38. Vitruvian Man
Up from here was a breezy ride. Sky lifts took us all the way to the point of no return. The PA of a sweet woman’s distorted voice announced the severity of our location. “Attention, dear travellers for Permanent Formation, this is your last call for boarding, requests WILL NOT be entertained after...” Those who’d had second thoughts and wished not for solid state should now descend the slopes and pass the pus of adhesive enzymes to commune with that perverse father-daughter-rodent unit of a family. If not, those ill prepared can retreat farther and opt for dung-worms, bats and giant demons pooping out from the Eye-of-D. But stay too long in the D’Arcy and Elizabeth Amber has a surprise installed. In the dungeons of cottage life, after you’d outstayed your welcome, Village Idiots seize and strip you, inject something profound* up yours, and in a week’s time you join a host of hunchback slurring brothers, turning to be the youngest member of the Idiot family. Not quite as glamorous as being bitten by a vampire...or even a werewolf, or a plain animal for that matter.
*Profound ass. The D’Arcy is full of them. In the Village Idiot’s case, the interpretation is big moron. Stupidity at its most philosophical inserted up the rectum.
But for Elizabeth, queen of profound asses, the translation is physical and literal, a best feature.
Elizabeth Amber has a profound ass. Go figure. Some versions use the word deep. Elizabeth Amber has a deep ass. Go figure again. Ask actors with long organs. It can take anything, a favourite of voyeurs, the seventh wonder of the pornographic industry. Another history she fled. In the footnote is mentioned it talks a lot. Go figure. However, a few insider reports say it is cold, unyielding, clamped, moody and reserved in reflective thoughts. Yah. Go figure!
The view is beautiful. Marvellous. The air, gorgeous. Each breath stimulates the brain cells, a tingling sensation unparalleled. To the north are two sunken valleys side-by-side, followed by a convex landscape of a large single mound. To the east and west, sheer cliffs drop into the ocean. Jagged rocks are constantly smashed by hard waters of the foamy seas. The south expands as far as eyes could travel, and the land beneath juts out to become four peninsulas where archipelagos grip the tips like little fingers of a foetus in a womb yet unformed.
“It’s your mould,” said our guide, a New Zealander with a twangy accent. Through his thick mouth and sunglasses, he continued, “Nature is plasma. You are its soul. You need to possess it. Otherwise it continues to lie here redundant.” Even as he worded, he played with rope. A shroud of trepidation mummified our faces. “Once you take the plunge, the scenery becomes who or what you initially picked, the permanent image chiselled by the Omniscient Artist. Consider his the blueprint, and this, this leap of faith, solidifies and materializes the design.”
“Joseph Goebbels!” He abruptly shouted. A thin, deathly man packed with cyanide timidly emerges from the back of the crowd as if he were singled out from a congregation at Auschwitz. “You wanted to be a beloved novelist.
“This is your redemption,” he spoke to the multitudes even as muscular arms yanked to tighten cords round Joseph’s legs, “a second coming to own the life you wanted but never gained.
“You never wanted to be Minister of Propaganda. You just wanted the plays you penned to be staged and made into movies. Here’s your chance.” He led Mr. Goebbels to the southern edge. Eyeballs traced. We were standing on the highest point in this voluptuous vista. Down below, the hugest gorge seen; no bottom in sight, just a big black nothingness swallowing all semblances of echoes.
“Ready whenever you are.”
Joseph Goebbels, friend of the Fuhrer, now a glob of runny liquid, is mashed potato knees knocking in fear of the unknown, asking forgiveness of sins. Goebbels was taking too long. Staring into the abyss he says, “Ca...ca...can I go back to the D’Arcy? I’ve changed my mind.”
New Zealander, who’s now a bit agitated and impatient, glancing over the long queue, barks, “No!” The sharp and booming frequency shakes not only Joseph but the rest of us and the camera-worthy panorama. Somewhere, an avalanche starts. If this were a movie, each still shot would zoom out in multiples of ten, his shout resonating on. Cliché.
“Well, hurry up. I don’t have all day. I leave work at five. If you don’t jump soon I’m coming over to give you a shove.”
“Thi...this is not a pirate’s plank...this is not fair. This is extermination!” came the German’s reply in English subtitles.
“Jump, damnit!” Everyone else commands, our united voices harmonizing in SATB, as if singing an Andrew Lloyd Webber production, a song promoting the equality of race against an Aryan regime.
Clearly, Joseph didn’t get much sympathy. In the D’Arcy, he was a farmer leading flock astray. Sending sheep to slaughter. Gas chambering goats. Not much of a life compared to massacring human beings.
Thus, a still, small voice reminds him of destiny lost. His one true love. Theatre. Drama. The advent of cinema... Killing your six children then taking your own life; what was that if not an operatic end for the whole world to watch? Joseph, it needed not have been this way, staging the murder of your innocent offspring; that was the one and only honest exposition of your art, albeit cruel and selfish and revoltingly sad. That was your lost inner child crying out, the boy before he became a crony, the dead artist in you striking a dying match in the pervasive dark face of death.
But I guess, once a Nazi, always a Nazi. Joseph Goebbels wishes to regress, he chooses to retard. Wants to turn his back on salvation...on fulfilment. Away from the movies, the seed of love wasted in him. Wants to return to the D’Arcy and promulgate a supreme race. In service of the Third Reich, I read, he fucks around, flogs the casting couch. Perhaps he can now beget the perfect lamb.
Sharon swan-dives into the dark gaping mouth. She was the embodiment of all things brave, reckless and spontaneous in me. Initially, our custom made body was to be ‘One’, but we could not agree, so it was unanimously decided I was to be me and she was to be my new me, Two; a totally inaccurate interpretation of Paul’s Second Corinthians 5:17. I was the old man. She, 2.0.
Sharon elegantly disappears into that giant gob, the bungee line following. Uncurling, never seeming to stop. Rapunzel’s hair going on and on and on and on...and on...
A tug finally, and lean-mean-machine-New-Zealander-extreme-sports-savant coolly unsheathes his Bowie knife and severs the high-tech string. My jaw drops, the cavity gulps down the remnant rope, and New Zealander gently assures, “Dun worry. It’s just like cutting the umbilical cord. All babies...and moms...have to go through that. Heard of stem cell banks? This is just taking it one notch up. How else do you explain your wounds healing when yer cut? This is nature. We design nature and store this...” he held aloft Sharon’s lumpy knot remaining in this region of existence, “in cryogenic freeze in case of future accidents.”
That mouth just ate Sharon, that mouth which is part of this scenic island crudely shaped like Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man. How much the line unwinds during your fall determines your character. Who you’ll be. There’s an indicator: Level 2 descent means yer a romantic; Level 3, a glutton; Level 4, a natural horny. Anything more than that means yer a pushover, something for people to sit or walk on. Level 1 destines a premature death.
If your jump is interrupted by a southern gust, drifting you into the north side of the cave, they say you’re clever. An intellectual. But beware; too much draught and you crash into the rock face of the Mount, entering into either a right or left ventricle overgrown with creepers, and sharp with stalactites and stalagmites. This the case, you’ll probably end up an autistic or with Down’s syndrome.
East or West winds usually means dexterous, or ambidextrous in unique cases. Get the picture? Of course what you are evades you in the beginning, and you only discover your personality along life’s journey. But that whole bunch of datum is already recorded by workers, and pored over by the management of this tour agency to develop and sell you their latest holiday package, inviting you to sample a new lease of life, a forever after of upgrades to improve your immortal experience. That’s why most of us, even having gone through three score and ten, are still clueless of our existence, banking on that next consumer product to make us happy.