PART FOUR:
The Gadfly’s Speech, and how his Soliloquy Gives the Lie to the Spider’s Opinion on the Common People’s Use of the Mouth Organ. The Tormentor Displays.
The Gadfly took a deep lungful of air. He had no time for the pettiness of organs, mouth or otherwise. He himself had a trumpet to blow. It was his own.
After the outburst the Spider had paused for a moment to allow his breath to return and the Gadfly, seizing the opportunity to squeeze a word in edgeways, squeezed it in, and finding no opposition to its passage, grasped it firmly in both his lungs and shoved it in all the way. Then he followed it with a whole dictionary.
-Madam Butterfly, if I may be so bold in my description, he began, -allow me to introduce myself. As you can see, he smirked -I am no lowborn dung heap botfly. Back in the real world they call me the Tormenter.
He paused, gauging the effect of this grandiose title upon his listener. His eyes glittered with the sharpness of a handful of broken glass.
-As for ‘loathsome warble fly’, he added turning to the Spider and squeezing his lips into a thin and deadly line until they resembled the quivering blade of a razor in the hands of Sweeney Todd the Barber, -well, there soon may be a score to settle on that score!
-Tusk tusk, said the Spider, sucking air between his teeth and slapping his gums together in imitation of an aphid learning to blow bubbles.
The Gadfly withdrew his attention from the Spider as a murderer might withdraw his dagger from his victim’s gut, and turned it skilfully towards the Fly, who was sitting open-mouthed in amazement. By now she was drooling a little.
-Understand, fair Demoiselle, he continued, -that just as you also clearly appear to be, I am of Noble and Ancient Race.
-My ancestors caused dinosaurs in the rampant fern forests of aeons past to trumpet despairingly and lash their tails with brute fury against fly-bitten flank until they dripped red with their own blood.
-Mee oh my, gasped the Fly, wiping the back of her forearm across her mouth.
The Gadfly continued.
-I myself, as infant, stampeded herds of the choicest of thoroughbred Arabians, driving them wild with my goad, poisoning them with my barbed tongue until they brayed like the untutored onager of the desert bellowing strange monosyllables stolen from the crass vocabulary of the common ass.
-I have caused turf cutters to go mad and leap to their doom in bottomless bog holes and yea, they even praised God for granting them release.
-I have upturned the extravagant picnic parties of the nouveau-riche and driven even the most well-appointed noblewoman to tear off her serf-stitched knickers and disgrace herself and her lineage in the full and undeniable light of day with frenetic screams and Tarantella writhings and the strange and corybantic lewdness of a pagan sorceress.
By now the Gadfly had risen from his reed stalk and was hovering in the air before them bathed in the magnetic assurance of an operatic tenor who is delivering his seventh encore of the evening and expects the imminent accolade of an eighth. He was clearly enjoying immensely the wrapt attention of the whole Universe and perhaps even that of other and parallel universes far beyond the one we know.
-I have caused proud generals on the reviewing stand to slap their own faces and swear with unimaginably alliterative foulness in the presence of their loyal troops and even of their own mothers.
-Wherever I go I panic the elephant and stampede the rhinoceros and torment the crocodile until they jump through the bamboo forests like young frightened gazelles and soar into the air in their torment as do the flying fish of the far and incomprehensible continents of the East.
-Even the pike sheathes its razor teeth and hides its stern eye beneath the safe skin of the water when I come visiting its pool to drink!
During all this performance the Fly remained spellbound. All trace of Thought and the Great Questions had evaporated from the surface of her mind.
-I wouldn’t mind having his maggots, she thought. –he looks mighty enough to father a plague of locusts!
She was by now was so captivated by the display being enacted for her benefit that she failed to notice what was happening behind her in the silver web.
The Gadfly’s Speech, and how his Soliloquy Gives the Lie to the Spider’s Opinion on the Common People’s Use of the Mouth Organ. The Tormentor Displays.
The Gadfly took a deep lungful of air. He had no time for the pettiness of organs, mouth or otherwise. He himself had a trumpet to blow. It was his own.
After the outburst the Spider had paused for a moment to allow his breath to return and the Gadfly, seizing the opportunity to squeeze a word in edgeways, squeezed it in, and finding no opposition to its passage, grasped it firmly in both his lungs and shoved it in all the way. Then he followed it with a whole dictionary.
-Madam Butterfly, if I may be so bold in my description, he began, -allow me to introduce myself. As you can see, he smirked -I am no lowborn dung heap botfly. Back in the real world they call me the Tormenter.
He paused, gauging the effect of this grandiose title upon his listener. His eyes glittered with the sharpness of a handful of broken glass.
-As for ‘loathsome warble fly’, he added turning to the Spider and squeezing his lips into a thin and deadly line until they resembled the quivering blade of a razor in the hands of Sweeney Todd the Barber, -well, there soon may be a score to settle on that score!
-Tusk tusk, said the Spider, sucking air between his teeth and slapping his gums together in imitation of an aphid learning to blow bubbles.
The Gadfly withdrew his attention from the Spider as a murderer might withdraw his dagger from his victim’s gut, and turned it skilfully towards the Fly, who was sitting open-mouthed in amazement. By now she was drooling a little.
-Understand, fair Demoiselle, he continued, -that just as you also clearly appear to be, I am of Noble and Ancient Race.
-My ancestors caused dinosaurs in the rampant fern forests of aeons past to trumpet despairingly and lash their tails with brute fury against fly-bitten flank until they dripped red with their own blood.
-Mee oh my, gasped the Fly, wiping the back of her forearm across her mouth.
The Gadfly continued.
-I myself, as infant, stampeded herds of the choicest of thoroughbred Arabians, driving them wild with my goad, poisoning them with my barbed tongue until they brayed like the untutored onager of the desert bellowing strange monosyllables stolen from the crass vocabulary of the common ass.
-I have caused turf cutters to go mad and leap to their doom in bottomless bog holes and yea, they even praised God for granting them release.
-I have upturned the extravagant picnic parties of the nouveau-riche and driven even the most well-appointed noblewoman to tear off her serf-stitched knickers and disgrace herself and her lineage in the full and undeniable light of day with frenetic screams and Tarantella writhings and the strange and corybantic lewdness of a pagan sorceress.
By now the Gadfly had risen from his reed stalk and was hovering in the air before them bathed in the magnetic assurance of an operatic tenor who is delivering his seventh encore of the evening and expects the imminent accolade of an eighth. He was clearly enjoying immensely the wrapt attention of the whole Universe and perhaps even that of other and parallel universes far beyond the one we know.
-I have caused proud generals on the reviewing stand to slap their own faces and swear with unimaginably alliterative foulness in the presence of their loyal troops and even of their own mothers.
-Wherever I go I panic the elephant and stampede the rhinoceros and torment the crocodile until they jump through the bamboo forests like young frightened gazelles and soar into the air in their torment as do the flying fish of the far and incomprehensible continents of the East.
-Even the pike sheathes its razor teeth and hides its stern eye beneath the safe skin of the water when I come visiting its pool to drink!
During all this performance the Fly remained spellbound. All trace of Thought and the Great Questions had evaporated from the surface of her mind.
-I wouldn’t mind having his maggots, she thought. –he looks mighty enough to father a plague of locusts!
She was by now was so captivated by the display being enacted for her benefit that she failed to notice what was happening behind her in the silver web.
No comments:
Post a Comment