Richard Penna's Writing

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                                   Nomadic Ways

From: Prof. Elwin Dwight Jr., Dept. of Anthropology, University of Milt, USA.

To: Prof. Richard Mbisu, Dept. of Anthropology, The People’s University, Liberaville, The Independent African Republic of Esperanza.

Dear Professor Mbisu - I write to you informally and in advance of a longer letter which will be sent to your department this evening by our Committee of Social Concern & Grant Aid. Full details will be given to you after their meeting tonight but I thought it important that I should take it upon myself to inform you of the Department's general disappointment and misgivings re your apparent decisions in relation to the use of the Financial Aid offered to your department by this University.

I feel obliged to make the following points…

1. The Aid was offered with the idea, obvious we think, that this money should be used within Africa for strictly Anthropological research.

2. In a continent ravaged by Unstable Markets and Political Uncertainty, not to mention Aids, Poverty, Malnutrition, Starvation, War and Civil War, our university feels it to be self-evident that there is a desperate need for Anthropological investigation that might underpin research in other areas (market creation, financial infrastructure, political and social restructuring and, of course health, education, agriculture and tribal issues).

3. Your Response Document is wholly inadequate in that it does not answer the fundamental questions that we have asked.

4. And in any case it is for us unacceptable that you intend to use these funds to head a team to carry out 'intense research and enquiry' into ‘foreigners resident or semi-resident or itinerant in the South of France’. Frankly we fail to see your purpose.

5. We feel also that we should remind you, though we do not have precise knowledge, that the South of France (after New York, of course) must be one of the most expensive places in the world. Just how long do you expect to be able to keep your team in the field in such a place?

6. Nor are we comforted by the letter which you say you have received from the French Ministry of Culture saying that you would be most welcome in France. We know from experience that French understanding of these matters is sometimes imperfect and often downright wrong.

7. To be blunt, Professor, we smell Vacation, Exploitation and Free Rides. We need not emphasise, I am sure, that this university is able to offer such financial aid because it is supported by well-meaning patrons in the USA and that we have a duty therefore to respect their general wishes. (i.e. you could find me with my hands tied).

I think it best that you await the full letter from our Committee which will be sent tonight and then that we should talk on the telephone later in the week. I feel sure that we can reach an understanding.

I hope, in fact I am sure, that you understand the concern of my Committee in this matter and that your intended field trip can be drastically redesigned.

With best wishes, Professor Elwin Dwight Jr. (Dept. of Anthropology)

 

Dear Professor Dwight,

Many thanks for your nice warning letter received this morning. Of course, of course I understand the feelings of your people. Entirely. We have our commercial pressures here as well you know.

I have accordingly re-allocated the exceedingly generous funding from your university. It is now to be used to carry out a field study in the hills near Mnong (100 klms south of Liberaville). This area, as you rightly point out, is well known as a good example of an area ravaged by Aids, Malnutrition, Political upheaval etc. and certainly has no markets worth speaking of; we expect the research to reveal valuable results. We will send you full details of this Project in due course.

The research in the south of France will go ahead, however, funded now directly by our own university. No problem.

Our Board of Governing Control and Extra University Funding (BGCEU) has been convinced of the value of this research. They have been persuaded by our argument, and I quote, ‘that a proper and in-depth study and evaluation of the life structure, opinions, rituals, sexual customs, earning capacity, values, religious belief, educational standard and world view of Anglo-Saxons and Europeans dis-located or partially relocated or nomadic in the South of France during the summer months might shed some light on the nature of the Anglo-Saxon/European Attitude to Africa per se’; an Attitude which we admit we do not fully comprehend but which is, nevertheless, a Curiosity and which we feel, given the complex inter-reactions of the modern world, must contribute (directly and indirectly) towards a (relentless) continuation of the General Situation in Africa; and that a study of this Attitude might give to the people of Africa a clearer idea of the ‘stance’ that they should adopt, faced very often with insurmountable problems, insupportable debt, rampant corruption and unbearable distress...

We wonder, for example, whether a clearer post-colonial point of view might not be more readily visible amongst the foreign residents going about their daily and no doubt vital business in the South of France.

You are correct, I think, when you surmise that the French may have misunderstood our research project since they have offered us pitches for our assorted tents in such prominent places as Les Jardins des Anglais at Cannes and Les Jardins Van Gogh at St. Remy de Provence. Our team, in our turn, are to be observed by a French ‘team’, financed apparently by the Ministry of Culture; and it is true that we have become a little perturbed by the insistent use of words like ‘troupe’ and ‘cirque’, though these could, of course, be simply translation errors. Nevertheless we are to be welcomed and encouraged and that is, I am sure you will agree, the important thing.

You may rightly observe that the Project lacks precision and is open-ended; so much the better. We shall see what we shall see. Certainly I must say I am inundated by offers from experienced volunteers from all over Africa who are keen to join our team and this in itself, I think, indicates its importance and justifies its existence.

It may be, dear Professor, that there is nothing that we Africans can do; but I begin to doubt it.

I look forward to the letter from your Committee which, as you see, is no longer strictly necessary. And I will let you have full details in due course of Project Mnong (markets/poverty/peace etc.) which is to be funded by your University and, naturally, a full report of its field results. Frankly, we expect the research to reveal again that, against such odds, nothing but a vast input of resources, money and hope can possibly change the situation; but we intend to keep an open mind on the subject.

Our gratitude is boundless, of course and as ever, both for your financial generosity and your unstinting interest in the small efforts of our university; rest assured I shall be sending you a post card from Provence giving clues and news as to the, no doubt subtle, progress of our project.

With also best wishes to your nice wife who I remember so well meeting during my brief visit some time ago to warm Milt.

Yours faithfully, Professor Mbisu (Dept. of Anthropology)

© Richard Penna 2022

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2...                                                                                     

 Genarius

Vanessa is snoring, her body vibrating, the sound drowned out by the pouring rain. She lies alone in the big bed. Genarius, the mouse, is sleeping in the kitchen next to the stove. I wander about the house, unsettled, but return again to the bedroom. Now she is lying on her side, quiet and still.

Sensible, alert as we have been, we have allowed ourselves to become so alienated and afraid. No longer lying out on the earth under the stars to sleep. Occasionally, alienated from earth itself. Alienated from each other. Organised. Dutiful. Quite still, quite calm, quite dead, a late autumn of our souls.

In the kitchen I look down at the little box containing Genarius. Sentimental little bastard, I mutter. I lift one flap of the lid. He is grey, curled, breathing, well-fed, fast asleep. And lonely I suppose for some of his own kind, though there is no risk nor chance that we will let him go; he does not want to go. "Douglas lived with a mouse called Genarius; the mouse would perform tricks..."

Returning to the bedroom I undress and lie down against her in the almost dark room, knowing that I am trying to use the strength within her sleeping body to give myself courage, the strength to chase away fears and terrors; everything seems to be collapsing and nothing has meaning and the time of demons and devils has arrived. I stroke her hair carefully, as tenderly as I can, not to wake her, not to hear her say a word, but simply, if it is possible, to stir up some meaningful sentiment, to have it in the air like the smell of log fire. But eventually I become drowsy, unable to keep my eyes open or my body tense against her.

 © Richard Penna 2022

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3...

Fragility

 

The women are also thin. They eat well, they eat enough yet they do not put on weight. We have become accustomed to bones – knees, elbows, hips, shoulders, cheeks – rasping against themselves when we try to make love; try to make love, defeated by dryness, flaccidity, carelessness…

Yesterday I stayed in bed, rising only to clean my teeth and wash my hands and to piss. I have a tendency to drink too much in bed. There is a perfect moment of inebriation when the creative urge is strong and perhaps valid but it soon passes and foolishness and emptiness set in. Despair also, of course.

Looking at her thin legs I am reminded of children who have rickets. Yet I like her thin body. There is a desperate urgency to our love making, this clash of bones, a pain. Even on the bridge of her nose there is a paper-thin veil of skin barely hiding the structure.

