At school he never spoke. When a new teacher asked him his name the boy behind him said, "He's ignorant. He won't talk." When he still didn't speak the new teacher said, "I have a name for you then. It's Insolence. Mr Insolence." His closed mouth drove the teachers mad but he behaved himself so they could not punish him. He ran home and told his mother that he had ridden on the backs of wild red animals. He went to his room, drew things with his finger on the walls...

When he was ten he met Annie Cuthbertson in a mossy lane. Alongside the railway line. A loose paling under a building. Crawled in. It was a long box-like space. Rather like a coffin. No room to roll around in. Terrible. They could hear trains. His mother found them and belted him with the hard back of a hairbrush. Said that one day he would be condemned...

... His grandmother was Italian. The windows of her house were always dirty but she had wind chimes in her garden. He and his sister, Daulcie were made to visit their grandmother until she died. She had a funny musty cupboard in her house which went through to another room. It was dark and poky in that cupboard and he always thought he would die before he got into the room. But Daulcie dragged him with her. The room on the other side was full of old-fashioned dolls which his grandmother had kept. They had red lips and net and satinish dresses. Once he was in the room he was all right. They played doctors with the dolls. He would pull up their dresses and watch Daulcie's face.

There was a chair in the room which was always covered by a big white sheet and when Daulcie lifted up the sheet, they saw wooden dolls carved into the chair. Daulcie said they were demons. They frightened the life out of him because they had no faces and they had very big penis like things. His mother said they were put there to punish and terrify naughty children who looked under the sheet.

When he was twelve his grandmother locked the cupboard door on him to punish him. He could hear them laughing in the next room. He could hear her wind chimes in the garden. It was like being buried alive in a tomb. After that, walls and cupboards and chairs seemed spiteful...

This was 1934, just before his father died. "You've been a good boy, Henry. I've been lucky with you. I know they locked you in that room but you're out now and you should see the world afresh. Anyway, don't worry about the world Henry." Then he died.

For the next 25 years Henry led an uneventful life,one day the same as the next, living alone, working as a base clerk, taking solitary strolls through the park and going shopping on Saturday mornings. He saved money by bringing toilet rolls home from work and living on cheap broken biscuits.He didn't mix with the other clerks. They always had interesting things to say. He didn't.

In 1959 things changed. It all started when he was befriended by Arb. Henry didn't like Arb but he was the only person who visited him. He took Henry to a very queer place where there were women. There was a neon sign outside a door. It was a low door and the passageway was long and narrow. They seemed to be in this passageway for ages and Henry felt as if he was suffocating.

Finally they came through to a courtyard surrounded on three sides by a two-storey building with lots of little rooms. Henry started to hold back but Arb held him tightly.

"What is this place?" Henry asked. A fearful shiver went through him.

Arb took Henry upstairs to a room with a soft carpet and walls hidden by pink satin curtains. There was an old bed in the room. They had to sit on it together because there weren't any chairs. Henry had his best suit on. Three women came in one after the other. They paraded around the room in a kind of a dance. One was very slender. Like a young schoolgirl. She looked at Henry and giggled. Arb muttered something like "Smug bitch."

" Do you want Henry to fuck you?" he asked her.

"Yes, I want him to fuck me," she said. But Henry could tell she did not.

"He'll fuck you all right but not the way you think," Arb said, a very nasty malicious tone in his voice.

Henry went into a sweat but then she left and another woman came in.

"Did you like her Henry, the one that just left?" Arb asked. "Did that innocent little idiot turn you on?"

"Yes," Henry said.

The next girl was called Babs. She was wearing a skin tight costume. She rolled around on the floor and stuck her behind up in the air. She was very silent but Arb threw money at her and yelled at her. She had no expression on her face. Just dead. Henry walked over to her. Arb pulled him away.

"Don't be sneaky," he had the rotten cheek to say to him. "O.k., that's all," he said to her.

She looked at Arb and shrugged. She lit up a cigarette and walked out. She had a little red tassel on her behind.

The third woman wore long black gloves and a black veil. While she was parading around a man came in with two glasses and a bottle of scotch on a tray. Arb and Henry both drank a glass of straight scotch. The woman leapt in the air and wiggled her hips and her breasts. Henry couldn't see her expression because of the black net covering her face.

