Title: In Savage Africa

Owner: Lilly Burroughs

Circumstances of Acquisition : Found in a bin at Lloyd’s

When Lilly found the book she thought it must be an unfortunate allusion of her current situation; she was just about to end a very long engagement. She was digging in a bin at Lloyd’s when her hand struck a hardback with a light crimson cover. “In Savage Africa” it read and she looked curiously down at the cover. Two illuminated figures roving about in a sea of high silver grass; a man with an axe and a bull with curved horns about to attack.

It looked very old and she checked the date within; 1897. Hmm, she thought, perhaps I should buy it for I do feel I’m in savage Africa at the moment and all men are terrible beasts and there is far too much exotica surrounding me. It was a good analogy for her life: she often found herself striking at tall grasses around her with a machete while the beasts swarmed about, clawing and biting and ready to place their calloused paws upon her body. But in reality, she saw herself, head down, arms draped tightly round her chest when she went out to bars and always, always there were the little furtive men who hung about, pecking at her like little meek birds for a taste of bread. It really did get tiring after some time.

Oddly enough she had gone to Africa years before and stayed a month or two with a local family in Zambia. When she thought back to this time, she decided she had never been happier; it was if the world was free of sound and distractions and she lived simply for awhile writing a book about Brachystegia longifolia–a native tree in the grasslands of Zambia. After she returned she had met Gar, not in a bar oddly enough, but at a hardware store. He couldn’t understand her desire to go to Africa and had almost decided Africa did not exist at all because it was not in the peripheral vision in his brain, had never swung about on his cones and rods, his rivulets of tiny brain nerves. He preferred cold, hilly places and often tried to get her to go to mountains of New Hampshire or Vermont (surely nowhere too exotic) to climb mountains. But she hated mountains, hated craggy, meaty environments. She preferred simple, flat lands; somewhat colorless. Zambia was not colorless, the city was bright and chaotic but once she got to the plains, she felt her skin settle a bit; breathe once again, it was more neutral and dusty brown. She should have known right then that Gar was useless but she somehow became entranced by his lack of character; she felt the need to understand his void, rest in its opaque, dull splendor for a while, almost like studying a common household  plant..

She leafed through the book and came upon several illustrations. She didn’t remember  the indigenous people wearing such elaborate costumes and this was unsettling. She wondered if the author had in fact traveled to Africa at all. However it was the height of colonialism and she realized his eyesight was simply awash in the stilted colors of the colonialism and the local sites, and people were part of his storybook. He would present his endless plays and props and sideshows to the public. So, she bought the book and brought it home, leaving it in the den on top of her coat. Later when Gar came home, he sat on it by accident. He picked it up and peered at as if it were a suspicious package.

“There you go, talking about this place Africa and then you go and buy the damn book.” He spit out and gestured wildly at the book. “Are the snakes in Africa really that large? He asked and pointed to an illustration of  a man fending off a python the size of a giraffe.

“No Gar, it’s embellished a bit. It’s a 100 years old for Christ’s sake! Africa’s not like that. You wouldn’t understand.”

“You always say that, oh Gar, you wouldn’t understand. Well, I don’t understand why a lady goes to Africa and studies plants anyhow. there’s enough to study in this damn urban jungle for a million years, well a few years, anyhow.”

And she looked at him and studied him and a light bulb went off and she then decided he would be ideal for her next project. Plants had become boring; he was right about that. But banality was a subject that keenly interested her. And why not observe it in one person? The mind’s big grasp at nothing–how exciting! The severity of dullness, the trials and torments of being blank; a null spot on a wall.

Title: In Savage Africa

Author: Verney Lovett Cameron, C.B., D.C.L.,Commander Royal Army

Penned: In the gray kitchen of a Victorian flat

Commander Cameron had  a deadline and was a month short on his promised draft of his latest African Book. His wife, Ivy, advised him to never take on the assigment;  first of all he would have to go back to Africa  and of course that would mean he would roam about and discover another tract of the cruel and unusual land on that god forsaken continent. And lastly, like last time, he would come home muttering bit and pieces of  some obscure and obtuse tongue that should never have been invented at all,  least of all spoken. He would stop wearing his overcoats and vests and roam about the house in his flannel knickers and the staff would rebel and all would be lost. He had also picked up a rash the size of Chelsea and was forced to bathe in milk for months.

