Barefoot in the Head

by Brian W Aldiss

  His tears scattered. Once they had had a goose to fatten and in the long blight of summer where the damsons festered it made some company with its simple ways not unapproachable. Once her mother brought it out a bucket of water in the heat for it to duck over and over its long head and flail its pruned wings with pleasure scattering the drops across small Angeline. She heard the wings flail now as out she crept nostalgic for the gormless bird they later ate.

  At last she came back wearily to where a broken Stella Art sign buzzed and burned in the desolation of their parking lot. She stood there in a wet shift breathing. Under the mauve and maureen flash her face showed like a shuttered street from which might crawl iguaneous things. But just a mental block away where she only blindly knew directions a lane stood in old summer green some place like a magic garden where a young barefoot girl might drive her would-be swans and never think of harsher either-ors.

  A small rain filled the incommense thoroughfares of night but still among the guttering buggies stilled tangents of smoke and rib-roofed skeletombs a guitar string or flute fought loneliness with loneliness and a poppied light or naked carbulb gave the flowerdpeople nightpower. Oh Phil the small dogs howl don’t ask me what I’m doing on the health Col. She plashes the raddlepuddles in a dim blue fermentation. A round of vestal voices plays noughts and crosses her subterranean path with a whole sparse countryside rumpling the stone-trees. Such shadows in her way she brushes off knowing the nets that await her in the shallows of a nightsunk city. She crounches and pees by old brickhaps. Oh don’t be pregnant in this tupturned world!

  Sickly still bedummied by the ill winds she staggered through her own grotesquely shatteredporch to find the blanket cold and stiff and Charteris not in. Groping with all menaces she unsandaled herself and beneath crawled heavily. Charteris not in not in the starve-in still? Small sound not rain not dogs reached her and immediate anxieties peopled the grotto with haggard dimmies half in flight with speed as closing in on her she propped and stared. Even hoping-fearing it might be Ruby Dymond?

  In the corner Marta only sniffing on a broken chair, lumpkin in the fluttered darklight with her crushed appeal.

  ‘Get to bed girl!’

  ‘The toad is going to get me pushing up my thinghs.’

  ‘Go to sleep stop worrying till tomorrow. The holed world’s had enough tonight.’

  ‘But throbbing toadspower! It’s trying to force my skull up and climb into my barn my grain and then motor me away to some awful slimy pool of toadstales!’

  ‘You’re dreaming! Pack it in!’

  Laying down her tawdry head she tucked her motherless eyelids on her cheeks and took herself far away from drivniks a goosegirl in an old summer lane drove her would-be-swans barefoot. And cellos hit a seldom chord.

  Every day Charteris like a bird of prayer spoke to new crowds finding new things to say giving outwards and never sleeping never tired sustained by his overiding fantasy. Two three days passed so at the big starve-in for Belgium’s famine or Germany’s bad news. He sat with a can of beans that Cass and Cass’ buddy Buddy Docre had brought him half-forking them into his mouth and smilingly half-listening to some disciples who parrited back at him a loose interpretation of what they had gleaned in all enthusiasm.

  When he had filled his crop enough he rose slowly and began to walk slowly so as not to disturb the ripples of the talk from which he slowly wove his own designs half hearing of the fishernet of feeling. In these famine days they all grew gaunt he especially captain on his scoured bridge his face clawed by multicolour beard to startling angles and all of them in their walk angular stylised as if they viewed themselves from a crow’s nest distanced. Partly this walk was designed to keep their flapping shoes on their feet and to avoid the litter in the lands stirred by thin breezes breaking: for they had now camped here three unmoving days or weeks and were a circus for the citizens who brought them wine and clothes and sometimes cake.

  Charteris kept his gaze steady as hair hid his eyes in the wind hover.

  Cass said gently to him almost singing, ‘This evening is our great triumphal entry, Master, when we break at last from this poor rookery and the lights of Brussels will welcome you and show your film and turn the prized town over to you. We have prepared the ground well and your followers flock in by hundreds. There is no need to motor farther for here we have a fine feathered jerusalem where you will be welcome for ever.’

