Authortrek short stories
Who will be the Authortrek Writer of the Month?
Creaking Mooring Giants by Peter Reiling
Nov 4th
Perhaps I was trying to build a structure, somewhere for the words to sit. Still the sporadic nature of my mind leads me away from discipline. I am not a disciplined man. I received too much at an early age. Marching to breakfast, lunch and dinner every day for five years left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I don’t wear uniforms anymore and I don’t polish my boots or brass. In the beginning, I was in Venice. Actually, that’s not true. In the beginning I’d just woken up after one week. My neck felt robotic. A mixture of desire, confusion and frustration predicated a need to write. I have to continue. But that was the beginning of it all. The day I heard the wood creak, I was in Venice. Venice is a good place for a romantic to be.
To the Sound of
Creaking mooring giants, rigid, split and standing fast, twisted round one another like so many drinking straws in a child’s careless hands.
Ciao Venezia!
And the Calzone’s puffed up and rustic looking with that oh so Italian dollop of pomodoro sauce napped across the top; nonchalant and deft like so many smoozing shoulders on the corners of Venice. The air is hot and humid, whilst the shade cools the young Dutch girl speaking with a dental lisp due to her newly fitted brace, creating a plaintive, almost scared intonation to her voice. Her lone Father lets out a desperate sigh as I suck on my gelato. I’m amongst firm footed pedestrians, floating on mud and lost in Venice.
By St Angelo Vaporetto station on the Grand Canal some in built directional system, over which I have no control, led me back to a few places. I watch the Gondoliers touting for business by the Ponte Rialto. With their dark brown attitude and arrogant pout it’s never long before someone is attracted. So a group comes along with one of their party being in a wheelchair. I can see the questions being asked from the way their heads nod and their eyes move. The Gondolier doesn’t much like it, but what the hell it is still money.
Small woody barber shops, warm and red with the patina of love and history soaked in to the walls, loose hairs brushed away from leaning necks. But it’s not romance that built this city. Trade, wealth, competition and a healthy slice of blood and sweat go a long way towards romance; the throw away image, visual recall and the suppression of violence. Whilst I’m thinking all this a French woman sitting next to me (I know she’s French because I heard her talking already) is explaining to her little boy what I’m doing. Peering over my shoulder the way she is, looks like the woman’s interested too, I even make my handwriting a tad more illegible; mainly for my self-inflated ego with a little left over for paranoia. That her child is peering over his Mother’s shoulder who is peering over mine; asking her “Mummy, Mummy, what’s that man writing about?” And the Mother answering…”I don’t know…” Only then to give a warm Motherly embrace and a kiss for fear that if she doesn’t show him enough love he might end up too insular, too solitary and with a propensity towards the malaise.
I’m thinking of Briggs now.
The waiter’s clearing up the tables and dragging chairs inside. Soft and balmy 11pm air is soothing my sun drenched skin. No amount of beer seems to get me drunk and the cigarettes still feel amazing. Hopefully all will go to plan and my beloved Hanna will arrive in half an hour. In the meantime I shall just sit here in the Punta Sabbione bus park with Venice just 20minutes away and continue to write.
I flick through the pages for a while. Nothing comes at me but that balmy air is keeping me calm. Over my right shoulder the muted machinations of propellers churning up salt fill the night. My mind churns back through the minutes and hours of bygone days; Ward Sergeant Briggs steps through the door.
Briggs is old and infirmed now, living in a home for retired servicemen. Everyday at twelve the dinner ladies come round with lunch. Leek and potato soup on Mondays and curries on Wednesdays. I’m at the hospital one day, talking to my old man when Briggs comes over; it’s the first time we’ve met.
“Are you the one… who done all those paintin’s… on ya Dad’s wall?” The old boy’s voice was rickety and splintered. Pauses and gaps in his diction made sense with his age.
“The paintings, yeah, their mine.” I told him.
“Oh..I done some wood carvings in my room. Come an av a look.” He didn’t ask me if I wanted to see them, he just told me. I wanted to see anyway.
On the way down to Mr. Briggs’ berth he told me about his stroke and how he couldn’t use his hands anymore. We had to walk slowly, Mr. Briggs had a Zimmer.
“Can’t even pick up a bloody pencil nowadays.” There was a hint of annoyance, but also acceptance in his voice. First he showed me the wood carvings and marquetry pieces. Most of them were generic and fairly unimaginative. I went for the ones that weren’t.
“What’s that one ?” I said, pointing to an abstract marquetry piece, basically a composition of triangles. I asked Mr. Briggs what his inspiration had been.
“Well…that’s maple wood….. I was having trouble… working with the grain…. The ruler fell on it, then I saw all these triangles.” It was a good piece. I picked out another.
“What about that one?” A figure climbing a tree but it looked like it was holding on for dear life. All the branches were drooping in to the ground and the figure was beginning to slide.
“It’s a dream.” He chuckled nervously; didn’t want me to see what he could see. There were pencil drawings of WW1 dog fights, one of the Germans going down; second rate copies. A watercolour of a cyclist that turned out to be Brigg’s and moved us on to his cycling ventures. The medals he’d received from the Cycling Touring Club, 20,000 K’s here, 15,000 there. Journeys I thought everyone on their little journeys.
“Ere…this’ll make your air stand on end” Typewritten on green paper, Briggs handed over his account of the North Eastern Spanish tour. The account was mostly factual, nothing creative in the words except that he’d actually written them which is a creative act in itself but I don’t think he saw it that way.
I walked back to my old man’s berth and he was riled at me for not spending the time with him. I’m glad I spent it with Briggs.
Ultimately another half-edged bet to nowhere
The pen somersaults in my hands, its nib dotting the ends of my fingers with small black marks; visual history or stains of thought, I can't decide which. One tentative trill of aggravated queuers’ serpentine their way to the left as curly blonde cripples scrape down the street with their leather flat caps worn a kilter on top a veritable bufon of rippled locks. That line I like. It could be the beginning of something, a poem, a painting, maybe the next line.
My Jotter
Torn flakes of cheap paper and jean fluff from my back pocket are stuck between my fingernails from the half a page of drivel I ripped out of my Jotter yesterday, easing out from their cuticle homes and floating through the air like blue cotton wool. Grey light is in the mist again but already I’ve got impetus, just from watching those nuts with their habit brollies raised…
Again
I find it easier to read the diary of a madman at six oclock in the morning, with two minutes to spare before the arrival of the Bank train. A distant ruffle of ubiquitous tabloid drivel accentuates the moment. Frustration at the awareness I’m losing the most productive hours of my day to this omnipresent, festering quagmire of draconian work makes me pick.. up.. my.. pen…. again! At least, I think to myself, if I can use the time spent traveling to and from work, working, thinking, playing, I can keep going. Purge myself creatively, so to speak.
Money Madness
I’m too tired to write
I have two
blister’s
in the same
place
one on either foot
a calming
black woman
reads
a
surgical procedures
document
on the
6.30
to Bank
Extramedullary technique
using
the
spike arm
all patched
up
with tired
lines
and gaping yawns
eyes seeking solace
in the
middle
distance
Paparazzo
lunge at
Mills
one suit
from the
FT
to the Sun
Money Madness.
The workplace
Some of them have been on the phones for twelve years.
I heard a bang from outside my window. I always assume it’s a firework but it was just the one bang, no more in quick succession afterward like you’d expect with fireworks. Well, should I go check? Strange sounds cut with the wind, slight and enticing. Mechanic trills mix with electronic vibes and the cadence of my prose. Muted rhythms from my neighbour’s wall blur the music to a din. Piaff voice slices through the haze and again, I have no regrets. Apart from this piece of absurd writing and the knowledge that this type of absurd is a trillion miles removed from the actual absurd of which I am trying, in vain, to get some kind of a handle on.
Misconstrued verbosity
Musicians
Artists
Or at least, they think they are
I remain sceptical of that
The Voice Mail chatters away in the back of my head
The Team Leaders hover, their pedantic comments spewing forth around me.
Middle aged women
Dried up
Lost
Social misfits
Freaks with eyes to the left
Mr. Pain of A.J Pain Waste Management is not in.
Systematically picking the phone up and putting it down; up, down, up, down. Run to the lavatory for a quick piss and a long drink of water, and then back to the booths. Right legs shake with anxiety as Dr Morris nods with knowing. I’m swimming around with the dregs in this place and I can almost smell it. In the booth opposite is a man who’ll be 62 in November. He moaned about the smell of all the smokers in the lift one day.
“Ohhpff God, when are you people gonna stop smoking?” No one responded to this facetious remark so I said.
“When are you going to start?” Equally sarcastic.
“Never, because I’m intelligent.” He looked at me hard from over the top of his reading glasses.
That was it between me and him. I knew after a remark like that there was nothing more I needed to know from this guy. His eyes look like they’re going to pop out of his head any minute and his face is twisted, red and dire.
Plenty of young black kids with their fuck off attitude, eyes hard to the wall, backs turned, not letting you in. I’m in this hole for money and Kazeem’s still tapping those keys with feral energy. His left leg is emaciated and crippled. Must be at least a foot shorter than his right leg and wears a large metal plate underneath his left shoe to make up the difference. Happiness and strength emanate from his soul..
A conversation picks up.
“What do you think of Boris’ handling the flag?” The Olympic handover.
Her resp’s not having any of it. “Not my thing.” He says. “I don’t like all the razzamatazz. I prefer the amateur sports.” Then comes out with some comment about the dumbing down of all humanity. There’s plenty of people with big ideas in this place. Plenty of people with their noses turned up to society and their faces in the dirt.
Those curly vowels and that expectorant tongue must really piss the clients off. I was staring straight in to his red, pitted face this morning, over the shelf of my booth. Peering intently whilst his eyes were fixed on the screen. Wobbling as he walks he stops
to retrieve the Eccles cake that’s been sitting at the bottom of his bag all week. He’s an overgrown child, socially inept and probably still living with his Mum, well in to his forties. His eyes droop at the corners like an old Mastiff as he juggles his vocabulary to hit another strike.
The beards, the hands, the nose curves and disinterested smiles. The wanton dreams in to time, desperate gasps, sinking heads and recumbent necks; I want them all. A mixture of sweet chilli sauce and mayonnaise makes the escalope tricky to handle; I manage somehow. Still burping I reach for my pen and the indigestion tablets. Open my little yellow jotter, let the ink flow and breath a sigh of relief. Half a closed ear sneers through the slit of an open door. What you listening to Buddy? But I’m only talking to the ear, not the man behind it. At the back of the sandwich cue stands a stressed out little guy, scratching his temples red; City Wired. I pause for a moment to consider ironing out all the Americanisms but there are too many creases and besides, the crevasses they form are deep and alluring.
So these are the people I’m surrounded by. Wired up city kids with skin disorders, socially inept and resentful divorcees with BO, cripples, forty year old choo choo boys, drunken English cricketing eccentrics who only watch amateur sports to bolster their feelings of intellectual superiority, 4ft women with spines the shape of triangles, 20% of next weeks A&E casualties to roll in at 3 in the morning with a split cheek and no shoulder to lean on and me. But I want to get a handle on the people, right?
Haggard, soft lavender lines with bows and tails of hair and life. Seedy, idealistic queers with absolutely no dress sense and even less reason to care what the fuck I might think about it. Noses that’ve sniffed untold numbers of untold drinks and every drop retained with olfactory magnificence. Old Mexicans lugging cheap English beer in the heavy damp air, staring with the glazed eyes of men who bailed out years ago. Green painted walls flake and peel. You can reveal something new by walking backwards sometimes but if you pick at your scabs too often, they’ll become infected.
Budgerigars
I figure I’ll open up my yellow Jotter again, anywhere, see what jumps at me. The word Hypermarkets catches my eye. Why was I writing about Hypermarkets? I don’t want to read anymore, just remember; see how much the picture’s changed. I cave in immediately and take another peek at the Jotter. Budgerigars…., now I remember. They had clipped wings and just perched atop their poles, chirping who knows what haunt. I like the word. Budgerigars I mean, reminds me of another chap with sticky lungs and dancing birds outside the Tate one day in autumn.
Something about ‘another bum’ came in to my head. My thoughts were derogatory and superior, self-inflating. Bloody bum, I thought. Looked him straight in the eye and made him damn sure I wasn’t interested, didn’t have the time of day, so fuck off thank you very much, get out of my sight and go boil your lips.
PROFILE THINGS
Silky budgerigar feet
Climbing up and down ladders
Walking the rope.
Keeper stops the music
Coughing,
Tells tale of hernia applied pressure to lungs
Sticky throat
Arms akimbo
Hot heat
Bloomsbury summer shade
Working its relaxant charms
Muscles tired with aching.
Conscience of oneself burning the core
Invisible eyes floating on a stage of their own
Making, waking, faking purple lines.