“Oh it will be such an experience Lovey, how I long to go back… I dare say these roasts we eat here are terribly bland and I long for some Caterpillar Delight. There nothing quite like an African sunset, it puts ours to shame. I miss the great expanse, the great stretch of equilateral loneliness. And of course, I can’t go back to Spain.

He set out to Spain after his first stint in Africa. Ivy thought it would straighten out, suck out the wanton spirits that circled his heart and engulfed his sturdy little limbs. But in Spain, he had gained forty pounds and brought back a young teenager he claimed was his new assistant. His name was Amando and he was to write longhand while Verny dictated. His wife grew suspicious after she discovered he knew not a drop of English. He spent most of his time in the kitchen, whipping up disastrous paellas and shook his nimble fingers about the room in search of things to do. One night, his wife caught them on the chaise lounge late at night and he was certainly assisting Verny with his nimble little fingers.

His wife put her foot down and told him if he set foot in Africa again, she would ruin him. She’d take all the money, which really came from his father’s estate and tell the world about his escapades in Spain and Hyde Park for that matter. And she would reveal that she wrote most of his last book “On the Restless Banks of the River Thames” about the adventures of a young Shakespearean fisherman, who dreamt of the theatre but had little talent. It had received wide acclaim and made them some money which she promptly put away for  a rainy day. She wasn’t sure why he had ever decided to leave the Navy, despite the little rumors she had heard from that terrible gossip, Bethany Dids.

So it was decided he would not go and he invited over an old man that had spent half his life in Africa to refresh his memory a little. Verney jotted down the old man’s anecdotes, imagined a young sailor as a narrator and his story began. When his wife read the first few chapters she quickly took over and wrote the entire book herself. It was her idea to include the stories of the hideous over-sized pythons. “Every tale should have a proper beast,” she proclaimed.  “After all, we English are simply left here in our miserable gray fields with the dull stares of cows or the defeated bleating of the sheep.”

Then one day Verny received a letter in the post;  it was an ivory colored envelope with some strange lettering in the corner and his own name scrawled across the front. He sat down and read it the dark corner of the parlour, trembling in excitement that someone from the continent had remembered him. But his excitement faded like the sliver of an old moon and he collapsed on the floor. His wife grabbed the letter and read it rapidly. Apparently one of the hunting guides at the camp had been killed by a Leopard. His name was Fumo and was much loved by all. “Oh, Fumo, oh Fumo,” was all Verny could manage to say and she led him to his bed where he stayed for some weeks. Ivy put the death of the guide in her book as well but decided it was a  a rather typical death and added that cannibals had stumbled upon the soon to be dead Fumo and had themselves a fine dinner. Later when Verny read the finished book, he wept again and thought of Fumo, his backside flyed and mounted on a long strip of wood to be boiled.

Title: Barnum

Owner: Bernard M. Woof

Purchased: At the Hayward Bookshop on Bog Street for $1.25.

Bernard was looking for a misadventure because a real, good adventure seemed too rosy and sunny for his disposition that day. His face was the color of an old worn dishtowel and Larky told him if he didn’t leave the house at once and get some good industrial air, she would roll him up in the old Turkoman and send him off on a steamer to the South. So, he trod down to Bog street, a name he particularly admired as he often felt the dregs of humanity waded frequently there and he felt inclined to get very damp that day in the apathy of all of them. He loitered at the grocer and prodded at fruit with his sinewy, chalky fingers and then stepped into Hayward’s. He felt jolly at once when he had found a bright green volume, named “Flat Farming” which gave advice on growing crops on your terrace. How Larky would disapprove, he thought and snatched it up.

A few spines down, he saw, “Barnum” and smiled a little woeful smile like that of  a sickly child receiving an update on his disease. “Barnum”, the autobiography of the famous circus proprietor. Circuses had always bored him, spectacles in general seemed obscene and self glorifying and most of all freaks made him feel odd and somewhat clammy. Larky claimed it was because of the large lump on the top of his head and when he saw the freaks, he possibly felt an affinity with these strange souls. The lump itself was barely noticeable and he covered it well with his woolly head of hair but on occasion, the hair would part and the lump would protrude and friends would comment. “My god, Bernard, what on earth happened to you?” Bernard would reach up to his head and pat it  and push it down as if attempting to calm an animal and claim he had taken a bad fall the week before. He had the lump since childhood and the doctors merely said a portion of his skull had simply grown up and out like a craggy little island suddenly sprouting from a sea. It was harmless, they said. Was it harmless? He wasn’t sure, it felt spongy and terrible under his touch like a moss garden one stumbles upon in the dark.

