Iain Sinclair - White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings

There is a drinking trough, or shrine, in the wall: the stone moulted, creased, the skin of deformity. A memorial to ‘ one unknown yet well known ’. And, through the mouth of this Caliban, a pipe has been driven, a hole. Hinton, on his knees, looks at the stone of sacrifice.

Enters the field of Matfellon, dragging the prostitute, hand in hand, bowed under thunderous clouds, a new Adam and a new Eve.

‘“And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar…”’

He releases her, unshriven, to climb the ladder into the roadside pulpit: howls.

‘“And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in strength .

Write these things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter;

The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand…”

‘It is the time of the ending of time. And a child shall be born, white as the lamb, a saviour will come. But you , who are called Sodom and Egypt, are not worthy of the child; you are the dead begetting the dead. And there is no hope for you. You have made my temple a place of shame; it cannot be measured, as your days are measured. Women couple with beasts upon my sacred altar.

‘And the child that is born shall be an Antichrist, god of unreason, Babylon. You shall follow him in travail, yea, to the end of your days.’

The woman crawls over the field towards a plane tree where another woman and a man are sitting, disputing a bottle. Behind them is the ruin of a defiled sepulchre.

Hinton will confess his penitents. Or flail the skin from their backs. He strides to them, seizing the wrists of the women; he whispers, he spits.

‘“And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.”’

The unfortunates drop to their knees under the flaking tree. Hinton is terrible: Mosaic wrath. Old sins nail their palms to the earth. Hinton raves.

‘“And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.”’

But his prophecy is barren; the clouds drift away, to be speared on the towers of another Jerusalem. Hinton, weeping, claws the topsoil, Enkidu, buries the three buttons. Matfellon must be destroyed in fire.

A rim of old Fathers watch him. Stone beards. A spark. The tinder of the organ box.

In one hour the church was gutted. Molten lead poured from the roof. The organ pipes twisted and whistled. Glass burst in the martyred windows. The cracking of saints.

Hinton’s boat burnt. An ark of fire.

He dug himself into the grass, to ravish the ground, painecstasy, sacrifice; shivering, gasping; hard clay, the spoiled field bleaching slowly to gold.

On the following morning the watch committee, dignitaries, welfare, the charitable fathers walked over the ruin of Mary Matfellon. Lead in shining pools on the grass. Blood splinters from the windows. Calcined stone. Wood crumbling like skin to the touch.

And in the wreck of the church roof they discover twelve sealed coffins that had been secretly lodged. The coffins were small, a few feet in length, black from the fire, but undamaged.

They gave the order for the seals to be broken: and found within the perfectly preserved bodies of twelve very young children, tightly wrapped, their eyes now closed.

Dryfeld lived nowhere. He had a room, but could not allow it to be where it was. It was cancelled space. And he was caged in the middle of it. Nobody visited the room, so nothing was added. The blinds were down, the radio was on. He could feel hair, unstoppable, coming out of him; shoving out of his scalp, against gravity. Why wait?

Nicholas Lane lay in the London Hospital in an empty bed; glucose dripping into his veins. The book was so much powder. He might as well snort it. You couldn’t kill him, he’d live for ever.

But sometimes, these last days, the world left Dryfeld. He was in it, making for Sidcup, pumping along on the pedals, already calculating how he would sell what he had not yet bought. Then he wasn’t. Keeled over at the side of the road, blood on his shirt, a few bruises. Or back to himself with a mile or two missing. There were these gaps in his head. He was spotted with darkness.

Why wait for a spectacular date to kill himself? Why not do it now? Get his retaliation in first. They say that people who talk about suicide never do it. They’re wrong.

He found a plastic bag but it wouldn’t fit over his head. The bull! Even stretched it looked like a jester’s cap, an uncut caul of soapy skin.

He’d studied all the how-to-do-it manuals. So what? The easiest thing was to dive in, get it done. He found another bag, with a book in it, The Two, the Story of the Original Siamese Twins . He stopped to flick through the pages, didn’t rub out the original price, never bothered, not worth more than a fiver — but the bag was big enough.

Dragged it over his face, which wrinkled, drowning, squeezed in on itself. Bog sacrifice. Eyes hooded over, nose flattened. He didn’t even bother to lie down. Took a roll of brown tape and gave himself a collar. Sealed his head into the bag, an unreturnable offering.

Red bands at the border: darkness beyond. His mouth opened. He started to swallow his tongue.

The telephone rang, loud, but far away. Nothing to do with him anymore. It went on ringing. He wasn’t going to die to the sound of the telephone. He split the bag across his mouth.

‘Yes?’

‘Fancy an Indian? There’s something coming up, in Boston, I’d like to talk about.’

‘Right! Twenty minutes, Brick Lane.’

His face, scarlet, the flaps of the bag hanging like torn ears. No mirror to watch him. Let’s go.

Summoned by telephone, licked in sweat, pale, a kind of recurring occult malaria: I tremble. Make shift through the last traces of the old streets; the hulks are crumbling to dust. We will never get back. The warren is detonated. They disguise it, cover it over with respect, modesty, forward planning: destroy it, utterly. You will never rebuild the city from these words. You would build a monster.

‘Bury the beast,’ said the girl from Sag Harbor. Her husband had floated it; friend of the trees. Bury Christ Church, Spitalfields, in earth. Incarcerate its hieratic bulk. Lift up a new mountain. To oversee a New Age. Seal its power. Stop its mouth.

Even the brewery is encased, is sheeted in glass, false reflections; disguised with vines and shrubs. The Eagle is hooded. Sell off the portraits.

Bury the bell!

Hold concerts in the belly of the church. Summon the musicians, tame the doctors. Banish the phantoms, the vagrants. Feed them into submission. Bandage the lunatic. Stack cars above the sweating room. Spray it with concrete.

I am shaking, beside myself. Old breath of poison. Flesh of the albatross. Tremor of cold excitement; estranged from any recognition of time and place.

It is a moment of Manichaean necessity — the split one meets, merges, dissolves: reintegrates? On the future’s sharpest edge. Holmes and Moriarty plunge together into the torrent, but only Holmes returns, diminished. Without the dark double, the contrary, his own power is lost.

Walking again, turning, it’s still the first time, into the Seven Stars.

Who is that sitting in my corner? What’s happened to the wall-paper, the ships, castles, the river? A man is waiting for me. My drink is already on the table. I don’t need this, I need brandy.