Nestbeschmutzer!

The legless man birched his way up the sideways, his pushcart wobbling from side to side. As today he had decided to be contumelious (to a fault) he veered and caromed trying to knock over as many passerby’s as he could, a munificent grin widening his already wide face. He barreled over a man wearing a Zuckerstätter cap, the poor man toppling head over heel to the pavement. Next he rammed into a woman in a Burgtheater wig, the wig leaping from her head and flying down the sideways like a hirsute kite. ‘Nestbeschmutzer!’ hollered the now hatless man, his face as red as a crushed rose. ‘scoundrel!’ yelled the wigless woman, ‘you’ve made a fool of me!’ hollered the once Zuckerstätter capped man. He upended a woman walking her dog, sending them crashing into the Seder grocer’s storefront window, both woman and dog tinseled in broken glass. ‘cocksucker!’ screamed the woman at the top of her lungs, ‘Nestbeschmutzer!’ hollered the hatless man ‘scoundrel!’ yelled the wigless woman, ‘kill the legless cunt!’ shouted a man with one eye ‘freak!’ Smiling from ear-to-ear the legless man punted across the medium, ‘not a cloud in the sky’ he said to himself ‘what a beautiful day’.

The day began and ended and ended and began until beginning and ending were indistinguishable from one another. The man in the hat sat on a bench thinking of ways to sit that didn’t hurt his back, moving his buttocks from side to side, sliding across the wooden top of the green splintered bench. He did things (to a fault), either sitting or pretending to sit but slouching, which he did when sitting hurt his back, preferring to slouch rather than sit thinking of ways to sit that didn’t effect his back, which hurt more often than not. He thought perhaps sitting on his hands, raising his body up like a gallows, might lessen the pain; but it simply redistributed the pain to his lower back and arms.

Flagella

The sinned and the sinning wait on the steps of the Church of the Perpetual Sinner for Mass to begin. A lineman from the Mark Twain Rural Telephone Co., cap in hand says ‘a fiver to anyone who can ping a rock off the bell’. A young boy raises his hand, ‘I’ll give it a try sir’. A hush falls over the crowd, a sinning woman says to the sinned man beside her ‘O but to be young and foolish again’. The sinned man replying ‘you foolish woman, that’s how we ended up on these steps to begin with’. Hidden behind King Olaf the littlest dogman snickers, his fingers drumming the birdcage of his chest. Behind the littlest dogman sits a man on a bench reading the newspaper, his eyes darting back and forth as he searches the obits for his name, the ruckus on the steps of the church trammeling his ability to concentrate. ‘I have no patience for the sinned or the sinning’ he burbles to himself. ‘damn muggers need a good thrashing!’ Closing and folding the newspaper he rises off the bench and ambles diagonally towards the gate that leads into the park across from the church, the newspaper stuffed under his arm for safekeeping. ‘were I not such a delicate man I’d whip them myself’. Having allowed what he said to register in his thoughts, which he did with most things he said and or thought, he walks up the steep incline that separates the aqueduct from the park, the newspaper birching his kidneys like an Opus Dei flagella.

Swords Co.

‘sluit de deur, você está deixando o frio dentro!’ The wool merchant slammed shut the door and returned to his work, his hands shaking aggressively. ‘its getting so man can’t make an honest living. I move into the forest yet somehow people find me, come knocking at my door!’ The felon tripped of his own volition, cracking his head in three places. Detective Garda Nolan Falls was heard to exclaim ‘this sort of thing happens all the time’. To which Commander Garnet Galsworthy added ‘in Swords. I can’t speak for other Districts’. The Herschel Liege pantomime troop played the Sword’s county hall the night the felon was arrested; Galsworthy and Garda Falls attending the final show of the evening. That night the wool merchant filed a grievance with the Swords Co. constabulary claiming that there were crazy hooligans larking about in his yard, two of whom were outfitted in women’s clothing. George Legnica and Albert Jawor were charged with mischief and sentenced to three months to be served in the Sword County Gaol.

The man in the hat shook his head not once, but twice, his brain unable to register what he’d just read. As it had been a long arduous day, many of his thoughts restricted to mundane things, what colour vest to wear with his tweed jacket or which knot to tie his boots with (in the past he had difficulties with his boots staying tied, the laces unraveling at the most inopportune moments, like when bending down to plant a kiss on a child’s head or rushing to make the betting window before the off-track close), he pushed his thoughts into the back of his head and continued home, the sun barracked in a canebrake of clouds over his head. The Poughkeepsie Constabulary arrested two men dressed in women’s clothing outside the Sword’s county hall; two Poughkeepsie policemen enjoying a smoke on the steps of the hall swiftly wrestling the two transgressors to the pavement. His head throbbing like a stubbed toe the man in the hat rounded the corner and headed home, the Poughkeepsie Constabulary interrogating his every thought.

