by Steve Aylett
‘A subdued-looking fish, m’ud.’
Resilient in the face of honesty, the judge answered with a laconic snort.
‘I’m not one to blow my own trumpet, but –’ Cannon began parping expertly on a small trumpet which the usher swiped immediately away from him. As a fallback measure Cannon was wearing a rubber mask of his own face beneath which was a rubber mask of Father - both of these came away with the trumpet, flapping like dishgloves. Cannon grabbed his shirt and tore it with a convulsive shriek.
‘Why have you rent your clothes?’ asked the judge wearily.
‘Because I didn’t want to rip my own.’
The judge embarked upon such a grim and lengthy stare that several people thought him dead and began to scream. During this diversion Father snatched Cannon’s masks from the floor and put them on, resembling Cannon for a split second before standing and ripping off the outer one with a yell which caught everyone’s attention. Wearing a mask of his own face, he was simply standing there like a ringmaster in rehearsal. Realising his mistake, he tore off the second mask to reveal his own face beneath. ‘What is this fathomless horseplay?’ the judge demanded. ‘I can’t tell what this mazurka of connivance and evasion tempts me to feel.’ He looked coldly at Cannon.
There was anxiety among the Hall residents as it seemed on the cards that Cannon would cheerfully tear off his own face to show he had nothing to hide. ‘Guilty,’ the judge sneered at last. Cannon did not react immediately, thinking that he himself had said it. But upon realising that he had been condemned and that his ordeal was over, he let flow tears of laughter and relief. The judge became indignant, raising the sentence to his tumbleweed heart’s content. At this point Uncle Burst happened to stick his finger into an electrical socket, draining the local grid into the inland sea of his ego. The room became a darkness in which the multiphonic screams of the startled were the only entertainment.
A single high-frequency shriek rang out as the lights went up. The judge’s mask had been removed to reveal a tense mess of bone and meat like red melted wax - it was a royal portrait of bitterness and misspent hatred. His pain seemed honest.
Poor Mr Cannon stood as innocent as you or I, leaning on the dock ledge and gazing skyward like a rococo cherub.
ENVY OF THE WORLD
Besides formation belching the main activity which constituted quality time at the Hall was the pretence at being dead. Of course there was Harbinger Night, during which the entire household rushed up to the reading room and rolled strangely along the walls, a tradition I always took for granted. But that was only once a year - we pretended to be dead all the time.
We were experts at vacant immobility. Whole days were passed tilted dummy-like at the table, cod-eyed and agape. I’ve recently unearthed a family portrait in which we are grouped staring past the camera, slack and departed. When visiting the seaside we would collar a brisk passerby to snap the family, and drop abruptly dead as we were brought into focus, provoking a kind of anguished scream from the traumatized bystander. We spent entire afternoons laying dead in the surf, rolled by the waves, our limbs flaccid as the ocean raised us and put us gently down.
In England death is a way of being left alone. Even clowns or barbers will reserve respect for the departed. I have known meddlesome priests to run snivelling the moment I collapse. Executives roar off in open-top cars. Street-mimes shuffle awkwardly, ducking into taxis and peering white-faced from the rear window. Horses look away in bored disdain. Policemen fail to notice. In other lands the flight of the spirit is an end to privacy - here it’s a start.
Adrienne once played dead as far as the morgue. She opened her eyes and swung off the slab, padding through the chill chamber. There were several other bodies in the vault, and these too opened their eyes expecting a time alone and free. There was some embarassed laughter at the realisation, and then a heavy, imploding silence. Lie back and think of England.
THE PICTURE OF UNCLE SNAP
Adrienne had painted a portrait of Uncle Snap sitting bolt upright next to a gremlin in a strange, drab room. Though small, the picture was incredibly compelling. Its high resolution had so much hold on the hallway we found ourselves gathering in front of it to fight. After a couple of years it became a centre of gravity for every punch-up we had. More than once I was caught trying to peer past the frame to see more of the room inside. Adrienne wouldn’t say how she’d done it and Snapper himself pretended not to care.
