Wädenswil Feuilleton

There, written in a steady hand, he read the following:

In me its made very plain
That parables are told in vain
To those who have but little brain[1]

He found many such things, handwritten notes and reminders, strange offhand exegeses and spiral-bound memos, three or four to a leaf, in which were written recipes and cures for Ryes whooping and Jick’s palsy. In a fine Sütterlin hand he read a Wädenswil feuilleton written by a simpleton who lived in the Overnight Asylum.

‘good God’ he said, his voice trailing off in a lisp. ‘a feuilleton in Wädenswil Sütterlin… what will they think of next?’ And such his afternoon began, under strain of illusions and badly composed exegeses. If not for the sun’s blistering rays, enough to send a less clematis man to his grave, he’d have surely run for cover, his tail quashed like a plucked flower between his legs.

Gabriel, legs and arms akimbo, stood staring at the statue of Gbel, the hero of the great Sachsen-Anhalt War. Behind him, just a smidgen, Mérida the gastromancer moved his lips. Salvador Bahia of the Yucatan yelled berating Vialonga the slowpoke, Gabriel, Mérida and Salvador Bahia having just arrived from a circus engagement in Lisboa Valencia. ‘good Lord’ he said, his voice trailing off. ‘what more can they expect from a poor sod like me?’

The man is definitly insane. He pulld tha dug by it's hindlegs an dragged it .... If I were by chance to meet up with Robert Walser, in a sanatorium or ...... Who would have known? Such a scalawag, a brute, a mountebank. Men like he are best left to their own squally. That afternoon, under a broiling hot midday sun, he prepared his person for further adventuring, leaving behind all thoughts of reparation and glad tidings, as these, pittances at best, have no place in a common man’s retinue.

‘Oh mein Gott, die Welt ist wie ein kalter einsamen Ort, oh my’ he said, ‘mein Gott ist wie Welt’. On the backside was written, gleefully:

Bei Singen und Sagen

Nach Muehen und Plagen

Thut jeder sich laben

An Gottes herrlichen Gaben![2]

‘Oh mein Gott, die Welt ist wie’ he said again, his heart pounding wildly madly. His day had not started out as he’d hoped it would. Weit von es. While out and about, a flâner, as his mamma used to say, he came across a woman staring at her reflection in the grocer’s window, her hands patting down her skirt, the woman laughing like a charmed lark.

[1] Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, Die Diene und die Henne (The Bee and the Hen, 1744)
[2] “With singing and story-telling, after hard work and worry, let everyone refresh themselves with God’s splendid gifts.”

Cheapskates and Dissidents

Barbican Noose and José Amorós stood two abreast admiring the flushing meadows, the sun rising above the seawall filling the landscape with a yellow tinge. Admirers of yellow hues, they watched the sun rising higher above the seawall landscape, the feasters queuing for the Feast of the Hopeful Sinner. ‘but today is the twenty-eighth’ said Noose alarmingly. That morning, far away far, the Guayaquil constabulary was busy beating confessions out of cheapskates and social dissidents. Jefe Guayas, the head of the Guayaquil Militar, and his assistant Marratxi De Bono, himself a keen constabulant, were convinced that a Marxist haberdasher was producing contraband whore’s gloves from his factory on the Islas of Baleares Payerne, a crow’s throw from the Isle of Warwickshire, home to Fribourg Studley, his chickens and a blind dog. As the story goes, or went, as stories fade with time and forgetfulness, Fribourg Studley, known for his exacting perspicuity, lived alone on the Isle of Warwickshire, his only companions a few featherless chickens and a blind dog with mange.

‘these are strange times, strange indeed’ said Dejesus looking into the mirror, his mirror image reflected in the milky white sclera of his green eyes. Up until today he had never heard of Walleyes Worrall or Rudolf Fallada, the poor sod from the Waldau Sanatorium, nor Ulla Fallada nee Losch, born in Greifswald, the Deacon, Mrs. Muriel Ciolkowska or Joaquin Da Bara, great godson of Madeira and Stanislaus Jolaño, nor had he heard of Jolaño Kalisz Aldershot and Foggia Puglia, who’s names, one would think, would stick in one’s thoughts like porridge, Montferrat Froe of York Somerset or the Feast of the Hopeful Sinner, Barbican Noose and José Amorós he’d once met, but had forgotten where and when, as for the Guayaquil constabulary, headed by Jefe Guayas of the Guayaquil Militar, and his assistant Marratxi De Bono, he had no recollection, nor did he know the Marxist haberdasher who manufactured whore’s gloves from his factory on the Islas of Baleares Payerne, a crow’s throw from the Isle of Warwickshire where Fribourg Studley lived with featherless chickens and a blind dog with mange, whom he met once, the meeting ending in an all-out fist-fight encouraged by his dislike for chickens.

Feast of the Hopeful Sinner

He lived for a time over the bakery on the street where his da was cantered to death by a horse. After his father’s death he was taken in by his great godparents. His mother, unable to deal with the grief of widowhood left town never to be seen or heard from again; her hair twisted in a long braid that reached halfway down her back. The smells from the bakery filled his small squat with a sweet yeasty aroma; confectionary sugar sifted onto doughy bread, sesames and candy charms inlaid on the top and bottommost crust. The baker gave him the three day-old bread, rye and pumpernickel, caraway tarts and pretzels dressed in poppy seeds and chopped onions.

He haggled with a hawker for a newsprint hat. The hawker agreed on 26 ducats to be paid in advance in paper. ‘but ducats come in silver and gold’ he said, his eyes darting to and fro. ‘that’s not my concern’ said the hawker firmly, ‘I deal strictly in paper’. ‘perhaps I could interest you in a pretzel, poppy seeds and hash onions’ he said hopingly. Throwing his arms up, the flaps of his elephantine ears catching in his shirt cuffs, the hawker replied ‘as long as its in paper’. He fashioned a paper hat out of silver and gold ducats, crinkling the edges and brim with the tines of his great grandmamma’s crimping fork.

When the man in the hat first heard the story, told to him by a beggar with a gold tooth, he laughed out loud, his cheeks cowling like a pig’s snout. Stories such as this, fairytales, made him laugh, filling his aching bones with jolly joy. Montferrat Froe of York Somerset sat biding his time weaving his fingers into logical threads. He often sat at the edge of the aqueduct, the stink of dead fish and salt stinging his eyes, his nose bled dry and scabby. Montferrat Froe came once a year to attend the Feast of the Hopeful Sinner, held on the 27th of September in the cloister behind the rector’s habit. This year the feast fell on the 28th, the world moving forward on its axle one day early.

Dylan Thomas, Lament

Kalisz Aldershot & Foggia Puglia

That afternoon under a broiling sun Joaquin Da Bara, great godson of Madeira Jolaño, ate a ham and spinach sandwich and a petite-forte cake. With all the noise and confusion in the streets, and there was much, no one, not even a dogman, could find a quiet place to sit and eat their lunch. Polkaed out Kalisz Aldershot and Foggia Puglia sat on a bench overlooking the aqueduct, seated next to them the great godson of Madeira Jolaño trying to eat in peaceful tranquility. ‘its getting that a man can’t find a quiet place to eat his lunch’ said the great godson, Kalisz and Foggia sitting quietly with their hands folded in their laps. ‘indeed’ said Mr. Aldershot, ‘and surely only to get worse’ added Mr. Puglia, squinting into the broiling lunchtime sun.

He lived for a time under the bridge crossing the river running round and through Mead and back. Sleeping he slept with his head pointing westward, his feet facing northeast. Kalisz and Foggia brought him rags and old cheese, wedges and scraps of this and that, things he needed but wouldn’t dare ask for. His godparents, Madeira and Stanislaus Jolaño, gave up hope of ever finding their godson when they read in the Catalane News and Chronicle about his slipping across the five-mile fence into dogmen territory; the courtier Albert Simms the last sane person to have spoken with him.

Sycorax

Not knowing what to say the man in the hat bowed and cantered away, his heels clipping the cobbles. With all these people in town, strangers and those about whom one must remain silent, the unutterable, he felt a shiver run down his spine, his thoughts collocated into a syntactical brouhaha. The last time this many people filled the streets was the year of the first Boat Day festivities, some 10,000 arriving for a fortnight or two, the streets befouled with impecuniousness. Written with an eye for penmanship, a skill all but forgotten in these times of tic tac and paddy whack, the Deacon read the following on a piece of rectory clothe,

"In truth, captain, the manner in which you have related this remarkable adventure has been such as befitted the novelty and strangeness of the matter. The whole story is curious and uncommon, and abounds with incidents that fill the hearers with wonder and astonishment; and so great is the pleasure we have found in listening to it that we should be glad if it were to begin again, even though to-morrow were to find us still occupied with the same tale."[1]

Mrs. Muriel Ciolkowska ordered dinner, Sycorax arriving with a cartful of viands and vegetables; the menu consisting of: spit-roasted meat, beef and oxtail, mutton, minced tartar, grilled whale, whole and cubed, whole roasted peacock in a sweet sherry and star anise poteen, internal organs, liver, kidney, pancreas and spitting glands, black pudding, and when available, blood tureen, boar's head garnished with bay and rosemary, roasted swan with vegetables, a delicate taste for a delicate palate, and for dessert spiced fruitcake followed with Montessori claret and Beefeater gin. The man in the hat, peering in through the oilcloth window, said ‘what a glutton… and the arse on her’. The day before Ship Day brought out the worst in the man in the hat, affording him with an excuse to cough up oysters of snotgreensot on whomever got in his way.
[1] Ibid

Ulla Fallada nee Losch

‘la filosofia è il perno di tutto perché la metafisico’ was written over the door to the Taverna Festivo. Seated round a maple butcher’s block the dogmen played cards with the Ludovico brothers and Tiscali the juggler, the littlest dogman dealing a shark’s hand. The rectory assistant prepared the church for the Feast of the Renunciation, which came after the Feast of the Annunciation, welcoming the newest lambs into the fold.

