The Henotheist Smith

The priest told the same lies over and over again, his altar skirt mulching up his hairless white legs. Afternoons when the church was emptied of sinners, a few stragglers hiding under the ciborium licking the pot clean, the priest salted his white hairless legs with chalk dust, hoping to bring a fine sheen to his once youthful gams. Hidden under the altar box, wrapped in sackcloth, was a copy of Ibsen’s 'When We Dead Awaken', the Henotheist Smith stealing into the sanctuary after vespers to read by candlelight. The Poitou-Charentes-Poitou children’s choir sing evensong, the youngest castrato devastating to pieces the chandelier over the Baptismal. ‘Never underestimate the stupidity of children’ his da said, his head pressed between his hands like soft cheese. The children’s choir wear burgundy robes and gray stockings stitched from unprocessed wool, corduroy overcoats and tare sandals. The youngest chorales’, a slight boy named Oporto, possessed such a piercing castrato the other boys called him Voz Alta, he with the high voice. Mr. Artsybashev, the leader of the Poitou-Charentes-Poitou children’s choir, though never married, was known to keep company with Greta Felisberto, the pianist for the girls’ chorus, a plump angry woman with oniony breath.

Los Peyotes - Bdaaa!!!

Hamlet’s Father

On Saturdays his father slept until eight o’clock. Upon awaking, which he did slowly, like a slowcoach with a sore tooth, he would order his children to line up at the foot of the bed, then taking a deep breath, his wooly chest rising and plummeting, tell them what he wanted for breakfast: skillet-fried liver with onions and garlic, which he expected to be served in bed. Using his barrel-chest as a table he ate like a ravenous animal, forking slivers of pinkish liver into his mouth, scabs of burnt onion and garlic slickening his lips and the gray stubble on his trebled chin. ‘Most people in this world are bit-players, so don’t expect much from them’ he would tell his children, the youngest sucking his middle and next-to-middle fingers. On Sundays his father admonished the priest for telling the same lies over and over again, the congregation too frightened to stand up for the priest or silence his father’s weekly tirade. After Mass his father would go hunting in the fields behind the woolshed, the crack and boom of gunfire besetting the calmness with agitation and terror. His father had no idea who Hamlet’s father was, and if he had, he wouldn’t have cared. Considering the deficit of most people, bit-players, rogues and hooligans, he had little to feel terrible about. Afternoons, when the stink of skillet-burnt liver and onions filled the house with an organ stench, his father went hunting in the clearing behind the woolshed, his little brother sitting in the corner by the stove sucking his thumb and next-to-middle finger. The hog pit behind the woolshed stank to high heaven, piles of dead rotting feces pickling the dry brown earth. The unfed hogs grunted and bellyached, the biggest one ramming its head against the pen, its eyes two black holes of rage. His father’s beard smelled of organ meat and diced onions. ‘Don’t expect much; your life will be less disappointing’ his father’s eyes two black holes of dirt and liver grease.

Dieter Kopf

The Absinthe burned like Hades, the taste of wormwood and cloves in his throat making speech all but impossible. Considering the paucity of most people he didn’t feel all that dreadful about the fact he couldn’t make heads nor tails of most things. Franz Alexander Platz and Dieter Kopf crossed the bridge (the rickety bridge; for this fact is duly important) that crosses across the aqueduct spanning the five-mile and no-man’s-land. Having both abandoned the Herstal Liege troop years earlier, they now travel by foot bringing their hodgepodge of pantomiming and dramatic asides to whomever have eyes and ears to listen with. The first time Poldy saw the Hans Lamprecht troop, for they called themselves the Hans Lamprecht troop so as not to be confused with the Hans Lampeel troop, who were hacks, the leader of the troop known for his dislike for Hamlet’s father, whom he felt was a bit-player, and as with all bit-players dispensable, he experienced for the first time that feeling deep in his guts that would follow him for the rest of his life. Considering the deficiency of most people he didn’t feel all that terrible about the fact he couldn’t make heads nor tails of most things.

ΒΕRLΙΝ ΑLΕΧΑΝDΕRΡLΑΤΖ 1 1/8

The Green Fairy

He thought until his head felt like it was going to split open, the bone spurs in his jaw aching. The spurs, a gift from a streetwalker with a garish hole for a mouth, who upon hearing him call her a cunt slapped him across the face with her purse, cracking his molar in two, a puss canker the size of a walnut effecting his speech, which now came out in half-vowels and constantans, his father’s hopes that one day his son might take up the opera or speak in tongues squashed forever. He walked slapdash idly up the sideways, his hat squeezed like a ripe orange under his arm, the brim folded over levering his armpit and bicep. ‘never again will I listen to an imbecile… after all any man worth his weight in salt knows that imbeciles can never be trusted, even a well dressed one’. Across the sideways the harridan’s sister let go with a loud commanding howl, his ears crackling like tinder. Unaware that he was sinking into a cesspit of despair, like a man resigned to failure, someone whom life’s lottery had missed over yet continued to encourage, he ordered a glass of Absinthe and sat dejectedly in the corner by the stove. I will overcome this, he thought, the corners of his mouth awakened by the Green Fairy.

Las Bragas de Oro

While all this was going on the legless man sat reservedly on his pushcart wondering what all the fuss was about. Across the street squabbling with a sales clerk the harridan’s sister walked in circles, the hem of her skirts entangling her legs, the mercantilist trying to elicit the attention of the constabulary, his face as red as Polish cabbage. The legless man thought ‘No wonder the world’s in such a mess. No one wants to give an inch, and when they do the other person takes a mile’, the smell of black oil fish besetting his thoughts.

His father read to him on those nights when his thoughts wouldn’t stay quiet. Two of his favorite stories were ‘Encerrados con un Solo Juguete’ (Locked up with a Single Toy)* and ‘La Muchacha de las Bragas de Oro’ (Girl with Golden Panties)* (*Juan Marsé). The girl with the golden panties, the one character his father found appealing, his father called ‘La Muchacha de grandes bucetoes’, after a dice-player named Sofia Sofiya who threw craps behind the Waymart, the momentum of her ‘grandes bucetoes’ driving the die hard against the brick wall. ‘what a magnificent ass’ his father said, his cheeks flushing. ‘and the way it wriggled, my God, what a sight, parading round like the Queen of asses’. He sucked his fingers when his father talked about Sofia Sofiya, his tongue thumbing the roof of his mouth.

El Cerdo

The morning sun rose behind the Waymart, a forebodingness settling over those up and about attending to their morning victuals’. The day stopped flat in its tracks, the alms man struggling to get his cap to stay put in front of him, a gale force wind picking it up and whirling it round and round like a top.

‘Hell’eth, yes by God, Hell’eth!’ If only I could stop the flow, all these notions and schemes, brainchildren gone terribly awry. I can if only. The Gog and Beggar drafts Pilsners and Ales from a spigot attached to a hose attached to a keg underneath the counter, the alewife hiking her skirts up round her hips, the drawstrings of her corset flapping to and madly. Hell’eth has no fury like slaking man. El cerdo stood admiring his reflection in the mirror, his unusually outsized nose obscuring an otherwise unusual face. Obscure as it was it was indeed his face he was admiring in the mirror over the counter. The Witness closed the door behind him and took a seat next to the window; his hands blued with pamphleteer’s ink and glue. ‘a bitters! Something with a good head on it if you don’t mind’. Hiking her skirts up the alewife flashed her hirsute bush at the Witness, a slatternly smile on her ungainly face. ‘madam, if I wanted a hair pie I’d ask for one. Now, if you please, put that ugly thing away!’ El cerdo snickered, his usually expressionless face screwed-up like a mousy glove. This will not do. To hell with it! May a gonorrheal dog mijao on your leg. The proprietor of the Beggar and Gog spit into a glass and rubbed it inside and out with a dirty rag. ‘gentlemen please, enough of your shenanigans, either you drink up and leave or I will be forced to throw you out; all three of you, headfirst!’ Snickering, his face a mess of warts and unlancerable boils, El cerdo pointed at the proprietor, his liver red tongue dancing in his mouth ‘you sir! Dare I say you will be up to your shirtsleeves with trouble if you try and toss us three out!’ Bustling in front of him, hirsute bush exposed, the alewife laughed, her soiled underpants hanging on by a thread. ‘put that damn ugly thing away!’ grumbled the Witness, his voice filled with bile. ‘can’t you see we three are engaged in a battle? Now scram woman, and for the love of Jehovah be quick about it!’

The day after the littlest dogman sniggled the biggest eel anyone had ever seen, a sickly child with a horsetail cowlick, hands knit in prayer, begging for a bite of the black oily fish. The littlest dogman cut the eel in two and handed half to the boy, the boy thumping his chest like a sideshow strongman.

David Grossman on Bruno Schulz

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)

Rudy Virag

He turned the world over in his head until it spilled out on to the ground in front of him, a frail twisted arm reaching up towards him beseechingly. Who’s arm is this, he thought, and why is it pointing at me? The world turned over again, the arm stretching, bending trying to touch the yolky sun above his head. And why is it pointing at the yolky sun? When he was a boy his da fastened baseball cards with clothespins to the spokes of his secondhand bicycle, the cards click-clacking as he rocketed down the sidewalk jumping puddles and potholes.

The Landesschule Pforta gymnasium holds weekly craps behind the kitchen, the Brandrübel brothers beating the coal out the Schmölln brothers seven times out of three.

