How to Swallow a Pig

by Robert Priest

  THE MISUSE OF CRADLES

  The thing we call a cradle is actually a very ancient invention, a secret configuration designed by a holy scientist who died a second before she could explain its great use to her king. For years it sat where she had left it, powerful and mysterious — a device which could, it was said, if properly used, utterly change the world. In an attempt to unlock this secret, the king had cradles installed in every home and made a proclamation that anyone who could devise a method to make them work would be rewarded with great wealth. Thereafter you saw cradles put to every kind of use — cradles high atop the aerials, cradles flying through the air, cradles in waterwheels, on tree tops, cradles housing lions, bears, bombs, rockets — all to no avail. Eventually this ancient king died and, there being no use for them, all the cradles were put in attics. Then new kings came, and newer kings, and kings of a different name until everyone forgot the cradles and the king and his contest. It wasn’t until much later that people rediscovered these ancient devices and realized that whatever else they did, they were very good for rocking babies in — a practice which has continued to the present day. And that is the true history of cradles and an explanation of the secret in the nursery which gives every mother (if she can only learn how to use it) immense and incredible power.

  THE LITTLE SINGER

  The little singer was a miner in the flames, a sun-denizen. He was a silver thread weaver. Ten times a night he wrapped it around the world. Now, a spider in lullaby, he hangs from the aerials turning and observing, growing full in the moonlight, holding communion with comets and crows, singing that endless melody of his, a melody that haunts and stays with you — a melody of eternal sadness. The little singer is an angel transplanted, a victim of a new divine science, he is a harp in skin, a trumpet in bones. He is a reed with silver hair, a bold boy of ivory, singing high and sweet and horribly sad above the rooftops. We watch TV and we see this little singer, his image doubling over the game shows. The little singer is there for the sports, unbearably bright in the sun. The singer is there in the newscast. His song filters through the radio from any channel — the star child, the little singer. Nobody can get the melody out of their head. People find themselves singing along, and then curse themselves, reminded of a deep sadness. They can’t bear it much longer so they go to cut him down. They go up with scissors, with garden shears, with knives and razor blades and quickly they cut the slender thread that keeps him turning up there in his chrysalis. They bring him down into their homes and put him in one of the cradles. Still he is singing. He sings all night in the cradle and the house is full of his song. Everybody sings his song in their sleep and wakes up sad. Everybody goes to the cradle in the morning and the child is silent. He is asleep, the stardust all over him beginning to fade. The child is becoming one of us. His lips still move in sleep, still singing that melody. You can almost read it on his lips. You will never forget it but he will never sing it the same again. He wakes up and looks at you — his mother, his brother, his father. You all come to kiss him. You welcome him into the family. You cleanse the last strands of web from around his eyes and begin teaching him how to speak.

  A VERY LEAKY FAUCET

  One evening a rabbit shadow dripped from my faucet and was joined in the middle of the room by a lot of other shadows, forming a mass of darkness. But where were the creatures these shadows came from? A whole cow dripped from the faucet, the buffalos, the pigs lowing, God, there were eagle shadows in the room, zeroing in on the centre of that ever-glowing darkness. I felt the run of cold calf’s blood, veal-like in my bones. Soon the cock will crow and the room will be full of darkness, a detached darkness that can’t get lost, won’t ever disappear, only light going into it and never meeting eyes. The eyes are gone wandering now, or, axe-weary, have fallen at last into dust. Lo, lo you cattle of the cutlery, you haunted sheep of the living room. Soon there will be no place to hide. All the darknesses will be filled; no Christ of the animals to drain you out through the loopholes of love. O animals, gather in the kraal of my ribs your once-rich voices and we shall speak in the language of herds. But then, I thought, what if people gather in the streets and walk together, sure of slaughter but following anyway? Not willing to go with this, I made my way over to the faucet and with all my might turned the tap till I heard a screech of closure. There was a tense moment of hesitation, outrage in the pipes, and then the dark migration stopped, leaving me with this mewling ball in the middle of the room. I waited until the sun set, until the darkness in the room was no different than the darkness of the gone animals. Then, walking through them, almost seeing them, darker than darkness, grazing on my carpet, I opened the window and, by turning on a fan, ushered them screaming into the front yard. Where, to my knowledge, they were at last completely absorbed into the general night.

