Teller by Neue Gestaltung

Teller A magazine of stories. Issue #1

£ 3.50 $ 5.50 C 4.00

ContentS I slid across the dancefloor Flavie Guerrand 4 — 11 POTROOM WILLIE Lee Scrivner 12 —1 9 Somerstown Julia Hayes 20 the best story i ever heard at a party Crispin Dowler 21

ON JANGAR’ Thomas Rees 22 — 25 This Time Tomorrow Charles Trotter 26 — 36 Augustine Augustine P. Ob 37 — 39 THE Peasan Olympics Joe Dilworth 40 — 49

S TRAIL

AWAITING FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS Damien Poulain 50 the loudest cow Will Carruthers 51 — 5 3

eyeskera t

The foldS of the fabric Fall differently each time Nina Mangalanayagam 54 — 62

I slid across the dancefloor

by Flavie Guerrand

Potroom Willie by Lee Scrivner

I. Potroom Willie remembered how it used to be between him and the Texas sun: how he would start the day by urinating with religious fervor on the backyard bluestem, wildrye, and crabgrass, under the rusted washhouse spigot, beside the rotting sycamore stump — just about anywhere that proffered itself up as a landmark to the eye or nose. Then, on those midsummer afternoons, during the long arching journey of the chariot of Helios — or whatever it was that was up there warming things — the backyard would blossom with Potroom Willie’s golden, glowy urine scent as from an aromatic oil lamp. Roused by this scent and the gold light, all around him would then buzz with summer cicadas, and he would bound through the backyard grasses as if to chase their sound, or leap to chomp the passing monarch butterflies, or roll around in the dandelion weeds. And all the while his attention would be absorbed by the dandelions and sycamores and even the sun that glowed in his nasal cavity and the harangue of those cicadas in his ear cavity until the old man’s yawp would fall on him from the back porch. Then he’d bound

towards that sound to see what the man or maybe the old woman would have in store: a scratch behind the ears, some canned meat residue, a bowl of beef stock or old milk, a tennis ball in a sock to chew, or maybe even a ride into town surrounded by the rich bouquet of a newly upholstered Buick. But lately the old man had fallen silent, and had stopped calling him from the high porch, but instead grew ever more confined to the Naugahyde recliner in the TV room. The old woman, too, in her daily challenge to tend to the increasingly immobilized man, had less time for acknowledging poor Potroom Willie. When she did acknowledge him, it was mixed with pent-up frustrations from weeks of thankless servitude, so she’d be quick to kick him in the hindquarters for the slightest misdeed. But Potroom Willie came to look forward even to these little punishments; enduring them was so much easier than being ignored for weeks at a time. Apart from these kicks, the main things Potroom Willie looked forward to each day were his daily rituals of eating, drinking, defecating, and urinating. So his attention soon

congealed around these few keys to his survival, the moments in which the old woman hovered overhead and opened a can of horsemeat or flipped the back door latch to let him out. When these things weren’t happening, he was impatiently waiting for them to return to the present, sitting expectant while enduring the living room’s tick, or the drone or buzz or honk of Wheel of Fortune or Matlock episodes, or seeing or hearing or smelling the tiny TV room fire ants that trudged across the orange carpet beneath his sighing, humid nose. And then usually after the seventh hour of this routine trauma, he would hear the kitchen tick again as the old woman opened a cabinet, and then his head would lift and he would come a-running. Then he would tremble and slink at the old woman’s feet in a moment of euphoria, surrounded by the rotary screaming scraping sound of the mechanical can opener, and then that meaty goo would erupt out of the cylinder like lava, into his doggie bowl. Then came the jowl machinations of the eating, the most elementary form of mental grasping except for sniffing. And he would suck and vacuum up all that sustenance into his entrails. And he would hork and gulp at the fastest possible rate of consumption. Ravenous, he would devour even the residue of the meaty goop on the sides of the bowl and along the floor, even if it was mixed in with mud and dust and lice and Mop-N-Glo. Then he would be impatient to be let out, and would whine and wince and shake, simmering and boiling over like more pent up lava, as all that goo would still be cycling through him, and then again the hovering over him of the old woman, and he knew then that something would soon be happening as the back door latch would tick, and the woman would dumbly push the door wide. Then he would romp and run like an escaped convict to spread his defecation and urination throughout the back forty, as the old man liked to call it. This daily process gradually sunk him into a mental furrow like a mechanical can-opener mechanism that spun round and round with the rotary scraping that sustained him. And the less

the old man or woman acknowledged him, the more he fell into the sole contemplation of this routine, and the less attention he paid to the Texas sun, or his urine’s smell, or the summer cicadas. And as running to chase the sun or the cicadas became less important to him, they became less prominent in his life, like in a shift into autumn. Then, gradually, Potroom Willie grew fat. One day, Potroom Willie had just finished defecating in the backyard. A man’s voice broke the breezy silence. A neighbor, who was usually just coughing and hacking, started to growl, then speak. Curious, Potroom Willie poked his nose through the diamond-shaped aperture formed by the criss-crossing diagonal wires in the rusted chain-link fence that separated the two backyards. There was the man, middle-aged, in a sleeveless shirt, smoking a stale cigarette. He barked Get over here, Butler! as he yanked the end of an old rusty chain round a laundry pole. Through the weeds Potroom Willie could see the other end of the chain was tied to an older and sadder dog, who barely resisted being pulled along. Get over here you dumbass. Shit in my house willya? And while dogs have not yet mastered English and are always only on the verge of figuring out what humans are saying, these words clearly bared their fangs. Potroom Willie knitted his brow and slunk away until the man was gone. Later he returned to the fence and again poked his nose through its diamond-shaped opening. He sniffed the air, trying to get a mental handle on this old dog, this so-called Butler, whom Potroom Willie preferred calling Arf Roorington. But Arf Roorington was always fourteen yards away, always in this neighbor’s backyard, among high weeds, chained with a seven-foot-long rusted chain to a rusting laundry-line pole. So only scraps of this dog’s scent filtered into Potroom Willie’s nostrils. But they were telling scraps. After some reflection, he could tell Arf Roorington ate a dog food with few or no nutrients, and that he had recently come from a distant railway town, from a

cramped apartment or a trailer which he shared with a middle-aged woman who also smoked stale cigarettes. At least two cats had also been living in the cramped space. Lastly, Potroom Willie could tell the old dog suffered from a parasitic worm that was slowly turning his guts to gravy. Now, and for the next few months, Potroom Willie had one more thing to look forward to beside his own digestive concerns. Each day, after he relieved himself, he would poke his nose through that diamond-shaped aperture to discover what old Arf Roorington was up to. It was always the same; Arf Roorington never left the laundry pole. But each day Arf Roorington would perk up his nose and look in Potroom Willie’s direction and try to fix where Potroom Willie had been, detect the residue of Potroom Willie’s life: the nylon carpeting fibres clinging to his fur, his paws still lacquered in Mop-NGlo. At least this is what Potroom Willie imagined Arf Roorington might be thinking about. He imagined that just by standing there across the fence from Arf Roorington, he could impart to the old neglected dog a hint of what life was like inside a warm house with humans, so that the old dog could live vicariously through the slight variations in Potroom Willie’s daily routine and know the life of a tolerated dog. But Arf Roorington never really thought these thoughts. For him, Potroom Willie peering though that fence may as well have been on television, the programs of which, like most English, always hover just beyond a dog’s cares. If anything, Arf Roorington only thought well there’s that fat neighbor dog, yet another item in that all-containing category of things existing in a freer state than I. II. A Texas sky, crimson. Potroom Willie, gilded by a rococo sundown. Windblown whiffs of autumn leaves, chestnuts, holly. Then the winds shifted course, wafting fumes of fresh diesel through brambles near an old bread factory. Potroom Willie had puppy paws and tiny needle

