CLIVE BARKER’S BOOKS OF BLOOD. Volume I. Chapter 2

THE YATTERING

AND JACK

WHY THE POWERS (long may they hold court; long may they shit light on the heads of the damned) had sent it out from Hell to stalk Jack Polo, the Yattering couldn’t discover. Whenever he passed a tentative enquiry along the system to his master, just asking the simple question, ‘What am I doing here?’ it was answered with a swift rebuke for its curiosity. None of its business, came the reply, its business was to do. Or die trying. And after six months of pursuing Polo, the Yattering was beginning to see extinction as an easy option. This endless game of hide and seek was to nobody’s benefit, and to the Yattering’s immense frustration. It feared ulcers, it feared psychosomatic leprosy (a condition lower demons like itself were susceptible to), worst of all it feared losing its temper completely and killing the man outright in an uncontrollable fit of pique.

What was Jack Polo anyway?

A gherkin importer; by the balls of Leviticus, he was simply a gherkin importer. His life was worn out, his family was dull, his politics were simple-minded and his theology

non-existent. The man was a no-account, one of nature’s blankest little numbers — why bother with the likes of him? This wasn’t a Faust: a pact-maker, a soul-seller. This one wouldn’t look twice at the chance of divine inspiration: he’d sniff, shrug and get on with his gherkin importing.

Yet the Yattering was bound to that house, long night and longer day, until he had the man a lunatic, or as good as. It was going to be a lengthy job, if not interminable. Yes, there were times when even psychosomatic leprosy would be bearable if it meant being invalided off this impossible mission.

For his part, Jack J. Polo continued to be the most unknowing of men. He had always been that way; indeed his history was littered with the victims of his naïveté. When his late, lamented wife had cheated on him (he’d been in the house on at least two of the occasions, watching the television) he was the last one to find out. And the clues they’d left behind them! A blind, deaf and dumb man would have become suspicious. Not Jack. He pottered about his dull business and never noticed the tang of the adulterer’s cologne, nor the abnormal regularity with which his wife changed the bed-linen.

He was no less disinterested in events when his younger daughter Amanda confessed her lesbianism to him. His response was a sigh and a puzzled look.

‘Well, as long as you don’t get pregnant, darling,’ he replied, and sauntered off into the garden, blithe as ever.

What chance did a fury have with a man like that?

To a creature trained to put its meddling fingers into the wounds of the human psyche, Polo offered a surface so glacial, so utterly without distinguishing marks, as to deny malice any hold whatsoever.

Events seemed to make no dent in his perfect indif­ference. His life’s disasters seemed not to scar his mind at all. When, eventually, he was confronted with the truth

about his wife’s infidelity (he found them screwing in the bath) he couldn’t bring himself to be hurt or humiliated.

‘These things happen,’ he said to himself, backing out of the bathroom to let them finish what they’d started.

‘Che sera, sera.’

Che sera, sera. The man muttered that damn phrase with monotonous regularity. He seemed to live by that philosophy of fatalism, letting attacks on his manhood, ambition and dignity slide off his ego like rain-water from his bald head.

The Yattering had heard Polo’s wife confess all to her husband (it was hanging upside down from the light-fitting, invisible as ever) and the scene had made it wince. There was the distraught sinner, begging to be accused, bawled at, struck even, and instead of giving her the satisfaction of his hatred, Polo had just shrugged and let her say her piece without a word of interruption, until she had no more to embosom. She’d left, at length, more out of frustration and sorrow than guilt; the Yattering had heard her tell the bathroom mirror how insulted she was at her husband’s lack of righteous anger. A little while after she’d flung herself off the balcony of the Roxy Cinema.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *