The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,70
he knew at once, upon looking up at the jingle of the bell announcing a new customer, that things were about to get a lot more diverting.
Bustling into the shop like a fairy-tale figure sprung to life was a humpbacked dwarf dressed all in black who pulled himself along with a pair of slender but stout walking sticks, pivoting with each ‘step’ on twisted legs that, wrapped in metal braces, seemed more like clever machines than appendages of flesh and blood. He was lean as a whippet, with a head whose wild mane of white hair made it seem even larger than it actually was, as out of proportion to the stunted body beneath as the heavy head of a sunflower to its stalk. And as the head to the body, so the nose to the head: a carbuncled, tuberous growth that appeared to have usurped the place of a nose; and upon that prodigious organ, nestled there like a black and gold insect, a pair of spectacles so darkly tinted that it seemed impossible anyone could see through them.
Yet see through them he obviously could, and did, for the man – the apparition, rather, since fifteen-year-old Quare could scarcely credit what his own eyes were showing him – had stumped across the shop floor, bringing all conversation to a halt. Even Mr Symonds drew back from the new arrival as he came to stand beside him. Without so much as a by-your-leave, the man tilted his leonine face up at Quare – he scarcely topped the desk; yet Quare realized that the man was not in truth a dwarf, but only so hunched over as to be indistinguishable from one – and demanded, in a voice that had more than a touch of the lion in it as well, ‘Are you Quare?’
Quare gazed back open-mouthed.
‘Well?’ the man continued. ‘It seems a simple enough question. Are you or are you not the apprentice Daniel Quare?’
At that, he found his voice. ‘I am, sir. If you would but wait a moment, I will be with you as soon as I finish with this gentleman.’
‘I would see your master,’ said the man as if he hadn’t heard. He struck the floor with one of his sticks for emphasis, like a goat stamping a hoof, at which Quare started and Emily gave a cry from across the room. Quare glanced at her and saw that the poor creature was white as a sheet and close to tears, at which indignation rose in his breast.
‘See here, my good sir,’ interjected Mr Symonds before Quare could speak, recalled by his daughter’s distress to his paternal and churchly authority. ‘There is no need to be so brusque. Young Mr Quare is having a look at my clock, and—’ He got no further.
‘Clock?’ interrupted the man. ‘You call that a clock?’ He seemed amused and affronted in equal measure. ‘Why, I would wager that object is more accurate in its timekeeping now than it ever has been!’
‘More accurate?’ the vicar echoed, uncomprehending. ‘But it is broken, as you see.’
Quare rolled his eyes. ‘The gentleman refers to the fact that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr Symonds. ‘Why, bless my soul, so it is …’
Again the petulant stamp of a walking stick. Again a girlish cry.
Quare felt himself losing the reins of his temper. He looked to Mr Symonds, but the man appeared to be engrossed in contemplation of the horological profundity just revealed to him. Perhaps, Quare thought, he was considering how best to work it into a sermon. At any rate, the task of dealing with this unpleasant little man had now fallen to him.
‘I ask you again to wait your turn,’ he said as politely as he could manage. ‘And to refrain, if you would, from upsetting Miss Symonds’ – this with a significant look in Emily’s direction.
The grotesque creature swivelled its body to regard the young lady in question, who burst into tears. ‘My pardon,’ he said, though there was nothing apologetic in his tone, ‘if my appearance has upset you, Miss Symonds.’ And here he sketched a bow, or something redolent of a bow; Quare could not decide if he meant the gesture to be as much of a mockery as it appeared, or whether his deformities, and the sticks and braces meant to correct them, rendered his movements, regardless of the intent behind them, naturally – or, rather, unnaturally – graceless and parodistic. ‘I am but as