Der Revisor

João Goytortúa and Jesús Uvalde Ribeiro poach quail and redbreast in the gully between the five-mile and the stumps-end. Unbeknown to Uvalde Ribeiro, Goytortúa has arranging an assignation with the owner and sole proprietor of the Vincennes Glove Co. Goytortúa plans to buy into the business with an eye to cornering the needle and thread market. If Jesús Uvalde Ribeiro were to get wind of João Goytortúa’s plan he would beat him senseless, then leave him for dead in a culvert somewhere. As the chances of this happening are miniscule, neither João or Ribeiro having met, it seems frivolous to give it a seconds’ thought. Jesús Uvalde Ribeiro and João Goytortúa, however, will crop up from time to time, as the odds of two Christian names beginning with J appearing on the same page are astounding.

His left foot piloting him forward the man in the hat took in the beautiful and not so beautiful things of the world. ‘Nature makes the rules we... break them...’ he said, his right foot lagging behind his left. ‘then we die thinking we’ve changed something, when all we’ve done is pushed a few things around’.

Cocksfooted, El Pozo pushes his way up the sideways. The last time El Pozo came in from the hive (people came from all over for a jar of his honey. Or. El Pozo lives under a honey tree, the bees making combs in his mutinous unruly hair) he ate enormous platefuls of fish, boiled potatoes and blackened bread, washing it down with schooners of Mickelbee’s Ale. This time El Pozo had come to see his love Altisidora Monroy de Pizarro y Cortés with whom he hoped to undo a noche triste. The year before El Pozo and y Altisidora met under a baker’s moon. El Pozo, in his haste to undo Pizarro y’s corset snapped one of the ivory stays, the pointed end stabbing the poor woman in the spleen. He had hoped to right this undoing by meeting with Altisidora Monroy de Pizarro y Cortés on the steps of the Church of the Perpetual Sinner, where he planned to offer his heartfelt condolences for the pain he had caused her the previous year. With him, stowed at the bottom of his satchel, he carried a page torn from a book which he planned to bestow upon his love Altisidora Monroy de Pizarro y Cortés as a token of his undying love for her. The page read as follows:

GOVERNOR. Please sit down, ladies and gentlemen. Ho, “Mishear”, bring some more chairs in.

The Guests seat themselves.
(Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Der Revisor)

Bewley Stillorgan

The Cowes Brothers, makers of optics and telescopic devices, played pinochle with the recently departed wife of Joseph Benedikt, doctor. Luis, the younger of the Cowes brother, and Jorge the elder played pinochle for high stakes, doctor Benedik’s wife a casualty of the war they waged. The day the doctor’s wife beat the brother’s, the game lasting 17½ hours, Luis took his disgust and anger out on Jorge, the more timid of the two brothers. Later that evening Dr. Benedik’s wife, overcome with joy, forgot where she was going and fell, cracking her skull into smithereens. The Cowes Brothers, Luis the younger and Jorge the elder, overcome with grief said that if they’d known that letting the doctor’s wife win would end in such tragedy they would never have played so poorly. This story made the rounds in every hamlet, municipality, settlement and conurbation until it became so incredulous no one with a crumb of brains believed it ever happened, even Karl Frailer von who was so gullible he could be persuaded to believe the most outlandish things.

Bewley Stillorgan lives on the skids in a cardboard box. Having at one time lived in Castleknock, Ballsbridge and Lecumberri, where he leased three, two and one-bedroom bedsitters, and 27½ weeks in a sublet while in transit between Castleknock and Lecumberri, he had a gen of what living the good life was like. Now, Joseph Benedikt and Karl Frailer von Eichendorff having met the day before the Feast of the Assumption, which meant they hadn’t had time to walk the sideways, which would have allowed them to meet and make the acquaintance of such people as Bewley Stillorgan, had no idea who he was. Had they, however, the opportunity to meet him, or simply espy him from a distance, something Karl Frailer was more comfortable doing, they certainly would have seen the execrable conditions he lived in and perhaps offered him a handout, a basket of escarole, beans and a picnic ham, or a few coppers to spend as he chose. But as there is little to be gained from making assumptions, assumptions being nothing more than gossip after all, it seems frivolous to give it a seconds’ thought.

