so want to sink into an alcoholic coma. I did so want
to finish my days in a softly intoxicating and long dying torpor.
But, alas, I cannot avoid . . . a void! Who? What? That's for you
to find out! 'It' is a void. It's today my turn to march towards
mortality, towards that fatal hour, towards 'that good night' (as
Dylan Thomas put it), that 'undiscovYd country from which
bourn no man . . .' and so forth, towards omission and annihila-
tion. I f s a must. I'm sorry. I did so want to know. But a lancinating agony gnaws at my vitals. I can only talk now in a dry, throaty,
painfully faint hum. O my mortality, a fair ransom for such a
mad compulsion as that which has had my mind in its tight grip.
Anton Vowl."
And to that Vowl adds a postscript, a postscript which shows
him as having truly lost his mind: "I ask all 10 of you, with a
glass of whisky in your hand — and not just any whisky but a
top-notch brand — to drink to that solicitor who is so boorish as
to light up his cigar in a zoo" - adds, finally, and almost as though
initialling a last will, a trio of horizontal strips (No. 2, curiously,
isn't as long as its two companions) with an ambiguously
indistinct scrawl on top.
Was it a suicidal act? Did Vowl put an automatic to his brow?
Or slit his wrists in a warm bath? Swallow a tall glass of
3 9
aqua-toffana? Hurl his car into an abysmal chasm, a yawning pit,
abysmal till Doomsday, yawning till Doomsnight? Turn on his
flat's gas supply? Commit hara-kiri? Spray his body with napalm?
Jump off Paris's Pont du Nord by night into a flowing black
miasma?
Nobody knows, or can know, if his way of quitting this world
was wholly of his own volition; nobody in fact knows if Vowl
did quit this world at all.
But, four days on, a chum of his, who had found Anton's last
writings alarming and had thought to support him through what
was obviously a major crisis, was to knock at his flat's front door
in vain. His car was still placidly sitting in its hangar. No stains
of blood on floor or wall. No clothing, nor any trunk to carry it
in, missing.
Anton Vowl, though, was missing.
4 0
I L L U S O R Y P A R D O N S F O R ANTON Y O W L
a Japan without kimonos,
a smoking boa constrictor on a curling rink;
a flamboyant black man,
a shrill cry of nudity in a plain song,
a kindly scorpion,
10 bankrupt tycoons spitting on a stack of gold coins,
a gloating sorrow,,
a simoon in a long Finnish corridor,
a profound cotton hanky:
that's what could rid our world of Anton Vowl. . .
a hippy cardinal shouting out an anti-Catholic slogan,
a razor for citrus fruits,
a raid on a trio of British bandits by a Royal Mail train,
a straight compass,
a man's tummy-button from which a volcano spouts forth,
a land only natal by adoption,
a twilit balcony supporting a lunatic who has lost an arm,
a crucifix without a Christ,
a sisal pissing Chardonnay for magicians without cloaks;
that's what would function as a pardon for Anton Vowl. . .
a farrago without fustian,
a looking glass dull from a tiny, not spiny, fish,
autumnal grazing,
a myriad of billows rolling in from a promontory,
a faithful old hunting-gun,
4 1
a whitish burn, a body without body, a world without war,
an illusory omission,
that's what would stop Anton Vowl from dying . . .
but how to construct it all in just that instant in which is
born a Void?
4 2
1
Which, following a compilation of a polymath's random
jottings, will finish with a visit to a zoo
Anton Vowl's bosom companion is a man known as Amaury
Conson.
Conson has (or had) six sons. His firstborn, Aignan (odd,
that), did a vanishing act similar to Vowl's almost 30 springs
ago, in Oxford, during a symposium run by a soi-disant Martial
Cantaral Foundation and in which Lord Gadsby V. Wright,
Britain's most illustrious scholar and savant, was a participant.
Conson's following son, Adam, was to pass away in a sanatorium,
succumbing to inanition through wilful
to finish my days in a softly intoxicating and long dying torpor.
