Our Trip to The National Gallery, Pt. 1

Monday and Tuesday passed without much in the way of interesting events. The Writer managed to smooth things over with his flatmate—after a lot of cajoling on his part; it turned out that Stasia was well under the impression that The Writer was a complete lech. (That may have been true; I don’t know the man all that well other than his bizarre thoughts on classical music and his ideas on writing.) He went back to normal life of avoiding talking to his German flatmates and getting tossed out of windows by a livid Greek woman.

I didn’t see The Drunkard, so I am left with the conclusion that he either found his way to being on very friendly terms with his French housemates, or they found some reason to reassemble the guillotine and decapitate him. After The Stalker’s punishment was up, I wasn’t to see him until Wednesday—which is probably for the best. The Student went in and out of madness, occasionally leaping out of bushes and screaming about how deconstructionism was missing the point completely, or how one simply could not read postcolonial literature in any way other than such and such. All told, The Student just really needed to go out on a date or two to relax.

Wednesday morning came and I left my flat earlier than I had planned. It had yet to become properly cold, but at this point, I was under the impression that it simply could not get colder than this. Oh, what a fool I was. I huddled in my pea coat and took up a brisk walk into the train station on the west side of town. I arrived in about fifteen minutes, bought my train ticket, and waited, leaning against one of the large white pillars in front of the station.

After I had been there for about ten minutes, watching the entranceway, The Stalker stepped out of the lobby wearing his usual black hoody, black jeans, and black tennis shoes. “Well hello, I was wondering when you were going to show up,” he said.

I blinked—after nearly urinating on myself upon seeing him walk out of the lobby—and said, “What? I didn’t see you come in.”

“Of course not,” he said, taking a paper cup from the pouch of his hoody and taking a sip. “But I saw you come in. I guess we’re a bit early, aren’t we? Lovely day for waiting around, I think. Not cold enough for the wind to settle into your bones if you’ve been sitting, observing, for too long.”

I was suddenly very glad I was not in a position where The Stalker could toss me onto the railroad tracks. “I guess so,” I said. “So, you looking forward to the Galleries?”

The Stalker nodded and leaned up against the other white column. “They usually provide ample opportunities for people watching. I believe that I could spend an entire week in each wing, and still get something new out of seeing the way people react to that which is on the walls.” He sipped from the paper cup again. If it weren’t so cold, I would have thought it was cider.

“But wait,” I thought, “it could be mulled cider. The bastard could be sipping on mulled cider at nine in the morning. Why, why would he be sipping on mulled cider at nine on the morning? Just to screw with you, Narrator. Just to mess with your rapidly-deteriorating mind.”

Thankfully, The Student walked up to the train station and gave the two of us a wave. I returned the gesture and said, “No need to go inside, there are machines right here that will give you tickets.”

The Student laughed and, after crossing the parking lot, said, “Nah, I hate dealing with machines. I’d rather deal with inept agents than poke a screen that’s got no personality.” He patted me on my shoulder and walked inside.

“Do I make you nervous, Narrator?” asked The Stalker.

“No. God no. Why would you ask that? I’m completely at ease. More at ease than they are in the military, I can tell you that. Ha!”

The Stalker sipped at his paper cup. “Good. Because I’d hate to think that I made you uneasy. Anyone save for The Writer, that is. I don’t think I like that man.” He looked across the street at the row of brown brick townhomes for a moment. “I might just have to toss him off Tower Bridge.”

My knees almost buckled. Him saying such a thing in such a calm fashion—as if he were saying “I’m going to have to toss this trash in a rubbish bin fairly soon”—made me doubt, and not for the first time, the sanity of being around this man in relative privacy. (There was, of course, a taxi rank, this being a major train station; but they probably wouldn’t have even noticed, most of them throwing a stick and watching a blue-eyed merle chase after it.) “Oh,” I said, “no, you don’t mean that. He’s nice enough in his own right. Eccentric and full of himself, but not an altogether bad guy.”

“I find him boorish and unnecessarily arrogant. Detestable qualities in any person, and I would have said the same thing about The Drunkard, but, to be fair to him, he saved me from being decapitated, so—”

“Wait, so they actually had a guillotine?”

The Stalker furrowed his brow and cocked his head to the side. “Of course they did.”

“Oh.”

“Did you not think the French would have a guillotine?”

I scratched my head. “Well, it seemed a bit, ah, ridiculous.”

“I assure you that it did happen. I stared at Madame Guillotine and was prepared for my life to end at that moment, but cooler heads than theirs prevailed.”

The Student walked out of the lobby, putting his train tickets in his wallet. “Did you just say Madame Guillotine?” he asked.

“Indeed I did.”

The Student nodded. “Okay, just checking.”

Soon after, the remaining members of our party arrived at the station (The Drunkard among them, head intact), bought their tickets, and we all boarded a train just as it pulled into the station. The journey, thankfully, was nothing like our first trip to London, and the train did not at any point feel as if it were about to fall apart under its own weight and the friction of its wheels against the track. We arrived at Charing Cross, further, without any hint of trouble from chavs with dogs that had names of weapons. We ate sushi from a take-away place near the station and made our way to Trafalgar Square to go to The National Gallery.

Arriving at Trafalgar Square, I was struck by one thing in particular: the disturbing amount of pigeons. I was prepared for the sight of Nelson’s Column and the gigantic stone lions, as well as the Rastafarians (and there were quite a few of them perched on the steps leading from the street to the Gallery), but the pigeons were in the Square en masse. It looked like they had staged a successful invasion and were clinging on to their newly-won territory for dear life. I, of course, was the only one dumbstruck by this. All the rest of my group moved along as if there were absolutely nothing to see. The Traveler turned around, saw me standing there, and said, “Hey, Narrator, you coming, or are we going to have to come drag you to The Gallery.”

I pointed in front of me. This seemed an understatement so, arm and finger outstretched, I spun around in a single rotation. “The birds!”

The Traveler gave up and walked on. Eventually I managed to get over the pigeons and followed up the steps and into the Gallery.

It wasn’t a bad-looking building by any means, but, to be honest, I found the Museum much, much more impressive. Sure, there were great works of art in this building, in their own right a testament to the intellectual and intellectual achievements of mankind, but, come on. Take a look at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and then the Rosetta Stone. The Stone takes the cake any day. The Writer and I were the only ones who felt this way—apparently—as The Drunkard ran off giggling like a kid on a playground (I know, I wouldn’t believe it either, but I was there), The Stalker sidled off towards whatever dark corner he was going to go people watch, and The Traveler… well, The Traveler was interesting.

I have no doubt that he felt an appreciation for the art in front of him. However, everything had to have a purpose beyond the aesthetically pleasing, and for The Traveler, art’s purpose was chat-up lines. He walked to the information desk, bought a brochure detailing the more important works on display that month, and sat down on one of the benches next to the gift shop. I turned to The Writer and said, “What do you think he’s doing?”

The Writer looked around him. “Couldn’t care less, honestly. I’m going to go do some writing in the café. I don’t have the time to waste looking at pretty pictures.” He then stalked off to the right and down some stairs that led to the Gallery’s café.

