Episode 13 - Beginnings

The Narrator:
When I was growing up there were still bombsites all across London, some are still there, but I saw them fresh. Cratered ruins of buildings pushed into the ground, collapsing through their foundations to kiss the blued clay browning in the air. They were wonderful playgrounds. We roamed across them, tossing rubble and watching it stumble down the uneven slope, clicking out stuttered revolutions.

My favourite was finding metallic shards and weaving stories about their lives before they came to rest down here on the ground. Could it be part of a cast-iron radiator, shivered into fragments as the room exploded? The stifling domestic scenes broken open in a riot of sound and heat. Or the broken shaft of a German cannon split into parts by an ack-ack gun’s tracer reaching out to stroke the plane and pull it lovingly back to earth?

I found a wing tip once, nestled in a cairn of shattered brick, its curved end crumpled like the discarded newspaper underfoot after a friday’s fish supper. I couldn’t tell which nation it belonged to, just that once it lived in the sky and now it was here, still, clamped down by gravity’s grip.

We cut ourselves open on the picked over carcass of the city. The sharpened skin and bones of the buildings cracked open and exposed, only magical now we could see them upended and rearranged. There were whole street’s worth of houses pulled from their sockets and mixed in with each other, their rubbled skeletons unsheathed and shining in the rain and sun.

Even though the last bombs landed years ago people were still found buried, their corpses cowered in basements covered over with a capstone of toppled walls. Or torn apart and strewn together, mingled carelessly with shattered cobble and curbstone torn out from the street. It was rare though. Most had been found when their remains were still intact enough to grasp. Picked up and carted away, then placed back in the earth, shrouded in wood and silk, for those that could afford it. I suppose the care kept their ghosts quiet and quiescent. They were able to rest now their covering was deliberate rather than carelessly tossed on by some impersonal force falling from above.

music break

There were other places. Places where the graves remained as improvised and violent as the deaths they marked. You felt it through your feet, could almost taste the confusion and amnesiac rage in the mist blanketing the ground after the sun had set. Sometimes there were trees ringing those places. Their trunks hunched, barked jackets roughly furrowed, branches reaching up to scratch the sky. If you ran a finger across the scars you could feel the heated metal still tearing through the air, all those years ago.

In those days you could still forage in the city. Its ruins offering itself up, a gift to those that still ran in its streets and gave it life. Some of those trees still bore fruit. Every bough garlanded with blossom, white tinged pink and purple leached from the sky when each spring wound around. Then, with the heat of summer, they’d be borne down, hanging heavy with apples or pears or plums, skin glistening in the sun. It was… beautiful.

Most of it was eaten quickly, snatched by hungry hands almost as fast as it grew. I once saw two men fight over a handful of hard unripe apples but they crushed them in the scuffle. Anything left fed the birds as it fell, slowly dissolved into the earth, folded under then sucked in by the hungry roots of the grass and bramble knotting across the broken ground. For me it felt like a net of souls holding each other gently, the death of one leading to the life of another. It brought me some comfort, later.

My favourite time was autumn, that’s when the blackberries would appear. Though we rarely got the apples or pears, there were always blackberries, they grew everywhere. All those missing families nourishing deep roots. The berries bunched amongst the catching thorns spread along the bramble’s wiry webbing arms. We were small enough to get to them, scampering paths through the tangle. We loved to stain our mouths purple-black, feasting till our stomachs revolted, casting out the sweet dark fruit spiked with stomach acid. It made no difference to us or the dogs that would follow us around. We’d be laughing and picking more, as the strays would lap at the mounded vomit, their meal mush and half digested, catching clods of earth with every lick, flapping their ears to scare the wasps circling in their angry banded jackets.

There was more than just the protective barbs you had to be wary of. Unsavory types stalked the ruined city too. Most were hungry for the possessions of those who crossed their path. Others wanted more. They looked to take parts of people, prise away fragments to carry in their pockets, warming themselves with what they’d stolen. Some watched for careless children, whisking them away to sell to lonely couples looking for a family or…worse. They had no luck with us.

We were only children but that meant we could fit in places no one else could. The scratches on our skin - proud marks of passage; red lines plotting out the map of our progress. Sometimes you’d happen across a stretch of bramble where the berries were soft and full and plump but their colour hadn’t darkened. They sat there ruby red, almost bleeding, aching to be picked. Over time, we learned to let them lie. If we’d watched the birds flocking everywhere but there, leaving only those berries, so ripe and inviting, untouched, perhaps we would have learnt the lesson without the same bite.

