--AtW-20--

His da ran the dogs in the field behind the woolshed. The dogs ranuntil one of them gave in and lay on its belly. His da put down thedogs that couldn’t run anymore. The Acosados Nuestros Pâtés Co. buy dogs hisda can’t be bothered putting down. His uncle makes Callejeros Monigote fromsticky paper and sits them on the porch on Santos Inocentes Night. TheAracaju Whores are known for their fat breasts, some so plump they looklike foaling mounts. “No es que crea imposible curarse, sino que nocree en el valor, en la trascendencia de curarse”. (Juan Carlos Onetti, LosAdioses) was written in red paint over the door to the Aracaju Bordello, themad·am, her garishly painted face enough to turn a man’s belly, wavingher hankie from the balcony. Juan Paolo Mantegazza carries a piece ofpaper in his coat pocket. On the paper is written ‘Acosados Nuestros IndiosMurieron Al Luchar’, the edges curled up like sleeping children.

The first time the sky fell it fell like a lead balloon; the sunbouncing off the sea-blue surface like a child’s ball. The second andthird times it fell it fell upside down, the outsides hitting theground first and the middle last. The fourth time it fell it felltwice, ricocheting off the surface, the people closest to the middleseeing a blue halo corseting sideways like a rocket. His da boiled themeat and added it to the beets, the quarters dripping with fat. ‘--lacarne del perro se come mejor con una salsa gruesa’ said a woman in aleper’s skin coat, her hair kneaded into a bun. ‘--you’re mightycocksure for a pipsqueak’ said the woman. ‘--if one expects to outlivethe dying one must be cocksure’ said the man in the round cap, hiseyes darting back and forth. ‘--anyhow cunts like you are a dime adozen’ he said smirking. ‘--concha sucia!’ hissed the woman in theleper’s skin coat. ‘--puede la huelga de dios usted absolutamente!’

Lela stood in front of the church trying to make up her mind: shouldshe enter through the front doors or skulk in through the back. Notsure what to do she walked away, her thoughts pulling her this way andthat. His da played the dogs’ ribcages like a xylophone, the smallestbones to the right the biggest to the left. Sometimes he’d use thehind quarter as a kettle drum, hitting the bones with his fist. Othertimes he threw the bones into the trash or boiled them into a stock.Or he extracted the marrow and served it in clay bowls with little

ear-like handles. His da hated wastefulness and things left out toolong in the sun.

The tinker fashioned a pair splints out of gate stiles, attaching themto the boy’s legs with screws. He shaved down the tibia, decreasingthe gap between the boy’s knees, Saber Shins having reduced his gate to ashuffle. Hutchinson's Teeth were a common beyond the five-mile, the fencebuilt to keep the syphilitics out and to ensure that if theundesirables made their way past the first gate the barbwire woulddiscourage them from continuing any further. His da said that thesyphilitics had lopsided heads that made them look like they werewalking sideways when they were walking forwards and forwards whenthey were walking sideways. The children had slanted foreheads andflypaper-thin eyelids. The parents slopping foreheads and hoodedeyelids. His da said that the oldest ones were know to eat the youngerones, cooking them over a brushfire. The ones that got away got caughtup in the barbwire he said, so there was no need to feel sorry forthem. Anyhow the sun would cook them, he said, which was better thanbeing eaten by someone with hooded eyelids.

“{Lela}, so the history says, was extremely happy to see {theharridan’s sister} in her house. She welcomed {her} with greatkindness, charmed as well by her beauty as by her intelligence; for inboth respects the fair {Lela} was richly endowed, and all the people ofthe city flocked to see her as though they had been summoned by theringing of the bells.” (Cervantes, Don Quixote)

The Farrier forged a pair of stilts out of horse steel. Working thekilned steel over the throat he hammered out the longer pieces,pulling and shaping the smaller ones with a pair of long-handlepinchers. He welded the pieces together, milking the joints to ensurea tight fit. They caught him trying to climb over the five-mile, hisstilts stuck in the barbwire. Better to have been eaten by the sunthan a half-starved relative. The Farrier Balotesti Ilfov sleeps in the old gasshed behind the water tower. He works in the garage behind theconsignment office, the furnace belching coal smoke like a derailedPuffing Devil. The Farrier Balotesti Ilfov makes the beast-with-two-backs with theharridan’s sister, his face a pantomime of unearthly bliss. From thetool shed window he can see the syphilitics trying to cross across thefive-mile fence, some hanging lifeless in the barbwire, othersswinging like ragdolls, their trouser legs torn to shreds. ‘--swingingback and forth left to die, yet they still keep coming’.

Doctor professor J. Petrus entered the room carrying his leather satchel, themoon glowering over his shoulder. ‘--where is he?’ ‘--over there’ saidthe Farrier pointing to a heap of filthy clothing on the floor next tothe furnace. ‘--he’s been like that for days’. ‘--have you triedmoving him?’ ‘--no, I was worried he might wake up’. Standing over thebody, for he knew from past experience that heaps such as thisconcealed a half-dead corpse, his leather satchel swinging from sideto side, the doctor looked down at the heap of dirty clothing, asolitary finger pointing upwards, the nail curled under. ‘--He mightbe sick. Don’t touch his face…I hear that’s where it’s the worse!’cautioned the Farrier. ‘--move back’ said the doctor, his satchelhanging between his legs like a leather scrotum. His legs kicked liketwo hanged men as the doctor turned him on his side. ‘--Don’t touchhis face…I hear that’s where it’s the worse!’ ‘--you’ve already saidthat’ said the doctor. ‘--now move back, your blocking the light’.Rolling the body on its other side, the side furthest away from thefurnace, the doctor checked for a pulse, the half-corpse’s armsstiffening like lightning rods. ‘--bring me the lamp’ ordered thedoctor. ‘--I need more light’. The Farrier walked to the other side ofthe workshop and grabbed the lamp next to the blast-oven. ‘--hurry’said the doctor cradling the half-dead half-corpse’s head. ‘--half-dead or dead the man deserves respect’ said the doctor half-angrily.He gave the Farrier a esculent scowl and pushed down on the half-deadcorpse, yellow bile oozing from the pickets between its teeth. ‘--Villaseñor has an oxcart he seldom uses’ said the Farrier hoping toconvince the doctor that the half-dead corpse should be got rid of,and quickly. ‘--moving him now would be fatal’ said the doctor. ‘--he’s barely holding on’. ‘--but what if we get sick?’ ‘--that’s theprice we pay for being human’ said the doctor palpitating the flesharound the half-corpse’s sternum and ribcage. Henrico Villaseñor’s oxcart ismade out of spruce; the axel palpitating counterclockwise to thewheels.

As he left {his lean-to}, {the man in the hat} turned gaze upon thespot where he had fallen. "Here Troy was," said he; "here my ill-luck,not my cowardice, robbed me of all the glory I had won; here Fortunemade me the victim of her caprices; here the lustre of my achievementswas dimmed; here, in a word, fell my happiness never to rise again."(Cervantes, Don Quixote)

Death comes to those who wait. He knows when death will come. Hisfather died of the whooping when he was a boy, and if the sins of thefather are visited on the son he {too} will be visited by death beforehis fifteenth birthday. He pulled the half-corpse counterclockwise,pressing down hard on the half-dead man’s shoulders. ‘--you say heseldom uses his oxcart’ said the doctor. ‘--yes as far as I know hedoes?’ said the Farrier scratching the top of his sparsely haired head.‘--then go get the cart… and be quick! We haven’t much time’. ‘--don’tyou mean him?’ said the Farrier. ‘--who?’ asked the doctor withannoyance. ‘--him’ said the Farrier pointing at the half-dead corpse.

Dejesus rounded the corner and ran slap daub into the Witness, the Witnesssticking out his hand like a traffic cop. Ignacy the trumpeter stoleVillaseñor’s oxcart, driving it clockwise into the dust. The man’s amenace! Always sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. Someone’sgun to kill him, I assure you. On his fifteenth birthday he got asecondhand bicycle and the whooping, narrowly missing his end. Hismamma applied a warm compress to his chest, squeezing the cool waterinto a washbowl she kept on the windowsill by the window. The lustreof his achievements waned as the whooping worsened, his throatswelling to the size of a pumpkin squash. ‘--but mamma it hurts’. ‘--never you mind’. ‘--is it suppose to is it ma?’ ‘--yes its supposeto’. ‘--but I can’t mamma I can’t’ ‘--you will, by God you will!’ Onhis sixteenth birthday he got a clout in the jaw and a purple eye, hismamma’s new boyfriend not taking a shine to him.

Juntacadáveres carries a blade tucked into his boot. Whenever he feelsthreatened he unsheathes the blade, waving it like a madman in theface of his assailant. That day he met no one, choosing to stay homerather than venture out into the world. Had he ventured out he wouldhave run into a madman and a boy with a head the size of a pumpkinsquash. But he did not. When he was a boy he made a raft out ofcardboard, strapping it together with clothesline and the metal twistshis mamma used to cinch tight garbage bags. In his Billy-Boots, theoutsides turned down, his name written in black ink, he would wadeinto the swamp in search of frogs and torch-size bulrushes. His unclegave him an archery set for his tenth birthday, his da making him aquiver out of rolled up newspaper and electrician’s tape. Billy-booted hespeared frogs with arrows, and arrows with frogs, never quite surewhich was which. He impaled two at a time, one on top of the other. Hestuck three with one arrow, the third swimming underneath the two. Howunlucky, he thought, to be minding one’s own business only to begutted through the back.

The Witness rounded the corner and ran slap daub into Dejesus, the twocoming to a full halt. Villaseñor stole the trumpeter’s oxcart, driving itcounterclockwise into the mud. This is surely crazy! Madness, I say,gone counterclockwise! I assure you. ‘--but I can’t mamma I can’t’ ‘--you will, by God you will!’ When he was a boy he made kites out ofgarbage bags and coat hangers, taping the bags to the coat hangerswith electrician’s tape. He flew the kites, soaring, above the clouds,his mamma hollering at him to ‘--pull that nuisance of a thing down!You’re going get it all tangled up in an airplane!’

The harridan’s sister rounded the corner and ran smack dab into Lela,neither woman giving an inch. ‘--but I won’t’. ‘--you must by God youmust’. When she was a little girl her mamma made her wear scratchysweaters and knee-skirts. She went swimming in the lily pond behindtheir house, her bathing suit too loose to conceal her frailties. Whenhe was a boy he missed her shoulder blades by an inch, the arrowslicing through her hair and lodging in the trunk of an elm tree. Heflew the kite into the telephone wires, the airplanes, soaring, overthe top of the house.

Silvestre Quiroga works for the Quahog Tannery, the shirt he wears to workthe same one he wears dancing. Haines Fortinbras hasn’t a shirt to hisname, his wife having burned them all in a pyre in the backyard.Ghastly cunt, he intoned, Ghastly. He can still hear his mammahollering in his ear: ‘--pull that nuisance of a thing down! (‘--but Iwon’t’). ‘--you must by God you must’. The Quahog Tannery manufacturelivery goods. Silvestre Quiroga’s job is to stretch and tan the hides usedto craft women’s gloves; the gloves petitioned by women of culture andcouture. The Vir La Libertad Tailors, the Colugo Seamstresses’, the Quezon NuevaApparel Co. and the Ecija Haberdashers all carry Quahog Tannery livery goods,the same brand Lela’s grandmamma wore winter, summer and fall. Lela claims‘--my grandma never wore the same skirt twice. She was above suchignobility’s ’. ‘--it’ll fit if you scrunch up your hand. Make a fistby God a fist!’

The bookmaker’s wife works for the Quezon Nueva Apparel Co. pandering tosymphony enthusiasts and hoity-toity charity types. He met thebookmakers’ wife after the Glutting of the Ewe, the two enjoying a goodchuckle together. As he was a sensible man the curate congratulatedthe bookmaker’s wife on her stately mission, to become the heiress tothe Quezon Nueva Apparel Co. The Witness swore up and down that a woman of

such illusory beauty should not be allowed to set foot in the VincennesGlove Co. ‘--the Quezon Nueva Apparel Co. does not recognize such sexualshenanigans. Women like you should be sent to the mines… ply your darktrade there madam and leave us alone’. The curate of Churchdown, oneCecil Basingstoke, known for his high teas and low morals, chastised thebookmaker’s wife, the blood in his temples reaching unspeakablelevels.

Under a mishmash of eel skin he found a notebook; and in the notebookwas written the following: “--yaaaa hooooooooooo wl!” Oftentimes histhinking went haywire; the past swarming his thoughts like lemmingsretreating from the cliffs of forgetfulness. At times like these hewished he had a tight fitting cap; one that would squeeze his thoughtsinto the deepest recesses of his brain. There they could be forgotten,laid to rest with the other thoughts and memories he’d worked so hardto disremember.

That morning (or was it lunchtime?) the soup kitchen queue reacheddown the street and around the corner, a woman with a sow’s faceannouncing the coming of the end. She stopped at Dlugacz's Deli for a porkpie, the soup kitchen queue clanking and squabbling like a dessertrattler. ‘--get off my shoe’ squabbled a man with a fiery red beard.The taller the beanstalk grew the shorter his da’s temper got. Heremembered his da telling him that and that he’d never make it to thetop if he spent his time messing round like a kid. Giacomo Taldegardo deJuan San Francesco di Sales Saberio Pietro Leopardi hates children; his longerelegiac pieces attest to that. His da said that boys like him had nobusiness thinking they would ever amount to a hill of beans. You’llnever ever reach the top his da would say, never ever. The Chinesemasseuse yanked his da’s cock, strangling it like a fair-hairedchicken. Every morning his mamma laid out his da’s work clothes: astarched and ironed blue pinstriped blue shirt, a pair of denim bluetrousers and woolly gray socks. Funny how he never once kissed her onthe cheek, never ever.

Lela wished her name was Lorelei, but her mamma said Lorelei was a whore’sname and whores weren’t woman but shylocks who sold slatternly love topigs and unhinged men. Kaspar had to learn how to whelk all ovary againafter he’d spent fifteen years kneeling encrypted in the tomb ova hisbode; life’s lest rake ageist death. The sic and befouled he said.Ghastly! The first time she heard her da say this she felt sick to herstomach. The second time she ran out of the house and hid behind the

woolshed, her da hollering bloody murder. Get to bed and be quickabout it! We haven’t all day you know! Her da was one of thoseunhinged men her mamma talked about; a fair-haired pig with wigglyears and a sad tortuous smile. Your da fucks whores, she’d saysprinkling ironing water on his blue pinstriped blue shirt. A ripecunt of a man. A pig! Clanking and rattling like a coal-shovel! I’ve amind to starch his ‘thing’ she said running the hissing sniffling ironover his collar. Chinese cock he is!

Horning she’s got horning on her ‘thing’, Ringkobing horning withfeathers and cactus lace. But mamma I can’t. You will by God you will!But I can’t, it hurts. ‘--it’s suppose to hurt!’ You silly cow! Get tobed and be quick about it! His woolly gray socks scratched her legs,the studs on his denim blue trousers leaving rivet-marks on her belly.Funny how he never once kissed her on the cheek, never. She stopped atF.W. Sweny’s Apothecary, the smell of ripening figs and Foil’s Tonic pickling hernose. ‘--I’ll take a bar of linseed soap please. The lemony one’. Shelaid a fistful of coppers on the counter, separating the tarnishedones from the shiny ones. ‘--that should be enough. Say, have you seena man with Stilton blue eyes?’ The apothecary agent gave her a cageystare, the back of his head squared with the snuff self. Rabbi Loew, hislegs crossed one over the other sat in the big horsehair chair by thedoor, the age spots on his hands as brown as Golem clay. ‘--what can Ido for you Rabbi?’ asked the agent trying not to stare at his hands.Struggling to stand up, his belly hanging like an overfed lapdog, theRabbi pointed a spotty finger at a sac of lemon twists on the shelfabove the agent’s head. ‘—those. I’ll take a bag’ he said, his eyestwo dots sunk in a knoll of pink flesh. I promise it won’t hurt, nowturn over. Don’t look at me! Look away. The Chinese masseuse wears pinheel boots. Strange is she kisses on the lips. Never says lay off. Ipromised it’d hurt, now get on your belly. Big Golem clay chair and agespots like horsehair. Gimme the yellar ones. That’s them. Sad thing ishis hat doesn’t fit anymore, sideburns stuck to his skinny neck likespider ivy.

In his greatcoat pocket he carried a slip of yellowing paper, andwritten in a child’s tiny script on that slip of yellowing paper wasthe following: “I'm still standing at the door of life, knocking andknocking, though admittedly none too forcefully, and breathlesslylistening to see whether someone will decide to open the bolt and letme in.” (Robert Walser, Geschwister Tanner) Never underestimate the powerof digestion his great great-grandfather said, his belly fatlysagging. His grandfather wore oatmeal gray trousers and blue flannel

shirts with snap-buttons. On Saturdays he wore a reddish-purple(Borscht-red his grandmamma called it) jacket and gray woollen trouserstapered from the knee to the top of his black boots. Flynn Odem playscheckers with his granddad on a upside down barn door placed betweentwo sawhorses. ‘--I hear that Chinese masseuse puts her back into it’.‘-Had her once. On the fallboards behind the woolshed. Rode me like agoddamn bronco. Still can’t lay on that side’. His granddad ate cornoff the cob with churned butter and riversalt. Would smack his butterylips and poke with the end of his tongue for the pieces stuck in hisbeard. Made a god-awful noise. Could hear him smacking and chompingclear into the backyard. His grandmamma told him he was like that onaccount of he got kicked by a mule and couldn’t close his mouthproper. He liked to watch his granddad snap close the buttons on hisshirt with his thumb and middle finger like he was trying to shoo awaythe devil or call upon God.

Hurrying passed me her face red like the cream soda we bought at thecorner store where the fat kid chewed his cud pathetic he didn’t knowhis ass from a hole in his head see his kind under the rector’s benchmuch as I’d like to forget that and that that went on back then when Iwasn’t as big as I am now littler when I wore those knee-britches withthe slit on the side and the rope belt that was always rubbing the fatover the lip of my pants and fader looking for the hole down the darkcobwebby tunnel that connects the twats with the balls and the whitesheets flocking like gulls making a nuisance when the older kids justwanted to show off to their flat chest girlfriends cheeks pinchedcrimson like the red squall jacket my mamma made me wear in badweather and my da sitting on the porch tamping flake into his cobenough to bring on a hacking fit just like that.

von Waldeyer drops washers into the collection plate, thinks he’sputting one over on God, not likely that God would give him a moment’snotice. Always got to keep your eye on ‘em, never know if they’ll pickyour pocket or run you up against the wall. Thing is. Firstly I methim when I was a wee trawler fishing for chubs in wellies and the rainslicker my ma made me wear just in case the weather got ruinous.Branches whipping round like ragdolls with twig arms. Take your headoff like a bean tin. Snježana ate her lunch on a bench in the parkbehind the aqueduct, her tiny malformed teeth sawing raw carrots andsandwich crusts. Her mamma made her wear spurge cotton dresses withlace collars bought off the hanger from the Saint Vincent De Paul. His datold him that she never outgrew her milk teeth and had to breakwhatever she ate into small pieces so she wouldn’t choke on them. Her

teeth had little bumps on them and if you looked hard enough you couldsee tiny purple veins like the ones you could see on a baby’s headwhen its born.

