Out-and-Out Liars, part 2; Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and other Monsters, Chapter 2, part 10

                                                                  10.

It is said that Mary Mary spoke her poems for the giant for two hours, for three hours, for four hours, in hunger not thinking of herself but the beautiful green-eyed man who sat beside her; the giant wanting her, aching for her, the dark troubles within his mind fell silent with each deepening line. The giant would lean forward and reach out to her with a hand the size of an anvil then draw back lest he snap the instrument from which the words flowed.

Seven times the strength of seven men; to push the door

Seven goddesses in gowns of seasonal hues; waiting to take you back again,

Away from summer’s window; to the watery pools of grey clouds

A howling that is heard off shore; like the raider’s plunder,

Instilling fear in the heart; still the world is ringed in darkness.

Larvae trapped in dew, a teardrop of the morning sun; on a blade of grass;

A new-born foal rises; in its dewy eyes a circling,

Up here the land has drained of pools of sky; young to feed and to be fed upon,

“Loverley, loverly loverly” sighs Moira MacManara,

“Grandmothers teach their little darlings; how to make daisy chains...”

Followed through the door; skipping into summer,

“Take your pick”, says the designer

“I can’t see the wood for the trees”. The young man said.

“Well, what do you want me to do about it?  Clear your head”.

Time to hunt the feast, defend the land, there is work to be done.

At day’s end after battle’s approach and sunlit slaughter, all is shared,

In poet’s glow of poet’s fire, a hill of the finest praise into the long night

Through the knot-weed of envy,wise old age watches, it is time to return

Stepping off the shore to catch the wind; they have landed.

What’s that roar?

 Oh, that?”, she says her eyes well versed in misdirection

.“A storm in a tea cup”.

Numb with poetry Mary Mary fell into Chovihani’s arms; Chovihani, too numb to touch, his spirit so filled they did not need to. The giant sat transfixed upon a faraway point, a halcyon time long before his aloneness, in a spell-like trance. And that is how they finally found themselves at table, filling their stomachs with the giant's fair of cured meats, seaweed and kelp salads, eggs the size of paper-weights, water from the purest snow.

They had been tipped gently onto the edge of a wide and firm expanse of polar ice-shelf just before the narwhals dove the 5000 feet depths to their feeding ground, and just after a dozen surfaced from those very fathoms each with a horn which each again nudged towards Chovihani . The length of each tusk, far longer than any in the schools of narwhals fanning out of the bottle-necked leads into open sea- betokened both the seniority and kingship of the deceased ancestor. As Chovihani gathered the rendered horns he inadvertently ‘heard’ the words, “Levelled vale”.

Snow-blind and exhausted they walked over the tundra insignificant captives of the vast  jet-stream. Mary Mary’s particular set of mirages were not visual; she was hearing snippets of show tunes.

Halleluja Cum On get happy

We’re going to the promised land...

It was not clear whether Judy Garland was in Mary Mary's head or if the troubled star was shadowing her at a distance close enough to project through a blizzard.

Halleluja, Come on...!

Were not in Kansas any more!

“You can say that again”, replied Mary Mary.

“What’s that?” Asked Chovihani

Somewhere over the rainbow!

Way up high..Were off to see the wizard..!

Follow the yellow brick road!

“Can I borrow you fur dear?”

“What fur?” queried Chovihani adjusting the bundle of horn tied to his back.

“Don’t rain on my parade..!

Mary Mary lagged behind, the carousel of musical hits momentarily distracting her; she could no longer see her own hand in front of her face, Chovihani was nowhere to be seen.

People, people who need people,

Are the luckiest people in the world, 

Barbara Streisand from a ghostly limousine.  Mary Mary had turned into one of her stage alter-egos West-End Wendy and was channelling more hits, and a few flops, than her slender mind could...well, channel.

We’re having a heatwave...put your lips together and blow...,

The words returned to her like a volley of slaps. No, they were actual slaps; when Chovihani finally traced his steps back to Mary Mary she was locked in an hysteria of Hollywood vamps; Mitzy Gaynor, Rita Hayworth, Marylyn Monroe among others all vied for centre-stage within her in a half naked and potentially lethal mash-up.

Chovihani was adjusting Mary Mary’s knit-ware when the blizzard suddenly abated, his beloved was coming to her senses. Directly beneath them a half-opened frozen hand protruded through the snow. A hundred yards away another half-open hand, then the same distance again, another, forming a perfect circle; unbeknown to them they had arrived at the Vale of Dead Explorers, otherwise known as The North Pole. 

