Barefoot in the Head (30 page)

‘Breathing the old west dust and breathing out the old west dust. No. That old ethic-ethnic LSD has automated us two thousand years and now the fracture there’s been a mizlocation so let’s jump it from the steamcross and say for ever farewell to that crazy nailedup propheteer. Look girl I don’t refuse to go your way or refuse to go Laundrei’s way or refuse to go Cass’ way or refuse to go any way. I refuse to hit the worn-out Creased or anti-creased way. For me new tracks and stuff the old ding-dong the belfrey-belt.’

Cass laughing poorly, ‘No no if there’s an opportunity you get in first that’s nature!’

She was shaking her head running her toe in the dust as if tracing out a hieroglimpse of some secret there.

‘You’re mad Colin Honey it not just Christ and all that it’s a bit different for you cos you’re a Serb there are mountains in between but the West thing we’re still on a Greek trajectory of ordering knowledge Phil told me that.’

‘The Greek thing was okay but it would have got nowhere without the sufferinfusion of our nazerining friend embodying the rags to riches poorman’s son outalk outsmart white-house-in-the-sky trouble-stirring miracle-working superman and then pow-wow-kersplat-but-oh-boy-on-the-third-day punchline echoed ever since by every comicstirup.’

‘Master Master you can’t change all that.’ Trembling out a little reefer and suckling on a long light in viperbeak. ‘Only through leading. You can’t change history. We’re what we are.’

‘We’re also what we’re not. See Cass I can’t change the churn of history but it changed itself when the sprinklerbombs came now we live in a wornout mode and the old Glenn Miller musicrap still canting us out of a new canticle in the old worn wesciv groove.’

‘Maybe you’re right. Lead us only away Master we’ll follow in blind belief!’

‘Leading is out makes blindness and the old swingdom of heaven is just slopporific. Opium of the pupil.’

She saw him new on a fought decision. She saw him. She saw he saw himself. He saw himself new. Still lying but deeper lies? Mirror distortions embedded? Every moment its equivocation like a tile pattern she saw him new. In the omniparacusis she heard him defrock Christ. A womb-shelled thing broke and bled. She stood outside herself her scars her incompletion. Her first vision of the current time explosure.

From Cass’ ears smoke poured and the tiny chambers even the metatarsals in a big big scald like the church of England burning up its bullion of belief and he craftily slipping out of the transvestory vanishing into the haze as if exorcised.

She had been conjured. Limply by one arm taking him she moved up to a nearby passing mountain and there cried solemn anger that he ploughed up every midnight corpse that ever fell to make them die again for his psychosis. Charteris laughed knowing she had never seen inside a church. She swore. The oaths in banners marched the mountainside. She owned her aggression at last. She had born him long enough his womanising his slobishness his selfhood and the godding. Now he must cut his act to play a human off-stage role.

He pushed her. ‘Your act comes from the same cass pageant the cult of individuals but it’s a mass life and death get it? Phases not people! Drop out that’s all, Angelbird. Dig that everything else has already dropped. Play to a new music right and dance to another measure down your long within. Cass off and shack with Ruby or take me on my own road but I cant stand halfway up this mutterhorn.’

Scratching her head covering up sad for all losses she alone locatered for. ‘Its Cass Colin Cass I’m afraid of you’re so helpless he just a paracide to any order he might do for you you know he emanates the old iscarrot role. If the present’s already past like you say Cass’ll have you nailed.’

People were coming he heard and was glad to distract her.

He gestured to the band as they materilaised into the plass. ‘I’ve the job for Cass.’

Jailgates gaped wide and the tumblebellies on the bangledrums were all in advance with brashing autos percussed cymballically all heads on the anonymass.

So now he warmed on the ticking of another prayer wheel turning in his stream and all the faces blowing to him were with their petals and the bloom of youthair checking them. So now was he not crusoed a footfall further in this islanded desertion and some would carry onto his farshore. So now though his carriage had never taken him beyond the stony trees he sent his mark scudding across the printless beaches. So now he grew her elbowing arm as the force pressed at the instress of his radiance.

