JOHN OF THE RHINE
Margaret Taylor
steamtrainsandghosts.wordpress.com
Copyright 2013 Margaret Taylor
Cover art Copyright 2013 Kelsey King
First, color exploded. Yellow and blue and green streaked through the world all shot through with black and sparks like being bludgeoned unconscious but in reverse. The river mud moaned and was shocked to find that it had lungs working inside of it, bellowsing out and then its whole body spasmed into a cough. Its balance tipped and it flung its arms out to save itself – arms!
Something cool pressed up against the river mud's back. It could feel that its head was further off the floor than its feet and its body lay tilted against the cool thing. The mud opened its eyes. It was in a small room that had plaster walls and water stains that weeped down from a corner of the ceiling. Shelves wrapped all the way around the room, and in the middle, there was a table with strange devices. And there was a man.
But how did it know that this was a man? The river mud couldn't remember much before a few moments ago, just dim semi-sentient thoughts, the deep pressure of its currents, sedimentation, the glance of sunlight on its surface. And the fishermen who had cast boats off from its banks and dropped hooklines down into it. Yes, those had been men. But this man didn't look like the fishermen. He was small in stature and wore a white shirt and a silk waistcoat. He stood absolutely still with his mouth partway open.
The man moved suddenly, lifting a book he'd been holding. "My name is Mr. Kaufman," he said. He appeared to be reading from it. "Your name is John. You work for me."
No, I'm not, I'm a river, John wanted to say, but he hadn't figured out how to make his tongue work yet.
He tried to move again, but the motion turned into a lurch, and he felt arms and legs flailing and he didn't know how to get them going in the right order and he was going to lose track of himself… Then came a stomach-dropping feeling of falling, and the next thing John knew he was in a pile on the floor.
Hands slid under John's arms and hauled him to his feet. John wobbled and held onto the side of the workroom table.
"There," said Mr. Kaufman. "Do you have it now?"
John nodded.
Mr. Kaufman withdrew. He went around to stand on the other side of the table, the book still clutched to his chest.
"You're going to be my assistant," Mr. Kaufman said. "You're going to help me with a series of experiments on the nature of light." He pointed at a folded-up pile of cloth on the table. "These are clothes for you. Right now, familiarize yourself with the surroundings and I'll be back with more instructions later."
Mr. Kaufman made a nod, then climbed the stairs that led out of the workroom in rather a hurry.
I wonder if he's afraid of me, John thought.
He hobbled around the table and picked up the top folded thing. It was a shirt. John was grateful that he could figure out what to do with it based on its shape, then he unfolded a pair of trousers and pulled those on as well.
John proceeded to open and close the doors of every cupboard in the room. He found a great variety of crockery in there: mortars, pestles, bowls, pots. There were metal stands for holding the bowls up, jars, funny-looking glass bottles with downward curving spouts. He looked behind the slab where he'd woken up a few minutes ago. He poked the fireplace with a pair of tongs.
On the table there were a lantern and some sheets of stiff paper, one of which had a pair of slits cut into it. That was odd.
So he was alive now. John peered at the flesh on his arms. So far, being alive was turning out to be a lot more interesting than being a river. He probed around the inside of his mouth with his tongue and discovered what felt like a piece of paper, folded up many times and jammed into the space between his back teeth and his cheek. He stuck a finger into his mouth to prod it. At the touch, a wave of dizziness and weakness came over him and he pulled away quickly.
He didn't know much about the world yet, but he seemed to have been born with a solid stock of common sense. Whatever that paper was, it was important and he shouldn't touch it.
He'd familiarized himself as much as he could, so he took up a candle and climbed the workroom stairs. He found himself in a hallway in a house. In front there were a parlor and a dining room with dust covers over all the furniture and the curtains drawn tight. John pulled one of the curtains back and found that outside, the world was night. He lifted the candle higher. Spiderwebs in the chandelier. It was as if nobody lived here.
