On a certain weekday, a year or two before the events described in the present chronicle, I betook myself to luncheon at the Ghastly Hipster opposite Turbo Island. There, I was unfortunate enough to find myself sharing a large table with a Bahai gentleman who averred that we might call him of all names Ishmael, and also with four relentlessly upbeat freaks who announced themselves as disciples of the alien nudist guru Ray.L.Innes-Hibbett. This ill-assorted quintet lacked all reserve, and each tried his or her utmost to outdo their companions in loudly broadcasting their serene spirituality and good cheer. In this, they were close cousins to the charismatic eccentrics with big personalities who held court at the Old Disgrace. They indulged various pranks and japes at one another’s expense, which all professed to find hilarious, but which made the civilians, forced into the role of spectating their society, feel awkward and wince. In this connection, I particularly recall a brief episode during which, Ishmael being directed to the bad shop next door to buy an apple, one of the alien nudist cult disciples – a diminutive and rather wizened Japanese lady – concealed herself under the table against Ishmael’s return, indeed actually … er … squatting between my feet and then, when that Bahai reappeared, bursting from her hiding place with much, it seemed to me, forced hilarity on the part of herself and her companions. —
Ghastly Hipster opposite Turbo Island, Ishmael
Much the loudest and most obnoxious of these exhibitionists was a rubicund gentleman in the Autumn of his years, whom I next encountered some months later, withal as yet before the misfortune which befell Herod, wallowing in the Spa Elysium. This was in itself little to be wondered at, given the clothing optional status of that sanatorium, which accorded most straightforwardly with the nudist element among the precepts of the cult to which that loud and vexatious poltroon adhered. The gentleman in question went by the name of Claude Boisselier. I harboured the strong suspicion that this was no more than a flag of convenience, a fig leaf concealing a lamentable lack of exoticism, and that he had in truth suffered an egregiously prosaic baptism, and that he was in reality a Gary Smith from Colchester or a Darren Jones from Bracknell; for in truth when the mouth of a bottle of Lafitte was unstoppered, a vin très ordinaire flowed out. —
Herod, Spa Elysium, Claude Boisselier
On this occasion, the subtle machinations of the system had determined that two further victims be selected, these being numbers 37 and 41, the Spartacist noms de guerre of, respectively, Scrumpy the Somerset dipsomaniac and Enematopoeia the former handmaiden to Mr Illingworth the colonist. I must say, this set {Boisselier, Scrumpy, Enematopoiea} formed a somewhat incongruous trio, although I did imagine that the last named might ceteris paribus have been induced to transfer her affections from Rodolfo Mather-Steiner, for whom she in any case vied with Clismathea, and bestow them upon this other charlatan Monsieur Boisselier. It bears recalling that this set overlapped with another set, equally gimcracked, namely the set consisting in the ménage à six of the remaining Somerset dipsomaniacs and Timothy and Adrian, the bereaved twinks of the sacrificed paederasts Peter Astley and Rogers Boyes; the set-overlap being embodied, of course, in the person of Scrumpy. —
Scrumpy, Enematopoeia
Just another fateful day. Late morning found me waiting, as so often previously, in Reception. As ever outside, a downpour, this time a veritable Götterdämmerung: thunder, lightning, dirty brown and orange clouds. Orange and orage and rage. A topsy-turvy time, a time of perversion and inversion: night when it should have been day. Drear, dismal, dinge, dirge, deluge, depression. Our chef de machinations Herod, he of no cahoonas, stood in his cantilevered overcoat, mug of tea in hand, loins girt with the White Willy, which gleamed in the reflected light of the neon strips in that artificial place. Striations and indents on the surface of that obscene thing drew me, though I list not and fain would have averted my peepers, to examine it. And I purposed despite my own higher purposes to see if I could tell what Egyptian or Hittite or Assyrian business was portended by the hieroglyphs etched thereupon. Withal, those random scratches only translated back to me ad hoc fancies and phantasms, which raised my hackles and set my blood wires coursing, even though I knew in my heart of hearts that nothing was thereby signified. And Herod saw me staring, and we were both embarrassed for he never could leave off masturbating that sterile shiner. —
White Willy
- That old chestnut, my accuser whispered furiously, we cannot do that. It would violate aliter assecurationem subnervat, as well you know Mr Cerebellum Towers. —
Aliter assecurationem subnervat
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