Hurryburlying Laundrei came on the surge with the autociples but Charteris stopped them. Climbed onto a bench under a sign that told the miles to Frankfurt old cosy sign made metal from the long attic store in thought. Waved his arms caught cheers. People scuddling like leaves under his farsight the whole seas surge of them.

Told them: I was in another vision. I broke free and discarded myself my former selves my sleep chained I.

Here through me the world tumbled to a new terminator.

Here we begin a new age the postpsychotomimetic age free from anshirt shittoleths and the grey grimmages stripped off.

Here the old programming of Godspain got its long last playback in the searoots of our occulture.

Here the nails scattered from my hands and fingers.

In the square they milled and sledded letting their origins down with mood music thrombic. The body hair buttressed and limbs rebuddied. Metamorphin slipper waker-slip. What they heard they herded and sluice-juices ran underfoot. As he luted their animinds. Ages went down into oceanic undertow. Civilians poured in and the old grey and biscuit buildings titaniced down into a glacial cobblesea. Inunvation of hands, plattening feet of limbic brand. Churning flowermotion with eddying scruffles sob-streperous among the onebacked beats.

To one side apart Ruby with an own thing to peddle. Also Elsbeth sailing all in selfmassage grown apart her two stout legs foliaging flesh belonging to the fused moment under the strain of canvas her salience gybes to generationing point her wild delicacy a sapiutan as she fixes on him rattling from his orificial platform.

Now from his purgent words the mucous remembranes of the sinking swimmers distend to farcy forms and the saprophagous outpour transfluxes the time’s ergot so that while it floats into her labyrinthine passages she feels the smooth buddoming trunks and timber shafts wheel and wheedle into grander growth in her skeleton the sapling stalked stuff supplanting bone nodes of branch staring under skin at hip and pelvis shin breast and elbow her obnubil features suddenly the whole unatomy its soft syruped holes its husks hairs and horned teeth beats

into greenamelled leaf!

Laundrei always more antiflowered broke his spate asked ‘What’s the vision on when we move to conquer?’

‘The broken off gods chumble over into obscrudity — ‘

‘Okay, very satisfactory to know ‘but there’s still the Berlin question.’

His old sly smile. ‘Now its your blastoff down the astrabahn to the straits of power while the wind blows favourable on your high traject. All go who will and nobody constrained in any form. I stay here. Our photographs peel separate here.’

‘No’ — ship without figurehind and he launched into the long machineries of a vocal gripe while others also had their temperature and again mazed denizens pander to the labyrinths until finally Cbarteris barks again.

‘It was my vision Laundrei you astracade it while it just sustains me while you image yourself into your machine-dream-role.’

‘
Scheisskopf!
You haven’t the face to back your prognosis!’ Hirst fluttering and swatching behind with birdlife gestures of ascent.

‘You take with you my second-in-commandant the Cass here as my man in your camp.’

‘Wechsel is my aide-de-camp.’ Peaching his plumage.

‘Cass makes liaison. Cass your new commander keeps him in a mind of miracles the claws pruned and darkness at the ninth hour.’

Dark brown pantry eyes glistering up the mottled cliff of medalled white seeking lodgement. ‘Meinherr glad to be of service and tote the — ’

‘Action man and the junkered footfill all autobreasted with all joints in my pistongrip right? Right. It’s a decision then. Herr Charteris we go to escalade in the name of glory and unity. We shall meet again. Men! Men! Follow men! Action! Scramble! Form paltroons! Clap to ventricles! Astrabahin and Utopia!’ Cass and Wechsel astraddlediddle as the revvrevvrevving struts and pattern merges from the millrace.

‘Hydrogen 12 be with you’ pronounced.

Saluters.

Now espousing their autos the deutschlanded gentry marry boot to rod hand to bar knee to rod bum to seat helter to skelter in a barrackroar of infective warcalls. The autocaders also spark their plugged enzymes and batter backwards into the crass planes curling bumpers and blue monoxide wolves through the pack like feral till everyone legs or wheels like tight little humans under hair astride. But Army Burton comes to Charteris ‘Hey you want your little master race girl any longer?’