He said that if she didn’t stop bellyaching and learn how to act likea grownup she’d end up a spinster with a houseful of cats. He use tosee her with her da shopping for hand-me-downs at the Saint Vincent De Paul,her da yanking her by her pale freckled arm, Snježana wishing they couldgo to the Eaton’s where they had brand new dresses not ones that smelledlike other people’s dirty houses. Never once did she feel soft cottonagainst her skin or lace-up a pair of new shoes. He said new thingswere a waste of money and that if that’s what she wanted she could golive with the nuns or sell herself to men with troubled pasts anduneven tempers. She wished her name was Lorelei and that when she went tothe bathroom her da didn’t peek at her through a hole in the wall. Shewished she had four arms so she could push her da off her when thepale freckled ones were pinned behind her back. They carried herfather to the cemetery in a wheeled bier. The gravediggers, their jawsworking like gristmills, spat tobacco juice onto the raised areaaround the grave. Fader Sieraków knelt in front of the wooden catafalque,his Chastibule collected round his waist, the hem of his Alb steepedin a gobbet of spit. The ceremony for The Absolution of the Dead wasconducted by Fader Tunuyán, a tonsured Franciscan with a brash tone anduneven teeth.

"Los sepultureros, sus mandíbulas de trabajo, como molinos, jugo detabaco escupió en la zona elevada alrededor de la tumba; Sierakówfader, tarareando un canto fúnebre gaélico, se arrodilló delante delcatafalco de madera, su Chastibule recogido alrededor de su cintura,el dobladillo de su Alb empapado en un trocito de saliva."

Once the funereal Mass had been said, and the mourner who had thrownherself on top of the coffin had been pulled free, Fader Sieraków wipedhis brow, and turning to leave stopped in front of the sepultureros whowere impatiently shuffling back and forth waiting for the mourners toleave, and said ‘--may God forgive you your sins’ then pausing, hisuneven teeth spitting out the words whispered ‘--lousy cunts’. Györgyand Löwinger, for that were their names, beneficiaries of lowbrowintellect and less that honorable temperament, stared popeyed at FaderSieraków, neither man knowing how to respond.

El hombre del sombrero se detuvo y saludó a Dejesus; hombres cuidado delos demás. Minas, Gerais and Belo Horizonte live in a woolshed with onewindow and half-a-door. They have to crouch when entering the woolshedlest they bust their heads against the doorframe. The brothers are allunder five feet in height, the shortest coming in at just under 4 ft.9½. The sky fell twice the year he met the Horizonte brothers; EasterSunday and the day after Lent. Minas, Gerais and Belo had come into townto buy blankets and salt, snookering past the guardsman where thefive-mile meets the outland, entering through the gate behind theearthwork barricade. Sövtöe J.J. Eötvös, the guardsman who was caughtsleeping when the brothers crossed the five-mile, was shipped off tothe Overnight Asylum where he was subjected to a series of sadisticpsychiatric procedures, one such procedure resulting in his death.When pushed one of the orderlies claimed that del paciente testículoswere subjected to una serie de baños de hielo dando lugar a atrofiadel paciente testículos y el escroto rompiendo en mil pedazos dehielo. Sövtöe J.J. Eötvös remains were sent to the Pays de la Loire cemetery wherehe was buried in a tobacco tin behind los Sepultureros’ Cubierto. ‘--a tobaccotin, how disgusting!’ said one of the inquisitors, his lips bluingfrom the cold. ‘--you’d think they’d at least give the man a decentburial’ said a second inquisitor, ‘--testículos y el escroto rompiendoen mil pedazos de hielo, how repugnant’. ‘--we’re all to blame’ saidthe first inquisitor. ‘--every last one of us’. ‘--I suppose we couldhave intervened and brought him back’ said the second inquisitor. ‘--after all it is our job to protect those who have made it to the otherside, even if we find them repugnant’. Eduardo Banzato, Eucrio-Rodrigues deBonaventura and Risottos-Oliveira Netto work for Los Departamento de GrandesInquisidores, also known as the Department of Undertaking. It is theirresponsibility to ensure that those tortured on the other side arebrought to safety and to guarantee that they get the proper medicalcare while interned. As representatives of Los Departamento de GrandesInquisidores they are required to recant their past as simpletons andembrace a brotherhood based on Dialectical Immaterialism, even though noneof them understands what Dialectical Immaterialism is or what it requires ofthem.

{This is foolish! There is no Departamento de Grandes Inquisidores or aBrotherhood of Dialectical Immaterialist’s. These are thoughts thought with littleregard for my saneness. The sort that choke me with melancholy.}

Emilio Videla Rafael, Jorge Redondo, Ramón Eduardo Orlando and Massera Agosti meetevery Sunday afternoon in the rear of the Waymart to split-hairs overwhich one of them was responsible for the atrocities carried-out at

the Overnight Asylum. They grumble and moan, none willing to acceptresponsibility for the horrors perpetrated by the orderlies anddoctors who were under their control. They were simply following theirown conscience, pursuing their moral innerness. They were never forcedto do what they did, they did it because they chose to, and at no timewere they coerced or subjected to duress. They just did it, that’sall. Miscreants tailored to fit the shoe that kicks the poor andunderprivileged, all four men live lives of carnal approbation,depraved animals who spread pestilence and disease.

[He remembers a broken-down motel room in a town where no one except aempire of dog-like people understand a word he says. Moneyless,carrying whatever he owns in a haversack, the broken-down motel roomsmelling of other people’s sex and urine, he sits on the edge of thebed and tries to figure out how he got here. There were mountains;snow covered mountains. A dirt road that bends just outside town, thehalogen eyes of a truck slicing through the darkness. Not a soulstopped when he stuck out his finger; not even someone he thought hemight know, or thought he knew. The dog-like people offered to helphim but first he must be put to work. A dwarf in clown pants and acrocheted toque points to the dogs rummaging through the garbage andsays ‘--here, feed them’ and hands him a bucketful of innards. Thedog-like people come running, in single-file and in groups, dressed incodpieces and toting long spear-like staffs. They enter a campfirering, single-file or in twos, he can’t remember which, the wallsconstructed from trees whittled into dagger-like points. One of thecrazies points at the snow-covered mountains and says ‘—there, that’sthe way out’].

J.M. Gutierrez has a Mostrar Tatuajes de Cangrejo on his chest, a mark of losHermandad de los Sobrevivientes. He lives in a one room bedsit over the SederGrocers with another man who refuses to make known his name. Everymorning at 7 o’clock they join the line in front of the clinic,talking to no one and clapping their frostbitten hands togetherwaiting for the heavy aluminum doors to open.

‘...I killed sleeping flies, turning my back to him and whistling’. (Juan Carlos Onetti, Goodbyes and Stories).

He met J.M. Gutierrez at the Feast of the Rapture, neither man recognizing theother. Years earlier they met at the Feast of the Lamb, acknowledging oneanother with a tacit nod. He pulled her across his torso, the hard

coils of her breasts digging into his chest like dirks. The smell ofher own sex making her sick, his hands despoiling her empty flesh, shelay like a frightened child unable to feel the simplest emotion. Hernoviciate last three years; two hanging from the rafters in a horse-sling.

They called her Lorelei,

1. I cannot determine the meaningOf sorrow that fills my breast:A fable of old, through it streaming,Allows my mind no rest.The air is cool in the gloamingAnd gently flows the Rhine.The crest of the mountain is gleamingIn fading rays of sunshine.

2. The loveliest maiden is sittingUp there, so wondrously fair;Her golden jewelry is glist'ning;She combs her golden hair.She combs with a gilded comb, preening,And sings a song, passing time.It has a most wondrous, appealingAnd pow'rful melodic rhyme.

3. The boatman aboard his small skiff, -Enraptured with a wild ache,Has no eye for the jagged cliff, -His thoughts on the heights fear forsake.I think that the waves will devourBoth boat and man, by and by,And that, with her dulcet-voiced powerWas done by the Loreley.(Heinrich Heine, Die Lorelei)

Swaying, trembling, the horse-sling cutting her in halves, she surrendered to his pow'rful skiff. ‘--I cannot determine the meaning’ said Dejesus. ‘--I think that the waves will devour the fading rays of sunshine, but I could be mistaken’. Fearing that he might be forsaken,or worse, abandoned to the jagged sea, he walked out into the sunshinybright day, his hat proudly atop his head, the smell of starchy laundry assailing his sense of balance.

‘--you look tired’ said J.M. Gutierrez swatting at a fly circling his head,its tiny wings thrashing up a dustbowl of infinitesimal filth. Theknife made a kinching sound, the hilt slipping against the open palmof her hand. ‘--be careful, she’s a whizz with a pocketknife. I’veseen her gut a man in halves, his insides coiling like a loose spring.Can’t be too careful around her kind!’ Lorelei, her golden jewelryglist'ning, devouring the boat men both with her dulcet-voiced power.Oh sorrow fill my breast! Thrashing round like a caged tiger, his thoughtsfalling in and out of consciousness, he felt the sorrow of his agepressing in on his very being. In a catheter-voice, his throatbreaching and constricting, he spoke of the age of foolishness, ofstout angry men with asthmatic voices and deceitful bathetic pride.‘--you look tired’. ‘--no, just trying to make sense’. She’s atigress, can slit a man in halves with a single thrust of herpocketknife. Best be careful lest she stick you like a suckling pig.‘--I’ll be fine, just give me a moment, I’m in the middle of the thickof it’. With a heavy breast he stepped out into the cool autumnalafternoon, his hat cinched under his arm, a militia of gray and blackpiebald crows caw-cawing in the branches of the boxwood outside therector’s study. ‘--in the end all that matters was that we tooknothing to heart; the misery and cold-heartedness of life’. ‘--youmean, don’t you, all that matters is?’ ‘no, all that was, not is, isnever was. Listen clearly: when was is is becomes was’. He could feelit, the past overcoming the present. It would only be a matter of timebefore ‘is’ succeeded ‘was’, relieving the past of the future. Theknife made a kinching sound, the blade hilted to the hilt. Cold-hearted she is. Can draw-and-quarter in half the time.

Buachaill Báire stood outside the grocer’s taking in the warm summery day;crooking his head to the left, then the right he took in the entirelandscape. The sun warmly caressing his neck, a hole in the cloudsabove the Waymart pierced by a bolt of raining sun, he made up his mindto pay a visit to the man whom he had not seen since the Fast of theBleeding Lamb when both took up the unstitched thread left dangling bythe sermonizing pastor. “O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, theknife-blade”. [U. 4.54-55] said the man looking to mend loose ends. TheVicar of Wrexham stood to address the congregation, the hem of his Albsteeped in a gobbet of spit. Poldy Magyar stood admiring his refractionin the awning window, rumpling and poleaxing his face like a kid-softglove, the sun forming a halo over his behatted head.

The truth has its own weaknesses. The day he was born his mammascreeched at the top of her lungs ‘--God forgive me, I have givenbirth to a monster!’ He was born Poldy Magyar, his mother changing hisname to Japheth on his eleventh birthday. Then on his twelfth birthday,realizing that her son had no competence for shipbuilding, she begancalling him ‘my little man in the hat’, as he wore a cap whenever andwherever he went. "Woodshadows floated silently by through the morningpeace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed." [U.1.242] she saidin a soft lilting voice, her ‘little man in the hat’ tuggingaggressively at her skirts. I did say at your birth, dear boy, that Ihad given birth to a monster, but that, I dare say was a mistake. Foryou see that morning, the morning in question, I slaked my thirst withSloe Gin Fizz, corrupting the hole you were hatched from. I beg yourforgiveness, my dear lovely child. So that was how it began: from Poldyto Japheth to ‘my little man in the hat’. But mamma why do you feel suchshame; a boy is a boy even if his name be untilled.

Laggardly, slowly, he pushed sleep from his body, his eyes trappedshut like the jaws of Nepenthes Rajah. The pigheaded four: Death,judgment, heaven and hell. Never underestimate the wisdom of the dead.These his da told him over cold mock chicken sandwiches and warmraspberry Kook-Aid. My son, you must never forget, the world is a sham;life is lived by the stupid, not the wise. Off in the distancewoodshadows floated silently across the horizon, his da tugging on hiscoattails, coaxing him over the five-mile and into the dustbowl of thefuture. It isn’t your fault mamma; some boys are born monsters.Written on the ceiling, the ink bluing into the corners above hishead, was the following: “The Alçada of the village came by chanceinto the inn together with a notary, and” {the Witness} laid apetition before him, showing that it was requisite for his rightsthat” {the rector’s assistant}, …there present, should make adeclaration before him that he did not know” {Japheth}, also therepresent, and that he was not the one that was in print in a historyentitled "Second Part”” {pamphleteering by way} of {colportage}, byone”{pigheaded Dutchman}… {also known as Buachaill Báire}…"(Cervantes, Don Quixote)

Poldy Magyar awoke from troubled dreams and winched himself out of bed,his legs giving way to inertia and a lack of exercise. The {pigheadedDutchman}… {also known as Buachaill Báire}, stood at the foot of his cotcounting the tiles on the ceiling. Earnestly he proffered him a cigar,offering to clip the prepuce for him with a nod of his gigantic head.‘--roll the clipped end round in your lips, that’s it, like a lolli’

he said holding the extinguished matchstick between his thumb andforefinger, the sulfur smarting his eyes. ‘--the Jesuits prefer asoaked end; the Franciscans less so’. The clipped end fell to thefloor like a spiraling autumn leaf, the tip frayed and scrimmaged. ‘--I’m sure you’d be better equipped to understand what I’m getting at ifyou weren’t such a good-for-nothing. And good-for-nothings, well theyseldom understand a thing, not even their own thoughts, simple andcontrived as they may be’. He could feel the earnestness emptying fromhis body; disgust overcoming his sense of magnetism. ‘--dare I sayyou’re a scoundrel sir, a cunt, were I a man accustom to using profanelanguage’.That morning (or was it the next?) a legion of fools arrived in town;some on foot, some hanging onto the bumper of the truck clip-cloppinglike horses. ‘--well I’ll be damned’ said the alms man, the buttons onhis shirt sparkling earnestly in the sun. ‘--it’s getting harder andharder to make a living these days’. Legions of fools were not anuncommon sight; putting on a show here or there, collecting whatmiserly gratuities they could, then leaving by truck and on foot, someclip-clopping clip-clopping. Doesn’t take much to teach a man alesson, especially if he’s taken a turn for the worse. The {horse-headed Dane}… {aka Buachaill Báire} ‘--a cunt dear sir, were I a manaccustom to using profane language’. I dare say it’s the Franciscan’s thatprefer the soaked ends, not the Jesuits! Alfonso Osip and Ochoa Emilyevichstood admire one another’s reflection in window of the Dogmen Deli,neither aware that the sky was about to fall. Osip, a castrato with anoversize chin, and Emilyevich, a pint-size violinist with glass-blue eyesand a goatee, had that morning arrived clip-clopping behind the legionof fools’ truck, the sun glaring off their button-down chemises.

The hunch-backed barber Hascheck, known for his vile demeanor andinsatiable guile, jumped off the back of the legion of fools’ truckand into the mud-crummy street, the tails of his greatcoat flappingmadly. Catching his breath, his chest pumping like a five-alarm firehe said,

“Her stomach is ugly, isn't it? Covered with folds of fat? You must beable to see it when she bathes...You say she is not very fit. Herbreasts, her fat stomach, slap slap, flabby as boiled pork. Just likethat, Polzer, slap slap, the mother sow!” (Hermann Ungar, The Maimed)

Taking a tonic from his breast pocket he took a long insatiable swill,suckling like a newborn hog. ‘--I dare say’ said Osip, ‘--a boiled porksandwich would go nicely’. ‘--with a cream jug of rum’ added Emilyevich,

his face wrinkling like a shaken cloth. ‘--indeed, yes, indeed’ saidOsip. Roca Cathedras sat on the edge of the dais thinking of ways to makeslag into gold, his upper lip knitting. Roca Cathedras hated nothing morethan truckloads of fools and woman “slap slap, flabby as boiled pork”.He had no time for Alfonso Osip or Ochoa Emilyevich, suckling hogs both. Thelegion of fools never stayed longer than a fortnight, two if the moonstayed put. The first time Poldy Magyar saw the troop of fools was on aSunday after Saturday Mass, the fools setting up their tents in theparking lot behind the Waymart, Osip and Emilyevich laughing to burst agut, Roca Cathedras gawking at them crossly, his forehead stretchedtighter than a pigskin blanket.

They stitched up the hole in his da’s leg with box-suture; theunraveled ends tied in double-knots then twisted round until the bloodstopped spurting. Time was when his da’s legs were fair game for dog-bites and lacerations. Humping through the dogbane behind thewoolshed, milking the tall grass, his hipflask hanging from his beltloop, his da hunted wild geese and turbot. His da’s da hunted woodlotpigs with a bow and arrow, taking down garbage-fed hogs with a singleshot. When he was a boy his da’s da took him out to the woodlot behindthe woolshed, showing him how to string a bow and pull back thefeathers so the arrow wouldn’t fly cockeyed. He took his first killthat day; a Landseer with a maggoty eye. His granddad hung it from abowed sapling, digging the maggots out with his hunting knife, hisheart racing in his throat. That was when they called him Poldy, longbefore he came to be known as the man in the hat. ‘La Belleza Convulsa: Where I lost my Spleen’ was written over the doorway to theDog and Beggar Tavern. And on the opposite wall, covering over ricochetsand bullet holes: Freedom for Los Desaparecidos! Suhcamelet, prelate to Normanand Varangian, his churlish egg-shaped jowl hanging below his chinstrap,stood admiring his reflection in the window, a stray Landseer with amaggoty eye sniffing his pant leg. ‘--away bucetão! I have no time forstrays and kettledrums’. On the back of his greatcoat, written in anunsteady Punjabi hand was the following “(He smites with his bicyclepump the crayfish in his left hand.)” (James Aloysius Joyce, Ulysses).Harping, Suhcamelet retied his shoe and sent his hat flying; the brimwhirling like a railroaded top. ‘--haven’t seen head nor tail of thecrapper spleen, must’ve hightailed north to sky-scraping ground’.Harping, the strings of his heart soaring, he delivered a sermon tothose assembled in front of the Waymart ‘--may the goalie host redeemyour pitiful souls. So say’eth Robin Goodfellow of the Puck’. Fool!See his sort round and a bout, piddling in the flowerbox out back of

the Dog and Beggar; piddle-puddle astride the grave. Ill-omened, hisshirttails un-tucked, he hightails it northerly, his cudgel danglingbetwixt his legs. Makes a man harp, it does.

