INFRA-NOIR – Issue No 1 by ZAGAVA

Issue № 1

Summer 2018

The Shore by Brian Howell

Exit and Entry by Thomas Strømsholt

a sequence by Jonathan Wood

The Shore

Exit and Entry

by The Editors

Black Box by Alcebíades Diniz

Resurrecting Sandor by Chris Mikul

16 17

Word-Clock by Anon

The House of Silence:An Exposition

by Thomas Strømsholt

The Laws of Reverberation

13 14

by Brian Howell

by Avalon Brantley

a sequence by Jonathan Wood

The Peacock Island

Beyond Dead

by Luiz Nazario

by Nigel Humphreys

Infra-noir

Inaugural and Introductory Meditation O my songs, Why do you look so eagerly and so curiously into people’s faces, Will you find your lost dead among them? CODA by Ezra Pound, From “Lustra”, 1916

Dear spirits of the literary life, It is with a distinct and rarefied pleasure that from out of the darkness and into the illusion of light, we conjure forth and unveil the inaugural issue of Infra-Noir for your reading pleasure, knowing that it will stimulate many distinct and piquant thoughts, reactions and emotions in those who seek to escape the modern world and study its pages by the flickering light of a candle or perhaps in the wondrous isolation of a private room, illuminated only by a skylight, surrounded by forbidden tomes. This first journal has been blessed and sanctified, if they be the right words, and of course, they may well not be, by a singular congruence of original fiction and philosophy, meditation and poetry in motion, mingling and merging, bleeding into the sensitive wounds of the world’s mind, to reveal the furthest glistening tidal shores of the night and the day, speckled with truths and with deceits and the minutiae that balances life, fate and ennui together in an unholy trinity, with texts that burn into the mind, like hearing the very last calling of your own name, by Gods known and unknown.

from the soul of our hearts and the ravines of our heads and through the gateways into eternal lands where life is lit with iridescence and desire and the certainty of unknowing. Infra-Noir will call for you in the heart of the night and tap you on the shoulder, seeping into your unconsciousness like a thawing waterfall as mid-winter dies and the deceit of Spring falters and concupiscent Summer approaches. The fevered experiences set out in these literary confections will haunt you, will take you through the doors of your inner chamber and back into the Dance Macabre, for all eternity! There is no escape! Read and never escape, for you will not want to escape. Who would want to escape from the bliss of creative passion and the anticipation of that which lies beyond the light.

We are thus all summoned hence! It is the proudest moment for the editors to accompany the publisher as the hermetic and shadowy midwifes of these first offerings, taking responsibility for the work of this excellent company of writers that lives and breathes within these pages. Subtle birth is the privilege that comes with creativity and for that we thank our authors Issue no. 1

Infra-Noir Alcebiades Diniz Miguel Jonas Ploeger Jonathan Wood 03

The Shore by Brian Howell

hat are you reading there?’ Gerald looked across the sand, startled. He was midway down Waikiki beach between the zoo and the Hilton Hawaiian Village complex, lying on a stretch of sand in front of one of the many beachfront hotels that was open to everyone. The girl who asked the question was simply gorgeous, anything from sixteen to twenty, her hair long and blonde, her turquoise bikini perfectly suiting her pale skin, which had been browned only slightly in the winter sun. For heaven’s sake, why would a girl that young start talking to a fifty-year-old man like me on my own? ‘Oh, just a crime novel.’ ‘Crime?’ ‘Yes, you know, someone is murdered, and the inspectors have to find out who did it, that kind of thing.’ From the little he had heard so far, he was trying to do some detective work of his own as to her accent. Possibly Spanish, he thought. ‘What are you here for?’ ‘A conference. I don’t have to go to every event.’ He didn’t know why he offered the extra information, except that she did look like she would be happy to listen to him. The water was surprisingly choppy, he thought, as he saw a young boy boldly launch himself on a boogie board into the oncoming spray. ‘He’s brave. I wonder where his mother …’ As he turned, his unformed question was already being answered, as the mother, a little behind them on the sand, hunched over her mobile phone, wrested her eyes from the device to issue a warning to be careful. Gerald’s new companion saw and heard the same interchange and gave him a knowing look as if she were wiser than her as-yetto-be-determined years. She herself had no impedimenta, not even a mobile, which was quite a wonder, he decided. Then she stood up and walked straight into the water, her calves and the pits of her knees immediately fixing his attention until they merged with the lapping water. She did not come back out of the sea. He lost himself in the book and fell asleep. 04

He came here from Tokyo every year to the same conference on teaching to get a few tips and to network, but he couldn’t remember ever being approached this way before by a stranger. Even though divorced, he was still close enough to make buying presents for his kids a meaningful ambition and a productive way of killing time. He smiled inwardly as he spotted a young Japanese woman wearing a cold mask as he walked along Kalakaua Avenue holding hands with her boyfriend. But his amusement soon turned to irritation. What in God’s name did she think she would catch walking around Oahu? Hopefully, she would soon realise she was about the only person on the island trying to shield herself from airborne germs. At least her companion was giving himself to the sun. As he walked back slowly along the beach, he could not but admire how unconcerned everyone was about their bodies, with the exception of the show-offy aerobics fanatics in the fitness centre on Kalakaua with their blaring music and the trainer’s stentorian instructions, enhanced even further through the PA system, like a direct exhortation to the innocent tourists below feasting on their ice-creams and assorted cream lattes to desist from enjoying themselves. At one stage he could have sworn one guy wearing dark glasses and a white vest was looking directly at him; it was a stern, reproving stare. As he arrived at the Hilton Hawaiian Village where he was staying, he overheard a unique chat-up line, at least as far as its audacity was concerned. A forty-year-old white American hunk of beefcake in a baseball cap tethering an Alsatian that gazed longingly towards the beach was delivering his line to a young Asian girl: ‘You wanna go out?’ Nod. ‘Get some drinks?’ Nod. ‘I give you my number’. ? All this was issued in deathless staccato. In Gerald’s experience, a nod or even a ‘yes’ did not necessarily mean a ‘yes’ as such, however.

Maybe I should try that, Gerald thought. I’ll first have to get myself a dog, a proper body, a baseball cap, a tan, a fixed smile, and a deep American accent, though. And maybe some balls, too. The second day he went on a drive with a Chinese teacher called Amy about twenty years his junior as much to have something to do as for companionship. Through her he had been witness to one of the most startling transformations he could remember. At her presentation she had dressed like a glittering Disneyesque character. By the time she turned up for their drive, she was unrecognisable in straight slacks, a white shirt, untucked, and a formless fishing hat. But she turned out to be an informative and pleasant guide, knowing the island very well. They kept to the coast, jumping out to take the odd photo with the seas as collaborative backdrop. She seemed to keep her distance a little once she learned he lived in Japan. He probed a little about the Chinese attitude to the Japanese and tried to represent the Japanese in a responsible and reasonable way but she was non-committal. He guessed that she did not want to get into an argument. One memory from the trip would stay with him for some time. They were eating at a wayside restaurant, a tent with plastic tables and chairs in front of a camper van. A Spanish-speaking family was chatting away; what he took to be the not-quite-middleaged father and mother were sitting at right angles to each other, forming an L, which two young women, whom Gerald took to be their daughters, mirrored on the other side of the table. They were relaxed, the mother being the most active conversationalist of the four. He had no idea what they were talking about, but he could almost enjoy their good-heartedness vicariously, chuckling to himself when they laughed at a comment. Then, a young girl, perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old, drifted into the picture and sat on the man’s lap, turning her head and gesturing to him to scratch her back. She grimaced slightly as he followed orders. The possible father pushed his hands up under her top till they revealed the straps Infra-noir

of her bra, then, tentatively, almost regrettably, retreated. The girl demonstrated instant satisfaction but pulled away when he started to nuzzle the nape of her neck, the mother and probably the other daughters all the while oblivious of the intricacies to the exchange. Gerald felt a mixture of sickness and envy. ‘Did you see that?’ he said to Amy. ‘What?’ Issue no. 1

‘There’s no way that guy’s her father, surely.’ ‘I didn’t see it’ was Amy’s only reply. Elizabeth would never let me do that, he thought, but then his daughter and he had hardly the warmest of relationships. The next day, a presentation on nuclear disarmament caught his eye. He ended up missing it but arrived in time for the second presentation on climate change by the

same speaker and for the discussion that followed. The presentation was so abstract that he wondered for a while if he hadn’t stumbled into a parallel conference on some New Age philosophy or even a cult recruitment session. He managed to get in a couple of questions about Chinese militarisation and the recent Russian bomber training missions in the North Atlantic. The genial speaker professed surprise at mention of the 05

arms build-up and the manoeuvres — unless he was just being tactful, given the international make-up of the audience. An hour later, after a brief chat with the speaker, Gerald was back at the beach, day-dreaming about why he wasn’t out there surfing, recalling that there had been a presentation on one woman’s debilitating fear of water and her recovery. ‘I’m not afraid of the water, really,’ he thought. ‘I’m just afraid of everything. Well, I was afraid of marrying and having kids, at least. Maybe I still have it in me to be a Mishima, but I’m not keen on suicide. Maybe I’m just not frustrated enough.’ He walked out onto one of the piers on Waikiki, congratulating himself on bringing his sandals. He turned to one side and sat, his legs dangling. A figure edged up wordlessly next to him. He hadn’t been aware of anyone else on the pier. ‘No book today?’ she enquired. Her skin was right up against his. This time she was wearing a golden-yellow bikini almost the same shade as the sand. There weren’t many Caucasians he found attractive these days. He had long since sur06

rendered to the exotic, slender, tiny frames of Asian females. ‘Oh, I’m too restless to read for long periods right now.’ Then, he added, ‘Aren’t you with someone, if you don’t mind my asking?’ ‘My parents are over there. They don’t mind.’ He looked over at the beach, following the line of her arm, unconvinced this method was precise enough to locate her parents, his eye drifting in the process across her small chest as if he were an awkward teenager. ‘Boyfriend?’ She shook her head dismissively, perhaps regretful in some way. ‘Well, you won’t be without one for long, I can tell you that.’ From the corner of his eye, he saw small, black crabs sidling across the boulders along the side of the pier. ‘Just look at that,’ she said, ‘I wonder why they are black.’ ‘Yes, with all these beautiful, bright colours all around us, too.’ ‘Maybe it’s camouflage?’ ‘On these rocks, yes, maybe it is.’

‘Have you ever wanted to disappear like that, into the background?’ she pursued. ‘Well, you know what Jack Nicholson says in The Passenger?’ He received a blank look. ‘ It’s a film.’ ‘Yes?’ ‘People disappear every time they leave a room, though not in so many words.’ ‘So many words?’ He chuckled. ‘It’s just an expression. It’s not important.’ But she picked up the thread. ‘I heard that what we see isn’t actually physically coloured the way we see it, right?’ ‘Yes, I’ve heard that. I’m no expert, but it’s obviously how our brain interprets light coming off certain molecules, or not, as it were.’ ‘I heard,’ she added eagerly, ‘that everything is really more or less grey, if we could see how it really is.’ ‘Yes, it makes me think of black holes. How everything can be eaten up as if it never existed.’ ‘Black holes scare me.’ Infra-noir

‘Oh, don’t worry. There’s nothing to be scared of,’ he reassured her, only realising the unintended joke as he enounced it. ‘For example, do you know how many people you would have to crush together to make a black hole even the size of a proton?’ ‘No.’ ‘10 billion! More than all the people in the world alive now.’ ‘Ay ay ay. That’s crazy.’ Then, ‘I’m not afraid any more. You’ve cured me!’ ‘Happy to help a charming young woman like yourself.’ She leaned towards him suddenly, pecked him on the cheek, then ran off. He tried to see which direction she was headed, but she soon merged with the beach and then, he supposed, the crowd. ‘$50 to the house and then you discuss with woman.’ He glided in rather than walked. One could be forgiven for forgetting the sleaziness of the area he had just passed through, a cluster of lonely commercial entities more looking like car parks than shops and businesses. She was Asian, slim, doe-eyed, diverging little from the photo he had seen on a forum, but now she was dressed in a white romper. She washed him down in the shower, got him to lie face down on the mattress, and started oiling him. He would only go so far, maybe wouldn’t even ask for much more than a little skin contact. He certainly didn’t trust any of these places for more than a little rubbing. At bottom, he did not want full engagement with a woman, only to look at and be looked at. His was a fetish that he could hardly name, a fear that shifted him to an unnameable region that could only be experienced for a short time, as if he were being pushed to the edge of a cliff, dangled, made to long for a descent and demise, then pulled back suddenly to safety. In reality, the sensation was little more than a need to be touched rather than to touch. All the rest, the images of transgression, darkness, bright lights, fear above all, were decorations around this world, like topping on an ice cream that had disappointed merely by the fact that he had chosen the wrong flavour. He came out into the semi-gloom feeling like he could taste the different colours of the lights which moved with his steps like bright, animated illustrations of the atoms of a nucleus. His senses sharpened, the air around him almost achingly clear now, he was, improbably, dissatisfied. Issue no. 1

