Barefoot in the Head

by Brian W Aldiss

‘The name?’

  ‘Your little master race girl Elsbeth?’

  ‘She Jewish

  They used to call that the master race.

  No that was the Germans.

  I forgot. Another world. You want her.

  You want her you take her you going on with Laundrei?

  Also Ruby Dymond in human shape to Angeline grasping her hand in oldworld form moving her behind a treebole.

  ‘Is this straight Charteris is hiving off on his own do I read the thing right?’

  ‘Ruby he’s straightening out past the world. Who knows this chemifect may all wear off in a few days and old time start up again so stick with him and see he doesn’t get himself killed in the general curfuffle.’

  His furtive shrugs of pain the hurt deep under a moist pelt. ‘But he tried to kill you honey — look leave him he’s got nothing for you the disintegration man himself and you with me so cosy.’

  ‘Sometimes he’s kind to me maybe all I deserve.’ Now from the long brackets of her inherited eyes spark the first tear.

  ‘You all screwed up, Angey, honest I hate to see you be done down and come off with us!’

  His secret words fended her. Drawing up, wiping off her wet nose on a handback, she says in bitter tone, ‘Don’t mix me up Ruby if he needs me I can’t help it!’

  ‘So you said about Phil and now this same mistake all over! Honey I beg I got to go the others are rolling now come on and this last time break your unlucky cycle!’

  Stilly with a crumpled face, ‘Ruby — Ruby — he needs me!’

  ‘I need you, he tried to kill you!’

  ‘Well he’s desperate!’

  Of a sullen the wild ox sprouted under his eyebushes, ‘Oh fuck you you silly stubble bitch!’ and with that he was bending his giant back among the common melée with all commotion. All were multi-backed to fusilage along dead reckoning; Army only faced the demasted master.

  Looking around at the hoofers and the revvobiles with the groups starting up the Fantineers and Deutchofiles and a quick brainscan. We got to orient with the action dont let grass go under our teeth eh its a lawn of asia.

  Briefly they made palmhistry. High road. Low road. Scotland afore ye. Never meet again. There we all parted. Franfurt sign. Poxeaten pozibilities. Army farewell.

  So the acceleration of mechanical joybox and the old footdown thirst of essolution. Jerk of cerebral juices destiny carvorting down the long within and the crazy internal kilométrage a brown near black instressed masteracing. On the bumpers nestled the new animal plural in solidity and near life as the pinballing progress meshed from the plass. Lopped tree lopped tree lopped tree loppedtree lopptree stood ruinously neat the clibbered rectungstone cobbles the red rodentures of the town hall biting sky the buildings semisubmerged on their shoals and all else on a low primevil light as wheels bore tribe dust smoke noise away dying sullen. In the lime embedded lost lingerers sank to the fossil mouth under drab oolite.

  The natives of the tableau mooched across the tattlefleld or on fours dragged off the injured. Small dogs were there tearing at fingers and jugulars as life slumped back to textbook level. Two figures stood anonymously round the Frankfurt sign. Buildings burned with the cool air-burling flames of time.

  Beneath this conbastion in shelfence sank the brontostructures the rathaus and gaunt grandosaurs down under the cobblesea without windowed strata still chronsuming themselves and on the tide big stone forests bursting green and all verdure trumpling brack out the Rhine to what was in uttered mindchaos downwards.

  The saint with Angelina executing the bipedal homosap walk on the way to the banshee all yellowspeckle as of toads bellyupwoods squeeping to right themselves and chunks falling off the western wold where the alternatives feralled. The car lumbering and she mutely asking where drained from her own sacrifice.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He’ll swing to destruct with self-inflected Cass and all.’

  ‘I asked you where you think we going.’

  ‘And all the music-muckers with them to the endless ends they clave all dreaming they aren’t dreaming in Kundalinicoils,’ under the sediment of long custom embedded. Looking ahead at the rockwalls, tyres tweeting on curbstones.

  ‘You don’t care a bit what happens to them Col do you!’

  ‘A new continuum has to alp itself from the screenery and potentiality is low from old corpses so mulch the old trodisues out of the worldbody.’

  Her young face shrunk back to its ultimate socket. ‘You hate everything!’

  ‘Schweitz doesn’t line my inscape baby we’ll push east... Anyhow Anj I love everything that really has a shape.’

  The rocking days closed over them, nights and afternoons with random weather, her womb rounding against the cracked april dayflight, the whole gestation-infestation opera yelling out on the revolutionary stage with mumps of pelting birds peeling larvae popping buds paregoric eggs in the drain downwards to emptying order-tors bared to the basalt. Until all his cogitations produced only To live with people Anj be with people love them hate their userpenting sleep, in a monosigh.

  So you still breathe jesuspirations!

  Get disenstrangled of this loot-in with Christ eh for gods ache its not for me that or you or anyone else ever agame that deathorglory boy with his nailed-up mystery and mixing pain with promise has all foiled up virtue against crudelty and permanan revel oution of our clockwatch west so now we break the square old charmed cycle. Be not do Anj be not do.

