Spirits of Christmas

It was five minutes to five and already dark. Jasper looked through a pane of the window on which frost was just beginning to swirl its florals. He hated to miss the man with his little horse tending the gaslight, but the man had been early today and the lamp below the office was already lit. A Hansom cab was turning the corner up ahead and the clop of the horse was music to Jasper’s ears. But the sound of his own name ended this reverie.

Jasper turned towards Kelsey with a slowness that wound her tighter than she already was. Though he’d learned that moving quickly in these circumstances simply wound her in a different direction.

—Did you get my text?

—I haven’t looked at my phone. It seems strange to text when you’re sitting three feet from me on the other side of the wall, and could shout the message just as effectively.

—Is shouting your preferred communication platform?

—Shouted information is transmitted in a package I don’t have to go looking for. And the sentiments contained are usually unambiguous.

—You leach energy from others, Jasper. Have you been told this?

—

—Jasper?

—Sorry. I thought that was a test. I was endeavoring not to leach energy.

—My question was, did you call the printer to see if the cover proofs for the David Beckham biography were ready?

—Yes. I called them.

—And?

—It went to voicemail.

—And did you try another contact there. Or e-mail?

—I didn’t want to sound needy and desperate.

—The deadline was this morning Jasper. The word deadline means needy and desperate.

—I can try them again.

—Yes you will. And then make me like you again.

—?

—

—Sorry, how am I—?

—Remember that Christmas story you wrote for our website last year. On this exact date?

—Yes I do, that was a satisfying diversion from—

—Jasper do you know why I haven’t fired you, when I should have fired you every day for the past year?

—I assume because you pay me so close to nothing that it’s not even legal, and you know I’m not ambitious enough to retain a labour lawyer and harm you.

—Believe it or not Jasper, people with whom you share those characteristics are a dime a dozen. It’s bullies like me who are in short supply. No Jasper. That Christmas story you wrote a year ago gave us a 70 percent increase in web traffic last December. It’s hard to measure how that increased book orders but it obviously did.

—Well, I’m glad to have—

—Deliver another by 9:00 tomorrow.

—That’s a tall order.

—O. Henry was given two hours to produce The Gift of the Magi, and he didn’t have a computer.

Jasper was momentarily thrilled that she knew about a writer as old as O. Henry. For a moment Kelsey looked as attractive to Jasper as she did to most men.

—I’m off to a launch at Compton Press. JK Rowling is supposed to be there.

Jasper knew he should know who this was and slyly kept his response vague.

—Oh, is he in town?

—She lives in town.

Clearly not sly enough.

—9:00 tomorrow.

She turned on a tall and slender heel and went out.

*          *          *

Jasper closed the computer and brought out a lined notebook, a calligraphy pen, and a bottle of black ink. He opened the ink and dipped the pen and made a flourish that matched the curve of the frost on the pane.

Having no idea what to write he drew nearer to the glass. The sky was indigo, making a silhouette of the roofline, with its dormers and blackened chimney pots. Too late in the year for the thin sweeps who tended them and who always distracted him while he worked.

It was snowing in earnest now. Black flakes that flared into silver as they passed obliquely before the gaslight, and then became black again. He tried repeatedly to make his eyes follow one from a point just above the roofline all the way to the ground. But he always became distracted by a second flake and then a third and then…

He looked back at the clock. Five after five.

His eyes moved to the shelf that supported the few books he hadn’t sold. The thin collection of Roman lyric poetry, which had almost disintegrated from the use it got during his classics MA. Considerably less worn was the de natura rerum of Paracelsus, a work of dubious early medicine, and alchemical spells. It had been forced on Jasper by Dr. Eyas in the last months of Jasper’s aborted PhD. He got up and retrieved it and discovered his own writing in the book’s wide margins. The book had mostly served as scrap paper for grammar notes on the ablative absolute, the passive periphrastic and other abstruse constructions. Memories flooded back and his mind wandered through all manner of narrative possibilities that had nothing to do with Christmas.

Jasper returned the book to its shelf and looked back at the clock. 6:00. Kelsey had been gone for an hour and he still didn’t have the slightest idea for a story.