The reptilian eye was perfect in its unblinking, primordial concentration. Keeping his distance as the instructor had advised, Gerald felt nevertheless outside himself. Coming to the surface, he saw the Spanish family on another boat. The blonde girl was wearing a pink outfit this time. She waved to him, then dived in. The father followed her down; neither was snorkelling, unlike him. He swam towards them, then went under for a while when he lost sight of them. Coming up, he saw them about ten metres away, the man encircling her. They had no interest in turtles. He swam as close as he could to them without seeming like a voyeur, dipping under once more, just long enough to see the man slide her bottoms down and reach between her legs. Their bodies turned in the water to keep buoyancy so that Gerald could now see the girl from behind and the man’s other hand encircle her buttocks and move a finger into her. Part of Gerald wanted to see more; another part could not bear it. Back at the hotel, he slept for hours into the evening, his mind full of the scene he had witnessed in the water. He felt a crushing weight on him, as his own body slipped in between the couple’s and then out, pulled back and forth by the current; then he was undergoing the more familiar feeling of a sleep paralysis that he often experienced at home. He was aware of something immensely dense pressing on him, which he now saw as a hole in the near distance that was tightening like the pupil of an eye, decreasing in area as it was irised to an unimaginably small point and drawing him around it at increasing speed. By moving a limb, he was able to pull out. Awoken with a start, he rushed to the balcony of his room. Looking down at the shore from his hotel, he saw the water inundate first the beach, then Kalakaua, and sweep away every person in sight. There had been almost no warning. Very soon, it was lapping at the sides of his seventh-floor room. He had never been to Pearl Harbor before in all his visits. He really did not know what to expect, having only the most superficial knowledge of the war in the Pacific. As a Brit, he had no real point of contact for it, and no interest in POW stories, but a casual mention of it in the presentation had captured his interest. At the wide-ranging Visitor Center he was fascinated by the petrified missiles in the grounds of the museum and horrified by the sheer lunacy of the Japanese attack, an attack that led in a straight line to the

bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in his opinion. Only the Regulus missile, from what he knew about its role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, meant anything to him. No time to go on the ‘boat’ or the memorial to the Arizona that still leaked oil. She was there, of course, in the shadow of her unlikely father, in a red dress with white polka dots hardly fitting the spirit of her surroundings, unless she had stepped out of a party in a New York apartment, circa 1945. The man was photographing her against the dark blue Regulus I. Gerald seized his chance and went up to them to offer his services for a two-shot. She stood, imperial, holding her father’s hand. He didn’t seem to speak any English, to Gerald’s relief. He was back to his novel on the beach, nearly finished. Light was fading and the population was swelling slightly as tourists congregated for the sun setting on the horizon as if in search of some revelation. She was wearing bright orange. ‘You have nearly finished?’ she said, indicating the book. ‘I thought you wouldn’t come,’ he replied calmly. She smiled as if to say, You knew I’d be here. ‘The man I see you with. He touches you a lot, almost like a lover…’ She lay down, not quite next to him, but at an angle, making an L, so that he saw the fullness of her left thigh and her cleavage in deep foreshortening, emphasising its depth all the more. She reached out for his hand, pulled him up, demanding they have their photo taken. ‘I don’t have a stick,’ he joked. She took his mobile and handed it to an Asian woman, who duly obliged. Behind him, the orange ball of the sun was about to touch the very rim of the sea. He let his hand fall down her back, and held her bottom gently. One kiss before she walked off? He did not look at the photo until he was on the plane back to Japan. Her Day-Glo orange bikini had succeeded in merging perfectly with the orangey-red of the great orb, rendering them a unique mass of saturated particles and pixels.

Exit and Entry by Thomas StrĂ¸msholt

he designated office hid at the far end of a long passageway stuffed as a sausage with citizens. Due to the official documents provided him, Konrad Z. was spared the ordeal of queuing up, but he still had to traverse the throng. The corridor stank of urine and garbage; it was as noisy as a bazaar. Some of the applicants looked as if ready to depart for their desired destinations while others had wisely brought blankets and pillows. There were steel cages containing chickens and a booth that sold fat-dripping samosas and baklava. Infants cried, heated discussions were held, dice were cast on the stone floor, delirious grievances were uttered in broken voices. Konrad Z. had once been there as a child with his mother. He had forgotten, now he remembered. They had waited in that stinking corridor for what seemed weeks. She had entertained him with tales of the country they were to visit for the holiday, told of its poppy-red pastures and bright cities, the ocean and wide-open skies. He recalled the surf of foaming waves, ragged kites lost to the wind and the fresh smell of brine. The request was denied and they had returned to the crummy apartment in the outer suburbs. The wave of memory broke against the barren seashore of his present self, coming and going like chest pains. He forced his way through the crowded corridor, trying to ignore the children nudging and tearing at his trousers, the pleading hands and eyes, the curses spoken through

clenched teeth. He uttered apologies for every step and held the faux-leather briefcase before him like a shield; if he stumbled and fell, these desperate people would surely devour him. The low-ceilinged office was cluttered with grey filing cabinets. A heavy desk entrapped a small bald-headed creature who was too engaged in chewing his pen to notice the applicant. The desk was coated with papers and dust and dead flies, and the inkpads were crusted. The clerk chewed on; behind him, on an otherwise bare concrete wall, hung a yellowing calendar dating back years. The office stank of stale liver pĂ˘tĂŠ, rank armpits, years of gastric odours and angst. Finally the clerk removed the pen from his mouth, placed the stump behind his right ear and asked for identity papers. He wore a tired and embittered face. He groaned as Konrad Z. produced the tenpage document that declared his case an official journey. Almost half the sentences were deleted by a thick black marker, and the remaining was worded in the usual government style that resembled the gibberish of a dipsomaniac. The small official scrutinized the document for a long time, the pen once again between his teeth, before stamping each page. Additional forms needed to be drawn up, typed, signed and stamped. Before all the documents were in order, Konrad Z. had finished several cigarettes, and three flies had breathed their last and crumbled up on the dusty desk. Infra-noir

According to the instruction, Konrad Z. was to proceed directly to the Consulate to apply for a permit of entry, but when he arrived at the address, it proved an empty lot. As one should never trust street signs, he approached a passer-by. The woman, obviously inebriated, was nevertheless compelling as she assured him that the Consulate was located in a whole other district; but where exactly, she was unable to recall. At a phone box he browsed through a charred directory, but apparently the Consulate was not listed. He hailed a taxi, casually naming the Consulate as his destination. The driver sped down streets and turned corners as one would who knew exactly where to go. But after a while the car slowed down, and they began to drive in circles. They move around a lot, you know, the driver explained. Back at the department, the receptionist was very obliging, but the information was at once disputed by a fellow clerk, and it soon turned into a row. Konrad Z. took down several addresses which all proved as many culs-de-sac. Enquiries made at random around the city had the same outcome, at the post office it even came to blows. He felt lost, traversing the city for hours on end like an Ariadne without the ball of thread. He began to doubt the existence of the Consulate. When was the last time he had heard of anyone legally crossing the border into that country? Relations between the two sovereign states had always been tense, at times even critically so, but as far as he was aware, diplomatic relations had never broken down completely. His fear of how failure might affect his position at the department grew to a sick feeling in his belly; also, he had gulped down too much coffee. Still, he wandered into another café. Both the waiter and the place looked run-down, and indeed he was the only customer. In his mind, he went over the rambling lines of the letter of instruction. The object of his journey was undisclosed, but once across the border, he would meet or be accosted by a certain unnamed person on an unspecified date and time at a blacked out space. He was advised to bring a toothbrush. He had finished his second cigarette when the espresso arrived, a cup of black sludge that one would have to ingest by spoon. Guaranteed to dispel all your troubles, said the decrepit waiter, looking very complacent. Most likely, murmured Konrad Z. grimly and lit a cigarette. Asked if he happened to know the whereabouts of the Consulate, the waiter claimed that indeed he did, it was right around the corner: Enter the first gate at the left and proceed to the inner yard… Konrad Z. listened to the detailed but improbable directions with half Issue no. 1

an ear. When he made to leave, offering a weak excuse, the senescent barista shook his head in sad disapproval, saying, The Consul herself comes here every day: she appreciates my coffee… Although the information was sure to turn out another false lead, he reflected that he had nothing to lose by investigating. The tenement in the second and inmost yard was hedged in by taller buildings, the windows were coated by grease and the staircase was shambling. At the uppermost floor, one of the doors had a handwritten note tacked on, announcing, to his great relief, the premise of the Consulate. The bell was answered by a dirt-faced little girl who put out her tongue at him. He was at a loss for words, but apparently he did not need to announce himself. The one-room apartment was dark and reeked of cabbage. The Consul, a thickset woman dressed in a bathrobe and slippers, was seated at a dinner table dominated by a heavy typewriter and littered with paper, cigarette butts and broken china. The girl circled the table in slow pirouettes but was stopped short by a yell. Please excuse the clay-brained bastard, said the Consul and gestured for the visitor to take a seat. Konrad Z. stated his case. A two-week vacation, the Consul repeated with a growl, aren’t you the lucky one … Konrad Z. unlocked the briefcase and produced his identity papers and permit of exit along with the customary bribe. The Consul did not make pretence of reading but merely browsed and stamped every page. Each time the stamp went down, she breathed a curse. More papers needed to be drawn up, signed and stamped. The Consul was agonizingly slow at typing, employing but two fingers and yet often hit the wrong keys. Konrad Z. squirmed in his seat. The stench of cabbage was nauseating, and his belly ached horribly. He glanced at the little girl who was now perching on the windowsill, her face turned towards a slip of electric blue sky, and he recalled the graceful sway of a kite on a breezy afternoon sky. The water foamed about his knees, splashing his garters, it was chill but he didn’t care. Then he heard his mother calling from the illuminated pier… Bull’s-pizzle, Sir, it’s done. And so saying, the Consul shoved a pile of papers across the table; he could hardly shut the briefcase for papers. Night had fallen and the control point was washed in blasé searchlights. A sodden booth, a barrier, two guard turrets and an impressive amount of barbed wire marked the crossing. Beyond that lay a vacant tongue of twilit space at the other side of which another booth flanked by turrets was visible. 09

