Day 24

The Joy of Pain and The Death of Supplementary Toes


07.19 Why?
Subject: Regarding Digits


First of all, I submit to you a question demanding an immediate answer!

How is it possible to retain my composure, my essence of chic, when I am in excruciating pain? Inexhaustible, unrelievable, unrelenting pain? Shooting, gnashing, gnawing, grinding, unmitigated pain?

Oh, I know quite well what you are saying behind your teeth. I saw your pouty, inflated, colleginated, botoxed lips move in a dream, and heard the uttered mutter, “Do I care? Is he still alive?” Oh, yes, my dearest one, those were the treasured words and sentiments spoken by your balloon-animal lip when they move ever so softly in the twilight. That is how they thrust the sharpened sword upwards through my very gullet.

“Oh hideous perfidy,” I shriek in hapless frustration and sadness. “How could you be so heartless?” Cannot those cosseted, faraway lips feel my pain? How is it they cannot even begin to experience my agony, or have a clue as to its veracity? As far as they are concerned, it is the merest and subtlest twinge, a non-consequential mini boilette on the posterior of my ineptitude.

For your information, however, it is not a “merest twinge” or petty botheration. Au contraire, my little fruit salad. It is much, much more than even you in all your wisdom could have anticipated.

It is a matter of my toes!

You might possibly recall the clatter clatter noises I mentioned the other night. Well, they refused to depart from the house, no matter what. And now my toes appear to be missing. In fact, they no longer appear at all.

I admit that due to my present circumstances, I wouldn’t be able to see my fragrant digits even if they were still dangling from their designated toeholds. The batteries of my torch have utterly expired, and my small and diminishing universe has been plunged into vile darkness and despair. I can see nothing. Nothing, I tell you! This bodes not at all well for that bizarre, rambling blind lady who swore up and down over the telephone that the batteries she so callously sold me would not and could not lose power. Not in ten years. Not in twenty years. Not in ninety years. Not even in nine hundred forty-two million billions trillion years.

Before you point out my shortcomings, I admit it was my fault. I should really have suspected that something was array when she started babbling on about eternity and the unbreakable light bulbs of fate. But you know how horribly trusting I am, how pathetically gullible. I am simply compelled by fate to trust someone, anyone, at least once a day, or I’ll go mad. My problem is, I never seem to zero in on the right person.

I trusted. And because I trusted and was, once again, figuratively kicked in a very bad place, I promise on your mother’s soothing unguent that I shall wreak havoc upon that odd-sounding lady and upon the other identically odd-sounding blind (and deaf) lady who sold me that “Everlasting, Ever-Shining Shoe Polish” exactly one year ago today. That you thought was funny. In fact, you laughed so hard that I was forced to pay the restaurant for the cost of a new, brocade chair. “Oven cleaner”, the product turned out to be. Mislabelled oven cleaner. How funny would it have been, Miss It’s-So-Funny-I’ve-Just-Wet-Myself, if I’d drunk it by mistake? Chortle, chortle, chortle. Snigger, snigger, snigger. And how about the occasion, exactly one year before that, when I spilled my so-called “Sundew Brand Ever-Black Cuticle and Testicle Crème” (another special telephone offer hawked by a ‘blind single mother with seventeen children and a ferukha) on my salad de tomate? I nearly expired I did, in convulsions and inverted orgasms. However, what if I had been eating ice cream at the time or had been concentrating on an arcane philosophical equation? Would that have been equally hilarious? Would you have split your gut through over-exuberant hysterical laughter?

It’s all down to political correctness and cost-effectiveness, of course. I realise there are a great many blind (and deaf) people wandering about, looking for something to do and bumping into unlikely objects, and I suppose most of them are imminently employable as salespeople. I’m all in favour of that; in fact, I’m a great exponent of full employment. That being said, does it send the right message for blind salespeople to be encouraged (or cajoled or bribed) to sell products blindly? To sell impossible products to fools like me who desperately believe them because I’m sure I’m destined for Hell if I don’t? And while we are about it, why not employ them as driving instructors or bus drivers and lure me aboard?

By the tone of my voice, you will be suspecting that I am in pain. My very soul is wracked, and I cannot but shall act accordingly. Although I have not as yet decided in what form my revenge shall take, you will know when my fury is unleashed. And after you know, the world will know. Just as soon as I have coordinated my vengeance and loaded my chilblains with explosives.

