Bond limericks V

Bond lit a Morland’s Specials,

probing croco-carnassials.

The fangs were of plastic

and rather eleastic,

courtesy of Q-branch initials.

Bond limericks IV

Bond flew to Morocco

to meet agent ‘Scirocco’.

‘Scirocco’ was late,

so Bond shagged the maid

and flew from Morocco.

Bond limericks III

Bond came to Fujiyama

to kill a traitor llama.

The job was weird,

as James Bond feared.

The llama went with drama.

Bond limericks II

The head of Station WB

diverted funds,  for no one to see.

T’ settle the matter

Bond resorted to batter

t’ head of the head of WB.

Bond limericks I

A boy from 00-section,

too fond of Jameson’s Selection,

-his hand was not steady,

his Colt hardly ready-

now drinks in bookkeeping-section.

Never Let Me Go – Review

I have just finished Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

A great read, touching, thoughtful, shocking, heartbreaking even. Not necessarily one you will want to go back to, but surely one you won’t forget. Not easy on the mind and conscience. I’m not sure, how much one should know about it in the beginning, so I’ll go on in spoiler tags. But I really think you should pick up and read this.

SPOILER ALERT!

Never Let Me Go tells the story of Kathy H. and her two friends Ruth and Tommy, growing up at Hailsham, a mixture between children’s home and public school. Kathy H. tells it as a 30-something adult living in 90′s UK in retrospect.

Hailsham at first looks innocuous enough, but there are a number of strange things too. The teachers are ‘guardians’, there is never talk about families, not even second names are mentioned, there is an ‘outside’ that is never explored by the students, there is no tv, but apparently there are videoplayers and tapes, there’s no teenager stuff like gossip about actors, music and so on. There are no weekends or holidays spent at home, no siblings and generally, no other background than Hailsham.

The kids at Hailsham are told that they are ‘special’, that they have a specific purpose, and an enormous effort is made to educate them, spur their creativity in every direction, painting, poetry, needlework, even stage plays are hinted at, giving at first glance the impression of an exclusive boarding school. Yet, there are also a number of curious gaps in that childhood. Keeping healthy and in good overall condition is imperative at Hailsham, and diseases are not an item there. The only connection to ‘outside’ is a lorry full of an obscure assortment of goods the children can buy with Hailsham’s own currency. The students own works of art, paintings and so on encouraged so much, are shown at regular exhibitions and the kids buy each others works, whereas the best examples are going into the ‘gallery’ of Madame, a woman irregularly visiting the premises.

Gradually it is hinted at that the studens, all of them, are to become ‘donors’ in the future, and by then the reader already suspects what this means. But when it’s finally vocalised by one of the guardians that all the kids are just clones, merely bred to become a living resource for vital organs, what’s really shocking is not the monstrosity of this simple truth, but the complete ignorance of the implications and absence of any opposition the students show. What they are disturbed about is not their nature as a different form of kettle, but the fact that ‘they’ (meaning in this context ordinary people, embodied in the character of Madame) seem to be utterly afraid and revolted by them.

The Hailsham students also seem to have gotten little to no education in the field one could in a wider context call ‘religion and moral philosophy’. They are merely taught to accept their fate and even to assist in it, becoming after a certain time ‘carers’, which means driving across the country, visiting ‘donors’, talking to them, encouraging them, help them keep on pushing. Until it’s their own time to become a ‘donor’, a perspective met by most with hardly a blink. Apart from that, there is no real purpose for them in life.

But it’s shown that the students develop their own form of myths, their own search for a sense in life. One of these myths is the rumour that a couple, if they really love each other, can get a deferral, for a time. And Kathy and Tommy set out to find out about this. Unintentionally, they meet by accident their… what? parent? no… God? no… But then again, in a way, they do. And what they learn is even more of a shock than the story up to then.

Never Let Me Go is in many ways a fascinating read, but it also has an awful message, and the moment the story gets even worse is, as far as I remember, the only scene when Ishiguro actually mentions a current brand name. For the simple purpose to prevent readers from dismissing the world of the story as not being ours. It is different, but it’s also much closer to ours than we would like to admit. The theme, therapeutic cloning, is a red-hot one, and while it’s not mentioned as such often, it is exactly the questions this book asks we would have to answer in our present day, if there was to be a major break-through with cloning in the near future.

Sleepyhead

As the day breaks, the light through the tinted wall-to-wall panorama window slowly turns blue, colouring the steep hillside, scattered spruce, all covered in heavy snow. And above it the sheer rock of the mountain face. Nora lies on her left, away from the window, her features hidden in the soft shadow, the blonde hair picking up the blue-grey sheen from outside. It’s a picture of such perfect peace and beauty that I feel a sob in my throat.

I fight for control, contain myself. Nora mustn’t realise there is something wrong. Nothing must look out of the ordinary. If she even so much as suspected, what I’m about to do, all my efforts of the last five months would be for nothing. And I certainly won’t let that happen.

