Victor Határ Hungarian writer and poet was born in Gyoma (Hungary) in 1914. He left Hungary in 1956 and lives since than in England.
Victor Határ
Witchburning
The little town of Tewkesbridge in the Lake District. Dreary September, misty lakes. Stone-built houses. Yet another and another. Then sudden change of gloom into protest-ant grandeur: Presbyterian portico; a patrician house, disguising badly its being a stately home. Apertures open in the depths of gibbous panels revealing the marbled depths of the vestibule: the Coffin on the bier, the family in the shadows. The Widow, head-to-foot in crape, undertakers in shiny top hats. Snatches of sermonizing priest, sounds reverberating. The clanging of echoes modulate into moaning tolls - knell for the soul - its clanging transposed over the funerary Profile: grizzled, bearded, haggard face, its peculiar hollowness makes it obviously deceased. Cut. Funeral cortege - sumptuous black limos groaning under mountains of wreaths - the hearse is the largest: in the shimmer of bevelled glass indistinctly appear now-and-again but only the outline of the coffin, glimmer of brass-handle, brass-mountings. The procession. Passing by. Receding. Sinister mood-lighting on the elegant street, icy puddles of late night's sinister background music. Extinguishing of lights in rows of mansion windows, as if snuffed out one by one. Darkness. Impatient ringing of bell. Night-light of door-lamp, servant on duty. Who is there? No reply. Won't let in. Not even then. At this time, in such awful weather? Soaked through? (Where from awful weather? Not clear. Yet there it is). Was it arranged? Do they know that you'll come? (To whom does he talk to, in a shiveringly, hurriedly slipped into night-shirt and what made so balefully hoarse that servant obstructing the doorway? Not clear. The stranger blended into so that became darkness itself. Moves into the light for a moment, then emerge - first the scar, then the scarred profile). Voices from somewhere at the back, from the murky sheen of the soaring marble stairway. Some reporter. Wouldn't budge. Would my lady receive him? No, she wouldn't. You could hear it: my lady wouldn't receive you. Well-well!... Paddy MacKearnan is not that sort. He pushes aside, nay, bodily removes the obstructing nobody, like a bundle and sets out with great strides (worm's-eye-view: Great Strides; rows of statues, in passing, under the great strides). My lady (Lady Spunter-Futzrue - widow of the rich, but deceased philanthropist, Lord S. -F. of Dougdale) silkily swishing semi-profile, cut off by the marble balustrade; all billowing finery. With growing excitement under forced composure, in bluish-crimson shimmer of brocades (for those with colour screens): "My orders were that I'm at home to nobody". - "In regard to the Bereavement, my lady?" - "If that pleases you, in regard to the Bereavement". - "Not even to the Press?" - "If you please, not even to the Press. Least of all to the Press." Paddy MacKearnan, at the diffused gloaming of the stair's marble foot (his under-wear is in tatters, though he hides with clever gestures the shabbiness of his outer garments): "I'm Paddy MacKearnan, my lady, representing the DOUGDALE MIRROR, as its Associate Editor, Chief-columnist, intimate friend of the Deceased..." - "I'm sorry: it's nearly midnight" - "I wish it were!" - "What is this intrusive upwards pressure on the Persian carpet of my marble double flight?" - "Only on one of them" - "Taking my stair at the double: What's the idea? Appearing up here so unexpectedly? Mr. MacKearnan!" - "Do call me Paddy" - "I'll call the police! Let go of my hand, why did you grab it?" - "My insufferable manners. Where is the boudoir?" - "But M i s t e r MacKearnan!" - (MacKearnan with fetching sincerity:) "Lady Futzrue! We have to talk...
