photo credit: uli harder

The arms of those tall squidly humans are flailing about; they occasionally hit the bongo. The liquid turns to blue, I forgot: does this mean it’s poison or that we’ve found an elixir of life?

Here follows the full story. You better sprawl on the sofa accompanied by a fruity beverage.

The forest path led to… I don’t remember. I just want to tell you: there was a truck parked there, at the side of the path. There were tools on the truck’s hindquarters, and a toaster. What the toaster was doing there among the screwdrivers and saws didn’t become clear until after a ponytailed woman came walking up from behind the truck. She had a cap on and a flannel shirt, covered with mud and leaves as well as a light-coloured goo.

“Everything alright?” I asked.

“Oh, Jesus! Go away, okay?”

“What happened?” I made a circling finger pointy gesture at her shirt.

“I smeared pudding on myself.”

She was lying, it occurred to me. She probably did not feel like explaining herself to a creepy guy just randomly showing up on a quiet forest path while he’s carrying a dead cat with a sign around its neck that says “I can has cheezeburger?”

“I’ll be out of your face, but if I can just… I couldn’t help but notice you have a toaster on your truck.”

photo credit: massdistraction

“Yes, how else would you warm up grain products?”

Good point. I forgot what I actually answered to that question. All I remember is that a dog came running out of the forest and went straight for this flannel lady, straddling her leg while she hugged his face and confided things to him.

That reminded me of an encounter with a cow. I didn’t want to forget the experience, so I told the woman it.

“You know, I saw a cow this morning. It wasn’t moving much and it was naked. That is a great thing about cows, you know, when you don’t have to watch them all the time because they won’t do anything crazy or wild. They can’t hide anything, and have no interest in hurting you. Except if you scare them with a dog, in which case they’ll trample you to death. You should probably be careful with that. I have a great understanding with cows. I just nod to them, as if to say “Howdy cow, everything grass?” It’s a particularly dumb thing to say, but that came out this morning when I met the cow. I said that. And so… Well, he answers “Meh.” So there, that’s a good way to converse with a cow. That’s all you need. You feel content having inquired after a cow’s state of mind and the cow’s been able to tell something about it. It’s so much better than dancing cows, those are terrible. You know? They might step on your foot or trample a drawing you made that you had just put down for a second, assuming it would be safe on the ground. There aren’t many places in nature to put stuff on or in for safekeeping. That’s one thing that’s interesting about nature.”

She said: “I love Britney Spears. HUGE fan.”

I didn’t quite understand why she would bring it up, or whether she was making fun of me.

I said: “Alright alright, that’s fine. Is that, like, an ironic criticism on the exploitation of our psyche by the marketing rationale in which the images and interests of our mental landscape are formed by the invention and direction of iconic puppets and…”

“No. No, I just really like Britney Spears. I think she’s hot. And her songs are edgy and catchy.”

This caught me off guard. Who says such a thing? Especially a flannel-wearing woman?

“Besides”, she said, “You’re talking in circles.”

“Do the circles intersect?”

“Can I just stop you right there and say you’re annoying me? I’ve got to bring this truck to a garage, cow boy.”

“Oh, that reminds me! I am reminded of… the thing, pets. Yes! Does it ever bug you that you can’t have fruit as a pet? Isn’t that ridiculous! You can tie a string to them and take them for a walk and everything, but they perish. Pretty quickly too. Fruit just doesn’t stay fresh for very long. And fake fruit is just not the same thing.”

Well, that was something she agreed on, at least. Although she did this thing whereby she deliberately screwed up her eyes all higgledy-piggledy, like she was cross-eyed. Then she asked whether I wanted to watch House MD at her friend’s place. I answered that I didn’t, but when she got in the truck she still opened the door for me and told me to get in already. I wasn’t too at ease with some of the sharp tools scattered around her truck, and wondered how badly it would embarrass my family if I got messed up by a flannel-shirted woman, turned into chunky bits by a woman who really adores Britney Spears. Or so she says. With all this pondering we had already arrived at her friend’s place. It was a nice sort of stone/wood/marble place (basically a house made out of several materials) not far from the forest. It looked worn by time, but that gave it a cosy and authentic feel. Honestly, though. I’m not reciting an advert, that’s really what it felt like to me. Cosy and authentic. There was also another dog. It too looked beaten up.

photo credit: Alexis D.

After the necessary awkward introductions the woman’s friend seemed not too surprised or bothered that I had been brought along. The friend’s name was Eileen. She wanted to watch a film about some French farmer. I liked the beginning where someone tried to grow a plant. I didn’t have the heart to ask Ms. Flannel for her name.

