Cohn King Death

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-84344-979-9
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten

Eddie is a strange man with an extraordinary talent that makes him the 'performer' he is. Eddie administers Death. His subjects, he explains, are not afraid, but are thrilled and transported. To Eddie, Death is completion, and he finds fulfilment, satisfaction, and pride in each job he carries out. When Seaton Carew, America's most successful TV entrepreneur, chances to witness Eddie in action, Eddie's career is altered. Overcoming many obstacles, he and Seaton literally ride to glory on the Deliverance Special, a train carrying King Death and his huge entourage all over America. But then a disturbing change comes over Eddie and threatens to topple him from his grisly throne... Part nightmare, part modern fairytale, Nik Cohn has written a bizarre fable for our time. In a cool and highly original style Cohn captures its sickness and horror yet stays true to its grandeur and allure.

Nik Cohn was the original rock & roll writer. Arriving in London from Northern Ireland in 1964, aged 18, he covered the Swinging Sixties for The Observer, The Sunday Times, Playboy, Queen and the New York Times and he published the classic rock history Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom in 1968. later he moved to America and wrote a short story that was filmed as Saturday Night Fever. His other books include Rock Dreams (with Guy Peellaert), Arfur Teenage Pinball Queen (which helped inspire the Who's Tommy) and Yes We Have No.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cohn, Nik

