Sean Dixon - The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal

There was a pause. And a sigh.

‘I was going to propose Possession .’

‘That book is fifteen years old!’

‘Your book isn’t even a book. It’s a bunch of rocks.’

‘And I’m willing to bet we’ve all read Possession already! Every single one of us!’

‘Not as part of the group.’

(Aline and Romy agreed quietly that Possession was an amazing book.)

Runner shifted in Du’s arms. ‘I can’t argue right now. I’m in pain.’

‘Well, suffer,’ said Missy and immediately regretted it, since it had become clear in that moment, to her as well as the rest of us, that Runner’s leg was hanging strangely off the soldier boy’s forearm. The truth was, Missy didn’t want Runner to suffer anything but defeat, but it suddenly didn’t sound like that. She was, for this rare moment, tongue-tied.

We were all looking at the leg. Aline finally ventured what she considered to be a reasonable argument, expressed in a tone of compromise: ‘Runner, I’m just not sure the Lacuna Cabal should be reading, like, unpublished material –’

Unfortunately for Aline, this was the argument Runner had most hoped to receive. ‘Just fuck off, Aline, okay? Why should the Lacuna Cabal be a carbon copy of other book clubs, reading only material that has been copied ad infinitum? I just want to try this book, okay? It’s my most favourite book in the whole world and just because it’s carved in stone and it’s written in an ancient language and there’s –’

An ancient language?

‘– only one copy and it looks funny or weird or whatever, doesn’t mean it sucks, Aline, okay? I bring the true experience of the prehistoric reader straight to your door. But if it sucks, we’ll switch, okay? We’ll just switch if it sucks we’ll switch, okay? Okay?’

Aline had switched her attention entirely to her sneakers, which had both suddenly come untied, and she was carefully rethreading the laces so they would all be of equal length. Runner watched for a moment, fascinated by the totality of Aline’s absorption in something so meaningless, and then she laid down her ace.

‘You’ll love it, I swear, on the grave of my sister who’s added her weight to my own.’

This maxed everyone out. Suddenly the pressure was unbearable and we were all desperately in need of escape. Runner sensed it. She paused and let out some of the steam. A beat. A breath. Then she offered to read a bit – just the beginning, just the beginning of the story. He Who Saw Everything . Literature as escape. It was deftly done.

‘Just let me read a bit. Just a little bit. A little bit of the first words that anyone ever thought to write. Just let me read a few of the first words of the first book. And then we can see if I’m crippled for life.’

We accepted it. It was allowed, though Missy was the only one who said, ‘Okay.’ There was no vote. Runner looked to Neil.

‘Neil, put down your gun.’

Neil looked at Runner.

‘Now get me the first stone.’

He did as he was told, as his sister spoke a brief editor ial preface:

‘There is, incidentally and for your information, Missy, a goddess at the top of the heap in this book who might sound familiar to you.’

Neil poked around the heap and finally pulled out one of the irregularly shaped stones. What indicated its status as first among the slabs was by no means apparent, though it was certainly believable that these stones were old. We could see that there was writing, if you could call it that, on both sides, and also that there were small patches of blank space, roughly textured, as if the text had been eroded. We, or some of us, found ourselves wondering how Runner would make the leap over these gaps, these … and the word occurred to Missy alone: these lacunae. With a sense of dread as pronounced as anything she felt about her own womb, Missy caught a flickering moment of import, as if something here were being fulfilled – a prophesy, like Herod first hearing of the baby Jesus.

What’s more, Missy realised, whatever was to come, whatever this prophesied, she herself had been the inadvertent origin of it, the namer of it. She wished she knew what it would be, this gap that held the future. This perfectly obscure lacuna.

Had she named the Cabal for this?

Neil handed the stone up to Runner, who sat up a little in Du’s arms and slowly began to translate the alleged first words of this alleged first book:

In the very old days, back when years were long, like the first year of a child’s life, only this is the way things felt to adults and children alike, because it was the beginning of the world, the future was full of everything and there was nothing in the past–

‘I wish I could feel that way,’ murmured Emmy.

– there was a time when everyone was happy in the beautiful city of Uruk, with its strong walls and its proud goddess Inanna –

Neil interjected, as if on cue, ‘Who was like Missy?’

A lot like Missy: always ready to leave if she didn’t get her way, march straight out of the universe …

But like rabbits in the warrens of Watership Down –

Romy forgot Emmy, for a moment.

– for a thousand years the people were happy .

And Runner paused and looked down at everyone from the arms where she wanted to spend the rest of her life.

Look at the walls of the city. They surround you. They were built for you, to protect you from the rain. These walls were built by one man, and he made them well, although in other ways, all other ways, he was a tyrant, with a stride as long as a league and eyes the rarest, rarest shade of …

She paused and paused some more. She would have paused forever and Missy would have let her, quietly praying for everyone to remain silent. But Romy, with her weakness for colour, took the bait.

‘Of what?’

Runner smiled, as sweetly as anything Missy might venture.

‘Can we vote on this?’

Romy could not believe it. She had been manipulated once again into taking the rap for the whole group, only this time it was at the hands of someone she trusted probably more than anyone in the world: ‘Runner Coghill!’

‘I’m sorry, Romy. I do what I have to. Can we vote on this?’

Missy sat stoically with eyes downcast. Calmly demurred. ‘I’m not ready to.’

Runner’s turn to panic: ‘I have to get to the hospital!’

‘So we’ll take you to the hospital.’

Romy demanded to know what was the colour of the tyrant’s eyes, but Runner kept her focus on the Missy stopgap.

‘But you’re interested.’

‘What ever .’

‘You are!’

She was. It was obvious from the hesitation that followed. This proved enough for Romy, who was holding the Book of Days and so was entrusted with proclaiming the calls to vote. She shouted the motion as Neil quietly bent over his notebook and wrote, On this very day …

‘The proposal is to do Runner’s stone book and also to accept the new member Anna so we can keep coming back to this building. And also learn the colour of the tyrant’s eyes. All in favour?’

Romy, Priya and Emmy all raised their hands with Runner, who almost broke her bearer’s nose. Aline raised her hand, tipping the scales in Runner’s favour. But then Missy raised her hand too, taking our breath (the breath of the two of us) away. And as our hands (the hands of the two of us) shot up as one, faster than the speed of thought (because it was true: we were curious too), Romy shouted in tones of joy, ‘The motion carries us!’

And Missy, standing and pulling her fists to her hips in that exquisitely Wonder Woman pose: ‘Carries. The motion carries, Romy.’ Then, turning the full weight of her attention toward Runner and her injury, she managed to take her into her arms without acknowledging the presence of the boy.