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Inheritor of silence / shall I be? / Black mass below us / above us only / sky ...


EVA AVE

Mutual Forgiveness of each Vice
Such are the Gates of Paradise


– William Blake, “For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise”


  1. Eva Android
  2. Dear E.
  3. Family Album
  4. February 6, 1935
  5. The Cat
  6. February 11, 1935
  7. Strange Meeting
  8. The Contract
  9. February 15, 1935
  10. First Night
  11. Arrival
  12. February 18, 1935
  13. Searching
  14. Work
  15. March 11, 1935
  16. The Vivisectionist
  17. 1001 Nights
  18. March 16, 1935
  19. Beauty and the Beast
  20. Dogs
  21. Night Visit
  22. April 1, 1935
  23. Together Forever
  24. The Excursion
  25. April 29, 1935
  26. Madness
  27. The Hotel
  28. May 10, 1935
  29. Murder
  30. But his hands were around my throat
  31. Ten Days that Shook the World
  32. The Trial
  33. May 28, 1935
  34. Last Day of a Condemned Man







  1. Marlow
  2. Welcome to my World
  3. The Invitation
  4. Welcome to my World (2)
  5. Hysterical Blindness
  6. Welcome to my World (3)
  7. Luce
  8. Dinner
  9. Burmese Days
  10. The Bargain
  11. Backstory
  12. Somnambulism
  13. Chantage
  14. The Investigation
  15. Trois filles de leur mère
  16. Club D
  17. Glam Metal Detectives
  18. Night Journey
  19. Outside
  20. Trilogies
  21. Rumble Edge Line
  22. Trilogies (2)
  23. Life on Mars
  24. Trilogies (3)
  25. Hydrogen
  26. King Candaules
  27. Free Love
  28. Helium
  29. Confessions
  30. Marriage
  31. High
  32. Terminus
  33. The Great Stone Face
  34. Doubts
  35. Iris
  36. Iris Recognition
  37. Iris Out






Wild geese draw lines / across an amber sky / Fish bask / in frozen rivers / generators die


Ovid in Otherworld

… black-and-white photographs of rusted/broken things (especially machinery), drawings of flowers, and pictures of old men, little boys, and little girls …

– Andy Radin, “What the heck is emo, anyway?


  1. Ovidius Naso
  2. Tristia 3.2
  3. Video-consult
  4. The Undead
  5. Tristia 3.3
  6. Blood-drive
  7. Exul Ludens
  8. Tristia 3.8
  9. Drip-feed
  10. Blinding
  11. Tristia 3.10
  12. Truth-telling
  13. ovid v. divo
  14. Tristia 3.12
  15. Witch-finding
  16. roma amor
  17. Tristia 3.13
  18. Hypno-slave
  19. Ovids 3
  20. Tristia 5.7
  21. Fever-dreams
  22. Ovid in the Third Reich
  23. Tristia 5.10
  24. Head-hunter
  25. Six Memos for the Next Millennium
  26. Tristia 5.12
  27. Title-story
  28. Lost Books of the Fasti
  29. Epistulae 1.2
  30. Poetry-reading
  31. Sleep Threshold – Hypnagogia
  32. Epistulae 4.7
  33. Face-saving
  34. Ovid Misunderstood
  35. Epistulae 4.10
  36. Scene-stealing
  37. Suetonius: "Divus Augustus"
  38. Epistulae 4.14
  39. Fasti V: 421-44
  40. Dream-catcher





E M O

I

Welcome
to the new reality
Nothing’s stranger
than the will
to survive


Wild geese draw lines
across an amber sky
fish bask
in frozen rivers
generators die


II

Inheritor of silence
shall I be?
Black mass below us
above us only
sky

Hello hell
the weight of matter
tells us
better
stop





Tuesday

Bibliography


Cover image: Emma Smith, "have I been pardoned yet?" (detail)


The R.E.M. [Random Excess Memory] Trilogy, 3:

EMO. A Novel by Jack Ross. ISBN 978-1-877441-07-3. Auckland: Titus Books, 2008. [vi] + 258 pp.