But, alas, I cannot avoid . . . a void! Who? What? That's for you
to find out! 'It' is a void. It's today my turn to march towards
mortality, towards that fatal hour, towards 'that good night' (as
Dylan Thomas put it), that 'undiscovYd country from which
bourn no man . . .' and so forth, towards omission and annihila-
tion. I f s a must. I'm sorry. I did so want to know. But a lancinating agony gnaws at my vitals. I can only talk now in a dry, throaty,
painfully faint hum. O my mortality, a fair ransom for such a
mad compulsion as that which has had my mind in its tight grip.
Anton Vowl."
And to that Vowl adds a postscript, a postscript which shows
him as having truly lost his mind: "I ask all 10 of you, with a
glass of whisky in your hand — and not just any whisky but a
top-notch brand — to drink to that solicitor who is so boorish as
to light up his cigar in a zoo" - adds, finally, and almost as though
initialling a last will, a trio of horizontal strips (No. 2, curiously,
isn't as long as its two companions) with an ambiguously
indistinct scrawl on top.
Was it a suicidal act? Did Vowl put an automatic to his brow?
Or slit his wrists in a warm bath? Swallow a tall glass of
3 9
aqua-toffana? Hurl his car into an abysmal chasm, a yawning pit,
abysmal till Doomsday, yawning till Doomsnight? Turn on his
flat's gas supply? Commit hara-kiri? Spray his body with napalm?
Jump off Paris's Pont du Nord by night into a flowing black
miasma?
Nobody knows, or can know, if his way of quitting this world
was wholly of his own volition; nobody in fact knows if Vowl
did quit this world at all.
But, four days on, a chum of his, who had found Anton's last
writings alarming and had thought to support him through what
was obviously a major crisis, was to knock at his flat's front door
in vain. His car was still placidly sitting in its hangar. No stains
of blood on floor or wall. No clothing, nor any trunk to carry it
in, missing.
Anton Vowl, though, was missing.
4 0
I L L U S O R Y P A R D O N S F O R ANTON Y O W L
a Japan without kimonos,
a smoking boa constrictor on a curling rink;
a flamboyant black man,
a shrill cry of nudity in a plain song,
a kindly scorpion,
10 bankrupt tycoons spitting on a stack of gold coins,
a gloating sorrow,,
a simoon in a long Finnish corridor,
a profound cotton hanky:
that's what could rid our world of Anton Vowl. . .
a hippy cardinal shouting out an anti-Catholic slogan,
a razor for citrus fruits,
a raid on a trio of British bandits by a Royal Mail train,
a straight compass,
a man's tummy-button from which a volcano spouts forth,
a land only natal by adoption,
a twilit balcony supporting a lunatic who has lost an arm,
a crucifix without a Christ,
a sisal pissing Chardonnay for magicians without cloaks;
that's what would function as a pardon for Anton Vowl. . .
a farrago without fustian,
a looking glass dull from a tiny, not spiny, fish,
autumnal grazing,
a myriad of billows rolling in from a promontory,
a faithful old hunting-gun,
4 1
a whitish burn, a body without body, a world without war,
an illusory omission,
that's what would stop Anton Vowl from dying . . .
but how to construct it all in just that instant in which is
born a Void?
4 2
1
Which, following a compilation of a polymath's random
jottings, will finish with a visit to a zoo
Anton Vowl's bosom companion is a man known as Amaury
Conson.
Conson has (or had) six sons. His firstborn, Aignan (odd,
that), did a vanishing act similar to Vowl's almost 30 springs
ago, in Oxford, during a symposium run by a soi-disant Martial
Cantaral Foundation and in which Lord Gadsby V. Wright,
Britain's most illustrious scholar and savant, was a participant.
Conson's following son, Adam, was to pass away in a sanatorium,
succumbing to inanition through wilful
Similar Books
