Thimio's House - Softcover

John Kefala Kerr

 
9781782790532: Thimio's House
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1782790535 ISBN 13: 9781782790532
Publisher: Perfect Edge, 2013

Synopsis

Fish is an idealistic young composer whose life is in meltdown. Gabrielle is an archaeologist who has uncovered something frightening and needs to get away. The couple escape to economically decimated Greece where they take up residence at the abandoned house of Fish's late father. The arrival of a rebellious lifeguard, a love-struck schoolteacher and an Albanian puppeteer, prompts Fish to follow his utopian dream of creating a new society. But as the heat of the Greek summer rises and tensions in the fledgling 'republic' increase, the unspoilt Aegean shoreline plays host to a series of unexplained events that threatens the future of the community. With the sounds of Fish's imaginary orchestra playing throughout, Thimio's House builds towards an emotional crescendo and a shocking revelation. Lyrical and satirical, funny and sad, sensuous and intellectual, gentle and traumatic, John Kefala Kerr's remarkable debut novel is about the raw unhappiness of modern society and an ancient vision of utopia.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author

John Kefala Kerr is an award-winning composer and sound artist. He lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Thimio's House

By John Kefala Kerr

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Copyright © 2013 John Kefala Kerr
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78279-053-2

Contents

1st Movement FURIOSO......................................................1
1 Near Death Experience....................................................2
2 Warmonger!...............................................................4
3 "Trick"..................................................................8
4 Seizmós..................................................................10
5 Digit....................................................................13
6 "Plip-Plop"..............................................................16
7 Man Walkin'..............................................................23
8 Band.....................................................................24
9 Man Talkin'..............................................................35
10 Normal..................................................................36
11 Garbology...............................................................37
12 Busk....................................................................42
13 Cracked and Peeled......................................................50
2nd Movement CON MOTO.....................................................59
14 Bruno...................................................................60
15 Elpida..................................................................65
16 Petros..................................................................81
17 Man Cryin'..............................................................85
18 Basso Profundo..........................................................86
19 Flutter-Flutter.........................................................96
20 Depth...................................................................100
21 Man Lyin'...............................................................106
22 Sweetie.................................................................107
23 Hike....................................................................110
24 Stavroula...............................................................117
25 Sofokli.................................................................124
26 Bus.....................................................................129
3rd Movement ALLA REPUBLICA...............................................137
27 Secret Shrine...........................................................138
28 Podium Rock.............................................................141
29 Grist...................................................................146
30 Arturo..................................................................148
31 Man Nearin'.............................................................153
32 Species.................................................................154
33 Chores..................................................................155
34 Skatcho.................................................................162
35 Key.....................................................................168
36 Thíta...................................................................170
37 Man Dyin'...............................................................180
38 Mound...................................................................181
39 Swifts..................................................................183
40 Sweet Water.............................................................191
41 Parashoot...............................................................197
42 Axion Estí..............................................................213
43 Casio...................................................................218
44 Mule....................................................................224
45 Mixolydian..............................................................227
46 ∞.......................................................................233
47 Man Hearin'.............................................................236
48 Creatures...............................................................237
49 Counting................................................................239
50 Smile...................................................................242
51 Psycho..................................................................245
52 Man Hidin'..............................................................249
53 Doctor..................................................................250
54 Eclipse.................................................................255
55 "Clatter"...............................................................263
56 Man Yearnin'............................................................268
57 Arrest..................................................................269
4th Movement AGITATO......................................................275
58 Steam...................................................................276
59 Score...................................................................284
60 Charades................................................................285
61 Cat.....................................................................292
62 Convex Mirror...........................................................295
63 Hesycheía (Stillness)...................................................300
64 Festival................................................................303
65 Twist...................................................................319
66 Flummox.................................................................323
67 Angel...................................................................329
68 Two Men Walkin'.........................................................342
CODA.......................................................................345
69 Moró....................................................................346
70 Bells...................................................................361
Acknowledgments............................................................363
About the Author...........................................................364


CHAPTER 1

Near Death Experience


It's a lovely sunny day and it's time for you to get ready to go totown. Your mother has woken you and drawn back the covers tostop you from falling asleep again. Your mother gives you a kisson the cheek, snuggling her face into your neck before picking upthe soft toys that have fallen on the floor. Eeyore and Tiggeralways fall on the floor. After putting the toys on the chair, yourmother goes to the bathroom to do her lovely hair.