Fade-in. Camera sliding off the golden escutcheon of the canopied bed unto the centuries old leather saddle-seat - then onto the carved oak mantle: blazing of oak-logs. In the oak-blaze of the log-fire the two-profile vis-a-vis, the two, boldly facing, simpering profiles: Lady Spunter-Futzrue and Paddy MacKearnan. One can feel by the unexception-ally upright posture of the journalist, that he'd love to sit astride on the saddle-seat, al-though restraining himself. The sound, now fading away, now drifting near and become distinct. The two-hour-long conversation, drawn out into daybreak, contracted into five minutes - the contraction amplified when it reached the ominous gist of it. Lady Spunter-Futzrue-: - "If I understand you correctly and my stupefaction is not in error, you are the natural son of my late husband, Lord Dougdale?" - "At your service". - "Namely, that your Nurse kept silent for twenty years and only when the negligent estate management stopped the secret remittances, only then: when you attained age twenty-two, did she re-veal it?" - "on that attainment, Lady Futzrue". - "And what is my guarantee, that you are not an impostor?" - (With deceitfully outstretched arms, looking strait into the Lady's eyes:) "My sincerity". The face of the Widow shows her thoughts of agonised doubts («only a scoundrel of a journalist can put on such a stupidly guileless cheek, that any doubter feels a rotter. If only he would not be so damnably good looking and young and what's more: Wouldn't be a boy the wretch...» Her mature, though beautiful face shows, that she is still undecided. She speaks:) "I only want to point out, that Lord Dougdale, chair of the Rotary Club, a philanthropist famed of his generosity, (with emphasis:) My Father, had it only be in his power, and the combined impediments - of the tendentious laxity of his estate management and death so suddenly taking him, -would not prevent him, certainly he would have taken suitable care of his only issue by blood, him being his descendant by the direct line; in his last will and testament". A slumbering poodle on the carpet. It gave an impressive howl in its half-sleep. To quieten its mournful whine, Lady Spunter-Futzrue: - "Be still, Cleo, couche-toi".
Oppressively dolorous silence. Advertisements. Washing powders, sports car, deodorant, hamburger, cruises, sanitary tampons. Return of the dolorously oppressive silence - picture again. The two of them. MacKearnan (with his feet carelessly poking the carpet. About the poodle:) - "Is it a bitch?" - "It is". - "Called Cleopatra?" - "Called Cleopatra". A yelp. With discreet sauciness, without any hurry, the picture is panned over the fly of Paddy MacKearnan, which is bulging: the reporter has an erection. A contented bark, jaw-creaking dog-yawn. Both him and the woman pretend not to notice it. MacKearnan (his glance chance to fall towards the soft and dusky depth of the bed. With eyes screwed up, he scrutinises the ageing, yet still very attractive woman. Thinking:) "To lay her? Might do as well, sweetie". Lady Spunter-Futzrue (her mouth quivers. Her face an open book: "Being so sturdily-young and filthy rogue, this one might be so-very-very-cruel to me, not only would he fuck me three times a day, on top of it he would diddle me out of all I have...My poor Edmund had not a fluff there, how on earth did he manage to spawn such a bean-pole is beyond me. If he has not any there, I'd tie a goatee for him under it and thus we'd play around. It would be adorably beastly, if only I'd let him. Would it be worth it"?) The lecherous music and the erection - in the crossfire of countrywide attention - wane. Lady Sp.-Futzr. Springs up nervously from her seat. After a brief walk to-and-fro, turns to him. - "Mr. MacKearnan. After leaving here what will you do first?" - MacKearnan (looks away, feigning pretence, is submissive. Sympathising:) "That after leaving here, what will I do first? What do you take me for, my lady. For me, the peace of mind of this House is sacred. And if it would cost my life, so be it. Even that. I'd give it, sacrifice it. Merely..." - "Merely?" - "I'd go to the office of a Sunday paper with world-wide circulation and sell my story in Twelve Instalments for a certain sum". - "Name it ". - "Never! Not a penny would I accept! Only what is my legal due". - The Lady (with heart-rending sigh:) "I'll see what I could do for you, Mister..." - "MacKearnan. Please, do call me Paddy". - "Paddy...And you, call me...Ottiline. If you wish". - "Lady ...Ottiline".
"Come in a week's time, Paddy"
"I'll be here...Ottiline.