For no other reason than he felt like it the man in the hat threw a stone at a sparrow, striking it in the head. The wounded bird fell collapsing onto the bricks in front of him, its feathers spread out like a woolly rake. Not knowing why nor caring to he nudged the sparrow with his boot and said ‘never know when you’ll come crashing from the sky’. He nudged the bird a second time then went on his way, his thoughts soaring ahead of him.

BullCock’s

Attired in his brand new Wakean portmanteau, a gift from the proprietor of BullCock’s Haberdashery, he set about the day brimming. His hope quickly squashed when he came upon a man laying facedown on the kerbside, his forehead bruised purple, a yellow pallor eating away at his face, his nose hanging on by a thread, ears tethered to his jaw like crumbling petioles, a nervous tic tatting the skin around his mouth. ‘too many legumes’ he thought to himself, ‘or just plain unlucky’. He fell so hard he skinned his forehead clear down to the bone; grey brattling oozing from his skull. The man’s got a pig’s face. Last I saw him he was feeding crumbs to the pigeons, shirtsleeves rolled clear up to his shoulders. They say a man like that has a long way to fall. Never know when never know why. Just happens. BullCock’s a ripe old faggot, still has the dropsy from 100 years ago. People say he always has something up his sleeve the cunt does. Just never know what and when. Sad state of affairs as affairs go. And I seen my share I have. Now get off your horses and gimme a fiver ya cunt. Haven’t got all day. There’s pigeons to be fed.

They wether the goat, skinning it into two unquarreling halves. Looks silly stooped like that; you’d think it’d found its cud. He’s the one plays stopcock with the Aleman’s wife, damn fine sight the calves on here… naught nary a hair naught nary a vein. Clean right on down to the hackle, smooth as a yam. Gets one to thinking, what’re the odds of that? What’re the chances? Makes a man wonder. Now BullCock’s, there’s a ripe old faggot, all flabby and loose round the neck, could make an ascot of it. Straight out, I told ‘em I’d take the withers if he grabbed the haunches, best way I know to spill the head from the flank. Not a word of a lie, I seen my fair share I told ‘em. BullCock’s… pulls tripe like taffy, brooding pigeons alight on his shoulders. Last I saw him he was facedown on the kerbside, nose hanging on by a thread. Ripe cunt that cunt BullCock’s, yellow pallor eating away at his face. They say a man like that has a long way to fall. Long time since I felt obliged... prayers don’t come easy to god-fearsome half-men like me.

(Skin the goat hasn’t a care in the world). The man in the hat awoke with a start. The sun sitting low in the noontime sky told him that it was past 9 o’clock, the time he customarily arose from his embedment. Joseph Benedikt and Karl Frailer von Eichendorff met the day before the Feast of the Assumption, neither man having set eyes upon the other before that day. Upon meeting one another Dr. Benedikt, a doctor of the lower extremities, said to von Eichendorff ‘I see you wear a mechanical timepiece. Might I have a gander?’ Karl Frailer von replying toothsomely, as he was a man of fastidious oral hygiene, ‘why yes of course… and by all means take your time, it is a watch after all’. Heir doctor Joseph Benedikt held the timepiece up to his eye, ‘a fine piece indeed. Might I inquire as to its maker?’ ‘the Cowes Brothers, acquaintances of my dearly and recently departed wife’.