Walleyes Worrall took in the scenery, having arrived two days early he had time to waste. With the feast two days off, and his mood still to middling, he decided to visit his great uncle Rudolf Fallada, a patient of 27½ years in the Waldau Sanatorium. His great uncle Rudolf believed that the world was transmitted to him through microwaves and lightening, each conveyance having a particular department or function: lightening was in charge of rational thinking, putting his socks and shoes on, eating and evacuating. Microwaves commanded his emotions, crying and laughing, feeling happy and sad, everything that made him who he was and who he could be if the microwaves aligned with the lightening, which by no fault of his own never occurred.

His great uncle Rudolf, born to his great-great uncle and great-aunt, his great-great uncle marrying his niece, Ulla Fallada nee Losch, after the untimely death of his first wife, was born July 21, 1947 in Greifswald, a small village on the outskirts of the five-mile fence known for its white potash and yellow mustard.

Madeira Jolaño

These are strange times, strange indeed. As strange as the times got the man in the hat knew that tomorrow would bring a sunshiny sun and a ocean blue sky. In Aargau Joo, Koscian Leszno and Cascavel Parana the sun would rise, shining on the bare headed and capped. Outside his bedroom window the world, fated to death, crumbled. Brittle leaves yellow red and orange, trees dropping their children into the hands of death. The Fall arrived early that year. Death, too.

Madeira Jolaño lives under the trees in the park behind the Waymart, falling children falling into the drum of her skirts. She collects the fallen falling children in her outstretched arms, cradling them to her round bosom. ‘what have we here… a thousand fallen falling children’ says Madeira Jolaño, ‘will miracles cease?’ Cradled in Madeira’s bosom Joo, Leszno and Parana fall asleep, the great heresy looming: a thousand fallen children cradled in the drum of her skirts.

I’d like to think that I have more to say, an epiphany for future generations. But I don’t. I have little left within me to say. Putting what I have left in me into words would belittle what is meaningless, too small, unnoticed, dying.

La Puta de Créteil

W.B. stood in front of the mirror admiring his ugliness. The shamble leg man stepped off the curb and onto the street, W.B. staring gaily at his reflection turning said ‘goodness me, what a fine specimen I am’. ‘indeed you are’ said the shamble leg man in mild retort. ‘and might I say a man of upstanding character’. ‘indeed you may dear sir, indeed you may’ said W.B. turning towards his reflection gaily staring. In a move of herculean restraint, for which he paid dearly, W.B. turned from his reflection and walked away, the tails of his greatcoat wagging like a dog’s tail. ‘now there goes a dime of a man’ said the shamble leg man, ‘vanity has many faces, some uglier than others I suppose’. Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder, some less beholding than others; all things considered of course.

Buckram, Camberley and Surrey met beneath the shadow of the Waymart clock, Torre Molinos, having previsited the statue of La Puta de Créteil, bringing with him a cartful of pamphlets and whore’s gloves. ‘I admire a man who doesn’t need any prodding’ said Camberley to Surrey and Buckram. ‘especially one with a nose for the better things in life’ added Surrey, all three shaking their heads like starvelings kneeling in front of the schoolmaster’s table. Unloading his cart, which he did without the aid of a hand truck or a helper, Molinos laid the pamphlets next to the whore’s gloves; one pamphlet per glove, a line of suede gloves and inky paper reaching as far as the eye could see, perhaps further. Ben Bulben of the Bellaghy Bawn stood sternly staring at the Molinos’ whorish wares. Wishing as he wished that he had the gumption to nick a quirt of slatternly love. Bulben has dreams, as sure as he has thoughts, prayers of a Sunday morning in the privy of his yellow canary restroom a stopple his cistern farting. ‘were I Molinos I’d surely have my fingers in the pie’ said Ben Bulben brave brazenly. Poor sod mucking the muck of his desirable desires.

Bolkonskyites

Dumfries and Galloway had seen starrier days, like those in Abruzzi dinning on calf’s testicles with Al Vomano, president of the Montorio Montessori school for the uneducable and dim. The man in the hat first met Dumfries and Galloway at the second annual Feast of the Annunciation, Dumfries introducing himself as a pagan orgiast, Galloway grabbing hold of his hand and saying ‘pleased to make your acquaintance, surely’. Galloway and Dumfries belonged to the Nikolai Bolkonsky society, Dumfries taking the side of war, Galloway peace; Dumfries the warmonger and Galloway the libertarian shared a dislike for communards, the Dreyfus Affair having left them unimpeachably sad and disillusioned.

When the Witness got word that Dumfries and Galloway were in town, which he did by way of the harridan’s sister, herself once a member of the Nikolai Bolkonsky society, who after much cajoling recanted her alliance and became a junior pamphleteer, he rush-printed a dozen pamphlets extolling the virtues of religious observance and the heathenry of orgiasts and Nikolai Bolkonskyites.

Overhearing two embittered false Witnesses squabbling Galloway turned to Dumfries and said, “The Moor had hardly heard these words when with marvellous quickness he flung himself headforemost into the sea, where no doubt he would have been drowned had not the long and full dress he wore held him up for a little on the surface of the water. Zoraida cried aloud to us to save him, and we all hastened to help, and seizing him by his robe we drew him in half drowned and insensible…”.[1] 'do you remember that Flugel fellow, the one that was always changing his jacket?' asked Dumfries of Galloway, both men standing with their backs to the rectory wall.
[1] Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

A Kiss on the Forehead

In Chorley Lancashire a man awakens in a fright, the back of his head stock and barreled to the bedpost. Pulling himself free, which requires considerable haleness, he stares at the ceiling, a full round yellow sun shining through the broken rafters and joists. ‘my goodness’ he intones, ‘what a beautiful day’. He awoke with a startle, his feet caught between the footboard and the bedsprings, a pepperminty taste on his lips. Every night before bed his grandmamma kissed him on the forehead, her enormous bosoms swinging like nosebags above his chest.

His grandpapa came down with the whooping the day after Easter. His grandmamma applied a peppermint salve to his throat and chest, his grandpapa repeating 'Apskritis Tunja Boyacá' over and over again. His granddad was prone to acts of peculiarity that sane any well-appointed people wouldn’t dare do. His grandmamma’s indifference to his granddad’s abnormalities served to reinforced his behaviour, his grandpapa letting loose with a yap in the middle of Mass, the nosey parker Thomas frowning dismissively in his granddad’s direction, the rector’s assistant clamping his hands over his ears, the entire congregation fit to be tied, their faces desecrated with anger.

Thoughts he couldn’t remember thinking, experiences he couldn’t prove he’d experienced, came into his head more often than not. Only a sane well-appointed person, a real person, knew for certain that his thoughts were his and his experiences experienced by him and him alone. But today he couldn’t verify that the thoughts he had and the experiences he’d experienced were his and his alone. They could be someone else’s, a double or a twin claiming to be him, someone who knew his every indelicacy down to the minutest detail.

Stáisiún Chuas

(You will find none of this in any of your respectable literary tomes, nor in a college text or a folio. This is shear nonsense, the mark of a cluttered mind. I promise to return to the empire of language once my stay in grammatical hell is done; not an iota before).

The Bishop of Chelmsford is in cahoots with the Bishop of St. Märgener Fuchs. The Eshoo Bros., cocksure oarsmen, sending a warning shot into the clear blue sky, Oblate St. Martin of the Vine singing alleluia halleluiah halleluiahs, the vicarage sister pulling her habit over the earflaps of her hat. ‘come with me young man… this is no place for a child’. The Gotthelf Horary sells postcards with pictures of half-nude woman on them, ‘what a charming curio’ says the curate, who’s own mother posed for one of the postcards. ‘this is no place for a child’ says the legless man’s da, fearing his son might catch syphilis or an unshakable cold. ‘I wouldn’t bring a dogman here’ he says pulling on his son’s coattails. ‘eel thieving bastards’. The Bishop of Chelmsford eats his breakfast in the canonical kitchen, the front of his surplice bespeckled with toast crumbs. ‘what time is it?’ asks Bishop of St. Märgener Fuchs, his hands trembling. ‘cahooting time’ say the brothers Eshoo firing a warning shot into the clear blue sky. ‘alleluia’ sings St. Märgener Fuchs, ‘halleluiah’.

His thoughts clambering to get out of his head the man in the hat changed his mind and got on with the day. The sky that morning was bespeckled with clouds, a fiery yellow sun burning a halo into the treetops. Sitting astraddle her bicycle Leila Kildare sang out ‘God be with us’, those awaiting the arrival of the Witness hallooing halloo halloo! Padraic Moisel of 2772 Arbutus Place worked as a coal shoveler for the Stáisiún Chuas an Ghainimh agus Glas Tuathail, his back as wide as a livery door. Knowing that the day would bring him nothing the man in the hat set off for home, the fiery yellow sun lighting the way.