Chovihani instinctively knew what he had to do. His actions would have nothing to do with his new family on an immediate and personal level for the words’ I love humanity, its people I can’t stand,’ rang unaccountably in his head, and his gift of clear-sight-through-touch had taught him to look on the obvious as sign-posts for the hidden. Striding forward drawing each twenty foot tusk from his bundle like broadswords he placed the thick base of each through the half-opened grasp of each explorer; it was a perfect fit and before long twelve spiralling golden staffs stood erect, gleaming like slender menhirs against the blue sky.

“Nothings happening !” Exclaimed Mary Mary after a short time contemplating the polar art installation.

Chovihanis stepped within the giant circle and closed his eyes. Mary Mary and Mitzy watched as the Roma gypsy walked to each tusk and placed a hand upon it. He appeared to be listening intently. Mitzy, however was seeing something entirely different; in a circle stood twelve perfectly restored, if somewhat holographically formed men in formless black cloaks and equally black pointy hats the sides of which covered the face. To Mitzy each apparition was reciting something Mitzy thought sounded like the constant drone of human activity in the city. Mitzy also saw the shape of the whole, the etheric shape. She had seen this once before, somewhere in London when she was a puppy and Mary Mary stood at a doorway in summer arguing with a red faced man, with a neck like a blood-hound who would not let Mary Mary enter; a vast circular library, a dark statue set in its own alcove, a library somewhere near a grove of tress where the other dogs' markings smelt of fresh salmon.  

It was not that Mary Mary did not want to enter the circle, she had the vague feeling that she was neither ready nor entitled to, but she nevertheless understood, deep within her that a change was taking place through her connexion with the man to whom knowledge of some kind was being imparted.  At this point Chovihani looked up into the sky.

From all directions the great climatic cincture that is the jet stream was being drawn into, first, the horizon, then, into the rim of the circle, a haloed reflection, outside of which Mary Mary felt warmer but also realized she was standing in melt-water. Four seasons a second raged with the perimeter of the golden horns like the pastel images of street painting in a down-pour. At the circle’s centre the stone monument engraved with explorer's names disintegrated, its bricks carrying off national flags and slamming them into the ice a great distance away. Whatever force was behind this phenomenon it was not British, American or Scandinavian.The tumultuous Circle narrowed until Mary Mary feared for Chovihani’s life. It came to a dark point directly above the base laid bare by the storm. There was a flash of lightening and a slowing down of time, the air heaved with anticipation; it was as if Moses would appear, or the Arch of the Covenant. Suddenly the dark funnel above the North Pole collapsed in on itself; as suddenly a greyish lintel fell out of the sky landing on the plinth of the former monument to claimants of the northern axis of the planet.

The jet-stream expanded and like a flock of migrating swans, first black then white then silver, disappeared out to every horizon; the air chilled once more and the melt-water icicled over.The twelve hands disappeared under the ice with the abruptness of twelve Ladies of the Lake. Mitzy was left wondering why one of the cloaked figures had given him a knowing wink before vanishing.

In the relative calm Mary Mary embraced Chovihani, mindful not to crush her pet, she was staring over her lovers shoulder at the new monument when it began to dawned on her that she had seen it somewhere before. Yes, she remembered, 8 kilometers from the City of Cork, County Cork, Ireland.

“The Blarney Stone.!”

Out-and-Out Liars; Part 2. Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters, Chapter 2; part 9

                                                                           9.

“All Eastern Europeans are Romanians!”

“No, No, I am Roma, from Romania ”, said Chovihani eyeing up the long wooden table laden with food and their eight foot giant  host with equal caution while recalling a Roma saying, ‘when all the Roma are gone, Europe will lose touch with its nomadic past forever’.

“Romanians!” Insisted the giant.

 Mitzy had wondered into another fur-partitioned chamber of the ice-cave and was staring up at a jar full of human ears. Chovihani probed further into the dimmed recesses of his host’s obdurate brain. 

“You have been to Romania? I can tell you are a well travelled man. Remind me, what is its Capital City?”.

The giant stalled, or rather his brain shut down completely against the onslaught of words; he became suspicious; he sensed a threat but could not tell whether it was coming from the curious ragged, half-starved creatures standing before him stealing glances at his food, from a missed opportunity outside his cave or from the distant knowledge of the horror of his own internal reality; a crippled messenger completed the course across the confused forecourt of his mind;

“Romanians!” said the guardian of warmth, food and polar fur.

Mary Mary, Chovihani and Mitzy had hitched a lift on the back of the lead narwhal, one of many who had rescued the adventurers and polar fur explorers from Aissur Yadot, a pernicious multi-tongued monster dashed into an Olympian vortex the depth and darkness of which could only be fathomed by the silvery lint of light flashing insipidly against its black walls.