  Amid the sprockets of his coinage he trod again the uncertain footage of his film seeing how it all fell in eternal recurrents and eddies of horning and horning with the everetrancing of steps slideways intombtime to the opening price of verture where the goahead geton-or-getout of caputulist christ was turd to ambivied materialschism and every grass and brute caught for an exploit.

  So as the Pleonastocene Age curded to a closure the banshee crumbled under the thundering glearbox to grow up into deeply scarlet peony by the sacred roadslide where they finely went on foot with Anjie meandering through the twilicker her golden grey goose beside her it in its beak holding gently to her smallest twigged finger with Charteris choked in his throat’s silence.

  Beneath them turned a greenfused planet where foliage unscrewed itself from the earthworld and they afflected by its field down to the last gaussroot of being. The wayfarers on their way youngbuds straplings or grey elders were of that earthworld impacted and she by this soothed Angey lifted from her lost garden and said to saint in a recurrent phrase

  All the known noon world loses its old staples and everything drops apart. You should show us how to keep a grip until the bomfact wears thin and fight the growing forest.

  When there was no forest were mock-ups of forest. When no PCAs organised religions as mock-ups of the personal paradise. Learn it angel not too hardly that the ferrocities of white officegoers had to crackup and tuck your city inside the only building is. Even in old concretions there pattered those our starcasters who went barefoot to the real experience hold their faith.

  Expurience of drugged disorient.

  Disorient we want and the nonwestered sun of soma.

  In the dark under piping bushes the talk was all bodies they became interchanged statement to threnody stamen to peony ransacked of all loved lute.

  He had grown out of too many lifetimes but this span bridged all there was valued. For her too no longer the grey-lagging little girl but that also. Some easement in the general break.

  To the evereast they talked and walked among the littling humlets with stopped steeples while to meet them avrilanched from there even from Serbia itself curled hunters forest away but a day now retidings in its roots small black ringletting pigs and its boles whisperfaced littlemen and its trunks the glowing eyes and razorbones of subsisterly glowing eyes and razorbones and its branches the quick lead thing still scunnered with eyes and bones enterbal and in the leaves scabrerattle of birdsong and in the earth beneath a whole sparce tempscape ciscumstantialing
the grotted world.

  She broke with elmed summer into twain and he glazed through the furry wires of his conch to see his baby girl with Anjys lip of beads touch still between them the poor wages of pain words how everstretched never pinioned truth flying feathers of lovenests sprawling at heroic dusks sumptuary in feeling midfeeling deepernal but the white always winning as light flapped and varicosed in rustickled veins it cried at night barehead in all garrots where he spoke or harped silence as the concrete towers regressed.

  The girl needled her small tranjecstory by his side or sprang after the rumpattering piglets in golden time so Anjy offered again seamly thewd thighs in splicing gesture. In him inartriculate patterns fuzzed and fazed stridulant through leafmoulded enterospection daytripping beyond his old throught records fobsilled deep only sometimes distirred by menacimages someone always drowning in beanstained waters beyond shingles behind a line of noctous epijean figures where shilluettes the sherd.

  Living barefate in sheughs or hams where travellers now could share salaami and bread in humbled rooms they lodged craking ramshack many citizens lined to speak many he felt he could reckonise their plane shapes crossing and recrossing between him and the recessed light all asked him What you make of christs tearching or even Are you anti-Christ

  So he Friends think fuzzed in diseither-organisated for mid-paths neither for nor anti what he said its Those whore not for me are agrainst me just a bit more punchy phallacy in westrun style there’s a newtrality to cultivate to be more receptive look for shades patterns where this goodevil stuff cant rise he startled too many hares for Man the Drover

  The shins of the flesh mere alimbic fantasy

  Don’t be for or against anyone only the waking thing that lies in sleep

  Hold firm to dreamament

  Its the pattern of percertivity

  Awakes the greater sleep

  Don’t think we’re too well made or permanent

  You are more merged each than you believe

  Better sensuous than sensible

  All you must have within is outside among verdance Christ and the westering thing supposited the inside out

  Never imagined where all the roads would lead

  Here

  The eternal position

  You have to have been there first

  Many theres

  For the here no multernatives

  His thought chewed deeper and deeper into the ruralities as the herding greentides lipped them

  Other thought impacted two thousand years

  Driver man became pedestrian. Be not do

  At times he trod in every belief beneath a broken art sign or died again the thousand psychic deaths of croesus christs last autobile age

  Barked the shins of the flesh under dogroses till senescence Saw and herded many nakedassed children to become holy men and whoremongers and homebodies

  Talked less wondered more thought of crafty old G only a span along the net leaning on an old rope bed picking his toes as christs millerimage hitler came and went

  Never knew anger allowed himself to be laughed at by strangers

  She knew they who knew did not laugh who laughed did not know

  Yawned as the phimpricked autumn grilled her hearsole

  Tried not to teach but learn from his disciples Peeled off the long long sepiage of photographs

  Watched aeroplanes in another sky

  News from the statedepartmented north not reaching

  Scratched himself

  Taught the disciples to sit and weigh dust All alternatives and possibilities exist through old mottled gums under a spreading square tree where some tiles still lodged but ultimately of course

