That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote (35 page)

But out in the suburb people drew their blinds, since there was nothing to see but the neighbours, who had nothing to see but you
– and other people’s houses incessantly repeated, one easily forgot how; and the wind was getting up, so that he was glad of his coat and muffler.

We called all night–

There was no answer from any dream,

Not even the easy one across the road,

Double
-glazed and serene,

With matronly vintage fins

Tightening the counterpane

Whose reversals seemed to say a lot
–

In time the flow slowed to a trickle,

Like difficult peeing;

Then it was over.

So, how about cards, or a baby?

Would a baby be an excuse

For patiently abiding, having picnics,

Letting the cutups loose?

The hard one
’s gone already, though not

To die. Moss will cover all his hurts, maybe.

Reports of a unicorn in the outfield

Patterns in the corn

A miracle in the otherwise stable

Night – You, nightwatchman, what happened?

Nay, but I was sleeping like the gnomon there on the lawn;

My dreams were full of fish and spies,

I don
’t suppose you saw them?

And so we have to listen to this tedious gent,

Who parted company with reason long before

All this nonsense started,

Recount the follies of a false life

Where infinite belongings were his stock in trade,

Adore the flight of the riparian bird,

Worship something found in a cave,

Tie parcels with string,

Avoid the cold heap over there,

Although it looked like Cornwall
–

He woke more like Osiris than a taxpayer,

Unable to forget that he was king, once.

Nay, but I was sleeping like a kite dipped in silver.

Into my mouth swam many things

All alight, incendiary, flailing,

Came to rest in my care
–

Here, this one
’s yours, you can have it–

–while a tram rattles back to the depot?

You were mistaken,
mein Herr. We shall have to walk

And slip like children back through the fences

Into the world of infallible dunces.

Chances? Where are your dice,

You said they were Limoges, or was it Limburger – painted

With handsome twits and twats from that erotic book your mad ancestor wrote,

What was the title –
Egypt, Still Wet With Spit
?

They are not in your handbag?

Well, that’s nothing to do with me.

You can go back and look for them
.

I have to go to an opening sale,

To buy more exquisite, delinquent things than you

Or your dark bird dreamed

In chalk-cut twilight.

But we must wind down to the corner again;

By all means, we must go home

And take a turn around the question of the decorations

And your plans for a rocket.

We must get out the melodica,

Ten times blow into the dirty hose,

Wish upon the black Porsche;

Salaam the dog
’s grave under the apple tree,

Do penance for violence
–

Then what rompish, darksome, magic character

Might spring, high
-stepping,

Out of the cobra box on the summer lino?

And then what hordes, departing through the snow,

Dressed as bears and lords,

Might draw whoever needs some convalescing

Time, or sexual leave, to holiday shores

Once painted by Watteau?

I prefer Epping Forest, or even the Augarten–

Best of all the Jardin du Luxembourg

As it was in the master’s time,

Dreaming, and silvan
-haunted.

That is to say, I want to go in, not over. But look,

I would paddle a boat in the shape of a swan

For a thousand and one diaphanous afternoons

To hear one reed from the isle of Pan

Amongst the rumours bleating through the crowd

And the music blasting from the stores

Or lose my shoes once in the park, twice in the street, thrice in the sea
–

And your Hessian boots, dear Excellence, and your sealed books
– those too

Will have to go
– and your servants, and the plans–

And yes, even you, Milord
–

The diamonds you hoard in your navel, your title, your hand…

We have to part, like the red balloon and the world.

The revolution, this time, was ‘to actualise the marvellous’.

The gunslinger

enlisted, far from sure of his part, for his weapons fired only

common lead,

not multicoloured lights or waves of kundalini. But he had,

in his dreams,

dived to the bottom of the ocean and seen the carcass of a whale,

with hagfish

at it all around like mad sperm around a dead egg, devouring

the infertile germ,

and felt his private share of responsibility, like a new organ in his body,

a harmonica,

maybe. He had always been around the edges, among the listeners,

tapping a foot,

but if he really was a boar leaping out of the sea, he wanted to know

that furious joy.

There was no commander as such to give orders, so he found

a place on the left flank

with the giraffes, and an old woman who had a tray of buttons

and a thermos

of black coffee, infinitely replenishing, which she shared around like

a suave host.

With gratitude he drank the unsweet brew in the tin cup and remembered

how, as a boy,

he’d loved the tubes of buttons in the haberdasher’s shop,

like lasting candy,

kaleidoscopes, or magic money for buying magic things

from magicians.

Perhaps, he mused, that was where his longtime love of finery

budded in tulip
-stripes.

Looking back, said the woman, it’s all ravines and tempests. You’re cold,

have my coat,

he said, stripping down to waistcoat and watch
-chain. It’s bulletproof,

and keeps the rain out
.

Well, I like rain, but thank you, and here, choose some buttons,

son. The pearl is smart,

but please yourself. Thank you, ma
’am, and in the yellow dawn he chose plastic

sections of Jupiter

and brass wafers for the charity of the poor, and pearl for the whale

and the egg,

and fake tortoiseshell for the giraffes, and fuchsia velvet domes

for sex and love

and loaded them in his old shotgun, and grinned like a fox sucking

shit through a sieve

because that’s how it’s done, and he followed the old woman, who followed

no one,

cocking her leg at every pillar, eating out of garbage cans, sniffing bums

in trousers,

her jubilant howl assuring him this wasn’t desertion at all.

All the previously published pieces in this book have been revised since first publication – some only minisculely, others more extensively, though there are no major rewrites.

‘
The Art of Dying’ was the first story I wrote and actually finished. I’d been writing nowhere-going bits and pieces for years about the character who eventually became Gwynn (after trying on a few different roles), and then the stars came right, the characters took charge and the story played out in my head.
Aurealis
published it in 1997, and it and ‘The Love of Beauty’ were the seeds from which my 2003 novel
The Etched City
grew. It belongs in time with the epilogue of
The Etched City
(though continuity may not be exact), as does ‘She Mirrors’. It has been reprinted with revisions three or four times – this version has more of the original in it than the others.

Both
‘The Art of Dying’ and ‘The Love of Beauty’ owe plenty to M. John Harrison’s
Viriconium Nights
, which amazed and haunted me, and probably more than any other book made me want to stop mucking around with writing and try to do it properly. Mona Skye and Seaming wouldn’t exist without Audsley King and Ashlyme from the novella ‘In Viriconium’. Bohemian, decadent and surreal settings, in this world or a secondary world, have always gripped my imagination and made me want to write my way into a similar place – though ‘The Love of Beauty’ turned into less of a demimonde story and more of a foray into my favourite fairy tale than I had planned.