A terrible laugh came out of him. It was very high pitched and he felt nervous but then he caught his breath.

The woman laughed too. He had some more to drink. He wanted to tell her all about himself but he'd never been able to speak to people, especially women so he just sat on the edge of the bed.

The woman stopped dancing. Arb embraced her. He told Henry to wait for him outside the door. Henry went out and Babs was in the passage smoking a cigarette. He was embarrassed but he tried to strike up a conversation. Smiled at her and said, "It's very kind of you to let me come here."

Arb came out of the room and they left.

A few weeks later Arb took Henry there again. He told Henry he was not to touch anybody. Henry thought about poking everybody under the arms and between the buttocks with his stick, he always carried this stick, especially when he went to the beach or to the park, but he didn't do anything.

Had some work rejected at the office. Had to do three pages of the balance sheet again. That had never happened in his life before. Didn't leave the office until 6.10. One day he wasn't feeling well. He rang and asked them did they mind if he came in late. They said they didn't mind because he hadn't taken sick leave for a long time. He arrived at work at 11.30, his stomach burning. Somebody put on the radio at lunch time. That made him angry. The weeks went by slowly. In the weekends he lay on his bed, thinking about things.

It was a cold night and they were both wearing overcoats. Although they asked him Henry would not take off his coat. For some reason Arb had Henry standing on the bed with him. Henry did not know that Arb was about to torment him.

Henry said he couldn't talk unless the women stood behind the pink curtains where he could not see them. They did, but he still could not talk.

Shelley, the one who looked like a schoolgirl, giggled.

"He's a kook," she said.

Henry found out then why Arb wanted him to stand on the bed. Arb opened the drapes directly behind them. There was either another room or a dark closet or something on the other side of the curtains. Whatever it was it had extended into blackness. And there was a naked young...woman...female...in there. She was glossy. Very pink. Her head was back so that her hair...it was light red coloured hair...her hair and her breasts were shaking... unmistakable laughter. Mocking him. He asked if he could go in there. He wondered what it would be like to touch her skin. There must have been some sort of pink light shining on her because it was suddenly switched off. Arb said, "No Henry, you cannot go in there. She is not remotely interested in you. She is only interested in me." Then he pulled the curtains back into place.

Henry was not the type of man to go charging into places where he was not wanted. So instead he got down from the bed and went over to where the drapes were lapping at Shelley's face. And for the first time in his life he began to talk to somebody at length. He didn't know what came over him but he talked to Shelley about this glossy pink young woman. He told her how somebody had once pinned a photo of a similar looking woman in his locker at work and he thought it an odd coincidence. He said to Shelley, "I crushed the photo..."

Arb dragged him back to the bed again but he kept talking. "I screwed it into a tiny ball. For a moment I thought I should put it in the hands of a superior because the waste paper basket worried me. Anybody could go through it. But when I was walking past Miriam Bellamy's desk I dropped it into a wire tray. I was relieved to think that I had lost it. I glanced at Miss Bellamy once or twice. Nothing happened. By five o'clock I felt a little bit disappointed..."

"Oh come on," somebody said. "As if there aren't a million clerks in this city with pin up photos in their lockers."

He didn't answer.

The next day he bought a beef rissole in a bun with sauce. There was a knock at the door. He didn't move from the kitchen. He put the bun down on the kitchen table, stared straight ahead. He noticed that the kitchen walls were grubby. He had fat fingers, thick, three times as big as Arb's. It suddenly dawned on him that he was a lot stronger than Arb. He unwrapped the bun, bit off a lump. Still that knocking. He sat there eating his beef bun with sauce. He heard footsteps walking away. Sometimes he complained to the council about his neighbours.

Towards the end of the year there was one final visit.

There were a lot more people in the room this time. There was a big woman...Henry was sure he had seen her before, naked, under a red net. There was a lot of alcohol that evening. He had a glass of port. There was a dark woman sending a shiver through him. She was in leopard skin. She had holes cut out in her dress for her bare breasts to come through. She called herself Queenie.

"Drink some more, Henry," she said. "You can go anywhere you want to go in this room." Then she stared at him with those big black eyes and he felt anxious.