  Sometimes he did not say all that he thought. Privately he said to himself, ‘While under the lid the finger is still to Frankfurt how shall we do more than park overnight in Belgium? How can Cass be so blind he does not see that if there is no trip there is nothing? He must be eyeless with purpose.’

  So he swooped down upon the field of truth that Cass and Buddy pushed and that Cass like Angeline had no habit in his dark draper suit. Behind his shutters he saw bright-lit Cro-Magnons fearful in feathers and brutally flowered hunt the ponderous Neanderthal through fleet bush and drive them off and decimate them: not for hatred or violence but because it was the natural order and he uttered, ‘Predelic man must leave our caves as we reach each valley.’

  ‘Caves! Here’s a whole hogging city ours for the carve-in!’ said blind Cass. But there were those present who dug the Master and soon this casually important word of His went round and new attitudes were born in the bombsites and a solitary zither taking up this hunting song was joined by other instruments. And the world sailed too amid the Master’s brainwaves.

  Leaving the others aside, he stylised himself back to his ruined roost where Angeline sat with her back curved to the light unspeaking.

  ‘After the film tonight all possibilities say we flit,’ he told her.

  She did not look up.

  ‘Leave the will open to all winds and the right one blows. This is the multi-valued choice that we should snarl on and no more middle here.’ Echoing his words the first engine broke air as crude maintenance started for the farther trek; soon blue smoke ripped farting across the acid perimeters as more and more switched on.

  Still she had no face for him.

  ‘You’re escaping, Colin, why don’t you face the truth about yourself? It’s not a positive decision — you’re leaving because you know that what I say about Cass and the others is a whole sparky truth and you hope to shake them off, don’t you?’

  ‘After this film and the adulation we flit on a head-start. Maybe a preach-in.’ He fumbled and half-lit a half-smoked cigar with an old fouled furcoat over his shoulder.

  She stood up facing him more haggard than he. ‘He pushes but you don’t care, Col! You have the word about the Mafia but you don’t care. It was through him Marta died but you don’t care. Whatever happens you don’t care if we all fall dead in our trips!’

  He was looking through the cracked pane. Mostly now they sat around with a trance-in going even among the rolling cars.

  But the beer brigade could caper — one of their plump girls danced now in the steel engraving air of a jew’s harp slow but sturdy.

  ‘This place has lost all its loot so we’ll take in my film and then we’ll give it a scan and we’ll blow. Open up another city. Why don’t you dance, Angel pants?’

  ‘Phil, Robbins, now Marta — oh, you really have lost all loot yourself man! You wouldn’t care if you got cut dead yourself and to think I stood up for you!’

  The cigar wasn’t working. His hand twitched it into a corner, he moved to the door’s gape.

  ‘You use the old fleshioned terms and feelings, Angle, all extinct with no potentiality. There’s a new thing you aren’t with but I begin to gravel. Somewhere Marta got a wrong drug, somewhere she caught hipatitis or pushed herself over. So? It’s down-trip and she had a thing we’ll never know in her mind, a latent death. She was destined and that’s bad. We did the best and can’t bind too much if she freaks out.’

  Lying with the lovely lubrication gone and nothing swinging.

  ‘Well I bind, for God’s sake! I could have helped her when she me
wed to me about a toad levering up her skull or whatever it was and instead I sogged back like the rest of them! It was the night of the filmrush and now tonight they let the complete epic roll — I see more death tonight — right here in the toadstool I see it!’ She rapped her brow as if for answer.

  ‘Flame,’ he said. ‘A light to see us off by I see but I don’t see you dance like that chubby girl her cheeks. Angey, you can’t motorcade — I want you so stay and shack in with the golden Boreaz in Bruxelles who’ll care for you and is not wholly gone.’

  She threw herself at him and clutched him, holding round his neck with one hand stroking his beard his hair his ears his pileum with the other. ‘No, no, I can’t stay a moment in this stone vortex. Besides, my place is with you. I give you loot, I need you! You know your seed is sealed in me! Have pity!’