It was three weeks before Christmas. There must be a world of possibilities out there. He put on his long wool coat and muffler and left the office. Outside the metal door he keyed in the combination for the alarm and then went down the concrete stairs and into the street.

Whenever Kelsey called him he was usually still at the office. Even at midnight. For the few hours he was away each night he made sure to leave his phone at the office. He wanted a complete break from responsibilities.

*          *          *

How liberating to be back in the world he loved, far from of the constraints of commerce. A carriage passed, and he saw a finely dressed man and woman laughing together therein. You could see the woman’s breath in the December cold. There was something strange about them though. The happiness was amplified. Giddy.

Of course! The woman is married, but not to this man! Jasper thought. But what are they doing out on such a thoroughfare, and this time of evening, where everyone could see them? Surely they know that gossip spreads like influenza.

Jasper shook his head. The like of it now happened. He walked on.

—Please sir. Could you help us? Anything at all would be a godsend.

Two children in rags, huddled in the doorway of a bankrupt and boarded up haberdashery. So thin that their bulging eyes seemed liberated from their bodies—as their souls would be, soon enough. Eyes roving in desperate hope of help and in trembling fear of harm.

Such sights affected Jasper. He reached in his pocket and withdrew some large coins of a shape and denomination that felt unnatural. But the children were ecstatic when he presented them.

—That will keep us fed for days sir.

A year or so younger than the boy who’d spoken first. Likely his sister. They huddled together for warmth.

How could a mother abandon her children? Though you couldn’t just blame the women, who learn too late that men betray.

Jasper felt cold and then hated himself for his thought, given the sartorial state of the children. He moved quickly to the entrance of Stork and Cygnet, and through the door.

The crackling hearth. The festive crowd.

*          *          *

Jasper felt something pressing against his forehead when he opened his eyes. He was staring at rustic wood. Of course. He was at the table of a pub.

He raised his head to discover he’d been face down, asleep. A metal mug of ale propping him up by the forehead. Many more vessels stood in its vicinity, stiff and scattered like demobbed soldiers.

Necessity had awoken Jasper. He got up and staggered to the bar and asked directions to the facilities. The barman restrained a laugh as he gestured Jasper towards a back door.

The back door opened onto a square at the end of an alley. The smell of coalsmoke almost overwhelmed a worse smell. The area in question was divided by bales of hay. One side for horses, the other for men. Jasper deemed the question of hygiene beyond consideration and made the best of it.

Before reëntering the pub he wandered down the alley several paces to examine himself in the reflection of a window. The aperture of the mug had left a perfect circle on his forehead. But he was quickly distracted from this marking by the room on the other side of the glass.

He could have sworn he saw Kelsey talking amongst several well-heeled members of the publishing world. People Jasper knew he should be able to put names to, but couldn’t. Many of the guests were bringing things up on their phones and showing them to persons in their midst.

Jasper shook his head and moved back to the pub. His eyes must be playing tricks on him. You couldn’t get to such a place from here.

He reseated himself before the mugs he’d emptied, trying to regain some equilibrium. It would be best to pay up and leave, but he needed to summon up the strength.

The woman who’d served Jasper earlier sat down in the chair across from him.

—Hello?

—We were talking. You don’t sound like you remember.

—Of course I remember.

Though he didn’t.

—Well, it was memorable. I’ve never seen a man interested in a woman and making a bigger mess of it. That’s no small achievement in this place.

Patches of this previous interaction started to return to Jasper and then froze, like a failed photogravure print. She did look like a woman he’d approach, given the courage that spirits enable.

—I…can you refresh me …Nell…?

—

—Esther…?

—Amy.

—That was my next guess.

—Course it was. How about I give you a summary. You boasted that you have no financial prospects. That you aren’t assertive enough to make what you deserve in an industry that pays almost nothing anyway. That you can’t focus on your work. That you’ll be fired soon. And that you don’t have a family supporting you.

—I must have said it. It’s completely accurate.

—To add something of my own, you’re shorter than me and not the most attractive of men.

—Acquaintances and the mirror confirm this. Please continue.

—And yet after laying all this out, you said very confidently that we should get to know each other better.

—I operate on the belief that honesty is rare enough to be seductive.

—So I guess I’d better take you up on the offer before someone else does.

