– So you’ve come all this way to take the piss. Why? I mean I can see that you are who you say you are and all that but why are you laughing at me?
Cue protestations of innocence from the two men, and a shared insistence on the veracity of their proposal and mission. Thirteen takes out his phone, shows her the picture of Max.
– This is him, see. Recognise him? He’s been on the telly and everything. He’s an important figure. He’s all fucked up. Honest, no word of a lie, this is easy money. Man’s proper pickled. Man’s in a right state.
– Fuck of a lot of it ’n all, says the other boy. – Money, I mean.
The woman thinks for a moment. Says: – Tell you what. Bring him up here, what’s his name, Max did you say? Get Max up here. Not sure to believe you two or not so get him up here to prove it.
Thirteen nods. – When?
– Soon’s you can. I’m not needed on set for the next couple of days.
Thirteen nods again. Rips his eyes off the woman and patrols through the mansion gathering his men and herds them into the cars and the soberest amongst them gets into the driving seats and they head back south to their city. Dark night they drive through, the mountains just darker shapes against that background blackness, a massive masking of stars all that tells of their presence. ‘Hey There Delilah’ by the Plain White T’s comes on the radio and Thirteen goes all quiet for its duration. Thinks about the woman and realises he doesn’t even know her name. He’s heard this song before and hated it but now he likes it, except for the bit about ‘paying the bills with this guitar’; that’s just fucking stupid. But the tone of it, and the mood of it... she had interesting eyes, that woman.
They drive all night through the land to which they have been told many times over that they belong yet none of them has ever felt that they do and nor do they feel that now and each man feels a relief, a settling of something inside, as he sees the skyline of his city approach at dawn. This familiarity: this safety. They each go separately home for a few hours’ sleep after which Thirteen goes straight to Rome. No point calling at the Emperor’s flat, he won’t be in. Rome’s where he’ll be. He is.
When Thirteen was a boy, he found a dead cat in a canal and fished it out with a stick. It’d been dead some time, and Thirteen spent five fixed minutes looking into its face. He’s reminded of that cat, now, as he looks at Max in his usual corner booth in Rome. He looks at the boys who have already gathered around Max with an expression that says: Him in this state, this ain’t gunna work, but he says to Max: – We’ve found her, boss. Woman yewer looking for. We’ve found her, brar.
With a speed and determination that startles in such a wasted frame Max slams back his drink and leads his men into the car park and they clamber into cars and again leave the city, heading north. Plains and mountains and rivers and lakes again, everything they know and trust falling away, falling away. Max drives very, very fast. Thirteen supplies the directions. Max grinds his teeth all the way. If he speaks, it is in a garble, impossible for Thirteen to discern what he says. On the flat island beyond the mountains, overlooking the castle at which the filming is going on, Max stops the car and says softly: Dreamed of this place, I yav. And he says it again, at the entrance to the mansion hotel: I have dreamed of this place.
Thirteen leads Max into the ballroom. There’s the same two bouncers; Thirteen nods at them and they nod back and regard Max with something like puzzlement. The mess of him. And there’s the woman, wearing a shirt and torn and faded jeans, her casual wear, sitting with her legs tucked beneath her on a red couch in the window bay. She smiles at Thirteen, a smile like a bolt of lightning. Thirteen shows her to Max. Max nods and sits beside her and stays there as the party around them gathers noise and energy and at some point in the hours of darkness they, Max and the woman, go upstairs. Max’s crew have once again dispersed themselves about the house, eating free food, drinking free drink, touching shoulders with the people around them some of whose faces they’ve seen many times on screens and billboards. They’re feeling famous. They’re feeling important. Except Thirteen, who is hovering around the patio doors, feeling what he doesn’t know, worried, jealous, apprehensive, uncomfortable, heavy and hot in the head.
The two security guys approach him. – See yewer boss is renting Helen, then.
Thirteen squints. – What?
– Does he know how much she costs? She ain’t cheap.
– What’re yew talking about?