Leaping potholes and puddles he rocketed down the sideways, the clothes-pinned cards clicking in the spokes. His da sat on the porch spitting tobacco juice into a coffee tin, the night sky redder than a slapped face. Anchises Lethe drank the Dog and Beggar dry, gulping back throatfuls of fortified wine. José Arturo, seated on the stool next to him, his face half-hidden in the turtleneck of his shirt, said a prayer for dead and recently deceased poor Rudy {Virag} who the year before had hanged himself from the rafters overlooking the Overnight Asylum. ‘may God bless his slithering soul’ said Arturo, his face ashen pale. ‘for God know’eth, Hades is hotter than Hell’eth’. ‘yes by God’ interrupted Ennis Forghas ‘hotter than Hell’eth!’ Hoisting their tankards above their heads, all three men yelled ‘--HALLELUJAH! To Hell with Hell’eth! May his rung’eth neck unbend and his soul rest in peace. Adman’.

Schmölln

His da’s mamma bought salt cod from the Oppegaard fish market, a man called Apercus separating the heads from the fillets, wrapping them in brown paper and securing the slimy package with twine, then winking at her salaciously as he handed her the package over the counter, the tattoo on his forearm separating his wrist from his elbow. Not that one; I hate Tegucigalpa flatfish. Pointing, give me that one, yes, that one there. Hack me off a piece. The Francisco’s make a fine Morazán fishpie. Too salty? Not at all. Now stop your quibbling and scythe me off a piece. My da once got a whitefish bone stuck in his throat; damn near choked him silly. Taught me how to dislodge it with a thump to the back of the back; pops out like a crumb. No really. Ask the monger at Oppegaard’s, he’ll give you the goods. Apercus I thinks his name; smarmy cunt gave my grandmamma the once over. If I remember correctly she was wearing her herringbone stockings that day. Up to her waist in fish guts, heads separated from the fillets so there’s no mistaking the good pieces. (ibid). Pops out like a crumb. Partial bones in the hips so they say; easier to get the middle parts down. Worthless parts are good for soup and headcheese’s. Never know when company will drop by. Crawdaddy in her left hand, mudbug in her right. Throat stretched out like a firehouse. If I remember correctly. Remembering the past, and what lay in between, his thoughts stretched out like a firehouse, partial bones lined up on the tablecloth, the back of his back thumped black and blue, his grandmamma spooning bowlfuls of headcheese soup into greedy hands, smiting the bicycle pump like a tea spout, his da’s da thumping his head against the table trying to knock some sense into himself.

The Landesschule Pforta gymnasium holds weekly fistfights; the Schmölln brothers beating the tar out of the Brandrübel brothers three times out of seven.

Obadiah

Tiring of the befuddlement that cursed his being, the man in the hat sat under a mighty elm and counted the stars in the noontime sky: 2. He had no other recourse than to admit defeat; his life having become a peccadillo of disappointment. Were he but a farthing, a boy called Poldy who’s worse fear was his ma’s uneven temper, wading knee-high in the muck behind the woolshed spearing frogs with arrows his da’s da gave him, the sucking noise his boots made when he unstuck his foot from a grave of squashy mud, his arrow a spit of frogs, garlands of roe and green things, three frogs impaled with one pull of his bow, his piss yellower than the buttercups they held under their chins to see who liked butter and who didn’t. {His best friend Obadiah was keen on oleo}.

“(He smites with his bicycle pump the {mudbug} in his left hand.)” (James Aloysius Joyce, Ulysses). His da wore his shirt back to front, affecting a backwardness that followed him wherever he went. Woolshed frogs, his granddad smiling broadly from ear to ear. ‘never admit defeat my boy’ thinking what he really meant was deafness, but his upper-plate slipped and got in the way. Pumping he went about the day, his unstuck boot making a sucking noise. Un-tucked he strode into the day, his cudgel dangling betwixt his legs. Knuckling his bicycle sump he set off into the world, Obadiah at his side. ‘never overestimate the forces of nature’ said his da’s da jawing his upper-plate. Time and again he lost time of time; the hours and days fleeting by like scat through a goose. Up to his waist he went about the day never-minding that at noontime he had a meeting with Dejesus. He wondered: who likes butter and who doesn’t? Maybe Dejesus. Who knows? “(He smites with his bicycle pump the {crawdaddy} in his left hand.)” (ibid). Maybe not. His da taught him how to make a cudgel out of worthless metals, the blacksmith’s apron cutting into the partial bones in his hips. That night his grandmamma served whitefish, his da rescuing a crumb of bone caught in his throat with a thump on his back.

Morphine - In Spite of Me

La Belleza Convulsa

They stitched up the hole in his da’s leg with box-suture; the unraveled ends tied in double-knots then twisted round until the blood stopped spurting. Time was when his da’s legs were fair game for dog-bites and lacerations. Humping through the dogbane behind the woolshed, milking the tall grass, his hipflask hanging from his belt loop, his da hunted wild geese and turbot. His da’s da hunted woodlot pigs with a bow and arrow, taking down garbage-fed hogs with a single shot. When he was a boy his da’s da took him out to the woodlot behind the woolshed, showing him how to string a bow and pull back the feathers so the arrow wouldn’t fly cockeyed. He took his first kill that day; a Landseer with a maggoty eye. His granddad hung it from a bowed sapling, digging the maggots out with his hunting knife, his heart racing in his throat. That was when they called him Poldy, long before he came to be known as the man in the hat.

‘La Belleza Convulsa: Where I lost my Spleen’ was written over the doorway to the Dog and Beggar Tavern. And on the opposite wall, covering over ricochets, near misses and bullet holes: 'Freedom for Los Desaparecidos!' Suhcamelet, prelate to Norman and Varangian, his churlish egg-shaped jowl hanging below his chinstrap, stood admiring his reflection in the window, a stray Landseer with a maggoty eye sniffing his pant leg. ‘away bucetão! I have no time for strays and kettledrums’. On the back of his greatcoat, written in an unsteady Punjabi hand, was the following “(He smites with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his left hand.)” (James Aloysius Joyce, Ulysses). Harping, Suhcamelet retied his shoe and sent his hat flying; the brim whirling like a railroaded top. ‘haven’t seen head nor tail of the crapper spleen, must’ve hightailed north to sky-scraping ground’. Harping, the strings of his heart soaring, he delivered a sermon to those assembled in front of the Waymart, ‘may the goalie host redeem your pitiful souls. So say’eth Robin Goodfellow of the Puck’. Fool, hasn’t a toadstool to piss upon. See his sort round and a bout, piddling in the flowerbox out back of the Dog and Beggar; piddle-puddle astride the grave. Ill-omened, his shirttails un-tucked, he hightails it northerly, his cudgel dangling betwixt his legs. Makes a man harp, lest it does.

Alfonso Osip

That morning, or was it the next?, a legion of fools arrived in town; some on foot, some hanging onto the bumper of the truck clip-clopping like horses. ‘well I’ll be damned’ said the alms man, the buttons on his shirt sparkling earnestly in the sun. ‘its getting harder and harder to make a living these days’. Legions of fools were not an uncommon sight; putting on a show here or there, collecting what miserly gratuities they could, then leaving by truck and on foot, some clip-clopping clip-clopping. Doesn’t take much to teach a man a lesson, specially if he’s taken a turn for the worse. The {horse-headed Dane}… {aka Buachaill Báire} ‘a cunt, dear sir, were I a man accustom to using profane language’. I dare say; it’s the Franciscan’s that prefer the soaked ends, not the Jesuits! Alfonso Osip and Ochoa Emilyevich stood admire one another’s reflection in window of the Dogmen Deli, neither one aware that the sky was about to fall. Osip, a castrato with an oversize chin, and Emilyevich, a pint-size violinist with glass-blue eyes and a goatee, had that morning arrived clip-clopping behind the legion of fools’ truck, the sun glaring off their button-down chemises.

The hunch-backed barber Hascheck, known for his vile demeanor and insatiable guile, jumped off the back of the legion of fools’ truck and into the mud-crummy street, the tails of his greatcoat flapping madly. Catching his breath, his chest pumping like a five-alarm fire he said,

“Her stomach is ugly, isn't it? Covered with folds of fat? You must be able to see it when she bathes...You say she is not very fit. Her breasts, her fat stomach, slap slap, flabby as boiled pork. Just like that, Polzer, slap slap, the mother sow!” (Hermann Ungar, The Maimed)

Taking a tonic from his breast pocket he took a long insatiable swill, suckling like a newborn hog. ‘I dare say’ said Osip, ‘a boiled pork sandwich would go nicely’. ‘with a cream jug of rum’ added Emilyevich, his face wrinkling like a shaken cloth. ‘indeed, yes, indeed’ said Osip. Roca Cathedras sat on the edge of the dais thinking of ways to make slag into gold, his upper lip knitting. Roca Cathedras hated nothing more than truckloads of fools and woman “slap slap, flabby as boiled pork”. He had no time for Alfonso Osip or Ochoa Emilyevich, suckling hogs both. The legion of fools never stayed longer than a fortnight, two if the moon stayed put. The first time Poldy Magyar saw the troop of fools was on a Sunday after Saturday Mass, the fools setting up their tents in the parking lot behind the Waymart, Osip and Emilyevich laughing to burst a gut, Roca Cathedras gawking at them crossly, his forehead stretched tighter than a pigskin blanket.

Laggardly

The truth has its own weaknesses. The day he was born his mamma screeched at the top of her lungs, God forgive me, I have given birth to a monster! He was born Poldy Magyar, his mother changing his name to Japheth on his eleventh birthday. Then on his twelfth birthday, realizing that her son had no competence for shipbuilding, she began calling him ‘my little man in the hat’, as he wore a cap whenever and wherever he went. "Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed." [U.1.242] she said in a soft lilting voice, her ‘little man in the hat’ tugging aggressively at her skirts. I did say at your birth, dear boy, that I had given birth to a monster; but that, I dare say dear son was a mistake: that morning, the morning in question, I had slaked my thirst with Sloe Gin Fizz, thereby corrupting the hole you were hatched from. I beg your forgiveness, my dear lovely child. So that was how it began: from Poldy to Japheth to ‘my little man in the hat’. But mamma why do you feel such shame; a boy is a boy even if his name be untilled.

