[Begin translation source I]
There was be one magic trick I used to pull. Good one trick it was too, ha, yeah. Made em all clap mighty. This trick could be done only at the golden hour. Do you rember that boy? Ha, yeah, I was be lifting my hands into the air and touching be the sun with tips of my fingurtips, ha, yeah, and pulling out a coin from behind, and all em clapping and laughing, rember that boy? Rember you be clapping and laughing too?
He lay there on the hospital bed, emaciated, words rolling slowly off his heavy tongue, punctuated intermittently by the harshness of cleared throats and swallowed phlegm, as I held one of his rough, bony workingman’s hands, a hand much like my own, like holding my own hand in that sterile odorless room, observing him for what the past numberless days had felt each time like the last, observing him as a man and as my father and as my fellow countryman, with tears rolling down my cheeks, thinking, when was the last time I cried? Thinking, don’t leave me you bastardfuck. Not fucking yet.
Was be a good trick, wasn’t it?
Yeah, I said, recalling all the times he’d reached toward the sun and through sleight of hand extracted a single gold coin from behind it, recalling laughing, recalling his smile and his embrace, true and powerful, as if he were hugging me with the force of two, his own and of the mother I never knew, recalling the texture, smell and weight of those perfect coins which as a boy I never could wait to go into the city to spend. On some trifle. Some semblance of luxury. Yes, it was a good trick, I said, mindful of the clock on the wall and the relentless, silent movement of its hands. In one direction always.
Midnight had come and gone and I had to be at the docks by dawn. A shiver ran through me and I felt a longing for my wife, who at this late hour is mending clothes for our daughters, who are asleep in a single bed because we’ve no space for another, and in the flickering candlelight, sole illumination for the needle piercing threadbare cloth, I feel the regret of a life amounting to but a child’s handful of failed dreams slipping insignificantly, like grains of sand, like grains of salt, between my thick fingers, burying the ruins of the once great illusion that I am destined, that any of us are destined, even as perfumed in silken robes my boss sluices warm brandy down his throat, which is like my throat, but whose soft hands are unlike my hands, unlike the hands of my father, which twitch, and I am imagining the taste of brandy when my father said, What if, ha, yeah. What if it wasn’t be a trick, huh boy?
[Several lines here temporarily omitted. Reason: Transcription failure. Note: Attempt with updated identification model once completed.]
The Thames flows golden.
Flows forever.
Loading.
Unloading we. Dying embers of the yester- become kindling for the new day, as the ships come and ships go, into the illuminous space formed by the sky and the sky-reflected, timeless and deep, upon the canvas of whose pale brilliance we all are rendered featureless and black, silhouetted, man, woman and ship alike.
Gulls cut across the brightening sky.
Having shut my eyes, I rub my swollen face and spit blood into the river.
[Note: Provisional placement of marked lines. Reason: Chronological dilemma. Does one prefer faithfulness to original writing or to events described? Note: Consultation may be advised.]
What do you mean, I asked.
But if I expected some reaction from him, some change from the pallid staticity of his dying, none came. His dull eyes kept their blank upward vigil. He merely cleared his throat and said, Wasn’t be any trick about it, ha, yeah. The pull be real. I wasn’t be having no coin in hiding ken? The pull be real boy. Ha, yeah. The coins be existing there always behind the sun. So many coins. I shouldn’t be touching, but the way em clapped, the way you laughed boy. The way you laughed.
He swallowed phlegm. Letting go of his hand, I rose. What are you saying?
I wasn’t be knowing any trick but I could be doing this one thing, ha, yeah. I could pull ken? I was be lifting my hands into the air—
I grabbed him by the collar and shook him. The coins, you mean they’re really there?
Behind the sun, he said. The pull be real, he said, as I shook him and shook him and he offered no resistance. There wasn’t any strength left in him at all. He was light as non-existence. How many? I demanded, still crying, Tell me! How many coins are there behind the sun!
More than all, he said. Ha, yeah.
