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envious wrath of society. Those fortunate few who have had the privilege of
visiting us this afternoon are now being asked to leave. Jago nods and bobs, a
rotund doll with a leadweight bottom, mechanically offering obsequies and
consolation to the departing guests. Eamonn and Beddowes squabble over the
leftover cakes.
Tanya is telling the little people inside the telly cabinet that she’d love to
model for them—I can see the eagerness in her lips as she kneels before the
screen undoing that tight skirt, but old Nurse McSomebody already has a controlling
arm around her, to steer her back into the women’s dormitory. An
erogenous zone. Theoretically verboten. But their spoonfuls of bromide can’t
wipe out the taste for young honey.
They try to make me ramble with their factory drugs. To distract me from
pleasure, from knowledge. And from the pain. This time of year Lucas used to
go to PP’s Cottage. It’s barely twenty miles away, a damp pink dump. I saw it
years ago, for one afternoon of an aborted weekend visit. “Inheritance is a
bourgeois mechanism,” I told her, “and a local villager would be happy to
squat in your late grandmother’s cottage. You should give it away. Free
cottaging for Peasant Power!”
Later I tried to make a fiery torch and march around the garden. I told
Lucas I was re-enacting the March of the Villagers on Frankenstein’s Castle. I
said I was really Frankenstein’s Creature, that I was going to be at large in the
world. I can’t remember any more, because PP got on the hot line to Jago, and
men arrived in their merry old Oakhill van, to shoot me up and tie me down.
It’s still raining outside on the cauliflower Brain Tree. Shrill birds fuss in
the grass. Where is Lucas in all this? Will he ever find his way to me? How will
a city boy face all the gorse and heather and wet ridges of mud, which is what
the Earth consists of . . . I want to crawl crabwise across wet stubble, to crouch
in a ditch yelling at the descending clouds. Hang on, Lucas! Hang on to the
whirling earth!
Yes, Lucas, I will reveal the divine method in my diabollockal madness, how
the body transcends historical space-time. Time, please come, come quickly.
For Space is female, black and curved. It rages all around Oakhill.
Mayanaam
vequinox
Manolis 