Contents:

[Cover design: Andrew Forsberg (2000)]

Title

Acknowledgements

Chapters:

1 - Grafton Amours
2 - God-Botherers
3 - Clubbing
4 - G.D. [God?]
5 - Going East
6 - His Girl Friday
7 - Gris-Gris
8 - The Great Hunger
9 - Government Issue
10 - G.K.'s Weekly [Ghost / Gutter King]
11 - I Gather the Limbs of Osiris
12 - Magus

Narratives:

The Open Boat
[Element: water]

Act I: Wreck
Act II: Setting Sail
Act III: Sabotage
Act IV: Drifting
Act V: The Ship

Kings of Infinite Space
[Element: fire]

The Archer
The Ram
[Extracts from Julie's Diary]
The Lion
[Extracts from Julie's Diary]

Scenes from an Antarctic Journal
[Element: earth]

Primus-Pricker
The Heart of the Snow
Dark Depths

The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole
[Element: air]

Valentine's Day
Glasgow's Miles Better
Artist
Diva
Siren
Trampled Grapes
Byron
The Necklace
The Gateway

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Verso
Game for One Player

Title

[Cover image: Max Ernst, Une Semaine de Bonte (1933)]


NIGHTS WITH
GIORDANO BRUNO


Jack Ross

Recto

Nights with Giordano Bruno
Copyright: Jack Ross, 2000

First published by Bumper Books
“experimental texts & investigative
cultural studies charting moments
when definitions changed”

ISBN 0-9582225-0-9


“Grafton Amours” appeared, in slightly different form, in Pander 9 (1999): 18-19;
“The Great Hunger” in A Brief Description of the Whole World 14 (1999): 34-37.

Acknowledgements are due to these journals for permission to reprint.


Any person who does any unauthorised act with this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

for my brother, K. M. Ross
miglior fabbro

1

Grafton Amours

A la fin tu es las de ce monde ancien
– Guillaume Apollinaire, “Zone”


Et comme on passait sur un pont, le prince se mit à la portière pour contempler le panorama romantique du Rhin qui déployait ses splendeurs verdoyantes et se déroulait en larges méandres jusqu’à l’horizon. … A kind of muscular, living pressure – not rubbery, exactly, though it has that same attribute of stretching and contracting, systole and diastole – a portal which does not so much let you in, as allow you to distend yourself. … “And as they were standing below a bridge, he leaned over the grave-stone to observe the romantic panorama of the gully which … displayed? deployed? … its green splendours and wound away in large curves to the horizon.”

You pant and groan – rough, hoarse as an animal. Which is what you are, of course, though circumstances may sometimes obscure the fact for a moment or two. But scarcely here, now. Your ribs crack, crackle with the contrast between sweat and chill. Il était 4 heures du matin, des vaches paissaient dans les prés, des enfants dansaient déjà sous des tilleuls germaniques. Une musique de fifres, monotones et mortuaire, annonçaient la présence d’un régiment prussien et la mélopée se mêlait tristement au bruit de ferraille du pont et à l’accompagnement sourd du train en marche. … Is it four in the morning? Quite possibly. Are there cows in those fields? Not likely; but the children are certainly dancing beneath the disordered boughs of the trees: these children of your city, ill-dressed and ill-nourished, smelling of earth and rain and flesh. And, hark! far-off, through the death-fed trees, the music of a police siren, “monotonous and mortuary, was announcing the presence of an authoritarian constabulary, and the sweet sound blended with the humming noise of cars proceeding over the iron bridge.”

“F … f … fucker, bloody fucker …”

No reply, at this point, seems appropriate or called for. But that is increasingly the case in most of life’s situations, for you. A simple greeting across the lunch counter, a cheery “Enjoy the film!” from a cinema usherette, they each seem to demand the one, correct reply: that witty twist or humorous acknowledgement which would seal your commonality, commensals at the feast of life. You cannot achieve it. It demands a thousand words of long

2

I was a quartermaster and had charge of No. 4 lifeboat.
– Angus Macdonald


• Scene [Opening Credits begin in darkness]:

Bruno Lawrence
in
A Louis Malle Film

THE OPEN BOAT

As the words fade out, it becomes apparent that there is movement in these dark depths, but the audience is uncertain, disoriented. A faint pinging is heard, a swirling. Perhaps we are underwater? Is there a shape, black against the blackness, moving through it? We think there is, but are still straining to make it out when …

EXPLOSION.

ACT I: Wreck


• Scene [Awakening (Friday, November 6, 1942, c. 1 a.m.)]

CLOSE-UP of Angus’s eyes opening out of some fathomless depth. Was the noise only in his dreams? It seems not: there are clanging pumps and sirens, shouting voices, all coming from outside.


WIDE-ANGLE shows his narrow, cramped cabin. There are a few pitiful ornaments: a little china cup, framed photographs. He rolls out of his bunk, starts to huddle on clothes and sea-boots.


Out on deck. Angus comes out from behind a steel bulkhead, and is shown pushing his way through a chaos of people running and shouting.

Voices scream: “Over here!” “Out of the fucking way!” “Diana!”

3

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4

Angus is shouting now, too, has seized someone (a seaman) by the lapels: “Make way there! Get those lashings loose.” He is clearly in some kind of authority, because people, mainly half-dressed civilians, are climbing into the lifeboat, as he points and yells, overseeing the operation.

We see a name painted on the side of the lifeboat: City of Cairo.

“Heave out there, heave out!”

The boat is now being lowered, and Angus takes a moment to look around him.

“Angus, Angus.” Through the confusion of sound and activity, it gradually becomes clear that someone is shouting for him. He looks a little puzzled, as if the voice were coming from elsewhere, some other place or time.

• Scene [Helping Bob (Friday, 6/11, c. 1.10 a.m.)]

Angus re-enters the slipstream, and starts to make his way to starboard, pushing past busy sailors and milling passengers.

He collides with Bob, who shouts, clearly on the edge of panic: “I can’t lower the bloody boat.”

Angus climbs inside the stalled lifeboat to try and clear a rope, which he does (after a couple of tries) with a violent flick of the wrist; then stays there, fending the boat off the side with a boat-hook, as they begin to lower it into the foaming sea.

EXPLOSION.

Splash.

The camera draws us down into the water.