– Helen, mun.
– What, the, the extra on the film?
The men laugh. – That what she told yew? Well she might be that as well as a very expensive prozzie, like.
– And we are talking very expensive.
In response to the incomprehension in Thirteen’s face he is told that Helen has, for some years, been servicing the film sets that regularly visit this area of castles and mountains and lakes. In response to the mounting dismay in Thirteen’s face he is told that she can charge a fortune for her services because the actors and directors etc, the celebrities like, can afford to pay it plus she’s very good looking. And in response to the anger in Thirteen’s face he is told that the two guys look after her, make sure she’s safe and that she gets her money, even from a famous actor, even from a big city gangsta like Max who’s been on the telly and everything.
Thirteen puts down his drink and takes a deeeeep breath. This is going to be very, very bad, he thinks, and at that thought there is a roar and Max appears in the ballroom like a whirlwind, overturning tables, scattering glasses and plates and people, kicking pot plants over, standing fists clenched at his sides before Thirteen and looking up at the chandelier so that the sinews in his neck stand out like cables:
– A whore! A skank! Woman-a my dreams maan an yew take me to a whore!
Proper lost it, has our man Max. He’s crying, or something. His face is in his hands and his shoulders are shaking.
– Boss, I didn’t know. See, she…
And she appears now, in front of Thirteen, all ruffled and dishevelled and furious, and God help him but Thirteen can’t help but crumple at her beauty.
– My fee, she says in a broken voice to the two security guys. – Bastard won’t pay me my fee! Sort him out, will you?
And then the three of them converse in their own language, the tongue of the country to which Thirteen has been told many times over he belongs but which he’s never felt to be true, the tongue he’s rarely heard in the city that has forever been his world, the tongue that has excluded him from the country he’s been told he belongs to in the same way that it excluded his Somalian father and his French mother. He’s in a foreign land, here. And Max is being shaken by sobs and the two guys and the beautiful woman are looking at him and one of the guys, the one with the smaller eyes, has an empty bottle of champagne in his hand and is taking aim with it at Max’s rocking skull. Thirteen is aware that those few people who have remained in the ballroom are watching, aghast. He’s under a bright light. He has an audience.
– Got to do it, lad, the guy with the bottle says. – Apologies and all that but the lady needs to be paid. Services rendered, like. Can’t let it go, mun. What kind of arsehole would I look like if I did?
Thirteen nods. – Aye, alright. But, no, listen; Max yur isn’t thinking straight. Look at him, bruv – he’s pickled. Proper lost it, maan. So I’ll stump up for him and pay the bill as long as Helen yur gives me a kiss. Just a kiss.
The guys look at Helen. She shrugs and nods. – Tenner extra. And just a kiss, like. And only cos you seem to be a decent sort of bloke.
– Then payment in full, Bottle-man says. – With a tenner on top.
– No problem, brar, says Thirteen, and leans in to kiss Helen. Lips meet. Oh what a fire burns. Thirteen sucks her tongue into his mouth then bites down as hard as he can, alligator-hard, and in the screaming chaos that follows he spits a chunk of meat out of his mouth in a billow of blood and scoops Max up and yells at him to RUN and they exit the mansion at spee
d, leaving the rest of the crew behind, and jump into the car and screech away and it seems like they don’t cease screeching until they’re back in the city they know and in their usual corner booth in Rome. Hearts still beating hard. The trembling fingers.
Over the course of that day their crew straggles back from the northlands, bearing broken arms and noses and gaps where teeth used to be, all except one man who will never be seen again. They tell Max and Thirteen that they’re off, they’re going, they’ve already gone. Some days later some men with the explosive accents of the north, hard voices chipped from lofty rock and depthless black icy lakes, appear in the club asking for Max and Thirteen. The barman points them out. The northmen drag them outside into the city’s dank alleys and Max and Thirteen are never seen again, not in the city, nowhere in the country to which they were told all their lives that they belong, nowhere.