In the ensuing silence,- broken only by a gentle lapping of water against meter-high walls of blue ice the gentle meandering progress of  narwhals through watery lanes spread out like fissures in the vast landscape - Mary Mary rode on in splendid wonder. As more and more Narwhals surfaced from leads opening up it was clear to the passengers, stunned by the grace and beauty of the gentle giant upon which they travelled, that it might not be clear which direction some narwhals were headed.

Chovihani, whose name in the Roma language means Seer had the gift of a Clairsentient, the ability to read, or ‘see’ through the palms of his hands the cumulative history, and future of objects, people and animals. As he cradled Mary Mary both hands gripping the narwhal’s cork-screw tusk, Chovihani had already begun ‘reading’. The narwhal’s pure clean spirit allowed Chovihani’s gift of sight-through-touch to not only grasp the momentous song-lines of past and future migrations, bordered then reduced  by the Bear, the Eagle, the Maple Leaf, and the Viking long-boat; ( Russia, Alaska, Canada, and Denmark respectively; Chovihani also ‘saw’ in symbols)  ;there was oil on his hands, he was able ‘see’ throughout his body the Narwhal’s journey with all the five primary senses triggered and the air stank of crude.

The Narwhal travelled through the palms, up through his arms and spread out into his senses; Chovihani was overcome with a liquid beatitude, at the same moment the imploding depth of the gentle giant’s feeding ground compressed Chovihani, then a vertiginous feeling of surfacing followed a sensation of exploding panic; the cumulative effect of times when long harsh winters froze over boreholes; the dread and lament of mass drowning was being keenly felt. Chovihani could ‘see’ beyond the imploding pressure and beauty of the narwhal feeding grounds and their tragically and more recently frequent seasonal oxygen privation and the bewilderment of vanishing krill. Suddenly, the vision clouded over; his body a smooth dolmen of mottled flesh was being hacked from all sides; all around the blood of slaughter and...here, Chovihani’s emotions spiked with a horror both repellent and compelling as, in his mind’s-eye the  Narwhal’s symbol for human-being stood before him; a tall lacerated mottled blue bi-pedal whale-corpse.

As they gently plashed and sloshed through the tundra-canals, Mary Mary was unaware of the sensorial nightmare visions playing out within the warm man in whose arms she allowed herself to feel safe. Ahead, she calculated five hundred or more narwhals wending their way across the transmigrating scene, criss-crossing at newly-opened inter-sections. At these crossroads the narwhals gathered a while and appeared to Mary Mary to be mingling, the air abuzz with a volley of clicks, whistles and knocks; an exchange of news and gossip before each air-kissed the other with their mindful tusks and glided off, a brief glance behind, like sashaying drag queens freed from an over-crowded dressing room. 

Out-and-Out Liars, Part 2; Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters; Chapter 2, Part 8

                                                                             8.

Just as Aissur Yadot, the multi-storey steely-knived beast was about to grind Mary Mary, Mitzy and Chovihani into the ice, all froze as a wind picked up from somewhere beyond the frozen shelves of pack ice. Out to sea a procession of what looked to Mary Mary like the horns of unicorns, hundreds, one behind the other forming a gigantic circle. Each horn 10  feet long, nine inches thick at the cork-screwed base spiralling up golden from somewhere beneath the sea and sharply tapering off at right and left-angles, like the arms and elegantly poised fingers of synchronized swimmers. The clock-wise motion of the unicorns, moving ever faster and faster caused the water at the circles’ centre to become turbulent and dip suddenly, collapsing at it were in one deep groaning vortex while the wind above rung like Tebetan Singing-bowls.

Chovihani noticed that the bloated mottled greyish-blue bodies that had strewn the area, staring up through the ice like drowned sailors, had disappeared. Meanwhile, Aissur Yadot was compelled toward the circular golden vision the centre of which was obscured by the prismatic play of light through sea spray. The whirling horns were accompanied by a percussion of clicks, whistles and knocks.
The ripple-effect from the golden sea unicorns caused not only a cold gyre of air to whip and lash around Aissur Yadot whose articulated parts began to jam and freeze, but the wave-machine effect of the dance caused the ice-field to split apart until Mary Mary and company found themselves drifting out of harm’s reach on their own pancake of snow. The articulated Rubik’s Cube that was Aissur Yadot twisted and screeched rusting in the briny onslaught with the din of a thousand working scrap-metal yards. The fragile ledge, upon which it shifted and frantically jammed, tilted and bobbed precariously. Pulled toward the golden ring shot through with iridescent shards, like rainbow banners above an Olympic Stadium, a magical chorus of paralysing chatter concealed its treacherous centre, a conspiratorial song directed the whole.