He leafed through the book and spotted Tom Thumb. What was so interesting about that little man and why had Barnum made him a general? It didn’t seem fair really. Why did he not have a title? Whereas a portion of him had grown out, poor Tom’s body seemed to implode into itself and never grow. Larky had once dragged him to the circus and they had seen the freaks but no midgets. The fat lady interested him to a great extent and he admired her from afar as if she was a large sculpture one didn’t understand. She seemed so jolly for a fat lady and every so often she would reach down within her clothing and pull out various props. A large pair of pantaloons. A shoe the size of a cat. A golden comb that she combed through her thick and lovely hair. He got closer and noticed she was sweating quite profusely and pockets of sweat gathered in vestibules between rolls of her fat. Her sweat seemed to have no odor and when he walked up to her to say hello, she said, “charmed to meet you.” with a lovely high pitched voice, like a squeaky nightingale flying out slowly from her stately lips.

He bought the book at once and decided perhaps if he did leave Larky, the circus might accept him and give him a grand title as Tom thumb. Perhaps his could be, Bernard of the Lump, The Lumped Man or something to that effect.

Title: Barnum

Author: M.R. Werner

Penned: 1921, mostly on trains as Werner was an avid traveler and found most of his material while riding on trains, carriages or trams.

Martin Werner knew little of London’s street food but he knew plenty of the fare found on most trains. The roasts were always perfectly roasted and the Cognac flowed freely. He found conversations on trains most agreeable because people were always jolly as people often are while traveling. For if one is going somewhere, it was always away from where they were, which had to be disagreeble in the first place as they seemed inclined to leave it. And yes, he could always spot a salesman, asleep and dissolute in the corner, waving about his cigarette and kicking the edge of his wares case. Those types hated travel the most and he avoided them lke the plague.

He wasn’t sure why he had chosen to write about Barnum, perhaps because he was a fellow traveler, another ambulatory fellow. And like Barnum, Werner saw money everywhere he went, in the hair of widows and the chubby fingers of  pampered children. But perhaps he wrote about Barnum because of Jenny Lind. Jenny Lind was the famous Swedish opera singer Barnum invited to America to perform shows.  Werner suspected the little midget Tom Thumb had an affair with Lind. He was also sure Lind never returned to Sweden but became quite fat and lost her voice. He believed Barnum made her the fat lady for rumors of the fat lady at his circus spread about like wildfire for enormous as she was, she had the voice of angel whenever she spoke. Later Jenny Lind was to have turned up in Europe once more but her appearance had altered. She was thin but heavy bags of skin fell from her neck and arms and she waddled about. The public refused to listen to her and claimed she was a fraud. Werner noticed his own wife had begun to gain weight as well and travel seemed the best solution. It also allowed him to have great dalliances in the sleeping  compartments of certain young women who were traveling fro the summer to an aunt’s for lessons of society or other such nonsense. They all seemed to learn so much more from his lessons. Often he imagined the small Thumb riding atop the obese Lind. What a strange sight he thought and wondered if the European mind was more modern perhaps this itself could be an exhibit. After the book came out Barnum almost sued him for Slander and Werner was forced to write a disclaimer after the fact. Later on in life he was seen riding in large, spacious town cars, a portly, sour fellow blinded by his ambitions.

Title: The Crime in Car 13

Owner: H. Vincent Wright

Purchased: Borrowed from his brother Terrance’s house. Found under the red velvet cushion that Audrey, Terrance’s wife uses to rest her feet.

H. Vincent wasn’t sure if he should read another mystery, after all the last time he ended up shivering in the bathroom, his wife coaxing him out with  a cup of Heather tea. H. Vincent, please I don’t want any more stains on the mattress, she told him when she saw the book. And after you are finished, please be sure to tell me what the crime was in car 13. Yes, dear, he replied and waded into the bath, his pale back looking like a sheet of white lightning reflected in the bath mirror.

