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They have given me a day’s grace to explain myself.
Enough of the meanderings.
The want more relevant information. More words on the why of the way I am.
Can one explain oneself? One’s self. I doubt it.
How does the storm look from deep inside? Not a storm at all? Or worse?
You see, they come and take the previous pages. Give me more blank ones to fill. Of course I ask them questions. Why, how, where. But they only give me shrugs.
The man who collects my homework is all teeth and hair.
A horrible beast of a man. His breath smells like vinegar. He leans over me sometimes and licks me. I am afraid of him.
Anyway.
They did not appreciate yesterday’s performance.
Nothing will dissuade them.
You will need to disregard the last chapter.
Discount it, I mean.
It was the rambling of a madman.
Or nearly.
An angry man at least.
Was it true? What is my truth? Did it shine any more light on the mess of my misery?
My life.
Partially.
But in truth, I am no more in my own house than I in my father’s house. For the place they have me in could hardly be called a house, if it is a house at all.
I imagine it to be a gigantic sprawling complex of half-dosed up nearly dead lunatics, of which I count myself as the most lucid.
Perhaps I am writing for a generation of lost peoples, lost madmen and lunatics whose homes and selves have been robbed from them.
No doubt.
On the other hand I could be lying to your again.
There could be nobody and nothing.
But that would hardly be entertaining, would it?
It is so hard not to lie. I mean, it is so much easier than telling the truth—whatever that is.
Perhaps that is why I lie.
Because there is no truth.
What do you think of that?
No doubt I will find out tomorrow when Mister Licky comes in to beat me.
Not that he beats me. But licks are a bit much.
Mister Licky.
I like that.
That is what I will call you from now on. Mister fucking Licky
Until you give me reason to call you something else.
Bastard.
I cannot stop fidgeting. My nerves are shot. Shook. Everything bursts and breaks. Is damaged. Unusable.
My real name is Max Jacob. My father called my Max. After Maximilian I, the son of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Germans. I am not making this up.
Perhaps this is where my morbidity springs from.
The fucker went everywhere with his own coffin. Can you imagine that? It is for the other poor fucker carrying it whom I feel more compassion.
In 1501, Maximilian fell from his horse and badly injured his leg. It caused him pain for the rest of his life.
What useless trivia.
Thank you father.
—Good old Maxi!
That is what he would say.
What the fuck was good and old about anything my father did for me?
I remember his slightly drunken wizen face as I left Connemara for the last time. I looked at him through the back window of the bus or car. I cannot remember what I left in.
He sighed as I turned away from him. But I did not cry. What was I to do? Cry there and then and give him the satisfaction of watching me cry.
No.
I cried later.
When I was alone.
Was it he who brought me here, killing my wife and child?
The thought has just occurred to me, out of blue, a sudden flash.
I arrived in the night. When it was bitch dark. A man dragged me over the loosely gravelled driveway. It was long.
—Jacob.
—Yes.
I was ushered inside, all black and blue.
Fighting, I must have been.
No doubt the other fella looked worse than I.
They brought me into this room on a red stretcher. It was then they bandaged my legs. It was Mister Licky. Yes, I remember.
I remember everything.
The drive down from Connemara.
My aunty in Bray.
The beatings.
Please.
Less histrionics. It will make me puke.
All teeth and hair.
Mister Licky.
Or did I drag myself here, over fern and hedgerow? In a momentary lapse of my continual consciousness. Is that possible? Can we do things we do not want to do, that we are not able to do?
Everything is possible.
Maybe it was I who murdered my wife and child and then dragged myself to this dumb for questioning on the matter.
Could I really do that?
Surely I would remember. If even the blood and the screams.
The death of a child is a terrible thing.
A terrible thing indeed.