Paddy departing. Long-legged and handsome in every mirror while gathering speed and never slipping on the smoothly shining marble floor. Lady Ottiline following him with her eyes: now one can see how tight her skirt is, as if painted on her - and the silky buds of her nipples thrusting like spearheads. Upswelling music; superimposition of pictures. Series of them: tomorrow. Traces of the day-before on the appearing pearly visage of the Lady. In her ermine peignoir, Lady Ottiline's restless roaming in her chambers, amid the family portraits hanging high around her - Which are not by Gainsborough, those might be by Reynolds, the ones not here are lined up in the strong-rooms of the Family Bank. Lady Spunter-Futzrue, in front of her own portrait. Comparing the picture with the original gives away the Lady's discomposure. In her vexation now she is smashing things, now dabs at an importune teardrop in the corner of an eye with a delicate Christian Dior mouchoir. She is kind but stern, refrains to reprimand the hoards of domestics engaged in vacuuming the mourning-covers on the furniture; however, her coming nearer shows her years older than her yesterday's self. She calms down only when arrogance of duty gains the upper hand. For Edmund. For the family. A Spouse of Lord Dougdale could not do what she'd oh-so-very-willingly would. Her need for humping may be obtained elsewhere, for money, in a decorous manner, not in a haystack. She has a week's grace, action is needed. But what kind? At random she bites her lips, wrings her hands or keeps hitting her palm with her little fist while she asks herself again and again: but what? what? what?...Snaps her fingers. She hits upon an idea. The idea is such, that it couldn't be more repugnant and she'd love to rid her mind of it. Goldie. (From here - with mouth closed, but in her own voice - an interior monologue, deep velvety droning; with music echoing from afar:) "Goldie". The insolently rich, although plebeian, the much richer Goldie, of the Flaxen Hair. In vain, the pack of private eyes set against her, because ten packs of counter-eyes covered up the telltale traces. That it almost resulted in domestic warfare between the two families, with open shoot-outs - even their gamekeepers kept covered with loaded guns the keepers of the counter-game-reserves. And yet, and yet. And yet, a hundred to one, what a hundred, she'd bet her life, that Edmund went to see her. Her own Edmund. The most famous dating agency organised their trysts, the odour of their dates reached far and wide. Fornicated with him...Goldie, the Flaxen Haired - who once upon a time was her closest, steadfastest, toadiest lovydove friend, the Trustworthy! But who dares to take up fight with a witch? The Lady's inner struggle in close-up: their Edmund is dead, time for a new chapter. Such ancient hatred unites them, Goldie won't refuse her. She'll understand. If anybody, well, Goldie will do it. Flaxen Haired Goldie, the Blond Witch, though a plebeian, is the Chief Witch of the Aristocratic Coven. Murmuring an indistinct curse, - the Lady gives in and sets about it. Wildly leafing through the address-book (all ex dir. numbers, her own as well as Goldie's). She is the only practising witch in the shire, with fearful reputation. Her house is full of pin-pierced dolls-and-pictures. In one corner in the shape of a toad, in another in the shape of a he-goat - surrounded by smoking joss sticks - the Lord of Darkness himself.
Widow's weed covers the grim bygones in the curtained black car-grandiosity. It slows down before the wrought-iron gates. It stops. The park gate's majestic opening, the car-wonder's sliding in. Drive-up ramp to stately pile, gothic underpass. Through long, gloomy line of halls (not less splendorous for their owner being one of the people) - in to the lion-couches lined witch-boudoir (lit by a blazing log-fire - and by the smouldering eyes of freakish and shaggy animals rampant in every corner). Overwhelming emotions of meeting once more - the gall of which was mixed with joy, because in Goldie's flaxen hair a few silver strands appeared and a few crow's feet around her eyes, notwithstanding, that she proclaimed herself eternally young. For cover-up meaningless chit-chat. - "Since when do you wear glasses?" - "Oh, only for the spellbinding". They pull themselves together. Lady Ottiline is Spartan charm itself (while sewn into her knickers hungry foxcubs gnaw at her tender parts: 'even if she is a bit older, hopefully, the witch-charm of Goldie lost nothing of its potency'). Goldie listens patiently while puffing on her Circadian pipe (looking now-and-again into this and that: into a basket, the depth of which hides a monstrous snake, - it raises its head - or into a Bogomil censer, the cover of which depicts a naughty Satan - or she pokes about amongst the smoking joss sticks). Lady Ottiline humbles herself majestically, her eloquence broken into disconnected gentility. She does know, that she asks for the maximally impossible, but. The estate, the family's honour, the feminine anguish are at stake: the entirety of the first, the integrity of the second and finally the laws of love - all swallowed up. Goldie, as reluctantly under-standing, as she is strugglingly compliant. Although after that unfortunate devil-raising (five years ago) she agreed with the police, that she never again; though since then she does not practise and notwithstanding that the given word of a witch is golden - but. For her, this the more-than-impossible. For the memory of Edmund. For her yes. Dearest! My Lovydovy! Amid several embraces and unfoldings of tearful appeasement and recon-ciliatory kissy-kisses. Not for nothing is she Goldie, she knows a lot more, her private-eye network is also more witch-like. The past of Edmund is whiter-than-snow; had no illegitimate offspring (even if there were: not from that one and not this one. The individual alleges to be Paddy MacKearnan is a common bogus journalist, has nothing to do with the DOUGDALE MIRROR. The despicable rascal is skulking in a seaside hotel of ill repute - there waiting for Lady Ottiline to weaken and crack up, and squander herself under him. Agreeing over the tea-table in the strategy, the ladies laughingly pick over the Catalogues for Spells and Magic-formulae. Terrific jinxing, the owls in the park to-wooing. - "This is the one!" - points at one of them in the sample-book Lady Ottiline. She is getting into the curtained car and waving bye-bye, the kiss-strewing, goldbrocade-trailing figure of Goldie on the purple-sweep of the desolate steps, the officiousness of the uniformed chauffeur in demi-profile. Sliding away, shrinking to a dot - out of the picture.
