Weekend LONG READ! Third & Final Part of Honest Adolph: Tyranny Hits America...?!

Have you checked out my books on Amazon Kindle yet? Well, there’s another one being released in a few days! As if the chapter by chapter novel serial of an America on the slide to tyranny wasn’t enough, I also provided you with two big reads: Volume 1 and Volume 2. But now… this is the big one! Devastating, harrowing, but also kind of beautiful… Or is it? Well, you be the judge! 😉
P.S. If there are minor errors or discrepancies in the online version, the ebook version must be considered the canonical, standard version (the latter is also subject to further updates over time if appropriate.

Chapter 1: See-Saw, Pan-On-The-Jaw

Another late evening.

Big Xian yawned and stretched his arms.

Good business.

All of a sudden, he jerked his head and frowned.

Surely not…

Rats?

Big Xian prided himself on the cleanliness of his restaurant.

He did not have a lot in the world, but he had his dignity.

‘Where are you,’ he tutted, wagging his winger in mock irritation.

A snicker.

‘That… was not a rat,’ Big Xian whispered.

‘Yeah, he’s there.’

Big Xian gasped.

Who could possibly have sneaked into his restaurant like this? At this time?

All of a sudden, he became conscious of how cold it was.

Perhaps he had forgotten to lock up.

No, he always locked up.

Big Xian warily lifted a pan in order to defend himself. He had a bad feeling about this.

He sincerely hoped he would not have to use it. Indeed, the last time this gentle giant had had to call pest control, he had not managed to get so much as a single hour’s sleep that night.

And yet, rationally, he knew that you simply cannot run a kitchen with all these worthless vermin swarming around.

The door to the kitchen rattled.

There was only this flimsy panel of wood between him and his unknown aggressors.

‘We… are closed… closed?’ Big Xian whispered, his very breath dying in his mouth.

The door was opened.

Big Xian breathed a sigh of relief. One young man in his early twenties, the other two in their mid to late teenage years stood before him. The elder of the three had a chunky, greasy, pimply face, and an ascetic-looking head that, while primarily shaven, had a curious little remnant of sparsely nondescript fluff at the back; almost invisible until you caught him from the right perspective. His defiant smirk was a little disconcerting. The two teenagers, a boy and a girl, looked dull and largely uninterested.

‘How’s the business, old man?’ the monkish smirker sneered.

‘P… pretty good,’ muttered Big Xian, somewhat ill at ease.

‘Yeah. Thought so.’ The young man burst out laughing. The two teenagers managed a tentative ‘Ha… Ha…’

‘I… I need to finish soon,’ Big Xian said, mopping with brow in anxiety.

‘Hm! Sounds like a plan,’ was the cold and menacing reply. Big Xian sensed something sarcastic, indeed bitterly, bitterly, ironic in the petty and mean-spirited answer.

Big Xian was not at all confident, by now, that he was not indeed in danger; after all! He reached for some dumplings. ‘Here, have these, they are a little stale…’

The girl laughed. The other teenager remained impassive.

‘Well, that depends,’ the elder lad spat. ‘Are they vegetarian?’

Big Xian’s hands trembled as he placed the (really rather fresh) dumplings down again on the table.

‘I am sorry. We are out of vegetable baozi. Everyone is buying them these days.’

A despicable laugh.

‘Ha! Ha!’ the ugly scalp bobbed back and forth. ‘Tell me, Charlie, do you know why we are here?’

Big Xian, speechless, steadied himself against the wall.

His tormentor strode up, to within breathing distance.

He put one hand on Big Xian’s trembling shoulder, using this for leverage; with the other hand, he gripped the bow at the back of Big Xian’s apron, whispering here:

‘What is your position on the Tibetan issue?’

Big Xian closed his eyes, by now fearing for his life. Although he was tall, he was fearful of the pot and pans, and the cruel, heartless knives that were all within easy reach of this wicked youth.

The lad drew back.

In stony silence, his scarlet eyes pierced Big Xian with the ruthless barbarity of an age-long salt-ocean; ‘lacking the least of measures, without the very merest of betidings,’ as Poet Wu used to chant around the campfire in the days of Big Xian’s youth.

All of a sudden the lad stamped his foot.

How Big Xian jumped!

The lad burst into laughter.

Big Xian could contain himself no longer.

‘Why don’t you just go!’ he sobbed, trembling from head to foot; by now so soaked in sweat, he might as well have just come to his Trotskyite enemies (did Big Xian have enemies?!) fresh from dunking himself in the Yellow River.

‘Uh-uh-uh. You tell him, little boy!’ the bully smirked.

And so he did! The younger lad recited the following spiel, as though by rote. To the more uncharitable New Yorkers, his Southern drawl had already seemed a little out of place to some. But if such people had heard the pompous, intellectual jargon and sentimental claptrap he was about to spew out, this would only have heightened the comical effect; however subjective and ‘unscientific’ such a sentimental impression might have been!

‘Whereas, the sovereign Tibetan Nation of the Land of Snows has this long been unjustly subject unto the tyranny of the reactionary Bukharinist Bourgeois-Roaders, Deviant Deformed Worker’s Bureaucrats and Revisionist Neoliberal Plunders and Looters;

‘Whereas, the inviolable sovereignty of one single, whole, integral, undivided Tibetan soil and shadow has been denied the children of the Snow Lion, and brutally withheld without the merest shadow of cause, nor slightest pretence of an excuse:

‘Whereas, the brutal secular Peking regime is the perpetrator of wilful Cultural Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity and indeed, has not stopped short even of perpetrating Crimes Against the Holy Dharma of the Blessed Boddhisattvas of the Shangri-La, the erstwhile and yet ever-blessed holy egalitarian Eden of Celestial Tibet…

‘It is incumbent upon the children of the Dharma and their holy comrades; we, the Tibetan Worker’s Liberation Party, holding up the sacred and all-highest spiritual truths of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, and rightly casting forth the blessed material consolation of Trotskyist Scientific Socialism and Marx-Engels-Trotsky-Mandelian-Zia-ist Holy Doctrine and Theoretical Praxis…

‘To avenge at all costs those who trample underfoot the holy seed of the Party of Buddha, and who demean and degrade and blaspheme against the scientific truths of Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Ernest Mandel, Zia-ul-Winterson-McMillan, Bennett H. Childers, Aum Tsukarida Nichiren Tomoko Hadarachi Omedeto Hadatakawariyama Yakitomo Omega-Ichi-Ban, Humphrey Hampton Hillard Bar-El Dharmaraja, and Hattie X Hoxha and all ye blessed, sacred infants of the promise…

‘And thence, insofar as it may be appropriate and scientifically expedient, to…’

Big Xian fell to his knees, holding his hands up, clasped tightly as though in prayerful intercession.