In town you hold your mother's hand. Town's a busy place.You stay where you've been told to stay—by the lamppost. Thedummies in the shop window have no clothes on. Suddenlythey're lying in the road with no clothes on, and a jet of water'ssprouted up out of the ground, and a very hot wind's made thelitter stick to everything, including you.

You remember the heat, the smoke, the rubble, the blood, theshouting and screaming.

In hospital, everything's a murmur. The murmur feeds on you,taking whatever it needs and discarding the rest—extracting thepink. You lie dead for four minutes and thirty-three seconds,combing and being combed, crying out for mother, your hair andbody in tatters, your skin forming an inhibiting bracken that youstruggle to get out of.

Emerging elsewhere, in a dazzling place, you suddenly feel afriendly feeling and see a glow and a shimmer. The glow and theshimmer brighten to become a person—not your mother, but aperson so bright that it's impossible to make out their features.The person is holding a shiny object in their hand. They put theshiny object up to their mouth and blow into it, playing highnotes—tee-teeee, tee-tee-teeee, tee-teeee—which makes the person'shair billow out in response as though the breath is escaping outof the top of the person's head.

Enveloped in the trumpet call's chilling burn, you know yourvision has something to do with the way you've been made andunmade, and that the vision means you've been made again fora second time within the blissful noise of the trumpet, which iseverywhere except in the room where you've been resuscitatedand told you'll have to lie on your front for weeks.

That was when you were nine years old, before you'd understoodthat the trumpet was a summons, calling you back to life.

CHAPTER 2

Warmonger!


The rain was torrential, bouncing off roads and pavements,making rapid lie-detector lines. The lies being detected werethose of the reckless bankers, the phone-hacking journalists andthe corrupt politicians.

Fish had been wandering the city since midday, listening tosounds. City sounds he found inspiring, but today they seemedreproachful, bombarding him like sonic projectiles. The soundsall cried warmonger! their myriad hisses and rumbles and clangsall going off like acoustic ammo. He was the victim of thesemunitions, especially the incoming shots of the goldsmith's clock(which said one hour to go) and the armour-piercing voice tellinghim his phone credit was zero.

Today his wandering had purpose: a last-ditch meeting withthe solicitor at three. Skirting the Coffee Democracy queue, heheaded for Toney's Café, taking the route past the Occupy tents.As he walked through the encampment he saw the djembe guytalking to some of the other protestors, a sodden banner behindhim listing the movement's core grievances: bank bail-outs,spending cuts, tuition fees, arms trading, banking crisis, heatingcosts, exploiting nature. The bearded drummer waved to himand pointed to the Monument—a reminder to him of his buskingpromise. Fish acknowledged the djembe guy with a thumbs upand entered the mall (capitalist cathedral), his mindchoir now ona rant (ooooaaaaeeee!) and his orchestra on a bombing raid(brrrrrrrrrmmmmm).

He was starting to doubt the wisdom of his symphonicproject. Symphonies were an ineffective protest. He'd been toldthis twice in the past week: first by his composition professor andthen by the djembe guy. The poncho-wearing drummer had saidthat symphonies were a part of the problem, the province of theone per cent. 'Don't get me wrong, it's really cool what you'redoing and that,' he'd said, stroking his goatee, 'but who's gonnahear it? Moneyed dudes that's who.' The djembe guy had thenissued him a challenge. 'Come and join us here, man. Get yourhands dirty. Come busking.'

Fish liked the djembe guy, he seemed sincere. He had a pointtoo about the slowness of his symphonic resistance, but it hadbeen shortsighted of him to dismiss the tactic so readily.

