Barefoot in the Head (27 page)

Clever guards slamslamslam outer doorment. In the maze long vistas slowly the charterisers clobbered and clapped into parallel cells. The harsh bones cease their crunk but from the lesser interstine sounds an invisible flute.

Entranced by Herr Laundrei’s door stood his buddyguard Hirst Wechsel who opened to let in the Herr and Charteris followed to pour them both thin schnapps but Charteris stood amazed to find almost tanible reality transformed into this particular figment with a bare rich squareness of hard black forest wood in even the softer things while the Laundrei cordially explained how the State now malfunctioned owing to the temporary emergency following psycho-chemical spraying on which the scientists of the nation were feverishly working to produce an infallible errorproof arabproof antidope that would guarantee to the race that took it a thousand years of sanitary sanity without deviations in any direction such as weakness brought on among even the most favoured of peoples though of course any old racist theories were long dispredited.

‘I don’t need to tell you as an Englishman that.’ Laughing and even Hirst Wechsel operating musculature of a broad grin.

However with the joking aside it must be privately confessed that the malfunctioning of government already touched upon causes certain complications of a legislative nature away and beyond the mere dying of six or seven million fellowcountrymen from famine brought on from lack of organisation at the headquarters perhaps stemming from the lack of discipline at the hindquarters any leadership vital to a dynamic nation and one of these legislative failures was that he here ran his little police force as an independent army you might say.

‘What do you mean what you going to do with all my friends in the cells we’re no invading army only tourists tourists spreading the light?’

Spreading the light was a happy expression was it not of course one knows that light like all basic things such as shall we say sex is made of hydrogen but one can well imagine this sort of hydrogen-compoundcondiment to be spread on ones bread like butter you excuse of I joke and the musculature again mindblowing.

‘My friends in the cells?’

All dependent upon Saint Charteris himself. We two would talk it was necessary to establish if you were a genuine leader but if so well here was this modest little army maybe a little barebooted in the shall we say head bin knowing well on which side of the condiment their light shone put it together with the crying need for a proper leadership to the country after all you could not be content with genuine messiah to remain head only of those hairy things with people inside a ragged flock of feathered friends like a new animals hopping from instant immobility to instant immobility leaping from the lawn closeclipped to the eaves of the bungalow where the sunset for ever in its ironed mottling how different oh my dear British decline from this a comic white-uniformed A busy Moscow newspaper man so its necessary to test you if you pass of course all pardons all round but when a traffic regulation is violated it is after all violated I mean that is basic philosophy old man eh nicht war.

So comes forth Hirst Wechsel with forms laden for Charteris to fill while Laundrei quits the room. Sitting at a table in unkindly light he stares through the lines and dots and little boxes anweisungen defences against the light take multi-forms of all the forms of dreaming activity is perhaps the deepest passivity is true guise activity lies and this is the landt where the truly eat the lotus suffering is permanent obscure and dark and shares the nature of infinity they even invent the concept of antisuffering a clever form to conceal real angst and infectious disease if any suppose I pretended to fall in with his idea might the multi-word not be spread his clouted clowns all accidentally aid me oh zbogom the old serpent but my rotten thoughts far from the driving have no wing-ding next of kin my fruitful angeline something still gets through perhaps for your stake.

There he wrestled locked mute in the hard Rhenish light till Wechsel brought him a warm sausage.

‘How you love my boss?’

‘For me he is just a uniform.’

‘Isn’t it engorgeous uniform?’

‘That’s incompatible.’

‘I don’t think so, I think it suits him a treat. White just sets off his complexion?’

‘Off-white.’

‘He doesn’t exercise enough.’ He bent lower so that his labroses were almost in contact with the folded labyrinths of statement. ‘He’s more of a thinker you see. He’s a great thinker he has his own laboratory here I’ll show you while he’s out come on.’

‘This sausage is enough adventure my adversary.’