‘I am not a political person,’ he wept. ‘I am not a political person, I know nothing about politics, all of this, it is so far away to me, I am not a political person, I am not a political person, I swear to you, my friends, I know nothing, I am not a political person…’

The chief bully burst out laughing again. His sneering guffaws dinned upon Big Xian’s ears like the repetitive heavy blows of an ill-wielded wok.

‘Do you see? Now, do you see? ‘It is so far away to me.’ The bourgeois intellectualism of the enemies of us loyal and patriotic workers of the Coming Cosmic Motherland knows no bounds!

‘But let me tell you something, you pitiful reactionary stooge: what is ‘‘far away’’ to you is not something intellectual. Your callous liberal idiocy sees the Tibetan people as a lifeless pawn to be used in your manoeuvres. Your undialectical bourgeois mediocrity and timidity says ‘A is A,’ a slave is a slave; but not also ‘A is B,’ a slave is other than a slave…

‘The guardians of the future global proletarian revolution!’

Big Xian gazed up, tears streaming down his face.

‘I do not know Tibetans. I do not know them. I am not a political person, I know nothing about politics, I am not, not, not, no, I am not a political person…’

The thug kicked big Xian in the jaw. Big Xian screamed, as much in terror as in pain.

At least as much.

‘Who is your brother!’ the lad triumphantly declared.

Big Xian was in too much pain to answer.

‘Spit in his eye,’ the young hooligan told his comrades.

The boy slowly bent down and spat in Big Xian’s left eye.

The girl stood over him, smirked, and spat in the other one.

The chief thug roared with a truly demonic laughter, even louder than before.

‘Your brother is married to a certain woman. And who is she?’

Big Xian inwardly intoned what little he could remember of the Chinese Jewish liturgy. For at long last, he knew for certain that this was, indeed, his final hour.

Up the pan went.

A hideous pause.

All of a sudden, the girl stretched forth her arm.

‘This… it’s getting out of hand,’ she warned her comrade.

‘It is… You scared?’ the cold response.

‘Look, quit messing about, you idiot!’ she shrieked. ‘You said we were only coming here to give the guy a hard time.’

Cain Ingershill, for this was the hooligan’s name, glared at her in fury.

‘Punch her,’ he instructed Little Jip.

Little Jip frowned.

‘Punch her, Jephtha,’ he said, in a warning tone.

Little Jip was not prepared to punch his own sister, even at Cain’s say so.

‘Do… you… understand the meaning… of obedience…’ he hissed.

Little Jip spat.

‘You ain’t my leader, Cain. Y’know, this is some fuckin’ reeeaaalll stupid shit, Cain. Ain’t nothin’ in our books say nothin’ about hittin’ yer own sister!’

Cain groaned and strode towards Lisa.

‘You in? Or you out?’

Lisa took a step back.

‘I’m out.’

Cain took two steps forward, almost within punching distance of Lisa.

‘Do you know, Lisa Gray,’ he panted, his knotty freckled fists all-a-quiver, ‘what the penalty is for splitters, in our party?’

Little Jip drawled indignantly: ‘Nah, nah, nah, now just you listen here Cain, my friend! We ain’t no goddamn splitters here, now, Comrade Cain! We just all think this is some damn stupid idea ah some kooky fucked-up bullshit you askin’ me to do! Hit my sister? Lisa Gray, see her, she’s family!’

Cain roared in fury. ‘You have no family! There is no family, and no nation, and no nothing, and the workers have no-one, not a single soul on earth, but the workers!’

The normally dull-as-a-didgeridoo Little Jip finally lost his temper, which was a rare enough occurrence; God knows! ‘Hey! Hey! That shit… that… that… well hey Cain! Hey, that shit ain’t true!’ Little Jip indignantly stammered.

‘True?!’ Cain Ingershill practically shrieked. ‘Who are you to say what is true or what isn’t? Truth is merely an instrument, our sovereign and unchallengeable means to the most highest and noble of ends; it is not an end in itself.’

‘Hey! Hey! Hey! What the fuck? This ain’t true!’ Little Jip persisted, indignantly stamping his feet. ‘It just ain’t true, Cain! Nah! Nah! Nah! This shit ain’t true, Comrade Cain! Truth is truth! I mean, I mean, I don’t even know nothin’, don’t even know nothin’ at all, about what, about all this here, all this here highfalutin’ bullshit Mr Ingershill is even talkin’ about!

‘But I’m callin’ bullshit! You are just sooooooo damn stupid, Cain Ingershill, that’s what you are! There ain’t nothin’ in the book about all this here goddarn sanctified crap about hittin’ your own sister! Nah, nah Cain, I ain’t standin’ for all this here, all y’all bullshit you and, you and your, these goddarn stupid comrades are talkin’ about here!’

Cain was unsure who to punch first, he was so furious with both twins. His flailing fists caught no-one, and he ended up falling to the ground and grazing his arm.

‘Ah! Shit!’ he screamed.

Big Xian, despite the pain in his jaw, instinctively reached for some kitchen towel to press against Cain’s bleeding arm. Having grabbed the paper, he suddenly paused and realised he didn’t know what to do with it.

