Friday 30 December 2011

Reverse


acknowledging Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-5 and Martin Amis’ Time’s Arrow

They praised God and celebrated, as streamers leap from the ground via the sky, into neatly-rolled packages. ‘My son is alive, yet was dead; he is found but was lost!’

Villagers crowded around the trestle tables, filling the crumb-strewn plates and unwashed bowls with pies, salads, punch and all manner of goodies from their throats, until the spread was complete and everyone was free to escape to their homes, awaiting an invitation.

The wood drew in flames and smoke as the calf’s carcass sucked hissing fat; the charred flesh grew pink and cold, until the spit was removed from the animal, and a knife swiftly drawn over its throat, healing and sealing tender flesh as it restored life – blood flowed from the mud over the cowman’s arm and into Daisy’s arteries as she sprang to her hooves and then waddled slowly, rump first, into her stall.

The father took a ring from the boy’s finger, and replaced his suede sneakers with old, broken, worn sandals; he took from his son a fine coat and gave him a ragged replacement. Finally he let go of the young man and stepped away with a smile as salt water trickled up his face into his eyes. Pa ran backwards to the house and up the stairs to the roof, from where he could see the lad, who by this time had retreated to be a long way off.

‘I’ll ask to be a man that is hired, as to be his son I am no longer worthy,’ the boy said to himself. Then he planned what to say when he met his father.

He retreated several miles, eventually climbing backwards over the gate, sat down in the pigsty and allowed darkness to fill his mind, envying the pigs their activity of orally ejecting pods which settled into their trough. Over several days, as other men brought buckets in which they skillfully caught the pods that leapt out of  the trough, the boy observed that the food gradually improved in quality, growing less diseased and wizened. The boy later became less familiar with the pigs and spoke to their owner, agreeing a price for the opportunity to walk away.

The famine lost its grip as national wealth increased.

The boy’s feeling of hunger diminished as he went from place to place vomiting food and wine, and was given money by shopkeepers and so-called friends, and by waiters and café owners in exchange for filling their plates with exceptionally fine dinners.

He also watched several showgirls getting dressed in time with odd-sounding music, and collected large numbers of gambling chips in games which involved forgetting in which slot the little ball started before whizzing around the wheel several times and ending up being expertly caught by the croupier, at which point everyone took stacks of chips from the felt surface.

He left the city and went home, where he gave a great deal of money to his father.

‘I want my inheritance,’ he said. He grew younger and younger, until eventually his severed umbilical cord was reattached by means of a knife and he squeezed himself feet-first and breathless into his mother’s womb. Less than two years later, his brother did the same.

No comments:

Post a Comment