—Who can blame you.

—That zero in your forehead is perfect by the way.

—I prefer to think of it as a letter O, representing a state of continuous awe as I move through the world’s multifarious wonders.

—It’s a zero.

—

—Anyway, you’re exactly what I’m looking for. It’s way past last call and I’m inviting you home with me.

—Um.

—Yes?

—Before we go any further.

—?

—I’ll try and put this delicately.

—??

—Does your proposal involve a transfer of finances?

—Yeah.

—Because I fear that my—

—Check your wallet.

Jasper reached for his wallet and withdrew it. It seemed even thinner than it should be.

—I don’t understand I had—

—One of our regulars lifted it while you were passed out. He does that kind of thing a lot so I had an eye out for him. There was nothing in it though, so he threw it down in disgust just as I was sending Reginald over to turf him. You grunted a bit when I slipped it back in your waistcoat pocket.

—But I did have cash when I came in. And my bank card is gone too.

—Your what?

—I…This is very embarrassing.

—It would be a lot worse than embarrassing if I hadn’t covered your tab. So to answer your question, this proposal does involve a transfer of finances. Mine to you. Let’s get out of here.

*          *          *

Amy’s room was just that. Four walls. A door. A window. Jasper looked out of the window.

He saw the flare from a smith’s forge and men pounding in a rhythmic trio to rend a thing of iron into what it would become. Smoke belched from a broken chimney above the furnace, and wafted towards Amy’s window like a dark spirit.

—You know you’re the only man more interested in what’s across the street than in the woman who invited him home.

Jasper turned.

—It’s just that I’ve never—

He was going to say ‘never seen an actual blacksmith’ but caught himself and redrafted it into something not much better.

—In the middle ages the smiths and their families often escaped the black death. Rats hate the pounding of the hammers. They have incredibly sensitive ears.

—Your conversation gets better and better.

—Sorry. I—

—You’re educated though. I could tell that right away. You don’t get much of that in The Cygnet.

—Thank you?

—I’m trying to figure out what got you so messed up.

—Sorry?

—What you drank tonight wouldn’t have affected a seasoned tippler.  

—

—So I’ll guess it was gambling.

Jasper figured that ‘I don’t make enough money to be a gambler, I’m really just an alcoholic with a low body weight’ was probably the wrong answer.

—And coming here with me. The way I asked you to. Seems like something only a gambler would do.

Before Jasper could wonder what the risks might be, Amy had pushed him onto the bed. He found himself in an unpleasant intercourse with clothing and sheets whose state of laundering he didn’t care to contemplate. He focused on trying to find Amy’s body somewhere in the sea of fabric.

*          *          *

When he opened his eyes he couldn’t see Amy anywhere, but there was a lamp he hadn’t noticed before. Its base arose from a triad of brass angels gesturing upward with wings that became a feathered stalk. The top of the stalk widened slightly into a circle that was large enough to balance a dimly lit globe, perhaps five inches in diameter. The globe had a pearly surface, too soft to be glass, and with patches of varied illumination. It undulated, its clarity and opacity constantly shifting. And something within appeared to be alive.

Jasper felt cold. But when he tried to move the disordered bedding it was stuck to his body. It hurt the skin of his belly to pull it away. Looking down he saw that his torso was glued to the fabric by a dull brown residue that smelled of resin and that glinted unevenly in the light cast by the globe. Japser was naked and wanted to dress, if only for warmth. He found his shirt, but there no sign of trousers, waistcoat, jacket, cravat or underclothes. Putting the shirt on only made him feel more naked.

Amy emerged from behind a dark curtain in the corner of the room furthest from the strange lamp. A curtain he couldn’t imagine a space behind. She was dressed in the same clothes she’d been wearing in the pub.

Amy pointed to the globe.

—See?

She walked over and lifted the globe from its stand and brought it to the bed. It continued to glow as she dug her fingers into it, making it bulge at both ends, as would a lightly-boiled and peeled egg. She increased her grip slowly and steadily until it’s surface popped and oozed fluid.  Syrup-like in thickness. But oilier.

The thing had stopped glowing and become a dull and amorphous glob on the bed, barely visible by the lamp in the street. She pulled off gobs of goo to reveal a very small person. A person who stood up shakily on the waves of bedclothes.

