The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth

by Malcolm Pryce

  ‘So what does it mean?’

  He stood up and walked over to the shelves and took down a book and brought it over to show me.

  ‘Ever seen this before?’

  It was Ulricus’s Life of Pope Gregory.

  ‘Frankie Mephisto sent a copy to Sister Cunégonde.’

  He opened it and began leafing through the table of contents like an old scholar.

  ‘Pope Gregory the First is usually known as the guy who thought up the seven deadly sins. But there is a far more interesting, less widely known story about him. How’s your Latin?’

  I laughed. ‘About as good as my Greek.’

  Llunos took out a pair of reading spectacles and set them on the end of his nose. He began to intone in Latin.

  ‘Memorabile quod ulricus epistola refert Gregorium quum ex piscine quadam allata plus quam sex mille infantum capita vidisset …’ He looked up and slapped the book shut. ‘Ulricus is discussing the subject of celibacy in the holy orders. In particular he describes the day when Pope Gregory drained a fish pond near a nunnery and found six thousand infant skulls. Soon after that he rescinded the decree forbidding priests from marrying. Better to marry than burn. By all accounts this was not an uncommon discovery in medieval times. Luther records a similar finding in the basement of a nunnery at Neinburg in Austria. More recently, workmen excavating the foundations of a convent at Avignon found a similar cache. It seems that wherever you get a lot of healthy young women living together, it doesn’t matter what vows they take, or how strong you make the lock on the door, that old master locksmith, Mother Nature, will find a way in. The Sisters of Deiniol founded the original convent in twelve seventy something, about the same time as Aberystwyth Castle. After the chapel and the kitchen, the ornamental fish pond was the first thing they built. The skulls have been there a long time. It’s just that they keep turning up from time to time. The earth moves a lot next to an estuary apparently. My guess is they’re probably not too proud of them down at the Waifery, and Frankie Mephisto was threatening to publicise their little secret.’

  He put the book back on the shelf and said, ‘Come. Let’s go and do some interviews.’

  * * *

  We walked the five doors down to the precinct station and found Haywire waiting for us in interview room one, looking scared. We sat across the interview table from him and Llunos said, ‘Do you know why you are here?’

  Haywire shrugged.

  ‘This man says he went to see you earlier today and asked you some questions about a certain monkey called Bojangles. He says you weren’t very helpful. This man is a friend of mine, so if he wants to know what happened to the monkey, so do I. The only difference is I’m not so politely brought up as he is. Do you understand?’

  ‘But I don’t know this guy called Bojangles.’

  I squeezed my eyes together involuntarily. That was not a good way to answer a question from Llunos.

  ‘Sure you do,’ said Llunos. ‘You’ve seen the chap wheeling the barrel organ round town? You’ve seen the little monkey on top? Her name’s Cleopatra. Bojangles is her son. But she hasn’t seen him for fifteen years. He was born up at the college during the space programme but we don’t know what happened to him. Now you used to work up there at that time, so we thought we’d ask you. Am I making myself clearer, or do you need a truncheon in your mouth to help you concentrate?’

  The old professor swallowed hard, his eyes brightening with fear. He nodded anxiously; the nod that says, You don’t need to take out the rubber hose, I’ll tell you what you want to know. The pointless look of supplication. The people with the rubber hose already know you are going to tell them everything. They know from long experience that outside the movies there isn’t anyone tough enough to take what they have in their power to give. And you’re going to feel the rubber hose anyway, not because it’s necessary but because they like it. It’s that simple.

  Llunos pulled a cassette tape recorder across the desk. ‘This here is to ensure that you get a fair hearing and that no unfair pressure is applied to you during the interview process. Do you understand what I am telling you?’

  Haywire nodded.

  The policemen pressed down the record button and spoke gruffly. ‘Interview with Professor Haywire. Present are me, Haywire and a few other people. The witness has been advised of his rights and declined the presence of an attorney.’

  Haywire looked surprised to hear that but chose not to say anything.

  Llunos flicked the lid of the cassette player open and replaced the tape with another from his pocket. He pressed down the play button and we found ourselves listening to Mantovani. Llunos stood up, walked over to Haywire, grabbed his lapels, hoisted him to his feet, and threw him violently into the corner. Then he walked over to that corner, grabbed Haywire and threw him into the next. This procedure was known as the suspect falling off his chair. After Llunos had helped Haywire fall off his chair a few more times he put him back in the chair, sat down and turned the volume down. ‘As you can see, it’s not infallible.’ He put the original tape back in and began the interview.