Feast of the Disfigured

The day the fornicatress Vysocina Chokebore arrived in town she was pale with puerperal fever. Félix Davisson, holding a pennant that read, ‘viva štiplavá’, arrived the next day. Then Morris Plaquenil, a tranquil yet in many ways contemptible man dressed in a checkerboard suit with matching socks; and on the heels of Davisson and Plaquenil, who arrived within seconds of one other, Plaquenil on the back of a dung wagon, Davisson in the company of two women in overflowing dresses, a stout ivory-skinned man with uneven teeth and a flaxen yellow jacket with a double-stitched pocket over his heart. ‘what’s in that pocket?’ asked one of the woman pointing disagreeably at his chest. ‘none of your business is what’ he said haughtily ‘now fuck off!’ As it was two days before the Feast of the Untainted, the Feast of the Disfigured convened and dissolved three weeks previous, the streets were overflowing with acolytes. There were hagglers and conmen, dough-faced children and dower hags, cheapskates and spoilsports, men dressed in black suits and women in red satin dresses, dogs and cats, chickens and roosters. Everywhere there were people shoving and jostling, some standing in crowds, others off by themselves watching on with awe and disgust. And flying overhead in the June-bug-thick sky a threadbare sheet with the words Zynischen Vernunft painted on it. His face clenched into a bloodied fist the Witness yelled ‘for the love of Christ, enough is enough!’

This can’t be. All this madness. There’s no need to agonize over it; it gets you nowhere anyhow. Diario de la Guerra del Cerdo, he’s a fucking swine! Plays stopcock the bung with the Aleman’s wife. Cunt’s like Himmler nickel and diming other sad cunts. Steal the food out of the pie-holes of babes… cunt. I’ll say! Enough to oblige a god-fearsome man to prayer. …watching on with awe and disgust. Happens before the sky falls catapulting I swear. June-bug-thick sky makes it hard to breath… dogs and chickens and roosters, what sheer joy! I swear it I swear an oath to it! Last time the Feast of the Disfigured a dozen, no two dozen beatings; rector beating assistant beating the lame and crippled.

Guasones - Dame

Zynischen Vernunft

On the 16thof June 1967 Éamon Pádraig Pearse resigned his office. I’ve had it up to here’ he said raising his hand above his head. ‘you raving people are stark mad’. That was the first and last that was heard or seen of Éamon Pádraig Pearse, the littlest dogman throwing an empty bottle at his departing head. Some people aren’t suited to a life of crossly drawn lines. The following year the Advent of the Cross was replaced with The Bleeding of the lamb, the crucifixion leitmotif causing a row among the townsfolk. A streamer with the words 'Zynischen Vernunft' painted on it flew by gabled to the tail of an airplane, the congregants taking it as a talisman of future sorrows, the Witness reading it as message from on high and Dejesus saying it was the work of a small group of nihilists who had access to an airplane and long bolts of cloth.

Written in pale blue almost turquoise ink, wet where the ink had bled through the paper leaving a birthmark-like smear on the back, the man in the hat read the following: ‘I KNOW WHERE THE MISSING GLOVE IS. IT’S RED AND HAS TWO BUTTONS MISSING ON THE WRIST’. ‘well I’ll be’ said the man in the hat. ‘never underestimate a man’s prudence and good nature’. He crumpled up the note, the corners sticking out like corn ears, and tossed it into the dustbin. ‘I could sleep forever’ mused the man in the hat sleepily. ‘yet I won’t. Not a wink’. His thoughts fell upon the letter and the puzzling hand that wrote it.

Juan Carlos Onetti - 1909 –1994

Salón J.L.Ortiz

Donning, and doffing when courtesy demanded, a hat fashioned from the supplest brown felt Éamon Pádraig Pearse sets about the day in song. His day will begin and end before he knows it; a rock crashing into his supple felt-covered head. Donning and doffing, eyes squinting into the sun, he fell upon the dogmen’s camp, the littlest dogman hurling a moss-covered stone at his unawares head. Stumbling and kilting off balance, Éamon Pádraig Pearse falls headfirst into the enormous sweltering lap of the biggest dogman, the littlest dogman jabbing him in the ribs with a stick.