And in the days and years and decades to come, some of the men involved in the events will be lucky enough to grow old and grey. But the story ends here. It’s not over, it’s not finished, but it ends here.
Rhonabwy’s Dream
a synopsis
Madog the ruler of Powys sent a hundred men to each part of Powys to look for his brother Iorwerth who was wanted after committing murder in raids on England.
One of the men on this quest is called Rhonabwy. He and two colleagues come to the house of Heilyn Goch. As they approach they see an old black hovel, inside the floor is uneven and slippery with cattle dung and piss. On one dais of bare boards is a hag feeding a fire, on the other a yellow ox-skin which gives good luck to whoever sleeps there. They are tired and want to sleep but the bedding is filthy and flea-infested. His two companions sleep there anyway, but Rhonabwy falls asleep on the yellow ox-skin.
He has a vision in which he and his companions are travelling towards a ford on the Hafren (Severn). They hear a noise behind and see a fierce-looking rider with yellow hair, dressed in yellow and green silk. They try to run away but he catches them and says he is called Iddog Cordd Prydain (The Agitator of Britain), one of the messengers between King Arthur and Medrawd at the battle of Camlan, who stirred up trouble between them.
Another nobleman, dressed in red and yellow silks on a yellow horse passes them, then they follow Iddog to a plain at Rhyd-y-Groes on the Hafren where they can see the huts and tents of a great host and Arthur sitting in a meadow. Arthur laughs, telling Iddog he is sad to see such scum protecting the Island after the fine men of the past. Iddog tells Rhonabwy he will remember the dream as he has seen the ring on Arthur’s hand. Then Rhonabwy sees a succession of troops and knights approaching the ford, all splendidly dressed in various colours, with coloured horses and precious stones, whom Iddog identifies for him. Arthur challenges one of the men, Owain son of Urien to a game of gwyddbwyll, a board game similar to chess. As they play a squire approaches to tell them that Owain’s ravens and Arthur’s men are fighting. Each asks the other to call their men off, but they carry on playing and start another game. More squires approach angrily and ask them to end the fighting, but they play on as the fighting escalates into slaughter, and then start another game. At last Arthur wins and the fighting ends. Arthur is asked for a truce and takes counsel. There is a call for men to either back Arthur or stand against him and in the commotion Rhonabwy wakes to find he has slept three days and three nights.
It is said that no poet or storyteller can remember this dream because of the number of colours on the horses and the armour, trappings, precious mantles and magic stones.
Synopsis by Penny Thomas:
for the full story see The Mabinogion, A New Translation
by Sioned Davies (Oxford World’s Classics, 2007).
The Dream of Maxen Wledig
a synopsis
Maxen Wledig is the Emperor of Rome. One day, after a morning’s hunting he falls asleep, protected by his men. He dreams that he is travelling along a river valley, then over a mountain as high as the sky, then a wide plain with a river flowing to the sea, with a city at the mouth and a harbour. He boards a ship and comes to the fairest island in the world, which he crosses from one sea to the other, finding lofty crags and rugged land and then another island with a castle. He goes into the castle, its hall made of gold, and finds two lads playing gwyddbwyll. An old man sits in an ivory chair and a maiden sits before him dressed in a white shift with clasps of red gold; she is so beautiful, like the sun, that it is hard to look at her. The Emperor dreams he embraces her, but the noise of the hunt around him wakes him up. He finds he can no longer live or breathe for love of the maiden in his dream and he is the saddest man in the world. He will no longer eat or go out with his men, but will only sleep so he can see the woman again in his dreams.