Contents:


EVA AVE

1. Eva Android
2. Dear E.
3. Family Album
4. February 6, 1935
5. The Cat
6. February 11, 1935
7. Strange Meeting
8. The Contract
9. February 15, 1935
10. First Night
11. Arrival
12. February 18, 1935
13. Searching
14. Work
15. March 11, 1935
16. The Vivisectionist
17. 1001 Nights
18. March 16, 1935
19. Beauty and the Beast
20. Dogs
21. Night Visit
22. April 1, 1935
23. Together Forever
24. The Excursion
25. April 29, 1935
26. Madness
27. The Hotel
28. May 10, 1935
29. Murder
30. But his hands were around my throat
31. Ten Days that Shook the World
32. The Trial
33. May 28, 1935
34. Last Day of a Condemned Man

MOONS OF MARS

1. Marlow
2. Welcome to my World
3. The Invitation
4. Welcome to my World (2)
5. Hysterical Blindness
6. Welcome to my World (3)
7. Luce
8. Dinner
9. Burmese Days
10. The Bargain
11. Backstory
12. Somnambulism
13. Chantage
14. The Investigation
15. Trois filles de leur mère
16. Club D
17. Glam Metal Detectives
18. Night Journey
19. Outside
20. Trilogies
21. Rumble Edge Line
22. Trilogies (2)
23. Life on Mars
24. Trilogies (3)
25. Hydrogen
26. King Candaules
27. Free Love
28. Helium
29. Confessions
30. Marriage
31. High
32. Terminus
33. The Great Stone Face
34. Doubts
35. Iris
36. Iris Recognition
37. Iris Out

OVID IN OTHERWORLD

1. Ovidius Naso
2. Tristia 3.2
3. Video-consult
4. The Undead
5. Tristia 3.3
6. Blood-drive
7. Exul Ludens
8. Tristia 3.8
9. Drip-feed
10. Blinding
11. Tristia 3.10
12. Truth-telling
13. ovid v. divo
14. Tristia 3.12
15. Witch-finding
16. roma amor
17. Tristia 3.13
18. Hypno-slave
19. Ovids 3
20. Tristia 5.7
21. Fever-dreams
22. Ovid in the Third Reich
23. Tristia 5.10
24. Head-hunter
25. Six Memos for the Next Millennium
26. Tristia 5.12
27. Title-story
28. Lost Books of the Fasti
29. Epistulae 1.2
30. Poetry-reading
31. Sleep Threshold – Hypnagogia
32. Epistulae 4.7
33. Face-saving
34. Ovid Misunderstood
35. Epistulae 4.10
36. Scene-stealing
37. Suetonius: “Divus Augustus”
38. Epistulae 4.14
39. Fasti V: 421-44
40. Dream-catcher



Cover design: Brett Cross

Palimpsest Texts:


SCHEHERAZADE'S WEB:
The 1001 Nights and Comparative Literature


Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Malory and Scheherazade: A Study in Narrative Method
Chapter 2 - Europe, Christianity and the Crusades in the 1001 Nights
Chapter 3 - Voyage en Orient: The Victorian Traveller and the Arabian Nights
Chapter 4 - Parodies of the Nights in Nineteenth-century Literature
Chapter 5 - The Poetics of Stasis: Twentieth-century Readings of the Nights
Works Cited
Bibliography
Chronology
Concordance

JACK'S METAMORPHOSES:
Collage-Poems & Sequences (1997-2007)


Metamorphoses I: Chaos
Jack’s Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses II: The Crow
Evenings in the Blackout
Metamorphoses III: Semele
Dieting. I’m Hungry too
Metamorphoses IV: Daughters of Minyas
In the Cave of Henry James
Metamorphoses V: Arethusa
The Britney Suite
Metamorphoses VI: Marsyas
Ancestral Voices
Metamorphoses VII: Theseus
Anamorphoses
Metamorphoses VIII: Icarus
Love in Wartime
Metamorphoses IX: Iolaus
Postcards
Metamorphoses X: Pygmalion
Servants of the Wankh
Metamorphoses XI: Midas
Suburban Apocalypse
Metamorphoses XII: Rumour
Days Under Water
Metamorphoses XIII: Glaucus
Citizens of the People’s Republic of Freaktown
Metamorphoses XIV: Pomona
Muses
Metamorphoses XV: Hippolytus
Papyri
Notes on Sources

Publius Ovidius Naso:
TRISTIA, EPISTULAE EX PONTO & IBIS


Tristia
Book I
Book II
Book III
Book IV
Book V

Epistulae ex Ponto
Book I
Book II
Book III
Book IV

Ibis




Blurb:

In the third volume of his REM trilogy, after the urban inferno of Nights with Giordano Bruno (2000) and the purgatorial stasis of The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis (2006), Jack Ross explores the closest thing to a paradise his cast of crazies can conceive of – let alone aspire to.