The guard on duty was half asleep, and Konrad Z. had to tap the window in order to get his attention. Rather late, isn’t it, said the guard, yawning. Konrad Z. murmured an apology, he was really sorry to cause a disturbance at this late hour but circumstances and so on. The guard sighed, pulled on his hat and straightened. In response to his request, Konrad Z. produced passport, exit permit, visa, insurance card and health record, and slipped in a banknote. The guard looked over each document very carefully or at least made a convincingly pretence of doing so. Once in a while, he took a bite from a greasy sausage, reminding Konrad Z. that he had not had anything to eat since noon. In the turrets, he could discern the silhouettes of armed guards moving about: it seemed their rifles were aimed at him. On the wall behind the sleepy guard was a clock whose hands ticked loudly, slowly by as the guard scrupulously turned the pages with fatty fingers. Konrad Z. supposed that the sluggish pace was excusable considering the late hour, but it felt like a punishment. At the thought he got very nervous and even more anxious that the guard should notice and misconstrue. He smoked several cigarettes in swift succession while trying hard not to glance up at the turrets. Didn’t you hear? said the guard. Konrad Z. turned in bewilderment. You may pass, Sir, move on, progress, go, absent your person. And just like that the barrier was raised. Konrad Z. had rushed the documents into the briefcase and scuttled across the border, but halfway across, he discovered that the zone was not the void space he had supposed it to be. At one side of the road there was a cluster of tents, at the other a heap of what looked like grave markings. He heard a voice call out something about the devil’s hand but was unable to make out the exact words; it must have been very funny though, for a low rumble of laughter followed. He wondered at that but decided that it was not his affair. He was almost calm as he reached the other control booth. Although the guard was as surly faced as his opposite, Konrad Z. was confident that the day’s troubles would soon be over. Sooner or rather later, he corrected himself after a quarter of an hour had passed by, and the guard had barely even finished examining the visa. He broke the seal on his last packet and offered the guard a cigarette. Most kind, Sir, said the guard and pocketed the packet. Not allowed, he explained with a look at once sad and smug. Konrad Z. felt helplessly angry. He wanted nothing more than to punch that false face into the semblance of a hu10

man being, but of course that would never do. Besides, he was sure to come across a kiosk once the control was finished. And so he waited patiently while the guard went through his papers and smoked his cigarettes. His belly rumbled terribly. There’s a page missing, said the guard. Konrad Z. starred dumbly at the supposedly deficient document. He protested that there had to be some mistake. There is indeed, replied the guard, and it’s not mine. The tension in his voice was unmistakable. It was the voice of someone not to be contradicted. He smiled very amiably though, and instructed Konrad Z. to return, secure or replace the missing page, and come again. So you will be a bit delayed, he added, and so what? In the greater scheme of things, so what, I ask you? Konrad Z. thanked him for the advice, faintly. He plodded back through the gloaming zone separating the two sovereign states. As his briefcase had not been properly shut, he searched the ground for the supposedly missing paper. Lost in this brooding search, he had forgotten all about the strange camp and was startled to hear laughter issuing from the tents. He hurried on, disconcerted. Back at the control booth, he lurched at once into an exasperated chronicle of his ordeal but was cut short by an irked bark: the guard had no idea what it was all about. Konrad Z. looked closer and perceived that the guard’s features, although surly, were those of a stranger; apparently there had been a shift of guards. Upon request, he emptied the briefcase of papers for the new guard’s scrutinising eyes. The guard yawned, lit a cigarette, and perused the documents. Yes, yes, he murmured, but then: No, no, he sighed, there’s a page missing, you know. Konrad Z. knew, or so he said, suspecting that a mistake had been made. He tried to insinuate as much, but that only worsened the situation. The guard was adamant, and Konrad Z. had to give in. He would have to return, he supposed. But the guard shook his head: regrettably, a person was not permitted to cross the border without sufficient papers. What am I to do, then, said Konrad Z., his heart dropping as by a flush chain. The guard merely shrugged and picked up a porn magazine, signifying that the audience was over. Konrad Z. paced indecisively about. He tried to remember travelling through the bright cities beyond, on the other side, but was distracted by an acute awareness of being watched closely by armed border guards. Disheartened, vaguely suspecting what he would find, he once more wandered into the twilit zone. Infra-noir

The Laws of Reverberation by The Editors

“In the walking there is no walking. There is no walking in what is left to walk. Without the walk and without what is left to walk, there is no walking.” Nagarjuna, the Nihilist, according to Jorge Luis Borges and Margarita Jurado in “What is Buddhism”

1. The multiple is the most persistent of all archetypes, the most painful of utopias. For the multiplicity exists in the air we breathe, in the forests, in the oceans and in the overloaded cities. This clash of manifold and disconnected elements could indicate a swarming universe, constantly filled to the brim, but, in fact, could also indicate the opposite: emptiness, lack, privation. Multiplicity and the abysmal void are not only the edges of a scale, but the shadow of each other, like the straight line on a paper that shows the way it was drawn. These tensions, which are reflected in every molecular space of our existence, are present here, for instance, in this literary magazine published in the brief temporal interstitium of Eternity.

1.1 Thus, by being a manifold of variations in the band below the spectrum of the absence of color, Infra-Noir presents emptiness and multiplicity. These two notions, in this magazine, become living entities, that breathe, think and live. It is not just a dialectic synthesis, a coincidentia oppositorum; but the physical appearance of entities that should be concepts, strolling along the paths, without previous destiny or orientation. Issue no. 1

1.2 The subjectivity of poetry, the intense objectivity of the narrative, the sharp focus of the essay, the short notes, the long expositions, the rites, the precious books, the imaginary libraries, the fragment, the vision, the senses, the gradual loss of rational reactions, the logic, memory, forgetfulness, displacement, dangerous places, unexpected events, nameless darkness.

1.3. Apparently, Infra-Noir is a literary magazine, published in Germany and which brings together several authors, from different countries, gathered around the strange resonance of its proposal, the evil spell of its name (which already pleased the Romanian surrealists). But, in fact, it is much more than that; It is a kind of cult, a secret group, although evident and open, that articulates the end of the world. At least of the world as we know it. 11

“On a certain time I saw not far from me a meteor — a cloud divided into smaller clouds, some of which were of an azure color, some opaque, and as it were in collision together. They were streaked with translucent irradiations of light, which at one time appeared sharp like the points of swords, at another, blunt like broken swords. The streaks sometimes darted out forwards, at others they drew themselves in again, exactly like combatants; thus those different colored lesser clouds appeared to be at war together; but it was only their manner of sporting with each other. And as this meteor appeared at no great distance from me, I raised my eyes, and looking attentively, I saw boys, youths, and old men, entering a house which was built of marble, on a foundation of porphyry; and it was over this house that the phenomenon appeared.” “Conjugial Love” by Emanuel Swedenborg

Infra-noir

Black Box by Alcebíades Diniz

t was an ill-famed neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. One of these places, though numerous all over our planet, singularly difficult to describe because of its fragmentary, composite nature, a kind of immense dissimilar coverlet, an unrelated fusion of forms and phenomena specific to so many peripheral borders in infinite similar metropolises. A river — and there are so many rivers in this city — dense, dark and rotting meandered across the district, waters slowly flowing in the most logical direction, the sea, so distant and so close at the same time, carrying so many dead particles in a clear forecast of a future in which itself, the river, its goal, the sea, and humanity that has dumped the already mentioned lifeless particles will no longer exist. But for now, everything would be its normal course, this life of multiform communication, continuous and monotonous. The riverside houses, which accompanied the irregular layout of the river, were wooden stilts that balanced precariously on the barren and sterile soil. These stilts are located on a kind of borderland between the river and a wide, fast expressway, which also targets the sea. Following the avenue, other types of construction made up the neighborhood in fact: standardized housing sets, concrete hives with regular holes in their façade for the entrance of air and sunlight; sheds reconverted into religious temples; vacant lots with barbed wire marking its limits; a profusion of parabolic antennae groping the space above zinc ceilings; decrepit potteries; malls and other huge bazaars; inexpensive little shops of diverse products, from building materials to beverages; chop shops focused in the most popular model parts; small and tumultuous bars, usually neighbors of the equally characteristic temples. In the middle of this incongruous totality, of these echoes of voices and desires dispersed, despair and daily life, stands La Issue no. 1

Caja Negra, a unique building of mysterious origin. There was no record of ownership or remembrance of when it was actually built; the municipality, due to lack of options, took possession of the building. The architecture of this box looks like something out of Baalbek, a temple in honor of Bacchus, perhaps. But with a notable difference in coloring matters: black was the color chosen for the columns, made of concrete in imitation of the buildings of the ancient Roman acropolis in the East, as well as for the rest of the building. Breaking this somber uniformity, shone in the pediment a neon light, livid and greenish radiance, with the word CINEMA. An observer, out of nowhere in such a neighborhood, might think that this strange edifice, isolated by vacant lots and earthmoving machinery, would in fact be the distorted shadow projected by some complicated optical effect, the assembled structure of a cinematographic setting for an Action or Terror thriller, or even a ghost, a deformed apparition, a supernatural effect on the urban fabric. But the place existed, its walls and columns were solid, and it was possible to enter through its portals which only opened at night, ruled by a seemingly complex mechanical system. Inside the black box, a set of old wooden chairs and a white screen in the background. In a small room adjoining the main hall, opposite the screen, there is a movie projector. It is a complex and ancient apparatus, intended for the projection of silent films, built, apparently, in the 1920s, in Germany, although this can not be said with any certainty. The projector’s instruction manual, with a large section apparently concerning the automatic mechanisms that controlling the portals seem to have been written in a strange dialect variation of Yiddish, unknown even to experts from other countries who came es-

pecially to study the functioning of the machines of the black box. What was known was that after the automatic opening of the doors at about ten o’clock PM the projector started to run automatically. But the projected films — stored somewhere in the guts of that infernal machine — did not constitute a unit, a narrative, a complete and recognizable program. They were rather pieces of various films in a high state of degradation by the corruption of silver nitrates, often designed in a kind of superposition that makes the recognition of fragments impracticable. So the scene of troops suppressing protesters in a port area — one of the earliest fragments displayed — could have been taken from Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkym, or it could be a cinematographic newsreel coming from some corner of the world reporting the same kind of violent, eventually tragical fact. The scene of the officer dying in front of his troops might or might not be from The Last Command, a film directed by Joseph Von Sternberg, or it could be of some patriotic movie so frequent in the past as nowadays. Impossible to identify the cascade of scenes and images dumped, hypnotically, in spectators, whether they exist or not. After an hour of this, at eleven o’clock sharp, the screen goes black and the doors closes soon after, to resume the same procedure, identical in itself, the next day, and the next, successively. Perhaps one day all the complex enginery that governs the existence of the Black Box will eventually break or a dreadful and marvelous fire obliterate the building and even its foundations. For now, it has become a tourist attraction, enticing amateurs and serious researchers from the world to Buenos Aires. They seek the logical explanation for all that. However, the brightness, which shines night and day, persists in repeating only “CINEMA”. 13

Resurrecting Sandor by Chris Mikul

like bringing the dead and forgotten back to life. I suppose it’s partly because I find it hard to believe in an actual afterlife, considering the whole idea wishful thinking. Oh, I admit I indulge in this sort of thinking occasionally (although I also entertain the possibility, which hardly anyone else seems to, that an afterlife might as easily be nightmarish as pleasant, just like this life), but ultimately I’m not persuaded. It seems to me, then, that there are two main ways to achieve some sort of personal immortality (at least on this planet, among other human beings). The first way is conventional fame, to be known for your actions by a great many people who can convey your personality, beliefs and experiences to any number of eager biographers. The second way is to write a great deal, and be lucky enough to have your writings survive. I write this having spent the last six weeks or so researching and writing an article about a very strange man named Sandor Berger. He was born in Hungary in 1925, saw most of his family taken to Auschwitz where they perished, and spent a year in Buchenwald before being liberated at the end of the war. He came to Australia as a refugee in 1949, and six years later self-published his first collection of poems, which are dreadful. His deficiencies in English can be forgiven, for he only began learning the language after his arrival in Australia. What damned his poetry was his conviction that to be worthwhile, writing had to convey some message about society and how it could be improved. And Sandor had a lot of advice to give — he wasn’t happy with the world at all. The world didn’t get much better for him after that. As a refugee, a ‘New Australian’ as they were called, he faced the prejudices of older Australians who couldn’t handle all the foreigners with odd names who had suddenly found their way to Australia. He

couldn’t find a decent job. He couldn’t find a girlfriend. He came to believe there was a vast conspiracy against him, and one of the strangest aspects of him was that, although he was Jewish, he thought his chief persecutors were other Jews who despised him because he had opposed the founding of Israel. After being diagnosed as a schizophrenic in the mid-1950s (a diagnosis he found outrageous), he added psychiatrists to the list of his persecutors. He could rarely refrain from talking or writing about the conspiracy against him, even when applying for work, which of course meant he didn’t get the work (and took this as further proof of a conspiracy). Though he had no inkling of it, he was always his own worst enemy. Sandor wrote hundreds of letters to newspapers over decades, commenting on or complaining about all sorts of things, from censorship to the amount of makeup modern women wore (way too much, he thought). Few of them were published so he published them himself in several ‘books of protest’. He churned out a host of other publications over the years, printing them himself with a stencilling machine: more collections of poetry, sheet music for songs he had written (he had dreams of becoming a singer), pamphlets on Israel and psychiatry, one-page flyers scrawled in his spidery handwriting (including advertisements for a girlfriend). He sold his productions in makeshift stalls on the streets, and because his ideas tended to be controversial, he was often harassed by the police and members of the public. He lived all his life in boarding houses in abject poverty, yet was sure he was destined for great things, and constantly coming up with grandiose plans. He founded a society called INSOREOLIOEA (short for the ‘International Society for the Reorganisation of Life on Earth’) which would be devoted to doing good works. He spent a year constructing a model of a 3,000-foot towInfra-noir