Tiring of the befuddlement that cursed his being, the man in the hatsat under a mighty elm and counted the stars in the noontime sky: 2.He had no other recourse than to admit defeat; his life having becomea peccadillo of disappointment. Were he but a farthing, a boy calledPoldy who’s worse fear was his ma’s uneven temper, wading knee-high inthe muck behind the woolshed spearing frogs with arrows his da’s dagave him, the sucking noise his boots made when he unstuck his footfrom a grave of squashy mud, his arrow a spit of frogs, garlands ofroe and green things, three frogs impaled with one pull of his bow,his piss yellower than the buttercups they held under their chins tosee who liked butter and who didn’t. {His best friend Obadiah was keenon oleo}.

“(He smites with his bicycle pump the {mudbug} in his left hand.)”(James Aloysius Joyce, Ulysses). His da wore his shirt back to front,affecting a backwardness that followed him wherever he went. Woolshedfrogs, his granddad smiling broadly from ear to ear. ‘--never admitdefeat my boy’ thinking what he really meant was deafness, but hisupper-plate slipped and got in the way. Pumping he went about the day,his unstuck boot making a sucking noise. Un-tucked he strode into theday, his cudgel dangling betwixt his legs. Knuckling his bicycle sumphe set off into the world, Obadiah at his side. ‘--never overestimatethe forces of nature’ said his da’s da jawing his upper-plate. Timeand again he lost time of time; the hours and days fleeting by likescat through a goose. Up to his waist he went about the day never-minding that at noontime he had a meeting with Dejesus. He wondered: wholikes butter and who doesn’t? Maybe Dejesus. Who knows? “(He smites withhis bicycle pump the {crawdaddy} in his left hand.)” (ibid). Maybe not.His da taught him how to make a cudgel out of worthless metals, theblacksmith’s apron cutting into the partial bones in his hips. Thatnight his grandmamma served whitefish, his da rescuing a crumb of bonecaught in his throat with a thump on his back.

His da’s mamma bought salt cod from the Oppegaard fish market, a mancalled Apercus separating the heads from the fillets, wrapping them inbrown paper and securing the slimy package with twine, then winking ather salaciously as he handed her the package over the counter, thetattoo on his forearm separating his wrist from his elbow. Not that

one; I hate Tegucigalpa flatfish. Pointing, give me that one, yes, that onethere. Hack me off a piece. The Francisco’s make a fine Morazán fishpie. Toosalty? Not at all. Now stop your quibbling and scythe me off a piece.My da once got a whitefish bone stuck in his throat; damn near chokedhim silly. Taught me how to dislodge it with a thump to the back ofthe back; pops out like a crumb. No really. Ask the monger atOppegaard’s, he’ll give you the goods. Apercus I thinks his name; smarmycunt gave my grandmamma the once over. If I remember correctly she waswearing her herringbone stockings that day. Up to her waist in fishguts, heads separated from the fillets so there’s no mistaking thegood pieces. (ibid). Pops out like a crumb. Partial bones in the hips sothey say; easier to get the middle parts down. Worthless parts aregood for soup and headcheese’s. Never know when company will drop by.Crawdaddy in her left hand, mudbug in her right. Throat stretched outlike a firehouse. If I remember correctly.

Remembering the past, and what lay in between, his thoughts stretchedout like a firehouse, partial bones lined up on the tablecloth, theback of his back thumped black and blue, his grandmamma spooningbowlfuls of headcheese soup into greedy hands, smiting the bicyclepump like a tea spout, his da’s da thumping his head against the tabletrying to knock some sense into himself.

The Landesschule Pforta gymnasium holds weekly fistfights; the Schmöllnbrothers beating the tar out of the Brandrübel brothers three times outof seven.

He turned the world over in his head until it spilled out on to theground in front of him, a frail twisted arm reaching up towards himbeseechingly. Who’s arm is this, he thought, and why is it pointing atme? The world turned over again, the arm stretching, bending trying totouch the yolky sun above his head. And why is it pointing at theyolky sun? When he was a boy his da fastened baseball cards withclothespins to the spokes of his secondhand bicycle, the cards click-clacking as he rocketed down the sidewalk jumping puddles andpotholes.

The Landesschule Pforta gymnasium holds weekly craps behind the kitchen,the Brandrübel brothers beating the coal out the Schmölln brothers seventimes out of three.

Leaping potholes and puddles he rocketed down the sideways, theclothes-pinned cards clicking in the spokes. His da sat on the porchspitting tobacco juice into a coffee tin, the night sky redder than aslapped face. Anchises Lethe drank the Dog and Beggar dry, gulping backthroatfuls of fortified wine. José Arturo, seated on the stool next tohim, his face half-hidden in the turtleneck of his shirt, said aprayer for dead and recently deceased poor Rudy {Virag} who the yearbefore had hanged himself from the rafters overlooking the OvernightAsylum. ‘--may God bless his slithering soul’ said Arturo, his faceashen pale. ‘--for God know’eth, Hades is hotter than Hell’eth’. ‘--yes by God’ interrupted Ennis Forghas ‘--hotter than Hell’eth!’ Hoistingtheir tankards above their heads, all three men yelled ‘--HALLELUJAH!To Hell with Hell’eth! May his rung’eth neck unbend and his soul restin peace. Adman’.

The morning sun rose behind the Waymart, a forebodingness settling overthose up and about attending to their morning victuals’. The daystopped flat in its tracks, the alms man struggling to get his cap tostay put in front of him, a gale force wind picking it up and whirlingit round and round like a top.

‘--Hell’eth, yes by God, Hell’eth!’ If only I could stop the flow, allthese notions and schemes, brainchildren gone terribly awry. I can ifonly. The Gog and Beggar drafts Pilsners and Ales from a spigot attached toa hose attached to a keg underneath the counter, the alewife hikingher skirts up round her hips, the drawstrings of her corset flappingto and madly. Hell’eth has no fury like slaking man. El cerdo stoodadmiring his reflection in the mirror, his unusually outsized noseobscuring an otherwise unusual face. Obscure as it was it was indeedhis face he was admiring in the mirror over the counter. The Witnessclosed the door behind him and took a seat next to the window; hishands blued with pamphleteer’s ink and glue. ‘--a bitters! Somethingwith a good head on it if you don’t mind’. Hiking her skirts up thealewife flashed her hirsute bush at the Witness, a slatternly smile onher ungainly face. ‘--madam, if I wanted a hair pie I’d ask for one.Now, if you please, put that ugly thing away!’ El cerdo snickered, hisusually expressionless face screwed-up like a mousy glove. This willnot do. To hell with it! May a gonorrheal dog mijao on your leg. Theproprietor of the Beggar and Gog spit into a glass and rubbed it insideand out with a dirty rag. ‘--gentlemen please, enough of yourshenanigans, either you drink up and leave or I will be forced tothrow you out; all three of you, headfirst!’ Snickering, his face amess of warts and unlancerable boils, El cerdo pointed at the proprietor,

his liver red tongue dancing in his mouth ‘--you sir? Dare I say youwill be up to your shirtsleeves with trouble if you try and toss usthree out!’ Bustling in front of him, hirsute bush exposed, thealewife laughed, her soiled underpants hanging on by a thread. ‘--putthat damn ugly thing away!’ grumbled the Witness, his voice filled withbile. ‘--can’t you see we three are engaged in a battle? Now scramwoman, and for the love of Jehovah be quick about it!’

The day after the littlest dogman sniggled the biggest eel anyone hadever seen a sickly child with a horsetail cowlick stood in front ofthe pumphouse begging for a bite of the black oily fish. The littlestdogman cut the eel in two and handed half to the boy, the boy thumpinghis chest like a sideshow strongman.

While all this was going on the legless man sat reservedly on hispushcart wondering what all the fuss was about. Across the streetsquabbling with a sales clerk the harridan’s sister walked in circles,the hem of her skirts entangling her legs, the mercantilist trying toelicit the attention of the constabulary, his face as red as Polishcabbage. The legless man thought ‘--No wonder the world’s in such amess. No one wants to give an inch, and when they do the other persontakes a mile’, the smell of black oil fish besetting his thoughts.

His father read to him on those nights when his thoughts wouldn’t stayquiet. Two of his favorite stories were ‘Encerrados con un SoloJuguete’ (Locked up with a Single Toy)* and ‘La Muchacha de las Bragas deOro’ (Girl with Golden Panties)* (*Juan Marsé). The girl with the goldenpanties, the one character his father found appealing, his fathercalled ‘La Muchacha de grandes bucetoes’, after a dice-player namedSofia Sofiya who threw craps behind the Waymart, the momentum of her‘grandes bucetoes’ driving the die hard against the brick wall. ‘--what a magnificent ass’ his father said, his cheeks flushing. ‘--andthe way it wriggled, my God, what a sight parading round like theQueen of asses’. He sucked his fingers when his father talked aboutSofia Sofiya, his tongue thumbing the roof of his mouth. He thought untilhis head felt like it was going to split open, the bone spurs in hisjaw aching. The spurs, a gift from a streetwalker with a garish holefor a mouth, who upon hearing him call her a cunt slapped him acrossthe face with her purse, cracking his molar in two, a puss canker thesize of a walnut effecting his speech, which now came out in half-vowels and constantans, his father’s hope that one day his son mighttake up the opera or speak in tongues squashed forever. He walked

slapdash idly up the sideways, his hat squeezed like a ripe orangeunder his arm, the brim folded over levering his armpit and bicep. ‘--never again will I listen to an imbecile… after all any man worth hisweight in salt knows that imbeciles can never be trusted, even a welldressed one’. Across the sideways the harridan’s sister let go with aloud commanding howl, his ears crackling like tinder.

Unaware that he was sinking into a cesspit of despair, like someonewhom life’s lottery had missed over yet continued to encourage, a manresigned to failure, he ordered a glass of Absinthe and sat dejectedlyin the corner by the stove. I will overcome this, he thought, thecorners of his mouth awakened by the Green Fairy. The Absinthe burned likeHades, the taste of wormwood and cloves in his throat making speechall but impossible. Considering the paucity of most people he didn’tfeel all that dreadful about the fact he couldn’t make heads nor tailsof most things.

Franz Alexander Platz and Dieter Kopf crossed the bridge (the rickety bridge;for this fact is duly important) that crosses across the aqueductspanning the five-mile and no-man’s-land. Having both abandoned theHerstal Liege troop years earlier, they now travel by foot bringing theirhodgepodge of pantomiming and dramatic asides to whomever had eyes andears to listen with. The first time Poldy saw the Hans Lamprecht troop,for they called themselves the Hans Lamprecht troop so as not to beconfused with the Hans Lampeel troop, who were hacks, the leader of thetroop known for his dislike for Hamlet’s father, whom he felt was a bit-player, and as with all bit-players dispensable, he experienced forthe first time that feeling deep in his guts that would follow him forthe rest of his life. Considering the deficiency of most people hedidn’t feel all that terrible about the fact he couldn’t make headsnor tails of most things.

On Saturdays his father slept until eight o’clock. Upon awaking, whichhe did slowly, like a slowcoach with a sore tooth, he would order hischildren to line up at the foot of the bed, then taking a deep breath,his wooly chest rising and plummeting, tell them what he wanted forbreakfast: skillet-fried liver with onions and garlic, which heexpected to be served in bed. Using his barrel-chest as a table he atelike a ravenous animal, forking slivers of pinkish liver into hismouth, scabs of burnt onion and garlic slickening his lips and thegray stubble on his trebled chin. ‘--Most people in this world arebit-players, so don’t expect much from them’ he would tell his

children, the youngest sucking his middle and next-to-middle fingers.On Sundays his father admonished the priest for telling the same liesover and over again, the congregation too frightened to stand up forthe priest or silence his father’s weekly tirade. After Mass hisfather would go hunting in the fields behind the woolshed, the crackand boom of gunfire besetting the calmness with agitation and terror.His father had no idea who Hamlet’s father was, and if he had, he wouldn’thave cared. Considering the deficit of most people, bit-players,rogues and hooligans, he had little to feel terrible about.Afternoons, when the stink of skillet-burnt liver and onions filledthe house with an organ stench, his father went hunting in theclearing behind the woolshed, his little brother sitting in the cornerby the stove sucking his thumb and next-to-middle finger. The hog pitbehind the woolshed stank to high heaven, piles of dead rotting fecespickling the dry brown earth. The unfed hogs grunted and bellyached,the biggest one ramming its head against the pen, its eyes two blackholes of rage. His father’s beard smelled of organ meat and dicedonions. ‘--Don’t expect much; your life will be less disappointing’his father’s eyes two black holes of dirt and liver grease. The priest told the same lies over and over again, his altar skirtmulching up his hairless white legs. Afternoons when the church wasemptied of sinners, a few stragglers hiding under the ciborium lickingthe pot clean, the priest salted his white hairless legs with chalkdust, hoping to bring a fine sheen to his once youthful gams. Hiddenunder the altar box, wrapped in sackcloth, was a copy of Ibsen’s WhenWe Dead Awaken, the Henotheist Smith stealing into the sanctuary aftervespers to read by candlelight. The Poitou-Charentes-Poitou children’schoir sing evensong, the youngest castrato devastating to pieces thechandelier over the Baptismal. ‘--Never underestimate the stupidity ofchildren’ his da said, his head pressed between his hands like softcheese. The children’s choir wear burgundy robes and gray stockingsstitched from unprocessed wool, corduroy overcoats and tare sandals.The youngest chorales’, a slight boy named Oporto, possessed such apiercing castrato the other boys called him Voz Alta, he with the highvoice. Mr. Artsybashev, the leader of the Poitou-Charentes-Poitou children’schoir, though never married, was known to keep company with GretaFelisberto, the pianist for the girls’ chorus, a plump angry woman withoniony breath.

Not the man in the hat (Poldy Magyar) nor the weekly fistfights held inLandesschule Pforta gymnasium were affected by these extraneous goings-on’s, it just was as it was, the rest of the world going about its

business. His father felt the violation in his head, the talismanicbeginning of the madness that was to plague him for the rest of hislife. But father, the goose will surely shit all over the floor. Stopyour bellyaching, shit is good for the milkman. Keeps him hale andhardly. Hardly what, father? Hardly worth the bother to give it asecond’s thought. Father, you’re always goosing around--I can’tunderstand a word you say. It’s better that way my boy; you’llunderstand it when you get older. But what if I don’t? You will, andyou will enjoy it. He wondered how her sagging breasts must feeltrapped under her blouse, hanged men swaying on the gallows. Frederica Cárdenas wears shiny shoes with beanpole heels. Abel Rotwang hasn’ta pot to mik-chə-rāt in, piss yellower than buttercups trickling down theinseam of his trousers. My boy (mijn zoon) never underestimate theimbecility of people! Ja vader ja. Hij leefde in een twee kamerbedsit, de bank stijver dan gematteerd paardenhaar. He wondered if herlegs rubbed together when she sat in church, the tiny hairs on theinsides of her thighs chaffing against the pew wood. His grandmammahad oniony breath, the fine hairs on her upper lip sweaty withuiensap. Pinesap, that’s what it was, not uiensap. His father felt thecontravention in his head, the tiny hairs in his nose clotting andtwisting like tree branches. Onderschat nooit de domheid van mensen(mijn jongen)! Fuck its hot in here; someone turn down the stove! Henever forgot the terror-struck look on his grandfather’s face when hechoked on a plug of Hawken’s, his throat squeezing like a boaconstrictor, his eyes nearly popping out of his head.

They came by oxcart, by foot and on their knees, people so grisly anddepraved they left a terrible taste in your thoughts. His father hadwarned him of the coming of ‘the many’, the hordes escaping across thefive-mile and into the cities. ‘--The five-mile will not hold forever’his father warned. ‘--sooner or later we’ll be overrun with them, thesame people we forced out wanting backing in’. His father squinted,his upper lip curling like a beheaded worm, splitting in segments. Henever thought he’d see the day when being sane would be a shortcoming,as commonplace as silk gloves and woolen trousers. Coro Falcon wearsknee-britches with candy-coloured stockings, the tiny hairs on hershins swimming in nylon. Father but why? My son, that you’ll learnwhen you grown old; like a puny stalk of celery. His father wore graytrousers, the inseams grayed with Hawken’s plug. Father but you’llsurely choke on it! Never you mind, (mijn zoon), I’m hardier than anoak; spinier, too.

Esther Pivner, big-boned and prone to fits of hysteria, lives abovePlunker’s Market with a blue goldfish. His da used to lay-in with herSunday mornings when his ma was busy cleaning the dust in between thepews. She used a duster with a silver handle; the kind used by street-sweepers and old-fashion charwomen. The kind his own grandmamma usedto clean the ceiling and the bottom of the cupboards. She was prone torum-fits and horse-coughing.