Gaol

He hi-tailed it up the sideways, the prospect of lightheadedness cursing his every step. ‘poor fellow knifed with a Sword… a man resembling a dog taken into custody. No reply when charged. Silly dog probably jumped up on his lap’. Detective Garda Nolan Falls told the court that the man had a deep voice and scratched himself with his hind leg. The people of Swords, Co Dublin, unable to contain their anger cajoled the felon, a few throwing bricks and stones, bouncing them off his droopy-eared head.

Monday July 26 2010

A court reporter was heard to say, ‘the man appeared to be lightheaded, thrusting his arms out from his sides in a vain attempt to balance himself’. The Swords constabulary, under the command of Garnet Galsworthy, attempting to calm the man knocked into the alleyway behind the Gaol, the felon’s face inviting several well-placed kicks. Detective Garda Nolan Falls told the court that the man had made no reply following the incident.

Monday Independent

Garrulous

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Oliver Schlomo

The stench was overbearing, as some stenches take on an otherworldly smell, half human half beast. It clawed at his forehead, gouging in behind the eyes, pressing on the halves of his brain. He smelled it with his thoughts, half beast half human, separating the stench from the everydayness of smells, odors that one needn’t worry oneself with. ““You spoke late,"” said Tromsø. “"I'd as soon turn Turk as stay any longer.”” (Don Quixote, Cervantes) Uéfec Délair has worked as an orderly for the Overnight Asylum for 27 years, 16 dispensing medication and 9 delousing inmates.

How do you function when your legs and arms stop working? I suppose you could remain impassive… and say were a pigeon to alight on your shoulder you’d shiver, yes, but that wouldn’t be enough, the pigeon, oblivious to your failure to shake it off would stay, like a bad thought gets caught in the wiring until the sickness forces you to change your mind, snip the wire… I suppose you could try that, mind you it would be a waste of time. Altogether your legs and arms are like broken sticks, useless appendages weighing you to the floor, the bench, the very same spot you lay in, shivering, the day before and the day before that.

Oliver Schlomo met the man in the hat on an unpardonably humid afternoon behind the aqueduct, the air thick with the stench of rotting fish, the pump clotted with dead river things, tortoise shells and one-legged arthropods, exoskeletons, chitin and unsavvy bullfrogs.

Suboficiales de Mecánica de la Armada

Tromsø sleeps in a dorm in the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics (Suboficiales de Mecánica de la Armada) where he is studying to become a machinist. On the first day of his studies he falls ill and is sent to the infirmary. The second day he is removed from the school and relocated to the Waldau Sanatorium where he is treated for a corrupt soul. On the third day he asks the orderly if he can visit a friend in the Overnight Asylum across the street from the Waldau Sanatorium. Shaking his head the orderly says ‘okay, but make sure your back before lights out’. They call him Tromsø because he has a face like a reindeer. The man in the hat met Tromsø at the Feast of the Annunciation; Tromsø carrying with him a broadsheet on which was printed the following: “La literatura es mentir bien la verdad” (Juan Carlos Onetti). After making each other’s acquaintance they go their separate ways, the whistle on the clocktower of the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics signaling the end of school.

Over the door to the mess on a plaque typically reserved for mounting angled fish, a fish which would have ruined many an appetite, bone-rotten as an indecently mounted fish tends to be, or at least one not mounted with prudence, was the following epitaph, “I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance” (Friedrich Nietzsche) and below that, yet seeming to exist on a different plain altogether,

"When I sat down to die, my soul prayed for me to get up and drag on with my life, as if it still expected some miracle to cleanse me of my sins. I didn't even try. 'This is the end of the road,' I told it. 'I don't have the strength to go on.' And I opened my mouth to let it escape. And it went. I knew when I felt the little thread of blood that bound it to my heart drip into my hands." (Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo)