I walked over to The Traveler, sat down, and said, “What are you doing?”

“Studying,” he replied, turning over sheets in the brochure faster than he should have been able to read them.

“For? I didn’t realize you were in an Art History course.”

He sighed and flipped the brochure shut. “My friend,” he said, “I don’t believe that you are fully aware that, as foreigners in this land, we have the Accent Effect.”

I cocked my head to the side.

“You know how, in the States, when a Scottish or Irish or English or any foreign guy opens his mouth he’s flocked over by women? Well, my friend, we’ve got that effect.”

“Bull. The Midwest non-accent that you and I have barely—”

“I say, sir,” The Traveler said, affecting an accent that I can only describe as Plantation Owner circa 1840, “when you find yourself against the wall, the only option you have is to find yourself a way to climb over that wall. Now, sir, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to make the acquaintance of some quite lovely European women.”

And with that, I was left to my own devices. I wandered around the Gallery for about half an hour and saw very few things that caught my eye. One of them, an Indian painting from the 20s featuring a tiger prowling through jungle undergrowth, caught my eye only for the fact that it was the cover of an English textbook I had in my freshman year of high school. I took a picture of it, caught a dirty look from a guard, and moved on. I went around looking for some surrealist art—something by Dali, or his ilk—but found nothing. I apparently passed through hundreds of years of stylistic changes reflecting the times of which they were a part, but the only real difference I could tell was from medieval to the oil-Rennaisance-y paintings, to the more modern ones where shapes got a little less defined. Beyond that, I am a bit of a clod when it comes to art. I continued wandering through the building (and, a few times, I think I saw The Drunkard laughing maniacally and dashing through the wings with the speed of Sonic the Hedgehog), and thought about what I could do to waste some time. I could, by all means, go join The Writer in the café, but I thought better of that option: at best, I’d find him hunched over his notebook (one of those black ones that cost twelve quid with the elastic bands that keep them shut) in a look of dismay at not being able to find The Muse or whatever; at worst, I’d find him in the throes of creative ecstasy and be verbally assaulted for daring to interrupt him in such a loutish manner. I could go find The Traveler, but he was trying to work his magic; The Drunkard would be impossible to keep up with; and spending time with The Stalker was directly out of the question.

So, in the end, I decided to head out to Trafalgar Square and wander around until I got a call from one of my companions enquiring as to my whereabouts. I left the gallery, buried myself in my coat as much as I could, and shivered. It had warmed up, but, of course, there was now a stiff, cutting British wind passing through the Square. I sat down on the steps to the Gallery and looked around me. It was fairly easy to tell who was a tourist and who was a native: the tourists were huddled together and shouting “fucking wind!” and variants thereof, whereas the natives were one step away from skipping around and singing about how lovely the weather was that day. Taking my attention away from the people in the Square, I looked up at the column and thought about how, when you compared the size and height of the thing, it was a bit of a letdown that the statue of Nelson wasn’t gigantic. (Of course, that may have been simply because of how high up it was. The statue was probably capable of riding one of the lions like it was a horse.)

And then, I stood up and stretched. That’s when a man in a black suit and bowler cap calmly walked up to my side and asked, “Sorry to bother you, do you have the time?”

I took out my phone, got out that it was just past ele—and then the man stabbed a needle into my left bicep. I looked at him, the world started going wavy, and I said, “What’s that about? Don’t have your tea time scheduled in the factory? Limey!” and burst into laughter.

“Bloody Hell,” he said. He took out a walkie-talkie and said, “He’s not down. No, I don’t know why. He’s poking me with his mobile phone and laughing like a prat. No I don’t have another dose, and if I did, it’d probably kill him. I’ll—oh sod it.” He punched me in my mouth and I hit the steps.

The first thing I felt when I woke up was a slap to my face. I shook myself wide awake and looked around me. First observation: Tied to a chair. Second observation: Tied to a chair in the middle of an unfurnished and unlit warehouse. Third observation: The only two people in the warehouse with me were seated at a table about eight yards away and way on the other side of the place. I grumbled, and one of them looked up, pushed a button on the desk, and went back to scribbling something with what looked like a quill ink pen.

A door opened on one side of the desk. Another man in a bowler cap and suit walked into the warehouse. He made his way towards me, the sounds of his shoes clicking and reverbeating off of the cement walls. He stopped short at ten feet, crouched and said, “Hello.”

I tried to say something, but couldn’t quite get it out. Fourth observation: I had a ball gag in my mouth. This did not bode well.

“Oh yes,” said the man. “I think you’ll find that it will be quite difficult to say what you want to say. Until we figure something out, that is.” He stood up and paced back and forth for a moment. “Giraffe. The green giraffe frolicks happily until what?”

I cocked my head to the side.

“Until what?” The man shouted. He walk forward and yanked the ball gag forward.

“Penguins dance!” I shouted. First thing that popped into my head.

“Good,” said the man. He nodded and removed the gag from my head. “Had to make sure you were on the level, what?” He then took a banana peel out from his back pocket and slapped me in the face with it. “Are you who you say you are?”

“What?”

He slapped me in the mouth with the banana peel again. “Do not make the mistake of fucking with me, gent! Are you who you say you are?”

“Yes. I think.”

He slapped me in the mouth with the banana peel twice. “Yes, or no, matey.”

“No!” Wait, yes I was. I was/am The Narrator, and I think I’ve said that to the man before. Had I? I don’t know anymore.

“Correct.” He put the peel away and this time took a Ziploc bag of ten sugar cubes out of his jacket pocket. “We are never who we say we are because we, that is, us, that is, ourselves, changes by the moment. Can’t very well be who we say we are if who we say we are is going to change the moment we say who think we are, yes?”

I nodded.

“Right. Now. Utmost importance that you pay attention to exactly what it is that I’m going to say forthwith. Follow?”

I nodded again.

“In seventeen seconds, from the time I stop talking, you will receive an apple. On this apple, the words ‘Hail Eris’ will be printed in the Copperplate Gothic font. You are to receive this apple, take the apple, and, this is more important than anything else, do not smudge the letters. You will take the Eris Apple and give it to a pair of pensioners on the train you will be taking this afternoon. You’ll know the pensioners when you see them.”

“How do you know what train I’m going to be taking?”

The man grinned, showing neon green teeth. “Oh, we know lots of things, my pedigree chum. Pull this off, and you may know lots of things as well.”

A couple of seconds passed and an apple dropped out of nowhere. I tried to move my arms, but as they were tied, I couldn’t. “Oh right,” said the man. He moved to the back and cut the ropes that bound me. Now, I moved my hands and picked up the apple. Sure enough the words “Hail Eris” were printed on the apple in black Copperplate Gothic.

“Welcome to the club, old bean,” said the man. And then, par for the day, he punched me in the mouth.