  ‘Woman, you won’t stay silent at Ouspenski’s spread!’

  ‘I’ll switch on, I will, and be like you and all the others. I’ll dance!’

  He side-stepped and the vague promises of a mind-closure near engine stutter.

  ‘You don’t take one pinch of loot to my sainthood!’

  ‘Darling, we don’t have to take that come-on straight!’

  Half to one side he pushed her peering through his own murk and the broken-down air, muttering, ‘So let’s get powered!’

  ‘Colin, — you need me! You need someone near you who isn’t — you know — hippie!’ Her eyes were soft again the wild goosegirl.

  ‘That was yesterday. Listen!’ He pointed among the buckling roadsters. Ruby Dymond’s voice — Ruby always so turnedon to a new vibration — lifted against a Tonic rhythm singing.

  Fearsome in our feathers brutally flowered

  We warn the predelics we’re powered

  We warn the predelics we’re powered

  We warn the predelics we’re powered

  Fearsome in our feathers and brutally flowered

  The Word gathered loot as gears kicked in.

  And another voice came in shouting ‘There are strangers over the hill, wow wow, strangers over the hill.’ In the background noise of backfiring and general revving and the toothaching zither sound. More plump girls dancing.

  ‘I need only the many now,’ he said.

  They required little to eat, clothes mattered not much to them, in the strengthening air was the gossamer and hard tack of webwork. What they were given they traded for the precious fluid and this stored in tanks or hidden in saucepans under car seats so that when they had to go they had plenty of go — those who ran out of golden gas got left behind sans loot sans end.

  By evening, a rackety carqueue moved towards the blistered dome of Sacré Coeur and citycentre where every pinnacle concealed its iguana of night. First came the Master in the new red Banshee his Brussels disciples had brought him as tribute, saluting with Angelina huddled despairing in the back seat. Then his tribe in all gay tarnation.

  From one shuttered day to the next his mindpower fluctuated and now wheelborn again he, finding the images came fast, tried to order them but what truth they looted seemed to lie in their random complexity. He radiated the net or web to all ends and to cut away strands was not to differentiate the holes. Clearly as the patterns turned in slow mindsbreeze he saw among them an upturned invalid car with wheels still spinning and by it lying a crippled negro on his back lashing out with metal crutches at a strangely dressed whiteman with machine qualities. Near at hand stood in separate frame a fat bare man with painted skull shouting encouragement by megavoice.

  Simultaneously this fat bare man lay floating in a lake of flame.

  Simultaneously this fat bare man lay in the throes of love with a bare bald female dolly of human scale.

  Simultaneously this bare bald dolly was Angeline with her suffering shoulders.

  Simultaneously the face was cracked. China griefs seeped from wounds.

  Startled, he turned and looked back at her on the back seat. Catching his glance, she lifted her hand and took his reassuringly, mother to child.

  She said, ‘This good moment is an interim in our long deline.’

  He said, ‘Wear this moment then with it all baraka as if you had it comfortable on your feet for ever in the timeflow,’ and at the prompt unprompted words his whole ornate idea of reincarnation in endless cycles flooded his hindusty horizons with eternal recurrence.

  Outside their moving windows faces clystered with hunger and hope.

  She said, ‘They acclaim you in the streets as if you did not come with downfall for them,’ gazing at the action.

  Cass said to him looking angrily at her, ‘They salute you and would keep you here for all the evers, bapu, as the wheel turns.’

  Thin-cheeked children of Brussels ran like wolves uniting in a pack packing and howling about the car — not all acclaiming, many jeering and attempting to stop the progress. Scuffles broke out. Fights kindled near the slowcade and spread like a bush fire among the stone forests. Half a mile from the Grand Place, the cars piled to a stop and crowds swarmed over them. Some of the drivniks in the cars wept but there was no help for them, the police force having dissolved to rustle cattle on the ignoble German border.