Crossing the replica public square where the giant teddiessing "fun, fun, fun", Fish felt suddenly vulnerable. Apart fromthe piano taking up most of his room and the symphony takingup most of his head, he was alone in the world. The whole pointof writing a symphony was to rectify this, create social magic.Otherwise there was nothing to live for.

In Toney's Café he tore off the end of a sugar sachet andstared at the posy of fake ice-cream cones arranged in thewindow. He hadn't enjoyed having his commitment questioned,his methods attacked, and now the seminar incident wasreplaying in his head like an earworm—'You don't have to be agenius to work out whose debts Britney's referring to, but it's obviousto me that she's playing the entire financial system off against itself,giving every fat cat in the world a taste of that green slime stuff sheputs in the guy's mouth in the video.'

His comments caused hilarity.

The back story to the scenario was the megastar's classic hit,Toxic. The track had been pounding the woodchip every night inthe communal house and the song's prophetic message hadgrooved its way into his thoughts, so he'd decided to conscriptthe diva because she said pertinent things like: 'Oh baby you'reso toxic'.

—Have you really quoted Toxic in your symphony?

—Are you seriously suggesting that Britney Spears predicted theglobal financial crisis?

—Well, who's to say Britney hadn't seen it coming? She had herfinger on the pulse back then, you know.

Bowing to sub-prime applause, he'd opened the lid of theclassroom piano and laid into it, pounding the keys in unstructuredbursts, unleashing an executive bonus of notes and chords.

With the cheers of the class adrenalising him, he'd gone toreclaim his score from the professor's clutches, but the musicalsnob had held onto it, giving it a curt sniff first before holding italoft like a dirty pair of underpants. He'd responded by snatchingback the thick wad of paper, rolling it up and whacking theprofessor in the face with it.

The sharp edge of his score created social magic—conjuringblood first and then a designated first-aider.

Ejected from the seminar, he'd retreated to the Union bar tofind news of his clash gobbling bandwidth. Facebook had gonemental and the leader of the University Wind Band—alwaysquick off the mark with anything publicity-worthy—had senthim an email begging him to bring the score and parts of his'amazing militant music' to Friday's rehearsal.

Fish didn't think he'd be able to oblige the bandleader. He wastoo confused, too messed up in the head, too concerned over howon earth he could legitimately join the Occupy protest nowwithout appearing hypocritical. In mounting his offensive he'dcommitted the cardinal sin of peaceful resistance. "Whacking"might sound innocuous in a Tweet, but it still amounted toviolence.

Gulping on his lager, he'd tried to ignore the music playing onthe in-house sound system, its connotations lending inappropriategrandeur to the war being shown on SKY. But when thegiant screen showed hundreds of Thimio lookalikes rampagingthrough the streets of Athens, and the music suddenly achieveda perfect fit, he realised then that it was time for him to getserious.


* * *

The solicitor's office was up a steep flight of stairs, which madeFish feel like he was going to the gallows. He reckoned he couldalways whack the solicitor if things didn't go his way, seeing ashe was now a warmonger. But the solicitor turned out to belacking in whackability. In fact he was friendly and badlydressed, which reduced his whack value. The groove under thesolicitor's nose held firm when his mouth and lips explained tohim how inheritance issues could often be perverse and that noamount of legal action would change the fact that his adoptivemother had left the piano to him and the house to the church.

Numbed by the news, Fish stood outside in the street andgazed up at the Mediterranean-style frontage of the Stand 'n' Tanthat the solicitor's was above. Along with every TV report andnewspaper headline it reminded him of Thimio.

Ever since the Euro crisis had hit, old memories had bobbedup to the surface: his adoptive father's tanned face, his droopymoustache, his oregano-and-Swarfega smell, his pumice-roughhands, the way he used to mangle the names of departmentstores ('Woolwuthers,' 'Littlywoods,' 'Markaspencer'), hisdelicate tutorial on how to crack open the pumpkin seeds calledpasatébo.