He doubled around to the back of the house and found a kitchen with a ruined, soot-stained fireplace, another smaller room, and stairs leading up to a second story.
John didn't know what to do now. He went back to the parlor and sat down in one of the chairs. The fabric of the dust cover crinkled underneath him. He would have to stay here and wait until Mr. Kaufman gave him orders.
He was hungry.
John sat up in surprise. He'd overheard the fishermen talking about hungry during their long afternoons on his shores, but he never thought it would happen to him. But this feeling in his middle couldn't be anything else. He thought back to the kitchen with its layer of dust coating all its surfaces like tarnished silver. There was nothing at all to eat in this house.
John held the candle up again and climbed the stairs to the second story.
One of the rooms up here had its door ajar. Light leaked through the gap and spilled across the floor. John pushed the door open.
Inside he found a study that was as full of strange things as the workroom in the basement: charts, prisms, curly glass flasks, bottles. There were shelves of books, candles for reading light, and a bed sequestered against the back wall. Long curtains covered the wall from floor to ceiling.
Mr. Kaufman sat at a desk reading the same book John had seen him with earlier. He looked up with a start at John in the doorway.
"I want to ask you for money," John said. His tongue felt clumsy as he tried to speak for the first time in his life. "Is there a market here? I want to ask you for money so I can go to the market and buy food."
For several seconds Mr. Kaufman didn't answer. Then he turned to the book, flipped a few pages over in it, and studied it. "It didn't say that you were going to need to eat."
If Mr. Kaufman wouldn't help him, what was he going to do?
"Well. Very well," Mr. Kaufman said. "If that's how it is, I can grant you an allowance for it." He dug in the pocket of his waistcoat and pulled out a purse. "I confess I don't know how much to– Maybe this much." He dumped several coins out onto the desk.
As John came forward to take it he thought that his new master was a very strange man. The fishermen who sailed over him never acted like this. Mr. Kaufman placed the coins in John's hand and then pulled his own hand away.
"And when you need more, come and ask me for it," Mr. Kaufman said.
It was not an invitation to talk any more. John understood that it was time for him to leave.
#
Dawn had broken by the time John left the house. Mr. Kaufman's house sat alone, surrounded by trees that towered against the deep blue sky. A smell like crushed greens rose in the brightening air. A road led away from the house, so John stepped onto it and started to walk.
A few minutes into the journey, John discovered that his trousers had pockets in them. What a marvelous idea! He put the coins into one of the pockets and kept going.
The sun rose clear and bright and turned the trees' leaves golden green. The leaves were still halfway furled in their buds and small tender things were sprouting out of the earth. The soil under his feet was wet. John found as he walked that he didn't like the sun, for it dried his flesh out, but here in the woods there was plenty of chance to walk in the shade.
After a good hour, the road connected to a bigger one and he came upon fields and then a scatter of wooden houses. The town smelled like trash, tar, and rotten fish, and there was a bustle everywhere. What a variety of people – old men, young women, children tugging at skirts, workmen in uniforms. All of them paid John no notice. He seemed to be able to pass as a man. A bald man with a strange complexion.
John caught sight of a glint between a couple of houses. He ran forward then, down a steep cobbled road to a place of docks and piers and a river. The river! His Rhine! The sun streamed off of it, and faraway a steamboat clacked and gouted out steam, his chest was heaving, it was overwhelming. This was being alive!
A few moments later John realized that there was a man at a stall at the edge of the piers. A savory smell wafted over to him. The man was selling little meat pies, each one the size of a hand. John took the money out and gave it to the man. The man frowned, handed most of the money back, then wrapped one of the pies up in paper and gave it to John.
It was wonderful. The pie was hot and salty and dripped juice onto John's hands. He ate carefully so as not to dislodge the paper in his mouth, but that didn't stop him from enjoying it. When he was done, he bought another pie and put it into his pocket.