“Angus, Angus.” A voice is echoing in his ears, but now it sounds like a woman’s voice; we cannot tell whether young or old.

• Scene [Swimming (Friday 6/11, c. 1.15 a.m.)]

CLOSE-UP as Angus’s eyes open again. The camera draws back to make it apparent that he is now floating in the sea, supported by his yellow Mae West lifejacket. His lips move. Though clearly dazed, he is trying to say something. It is a name: “Ellen.”

5

The Archer


His first impressions were of a dark wet street, with buildings on either side – high blocks of black windows and walls – and a continual sense of shadow. Of course, the shadows were more illusory than real, for here there could be no sun. His boots rang on the sunken rivets of the paving.

Eventually he came to a tall iron door, with an intercom tube beside it. He pressed on the bell, but heard nothing from within. After waiting a little longer he pressed again. At this, the stained and discoloured video monitor beside the door crackled into life, and he saw the face of a young woman appear. Her hair had been cropped close to the skull, which gave her something of the appearance of a porcupine – an impression assisted by her sunken cheeks and forward-tilted face. Only her head and shoulders were visible, and she was wearing, from what he could see, a rumpled white singlet. She looked as though she had just been awakened from sleep.

“Wha’ fu’?”

“Sorry to disturb, but orders given to report to Building 7, quadrant 34. This is?”

She knuckled her eyes a little and gave a great yawn before replying: “Sorry, yeah. This is Building seven. But I don’t think … we weren’t told anything about you.”

“Orders given. May I come in?”

“Ah … dunno really. Where’re we gonna put you?”

She seemed to be speaking to herself, rather than continuing the conversation. He looked at his watch. The figure it showed was, of course, quite meaningless: a set of arbitrary numbers. He had not yet been issued with a sidereal chronometer, indispensable for the Stations. This was, it seemed, the middle of the night – or possibly, given the girl’s disorientation, the deepest hours of sleep before morning.

Misinterpreting his gesture, the girl frowned slightly and rapped out, “Well, anyway, you can’t stay out there. ‘Orders given,’ you say. I don’t know who the fuck you are, or why we haven’t had any orders about you, but you’d better come in.”

The screen died back into greyness and a short buzzing noise supervened. At once he was transported back to another apartment building, aeons away in

6

buttocks, now that you’ve achieved lodgement between them, angling them this way and that to persuade yourself of the pleasure you must be feeling.

And he? What are his sensations? His large hard cock must be throbbing against the lifeless stone, as the gradual surrender of his anus feels more and more like a sharp steel knife swallowed up by quicksand, or like a backed-up case of constipation. Sharp, painful, unclean, fascinating. He’s jerking about more, now, as if losing control of the process, the procès: the trial.

«Attends, dit Mony, reste assis.» Yes, stay still, little one.

Et, se couchant sur la mourante, il fit entrer son vit bandant dans le con moribond. You cannot help but visualise Estelle lying on her back, with the subhuman assassin Cornabœuf straddled across her shit-stained face. Prince Mony thus placed himself between her thighs to enter the dying pussy. … Il jouit ainsi des derniers spasmes de l’assassinée, dont les dernières douleurs durent être affreuses, et il trempa ses bras dans le sang chaud qui jaillissait du ventre. “He thus enjoyed the victim’s last spasms, which must have been horridly painful, and bathed his arms in the hot blood which spilled from her stomach.” You are bent over your victim, victim more of economics than of your insignificant lust, as your cock begins to spasm. The frustration of the double membrane – living and manufactured – is compounded as you retreat, frustrated at the lack of fleshly contact. The condom receives your seed, nevertheless, along with his mingled blood and shit.

Quand il eut déchargé, l’actrice ne remuait plus. Elle était raide et ses yeux révulsés étaient pleins de merde. “When he had discharged, the actress was no longer moving.” A prostitute, no matter how amateurish, must be a kind of actor, must feign enough humanity to promote the customer’s arousal. A boy who bends over to get money may have no interest in the act, but he knows that his masculinity is at the very least called into question by it. You disengage yourself quite quickly from him, half-expecting an elbow in the face or a gob of spit. What he does takes you therefore quite by surprise. “She was stiff and stark, and her revolted eyes were full of filth.” His eyes are bright and alive. He seizes you by the back of the neck (jeans halfway down, limp-dangling cock still cocooned in its ridiculous plastic cover, business shirt rucked up and clinging sweatily to your back) and kisses you hard on the open mouth, his tongue squirming deep inside, bad teeth forgotten.

You are Estelle, his willing bitch, at that moment, albeit fresh from mastering his arse (though could you ever, from the first, think that was what you were doing?) When he releases you, defiant and upright in his grey sweats,

7

It is very dark, and he is surrounded by ghostly shapes. A body floats by, and he clutches at it before seeing the huge gaping wound in the back of the young sailor’s head. He recoils, then pulls at the light-switch on his jacket, but nothing happens.

He is now muttering under his breath: “Got to keep moving. What’s that over there? Bugger me. Better go and see.” He does not seem to be conscious of what he is saying, which is getting more and more disjointed. At times he appears to imagine he is speaking to Ellen. “Ellie, we got to get rid of that cat,” he says. “That’s the third time the little shit’s tripped me coming in the door.”

There is a light swell, but little wind. As he swims on through the darkness, he sees that the largest nearby object is in fact a lifeboat. It is extremely low in the water, half-swamped, but there are still a few people sitting in it. Others are clinging to the ropes and trailing ends of canvas around the sides. Their faces bear an indescribable look of apathy, mixed with dawning shock.

• Scene [Bailing out the boat (Friday 6/11, c. 1.30 a.m.)]

With no help from those on board, Angus flops across the almost submerged gunwale.

“Some of you have got to get out so we can bail her dry,” he says. Nobody moves. “Come on, you’ve got to,” he repeats, more coaxingly.


Insert: [Dark night. Angus is on the far side of a pane of glass, with frost streaking the edges. “Ellie, please,” he is saying. “Let me in. You’ve got to. It’s bloody freezing out here.” His face continues to stare in, registering little hope, but an immense resignation. Is there movement from our side of the window?]


One of the older women says “Come on, children,” and begins to climb clumsily over the side of the boat, assisted by her eldest daughter, and followed by her other two children. The others reluctantly imitate her, including (latterly) the men.