Why, time is of the essence now my boy;
How many of these waking hours will you squander, fretting over wasted time?
Sinuous, residual memories
The omnipotent trap.
I met Tony in Trafalgar Square some time between 2006/07 I can’t remember exactly. I was going to the national gallery.
TONY BOLLONI
Me mate said to me, he said ere, Tony Bolloni. What's that ya drinking there?
VP I told im.
If ya ga dun there, towads St James, there's an Offi on the corner, second left. I could get me bottle o' VP in there, this were a few year ago like, I could get me VP in there for £1.99, £1.99. Now the same bottle o'costya £3.99. We're makin it and they're takin it.
The first thing Tony Bolloni said to me was
Ere Biggun…….. Biggun……Eh Biggun
I turned round on the third, even though I knew he was talking to me the moment he opened his mouth. I guess a mixture of apprehension and plain ignorance stopped me from acknowledging him straight away.
Ere Biggun, who said ya can't avva drink in Trafalgar Square?
I don't know, who said it? Was my reply.
Between the moments of silence, which became less awkward the more we spoke, Toni began to open up with me. He was clearly homeless and his attempts to hide it were completely transparent. However, I think no matter how down a man becomes; it takes a lowly sort to admit it readily.
Ah..! My words are so clumsy. The brevity of honesty will do him better justice.
Ya doun ere fa long?
I live in London.
So do I mate, just over the river I am.
I want to look at some paintings but…..
I asked Tony how long he'd been in London.
Nearly 50 years now.
He didn't look much older than 55.
15 years?
No Fifty. I'll be 58 this year, must've come dan ere about 11.
With your folks? I presumed.
No. Thumbed it doun the M1, chap dropped me off at Covent Garden.
Tony found a job, working in the Market there.
S'all changed now.
I can remember when we use to go o'erthere (he pointed to St Martins in the Fields) get a nice cup o soup an some tea. Stopped all that now.
Everywhere?
Yep. I go to Victoria now, but even there ya cant go in the front door. Ya av to go round back door, an ringa buzzer. First thing they ask ya is. Av ya git any ID. Then they wanna know, if ya got any money fa food. Na, I tells em. If I ad money fa food I would'ne be ere. 15p for an egg. 20p for a slice of bacon.
So what happens if you got no money?
Fuck off mostly, sometimes you get a cheese sandwich. Ask em for a blanket an they don't av one. What I'll do tonight. I'll go doun the Strand and get meself some nice cardboard, find a private doorway to fall asleep in.
How long you been doing that for?
Years.
I'm gonna get me a bottle of VP in a minute. Might go to brighton tomorrow.
What is VP?
27.5 percent. See what I'm tellin ya to do, well, not tellin ya, but ya know. I buy me bottle of VP anna bottle o'coke, pour half me coke out an put the VP inside. They think ya drinkin coke an by the time ya get to Brighton ya drunk as a cunt aren't ya. I don't like this cider. Gonna get a bottle o'VP in a minute.
Ere Biggun, watch me can for a minute, I'm just goin for a piss. Me name's Tony by the way.
Peter.
Tony got up and went for a piss behind a statue of George Washington, at the front of The National.
He came back.
I'll tell ya what Pete.
What's that Tony?
I'm not goin back there again.
No?
Nah, they're takin the piss outa me. (He jiggers)
Ok Tony, I think I'm gonna go now.
Ouh…ya got far to go?
No, I'm going in to the gallery.
What, in there?
Yeah, I go there a lot.
Aye, I bin in there once like, when she was alive, God bless er.
Must've bin 20 year ago now.
Hey, it's been nice meeting youTony.
Y'alright fa a cup o'tea like. If ya not, I'll see ya right for one.
No. I'm OK Tony.
Listen, take it easy man.
Yeah, alright Pete. Ya got a ciggi before ya go?
Yeah, course I have.
Lila I met on the Portobello road one day in summer. My face turned to the sun while my fingers felt numb.
Lila
I don't know why I stopped, it provoked a few days of vacuous nothingness, inactivity and lax behaviour. Thinking about why people buy those lousy ‘Change Your Life’ books got me started again. Well, the answer to the question's straight forward, people want to change their lives. Why do they think a book's gonna give them the answer? Why not I suppose; this is getting me nowhere. But I was going to tell you about the Norwegian lady I met; I just had to wait for the right time to tell it.
So she asked me for fire. I assumed by this request that her English wasn't great so I didn't expect a conversation. May be she was using the time to appraise me, sum me up.
"I think it's nice to smoke, may be once or twice a year." She glanced over without me looking.
“Well yes, I’m afraid I smoke rather more than that.”
The last time she was in London was 69; she liked the London buses; I like semi-colons; they give you time to think; a brief pause but longer than a comma. Her name was Lila and if she'd owned a Beach Shop she could have called it Lila's Lilo's; or not. I asked her the reason for her visit to London and she told me she'd been following a 70 year old pianist with a psychiatric disorder that made the woman think everybody hated her. I wanted to know what she meant by following. I knew it wasn't bad diction but I didn't ask. Lila was drinking her strong coffee that she didn't like too much and getting a bit of head space from the bi-polar pianist.
Warm, but with a cold Scandinavian cut to her voice she said:
"Yes, I think I am leaving Oslo soon, may be Toronto, Canada, I don't know yet. You know Somalia?"
“Somalia?” I said. “Well ere, yes, I know it’s in Africa.”
“Yeah, yeah, Africa. Oh, I tell you, there are too many in my country.”
“Somalians ?”
“Yeah, yeah. You know, I’m not being racist, but their culture, ohhff!! You know they cut up little girls in Somalia. You know that, right? It’s very bad, right? Tragic huh?”
“Well yes, I ahh…….” She kept butting in, trying to back up her point, then apologised when she caught herself interrupting too much.
“I think I understand what you’re saying Lila but you know, I think it’s harder to understand than it is to judge also.”
"Hmm, yes, you are right. I think you know a lot of things. Yes, I think you know about life Peter. Yes, I think it's true." She smiled some more, pointed at the freckles on her forearm, told me what a strong woman she was.
“I am 64 but today I feel like seventy.”
“You look fine to me.” I told her.
“Oh, my hair is all curly and I look like I go round in one those machines, yes.”
“Yes” She patted my arm affectionately.
All the time she was looking at me with these blue eyes, somehow both cold and warm, simultaneously. Lila told me how she sang at home, to friends and family, and how the people said she had gold in her voice. There was something enigmatic and alluring about Lila. Then she hit me with the pitch.
“You know Peter, I want to tell you something. Jesus loves you, you know. Yes, Peter. Jesus loves you. You know, back in Oslo one time, I see a man who was on the street, he had children and I ask him if he’s OK and he say no, no. He say I don’t want this life anymore, I hate this life. You know Peter, I felt so bad for him Peter. This man have children too, you know. Then the Lord, he say to me to help this man and I take him to the post office and I give him $500.”
Lila had done such a good job of endearing herself to me by this point; I could feel myself being roped in for a minute. I could see how some down on their luck saddo like me could’ve been taken in by it all; start to believe that Lila really was an Angel. Putting all the God stuff aside though she was a good and sincere woman, not some religious whacko and I felt truly touched by her. She asked me if I had a lot of money. I said no and she reached in to her purse and put a twenty pound note in my hand.
“Oh, I can’t possibly take this, I mean, you really don’t have to, erhh..” You know how it is, I showed her the usual polite protestations, but she wasn’t going to take the money back. So a little later on I went to have a drink with the money Lila had given me and supped over those cold/warm eyes for a while longer.
Disingenuous or Kosher
Without a doubt it's a beautiful smile, when I first caught sight of it I stood up and paid attention. Of course, she gives the same smile to everyone, enough people to cancel out the charm completely and leave me with nothing. Seems like nowadays you've got to see through all the faces and decipher what they're really saying; a modern day cryptology of disingenuous looks and vacant stares. Rigid steel rods, fixing all the eyes to the ground, fixated by unknown paths, arbitrary bearings tuned to the poles of miscellaneous compass needles; latitudes of thought threatened by the whims of caprice and fantasy. Nobodies, telling somebodies to be anybody; IC1 males getting checked in the rain on Charlotte Street. Old Bill sliding on his blue plastic gloves and asking where the jabs are. The burly looking community officer, standing alongside and keeping quiet, either because he's been told not to interfere too much or he just can't think of anything to say. God I hate authority.
Perfect Elocution
The simplicity of a polite request and the privilege of class; he just asked me for a light with one banana in his hand, perfect elocution and a direct, leading eye. “Hello. Please may I borrow your lighter?" I thought. I can respect that in a man, the directness, the perfect simplicity and all that entails. Gives me a good grounding, something to go by, maybe not all of it good, but enough to make my lips turn up to the corners and a little smoke get in the way.
But I’m Game
Like an insane man’s reality, a cacophony of voices whirls through my ears; only this is a reality deemed sane, given mandate by business, work and money. The lens of my eye zooms in as my head pans out, evoking an Hitchcockian moment of vertiginous terror. Voicemail recordings merge with classical hold music as I begin to while away the minutes and hours in this miasmic state of ethereal abandon. This hegemony of sound with its irksome and ignorant squeaks of zealous redundancy overcomes me. Subjugated hands of toil squirm at my side, lubricating the engines of their own demise. My heart begins to palpitate, pumping that sanguine liquid ever faster through my veins, hence darkening the meat of my flesh with blind activity. And yet, I have a retreat.
The Retreat
Dark black silhouettes of fantastical urban invention jar for space with romantic Ferris wheel rides and the jagged wings of art deco eagles. Bastions of civil engineering parade with stature the prowess of their industrial age and rile the stiff, starched collars of an eighteenth century count. On the 14th floor of my four inch tall skyscraper one lone Bauhaus sofa awaits the edifying presence of Le Corbusiers’ arse, ready and waiting to learn from the curves of his buttocks. Variations upon a theme of Venetian architecture meld with low lying Danish huts floating softly upon their Scandinavian mud foundations; tunnels and roads lead to nowhere.
But these words trace a false outline; paint a façade over the sheen of your eyes.
At first there are lines, curved and straight; punctuated by black blocks of ink. The abstract interlocutor whispers clichés of coffee and drink; hazel tinged screens of dried up Epicureans baking cakes. Already fallen rain eeks the colour from my page as if a brush dipping it’s sympathy upon a dab of dried up gouache. Those tender arms of flesh asphyxiate my words. Paper siblings of a fresh new page are etched with indecision; they mark the intentions of my own sustenance.
Anomalous human gaits, taps of spoons and seen through stares choreograph a new act of day. The metal legs of my table rattle over old Berlin cobbles as I attempt to make myself comfortable. Air thick with must do’s and muscles tired with aching rest their haunches while another freak slaps his face to the resounding echo of solitude. An arbitrary arrangement of books, letters, words and journals sooth my bones and add sound to the polyphony.
Old Panama Cyclo
Cyclomotor with his Panama hat and engine that doesn’t work rides across the Mariannenstraße crossroads and I’m reminded of my friend John Muckle and the book he wrote about cyclomotors. Irish hounds sniff the paths, glancing at me with their doleful eyes like souls once removed. I think perhaps he wallowed too much but I can already see his sneering pride grinning at the bar of King George’s. Rob remarks in his lude and high falutin foppishness, insinuations of a lascivious nature, then on to bestiality and more. Subversions of friendship attack my senses whilst the puerile jibes act as terms of endearment. It’s hard to tell when the joke becomes more; an opening to the truth or my own stupidity.
And I sit here, the girl in front of me’s coffee slowly turning to milk. Turkish gaggles of worked up women tickle their fancies behind me, happy, content and green like a freshly baked baklava. She measures I know not what; with her protractions and right angles to I know not where. The hook nosed gentleman sneers in to his place. Wearing a murky grey great coat and bulldog clips on his trouser legs he could be anyone from academic to maniac. His friend speaks with his fingers, drawing the outlines of little alien men in the air, their eyes are wide and generic and their little stomachs are round and that’s a ruse. The abstract interlocutor reminds me that the loneliest are the strongest, I’m still unsure whether I can carry the burden or not.
Who Killed Bambi?
Opposite this cobbled road the Funk Store has a sign in the window, it reads: ‘Who Killed Bambi?’ Sirens whirr, their harsh tones grate my ears a little more. Buffed stainless steel reflects the orange of one more Indian summer. Embroidered gold and green parasols give me the heat and wallow; waiting for the Maharajah to glide through town with Elephantine pride. Courtesies are exchanged and fees are paid whilst abrasive tongues of Germanic banter jolt my perceptions, until they whisper. Turn my head, extend your journey as my pen writhes and wriggles its spurious line.