teeth, clinging to his mamma’s teats. Overhead, branches of an old creosote bush. Then Arf Roorington, in freeze frame, floated past the clouds, blocking out the sun. Potroom Willie barked himself awake from his dog’s dream to his usual surroundings. He adjusted his head in its imprint in the shag carpet as, in the background, Matlock limped into another season premier and the old man and the old woman argued blandly. Potroom Willie waited. He barely whined. He was either hungry or ready to relieve himself. He waited some more. The hours snailed along until the old woman’s voice filled the house. Potroom Willie. C’m here ol’ boy. Then came the rattling of keys, and he bounded towards that sound with eyes wide and tail spiralling. For a moment he prostrated himself before the old woman, who now hovered over him, keys in hand. Then he leapt up to sniff them. They were really there, these jangling keys, smelling like steel and dead skin and a ride in the Buick with the new upholstery. Settle down ol’ boy. He sniffed around the Buick’s back seats of baby blue velour. As they picked up speed and wind started gushing through an inch-wide opening in the window, the car’s manufactured scent was infused with other ones—mosquito spray, turpentine, okra—blown in from the neighborhood. Then, in a minute, they reached the town’s main drag—a county courthouse, a bank, a post office, and a hardware store— and pulled into a parking space next to a silver sports car in an otherwise empty lot. The old woman grabbed some packages from the passenger seat. Wait here ol’ boy. I’ll be right back. She left him there and disappeared into a cinderblock building. A muffled yap broke the quiet. Potroom Willie looked up. A wiry little bitch twitched in the tinted window of the silver sports car. She was a little shorthaired mutt, lost in a spasmodic frenzied interest in Potroom Willie. He returned her interest, and matched her excitement as he barked and leapt, hitting his head on the car’s ceiling, scratching at its window glass. Potroom Willie got so riled up

during those few minutes that when the old woman returned and opened the driver’s door, he shot over the front seats and squirmed out through her stumpy legs. Potroom Willie, you get your bee-hind back in this car. But playtime had begun, and his viscera sprang from their long dormancy. He widely glided and strode and pranced through the parking lot, showing off for the little dog, now yapping non-stop. The poor old woman vainly waddled towards him again and again and swatted her gummy arms in the blank air as he kept lunging away. It was so much fun to dodge her, he thought. So much fun to—Arf. Truck rolled over his hindquarters pretty good, I reckon. It was the old man’s voice. So he’s gonna be alright? The old woman seemed concerned. The vet’s office smelled of disinfectant and halogen bulbs and this stainless steel gurney. Potroom Willie was in a much sadder state of affairs now, all strapped down, drugged up. Well, we reconstructed the hip. It’s all set. But you can see there is this protruding bolt. Just have to see if he has the personality for a long incapacitation, to give ’er time to heal. The old woman’s gummy arms took him up. Now what was that, some lights coming though his bleary eyes, and oh look it was the old man following close behind them, wobbly but walking with a cane in each trembling hand as they emerged out of a dense brightness to an outside of cool twilight. Then the old woman set Potroom Willie in the Buick’s back seat next to some potato-chip bags. He couldn’t even lift his head up off the velour upholstery, couldn’t even move his jaw bone off the seatbelt buckle that dug into his jugular. Potroom Willie just drooped there as heavily as his own saliva, which was now infused with an alien smell, and which now just kind of welled up on the seat around his face. Now the old woman lifted all this heaviness up again and set it down inside the house, in the living room, at the foot of the big velour armchair, in front of the ol’ television.

III. Potroom Willie felt sorry for himself and wanted everyone to know it, casting those sad, sad eyes about the house, as dogs do so well. He was so nagged by the cast on his hind leg and especially the nail jutting out of his hip, he just couldn’t leave it alone; he would scratch and bite and claw at it though the old woman hollered at him each time and eventually slathered it in some kind of gunk that bit his tongue. After a few hours of anguish and blood and stained carpet and scolding, the old woman went out to the car and produced a plastic contraption that the vet had given her, a lampshade-shaped hood that she affixed to poor old Potroom Willie’s head. It wasn’t easy, this new lampshade life. Though it kept him from irritating the red, infected flesh around his hip bolt, the plastic hood also kept him from doing other things, like navigating under the kitchen table without getting stuck. And instead of hearing the world as he was used to hearing it — omnidirectionally — it now seemed to be coming at him head-on. By the middle of the next day, Potroom Willie was strong enough to go outside to relieve himself. But now he could not proudly impart to Arf Roorington smells of his trip to the post office, or smells of his ride in the Buick, without also imparting, just by standing there with a lampshade on his head, some sense of his humiliating mishap. Through pestering pains he relieved himself, then gazed across the chainlink fence at old Arf Roorington, who didn’t seem to think much of Potroom Willie’s new look, one way or the other. After a brief barely quizzical stare, he just kind of drooped his head back to the ground and fell back asleep. But, despite Arf Roorington’s nonchalance, the lampshade continued to plague poor Potroom Willie. One night, while the old woman slept, the old man, sitting in his velour armchair, started feeding Potroom Willie popcorn. It was an old tradition they shared. The old man would toss a popcorn, it would sail through the air for a moment, then Potroom Willie would catch it with a wet snap. Now

thrower and receiver were past their prime. One of the popcorn pieces missed its mark, bounced off Potroom Willie’s lampshade, off the carpet, then got lodged deep under the recliner’s footrest. A sad struggle ensued. Though the morsel was there under the recliner in plain sight, just a few inches from his clamping maw and lapping tongue, Potroom Willie couldn’t get at it because the lampshade’s wide funnel brim got caught on the recliner’s mechanical underpinnings, its complicated joints and springs. And yet the old man couldn’t get up to help him, because the ol’ dog was burrowed under the footrest, and any attempt to unrecline and emerge from the chair would have squished Potroom Willie as if he had been trapped inside the compacting device of a garbage truck. The old man could do nothing but sit in the recliner for twenty minutes and listen as the poor dog struggled and squirmed and whined beneath him. Don’t worry old boy, here’s another piece. Right here. Look. C’m on, you. Psst. Hey. What in tarnation’s going on out here? Making all the fuss? Said the old woman, awakened and upset. She grabbed at Potroom Willie’s fur with clamping arthritic hands and yanked him out from under the recliner. She swatted him across the back and shoulders a few times, finding it difficult to make Potroom Willie respond with the necessary flinching that meant he was feeling anything at all, so preoccupied was he with that little morsel of popcorn. But then, unwittingly and reflexively, the old woman let her foot fly at old Potroom Willie’s rear, and when her bare foot landed on the nail, it cut into the old woman’s flesh. Then both she and Potroom Willie writhed and howled, while the man just sat there in the recliner, doing what little he could to console them. From then on both the old man and the old woman doted on him less, and his life returned to its normal routines with a vengeance: ingestion and excretion in isolation. And with the lampshade on his head, he felt he had blinders on, which focused his attention, his vision and his hearing, all the more upon this