What was the riskier option?

Do nothing, or try to appease Cain?

In the end, a certain fearful compassion, replete with tender trepidation (which Cain would no doubt have viewed with the most stomach-churning repugnance as ‘idle, rootless bourgeois sentimentality’); well, in the end, Big Xian handed the tissue over to Cain. Cain sat and sat.

Time passed.

Eventually, Cain staggered to his feet.

‘So, here’s the deal. You are either loyal to the Revolution. Or you suffer the inexorable and excruciatingly agonizing, predestined fate of all the splitters. The power of the dialectic is beyond all human intuition and knowledge. Human karma is not the actions of mere bourgeois human individuals, but it is of the mysterious and inscrutable emanations of the void.’

Cain sinisterly intoned the following words, as though falling into a trance, and as though intending to take half the suffering, bleeding, baleful-baling Kosmos down with him.

Grimly lullabying at first, the galesome spirits of demonic torment captured him, and every corner and inch of the room rattled with the clinking rattle of his martial prance.

Oh, oh, weaver’s shuttle

Steam arises, rises still

Oh, oh, mist of dawn,

Mist of dawn on freedom’s hill

Whence do you bring your joys?

When shall my suffering cease?

Oh, oh, spider’s web

Spider’s web, so MIIIGGGHHTY!

I! Spy! Upon the clouds

Mystic dragon WEEEEEEEPING

Oh! Daddy! Where my pouch!

Tearful kisses, pleading!

Hence! All my magic foes

Terror, artsome, FLEEEEETING

When can Mama make me whole?

Crimson river, CHEEEEEATSOME!

Oh, pleasant, river, run?

Gales and sky-blue eggshells!

Mak! Chaddi! Het-Dop-Dong!

Makes my belly tum-bum-bly!

Ach! Why I sing so long!

Milk-some measures PREEEEENING

Daddy make me mourn so long

Father, chop, HO!

Big Xian committed himself to his fate.

By now, even his inward prayer was silent.

Through blood-shut eyes, he dimly perceived the shadow sweeping above his head.

He barely felt the blow.

Chapter 2: Flowers in the Mirror

Saul Friedman exited the funeral hall, still holding his messy clump of flowers.

Big Xian’s sister-in-law warmly smiled through her tears.

‘Thank you for the flowers,’ she whispered.

Saul didn’t hear her.

He slouched towards the exit of the funeral hall.

Civil funerals were never quite his thing.

They always seemed to be missing something.

But then, the entire city was missing something now.

Or someone.

Never would Saul eat chicken balls or dim sum again!

He just didn’t have the heart.

Well, perhaps one day he would.

But he would never admit it to himself.

He was stubborn like that.

Or…

A little ‘rigorous,’ as he liked to call it.

‘These are lovely flowers,’ Genevieve repeated again.

Saul dully raised his head.

‘You brought these for our Xian, then?’

Saul grunted and almost imperceptibly lowered his chin.

And up again.

‘How nice,’ Genevieve said, her voice trembling.

‘And… how unusual.’

She reached out her hand.

Saul frowned, not quite understanding the gesture.

‘Well… I was only wondering if I may hold… but of course… if you’d rather…’

Saul blinked and slowly extended the bouquet.

‘Is there… is there perhaps any chance we may keep one? You’ve really been so very, very kind to big Xian. He always says he has so many good friends. And yet.. and yet… so few have turned up today. Well… well now! Perhaps it is the weather.’

Saul momentarily contemplated mentioning that this was actually an extraordinarily mild January, by all that he’d heard.

But he eventually decided that actually, this was just all these here neurotypical folks with these curious conventions of theirs. The code was not always so easy to crack, but long years of hard experience had given him some fairly decent competency in the curious symbolic to ‘n’ fro of all them ‘normal folks.’

So it seemed, then, that Genevieve, the wife of Big Xian’s brother Di (not to be confused with his other sister-in-law in China, the daughter of a prominent Party Figure in Qinghai province), was not really intending to make a casual observation about the weather at all.

Well, it was understandable that in this kind of situation, one might wish to speak a little thus… ‘indirectly.’ But what Saul could never in a million years comprehend, no, not in the least, was…

Why the ‘neuronormals’ just took it so damn far?

In a situation like this, yes let’s all use language and words to shield us from painful truths. But in politics? In geopolitics? In international relations? Who gave them the goddamn right to weasel around, like words didn’t matter, and the end somehow inevitably justified the means! These bitches! Ahhh, these frickin’ bitches!

He almost said it out loud.

‘Guess it ain’t much for an old friend,’ he murmured, almost inaudibly.

‘Oh. Oh no. On the contrary. Really, you have been so very, very thoughtful. So deeply considerate. I mean, really. Why, it’s not even the custom here. Now, I don’t know how you thought about it, but these little flowers; well, they really do mean a great deal to us.’

‘Good,’ Saul grunted, shifting uncomfortably in his shoes, and rather wishing he was somewhere else right now.

‘Care to have a little bit of this tea? For, you know, Big Xian was so… just so, so, very good for these beautiful teas, you know.’

‘No,’ Saul said, inadvertently snorting and spluttering like a Neanderthal.

A few steps later, it dawned on him that he had not responded quite correctly.

He half-turned on his heels, looked back, and tried to whisper:

‘No, thank you.’

But the words died on his breath.

Chapter 3: Scrapbooks and Shredded Hearts

Deborah Willow was now free from the strains and worries of her career as a rising star in the Democratic Party. She was also not badly off for money; not at all, thanks to her uncles in Iraq, who had been shrewd enough to not put all their eggs in one basket. ‘Big Solar’ had yet to reach the heights of ‘Big Oil,’ but it certainly was far from a senseless investment.
A book of poems.

Written by Adolph Adams.

Many years ago.

But Saul must have had something to do with it too.

He generally did!

Deborah ran her fingers softly over the immaculately illustrated indie volume.