On the 16th of June he could be found wandering the barrios looking for los Biblioteca Nacional, Salón J.L.Ortiz, where word has it cool bottles of Tic-tac are served between 7 and 8:30pm by a panicky waiter with Viking-large teeth."Everything is possible, everything, even the most sordid and undignified things." (Robert Walser, 15 April 1878-25 December 1956) was written in block-letters over the entrance to los Biblioteca Nacional, Salón J.L.Ortiz, the panicky Viking-toothed waiter rubbing the sides of his head with the heels of his hands. Late as he was, Éamon Pádraig Pearse entered the front doors to the church, a jar-toothed congregant staring at him crossly, the rector’s assistant, his voice quavering, announcing the pledge of the indigent.

The man in the hat met Éamon Pádraig Pearse one fine summer day before the Advent of the Cross, neither man wearing a hat suitable for the occasion. Éamon Pádraig Pearse engrossing the man in the hat with stories of intrigue and adventure, about the bottles of cool Tic-tac to be had at los Biblioteca Nacional, Salón J.L.Ortiz and the funny way the Viking-toothed waiter rubbed his head with his hands.

Chapel Hat

He used to eat dog. ‘stop fidgeting’ barked the Witness. ‘you’re distracting me’. Now he eats mutton. And then he grew, growing taller and taller until the top of his head reached the last pencil mark on the doorframe. He used to fuck canaries (whippoorwill-whippoorwill) his mamma slapping him hard upside the head yelling ‘you’re a dirty selfish boy!’ On the Feast of the Calf he stole the rector’s chapel hat and hid it in the commode pot at the back of the closet. ‘that’ll show the cunt to box a boy’s ears when he’s facing the altar’ he whispered ‘keeps ugly babies from being made, heads all cone-shaped and blubbery’. Never know when a miscreant or a dullard’ll be born. Shit out two at a time, tiny misshapen bodies grappling for air. Twice in one day; left a beard of shit in the commode pot. Damn tricky trying to scrub the wee shits out of the hummer. Parturition hole torn right split down the middle, nurse raking entrails off the tabletop grimacing. Never can tell which end will come out first. Came out all mottled upside down, cut the spay-cord just above the placenta. Less blood-letting that way, easier on an aching back. Pulled ‘em out like taffy, legs all twisted bent outwards slightly. ‘you’re a dirty selfish boy!’ Now I’ll have to slap you upside the head hard, sassy dirty boy. That summer Lela found a diary behind the pumphouse. Hid there by whippoorwill or a crank hoping no one’d find it. “June 4th, my bleedings smell like alkahest and my cunt like shibboleth. Must tell mamma before the sky falls again.”

Shibboleth

The winter Lela had her first period the man in the hat grew a moustache, the harridan found a box of women’s gloves behind the Waymart and Dejesus arrived on a boat. Also that year the sky fell twice: on the Feast of the Calf and on the Sabbath. That winter Lela found her mamma’s diaphragm. Not sure what it was she asked her mamma, who said it was for keeping ugly babies from being made. Also that winter the legless man lost his other leg; the amputater sawing it off just below the hip. That winter the alms man bought a new cap; his old one too small for his expanding head. The Witness printed his first pamphlet: a call to heathens and cowards to come to the fold of the lamb. No one read the pamphlets so nobody came. That winter before the thaw, which usually came on the Ides of March, later the year the sky fell twice, the dogmen arrived in town riding on the backs of beasts, the littlest dogman pounding his breast like a kettledrum. The winter Lela had her first period the shamble leg man wandered into town, the world stopped rotating on its heavenly axle and Sepahan Buxton of Derbyshire lost his mind. Little did Lela know that her blood was an alkahest and her cunt a shibboleth.

Tripe and Onions

Hips chasséing she struts back and forth in front of the Waymart, stopping every few yards to mark her territory with seedlings of orangey piss. ‘the smell is altogether unpleasant… seedling yards of lemony piss!’ Her breath smelled like cur’s piss. She appeared in front of the Waymart clocktower, her carpetbag clutched like a swaddling child to her bosom. ‘the smell the smell’ screeched Enrico the soft-headed pimp, ‘can’t you smell it?’ ‘by God… run I say run, the pox is upon us!’ shouts Gunter Grünenthal, the street frenzied with people running amok. ‘a feast is not a bare-knuckled free-for-all’ says Dejesus having arrived on the sly. ‘nor is it pumpernickel and corked cider…!’ ‘enough is enough!’ cries the Witness, his hands blued with printers’ ink. ‘away with you… scat!’

