My Sophisticated Novel (excerpt)

from:

To 'Scape the Serpent's Tongue:
a novel

by

Jack Haaversham

"I am so bored with you, do you hear me? Bored. Bored. Bored."

"Oh darling, you bore me so with your speaking of being so bored."

He stood, leaned against the mantle, one arm draped casually about the alabaster bust of Cato the Elder -- c. 234-149 BC, a Roman statesman, surnamed the Censor (Censorius), Sapiens, Priscus, or the Elder (Major), to distinguish him from Cato the Younger (his great-grandson), who came of an ancient Plebeian family who all were noted for some military service but not for the discharge of the higher civil offices, and was bred, after the manner of his Latin forefathers, to agriculture, to which he devoted himself when not engaged in military service but, having attracted the notice of Lucius Valerius Flaccus, he was brought to Rome, and successively held the offices of Cursus Honorum: Tribune (214 BC), Quaestor (204 BC), Aedile (199 BC), Praetor (198 BC), Consul (195 BC) together with his old patron, and finally Censor (184 BC), and died by cutting out his own guts -- that he had purchased from a wizened Jew in San Moritz. He tugged casually at the satin cravat knotted casually about his neck in a four-in-hand knot. The heat of the room was becoming stifling. He wondered if he would ever be cool again.

"My, aren't you the cool one though," she observed from the low, satin chaise-longue she had purchased during her last tour of the Casbah. She fingered the priceless strand of matchless pearls strung casually about her neck.

"Yes, I tell you again, I am bored with you."

"And I you."

"My boredom knows no limit."

"Not half so limitless as my own."

"You are tiresome," she snorted, her mocking laughter ringing like breaking crystal.

"Your words are hurtful."

"You dare speak to me of hurtful? When it was you, you who tore my beautiful gossamer negligee in my boudoir that Coleen my chamber maid laid out on the eider of my canopied bed last night?" It had been a gift from the Maharajah of a land locked principality on the subcontinent on her last tiger hunt.

"Indeed, and I am glad, glad do you hear me, glad that I did! And I will tear all your negligees to pieces, again and again, forever do you hear me, forever!" And he laughed madly, removing his elbow from the alabaster bust of Cato and placing it to his hip, laughing madly in merriment. "And now you must pardon me, Agnes, for I must go and vote."

"Vote?" Her scornful laughter tinkled like breaking glass. "Oh my, you are such a naif. But don't you know, my darling, how foolish such is? For beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. For it both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what my very father the Commodore has done. And I am ... your wife, Agnes!

"'My wife Agnes.' Ha ha. I laugh, laugh at the very idea! For no wife are you!"

"Oh, what woman could be a wife to you? If you were a real man it would be easy, but you are contemptible, contemptible do you hear me?"

"Your contempt bores me."

"No, it is you who bore me."

"I am leaving you, Agnes."

"Good."

"And I am taking Philomena, our young blonde daughter, with me."

"No! No you mustn't, you can't."

"Oh but I can, Agnes, I can and I shall! For here are the very documents, proving how unfit you are!" His voice cracked like broken pottery with triumph and emotion, and out he pulled a large sheaf of documents from beneath the voluminous folds of his satin cravat. "All signed and sealed, by my father the Chief Justice! And there is nothing you can do about it!"

"Is there not! More fool you! For I shan't allow it!" And out from under the delicately embroidered cushions of her chaise-longue she plucked the pearl-handled derringer pistol that had been given to her by the deposed president of a small Caribbean nation.

"No! No, Agnes, you mustn't! Think of our small blonde daughter Filomina! The scandal of it!"

"But I am, Frederick, I am!" And with a cold glint in her feminine eye, she carefully aimed her derringer pistol and ... fired!


End of Chapter XXI


J