Mr Cassini

by Lloyd Jones

  The Rhondda is a place where pretty words bow their heads and stay silent, out of respect and politeness. All these valleys have been drilled out by a bad dentist and the gaping holes overlaid with poorly-fitted dentures – rows of houses, pitted with caries, which sit uneasily on the blackened gums of yesteryear. Never has so little beauty been compressed into so large a space, as Gwyn Thomas put it.

  We arrived in a squall; the tired rivers and industrial-sized puddles were pocked by the rain in acne-rings, and a weaselly mandrel-wind slipped in and out of every hole in our clothing. Needless to say, the people were magnificent. Somewhere above us in the mist (we were lost in the spout of a kettle all day) was the ancient well and shrine at Penrhys, almost as important for pilgrims as Holywell.

  When we arrived at the Rhondda Heritage Park in Trehafod we passed under a six-foot high model of a miner’s lamp (a memorial to the many thousands of Welsh miners killed over the years) and walked into the restored colliery buildings. Over half the visitors come from outside Wales. I wondered what they make of the Black Gold experience, with its reconstruction of a village street in mining days, art gallery, restaurant and gift shop. The surrounding village dropped 14 feet when the mine was working and it’s a wonder it’s still standing.

  After sniffing around for a while we were taken on a guided tour by an ex-miner who’d spent a long time below, in the heart of darkness, at the cutting edge.

  His voice slipped like a chisel occasionally and sent sparks into the gloom; he’d either smelt firedamp or had spent too many hours trapped in the sclerotic arteries of the past because there was a distinct whiff of mania in the air around him. He had a black, trammelled sense of humour and he scared the children once or twice. The canaries seemed fond of him though. Yellow and black go together quite nicely, I noticed. Compatible colours. We sat down in a metal cavern and struggled to understand an audio-visual show. Exciting and emotional, said the publicity. These people ought to get out more. Girders loomed in the vaulted darkness, and their dimlit cavities reminded me of those lovely little hollows behind girls’ knees. I half expected it to start snowing coal dust from the shadows overhead; soft black coal-flakes which glinted in the murk and turned us all, slowly, into minstrels with itchy collars and very white teeth, gleaming in luminescent rows. Dirty blackleg miners.

  Coal seams, as you well know, are buried ancient forests. Which brings me back (neatly) to the Yanomami wise men, who snort hallucinogen snuff in faraway rainforests. Next time you look into a coal fire, when the tic-toc of time has brought you to the end of your working day, I invite you to look into the eye of the firestorm. You will see brilliant sights: rainbows trapped inside the shamans’ feathered headdresses, flowers weeping in their hair.

  Lewis Carroll always maintained that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a story told during a series of picnics, was just a book of nonsense. But he was certainly influenced by The Seven Sisters of Sleep, published in 1860 by the naturalist and mycologist Mordecai Cooke; very popular in its day, it was an entertaining survey of the best known psychotropic drugs of the Victorian age: betel, cannabis, opium, coca, datura, and fly agaric mushrooms.

  The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

  Alice goes on ‘a trip’. She experiences a slowing down sensation. She sees hallucinogenic animals. A baby turns into a pig in the story, reminding some of the curse of opium, which affected about five out of six Victorian families and killed many children – the infants shrunk up into little old men under the influence of the drug.

  Drink Me! says the bottle and Alice shrinks until she’s 10 inches high. What a curious feeling! says Alice. I must be shutting up like a telescope…

  Inside a glass box there’s a very small cake. Eat Me! So Alice grows enormous.

  Don’t tell me that this nonsense has nothing to do with drugs. Or eating disorders.

  It all ends in tears:

  Poor Alice! It was as much as she could do, lying down on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye; but to get through was more hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again…

  ‘I wish I hadn’t cried so much!’ said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. ‘I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears!’

  And there’s implicit danger, a lurking threat in the background:

  How doth the little crocodile

  Improve his shining tail,

  And pour the waters of the Nile

  On every golden scale!

  How cheerfully he seems to grin,

  How neatly spread his claws,

  And welcome little fishes in

  With gentle smiling jaws!