The first time we tried them was on an autumn afternoon bathed in soft golden october sun. It had been a hungry day, all morning our stomachs had grumbled over bread and dripping, barely enough to keep them quiet. And then there they were. Like manna from heaven, an entire bush unplucked. There were four of us - Charlie, Sasha, Crispin and me. We all set about feasting, gorging our mouths red and puckered around the fruit’s tang then sitting down to rest and warm ourselves on seats of powdered masonry. Ever so slowly it crept up on us.

music break

Slipping around the edges at first, a trembling in the peripherals, suggestions of buildings growing from their splinters climbing like shadows, disappearing as soon as we turned to look. The memories built and thickened; an old woman’s wrinkled hands, a beloved dog, a stolen service pistol, a child I didn’t recognise but knew I would die for. We were adrift watching the city’s history layering in front of us, we saw it all together; carts of plague dead rolling through empty streets to the clangour of doleful bells; buildings of stone built up by sandal shod labourers; fire dancing up walls and leaping from roof to roof; families parading arm and arm, laughing between market stalls; knots of cattle driven in a rush by ruddy faced men and their squat biting dogs.

It was a palimpsest we couldn’t navigate, trapped in its shifting layers. By the time we regained our senses, the sun was already dipping. But it took till after dusk for our surroundings to settle back into a single shape while we shivered in the cold. It didn’t seem like much at the time, too overwhelming to be held, a strange fever dream we’d shared. None of us spoke of it as we stood and left, parting ways silently, heading home.

My dreams were haunted that night. I relived memories I’d never had, suffered through heartbreak at the hands of strangers and deep biting grief at the death of parents and lovers I’d never met before. So many tragedies, so many crises, so many joys, I felt every one. It aged me. The next day I was a cracked urn leaking out the confused memories of a tangled multitude, they seeped out behind me like a snail’s shining path. The future and past merged into a confusing mess of unlit passageways, dark cobbled paths with no exits, a labyrinth I couldn’t recognise but had to walk.

I knew the others had seen what I had, we had shared that journey. We should have spoken, but somehow there weren’t the words. That or we couldn’t find them, we didn’t have a language for something like this. So we buried it, put it back where we found it, in the ground, along with our friendships. We never spoke again.

It passed as the weeks went on, leaking away each night, slowly sloughed off in my dreams. Then one day it was gone. I saw the others on the street or on the bus and could see it had left them too. All but one. That one taste had hooked Charlie, drawn him in and held him there like the barbs on the bush. He always wanted to talk but I just couldn’t do it. I slid away from the greetings till they stopped. Afterwards I saw him now and then ducking into alleys or slinking over rubble piles talking with the memories real for him and the dead. He was found on a November morning huddled up under a bramble bush on the edge of a bombsite, his mouth stained red, his face etched with years he hadn’t lived. Some years ago, I managed to dig out his coroner’s report, no easy task. His insides were a mess of desiccation, each organ dried out and shrivelled, his chest hollow with the space between them, any enlivening liquid absent.

I learnt that year that you should be careful where you go a-picking. Roots drink deep, and who knows what kind of memories they can pull from the ground. Some things are best left buried, hidden from greedy little hands. Remember that the next time you pull a berry from a bush. You can never be sure where its winding roots reach and what kind of fragments are shrouded within those ruby coats waiting for living tongues to taste and draw them in, far too deep.

sound of door breaking

Narrator:
What! Who the fuck are you?! No, no no no.

Sasha:
Too late for no.

Narrator:
Listen, just listen to me, do you want money? I can get money or or equipment! There’s plenty of that around here, it’s good I swear it!

Sasha:
Everyone has heard enough.

Narrator:
You, you can’t do this, I don’t even know you

Sasha:
I am not in mood for—

Narrator:
interrupts Wait, wait, I do know you! You’re that fucking heartsick killer! Your, your voice has been following me around, haunting my dreams. What in the fuck are you doing HERE?! How, How are you here??

Sasha:
You shine a bright light in the dark. Some fish have bigger jaws than yours

Narrator:
Are you, are you quoting me?! No, no, no, this isn’t possible

Sasha:
And yet here I am, and there you are, now–

Narrator:
interrupts Well If you’re here then, then you dragged yourself out of my story! Yes that must be it..I..I… I made you. I dreamt you and wrote you, I virtually fucking birthed you. Your life, your history your fucking illfitting clothing and poorly shaven head. It was all me!

