Read by Louisa Gummer (MVP Acting, 2017)
Welcome. Gather round. Gather round, please. Good. Ahem.
If one person were to spend one minute looking at each item in the British Museum’s permanent collection, it would require a visit of 15 uninterrupted years. To do the same in the labyrinthine halls of The Corollary Museum would take almost a century.
But don’t worry - today I will show you just some of the Museum’s catalogue. Please stay together and don’t touch the items. If you have a question then please speak loudly, I’m older than I look.
The Museum was founded by Porfirio Maldonado Jambrina, to house the private collection of objects he acquired on his extraordinary travels. How can one man have collected so much?
Obsessed with finding this relic, Jambrina set about scouring the world. After several fruitless years, he recognised that the mission was too great for even an entire lifetime.
At length he made his way to the bottom of a well, where a priestess sat at the altar of a feared and nameless god. She was said to be a necromancer, with ancient powers that crossed into the other world. Jambrina asked her for the only tool he needed to complete his quest: time.
‘Postpone my death,’ he said ‘until I have found what I am looking for. Give me enough time to search every corner of the planet, and then my life is yours.’
The priestess looked on the quest with favour, and granted his wish. But before he left, she pointed her finger and issued a warning:
‘Every profit must pay its duty, conquistador. If your gains be substantial, so too may be the cost.’
Jambrina climbed as quickly as he could out of that damp well and set off in search of the relic.
The objects in the Corollary Museum are merely the surplus of that search. Though Jambrina’s recorded life leaves too many loose and frayed ends to form any serious biographical project, the Museum can offer us some clues. Please follow me to the first hall.
The principal cases tell us the first places he visited. Here we find a borrowship mat from the bungalows of Qurin, probity hammers from the Starling Mines, and a four-cap accumulator from the famous city carriers of the Blix Engine Army.
To visit the Museum is to follow Jambrina’s quest item by item, but each exhibit only pushes the borders of the world further beyond the horizon. Look here, the caesium baton of Henrietta Calabazas, whose orchestra only ever performed one single, roaring crescendo that would not break until every member of the audience had left the theatre in desperation. Beside it, a remnant of the Osman Capsule Halls, where a disgraced monarch built an illegal archive of citizen data before burning it, and himself, to the ground.
Each object tells its own narrative, has its own history, but for Jambrina, who searched only for the relic, they speak just one short declaration: it is not here.
Here are the Amahato Beads, another popular exhibit. If you put your hand against the glass, you can feel the vibrations caused by the hum of the beads, which we monitor with our own seismograph. The beads were considered sacred by their indigenous creators whose civilization declined not long after Jambrina passed through. They have always been of great scientific interest in this country, of course.
This case? Yes, they do appear to be ordinary cooking utensils, but they disguise a story of violence. Jambrina was taken prisoner by the pirate Blanca Choi and forced to work as a cook on her ship. She forbade him to speak, so that for thirty-six years his tongue would be exclusively reserved for tasting food. The Museum also houses her notorious knife collection, including the undrawn stiletto of Chiang Kai-shek, the cinquedea of Pedro de Alvarado, and this short-handled weapon that was said to have pierced Julius Caesar himself. Some speculate it was this weapon that Jambrina used to slit the pirate’s throat, steal her vessel and lead his own band of smugglers. They ambushed software caravans on the Caspar Downs until he was ousted by the jealous old men he had taken in as boys.
Many visitors come to the Museum only to see the feather of the elusive Carmine Windwaker, the flame-coloured bird that was said to build nests big enough to house an entire village. Look up. As you can see, the feather is the size of a small fishing boat - Jambrina’s trophy of what is rumoured to have been a vicious battle. Indeed, he may have killed the last of these fowl. The feather is the world’s only conclusive trace of the extraordinary creature. Without it, we would only have the myth. bird
Throughout all of these adventures, time did not touch Jambrina. He would have learned and forgotten a thousand languages. These objects speak to the trades he mastered as a pilgrim: engineer, sailor, pilot, geologist, warrior, carpenter, bureaucrat, thief. These are the livelihoods he picked up, like tools themselves, in the relentless search to each corner of each place on Earth for his elusive relic.
When he came to a river, he sat down and waited for winter to freeze the water. When he came to a sheer cliff face, he planted a seed and waited for a tree to grow. When he came to an enemy barring his way, he parried the blows until the enemy grew old and shrivelled up with regret at a misspent life.
Gather round, please. This curious item is a rare totem from the great moving mountain of Pathatenango, which traversed the desert on the engine of its own volcanic activity. Debate has raged for years over the provenance of this exhibit. Was it a parting gift to Jambrina as he left through the mountain’s gate, or his plunder as he snuck away in the night? We can only guess.
There is evidence that Jambrina was present for the sacking of the legendary Tiller’s Library. You’ll find here a few charred pages rescued from the site. They are substantiation of the library without telling us anything much at all – as the Museum is to Jambrina, as this tour is to the Museum.
In truth, we don’t know much of Jambrina’s story. Did he rest? Get lost? Give up? How lonely was the world’s only ageless man? Years are elided from our timeline and no objects mark the man’s footsteps through them, yet we pursue the trail.
Here is an ending if you need one. On an outcrop above a rough ocean, Jambrina at last found the mysterious relic that he had been searching for. There, he finally learned the relic’s unique power: to bestow immortality. The priestess was right: his gains were substantial, and so too was the cost. It was the moment for Jambrina to pay the levy: the price of his quest was to be trapped in time and never to die. He turned to the sky and screamed, for there was no greater end to his quest than a manly death, and that was all that was denied to him. His bounty was its own undoing.
Gather round please. This is our final exhibit of the day. Don’t be afraid, it’s quite safe. As a concluding reminder that history is more than the objects collected by great men, Jambrina himself is displayed in this glass case. Not, like the other objects, as a token of death, but rather of eternal life. He is still alive, but can tell us nothing of his life. This is the way we have found for him to atone for his quest to find what is unknown and to know it.
(c) Joel Blackledge, 2017
Joel Blackledge is a writer and filmmaker based in Birmingham. His non-fiction writing appears in magazines including Little White Lies, Bright Wall/Dark Room, and Vague Visages. His fiction will appear in the upcoming anthology 24 Stories. His films have been rejected by many prestigious festivals.
Louisa Gummer is a highly experienced actor and voiceover. Recent work includes several roles in new Audible comedy series Slaving Away, and the audio guide for the Rotterdam Maritime Museum. Audiobooks include A Jane Austen Daydream. She can be heard saying ‘Pig Museum’ on the Stuttgart City Open Top Bus Tour, and in 2017 won the Liars' League Most Valuable Player (Acting) Award.
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