Read Online My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Peter Carey
Ads: Link
to the mystery of the poems.
Yet while he was at times effective he suffered a single butconsiderable disadvantage: McCorkle’s verse was almost impossible to explicate, with the result that Weiss sometimes seemed like a bright but lazy post-graduate hiding behind obfuscation.
The florid prosecutor then asked Weiss to take one of the stanzas of ‘McCorkle’s’ ‘Egyptian Register’ and tell the court what it meant.
WEISS: The poem starts off with the man examining the body.
PROSECUTION: What man?
WEISS: The man in the poem.
PROSECUTION: Where does that come from—examining the body? I don’t see that in the poem.
WEISS: Each thing he takes up suggests to him the inexplicability of human life….
PROSECUTION: Where does it say anything about the inexplicability of human life?
PROCEEDINGS INTERRUPTED
How were they interrupted? The transcript does not say but Chubb remembered everything and thus this lunatic event may be roughly reconstructed.
Dunce, cried a rasping untutored voice.
Weiss flinched.
Silence! cried the judge.
Answer the question, demanded the prosecutor.
But Weiss was staring at the heckler, his complexion turning the colour of boiled tripe.
Mr Weiss, you may continue.
Haltingly, Weiss argued that the actual point of the poem was ‘vagueness and inexplicability’ He was interrupted by a chair scraping violently in the front row. He tried to argue that the spine mentioned in the sixth line was actually ‘a partof the brain’ and that the poet had linked it with the ‘harsh and enquiring element of the brain,’ which attempts to pierce ‘the obscurity of life.’
PROSECUTION: Where is the harsh and enquiring element
of a brain? Where do you get that from?
PROCEEDINGS INTERRUPTED
The transcript makes no mention of the heckler or his raw, uneducated voice. Ask the bloody author, he cried. Ask the author, you fucking philistine.
No mention of the bailiffs either. They rushed loudly in. A woman screamed and a chair crashed to the floor. From this scrum the bailiffs emerged, somehow joined to a massive man with wild dark eyes and black, shoulder-length hair.
Here’s to culture, the wild man roared.
Sieg Heil
.
He turned to face the court, raising his arms not in the salute suggested by his cry but as if in benediction. Then, like a man shrugging off a coat that had suddenly become too hot, he dropped the bailiffs to the floor and walked—with remarkable grace, lightly on his toes, back and shoulders straight—out of the completely silent court.
What transpired next seemed even more shocking to Chubb: the prosecutor, apparently in complete denial of this interruption, simply resumed his questioning.
PROSECUTION : You don’t think that it would be possible for any fair-minded person to think that the author in using the word ‘index’ was referring to a penis in the state of erection?
PROCEEDINGS INTERRUPTED
And here Weiss angrily jabbed a finger at where Chubb sat, huddled miserably in his cedar bench.
I will not continue, the defendant informed the court, while that man is sitting there.
And so, in a state of considerable embarrassment and confusion, Christopher Chubb stumbled out onto William Street. He never entered the court again.
12
During this story Slater had wandered off, and I was not at all pleased to see him returning with a brimming goblet of red wine in his hand.
Apart from complaining that the wine was off, a process which involved two waitresses and took an extraordinary length of time, he pretty much behaved himself. Only when I asked Chubb to explain why Weiss had acted as he had in court did Slater begin to roll his eyes and tap his head.
You want to hear? Chubb snapped. Yes? No? Which is it?
Slater was not in the least discomfited by having been caught out.
Of course, of course. Always very interested.
Chubb leaned forward, as if speaking directly to my notebook, which prop I seemed to be using more energetically than was my original intention. I
Yet while he was at times effective he suffered a single butconsiderable disadvantage: McCorkle’s verse was almost impossible to explicate, with the result that Weiss sometimes seemed like a bright but lazy post-graduate hiding behind obfuscation.
The florid prosecutor then asked Weiss to take one of the stanzas of ‘McCorkle’s’ ‘Egyptian Register’ and tell the court what it meant.
WEISS: The poem starts off with the man examining the body.
PROSECUTION: What man?
WEISS: The man in the poem.
PROSECUTION: Where does that come from—examining the body? I don’t see that in the poem.
WEISS: Each thing he takes up suggests to him the inexplicability of human life….
PROSECUTION: Where does it say anything about the inexplicability of human life?
PROCEEDINGS INTERRUPTED
How were they interrupted? The transcript does not say but Chubb remembered everything and thus this lunatic event may be roughly reconstructed.
Dunce, cried a rasping untutored voice.
Weiss flinched.
Silence! cried the judge.
Answer the question, demanded the prosecutor.
But Weiss was staring at the heckler, his complexion turning the colour of boiled tripe.
Mr Weiss, you may continue.
Haltingly, Weiss argued that the actual point of the poem was ‘vagueness and inexplicability’ He was interrupted by a chair scraping violently in the front row. He tried to argue that the spine mentioned in the sixth line was actually ‘a partof the brain’ and that the poet had linked it with the ‘harsh and enquiring element of the brain,’ which attempts to pierce ‘the obscurity of life.’
PROSECUTION: Where is the harsh and enquiring element
of a brain? Where do you get that from?
PROCEEDINGS INTERRUPTED
The transcript makes no mention of the heckler or his raw, uneducated voice. Ask the bloody author, he cried. Ask the author, you fucking philistine.
No mention of the bailiffs either. They rushed loudly in. A woman screamed and a chair crashed to the floor. From this scrum the bailiffs emerged, somehow joined to a massive man with wild dark eyes and black, shoulder-length hair.
Here’s to culture, the wild man roared.
Sieg Heil
.
He turned to face the court, raising his arms not in the salute suggested by his cry but as if in benediction. Then, like a man shrugging off a coat that had suddenly become too hot, he dropped the bailiffs to the floor and walked—with remarkable grace, lightly on his toes, back and shoulders straight—out of the completely silent court.
What transpired next seemed even more shocking to Chubb: the prosecutor, apparently in complete denial of this interruption, simply resumed his questioning.
PROSECUTION : You don’t think that it would be possible for any fair-minded person to think that the author in using the word ‘index’ was referring to a penis in the state of erection?
PROCEEDINGS INTERRUPTED
And here Weiss angrily jabbed a finger at where Chubb sat, huddled miserably in his cedar bench.
I will not continue, the defendant informed the court, while that man is sitting there.
And so, in a state of considerable embarrassment and confusion, Christopher Chubb stumbled out onto William Street. He never entered the court again.
12
During this story Slater had wandered off, and I was not at all pleased to see him returning with a brimming goblet of red wine in his hand.
Apart from complaining that the wine was off, a process which involved two waitresses and took an extraordinary length of time, he pretty much behaved himself. Only when I asked Chubb to explain why Weiss had acted as he had in court did Slater begin to roll his eyes and tap his head.
You want to hear? Chubb snapped. Yes? No? Which is it?
Slater was not in the least discomfited by having been caught out.
Of course, of course. Always very interested.
Chubb leaned forward, as if speaking directly to my notebook, which prop I seemed to be using more energetically than was my original intention. I
Similar Books