Mary Mary, Chovihani and Mitzy saw themselves reflected in two giant knives of shiny steel as Aissur Yadot dug in. The rest of his armour rendered useless, its slatternly eyes fixed on Chovihani conveying a final vengeful promise of pogroms as it was dragged closer to the edge of the terrible whirlpool. The clicks, whistles and knocks intensified then, of a sudden the circle of gilt tusks broke rank, obliterating the boundary between Aissur Yadot and the howling vortex as the monster was dashed against the monstrous funnel’s sheer walls.

As the synchronized swimmers disappeared beneath the waves, a mass of water rushed in to fill the yawning chasm and levelling out, the wind abated and the briny sea settled.

Mary Mary, Chovihani and Mitzy drifted in the calm waters on their polar raft wondering how they would make it across the inky black avenues and lanes opening up before them; they were in shock. It was at this point that Mary Mary began to unravel.

Unbeknown to Mary Mary a perpendicular golden horn had broken through the water and had pierced through a loop in one of the outer layers of her knit-ware. Before she could disentangle herself, the aquatic knitting needle was moving beside the raft of ice tugging yards of insulating wool in its wake. Before she could alert Chovihani to her plight, another tapered horn was about to counter- cross the first needles line of flight; behind yet more needles were approaching; Mary Mary realized to her horror that she was about to be crocheted to death!

“Quick, jump on!”  Chovihani shouted as he gently pushed his beloved forward.

Mary Mary, Chovihanis and Mitzy stepped onto the greyish-blue mottled back of the first in a long line of Narwhals heading out along meandering leads towards their summering grounds.

Out-and-Out Liars Part 2, Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters. Chapter 2 Part 7

                                                                            7

Mary Mary and Chovihani, walked a hundred yards apart as they fought through an Arctic blizzard; it is not an uncommon instinct on the initial meeting of soul-mates for those very soul-mates to want to run as far away from one other as possible. In the vastness of the Arctic tundra, with her pet Chihuahua wrapped snug in a muffler of improvised knit-ware, Mary Mary was throwing a charade of tantrums all designed to get herself lost in the general white-out punctuated by the ever-loving yet possessive attentiveness of Chovihani, who reminded her that not only might she die in the 19 degree sub -zero temperatures if her bare-shouldered impressions of Hollywood actresses persisted, but also that if she cheated on him during one of her momentary disappearances, he would strangle her where she stood.

They had recently met in and escaped from the Ice Labyrinth, leaving behind the pernicious and monstrous sirens Swen Gnillor and Swen Gnikaerb both of whose imperceptible droning leitmotivs ossified the listener in kow-towing dread. The more defiantly blood-curdling Aissur Yadot, last witnessed clawing its way through the glacial walls of Eyes’ melancholy abode, was, outside in the open, pursuing Mary Mary and Chovihani . Sounds, as of fingernails drawn across classroom blackboards, echoed across the ice-scape pursuing them under-foot, terrifying Mary Mary and setting Mitzy’s teeth permanently on edge.

Between gaps in his terror Chovihani could distinguish greyish-blue forms, as of sailors drowned, their bloated bodies peering, mottled and milky-eyed, from beneath the permafrost. At one moment of lucid terror they froze in each other’s arms looking this way and that as they realized the sheer numbers below the frozen watermark stretching out for miles beneath the soles their feet. In the distance, the myriad claws of Aissur Yadot approached in deafening gyrations of ice.

A gigantic articulated carbuncle of boils, boils in between which pores pocked the beast. Each pore a hole, each hole a prison cell.; floor upon floor, storey upon storey. As the series of independently moving blocks, the rotations of which propelled the edifice forward upon razor sharp claws, Mary Mary could see that the claws belonged to those of gigantic bears rather than those of an eagles.

“This way. Lead it further out onto frozen sea!”. Shouted Chovihani.

Mary Mary followed as Aissur Yadot gained on them. She could see that inside each cell, behind its rows of bars, were not actual living and breathing individuals but, in fact the Talking-, and Skyping-heads of Bedroom Academics.

From the Babel that towered above them, the ranting of a thousand or so incarcerated Western voices treacherously decried their own countries short-comings for £9.000 a Judas Kiss; more angles than a Rubiks’ Cube they failed to discern through the honey-eyed questions the true view from Aissur Yadot’s green-eyed vistas , encouraged in their revolutionary froth through subtle changes in direction cloaked by Aissur Yadot’s chameleon-like skin, its eyes as alluring as a whore in a gulag. It was short wonder that the low-slung gaping mouth of Aissur yadot reminded Mary Mary of the entrance to the Tower of London, Traitors’ Gate, seen through twin fangs, as mesmerizing as smiled whispers between war-time, and peace-time traitors Lord Haw Haw, Max Kaiser, Stacy Herbert and Leni Riefenstahl.