  ‘OK. What happened to Bojangles?’

  Haywire paused while he collected his wits and then said, ‘I want you to know it wasn’t my idea—’

  Llunos leaped forward, veins throbbing at his temple, ‘I don’t give a fuck whose idea it was, you idiot!’

  Haywire threw his hands out as if shielding himself from a bright light. ‘OK, OK, OK. We called it sending them to Timbuktu. You see, we had a lot of monkeys born on the project so we had to get rid of them. It got to be pretty distressing, you know, taking the kids away from their mothers, so we invented this thing. We told them the kids were going to be research fellows at a foreign university, the University of Timbuktu, that way they would be sort of proud of their kids, you see. We even had a little “going away” suit made with a University of Timbuktu badge on the pocket. And a scarf and a bag. It was always the same suit, of course, but they never noticed. We’d have a little going away party and all the chimps would gather at the door and wave the little fellah off. Then when the door was closed we took his suit off and took him down the corridor to the animal behaviourists where they were conducting research into resistance to fear-extinction in primates—’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual questions of whether phylogenetic and ontogenetic stimuli are comparable once the orientation and aversive consequences of the ontogenetic FR stimulus are taken into account. That sort of thing.’

  There was a second’s silence in the room as Llunos blinked and the thought dawned on Professor Haywire that he might have said the wrong thing.

  ‘What,’ said Llunos in a slowed-down voice, ‘the fuck does that mean?’

  Haywire turned pale and Llunos looked at me, bubbling with rage. ‘Did you understand a word of that?’

  I wanted to say yes to spare Haywire but there wasn’t a lot of point.

  ‘Look, Haywire, you’re not up at the Arts Centre now with the rest of those dodos in their corduroy jackets, talking hooey in front of a canvas that looks like someone has thrown a tin of Dulux at it, do you understand? When I ask you a question you’ll answer in words I can understand.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ said Haywire. ‘Basically it means they were conditioning monkeys to be scared of flowers.’

  Llunos grabbed the arms of his chair in disbelief.

  ‘They did what?!’

  ‘Conditioned them to be scared of flowers,’ said Haywire weakly. He could tell this wasn’t going very well.

  ‘How can you be scared of flowers?’

  ‘That’s just the point. You can’t, normally. But if you give the monkey an electric shock every time he sees one, well, I mean you can make him terrified of anything. We even made them scared of toy rabbits.’

  For a while Llunos was too astonished to speak. Finally, he said, ‘B … b … but what’s the point?’

  ‘It’s to find out whether fear of things like
snakes and things is innate.’

  ‘Where the hell’s that?’

  ‘No, it’s not a place. Innate. It means built-in. Look, I didn’t like it either, I was just doing what they told me.’

  ‘Oh right, you were following orders, just like Klaus Barbie. Look pal, this is Aberystwyth not Nuremberg.’

  Haywire wisely kept his own counsel and there was silence in the room for a while as Llunos cogitated. An air of calm slowly took over but you could tell it wasn’t real calm, it was a thin layer over a boiling fury. He looked at me and I turned to Haywire.

  ‘Do you know anything about these postcards from Timbuktu?’

  He nodded weakly. ‘I didn’t mean any harm. I was just trying to spare their feelings. You know, pretend the little guy was still alive.’

  I stood up to leave, I needed some air.

  ‘So what happened to Bojangles then?’ said Llunos.

  I paused in the doorway to listen to Haywire’s answer.

  ‘We sold him to the holiday camp out at Borth: they had a travelling booth in those days that they sent round the country trying to drum up custom. You know – to agricultural shows and fairs and things. They took him along to entertain the kids. His first gig was Shrewsbury Flower Show. Died of heart failure.’

  The last thing I heard as I reached street level was the sound of Haywire falling off his chair again.

  When I returned from my walk, Haywire was gone and Cleopatra was sitting in the chair. She looked scared. The chair was too low and some phone books had been placed under her, but even so her chin was barely above the table top. Two tiny paws clutched the top of the table. Mrs Watkins was wearing the hat she normally wore to weddings and christenings. I explained the procedure to Cleopatra in a soft patient voice. And I asked Mrs Watkins to make sure she got the soft patient bit in the sign language.