Commencement of the revenge-machinery. Upwhining of ominous witches-chant ob-liquely whiffly lit frontage of the hotel of ill repute, which is mirrored upside down in the sea of the boatless shore. Screeching of storm petrels, water-vultures and golden eagles in the pitch-dark lighthouse. Madam Goldie, (in witch-incognito) alighting from a dilapidated minicab. She looks up. Rogues' lodgings. She is after this one. Night's reception desk, thug-mug on duty. Paddy MacKearnan? We've no such rogue here. You don't say so? What about that shifty light in that garret window? He's not holed up here, begging your par-don. But yes, he very much is, he is hiding under the name of Sean O'Hara from his devastators. Even if he was, he is not at home. You don't say so. I'll show you that he is. But Madam! Madam...Thug-mug will never learn what made him stumble and tumble down head-over-heals on the attic-steps: Was it the polish, or the bump on his head by that umbrella, or the hooking of his wooden leg by its handle? Anyway, he never even at-tempted to run after her. And the Flaxen-haired one just kept on up and up... Creaking of planks, pressing upwards. The WC door in the attic's corner swings dazedly in the draught: in it something stirs, left there, unflushed... Loose handle on the red-stained door of the den; opens up at the first witch-hiss - without Goldie touching it. The objects and everything. They all are her allies. The sham-MacKearnan-lad with feet put up, in a dishevelled housecoat, playing at being the Great Sneering Lecher; in his smoke-rings blown high, he imagines his dreams to come true: what compound good luck, that he hit upon the Mad Hoax just in the nick of time. If everything goes according to plan, then with Gran (for thus he nicknamed Ottiline) with Gran he'll bath in the grossest of lechery and as the mock bastard, will loll in the ancient inheritance of the Dougdales. He is daydreaming (behind his scar-face) about rolling in the fabulous riches, about buying up and then booting out of his companies all of his creditors. About using which firms of brokers to engulf in a deadly embrace the City - when.
- Sean O'Hara.
The sound hits him on the head.
At hearing his real name, he looks behind him. With clumsy urgency he tries to struggle to his feet, but gets entangled in his slipped down pants and toppling sideways bangs an ear on the table.
He feels it. He is horrified by it being bloody. The light of the moon shows his palm: dripping with blood. The Bloody-eared cowering on the ground sees the enormous Goldie above him for a hen-vulture with wings spread out wide.
She holds a scull-shaped flask and uncorks it. The beacon suddenly lights up. By its blinding glow, she rustles her gold-brocade wings, springs into offence. The sham-journalist's gibbering protests. However, the shirt sleeves slides back off his raised up arms - and this was a mistake. Goldie, the Golden Witch in long scarlet gloves sprinkles on him the frogspawn, which were pickled in salty piss-brine. Countrywide murmur of horror. In the bluish flicker of the oven's gas-flames appear transposed now hissing snakes' tongues, now smirkingly retching demon-masks raised high above her. Scream of the self-alleged sham-Bastard, the magic potion is splashed on his arms - scalding and burning his hairs - it penetrates his pores. Tableau. (The wing-beats of her voice echoing round:)
Your liver and spleen shall shrivel up
Your blood and piss shall get corrupt
Your spittle and tears shall putrefy
Your snot and gob shall mortify
Your tousled tow shall get gunked up
Shall get with phlegm all fouled up
Your spawning sperm shall get parched up
By evil eye, you loathsome rat
Your arms shall wither and decay
Lame and crippled waste away
Ravagement shall desiccate you
Racking pain shall stab and split you
Waste you shall for you are hexed!
