Thongs

by Alexander Trocchi

  Thongs

  By

  Alexander Trocchi

  A Renaissance E Books publication

  ISBN 1-58873-112-X

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2002 by Renaissance E Books

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.

  For information contact:

  Renaissance E Books

  P. O. Box 494

  Clemmons, NC 27012-0494

  USA

  Email comments@renebooks.com

  Introduction

  On a cold morning in February 1922, some Gypsies moving across country between Madrid and Escorial came upon the naked body of a woman. In this fact alone there is nothing remarkable. Spain, perhaps more than any other country in the world, is the land of passion and of death. And in Spain death is cheap, from that glittering death in the bull ring to the quick thrust of the stiletto in a narrow street in a Barcelona slum. No, this death would have called for no further comment had it not been for one striking fact. The naked woman had been crucified.

  Thus the Gypsies saw her first from a long way off, struck like a scarecrow against the pale horizon, and as there was in that arid part of the country no crop to be protected, they approached to find out what it was.

  The body was covered with thin red lacerations as though before death the woman had been whipped mercilessly with fine rods. Across the belly on a fine silver chain was slung a small metal plate which bore the inscription: Carmencita de las Lunas, por amor.

  For love...

  The Gypsies set the cross with the corpse still nailed to it on the back of a donkey and took it to the nearest village. There they were arrested and thrown into the local jail to await judgment. The magistrate set them at liberty without hesitation when he arrived and directed that the body should be buried at once in unconsecrated ground.

  This was done. And if it had not been for a chance find of mine in a Madrid bookshop three years later, the amazing story of this woman's violent and passionate life might have been buried with her bleeding corpse.

  It was early spring in the year 1925 when I arrived in Madrid. I had gone there not only for the bullfights but also to look at the Prado, which I had not seen before. In a little street near the museum I came upon a bookshop and spent half an hour browsing amongst the old books. In a dusty pile of books in one corner I came upon the personal notebook of Gertrude Gault, alias Carmencita de las Lunas. It was an old notebook with stiff covers which in one way or another had been subjected to damp; the writing was faded and in places the ink had run. I would not have given it a second glance had it not been for the fact that it was written in English.

  On the flyleaf was a quotation in Spanish, which I subsequently traced to St. John of the Cross. It read:

  "He taught me a science most delectable, I gave to him, reserving nothing; there I promised him to be his bride..."

  There followed in a small neat hand perhaps the most amazing story I have ever read, a story which began in a Glasgow slum and ended in a crucifixion on an arid hillside in Spain, or rather, just before the crucifixion, for it was only upon making discreet enquiries towards the end of 1925 that I found that this woman's personal Calvary had actually taken place, and found moreover that certain influential people in Spain still made annual pilgrimages to the unconsecrated grave.

  It is my considered opinion that she not only consented to but demanded this terrible act; that according to their own lights her executioners acted with all sense of propriety. It was her own deep sense of destiny that drove Gertrude to become Carmencita.

  To give some sense of order to the narrative, it is necessary for the present editor to return to a street battle which took place in the notorious Gorbals district in Glasgow in 1916 during the First World War. Few of the Gorbals men fought for their country. They were involved in their own bloody battles. In recreating the battle scene with which this tale begins, I have had recourse not only to the notes of Gertude Gault herself but also to eyewitness accounts collected by me between 1926 and 1930 during which years the razor still ruled the Gorbals.

  It is of no small psychological interest to know that the father of Gertrude Gault was the human wolf known to all Glasgow as the Razor King and that one of her earliest adult impressions was of the mortal battle fought between this man and his own son, Johnnie, Gertrude's brother, in a Gorbals street. Who knows? Perhaps only such a brutal tribe of men could have produced a woman with such an infinite longing to be a victim.

  The rest of the narrative is written almost entirely by the protagonist herself, and for that reason it is truly Carmencita's book. The editorial work I dedicate with reverence to her agony.

