Previously…
“They teach us to recognize abuse," says Joshua.
“Abuse? This is abuse? Now a mother’s love
is abuse? Shouting is abuse, sure. Calling people names...that’s abuse.
Hitting....do I ever hit you? Well, do I?” She watched his little face tremble
as he tried to remember what his teacher had told him, trying to defend himself
from her barrage of words.
“Oh God I am so sorry.” She burst out when
she realized what she was doing. “I’m so sorry my baby.” She hugged him tightly
to her, trying to make up for her cruelty. Wracked with guilt, the tears spilt
from her eyes.
Joshua waited patiently until she had
stopped blubbering; then he said.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, I’m alright. I’m so sorry.
I....things....”
How do you tell a twelve-year-old boy what’s
happening inside you? Mind you, he seemed more capable of understanding her
than she did.
“I’m in a bad place at the moment. Things
are....” She paused. “You can stay home from school tomorrow if you let me
stroke you.”
And now...
“Now you be a good boy and pay attention to
your teacher.” She fudges with his tie. “There. You look wonderful.”
Oh how the bully-boys just love a smartly
turned out mother’s son - and oh how soon his sandwiches are squashed into the
ground and his mother’s home-made jam spread all over the quadrangle. But
hunger is the least of his worries – schoolwork too. His mind is filled with
self defence and survival, and trying not to look conspicuous.
Blue skies, foggy lies, fester pester school
drool fool trumpet practice dribble down memory lane, shame, take your
punishment like a man. Pell-mell bags and buckles, snotnose and horseplay. And
then, of all sounds evil, the school bell rings; tortured cry of education,
steel striking at the young nerves, the senseless voice of Authority clamouring
Obey, Obey, Obey.
Lessons start. Sit and stare through empty
air, Miss Kay comes in. ‘Mrs.’ actually, (though who would marry her?)
She is very ugly and has a protruding pudendum; so the boys are always looking
at her pussy. Her son is in Joshua’s class. Joshua is often tempted to ask him
why his mother’s thing is so big. Surely she knows it sticks out a mile? It
draws Joshua’s eyes like a magnet, which irritates the hell out of Miss Kay.
But he is unable to resist the lure.
‘Beware the Ides of March’, a hollow voice
intones in his ear.
Someone sniggers.
“Who did that?”
“Joshua,” shout half a dozen voices. ‘Et tu
Brute’.
“Where is your homework Mitke?” she asks
with a tight, controlled voice, knowing what the answer will be. She is their
history teacher and has a face like a Roman Centurion.
Joshua opens up a book of blots and smudges,
erasures and erosions. There are neat little signatures in the margin, each a
careful counterfeit of his father’s handwriting. She is loudly suspicious. The
air rings with “Quo Vadis?” – wither are you going young man? (The phrase ‘to
jail’ implicit in her tone.)
For Joshua the answer is not so clear cut.
He is hemmed in on all sides as it were, squeezed into his uniform and set
along a path, hopeless, helpless, cheered and jeered and dragged by the ear to
the front of the class, tears and queers and pimples from your fears. She has
watched him disregard her words of wisdom for long enough and wants to whip
some sense into him.
Pain is such a revelation when it comes…to a
high point on a pair of buttocks near you. Rosy cheeks are always a sign of
rude health. Whack! Whack! A straight-steering fellow after that, of clear mind
and in no doubt as to which side his bread is buttered. A helpful fellow
even…for a while.
“And what did you learn in history today?”
He learnt that Julius Caesar didn’t have any
friends.
Playtime behind the tennis courts. Watch out
for wandering gangs and teachers on patrol.
Someone’s picking on Michael again. He is
crying.
“You’re a puke. Why don’t you have a bath,
Stinkie?”
Michael is poor, dirt poor. And so is his
mother; a birdie little thing. He nearly steps on her when she walks him home.
“Go away, sit over there. You fucking smell
awful man.” Michael slinks off with a sniffle and a slither, and settles down
in the dust.
“O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge hath withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.”
The teacher looks up from his book and runs
his eyes over the little heads before him. Forty pairs of eyes stare back at
him, devoid of understanding. Oh well, like a farmer in a dry and desolate
land, he has no option but to plough on hopelessly, turning over the meagre
turf and tilling the sandy soil in preparation for planting.
“I saw pale kings and princes
too,
Pale warriors,
death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans
Merci
Hath thee in
thrall!”
“So. What have we here?”
No response.
“Okay. I shall start you off.
We have a knight…alone and palely loitering.”
“O what can ail thee,
knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so
woe-begone?”
“What ails our knight?
Anyone?”
“He’s in love.”
“Thank you Shirley. And how do
you know he’s in love?”
Again no answer.
“Because he is sick and
sad…full of woe-ing and wailing. This is how we know he’s in love. He’s got the
sighing and pining disease. Is this not so?” he looks around the room.
“And who is he in love with?
Anyone? I’ll give you another clue. La Belle Dame sans Merci. Who knows what
that means?”
A young hand shoots up into
the air, like the delicate stem of a young plant struggling up from its
seedling stage to greet the sun of knowledge.
“Yes Simmonds?”
“The lady without mercy”
“The beautiful lady without mercy.
And why is she called merciless?” He waits for an answer but none is
forthcoming.
“Alright then. Why does The Knight look so haggard and so woe-begone? Adams
stop sniggering. Why?”
He looks around the room.
Stillness.
“He is a knight that has failed to conquer his
lady-love. He went to do battle with her on the jousting field….and lost. All
his armour could not protect him from the wound she inflicted upon him with that
one little word. And what was the word? Anyone?” The teacher looks about, mock
expectantly.
“The word was ‘no’. She has mercilessly said
NO to him. Unthinkable isn’t it; a woman saying no to a man? After all, she is to blame for his desire - simply by
being so beautiful. This in turn obligates her to take pity on him and always
say…‘yes’.
