Civil Servant v. Clerk

The Civil Servant tries in vain to understand. The Clerk repeats:

I wrote all this. Well, not all this exactly, but I wrote something a lot like this while I was at work. That's what I'm trying to say. It's like what I wrote is coming to life. It wasn't you and me. Instead it was two other people, a Banker and a Bank Robber.

The Civil Servant purses his lips sympathetically. He doesn't understand. The Clerk sees that he doesn't understand. He repeats:

The same basic entry: two people meet, they talk for awhile, and then they duel.

The Civil Servant asks the Clerk if he works as a Copywriter. The Clerk replies in the negative. I'm a clerk, and I write at work, he says.

Memos?

And plays. Sometimes short stuff.

So you're a Writer, a Playwright.

I work as a clerk.

You write memos.

I write memos and plays.

At work?

I don't really do much work at work.

You work at home?

No, at the office. I write in the office, at work, when I should be working.

Why not write at home?

I have a wife and dog.

And you wrote this?

Right. At work.

I don't understand.

It isn't that the Civil Servant's stupid; we all peer into the world of others and ask,

How is this?

Yet it is!

And it's a blessing that we can't understand.

They raise their guns, their guns go off.

Civil Servant v. Clarinetist

Growling stomach. Stroll stroll stroll. Pass mass grave. Stroll stroll stroll. Stroll through field. Stroll stop. Admire flower. Stroll stroll stroll. Knock on Pepple's door. Rap rap rap. Wait wait - What? asks Pepple.

Expression of hunger. Query regarding inventory, comestible variety thereof. Promise of remuneration implicit.

Vague & noncommittal response.

Promise of remuneration explicit.

Pause.

Pause pause pause. Thinking.

Close door. Wait wait wait. Open door. Biscuit. Hard tack. Hard tack?

Definition:

hardtack |ˈhärdˌtak|
noun
hard dry bread or biscuit, esp. as rations for sailors.

Thinly displeased appreciation given in exchange for hard tack. Also, seventeen dollars. Awkward post-exchange discourse. Excuse from Pepple. Muffled goodbyes. Close door.

Stroll stroll stroll. Nibble nibble nibble. Stroll stroll stroll. Pass mass grave. Stroll stroll nibble. Nibble stroll stroll. Stroll nibble nibble. Arrival at oak.

Thirst after consumption.

Arrival of Clarinetist. Awkward pre-duel discourse. Pre-duel preparations.

They raise their guns, their guns go off.

Civil Servant v. Civil Engineer

The Civil Servant's one of those rare people in whom everyone confides. Whether it's his girth (ample), his disposition (sanguine), or his smile (wide, simple, disarming), he's built a small world - rising the tortuous path upward through the ranks of municipal bureaucracy - largely on this gift alone. Certainly not on his capacity for hard work (negligible).

Pepple confides while shoving soil atop the Circuit Preacher. His sister left him last night, taking her sickly boy, headed east into the forest. They left, and - Pepple says with unwavering certainty - won't return. The Civil Servant suggests that he leave and search the forest, but Pepple doesn't respond. He continues shoveling.

The Civil Engineer and the Civil Servant know each other. When they greet, they greet as comrades: a nod, a hand shake.

Whereas the incompetent Civil Servant rose the ranks on his charm, the truly adept Civil Servant swirls trapped in an eddy of missed promotions and rebuffed advances because of he favors blueprints, the feel of cold steel girders over politics and people.

They are enemies, these two. Because the Civil Engineer resents the Civil Servant's advancement in light of his idiocy, and the Civil Servant is loathe to anyone who would hold his incapacitates against him in light of his natural charisma.

When they prepare for duel, unlike many others that came before, they do so in silence and with purpose. Theirs isn't a duel carried out as duty, but a duel in love of dueling. And for this, their duel is - when seen from afar - a beautiful matching.

They raise their guns, their guns go off.

Circuit Preacher v. Civil Servant

That night the Circuit Preacher has a dream. It's in some ways similar to the Cardinal's Dream. In other ways it's different.