narrower range. So he lived, earthworm-like, heedless, blindly burrowing, pushing himself through the matter that sustained him as it passed through his tube, picking up bits and leaving them behind as it tunnelled without pleasure or savor. IV. Winter in Texas turned the trees bare and the air sere. Potroom Willie was dozing beside the recliner in the living room, his head deep in its impression in the shag carpet. The old woman’s voice filled the house. They’re here! A young woman and a young man and their two kids came into the house. For Potroom Willie, it was like the universe had come unglued. But he couldn’t get the gumption to go apey, like he usually would. He just whined and whined. Oh, look at poor old Potroom Willie. He’s got a lampshade on his head. The young woman’s kids jeered as they bounded toward him, laughing. Just let him be. The old woman yelled. Don’t you try to play with him. He’s injured. You’ll hurt him. Said the young woman. The next day the old man sat in the usual place in his recliner, perched over a dozing Potroom Willie. The old man pursed his lips for a moment, then reached into a drawer on the lamp stand next to him. With quivering hands, he pulled out an antique pistol. The young woman, who happened to be passing by the TV room, caught a glimpse of the gun. What are you doing? I gotta put this old dog to sleep. You’re gonna shoot him? Looking so. The old woman joined in. You can’t kill that old dog with your ALS. It’s too dangerous. Get Billy to do it. He won’t get in till Saturday. Can’t wait that long.

I’ll do it. Said the young woman. You can’t do it. Said the old man. How hard can it be? Said the young woman. The young woman held the shiny pistol in her hand, and the young man picked up Potroom Willie and put him in the back seat of a tan station wagon that he had never been inside before, which smelled of another dog. The young man started driving, with the young woman sitting shotgun. Potroom Willie sniffed around nervously for a while, sniffed at the other dog’s dried up saliva along the back seat windows’ interiors. He still couldn’t stop whining. Where were they taking him, these city folks? I don’t get why you want to do this so bad. I think it will be fun. Fun? Never killed an animal so big before. We’re doing him a favor. A favor? The dog or your dad? The young woman looked back at Potroom Willie. He whined more. It’s all right Potroom Willie. We’re just going for a little car-car ride. Why don’t I just drop myself off at the tennis courts while you go do this? I need you with me. I need you to hold him down. Potroom Willie knew they were talking about him. He sniffed around the station wagon. Now he looked out the window. He was soon in a place he barely recognized. They were leaving town. Potroom Willie grasped the terrain through the air that blew in from the crack in the window: honeysuckle, live oak, shale, clay, a bread factory, diesel. But they soon turned off the highway and were again in unfamiliar territory. Hank Williams came on the radio, and the young woman turned up the volume. They slowed and stopped next to a gravel road that turned down a steep hill into a smell, oh what a smell, oh what was this smell, this smell. What a smell. Oh down here’s an old dump. Just turn off here. They won’t let us fire guns down there.

No one’s there. It’s Sunday. The station wagon descended down the road and soon whimpered to a halt. They all got out of the car amid a soft, warm sandy clearing beside a landfill dune. Potroom Willie’s leg throbbed in pain, but his head was too filled up with the dump to notice: lemon rinds, beer bottles, bleach, lawn trimmings, dogshit, cowshit, egg cartons, cat litter, meat—a constellation that held Potroom Willie transfixed, so he hardly noticed the young man take the shiny, pewter-hued, antique pistol from the woman. Your dad said he loaded it? It’s loaded. Let’s just test it out here. See if it even works. Sure it works. It probably hasn’t worked in years. The young man pointed the gun at a big mound of refuse. The gun made a sound like thunder. Potroom Willie winced, grew confused. The man seemed satisfied. Well, it fires. So do your deed. The young woman took the weapon, and the unthreatening young man took Potroom Willie’s lampshade off his head, and immediately his mouth looped round to his rear to gnaw at the nail head sticking out of his hip. The young man put his big hands on Potroom Willie’s side and pegged his body down into the soft sand. And Potroom Willie was mostly lost in his own singularity of purpose as he coiled up like this and just gnawed away at this hip, but part of his brain was still all wrapped up in unravelling the complexly scented air that he sucked in while he gnawed. And then another, louder crack like thunder filled his ear as it split off from his cranium, and dangled there, his floppy ear made floppier and with it a chunk of his skull and some cartilage bits that had been holding his ear in place. All this stuff now dangled and flapped around near his throat and in the corner of his eye. It was only then that pain became something to consider. Pain is something, like the needle on an old vinyl record, that only makes sense through duration, and for a moment he was so lost in the moment of the gunshot that time — and

therefore the pain itself — all but ceased. And then, as if someone holding the record still had let it go again, this pain started off deep in a low register, and as if time sped up it now became intense and high-pitched like a wasp sting, zzzzzz. Then came the sound and feeling of a face being dragged across a bed of poison hooks and spikes, while the rest of himself lunged, jumped, lurched, and howled. His jawbone now came loose and an eyeball slid down his face like an old summer snail. The humans started talking about him again. You … you missed him. Damn. Try again. Tick. Tick. Well … that was the last bullet. What? It’s empty. You’re kidding me. Give me that. The man opened the weapon with a click. It’s empty. You wait here. There’s a general store up the street. I’ll get more bullets. I can’t stay here with him … like this. These big words filled the half of his head that wasn’t sloughing down his shoulder. Though Potroom Willie wasn’t in a position to explicitly acknowledge this, the paying attention to other stimuli, such as the hearing of these words, built a kind of buffer zone between himself and his otherwise all-consuming pain. The same physics of attention applied to the interesting smells that were now filling his nasal cavity, smells which he had never experienced, gunpowder and cauterized dog, while other parts of him were largely devoted to the puzzle of how to keep biting at his hip nail with half a face, while his spine seemed to be content with writhing like a fire hose on full blast with no one to hold it. V. The woman drove away, and Potroom Willie was left alone in the dump with the unthreatening young man, who stood over him

as he gyroscoped, an off-kilter dynamo, like he used to do when he got his teeth on that old tennis ball in a sock — that was a fun thing, flailing around like that, thought his body. No, this wasn’t remotely like that, thought his other body, the demolished part of him, the half of his face that was on fire and melting like microwaved burrito cheese. Soon, in the chaos of his flailing, the vet’s nail detached from his hipbone and his hind leg fell off, hanging useless now underneath. He tried to tend to the new wound, and slunk round donut-like to join his two injuries together, connect his shattered cheekbone to his shattered hip, the parts of him that pained him so. Then Potroom Willie somehow noticed through his pain that the young man had walked away to the edge of the dump and was now returning with an old shovel, with which he started uggghh hitting uggghhh him ugggghhh in the head uggghhh. Now Potroom Willie could feel the heavy rounded cutting edge work its way into his face and neck uuuugggjhuhgh, and start carving out the stringy meat of his shoulder muscles even to his neckbone unhuhnhgjjgh and upper spine, which was hard and still would not yield even after the remainder of his jaw popped off and hung by a strand of neck skin near to the back of his tongue. Then again the full-grown man smacked Potroom Willie’s skull in with this shovel until the rotting handle busted. Time was slowing again as his pain was starting to dissipate. The low moan in his head sounded like a vinyl record spinning at just two RPM, and even the young man now seemed to move more slowly, and so all the more threateningly, because still he could not be stopped as he took the now handle-less shovel head and fell to his knees and dug a shallow hole with the metal blade, a pit just deep enough to receive Potroom Willie’s gurgling face. Then the man heaped on bits of the dump, piled the decaying compost on poor old Potroom Willie. Things started to go generally dark and numb for Potroom Willie. The removal of sight and tactile sensations, and the gradual numbing of all his pain, brought even more intense smells.

