20 Carpal Syndrome. A Transplantation of Heads.

PART TWENTY: Carpal Syndrome. A Transplantation of Heads.


There are moments when time screeches to a stop and stands utterly and unbelievably still; when the grinding mandibles of the Universe pause in their inexorable activity of entropy and the present moment is frozen in its tracks, mouth agape, motionless, poised between what is and what might be.

This was not one of those moments.

An urgent dilemma presented itself to the Fly. She had come to this place specifically to retrieve the Gadfly’s accoutrements and perhaps even to save his face. But at once it was clear that these noble heirlooms had already become the jetsam of war. Indeed they were now rattling before her eyes on the gloating chest of a vile and toothy impostor. They were beyond retrieving. Probably her intended's face was also beyond saving. As the Carp bore down on her what seemed suddenly pressing was this question: was she herself beyond saving?

-I refuse, she thought, turning sharply in the water, -to be swallowed up by a carnivorous instinct twice in one day!

That anyway is what she might have thought had there been time to think during the nanosecond's gap between appraisal and deed that flickered among her multi-tasking female synapses as they bypassed both mentalese and logic and slipped like well-oiled lightning so quickly into action one might have thought she was executing a standard well practiced military drill.

With two leaps and a bound she seized the Maraschino cherry from the water where it was bobbing about like a lost salmon egg and throwing it high into the air in front of the Carp pulled herself from the pond and flung herself far up onto the shore.

What might have gone through the Carp's fishy mind to trigger the reflex that it did any fisherman can tell you. With a fierce flip of his fins and a slap of his tail he rose from the water in brute pavlovian reaction, curving upwards with the muscular elegance of a flying fish. There was a flash of blue breastplate and a clanking of medals and a snap of jaws, white and gleaming as the ivory tusks of the mighty trumpeting walrus and the crimson bolus was gone. So too was all control the Carp might have had over his tumbling body. He fell, and fell headlong and headfirst. With a smack and a splat he made landfall, wallowing through the mud like a runaway pile-driver and propelling his head up to the gills into the neck of the putrefying toad.

It is amazing how defeat can be rationalised in a moment and turned into glorious victory. With unconscious subterfuge and three mighty slaps on the mud that rang out as loud as a beaver's tail, the Carp, in a majestic and triumphal somersault arched his back and executing a magnificent strategic withdrawal through the gathering dusk, landed a moment later with a loud splash in the middle of the pond.

The Carp too had his pride. Failure in the hierarchy of the bog, just as in the hierarchy of all competitive societies was not a concept permitted to darken the pages of his military log book. The penalty for this crime is generally promotion.

He pushed up the Toad Mask with the tip of his snout and wriggled it onto the top of his head. Three fast laps round the pond, his size now increased by a head, he moved like Napoleon or Wellington in a grotesque cocked hat and cocked the snook now at any former setback he might have suffered. He was become a military edifice of impressive stature, a monument of the pond. His face had been transformed into a grinning battle mask. He was a thing of ugliness and a joy for ever and a terrible warning to those who might mock him. He had moved from decorated hero to General and now to veritable Field Marshall. It seemed to him he ruled the Pool and by extention the whole world beyond its borders was his empire. All trace of failure obliterated by this magnificent war trophy, it was clear that it was the Head of the Toad he was after from the start. It perched now like a busby, a severed head, a captured enemy standard atop his pride as he cruised in his military regalia of glittering breastplate and clanking medals close to the shore. Haughtily and in ever widening circles he cruised with pomp, circumstance and for good measure making a noise like a brass band, which somehow failed to emulate the glory of tone produced by the actual trumpeting of a walrus but was sufficient to impress the denizens of the pool at any rate. A final tour of the pond and the Carp sank slowly and ponderously beneath the surface. Echoes of underwater music of a military nature reached the Fly from the weed-green depths. They seemed to pop like exhausted bubbles of marsh gas on the surface.

The Moonlight glittered, a thousand little bayonets among the ripples. The rumbling of guns seemed to echo from the muddy bottom of the pool. Slowly in the darkness lights came on. The lights of a thousand curious and well hidden and camouflaged eyes. The audience was returning to the spectacle. The murmurings began, softly at first, and then swelling to a sibilant roar that rattled the reeds and ran rustling through the grasses. -Hurrah for the Great Warrior! Long Live the Toad Killer! Three Cheers for His Excellency the Carp! Hip Hip Hip Hurray!

The Fly had watched the Carp circle the pool in his triumphal swim, breasting the water proudly until he looked like a whole flotilla of himself, grinning the grin of the great sabre-toothed walrus.

-These boys do think a lot of themselves, she thought. Let us see now what has become of the Gadfly. Her wings were now clean and dry again. She rose into the air, and hovering for a moment, looked out over the pool. The moon smote its surface and moon dust hung in the air flickering. Mayflies were dancing there. Their first fling and also, she supposed, their last. What a short life. The last go round of maidens and spinsters before the garret. A short life but a merry one. Tush! All that gossamer and flimsy flim-flammery . She began to circle slowly upwards to the Spider’s domain.