Zone of the Interior by Clancy Sigal
Author:Clancy Sigal [Sigal, Clancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-3707-4
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-07-10T16:04:00+00:00
] three [
SPRING ALSO CREPT INTO Clare Community Council. By Easter Bank Holiday (I missed another Aldermaston march) we had shaken down to âour fightinâ weight,â as Dr. Last put it. The drossâClive Flynn and his ilkâweâd got rid of simply by letting them come to meetings. No stranger ever survived a Lastian interrogation. âWhaâs thâ point in suckinâ up to outsiders,â he declared. âSooner or later theyâll only find out thâtruth about us.â And heâd giggle unhappily.
I thought that this blackballing of outlanders contradicted Lastâs stated policy of courting all possible allies, and said so. (After all, it had provoked my first quarrel with the group.) He looked right through me as if I wasnât there. Though Iâd been elected chairmanâadmittedly, to keep me quietâLast still ran Clare meetings in his own way. Head in hands, he punctuated the agenda with doleful comments on our shortcomings. âDavina, stop mumblinâ. If yeâve nuthinâ to say, shut up.â âGit to thâ point, Boris. Yir Stalinist prattlinâs drivinâ me up thâ wall.â âSid, I swear if ye was a mite more withdrawn yeâd disappear up yir own arsehole.â
We accepted his judgments docilely. Davina said, âWillie gives one such a feeling of being nobody and of not even existing. Thatâs the first step to Enlightenment, isnât it?â
The plain truth is, we jumped whenever Last cracked the whip. His decisions, usually handed down in the form of soft-spoken suggestions or off-the-cuff guesswork, had the force of Law. A strange collective chemistry transformed even his slips of the tongue into group canon. Will-lessness emanated from us like plants stretching out to their light source, Willie Last.
Hell, Iâd been through all this charismatic b.s. before, in American politics. And the other Clare members had been around, too. Why did we stick it?
If Last had been nothing but what he seemedâa vain, truculent stage Scotsman with a talent for âputtinâ thâ boot inâ to our emotional soft spotsâwe would never have followed (and loved) him so. He could also be sweet, tender and caring, fatherly, without side or swank, retainingâeven in fits of arrogant temperâthat sly, warming grin, which seemed to say: âOch mon, whatâre we takinâ ourselves so seriously fer?â He had a trick of enticing you into dark, twisting mental labyrinths and then suddenly abandoning you to find your own way out, which we proudly thought of as his liberating us from âthâ chains oâ love.â Though he made much of his dislike of the role of Master, which he claimed we foisted on him, he seemed to accept such eminence with a humility that was indistinguishable from arrogance. At the same time as he poked fun at my habit of always calling him âDoctor Last,â a respectful hangover from our previous analytical relationship, he made it equally clear that in practice Clareâs democracy of souls meant he had every right to lash us for (among other things) our dependence on him.
At bottom, of course, couch power dictated Clare relationships. Part of Lastâs abnormal authority
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