Bishop Quertaro de Arteaga

His hands gesticulating wildly, the bib on his surplice flapping, Bishop Quertaro de Arteaga tells the legless man ‘you’d do better to put your faith in God my boy’. ‘that’s no way to speak to a boy’ says the legless man’s da, his nostrils flaring wildly. ‘God will see to your son’s gamey legs sir…’. ‘…and iron won’t?’ interrupts the legless man’s da, his throat constricting. ‘there is no time to waste’ says the Bishop, ‘step up and take the Lord into your legs…’. ‘heart! …you damn fool!’ says the legless man’s da, his face red as chimney brick. ‘in your sons case its best we start at the bottom and work our way up’ says the Bishop, ‘that way he’ll be able to kneel at the altar and pray’.’damn fool!’ says the legless man’s da, the back of his throat tightening. ‘come with me!’ says the legless man’s da, grabbing hold of his son’s coattails. ‘and step on it!’ Scrabbling his iron legs across the parquet floor, his coattails forming a V behind him, the legless man falls in behind his da, the smell of burnt offerings and candle wax singeing the hair in his nose.

Théophile served the Bishop beans on toast and a cut up orange for lunch. The Bishop liked his lunch served at exactly 27 ½ minutes past noontime, his belly howling like a starving child if his lunch was a minute late. Théophile scurrying into the manse dining room, the Bishop waving him off with his napkin. ‘would you serve Christ his lunch late?’ he’d say, Théophile bowing in servility. ‘I thought not, now get out of my sight!’ He filled his pipe, tamping it with his thumb, the smell of the tobacco sweetening his mood. Bishop Quertaro de Arteaga made the beast with two backs with the rectory nun, pulling her habit round her waist like a papal corset, the confessional shaking like a midway ride.

Jean Mullion Polycarp

That night before bed he read a letter sent to him by Jean Mullion Polycarp “Follow my example: break with the outside world, live like a bear—a polar bear—send everything to the devil, everything and yourself with it, except your own intelligence”[1]. That night he slept like a wolfhound, his backbone pulled into his shoulders. Le Colibri was in possession of a dolorous collection of whores’ rickrack’s, which he kept under lock and key in a Sanssouci box under his bed. That night Le Colibri slept like an angel, the wings of his heart beating against the cool night air. The next day upon awakening he fell swooning for the harridan’s sister, finding her simple countenance to his liking. That night he dreamt that he and the harridan’s sister were lovers, the heathery aroma of her hair, spun by angels on a heavenly loom, rousing him from sleep.

Settimo Torinese lives above the flood line behind the Cooper Osnabrück Piemonte, the cooper banging and clashing his iron hammer against his steel forge. When he was a boy the legless man’s da took him to see the cooper, his da tugging on his arm ‘this is the man who’s going to change your life forever’. The cooper forged him a pair of iron legs, pounding and shaping strings of molten iron across the pommel of his anvil, forge ash and smoke smarting the legless boy’s (for he was born without legs) tiny blue eyes. Arbuckle the tanner fashioned him a bridle and yolk, fastening the iron legs to his stumps with leather straps and a silver buckle. The summer he got his iron legs the legless man’s da started working for the Silverfish Hosepipe Co. His da drove the Silverfish deliver truck, the back end packed to the ceiling, jostling, with hosepipes and rubber gaskets. On Mondays his da and the driver for the Mercury Fish Co. raced for eel and chips, the driver of the Mercury Fish truck loosing 27 times out of a hundred.
[1] Flaubert's advice to Alfred Le Poittevin on devoting oneself to "Art."

Silveira Méndez González

When he was a boy his da took him to the Ninebark Fair where he saw Wolfratshausen the clown and a lion tamer named Spielzeugpferde. Wolfratshausen had a Christmas tree bulb red nose and a griddlecake face, the light in his nose flickering on and off like a pedestrian ‘don’t walk’ sign.

Blackburn and Darwen live below the tracks behind the Blois Centre for Amnesiacs. That morning as they watch the last match of the Central American Football Association finals between Guayaquil and Modelo, a crowd of some 55,000 packing the José Luis Praddaude Stadium, the announcer for the Sosa Troche television station, Silveira Méndez González, announces, ‘ladies and gentlemen, Mesías Pérez has taken out number 65, Bergara Guaglianone, raking him across the ankles with his cleats. In retaliation number 80, Douksas Benítez has kicked the Modelo midfielder Sasía Escalada in the groin, Sasía Escalada writhing in pain at midfield. Bonnard Argüello Gonzabay, recently acquired from the Sissilostos Stryker’s, is chasing Nall Izaguirre Galarza, forward for the Modelo side, punching him between the ears with his balled up fist, Izaguirre Galarza retaliating with a kick to Argüello Gonzabay’s shin. Reeves Patterson Gómez, known for his angry outbursts, is chasing Modelo fullback Balseca Palacios Spencer Raffo from one end of the field to the other, Spencer Raffo circling the statue of the Uruguayan football hero Almeida del Monte. Ladies and gentlemen, the head referee Silveira Escalada Bergara Pérez has called a mismatch, both coaches screaming bloody murder… the Guayaquil fans are attaching the Modelo side with broken Tic-tac bottles and homemade shanks’. In the newspaper the next morning the headline read “the final match for the Central American Football Association between Guayaquil and Modelo was suspended at the 85th min mark due to unruly fans”.

The last memory he has of the Ninebark Fair is of the cotton-candy machine spluttering to a stop halfway through spinning him a funnel of angel hair sweetie, the look on his da’s face paler than a draft notice. The following year the town council closed down the Ninebark Fair, Wolfratshausen and Spielzeugpferde having been found guilty of scalping tickets to orphans and cripples.

La Bazarette Le Flâneur

The man in the hat collected his thoughts itemizing them into boxes. One box was devoted to thoughts he’d thought but on further inspection realized he hadn’t; another was for cleaning thoughts that he wished to use again, ridding them of information and ideas; and a third box was allocated for things he hadn’t yet thought but might think sometime in the future. Some thoughts he thought, or thought he’d thought, were thought while sleeping, and as such were relegated to the box for dream thoughts, not conscious thought. Other thoughts were assigned to memories or past recollections, this box larger in size than the box for future or yet to be thought thoughts. Through trial and error he discovered that the box consigned to morbid thoughts was much smaller than the box assigned to sad sorrowful thoughts, the lacuna being that morbid thoughts didn’t effect him as much as sad sorrowful thoughts, the difference between the two modest yet significant.

Everyday thoughts thought while he was awake and at large seldom had an effect on him; the latent meaning revealed to him in sleep as dream thoughts, and as such assigned to the box for dreams, this box seldom if ever opened while he was awake, unless of course he fell asleep when he should be awake and conscious of the world around him. He was constructing a box for deluded thoughts or numinous reckonings, to be filed under ‘asylum thoughts’ shelved beside thoughts thought while sleeping. Should he discover that he had an extra box, he would catalog it under boxes yet to be itemized or numbered, for each box was assigned a numbered tag, his knowledge of the dewy decimal system relatively intact, regardless of numerous head injuries and a failing memory.

He bought boxes from La Bazarette Le Flâneur around the corner from the Oxbow Hostel. Le Flâneur sold him soggy lettuce boxes for a dime, apple and haddock boxes for twenty-five cents. La Bazarette was home to three chickens and a lame dog, Le Flâneur having a soft spot for strays and fowl. The chickens lived in a fenced off area behind La Bazarette, the dog under the Bergville oven in the back kitchen. The Oxbow Hostel, across from La Bazarette, housed an old style tavern and a billiard hall; Le Flâneur known to wile away his afternoons shooting pool with off duty cabmen and an occultist with a scabbed over scar over his left eye. At the rear of the tavern standing beneath a picture of Casimir Pulaski Martin Grimmway announces “In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play”, the cabman retorting ‘you will relive today over and over again, sit down you fool’.

Quezon City

The Caloocan twins from Quezon City worked as grave diggers for the Druidic Funeral Home, the eldest brother Abel working a shovel like Portuguesa mason. Axel, the younger of the twins, an artisan at lowering coffins into 2½ foot wide holes, never once loosing a casket tether or breaking an Eisenbrandt coffin lid. The Gaborone brothers live behind the times in a makeshift lean-to behind the canebrake behind the Druidic Funeral Home. Originally from Cathedral City, which they fled the year the sky fell into their clapboard house, the brothers arrived in town the day after the Feast of the Redeemer, 1950andaught. Carrying in his satchel a feuilleton from the Countrywide Interrogator, Goral, the eldest of the Gaborone brothers, pulled his ragtag blanket over his head, repeating to himself ‘Solemn strikes the funeral chime. Notes of our departing time, As we journey here below Through a pilgrimage of woe’[1]

Written over the door leading into the Druidic Funeral Home was the following: o don' inoperante; desgaste de t guantes de la puta, guanto della prostituta luva, da meretriz es muerto. The Caloocan twins, Abel and Axel walked fleetingly in through the front door of the Funeral Home and sat down at the back of the chapel, Abel whispering to Axel ‘this place gives me the creeps’. Axel whispering to Abel ‘Mortals now indulge a tear; For mortality is here! See how wide her trophies wave O'er the slumbers of the grave’[2] At that moment Goral Gaborone, his brother in tow, barged in through the buckboard doors to the chapel, exclaiming ‘Calm, the good man meets his fate; Guards celestial 'round him wait. See! he bursts these mortal chains, And o'er Death the vict'ry gains’.[3] On the heels of the Gaborone brothers, Goral pushing past the sanctuary picket, his brother in tow, the Marouflage constabulary entered crashing through the side door, the head constable crying out ‘Here another guest we bring; Seraph of Celestial wing, To our funeral altar come, Waft this friend and brother home’.[4] Not one to be outdone, Axel Caloocan yelled ‘There enlarged, thy soul shall see, What was veiled in mystery; Heavenly glories of the place Show his maker face to face’[5] his cheeks puffed out like soft melons. Then a crash and a bang and in through the pulpit trap rose the Witness, his gowns overflowing the altar. ‘Lord of all! below - above- Fill our hearts with truth and love; When dissolves our earthly tie, Take us to Thy Lodge on High’[6] said the Witness, putting an end to the unruly outburst.