The Epilogue to The Student's Tale

I would hazard a guess that you, Dear Reader, have some idea of what our reaction was to this story. The Traveler sat back in his chair, eyebrows arched and arms folded over his chest. The Writer scratched his head and said a bemused, “Huh.” The Stalker, as per usual, slurped at his cider, which never seemed to run out. The Drunkard had passed out halfway through The Student’s tale. I sat, open-mouthed, gawking at the story.

Judging by the blush on The Student’s face, and the way he stared at the tabletop, this was not the reaction he had been hoping for. “I, uh,” he said, “get really tired of literary criticism.” He drummed his fingers on the top.

“Well,” said The Writer, “ten out of ten for style. It’s very… you.” I must admit, I was a bit surprised to hear The Writer give out praise—but then again, it wasn’t such a big shock; after all, the two shared some common ground when it came to writing. The Writer was all for the literary methods and narrative style of some of the more serious writers, and The Student spent a good amount of time reading the same people The Writer probably did. “Not a fan of giving Stephen King any praise,” he continued, “so I’d suggest leaving that out in the second draft—after all, you don’t want to give best-sellers any credit, do you?”

The Traveler grunted, but beyond that, kept his opinion to himself. “Student,” he said, “I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting from you, but that was really quite well done.”

“Indeed,” I said. “It’s certainly easy to tell that you have a low opinion of academia.”

The Stalker murmured something into his glass. We chuckled, again, not knowing exactly what he said.

“Well then,” said The Traveler, “let’s digest that vignette and I’ll see you all on Wednesday. Shall we say half-past nine in the morning at the West station?”

We all agreed, and I said that I would tell The Drunkard when he woke up.

I made it a mental note to never ask The Student’s opinion on a novel of note—mainly out of fear that he would forget how to speak and find that his only recourse was to chuck feces at the library.

The Student's Tale

Just seven miles away from Harvard, the renown home of American academic thought, there was a large auditorium. It was in a hall made of marble—white, flawless marble. At the front of the building—which was built to resemble the Parthenon—there were gigantic columns, a large set of stone steps, and, at the top of the building, reliefs of scholars from throughout the ages. Walking up the steps and into the building, there was a horde of men and women—largely from their late 30s to their 60s—dressed in dark clothes, like a religious cult going to make their sacrifices in the temple.

They congregated within a great room, a vestibule of white marble, ferns and even trees potted in large, brown, earthen urns. The mass conversed, though one could not pick out individual conversations. Language was lost in this place; its high marble ceilings and walls created the perfect anonymity for those who should want it. Lights hung in chandeliers, bulbs incandescent and burning with electricity—for the owner of this construction could not stand the thought of wax dripping on to the carefully preserved marble, bought and shipped from all over the world and, supposedly, only coming from ancient pagan temples.

The lights dimmed. Conversation stopped. A few seconds later, the lights went back to their normal volume. Conversation remained halted as a dark-skinned man walked from a door on the second floor balcony holding a gong. The mass turned to the man. The man, holding a percussion hammer, bowed to the mass and then struck the gong. Once. Twice. Thrice. The low tones cascaded around the antechamber. The great doors towards which all of the people in black faced swung open. The great oak creaked against the giant brass hinges as the doors took their journey. Slowly, calmly, the mass filed through the doors.

The next room was an auditorium. The carpeting, seats, and walls were all of a deep, rich crimson. The seat-backs and the stage up front were all of the same dark oak of the now closing doors. As the mass took their seats in the auditorium—tonight, the boxes were left empty save for a group of five people sitting in one—as the great crimson curtains drew back, revealing a podium made of black-finished wood, thin, with a top positioned at just the slightest angle, and a microphone coming out from the surface. A man in a well-tailored black suit walked from stage right and stood behind the podium.

Silence fell across the auditorium as the man began to speak in a deep, sonorous voice. He greeted the audience, told them that he was very pleased to be speaking in front of a group of such distinguished peers such as they. He told them that he was to be discussing the use of the obscene in James Joyce’s ouvre (and yes, he used that word; and yes, the throng lapped it up). He outlined his forty-five minute speech, his own meager attempt to probe the mind of a genius—as he put it—and then began.

It seemed a very well-worked thesis, that idea of his. He spoke to the silent, watching audience, looking on as if they were children around a campfire listening to a ghost story right before bedtime. Such a display of oratory on such a mundane subject they had not seen before. The man, it seemed, legitimately cared about what he was saying, believed that what he had written was, if not the Gospel on the obscene of Joyce, something that came close to getting at the Truth of the Matter.

After the forty-five minutes was up, and the man closed on his topic with a sentence that, honestly, only half of the audience understood (and only a quarter of the remaining half even thought about), he folded the stack of papers from which he had been reading and placed them in his jacket. He gazed out at the crowd, gave them a minute to think about all that he had said, left them wondering if, since he wasn’t saying anything, he had a final thought, a final joke, a final something to take the edge off of the unbearable silence. After a minute, he asked, “Are there any questions?”

A bearded man stood up towards the back of the auditorium. He wore a black sweater, a black beret, black glasses that had frames in the Golden Ratio, and wore a black goatee that came down to a point. He cleared his throat and asked, “Do you expect the erudite among us—and I trust that we are in fact present tonight—”

The crowd laughed for a moment.

“Do you expect us to accept this load of tripe you have said? Do you believe that we are so naïve to accept everything, especially your tenuous position?”

The speaker fidgeted. In his practice runs, no one had said that he was being trite, or that he was expounding doggerel, which, it seemed, was what this man was saying. “I think,” he started.

The interjector cut him off with a howl of rage that bordered on the inhuman. It cut through the air and caused all those in the auditorium to blanche. “You think?” he shouted. “Boy, you do not think a conclusion! You do not think a defense! You take a stance! When you think something, or posit something, or—or—or…” Language failed him. He was reduced to a primitive state, some ancestral memory from the primeval past swept through his mind, and he knew what he had to do. He unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his trousers, stuck his hand down the back of his pants, and, judging from what happened immediately afterwards, shat in his hands. Screaming like a mad ape, the man flung his feces through the air with such force and such accuracy that the speaker was hit full-on by the load of dung, directly in his face. He had no reaction.

The audience did nothing for a full three minutes, until another man stood up and faced the man who had flung feces at the speaker. “You call that a criticism?” the new man shouted. “Why, throwing fecal matter at someone is not what we do at this University! That is the sort of behavior one would expect from a college in the SEC, or the Mid-West, but not this place. This is—this is a place of—of…” words failed him. Primordial visions of long-dead ancestors evolved just beyond apes passed before his eyes. In the jungle, there was a dispute over a banana. The new man saw what he had to do. He unbuttoned his trousers, defecated into his hands, and flung his dung at the first interjector.

This set off a tidal wave of fresh bodily waste. All of those in attendance at the symposium stood as one, defecated, and threw feces at each other. The people in the sole-occupied box took advantage of their leverage and, screaming about the proper methods of deconstruction—which, they claimed, the speaker had clearly and wisely utilized in his defense of his thesis—began urinating on the crowd below them. After five minutes, the pretense of language was mutually abandoned by all those in attendance, and the crowd began screaming and howling like animals at a zoo. They scratched, they leapt, and, above all, they continued flinging crap.

