The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

‘This place has lost all its loot so we’ll take in my film and then we’ll give it a scan and we’ll blow. Open up another city. Why don’t you dance, Angelpants?’

‘Phil, Robbins, now Marta-oh, you really have lost all loot yourself, man! You wouldn’t care if you got cut dead yourself and to think I stood up for you!’

The cigar wasn’t working. His hand twitched it into a corner, he moved to the door’s gape.

‘You use the old fleshioned terms and feelings, Angle, all extinct with no potentiality. There’s a new thing you aren’t with but I begin to graveL Somewhere Marta got a wrong drug, somewhere she caught hipatitis or pushed herself over. So? It’s down-trip and she had a thing we’ll never know in her mind, a latent death. She was destined and that’s bad We did the best and can’t bind too much if she freaks out.’

Lying with the lovely lubrication gone and nothing swinging.

‘Well I bind, for God’s sake! I could have helped her when she mewed to me about a toad levering up her skull or whatever it was and instead I sogged back like the rest of them! It was the night of the filmrush and now tonight they let the complete epic roll – I see more death tonight – right here in the toadstool I see it!’ She rapped her brow as if for answer.

‘Flame,’ he said. ‘A light to see us off by I see but I don’t see you dance like that chubby girl her cheeks. Angey, you can’t motorcade – I want you to stay and shack in with the golden Boreas in Bruxelles who’ll care for you and is not wholly gone.’

She threw herself at him and clutched him, holding round his neck with one hand stroking his beard his hair his ears his pileum with the other. ‘No, no, I can’t stay a moment in this stone vortex. Besides, my place is with you. I give you loot, I need you! You know your seed is sealed in me! Have pity!’

‘Woman, you won’t stay silent at Ouspenski’s spread!’

‘I’ll switch on, I will, and be like you and all the others. I’ll dance!’

He side-stepped and the vague promises of a mind-closure near engine stutter.

‘You don’t take one pinch of loot to my sainthood!’

‘Darling, we don’t have to take that come-on straight!’

Half to one side he pushed her peering through his own murk and the broken-down air, muttering, ‘So let’s get powered!’

‘Colin – you need me! You need someone near you who isn’t – you know – hippie!’ Her eyes were soft again the wild goose-girl.

‘That was yesterday. Listen!’ He pointed among the buckling roadsters. Ruby Dymond’s voice – Ruby always so turned-on to a new vibration – lifted against a Tonic rhythm singing.

Fearsome in our feathers brutally flowered

We warn the predelics we’re powered

We warn the predelics we’re powered

We warn the predelics we’re powered

Fearsome in our feathers and brutally flowered

The Word gathered loot as gears kicked in.

And another voice came in shouting ‘There are strangers over the hill, wow wow, strangers over the hill.’ In the background noise of backfiring and general revving and the toothaching zither sound. More plump girls dancing.

‘I need only the many now,’ he said.

They required little to eat, clothes mattered not much to them, in the strengthening air was the gossamer and hard tack of webwork. What they were given they traded for the precious fluid and this stored in tanks or hidden in saucepans under car seats so that when they had to go they had plenty of go – those who ran out of golden gas got left behind sans loot sans end.

By evening, a rackety carqueue moved towards the blistered dome of Sacré Coeur and citycentre where every pinnacle concealed its iguana of night. First came the Master in the new red Banshee his Brussels disciples had brought him as tribute, saluting with Angelina huddled despairing in the back seat. Then his tribe in all gay tarnation.

From one shuttered day to the next his mindpower fluctuated and now wheelborn again he, finding the images came fast, tried to order them but what truth they looted seemed to lie in their random complexity. He radiated the net or web to all ends and to cut away strands was not to differentiate the holes. Clearly as the patterns turned in slow mindsbreeze he saw among them an upturned invalid car with wheels still spinning and by it lying a crippled negro on his back lashing out with metal crutches at a strangely dressed whiteman with machine qualities. Near at hand stood in separate frame a fat bare man with painted skull shouting encouragement by megavoice.

Simultaneously this fat bare man lay floating in a lake of flame.

