Keep The Giraffe Burning (8 page)

‘Excuse me, I am of course terrifying; the face of death in the halls of Life. You are here to preserve my skin: I am here to take yours. Fair enough?

‘Forgive me for being obscene pig. I have not the garment your race require for decent civilized discourse. Ignorant bastard, me. Have not even Jesus-boy laplap. Sorry, boss.

‘Gentlemen, my work is
crucial
to the war effort. It is absolutely essential that I be left undisturbed,
not bled daily
, and so forth. I would like to see my aide, Captain Savage, as soon as he comes in. I am our only real guarantee of liberty – I do not exaggerate. I would like the bombing to stop between ten and twenty hundred hours, if you please. And for God’s sake, take that burned child away to some other ward!’

The nurses are frozen, like the men in his dream. The throat of Dr Godden smiles at them from the floor.

‘And the toilets are a disgrace. In conclusion may I say that this has been a most successful year, fellows. I really mean it. The Enemy is everywhere, in our food and air, up our rectums and down our throats. But we have every confidence of an early victory. If we have to poison our food, burn our air, and flush our guts, I can promise you one thing – The Enema is finished! We will mop up his cells wherever we find them, and you have my word – the boys will be home for Christmas!’
(and standard purées. The only enjoyment left him at mealtime now was imagining the dietician ladling goop from tiny jars whose labels exhibited pretty babies. His hair began falling faster now, and there were sudden blinding headaches and spells of high fever. He was enveloped by a very ancient and fish-like smell which reminded him, when he happened to notice it, of woman.

(4. J: an attractive first piece

a. on earth

b. in winter

c. female dominant position

d. conclusions

(1) lazy and reluctantly responsive

(2) engages only to be sociable

5. J: a nice tight second

a. darkly tanned

b. athletic socks

c. boring

6. one night stand

7. not applicable

8. n/a

9. M: a rich third

a. needed to get drunk for it

b. eventually, so did I

10. O.n.s.

11. O.n.s.

12. S: a beautiful fourth

a. almond eyes

(1) ophidian eyes

(2) parenthetical

(A) made me think of parenthood

(B) made me wonder about her other, multiple parentheses

13. O.n.s.

14. R: a seductive fifth

a. passionate

b. intelligent

c. well-made

d. but

(1) error

(2) stillborn son changed things

e. suicide

(1) I made her nervous and sleepless

(2) the doctors gave her pills to make her sleep

(3) she slept

(4) with the TV on

(A) I thought she was watching the Big Picture

(B) Battle of the Bulge

(C) I watched it through, not knowing

(D) then called the doctor

(E) but she was dead when I got there

(F) really

f. parenthesis closed

g. all she wrote

15. Suggested designation: MIL-W-84007/3)

‘I chose to destroy him with heart disease; he chose cancer for me. Thus far it seemed a stalemate again; each of us is drawn off against a new enemy, part of our energy and cognitive ability is thus diverted, and the significant changes in national strategic policy could now be examined.

‘But The Enemy loses! Though he has established a salient within my brain, my REAL soul is intact. He is at my back, but my back is protected. He is at my window, behind me at the mirror when I shave, within my blood and soul – yet it is my soul which will subsume him entirely!’

The Master Plan has been given the above ‘tall tale’ and queried as
to the nature of The Enemy. We are now awaiting significant results.

(Seven divisions wiped out on paper! He leaned against the bar, sick with defeat. The other Junior officers at the NATO mess tactfully avoided his eye. Those who had seen the printout and the plotting board grinned, or seemed to grin.

He had forgotten that Leap Year gives February 29 days. It was that simple: him sitting helplessly watching the plotting board, while a clerk erased his seven immobilized divisions: The Enemy leapt on Leap Day.

(His teeth were on fire. He ran down the streets of Avalon laughing with pain. They began to pull the burning roots, and as his jaw came crumbling away they drew him into the Avalon Theatre.

The movie was in special code. He put on the strange cardboard glasses everyone else wore and these made him invisible. ‘Gentlemen, Ruth is like the seven seas. I will translate her for you right now, if you please: Earth on earth, dust to dust. Get it?’ Her cornsilk hair rattled across his face where it was burned.)

The razor blade cut through the silk-threads of the balsa sheet and skipped into his finger and out again. The blood was the colour of dirty bricks. He watched it drip down on the razor-nicked edge of the table. (watched the water-jug fling out a bouquet of water that hung there, shimmering. The movie was stuck or something; he got out of bed and went into the hall.