When all was said and done, the only thing the janitorial staff could agree upon, the only bit of good news they all shared, was that at least none of the academics had a case of diarrhea that night.

While this happened, across the street, in a dimly lit bar called The Pen and Paper, there was a small group of about twenty men and women reclining in leather chairs, clutching glasses of scotch, beer, and other tipples. In the corner of the bar, mounted on the wall, there was a television showing baseball scores. The Red Sox had lost to the Yankees in the final game of the ALCS—again. “Damn Yankees,” said a man sporting a large, fluffy brown beard.

The entirety of the bar’s custom raised their glasses and echoed the man’s toast.

“I’m not sure about my eighth chapter,” said one man, sitting across from an older woman with her gray hair pulled back into a pony tale, “in which Richard leaves the nursing home. I feel there should be a stand-off with one of the orderlies. Instead, he—”

A younger woman, curvaceous and attractive, sitting at the bar tapped her glass on the countertop and said, “Please, Don, don’t talk about work at night.”

“Agreed,” said another man sitting a few stools down from her, who, until then, had been glaring at his reflection in the mirror over six consecutive whiskeys. “We spend so much time in the morning and afternoon thinking about our false realities, putting them into computers, or notebooks, or whatever. So much time confined to the same spot every day, the same time every day, all so that we can continue writing word, after word, after word, just so the stories won’t play themselves over and over again in our heads and drive us mad. In the evening, let it drop. Dull the mind a little bit. Watch some baseball.”

A highlight of the game showed Stephen King sitting in a seat on the first base line, wearing a Boston Red Sox slicker and clutching a notebook and pencil in his hands. “Stephen King works at night,” said the man at the table.

The door opened and Stephen King walked into the bar. “What about Stephen King?” he asked. He walked to the bar and ordered a juice—after all, he hadn’t been drinking in years. (Good for him.)

The bar grumbled in response.

“The squares,” said a woman by one of the windows facing the street, “are throwing their shit around, again.”

“How can you tell?” asked the woman at the bar.

“Spilled out onto the street.” A splatter hit the window. “They need to work on their aim some more.”

The door swung open and an apparition entered. It closed the door behind it and spoke in a British accent, “Evening, all.”

A man sitting alone at a table reading by candlelight looked up, saw the ghost, and stood. He threw the book at the specter—the book, of course, passed right through it and hit the door—and shouted, “Get the fuck out of here, Dickens! No one wants you here! Go back to London and haunt your own God-damned people, you windbag fuck!”

The ghost of Charles Dickens looked at the man and said, “Vulgar language—”

“Is absolutely necessary! We don’t want you here, with your Chuzzlewits, and Cratchets, and motherfucking Twists. Go back to that racist shitbag, Kipling! I spit on you, and put a black year on your head!”

Dickens disappeared, and the man apologized to the bar, then sat back down. A good portion of the rest of the night was spent with a few of the bar-goers playing darts or pool. Occasionally, someone would make a comment about how evil and corruption was destined to take over the world, and King would retort that that was unnecessarily bleak and that maybe they should count their blessings (after all, they weren’t having their spines sucked out by aliens, or being turned into mindless zombies by aliens, or didn’t live in a haunted hotel, or etc. etc.), prompting a grumble from the more morose writers in the bar.

Outside, in the street, the academics kicked each other into the dirt and called each other imbeciles who had received their PhDs from diploma mills. By this time, thankfully, most of them had run out of shit to throw, and resorted to simple, old-fashioned name-calling.

Prologue to The Student's Tale

Time passed. Aside from my meeting with the Master and a couple victories at pub quizzes, nothing of note happened. (These wins were a rare occurrence, as every subsequent time we came in near to the bottom of the rankings—this may have been because The Drunkard started coming along, shooting vodka and whiskey, insulting the landlord, and getting us kicked out halfway through.) I went to courses, went on a date—incredibly unsuccessful, she found out that I was Jewish and spent the time asking me if I felt put upon in this country and if she had offended me in asking the question in the first place—all in all, a thoroughly normal week. Oh yes, and, every morning, The Drunkard and I collected The Stalker and formed a sort of military march down towards the humane shelter. By the weekend, he had served five days of his sentence.

Saturday rolled around, and in the afternoon, we all met at The Sub-Pope’s Flock for our weekly story session. I saw that The Stalker had taken up his usual seat in the back corner, and The Traveler was sitting there with him, doing his best to strike up conversation. I could hear The Stalker’s exaggerated slurps from the entrance, and I knew that, try as he might, The Traveler would get no real response from The Stalker. I bought my beer and sat down at the table. “Heya, Traveler,” I said.

“Afternoon, Narrator. How’s things?”

“Things are things,” I said. It was a response I’d perfected over the years and, more often than not, people thought I was just being a smartass instead of answering their question. While that was often true, it was also true that I was simply trying to make a statement that things were the way they were and could not be any other way. (In my opinion, it was a brilliant philosophical statement that went over most people’s heads.) “The Drunkard and I have been taking The Stalker along to volunteering jobs at the RSPCA shelter in town.”

The Traveler nodded. “That’s what he told me.”

“Apparently,” I said, “he gets on fantastically with the dogs there.”

“Dogs are simple,” said The Stalker. “Once you know how to get them to like you, then you control them.”

That was one of his responses that, while true, still had the effect of sending a mind-numbing chill down one’s spine. I still often wonder if he practiced his tone of voice in front of a mirror, just to get the proper cadence right before he went out talking to people and scaring the crap out of them.

“Hey, Narrator,” said The Traveler. “Let’s go outside for a sec, I have to ask you something.”

“Secrets,” said The Stalker, “don’t make friends, Traveler. They don’t make friends at all.”

The Traveler put on the epitome of an innocent smile, the sort that said, “Why would you say that? Why in this, the best of all possible worlds, would I have an ulterior motive,” and meant it. “Hah, no secret here, my friend. I just thought that you were enjoying your cider so much it’d be a shame to break you away from it.”

The Stalker nodded.

The Traveler and I stood up and walked outside.

The square was full of people clutching shopping bags. Most of them looked around them like they were lost, while a few loitered around not really moving with any sort of purpose. It was the first legitimately sunny day I’d seen that week, and though it was still chilly outside—about 50 degrees Fahrenheit—it was better than it had been in the morning. The Traveler rolled a cigarette, and offered me the tobacco and paper to make my own.

“No thanks,” I said, “I don’t smoke.”

“Good call. Terrible for your health. For example, I can no longer run marathons.”

“You used to run marathons?”

The Traveler grinned. “No, but I know that the option has been ripped away from me. So, what I asked you out here for was to see if you heard what The Stalker did to the rabbit.”

I nodded. “Indeed I had.”

“What do you think should be done?”

“Well, we’re already punishing him, in a way. And, if what The Drunkard said about the French almost decapitating him was true, then I’m certain The Stalker ise scared off from doing anything like that again. After all, if you were taken from your home by a couple of angry Frenchman, what would you do?”

The Traveler thought for a moment. “Declare war on them. That’d scare em away.”