That night they had tripe and onions for supper. Wife’s tales say tripe and onions rids one’s breath of that cur’s pissy smell. Skillet-fried then put aside to sweat; tripe and onions: best served with cornmeal biscuits and Baldur’s Gin. Brugg’s, he’s the one’s got teeth like rusty hinges, sits all daylong watching passerby’s pass by, liver and onions breath, coattails in tatters. Its no wonder people throw scraps at him, hooking tripe and onions off his bone-hard skull. The day of the Feast of the Pox the cabman’s shelter was doddered off its cement foundation. ‘by Christ … run I say run, the pox is upon us!’’ yells a woman from her balcony. Unable to contain his anger any longer Fajardo Rafael cries ‘you would think they’d lime the corpses’. ‘by Christ but its awful!’ yells the woman from her balcony, her fat blubbering child tugging hungrily at her skirts.

The winter Lela had her first period she bled like a hen, pullets of blood spotting her sheets and the insides of her underpants. She thought she’d given birth to eggs, tiny red dots like the ones on her mother’s favourite dress. She hid the sheets in the close next to the stairs, stuffing them into a crook under the stoop. She wrapped her underwear in butcher’s paper and hid them in the bushes alongside the house.

Castrato

The man in the hat met Schug Grünenthal at the Feast of the Redeemer, both men eyeing one another from across the pews. Sitting to the right, legs stretched out under the pew in front of them, Fajardo Rafael and Utrecht Viagem listened to the priest give the oratory, Gunter Grünenthal eyeing them from his pew at the back of the church. Hidden in the corner of the balcony, his goldfish floundering in his coat pocket, the soft-headed pimp Enrico eyes the congregation, his thoughts on calumny and thieving. Singing in a trembling castrato the lead chorister, a fat boy with curly red hair, reaches out his arms to the congregation, Enrico cowering fearful that the boy castrato is speaking directly at him. ‘the smell is wholly offensive’ gags Gunter Grünenthal, ‘you would think they’d lime the corpses’. While communion is served the boy castrato delights the congregants with a Mendelssohn aria. A woman seated next to the ciborium begins to weep uncontrollably, the priest’s doughy hands trembling under the weight of the Host. Flaring his nostrils like sea worms (Riftia pachyptila), Fajardo Rafael says to Utrecht Viagem ‘can’t you smell it?’. ‘what?’ says Utrecht Viagem tilting his chin upwards. ‘the smell’. ‘what smell?’ asks Viagem. ‘the rotten teeth smell’ says Rafael irksomely. Raising his chin even with the altar Utrecht Viagem takes in a big breath of parish air. ‘smells like a church to me’. Unable to contain his anger any longer Fajardo Rafael cries out ‘dead stinking teeth!’ ‘and corpse-rotten’ says Gunter Grünenthal raising his hand like a schoolboy, and from the balcony ‘and wholly offensive’.

Schug Grünenthal

Word has it the dogmen attacked Sergipe Aracaju and Ticino Locarno as they laying sleeping, beating them into a bloodied mess. As no one knew of their arrival or the purpose of their visit, they’re demise was quickly forgotten. Men such as these seldom made it to the next day; they’re corpses disposed of in well-buckets behind the pork butcher’s or in shallow graves under the swimming cabana at the rear of the aqueduct.

The soft-headed pimp Enrico lives with his mamma in a two-room walkup with a cat and a goldfish. The soft-headed pimp, no relation to the black top-hat pimp, spends his mornings drawing pictures of his fish, the afternoon’s reserved for smalltime pimping and thieving. His great great-uncle Julio, a bear-toed angler, sniggled eels until the day he died; his great great-aunt burying his swaddled corpse in a plot behind the pumphouse. As soft-headed as he was, Enrico the soft-headed pimp never once begged for alms or cheated a dishonest man. He lived by a code of conduct he carried in his coat pocket wherever he went. Wherever he was he could pull out the code and check it for instructions, never having to give anything a moment’s rumination.

