(An excerpt from the novel Not An Incredible Journey in manuscript)

Chapter 7
The plane was escorted by Egothian fighter jets. We aboard were ap-
prehensive, having heard recently about a sad incident when the fight-
ers of one nation shot down a civilian airliner. There had been accusa-
tions and counter-accusations of spying, lying and brutality. Through
the gauze of media, press releases and government obfuscation, the
public was outraged but will never know the truth. The elusive truth our
ancestors were so confident of. Have we all become Pilates? (I’m not
badgering you. My name isn’t Hector.)
We landed precipitously. Over my shoulder, a hateful man scowled
and said to me: “You,re a sciolist who sashays his way without heed-
ing strictures. You pissbrain, slubberdegullion and snaggle-tooth,
j’aboude.” Of course, he was joking, I thought. Until he tried to apply
acupuncture on me from ear to ear. A team of security guards led him
away. Oddly, I never saw mention of the incident in the newspapers.
It was, therefore, with some nervous exhaustion and perhaps even
a little trepidation that I deplaned (as I heard the captain say). The
quest for palingenesis is a foolish one. It pains me to admit it. My heart
rebels. Yet I will take no nervine. No folly is inexpiable. Deuus miserea-
tur. I shall daub myself with mud and salt, but I wi11 not foul myself
with the stain and soil of my sin. Laugh, I know, I bore or give mirth
inadvertently. Gaff or gaffe? To pit and put out. I only wanted to root,
to be left alone, but, instead, I am harassed, and danger flees before me.
My cousin shook me out of my trance. Walter was tall, blond and
sad-eyed. He apologized for having been out of town when I visited
Damelow. He was a polyglot and a great organ master. It seemed odd to
me that he had been away on business when his concerts were planned
months and years in advance, but I asked no questions. Man’s natural
state is ignorance. History is the chipping away at that mass of dark-
ness, which, ironically, appears to grow with each discovery.
Walter shook me again. I must have been in shock. He whistled a
fugue (if that is possible; if it is, only my cousin could do it). The land-
scape skirred by. In minutes the heart of the divided city rose like a
buckling of the earth. Somehow amid this urban earthquake, I could
only think of a prison, of the war between thisness and thatness (haec-
ceity and what?). For my cousin, all things were possible. He was un-
doubtedly one of the marvels of our century. Being modest, he didn’t
say, as some of my friends did, “You ‘re not a Tremblegun, so do as I
say.” Walter didn’t mind silence. “Rest and pause,” he observed, “are
the half-mortar of music.” I felt comfortable with him because he was
beyond criticism and made me feel that way. By “beyond” I mean
beyond unjust censure. Small souls look for small faults as toads do
to hide in. If I had listened to the others, I would have been drunk at
home, breathing bitter words to dwarfish minds and the open wind.
Instead, I fought and achieved what I could. Let time judge. What
works is my only theory.
A sag of youth leaned against the base of the tall buildings. These
souls looked eaten with drugs and neglect. I could do nothing. Belief
had fled like a soft bird escaping hard rocks and wiry serpents. No one
noticed them any more. Cancer can suddenly kill a man in the seem-
ing pink of health. Our driver sped up. Gangs wandered the streets like
accident. Billiards and chess were turning to bombardment and reac-
tion, whirring to events and motion without explanation. The car was
hermetic. Exhaustion. The ruins of the last war still seemed to smoul-
der. A cold northern dusk descended. Perhaps the city was nothing like
this but had become the grim repository for my feelings.
The next day I was left to my own devices. Walter had to practise
for a concert he was giving that evening. “On the day of a perform-
ance,” he explained, “I grow meditative and concentrate on nothing
but my organ.” And so, as my cousin pounded out piece after piece, I
wandered the streets of Divide. Perhaps while he cheered himself with
a roundel, I went round in circles. The city was the rowen of war, pride
and politics. Here the overtones differed from those in the concert
hall. I was leery of walking by myself. Old half-covered leats winded
through the scape. Dead ides floated on the surface, portending dis-
cord. The sound of carping voices bickered through the streets. I sew
faces drawn with jaundice. Even the sun seemed to suffer from icterus.
I came upon a high, thin wall of stainless steel, stretching the length of
this city, separating cousin f rom cousin, one side jailed and the other
yearning for unity.
I heard a voice. “Emerods,” it said. I turned and saw a man sitting
on this razorous fence. Startled, I asked him what he was doing. My
seat is beaten, even my specialy-designed trousers can,t keep me from
guillotining myself in two vertically. At least the Creator designed us
with a start, from ankle to acrotum.” I blushed. “What is imminent
here?” he asked. Just as I was about to answer, he cast an immortelle
upon me and said: “So you went to know why I straddle this Wall? My
name is Grumpy-Lumpy. Does that explain it?”
“No,” I said.
Seeing that I was dumbfounded, or confounded at least, he con-
tinued: “You see I was born of parents, one Up, the other Down, of
two opposite political persuasions, from different sides of this wall,
which, by the way, gives me vertigo. I am half a Togetherist and half
an Apartist, so here I perch. I live like a beetle crawling along a razor.