Laggardly, slowly, he pushed sleep from his body, his eyes trapped shut like the jaws of Nepenthes rajah. The pigheaded four: Death, judgment, heaven and hell. Never underestimate the wisdom of the dead. These his da told him over cold mock chicken sandwiches and warm raspberry Kook-Aid. My son, you must never forget, the world is a sham; life is lived by the stupid, not the wise. Off in the distance woodshadows floated silently across the horizon, his da tugging on his coattails, coaxing him over the five-mile and into the dustbowl of the future. It isn’t your fault mamma; some boys are born monsters. Written on the ceiling, the ink bluing into the corners above his head, was the following: “The Alçada of the village came by chance into the inn together with a notary, and” {the Witness} laid a petition before him, showing that it was requisite for his rights that” {the rector’s assistant}, …there present, should make a declaration before him that he did not know” {Japheth}, also there present, and that he was not the one that was in print in a history entitled "Second Part”” {pamphleteering by way} of {colportage}, by one”{pigheaded Dutchman}… {also known as Buachaill Báire}…" (Cervantes, Don Quixote)

Poldy Magyar awoke from troubled dreams and winched himself out of bed, his legs giving way to inertia and a lack of exercise. The {pigheaded Dutchman}… {also known as Buachaill Báire}, stood at the foot of his cot counting the tiles on the ceiling. Earnestly he proffered him a cigar, offering to clip the prepuce for him with a nod of his gigantic head. ‘roll the clipped end round in your lips, that’s it, like a lolli’ he said holding the extinguished matchstick between his thumb and forefinger, the sulfur smarting his eyes. ‘the Jesuits prefer a soaked end; the Franciscans less so’. The clipped end fell to the floor like a spiraling autumn leaf, the tip frayed and scrimmaged. ‘I’m sure you’d be better equipped to understand what I’m getting at if you weren’t such a good-for-nothing. And good-for-nothings, well they seldom understand a thing; not even their own thoughts, simple and contrived as they may be’. He could fell the earnestness emptying from his body; disgust overcoming his sense of magnetism. ‘dare I say you’re a scoundrel… a cunt, sir, were I a man accustom to using profane language’.

JAMES JOYCE IN PARIS 1920s

Poldy Magyar

‘you look tired’ said J.M. Gutierrez swatting at a fly circling his head, its tiny wings thrashing up a dustbowl of infinitesimal filth. The knife made a kinching sound, the hilt slipping against the open palm of her hand. ‘be careful, she’s a whizz with a pocketknife. I’ve seen her gut a man in halves; his insides coiling like a loose spring. Can’t be too careful around her kind!’ Lorelei, her golden jewelry glist'ning, devouring the boat men both with her dulcet-voiced power. Oh sorrow fill my breast! Thrashing round like a caged tiger, his thoughts falling in and out of consciousness, he felt the sorrow of his age pressing in on his very being. In a catheter-voice, his throat breaching and constricting, he spoke of the age of foolishness, of stout angry men with asthmatic voices and deceitful bathetic pride. ‘you look tired’. ‘no, just trying to make sense’. She’s a tigress, can slit a man in halves with a single thrust of her pocketknife. Best be careful lest she stick you like a suckling pig. ‘I’ll be fine, just give me a moment, I’m in the middle of the thick of it’. With a heavy breast he stepped out into the cool autumnal afternoon, his hat cinched under his arm, a militia of gray and black piebald crows caw-cawing in the branches of the boxwood outside the rector’s study. ‘in the end all that matters was that we took nothing to heart; the misery and cold-heartedness of life’. ‘you mean, don’t you, all that matters is?’ ‘no, all that was, not is, is never was. Listen clearly: when was is is becomes was’. He could feel it, the past overcoming the present. It would only be a matter of time before ‘is’ succeeded ‘was’, relieving the past of the future. The knife made a kinching sound, the blade hilted to the hilt. Cold-hearted she is. Can draw-and-quarter in half the time.

Buachaill Báire stood outside the grocer’s taking in the warm summery day; crooking his head to the left, then the right he took in the entire landscape. The sun warmly caressing his neck, a hole in the clouds above the Waymart pierced by a bolt of raining sun, he made up his mind to pay a visit to the man in the hat whom he had not seen since the Fast of the Bleeding Lamb when both took up the unstitched thread left dangling by the sermonizing pastor. “O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade”. [U. 4.54-55] said the man in the hat looking to mend loose ends. The vicar of Wrexham stood to address the congregation, the hem of his Alb steeped in a gobbet of spit. Poldy Magyar stood admiring his refraction in the awning window, rumpling and poleaxing his face like a kid-soft glove, the sun forming a halo over his behatted head.

Feast of the Rapture

‘...I killed sleeping flies, turning my back to him and whistling’. (Juan Carlos Onetti, Goodbyes and Stories).
The man in the hat met J.M. Gutierrez at the Feast of the Rapture, neither man recognizing the other. Years earlier they met at the Feast of the Lamb, acknowledging one another with a tacit nod of the head. He pulled her across his torso, the hard coils of her breasts digging into his chest like dirks. The smell of her own sex making her sick, his hands despoiling her empty flesh, she lay like a frightened child unable to feel the simplest emotion. Her noviciate last three years; two hanging from the rafters in a horse-sling. They called her Lorelei,

1. I cannot determine the meaning
Of sorrow that fills my breast:
A fable of old, through it streaming,
Allows my mind no rest.
The air is cool in the gloaming
And gently flows the Rhine.
The crest of the mountain is gleaming
In fading rays of sunshine.

2. The loveliest maiden is sitting
Up there, so wondrously fair;
Her golden jewelry is glist'ning;
She combs her golden hair.
She combs with a gilded comb, preening,
And sings a song, passing time.
It has a most wondrous, appealing
And pow'rful melodic rhyme.

3. The boatman aboard his small skiff, -
Enraptured with a wild ache,
Has no eye for the jagged cliff, -
His thoughts on the heights fear forsake.
I think that the waves will devour
Both boat and man, by and by,
And that, with her dulcet-voiced power
Was done by the Loreley.

(Heinrich Heine, Die Lorelei)

Swaying, trembling, the horse-sling cutting her in halves, she surrendered to his pow'rful skiff. ‘I cannot determine the meaning’ said the man in the hat. ‘I think that the waves will devour the fading rays of sunshine, but I could be mistaken’. Fearing that he might be forsaken, or worse, abandoned to the jagged sea, he walked out into the sunshiny bright day, his hat proudly atop his head, the smell of starchy laundry assailing his sense of balance.

Emilio Videla Rafael

{This is foolish! There is no Departamento de Grandes Inquisidores or a Brotherhood of Dialectical Immaterialist’s. These are thoughts thought with little regard for my saneness. The sort that choke me with melancholy.}

Emilio Videla Rafael, Jorge Redondo, Ramón Eduardo Orlando and Massera Agosti meet every Sunday afternoon in the rear of the Waymart to split-hairs over which one of them was responsible for the atrocities carried-out at the Overnight Asylum. They grumble and moan, none willing to accept responsibility for the horrors perpetrated by the orderlies and doctors who were under their control. They were simply following their own conscience, pursuing their moral innerness. They were never forced to do what they did they did it because they chose to, and at no time were they coerced or subjected to duress. They just did it, that’s all. Miscreants tailored to fit the shoe that kicks the poor and underprivileged, all four men live lives of carnal approbation, depraved animals who spread pestilence and disease.

[He remembers a broken-down motel room in a town where no one except a empire of dog-like people understand a word he says. Moneyless, carrying whatever he owns in a haversack, the broken-down motel room smelling of other people’s sex and urine, he sits on the edge of the bed and tries to figure out how he got here. There were mountains; snow covered mountains. A dirt road that bends just outside town, the halogen eyes of a truck slicing through the darkness. Not a soul stopped when he stuck out his finger; not even someone he thought he might know, or thought he knew. The dog-like people offered to help him but first he must be put to work. A dwarf in clown pants and a crocheted toque points to the dogs rummaging through the garbage and says ‘here, feed them’ and hands him a bucketful of innards. The dog-like people come running, in single-file and in groups, dressed in codpieces and toting long spear-like staffs. They enter a campfire ring, single-file or in twos, he can’t remember which, the walls constructed from trees whittled into dagger-like points. One of the crazies points at the snow-covered mountains and says ‘there, that’s the way out’].

J.M. Gutierrez has a mostrar tatuajes de cangrejo on his chest, a mark of los hermandad de los sobrevivientes. He lives in a one room bedsit over the Seder Grocers with another man who refuses to make known his name. Every morning at 7 o’clock they join the line in front of the clinic, talking to no one and clapping their frostbitten hands together waiting for the heavy aluminum doors to open.

