion and despair. Eventually, only one goddess was left: Astraea, the goddess of justice. She promised to stay with mankind unless he grew so wicked that she could no longer bear the sight of him; but in the way of things this too came to pass, and so the last goddess left us. She plunged us into darkness, and took our justice to the stars. And mankind was alone and lost.

  The story made Set feel melancholy. Are we still alone? he asked. Will Astraea ever come back?

  Cedric grinned at his solemn brother. Iam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia Regna, he said. Virgil wrote that, boy. With the Virgin, the Days of Old will return, too. Perhaps when man is worthy, she will be the first to return.

  Set knew Cedric meant to be comforting. But somehow, he didn’t like the idea of the gods sweeping back in to take things over. That frightened him more than the idea of being alone.

  He went to Oliver with his fears, and Oliver promised to cure him of gods. He collected Set and Desmond and loaded them onto the train to the city, and they walked the long blocks to a brightly colored building with gold crown moldings and loud, gaudy posters advertising something brand-new: a moving picture, Oliver called it. In large lights on the awning, a word Set tried to read, but didn’t know. Nickelodeon, said Desmond, and the big man grinned like a boy. Desmond loved new inventions, new toys and technological marvels. His fascination with newness was the perfect counterpoint to Oliver’s love of the old.

  Oliver handed fifteen cents to the man in the booth, and they went inside. It was bare as a board, with hard seats and ugly white walls, but as soon as the picture started Set was lost onscreen. Satan gamboled and danced, the people onscreen ran herky-jerky away, fires burned and dissolved, dragons and demons sprang from nowhere and disappeared, and fantastic-looking people in paint and marvelous costumes filled the screen. And at the end, Set stood and applauded like he’d been taught, and waited for all the people and dragons to come take their bow.

 
It’s only light, said Oliver, smiling. A projection. You don’t have to applaud.

  The spells the screen cast were the most marvelous sort of magic, flicker and shadow and sleight-of-hand on a grand scale. Watching these illusions play out, Set saw a world more fluid than his own, an enchanted otherworld. He often wondered after how he might slip inside it.

  Photograph: A fine soft layer of dust over a scattered still life. A vanity table, topped with silver-backed hairbrush, golden hair pads, glass jars filled with perfume, powder, and paints. A lady’s tools of beauty, undisturbed since the night she died.

  Inge’s father didn’t mind if she played in the disintegrating parts of the manor. She sometimes slept in the old servants’ quarters, watching the moon and stars through the hole in the roof. She clambered about on the old banisters and the back staircase, jumping aside hastily as bits of them crumbled. She pretended she was the pirate captain of a great but broken ship, fighting mightily to keep it from sinking, the baby willow warblers in the rafters her stalwart crew.

  But she knew better than to enter her mother’s bedroom. It was kept locked, and the only person with a key was her father. Once, just once, she’d found the door ajar and looked inside. Her father lay facedown across a cream lace bedspread, filthy with dust and age. He held his head in his hands and his broad back shook, and Inge found him somehow more terrifying this way than when he was yelling or glowering at her. She tried to creep back out, but he heard her and ran after, shouting all the while that he would flay the curiosity out of her hide. Cook took pity and hid her in the pantry cupboard. She could hear her father banging about, saying rude things to Cook, and he even kicked the cupboard next to her, hard enough to splinter the wood. Then he went away, his loud footsteps sounding flat and angry in the corridor. When Cook finally let her out, Inge was shaking so hard it took ten full minutes for her to stop. At dinner that evening, her father simply turned to her and held out his fork threateningly. Never, never, ever again, he said, and jabbed the fork into his duck so ferociously that Inge half-expected to hear it quack.

  Curiosity #315: Jar of children’s teeth, prehistoric, date of origin unknown. Partially burned.

  Once, when Set was the age where fiction and reality are easily confused, Pru told him about a new book she was working on. In it, Mr. Rabbit finds a secret passageway in his little rabbit house under the earth, and the secret passageway leads to a secret door, and the secret door leads to a secret room where a secret feast is spread over a secret table.

  Set was sure his huge house must have a secret room somewhere. He spent hours knocking on the walls to see if they were hollow, trying to peer behind bookcases, pressing every knot in the fireplace to see if something would happen. He had wriggled behind one of the bookcases in the library when he heard footsteps, and he stilled and silenced himself. He wasn’t sure if what he was doing was punishable or not, but he didn’t care to find out; Pru was a firm believer in corporal punishment and he still feared the switch.

  Set heard two sets of footsteps, one light, one heavy, and then Oliver and Cedric talking—no, arguing.

  We should tell him, said Cedric. When he’s old enough to understand.

  Tell him what? asked Oliver. That he was dead and now he isn’t? What can it matter to him?

  It’s not right, said Cedric. And it’s my fault. You can’t come back from death, not really.

  Set did, said Oliver, and he sounded as angry as Set had ever heard him.

  Cedric seemed oddly cheerful. Suit yourself, he said. But it’s cruel, if you ask me, not to let him know. Not to tell him what he is.

  And what is he? shouted Oliver. Set flinched as something made a loud smashing noise. One of the busts on the bookshelves? A vase?

  Don’t get sore at me, said Cedric. I’m just trying to be honest, stop hiding what’s plain.