She will not conceive. We all know this. We went to Kurstgarten for a sculpture festival and there in the centre of a crowd of admirers was a child, a wide-eyed, fat, pink cherub. We were repulsed, remembering our slaughtered friends and so much strength dissipated, so many almost skeletons buried wherever the ground was soft. Our children will be books, paintings, poems, films, music – and other acts of grace. We will rear them selflessly with no aim in mind.

We are discussing Munch’s painting Evening on Karl-Johann Street - a crowd, gaunt faces (as if he could see into our future), pin prick eyes, ghosts – yet our first or dominant thoughts concern the top hats; almost unconsciously, every day people put on such a stupid hat and went about their business; repression, arrogance, cruelty and the dominance of limited or deficient minds.

No one is very content now with the occasional reading of newspapers or novels, nor travel by air, nor shopping; these activities lead too quickly to fatigue and despair. I crave nature, wild places, and time; and easy distraction. Film, games, women eager to learn, unpretentious restaurants. I want my bed, non-fiction, peace and quiet, my own hand on my own gun.

We long somehow for care, affection, love; to be loved. But we are not loved and we do not love. Surviving the non-loving, what do we do instead, as compensation? We inhabit a material world, we work, we become ill and go to hospitals, we indulge in political meanness and in wars; we distract – television and the so-called new arts. How did we become so; or were we always a race of material philistines as cut off from nature as we are from life as we are from love. Yet I live among these people pretending to suffer.

As individuals we have sometimes been able to set aside the awareness that we have always been wrong or half wrong and as a result we have created some wonderful things. Out of denial has come beauty. And out of denial has come suffering.

We now accept that nothing is simple, nothing is clear cut; we understand that we do not know what to do or what to feel.

In the way that men do not understand, women do not understand that love can be centred on a woman’s eyes, her power, her confidence and her body, all at the same time, indistinguishable one from another; yet missing out on the colour of her eyes and the intensity with which she carries out her work; in this area men are silent, as women are, fearing to offend.

Every reality has slipped away, the stuff that held us together, those thoughts and feelings following on one after another, now collapsed and fallen into ruin along with the buildings and the once flowering trees... 

© Richard Penna 2022

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4...

                             Dissociation

As in a dream, skimming down a water fall on smooth stone and the finest bright green weed; landing in the water silently. Though there are women standing at the end of the pond talking, he cannot hear what they are saying. He rubs his eyes and suddenly he can hear what they are saying but he can no longer see them; he can see nothing, he is blind. He blinks again to clear the blackness and now he can see them and hear them. But gradually he realises that he can feel nothing, has no sensation, not even of the water in which he swims nor of his own face when he touches it…

A woman swims towards him and draws him into the shallows. She has a magnificent face, strong and angular, and her wet hair is long and grey. She takes his hand and places it on her breast; but though he sees his upturned palm and his fingers which touch her nipple, he feels nothing. He blinks so that he is able to feel but is then blind again; so again he blinks and he can see and feel. He caresses her soft breast and leans forward to kiss her and as he does so she closes her eyes, yields so he thinks. The kiss is tentative, gentle, almost unbearable and his eyes close. He senses her lips, the tender curve of her breast, without seeing, without hearing…

When he opens his eyes she smiles and says something. He notices the other women, some of them young girls, cavorting at the edge of the small pebble beach; he sees the water falling silently into the pool, the bubbles rising and foaming, and where the branches of trees lean down to touch the water he sees the wind fluttering the leaves. All this in an unnatural, frightening, ineffable silence that becomes slowly a form of torture, literally an agony within his head because he knows that apparently his senses are functioning precisely as they should, yet so clearly, they are not.

© Richard Penna 2022

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5... 

Garrigue

When he walks in the garrigue (having no dog) he talks to everything; trees, plants, ants, birds, stones and rocks, tadpoles trapped in fast drying puddles, flowers, sky, clouds. Mostly questions. He meets no one (except very occasionally the goatherd with his goats) but he would not mind if he was overheard, talking aloud, having conversations, voicing replies to his questions. It has taken some time to arrive at this state of mind, being deeply absorbed in the daydream, but he is now able to be in this wildness without motive, and almost timelessly. He is there for no reason; he is not taking the air, exercising his body, absorbing nature, none of those things. And he is unaware of what will make him decide to start choosing paths that will lead him back to his home; it could be fatigue or hunger or simply because he is human. He never knows precisely and does not care to know.

Signs of human activity are everywhere; the electric pylons in the distance, the paths kept open by hunters and the tracks kept clear by the fire department, goat droppings, cartridge cases and sometimes in small clearings, olive trees or ancient, untended fruit trees – walnut, apricot, apple. In a small meadow surrounded by green oak, are beehives. One path that gradually ascends the hillside was once a well maintained track with the remains of a retaining wall on the lower side. He imagines mules and donkeys picking their way carefully, loaded down; olive oil, figs, roof tiles, door hinges, window panes wrapped in sacking…

The muleteer lays a hand on his forearm and asks: In the valley, is there still water in the river bed? Yes, there is. He sits at the side of the track to let the animals pass, listening to the clunk of the hooves on the stones and the murmur of the breeze in the topmost branches of the pines; and in the far distance he hears the random music of goat bells…

There are sounds and encounters that cause fear and others that give rise to a profound contentment. She is there, walking ahead of him now, every so often passing her hand swiftly over her face; he knows that she is breaking spider webs that traverse the path and needs to wipe the sticky remnants from her eyes. She is wearing new white tennis shoes, very sensible in this heat and on this terrain, and loose jeans and a check shirt, the sleeves rolled up; a quite masculine impression. Her fair hair is tied back with a green ribbon. She stops and comes back towards him and without looking him in the eyes, undoes the buckle of his belt and places her palm flat on his belly. She does not move it lower but slowly makes her hand into a claw so that the fingers dig deep into his flesh, making known her desire and recognising his in this peaceful place, a desire that is intense, violent, cruel yet also natural and in harmony with the life around them. She withdraws her hand, buckles his belt and, without glancing up at him, walks on, leading the way…

He experiments, plays with a previous state of mind in which he would have called after her: is anything wrong? But he knows that nothing is wrong. She exists within the realm of that which is possible, a small world and an imagined world, and he has learnt to be exalted by the directness and the tenderness of her touch and intimacy, simply by her presence, her absolute otherness, her energy. After ascending the donkey track he turns left and then immediately right in the direction of the village. She has been at his side but has now fallen back and he can no longer hear her nor sense her presence.

In daylight he is too frightened to enter the caves, especially if he must lie flat on his belly and slither through narrow openings; but at night, especially when it is pitch black, he has no such fear. Crouched in the very depth of the grotto, he feels invulnerable, safe. He extinguishes the torch and listens. The sound of bats squeaking and other animals foraging, perhaps wild boar. He begins pushing aside small rocks and stones so that he can lie out more comfortably.

He hears an animal breathing but because of the echo and the distortion of sound he cannot tell how close it is, yet it soon becomes clear that the breathing is laboured and unlike an animal, more like a human being straining to get somewhere or struggling to achieve something. When the sound seems almost upon him he fumbles for the torch, but he cannot find it…

What climbs onto him is a creature of about the size of a human, naked, slippery and moving like a lizard. It bites him on the neck and the pain is so intense that his body coils and uncoils in an instant and the creature is thrown off him. A forked tongue slaps against his face and the body is crawling up over him again and he feels something jagged and hard tearing at his clothes and then understands that it is the animal’s sex, thrusting at him in its blind attempt to find a way in. He brings both hands down to grasp the penis which feels slimy like the branch of a tree stripped of its bark and with all his force he wrenches it downwards and backwards; there is an immense intake of breath and a sound half way between a scream and a gasp of pain, and it falls away from him. Then there is silence, not a sound, an absolute calm and stillness. He finds the torch, shines it in the direction of the dragon, but there is nothing, not even a mark on the ground where it fell. There is only the smell of fear hanging in the air, a heavy, sickening stench that pushes him towards the cave entrance and into the cool night air…

He is running in the darkness in the direction of home when she leaps out in front of him and stops him. He can see at once that she is not there to console him, but to challenge him again. He sinks down on the track, onto the hard stones, being prepared to be accused or tongue lashed or beaten; yet he is too exhausted and too tired to care. But she leans down and lifts him to his feet. They walk home in silence and once in the bed he lays his head on her breast, knowing that he will not yet be able to disappear into a deep sleep. She runs her hand through his hair, then clutches at it and pulls his head back so that she can see his face.