  At last the Tonic Traffic managed to climb free and with other helping hands set the infrasound machine with its husky rasped throat extended towards the bobbing heads. Its low vibrations sent a grey shudder across the crowd and a vision of the sick daybreak across unfilled land where an old canal dragged straight over the landscape for a hundred versts. With many hands raised to steady the terrible machine, it progressed and the crowds fell back and the other autos moved forward so they grated gradually to Grand Place, with the group bellowing song and all present taking it up as far as able, detonated underground with a whole sparse country rumpling upwards and rolling at predatorial speed towards the fluttering heart with every kind of looted image.

  In the Grand Place, a huge screen structured of plastic cubes had been set up on the front of some of the old Guild houses. From the Hotel de Ville opposite, a platform was built perilously out. High resplendent equinoctial on this platform sat the golden Boreas with shadowy men behind him and amid cheering the Master also ascended to sit here among the hatcheteers.

  Thus met the two great men and the Bapu knew this was the fat bare ego of megavoice who could radiate powerful dramadreams and later a song was sung telling that they exchanged views on exitsence with particular reference to what was to be considered inside and what outside or where deautomation lay: but the truth was that the hubbub in the square below was so great that both were forced to play Gurdjieff at their own feast and even the offering of Angeline as a dolly substitute which the Master intended had to be forgotten she shrinking nevertheless from him.

  Chilled wind rose, petals sweetly scattering. The square had been given rough nautical ceiling by immense canvas sails stretched over it and secured to the stone pinnacles of the guilds encrusting the titled place like stalagmites. This ceiling kept off the seasonal rain that fell as well as supporting strings of multicoloured lights that glowed in a square way. Now it all became more sparky as the bulbs swung and fluttered where the whole sky was one big switchedonstellation with Cassiopeia dancing and ton-weights of conserved water off-loaded with grotesque effect to the Tonic Traffic dirges. Then the circuits failed and all milling place swung unlit except by torches and one randy probing searchlight until unknown warriors funeralpyred a bright-burning black motor-hearse.

  The night was maniac over self-sold Europe.

  Fighting broke out again and counter-singing, a car was overturned converted into variable geometry and set alight to predatory slogans. It was a big loot-in with action all round.

  A colour slide show beginning, the crowd settled slightly to watch and smells of reefers densed the choleric air. Glaring colours such as delft blue ornamental red dead grey tabby amber persian turquoise eyeball blue cunt pink avocado green bile yellow prepuce puce donkey topaz urine primrose body lichen man cream arctic white pus
s copper jasmine thatch Chinese black pekinese lavender jazz tangerine moss green gangrene green spitoon green slut green horsy olive bum blue erotic silver peyote pale and a faint civilised wedgwood mushroom that got the bird were squirted direct onto the projector lens and radiated across the place where the pinnacle cliffs of buildings ran spurted and squidged amazing hues until they came like great organic things pumping out spermatorrhoeic rainbows in some last vast chthonic spectral orgamashem of brute creogulation while the small-dogging sky howled down-falls and shattered coloured lightbulbs.

  The junketing eferetted into every nanosecond, not all in many sparky spirits for those who wished to leave the square for illness or emergency unable to exculpate a limb in the milling mass. Some weaker and fainter Bruxellois fell beneath beating feet to be beaujolaised under the press. Cholera had to loot its victims standing as their bursting sweats ransacked to fertilise itself all round the strinkled garmen but bulging eyes not making much extinction in exprulsion between agony and ecstasy of a stockstill stampede sparked the harm beneath the harmony and many perished gaily unaware they burst at the gland and vein and head and vent and died swinging in the choke of its choleric fellation.

  Only when morning slutted at its lucid shutters the last crazed chords and colours writhed away did the paint-spattered herd gather what their rituals had wrought. From the cattle-pensioners rattled a great and terrible exclamor! Several who had in delurium clambered to the prismatic pinnacles to lick the suppurating hues now cast themselves for a final fling down to the fast-varying-geometry of the groundwave. The rest with remourning strength dancers horsevoiced singers drugees gaunt thieves true believers boozers and paletooled lovers crept away into clogged side alleys to coven their despair.