Waste Land to a Scream: A Gay Science

Novel - 001

To Dame Judith Olivia Dench, Who knows a great deal about a woman in a man’s role.

1. “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Nietzsche

27 July, 1914 - London

The sluice of the muddy watercourse lapped among the grimy shores a blooming, caustic in the light. Like licking the buildings before going down: this was the Thames at ebbing tide, and drenched with the spires lit by electric lights, while the sky was filthy brown. A young man stared at the Tower Bridge where the wind came out of the sea, and thought to himself: Thou hast set all the borders of the earth: thou hast made summer and winter. And the summer was hot, but not yet in the whispering half-life between twilight and full aching day. Somehow he burrowed deeper into his jacket holding on to the cold of night. All around was an old city far older than even time could see, with a conjoined fracas of Medieval, Renaissance, and later buildings that crowded around the river.

It was, it was, yet was, not quite emerging dawn. And it was not quite yet 4 of the clock. Along the bumpy cobblestone streets, where the street was dimpled with rolling grace and he rolled with them in an undulating pattern full of grace.

And yet all was alive with the deliveries of fish and fowl, the men glistening with sweat as they piled high the delectable dead fish in a heap on every fishing troublous. And with each stack, the men gasped as one with the tiredness that comes from waking up too early to set the table for the match of bidding and buying. He saw newspaper boys whizzing between the men asking who would buy this beautiful morning for the price of a ha’penny. And already the stools were being set up by the women and they were talking about how much per pound of the fresh catch of the day and other matters of business. It was a collage of the market coming to life for the first customers would come in only a few minutes.

But he looked beyond, outside of the market and he was looking for the face of a man that he now knew quite well even though they had only met a short time ago. And just outside the conglomeration of fresh meat and delectable fish he then saw the twhirl of a mustache and the need goatee on a thin white face. And he almost ran.

“Ezra! I knew you would strengthen your hands and come to meet me.” But he knew that the face had already seen him and was waiting for him to recognize the staring eyes.

“I had to meet you TS before you took the train to Oxford.”

TS, for that was his name, took a back and then said, with great aplomb: “ I will probably be back in London quite often, because while I like studying, the University town is drab and dull filled with men who have had the learning squeezed out of them by lecturing and by the women who think of little but raising the next crowd of professors, from cradle to boarding school.”

“It sounds as if do not want to go there at all.”

“I am have sliding towards and whisking away because there is nothing like Dante to reinvigorate the soul, but he is first found dead in the classroom and only when one walks can one make that skip that makes his words live.”

“You do bear some observation, I have read the home that was given to me and it seems quite obscure and excellent.”

they had made a kitty corner around the market and delved into another street with a different kind of wave to it. Around them were the brick buildings of gray and white sashes of windows with clear glistening mirrors in two the souls of all who passed by. Ezra turned to him.

“So we’re letting you stay for the night? I’m sorry I did not ask you. I might have had a friend put you up. I was too busy thinking to think.”

TS whistled, and then at last muttered: “I eventually retreated to a cheap hotel And paid for the most sawdust room I could afford.”

“Since you are young and healthy they probably did not even intimate that there was a discount.”

“No, I’m afraid not, while my clothes are poor my face says that I come from a well-to-do family in some Brahman caste, even if from far away.”

“There will be war, quite soon if not already.”

“People are not talking about it with great assiduousness. All is about pounds and shillings and not bodies and arms.”

“Their minds are talking about it even if their lips are not.”

“Come let us go. There will be time.” The sky was light though the sun had not graced them with its presence.

TS chuckled: “Time for you and time for me, but I am quite certain that Father Time will point at many of the people I walked among and call in a chime to come with him.”

“I think you presume too much to know who will be called.”

“Perhaps so, maybe it is an illusion or persuasion, but I can feel it nonetheless.”

They looked at a clock on a church steeple, clearly designed by Gibbs, and saw that the sun would soon rise, even though it was not quite yet.

“Should we go and get our breakfast?”

“Yes, let’s.”

over and above them through the cracks that the street allowed they saw the slipping light. Ezra looked down and lit a cigarette.

And TS looked up into the raging dawn.