Mary Mary screamed covering her ears. "Somebody make them stop!".

Peering over the edge of the largest of several million new open sewers now manifesting in the middle of every Russian living room, the now exiled French veteran actor Gerard Depardieu turned to Edward Snowdon the exiled NSA employee and asked,

“Tell me something I didn’t know?” They were in the Green Room of Aissure Yadot new lair.

“No, you first”. Returned Mr Snowdon.

“Well…Okay then. I did not leave France, tearing up my passport, for tax reasons”.

“Oh?”

“Non, mon ami, que je suis con! I am an idiot. I left because I knew I should not have taken the role of Alexandre Dumas (Pere).

“Oh". said Edward Snowdon WASPishly. “Hey, can you see plastic party cups and plates down there” he said pointing down the black hole in the centre of Russia's main TV broadcasting building.

“Office party....inauguration…how do you say…opening ceremony?”. Said Depardieu

“Pardon me Gerald. Do go on.”

“Gerard..Ger-rar-d. He, was black, wasn’t he…Ah, que je suis bête! I knew, of course I knew…but my head is bigger than my nose..quoi faire! Que je suis un salaud. There was a public out-cry, seeing that the original Dumas Pere’s authorship of his adventure was completement erased and while he was alive. Je suis un sale blanc…je lui a fait la meme chose. I did the same thing to the Father of Alexandre Dumas author of Les Trois Mousquettaires,The Three Muskateers writer. I am a coward”.

After a pause Mr Snowdon said. “ I wouldn’t be so hard on your self, most of white America doesn’t believe Barrack Obama wrote his own life story.”

“Vraiment!? Did you read that in the data?” ask Monsieur Depardieu.

“Don’t need to." Then almost to himself, Snowdon muttered. "Actors are Soft-Power Poster-boys,"  then snapping out of reverie he coninued. "There’s an almost autistic wall of short-sightedness and dunderhead white supremacy in the US”.

“ En Europe too. Well, That’s why I am here. I am an exile of my vanity”. There was a long pause in which Edward Snowdon pointed out the greyish blue bloated bodies floating in the depth of the sewer.

“The out-going TV Company”. Depardieu said with a shrug. "Look!" the former-French national said leaning dangerously over the rim of the sewer. "An almost full bottle of Vodka. Quel gaspillage!. What a waste!. Isn't that the old liberal anchorman still holding on to it? un vrai poivron, tout comme moi...sante mon pauvre brave! On est tous dans la merde...we are all in the shit."

“You know those guys, those American and European Academics paid to talk against the West?" Edward Snowdon asked suddenly?. "Well, they’re all tracked…every last one of them”.

“C’est entendu…That’s understandable”. Said the French actor looking around aware that their every word was being monitored.

“No but the crazy thing is, they’ve started appearing in the middle of people’s living rooms here in Russia”.

“What?... you mean..?

“Yeah, I do.”

 

Out-and-Out Liars, Part 2 . Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters, Chapter 2 Part 6

                                                                                 6.

MOOGY’S SPLIT HIS FINGERNAIL. BENEFIT BASH AT CLUB...NOW. This was the text that vibrated into the awareness of Iain Duncan Smith, Work and Pensions Secretary five minutes into a House of Commons' debate on the rise of Great Britain's dependency on Food-Banks and the increase in famine conditions which had already prompted the Red Cross to launch, for the first time since World War II, a TV appeal for aid for the country's 600,000 starving poor, 20,000 of which, children, will be going hungry this Christmas.

“In the Beatles' song, Eleanor Rigby, Mr Speaker, the first two lines”  said a Labour Party back-bencher, one of a score eager to add to the three hour debate.”Mr Speaker, If I may quote Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles.".The MP's seniority in years demanded a reply. “You may”, said The Speaker of the House. “ ‘ Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been’. I would like to ask the House, why they think the lady in the song needed to pick up rice, at all?”

The Tories suddenly burst out laughing; one of their number had thought it appropriate to shout out something about liking weddings.

“She was starving, Mr Speaker”, continued the Labour back-bencher indignantly. “I am also reminded of an article that recently appeared in a Tory broadsheet on the popularity of job applications to be a barista, that is B.A.R.I.S.T.A , another name for a sales assistant in the capital’s coffee shops; 5000 applications to every vacancy. Without any irony whatsoever the heartless nonentity of a journalist goes on to elaborate on the love of the coffee bean as primary and unique cause for the disproportionate numbers applying. Like the Tories and Lib-Dems, the writer, living in his own callous conservative bubble, failed to grasp the basic point; desperation within current job market.”