Points of similarity: the dueling grounds, the oak, the forest, the hideous shack.

Points of difference: in that there is no coquettish statue of the Virgin, no Archangel Michael, no booming directive.

The Circuit Preacher's Dream:

The Circuit Preacher stands. He stands quiet. The night wind sweeps across the forest. Clouds sweep across the sky. The moon darkens, and all goes black. Then the clouds sweep past and the moon brightens. It's then that he first notices Pepple, who stands in sharp silhouette by the north border, unmoving.

Suddenly the earth shakes. The Circuit Preacher reaches back to brace himself against the oak but the oak's gone - far behind him. Pepple stands calmly as the Preacher staggers from the tremor. Fear grips him. A fissure runs through the earth before him and darkness shows beneath. Darkness - then a flash of white. White from the gap, flashes of white - delicate bones as roots clawing up from the earth.

The Circuit Preacher falls back in terror. He pushes against the grass, but all for nothing - no distance comes between him and the skeletal hands that grasp awkwardly from the grave. Ten, forty, eighty, twelve hundred - the caps of skulls, the gaping sockets of their eyes as they peer from the darkness and rise.

Still Pepple stands unmoved. Not on human feet, the Circuit Preacher sees in terror - but cloven hooves.

In mute horror, the Circuit Preacher watches as the skeletons stand and regard themselves. They look at their hands, their legs, their caged torsos. They look at each other. Their hinged jaws open and close in silent wailing. All grasp and loll, the only sound in the valley the insectile clack of bone against bone.

A shrill whine. The skeletons turn. The Circuit Preacher turns. Pepple tunes a dusty violin.

Then music.

And the skeletons, as if lifted and moved by unseen strings, begin to twitch. They twitch, then swoon, then - like newborn calves - stumble to life. Now waggling the legs, now wriggling the thighs, now waving their arms, the rattle and clatter rises like thunder - all working together, beating time to the dance.

They swirl and spin now, faster and faster, as the Circuit Preacher presses himself into a ball, grasping at the frigid grass beneath him. He looks up and sees Pepple amidst them now, dancing and playing as they are. He also, the Preacher sees, stoops to grab the bones that the skeletons drop. So that if one dances too harshly and looses a hand, Pepple rushes over, grabs it, and shoves it back in place. The same with skulls, and arms, and leg bones, and anything else - he runs and runs back and forth between the swell of unreal dancers. Yet at no time - even with his baton away from the strings - does the violin stop its playing. In fact the music swells higher, backed by an unseen symphony from the east - from within the shadows of the forest to the east.

Now the Circuit Preacher wills himself to struggle to foot and run. He staggers wildly away, up to the top of the mound to the west. Here, for the first time, looking down on the scene from above, he sees what he missed below:

That the skeletons dance is far from chaotic - rather it's a massive, fractal waltz: a waltz in miniature, one skeleton spinning alone, and then in spinning in tandem with another, and these two both spinning with another couple, and the greater could spinning with two others on each side - and the entire mass of dancers dancing as one, together: spinning all in a tremendous glowing white wheel around the oak. And with Pepple in light activity, running to attach one bone, then the other - back and forth, from inside the ring, lit by the spectral moon.

The Circuit Preacher wakes with a start to the call of a rooster. Dawn.

He's in a state of blubbering prayer when the Civil Servant arrives. The wheel within the wheel, he laughs aloud. The Civil Servant sees his manic eyes, the tears that wash his face.

They raise their guns, their guns go off.

Choreographer v. Circuit Preacher

Pepple rummages through the hole in the oak. He stands atop the table dragged next to the trunk. The Choreographer watches him showing an expression of confusion and strange annoyance.

He regards the Beader's kitsune statuette, the Bellmaker's bellmaking instructions / deck of cards, the Archivist's List of the Dead, and the Basketweaver's Ch'mekelekeske woven basket. He takes the cards, jumps down from the table, pulls the table back from the oak, then restores it of its pistols. Cards in hand, he walks off, back to the hideous shack.