But I digress. I am utterly disconsolate and desperate about the condition (or lack of condition) of my toes, and this is affecting my entire outlook on life. That and the uncertainty. If only I knew for certain… knew for certain that there were unrelenting gaps at the end of my feet. I feel nothing but numbness down there. What if they had merely lost all their feeling (much like your heart), and were dangling there, grey and shrivelled and disconsolate? What if they were elsewhere, on holiday, for example, and were planning on coming back when the weather has improved?

The very numbness frightens me, especially because I’m sure I feel what amounts to phantom pain. Horrible, searing, phantom pain, but I cannot reach down to check. My hands are occupied elsewhere and it is so very very dark. If I were common I might be heard to lament, “Shit, Shit, and thrice again, Shit!”

As usual, I shall be patient. In spite of appearances, I will continue to believe that everything will turn out for the best. However, moral and spiritual support from a treasured friend is always welcome at such a time. Will you please read up on Buddhism and “Omulate” for me? Just in case? – Your beloved Laurent.

***

12.02 Nearly lunchtime with not an antipasto in sight
Subject: Congratulations

Dearest Darling Forsythia,


I forgot to congratulate you on the publication and rapturous reception of your masterly work, The Joys of Thrush: Personal Agriculture for Fun and Profit, by Forsythia Fhanwyth-Featherstonehaughe, JD. I lie prostrate with grief and awe at your feet. Such a mind you have! Such a facility for language! Mind you, I profess to be more than slightly miffed, not to say disappointed in your subject matter, which I personally find distasteful, as well as a little smelly. Why did you not make it clear on the cover that you were not waxing lyrical about the small, modestly clad, sweet-voiced songbirds we all so enjoy in our gardens. I have written to your publisher to complain, and also to Le Monde and Libération to express my utter disappointment. Your book is a tragedy for France, and what is a tragedy for France is a mortification for the world. – L.
***

14.17 Missing your letters
Subject: Neighbours

Dearest Darling Forsythia,


Have you remained entirely ignorant of the goings-on in No. 3, up near the top of the street?

As you are no doubt aware, the house is occupied almost entirely by refugees from Great Britain, having fled from that green and pleasant land to escape the dire undertrimmings and the all-pervasive decay of that strangely flatulent society.

Flat No. 2, on the first floor, is, as you know, occupied by a certain Miss G. Thong. Sharing her bed and board and affections is H. Snotter, erstwhile tenant of “The Hedges”, The Weir, Lesser Wolverhampton. When actually and actively employed, he occasionally supplements Miss Thong’s meagre income from moneys garnered as an assistant behind the second-best wet fish leavings counter at Monoprix, having in his life occupied a similar position in Sainbury’s Used Food Section. Miss Thong works as an office manager for L.Grosthweite et fils, carpet fitters.

Most evenings, Miss Thong and Mr. Snotter can be heard engaging in certain indispensable and raucous pursuits.

Dwelling directly above Miss Thong, in apartment 5, is a certain Mlle. Emile Habitude and her lover Henrietta du Nord. Both earn extra income by nefarious means and are seldom seen either in public or out of doors.

It may be of interest to you that Madame du Nord, in her earlier incarnation, foreswore the shaving of her legs so as to appear more French. However, for no particular reason, but after the onslaught of an unbearable chic, she was seen ordering large quantities of wax from a well-known and respectable undertakers supplier.

Mlle. Habitude has always been immoderately quiet in all respects, and prefers to be spoken about in severely post-modern terms. There was, of course, the historical occasion, well-remembered by those whose business it was to know about such things, when, in a fit of pique, she uttered “All men are Pflod!”, an outburst which came as an untimely intrusion in an otherwise perfect day.

Immediately after this, a gargantuan chasm opened up, but it solved nothing. There was, quite naturally, the usual bleakness and disrepair, and following that (it was shortly before midnight on the 4th or 5th of the month), old Mr. Hamster on the top floor flung himself from his small dormer; he was inevitably impaled upon the railings far below. Again, nothing was solved, and his flat was sublet to a family of eight with no prospects.

The interestingly aroma-ed fourth assistant inspector from the Office of Unaccountable Taxation, the one with the sibilant comb-over, studied the occupants of apartment number three with uncommon intensity, but it availethed nothing. There was no one there.

Soon the house fell asunder and a dark grey multi-story car park was erected on the site, blocking the view of the small Ethiopian restaurant and causing the yoghurt to decline.

Still, the Office of Unaccountable Taxation watched and waited.

It was all very sad. It was bland and scurrilous. They all died.
Fin.

PS. Has it occurred to you that I am trying my best to provoke a response? Have I offended you? Have you moved away? Are you no longer in a communicable arrondisement? Are you dead? Or are you simply too busy to care?