Angus stops one young woman with two babies, and says, “No, that’s enough.” He would clearly like to do something more for the cold and shivering girl, but has to content himself with patting one of the babies on the head. “Good girl, good girl,” he croons. The baby begins to cry.

8

complicated pockets and harness. She had not troubled to put on her boots, so her bare feet poked out somewhat incongruously from the heavy, stained folds.

“Here I am,” he said, feeling the occasion demanded some comment. For some reason, this seemed to amuse her greatly.

“Here you are! But who’re you, and what are we supposed to do with you?”

It was only a token protest at this stage, though, as she ushered him through the door into a little apartment behind. As prescribed, the first thing he did on the threshold was to stop and quickly pan around the room, recording its contents.
Misreading, again, his reactions, the girl pushed him half-playfully from behind: “Go on in. She won’t bite!”

She was referring, he inferred, to the presence of another young woman in the room in front of him. This one was wearing a blue terry-cloth dressing-gown, and was far more feminine in appearance than the spiky young uniform behind him. She had long black hair, which she had evidently just been washing, for she was dabbing at it with a rather ratty-looking towel, and looked distinctly put out to see him.

“Excuse … intrusion.” He managed to come up with the second word eventually, although it was a struggle to remember it. They had warned him of the possibility of some such partial aphasia in the secondary speech areas, but he had not since then had his abilities so tested as in this particular encounter.

As he walked into the room, he found himself regarding the new young woman with immense interest and curiosity. She too had her feet bare, and he concluded that there were no irregularities in the steel floor to damage them. Her toenails, he was interested to observe, were painted purple, though the finger nails were regulation length.

“My God, where did they find you!” the new young woman (he found himself mentally classifying them as long-hair and short-hair) exclaimed incredulously.

Short-hair had now come in, closing the door behind her, and stood observing the scene with malicious pleasure.

“Julie, I’d like to present to you our guest, Mister Orders Given, from Outside. His hobbies are ringing bells, running up stairs to impress people who couldn’t give a fuck, and hanging around in doorways …”

He waited a little to see if there was any more, but her fund of invention seemed to have dried up, and said: “Lieutenant.”

9

Primus-Pricker

We decided to camp for the night. Some hours later I woke up to hear a blizzard blowing outside, and to find Filippo fumbling amongst some gear at the head-end of the tent. From inside my bag I called out to inquire if there was anything wrong, and received a reply that he was looking for the primus-pricker. Then he slipped back into his sleeping-bag, and all became quiet, except for the snow beating against the tent … Revolving the incident in my mind, and dimly wondering what use he could have for a primus-pricker in the middle of the night, I again fell asleep … On inquiry I found that Filippo knew nothing of his midnight escapade. It was a touch of somnambulism.


The snow beating against the tent. Soft flakes piling up into hard, sculpted drifts, blown into aerodynamic contours – sastrugi. Snow is so soft and deep. And slushy-wet and burning-cold and diamond-hard. Snow is like sleep.

The day is stink of men and food and foul air, dogs barking, fingers pricked by needles which slip from the hands. It is the itch of an unwashed body, the rub of harness. It is longing for a hard steel hut, and desire for the wind to stop. Stop just once, just once long enough for us to stand clear and see – see that ethereal stillness so few feet above our heads – the silence of those infinite spaces.

This afternoon I found myself thinking about Melbourne, and that led me to the evening I met that girl. She was clean enough, I suppose, a scrubbed little thing – quite boyish as she minced along. I can’t remember what she said, what I said. We went back to her room (on my insistence), so I had to wait while she ran in to check that the coast was clear. That was strange, standing out in the alley thinking about what I was about to do, or rather trying not to think about it, smoking a cigarette and watching the shadows. She was back soon enough.

Once in her room I insisted she undress completely, although she was very reluctant. I could see why, afterwards. She had a long scar running down the length of her back – a long red curve of cicatrice. It must have been devilish deep at the time. A whip? Too clean for anything but a stock-whip at full stretch, I’d say. More likely a knife. I didn’t ask her about it. Felt ashamed to, I suppose. In any case, it didn’t make me any less interested in what I’d come to do.

10

you grope your own pants up and reach out the fifty dollars you had ready in the back pocket. He takes it and moves away with a smile, saying, as he goes, something to the effect of “goo’ night,” though it might well have been followed by “cocksucker” or “whitey” or some such epithet. It had, after all, been he who approached you, spoke to you, offered you sex for money; who tongued and fisted your cock hard; and who finally leant himself, his youthful arse, across the tombstone. The Golden Ass: Apuleius. Why didn’t he simply rob you, you wonder? The money was there all along.

It’s funny how a picture forms itself of many small items, half-apprehended. As you walk back up the slope to your car, through the dark whispering tracks of the cemetery, you think of a dream you once had, a long time ago, a dream where a stone statue turned itself head over heels through the grounds of a park, crushing its way, unstoppable, through ponds and woods and walls. His dark buttocks against the white of the tombstone seemed like an indignant sideways face, about to shout out hoarse commands. The rest of the black and white complex of leaves, shadows, trees might have been made to harmonise with this conception into an Arcimbaldo crowd-scene, faces made of bark and flax.

And what are they doing, the bizarre faces in this crowded canvas? They’re roaring blindly at the leper, the excluded one. Even a boy prostitute can be more in command of his moment, his place, than that bleeding face, shoulder bowed under the weight of a crosstree. So what does that make you? The crucified Christ? The martyr complex is the first thing to explode when the physical organism goes wrong. In this case, when the arsehole-fucking, graveyard-haunting, prostitute-poking, French novel-quoting, extreme experience-craving – Miracle-in-Mary-of-phlegm – blaspheming fucker cannot … cannot what?

GA

ZA

11

He and the other men start bailing as hard as they can, the water spraying in all directions.

Shot of the other women and children clinging to an upturned oil-drum.

• Scene [“There she goes” (Friday 6/11, c. 1.30 a.m.)]

MEDIUM CLOSE-UP of Angus and another man, Tiny, trying to resuscitate the sodden-looking body of an older man, a passenger. They’re rubbing at his arms ineffectually, and dosing him with little nips of brandy until he coughs and chokes.