Goldie, her approaching left eye waxing enormous. (This eye now becoming the whole screen). Goldie the Beautiful in the moment of the spell-casting is growing hideous and descends onto the chickening quake that is O'Hara. The scar-face groans. Goldie, the Golden-Horror, wields her bulging eye as a skewer - impales the sham-Bastard. In that very instant the rascal gets discouraged from the Great Hoax and forgets altogether that yesterday he wanted to be a sham-Bastard, the "illegitimate offspring" of Lord Dougdale. Sham-Bastard grabs his arms. He screams. His features get distorted from his childish wish to cry, but do not betray where or what hurts him. One of the long scarlet gloves of Goldie suddenly moves (now one can see that the finger-ends are cut off and reveal Vampire-talons). She stretches them out. Scratches. Lacerates her victim. O'Hara (shriek-ing:)
"My arm!" (Even more painfully:) "Ouch-my-aaarm!"
Long weeks accelerated into two minutes: (O'Hara {like a suddenly wilting plant}. His two arms keep shrinking, withering, shrivelling. He is weakening. Feeling faint. His face swells, his face-wound recurs (facial-abscess? tuberculosis? malignant tumour?) The turn of his condition for the irreversibly wasting away. His mysterious visitors from the nether regions. Bustling about of doctors; snapping out of orders in medics-Latin. Lipoma, leukaemia, vacuity of lipoid-cells; cachexia. Whirling of white-coated consultation shot from above. The turns-and-twists of the story can hold less and less the TV-viewers' interest. 16 millions pairs of eyes glued to the same number of screens. A strange panic overcomes them. Of the 16 millions 8 millions are men; of the 8 millions for 2 millions of them a goose-pimply shiver springs forth from under their scrotum, then up and down their backs: these 2 millions switch channels. Shrill bickering, forcing children to bed. The remaining 6 millions (men) can't take their eyes off it. The ones living the part; the 6 millions of pretend-"sham-Bastards"... They keep waiting on tenterhooks for the "forth-comings" - for the "what's next". Does it matter? Compared to that countrywide health-care-disaster which will hit them in the real world of action outside of the small screen? That whether the heart of the precious Lady Ottiline will soften towards the rascal and will go to bed with him in her jodhpurs? Or else in Goldie will flare up the last sparks of mis-chief (if she once bagged her husband, why shouldn't she put her nose out of joint and the vulgar O'Hara out of her vagina?) Or that the skint and lowbred O'Hara as soon as aided-and-abetted by the pretend-journalism will sell his cockeyed life-story entitled, I LOVED A WITCH to the papers around the world. Is it not all the same, compared to that in the following weeks thousands or tens-of-thousands of sad-visaged men of various ages will lay siege to the local surgeries, their arms in slings, all suppurating and salivating and despondently wasting away? Emergency surgeries on hospital corridors. Pulling and pushing of chairs by emergency sawbones, a stampede. Hesitant constats, illiterate forms, illegible scribbles, perplexed diagnoses. Scurvy? Grapes? Morbid degeneracy? Phlegm-rot? Gum-plague? Tendovaginitis? The sufferers under the influence of TV-hypnosis are not complaining about their own ills but of the "forthcomings": about the reckless son-of-a-bitch's swollen face, his scar is suppurating, his eye socket, after getting completely gummed and closed up seem like a "self-dug-grave". From here on (according to their relations), the victims could not follow the "forthcomings" on the screen, because they were caught and overcome in front of the TV by pains of empathetic fit (homeoalgia). They had to wail with loud yammerings, pseudo-screaming, "Ouch! Ouch!" The moaning ones were tucked up in bed; were talked to, though not hearing it; they asked for crucifixes, bedpans, priests, etc. (Cataleptic phlegmathorrhea). They delegated a government committee for the studying of the mass-plague spread by the TV-hypnosis; though for being not so much a committee but the government itself, they do not start to discuss the wherewithal of overcoming-and-preventing the disease, but they dwelled upon the possibility of combining the observations about the poultry-factories, incubators, factory-farm-animals etc., with the discovery of the TV-inducted mass-hypnosis and how could be all that turned in-to the salvation and benefit of