It was all around him now, this compost clay mixed with sand and loam, mixed with rotting leaves from the last several autumns. His body became a ragged bloodied canine sponge, rich with effervescent bouquets as he inhaled the air and denser matter of earthworms, fruit loops, and diapers — all the things that he now leavened himself with, all these things he was becoming — desiccating and decomposing Potroom Willie compost. Potroom Willie didn’t really believe in an afterlife. Dogs don’t have beliefs per se. Still, something was happening now where he could again feel, and feel himself, piecemeal, hovering fourteen feet in the air above the young man who was still hunched over him, yes, now looking down on the man who was looking down on the spot where he had just buried some poor old dog. The wind, smelling of oak and diesel and fresh dough, and now subtly of Potroom Willie, sloughed in the direction of the state road, and weirdly he went with it like a tattered kite, to just over the next rise where some young coyote pups cooed under a creosote bush, and then, further on, to where the woman pulled the antique pistol out of her purse at a convenience store, alarming the clerk until she explained she only needed some bullets to finish off an old and dying dog. Then the breeze scattered him ever further along and apart, and less and less could he determine the Texas Hill Country’s spatial distances, its sublime perspectives, since he was becoming all of them at once, a kind of Potroom Willie canine omnipresence. For now he understood the whole surface area of the ground over which he soared, read all its topographical info in a glance, like he used to do when taking a hairpin turn round a clump of pampas grass. But this was all of the clumps of pampas grass at once, everything in the local counties that had comprised his frames of reference. And in this understanding there was for him a strange emancipation while all the wind that blew through him and blew as him sung to him and of him, in his ear cavity now as corrugated as

those hills, in reverberating chants of spiritus sancti. During this sound, during its prolonged duration, the old synesthesia came again as the Texas sun burnished flat into a gold foil against the tin roof of the house of the old man and the old woman, and from there he visited, with a new unfettered access, old dozing Arf Roorington, who perked up his nose with a start, rolled over, fell back asleep, and dreamed of romping through some far field, rolling around in the dandelions with Potroom Willie.

Somerstown by Julia Hayes

The best story I ever heard at a party by Crispin Dowler The best story I ever heard at a party starred a friend of a friend, a new age traveller called Happy. One summer Happy was driving his truck from Brighton to the south of France to go to a free festival. Speed isn’t the selling point of ancient trucks that have been converted to live-in vehicles, so he was going the slow way down, along narrow roads that wound through open countryside and tiny villages. As he drove into a backwater hamlet, he saw a little old lady and her dog waiting to cross the road. Seconds before Happy drew level with them, the dog suddenly started from its owner’s feet and made a dash for the other side. Happy stamped on the brake, but too late to prevent the nauseating bang of the truck’s bumper smashing into the animal’s fragile body. Horribly shaken, Happy got down from the cab to find the old lady hysterical. He tried to comfort her, but he spoke no French, and — he quickly realised — she spoke no English. It’s safe to assume that the sight of the wildly gesticulating foreign hippy who had just mortally wounded her pet did little to calm the old lady's nerves. Happy’s attention turned to the dog itself. It was in a bad way: unable to stand, its eyes unfocused, its face and body contorted with pain. It was obvious to Happy that the dog wasn’t going to make it. He realised that, as much as he regretted the accident, it would be infinitely more regrettable to leave the animal to a slow and painful death. He went round to the back of the truck and fetched a half-size shovel,

of the type you find in any traveller’s vehicle. He walked back to the dying dog and raised the tool above his head. Happy brought the shovel down once, hard, on the dog’s skull. The animal stopped moving. It was at peace. Happy knew he had done the right thing, but recognised it was unlikely to be interpreted as such by the appalled old lady, or the rest of the village for that matter. There was little left to do but get back in the truck, give a last apologetic shrug, and drive out of the area as quickly as he felt prudent given recent experiences. He pressed on until he reached the festival, where he no doubt recounted the horrible incident to his friends and then set about using the usual methods available at festivals to forget about it. A week or so later, Happy was driving back up through France and found himself in that same tiny village. Who knows why Happy would do such a reckless thing? Maybe there was just no other road, or maybe it was the morbid instinct that drives criminals back to the scene of the crime. Maybe it was just a mistake. Anyway, as he drove through that forbidding place, his anxiety gave way to a full-blown rush of nervous adrenaline as he saw, to his horror, that same little old lady walking up the road. And in the old lady’s hand was a lead; and, as Happy drew close he could see, at the other end of the lead was that same dog, very much alive, and instantly recognisable despite the elaborate bandages around its head.

Photo: © Seamus Murphy/ VII Network

On Jangar’s trail Riding in a horse race in the Central Asian steppes,Thomas Rees comes nowhere, and cheats

Far, far away, beyond the Caucasus mountains and on the steppes that stretch to Siberia, lies the autonomous state of Kalmykia. It occupies almost 30,000 square miles of the vast lowlands of the Northern Caspian Depression, and is peopled by a remote tribe of Mongols from Tibet. They roamed the region from the start of the sixteenth century, finally settling 100 years later south of the Volga, where they herded cattle and sheep. Every year, in celebration of their nomadic traditions, they hold a cultural festival, the Jangariada, named after the warrior hero of a Kalmyk epic. In song and verse, weird ululaic renditions of the exploits of the great Jangar ring out across the boundless steppes; and feats of archery, javelin throwing, wrestling and lassoing are performed. Sheep, munching contentedly around the yurt tents, are slaughtered. And there is vodka. But the great centrepiece of the festival is the horse race to end all horse races: a thirty-five-mile flat-out gallop across the steppes, completed in scarcely more than an hour and a half. It is a cavalry charge of epic proportions for which men, women and boys train all year, competing for the right to represent their region. The race is a siren call to horsemen across the flatlands which, somehow, I heard on the Sussex Downs.