He really took the book because Audrey had touched it with her lovely feet and he was sure she had read it as well. If he could get the nerve up, he would discuss the book later over their planned dinner date with them. So he read a little, so far it seemed tame, light characters and silly situations. But in the second chapter, Hamlin, a traveling salesman was murdered with a large ashtray. Harold hated reading the next scene where they described the death in detail, but he had to, his wife would need to know and Audrey would be impressed with his ability to analyze the characters in depth. He clutched the bathtub edge as he read:

“The salesman’s body was twisted violently around an old rusted telephone pole. His coat tattered and beyond recognition, like a tattered sail after a storm. His wares were scattered about the street: a set of pink curlers, a bundle of small black combs and several bottles of tonic in a variety of sizes with names such as “Steam Cream” and “Shine Wine”. Next to his wares was a large broken ashtray–a souvenir, “Baltimore” written boldly across the glass. His eyes were intact but now the large orbs simply sat upon the mound of pink flesh that used to be his face, the skin had been flayed away from just below the eyebrows to the lips which oddly still held a lit cigarette in them. Inspector Yanks also was keenly aware of the man’s eyebrows, which seemed to strike a curious pose. Yanks couldn’t decide if it was anger or humor.” H. Vincent stopped reading and screamed a little inside his mouth and peed slightly in the tub out terror.

He jumped out and got dressed quickly for dinner. But he knew he should read on for this surely wasn’t the crime in car 13, this crime was on the street. He dressed and splashed cologne on his neck and sat once again as his wife dressed and read on. He skimmed much of the book and finally got to a chapter entitled, the “Car 13″. Apparently the salesman had not died and  recovered! But his face was hideous, and still looked red and raw, bandages hung lazily from his face. He was taking car 13 to his last surgery that would complete his new face. A large piece of skin had been recovered from a suicide, a man that had ironically jumped to his death in front of the very train he was traveling on.

The salesman sat quietly in the car facing the woman that had mutilated him. He had followed her here and she was completely unaware of his presene, so absorbed in a book held out stiffly in front of her face. She was a mousy housewife who was dissatisfied with the oil creme company the salesman worked for. Several of the cremes had caused a terrible rash on her husband’s face and his face now resembled a baby’s bottom. She was angry that she had to have a crimson faced man hovering above every few nights, spreading his disease about. She blamed the salesman immediately and scooped out his daily whereabouts, then carved up his face in a moment of deep spite. Just then the car stopped quickly and the woman put down her book and noticed the salesman. She cried out. The salesman lunged at her. She s ducked  quickly just as he made a swipe with her with his black bag full of wares. H. Vincent turned the page and soon discovered the pages had skipped from 78 to 82. The top of the following page read,”Hamlin, the salesman, wept with his sore eyeballs as the police officer patted his back.” Where were the missing pages?! How absurd he thought, what will I possibly do? I need to know what happened in Car 13!

Later that evening at dinner, H. Vincent sat quietly and spoke little in the hopes his wife and sister-in-law wouldn’t ask him about the book. Audrey looked lovely in her olive summer dress and buoyant smile–oh, how he loved her and wished he could slip his socked toe beneath her dress under the dinner table. Desert was brought and the book again was unmentioned until his terrible brother brought it up. So H., he said, I heard you were reading that bloody silly novel, Audrey  just read it last week. Ridiculous scene, don’t you think, in car 13? And the whole table laughed gleefully and suddenly H. Vincent felt terribly out of place like they were in a club that had rejected his application. Terrence went on, “What a joke! But it was terribly sick, terribly! But oh, such rubbish writing!” “Oh, yes, H. Vincent, please tell me what happened you seem to have forgotten to inform me, his wife screamed out.

H. Vincent signed and began to weep, he wept over his love of Audrey and his hatred of anything frightening and his terrible marriage to his brooding, carnival of a wife. I’m not sure, I’m not sure. And then he vomited, filling their desert plates with a loose brownish fluid. The night then came to end.