WIDE-ANGLE of the boat, now full of miserable-looking people, many of them clearly injured. There’s perhaps a hint of light in the sky as the camera begins to move up from them to show the stricken ship sitting low in the water not far away. Other boats are circling around it like water-beetles.


The City of Cairo is shown silhouetted against the horizon in a succession of near stills, with gradually increasing light providing the time index.

A voice says: “There she goes,” and the ship’s bow lifts up and begins to slide back inexorably into the sea. It is dawn, now, a cold dawn.

12

“What?”

“Not Mister, Lieutenant.”

“Sorry, look, I’m being really rude here. I’m Hartnell and this is Baker, Julie Baker. It’s our job to look after the dormitory here, and answer the bell. Sit down, please. Can I get you anything? Coffee, water?”

He sat down, stiffly, in the chair furthest away from the long-haired woman, Julie. He felt she didn’t like him already, whereas the other one, short-haired Hartnell (probably a private, or at most corporal, given the job she was doing) was still reserving judgement. He found himself wondering what her first name was, and whether it was a pretty name. He hoped it was. They had warned him also of such emotional imbalances – at first, until his new system adjusted to the stresses and strains.

Objectively, he knew it was of minor importance whether the two young women liked him or not. He had a job to do and so did they – but what he knew and what he felt no longer connected in any meaningful way. He felt that if neither of the women gave him a kind word in the very near future he would howl like a dog in pain and disappointment. Their approval seemed to him, for the moment, the most important thing in the world.

“Please,” he said. “Please. I’m very tired.” And started to cry.

What once would have embarrassed him almost beyond endurance was now something of a relief. The tears flowed. At first he wiped them away with his sleeve, but then he found himself starting to sob, which necessitated covering his face with both hands. At length he stopped, and blew his nose. Only then did he think of the effect this might be having on the two women, who had been shortly before the centre of his universe.

Hartnell was now sitting next to Baker, who had her arms around the shoulders of her friend. They were looking at him with consternation – “Gob-struck,” he thought, proud to have recovered this useful word from his cerebrum.

He felt no need, now, to take the initiative or say the first word. He felt strangely at peace – as if, by humiliating himself so utterly before them, he no longer had any need to fear their reactions. The rest was up to them.

“What’s wrong?” the softer, more feminine girl Baker asked at length.

“Nothing,” he replied, perfectly deadpan and affectless once more. He knew that now they would not take him solely at face value.

“But … do you often do that?” she continued, apparently determined to pursue the matter to its conclusion.

13

Afterwards she cuddled up to me a little and asked me if I wanted anything else. Funnily enough, what I wanted most then was a cup of tea. I wanted to ask her for one, and to watch her getting up and making it for me, like a good girl, a girl of good family. Like Effie, or one of the White girls in the old days. I knew she wouldn’t understand, though, and so I didn’t say anything at all. I just started to put my clothes on. She helped me with the boots, then started to pull on her own clothes. I wanted to kiss her, but I didn’t dare. Funny, really, when you think that I’d just fucked her, but somehow that seemed less intimate than treating her as a person, a real girl, now, afterwards.

I just walked out of there, then got pissy drunk in a bar by the river.

I suppose it was thinking of the snow that did it – her body was very white, I remember, which made the long scar stand out that much better. God, it must have hurt! Though maybe not: a scar that deep might have a temporary anaesthetic effect. The blood would pump out, but you might just feel a pleasant warmth from it – a kind of narcolepsy, just as we all thought sleeping in the snow would create.

It’s bad thinking about girls. I got a stiffy right away, and even though no-one can see it in these baggy furs it makes you crazy. I could feel myself licking her along her scar, tongue touching every inch of it. Why didn’t I do that then? I could have talked to her more – told her to do any number of things I can think of now. She was a pretty girl, not that it matters. Not pretty like the girls at home, but like a sleek little animal, furry and dark as an otter. She would have done anything for a few more coins. She might even have liked it, to be able to stay in bed instead of going out on the cold street again. Perhaps she ended up with some sailor who belted her arse for her – or some paterfamilias who buggered her while dreaming of his own daughters. She would have been better off with me. I wouldn’t have done anything to hurt her.

I’m certain I could never have whipped her, but now I find I’m thinking of her when I strike the dogs, wondering what kind of a whip had been used on her. On consideration, I think it probably was a knife – like those long gutting knives we use on the seals. Not so long and sharp, of course, or else all her guts would have fallen out on the table and would have had to be stuffed back inside before she could be sewn up.

That was the thing, of course. I can see it now, more real than the wind-flurries, the solid ice visible only a few yards ahead. There were no stitch marks

14

Valentine’s Day



The family lived at the top of a long stepladder – a kind of tree-house in the sky. It had been built by their father, with the help of Paul, the eldest son; but Father was dead now, and Paul was the man of the house. Besides Paul, there was Kevin, the second son, and then the two girls.

Melanie was the elder: blonde, lissom, straight-limbed – a golden girl. The youngest was Gillian, darker, somewhat inclined to dumpiness, and always lacking her sister’s grace (and, in consequence, her brothers’ favour). They were never very nice to Jill.

One evening, when the whole family, mother included, had been getting at Jill for her moodiness, lazy ways, and general inability to learn, she burst into tears (this was nothing unusual), rushed out of the room (nor was this), and then started to climb down the ladder to the forest floor (this was going a little far, however – heaven alone knew what might be roaring about down there at this hour of the night).

Paul and Kevin came out to stop her, only to find that she had taken their father’s lighter, and was holding it cocked against the dry straw of the hut platform. Now, fire is something you never joke about if you live on a platform in a tree. It can destroy you in minutes, and so a naked flame was never allowed in the house.

“What are you doing, Jill? Come back at once!” said Paul, in his customary petulant, exasperated tone (by now Melanie and her mother had come out as well – nor was it simply to see the fun, because neither was smiling).

“No,” said Jill quietly, as she eased herself down the first few rungs of the ladder.

“What’s wrong, Jill?” asked Melanie, leaning out to look into the upturned face of her sister.

“You should know, of all people. You were the one they always chose to do the solos in ballet class – you were the one who was excused dish-washing because your hands had to be kept smooth … Well, I’ve had it. I’m off.”

“Don’t be stupid, you little cunt. You won’t get half a mile,” shouted Kevin, the meaner of the two brothers.