  Nineteen-Sixteen

  The red disc of sun seemed to be suspended at no great height above the roofs in a thin, whitish-yellow atmosphere. No heat came from it. It was more like the sun on a primitive stage-set, a Chinese lantern, perfectly circular, and with no density. It was sill early and the city would have been silent had it not been for an occasional milk cart, its bottles clinking in their metal-strutted boxes, some early tramcars, and the gradually increasing clamor of the church bells.

  It was a Sunday morning in January and the winter-blackened trees on Glasgow Green and in other parks of the city were gaunt and lifeless. There was as yet no sign that in a few weeks, a month at most, the sap would begin to stir in them again. In the early morning frost their trunks had the hard glint of cast iron.

  With the disappearance of the January snow, the city had assumed its accustomed grayness, and now under the pale yellow sky and the heatless lens of sun, the streets of tenements on either side of the turgid, scum-laden river were almost deserted. Their heavy emptiness, caused in part by the time of the year, the earliness of the hour, and the fact that it was the morning after the Saturday night before, was accentuated by the preponderance of gray stone, quarried locally, which went to their building. More than all other towns in the country, those on the West coast of Scotland are gray, and Glasgow, the rambling metropolis of shipyards, engineering works, mining and construction companies, and endless factories, whose million inhabitants are often cut off for months on end from direct contact with the sun, is more than any other the gray city.

  At the beginning there were more women than men in the group, unkempt, hatless women with bare pink legs in broken shoes, the upper part of their tired, sun-starved bodies wrapped in black or gray shawls. Occasionally, one of the women broke away from the group, shambling off down Rose Street towards her flat. But as time passed, the group became larger and signs of life began to appear at the windows of the rooms which gave on to the street. The shrill coarse voice of a slum woman cried down from a window above their heads. Someone answered her. The woman at the window remained there, her flat red suspicious face craning out from the window above her flaccid breasts like some grotesque figurehead. She clutched a towel at her breasts in a thin red hand. Her mouth was open and even after she had been answered she hung there, waiting.

  They were all waiting. Most of them were incredulous. But a mute hunger for violence, common to each of them, held them together, reinforcing, animating the rumor.

  The men joined them, singly or in groups, coming slowly out of the closes which lined both sides of the street. The same caps, the same white scarves, the same boots. There were now more than fifty people in the crowd and the excitement was growing. They were all talking at once. The woman with the flat red face yelled something to another woman who leaned out over a windowsill at the other side of the street. The other woman cocked her head, blinked, and answered with a burst of braying laughter. The crowd shifted and turned, looking up and down the street and up at the faces which looked down on them from above.

  And
now it was clear that the young man in the blue serge suit, a white scarf at his throat like the other men, was the main point of interest for the crowd. He was leaning with his back against the wall below a street-level window. His hands were thrust deep in his trouser pockets and he answered questions quickly and incisively as they were put to him. He looked very young, with sleek black hair and a thick powerful body which caused the too-tight blue suit to have a corrugated appearance. His face was sullen, the lips thick and sensual, and his small gray eyes suspicious. Although the crowd made no move to interfere with him, he had the look of an animal at bay, his shoulders rounded against the wall and his heavy hands clenched in his pockets causing his trousers to bulge at the thighs. A half-smoked cigarette, unlit, hung from the corner of his mouth. He answered questions quickly but impatiently, without moving his cigarette. He seemed to be interested in those at the fringes of the crowd rather than in those close to him, or perhaps in something beyond the fringes, for as the men appeared from time to time, sidling from the closes along the street, his eyes narrowed and he watched them guardedly.

  Suddenly, from a window far above his head, a metal object fell. It struck the pavement with a sharp crack and ricocheted close to his feet. A hush came over the crowd and all eyes were focused on the open razor towards which his hand, after a moment's hesitation, moved. He seemed to be fascinated by the broad blue blade. He tested its edge with his thumb, his head tilted to one side like a bird's, almost as though he were listening to music, and then, very slowly, almost cautiously, he closed it within its white bone handle and looked up to see who had thrown it. The crowd followed his gaze. The girl at the window on the third story pointed twice at him.