In the barracks, he found them frozen as the dawn had taken them, in a grotesque game of ‘Statue’. One airman field-stripping a cigarette had just exposed the wet tobacco wound. Another, in the middle of shining one shoe, had tilted it to get the morning light.

The light continued, for the sun was stopped just above the horizon – with motes frozen in the stationary beams – to permit The Enemy an extra day of battle. The General screamed out at them as the grindstone began to sing. And the God who stopped the sun over Gibeon was our own
The map –

The map showed the cancer clearly, and Captain Savage walked a pair of dividers across it. ‘The Ruth,’ he explained, ‘is right here.’ The Avalon parents association was meeting to discuss what to do about the burned boy. ‘He’s blocking up Courthouse Square!’ ‘Yes, and that hideous “face” – or whatever you call it.’

The briefing was over, and he was up into the cockpit, off on Mission Ruth. Even on a contour map, he thought, her body was beautiful … the lines enfolding it like parentheses)

That last night – if it were the last – he allowed Miss Nylon to turn on the TV. It began as a family comedy, and he dozed
(the albino butcher).
The room was dark when he woke, and Miss Nylon was nearer. Machine-guns clattered in the corridor. No, in the flickering window. ‘It’s about Guadalcanal.’ There was a strange look in Miss Nylon’s eyes. ‘If you like I can trim it off …’

‘No, it’s all right.’

‘Al! I’m hit, Al!’

Takatakataka. ‘This is it, kid!’

‘You’ve certainly been grouchy, today. Is the pain …?

‘Al, I can’t make it! Better – unh! – better go on without me. Leave me here.’

‘Old Grouchy. Why, you haven’t even made a pass today, you old goat.’ Her eyes were glazed in death. She came nearer. She stood by the bed.

‘Leave me here, I can hold ’em off. That’s an order, soldier!’

‘You old, oversexed goat.’

The rain outside was machine-gunning on the wide window. She turned to draw the curtain, and he saw the glitter of wet red lower lip.

‘Hey Joe! Hey Yankee pig! I coming cut your throat plitty soon now!’

Takataka.

‘Sweet old grouchy goat.’)
He is simply Old Grouchy to them now, the fear is over. Every once in a while there comes a mad bull to the slaughterhouse – routine. Give him the usual sedative, drag him back to the numbered room, slip him between the mitred sheets. The day he dies they will cover him with the same sheet. Then they will walk down to the clean cafeteria, and eat meat and gravy, mashed potatoes with a dab of butter, and frozen peas. Miss Nylon will leave her potatoes, and Al the intern will tell her she needn’t worry about her figure, it looks just fine …

(Pretty Miss Nylon was taking off her white nylon uniform. The Zero came in low over the beach, probing for them with tines of fire budda-budda-budda.

‘Sweet.’

‘Christ!’

(End of report.

(something tells me I’ve been here before

(‘Hi-yo, Silver! Away!’

(all she wrote

(The albino butcher stood there, waiting, silent. White hair and skin, white apron and shirt, white hands holding the cleaver against the grindstone. Inscrutable in his white Oriental mourning. Unfathomable.

Chunk! ‘Full fathom five my finger lies …’

Chunk! It didn’t hurt at all! ‘My face!’

(Within the dreamwork, a map of Littleworld is being plotted. The General leans over it, easing wind from a good dinner. His cigar taste accents the lingering flavour of the port.

Now he can see into it, the roofless hospital room, as a tiny Savage leans forward, ferret-eager over the dying feast.

‘I begin to have bloody thoughts. The blood is leaking in my brain. I am changing into something rich and strange. This is all so real the General cannot help holding his cigar well away, lest he drop ash on the tiny figures,’ says the doll in bed. ‘My marriage has failed, and now my health. It would be pleasant, very pleasant …’

‘Absolutely senseless at the last,’ says little Savage to little Dr

Godden. ‘It’s a great pity. I ought really to destroy his final ruminations, to protect his reputation. But – well, regulations.’

Smiling, the General muses that tiny Savage has his own miniature cancer. He, Cancer, has won. He finishes the inert replica’s sentence:

‘… to imagine that The Enemy destroyed Ruth and fed cancer to my brain. But ultimately, the responsibility is
mine
.’

The face of the doll has become the colour of the fine ash on his Extramaduro.)

Chunk! ‘The dying man pays all debts … this is three …’

The five senses leave him by five wounds. A solid fifth, sweet numbness of the razor-nicked wooden block.

And it is Ruth who takes his carcass over her shoulder and carries him down to the snowy freezer. His cloven stomach enfolds her; he covers her again …)

Anticipating his command, slime is drooling down his leg, as he drops the knife. And this is)
IT!