  Set had no idea what they meant, but it gave him shivers and made his toes curl. It made his hollow place feel wider and emptier than ever. His knees were beginning to ache from being pressed up again the bookcase, and the dust back here was in his nose and mouth and eyes, and he hoped they would leave, soon, before he sneezed or coughed.

  So am I, said Oliver, forcefully. He seemed to be walking away from the bookcase, and then the footsteps stopped. It doesn’t help for him to know, when he can’t do anything about it.

  But maybe we should do something about it, said Cedric. I just thought—and then footsteps, heavy and light, heading out the door and down the hall together. Set sighed and slid out from behind the bookcase, his knees pulsing with pain and pressure. He saw the little plaster bust of King George IV that usually sat on the fireplace mantel. It was shattered in a hundred jagged pieces all over the hearth rug.

  Just to be quarrelsome, Inge often asked the governess, Why do we not learn Irish?

  The governess always shuddered. Because it is a heathen, filthy Roman Catholic language, she would say.

  But Father is Catholic, said Inge. After Inge was born and her mother died, her father had converted to Catholicism, though no one else had. Hannah said it was because their mother had been a Catholic, and their father wanted to make sure he found her in heaven. The mustachioed governess said it was because their father was under the influence of the demon lord himself, though she said it in a whisper and never when Father was around.

  Albert said it was because Father was sad and lonely, and people who are sad and lonely seek comfort in strange places. Inge didn’t know much about religion—though she said her prayers each night like she was taught and went to church on Sundays with Cook—but she didn’t see what could be comforting about it. If she had a religion, she supposed it would be the Having of Adventures. It would involve trials of wisdom and courage, with long quests for magical objects, and one would worship in far-off lands, where natives heaved spears at one another and prayed to strange gods in fiery temples. Inge’s village church was the last place in the world she’d think to Have Adventures. The church was damp and gray, and the Book of Common Prayer was boring, and the vicar was a hundred years old and asthmatic, forever coughing and wheezing his way through endless, wandering sermons. Inge sometimes wondered, sleepily, what would happen if he just dropped dead during the Eucharist. Was another ancient vicar stowed in the closet with the vestments, just in case?

  But Inge’s father did a lot of things that the governess was at a loss to explain, and converting to Catholicism was just one of them. The governess could not explain why he would not let the farms to new tenants, or why he let the land lie fallow and wasted. Nor could she say why he sometimes went to Belfast, and why he always came back sorrow-eyed. She did not know why he voted against Home Rule but had an angry admiration for the Nationalists, for their blasted courage and convictions, he said. The only thing she could say—indeed took great pleasure in the saying of it—was why Inge’s father had not smiled nor laughed nor touched his youngest daughter since the night her mother died.

  The jumble of Oliver’s cabinet held a few genuine treasures. The shelves were lined with gold doubloons, books plated with silver, crowns set with rubies and sapphires and emeralds. Directly under the figure of the snake, at the tail end of the cabinet, perched a meticulous jade miniature of ancient Chang An. And plenty of other goods fit for a lord lay buried under the most mundane items—a stuffed lizard with a necklace made of pearl, a medieval manuscript serving as a hiding place for a small, famous lost diamond.

  But as Set grew older, his favorite object of fixation shifted from the bright shiny coins and jewels and became, instead, an egg. A fossilized egg from the moa bird, a creature extinct since the fifteenth century. Large, cream-colored, and solid as rock, it fascinated Set: a manifestation of endless possibility. He didn’t know what a moa was, but he pictured all sorts of creatures—a small dragon, perhaps, or a brightly colored bird, large as the flying dinosaurs. He was obsessed with the idea that a life could be caught out of time forever, spared the fate of the rest of its kind. He would sit before it on t
he footstool, and sketch the egg, the thatched nest underneath, and make lists of the creatures it might contain.

  Oliver found him at it one afternoon, and unlocked the Cabinet for him. He lifted the egg, put it into Set’s outstretched hands. Humans overhunted them, he told Set. They looked like emus, or kiwi. Do you know what those are? Set shook his head, no. I’ll show you, said Oliver, and he went off to the library, left Set holding the egg. Set was certain he felt it moving about. It made him nervous. He was sure he would drop it and a dragon would fly out.

  Oliver came back with an important-looking book bound in red leather. He thumbed through until he found a faded illustration of a strange bird. Thick-legged, gray-brown, long-necked, incapable of flight—thoroughly disappointing, as far as Set was concerned. He handed the egg back to Oliver, no longer interested in its lost potential. Oliver laughed. You’re unhappy, he said. I’ve ruined your object for you.

  Set nodded, close to tears. What was the point of dreaming up new dragons now?

  Oliver smiled, and knelt beside Set. You know, it’s taken me many years to collect all of these things. It is a part of me now, the best part, perhaps. Oliver’s beard quivered, and Set remembered being very little and watching that little triangle dance upon his brother’s chin like a sail in the wind. Just like all of his siblings, Oliver seemed changeless.

  Why did you? asked Set. It was the right question. Oliver’s beard dipped and he showed a rare, shy smile to his small brother.

  Because of the mystery, said Oliver. I find an object—it’s a blank, or nearly one. And then—and then I have the pleasure, the exquisite pleasure, of finding the object out. What it is, where it’s from, when it’s from, what it does, or says, or was. Who might have loved it, and lost it, you see? What it meant to someone or something, long or near ago.