Grandes Inquisidores

El hombre del sombrero se detuvo y saludó a Dejesus; hombres cuidado de los demás. Minas, Gerais and Belo Horizonte live in a woolshed with one window and half-a-door. They have to crouch when entering the woolshed lest they bust their heads against the doorframe. The brothers are all under five feet in height, the shortest coming in at just under 4 ft. 9½. The sky fell twice the year the man in the hat met the Horizonte brothers; on Easter Sunday and the day after Lent. Minas, Gerais and Belo had come into town to buy blankets and salt, snookering past the guardsman where the five-mile meets the outland and entering thought the gate behind the earthwork barricade. Sövtöe J.J. Eötvös, the guardsman who was caught sleeping when the brothers crossed the five-mile, was shipped off to the Overnight Asylum where he was interned and subjected to series of vicious incapacitating psychiatric procedures, one such procedure so vicious it resulted in his death. When pushed one of the orderlies claimed that del paciente testículos were subjected to una serie de baños de hielo dando lugar a atrofia del paciente testículos y el escroto rompiendo en mil pedazos de hielo. Sövtöe J.J. Eötvös remains were sent to the Pays de la Loire cemetery where they were buried in a tobacco tin behind los sepultureros’ cubierto. ‘a tobacco tin, how disgusting!’ said one of the inquisitors, his lips bluing from the cold. ‘you’d think they’d at least give the man a decent burial’ said a second inquisitor, ‘testículos y el escroto rompiendo en mil pedazos de hielo, how repugnant’. ‘we’re all to blame’ said the first inquisitor. ‘every last one of us’. ‘I suppose we could have intervened and brought him back’ said the second inquisitor. ‘after all it is our job to protect those who have made it to the other side, even if we find them repugnant’. Eduardo Banzato, Eucrio-Rodrigues de Bonaventura and Risottos-Oliveira Netto work for Los Departamento de Grandes Inquisidores, also known as the Department of Undertaking. It is their responsibility to ensure that those tortured on the other side are brought to safety and to guarantee that they get the proper medical care while interned. As representatives of Los Departamento de Grandes Inquisidores they are required to recant their past as simpletons and embrace a brotherhood based on Dialectical Immaterialism even though none of them understands what Dialectical Immaterialism is or what it requires of them.

Los Sepultureros

He called her his little cunt and said that if she didn’t stop bellyaching and learn how to act like a grownup she’d end up a spinster with a houseful of cats. He use to see her with her da shopping for hand-me-downs at the Saint Vincent De Paul, her da yanking her by her pale freckled arm, Snježana wishing they could go to the Eaton’s where they had brand new dresses not ones that smelled like other people’s dirty houses. Never once did she feel soft cotton against her skin or lace-up a pair of new shoes. He said new things were a waste of money and that if that’s what she wanted she could go live with the nuns or sell herself to men with troubled pasts and uneven tempers. She wished her name was Lorelei and that when she went to the bathroom her da didn’t peek at her through a hole in the wall. She wished she had four arms so she could push her da off her when the pale freckled ones were pinned behind her back. They carried her father to the cemetery in a wheeled bier. The gravediggers, their jaws working like gristmills, spat tobacco juice onto the raised area around the grave; fader Sieraków, humming a Gaelic funereal dirge, knelt in front of the wooden catafalque, his Chastibule collected round his waist, the hem of his Alb steeped in a gobbet of spit. The ceremony for The Absolution of the Dead was conducted by fader Tunuyán, a tonsured Franciscan with a brash tone and uneven teeth.

"Los sepultureros, sus mandíbulas de trabajo, como molinos, jugo de tabaco escupió en la zona elevada alrededor de la tumba; Sieraków fader, tarareando un canto fúnebre gaélico, se arrodilló delante del catafalco de madera, su Chastibule recogido alrededor de su cintura, el dobladillo de su Alb empapado en un trocito de saliva."

Once the funereal Mass had been said, and the mourner who had thrown herself on top of the coffin had been pulled free, fader Sieraków wiped his brow, and turning to leave stopped in front of the sepultureros, who were impatiently shuffling back and forth waiting for the mourners to leave, and said ‘may God forgive you your sins’, then pausing, his uneven teeth spitting out the words, whispered ‘lousy cunts’. György and Löwinger, for that were their names, both beneficiaries of lowbrow intellect and less that honorable temperament, stared popeyed at fader Sieraków, neither man knowing how to respond.

von Waldeyer

“Hurrying passed me her face red like the cream soda we bought at the corner store where the fat kid chewed his cud pathetic he didn’t know his ass from a hole in his head see his kind under the rector’s bench much as I’d like to forget that and that that went on back then when I wasn’t as big as I am now littler when I wore those knee-britches with the slit on the side and the rope belt that was always rubbing the fat over the lip of my pants and fader looking for the hole down the dark cobwebby tunnel that connects the twats with the balls and the white sheets flocking like gulls making a nuisance when the older kids just wanted to show off to their flat chest girlfriends cheeks pinched crimson like the red squall jacket my mamma made me wear in bad weather and my da sitting on the porch tamping flake into his cob enough to bring on a hacking fit just like that".

von Waldeyer, cunt drops washers into the collection plate, thinks he’s putting one over on God, not likely that God would give him a moment’s notice. A dime a dozen, cunts like von Waldeyer. Always got to keep your eye on ‘em; never know if they’ll pick your pocket or run you up against the wall. Thing is. Firstly I met him when I was a wee trawler fishing for chubs in wellies and the rain slicker my ma made me wear just in case the weather got ruinous. Branches whipping round like ragdolls with twig arms. Take your head off like a bean tin, blackstrap flying every-which-where. Snježana ate her lunch on a bench in the park behind the aqueduct, her tiny malformed teeth sawing raw carrots and sandwich crusts. Her mamma made her wear spurge cotton dresses with lace collars bought off the hanger from the Saint Vincent De Paul. His da told him that she never outgrew her milk teeth and had to break whatever she ate into small pieces so she wouldn’t choke on them. Her teeth had little bumps on them and if you looked hard enough you could see tiny purple veins like the ones you could see on a baby’s head when its born.

Geschwister - 27

In his greatcoat pocket he carried a slip of yellowing paper, and written in a child’s tiny script on that slip of yellowing paper was the following: “I'm still standing at the door of life, knocking and knocking, though admittedly none too forcefully, and breathlessly listening to see whether someone will decide to open the bolt and let me in.” (Robert Walser, Geschwister Tanner). Never underestimate the power of digestion, his great great-grandfather said, his belly sagging fatly. His grandfather wore oatmeal gray trousers and blue flannel shirts with snap-buttons. On Saturdays he wore a reddish-purple (Borscht-red, his grandmamma called it) jacket and gray woollen trousers tapered from the knee to the top of his black boots. Flynn Odem plays checkers with his granddad on a upside down barn door placed between two sawhorses. ‘I hear that Chinese masseuse puts her back into it’. ‘Had her once. On the fallboards behind the woolshed. Rode me like a goddamn bronco. Still can’t lay on that side’. His granddad ate corn off the cob churned with peameal butter and riversalt. Would smack his buttery lips and poke with the end of his tongue for the pieces stuck in his beard. Made a god-awful noise. Could hear him smacking and chomping clear into the backyard. His grandmamma told him he was like that on account of he got kicked by a mule and couldn’t close his mouth proper. He liked to watch his granddad snap close the buttons on his shirt with his thumb and middle finger, like he was trying to shoo away the devil or call upon God.

Foil’s Tonic

Horning, she’s got horning on her ‘thing’. Ringkobing horning with feathers and cactus lace. But mamma I can’t. You will, by God you will! But I can’t; it hurts. ‘it’s suppose to hurt!’ you silly cow! Get to bed and be quick about it! His woolly gray socks scratched her legs, the studs on his denim blue trousers leaving rivet-marks on her belly. Funny how he never once kissed her on the cheek, never ever. She stopped at F.W. Sweny’s Apothecary, the smell of ripening figs and Foil's Tonic pickling her nose. ‘I’ll take a bar of linseed soap. The lemony one please’. She laid a fistful of coppers on the counter, counting them in twos, separating the tarnished ones from the shiny ones. ‘that should be enough. Say, have you seen a man with Stilton blue eyes?’ The apothecary agent gave her a cagey stare, the back of her head squared with the snuff self. Rabbi Loew, his legs crossed one over the other, sat in the big horsehair chair by the door, the age spots on his hands as brown as Golem clay. ‘what can I do for you Rabbi?’ asked the agent trying not to stare at his hands. Struggling to stand up, his belly hanging like an overfed lapdog, the Rabbi pointed a spotty finger at a sac of lemon twists on the shelf above the agent’s head. ‘those; I’ll take a bag of those’ he said, his eyes two black dots sunk in a knoll of pink flesh. I promise it won’t hurt, now turn over. Don’t look at me! Look away. The dead come in every shape, size and colour; some more inconspicuous than others. The Chinese masseuse wears pin heel boots. Strange is she kisses on the lips. Never says lay off. I promised it’d hurt, now get on your belly. Big horsehair chair and age spots like Golem clay. Gimme the yellar ones; yes, that’s them. Sad thing is his hat doesn’t fit anymore; sideburns stuck to his skinny neck like washer line.

Dlugacz's Deli

That morning, or was it lunchtime?, the soup kitchen queue reached down the street and around the corner, a woman with a sow’s face announcing the coming of the end. She stopped at Dlugacz's Deli for a pork pie, the soup kitchen queue clanking and squabbling like a dessert rattler. ‘get off my shoe’ squabbled a man with a fiery red beard. The taller the beanstalk grew the shorter his da’s temper got. He remembered his da telling him that, that and that he’d never make it to the top if he spent his time messing round like a kid. Giacomo Taldegardo de Juan San Francesco di Sales Saberio Pietro Leopardi hates children; his longer elegiac pieces attest to that. His da said that boys like him had no business thinking they would ever amount to a hill of beans. You’ll never ever never reached the top, his da would say, never ever. The Chinese masseuse yanked his da’s cock, strangling it like a fair-haired chicken. Every morning his mamma laid out his da’s work clothes: a starched and ironed blue pinstriped blue shirt, a pair of denim blue trousers and woolly gray socks. Funny how he never once kissed her on the cheek, never ever.

Lela wished her name was Lorelei, but her mamma said Lorelei was a whore’s name and whores weren’t woman but shylocks who sold slatternly love to unhinged men and pigs. Kaspar had to learn how to whelk all ovary again after he’d spent fifteen years kneeling encrypted in the tomb ova his bode; life’s lest rake ageist death. The sic and befouled, he said; ghastly. The first time she heard her da say this she felt sick to her stomach. The second time she ran out of the house and hid behind the woolshed, her da hollering bloody murder. Get to bed and be quick about it! We haven’t all day you know! Her da was one of those unhinged men her mamma talked about; a fair-haired pig with wiggly ears and a sad tortuous smile. Your da fucks whores, she’d say sprinkling ironing water on his blue pinstriped blue shirt. A ripe cunt of a man; a pig! Clanking and rattling like a coal-shovel! I’ve a mind to starch his ‘thing’, she said running the hissing sniffling iron over his collar. Chinese cock he is; a ripe pig!