It was a miniature man, dressed only in a shirt that was identical to Jasper’s. The man had a gigantic head with long narrow eyes set widely apart on his skull, and a few strands of hair. He looked to be Jasper’s age. Perhaps slightly older. The small figure and Jasper spoke the same words at the same moment.

—Who are you?

The figure tried to walk and tripped on a fold in the blankets and fell. And then stood up and fell again, almost immediately.

—The body will grow larger in relation to the head. In a few weeks he’ll look like a normal person and be able to walk without falling over.

—A homunculus?

She shrugged.

—I’m calling him Jasper.

She put New-Jasper in a basket and covered him with a cloth and put the basket in the bottom drawer of her dresser. She closed the drawer stiffly and not all the way, leaving a gap at one end of about an inch.

—That will give him air.

—I—

—?

The relevant chapter was slowly returning to Jasper. Now he wished he’d reviewed it before coming out tonight.

—In de natura rerum Paracelsus discusses preformism, as an alchemical possibility. But this was in the 1500s. We’ve known for centuries that the DNA—

—?

—That the information for a person isn’t contained solely in the sperm. Among other things there’s a problem of regression. A person inside a person ad infinitum, and the ovum is left completely out of the equation.

—See, you are smart. I knew I’d picked the right guy.

Jasper ignored this and tried another tactic.

—Surely you find it misogynistic to suppose the male responsible for the entire reproductive code.

—I don’t have time to raise a child the usual way. Grow him. Nurse him. Stay home and look after him. I need someone who can look after himself when I’m gone.

Jasper began to feel dizzy. He knew he’d be more persuasive fully dressed.

—Even assuming that the Peracelsian theory of preformation is possible, he specifies 40 days of incubation. I believe I’ve been here an hour.

—The chemist who sold me the paste to make it happen also gave me some oil to accelerate the process. You just light it and put it under that stand.

She pointed to the three brass angels and Jasper could, indeed, see a faint glow from the space they surrounded.

—He arrived 20 minutes after we lay down together. That’s even faster than last time.

—Last time?

—It was a ship’s captain. But as soon as the new version grew to five feet tall he sailed off and never came back. A Jasper will be easier to keep track of.

Jasper racked his brain for whether or not there was a female version of the homunculus in de rerum natura and then cursed himself for even considering such nonsense.

—I’ll make sure to keep him from trouble, until he gets big. You look like you could have used that.

—My parents did a fine job with me thank you very much. My shortcomings are no one’s fault but my own. And by the way, where exactly are my trousers—

But before she could answer there was a knock at the door. Jasper made an attempt to shield his nakedness by getting on the far side of the bed and positioning himself behind a clump of sheets.

The door opened to two police officers and a man who was clearly the landlord.

—Complaint from the neighbour below. Some foul-smelling sticky substance is leaking into their flat.

Jasper crouched behind the bed as though to act on this information and found his hands on an unpleasant pool of the resinous sludge. The stuff was animate, it’s surface reflecting the light of the street with ever-shifting glints.

The next thing Jasper remembered was sitting at a deal table on a wooden chair of coccyx unfriendly construction (unfriendlier still to bare skin.) The landlord was handing Jasper a cigar which Jasper felt it only polite to accept despite the fact he’d never smoked anything in his life. One of the officers nodded to the other who winked in acknowledgement, their chin-strapped helmets almost touching as the first pulled a flask of cognac from inside his greatcoat and the second officer produced four elegant snifters from inside his. The cognac was poured and distributed in celebration of Jasper’s reproductive achievement. Meanwhile Amy assembled the bedding for cleaning and scrubbed the ooze from under the bed with a bucket of warm water and a rag that Jasper hadn’t seen her go and get.

The men chatted on familiar subjects, but Jasper couldn’t have said what those subjects were, even as one replaced another. He glanced occasionally to the bottom drawer of the dresser and was conscious of whimpers and vibrations from inside. More an intuition than anything his senses told him.

The cigar smoke thickened to such a degree that it was hard to distinguish from the smog of the street.

When the smoke cleared Jasper saw that he was in the street.

And then back in the office.

And then at his desk.