Schug Grünenthal, no relation to Gunter Grünenthal, a beast of a man with corpse-rotten teeth, carries a placard with him that reads, “For this reason, a higher culture must give to man a double brain, as it were two brain-ventricles, one for the perceptions of science, the other for those of non-science”. (Nietzsche Human, All-Too-Human)

Fajardo Rafael tells Utrecht Viagem that he would be more than happy to pick up the tab should he care to join him for dinner. Viagem ungraciously declines, sending Fajardo Rafael into a lather, which arouses the attention of Schug Grünenthal, who exclaims ‘I’m Schug Grünenthal and have all of my teeth. I am not Gunter Grünenthal with the corpse-rotten ones!’

Borges Acevedo

Ticino Locarno met Sergipe Aracaju behind the bathing cabana at the rear the aqueduct. The men had come to discuss the plummeting sales of whores’ gloves. The Italian’s had cornered the market with their simple black guanti delle prostitute, the Dutch with a red kidskin whore handschoenen, the German’s monopolized the Eastern European market with their suede Dirnehandschuhe, the French the French market with an olive green and red gants de putains, the Korean’s had a lovely loose-knit 매춘부 장갑 that sold for 1,125.62 KRW, the Portuguese continued to sell 1000 upon 1000's of luvas das meretrizes, the Chinese owned most of the Asian market with a rayon 妓女手套, the Japanese a close second with a rayon cotton blend 売春婦の手袋, and of course the Spanish with a hybrid, and highly coveted guantes de las putas, which came in red, black and aquamarine.

‘vá-se foder agora,mujerzuela sucia!’ exclaimed the Argentinean glover-maker, adding ‘Serás lo que debas ser y si no, no seras nada!’ (José de San Martín). ‘Que el cielo exista, aunque mi lugar sea el infierno’. (Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo). ‘tomorrow we will pay a visit to the Dogmen’ says Sergipe Aracaju gripping his thigh just above the knee. ‘I hear tell they’ve come up with a plan… that no glove that passes through the five-mile fence will ever make it to market, and we, Ticino Locarno, shall outwit them for it’.

Ticino Locarno leans in closer to Sergipe Aracaju, his jet black hair greying at the temples, his ears pinned back like a rabid dog’s, clears his throat and says, ‘then we can have something to eat, right?’ Leaning away from Ticino Locarno, his breath stale with cigarette smoke, Sergipe Aracaju smiles ‘yes, then we can eat I promise’. In his coat pocket he kept a scrap of paper with a poem written on it in pencil.

O man! Take heed!
What saith deep midnight's voice indeed?
"I slept my sleep—
From deepest dream I've woke and plead:—
The world is deep,
And deeper than the day could read.
Deep is its woe—
Joy—deeper still than grief can be:
Woe saith: Hence! Go!
But joys all want eternity—
Want deep profound eternity!"
(Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra).

He read the poem before bed each night, stopping every so often to clear the cobble from his throat. He first came across the scrap of paper in an alleyway behind the pork butcher‘s, the paper yellowed and covered in swine entrails. Placing it in his coat pocket he headed for home, his feet troubling him since awakening that morning. He was prone to the gout, his hammertoes swelling red hot. He’d inherited the affliction from his father who suffered with it most of his life, his foot swelling to the size of a ham, his big toe to the size of a garden radish.

Dijo al Chulo

‘minhas meninas estão limpas’ dijo al chulo, ‘Eu não troco na carne podre’. Derrubada em seu chapéu, disse ‘el niño abandonado es muy limpio Juro en mi mães sepulcro!’ Grabbing Lil by the arm, his brow fishy with sweat, in a hatful voice he says ‘ahora, váyase a la mierda!’ Written in the blackest squid-ink, in flowery overflowing scribbles, darting in and out of the shadows like a playful child, hidden in the sorrows of a deflated saddened heart, was the following; a sort of epitaph for lovers and the bedraggled,

"I can't resign myself to the fact that I live in order to die some day. I'd love to step off this well-trodden straight and boring path. To somehow live differently, think different thoughts, feel different feelings than others. It wouldn't bother me to be as alone as a tree on the plains. My leaves would be like no other tree's. [...] (p 88)" Gyula Krúdy, Sunflower.

Lindsay Gresham William fell down a well, cracked open his skull and died from exsanguinations. He was discovered by a milliner the next day, the milliner stumbling across him in a drunken stupor, and carted off to Carlisle’s funeral home outside the five-mile fence. ‘that’s him, the one’s got the boils on his neck’ said a boy with spindly legs, ‘he grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go… I had to chop him in the neck before he’d say uncle’. ‘I don’t trade in rotting flesh’ said the pimp, his eyes two festering holes. ‘my girls’ are clean’. In the alley behind the Waymart a man with an oily neck accosts a woman with mascara-blackened eyes, the oil from the oily man’s neck allowing the woman to escape, wriggling free like a greased piglet. The woman, who had studied Portuguese at night school the year her husband left her for a meretriz da diva with melharucos enormes, screamed at the top of her voice ‘ahora, váyase a la mierda!’

Salpêtrière

A pimp in black top-hat yanks the arm of a simpleminded waif named Lil. ‘you look like a cripple’ says the pimp. ‘and cripples don’t make money’. He yanks harder. ‘stop slouching!’ They fell from the tops of buildings, from balustrades and from the edges of cliffs. ‘stop your blubbering, it makes you look like a child!’ Flays of chin flesh hanging like bibs. The despicable and the despised.

Captains of industry with fat bellies and blood-red lips. Ne’er-do-wells. ‘I said stop blubbering, it makes you look small and useless!’ Behind full-busted statues, whores and pimps. He pulls harder, Lil’s arm detaching from its socket. ‘stand still’. He pops her arm back into its socket, ‘that’s better’. The blind and mute, peddlers, conmen, grifters and cheapskates, cutthroats and those with their throats cut. ‘we’re almost there’ says the pimp, his top-hat squeezed onto his head.

His stomach is bloated, swelling rounding the pubic bone and hips. The pimp recommends a Salpêtrière salve or a visit to doctor Vassenden Iskenderun who will carve away the rotten flesh. ‘my girls’ are clean’ he says defiantly, ‘I don’t trade in rotting flesh’.

José Hernández

Falcão de Sousa

‘that’s him, the one’s got boils’. His neck wept yellowy pus, a loch of yellowy pus collecting in his fob. His neck was a boil-making machine; a ditch. No matter what he did he couldn’t stop the yellowy weeping. ‘that’s him, the one’s got yellowy pus on his face’. On his forehead was written:

Den eben wo Begriffe fehlen
Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein.

[Precisely where concepts fail you,
A timely word will come to mind.]
—GOETHE, Faust I:1995–1996

Stop for the love of Christ! I’ve had quite enough! ‘the least of your concerns, sir, is the yellowy pus… your teeth are rotting in your head, and they, sir, I fear will see you dead’. Fernando António, Nogueira de Seabra, Alberto Pessoa, Christovão Falcão de Sousa, José Gomes Ferreira, Pancrácio de Pas and Dr. Chevalier met beneath the Waymart awning to discuss the rising cost of thievery. ‘I blame it on that fish bastard Goethe… he’s a crab of a man’ said Christovão Falcão de Sousa. ‘a short shrifter, too’ said Dr. Chevalier ‘never once have I seen him offer to buy a round, never!’ ‘not in this lifetime’ added Nogueira de Seabra. ‘nor the next’ interrupted José Gomes Ferreira, his face blowing up like a red balloon. His left side acted independently of his right, kilting him to and fro and fro and to. The two, to and fro, acting in harmony with one another. ‘he’s got the yellow weeping!’ hollered Pancrácio de Pas ‘smote the cunt!’ bellowed José Gomes Ferreira ‘before its too late!’ ‘stab him!’ yelled Nogueira de Seabra, ‘in the heart!’ shouted Pancrácio de Pas. ‘yes the heart!’ hollered the legless man who happened to be punting past.

