the five phials of dr poliakov

[wytchcroft]

(rather a sombre chapter this one.)

phial two

I think perhaps it has to do with time and its interactions with us – the ordering, structure and composition of time, time and the spirit so often mutually antagonistic may yet be revealed as close as kin.

I am staring at the clock.

My eyes fix firm upon those neat and iron hands. A flicker, did they -? No, no. Very well then, so be it.
If the hands are steady, I shall watch. If the hands remain unmoving, so be it. I shall wait.

There were voices.  One of them at least was mine.

“But honestly – where’s our fourth? We cannot possibly proceed without a fourth!”

“Hsst man! This isn’t Bridge you know! We’re not here for a game of cards and this is not some Gentleman’s club!”

Yes, that voice I believe was mine. The remembrance is already foggier than I should like, but under the circumstances and the mix of elation and trepidation that we must all share… well, I would hold any absent mindedness of recall to be only natural, even in a scientist such as myself. Yet like music, I can hold the notes in my head. The important ones, the melody of this moment, the harmony or dissonance of our experiences as we drink the unknown and I wait and I watch the clock. 

Voices, then – for I was late arriving, my entrance to this disinfected cave held up by the busy traffic and a number of other minor hurdles as I travelled down to enter finally (and for myself as much as the group) the laboratory of Dr Poliakov himself. What once was lost is found again.

I was not lost – true I am the only woman from our little group, but before my entry, during all the excitable months of correspondence, communication and preparation, I was almost entirely heedless of this elementary (if utterly spurious) distinction - a distinction quite apparent to the others.
One of these, a small ferrety type or so I imagine, darted forward eagerly enough before stumbling over his greeting – what does one do with a woman, I could hear him thinking, should I shake the damsel’s hand, clap her on the shoulder as I might Phillips or Grayling-Thomas?

In the end he settled for tucking his hands into his belt and beaming in a vacuous sort of way as he applauded my entrance with, “Jolly good! Bit of discipline and order that’s what we need.” He said the words approvingly, but such nonsense would not wash with me.

“’I’m not looking to molly coddle you,” I tell him firmly, “If that’s what you’re hoping? I’m a scientist not a governess! I am not seeking idle flattery nor am I a private secretary.”

“Well said Maud.”

It was hard not to clench my fists as the voices, as the men, swirled about me – however well intentioned and supportive.

“Mr Grayling-Thomas,” I said, “Whilst it is true that we are known to one another, I would prefer if you accorded me the respect my qualifications deserve – especially since this a place of work.”

I turned then, slowly, to see the familiar round face and dark beard peering somewhat owlishly back at me from the corner of the lab. The voice was as mellow as ever, “Certainly Dr McKinney.”

“Thank you Mr Grayling-Thomas.” I was looking at that face,  well known to me indeed through many years… perhaps that was - IS - why his features are clearer in my mind. No, wait - of whom am I speaking now?

"What?" was that my voice?

He was blinking. “What?” he said, almost stupidly.

“Nothing, just – a sensation.”

“Someone walk over your grave?”

“No, more like… déjà vu perhaps.”

Another man, the owner of the first voice, I took him to be Dr Phillips, was proffering a phial at me, filled with a white cloudy liquid the thing dangled from his hand and looked for all the world like a long canine tooth.

Behind him, one of the great steel globes was rotating slowly, a static force was crackling from it and onto the silver rack from which I should judge the phials had been lifted. I noticed around me clocks, some large some small, but many different time –pieces of some sort from the most regular to the most bizarre, jar like objects with mercury in time and wax. I could hear the ticking. The man waved the phial again, his eyebrows raised.

“I see you have prepared without me,” I said, but the man seemed not to hear me and I let the remark fall and reached instead for the phial.

The man was smiling then, and is smiling now.

Only there is something most dreadfully wrong with that man’s smile. It disturbs me for it leaps from his features like an animal loosed from a cage at some zoo or circus. There it is again – even now as he gazes like an imbecile at the blank pages before him. And he is supposedly a scientist, no he IS a scientist, his reputation is deserved, like all of us, or… that is, rather – we claim to be so, we claim…

A claim can be analysed as surely as any microbe. An irony perhaps that it is the scientists under the microscope here, yes all claims now put to the test, all reputations – even that of the great Poliakov himself whose substances we have each of us imbibed – or dare I say whose substance we have imbibed. This makes us uncomfortable, scientists or no, it strikes some of us as an unholy communion, and one of us at least is a devout believer. Claim.