Leseproben

2 One afternoon, shortly after his twenty-sixth birthday, Seaton was driving through the Hollywood Hills, heading nowhere in particular, when he passed a Spanish mansion behind a high electric fence and his eye was drawn to a gilded nameplate, which read Tierra de Ensueños: ‘Land of Dreams,’ said the Englishman, and he paid a quarter of a million dollars to live inside. Originally built for Avril Orchid, the siren of the silent screen, the mansion had thirty-one rooms and everything in them was heart-shaped. There were heart-shaped windows, heart-shaped beds, heart-shaped mirrors and chandeliers. Even the grand pianos, the sunken baths and tiger-skin rugs were heart-shaped and, at the centre of a labyrinth of twisted corridors, there was a heart-shaped perfumed garden. Here Seaton took his ease in a velveteen hammock, in the shade of a slumbrous fig tree, whose fruit hung down about his head in deep red crystals. He was surrounded by songbirds, alabaster cupids and a hundred different kinds of blossom. Moorish minarets soared far above him, wild animals ate crumbs from his hand. At his feet, a scented fountain played in a bowl full of silvery snowfish. Nobody knew where he had come from, what his origins were, exactly how he had begun. But he had arrived in Los Angeles when he was twenty-one, already rich, and proceeded to make himself still richer. He owned rock groups, produced motion pictures, invested in real estate. He had five cars, three bodyguards and twenty-seven TV sets, and he put up the largest, most dazzling neon sign on the whole of Sunset Strip. In due course he became twenty-five, and he began to grow stale. Deals no longer excited him; neither did anything else. So he grew his hair to his shoulders and lay motionless on Oriental cushions. He passed through a maze of analysts, clairvoyants and avatars, he was married and divorced and married again, and he was naughty in every way that he could think of. He yawned and played Russian roulette. At the end of everything, he was twenty-six. It was at this moment that he drove past Tierra de Ensueños. That same day, he dismissed his wives and lovers and friends, sold off his corporations, disposed of all his possessions and, when he was stripped to his bare essentials, by which he meant himself and his money, he stretched out in the hammock and sucked on a fig. Ever since the death of Avril Orchid, fifteen years before, the mansion had been deserted. The chandeliers were hung thick with cobwebs, the mirrors and ganymedes had lost their gilt, fungus sprouted from the walls, and the corridors were infested with vermin. The perfumed garden, where once there had been order, was now a teeming, sweating jungle, and Seaton was hemmed in by every form of flower, plant and creature that his imagination could create. Padding along the galleries in Turkish slippers, the Englishman scrawled his initials in the dust, a thousand times repeated. Nobody came to see him, he never went beyond the gates. For the next four years, alone in this mausoleum, he lost himself in his collection of Wisden, the Cricketers’ Almanack, and nothing else existed. On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, he drove off into the heights of the Sierra Magdalena and stood at the edge of a precipice, poised above a thousand feet of nothingness. Vultures circled overhead, wolves waited underneath and Seaton hovered on the brink, imagining. But he did not jump. Instead, he was seized by a most terrible hunger, against which he was defenceless. Far away in the valley, a church bell rang, and he turned aside in defeat. In the nearest roadhouse, he fed himself on charbroiled hamburgers and crinkle-cut French fries, tacos and enchiladas, hot pastrami on rye, lox and a double portion of Aztec Glory (strawberry, chocolate and pistachio ice, with whipped cream and Melba sauce, almond flakes, canned peaches and a maraschino cherry on top), and when he was quite satisfied, he drove home to Tierra de Ensueños, where he fell into a bottomless sleep. The gardens ran riot. There were catalpas and syringas and liquidambars, monkey trees and prickly pawpaws, Spanish clementians and scarlet kawligas, all flung together in madness, thronging and overspilling. Parakeets perched in the mimosa, mocking-birds scoffed from the depths of the tulip trees, silver foxes went whispering through the undergrowth. Above the sleeper’s head, perganzas of gold and crimson and azure blue formed an impenetrable canopy, and he lay perfectly still. At the end of three weeks, awaking from his dream, he sat up straight and rubbed his eyes. He brushed his teeth, cut his fingernails, put on a clean white suit and made another excursion beyond the electric gates, out into the streets of the city, where he chose a random selection of families, purchased all rights to them and carried them off in a fleet of yellow taxis. Back inside the mansion, he fed and clothed and warmed them, supplied them with every toy and diversion they desired, guaranteed their safety. He even redecorated their rooms, ripping out the velvets and heart-shaped mosaics and replacing them with formica, polyurethane, and grease-proof laminated Perspex. In return they had only to look at images. From morning to night, they watched TV, and the mansion was filled with screens. There were pictures on every wall, round every corner, behind every door. When Seaton lay down to rest in his hammock, the flickering images lit up the minarets like a radiance of stars. For a year, the Englishman was content to watch, observe the families’ reactions, learn. Then he felt that he knew them by heart, and he began to manufacture images of his own. Once again, he became successful and famous. In the next five seasons, he created a dozen different formulae and all of them topped the ratings. The garden was hung with gold awards, magazines blazoned him across their covers, journalists came queuing at his gates. But he did not let them in, for he had a horror of being photographed. Without his invisibility, like Samson shorn of his hair, he believed that he would lose his gifts, and it was his great ambition that, when he died, he should leave absolutely no record that he had ever existed. Night after night he lay in his garden and dreamed, until at last he began to feel restless. He itched, he ached. Though the screens continued to flicker and burn, their pictures did not reach him. So he climbed inside his Lamborghini and drove away across America, to refresh himself. He travelled across deserts and infinite plains, over snow-capped mountains, beside storm-whipped rivers. He lost himself in cities black as night, was stranded in the swamplands; slept in cheap motels, ate at corner drug-stores, watched lovers through peepholes; was beaten up and robbed, got drunk and was thrown in a cell. But through it all he remained entirely passive, as though none of this were happening to himself, not in reality, but rather to a stand-in, clothed in his flesh. Thus he drove and watched without feeling and finally, in Tupelo, when he looked down from his bedroom window, Eddie was standing in the doorway of the Chinese laundry. The partners came to the mansion together and sat down in the perfumed garden. Reptiles crawled at their feet, butterflies hung in clouds about their heads, the jungles were full of secret whisperings. ‘I call it home,’ said Seaton modestly. ‘But do you know something strange?’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘Apart from the families, who do not count, you are the first human being I have ever asked inside. In fact, you are the only one alive who can guess what these gardens are really like.’ Eddie rested on a cold stone love-seat, eyes downcast, while birds perched on his shoulders and small furry animals scampered up his legs, as though he were an inanimate object. ‘I am honoured,’ he said. ‘Then let us begin.’ And they entered a maze of dark, dank corridors, where the dust was so thick that their footsteps left no echo. Seaton shone a flashlight, lighting them through the shadows, and Eddie’s lips were brushed by cold, wet tendrils, like seaweed. Periodically, the Englishman opened doors and they came into bright, strip-lit oases, where the families sat and watched. In Room 13, the McGhees witnessed a garrotting; in 22, the Pottersons studied rape; in 5, the Carters gazed blankly at tear gas on the News. Everywhere that the partners entered, the screens were filled with carnage, perversion and excess, and Eddie averted his eyes, for he could not tolerate pain or any form of cruelty. In due course, Seaton led him back into the sunlight and they arrived at a heart-shaped Chinese pagoda, lost in the depths of the wilderness, where they drank tea and ate chocolate biscuits. Eddie rested silent, brooding, and every time he looked up, he saw the families reflected on the screens, watching bloodshed. ‘This will be your audience,’ Seaton told him. ‘What do you think of them?’ ‘They are in love with mayhem.’ ‘Indeed they are; but you must not hold it against them. After all, they spend their whole lives as spectators. They exist through images, always at one remove, and can never experience for themselves. So naturally their taste runs to novelties, thrills, explosions. Anything that stirs their blood and makes them feel alive.’ ‘A man feels sick,’ said Eddie. ‘Of course he does,’ said Seaton. ‘And that is why we are here. To show a better way. To demonstrate that vulgar slaughter and bestiality can never lead to true fulfilment; and that the dignity of Death makes for a finer, deeper spectacle than any atrocity.’ They sat beside an ornamental fountain....