  She was not pretty. Big, with thin wispy blond hair and slack lips painted a violent red, she leaned over them all, her massive soft bosom pendulous in a blouse of white satin, her hands clasped, her snail-white arms bent, elbows on the sill. The faces – except for Johnnie's – that looked up at her were not friendly. The men were perhaps amused but their eyes were hard and calculating. One woman shouted an insult to her and went into a guffaw. The other women joined in and soon the noise was deafening. The men joked with one another and looked up meaningfully. Only Johnnie, the young man who a moment before had been the center of attention, wasn't smiling. He had a serious, almost hypnotized look on his face, and his glance was still directed at the girl.

  But she was no longer looking at him. She was cursing inaudibly at the crowd. And then, when she realized she wasn't heard, she leaned forward over the sill and spat carefully at the woman who had insulted her.

  A sudden angry silence came over the crowd.

  A large, big-boned man, the husband of the woman who had been spat at, let out an oath and barged his way quickly towards the close which led up to the girl's apartment. The crowd fell aside to make way for him. Johnnie watched his approach without expression. It was not until the man was within a few feet of the close that Johnnie moved. He did so with a sudden snarl, the razor flashing open in his right hand. The man stopped abruptly, a yard away, facing him. A slow hissing sound came from the crowd. Johnnie crouched, the blade ready.

  "Fuck off, Beck!" he said. "Take yer bloody mug awa frae here!"

  The man hesitated, glowered at the naked blade Johnnie held rigidly at the level of his face. He stood his ground, his face white and his fists clenched at his sides. There was a deadly hush. No one moved. The faces of the spectators were twisted in anticipation.

  "Ah'll gie ye five seconds tae fuck off!" Johnnie said quietly.

  The long white scar that ran down the left side of Beck's face from temple to chin became as white as chalk. The young man who threatened him was speaking with his father's voice, the same wolf's look.

  Abruptly then, Beck turned on his heel and walked away. As the crowd fell back before his retreat, he said loudly for them all to hear: "Ah'm no wantin tae interfere wi the mornin's sport!"

  That might have justified him had it not been for the protracted shriek of a woman's laughter that rang out like the rattle of bones from overhead. Beck froze in his tracks, turned, looked over his shoulder at the young man who barred his way, and spat viciously on the street. Johnnie watched him balefully, and then, when Beck continued to walk away, he closed the razor with a snap, turned himself, and disappeared into the close.

  The crowd, left to its own devices, did not disperse.

  The woman was waiting for him, the door of her flat ajar. He entered cautiously.

  She was standing away from the window now, near the large bed, her big breasts heavy in the white satin blouse and faintly pink beneath the material. She was wearing nothing else. Her fat slug-like belly ran outwards to its own ripple and fell inwards towards her crotch with its tuft of coarse colorless hair. The color of an old man's moustache.

  Her haunches were flaccid and the big round thighs were streaked gray with dirt. The legs were fat, the ankles thick, and the toe-nails on the spatulate toes were wedged with filth. An insinuation. In one of her pudgy white hands, held between two fingers stained brown from nicotine, a cigarette wilted.

  She looked at him through her watery, childlike eyes, and smiled at him with slack, very red lips.

  He stood watching her with a mixture of lust and loathing. She was like any one of the prostitutes in the numerous brothels in the Gorbals. But she was an amateur. They said she had money of her own.

  She shuffled in her bare feet over to a cupboard and brought out a bottle of cheap spirits. She poured out two glasses. He was fascinated by the great sack-like buttocks and the thin spines of the thighs with the network of fine red veins behind the colorless sheen of hairs. Perhaps it was the imminence of death that brought his lust to a hard knot at his vitals. But excitement gained on him. He accepted the proffered glass without protest. And when she stood against him, breathing through the slack red lips at his face, he made no move to escape her.

