Nemonymous Night (part eight)

I have forgotten how I described myself earlier: and I now try to find the essential Mikeness of me.

“I ought to try looking under the earth,” I said to myself.

Whatever the case, I would try more than anything now to shake off those encroachments of doctored repetition that were Ogdon’s original wordings in his novel and, thus, give more rope to my own words and concepts. Otherwise, there would be some danger of his novel becoming the victorious prevailing reality: a fact which would be a vast disappointment to us all, as my own novel was the only novel that contained a happy ending.

Hawling, after all, is dragging positive from negative and crystallising it. A novel is shorthand for a novelty trying to find its permanent fixture or berth as a well-established truth. And my scatter-brained extrapolations from all manner of different truths and fictions were – and still are – trying desperately to fit their novel jigsaws of shard into the ultimate picture of probability and, from probability, learning to summon the sinews of certainty … carving the perfect dimensions (inner and outer) of the sphere where we can live forever happy and content, having defeated those who wanted to smash it to smithereens even before it was formed.

There, the definition of hawling … at last!

Yet, meanwhile, I had to face one problem. It was Ogdon who first created Mike as a character and, therefore, by syllogism, myself! It was like trying to unclog the throat of my existence from the choking flying-threads in the air I involuntarily breathed to maintain that existence in the first place.

****
The children plodded the dawn. Then they saw other pairs of children plodding in from different streets – of similar ages, if quite various looks or breeds. Some were going in exactly the same direction, others more off-centre. Two were particularly smart, dressed in a material that could be described as brushed velvet in varied pastels. Some in little better than makeshift carpets fashioned into coats. Most tried to discover each other’s names.

In the distance, one of the other children heard the thrum of traffic – as if the city had started to re-ignite – and the odd flash of tall red metal as it wheeled between the distant openings of terraced streets was glimpsed by the children as they looked down the streets from their own end.

Things were evidently coming back to life after the strobe systems of reality had jolted out of kilter for a short few moments.

“But nobody will ever find it again. It’s only a way to make us hope,” said a shrill voice from the now increased crowd of children as they crouched over a likely-looking manhole cover. Yet, some of these, in dribs and drabs, even single pairs, had often investigated such ground-level apertures assuming they were at the very least the top edges of oubliettes.

The children shrugged off anything that should be beyond children. Their games were ones that only children could play – seeking the Second World War bomb-hole where some of them used to play when they were even smaller children on some (god)forsaken Recreation Ground beyond the back of the back of council estate terraced houses. The city had bomb-holes galore – having suffered many raids in the war during the blitz … but none deeper than the legendary bomb-hole which was the children’s ultimate goal. No parents would understand it. The children themselves barely understood it – and why they had to find it … and to lose themselves in the process of finding it or merely seeking it without finding it, whichever turned out to be the case.

****
The city of Klaxon had gathered to bid farewell to the Drill on its renewal of burrowing towards the earth’s Core. Greg shaded his eyes from the Corelight, like a salute, as he gazed towards a deceptive hill, a hill that had grown from two vast encroaching earthworks shifting together towards the variable cavity-space that housed Klaxon – shifting together during the Drill’s stopover. A huge Canterbury Oak seemed to be standing proud upon this hill above the city turrets and ‘Parisian’ quarters, bellowing out its wild, tortured wailing within the echoing hollow that was Klaxon. The multi-tannoy system that was used to imitate its wailing had been switched off, whilst the real thing reclaimed its ability to fill the city with its siren.

There would be no fireworks to mark the Drill’s departure because no fires and resultant smoke were allowed in Klaxon. For obvious reasons.

Beth and the two dowagers boarded in advance of the businessmen class’s own ceremonial boarding – especially as the women had further to go. Right up to the top for the rear cabin, where the Captain – it has to be said – had arranged for some redecorating by Klaxon workers – so as to make the journey more comfortable and easier on the eye. Adjustments had also been made to the huge insectoid vanes on the Drill’s outside so as to help improve the views from the rear cabin’s windows once en route via renewed intra-uterine burrowing.

Beth recalled the vision of two huge eyes in the Klaxon 'sky' and she shuddered, having now forgotten whether the ceremony of Sunne Stead had been a dream or real life. She had forgotten, too, self-evidently, that there were no such things as unrecognised dreams within Inner Earth. So it must have been real. Clare and Edith were too preoccupied with their next choice of books from the Drill’s library to care either way.

Greg took one last backward look at Klaxon, wondering if he would ever be able to relive his adventures there. They would make a small book all by themselves.

