Friday, January the 27th, 2006
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Episode five in our daily serialisation of The Immense Duckpond Pamphlet
In the scullery, Aminadab sat slumped at the table. His elbows rested on a grimy place-mat, one of a set depicting scenes of Thuringian history. Blodgett had stacked most of the set on the dresser, leaving two on the table. Aminadab's mat showed the execution of Konrad Schmid, flagellant King of Thuringia who predicted—inaccurately, as it turned out—that the Last Judgement would occur in 1369. In colours that were no longer vivid, Schmid's gruesome face leered out of the flames which were about to engulf him. The six other heretics who were burned alongside him at Nordhausen in 1368 were curiously absent.
Aminadab, who had poured his cold tea down the sink, was about to fall asleep when Euwige entered the room. She was wrapped in a blotchy shawl, so huge that it trailed along the floor behind her. Her corduroy boots had been strengthened with scraps of inexpertly-sewn hide from an unidentified quadruped. As she removed her hat, she shuddered, her sightless eyes directed at the ceiling.
“You must come with me,” she said. Aminadab looked up.
“Shall I bring my luggage?” he asked.
“It might well be for the best,” replied Euwige, in a mysterious tone.
Aminadab loaded himself with his three suitcases, haversack, two satchels, purses, vanity bag, cloth hammock, bandbox, badger tin, caddies and punnets, gunny sack, reticule, vasculum and duffel bag. Tottering under the weight, he made to follow Euwige, but was immediately halted in his tracks when the scullery door banged shut behind her. She did not respond to his cries for help, so he was forced to drop the vanity bag, bandbox, reticule and one of the punnets, wedge the door open with a handy utensil, pick up the items he had let fall—noting that the bandbox was irreparably dented—and hurry after her. So bulky was the haversack, however, that Aminadab was unable to negotiate the doorway without a struggle, and by the time he was free Euwige had vanished around the corner of a sulphurous corridor. By the time he reached the spot, she was nowhere to be seen.
Thinking he could hear her shawl trailing across the floorboards somewhere in the distance, he followed on through dingy, unlit corridors, up and down rotten staircases, through rooms empty of furniture or life, past gigantic indoor fountains, conservatories filled with stinking poisonous spiky foliage, lumber rooms, bookcases stacked with editions of the novels of Ayn Rand, cavernous halls, storerooms full of half-dismantled tricycles, larders crammed with tins of soup, chambers, parlours and cubicles, ventilation shafts, dust holes and laundry rooms.
Hours passed before he admitted to himself that he was lost.