Quahog Tannery

The harridan’s sister rounded the corner and ran smack dab into Lela, neither woman giving an inch. ‘but I won’t’. ‘you must by God you must’. When she was a little girl her mamma made her wear scratchy sweaters and knee-skirts. She went swimming in the lily pond behind their house, her bathing suit too loose to conceal her frailties. When he was a boy he missed her shoulder blades by an inch; the arrow slicing through her hair and lodging in the trunk of an elm tree. He flew the kite into the telephone wires, the airplanes, soaring, over the top of the house.

Silvestre Quiroga works for the Quahog Tannery, the shirt he wears to work the same one he wears dancing. Haines Fortinbras hasn’t a shirt to his name, his wife having burned them all in a pyre in the backyard. Ghastly cunt, he intoned, Ghastly. He can still hear his mamma hollering in his ear: ‘pull that nuisance of a thing down! (‘but I won’t’). ‘you must by God you must’. The Quahog Tannery manufacture livery goods. Silvestre Quiroga’s job is to stretch and tan the hides used to craft women’s gloves; the gloves petitioned by women of culture and couture. The Vir La Libertad Tailors, the Colugo Seamstresses’, the Quezon Nueva Apparel Co. and the Ecija Haberdashers all carry Quahog Tannery livery goods, the same brand Lela’s grandmamma wore winter, summer and fall. Lela claims ‘my grandma never wore the same skirt twice. She was above such ignobility’s ’. ‘it'll fit if you scrunch up your hand. Make a fist by God, a fist!’

The bookmaker’s wife works for the Quezon Nueva Apparel Co. pandering to symphony enthusiasts and hoity-toity charity types. The man in the hat met the bookmakers’ wife after the Glutting of the Ewe, the two enjoying a good chuckle together. As he was a sensible man the curate congratulated the bookmaker’s wife on her stately mission, to become the heiress to the Quezon Nueva Apparel Co. The Witness swore up and down that a woman of such illusory beauty should not be allowed to set foot in the Vincennes Glove Co. ‘the Quezon Nueva Apparel Co. 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’. The curate of Churchdown, one Cecil Basingstoke, known for his high teas and low morals, chastised the bookmaker’s wife, the blood in his temples reaching unspeakable levels.

Under a mishmash of eel skin the man in the hat found a notebook; and in the notebook was written the following: “yaaaa hooooooooooo wl!” Oftentimes his thinking went haywire; the past swarming his thoughts like lemmings retreating from the cliffs of forgetfulness. At times like these he wished he had a tight fitting cap; one that would squeeze his thoughts into the deepest recesses of his brain. There they could be forgotten, laid to rest with the other thoughts and memories he’d worked so hard to disremember.

Juntacadáveres

Dejesus rounded the corner and ran slap daub into the Witness, the Witness sticking out his hand like a traffic cop. Ignacy the trumpeter stole Villaseñor’s oxcart, driving it clockwise into the dust. The man’s a menace! Always sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. Someone’s gun to kill him, I assure you. On his fifteenth birthday he got a secondhand bicycle and the whooping, narrowly missing his end. His mamma applied a warm compress to his chest, squeezing the cool water into a washbowl she kept on the windowsill by the window. The lustre of his achievements waned as the whooping worsened, his throat swelling to the size of a pumpkin squash. ‘but mamma it hurts’. ‘never you mind’. ‘is it suppose to is it ma?’ ‘yes its suppose to’. ‘but I can’t mamma I can’t’ ‘you will, by God you will!’ On his sixteenth birthday he got a clout in the jaw and a purple eye, his mamma’s new boyfriend not taking a shine to him.

Juntacadáveres carries a blade tucked into his boot just below the hilt. Whenever he feels threatened he unsheathes the blade, waving it like a madman in the face of his assailant. That day the man in the hat met no one, choosing to stay home rather than venture out into the world. Had he ventured out he would have run into a madman and a boy with a head the size of a pumpkin squash. But he did not. When he was a boy he made a raft out of bulrushes and cardboard, strapping it together with clothesline and the metal twists his mamma used to cinch tight garbage bags. In his Billy-Boots, the outsides turned down, his name written in black ink, he would wade into the swamp in search of frogs and torch-size bulrushes. His uncle gave him a an archery set for his tenth birthday, his da making him a quiver out of rolled up newspaper and electrician’s tape. Billy-booted, a garland of hair sticking out from under his hat, he speared frogs with arrows, and arrows with frogs, never quite sure which was which. He impaled two at a time, one on top of the other. He stuck three with one arrow, the third swimming underneath the two. How unlucky, he thought, to be minding one’s own business only to be gutted through the back.

The Witness rounded the corner and ran slap daub into Dejesus, the two coming to a full halt. Villaseñor stole the trumpeter’s oxcart, driving it counterclockwise into the mud. This is surely crazy! Madness, I say, gone counterclockwise! I assure you. ‘but I can’t mamma I can’t’ ‘you will, by God you will!’ When he was a boy he made kites out of garbage bags and coat hangers; taping the bags to the coat hangers with electrician’s tape. He flew the kites, soaring, above the clouds, his mamma hollering at him to ‘pull that nuisance of a thing down! You’re going get it all tangled up in an airplane!’

Henrico Villaseñor

His legs kicked like two hanged men as the doctor turned him on his side. ‘Don’t touch his face…I hear that’s where it’s the worse!’ ‘you’ve already said that’ said the doctor. ‘now move back your blocking the light’. Rolling the body on its other side, the side furthest away from the furnace, the doctor checked for a pulse, the half-corpse’s arms stiffening like lightning rods. ‘bring me the lamp’ ordered the doctor. ‘I need more light’. The farrier walked to the other side of the workshop and grabbed the lamp next to the blast-oven. ‘hurry’ said the doctor cradling the half-dead half-corpse’s head. ‘half-dead or dead the man deserves respect’ said the doctor half-angrily. The dead come in every shape, size and colour; rigor pallor the most conspicuous. Preparing the corpse for transport is best left to professionals and extortionists. He gave the farrier a esculent scowl and pushed down on the half-dead corpse, yellow bile oozing from between the pickets in its teeth. ‘Villaseñor has an oxcart he seldom uses’ said the farrier hoping to convince the doctor that the half-dead corpse should be got rid of. ‘moving him now would be fatal’ said the doctor. ‘he’s barely holding on’. Transporting the half-dead is best left to a specialist with an ear for stiffening. ‘but what if we get sick?’ ‘that’s the price we pay for being human’ said the doctor palpitating the flesh around the half-corpse’s sternum and ribcage. Henrico Villaseñor’s oxcart is made out of spruce; the axel palpitating counterclockwise to the wheels.

As he left {his lean-to}, {the man in the hat} turned gaze upon the spot where he had fallen. "Here Troy was," said he; "here my ill-luck, not my cowardice, robbed me of all the glory I had won; here Fortune made me the victim of her caprices; here the lustre of my achievements was dimmed; here, in a word, fell my happiness never to rise again." (Cervantes, Don Quixote)

Death comes to those who wait, thought the man in the hat. Never a moment before. He knows when death will come. His father died of the whooping when he was a boy; and if the sins of the father are visited on the son, he {too} will be visited by death before his fifteenth birthday. He pulled the half-corpse counterclockwise, pressing down hard on the half-dead man’s shoulders. ‘you say he seldom uses his oxcart’ said the doctor. ‘yes as far as I know he does, or doesn’t?’ said the farrier scratching the top of his sparsely haired head. ‘then go get the cart; and be quick! We haven’t much time’. ‘don’t you mean he?’ ‘who?’ asked the doctor with annoyance. ‘him’ said the farrier pointing at the half-dead corpse. ‘enough! Now off with you; quickly!’ he said, his face as red as a pumping heart.

Balotesti Ilfov

They caught him trying to climb over the five-mile, his stilts stuck fast in the barbwire. Better to have been eaten by the sun than a half-starved relative. The farrier Balotesti Ilfov sleeps in the old gas shed behind the water tower. He works in the garage behind the consignment office, the furnace belching coal smoke like a derailed Puffing Devil. The farrier Balotesti Ilfov makes the beast-with-two-backs with the harridan’s sister, his face a pantomime of unearthly bliss. From the tool shed window he can see the aberrant and hideously syphilitic trying to cross across the five-mile fence; some hanging lifeless in the barbwire, others chanting and picking fresh scabs off sole-worn feet. ‘swinging back and forth, left to die… yet they still keep coming’.

Doctor professor J. Petrus entered the room carrying his leather satchel, the moon glowering over his shoulder. ‘where is he?’ ‘over there’ said the farrier pointing to a heap of filthy clothing on the floor next to the furnace. ‘he’s been like that for days’. ‘have you tried moving him?’ ‘no, I was worried he might wake up’. Standing over the body, for he knew from past experience that heaps such as this concealed a half-dead body, his leather satchel swinging from side to side, the doctor looked down at the heap of dirty clothing, a solitary finger pointing upwards, the nail curled under. ‘He might be sick. Don’t touch his face…I hear that’s where it’s the worse!’ cautioned the farrier warily. ‘move back’ said the doctor, his satchel hanging between his legs like a leather scrotum.