E M O

RANDOM EXCESS MEMORY

“ … I had a companion when I first came here, all those years ago. But we spent too long exploring our new world. When he tried to leave he shrivelled into dust. I found his body and buried him. Flint, he was called.”
“But ... why didn’t you shrivel into dust. If you followed him out.”
“He never drank the water or ate the weeds.”
“But ...”
Suddenly something clicked into place. She saw the milky mildness of his deep-set eyes as they actually were: a mask for thick, impenetrable cataracts of scar-tissue.
“Yes, I fed you on them. I’m sorry. I want you to stay with me and be my wife
.”

EARTH
MARS
OTHERWORLD

... the book itself exists like a music of the spheres that runs along the tops of the pages, available only to a concentrated sense of hearing, but as real as fuck.
- Will Christie



Abstract:

"There’s an obsession with blindness, certainly – with ageing dictators and visionaries: Hitler, Ovid, Shahryar. What else can we say about the narrator of this book? He (or she) takes refuge in flights of fancy, posting pseudonymous entries on the web.

Later they’re printed out on the backs of any pages, used or scribbled on, that come to hand.

Each of the three stories explores a set of flawed relationship: Hitler and Eva, Marlow and Phil, Ovid and the wise-woman. …

Is it all an attempt to find the perfect partner, whether she be android clone, registered nurse, or girl-next-door? ..."

This book consists of a set of three online narratives: one devoted to Earth (EVA AVE), a futuristic story about a girl convinced that she’s the clone of Hitler’s mistress Eva Braun; one to Mars (Moons of Mars), the story of a violent sex-ring based under the pyramids of Mars; and one set in the Otherworld of a patient under psychoanalysis (Ovid in Otherworld), who believes that he’s the poet Ovid, in exile on the Black Sea. The titles of the stories make an anagram of the word EMO: a neo-gothic youth style, derived (allegedly) from the words “Excessively Emotional”. Before publication, I copied each story onto pages already “contaminated” by other texts: a critical book about the 1001 Nights, a set of poetry pageworks grouped around Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as well as the Latin text of Ovid’s exile letters. These can be seen (but not clearly read) through the print of the “over-story”.

Online Texts:

[EMO:] EVA AVE (2006-2007)

[EMO:] Moons of Mars (2006-2007)

[EMO:] Ovid in Otherworld (2006-2007)

EMO (e-book, 2020)

Samples:

Jack's Metamorphoses

The Britney Suite

The Cat

Love in Wartime

Papyri

Publisher:

Titus Books
1416 Kaiaua Road
RD3
Pokeno 2473
Waikato
New Zealand
email: titus.books.akl@gmail.com
mobile: 027 865 3958
http://titus.co.nz/catalogue.xhtml

Available from:

Atuanui Press

RRP: $NZ 40.00


[Titus Book launch (l9/6/08)]





Cover illustration: Marcantonio Raimondi / Cover design: James Fryer


The R.E.M. [Random Excess Memory] Trilogy, 2:

The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis. A Novel by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-9582586-8-6. Auckland: Titus Books, 2006. 164 pp.

Contents:

Who am I? Automatic Writing

A Princess of Lemuria
Z

The Tremor
Y

Flight
X

Antiterra
W

The Dream
V

Priapus
T

Sabra
S

Living without a Memory
R

The Beach
Q

To Poley Bay
P

The Cave
O

The Breakdown
N

Perpetua
M

The House
L

Summit Cafe
K

The Academy
I

The City
H

Just Call Me Alcibiades
G

Bedtime
F

The Dungeon of the Sacrifice
E

The Thirteen Gates
D

The Ceremony
C

Sky-clad
B

Coming Home
A


Where am I? Cuttings




Blurb:

WHAT IF you awoke to find yourself alone on a beach, with no memory of how you got there? No memory of how you got there, or of anything else in your past?

WHAT IF a young girl found you (like Nausicäa), and took you back to her house (like Odysseus)?

WHAT IF you started to scan the books she had for clues to where – and who – you were?

WHAT IF those books were New Age texts about the mysteries of the unseen world, the supernatural, Atlantis?

WHAT IF that’s where you assumed you were? That this strange new world, New Zealand, was indeed Plato’s fabled lost continent?