5’s and S’s
Sitting by the Heinrich Platz, all the people are on the other side of the street; I thought it would give me a good vantage point; the hubs are my muse. Two feet cross the road with one ankle that won’t bend, making the foot look heavy; lead weights to the ill timed gait of a long lost fate. Old musicians walk to the next gig with their stings and shades waiting for the sun to peek through the rain again. Huskies growl at the ankles of trouble. 5’s hang from S’s next to O’s with eyes. A Berlin hippy rides his bike with golden leaves and branches strewn across his handle bars the same colour as his silk trouser legs.
The Best Years Were Times Spent Alone and I Won’t Forget That
I wake up to one quasi-ecclesiastical arch, washed in to the grain of white paper pits and a note daubed in red. It reads ‘The best years were times spent alone and I won’t forget that.’ For a moment my heart sobs until the street kids raise their screens to the start up tones of another day. With a clip a slip and a flip they’re all logged in again and I log off. For a while I’m walking through the antique market that I went to yesterday. Resplendent with World War II memorabilia; German soldier helmets and arbitrary communications, letters, cards and the like, tainted by the Nazi stamp. Philately collections, numismatic collections, wind up amps playing old Bavarian folk music. Trophies of Africa, breasts of fertility and masks of war. Young Arian idealists with their teeth all crumbling to gold selling dug up pieces of broken pottery from the Weimar republic. The romance replacing a reality I seek to evade.
Sate the Baying Beast
Looking through the street art murals which I don’t much care for I feel positive the moment I pick up my pen. I remember Rob telling me how he feels he’s keeping the beast at bay when he paints, subduing its rage and sating its appetite for destruction. I fear the appetite of Rob’s ghouls and demons may prove to be too voracious. I can see them slowly, inexorably devouring him. His stained red teeth and open, intelligent face descending to the South. Each slow and heavy swing of the pendulum forcing him down, in to the pit, its mirror lined walls will offer no escape, simply a reflection. I can feel the fear when I’m near him.
Numero Svei
So now I’ve got the window seat, booth no.2.
Slow and tender like a horticulturist stroking back to life a dying seed, the way my neighbour strokes his keys makes me think he may have a gentle soul; considered application and nervous brilliance.
“Please, if you may help me one more time, you are so gentle.” He meant kind or helpful but I like the word he used, gentle, and it was true, she did seem really very gentle but not particularly attractive.
Leaving
It was three o’clock in the morning. Stroking her soft skin for the last time, I got up and made myself a coffee. I was feeling scared and unsure about everything. After I got up I remembered that the clock was set ten minutes ahead of time. I relaxed for a while and took in my surroundings. The air was still and dewy. Outside the overgrown weeds looked strong and fresh; they looked like a picture I had in my head of the jungle. In the sink were the remains of the meal and wine we had devoured the night before. I always enjoyed eating with her. Now I was looking at history. I can’t look back like that I thought. I have to move forward; there’s no going back now. She got up too. Her eyes were still sleepy. I wanted to hug her but thought it would hurt too much. I didn’t want the pain. She came over to me anyway and snuggled her face in to my chest. I could smell the fragrance of her hair.
“Ok baby, I’ve got to go now.”
“Oh no! Where are you going?” She said it like a scared child, she knew it got me.
My throat was beginning to swell with emotion. I looked down at her sweet round thighs once more, kissed her cheek and shut the door.
When I met Rob he was already drunk. Swaying backwards and forwards on his heels and pointing his finger at me like Lord Kitchener. I felt sick at the sight of his sorry drunkenness. The driver told us to hurry up. We threw our luggage in to the baggage compartment and took our seats. It was four o’clock in the morning and Rob was wearing his shades. He sat down opposite me and stretched his legs across the passenger seat. I was glad he sat over there. I leant my head against the window and tried to sleep but couldn’t. I was thinking about her and myself too much.
“Wouldn’t it be great if the plane crashed?” Rob felt a little perky now, still drunk but perky. With his air of perpetual nonchalance he swayed his eyes through the shades and offered me a polo. I took one.
“Want a sweet?” He said to the girl behind us in the queue for the plane. She shook her head disapprovingly and just sighed.
“I think we’re in the wrong queue Peter.”
“Oh well, I said.”
When we got there they were all laughing and joking. Thinking how cool and charming this guy was with his dishevelled hair and white rimmed Ray-Bans. I though it was sad the way he just couldn’t be himself. Or maybe this was he. I hadn’t worked that out yet.
A Man at His Bath
I like
Caillebotte
he makes
me
laugh
and think
I will paint
a man
drying his body
after a bath
I can hear
his joyous
bellow
bouncing
up
and
down
all the
cafes
of
Montemarte
Sacre Coeur!
they will shout
this is ridiculous
will be
their
retort
no doubt
It’s a fine figure
not perfect
but fine
that’s not really
the point
the boots are worn
a
little ragged
newly wet
footprints
stain the floor
a
snapshot
of banality
extrapollated
everyday
But this
is no Gentleman
surely
such a
plain
metal
bath
such an
austere
room
such vigour
enervate
the fate
of a
working man’s gait.
As I Leave I Find
My first problem as I leave the gallery is the constant movement; in part due to the fact that I am trying too hard to focus on it. Encapsulate the swing of every hip, the beat of every foot, to paint the changing light and smear my page with the detritus of a single day. An instant that changes so quickly it almost never happens, made manifest in the downtrodden grey shades of a trillion chewing gum puddles.
A nexus of conversations around me lead first to the red cheeks and corpulent belly of farmer house tweed. He's a Slow Food producer from Italy, the deep embedded lines of his work torn hands stained red with the clay caress of Mother Earth. Then the wet coarse gurgle of an old man's chest sends me north to flying cats and projectile claws, intermingled with the nervy giggles of a schoolgirl trip.
Tap tap tap of my minds reflection transcended to audio by the flip of a flop. A flip-flop. Catching a dried summer leaf in flight as it blows through the doorway like a curious cat I sense the passing of souls, exaggerated by the nervous twitching of a knee and one Greater London for the Blind whiskey bottle, half full of pennies.
I glance toward Baguettes on the Menu but I don't think of quality, like the fresh doughy bread I tasted in France one time, rather some dried up piece of pre-baked rot looking sorry for itself and trying to catch some rapport with the wilted little gems and cherry tomatoes before it gets eaten.
As I Leave I Find
I thought they were rather bigger than this
In a larger room
With different lighting
Less people milling around
Solid
Noon tree trunks
Spin their twines
With a scrape
Distant starry halo
Moons deep night
Noon country workers
Resting their feet
Side of the road boulders
Shaded by leaves
Companions trail
While laces are tied
Dusks’ soft serenity
Punting afloat
By the banks of your lake
Depths impending night
Appears to have left the boat
Residual heat of day
Baked in stone Monastery walls
Then I walk away
Through pine trees in the snow.
Ballerina Shoes
I can see your ankles
They look like Ballerina shoes
Smoking au usual
Not much
Tired
Oh yeah
He’s an intelligent guy isn’t he?
He was a sports writer
Anyways, that’s how he started, I think
Hmm
Well, your saying that like it’s a new revelation
People have always been skeptical
You’re talking about society now
So
Explain more about the meeting
What happened?
Cal
Stop moving
Please
No, talk
Just don’t move
Did you drink lots of coffee today?
No?
Cause I hate it when you catch me off guard
When I’m feeling tired
It makes me feel so inferior
Ah, all wright then
Went to the market
Wanted a lamp for the apartment
Nah
Hhhad some sushi
Walked through the park with Colin
Look how black my eyes are
I haven’t been home yet
Yesterday
Ah it’s a great city
Like New York in the seventies
Nothing
I feel like a schoolboy
Been there two many times Cal
I know
I know that.
I remembered
I rang the number five, maybe six times. All I got was a message in German I couldn’t understand. Akim told me it was an answer machine. Now there are two dumb messages at that number. I don’t know who Yanick is either.
They made everyones portion of pasta and sauce a little smaller, so I could have some. It was good but not enough. Some girl was crying. Her eyes were red and her voice a little wobbly. Her ex had just killed himself. We all ate the pasta together and I drank some cheap red wine that I had just bought from the Plus around the corner. Rob had been up for about 36 hours. He’d done some good painting on the night shift and now he was truly soused. He was trying to be funny, making schoolboy jokes, and generally being insensitive. He felt bad about that the next morning. I could tell but he told me also.
When I began to write the China box noodles were sizzling in the wok behind me. From the looks the cook was giving me I thought she didn’t like me sitting around after I’d eaten my noodles. They tasted good and hot. I helped myself to some more chilli and soy half way down.
I’d ridden my bike for an hour to clear my mind but she was still there. I remembered the curves of her neck and her soft white skin, lightly dappled with freckles. I remembered how she threw back her head to drive the smoke away. The way she pouted her lips was provocative to me. I remembered how she’d spoken of seeing the most beautiful boy in the world on a beach in Cuba and the way I thought her idea of etiquette had made her use the word beautiful. I remembered how she’d looked at me when she used the word.
A buzzer sounded in the street. Some music began to play. I couldn’t see where the speaker was but kept looking at the Chinese lantern above my head. The sound seemed to be coming from there although I knew it wasn’t. A gust of wind blew the lantern to an angle and I could see straight through it. Someone spat in the street. I caught the sound in my left ear. He must have had good lungs because my left ear doesn’t hear too well. Then I saw the busker on the opposite corner of the crossroads. Wearing a Gatsby and bending his knees to every riff he appeared insensibly happy. From where I sat I could see his snidy grin tinged with sincerity. People on the street looked relaxed. There was no trouble. I was glad of that.
When I returned home that night I saw a pair of half naked legs on the sofa, through the window. I thought it was a girl, sewing. My key stuck in the door. It took an age to open. Managing to turn the lock the wall shuddered because I always forget to close the door quietly. Knocking over a few of the empty beer bottles in the lobby, I turned the light on. Rob was sitting on the sofa in his swimming shorts, a half drunk bottle of beer on the table infront of him. He was not awake.
The Kiosk
There’s a small lever attached to the side of the ashtray. When you push down on it with your thumb a hole opens up and swallows all the ash. Inside, the Kiosk looks cosy. One Mother and her boy serve coffee and hot sandwiches from their hunker of warmth. Large green, wooden flaps open up into a roof with white and yellow bulbs dangling from wires. Neon café signs and steel reflected light give an edge to the grey air. Across the other side of the platz is another bar I’ve been to a lot lately. The chap who serves me there is old and lean. He wears horizontal striped sweatshirts. I gave him a nod when I walked by earlier. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. The sun has already begun its descent.
The local rag has the intials BZ printed in red. It's leading article is a story about a drug peddler and his client making a deal in front of the chief of police. On the inside cover is a picture of a twenty four year old man wearing a black vest and holding a semi-automatic machine gun across his chest. He wears glasses and looks rather pleased with himself.
The third double spread is all pictures. Danny de Vito, Bruce Willis and Jack Nicholson all stare in awe at the strength of a little disabled kid. A buxom German wench pushes her cleavage forward as she kneels on the wet grass. A half eaten ear dangles from her teeth that she has just picked out from the apple water. You remember the old party game. The top of her torso, just below the shoulders, is gouged deeply with two fresh claw marks, one either side. They bleed heavily.
The left side profile of my face held her gaze for a second. It was a long second. Within it there was enough time for me to think of the last time I came to this bar, some eight months previous, and the department I came up with for the ‘New Curriculum. Curiosity was its premise.
Doubt makes the words appear to slide off the page already, like frost on a car windscreen in English suburbia as the sun begins to rise. I’m glad to be hearing music again. What with the heads, the flowers and the perspective of movement in here the window looks like a torn page from one of the Sunday Times glossy supplements; some spurious article on the youth of today. Another lone chap at the bar picks up his pen and begins to write something. He annoys me by doing so. Candles at the bar create a chiaroscuro effect on my forearm. My right knee begins to shake in time with the music. Naked Apes, scratch, squint and quiver. Desmond Morris really had a lasting effect on me. Nina Simone makes me want to burst. I lean my left foot on the other stool. Muted trombones and voices speaking eyes hypnotise my throat to the sound of popping bottles. Long leaning light on the post in front of me make the shadows kiss and all the flowers wilt. Bobs of hair resemble freshly harvested bundles of wheat. I can feel the heat. Green Absinthe glows on the bar. Fish shaped spoons rest on the lip, waiting for the sugar to burn. A polyphony of voices mutes the teenage giggle. The ink is pumping and my hands feel warm as the music hits a peak. I turn the page. I think she was a he. It wallows in ecstatic abandon, leveling out before the next crescendo. Oscillating with awareness, the bongos kick in and square the game.
Peter Reiling © 2008
JAGGU.
Oct 20th
Jaggu was a part time labourer and also a part time jack of all trade and which may not be strictly true, as he never learnt a trade in a professional manner but drifted from job to job and from place to place, to earn as he called the ‘crust’ for his hungry stomach.
