Performance
Lie as a drunkard in the gutter by a storm drain. The performers should space themselves such that a word spoken firmly by one is just barely heard by the next, either in a line down the street or encircling the block. Press your lips to the Source of the Ray as if giving it a kiss, and place the other end into the storm drain.
Blow into the Source through tightly pressed lips as the horn players do. If the width of the Source is small, your lips must buzz as tightly as those of a disapproving matron, and if it is large, they must burr as loosely as those of a dismissive baker. Strive for a clear, bright tone.
While sounding the instrument, slowly slide the outer pipe in and out to adjust your pitch until the drain responds with a ringing resonance. The sound should swell and deepen.
When you have found your resonance, hold the outer pipe steady and stop sounding. Lie still until you can hear no other performer sounding.
Let the First wait for a dozen breaths, and then sound the Ray. Each sounding should start softly, then swell and hold for as long as possible, and then fade. Take several long, slow breaths, and repeat.
When the performers nearest to the First hear this first sounding, they should wait for a dozen breaths, then sound their Rays in the same fashion. The next in line should begin, and so on.
Repeat your sounding a dozen times, plus one additional repetition for each pip of the card that you drew earlier.
Once you completed your soundings, be still and listen until you no longer hear another Ray. Lie still another dozen breaths. Depart with quiet grace.
Variation
Instead of the storm drain, you may use the stairwell and halls of an abandoned tenement, the mews of an affluent enclave, etc.
Commentary
Florens says, “The wax is not the Source; the pipe is not the Ray. Quick: What is not the First?”
Parch says, “Odds are you’ll be First asleep.”
* * *
The Night Soil Salvagers do not tell this story. But you will hear it in the hum of overhead wires, in the rattle of branches on a moonless night, in the cries of street sellers closing at sunset, in the heart’s flow of the city’s sewers.
Attende! I and others will meet, one night some nights hence, at the foot of the great tree in the antinode where what remains of Florens and Parch remains. One of us will say, “Anyone got a lead on bells? Seems like a fine night for a performance of ‘Calling Her Down.’”
Another will say, “It’s baby rattles you want, my friend, for it’s a new moon.”
The first will crane her head back and ask, “If not the full moon, then what?”
And so we will climb that tree, past wired Voices and blood-filled bottles, parchments bearing ash-drawn maps, lumps of clay that once held drums. Past crows with costermonger cries and a single ceaseless mockingbird.
Some of us will rattle as we climb and some will ring, for though it is midnight on a new moon’s night, there will nonetheless be something full and round and harvest gold framed by the highest limbs of that highest tree.
It will be a flower.
A flower fat as a dozen babies on a single spindled limb, petals thick as tongues, stamens like ribald horns, and all a rich, bilirubinous amber.
We will sit in silence around that blooming, counting breaths.
Until one of us will lift arms up with fingers out, a child’s tree atop the tree, bell clasped between thumb and forefinger, and ring.
Another of us will laugh, as if seeing an old friend on the street. “I was hoping for change,” she will say. “But there’s the best spot, taken by a baby.” Then she will count a measure’s rest and shake her rattle.
Another count of four, another bell, another laugh, another rattle, and so it goes round. Whistles and horns and the cry of names of those we shall not see again. The Night Soil Salvagers delivered there, shaken like ash by that music from limb to limb, chancing every thing in that flower light, will be too loud—almost—to hear one of us cry, “The city! Where has it gone?”
And another—an ancient face he will have, almost familiar, rattling two coins in his fist and with such a stench, like the fundament of the Earth!—will throw arms around the first and say, “There, of course; the city is there,” and point not out but up.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 by Gregory Norman Bossert
Art copyright © 2020 by Red Nose Studio
The Night Soil Salvagers Page 3