Auckland’s triple-ringed harbours and sun-dappled streets provide an unexpected backdrop to the Imaginary Museum of Atlantis in Jack Ross’s new story, a successor to Nights with Giordano Bruno (described by Alan Brunton as “this crazy, obsessively sexual novel … an echo in Auckland of Eco …”).

Abstract:

How do you recover your past if you have retrograde amnesia?
– Write down, blindly, everything that comes into your head
check it back for clues

How do you hold onto the present if you have
anterograde amnesia?
List the things that strike you
link them up to preserve your train of thought

If you forgot everything you did as soon as you’d finished it, it’d be almost impossible to write a book. Of course you could resort to automatic writing, recording things at random, checking them back for clues. Alternatively, you could keep a scrapbook of pictures and quotations, indexing and annotating them to preserve the associations you – once – saw between them.

What if you chose to do both? Or, rather, if you happened to open your notebook one way, it told you to do the first. If you opened it the other way, it told you to do the second.

All the things you really wanted to say would be hidden under a mask of random words. You and the reader would be, to all intents and purposes, equal – digging into the mask of a culture to uncover the repressed, the collective memories concealed beneath.

This novel uses the metaphor of Atlantis to construct a portrait of a world few of us could claim not to recognize. It’s a mediascape, a romance, a detective story and a history lesson all rolled into one.

Online Text:

[The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis:] Who am I? Automatic Writing (2008)

[The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis:] Where am I? Cuttings (2008)

The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis (e-book, 2020)

Publisher:

Titus Books
1416 Kaiaua Road
RD3
Pokeno 2473
Waikato
New Zealand
email: titus.books.akl@gmail.com
mobile: 027 865 3958
http://titus.co.nz/catalogue.xhtml

Available from:

Titus Bookshop

RRP: $NZ 27.95







Cover illustration: Max Ernst / Cover design: Andrew Forsberg


The R.E.M. [Random Excess Memory] Trilogy, 1:

Nights with Giordano Bruno. A Novel by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-9582225-0-9. Wellington: Bumper Books, 2000. [xii] + 224 pp.

Contents:

Chapters:

1 - Grafton Amours
2 - God-Botherers
3 - Clubbing
4 - G.D. [God?]
5 - Going East
6 - His Girl Friday
7 - Gris-Gris
8 - The Great Hunger
9 - Government Issue
10 - G.K.'s Weekly [Ghost / Gutter King]
11 - I Gather the Limbs of Osiris
12 - Magus

Narratives:

The Open Boat

Act I: Wreck
Act II: Setting Sail
Act III: Sabotage
Act IV: Drifting
Act V: The Ship

Kings of Infinite Space

The Archer
The Ram
[Extracts from Julie's Diary]
The Lion
[Extracts from Julie's Diary]

Scenes from an Antarctic Journal

Primus-Pricker
The Heart of the Snow
Dark Depths

The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole

Valentine's Day
Glasgow's Miles Better
Artist
Diva
Siren
Trampled Grapes
Byron
The Necklace
The Gateway


Game for One Player (8-page insert by Jack Ross & Gabriel White)



Abstract:
The untitled cover of this book opens to horrors akin to those of Pandora. Not all the contents are evil but the spirit of darkness certainly prevails.
- Laurence Jenkins

Nights with Giordano Bruno, published by Alan Brunton’s Bumper Books in late 2000, is made up of a set of interlocking stories set in extreme environments.

The book is arranged as a series of out-of-sequence pages, so that the continuation of any particular story has to be hunted for (though I do have to confess that there are certain gaps in the continuity).

The point of the novel as a whole is to contrast the vivid fantasy worlds of my protagonist – self-identified with the Renaissance scientific (or was it black magical?) martyr Giordano Bruno – and set (respectively) on a space station in the outer solar system, a raft in the mid-Atlantic, an archaeological dig in the Jordanian desert, and an Antarctic expedition, with the strangeness of his actual surroundings in late 1990s Auckland.

