Read Online Broken Meats: A Harry Stubbs Adventure by David Hambling - Free Book Online
Authors: David Hambling
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topic on which I could be authoritative. I wanted
to add that Bulwer-Lytton was the originator of the phrase about the pen being
mightier than the sword—a doubtful proposition, to my mind—but felt
that this would be lost on someone from China.
“It seems
to me—only from reading those pamphlets—that Theosophy mixes up
fact and fiction all higgledy-piggledy. Vril isn’t real, and I’m sure Atlantis
was never a real place. They have these dreams and visions, and they write them
down as if they’re true. On top of that—and they don’t say it in as many words—Mrs
Blavatsky cheated with at least some of her psychic effects.”
Yang took
his time before replying. At length, he took out his cigarette case; instead of
taking a cigarette, he passed it over to me.
“Look.”
The case
was worked with an intricate pattern, a circle made up of curved shapes like
two fish wrapped around each other: a dark fish with a light eye, and a light
fish with a dark eye.
“This
distinction is false. Night and day give rise to each other. Good and evil are
not opposites but complementary. Shadow cannot exist without light. What you
call fact and fiction are intertwined and cannot be separated. They support
each other. They are ‘two sides of the same coin,’ as you say in English.”
This might
have been ancient Oriental philosophy, but it seemed like muddled thinking to
me, and dangerous at that.
“Good and
evil are two different things.”
“Indeed? As
a boxer, you fight people who you do not hate. In your work, you take money
from people who you pity to give to rich people you despise. You deal with
criminals like Mr Renville and do not report them to the police.”
Yang smiled
faintly as my discomfiture. I did not know where he had heard the name of
Arthur Renville, but it was not from me. Nor had I mentioned that I collected
debts.
“What did
you make of that séance then?” I asked quickly, handing the case back to
him.
I had gone
over the events in my mind a hundred times and was less sure than ever about
what I had seen. Lavinia’s enthusiasm for getting patronage from a wealthy
American was plain. Yang was also moneyed. Perhaps they had planned to stage an
event to impress him. Theatrical smoke and sound effects, along with the power
of suggestion, might have explained everything I witnessed. It is not unknown
for mediums to be overcome with hysteria, perhaps even an infectious hysteria.
That was more or less the version of events that I had agreed on with Arthur
and Reg at our evening debriefing.
Perhaps it
was my previous experience that made me think that magic is not so unlikely as
all that, or maybe it was working in a Law firm. A man can stand up in court
and say ‘Habeas Corpus’ and it changes everything. The right ‘Hocus Pocus’
might work just as well, with the laws of the natural world rather than human
laws. Arthur and Reg maintained these laws they were two different things, but
I was not so sure.
“A most
curious event,” said Yang. “The manifestation was unusual.”
“Was it…
real?”
Yang
laughed sharply. “Real and unreal, dark and light—everything is dualism
for you! Do you forget the pattern so quickly?”
“The
manifestation—was it dangerous?”
“Perhaps.”
“Did I do
the right thing, pulling your hands apart from Howard's?”
“Who can
say? Right and wrong is more dualism… now, please, which turning here?”
We had an
appointment in Upper Norwood Library. It was one of the more compact sort of
Victorian libraries and one that I had made use of on occasion. The library was
doing its usual quiet trade. A scattering of people browsed the shelves while
the reading tables were fully occupied—some pensioners but also several
younger men hunched over the Jobs Vacant sections of the library newspapers.
Although I
did not know whom we were meeting, Yang had again decided that I should come
along—as though he wished me to be seen with him.
Yang
consulted a
to add that Bulwer-Lytton was the originator of the phrase about the pen being
mightier than the sword—a doubtful proposition, to my mind—but felt
that this would be lost on someone from China.
“It seems
to me—only from reading those pamphlets—that Theosophy mixes up
fact and fiction all higgledy-piggledy. Vril isn’t real, and I’m sure Atlantis
was never a real place. They have these dreams and visions, and they write them
down as if they’re true. On top of that—and they don’t say it in as many words—Mrs
Blavatsky cheated with at least some of her psychic effects.”
Yang took
his time before replying. At length, he took out his cigarette case; instead of
taking a cigarette, he passed it over to me.
“Look.”
The case
was worked with an intricate pattern, a circle made up of curved shapes like
two fish wrapped around each other: a dark fish with a light eye, and a light
fish with a dark eye.
“This
distinction is false. Night and day give rise to each other. Good and evil are
not opposites but complementary. Shadow cannot exist without light. What you
call fact and fiction are intertwined and cannot be separated. They support
each other. They are ‘two sides of the same coin,’ as you say in English.”
This might
have been ancient Oriental philosophy, but it seemed like muddled thinking to
me, and dangerous at that.
“Good and
evil are two different things.”
“Indeed? As
a boxer, you fight people who you do not hate. In your work, you take money
from people who you pity to give to rich people you despise. You deal with
criminals like Mr Renville and do not report them to the police.”
Yang smiled
faintly as my discomfiture. I did not know where he had heard the name of
Arthur Renville, but it was not from me. Nor had I mentioned that I collected
debts.
“What did
you make of that séance then?” I asked quickly, handing the case back to
him.
I had gone
over the events in my mind a hundred times and was less sure than ever about
what I had seen. Lavinia’s enthusiasm for getting patronage from a wealthy
American was plain. Yang was also moneyed. Perhaps they had planned to stage an
event to impress him. Theatrical smoke and sound effects, along with the power
of suggestion, might have explained everything I witnessed. It is not unknown
for mediums to be overcome with hysteria, perhaps even an infectious hysteria.
That was more or less the version of events that I had agreed on with Arthur
and Reg at our evening debriefing.
Perhaps it
was my previous experience that made me think that magic is not so unlikely as
all that, or maybe it was working in a Law firm. A man can stand up in court
and say ‘Habeas Corpus’ and it changes everything. The right ‘Hocus Pocus’
might work just as well, with the laws of the natural world rather than human
laws. Arthur and Reg maintained these laws they were two different things, but
I was not so sure.
“A most
curious event,” said Yang. “The manifestation was unusual.”
“Was it…
real?”
Yang
laughed sharply. “Real and unreal, dark and light—everything is dualism
for you! Do you forget the pattern so quickly?”
“The
manifestation—was it dangerous?”
“Perhaps.”
“Did I do
the right thing, pulling your hands apart from Howard's?”
“Who can
say? Right and wrong is more dualism… now, please, which turning here?”
We had an
appointment in Upper Norwood Library. It was one of the more compact sort of
Victorian libraries and one that I had made use of on occasion. The library was
doing its usual quiet trade. A scattering of people browsed the shelves while
the reading tables were fully occupied—some pensioners but also several
younger men hunched over the Jobs Vacant sections of the library newspapers.
Although I
did not know whom we were meeting, Yang had again decided that I should come
along—as though he wished me to be seen with him.
Yang
consulted a
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