BigBug

Down below on planet earth, in his apartment at Marnixstraat, Amsterdam, Seamus went back into his front room. He began to clear the table of beer cans, glasses and ashtrays overflowing with spliff remnants and cigarette butts. What a mess. Last night was January14, Seamus’s birthday. How he reached the age of sixty-five was remarkable and he was in no mood to party about it but Moon brought across his secret EWAB unit (Eco Warriors Amsterdam Battalion) and their woopies to Seamus’s house to celebrate after Finnegan’s Irish pub closed. Moon loved parties. For some reason, sitting at the table, Moon brought up the subject of his strange rock. This strange rock. Seamus never really looked at it before. The rock had been sitting up on a shelf in the kitchen for a couple of years, wedged between his beautiful jade Buddha and a brass antique camping kettle.

Moon took the rock down and put it on the table among the spliffs the shots and the beer.

“It is a meteorite,” declared Moon.

“If it is a meteorite,” declared Colonel Tom Hardy a friend of Seamus and an antagonist of Moon’s, “then a magnet should stick to it.” Being an efficient chap and highly trained to wage war against Her Majesty’s enemies and friends in times of war and peace, and to eliminate all regardless, the colonel stood up, went over and pulled off the Guinness magnets sticking on the door of the fridge. He walked back and placed the magnets onto the rock. They made loud clicks. The magnets were stuck fast to the rock. “Hmmmm,” said Col Tom in his polished and paid for Lord Haw Haw Brit accent. “If I were you, I should have this rock checked out.” He lifted up the rock gauging its weight. “Magnets do not stick to rocks.”

Everybody knows magnets do not stick to rocks. Even the cat knows that now.

“I told you it was a meteorite,” said Moon delighted, “and do you remember what you said?”

“I don’t remember,” Seamus lied.

Moon was looking at Seamus. Is he talking to me? Where is my mirror?

“I don’t remember,” Seamus lied.

It is always better to say, I don’t remember, to Moon and the police, because they are going to tell you the way things were/are/will be anyway. If they are wrong, which happens to be a lot of the time, you do not have to argue with them and you will save yourself a great deal of heavy, pointless argument and protect your sanity. Three simple words, ‘I don’t remember’. I do not remember. Murphy has pointed out that be four words. Never have a cat as a proof reader.

These three simple words, I don’t remember, induces Seamus to make a dramatic digression from this narrative, from the reality of now, and a performance is staged in the Mind Theatre.

I am not Seamus.

Eyes wide open, sitting at the kitchen table, staring out the window at the cold dark, everyone’s gone to bed, Marnixstraat, the can of Heineken warming up in my hand, pretending to be part of the party, I was utterly still and oblivious of the party goers as I walk along the fine red magic carpet embroidered with the faces of my whispering ancestors. At the end of the corridor above the theatre door green neon lights burn brightly spelling out, Cead Mile Failte. I stop and bow at the portal.

The Mind Theatre opens.

A lovely breeze, a scent of all that was before, brushes my face. The air is alive with preserved memory. It is invigorating to inhale. I breathe in deeply. I go back stage. Bless you Moon for this ticket.

Curtain up on the streets of London.