Not many people came or went that day; the main street as quiet as a monk’s cell. At one time the street was bustling with activity, people coming and going, peddlers and conmen, grifters and cheapskates, peripatetic henchmen and roving hangmen, the hanged and the quartered, the poor and the wealth, a vaudevillian troop of half-mad frenzied characters, each with their own reason for being far, far away from home. There’s not much more to be said: things changed, went haywire, out of control, people fell from the sky, from the tops of buildings, the edges of cliffs and balustrades, some holding on for dear life, others letting go and laughing madly as they plummeted to the ground. Those who survived the fall became captains of industry with legions of lackey’s, some blind, others mute, each with their own disturbance and deformation, some with bent legs, others with fat bellies and blood red lips crouching beneath store awnings and behind full-busted statues, whores and pimps, cutthroats and those with their throats cut, flays of chin flesh hanging like bibs, cretins and morons, the despicable and the despised, a veritable circus of miscreants and ne’er-do-wells.

Ballismus

Lodz Pabianice lives with a goat under the bridge over the Drina, the goat grazing on nimblewill and spurge. The last thing Lodz remembers before waking up under the bridge with the goat is choking on a spotted dick, his ulnar nerve a fiery cord of pain. Lodz Pabianice, onetime bon vivant, alchemist, ethicist, ethnobotanist, curer of boils and whooping, found himself halfway through life living under a bridge with a goat. A measly shame. An abomination… pubis grinding rump grinding pubis. I dare say I say? Bursting flaring like a Vela Romana. ‘sit down young man please, enough’s enough’ his da would command, the cords in his throat tightening. When he was a boy he was diagnosed with Hurling Ballismus. He would jerk violently, right arm flailing, his face roped in spittle, the right side of his body acting independent of his left.

Jesús Rogelio Curbelo

The Billancourt Boycotters embargoed the Feast of the Redeemer, claiming that rather than redeeming the Redeemer kept those who sought redemption in the dark. ‘its all rather complicated’ said the head Boycotter, ‘so don’t go thinking we have the answer, no one does... not even God!’ A portly woman curdled down the sideways, her bawling child in tow. ‘he has the answer’ she said pointing at the child, ‘gimme a fiver and I get him to tell you’. ‘feathers and shit flying every which where’. The bawling child fell into a stupor before he could divulge it, his back teeth grinding like a corn-wheel. The bawling boy’s da, Tavkozlesi Szolgaltato, has the answer, but seldom leaves his cottage outside the five-mile. Stop that nattering; pull up your socks and get on with it! This isn’t a feast, for Jesus’ sake, it’s a free-for-all, a stick in the eye-for-all! Smucks! She rode the mule upside down, her pubis grinding the mule’s rump. Get out of the way… scoot! Give her some room, for the love of God! Can’t you see she’s faltering? Give way for Christ Almighty! Give way!

When he was a boy his da fried up calf’s liver with boiled onions, mashing the liver and onions into a placental hash. He had to eat what was on his plate; refusal to do so would incur his da’s wrath, his temper flaring like a Mayday Roman Candle. ‘but da it tastes like metal’. ‘stop your snivelling and eat’ his da would command, the veins on his forehead bulging. Alberto Blanco, Czarne Gonzalo Rojas, Pizarro Alberto Garrandés and Jesús Rogelio Curbelo met at the Wydawnictwo Riveron motel under dark of night, each man having in his possession a woman’s handbag in which was stowed a red whore’s glove. Jesús Rogelio Curbelo, being a man of little patience said loudly ‘enough’s enough, sit down gentlemen please’.