30 Nights

It wasn’t until his first night in the Overnight Asylum that he became aware of his illness. Then when they moved him to Waldau Sanatorium, which they did by hook and crook, smuggling him out on the back of an oxcart, he accepted his stock in life. The first night they punctured his thigh with a long sharp needle filling him up with a mixture of Thorazine and cod-liver oil. The following day they filled him with Klor-dye-az-eh-POX-ide and Dulcolax, his legs giving way and his arms swaying from side to side. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t stop his arms from swaying, the once happy bones in his elbows now unmerchantable and morose. The doctor prescribed a mild apagogic to be administered before bed. The third night he soiled the bed, the orderly throwing the shitted-on linen in the laundry that was rolled around on wheels. He calculated how long he could exist in a stupor: 27½ days. Then how long he could sleep on his back: 30 nights. On the seventh day the doctor pressed on his kidneys checking for stones and abscesses. The eighth and ninth days he slept on his side, the bedsores on his back weeping like frightened children. On the tenth day he was visited by the Tasmania brothers Arlen and Launceston, the brothers reveling him with stories of intrigue and folly. The eleventh and twelfth days he spent submerged in an ice bath, the doctor figuring it would do his constitution some good. On the thirteenth day he requested an ice bath, having found the first one invigorating. On the fourteenth day the sky outside his window fell, leaving a big hole in the roof. The fifteenth and sixteenth days a truckload of Mormon barn raisers arrived to repair the caved-in roof; the sanatorium administrator rewarding them for their hard work with a tinctura opii camphorata each and a free shave. They call him Tromsø because he has a face like a reindeer.

Porch Rats

He thought of the sister that was given away as an infant because she was retarded and the chances of her contributing anything to the world fractional. He turned and walked down the street, the hum of the slaughterhouse saw cricketing in his ears. She remembers a small dog with a chain around it’s nick pulling at the corner uv her blanket, its yello teeth white with slaver, it’s eyes blak as night.

She remembers two bodes, a man and a wounds; the man picking her up and cradling her in the basket uv his strong rms. She can think bank ta the smell uv a man and a womun, the Oder uv glands an sweat glistening unbar their armpits’, cam fore and cinnamon, the sweetness and the hard stench uv bodes astir wreck. The man and the women fed her fram a goats teat and rubbed oils and powders anta her skin. They stayed by her wan she creed at night an comforted her wan the thunder and wind pounded up ageist the sides uv ta cottage like anger ghosts cum to reclaim what wo rightfully theirs. She had lived with this cual until she was fifteen, than moved on in search uv her birth parents’, an the resins why they had left her on that footstep that day fifteen years ago. She went in search uv answers, not sure uv what she’d find, not certain that she wanted what she’d find and unsure if their actuate was anteing out their; a part uv her, a pence uv the puzzle that had begum her life. Eight years later, after crossing the berth an depth uv a weld she had ogle red about in books, she settled in the cottage outside the vie-mille fence with a slow dog with an appetite for porch rats. He remembered the morning his sister was taken away in the big cab, the driver pushing the seat forward so his sister could crawl in the back. His parents watched from the stoop as the car backed out of the laneway and turned north, his sister waving her handkerchief from the backseat window.

Dreadful Man

The carver sliced a coil of pig’s tail and slapped it greasily on the plate, the man in the hat swallowing the spittle caught at the back of his throat. Next to him to his left sat a dreadful man, his jowls greasy with knuckle. The dreadful man ate like a flophouse hosteller, cramming joints of greasy knuckle into his mouth with both hands. He lay his hands on his belly, a sloop of grease anchored on his chest, the man in the hat watching on with disgust. He begirded his tie and straightened out the front of his chemise, the buttons hanging on by a yarn. Zug two-fists strays, approaching from the flank and lassoing them around the begird. Gnaws at the bones like a grizzly bear. Dreadful indeed. Spits on the whetstone to lather up the sharpening end. Hones a mighty fine edge, enough to take down a whale. Zug stands leaning against the hosiery’s awning, his eyes glassed over, legs trembling.

It’s the second time that day he’s queued for something to eat; earlier that morning having waited for the fishmonger to open the back door and jettison hacked fish heads out into the trash, his hands up to the elbow moiling through offal. When he was a boy his parent sent him away to school, a cinderblock edifice with stained glass windows and a playing field that stretched further than the eye could see. Never again did he see or hear from his da and ma. Hanging on by a yarn the sun blazes above the dirt-poor earth, a crow aureoling on the horizon. Zug watches the crow circling overhead, the hosiery’s awning cricketing under his weight. He bites down hard on a button of gristle, his teeth working like a slaughterhouse saw.