‘What you are capable of physically, yes, that is disturbing and exciting, but for the rest… You are weak, enfeebled by your rampant, arrogant, lustful imagination – so poisonous, such a desecration, so endlessly self-destructive. You smother love with a sickly sentimentality and hide it within perfunctory sex. You seek escape and refuge in a cave, risking your life, tempting death, simply because you are terrified of life and you hate yourself because you know that you have neither the will nor the strength to change…’

He can see part of her breast and shoulder. The fine hairs are catching the light. He wants the sun to shine. He longs to return to the garrigue in spring, to sit in the shade under the trees, listening to the sound of the river flowing over and around the rocks; in truth he is tired and wants to do nothing at all, but she will not let him be peaceful, she will never let him sleep.

© Richard Penna 2022

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6...

 Distraction

there is a light on the stair, he must feel his way, a door opens and closes and the last remnants of light from above disappear and the darkness is absolute and the blackness is thick like a cloak, he knows his way around in this soup, you hear the word ‘wine’ and then the sound of the cork leaving the bottle and the smell of the wine in a glass being pressed into your hand, the girl arrives and he can hear her undressing, hear the bed creaking as she lies down, moving towards the bed he undresses, trying to leave his clothes in an orderly pile on the floor, he lies down next to her, finding shoulder, breast, face, then he knows where he is and thinks he knows how to go…

but outside a woman begins to wail, a barbaric wail, endless, violating his mind, entering the very depths of his brain, finally he can stand it no longer, he expects to stand courteously before her and to offer her consolation but he kneels down to her as if she is a child and, making himself small also, he takes her hands in his, but her foot comes out and he is pushed onto his back, upset, undignified, furious, she helps him up, puts him on the plastic chair beside her, opens the palms of hers hands and wails again, her tears splatter everything, an orgasm of despair, her head comes onto his shoulder and his head leans against hers, she smells of curry, she waddles off, still wailing and he wonders, but cannot remember, why he is there, why he is waiting, a priest has run over a dog, he was worried about paying bills and what he will say to her in the morning…

© Richard Penna 2023

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7...

Dame Daphne of Nyesandland:

on sex and men

I am of mezereon and spurge-laurel, you know; my greek is sweet bay. I am Lady in Waiting to Queen Jane.

Ours is a little country, now sadly of diminished importance in the world, sandwiched as it is between the mountains and the sea.

I have been the queen's masseuse since she was ten; now I am old, auntie-old, smooth and powder pink and large. From the beginning, almost from the time when she was eleven there has been an affectionate aspect to my role, which I think is only natural and lovely; I am her confidante; I notice, for example, her legs, which are in excellent shape still; and I caress her tummy. Sometimes as the culmination of our meetings and prior to her nap, I stay with her and doze on the couch, or in one of the easy chairs. She often has a little dream, a little royal, muttering dream, as I call it and I am delighted by this; if afterwards I concentrate and then relax and then concentrate again I will often experience a little springing dream myself…

I have a way of life, you see, with commitments and meetings and strangenesses that gives me a particular view of things and it was John Tattenberg (her majesty’s chief adviser) who encouraged me to write these words, himself encouraged by a casual remark to us both by the First Minister. (I want to say clearly too that Tattenberg has offered me a little reward, a little Money, for my efforts.)

But I must begin. I am quite nervous and confess that I much prefer to be quietly chatting with the Queen. But, to begin at the beginning. I simply love my job, my Queen and all the Cuddles with my queen and attending to the Queen’s every need…

(I stopped there, did you see? O dear! I was rambling through thoughts such as: well don't we all & is that important and what of it anyway?)…

What did Tattenberg mean when he said, Daphne you owe it to yourself and to the world to write it all down? What did he Mean exactly? Not court gossip, surely? Not, ‘I had the great honour to meet the Archbishop at a Tea; he is an extremely jolly fellow with a sprightly, slightly boyish sense of humour’...

Talking of boyishness, and humour, the First Minister says that work makes him randy and it must be true; is it not amazing that he can work a strenuous eighteen hour day yet need, apparently, at least four sexual encounters a day. Need them, for his peace of mind, stability, pleasure. The general public would not believe it, they would not believe anything about him, or her Majesty, or even about Tattenberg with his great glistening Organ seeming always to have been added onto his body afterwards, a grotesque and splendid afterthought; wonderful man among wonderful men and women...

When I walk in the street, read the newspapers, look at television I am convinced of the fact, and amazed, that most people, the masses, the man in the street does not seem to really Relish sex, or at least, not as we do; not as the court does; not as the Queen does...

But to facts: I wake at six, pick up my second pillow from the floor where I have flung it during the night and Masturbate at once. I shower. I check the list from the Her Majesty's wardrobe to make sure that I do not wear anything that is either similar or would clash with what ever she will be wearing. I have a light breakfast in my room. I go to the Queen's office at eight where, generally, she is already hard at work. Tattenberg is often standing at the window staring over the garden, awaiting instructions…

Oh yes, Tattenberg wanted me to mention, to state rather emphatically that Sex is Good; morally good. To which I must add my own thought here, that if this is so then to engage in it, to Do it, must be morally enhancing and uplifting. Though it is complex; you see, Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, Bergman, Bunuel, Jesus of Nazareth, Nietzsche and the Queen, to name a random sample, have all given me strength, Spiritual strength - and Sexual strength; the former underpins the Meaning of Life, the second underpins the Continuation of Life, though both are intertwined, ecstatic, eternal and longed-for Pleasures in themselves...

Evidently, avoiding the gossip which of course exists, I must describe for you a Day in my life; a day in detail. The hesitancy that I feel within You makes this delicate, difficult task essential; the hesitancy within Your mind; within you, your brain.

(And as I write I feel a little Naughty and truthful and find a precise need to say, ‘And, yes, also a hesitancy within your Trousers and up your Skirts. But why, for goodness sake, Why?’)

But first a description of myself. I am sixty-ish, loyal, patriotic, fun-loving, irreligious, art-loving; terribly Young inside. Physically I am tall, I admit, a big woman; I wear straight down dresses because I must; I sway, my feet are ridiculously, Erotically small, my breasts very large. I move majestically. If I don't, I wobble; naked I Wobble Erotically. There you have it…

Young men, teenagers, are always trying to catch glimpses of my Breasts because young men of that age are still obsessed by them; middle aged men ignore me completely; they see only an overweight, uninteresting auntie figure. But Fellini would probably have loved me, and perhaps Pasolini also.

Very old Men, especially the particularly shrunken types, quiver with delight even when I come near them; they are sturdy little Blighters some of these, going at it Hammer and Tongs. After love and passion the conversation with them is often equally stimulating and interesting…

There was one old Colonel who took four hours to make love as he described with a Wetted finger on every part of my bare body the intricate manoeuvrings at the battle of Waterloo. Eventually the battle was over. I remember vividly his words, 'Wellington won'; I recall with delight the sighs and the sensations of that sumptuous victory...

But again I digress. But I suppose, too, Sex is a digression; a digression from sitting properly at table and eating up all ones Greens and pretending that butter would not melt in ones… Ah, but it will, of course, even in Auntie's, even in prim auntie's.

What clever, but deceitful people have been all my aunties, and what terrible harm they have done. Had I had a Willy, then to be sure that I would have Poked them all into confessions of utter Lust; lust the sin. But Jesus, bless his heart, meant that lust is a sin if you let it lie, if you let it fester, closed from the air, hidden from the sun...

