A Void (6 page)

Which animal do you know

That has a body as curving as a bow

And draws back inwards as straight as an arrow?

"Moi! Moi!"
Aignan (no doubt a fan of Miss Piggy) shouts back

at it.

A frown furrows its horridly bulging brow.

"You think so?"

"Why, naturally," says Aignan.

"I fancy you ought to know," says his inquisitor mournfully.

For an instant nobody says a word. A cold north wind cuts a

blast through a cotton-cloud sky.

"I always said a kid would bring about my downfall," sighs a

Sphinx so dolorous it looks almost as though it's about to burst

into sobs.

"Now, now, Sphinx, no hamming it up,
s'il vous plait"
says

Aignan gruffly and with a faint hint of compassion for his victim

— adding, though, "You must admit, had I got it wrong, you'd

instandy claim what's owing you. I got it right, I won; and so,

by law, it's curtains for you." And, raising an intimidating hand

in front of him, adds, "So - what about taking a running jump

off that cliff?"

"Oh no," it murmurs softly, "not that, oh God, not that. . . "

"St, sir Aignan roars back, without knowing why an Italian

locution should pop into his brain at such a point of crisis and

climax.

Picking up a thick, knobby stick, Aignan knocks it down - so

hard, in fact, that it falls unconscious, spiralling downward out

of control, spinning round and round in mid-air, down, down,

down, into a profound abyss, into an aching Boschian void. A

blood-curdling wail, a wail partaking of both a lion's roar and a

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cat's purr, of both a hawk's inhuman squawk and a hauntingly

human, all too human, cry of pain, throbs on and on all around

for fully thirty days . . .

With a fabliau of so obvious a moral, it's not too difficult to

intuit what kind of fiction or plot must follow. Aignan tours his

country, roaming back and forth, uphill and down again, arriving

at sundown in unfamiliar and unknown townships, proposing a

day's labour to local rustics and cartwrights and sacristans and

taking for his pay just a thin, fatty cut of bacon or a dry crust

with a scrap of garlic as its only garnish. Starvation gnaws at

him, thirst too, but nothing can kill him.

Whilst approaching his maturity, Aignan would soon know

how to adapt to almost any kind of situation confronting him,

would soon grow cool and nonchalant, fortifying his worldly

wisdom, magnifying his vision of his surroundings, his

Anschauung
, and crossing paths with many curious and intriguing

individuals, all of whom would, in various ways, transform him,

by giving him a job of work to do, or board and lodging, or by

indicating a vocation to him. A con man would instruct him in

his craft; a mason would show him how to build a small but cosy

shack; a compositor would tutor him in printing a daily journal.

But that isn't all. What occurs now (as you'll find out) is a

hotchpotch of cryptic plots and complications, simulating, word

for word, action for action, its conclusion apart, that saga of

profound roots, that amusing but also moral and poignant story

that a troubadour, whom history knows as Hartmann, took for

his inspiration, and whom Thomas Mann would follow in his

turn, via a trio of short fictions.

Thus, to start with, Aignan is told that his papa was good King

Willigis (or Willo for short) and his aunt was Sibylla. Sibylla,

though, was so fond of Willigis, fond of him with a passion that

sat oddly with kinship, that sororal adoration would gradually

blossom into carnal lust (notwithstanding Willigis's faithful old

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hound howling with horror and dying just as coition was about

to occur). Within 8 months and 23 days Aignan was born.

Blushing with guilt at his iniquity, hoping that castigation in

this world might guard him from damnation, Willigis (Willo for

short but not now for long) fought a holy war against Saladin

and was struck down, as was his wish, by an anonymous son of

Allah.