The sky clears and the Circuit Preacher arrives. He's a short, unobtrusive-looking man wearing a dark green polyester suit. The bow tie around his neck is tied tightly - so tight as to seem painful. In fact, he squirms and coughs and pulls at it constantly. Sweat beads along his brow beneath a shining wave of set and molded hair.

He introduces himself. She stares.

Don't suppose you're from here, then? he asks.

She blinks.

You from Russia?

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Lituanen, echt deutsch, she says plainly.

Even in Russia I'm led to believe they have word of the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ, opens the Circuit Preacher. Even as far as the northern reaches of Russia, it's true.

She looks away, absently fingering the hem of her blouse.

Mistaking her incomprehension for atheistic snobbery, he gently recounts to her a sermon he gave to a congregation in a small town just south of the state border.

Son of man, the Lord tells him, set thy face toward the mountains of Israel and prophecy against them - and say, Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God: Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places. In all your dwellingplaces the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolatye; and your idols may be broken and cease, and your images may be cut down, and your works may be abolished.

The Choreographer shakes her head.

They raise their guns, their guns go off.

Chiropodist v. Choreographer

The Chiropodist doesn't speak English. The Choreographer doesn't speak English. Neither speak English. And neither speak a common language.

While the Choreographer understands that the Chiropodist is in a state of shock, the cause of this shock isn't traced to the Chiropodist's witness of the Chimney Sweep's accidental death.

After several hours of nonverbal comforting on the part of the Choreographer (a kind if teutonically stiff woman), the Chiropodist wipes her eyes and begins to replay the scene. She speaks throughout, using exaggerated hand gestures, and frequent pointing - to reference the oak, the guns, the place of death, and the burial.

The Choreographer doesn't understand.

The Chiropodist stops and begins again. Then again, and again. And again. And again and again. She continues repeating the same sequence, each time slightly different - a slight turn of the hand, a slight shift in the series of events - but each time roughly identical. And again. And for the tenth time.

Still the Choreographer doesn't understand.

And for the fortieth time.

Still the Choreographer doesn't understand.

At some point the Chiropodist decides that nothing in gesture can make the Choreographer understand. And yet the Chiropodist continues. She replays the event over. Now with an almost a sickness of movement: a ritualized motion, a catechismic circularity, an oriental numeration. Again, again, again.

Still the Choreographer doesn't understand. And she grows bored. Oed' und leer das Meer, she sighs.

Eventually the Chiropodist hits on an idea. She stands, grabs her umbrella and takes the pistols. She hands her umbrella off to the Choreographer and leads her onto the field. Acting the role of the Chimney Sweep, the Chiropodist stands ten paces away and raises her gun. The Choreographer reflexively lowers the umbrella. The Chiropodist advances. She lifts the umbrella, and raises the Choreographer's arm. The Choreographer's pistol presses against the Chiropodist's chest.

Then the Choreographer understands.

Her gun goes off.

Chimney Sweep v. Chiropodist

Minutes after the Chief Mate falls, Pepple drags off his body. And then body of the Chief of Police. He takes the Chief's handgun and his badge, his wedding ring and the money in his front pocket. He takes a gold pendant tied on a leather cord around the Chief Mate's neck. Then he buries the two duelists. The Chimney Sweep watches.

Soon after, it begins to rain. It rains hard for a long time. Then softens, and continues raining softly all night.

The Chiropodist arrives beneath a yellow umbrella. She's a tiny woman. Very petite. Simply dressed, but spackled with cosmetics. She walks up to the Chimney Sweep and hands him a telegram. She does not speak English well.

Yes, says the Chimney Sweep.

She points to the telegram. Yes, he says. He points to the ground, then to the pistols, then to the dueling field. She looks confused. She looks at her telegram, then at the pistols, then at the dueling field.

The Chimney Sweep pantomimes a duel. (No help.)

Eventually, he leads her out to the field. She stands holding her yellow umbrella and a revolver. He stands ten paces away. He raises his gun. She lowers the umbrella over her face in fright. He walks over, lifts her umbrella, and raises her hand that holds the revolver. He points the revolver at his chest.

Her gun goes off.