er to be erected in Sydney, which would be topped by an artificial sun and a telescope of his own design. He fired off letters about his plan to all sorts of important people from politicians down. No-one took any notice of any of this. As a teenager in Sydney in the 1970s, like most people I was aware of Sandor. He was the guy who walked around with a placard reading “Psychiatry is an EVIL! It must be BANNED!” on his chest. I remember reading the very long notices that he hand printed in capitals, always ending with his swirling signature, and attached to telegraph poles. While I could see that he was, well, a little crazy, I also admired his tenacity in trying to get his beliefs across. Later, I managed to obtain some of his publications, which are now very rare. I had wanted to write about him for years, but never had enough information on him to do it, for after his departure from Australia around 1990 (in somewhat mysterious circumstances) he had been almost forgotten. Then one night my friend Sunil Badami handed me a massive block of a book by Sandor called Prison (fittingly, it was on the occasion of a talk I was giving, along with three other speakers, on the subject of ‘Weird Sydney’). At the beginning of the book, Sandor writes, “Don’t judge this Book (in Style or Content, etc) or its author by it (or without it) or the Characters in it; before you have read it all, (and VERY CAREFULLY) through”. Well, I thought, I guess I owe it to Sandor, and resolved to read all of its 780 or so pages of tiny print, all of it typed (badly) by its author. The first half consists of Sandor’s account of being imprisoned for a few weeks in 1968-69, after he got into fights with two men who disapproved of his publications, and another man who lived in his boarding house and had threatened him. The rest of the book reprints more of Sandor’s letters, along with letters other people Issue no. 1

sent to him, and he thought nothing was too trivial to be included. The book was, in short, a mine of information about his life. Having finished it, I took myself off to the reading room of the State Library. Sandor, believing his works to be of profound importance, had lodged just about everything he ever published with the library so it could be studied by future generations. Here I found his third book of protest, at 730 pages almost as long as Prison; his lengthy ‘erotic’ screenplay for Springtime in May (a movie he would direct and star in); his book denouncing Israel and a whole box full of pamphlets and broadsides. And as I methodically read his books, it dawned on me: I was not just the first person to read most of this; I was the first person who had read any of it. Okay, I’m exaggerating slightly. A few people had obviously picked up and perused his pamphlets over the years. In one of his early protest books, Sandor reprinted a letter sent to him in the 1950s by a university student who said he admired his poems (God help him), and later, a few freethinkers wrote to him expressing an interest in his ideas. But had anyone else ever read Prison or Springtime in May in their entirety? I very much doubt it, and I doubt anyone else will be reading them any time soon, if ever. Little did Sandor know when he was mailing all his books to the State Library that I was the only reader he was going to get. Well, it was heavy going at times, I admit, but I made it through to the end, gathering along the way more than enough information to reconstruct much of Sandor’s life and get an idea of his turbulent, self-defeating personality. He remains a minor figure, certainly, but as a confirmed and outspoken contrarian his voluminous writings offer an interesting perspective on many of the social issues of his day, and I think, at least in a small way, he deserved to live again. 15

Word-Clock by Anon

We Experience Brevity Distance Horizon Serendipity Flowers Meetings Crossroads Forgetting Regret Loss Memory Time Treasured Forgotten Lost In The Sands Of A Momentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Existence Mortality 16

Infra-noir

The House of Silence: An Exposition by Avalon Brantley

WARNING – those intent upon ‘merely taking the story as a story’ may prefer to first read the Book itself, if only to avoid ‘SPOILERS’.

Issue no. 1

he following series of annotative notes have been prepared as a kind of expository coda to the long narrative document recently published under the title The House of Silence. It is hoped that these selective details might grant the wondering reader deeper insight into some of the symbols and referents implicit in this extremely strange account. The House of Silence was discovered a few years ago, fortuitously, after an inspired second reading of one of my own favourite horror novels: William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland. I had found a perfect incidental soundtrack for this indulgence, composed by the German dark ambient project Nostalgia. Soon after began a binging upon all the works by Hodgson I collected for years but not yet fully ingested. I even, at long last, imbibed in full his massive, flawed and sentimental masterpiece, The Night Land. I was both disappointed at the unfulfilled promise it had made to my imagination whilst still unread (a phenomenon not remotely uncommon for me), yet I found a deep, lingering charm in its quaint yet epic atmosphere—the almost hypnotising pseudo-archaisms, the unrelenting otherworldliness of its settings and inhabitants, the aura of its dark, almost childlike mystery and wonder. The dreamful flavours of that dense, blocky text persisted with me, as did the realisation that the famous house on the Borderland featured alike in The Night Land: it was the sinister House of Silence itself—the Borderland of Borderlands! And I wondered, had very many others of Hodgson’s readers made the same connection? The parallels seemed downright intimate. I became further fascinated with the fact that Hodgson’s inspiration for The House on the Borderland came from the brief time in his childhood when his father acted as an

Anglican minister in western Ireland. Biographical data for this part of Hodgson’s childhood was scant indeed, but already my imagination was busily filling in the blanks with what remained from an extensive interest in Irish history, myth and poetry dating back to my University years as part of a Master’s Thesis that in the end I chose not to pursue. And then, suddenly, the manuscript came to me, as if unbidden, as if it had known the time was right! I found Ashley Acheson’s voice spellbinding, in every sense; reading it so soon after having devoured so much of Hodgson’s fiction I thought, this had to be more than a mere hommage—it felt all along as though something between The Night Land and The House on the Borderland had been missing, some puzzle piece, an unexpected medial frame in a triptych held between them? (But of course the tale has always seemed eternal and neverending….) I thought, a bit blithely I admit, well, Ashley must have been channelling the spirit of William Hope Hodgson himself! Yet as I investigated his genealogy (and mine), how could I dismiss as mere coincidence the fact that Acheson was born in January of 1919 … 9 full months after Lieutenant William Hope Hodgson was killed in action at Ypres! The implications concerning resurgence, metempsychosis and borderlines/liminal spaces are, I would venture, the symbolic framework undergirding both of Hodgson’s indispensable novels, as well as that of this present story. This present, secretively cyclic, story we are a part of.

Dedicatory Epigraph Hodgson opened The House on the Borderland with an epigraph dedicated to his 17

father, entitled “Shoon of the Dead”. The House of Silence begins with a poem I likewise have penned in dedication to him.

Foreword I have detected in the names of several of the Achesons an uncanny connection to certain members of the Hodgson clan, although these must be but ‘nominal echoes’, permitting no more deeper insight into their characters than would the mere similarity in name. My research into the Hodgson family was swiftly exhausted, and even an inquiry made via my own family connection with the Anglican church leant little lumination upon the brief time Samuel Hodgson and his family spent living in County Galway. collapsed sometime in the late 1870s — at the conclusion to The House on the Borderland. nearly sixty years ago — 1953, the year when Ashley’s journal was written. ringfort, or caiseal — early medieval ringforts, common in Ireland, were constructed in a wide variety of sizes over hundreds of years. The foundation of the western wing of the House was initially a far larger ringfort which partially collapsed into the ever-ravenous chasm beside it, so that the tower subsequently built upon its base must be of uniquely crescent shape. One might picture a lesser version of the famous ringfort Dún Aonghasa (Hillfort of Aengus!) on the seaside cliffedge of Inishmore, only inland, partially fallen, and afterward rebuilt. This later tower was made one with the House of Silence, and bears some similarity to tower-houses popular during the late middle ages (on the Scottish Borders this sort of structure was often called a peel) of which Yeats’s Thoor Ballylee is perhaps the most familiar example. And the ghost of Yeats himself haunts this region—he too called County Galway home, and always felt nearest his true roots in the west country. Lagoo, An Ghraig and Kraighten — the first two actual villages help approximate the region where the House must have stood. In Ireland of the late 19th century, where the frame story of the two English fisherman in The House on the Borderland was set, the railroads were already too extensive for it to be possible that the village of Kraighten could lie a full 40 miles from the nearest train station at Ardrahan, as Hodgson describes it (unless like Skellig Michael, Kraighten lay out to sea!) But… if Hodgson ‘misspoke’ and meant in fact to say it was 14 miles from Ardrahan, the location of both the village and the house beyond it places us 18

at a very interesting confluence of both present day and ancient boundaries, as is clarified during the pivotal meal scene in Chapter X: Repast. haunted faery ráth — the word ráth is synonymous with ringfort, save that it tends to imply earthen construction as opposed to the stone above described. That said, it was often the term used to designate a hillside thought to be haunted/inhabited by the good folk. This might often involve a construction of stone which had, through centuries, come to be covered over by earth and verdant growth. Regardless, whether as rings or hollow hills, ráths would host both the dreams and nightmares of many imaginative generations.

Chapter I: Finding Foundered Foundations Leo—a backward question mark — the stars here described are as they might have been seen from western Ireland on an evening in March, 1932. At the time the boy is gazing, Canis Major and Minor etc. have yet to rise over the southern horizon. he is silent drifting dust — an echo of the fate of the dog Pepper in Borderland. tut tut tereu — the cry of the nightingale Philomela from the Greek myth is ‘fie fie Tereus’, a mournful rebuke for the crimes of her rapist/butcher brother-in-law. ‘Tut tut’ is perhap a closer approximation of the bird’s actual call. Nazi subs out in the water — personnel of the Mercantile Navy were often in harm’s way during WWII, both at sea and at the docks. Heathrow Aerodrome — Heathrow was not renamed an airport until the mid-1960s. Liza, Francis, Sam — William Hope Hodgson’s sister’s name was Elizabeth, although her nickname was ‘Lissie’ not Liza. Hodgson did have a brother named Frank, and a brother Chris (no relation of course to Ashley’s nephew), but no brother Sam, although his father’s name was Samuel. There is however an intrigueing character proxy to Hodgson’s father in the short story, “The Regeneration of Captain Bully Keller.” night time, all the time — the setting of Amanda’s dream might be discerned by fans of TNL as the Lesser Redoubt where the maiden Naani awaits her rescuer.

Chapter II: Ex Exilio Esker Riada — a collective of high drumlins (ridges) which ascended toward the end of the Midlandian Ice Age. It provided a natural highway east to west (i.e. from Dublin to Galway) across the largely boggy span of the island, and became the legendInfra-noir

ary boundary between two early political divisions: the northern half, Leath-Cuinn or Conn’s Half, and Leath-Mogh, the half of the island belonging to Eoghan Mogh. Sections of ‘The Great Way’ continued to be used not just for foot and flock traffic, but for a major branch first of the railway, then later still for the motorways as well. Ardrahan Station — a quite real place, then and now.

Chapter III: School Belle We’ve not sain the like from the Anglicans since — Hodgson’s own father had a reputation of being very well-respected, approachable and rather open-minded in his office, and seems to have been in the high esteem of his Catholic neighbours. turf slowly burning — compressed peat was a common fuel throughout Ireland, cut from the boggy landscape in manageable chunks to be fired in the stove. It has a distinctive and (naturally!) nostalgic odour. Amanda Panda — the title of a poem included in the first London edition of Hodgson’s novel Captain Gault, a poem which I myself have never seen, though not for lack of looking! Nonetheless I am confident that this is a completely different composition unlikely to resemble Hodgson’s original in any way beyond its title. [If any readers have access to a copy of Hodgson’s poem, which to my knowledge was never afterward reprinted, I would be very grateful for the opportunity to read it—please contact me through the publisher.]