  He felt the sudden exciting chill at his loins as her hand worked loose the buttons of his trousers and a moment later felt his sex rampant in the soft fatness of her palm.

  "Come on, Johnnie!" she said huskily.

  He felt himself drawn to the bed and with his trousers dangling below his hard buttocks, his belly fitted like a forehead against her. He groaned as he sank into the pale lips of her sticky slit. Her hands closed over his buttocks. With an oath he worked blindly and angrily like a gouge at her heavy crotch.

  It could not last long. The woman had offered herself with sure knowledge at a moment of crisis. He was back on the street in less than a quarter of an hour.

  When he reached the street, his face was wooden. The woman, returned to the window, looked down from her vantage point. When she saw Johnnie's gaze, she made a slight movement with her hand. He was smiling when he looked down again, but the smile drained away as he surveyed the crowd. It got on his nerves as well as theirs. They were glancing at him uneasily. They were waiting.

  "Hey, Allison!"

  A young man of his own age stepped forward from the front ranks of the crowd.

  "Go an tell the auld bastard ah'm waitin!"

  Allison nodded. He turned on his heel and disappeared through the crowd.

  The men nearest the front began talking now, passing the news back to the fringes. It moved quickly, like an electric spark, like a catalytic agent which caused the members of the crowd to grow together again in purpose. They were elated. All disbelief was washed out of their expressions. The women especially were watching Johnnie as he took up his position against the wall. He seemed to feel the change and respond to it. His thick features were flushed and his jacket was hanging open, disclosing the vest in whose pockets at either side was a razor, the white-handled one which the girl had thrown him on the right, and a larger black-handled one on the left. They were impressed. The new item of information ran through the crowd as the first had, increasing the tension. Then, as he cupped his hands in front of his mouth to light a cigarette, a sudden shivering of glass on me
tal caused all heads to turn. A milk cart was turning into the street at the far end. He scowled as he threw away the spent match.

  Slowly, a few yards at a time, the skinny white horse approached, drawing the rattling milk cart in its wake. At each close it halted while the boy mounted the stairs to deliver milk to the flats. The red-haired man at the reins sat high on the cart, slumped forward, and smoked a broken clay pipe. He was aware of the crowd which was thinning now but not dispersing. The women clustered on the corner, talking excitedly, and the men, in twos and threes, leaned on the walls lining both sides of the street. They watched the snail-like progress of the cart without interest. Nevertheless, the passage of the cart along the street provided a distraction, an interval of lower tension which lasted right up to the moment when, as fortuitously as it had appeared, it rounded the corner of Rose Street and left the central lane of the roadway once again deserted.

  At that moment, as the rear end of the cart turned the corner, Johnnie tossed his glowing cigarette butt into the gutter and closed his jacket. Three police constables had appeared suddenly where the cart had turned and were strolling at a leisurely pace along almost the same route. The faces of the men became impassive and those who carried them opened Sunday newspapers and made the movement of relaxing against the walls. Simultaneously, those who had been hanging out of the windows disappeared from their places and the windows were closed, presenting a uniformly gray exterior. The women meanwhile gathered their shawls about them and moved deeper into the doorways or entered the flats of their neighbors at ground level until there was no sign of a woman on the street. Johnnie, isolated now, with at least ten yards between himself and the nearest group of men, lit another cigarette, thrust his hands deep into his trouser pockets, and stared vacantly at the pavement in front of him. He remained in this posture for some seconds and then, as though the thought had just occurred to him, he extracted a neatly folded gray cap from his right-hand jacket pocket and fitted it with great care close to his scalp. He looked up then, his eyes traveling along the groups of men reading their newspapers to the three helmeted constables who had stopped in the middle of the street, looking casual, as though they were discussing the weather or the architecture of the tenements, their hands clasped peacefully behind their backs in an at-ease position and their white faces under their dark blue, silver-studded helmets glancing upwards at the impenetrable windows and the sky beyond.