My student friend Tony Mahon, who worked part time in his aunt’s travel agency, tipped me off about a great deal on a three-day trip to London. It was virtually for nothing with a bed and breakfast thrown in. A great deal for a poor student. My da Paddy, and his Uncle Brian, were both in the Irish Guards before and during the Second World War. Uncle Brian had been a Sergeant Major and my da a lance sergeant. They both fought in their tanks all the way from the beaches of Normandy to Berlin. As a boy I was fascinated and enraptured by their tales and when they talked about their peacetime ceremonial duties, especially the Trooping of the Colour, their backs straightened, and they were very proud and happy old soldiers. If you ever get the chance, advised da to me, go and watch the Trooping of the Colour. Better still urged Uncle Brian join up and take part. No way says ma. He is going to university and he is going to be a geologist. He is going to prospect for gold and diamonds in South Africa. Isn’t that right son? Aye, ma. I am going to find gold nuggets as big as spuds. She has the boy ruined the old soldiers declare. This is cissy civvies talk. Nothing to do with war. The veterans retire to the pub to explain to the local republican rebels how they managed to get through nine Churchill tanks, or was it ten? And still lived to tell the tale. I so much want to see the Trooping of the Colour, the Mall, Buckingham Palace and visit the Imperial War museum. There was so much to see and do in three short days. It will be wonderful. My good friends here I am in 1966. A tall spotty auburn haired young man, wearing a Norfolk jacket and bell bottoms from Carnaby Street and a nice pair of tan Chelsea boots and I am standing on Horse Guards Parade watching the Irish Guards Troop the Colour. It is a nice sunny day. I am eating a hot dog that is, unfortunately, prepared in a way that displays the colours of a foreign flag. Green lettuce white bread and orange mustard. The green white and orange. The colours of the Irish flag that the British Foreign office, and for many good under cover and under the table reasons, look down their snotty snooty rich upturned noses at. An exceptionally wicked porker grabs me from behind, wrestles me to the ground, handcuffs me, and gives me a good old fashioned, preliminary thrashing, then hisses in my busted and bleeding ear.

“Gottcha! How’s that!”

The porker reeks and stinks of boiled beef and badness. He is a dainty English delicacy. It bundles me into a police wagon and whisks me off in this unmarked van to an unknown police station. I am searched and my belongings confiscated. After a few hours in a cold bare tomb like cell I am dragged by the hair into an interrogation room. I am forced to sit on a rickety wooden chair. My hands are handcuffed tightly behind my back. My wrists are swelling up and they will not let me pee. Every time I try to speak, I am told to shut the fuck up. The wicked porker is a masterpiece, fashioned from malice, and chiselled from pure spite. It is a bigot with a baton. A very tall very strong thin creature with a bulb head and spiky eyebrows. It is an upside down gangrenous blue scallion staring at its victim with relish. There is dried blood on its great big boots. It begins to speak in a very high-pitched, almost girl like, Cockney accent, with a pronounced lisp.

“I have reason to believe, you, you Paddy bastard, that on or about more than 100 years ago you did wilfully, and with malice afore thought in your twisted Irish mind, murder the prostitute Mary Murphy with a surgical instrument; namely, a blunt rusty bill hook, illegally imported to the UK from the County Antrim, and further, after draining the said Mary Murphy’s blood and making black pudding with it, you did further fry up her liver and kidneys with the same black pudding and had a murderous mixed grill; eating with your left hand while masturbating with your right hand and all the time singing dodgy, debilitating, disgusting, seditious, sentimental, stupid Irish rebel songs as wot is an affront to common decency and an assault on the ear, either one or both. What do you have to say Paddy? Tell you what me old cocker. Don’t tell me. Tell it to the Judge. You’re up before the beak at the Old Bailey. It is the rope for you.”

The Old Bailey is designed to enhance fear dread and apprehension.

“How do you plead?” asks the judge, a man dressed in blood stained pyjamas, a man with a jackal face, and wearing a long horsehair wig that reaches each side of him to fall onto the floor.

“I don’t remember,” I tell the judge.

“Liar!” screams the Judge.

“It was such a long time ago, your honour. I was not even born then. I haven’t got a clue,” I reply.

“No, no, m’ Lord,” shouts the wicked porker, objecting, “the Paddy is committing perjury. It is us wicked porkers as wot don’t ’ave a clue. Ask anyone as wot has been hanged in the wrong. A good flogging will loosen his tongue. May it please the Court.”

“It pleases the Court greatly.” The judge shakes his wig at me. “In fact, and expunge this from the transcript, “it threatens the stenographer, “I just whipped my wife and children and that blasted poodle before I got here. Put me wig in the wash. Look at the state of it, and I have to deport, in chains, five hundred migrants, in flat packs, and hang three political refugees before the rush hour. I digress. What say you, Paddy? Be thee Jack the Ripper?”

“I don’t remember.”

These three simple words cause uproar in the court.

“Amnesia? Loss of memory? Whom does this Paddy think he is kidding? It’s an old fucking Fenian trick, m’ Lord. Bring back the rope, the firing squad, the rack and the axe. Hot irons and your good old Celtic ball crackers. If it helps I just bought a pair of genuine British thumbscrews. Empire made.” The wicked porker is shaking his fist at me.