  Ultimately they asked listening

  Poignantly shall I tell them

  No way of telling anyone only through silence

  Ultimately of course

  They let the vast blackdrop curtain their waiting

  In the hours of morning he said I will answer your ultimate question thinking that glowing eyes and razorbones burned unattended

  So under the sparky starcover he let her old arms lull him but the brain still burned towards its wisdom he crept away from her guzzling sleep amid the multibrood climbed out through the stiffly hole in their thatched roof lay flat there under pulverised galaxies

  Put his arm over the curved spine of roof rough and warm breathing

  Gigantic beast patient My ultimate wisdom my nonsense

  Suddenly wildly flightening the hateful faces of his discarded selves when a man dreams instead of acting falling by the wayside the slow bonfire of unaccustomed words had he had a bad dream the archetypal figures or was he still lying arrowed on a hyperborean shore.

  Feeling himself half-slipping from the roof he roused ultimately of course

  Keeping an fuzzed open mind

  That wasnt enough the forests are back

  Brains just an early model half unwaked shaped for the forests

  You want it both ways

  Did I have it both ways

  Made and destroyed lived and tomorrow maybe Both means two more than two many ways many many ways my chief word to the world I’ve been thought as well as body spirit and prick soul and stomach both

  Slipping back into old astotelian ways of thought slipping off this damned roof cold

  Was aristoddle also christ the proudwalker too old too damned old to think clearly back to nearderthal times

  Climbed slowly down off the roof woke one of his grandaughters who went with care to blow on the embers and brew him a mug of redcurrant tea the warmth back to basics Pinhole camera my sight of shapes all fluffed Either too old or too young to think but who knows old angeline where was it I met her I loved her loved her in my way loved her being in many women

  Thought about waking her till dawn came then she stirred bent nearly double came patted his gnarled hand and said something he had forgotten his bit I had a little speech for you

  Heard too many of your speeches in my time you have to make your ultimate speech today do you know what you are going to say do you ever know

  Perceived that this old place is really a great beast cantering us over the nightplane

  Give me your animist patter again waking us all up in the small hours

  Once they were everlasting hours

  Do you know what youre going to say theyll all be under the meetree expectoring you

  Meant to tell you something personal angel something about a flower or a cactus or something

  Tyrannical really he still had not come to the end of words What year was it where were they she forgot finally he went out shuffling must be ninety who knows if its still this century even

  I wonder if he was jealous of Christ

  A doityourself christkit no nails needed

  They were under the tree had his old bed there where they flies flicked about in the peeving shade he smiled his crafty old G smile and sat on the bed scratched his toes maybe he really would tell them

  They waited in droves

  No knowing the calendar

  On this special day saint you were to speak about the ultimate

  Yes

  Well you patterny people with hands Byzantine born to genureflect below the low hair weigh dust well let it drip an hour or two we may not have beaten time but it no longer drives us desperate before it nothing like a catastrophe to lengthen lifespan pledge my last liquors to humbug the humbuggers and the ones who never made it

  If they knew the flip old thoughts I blaspheme against my own holiness

  Green and tawny under the tree the patterns they mean

  We learnt to sit under trees again stop looking for better trees concentrate yourself under an inferior tree

  One of his grandsons sneaking away he had news of an organised state north somewhere what was his name that man dead now a white sort of gown or uniform Boreas no matter Concentrated on his big toes the long within We learnt to sit under trees again the longer without In the old days Now the empty b
owl

  But I can remember sitting in a car and driving all through the night

  Remember the old autostrada del sole the red lights paired tinily capable ceaseless countless swarming pintabling under the hills and over the bridges viaducts mighty mountains headlines slicing nature in two not a thing ever like it never no greater thrill we were all little christs then own death or salvation right there in your steering hands.

  Autocrashes full of orgone-content like copulation bayonetpracticide war nothing personal in it only all things inferfused and the exhaust-throat snarling The sparks died into the earth finally My capital crime nostalgia Fault of early brain model flickering

  During the long silence a small boy trotted round with fruit to eat and a disciple deferentially handed the saint an apple cut by his pocket knife the saint mumbled a segment

  When they were all silent he sat up toes in the dirt

  They waited

  He waited

  Their dull conformist minds he would have to give them holy law okay but spiced with heresy let them grit it right up their nostrils

  Ultimately he said

  At least they would always hold him immobile in their eyes not exactly the posture he had once aimed for but only fair he had tried genuinely tried

  To hold them all in his eyes

  It must embody what he had always thought must enshrine him at the same time contain the seeds of his liberation in another generation must be as old as the hills as old as the hills must gleam like headlights were holy law and heresy he started again and they listened

  All possibilities and alternatives exist but ultimately

  Ultimately you want it both ways

  Later much later when his old bed had been devoured they propped up the branches with long poles and stuck a sign on the tree and later still they had to build a railing round the tree and later still tourists came metalboxed driving down from the north to stare and forget whatever was on their minds

  BRIDGING HOUR IN WESCIV

  Cryogenetic wings

  bourning another spring

  croaking forth on

  the tundragged wrathland