There are some men, you know, who will lurk in a woman's shadow as if always about to Pounce, and to pounce and do harm. Women fear them and despise them. Such men do not understand that sex is in the street, across the table, on a Walk, in the Air; they do not realise that they can look, and Smile, and talk, and give; they do not see that we women are warmed and made happy and joyous by the sense of Attentiveness, the tinge of Admiration, by the slow, adoring movement of a man's lovely, open, smiling Eyes...

And that, I feel, is all there is to say.

© Richard Penna 2022

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8...

Falmen

Reason or motive or intention are not easily attributed to Nature, but one may conclude that a virus would like to flourish and multiply, as do humans and ants and ivies. Ivy pushes on, climbs until it discovers a limit. Human beings experiment and explore and reject all limits. The virus also experiments, takes risks and is careful, perhaps, to protect the host for as long as possible before a replacement is found. Viruses are the new heroes who will not erect statues to themselves but who will, nevertheless, reign like vulgar and obnoxious kings…

In the flooded valley of the Fal in Cornwall, a small, human population survives the deadly virus D-sloe. They do sometimes develop purple blisters but after a few weeks most of them recover their health. Realising that they are the sole race of survivors they seek a reason for their salvation. Some say that the ancient Celtic strength has revived here in this unpolluted place where there have never been factories or motorways. Others half believe that it has something to do with the nuclear warheads that were supposed to have been submerged in the deep tidal waters some years before. Then there are those who believe that it is simply fate, chance…

But in fact D-sloe, having annihilated most of the human population, has chosen this symbiotic relationship in this strange, damp, almost sub-tropical region; its safe haven and incubator, passing amongst these people like a ghost, seeking its own immortality. Occasionally, almost inadvertently, it is responsible for a death.

Falmen themselves live simple lives, eating fruit and fermenting grapes; they seem content with their precarious existence. When a baby is born they wait patiently for it to excrete a purple slime, proof that D- sloe has expired within it. Then, when the tide is out, they give thanks, hurling their naked bodies into the mud and thrashing around in frenzied and ritualistic celebration.

© Richard Penna 2022

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9...

Naivety

He is slumped against a blood stained wall in a dingy room, rubble and rubbish, broken furniture scattered here and there; and no sound except dripping water somewhere.

(If the peace comes, if the foreigners pay, this house will be rebuilt; but the owner, if he is still alive, is already settled in a tent in a camp somewhere in another country and he will not return; he will probably not be told that his house is repaired…)

None of this concerns him directly. In his fatigue he is anxious about his psychological, or psychic state; or more accurately with his spiritual state. And then not absolutely concerned. If he can think and feel deeply then he will act correctly. He will get to his feet and leave this room, driven by hunger or thirst or cold or heat and aided by a courage which is both profound and honest. It is only necessary to behave properly…

At the corner of two streets whose names he knows but has forgotten there are two wrecked and abandoned military vehicles; from one hangs a body, burned and half torn in two. He knows that he does not have the strength to bury the body but he tries at least to pull it to the ground where he intends to settle it decently in the shadow of the vehicle; but he discovers, no doubt like many others before me, that the ankles are jammed in the metal. The body must wait either for a mechanic to untwist metal or for someone to sever the feet…

Entering a building where the rooms are full of people who are immersed in form filling, first aid and therapy, he watches random groups of wounded people waiting quietly and with immense patience. People look up as he enters and, seeing his pale face and cropped brown hair, look away and continue what they are doing; studying, tending, staring, waiting…

He drifts through the crowd and then leaves the building, not yet ready to join them, not yet ready to be made to feel better. Tonight, he is sure, more bombs will fall and more people will scream; more children will stand over the half-dead, twitching bodies of their parents and cry hysterically, demanding that they get up and come home.

He returns to the bare room, stands in its very centre. Like the others, he has lost everything; things, securities. Yet he is aware above all that he has been purged and cleansed of a great tangle of protective lies, both inherited and self-made. A great fabrication of logical means and intentions has collapsed into dust.

What remains is the body, young enough and well able to resist this cold and well able to go without food for another day; and a mind longing for a single truth, craving a simple image, perhaps a cool stream rushing amidst green grass towards the sea. For the moment, even a child entering this image sends a shudder of fear and despair through his limbs.

He is clothed but loose in his clothes as if naked, as if he has known everything and abandoned everything, all that knowing and quasi-understanding and miscomprehension. Bracing his feet against the concrete floor, he is unsteady as the planet circles. There is nothing to say, yet he speaks. There is something that he wants.

He wants to enter a realm of experience, to sink or rise into another state of being; not an escape but rather a condition in which there is an absolute acceptance of total responsibility; at the same time it is a state of mind that owes nothing, owns nothing, expects nothing…

It is also a desire to start again, like a child, to wake lying in the grass and to crawl off in any direction, over-awed, fascinated by the blades of grass and the stems of plants and the sunlight slanting down, giving colour and shadow and form; to be oblivious of everything else, especially mankind and his structures and the places of no-meaning…

Returning to the hive of activity, he identifies himself, begins to help with the wounded, the distressed, those without a home, a land, no place where they have the right to be. People do not smile; and nor does he. When someone begins filming the good that is being done amidst the bad that has been done, he averts his face and eventually hides. But this action makes people suspicious and finally he ignores the camera and continues with the work.

When it becomes too dark to carry on the foreigners sit in a circle around a single candle, eating bread and spooning food from tins. There is a dark eyed young man staring at him. He asks if he is unwell. He cannot bear to hear himself reply, so he shrugs his shoulders and turns away. The young man continues to stare so he pulls his jacket closer around him. As soon as possible he slips away to sleep outside in the yard, sheltered by the trunk of a fallen tree. There are chickens and they come pecking around his feet as if they cannot see him or smell him or sense his presence; as if he has no existence…

At dawn, near to what remains of the market he hitches a lift on a lorry going north. Gradually, as it becomes daylight, he sees that they leave behind all traces of green, all fields and trees and begin to enter a wild, unpeopled landscape of barren hills, dry water courses. Dust clouds swirl about them and tighten the throat, inducing a silent panic.

At a crossroads the driver indicates the direction of the partisan camps; in the other direction he says there are only hills and hermits. He climbs down from the lorry and takes the road that leads on into the hills.

The sound of the lorry dies away. He hears only the calls of a few birds of prey high in the sky. He has no map, no precise idea of where he is, no food, no water, no clear idea of what he is doing. He is unsure, as a traveller and stranger, if he will be welcome in this country.

The sun is already hot, the sky pale and clear, the hills shades of grey. He hears lizards and insects but he cannot see them; perhaps there are wild cats.

If he dies it will be of thirst, far from the green valley with the rushing stream. But if he dies he will die praying, he has decided; he will die communing with the blue sky and brown earth and with the forms of life that he cannot see. He will be aware, near or far, of the presence in this place of the hermits. And if one of them should find him, dried and lifeless, they will perhaps be content, perhaps further inspired, because his body will be curled and his hands clasped in a attitude of supplication, an attitude of self-sacrifice; this, he has decided, will be his last pointless act of defiance.

But for the moment he walks on, sometimes stamping his boots down into the dust, pretending to trudge along, pondering this word sacrifice, studying the barrenness of the hills and marvelling at the emptiness of his life. Sacrifice, how feeble, how irrelevant this word seems when compared with what he sees about him; the soaring of the eagles and the sharp ridges of the hills against the sky…

Further on he digs in the sandy soil at the side of the track and buries his wristwatch, deep enough so that it will never be found and traded for some other worthless thing. But at the same time he knows that when the autumn rains come, it will be washed down the mountain and he imagines that it is found by a wise man who at once flings it far out to sea.

Sitting by the roadside, not in despair, but not yet in prayer, he is disturbed by a small shower of rocks falling nearby. Turning he sees a figure slowly approaching through a cleft in the rock. He gets to his feet calmly and turns to face him.

