Small Miracles

Peter Kettle 29 The Avenue, Lewes, Sussex, Bn7 1Qt.
Tel: 01273 472301 Fax: 01273 471685 Email: kettle@clara.co.uk

Small Miracles

At three years old Theo decided to go on disguising himself as a child,
and he discovered Montaigne.
In the hot dusty attic a book lay open on a chair. The sun poured in
with enough heat to curl its pages, which sent shadows like claws
across the words. Trembling, sensing this book was important, Theo
looked away. He noticed dried bodies of flies on the windowsill. He
noticed the paint on the sill curled just like the pages, and the
shadows were again like claws. Turning back to the book he read the
essays of Montaigne at his usual pace, ten thousand words a minute.
Theo didn't know he read forty times faster than most people.
Finishing the book, he took it into the garden. Reading it again,
reaching the same pages that had sent the clawed shadows across the
words, similar shadows passed over them. A crow caused the coincidence,
passing low across the garden without wing beat or sound. It perched on
a fencepost, eyes fixed on Theo. The incident bookmarked Montaigne
forever. Looking at the bird, Theo heard a click. He watched as a big
flint turned over in the heat. Closing his eyes, he committed the
pages, the crow, and the stone to memory. He read Montaigne a third
time, without opening his eyes.
His parents had died a month ago. Montaigne helped him understand why.
Or perhaps more important, why not.
Throughout summer Theo read and observed the stones, birds, lizards,
weather. The crow sat in the tree, reminding him of Montaigne. Theo
learned French and read Montaigne without the gauze of translation. A
new, vast, enquiring intelligence reached the age of four that autumn.
The Russians sent him a sprawl of poetry and prose. Akhmatova, Chekov,
Bulgarkov, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky. And Raskolnikov won Theo's
heart.
Until Pushkin! Who came softly through a slim volume of poetry, bound
in blue cloth, edged with gold, slipcased in shagreen. Theo read
Belinsky's metaphor for Pushkin, 'he was the sea all other Russian
poets flowed into.' (Schweitzer said a similar thing about Bach, but
after Belinsky. Theo, burdened with remembering everything, began
making such comparisons young.) Pushkin taught Theo Russian the way
Montaigne taught him French. Theo translated Pushkin into English, in
the edition we most prize today.
Theo, with some shame, still dribbled.
Theo went to the attic and found a grubby paperback. Don Quixote
revealed another dimension. And Cervantes taught him Spanish.
Then came Shakespeare. Who taught Theo nothing. Shakespeare
transcended teaching. Shakespeare's infinite blending of word, image,
thought and action, the universality of his imagination, helped Theo
resolve the contradiction of his mature mind within a child's body.
Life even seemed a little less perturbing.
How small was this four year old? Not as small as he thought himself
to be. Theo imagined himself no bigger than an average cat's head, and
thought himself too young to grieve for his parents. Mike and Tom, his
older twin brothers, would teach him about grief.
Theo wrote a novel at six. It made him and his brothers rich. Mike and
Tom used this wealth but never stopped resenting the child who provided
it. It was galling to be indebted to a brother seventeen years younger,
and at least a century wiser. Theo bought books, and whole
libraries.
********************************************************************
Vita arrived when Theo was nine, in a winter storm after thick snow.
Bitter winds ransacked the hills, rattled the trees and varnished the
landscape with ice. Intending to feed his bookmarker crow, Theo noticed
the rattle of the branches matched the crows' voice. Winter lightning
cracked theatrically in the dim light. He felt wonder, but no fear.
Trees cast daggered shadows across the snow. He thought of Lear and
Prospero.
The lightning outlined an elf-like woman; dirty, profoundly cold,
small as him. Theo felt the same as that first day in the attic, when
the shadows went across Montaigne. She was 'No bigger than an average
cat's head,' he thought, as he held meat for the crow. Bookmarker
kraarked from his icy branch, flew down to Theo's wrist and took the
meat before it froze in the boy's gloved hand.