[1] “The Masonic Dirge” Transactions, Texas Lodge of Research, Volume XXXVI at Pages 47-55.
[2] Ibid, [2] Ibid, [2] Ibid, [2] Ibid, [2] Ibid.

Druidic Funeral Home

(Grimmway has a weakness for the ponies. El Torre thumped Grimmway for coming up short. This is crazy all this madness). Martin Grimmway lives with his mother in a bedsit walkup. Martin Grimmway and his mother live above a man who bangs pots and pans together late into the night. Martin Grimmway’s mother and He stove their ears with cotton batten to ward of the clanging and banging. The man who lives below their bedsit walkup banging pots and pans together could care less. Some day soon both Martin Grimmway and his mother will go stone deaf. Going stone deaf will be a boon to both his mother and Martin Grimmway, as now they will not have to listen to the man who lives below them bang pots and pans together late into the night. (Grimmway has a weakness for the ponies. Tunica and Albuinea thumped Grimmway for coming up short. This is mad all this craziness).

Fluntern lives in a circus tent behind the Druidic Funeral Home. Having only a right arm, the left having been expurgated at the elbow, he has difficulty snapping shut the tent flap. Fluntern hasn’t a friend in the world, living by his lonesome self among the trash and splinters behind the Druidic Funeral Home. When the Burgomaster Santander was put to rest it took 27 men to lower his coffin into the dirt. Peering through the flap in his tent Fluntern watched as the 27 men grunted and moaned, the Burgomaster’s coffin barely fitting into the spade-dug hole. ‘expurgate’ thought Fluntern, ‘surely he doesn’t need two arms’. Standing their shovels against the canebrake the 27 passed around a cigarette, each taking a drag then passing it onto the next, a gray blue nimbus of smoke dissipating into the damp morning air.

Breece D'J Pancake - June 29, 1952 - April 8, 1979

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/82oct/pancake.htm

Huixquilucan Café

The more he wanted things the less he received. This, he came to accept, was his lot in life. Forest Cracknel and Halden Bracknell met behind the Society for Comparative Meteorology to discuss their shared dislike for Ostfold Sloterdijk, Doktorgrad. ‘fuck him’ said Cracknel, ‘he’s nothing but a two-bit weatherman’. Both men turned about face facing the back of one another; Bracknell staring at the back of Cracknel’s head, Cracknel staring at a tear in Bracknell’s jacket. ‘the world looks better from the back’ said Cracknel, ‘gets rid of that gray feeling’. Over the doorstop to the Huixquilucan café was a sign, and on the sign was whittled,

sin
I beget
thee amerces
in corpus
diem

Cracknel and Bracknell stepped into the café, neither giving a second thought to the admonition carved into the doorstop above their heads. ‘the world looks better from here’ said Bracknell elbowing his way up to the bar. ‘comparatively’ said Cracknel. The one and only time the man in the hat visited the Huixquilucan café he was beaten hopeless by two grifters with bull mastiff jaws and black eyes. Ostfold Sloterdijk, Doktorgrad, sold Jesus pins to the heathenry that congregated at the back of the café, 2 for a dollar, three for a dollar-fifty. The brothers Wimm sold Maryland cigarettes by the box, 3 for 1 or 1 for 3. One could purchase almost anything at the Huixquilucan café; smuggled cigarettes, 100 proof Whiskey, bracelets made from gold and silver, Proustian corkboard , 25 cents a foot, 10 feet for a dollar, Black Sea muscles, Red Sea clams, salted pretzels, full-wheat or half-wheat, old books, slingshots and peashooters, stilted or coat-hankered, gumshoed boots, sizes 7-11, discarded surgical instruments, clamps, speculums, forceps and stainless steel scalpels, things one couldn’t find at the local grocer’s or the Waymart.

Comparative Meteorology

Waiting in the offing he spread the book across his lap and began to read,

AMONG THE MANY SCIENTIFIC WORKS undertaken by my father in his rare moments of calm and inner equilibrium, between the bouts of disaster and catastrophe in which that audacious and boisterous life abounded, closest to his heart were studies in Comparative Meteorology, and particularly in the specific climate of our province, replete with its own singular kind of oddness. It was he, my very father, who laid the foundations for the scholarly analysis of climatic formations. His ‘An Outline of the General Systematic of Autumn’ explained once and for all the essence of that season, which in our provincial climate takes on that protracted, branching and parasitically exuberant form that, under the name of ‘Indian summer’, extends far into the depths of our coloured winters.[1]

Offing he lit a sweet Maryland cigarette, his lips puckering round the inhaling end. He had little interest for Comparative Meteorology or General Systematics, finding things of a scientific nature addled, or worse, sadly mistaken. He understood things to be simply what they are, not how we think they are or how we want them to be, but simply how we found them, there, laying on the ground in front of us waiting to be held, fondled, looked at and digested. He kept things simple, not having the patience for fuddling, or worse, rash hypotheses.
[1] Bruno Schulz, Cinnamon Shops

Tunica and Albuinea

Arzignano Maccabeus met Veneto Mussolini under the lanterns outside the Huixquilucan café, both men having heard that the café served the best queso bergkäse sandwiches in the prefecture, neither having heard of Baruch Benedict de Spinoza. ‘when he comes back down the mountain ask him if he has a fiver?’ ‘I wouldn’t dare touch a hair on his head’ said Arzignano. ‘surely’. Wilmslow, Hove and Hove stood wide-eyed taking in the beating; Hove saying to Hove "To be an artist one has to die to everyday life."[1] The Huixquilucan café was known to attract a hodgepodge of strange eccentric characters. There were the unsavory and the sleazy, the insalubrious and grotty, the seedy and disagreeable, conmen and short-shrifters, bunko-men and flim-flam-artists, gafflers and grifters, hustlers, schemers and swindlers, they all held court under the swinging lanterns outside the Huixquilucan café. Alberto Tunica and Loanword Albuinea held court outside the Huixquilucan café, trafficking secrets with other bunko-men and schemers, conmen and gafflers, Tunica and Albuinea know for their insalubrities’ and bad manners. ‘dare I say the world is a strange place, and getting stranger by the minute’ said Wilmslow to Hove, Hove replying with a grunt and a mild wheeze. ‘with God as my witness’ said Hove to Hove, both men staring at Wilmslow. ‘seedy and disagreeable’ said Wilmslow to Hove and Hove. ‘entirely’ said Hove to Wilmslow, Hove smiling beamingly. Neither the man in the hat, Dejesus or the man tending to his fallen horse had ever stepped foot inside the Huixquilucan café, concerned as were they that they might find themselves beaten to a plum or short-shrifted. All manner of scoundrel was known to beat about the café, not just flim-flamers and hustlers, conmen and gafflers, which were never in short supply or unwilling to bust your chops for a fiver or a on a lark.
[1] Thomas Mann, ‘Tonio Kröger’.

The Pursuit of Honors and Riches

While all this was happening the Vincennes Glove Co. was busy stitching together gloves: whore’s gloves and evening gloves, dinner gloves and postprandial gloves, woolen gloves and goatskin gloves, calfskin and ostrich, emu and alpaca, gloves for dancing and gloves for sitting, furry gloves and fleece-lined gloves, gloves for debutants and gloves for seniors, the bobbins and skeins whirling and spitting out gloves for all occasions and all sorts of people. Stitched in gold thread onto the palm of a dinner glove was the following, [4] (1) By sensual pleasure the mind is enthralled to the extent of quiescence, as if the supreme good were actually attained, so that it is quite incapable of thinking of any other object; when such pleasure has been gratified it is followed by extreme melancholy, whereby the mind, though not enthralled, is disturbed and dulled. (2) The pursuit of honors and riches is likewise very absorbing, especially if such objects sought simply for their own sake, [a] inasmuch as they are then supposed to constitute the highest good.[1] The glove was made for a Countess with a whorish disposition, a disposition she unveiled behind her husband’s back in the cold cellar. The psalm stitched into the palm was a reminder that men are beasts and women saintly whores. She hadn’t the foggiest who this Baruch Benedict de Spinoza was, for had she she would surely have had second thoughts about disgracing such an eminent, albeit unassuming man. The Countess spreads her legs, the smell of mare’s piss sating her desire, she’s a fine fuck, never ‘disturbed and dulled’. His breath smelled like vintner’s gas, sour and vinegary. ‘I dare say I wouldn’t dare touch a hair on her head’ said the tailor’s apprentice, ‘...surely she’d bust a stitch’.
[1] Benedict de Spinoza, On the Improvement of the Understanding

The Smock's Beshit

Haskell O’Casey tightened his grip around Phil Villefontaine’s neck, his face turning plum purple. MacFlecknoe and Funcke ganged up on Collofino Olbrich, Collofino teetering left and right, Dejesus hollering ‘stoolie bastard!’ Stanton, O’Casey yanking him left and right, yowled like a kicked dog, ‘it wasn’t me, I swear!’ A mist appeared out of nowhere, ‘scat bastard!’ hissed Abe Abingdon’s ghost, ‘…always had your hand in the till’. ‘kill the bastard!’ crowed the cock, its coxcombs standing on end. Not one to miss out on a good opportunity, Marjorie O’Casey jabbed Villefontaine in the eye with a stick, a cockscomb of blood spackling her newly washed dress. Teetering Villefontaine fell ass over kettle, his nose splayed across his cheekbones like a maple tree seed pod. As he fell swooning to his knees Villefontaine paid homage to the Debauchee of Rochester,

By all love's soft, yet mighty powers,

It is a thing unfit,
That men should fuck in time of flowers,
Or when the smock's beshit.