Simultaneously this fat bare man lay in the throes of love with a bare bald female dolly of human scale.

Simultaneously this bare bald dolly was Angeline with her suffering shoulders.

Simultaneously the face was cracked. China griefs seeped from wounds.

Startled, he turned and looked back at her on the back seat. Catching his glance, she lifted her hand and took his reassuringly, mother to child.

She said, ‘This good moment is an interim in our long deline.’

He said, ‘Wear this moment then with it all baraka as if you had it comfortable on your feet for ever in the timeflow,’ and at the prompt unprompted words his whole ornate idea of reincarnation in endless cycles flooded his hindusty horizons with eternal recurrence.

Outside their moving windows faces dystered with hunger and hope.

She said, ‘They acclaim you in the streets as if you did not come with downfall for them,’ gazing at the action.

Cass said to him looking angrily at her, ‘They salute you and would keep you here for all the evers, bapu, as the wheel turns.’

Thin-cheeked children of Brussels ran like wolves uniting in a pack packing and howling about the car – not all acclaiming, many jeering and attempting to stop the progress. Scuffles broke out Fights kindled near the slowcade and spread like a bush fire among the stone forests. Half a mile from the Grand Place, the cars piled to a stop and crowds swarmed over them. Some of the drivniks in the cars wept but there was no help for them, the police force having dissolved to rustle cattle on the ignoble German border.

At last the Tonic Traffic managed to climb free and with other helping hands set the infrasound machine with its husky rasped throat extended towards the bobbing heads. Its low vibrations sent a grey shudder across the crowd and a vision of the sick daybreak across untilled land where an old canal dragged straight over the landscape for a hundred versts. With many hands raised to steady the terrible machine, it progressed and the crowds fell back and the other autos moved forward so they grated gradually to Grand Place, with the group bellowing song and all present taking it up as far as able, detonated underground with a whole sparse country rumpling upwards and rolling at predatorial speed towards the fluttering heart with every kind of looted image.

In the Grand Place, a huge screen structured of plastic cubes had been set up on the front of some of the old Guild houses. From the Hotel de Ville oposite, a platform was built perilously out. High resplendent equinoctial on this platform sat the golden Boreas with shadowy men behind him and amid cheering the Master also ascended to sit here among the hatcheteers.

Thus met the two great men and the Bapu knew this was the fat bare ego of megavoice who could radiate powerful drama-dreams and later a song was sung telling that they exchanged views on exitsence with particular reference to what was to be considered inside and what outside or where deautomation lay: but the truth was that the huobub in the square below was so great that both were forced to play Gurdjieff at their own feast and even the offering of Angeline as a dolly substitute which the Master intended had to be forgotten she shrinking nevertheless from him.

Chilled wind rose, petals sweetly scattering. The square had been given rough nautical ceiling by immense canvas sails stretched over it and secured to the stone pinnacles of the guilds encrusting the titled place like stalagmites. This ceiling kept off the seasonal rain that fell as well as supporting strings of multi-coloured lights that glowed in a square way. Now it all became more sparky as the bulbs swung and fluttered where the whole sky was one big switchedonstellation with Cassiopeia dancing and ton-weights of conserved water off-loaded with grotesque effect to the Tonic Traffic dirges. Then the circuits tailed and all milling place swung unlit except by torches and one randy probing searchlight until unknown warriors funeral-pyred a bright-burning black motor-hearse.

The night was maniac over self-sold Europe,

Fighting broke out again and counter-singing, a car was overturned converted into variable geometry and set alight to predatory slogans. It was a big loot-in with action all round.

A colour slide show beginning, the crowd settled slightly to watch and smells of reefers densed the choleric air. Glaring colours such as delft blue ornamental red dead grey tabby amber persian turquoise eyeball blue cunt pink avocado green bile yellow prepuce puce donkey topaz urine primrose body lichen man cream arctic white puss copper jasmine thatch Chinese black pekinese lavender jazz tangerine moss green gangrene green spitoon green slut green horsy olive bum blue erotic silver peyote pale and a faint civilised wedgwood mushroom that got the bird were squirted direct onto the projector lens and radiated across the place where the pinnacle cliffs of buildings ran spurted and squidged amazing hues until they came like great organic things pumping out spermatorrhoeic rainbows in some last vast chthonic spectral orgamashem of brute creogulation while the small-dogging sky howled downfalls and shattered coloured lightbulbs.