We burst into laughter, causing quite the scene in the tranquil square across from the Cathedral.

The Writer walked up in his usual corduroy jacket and flat cap ensemble, saw the cigarette in The Traveler’s hand, and said, “Ah, Traveler, do you mind if I join you in a smoke?”

“G’head,” said The Traveler.

The Writer then pulled from one of his inner jacket pockets a corn-cob pipe, packed it, and lit it. I thought about asking him why he had chosen to smoke from a corn-cob pipe instead of something a bit more conventional in the UK, but I figured that The Writer would get defensive, and I wasn’t feeling up to the aftermath.

“Anyway,” The Traveler said, finishing his cigarette, “I was thinking that, this Wednesday, we could all go up to London and hit up a couple of the galleries or museums. It hit me yesterday that we hadn’t actually done anything as a group of mates beyond sit around the pub and attempt to tell stories; and if you ask me, that’s a damn shame.”

“I say, that’s a great idea,” I said. “A day trip to London might be just the thing a few of us need to break the monotony of going to courses, wandering around town, and knocking back beer to kill the time. What do you say, Writer?”

The Writer snorted. “I say that galleries are a waste of time, but, as I haven’t any plans for Wednesday, I might as well come.”

“Glad to have such an enthusiastic member on the expedition,” The Traveler said. “I believe that The Narrator and I shall head back inside and await the other members of our group. See you in a few.”

The Writer nodded and turned towards the Cathedral, affecting a pose that I’m sure he thought was erudite.

We walked back in the pub and sat at the table with The Stalker, still contentedly watching life drift by through the front windows. After a minute, The Writer walked in with The Student. They were chatting about different translations of Madame Bovary—a book which I had to read twice for two of my classes in undergrad, a requirement that led me to wish for sweet death both times. “And I say,” said The Student, “that it stands as a solid piece of literature. Maybe not the best, as you put it, but definitely solid.”

“You fool,” exclaimed The Writer, taking his drink from the bar to our table. “Just look at the emotional anguish felt in the story. The anguish! No one’s done that like Flaubert did.”

We were spared from further commentary by the arrival of The Drunkard, who stumbled in through the front door and ordered a whiskey. He joined us at the table, wearing clothes that looked like they hadn’t been changed in a few days, blinked his bloodshot eyes, and said, “Hi there.”

“What’s up, Drunkard?” asked The Student.

“Drank three bottles of wine last night. Still drunk when I woke up this morning, figured could keep on going.” He took a drink and hiccupped.

“Well,” said The Traveler, “before we begin our tale for the day, I thought I’d broach the subject of going to London on Wednesday so that we could all hit up a few galleries or museums or whatever, as a group.”

“Hit up some bitches!” shouted The Drunkard.

“Well, yes, if you want to. Anyway, who’s next?”

The Student cleared his throat. “I’ll go.”

“Yay,” we all said. It was one of those moments where a group of minds synchs up and, in doing so, sends a shiver down everyone’s spine.

“I should first apologize for my actions the past couple of days. I’ve been going through a rough time lately, and I sought solace at the bottom of the bottle.” He wrinkled up his nose and cleared his throat. “I found that once pink bits started appearing in my vomit, I should probably stop for a while. You see, literary criticism is a soul-crushing business, and having to read a significant amount of it over the course of a couple of days tends to lead one into either alcoholism or madness.”

Ah, well, I guess I was wrong about his troubles with women.

“At any rate,” he continued, “I was inspired to create the following story after thinking a little bit about what goes on in academic discourse, as a rule. It is, you see, a fictionalization of what I believe to be the method of having a discussion about any subject in the ivory tower.”

I Meet the Master

The day after, I received a phone call from the College reception on behalf of the College Master. There was the possibility of the University taking disciplinary action against me, and the Master was to speak to me in order to attempt to either implement or block the action. I was to meet her in half an hour in her office, and bring my student ID card. This was a bit of a shock to me. I had no idea what this could be about, as I had managed to kick the habit of downloading a gigabyte of music a day, had never downloaded a movie to my hard drive and, unless I was doing it in my sleep, had not taken any action in my courses that would have damned me in an academic sense.

Nevertheless, I made it to my appointment on time and entered the Master’s office. It was minimally decorated. There was a large gray desk on the top of which sat a black desk lamp, a white MacBook, and a framed portrait of a happy family. The Master wasn’t in the picture, so I assumed they were her brother’s or sister’s happy family. The bookshelves were only about a quarter of the way full—all of Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and historical novels about swashbuckling members of the Royal Navy—and I got the general impression that the Master spent the bare minimum amount of required time in her office.

The Master herself was a middle aged woman with blonde, yet slightly graying, hair, and gray glasses. She wore a black pantsuit and looked more like a businesswoman than an academic in charge of administrating a postgraduate college. She stood as I entered and said, “Ah, Mr. Narrator, there you are. Er, I am pronouncing that right, am I?”

I nodded. “Yes ma’am, just like the literary term.”

She smiled and waved at a chair. I sat across from her desk and she opened up a folder. “Mr. Narrator, I suppose you know why you’re here today.”

“Actually I don’t. It was quite a shock to get the phone call on such short notice.”

“Well, we didn’t have much of a choice in terms of timing, as the University just alerted us to the possibility of the lawsuit today.”

Lawsuit? “Excuse me, ma’am? Did you just say lawsuit?”

“Oh yes, dreadfully serious, I’m afraid. Assault and battery. You seemed to scare the hell out of that bartender.”

Ah-ha! So that’s what this was about. Well, fair’s fair and I did almost choke the man to death. “In my defense, he didn’t know where the red wine was kept, and, really, as a man working in a bar, I find that he should have known that.”

“Well,” she said, “I’m not certain that such a defense would fly in court. Luckily, though,” she turned a page in the folder, checked something, nodded and said, “yes, the possibility of lawsuit has been dropped. I can assure you, I was quite puzzled as to why it was; if I were attacked, I would want to press charges.”

“I, uh, have a bit of a short fuse, ma’am. He was chatting up this woman who, clearly, had no business being in the University, judging from her butchering of the language.”

“Mmm.” She said. It was the first time I’d been studied by another person, and being in the cold gaze of the College Master, I didn’t really want to be studied again. I knew that they were going to give me some sort of punishment. Probably a large one due to the near-death of another student. I started sweating as the punishments flitted through my mind. Would the expel me? I couldn’t blame them if they did; after all, I wouldn’t want a murderer next door to me. Worse, would they decide that I was too dangerous to be even alive and decapitate me? If the French had a guillotine, what would the English have?

“Yes, Mr. Narrator,” said the Master, “I’m afraid there will have to be some sort of punishment. Quite a severe one. After all, you did nearly kill a man, you understand.”

I nodded.

“Then I’m afraid,” she said, taking on a solemn voice, “that we shall have to take the measure of revoking your privilege to use the student sports grounds. I know, it may seem vastly unjust, but you’re actually getting off easy: you could be barred from all athletic facilities on campus.”