…would have won a medal if it weren’t for the rum-fits. Had her allcrippled and bent over. That winter Lela bought a pair of red gloves,the mercantilist offering to wrap them up and top off the package witha scissor-pulled bow. She chose instead to wear the gloves, clutchingherself against the brisk weather on the other side of the belleddoor. The mercantilist lived with his ailing mother on the secondfloor across the hall from a woman who lived with a bluefish. Neitherhe or his sick mother ever saw the fish that it lived across the hallon the second floor with the big-boned woman. Taking their neighbor’sword for it who had seen the fish, they agreed that there was indeed afish in the apartment across the hall, but as for anything else,anything of importance, they hadn’t the foggiest. Sunday morningstheir neighbor took her cat for a walk, clomping up and down thestairs like a bull elephant, cat in toe. The owners of Plunker’s Marketkept a dog in the crawlspace beneath the stairs, its snout--were oneinclined to look--visible from the top of the stoop. The dog wascalled Temecula, named after the mercantilist’s wife’s mother. The womanacross the hall from the bluefish was indifferent to the dog, climbingand descending the stoop in a hurry when she took her cat out for awalk. No one cared, not even the harridan’s sister who lived in theapartment above the mercantilist and his wife, or if they did they,they did a fine job of pretending they didn’t. Everything was takenfor granted, and those that weren’t were taken with a grain of salt.When he was a boy Poldy bought penny-candy from Plunker’s Market, eachtreasured piece placed one by one into brown paper sacks, the counter-person trying to pinch his cheek as he tried valiantly to escapethrough the belled-door, the ballooning sack clutched in his tinyhands. When he got home his da would take the jelly beans and mojos,redskin peanuts and licorice, leaving him the hard toffee and a fewboxes of raisins. Over the door, fished in cobwebs, was a sign thatread “for the corner boys who spit into the Liffey” (The Rev. Sir JohnPentland Mahaffy) Remorselessly he set about the day a second time, hishat sleeved in his armpit, the corner boys gobbing, their youthbelying their ignorance. A few boxes of raisins; bastard needs his

ears lowered. Covered in pocket lint, sticks to the roof of my gob.Cat strangler, seen him wring a few feline necks, pushes ‘em over thecornice and into the river. Tails white with plaster. Sells them tothe Asians, make a wonton or soft roll with the not so bad parts. Thesun bled yellow egg yolk. His father told him that if he sat under thebiggest tree in the forest an apple would sooner or later fall on hishead. ‘--That’s how we know we’re down here and not up there’ saidhis father pointing a resin brown finger at the sky. ‘--there’s onlythe apple and the serpent’ said his mother scolding his father, ‘--nowget in the house!’ He lined the toffee and raisins on the floor nextto his bed. He counted until he couldn’t stand counting any more. Fivepieces of toffee and 27 raisins, each in its own tiny box. Taking intoaccount the plumpness of the raisins he figured he could eat oneraisin and one piece of toffee a day, the entire cache lasting 27½days, longer if he broke the toffee into smaller pieces. The writingon the side of the box said, The Tuxtla Bros. Raisin Co., Chiapas Gutierrez,Mexico. The finest plumpest raisins grown and sundried with lots of nice plump sunshine.Each tiny cardboard box carried within it a handful of plump sundriedraisins, some so plump they looked more like plums than raisins. Hewrecked havoc wherever he went, smashing and wielding the cudgel hisgrandfather made him from a sledge of grainy oak. He and TroyScheherazade, an uncomely boy with jug-handle ears and an ungainlysmile, vandalized and laid waste to anyone who got in their way, usingtheir cudgel sticks as batterers and swords. His grandfather barteredwhole grain and rye seeds for Bocholt-made Limburg steel, convincing theblacksmith that his wife could use some vulgar flour for her biscuits.The blacksmith agreed, trading 27½ ounces of Bocholt steel for threesacks of whole grain, passing on the rye seeds which he said stuck tohis wife’s dentures, “the insufferable cur”. There are coincidences inlife that make your teeth ache. This, however, is not one of them.Cudgels were commonplace and found among all hooligan’s magazines,like battering rams and trebuchets, so making a claim as to theirinimitableness is pure folly! The mercantilists are in cahoots withthe industrialists, neither seeing the nonsensicality of theircoalition. Nary a brainpan among them. Feel sorry for their children,probably haven’t eaten a decent meal in months. All embroiled in theircoalition, making it hand over knuckle, sucking the lifeblood out ofthe gloving industry. The post diggers staged a strike; had tosidestep half-excavated holes on the way to vespers. Came close toturning an ankle! Left their shovels in a hurry to be the first at theunion office. First cunt in line gets a saloon chit. Spend a dime onpale ale and pig’s-feet. Maybe a butter plate heaping withchitterlings, spleens, I hear say, are good for the heart and proper

bone formation. Cunt Scheherazade eats ‘em like there’s no tomorrow,sucks the guts dry. Cunt doesn’t know the difference between lamb andmutton, uses the hotplate for boiling soaked bandages. Blood andchafed skin flying every which where. First one to the union hall getsa brand new hotplate, boil up a mess of oily shoulder. Old Overijssellives above the Enscheda Apothecary with a blind dog, neither aware thatthe other is watching him. Though unable to see, the dog is suckingthe lifeblood out of Old Overijssel. Before moving into the bedsit abovethe apothecary Old Overijssel worked as a fitter for the Vincennes Glove Co.,retiring with a handshake and a cutout for the women’s red eveningglove, the company’s top seller. Last one to the union office gets thedregs. Blue-fin eel, blacker than the ace of clubs. Don’t get muchthese days for a union chit. All hell broke loose. Dodgy cunts don’tknow the difference between pork belly and Blue-fin. His father worethe same blue shirt day in and day out, the collar ringed with his ownfilth. Had he a mind to tell him off this is what he’d say ‘--by Lordfather but your shirt is filthy dirty’. His father’s blue shirt wasmanufactured by the Barking and Dagenham Shirt Co. The Barking and DagenhamShirt Co., owned and operated by the Barking Bros. of Dagenham Council, areknown for their haughty craftsmanship and eye for detail. Over thedoor to the cutting-room, framed in oak, the wood buttering in thedovetails, are the following two quotations: “I did not receive myvisitors with boisterous rapture as the bearers of any gifts of profitor fame” (Joseph Conrad, Some Reminiscences, 1912) and, “. . . No, it isimpossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any givenepoch of one’s existence—that which makes its truth, its meaning—itssubtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream—alone. . . .” (Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1902). As neitherbrother knew how to read the quotations fell on blind eyes. Were theyable to read, able to make out squiggles and dots, the words wouldhave leaped out of their wooden frames, calling to arms the brothersagainst the impunity of falsifying the story of one’s life; thebattle, if they had enlisted, having ended in their ruin. For thebrothers, you see, were numbskulls, incapable of making sense ofanything more challenging than a brothel address or the embossed faceon a coin, which they did by touch, not sight, making their competencyfraudulent, calculating at best. Frank Goya, a first-rate embosser andclerical tailor, has the needlework contract for the Vincennes Glove Co.He is a scoundrel and a mountebank, and undeserving of charity or goodwill! He has carious teeth and ill-defined features; a tomblike smileand bloodhound red eyes. He is to be avoided at all costs! Pray tellwho? More people peopling an over-peopled world. This must stop!{Author’s aside: you must excuse my overzealousness; confession, so

the rector told me, is good for the soul}.Let us begin again: The skyappeared and disappeared leaving behind a streak of blue. ‘--can’t yousee his head is crooked? Now cradle the back of his head in your arms;now push, gently… that’s it, now you’ve got it’. He didn’t knowwhether he should pull or push, the half-dead corpse mumblingsomething in Gudrun, a altogether unpleasant parlance of constantansand misplaced vowels. ‘--cradle, now pull!’ Liphook stood over the half-dead corpse whittling the point of a stick. Having been rousted fromsleep by his grandmother’s foot kicking at his slumbering head, whichshe did without fail every morning, he felt none too solicitoustowards anything or one. His mother played pinochle with thegasfitter’s son; never once winning a hand. His da threw craps withthe stevedores; rolling snake-eyes seven times out of eleven. Hisgrandmamma tatted doilies with a whalebone hook, weighing her Gin inthe barrows of her skirt, a look of deepest absorption on her hag-wearied face. His granddad spent Sunday afternoons sloughing the pumpout back of the Hogshead, the proprietor promising him a slow pint anda package of saltine crisps, the stink of cabbage thickening thenighttime air, the unclipped hairs in his nose billeted with snot. Hewas born on the butcher’s block in the summer kitchen, the tiny hairson his skull dewy with placental wash, the doctor stinking of saltinecrisps and washtub Gin. His grandmother held the bottom half, his dathe top, his mother squirming like an eel. His cone-shaped head wasthe first part of him to appear, the doctor callipering his skull withhis grandmother’s corn tongs, then his shoulders, the umbilical cordtwisted round his throat, his mamma screaming bloody murder. Thedoctor said he hadn’t delivered such a bad-tempered baby since he washeld at gunpoint by the littlest dogman, his currish mother givingbirth to a hirsute baby with gigantic ears and the remnants of acaudal tail. The doctor delivered most of the children of theconurbation; many of whom grew impatient with life inside thetenements, leaving to find fame and fortune beyond the five-mile, onlyto return, cap in hand, to a city overrun with swindlers and cheats, acity on the verge of ruin and despoilment, where dogmen roamed thestreets like packs of wolves and children begged for scraps under ayellow sky, their noses billeted with snot. The day the alms man wasborn his father swaddled him in burlap, loaded him into the back ofhis mule cart, and sent it caroming over the crags into the aqueduct.The dream tells him little other than he is doomed to an unimpeachabledullness; a life of sorrow and debt. The dream: he is at home mindinghis own baseness, doing whatever the baseless do to wile away thetime, when his older brother arrives on the doorstep, a squad ofrowdies in tow. We want barbecued ribs! bellows one of the rowdies,

what little hair he has on his head standing on end. Smothered insauce! bellows a second. But how are we to spit them? asks a third.Why not use your brother? says a fourth. Yes, your brother says thesecond. We could push coat hangers through his shoulders. They’d makea fine spit. Fighting off the rowdies as best he could, threatening tostab his brother with a kitchen knife, he is overpowered by the rib-thirsty mob. While two rowdies hold him, the second and third piercehis shoulders with straightened coat hangers, his brother, a siblinggrin on his bewhiskered face, watching on. They suspend him over a pitof glowing coals, his arms and legs bound with basketball mesh,prodding and pushing him over the coals like a skewered pig, the hissand sizzle of roasting flesh rivaling the heathenry of theInquisition. ‘--Then that’ll be that’ said his da leaning over thetable, his fork moving a mixed bag of organ meats and boiled thingsaround his plate. ‘--The end will come and wipe the slate clean; forall and once, my boy’. You mean once and for all don’t you da? ‘--Shutyour pile! Now move along, damn you!’ His da didn’t take kindly tosass. He was quick with a slap, swinging his hand like a fish mallet,his fist leaving a red weal on a back-talking face. You’re worse thanthe Inquisition! Prodding and pushing people round like desecrateJews. Unburying whole families and burning their remains a second andthird time. You’re a fucking menace!

She has the ‘French Disease’, Bifrons, the skin around her mouth as hardas a scabbed knee. Her father read to her from Grünpeck’s ‘Tractatus dePestilentiali Scorra Sive Mala de Franzos: Originem Remediaqu[ue]Eiusdem Continens’, [published by the in Nuremberg by KasparHochfeder, 1496 or 1497]. When she began to show signs of necrosis, asurfeit symptom of the tertiary stage, common to advanced syphilis,her father summoned the Catastrophist from the village, a tunicate-fleshedman with a doctorate in zoology who was familiar with treatment bySalvarsan, discovered by Niccolò Falcucci and available at the conurbationlibrary under ‘Sermones Medicinales Septem’. [Venice: BernardinoStagnino, 1490-1491]. The abattoirist prepared the slaughter-roomfloor, skimming off the blood and intestines, some tied in bows, thepastime of men with minimal intelligence and weak morals, and laiddown a double-sided oilcloth, then, with a wave of his hand told himto bring his daughter to the middle of the floor and lay her next tothe trap. He did as he was told and stepped back, the Catastrophiststepping forward, his eyes glazed over like a honey cruller. TheCatastrophist swabbed the infected areas with a mixture of ox piss andspirit gum, sourcing the contamination at the font, then applied anoatmeal plaster, tying off the loose ends with brass clips. He lay his

hands on her forehead and closed her eyes, like one does to therecently dead, then pried open her mouth with a tool that resembled abung-tapper, the brassy end riveted with past strikes, and cleaningany debris from throat, which necessitated sticking his longestfinger, generally the middle one, though in some the next to middle,given a mother’s excesses while carrying, dislodged a piece of half-digested meat, a roast of pork or mutton, clearing the air passagewayfor the trenching tool, which he held like a prognosticator’s wandover her head, and edging the tip of the tool down her throat yankedfree the vile pox; the smell of rotting organ meat and bile fillingthe slaughterhouse air with an offal distemper.

The following day, awaking from plodding dreams, her foreheadglistening with an oily sweat, she lifted her head from the pillow andexclaimed, ‘--I’m cured by Jove I’m cured!’ The dead die and theliving die; the trick is in knowing which is which. Lela stood in frontof the Seder Grocer’s admiring the reflection of the person next to her,his greatcoat coattails hanging in tatters. The man, as indeed he wasa man, perhaps a gentleman, had a hardnosed look on his bewhiskeredface, the face of a journeyman or a jailor. She troubled with askinghim if she might pull on his coattails, realigning them with the jibof his wooly trousers. But soberer thought told her that she best mindher own business and let bygones be. But why not, she thought? A man,any man, would be grateful to have a complete stranger, someonealtogether unknown to him until today, draw attention to an obviousand glaring impropriety in personal attire. Not wishing to appearuntoward, or worse, a troublemaker, she turned and walked away, hisreflection sutured in her thoughts.

The following day, a day much like the day before, yet in and ofitself an altogether precedential day, Lela awoke in a foul anduncharitable mood. Had I a mind to I’d give him a good talking to! Notclothing oneself propitiously is a sin. By the age of twelve Lela hadalready read A through P of her grandfather’s Funk and Wagnall, consigningto memory those words she felt she might need when she grew older. Shetwirled a braid of hair round her middle finger, the moon laurellingher head like a birds’-nest halo. Kick the bastard in the teeth, sendhis upper plate unhinging. The steeple of his head warding offlightening strikes, a common phenomenon when the temperature plummetedbelow 27½% Celsius, the man who’s reflection Lela admired in the windowturned and skedaddled headlong up the sideways, his greatcoat tailsrag-tagging behind him. She remembered how hot the woolshed got whenher father banished her to think about what she’d said; the few sheep

her granddad kept caked in shit and piss, the stench of mildewed haybringing a sweat out on her forehead.

Deeshy ordered a taggeen of Ballyhooly and returned to his stool at theopposite end of the bar. A queer bosthoon, known to spend umpteenhours counting ceiling tiles, his trousers and coat, threadbare both,begging a seamstresses’ attention, spent his evenings eavesdropping inon the chatter and hullabaloo that filled the tavern with a buzzingdin. The two woman next to him, both regaling one another with talesof misfortune and love gone bad, were sharing a package of Saltillo Crisps,made and packaged by the Coahuila Tortilla and Flatbread Co. 27 Avenida de Zaragoza,Paco Grande Texas. Cunts, he grumbled to himself, his nose twitching likea dog’s tail. The salt will surely make them drier than a empty well,pity their husbands, like fucking a sandshoe.

He order another Ballyhooly and sat ruminating over the recent loss ofhis favorite hat, the one with the red and black hatband. Majeklejohn’s areal boozer, chugs back a 40 ouncer every other day; every three on aleap year. Not one for the Ballyhooly, claims it brings the worse out ina man; makes him into a headcase. Not that Deeshy gives a pile, makes acounterclaim: a taggeen a day keeps the bedbugs away, cleans out thewhistle-hole too. And a man with a clogged up whistle-hole is a man onthe verge of collapse. Can’t inhale and exhale; goes up down the wrongtube. He first met Deeshy at the Feast of the Lamb, Deeshy having come topay a visit to his sick aunt, a woman of uneven temper who hadcontracted syphilis and was unable to pry herself from bed.

Having no other reason to acknowledge him than to ask him to move, foryou see he was obstructing his view of the Lamb, he exclaimed ‘--you,you stupid oaf, can’t you see you’re blocking my view?’ Deeshy replyingin kind ‘--get off my foot or I’ll smash your face!’ An awkward man heseldom spoke, worrying that a sentence would come out missing apreposition, or worse, in a language he didn’t know. Careworn withticks that caused him no end of embarrassment, if he came upon aacquaintance in the street he would cover his face with the cuff ofhis greatcoat, replying to a solicitous hello with a muffled good bye,scurrying passed like a man hell-bent on meeting the noontime train. Adiscomfited man, prone to impetuosity and overgeneralizations, he satstaring blankly at the ceiling, each individual tile providing relieffor the one next to it, a mosaic overlay that generated its own plane;equidistant, yet flaring out in plinths that created a Zoroastriancomposure, a mesmerizing jējūnus that marveled the eye. ‘--fuck the dog

and the horse it rode in on’ he exclaimed, his face turning threeshades of red. The constabulary wrestled him to the ground, his facesmeared like a stain into the sidewalk. Kick him… kick him in thehead! Harder… HARDER! …PUT some effort into it MAN! What do you thinkthis IS? …we’re the CONSTABULARY! By GOD!

‘--get off my foot or I’ll smash your face!’ Dashing sideways like apunter hell-bent on laying a fiver on the last race of the evening,the off-track betting window three blocks away, he kicked up a fewpebbles here and a few stones there, dragging his coattails behind himlike a shredded windsock. ‘--Aviate ahoy! he hollered, ‘--ahoy I say:aviate!’ As no one could make heads nor tails of what he was saying,and even if they could they could care less, for you see they loathedanyone who hollered for no apparent reason, those closest to the backof the queue threw themselves flying out the window and into thestreets, Lela’s mamma, pulling on her arm like a ragdoll, swearing ablue streak at the nerve of some people. That winter, a cold cruelwintertime, Lela found a glove hidden among the odds and ends of hermother’s things; things she kept in a lockbox stowed under the stoopbehind the house that led to the woolshed where her granddad chewedshredded tobacco, his mouth, or was it his lips, ringed with blackresin, or tar, yes tar; it was his favorite cob that left a circlet ofresin, the smile a child gets after eating a stomach full of Easterchocolate.

She sat on top of the hill just outside town, the very same one whereshe sat years ago waiting for the jugglers and acrobats to arrive, thesnorting of ox-driven carts filling her heart with expectant joy. Thesun that day filled the sky with a buttercup yellow flame, the treesand high bushes surrounding the neighbor’s yard in full blossom, thesweet nectar of rosehip and lilac filling the soft afternoon lightwith a gossamer scent, like her grandmamma’s handkerchief drawer orthe perfumer’s shop where her granddad bought tiny green bottles of Eaude Cologne called toilet-water, but not the same kind she flushed aftermaking her commode each morning, that was different, not something yousprayed on your neck to entice eager young suitors or another man’shusband. That Christmastime, gathered round the Menorah his greatgrandparents brought over from the old country (they lived at Kaiser-Friedrich-Straße 70 Wilmersdorfer Straße 141, the apartment next to them occupiedby a strange fellow who scribbled tiny verses on the back of postcardsand scraps of odd-sized paper) placed in the window and festooned withevery Hanukkah decoration imaginable, they slit the throat of hispenis, heralding in his ascension into manhood. The Roscommon Women’s

Auxiliary, which convened every Sunday afternoon after church and wasrenowned for its allegiance to making Roscommon a place of hautecouture, a stopover for travelers and the peripatetic alike, organizedthe fifth annual the Gorging of Friedrich-Straße, to be held the dayfollowing the Feast of the Lamb, the day after if it snowed. Lela attendedthe first Gorging of Friedrich-Straße held on the second day after the Feast ofthe Lamb, as it snowed the first two days, much to the surprise of hermother who was expecting rain. Belly-swollen Lela walked the dirt roadhome, the sweet doughy aroma of oven-baked bread kindling memories ofsimpler times when a young girl didn’t have to wear her heart on hersleeve or pretend she didn’t care when the boys called her names ormade fun of her hand-me-down dress.

The Mohel arrived by car, his goatskin skullcap covering the tonsuredbald spot on his head. ‘--where’s the boy?’ he asked, his enormoushead sinking into his chest. ‘--I haven’t got all day. I’m a busy manyou know’. His mother searched all through the house, from top tobottom, but couldn’t find her son. He must be hiding, she thought; orhas simply forgotten that today is the day. ‘--just a minute’ shesaid, her face reddening. ‘--I know he’s here somewhere’. Tighteninghis belt, his trousers bagging round his socks, the Mohel cleared histhroat loudly, a gravelly rasp like a steam-shovel scrapping a mined-out quarry quickening her pace.

The day began anew; the sky opening like a perfectly cracked walnut,revealing a buttery yellow sun. ‘--now hold on, boys in his positiontend to squirm’ said the Mohel, his goatskin skullcap shifting on thetop of his head. ‘--grab him round the hips… that’s it, now pushdown!’ Loosening his belt then tightening it again the Mohel coupledthe boy’s testicles in his right hand, and with his left pinched thetip of his fleischig, the boy squirming like a fidgety baby. ‘--stop thatyou little ganef!’ hollered the Mohel, ‘--you’ll only make it worse!’Snipping off the orlah with his scissors, the boy’s mother covering herface with her shawl, the Mohel bent over the boy’s privates and drewthe blood into his mouth. ‘--it’ll heal quicker if its exposed to theair… and for the Love of YHVH don’t play with it!’

