Beatlebone Read Online Free PDF Page B

the clouds over the bleak hills and the fall-away fields. The stone walls drunkenly wander the hills on unmentionable escapades. All is pierced with anxiety and dread. It’s the place of the old blood and it has too a sexy air.
    The sexy airs of summer.
    From who and where was that? At difficult angles across the hills the grey sheep move. They drift unpredictably like the turns of his own dark, glamorous mind. The past is about, too, but now it’s the more recent past, and he imagines the salve again of (oh-let’s-say) heroin, and how might that feel, John? To fall into that dream again—to be in the arms of the soft machine again—and to have that deeper quiet and space again. Morpheus, the dream. Noise is the fucking difficulty always. The excess of. The wind licks out the corners of the yard—its tongues move in green darts and lizard-quick. Sexy airs. Wasn’t it from Auden? The wind speaks, too, and in urgent whispers. News from far-out? Or from close-in? He shakes his head as he walks and circles the yard, and he notes from the corner of his eye the presence of Cornelius by the farmhouse door, leaning against the jamb, and his eyes are vast with pleasantness. The arms folded. The bull’s head inclined. The expression of great interest.
    John?
    Yes, Cornelius?
    You know what I’d wonder sometimes?
    What’s that?
    If I amn’t half a blackman.
    ———
    Cornelius carries with prim importance two shaving bowls and two razors. They climb to a tin-sided outhouse built into the rocks of the hill. The outhouse lacks a door and John can see down the country as the sky moves its clouds along and the sun appears and it’s trippy now in the sunburst. The fields are lit and lifting. It’s the hour for a shave and a philosophic interlude.
    A black, Cornelius?
    Is fucken right.
    I think I see where you’re coming from.
    Cornelius turns his throat and jerks the head curtly.
    I’m talking if we were to go way back, he says. I’m talking from the south.
    Cornelius rinses off the razor and shakes it dry. He slaps his face to get the blood back in. The blood comes hotly in a rush to enliven the stately face. He leans against the rock and looks out on the freshening day as if it might just about contain him.
    I’m talking about cunts off boats, he says. I’m talking about my father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s time.
    I’m losing track.
    I don’t know if we aren’t looking at the likes of 1400?
    As if it was the other Wednesday.
    You’re saying there might have been a dusky sailor back then?
    Now you have me.
    Do you hear whispers from back there, Cornelius?
    Ah I would do. Yes.
    You mean from an old life?
    Back arse of time, he says, and gestures grandly with a sweep of imperious paw.
    What do you hear?
    I think it could be a class of Portuguese.
    There’s an old tar with a monkey on his shoulder. And what do you see?
    This is where it gets good. I see a tiny window set deep in a thick stone wall.
    Yes?
    With four iron bars set hard in the sill.
    You were in a spot of bother then?
    I would think so, John, yes.
    Involving?
    Nothing fucken good. Horses, definitely. And somehow I think a plain girl but gamey and with greenish eyes.
    He calmly shaves. The burn of his jaw is a cool ordinary feeling and the afternoon is calm and bright or at least it is for a while. Cornelius considers him carefully and for a slow, held moment—
    You have the longish nose, he says. Like a particular type of dog I can’t place.
    ———
    Sometimes in the black oily panic of the night when the city sent unsettling dreams across its towers and violent bowers—
the shapes of night in the park
    the dark trees crouching
    the trees so fiercely bunched
    these creatures about to spring
    —it was then he would travel to the island in his mind, and he would quieten when he lay his sore bones down among the rocks for a while and let the water move all around and the sky hang down its cold stars—its cold, cold jewels—its