He also recalled the multi-manhandling of the mighty Drill from its pylon-turret’s pinion, with some difficulty, by the Klaxon workforce. But, eventually, the Drill was pitched upon the banks of the river near Klaxon’s own Notre Dame Cathedral, the bit-tip once more poised over burrowable terrain. He imagined that the bit-tip’s whirring and eventual screeching as it met the under-surface would out-noise even the city’s wailing sirens themselves. Meanwhile, the Canterbury Oak, with gigantic bole, but sparse branches aloft, was still etched against the wan Corelight. Now silent. Hence the renewed man-made sirens opening up their avant-garde threnody à la Ligeti or Penderecki.

The other businessmen whom Greg had hardly examined during the first part of the journey were still nebulous figures or an undercurrent of company rather than specific hard-drawn faces of mutual communication – but they were no doubt due to share the Corporate Lounge’s facilities with him again. Hogging cocktails and anchovy munches and canapes. This time he thought he recognised one of them. At first a waft of Ogdon’s smell. But, without the cape, Crazy Lope looked quite different. He didn’t seem to be out of place. So in place, therefore, so basically unnoticeable that, in the end, Greg didn’t notice him at all.

He just day-dreamed of their overground City following them on, digging with its airport arms.

****
There were many cities within Inner Earth. Klaxon is just one example. Whether the Drill itself or even the party travelling simultaneously through dark tunnels in an attempt to beat the Drill to the Core would visit it, one of those other cities whose repute has filtered to the overground is Parsimony.

There were four long hills leading up to the centre of the city, whereupon its Ancient Fathers had seen fit to erect an architectural folly, a giant tower that leant in all directions at once. Some of the inhabitants, when they actually deigned to look up at it from their daily strife for life, saw it more like an inverted pyramid. But, mainly, it was just there, a landmark that nobody any longer bothered to notice.

So, when new arrivals used to come in across the neighbouring cavity’s scrublands on a packhorse, he (and, on rare occasions, she) would be stunned by the apparently unstable megalith rising and widening from an already high point of Parsimony, up to which the huddled, makeshift beast-sheds, that served as shelter for citizens as well as their beasts, crawled, without any worthwhile gaps for movement between.

There had been no new arrivals for some years. The cavity winds, caught up in some cyclic intraglobal panic on the ice runs that another neigbouring cavity contained, had worsened for several seasons, making Parsimony further from the thoroughfares of holidaymakers or Coreseekers.

Then, out of the blue, during a particularly long pandemic of freak mildness, came one – side saddle – across the cavity’s wastes. Dressed as a woman should be, she was seen to lift her hand to her brow to shade the dust-choked Corelight from her eyes, as if surveying, with in-built sextants and balances, the height of the folly-tower. She must be an architectural student, working out a doctorate on the wonders of Inner Earth, the citizens thought, as they raised their eyes from dredging the accumulations of dust from their earthen floors.

They did have pride for the folly-tower that dominated, but did not encroach upon, their daily existence. However, as soon as a stranger was espied on the otherwise unnoticed cavity’s horizon, they became conscious, not only of their own shortcomings but also of the tower's representation as the last vestige of the Ancient Fathers, as bequeathed by that one particular item of folly.

The inn was crowded, which was unusual for that time of day. The landlord had spent most of the morning clambering over the roof, cleaning out the gutters and patching up the holes which seemed to break open every season of untimely mock-weather. He brushed off the dust as he bustled into the bar area, cursing the day he was born. When he saw the amount of people crowding round the pumps of Angevin, mouths open, he cursed even louder, for there was nothing more irritating than customers.

“Hey, what do you think you lot are doing?”

“We’ve come to partake of your lousy Angelus Vino, mine host,” jeered one lad with lights in his eyes.

The rest nodded diffidently in assent.

“Well, you can all pack off till nearer closing time. I’ve too much to do to deal with the likes of you, today. Up on the roof, just now, I saw one coming ... who looks a sight more respectable, and a lady at that! She won’t want to mix with any old company and she’s bound to step off here, this being the inn.”

“Come down off it, you think she’ll stick her nose in this dump?” continued the young lad.

Suddenly, all heads turned as the door opened, and in strode the stranger that many in the city had seen coming since earlier on, when the young, dust-free Core had etched her silhouette upon the most distant cavity’s horizon that they could manage to see with their retractable eyes.

Their vision was now out on stalks, as they explored every nook and cranny of her garb. They didn’t know it was rude to stare; she stared back.

The landlord was the first to move, striding over to her, holding out his hand - she did not take it.

“Welcome, madam, I hope your stay here will be fruitful and don’t mind these gawping gents, they’re just going....”