Psaráki was what Thimio used to call him. It was Greek for"little fish". His father's death had seemed unreal. On the tellythere'd been a platform on stilts and footage of a downedhelicopter. Search and Rescue never found Thimio.

CHAPTER 3

"Trick"


Frightened, you flee.

Pack your bags and flee.

Stalked all the way.

The baritone sax too big for the boot, lying on Bruno's backseat.

Signs of life rising up all around.

A roar of living life.

A tsunami.

A curling, living willow pattern of life.


I'm loving angels ...

On the outskirts of Belfast you skin up, constantly checking overyour shoulder, drained of energy but loving the open road, thesecurity of it. You want to keep going forever. The world is bigenough. Moving, you revive things—rouse fields, restore towns,awaken skies, stir rivers. The speedometer keeps you on the rightside of sixty. After sixty all hell breaks loose.


Spread your golden wings ...

You inhale deeply. The cool smokestream settles you ... makes youfeel unmade and made again ... helps you feel joy at the undoingof the done ... at the gathering of parts from as far as a bomb blastcan send them ... lets you feel proud of your "trick" for re-gluingthe beautiful mother torn asunder (wait here, Sweetie, while I pop infor some ham), for replacing the hairs caught in the hairbrush(sudden ears of cloth), for fixing the forever-wrecked breasts (hotcloth!), the confetti freckles lost on the breeze (sticking!), thefluttery eyelashes (singed!), the keepsake lip (scorched!), the laughdamaged beyond repair (burning!).

After you've lost your pursuer you'll resume the task ofreassembling your mother. This is your goal. You have the skills.

CHAPTER 4

Seizmós


In his symphony, violins make curved Vs the shape of wings.

His tan was a disaster! His life was a disaster! The objects on thewindowsill agreed. Gel Spray—its label facing the wall—wasspurning him. Shaving Mirror, all steamed up like a huffymother, was reminding him of how stupid he looked. OnlyToothbrush showed empathy, standing there alone in the cup likean orphan.

Fish had been soaking himself in the bathtub for over an hour,trying to decaffeinate himself. What had induced him to go inand get a tan he had no idea. Maybe he'd thought it wouldimprove his fortunes, make him look more like Thimio, orperhaps give him the edge at the police station when he went toget cautioned. He hadn't bargained on spray. He'd expectedbright lamps, not spray!

Giving his arms and legs another scrub, he felt an arpeggio ofanger ripple through him, which had nothing to do with theprofessor's jibes and a lot to do with coming a poor second to thechurch. Greta had done him out of hundreds of thousands ofpounds and had rendered him virtually homeless.

He couldn't give a toss. He was on his way down. The seminarincident had merely sealed his fate. A letter requiring him towithdraw from his course was on its way. Greta would havehuffed big time. Thimio would have told him not to worry and togo see the world.

He could have done with some of his father's wisdom rightnow. Thimio had known a thing or two about disasters: 'Get aclear word from someone who knows' was his maxim.

On the oil-company helicopter there hadn't been anyone who"knew". But at the Pelion house Thimio's "clear word" had comefrom his grandmother—Yiayia Maria. An earthquake hadawakened the teenage Thimio and he'd made his way around tothe other side of the wobbling hardboard partition to whereYiayia Maria kept her bed.

'It's nothing, go back to sleep,' the old lady had said, andThimio had jumped to it, because Yiayia Maria "knew". She'descaped a house fire in Athens once by jumping from a third-storeywindow. Yiayia Maria was a sklirí yeinaíka—a "hardwoman" who'd lived alone for thirty years in a remote house bythe sea.