  THE PIG WHO DISCOVERED HAPPINESS

  The pig who discovered happiness didn’t tell anyone, not even the other pigs. It just lived a life of perfect glee dancing in meadows like a lamb, scooting up trees to sing from branches out of sight — a completely happy pig. And not a stupid pig by any means. This pig knew what was coming, but even that didn’t affect its delight. It could have been an historic pig if it liked — a Leif Eriksson of pigs, a Columbus of pigs, and yet it remained a pig that never once tried to reveal its happiness to other pigs. This would only have decreased its happiness. This would have involved it in endless arguments. Better to be quiet and happy, the pig thought. And so, if bad weather befell, if tragedy struck, still that pig could be gleeful. And even at the very end, as it was marched to the abattoir, with all the others squealing and shrieking with fear, even then this pig kept quiet the great secret of its happiness. Not until it realized that its time was coming — not until it knew its own happiness would at last be ended did it attempt to tell the others. As they strung it up by the foot to slit its throat, it began to shriek in its high pig voice, letting out, alas, too late, that long-held and, by then, unintelligible formula.

  THE LITTLE PIG OF SELF-RESPECT

  The little pig of self-respect got away from General Li Tu. It ran greased and squealing through the populace as the soldiers tried to catch it, leaving the general with a pig-shaped space suddenly missing from his heart. Immediately the weasels of remorse began to burrow in, looking for that absence. Hedgehogs of guilt and bloodfish of anguish long held at bay sucked their way along his veins, up through the marrow, all looking for that small shivering pig-space, to live in its emptiness, to take up residence in its vacated temple — the general, left writhing, sweating on the bed, beset by terrible visions, knowing there was no more pig-space inside, just a crammed banquet hall full of ravenous mice, and gorged weasels toasting each other with his blood. No more pig-space in the soul! Afterward, when the little pig of self-respect was dragged back to him, crying and squealing, he had nowhere left inside himself to put it. He had to wear it, stitched down, over his shoulders, like a kind of pink epaulette.

  THE VIOLENT MAN’S HAND

  The violent man’s hand fell into the dust and withered to the size of a seed. Later, from that spot grew the wheat that would be ground down into the earth by armies, the grains that would be burned and turned back to earth in peace.

  The violent man’s hand fell into the heap and from it a bird burst — a bright bursting bird, a third bird, a herd of birds, so that the hand leapt and spattered as each bird burst from it. Finally it was a spent black splinter from which blue sparks leapt.

  The violent man’s hand sank into the earth at two miles per hour, heavy as lead. To come back as a bomber angel, dark Lucifer jets with arms full of crosses and gelignite, bleak bomber angels, that only to look into the eyes of a newborn child can bring down, one by one — dark flies, dark fear-flung fists overhead, the severed hands of those who would strike us, dark wings of surrender, bleak hands of poverty thrown high.

  The hand that was nailed up, crossed down, crushed at the foot. The hand that went mad and took on rage like seven gravities. T
hat is why there are holes in Arkansas, call them comets, call them what you will. There is rage in those hands when they come down and the children run inexplicably past certain houses, terrified of a sound no one else can hear.

  THE MAD HAND

  Once there was a floating walking hand which went ‘round and ‘round the world darting and crawling, hoping to evade detection, sometimes scaring drunks and small children. A wild leaping scampering hand not wishing to be part of a circus but utterly mad, knowing only old routines and concentric habits like circles at the bone — to dance, to tap, and insanely, to shake hands. That‘s why this hand took to creeping into embassies and literary parties, so that it could crawl up table legs, wait for the right moment and then dive into a handshake, usurping the place of the intended other hand with a shrill kind of scream. This is the hand that madly signed papers over and over again, pouring wine glasses back into nothingness, tilting back beers, making its stump shriek like a whistle.

