The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal. Sean Dixon

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СКАЧАТЬ threats, using coercion that undermines the sanctity of and that stamps and spits and trammels our constitution – you’re … the Pony Palimpsest!

      Now Runner was overjoyed. ‘Don’t you call me a Pony Palimpsest.’

The reader, like Priya, might turn to Romy and ask, ‘What does it mean?’ and be as unsatisfied as Priya by Romy’s response: ‘It means the gloves are coming off.’18

      Missy continued to berate Runner in a manner that might require more footnotes.

      ‘But I’m not sure you’ll accept the book any other way!’ protested Runner.

      ‘I will not accept any book this way.’

      ‘But you have to accept it whatever way will work!’

      ‘What’s the book?’

      ‘That’s the book!’

      And Runner pointed to the heap of stones at Anna’s feet.

      What did we see? We saw a pile of stones covered with small notches, some kind of writing. If there was a palimpsest there, it was literature written over archaeology. Any pony prints in that hard clay would have been left thousands of years before it was ever dug up, baked and written on.

      Still, impressive as the individual stones might have looked from an archaeological standpoint, there was nothing to suggest we were looking at a book.

      Runner had anticipated our ambivalence.

18 A palimpsest, of course, is a document that has been written over a pre-existing document, a holdover from the days before printers, when paper was precious and writing took a long time. So the image of a Pony Palimpsest, in the mind’s eye of the members of the Lacuna Cabal, is a skittish young horse mucking up a pre-existing document, preferably printed on beautiful medieval parchment inscribed by monks. ‘You are the Destroyer’ would be a synonymous statement.

      ‘I assure you: it might appear cumbersome, but it’s a real book.’

      ‘Um,’ said Missy, who never said ‘um’. ‘What’s it called, Runner?’

      Runner bit her lip. ‘That’s a matter of opinion.’

      ‘Runner, I’m not going to choose a book that looks like that and has a title that is “a matter of opinion”.’

      ‘He Who Saw Everything. That’s what it’s called. It’s Mesopotamian. It’s pretty much the first book ever written. And if we are to hold on to our status as the premium book club, then we should be interested in reading the first book.’

      There was a pause. And a sigh.

      ‘I was going to propose Possession.’

      ‘That book is fifteen years old!’

      ‘Your book isn’t even a book. It’s a bunch of rocks.’

      ‘And I’m willing to bet we’ve all read Possession already! Every single one of us!’

      ‘Not as part of the group.’

      (Aline and Romy agreed quietly that Possession was an amazing book.)

      Runner shifted in Du’s arms. ‘I can’t argue right now. I’m in pain.’

      ‘Well, suffer,’ said Missy and immediately regretted it, since it had become clear in that moment, to her as well as the rest of us, that Runner’s leg was hanging strangely off the soldier boy’s forearm. The truth was, Missy didn’t want Runner to suffer anything but defeat, but it suddenly didn’t sound like that. She was, for this rare moment, tongue-tied.

      We were all looking at the leg. Aline finally ventured what she considered to be a reasonable argument, expressed in a tone of compromise: ‘Runner, I’m just not sure the Lacuna Cabal should be reading, like, unpublished material –’

      Unfortunately for Aline, this was the argument Runner had most hoped to receive. ‘Just fuck off, Aline, okay? Why should the Lacuna Cabal be a carbon copy of other book clubs, reading only material that has been copied ad infinitum? I just want to try this book, okay? It’s my most favourite book in the whole world and just because it’s carved in stone and it’s written in an ancient language and there’s –’

      An ancient language?

      ‘– only one copy and it looks funny or weird or whatever, doesn’t mean it sucks, Aline, okay? I bring the true experience of the prehistoric reader straight to your door. But if it sucks, we’ll switch, okay? We’ll just switch if it sucks we’ll switch, okay? Okay?’

      Aline had switched her attention entirely to her sneakers, which had both suddenly come untied, and she was carefully rethreading the laces so they would all be of equal length. Runner watched for a moment, fascinated by the totality of Aline’s absorption in something so meaningless, and then she laid down her ace.

      ‘You’ll love it, I swear, on the grave of my sister who’s added her weight to my own.’

      This maxed everyone out. Suddenly the pressure was unbearable and we were all desperately in need of escape. Runner sensed it. She paused and let out some of the steam. A beat. A breath. Then she offered to read a bit – just the beginning, just the beginning of the story. He Who Saw Everything. Literature as escape. It was deftly done.

      ‘Just let me read a bit. Just a little bit. A little bit of the first words that anyone ever thought to write. Just let me read a few of the first words of the first book. And then we can see if I’m crippled for life.’

      We accepted it. It was allowed, though Missy was the only one who said, ‘Okay.’ There was no vote. Runner looked to Neil.

      ‘Neil, put down your gun.’

      Neil looked at Runner.

      ‘Now get me the first stone.’

      He did as he was told, as his sister spoke a brief editor ial preface:

      ‘There is, incidentally and for your information, Missy, a goddess at the top of the heap in this book who might sound familiar to you.’

      Neil poked around the heap and finally pulled out one of the irregularly shaped stones. What indicated its status as first among the slabs was by no means apparent, though it was certainly believable that these stones were old. We could see that there was writing, if you could call it that, on both sides, and also that there were small patches of blank space, roughly textured, as if the text had been eroded. We, or some of us, found ourselves wondering how Runner would make the leap over these gaps, these … and the word occurred to Missy alone: these lacunae. With a sense of dread as pronounced as anything she felt about her own womb, Missy caught a flickering moment of import, as if something here were being fulfilled – a prophesy, like Herod first hearing of the baby Jesus.

      What’s more, Missy realised, whatever was to come, whatever this prophesied, she herself had been the inadvertent origin of it, the namer СКАЧАТЬ