‘Indie books for Indie Spirits,’ was what Adolph had suggested as the slogan for a new publishing project of his.

But Saul, as level-headed and prudent (in his way!) as he was irritable and highly-strung, had warned Adolph off of this risky venture.

And something of Adolph Adams, as he many years later recounted to Deborah Willow, had died, with the death of this little project.

***

The Jester’s Net I Gave Me

What if I told you ‘Brahman’ was not a mere ideal

A coercive superstitious worship of unity

As the absolute end-of-all?

What if I told you ‘Brahman’ was the encounter

Between the finite and the (in/)finite

Between the severed and the whole?

What if I told you ‘Brahman’ was where we meet

And not where we end?

What if I told you Brahman does not exist Outside of you

Nor within you?

What if I told you

Neither forgiveness Nor non-forgiveness

Are the end

But rather the boatframes

That carry you

To the shore of encounter?

What if I told you

You are neither a good person

Nor an evil person

But you are amid the endless play

Of both?

What if I told you

The play of Brahman

And the Quranic injunction

THE WORLD IS NOT FOR SPORT

Were precisely the same wisdom

And yet (im/precisely) different?

What if I told you

That Jesus was only THE SON OF GOD

Precisely because he was crucified

The one and only Father Sought eternally?

And what if I told you

The Son of God was the greatest ‘atheist’ Of all?

What if I told you God warned Moses

IF YOU EVER SEE ME ON THIS MOUNTAIN SLAY ME?

What if I told you

When Confucius begged assistance of Heaven

He was asking Heaven to help him help himself?

What if I told you To ‘comprehend’ is not make a

Bald Trite Factual arrow wound Murmuring

ALL WILL THUS BE WELL?

What if I told you

ALL WILL BE WELL AND ALL MANNER OF THINGS SHALL BE WELL

Was not at all

For the end of these times

But for the here-and-now?

What if I told you

The everlasting love you seek

Is neither inside yourself

Nor outside it

But in all those silent fleeting spaces

In between?

What if I told you

Everlasting does not mean all time

But merely neither of time

Nor not of time?

What if I told you

You are neither guilty or innocent

But that you are in them

But not of them?

What if I told you

Every day God crucifies himself for hurting you?

What if I told you

Everyday Allah lets the humblest of his servants stone him

And tender

Smiles through tears unwelcomed?

What if I told you

Every day Buddha weepingly confesses his guilt

To the demons in hell?

What if I told you Brahman does all these deeds

Not for his own sake

But for yours?

What if I told you

You cannot inflict on yourself

Any of these torments

But that you can nevertheless know

That not one smile you have gifted to another

Shall be ever taken from them?

What if I told you

When you senselessly crucified yourself

For your faults in love

There was a voice from your morning

Calling to you

NOT IN MY NAME?

What if I told you

The unity of Brahman is not a denial

Of alienation

Of despair

Of grief

Of remorse

Of sadness

Of sorrow

Of tragedy?

What if I told you

There is no Brahman inside

Nor outside

Of you

But that when you are ready

You will be taken

By the hand

And led at last

Where you always were afraid to go?

What if I told you

The place

Where there is no fear

And the place

Where fear lurks in the shadows

Are two names

For the self-same house of Being?

What if I told you

The lies you told yourself

Were truths

And that they were also falsehoods

But they could never

And will never be

THE TRUTH?

What if I told you

You were loved

And you were love

And this love will remain with you

To the end of your days

And no one will ever

Take it away from you

Nor from your love

And not even you

Have the power

To ever accomplish such a deprivation?

What if I told you

The love you have given

And the love you have been given

Will last longer

Than all the generations of this earth

Because the Book of Time

Never rubs out

What she has

First inscribed?

What if I told you The Poet of Memory

Never forgets

For even if His poems were to forget

He herself

Shall not ever

Let she himself

Forget

Because the Book of Time Never rubs out

What he has First inscribed?

What if I told you The Poetess of Memory

Never forgets

For even if Her poems were to forget

She herself

Shall not ever let herself forget?

***

The doorbell rings.

Can it really be Adolph Adams at last?

Willow falls into a dreamy muse.

And so the song continues.

***

What if I told you

This love was

Neither real nor unreal

Neither authentic nor inauthentic

Neither beginningless nor beginning

Neither endless nor ending

Neither poison nor cure

Neither life nor death

This nor that Here nor there

Speaking nor silence?

Brahman does not lie

Nor does Brahman tell the truth

But please do me the courtesy

To whisper unto another

Gently, gently

And loving close

Beyond all hope of love

O beloved one

What do you know?

Chapter 4: China Soars, While Freedom Roars
‘You know, Saul,’ Adolph remarked, ‘It really is such a pity we haven’t seen anything literary from you in a while.’

