Argument: in which a metaphorical tunnel is followed and the King reappears prior to the disappearance of Sir Lathynarn.A tunnel.
The floor is cobbled – brick and monoblock herringboned to infinity, sunken where the workmen knew a teabreak or two; puddle in those spots where the workmen spilled a teacup or two.
The ceiling is light – white painted cumulus, a single yellow bulb, an impasto shadow of a fasting flock of birds; all swaying slightly to the angles and to the angels topping off the cloudy architecture.
The walls are faces – the eyes and nylon noses of faces with bastard flags and rubber armed applause; the walls move and sing in hallucinations of the innertube of the tunnel.
Behind – just an emptiness to the beginning all straight and banal.
Ahead – less an emptiness than the back of the parade that is powered on empty.
And here in the centre, Sir Lathynarn running – struggling to the end with myself by his side.
***
We followed the Parade – it dropped its crap to the ground, its flyers and its autographs ripped and torn to the ground, its odd shoes and ripped hair torn to the ground.
“Some fame
and some madness
in the tunnel of crowding,
these barriers keep us
safe from danger.
“Danger
that a crowd could
love me in imagination
and perpetuity,
eternity.”
We stumbled, fell, picked up and ran on.
How long for? for long enough to keep the space dividing the Parade and ourselves a constant one – their speed matched our speed, so we seemed as invariable as the other.
The crowd, the audience as invariable as ever.
“Lathy,
can you hear her?
That one lady’s rounding applause?
I cannot hear a thing
beyond our boots…”
He ignored me for listening too hard.
On and on, and turning and tunnelling – where did the tunnel aim to? shot through the city, the city streets disguised by the tunnel run through it, the crowd assigned to it and the cheers that rose from it.
What could I remember of the city we had left that lifetime before? where was the Cage and where Sick Brian? the Chessmaster… remember? what was his face? did I ever know his face? where the cold of the chessboard was that I came from?
I knew none of it anymore.
I knew only the step
I had stepped before
the one I now took…
***
HALT!
The Parade with its millipedish trundle stopped and we heard the unclanking of a grand metal handle – some collapse of pressure in the distance like a boulder, shunted by a thousand knightly shoulders, crushing an acorn in its way.
We caught up with the last, we were a part of the Parade, we waited with them for commands and rubbed our nervous hands on the metal of the knights’ armour... rusted handprints where Lathy and me had nerved them, unnerving ourselves.
He shooshed me, I shoosed myself – we walked slowly forward through the doorway, into the King’s Hall – all the majesty of kinghood painted on ceiling panels above – the life of the King, his slaughtering of children, his raping of corpses, his looting of the women who had protected him most – what a King he was that he should celebrate himself with the art of atrocity.
We gathered in lines, in silence, in awe of the King – dear Famous King with his Mistress Fame.
The silence grew, the King on his throne, the gold singing its light to the angles, hidden in the shadows of rubied corners.
He spoke:
“Knights – here
are my orders:
be kindly, good; then honesty
will create Future Of
Celebrity.
“For Fame
is all – what coins
can buy you brief adulation
from your grim tomorrows?
None I tell you.
“Do all
you can to be.
Do all you can to be a star,
a universe of Knight.
Known beyond sight.
“You, Sir
[… he pointed to a Silver One…]
could be greater
if you were to proclaim your love
for all the audience
demand of you.
“Loudness
of Audience –
do as they wish – hear them, outside
wanting to bite your flesh
in heathen light.
“Pity
only those fools
who don’t wish for adulation,
who only fish for coins
to feed themselves.”
But then the King had to stop:
BEEP! went Lathy’s watch – his false, futuristic digital – the alarm set for disturbance and disturb the King’s sense it did – all eyes shot their sparrows at Lathy, hatred in the air.
BEEP! what was I to do now? I hid behind Lathy – away from the glare of the King, but harder now as I stood taller than my master.
BEEP! struck the tin of knights, the foil of visors, the painted card of shields arrayed within the hall.
BEEP! echoed in the ears of the painted martyrs the King had slaughtered to make a victory of his own.
BEEP! BEEP! the sound hit the eyes, punched the guts and the balls of every ball and gut within the thin, thin, fabric and paintshop walls.
And as Lathy felt for the watch button, the balcony spotlight buttoned him to the centre of the hall.
“Wee boy…
How very dare
you interrupt my bastard speech
to these not-quite great men
in infancy?
“You’re no
new knight of mine.
An impostor? Independent
of them all and my court –
stranger to us?
“Just who
the fuck are you?
Why the bastard noise and riot
from you, you little boy?
Say who you are.”
Lathy stepped forward, the watch now silenced and his voice now loaded:
“I am
Sir Lathynarn –
your Knight of the Winter Chessboard,
champion in that war
and now hero.
“I have
travelled from here
to there, fought fights with your morals
and won them, and won them
well and proper.
“Service
to your Kinghood
[…I prodded him, he shrugged me off…]
my one obsession on my way
to being a true knight,
a knight of GOOD.”
Sir Lathynarn, the Half-height Knight, bowed deep and scraped a nostril to the floor.
“Cunt-faced
fuckin’ midget.
I’ve never seen your fuckjaws squeak
so much as ‘haw’ to me.
Piss off home now!”
Lathynarn took a step forward, small step, one step – he remained on his square, on his circle of light, and hesitated.
[But then I peeked around him and saw, behind the throne, Sick Brian peeking back at me – he held thumb and finger to his lips and ear and mouthed phone me.]
“You don’t
[… squeaked Lathy to the King…]
remember me?
You haven’t even forgotten
to forget poor wee me,
poor me… oh me…”
The King’s Wizard stepped up the throne and whispered a speech in the Royal Ear – intent, in quiet, all the hall stared at them – the Wizard retired to the shadows and Sick Brian hid beneath the throne.
“Small man
[… the King said…]
my Wizard spoke
and reminded me of chessgames
where promotion led to
a forged knighthood.
“Listen –
hwaet, and other
starts to things to say at these times.
I fight against myself
in chessgames.
“No names,
no enemies.
No more reason for games to me
than boredom, solitaire
in challenging.
“Defeat
and your knighthood
was no winning, no promotion.
Just one bored winter’s day
in Fuckalot.
“Go now,
beat it – vanish.
I never knighted you in war,
nor peace but in joking.
You are no knight.”
You are no knight, you are no knight, you are no knight…
If Lathynarn, plain Lathynarn, were in possession of a psychology I would attempt to write it for him – how he cried, how he fought, how he collapsed and took his fists to the air, to the throne and to the King – but he has none, he has none, he has none.
He was no knight.
“Lathy,
can you hear her?
That one lady’s rounding applause?
I cannot hear a thing
beyond your heart…”
[And the camera pulls out, up to a hole in the panel in which the King crushes an enemy’s face in his horse’s shit – and looking down we see, light still illuminating, one Lathynarn broken amongst all the King’s horses and all the King’s men.]
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