The Smell of Telescopes Read Free Page B

there, elbows on the bar, tall hat tipped at an angle over one of his disturbing eyes. Later I was to learn that these eyes were like tiny obsidian mirrors, although it did not seem so to me at the time. But you know how folks will have things; the eyes of a stranger are always like tiny obsidian mirrors in the same way that a ghost is not a real spectre unless it is trailing a bloody winding-sheet behind it and talking with a voice tuned to the pitch of the autumn wind.
    “Perhaps I have an ache in my soul,” said someone from another corner. And now my knees knocked together and everyone else in the bar looked to their cups. For this was the voice of Elizabeth Morgan, the fiery witch of Cobweb Cottage, who rarely spoke except to augur some crisis and whose nettle jam was an inarguable reason for living one’s life in a state of quiet desperation. But when my curiosity finally overcame my better judgment and I glanced up, I saw that she was talking to herself and staring at the bottom of one of her shoes.
    At last the stranger stretched himself and once more addressed those gathered. “I am looking for the local poet. All these villages have one. I see no reason why yours should be any different. Lladloh is it? Well then, my fine fellows, where can I find the Bard of Lladloh?” And suddenly I bit my lip, for this personage was none other than my good self, or so I liked to think. “Why do you seek him?” I ventured, not entirely sure that I wanted to hear the answer. The stranger turned those mysterious eyes upon me and a faint smile cracked the stiff parchment of his face. “I have a service to offer,” he said slowly, bowing a menacing bow and doffing his dusty hat.
    I felt a sudden, absurd urge to throw myself at his feet, grasp his ankles and cry, “It is me, sir,” in a vain attempt to solicit mercy. But as I did not know what he had planned, I managed to restrain myself. My hand shook as I raised my drink to my mouth and took a long draught to steady my nerves. “What sort of service?” I managed to gargle into my beer, the bubbles exploding around the lip of the glass and sloshing over the floorboards.
    The stranger moved a pace closer and his left eyebrow arched ever so slightly. “I am an extractor of egos,” he announced with a hint of a chuckle. “I travel the land seeking out poets whose ambition is greater than their talent and I remove the source of irritation that is making their lives a misery. In short, I cut out their egos. I perform an egoectomy! I have the tools, such tools you have never seen before in all your dreams. I made them myself. Out pours the ego like blood from a broken nose and I collect it in a blue-glass bottle. The operation is almost painless. My fees are reasonable, but I make a good living. My services are always in great demand, if not from the poet himself then certainly from his friends and family!”
    I glanced around the bar at my companions. Would they betray me? Despite their public endorsement of my verse, what did they really think? I noticed that they were all frowning. There was indecision etched on every face. The stranger stepped forward another pace and stroked his pale chin. All eyes in the bar were now turned upon me. The very air bristled with some horribly subtle meaning.
    I guessed that my drinking companions would not be able to resist the temptation to give me away for much longer. This was a profoundly depressing insight. I had no wish to lose my ego. After all, it was only a very small one. I had spent the last five years attempting to build an extension to it, but had repeatedly been denied planning permission for the project. In other words, I was an unpublished poet. A failure. But I liked to think that I had preserved at least some measure of pride, of hubris, throughout all my rejections. I did not want to lose this small crumb of what I still hoped my identity might one day evolve into.
    I had produced reams and reams of verse in my thankless