Barefoot in the Head Page 19

  Europlexion and the explexion of conventual time the time by which predecyclic man imposed himself against nature by armed marching cross-wise to conceal body-mind apart hide dissillusion.

  Cheering and singing only the cops stamped around and offered dials of non-radiance. He still upbraidcast.

  ‘And to these levels also another pirate transmitter with emissions on the self-life-mitter band for you got to mash your own consciousness into the introwaving road routage and the general timeweb only achieve by the disciplation of my thought the disciplation of proper erectitude like a disciplation of any distinct order and to achieve finally well you need what Ouspenski calls certain luggage and then the true sidereal time can faze with your arcadian rhythms of living.’

  ‘Get off my automobile!’ said the big pink white laundry-bundle chief of police.

  Two policement hupped Charteris down as he called, ‘For all of you also timeflow can bold the orbital radiance of a spyers web if you will follow me. Let your circharacters centrifuse in the spinrads of centricourse! Follow me or you will drown in the flowing timeflow!’

  So he comes away kicking as they assimob and fling his pants at him wrapping round the timeflapperture. You are not asleep at this moment. Many things were like sleep many things had no relationship to reality. Truer: reality had no relationship to the true things. They just built these wooden walls with wooden windows to sail on regardless. Many things that I said at that time must have surprised my companions in this strange adventure very much. I was surprised by much myself. I stopped and turned towards G. He was smiling. His old friendly fallible familiar smile. ‘Afterwards it was very strange for me to remember the things I had said.’ I was walking along the Troitsky street and everyone was asleep.

  The Schwabe officers conferred with rapid eye movements and a thin cracked music started from the escampade. Many things that I said at that time. The brilliant laundry bundle made clockwork gestures parabola starting and ending at low point X and two polizei grabbed Ouspenkian I.

  Set a speech to clash a speech.

  Orated the laundrobund in machine-style ‘Fine leadership I have appreciape and the exhaustation but even god almighty must here be circumstrict according to the authority of law and not park his car contrary to stated regalations. Else there’s distrumblanches and the crumble-off of state and diction but right here is still my desportmeut and you hippies are all contravemed. So it’s a rest this hairshirted malefracture do his freakout in a cell! Move!’

  ‘Hey, they’re going to take away our saviour!’ warcried Ruby Dymond running to Angelside. He flung a realityobject of unvariable geometry and metallic origin in semilethal parabol and the other sleep-runners started to mill marvelously unstewing from their rancid and autobreasted pluckered in to the uniform defeat. Hit a Kraut for Easter. Then leaped the bold gendarmes also acid-hipped but swinging in the name of Ordentlichkeit to let battle commensurate with duty the PCA bombs when dissembling produced according to each character in its own intensification.

  By the perspective transfixed was the police point with its flags and signs and from here gorged more polizei slowly inflating themselves with self-pumping steps as they evolved themselves from the middle distance becoming part of the fore-grind where the mass milled and Herr Polizeikommissar Laundrei clasped enchanted Charteris to his postage stamps.

  Ordenthchkeit having boots and truncheons won.

  So a march began slowly and with bloody eyes and ripgear and straggling struggle to the lock-up all baretoed hepos while by the cobbles a few wooden pudestrials started at the delinquents Herr and Frau Krach and little Zeitgeist Krack who when pushed bobbed up again and soberly registered gut show nodding as the procession hobnobbed to the great slapup HQ with many drivniks still plunching.

  Now the harsh bones of that great creature were stone and its flesh mortar and plaster painted democrappic yellow lying in feigned fossil sleep and all its viscerca dark and cool with powerf allure or the awful processes of parquet flooring turning corridors reflected dim outside light entrailing from all surfaces constantly interupted returning interupted broken continuous of a special manufacture greylight patent. You are no longer awake many things that I said.

  The blundering polizei themselves bemused. Pattern of bars no more italianate where the reverie bursts into the old brown building but industrial north dull parallels to close the mind unblown. Clash of bars and swinging blatterplang with no regard ringing unanswerable. The sittlichkeitsvergehen of German standingrheumonly.

