So first I came out of prison. Then I came out of hospital. There can be no doubt I was battling with the influences of Saturn. Yet in August it moved far enough to cease to create a negative aspect, and so we spent the rest of the year like a good family. I lay in a darkened room, Oddball tidied and ran the house, while Dizzy and Good News cooked and did the shopping. Once I was feeling better, we made another trip to the Czech Republic, to the extraordinary shop where we visited Honza and his books. We had dinner with him twice, and held our own miniature conference on Blake, without any EU grants or support.
Dizzy found a short video on the internet. It lasts no more than a minute. A handsome Stag attacks a hunter. We see it standing on its hind legs, striking the Man with its front hooves. The hunter falls over, but the Animal doesn’t stop, it stamps on him in a fury, it doesn’t give him a chance to crawl away on his knees. The Man tries to protect his head and to escape from the enraged Animal, but the Stag keeps knocking him down again.
The scene has no end – we don’t know what happened afterwards, either to the hunter or the Stag.
Lying in my dark room, in the middle of the summer, I watched this video over and over again.
XV
SAINT HUBERT
My Venus is damaged, or in exile – that’s what you say of a Planet that can’t be found in the sign where it should be. What’s more, Pluto is in a negative aspect to Venus, and in my case Pluto rules the Ascendant. The result of this situation is that I have, as I see it, Lazy Venus syndrome. That’s what I call this Conformity. In this case we’re dealing with a Person whom fortune has gifted generously, but who has entirely failed to use their potential. Such people are bright and intelligent, but don’t apply themselves to their studies, and use their intelligence to play card games or patience instead. They have beautiful bodies, but they destroy them through neglect, poison themselves with harmful substances, and ignore doctors and dentists.
This Venus induces a strange kind of laziness – lifetime opportunities are missed, because you overslept, because you didn’t feel like going, because you were late, because you were neglectful. It’s a tendency to be sybaritic, to live in a state of mild semi-consciousness, to fritter your life away on petty pleasures, to dislike effort and be devoid of any penchant for competition. Long mornings, unopened letters, things put off for later, abandoned projects. A dislike of any authority and a refusal to submit to it, going your own way in a taciturn, idle manner. You could say such people are of no use at all.
Perhaps if I had made an effort, I would have gone back to school in September, but I couldn’t summon the strength to pull myself together. I was sorry the children had lost a whole month’s teaching. But what could I do? I was aching all over.
I couldn’t return to work until October. By then I felt so much better that I organised an English club twice a week, and helped my pupils to make up for the lost lessons. But it was impossible to work normally. In October children started being excused from my lessons because preparations were at full steam for the opening and consecration of a newly built chapel. It was to be consecrated to Hubert on his saint’s day, 3 November. I refused to let the children go. I’d rather they learned a few more English words than the lives of the saints by heart. But the young headmistress intervened.
‘You’re exaggerating. There are certain priorities,’ she said, sounding as if she didn’t believe in what she was saying.
To my mind, the word ‘priority’ is just as ugly as ‘cadaver’ or ‘cohabitee’, but I really didn’t want to quarrel with her, either about excusing the children or about words.
‘Naturally you’ll be at the consecration of the chapel, won’t you?’ she said.
‘I’m not a Catholic.’
‘It doesn’t matter. We’re all Catholics by culture, whether we like it or not. So please come.’
I wasn’t prepared for this particular argument, so I said nothing. The children and I made up for the missing lessons at the afternoon club.
Dizzy was interrogated twice more, and finally was given notice to quit his job by mutual agreement. He was only going to work until the end of the year. He was given some vague justification, staff reductions, cutbacks, the usual excuses. People like Dizzy are always the first to be eliminated. But I think it had something to do with his statements. Was he a suspect? Dizzy wasn’t bothered about it. He had already decided to become a translator. He planned to live off translating Blake’s poetry. How wonderful – to translate from one language to another, and by so doing to bring people closer to one another – what a beautiful idea.
He was also conducting his own enquiry, and no wonder – everyone was anxiously waiting for the Police to make new discoveries, revelations that would put an end to this string of deaths once and for all. For this purpose he even went to see Mrs Innerd and the President’s wife, and tracked the murder victims’ movements as much as he could.
We knew all three had died from a heavy blow to the head, but it wasn’t clear what sort of Tool could have inflicted it. We speculated that it may just have been a piece of wood, a thick branch perhaps, but that would have left specific evidence on the skin. Instead it looked as if a large object with a hard, smooth surface had been used. On top of that, the Police had found trace amounts of Animal blood at the point of impact, probably from a Deer.
‘I was right,’ I insisted once again. ‘It’s the Deer, you see?’
Dizzy was tending towards a Hypothesis that the murders must be to do with settling scores. It was a known fact that the Commandant was on his way back from Innerd’s house that evening, and that Innerd had given him a bribe.
‘Maybe Innerd caught up with him and tried to take back the money, so they tussled, the Commandant fell, then Innerd took fright and dropped the idea of looking for the cash,’ said Dizzy pensively.
‘But who murdered Innerd?’ asked Oddball philosophically.
To tell the truth, I liked the concept of evil people who eliminate each other, in a chain.
‘Hmm, maybe it was the President?’ fantasised Oddball again.
It looked as if the Commandant had been covering up Innerd’s crimes. But whether the President had anything to do with it, we had no idea. If the President killed Innerd, then who killed the President? The motive of revenge on all three of them was a possibility, and in this case too it was probably to do with business dealings. Could the gossip about the mafia be true? Did the Police have any proof of it? It was highly possible that other policemen were mixed up in these sinister practices too, and that was why the enquiry was making such slow progress.
I had stopped talking about my own Theory. Indeed, I’d just been exposing myself to ridicule. The Grey Lady was right – people are only capable of understanding what they invent for themselves and feed on. The idea of a conspiracy among people from the provincial authorities, corrupt and demoralised, fitted the sort of story the television and the newspapers revelled in reporting. Neither the newspapers nor the television are interested in Animals, unless a Tiger escapes from the zoo.