Strangest of all was the slow transformation which Snapper’s painted image seemed to be undergoing. The facial expression appeared progressively more relaxed and lighthearted while in actual life he grew increasingly angry. One morning we found the painted Snapper beaming like a cherub, its eyes filled with love - Father visited the treehouse and interrupted him frantically wedging the disconnector from a semiautomatic. ‘Full auto, brother!’ shrieked Snap. ‘Think of the damage I could do with that!’ And he barrelled headfirst across the room, missing Father by a mere three yards and flying through the open door. Breaking his right arm in the fall, he became increasingly enraged. Yet over the next few weeks there was no change in the picture, and this set me thinking.
Climbing into the treehouse, I engaged him in light conversation and hunted for signs of creativity. All I found was a brass rubbing of his ego. ‘Listen Snap,’ I shouted, ‘I know only a freak in a hurry could mistake you for an innovator but don’t you think it’s strange that your stupid expression changes all the time in that bloody portrait?’
Snapper stood and charged headfirst in the wrong direction, flying through the open door.
When Snap was recovered I began a nightly vigil of the picture. The changes always occurred at night and I was determined to see them happen. There was alot of nodding off and rushing over to see if I’d missed anything. Nothing changed. Until one night I was checking out the picture in the light of a torch.
The little gremlin which sat in its own chair next to Snapper, its face full of mischief. The bare board floor coated in grey ash. Dim, pastiche wallpaper and ill darkness. Creepy, indistinct corners.
I realised I was inside looking out at the dark hallway. The seat and everything was attached to me and nothing but my eyes could move. Straining to see through the visor of my face, I located the figure seated next to me. It was all front, like a piece of stage scenery. I was in a sterile, airless, annihilative space. It was starkly scary - my spine was an electric eel, stinging itself and wanting out. The whole setup was familiar. The moment I thought to scream the Snap figure said ‘I increasingly think action is the only way.’ Its voice was like ice and vinegar.
‘I didn’t burn the nerve farm,’ I said, uncertain. ‘It was Snapper. Doesn’t like people pushing the envelope.’
‘Pretends he doesn’t,’ answered Mister Hieronymus. ‘On the quiet he drags out a vein and uses it as a skipping rope. Eyes front, laughing boy, if you want the facts.’
I looked into the hallway - Snapper walked up in his pyjamas, brandishing a fine art brush. He reached up and carefully retouched the Snap figure’s face, drawing up the mouth into an inane smile, smoothing out the brow. His eyes strange and glassy, he turned and plodded off.
‘Sleepwalking,’ said Mister Hieronymus. ‘Subconscious urges he’d never admit to.’
‘Why did you stand for that?’ I asked, looking askance at the wet face of the Snapper effigy.
‘I’ve taken the opportunity to inhabit this nightmare,’ it replied, ‘so as I can talk to you - it seems nobody else will. You’ll be left alone here, laughing boy. Your life’ll fly off its hinges.’
‘And I wanted everything to be so perfect.’
‘Now’s not the hour for snide abstraction, boy – don’t imagine I thrive upon perching like something preserved in a museum. Everyone’s reading more into this than you are. As sure as you’re sitting there, a garden beetle’s backflaps will lift to reveal a hotrod engine.’
‘I’m not convinced I’m sitting here.’
‘Please yo
urself. You’re a Machiavellian bird I’ll say that for you.’
‘Wasn’t he that bastard who said authority was the spice?’
‘And more. That by making an example or two a ruler will prove more compassionate than those who allow riot and disorder.’
‘If such examples are proof of compassion then surely disorders will prove the more compassionate as they harm the whole community, while executions only affect individuals.’
‘Can’t change a circle to a square without reducing its surface area, laughing boy.’
‘What about a cube.’
‘You mar my argument by no more clever means than an increase in dimensions.’
‘To no greater number than that in which normal people move and have their being, Sideshow – it’s not my fault your crap argument hasn’t the stamina to exist in the real world. This is terrible. Get me out of here.’
I was instantly back in the hallway, gasping for air. My body was aching like inept architecture. In the picture Snap beamed and the little creature beside him was looking, its head now turned aside.