Pshtt! To think that I Maud McKinney probably have more qualifications than any of these men can lay claim to. 

And to see such a man as Phillips, a man who chemical monographs have been translated into fifteen languages, to look at him waving his hand in the air and staring with wide dark eyes. To see a man of such talent fallen into a state of disrepair… as if he were an unloved shed.

So let me state; I am not witch nor harridan, old maid nor suffragette, though it is true that I admire candour and forthrightness and sense, of course, these things - as much as their opposite - may be found just as well in a woman as any man. The plain fact that seems to have escaped you is – gentleman, that I have not had the time. Frugal as I may be it has often seemed that time is yet another luxury that of necessity I have had to fore-go.

Besides which, there has ever been a man in my life – two in fact. One of which, Dr Poliakov, I have been married too as much as any nun, any ‘Bride of Christ’… certainly some would say as much, perhaps have done so already, but rags like The Tymes and the Daily Letter.. I have not read an editorial in years. 

But here I am – and with my eyes stinging and my throat burning still from the taste of the stuff we’ve all drank; an insane act – but all for science. Perhaps. Here we are. All for ourselves maybe.

Or all for Him.

Dr Poliakov, that seer whose writings now are locked away in dusty archives but whose work is folk-lore, his designs and theories part of everyday life.  Dr Poliakov, whose last act was to disappear entirely and whose journal ever hinted at a grand conclusion to be found only in these strange and unknown liquors the properties of which would evaporate as soon as opened.

All for Him.

We drank. And now we wait. Now I stare at the various clocks and find one alone to keep my attention on as the potion does its work.



I am beginning to suspect that I know – or rather that I sense the purpose of the invention here.

All for Him.

For I am quite transparent really, my life is read upon me easily enough. My Father died when I was young, that is well known.

All for Him. Russell James McKinney.

I will admit that we Scots can be a dour folk and morbid even to the frivolous yes of the new Metropolitans – but we are hardy folk. Though there be some who, in zealousness perhaps to the church or their community, wear a widow’s weeds for the remainder of their time, yet these are relatively few – and at least such a number, I’m sure, could be found among the heaving peoples of London, Manchester, New York or St Petersburg. Not to mention the romantic countries of France and Spain…

As to my home, well true enough Brora is but a scrap of a village far distant from this place or the colleges in England in which I have now spent most of my life, I realise, but there is history enough nearby. The old castle, the city of Domoch has a resplendent cathedral.

I don’t know if he ever saw the Cathedral, too modest a man for that.
Born, lived and gone from the same and single village.
So easily recalled, so easy now to roll back the years, and to myself standing there in the church with its knave open to the elements on the coast side where the land slides down toward sea level and the brethy sounds of the ocean and the smell of brine, and sea-weed and sadness mingled with hard polish on pew and casket and my mother smothering my wee child’s fingers in her hands.
Hands.
His were larger still, his were larger and still, folded so neatly across his waist and that dark Sunday suit of his - oh mother why and but why he should have to leave and so? And shaking deep under my clothes from the wind and the nips in the air and something more, shaking down under my skin as I’m watching his white, white hands so large so still and the voice of my mother keening away like some gull.

Not all the sour faces nor all the well intentioned wreaths nor all the black dyed linen in the world can restore your father – a man whom by his nature would have deplored an unseemly showing of grief or its prolongation.

I think perhaps it has to do with time and its interactions with us – the ordering, structure and composition of time, time and the spirit so often mutually antagonistic may yet be revealed as close as kin.

My eyes fix firm upon those neat and iron hands. A flicker, did they -? No, no. Very well then, so be it. If the hands are steady, I shall watch. If the hands remain unmoving, so be it. I shall wait.

...............................
end of pt.2

i wrote the first version of this chapter a little while ago and i would like to thank regina and irishunchick for inspiring me to dust it off.