Why didn’t you—Why did we live like we did? If you could’ve pulled money from the fucking sky, why did you—We were so goddamn poor! We didn’t have anything. I don’t have anything, I sobbed, and thinking of my wife and daughters lifted his fragile body and drove him back into the hospital bed, trying to push him through it. Blank-eyed he cleared his throat, gargled and sucked down phlegm.
Rattle, he said. Rattle boy. Rattle and hum, and for a moment I thought I saw something fill his eyes. Something golden. something flowing forever. and reflected in the Thames I saw a long ago memory of the two of us on the banks watching the merchant ships. it was, i remembered, the day after i’d been caught spraying graffiti on the school walls. the city skyline shadowlike. there be two sounds only in the world boy, i heard him say in the memory or in the hospital room or in my own pulsing head, the rattle and the hum, highlit by the pink setting sun, this be your education boy. this be wisdom ken? that, he said, pointing at the shadow buildings, be not your world. hollowed rattlescum. hear boy? hear the rattle? but i didn’t, and every night i dreamed about living in the city with all its luxuries, with everything modern and easy, and do you hear that? he asked, listening. listen be under the rattle. listen be to the sun. the hum, ha, yeah, that be the real life, the hard life. the sun, the hum, ahem, I let him go, backed away, terrified I might have killed him.
[End translation source I]
[Begin translation source II]
But no, he still clung to life, coughing and wheezing even when I left the room, the hospital, too furious to go home, too awake to sleep. I looked for another kind of familiar instead, down by the dockyards where I knew I could find the pain I needed. To give and to receive. I went into a bar, downed drinks and insulted some out of town scabbie just to get into it with him, and that felt good. The anger. The scabbie didn’t have a chance, not because I was good at brawling but because what I wanted was for him to hit me. Hurt me. Heads I win, tails me too. Punch after punch. He beat the snot out of me, broke my nose. I beat what was left of my father’s life out of him, cracked a few ribs, all while telling myself my father was out of his mind with dying man’s delirium to be talking about coins behind the sun. But that wasn’t even what had pissed me off. It wasn’t that I believed him. It was that he believed himself, and still thought he’d done right by keeping us poor when all he had to do was pull fucking coins from the fucking sun until we had everything we’d ever dreamed of!
What finally put the scabbie down was a chair to the face.
I slinked out of the bar sore to moonlight uncomfortably louder than it had any right to be, then swung at the moon too. I missed. It wasn’t until the next day, after a shift on the docks on no sleep and too much Adderall, that I found out my father had died.
Crawling home I was sure my wife was going to kill me, but she didn’t. Bless her heart and curse mine. Instead she wrapped her arms around me, kissed my cheeks and offered her condolences. Then she pulled me to the bathroom before the girls noticed I was home, and I washed the blood and sweat and stink off myself so that I’d be more presentable when they inevitably decided to snuggle with me. As presentable as anyone could be with a cracked nose and puffed out face turning all the bruised colours of the rainbow. Predictable as clockwork, I broke down.
[End translation source II]
[Note: Inferring existence here of unlocated paragraphs presumed lost.]
[Begin translation source III]
[Note: Uncertain temporal relationship between preceding and following paragraphs. Estimation: 2-4 years. Note: Estimate open to revision.]
I haven’t been writing much lately. I’ve spent more of my free time reading my old notebooks and journals. Truthfully I’m ashamed of much of what I wrote before, yet there’s something that prevents me from destroying it: it’s a reflection of who I was at the time, what I was. I want to remember that. I don’t want to forget myself. Reading, I feel again the stress I was under, the drugs I was taking, the thoughts I started and never finished.
I miss my father.
I took the girls to a movie tonight. It wasn’t very good, but we had a lot of fun. They’re getting older. They’re starting to lie to us.
I injured my arm on the docks. Two days off, then pain meds and back to work.
My wife and I celebrated our tenth anniversary by going out to dinner. We walked past the hospital where my father died. It was early evening and I couldn’t help glancing up at the sun in the sky. (In the air, as my father would have said.)