'I'm Vita,' said the tiny woman. She was concentrating on the bird. It
was eating the meat she craved for herself. The bird stopped feeding,
stropped its beak on Theo's shoulder, and flew away. Theo and the woman
looked at each other with a kind of recognition. Each identified with
the slight figure before them. Sympathy made him protective; protection
became possessive. Possession became love. She moved inside the house,
inside Theo's life, joining Montaigne, Pushkin, the crow, the flint,
Cervantes and Shakespeare. Like a blade, she entered his heart. But she
also filled his head. She thrust inside him like the heartwood of a
tree. Their lives changed.
Writers brought understanding and wonder. Crow brought wildness. Flint
showed time. Vita stimulated irrational, emotional, desire. Theo knew
his freakish intelligence was dubiously beneficial. Instincts, emotions
and feelings were there, like yours or mine. Intelligence cannot
immunize the needs of the body. Vita's hair was raven black. She was
bird-like in movement. She picked her way to the kitchen. Skin? Ivory.
Face? Framed by darkness. Looking through sloe eyes she could not know
the effect she had on him. The stove warmed her, cats gravitated to
her. Theo, transfixed, crawled in abject obeisance, like the cats. The
blade lodged and he liked it. It stung, but felt good. Sexual longing
was new. He had no grasp of passion, no emotional experience or
understanding.
'I'm eleven years older than you,' she said, 'Get me a towel.'
Where are towels kept? The housekeeper had been unable to get from the
city because of the weather. Mike and Tom were away. Theo and Vita were
alone. He found a towel, brought it to her. She stepped out of cold
clothes and stood before him, unselfconscious, like a child. She let
him drape the warm towel around her. The mirror showed how small they
were, Theo an inch taller. He was trembling, more than her. When she
had warmed she ceased trembling but his trembling continued. He'd never
known such absorption outside a book or a piece of music. Her eyes grew
larger in his eyes. He looked into them as he had never looked into an
eye. He cared for Vita more than for himself. He touched her cheek and
felt gratitude at its growing warmth and colour. And terror at the
effect it had upon him. Nothing happened beyond that touch for an hour.
Another lesson. It was the first hour he could not remember passing, an
hour that stretched beyond his freakishly intellectual, conscious,
self. Yet it seemed a moment. She smelled of earth and stung of
naturalness.
The kiss broke through that hour. He still feels it in his heart's
core.
'You smell,' he said, 'Briars. Plants and animals. Dung and death.
Fruit and flesh. Sweet, wild, sourness. More lovely than summer.'
'Sentimental boy,' she murmured.
Vita was stronger than Theo, despite her frail looks. She commanded
his next move and many after it. He became her subject for the next
months, taught him to love; ardent, physical, peremptory, she
orchestrated the inexperienced boy and opened herself and him to a
higher sensuality. For him, it was another example of Shakespearean
ineffability. For Vita it was a wordless transaction that enthralled
her. With minimum spoken language they entered upon a new phase of
communication; physical love. It had wisdom, eloquence and something
beyond.
Vita took his hand, led him to a bathroom, took his clothes off,
slipped off her robe. Water swirled into the bath. Crystals melted.
Vita stepped in and pulled Theo with her. They soaped each other. He
marvelled at her wet rubbery softness, the swelling dark nipples, the
shining eyes. She gently stroked him. He came in seconds, and she
laughed. They held each other and laughed into the bedroom. She guided
this boy, who was delighted to be her pupil. Many climactic moments
followed.
Weeks passed. He felt stupid, and enjoyed the novelty. It was another
lesson. From the first she offered ordinary humanity, drawing him out
of isolation. She bestowed wisdom from the world of the senses. Showed
him different wonders. The world changed utterly. Learning - reading -
all that had meant most to him, became merely part. She integrated into
his life, and changed aspects of it forever.
