Mama Sita

In the same vein as my previous post, this one nonetheless has a distinguishing feature; I remember a little about its genesis. I asked Issa in the summer of 2002 for a name to give to a grand matriarch. It couldn't have been more succinct than Mama Sita. It's certainly a regret of mine that the following is the only occurence to date of that grand old lady:

Mama Sita was a remarkable lady. She was in the Triangle that day I went with Dr Rudolph, a Wednesday, and was looking to get away from him. My time spent under the grip of his hospitality was very useful, I mean, I’d met all sorts of people and made a fair bit of money, but I was feeling restless. One major reason, perhaps a paranoid one looking at it now, was that he seemed fairly frequently to be examining my eye-sockets. Of course he has rarely operated on males, nor has he tended to repeat his procedures on other patients. Nevertheless, I didn’t trust him; it’s quite conceivable that he gave me room and board, like he said, for intelligent conversation, that when talking to me he didn’t have to worry about shocking me – it’s quite true, I was never once shocked by a thing he said. I found him, in spite of his twisted operations, to be very easy to talk with. Of course, I had no doubt that he was a dangerous individual. Whatever, I had to get away from the bastard; I wasn’t shocked, no, but I’ll say I was getting increasingly disgusted cohabiting with some of his creations. The conditions that they had to live in, the cages, the lax approach to basic cleaning and maintenance. It just got to be too much, and then there was that nagging ethical outrage; I decided one day that I would liberate them, but I haven’t as yet acted on that urge.

Old Fool at the Egg

Inspired by Moxther to do so, I trawled through old notebooks, seeking The Jonathan. I found a fair bit, some of it good. The following dates from May 2002, though it required a little fine-tuning tonight, a little sanding of the edges. I gave that a quick whirl, and here it is:

I have a chance meeting with the sorrowful old fool who passed out at the egg last night on my way to see that gentleman I heard mentioned over foul cocktails, before Mr Samuel Thompson’s hideous public humiliation. I’m very surprised to see the Old Fool, who looked quite frankly dead last night. He still looks rather dead, and yet I hear him mutter words that suggest his continuing and pitiful existence, words like ‘pain’ and ‘alcohol poisoning’. I’m catching the drift, more or less, I’m really not sure, of what he’s trying to communicate. I won’t even attempt a verbatim transcription here of the poor bastard’s monologue. But it goes something like this;

“When I was your age, young sir, I had the deepest desire to donate a kidney. After all, my boy, I did have the two. It seems frightfully selfish for a young gentleman to have so many kidneys when there are people out there with really frightful kidneys, or none at all, even. I trust, my boy, that you have donated one of your own,” the Old Fool looks very stern. He frightens me. Of course I haven’t, nor will I ever donate a kidney, or anything else for that matter. But I must humour the old coot.

“Yes, sir, I donated the larger of the two, and a lung.”

“Splendid!” (This is an extremely guttural sound), “My dear boy, I myself was not able to donate a kidney. I was healthy young man, in my prime, barely thirty-seven years of age, my boy, and they told me they wouldn’t take the kidney. I was positively crestfallen, my dear. I believe that they said something along the lines of, ‘Sir, your stronger kidney resembles a dog turd, and the other is unspeakable,’ I mean, they just cut me open, took one look at my darling kidneys, and then turned away, truthfully, young sir, they were retching. They sewed me up and threw me out. My dearly beloved, that is what drove me to the drink, and I vowed that from that day on, if I ever saw a young man, like I was those many years ago, declining to do his duty, and keeping all of his kidneys selfishly to himself, I would cut open his gut and positively feed them to him, young sir. Just look at me now,” and he screams, “Just look at me now! I have barely two kidneys to rub together…”

“If you’ll excuse me, sir, I have an appointment to donate a portion of my brain to friendly helpful people. If I’m late, I will be a murderer, and be held responsible in law.”

“Oh, marvellous, young marvellous man! May you never become as I am, a pathetic, drunken old rabbit.”

I would sooner die, “Farewell!” I say.

“Farewell, young sir my dear.”

The Matter of the Case of the Skinny Girl, Perhaps With Teeth

The following is from The Jonathan. It's alright.

Jonathan mulled it over once more. He looked edgewise at the envelope, squinting. But for a thin manila line, it mightn’t have been there at all. This didn’t help matters and so Jonathan was forced to concede that this was indeed a conundrum of a mystery, akin to an enigma. He pincered his fingers for the third time into this foolscap phenomenon, retrieving the card with its uppercase inscription:

JONATHAN DO WHAT YOU MUST JONATHAN AT THE EGG SEVEN THIRTY TUESDAY WEEK SKINNY GIRL SMALL HANDBAG MURDER INEVITABLE BE SURE NOT YOURS JONATHAN FOR SAKE OF THE COMPANY PERHAPS GRIZZLED MAINE IF PRESENT OF USE DONT FORGET PRE DAWN REPORT BE SHARP MR CURTIS WATCH PS HER TEETH WHILE SINGING

He used or attempted to his analytical now on account of crash course mental awareness training the previous week mind to unravel layers of meaning and sense from this correspondence. Murder a factor. Perhaps be armed. Investigate skinny girl – perhaps the teeth are hers, in which case expect her to sing. Grizzled Maine may be a person – male? – in which case perhaps grizzled. Avoid preconception. Try not to die. Report perhaps by phone – Ms Ex works nights. The Egg is a notorious night-spot. He knew that. The handbag was unfathomable at this early stage of enquiry, and Jonathan could neither associate nor disassociate the handbag with or without the murder, which itself might be anyone’s. Forthwith he attired himself with revolver, kerchief and fedora, for it was Tuesday week from last Tuesday and early evening six-thirty, sky forming night and full of oxygenated air useful for breathing. Jonathan slammed the door with himself on the other side and dismounted stairs and hailed a taxi and walked down the stairs to the basement Egg twenty minutes having paid his fifteen pound fare to see what he might find, hoping it would work in his favour to arrive a good forty minutes before the allotted time and he made sure to look for features in faces but not too closely so as not to draw undue attention. Was it the skinny girl or the handbag that would be small?