Tuesday 26 August 2014

Italo - a very short story in the style of Italo Calvino

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Hard up against the Northern Frontier lies the abandoned city of Italo. No one knows who occupied it, if indeed it ever was so used. It is, in general, a city that defies, or at least deters and frustrates understanding. There is a rough geometric grid, of sorts, to which the buildings are obliged to conform, streets running one way, avenues another. However there is an irregularity to both the angles and the offset distances between roads that adheres to no discernible pattern.

Likewise, the buildings show a semblance of order, elements are consistent between different buildings, a pillar here, a lintel there. But such familiar elements are seldom seen to be arranged twice in the same manner. A lintel that goes over a window, is elsewhere a hearth for a fire. The exteriors of the buildings bear little relation to their interiors. Windows arranged randomly surround a regular commonplace interior arrangement, and likewise the contrary.

At this distance in time it is impossible to determine the function of the buildings that remain. Likewise no quarters are discernible by likely function in that city. In whole and in part, it defies categorisation. There is no style, no commonality, no repetition. It is a maddening city, it defies logic and intuition. It is impossible to place the buildings within any typology, to conjecture any order to their construction. Devoid of the sun or the stars, as with a cloudy firmament, you quickly lose your bearings.

Scholars are, in general, frustrated, by Italo, and it is little studied as there is so little that one can usefully say about it. The lack of interest in the city is doubly manifested in those who lived there or chose to build it. No image can form of the creators of such a frustrating place. There is nothing to be said for or of them.
The young turks of urban historiography put forward a theory, a half hearted and playful notion. Their conjecture is that Italo was never occupied, it was the physical manifestation of some lost architectural manifesto, some set of forgotten tenets, part intellectual, part religious. An auto-da-fé for some past sins. A festival of possibilities, endless permutations, built and rebuilt, formed and reformed, seeking some final form that bore the self evident stamp of authenticity and rightness that its timid builders could not find it in themselves to arrive at by more rational means.

Sunday 24 August 2014

Misericord - a John de _____ story

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[A misericord or mercy seat, is a wooden shelf fitted beneath a folding seat in a church. They can be ornately carved.]

 

The scholar adjusted the angle-poise lamp. There was far too little space left on his oak desk. He picked up the pile of books on medieval alabaster work and stained glass, moving them aside to place them on a windsor chair, already well laden with books. 

 

At last, there was nearly enough space. He pushed back the paperwork and artefacts out further towards the edge of the desk. A few toppled precariously, but nothing fell off. The circle of bright legible light fell on the middle of his desk. He unpacked the manuscript, the edge was tattered. Shreds were about to detach forever, now part of the manuscript, the merest touch and they were on their way to the oblivion of being dust. 

 

The manuscript conformed to the broad description offered by the antiquarian bookseller. It was a handwritten manuscript probably of the medieval period. Very late, but possibly medieval. It smelt musty and old, foxed and splatted with spots and damage. At first he focussed on the damage, the random pattern that age had inflicted on it. Then he tried to switch his focus to what remained. Looking back in time to see what had been written on this yellowed parchment. The antiquarian bookseller had merely described it as possibly medieval parchment, he had made no further attempt to describe it. With no illustrations or illuminated characters it was not the most prepossessing of items. He looked around his room, in the partial gloom he could see the same reassuring collection of artefacts that he always liked to look at. Like a miser admiring his hoard, his eye flicked between the items. A variety of misericords, the heavily decorated underside of fold away church seats, designed to offer temporary respite during a long church service. They were decorated with mermen, centaurs, green-men, courting couples. They were roughly rectangular, that was the beauty of the medieval, nothing was ever quite square or quite straight. It was always contorted in some cartoonish manner. There was a huge ceiling boss, a screaming green man sheaved in leaves. The boss would have covered the part of the ceiling where the stone reinforcing ribs crossed. In use it would have been visible, but not legible, yet the detail was incredible. The leaves sprouted forth from his eyes and mouth. There were fragments of rood screen or jube, the wooden tracery that separated the medieval church chancel and nave. Figures being swallowed by reptilian mouths and swathed in looping oak leaves. The medieval wood carvers continued a tradition of working and venerating the living oak that stretched back to at least the druids that the Romans had encountered when they invaded. Back when an older faith pervaded these islands keeping and maintaining the people in their happy state of fear and awe. 