Online Text:

Nights with Giordano Bruno: A Novel

Samples:

Crywolf Books

Titus Books

Available:

Crywolf Books
http:/www.crywolfbooks.org/

Titus Books
PO Box 102
Waimauku
West Auckland
New Zealand
titus@snap.net.nz
http:/titus.books.online.fr/index.html

RRP: $NZ24.00 (+ $2 postage & packing)


Game for One Player






palimpsest


Monday

Chronology


Jack Ross: E M O (2008)

Jack Ross:
R. E. M. Trilogy
(2000-2024)

2024
2009
2008
2007
2006
2000
1999







  1. (May 2) E M O: EVA AVE - Moons of Mars – Ovid in Otherworld (27/11/23-2/5/24)


  2. (January 13) Traffic in Gold (Montana Poetry Day, 2008). Music by Anna Rugis / Poetry by Jack Ross. Auckland: Auckland Art Gallery, 2009. [77 mins].


  3. (September 23) “The Cat: Extract from EMO.” brief #36 (2008) – The NZ Music Issue: 31-40 & 114-18.
    • The Cat.” Music by Padmanabha Fischlinger. [Brief #36 CD: 7] (15-22/8/06)

  4. (May 22) E M O. A Novel by Jack Ross. ISBN 978-1-877441-07-3. Auckland: Titus Books, 2008. [vi] + 258 pp.
    1. E M O (10/4-14/7/05)
    2. Burmese Days (20-23/3/03)
    3. Trois filles de leur mère (24/11-2/12/01)
    4. Free Love (20/11/04-25/4/05)
    5. Marriage (14-26/8/99)
    6. Monkey (10/8/07)
    7. Metaphors of The 1001 Nights (30/6/95-2/8/03)
    8. Jack’s Metamorphoses (15/6/97-23/8/98)
    9. Evenings in the Blackout (27/10-19/11/98)
    10. Dieting. I’m Hungry too (21/12/99-5/5/2000)
    11. In the Cave of Henry James (16/6-28/7/2000)
    12. The Britney Suite (25/7-30/11/2000)
    13. Ancestral Voices (9/88-14/3/01)
    14. Anamorphoses (22/4-4/10/02)
    15. Love in Wartime (17/8/02-11/3/03)
    16. Postcards (13/11/02-21/5/03)
    17. Servants of the Wankh (23/12/02-24/1/03)
    18. Suburban Apocalypse (13/6/01-7/11/04)
    19. Days Under Water (27/11/01-24/4/04)
    20. Citizens of the People’s Republic of Freaktown (27/11/03-14/3/04)
    21. Muses (11/1-18/2/05; 13/5/05)
    22. Papyri (4/8/06-2/4/07)
    23. Tristia 3.2 (12/7-15/8/06)
    24. Tristia 3.3 (13/7-27/8/06)
    25. Tristia 3.8 (18/7-27/8/06)
    26. Tristia 3.10 (11/7-27/8/06)
    27. Tristia 3.12 (13/7-27/8/06)
    28. Tristia 3.13 (13/7-27/8/06)
    29. Tristia 5.7 (13/7-28/8/06)
    30. Tristia 5.10 (13/7-28/8/06)
    31. Tristia 5.12 (13/7-28/8/06)
    32. Epistulae 1.2 (14/7-29/8/06)
    33. Sleep Threshold – Hypnagogia (15-29/6/06)
    34. Epistulae 4.7 (14/7-30/8/06)
    35. Epistulae 4.10 (14/7-30/8/06)
    36. Epistulae 4.14 (14/7-30/8/06)
    37. Fasti V: 421-44 (27-28/9/06)

  5. (March 31, 2008) “The Cat." With backing music by Padmanabha Fischlinger. Titus Books: A Platform for New Writing.

  6. (January 20-February 13, 2008) [The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis]: Who am I ?: Automatic Writing.

  7. (January 20-February 13, 2008) [The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis]: Where am I ?: Cuttings.

  8. (January 19-30, 2008) Nights with Giordano Bruno: A Novel (2000).

  9. (January 16) ““from Ovid in Otherworld: Versions from Tristia: Tristia 3.2, 3.3 & 3.10.” JAAM 25 (2008): 142-44.


  10. (November 11) “Fever-dreams: from Ovid in Otherworld.” Magazine 5 (2007) – Utu, Justice: 83-86.