  Blundering they grey big honey cops with striding arms dull in the confinement space swing swinging to the repetitive doors themselves trapping on the wrong side and commense hammercry which the disciples stand dumbfloundered like a whole new range of unfeeling in a brown nearest black till one judy shrieks that they are merely stacked in the corridor. All begin panicake panicake round the shattered vision down or up stone steps or mindless groins digested seeking exit. Bars bars false leads dead ends long vistas dim greylight like a broken circuit entrailing from all sourplaces in the harsh bones time’s loot-out rings unanswerable. More cops flushtuate in the hide-and-seek. Now bellies the whole building rangorously. Mindfallen new race rapidly cell-dwells and all anti-flowered. Garish alarms zibbernaut into cavities the grot graves. Life down to the low point of textbook level. Lungs hammer limbs scissor feet clatter in the machineage moment.

  Clever guards slamslamslam outer doorment. In the maze long vistas slowly the charterisers clobbered and clapped into parallel cells. The harsh bones cease their crunk but from the lesser interstine sounds an invisible flute.

  Entranced by Herr Laundrei’s door stood his buddyguard Hirst Wechsel who opened to let in the Herr and Charteris followed to pour them both thin schnapps but Charteris stood amazed to find almost tanible reality transformed into this particular figment with a bare rich squareness of hard black forest wood in even the softer things while the Laundrei cordially explained how the State now malfunctioned owing to the temporary emergency following psycho-chemical spraying on which the scientists of the nation were feverishly working to produce an infallible errorproof arabproof antidope that would guarantee to the race that took it a thousand years of sanitary sanity without deviations in any direction such as weakness brought on among even the most favoured of peoples though of course any old racist theories were long dispredited.

  ‘I don’t need to tell you as an Englishman that.’ Laughing and even Hirst Wechsel operating musculature of a broad grin.

  However with the joking aside it must be privately confessed that the malfunctioning of government already touched upon causes certain complications of a legislative nature away and beyond the mere dying of six or seven million fellowcountrymen from famine brought on from lack of organisation at the headquarters perhaps stemming from the lack of discipline at the hindquarters any leadership vital to a dynamic nation and one of these legislative failures was that he here ran his little police force as an independent army you might say.

  ‘What do you mean what you going to do with all my friends in the cells we’re no invading army only tourists tourists spreading the light?’

  Spreading the light was a happy expression was it not of course one knows that light like all basic things such as shall we say sex is made of hydrogen but one can well imagine this sort of hydrogen-compoundcondiment to be spread on ones bread like butter you excuse of I joke and the musculature again mindblowing.

  ‘My friends in the cells?’

  All dependent upon Saint Charteris himself. We two would talk it was necessary to establish if you were a genuine leader but if so well here was this modest little army maybe a little barebooted in the shall we say head bin knowing well on which side of the condiment their light shone put it together with the crying need for a proper leadership to the country after all you could not be content with genuine messiah to remain head only of those hairy things with people inside a ragged flock of feathered friends like a new animals hopping from instant imm
obility to instant immobility leaping from the lawn closeclipped to the eaves of the bungalow where the sunset for ever in its ironed mottling how different oh my dear British decline from this a comic white-uniformed A busy Moscow newspaper man so its necessary to test you if you pass of course all pardons all round but when a traffic regulation is violated it is after all violated I mean that is basic philosophy old man eh nicht war.

  So comes forth Hirst Wechsel with forms laden for Charteris to fill while Laundrei quits the room. Sitting at a table in unkindly light he stares through the lines and dots and little boxes anweisungen defences against the light take multi-forms of all the forms of dreaming activity is perhaps the deepest passivity is true guise activity lies and this is the landt where the truly eat the lotus suffering is permanent obscure and dark and shares the nature of infinity they even invent the concept of antisuffering a clever form to conceal real angst and infectious disease if any suppose I pretended to fall in with his idea might the multi-word not be spread his clouted clowns all accidentally aid me oh zbogom the old serpent but my rotten thoughts far from the driving have no wing-ding next of kin my fruitful angeline something still gets through perhaps for your stake.