He sees a small person wearing sandals and brown, baggy trousers bulging over a distended stomach; the top half is covered by a patterned, grimy pullover and a short leather cloak. Long black hair frames a small, dark, wrinkled face whose expression is tight-lipped, serious, yet illumined by sharp blue eyes. For a moment he cannot understand what seems a surreal aspect of this being; then he understands. He is a woman, and she is pregnant…

At a short distance they stand and stare, surprised by each other. When she speaks her accent is clear and precise, her tone of voice harsh.

‘You are alone?’

He nods and she beckons him to follow her and she leads him to her dwelling and seems to insist that he explore it.

She lives in a cave, the mouth of which is half walled up by mud bricks. A small trickle of water emerges from near the cave entrance, spreading out over the surface of the stone and after a few metres disappearing into the sand. The space within the cave is quite dark, blackened by the smoke from a fire which smoulders within a circle of stones in the middle of the earth floor. There is a deep pile of dried grasses which he assumes to be her bed, and a small pile of dry wood for the fire. And against the wall there are two small stone coffers each sealed by a close fitting slab of stone. One contains berries, a morsel of food that resembles dried bread and a plastic bag containing nuts. The other contains two, small, battered leather-bound books.

Sitting beside him at the mouth of the cave, she smiles as if at some private pleasure. She makes no demands, asks no questions; and he asks nothing of her. Their lack of suspicion (this mutual trust already takes the form of an emotion which resembles affection) emerges from the silence within which they listen to the sounds around them and stare quietly at the birds circling high in the sky. They have not frightened each other by the threats inherent in a barrage of questions that demand a response; they have not tried to fix each other in time and space.

She invites him to rest, to lie down and sleep on the bed of grass and as he slips into sleep he realises that he has not a care in the world…

He drifts in and out of sleep, sensing an unusual comfort and security; she offers him water in a small wooden bowl.

Later they climb upwards towards the ridge and descend a little on the other side into another, almost verdant world. He gathers up a great armful of grass for his own bed; she gathers berries and nuts from the small low trees and a knob of wood which during that evening she will carve into the shape of a bird.

In the morning, as he half-expected, she is not to be seen. In one of the stone coffers she has left a few nuts and berries; the other is empty.

He shouts out, a loud, meaningless call simply to be sure that she has gone; there is an echo of the sound but there is no reply, not after a minute nor an hour nor a day. He understands, beyond any doubt, that she has moved on and has passed on to him her cave as he must one day bequeath it to someone else. Lying flat on the ground he laps up some of the cool water. He finds a sharp stone and a piece wood in order to carve myself a cup, but changes his mind. Instead he will try to find a large, curled leaf.

He sits at the mouth of the cave surveying the valley, the rocks and the sky, his domain. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go and nothing makes any demand and though he is calm in body and mind, he is not entirely at ease; something still eludes him.

© Richard Penna 2022

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10...

                

From The Sickroom

The house dominates the promontory. The garden, a jungle of small trees and bushes, patches of grass, wild flowers and scrub, falls away steeply to the cliff edge. Meandering throughout the vegetation are dark, hidden paths. There are steep steps winding their way from the garden down to the beach below; steps cut in the earth, their edges held in place by half buried logs, and steps lower down cut in the rock face. The beach is rock and shingle, as I remember, and very narrow when the tide is in.

I have been awake for some time and I am in my room on the top floor of the house. From the window I can see the garden stretching away to the cliff edge and beyond that the sea. White horses and the cold, dark sea.

It is true that I have not been down to the beach for a long time. During last summer I was unwell and hardly moved from my room. The summer before that was so poor, so windy and wet, if I remember, that it was impossible to climb down. So it must have been the summer before that when Jean arranged for the two workmen to come to the house and to carry me in the chair very slowly down to the beach. They had a great deal of trouble at the sharp corners on the path; there was a great deal of grunting and groaning and I remember the smell of their sweating heads under my nose. I recall too the half buried logs that stopped the path turning into a slippery slope.

On the beach it was difficult; the two men waiting at the far end of the beach impatiently, while the two ladies, the young and the old, sat draped in blankets, reading; or, if I remember correctly, also clinging onto each other, daring to paddle at the edge of the sea...

But memory does not deceive me about the path; it is steep and difficult, tortuous, even for a fit and agile person.

Therefore when I awake at first light, how can it be that the garden is full of cows? Cows wandering in all directions along the small paths, browsing on the leaves of shrubs and trees, very calmly, as if they had all the time in the world. And this is no dream, because I call down to Jean and though I do not think that she hears me, nevertheless she rushes from the ground floor of the house shouting and waving her arms at the animals. She is wearing a plastic mac and a plastic hood over her greying hair. It is raining slightly and the wind gusting against the window suddenly makes it impossible for me to hear what she is shouting; but with her arms raised she is shooing the cows towards the cliff edge, towards the path that leads down to the beach and the sea.  At first the cows stand and look at her, wondering at the fuss and noise; but eventually they turn and make their way slowly towards the cliff path and out of sight.

But what cows they were! Sandy in colour and stocky like French cows, like small bulls. Very clean, their hides very thick and furry and perfect. A lovely fold of skin on their necks, and thick tails as if they had been combed. And looking at their heads, their pure horns, the area between the horns, the soft sideways movement of their jaws as they ate, and, of course, their eyes, their enormously beautiful eyes, I know for certain, beyond all doubt, that I will never see such beautiful creatures again. I watch Jean coming back into the house. I return to my bed and lie down, quite exhausted and closing my eyes I imagine the cows in a trance wading deeper and deeper into the dark sea.

© Richard Penna 2022

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11...

                        Out Of The Gap

Gregor awoke one night in the gap between the floorboard and the skirting and he was not what he had been before. He was transformed into a human being and he was small and naked. In the large mirror, in the room that was his entire world, he recognised at once that he was a reincarnation of Franz K and he knew instinctively that the scratching, clawing sound behind the skirting was evidence that his erstwhile progenitors were waking, cleaning themselves and beginning to search for lost bread crumbs and dead dust-mites. But they suddenly emerged and spied him, a juicy, white maggot, and they advanced towards him…

But it is not good, not healthy to remember Franz K in this way, ripped apart by his parents and his siblings.

He awoke one night in the gap between the floorboard and the skirting and he was not what he had been before; he was transformed into a large boot. And when the cockroaches emerged he stamped down on them one after the other, squashed them into red-brown stains that continued to writhe; and those that escaped in the instep did not do so for long. But he became too zealous, too rabid in this destruction so that he failed to notice a tiny human form emerge and he half crushed the little body before he could stop himself. He recognised Emily Bronte and he was forced to put her out of her misery. Thereafter he was more careful; he saw John Steinbeck, Beethoven and Francis Bacon emerge hand in hand, picking their way through the sticky mess of dead and dying insects and heading in the direction of the stairs where they helped each other to climb down a small rope ladder towards the dining room. There they all climbed up on the table, Chekhov in red, St. Jerome in blue, Dodgson in green; and they began to feast and chatter, all desperate and all doubtful.

 © Richard Penna 2022

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12...

                 Various Provocations

When Father Robinson knocked rapidly at the door of the small terraced house he was shown immediately into the front parlour; the girl was sitting in the corner of the room in her father’s armchair, her knees pulled up under her chin and her arms encircling them, a sullen expression on her face. The mother stood between the priest and her daughter, looking from one to the other as if she expected something strange and miraculous to happen. Father Robinson hesitated for a moment and then gestured to the mother to leave and sat down in the armchair opposite to the girl. Having hurried to the house at some speed in response to what had seemed an urgent request he was now at pains to calm himself; he ran his finger under his collar. He cleared his throat.

- Now Millie, what’s all this I’ve been hearing?

- It’s nothing.

- Well, now I’d best be the judge of that.

The girl pulled her knees up closer under her chin and eyed the priest suspiciously as if preparing herself for an attack that she was determined to resist. She was a girl of fifteen with a plain, boyish face, distinguished only by a pair of piercing blue eyes which fixed the priest now with a penetrating and unyielding stare. He looked away and down at his hands in his lap and took a deep breath followed instantly by a deep sigh.

- Your mother tells me, Millie, that you’re upset about the General.