Then that solid common sense came back to John and told him that he couldn't walk for an hour every day just to buy pies. He climbed back up the hill to the town's center. First he bought a floppy straw hat and put it on to keep the sun off of his face and neck, then he bought a bag. Then he wandered among the shops there, focusing on things that already looked like they were food: apples, sausage, bread, cheese. But when he passed a barrel of turnips at a greengrocer's shop, he was stumped.
He waved to a young lady who was sweeping up around the crates of potatoes. She set down the broom and walked over to him.
"These don't look good," John said. He picked up a turnip and turned it over in his hand. The thing was as hard as a rock. "How do you make them good?"
"So you're a bachelor?" the lady said.
John couldn't see how being a bachelor had anything to do with not knowing how to cook a turnip. "I'm Mr. Kaufman's assistant," he said.
The lady smiled. It was a pretty smile. She had a round face and black hair that fell around her shoulders, and she curved in a way that none of the fishermen did. "It's about time he had some help." She took the turnip from him. "You boil these in a stew."
"That's all I have to do?"
"Yes."
"Then I want to buy some."
The lady took the turnips over to the till and weighed them out for him. "What's your name?" she said.
"John."
"Milla," she said. "I'm minding this place for my folks."
John paid for the turnips and put them in his bag with the other things, then left with a buoyant feeling. He was definitely going back there.
#
When John returned to Mr. Kaufman's house, he bounded up the steps and set his bag down just inside the door and hung his hat up on a hook. Motes of dust glimmered in the light that the door let in. Mr. Kaufman was nowhere to be seen. John poked around in all of the rooms as well as the workshop, but he couldn't find him. He went upstairs to Mr. Kaufman's study and found the door shut tight. It wouldn't open.
John knocked. No answer.
How was he supposed to do his work if his master wouldn't give him instructions? John huffed in frustration. Well, he knew what he could do in the meanwhile. This place was a mess.
Since he could see no reason the air in this house had to smell like old mold, he flung the curtains wide and opened all the windows. Next he took the dust covers off of the furniture, folded them, and put them in a cupboard. Propped against the back wall of the cupboard, covered in a thin film of dust, there was a broom. Aha! John picked it up. He could see how this thing worked! He attacked the floors, stopping at times to nibble on the apples and cheese, but he saved the turnips for later.
Shortly after sunset, John was rubbing at a wardrobe with a cloth when he felt a prickle on the back of his neck. He turned around to find Mr. Kaufman standing on the stairs. How had the man gotten up so quietly?
"What have you done to my house?" Mr. Kaufman said.
"I'm cleaning it up," said John.
Mr. Kaufman's eyes opened wide and he ran down the stairs. "Not the curtains!" He went to the nearest window and hauled them closed, then the next. "Never, never leave the curtains open!"
John stood with his rag suspended over the wardrobe.
"Go! Go close them now!"
John hurried to do as he was told. Why was Mr. Kaufman mad at him? He came back hangdog. "I'm sorry."
"You didn't know." Mr. Kaufman rubbed at the side of his head like something hurt him there. "You may clean if you want, but leave the curtains alone. Come on, let's get to work."
Mr. Kaufman went back upstairs and got a couple of books from his room, then they both went down to the workshop.
"The first thing you'll need to do to be my assistant is to learn as much as you can," Mr. Kaufman said. He thumped the books down on the worktable. One of them said On the Corpuscular Theory of Light on the spine and the other said Principia.
"Parts of these have been translated," Mr. Kaufman said, "But in time I'll expect you to learn how to speak English and French. Those nations are home to some of the world's best minds. America looks promising."
He opened Corpuscular Theory and slid it across the table to John. Words were printed on the pages in block type. In the margins, there were handwritten translations by Mr. Kaufman into German. John puzzled through one of these haltingly, but he was surprised he could read at all. It had a lot of words that he didn't understand.
Eventually John set the book down. "I'm so tired."