What? This was their severe punishment? This country was fantastic! It was like living in the 50s, when people still thought the best of one another! I wasn’t even going to use the athletic facilities when I was allowed to, the shlemiels. Still, had to appear calm, even hurt a little bit. I slumped in my chair and covered my face with my hands. “O! Woebegone man I am! What sort of cruel mistress Fate is, to take away mine own vitality, the health of youth stricken from me by mine own folly! Accursed, accursed emotion, anger is.”

“Chin up, Mr. Narrator. We’ll see if we can get the sentence to only this term instead of the year.”

“Would that you could,” I said, dropping to my knees on the floor. “I would forever be in thine debt.”

She stood, I stood. She offered her hand for me to shake, and I did. “Good luck with your studies, Mr. Narrator, and please do try to contain your emotions. This is, after all, Britain, and one simply must be stoic in certain times.”

“I understand,” I said, taking a deep breath and puffing out my chest. “And now, madame, I must leave this place and take up my studies and attempt to put this dirty business behind me.”

Leaving the administrative offices, I chuckled to myself. “Heh,” I thought. “Schmucks.”

The Stalker's Punishment

The next day, after The Drunkard called me into the courtyard at nine in the morning and told me the story, he called The Stalker outside for his punishment. I was hung over from drinking a bottle and a half of red wine during my Risk game, but still, one has duties as a friend. “What did you decide on?” I asked.

The Drunkard took a sip of coffee from his travel mug. “There’s an animal shelter in town. Chretien and I decided that the best way for him to make amends for his actions would be for The Stalker to volunteer at the shelter for the week.”

I nodded. It seemed like a just plan. Though the animals in the shelter probably weren’t rabbits, they were still animals that needed a break and a helping hand—definitely more than the rabbits on campus, at any rate. So, in a way, by helping the injured and abandoned animals, The Stalker might be seen as coming out on top. “Why am I around?”

“You’re here in case The Stalker decides that maybe he doesn’t want to come along and help the abandoned kitties and puppies of Canterbury. Congrats, Narrator,” he said, “you’re the muscle in this operation.”

The idea of me being the muscle in any sort of operation scared the hell out of me, for it implied that there was literally no one else insane enough to go along.

“Don’t worry, though,” continued The Drunkard, stretching after another sip. “I don’t think Stalker’ll do anything to make it harder on himself. After all, the bastard came one step away from being decapitated by a Frenchman last night, and that’s enough to shake even the hardest of hardasses among us.”

“Speaking of the guillotine,” I said, sitting down on one of the benches, “what happened to it?”

“After I made sure that The Stalker got back up to his room without being hurt, I convinced Matthieu to dismantle it out into the woods out back.” The Drunkard shook his head. “I can’t believe the crazy bastard had a fucking guillotine in his room. The space it must have taken up alone is enough to make you think that the guy’s certifiable.”

“You think that’s bad?” I asked. “You should see the iron maiden I keep in my closet. I barely have space to put in any of my clothes.”

“I know you’re joking,” said The Drunkard, “but after seeing all that went down last night, I honestly wouldn’t put it past anyone to have a torture device in their rooms.”

The Stalker stepped through the frame of what was previously a door. Like every other time I’d seen him, he wore his black hoodie, black jeans, and black contacts. What with my white Dickens College hoodie (which had a picture of the author on the back) and The Drunkard’s brown leather jacket and fedora (it actually looked pretty good on him), we made quite the trio. “Hello, Narrator,” said The Stalker, “I wasn’t aware that you were going to be joining us on this day of repentance.”

“Week of repentance,” corrected The Drunkard.

“Whatever,” The Stalker said, not moving his eyes off of me. I wondered what the man did to make it through British Customs a few weeks ago. “Either way, the more’s the merrier. As they say.”

The man’s monotone voice was starting to grate on my nerves. Just for a moment, I wished that I had been there when he faced Madame Guillotine, so that I could have seen that The Stalker was capable of instilling some emotion other than terror. (I still wasn’t convinced that everything had happened like The Drunkard told me it did, and it wouldn’t be until he took me into the woods and showed me the giant steel blade that was the heart of the guillotine that I believed him. Even then, though, I doubted that Julie had behaved like a leading lady in an Indiana Jones movie.)

“Wrong again,” said The Drunkard. “You’re the only one who’s going to be doing any of the volunteering. We’re just along to make sure that you go to the shelter and start on your work.”

“I see. And where will you be while I am in thrall to the RSPCA?”

“Don’t know. Reckon we can grab a drink or something for a couple of hours.”

I checked my watch. “It’s half-past nine.”

The Drunkard shrugged. “Fine, coffee then. I don’t understand this aversion to drinking before noon that you guys have. You haven’t experienced the day until you’ve had a Guinness to start off the morning. Now,” he said to The Stalker, “here’s how this is going to work: You’re going to walk in front of us and we will be on either side of you. We will walk—”

“You’re treating me like a prisoner,” said The Stalker. It was true. I thought that The Drunkard’s method of getting The Stalker to the shelter was a bit unorthodox.

“No,” said The Drunkard. “I just don’t trust you standing behind me, and I’d rather have someone else here in case you mistake me for a rabbit and try to take a knife to me.”

The Stalker responded in his usual way: he stared at The Drunkard for a few seconds—eyes blank, like a shark’s—and then went on his way. We followed and, thankfully, made it down the University Foot Path without incident.

The shelter was a large building—for England; in the States, it would have been on par with a stand-alone McDonald’s—with a small reception lobby in the front. The lobby was clean with tile floors, potted plants, and posters of sad looking animals on them, with text asking people to donate to the RSPCA. I started feeling sad that I didn’t have my dog around—a big golden retriever named Mr. Floppy—so I put a ten pound note in one of the donation jars. From the back of the building, we could hear dogs barking, cats meowing, and some birds chirping. It sounded like any vet’s office I’d been in.

The Drunkard walked up to the desk and rang the silver bell. A middle-aged woman in white scrubs on which cartoon dog bones had been stitched opened a door behind the reception area. “Help you?” she asked, sitting down at the chair.

“Yes, ma’am,” said The Drunkard. “My friend here,” he said, indicating The Stalker, who was glowering from a corner, “wants to help you guys out for a week. See, he’s really missing his dog back home—Snuffles, he calls her—and this is about the best way he can get to feeling like she’s right here with him.”

The woman smiled. “Well isn’t that just sweet?” She stood up and waved The Stalker over. “Come on, love. I’m sure we can find something for you to do.”

“Fantastic,” said The Drunkard. “The only thing is, he’s got some things planned during the afternoons, so he’ll only be able to help out for a few hours a day. We’ll be back to collect him around half past noon.”

The woman said that was just fine, they could use whatever help they could get, and she’d see us in a couple of hours.

We went to the French café on the High Street to pass the time. It was getting to be that the mornings were, as a rule, cool and crisp. I preferred to think of the temperature as needlessly cold at a needless hour, but The Drunkard insisted that it was merely crisp. I bought an espresso, thinking that the heat of the beverage on top of the energy it produced would help keep my mind off the weather, at least until I got used to it. The Drunkard ordered a large glass of red wine.