Everyone in the room was giggling, babbling, buzzing like a swarm of flies. Their faces were red from too much drinking. The dark woman came up close to him again, put her lips next to his ear. She repeated herself. "You can go anywhere you want to go." He wished she hadn't said that. If he could have just touched her without any talking but now she had gone too far. He suddenly felt that like this very room here, he had seen her somewhere else. And that was the world she was talking about, where she wanted him to go now. He wished that he was at home watching the tv like he usually did every night. Not that he watched exactly, he liked flitting from channel to channel. "Don't you want me?" she asked.

A wave of sickish helplessness swept over him. Her face and her bare breasts made him dizzy. For a moment he thought her hair brushed his face. Very black and soft. Then he could not help himself. It was as if they made him do it, the people in the room. They were burning sticks of odd perfume and refilling his glass and singing drunken songs. And it was as if he had to admit to himself that all his life he'd had little thoughts which he kept padlocked...now a torrent of words bulged up in his mouth and it was as if there was a stranger speaking...he told them how the other clerks joked behind his back, called him a dumb little dago, how they whispered about a secret room where lots of things went on besides beer drinking...And his mother, when the spring came she stood on the table to dust the ceiling, scrubbed the floors with a harsh grating sound, pummelled her sheets in a tub of brown soapy water. My son, she said, you are a useless stick in the desert. His father panted in the garden. Annie...somewhere in a lane... then years later, accidentally walking past that secret room at work, he had caught a glimpse of her soft brown hair...
...Closed his eyes, expecting ridicule, but everyone was silent. And he realised then he had won them, had their sympathy. He had been entertaining. He didn't know he could do it. They were not laughing at him. They had closed in on him and in that moment he realized something else. Suddenly he realized what he was. My God, he was a story-teller. Only in secret of course, with people like these. A special story-teller. And all the while he was telling this story with a great gentleness, he was thinking how very slowly he would move in on the lot of them. Had a few more things to say then he knew he could do what he liked.

He started off again, went carefully. "This room. Silk curtains bulging out. Just like now."

"What room, Henry?"

"This room...I've been here before ... before you brought me."

"But you can't have."

"This room, that room, it's all the same. I am not stupid. You were all here. There was a candle flickering. And...there was a chair. Bring me the chair. A carved chair. On either end of the back piece...two carved figures. Both figures had female breasts and male...male things...very huge organs and the like...the little figures had no faces. Terrified the life out of me. Their faces were just smooth wood...And you were here, you were naked," he said to the big red net woman, making a story-telling gesture with his hands. "Petals falling from something onto the table...petals dropping from your breasts..." Not exactly what he had seen, just threw it in to see what they would do. "Where's the chair? Get the chair. Get the table. Bring it here. A dark polished table." He was getting worked up. They were going to find out about him now. "Get the chair."

Somebody said, "There's no chair."

"There must be," he said.

"Listen," snapped Arb "If they say there's no chair..."

But then he screamed. "I sat in that carved chair like a dead man. When they locked me in the doll's room and tried to suffocate me...I'm shy with women but it's coming..."

Hold on Henry, he said to himself. Hold on. Let them worry themselves sick over this bloody table and chair. They'll be running around for more than tables and chairs next time, that's for certain. You'll be master here next time you visit. You can wait until then. Give them time to think about it, to prepare themselves for your coming. The coming of the story-teller. Next time they would see...

The people in his grandmother's old house have made a complaint against him. They say that he pestered their little girl. Arb told him not to worry. He swears he was with him and says all he did was ask about that old cupboard and some special room and two little faceless wooden dolls.

Hasn't seen Arb lately. Henry would never go to that place without him. Can't even find it. Sometimes in the evenings he walks past the shops. There is a shop with a grimy window and he is sure that once when he passed it he heard tinkling bells like wind chimes.

My next story, he tells himself, will be about an old woman who locks little boys in cupboards.

The weeks go by slowly. Often now he works late at the office. In the week-ends he lies on his bed, thinking about things. Waiting.