Late the next day I started feeling stupid for bailing out - it was clear Hieronymus had information to impart. I went to the hallway but the picture was gone - Snapper had burnt it. ‘The gremlin,’ Snapper said, fronting off defensively. ‘Suddenly didn’t like it. All day wherever I went - felt the little shit was watching me.’
METAL BOX
Like human hair, the reputation of a saint grows after death. Uncle Blute had driven a Morris Traveller into the lake. Now the turquoise square of its roof rippled just below the surface, dappled with emerald moss and jacinth rust. ‘Your mother’s brother,’ stated Snap. ‘Strange chap. Eyebrows met in the middle of someone else’s face. Insisted the same birds were being born every few years. Finite number. Made calculations. Invented devices he couldn’t operate. Disappeared for days at a time. Staggered back unable to tell the tale, covered in insect bites. A gentleman in the days when the word had a meaning.’
Adrienne said she dimly recalled him doing a stunt with his nose. ‘Turned it inside out,’ she said, frowning. ‘So it looked like a sea anemone. Arced over laughing - never grew tired of it.’
‘Well he won’t be doing anything with his muzzle these days,’ I said. ‘First thing to go Father says and I’m tempted to agree with him. Becomes a luxury.’
But I was forgetting the lake. Like certain Nevada lakes its water was clinically pure, preserving anything which sank there. After ten years Blute was at the wheel in immaculate condition.
Yet the strangest thing was that due to the water’s conductive alkalinity the headlights and radio were still on. If you sat at a particular spot on the shore you could faintly hear the weather report. At night a corner of the lake glowed an agreeably ghoulish green. Adrienne would sit with me on an overhanging rock, her face underlit as she crunched an apple. ‘He was ready.’
On the anniversary of his death it was decided we should endure a memorial service for this amusing fellow. We trooped down to the lake in a squelch of rubber insulation, carrying wreaths of iron flowers which the nuns had hammered to order. ‘Why the hell are we doing this now?’ I asked, tugging on Father’s sleeve.
He raised his mask. ‘Man is made up of body and spirit, but not until death is he forced to take sides.’
That shut me up - I bit upon the snorkel and looked toward the water. The others were already getting in, big ripples spreading - they were like zealots in a ritual cleansing. As I began wading after them I heard classical music throbbing through the water and thought maybe it wasn’t such a malignant ceremony. Above all, I was curious to see an authentic gentleman.
As my mask went under the surface everything became luminous. I saw the others floating like haunts around the two headlights. Debussy’s Rondes de printemps was playing as Mother laid a metal wreath on the bonnet. I couldn’t help but marvel at the condition of the wooden panelling.
‘There’s Blute,’ said Father, touching his mask to mine. ‘Absolutely mint.’
The driver, whose white balloon head became visible through the windshield, was certainly in good repair. He was staring like a madman, his chalky hands still on the wheel. His nose was squashed against the glass like the sucker of a snail, nostrils flared. Light and shadow shifted like commune ideologies, giving the illusion of life. But there was no reaction when I laid the wreath - nothing there atall. This was either a dead, abandoned body or a wax mannequin. Neither was of interest to me.
As I stared, the music faded and an announcer began to describe the royal celebrations. It was Jubilee year.
ITCHES IN THE SKY
Snapper missed his medication and started seeing itches in the sky. ‘Truth is as small as an itch,’ he had said that morning and we should have been alarmed. Now he was utterly incoherent, springing over hedges yelling gibberish which two years later he patiently explained as meaning ‘I’d give my weight in snails to know what’s going on around here.’ He entered the sitting room covered in ferns and wearing a chrome helmet. He was laughing like Lamb at Hazlitt’s wedding as he described the web-like constellations of truth and the inevitable collapse and infernal damnation of the universe.
‘Informal did he say?’ asked Leap.
‘Infernal,’ said Father, reading the paper.
‘I thought he said informal too,’ I said cheerfully, stroking a South European wolf spider.
‘Ofcourse it’ll be informal!’ bellowed Snapper, transfigured with rage. He swiped up a chestnut pan and slammed it down on the spider, which now resembled a discarded glove.
