Sean Dixon - The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal

Beside the man there stood a chubby little rosy-cheeked girl who didn’t look too interesting or too bright. 15Except that she was carrying several slabs of stone, which looked to be interesting and so, arguably, endowed her with a veneer of the interesting. Although, on the other hand, they didn’t appear to belong to her. She was carrying them cavalierly, like she wanted to drop them and have a cigarette.

14A lie. (Neil’s note.)

Still, during the conflict that followed, this girl, with the self-consciousness of someone who was not accustomed to negotiating fragility, managed to lower the stack to the floor and allow the stones to slide away into a harmless little heap. We’d have expected her to let them drop and break into pieces. She looked the type. But there was some deep current of delicacy in this girl that we could not see on the surface.

‘Ladies and ladies,’ said Runner, now that the arms of the man had given her our undivided attention. ‘I’ve come to propose a book.’

‘You’re late,’ said Missy.

‘That’s a great leadership skill, Missy: you can tell the time.’

‘That’s how I know you’re late.’

‘But it doesn’t matter because I’m hijacking the agenda. Neil, show them your rifle.’

Neil’s eyes widened as he looked at Runner, and a very familiar she’s-crazy expression flashed across his face. He didn’t have a rifle. Still, Runner continued as if Neil had flourished a semi-automatic and sent a hail of bullets over our heads. 16

15Sorry, Anna.

‘Now, there’s no need to panic; if we keep our heads when all around us –’

‘But you must know, Runner, darling,’ interrupted Missy sweetly, ‘that boys are not permitted to attend these meetings.’

‘He can if he’s got a rifle.’ (Runner’s baby poker face.)

‘Runner, darling?’ (Emmy, incredulous, her eyes stuck up inside her head.)

‘I’m not talking about that boy.’ (Missy, indicating the obvious and Neil.) ‘I’m talking about that boy.’ (Missy, indicating the boy in whose military arms Runner reclined.)

‘This boy?’ asked Runner, as if she were noticing him for the first time.

‘Yes, that boy.’

Runner looked at the boy again. And then, as if she had only just recalled it, as if it were all slowly coming back to her, she explained that, had it not been (or, rather, had it NOT BEEN) for the assistance of this boy (i.e. THIS BOY), she would still be lying in a pile of refuse on the first floor, having fallen through the ceiling, indicating the possibility that she had perhaps finally become too heavy for this world.

16The following was written in the Book of Days immediately under today’s date: ‘Salam Pax has not posted today regarding the situation in Baghdad. Why not? We can’t help but fear the worst for this courageous bear of a man.’ The authors of this account did not recognise the handwriting, but it has turned out to be from Aline, who managed to keep his obsession with the Iraq war and specifically the Baghdad Blogger a secret from everyone else in the Cabal.

At the mention of Runner’s surfeit of heaviness, Missy placed the tips of her thumb and forefinger on either side of the bridge of her nose, pressing hard in a believable display of martyrdom. Runner continued.

‘He carried me here, and I have yet to hold up my end of the bargain, since I promised to blow him if he got me up all those stairs.’

Now we all had our faces in our hands. Even Priya. The boy, we think, would also have had his face in his hands, but for the matter that he had his hands full of Runner, so he had to content himself with casting a suffering look towards the chubby-cheeked girl who stood beside him.

The girl beside him, it should be noted, did not have her face in her hands either. She was looking almost amused behind her fulsome mug.

‘Still,’ Runner continued fearlessly, ‘the boys aren’t nearly as effective a hijacking tool as the Girl. Ladies and ladies, I present to you: the Girl.’ And then, sotto voce, to the girl, ‘I didn’t get your name.’

The chubby 17girl flashed a flicker of a smile, which passed as swiftly as a sparrow round a street corner, and replied too quietly for us to hear.

Runner continued. ‘Anna. First order of business, and necessary for the historic tie-break between the two distinct factions of the Lacuna Cabal, is: Anna here must be received as a new member.’

17Sorry … sorry …

After a pause, Missy inquired whether Runner had gone out of her mind. Runner ruminated on the question for a moment or two before Missy just said, ‘No.’ Runner asked if we could vote on it. ‘No,’ said Missy.

‘Well, as it turns out, Missy,’ said Runner, ‘Anna owns the building we’re standing in. So if this were the Notre Dame Cathedral – and Missy, I’m not suggesting that if this were the Notre Dame Cathedral you’d be the Hunchback of Notre Dame Cathedral – but if this were Notre Dame Cathedral, Anna here would be the bishop, not to mention a devoted supporter of my book proposal.’

Missy was looking flagrantly at her watch and not panicking.

‘It’s seven thirty anyway. We can adjourn for now and meet somewhere else tomorrow. I will not tolerate this kind of mutinous –’

‘Missy, I’m in the process of proposing a book.’

‘You’re in the process of conducting a MUTINY!’

‘Outrageous!’ said Runner with delight, as Missy continued.

‘Proposing a book, any book, using threats, using coercion that undermines the sanctity of and that stamps and spits and trammels our constitution – you’re … the Pony Palimpsest!

Now Runner was overjoyed. ‘Don’t you call me a Pony Palimpsest.’

The reader, like Priya, might turn to Romy and ask, ‘What does it mean?’ and be as unsatisfied as Priya by Romy’s response: ‘It means the gloves are coming off.’ 18

Missy continued to berate Runner in a manner that might require more footnotes.

‘But I’m not sure you’ll accept the book any other way!’ protested Runner.

‘I will not accept any book this way.’

‘But you have to accept it whatever way will work!’

‘What’s the book?’

‘That’s the book!’

And Runner pointed to the heap of stones at Anna’s feet.

What did we see? We saw a pile of stones covered with small notches, some kind of writing. If there was a palimpsest there, it was literature written over archaeology. Any pony prints in that hard clay would have been left thousands of years before it was ever dug up, baked and written on.

Still, impressive as the individual stones might have looked from an archaeological standpoint, there was nothing to suggest we were looking at a book.

Runner had anticipated our ambivalence.

18A palimpsest, of course, is a document that has been written over a pre-existing document, a holdover from the days before printers, when paper was precious and writing took a long time. So the image of a Pony Palimpsest, in the mind’s eye of the members of the Lacuna Cabal, is a skittish young horse mucking up a pre-existing document, preferably printed on beautiful medieval parchment inscribed by monks. ‘You are the Destroyer’ would be a synonymous statement.

‘I assure you: it might appear cumbersome, but it’s a real book.’

‘Um,’ said Missy, who never said ‘um’. ‘What’s it called, Runner?’

Runner bit her lip. ‘That’s a matter of opinion.’

‘Runner, I’m not going to choose a book that looks like that and has a title that is “a matter of opinion”.’

‘ He Who Saw Everything . That’s what it’s called. It’s Mesopotamian. It’s pretty much the first book ever written. And if we are to hold on to our status as the premium book club, then we should be interested in reading the first book.’