Valerie Kirwan. THE STORY TELLER
COPYRIGHT. 2004

Extracts from "THE DISEASE OF THE SILKWORM"
A Novel by Valerie Kirwan - Published by Hornet's Nest Publishing - 2001

"Inside each large tent belonging to my husband was a labyrinth of smaller tents. As soon as they had paid their money the guests were invited in through the first entrance where a woman danced naked for them. She would then disappear into the labyrinth of tents. Whoever paid the most money was permitted to follow her. The other guests had to wait until another woman came to dance for them. After her dance she too would move off into the labyrinth. One by one the guests would pay extra money for the privilege of following the dancers..."

"My story reveals what it actually is that men and women do want. It is a succession of doors to open for them and to continually take them into new realms where they can be hunters of elusive butterflies, of wild creatures which they can conquer, objects of desire which will seduce and challenge them. These passionate quests give human beings a heightened sense of their own existence. Yes, sex and mysticism. They both amount to the same thing. And when they are cunningly linked they can create an illusion of escape."

He fell forward across the table, knocking over a bottle of wine. The wine cascaded down, staining the blue table-cloth with a dark red colour which expanded and deepened, mingling with the pool of his blood.

Thomas Coin stood in the small dirty room, watching his friend who was sprawled across the table, watching the flowing red wine, spreading with the blood, seeping into the worn cloth. Then he turned and looked from the window.

In the distance he saw a woman bending over a lion. She appeared to be painting something on its back, a deep red formless mark. It was hot and dusty out there. The light was fading and the air was murky.

Another woman, big, dark, stood for a moment in the open doorway. In spite of her large body she moved with fluidity across the room. She lifted Salvino's head from the table. His sun shades had been smashed and blood was running into his eyes.

Thomas had met Salvino late that afternoon in the street. He had seen his friend
coming soundlessly toward him from a distance, through a long stretch of light, in the dull heat. Thomas didn't have a job. He just went places. He had been walking since early in the afternoon when the factory chimneys had been belching smoke. The garbage hands had been on strike for weeks and the city smelt putrid. Whenever there was a strong gust of wind the rubbish flew along the gutters and the air was filled with the smell of rotting meat.

The wind had dropped now, the shops had closed, the streets were silent and a pale light filled the sky.

Salvino's shirt clashed with the grey lifeless day, a loose-sleeved green shirt patterned with roses. He wore mirrored sun glasses and yellow Italian shoes. Beside him was the white dog which followed him everywhere, snapping at people's heels and when it saw Thomas, it snarled.

There was something foolish and optimistic about Salvino's smile when he said, "I have some money. I'll take you to The Silk Palace. There's a girl called Lais..."

Salvino had long blonde hair which he continually flicked back from his face. He had a wolfish look about him, Thomas thought.

It was already dusk when they arrived; they had travelled slowly by foot. There was a laneway which ran down to the sea and they entered the house through a small door. The rooms were oppressive, dark. They stank.

Angelina Lar, a big black woman, came to meet them, her heavy hair decorated with exotic flowers. She took them to a room where there were carved wooden beds against black walls. Although the beds were absurdly small there were couples in nearly every one, whispering and fucking and tongue kissing. An almond-eyed boy stared into space with a frozen smile as a fat man pawed and mounted him, almost thrusting him in his lust from the narrow mattress onto the floor.

"Can I see Lais?" Salvino asked.

"Lais is not here," answered Angelina Lar. "Besides, you know you don't have that kind of money."

A delicate blonde woman sat alone in one of the beds, leaning forward, covering her face with tiny hands. Salvino shrugged. He threw off his bright clothes and climbed into the bed with her.

Thomas was tall with a powerful jaw, his nose large, his hair thick and curly. Lar could sense a warmth in him but there was also something confused, unfathomable.
"You will have to make yourself presentable before you touch one of my girls," she told him condescendingly. "Your hair is untidy. Go brush your hair."

"The people in this room are filthy," he protested. "The room is filthy."

"If you don't like it..." Lar sang at him. Then she turned her back on him.

The young woman who was with Salvino climbed out of her bed, approached Thomas, touched him on the hand. She smiled at him with rosebud lips. "Upstairs you will find everything you want..."

"Get back on the bed," Lar ordered her.

Thomas left the room.