Fair nasty nymph, be clean and kind,
And all my joys restore;
By using paper still behind,
And sponges for before.

My spotless flames can ne'er decay,
If after every close,
My smoking prick escape the fray,
Without a bloody nose.

If thou would have me true, be wise,
And take to cleanly sinning,
None but fresh lovers' pricks can rise,

At Phyllis in foul linen.

(John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester)

Dorset and Rogaland met Eschborn under the bust of King Olaf to discuss what was to be done with the scoundrel orange merchant Villefontaine. ‘oranges are God’s fruit’ said Rogaland, ‘...not some mammy ambry child’s soother’. ‘right you are my dear friend’ added Dorset, ‘…nor are they to be taken lightly…’ ‘…or eaten like a slob prince’ interrupted Eschborn. King Olaf’s skirt stuck out like a broken thumb, the folds in his sash snaking round his legs and torso. ‘that hardhead O’Casey’ll lay a beating on the bastard Villefontaine’ said Rogaland. ‘fuck him up to next Wednesday’ said Eschborn, Dorset’s lips trembling with anger. Rogaland hung his arm over King Olaf’s shoulder, resting his hip against the King’s thigh. ‘merchant of spoil’ laughed Eschborn, Dorset joining in with a thundering guffaw.

Collofino Olbrich

Mullingar ran the photo booth at the church bazaar. For 25-cents you could have a photograph taken of yourself and watch it develop right before your eyes. Mullingar won the Rollei Instamatic for an essay he wrote on choiring; second place going to an essay about deep-knee-bends written by an asthmatic. Vilna Kroner was born in Sebastopol in 1958, son to Abe and Lois Kroner, brother to Oliver and Stu, grandson of Haskell and Marjorie O’Casey, on his mother’s side. Vilna spent weekends and holidays collecting odds and ends, things small enough to fit in his sachet or in the basket on his bicycle handlebars. He had a particular hanker for old bottles, green, brown, yellow, blue and navy, match packets and shiny bits of glass, green, blue, orange, yellow and black. One day he found a crate of spoiled oranges in the alleyway behind the Seder Grocer; on one of the spoiled oranges was written,

"If there were no commandments, no duties in the world, I would die, starve, be crippled by boredom. I only have to be spurred on, compelled, regimented. It suits me entirely. Ultimately it is I who decides, only I. I provoke the frowning law to anger a little, afterwards I make the effort to pacify it."[1]

Phil Villefontaine, cofounder with Abe Abingdon of the Oxfordshire Orange Co., met his demise at the hands of Haskell O’Casey on the 10th of August 1900andaught. Vilna’s grandpappy beat him senseless over a crate of spoiled oranges, shouting ‘a man ought stand by what he sells… and you, sir, are no such man!’ Mishearing fishcakes for fig cake he beat the man specious with the clubs of his fists. ‘God almighty’ shouted Cecil Funcke, ‘…you’re going to kill the man!’ ‘mind your own business’ huffed Vilna’s grandpappy, ‘…or you’ll get some of the same’. At that moment, unbeknown to the people gathered taking in the beating, Dejesus stared into the fiery blazing sun, his eyes flashing blue murder. Bumping and trundling along the sidewalk came a wheelbarrow, a cock sitting pretty in the barrow, its cockscomb sweltering red murder. ‘we live in strange times’ said Dejesus to Cecil Funcke., ‘strange in deed only… everything else is gravy’ replied Cecil Funcke.

MacFlecknoe gave the bum’s rush to Thomas Josef Stanton, ‘you foolish scat!’, Collofino Olbrich laughing a stitch in his side. ‘strange’ said Funcke, his eyes rolling back into his brow. ‘who would have thought MacFlecknoe would waste his time on a scoundrel like Stanton?’
[1] Robert Walser Jakob von Gunten

Dante's Inferno - Canto I

Crappy Skull

That day, the day before the running of the dogs, a boy wearing a bowtie fell off his horsy and broke his busted nose. Jorge Estadística, standing nearby exclaimed ‘good god the boy’s wearing a bloodied bowtie!’ The boy yowled like a whipped dog ‘yaaaa hooooooooooo wl!’ Cecil Funcke of Basingstoke Churchdown wears his surplice inside out, saving an offering coin or two on dry-cleaning and refolding. The Basingstoke Churchdown boy’s choir sing for their supper, lunch and breakfast, the choirmaster egging them on with his baton. When he was a boy Dejesus sang in the Basingstoke Churchdown boy’s choir. Celebrated for his piercing castrato and flash blue eyes, Dejesus was a favorite among the parish fish.

‘look his nose is all bloodies’ said a boy frighteningly. ‘bloodied’ said a boy chewing on a whip of red licorice. He threw a punch that came down on top of the other boy’s head like a hammer, caving in his already crappy skull. ‘that’ll be quite enough!’ roared a man clenching his jaw. ‘you boys should be in choir practice… now git’. Both boys took flight, disappearing round the corner tumbling. That morning Dejesus laid a out a boy he’d had a fight with earlier in the day, knocking him tea kettle over arse into a mountain of apples. That day, the day after the running of the dogs, the Basingstoke Churchdown boy’s choir brokered a deal with the choirmaster, they would stay late on Wednesdays and Sundays after Mass if they could have fig cakes for supper. Agreeing, free of caveats or conditions, the choirmaster sent out for fishcakes and sodas, mishearing fishcake for fig cake and sodas for rum.

Un Solo Hombre Ha Nacido

The bootmaker’s wife worked for the Eire Abu Society pandering to opera enthusiasts and highbrow charity types. The man in the hat met the bootmaker’s wife after the Feast of the Lamb, the two enjoying a good laugh together. As he was a sensible man the curate congratulated Gretchen Micomicona on her stately mission, to become the heiress to the Vincennes Glove Co. The bootmaker’s wife swore up and down that a woman of such illusory beauty should not be allowed to set foot in the Vincennes Glove Co. ‘the Eire Abu Society does not recognize such sexual shenanigans. Women like you should be sent to the mines… ply your dark trade there, madam, and leave us alone’. While this was happening the man in the hat sat facing the Waymart clock waiting for the little hand to pass the big hand. He felt uncomfortable around angry people, preferring the tick tock of the Waymart clock to arguments, won or lost, that made fools of everyone except he. Gretchen Micomicona let go with a gush of anger ‘how dare you, madam!’ the bootmaker’s wife shrinking in fright. The curate of Churchdown Cecil Basingstoke, known for his high teas and low morals, chastised the bookmaker’s wife and Gretchen Micomicona, the blood in his temples reaching untold of duress.

Under a hodgepodge of eel skin, left behind after the dogmen harvest their catch, under a fichus tree, one of many that surround the aqueduct, the man in the hat found a notebook; and in the notebook was written the following:

Un solo hombre ha nacido, un solo hombre ha muerto en la tierra.
Afirmar lo contrario es mera estadística, es una adición imposible.

In all the world one man has lived, one man has died.
To insist otherwise is nothing more than statistics, an impossible extension.

Jorge Luis Borges

As curious as curious can be the man in the hat read on, hoping to discover the secret, a simple fraction, an into or out of, something he could say he’d learned but couldn’t say how or why. Sursee Aargau belittled the dogmen for leaving behind ‘such a god’s awful mess’, the grassland surrounding the aqueduct littered with eels skins and belly guts.

Schleswig's Bugleweed Paregoric

His uncle made potions and salves from the desiccated weeds and grass, mixing the brew with agarics and tonic water. When Schleswig was twelve he stole a bottle of bugleweed paregoric (tinctura opii camphorata) from his uncle’s desk drawer, heralding the beginning of his addiction to morphine and carpenter’s glue. Before bed each night his uncle Rex plants a watery-mouthed kiss on his wife’s melony rump. Schleswig took to covering his ears every time his uncle spoke, not wanting to be privy to his uncle’s sexual proclivities. Sometimes a mild paregoric helped deafen his uncle’s voice, other times a stiff draft of bugleweed tonic topped off with a menthol cigarette. ‘a melony rump’ Schleswig whispered to himself, ‘I’d give up breathing to get a look at that’. Schleswig fell in love with Maria Puglia, a textile worker from Foggia. Maria Puglia and Schleswig were lovers for three years, their tryst coming to an end when Ms. Puglia cheated on Schleswig with a lamplighter from Tuxtla called Gutierrez Chiapas Jr. After a series of unhappy relationships, one tryst ending with Schleswig hightailing it after his lover put a contract out on his head, Schleswig found refuge and safety in the town where he now works in the sanatorium emptying stool-buckets, a job he has held for the past 2½ years, almost.