I checked my watch, saw that it was twenty past ten, and said, “You sure about that?”

The Drunkard looked at me, arched an eyebrow, and took a sip from his wine.

“You know,” I said, “I’m just saying that cause it’s half past ten in the morning and, generally speaking, drinking before noon is a sign of some problems.”

The Drunkard took another sip from his wine.

“I’m not trying to say that you have problems, you know. I’m just saying that, you know, the passerby might look at you and think, ‘Wow, that guy there, he’s got some weird stuff going on with him. Why else would he be drinking wine at half past ten in the morning?’”

The Drunkard looked at my steaming espresso and took another sip of his wine.

“Course, what do passersby know? There’s a reas—”

“Shut up.”

I nodded.

“Thanks for the concern, Pops,” he continued, “but I’m fine. It’s even recommended that you drink a glass of red wine a day. I’m just getting a head start. Besides—” A woman about our age walked by our table wearing tight jeans, long black boots, a black t-shirt, and a leather jacket. The Drunkard watched her until she turned into an alley. “Besides, if you’re worried about someone going past their limit, you should be worried about The Student. No way that guy’s been drinking enough to handle the sorts of volume I’ve seen him put away over the past couple of days.”

“Nah,” I said. “I wouldn’t worry about him.”

“And why not?”

“He’s the sort of person who drinks like that because he thinks it’ll stop him from thinking about something. Now, there are two reasons why he’ll stop drinking so much: The first, because he finds out that alcohol forces him to concentrate on whatever he’s thinking about—just happens like that, doesn’t it? The second, because he’ll wake up with such a disgusting hangover that, when he looks into the toilet and sees bits of matter colored in ways he wouldn’t have thought possible, he’ll stop drinking to such excess.”

The Drunkard nodded. “Yeah, he does strike me as that type.”

“And you? Why do you drink like you do?”

The Drunkard grunted. He took a chair from the table next to us, brought it over, and propped his legs up on it. “Would ‘it’s something to do’ be too trite an answer for you?”

“Worse, it’d be a nonanswer.”

“True.” He took a drink from the glass. “I’ll think about it, get you an answer in a way that tries to make some sense in terms of logic and coherence. How’s that sound?”

“Works for me.”

We sat and people watched for a while longer. The Drunkard finished off two glasses of wine while I put an Americano on top of the espresso and thus ensured that I would be extremely alert for about two hours before dropping nearly dead in the middle of my seminar at one. After, we collected The Stalker and went our separate ways.

The Drunkard and the French, Part Two

The Drunkard’s night, though, ended up being much more interesting than mine. I should note that, due to my impromptu game of Risk, the following narrative is based solely on his telling of events. As such, what happens may be skewed towards the more unhinged by his outlook on life, as well as the copious amounts of wine consumed at the bar.

When he and the French returned to the flat, they noticed an odd smell pervading the air, as if they had left a few pounds of raw meat in the open. They checked the corridor, noticed nothing, and opened the door into the kitchen. There, hanging from a hook that had been hammered into the ceiling, was a skinned rabbit with a note stapled onto its chest. The note read, in shaky block letters: Never Criticize My Work Again.

The Drunkard, being a man of well above-average intellect, even while drunk, immediately knew who committed this act of vengeance. While Julie and another one of the French fled the room with hands to their mouths and a green tint over their faces, The Drunkard, Matthieu, and Chretien (the Existentialist who originally told The Drunkard that he could have the world, for it was shit) unhooked the rabbit and put it in the trash. Chretien tied the bag and took it to the woods behind the college. The Drunkard sat on the kitchen couch and poured a glass of whiskey. (Most of the following conversation was in French. The Drunkard translated it for my benefit.)

“Who would do such a thing?” asked Matthieu. As it turned out, the Existentialists were all pacifists, having come to the conclusion that, unless someone directly attacked them, it would be worthless to hurt another being—for doing so would unnecessarily prolong and increase suffering on the planet.

The Drunkard sat Indian style on the couch and took a drink. “A man of extremely loose morals, who has no compunction about crossing societal taboos if someone or something crosses him. A man who, put blatantly, may be the most pants-shitting terrifying man in this University.”

Matthieu stood next to the window and stared out at the night. Wind blew the trees at a nearly horizontal angle. “He killed a rabbit.”

“Oui, Matthieu. He killed a rabbit,” said The Drunkard.

Matthieu paced over towards the wall. He shook his head. “He killed a rabbit!” he shouted, punching the wall and leaving a dent. “Un innocent! Un petit lapin!”

The other Existentialists rushed into the kitchen upon hearing the raised voice and exclamation. “What is it, Matthieu?” asked Julie.

Matthieu spun on his heels and addressed Julie and the others (Chretien had returned by now). “My friends,” he said, taking on the air of someone addressing not soldiers in an army, not underlings, but fellow citizens in a People’s Army. “My friends, we are faced with an evil so decadent, so base, that it would lash out against an incontrovertible symbol of good in this world. It would lash out and kill a rabbit, that—”

“Ah,” said Philippe, the other Existentialist. “But, to the farmer, is the rabbit not evil for uprooting crops, for eating the foundation of his livelihood?”

“Now is not the time for philosophical debate,” said Matthieu. “We are not farmers, we are students. We are the intellectual class. For us, a rabbit, though a rodent, is a symbol of quick wits, the necessary reaction against that which would destroy it. The rabbit does not use force against a threat, it uses its wits to escape danger,” he began pacing, taking on the air of an ancient Roman orator, gesturing with his outstretched index finger and with waves of his hands. “It is that which we aspire to be. It takes what it needs to live, and depends on its reflexes to survive.

“This beast, the rabbit-murderer, has decided that, instead of attacking that which he is afraid of—or hates—he should attack a thing of beauty. A process of evolution so progressed that, even with the world’s most destructive hunter—”

“The fox?” asked Philippe.

Mattieu took a wine glass from the countertop and hurled it at Philippe, who dodged. The glass shattered on the wall behind him. “No, you fool! Man! Man is the world’s most destructive hunter.”

“Ah. Oui. D’accord.”

“Even with the world’s most destructive hunter, the rabbit has managed to survive. And this wretch has killed an innocent member of the species. American Drunkard,” he said, turning towards The Drunkard.

“Ayup,” said The Drunkard.

“You know who this person is?”

“Ayup. Goes by the name of The Stalker. Lives in E Block.”

“Magnifique! Then you shall bear witness to what the French can do when roused. Chretien, bring the guillotine. We shall end this man tonight. Go, Drunkard, wait outside and we shall join you momentarily. Think about which room he is in and then you can lead us.”

