What Happen Then, Mr Bones? by Charlotte Randall

Author:Charlotte Randall
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742288390
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

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James Harvey Montague, or what is left of him — he is without his lips, his nose, an unidentifiable but essential portion of his spine, likewise of his mind, and what is a man without identifiable features, vertical erection and the capacity for self-reflection? — lies on his straw, and the days pass lightly over him and are gone. Like translucent veils in the hands of goddesses, the days float harmlessly across his vestigial awareness until they are torn away by the screaming banshees of the night. At night he lies in a ball of abject terror as the furies gather, and the other souls in hell rail and howl, and the heavy reek of defecation pollutes the already inelastic air. There is nothing he can do to put an end to his animal life. He is far beneath the faculties of planning, initiating, executing, of active wishing or passive hoping. Indeed, let us go even lower in the hierarchy of human capabilities — he is incapable of inserting a single separating thought between the perceptions of his senses and inner pandemonium.

There is nothing anyone can do if anyone were to stick his medical nose in the door. Which is doubtful, and which anyway would go unnoticed and certainly unremembered by the cell’s insensible inmates. Did we earlier refer to them as souls — that can’t be right, animals don’t have souls. But even if anyone goes on his negligent way through the decrepit halls of the asylum, someone must come in, someone must clean and feed and later drag away the rotten corpses. Alas, this particular someone must go unrewarded. There is no one here to register appreciation, confer praise — faculties even higher in the hierarchy than any of those previously mentioned, in fact so high as to be above the reach of many.

Leaking a foul-smelling amber liquid, the bloated corpse of James Montague is mercifully dragged out of the cell by this nameless angel the day before a portion of the wing is destroyed by a passionate fire, and thus his living remains are saved from the assaults of burning beams. Even soulless curs suffer when set alight. Not so lucky the anonymous angel. He collects a fiery splinter as large as a spear in the back of the neck, is pinned face down to the ordured floor while the flames lick him lasciviously all over, and departs this world indistinguishable from the foaming beasts he’s served. That’s all right, God recognises His own, so we are told.

The name of James Harvey Montague is added to the family headstone in the Anglican churchyard of the parish of his birth. It is read aloud by his small son Josiah when he is taken to the churchyard by his aged maternal grandparents, there to contemplate death under smoky skies, there to learn death is the corrective not only for a life gone bad but for all life, and afterwards to tread sombrely back to the carriage, to be driven in unbroken silence back to the house.

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