Chapter IV: The Fallen Tower this chapter title invokes Tarot symbolism, as does the tower oft invoked in the poetry of Yeats, which in this as well is esoterically pertinent. Gabriel Furey — an echo, perhaps, from James Joyce’s “The Dead”? round tower — there is sufficient general exposition upon these throughout Silence. It is worth noting however that there really was one in Ardrahan, the scant ruins of which remain as and where described. vellum pages — papyrus manuscripts fared poorly in the wet climate of western Europe, and most literate peoples in the early middle ages wrote on parchment (made from sheep skin). The Irish though were rather unique in their preference for the skin of young calves, which first had to be stretched, scraped, dried and tanned in a laborious process that in the end rendered them beautiful and supple pages upon which to write. Óengus the Culdee — 8th-9th century cleric, possibly an actual Culdee (this has been disputed). One of the most crucial Issue no. 1

pieces of documentary evidence of him is a brief biographical poem collected in An Leabhar Breac (The Speckled Book), a substantial early 15th century manuscript. This poem is included with facing translation by William Stokes as part of the preface to his 1905 edition of The Martyrology of Óengus the Culdee. According to his 9th century biographer, Óengus became a hermit sometime after receiving a monastic education in his hometown of Clonenagh. The new-matriculated ascetic went to dwell in a place called Dísert Bethech (euphonically rendered The Birchen Hermitage) beside the river Nore. It was there he was said to have communed with angels. He spent years in this general region of the midlands southwest of Dublin, in what is now part of County Laois. As fame of his learning and practice of austerities (fleshly mortifications) spread, his peace there was increasingly breached by visiting strangers, locals and monastic students. Exasperated, he finally took to the road. It is not recorded exactly where his wanderings led him, before he sought anonymous admittance to the monastery at Tallaght where, in only a little time, his unusual learning betrayed his true identity. He thereafter collaborated with the famous abbot Maelruain upon further hagiographical works. It will be in order to show below certain lines from the same biographical poem: Delightful to sit here thus, by the side of the cold-pure Nore: though it was troopful, there was not a path of raids here, in gifted Dísert Bethech [meaning it was not a locale Norse marauders frequented] wherein dwelt the man whom hosts of angels used to visit, a pious cloister behind a circle of crosses, wherein Óengus son of Oiblén used to be. Óengus from the assembly of heaven, here are his tomb and his bed: and hence he went to death on a Friday unto holy heaven… [a few lines describe his anonymous time spent in manual labour in Tallaght, drying grain in a kiln] Before anyone [else] had arisen in the country a hard sack had he, for grinding seeds… Greenish cornblades (grew) through the hair of his head, a covering of hair through his body: seven years for him—godly the fasting… choice was the wheat: often his face changed colour, between wind and winnowing chaff.

[the preceding lines are fascinating—on the one hand, we might simply picture Óengus draped with the dust and debris of his work, but it seems not unreasonable to read a subtle (even sexual?) pagan quality inherent here, likening him to a harvest god, and one embodying the vegetal qualities of his sacred agrarian domain. I believe this is a glimpse of melding of two different cultural mindsets at a watershed time for Irish culture: this is Borderland; it is Pagan Christianity.] He went one day to cut wood, Óengus the flame on Bregia; while lopping it—tale with beauty— he struck off his gospel-hand [his right hand, as Stokes advises in a footnote: ‘Óengus must have chopped wood with the left.’ The loss of his hand will connect him in The House of Silence with the Irish myth of the Nuada of the Silver Hand] His (left) hand comes to the forearm, Óengus without semblance… what miracle was mightier under heaven? healing without defect, without blemish! [i.e. his right hand regrew… again he is comparable to a corn god] Let him pray for me with that (right) hand… The man who wove quatrains has come here, the sun of the west of the world, of Meath: a bank (whereon) the headache attacked him, a bank which is called the bank delightful. [The headache is particularly interesting… might Óengus have suffered some sort of visionary epileptic episode? I am reminded of a recent reinterpretation of the Egyptian ‘Dream Stele’ of Tuthmosis IV unearthed at Giza: a surgeon at Imperial College London (Hutan Ashrafian) has posited that temporal lobe epilepsy was responsible for the visions recorded on the stele. According to the inscription, the sun (god) itself spoke to Tuthmosis while at its zenith. Dr Ashrafian reminds that direct sunlight is often a catalyst for seizures in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, and suspects that this may have been a genetic disorder throughout this pharaonic dynasty.] reverse tonsure — a distinctly Celtic method of tonsure, widely disdained by Romish churchmen. Although it persisted into the 9th century, its exact appearance seems to be lost to time and subject (like nearly everything) to academic contention. ergo, too much ergot — the consistently damp climate made it hard not only to preserve paper materials, but to properly dry ones’ grain harvest. Some scholars have blamed a great many strange events and ex19

periences of the Middle Ages on the hallucinogenic effects of ergot poisoning. oiled skins battened with long bones — currachs would typically be made of wickerwork and covered with cowhide and tar. This description seems to hint at more grisly construction.

them in their low cast state. One of those brothers (once locked in his swinish form) was also known as Froechan. These sibling pigs were eventually hunted down by Queen Maeve, save one Brogarban, who escaped. Maeve collected their severed heads at Dumae Selga—‘The Mound of Hunting’.

Chapter VI: Waking the Dead

Chapter X: Repast

Melville and Stevenson … John Conroy Hutcheson — we know from his own journal entries that Hodgson too read at least some of these authors during his formative years. There are comments he made concerning Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race for example, and several themes from Hutcheson’s works about oceanic adventure, piracy and the Sargasson Sea seem to have sown not a few kernals in the fertile soils of Hodgson’s mind. Let them eat oysters! — though one might perhaps detect a wee echo of Marie Antoinette in this, as well as the Gospel admonition of casting pearls before swine, shellfish in Ireland were long stigmatised as bia bhoicht—pauper’s grub, food fit for only a scrabbling peasantry. And poetic satires really were feared by the Ard-Righ—poets were some of the most highly educated and respected personalities in Celtic culture, and their maledictory verses considered a kind of deadly magic. I had not thought there would be so many — an echo from Dante’s Inferno? Themes from the Florentine bard’s Divina Commedia and Vita Nuova seem recurrent…. I Will. — given the metempsychotic possiblilities, I Hope the last word in this chapter was capitalised intentially.

One shorter lock — a distinctly Irish hairstyle of the Middle Ages, mentioned by Edmund Spenser in his 1596View of… Ireland, and near a century earlier by Laurent Vital as well, consisted of shearing the hair rather close in the back but allowing it to grow long in front into a kind of fringe, which at times—once it had neared the eyes or become matted and tangled—could be gathered into a single distinctive forelock. Tuadmumu and Connachta — Tuadmumu, the medieval kingdom of Thormond (Northern Munster), was eventually carved from Connachta in the 5th century CE by the Déisi of Meath, according to the (much later) assertions of the Dalcassian (Dál gCais) tribe who claimed rights to the Déisi’s kinship, and kingship. Both the Dalcassians and the Uí Néill descended from Conn of the Hundred Battles, for whom Connachta was named. However, according to the 14th century Leabhar Mór Leacain (Great Book of Lecan), the Dalcassions were themselves a colony of Firbolgs. Early chronicles echo ancient legends that Connacht was first controled by Firbolg tribes until they succumbed to the Tuatha Dé Danann, followed by Milesians from Iberia (not to be confused with Anatolian Milesians). Ard Ruide poem — the Dindsenchas (lore of places) were a series of poetic tales and an important source of traditional Irish mythology, composed in some cases as early as the 11th century but quite likely based upon oral traditions stemming even further back. sombre bas-relief face — there are multiple instances in world mythology of shields with human faces, such as the Aegis of Perseus. One crucial example from Irish myth is the Storm Shield of Fionn MacCummhail, the history of which appears in the Fenian Cycle of the Duanaire Finn, here translated by Eoin MacNeill: ‘When Lugh overcame his grandfather Balor, he stuck Balor’s head in the fork of a hazel. The drip from the head split and withered up the tree. Fifty years later Manannan had the hazel cut down. In felling it, twice nine men were killed and nine more were blinded by its poisonous vapours. Manannan had the frame of a shield built up of the branches. Bearing this shield, he won many battles…. it came

Chapter IX: Bound to the Borderland Silent One — ‘And round by the House of Silence, wound the Road Where The Silent Ones Walk. And concerning this Road, which passed out of the Unknown Lands, nigh by the Place of the Ab-humans, where was always the green, luminous mist, nothing was known….’ William Hope Hodgson, The Night Land Froechan Dalcassian … Fland … Liath MacLobais — according to the Dindshenchas of Dumae Selga (part of the Prose Tales in the Rennes Dindshenchas… see note to Ch.X below) Fland and his sister Treis were two of the six siblings who enraged the sorceress Garbdalb by eating the nuts from her sacred grove. She turned those three brothers and three sisters into pigs. Previously the six were housemates of Derbrenn, Garbdalb’s daughter-in-law and a lover of the god Aengus Og. Derbrenn continued to protect 20

at length to Fionn. But when the gods were overthrown by [Saint] Patrick, the shield was burnt before Oisin’s eyes…’ An image of the head of Balor of the Evil Eye, formerly king of the demonic Fomorians, would have made of such a shield a new Aegis. Lady Gregory enigmatically states that ‘when [the shield] called out it could be heard all through Ireland.’ But what if Patrick burned the wrong shield? Jerome and Vitae Patrum — Vitae Patrum (Lives of the [Desert] Fathers) is an 17th century collection of far earlier works concerned with the primative Christian ascetics, whose theory and practice were formative for the development of monasticism. These eremetic devotees sought to emulate the life of Jesus not just in his works and teachings, but in his suffering and violent death. Martyrdom—later specifically designated in these zealous communities as red martyrdom—required bloody death, something several Roman emperors were more than pleased to render them. However by the 4th century CE, once Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, this type of fate (fortune?!) became a far less feasible aspiration. No more the dream of the lions’ unloving jaws in the gloriously gory arena, the crosses and scourgings and wheels; even less so in far quieter Ireland. Hence the distinction of white martyrdom, as expounded by Jerome in his Vita S. Pauli (Life of St. Paul [the Hermit]): essentially an abandonment of all that which the adherent has ever known and loved—a departure from the world, a plunge toward strictest solitude, ascetisism and, likely enough, death. The aspiration toward white martyrdom was quite influential upon Irish monks, who are said to have found (and colonised) the monastic island Skellig Michael after they stumbled upon it having forsaken the land and all upon it for the watery westward void, a kind of suicidal plunge into the cloudy arms of God. White martyrdom is also described (as bánmartre) in the so-called Cambrai Homily, one of the earliest surviving examples of Old Irish. There, a third and uniquely Irish degree of martyrdom is defined also: glas—blue (or green) martyrdom. This colour seems to have many lurid and livid connotations; in certain contexts it indicates several ‘horrifying penances,’ such as self-immersion in cold benighted riverwaters, or resting in beds of thorns or stinging nettles, or holding long watches over a putrifying body. Poteen — also poitín. Essentially Irish moonshine. Ulster Scots-Irish immigrants to Appalachia carried on their tradition of Infra-noir

distilling their ‘water of life’ in the American backwoods, and poteen shares with its New World cousin similar reputations (e.g. that a bad batch’ll make ya blind) and folksongs (cf. the American bluegrass ditty “Good Ol’ Mountain Dew” with ‘The Hills of Connamara’, in which it’s dubbed ‘mountain tae’). These potent spirits haunt a number Irish folktales, several collected by Thomas Crofton Croker. Irish Monster meeting — Monster Meetings were mass protests of the early 19th century, organised by the Liberator Daniel O’Connell with the aim of seeing repealed the 1800-1801 Acts of Union which had stripped Ireland of her parliamentary autonomy. West Briton — a mildly derogatory term for an Irishman holding England in excessive reverance, especially as regarded its mannerisms and fashions. Cromwell’s occupation — during the reign of King James I numerous Englishmen, and outright swarms of Scots, flooded Northern Ireland to colonise the newly confiscated lands, especially in the vast ‘plantation’ of Ulster. Many settled well, married locally, and went native (this was a repetitive trend in Irish history—settling Norsemen and later Normans had undergone the same transformation several centuries before). A generation later, the storm of the English Civil War seemed for some rebellious souls a faint ray of hope. But in 1649, after the bloody overthrow of Charles I, a victorious Oliver Cromwell set his reddened sights upon Ireland. Cromwell now possessed both a hefty war chest and a terrifying army of more than 12,000 war-hardened soldiers known as Ironsides. The Parliamentarian campaign was more than a mere repression; it was a mission of vengeance meant to pay the Irish back for the massacre of Ulster protestants some four years before. Cromwell declared his own atrocities ‘a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches….’ Any Catholic clergymen discovered in the towns his army sacked had their heads broken open. At the siege of Drogheda, governor Sir Arthur Aston was bludgeoned to death with his own wooden leg. A large church in which about 100 parishioners sought shelter from the violence was fired at Cromwell’s command, incinerating all citizens within. Ordinary people, even children, fleeing starvation and plague-ridden conditions within besieged cities of the south were captured and hanged. Battalions in transit across the countryside slaughtered livestock and destroyed by burning all food which they didn’t opt to steal, leaving the inhabitents Issue no. 1