The Minster for Work and Pensions rotated his phone in his pocket. He couldn’t quite picture exactly who Moogy was. Married to Cynthia Kenross-Tweedsmuir, something in Nuclear Fuel. He caught the tail-end of the laughter and, ever eager to fit in since the days he was mercilessly bullied by members of Bullingdon Club, he rocked with exaggerated mirth. This sickening response to the plight of those who, while working still found themselves standing, once a week before shelves of food donated to, and collected by the Trussell Trust and various church and charitable organisations - was witnessed not only by the country through their TV sets, but by the dozen or so users of the very same Food Banks who had been bussed in to watch the debate from the gallery; five of whom threw up.

Also caught on camera was the Secretary’s deputy minister, Esther McVey peering down at something Iain Duncan Smith was holding in the general area of his crotch. Miss McVey registered the content of the text also recognising its sender, Owen Patterson the Minister for Food. THE TRUFFLES WON’T KEEP.

It was unfortunate too that she chose this televised moment to lick her lips. Her senior member caught this gesture and found himself caught between two urges, both of which necessitated get a quick get-away.

“Mr Speaker”, another Labour back-bencher stood up. In my constituency of Tunbridge Wells at seven O’clock every evening an unsightly scrum breaks out in front the shelves of reduced produce, food already at the end of its use-by and sell-by dates.

Rumbling jollity could be heard coming from the ruddy-faced Tories.

“Order!, Order!”, The speaker was battling against a mawkish chorus of jeers and general hilarity.

“...It is a case of Tax breaks for the rich and Food Banks for the poor. Mr Speaker...Mr Speaker. Trying to make ends meet on a living wage not fit for purpose the throng, mainly the working middle-class, might I add,…the throng around food not fit to feed to a dog, is such, Mr Speaker…” A crescendo of hilarity rose like a parliment of birds from one side of the House. “…is such, Mr Speaker that security...that security has had to be called in to control those whose only crime is that of trying to feed their children”.

To say there was not weeping in the aisles at this speech would be an out-and-out lie; the Labour MP for Tonbridge Wells failed to see the joke.

There followed a sudden lull in the unbridled mirth coming from the Conservative benches as Esther McVey eager to  be released from her duties and get to Moogy’s  Split Fingernail Benefit Bash at the Club in Saint James, hastily took the floor.

“It seems to me Mr Speaker that the Right Honarable Member for Tonbrige Wells’ time would be better spent at a more high-end supermarket which does not cater to the mob. As for the increasing dependency on Food banks, I remind the House that the 1.5 trillion debt accrued under the Labour government has to be repaid by each and every one of us. We must all breed within our means, and I propose that any surplus be given to banks and not, Mr Speaker, Food banks.” Miss McVey returned to her seat.

The House fell silent for the first time in a century. A Labour back-bencher, whose hand was aloft, announced himself to the Speaker and the House.  “Labour Minister for Ulster”. He turned towards Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey, then to those gathered in the House of Commons and in a rich Northern Irish accent, asked wryly  “And is that the Right Honourable Lady’s modest proposal*”.


* In 1729 the Satirist, Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels anonymously published A Modest Proposal  a pamphlet detailing the solution to the problem of poverty in Ireland by suggesting that the Irish sell their children as comodities, namely as food for the rich...for Christmas.

Out-and-Out Liars. Part 2. Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters,(Chapter 2, Part 5)

                                                                            5

As Mary Mary’s heart melted in front of her Roma man in whose eyes she had not yet materialized. Mitzy her pet Chiuauaha, gifted with Sight beyond the scope of her owner, watched as indeed thousands of thin tendrils emerged from the two beings, each fibre seeking for its opposite strand.; a curious lightshow, noiseless ground lightening in slow motion. Unseen by those waiting in the Mittel Europa Waiting Room, one of the glass doors flew open as by a forceful  gust of wind and in walked a pale translucent replica of the Roma man, asthough late for an appointment; he merged  into his doppelganger. Behind him a ghostly procession of folk of all ages and periods in history.

Behind Mary Mary a blond man in a patterned white and blue Norwegian-style pullover, who entering through the glass door, greeted his opposite number entering behind the Roma man; a woman of similar hair-colouring.  A hollow distant basso-profundo groan heard at the end of a long tunnel released the voices, scenes of lives past.

Snow, a frozen canal, a patio, everywhere white. Their faces, one above the other etched repeatedly in the marble memorial in Dam Square; the swollen warmth of friendships recognized. There, beyond and below, the bridges of Amsterdam in winter.