Under the Altar

He laid his feet on the floor and stood up, his knees buckling like keel wood. ‘damn if I can make a fist without flinching’ he mumbled, the cigarette dangling from his lip like a hanged paper doll, the spent match fizzing sulfur. Reaching across the bedstead he grabbed hold of the post, his fingers rigoring the catch on the night table. He opened the drawer and walked his fingers along the bottom. He could feel the glove pushed up against the screw holes. His thumb scaling the silver buttons he grabbed hold of the middle finger and charily tugged the glove free. He swooned backwards, the juniperus smell of the glove reminding him of his mama’s temper and burst veins. The day his mother abandoned him he wailed and fussed until the rector’s assistant picked him up and carried him into the church. He lived in a box under the altar until he was old enough to fend for himself, his mamma’s glove the only thing he had to remember her by. When he was strong enough to stand on his two feet the rector sent him off into the world, telling him ‘don’t let anyone fill your head with nonsense…and stay close to the shoulder, may God be with my boy’. His hat aureoling his scarlet face he set out into the world, the sun a handbreadth from the top of his head.

Myles Crawford

As it was the end of the feasting season and the churches were preparing for winter bible studies and no one within earshot, no matter how they strained, could hear the bells clanging in the belltower and as the sky was gray bitter, the clouds corralled against the horizon, and no one save for the street sweeper, who was up and about tending to his sweeping duties, duties he took great pride and satisfaction in, and no one knew what time it was because the clock in the clocktower had stopped ticking, the hands having detached from the face, and the vergers had put the anointing ciborium away, placing it on the topmost shelf behind the altar, no one save for the street sweeper knew what to do, save for dream of next year’s feasts and the red-faced look on the rector’s assistant as he thought up new ways to get the attention of the young curly-haired boy who every Sunday sat ramrod straight in the first pew facing the altar box. That day the sun set 2 hours earlier than usual, falling from the sky like a fiery bird.

“Myles Crawford appeared on the steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet face…” (Ulysses James Aloysius Joyce). He awoke with a start, his legs choked in bed linen. Looking up across the wall to the ceiling he noticed the plaster flaking at the corner, a gray water stain making a seam with the ceiling lamp. ‘everything is everything…’ he mused. Thoughts brought to mind other thoughts, the old woman with the spoiled apple face, the smell of damp clothing and bräken lye, his da’s starched shirts, the elbows table-shined, things, that were he not abed staring at the ceiling, would surely not find their way into his thoughts.

Imbecile

He threw a hail of birdseed into the air and watched the pigeons tumbling wildly over his head. Next to the bust of King Olaf next to the merry-go-round sat an imbecile counting time. The imbecile made a whooshing sound with his fingers against the leg of his corduroy trousers, choroids of blood exploding under the half-moons of his fingernails. The imbecile had come to see the Herschel Liege Pantomime Troop, and if he were lucky have the bearded lady sign his cap. As he knew no one in town he kept to himself, sleeping on a bench in the park behind the aqueduct and eating the crusts of bread he kept in his corduroy pant’s pocket. He stared at the bust of King Olaf then at the pigeons then at the bust, his attention rarely held for more than a few seconds. Reaching into his pant’s pocket he retrieved a crust of bread, the corners green with mould. Breaking it into equal portions he swallowed each piece whole, his throat tightening like an angry fist. In his other pocket he carried a red silk glove with gold stitching and a whalelike (see Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings, ‘Animals in the Form of Spheres’) crest on the forearm, for the glove was long, reaching above the wrist to the elbow. ‘never before have I witnessed such baboonery!’ exclaimed the Witness. ‘and on the steps of the holy shrine… shame on you boy, shame!’ The imbecile ran like the wind, his pockets turned out, the red silk glove with gold stitching trailing from his pant’s pocket like a nosebag.

As it was the day before the Feast of the Lamb, and no one save the harridan’s sister had bothered to ask the rector’s assistant if they could rent the church basement, and seeing as the two loathed one another, the feast was called off.

The cinema screen took up the whole end of the block. Held in place with iron tetrads and bailing wire the screen stretched across the median like a matron’s sheets held tight between two nuns. The street sweeper stood astride his cart cracking pecans with his hole puncher, his jacket nickeled with shells.