 

These wooden carvings were rare, rarer than just their antiquity would suggest. Under the Tudor Reformation the state had destroyed the vast bulk of religious carvings, tearing them from their churches and burning them in great bonfires. 

 

He heard the faint rustling of leaves. He had probably paid too much for this piece of tattered parchment, he usually did. 

 

He scrunched up the brown wrapping paper and board, throwing them aside. He pulled across a medieval dictionary and started to work through the text methodically. If the text were actually of more than just the usual very parochial interest then it might be of some real value. 

 

 

“My name is John de _____ and this is my story. Although this story is scarcely credible, even to myself, I swear that it is true. As a young man, I was the faithful servant of Henry, to become the greatest king in all Christendom. He was a strong virile man, full of wisdom beyond his years and with the strength of many men. In the winter of 15__ I was dispatched in his service to the furthest reaches of his kingdom. The kingdom was unruly. Henry had been chosen by God to lead us, but his lords and their serfs were not worthy of him. They were disputatious amongst themselves and unduly troubled by ungodly things. With a troop of my soldiers I was to travel the lands of our King and instruct them in their rightful duties and allegiances. A good king will have obedient people and those that will not be obedient must be fearful, in fear for their very lives. 

 

It was a hard winter, the wet ground solid with frost. We were unwelcome everywhere we went. We struggled our horses up endless tracks through oak woods that had never seen a cart. We fought off cur like wolves, and snarling wild pigs, cold hungry. The woods were full of brigands but they knew better than to attack us in the daylight. At night we heard their oaths and footsteps in the dark of ancient woods. The nighttime woods were always full of their noises around us. 

 

When we found a village we were scarcely more comfortable. The huts were low and mean, crowded round a church or pond, like weary hunters round a fire. Hungry dogs licked round us as we entered each village. Dark eyed children looked on. At each gathering I would say my story. I would tell them of their great king and their place in his kingdom. The lords would shift uneasily. They lived in comfort in service of their king, but had done so little to deserve his favour. 

 

I am pledged to the service of my king. After that I am pledged to the service of my Lord God. The churches were as dark and mean as the people. We were far away from the fashionable papistry and Latin of London. The churches were dark and crowded with their carvings. Dark oak figures of heathen things, mythical figures and conjoined couples, gargoyles pulling at their cheeks, twisting branches and oak leaves. On the Lord’s day we would go to the church. The services were long and stilted. 

 

It was in the darkest month of that year when we came to the village of F_____ after days of riding through the tightest of forests. As we approached our path was bordered by oaks on either side, huge twisted trees that were too broad for a man to put his arms around. Trees that were so ancient as to be near useless for anything but firewood. The houses were set low in the ground, turf walls and roofs of scattered brash. It was Sunday and there was no one to be seen. The village circled it’s church. I led my men to the church, stooped low to enter. The church was dark, but full of people. There was the sweaty warmth of many people together. The place smelt of wood and damp, like the woods that we had been marching through. No one turned to face us. We sat at the back of the church, there was empty space and we genuflected before sitting back on the misericords. I took my right hand off the pommel of my sword and placed it on the side of the pew. It was carved with their usual pagan heathenry. The service was unfamiliar, the dialect here too thick to understand. 

 

The church was a long low building, the row of pillars were like the oak trees that led up to the village. It was entirely covered in carvings. Green men and wild hairy men of the woods, carved oak leaves and carved ivy spread across every surface. 

 

The people of the village stood and knelt, their hands pressed together in prayer. At the front of the church there was an ornate rood screen, atop it a rood, a figure of our Lord Christ, upon the cross. This Christ was entangled in oak and ivy leaves. The people roared as one, their prayer becoming more feverish, in the faltering winter light the endless carvings seemed to fidget and settle, flicking like the tail of a summer lizard. 

 

Their chanting grew louder. The Christ rood grew brighter in the dark. The chanting was like shouting. The rood Christ stepped forward, the leaves started to swallow up the Christ until they consumed him. The figure was now a green man, the screaming green man, walking through the air towards us. My men jumped to their feet, their swords and axes at the ready. The wooden leaves were flicking and twisting, grabbing at my men as they chopped desperately to save themselves. I watched as my men were swallowed up and torn apart by this dark wooden undergrowth, I myself felt the pew twist and grasp at my wrist. 