“Liefde, liefde mejn liefde”.

“Rob! Ik hou van jouw”. Seemed to come from the direction of the woman.

Behind them dressed in striped ragged pyjamas, dirty yellow stars, dirtier pink triangles, thin young men approached the glass doors, timidly. Mitzy heard the distant wind of voices

A dormitory, work outside; labor camp.

Gaunt, stick thin lain-out life broken dolls, parallel, facing, a dormitory, Work going on outside, labor camp. Exhaustion; one slipping away. “Je veux un Rabin...”. I need a Rabbi..

‘Je suis trop faible’. Pensait faiblement l’autre, enver son ami meurant.

“Too weak to say it, I am sorry, too weak my friend, dear friend.”.

Mitzy then heard a song, or rather a chant, melancholy yet tinged with optimism, a chant coming first from the one phantom apparition then the other.

“Shama Israel

Adonai Eloyhainu

Adonai Echad

“Shama Israel

Adonai Eloyhainu

Adonaie Echad”.

The two men appeared to fill out physically and grow younger healthier. There in a  Place Publique a French town square or city plaza wearing vintage leather jackets, (brand-new then, in the nineteen-twenties).  One of them was seated on a monstrous motorbike turning to say something to the other before speeding off in a roar of bird-song and engine-sound.

“Shama Israel

Adonai Eloyhainu

Adonai Echad”.

Behind them both came more individuals in varying costume. Upon an altar in a vast hall, a cathedral.  A wedding. Regal. Rows of maidens dressed in white, brides maids, by the hundreds, faerie queens from time out of mind.

 “Mr King!”.

“Mrs Queen”

“My love”

“’I’ve missed you”.

“Ha, Mr Shakespeare”, said a beautiful black woman to a balding man opposite with a pearl and lace high neck-collar and a long pinched nose.

“My dusky love..” said the man

“I see you are still receiving credit for my work”. Said the woman

“You left enough clues” his voice echoed.

“The times...” Replied the ghost-writer.  “You’d have thought they’d invented writing”.

“Words, words, words. Plus ҫa change, plus c’est la meme chose.”  Replied the ghost.

“Like my love for you, Will”, said the black woman blowing the man a kiss. “The more it changes, the more it’s the same.”

Even had these apparitions appeared as stark three dimensional figures they would have remained invisible to those in the Waiting Room who themselves looked like ghosts in the rooms air-conditioned penumbra; their faces dimly lit by objects they stared down at and fidgeted with but which had no smell.

As the luminous filaments met, the complimentary rows of lives stretching back in an arc beyond time, suddenly concertinaed into both Mary Mary and the Roma standing before her. The glass doors suddenly slammed shut as though once again blown by a powerful gust.

Mary Mary took a small step back as, perceiving him through a glow which spread from the region of her sternum; she knew she had become visible to the man opposite. From Mitzy’s point of view, they were crying into each other’s souls.

The company now found themselves outside in the corridors of Eyes’ labyrinth, the Waiting Room having dissolved. Swen Gnillor and Swen Gnikaerb’s shrieks still pursued them from no particular direction, but their howls were being challenged by a new infinitely steelier yet blood-curdling scream doubled by an accompanying layer, at least three scales lower in the diatonic; the higher pitch; a glacial dehumanising stare, the deeper and lower pitch; a steady immanent powering up of weapons.

They lived in paradise, they lived in paradise!

Where? Where?

With wives and children! With wives and children!

Who? Who?

In the middle of every living room! In the middle of every living room!

What? What?

An open sewer! An open sewer!

How,? How?

They are sleeping! They are sleeping!

Why? Why?

Aissur Yadot! Aissur Yadot!

When? When?

“Run!"

Chased by Aissur Yadot, the perfidious discreditor of Swen Gnillor and Swen Gnikaerb, Mary Mary, Mitzy and the Roma disappeared around another corner of the maze and out into the open tundra.

From the outside and at a distance the words’ Russia Today’  were cutting their way, scythe-like through the walls of Eyes’ labyrinth with the dexterity of glass-cutters in the hands of international thieves.

Out-and-Out Liars, Part 2; Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters, Chapter 2, Part 4

 

                                                                        4.

Her arm aching from adjusting the numerical digits displaying the date on the clock/calendar in the Waiting Room, Mary Mary celebrity drag chanteuse and her pet Chihuahua Mitzi found themselves, once again, out on the Arctic tundra; they were not alone. Having escaped the miserable labyrinth and Eye’s baying bloodhounds Swen Gnillor and Swen Gnikaerb, or Rolling- and Breaking News, Mary Mary had now morphed into a handsome bearded explorer her beehive hair-do having snapped off in the general freeze. Beneath a dark crop of hair, framed by a lush beard glinting with auburns and red undertones, her eyes surveyed those of her lover.