Schleswig’s mother Peggy attended the Marchmont School For Girls. In her senior year she wed a delivery man for the Crompton Linen Co., one Albert Schleswig. The following year she gave birth to a baby boy. As his parents couldn’t agree on a first name, Peggy wanting ‘Hilbert’, Albert ‘Hulbert’, they settled on Schleswig, ‘Schley’ for short. Schleswig’s great granddad was a Midshipman on the freighter Elijah Stubb. Gabriel Bunger, the freighter’s captain, keelhauled whomever disrespected his commission. Being a cheek and short-tempered salt, 'Schley’s' granddad many a time found himself scraping the ship’s hull, his disrepute legendary among seafaring men. Vicente was in charge of keelhauling, a family tradition handed down from his great-great great granddad to his great-great granddad and so on, Vicente the latest in a long line of keelhauling seafarers.

…there are no Schleswigs, no midshipmen, no keelhaulers…! The Bunger School For Girls, 2727 Stubb’s Ave., a crow’s throw from Crompton’s gym, muscle-bound roughnecks putting the boots to poor old Elijah. …stomp stomp, don’t Lethem up boys, let’s keelhaul the fucker… heave ho even as she goes… Sternshipman said it’ll be more rigorous if we ketch ‘em over the bow, boys…

He dreams that he is in a one room schoolhouse watching Ms. Hicks write into’s and out of’s in yellow chalk on the chalkboard. He awakens, shakes the sleep from his head and jumps headfirst out the window, landing feetfirst onto the asphalt in front of the Church of the Perpetual Sinner. Shaking his head a second time he mounts the steps and walks into the church, the rector’s assistant sitting in the second to last pew. Clearing his throat the rector’s assistant turns and whispers ‘the truth is not in your head… when will you ever learn?’

Black Lung

The harridan’s sister spent one afternoon a week visiting with the consumptives. She read to a woman with gangrened feet, tatted dollies with a syphilitic and played pinochle with a deaf mute. She kept her distance from Rosario Santa Fe, who she feared might punt her between the legs should the impulse arise. One night Fe Rosario Santa ate shoeblack, her face breaking out in boils, the duty nurse scrubbing her cheeks raw, Fe Santa squealing like a sow.

He remembers the stool-buckets, hammered from cheap tin, and the reflection they made in the metal jakes under the door. Schleswig made the rounds on the floor for consumptives and drug fiends. In the bed next to the window overlooking the courtyard lay the General, a Bell palsied consumptive with a hooked nose. In the bed next to him slept a Black Lung consumptive, his railing punctuating the stillness of the room. Schleswig emptied the stool-buckets, the tins clanking as he shepherded between beds. Schleswig was born to Albert and Peggy Schleswig, peasant stock, in Bowerchalke Wiltshire in the year of the dog, 1948. He aspired to nothing; his parents having instilled a sense of hopelessness in him at a very early impressionable age. Growing up Schleswig visited his uncle Rex who lived in Biggleswade Square outside New Bedfordshire. His uncle Rex picked bugleweed and crowfoot grass, drying the flowers in a brick oven behind the outhouse around the back of the house.

House of Borges

He remembered the surly look on the custodian’s face and his eyes, pale blue with flecks of gammare. He could see the gray cloudless sky and the crows sniping at passersby. He could hear the custodian laughing when he walked on the balls of his feet, his shoes worn through at the heels, the cobs of his toes chafed crumbly. Rosario Santa Fe they called her, never once using her given or Christian name. Rosario lived in the room above him with the other consumptives and dope fiends, the ward known for its indecorousness fecal odor and broken door handles. Santa Fe, as she was wont to call herself, wore the same blue and white jumper, the cuffs frayed, the waistband twisted round her hips. Rosario Santa claimed she’d been a courtesan to the House of Borges in Ola Buenos Aires. Around her neck she wore a lion’s tooth broach, a gift from a man with a black face and white white teeth. Fe slept with her feet facing southward, interrupting the microwaves that flew like tailless kites around her head. Fe Santa wore a toque lined with tin foil, the chinstrap tied in bows and double-knots lest it jimmy loose exposing her to violent thoughts and spasms of the brain.

A Tall Spiraling Bush

‘--how often is often?’ the harridan’s sister asked. The harridan’s sister asked questions mostly of strangers or people she ran into in the street. If she didn’t get an answer she asked a second third and fourth time. ‘--where is Torrent Cataluna?’ she asked pointing. ‘can I get there by boat?’ ‘how often does the boat leave if it leaves for there?’ pointing. Out from behind a tall spiraling bush approached a poacher, his gunnysack slung crosswise over his shoulder. Pointing she asked ‘poacher, can get me from here to there?’ ‘I can take you as far as Pietarsaari…’ said the poacher, ‘…maybe Mendoza’. ‘Mendoza…’ pointing ‘…I’ve always wanted to go to Mendoza’. ‘give me your hand’.

A green leaf sky, the tree outside his window in full leaf. As he waited for the feast to begin, he reckoned noontime, half-past on the outside, he picked his gums with the half-moon of his thumbnail. ‘sure I could..’ he said thinking he could eat a horse, or a back loin or shaker. Trimming the fat, separating the whey from the curd, the wheat from the chaff. He’d been to the Waldau Sanatorium once before, the day after Christmas 1959. He’d overheard two men with fat crumbly-skin talking about the Transhumance, a tribe of natural runners who live deep in the red canyons somewhere in Mexico. ‘barefooted’ said one of the fat crumby-skin men, ‘they run without shoes’. He’d been a patient at the cantonal sanitarium of Appenzell-Ausserhoden in Herisau since June, moving to the Waldau Sanatorium after Christmas 1958. He had a hard time remembering when he was a patient at the Appenzell-Ausserhoden, thinking that it might have been the Waldau Sanatorium Christmas 1958 or 59. He had a difficult time distinguishing between sanatoriums and madhouses, places he’d been in the 1950’s, placed he’d been taken against his will by roughhouse men in white jackets. He remembered reading a note written on one of the madhouse wall, the pale green wall, “Some who jumped had fiery wings, their heads burned, or their hands, and they looked like strange birds who could scream but couldn’t fly.”[1]

His moustache was longer, bushier then. Back then his moustache was blonde, like angle’s wings, not gray and wiry. He had hard white teeth with gold fillings then, not a salver that made his gums bleed. Back then, before he was taken against his will, he went crabbing with the man in the hat, sometimes the harridan and her sister. They all three had fun, jolly good fun. Now he was lucky if he was permitted a walk around the grounds, the custodian waving at him to stay away from the gate. Now was different then back then when things were simpler and less hot. Now he was always complaining about the buzzing in his ears, like bees in a bonnet, the custodian waving him off. The first time he felt it, his insides, he was eeling with the littlest dogman, the water calmer than death, his ears buzzing and hissing. That’s when he thought of ‘bees in a bonnet’, his forehead doubled in two. The pain was excruciating, the sound deafening, his back stiff as a dressed corpse. It was three o’clock, he remembered, the sun slinking behind the gatehouse bridge.
[1] Robert Walser, Theater Fire

Del Mar Valparaiso

The reoffering follows the conferring, reoffering and conferring referring to the Lamarckian maxim ‘what comes into the world must exit the world’. The Reofferer arrived the day after the last calf was conferred. A panhandler by trade, it was his job to initiate the reoffering of the calves; an avocation passed down from grandfather to son to grandson. The man in the hat met the Reofferer the day before the first snowfall. His hat hunkered on the crown of his head he set out into the day. As the midday heat was stifling, the blacktop a sizzling cast-iron skillet, the man in the hat decided to defer the remainder of the day. When the days grew weary with heat the townspeople stayed indoors, cooling the inside temperature with frozen saltlicks wrapped in bed sheets, the windows sealed shut, chinking stuffed with rags and shirttails. Del Mar Valparaiso makes ice in an abandoned trolley-car, saltlick-size bales going for 25 cents a block. The Reofferer arrived the day after the last conferring. In the boot of his sedan he carried iodine, mercurochrome and sulfuric acid, gauze, tensor bandages, coarse salt, alcohol, a set of speculums arranged in order from 25 centimeters to 7½ centimeters, a lever and three changes of clothing. The Reofferer began the reoffering with a short prayer ‘--what is conferred shall be reoffered’. Smearing an unctuous oil of calamine, stinkweed and fichus root on the calves’ head, the Reofferer slapped the calf on the tenderloin and said a second prayer ‘But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency?’[1] The Potchefstroom Bros. make Porkpie hats, 2 for a dollar 3 for a fiver. He gave him a priestly pat on the back and set out to meet the day.

[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, Zarathustra's Prologue, 1891

Ena Sallied Forth

Its never too late to forget an old trick. Dr. McCredie dispenses stool-softener to the incontinent and down-at-the-heel, never once asking for a script or a handwritten note. ‘Soften the bowel and free the man’. The Greek palmist sang in recitativo accompagnato, the audience succored into a deep hypnotic trance. The Dionysian Chorister, master of the Eleusinian Mysteries (Ἐλευσίνια Μυστήρια) sallied forth accompanied by Demeter and Persephone, the trio singing at the top of their lungs, ‘Ena sallied forth to face the day, her gait determinedly nonchalant’. Slouched against the Waymart guardrail the man in the hat said ‘--sally on poor man, rally forth’.

A boy swinging a cat by the tail said "Three quarks for Muster Mark!"[1] to which Kemerovo esta Kemerovo trumpeted “big ass fackeng” to which Marcus Hook declared “Bloemfontein is a Free State…” to which Dom los Alcanena Santarem announced “Hemel Hempstead Hertford has the best fried eel pie”, all four giggling like mischievous waifs.