Logroño de Pisón

The Óglaigh Abstentionists convene Wednesdays and Fridays in the basement of the Church of the Blessed Sinner. Not sure what to do with the hymnal he slid it back in the hidey-hole and crossed himself three times. Unaccustomed as he was to paying attention to braggarts he sat quietly in the pews tallying numbers in his head. A stitch in time is worth nine. All square roots lead to one. Logroño de Pisón and Armando Ejércitos, mathematicians held in the highest regard by árbitros and sabios, say that all square roots lead back unto themselves; and any and all other posits are nothing more than schoolboy nonsense. ‘nonsense!’ shouted the Witness, ‘all square roots lead unto God’. ‘rabble-rouser’ hissed the man in the hat. ‘always trying to make a fish out of a loaf of bread’. He sat quietly with his hands folded on his lap, the oniony smell of incense assailing his thoughts. As the priest besieged the congregants with sin, turning the Ten Commandments into a sideshow heist, he watched as the rector’s assistant made faces at a young boy sitting at the front, his curly mane drooping in front of his eyes. ‘the things that go through peoples’ heads’ thought the man in the hat to himself, ‘all square roots lead unto God… shameful, scandalous… a vile corruption’. Drumming his fingers against the pew in front of him he thought of ways to knock the Witness off his Christian horse. ‘damn nonsense I say!’ He stared at the Witness like a dog on a bone, his jaw grinding. ‘look at him… a man on the abyss of ignorance yet he holds on still. Blessed be the sinner for he know’th his sin’. Taking the balled up paper out of his jacket pocket he began to read, his lips moving ever so slightly as if a gale were blowing from above.

Essex Bros.

She stopped in Colchester where she purchased a soda from the Essex Bros., the youngest brother fiddling with the cash register. Then out beyond the five-mile where she took up with a hermit with a monstrous cock and a monstrous nose. Not once did she think of her feeble child.

The monstrously cocked hermit gave her the clap, his hideous snout dripping like hung laundry. The vile spell inflicted her woman’s jaw. Not knowing how to decoct the pain, which came in floods and surges, she hanged herself from the rafters. Word beyond the five-mile has it that the monstrously cocked hermit amused himself with her until her skin unravelled and her teeth fell out. These are unpleasant times. They are. When the man in the hat heard about the hanged woman and her feeble child he fell to his knees and wept, an uneasiness coming over what little he had of a Christian soul. ‘a new hat. I must buy a new hat’ he said weeping snotgreenness out of his enflamed nose. Hidden under a pile of leaves that corkscrewed into cone he found the following:

The Man With The Pumpkin Head

“Once there was a man and on his shoulders he had, instead of a head, a hollow pumpkin. This was no great help to him. Yet he still wanted to be Number One. That's the sort of person he was. For a tongue he had an oak leaf hanging from his mouth, and his teeth were cut out with a knife. Instead of eyes, he had just two round holes. Back of the holes, two candle stumps flickered. Those were his eyes. They didn't help him see far. And yet he said his eyes were better than anyone's, the braggart. On his pumpkin head he wore a tall hat; used to take it off when anyone spoke to him, he was so polite. Once this man went for a walk. But the wind blew so hard that his eyes went out. He wanted to light them up again, but he had no matches. He started to cry with his candle ends, because he couldn't find his way home. So now he sat there, held his pumpkin head between his hands, and wanted to die. But dying didn't come to him so easily. First there had to come a June bug, which ate the oak leaf from his mouth; there had to come a bird, which pecked a hole in his pumpkin skull; there had to come a child, who took away the two candle stumps. Then he could die. The bug is still eating the leaf, the bird is pecking still, and the child is playing with the candle stumps”. (Robert Walser, Collected Stories, 1913)

Not sure what to make of it he balled it and stowed it in his pant’s pocket, a dog-eared corner sticking out like a plucked parsnip. ‘dear me’ he said to himself, ‘the things that go through peoples’ heads… astonishing’.

Windlass

He rang the bell with both hands, the wails of the feeble child muffled by the clanging. Using her body as a windlass she worked her way closer to the front, the rector’s assistant shouting orders from his bench above the masses. The first calf, its back legs trussed with wire, was dragged onto the pulpit, the stink of shit and turned milk stinging the eyes of those who had made it to the front. The feeble child’s mother watches as the first calf is brought to its knees, the rector’s assistant directing the carnage from his seat above the horror-struck mob. From the back of the crowd, flattened under hurrying feet, the feeble child’s wails can be heard, the bells deadening the calf’s cry. Not sure what to do or what she has witnessed, the mother of the feeble child cuts around the hobbled bled calf and down the side street next to the grocers, the unearthly wail of her child weakening behind her.