The Waggon Horchers arrived two abreast; the left one keeling rightwardlike a failing kiss. Reining in the horses, his teeth clenched like afarrier’s clinchers the leftward Waggon Horcher slowed the waggon downto a stop, the rightward one pulling in behind him. Qabbals, for thatwas his name, bestowed on him by his father, jumped from his waggon

landing irrefutably on his arse. ‘--quickly, pull me up from thisgodforsaken fen’ quipped Qabbals, his upper lip quavering. The secondWaggoner, a lithe, lissome man who went by the name Squibs hurdled fromhis waggon landing squarely on his two sturdy, albeit flat feet. TheMohel, his goatskin skullcap tilting like a windmill, hurried up thesideways, his Mohel’s bag pinched under his arm. Unable to see more thanan inch in front of him, his locks, untrimmed in abeyance to Rabbinicallaw, covering his eyes, the Mohel ran amok into the first Waggoner’swaggon, his Mohel’s bag skidding sideways under the waggon. Lela, whohappened that day to be sitting atop the hill just outside townwatched on as the Mohel tried to un-upend himself, her eyes fixed onthe lead horse who’s bridle had become entangled in the legless man’spushcart; the alms man, sitting on his patch of cardboard in front ofthe Waymart, laughing to split a gut. And that was that.

Jean-Philippe Pringles, Coronel, his smart gentleman’s hat perched atop hisfull-head of hair, slivered an ivory toothpick between his eyetoothand his incisor, no one within earshot paying him any notice. For yousee the Coronel was in town to visit a dear friend, and if timepermitted, buy a toothpick placemat from the harridan’s sister, whothat afternoon could be found with the other hawkers and peddlers inthe basement of the church. Old Pitschobed wanted a Dolldy Icon and waswilling to part with a day’s wage to purloin it. He had heard say thata hawker, one who barks and vends handmade goods, had a table in thebasement of the Church of the Perpetual Sinner, alongside a woman who vendedPop-siècle placemats and gravy bibs. Old Pitschobed (born in Oalgoak’s Chelovento a Barbary whore and a tinsmith) collected Dolldy Icons and women’ssilk supper gloves. He fell down the stairs to the basement of thechurch, his tumbling caroming body going kun-ruhtnenedroohoohootnwaksnwanuohrravortnnuhtnnoutnnorrennotnnorbnnoknnorranimmakathgarahgladababab!

He wore his wooly rollups, cinching the tops round the basins of hisankles. On those dreary days when it was colder inside his lean-tothan it was outside, which given his leaky roof and poor circulationwas more oft than not, he warmed himself by the coil-flame thatspluttered and gasped from the entrails of his hotplate, where, shouldhe need he’d lay his socks and listen to the thread crackle and hisslike a yuletide log. Dog was a corpse sniffer; would snuffle the arseof a lamb were it in whiffing range. Fed it on drake and gander, goosethe fowl smell out of it, hindquarters shaking like Ouija board. Notuncommonly common that a man of such low means should find pleasure insubordinate things: simple mind simple pleasures. Subordinate the

ordinate, so to say. The more vertical the Y, the plumber the X; likea chalkline thwacked on a perpendicular. Born in haste, mamma pushinghim out like a scalding hot oyster, placental entrails coiling roundhis neck, his mamma’s borehole gaping like a shucked clam.

Og Fjordane arrived on the back of a mule-drawn-carriage, the sleighscooping and splitting torrents of undulating snow, some higher than aman’s shoulders, others no higher than a curbside, small enough to hopover without splitting a collarbone or shin. Og, as he was called bythose of his acquaintance, dispensing with the formality of a lastname, which connoted a snobbery indicative of high ideals and lowtemperance, came to town twice a year to purchase gifts for his wife;a mediocre looking woman with pale skin and uneven teeth who demandedextant chivalry from her husband, who given his line of work, a tannerof high-grade leathers and leather apparel, could afford to keep hiswife ensconced in the lap of luxury. Leaping off the carriage hewalked in a straight line to the Waymart, his overstuffed billfoldweighing his gait to the left. ‘--corpse sniffer’ he grumbled, the dogsniffing at his plantlet. ‘--you’d think the mayor would have thecommon sense to rid the town of these shameful brutes’. He opened thefront door and walked into the Waymart, his chin waggling like afishpie, the doorman rubbing the tip of his nose with his ring-finger.Lela’s mother told her about a strange man who came to town twice a yearto buy gifts for his duck-ugly wife, his wiggly chin bouncing off theprow of his mule-drawn-carriage. She warned her to stay away from thisstrange man with the fishpie-chin lest he entice her into running awaywith him.

Flanking the curbside a timid man with a stock-stiff leg stumbled. Lelaknew this man; not so very long ago he stumbled into her as shestrolled idly along the sideways, her favorite dress frilling anddancing in the midmorning breeze. Could it be him? Could it? No nothim. The man she was thinking of lived beyond the five-mile and worefishstockings, so no it couldn’t be. Anyways she hadn’t seen hide norhair of him, nor had she given him much thought, really. He was aghoul that lay quiescent in her thoughts; pushed back into that placewhere she kept memories that had frightened her when she was aformless child; a tot, her grandmamma used to say, her brow as tightas the hatband in her father’s cap. The Mormons kept a monkey in a cagehidden from sight behind the Kingdom Hall; its leper spotted coatinfested with lice and wood tics. Bug-ridden and half-crazed the poormonkey scurried round and round the cage, its flea-bitten tailtrailing behind it like a masochist’s whip. Lela recalled the day she

first saw the monkey, one of the Mormon’s feeding it mashed up grapes,the monkey flinging itself round the cage like a furry acrobat, itseyes daring to be met. The Mormon, a cubbish man with a child’s chubbyface and yellow-brown teeth, was talking to the monkey, warning it ifit ever tried to run away he would wring its neck and throw its half-dead body into the aqueduct, where it would lay rotting until theSpring thaw. Then, if anybody gave a good damn, they’d scrap whatremained of it from the oily green muddy bottom and throw it into thenearest trash heap, where it would unthaw and start rotting all overagain. As monkeys don’t understand Mormons’, and even if they couldthey certainly wouldn’t care, the bug-ridden infested animal staredblankly at the stupid man crouching outside the cage, its eyes daringto be met. As this happened a long long time ago, before Lela knew thedifference between a monkey and a dogman, she had mostly forgottenabout the monkey; only now, standing in front of the grocer’s swattingflies off the picnic hams having an inkling of what she’d saw.

Above the screen door to the grocer’s was a sign that read: “If all mylife and my being were judged by a few incidents it would rightly bedetermined that I was a complete imbecile”. (Felisberto Hernández) Theowner, a cheat with caterpillar eyebrows and a sneak’s grin, sat on awooden stool behind the counter counting the day’s take: $27 plus thetwo he stole from the old woman’s handbag when she wasn’t looking. ‘--Not a bad day’s take’ he thought to himself stuffing the pilfered twodollar bill in his apron pocket, ‘--the old biddy shouldn’t havenodded off… stupid cow. What’s a hardworking man to do?’ Turning, hisbrown teeth sticking out and upwards like walrus tusks, he locked thestrongbox and placed it under the counter. ‘-anyhow serves her right.Maybe next time she’ll be more careful, feeble cow’. He placed a crateof iced cowfish on the top shelf behind the counter with the hope thatby the time he arrived in the morning it would be unthawed and readyto be sold. ‘--cowfish for a cow’ he said to himself, his front teethtouching the end of his nose, and slamming shut the screen doorhurried down the street like a burglar.

The West Ham Newham Glove Co., owned and operated by John J.J. Newham,manufacture Dolman coats, a one-piece garment with led pellets in thehems to keep the coat from riding up on the wearer. Above the cuttingtable, written in gargantuan block letters, by the hand of a behemoth,perhaps, or a hippopotamus, even though one hadn’t been seen in thevicinity in years, nay eons, was the following epitaph: "Everything ispossible, everything, even the most sordid and undignified things."(Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten) His father, J.J. the elder, beat his mamma

with the wooden skeins the coat cloth came wrapped in, his mammashrieking and moaning like a wounded animal.

His fader came across on a famine boat, captain Gorta Mór standing thehelm of the Clachans’ like a man incorruptible of mind and spirit. Hisda was the first settler to set up a hiding and tanning shop, workingthe hides into high-grade leathers fit for a Lords Lieutenant or a Waterfordfop. He ate his ploughman’s lunch astride the O’Connell bridge, a rustedout bicycle fender gasping for air in the bottle-green Liffey, achiliadal waif throw crusts of black bread into the swales, a loneduck, the waves pushing it into the chalk-marked battlements, wingsslapping like a shingle, treading the surge. ‘--shove off!’ bellowed atart, her heavy-weighed hips anchored to the Speyside balustrade. Hisfader came across on a famine boat, captain Gorta Mór standing the helmof the Clachans’ like a man incorruptible of mind and spirit. His da wasthe first settler to set up a hiding and tanning shop, working thehides into high-grade leathers fit for a Lords Lieutenant or a Waterford fop.

Cunts like him always want a free-one, don’t want to wear galoshesneither. Like boots make the man. Rather have his cock in my mouththan up my skirt. Never know if the packers got the crabs; crawl allover you like the British fucking army. Lords Lieutenant gave me a dose,squeezed it out like toothpaste, saying he’d never been with a ladybefore. Said his da came across on the Clachans’, took the helm when thecaptain went starker’s. Had to lock the mad cunt in his cabin, triedon his graveclothes to see if they still fit. Found a fiver in hispants pocket.

Leftover from the last time he was ashore; probably got the whiplashfrom that fat tart on O’Casey, hear say she practically gives it away,waiting on the famine boats like an expectant mother. Got a mouthbigger than a man’s head; good for swallowing and spitting back up.Saw her with the gimp, practically sucked it off, poor bastard. Almostfell head over into the drink, held on with one thumb it was. Famineboats coming and going; some never making it past the breakwater,others crashing into the breakers by the funnels. See the little onescutting their milk-teeth on runt potatoes, a cup of bilge water towash it down.

She was twelve when her da first told the story, his face screwing uplike a tight-knuckled fist when he got to the part about runtpotatoes. He said he remembered swimming out as far as the breakwater,

the funnels belching plumes of gray brown smoke, the engine masterwrenching the bilge gate open, the tanks filling up with seawater.It’s all a lie; her da never learned how to swim. He couldn’t hold hisbreath or make flippers with his hands. Anyhow the funnels arechimneys, not breakwaters. Any other man would know the difference.Anyhow the British fucking army would put a stop to that; cutting themoff at the docklands, guns emblazing. Stead’s bad for a so-and-so witha wiggly tooth. Bilge water up the arse I’d say. Makes a mockery outof an otherwise charming fellow. Her da held hold of the gimp’s arm,pulling him furlong into the drink, O’Casey’s whore splitting a gut.Serves ya right she bellowed, maybe next time you’ll come by ithonestly!

That morning the sky broke like an egg, the sun filling the horizonwith a yolky glaze. Lela walked the battlement that crossed the aqueductand met up with the path behind the Waymart, her eyes fixed on theyolky yellow sun. She heard that the dogmen slept three to a bed, fourif they shared with the littlest dogman who slept at the foot curledup in an eel-basket. She dug in her heels, the straps and buckles ofher shoes creasing the skin around her ankles, and watched a clamshellof gray clouds move across the blue sky. A swan swam across thesurface of the aqueduct, its neck twisted into a Midshipman's Hitch. Youcan see the funnels from here--there, out beyond the breakwater shesaid pointing. A man kicking a hedgehog, the hedgehog curling up in aball, the man kicking it again and again, crossed in front of her, theman hollering ‘--that’ll show you! Never underrate me! Never!’ Lelafelt sad for the lowly hedgehog, the man forcing it, underfoot, towalk a faster straighter line. She thought of her great uncle, hisham-fisted grip on the sledgehammer, swinging it over his shoulder andacross the head of the cow; felling it as it stood, a mass of cowhideand hamburger spreading out on all-fours on the switch-room floor. Hermother said it was man’s right over Nature: to kill or be killed; toeat or to starve; to go around coatless or to be dressed in the finestleather garments. Her great uncle was doing us a great service;maintaining the lifestyle we had all become accustom to. But what ofthe disservice to the cow? Was it not deserving of life and limb, atrough full of hay and leather coat? If it was her great uncle wasdoing the cow a grave disservice; treating it as a means to an end,not an end in itself. But really, she could care less; cows were uglybovine brutes, and as her mamma said, open season for well-dressed fatpeople. As for her great uncle, well he had other things in mind;things so ugly and ghastly he never spoke a word about them.

Meisce’s Tavern drafts Bullwhip Black Porter, the aleman’s wife, Euryclea,scurrying from table to table, her apron on back to front, revealing abony white shank of knee. Her great uncle drank tankards of molassesthick Black Porter, the space between the tip of his nose and his upperlip frothy with head. The well-dressed cad at the next table, next tothe commode, a two-seater with an onionskin seat, drank his cups likea man once denied a good hearty slake, his beard birdied with biscuitcrumbs and salt, his nose up to the hilt of his tankard. ‘--by Joveyes!’ exclaimed the well-dressed man. ‘--you’re that fellow who likessweet nutmeat biscuits’. Lela’s great uncle swabbed a moustache offrothy head from the space between the tip of his nose and his upperlip and said ‘--you must have me confused with someone else; for yousee sir I despise biscuits’. An angry-looking man with a broken armgot up from his stool, and turning to walk away said ‘--perro cuerpo,hond se liggaam’ huis voice follón bejina hiñe lique a bar ámel. ‘--byJove what an uncouth fellow!’ said the well-dressed cad. ‘--comes hereevery night to use the pisser. Always has something nasty to say onhis way out’.

When her great uncle wasn’t killing cows he bowled for the Boondocks’Brachycephals. Every Sunday they played 27 wickets--27½, weatherpermitting. Her great uncle was known for his overhand bowl; launchingthe cork orb like a meteorite, the batsman stepping out of the wicketlike a man fearing for his life. His mother watched seated on ablanket in the stands, her eyes too weakly to see beyond the end ofher nose. Oskar Lynch Kokoschka edging closer slops potato pot pie gravyonto her blanket, his great uncle bellowing ‘--perro cuerpo, fucker!’the cork orb ricocheting off his head. Of course none of this is true.Her great uncle was a tinker’s assistant, not a slaughterer. He neveronce held a cricket bat or bowled a cork ball. He was a fearsome manwith uneven eyes, one a half a centimeter higher, a port-stainbirthmark and a three-fingered hand; two fingers having beenmistakenly severed by a knife-wielding maniac who mistook for anotherman. Oskar Lynch Kokoschka I made up to amuse myself. Which he/it did.(Authorial note: it’s what I do, make things up, so please don’tharangue me unduly--it’s in my Nature).

He fell from such a substantial height his arms and leg looked likecorkscrews, the missing one aching like mad. His great great unclesuggested he use a cricket bat, jimmying it to his stump-end withleather straps and baling wire. Seeing this as a sign of his uncle’smisfortune, a mule waggon accident rendering him uncollectable andrivetingly small, he thought he’d give it a try, tamping the metal

snip in place with a soft-wood mallet. Of course this reminded him ofhis great grandfather who’s missing leg was mistaken for his gamy leg,the one rankled with sores and pustules, and severed at the joint byan overconfident intern with thick horn-rimmed spectacles and globulesof salty sweat on his forehead which the nurse swabbed off with agreen and yellow surgical napkin. The litigation ended with his greatgrandmother receiving a cash disbursement of $27½, payable to her fromthe conceited bespectacled surgeons insurance company. Give her aHogansberry soda--with a straw, by God, a straw. Astride the battlementhe strode, his funereal clothes tarred and fathered. He was a sloppyfellow prone to fits of nervous tics. A tic tick here and a tick ticthere. He’s likes België waffles with Maple syrup for breakfast and forsupper.

They came by what they come by dishonestly. Salty bastards! Ben Nachtaíand James Nollag live the life of O’Reilly. No more dishonest two, thither orthon, are there to be found. Upon their backs haversacks they carry,pleasing cur and hag with nosegay and candy, Nachtaí and Nollag wander atithe to a hither. Her da told her the tale of Nachtaí and Nollag oneChristmas eve, the shutters clapping and the wind howling like asanitaria dog.

Her great great uncle, deceased and exhumed by worms and wood tics,lived the life of O’Reilly, pillaging and raiding and spending the eveningsin compotation with his marauding brethren. Astride the cattlements heheads for home on the backside of a bull. Never delimit the cosmos, hewould say, his chaps hipswaddled round his legs. The morrows anotherday, believe you me. So mount up; the suns lowing and the windsblowing and the sky is red as hickory. The insurance man said he’dhave the tuque in the mail by Friday; Saturday at the latest. Can’ttrust those cunts, always got something up their sleeve. Puffed upnotions of righteousness and high merit. Impressive: I dare say nay!Cat-o-nine-tails across the back makes a man into a lowly crumb. Herda made candle-wax heads, spiking the tops with spent matches and thatdamn sulfur smell. No matter what she did she couldn’t get theparaffin stink out of the sofa cushions. Had to sleep with her head atthe bottom of the daybed, her new hairdo lousy with grave worms. Asight for soar ewes. All that bah-bahing and jumping one over theanother. Her da said things could only get better, when what he reallymeant to say was needs some more butter. Can’t stand a dry flapjack ona midwinter morn. Sticks to the eaves of your mouth he’d say, his eyestrained on the brown sugar bowl. Cows all lined up like toy soldierswaiting to be shipped out; never can tell which is which: the cows or

the toy soldiers. Saturday last Thelma cashed in her diner’s card, gotmore than she bargained for. Two free entrees and a side-plate ofmash. Never did ask why she didn’t ask for the butter. Might have gotit mixed up with salad. Mixed greens; smell worse than spent matchheads. All that sulfur and burnt wick smell. Do better with a plate ofgriddle-cakes. Tastes like mamma’s homemade cooking, except for thegassy smell coming from the oven. Can hear the clapboards cricketing.Lives under the hydro electric towers, the buzzing in his ears aconstant consonant hissing. Like burnt wick and sulfur but louder.Can’t stand wet things on a dry summer’s day.

Sniveling like a scolded child the Witness threw pamphlets into thegathering mob. ‘--there will be hell to pay, I assure you that!’ ‘--fuck you!’ yelled a man from the back of the mob. ‘--go back to whereyou came from!’ yelled a second. ‘--sack of shit!’ yelled a third, anda fourth ‘--eat shit pamphlet man!’ Puffing out his chest like awindsock in a hurricane the Witness bawled ‘--mark my words; the wrathis near!’

The Wren Boy Procession made its way up the street, drums pounding. Tam tamtam tam went the pecking wrens. With Christmas eve on the quick theWren Boy Procession came out of Kilmainham Jail and marched down Inchicore Road,a small group of onlookers giving them the once-over. ‘--here theycome’ said a woman in a Kerry scarf, ‘--and in such a neat orderly line’.Alongside the barricades dressed in full regalia the Kerry Women’s Auxiliarytossed nosegays of daffodils and carnations and bluebells andmarigolds and frothy half-pints of chocolaty brown Guinness into thestreets, the onlookers roaring with enthusiasm.

Peeping slyly from behind the bust of King Olaf, his chest puffed outlike a Spring pheasant, the littlest dogman watched the processionmarch by. A woman holding a sign that read “A godless person is like apublic woman to whom everyone has access” (Witold Gombrowicz, Bacacay)charged to the front of the procession, her face a medley ofconsternation and bliss. ‘--mark my words!’ bawled Witness, a waif, histongue stuck out like a red Pop-sickle tugging on his coattails. ‘--out of my way!’ bellowed a tugboat of a man, the prow of his bellycutting the crowd in half. ‘--make way for the Óglaigh na hÉireann!’piped a man clad in full military dress.

Standing in the middle of a lottery of broken plates and dishes, theaftermath of an all-out brawl between the Cork Constabulary and the Sligo

Armory, Poldy watched the Wren Boy Procession make its way through the icystreets, the blue sky above his behatted head turning centenariangray. Tomorrow is another day he thought, and then another and anotheruntil the one is indistinguishable from the other. A week, a month, ayear, the days following one after the other, like sheep to theslaughter, dancing like dervishes under a whorish yellow moon, hisfather smiling counting the day’s take: tomorrow will be a good day, afine day indeed.

Poldy Magyar set out into the snowy streets, his toque pulled tightaround his ears. On the other side of the snow-white street, thecollar of his overcoat cinched up around his ears, stood Dejesusadmiring his reflection in the Seder grocer’s window. Further up, beyondthe snowy hedge that had formed alongside the taffy-pullers shack,beyond the Waymart, beyond where the sun fell like a golden shadowupon the earth, he saw the legless man punting across the wet unevencement, the sleeves of his coat dragging behind him. ‘--make way!’piped a man clad in full Óglaigh na hÉireann military dress. ‘--make way,damn it!’ Plowing through the snow-white snowy streets, past Dejesusadmiring himself in the Seder grocer’s window, past the taffy-pullersshack, past the legless man punting across the wet uneven cement,marched Sligo Armory, the Cork Constabulary hot on their heels.

He saw the world as if it were upside down; everything floating on asnowy white plateau, the sky a great troubling sea, waves crashing,the sun, yellower than any buttercup, sitting on the ocean floor, hissenses replicating, doubling, until he imagined his head wouldfracture into a million worlds, each world rupturing into yet anotherand another until there was nothing; only a white glowing light: thegodhead, the beginning, nothingness. Advancing, flags flapping in themidday wind, a band of troubadours moved up the sidewalk, the leadsinger, a diminutive cantor with a headscarf entwined round histhickheaded skull--for indeed he was in possession of a un-gauntlylarge head, shouting out the count: one, two, three, four, ‘--stay inline, damn you!’ five… ‘--left, to the left by God!’ The Unionists saidshe died of mortal causes, not knowing what else to say and taking itinto consideration that none of them knew how to dress the body forthe coffin. Lela figured they meant natural, but hearing themsniggering, which they did in front of the mourners, one of whom, anelderly woman with a child in her arms broke out in tears, mortalseemed more fitting; even if it did make her own eyes well up and herhead spin. ‘--stay in line!’ …one, two ‘--left, to the left!’

The Unificationists pelted the crowd with crabapples and unripe pears; oneof them, an odious-looking boy with a fat face and matching nosegrinning from ear-to-ear. ‘--God save the King!’ hollered a boy inknee-britches and a candy-striped nightcap, ‘--and the Queen too!’hollered a second boy, his sickly yellow face riddled with pockmarks.Lela made her way along the icy balustrade that ran like a Chinese Wallfrom one end of the town to the other, the thump of the drumsvibrating in her ears. She walked past Monument Creameries, the heavyoak doors creaking on their hinges, an ashen face cooper sliding thequarter hoop into place then tamping the head hoop round the chime,cherry wood barrels of fresh cream saddled onto the back of ox-drivenwagons destine for house and home, then past a stray dog pissing on adead dog, the pissing dog leaning into it furtively, Lela pulling hermuffler over her mouth, the dead dog grinning from ear to snout. Shepassed by a woman and a wailing child, the woman’s face red with fury,the wailing child sucking its thumb like an icicle candy.

She walked and walked, stopping only to redress her skirts, whichowing to the clamminess in the air wouldn’t stay flat against herthighs and buttocks. She walked past the bust of King Olaf, his figurelooming over the commons like a regal courtesan, his feminine side,something he was disparaged for as a young man, fief and serf alikemocking him for his womanly manner, outstripping his masculine side,past a sandbox where a boy and a girl were building a sandcastle, theboy throwing handfuls of sand in the girl’s tear-stained face. Shewalked and walked, her legs aching like whittled sticks, her feet astender as milk pudding. ‘--wait up!’ yelled a man in a overcoatbeguilingly. ‘--I have something for you’. ‘--shove off I’ll call acop’ said Lela firmly, her eyes fixed on the man’s face. ‘--that’scertainly no way to talk to your great uncle, now is it?’ ‘--my greatuncle is dead’. The man smiled and went his way, his overcoatbilleting in the wind, a crow riding the thermals like an acrobatsignaling the end of days. ‘--damn scoundrel pigeons…Call itdomestication…keep them in rooftop hutches…skin and boil them withradishes and field greens, saw a peddler griddle cook a dozen on asidewalk grill, juices spitting all over his boots…sold them twoabreast, slat-rubbed and quartered, pick your teeth with the leftoverquills’. Her great uncle died from overexertion, collapsed on thestreet like a whipped horse, flies laying eggs in the whites of hiseyes. She past a man making the sign of the cross, an X marked withash rubbed into his forehead.

Tubbercurry Creamery mark every jug of cream with an X, signifying theresurrection of the cross. The cooper’s assistant bungs every jug withbees’ wax and onion cloth, guaranteeing a taut indissoluble joint anddeterring lice and ants from laying eggs in the cream. Lela overheard aboy with a freckled face ask a man with a weary face why he looked sosad, the man answering ‘--because my house burned down last night andI have nowhere to sleep’. ‘--you can stay with my mamma and me’ saidthe freckle faced boy. ‘--thank you but no’ said the weary face man.‘--why?’ asked the boy, ‘--why won’t you come live with me?’ ‘--because I have a disease that makes me crazy’ said the man. ‘--so doesmy mamma… and she shakes worse than you’ said the boy. Lela felt ashiver corset down her spine. Her mamma too had the crazy disease. Theweary face man turned and walked away, the freckled face boy shouting‘--she’ll do whatever you want… anything… I promise!’

It takes an hour to walk from one end of the city to the other; a dayif you have no legs to speak of. The legless man punts the streetslike a crazy devil, his pushcart jumping curbs and medians. Get out ofmy way! Can’t you see I have no legs to speak of? They fell off! I hadno say in the matter! They just fell off! I could care less! I havethis machine to get me where I have to go! A good sturdy machine! Imade it myself! With my own two hands! These! Now get out of my way orI’ll run you over! I swear I will.

‘--Liar!’ yelled a woman in a purple skirt with matching runaroundlace. ‘--He’s the devil his self!’ shouted a man holding a walking-stick. ‘--His mother has the crazy disease!’ shouted the woman in thepurple skirt. ‘--Let’s Kill him!’ shouted a boy throwing a tantrum.‘--and send him back to where he came from!’ added a second boy with amane of fiery red hair. ‘--Stop!’ shouted Poldy. ‘--leave the poor manalone! He’s done no wrong!’ ‘--let’s kill him!’ shouted a boy pointingat Poldy. ‘--no, this one!’ said the other boy. ‘--like we planned’.‘--kill every last one of them!’ said a colossal man with a dwarf onhis back. ‘--then burn them’ said the Witness addressing the mob. ‘--inHell Fire’ screeched the boy at the top of his lungs. Off in distancethe legless man could be heard yelling ‘--With my own two hands! Nowget out of my way or I’ll run you over! I swear I will!’

He stole his way past jugglers and hagglers, past the post-digger andhis assistant, past a man advertising pork bellies, a gory display ofentrails and viscera, bowel and tripe, he stole his way past everyone

and everything, a twinkling in his eye. I will I swear I will I swear !Lela watched as the man collected his things, placed them in a satcheland walked away, the sun shining like a roaring lion, his stepsferrying him across the wet glistening streets like a brokenmetronome. I will see him again, sometime, I know I will she said toherself. I may pass him in the street or see him placing his things inneat rows on the ground, the sun barely risen, stars holding the nightat bay. I will I will, I will see him again, of that I am sure.

He met Maribor Brezovica in a cattle car heading north into thegrasslands. As the cattle car rattled headlong into the night, doorsclanging, the floor shifting beneath their feet, the two men stared atone another. Suddenly, as if awaking from a yawning slumber MariborBrezovica said ‘--rattling ride’. ‘--what?’ said the Witnesses’ father. ‘--rattling’ said Maribor Brezovica. Wendell L. Espuma sat next to the Witnesses’father picking at a scab on the heel of his right foot, his left foottaken by gangrene years previous. ‘--death’s door’ said Maribor Brezovicapointing at Wendell L. Espuma. ‘--pick pick pick, soon he’ll have no footat all’. An abattoir of viscera (entrails, bowel and tripe) layfestering stacked like cord wood in the corner, a disease that neededslaughtering. ‘--it stinks in here’ said Maribor Brezovica holding hissleeve against his mouth. ‘--it’ll get worse’ said Wendell L. Espumarolling a crumb of dead skin between his thumb and forefinger. ‘--thedeath of us all, you’ll see’.

The Witnesses’ father had been summoned by the standing council to bring anend to an outbreak of smallpox that had killed half the townspeople.Long before he devoted his life to the Church the Witnesses’ father wasknown far and wide as a conjurer. Long before the birth of his son theWitnesses’ father lived the life of Reilly, concocting harebrained schemes abouthow the world could and would be if people only paid heed to hisoutlandish ideas and notions, some of which verged on the abyss ofoutright madness. He fell in and out then in again with an unsavorymob of hooligans, many of whom wore stockings on their heads and wentabout shoeless; all the better for kicking the crap out of anyone whomistook them for snivelers or creamery workers. This was long beforehe found God, leaving behind the life of Reilly for a life of faith,fidelity and sacrosanct devotion.

The Ogress retted her feet, tethering the corresponding foot to theanalogous ankle. ‘--Una tumba sin nombre, beneath my feet’ said theOgress pointing at a mound of fly-thick manure. Digging with herfingernails the Ogress scraped shovelfuls of fly-thick manure hoping to

find the missing whore’s glove. ‘--he assured me it was buried here,in this very spot’. The Ogress tilted her head and crowed like arooster in a cockfight. ‘--god’s awful god-awful hole! It’ll take allnight!’ A burdel of whores sashayed into the streets, each wearingidentical red supper gloves. The lamplighter, wick- lighter in hand,jumped from atop his ladder, the clang-clank of steel and knucklesfilling the night with a tinny pitch. ‘--look out’ shouted the almsman. ‘they’ll run you over’. The lamplighter threw himself like a doghit by a truck into the Seder grocer’s window, the glass mizzling into athousand pieces. ‘--what next; the sky falling?’ said the alms manraising himself up on the heels of his hands like a sideshowcontortionist. Neck boils. Get all roughed up in shirt collars. Hurstlike the devil.

The following Juan’s are known to have been in possession, at one timeor the other, of a red whore’s glove: Juan Alvarado, Juan Miguel Padilla, donJuan Tenorio, Juan Bautista, Juan McQueen, Juan Carlos Salazar and Aguja JuanRodriquez. Like a dog hit by a truck the lamplighter rolled along thecobbles hollering. ‘--for the love of Jehovah what next; the skyfalling? The moons of her fingernails eclipsed by manure, the Ogresscontinued to dig, the smell of salt-rub reddening her cheeks. Poldy,his shoelace, the aglet crumbed like a sawed-off stump, threadedthrough the wrong eyelet, watched from his perch above the overlord’sbanquet, all of the fat people cramped under a small disc-shaped tent,the fattest pushing his way forward hoping to be the first to be fed.Under the disc-shaped tent, surrounded by fat people gnawing andchomping, a cockfight was going on; guts and quills flying everywhere.A potpie chicken fought a barnyard rooster. The crowd jeering andhooting, the barnyard rooster pinning the potpie chicken to thesawdust floor.

Poldy put on his favorite hat, laced his best pair of shoes and strodeout into the glaring sunlit day. It was hours before the Feast of Tierra deNadie and everywhere he looked there were people scampering aboutgetting ready for the first gorging of the New Year. Heerlen stoodabout-face, his feet unbuckled from his shoes, a sea of people hissingand churning like an unruly crew. Swaging like a Rabelaisque Gargantua themob moved down the street, stopping in front of the Church of Thélème’s,the harridan’s sister, her hair done-up in a hag’s knot trying tosweet-talking them into to buy a placemat or a Pop-icicle boat, past theDogman Deli, the littlest dogman crouching behind a stall of oyster hamsplaying his breastplate like a xylophone, to the front of the Church of thePerpetual Sinner where the rector, his face three shades of red was airing

out his surplice, the mob coming to a full stop. Suddenly,unexpectedly a second mob appeared around the corner, an army ofhalfwits and imbeciles, the lame and ambulatory, some on stretchersothers wheeling themselves in chèz woulant’s, led by the head nurse fromthe Overnight Asylum. ‘--Heathens!’ yelled the rector. ‘--sit on myface!’ yelled the head nurse. ‘--on her face!’ yelled the mob. ‘--tohell with you all!’ scowled the rector.

Ro Gallegos Cruz, an encephalitic, stands in front of the Seder Grocer’sadmiring his reflection in the window, his goutweed jaw working astick of peppermint chewing gum. Taking hold of his arm and yanking donJuan Tenorio puts an end to Ro Gallegos Cruz’s dullard’s engrossment, a loudcrack issuing from his head, his ears dripping spools of brackishwater. ‘--Hurry!’ he yells yanking harder. ‘--before the mob overtakesus!’ The mob, cheek to jowl, close in rounding the corner, the headnurse wailing. Off in the distance a siren blares. Then the bells inthe church tower begin to chime, a tinny ear surrendering to a coldmedieval chorus. Ro Gallegos Cruz, breaking free of don Juan Tenorio yells‘--to hell with you! On her face!’ The head nurse yelling ‘--How dareyou, and without my permission!’ don Juan Tenorio charging past herscreaming ‘--to hell with it, I’m going home’.

From his perch high above the mob, the bell tower cricketing under theweight of its colossal chimes, Poldy waves his hat like a cowboy, themob yipping and hollering him on. To his left the Witness, a splinter-group of mobsters kicking at him like a piñata, struggling to stayupright, to his right the littlest dogman, his chest puffed out like acourting pheasant, pelting the mob with rotten cabbages and directlybelow, his pushcart upturned, the legless man, a galley of halfwitsand imbeciles clubbing him over the head with makeshift cudgels andbats. ‘--yip yip yippee!’ howls the mob, the legless man, his headswollen like a melon begging them to stop. His booted feet kickingclumps of earth Jesús Juventud stood staring at his reflection in thewindow, the grocer swiping at him with a broom. ‘--shoo or I willsmite you with my broom!’ cried the grocer. ‘--malcontent!’ JeromeAhasuerus, middle brother of Caleb, Eusebius and Sophronius, sat behind theChurch of Thélème’s chewing and reading a pamphlet he’d found under ashrub, the sun burning a tonsure into the top of his head. ‘--brother,hand me your eyeglasses, this print is awfully small’. ‘--are yougetting a headache?’ asked Jesús Juventud fiddling with a handful of greentwigs. ‘--not yet… it’s the print… it’s putting a strain on my eyes’.‘--perhaps it’s the poor quality of the ink... the kind they use forsheet music and poor people’s bibles’ said Jesús Juventud squinting. ‘--

perhaps… but I’m more inclined to think it’s the poor quality of thepaper… the kind they use for wrapping meat and poultry’. ‘--I couldsee that’ said Jesús Juventud squinting one eye then the other. ‘--what’sthat? asked Jerome drawing the pamphlet closer, the print dissolvinginto an inky black splotch. ‘--I could see is what I said’ said Jesús.‘--see what?’ asked Jerome, his hands shaking from the pressure he wasapplying to the corners of the pamphlet. ‘--never mind’ said Jesús, ahint of hurt in his voice. ‘--either way you can’t make heads nortails out of it can you?’ ‘--but I will! I surely will!’ said JeromeAhasuerus defiantly, the pamphlet pressed tight against his nose. ‘--yessurely you will’ said Jesús Juventud. Leaving behind a stack of twigsarranged like tiny logs hued for an infinitesimal miniscule cottage,Jesús Juventud went his way, the sun splotching everything under itsglare.

This is not how it was suppose to be; things got out of hand, the sanewent mad and the mad sane, what was inside turned outward, the centreno longer in the middle but cast asunder floundering in no-man’s-land.Deasey, now there’s a swimmer: can make two lengths of the aqueduct onone lungful of weedy air. Saw him do it twice: once for taking theLord’s Name in vain and once for swearing during morning prayers.Eyjafjardarsysla, from on Tyne but now living in Glossop, attempting to swimthe aqueduct drowned midway under the Quim’s Span, those cheering him onwatching on horrified as he sunk to the bottom like a stone. ÓmaighSizars wears a top hat summer, winter and fall, reserving his rattansou'wester for those gray drizzly days between deice and blossom.

That day, the day of the drowning, he stood astride Quim’s Spanrecouping his trouser, which having dropped below his ankles, exposinghis Mongrel pale legs, debarred his ability to cross across to theother side. Looking down below the frayed hems of his trousers, beyondthe sprained tendons in his ankle, he exclaimed with unusual alacrity‘--my God, someone throw the poor man a rope!’ not a sole moving aninch. ‘--Can’t you see the man’s drowning?’ he cried out. Raising hisvoice above the din, his face a bad apple rotten to the core, a boyreplied ‘--Yes, and we don’t give a damn’. ‘--Let the bastard drowned’shouted a second boy hoping to impress the first boy with his braveuncowardly tenor. ‘--Have you no mercy!’ shouted Ómaigh Sizars, the firstboy watching the second boy poking a dead worm with the lit end of acigarette.

Laying under a fichus swatting midges with his hat O’Rourke reads theOrganon, the sun hardly climbing above the treetops.

So much at least is plain on all these points, viz. that thefaculty by which, in waking hours, we are subject to illusionwhen affected by disease, is identical with that which producesillusory effects in sleep. So, even when persons are in excellenthealth, and know the facts of the case perfectly well, the sun,nevertheless, appears to them to be only a foot wide.*

Swatting a midge, his hat flopping side to top, O’Rourke reads on,

Now, whether the presentative faculty of the soul be identicalwith, or different from, the faculty of sense-perception, ineither case the illusion does not occur without our actuallyseeing or [otherwise] perceiving something. Even to see wronglyor to hear wrongly can happen only to one who sees or hearssomething real, though not exactly what he supposes. But we haveassumed that in sleep one neither sees, nor hears, nor exercisesany sense whatever. *(Aristotle, On Dreams 350 BC, translated byJ. I. Beare)

‘--I dreamt the dream I was dreaming was dreaming me. Greeks, alwaysmixing up one thing for the other’. Standing, his legs bucklinginwards then out, O’Rourke threw the book into the bushes behind thefichus, the sun scaling the sky like Japanese ivy.