The day the abortionist arrived in town the sky was black as soot. That year the rains arrived in June ending with the first snowfall in November. Calving time came early that year, the pastures overrun with feeble-legged calf’s and slack-belly heifers. “…and then, all because of him, came the other gentleman and carried off my tail, and gives it back more than two cuartillos the worse, all stripped of its hair…”[2] said the abortionist in rhyme, his head bobbing from side to side. He had a way about him, the abortionist did, that to the untrained eye seemed awkward and unneutered. He terminated fief calves, the stillborn and deformed, two-legged calves and calves with no legs, half-formed calves with half-formed heads, tiny bale-size calves with red eyes and wet noses, he came to town once a year to confer death upon new life, his tools tinkling like cutlery in his doctor's bag.

[1] James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
[2] Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Cutthroat Eel

The next day the owner of the Greek Deli left town never to return. The following day the dogmen took ownership of the store changing the name to Dogmen Bros. Store, the sign in the window reading ‘we sells eels and salt goods’. Seeing that the dogmen had taken over the Greek’s Deli the Seder Grocer exclaimed ‘--things are changing... and not for the better’ The man in the hat gawped at the new sign over the door ‘--I’ll be damned, Greek dogmen’. Eel brisket and eel pot pie, poached eel and braised eel, eel fricassee and eel a la king, eels jubilee and blanched eel with parsnips and vinegar; the dogmen sold eel fillets and eel loin, picnic eel and minced eel with garlic and parsley. They sold freshwater eel and salted eel (Anguilliformes), deep sea eel (Monognathus) and river eel, eel roe (leptocephalus) and coral reef eel (Chlopsidae), mud eel (Heterenchelyidae) spaghetti eel (Moringuidae) and cosmopolitan eel, thin eel (Myrocongridae) and Longneck eel (Derichthyidae) Snipe eel (Nemichthyidae) and Sawtooth eel (Serrivomeridae) duckbill eel (Nettastomatidae) and Cutthroat eel (Synaphobranchidae), the dogmen sold all manner and species of eel.

He unsheathed his naked dagger and plunged it in to the hilt, his thoughts spinning in his head. "Fate, it seems, will not grant my just desire complete satisfaction, but it will not be able to keep me from satisfying it partially at least…"[1] The verse evoked memories of his great aunt’s marmalade tea biscuits dusted with icing sugar and friar’s cocoa. The grocer of his childhood, Doha Ad Dawhah, sold sassafras soda and saffron pie, betel nut candies and lemongrass suckers, syrupy cakes and soft licorice, things you could only find at Mr. Ad Dawhah’s corner store. Across the street from the ten pin bowling lanes the fat lady sells cold beer and rainbow gumballs, the clap and crash of the ten-pins echoing in her ears. The owner of the Greek Deli gathered his belongings and returned home to Parala Pieria, Doctor Solihull of the Solihull Overnight Asylum warning him that feebleness runs in families, αδύναμες οικογένειες, so you best keep your πέος στο παντελόνι σας. Resheathing his dagger he plunged his foot into the mossy earth, balancing himself on the ball of his foot, his dagger shackled and scabbard at his side. In his dream he thrusts the cook’s knife into the picnic ham, a suckling watery sound oozing onto his pants leg.
[1] Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Girolamo Fracastoro

This wasn’t the first time he’d had his fetters with the Mormons. A few years back late into the evening he fell upon a Mormon wingding in a circus tent on the outskirts of town (the Mormons not being allowed within the five-mile fence) the head Mormon scolding ‘--be gone heathen… you are not welcomed here!’ The South Shields Mormons and the South Tyneside Mormons are in cahoots with the Brayside Episcopalians, forming the Church of the Greater Scientist, know for its pig-knuckle competitions, held the second Sunday of every month, twice during the month of Lent. Not feeling the faintest bit faint he stood his ground and stared bulls’-eyed at the head Mormon, his knuckles brandished at his sides. ‘--I assure you, my dear man, I am no heathen…’.

When he was old enough to burn ants with a magnifying glass his da bought him a telescope with silver dials. He burned small black dots into ash, spiny legs like fake-eyelashes disappearing under the hedge, his mamma screaming ‘supper!’ at the top of her lungs. ‘--if it’s a fight you want, dear sir, then so be it… I will show you no mercy, I assure’. (Dear auntie hadn’t the faintest why the gonorrhoeae visited her on Wednesdays and Friday’s after fish, just the damndest thing).

In the village of Wolverhampton, under a jaundice yellow moon, the Wolverhampton apothecary dispensed a tincture of flea salve to the man standing at the head of the line, the queued fuming like a nest of angry mud-wasps. Girolamo Fracastoro, professor emeritus at Padua university, handed out copies of his epic poem ‘Syphilis sive morbus gallicus’ to those gathered, men, women and children alike applauding with enthusiasm. Skulking in the shadows, his pamphleteer’s cap pulled over his brow, the Witness pointed his finger at the eminent professor of medicine and proclaimed ‘--you sir are a crackpot and a phony!’ His face calm and unwrinkled, the eminent professor replied ‘--the educated classes… who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit… do not waste yourself on the whining of decaying intellectuals’[1], the sun disappearing into the brown dirty earth.
[1] Vladimir Ilyich Lenin to Maxim Gorky

Efflagitasti Convicio

Howard Zweig fell from such a great height he broke his collarbone, three knuckles and a tooth. Had he not been in such a hurry to get where he was going he might not have fallen from such a great height breaking three knuckles, his collarbone and a tooth. But on that day he was in a hurry hurrying to get a glimpse of the missing whore’s glove said to be in the possession of a frail weakly man staying in a room above the Greek Deli. (On the wall facing the five-mile fence, the plaster pale-ashen, was written the following: “Thoughts---- Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings----always darker, emptier, and simpler.”)[1] On the wall opposite, beneath a framed facsimile of the first page of the Bible, was a handwritten note, “Anselmo, hidden behind some tapestries where he had concealed himself, beheld and was amazed at all, and already felt that what he had seen and heard was a sufficient answer to even greater suspicions…” {Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote}. After reading the handwritten note, before which he took a wide-eyed glance at the facsimile, the man in the hat said to himself ‘--ah yes, the missing whore’s glove, suspicion does as suspicion is’.

The last time he’d seen a framed replica was in Buenos Balcarce in the nineteen-fifties, the page torn from the book of Los Conchas de Putas, owned by the Dundee Bros. of Dundee. The Dundee Bros. sold the replica page to the Allerd City library, the facsimile placed on the wall next to a duplicate replica of the Frederiksborg Book of Laughter, chapter 27 revealing the proper technique for belly-laughter and chortling. ‘--I sure could use a feast’ said the man in the hat, ‘…its been months since the Feast of the Thirsty Boar… the harridan’s sister flying off the handle and making a damned fool of herself’. Peeking from behind the bust of King Olaf, the King’s nose whitewashed with tern (Sternidae) shit, the littlest dogmen tittered, his pockets weighed with river stones and pebbles. ‘--if I had a nickel’ said the man in the hat weighing his words carefully, ‘--I’d be a rich man, nickels being what they are… prime real estate in a bunkers’ market’.

That summer feasts were a rarity, few churches and women’s auxiliaries having the chairs or time to put on a banquet, those with a craving for formal meals having to settle for tinned vegetables and canned meats, under-ripe cheeses and hard boiled eggs, the sort of trough one found at the Greek Deli or the Seder Grocer’s, both of which were closed Saturdays and Wednesdays after one (the proprietor of the Greek Deli spent Wednesdays eeling and Saturdays reciting Homeric poetry; the owner of the Seder Grocer’s paid his mother a visit every Wednesday afternoon at two, Saturdays he baked wafers for the following week’s communion, non-salted from eight to noon, salted from twelve to five-thirty).

‘--out of my way, can’t you see I’m in a hurry?’ cried the Witness, his arms overburdened with pamphlets and jars of ink. As today was the day before the Quintilian he was fit to be tied, his thoughts baying in the pulpit of his head. In his right hand he held the first oration, ‘Efflagitasti cotidiano convicio, ut libros, quos ad Marcellum meum de Institutione oratoria scripseram iam emittere inciperem…’[2] and under his left arm a duplicate replica of the first page of the Mormon Bible, the words bleeding one into the other, the printer having used cheapskate ink and discount paper.

[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Trans., Walter Kaufmann, New York: Vintage, 1974.
[2] Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, The Orations.

Charcot’s Beret

The Redditch constabulary are on the lookout for a smarmy cunt and a two-bit con, both cunt and con having been seen in the vicinity of the Vincennes Glove Co. on the night of August 6th nineteen-hundred and aught. The newspaper headline read, “The cost of whore’s gloves has skyrocketed! Having become the accessory of choice among the gentry and simple folk alike, finding a haberdasher with a pair in stock, even a mismatched pair, is a chore indeed. And with Flag Day quickly approaching, followed by the Feast of the Comeuppance and the return of the Herstal Liege pantomime troop, all hell will surely break loose if the Vincennes Glove Co. cannot keep up with the demand for whore’s gloves, be they mismatched or in pairs”.