 

I pray for forgiveness from my king and my Lord. I ran to the horses, climbing atop the strongest of them. The heavy horse galloped as our lives depended on it, the very avenue of oak trees bending and grasping at us. My king is the wisest king in Christendom. He knew my testimony to be true. Together we set out to rid the country of it’s paganism.”

 

 

The scholar rocked back in his chair feeling sick. The light was getting dimmer and the sound of rustling leaves was getting louder and louder, but it was winter and there was not a tree for miles.

 

 

Losing Definition - Stories by Peter Reid

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As touched on in earlier blog postings, for some time I have been working on a series of short stories that I intend to collect together as Losing Definition for self publishing on Kindle. 

To be honest, I have been busy with other things for a while, but I am now trying to make a concerted effort to pull together the collection. Proofing the stories for final publication is unbelievably tedious, and I am still to decide on exactly what order to publish them in, but things are progressing. I think that I will just publish the stories here on my blog as I finish off the final proof. Having said that, there is no guarantee that everything that appears in the blog will appear in the final book, or that i won’t make further amendments, some stories here might not make the final cut. 

I do hope you enjoy these stories. 

best wishes 

Peter 

 

 

 

 

Saturday 16 August 2014

Chalcedony - a very short story in the style of Italo Calvino

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To the north of their territories, nearing the edge of that empty steppe land that they inhabit lies the city of the nomads, Chalcedony. Once it was as other cities, but the nomads were unfamiliar with the ways of cities. They had determined that the city should be built entirely from the stones from one quarry. At first this quarry had seemed infinite, the great slabs of rock that had outcropped, it seemed as if they would stretch on far beneath the thin turf. Believing that they enjoyed a near infinite wealth in their chosen stone, they were wasteful discarding pieces with a poorer figuring or cutting large pieces that necessitated much waste. Their city too, though smaller than it is today, was built with extravagance and architectural abandon. The buildings had many stories, turrets and such other features as amazed the visitors eye.

After a few short centuries, the seams of rock were petering out. They were cutting smaller and smaller pieces for building, and even that was not enough to allow fresh building. Barely enough for an outbuilding could be cut in a year. Being nomads, they did as nomad did. The city was not in where it was, but in what it was. They had resolved at some nameless point in time, that the city was built solely of those rocks from that quarry, internally supported and floored with such wood as they could find. Though in truth, in that empty land, wood was scarce more common, or more accessible than their chosen stone.

As nomads do, their city shifted, the wasteful stone foundations were dug up, and houses and great public buildings were installed on more rocky lands, where weatherworn rock made up the whole of the surface of the land. Gentle slots were cut to fix the base of their walls, and atop those the self same stones of old Chalcedony city were laid in fresh configurations. The old city now is marked by robber trenches, setting out where the streets and walls once lay, the diligent and poor are still prospecting for the odd slab of stone that might have been neglected and left behind, and might once again be reunited with its migrant city.

The city is never fixed, not as a city, nor as streets, houses or other buildings. Only the stones of Chalcedony are permanent, endlessly rearranging into different forms of building or city. The city was once small and ambitious, but the constant parsimony of their situation has imposed a pessimistic mien to their fresh city. The stones of Chalcedony cannot last forever, facing blocks are worn in the harsh desert winds, sand batters stone, until only sand remains. They seek to use their blocks until the very last, but eventually every stone must be a pebble and useless for building. And so their fine public buildings, with great spans and impressive arches, are becoming more mean and squat. Houses sit low in their landscape, huddling to the ground, the many stories of the old Chalcedony are a distant memory, if indeed they ever did exist. For now all there is is some low buildings, much as any other village, sunk low to the ground. The nomads are out of love with their idea of a city, the robber trenches sometimes reveal a fresh large block of cut stone, or even a fragment of such, exciting much telling of stories and fantasy. I do believe that for all their talk of the splendours of old Chalcedony, those desert people would fain recognise a real city now, one that stretched beyond a huddle of low huts sheltering against the sandy wind.

But in truth their city of Chalcedony has never left them, it is all around them now, as the pebbles and sand that they piss on, on cold winter nights.