“Excellent evidence.”

“May it please the Court.”

“It greatly pleases the Court. Answer up, Irishman. Be thee Jack the Ripper?”

“It was such a long time ago. I could not possibly be there. I wasn’t even born.”

“Who appears for the persecution?”

“I do m’Lord. The Lord Chancer.” The Lord Chancer is dressed in an old Etonian schoolboy’s uniform. He makes a theatrical upper class harrumph sound so that the judge and any lesser mortals listening will be aware he went to a public school for a better class of empire enemy eradicator. He breaks wind to reinforce his pedigree and addresses the court, “I am speaking here, m’Lord, not only as lead persecutor in this case, but as representative of Her Majesty’s Government.” He makes two more harrumphs. Sounds like a hungry scavenger. He waits for the silence to turn fearful and pronounces. “The impossibility of guilt is no defence at law m’ Lord. Likewise, being unborn at the time of an offence is obviously no defence at law, and, it is obvious that as the accused was not there, he cannot possibly have an alibi and was also unable therefore to appear in person to enter a plea of not guilty. The law is quite clear. A plea of guilty must therefore be entered, on behalf of the accused, in the absence of the accused.” He waggled a brown stained finger at me, and I was not sure if it was nicotine or nasty stuff, the Lord Chancer being an old Etonian bum bugger em all buddy boy and all that. “Further, let it be said, the presumption of innocence can only be applied to Irish rebels after the accused has been found guilty and dealt with under due process of the law of the land. Her Majesty’s government will bring these points forward to be incorporated into law at the next emergency secret session at the Blue Boy Club in Mayfair.”

“Well fuck my old boots,” applauds the judge. “Nice wig, Lord Chancer.” The judge addresses the wicked porker. “Constable O’Bashemall, you have given outstanding evidence and thus you have saved the good women of England from being turned into black pudding by the dastardly Irish rebels posing as ordinary decent tourists, ODTs. You may, in recognition from a grateful public, affix six Sterling silver nails, sharpened up at public expense, to your truncheon.”

The judge and the Lord Chancer give Seamus the hangman’s glare. The judge places a black tea cosy on his head.

“Paddy you are fucked. I sentence you to death without the possibly of anything. You will be taken from this place and, as an example to all other terrorists, hanged from the mast of the next Liverpool ferry sailing back to Belfast –”

“Objection, m’ Lord.”

“Objection, Lord Chancer?”

“I am afraid so.” He whispers. He is aghast. “This terrorist, this Celtic serial killer, is too young to hang.” He apologises. “Her Majesty’s government are aware of this loophole in the law, m’ Lord.”

“You sneaky little Irish bastard,” roars the judge red faced and shaking his head. His tea cosy falls off. His tea is going cold. Flogging offence that. “Paddy you are sentenced to life imprisonment for the heinous crime of dumb insolence and may our good old decent Christian God have mercy on your tongue.”

“All rise.”

“This is not fair,” I shout.

The judge stomps off out of court back through his designer rat hole.

There is great disappointment in the press gallery. The representatives of the gutter press shout out in disappointed diatribe.

“Where the fuck is Jack the Ripper then?”

What an awful, dreadful, way to earn a living and the hacks, these mighty ghouls of gibberish, drenched in the blood of the innocents, wallowing in phoney pissed-up press patriotism, have not changed in all these years. My da marches into the courthouse dressed in his immaculate red tunic and bearskin hat. He is wearing his campaign medals. He about turns smartly at the bench marches towards me and halts slamming his gleaming bulled up best boots into the marble tiles. He stands to attention.

“This is not fair, da.”

“There is nothing fair in love or war. Peace is nothing more than a lull in hostilities. Remember that!” Da is crying.

End.

Curtain falls.

I stand up and leave the theatre.

Seamus returns to the kitchen in the Marnixstraat.

He turns in his chair and looks at Moon. He is very tired. The Mind Theatre can be exhilarating but exhausting and if one attends a performance featuring the dark side of human memory it can be monstrously terrifying. Seamus rubs his swollen aching wrists. Moon looks at Seamus with studious, envious, eyes. Moon starts moonologuing.

“You are the only man I know can trip without dropping a tab. Welcome back to dead colour, flat music, bent boundaries, bills and straight people. You said I don’t remember?” continues Moon. “Do you remember saying that? Let me remind you den,” said Moon sucking on his spliff and exhaling in Col Toms direction, who loathed secondary stoning. “You,” he waggled his finger at Seamus, “told me to get rid of the meteorite or you would tie me hands behind me back, tie the rock around me balls, and throw me into the canal. That’s what he said Hardy.” Moon said this as if Col Tom was in some way responsible for Seamus’ threatening behaviour.

“I told you to get rid of the rock because I thought it was junk like all the other junk you bring in here. Like the cat,” Seamus replied. “As far as I remember,” Seamus continued, invoking the amnesic get-out-of-a-mad-conversation clause.

“That was a very nice cat.”

“The cat was dead.”

“That’s the way I found it.”

“I came up to make breakfast,” Seamus explained to his guests, “and there was a dead cat on the chair, over there, beside where Moon was sleeping.”

Moon, who claimed he communicated telepathically with most animals, usually young human females, bristled. “That cat was entitled to be buried the very same as you or me. I mean to say, Hardy, if someone ran you over and squashed you, would you expect people to walk past you on the streets of London. Would the bowler hat and the bustling brolly Brits let you rot until de dustbin men came along and scraped you off de road? Is that what they do in England? Is that what they do in the mother of all your poxy proxy Brit democracies? All creatures great and small, all things bright and beautiful - my black crusty Celtic bollox!”

“I am not a cat,” said Col Tom, “I have not been run over by a joyriding layabout and I am not lying squashed on the Queens Highway. The questions are moody moot and any answer given will be deemed wrong as a matter of prejudice. It’s rather like the question – do you still fuck the vicar’s wife?”

“Well do you, Hardy? Or do you think you are better than the vicar, no the pope, the Holy Father himself, even though anything you say or do is always wrong? Always!”

“The thing is Moon,” said Seamus, “you did not bury the cat. I had to do it. It was laying on one of my kitchen chairs for Christ’s sake with its guts hanging out touching the floor and you lying there like Rip Van Winkle without a care or responsibility in the world. That’s why I started shaking you and shouting unkind things at you about all the junk you bring in here.”

“Junk?” said Moon, “and what about this? Is this junk?” and he stroked the rock the way one does. Well, you have guessed it - a cat.

“I was going to bury the cat when the Earth warmed up a bit. You must have buried her in the dark. How would you like to be buried in the dark Hardy? The mourners would have to wear night vision goggles but that is no problem to an old Imperial Quartermaster like you. Is it? The UK is coming down with military equipment left over from your wars and regime change adventures. People like me, the lonely taxpayer, we have to dust it down and wear it when some maniac on the menopause, some domineering old bitch of a dictator, goes off the head and declares war on Disneyland. We are all expected to march off like good little public schoolboys and kill anything that moves. I ain’t goanna slaughter on Maggie’s farm no more.” Moon snaffled and pointed at the rock. “This might be junk,” he conceded still patting the rock, “but it is extra-terrestrial junk. Is it debris from deep space? Or is it?” He paused moonologuing inspired, and sucked on his spliff to enhance his inspiration. He gasped out in a voice that tailed off in a much higher octave. A squeak. “Is this meteorite a cosmic artefact? Is it all that’s left of another world, an alien planet that your British Empire destroyed? The Empire on which the moon never shone. Well there are a lot more suns out there than bleeding British Regiments Hardy.” He was tickling the rock’s belly. Seamus thought he was going to coochy-coo it. Multiple-Choice-Moon elaborated, “Maybe it’s a message. A portent of promise. An archaeological treasure from deepest space. A rock from an ancient alien civilization,” he shouted across at Col Tom, “a brilliant Cosmic Celtic Civilization that the Brits never found, never enslaved, exploited and destroyed!”

“We Brits have not colonized space,” said Col Tom. “Not yet. Now, do you have a map reference for this little piece of heaven that fell out the sky one day?”

