Night
was falling in the Botanical Gardens when Tremolo the Tale-Teller finished his
tale, and the last of the daily visitors could be seen fanning out along the
asphalt path. The mustachioed gardener, his cap still sweaty from the heat of
the day, turned to face Tremolo and asked, “So that’s your story, eh, Tremolo
the Tale-Teller? You expect anybody to believe that you just caught the ocean
on your hook and now you’re dropping it on people until you figure out what
else to do with it?”
Tremolo
looked aghast and pulled his beard for very outrage, “What? Did Tremolo say that he was the fisherman of the
tale? For shame, gardener, that your wit is not quick enough to catch the drift
of my tale!”
“But
when you mentioned the balloons at the end of the story, well, it’s just that,
considering you just dropped a balloon on that poor Nobody’s head—“
“I deny
that,” Tremolo denied, pointing a single finger at the gardener’s mustache.
“Well,”
the gardener sighed, “It’s just that I can’t help but think your story’s tied
to the real world somehow, you know? Especially when you only told it because I
asked you to explain what happened.”
“Tremolo
did explain! Tremolo has explained!
By way of parable.”
“But if
that’s not what happened, what with you catching the ocean and stuffing it in
your—“
“Ass!”
cackled Tremolo the Tale-Teller, somersaulting away from the gardener with a
bound and running back to whence he came, “No man shall penetrate Tremolo’s
secrets! Unless he be the Possessor of English!”
“Don’t
you mean the Professor of English?”
shouted the gardener, who was rapidly receding into the gathering darkness.
If
Tremolo heard this quite reasonable query he gave no sign of it, and I tell you
reader, it is very unlikely that he heard, so distant were his thoughts at that
moment.
A
change came over Tremolo as he came to be alone, hidden from the eyes of the
world as he walked between the still and dimlit trees. The light in his eyes
grew dark, and he began to fidget. His lips moved as if he would speak, but no
sound escaped them. The darkness grew close. Tremolo walked on through warm air
that seemed to sweat, and the chirping of crickets only deepened the absolute
silence that reigned all around him.
Tremolo
walked beneath a soaring tree, and by the light of the rising moon eyed a tiny
spider spinning a labyrinthine web between two twigs. It traced circles, the
little architect, circles around circles from its undecidable center, branching
out in supporting lines to strengthen the marshalling structure. Beady dewdrops
caught the light, and Tremolo saw reflected into his eyes the light of the
moon, moons and moons of moons ever and infinitely shining, now distant, now
overwhelmingly near as if to touch…
“Oh,
you spider,” Tremolo sighed, a tear tracing a shining trail down into his mossy
beard, “How very like you is Tremolo the Tale-Teller. What you would eat you
needs must catch, sister spider, and yet methinks you would not catch. You are
not a cruel creature, no, you are quite gentle and kind, you would only build
your web for love of the work, for love of the lines, for love of the joy of
weaving… except you must eat. Except you must
eat! And so if you would weave you must catch… and if you must catch you must
be cruel.”
Tremolo
the Tale-Teller shook his head and walked along, his feet falling heavy on the
grass. His ears pricked up when he heard a woman weeping somewhere nearby, and
with fleet and quiet feet he sought her out. Around the trees and flowers he
walked through the Botanical Gardens, careful as always to avoid tripping on
the uneven ground.
His
gait, as I believe I have mentioned before, was rather uneven, always favoring
the left side. When Tremolo walked he resembled nothing so much as a kind of
wind-up children’s toy gone slightly askew, so that left to his own devices
he’d almost certainly return to any starting-point he cared to leave. If
Tremolo the Tale-Teller appears unusual in this respect, I suspect it may be
only that this quality is more pronounced in him than in most of his fellows in
the human race.
With
the woman’s sobs as a kind of beacon drawing him on, he managed to walk more or
less in a straight line, pausing here and there for a pirouette and only every
once in a while doubling back from his course. Her voice was not loud, there in
the dark night. Once or twice, Tremolo lost the sound of her weeping altogether,
and thought that perhaps she’d gone away and eluded him utterly. Sound carries
much further at night, Tremolo reflected.
At last
he spotted her, knees drawn up and leaning against a tree with her arms hugging
her legs close to herself. Tremolo stood behind another tree and watched. So
still she was, only rocking back and forth slightly, so slowly that in the dim
light she might have been a statue of stone. Although he couldn’t quite put his
finger on it, Tremolo couldn’t help but think that she was somehow familiar…
A
sudden panting and sniffing came from behind Tremolo, and he turned to find a
tiny black dog, possibly a Labrador puppy, staring up at him with great bulging
eyes and a stick between its teeth. The dog dropped the stick on the ground and
stared as Tremolo backed away slowly, his feet catching on a root so that he
fell down hard on his backside.
“Oh,
you incorrigible dog!” Tremolo shouted, and immediately cursed himself inwardly
for crying out. The puppy scampered onto his chest and started licking at his
beard as Tremolo heard a muffled gasp from the woman beneath the other tree.
Now, because Tremolo the Tale-Teller was exceptionally good at thinking on his
feet (or, well, not strictly speaking on his
feet at the moment, but you get the idea) and besides really didn’t want the
woman to go away without getting the chance to make contact at least, he
shouted, “Help! Help! This dog is attacking me viciously! Help! Yes, you, lady
crying under the tree, you, please, help!”
She
crept slowly towards him, he observed out of the corner of his eye as he
continued his protestations. The dog, having become bored with Tremolo’s beard,
or perhaps simply preferring the woman’s scent, scurried off in her direction
after one final tug on the man’s chin. Tremolo sat up, turned to face her, and
spoke, “Great thanks and sincerest gratitude to you, who have rescued me from
the ferocious beast that now sniffs at your ankles!”
The
woman kneeled to pet the dog, gave Tremolo a piercing look, “I know better than
to trust your gratitude, Tremolo the Tale-Teller. Do you know they say you
invented double-dealing?”
“Oh, to
be so universally misrepresented! It is a shame, is it not?”
The
little dog’s tail wagged as the woman scratched it behind the ears, “Well, I do
know you’re certainly not the kindest fellow to walk about on two legs. Tell
me, though, why did you drop your water balloon on poor Roger’s head? You
probably ruined his guitar.”
“Oho,
so you were the lady under the tree?
Well, Tremolo will answer your question if you answer him this: why was that
third-rate songster making so much noise all for you?”
“Why
don’t you answer my question first?”
“Why
did you run off so fast after Tremolo dropped his water balloon?”
She
stopped petting the puppy’s fur momentarily, raised her dark eyes to face Tremolo
with an unreadable expression on her face. The crickets chirped and Tremolo
thought he could hear a mosquito when she finally spoke, “Why do you have to
make things so difficult, Tremolo the Tale-Teller?”
Tremolo
cackled, “Why does the sun shine in the sky?” And before she could answer—or more
likely ask another unanswerable question—he added, “Why were you weeping there,
all alone under that tree, at this time of night? Tremolo wonders, oh yes,
Tremolo wonders.”
An
ember burned in her eyes as she rose to her feet, and it was with a defiant
look that she answered, “You know what, Tremolo? I’ll tell you. Not here, but I’ll
tell you. Follow me now, quickly, and I’ll tell you.”
And
with that she turned on her heel towards the exit, Tremolo following fairly
behind.
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