‘Glad you like it but look you see his place here.’ It rocked over to another door flinging wide and beyond again the stark geometry and pohlar parade of apparatus old Boreas with his realitoys. He shook his head and commenced resuming the patterplexity of the intraformity Wechsel hovered.

‘He wouldn’t mind you seeing it not if I let you I don’t quite know how he strikes you but he’s really a very kind man indeed a thinker and keeps himself very clean insists that I keep myself clean too finds you lot very unhygienic you’re not a real prophet are you you don’t somehow look the part I reckon my boss will come up with the solution to the world’s troubles I do I sincerely do he works all night sometimes goes without sleep I never saw such a saintly man.’

State blood group and whether you have ever been donor or donator of blood or practised acupuncture.

‘He’s trying to synthesise Hydrogen 12 that’s what he’s doing in there synthesis says the Rhine river is the main artery of the body corporate analogous to an actual organism which with a chain contraction would convey Hydogen 12 from source to mouth and thus infect the total statement and spread from Germany out into the oceans until the druplets fructify the mondial globule in profit from his inversion and never no more by any deviation from the correctum orderly way of life you ought to concourse him about it oh it’s a real privilege to work for such a splendid man and for such a splendid man and for such a splendid uniformed official man he’s marching marching marching of which the human race is capable is caperble is cape-er-bull!’ All this vocal accompaniment to a sort of sweeping jig about the black-forested room with a lightly pointed jacktoe fluttering and the odd coy pirouette to saint’s unheeding back.

Down behind the parallel bars they took some semiphysical jerks at guitars and howled an improvised stave in memory of colour and the wild-headed moment. To the bargemen this music clumped by me over the liquid hydrogen 12 with a fine echoing prison flow as if the great stone creature finally foundered its voice in its tailpiece.

Above all that Meinherr Laundrei revealed himself from under the white parcel and took on oblation in a blackforestscented bath gristoning with Wechsel to perform the mastaging dry him compulsively and clad him in a flowing white towelling bathrobe with white matching leatherboots erminelined. So came he glowing forth murkless unto his feathery captive now socketted by the deep-eyed window watching natural France gobble off the golden phallus of the sun.

‘Before I go to labour all night in my what I jokingly call my private den of stinks — cracklehund Hirst makes with the musculature — you and I Herr Charteris will have a discussion on philosophy and the sexual dynamic for in this little beleagured miniskirt of empire where we repell the frontiers with jockstrips against such penny barbarous tribes as the cascaders penisenvy sagacity as whores hardon to come by.’

Coughing clearing throttle wattle and daubed crimson uncontrollable freudian slipway fazing him.

Groping in drawer of desk sitting down heavily letting robe flap bringing out in fist mighty cigars, ‘Pardon, we must be good buddies and talk with proper form and usury, nict war. Have a nice big Lungentorpedo.’

‘Don’t use tobacco.’

‘Well, you should. Smoke always smoke keeps me calm in this duration of stress yes yes very good for the nerve scenters and concentrates the mind on the objection — here take one!’

‘I don’t use the stuff!’

We will see who uses it and who doesn’t. Hirst get the Schnapps!’

‘Immediately master.’

‘Hurry you fool!’ He stood glowering in towelling the boy came and trembling poured two measures from the bottle then adroitly downed the measure through an open throat calling simultaneously for more and shouting for one for Charteris.

‘It’s just prison poison.’ Tipping it on the wood floor.

‘Insulting dog!’ He swinging a ham in clever textbook demonstration of anatomical leverage connecting with physiognomy of seated opponent with consequential impact subsequential entropyloss carrying victim off chair continuity of energy in previously steady state universe. ‘That will teach you when your betters try to show you courtesy men in dirty rags have to be polite and look after their manners in good order now get up!’

He rises against gravity and the giantkiller smokes himself back into better humour behind grey self-made curtain haze finally saying, ‘Now we will discuss privately my sex problems in absolute confidence. Hirst kindly make yourself scared. You see for a man like me in the very power of my prime and pink used to violent exercise and and shall we say such constant hobbies as swordplay and horseriding even since extreme infancy for my grandfather and father harsh men and great believers in mortification and also if I say so with all modesty both genitalmen were profound thinkers and unrecognised scientific genius who may yet save the world beginning with our own blessed soil — come I show you about my stinks den as I talk — and these rare gifts also going gland in glove with great administrative qualities and strong gift of leadership — Hirst!’

‘Sir!’ Anxious nose only round door executing own cute disarming bow and the musculate animate.

‘Have I not strong gifts for leadership?’

‘The strongest and for what it’s worth a really kind man indeed a thinker — ’

‘Go! You’re discharged!’ Marching into the laboratory waving his torpedo like a wand at the alchemaic impedimenta lowering voice to his own reverence, ‘All these rare qualities Charteris rare qualities and yet how shall I say. Though I am so bushy with all these schemes I am tornamented by the synthesis of the flesh the sins of the flesh and in this as in all things I am outrageous and priapic it is a torment to me for how can I be holy its the one aspect of leadership I perceive immediately that you have and I have not for its the sex centre perpetually overheating and my degenerative organ perpetually tumessing. Naturally once I have mangled to synthesise my Hydrogen 12 and release it in the Rhineflow then all such tortures can be extirpanted and we stump out sex altogether it rolls us with a rod of iron stump it out you hear — ’ he tripped over a snaking cable and grasped the workbench. ‘In a properly functioning world this random element will not be introduced but till then in my torment I ask you what sort of help you are a seer and prophet can give me that is an order I give for the positive assistance of mankind and in exchange my assistance on future.’

‘Would the truth awaken you or your serpent?’

‘I am a depraved man though a hero and savant and great leader. You see I confess without jurisprudence! Save me from that snake-in-my-grass I need your truth.’

‘It is import to know if you have the Kundalini — ’

‘Yes yes I admit I have practised that vile sin and fallen into many fellacious ways so how am I to lead if I am led by my unruly part.’

Gurdjieif also that sly old city shaman in his worn slippers smiled under his moustache at similar questions always coming back — eternal recurrence and the nostalgia of constantly repeated for people of lost possibilities who had drawn away into a deeper dust. His truth could be told to Laundrei in such a way as to defeat him and keep him in G & O powerlessness.

‘Sex is a normal and natural way to horness energy and create further possibilities in the organisms. Being alpervasive like hydrogen it forms one of the main springs of the multi-valued and self-creating fuzziness so we find philosophicantly that everything people do connected with sex — politincs reliction art theatre music is all sex. People go to the theatre or church or sport event not for its own sake but simply because there in the crowds of men and women is the centre of gravity of sex. That’s why people go to any meeting or occasion or rally. You are merged each more than you note in a general empathy. So you see sex is the principal motive force of all mechanicalness. Hypnosis depends upon it. So you must ledgerdemise more room for this extralactivity among your other rattributes so become more mechanical.’

‘So!’ Dragging in a fever on the torpedo sucking down the smoky poison of the GO-warning. ‘So! Mechanicalness yes the great modern force all working with the beneficiency of the machination. That is how it will be under hydrogeneration! We’ll strop this nonsense of astral bodies then and the whispering anoise of spirituality — only physical bodies aloud then. You are right. I will be glad and make myself machinelike.’

He strode up and down. ‘Hirst!’ Hirst. ‘Hirst be a good boy take this saint and lock him up in a singlecell then first thing tomorrow we will make one last little testicle and see how the godhead manages miracles?’

As they paced through the dim stonebone maze Wechsel said, ‘I don’t know what you did to him but I can tell he’s going to be a devil tonight I’m half scared to go back there his rod of iron!’ Leaving Charteris in a dark locked place returning to his manchine.