  There he wrestled locked mute in the hard Rhenish light till Wechsel brought him a warm sausage.

  ‘How you love my boss?’

  ‘For me he is just a uniform.’

  ‘Isn’t it engorgeous uniform?’

  ‘That’s incompatible.’

  ‘I don’t think so, I think it suits him a treat. White just sets off his complexion?’

  ‘Off-white.’

  ‘He doesn’t exercise enough.’ He bent lower so that his labroses were almost in contact with the folded labyrinths of statement. ‘He’s more of a thinker you see. He’s a great thinker he has his own laboratory here I’ll show you while he’s out come on.’

  ‘This sausage is enough adventure my adversary.’

  ‘Glad you like it but look you see his place here.’ It rocked over to another door flinging wide and beyond again the stark geometry and pohlar parade of apparatus old Boreas with his realitoys. He shook his head and commenced resuming the patterplexity of the intraformity Wechsel hovered.

  ‘He wouldn’t mind you seeing it not if I let you I don’t quite know how he strikes you but he’s really a very kind man indeed a thinker and keeps himself very clean insists that I keep myself clean too finds you lot very unhygienic you’re not a real prophet are you you don’t somehow look the part I reckon my boss will come up with the solution to the world’s troubles I do I sincerely do he works all night sometimes goes without sleep I never saw such a saintly man.’

  State blood group and whether you have ever been donor or donator of blood or practised acupuncture.

  ‘He’s trying to synthesise Hydrogen 12 that’s what he’s doing in there synthesis says the Rhine river is the main artery of the body corporate analogous to an actual organism which with a chain contraction would convey Hydogen 12 from source to mouth and thus infect the total statement and spread from Germany out into the oceans until the druplets fructify the mondial globule in profit from his inversion and never no more by any deviation from the correctum orderly way of life you ought to concourse him about it oh it’s a real privilege to work for such a splendid man and for such a splendid man and for such a splendid uniformed official man he’s marching marching marching of which the human race is capable is caperble is cape-er-bull!’ All this vocal accompaniment to a sort of sweeping jig about the black-forested room with a lightly pointed jacktoe fluttering and the odd coy pirouette to saint’s unheeding back.

  Down behind the parallel bars they took some semiphysical jerks at guitars and howled an improvised stave in memory of colour and the wild-headed moment. To the bargemen this music clumped by me over the liquid hydrogen 12 with a fine echoing prison flow as if the great stone creature finally foundered its voice in its tailpiece.

  Above all that Meinherr Laundrei revealed himself from under the white parcel and took on oblation in a blackforestscented bath gristoning with Wechsel to perform the mastaging dry him compulsively and clad him in a flowing white towelling bathrobe with white matching leatherboots erminelined. So came he glowing forth murkless unto his feathery captive now socketted by the deep-eyed window watching natural France gobble off the golden phallus of the sun.

  ‘Before I go to labour all night in my what I jokingly call my private den of stinks — cracklehund Hirst makes with the musculature — you and I Herr Charteris will have a discussion on philosophy and the sexual dynamic for in this little beleagured miniskirt of empire where we repell the frontiers with jockstrips against such penny barbarous tribes as the cascaders penisenvy sagacity as whores hardon to come by.’

  Coughing clearing throttle wattle and daubed crimson uncontrollable freudian slipway fazing him.

  Groping in drawer of desk sitting down heavily letting robe flap bringing out in fist mighty cigars, ‘Pardon, we must be good buddies and talk with proper form and usury, nict war. Have a nice big Lungentorpedo.’

  ‘Don’t use tobacco.’

  ‘Well, you should. Smoke always smoke keeps me calm in this duration of stress yes yes very good for the nerve scenters and concentrates the mind on the objection — here take one!’

  ‘I don’t use the stuff!’

  We will see who uses it and who doesn’t. Hirst get the Schnapps!’

  ‘Immediately master.’

  ‘Hurry you fool!’ He stood glowering in towelling the boy came and trembling poured two measures from the bottle then adroitly downed the measure through an open throat calling simultaneously for more and shouting for one for Charteris.