Mike resented her intrusion on their easy lives. Tom, more than
resentful, fell in lust with Vita as an object; he wanted her to be
subject to him, slaved to his desires. He kept this hidden, but
feelings cankered into a noxious fixation, consuming him like a banked
fire. Mike moved into the stable lodge, where he could look after his
horses. Where he could look at her.
Vita said, 'I never knew my mother. Raised by my dad, who died.'
Theo found a vast woman, her size and bulk scarcely credible as Vita's
mother. Theo brought them together. Vita had no memory of her mother,
but her mother remembered her. The mother could not speak through
excess feelings, could only see Vita through tears. The mother touched
her, reached for her daughter in supplication, atonement, and a
grieving over lost time. Vita was unmoved until the photographs. She
cried, gave her mother money. Mother left and Vita said, 'Theo, come to
bed.'
She loved him as much as any receiver of adoration can love the
adorer; but after such a cathartic day, she wanted more than sex. He
was overwhelmed at her desire for him, which came close to his need for
her for the first time. That night they adored, seared and soared
through something new. Time was not with them, it was of them. They
became time's masters. So they felt. So it seemed.
'The time of my life,' she whispered, as sun pricked through curtains.
The night had made deepest sense of deepest feelings. The heartwood had
grown. The morning was hot. They went to the pool and made love. It
seemed impossible to end their loving. There was no emptying. Each
finish led to increase. Each time their bodies parted strengthened
their appetite. They fell on each other with renewed love, an ascension
of feeling. Vita looked ravishing and ravished, with a hectic bruised
beauty. Her lips were swollen and reddened; Theo's were too. Their
bodies bore marks they were proud to wear. Love is inadequate for what
they were to each other. When they reached a satiety that demanded
sleep, they slept. Close as two people can.
Vita said, 'I must ride, by myself.'
She rode the palomino. Mike was riding on the course, and Vita
followed through miles of countryside. In a woody part she collided
with Mike. He was killed instantly, neck broken. Crushed beneath the
horse, Vita was paralysed and could recall nothing.
********************************************************************
The doctor took Theo aside. 'She's been raped.'
Vita could move her upper body, but all was agony. Surgeons offered no
hope for improvement. Theo's grief was limitless. His need for revenge
upon the attacker she could not remember grew. The two passions
released the creativity within. Theo saw she could only be free of pain
through something that would render her weightless and support her
utterly. There was no thought in his head but her comfort and repair.
Such was Theo's passion, so powerful his rage, so inexhaustible his
energy, he invented an impossible metal. Now, Theo found out why he had
bought libraries. Eclectic, untrammelled by convention, he looked
through books, researched the internet, cross referenced all he found
within ancient volumes in obscure languages. He synthesised and
iterated circuitously, relentlessly. He pursued unlooked for
connections and collations. And found the joins.
In a vast book, the paper friable, the spine cracked, he found the
story of Hermes' quest for a weightless alloy. The quest never got
beyond theory, but the theory was - oh so hermetic. The alloy offered
lightness beyond measure of lightness. The theory was all Theo needed.
Without the prejudices of formal learning, he made his own quest
through metallurgy, engineering, chemistry and physics. His desire to
help Vita converted dream and theory into fact and solution. He did it
for Vita; he named it after her; levitanium.
The first sanguine ooze of liquid levitanium splashed from the
crucible and - hovered! Congealed and still hovered! As it cooled it
turned from blood red to silver. No power; no emission, no energy
input. Theo looked at the material and realised Vita's world had
changed. And ours with it. Theo breathed on it. It floated sideways,
utterly weightless, accelerating until it struck a wall. Theo
fingertipped it gently upwards. It accelerated again, until it smacked
against the highest point of the ceiling. It stayed there.
Theo produced more. Increasing the temperature made it transparent. He
made enough to create a fully articulated armature for Vita. She lived
because of it for months; an impossible time, the doctor said. She
could move without pain, but she wanted something else. 'I want to love
you again, as we did before the accident. I crave love as much as life.
