Dreams of jug and jar
or, the strangest of things
Disclaimer: Everything below is true. All except the parts that aren’t.
Strange things have happened lately.
I want to talk about one of those things.
Whilst chatting to my mother the other weekend1, we got onto the topic of phobias. My brother has a beautiful daughter recently turned four and we were saying how fearless she is, which led to a comment about most children generally being fearful of specific things and how varied that fear can be.
And then came this little treasure of a line:
“It’s like you with grandma’s Toby Jugs. You were terrified of those. You wouldn’t go anywhere near them.”
I’m sorry, Mum? What? The what jugs?
A whole slurry of questions ensued. But with each answer I just sat there dumbfounded. I had zero recollection of this. Of any fear. Of refusing to go anywhere near these whatever-they-are-jugs—nothing.
Had I blanked such memories?
In the days that followed, I sat and I thought and wracked my brain and I tried to pull at those memories.
I did this a lot.
I now wish I hadn’t.
Because one night, in the creaking hours of pre-dawn, I recalled it all2.
I was seven, and though that is an age from which rafts of memory float muddied by time, I shall recount to the reader some semblance of that day and its proceedings.
∗ ∗ ∗
From all angles but one, there was nothing overtly wrong with the room. Far from it. It was well-lit, with a south facing window that peered onto a typical English lawn fringed on either side by a border of neat azaleas. Outside, hugging the sill with its deep green leaves, a creeping vine would tap-tap-tap against the glass whenever the wind blew, those playful erratic jitters keenly observed from the aged oak writing desk—lacquered slope, insectile legs, matching chair with plumage-stuffed cushion—positioned for the ever-watchful writer. That piece was an antique passed down through generations of family, an item for which even now I hold no love save for the drawers and their unknown treasures kept endlessly barred from prying fingers by tumbler and spring.
Of course, I mention all this with the acute lens of time, my pre-teen corpulence knowing not oak from mahogany, but with enough wits to understand two simple facts:
Primo: The house, and by extension the room and contents therein, were my grandmother’s. (For later consideration: technically her late husband’s, a wealthy writer of some repute, though of notable reclusivity in both character and process.)
Secondo: It was entirely off-limits. Locked. Closed. Warded against wandering children.
The more important feature of the room, the antagoniste maléfique—that which I am so inclined to herein write of—was, upon entering, entirely obscured from view. Gliding across the floor, little socks purring against carpet, a witless and hapless enfant would pass beneath a shelf of stout wood imprisoned to the wall above the doorframe. But it is not the shelf itself that need worry the reader. It was what lay upon it. Arranged with militaristic precision were a series of clay vessels—jugs, jars, whatever you will, nine ceramic cylinders of unwholesome taste, grinning foolishly with handles conjoined neck to head, all-seeing pinpricks of obsidian and alabaster ensconced in grimaced faces displaced from view unless the unfortunate individual precisely sat upon the chair’s plump cushion.
What I mean by these rambling specifics is that if said individual, having entered and sat at the desk to perhaps watch the tedium of growing grass or push pencil across barren page, if they were so inclined as to extricate themselves, then from turned shoulder the natural eyeline would settle and intercept the counterpart from each of the beglazed jugs.
To satisfy with a simpler explanation: the jugs would stare back. Mocking eyes of jest. Slits from atop door’s vantage.
And occasionally, through tremulous claylips, those very same would speak.
They would … utter.
Words. Chants. Desires.
∗ ∗ ∗
The astute reader may wonder then as to why this bumbling youth, the protagoniste involontaire, knew any of these facts about a room that should have (I refer back to aforementioned limits) remained uncharted.
The answer—oh the answer!—awaited his quintillionth visit, a day when the intrepid junior explorer, cartographer of rooms unvisited, would finally venture cotton-heeled and catlike into that forbidden vestibule and glean its shelf-kept secrets.
The door, it must be understood, that day was ajar.
∗ ∗ ∗
It was a cold March afternoon and via tortuous hours of rain-pelted windscreen the cruel affront placed upon two siblings was a visit to the grandmother. Our arrival heralded no respite from the reliability of England’s inclemency and at that age the undulant surrounds held no special promise or stimulus for affectation.
Seeking refuge from endless and nonsensical adult chatter, we (herein I should clarify for the reader: my brother and I; let us call him B–, for simplicity), B– and I became unmoored from the living room and sought from cryptic corridors any sustenance to sate Sunday’s boredom. B– suggested we resort to the tried tradition of paper planes. Having no inclination for the optimal folding of paper, I was capable of neither the aesthetic grace nor ensuant sailing-forth to achieve worthy distance, yet B– excelled (another note for the keen reader: later in life, an unsurprising engineering career, financially successful). Nevertheless, I humoured him, clapping with false joy at each distance of record achieved across the grandmother’s upper landing.
His last throw, though, aroused curiosity in even my listless mind. The trajectory—launched from a swift right arm, B– perhaps aiming via open door for the exposed sanitary fixture—was high, Pinus planus soaring and sweeping and at the very last an uncanny bank left, the unmanned origamic wonder curiously aloft through entirety of stair’s descent and, again uncanny, another bank, right this time, to the small corridor. The very corridor at the end of which resided The Room, threshold of which I was convinced I should have caught whisper the subtle thunk of paper greeting door.
I heard nothing.