  Crying is good for you. Butterflies gather salty tears from the eyes of otters and turtles along the Peruvian Amazon. But no one knows the exact nature of tears. Are tears – high in protein – the residue of an ancient emergency feeding system for babies? Another crackpot theory…

  Going underground: Plutarch (45-125AD) reported that vestal virgins who broke their vows were sealed alive in underground chambers and left to die. Medieval monks and nuns who broke their vows were often walled into niches with just a small amount of food and water for company. When graveyards became full in the mid-18th century, following a particularly busy era for the grim reaper, many graves were ‘recycled’ to accommodate new residents. When the old coffins were dug up something horrifying came to light: scratches, kick-marks, and even teeth-marks seemed to indicate that about one in every 25 of the ‘dead’ had been buried alive. So being buried alive became a huge fear factor for the Victorians, many of whom arranged for one of their fingers to be connected – via a small borehole and a piece of string – to a bell on the surface so that they could ring for attention. Doom service. Graveyards had someone on standby around the clock – the graveyard shift. In his book Buried Alive, in 1895, Franz Harman recorded over 700 incidents of people who were literally saved by the bell.

  I’ve a little joke up my sleeve, for my fellow Taffies. There’s a word for the fear of being buried alive… taphophobia! No kidding.

  So we went on a ride in a cage, that day, to the bottom of the mine. Could have been seventeen hundred feet down, could have been seventeen. Didn’t matter. It felt mighty authentic. There were great big iron hoops to keep the roof up, and nogs and sprags festooned all over the place like beads in a Rastafarian hairdo. We were inside a whale’s ribcage, a great big mechanical whale creaking and clanking through a coal tar sea. Swallowed by the darkness, we were all little Jonahs inside the whale’s belly.

  So we were there at last, in the small intestines of the Rhondda Valley, and it was treacle black in there. Sloe black. A landscape of smells. I’ve always liked the smell of coal and pencils. Carbon. Compacted a bit more it turns into jet, then diamonds. It’s the same with people. The richer they are the harder they get.

  But it’s no good. Down here in the dark, the past won’t come back to me. Pity. It smells just right. Musty and old. I’d hoped that the darkness, the drop in temperature, would help. But there are others humans snuffling around me, and I can’t concentrate. I would have to be alone.

  We prepare to leave. Darkness has failed me; my obdurate memory has sealed itself in and refused to cooperate. I’m not even allowed to have Korsakov’s Syndrome, a drunkard’s complaint in which lost memories are replaced with fantastical inventions. Or euphoric recall, the romantic false memory system used by cocaine addicts to exaggerate the pleasures and diminish the pain of their trips.

  Back on the surface I mentioned food.

  ‘Fancy a nibble?’ I asked as we sauntered around the knick knack area. ‘Because I’ve made some rather special sandwiches for us today.’

  I looked smug, and she made I’m like soo impressed eyes.

  We walked out underneath the oversized miner’s lamp and found a rough-hewn b
ench near a children’s maze. As I unpacked my mini-feast I regaled her with some facts about Britain’s commercial sandwich industry, which now employs more people than the farming industry – over 300,000 according to some estimates.

  Top varieties:

  1 cheese

  2 unflavoured chicken

  3 ham

  4 tuna

  5 bacon

  6 flavoured chicken

  7 cheese salad.

  Each year more than 5.5 billion lunchboxes are packed for children in the UK.

  ‘Wow,’ said Olly through a mouthful of food. ‘That’s a hell of a lot.’

  That morning, as the dawn chorus twanged my ears, I had stood in the garden for a while, drawing in some fresh air. I’ve told you much about telescopes; but I also like looking at the small things around us, the little things in life. I watched leaves take shape in the gathering light. On one leaf I noticed a squadron of flies in military formations, parked neatly in rows on the blade, between the veins, all of them painted gunmetal grey. They stood completely still. I admired their microcosmic tidiness. I like standing in the garden while most people are asleep, looking at very small things. Detail therapy. Tiny animals and thumbnail Monets in the lichen patches. Droplets lodged in the petals, tumescent water-boulders.

  Anyway, as I studied the flies I thought of the day ahead and made plans. Having formed a mental itinerary I dwelt briefly on food. In particular, I considered what sort of sandwiches I’d provide for our trip, since it really was my turn. I’d insisted.