Just getting to Kalmykia through the Soviet-style bureaucracy demands reserves of guile and stamina. Finally, permission to enter the state was granted by the president himself, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. The promise of a white Volga to meet us at the airport came to nothing, but at least we found rooms in a hotel in Elista, the capital. In the hotel’s bar and restaurant, the prospect of a European riding in the Jangariada proved to be exciting news—some doubters thought it a little ridiculous. A demonstration of the Lester Piggott seat (shortest possible stirrups, bum in the air) attracted great interest and a spirited rival version by a huge Kalmyk who referred to himself as Budmar —“Me Bad Boy”. But the following morning we were greeted by an overcast sky and a representative of the president’s press office, who announced, with great charm, that almost nothing was immediately possible, nor was likely to be in the near future. A horse to ride in the race began to seem an unlikely prospect. The racecourse was beginning to fill with the tents of Kalmyks from outlying regions. Over at the stables, the horses were settling in, each embodying the hopes of its district. The course had been marked out across the steppes, and it was time for

a preliminary inspection. One of the horse breeders offered to drive us around. His name was Bassan and he was already solid with drink, his impassiveness as broad as his shoulders. The start of the race was on the edge of town, just past the prison. Bassan lurched the Jeep off the road and steered towards the interminable landscape, featureless but for a line of telegraph poles that stretched out to nowhere. “Here,” he announced with portent, “this is where it begins.” There was nothing there, no marker or sign, just a track that disappeared into a great unknown. For the first time the prospect seemed chilling. “ If you win tomorrow, we’ll slaughter an ox and drink for three days,” he declared. That evening a meeting with the organiser of the Jangariada, at dusk in the centre of the track, was conducted with the utmost pomp and dignity. We were reminded of the remarkable history of the Kalmyk people, of their journey from the Mongol lands far to the east, of their culture, their nomadic husbandry, their plight at the hands of Stalin and, above all, of the significance of the race the following day. It was impressive stuff. The morning brought bad news. The director of the racecourse, himself a former steeplechase jockey (he rode in the 1986 Pardubice in Czechoslovakia), regretfully announced that my horse had not arrived. It was a bitter blow. I pleaded, cajoled, tried not to weep. Finally, he smiled, and agreed to let me ride his own horse, but warned that I should take care of it since it was not fit. I promised him that my hands were like silk, that his horse wouldn’t even know that he’d been in a race. “Yeah, yeah,” his face said, “I’ve heard all that before. Just take care of him.” The great day dawned, cool and sullen. A stable groom gingerly led the

24 Photo: © Seamus Murphy/ VII Network

way to the box of the racecourse director’s horse. “Be careful when you go in,” said the groom. “He bites.” That sounded promising: a tiger of the steppes awaited me. The door swung open. There in the box stood a surly and malevolent grey, ears laid back, a veritable Boris of a horse, with thick shoulders and cojones you could play football with. I turned to the groom, and out of the corner of my eye saw Boris swing his head towards me. Luckily, I got my elbow up into his teeth before he could get any purchase on flesh. He jerked his head back, content with this opening skirmish, like a boxer tasting first blood and looking forward with relish to the fight ahead. You’ll hear more of this, he seemed to be promising. The churlish Boris was led out and saddled up, and then proffered by the

groom, who was clearly curious as to what I would do next. I checked the girth; it was a move Boris resented and he quickly let me know. But once I was in the saddle he was solid beneath me, or possibly asleep. On the course, the field was wheeling around, ready to canter in a parade in front of the stands before being led out on to the steppe for the start. In all, there were 54 horses competing. There were men with gnarled, weather-beaten faces, young boys and several women — half the field dressed in tunics, the rest in whatever clothes they probably woke up in, some with boots, some with gym shoes or sandals, many without saddles but all bearing a cloth with a number on. The stakes were high. The winner would receive the sensational prize of a Russian four-wheel drive;

second, a fridge; the third would take home a horse as a trophy. The field moved off at a trot, then a canter, then a gallop, with shouts and cries from riders and onlookers alike. A two-mile walk still separated the field from the edge of the steppe and the start of the race. The riders around me chatted amicably enough until Boris kicked an innocentlooking gelding, which he clearly felt was encroaching on his path. I seized the moment, and hit him hard several times on his quarters in a tight turn. There were warning shouts from the other riders, which I took to mean that I should leave him alone. Actually, I had already been told that it was perilous even to show Boris a stick, let alone hit him with it. As it turned out, he was unruffled. If he felt the stick at all, he didn’t begrudge it.

I began to realise why he was so dear to the director’s heart. At last we reached the plateau. The riders began to concentrate, muttering incantations to their horses. Then the tide swept forward and submerged the starter, gathered to a rush and charged. The game was on. To his credit, Boris proved to be a rock, but not much faster. He preferred a kind of sedentary, comfortable motion, covering the ground with dignity and a fearsome knee action. We went on like this for a while, perhaps a mile or so, as small boys sped past us, cocked up like weasels over the mangy withers of their mounts, bouncing and smiling, with their coats and tunics flung out to the wind behind them. It was exhilarating, and I shouted out to a passing rider, just for the hell of it. He shouted back, but his words were blown away across the steppe. We were going a decent clip at this point, certainly as far as Boris was concerned. The field was thinning — two or three other competitors within a hundred yards ahead of us, and the leaders blistering a dusty trail perhaps a furlong beyond. Most had fallen away; I was now in the company of riders with grim determination, their horses breathing regularly even as they skipped over a fault in the ground, fabulously agile and sure-footed. I asked Boris to quicken a little in order to stay in touch. The response was immediate. Some truly terrible sounds began to emerge from beneath me, a kind of sobbing and heaving and gasping. It seemed Boris was coming to the end of his tether. He pulled himself up within a few yards, shuddering to a halt. I dismounted, loosened his girth and went up to the front end. It was a sorry sight. His head was down, eyes rolling. Oh God, I thought, what have I done?

When Boris had worked out that I was no longer on his back, he lifted his head, nudged me in the chest and looked around. We were alone, with nothing between us and the distant horizon. But then I saw, lying low in the landscape, the squat shape of the prison, which I knew was no more than a mile or two from the race course: the finish line. We set off in that direction, the reins looped in my hand, Boris walking companionably beside me. The solitariness of our situation heightened a kind of surreal camaraderie that I now felt for Boris. He might have been a Russian general, deserted by his men in a terrible battle, wandering in an empty no man’s land but curiously content with his lot. I was touched. His feet kicked at the scrub, sewn with wild lavender, sending up a heavenly smell. His ears were forward, his belly swung to his gait. I admit that I kissed him. He was surprised. By walking back directly to the prison we were cutting across a large segment of the full course, which formed a circle. After three-quarters of an hour of our idyll on the plains we found ourselves ahead of the field and just a mile and a half from the finish. Sooner than expected, the dust cloud appeared, and the shimmering figures of two, three, four, then five horsemen became clear. There was barely time to tighten Boris’s girth — with more groans — and get on board before they were upon us. The horses came round the bend in a pack, still galloping, soaked in sweat, their riders wild-eyed and pale. Boris reared up like a bear, wheeled round and set off in pursuit. There was a chance that we might make it to the finish with the pack. It was a forlorn hope. Even after a lazy walk, and his rivals exhausted after their epic chase, he couldn’t keep

up. As we reached the racecourse there was just time to see, at the far end, two horses flash past the post, neck and neck. The third had careered off the track and was rudderless in the outfield, its rider helpless to steer any longer. Two onlookers grabbed the horse and dragged it over the line, where the rider fell to the ground almost unconscious. It was heroic. They carried the winning jockey from his horse, a good idea since he couldn’t walk. He looked no more than a boy, but was, in fact, Vladimir Berukaev, an eighteen-year-old from the Ketchenerovsky region, 200 miles away. He was flung up on to the shoulders of his admirers and borne to his gleaming prize, the four-wheel drive. Family and friends crammed in around him as he stroked the gear lever and fondled the steering wheel. Press cameras flashed in his exhausted and proud face. But not even his pride could conceal the fact that this was his first encounter with a driving seat. At seven the following morning, the racecourse was empty, but still it had the feeling of an arena that had seen great glory. The tents had gone, and weeds and rubbish covered the infield where they had been. Over in the stables stood the winning horse, cool, disinterested. The truck to take him home arrived, its driver falling out of the cab in a stupor. Boris was in much the same condition as when I first met him. I bent down to feel his legs — they were cool and hard. He smelled my back, thought about biting out my backbone, but instead neatly, and kindly, clouted me with his head.