  ‘Now look, Cleopatra,’ I began. ‘No one wants to hurt you, you understand, we’re your friends and we want to help you.’ I stopped to let Mrs Watkins catch up. Cleopatra nodded.

  ‘But we need you to help us and then everything will be all right, do you understand?’

  Cleopatra nodded again, still wide-eyed with fear.

  ‘All you have to do is tell us where Mr Bassett is.’

  ‘She says she doesn’t know,’ said Mrs Watkins.

  ‘All right,’ shouted Llunos, ‘that’s enough of the pussy-footing about. I want answers and this mangy little fur-bag is going to start singing.’

  Mrs Watkins sat there immobile, looking shocked.

  ‘Well, what the hell are you waiting for?’ he demanded.

  ‘You want me to say that?’

  ‘What do you think I brought you here for? Flower arranging? Just tell the monkey it’s time to cut the crap and start singing. Or signs to that effect.’

  ‘I’m not saying that!’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘Profanity. I won’t translate profanity.’

  Llunos started to get annoyed, the genuine variety as opposed to the dissembled stuff. That was always the way with ‘bad cop’: you forgot you were acting. ‘Look, Mrs Watkins, I haven’t got time here to dance round your sensibilities. You either do what I tell you or I subpoena you and send you down somewhere you’ll hear enough profanity to blow your hat off.’

  Mrs Watkins turned reluctantly to Cleopatra and translated. Cleopatra answered and Mrs Watkins turned to us. ‘She says she understands.’

  ‘OK, ask her again. Where’s her master?’

  ‘She says she doesn’t know.’

  Llunos slammed his fist down hard on the desk. Both Cleopatra and Mrs Watkins jumped. He got up and walked round and thrust his face up close to the monkey.

  ‘Right, listen to me good, fur-bag. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Play ball with me and you walk out that door right now. You want to play silly buggers, go ahead, see where it gets you.’ He reached into the monkey’s jacket and pulled out a little plastic bag with some white powder in it. ‘What’s this? Drugs, is it? Are you a dealer, are you? Is that your little game?’

  ‘I saw that!’ shouted Mrs Watkins. ‘You planted it on her.’

  Llunos turned the colour of a plum. He spun round and shouted at Mrs Watkins, ‘What was that!? You want some too, do you?’

  He thrust the bag of narcotics under her nose, pulled off her hat and then dipped his hand in and pulled the bag of powder out. He tore the bag open, dipped his finger in and tasted.’ I can’t believe it! Mrs Watkins from the deaf school is peddling snow.’

  ‘I … I … I want a lawyer,’ stuttered Mrs Watkins. She was trembling violently and it smelled like she had involuntarily urinated. But it could have been the monkey.

  Llunos paused and wiped the sweat off his brow. ‘What the hell are you talking about? You’re here to translate, you don’t need a lawyer.’

  ‘Well, stop bullying me then.’

  Llunos spat on the floor and Mrs Watkins gasped. ‘We’re doing our best,’ she said.

  ‘Like hell you are.’

  He looked at me and I took over.

  ‘Look Cleopatra,’ I said gently, ‘I don’t want to see you get hurt. This mess is none of your making, you’re just an innocent monkey caught up in it. I want to help you, really I do. But you need to help me. You understand? I know you had nothing to do with the cocaine they found in your pocket, but who’s going to believe me unless you help me first? You have to tell me where Mr Bassett is then we’ll speak to the DA and see if we can cut you a deal. All you have to do is tell us where he is.’

  Mrs Watkins answered, ‘She says why should she trust the word of a lousy cop.’

  Llunos rushed over again and grabbed the monkey by her Ardwyn school tie.

  ‘Because I’m all you’ve got, fur-bag! I’m the only thing standing between you and zoo-time, do you understand? I got enough to put you behind bars for the rest of your life. And I’m not talking about a safari park here or an open-plan place. I’m talking about one of those mangy cheap places in a holiday camp where you spend your days in a concrete room with a rubber car tyre hanging from the ceiling that’s supposed to be a tree in Africa. You want that, do you? You know what happens to animals in zoos like that? They get so bored they chew their own paws off. I’ve seen it happen. Now you think about that.’

  He stormed out of the room and I followed him. Outside, we looked in through the two-way mirror. Cleopatra sat in a pose of utter dejection, her head resting on her paws. Mrs Watkins was sobbing.

  Llunos drank coffee from a plastic machine cup. ‘Do you think I’m riding her too hard?’

  I shrugged. ‘Hard to say.’