the government? Would it not be possible to produce such citizens, which were incubated, formulated in the darkness in factory-farms, fed only with pigmented water in their sleep, were quadrangular for ease of packing and were kept under TV-hypnosis, taken out once in every fourth year - for voting - and that after voting for the government, they could be stuffed back by the millions into darkness? This would result in great savings for the government as well as the final consolidation of the factory-farm-democracy... By the conclusion of the government committee's secret meetings and handed in their far-reaching Secret Report, such endemic diseases raged nation-wide, that abroad they closed their ports, fumigated the post, filtered the phone-lines, and put into quarantine all of the Sceptred Isles. The country languishing under the double curse of isolation and wasting-sickness - like so often in its history - was saved not by its government, but by a conference of blundering botcher-psychiaters coming together without authorisation by the government. The "shrinks" talked about "identifying transposition" and the meeting slowly crystallised the vague hope, that "if they wrote the therapeutic continuation of the TV-story, the mean blackguard should be 'made likeable' and his gradual recuperation with his triumphant return to health would result in a homeopathic recovery and healthfulness for millions suffering the TV-sickness." Many of them blamed Lara Lovebomb, who in the role of Goldie "overdone her acting" and the fact-finding interpretations of "the social condition of witches and witchcraft" at the meeting thrust increasingly into the background the established religions and scientific methods. It emerged that tribal medicine men and registered witches are a great deal more competent about sympathetic magic than the dumbfounded consultants. The derided medical profession, which called itself modern, in the beginning, was only pushed into the defensive then decamped and took off at full speed to the four winds. It is happening at the first time, all the world can see it, and the suffering millions can witness it, that the quackery-sorcery and the much ridiculed hexing, when sufficiently intensified by the exponent of the TV: it is effective! Countless axillary glands are inflamed and putrefied, millions of arm-muscles are wasting away to emaciation to skin and bone, from armpits to fingertips. The scuttling about and ostentatious congregating of these ghostly skeletons in the lobbies of the TV-studios is an everyday spectacle. They swarm into the luxury-car-parks, turn over the cars, screech themselves hoarse at the top of their feeble voice.
"Goldie! Goldie to the stake! Sorceress!"
"To the flames with her! To the fire with the Goldie-whore!"
Public opinion is born, the loudspeakers are lynching, and the firebrand of countrywide demand shot up to the rooftops.
"We want the stake with Goldie on it!"
"She is to be burned!"
"To the stake with her, to the stake!"
By this time even the Eternally Young-and-Beautiful (Lara Lovebomb) notices that the public wroth which is bursting forth from thousands of consumptive throats is not quite similar to the majestic roaring of a Greek chorus; and when she was leaving one of the Limewood studios and was confronted with the raging mass of consumptives - she took fright. That she is only an actress, words were put into her mouth, she is acting according to the role - thus she squawked in her throatily, refined way - and at anyrate, whoever followed the "followings" should know: the dirty cad O'Hara met his just desert and while he in his grief (and shame) killed himself in the ornamental lake of the park, indoors, when his aquatic corps was fished out, the Dougdale Family Council celebrated the saving of the family's Fortune -
"We are not interested in the just desert, the Dougdale-fortune, the tribe of his lordship, the whole soft-pated TV-plot! Not interested!"
"We want our hands, I want my arm healthy: no need for the Dirty Cad to meet his just desert, who would give a poop-scoop full of shit for it?
"Somebody! Take this wasting off us!"
"Take off this hexing!"
"To the TV, with the hellcat sorceress!"
"Should she just try it: look at those shifty eyes! Look at the bitch - she'd deny it!"
"Either she takes it off, or to the stake with her!"
"If she takes it off, even more so!"
"To the stake! To the stake!"
"Eee! Eee! E!...Eee! Eee! E!" (To the stake! To the stake!)