As for his Dauphin, Aignan, with immoral blood coursing

through his body, his mama, Sibylla, thought to abandon him

on a raft so that it might float away northwards to an insalubrious

district of filthy marshland, full of moronically drooling young

cutthroats (for adult consumption of alcohol was said to attain

as much as six gallons a month) and animals of unknown origin

but of, no doubt, voraciously carnivorous habits: talk was of a

dragon "stuffing guts wit' battalion, a' way down t' last drop o'

last man", as a charming patois had it in an inn into which many

locals would crowd for a warming drink on concluding a hard

day's work outdoors. In addition to which, it was always dark

and always drizzling - a cold, thin, stabbing, British sort of rain-

fall. Thus you wouldn't go far wrong in supposing that only

miraculous odds (I fancy a Christian would put it down to God

working in mystical ways and is probably right to do so; but

fiction has an intrinsic duty to contradict such an illusion of

propitiatory fatality; for if not, what's its point?) - in supposing,

as I say, that only miraculous odds could account for Aignan's

surviving up to and including his 18th birthday. But I mustn't

run on too quickly . . .

Anyway, on or about Aignan's 18th birthday, Sibylla, in a man-

sion fashionably got up
a la brabanfon
or
flamand,
is still doting, if now posthumously, on poor Willigis (or Willo) and turning

down all invitations to marry. A rich and rutting Burgundian

aristocrat pays court. Sibylla simply says no. "What!" says this

aristocrat in a purplish paroxysm of wrath, prior to razing half

of Hainault and marching on Cambrai.

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But wait . . . At this point in my story, to Cambrai, clippity-

clop, clippity-clop, riding Sturmi, his black and bay brown

Anglo-Norman stallion, clippity-clop, clippity-clop, gallops a

knight-at-arms, with all you could ask for in youthful vigour and

good looks. Brought to Sibylla's mansion, this dazzling young

paladin charms his monarch, who commissions him to slay his

Burgundian rival. "Your wish is my command," fair Sir Adonis

says instantly, kissing his lady's hand and adding wittily, "And,

may I say, your command is actually my wish."

Mounting Sturmi, with its saffron housing and its caparison

of indigo, and illustrious in his own gold strappings inlaid with

opal, his cloak, his broad cuirass and his coat of armour, Adonis

gallops out into a sort of oblong paddock with paling all around

it. A fish adorns his standard; and a long standing ovation from

his Braban^on champions totally drowns out an irruption of scur-

rilous anti-Braban^on sloganising from a mob of Burgundian

hooligans and paid agitators.

What a bloody clash of arms it is, with onslaught following

onslaught, mortal blow confuting mortal blow, chain mail

clashing clamorously against chain mail, attacks by harpoon and

spontoon, hook and crook! In all it lasts a full day. Finally,

though, by a cunning ploy, young Adonis dismounts his rival:

victory is his.

Brabant and Burgundy mutually disarm. Joyful carillons ring

out in both lands. Floors throb to dancing, walls to playing of

hautboys, horns and drums, roofs to toasting of this artful young

paladin — now, by a logical promotion, known as Grand Admiral

of Brabant. And, complying with a royal summons, our Grand

Admiral pays an additional visit to Sibylla's mansion. Boy looks

at girl, girl looks at boy . . . imagining how it turns out is child's

play (or, should I say, adult's play).

Oh you, browsing or scanning or skimming or dipping into

my story, or actually studying it word for word, moving your

lips as you go, I must now throw light on a startling twist in its

tail, though you no doubt know without my having to inform

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you who it is that Sturmi is carrying on its caparison - why,

that's right, it's Aignan.

Aignan, though, still blissfully ignorant of Sibylla's kinship

with him, falls into just that trap in which Oi'dipos was caught.

And Sibylla, ignorant of Aignan's analogous kinship, falls into

just that trap in which Jocasta was caught. For Sibylla admits to

an infatuation with Aignan. And Aignan admits in his turn to

an infatuation with Sibylla. And, without a filial qualm, Aignan

starts fornicating with Sibylla. And Sibylla, not surprisingly, starts

fornicating back.

Luckily or unluckily - it's hard to know which - Aignan all

too soon finds out what kind of filiation it is that links him with

Sibylla.