‘The name?’

‘Your little master race girl Elsbeth?’

‘She Jewish

They used to call that the master race.

No that was the Germans.

I forgot. Another world. You want her.

You want her you take her you going on with Laundrei?

Also Ruby Dymond in human shape to Angeline grasping her hand in oldworld form moving her behind a treebole.

‘Is this straight Charteris is hiving off on his own do I read the thing right?’

‘Ruby he’s straightening out past the world. Who knows this chemifect may all wear off in a few days and old time start up again so stick with him and see he doesn’t get himself killed in the general curfuffle.’

His furtive shrugs of pain the hurt deep under a moist pelt. ‘But he tried to kill you honey — look leave him he’s got nothing for you the disintegration man himself and you with me so cosy.’

‘Sometimes he’s kind to me maybe all I deserve.’ Now from the long brackets of her inherited eyes spark the first tear.

‘You all screwed up, Angey, honest I hate to see you be done down and come off with us!’

His secret words fended her. Drawing up, wiping off her wet nose on a handback, she says in bitter tone, ‘Don’t mix me up Ruby if he needs me I can’t help it!’

‘So you said about Phil and now this same mistake all over! Honey I beg I got to go the others are rolling now come on and this last time break your unlucky cycle!’

Stilly with a crumpled face, ‘Ruby — Ruby — he needs me!’

‘I need you, he tried to kill you!’

‘Well he’s desperate!’

Of a sullen the wild ox sprouted under his eyebushes, ‘Oh fuck you you silly stubble bitch!’ and with that he was bending his giant back among the common melée with all commotion. All were multi-backed to fusilage along dead reckoning; Army only faced the demasted master.

Looking around at the hoofers and the revvobiles with the groups starting up the Fantineers and Deutchofiles and a quick brainscan. We got to orient with the action dont let grass go under our teeth eh its a lawn of asia.

Briefly they made palmhistry. High road. Low road. Scotland afore ye. Never meet again. There we all parted. Franfurt sign. Poxeaten pozibilities. Army farewell.

So the acceleration of mechanical joybox and the old footdown thirst of essolution. Jerk of cerebral juices destiny carvorting down the long within and the crazy internal kilométrage a brown near black instressed masteracing. On the bumpers nestled the new animal plural in solidity and near life as the pinballing progress meshed from the plass. Lopped tree lopped tree lopped tree loppedtree lopptree stood ruinously neat the clibbered rectungstone cobbles the red rodentures of the town hall biting sky the buildings semisubmerged on their shoals and all else on a low primevil light as wheels bore tribe dust smoke noise away dying sullen. In the lime embedded lost lingerers sank to the fossil mouth under drab oolite.

The natives of the tableau mooched across the tattlefleld or on fours dragged off the injured. Small dogs were there tearing at fingers and jugulars as life slumped back to textbook level. Two figures stood anonymously round the Frankfurt sign. Buildings burned with the cool air-burling flames of time.

Beneath this conbastion in shelfence sank the brontostructures the rathaus and gaunt grandosaurs down under the cobblesea without windowed strata still chronsuming themselves and on the tide big stone forests bursting green and all verdure trumpling brack out the Rhine to what was in uttered mindchaos downwards.

The saint with Angelina executing the bipedal homosap walk on the way to the banshee all yellowspeckle as of toads bellyupwoods squeeping to right themselves and chunks falling off the western wold where the alternatives feralled. The car lumbering and she mutely asking where drained from her own sacrifice.

‘Where?’

‘He’ll swing to destruct with self-inflected Cass and all.’

‘I asked you where you think we going.’

‘And all the music-muckers with them to the endless ends they clave all dreaming they aren’t dreaming in Kundalinicoils,’ under the sediment of long custom embedded. Looking ahead at the rockwalls, tyres tweeting on curbstones.

‘You don’t care a bit what happens to them Col do you!’