конец

This Time Tomorrow 26

Kenya, 1954 –1957 by Charles Trotter (© Charles Trotter/ Images of Empire)

Augustine by Augustine P. Obeyeskera

I am a Catholic, but the thing is, the last two years I go to five different churches. St John’s has a lady vicar. The Baptist church across the road gives a lunch on Fridays, then I go to the Salvation Army in Hove — they’ve got another lunch on Wednesdays. My mother was Church of England, but she decided to become a Catholic and that’s when all the trouble started. Because her father, Sir Solomon, was Church of England and he didn’t like it. No, and his son became a Buddhist, but he, this son, he got a bullet in his head. As a mark of a respect they give a low bow to a monk or someone more important than you. Now, when he gave a bow to the monk, the monk pulled a revolver out of his yellow robe and shot him. Politics. This was November 1959. There

are pictures on the internet. What do they say? That the Prime Minister was shot by a monk who was not right in the head. My memory can go back a very long time. I can remember my mother used to go to her father’s birthday parties. That was about … 1946 it must have been. She used to say, “When you see my father, you give a low bow”. He was a large black gentleman sitting like a rod in his chair. And all the people would come with their grand saris and their posh cars. This was in Colombo. Sir Solomon was knighted — by Queen Victoria I think. I think so. I looked him up in the dictionary. It didn’t give the date he’d been knighted, it just said that he had been knighted. Sir Solomon, yes; a very great and powerful man he was. He used to

come to England for important functions. You know, with everyone in uniform and plumed hats and this and that. Oh, he had about a hundred servants when I was little. I came here in 1950 with my mother because she couldn’t get on with her father or her brother. I must have been about twelve years old, I suppose. When she went to Thomas Cook & Sons — the travel agency — they said she had to have identity cards and ration books and she went and filled in all the forms: who she was, who I was and why she’s come to England. After that she decided she’s not going to fill in any more forms. Once is enough. And she lived from 1952 until 1977 in total secrecy. We lived in a caravan. I wasn’t allowed to go to school or see other children. As I was growing up I asked my mother, just out of interest, “Why am I not going to school?” “Oh, no, no, you’re not going. I’ll give you a bit of education and you’re going to look after me in my old age.” So that’s what I did. My mother was a very particular lady. I mean, not fussy, but she had strange habits. She kept to herself as much as possible. That’s why the government or the council didn’t find out about us until she died. And do you know, on the Monday 10th of January 1977 she decided to go up there. And guess what happened? The murder squad came in! The police thought I had killed her. I was about forty when she died. And the police got the shock of their life. They asked me, “When you’re not cooking and washing for your mother what are you doing?” I said, “ I play with my train sets.” You know those old train sets? Hornby Tinplate? I’ve got about twelve of those engines. Still have them. There were six police vans pulled up beside the caravan. And what did I do? I had a little peep inside each one. It was most interesting, all the police equipment involved. I was very inquisitive. Now, anyone else would have kept away from them. I did just the opposite: I stuck to them like gum. Until Mr Taylor came and took me away to ask a lot of questions. Mr Taylor was the welfare officer for that district.

When the police questioned me I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was not frightened. I told Mr Taylor that the chief of the murder squad looked like a crook. He said he had to ask me some questions. Put it this way: when they checked the records there was no mention of me or my mother. Everyone’s on computers and on files. Now everything I’ve been doing since 1952 is on the computer. They can check on me now. It’s all on the records. Anyway, they didn’t know what to do with me. Mr Taylor put me in an old people’s home in Heathfield. Because they didn’t know what to do. I stayed there for a week, then they moved me on to some lady’s large estate. There was a mansion and a lot of grounds and she had a caravan so I was put into there for about six weeks. Once they put a calf by my caravan and it would look at me with its beady eyes. Then from the caravan I was moved to Hove. After a couple of months they found me a housing association flat. It took three years for them to do something about getting me a job. Three years! I asked Mr Taylor why they are taking so long. He said they were arguing about it. About me, my life. Because I had not worked, so how should they go about it? I was sent for nine weeks to Portsmouth for job training. I got on very well with all the supervisors. But I didn’t like the other men I was working with — lazy lot! Oh, but it was most interesting. There were two young men whose hands were crippled. One of them had been in a motorcycle accident and could use only his right hand. After that I got a job in tailor’s shop. They were Jewish. Very interesting, the Jewish. I used to bring pork sandwiches and then I found out they don’t eat pork so I brought in chicken and turkey. It was a very trustworthy job. I had the job of taking the money to the bank, from a few hundred to a few thousand pounds. I think the welfare office must have told them that they could trust me. I mean, I’ve never been to school so I can’t forge a cheque or anything. They used to send me to London to buy cloth. They sent me into Soho—you know,

I met Augustine at a dropin centre for the elderly in Brighton, on the south coast of England, where he is a frequent and well-liked visitor. He was sitting at a table laid out with photographs, newspaper clippings, leaflets and flyers, cutting out new images and headlines from a pile of papers. Augustine began by presenting me with a CV, several copies of which he had handy on his makeshift desk. The photocopied A4 page outlined a sparse work history beginning in 1980, and gave his NHS and his National Insurance (Social Security) numbers. On the back was a handwritten account of the assassination in 1959 of Sri Lankan Prime Minister Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike. Photo: Kyna Gourley

where the ladies of the night are. I had to go right through Soho and the birds kept eyeing me. With hardly anything on! And I passed a lot of clubs with the doors open. Oh crumbs! They had nothing on from the waist up, serving drinks to people. I could see in through the open doorways. Doctor Wilkinson, of the children’s department — who asked me about seven hundred questions — said I shouldn’t stick in my flat all the time, I should go out more, so I said, alright, I’ll join a few clubs. Because sometimes I would stay in my flat for three days, looking at my trains. So then I used to go to a club where they show films about trains, buses, transport, that sort of thing. I used to sit right in the corner and just listen, but I learnt a lot of things. Once someone gave us a slideshow of London. And they showed us a house and said inside that house there is an atomic kettle. Something to do with the atom bomb. Now, the stupid fool of a government put it there in wartime and now they cannot remove it or the whole of London will go bang! So it’s under heavy guard. Wait ’til the terrorists find out — then there’ll be fun and games! It’s very interesting, all those hush-hush things. Take Brighton station: there’s a rifle range under Brighton station where the railway men use guns. There are a vast number of spooky, eerie tunnels. Oh, all sorts of things under Brighton station. There’s even a little room where somebody murdered somebody. Long ago someone was murdered and put into a trunk. A man was in the room and he noticed the smell. It was in the Evening Argus. Mr Taylor died of cancer a few years ago. I send photos to Mrs Taylor so she knows what I’m up to. Mrs Taylor knows my whole history so if someone tries to argue with me she tells them to go to hell. Do you know what I did? Mr Taylor’s gone, so I took Mrs Taylor and her daughter to a Pullman lunch on the Bluebell Railway. Mrs Taylor had never been inside a Pullman car. It’s like Buckingham Palace. Luxury train, all silver service, of course.