One day a servant tells him his men are unhappy because he won’t answer their messages and he calls the wise men of Rome to him to explain why he is sad. They send messengers but have no luck until Maxen sets out to hunt and finds the river of his dream. Thirteen messengers follow the river and take the ship to the island, which is the Island of Britain. They cross the island until they reach the rugged land which is Eryri (Snowdon) and continue until they see the island of Môn facing them and the castle. They enter the castle and find the maiden, Elen. They greet her as the Empress of Rome, but she thinks they are mocking her. She tells them to bring the Emperor to her so Maxen sets out for Britain, taking it by force. He recognises the lands from his dream and the castle. He finds the maiden there and sleeps with her. He asks her to name her maiden fee and she asks for the Island of Britain for her father, three islands for the Empress of Rome and three forts built for her. The forts are built at Arfon, Caerfyrddin and Caerlleon and she builds great roads, the Ffyrdd Elen Luyddog to connect them.
Maxen Wledig stays for seven years, after which his place as Emperor is forfeit and a new Emperor is declared in Rome. Maxen travels back to Rome, conquering all the lands in between, and lays siege to it. The siege lasts a year, until Elen’s brothers appear and break it, giving Rome back to Maxen, who in return gives them an army.
The brothers spend their lives conquering new lands, killing the men but leaving the women alive, until one, Gadeon, decides to return home and the other, Cynan, decides to settle where he is. They cut out the tongues of the women there, so that their own language is not corrupted. Because the women are silent and lose their language and the men speak on, the Britons were called Llydaw men (half silent).
Synopsis by Penny Thomas:
for the full story see The Mabinogion, A New Translation
by Sioned Davies (Oxford World’s Classics, 2007).
Afterword
Reading through the acknowledgements of the first two books in this series, I noticed that they were both written on land not Welsh: The Ninth Wave in Wicklow, and White Ravens in New York. For myself, I tinkered with the preceding stories in an internet caff off the Magnificent Mile in central Chicago. This is no more than coincidence of course – we’re jobbing writers, and we go wherever the job takes us – but, being a writer, and thus given to a quasi-pareidolic interpretation of events, I’m going to wilfully draw a symbol from this and read into it the notion that, wherever we travel in the world, in whichever places our emotional or career obligations take us to, the Mabinogion, like luggage, follows us there.
This is a good thing. The weight of a deep cultural history is a beneficial one to carry, and I feel safe and secure and settled when ancient masonry and memory are at my shoulder; castles and megaliths and ruins and the like, and the human histories they hold in their stones. I also feel this way when the nomenclature of a country is intimately related to its mythology; the many place names in Wales that contain the word ‘moch’ or derivations thereof testify not to the localised history of porcine hus-bandry (of which there is none, or very little) but to the overnight stops made by Gwydion in his journey across the country with his personal herd of swine in The Fourth Branch. So the Mabinogion remains alive; the fact that it is barely read beyond the dry
pales of academia now has, amazingly, generated no moribundity in its tales, a status further assured by Sioned Davies’ superb new translation for the Oxford World Classics and by the Seren series of ‘retellings’, a volume of which you are holding in your hands.
So why the Dreams? Why did the reveries of Rhonabwy and Maxen strike me as ripe for a retelling, or a ‘re-imagining’ (as the promotional bumf for various facile and lazy Hollywood remakes of perfectly good and recent films has it)? Well, at root, the oneiric has always held a fascination, especially in regard to the tenuity and futility of its interpretation; it’s the magnetism of the weirdly logical, the paradigm shift in the REM brain, that attracts. Also, there’s the gleefully mischievous rejection of one of the most basic rules of writing creatively, namely tell a dream and lose a reader (that comes from Hemingway, I think, who obviously post-dates the Mabinogion, but nevertheless the Dreams remain exceptional in this). This isn’t un-common in medieval literature – it can be seen, for example, in Langland, ‘Pearl’, even Dante – yet the schematics involved and the satirical, rather than tutelary, intent here make for a rarity. Plus there are preoccupations which find a rhyme with my own: substance abuse, the urge to isolate oneself, a deep yearning for completeness which, somewhere and somehow, twists itself into its ostensible antithesis, the need to reach a condition of calmness even if that necessitates a path of destruction, etc. I could go on. Enough to say that I find a contemporaneity in both Dreams which on careful re-reading came close to astonishing. Timeless writing indeed.
The Dreams of Max & Ronnie Page 8