"You need to sleep, too." Mr. Kaufman said it more like a statement than a question.
John tensed up, waiting for Mr. Kaufman to tell him what he'd done wrong this time.
"John, you are not at all what I was expecting," Mr. Kaufman said.
John hung his head.
Mr. Kaufman was silent for a long time. "Half the night," he said finally. John didn't understand what he meant. "At midnight, you join me down here and we'll get to work. And you have half the day. You can spend the mornings to do whatever it is you need to do in that town."
John brightened. Maybe Mr. Kaufman wasn't as mad at him after all.
#
The next morning, John woke up with corduroy pressed up against his face and a crick in his neck. The parlor was as dim as ever, but he could sense that it was morning. He levered himself out of the easy chair where he'd curled up for the night, shook himself, and got ready to start the second day of his life.
Mr. Kaufman had vanished again. John wondered if that was simply his way. He was a very odd master, there was no mistake about that.
That rule about curtains didn't apply to doors, now did it? John propped open the front and back with chairs for the light and the air, then he rubbed his hands. Today he would attack the kitchen.
A variety of pots and pans hung suspended from a rack bolted to the wall, some of them with their handles broken and all of them coated in a brown-black, greasy dust. John got out the biggest basin he could find, filled it with water from the pump outside, then put as many pans as he could fit into it. He seized that broom from yesterday and swept the ashes out of the fireplace. Then he turned the broom over and stuck it up the chimney, dislodged a couple of old birds' nests and threw them out. With a rag soaked in water he scrubbed the fireplace down.
John was whistling by the time he headed outside to chop wood for a proper fire. He would be able to do this right. He'd be a good assistant to Mr. Kaufman, he was sure of it. He hauled an armload of wood pieces back inside and put them in the hearth, then stopped and scratched his head. The matches Mr. Kaufman used to light the candles in the workshop! He fetched them and managed to get a fire going after a few tries.
When all seemed ready, John hung one of th
e scrubbed pots over the fire, filled it with water, and plopped the turnips in. He waited. He paced the floor of the parlor and dining room and every once in a while came back to the stew to prod it.
After two hours, the outsides of the turnips had turned to a gooey white mush while the insides were as hard as they ever were. John fished one out and tasted it. The stew was so terrible that he had to dump the whole thing out in the woods.
#
When John came down the basement stairs to start work for the night, he found Mr. Kaufman by the table with a candle in his hand. The peculiar apparatus John had seen on his first night was there: the lantern, the card with the slits in it, a broader sheet of paper, all set up on wire stands in a line. Mr. Kaufman beckoned him over.
"I want to show you something," he said.
John descended the last couple of stairs. Mr. Kaufman struck a match and lit the lantern, then lowered its shade until it was almost shut. He put out the candle.
John was plunged into blackness and at first he could see nothing at all. Slowly, his eyes adjusted and he could make out the surface of the table in ghostly fashion: lantern, card, and paper. One feeble beam escaped the lantern and shone onto the card with the two slits in it. Beyond, the light splayed onto the card paper in a beautiful pattern of light and dark bands, bright in the middle and fading away to the edges. Like ripples on the surface of the Rhine.
John looked back up at Mr. Kaufman.
"It shouldn't be able to do that," Mr. Kaufman said.
"Why not?"
"Look here." Mr. Kaufman pointed at the card with the slits. "This forces the light to split. In some places, when it comes back together, it adds to itself. Those are the bright bands. In some places it destroys itself. Why? Why should light destroy itself?"
"I don't know, why?" John said.
"I don't know."
John looked up, startled, at the barely-visible form of Mr. Kaufman. He had a feeling that he was learning something new about his master.
"Alchemy! Bah!" Mr. Kaufman said. "It's been passed down since the days of Hermes Trismegistus without question. I want to know about the whys of things, John. There's a rail line coming from Koblenz and it's going to run right through this town and it's going to bring the modern world with it. I intend to be part of that modern world."