The "enchanting" Lara Lovebomb was this once got out of her tight corner by her body-guards. After this she takes care that before leaving (by a side entrance), she'd change her appearance. She takes out her dentures. Bad mistake. Next day she can see herself on the whole of the front page of the DOUGDALE TIMES: she was caught by the ambushing camera when instead of a well preserved fortyish she looked an ill preserved eightyish who with her toothless gums mutters unprintable remarks. By the third day the leading articles reported about the pressure weighing heavily upon the government of the Public-Hatred - by the government upon the Public Hatred, by the fourth day they reported about the increasing of the pressure.
The countrywide wasting away claims its victims by the hundreds. The crisis-coffins are followed by hundreds of thousands of members of the Wastrels' Militant Tradeunion, showing their naked skin-and-bone arms. Worse than braking all of the windows of the Parliament. People are crying, wishing long life to the ones espoused to death and taunting eachother - they organise mock-serenades of catcalls to their MP-s:
"It's not fair! Compared to this the Highest of Dirty Tricks, Watergate is piddling!"
"The instigators shall pay for this! The ones making obscene piles with this!"
"Thank the TV for this! The TV let this plague loose on us!"
The therapeutic sequence to the TV drama was voted for at an extraordinary sitting of the House. Chewing of pencils by the scenarists under supervision of gaolers. The little town of Tewkesbridge in the charm-laden Lake District. Melting smile of the TV-bulbul announcer shaking her curly wig-mane: the Next Episode. Burgeoning of fresh shoots, bursting forth of flowers (music: the plundered Schubert is turning in his grave). Two nightingales naughtily bill-and-coo (two beaks in close-up:) they warble in minor third and flit away in nuptial dart. Lady Dougdale, the lilywhitened widow (of the nobility: coat-of-arms on castle), her irresistible attraction towards the Hero (in transit on steed). Of the Hero several lucky coincidences (and episodes dragged in by brainwashed script-writers) disclose, that he is the lawful heir and secretary by blood of Somebody (?) who was filthy rich and an ex-prime minister. The hot embrace of the Promised Ones up hill and down dale: the countrywide festivities of the nuptial joining in wedlock together with witch-burning (white tie and full evening dress compulsory)... They did not even start with the shooting - and at the faculties of the universities, they replaced the professors of medicine with shamans, gurus and African medicine men. The itinerant salesmen of the Pharmacochemistry-factories were shown the door - in the laboratories bongo-drums, tom-toms, uangos, cacophoniums, goo-goo-whompers, poisoned arrow-heads were lined up. By the time the therapeutic TV-script is finished, the hundred-thousandth wasted corps was interned. The quarantine was tightened up by order of the UN. The TV-infected countrywide isolation asthmatically fights for breath, air- and seaports are all hermetically sealed.
At last!
The Day of Healing! The Day of Good-Hope is imminent!
On the streets imbecile winks are exchanged by strangers, showing the V-sign of victory to eachother.
Under the inspection of witch doctors and ghost-busting vice-shamans, the country-wide hospital wards were turned into TV-auditoria. The "next episode" of the TV-soap is watched, being legally compulsory, by wasted millions, together with their excited families. (As proposed by the Chief-Shaman of Canterbury, in live transmission - according to the unanimous ruling of the shaman-conclave. The "pellicula" of the tape would weaken the suggestivity of the therapeutic action, not having at all such hypno-magic effect than the live one.) Continuation in direct, the just-widowed Lady Ottiline, like an enraptured golden moth, alight upon the passing (and by now made appealing) Handsome Youth, whose parting glossy-mag-lips reveal his unmistakably noble soul, just as his accidentally-left-open fly - his thirst for a kiss. From guessable source, squelching sound can be heard. They pant faster and faster; the acceleration is proportionate with the sweetening of their trembling. A cast off Levy in the corner. A brief cut. Near the climax Lady Ottiline offers the Youth, for necrophiliac ends, the mortal remains of Lord Dougdale, which rests on an adjacent bier - cut. The Youthful Paddy MacKearnan: (with bashfully callow smile shakes his head, "no"). Lady Spunter-Futzrue: - "Surely, that's your father. Happen in the best of families" (she eggs him on). Paddy: - "I can't accept it". He does though. He performs it. In a little while, zipping up his jeans: his regret is captivating: - "Can you forgive me?" - Lady Spunter-Futzrue (her playful fingers in Paddy's hair:) - "The Witch was the evil one not you..." -
