excerpt
Now Pauline has to stop this electronic time-seizure, because Lucas is driving
her mad with his mooning child face, staring from a sunset cottage. If only
the lines of various worlds had twisted differently. She pulls the plug. Her head
goes dark.
She’s dreaming that Lucas is stretched out on a strange luminous grid. Then
he’s moved into a cell on a hospital trolley. Sinister people in dark robes cluster
around him. She’s standing in the corner, huddled in her dressing-gown, wondering
if he’s dead. But one of the ‘Blue Monks’, a rubicund old man with a
candle-lit aura, reassures her.
“I’m sure the Holy Father remembers us all in his prayers.” She can’t find
the right answer to that, but the old man continues solemnly, “I am Brother
Worsley, with the duty of caring for wandering wayfarers. You must be
exhausted by your dreadful delusions . . .”
A large woolly dog stands stiffly at his feet, like a toy in a window display.
The monks start wrapping Lucas in damp towels, and she wants to offer her
dressing gown. “ You have been blessed, albeit by a virtuous heathen,” intones
the Brother, so solemnly that she wakes up, laughing with hysterical relief.
Until she remembers . . .
Breakfast TV: she can’t see it because she’s burning toast, but she can hear rippling
music, and the suave ad-break voice-over:
A new age: the old truths rediscovered: that your mind, body and free spirit all act
in secret harmony; and the rhythms of nature shape each day’s new growth.
And Kril Koolah fits in with your new way of living. With its fresh taste and low
calorie nourishment you can keep those energy levels high; and keep in touch with your
innermost heartbeat. Part of your personal development . . .
Through half-closed eyes she turns to see a young bronzed male profiled in
sitting postures of meditation. Serenity. Equilibrium. Fulfilment. His images
float and dissolve, rotating to form a mandala. Superimposed at the centre of
the mandala: an outline of the human body, emanating energy. And the glittering
green bottle.
These marketing people will package anything, won’t they just! They must
have psychographic profiles of the whole class of sixty-eight. She almost feels
sorry for Nick. All his cults, like his old rock’n’rollers, have become marketing
strategies. His generation have been targeted with their own fantasies..
She wonders again about lewd old Larry, who lost his place in the cosmic
directory. Careful. She must stop her brain wheeling and looping.
Libros Libertad 