‘You utter bastard,’ I said, staring. I had been training the spider to form part of an alarm-clock mechanism and everything had been just fine. ‘You did that deliberately.’
Snap was hooting with laughter.
‘I hope you’re proud of yourself,’ said Leap. ‘After all the boy’s work. Those of us who give a damn are of the opinion that you’re put together with glue. Ribcage like a mantrap. This resentful malice of yours. Perhaps I shouldn’t mention it at this point but when viewed through an obverse gravitational lens you appear to have the face of a king prawn.’
‘I know it but what about the droog?’ shouted Snapper, pointing at me. ‘His pockets are full of tiny bones!’
‘Nonsense,’ I said quickly.
‘Oh yes, brother,’ shouted Snap. ‘It’s incredibly obvious. And I’m disappointed you found it necessary to produce such truculent and abrasive offspring.’
‘Oh I don’t know,’ said Father with an air of judicious consideration. ‘Sheets stretch in transformation, a new creature brims a little amid its claws – doesn’t matter in the long run.’
‘Are you quite sure it doesn’t?’ asked Leap, tortuously aghast, and turned to look at me with a new and appalled understanding.
‘I’m completely informed about everything,’ Snapper was saying imperatively, ‘and the beauty of it is I’m reluctant to share.’ He went on at length about badgers and hope, concluding with the statement that he’d scribble down certain metaphysical truths and gloat over them privately till the cows came home. ‘Meanwhile the lot of you will fade and die,’ he said and, hollering with laughter, bounded from the room.
Two days later he sat up in bed and clutched his temples. ‘Have I been stroked with a bone saw?’ he asked.
‘Snap?’ said Father, looking in. ‘Up at last. Lost your marbles, brother. Been pointing at Caesar for three days. Talking about the facts.’
‘I remember now - or some of it. Thought I was ill and sat here idle for half a lifetime. Kicking through grapes to the lavatory. Even read Five Weeks in a Balloon.’
‘That was just yesterday, brother. Before that you were padlocking birds to branches. Sat naked playing a bassoon. Went to bat for the big issues.’
‘Doesn’t sound like me. Didn’t shoot anyone?’
‘Not a soul, brother - strangest part of the whole affair. How you feeling?’
‘Like a dog in amber,�
�� Snapper croaked. ‘And what’s all this about the facts?’
Father explained Snapper’s plan to record the cosmic truths and Snapper gave a snort of disbelief. ‘What else did I do? Flatten the boy’s spider with a chestnut pan?’ Failing to notice Father’s mournful look, he roared with hilarity.
When Snapper shot a peaceful dove from an awning we knew he had recovered, but each of us harboured a strange and secret concern. Snap’s brain was a wasteland shunned by its owner. Could such a hulking grotesque change fundamentally for even a moment? It’s said god blathers profundities to village idiots - Snap may have gained temporary access to these higher levels of incompetence during the fugue state. Though we rarely discussed it, we were all gung-ho for new information - the present circumstance was a lesson in that it first required us to confess we never got any. This took a rare courage.
Adrienne bit into a stick of celery. ‘I’m for knocking him senseless,’ she vouched, crunching, ‘till he has another fit and spills the beans. If he knows anything of use we’ll be sandboys - if not we’ll be as pig ignorant as before.’
Father climbed into the treehouse, where Snapper was inspecting the discarded skeleton of a fly. ‘I think I speak for us all when I say we’d like to know just what the hell you think you’ve been doing these last few days.’
‘I’ve told you brother,’ spat Snap, whacking the fly with a mallet. ‘Can’t remember.’
‘But brother,’ said Father, looking with distaste at a fossilised starfruit. ‘What happened to you was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, like being shot and falling from a wrought-iron balcony. Did you find nothing here? No note or message?’
‘All I found was a hopelessly blurred photograph of a sobbing clown.’
It seemed the truth had been lost like a poodle in a riptide. ‘So you’ve been amusing yourself at our expense,’ said Father. ‘To salvage anything of worth we’ll have to retrace your sinister footsteps from that moment to this. Now I’m getting out of here - these conversations have been fatal to sturdier men.’