Saul frowned and said nothing. He was a hundred miles away.
The room was silent.
So deathly, deathly, silent.
‘Have you ever considered writing a little more?’
Saul grimaced, with an air of semi-indifference.
‘Hm?’ Adolph hummed, with his usual sobriety and plainness that was not, however, without a certain whiff of lyrical charm, in itself.
‘Nah,’ Saul grunted.
Adolph sighed.
‘So few words, Saul. So few words. Now, what a pity.’
Adolph reached for his half-empty glass.
‘Did you enjoy that? I brought it especially for you. Be careful about your bones, Saul. I was worried when you told me you hadn’t had milk for months. You know how it is with this condition of yours.’
Saul furrowed his brow. ‘I’ll be alright, Adolph. Sure yer have more important people to be worryin’ about.’
Adolph raised his eyebrows. ‘Saul, Saul, you silly old fool,’ Adolph tutted in a disappointment only half-contrived at best. ‘Why, I don’t have anyone in the whole wide world besides myself! Well, I have friends, and colleagues, and acquaintances. But…
‘Well, Saul old friend, don’t they call me the Electric Quaker? Sometimes I think the Electric Monk would be nearer the mark. Don’t you?’
Saul looked down, embarrassed to say any more.
‘Your shower is broken, Saul.’
Saul stirred in his seat; by now he was starting to get irritated by Adolph’s nagging.
‘I am sure you can afford a decent repairs person. I can look one up for you if you wish?’
All of a sudden Saul sprang out the chair and rammed his fist down on the coffee table.
The normally unflappable Adolph Adams jerked upwards in his seat, startled by Saul’s helpless fury.
‘Excuse me, Saul. It was not my intention to nag. But I worry about you. You are an old friend, after all! I just don’t know what to do. People are saying things.’
Somewhat mollified, Saul sat down again. He puffed and panted for a few seconds; a few tens of seconds, even.
Silence came once more.
Eventually Saul drily murmured (I had almost as well have said, ‘prophetically intoned,’) ‘the dogs may bark, and the hyenas well may bray! But still the caravan proceeds.’
Adolph smiled warmly. ‘Indeed. But a great deal depends not merely on where the caravan is headed, but in what state the caravan is headed. There is a great deal of pain and trouble and fretting in this present world, dearest Saul. Is there not?
‘And would you not prefer as sturdy and as rugged a caravan as ever you may cultivate and renovate, on this wondrously prophetic night journey of yours?’
Saul hung his head. A single, solitary tear rolled down his cheek.
‘Come now, Saul,’ Adolph gentled, in this very same customarily quaint, archaic, homely tone of the Electric Quaker. The Marchtide Vitality of George Fox was upon him, and a Woolman out of season was appointed to preach good news unto the poor in spirit.
Or so, at least, it was dreamed and mused upon, in many a broken, aching heart amid The Fullness.
Or Foolness?
Well, who shall be bold enough to declare the judgment betwixt the twain?
‘You once had binders full of stories,’ Adolph reminisced.
Saul looked up, his tearful eyes appearing on the verge of a transportation most wondrous, fearful and beyond the telling of any tongue but one.
‘Here is one of them,’ Adolph sweetly murmured, his own generous, plaintive, plain-besparking eyes glimmering with affection: the purest kind of homely, spiritual love two men could ever know.
It was not for nothing that Adolph had won the Cardinal Newman Undergraduate Prize for Spiritual Significant Poetry, in the days when he and Saul knew a love sweeter than the love of women, and more generous and self-sacrificial than the love of gods and angels.
Saul smiled warmly. This pure, emancipated spiritual affection, as free of all carnal temptation and entanglement as it was bright and radiant in its spiritual wealth and splendour, renewed and kindled in his precious eyes.
Adolph read, as he used to read to his precious Saul when they shared opposite beds in that dormitory of old.
His voice was warm, generous of spirit, and full of a radiant love and purity that was dimmer and cooler than the cascading of water, yet warmer and more brilliant than one thousand stars.

THE FLIGHT OF NEW CHINA: SPACESHIP PINGDENG

Rat-a-tat-tat.
Such a sound.
Drum, drum, drum, and “guan, guan, quoth the osprey!”
Reminiscent of the grand old China our ancestors once remembered; but even they were too old to live there.
Of course, in that old society, they were not equal.

There were boundaries.
There were the five and three.
Bonds of social belonging, bonds of responsibility. Or was it the other way around?
Five and three, five and three.
We no longer know how to count backwards…
Did we ever?
We must do.
Their boundary was society.
But it was also the planet Earth.

We dreamed that if only we could escape this barren planet after the May 5 incident, it would not be difficult to explore the boundless reaches of the Kosmos, as dreamed our most exalted visionary, Kang Youwei.
He spoke of a ‘Great Sameness,’ a ‘Grand Community of Perfect Equality.’
Some said it was at the cost of liberty.
But then again: the gloomy, unconstructively pessimistic novelist, Lao She, he wrote his idle dystopia ‘The City of Cats.’ By reducing our proud nation to squabbling felines, he denied that the outer reaches of the Universe were ours to explore.

So on the one hand, we, yes we, the New Chinese, have crossed every galaxy in search of a new age.
The old ways weren’t working any longer; neither our ways, nor those of our fellow-planeteers.
We sought wisdom within a narrow sphere; but this was no use for us.
The prison-cage of the feudal clan became the prison cage of the world.
We could not rest easy, we could not ever be satisfied.
Liberalism and Communism alike were of our world. We wanted a Greater Good even than these.

After May 5, the hacking of the Global Geo-Engineering complex left us no choice but to leave this planet, before our enemies finished us off.
But why speak more?
For is there not an old Occidental proverb (if my memory does not betray me), that ‘the man who roars in space shall never get a hearing?’
Or was it our Confucius?
It is also said that Confucius was of the bones of long-dead men.
Once upon a time, it was said that ‘China needs fewer -isms, and has need only of this: our practicality.’
There once was a time that ‘liberty’ was a word fresh and new.
But we are uprooted from that word by now.
And why? Because those who treasured liberty, among us and afar from us, traded freedom for a sturdy seat on Spaceship Earth.

We used to say that Liberty is a lifeboat; the only way to avoid capsizing it, is to steady your own ship.
This was our truth…
But it became our lie.
We never dreamed the May 5 incident would destroy all life on Earth.
Why were we the ones that were spared?
Now freedom, this treasure of the human race, is committed into our hands alone.
…
Would to Heaven we knew what to do with it!