“Oh yes, I will. I didn’t start planning this yesterday, you know. But before I do go, I have to tell you some things. The first is, I’m queer. I don’t like boys. I doubt you’ll understand what I’m talking about, but maybe you do, Mel.”

The older sister blushed.

“The second thing is, I’m a witch. I speak to the dead, to dead people. They tell me things. Not always things I want to know, but useful things sometimes.”

15

God-Botherers

rimettere il diavolo in inferno
– Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Decameron (Day 3, story 10)


“Putting the devil into hell.” Quite an elastic concept also, in its way. Then there’s that trick of taking a lighted match, holding it between two fingers, and letting it burn right down to the stub before you suddenly pinch it black with two pads of skin. It stings, scorches, sears (if you’re lucky).


“Gracious ladies, you who have (perhaps) never heard of the operation of putting the devil into hell, there was once a young man who couldn’t sleep. It began, at first, with too intense a concentration on the things of the day. He would lie awake, for hours, in his little apartment, as his mind went over the immense things he could accomplish in just a few hours, or days, or years – starting next morning. When the morning came, however, he found he was invariably too tired to put any of these plans into practice.

“His friends noticed his persistent fatigue, and began to prescribe antidotes. ‘Take a hot bath before you go to bed,’ said one. ‘Clear your mind of the things of the day by repeating these few words,’ said another. ‘Pour yourself a drink of whisky / hot milk / camomile tea,’ chorused the others. All of these remedies he tried, but none of them worked.

“Finally he went to the doctor with his problem, and was given a sleeping draught. At last he could sleep again. But when he awoke he felt as tired as ever: stale, used-up, thick-headed, as if his sleep had not refreshed him at all. So he stopped taking the draughts, and lay awake as before, his mind going over and over the things of the day …”


You are writing in your notebook, a little story about a man who couldn’t sleep, when the doorbell rings. You think (as one does) of not answering it, but curiosity is too strong. Your story bores you [and me], anyway.

There are two of them, quite young. She (perhaps eighteen?) is wearing jeans, a halter top, bare midriff. No, no, no: in order. Long dark hair, hanging down upon slight shoulders, serve to frame a tanned, unblemished face. Her

16

“The third thing is, I’m leaving for good. I know I can be happier somewhere else, somewhere I’m not shut in at the top of a stepladder in the sky, cut off from the earth and the sea and all the other people. Mel, you can come too, if you want. The rest of you stay put.”

Mel did want to come, for a moment. But then she thought about the first thing her sister had said and, looking at the shocked, uncomprehending faces of her mother and brothers, knew that she didn’t dare. She shook her head.

Jill shrugged and, still brandishing the – long-evaporated – lighter, continued her descent into the dark depths at the foot of the tree. They never saw her again. Melanie cried herself to sleep that night, though, and many of the nights that followed.

[This I dreamed … 14/2/98]

17

on her scar, so it can’t have been sewn up. Amazing she wasn’t finished off by infection; more amazing that she didn’t bleed to death straight away.

I can see her dancing ahead of me, just ahead in the wind. She’s not naked, but in her furs, with her feet bare in the wind-furrows. How old is she? Fifteen? Fourteen? She’d been had many times, I could feel that, but was still narrow and tight, as only a young girl can be. That’s filthy talk, though. A filthy thing to think. I only want to see her dance, to beckon me on. Her skin is so white, her body so smooth and firm, her little tongue is red as she puts it out to catch a snow-flake.

18

was seizing hold of him. How dare they call him a robot – insensate hardware. After all, he had wept in front of them, asked them their names. How could he be a machine? The complex fusion of moods was beginning to balance him, though – his overwhelming interest in and sympathy for the two young women warred against his desire to stand up and shout at them.

“You mean … you remember everything you see?”

“Not just remember – classify, record. Little boxes, cubby-holes.” How could he express it to them? He took it for granted they would be interested in understanding all the details of how it worked. “I …” No, that appeared to be all. “Apologies.”

“But … you’re not like us, are you?”

“Treatment.” He shuddered, once, involuntarily. “Long treatment, and long adjustment to optimal conditioning level.”

Ann seemed prepared to leave it at that, but Julie now seemed to have overcome her fear and recovered her initial curiosity.

“So – what do you record exactly, and why did they do this to you?” her voice sounded sympathetic and he responded to her mood with an overwhelming feeling of tenderness. If only he could do something for these two friends of his – help them in some way with the overwhelming powers that were his.

“Shall I show you?”

“Yes!” she returned quickly, ignoring the look of warning in Ann’s large hazel eyes.
“Before I came in, I scanned your room. Scan, Record, Classify. That is our job. Now, I close my eyes and I recall …”

He closed his eyes and recalled everything he had seen. There was also capacity for selection according to given parameters, and he set this to social mood-setting, the level on which one attempted to analyse the emotional temperature of a room or gathering.

“Ann, you are wearing regulation uniform trousers and a white singlet. You sleep in the singlet and put on the trousers if you have to get out of bed. There are sixteen pockets in your trousers, two buttons, thirty-seven stitched seams, of which three are beginning to fray. They are approximately eighteen months old. Julie, you too were in bed, but you decided to wash your hair when the two of you had to get up. Your towel is not clean enough, though. You paint your toe-nails and not your finger-nails because you do not like regulation wear. You have forty-seven eye-lashes and brown eyes with red

19

eyes are an intense blue. Histoire de l’oeil: Bataille – Tale of the Eye. Slim waist, slim hips, thin legs, black boots combine to form an image of adolescent innocence – or outrage?

He, by contrast, blonde and freckled, thick, half-strangled by incongruous (unaccustomed?) tie and jacket, shorter than his platform-heeled companion, hand outstretched, looks ready equally for scrum or barbecue. The other hand holds, half-shielded, a dark, not unfamiliar book.

“Yes?” (Not unsnottily).

“We’re going door to door to talk about the Lord Jesus Christ and what he’s done in our lives and what he can do in yours too if you’ll let him …” (faltering slightly after that breathless apostrophe) “Would you be interested in talking to us about that?”

The girl smiles, half-nervously, as if to back up her companion’s asseverations of life-changing events without associating herself, necessarily, with his naïve sense of mission.

The flat’s a tip. You’re blinking, bleary-eyed, in tee-shirt, jeans, bare feet.

Why not?

“Why not? Come on in, both of you, and tell me all about it. I warn you, though, I’m not going to buy any steak-knives or subscriptions to video-clubs.”

They exchange disconcerted glances, the first sign of any complicity – intimacy? – between them. [Psycho killers, rules for the detection of: First, unusual determination to invite one into any malodorous vehicle or dwelling they may be occupying at the time; Second, refusal to abide by conventions of polite speech (in this case, dismissal with protestations of uninterest); Third, “looking like everyone else:” indistinguishability from the rest of the population in general affect (no giant warts, seven-fingered hands, ill-concealed claws, insect-like eyes) …]

“Come on in! I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

Further glances. Still, this does come with the territory. They sidle nervously in.

Fighting your impulse to give a sepulchral laugh, slam and bolt the door, and turn on them, leering, with the words: “So the great lord Dagon at last sends me my prey …” you bustle over to the kitchenette, and start to pour water loudly into a kettle.

20

Glasgow’s Miles Better

Going into a cinema with a pal, – he slipped and fell, – bouncing down three flights of stairs – (huge auditorium, banks of seats: wide aisles). – I followed at a run, then paused. – Girl sitting there said, – “I’ve seen you before.” – I: “Where?” – She: “In Glasgow.” – I: “How did you know?” – She: “I’d remember you anywhere.” – On waking, thought I should have given her – Address or telephone number. –


Woken by the muezzin. Where else but Baghdad? The boys are running around and screaming in the covered way, little tongues shrill as whistles, brown limbs flashing like flames. The faithful are being called to prayer, and I, the faithless, to another burning day.

Planning an expedition is smoke in a water-pipe, a shimmer on the horizon, the glint in an almond eye. It is easy to see myself, in the mind’s eye, climbing the face of a dune in desert robes – I who should now be tramping, in the flesh, through the rocky defiles of Luristan.

The first real lead so far was at the party I attended last night, the British at their least reserved. I got into conversation with the wife of some embassy official [horse-faced woman with a braying laugh], and soon found myself being introduced around as a “terribly clever young man.”

One or two of them seemed to know what I was talking about when I began to talk of the road to Turkestan, and I ended at last with some names and addresses of “people who might help.” “You need to join one of the regular caravans,” said one. “There are no regular caravans at this time of year,” riposted another. “Much better to conscript a guide and travel with his people.”

It ended where I thought it would. No-one knew of a suitable guide, for a destination so far-off, so fraught with peril: Persia, the Caucasus, and the shores of the Caspian sea. “You’ll get yourself shot if you go anywhere near the Bolshevik oil fields.” Some of them promised to keep an eye open, however.

•

21

striations in the white. You have put up a picture on the wall, there, of a snowy lake. It is yours and not Ann’s because it reflects your taste in colours – blues and pale shades.” He thought it best not to mention that he could detect her fingerprints in the glossy paper, having compared them with the ones left on the glass she had been drinking out of. “There are 973 rivets in this room, and eighty-nine strips of steel …”

“Okay, okay, enough already,” broke in Ann. “But what does all that tell you, anyway? It’s just details, really.”

“No, it tells me that the two of you are lovers, that you are not concerned to hide the fact, that you are happier with conditions here than Julie is …”

“Anyone could have guessed that.”

“That you are afraid of losing her, that she is afraid of losing you, that neither of you are aware that it is this fear which is making things difficult for both of you, that both of you would like to talk about it, but are afraid that that might mean the end for you, that you feel you cannot leave and she feels she cannot stay …” He stopped.

The two girls were staring at him as if at a black magician. They turned, then, to one another and laughed.

“He’s right!”

“Me too!”

“Look … George. You are going to keep all this to yourself, aren’t you? I mean, there can’t be many secrets when you’re around.”

“You are my friends. I will never betray my friends.”

“Friends … but, look, we just met.”

“Apologies.” With the scanning apparatus suspended, speech again became difficult. “I know you so well I think of you as friends, and would like to help you anyway – in any way. I have no … reserve? I cannot dissimulate. Since I met you I am interested only in you.”

Breaking the somewhat embarrassed silence, Julie asked, “Where’s he going to sleep?” Then blushed a little at the implications of what she had said.

“I don’t sleep.”

“You don’t? But … what do you …”

“Do instead, were you going to ask, Jules?” broke in the more level-headed Ann. “Is there anything we can do for you, then, George? You know, like I said before, coffee, tea, breakfast.”

“Nothing, thank you, Ann. I am all right. I will be all right.”

22

They stand, uncomfortable. The table is overflowing, as usual, with papers and the detritus of breakfast (it is approximately 10.35 a.m.). You move back to clear two chairs for them, which they deign, doubtfully, to occupy.

Now that you have them here you wonder what to do with them. The girl is young and pretty, but (let’s face it) a Christian, and probably connected with the boy. He looks (at least on superficial indications) to be quite probably a dork.

“So what did you want to tell me about?” you ask, returning them the initiative.

“Oh, well, we’re here to talk to you about the Lord Jesus and …”

“Yes, I kind of gathered that. But who are you? Why are you here, now, talking to me?”

“Well, our church sends out volunteers to witness in this area …”

“You’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, are you?”

“No, we’re not.” He sounds quite indignant. “We’re from the Christian Fellowship, just over the hill from here.”

“What about you?” you ask, turning to the girl. “What are you here for?”

Your tone of aggression obviously perturbs her. She was coasting along quite nicely, thank you, on the wings of her companion’s eloquence, but is now forced rudely back into the conversation. How much more comfortable to be a critic of others’ efforts!

“I’m … like him.”

“What’s your name?”

“Judy.”

Blondie reasserts control. “I’m Philip.” Putting out a brawny hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

You shake the hand: “Bruno, Giordano Bruno. You can call me Jordan, though, for short. You know, like the river.”

“Jordan?”

“Precisely.”

“Nice to meet you, Jordan.”

“Well, now, Judy and Philip, so you’re going to tell me about the wonders of your faith, are you? Convince me to accept the Lord Jesus Christ into my life as my personal saviour?”

“Look, would you rather we left? I mean …”

23

The Ram


The taste was salty, a little sweat mixed with the secreted tartness of the juices: more grapefruit than honey. Folds of texture demanded separate exploration – exploitation? – as did the springy mattress of coiled hairs, dark, sparse but still an important contributor to the overall sensory mélange. It was at once the most active and most passive of activities: active, because it demanded the use of facial muscles seldom consulted otherwise, save for a moue or a grimace; passive, because his body took no further part in it than that.

“That’s good. Don’t stop …”

He had almost forgotten the other witness, which was odd, as it was her wishes only he had meant to consult. Looking up, he saw her face looking down at him, complacency mixed, he felt, with a certain anxiety. His tongue probed further, encountering, in its passage, a small raised dot of flesh above the junction of the two sliced halves. At once, and with little warning, the taste came sharper, more urgent. A gasp came from above, and she pressed herself at him with no lingering reserve. The tongue flicked on, pendulum-like, as he paid minute attention to the reactions it inspired.

For a while he investigated the slippery bridge of flesh which joined her slit to the starfish hole behind. This appeared to please her also, though she resisted a little his attempts to probe the latter more deeply. In any case, the posture she was in, on her back, thighs apart, on the edge of the bunk, precluded the possibility of proper entry.

“More … uh. Up above … yes! Don’t stop.”

Her coaching continued with less and less precision as he returned to his original position. At length, after a good ten minutes or so, she gave a little buck and gasp, and subsided. He took that as his signal to cease.

Every minute detail of the room was, of course, registered in his mind, and he began to sort them idly according to origin. This sheet-fabric-crease was Ann’s, the result of a less than peaceful night; this odd sock was Julie’s, torn off just now as she hastily bared her lower half to facilitate the activity they had just enjoyed. He supposed that she had enjoyed it. So, really, had he, though she was now beginning to rouse from her lethargy and look down at him with a certain anxiety. With surprise, he realised that it was only now she had begun to wonder what services he might demand in exchange for this one.

24

“No, no, no, Philip, please forgive my brusquerie. I’m quite willing to hear what you’ve got to tell me, just as long as you do me the courtesy of listening to me in turn.”

“What’s that?” asks Judy, unexpectedly.

“What’s what?”

“That word. Brusquerie.”

“Oh, a rude or unpolished manner, lack of finesse in one’s conversation … something like that.”

“Are you a teacher?”

“Well, I suppose I am, sort of. I’ve got a brother who’s a musician, and another one who’s a boxer: Pete and Frank.”

They exchange more glances. Clearly they’ve been warned against teachers – or was it intellectuals in general? Unrewarding to talk to, improbable as converts, and always full of lengthy provisos … seed that fell on the waste ground, for the most part.

“Well,” Philip doggedly resumes the scent. “We’re here to talk to you about our personal experience of the Lord Jesus …”

“What was it, then? Tell me about your personal experience of him. Did he come to you in the form of a blinding light, which only left you in the city of Damascus? Did you meet him as a traveller on the road to Emmaus? Or is he just a voice whispering in your head? What’s he saying now?”

“Look, mate …” Philip is going to lose his cool in a moment, so Judy sees this as her moment to intervene.

“I hear him talking to me sometimes.”

“Do you indeed? Tell me about it.”

“There’s nothing to tell. I just hear him.”

“Words forming in your head out of nowhere? Or is it an actual tone of voice that you recognise?”

“I know it’s him.”

“But how do you know? Is it because of the things he says to you?”

“I guess so, yes.”

“What’s he telling you now, right now, about me?”

“Nothing. It doesn’t happen very often, you know.”

“Couldn’t you ask him? You know, a word or two of advice?”

“Of course. Would you like to pray with us?”

“You know, I might just do that – but only if he tells you something you can pass on to me. You see, I really do need some advice here.”

25

“I’m sorry, Ann. I would have done the same for you, only Julie was here and you weren’t. I love you both, but you understand that I want nothing in return.”

“But look, you dumb shit, don’t you understand that you can’t just go around licking out ladies like an icecream cone or a lollypop – that it’s got implications for us?”

“But Ann, that’s just it … that’s just what …”

“Shut up, you fucking little slut – just get the fuck out of here, both of you. I want to think.”

Julie was now occupied in trying to retrieve her panties (the only other garment, besides socks, she was in the habit of wearing around the apartment) from wherever they had got to. Seeing them in the far corner into which they had been flung, Bruno went over to retrieve them, and handed them to her. She took them, then ran out in a flood of tears.

“No, you stay. We’ve got to talk.”

“Certainly, Ann.”

“How can you be so fucking cold about it? I mean, this is probably it for me and her, and I’ve been trying for I don’t know how long to stop this from happening. I always knew she liked men, but I thought that if …”

“But Ann, Julie loves you still.”

“So what about this? Was this a way of proving it to me? Hey, Ann, guess what Bruno and I got up to this afternoon?”

“I’m sorry, Ann. As I explained to Julie earlier, I do not really understand. I remember something of what I used to feel, and I remember that my … lover used to enjoy that act, as did I. Julie was bored, and did not want to talk to me, so I asked her if she would like me to do this for her.”

“Call it by its name. You asked if she wanted her pussy eaten, and of course the little slut said yes. She always does. How much time do you think I’ve spent with my head where yours has just been, contributing to madam’s pleasure?”

“I had forgotten the names. Some are there still, but not easy to recover: Cunt, snatch, pussy, slit, vagina, honeypot – it is more bitter than that, more citric – peach, fanny, crack, vulva …”

“Oh just shut up you fucking robot. I suppose you’d like to eat me out now to make it all even?”

“Yes, Ann.”

26

I was getting ready to go out when I heard raised voices in the narrow alley outside the house (trust psychoanalysis to give me the right associations with dark alleys and narrowness). The woman of the house, my landlady (or concierge), was quarrelling with somebody else, a young man by the sound of it. They were talking too fast for me to make out much of the conversation, but it seemed to concern the right time to come calling.

I thought little of it. Many people come to this quarter looking for rooms, but after a brief interval, I heard a knock on my door and some whining words from the servant (an oppressed looking black who cringes instinctively every time he looks at you). I gathered that I had a visitor, and that they were just checking I was fit to receive guests.

Hastily tidying away my accumulation of papers, I signified assent to the invasion, and the procession of man of the house, woman of the house, and young robed and booted visitor began to sidle in.