Horse Steel

The tinker fashioned a pair splints out of gate stiles, attaching them to the boy’s legs with screws. He shaved down the tibia, decreasing the gap between the boy’s knees, Saber shins having reduced his gait to a shuffle. Hutchinson's teeth were a common sight beyond the five-mile, the fence built to keep the syphilitics and undesirables out and to ensure that if they did make it passed the first gate, the barbwire would discourage them from continuing any further. His da said that the syphilitics had lopsided heads that made them look like they were walking sideways when they were walking forwards and forwards when they were walking sideways. The children had slanted foreheads and flypaper-thin eyelids. The parents slopping foreheads and hooded eyelids. His da said that the oldest ones were known to eat the younger ones, cooking them on skewers over a brushfire. The ones that got away got caught up in the barbwire, he said, so there was no need to feel sorry for them. Anyhow the sun would cook them, he said, which was better than being eaten by a relative.

“{Lela}, so the history says, was extremely happy to see {the harridan’s sister} in her house. She welcomed {her} with great kindness, charmed as well by her beauty as by her intelligence; for in both respects the fair {Lela} was richly endowed, and all the people of the city flocked to see her as though they had been summoned by the ringing of the bells.” (Cervantes, Don Quixote)

The farrier forged a pair of stilts out of horse steel. Working the kilned steel over the throat he hammered out the longer pieces, pulling and shaping the smaller ones with a pair of long-handle pinchers. He welded the pieces together, milking the joints to ensure a tight fit.

Concha Sucia

His da ran the dogs in the field behind the woolshed. The dogs ran until one of them gave in and lay on its belly. His da put down the dogs that couldn’t run anymore. His da he made a beet stew with the dogs that couldn’t run anymore; the beets turning the meat jugular red. The Acosados Nuestros Pâtés Co. buy the other dogs, the ones his da can’t be bothered putting down, for a dollar fifty a pound. His da makes Callejeros Monigote from sticky paper and sits them on the porch on Santos Inocentes night. The Aracaju whores are known for their fat breasts; some so plump they look like foaling mounts. “No es que crea imposible curarse, sino que no cree en el valor, en la trascendencia de curarse”. (Juan Carlos Onetti, Los Adioses) was written in red paint over the door to the Aracaju bordello, the mad•am, her garishly painted face enough to turn a man’s belly inside out, waving her hankie from the balcony. Juan Paolo Mantegazza carries a piece of paper in his coat pocket. On the paper is written ‘Acosados Nuestros Indios Murieron Al Luchar’, the edges curled up like sleeping children.

The first time the sky fell it fell like a lead balloon; the sun bouncing off the sea-blue surface like a child’s ball. The second and third times it fell it fell upside down; the outsides hitting the ground first, the middle last. The fourth time it fell it fell twice, ricocheting off the surface, the people closest to the middle seeing a blue halo corseting sideways like a rocket. His da boiled the meat and added it to the beets, the quarters dripping with fat. ‘la carne del perro se come mejor con una salsa gruesa’ said a woman in a leper’s skin coat, her hair coiled into a bun. ‘you’re mighty cocksure for a pipsqueak’ said the woman. ‘if one expects to outlive the dying one must be cocksure’ said the man in the round cap, his eyes darting back and forth. ‘anyhow cunts like you are a dime a dozen’ he said smirking. ‘concha sucia!’ hissed the woman in the leper’s skin coat. ‘puede la huelga de dios usted absolutamente!’

Lela stood in front of the church trying to make up her mind: should she enter through the front doors or skulk in through the back. Not sure what to do she walked away, her thoughts pulling her this way and that. His da played the dogs’ ribcages like a xylophone, the smallest bones to the right, the biggest to the left. Sometimes he’d use the hind quarter as a kettle drum, hitting the bones with his fist. Other times he threw the bones into the trash or boiled them into a stock. Or he extracted the marrow and served it in clay bowls with little ear-like handles. His da hated wastefulness and things left out too long in the sun.

Coloc a Luva

The pew-wood scratched the seat of his trousers; the ones his grandmamma sewed him out of seed bags. She’s a mighty fine pinker. Cuts bolts of clothe with an eye for straight lines and hems. Can’t say I can say a bad word about her. Never grants me reason to. And grant she does: gives coppers and redskin pennies to the Women’s Auxiliary and the poor. Ear-to-ear, she gives… dentures bristled with tea-biscuits and doily-thread. A fine woman indeed. ‘coloc a luva, bastardo ladrão!’ yelled a man in a round hat. ‘imediatamente, você torneira otário!’ ‘El astillero’ yelled a man in a peaked cap, ‘Lo vi allí’. He didn’t understand why people screamed when all they had to do was talk. Maybe loud noises made him cringe; or he simply detested people in general. He abhorred people who spoke in riddles, no-good cocksuckers and bare-faced liars. He hated loud, clashing noises; cunts who always seemed to have the answer, even when you didn’t want it; or worse, when you did but were loathe to admit it. He’d fuck them all, Auxiliary ladies with blue hair and soiled nappies; every last one of them. ‘get a lay on’, his da used to say.

Pier - 'On the Road'

Enormous Head

He awoke with a start, his head double the size it was the night before. He shook his head up and down, then from side to side all the while counting from 100 backwards, something he did when he felt out-of-sorts, then opening open his jaw he let out a groaning sigh; the sky outside his lean-to window shattering into a million jewel-like pieces. ‘good God my head is enormous!’ He felt like the devil had knocked the stuffing out of him; everything other than his head smaller than it was the day before. Let him die and be done with it; further sentence is foolish. Unexpectedly, faintly the sky fell into his rooftop; collapsing the timbers, joists and crossbeams. You should have aimed higher; by God Yes twice as high higher! Twice the size that it was the night before. Was it? it was. You can’t make a purse out of a boar’s ear; its sacrosanct… the ear. That morning the man in the hat rose from bed a different man; the sky outside his lean-to window twice the size it was the day before. ‘better that it grow twice than fall’ he thought to himself. The surest way to corrupt the sky is to make it littler; like things in a mirror: they always appear bigger than they actually are.

‘it’s not what you make of it, but what it makes of you’ said the Witness. ‘never confuse the one for the other’. His face reddening he ended with ‘God makes things! Not you!’ ‘sodomizer’ said the boy next to the freckled-face boy. ‘always sneaking up behind you’. He wears paisley socks, his hammertoes piercing the woolly end. The boy sitting next to the freckle face boy yanks on his socks, the elastics frayed round the shins. ‘God made you!’ said the Witness pointing at the freckle face boy. ‘sodomizer’ said the boy next to the freckled-face boy.

29th

‘I must go on I won’t go I can’t’ thought the man in the hat, a tuffaceous posy of hair sticking out from under his hat. Today being the 29th day of the month, a month that seemed to go on and on, a month that sat in his thoughts like a lowly beggar, shirt torn, hands outstretched revealing a capacious litter of sores, thumbscrews, fingers pressed together in prayer, summoning gods and heathens, the steeple of his head warding off lightening strikes and rogue pigeons, the next to last to last day of the month loitered like an unwanted lover, her advances making you wonder what you saw in her to begin with. ‘especially the dead’ he mumbled to himself, ‘or the dying.

It makes no difference to me; either way they’re not alive, living, yes, but not alive ’. The dead die and the living die; the trick is in knowing which is which. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the littlest dogman appeared from behind a fallen stand of fichus’, his chest puffed out like a fat man’s stomach, his eyes trained on the man in the hat. Pointing he garbled something faintly, softly, yet loud enough to raise the hair on the man in the hat’s neck. Not sure how to respond the man in the hat walked in the opposite direction, the littlest dogman playing his ribcage like a xylophone, the sun cutting the Seder Grocer’s awning to ribbons.

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." (Friedrich Nietzsche) was written in an unsteady hand over the door to the Zum Zum Tavern, the proprietor offering a free drink to whomever could shoot the ‘Y’ out of ‘youth’. ‘fools’ thought the man in the hat. ‘should aim for the ‘R’… knock the stuffing out of the devil, by God’.

James Joyces Ulysses (1967)_6.avi

Vomolbo the Sluggard

He went to bed thinking of summer days that went on for ever and ever, his mamma standing at the foot of his bed saying ‘get up, the day’s half over’, his da laying the new sod in the half-yard, the sun burning his shoulders hot-chili red. Georg Ludwig Trakl lives in the house across the street with a half-mad dog. The half-mad dog runs in circles in the back yard. Basel Zarathustra passed away on the 25th day of the eighth month nineteen hundred naught zero, his remains interned in a butcher’s box in a garden overlooking the Overnight Asylum. When not sketching still-life’s, which he does sequestered away in the smallest room in his cottage, Basel Zarathustra tends to the half-mad dog’s evacuations; the half-mad dog’s master, Georg Ludwig Trakl, too busy tending to his own to bother with the dog’s. Féin Aust-Agder spends his days watching the half-mad dog running round and round in circles. Georg Ludwig Trakl’s claims that half-mad dogs are more human than people. ‘babies need they’re shit pulled out of they’re crap-holes, dogs don’t. And dogs make they’re commode crouching, not sitting on a seat’.

The sluggard Vomolbo sits all day looking out the window of his cottage, his peach-plump hands holding up the hammock of his chin. He watches Féin Aust-Agder watching the half-mad dog running in circles in Georg Ludwig Trakl’s half-yard. Across the alleyway peering through a fissure in the fence Féin Aust-Agder watches the sluggard Vomolbo watch the ½-mad mutt kicking up dirt running in circles, neither aware that the other is watching the other. Dogs shit and babies shit and men and women and morons shit. But dogs shit standing, babies and men and women don’t. Morons shit anywhere they please; sitting, standing or crouching in the corner. The man in the hat felt a cold coming on; the skin around his eye sockets achy and red. He didn’t care whether dogs shit standing or crouching, all he cared about was his achy red skin.