Life and love are one thing,' she said, 'both are essential. Help
me.'
With practice she grew familiar with the cradle. She touched her body
again, explored her twisted legs, and looked at her reflection in the
mirror. Her face was still beautiful. She felt her sex for the first
time since the accident. And as she explored the extent of her ruin,
she changed again. The hidden memory became vivid. Big Tom tearing at
her. Theo watched her face grow ashen. Her great dark eyes engulfed
him, became the eyes that had enchanted and captured his heart. As her
memory revived her voice died. He swam within those eyes, shared the
griefs she could not speak, tasted the salt tears. The devastation of
her body reflected in her face and imparted a message to him. Her
eloquent look said she could not, would not wish to, exist without
their love. The levitanium cradle, jewel like and lacily flexible,
allowed her to lift her hands, her delicate ivory hands, to her
grieving face. She pressed her eyes and Theo saw tears move around the
fingertips and trail down her cheeks. She could say nothing, but
indicated a need for pen and paper. She wrote slowly, with
difficulty.
'Dearest T, I must tell about the accident. I'd lost it, but touching
my pussy brought it back. I collided with Mike's horse. Tom came from
the trees, ignored his dead brother and raped me, injured as I was.
Aware of his great bulk on top of me, tearing me, wounding me, I
fainted. He choked my sounds and feelings, damaged me, tore me, stole
my memory. All I sensed was regret. We could not love each other again.
Then nothing until I was in hospital, you beside me. I cannot speak
because of the rape, the anger, the regret at losing our love. I love
you, love you, love you. I can't forgive Tom.'
Vita died after writing this, but the note delivered her defiler into
the consciousness of the greatest intellect the world has seen.
********************************************************************
Theo, a manchild compared with bulky Tom, contained his rage. Slammed
an iron cover on his emotions, welded it beyond detection, but plotted
revenge. Despite his physical weakness compared with Tom, he would
devise a fearsome reckoning. Leaving Vita's body floating in the
tethered levitanium cradle he stood at the window. Tom worked the
horses in the paddock. Horses! They would provide the power he needed.
Tom's greatest love would be Theo's agents of death. A vulgar
tit-for-tat, but satisfying to Theo, now possessed by a cold fury
unknown in his short life. He would reenact the martyrdom of Saint
Hippolytus. Trap his brother. Secure him with ropes, tied to his
beloved horses. Drive the horses in different directions. Destroy his
brother, revenge Vita, and cause his brother pain and death from the
creatures he worshipped. Oh yes.
He left the house and walked to the stables. He watched Tom and hid
his rage. As Theo spoke of Vita's death, Tom's porcine eyes looked with
infinite dullness at his young brother. Theo's desire to kill his
brother changed to contempt. His death would not bring Vita back. Theo
plotted a different retribution. He would exile Tom from the family
estate. He would send the evidence - the pathologist's report, Vita's
note - and leave the case to the law. He would not kill dull Tom; but
he would kill himself.
Theo sent details of the alloy to every scientific institute in the
world. He revealed all he could on the internet.
And he created the intricate but simple levitanium craft he is
ascending in now. He is rising to eventual death, abandoning the boy
inside him. Eleven years and one hundred days into his extraordinary
life, he is passing into a limitless unknown with an undimmed interest
in the journey.
'This is for Vita, lying in my arms. We are taking the strangest
journey made by humans.'
The craft lifted and accelerated exponentially. The air began thinning
outside the bubble of levitanium. Theo will be the first to die from
this alloy made from common ingredients. Needing no power, it's
ultimate capabilities unknown, its absolute velocity about to be
gauged, levitanium will change our world. What will happen when this
craft moves into a measureless velocity will transcend superficial
ideas about speed. Maybe space will fold into a new time. The machine
will send data until something stops it. Will it transcend thought? A
strange thought for Theo, who has known nothing but thought. This
extraordinary journey begins as the Earth's pull ceases, and infinity's
pull increases infinitely.