Schooling was hard for him and he was usually at the bottom of his class but he never detected any harm in it and thought that when divinity brought a human being in this world, he was already equipped to deal with life in all its aspects and did not need the promptings of schooling as to come under goading of some school mastering of any willy nilly personnel. The only important thing was finding a shelter and sufficient food for ones belly as not to get starved or emaciated like hermits and thus to take an early exit from life. That was all. When one was born then one he had to survive somehow and there was no point in committing suicide. It was all right to do a little hard work here and there to make a living, providing one is not wholly preoccupied with it and thus becomes a slave of others.
He was hardly capable of passing any examination at school but somehow managed to progress from elementary level to grade eight and that was the limits of his educational ambitions and it did not extend beyond that circumference. He could just read and add simple sums, to make his way into the greater world. He considered himself as well equipped intellectually as anybody else and pitied those who became slaves of their own intellect by enrolling into universities and higher educational institutes, and that was a shear waste of one’s life.
He had not much time for any morality or ethical behavior either. If a man or a woman is loaded with money and some poor bastard like him comes to such person as to ask for help, the moneyed person should have the guts to give away some of the extra cash that was being left wastefully in a bank. With that pragmatic approach, he did not want anymore intellectual analysis about the ethical side or of moral transactions. Only fools did that- who had not realized the meaning of life.
He decided to settle in a small town where there were sufficient means of making a living, by hiring himself out as a labourer for the day jobs. In the morning he had to go to a place in the market and align himself with others waiting there- sit on the pavement and wait for the prospective hirer to come and pick the suitable person. Normally he was hired to do various jobs- as a farm labourer, a plumber’s mate and assistant to a stonemason or as an unskilled labourer on a building site. After certain period of time, he began to find all that physical work monotonous and tiring. He wanted to find an alternative work but did not know how to go about it. To give him some ideas, he ventured out to the center of the town where the big market place was bustling with people. He visited various shops and arcades.
The green grocer and fruit seller stalls were most attractive. There were so many varieties of fruits, vegetables and other sweets things such as sugar canes tied into bundles and being displayed against the walls. The children were the most enthusiastic about buying the canes, pressurizing their parents to buy them the whole lengths of five feet of the cane sticks and which they directed the seller to cut into lengths of one foot each and thus making the five pieces of cane sufficient for each member of the family. When at home in winter sunshine, they sat in a circle with a lengths of sugar cane in their hands and their teeth ready to do the honour of biting and slicing the outer skin by peeling out and leaving the inner juicy core ready for sucking. They bit into the soft fluffy core tearing out a small piece and extracting its juice. It was a heavenly tasting juice; the sweet cool liquid was pouring through, to transform their palette and brain into a symphony of bliss.
Looking at those tastefully decorated stall of fruits and vegetables with their yellow, green, red, mauve and white colours and different textures; he was prompted to ask for any available job and was not surprised to find its unavailability.
He next observed a bulky shopkeeper sitting on a comfortable divan, in the front parlour of his grocery shop. He had propped himself against cushions to rest his back and also on left and right to support his bulky mass and telling his customers that due to shortage of staff, he was unable to serve them promptly. Here was an opportunity for Jaggu to land such a cushy job and as the opportunity came he presented himself to the shopkeeper.
‘ Ram Ram. Sethji. I gather you are in need of some new shop hand. I was wondering if I may be suitable for it.’
Sethji looked at him and examined him from head to foot with his fat face and mean eyes.
‘ I do not employ any willy nilly.’ Trying to exert his position and his ownership
‘ But I am not anyone, I have done such work before.’ Jaggu lied.
‘Can you read?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘And add and subtract.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Are you honest?’
‘ Very.’ Jaggu lied again.
He was hired.
*
Sethji was sitting on his comfortable divan dealing with the customers who were sitting on a long bench, waiting their turn to order the required groceries. He was popular with people and had a sweet manner of speaking and putting people at their ease. He had loyal and regular customers at his command.
The popular items being dals or pulses- mungi, mash, moth, lentils etc and before the people decided to buy, they were shown samples in small quantities and this was the task assigned to Jaggu.
‘Oye! Jaggu, show the reverend lady some mung dal.’
And Jaggu brought a handful of mung grain scooped from a sack of mung into a sort of metallic scooper and which the customer examined.
‘ Is it from last year’s crop?’
‘ Would I do such a thing to a dear lady? No it is from this year’s crop and I sell only the best.’ Sethji laid out his strategy for charming his customer.
Further the ‘dear lady’ bought weights of rice, flour, cooking oil, spices etc.
Sethji was writing each item on a piece of paper and at the end of the transaction made an invoice by adding the cost of each item. The whole bill amounted to twelve rupees.
‘ I have got only ten rupees on me.’ Shanti, the customer lady announced.
‘ It does not matter, Jaggu will accompany you to your home carrying all the goods.’ Said sethji.
Jaggu accompanied her to the house. Shanti was a widow but her house looked prosperous.
They entered the house.
‘Put all the things in the kitchen and I will bring you two outstanding rupees.’
Jaggu watched her go into a room, unlocked a steel trunk, pulled out a bag of jingling silver rupees and took two rupees for sethji and some loose cash for Jaggu as baksheesh.
Jaggu watched her closely.
‘That old woman has plenty of money hidden away and how nice it would be if he could lay my hand on some of it. A young man like me needs it more than that silly old woman and who has not many years to live’ mused Jaggu with his head full of wicked thoughts.
He went back to the store and planned something ghastly and awaited the arrival of Shanti on her return trip to the shop. Usually the old woman returned to the shop beginning of each month to replenish her stock.
After some interval Shanti did return one afternoon to buy more provisions from the shop and Jaggu accompanied her again to the house and put the grocery in the kitchen and when she went to open the trunk to bring out money, he watched her and as she took out her money bag and returned to kitchen, Jaggu grabbed hold of her from behind and told her to hand it over the money but she refused and ensuing struggle followed when each one tried to get hold of the bag and in the process, Shanti slipped and fell hitting her head on the hard floor. She lay there silent with blood pouring from back of her head.
Jaggu grabbed the bag and ran out of the house trying to close the front door behind him.
When he went to the store the following morning, Sethji told him a dreadful news that one of his best customer had died in the hospital after slipping and hitting her head on the floor and that the door of her house was not locked and the next-door neighbour heard some banging on the adjoining wall. They took her to the hospital where she died later due to severity of her head injuries.
Police did not pursue the matter further as they thought that she died due to an accident, slipping at home and there were no suspicious circumstances.
………………….
Jaggu was worried that he might be charged with manslaughter or something like that but after hearing the good news he breathed a sigh of relief.
Did I kill her? No she just slipped and banged her head on the floor. You cannot put the blame on me. She was old and had plenty of money hidden away. Truly it was no use to her; she was soon going to die any way. I am young and still have all my life in front of me and it is better that I make use of herfortune. Do not blame me that old woman has died. No I do not feel any remorse for her on account of my action. Things just happen that way in life. It is full of unexpected accidents.
Musing thus he convinced himself as being blameless and thus became overjoyed. He had done well. Soon he would go on a splendid holiday and enjoy himself and forget all about that old woman.
* * *
Having unburdened himself of his remorse about that dreadful happening, he was sleeping now peacefully each night and dreaming, some happy reveries occupied his dreams.
One such night during drowsiness of his sleep, he thought he heard a muffled knock at the door but did not pay any attention to it, thinking that it was only an illusion until there was a constant scratching outside the door which gave him a sudden upstart to get up in panic. Soon the door was pushed in with a creaking noise and a ghostly shadow entered the room. He rubbed his eyes to see clearly but could not make much of it against a dark background.
With thumping heart he laid in bed while the scratching sound approached nearer and nearer. Some ghostly fingers touched his neck and he jumped out of bed and stumbled to the floor. The phantom figure of Shanti was standing over him, with her bony finger pointing straight at him.
‘You stole my money. You bastard! You murderer!’ the skeleton shouted in rattled voice
Jaggu tried to run away but stumbled again, his legs turned to jelly and without any energy left to stand.
‘ You cannot run away from me now. You murdered me and I will murder you soon.’
‘Please don’t, I am too young to die.’ Pleaded Jaggu
But the ghostly skeleton approached nearer and nearer and caught him again by the throat with those cold deadly fingers, which felt like a frozen knife blade.
‘Please do not kill me, I beg of you. I will give you all the stolen money.’
‘Show me the bag.’ Said the ghostly voice.
Jaggu pulled out a metallic box from underneath his bed, opened the bag inside and showed all the shiny silvery pieces.
‘All three hundred rupees are there, I have not touched even a single pence yet, honestly.’
The bag was snatched from his hands with a jerked pull and all the silver coins scattered on the floor making a metallic musical sound.
The bonny hand picked one piece.
‘I will be back tomorrow for another piece.’ and disappeared.
He was drenched in sweat and his mouth was dry. He sipped some water and waited for the daylight to come. On the following day he could not eat much and spent the restless day again in dread for the coming night.
The same episode was repeated on the following night and night after that. He realized that he had entered a place in hell and from which no escape was possible for the following 299 nights.
As the days went by, his face began to take on a haggard and withdrawn look. His black hair began to turn gray and after three months, he became an old man with a horrible twisted figure. The customer at the grocery store did not want to be served by that dreaded figure, which instilled so much fear into their children as they screamed and ran away out of his sight. It was not difficult to speculate that he was sacked from his job and had to spend rest of three hundred nights waiting for the executions at each night.
After about a year, he completely disappeared from the scene and the town population was glad to get rid of that ‘horrible old man.’
Durlabh Singh© 2008.
AUBERGINE GIRL.
Oct 19th
There lived a poor Brahmin couple and had a little cottage with a thatched roof.
They were so poor that most of the time they could not afford to buy any food and in order to stave off hunger, they searched the countryside for herbal foods and any edible grasses.
They did not have any children and were glad to be so. They could not bear to have seen their child suffering from hunger. Once they were searching for wild food, they came across a plant with shiny purple fruits and plucked some of these fruits to take home.
They cooked some of the fruits but saved the seeds and planted them in their little garden.
With the passage of the time a small plant issued forth from the ground and in the heat of summer sun it began to grow forth. In the middle of the season there issued a purple flower on the plant, beautifying the whole garden with its hue. The couple liked to look at it and spend their days in the garden, sitting and admiring the beautiful creation. Slowly the flower began to wither and they were so sad to see it dying and sat no more in the garden. But one day they noticed a small purple fruit with luxurious growth of leaves. They went to have a closer look and it was really a small aubergine fruit and they were so glad to have it in their very own garden.
And the fruit grew and grew till it became bigger than the length of their hand. Its shiny purple surface was a joy to watch and though they were hungry they did not have the heart to pluck it and eat it. They had to look for other foods in the scrublands but as the dry season began, the wild growing herbs and fruits vanished and the fear of starvation came close to hand. They have not eaten for two days and the pangs of hunger overwhelmed their reasons and they decided to eat the fruit growing in the garden.
The plucked it and washed it and as the brahmin woman tried to slice it, she heard a tiny voice imploring her to be gentle and not hurt it. The woman looked around to see where the voice was coming from but there was no one present. Thinking that she was imagining things on account of her starvation, she picked the fruit again and tried to slice it again and the same voice came through. Shocked she ran off and told her husband about it. They regretted plucking the fruit and pondered about the whole episode. There was no alternative course of action, they must have that sliced aubergine food or they were going to die of starvation.
This time the husband was charged for slicing the fruit gently and lo something dropped out of it when last slice was in place. They looked down and it was most exquisite creature and it grew and turned into a sweet figure of a girl. The couple jumped and hugged the gentle creature with a delicate touch afraid that they might hurt that fragile form. They had no child of their own and were anxious to adopt her as their daughter and named her aubergine girl. Life became sweeter for the couple and they showered all their love on her.
She told them that she was the spirit of that plant and would help the couple in any way they liked. They told her that they were starving and would like her help in acquiring some food for their hungry bellies.
The girl cast a spell on the garden and all sorts of plants began to grow there mostly of edible variety and they were so thankful for having that beautiful creature as their daughter and also have all the delicacies cooked for their food. They were no more starving and they were thankful for that.
The news of the beauty of the girl began to spread far and wide and p and quest for beauty. It happened that there was a rich women living in the village and thought herself to be superior to all the women of the district in all the aspects of life. She was rich, beautiful and could command all the men under her seductive glances. When she heard about the beauty of the girl, she did not like it. Everyone was talking about and singing the praises of the brahmin’s daughter and she could not stand it. This jealousy planted a seed of evil in her mind.
She called upon the brahmin’s house to see the girl and was stung by her beauty but she concealed her evil intents under the guise of friendship. She took few gifts for her and her parents as to overcome their suspicions and invited the girl to her house for a meal and which she accepted. It was grand meal but she had put some slow acting poison in her meals and when the girl was drugged she began to ask her all sorts of things under the guise of friendship. This woman knew that the girl was not of human origin and must have other seeds of origin. She managed to coax the girl into divulging her secret about her soul being the spirits of the plants growing around her adopted parent’s house.