We did watch House after all. It was the House episode where someone dies, I won’t say who. It was over before I knew it, and the hostess offered crunchy biscuits with tomato and some type of cream sauce. When she had been making it in the kitchen Ms. Flannel had joined her and I had overheard them saying: “He’s a smart enough kid, but you know how smart guys are the worst idiots.” I wondered if that was about me.

When House was over, Ms Flannel said: “Just so you know, there isn’t going to be any weird lesbian stuff or anything, alright?”

“What?”

“We’re not going to make out with each other or seduce you and have a threesome. You need to be aware of that.”

“What?”

I was allowed to stay the night and I had nothing to go back to, so I stayed. A night of many dreams left not a trace of them, not a nebulous image, when in the morning the croissants were aglow, the jam was sweet and the oranges transmutated happily into enlivening juice. Outside we inhaled a sky, fresh on the respiratory tracks, a morning in the mind. Truly a different state of affairs from ramblings about cows and fruit. There was a hill at the back of the house, with wild overgrowth, a place to look out across the expanse, and we climbed towards it.

In one version of this tale we’re in awe of the view, a few lights still on in the town in the distance, we’re making merry about getting lost among little streams and juniper bushes and open areas of soft sand and sparse islands of trees. In a different version I’m arguing with the women about the aquarium. They were of the opinion we should go there, have coffee and then go look at the fish, and then have some more coffee. I like fish, but not coffee. I suggested I have tea myself, but they were not to be persuaded; all three of us should have coffee in their opinion or it wouldn’t be right.

This morning, as said, the croissants are aglow, the jam is sweet, the butter salty and the oranges fresh. We inhale a new sky, as said, fresh of each other and the morning. The night left no nebulous traces, as mentioned before, but was dormant in our mind. There is naught but the table and the mountain, the plateaus around which we wander.

Lisa, turned out to be Ms. Flannel’s name. Later, when we were at the aquarium after all, I said: “Lisa, your eye is dangling from your bag.” Her eyelashes hung like oil-drenched wings from her handbag. A drop of mascara attempted the jump and regretfully splashed apart on the floor. With a last exertion it wrote ‘help’, but too small to be noticed by anyone. The droplet had no advance knowledge of this, which is so often the source of one’s downfall.

“What do you mean by that?” she replied to my initial comment about her dangling eye, and pinched her empty eye sockets. A man at a piano added a D minor. Genius. This same man would later blow my mind by telling me that it is a necessary fact that at some point it has been the Winter Solstice in 147 AD, and that somewhere on that very day it must have been half 1 in the afternoon, and that sheep already existed. Who knows what that could have meant on that day. And that was the genius of this man. He could, with a single tone, invoke an entire world and let your mind fill it up.

Lisa was still staring at me.

I remember she asked me something, but what was it?

“I said, what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Of the mist that I can see scrambling up from the water, of that mist I know this: it won’t pass through the walls. Mist cannot do that. But of myself I do not know if walls can keep me here. I don’t remember why I said that Lisa’s eyeball was dangling from her bag. Most female apparitions in this place carry a bag in one form or another, but not Lisa. Lisa never used one. She did have an iguana as a pet. And a healthy pair of green eyes. But no handbag.

“It was just nonsense, Lisa. Who knows that someday I might say something of value, so I’m in the habit of just saying everything.”

She looked at me searchingly and then brushed past me, up the stairs to the fish nursery.

Suddenly it occurs to me that the pianist probably wasn’t Russian. Why had I assumed he was Russian, or even a pianist? I decide to go to the toilets, behind the stairs. Thank goodness, no-one is there. From my backpack I take two of those giant orange witches hats. The giant orange pawns, what do you call them, and striped tape. I bar the toilet for ‘construction work’ and go into a stall with The brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. I fill the pot to the brim with toilet paper and peacefully start work on the next letter in the alphabet. Where was I? The L, right, that one’s easy peasy.

photo credit: clstal

Before I’ve finished reading the slogans and conversations on the stall door, twenty minutes have already passed and I decide not to open the book. Packing the cones back in my backpack, I feel a hand on my shoulder. Another hand bounces by across the floor and comes to a screeching halt. A flake of nail polish attempts the jump and regretfully lands on its back on the floor. With a last exertion I whisper ‘help, I’m stuck in a reality that just keeps going’.

Combine the overwhelming sensory input and hidden psychodramas of a modern metropolis with the haunting trappings of a serial-killer thriller, then add a feisty and flirtatious anti-heroine and a range of within-their-walls intellectuals and artists, and you have the ingredients of Surya Dour’s larger-than-life debut novel, “The Girl With The Sucker Lips,” a huge promise in a saturated market.