Slow transposition, dungeon-music. The Sorceress before the cowled Bloody Assizes; the heads are sugar-loaf-like, the lighting is just as in a gaol. Flaxen-haired Goldie, by right of her dying wish, asks for her mirror. She straightens herself, pats the beehive hair. She doesn't want to step onto the stake untidily back-combed. Up and down in her mirror, she observes her gums, the corners of her mouth (for lipstick-bleed, on that the eyelid's blue, on it the fake lashes) and finding everything in order - (shooting!) - in undulating golden brocade she sets off for the stake. She does not know, that it is not filmed, everything is in direct; that the stake as well, is not "virtual", but a real one. Scattering of kisses, dimpled smile; she makes light of her death on the stake, flashes a bare boob. She does not yet know, that in the Ghastly Innards of the Isles, the Chief-Devil of the TV-ovens arranged it already, thus it arranged it. That although at first the blazing of the flames is "virtual", but the consequent short-circuiting is real. It is not hidden for long either, that it sizzlingly consumes the insulation. Sparkle jumps in a great curve unto the flammable, which being combustible, is inertly keyed up for it. It flares up with an explosion-like hooray, the flame with great gusto becomes rapacious, starts to singe the tights of the Star. Jet-flame of soldering torch. Everything flashes through her brain, from birth to burning. Because by now she is being roasted. Yes, the Star, half-mad of fright starts to burn, even so, in the screaming forth of her marvellous discernment to the last minutes; she limits herself to establish the fact:
"Ouch I'm burning! Burning! BURNING! BURNING!"
She repeats this again and again in increasing shriekings, until the throat-chafing smoke chokes her. And Lara Lovebomb, together with the cracklingly shattering props crashes under, thus disappearing from the optic nerves of the TV-addict millions. The national-disaster-wards view with satisfaction the witch burning - let that good for nothing have it! - Although they understand so, that their treatment include only an innocent trick-shot, so that the conscience of the nation is clear. Cut, adverts, washing powder, sport car, mediterran sunbed, dream cruise, moisturiser, sanitary tampon. All the more troubled is the conscience of the TV-crew's boss (not being one of the initiates in the decision of the Chief-Shaman of Canterbury about the live transmission). The spectacle sets his hair on end, which he tears while gaping at the props sinking into a sizzling wall of flames and he hurriedly searches among the extras for the bribed culprit calling him a mangy dog, whom he shall bump off, so help him... when an amiably energetic Iron-Grip grabs him by the collar and informs him: he has orders from the Highest Authority, that.
What about the millions of hush money paid out of public funds to greaser/and greased-of palms, to their relations, to the newshounds of the tabloids? Who cares, who is bothered about it? All through the night the permanent session of the Cabinet are in readiness for the first news. About the first healing. For the first shaman-bulletin. "The first armpit swelling is abating, the glands are working normally. The lipoids are filling up, the bright redness of the inflammations are clearing up; vigorous closing of wounds, the contraction of the striated musculature is more defined". That the "wellthankgod-forthat" could be uttered at last. That they could relate to eachother about the size of the stone that no longer pressed on their ministerial hearts. That behold! The live witch burning was - "effective". That for the little thespian - who never dreamt to be a sorceress, only acted as one - shouldn't some mischief-maker pay for masses: that would be his last act alive. That the government, in its canopied ministerial bed, should drop off into torpid sleep with the same gratifying feeling as the governed ones, as the lethargic-ally idling humanity, which was knocked on the head by universal progress. In a million homes appear on the screen of the Box the unctuous Lead in the news, gurgled by the chief minister, lip-smacked by the court wizard and listened by the Crown with inane smirks:
"We can state with pride - (he stops, adjusts his toupet and dentures, tucks back the folds of his double chin and raises his windpipe:) - We can state with pride, that on this here dedicatory evening of the permanent dawn of our golden-age, we arrived to the threshold of our dialectic synthesis and nobody should say, that there is, because there is no stopping on the road dictated by progress: behold - (with majestic crowing:) - behold we have retrieved witch-burning, on a Higher Plane, before millions of TV-viewers".
Translated by Priscilla H. Pragai