“The rock is green Hardy,” said Moon mysteriously and popped another can of Heineken, “but I am not one of the proverbial forty shades of green.”

“You are all talking rubbish,” said Vicki, a petite blonde lady with lovely green eyes. She was Moon’s Ex. “Even if it is a meteorite, what use is it? Who wants it? It is a waste of time and space. This house is full of your junk, Moon. Get rid of it. Clean the place out. Chuck it in the canal. Chuck it in the canal and jump in after it.” After relationship rasp. ARR.

“Like you chucked me out?” said Moon, “no way. You threw me out and stole my Man-U socks. And my vaporizer.”

“Rubbish,” said Vicki, “you talk nothing but rubbish. Just be quiet. Stupid piece of stone. Get rid of it. Throw it in the canal.”

“I’ll throw you in the canal!” shouted Moon.

“If it is a meteorite,” said Col Tom, “depending on what type it is, it may be, it could be, worth money. A great deal of money here in Holland.”

A greedy silence fell over the kitchen. Vicki was peering at the rock anew and there was a sparkle in her dollar-green eyes.

“And how would you know all this?” asked Moon, almost with a bit of respect in his voice.

“My sister is a rock hound.”

“I always knew there was a bit of a dog in you Hardy.”

“My sister is an archaeologist/geologist,” said Col Tom ignoring Moon, “done her doctorate on the manufacture of early iron age tools and weapons. Her house in Cape Town is full of rocks, arrowheads, spears, swords, and all that sort of stuff. I think she has a few meteoritic specimens, some of which are quite valuable. She has a slice of a meteorite, a mesosiderite or something like that, that’s worth some thousands of Rands. Yes, a meteorite can be worth a lot of money especially one found here in Amsterdam.”

This information from Col Tom produced an attentive silence at the table. Seamus who knew something about meteorites knew Col Tom was correct but he had refrained from saying anything to Moon because he would get excited to the point of irritating obsessiveness. The revellers weighed what Col Tom had just said. If there was money involved that changed everything. Vicki leaned over and poked Moon with her finger.

“I own half of that meteorite,” said Vicki. “Are you listening to me, Moon?” She poked Moon again for he was ignoring her staring at the rock. He was a Cobra staring at prey.

“Where was it found?” asked Col Tom.

“In my garden at the Spaarndammerbuurt,” said Vicki, “I suppose legally speaking, it belongs to me.”

“You fuck off,” shouted Moon and he cuddled the rock and held it in his arms the way one would do with a small baby, or a cat. “I found this meteorite. I dug it up clearing your poxy garden, our ex-poxy garden, of roots. I told you all it was a meteorite and you were all saying I was off the head and now you want a cut you cunt,” he was glaring at Vicki. He patted the rock and smirked at Vicki. “Who is off the head now?”

“You are. You were always off your head darling. I often wonder how you attach it back, still, that is all in the past. Eh, darling?” said Vicki. Fair enough. “If it’s rare, it’s worth something,” she reasoned, “that’s what they say on the Antiques Road Show. It is rare isn’t it?”

“It would be. Very much so here in Holland. To find a meteorite anywhere is rare. Most of them fall into the sea. To find a meteorite in Amsterdam is a bit like winning a lottery and I don’t think anyone would find another. Improbable in the extreme chaps. I cannot imagine people digging up the Dam Square or the Red Light District looking for meteorites. But a word of caution. Most artefacts that people think are meteorites turn out to be man-made, like industrial slag, old rusted cannonballs and such like.”

“Stop throwing cold water on everything Hardy. It is a meteorite,” shouted Moon rocking the rock back and forth in his arms, “and it’s mine.” Seamus thought he was going to breast-feed it.

“I’ll settle for half,” said Vicki.

“That’s an idea,” said Leather John, “cut it in half and have a bit each.”

“What?” shouted Moon at Leather John, “cut my meteorite in half? Do you think this is the Court of Solomon and this is the little abused child, God help it, the poor little child that the two auld ones agreed to have cut in half? I know,” said Moon to Leather John, “you went through a bad custody battle with the kids, but there is no need to want to saw them in bloody half.”