She waited for the girl to linger in her agony and in the middle of night she raided the garden and destroyed all the plants. Dark clouds gathered and a storm rose at her death.
Her parents waited for her to arrive back but she never returned and the brahmin couple lost all their interest in life and slowly died of grief and starvation. The strange truth was that when two of them died, they did not leave any bodily remains behind.
The rich woman was happy and did not regret the murder of the girl and the dying agony of her parents. She was the fairest in all the land and it did matter to her. After few years the things began to change and the rich woman began to age prematurely and loose
her matchless beauty. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she was horrified to see a haggard face of an old woman. Screaming and howling she went about the garden and asking pardon for her sins and offered her life in exchange for remove the curse. Gradually she went out of her mind and took her life.
The withered garden showed signs of new growth and began to bloom again. An aubergine plant burst forth and the large shiny purple fruit appeared and out of it the resurrected body of the girl appeared. Her parents’ spirits also got revived and with that their bodies appeared again. The house bloomed and with it the garden. Three of them lived together in that land of beauty and love.
Durlabh Singh© 2008.
A Short History of the London Borough Wars by Ian Cassidy
Aug 5th
A Short History of the London Borough Wars.
By
Ian Cassidy.
The founder members of our great alliance, Holborn, Marylebone, Mayfair, St James’, Soho, Strand and Westminster signed the inaugural treaty in the momentous year of 6432. Three years later there was a small expansion and Barbican, Clerkenwell and Hoxton joined. The big expansion came ten years later when Bayswater, Belgravia, Brompton, Camden, Chelsea, Regents Park, St Pancras and Somers Town all three their hats into the ring. Finsbury Park, Pentonville, Pimlico, Shoreditch and Stepney joined shortly after, having missed out on the big expansion due to internal squabbles.
Only little, leafy Bloomsbury held out, we, the residents voted not to join. Finally we had to, we could not hold out any longer. We had seen the prosperity of our neighbours and we could no longer sit in our studies at the University or browse aimlessly through the bookshops and pretend we were better off on the outside. The leafy peace of Russell Square was no fun anymore. We were being left behind and everyone else was making a fortune.
So we joined and at first things went well. There were always one or two tensions just below the surface, the disputed area of Hyde Park regularly raised its ugly head and led to a bit of shoe banging but we coped. We resisted the expansionist policies of St James’, their vast agricultural power, based on the rich verdant areas of Green Park and St James’ Park gave them ideas above their station. The grants received by the smaller boroughs such as Holborn, St Pancras and Stepney stuck in the craw of those boroughs that didn’t receive them but generally we muddled along and the outlook was fine.
But the clouds soon gathered. Should we admit people from the South, from the hitherto independent boroughs of Bermondsey, Borough, Lambeth, Southwark and Waterloo? We had always had a distrust of people from the South.
But we let them in and things started to go wrong, they poured over the river, taking our jobs and causing trouble. The simmering differences came to the boil. The import of jellied eels was strictly controlled much to the annoyance of the southerners. Entry to the University was made prohibitively expensive to all but the residents of Bloomsbury by the Statute of Gower Street. The resentment of the other boroughs was stoked still further by rumours that Bloomsbury was giving concessionary entry to students from its close allies, Holborn and St Pancras. The boroughs along the river controlled the bridges and their tolls were unpopular.
But immigration was the real bugbear. Outsiders from the poorer areas of Kent and the wilds of Sussex constantly attempted to enter the city via Belgravia and Brompton, who were criticised for the weakness of their border controls. These immigrants then headed for the wealthier areas of Mayfair and Soho. City policy of returning immigrants to the borough through which they first entered the city was only laxly enforced and soon seething detention camps grew up the areas just north of Piccadilly. The Royal Academy became a vast processing centre for these unfortunates who were slowly repatriated to Belgravia. They simply returned to Mayfair by making a nighttime crossing of St James’ Park. Public pressure led to the electrification of Birdcage Walk and The Mall, but although the route was difficult it was not impossible for your determined economic migrant, sick at heart after a yet another summer’s hop picking in the wild and hillbilly packed backwoods of Kent.
The failure of the City Premier to do anything worth while only exacerbated the problem. In fact Kingston the Newt was so ineffectual that I had to look him up in the Great Book when researching this paper as all information about him seemed to have slipped my mind.
Out and out war seemed unlikely but events soon gathered their own pace.
The people of Barbican were the first to act, well they would be, wouldn’t they, they had always been warlike, their emblem is a fortress after all. They took a stand on London Wall and repelled all comers. Nobody got across their fortifications but St Paul’s was lost to the southern invaders. Threadneedle Street was left untouched, even barbarians from the south respected the power of money.
We held a summit; something had to done to stop the invasion from the south. The situation could not be allowed to get worse but we couldn’t agree and went our separate ways with a brief to bring some reasonable solutions to the situation with us at a meeting to held sometime next week.
The people of Soho took advantage of the hiatus and annexed Jermyn Street, their own sweat shop clothing makers had for a long time resented the up market competition.
From then on it was every man or every area for themselves. The Finsbury Park Hillbillies attacked the newspaper offices in Clerkenwell. Selfridges was captured by the Marylebone Mafia and Westminster and Belgravia fought a monumental three-day battle in Victoria. The guns of HMS Belfast were turned on the Tower. Lambeth launched a daring, dawn raid in the Houses of Parliament and relocated their Government there from the dingy Town Hall, only for the people of Westminster to recapture it two weeks later following a vicious battle that degenerated into little more than an orgy of blood letting.
Skirmishes raged all over the city, people from every area taking advantage of the anarchy to settle old scores. The cab drivers of Hoxton formed themselves into a quite formidable motorised division and embarked on a series of lightening raids on the ranks of their more prosperous cousins in Mayfair.
The people of the Strand launched a series of brutal attacks on the lawyers in Holborn and for a time it appeared that some semblance of unity may be restored as this was one of the few acts of violence that was supported by all factions in the City.
The most brutal action of the early years of the war was the battle of Hyde Park or the Battle of the Three Aldermen as it became known. The forces of Brompton and Marylebone clashed with those of Mayfair in a bloody and brutal encounter on a cold winter’s morning. The early exchanges saw Mayfair’s army trapped in a pincer movement and at risk of annihilation, which they most certainly would have been but for an inspirational flanking movement by the Apsley House Dragoons, which drove the centre of Brompton’s army into the icy depths of the Serpentine and allowed the remainder of the Mayfair army to escape to the safety of their fortress in Grosvenor Square.
The People of Somer’s Town suffered most, the stations of Euston, King’s Cross and St Pancras were continually bombed will all the other boroughs claiming responsibility. They were willing to countenance even the most sordid acts of terrorism to prevent Somer’s Town using the railway as an artery for bringing in reinforcements. Although outside reinforcements were thin on the ground, the war was a matter of supreme indifference to anyone north of Watford. The people of St Pancras tried repeatedly to capture the station that bore their name but was inconveniently placed on the wrong side of the Euston Road.
Somer’s town was left in ruins, it’s people in rags and forced to eat rats.
There were many attempts to elicit support from other areas, Berkshire, the superpower in the west received many such entreaties and rumour has it that the Aldermen of Westminster knew in advance of the Chelsea microlight attack on the Royal Box fleet moored on Ascot’s boating lake and failed to pass on the information to their opposite numbers in Slough. Still Berkshire resisted, unwilling to take sides and risk an all out confrontation with ice war rivals Essex in the east.
What of my own part in all this and what of leafy inoffensive Bloomsbury? We tried to remain neutral, like the people of Broadgate. They declared neutrality on the very day that Barbican clashed with the Southerners and that neutrality was respected, well the money was there, wasn’t it. And soon Threadneedle Street became the repository for untold amounts of stolen cash and looted artworks.
Without the buffer of the banking system, the option of neutrality was never a realistic path for Bloomsbury to take, we had no money and also the Ottoman community of nearby Clerkenwell took a serious and quite belligerent interest in the contents of the British Museum. So we were dragged into the mayhem.
I myself took part in the Battle of Coram’s Field, as the commander of a battalion of the Lamb at Lamb’s Conduit Street Pals Brigade. A bloody and protracted engagement with Clerkenwell, who received clandestine support from Finsbury Park. The enemy guns sited on Mount Pleasant rained shrapnel down on our troops in field for several days before the fighting began in earnest.
Our centre under the command of Alderman Mecklenborough was mauled by the Farringdon Heavy Dragoons and our guns were put out of action by a daring nighttime raid by the Guardian Woman’s Page Fusiliers. All looked bleak especially once our counter attack across the Gray’s Inn Road was stalled by determined resistance from the Finsbury Park Militia and a group of Canvey Island mercenaries holed up in the Eastman Dental Hospital.
The position of the Lamb at Lamb’s Conduit Pals next came under the enemy’s withering fire and I must say that we acquitted ourselves very well, repulsing a vicious frontal assault from the Hatton Garden Light Infantry before counter attacking along Guildford Street and for a time bringing our fire on the enemy artillery at Mount Pleasant. Mercifully bringing a respite for the troops suffering at our beleaguered centre.
That respite gave us the chance to counter attack and the Woburn Place Hussars, brilliantly led by Johnny Tavistock stormed along Calthorpe Street and met the enemy centre at Pakenham Street. The defence of the Holiday Inn, Farringdon Road has passed into folklore and for a time the success of our attack was touch and go. A brilliant flanking movement by the School of Oriental & African Studies Rifle Brigade along Exmouth Market left the enemy exposed on two sides and my own depleted forced now overran the guns on Mount Pleasant and we had won the day.
I next saw action at Bedford Square and I need say no more about that unremittingly bloody encounter. Any student of history will be all too familiar with a battle that has become a byword for the senseless loss of human life.
The war continued, victories and defeats followed, alliances were formed and broken. The Premier of Chelsea was kidnapped and murdered. Rumour has it that he was shot, poisoned, stabbed and finally drowned.
I would like to be able to end this brief history with a happy ending, the arrival of a peacemaker, a man of vision, lawgiver and a great healer. Attempts were made to agree a cease-fire by Cameronson the Fat but they came to nothing and our second President became as irrelevant as his predecessor.
Unfortunately the war still goes on, we are still at each other’s throats. As I write the smoke has barely settled from yet another battle between one faction and another and we are all still reeling from the slaughter that stemmed from the Covent Garden Cucumber Riots.
Happily I am now retired from the military but the war still affects me. I received shrapnel wounds at Bedford Square but I cannot get adequate treatment in Bloomsbury. To do that I must travel to the specialists in Harley Street and whilst my presence is welcome in Mayfair, to get there I must travel through Soho where a group of choleric judges of the so called Kangaroo War Crimes Tribunal want to have a word with me about trumped up allegations arising from my actions at Bedford Square. Charges that I refute.
I am affected in many other ways, the curfews and the air raids have become commonplace but I cannot obtain fuel for my microlight in Bloomsbury at a price that is anything like reasonable. I could buy it at a fraction of the price in nearby Shoreditch. The same is true of cigarettes, they are taxed heavily here whilst in Hoxton they are dirt-cheap and I believe they are even cheaper south of the river.
I can only buy things manufactured within the City; it is very difficult to import things from outside. Fruit from Kent, beer from Burton and lamb from Wales are almost impossible to get hold of.
The taxes I pay from the meagre income I make as a military historian go to the leviathan at our centre that supposedly labours to keep us all at peace.
But things could be worse, I could still be eligible for military service and I can only feel sorry for those young men who are today starting out on life’s great journey.