The Drunkard, even when he stood outside, huddled in his pea coat, didn’t think the French Existentialists would actually bring out a guillotine. Surely that was a metaphor for their sharp wit—for The Drunkard had gained a respect for the Existentialists once they stopped harassing him on account of his nationality—and not a legitimate guillotine. I believe that there is a certain part of the brain, which I call the Justification Realm, that has the purpose of making outside stimuli make sense in relation to what we hold to be true in the world. I believe that, when The Drunkard saw the Existentialists walk out of the front of his block carrying a guillotine—a giant wooden one with a sharp, steel blade positioned at the top—The Drunkard’s Justification Realm went into overdrive. “So they have a guillotine,” the portion of his brain must have said to another part of his brain. “Surely they wouldn’t actually use it. These people aren’t barbarians, after all. They aren’t storming the Bastille. They’re just going to scare The Stalker. People who read Camus and Beckett don’t go around chopping off the heads of people who go around killing rabbits. They go around drinking wine and talking about Camus and Beckett.”

“Drunkard,” said Matthieu, “it is time. Lead us to the offender.”

The Drunkard cocked an eyebrow. The Justification Realm had won him over, and, leading the Existentialists towards the window he believed to belong to The Stalker, he still didn’t believe that they were going to hurt anyone. “That’s the one,” he said, pointing to a window on the first floor.

Chretien and Philippe took a handful of rocks from the garden and began hurling them—overhand and with all the speed of a seasoned Major League pitcher—at the window. After a few minutes, The Stalker opened the curtains and peeked out. “There he is!” shouted Chretien.

The Drunkard could see The Stalker glare in the light of the lights in the courtyard. He retreated into his room.

“My friends,” said Matthieu, “the offender will not come outside of his own accord—it is time that we force him out. Philippe and I shall bring him out here to make the acquaintance of Madame Guillotine.”

Even as the two Existentialists broke their way into the block—smashing the glass door and roaring “La Marseillaise”—The Drunkard’s Justification Realm told him that, really, the Existentialists weren’t going in to bring The Stalker out to his death. They were just going in to give him a little scare. Maybe mess up his room a little bit, sort of like what The Drunkard himself did to the gubernatorial candidate in Nashville. People who read Camus and Beckett might very well haul out a guillotine and chuck rocks at people’s windows, but they didn’t actually bring them outside to meet Madame Guillotine. 

The Drunkard turned to Julie. “So what’s next? They upset The Stalker’s room? Maybe rip up the curtains, steal a few books?”

A wolfish, predatory grin took over Julie’s soft face. Surely, the Justification Realm said, girls like Julie who looked like they should be painting Impressionist portraits of the Champs Elysees didn’t yearn to see blood stream forth from a decapitated head. “And now, we see how a man meets his death.” Ah, said the Realm, that must be an example of French black humor.

Now the glass pane next to the door shattered outwards, with the Frenchmen still shouting the lyrics to La Marseille. This time, though, they had The Stalker in tow, a length of rope tying his hands behind his back. The man looked like a captured animal making its way from the wild to a cage in a zoo. His hair was ruffled, and his eyes (the natural color, brown—it would appear that he didn’t have time to put his black contacts in) jumping around in his skull. He grunted, and The Drunkard could make out obscenities in the guttural noises that came from The Stalker. Then, suddenly, the two fellows made eye contact. The Stalker straightened and became silent. He gained a sense of dignity that, until then, The Drunkard would not have imagined The Stalker possessed.

Okay, said the Realm, they may very well bring the man outside to meet Madame Guillotine, but there was no chance that they would actually decapitate The Stalker. After all, these were people who read Camus and Beckett, and people who read Camus and Beckett never kill people. They may scare the living daylights out of them, but not kill them.

Matthieu came to a halt and moved to stand in front of The Stalker. “Killer of un petit lapin, we, the citizens of Dickens College, find you guilty for the destruction of an innocent being in order to make a passive-aggressive attack at our flatmate, The Drunkard. Do you have anything to say in your defense?”

The Stalker straightened up. His chest jutted out, his chin took on definition, his eyes had a spark of courage that he previously lacked. One could have mistaken him for a freedom fighter facing the firing squad of an unjust ruler. The Stalker looked at his accusers and settled on The Drunkard. “I have no regrets,” said The Stalker. “All that I have done, I have done because it was what I had to do.” The Drunkard admitted that, had this been a completely different situation and not one in which The Stalker had flayed a rabbit, the man’s words would have had a certain respectability in them.

Matthieu and Philippe led The Stalker towards the guillotine, forced him to bend down, and stuck his head through the hole in the bottom. This time, The Drunkard’s Justification Realm stayed mercifully silent. “Now hold the fuck on a second,” said The Drunkard.

Mattieu and Philippe looked at The Drunkard in shock.

“This is getting a little nuts,” he said.

“But Drunkard,” said Chretien from behind The Drunkard, “this man killed a rabbit!”

“Yes!” said Julie. “Because of this…this demon, a little, innocent rabbit is dead.”

The Drunkard nodded. “Yes, of course, but don’t you think that this isn’t the right way to approach the situation? Sure, you may get a certain amount of joy from seeing The Stalker’s head roll, and God knows that there are probably a lot of people back in the States who would as well, but that doesn’t make it right.”

“What do you mean?” asked Matthieu, releasing his grip on The Stalker.

The Stalker shot The Drunkard a surprisingly warm grin.

“Comrades—”

“Citizens,” corrected Matthieu.

“Citizens,” continued The Drunkard, “does taking a life bring back a life? Of course not; it only perpetuates the myth that murder is a form of justice. If we are doing this because of the creation of suffering, or the taking of a life, then it stands to reason that we are opposed to the act that brought us here in the first place, yes?”

“Of course,” said Philippe.

“Then why should we, as the people who are trying to correct the ills of society, perpetuate murder in the name of justice? No, fellow citizens, that would be senseless. What we must do is find a way for this man to work off his crime. We must consider all options that would replace the murder of a rabbit, and then put him to task on the best one. So, please, citizens, remove him from Madame Guillotine, in the name of Justice.”

Matthieu and Philippe looked at each other. Mattiheu nodded. “He is right,” he said. They pulled The Stalker’s head from the hole and stood him up.

Julie spun The Drunkard around and said to him, “Who do you think you are?”

“I’m trying to keep us from becoming that which we despise.”

Julie’s face burned a deep red. “Because of your actions today, another innocent rabbit may die.”

“If that happens, then I am just as responsible as the murderer, and I shall gladly face the consequences. However, babe, people can change.”

Julie slapped him in his face and kissed him. She broke away with tears in her eyes and ran back into the block.

“You’re putting me on,” I said at that point.

The Drunkard held up his hand and held up his index and middle fingers. “Scout’s Honor, that’s what happened.”

The Drunkard looked on, stars in his eyes. Matthieu walked up to him. “She cannot abide rabbit murderers. Her father, who was a drunk and a scoundrel, killed rabbits.”

“People can change,” said The Drunkard. He looked into the sky. Somewhere in his ancestral memory, one of his progenitors told him that the proper way to feel after saving someone from Mme. Guillotine—for, it turns out, one of The Drunkard’s ancestors was a French Jew who was instrumental in storming the Bastille and then making a case for saving some royal fiend’s life—was to feel as if a castle were burning at your back, and the only place you could look was to the horizon—away from the burning and destructive past and into a future that, for the moment was filled with hope.