Adolph laid down the book, and gazed lovingly upon Saul. Saul was now lying back in his armchair, softly whistling and occasionally grunting in the most peaceable contentment ever imaginable. The story had not been a long one, but Adolph’s legendary patience, and talent for adding curious and wondrous embellishment here and there without ever once losing the thread or plunging into a sentimental and pretentious bathos of dissipation…
Well, all this had resulted in a tale rather long in the telling, but not at all long in the listening. With the innocence of a child, Adolph pressed his brother’s hand gently. In any ‘civilized country,’ this would have been considered a sign of sexual deviance. The brief spring of gay emancipation had already been partially rolled back, so that if ‘sodomites’ were no longer as free as they had been some few decades ago, no more were they the figures of systematically vicious and abusive persecution and vitriol of earlier still. They were teetering on the abyss of utter destruction on one side, and a chastened renewal and fresh liberation on the other. For after all, ‘who by fire, who by water,’ was a common remark of Saul’s. And the experience of gay people was not, in the last instance, so very dissimilar from that of Jews in the America of the day.
And this, in turn, was the experience of America.
Turn forever, or burn forever, as the hellfire ‘Party of God’ and ‘Party of Allah’ alike were given to chant.
But if theocrats Christian and theocrats Islamist had the luxury of appealing to certainty, liberals like Adolph and libertarians like Saul had not.
Their road was a lonely one, and there were no promises, and no guarantees.
It was just as well then, given the circumstances, that Adolph Adams was actually impotent.
And Saul Friedman was entirely lacking in desires.
But freedom, at least, he did desire.
And was that not, after all, a great deal more than could be said for some?

Chapter 5: Sputs Under the Bed

Alaska was cold at this time of year.

But then again, when was it not?

Senator Bubble stood up, raised his finger in the ear, and immediately commenced to rant and rave.

“We are sick and tired,” he roared, “of weak enemies trying to act tough and push us around!”

Roarsome, rough approval.

Bubble picked up a delicate Russian doll (specially crafted to be as shattersome as possible for this highly memorable act of radical political performance theatre) and hurled it to the groud.

A pin’s drop or two of awestruck silence.

All of a sudden, a roar so deafening many a television viewer jumped for shock, to hear the myriad voices. Like a thousand-cattle slaughterhouse on a San Martín festival more fit for pigs than men, the shrieks and squeals and hideous, frightful bellows threatened to turn the universe.

Saul Friedman finally found the graveyard. This dyspraxia was a real frickin’ bummer! Now where in the fuck-damn shitty little…

Saul gaped in horror.

Big Xian’s grave had been desecrated! An ugly Dharmo-Nazi Swastika had been sprayed all over the tombstone. Some rotten Dim Sums had been mocking scattered around the grave, and various soiled and shredded pictures of Fun Manchu, Charlie Chan and Ho Chi Minh (did they not even have the decency to know the difference?!) had been stapled to a crude effigy of Saul’s intellectual namesake, a Milton without ‘a Paradise to be gained,’ but certainly not without ‘a hell to be shunned.’

Saul raised his eyes to the steaming heaven and roared.

Marcus Bubble’s aide tried once more in vain to get the Senator’s attention.

The raving demagogue didn’t even satisfy him with a glance in his direction.

We all hate all these pathetic losers and cowards who dishonour our nation! Nobody has any idea what these Russian morons are trying to achieve. But I tell you what! For what it’s worth, I am NOT gonna tolerate this, this utter crap any longer! They want their trade war? Mr Stoliniev wants his trade war? Ah, Mr Kirilliev? Whatever! You want your fuckin’ trade War, Kirri boy? Well, you’re gonna get your trade war! Be careful what you fuckin’ wish for, asshole!

Pause for effect.

One minute or so.

Does ‘em good!

Alright everybody! Gives us a Da Komrad, if you think we’re gonna put with this utter hateful, unpatriotic CRAP any longer? What’s that! Hey! I CAN’T HEAR YOU! Where are all the unpatriotic Russkiebots!

Oh, what’s that? Oh, be careful you don’t end up with some bad conseq… Oh well hey! That guy is getting beaten! C’mon, stop hitting him. He’s suffered enough. The CIA will find out later what he’s been doing.

Where are all my Da, Komrads? Hey hey hey! Naaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!

Alright! So where are all my ‘Bankrupt Moscows?’

Woo-hooooooooooooooo! That’s it, baby! Do this shit now!

I am GOING TO BANKRUPT Moscow, and aaalll the Russians are GONNA COME DOWN TO US ON BENDED KNEE…

And BEG FOR FORGIVENESS!

That’s right! BEG!

Should we let ‘em off?

Gales of horrible, hideous laughter.

“Let ‘em starve!” shrieks one.

Let ‘em starve! WOOOOOOOOO!

Let’s go with that one!

Can I make ‘em starve, people?

YES I CAN! YES I CAN! YES I CAN!

Are you gonna Bankrupt Moscow, Baby?

The only reply possible, really…?

“YES WE WILL! YES WE WILL! YES WE WILL!” the morons roared.

“You have beheld the melting of the snowflakes: this is the day our economy surges, and our Republic begins to roar! You can see that I am the one you are hoping for!”

The crowd shrieked like goblins.

“YES WE DO! YES WE DO! YES WE DO!” they dinned.

An ambitious young girl clutched her heart. She saw herself enthroned upon the White House, with the riches of the Holy House of Peron around her neck, and a shining crown of blood upon her golden hair. ‘The Mansion of the Common Good,’ she breathed. ‘The Spiritual Economy will be restored. Wisdom, Wisdom, Jnana, Gnosis. The Global Village is my Father, Our Common Humanity is my Mother. And when I return to my rightful abode, it shall be said that Justice will be the father of a daughter glorious. From Peking to Paris, the flight of Justice shall finally descend upon the beauty of my head. Beware ye then, of the wounds of the innocent!’

Bubble still had not even finished. But she was lost to the world.

Honest Adolph blinked. ‘Really, Deborah?’ he said. ‘The Chinese Communist Party have decided to embrace the Socialist Humanism Reconstruction Project? Well, at this rate, they will soon overtake us, as we really do seem to be on a little bit of a backward trend.’

Willow sighed.

‘How the mighty have fallen,’ she sighed.

‘Well… I trust at least we may be found worthy to cling on,’ he murmured.

Willow looked down and furrowed her brow.

They fell into silence.

‘I feel like I’m falling,’ she whispered in her heart, ‘and I don’t know how far I have to fall. Perhaps forever.’