I left B–, trotting down the steps and slipping right, to stand in alarm—more a mild perplexity, my flaccid juvenile face having not yet developed the necessary musculature to convey alarm—at what lay before me. The diminutive white aircraft had ceased its voyage upon the tendrils of carpet, its miniature passengers—had there been any—wading through bland beige fibres of territory unknown.
I stepped forward, allowing an advance upon the beige frontier, eyes now drawn and fixed on the wooden writing desk with its nasty entomic legs, its writhing height and sheen, la position dans la petite pièce snug beneath the terminal window.
My feet, having absently crushed all possibility of return flight, carried me forth and presently I was sitting on the oak chair, buttocks undergoosed by feathers, fingers drawn already to those drawers, unsuccessful at each pull.
I remained there, the foolish child, idiot empoté, whilst from another world I heard B–’s distant enquiry as to my whereabouts; speaking not, I stared through glass at the garden, the incapable extension of my legs engaged in rhythmic sway. Time’s maw engulfed a number of minutes. At some unreasoned moment, from nowhere I felt the prickle of sensation against the fleshy nape of my neck and, sans pouvoir m'arrêter, commenced a sudden rotation of the upper body.
And that is when I caught glimpse of the hitherto missed feature of that room (the reader, already blessed by writer’s omniscience, must remember that for the seven-year-old this was the virginal encounter): the nonet of kiln-cast faces, ominous and unceasing ocular intrusion holding me transfixed.
Somewhere distant, another exclamation from B–, the lack of a search party.
Dropping from the chair, I stood, a shieldless Perseus, shifting right, left, and with each move so did follow in painterly fashion the gaze from embedded eyes.
I resolved to leave, acutely aware of the spawn of entire new oceans across my skin.
And that is when I heard it.
Them.
The first utterance.
Open us. Open us, the claylips spoke, horrible unison chorus.
Look in us. Look in us, they chanted, rasping.
Listen to us. Listen to us.
I became aware that my hand, the right, the left too limp for any use, was reaching for the chair’s crested rail and that, once grasped, commenced a slow drag to doorframe, whereupon I proceeded, stuporous, to clamber and stand.
My little fingers, delicate unscathed digits untamed by age, reached toward the jugs, feet tottering as tiptoes extended on cushion’s edge.
Handle hooked, I retrieved one jar, nearly releasing it as I brought the glazed urn toward my face to peer over lip and lips and see into the abyssal reach of its belly.
Staring at what was inside, rapidly did I grasp the others, checking each and seeing that—oh, dear reader, the horror!—they were the same, that each was casket to foul powdered ash! Bone-fine, though not without bone, white-grey and crumbled. All near full and in lidless exposure accepting the room’s undying air.
I ran, screaming, seeking B–, later my mother, never seeing, not then on that day (far later, in will’s receipt) the bardic names etched upon each base.
∗ ∗ ∗
Of course, with door locked I sit and have sat at that very desk in that very room under those watchful eyes, heeding via word and chant my arcane muse.
Each day I listen.
Every day I write.
Afterword
Well, I applaud you if you made it this far and waded through such nonsense3.
Can you guess at all what, or rather who, I have been reading?
Nabokov. Lolita, specifically. Thoughts on that once I finish (soon), but I’ve been enraptured by his prose and though of course this comes nowhere near even a crude imitation, when I started to try and write this I felt his head peering, watching and wondering what I would type.
My very first draft was way back at the end of March (no Dolores Haze then), but all I had were some words of introduction (a genuine conversation with my mother) and the opening paragraph about the house (entirely fictitious), an exercise in description but written in a wholly different tone and style. More King-like, if anything. I thought it would be a fairly straight affair, but then Nabokov came knocking and when I came to start work on this properly last weekend I felt compelled to try and write in such a different style, words and structure that in no way come naturally. Painful and difficult. And to what end? What result? I almost dare not ask!
Oh, and if you don’t know then you may be wondering (or have Googled) what a Toby jug actually looks like. Here, have this. Terrifying, no?
So, there we have it. Dreams of nonsense and nonsense, more like.
It was fun (exhausting!) to stretch myself, though. I think.
Feedback, comments, likes, dislikes, etc. I’m open to it all. Thank you as always, lovely reader.
Hello Mum, I know you’re not reading this because you have no idea I’m writing this, but hello anyway.
A note before a more robust afterword. What follows is not in any way what I intended to follow, but I’ve kept this introduction as is.
There is an underlying meaning and idea here, though I may have buried it too much. Or it’s nonsense. I’m not completely happy with it, especially the ending (cursed endings!) but I had a self-imposed deadline to meet and the jars wouldn’t stop their chanting until I hit Publish. A special thanks to
for advice on the French (Jamie, Hannah, others, I had you on standby), even if it was entirely out of context when I sent snippets to you. You didn’t see all of it, so my apologies if I butchered anything.
that nabakov novel is astounding
outstanding
too bad it (perhaps) suffers from the prurience attached to title but like styron i figure with sophies choice he was "in the zone" when he gave birth to that motherfucker
always enjoy reading you
Wonderful, wonderful... so very Nabakov-esque!
As soon as I read the words ‘Toby jug’ my stomach flipped. As every child knows, they are haunted objects. I’d buried all memories of trying not to make eye contact with them whenever I’d been inside an old English pub, but they’ve since come rushing back. Adding that to the long list of things to discuss with my therapist this week...
Beautiful work, Nathan!