Half The Joke Most Of The Time

[smokingboot]

A friend - a few friends actually - have been giving it large about the 'Death to the IDF' chants at Glastonbury, and how righteous that is, how lacking in antisemitism it is really. For the record, I don't think it's antisemitic to consider what's happening in Palestine as a crime against humanity, nor do I think it wrong to criticise the decisions of Netanyahu or his government, though I wonder why Israel's detractors were all so spectacularly quiet re the Nova atrocities. I accept the elements of whataboutery in that. Still those death chants were distressing and utterly unhelpful. Here comes the fiction that came out of me in response; it has its cruel edge, just as those idiots at Glastonbury have their cruel edge, and it is mostly harmless just as they are. It's partly inspired by Blighters by Sassoon, so if there's an afterworld society of dead poets, Siegfried this is for you.


I went boom at them and this landed me in the office of the Adversary. To my eye he often has a passing resemblance to Rene Auberjonois in Boston Legal.

'Well, you had a good time,' he said.

'Damn straight I did,' I replied, 'and I'd do it again, enjoy a few pops at the self satisfied prigs who speak about death as though they knew it well.'

'You're very sure you know it well.'

'What do you think?' Taking no nonsense from him today.

He changed his head for a moment, that huge steer skull with the bleached horns suddenly perched above his collar. I never quite see its neck. Neither of us spoke and I got impatient.

'If that's us done I'll be on my way.'

'You wore your father's ring.'

I did. I often do for a conflict I mean to enjoy, for extra fire power and that fierce delight in the fight itself for the sake of the fight.

'What of it?'

His smile deepened. 'Nothing. I have squadrons of agents who enjoy as he enjoyed. Living their best afterlife, some might say.'

I went over to the window but the glass was too frosted for me to see anything beyond.

'I'm trying to work out if you're offering me a job.'

He tilted his head from side to side.

'Not exactly. Put it this way; I've seen worse apprenticeships but you're awfully small. Let me put a scenario to you. Sit down, stop padding around my office.'

I sat, hands reaching across his desk towards a glass paperweight which was without shape, lumpen.

'That's just a toy. Think at it,' he said, waving a hand towards it. I did, and saw the head and shoulders of a gorgon form. She blinked and it instantly struck me that she wanted to move but the sculpture ended above the bust. She couldn't exactly roll across the table, head wheeling round transported by hair snakes, I thought, so I added a pair of wings above her ears. Where to go, though? If I opened a window and threw her outside, what was waiting for her?

'She's a paperweight. If you throw her outside, she'll plummet several hundred floors down and crash into the sidewalk,' said the Adversary.

He was ready to discuss his scenario and leaned forward.

'What I want to know is...' closer, his voice almost intimate, 'if, at that festival, that particular gig, gunmen had suddenly appeared and surrounded the chanting audience, what would you feel?'

I waited and when nothing else came, replied, 'I would feel horrified of course.'

'Of course. But suppose they weren't actually going to shoot anybody? Suppose it was just a hoax?' He sat back. 'You've obviously got a sense of humour. I am wondering if you could see the comedy in the situation. In that moment when the audience sees what they are chanting for, almost, almost gets what they are singing to... Yes, that would be horrible. But if there were no real consequences, could you understand that it might also be hilarious?'

He looked at me and the little medusa did too. Her shape was fully formed, and her wings had moved from her head to her back. And now I did see a sky beyond those windows. It was just like that day in Phnom Penh when the clouds grew claws and clutched at the sun.



'Hmm,' remembering how many of my exam successes have come from correctly identifying the question asked, 'those people chanting made judgements on a reality they can't know, from which they are totally removed. Now you want me to make judgements on a hypothetical joke heist that's a pretence even within the context of the fantasy gig. They had one layer of big nothing to go on, you offer me two. I call them self satisfied prigs when high and drunk, you offer me the same title with added responsibility cos I'm sober.' I had to marvel. 'You're very good at this,' I told him, watching the paperweight which was shapeless again.

He looked at me, laughing and frowning together. I keep forgetting how many heads he has.

'I'll say this for you,' he smiled, 'you get half the joke most of the time.'

And with that, he was gone and I was sitting here.