Toward the very Beginning
Jul 20th
"Why here?" Siranoosh asked agitatedly. "Why at this desolated place?" "The ocean is so clam. Isn't she?" Mohammad replied calmly. In the rare view mirror, she, suspicious and horrified, checked the road, the abandoned road, lying in a very close distance from the shoreline, and after that she took a look at the peaceful waves of the ocean and then at him with clothes lost in dark blue. "Why would you like to watch the ocean behind the window of my car?" she asked in distress. He was silent and still gazing at the waves. Having put his hand on the black sack, which had taken the shape of the box in it, he sighed deeply. She was still staring at him, dying for an answer. "The face of this ocean is so calm," he said. "But on occasion so stormy!" "It's been three years since you stopped talking to me," she said, while trying to hide her trembling hands in her pockets. "But there is no trace of change in your way of talking," she couldn't stop her voice trembling. "Behind your satanic words, there has always been something," she cried. "For God's sake tell me, why you have asked me to come here to this God-forsaken place?" she shouted. He looked at the black sack, and then unhurriedly like the lens of a camera, his eyes moved toward that picture behind the window, the ocean. "I love this ocean. I love her calmness more than her violence. I love her mysterious inside. No body knows whether now her inside is calm__ or not?" he said, while pronouncing these words at a snail's pace. "I'd like to spend the last minutes with you, in front of her, here. That's why." "Last minutes of what?!" she asked. "Last minutes of being in the city where the wind is dancing the ash of my wishes in the air, before my eyes__ to mock me," he said, but a sob cut his words."I'm leaving this city in an hour. I just wanted to say goodbye to you." She took a look at the black sack on his feet, and asked in disbelief, "You asked me to visit you__ today__ now__ here in the middle of nowhere__ to say goodbye to me?!" He nodded. "I can't understand. Why? After three years? __an age old enmity__ I thought you would take your revenge for what I have done to you," she cried. "Revenge is a road__" he whispered. "That takes its travelers toward the very beginning." "You know, I… I just felt she loved you. I… I just wanted to link up your life with that of someone whom you loved. But…" "You lied to me as an unwanted intermediary. She never loved me. With your miscalculation, an enormous part of my life burnt. You wounded a psyche." "Take it easy. Let gone-by be gone-by," she roared. "Is she happy now?" "Yes, she…is. Frankly she is." Tears, one after another, slowly began rolling down. "What you did hurt my soul," he sobbed. "Your soul__" "Look at my soul there," pointing at the ocean, he interrupted her. "She is so calm__ this ocean is always calm. Like a web, it is made of infinite H2Oes. At the first sight, it is anything but orderly. But it is orderly." Anger deformed his face, "But what will happen if you separate her oxygen? No living matter finds a chance to breathe. What will happen to her order__ divine order? What will happen if somebody__?" his last words faded, but he sighed, "What will happen if a strong wind begins blowing her__ the aftermath is nothing but a storm." "Are you comparing what I have done to you with these examples?" she asked, as her tears were already passing over her lips. "This is a gift__" he said, not looking at her. "From me__ to you." He put the black sack on the back seat hurriedly. "A gift?!" she exclaimed. "After three years hating me?!" "Did I?!" quickly as a wink, he stared at her. "Sounds heavy!" wiping her tears, Siranoosh asked. "Yes, heavy, so heavy that knows how to smash my life and that of yours," he said while opening the door of the car. He got off, and slammed the door. She rolled down the window, and smiled, "Won't you be back in the city?" "You won't see me again in some minutes," Mohammad said and smiled. "Thanks for the gift," she said and started the engine. "Where are you traveling to?" "Toward the very beginning," Mohammad said softly and waved at her calmly. She pushed the gas pedal, and as if she was running away from death, drove away. He kept watching her at the same time as putting his hands in his pocket. He took out a small black box which had the drawing of a scaffold on its door, and opened it. He took out the small controller. Gazing at the red bottom on it, he began sweating and his face became red. His finger, trembling, crawled on the red bottom. His eyes were at the edge of their sockets, ready to blow up. He pushed the bottom. A blast threw her car into the air. Fire was winding around the wrecked car. As if a boa was squeezing his prey. Turning over twice in the air, the car like an eagle hit by a hunter, fell down, and began turning over and over. It rolled and rolled until with its four melted wheels up, fell into the hands of the waves.
Royal Peculiar by Ian Cassidy
Jul 7th
They say a classical education never did anyone any harm, presumably the harm comes from the cold showers and the buggery. I did not receive a classical education. My minor public was more progressive and allowed less promising pupils to drop Latin and Greek. They also allowed you to drop the cold showers and buggery so I considered myself fortunate and never regretted my inability to conjugate the locative or to read the Illiad in the original Greek. That was until I received a legacy from my great uncle. A legacy that he assured me shortly before his death would make my fortune.
The pregnant parcel that represented my share of his estate arrived neatly wrapped by an over efficient solicitor's clerk at my door on a dull November morning. I was struggling to cram land law into an Asian private pupil whose command of English made me think of Michael Bates in "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" and whose command of English Law made me despair.
Glad of the interruption I left my willing but woeful pupil to the delights of Lloyds Bank V Rosset and rushed to answer the postman's knock.
I signed for the parcel and left it on the hall table unable to open it there and then as my pupil could be relied on to do absolutely nothing if left unsupervised and half hearted educator that I was, I still felt it dishonest to take his money and leave him to his own devices.
I need not have rushed back to the study because my pupil had availed himself of my absence to make his dedications to Mecca.
Once he had finished with me awkwardly spectating we completed the session and I packed him off to the bus stop.
I took the parcel to the kitchen and armed myself with a knife.
Stuck to the lid of the packing case in one of those self adhesive plastic bags that are virtually impossible to remove, was a dry letter from the same solicitors clerk who had so assiduously packed the parcel informing me that parcel contained papers bequeathed to me by the last will and testament of the firm's client and assuring me of their best attentions should I need to contact them in the future. I quickly put it to one side and withdrew from the torn plastic bag a sealed envelope addressed to me from my great uncle. Somewhat disappointingly the envelope just had my name and address written on it, there was no "only to be opened after my death" or other such dramatic little message. It was just an expensive Manila envelope inscribed my great uncle's immaculate copperplate hand. The envelope was slightly worn and if I needed another clue to the age of the epistle then the quality of the handwriting gave it to me. Uncle had lived to be one hundred and three years old and whilst he had enjoyed remarkably good health, the final few painful months aside, I suspect that it been some years since his hand had been so steady.
I sat at the kitchen table and took a paperknife to the envelope.
Dear Neville Enclosed are the miscellaneous papers collected by my friend Ryford Mason. I am sure that they will be of some considerable interest to you and perhaps they will even prove to be lucrative. You are always talking about writing a book, well here is your chance; put the papers in order and get them published; they tell a remarkable story. I never had the time or the ability to do it. You claim to have the ability so put it use. I am only sorry that I shall not be around to see the fruits of your labour. Let me give you some background to the papers that you will shortly begin reading. They were assembled by my dear friend Ryford Mason, Ford to his intimates of which there were very few or very few whom he could acknowledge in the circle that his conventional and overbearing mother demanded that he move. I was happy to belong that select band and happier to know nothing of those other intimates, the ones he met for furtive fumblings on Hampstead Heath or other such places. His private life was his own, my interest in the man revolved around his most extraordinary imagination. Some might say that he displayed many of the forms of neurosis that Mr Freud and his disciples were at the time discovering or perhaps manufacturing. Of his many eccentricities he believed himself to be a descendant of Perkin Warbeck and thus of Edward IV, he studied Nostradamus uncritically and believed in a race of superbeings descended from Christ and the Magdalene. But it will perhaps be best if I refrain from listing Ford's areas of interest just now, suffice to say that he researched them all industriously and collected a quite fabulous library, regrettably sold off when he and his mother fell upon hard times. The fruits of his research are all in the box before you. Before I attempt to explain their nature, let me tell you something of Ford himself, beside his homosexuality. He worked all his short life for Ambrose Heal, in the soft furnishing department and quite frankly, he hated it. He hated Heal's functional designs, longing for something more romantic, the outlandish works of Majorelle or Bugatti were more to his taste. He hated the fabrics in monochrome or cubist designs that Heals stocked, preferring something more on the lines of William Morris and Liberty prints. For a time he attempted to design his own furniture and fabrics. No examples of his sketches remain so I presume he did not consider it a success. He did design his own coat of arms, borrowing unashamedly from Morris and leaning heavily towards a pseudo-royal standard reflecting his belief that he was descended from Edward IV via Perkin Warbeck. I saw the coat many times and can tell you that it was unbelievably crass so I must say that I too do not consider his attempt to become a designer a success. Everyday of his working life Ford left the Tottenham Court Road at lunchtime and headed for Bloomsbury and bookshops. There he sought out the scientific and learned tomes he needed to research whichever theory he was working on at the time or just wandered around the British Museum or Russell Square thinking. What he came up with is contained in the files before you. Let me give you a quick summary of them, I am sure you are aching to open them for yourself but I hope my brief précis of their contents will make your work easier. The files are colour coded. Blue Folder. Perkin Warbeck. He really did believe that he was a descendant of royalty and harboured ridiculous notions of mounting a legal challenge to King's right to the throne. As an impecunious junior barrister at the time I was of course bombarded with requests for legal advice. I did my best to dissuade him from such a disastrously costly step and fortunately he lacked the funds to even get it started but he hung around my chambers looking through forgotten constitutional law manuals and pleading with me to point him the right direction. It was at this time that some of the more waggish members of the clerk's room on discovering his reason for being so often in chambers, christened him "Royal Peculiar". When he tired of this theory he moved on. Green Folder: Nostradamus. Ford read and studied everything he could on the could on the subject but as you are aware I always thought that this was complete tosh so I will move on. Orange folder. Shugborough and the inscription. As it's on your doorstep you may know of the famous cryptic code that has never been satisfactorily deciphered but apart from that I think you will find it of little interest. The same may perhaps be said of the Purple and Black folders. The former contains details of his experiments in numerology and the latter his research into the existence of a race of superhumans descended from Christ and the Magdalene. All I can say on this is if only he had had the inclination to popularise his fantastic theorising he would perhaps have given the world Superman a whole decade before the comic strip. The contents of the Yellow folder will interest you, it contains details of his experiments in mind expansion. I do not mean with drugs although I suspect Ford had recourse to narcotics from time to time. Call it an old man's prejudice but I associate the misuse of drugs with someone of Ford's inclinations, it's Oscar Wilde and his penchant for absinthe. His experiments with mind or brain expansion took a more prosaic route. Ford learnt, as I'm sure you are aware, that human beings only use a very small percentage of their brain capacity on conscious thought, the rest being dormant or taken up by the subconscious. He was convinced he could increase the percentage of his brain capacity that was in active use. His experiments are, if nothing else amusing. Finally you will come to the red folder, that is the one. I believe it contains something important, something of interest to the wider world. Study it well and make use of it.
The rest of the letter contained exhortations from uncle to get off my backside and do something, to actually write a book rather than just talk about it and his best wishes for myself and the family.
I laid down the letter and opened the package. I pulled out the dusty files and laid them in order on the kitchen table, placing the red folder, as uncle had advised at the end.
My great uncle's advice had as always been beyond reproach and I saw nothing to linger over in the first folders on the table, except for Mason's experiments in numerology but only because I'm a sudoko fan and like tinkering with numbers. The others were quite unbelievably turgid and sparked off a bout of sneezing. My dust mite allergy was one of the excuses I gave for not opening a second hand book shop.
I picked up the folder containing the brain expansion experiments. The gist of Mason's theory seemed to be that no information stored in the brain is ever lost, it is just that we lose the ability to access it. So he planned to record everything that happened to him in one day, in the minutest detail and then attempt to reproduce that record from memory at a later date. He would then compare the two and thus discover which of his experiences were the first to leave his conscious memory. By establishing this, he then hoped to discover the reason why these details were the first to go. And once he knew why, he would know how to retain them in future.
I closed the file, all well and good but all very boring. I too had seen information that says that nothing is lost from the brain, we retain every piece of information ever received but I had a simple theory why we forget things. Some things are not worth remembering. But if my great uncle thought there was something in the papers that I might find useful then I decided it might be worth my while to persevere. I picked up the dusty folder and turned again to Mason's painfully tiny handwriting. He had approached the project rather like a school chemistry experiment, setting out his apparatus, his method, results and conclusions. I skipped "apparatus" and went straight to "method". Quite simply it was a record of a typical day in the life of Ryford Mason. It began with him waking in response to the alarm clock and included his first thoughts, annoyance at the strident noise of the alarm, recorded his reluctance to leave the warmth of the bed and step out onto the chilly lino. Everything was recorded in frank and honest detail, including his thoughts as he stood in his dishevelled pyjamas at the bedroom mirror. He recorded his worries about masturbating excessively the night before as he examined the bags under his eyes.
He then described his ablutions and dressing. I was a little shocked to learn that Mason wore his mother's discarded girdle and stockings under his suit but then again not overly so. Next he described going down stairs and entering the dining room. Taking breakfast with his mother and delighting in the feel of her silk underwear as he was studying the morning paper.
I skipped a few pages. Mason's journey to work was recorded in mind boggling detail, from the quiet of Heathcote Street and the birdsong in Mecklenburg Square to the pandemonium of the Tottenham Court Road.
I skipped his arrival at work and the best part of his working day and then something caught my eye.
It appeared that Mason had a job interview with a rival to Heals. Strange that he would to choose to record that day, surely the experiment would work better on a purely routine day, but I read on. He described his journey to Regent’s Street, his arrival at liberty & Co, where he was greeted by a very pretty secretary (male I assume) and his feelings as he kicked his heels in the waiting room.
The interview itself was a disaster and Mason records himself as a dejected man storming towards the nearest exit, desperate to put the whole thing behind him.