On entering the Mittel-Europa 1980s’ Waiting Room with its rows of septuagenarians, Mary Mary had received the full force of their ire when a pile of neatly stacked Ubermensch Monthly magazines began to topple. She soon found that it was not her that was being screamed at, for retrogressive time had rendered her and Mitzy invisible. It was a young Roma boy, sat in the corner swinging his bare brown legs, who was the object of their collective rage. The fact that he had done nothing seemed to be beside the point; he was young, happy and different. About ten years of age his large dark eyes seemed bewildered by the Wutschnaubendige shrieks of those not-so- locked in their own internal purgatory.

Historical lessons were either being refused to be learned here, or the atavistic fear and hatred of the Roma was a contract in which both sides tacitly colluded, the one steeled for periodic onslaughts yet not altogether impervious to hurt, the other exercising an ancient racial limb that stretched all the way back to some fretful Urwald.

Mary Mary hoped that if she just ignored it, it would just go away and anyway, not only could she not be seen but the Teutonic eruptions at the boy with the swinging brown legs and large saucer-shaped eyes were marginally better than the cacophonous racket of Swen Gnillor, and Swen Gnikaerb. She sat down to read a copy of Ubermensch Monthly which she pilfered as those in the waiting room once again rounded on the Roma lad.

The List of Contents promised an article entitled The Statistical Improbability of the Educational Advancement of the Untermensch by Mal-Combed Badwill.  Mary Mary was baffled; the photo of the features writer for Ubermensch Monthly depicted a...mullatto, or hal-caste...no, not politically correct, thought Mary Mary. What was the latest correct terminology? Mixed race? Dual heritage?.. She had heard it somewhere, recently, in 2013 that is.  Suddenly she remembered, bi-racial!. If Mr Badwill sought to cloak his own obvious Ubermenschlichlessness through statistical erudition belittling those from a background from which he himself had sprung, it was working. Here he was, page 5 offering up data, numerical evidence, hidden in a murky soup of amusing anecdotes, about the  lack of advantages, a  predisposition for laziness, and the inherent poverty of those he now clearly felt himself above. The article concluded that it would be the year 2027 before even a tiny percentage of those who were not Caucasion caught up with those who were. Mary Mary felt sick. On Page 7in The Arts and Culture section “WHEN I HEAR THE WORD CULTURE...”  a photograph depicted a famous, and angry looking art historian boarding a train with a shopping trolley full of tins of Campbell’s Soup.

It had not escaped Mary Mary’s attention that while in her possession Ubermensch Monthly magazine had been rendered invisible and this fact triggered an idea in her quick-witted mind, honed by years of dealing with smart-Alec hecklers during her stage shows. Frau Bundchen, Herr Schiffer  and a dozen other failed veterans, their rage gathering pace and fury toward the innocent Roma boy, jumped backwards as one when the object of their racial hatred suddenly vanished.

The boy seemed not to be phased, indeed he appeared to be unaware of Mary Mary’s gentle embrace or of the Cloak-of-Invisibility effect she was having on him. From his perspective, the shrivelled remnants of the master-race had jumped back so abruptly they had piled on top of one another onto a single seat like in a game of Musical Chairs, upsetting the pile of Uebermensch Monthy magazines, which in turn sent them screaming at each other in a volley of invectives and mutual blame at the newly established order of the lack of...well, Ordnung!

Holding onto the boy’s hand, Mary Mary reached up to the clock/calendar and began winding time forward. From the corner of her eye she could see the Roma boy growing into a tall handsome man, though with hardened features and a defensive disdain in his eyes. His hand grew in hers. The back-copies of Uebermensch Monthly and the Mittel-Europa septuagenarians were not long in crumbling to the floor leaving puddles of evil looking black bile mopped up in quick-motion by a new generation of African Gast-Arbeiter.

The Waiting Room emptied and filled as Mary Mary slowed time down to the present day and found herself in the company of, and holding hands with, a thirty-something year old Roma in a glass room populated by Mediterranean migrants, - economic refugees from Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Portugal- sat  alongside freshly-minted Eastern-Block Capitalists, all competing for their own little bit of Lebensraum. In a corner sat an avaricious looking red-faced man holding a train ticket to Switzerland, not completely dissimilar in looks, Mary Mary thought,  to the art historian in the Arts and Culture section of Ubermensch Monthly; a rolled up Picasso peeked out of his heavy overcoat.