“But this lady has said ‘no’, and because of
this he has suffered a fatal loss of face. She has said ‘no’ and he has taken a
monumental blow to his pride and manliness. So much so that he is on the verge
of death…thus the sedge is withered from the lake and no birds sing. He sighs
and seeps for her; he dies and weeps for her but she is not turned. All his
promises and exhortations fall like dead leaves upon the cold, rocky shores of
her unyielding flesh. Give it a break Adams.
“And yet he is a dashing fellow, brave and
bold amongst the best of them. Why does she refuse him? Does anyone know?”
“He is ugly.”
“No indeed, he is dapper and debonair, with
a fine devil-may-care air that women find so attractive, God help them.”
“She’s a lesbian.”
Sniggers all round.
“Thank you Adams. No.
“The answer is the same for most women, then
or now. She has said ‘NO’ to kids, housework and miscellaneous drudgery. She
knows that once the honeymoon is over…this will be her lot.
“In the old days a woman was considered a
man’s property to do with as he pleased and she was obliged to bend over and
bite the bullet. Now women have their say and it’s just one big argument after
the other….about who’s the boss? Who stay’s at home? Who wears the pants in
this house? Who rules the roost? Who has the last word? Who is RIGHT?
“This is where the war begins. In the
home…and ends on a lonely hillside where the flowers and trees are all dead and
the lovebirds have died, tied together in a cage they have despoiled, and then
taught their children to do the same.
“Do you love your brothers and sisters…not
in general, I mean practically…every day…in word and deed. Do you love your
brothers and your sisters, or do you fight like cats and dogs….or should I say
moms and dads?
“Romantic love is a flash in the pan, a
precursor to pain and the fires eternal. Real love is….Who can tell me what
real love is……..?”
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRINNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG.
And what did you learn today Joshua?
He learnt that some girls do and some don’t.
In science, they learn how to tie little
mirrors to their shoelaces and look up the teacher’s skirt while they’re all
standing around watching her light a Bunsen burner. No-one sees anything really
but they tell each other they did.
In Economics, Prof. Fagin teaches them about
Free Enterprise (now you see it, now you don’t; or how to pick a pocket or two),
and how to turn worthless rubbish into a fairly decent hedge fund.
In class Enlightenment 1, there is a rumour
that the teacher takes drugs; a fact pretty much borne out by his
incomprehensible tirades.
“Facts! Facts are sticky little things.
Everyone says ‘stick to the facts’. But they are already ‘stuck to the facts’,
like flies to flypaper. Once a fact gets hold of you it’s hard to shake the
little bugger loose. Science above all, likes sticking to the facts and calling
it the truth. Lawyers like lying about the facts and twisting them around, but
they are still stuck with them.
“Facts are a fiction. They only exist
because you insist that they do. A fact is a fact because someone says it is,
and has measured it. But we know how men exaggerate when they measure things. A
fact is measured by the eye. But we also know there is more to life than meets
the eye.
“How do we see beyond the facts? How can we
look beyond the veil into the worlds where reason and logic are turned on their
heads? Indeed, there have only been a few brave souls who have entered this
strange and terrifying hinterland where common sense doesn’t count for much.
“Beyond the pale, it is called by the Irish.
Beyond the ‘pole’ that marks the outer extremity of all things known. Beyond
this is the ‘backstage’ of reality, where the magic is made, where fairy tales
and nightmares are the norm. Which is why most people do NOT want to go there
and do all they can to fill their already busy lives with more and more….facts.
“Facts are the nails in the coffin of
mundanity and custom. Facts are the stepping stones across the river of chance.
Facts preserve your life. Facts are the embalming fluid of the mind. Facts keep
the brain closed and safe, encapsulated in its little bone dome prison,
endlessly repeating its little list of formulas like a pagan incantation but
with little or no effectiveness.
“It is a fact that you see what you have
been taught to see, by the paper people and their computations, pointing with
their pencils and saying ‘this is a such and such, and this is a so and so.
This is a fact’.
“But what is this preoccupation with facts
anyway? What are we actually looking for? Mitke? I ask because you almost had
an intelligent expression on your face there for a moment. No? Must’ve been a
trick of the light. Anyone?
“The truth. We are searching for the truth
of life. And all we do is bundle our erroneous findings into smelly little
facts, which everyone passes around and learns off by heart.
“And why can facts not tell us the truth?
Well, contrary to popular fiction, the truth is not ‘out there’, in the
mud, or in the stars. The truth is in here,” he says, wildly pointing at
his rather large, egg-shaped head. His high sloping forehead and Frankenstein
haircut lend much credence to his intense utterances, so much so that no one is
inclined to question his perspicuity.
“And what is in here is more than a list of
facts. In here is…madness, and witchcraft. In here, a fool and his facts are
soon parted. In here resides a world incomprehensible to a mind accustomed to
the paint-by-numbers approach to life. In here is…..power. In here is…..God.
“I understand that you have not the faintest
idea what I’m talking about. But I will say it none the less. One day, when you
are older, but sadly not much wiser, you might….but I think not. Never mind. No
matter. The only fact we can be sure of is that there are no facts. Now please
leave.”
“Hey Mitke you moron, get out of the way.”
Joshua puts his hand out and steadies
himself against the gatepost. For a moment his eyes blur as a pulsing darkness
begins closing in on him, as if his reality is running away from him. It has
been happening a lot lately…this strange dizziness.
“You either come in or you go out but you’re
blocking the path.”
His schoolfellows stream around him in their
rush to get home and play, but he is glued to the spot. At first he feels light
headed and faint, and then something wells up inside of him, like a thousand
ghosts all trying to get out at once, and the world falls over on its side.