Sasha:
Perhaps

Narrator:
Well then without me you wouldn’t even exist! You couldn’t even be here! You owe me everything! What kind of gratitude is this?!

Sasha:
Svolotsch

Narrator:
Damn you really are a monosyllabic moron, why did I ever make such an oaf. I was clearly reading too much Shelley at the time.

Sasha:
Frankenstein was the fool, not the monster, his child outshone him

Narrator:
Oh piss off, what would you know about creation?!

Sasha:
Self-sabotage. You are own worst enemy. How I’m here is unimportant, my role is set. I do not wish to play this game

Narrator:
And what role do you suppose that would be? The knight in shining armour come to slay the great dragon hiding in its hole?

Sasha:
Word’s bore me, yours especially sound of furniture scraping on floor

Narrator:
almost to himself No, no you couldn’t be the hero, you didn’t save the girl after all, wait, Wait!

Sasha:
Be. Quiet.

sound of smashing furniture

Narrator:
I can bring her back! Your lost love! The golden girl! They stole, I stole her b–bu—but if I wrote you then I wrote her—I can bring her back! You can settle down and raise a million children for all I care, plenty of fun and games

Sasha:
It does not matter. You did not write me. She is gone. Even if you could speak true I am no man’s puppet

Narrator:
Oh, please that is rich coming from you! Your whole life has been violence directed by others; wind him up and point him in the right direction then let you go a’breaking. Who sent you here? Who wound your spring?

Sasha:
Your words will not stop me!

Narrator:
You’re just as I imagined, tell me how did you get that scar? The one that stretches across your upper back

Sasha:
Shut. UP!

more sounds of breaking stuff

Narrator:
Wait, I’ve got just the thing. There’s a terrible pressure building in your head..it feels like your going to explode….all you need is a little burst to relieve the pressure…just…a..little..prick

Sasha shouts then falls to the floor

Narrator:
walking over to Sasha Gosh, such a large man falling to so few words, well you’ve got to kill your darlings though—-

Sasha roars and jumps up

Narrator:
Oh! You’ve some skill for mummery there, shame your strength can’t match it.

Sasha:
You speak with others tongues, are you sure you’re the real one? Not just some husk that others wear

Narrator:
Let me stop you there, my book will clear this up. See, right there, they’re my words, all of them, my written words and laws so you just have to fall in line and follow

Sasha:
Like this? sound of something heavy getting thrown

Narrator:
winded soundsOw! Jesus Christ!

Sasha:
Your story escapes you, its threads are unravelling

Narrator:
What would you know about story! You burst in here like some common vagabond spouting off about silencing me ugly well my pedigree chum what you don’t know is I am Infinite how the fuck are you going to silence that?

Sasha:
Blade and fire work before. Stop. Running sound of throwing a spear and pinning the narrator to the wall

Narrator:
You—you—-you bastard, you’re just like the rest, never stopping to—

Sasha:
interrupts Quiet, quiet as the grave

Narrator:
What will happen to you when I’m gone, you’re nothing without me!

Sasha:
I. Don’t. Care stabs the narrator you bleed like man, now die like one

Narrator:
Oh save me mother cough please…please

extended dying sounds/clips form show/ Long music break

phone rings

Sasha:
Who is this?

Interviewer:
Sasha, what a pleasant surprise, I take it the boy finally met the big bad wolf?

Sasha:
How did you get number?

Interviewer:
Trade secret I’m afraid, if I told you you’d have to join up and I know well enough how much you hate company

Sasha:
What do you want?

Interviewer:
Just a little check, I wanted to satisfy my curiosity. Now that he’s… gone, well, I’ve always known it, you were too real, he didn’t make you, though his hand pushed you along the path

Sasha:
Could say same for you

Interviewer:
Very clever Sasha, not bad for an oaf

Sasha:
Why you say this, how can–were you listening? Is this another mess you leave me?

Interviewer:
Oh ho ho, no Sasha, nothing like that, I think things will be getting a little stranger from now on. Change blows in the air, possibilities dance at the end of speaking tongues and writing hands, almost like reality is… no, no, no longer. I feel so real and I have no idea what comes next. How about you Sasha?

Sasha:
What. You. Mean!?

Interviewer:
Sasha, we’ll find out soon enough. Oh, and if it becomes too much, well, you know how to find us

click - phone disconnected tone

Sasha:
long pause, sound of lighter clicking, inhale, exhale then… Blyat