On the wall over the transom, just out of reach of meddlesome hands, was written ‘Pulchrum est Paucorum Hominum, áskēsis is not for the weak or faint of heart’. Having read the very same infixion on a plaque honoring the Feast of the Redeemer, the man in the hat thought nothing of it. The Altrincham Bros. of Krung Thep and the Cheshire Bros. of Bangkok met one muggy August day under the ferric-wheel in the park beside the town hall. Upon seeing one another, the sun licking the salt from their chins, the two brothers shook hands, loosened their ties and climbed aboard the ferric-wheel, the eldest Altrincham Bros. exclaiming to the youngest Cheshire Bros. ‘--acicular ferrite, and by the bushel…’ As the Cheshire Bros. were in the market for needles and pins they agreed to pay the Altrincham Bros., makers of fine needles and small-headed pins, the sort used for dress busts and kitchen windows, $27 a bushel, postage and shipping included. The Cheshire Bros., who were in cahoots with the Vincennes Glove Co., supplying them with small-headed pins and sewing needles, figured they could corner the market on haberdasher’s appurtenances, insuring their fair share of whore’s gloves.

Having never seen nor smelled a whore’s glove I fear I am in no stead to make pronouncements about them. Objects without subjects, words without meaning, its all slight-of-hand, trickery. Should you believe what I say, put trust in me, you are nothing more than a fool’s fool, a buffoon, a simpleton, an ass, a predicate without a subject. Go back to your incontinent morals and public confessions; there is nothing left to see here… move on, find someone else to amuse you, SCAT! He awoke from a disagreeable sleep, the world having changed since he last saw it, vanished, kaput, gone. Disagreeably he eased his legs from bed, unbent his knees and plopped his feet on the cold linoleum floor. ‘--so this is it, what I have to make do with…’. He slid off the edge of the bed and onto the floor, the cold linoleum bringing out the worst in him, and peered out the onionskin window, the sky blacker than Charcot’s beret, the day starting as if for the first time again.

Lux Ex Orient

Gonzalo Fernández de Canela and Christopher de Rómulo Oviedo y Valdés were to meet Gallegos y Gallegos behind the Waymart the Friday before the Feast of the Comeuppance. Gonzalo Fernández de Canela saying to Christopher de Rómulo Oviedo y Valdés ‘--this is the place, its buried here… under the 27th pew from the altar, if we count back from 1001 we should have no difficulty finding…’. ‘--the glove?’ interrupted Christopher de Rómulo Oviedo y Valdés. ‘--yes?’ said Gonzalo Fernández de Canela in a censorious voice, not wanting to draw attention to himself. Christopher de Rómulo Oviedo y Valdés upon turning noticed Gallegos y Gallegos standing straight as maypole behind the Waymart.

Fixing his gaze on Gonzalo Fernández de Canela he said ‘--he’s here’. ‘--we best get the ropes from the cart’ said Gonzalo Fernández de Canela, ‘--before he thinks we’re lazing about doing nothing’. Gonzalo Fernández de Canela, Christopher de Rómulo Oviedo y Valdés and Gallegos y Gallegos were but three of many who coveted the missing whore’s glove. The barrister Simms, unbeknown to his wife, coveted the missing whore’s glove, as did the rector’s assistant, for reasons of a daemonic nature, the glove being a golden calf, and Dejesus, for whom the glove represented the end of hatred and jealousy in the world; all who had come in contact with the glove, be it through travel, happenstance or duress, coveted the glove, the glove having a power over people far overreaching any women’s apparel, be it nightshirt, corset or lacy underclothes.

What’s all this buffoonery about whores and gloves? The two appear together like yesterday and tomorrow, everything and nothing, sunrise and sunset. To think otherwise is to covet buffoons and clowns, gadflies and busybodies, cranks and nitwits. Fyn told me that a man’s Svendborg is his castle… On the island of Funen upriver from Langeland, Ærø and Tåsinge, Møller-Mærsk Fyn opens a letter from Valdemar the Victorious (Valdemar Sejr) announcing the investiture of Walpurgis Night, to be followed the next day by national Flag Day, a day of highfaluting rejoicing. ‘--but where will we ever find enough whore’s gloves to appease the throngs?’ said the second assistant to the first assistant. ‘--I’ve heard say of a place beyond the Ærø across the Tåsinge where a man can buy as many whore’s gloves as his heart commands…’ said the first assistant to the second and third. ‘--Vincennes…’. ‘--Vincennes, yes I recall the name’ added the third assistant, the second and first assistants beside themselves with joy.

Gloving and whoring found their meter in the early Dark Ages, a time of low-culture and swank haberdashery. A time when Lux Ex Orient rang throughout the land, summoning the Teutonic Knights to the knee of Pope Gregory IX, Inquisititor, whereupon he cautions them ‘be wary of tomfools and heretics’, sidesaddle to Pope Gregory IX Pope Innocent IV, his face red as fresh meat, requests Isabella’s fair hand in dance, Pope Sixtus IV arriving by landau, his Chantilly frayed and torn, demanding of Lucas de Tuy ‘as we speak the Moorish are convening… get thy shoulder beneath the wheel, I command you be fleet and unnerved… now get moving we have no time to waste’, his booming command catching the ear of Torquemada Pope Paul III, his Miter tippling on the tonsure of his head, who decrees in a deep Bassano voice ‘Galileo, who you will find on page 27½ of the Liborurm Prohibitorum, is a crackpot, a heretic… I demand that you set his telescope on fire!’… and off in the far to middling distance, his threadworn surplice gathered round his shoulders, Giordano Bruno, pale and ashen, sits in the sanctum dais playing pinochle with two monks and an ass.

The Northallerton Abattoir

His da’s da first worked for the Metz Bros. Abattoir, the brothers admiring his granddad’s overhand swing and steady hand. The brothers sold chuck and picnic shoulder, ribs and loin, flank and inside round, his da’s da dressing the meat with brown paper and string. On his off-time, those few minutes between pigs, his granddad smoked his cob outside the back door of the slaughterhouse, the alleyway a litter of rotten loin and chuck, half-incised picnic shoulder, flaps of meat pocketed to yellow bone, broken ribs and flattened out inside round. As the day drew on the back alleyway took on the appearance of a war zone, bales of putrefied flesh and sawed bone, coils of knotted intestine and guts, things hacked and chopped into unusable flanks and cutlets. The Parigi Bros. and the Emilia-Romagna Bros. are in cahoots with the Metz Bros. Having lost 50% of the yellow bone market to an abattoirist in Cork, the Emilia-Romagna’s and the Parigi’s figured a cahoots with the powerful Metz’s would be in their best interest.

A slaughterhouse bureaucrat from Northallerton plotted a cahoots against the three sets of brothers… the plot, to corner the market on picnic shoulder and inside round. His da’s da ended up working for the Northallerton abattoir, making 27½% more on dressing and 42½ on hanging. His face pushed like a spinnaker into the wind, his feet barely touching the peddles, he rode his bicycle round in circles, his grandmamma hollering like a banshee out the summer kitchen window.

That summer he lived with his granddad and grandmamma in their tack-board cottage with the funnel chimney and woodstove in the winter kitchen. While his granddad worked at the abattoir he spent his days in the fields inside the five-mile fence looking for spent shotgun cases and blasting caps. The men who blasted craters in the hard rocky earth for the Northallerton abattoir left behind unexploded caps and golden-brown whiskey in old apple jelly jars. On a good day he found 27 caps and a quarter-jar of whiskey, the mouths of the jars gritty with sand and chipped shale, the caps as new as the day they were taken out of the crate, some still with the red tappet on the hammer-end.

Cabman's Shelter

He’d had enough of all this fumble about in the past, ‘--memories punt you off-kilter’ he thought, ‘--making a mockery out of what you’ve become. Its what you are at the moment of death that matters, everything else is conjecture and happenstance… today I will buy a new hat, a fedora with a red satin hatband’.

‘--throw it in the fire’ yelled his da, ‘--it’ll burn good once it gets the flame’. His da’s da watched from the head of the scud, his jaw working a plug of Warhorse chaw. Every autumn his da and his da’s da burnt ground apples in a fire-pit behind the woolshed, his da’s da stoking the fire with gasoline and chaw spit. The cabman’s shelter wasn’t far from the Masonic temple. The Masons’ sanitize the jars with hydrochloride, the measure of which is to ensure that the apple jelly doesn’t get moldy and sour. They dispatch cartfuls of Masonic Jelly to places where jelly is valued for its high sugar content, such places as Chesterfield Derbyshire where jelly gourmands have such rotund gaseous bellies their nightshirts scarcely entomb the girth of their ballyhoos.

Dejesus prefers crabapple jelly on half-done rye toast, the sweet nectar pleasing to the tongue. ‘--I fear I fear going mad’ said a man standing beside Dejesus, the dread in his voice immanent. ‘--that and loosing my legs, because a man without steady legs is nothing but a falling down fool’. ‘--you needn’t be so dramatic’ said Dejesus, ‘--worse things could happen…’. ‘--like what?’ interrupted the fearful man. ‘--like falling head over kettle into a cesspit and not being able to climb out’ said Dejesus, the skin around his eyes tightening. ‘--I never thought of that’ said the timorous man. ‘--thank you dear sir, and now I must be off’ and off he went, Dejesus thinking ‘--how strange indeed, and to think I once aspired to such nonsense’.

When he turned twelve his da’s da bought him a secondhand bicycle with money he saved from his job slaughtering pigs. His da’s da was known for his precision at placing the head of the ax into the halves of the skull, felling the pig four legs out from the body. Pumping the tappet with his left hand he raised the carcass over the boil, dropping it in headfirst, his right hand obliging the push-rod into the cogwheel, the whirr and bustle of machinery filling his ears with dirty thoughts.