With two steps I’m at the bed, looking down on her face. I kneel by her side, my left hand feeling the slight dampness of the sheets, the lingering warmth of our bodies from last night. The noise of my skiing clothes must have woken her, as a faint smile shows on her lips, just visible in the half-light of dawn. I take her right hand lying on the pillow, feeling the pulse of her blood running through her veins. Nora’s smile broadens, her eyes sleepily squinting at me, a soft cosy growl giving away her happiness.

I glance beyond her, across the wide wooden veranda, studying the slopes, the first light of dawn promising a perfect winter day, the air so clear you feel you can reach out and touch the mountains, a chocolate box picture.

‘Aw, come back to bed, please. It’s still so early.’

Her blue eyes look at me from across the valley of content cosiness. The soft shimmer of her peachy skin is alluring, threatening to weaken my resolve. It would be so easy to let myself fall into her comforting arms, enjoying her one last exquisite time. Celebrate our lives, our youth.

It mustn’t be. This is perhaps the worst thing of all, not being able to explain myself. To explain what is necessary, what must be done.

Instead, I smile at her, kiss her soft cheek, taste her on my lips. This will be what I’ll remember of her until my death, a faint intimate taste of vanilla.

While I kiss her I look once more out of the window. Suddenly the mountain view is disturbed by tiny black flecks. The wind must have caught the contents of the ashtray on the table outside, taking the ashes of the three sheets of paper that I’ve burned last evening while Nora was taking a shower. Three sheets of paper that I’ve carried with me for five months; crumpled and with dog ears. I’ve read them so often the folds were already coming apart. But their massage remained, no matter how often I took them from my pocket, read them, refolded them. I’ve taken them everywhere, a reminder of what I had decided to do and why it was necessary.

Yesterday, I’ve burned them.

Today, I won’t need them any longer.

Steeling myself for what I have to do now, I stand up.

‘See you later, sleepyhead.’

Nora blows me a kiss and I turn around, not pausing, endlessly thankful that my voice didn’t betray me as I close the door behind me, going to my last downhill run.

Hello, Goodbye Or Both?

It really was the worst possible weather when I saw her. An ice-cold northern wind was driving a mixture of rain, sleet and snow across the park and right into my face and down my collar. God knows I didn’t want to be outside in this ugly weather and nor did my dog.  Still, he had to do a few paces and I had to keep him company.

We were walking for about half an hour when I spotted a young woman a bit further down the way. She was strolling along without apparent regard for the miserable way in which the elements treated us that afternoon. When Rover and I passed her I noticed the reflective absentminded  look in her face. She was maybe about mid-twenties, with dark hair and large dark eyes. Eyes that looked somewhere else, as if seeing a completely different landscape, far away. I doubt she noticed us at all.

Rover, despite being an extremely lazy sort of dog, somehow developed a taste for defying the weather on this day and so it took another twenty minutes before we turned around to make our way home. The constant precipitate and the freezing wind effectively kept most other walkers from the park on this day and so the woman had been the only other human we had seen so far. As we came along the spot where we had first passed her I saw her sitting on a bench, insufficiently protected from the downpour by the naked branches of an overhanging tree. She still had that look of distant meditation on her face, not caring for sleet or wind around her. I remember thinking ‘Has some matter of the heart on her mind. Either a break-up or somebody new in her life. Perhaps both?’. By the time we arrived at home I had forgotten about her.

When Rover was due for his second stint of walkies I once more went to the park with him. The weather hadn’t become any better in the four or five hours since our last visit. So I was somehow surprised to see the woman still sitting on the same bench. It looked as if she hadn’t moved in hours and I’m sure she really hasn’t. The daylight was slowly fading but I could still see the same withdrawn expression in her features.

This time Rover decided to make it a shorter turn and so we passed the bench again after just five minutes. She was gone and I couldn’t see a trace of her on the way. She must have moved on shortly after we’ve passed the bench. I suppose she had made up her mind about whatever was on it finally. Out of curiosity I took a closer look at the bench, looking for a hint about the woman’s secret.

Right beside the bench I noticed some small piece of plastic lying in the dirt. It was one of these do-it-yourself pregnancy tests, like a square ballpen with an LCD display at it’s side. I couldn’t read the display. Someone had smashed the device with the heel of a small shoe into the dirt beside the bench, burying it deep and breaking it in the middle.

Parking Area Attack

Suddenly, my chest feels tight. My lungs have to pull in the air against a pressure from inside, heaving with the effort. The tiny spot behind my sternum, usually just a source of mild discomfort, now becomes a spot of pain, small at first, then ever growing. Growing in size and intensity until it really hurts.

The people around me notice nothing. They pursue their ordinary lives, parking their cars or driving off, buying their purchases, preoccupied in their thoughts, their problems. Isolated in the capsule of their own private lives.  They don’t realize what happens with me right here in my car, on this parking area. I see their faces but I don’t have the courage to call them for help. It’s surely just heartburn.