And he motioned them out the back way. Turning again to the stranger, he went on, “Can I offer you a mouthwash, a waft of roasting bird-carcass, a clean ladle of...”

“No, no, I’m only here to seek directions to the folly.”

Her voice hinted at breeding, slightly masculine in its overtones, but underlaid with a lilting dialect that betokened feminine upbringing.

The voice was, however, furthest from the landlord’s attention, when he realised that the stranger was blind. The eyes were shards of grey pottery; but her fingers were long, slender, more feeling and manipulative than any he had ever seen; they were playing a braille compass-box as if it were a musical instrument.

Her steed snickered outside. The landlord, at a loss for words, asked whether she would like to bring it in for a watering, before venturing up one of the long hills to the Ancient Fathers' monument, as he preferred to call it.

She shook her head.

“I’ve spent most of my life getting here, dear sir, through all manner of mock weather systems, and this...” She pointed to the revolving wheel-spikes of the compass-box. “...my trusty box of tricks, has got me here. But now, all I can find with my feet are splintered wood, disused fences, corrugated iron sheets, cries of child and beasts as one, and no way through them to that I most want to see. So pray, don’t dilly, just give me the once over for the top!”

She used the word ‘see’ as if it held all the mystery of the universe.

Darktime was later because the Core had steered clear of the worst of the duststorms. It was still a relatively uncorrupted scatter-orange eye as it set behind the distant northern hills in a different cavity.

The folly, to those in the southern reaches of the city, hid the last golden rays and stood out like a vast triangle which, for long, had bean emblem of their faith in religion. Many kneeled in penitence, not with faces upraised, for very few could look up at it with equanimity: it would remind them too much that the past has no longer duration than the future. It just shadowed their temples, granting an unremarkable peace, and as the Core finally left their world for the next in line, the darkness became everything, no longer just the trinity shape on the hill…

As darkness took the shanties fully in its embrace, one could only hear the odd howls of beast and babe, and even those intermittent reminders of life’s light-time took their noises into dream.

But one still sat awake. She had reached the foot of the vast inverted pyramid, where mathematics (or some arcane version of that science which only the Ancient Fathers had known) balanced the apex upon the central proud fulcrum of the township, allowing incredible balancing feats and inner strengths to take the line of least resistance ... which was the perfection represented by the unwieldy up-widening chaos of the superstone perched upon comparatively next to nothing.

She recalled the landlord’s amusing chatter as he himself led her to this place of quiet. The landlord himself was somewhere near, snoring louder than the beast that had carried her.

ENDING (A)

She smiled. With her box of tricks fast-churning within her hand, she reached out to touch the vibrant surface of the tapering base, in the hope that it would fulfil her as much as it would drain her. Perhaps she could lay off her blindness upon it, somehow, as many had told her of its curative properties.

She stumbled. At the very end of her tortuous quest, she fell over the outstretched leg of the landlord and careered into the monument. She could not see it, but she knew it as if instinctively: the massive block teetered, righted itself momentarily, and then hurtled from its plinth down the screaming slopes, in all directions at once putting out of misery all in its paths finally, coming to rest, in several halves, and brooded henge-like for the rest of eternity within the Parsimonious cavity.

The landlord had been in one of its paths, so his dreams were cut short. She shrugged and hugged herself to sleep.

ENDING (B)

She smiled. She would be neither blind nor a woman. She walked up the sloping side on the inverted pyramid, defying all the gravities known to man, her box of tricks whirling and clicking in her hand.

“Blimey!” said the landlord, on awakening to a renewed Corelight that was clearer than any he could remember. “What am I doing here? It’s cold, soon to get hot — no doubt. Must have dreamed myself up here”’

He wandered down the long hill, dodging in and out of those yawning from the ‘beast sheds’. He was in a hurry, for otherwise he would be late for opening time, with many customers wanting a drink of Angevin before breakfast.

Halfway down the hill, he looked back, without really knowing why. He had gazed a thousand times up to the monument, without properly ‘seeing’ it, but today it filled him with a glory.

The folly was his God, the only way to face out the Absurd; no need to keep staring at it, for it wouldn’t go away. It was rude to stare in any event.

He got back to his inn and he welcomed his customers with a very special ‘happy hour’.

This ending seemed far better to him. He smiled.

****
Having a choice is the only happiness.

Having a choice of ending is the optimum ending … eventually.

“A chosen unhappiness is better than an unchosen happiness,” are the convincing words I whisper into what I hope is the left ear of the headlease narrator’s head.

Susan stirs in her sleep and asks me in empty dark echoes: “What did you just say?”

(THE HAWLER continued here: part thirty-four)

======