A woman with fiery luxuriant hair stood in front of a door. Her dress was patterned with stars and she wore a necklace of fine bones. She beckoned to Thomas. Above the door were eight flashing letters spelling out the word PARADISE...

She opens the door. There is a smell of mould and a stairway enclosed by water-stained walls. The steps are so narrow that the only way they can ascend is in
single file with their arms close by their sides. This stairway leads to a wide landing and then in turn to a wider staircase.

Thomas is feeling angry and rejected. How dare these disgusting people refuse him.
They ascend yet another flight of stairs which is even wider than the one before. The rooms are becoming astonishingly palatial...several women strolling about, naked except for expensive antique jewellery, none of them uttering a word. One woman stands in the centre of the room, stripped to the waist, her arms across her bare breast and her head hidden by a white silk cloth. These upstairs rooms have a dignity, an opulence. One room is decorated with tall gold drinking cups and paintings on the walls. The paintings are of distant places, chateaux or large mansions, their doors and windows obscured by the heavy branches of trees.

The women in the room are alluring, graceful. Thomas hopes he will not have to make an immediate choice, although the one with the white silk covering her head has intrigued him the most. He can hear discordant cellos and flutes, sounds which set him on edge. He looks up at a clumsy painting of a red lion streaming through a field of white lilies. This painting has a primitiveness and an awkwardness, something which bothers him. There are equally inept paintings of naked lovers in chains and one of a naked hermaphrodite tied up in pearls. Thomas believes he can hear the sound of the sea, a continuous hypnotic sssshhhh....

And then another room. Dull pink lights and soft gauze drapes. Five young men are moving about in circles, moving through a mist of gauze. Four of them wear bright lipstick and long velvet cloaks flung wide open to reveal naked bodies. One wears gold rings on his fingers and gold circles flash from his ear lobes. Another boy has a thin cord around his naked waist with a knife inside a silver sheath.

The fifth young man is dressed in white and his face is also covered by a shining white cloth. "Turn around, let's look at your arse," he yells at someone. Perhaps at Thomas.

Thomas feels threatened by these petulant young men. His growing desires are mingled with a surfacing fear.

The red-haired woman is still beside him. She takes him to a smaller room, a bedroom, with ornate mirrors on every wall. An engraved silver brush set is displayed with extravagant jewellery upon a dressing table. Thomas picks up a hairbrush and begins to brush his hair, but the woman takes the hairbrush from his hand.

"Sit down, it's my task to make people desirable." She has a deep sorrowful voice and speckled green eyes.

He sits in front of the mirror and she brushes his matted hair. He looks at her
reflection in the glass as she brushes. Her eyes are shining, she is smiling slightly.
Then he hears a young woman's voice cry out from another part of the house. "NO...NO...PLEASE...NO." He hears loud shouts and then a muffled cry. The red-haired woman puts down the hairbrush and brings him a cup of aromatic tea...

On his way downstairs he saw a girl. Perhaps it was the girl who had cried out. She was sitting in front of a painted curtain with a tormented smile on her face, wearing a blue kimono and an anklet with a crescent moon on it. As she handed him a note which she had rolled up like a small scroll, Thomas heard a gunshot.

The girl turned pale. She drew back the curtain and took him into another bedroom.

"Help me," she said.

"How can I hel...?" he began. He heard that hypnotic sound of the sea again...Ssshhhh...He also heard footsteps on the stairs.

Then the girl laughed a false bright laugh. "I am Lais. I have travelled to the most exotic ports of the world. I've had many bizarre adventures. I have lived through lingering twilights...long silent hours broken only by ..."

Lar appeared at the bedroom door. "Don't take notice of anything this bitch tells you. And don't get too close to her. She will make you sick. You can go downstairs now, sir." It sounded like an order rather than an invitation, but he had no money, he could make no demands.

He left Lais and went downstairs. He saw that Salvino had been hurt. He went to the window, reeling from the tea. He was hallucinating, he saw a lion out there. It seemed as if he stood at the window for hours before Lar followed him into the room and slowly lifted Salvino's head from the table.

"I don't have any money," Thomas told her, still reeling.

The white dog began to howl outside the door.

© Valerie Kirwan. 2001.