The man in the hat stood looking at his reflection in a puddle of dog urine, the dog halfway down the street running in circles, its tail serving as a lightening rod or a ship’s rudder (who’s to know which?) Across the street leaning unsteadily against the Seder Grocer’s doorpost the Witness handed out blue and white pamphlets, the dog circling his bellbottomed trousers. Standing on the corner, his feet shuffling like thrown dice, the alms man held his alms-cap out in front of him, the cap sagging with washers and wooden-nickels. Her skirts hiked up round her waist the harridan’s sister makes her way across the sideways, the sun striating her forehead with red lines, the dog raising a hind leg and pissing on the Witness’ leg. Watching from the middle of the street, the dog’s urine inching closer to his foot, the man in the hat let out a sigh, and removing his cap said ‘the dead do no one any good, especially the dying.’

Efrén

Carlos Pérez Efrén and Juan Vizcaíno Hernández met one afternoon in the park behind the Waymart, neither man aware that the other had a bone to pick with Nepomuceno Jalisco. Nepomuceno Jalisco lived in a collapsing shed on the outskirts of the five-mile fence, his life a day-to-day fight with consumption and violent whooping (brought on by dead rotting things and things almost dead or soon to be dead, although rotting just the same). ‘I am a man not to be fooled with… stay clear of my temper, it will exhaust what little patience and goodness you have in your heart’. The first time Carlos Pérez Efrén heard this pronouncement he was a boy of nine accompanying his mother to the market; Nepomuceno Jalisco, standing stock-still between the baker and the butcher, his lips moving like red licorice whips, claiming that he knew the whereabouts of the red glove, and for a quiver of arrows would divulge its location. His mamma, grabbing hold of his hand pulled him past the deranged objectionable man, her face slick with rain.

Most days the sun sits in the sky over the Waymart clocktower. Most nights the moon squats like a yellow whore, her lovers the clouds defiling her from behind. Chiriquí’s saddle horn cleaves his testicles in half, splayed sacs of fleshy life flattened against his jiggling thighs. “So vehement and so piteous were the lamentations of {Hörbiger} that they drew tears from {Roué’s} eyes, unused as they were to shed them on any occasion.” (Cervantes di Miguel, Don Quisciotte). This is how it begins; the air churning round and round his head, then a snap, then nothing, stillness, the ceiling fan groaning under the weight of his body. In that epigrammatic second before death a thought, a lamentation, ‘Why doesn’t he steal a horse and make a getaway?’ Then ‘Dying does no one any good, especially the dead.’ ‘There’s no denying the truth’ his dad said. ‘even when it’s a lie’, his laugh soaring like a kite into the blue afternoon sky.

Plástico y Excremento

Y plástico y excremento de apariencia anormal, the bed sheets coiled round his ankles, the head matron beside herself with disgust. ‘give him a suppository’. ‘quick before he fills the room with shat’. ‘try prying his knees apart!’ ‘widget, watch the damn widgets!’ ‘easy as it goes’. ‘slowly’. Oh but the depths of depravity. José Proaño wears women’s hats, claiming they are much better at keeping his head safe from falling skies. With equal arms the head matron stopped his scatting, his maundering dispatches driving her mad. ‘his legs. Squeeze, you foolish woman!’ Dr. Mudstone stood glowering over the bed, his manicured hands clasped in prayer. ‘stick it in his ass!’ he ordered, the matron pushing down hard on his head.

You might ask what does Oskar Hörbiger have to do with the story? Nothing. He arrives, then as quickly as he arrives departs, leaving behind a wedge in your thoughts. (You might ask but you shouldn’t! Nothing I have to say is worth listening to. You’d do better with sums; with things that can be made sense of. Move on; you’ll find nothing of interest here).

The first time he fell toppling backwards, the noose hanging itself. The second time he fell forward, the chair catapulting into the kitchen table. The third time the rope cut through his neck, the laryngeal cartilage popping through the skin. Hanging himself was the one uncensored act he had left; the adjectival having deputized the first-person-participial. Camberwell Jowett eventually hanged himself from the kitchen light, Sandefjord the orderly unhooking him from the garret-beam and wrapping him in oilcloth. Not a word was spoken that night about the hanging in the Overnight Asylum; Camberwell Jowett’s bed was reassigned and his belongings burned in the makeshift crematorium in the basement.

The day after the hanging a young girl claiming to be Camberwell Jowett’s daughter arrived in town, the director of the Overnight Asylum sending her out the front door on the toe of his boot. When word got out that another patient had hanged himself at the Overnight Asylum the rector called for an investigation, claiming that 'God’s work was being meddled with and whomever was responsible would be punished accordingly'.

Oskar Hörbiger

Oskar Hörbiger has no place in common society. A rogue, a mountebank, the scoundrel is not to be trusted: putting faith in him is like believing in {fairytale} happy endings, proof of man’s abject stupidity. One-time owner of the Bejel Linen Co., general nuisance and gadabout, the cunt should be thrown to the dogs, if they’d have ‘em, which they wouldn’t. The original owner of the Bejel Linen Co., Girolamo Pétasse, transferred ownership to the cad Hörbiger after falling ill with the whooping, which he died from two months later, alone, febrile and shivering in the tinsmith’s shed behind the livery. Dr. Mudstone pronounced him dead and signed the death certificate, warning the tinsmith that he best fumigate the shed before returning to the anvil. Dr. Ragama, ignoring proper practice, gave the corpse an enema, running the hose over and through the transom and attaching the tin nozzle to the rubber gills. Then the Dr. prescribed a good scrubbing to exfoliate the dead hanging skin. The internist Dr. Salcedo, who happened to be passing by that day and is renown for his skill at straightening bent and twisted legs, which he achieves by bending them over a pommel, offered to dispose of the rotting corpse, donating it to the burn ward of the hospital at Coláiste Cliath, which admits corpses and the half-dead Wednesdays and Friday evenings. Nonsense! Girolamo Pétasse died from rickettsia, his knees locked together like widgets. The night before he died Dr. Mudstone prescribed y vidrio o plástico de analéptico for recurrent excremento de apariencia anormal, the patient having shat himself twice before anyone noticed.

José “Pepe” Conteris

He let go of the back of the pew and allowed himself to fall backwards, sinking into the crooked floorboards. ‘see, God does renounce those who disbelieve!’ exclaimed the rector’s assistant. ‘nonsense’ bellowed a man sitting in the front pew. ‘the man’s obviously fainted… look at his eyes’. Winded (as he had just come up from the basement where he had been sent to retrieve the Host) the red-haired altar boy tripped and fell headlong into the pulpit, the Host flying every-which-where. Pointing his talon-like finger, stained yellow from years of smoking, the rector said ‘Now let us pray’. ‘what is the meaning of this?’ said the Witness striding up the centre aisle, Dritëro Vogel in tow. Dritëro, a man of squat-measure, his torso four-square to his shoulders, accompanied the Witness on his evangelical rounds, ensuring the sanctity of the Holy Word and mealy-mouthing anyone heathen enough to contest the inviolability of the Blessed Lamb. Slamming his fist against the altar, his ring-finger tolling, the Witness gathered in his overcoat and turned to face the congregation, Dritëro Vogel close on his heels. ‘yes a heathen, a wretch, but a lamb of God just the same’.

‘Non lasci uomo gettare la prima pietra, che lui lapidato egli stesso’ said an old man sitting in the back pew, his face a withered rotten apple. ‘Sim, e pode queda do céu no inferno’ said a second old man, his face a bashed in tomato. ‘y puede Cristo estar con usted’ said a woman with a pockmarked face. ‘puta de la concha’ whispered Lela, her fire-red bangs hiding her eyes. ‘may the Blessed Lamb be your friend’ said the rector, the stain on his robe taking on the appearance and shape of a goat. ‘in the name of God Almighty, amen’.

José “Pepe” Conteris, his mouth stuffed with boiled mutton, let out a sigh, his forehead crimped like windswept drapes. ‘Nonsense!’ bellowed £. Q. Beiträge, his mamma tugging at his shirtsleeve. ‘stop!’ I implored stop! implored Złolton ₤owther, his eyes boiled mutton gray. ‘Cristo estar con usted, do céu no inferno’’ said man with the bashed-in face. ‘for the love of God!’ yelled the Witness. ‘enough is enough!’

Złolton ₤owther

Âmapanada Del Amour sits facing the Seder grocer’s window, her hair pulled back into a nosegay. Next to her sits a girl in a yellow cotton dress, her fingers worrying the beads of her rosary. Across from the girl in the yellow cotton dress sits the littlest dogman, his chest puffed out like an courting ɡraʊs. Walking passed on his way home the man in the hat gives the littlest dogman an stern look, the littlest dogman smiling broadly from ear-to-ear. ‘menace’ says the man in the hat. ‘its getting so a girl can’t worry her beads without having to turn her back on the world’.

The night he met Âmapanada Del Amour the sky was as black as the inside of a storm lantern; snowflakes eddied like kicked dandelions, the smoke from the coke oven smarting their eyes, and in the pew across from them, sitting next to his mamma, £. Q. Beiträge snickering at the spilt wine on the rector’s dress, and sitting in the front pew across the aisle €von ¥olanda and Złolton ₤owther, €von working her rosary like an abacus, Złolton making a pocking sound with his mouth, the rector giving them the eye of the lamb, £. Q. busting a stitch, his mamma tugging plaintively at his shirt sleeve. That night, the lamps flickering like drunken fireflies, the moon shimmering like a Christly halo, he slid his hand beneath Âmapanada Del Amour’s skirts, the milk-softness of her nethermost trembling his fingers.

Blimunda, now there’s a real looker, stork long legs and lips like smashed cherries. The Harpsichordist Bartolomeu de Gusmão creeps between her legs supping, her Mons Venus moaning. José de Sousa Lourenço, Mons Venus my love my dear my Mons. ‘stop! I beseech you stop!’ beseeches Złolton ₤owther. ‘stop your sniveling’ scolds £. Q. Beiträge.