  I settled on something special: a mango and mint salsa sandwich with diced mango, red onion and vine tomatoes plus fresh lime juice, rice vinegar, sunblushed tomato chutney and fresh mint leaves, sliced. All this went on a tomato and chilli bread smeared liberally with crème fraiche and low fat cheese. The best yet. Out of this world. To accompany it I chose individual bottles of Brecon Carreg water, high in calcium and magnesium, and an ideal compliment to the mango. You may be surprised to know that some of the world’s top restaurants now employ a water sommelier. Absolutely no bloody kidding.

  Olly was knocked out by the picnic. We rounded it off with two tubs of sherry trifle. Brilliant. We chatted comfortably about various things, including my picnic in the snow film project at college. I’d already chosen Captain Oates, Karol Karol the Polish hairdresser, and Dr Zhivago to join me on the tartan rug – but which film character should I choose next? Actually, I’d already decided. I wanted a wise fool, an eccentric, a madman who’d keep us all entertained with his tall stories – who better than Baron Munchausen, the daddy of all bullshitters? I couldn’t remember if Terry Gilliam’s 1988 version, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, contained the famous snow story but I found a version of it in Rudolph Erich Raspe’s original book and it goes like this:

  I set off from Rome on a journey to Russia, in the midst of winter…

  The country was covered with snow, and I was unacquainted with the road. Tired, I alighted, and fastened my horse to something like a pointed stump of a tree, which appeared above the snow; for the sake of safety I placed my pistols under my arm, and laid down on the snow, where I slept so soundly that I did not open my eyes till full daylight. It is not easy to conceive my astonishment to find myself in the midst of a village, lying in a churchyard; nor was my horse to be seen, but I heard him soon after neigh somewhere above me. On looking upwards I beheld him hanging by his bridle to the weather-cock of the steeple. Matters were now very plain to me: the village had been covered with snow overnight; a sudden change of weather had taken place; I had sunk down to the churchyard whilst asleep, gently, and in the same proportion as the snow had melted away; and what in the dark I had taken to be a stump of a little tree appearing above the snow, to which I had tied my horse, proved to have been the cross or weather-cock of the steeple!

  Without long consideration I took one of my pistols, shot the bridle in two, brought the horse down, and proceeded on my journey.

  The Baron was just perfect, and Olly agreed with my choice as we sat together in the Rhondda that afternoon. My project was coming together. Soon I would have a fine group of people stumbling out of their films and joining me for a picnic. All I had to do now was to write a dialogue for all of us as we sat and munched our way through the chocolate cake.

  Before the aptly-named Walter Coffin sank the first pits in the 1850s a squirrel could cross the whole of this area by leaping from one branch to another. But huge deposits of high quality coal made the Rhondda one of the biggest coal-producing areas in the world by the end of the nineteenth century, with 53 collieries in a strip of land only sixteen miles long. The population soared from about 3,000 in 1860 to over 160,000 in 1910. At one stage a miner was being killed every six hours.

  On an April morning in 1877 a huge inundation of water, which had built up in an abandoned seam nearby, burst into the mine at Tynewydd. Two of the fourteen men underground were drowned immediately, as were a number of horses. The flood waters chased five of the miners onto higher ground, where they were trapped – and with the waters rising it was only a short matter of time, seemingly, before they were drowned too. But a bubble of air held the floodwater at bay.

  The men started digging themselves out and by the following morning they had burrowed eight yards through coal and rock. Their picks were heard by rescuers, who started digging towards them. With only a thin wall of coal left between them one of the trapped miners – a young man named William Morgan – broke through, but the sudden outflow of compressed air flung his body into the narrow opening, killing him instantly. His four workmates, including his father, who witnessed his terrible death, were rescued.

  Spotting air bubbles coming through the water from the workstation of a miner called Edward Williams and his fetch-and-carry boy, Robert Rogers, rescuers sank a shaft towards their faint voices and taps, which suddenly fell silent. When they finally broke through it was too late – both had drowned in the rising water.