to a winter destitute of nourishment. Disease was rampant. Some estimations reckon well more than half a million native Irish dead from war, famine or bubonic plague. The Parliamentarian commander Colonel Richard Lawrence wrote that after nearly four years of these intentionally genocidal tactics, ‘a man might travel twenty or thirty miles and not see a living creature, either man, beast, or bird, they being all dead or had quit those desolate places.’ Cromwell’s occupation rendered these truly dead Silent Lands. Nordic axe for a cap feather — although victorious at the decisive Battle of Clontarf, High King Brian Boru did not live beyond that day. As he knelt alone in his tent, offering a prayer of thanks for his victory, a Viking soldier slipped quietly inside and buried a battleaxe in his brain. Hell or Connacht — in the years after Ireland was crushed by war, Cromwell’s administration let a steady stream of fresh blood. Trials and political witch hunts effected the plundering and, quite constantly, the callous execution of landowning Catholics. The intention was the complete displacement of surviving Catholics to rural ‘wastelands’ west of the Shannon, if not further—if their complete elimination could not be conveniently effected. As Cromwell once before had roared it, the Catholics of Ireland ‘could go to Hell, or Connacht.’ For many, with nary a scrap of food, nor property to grow it on, there would have been no practical distinction.

Chapter XI: Ill Repose Night Garden — perhaps this is the Moon Garden, an ‘olden and happy fancy’ briefly painted by the The Night Land’s unnamed narrator. naughty game of the beautiful — characteristics quite reminiscent of Lady Mirdath, called also Naani in The Night Land. little red pooka — the púca is a fairly ubiquitous spook of Celtic folklore, usually of a malefic though occasionally ambiguous disposition. A shapeshifter, in tales it most commonly takes the form of a horse. Perilous Chapel of altared-reality — a key motif from the Parsifal (or in some early versions, Gawain) cycles of Arthurian legend, one possessed of much symbolic significance in occult exegeses of the succedent centuries. The knightly hero, whilst traversing a misty wood, discerns amidst the trees a mysterious, haunted chapel. Over the alter inside he is accosted by a powerful demonic presence, usually the Devil himself. …clear more forest — a means of clearing the land of Ireland for farming—as ev21

idenced by archaeology—since Paleolithic times. The invaders have conquered — both mythologically and historically, Ireland was a land of invasions. The ancient tales describe successive settlements and conquests by the Cessairians, Muintir Partholóin, and Nemedians (all of whom died in their entirety), followed by the Fir Bolg, Fomorians, the Tuatha, Milesians, etc.. History records a pattern of comparable regularity involving Gaels, Christians, Vikings, Anglo-Normans, French, British, Spanish, etc.

Chapter XII: The Strange Ambit sleep all the night with open eye — a twisted reechoing of Chaucer’s vernal verse. Immrama and Echtrai of Oisin — Immrama were a class of seafaring tales featuring a saintly hero (e.g. Bran the Blessed, or the later Saint Brendan). Echtrai are likewise adventure tales involving the heroes’ various departures for the Otherworld (be it Heaven, Avalon or Tír na nÓg). James MacPherson — despite their acknowledged inauthenticity, MacPherson’s pseudo-archaic poetry was wonderfully crafted and deserving of remembrance. His forgeries were, like those of the marvelous Thomas Chatterton, justifiably influential to the budding Romantic movement in literature. It is not surprising however that a resourceful purist like O’Brien would so disdain them. grey mare named Macha — Macha was a fearsome Tuatha battle goddess ‘whose mast-feeding was the heads of men killed in battle’ as Lady Gregory phrases it. The Grey of Macha was a legendary horse tamed by the Irish hero Cuchulain. black stallion called Sainglen — Sainglen is the name of the ‘black lake’ where the horse called Black Sainglain lived until he was captured by Cuchulain, who had similarly captured his Grey from a different, grey lake. red hunter called Cruinn Dergh — the name may mean deep or concentrated red. reddish-brown creature — this bizarre antlered boar, and the apparition of a woman glimpsed briefly behind it, bear resemblance to an episode from Douglas Hyde’s Sgealuidhe Gaedhealach, retold by Lady Gregory as the tale of “The Red Woman”. It seems that in the Borderland, the veil between this and Otherworld(s) is growing increasingly tattered. cut the cow’s ear — this old tradition had a number of purposes, both superstitious and practical. Cows’ blood was poured out as a libational sacrifice to the faery folk, and it was generally believed that bloodletting 22

protected the herd from disease. Such blood also had culinary uses; it might be mixed with milk, butter, soup, pudding, etc. Most crucially, since animals with red ears (especially white ones, such as cattle or dogs) are always magical, Otherworldly creatures in Irish myths, this practice thus links the borderlanded worlds of dream and waking, the ‘normal’ and the numinous.

Chapter XIII: A Night of Convocations exotic bronze horn — long sinuous horns, held high over the head of the player (like the well-preserved Loughnashade trumpet) were produced in Ireland well over 2000 years ago. bell tin a — possibly a variation upon the original pronunciation of Beltaine which, along with seasonal hints, confirms the occasion of the festivities here described. Beltaine (May Day) was the most important of the quarter festivals of ancient Ireland. calves may be suckled full thrice in a sun’span — Anglo-Saxons called this period Þrimilce: trimikling, when the cows had newly dropped their calves and their udders were so plentiful they could be milked three times a day. It was a rich, full time of the year. waltz! Purge us — Walpurgisnacht is a corresponding continental version of Beltaine. Rinka — a traditional Irish folk dance. rude masses — perhaps an aside regarding Roodmas, observed but two days later. fires so bonny — bonfires are a staple tradition of the Beltaine festival. Those first days were scribbled in ash — there seems a measure of Paschal symbolism in these stanzas. In much of Western Europe throughout the Middle Ages, the new year commenced in March, sometime either on or around Easter (this varied across place and time). It might be recognized at the beginning of March, at roughly the time of Ash Wednesday. Ashes might also be an ingredient used in scribal inks. lying white on a Sunday — Whitsunday, the Anglican angle on Pentacost, came to inherit many attributes of Beltaine—games, athletics, songs, processions, fire and feasts. felled fodder: a mast! — felled father? But would that reference the Messiah or his opposite? And ‘amassed’? ‘A Mass’ or ‘a mass’? The connectivity of all these themes of resurrection, simultaneously Pagan and Christian, seems to admit a wide swath of interpretation. craic — a good time. May mean a party, geniality, banter and boasting, snickering and shenanegans.

Infra-noir

hand that appears to me as silvery-white — this entity appears to amalgamate both Nuada and Aengus Og of Irish myth with Óengus the Culdee, as well perhaps as Ashley’s own father.

Chapter XIV: And A Day for Conviviality Delightful thus to sit — see note for Óengus the Culdee, Ch.IV. Ashley seems to be directly channeling a far older poem… gowking sound — Gaukr is the Old Norse name for the cuckoo bird, from which the synonym gowk descended. The cuckoo is a brood parasite. The mother lays her egg in the nest of another bird, to be incubated by the forced foster mother’s warmth. Once hatched, the chick will push the other eggs or young, as the case may be, out from the nest and completely dominate the continual efforts of its new parents (whom it monstrously outweighs) to keep it fed. primroses… wild garlic… golden fern — Ulster legend tells of a banquet held by Ailell and Maeve one Samhain eve, a time of year when it was believed the dead (and other spiritual forces) were granted power over the living. This myth is in a way a kind of echtra (mentioned above). Two criminals had been hanged the evening before, and Ailell offers a prize to any man daring enough to tie a wicker switch about the foot of one of the corpses. All the guests are far too fearful, but the swain Nera at last accepts the challenge. When he arrives to fulfil his mission, the corpse opes its puffy unseeing eyes, commends the young man for his bravery, and begs of him a drink. Nera takes the corpse on his back, carries him to where he may be quenched, then returns his ghastly burden to the gallows. On his return therefrom, Nera finds the palace aflame, and the heads of all its inhabitants decapitated and strewn about the grounds. He spies then a spectral host marching back into the ráth, and follows it within. Inside, he eventually meets (and marries) a strange faerie woman who comforts him by assuring him that the horrors he has witnessed have not yet befallen his friends, granting him the chance of warning them. And although he has spent what seemed a year with her in the Otherworld, he will find himself returned to his people on the very same night he had left them. Nera protests that they should never believe he had been with her all this time, at which point she advises he should bring with him a bouquet of the same flowers of summer here mentioned, as proof of where and when he has been. Crows of Cruachan — the Mound of Cruachan was the legendary abode of Ailell Issue no. 1

and Maeve, king and queen of Connacht. Amidst other fascinating aspects, some dating back to the Neolithic, is a cave long reputed to lead to the Other- (or Under-) World. From this cave, especially on Samhain when the veil between is thinnest, various creatures of a magical and often malevolent nature might be witnessed to emerge. throw the mountains over them! — in preparation for the mythic battle of Magh Tuireadh, the Tuatha magician Mathgen advises their chief hero Lugh that he, Mathgen, can hurl all the mountains of Ireland down atop the forces of the Fomor. Stone them with jagged satires! Rend them with rainn! — references again the magical potency of poetry—rainn is an Old Irish word for verses—‘verses’ which, incidentally, is itself a Latinate word with the potential for the same dual/duel meanings! Gadda — the name seems an anagram of the Dagda, one of the most important gods in Irish mythology. This is clearly a ceremonial reenactment of a kind quite likely for the late summer festival Lughnasadh, held in honour of Lugh. sun himself has taken to rise from the west — in the myths, after Lugh of the Longarm has ridden a long circuitous route around them to approach a company of Fomorians from the west, they mistake his shining form for the sun. I was born of you both — Lugh was the son Cian of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, but his mother was Ethlinn, the daughter of the Fomorian king Balor of the Evil Eye. plunged his head into the beer-filled vat — the Dagda was sent by Lugh to the Fomor camp as a spy. There he is variously offered an immense pot of soup (with a spoon in which a man and a woman could both fit in as in a bath) or a gigantic mug of beer. He is advised to eat/drink the entire contents, on pain of death, for the sake of hospitality. To the astonishment of the enemy, he manages to consume every drop, and then some, then takes a leisurely nap before sloshing sloppily home. Gules of August — in Scotland and northern England the Feast of Lammastide was called ‘the Gule of August’. Of course the heraldic colour gules is descended from an old French word for throat (cf. gullet), obviously with reference to blood. However, Ronald Hutton in Stations of the Sun has pointed out that the word more likely derives from an old Gaelic word for ‘feast’. The ambiguity of course is serendipitous. Bron Trogain — ‘…that is the beginning of autumn, for it is then the earth is in labour, that is, the earth under fruit, Bron Trogain, the trouble of the earth.’ —Lady

Gregory, Cuchulain of Muirthemne. Little is assuredly known about this goddess and/or festival. last we could see of him was his head — the Sun is set.

Chapter XV: Descensions sky falling down on us all — according to various histories of Alexander the Great, as purportedly reported by Ptolemy, the Macedonian general met with representatives of certain Celtic tribes near the Ionian Sea. When asked what in the world their people feared most, one haughty ambassador replied, ‘What more is there we should fear, than that the sky should fall on us? We fear nothing from men.’ O’Brien Boru of the many moos! — in ancient Ireland, a rich man’s wealth and status was counted in cattle. an old man — perhaps this revenant is that of the recluse whose rantings were immortalised by Hodgson in The House on the Borderland…?

Chapter XVI: The Stranger Orbits grasped empty air — ‘And I cannot touch her face And I cannot touch her hair, And I kneel to empty shadows— Just memories of her grace…’ Wm. Hope Hodgson, The Night Land Constellations spun past the window — cf. House on the Borderland, especially Ch. XV. great alleviating hand — the ultimate Deus ex Machina, and Earth’s only chance to avoid being devoured by red giant the sun by then would likely become. Hodgson had written the visionary astronomical scenes in Borderland long before a broader understanding of the lifecycles and deaths of stars such as our own sun had been developed. dragon the sun had become — and there appeared another wonder in heaven…

Chapter XVII: The Fallen World Tír na nÓg — the Land of the Young in Irish mythology. Time here passes differently than it does in the common lands of Earth; the interloping hero may remain youthful whilst vast swaths of time are passing back in his homeland. heron-like apparition — according to Yeats, the heron is the totem bird of Diarmuid, who is a kind of Irish Adonis. In a moment which augurs very ill for him, after Diarmuid is stabbed in the thigh by his lover Grania, and shortly before a series of further events lead him to his death by the Boar of Benbulben, a heron cries out. Icy-hearted Grania asks him why the heron cried 23

Infra-noir

and Diarmuid, enigmatically, tells her it is because the bird has become frozen to the rocks. tall pointed chimneys and strange twisted spires — the House perhaps as it was when Hodgson envisioned it originally. gargantuan hog — here are several dark streams in conflux: there are the connections Yeats hinted at in a note to his poem “Valley of the Black Pig”, named for a place of mythological and perhaps even apocalyptic importance in the popular imagination. He connects this entity with the boar which (like pigs in the myths Attis, Adonis and, if we accept Frazer’s interpretation, Osiris) kills the hero Diarmuid. Yeats recognised further correspondence with several other malevolent pigs in Irish myth; one such example being the Black Pig of Enniscrone. Robert Graves in The White Goddess cites the pig as the animal of death, and in the Welsh Mabinogion, swine were sent into the British Isles as a gift from the king of Annwn (the Underworld). This is particularly interesting when one remembers that the swine-things in Hodgson’s Borderland emerged from a cavern in the earth. Another crucial porcine manifestation is to be found in Hodgson’s Carnacki tale, “The Hog”. humped men — ‘…and I saw that there were six squat men that were humpt at the neck and shoulder; and they did crouch all there in a row, and were something hid by the shadows; and I perceived that they watched me; and the eyes of the men did shine like the eyes of beasts; and so shall you know somewhat of the strange terror that came upon me. Yet had I the Diskos and mine armour; and though my heart did shake a little, yet was my spirit assured to conquer.’ Hodgson, The Night Land before me were many precious things — the contents of a monastic reliquary or treasury, kept high in the round tower to, as some scholars have posited, secure it from Viking plunderers.‚

Chapter XVIII: The Season of Stirring and Resurgence hook and hair and hollyberry — see especially the rendering of this part of the myth by Yeats in his poem “The Song of Wandering Aengus.” Aengus Og was the foster-father and guardian, in both senses, of Diarmuid. A crimson-spotted salmon — nine hazel trees of various kinds of wisdom, inspiration and poetry (comparable of course to the nine Hellenic muses) grew about a sacred well in which swam five such salmon, Issue no. 1

their colour reputedly gotten from having eaten of the nuts of those trees. As happened in a rather well-known myth of Fionn MacCumhaill, anyone who ate of those salmon would become incomparably wise. courtly ivy leaf — this may seem merely an imaginative and recondite notion from Irish myth (there are so many!) but there are even recent testimonials of ivy leaves actually being played—and, reputedly, quite beautifully!—from relatively recent accounts. For several examples see Ríonach uí Ógáin, “A Tune off the River: The Lore of Musical Instruments in the Irish Tradition”. time for sowin’ | Arrives at hey of harvest tide — ‘Sowin’ arrives so late because that is the proper pronunciation of Samhain, the year’s last feast in pagan Ireland. feis — usually pronounced ‘fesh’, this may refer to both a festival banquet, or to a marriage and the consummation thereof. It was usually the occasion of a high king’s inauguration, at which he coupled with some animalian embodiment of the goddess of his tribe. According Gerald of Wales (a prejudiced source, yes, but not strictly the only one), the ceremony saw the new-made sovereign engage in sexual congress with a mare, after which the animal was slaughtered and boiled. As his subjects feasted on the meat, the king bathed himself in the broth in which it was cooked, after which he donned white vestments and stood inside a footprint carven into the coronation stone. The loaves he leaves behind all broken. — Diarmuid bears several aspects of vegetable, ‘dying’ gods, for whom (most familiarly in Christian imagery) bread is symbolic of the deity’s broken body, offered for the sustenance of humankind. twine a twig round the hanged man’s toe — see note from Ch. XIV on primrose, wild garlic and golden fern.

Chapter XIX: The Fomor Prior somehow keep my head alive — longevous severed heads abound both in and outside of Celtic mythology: the Welsh Bran, Gawain’s Green Knight, the Norse Mimir, the head of Orpheus, etc. Celts, both in continental and in the western isles, kept collections of severed heads, and there is plentiful archaeological evidence of a fanatical fascination. as though the [shield] were spinning — clearly he hints that time and space are bending, melding, and that this ancient magical object is becoming the spinning shield-like weapon called ‘the Diskos’ in The Night Land. original Irish maiden — according to Leabhar Gabhla Érenn, the first folk to suc-

cessfully settle in Ireland were the Fir Bolg. They are usually described as diminutive and dark, and indeed there is something intriguingly distinctive in the tendency in many Irish toward rich dark brown hair coupled with a fair complexion, and even eyes of startlingly light hues. These features have been subject to centuries of dispute and speculation, with recent DNA evidence supporting an ancient history of blood-ties with Spain (whence the Milesians were said to have ventured to Hibernia). writhings were a forecast — the Celtic practice of human sacrifice and ritual torture, in Ireland and elsewhere, is well attested by archaeology. In old Irish texts there is some mention of the torture of kings in particular, in the event of a bad year. Some likely failed monarchs have been found to have suffered the oft-mentioned ‘triple death’: they were garrotted, bashed in the head and then had their throats slit. Some victims were impaled, one had ropes strung through holes made in his arms, and many had their nipples sliced off—this mutilation disqualified a king immediately, it being a sign of subjugation for subjects to suck the sovereign’s nipples. One key classical reference is Strabo’s Geography, Book 4: Chapter 4, section 5: ‘They would wound a man devoted as a sacrifice in the back with a sword, and [their Druids would] divine by observing his death throes.’ foundation deposit — sacrificial victims, both animal and human, some of the latter bearing signs of torture, have been widely excavated beneath the foundations of ancient Celtic edifices. This was a common practice throughout the ancient world, not strictly unique to the Celts.

Chapter XX: Black Watershed flung both eye and sword together—like an offering — another common practice in Celtic Britain and Hibernia was to offer not only human sacrifices to various bodies of water, but weaponry as well. Sundry martial objects, including the famous Battersea shield, have been found in the Thames, as just one of many examples. The tendency seems to have been that swords were deposited in rivers, while shields and other objects (if not left directly in a grave) were given over to lakes and bogs, often enough without the association of a corpse. The evidence makes it increasingly clear that it was the weapons themselves being offered… perhaps one legacy of this practice lies in the legend of the Lady of the Lake, whose hand had parted the twilighted waters of her home to offer to Arthur his holy sword Excalibur, in Avalon…. 25

July / August There’s a Black Hell Waiting for them One day Once the crocodile tears Have dried into ghostly crust And my history is levelled By their tide that never Quite covers the bones Of their faces and the Best of their wishes I remember nothing now But the emerging light And the everlasting future silence And the pallid x-rays of their smiles ....

August / September Flight ......... And an inner silence Like a peace that I cannot Yet understand The walk down to the Adriatic, The erection below the waterline The emptying of the mind Into a solid sun of bliss The cracked step in the lobby The distant sound of the lift The peace behind the door The isolation in language That I utterly accept…

September 6 / November 8 From the bus as it slows I can see everything Through the mesh of gentle rain; A specialist standing at The door of his consulting rooms… He wears a white coat With history book skill And as expected Has thin black framed glasses And an oblique distance In his face As if purposely thinking Backward into the past. His consulting rooms are housed On the ground floor of The unassuming apartment block. The polished nameplate is prominent. I’ve seen him before in my imagination But not my dreams. That is an important distinction, Don’t you think? I write this in a coffee house In Great Russell Street With the only sound, The coffee machine’s momentary Gush of boiling steam and water And the sound of someone behind me – Three sausages on his plate. ‘Cor, Somebody loves me’, he says As the plate was set down before him On the table, Surveying this modest feast. I wonder ...... I think the doctor would Know, all those miles Away, standing in the mesh of gentle rain. He could tell me.

Infra-noir

a sequence by Jonathan Wood

I’ve got LOVE and HATE Tattooed on the knuckles of my mind

September 5 The rains came early And persisted. The doctor said that I had Beautiful blue eyes And that the form of my face Was perfect, Classical, Dalmatian, Greek perhaps Around his neck and wrists Amulets of metal and blue stone The Serbs made him Parade naked around his village And in his constant searches His brother’s body remains Undiscovered. The eternity of sadness In his eyes Ran its course in tears And deep in his journeying heart A quest for peace and knowledge In the language of others.

Issue no. 1

September 9 / November 8 Flight ..... In reverse A dropping back Into the story, Preparing for descent Into the perfection Of numb streets And vacant thoughts. Bitter ash upon the tongue, With the emerging future silence Laid out in envelopes Upon the mat. A looping ‘welcome home’ That I can no longer stand to hear.

Pendant — Arid This is just how things are sometimes, How things work out, Best to move on seamlessly Into the next chapter, The next reel, The next goodbye kiss into Dreamless sleep, Where no footprints happen, Where the sediment Falls to the bottom Of the glass Like silent snow or ash, Where tears vanish into The memory pool Of saline despair and loss Where no ripples break. No voices, no reassuring Gentle qualified fingers closing Pale eyelids in the afternoon.

The Peacock Island by Luiz Nazario (translated by Alcebiades Diniz Miguel)

e live imperceptibly immersed in a network of social relationships that, in an equally imperceptible way, facilitates our lives through daily rituals. Stripped of the comfortable mesh of these relationships, now I only relied on my own strength to weave the fabric of my practical needs into a hostile, or to be precise, indifferent world. Until a new mesh was woven around me, the smallest practical problems assumed monstrous dimensions for me, shortening the time when I could effectively exercise my freedom. Researching in Germany for my PhD on Klaus Mann, I needed to divide my time between the research in the archives, the translations of Gothic German, and the need to take care of my food. There were strict time schedules at Mensa (the University cafeteria), so I should stop the research when work began to take its best pace. The supermarkets closed early, forcing me to abandon half-way the translation of a difficult text to run after a bottle of milk. At weekends, Mensa did not work, and I had to provide groceries, facing the supermarket queues, which persisted in the stress of the cash register, where I barely breathed between the packing, the search for the right amount of money, the return of the change and the loading of the cart, without delaying the chain of consumers. Ultimately, the inevitable practical problems devoured large portions of my time in Germany, a country I might never return to. I could only defend myself against this consuming rhythm with the establishment of a new network of social relations, but without the slightest chance of meeting someone just with my academical duties. Even reducing the time spent on the practical problems of life to the maximum, my free time would always be less than desired. There was a huge amount of materi-

al in the library, including the possibility of access to any published book in the world. In the impossibility of reading everything, I photocopied the rare editions. And with that I lost more time. My emotional state was rather precarious, and my nights were haunted by strange dreams. One of these dreams haunted me for months. A crazy dream, with the same narrative in a cyclical manner. This dream visited me at least once a week. I could almost imagine that it had really happened. But had not he really happened? In the dream, I saw myself on board in a ferry, waiting, with other tourists, for the departure. The distance traveled was short, lasting no more than ten minutes. How to calculate, however, the sensations in the form of time? Surprising myself by saying: ten minutes. Perhaps the crossing lasted an instant, or an eternity. But the ten-minute sensation was constant in all my dreams, so I can say that the crossing lasted ten minutes. Suddenly I was on the Peacock Island, before a beautiful wooden castle, all white, in the shape of a stylized ruin, surrounded by gardens, where peacocks and other rare birds walked, as in an ecological reserve. The carcass of the castle was not restored, keeping its original appearance: it was not a standard ruin, like so many in Germany, but an authentic ruin, like something from a fairy tale. Beside the entrance to the castle a young girl, accompanied by her younger brother, waited in silence. The two children were unaccompanied, but they were not curious. When I tried to open the door of the castle to see its interior, the girl shouted to me that one could not enter the castle without the guide, that his parents were to call him.

