goddess no longer of the moony crested tire, quick-change artist and record-holder, out steps the twenty-one-year-old lieutenant-colonel — the youngest in the whatsit army — wearing steel helmet, rakishly askew, eccentric battledress copiously stippled with pig’s blood, bedroom slippers with soft woollen pompons (I intend to invade whatsit in comfort); his face is blacked like a nigger minstrel’s with white eye-circles, one emitting searchlight illumination: through the second orifice a whizzing stream of machine-gun bullets, exploding bombs, rockets, clods of earth, power-diving planes, bombers, fighters, vampires, anopheles-size and vicious, in inexhaustible swarms.
The searchlight beam points erratically hither and thither, in the manner of a retriever questing for game, over the vast slow-seething seabulk which is now apperceptible as a sort of time symbol holding locked in its dark plasma the innumerable bubbles of all past and future eventualities.
At irregular intervals the beam oscillates violently in the agitation of finding, then slowly fixes, freezing in its terminal circle small distant sharp scenes of topical interest. As,
an idealized country house in sunny summery landscape, roses round the door, elm-muffled peaceable strokes of church clock striking the tea hour, strawberries and cream and deck-chairs on the lawn, unseen pigeons cooing, every exile’s sentimental picture of home.
Twilight gathers quickly; a bleak wind rising overturns the deserted chairs: the roses droop, wither, fall, their petals are blown away; the pigeon-coos hoarsen to ominous hooting as a huge spectral white owl with lambent eyes sweeps stealthily past, concentrating to pounce as it disappears; immediately afterwards a thin mouse death-shriek is heard.
In deepening darkness dimly seen conspiratorial forms, wearing some kind of horrific disguise-uniform (Inquisition or Ku-Klux-Klan suggestion) by unclear and rapid manipulation convert the house to traditional haunted-house aspect.
The Hanged Man swings from a black tree; he is looking at something unseen in the air; spinning slowly in the wind with desolate bone creaking; muttering, I am too old to be in a tree. A mongrel pup, starved ribcage on four matchsticks, slinks in and out of sight. Mist wraiths coagulate, hover lugubriously, disintegrate, among dark shapes of bushes or tombstones or crouching things. After slight pause, a small white bone falls like a full stop on the black grass.
Now inside the house: a storm lantern flickers feebly on dusty and empty rooms that the wind whimpers through, and on the uneasy group of neophytes herded together. These are boys of about fourteen, with dumb-bucolic or vicious-urban-degenerate faces sniggering in discomfort, and with restless movements and whispers hiding their half-alarm. They are dressed in badly fitting uniforms of cheap coarse material, some with jackets sagging loose to the knees, some with tight sleeves which fail to cover their wrists. They are armed with weapons contrastingly, expensive, efficient, ultra-modern and deadly looking. Carrying out their orders, they move through the rooms, a few displaying exaggerated toughness, the others alternatively scared and vacuously amused by the various trick manifestations, hidden traps, skulls springing out of cupboards, chains clanking, lights suddenly flashing, doors suddenly opening or slamming, moans, screams, howls, etc.
Finally the roof lifts up like a lid and the lieutenant-colonel is seen hovering batlike and spraying from the poison ducts at the back of his vampire fangs a fine rain of blood with which the upturned faces are thinly spattered. Simultaneously his voice, very much amplified, yells through the loudspeaker, On your toes, boys. Remember whatsit. There’s a whatsit. Kill the swine. Kick his guts out.
As his image slowly fades it develops a recognizable though incomplete resemblance to the Liaison Officer. At the instant of disappearance the rim of his steel helmet catches the light and hangs in mid-air, a halo-like, phosphorescent ellipse which evaporates as the loudspeaker switches to soundtrack of war horror film
linking up with
a cinema audience in tightly-packed hall. The rows of people seen from the back all exactly similar somewhat elongated heads with protuberant ears. A big flag with crossed emblem hangs over the screen where an air-raid is shown in progress. Deafening accompaniment of appropriate noises: bombs, rockets, ack-ack, sirens, shouts, clanging bells of fire engines, ambulances, etc. Walls seen crumbling, A.R.P. and N.F.S. personnel search through wreckage and rubble for victims under mobile arc-lamps. A woman is carried by on a stretcher; where her face was, foot-long splinters of glass project like porcupine quills. A growl of rage, baited-animal sound, travels along the watching rows of the audience.
Quick over the road to the movie theatre on the other side. The rows of people here seen from the back all exactly similar somewhat square heads with protuberant ears. A big flag with circular emblem hangs over the screen where an air-raid is shown in progress. Deafening accompaniment of appropriate noises: bombs, rockets, ack-ack, sirens, shouts, clanging bells of fire engines, ambulances, etc. Walls seen crumbling, A.R.P. and N.F.S. personnel hunt through wreckage and rubble for victims under mobile arc-lamps. A woman is carried by on a stretcher; where her face was, foot-long splinters of glass project like porcupine quills. A growl of rage, baited-animal sound, travels along the watching rows of the audience.
Quickly the audiences of the two theatres crowding blackly out, overflowing the street like opposing ant-swarms. A rumbling roar goes up as they converge upon one another, interpenetrate.
The searchlight beam (now for the sake of convenience to be identified with the untroubled eye up above) wanders restlessly:
after a not arbitrary number of glimpses of world happenings,
roams towards a huge solitary fang-shaped rock, almost a mountain, jutting sheer out of the ocean, sleek oil-black faintly polished, belted with white scalloped beading of foam. A sudden long inexplicable swell gathers on the smooth water, mounting quickly to tidal-wave size, travels increasingly rapidly and toweringly to the rock; at the moment of impact the eyebeam telescopes into close-up of the shattering wave with heavy spray mane wind-combed and white from the black wave blown back.
In still closer analysis, the spray particles brightly illuminated, particularized, individualized, metamorphosed into papers of all descriptions.
Envelopes (with stamps of various countries, airmail stamps, Opened by Censor, D.D.A. stickers, O.H.M.S. signs, etc.) addressed in various handwritings or typewritten to places all over the world. Letters from lovers, banks, businesses, ministries, consulates, etc.; on embossed paper, thin paper, papers with printed headings, pages tom from exercise books. Birth, marriage, death certificates; diplomas, passports, dossiers, warrants, licences, ballot cards, invitations, tickets, cheques, coupons, leaflets, cables, menus, currency notes, programmes, manuscripts, drawings, photographs, labels, press-cuttings. These appear briefly (there is barely time to read them) with headlines in utter confusion. As
Gas leads suicide methods this winter. Shaw mumbles no in beard to love notes. Mayan temple hieroglyphics used as play-suit trimmings. No bass violinists in Folsom Prison. Atom Bomb opens new era in world destruction, entire city vaporized in black rain, victims vanish. Bishop thanks God for science.
There are perhaps one or two full paragraphs
Phosgene is the most practical and economical gas for the production of quick death. While mustard-gas casualties are a long time in hospital, sometimes several months, there is nothing about them, immediately after being gassed, to inspire terror in other troops. With phosgene, however, if heavily gassed, men will be dropping dead like flies in a few hours…