My left hand doesn’t always know what my right hand is doing. Neither
side trusts me. I am a citizen of nowhere. Every day both sides goad
me, making Destructo bombs in my sight. I have no political voice, no
rights, no freedom of movement (of any sort). It seems I am the end of
a dialectical view of history. My city, so complex, so crass, now splits
like a melon hit with a machete.”
Neither side treated Grumpy with respect. All about him, he saw
ugliness, the oedematose ooze of urban ugliness. Not a lover in sight.
No Jacob’s ladder to inspire him. No repose for the souls of the faithful
departed. Dead or alive indistinguishable. I wanted to repugn those
who kept him from beauty and peace. Mud, dung and concrete clung
at the base of the wall. Blood rusts when dirt is all around. He was
bleeding internally, a slow trickle clinging to the corners of his mouth.
“To snib or sneck? to act with distinction? those are questions. I
can’t even snog here or realign alliances. Really I can’t effect a thing.
My arms wither as I flag.”
“Marcescent limbs.” I added.
“Limp.” he mused. I thought of transformation and the Chinese
book of changes. Words are not things. Sound is not sense. “Iamb”
and “lamb” have little in common. “Ibid” and “ibex” are not the same.
Analogy, I suppose. I did not dare to broach this topic with a man who
was already in such pain.
“Economists,” Grumpy surmised, “are iatrogenic. What do peens
and icebergs have in common?” Riddles were not my forte. Soft now,
there goes the drowning maiden. Association, free or not, saves few
of us-in the end. I wondered whether he had played pelota, for he was
holding court on a wall amid the racket of the city market in the dis-
tance. Was he a stockbroker concerned with dividends or a mathem-
atician impassioned with divisions or a politician wrestling with div-
ision or did he just like sitting there?
“To be plain,” he said, “I am no jobbernowl, am no lessor – than
what you say. I’ll cut he otioseness.”
“Please do,” I ventured, “if you would like to.”
“It has been hard,” he said, “living here on the edge. Guns and gut-
ters seem to be my lot. When I was young, I used to wash my feet in a
mountain lake, run along its ragged shore and plunge into the ice and
water when spring was newly born. Neither the sound of battle nor the
fury of envy and fire shook me and cast me into smoke and stench.
Now I am bitter that life is not a nest but has become a hunt, in sleep,
at work, by day and night. Pursued. We should never put up with this
organized terror.”
That night I could barely hear the harmony. A rash of voices in the
lobby praised Walter for his melodious organ. His renditions would
make murderers weep and wake the petty and envious from their
squint and whine, the polemicist or marble-hearted from their dog-
matic slumber. After the intermission, the music soothed me more and
more, and, for a moment, transported my smirched and tattered soul
beyond the concerns of’ death and war. I wished I could consider the
simple things in life. The loss of the simple. Time, the pillory. History
shakes us out, thus giving us our selfhood but also leaving us to the
plunder each hour brings. The seas blow our fingers from the holes in
the dykes and we try to plug them frantically. I guess.
From sangrail to sangria, we, the sand-blind, wander. Miracles
lie beaten at the gates. We drink swipes. Who believes now in san-
guinification? I badger, perhaps. An unbearable telluric teddy. A punk.
A snot. What is real about me? Sure, I’m actual, but where is essence
to these pompous sinews and simoonic skull ? Questions are life but
not ever lasting. Quest: all is simulacrum. I could ring my neck. Guilt
creeps into my heart and angry and afraid. I am a pimple on a sea of
trouble. A song of myself is nothing. Let these hands reach out.
The janitor asked me what I was doing. The hall had been empty for
some time. Apparently, a car was waiting for me outside. Walter was
already at the restaurant. I swore I would not tell him about Grumpy,
so I wouldn’t ruin the celebratory drink.
“So you’ve seen Grumpy,” Walter said as I sat down.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“You,re depressed beyond reason,” he replied.
“So is the rest of humanity,” I said.
“Not so,”he said.
“Why,” I said.
“Because,” he said, “if men become to manic, they only invite
misery and war. We need positive men. That is your mission – to go
and convince men that we must survive, to thrive in goodness for ever.”
“So you say,” I said.
“You know I’m right,” he said.
“O say,” I said, ”can you see the red sandlewood, the sky a sailor’s
delight.”
“By the way,” he noted, “you should rest or you’ll suffer the strug-
gle of atrophying muscles. In other words, don’t be sadistic and repeat
yourself world without end.”
I was lost and the jungle was not dark yet. The divided city was a
smoked glass mirror on one side and a prism on the other. Here, I dam-
aged my sense of touch. I could find no enlightenment. A labyrinthine
figure, My head swirled. I threw up.
The man who looked like Walter peeled of his mask. I was on the
Other Side, the Undpire, moving underward in a speeding car. I had
been kidnapped once again, my mouth bound, my stomach retching.
Perception moved in loose waves. Then a vortex. I was going down the
drain. I lost consciousness.