The junketing eferetted into every nanosecond, not all in many sparky spirits for those who wished to leave the square for illness or emergency unable to exculpate a limb in the milling mass. Some weaker and fainter Bruxellois fell beneath beating feet to be beaujolaised under the press. Cholera had to loot its victims standing as their bursting sweats ransacked to fertilise itself all round the strinkled garmen but bulging eyes not making much extinction in exprulsion between agony and ecstasy of a stockstill stampede sparked the harm beneath the harmony and many perished gaily unaware they burst at the gland and vein and head and vent and died swinging in the choke of its choleric fellation.

Only when morning slutted at its lucid shutters the last crazed chords and colours writhed away did the paint-spattered herd gather what their rituals had wrought. From the cattle-pensioners rattled a great and terrible exclamor! Several who had in delurium clambered to the prismatic pinnacles to lick the suppurating hues now cast themselves for a final fling down to the fast-varying-geometry of the groundwave. The rest with remouraing strength dancers horsevoiced singers drugees gaunt thieves true believers boozers and paletooled lovers crept away into clogged side alleys to coven their despair.

Only then as Boreas crawled off the platform to lie again in peace under the caressing feathers of his heated pond did the Master speak to him.

‘You are an artist – come with us along the multi-value mazes of our mission. Your film caught all the spirit of our cause my life my thought the unspeaking nature of spontagnous living in mystic state!’

Then Boreas turning his great bare head and naked tear-lined cheeks like udders grey with dawn: ‘You stupid godvetdomme acidheads and junkies all the same you live inside your crazy nuts and never see a thing beyond! So you mastered my masterpiece, was it? Pah! My fool man de Grand was supposed to bring the cans of film but in his stinking state forgot – and once caught here impossible to leave again the cattlepen. And so my masterpiece my High Point Y unseen and unshown this golden importunity!’

‘We saw it all! It sparked right over with total lootage!’

Sick with disgust salivating.

‘God knows what you thought you saw! God knows, I swear I’ll drown myself, shoot myself, harpoon myself to death, never film again! Not only is my masterpiece unshown but not one of your armada knows it or misses it. This is the nadirene anti-death of art!’

Bitter and acid, Angerme’s rank morning laughter bit them.

Charteris took in breezy semi-grasp Boreas’s coat and pointed at the emptying square of stood squampede grey in washed-out light but ambered by flames that now consumed the pinnacles recently putrescent in other taints.

‘You have no faith in transmutation or my well of the miraculous! Your oldtime art has caught a light at last! Everything you Boreas tried for broke fire materially and burns into our sounding chambers! You are my second blazer henchforth, Boreas, a black wind blowing off the old alternatives and hurricaning those who cling to what was, electric, electric, see the sign! What you making here in newchanced happens! Stellar art!’ He laughed and cried tired dregs leaping leaping.

Through his blandering tears stared electric Boreas, clutching at his bare brow, screaming, ‘You gurglingodfool – your rainbowheaded randyears have set fire to the place! It’s the last loot! My poor beloved city burning! Bruxelles, Bruxelles!’

The poison that powered their inner scrutinies seeped into beetling baldbright Boreas so he saw himself tumultaneously making the cripple still upon the cabbalistic asphalt making couch among a lake of flames making love to a dummivulva making Age old Ina suffer him. His face cracked its banks china thoughts depiggied. Boreas saw more of boreased self than he could dare or wish to see. He rocked with unreason on the staggered balcony of outsight.

Manifolding with discardment he cheek in hand into the dull inner chambers of shade past old banners toothed with black lions collided with the birdlike nervous drapery-deportment figure of a human cassowary to hiss shoulder lept unmoving and instantly with locking blubber arm seized him groaning and yowling for accompaniment.

‘I am ill – magisterially ill!’ Hollowly to his lackneed squir.