Poldy first met O’Rourke at the Bleeding of the Lamb, both men standing to theright of the altar. O’Rourke, engaged with a transubstantiated crack inthe ciborium, was watching dewdrops of Divine Water drip onto his unshodfoot, the rector eying him with disgust. Čerenkov the dwarf, great-nephewof Čerenkov the Giant, pulled down his trousers and let go with atrumpeting fart; a fat woman midway through lighting a votive candlefainting like a malarial missionary. ‘--the woman has no sense-perception’ whispered O’Rourke. ‘--everything appears to her as if itwere only a foot wide’.

Chiming like a tinsmith’s anvil the church bells clanged throughoutthe night and into the morn. The mob disbanded, some southwesterlysome northeasterly and some down the middle of the street like cows tothe abattoirist’s hammer. Her head bobbing from side to side like aragdoll Glostrup marched up the sideways, her defiance matched only by

her heartless reproach for anyone or thing that got in her way.Earlier that day, well before the mob arrived in the streets, Ms.Glostrup, toting a pike, shouted ‘--Be there any man who thinks he isstronger than I may he stand forth now!’ A freckle-face boy holding atop raised his hand and shouted ‘--I will’. A Hetaerist, his Midrashim’scape flapping, pushed past the boy and stood eye to eye with thealmighty Glostrup. ‘--Stand aside, there’s no need for a boy to do aman’s job. I will thrash this despicable whore!’ Looking on with amixture of terror and enthusiasm, as they were well-acquainted withthe Hetaerist’s ruthless demeanor having witnessed him tear a man limb-to-limb for calling him an encephalitic, which he was, his head threetimes the size of a man of his matching deportment, Cinecittá João, Ubaldo,Ribeiro, João and Guimarães Rosa took cover under the Seder Grocer’s awning,Ubaldo cowering like a frightened child. With one blow the Hetaeristbrought Glostrup to her knees, Ubaldo yelling ‘--stupid cow…that’ll showyou!’ Straightening the hem of her skirts the harridan’s sister letout a sigh, safe in the knowledge that today she would not have tofend off the Nair-do-wells that followed Glostrup like pilot fish.

Every night before turning in the legless man soaks his stump-ends inrosewater, wrapping the pruned stubs with a handkerchief. Tucking thebed linen under his hipbones he falls to sleep thinking of ways tomake his pushcart go faster. When he was a boy his mamma scrubbed himall over with a wire brush, the smell of cropped skin filling histhoughts with persecution by foot roasting and thumbscrew. She fed himboiled prunes to soften his stool and spruce-beer to settle hisstomach. The Street Sweeper's Daughter danced in the streets like a madmaiden, her feet barely touching the pavement. The Street Sweeper's Daughtersalaamed up the street like Avshalom’s concubine, her maidenhead flappinglike a washerwoman’s rag. On Saturday afternoon Glostrup played Nardshirwith the Street Sweeper's Daughter’s uncle, a frightfully timid man with anervous tic that made him look like an encephalitic on the brink offainting. The Street Sweeper's Daughter fell plummeting to her death fromQuim’s Span, Jerome Ahasuerus, middle brother of Caleb, Eusebius and Sophronius,catching a glimpse of her undressed maidenhead before she wasswallowed up by the outgoing tide. ‘--surely she’ll be eaten by pilotfish’ whispered Ómaigh Sizars, fearing that he too might lose his footingand fall plunging into the aqueduct.

James Aloysius Augustine of Clongowes, born 2 February 1958, stood admiringhis reflection in the Seder Grocer’s window, the sun glistening off histonsured head. Augusta, plays the feint-hearted when the chips are down,never once seen him levy a round. ‘--I’m skint’ he says, or ‘--the

Misses won’t allow it’. Soddy bastard lives off the charity of others,and on His Clongowes’ birthday! Throw ‘em to the sharks, pilot fishchewing the fat off his gums. The last time Poldy saw James AloysiusAugustine of Clongowes he was dancing a jig with the Street Sweeper's Daughterand turning a blind eye to the fiver he’d levied off McTaggart. Nevertrust a gambolling man, there only in it for themselves. Sweet Jesus butits hotter than the Blazes in here; never know when the cunts going pullone over. Seen him crossing over the Libby in a straw handsome withMcGibbon. Wife’s got a fine pair, ‘cept for the sores and pantingblisters. Seen her snap crystal, her under-drawers losing theirelasticity. But he of course turns a blind eye; rather pull thecommode chain than come face-to-face with the cuckolding impresario.Seen him Thursday last buying a bar of McCabe’s Finest, lemony scented andsure to raise an eye or two. Says its easy on the complexion, razesaway all the blackheads and raised spots, known to bring a shine outon a cuckold’s face. On a whim Luceafărul the Middling ate an entire bar,could blow bubbles out of his arse like a Shriner. Some say he couldsink a frigate with one clench.

Awaking, his clammy bedclothes weighing him to the cot, Poldy felt arumbling in the smithy of his soul. He dreamt that he was closing inon the scent of the missing whore’s glove and that if he could onlypull himself free of his daily routine, see things more clearly, withmore perspicuity, he would find it there, right under his nose,waiting to be found. But as this was not to happen, his bedclothesdiscouraging him from rising upright, he fell back to sleep. Word hadit Luceafărul the Middling had arrived in town Thursday last, bringing withhim an oxcart full of leather goods, sow bellies and tripe. Luceafărul theMiddling set up a table of sows’ bellies, leather goods and stomachlinings in the empty lot across from the Church of the Perpetual Sinner andwaited, the rector eying him from the balcony. Vrije Bielefeld stoodadmiring a cockroach floundering in a puddle of dog piss. ‘--and whata drowned little boy you are’ said Vrije Bielefeld unzipping his trousersand pissing on the cockroach. ‘--I hear say he can drowned a frigateand blow bubbles out his arse like a Shriner. Says it’s good for thecomplexion… razes all the raised spots and blackheads’. Awaking asecond time he fell back to sleep, his bedclothes clammy with piss.Barely able to raise his head from the pillow he fell back intosaturnalia bliss, his bedclothes chilly with dog piss and sweat.

‘--Unfortunate wretched woman, trotting like a poodle. Bi i dho husht,says he. That bloody old fool!’ Astride he stood, his trousers heldaloft with a Yeomen’s garter. ‘--Husht ye gamy bastard! A leg up is all

he’s after’. Unfortunate wretch brings tears to my eyes. Seen her doglapping up pools of it, tongue swelled up like a cirrhotic liver. Hasa pawn owing on an engraved headstone, wagering she’ll live well intoher hundreds. Shriner’s’ll pay the balance on monies owing if she breaks aleg or catches her death. Carry her across in one of those miniaturecars, easier if she doesn’t look back. Price of petrol has tripled intwo weeks! Diesel cost twice as much even though it makes the engineclank and sputter. Someone’s making a profit and that someone isn’tme. Cost less to embalm a corpse. Can get by with a smaller miniaturecar. Don’t have to rely on coasting. Hills are a rarity, most peoplewant to go up not down. Less time-consuming. Barely raises a hair onyour neck. Mock chicken with baked jam puffs, brings out thepepperiness. Can get by on a smaller pot if you can keep the steamfrom escaping. Bathe your face in bath steam, brings out the shine anddoes away with the blackest blackheads. Red as Mandrill’s ass. Good forcourting and praying on the weakly. Seen him holding her chin aloft,leg stumps buckling, swiping flies with the knob-end of his cane.Costs less than a chèz woulant’s. Don’t have to add to someone’s profit.Save up monies owing. Carry the balance over without penalty orhedging. Interest only in making a dime on your sorrow. End up pawningthe pawn. He awoke to a gallfly buzzing like a hornet’s nest above hishead, tiny crude wings flailing madly. I’d suggest a mustard poulticeto ease the stinging. Grandmamma’s recipe: cloves, castor oil andmolasses boiled in a coffee tin.

Hold her head so she doesn’t fall four words: Bi i dho husht. Easier whenshe’s clamping. Always on the bend performing the Noble Provision. Lay afiver she’ll get a mouthful. Like spoiled cream. Bite down hard; likeshredding kip sausage. Jaw gets all stiff and mangled, barely open ita peep. Should have known better. All mangled. Turn him off for good.Poses a problem with sitting. Have to crap standing. Comes out inpips. Mangled from the inside out. Easier when she’s ajar. Slows downthe provision. Ladle the boil. Good for the simmer.

He lay abed until his neck ached, his head full of hornets. Rising,slowly, his feet scarcely touching the dirt floor, he assembled histhings, three pairs of socks, a scarf, his favourite boater, a reissueof Popular Mechanics, the June 27th issue with an article on Rolfing, andnimbly wade his way out into the glowing sunlit afternoon. He had ameeting with Dejesus to discuss the likelihood of the sky fallingThursday next; the last time before the next full moon. The last timethe sky fell before the full moon the Semiheretics put on a knees-up onthe front steps of the church, a thousand or more semi and full

heretics taking over the grounds of the sacristy. Ramihrdus of Cambrai,Peter of Bruys, Gherardino Segarelli, Marguerite Porete, Botulf Botulfsson, Antonio Bevilacqua,William Sawtrey, John Badby, Jan Hus, Jeroným Pražský, Thomas Bagley, Pavel Kravař, GirolamoSavonarola, Jean Vallière, Johannes Pistorius Woerdensis, Wendelmoet Claesdochter, MichaelSattler, Patrick Hamilton, Balthasar Hubmaier, Jörg vom Haus Jacob, Richard Bayfield, JamesBainham, William Tyndale, Anneke Esaiasdochter, Maria van Beckum, Patrick Pakenham, HughLatimer, Nicholas Ridley, Thomas Cranmer, Dirk Willems, Diego López, Kimpa Vita, MariaBarbara Carillo and Saint Joan of Arc in attendance either in person or byproxy.

Stephen Breen kept the docket listing all the full and semi heretics inattendance that day, itemizing each according to means of torture andexecution: full heretics: lead sprinkler, hanging, flaying, burning atthe stake, boiling, flaying then boiling, hanging and flaying,flaying, boiling and hanging and set ablaze inside a Brazen Bull with astopcock to release the built-up steam: semi heretics: crocodileshears, reserved for regicides, the Spanish Tickler, flagellation, sawing,Judas Cradle, the Pear of Anguish, foot roasting, the Heretics Fork, kneesplitting, pillory, toe wedging and branking.

They came from Botulfsson and Savonarola, from Pistorius and Wendelmoet, byoxcart and mule waggon, in groups of twos and threes, some laggingbehind like lame dogs, others charging ahead grasping at imaginarystraws; they came and they came until the streets were swarming withheretics. Casement wore a Congolese Headdress festooned with partridgefeathers and a fiery red cockscomb, making him the first full-fledgedheretic to refuse to wear a Sattler Mitznefet. ‘--pillory me if you likebut I will never wear a miter. Never I swear!’ I swear I never laid ahand on him! Must have fell over backwards over the breakwater wall,little peeps cooing and going out of him. Save my own life by a hair.Leave it to God or the devil. Heretics Fork brings the best out in a man.Keeps the chin from getting flabby. Yank ‘em up by the throat.Reserved for regicides. Makes a man out of a Brazen Bull. Semi hereticsaren’t worth the bother. Lead sprinkler is usually enough. Has ‘embegging for you to pull the stopcock. Which we won’t. Never! Splitknee easier on the pulling arm. Makes boiling seem like a trip to theferries. Blindfolded. Can’t tell who’s who. Buggerer’s get off Scottfree. In his left-hand pocket he carried a poem penned by a Ramihrdus ofCambrai:

the embalmer’s handsweigh the body in ounces

employing an age-old sciencethat separates the body from the heavenly

On his last visit to the Heretic’s Hospital the etherist pumped him full ofaryl halide, his chest ballooning like a sow’s belly. ‘--No need to worrymy boy it’ll escape out your anus and through the pores in your neck.Give it a few days, you’ll see’. The orderly wheeled him out in a ChèzWoulant, Eusebius, brother of Caleb and Sophronius working the stopcock like aBlack Friar. He was prescribed a mild epagogic and told not to remove thebandage until the wound had scabbed over; then he could scissor it offand throw it into the trash bin behind the Waymart where a man wouldretrieve it and dispose of it properly; burning it to ashes thendispersing them into the aqueduct. He was to discover years later thatthe man who retrieved the soiled bandages was none other than Čerenkovthe dwarf, then in the employ of Stephen Breen who paid him in hereticalnames and aryl halide.

Waking from a night of sorrowful countenance he fell upon itemizinghis thoughts. Arranged according to consonance, and taking intoconsideration sibilance and vocal quality, he made a list of thingsthat occupied his thoughts upon waking. Having dawned on him that hiswaking thoughts were occupied with such things as how big ones headwould grow if one watered it or why cows have two stomachs and goatsdidn’t, variables he seldom gave much thought to, he determined thatupon-waking thoughts were much smaller than the ones he had during theremainder of the day. Taking this into consideration he itemized histhoughts according to what thoughts he could and would have uponwaking should he remain abed with his eyes closed. Comparing the twohe came up with a list that took into consideration what thoughts hewould or could have were he to stay abed with one eye closed waking afull two hours earlier. As neither consideration appeared to alterwhat thoughts he had or would have, he rearranged his hat collectionsafe in knowledge that any thought he would or could have, both eyesopen or one closed, changed very little about how he went about hisday. Other than adding a sibilant lisp to his consonant tenor, whichhe could dispense of verily with an Epsom gargle, whether he awokeearlier or later mattered very little. Is it all a suicide of reason?A pittance to pay for safe passage into the otherworld?

He met Stephen Breen at the Bleeding of the Lamb, both men admiring the lowcut of the harridan’s sister’s skirts. Apostolidès the Flâner, a courthouse

jester, was at that very moment prying a sliver from his thumb, aspurt of blood corkscrewing into the air. Turning to Stephen Breen hesaid ‘--the man’s a menace; always bleeding when he should begreening’. Realizing that a pun was being made against his name StephenBreen turned a red cheek and said ‘--green or red it’s all the same tome’. ‘--anyone can bleed red, but only a giant of a man can make itgreen’ said Apostolidès the Flâner pinching off his thumb. ‘--and with suchélan’ said the harridan’s sister tugging at her skirts. ‘--yes élan’said Stephen Breen. ‘--green or red, with flair indeed’. Sitting on thehighest branch in the biggest tree in the courthouse yard the littlestdogman played his chest like a Domitius lyre, Stephen Breen pricking up hisears trying to follow the tempo.

There was a rumor spreading that Stephen Breen, fellow of the Brethren ofPhilistines, having been in attendance at the last assemble of the Brethrenof Heretics knew the whereabouts of the missing whore’s glove. Theyferried him across the Libby, the punter thrashing passers-by with hiselbow, the paddy waggon caroming from paling to balustrade. Cuntsalways think a dead man deserves the right-of-way. Philistines! Nevertake the right-of-way for granted. The dead are dead. The living getthe right-of-way.

He arrived dockside aboard the Mary of Bullockships, the buoys out past thebreakwater rushing the keel hurriedly, the captain spitting up gob inthe deck below, the first coxswain manning the wheelhouse. Hauling inthe bollard, the untied end lashing the sheeting, the second coxswaincrawled under the deck with a monkey-wrench, his job to loosen thestarboard rudder. ‘--give it some slack!’ he shouted, the ship keeledto the right, the Hex bolt stripping his knuckles raw. His da, a galleycook on the Mary of Bullockships, sat under the captain’s poop shuckingpeas, the ocean salt liming his face. His da came from a long line ofwhaling Breen’s; his great-great grandfather a stoker on the Queen ofBullockships, his great grandfather a second mate on the Queen of Scots ofBullockships and his da’s da a coxswain on the Queenlier Queen Marie Henriette ofBullockships. Mackey Lacy, pining for his beloved ashore, recited a lovepoem evening, morn and night:

Tis youth and follyMakes young men marry,So here, my love, I'llNo longer stay,

What can't be cured, sureMust be injured, sureSo'll go toAmerikay. My love she's handsome,My love she's bony:She's like good whiskyWhen it is new;But when 'tis oldAnd growing coldIt fades and dies likeThe mountain dew.

(James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, A Portrait of an Artist)

Mackey Lacy kept a Ditty Bag full of books stowed under his hammock, eachvolume to be read according to the reading on the Schöner Star-taker:botany when the wind blew leeward, poetry when it blew portside andphilology when it blew over the starboard bowsprit. His da never didfeel much for Mackey, considering him a man of uneven temper and lowmoral principles. He kept his distance, staying below when Lacy wastopside and hiding in the galley when he was below, ever-mindful thatLacy was easily angered and could knock a man out cold with one punch.Mary of Bullockships ser sail for the Blackwater Mainistir at Fhear Maí, the secondmate doubled over with Brontophobia, the foresail gagging on saltwaterand rum. ‘--release the bilge trap’ yelled the first mate, the seahead lashing the starboard elm.

Francisco Morazán Tegucigalpa wears knee-pants with darted cuffs and double-stitched hems. The better for jumping portside into the tumult sea.His da’s da met the crowdie bugger on a salt run from Petersburg to SaintMahout, Francisco Morazán Tegucigalpa leaping portside as soon as the shipreached shore, his Ditty Bag stuffed with trinkets: wares to keep whoresfrom flinching and showing up his meager cockmanship. The sisters ofBlackwater Mainistir at Fhear Maí, known for their crumbly pies and pokerfacedrefusal to recognize Christ-less Heathens, took care of his da’s da when hefell ill from a congestion of the upper bowel, plying him withointments and salves and swaddling him in cotton gin.

Giving into his infelicities, daily rations of egg rum and soft palatebiscuits, what few teeth he had requiring an ease of chewing lest he

swallow a wad or spit up a whole crumb, the sisters tended to hisevery desire. Crowdie bastard living like a lieutenant: daily rasherof Cèilidh Brose n’ Oatcakes, dancing a jig with the Stichelton Clan; rummybastards cut the lamb’s gut too high, stuffed it full of Parker’s Oats andYarg Gelatin; runny end slopping all over his trousers. Stopcocked thecoke oven, black ashy steam escaping like corpsegas. Navy captaindressed him down to his buff, stood admiring his manhood in the brassyellow waters.

Heard say he’s now living abroad in a half-room walkup with a pay-as-you-go bidet. Pissed away on whore’s trinkets and egger rum. Keeps themoths from alighting on the lamphead. Wick-end burns the bone down toknuckle. Seen a man light his self ablaze. Leapt over portside intothe brassy yellow sea. Keeps the whores from flinching and making anuisance. Christ-less Heathens. Give into their infelicities. Keeps the sistersbusy. Tend to their every wont and desire. His da set out to seaaboard the Mary of Bullockships. Lightening quick and easy as she goes.Left his molars under the ambry. Had to mash his oatcakes with aspoon.

