all those hours spent on the couch! return to him, together with the overpowering intimation that sitting behind him was no dispassionate analyst, but. . the Creep! nodding and note-taking, with his Japanese trannie gibbering a tinny commentary. Join us, why don’tcha, Claude says, pointing to the balding patch at his feet where straggly dandelions and buttercups have been. . combed over. I was tellin’ Clive here how I met up with my near-namesake, my des-ti-ny — you’d be innerested in that, wouldn’tcha, Roger? I mean, you and I go ways back — but not that far. Wouldn’tcha like to know the truth for once in your cockamamie life, huh? Or p’raps it’s more important to you that two doors down is being built right this instant from the smoke it’s SUCKIN’ OUTTA THE SKY! Gourevitch yelps — and, turning to see what his spongy eyes have sopped up, Busner’s also overwhelmed by the squat chimney pot inhaling the blue sky. He stares at the blackened lip of the pot, amazed by the clear air mysteriously condensing into thick, yellowy-grey smoke that instantaneously solidifies to become the stack’s brickwork. Crushed by this. . weightiness, Zack throws his eyes back up into the heavens, where they intersect with a. . scission of starlings cutting a cirrus ribbon. Clive says, Oompah-lumpah, stick it up yer jumpah. . and Claude snaps: Can it! That’s enough of that BS — we’re done with Hullabaloo-don’t-tell-Lulu, we’re done with toboggan rides and the surrey-with-the-fuckin’-fringeon-top! — Roger’s fingers grip Zack’s arm, his words blow in my ear, each hard consonant tickling one of the fine hairs sprouting from. . the tragus: We GoTTa Go To him, man — you GeT iT, righT? Claude. . he’s GoT the ancienT cell wisdom, he’s ToTally GroKKing iT Now. . — Maybe, Zack thinks, but it’s so very absurd of Roger to be wearing a cow’s skin, sliced up and sewn — ’Sides, Roger stagily whispers, over there. . and there, and there at the back of the yard by the fence, can’t you see them creeping? The iddy things, man, the wild ones? Zack sees next door’s. . saber-toothed tiger, smarming around the rusted post propping up the washing line, its fangs bared, its slitted eyes squeezing out. . dumb and unknowing hatred. I think, he says, I get you, Rodge — the iddy things are akin to Jungian archetypes, and they’re invading your garden, which is an archetype of safety and. . normalableness. . Roger titters maniacally and his fingers dig deeper, their pressure synchronised with the tinny emanations from Claude’s trannie: Gimme-gimme-gimme dat ding! the pop pops, and Zack thinks: It’s referring to the Ding an sich, how profound — and why on earth did I give up using this stuff for analytic sessions? Because it’s perfect — taking you to a place where there’s almost infinite time with which to contemplate the hidden connections that subsist between every. . ding! Gimme-gimme-gimme dat —. Lesley swells into view, his face a van Gogh morass of pus and pore. He’s right, man, he says, the iddy things are. . like, messengers, man — they’ve come to tell us that there’s no such thing as coincidence. . That geezer, Hofmann, man, he takes his bike ride, yeah, into the void — ’cause it’s all there in the bardo, man, all of it: Switzerland, man, with Heidi and cuckoo clocks and big horns an’ shit — all of it free-wheels with him into the void, man. . And right when this is happening, man, those cats in Arizona or wherever it was, they’re cranking up their cyclo-whatsits and pat-a-caking together their big hunk of kryptonite stuff. . Smart monkeys, yeah — iddy things with their potions and cyclo-motions and bombs. . But Hofmann, he’s the smartest monkey of them all, ’cause he’s found the solution, he’s got his own cyclo-whatsit, which is a good old bone-shaker, man. . He’s guided by the ancient cell wisdom, man, smeared on his lips: cosmic-fucking-consciousness, man, only a few microgrammes, man, but they’ve been sorta fishy-whatsisting ever since —. Your point being? Zack interrupts — not to be cruel, but because he feels dizzy and nauseous, and he needs to eat more dings! — My point being, man, that Claude was there, man, he saw the mushroom growing — he saw the people dying, man, and now he’s here with us, man, on this merry May morning. He’s gotta be here for a reason — I think he’s here to tell us something. . Roger whispers, He’s right. — Not knowing if it’s they who lead him, or he who guides them, Zack begins edging over the innumerable ridges of the illimitable concrete plain — days later they reach the scraggy lawn and take their places at. . the Magus’s feet. Claude says, Shrink cat sat behind a plain metal desk, smokin’ away and peckin’ at his typewriter, the peckerwood. . And Claude’s trannie says, Gimmegimme-gimme dat —. I say, Claude, Zack blurts out, be a good chap and turn it off, would you? And to his astonishment Claude obliges, then assumes a German accent: Ach! Are you getting much of ze sex satisfaction? Are you liking of ze big breast or ze small breast? Me sittin’ there, nice as in BVDs with the washing instructions printed on the goddamn singlet. I tell the Kraut shrink: If you continue treating me like a child, I just might become strongly attracted to ze very small breast. He says, This is ze typical kind of rrreasoning associated mit your condition. And I say, Doc, you gotta level with me: is it scatziphrenia, scatosis, or the very worst there is, scaphunkiness? Boodlie-bar, boodlie-bee, boodlie-Israel, boodlie-Palestine. . As Claude scats, Zack’s seized by anxiety: Where’s Podge? Because if she’s feeling anything remotely like this, she’ll be in a hell of a state. . The thought — a protozoan paisley blob — floats towards the house, where it metamorphoses into a sway-backed form wrapped up in a tartan rug being manoeuvred through the back door by Eileen, Irene and Maggie. Through the rug’s folds a hand emerges to. . tuck itself up from within. The sight is disturbingly reminiscent of a corpse being carried from a pacified village by General Shoemaker’s dog-lovers, but Zack’s pleased the women of the house have made common cause. They stagger across on to the grass and dump the bundle, the rug falls open, and there’s Podge, curled up in a foetal position, her tartan mini-dress riding up to expose her white-and-pink-polka-dotted knickers. Her eyes are wide open and absorbing the bright sunlight of. . this, her first day on earth. She takes her thumb out of her mouth and says, Goo-goo, ga-ga, I’m a little rainbow baby. . Claude pokes her in the belly with his steel toecap. Waaa! Waaa! Podge cries, I’m a little rainbow baby and I’m hungry: I want milky! — The other three women have arranged themselves: Maggie seated and already knitting beside Zack on the grass, Eileen next to Lesley, and Irene standing with one hand on the back of Claude’s chair, the ends of her velour headscarf trailing. .