He paused and dared to look the girl in the eyes.

- I’ve known you girl since you were a tiny child and you know that you can talk to me. So come on now, you’re not trying to suggest to me, your priest, that the General has in any way…

- It’s nothing like that. Nothing at all.

She spoke the words as if with a tired resignation.

Father Robinson leant further back in his armchair and again took a deep breath. Balancing his book on the arm of the chair he fumbled in his pockets and lit himself a cigarette.

- Would you be getting me an ashtray, Millie?

The girl leapt up awkwardly from her chair and went to the mantelpiece to fetch him the ashtray; she stood stiffly a yard in front of him distending the glass bowl for him to take, looking down at him, her tight lips held in a grimace of embarrassed distaste. Turning away from him she moved to the table and began to finger the fringe of the heavy, brown tablecloth. She did not look at him and spoke as if to herself.

- I only said I wanted to kill him.

The priest looked up at her quickly, anxious to catch a glimpse of her face and its expression. But he could see nothing but the tension in the tablecloth which she seemed to be drawing violently into her hands.

- But you said it a number of times Millie, if I heard right. In fact you mother says you screamed it out so that the whole street could have heard. Am I right in that Millie?

- You are.

She was almost inaudible and did not turn to face him. Father Robinson took a little courage from the softness of her voice and from the gentle folds in which the tablecloth was now hanging.

- Now why would you say that, my girl? Whatever has the General done to deserve such words? Mother of God, that’s no way for a young girl to be talking, now is it?

- I hate the man. Hate, don’t you understand?

She swung round to face him, spitting out the words. But suddenly her entire body seemed to shudder and go limp and she threw herself sideways into the armchair and covered her face with her hands…

Though the priest tried a dozen other questions, she uttered not a word more. He tried calm, patience, tact and the might of God, but nothing prevailed against her silence and when he approached her at one point and placed his hand on her shoulder her young body tensed and stiffened so that he felt obliged to withdraw it. Eventually he got up, pocketed his cigarettes and took up his book and left the room to converse in whispers with the girl’s mother in the hall. In his opinion, as he expressed it, there was cause for a certain concern and worry; the girl seemed a little frightened of him and why was that he asked the mother; he had, however, not the least doubt that she would talk to him and quite soon and for that reason the mother was to know that he would be at the church until late in the evening and the girl was to be allowed to come when she wanted. In the doorway he turned.

- Mrs Flynn will also be at the church until late, arranging flowers, you know.

But again he turned back and spoke hesitantly, cautiously.

- She is well, I suppose. I mean the doctor…

- Father you wouldn’t be suggesting…

- No, no, no, nothing of the sort, of course. I was just wondering if at some point the doctor might have a word with her, just the same.

At about seven o’clock that evening Father Robinson was interrupted during a rather quiet encounter in the confessional by a loud banging on the booth. It was Millie’s younger brother, panting after a hard run and shouting out to him.

- Father, Father, it’s Millie. You’ve got to come.

Taking the boy by the shoulder the priest led him away from the confessional.

- Calm yourself, calm yourself. Now what's the matter boy.

- It’s Millie, Father. She’s gone. Me mother sent me to fetch you. She’s not to be found. And me dead father’s drawers are all pulled out in a mess. There’s a revolver gone missing.

The priest stood staring at the boy, still gripping his shoulder and trying to take in what he was saying. Then his face cleared and he spoke urgently and rapidly to the boy.

- Alright now. Go back to you mother. Be telling her that I’m fetching the General and that I’ll be there as soon as I can.

At a quarter to eight Father Robinson, with a bewildered General in tow, arrived at the small terraced house and were let in by the panic-stricken mother. An urgent and anguished discussion ensued in the hall and, after some persuasion it was agreed that the agitated woman  should go off in search of the girl while the General and the priest should stay at the house in case she returned which Father Robinson had no doubt she would. Then they would have the matter out once and for all.

Mother and son set out in search while the priest and the General settled down in the parlour to wait.

They sat opposite each other, the priest in the chair that the girl had occupied that afternoon and the General in the armchair opposite to the mantelpiece. They spoke little to each other as they waited, the priest drumming his fingers on the book and the General, looking somewhat uncomfortable, gazing disinterestedly around the room.

The General was a tall, quite handsome, moustached gentleman in his mid sixties. He wore most often a slightly aloof, almost vague but genial enough expression, though now the wrinkles around his narrow grey eyes seemed that much more pronounced and his normally thin lips were drawn even tighter; there was a twitching at the corner of his mouth...

No one really knew where he came from nor whether he was in fact a General, but certainly he had been an English officer of high rank. This could be seen plainly enough even if one only caught a glimpse of him in the street as he strode along in his English clothes and with his chin held so high. He had been in the area a long time and everyone knew him, from the adults who passed the time of day with him, and the children who followed him in the hope of receiving the sixpence that he was wont occasionally to stoop and hand over with due solemnity, to the girls who sometimes giggled when he passed them in the street giving them that strange momentary bow. The General was part of the local scene and none seemed to mind his solitary and somewhat dignified presence in this mostly poor part of the city.

As he sat crossed legged with the priest it would have been difficult to know what he was thinking. Father Robinson got up to offer him a cigarette and then took him the ashtray which was still full of a dozen half-smoked stubs from his call earlier in the day…

As he settled himself again in the armchair he noticed a slight movement of something just over the General’s right shoulder. The door to the cupboard under the stairs was being pushed slowly open from the inside. The General, noticing the curious expression on the priest’s face, half turned in his chair to see what it was that he was staring at and immediately the small triangular door opened completely and Millie emerged, drawing herself up to full height in front of them. She was brandishing a large revolver.

Both men began to move, but her intense eyes fixed the priest as she lashed out at them.

- If you move Father, I’ll blast the General.

She stood stock still behind the General pointing the gun at the back of his head; the two men eased themselves tensely back into their armchairs.

- Now it’s I’ll do the questioning. This here General or whatever he is can do the answering and you can just do the listening Father.

Her voice was cruel and amazingly hard for one so young. The priest looked from the General to the girl and leant forward in his chair, raising a hand in appeal to her.

- Millie, for the love of God, what…

- Shut you face, Father.

There was such hate and violence in her voice that he was immediately halted, lowering his hand and sinking back into his armchair. The General’s eyes appealed to the girl and then to the priest but he remained still, slumped in the armchair with an almost tired, resigned air about his entire body.

The girl took a step back from the General’s chair and took a deep breath. She swayed a little on her feet. Then she continued in the same tone of voice.

- Right then General, tell me this and I’ll be wanting it straight. What are you doing here? By what right are you among us?

The General lifted his head a little, took a long draw on his cigarette and then took it to the ashtray and tapped it gently twice against the glass. But the General did not answer her question. Father Robinson was going to answer for him and was in the process of blurting out a question as to why in God’s name she thought he shouldn’t to be here - but in his agitation his elbow tipped his book off the arm of the chair. He made an unwise dive to catch it and young Millie, who was holding the revolver in both hands a few inches away from the General’s head, took half a step backwards, panicked and fired.

© Richard Penna 2022

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13...

                     Lament

I took the saddle down again that fateful day for you to ride; damp mud, leaves, green and brown, wet leaves slapping against your face. You fell, but seemed merely dazed. I took you back, stripped you, washed you in the bath, put you in the bed where you fell asleep at once…

My energy soars with this new love but when you are not there I drink and when I decide that I have had enough to drink, I stare from the window.

I forget the fire, the blazing logs, and I don’t touch anything else. The window remains closed and my own thoughts circulate. No thoughts, particularly of death, but none either of life; a strange desolation. You are curled now under the sheet and your body seems very small and I know that you are asleep; you are not yet elsewhere.

I studied the frescoes. I left the temple at noon and was blinded by the intensity of the sunlight. I could not see you as I descended the steps and our bodies collided; I could feel your breasts, soft against me. You asked about the temple, you asked if I loved god, but I was too confused, there was too much traffic and I could not reply.