José “Pepe” Conteris likes boiled mutton, his jowls bobbing as he masticates chin-size pieces of meat. Leave it to a no-good fool to make a mockery of chin-food. May as well pin the tail on the ass; either way the fool will fight the fool until the end is née. The man in the hat swooned, his head full of nonsense and blather. When he felt the swooning coming on, which it did, it did, he knew that he had been thinking too much; and when his thoughts crowded in on his life he knew it was time to sit quietly without moving an inch. Snivelers and no-good fools, they filled his head with nonsense; enough to make a man reevaluate his place in ‘it all’. Nonsense!

Booker T & Drive By Truckers & Neil Young

Cretino

On the second day he fell into stupor. On the third day thoughts began to resurface, undersized miniscule thoughts, but thoughts nonetheless. On the fourth and fifth days he started thinking mawkish petty thoughts. On the sixth day he had a complete thought that sent him reeling with fear: ‘for we shan't always find castles where they'll entertain us; now and then we may light upon roadside inns where they'll cudgel us…’ (Don Quisciotte, Cervantes di Miguel). When he awoke on the eighth day, which he did begrudgingly having spent the previous day recuperating from the fifth and sixth days, he noticed a peculiar taste at the back of his throat. This he found noteworthy as never to his knowledge had he noticed it, or if he had he hadn’t noticed that he had, and furthermore one taste’s tastes not notice them, so the argument was moot anyhow. On the ninth day the stupor returned, the previous day’s recuperation falling short of the mark. And on the tenth day his thoughts returned to normal, or so he thought.

He recalled the soup kitchen behind the parking lot; a queue of hungry men stamping their feet trying to stay warm. A man wearing a hairpiece pushing his way up to the front, the queued hissing like steam valves. ‘cretino bocó’ groused a man at the rear of the queue, the back of his coat covered with the throw-up of the man behind him. ‘soltar pum!’ His sou'wester aureoling his head he walked down the line looking for butting-inner’s and loudmouths.

Grupo Rojo

And then, not a second before then, los Grupo Rojo, under the banner of Proceso de Reorganización Nacional Montoneros, came rushing into his thoughts, Solar Ramón, and that salacious cunt El Tío, stepping off the plane and onto the tarmac, Guerra Sucia sitting like a beaten child in front of him bawling. ‘this is outlandish!’ he said to himself, not quite sure who himself was. Solar Ramón will steal the teeth right out of your mouth, then break your jaw just for the fun of it. Kékes, poor bastard’s never seen a snatch up close; says its too soon to tell if the sky’ll fall before breakfast, eats eggs like a preacher, mouthful after mouthful, never once giving into the yolk. The Macclesfield Armorists’ stood two-abreast the arroyo awaiting the lowering of the flag, Captain Cheshire chewing the grist of his thumb. His thoughts rambled, hobbling the inside of his skull. He stopped for a café au lait, taking in the morose performances of the coffee-drinkers and their hangers-on’s, each one more morose and indefatigable than the next. He slurped back the coffee, now tepid and undrinkable, and placed the now empty cup on the grainy wood in front of him, his thoughts rattling. ‘descabelar o palhaço’ he said loud enough for all to hear, and walked out the front door and into the street.

Mijão

The man in the hat stood leaning against the bust of King Olaf, passerby’s giving him the once-over. This had happened before, people gawking, giving him the once-over. He was observed by people whom he would never meet. He spent countless hours watching others watch him, gazing at lips that he would never kiss, legs he would never pry apart, sinking his cock into places he knew existed but had never seen up close. And in his head a blasphemous narration in a tongue he didn’t understand:

…cagar, titica, merda em boca, Mijar, Mijada, Mijão, Bufa soltar pum, gás, soltar um gasinho, Peidorreiro, Flatulento, Gaseiro, Estúpido, Cretino, bobão, bocó, Despropósito, Doido varrido, Intelijumento, Mongolóide, Debilóide, Débil-mental, Doente-mental, Beócio, Aparvalhado, Atoleimado, Paspalho, Palúrdio, Paspalhão, Patego, Pancrácio, Papalvo, Papa-moscas, Pascácio, Estafermo, Beldroegas, Bangalafumenga, Zé-ninguém, João-Ninguém, Zé-mané, Bolônio, Tchalau, Tchalongo, Tchongo, Tontão, Cabaça, Coió, Leseira, Toleirão, Titica-na-cabeça, Cabeça-de-vento, Idéia-de-jerico, Abobalhado, Dãrdi, Estólido, Néscio, Calinada, Otário, Lerdo assclown histrião Canhão tribufu, baranga, mocréia, dragão, jaburu chifrudo… Cafajeste/Canalha/Crápula/Calhorda/Patife/Tratante/Trapaceiro/Embusteiro/Abjeto, Salafrário, Safardana, Babaca, Tosco, Boçal, Bronco, Cavalão, Grosso, Grosseirão, Cavalgadura Filho da mãe sentar o sarrafo, parafusear, rosquear Lamber o cu, performar cunete, rimming, cuzete, lambe-cu, botão de rosa, tulipa roxa, beijo grego enculé Afogar o ganso, molhar o biscoito, descabelar o palhaço, escorregar no quiabo, bater uma, Espancar o macaco, descabelar o palhaço, cinco contra um, bater um amistoso, bucetinha, bucetão, xana, xoxota, xota, buça, xereca, tcheca, xeca, cobiçada, perseguida, piriquita, bacurinha, xavasca, racha, fenda, Poupança, ripa, piroca, pistola, peru, trabuco, nabo, mandioca, benga, jeba, sagatiba, bigola, bilau…

Then “‘The only dangers for me are metaphysical’” and “‘Only by living absurdly is it possible to break out of this infinite absurdity’” (Jules Florencio Cortázar) ‘this is getting me nowhere… and quickly at that!’ he said inveigled. ‘pass Paspalhão pass Passépartout. Its all the same in the end’.

Ter Titica na Cabeça

He jumped off the back of the oxcart two miles shy of Co Offaly, his legs aching, the back of his head matted with straw. No matter how hard he tried the muleteer couldn’t avoid the runnels and undulations that littered the road, the back of the oxcart kicking like a foaling mare. ‘by Christ I almost ate my tongue’. The station attendant walked along the dirt path to the livery, the muleteer following behind him like a stray dog. The last time he saw the station attendant he was wearing the same squalid redcap. The lacquey Tosilos came up from the cellar carrying a pickaxe and a shovel, behind him the judges of the field and the appellant duennas, each carrying a rake and a tar pot.

Oliver Etnad stood two feet shy of the field judge, and judging by his posture he was none too pleased to be sharing the same shadow with the judge and the lacquey Tosilos. The sun, sitting higher than usual in the sky cast a shadow twice the size of a well-kept orchard. That day “Myles Crawford appeared on the steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet face” (Ulysses, James Aloysius Joyce), his forehead anodyne pale. (Coclé Pennon and Gerald Og, no relation to Jerrod Og, met under a broiling hot sun outside the Co Offaly station, neither man aware that the other had booked passage on the eastbound oxcart scheduled to leave at noon). The field judge and the lacquey Tosilos stood two-astride the biggest runnel, neither shovel nor tar pot seeming immense enough to fix the frottage. ‘good Christ, what a runnel!’ exclaimed the field judge. ‘we’ll never get this thing filled before the noontime’ said lacquey Tosilos. ‘not with these shovels and tar pots we won’t’. The field judge shook his head up and down and back and forth, grinding his teeth until he could taste them at the back of his throat.

Holding his alforjas out in front of him he walked cobbling to the station, a supremely happy look on his face. That morning the field judge offered him a modest purse with two hundred gold crowns, enough to pay for his ticket home. He refused the gift, saying he’d rather starve than accept alms from a cheat and a scoundrel. Trifaldi, standing abreast Coclé Pennon and Gerald Og shook his head back and forth; he too wanted nothing to do with rogues and villains. ‘who’re you calling a rogue, Pisón?’ grumbled the lacquey Tosilos, his armpits dripping like hanging laundry. Two of the judges of the field and the appellant duennas stood their ground, refusing in kind to have anything to do with cutthroats or cold-cockers.

Bucetão

He set upon the day, thoughts of Lela metering his every step. The last time he saw her was at the Feast of the Nestbeschmutzer, her yellow summer dress making her look like a freshly plucked daisy, her polished feet barely touching the ground. He stared at her from afar, hands trembling, the sun cascading off her nut-brown shoulders. ‘I must have her’ he whispered. ‘I must I must’. She walked towards the gate, and looking over her nut-brown shoulder smiled in his direction, her lips as red as a coughing throat. Not knowing what to do he turned and walked away, his neck as taut as a boxer’s fist.

He set upon the evening, his favourite hat adorning his head. He noticed that the lamplighter had not made his rounds; the city adrift on a sea of black. Correcting his hat, realigning the brim with the hatband, he continued on into the ocean of night, his feet skipping like stones across the pavement. ‘I must have her’’ he said over and over again. ‘I must I’. Ficha Limpa sits admiring his newly-polished shoes, a woman with a nervy smile counting the bluebells in the hammock of her skirt. Lela closes her eyes, the last plum leavened, pushed in place. ‘emita a meretriz gorda ao Alçada’ commanded Setubal the Awful. ‘e não esqueça para tomar-lhe luvas!’ His thoughts set upon him like a tempest, one thought leavened into another into another. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t change his mind; unthought-of thoughts storming his mind until he couldn’t distinguish one from the other. Over and over again, like a tattooing on the underside of his skull: “man proposes and God disposes…” (Don Quisciotte, Miguel di Cervantes) until he couldn’t stand it any longer. He shook his head up and down and back and forth, grinding his teeth until he could taste them at the back of his throat; spittle cemented with ivory and silver filings. Setubal the Awful never turns down a bit on the side, puts his back into it, arms and legs thrashing like sailcloth. Seen the noble cunt give it to a cur with both fists, enough to make your stomach churn, by Christ it was.

Buenos Aires at Night