At rehearsals J asked O if DEAD SOLDIER was gonna pull through. She smiled but then she looked out the window and would not answer, just like Dad never would.

*

A jumble of hard work and bitter scenes passed. James worried, like his own bones aching, his own skin getting cold. Indeed preparations for performances of that play authored by Gormenghast (about Mme Curie) became long and increasingly complex – stressing everyone – G desperate to perfect every minute detail before letting the public see his ‘fine efforts’ and turn him into a laughing stock. Each day seemed to require an addition of new scenes, special effects and dances and G was more and more anxious and inclined to bursts of depressive temper. On Monday he sent the cast of Hydrogen Atoms back to their dormitories in tears, and on Tuesday he re-wrote sixty three (63) entire scenes in order to excise FOREVER the part played by one poor unfortunate x-ray.

James and Olivia watched all from above. O taking notes. Fixing lighting cues. J staring down in the shadows, thinking, looking and listening for ‘shapes’ ©.

*

December. Dark music (from the Gormenghast thing) played in that orphanage thru all hours of day and nite, its sound spilling thru the dormitories making sleep impossible, bringing ghosts from the old brick walls. Add that to the constant sounds of crying, pipes bursting and not-so-very-distant mortar attacks and the air itself became a festival of sounds.

Then one night from under James’ bed there came a new sound instead of all the above and the constant moaning of DEAD SOLDIER: i.e. a sound called SILENCE. James arose reluctantly, butterflies in stomach and pulled off the blanket from the box. Silence continued. J with his white fingers shaking and his white skin trembling and his blue eyes locked open wide.

There inside the cardboard coffin of the box lay DEAD SOLDIER curled tite and naked, like a fist in a womb. James touched him softly and didn’t find a response. DEAD SOLDIER blank and rigid with betrayal, soiled in sweat, his medals discarded, his uniform shredded off and torn. Desperate.

James could not cry.

*

To look into the eyes of DEAD SOLDIER and to see ‘nothing’ ©. To see his eyes still faintly tracking movements, too late, too late, to see an expression of Palitoy ‘Despair’ ©.

They buried DEAD SOLDIER without religious service in the rough ground at edge of the orphanage kitchen gardens. James drew a picture of a rose. Olivia brought a book and she read from the story of earth and of RAMBO, she read from the poetry of Yeltsin, Maxwell and Roche De Sandoz. James cried and she held his hand and it rained and she read from the epic poem La Bionica/The Bionic Woman by Keats and several times she read out the last and saddest verse, what every schoolgirl in Endland (sic) knows by heart:

“If I ever need a cold shoulder to cry on