Near the house, the sound and stench of the chain-saws, the men felling trees and spreading ugliness everywhere, ravaging the valley, polluting the stream, poisoning the breeze. We lie low, we wait; we draw, paint, compose in the almost darkness and the almost silence. We are content, we are happy, we are loving – but we are also tense, afraid, sensing the nature of the impending conclusion as if mud might become dust and green leaves fall in spring…

 © Richard Penna 2023

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14...

                             Swinehearts

Can you believe when it all started?

Various research institutions around the world had already noticed some special or strange behaviour among the so called Swinehearts – those people, numbering now in their thousands in the West, who had had some organ transplanted from a pig, most often the heart. But the first proof that something odd was happening occurred when Eric Jones, who was a farm worker in Devon and who had a pig heart transplant at the early age of twenty seven, began to work with pigs. Eric enjoyed looking after the pigs whom he thought gentle, friendly and very intelligent creatures.

One morning in late February a pig spoke to him. It said something like:- ‘Morning, Eric. Everything okay?’. Within a few days all the pigs were talking to him and he to them, simple but not uninteresting conversations. The farmer overheard Eric one day in the barn and thought that he was talking to himself and said nothing. Apparently he could hear only the usual grunting of the pigs.

Eric was not unaware of the possible link between this ‘talk’ that only he could hear and understand, and the fact of his transplant; he was initially grateful that the pigs seemed to bear him no grudge despite the fact that one of their number had been sacrificed so that he might live. When he pondered the matter, as he did for some long time, he decided that the pigs thought that he was one of them. They heard his heart beat, felt its rhythm, and knew that he was in fact not just kith but also kin, a true brother; and when he spoke, the words sounded to them like meaningful grunts. But one day a certain combination of events brought about a further, bizarre development in his relationship with these swine...

Certain financial and matrimonial problems had caused Eric to drink a great deal of beer on the previous night. He arrived in the pig shed late and extremely hungover. As he worked at the cleaning and feeding, he told the pigs incoherently and in a soft, grumpy voice the details of all his anxieties and difficulties; about his desire to have what he termed an ‘erotic’ relationship with his buxom wife who so wanted to have a child; about his need to have just a bit more money, say a hundred pounds a month, so that he could save up and take her on a luxury cruise to Malta and such places. These were the vital and primary elements that would lead, eventually, to the achievement of his master plan. This was the dream:- to have  a farm of his own, a few acres of land and a horse, a stout, strong horse, on which to ride the boundaries of his domain, his children seated behind him, holding onto him and to each other; and he would rear special pigs of high intelligence who would almost look after themselves… in fact he would stop taking his pigs to market, he would keep them and instead eat bread and pickled onions…

The pigs stopped snuffling around his feet and came close and stood quietly looking up at him. They said, almost in a sweet chorus, ‘Perhaps we can help, Eric’.

He smiled and plonked down on his buttock in the straw amongst them which very much excited the pigs who crowded about him, nuzzling and nibbling and, as it seemed to him, kissing him all over.

Later that day Eric received a call from his wife to say that one of his pigs had escaped and was at their house racing around the garden and about to do all sorts of terrible damage. He checked the pigs and noticed that Brendan, the hairiest and grandest of the all the boars, was missing…

He drove to his house as quickly as he could and though he saw no pig in the garden, he certainly heard one in the house. His wife was squealing and so was Brendan. When he opened the front door she screamed out that she was upstairs trapped behind the wardrobe and that the pig was under the bed snorting as loudly as he could. And so it was.

‘Brendan’ said Eric, ‘You come down at once and sit in the car’. And Brendan, though he had a little trouble with the stairs, did as he was told. As Eric shut the car door on him Brendan said in a pig whisper, ‘Giddy-up, Eric’, which was unusually encouraging.

When Eric went back up stairs to calm his wife she emerged timidly from behind the wardrobe, still in her night-dress, and flung herself with massive relief into his arms. He fell back on the bed, and she with him. She squealed and hugged him, smelt pig on him and licked his neck voraciously and buried her red nose in his jumper. She rolled and he rolled with her; they toyed and tumbled for a good hour before they lay back exhausted and amazed, naked and smelly, pleased, happy and at peace.

‘Well.’ said Eric, ‘Well, well’.

A few days later the pigs, lead by Brendan, went on hunger strike. The worried farmer asked Eric what was to be done. Eric sat down among them and talked; later he told the farmer that in his opinion the animals wanted Eric to ‘give his all’ and this, he was prepared to do for a small increase in his salary. The farmer readily agreed…

So! Pigs and their heartfelt emotions! But one must not believe everything one reads even though it may make one happy and especially not if it happens to be true.

© Richard Penna 2022

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15...

                             Inertia

She had watched him watching from the window for a long time and she wondered what it was that he watched. People perhaps, moving in the street below, cars, lorries being loaded and unloaded, shadowy activity behind lace at other windows.

The blame and therefore the innocence being apportioned equally between them, it came to his turn to go out. He refused. He would not be persuaded. He said quietly that he had had a dream and did not yet understand it; he could not go out yet. The leaves, he said, were falling from the trees like bombs onto the street below. They fell heavily, clumsily through a vacuum; they bruised the pavement. A mechanical drone pervaded the air, bulldozers heaved and struggled to pile up the leaves. The roots of trees were crushed to death by the weight of the leaves that fell upon them. He would not go out, he would not leave the house.

There was then a heavy silence, and sighs, and the persuaders temporarily withdrew except that she followed him closely with her eyes. And followed him with her eyes up the stairs to the top of the house where his room was. On the landing he turned abruptly and faced her. She stopped, one foot still on the stair. Looking at her he saw and felt her idleness; uncommitted, still floating between the floors of the house, still knowing that she drifted aimlessly between things that moved and spoke - and things that spoke and moved…

He wanted to harm her, attack her. She wanted to pull him down, twist his head in her hands so that he would look at something; but they did not move. Quite soon they forgot what they were doing and even why they were there at all.

© Richard Penna 2023

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16...

                       In The Gallery

Every few moments I catch a glimpse of his empty, blue eyes staring down at me, waiting for me to start writing. I am reminded of a woman I met recently who had startling blue eyes and in spite of her skin, which appeared paper-thin, I found her beautiful. Her eyes were not empty.

I write: “He regards me with his pale blue watery eyes...”

Leaning down, he says in a low voice, “Please concentrate on your work.” I assure him that I will delete my opening sentences as soon as my story gets started.

In this flimsy, windswept building in a woodland clearing on the edge of Paris, being examined in a language not my own, my teacher passes again, expressing impatience that I have not yet deleted the words about his blue eyes. He has been kind to me and helpful; why then, today, is he so irritating? He advises against speaking directly to a reader… (and his eyes are fixed on me again, disappointed and scornful)... but I must speak.

I have not talked to anyone since Friday at six, nor have I listened to the radio; and I have read nothing. Nevertheless I have enjoyed the quiet, the stillness and the falling rain...

On Sunday, when it rained again, I decided to visit an exhibition of Central African ‘art', a way of warming myself. I walked there through the downpour.

As you can imagine, I arrived wet and dishevelled and was scowled at, first by the people in the foyer who were studying photographs of mud huts with ladders poking through holes in the flat roofs; and then again by the woman in the little glass booth who sold the tickets. As I knew well, you should not arrive on a Sunday afternoon (at an important gallery showing important ethnic objects) in a wet and dirty condition. But I got in without too much bother.

I enjoy galleries because I can observe the people who come to look at the exhibits. They pace gently, inspecting the objects, reading labels and inscriptions, leaning in close to them, trying to be as quiet as possible, trying to avoid all body contact and all expression of emotion. Some become lost, entranced, absorbed; others perform a strange, slow, whispering dance; a mime. They are pilgrims at a peaceful shrine where the god has become art; the act of faith here is the half-buried hope that one will be changed, transported; that one will emerge into a bright dawn with a yellow sun shining onto a wide open space, green and brown and beautiful...

And also, no doubt, the hope that within this space one might encounter a fellow spirit, a wandering dreamer, a silent lover... (I write quickly now, lest he pass by my table again...)