Both Thimio and Yiayia Maria had survived the '54 quake,and to celebrate, the octogenarian had smoked a cigar, and herobedient grandson had received a haircut from an alcoholicfarmer. The inebriated neighbour had staggered along therecently devastated path with his scissors and his comb in hishand, and Yiayia Maria had brought out a chair and placed itdefiantly over one of the newly formed cracks in the ground.Kátse káto meant "sit down", which was what Thimio had done,allowing the amateur barber free-rein, the object of the haircutbeing twofold: to ensure the young man's mother wouldrecognise him when he went home to Volos and to prevent himfrom resembling a priest.

Later that same day, an old man called Yiorgo had climbed uponto Yiayia Maria's roof to realign the loose slates. A newlycropped Thimio had been indoors giving himself his first evershave. The shaving mirror had rotated. Flecks of soft beard hadvibrated in the soapy scum. The mirror had danced. Pots andpans had clattered. The suspended cheese larder had swungviolently—peradóthe-peradóthe. Yiorgos's anxious face had flashedpast the window. 'Seizmós! Seizmós!' the old timer had cried.

That second tremor had been brief but violent, as off-the-scaleas the peals of laughter emanating from the Petrino Bar thatevening when the men of the village had resumed their tsípouro-drinkingand games of távli. A vast plane tree outside the Petrinohadn't budged in the quake, despite the ground around it havingsnapped like a biscuit. Feeling himself lucky to be alive, Thimiohad etched his name into the bark of that tree.

Thimio had been Fish's "someone". His father's absence waswhy his life was now a disaster.

With a brown-streaked body there wasn't much he could doexcept stick to his work regime and maybe have a few more bathsbefore Friday's rehearsal. His imminent departure from theuniversity wouldn't stop him from making the most of his finalband practise, though. He would go out with a bang. Music wasall he had now. It was the only good thing Greta had given him.Everything else had been skatá—shit.

CHAPTER 5

Digit


Cooking a nice plate of champ is how you're reconstructing hertoday. You mash up the boiled potatoes (like so), chop thescallions, mix in a dollop of butter and some milk (well done,Sweetie) then pile the lot onto a plate. The volcano shape comeseasily ... but not a volcano now that you look at it, more like alandfill slope. You add a veggie sausage in sick commemoration,recalling with the help of your notepad the way your fringe hadbeen irritating you that day at the dump, and how you'd had tokeep brushing your hair away from your eyes with your sleevebecause your hands, or rather your Kevlar gloves, had been toofilthy to be touching your face with. The rest of the team hadgone to the pub. One last delve, you'd insisted, knowing it brokethe rules.

The song playing on your Walkman at the time was My SpecialAngel. The machine—a wee totie piece of retro you'd boughtyourself after winning the scholarship at Northern—you'dlikened to the getting of a new purse, hence the mixtape.


... from paradise ...

The landfill's north foreshore was where you'd been based thosethree weeks, the preceding three months having been spentgetting the Environment Agency clearances, the polio, tetanusand hepatitis jabs, and negotiating access to that area away fromthe active dumping: a place you'd dubbed "the valley", locatedbetween the "hillock" and the "dune", a place where the stenchwas unspeakable. Your descriptions of the various pongs hadbeen uninventive. More like curses. But after half an hour in thenoxious perfumery words became redundant, because the smellsvanished, or rather the capacity to detect them did.

From afar, the landfill was a rowdy splatter of colour. Closeup, it was a repository, an archive, in which every object told astory. How many stories had you disturbed that day? How manyhad you unwittingly trampled on? How many more were stillwaiting to be uncovered in the municipal marshland of wastepaper and buckled plastic?

You'd kneaded the top layer of mustardy sludge, picking outa drinks bottle, a half brick, splinters of wood, a condom, bits ofeggshell, a shitty nappy, a hot dog (some were known to last 15years), several newspapers (every three-foot bucket of trashproduced 10 to 30 readable ones), a syringe, a human finger ...


(Continues...)
Excerpted from Thimio's House by John Kefala Kerr. Copyright © 2013 John Kefala Kerr. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher
Perfect Edge
Publication date
2013
Language
English
ISBN 10 
1782790535
ISBN 13 
9781782790532
Binding
Paperback
Number of pages
375