I thanked her, smiling, at the information, but from my reply, the girl realized I was a foreigner and it made her so terrified that she tried to protect her little brother with her arms, then running away with him as if I were a monster. I did not blame the girl for her hysterical reaction: every day the TV featured frightening news about the AuslĂ¤nder in Germany and the violent demonstrations they inflicted on unemployed young people, with the attacks with Molotov cocktails in asylum shelters, with unwanted foreigners being burned Alive. I decided to stroll around the castle waiting for the guide. I crossed a beautiful bridge in the middle of the woods, admiring the peacocks proudly lifting their satin feathers sometimes green, sometimes white, until I saw something moving among the trees. I approached and could see a man with rude features, who rose abruptly from the ground and ran. Another person who was startled by my presence, I thought, irritated. The guy had even forgotten his coat on the grass. I walked to the place and soon realized that what seemed to be a jacket was, in fact, the lifeless body of the girl who had run from me frightened. Horrified, my reaction was to get out of there as if he were moving away from a catastrophe, a curse. But when I started the race I stumbled on something soft: it was the body of the girl's little brother, who also lay there inanimate. As I felt the horror crystallize inside me like an ice rock, I awoke from the dream bathed in sweat. It was as if a beautiful fairy tale turned into a horror movie whose images I could not bear. The Peacock Island had been tainted by something unspeakable that I dared not define, however much I knew, something that now rendered every reality intolerable, including my very existence. Infra-noir

Beyond Dead by Nigel Humphreys

am beyond dead, far from life having quit the safe-keeping of bones. I have no mass. I am no longer relevant, like a moment’s spindrift, assuming structure where there may be none. It feels as though I have been here for days, maybe weeks, yet there are no days. Only interminable night. And no sleep and no dreams to break this terrible monotony. To embody and embolden ignorance, make ignorance incarnate, was clearly the intention but I had not expected this — this hermetic darkness. Where are others? Are there others? There must be. For now I am alone. There is nothing here. Not even ground to move along. Everywhere about me, in every direction, is impenetrable starless night as though I am at the centre of a black void. All is nothing. No features. No sound. I am neither hot nor cold. And there is no one and no thing here, wherever here is. Yet if I exist, and I have reason to think I do and therefore the best of all reasons, there will surely be others too. To see, hear and commune with through a flavour of physics specific to this new self, and quite beyond Newtonian observation, I suspect. Illogical to think otherwise. If I assume continuity and alignment I will learn what is required of me, having retained planetary knowledge and memory. And what memories they are! Oh, that they had been erased! Except for my childhood years perhaps. Yet since I have retained my reason I must put it to some use while for the moment I am inert, since there are moments. Here appears to be eternal night but there is time in this non-place. Though so far no means to measure it. My sequential thinking alone creates it. This conclusion is already in the past and my next inference, whatever it is, I will pluck from the future. My future. Yes, it seems I have a future. To suppose otherwise would give the lie to this present impasse. And yet these new moments can only be reactive and reflective since nothing is happening. Here. What surprises me is that I am not elated at finding myself still extant. Oh, I know I was known for my Deist beliefs and in public it 30

is true I affirmed the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. But if I am honest, now, in my heart of hearts my observation of life only ever pointed to the absolute termination of self. No doubt such hypocrisy is not unique to me. And certainly not this! Suspended in darkness like a dead fish at the bottom of a quarry lake. A stand-alone thinking mind with nothing stirring above or below me. Nor in front or behind me. Neither on any side. If I had sides. And I am not sure I do. Silence appears natural here and I have no fear. I do not understand that but am glad for it. I am content to wait. What else can I do? Extrapolate from inertia? Make deductions about nothing? Deduce what? That eventually I may have the means to move about and join others. If there are others. And if there are may I not anticipate friendship, loyalty, love even? But wait! Why not also vengeance and hate? Ah, the thought grinds the mind with fear. What if there is only hate and retribution? Then I would be in Hell. And yet I am without fear of this place. What troubles me are those here who might seek revenge. Not my new surroundings however featureless they are. I can only hope that a new topography when this cloying night lifts is to my taste. Will there be soil, water, fire, gas, mountains, towns and cities? There is nothing of these yet. When will this darkness end? When will someone make contact? Will someone make contact? Perhaps I am being processed in my absence. I strain to hear but there is nothing to hear. And nothing to see. And yet, I am largely content, existing in a vacuum. All I can do is pass the time with thinking to the point. I should have known. Speculation in the name of religion never earned one solitary word of response in all the millennia man has existed. Faith was born of the terrible fear of isolation and non-existence. The loss of self. The annihilation of personality no matter its groomed sophistication. It was called faith but in fact is was hope. A simple hope beyond the rot of flesh. And there was no evidence that faith or hope was ever re-

quired. Now I am beyond death. That frail hope has been realised. It has become fact so why is there still no response? And why did we have to live in ignorance of this addendum to Earth life, denied all knowledge of where and what I am now — extant but little more than that. I had no reason to anticipate this. But it would imply intention would it not? Whose intention? Am I justified in supposing a who because I am still me. As self-consumed as ever. Yes, I admit it. There is no shame in that. How else can it be? But surely I can expect others to come soon. Will this dark silence never cease to deafen? In this awful solitude I have only myself for company. Shall I whistle to keep my spirits up? Spirit? How can I? I have no lips to purse. Yet… Ah yes, I hear myself whistling. Can I hum? Shall I hum a tune? I’ll hum the Marseillais…and there it is. Crisp and clear. Somehow I hear myself humming. It will pass what passes for time here… And now I am bored. Someone in authority will surely come. A Tiresian figure perhaps, to explain what I must do, what is expected of me, if anything, what passes for a way of life here. Not King Louis I hope. He will certainly have it in for me. If reprisal is permitted here. And if this is Hell then that is likely. Yet I do not feel I am in Hell. And certainly not in Heaven. Whoever comes the first question I will ask is why one mode of existence should succeed another; why my brief materiate span has been supplanted by this existence of the mind. And will there be accounts to be settled for all I have done, or not done? I signed away so many lives. Cutting them short for the greater good. Will that be justification enough? Will our religious teachers in all their various vestments be proved correct after all? Will there be judgement? How I despised their self-righteousness. Even if my continued existence has settled the great question of survival once and for all they did not know. No one knew. It was guesswork. Nothing but that. Am I deceived or has the darkness weakened? I have no eyes and yet…yes, this black Infra-noir

cast appears to be breaking up. There is an up light. Very frail but I am sure of it. The darkness is less dark now. Ever less dark. At last! And there are shapes in the distance. How do I see them without eyes? And yet I do. In every direction. Amorphous upright shapes. Drifting like slow flotsam. In clusters. And no indication of who or what they are. Demons or angels or spirits of the dead? Perhaps they are the creatures who naturally inhabit this wretched region. And now for the first time I begin to feel cold. A coldness which teaches of despair. My contentment shudders. Suddenly I am uneasy. I do not like these strange forms. There is something malevolent about them. This is certainly not Paradise. But it may be Hell. Yet why am I in Hell? Do my good works count for nothing — the candles I burned down to the metal through solitary nights drafting laws to protect the nation, championing the cause of slaves, thespians, defending Jews? The commissions and tribunals I sat on dispensing justice with the sword of law. Do they count for nothing? I have not asked for much in life. I have been frugal and moderate in my tastes. Lived a sober, God-fearing life. Yet am I still to fear God’s judgement? But not like this! Faced with these hideous figures. Gathering in numbers. I must hold myself firm. Brace myself. At least it is no longer dark. Perhaps I will soon wish it was. Are they getting nearer now? Yes, I am sure of it. I see them better now. They have the pallor of cerecloth and bring a sickly sweet smell with them. Violets perhaps. Sharp. Fierce. Noxious. And yet they are still unrecognisable though they grow taller the nearer they get. Were they once human? There are hundreds of them. Some hang back. Others drift ever nearer. Drifting because they have no legs. No arms. No heads. Those nearest look like headless torsos tightly wrapped in bandages which is why I cannot make out limbs if they have them. I fear them as though they accuse me of some terrible crime. Why will no one come to protect me? Issue no. 1

Wait. Those nearest have stopped. They are quite still now as if waiting for the others to catch up. They are within the range of stones if there were stones to throw. Nothing good can come of this. I am greatly tormented. They must be demons? Malevolent creatures. The Devil’s henchmen. And their numbers multiply. Rank after rank. A silent claque waiting for the curtain to rise. Or a trapdoor to open. Or a blade to drop. I am surrounded by violent denunciation and yet nothing is said. At least I hear nothing. And all the while the choking stench of violets… and now something else, acrid, metallic and yet not metal. One draws close. Approaches relentlessly. I see limbs pinioned by rope. And a stale crimson stain where the head should be. The vile thing is upon me! It will slam into me! And I have no means of evading it! Its blood! The stench! I cannot bear it …Go away! No! No! … Where did it go? It vanished into me! I feel its weight! Oppressive like despair. Crushing my spirit! And now another comes at me too. Impossibly close. I feel its burden. And others too follow quickly. From every direction. Somehow I seem to absorb each shrouded shape and know its melancholy. I have no choice but to suffer these terrors. I have no eyes to close, no nose to hold, no legs to run. And still they come at me in their hundreds. I am in Hell. In Hell indeed… Yet why? Why must I suffer this? I kept the commandments. I lived a simple celibate life, lodging in a carpenter’s house when I could have been in palaces. I refused to exploit my public office for gain. I made do with my miserable deputy’s pay. I killed no one though I caused many to die it’s true, but always for the good of the state. In good faith. And I made sure their deaths were quick and painless. I stole from no one. I never missed mass unless I was too busy with the nation’s affairs. I coveted no one’s wife. Honoured my parents while they lived. Gave to the poor. Championed the disadvantaged against the privileged few. I stood out for equality, fraternity and liberty. What

more could I have done? Does this count for nothing? Is no one listening to me? Many died, yes, but many more were saved. Terror was necessary. A swift severe justice. An emanation of virtue. Conscription and the end to the civil war depended on it! The spectacle of public execution was a necessity. The people had to see justice done. They had to know fear. Surely that was only reasonable. Didn’t I suffer its ignominy and terror myself. Exposed to the ungrateful herd whose lives I had striven to better. Wigless. Humiliated high on the scaffold. My hands trussed behind me. And suffering more than most with pain from the gunshot wound to my jaw. I can hear myself even now scream in agony as the executioner removed the bandage to clear my neck for the blade. Was that not enough redress for any wrong I may be judged to have committed? I do not deserve this. These horrors! And still they come with their lifeless limbs and blood soaked necks and still I can do nothing about them. Will this go on for all eternity? There are as many as ever. Surely there will be mercy! Mercy, I say. Have mercy on me! God have mercy on me … Gone! They’ve gone! All of them! Gone! Everyone of them! In the instant I begged for mercy. Oh, what joy! What relief to be surrounded by the nothingness of night again. Thank you, God! God be praised for his blessed mercy? Mercy…What mercy did I ever show? And yet I had no occasion to show mercy. Did I? So why do I see the face of Lucille Desmoulins! Camille’s wife. My boyhood friend. Her mother pleaded for her life but I could not answer her letter. France must always come before loyalty to friends. But yes. I could have shown mercy to her. I could have made an exception. Perhaps I should have. Is that why I am suffer these vile outrages? And if I am not mistaken…Oh, my dear God! No! Yes! The darkness lifts again and I see the shapes regathering in the distance. Multiplying. An army massing just as before. Is there no end to this torment? Have I destroyed mercy so there is none for me? 31

preview on Issue no. 2: Corruption of Heliotrope by Louis Marvick | Light and life by Michael Dembinski | Four Elemental Invocations by Forrest Aguirre | molar by Krzysztof Fijalkowski

Issue № 1 of Infra-Noir Published by ZAGAVA® in the summer of 2018 Edited by Jonathan Wood and Alcebiades Diniz Copyright of texts by the authors