He was called back by the secretary and there follows a tortured exchange as the two men fence with each other. The secretary's intentions are clear to Mason who is reluctant to rise to the other young man's bait fearing that any whiff of scandal will forever scupper his chances of employment with Liberty and the secretary has clearly lost his nerve. They part awkwardly and Mason makes his way to the street.
The incident has obviously aroused Mason and he heads for the nearest public lavatory. I continue in Mason's own words.
The feelings of dissatisfaction following my encounter with that delicious young man at Liberty continued as I strolled towards Gower Street and soon I realised that I had ceased to take note of everything that I encountered as required by my experiment. In order to continue my observations unencumbered by sexual frustrations I resolved to seek immediate relief and made haste to the closest public lavatory, deluding myself that my motives were purely in the interests of science. I entered the scrubbed portal and initially made an attempt at my experiment. I first noted the acrid smell of urine and ammonia, the black and white glazed tiles, some clean, some filthy. I satisfied myself that there was no attendant on duty and positioned myself by the sinks. I noted the state of the sinks but it proved hopeless, my mind was now firmly on other things. I looked about me, desultorily going through the motions of washing my hands. I did not have to wait long, a young man in working clothes entered, I caught his eye as he went to the urinals, he looked away and I sidled towards him, joining him at the urinals and looking down at his crotch. I looked up again and our eyes met. He did not return my smile, he simply nodded towards the cubicles. I went into the nearest and waited with the door closed. I heard his boots clip along the harsh damp floor and prepared myself. To my surprise he went into the adjacent cubicle, I was about to call out, thinking he had made a mistake when I noticed the hole in the cubicle wall. I looked expectantly towards it. Soon enough, his penis came sliding through, still damp and smelling strongly of urine. I stroked it gently and inhaled the strong male odour before placing it between my lips. I moved my mouth against it and in what seemed like no time I felt him tense and tasted his salty discharge on my tongue. As I was spitting onto the grimy floor I heard him whisper: "Now you." With some trepidation I unbuttoned my fly and with reluctant expectation I pointed my penis through the rough little hole in the wall. My relief when his lips closed around it was such that I almost ejaculated there and then. With a great act of will I checked myself and settled back to take my pleasure. It was very brief and soon I spent myself into his open mouth. I sat back on the harsh porcelain and closed my eyes. I heard his door and ignored it expecting him to quickly take his leave, much as I intended to do. However my door opened and a red faced figure was framed in the low doorway looking blankly at my sprawled and sated figure. I gave a start and was about to rise when he slapped my face and spat the retained mouthful of my semen back at me. "Filthy queer!" He screamed and ran from the room. For a long time I sat there with the mixture of semen and spittle dripping from cravat and waistcoat, before struggling to the sink and cleaning myself up. As I did so the tears came. The experiment was forgotten for the day.
I put the papers down. Interesting perhaps, uncle, but only in the most prurient of ways. I leafed through the remainder of the papers hoping to avoid anything similarly graphic. Fortunately I found none and was able to have quick look at the results of Mason's experiments. His attempt to reproduce his record of a typical day from memory was woeful. He glossed over the encounter in the public lavatory and so I assumed he was forgetting the things that embarrassed him. He did however remember the secretary at Liberty and I soon tired of reading his account of the boy's pert little buttocks as he retreated back to office in rather too tight pin-striped clerk's trousers.
I put the papers aside and picked up the red folder. With a feeling akin to Mason's as he entered the lavatory I undid the lawyers tape that bound the folder. So this was it, this was my passport to a few quid, (I'm not by nature optimistic, I didn't want a passport to riches just a modicum of financial security,) a way out of the endless round of evenings with out of their depth law students. A way out of daytimes in city centre sink schools covering for disillusioned, exhausted teachers who had made the lamest excuses for getting away from their classrooms full of feral children. God I hoped so, I had been attacked by a simply evil fifteen-year-old just three weeks previously, so I was feeling as pissed off as the teachers I covered for. Perhaps I was feeling a little more revolted by supply teaching than usual. In general my working life was merely awful but awful I could stand. Even so I wanted out.
I started to read. "Circonmurabale". Here I regretted my lack of Latin for the first time in many years but I put the feelings aside and read on. Fortunately the remainder of the opening pages seemed to be in English, fairly stilted and tortured English but English none the less. It was all neatly presented and indexed. A little bit amateurish to my masters educated and floundering PhD mind. A little like you'd expect a degree thesis or other piece of learned work to look like if you'd only got a school leaving certificate.
I studied the index.
1/ Introduction.
2/ Schwenckfeld.
3/ Eboracus.
4/ Schelly.
5/ Kovaleski.
6/ Decken.
7/ Modern followers.
8/ Travels and Reminiscences.
9/ Conclusion.
The names meant nothing to me, so I would have to read the whole thing and where better to start than the introduction.
The miscellaneous papers and supporting documents contain details of my research and investigation into a society, no society is too precise a word, more an association of fellow travellers, comprising learned men from across the generations who believed that Hadrian's wall was only one very small part of a vast fortification that once ringed the whole of the Earth at a longitude roughly corresponding to that on which Hadrian's wall stands. A vast redoubt man-made earthwork in places, in others taking advantage of natural defences, such as rivers and mountain ranges, designed to keep out not just Ancient Scottish barbarians (although I am sure this was a very welcome boon for the poor unfortunates of Dark Age northern Britain) but also to keep out a race of people who had alighted on the northern extremity of the Earth from another planet.
I stopped short, I didn't really know what I had been expecting from the rather strange man who been my great uncle's friend all those years ago. I'd done a little research into Ryford Mason and the passage of time had not made it easy. My grandmother in her infrequent lucid moments, vaguely remembered him, she was much younger than her brother and had only been a child when Mason died. She remembered an effete little man always impeccably turned out, with a taste for bright cravats and scent of lilies of the valley. She knew very little else about him except a scandal of some sort surrounding his death. It was not a subject my grandmother was comfortable with, although I knew there was a copy of the "The Well of Loneliness" on her bookshelves but I gathered from the rumour and innuendo that Mason had encountered someone vastly more violent than the semen spitter on one of his illicit visits to the public conveniences and had sadly not recovered from his injuries at the age of just thirty four.
So my research had been inadequate and I hadn't known what to expect but given the contents of the box that I had just scanned, I had perhaps expected definitive proof of the location of the Holy Grail, Captain Morgan's treasure or perhaps something more recent, like evidence that Dr Crippen was innocent. Certainly not aliens! With a growing sense of disappointment I read on.
I came upon the existence of this group of men quite by chance in a Bloomsbury bookshop, whence I had repaired one lunchtime as was my habit when not in need of distraction of a more physical kind. The owner recognised me and whilst he was searching in the back room for a first edition of Middlemarch he knew I was anxious to add to my collection, he invited me to look over a tea chest full of volumes that had arrived from a house clearance that morning. Their provenance was impeccable he informed me in a flurry of crashing encyclopaedias from the rear of the shop. A house in Belgravia where the library had been shut up for over a century and he'd been lucky to get his hands on the few dusty volumes in the chest, the remainder having already been spirited away to Sotheby's. I set about my task eagerly but the majority proved disappointing, a drab three volume edition of the Wealth of Nations, a first edition of Shirley, three battered bindings from the admirable Miss Bronte whilst she still went, professionally at least, by the name of Currer Bell. I already owned a far superior copy and was despairing of finding anything interesting when I chanced upon a small calf bound tome with mouldering boards. The spine was worn and virtually unreadable but rather than toss it aside I opened it up and read the frontispiece. CIRCONMURIBALE. By Otto Schwenckfeld. 1732. My Latin is not strong as I have only made fleeting attempts to unravel it's intricacies but there was something about this obscure little book, some frission of excitement, some expectation that came from just holding it in my hands. The author's name meant nothing to me and the title only slightly more, "Round wall" I ignorantly translated. I did not know if it was a novel, a work of scientific discovery or a political tract but I just had to have it. Concealing my excitement I reluctantly put it down, I was unwilling to let it go in case someone else came into the shop and was similarly drawn to it. The shop owner returned and handed me a somewhat indifferent copy of Middlemarch, in poor condition with foxed pages and a sickly smell emanating from within. I feigned satisfaction and asked the shop owner the price. He responded with the exorbitant sum of ten shillings. I paid it willingly and as a seeming afterthought asked the price of the tatty little Latin novella, explaining that I was revising my classical grammar and the book looked sufficiently unchallenging for that purpose. The shop owner gave it a cursory glance and asked the princely sum of two shilling. I placed the coins in his hand and rushed from the shop. My lunch hour was rapidly drawing to a close and I'm afraid I had quite shamelessly lied to the shop owner, I could not even attempt to revise my classical grammar for I had no Latin in the first place. I careered into the next bookshop I encountered and purchased a schoolboy's Latin crammer. Drudgery at Heal's precluded me making an immediate start. That had to wait until I got home in the evening. I confess I made a very poor dinner companion for mother that night, I was almost wordless throughout and I bolted my meal before retiring unceremoniously to my study. Progress was very slow and so it was every night for the next month but every fraction of that glorious little book as it slowly gave up it's secrets provided me with infinite joy. What follows is a summary of what I read, I do not often attempt to translate and I apologise in advance for the clumsiness of my work when I do attempt a verbatim reproduction. The book was written by Otto August Schwenckfeld, a junior librarian at the Schloss Charlottenburg in 1732. His central theme was that the Ancient Scots and Picts were not the barbarians that they are made out to be. Scotland in Schwenckfeld's time due to alliances with France and Spain and elsewhere was a far more civilised and sophisticated country than Britain. It was also socially, politically and technologically more advanced. He then argued that Scotland or Caledonia as it was known at the time of Hadrian was similarly more advanced that it's southern neighbour. It was not a bleak hell hole of untamed brutality with vicious red haired, kilted maniacs claymoring everything in sight. The Picts were cultured and peaceable and came to a mutually beneficial accommodation with Rome and Hadrian built his wall for other reasons. Assigning responsibility to the Picts was a spectacularly success piece of Pre-Christian news management aimed at covering up not only Rome's military shortcomings but also the real reason. The existence of a race of extra terrestial beings that had to be kept out of the Empire at all costs. Schwenckfeld goes further, pointing to evidence that it was not just Scotland where these beings made a home. They lived throughout colder northern regions of the Earth. The Romans and other peoples, most notably the Chinese (apparently the Great Wall of China was built on the foundations of a much more ancient earthwork) had constructed huge walls and earthworks all around the globe to keep the alien invaders at bay. Schwenckfeld then produced a map showing the position of these fortifications. They followed the line of Hadrian's Wall, in Britain, then on to Denmark, following the edge of the Baltic to Kaliningrad. The line then turned sharply downwards and headed for the edge of the Carpathians at L'vov. It followed the Carpathians and branched out to Odessa, then followed the shores of the Black Sea, then stuck out across dry land again tracking the path of the Bolshoi Kavkak mountains as far as Baku on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The line then tracked across Iran and Afghanistan until it reached the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas before meeting up with the Great Wall of China. In the USA the line followed a similar path through mountain ranges and following the along the banks of inland seas and lakes. The route took it through the Appalachians in New England and then through the Great Lakes across the American prairies close to the Canadian border until reaching the Rockies and the coast at Vancouver. The map also showed gates in the walls and Schwenckfeld contended that due to a certain amount of interaction and perhaps trade between the races each side of the wall, that cities in the vicinity of the gates had become centres of excellence, cities of learning and culture or industrial innovation, such as Newcastle, Tashkent, Hamburg etc. Schwenckfeld drew his evidence from the writings of numerous scholars and scribes from across the centuries. Beginning with a Roman Tribune, known only as Eboracus, who had fought with the Ninth Legion at Carrhae and survived to record his experiences. There were the writings of an illegitimate daughter of Philip Melancthon who had encountered the aliens in the Bremen region of Germany. The records of an English monk and mystic called Schelly and a Ukrainian mercenary called Kovalesky. Let me begin with a summary of the tales told by Eboracus. Schwenckfeld is scathing about the quality of the writing, being classically educated he is fussily critical of the mixture of barrack room dialects that the Roman soldier employs. Once he has gotten over his attack of pedantry he sets down Eboracus's story and he is not scathing about its contents. As it is an eyewitness account he gives it great credence. It seems that the Ninth Legion left York in a triumph of banners and standards. Eboracus returned to York alone, he skulked back into the city, starving and dishevelled, with a taste for the distilled barley drink so popular in Caledonia. That being the only thing that could make him forget his harrowing experiences north of the border. To expunge the memory of the massacre of his comrades at the Battle of Carrhae where even the highly drilled and battled hardened Ninth Legion were no match for the Picts and their technologically advanced alien allies. Schwenckfeld details Eboracus's descriptions of these aliens, taller than the Picts with a dark bluish tinge to the skin and lobeless ears. Next Schwenckfeld deals with the writings of Raphael Schelly, born 1290, a priest, student of pagan religions, member of various Millenarian Sects and ultimately a hermit living in a cave in the Lake District. Before heading into self imposed Purdah Schelly produced a beautifully illuminated manuscript, that was in Schwenckfeld's possession, setting out a history of Northern and border folk lore and mystic belief. Among the stories of Green Man like figures and other primitive tales, Schelly found what he believed was evidence of a strange race of people differing from the indigenous population. A dark haired swarthy race considerably taller than the norm. Then there are the writings of Perdita Melancthon, which like Schelly deal with folklore in the north of Germany but also contain a series of diary like entries detailing a sexual relationship with one the peoples from the north. Finally Schwenckfeld comes to the most compelling evidence of all, that of Spiridon Kovalesky a Ukrainian mercenary from the time of the third Crusade. On his return from the Holy Land Kovalesky led numerous archaeological expeditions in around the Carpathian mountains and uncovered the remains of many sections of the earthworks. Schwenckfeld here reproduced more detailed maps and diagrams as recorded by Kovalesky. I studied the maps and a shiver ran down my spine, it all made a great deal of sense. Why just build a wall in Scotland? Why not extend the fortifications eastwards, it would certainly make sense for the Romans to do so, they had the money and the slaves. I reread Schwenckfeld's book and resolved to do some independent research. With difficulty I obtained a card for the reading room at the British Library and spent every available moment there. Incidentally I enjoyed several brief but enjoyable couplings in the conveniences there. Through my research I discovered the writings of an American gentleman going by the name of Cyrus Decken, although that may well be an alias. Decken was the son of a New England farmer born in 1812, who enjoyed a somewhat chequered career being variously a priest, businessman, soldier, writer and evangelist. The dates of his death are somewhat uncertain. Whether he had knowledge of Schwenckfeld's work I cannot say but he makes no reference to it and appears to have come to believe in a race of alien people in the northern regions of the earth quite independent of European influence. Decken draws heavily on the teachings of an Hidatsa Indian mystic known as Red Deer or the Sakakawea Wise Man. As with all such teachings they are not written down and so subject to some latitude of interpretation. Like Schelly, Red Deer talked of a race of tall dark people who came from the North and also of the defences his people and the early white settlers put in place to keep the border safe. Decken provided no map of the fortifications but did provide a possible route for such a defence spanning the Great Plains of the USA and Canada. It appears that unlike Kovalesky he did not carry out any archaeological survey of the area although it seems he did raise quite a considerable sum of money for just such a project only for the money to be diverted elsewhere, not doubt an orgy of alcohol and chorus girls. How I longed to go and see these places for myself, to tour the sites of this great earthwork. Perhaps even to set up my own archaeological expedition. So much more fulfilling than the tedium of soft furnishings. Perhaps I could man the expedition with a team of lithe young men. What bliss! After I exhausted Decken's work, my trawl through the library's card index took me surprisingly back in time to Boswell and Johnson and their tour of the Highlands. I found several quotes from Boswell's book. "With these celestial wisdom calms the mind, and makes the happiness she does not find." & Here falling houses thunder on your head and a female alien talks you dead." & "There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can receive not answer." There was also a letter from Johnson describing Skarra Brae and the Old Man of Hoy. Johnson could not believe that Skarra Brae was built by the Picts and finds evidence of the work of a much more sophisticated hand. He can find no explanation for this, advanced technological help could not have come from Europe or the USA and so Johnson concludes it must have come from another planet.