It’s the plot that makes this novel more than your run-of-the-mill mystery: the protagonist – a twentysomething American student of journalism identified by no other name than Leah – is voracious in her hunt for love, but after every of her short-lived relationships she emulates what was special about the person she desired and devoured. More and more she becomes a best-off of her lovers, but leaving those lovers broken and exhausted.

What happens next is an example of the human insight and narrative skill that Mr. Dour offers. I will not give it away, except to say that the story takes a chronological leap and gives us a different understanding of the shocking events and psychological exploration the reader has absorbed so far.

Mr. Dour – who died in 2006, shortly after publishing this novel – was a guru of digital design with a wide circle of smart and creative friends, and his instinctual understanding of the emotional life of others enabled him to do an incredible job of recounting Leah’s efforts to redefine herself after every turbulent exploit and of depicting the distinct passing lives of her victims.

At the same time, Mr. Dour uses his repertoire of indulgently farcical metaphors and evocative sense of mood to create a chameleonesque picture of London and her people, all on their own paths within the same limited grounds. When it comes to character progression, however, Mr. Dour fails to convince, taking us further and further along the endless cycles of Leah’s ambiguous maturing without allowing her to see what the reader is seeing. Leah muses endlessly about her identity, but as if she’s looking at pictures she took of herself rather than looking in the mirror.

Like its protagonist, The Girl With The Sucker Lips is an emotional, shocking ride, but at the same time a book to fall in love with and make part of yourself.

(Also, it’s completely fake. There is no such book or author, though maybe there should be. Sorry to do this to you. Mr Mackerel had a story idea he didn’t want to execute, so he wrote the review instead.)

Janus Schmeisser kept a vigilant eye on his dog, whom he suspected to be in cahoots with the Falangists. Janus was a 48-year-old native German, Dutch resident, and believed he was living in Civil War-era Spain.

Two of his phones rang. Janus picked one up and muttered in his native language:
- Ja, wass denn?
- Good morning, mister Schmeisser. I’m calling to tell you everything.

Meanwhile, in the park behind his residence, a warren of rabbits were deliberating. They intended to write a law so long-winded and prosy that no-one could ever finish reading it in their lifetime. The rabbit rulers would then be able to use their own judgement in any situation they wished by referring to this law that no-one could possibly understand. Two thousand civil bunny servants were put to work. They weren’t allowed fresh air, as this would benefit the clarity of the document too much. The rabbits lived off carrots and lettuce, and only the rattling of typewriters was heard.

- Tell me what? What do you have to tell me?
- You are mister Janus Schmeisser, German resident of Rotterdam. Your PIN is 8864, which you’ve forgotten twice in your life despite the obvious mnemonic. You stole candy from the local candy store when you were a boy in Bonn, but didn’t like the candy and threw it away. You’re about to hang up the phone and one of your ex-loves aborted a pregnancy you caused but didn’t know about. In the middle drawer of your desk are detailed designs for a new and improved generation of swimming pools. It’s unfortunate that you’ve never showed them to anyone, as a very similar design is now gaining popularity in Eastern Asia. You’re feeling a tad light-headed this very moment and have never admitted to yourself that you get intense pleasure from completing tax forms. You have no idea why you smoke joints in the bathtub, and you distrust people with moustaches because you feel they’re metaphorically hiding something. Now you will believe me when I say that an attractive woman at your work has fallen in love with you, but when you talk to her that will end. However, you must take care to befriend the man she will eventually marry, in which case you will start a very profitable dog-related business together. It will get you in trouble with the police, in a most gratifying way. You’re not sure how you’re feeling right now and I have told you everything. A good afternoon, mister Schmeisser.

There was a click and a thump. And there was lettuce.

The ribbons dropped like glossy flyers from a crashing zeppelin, sucking up our mind void in a dreamlike loss of control. They were, probably, more like flyers than ribbons anyway. Ms. Lanyard watched, and so did Mr Pigskin and Mr Porkknuckles. Meanwhile the monkey was shot behind the scenes, without audio or video recording, without paperwork. If we had known, we would have not been happy with that.

The ribbons served a mere decorative function. They were there to be pretty, to rain with a positively cheerful attitude. The next night fireflies made their way down the motorway. We were inside one of those fireflies, had been for hours, but hadn’t been thinking about monkeys. Monkeys were one of the farthest things from our minds. Ms. Lanyard was thinking about how their melancholy was reinforcing itself, Mr Porkknuckles was pondering the A-Team, and Mr Pigskin had tomato juice on his mind. I was thinking about whether people could be lured to a good shoe shining by the scent of shoe polish.

SHOE POLISH, IMAGINE THAT?

We did make our way to Dubrovnik eventually.