  For a while the hand hung out with spiders thinking it might be one of them. It dreamed of running over buttons like a minefield, setting off sequences of roses in some drunkard‘s head, detonating poems like Q-blasts. “Arrrrgh! Take me to the abodes of people! Get me into a glove! I will buck and jolt. I will seize up and spit blood if I do not get involved in a caress.”

  One thing the hand liked to do was grope and poke at parties — touch people in places no living human being could get at — give a poke in the dark and then roll across the floor like a combat-trained creature, chuckling with sheer unbearable squeals as the puzzled party-goer nervously eyed whoever was behind him.

  Sometimes the hand liked nothing better than to ride the still surface of a stream like a water spider — to just hang there above its own reflection, each finger, as it touched the mirror, leaving a poem to the sky, an ode to the sun, a divine literature.

  It is also true that the hand would sometimes go into a factory, start up the conveyor belts and madly assemble amazing gadgets, strange amalgams and marvelous gimmicks, all the while whistling with its strange humour until it fell down, exhausted.

  Of all things, the hand most enjoyed slapping the faces of dictators when they made big speeches on television. This made the hand well-known to all despots, but due to the fact that these programs are pre-taped, the mad escaping hand never had the pleasure of having its handiwork seen by the masses. So if you ever see a political speech and, after a commercial, the great leader comes back on looking a little stunned, a widening red imprint spreading out on his cheeks, look at that shape, that map, that message in the right light and you will see it for what it really is — the mark of a mad hand.

  THE ESCAPED COCK

  For a long time the escaped cock worked in a Welfare office gathering contempt for humanity. Dressed in a hat, it learned to speak in a deep voice, practising by saying “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” over and over again. At night the cock would go home and deflate. It would lie around limp on its bed, curled up like a huge worm dreaming of power and smelling of Aqua Velva. The cock could not accept that it had no bones — that it was just blind flesh. Desperately, the cock began to don new disguises and wander. The cock in Washington. The cock hanging around outside gun stores. The cock eating human food — meat, meat, meat. For a while the cock wore a dress and pretended to be a woman, but the cock wanted to know about murder so it joined the army. It volunteered for firing squads whenever it could and so came to shoot human being after human being until it no longer felt anything about them — shooting them through the heart, shooting them in the mind, shooting and shooting and shooting. As time went by, the cock began to rise through the rnks from soldier to sergeant to major. A general! Always a loner. Four stars — a sham, an inhuman thing, an alien presence in the army. But now the cock could get close to the bombs, the great fertile bombs, bombs like eggs in underground ranks. The cock had the power. It could rub its face on the bombs, mad about having no bones, a little crazy, bursting at odd times into tears, but a good soldier. Not so good on TV though. The face twitched. What if they uncovered the awful truth? This was no human being. This was an awful escaped cock. This was the big, violent dick, the maniac genital. This was the terrifying schizophrenic cock — the killer cock of the world. There was a tense moment when the cock was asked its first question: “Now tell us, General Le Coq, to your knowledge was the army in any way involved?” The cock took a hanky and wiped some sweat from its glans. Then it spoke in its deepest voice, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!”