Thus the blind bleeding the blind and dankring leech to leech upon romaining leechions highways where this wesciv sinbiote first took its blindwheeling veinhold with the cohorts tormenta in hurling knowhow to the punchy vein and murk the scenariover evermorgue till savvy was a scavengers filiure of which this sciatic scattering long kuwaited just the last blood-strained curtain. After the legendary coherets among the dark-falling walls of oh my westering world the venomilk of progross gains its bright eclipse and suppurages from the drawbridge-heads of cleverknowing Charteris gold-pated Nicholas Boreas and black jack Cass.

Nothing for Cass but this supporting role uneasy-eyed or never rubicond to shuffer with the ruined borean bulk out down a lamenting grand stair and by tenuous tenebrous betelgrained deathsquared slipways to Boreas’ luxconapt

There with continuing running whines for succour, Boreas almost hauled him to his pool edge. But at the sight of those bulbous hyacinths the castaway squealed like a lifted root seeking too in the convex gilt eyes twin unaimed deadmen of himself!

‘Yes, die-by-drowning, Cass, you undreaming schemer of your hire-oglyphed runways! Wasn’t it you who brought this pyromanichee circus into city just for hope of trade, Cass, for hope of trade? You neo-Nero para-promethean primp, they’ve sacked our silver-breasted capital, haven’t they? Haven’t they? Under the gargling lilies with your scant scruballs!’

He wrenched and tugged in buttacking flapping angony but Cass was nimble and falling took the epicurer man off balance with one tricky twisting cast of leg. Together they struck and smacked among showering orfe and weed and tame piranhas glimpsing for a nanoment undersea eyes of each with sibyling hatred widely divinited beneath the parting roots. Then Cass was sourfacing and outkelping himself, evading Boreas’s doctopurulent grasp to snatch from his stocking nestling a slender beak of knife.

So they confronted, Boreas half-submanged with foliaged morses dotting his sunken suit. Then he recalled his anger with flecked lungs, leaped up brandishing his arm and in megavoice again on set bellowed in long bursting vein the terrors of his repudation!

Wilting Cass turned his tail before the wind and like a deflayded animal ran away somewhere into the smoking city-hive to hide.

That cityhive and what its singeing symbolled did cosmic Charteris survey from the shaking platform.

Angeline shook the Master’s arm. ‘Come on, Masterpiece, let’s shake this unaimed scenario before the whole action goes Vesuvius! Come on! Uncoil the Kundalini!’

He stood enwrapped staring as the centuries fevered to the edges and breathed and blew themselves to heat again and their stones ran in showers kill slate cracked down the long glacier of mansard roofs and hurtled into the extinct square below to be devoured with its old common order in the long morain of alienation.

He pushed her away.

‘Colin! Colin! I’m not flame-proof if you are! It’s the last loot-in else!’

Rich curtains at the windows of an old embroidery now released a noise like cheering and whistling swept the blaze and the crushed bodies in the square below burst into conflagration with amazing joy. One or two cars were still careening madly about to lie with black bellies uppermost lewdly burning tyres still rotating as their votaries dragged themselves away. The emptying bowls held ashes and a lascivious flute held court.

Angelina was having a mild hysteric fit, crying this was London burning and slapping Charteris wildly on the face. He in his eyes scribbled on the retinal wall saw the graffiti of her blazing hate and all behind her flames like Christmas cacti flowering with a lorry coming fast recalled her husband the white land as it rushes up but no impact and his blows and knew among the microseconds lay a terminal alternative to silence her and have no more inspector at his feast for she as much as any of the predelic enemies among the Neanders dream her speckled wake.

She in her turn was not too wild to see a redder shade of crimson leap up his retaining wall and with a lesser scream now our valleys fall echoing before them now in our shattered towns the smoke clings still as the ulcerated countryside rumpled outwards at predatomi speed to her fluttering chimera she did the sleight-of-hand and dodged him as he once more sprang and pushed clutching at his ancient blue coat of Inner Relief but now no Christmas innocence. Slipping he fell and at the rickety platform edge hung down to see bloodied cobbles under surflare. With instinct she on top of him flung her bony trunk loading him back and cosseted him and goosed and mewed and sat him up and like a mother made all kindliness but milk there though the sun novaed.