  11. (August 16, 2006-September 3, 2007) Moons of Mars – Welcome / to the new reality / Nothing’s stranger / than the will / to survive …

  12. (August 15, 2006-September 3, 2007) Ovid in Otherworld – Wild geese draw lines / across an amber sky / fish bask / in frozen rivers / generators die …

  13. (August 15, 2006- September 3, 2007) EVA AVE – Inheritor of silence / shall I be? / Black mass below us / above us / only sky …

  14. (April 21 / June 1) The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis. A Novel by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-9582586-8-6. Auckland: Titus Books, 2006. 164 pp. [36]:
    1. Ithaka (after Cavafy) (30/8-12/10/04)


  15. (November 8) Nights with Giordano Bruno. A Novel by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-9582225-0-9. Wellington: Bumper Books, 2000. [xii] + 224 pp. [74], [87], [105 & 153], [142], [150], [152], [211 & 215]:
    1. Chi femmi ad altro amor la mente desta … (28/4/99)
    2. One night of spindrift fog in London … (6/12/97-2/9/98)
    3. Questa fenice, ch’al bel sol s’accende … (30/4-27/5/99)
    4. Unico augel del sol, vaga fenice … (28/9/98-29/4/99)
    5. Look at the picture dumb-ass … (30/9-13/12/99)
    6. Vampires suck … (23/10-19/11/98)
    7. The city is a hermetic jewel … (3/11/99)


  16. (December 30) “The Great Hunger.” A Brief Description of the Whole World 14 (1999): 34-37.

  17. (October 16) [as 'G. Bruno']: “Grafton Amours”. The Pander 9 (1999): 18-19.







Sunday

Dear E

 

I’ve thought of writing to you many times, but could never decide how to go about it. I don’t know your real name, to start with, or where you live. I know you must live somewhere. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Live or have lived – you could be dead, I suppose. But since you’ll never see this letter, it doesn’t make all that much difference.

I miss you.

I miss having someone to talk to.

I’d like to know all about you: your friends, your house – children? husband? boyfriend? I suppose that means you’d like to know more about me, too.

That’s logical.

That makes sense.

It’s hard to know where to begin, so I’ll start with the thing that made me decide to write this letter: the party for His book.

*

My job was to serve drinks and carry trays of food and (later on) to clean up the mess. Marta told me what to do. Marta runs the gallery. It’s a picture gallery, with paintings in it that she sells to people. Not tonight, though, she said. Tonight was all about the man and his new book.

“You’ll be wearing your black skirt and your white blouse and your shoes and stockings, Eva.” (She always calls me Eva – not like some of the others. Some of her friends. They call me other things. I hate the things they call me). “You must be very polite. Speak only when you’re spoken to. Offer drinks to people whose hands are free, and hold the plates of food out in front of them.”

“Yes, Marta.” I said. She likes me to call her Marta when we’re by ourselves, but of course in public I call her Madam. Miss and Master are for children, Sir and Madam for grownups. I used to make mistakes at first, but never now. Not since the last time. Marta never whips me, but not everyone is Marta. Some of them are cruel and not kind.

“No wine for the children – fruit juice or water for them. You remember? Wine is white or red, juice is yellow or clear.”

“Yes, Marta. I remember.”

I’ve done these things before, so many times, but she likes to remind me of the details. Marta likes to get the details right.

“Don’t jump if any of the gentlemen … admire you.”

That she’s said before, too. She doesn’t think I understand about the men, but I understand. This isn’t the first job I’ve been assigned to. Not everyone is Marta.

“You’re a very pretty girl, you know. Some of the men may want to … well, you know. Just smile, be courteous, move on with your tray.”

The men get grabby if you let them. After they’ve drunk some wine they like to touch you with their hands, rub their bodies up against you if they can get you alone.

You’re a female, too. You must know the things they want to do, want you to do.

Marta is kind and good. Marta tries to defend me. But she can’t always stop them.

*

The party day came. I wasn’t looking forward to it, exactly. Why should I? Crowds frighten me, a little. Crowds of people, some of them good, some of them mean, but somehow the good ones never stop the mean ones from doing things like tripping you up when you have a full tray of drinks, or running their hands all over you when you’re trapped in a corner.

Marta’s not like that, and this was Marta’s party. Marta had asked me to help as if it was a favour, not a job, as if I could say no. I tried to imagine saying “No,” but couldn’t. I always agree with her, say what I think she wants me to say, but sometimes it’s difficult to know exactly what she wants me to do. That night, for instance.

The guests started to arrive. We’d spent most of the day putting up posters and laying out chairs and tables around the walls. There was one big table for all the books: lots and lots of copies of the same book. It had a dark cover with red lettering on it, and a picture of a woman behind the letters. The words said:


THE ARABIAN NIGHTS AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE


Marta said she’d explain them to me later, but she never did.