He struck a matchstick and lit the tapered end of a cigarette, theyellowy sulphur stinging his eyes. He smoked the cigarette down toash, snubbing it out with his right foot. Dropping in a coin he satover the pay-as-you-go bidet, a fountain of lukewarm water finishingoff what paper and hand couldn’t. A runny yare of egger rum trickleddown his leg pooling at his unshod feet. He squished the yellowycordial between his hammertoes and smiled with leviratic ecstasy. Hereached into his breast pocket, for you see he he’d fallen to sleep inhis suit of clothes after a night of drinking and poaching kisses fromthe aleman’s wife, and retrieved the poem he was to recite at the Orderof the Helotage later that day.

children play in the burins kicking the ashes for stomped tins God lives in the razor wire

Whether they introduced him as poet or drunkard mattered little. Foryou see his great granddad, who ran an after-hours club and was knownfor taking in struggling poets and supplying them with free room and

board and an unlimited supply of ink and whiskey, took care of himwhen his ma and da were on the road traveling with the Herschel LiegePantomime troop, so poetry and slavish drinking ran in his blood. Heread the poem in front of the hoary mirror overhanging the washingtable. ‘--children kicking in the burins’. Realizing he’d placedchildren before God he repeated the poem a second time. ‘--God kickingkicking children’. Feeling that he was making a mockery of God, whichgiven his strict Presbyterian upbringing he was loathe to do, he recitedit a third and fourth time. He threw the poem onto the floor and satdown on the edge of the cot, his unsuspended foot aching like a hoof.

He lay the Curioso Castigos de Antaño on the table next to his teeth. Havingspent 27 minutes reading the first line “i helots hanno nascosto ilwhore' guanto di s sotto la base vicino ad un pacchetto delle patatinefritte del riso” he couldn’t bring himself to read any further; theglue holding the spine to the boards giving him a headache. His leftfoot went numb when he stood for too long in one position; the bloodand gases sinking to his lowermost extremities explained away asbloodguilt, a pathological condition passed on to him from his great-grandfather who fought in the Great War of Independence. His great-granddad’s side lost to Los Ejército de Putas, General Orotava Canarias’ pince-nezawakening in him memories of his grade seven trigonometry teacher Mr.Keegan who had one glass eye and one that could only make out fuzzylines and shadows. Pathogens make the man is what his great-grandfather used to say; turns a shrinking violet into a SnappingDragoon.

His great-grandfather told stories of footslogging marches carryingeight pound haversacks, never once admitting that he rode in a tankand never lost a leg or an eye. His great-uncle Jim lost one; a pinesplinter slivering the retina in half. He never knew if you werelooking at his bad eye; the one threaded with guck and dried blood.His great-uncle bought his cigars from the Windsor and MaidenheadTobacconist, ¼ Perivale Council, a stone’s throw from Wheatears’ Apothecary. Theysold creams and salves for getting rid of blotches and ugly spots. Hisgreat-aunt bought an unguent for keeping her clean down where thingslived in pockets of loose flesh and folds of old fat. It made her feelwomanly and kept her husband from turning yellow when they went to bedearly on Saturday nights.

This was all long before his da’s nightlong visits to the local whoreand the not so soothing whirr of the rubber fan that agitated the foul

air over his tiny wooden bed. Long before he learned about bloodguiltand first saw the little girl with the hearing-box strapped to herchest and the foul stink of his grandmother’s breath when she smokedtoo much. Lots happened before he could see over the railing and hisma stuffed crumpled newsprint in the toes of his shoes so he wouldn’tfuss when she pushed too hard and left welts on his ankles. Longbefore they arrived on the back of a mule-cart carrying their earthlypossessions and his da hit the driver for smiling at his misfortune.“...nascosto il whore' guanto di ad un patatine fritte del riso”.

Dejesus met Natty Roche when the two were freshman boys at the O’Athy School,Natty Roche, steeling a look under the sister’s skirts and Dejesus, unableto contain himself, spitting up splodges of pea soup with biscuits,the sister sending them both to see the Mother Superior. Sliab Bladma, aweakly boy with a persistent cough, Demne Máel, know at the school asthe boy most likely to meet his end through bludgeoning and Finn MacCumhaill, a mucousy boy with a wiry frame, all lived in the same dormwith Dejesus and Natty Roche. The Mother Superior loathed the boys, referringto them as the God’s little ants, the boys taking this as a sign ofMother Superior’s habit of using God in every sentence and her affectionfor entomology. Boys at the O’Athy School were expected to attend dailyvespers; even Ackley who was born with a gimpy leg and had troublemaking it up the steps to chapel. The other boys would help himnavigate his way up the steps and sit him in the back pew, Demne Máelmaking sure he didn’t topple over and crack his head into the pew infront of him. Fader Muldoon gave the sermon, warning them that any boyfound playing with himself would be denied entry in heaven and given agood thrashing by brother Ignatius, the boys seated in the front pewscowering lest fader poke one of them in the eye with his rovingfinger. Fader Muldoon drank Black Porter and Irish Whiskey in the back booth ofthe Sibín Tavern, Sister Hélène tugging on his defrocked cock under thetable. The aleman’s wife said the two were blasphemers. ‘--fadershould know better... and with a Carmelite by God, she’s not yet madeher solemn vows... a noviciate she is!’ ‘--His errors are volitional’says O’Hanlon. ‘--fader never makes mistakes!’ Cursing under her breaththe aleman’s wife returns to spit-shining the glassware. ‘--fader evencelebrates Gigantes y cabezudos and has the biggest head of the lot’adds O’Hanlon. ‘--and La Mercè de San Juan and the Carnival of SantaCruz de Tenerife’. ‘--but he’s still a blasphemer’ adds the aleman’swife spitting. ‘--and Moros y Cristianos and the Fiestas del Pilar’.‘--blasphemer!’ ‘--and el toro embolado and the feast of Hogueras’.The boys at the O’Athy School dressed in wool trousers and flax shirts,the youngest in goatskin diapers and doily booties. Her skirts hung

from the gallows of her hips, darts and overlapping pleats forming atam and tartan hem. Slocum Connolly, giving her the once over, the sundappling his forehead, exclaimed ‘--the woman’s an angel... by Godyes’. Brother Slocum had arrived early for vespers, the boys staringweakly at him, the rector’s assistant cursing him under his breath.‘--man’s a charlatan… never once seen him bend a knee or say a HailMary’. Snorting and snickering the boys looked at one another withdisbelief, Natty Roche whispering ‘--next he’ll be fining him for notpraying for rain’. ‘--I hearsay the Dutch make a fine cigar’ saidDemne Máel his knees knocking against the back of the pew in front ofhim. ‘--hand rolled’ said Sliab Bladma playing with his prayer book. ‘--leaf by leave’. ‘--they spit on them’ said Ackley trying desperately tofit in, the other boys ignoring him. ‘--and some of them have bleedinggums’. ‘--you fool…there’s no way they’d let ‘em anywhere near acigar’ said Natty Roche reprovingly. ‘--it’s unsanitary’. Raising theBible over his head, the pages fluttering like cigar leafs, BrotherSlocum announced the day’s routine: 8 o’clock: prayer; 9 o’clock:vespers; 9:30: confession; 10 o’clock: vaulting and pommel horse; 11o’clock: lunch; 12 o’clock… his words falling on deaf ears as the boyswere more interested in the wine stains on Brother Slocum’s surplice thanin what the day had in store for them. Never did Poldy think that oneday he would raise a Bible threateningly over his head or find himselfstanding toe to toe like common pugilist with Slocum Connolly. Lifesometimes holds things in store for us that we never dare to imaginecould ever come true; like living one’s life in the belief that thisone is but a staging ground for the one to come, ever mindful thatthis one, or the next, could be the last. He tosses down a goblet, atail of maenads’ milk whale whitening his chin, ever cautious that onewrong suckle could give him diarrhea, or worse, ‘the rumblings’.

He remembered the mossy stench of the cod cave where his grandpappatook him on an outing to find his grandmamma’s missing earring, theone made from pearl of swine and the brownest shiniest garnet. Heworked as a buyer for the swine and poultry division. ‘--cocks andpigs, pigs and cocks. It doesn’t really matter’ his da said. ‘--who?’he asked. ‘--why your great great grandfather my boy, the one with oneleg’. Volutes and spalls, archivolts and dolmens, an intricate façadeof architecture and trigonometry, the world unfolding like a Gaudisuperstructure, his da standing in the middle paring the grimy halfmoons of his fingernails with a pocketknife. ‘--why your great greatgrandfather my boy, the one with the peg leg’. Thinking back over hislife he realized that he was living it over and over, each time withsmaller and smaller changes, each making an impact on what he had

already lived more than once. ‘--Mother of swine’ his gargantuangranddad would hiss at his grandmamma, his grandmamma gargantuan inher own right, throwing pebbles off the rain shutters. MosfellsbærÓlafsdóttir, known far and wide as the man mostly likely to die fromchronic whooping, and his diminuire friend Sólrún, known to only a fewsquinting cross-eyed freaks with dreams of working the circus circuit,sold pearl of swine cameos and bracelets out of the back of a 1938suburban sedan with bucket seats and a lay-around dash. ‘--cocks andpigs’ said Mosfellsbær Ólafsdóttir grumbling, his jug ears redder than Ultisolsclay. ‘--next they’ll be asking for a layaway… then what? We’ll haveto pawn everything and go back to working the concession stand’.

He stood at the back of the church staring at the priest’s gown, thepurplish one with extravagant embroidery that draped his stoutsloppiness like a cinema curtain. Lined up like Russian dolls, thechildren looking for something to while away their time with, theywaited on the priest’s first words. Speculating that it would havesomething to do with immoderation or indulgence, both of which he hadpartaken in in the last week, he relaxed and let his feet sinkeffortlessly into the floorboards. ‘--God is watching’ said the prieststarting the homily. ‘--then He must need a telescope’ whispered afair-haired boy. ‘--He watches over you when you are awake and whenyou are sleeping…’ ‘--and when you’re shitting’ said the fair-hairedboy squeezing himself lest he break out in laughter. His da fed thepigeons that congregated in the parking lot behind the church;throwing fistful’s of a seed at them like a soldier attacking hisenemy. João Ultisols Guimarães shits in a commode pot handed down to himfrom his great uncle Gaudi Ultisols Guimarães, a whoremonger’s son with anoticeable limp. He lives on both sides of the five-mile depending onhis appetite for whores and black tea. The black tea he could easilydo without.

Having been brought up by a father who tutored him in the indelicateart of whoremongering and the sophistication of tea and scaldingwater, a week never passed without him indulging in both. The UltisolsGuimarães’, from child to great grandparent, had little respect forthings or people; taking what they wanted regardless of title orpropriety. “It is an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its God”(Ulysses, J. A.U. Joyce) Mór Matthew and U. A. Shakespeare, doctor ofpediatric medicine, share a quart bottle of Pig’s Stout, the awning overtheir heads flaccidly flapping flipping. ‘--I say Mór t’is a sad daynow that Paddy’s gone under’. ‘--Pushing dirt off the coffintop’. ‘--All wormy’. Nether Stout dear man… and snap! Haven’t all day you know.

People have little respect these days. Take what they want regardlessof marker or politesse. Sad days. Indeed. The youth these days need agood thrashing. I’d say! It’s exhausting just trying to keep one stepahead of them. Catch up with you and, blam! Knock you arse overteapot. Godless hobbledehoy! Not an ounce of propriety. Poldy watchedfrom his stool next to the fiddle hearth Mór Matthew belittling a boyfetching his da’s pail, A. Shakespeare, doctor of pediatric medicine,splitting a gut over a ball of rarebit and egg, his face a jubilantlactation. Indulge in both. Not a word of a lie. Serpent’s tail coiledround stool leg. Children begging the da to come home and light thegas. Blitzing carries a hefty cork. Pop the capper and down she goes.Frothy beards stubble with gin sores. The da laying claim to Pig Stoutand wife cheating. Not a yard of decency. Shaves over the commode bowlwith strop and straight. Lays the razor wetly in the jam jar besidethe gleam paste. Da says man’s rights outweigh the ma’s. Keep an evenkeel. Bend her over the boxwood like a common whore. Bleeding hearts!Should stave their bellyaching. No amount of moaning will vary a man’scheating. Take what they want regardless of proper etiquette. Titsover tea kettle. Bent over moaning like a gin whore. Cod cave reeks oftoad roe. Poldy watched from his stool next to the fiddle hearth, quartbottle stacked and kneed, U. A. Shakespeare boasting about a whoredomwhere a man’s freedom is his canon. Toast all the sad buggers whothink wife cheating’s a sin against God and spouse. Crack the spigotand down she goes. ‘--All wormy’. ‘--Pushing dirt off the coffintop’.Age of whoredom and groping. Toad in the hole. Softens stool from theinside. Fetch a pail for the ailing da. Ma blistering over the organpot. Likes his entrails skilletted. Gullet bribe. The ma adds theorgans to the boil. The da hoisting a yard. Pig Stout and fried lamb’stongue. Salt worsted. A smidgen’s worth. Pottage pillage. Lips smearedwith the bottom of the pot. He remembers the day his da drank the Pig,his eyes flaming up like a Skankhill bomb fire. Fire in the belly. Shinfan the oven with the hems of her skirts. Otherwise the pot boilsover. Keeps the smoke from quisling. Eyes go all red blurry. Keepsthings on an even keel. His great grandfather was buried in a woodedcoffin with brass handles; the insides plush with coffin cloth andsilk pillows. He watched as the pallbearers lowered the box into thedirt, his ma pulling her skirts straight, the da fiddling with a pieceof ivory, a gift from his da when he was eight and close to dying fromgangrene in his belly. His insides swelled up with bile gravy, thedoctors saying he had a small chance if he stopped fidgeting and keptstill. His ma said she’d only pay for what they took out of him;everything else she’d have to pay on credit.

After several attempts he managed to dismount from the stool, his leftleg cobbled in the wicker backing. Laughing, the coffin builder wipedthe perspiration from his tremulous brow, a stogy of soot darkeningthe back of his neck. Mouthing his words like a harp he said ‘--I’sthe only one in this place that’s daring enough to wear a lasso shirtwith a fluted collar’. ‘--shit down!’ grumbled a codger crossly. ‘--orup’ said the coffin builder wringing the sweat out of hishandkerchief. ‘--or off!’ barked a fat woman in a pile sunhat. ‘--enough!’ scowled the aleman’s wife flapping her skirts, a creel odorpiling the besotted night air. He threw himself onto the floor like adog hit by a truck, everyone except the aleman’s wife watching on withunpleasant bewilderment. ‘--look his eye’s bleeding’ shouted thealeman’s wife. ‘--must’ve burst a vessel’. ‘--damn fool’ cussed thecodger crossly. ‘--man’s a menace’ whispered the coffin builderthumbing his nose. ‘--probably has some kind of mental defect.Standing round with their heads in their hands. Seen this before whenI was making deliveries to the Overnight Asylum. Not much they can dofor them’. A chappy with a harelip ambled up to the bar and ordered aPig’s Stout, his nose bobbling like an unmanned fire hose. His da worethe same checked shirt to work every day, the buttons thumbed withengine oil, the chest pocket stuffed with his work credentials andpassed due chits. He stood his boots upside down next to the boilerroom fan, the day’s grease and sludge blackening the ankles and toes.He placed his sweat stained work cap on the hook next to his coverallsand left for the day, the sun rising above the Texaco sign yellowing theearly morning walk home. His da had watched as an outbreak of smallpoxkilled half the townspeople. Not knowing what to do he hid under theSeder’s awning carving boxwood talisman’s and monkey’s-foot-key-chains.The key chains he gave away for free, the boxwood talisman’s he soldfor a dollar a piece, shining the copper rings with ox piss andshellac. No man’s an island his da would say falling into a drunkenstupor, the front of his shirt covered in slobber. He never didrecover after seeing the dwarf hung upside down from the rafters, thehead nurse poking him with a curtain rod. His credentials said that hewas a day laborer, the picture on his ID taken the year he had his legamputated and cauterized with a copper welder. Long before he was toldof the death and resurrection of Christ he watched his da tease hismamma about the size of her corset; laying claim to her sex and thebodice that hid it from his prying eyes. The priest read aloud fromthe Versio Vulgata, his lips moving along each verse like a cat stalking acanary. Saint Jerome of Vulgate, hiding his bruised knees under a surplicewoven from newly ginned cotton, stood facing the sanctuary altar, theblossoms on his nose frightening the children seated at the front of

the church. He remembered everything that happened that year; eventhose things it was not in his interest to remember; beatings andthrashings, hogtied and left to whimper like a puling calf in thecrawlspace under the summer kitchen; the scalding pressure of his da’shand as it lay welts into his backside, his brother sniggering as helay claim to his puny soul. He hasn’t eaten a dog in years. Not sincean outbreak of rabies culled the strays to a few runt lapdogsdomesticated to fulfill the needs of lonely spinsters and friendlesschildren. “…one sees every day priests and monks who, leaving anincestuous bed and without so much as washing their hands soiled withimpurities, manufacture gods by the hundred, eat and drink their god,shit and piss their god”. (Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary) was written ina swirly calligraphic hand over the doors to the Pig’s Head. Thechalkboard menu read: ‘Tartar lamb (Agnus Scythicus) with mint jelly andsprig marjoram’, and under that ‘if the meat doesn’t flake off thebone your supper is free’. Please shit and piss in the restrooms.Disobeyers will be sodomized. He shook a dash of Lot salt on his legof Tartar lamb, ‘--brings out the flavor and juices’ he said ‘--andsoftens the gristly bits’. He remembers his da hogtying him with hismama’s clothesline, leaving a crease round his reddened belly, hisarms weigh-laid to the corner post. Gets easier the older you get; thered marks fuse with the lashing welts, the soreness with satisfaction,the bitterness with acceptance. Sodomizer’s will be stopcocked andleft to rot from the inside out. Many was the time he felt the worldcreeping up on him, his feet nailed to the Melamine terrazzo, an oilysmeary odor picricketing his nose. It’ll make a man out of you his dawould say slapping him hard upside the head. Then you can callyourself something other than a boy. His da made him listen to Saint-Saëns’ ‘The Carnival of Animals’ over and over again, slapping him hardupside the head if he flinched or winced. The restroom was a place ofinexorable filth and squalor, a dispatch of grunting disobedience.Unbuckling his trousers he straddles the devil’s bowl, a beard of shittarring the porcelain, the smell of other men’s dirt brachiating hisnostrils. Grabbing hold of the cistern chain he flushes, speckles ofindissoluble shit floating rebelliously to the top, a swirling eddy offoul effluence circling the dunny trap. The rector’s assistantunbuttoned his surplice and stood astride the reredorter, the troughspilling over with yellow coppery-piss. That night the friar cookboiled up a pot of tripe and oxtail stew, the brothers eating untiltheir bellies ached and their hearts sang.