Sibylla, praying daily, not to say hourly, for God's pardon, has

a hospital built in which a crowd of filthy waifs and strays stay

for nothing, with not a limb, not a dirty hand or a stinking foot

or a gamily aromatic armpit, that its nursing staff will not lovingly

wash.

Aignan, donning a ragamuffin's rags, a hairshirt worn out of

mortification, with a stick in his hand, but without a vagrant's

rucksack or tin can, slips away at dusk from a mansion in which

an illusory and, alas, mortally sinful form of conjugal intimacy

lay almost within his grasp - slips far, far away, going hungry

and thirsty and living rough and tough, and pays for his infamous

conduct by asking God to vilify him, to damn him outright.

So pass four long and hard days of wayfaring, culminating in

his arrival at a poor woodman's hut. Aignan timidly knocks at

its door. In an instant its occupant is standing inquiringly in front

of him.

"Would you know," Aignan asks him, "of a
Locus Solus
not

far off in which, till Doomsday, God might punish my Sin

of Sins?"

"That I would, my lad, that I would," growls this doltish wood-

man (who is in fact as thick as two of his own planks). "Tis an

island, no, no, I'm wrong, 'tain't that at all, 'tis just a rock, sort

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of a crag, look you, with an awful sharp drop down t' bottom

o' loch. Tis just th' spot, I'd say, for a man with drink or dam-

nation on his mind!"

"Oh woodman, do you own a boat?"

"That I do."

"And will you row it out to your island, your rock?" Aignan

asks him imploringly. "For my salvation!"

Though caught short by this proposal, his saviour concurs at

last, with a warning that Aignan will rot on such a solitary crag

- rot till his dying day.

"I wish only for God's will," says Aignan piously.

At which his rustic Charon murmurs a (slighdy incongruous)

chorus: "And so say all of us!"

So our young pilgrim sails forth to this Island of Lost Souls on

which his companion, almost throttling him, binds him to a rock

with a hangman's tight collar. A nourishing mould or humus

oozing by night out of a cavity in his rocky crucifix is his only

form of nutrition; a storm or a cutting blast or an icy south wind

or a burning simoon or a sirocco swirling about him his only roof;

a typhoon or a tidal flood his only wall; and his only clothing (for

his poor, worn, torn rags rot away as fast as crumbling old wood)

is his birthday suit, soon just as poor and worn and torn as his

rags. Not cold but glacial, not hot but roasting, Aignan stands

thus, a living symbol of contrition, a human incarnation of purga-

torial pain.

Now half-starving for want of food, now wholly fading away,

notwithstanding that mouldy humus that God in all His wisdom

and compassion has put his way, Aignan gradually grows thin,

his body physically contracts from day to day, from hour to hour,

it slims down and narrows out until unimaginably gaunt and

scrawny, until as small and insignificant as that of a dwarf, a

pygmy, a homunculus, until Aignan is nothing at last but a

shrimp of a man, a Hop-o'-my-Thumb . . .

* * *

18 springs pass. In Roman Catholicism's sanctum sanctorum Paul

VI is dying. Vatican City is in a tizzy: it must now swiftly appoint

a Paul VII and affirm papal continuity. But six polls go by - and

no Paul VII! This cardinal submits a proposal for an idiot and

that cardinal for a glutton, a third opts for a psychopath and a

fourth for an ignoramus. Corruption is rampant: anybody willing

to put down a cool million in cash can practically buy his nomina-

tion as pontiff. Things look bad. Faith is vacillating. Nobody

thinks to pray to his patron saint.

It's at this point that black clouds start forming in Abraham's

bosom, bolts of numinous lightning shoot down from on high

and Almighty God in all His wrath pays an unusual visit on a

Cardinal - unusual in that His outward form is that of a lamb,

a lamb with stigmata of blood on its flanks and a couch of fragrant

blooms to accompany it.

"O hark my words, Monsignor," God booms out at His

Cardinal. "Thou now hast that Vicar of Christ that thou sought

in vain. I, thy all-knowing King of Kings, do appoint Aignan as

My apostolic missionary — Aignan, who hast, in that corporal