I can’t stand the thought to call for help just because of a little indigestion. They’d lay me on the tarmac, opening my shirt. Then the paramedics would fiddle around with their instruments on my body. And all the people that just a few minutes before didn’t even notice me would stare at my body, at the white flesh of my chest covered with ECG electrodes. Their eyes full of fear and shock. And of relief. Better him than me, their looks would say. Confirming the horror I have yet to deny. That this time it is me.

My surroundings close in on me. There is a plastic smell around me that makes me feel sick. Sounds swell to a piercing crescendo. Colours take up all the space, threaten to jump at my face. My car is a cage, far to small for me and my throbbing heart. I’m covered in cold sweat, my laboured breathing getting weaker. The air feels thick like jelly, refusing to fill my lungs. The pumping of my heartbeat closes my windpipe, a wild animal of white-hot panic going berserk in my chest, clawing at my throat, suffocating me.

Pain reaches out to my left arm, enveloping the whole side of my torso. I’m reduced to the core of my being, the world outside receding, fading. The fear inside me makes me winding down the electric window of my car, gulping down the fresh air from outside, my bulging eyes unseeing.

‘You OK?’

The voice from outside cuts through the blinding fear. My eyes focus on a guy some yards away. He looks at me, white face, grey hair and glasses, a quizzical look on his face.

At first I can only exclaim in an unintelligible grunt. I clear my throat.  I can breath again, can feel the dampness of my sweat-soaked shirt. The pain recedes as quickly as it came, already just the memory of a sting, lingering on the outer fringes of my consciousness.

Had it been real at all?

‘Are you OK?’ the guy beside my car asks again. I can hear the concern in his voice, read it in the lines on his forehead. Concern, not relief. Not yet.

‘Yes. Yes, I’m alright. It was… nothing serious, I’m fine. Thank you.’

There is still doubt in his look, a frown on his face. Slowly giving way to a nod, an uncertain smile, reassuring more than anything else himself.

I start the car and drive off.

Nothing serious. Just a… a heartburn!

Repellent Affair

Once more, done for CommanderBond.net. For their Ian Fleming Centenary tribute ‘Forever Yours, With Regret‘. Several great stories to find there. Be sure to check it out.

Afternoon At The Games

The heat of the afternoon had baked the streets of Karlovy Vary to a dry asphalt desert. The palm trees in their buckets along the promenade left their leaves hanging like discarded rugs on a clothes line, dry rattling whenever a hot breeze chose to find its way into the Tepla Valley. Even the river seemed to have lost most of its life, gurgling and bubbling strangely muffled in this unseasonable warmth at the beginning of May. James Bond was glad to escape the merciless heat and the piercing rays of the sun when he entered the air-conditioned hall of the Casino at the Grand Hotel Pupp.

Inside there was a small crowd consisting for the most part of elderly people not wanting to stay awake until the wee small hours mingled with three or four die-hard gamblers not able to forego the temptation of a game of cards or Roulette. Before five o’clock there usually were only few players and even fewer spectators. Only two card tables and one Roulette were operating, emitting the soft sounds of a quiet afternoon game.

Only the German was disturbing the picture. He was playing his usual reckless game at Poker and giving every sign of the addicted gambler. His hands were constantly in motion, chain smoking cigarettes from a packet of Camel’s at his side or playing with his stack of chips. His thinning hair looked uncombed and sweaty, his suit crumpled. His upper body shifted and bent this way and that, searching for the posture to deal with the built-up pressure that made his nerves longing for release.

Bond felt there was an almost voyeuristic fascination in watching this man fighting in the throes of his addiction, like witnessing a traffic accident or a plane crash. Reluctantly he turned to the Roulette and placed two bets. After losing both he sauntered over to the bar, ordered a Martini and lit a Shepherd’s Hotel.

If Zaitseff didn’t show up this evening  it couldn‘t be helped. Bond had already seen everything he wanted to the past two days. Karlovy Vary was certainly one of the neatest and best organized operations the Russian Mafia had invested in during the last fifteen years. Their money had restored the old yellow Bohemian facades of the spa town, refurbished historic interiors and generally renovated  the ancient morbid charm the town held. And in the process vast amounts of money had been laundered and retreats for ageing mobsters had been built. And one could park ones car at the sidewalk without having to fear so much as a tiny scratch in the varnish or a dent in the bodywork. That was Karlovy Vary with its strings pulled by the Mob.

And Slava Zaitseff was the head of this operation. Was there a Russian mobster this far from Russia that was better protected? Bond doubted it. When he had arrived Monday afternoon at the Hotel Bristol and taken a walk through town he’d immediately noticed the presence of tell-tale bodybuilder figures scattered throughout the streets, quietly observing the passers-by, taking in suspicious behaviour, noting faces, cloths and headings. And Bond was glad that he’d come unarmed for with these people a gun surely wouldn’t go unnoticed for long.

But one could hardly say that Bond was surprised by the heavy presence of Russian mobsters. After all, his briefing last Monday morning had indicated just this very situation in the town.