A woman stooped to look at a carving, and I could see the sad, greyness of her face; but she straightened up and turned slowly and her bright, blue, amazing eyes held mine and she did not smile but continued to stare back at me. And I stared at her; a long, unblinking, silent face à face, completely forbidden in this  strange, timeless atmosphere, within the gallery and within the rain.

Eventually, shakily I like to think, she went to sit down on a bench, her back to me. I made a brief tour of the room and left. At the door I turned and saw that she was looking at me again...

In my room I lay down on the bed and kissed her image very gently on its white, white forehead. I decided that a memory, a deep longing had been stirred within her, but it was not this that made me so pleased; it was the fact that she had been unable to mask her feelings. In my silent room in the slow, decadent rain of winter Paris, this seemed good news.

© Richard Penna 2023

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17...

                   Seeking a Refuge             

I arrived in the rain at the house of George, my brother, his wife, Vanessa and their dogs. I did not tell them that I had walked from the boat. At dinner, which they ate very early in the evening, I talked about nothing; I was calm yet hysterical at the same time. I watched television with them because I was drunk.

I enjoyed the soft bed and the pale, yellow, nylon sheets with the embroidered edge but I was awoken by one of the great dogs pushing at me excitedly with its wet nose. Vanessa came in, whispering at the dog, and dragged it from the room; she closed the door and sat on the bed. She placed her hand on my arm and gazed at me and asked how I was.

On the following night, in the dark I heard the dog outside my room again and I waited with baited breath for her to come in. She stood by the door almost naked. She gestured in a way that I found slightly lewd and beckoned me to follow her, down the stairs and out of the house. In the stable she pulled me down on top of her on the straw on the cold, hard, concrete floor. Though I heard them breathing, the horses did not move.

Later I wrote to Sylvia. ‘I am well. I miss you. I find it odd here. They are unsophisticated, even crude people yet they own a stable full of horses… I am weeping. I wish that you could be here, sharing the yellow bed with me, waking and talking and laughing as you did. I dream of the way that you make love, so quietly and slowly, arching yourself, stopping and starting. I will return as soon as I can, as soon as something can be arranged.’ I sealed and taped the envelope and hid it under the pillow.

I was on the top step of the landing when I heard O’Hara’s voice at the front door, asking to be let in. Luckily my brother distrusted him at once and was wary of his brute appearance and kept him outside.

At breakfast it was too early to tell them that I had no money; with them I was ashamed of my poverty and I knew that they would think it my fault, which is right, it was…

In the evening George came up the stairs with a decanter and two glasses and sat on the bed in exactly the same spot as Vanessa on the first night. My brother asked, ‘Who is O’Hara? Do you owe him money? What hold does he have over you?’

This is what I replied. ‘After the stabbing and the trial I thought that was an end to the matter. I would see Sylvia from time to time, if they permitted it, otherwise all that period of my life was over, tidied up and finished. But I was wrong. It seems that she was part of an organisation… But what organisation? I have no idea, something political and, I suspect now, more legal than illegal. I mean that it now seems that she worked for the state but in a department that was totally obscure, totally hidden from scrutiny. And it seems that O’Hara had discovered what she did…

‘When she stabbed me she said ‘Now we will both be safe’. I got rid of the house from my hospital bed and a year later, when I came to pay off all the bills I found that there was nothing left. Everything was spent. At first I could hardly walk… then O’Hara appeared, a sort of vagabond, wanting to know if I sought revenge.

‘Brother, O’Hara will soon tire and leave the island; let me stay and work quietly in the stables. Is that possible? I feel safe and secure for the first time in months. Let me have the room above the stable. I need rest but I can work. What do you say?’

‘I must talk to Vanessa.'

I could have pleaded with him. (I was tired and frightened and still cold, deep within my bones.) But I lay back, what more could I say. I rested my case.

© Richard Penna 2023

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18...

                         Aftermath

I did not join the protests in the street, but it is sometimes difficult now to think that it was such a good thing not to have done. We laugh about it now; we sit in the sun and drink and we literally fall about laughing at the irony of it…

Everything ended, everything silenced, every bit of vile plastic melted into nothingness. A lot of people gone, of course, but no one in truth needed all those people nor loved people en masse, though I can see that you might think you need them if your conscience is wracked by guilt or your life is an unsatisfactory mess. Or if every day life is boring you to tears…

I admit, at the time of the collapse, those few weeks, things were grim. But on the other hand, to look on the bright side, the things that we saw were so bad and went on for so long that we are constantly Now reacting positively against that experience; the horror and the blood of it all, the anguish and the numbers of the dying and the dead.

Now we are proactively alive, a small, very happy group. The Great Collapse has ended forever the constant fear and worry that lurked somewhere in the back of the mind about man’s ultimate destructiveness, his violence, his death-wish, his threat to pollute, to bring about extinction; all that…

Yes, then it would have seemed vulgar, but Now it is no more than common sense to write that it was a great blessing, in retrospect the most important days of my life in terms of its cleansing effect, the happiest days of my life, despite the terror that I felt and saw in the days that followed, the suffering and misery…

Immediately after the Collapse I realised that I had been looking forward to it with a certain pleasant anticipation and I wonder sometimes if that was why I did not protest. Certainly I had not liked the world as it was. It was a dirty place and always had been from what I could deduce; and deceitful, wasteful and violent. More so in my day, I like to think. It was becoming impossible to live properly, to stay sane, to find the place and to find the time, to get away from boorishness and brutality and dirt, to get away from noise, machines, obligations, crass distractions, fake realities and lies; and a pervasive, sickly sentimentality.

Everything now is very real; yet also dreamlike. The greater part of the natural world has quickly recovered and flourished; we swim in clear streams which grow bigger and swifter as the days pass. It will be years before we burn all the great piles of diseased timber. There is no will to hunt, instead we eat fruit and nuts and depend of the food stores; we drink the best wine.

We reinforce each other’s rejection of the past; no regrets, no nostalgia, no mourning. No hankering after the complexity and false emotion that needed to be swept away, destroyed. And no looking forward either. No false hopes, no elaborate plans, no aims, no targets. Sleep occurring naturally at the end of each day is a blessing as is the rain and the snow, the sunrises and sunsets, the changing seasons, the animals roaming harmlessly in the woods - all this is witnessed without effort, without our intervention…

We are calm and civilised; able to conduct discussions about contraception, for example, that are rewarding and fruitful. And likewise our occasional disquiet about the sexual possessiveness of our Leader is easily soothed.

© Richard Penna 2023

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19...

In The Meadow

It is evening, the sky is darkening, the sunlight weak. A young woman in a green field with cornflowers and poppies and buttercups; in the background, olive trees. Her face is silhouetted against the dark blue sky. Before her, spread out as if for a shroud, pure white linen.

The young woman stands, legs well planted apart, in the tall grass, her arms outstretched, her head thrown back in an attitude of ecstatic supplication to sun and sky. At her neck, what appears to be a red poppy.

Her simple white dress, dotted with lunar and fluid shapes in red and yellow, is gathered at the wrists and at the low, round neck. Her hair tumbles back from her head. Her feet, bare, are half visible amongst the green grasses and the flowers. Her mouth is open, her body motionless yet as if falling or flinging itself backwards. Tense yet free, the abundant material of the dress billowing slightly in the breeze, though drawn tight at her waist and falling freely from her hips…

But he has seen all this before, he remembers clearly. After a terrible, drunken night at some point in the past, his love crushed from him, he needed to hide himself so that she would not see him crying. He found himself in a tiny laundry room, slumped on a chair by the washing machine, staring at the image on a packet of washing powder; there she was with her pure white linen in the field of flowers…

But this is not the same. Someone has defiled the image; a passing shot, perhaps casual, perhaps mistaken; one cannot imagine who would do such a thing. She is not inspired, overwhelmed, exultant and it is not a poppy at her neck but a gaping wound from which the blood is beginning to gush.

© Richard Penna 2023

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