Spitting Apples

That summer the people of the five-mile threw a party in celebration of Bewley Stillorgan coming-of-age. They came by oxcart and cattle-car, from Castleknock, Ballsbridge and Lecumberri, arriving one after the other until the streets were overflowing with people.

He awoke with a start, his arms pinned behind his back. This was not unusual; it had happened once before… twice possibly, possibly more. He remembered going to a carnival the night before… or was it a celebration. He saw a woman carrying a feeble child under her arm, the child’s face red with exhaustion, the mother berating it for making unearthly noises. Struggling to get a better look the mother places the feeble child on the ground next to her, its head wobbling like a pumpkin on a fencepost. Craning to see above the crowd the mother kicks the feeble child with her shoe, the child falling over onto its back. Winching her way deeper into the mob, arms flailing, the mother leaves the feeble child writhing on the ground, its mouth spitting apples. He remembers hearing a deafening clank, like a train coming to a juddering stop, people dispersing every-which-where, the feeble child cowering. Swept up under scattering feet the feeble child raises its weakly arms over its head and wails. Returning home he couldn’t help but feel a sickening in his guts, a dull ache corseting through his bones like wildfire.

Doctor P. Recio

The man in the hat met El Pozo on a Saturday in front of the Church of the Perpetual Sinner. Or Sunday. El Pozo, his thoughts consumed with Bible Times, stared zealously at the crucifix hanged on the gallows of the priest’s choker. He kept repeating over and over again ‘the bank… rob it now… you must’ his voice rising and falling like a tailless kite in a windstorm. The Guests seat themselves. On the 17thof June 1967 Éamon Pádraig Pearse resigned his office a second time, and the fornicatress Vysocina Chokebore, pale with puerperal fever shrieked ‘el cielo está cayendo… escapar fugarse!’ Santarém Sanatório leapt on his bicycle and raced through the crowd, lurching and pitching, weaving in and out of people, some standing in two’s others in three’s, caroming and swerving between lampposts and curbstones, he peddled and peddled until his calves and thighs burned, then came to a halting stop, his hands gripping the handlebars like a mother her colicky child. Ho, “Mishear”, bring some more chairs in…

He’s got the face of a pig… give ‘em a Mickelbee’s by God! …the man in the hat held onto his druthers, lest he plunge impaled onto the thorn of despair. ‘there is no such thing’ said the Witness. ‘your just not feeling yourself is all’. ‘give it time’ added Dejesus. ‘it’ll all work out it will’. ‘it’s all a matter of good luck… something you need if you expect to make a go of it’ said the Witness scornfully. ‘its all about luck’ said Dejesus. ‘yes, a go of it’ added the Witness staring zealously at the crucifix hanged on the gallows of the priest’s choker. ‘give it time’. Turning on his left foot, his right foot lagging half a step behind, the man in the hat walked away, Dejesus and the Witness making faces at him as he made his way down the sideways. ‘fucking zealots! the man in the hat mumbled to himself. ‘its getting so a man can’t move without cunts getting in his face’.

“Night came, and with the permission of Doctor Pedro Recio, “Bewley Stillorgan” had supper.” (Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha)

Lodz Pabianice, Fernando António, Nogueira de Seabra, Alberto Pessoa, Christovão Falcão de Sousa, José Gomes Ferreira, Pancrácio de Pas, Dr. Chevalier Lindsay, Gresham William, Ticino Locarno, Sergipe Aracaju, Schug Grünenthal, no relation to Gunter Grünenthal, Fajardo Rafael, Utrecht Viagem, Éamon Pádraig Pearse, Vysocina Chokebore, Félix Davisson, BullCock’s, Joseph Benedikt and Karl Frailer von Eichendorff, the Cowes Brothers, João Goytortúa, Jesús Uvalde Ribeiro and El Pozo sat down to dinner with Bewley Stillorgan, the waitress bringing to the table the following:

-First Course-

Turtledove soup
Stewed pigs’ feet wrapped in tripe
Calf’s bowel in a creamy fennel sauce
Boar’s liver sautéed in urine

-Second Course-

St. Anne’s Eel, choice of poached or baked
Beef cock, choice of steamed or boiled
caramelized onions
sweet yams

-Dessert

Choice of Potato Pie
Or
A second helping of Stewed pigs’ feet wrapped in tripe

After dinner the men smoked plump San Domingian cigars and drank snifters of Château Guermantes Brandy and told fat Proustian lies. ‘its never to soon to turn over an old leaf’ said Pancrácio de Pas drumming ash onto his dinner plate.

The Twilight Singers