  ‘It’s just prison poison.’ Tipping it on the wood floor.

  ‘Insulting dog!’ He swinging a ham in clever textbook demonstration of anatomical leverage connecting with physiognomy of seated opponent with consequential impact subsequential entropyloss carrying victim off chair continuity of energy in previously steady state universe. ‘That will teach you when your betters try to show you courtesy men in dirty rags have to be polite and look after their manners in good order now get up!’

  He rises against gravity and the giantkiller smokes himself back into better humour behind grey self-made curtain haze finally saying, ‘Now we will discuss privately my sex problems in absolute confidence. Hirst kindly make yourself scared. You see for a man like me in the very power of my prime and pink used to violent exercise and and shall we say such constant hobbies as swordplay and horseriding even since extreme infancy for my grandfather and father harsh men and great believers in mortification and also if I say so with all modesty both genitalmen were profound thinkers and unrecognised scientific genius who may yet save the world beginning with our own blessed soil — come I show you about my stinks den as I talk — and these rare gifts also going gland in glove with great administrative qualities and strong gift of leadership — Hirst!’

  ‘Sir!’ Anxious nose only round door executing own cute disarming bow and the musculate animate.

  ‘Have I not strong gifts for leadership?’

  ‘The strongest and for what it’s worth a really kind man indeed a thinker — ’

  ‘Go! You’re discharged!’ Marching into the laboratory waving his torpedo like a wand at the alchemaic impedimenta lowering voice to his own reverence, ‘All these rare qualities Charteris rare qualities and yet how shall I say. Though I am so bushy with all these schemes I am tornamented by the synthesis of the flesh the sins of the flesh and in this as in all things I am outrageous and priapic it is a torment to me for how can I be holy its the one aspect of leadership I perceive immediately that you have and I have not for its the sex centre perpetually overheating and my degenerative organ perpetually tumessing. Naturally once I have mangled to synthesise my Hydrogen 12 and release it in the Rhineflow then all such tortures can be extirpanted and we stump out sex altogether it rolls us with a rod of iron stump it out you hear — ’ he tripped over a sna
king cable and grasped the workbench. ‘In a properly functioning world this random element will not be introduced but till then in my torment I ask you what sort of help you are a seer and prophet can give me that is an order I give for the positive assistance of mankind and in exchange my assistance on future.’

  ‘Would the truth awaken you or your serpent?’

  ‘I am a depraved man though a hero and savant and great leader. You see I confess without jurisprudence! Save me from that snake-in-my-grass I need your truth.’

  ‘It is import to know if you have the Kundalini — ’

  ‘Yes yes I admit I have practised that vile sin and fallen into many fellacious ways so how am I to lead if I am led by my unruly part.’

  Gurdjieif also that sly old city shaman in his worn slippers smiled under his moustache at similar questions always coming back — eternal recurrence and the nostalgia of constantly repeated for people of lost possibilities who had drawn away into a deeper dust. His truth could be told to Laundrei in such a way as to defeat him and keep him in G & O powerlessness.

  ‘Sex is a normal and natural way to horness energy and create further possibilities in the organisms. Being alpervasive like hydrogen it forms one of the main springs of the multi-valued and self-creating fuzziness so we find philosophicantly that everything people do connected with sex — politincs reliction art theatre music is all sex. People go to the theatre or church or sport event not for its own sake but simply because there in the crowds of men and women is the centre of gravity of sex. That’s why people go to any meeting or occasion or rally. You are merged each more than you note in a general empathy. So you see sex is the principal motive force of all mechanicalness. Hypnosis depends upon it. So you must ledgerdemise more room for this extralactivity among your other rattributes so become more mechanical.’

  ‘So!’ Dragging in a fever on the torpedo sucking down the smoky poison of the GO-warning. ‘So! Mechanicalness yes the great modern force all working with the beneficiency of the machination. That is how it will be under hydrogeneration! We’ll strop this nonsense of astral bodies then and the whispering anoise of spirituality — only physical bodies aloud then. You are right. I will be glad and make myself machinelike.’