Adolph’s mind was drawn to Saul.

Those precious moments sat around the campfire in Yunnan province, the land of eternal spring.

So long, Marianne.

Suzanne.

And of course, greatest and most grand and majestic, as gorgeous, gleaming, glorious as the ship Uncle Len brought before our eyes in the song itself:

Democracy.

That was the one song Saul had refused to sing.

Willow, half delirious with joy, had pressed Saul to her, and in unbelieving wonder, Adolph was fit to swear she was about to melt his heart once and for all.

After a brief pause, Saul had angrily (if almost wondrous tenderly, after a fashion) swiped her hand away.

She was there now.

Willow’s flushed cheeks faded.

She gawped open mouth at Saul, as he stood quivering, quivering, shaking, struggling to contain himself before the fire.

Adolph gently intoned, ‘Saul.’

Saul kicked over his Qingdao and ran into the night, too furious to speak.

Willow was inconsolable.

From that month onward and evermore, she never had a period again.

Bubble held up a giant ballot paper, which he doused with some curious-smelling liquid and set alight.

‘Throw the Czar down the well!’ he shouted, as the crowd collapsed in laughter.

In not-so-perfect union, Deadbeat Lynton and the Saville Twins struck up a rousing rendition of ‘This ballot papers sets bears on fire!’

The glimmer of the fire was mirrored in the eyes of little Deirdre.

One day, she swore, she would be the liberator of Our Common Humanity, and the final, fatal bane of those who so deeply callously, cruelly, indifferently, robbed the All of her rightful praise and property.

Chapter 6: Motherhood is Mighty

Final day in Alaska. Yesterday’s speech was a stormer. And now this one will be the BEST SPEECH EVER!

Bubble threw the mike to his personal assistant.

‘OK, so wadawesay, boy? What are we gonna do to Russia?’

The aide, overcome with shame for his hideous error, quaked and trembled, wishing the ground would swallow him up.

If looks could kill! Bubble stepped towards the aide, as though (however implausibly this might appear to any but the most narrowminded and bigoted of cynics) he were going to grab the lad by the throat and choke him to death).

‘I meant Ukraine, not Russia!’ the boy screamed in terror. ‘The briefing for tomorrow…’

Bubble momentarily paused in stupefaction. About to swing for the lad’s jaw, he suddenly noticed that everyone around him was laughing and cheering.

He raised his arm aloft, grimly smiling.

‘That’s what it’s all about!’ he roared, in an unprecedently hideous, perfidious exaltation.

‘ASSHOLES DEAL IN FACTS! BUBBLE DEALS THE TRUTH! LOSERS HAVE DISCUSSIONS! MARK TAKES BACK THE LOOT!’ the gibbering menageries of pestiferous imbeciles chanted, carried away in a truly demonic ecstacy of inauthentic rapture.

***

Little Deirdre pulled herself out of the frozen river and sobbed. Even drowning herself was of no use. Her limbs quivered, but even the unbearable Arctic chill could not bring her to her final end. 16 years of torment and misery. How many long, cold, cruel decades lay ahead of her?

The mocking words of Ruby Chandra De Montevideo echoed in her ears.

‘We have no use for the eagerness and idealism of youth. When your ideas have matured a little, and you are ready to deal in practical politics, by all means consider coming to us again. We admire your perfectly understandable fury of youth; let’s just be a little more smart and level-headed about it, and you never know! You might make a highly creditable public mayor at some point in the not-so-distant future.’

All of the sudden a dull, grey-suited figure stumbled out of the bushes.

Deirdre screamed, for she thought that it was Lynton Goering.

It was not.

It was Dickie Klindel, with a camera.

‘Why are you filming me?’ she quivered.

Dickie Klindel gaped at her, dull and lifeless as a frozen trout at the bottom of his horrid river.

But this was now a moment of decision.

He had to find a way to silence her.

He did not know that this fateful day was sowing the seeds of those future hideous, unbearable decades of terror, as the lily-white thunder-crest and sea-storm-motto of Neo-Social Democracy was one day to adorn the White House…

The Mansion of the Common Good.

From this moment on, Deirde was no longer Deirdre.

But what that really meant, there was only one soul on earth who could tell the tale.

***

And even she could not ever tell it.

Not once.

Not ever.

Chapter 7: Thicker than My Father’s Arms

Willow.

Willow-willow.

Oh hey Willow, Will-Willow

Ah me Daffy-Down-Dillies!

Where I am.

Sing, Temple Sing!

Trink, Gunther Trink!

O, and I am not alone.

Rhiiiiiiiinegold, faaaaaalllll upooooooon the shore!

IIIIIIIII am youuuuuuuuuurs foreeeeeeevermore!

Froooooolic, freeeeeely in the mire, and never mind the meeeeeeeedia wire

That cheeeeeeeat the woooooooooorld of yooooooooour desire!

Friedman, Friedman, Wealth of the Wildly

Make of me Bridely

To the dwarf-like eniiiiiiiiiiiiiigma!

Ach! Fraulein be free,

Like char siu and tea,

Be another soft pearl buried,

Deep, deep down in the oooooooocean!

***

DURRRRRRRRRRRRM! DURM DURRRRRRRRRRRRM!

Make way for the crazy Tooooooooooooooot! DURM DURRRRRRRM

Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Schwester Mona

I am dyyyyyyyyying, now drown me now….

Ooooooo Sauuuuuuuuuuuuuul, Love!

Ooooooo Frieeeeeeeedmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan! And so it paaaaaaaaaaases…….

Fried-man! Fried-man! Friiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeed…

Fried-man! Fried-man! Friieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed

O Saul, man!

O unshackled soul….

O my dooooooooownfallllllllllllllll

***

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Oh Willow, the trolls of cloud, they are uppling me back to shore!

Oh brother, brother, the sword, it shall yet be resheathed!

Upsingses! Uppspingers! Halt! Ach haltend Hagen!

