The
voice from beneath its hung headful of choppy black hair
Skunk:
Uh-huh?
came
on a breath congenital and eighty-six proof.
cog:
Look emmm, I wonder if you might keep the em, the noise down a bit in the
second act. It’s really off-putting and em, it’s not just the actors,
you’re spoiling it for everybody.
Skunk:
Ah sorry I’m ehm I’m sorry. Sorry it’s
intending
to show her the hipflask in his hand by way of excusing his behaviour, and the
hipflask not there anymore but returned to his jacket.
cog
(sarcastic): Thanks. Thank you.
Brother
Skunk damned himself again for having heeded the recommendation of a fellow
bookstore cog, and attending this student drama presentation of “The Elephant
Man”.
Skunk: Is it ehm, do they do they, is it
the same as the film, I mean do they use the same script
cog: Well
Skunk (imitating Merrick’s salivary
phrasing): “The Lord is my shepherd. You’ve all been very kind.”
cog: No it’s it’s, actually to be honest
I’m not sure which came first, whether the film itself is actually based
on the play or what. I think the play was written first, but ah, apart from
them both being about the, you know, John Merrick, I mean, there are some
similarities, obviously, but ah, you should see it, you should see it. The guy
who plays Merrick is excellent, and it’s done without usi-, you know, there’s
no, he’s not got a mask on or any make-up or anything, he does it all through
posture. You should see it.
but
so far Skunk had only felt the production’s tone to be insulting and
patronising, Merrick and his condition reduced to a travesty, a deformed and
ultimately pathetic peg upon which to hang a very poor piece of theatre.
He
cursed himself for being so stupid as to think he could get away with
exploiting this evening as a baptism for his new hipflask, which had arrived in
the mail only that noon, and for losing control enough to merit rebuke from no
lesser member of the cast than the actress playing Mrs Kendal herself.
With
a drunk’s lack of concern for time and its passing, his skull provided chamber
to quick and infinite debating between pride and conscience and anything else
the whiskey had not robbed of voice; whether to resume his seat for the second
act, or to leave the theatre for home and there await the inevitable and
unwelcome return to sobriety.
In
the process of decision he found he was back in the little auditorium with the
lights fading out overhead, the play proceeding through its scenes until the
aforemet Mrs Kendal must undress, allowing Merrick his only glimpse of
something previously so unattainable as to be beyond even his imagination, and
this so patronising in its concession as to elicit not the requisite pathos but
rather, at least from Brother Skunk, a howl of derision, a genuine and glorious
inebriated blend of disgust, exasperation, pity, and contempt. And then
laughter, laughing even as two actors leapt from the stage and roughly escorted
him out of the hall, stopping only when the culminating hard kick to the seat
of his Levi’s robbed him of his breath for an instant and left him gasping in
the rain.
The
streetlamps shone on the pewter hipflask as Skunk turned back to the building’s
facade and damn near ate the Jack Daniel’s at them, as if in his drinking he
could place an individual and relevant hex on every head therein.
Skunk
(shouting): GET EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU INTO HELL!
and
then slowly clumming away, satisfied with the fury of his alcoholic
malediction.
At
some point in his walking he realised he did not want his home yet, and
stopping to ascertain his location, found he was already engulfed in a desire
to return to the bookshop and view again his first window display set up just
that morning, hoping to supplement his inebriated pride with a grand gesture of
self-congratulation.
Skunk:
Damn your rain Uncle Jesus
and
after yelling up into the night
Skunk:
YOUR RAIN NEVER HURT NO-ONE!
began
his trek across the town, through the citylit rainfall and streets and
backstreets until he reached the shop. Behind the rain-soaked glass a large
photocopied text* hung in taped-together rows, suspended on rough and knotted
seagrass cord providing backdrop to a spread of William Faulkner paperbacks,
the display now streetlamped into a deeply-shadowed beauty.
Skunk
pressed his face against the glass, perceiving a depth in the now familiar words
that his undrunk eyes had altogether missed. They shifted, swam before him
beyond the liquid pane as the rainwater he felt alter course from the window to
his forehead spread rapidly beneath his jacket, his t-shirt permitting access
to a cold sobriety he did not want, not with this, not with his floating rage
at the treatment of the elephant Merrick.
He
blinked the rainwater from his eyes and stepped back some to better view this
one window against the rest of the building. Raising the hipflask once again,
he bid the American a
Skunk:
Good night Mr Bill
before
taking a full and heartening swallow, and heading back into the night, where he
himself was due to take a cobbled shortcut centre-stage, any minute now.
*The
aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and
hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it
moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality
possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it
will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on
the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday
pass.
-Interview
with William Faulkner
-The
Paris Review
-Spring
1956