Half-stunned he sighed, ‘You are my all-ternatives,’ and she half-wept upon him at such grudged sign.

Their hair singed and Buddy Docre came in an illusory moment with Ruby who fancied her and Bill and Greta yelling murder. They together all but not in unison climbed tumbled down the foul inner chimney stair and ran among the Sailing lava of another Eurape to the battered cavalcade jarring to take off in another street with the nervewrecked bangwaggon.

‘Boreas!’ cast the whiteface Master. ‘We must save Boreas!’

And she glowed him amazed still in his headwound he had some human part that plugged for the schillerskulled director. But she was learning now and now stayed silent at his murderous feast with inward tremor knowing she would not break a single crust if Boreas loafed or died as maybe the Master minded: a gulf of more than language lay between them.

Vanquished she tottered against Ruby his face moonstrous in the setglow and he grasped to the smouldering pompous columns gasping ‘Change gear Ange your way doesn’t have to be his or my car in the Chartercade you know that you know how I skid for you even since before Phil’s day two rotten no good bums –’

But he gave up as through her frantic goosetears she began on tearawy note that she was not good enough for him was no good to any man deserved to die or could render to no man the true grips of loves clutchment till the others turned back calling and Charteris took her failing wrist abraptly.

For him the self was once again in its throne called back from the purged night’s exile and he commanded no more as he faced the lack of his own divinity in all its anarchic alternative. His pyre grew behind him as they barged off across the ruby pavements for as Buddy passed a reefer he flipped the photograph that he had godded himself because they had to crown some earthly king then had forgotten that he was their moulding not his make so tunnelling upwards through the sparce countryside the mole-truth set up its tiny hill that all was counterfate in a counterfeit kingdoom.

He had cried for Boreas because that artifacer could help blow blazes from his parky wavering nature with the bellows of his counterfaking craft

Before real miracles he had to dislocate the miraculous in himself. New dogs shagged along alleyways with ties of flame. A man ran blazing down a side street. Dischorded impages of choleranis sang along the bars of his perplextives. All were infected from him and in that pandemetic lay his power to make or sicken till nature itself couched underground.

A smoke pall canopiled overhead the new angrimals swimming powerfully in it or hopping along the crestfallen buildings. Shops stood plagened open entrailed on the echoing gravements as men noised abroad and struck at each other with fansticks more than one fire was buckling up its lootage as they acidheaded out towards the oceanic piracy of their motorways.

Famine Starting At The Head

She clad herself in nylon

Walked the flagstones by my side

The feathered eagle

To the skies

No more uprises

Instead a palm of dust grows

You know that earthly tree now bears no bread

A hand outstretched is trembling

The flagstaff has an ensign

Only madmen see

With famine starting at the head

Some judy delivers a punchline

In the breadbasket today

No fond embraces

Are afoot

Death puts a boot

Where the bounce was once

In among the listening lilies a silent tread

Bite the fruit to taste the stone

Throughout the Gobi seed awaits

The rain to stalk

Famine starting at the head

He only has to say one word

Roses grow from an empty bowl

In our shuttered streets

The cars roam

Don’t need a home

Or volume control

Wandering sizeless with the unaimed dead

We hear his voice cry ‘Paradise!’

On the Golden Coast the cymbals

Start to sound

Salvation starting at the head

Tortures

There’s no answer from the old exchange

I want to push inside you

The sensations you find in yourself

May just be within my range

Grimly sitting round a table

Fifteen men with life at stake

They may torture themselves but those tortures

Will not make them awake

The cards were somehow different

The board I had not seen before

Their iron maiden gleamed dimly cherry-red with sex

Down in the basement I reached Low Point X

Last year they stopped their playing

Phone just ceased to buzz

But if you find them there tomorrow

Better start in there praying

Reincarnation where the cobwebs

Are comes daily from your keep

We may torture ourselves but those tortures

Cannot break our sleep

Poor A!

(Gurdjieff’s Mocking Song)

Poor A! Poor A! Now there’s a clever man!

He only wants to talk and he is happy!

I could have pulled his trousers off