Oh treacherous, oh treacherous!

The Ring! It is mine! O Empire of age-like beauty!

O queen-like Reich! Reich! Reich…

GET BACK OF THE RING!

GET BACK! GET BACK!

***

Adolph Adams awoke in a cold sweat.

He shook himself, tried to forget the dream.

The maidens tried to call him back.

But he was caught in some unpleasant phantasy.

Fair or foul, he must tarry until the break of day.

Chapter 8: Give me Liberty, or Give Me Slumber

Sally Thatcher sat thumbing through the book she had strangely chanced upon.

She had never darkened the door of a library in her life.

But something about the vaguely-intellectual old whiskey-guzzler had stuck inside her.

A book of quotes from Saul and other friends of his; an odd choice.

Not very marketable.

Sally wondered if she was the first person who had ever so much as given the book a second glance.

Sally slowly thumbed her way across the lines.

Her cautious Southern drawl painstakingly traced out the lineaments of Saul’s robust and ebullient meditations.

***

Those who fight for freedom on the outside while remaining slaves on the inside, are condemned to be slaves forever.

Little amuses the innocent, and even less the not-so-innocent.

My interests, not the national interest! My good, not the good of Humanity! And what you wish for yourself, you wish for others too!

People need to stop serving “Humanity” and start working to help individual human beings instead.

I would never sacrifice so much as a single armpit-hair for Humanity. But I would shed my blood 1000 times over for individual liberty.

I want doesn’t get. My rights doesn’t get. And my choice is certainly to no avail.

‘Choice’ is actually not a liberal notion at all. It is part of the postmodernist revaluation of all values. Individual liberty considers all stakeholders; choice erects one agent of liberty above all.

Individualism is not egotism. There is no greater egotist on the earth than the collectivist.

It is well said that the Devil’s greatest trick was convincing you he never existed. But his second best trick was telling you he was God Almighty himself. And if there is a third one, it is perhaps distracting you with such false ideals and high-minded principles, that you cannot devote a single second of earnestly dispassionate meditation to just how far you have fallen.

I want to see you and your fellow liberals talking less about tolerance, and more about liberty. Freedom cannot be tolerant of unfreedom!

Choice centers the individual making the decision, while decentring and de-emphasizing the objective value of the decision.

To all you humanitarian interventionist traitors I ask:
When I am standing for peace & non-violence & ahimsa…
What are you doing?!

Choosing between nationalism and globalism is like choosing between being drowned or strangled. You know you’re better than that…
And for my part, I know I’m better than that too.

***

Jim waddled over and tugged her sleeve.

She looked into his tear-strewn eyes.

This time there was no flippant smirk or caustic remark.

This time, Jim didn’t need to mention the horrible nightmare he’d just had.

Jim buried his head in Sally’s breast.

They sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

Just this once, it was together.

…

The shadows fell, regardless.

Chapter 9: As a Child, Thou Shalt Speak Wisdom unto the Mighty

he imam frowned as Jim gazed up at him innocently.

“We are busy now. We are praying.”

Jim stammered.

“Sir. Sir. Mr. Mr. Imam.”

The man’s face warmed a little, as he realized that gentle Jim meant no harm to them.

The climate for most religious minorities was a little too hot for comfort.

But the mosque gradually relaxed, as one. Only a couple of grimly frowning faces remained unconvinced.

“I had a dream.”

The imam stroked his beard gently.

“Dreams are very powerful things.”

Jim bowed his head. “I… I thought Mr. Mr. Feinstein. The dream.”

The imam sighed and gazed to the heavens.

“Perhaps this man you mention has gone to another place?”

“Dead. Dead.” Jim whimpered.

The imam gazed at Jim compassionately.

He reached into his pocket and took out a stone from Qarbala.

He loving placed it on Jim’s forehead. Jim stood silently; as he relaxed, the quivering stopped.

“This is a precious stone. From a holy land.”

Jim raised his hand, and pointed to the skies.

“Holy. Holy land. Like. Like. Skies. Like everywhere.”

The congregation were moved to tears.

***

Deborah sat and gazed at the curious photograph Saul had published with his poem. She placed her hand reverently on her breast, and tearfully interceded for this frail and fragile testament to the indomitability and eternal courage of the human spirit.

She solemnly, but tenderly, intoned the words.

***

The only true God is
The Lesser Good.
The only true God is
Whatever is not reducible
To these external
And to those heteronomous
Abstraction-mongerings
…
The nation
The race
The ethnicity
The culture
The planet
The species
The ecosphere
The universe
People are what count
…
If The Lesser Good
Means anything at all
It means precisely this.
‘The Divine’ is not found
Except in and with and among people
Which also means
Being amid one’s own self.
No God is more precious than the individual
No God is more precious than people
Not ‘The People’
Dare I state the blindingly obvious
But ‘people’
And I offer
Nothing in the service of The Greater Good
Nothing for the benefit of The Greater Good
But everything in the name of The Lesser Good
For no other name is given under heaven
Than the name of the individual
The name of the person
The holy fire of The Lesser Good
Let it burn me
And let me burn forever in the ecstasy of this whirling
My head is drunk
My soul intoxicated
My spirit reels with the giddy joy
Of an endless spiraling daybreak-wonder
I am the Lesser Good
I am the Lesser Good
Anyone is the Lesser Good
Anyone Good
Anyone is Good
We are Good
Good
Good
…

***

Otis Spengler waited until the last person had left the Church.

He could no longer stride, or swagger.

His old grace was gone.

The coughing racked his body.

Was it really AIDs then, by now?

Even it wasn’t, did he really have any time left anyway?

Otis staggered along the aisle, halting at almost every step.

The bastards wouldn’t get him this time.

On the threshold of the altar, he stumbled and fell.

He tried his best to kneel, his body racked with agony.

He moved his lips.

But the words wouldn’t come out.

And yet somehow, his prayer was heard.

One way or another.

***

If I were hanged on the highest hill