Title: The Crime in Car 13

Author: Stephen Chalmers

Penned: Chalmers’s first  book in a series of crime novels that sold like hotcakes even though much of the readers were disappointed. Car 13 was named after the author had an incident in a railroad car. The actual car was named “car 23″ but as the Chalmers left the train, he noticed someone had scrawled, “Car 13″, on the outside of the car in dark red paint. It has been aptly named he decided soon after for as he sat in the train out of sheer boredom, he began counting things in the car about him. There were 13 buttons on the man’s coat sitting across from him. He thought this was odd, as one would assume  the buttons would an even number but maybe the man’s position on the seat obscured the 14th button. Two children next to him appeared to have an assortment of toys, books and candy–13 in all. Their mother had 13 pieces of jewelry on: two earrings, two necklaces, a brooch, 4 bangles on one arm and and 4 rings, equaling 13.  A magazine lay on the seat as well, the cover showed a pile of 13 books on a table and read, “Summer Picks.” All of a sudden the train slowed down and stopped for a moment and Chalmers looked out the door. He counted 13 crows on the tree outside and 13 rocks in pile right next to the tracks.

Later after leaving the car, he felt sick to his stomach and lay down on his chaise lounge and watched the ceiling for awhile. He counted 13 cracks in the ceiling and decided to grab a pen and write. He felt compelled to write a book, although he had never actually written a novel before. But the pages seemed to write themselves and in a matter of weeks he was finished. He read the completed work yet had no recollection of the actual writing itself–the weeks seemed to have flown by like a crazed dream. He found the story itself quite strange and non-sensical and he unenthusiastically sent it out and oddly enough it was immediately accepted. He thought it must be due to the compelling title. The next book he published was called “The Tin Thumb” and sold possibly 3 copies. He wrote 5 other so called “mysteries” after this but somehow “Car 13″ would remain the most popular even if it was widely accepted to have a weak premise and stale characters.

Title: Mime: Basic For Beginners

Owner: Susan Ruhig

Purchased: 1986 at a local church sale.

Susan Ruhig’s husband Victor had recently told her she was uncommunicative. He longed for the days when they gabbed all night. Susan with her cigarette dangling on her lower lip, naked and sweaty under the electric blanket, chatting about the neighbors’ fights and their own lives and how they would open an animal feed store and plant spinach in raised beds. Oh, those days were delightful!  Sometimes he couldn’t shut her up, practically had to buy duct tape to keep her quiet and an erotic image often rose in his mind of Susan lying on the bed, her mouth covered in duct tape, her legs spread open, her pubic hair wild and unruly on her inner thighs.

But he wasn’t that kind of man and decided he’d let her talk to her heart’s desires. But years later into the marriage, Susan, began to talk less and it was Victor who found himself gabbing. Gabbing to no one in general, the rose bushes; the retarded clerk at the hardware store, the old rusted TV left at the dump. Talk to me! he’d bellow at Susan, his sour face blossoming behind her as she walked away. It wasn’t that talking to Victor bored Susan, it was just that as she got older she realized that speech in general was overrated and life at best could be boiled down to perfunctory tasks or errands, thus she realized that she needn’t speak at all and reeled with great excitement (but not out loud for an exclamation now seemed unnecessary) when she saw the mime book. She practiced often, usually at night when Victor was asleep so he wouldn’t be disconcerted by her awkward movements.

Soon, their actions about the house became very comical for when Victor asked her if she had paid the electrical bill, she would move towards him and gesture, bending her hips and placing her hands out before her as if saying, whoa, it was your turn to do the bills! Or if he asked her to go to the store and get milk, instead of saying, hey lazy ass, why don’t you, she’s make the gesture of exaggerated walking towards an unknown location.

The “pelvis isolation” proved to be a very valuable as she managed to isolate her pelvis for Victor, thus she was able to have sex quite well without any requirement of the upper part of her body and she was able never to utter a word but be fully physically engaged below. “Greed” was his least favorite gesture and he especially hated it when she made this face when he took second helpings of pork chops.

The years went by and sadly he finally accepted her as a Mime but they rarely went out much anymore as people tended to shun her in public and at parties she was often told to go into the closet and stay there as she was disturbing the guests with her frantic gestures such as the old act of one pretending they were enclosed within a box. Soon Victor was engaging in mime as well and their everyday life was a wild abandon of haughty gestures and pantomime. Oddly, they communicated now much more than before.