“It’s only a magnetic rock or an odd bit of scrap, Moon,” replied Leather John, “not worth a wobbly wank. You need to stop watching all those science fiction channels, Moon. Fiction is fiction not scientific fact and treasure does not fall out of the sky.” He sighed. “Not for the likes of you and me. We are not that lucky. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for the working man, only a crippling, mind-destroying terrestrial tax bill.” Hardy nodded agreement at this happy man.

Moon put the rock back up on the table. He adjusted the Guinness magnets on the rock. He raised his glass, “To Seamus. Happy birthday, Seamus.” They drank.

Seamus raised his glass and counter toasted, “To the rock. To the Amsterdam Meteorite.” They all toasted. The room buzzed with interest and excitement and that suited Seamus. It was not his real birthday anyway. Seamus was not even his name.

“It looks just like a little space bunny,” declared Moon’s friend, Kosher Karl. He was the I.O, intelligence officer, for the EWAB unit but he was doubled up as a member of Israeli Secret Intelligence. His cover story, when he drank a few was - “What do I do, young lady?” No matter what the age the woman may be. “Well, I am not supposed to say, being a spy and deep under cover, but I can tell you I am the Amsterdam Station Chief of Mossad. That’s why I cannot tell you my name and address or divulge my marital status, but I can tell you this much, I am obliged to investigate you in the most intimate way in the interests of Israel. That is right my dear. Just like a movie and we are the stars. Get them off. We do not have much time. The ice is melting and the terrorists are counting down. Drip drip and do the strip. Tick tock and suck my cock.”

“Yeah,” agreed Moon. “A little space bunny.” He liked that description and Kosher Karl’s ingenious procreative protocols. “It’s Easter in the galaxies and this is a little meteorite space bunny buddy hopping from galaxy to galaxy seeding de planets.”

“The only thing you ever tried to seed was me,” said Vicki, pouring herself another glass of red wine. “As I said, I will settle for half.”

“Half of nothing,” said Leather John “is sweet Fanny Adams.”

“Would that,” said Col Tom, “be the sister of General G. Adams?”

“Now less of your anti rebel rhetoric, Hardy,” snaps Moon whose great grandmother made genuine Irish corn beef sandwiches for the rebels in the GPO in 1916 and only charged them cost price. She did not have the heart to tell those brave, idealistic, very hungry young rebels that the mustard was made in England. Or, as she confided to the priest as she received the last rites on her deathbed, “I couldn’t tell them it was British mustard but then sure no one should die on an empty stomach, father. Would you mind popping out and getting me me last ray and chips and mix the vinegar up with a drop of holy water just in case?”

“The rock is worth sweet fuck all,” said Leather John delighted to be pouring cold water on a dream, “we divorced men are the unluckiest bastards on the planet. You are not that lucky, Moon. Join the great dispossessed males, mate.”

“You couldn’t win a bet in a one-horse race John.’’ Moon was staring at the rock intently. “This is not luck,” he said pointing at the rock, “this is destiny. A redistribution of cosmic karma – CK.” He was staring at the rock fascinated. A visible fixated intensity shimmering, haloing, all about him. A few more friends called by, some somewhat dodgy, and Seamus lifted the rock off the table and decided to put it somewhere safe. In his bedroom. On the floor next to his bed. A great idea.

There it was now, this blessed botched up morning, scratched and speckled with toe blood, up on the table. Seamus was exhausted. Partying is such hard work. He needed to take the day off work.

Seamus rang in sick with the Irish flu.

“I think,” said Seamus, patting the strange rock, “That we need to Google meteorites.” He opened up his Apple.

Seamus’s conversation with the cat and the conversations of the night before, in fact every word ever spoken in the house since he moved in, were eavesdropped and duly recorded by the surveillance devices planted in his house by the Dutch security services the old BWD. Seamus switched on his computer. It too was monitored, also by the Brits and the Americans, just to make sure absolutely nothing, but nothing, slipped through the fine great world-wide net cast by the shadows. Luckily the information gathered with regard to Moon’s meteorite had not yet come to the attention of Bigbug and DATA.