Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Mosley

Author:Nicholas Mosley [Mosley, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 1990-07-07T21:00:00+00:00

children had come to burn with their glass the maggots that grew out of it. I found I could not think too much about this: I had bared my teeth: it seemed that I should just bury the dead body of the child. I looked round for something that would serve as a spade. There were some slates in a small pile of rubble by the child. I pulled at these, and there became dislodged from the pile a piece of coloured glass. The piece of glass was smooth and red and slightly convex like a small pool of blood. It seemed that the children might have been using just such a piece of glass to concentrate the rays of the sun. I used a slate to scrape at the rubble and cover the dead child. I wondered if there had been a stained-glass window here once, pieces of which had made splashes of light like blood. I succeeded in covering the child. I thought - And the maggots: oh they will live, they will die! There was one of the children at some distance from me standing at a corner of the church: it was watching me. It was somewhat like the small child who had been waiting in the clearing beneath the railway lines for the deaf-and-dumb girl who had been in the tyre: it wore a similar smock to just below its knees. I had picked up the piece of coloured glass and was looking at this; it was a strange deep red; it was very beautiful; it seemed to have retained some of the rays of the sun inside it, and not to have burned with them. The small child by the church was coming towards me; it seemed to be looking for what it might find among the stones. I thought, as I had thought before - Perhaps people will think it is to do with me, that body of a child. The child in the smock had come up to me and held out its hand: indeed, it seemed to be the boy-child that I had seen before with the girl in the tyre. I gave him the piece of blood-red glass I had been holding. The child took it, and put it in a pocket at the front of his smock. I thought -So this child collects coloured glass: to burn; to build windows with? Then - I see: but what? That seeds are being scattered like bits and pieces of light? That light does not only burn: and gods look down? And we can know this: what else need we know? That maggots sometimes grow wings and fly? The child turned away with its small piece of coloured glass.

When I got back to the rectory I found two letters which had come by the same post. One was from Melvyn. It said -

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