  Rescuers concentrated their efforts on another part of the mine, thought to be the likeliest place to find survivors. Four deep-sea divers searched the flooded galleries, venturing over 600 feet into the black waters, but strong currents forced them to abandon their mission. Massive pumps were put to work and after two days the water had lowered enough to allow a tunnel to be cut downwards. Four teams of four men worked around the clock in three-hour shifts, and eventually faint tapping sounds indicated that men were still alive below. The news spread like wildfire throughout the country and newspaper reporters flocked to the Rhondda. Before long the rescuers were close to the imprisoned men, who were huddled together on a ledge in a tiny cavity. Hunger had forced them to eat the wax from their candles, and they were completely exhausted. They sang hymns to raise their spirits, although one of them, a young boy, became distraught and frequently cried out for his mother. The rescue, which was complex and incredibly dangerous, ended when the leader of the four men on shift, Isaac Pride, aged 24, broke through to the trapped men, alone and in complete darkness. Isaac was thrown down by escaping air but recovered quickly and enlarged the hole. Trapped for over nine days by now, the men were too weak to stand and Isaac used his body as a human bridge so that they could be pulled to safety. Many of the rescuers were given medals and jubilant newspapers ran headlines like Life from the dead.

  We left the Rhondda to its own devices in the rain. The greys were frolicking like lambs by now. We were on a bus again and we were all thrown into the air when we hit a bump in the road, or an iceberg, or maybe it was a coalberg. Farewell to thee fair Rhondda. As we zoomed up the dual carriageway to Merthyr I thought I saw an endless conga, black-clad but happy, snaking its way along the banks of the Taf. The experience had been too much for me, obviously.

  Inscribed on the tomb of that famous iron man of Merthyr, Robert Crawshay, is the epitaph: God Forgive Me.

  It was the task of the twentieth century to forgive Robert Crawshay.

  But many people in Merthyr are still trying to forgiv
e God.

  I am a footballer. I have told you this, many times. I was in the business of making connections. Pass-pass-pass-pass-goal. A movement on the soccer field is a sentence with clauses and punctuation marks. There are some who argue that words are the curse of mankind, that they constrain the mind rather than free it. Like many, I am fascinated by the word on the page, by the fact that the sea of white around each letter is sometimes more meaningful – more emancipating? – than the words themselves. Books as liquid charts, slopping from one hand to the next. Sentences as sea-bound glaciers with their stony meanings trapped inside them, debris. Memories as terminal moraines. Each page a white mist, a spell upon the land, crowded with words which have forgotten their childhoods. Oblivion: etymology unknown.

  And so I navigate this last dangerous sound using the words of others; listening to the sonic of their experiences and trying to find my own position on the map.

  In 1992 the German academic and writer WG Sebald, who spent many years working in England, set off to explore Suffolk. His tour was a carefree one, initially. But as he walked through the countryside he experienced a series of intense encounters and witnessed traces of destruction reaching far back into the past. His health collapsed during that year and he was admitted to hospital.

  He recorded his travels in Rings of Saturn, a phantasmagoria of fragments and memories in which the past and the present intermingle; the living seem like supernatural apparitions, while the dead are vividly present. Exemplary sufferers such as Joseph Conrad and Roger Casement people the author’s solitude, along with various eccentrics such as Major George Wyndham Le Strange, who lived in a Suffolk manor house, and who became incredibly eccentric as he grew old. Since he had worn out his wardrobe and saw no point in buying new clothes,

  Le Strange would wear garments dating from bygone days which he fetched out of chests in the attic as he needed them. There were people who claimed to have seen him on occasion dressed in a canary-yellow frock coat or a kind of mourning robe of faded violet taffeta with numerous buttons and eyes. Le Strange, who had always kept a tame cockerel in his room, was reputed to have been surrounded, in later years, by all manner of feathered creatures: by guinea fowl, pheasants, pigeons and quail, and various kinds of garden and song birds, strutting about him on the floor or flying around in the air. Some said that one summer Le Strange dug a cave in his garden and sat in it day and night like St Jerome in the desert. Most curious of all was a legend that… the Major’s pale skin was olive-green when he passed away, his goose-grey eye was pitch-dark, and his snow-white hair had turned to raven-black.