I motioned to them to sit down, which they did, and then clapped my hands and ordered refreshments from the wretched servant. As he bustled off to fill a tray with dusty pastries and half-stewed coffee, we began to exchange small-talk about the weather (hot), the conditions for trade (bad), and the prospects of amelioration for either (small).

All through this rigmarole I was sizing up my guest, who was dressed as if for desert travel, with a full headdress wrapped around the face. His part in the conversation was confined mainly to assent with my landlord’s views, but I could see his eyes – large, lustrous, brown – were fixed on me as if sizing me up. Haunting eyes, really, but then so many of them are when framed with the dark blue of the burnoose.

When the coffee came, and the ritual exchanges were completed, my landlord began to offer hints that it might be time to come to the object of this visit, and our guest began to speak with an absence of circumlocution attributable (I fear) only to his youth.

“You wish to travel to the north, I hear.”

“Yes.”

“I can guide you there. My home is in the mountains.”

“Really? You know that I wish to go quite far?”

“I do not care how far.”

“What payment would you require?”

I had little faith in the negotiations; they seemed to me like many I had been through before. Soon would come the “but” – the demand that we go in

27

“Can we help?” intervenes Philip, positively unctuous with concern.

“You’re both kind of young. I think he’d probably be in a better position to advise me, what with those forty days in the wilderness and three days down in hell.”

Philip would clearly like to know if you’re having them on, but knows it’s against the rules to ask. Julie seems to be enjoying her new-found spiritual authority as Mouthpiece of God. She takes your hand, then Philip’s, closes her eyes, and intones, “Let us pray.”

GOD

BOY

28

“So anyway, what I’m saying is that you can stay here, too, and it needn’t mean a court-martial for dereliction of duty.”

“Thank you. Both of you.”

“You’re very welcome, I’m sure. Now, your first job is to apply some more cold compresses to Madam’s sore behind, but for that you’d better go into the next room. I’ve got some work to do on the link.”

“Please, not too hard …” murmured Julie a few minutes later as her bare bottom lay before him on the bed, seeming to invite caresses of a more substantial kind than those provided by tongue and soft, wet towel.

•

“What I don’t quite understand is what you were sent here for in the first place, if you don’t have any work assignment and no-one’s ever heard of you on the link.”

It was strange to lie in a bed again, holding and being held by a girl. Julie had gone to sleep, and was snoring off to one side, but Ann was still awake and curious, and interested in more than sex, it seemed.

“Neither do I.”

“And the way you speak, too. It’s a bit like a foreigner with a good vocabulary but a lot of gaps in his knowledge. Why did they make you like that?”

Releasing the smooth bare body which he had been caressing with such reminiscent devotion, he rolled on his back and stared at the ceiling. At this the sleeping Julie gave a grunt and pushed herself back against him. On one side, then, her delicate backside pressed against his leg; on the other, Ann’s lithe inner thigh and breast were nestled up against him. It was a kind of paradise, a dream of love and contentment – physical and emotional – perfect in all ways. And yet he could not sleep.

“Ann. Do you mind if I tell you something? It will take time.”

“How much time? I mean, you can go ahead, but I’m so comfortable right now that I can’t really promise to …”

“That is all right. You do not have to stay awake. I will feel you against me, and lie here till morning.”

“God, it’s all so melodramatic in your world, isn’t it?” She stretched up and gave him a smacking kiss on the mouth, followed by one on the ear. He did not react except to continue stroking her like a cat. She purred.

29

The Heart of the Snow

No-one was guilty of an elaborate toilet, water being a scarce commodity. There were adherents of the snow-wash theory, but these belonged to an earlier and warmer epoch of our history … Laurence tried an early morning bath which was the last voluntary dip attempted by anyone.


Their bodies look so white as they rub them down with snow. The faces, hands, rough, brown with weather, work – wrinkled as mummies; but their limbs are pure and smooth as alabaster. There is a little party of four or five who run out every week or so into the wind to cleanse their limbs with cold fingers of snow. Since my immersion in the bay, I have felt no temptation to join them.

It was necessary, of course – the packing case had to be recovered, and you cannot ask a man to do what you will not do yourself. I stripped off all my clothes (God knows that was hard enough in itself), and trod gingerly down to the shore. Then plunged in, as fast as I could.

The water burned like liquid fire. It was so cold I was almost beyond feeling – layers and layers of compression and pain. I had thought that I would be numb in an instant, but there is a numbing pain within the numbness, and a greater pain, an agony of the larger organs, within that. I was at full stretch to reach that wretched case, cursing as hard as I could to keep my brain alive, language the enemy of ice. Oh, and when I put my head under I thought it would explode, blood rushing to every corner of the skin to buoy it up against this unheard-of enemy. I reached the slippery bottom – a moment’s panic before I grasped the case (which I had located already with my feet), then a mighty pull up to the waiting hands above. Some of them seized hold of me and pulled me up. And then I was being rubbed down with rough towels, and brandy in the mouth, and I was putting my clothes on as fast as I ever have, faster than with that whore in Melbourne, faster than on the morning I woke up too late for my biology final.

It was the wrong packing case, of course.

Afterwards, my teeth rattled so that I thought they would never stop, that they would ricochet out of my head and keep chattering along the ground. My head felt swollen to bursting point, and ached for hours afterwards, while my

30

the wrong direction, or be back by a fixed time, the unrealistic arrangements for remuneration. As the conversation continued, though, in this direct and straightforward way, I began to feel again the excitement which had brought me here, to the Middle East, to explore the ruins of this ancient world. Was it possible I might succeed after all?

Horses. Equipment. Food. No camp-followers required – no wife, no servants, no guards. Was it possible he was a bandit, intending to march a few miles out into the countryside before killing me and stripping my body? Quite probable on the surface, but somehow, looking at those eyes, I could not believe it. This was someone who meant what he said.

He had heard of my plight from a servant of one of the British officials I had been talking to the night before, and saw this as a fortunate coincidence of aims. He wished to return to his native regions, and desired little profit beyond that required to cover his own travelling expenses. Secretly determining to reward him far beyond these modest claims if our travels came to anything, I shook hands with him to settle the bargain.

His hand was cool and soft, lacking the leathery consistency of the true desert dweller. What I noticed most about it, though, was the long ridged scar which ran across it like a trench. A straight razor cut which must have gone very deep indeed.