Title: Mime: Basic For Beginners

Authors: Cindie and Mathew Straub

Penned: 1988 under duress from Mathew that the book had to be published while Miming was still popular; before the general public started flaying people who practiced the art.

Mathew Straub was a calculating son of  a bitch and had only discovered the art of Mime on his way back from his job as a financial advisor on the subway. He noticed some kids at the end of the train doing some strange movements and several people clapping and throwing money at them. Later in the evening he noticed an article in the “Times” about the resurgence of Mime in the streets and the public’s softening towards the trend. He vaguely remembered in the ’70s as a teenager mime had its moment but hippies and social misfits tended to gravitate toward it. Whereas back then, the mimes wore more black and white and now he noticed they wore colorful, hip colors such as aqua and purple.

Soon he noticed his co-workers had started to mime and when the manager of his team had  a party,  the host frantically mimed as he poured drinks. Mathew saw an enormous potential and decided a book was in order and of course Cindie would write it. Cindie, who sat most of her life and had the body of a mound of compost. It’s all about Mime, baby, he would shout, look about you darling, wake up, we’re on to something here. Cindie was disinterested at best but slowly managed to produce the book.

Finally after some years it was finally ready and soon to published. Unfortunately, mime was again frowned upon and when the book came out, Mathew was mocked by coworkers and his neighbors made scatological mime gestures at Cindie as she drove down the driveway off to simple errands. Soon Mathew became a shadow of his former self and lost all entrepreneurial drive until one morning he noticed everyone about him was wearing leg warmers. He thought Cindie should do a book and prodded her endlessly about it.

Title: The Art and Science of Homemaking

Owner: Mariam Wetter

Purchased: In her 3rd year of marriage by her mother-in-law, Bett. Wrapped in elaborate paper with a note, that read, “Feed your man and he’ll forgive you in the bedroom.”

Mariam Wetter doesn’t mind the smell of bleach, it’s all too familiar to her. In fact the undersides of her fingernails often smell like bleach and later when she touches her husband Edward’s penis, there is the subtle scent of bleach hovering about the two of them as if she were a nurse giving him a sponge bath. I can’t clean what I don’t see and what I see is dirt, she laments this often. Edward is breezy, indifferent and strokes the sofa like it’s a woman and reads his gardening books.  He doesn’t care for sweets anymore but this doesn’t deter Mariam Wetter from making endless amounts and they sit in cupboards and pie chests and gather mold and until she throws them out in a fit of rage, clutching her homemaking guide in her thick, ginger root fingers Milk made the difference don’t you see! It makes men, makes them blubbery and mean and lovely to look at! She’ll scream at him as she tries to push cookies and milk near his stick bug silhouette. When did he shrink? When did she loose his profile? She’s unaware of the timeline and grits her teeth as he gnaws on celery. Gradually fold in cream, should be her motto, as she is often doing this. Folding in the cream, folding in the cream, bloody cream! Sprinkle in the cinnamon, you lousy bastard!

Title: The Art and Science of Homemaking

Author: Mary. W. Cauley

Penned: 1937

Mary W. Cauley is commissioned to write a guidebook for struggling young housewives. She finds the assignment horribly tedious but is persuaded by her editor as her last book “Steamy forebodings at Dern Street” hasn’t done well, no, not at all. This is terribly frustrating as she has hardly touched a pot in her life and the site of food in general nauseates her. She is often guided towards food by her live in “friend” Millie,  like a cow to a slaughter house and only eats to survive. Now, she’s not sure she would like to survive as writing this book sends long, steel shivers to her heart. So she puts the sequel to “Steamy” aside, having done research when Millie was asleep, in her Rover on the streets of Captain Street, which is parallel to Dern Street and sufferers from the same malaise. She then turns to a neighbor down the road who seems to be rooted to the floor of her kitchen. This woman gives her many recipes and suggestions, having also once been married to a farmer. She tells her horror stories of sheep birthing and farmers losing legs in threshing machines and of losing her virginity on a mildewy bed of straw to a local herdsman. Mary doesn’t put that in the book and when it is complete, she and Millie celebrate by concocted a simple fudge but throw in some sorted liquors. It comes out like soup and they pour it down their gullets in midnight merriment.