He had no memory of disabling the alarm. It would be funny if it had deployed and they sent the same two policemen to investigate. He was somehow sure they’d bring Amy’s landlord with them. The thought made him laugh out loud.

Through the window Jasper could see light from the bakery down the street. They were the only ones who worked this early. During the black death it was the bakers and their families who died first, Jasper thought randomly. Rats love the warmth of ovens.

He looked at the clock. 5:05. Roughly an hour and a half until sunrise.

Jasper began writing in the notebook but soon the sentences were coming too fast. He put pen and ink away and opened a Word file on his laptop. The pages scrolled down and down with text, faster than he’d ever known them to do.

*          *          *

Jasper had forgotten that bedding could be so fragrant. And comforting. And soft. It must be the thread count. And how the sheets were laundered.

He was wearing the shirt he’d had on in the office last night. He felt for pants, and discovered underwear. Things were moving in a good direction.

The first item that caught his eye was a lamp on the Rietveld table next to the bed. Stainless steel with strong vertical lines. And topped by a glass sphere, perhaps 12 centimetres in diameter. There was nothing organic about sphere. It was pure white and smooth as quartz. He leaned toward it but couldn’t find a switch, or a cord. Perhaps you twisted something and it—

—Awake, and in better shape than I’d expected.

—Oh, Hi Kelsey, I guess I’ll ask the obvious question.

—Which would be ‘where am I?’ Where do you think you are?

— I’ll say you’re housesitting for David Beckham and brought me to his place after bailing me out of jail and now you’re dropping by to tell me to get to the office.

—Wrong. You’re in my apartment, and I found you at the office when I came in this morning. Though that’s not a bad story and you should develop it. It’s a lot better than the one I found on your hard-drive.

—Usable?

— A trainwreck. You thought it would work as a Christmas tale?

—It has all the elements of the nativity.

—I have to hand it to you. You write a beautiful sentence, in any state whatsoever. I don’t think you even made a typo. They should give awards for that. More importantly Joanne says there are sections she can use as is.

—Joanne?

—JK Rowling. We really hit it off last night. She gave me her card and I forwarded your file to her as soon as I saw it and she called me as soon as she’d read it. She likes how you created a place no one has ever been. The juxtaposition of old and new.

—But—?

—Oh, and she liked the supernatural element. Her version will involve a wholesome and promising lad who apprentices with an alchemist, despite living in the modern world. She says she can spin it into a novel. Maybe a series.

—This feels a little like theft of intellectual property.

—Does five times your annual salary in a cheque you’ll receive tomorrow soften the sense of violation? Here—

She passed him JK Rowling’s business card.

—She wants to know me?

—Absolutely not. Turn it over.

 On the flip side was the address of a nearby church and tomorrow’s date and a time.

—What’s this?

Jasper tried to sit up. His head didn’t like it. He sunk back to the pillow.

—Your first AA meeting.

—How would that be a thing I would do? These places are populated by extroverts who smoke.

—Then prove you can quit drinking some other way. That’s the deal.

—Deal?

—Or we can go back to the old arrangement. At the old salary.

Jasper wondered if the old salary meant not getting the cheque referred to earlier and decided not to ask.

—If I’m at your place, where are you sleeping?

—You’re in a room that I’m not sleeping in at the moment.

This felt different than saying he was in the guest room. And Jasper didn’t think he was.

—You should rest. You’ve put in a lot of work, and I need to meet with Joanne.   

—Can I ask a strange question?

—?

—Was I fully dressed when you found me?

—Exactly as I left you. Except that you were in a stupor and had vomited on your pants. They’ll be out of the dryer in half an hour. Go back to sleep. You have a new life ahead.

Kelsey took a sip of twice filtered water from a slender metal bottle that was an uncanny match with the base of her lamp. She was wearing Lulu Lemonwear. She must have just finished a workout, Jasper thought.

At that moment he knew that Kelsey didn’t want him to leave. And that perhaps she didn’t even know that yet herself.

She’d never have time to raise a child. Having Jasper around would a nice compromise.

Jasper didn’t know if this was a good thing or a bad thing and he was too exhausted to decide. In seconds he was back in dreamless sleep.

This has been an Albatross Event