  THE MAN WITH THE NITROGLYCERIN TEARS

  The man with the nitroglycerin tears, his sorrow terribly intact, stared from a window and waited for rain. It was amazing how much pain he kept bottled up in blue and white eyes — thick, compressed pain, like sap, colouring his features in deep rings of rage, spreading out like poison to the rim of his fingertips. If the trees were this full of pain, they would twist in agony, making hideous shapes over graveyards, screaming with the wind, black howls from hell on earth. Aaaaah, the pain that would not leak out of his eyes. How this pain thickened in his throat, the hands grasping like roots in his sleep, mad, in a frenzy to be caught up in something. Perhaps he would fly and weep in an airplane, the bright explosions of his tears like bombs in the night below. Weep over barracks, weep over parliaments. Weep, sobbing with grief over churches and educational institutes. For so long he had hidden those nitroglycerin tears in the pockets of his eyes he was dreaming through them, fantastic griefs. He thought of his mother, of children. He thought of love he could not be reached by and imagined midnight arms factories lighting up the dark skies with his aerial grief. One morning he woke up, and as though coming through the high dome of a cathedral, the sunlight streamed in through a large tear which had somehow escaped during the night and now lay quivering, explosively, on his cheek. For hours he lay there, tilting his head back without blinking, letting gravity slowly draw the tear back into his eye, hardly daring to breathe lest he explode.

  One day in the street, like a great wave, it finally overcame him. He sobbed, bent over and watched as the first two great luminous teardrops hurtled down to the pavement. As he wept, louder and louder, the man was blown apart, sizzled, ruptured, burnt by grief, saying $$$ldquo;Aaaaah children, children, children. My babes, my babes.”

  Only a few pieces of the man with the nitroglycerin tears were found — an eyelid in Kenora, an arm in Minsk, a lot of blood in Lake Erie, and in various parts of Northern Ontario, small red pieces of his heart. These were gathered up and put to rest beneath a stone which read, $$$ldquo;Here lies the man with the nitro-glycerin tears. Of all things in life, he loved rain best.”

  THE MAN WHO BROKE OUT OF THE LETTER X

  Once, while the soldiers were asleep, a man broke out of the letter X. He burst through its centre and emerged into the world in a loincloth and began to run. He was past the soldiers before they could see him, and when they did see him, they just stood there rubbing their eyes and wondering if he was real. The man ran through the winding streets of the city faster and faster in apparent terror and many people saw him as he darted here and there along the cobblestones. As the day progressed and the streets contained more and more people, the man who had broken out of the letter X would suddenly find himself face to face with a pedestrian. When this happened his terror would redouble and he would dart off even quicker, shrieking as he continued his flight. Soon the news spread that a man had broken out of the letter X and there began to be a great deal of apprehension about him. Where had he come from? What did he want? Why did he flee from them as though they were monsters? The governor approved the order and helicopters were sent to follow the running man. Faster and faster he ran, his lungs burning up, coughing as he scrambled and fled across the plains and plazas of that immense city. Cars screeched to a halt, crowds gasped as he passed. As the police began to close in, the man was like a tiger in the jungle, scrambling up walls, leaping up stairs, jumping over the canyons between small buildings. They caught him at last in a
net. A very beautiful man — a man as beautiful as they had ever seen. But when the flashbulbs went off and he looked into the faces of his captors, he let out shrieks of horror which were like nothing they had ever heard before. As he screamed, the man went into a spasm — his back arched under him, his jaw clicked open, his eyes bulged, and all of him trembled like a leaf of death. And so he died, this man who had broken out of the letter X. And why he came here and what he was running from no one ever knew, but from then on the soldiers guarded the letter X with greater vigilance, so that if anyone else broke out they could send him back inside for his own good.

  THE WISE MAN

  This is the story of the wise man who lived in a pit instead of up on a mountain. And when he wanted to talk to his God, he looked down at the earth instead of up into the sky. When he slept, he hung upside down from a device in straps facing the ground. You see, he had spotted a star in the centre of the earth. It was a dark star of soil and soot and blood and it was to this dark thing that he uttered down his prayers. The sun seemed like a darker force upon this wise man. He worshipped the frozen star in the ground, the white star of permafrost beneath the magma and the robe of char. What a glowing spiritual star it was for him. A bogus heaven, of course — a small device to let the actual implications of paradise slide by. For he would be helpless if he had to think about paradise. It was like grease — this ersatz heaven in the depths of his soily sky, and each worm, each bug and mole, a mysterious dweller in the heights, a burrowing angel.