The text above is Augustine’s own account of his life as he explained it me. A little research confirmed names, dates, births and deaths, such as that of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who was Augustine’s uncle on his mother’s side. While external accounts of the events he describes differ to Augustine’s on details, they detract nothing from the integrity of his story. Ruby Russell

Somogyhárságy, situated in a small valley in southern Hungary, has a population of around 300. The Peasant Olympics, now in its twelfth year, is the village’s big annual celebration. Teams from the surrounding villages and as far away as Budapest compete in egg-throwing, wine-siphoning and ladder-racing games, fuelled by community pride, home cooking and

plenty of the local pálinka. Its creator, László Virag (pictured on the left on page 48) is more than happy to help other villages to set up their own Peasant Olympics, so long as they remain free from commercial interests and true to the spirit of celebrating what it means to be a peasant in the twenty-first century.

AWAITING FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS by Damien Poulain

The Loudest Cow by Will Carruthers

It was my first visit to the United States of America, and the first major tour I had undertaken for six years. I was playing bass guitar in a band. We had landed at Detroit airport two days earlier where the immigration official had asked me how long I intended to stay and how much money I had. I duly answered that I was on holiday for six weeks, that I had forty dollars in hard cash and no credit card. He invited me to spend some time in secondary immigration where I was shortly joined by my nervouslooking band mates. Even though we had split up at the immigration desks to avoid suspicion that we might be a band, I suppose we weren’t that difficult to spot. I was carrying a theremin and no money. Does anybody go on holiday with a theremin? We sat in a miserable row, on plastic chairs, waiting to get the orders to leave, with a great and terrible weariness upon us. On the wall in front of us was a huge flag with a picture of an eagle and the gold embroidered words “Land of the free”. I needed to piss, so I asked the official at the desk if I could use the toilet. He looked at

me and said, “Probably not”. I looked at the flag with its loud proclamation of certain freedom, and pleaded a bit. He sort of sighed, beetled his brow, and pointed at a door. I guessed it was the room where they looked through people’s shit and did cavity searches. There was a kind of non-flushing toilet, which was a great relief. I suppose that the toilet did flush somehow, but only after the sewage had been inspected and found to be nonthreatening. My piss wouldn’t have hurt a fly. I knew I was safe on that score. I rejoined the miserable row. Things were looking up. Even the eagle looked less likely to tear out my liver now that I had an empty bladder. Over to our right, some people were having their luggage searched. They were browner than we were and had cooking pans with them. I tried to decide which was worse: pots or musical instruments. At least we were whitish. That’s gotta count for something, right? I mean, I know that many of the high-level genocidal lunatics and mass murderers of the

last century have also been without cooking pots and fairly white but this was an airport. Normal rules of logic do not stand. It’s a humour-free world where laughter and levity are signs of a deep wrongness that warrants closer inspection. It’s better to crack jokes at a child’s funeral than at an immigration desk. Even if you are white and pot-less. Luckily, the customs officials seemed to be finding us less than sinister. After some fictitious explanations of our intentions, they even seemed to find us quite amusing. After all, we were only in the country to play some promotional shows and were to receive absolutely no remuneration for our efforts. We were simple-hearted minstrels bringing the gift of music. We had love in our hearts. We would eat sawdust and sleep in the gutter for the privilege of playing to disinterested and half-hearted crowds who would ignore us at best. For some reason they found this believable. Even I found it believable. Eventually they gave us free passage and we moved through the system. One official mentioned that at least we didn’t have a name like the Butthole Surfers. I began to think that the customs and immigration people may have been a little obsessed with all things anal. I guess a life that involves suspecting people’s body cavities of harbouring dark and dangerous materials will do that to you. Out on the streets, smoking the first of fifteen consecutive cigarettes, I was overcome with expectations of gunfire and car chases. Everywhere I looked, I expected violent drama. Eventually this passed as I realized that I was familiar with the American city only through the medium of TV. I thought I was going to encounter Starsky and Hutch on every street corner. I was both disappointed and relieved to find this wasn’t the case. We got in the van and drove to our first gig in Rochester, New England. We were running late and arrived just as the support band were finishing their set. They were called the Silver Apples. We grabbed up our rented and borrowed amplifiers and hurriedly set them up on the stage,

smoked a cigarette and played a frazzled and ragged set. I think I played the bass through an acoustic guitar amp. It was ok for a first show. The audience threw neither underwear nor bottles. I can remember nothing else until we reached New York. I had spent the four weeks prior to the tour living in the woods in a treehouse with no electricity. I loved nature and thought cities were the opposite of that. At the time I was probably a bit too sensitive for this particular city. It felt like a constantly-honking traffic jam of foul-smelling vehicles and noise where you had to shout to be heard and fight to live. It felt like hell to me. Like living in a washing machine. All cities felt a bit like living in a washing machine. But you came out dirtier than you went in. We negotiated the city and found our way to the venue in the meatpacking district. My nagging suspicions of having made a terribly wrong turn increased. I was a vegetarian and we were to play in a place called The Cooler, an old cold store for dead animals. We descended into what had been a huge meat locker. There was a big fridge door which led into the venue. The meat hooks had been left on the ceiling. My paranoia increased and I fully expected to end the night as my fellow herbivores before me: hanging, chilled, neatly disembowelled and ready for consumption. Given that I was a downwrong paranoid freak-show in a decidedly unsoothing world, I believe it is a testament to my mental fortitude that I didn’t flee gibbering into the night. The show we were playing was part of CMJ, which stands for something or other, and involves lots of gigs in lots of venues and lots of industry types and culture vultures picking over the cold cuts and meaty treats on offer. The Silver Apples whirred and oscillated to the end of their set, keening about misty mountains, and we readied ourselves for the auction. Much of the music we were playing was from an album called Forever Alien which was heavily

reliant on synthesizers and electronics. I was playing the bass guitar and found myself peculiarly human in my efforts to keep pace. I reassured myself with memories of John Hardy, the steel-driving railroad worker from the old blues songs who went into competition with a machine. He won the battle, but died as a result. Playing the frantically fast and repetitive bassline of 'Delia Derbyshire' for seven minutes I didn’t exactly fear death, but occasionally wished for it as respite from digital punishment. At a certain point in the show, we were to abandon our instruments and take up circuitbent toys. These are children’s toys that have been electronically molested and mutated. I had a train with four brightly-coloured buttons on it. Above the four buttons were pictures of animals with decidedly anthropomorphic smiles. There was a pig, a goat, a horse and a cow. They looked happy, wherever they thought they were going. Also onboard the train were three serious black dials, two silver switches and a silver quarter-inch jack plug socket. Protruding from this, like a monstrous curly pigtail, was the lead that was plugged into my bass amplifier. We had never performed or practiced this particular piece before as it was to be a random collision of sounds produced by these altered machines. They never really played the same thing twice. The leader of the band had warned me to be careful with the toy train. “Get some sort of volume control for it,” he said. I had no volume control and decided, in my wisdom, that it would probably be unnecessary for a child’s toy. The “music” began. Squeaks, skronks, boings, whistles, and the howling of wrong-wired electronic devices began to emanate from the stage. I stood, wondering whether I looked like an idiot, deciding which button to press first. I went for the goat. Nothing. My goat was silent. My goat was not got. I twirled some dials, flicked a switch, turned

up the bass amp, called on the force, glanced at the meat hooks and pressed the cow button. “MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO” It was the mustered voice of every butchered bovine that had ever hung in that place, gathering in spirit and issuing forth in the loudest noise I had ever encountered. It obliterated every other sound on stage. It was the loudest most defiant bellow I had ever heard in my life. It was bowel-loosening, blood-curdling and spine-chilling. It was sound transformed into unpleasant physical effect. Stunned, I glanced at the audience. The front five rows had ducked and covered. I looked round at the rest of the band and saw only wide-eyed and horrified expressions. I stood there with my finger poised over the happy train of animals and tried not to laugh. It was the loudest cow in the world.