Everyone was nicely dressed. The gentlemen were in suits, the ladies in evening gowns. It was a hot night, and rather stuffy, so we kept the doors and windows open to allow the air to flow through. I was kept quite busy pouring drinks at first. Another clan, a man, was helping with the lights and sound system. He wore a suit and tie, but I could tell. He moved a step behind the other men.

*

The speeches started half an hour later. First a big fat man stood up and told us what a good friend he was of the man who wrote the book, and what a good book it was, and how all of us should read it.

I wish I was allowed to read it. Marta doesn’t like seeing me with a book. She says it’s lazy and there’s no good reason for it. What could I possibly hope to learn that I don’t already know?

Then another man stood up and said that he’d published the book because he was sure that it was going to be a great success. There was quite a lot of talking going on during the second speech, so I couldn’t always follow what he was saying. Twice he had to call for them to hush. There were some women near the door, not so well-dressed, who seemed to be arguing with the men by the door. I could see that Marta was drifting in that direction, too. It was her party, and she wanted it to run smoothly.

She’d said that to me so many times during the day, that I understood at last she must be nervous about the success of her party. I’d never thought a thought like that before. It made me feel a little strange – not worried for myself but worried for her.

Now the man who wrote the book started to speak. He said he’d read us some parts from the book, and I wanted to listen to him. I had to keep serving drinks, though. Every time one of the speeches finished people would cluster round the table to get more.

The noise by the door was getting quite loud, now. Suddenly I heard a voice shout: “Wife-killer! You fucking murdered your wife …” It was a woman who’d sneaked right into the middle of the crowd. She looked quite young, about my age, but she was dressed in pants and halter, not a dress. She was waving her arms about, and when the men tried to grab her and calm her down, she started to kick and struggle.

The noise by the door suddenly got worse, and a group of other women pushed by us into the hall. They were all shouting things like “Woman-hater!” “Murderer!”

I didn’t understand what they were saying, or what I should do. One of them crashed into the drinks table and knocked a lot of glasses and bottles over, so I stepped back to avoid being cut by broken glass.

Just then a glass came sailing into the room. I don’t know who threw it. I suppose one of the people by the door, but it fell right into the middle of the floor in front of the book table and exploded like a bomb. The man who wrote the book fell down. I thought I ought to see if he needed help.

The women had mostly run away or been pushed out the door by now, and the party had become a lot of small groups of people shouting at each other. No-one seemed to notice at first that the man who wrote the book had fallen down. I was the first one there to try and help him up.

I knew not to try and wipe away the blood around his face and eyes, because there could be bits of glass in it, and they might go deeper into the wound. Instead I sat down next to him and asked him how he was.

“Who’re you?” he asked, very faintly.

“Eva,” I answered.

“What’s happened? Something hit me – my eyes …”

“You were hit by a glass. Someone threw it into the room,” I said. “Please keep your eyes closed, sir. You might cause further damage if you try and open them.”

His eyelids were gummed shut by blood, so I didn’t think he’d be able to, in any case.

“I tried before and … I couldn’t see anything, Eva. D’you think that means anything? D’you think they might be … hurt.”

He reached out his hand, but it wasn’t to touch me the way men do. He wanted to hold my hand. I held his hand.

“Will I be all right?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I hope so, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir, call me …”

Someone hit me on the side of the head, very hard, and rolled me to one side. There was an ambulance crew with stretchers and a bunch of other men standing behind us. He disappeared underneath them.

All the others were filing out by this time, dishevelled and worried looking. Even the other clansman had gone. There was nothing left of the party but the boxes of books and the P.A.-system.

As they carried the man away, I heard him call my name. He kept on shouting it as they put him in the back of the ambulance. Then the doors closed and the sound abruptly cut out. They jetted away.

Marta was too upset to speak to me, but I knew she’d want to forget it all as soon as possible. It took me three hours to sweep and scrub the floors and walls, stack all the chairs, and gather up all the glasses.

Then I went back upstairs and climbed into my cupboard.

Love

your sister Eva

Saturday

Family Album

 

friends


alone


how I imagine you and me together

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is freaky stuff! These are pictures of Eva Braun and her sister ... I dunno how that fits in with the rest of the stuff on this blog, but I don't see how it can all be for real.

Anonymous said...

wait and see, wait and see -- all will be revealed.

The sister's name was Gretl.