The doorbell range and disturbed my studies although I was finding it all a little tedious, I did not share Mason's gullibility. Another struggling law student arrived, it was coming up to exam time and most were getting a little panicky. Fortunately this one was one of my more promising under grads, with a command of English one would expect from a budding solicitor, sadly not yet the command of the law one would expect but that would come, dealing with the intricacies of the subject was not his problem, work was his problem, he was bone idle.
As I let him in I remembered I had not eaten, being distracted by the contents of Great Uncle's box, so I rumbled my way through a two session on the Tort of Rylands v Fletcher before I packed my student off and made myself a sandwich.
Whilst I was eating I picked up the folder again.
What followed was a catalogue of Mason's travels to investigate the "facts" he found in Schwenckfeld's book and the British library.
With his cash strapped mother, groaning library and sexual appetites it appeared that he was always short of cash and did not always manage an annual holiday. When he did he recorded everything in minute detail and where possible illustrated his written accounts with photographs from a cheap Kodak.
One year he had travelled to Scotland and his diary told of his journey to Hadrian's Wall and then on to the Antonine Wall. He did not have the time or the funds to take in the Orkneys and did not discover much of note. Well you wouldn't expect him to would you?
The next year he had planned to travel to Berlin and visit Schwenckfeld's library at Charlottenburg and maybe view Schelly's manuscript, if it still existed. It seemed that the trip had to be abandoned as it proved beyond Mason's means and he had settled for a fortnight in the Lakes searching for Schelly's cave, fruitlessly I need hardly add.
America likewise proved nothing more than a pipedream but then he decided to forego his holidays for several years and spent the time painfully cooped up with his overbearing mother, many forays to Hampstead Heath excepted. With the money saved he finally made it to Germany, first to Berlin and then to Bremen. He visited Charlottenburg and describes in excruciating detail his trip around the castle, the Baroque splendour of the porcelain room, the intricate decorations in the Winter Chambers and also a rapid and unsatisfying encounter with the handsome custodian of the Golden Gallery. Then he describes his ultimately unsatisfying tour of Frederick the Great's Library where it seemed that Schwenckfeld had left no lasting impression or that the successors to his post had done nothing to preserve it. Mason left Berlin empty handed and headed to Bremen in search of evidence of the fortifications. The journal included several grainy black and white photographs showing mounds and dykes, that may have been what he was looking for but it was really impossible to tell if they were Neolithic earthworks or just weed covered slag heaps.
The secondary purpose of the trip to Bremen now became clear, Mason was looking for anthropological evidence. There were hundreds of surreptitiously taken photographs of tall dark young men and just occasionally a tall dark woman. But what did they all prove, that there were tall dark people in Germany, yes but certainly not that there were aliens in Germany.
I looked at the time and closed the folder. Time had passed quickly whilst I was reading, so if I had been interested then perhaps other people would. Perhaps I could turn it into a book of sorts. I resolved to sleep on it.
Next day in school I didn't have time to give Mason so much as a thought. I was too busy shouting and ducking. I didn't even get a few quiet minutes at lunchtime, I had had such a shit morning that I left the school grounds for a fag, something I almost never do, trying to limit my tobacco intake to the pub or nowadays the pavement in front of it. Off site and sneakily sucking on a filter tip I became embroiled in all sorts of shenanigans with the kids. The pleasanter ones shouted: "Gis a fag Sir!" the vast majority sullenly glared at me, I was after all spoiling their own smoking time and the awful ones spat at my back as I passed. So I was unable to give Mason my attention until I got home on the evening.
Taking the precaution of eating first I returned to the Mason's notes.
Oh joy! O miracle! Whilst reading the Times this morning I found an intriguing piece by Mr Orwell detailing his unusual experiences whilst on retreat at Jura. Orwell writes: "Night on Jura, a sodden night of rains. A sickly half light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the hillside. I was walking when I came upon a group of men, tall, dark men. "Good." Their leader said: "Join us." "Join you in what?" I asked. But received no reply. We waited. A prisoner had been brought out of his cell, he was an outsider, a puny wisp of a man, tall, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache of a comic man on the films. Six tall outsider warders were guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood with pikes, while the others handcuffed him and passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was still there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening. Seven o'clock struck and a bugle call, desolately thin in the wet air, floated over the hills. The leader of the group who was standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the heather with his stick, raised his head. He was a military man, with a grey moustache and a gruff voice. "For the Lord's sake hurry up, Grumble," he said irritably. "The man ought to have been dead by this time. Aren't you ready yet?" Grumble, the head jailer, a fat outsider in a white suit and gold spectacles, waved his dark hand. "Yes sir, yes sir." he blubbed. " All iss satisfactorily prepared. The hangman iss waiting. We shall proceed. "Well quick march then, the others prisoners can't get their supper till this job's over. We set out for the gallows, two warders marched on either side of the prisoner with their pikes at the slope, two others marched close against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing and supporting him. The rest of us, outsiders and locals, followed behind. It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare, dark back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the outsider who never straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves in the wet soil. And once in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path. It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puzzle I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. The man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working – bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming – all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the brown soil and the grey hills and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned – even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone – one mind less, one world less. The gallows stood in a small clearing, separate and overgrown with tall prickly weeds. It was a wooden erection like three sides of a shed, with planking on top and above that two beams and a crossbar with the rope dangling. The hangman, a grey haired outsider in white uniform, was waiting beside his machine. He greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered. At a word from Grumble the two warders gripping the prisoner, more closely than ever, half led, half pushed him to the gallows and helped him clumsily up the ladder. Then the hangman climbed up and fixed the rope around the prisoner's neck. We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed in a rough circle around the gallows. And then when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out to his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of "Javon! Javon! Javon! Javon!" not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The hangman, still standing on the gallows, produced a small cotton bag like a flour sack and drew it down over the prisoner’s face. But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still persisted, over and over again; Javon! Javon! Javon! Javon! Javon! Javon! The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes seemed to pass. The steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and on, Javon! Javon! Javon! never faltering for an instant. The leader, his head on his chest, was slowly poking the heath with his stick; perhaps counting the cries, allowing the prisoner a fixed number – fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed colour. The outsiders had gone grey like bad coffee, and one or two of the pikes were wavering. We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened to his cries – each cry another second of life; the same thought in all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise. Suddenly the leader made up his mind. Throwing up his head he made a swift motion with his stick. "Gutung!" he shouted almost fiercely. There was a clanking noise and then dead silence. The prisoner had vanished and the rope was twisting on itself. We went round the gallows to inspect the prisoner’s body. He was dangling with his toes pointed straight downwards, very slowly revolving, as dead as a stone. The leader reached out with his stick and poked the bare dark body; it oscillated slightly. "He’s alright," said the leader. He backed out from under the gallows and blew a deep breath. The moody look had gone out of his face quite suddenly. He glanced at his pocket watch. Eight minutes past seven, well that’s all for the night, thank the Lord. The warders marched away and we followed them from the gallows. One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily. The outsider boy beside me nodded towards the way we had come, with a knowing smile; "Do you know, Sir, our friend, the dead man, when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor of his cell. From fright. Kindly take one of my cigarettes, sir. Do you not admire my new silver case? Classy Earth style." Several people laughed – at what, nobody seemed certain. Grumble was walking by the leader, talking garrulously: "well sir. All hass passed off with the utmost satisfactoriness. It was all finished – flick! Like that. It iss not always so – oah, no! I have known cases where the doctor was obliged to go beneath the gallows and pull the prisoner’s legs to ensure decease. Most disagreeable. Wriggling about eh? That’s bad. Said the leader. "Ach, sir, it is worse when they become refractory! One man, I recall, clung to the bars of hiss cage when we went to take him out. You will scarcely credit it, sir, that it took six men to dislodge him, three pulling at each leg. I found I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even the leader grinned in a tolerant way. "You’d better come and have a drink," he said quite genially. "I’ve got a bottle of whisky in my cave. We could do with it." We went through the damp opening in the rock. "Pulling at his legs!" exclaimed an outsider official, and burst into a loud chuckling. We all began laughing again. At that moment, Grumble’s anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink together, local and outsider alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away.
I put down the folder, so Orwell had a few strange ideas, just the same as Johnson and Boswell and all the other wierdos that Mason had uncovered but what did it all mean to me?
I set out my options.
One: Forget all about like my great uncle had done.
Two: Bung it all in the local auction house, Schwenckfeld's book had some age to it and might be worth a few quid and there is always a market for old photographs especially if they show trains or ships and some of Mason's did, particularly those taken on the Baltic coast.
Three: Do what great uncle suggested, write it all up in a coherent and publishable form and try and sell it. But that would mean getting an agent and a publisher, which is virtually impossible.
Four: I could guarantee finding a publisher, I could go to the areas mentioned by Mason and capture myself an alien.
It sounded absurd so I went down the pub. After a couple of pints I decided that finding an alien was a bit of a no no. I didn't really buy that they existed, no the angle was that a group of learned men had bought into a daft theory, rather like Conan Doyle with his fairies and spiritualism.
But would anybody care that Johnson and Boswell had a few strange beliefs. Or would it surprise anyone that Orwell was a little unconventional in his thinking, he probably boozed and masturbated himself into believing just about anything up there all alone on Jura. No debunking the reputations of great men was not for me.
I got in from the pub and put Mason's magus opus in the loft. Sorry Uncle.