The folds of the fabric fall differently each time 54

by Nina Mangalanayagam

When my father arrives Mathuram’s wife has made dosa, even though it’s the day before the wedding and it has taken her a whole day to make. He is served first, then my mother. They forget the fork so my mother starts eating with her hands. I watch my mother and note her mistakes. I think they must mind terribly now, my mother does it all wrong. Later I ask my cousin. He says he hadn’t noticed. Everyone does it differently, he says. There’s no wrong or right. But that’s not what my father told me as a child.

As a child I eat the curry my father sometimes makes. It's always the same, with chicken and at least half a bottle of oil. He serves it with Uncle Benâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s long grain American rice, and because he thinks it will be too spicy for me he pours milk over my plate. American rice swimming in cold milk with oily curry floating on top.

My cousins ask me about boyfriends. I lie and feel awkward. I've forgotten why Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m lying. They know I am not religious. They know we grew up differently from each other. They probably know that I have a boyfriend. I wonder what they lie about to me.

I am fifteen and the school ball is coming up. One day I sit next to the most popular girl in class. Anna is tall and blonde with wealthy parents and knows all the older boys in the Levi’s shop. Anna asks me what I’m planning to wear to the ball, and suggests that I should wear a sari. I actually think that they are really beautiful, she says. I don’t know if I have been complimented or insulted.

A man asks me out on a date over the counter at my first job in London. Why are you whispering? I ask. He doesn’t want my father to hear, maybe he wouldn’t let me go. He’s not my father. I follow his gaze to my boss. Oh, I thought it was a family business! Behind me stand the people I work with, from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria and India.

A businesswoman walks into the shop. She advises me not to throw my life away working there. That I could go and get educated somewhere. Across the road is a good business college. She tells me to go

and talk to them. I look at the businesswoman, speechless. It has never occurred to me that I seem so helpless.

Meeting my uncle for the first time is strange, but also so familiar. He’s very similar to the uncle I have already met, I feel like I know him already. He gives me an envelope with money in. Two hundred-dollar notes. It’s a lot of money, by my standards, and I guess even more so by his. I say it’s too much, but when he acts as if it’s nothing I play my part in the game, and continue to treat him like the successful businessman he wants to be.

Contributors Flavie Guerrand is a French photographer based in Berlin. Her work began in, and is inspired by, the underground party scene in France in the 1990s, in which she was a dedicated conspirator. www.flavieguerrand.com ➞

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Lee Scrivner is an American poet, composer and critic known for his satirical manifestos, anachronistic verse dramas, and for being the Interim Margrave of the avant-garde sleeper cell The Insomnauts. He is currently Lecturer in Humanities at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. www.leescrivner.com http://insomnauts.org ➞

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Julia Hayes is based in London where she studies painting at the Royal College of Art. The main focus of her work is folk culture and she seeks to represent celebratory, ritualistic and transgressive aspects of collective community behaviour and ritual. http://hayesjulia.wordpress.com Somerstown, London, 1930: New social housing was due to be built in the place of the existing slums. In an attempt to cleanse the local ground of the scourge of vermin, community members created effigies of bugs, rats and mice and ritually burned them, determined to leave behind the pests of the past. ➞

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Crispin Dowler is a freelance journalist and writer from London. ➞

Thomas Rees is an ex-jockey and was for twenty years a horse coper. He has written for The Times, The Guardian, The Spectator, etc, from Iraq, Bosnia, Europe and the US. He is now working on a film.

Page 21

Seamus Murphy has worked extensively in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and most recently in America on an ongoing project during what he calls “a nervous and auspicious time.” His accolades include six World Press Photo Awards. www.viiphoto.com ➞

Page 22–25

Charles Trotter, a commercial photographer, was based in Nairobi in the 1950s. www.imagesofempire.com ➞

Page 26– 36

Kyna Gourley studied photography at Westminster University before completing a Masters in Visual Anthropology at Goldsmiths. She has worked on sociallyengaged projects for over ten years and now combines the roles of photographer, filmmaker and ethnographer. www.kynagourley.com ➞

Page 39

Damien Poulain is a French graphic designer and art director based in London. Specialising in print-based projects including books, small-run publications and record sleeves, he also creates posters and other communication imagery for art galleries, fashion designers and music labels. www.damienpoulain.com ➞

Page 50

Will Carruthers is best known for playing bass in Spacemen 3, Spiritualized and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. He has worked as a waiter, a cook, a gardener, a roadie, and on building sites. He is currently compiling a book of his poetry and short stories and playing music. Sometimes. ➞

Page 51– 53

Nina Mangalanayagam graduated with a Masters in Photography from the Royal College of Art in 2009. Half Swedish, half Tamil she uses her own experience to explore the relationships between identities and societies, families and environments. ‘The folds …’ brings together images and experiences of her family in Sweden and Paris. www.ninamanga.com ➞

Page 54–62

Joe Dilworth studied fine art at St Martins and Goldsmiths. He has worked as a photographer for music papers and record companies and played drums in various bands. He now lives in Berlin. www.joedilworth.com www.parasztolimpia.com ➞

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Teller—A magazine of stories. www.tellermagazine.com

Editors: Katherine Hunt and Ruby Russell

Published in Great Britain in 2010 by Trolley Ltd www.trolleybooks.com

Graphic design: Anna Bühler and Peter Stenkoff, Neue Gestaltung www.neuegestaltung.de

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-907112-24-9

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from Trolley Ltd., application for which must be made to Trolley Ltd. Printed in Italy by Grafiche Antiga

Welcome to Teller, a magazine of stories. Stories told in pictures, in words, in both; short sharp stories, ‘so I once heard this story’ stories, stories of pure invention and stories that might just be true. Flavie Guerrand’s pictures, culled from hundreds of all-nighters in Paris and Berlin, tell the story of the ultimate party. Charles Trotter, a commercial photographer based in Nairobi in the 1950s, shows us the decadence of colonial rule in its dying days, while Damien Poulain pictures a congregation that has already passed away. Julia Hayes commemorates a ritual cleansing performed in a 1930s London slum and Joe Dilworth introduces the bucolic disciplines of Hungary’s Peasant Olympics. Will Carruthers, Crispin Dowler, and Augustine Obeyeskera tell implausible tales of real life. Nina Mangalanayagam opens the doors to a gathering of her Tamil family in Europe, Lee Scrivner disturbs the peace of the American backyard, and Thomas Rees goes for a ride in Russia. It’s a miscellany, a platter for your enjoyment. Like an old sea dog accosting you at a wedding, fugitives from the plague passing time around the campfire, or just the rambling oracle propping up the bar, Teller will tell you the stories you always wanted to hear. London and Berlin, October 2010