  He screwed up the cup and threw it with a metallic clang into the bin. ‘Come on, let’s get it over with.’

  Ten minutes later a man in a fifty-dollar Swansea suit turned up and said he was the attorney for the Mephisto family and we were illegally detaining one of his clients. We had to let the monkey walk.

  Chapter 17

  THE PAPERWEIGHT WAS still lying on top of the ring-binder files where Llunos had left it. I picked it up and shook. Snow fell above Aberystwyth at Christmastide. Just like it did that day in June when Myfanwy begged me to take her away from Aberystwyth. The day I needed more time – the myth that cripples all our attempts on happiness in this world. The day it snowed in June, big feathery flakes falling from a grey summer sky like tufts of kapok from inside a broken old teddy, a bear with one eye and stitches for a nose like the old streetwalker, Lorelei. I pulled a bottle of Captain Morgan out of the drawer and filled a tumbler. I drank slowly, thinking about things, shaking the paperweight idly now and again. Gradually, the room grew darker, the level of amber in the bottle descending gently like the sun, sinking like the level of oil in a lamp. I put on my hat.

  Cambio, Wechsel, change … tickets for the continent … The Cliff Railway station had that time-worn, forlorn air of railway termini everywhere, places that offered the illusion of escape, a door to a new life. The rails dropped from the
sky, like the lowered ropes of a rescue party at the bottom of a collapsed mine shaft. I stood in the darkness of the doorway and stared.

  It had a ticket counter with an arched window, a snack bar where you bought your beer or tea and stood at a chest-high table that had no seats; it had a departure board and a clock; a crumbling lattice of ironwork in the ceiling supporting filmy grey pieces of cracked glass, dirt and droppings, and brooding gulls. It had a shoeshine machine and an empty fibreglass kid, dressed like a refugee from an Enid Blyton book, politely soliciting donations for a children’s charity; usually too there would be one or two women of the night soliciting with varying degrees of politeness; but what it didn’t have was a left luggage office. I felt a fool. I turned and headed down the Prom.

  The lengthening shadows signified a change of shift as eternal as the reversing tides. Bathers scurried off to the sanctuary of their homes and the people who wandered the beach now had ugly coats and unwashed hair and were laden with bottles of sherry of a type unknown to the men of Jerez. The scent of fried onions began to impregnate the breeze – the perfumer’s sizzling overture to the coming night. At Sospan’s, the townsfolk gathered for a last ice like wildebeest at dusk round an African watering hole. Yet here they licked a nectar far sweeter than the brackish waters of a lake where hippos swim. Vanilla: the analgesic of the heart, the scent of lugubrious South Sea lagoons, and of the nursery. I ordered one. A workman stood on the roof of the kiosk fixing the illuminated cone and its neon motto, Et in Arcadia ego, and we watched him work for a while because there was nothing else to watch.

  ‘Let the lamp affix its beam,’ quoted Sospan to anyone who wanted to listen. ‘The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.’

  I took my ice and continued walking, filled with soft envy for the donkeys that drink from the waters of the Lethe at either end of the Prom, and thus begin every journey bright with hope, while we all struggled to escape the snare of the past and the power of events from long ago to blight us. I thought of Brainbocs, who had been crucified by a vision of play on a summer’s afternoon; the simple image of a girl that lodged in his heart like shrapnel. And I remembered Rimbaud, haunted by acts that time would not give back; the albatross of his missing years weighing so heavily precisely because the years were not missing. They never are, except perhaps for Bassett for whom fate has devised another torment: a choice. Knowledge or oblivion. To throw away his past, never discover it, or to take the risk and look inside and be for ever stained by what he saw. He was doubly cursed. Damned if he opened and damned if he forbore. And I thought of Sospan and of the hidden sting in the tail of his Latin motto. Eeyore had explained it to me once. He said most people misunderstood it; the ‘et’ meant ‘even’ and not ‘also’ as was commonly supposed. Not ‘I too was in Paradise’, but ‘I was even in Paradise’. A subtle but crucial difference because the speaker was Death. Eeyore insisted that the ice man as secular priest was aware of the true meaning but I could never make up my mind. How much did Sospan really know? Did he receive that pale zigzag scar down his cheek from a brawl in a dark harbour-front bar in Marseilles? Or did he just fall on a cornet? Maybe his was the cruellest fate of all: that his soul was a blank; that he went into gelati to forget that he had nothing to forget.