My boss died yesterday. It was unexpected. He was 61. Unmarried, no kids. For five minutes the entire docks stopped and stood in silence, then the whistle blew and we went back to work. There are articles about him in all the newspapers, some of which he owned. His funeral is scheduled for Saturday and they say it’s going to be one of the largest ever. There was almost no one at my father’s funeral, just the few living people who knew him.
I’ve been feeling increasingly indifferent to things I used to care about.
Midlife crisis: check.
I keep listening to music from my youth. I do it on headphones because it’s fucking shameful. Sometimes I feel so much nostalgia it hurts. What exactly am I trying to find? I grew up poor. I’m still poor. I’ll die poor. My life is stillborn. It never really started.
I stayed out all night again doing nothing. Haunting the city, I guess. I take the bus in then walk. I told my wife I was drinking, looking for drugs. She believed me but didn’t have the decency to get fucking mad. She’s just concerned. Not just saying the words but actually meaning them. I was looking for a fight and all I got was empathy. How much of a loser am I, right? My kids tell me they love me every day and I spend my days feeling like absolute shit. Maybe it’s because I pretend all the time that I don’t believe in the sincerity of others.
I bought some spray paint today. Recapturing lost youth, but at least it’s artistic!
There’s so much noise in the world.
One of my daughters is sick. Not caught-a-cold sick. Running tests to figure out the damage sick, and: planning to buy meds we can’t afford on my salary sick, and: being on a waitlist for a procedure for seven fucking years (!) sick.
Walking tonight I kept thinking about my old boss’ funeral. So many interviews and TV specials and it’s like no one rembers (*) him anymore. At the same time, his daughter wouldn’t be dying because her dad was too much of a terrified fuckup to get anywhere in life.
[Note: Link to Soho Stone? Plan: Attempt precision dating. Outcome: Plausibility passed. Note: Begin formal write-up of hypothesis to present at Symposium. Note: Inform Norq and query opinion .]
Went out to the city tonight and did my first spray job in twenty years. Felt good despite the hands being rusty. Nothing major, just a quick poem I’d written a few weeks ago, but then I crossed it out anyway and wrote something else. Something true. Something sincere. You know what was good about the whole thing? (Other than not getting caught, because how embarrassing would that be.) It’s not me anymore. I’m no graffiti artist. After I was done and the adrenaline had gone down, all I wanted was to be home again.
The Universal Archivist Pix disconnected from the central mainframe and telecommunicated to the Universal Archivist Norq. The two Universal Archivists were good colleagues, despite that Norq had achieved greater scholarship-fame than Pix because his research activities concerned a planet exponentially more interesting and universally significant than Earth.
“Good eon, Norq” said Pix.
“Good eon, Pix,” replied Norq. “Do you possess useful information to submit?”
“I possess it,” said Pix.
“Please make submission,” said Norq.
“I submit I have developed a plausible hypothesis about the identity of the creator of the Soho Stone,” said Pix.
“The Soho Stone,” said Norq, referencing briefly the central mainframe. “One of the few surviving physical artifacts from the obscure planet you have determined to study. Who do you hypothesize is the creator?”
“He is unnamed,” said Pix, for the digital files he was studying never identified their writer.
“The currently stated creator of the Soho Stone is Unknown,” said Norq. “Is it your intention to appear before the Symposium to make rational argument in favour of amending the creator to Unnamed?”
“That is my intention,” said Pix.
“Do you not believe such a change is quite minor?” asked Norq.
“Not all archival revision must be radical,” said Pix. “In addition, I believe that names are not always of primary significance. The information I have gathered, collated and transcribed provides great insight into an individual Earthling and by linking such insight to the Soho Stone I believe I will add much scholarship-value to the Archive’s exhibit.”
“I support your submissions. They are well founded,” said Norq.
“Thank you,” said Pix.
“Goodbye, Pix” said Norq.
“Goodbye, Norq,” said Pix and ended the telecommunication. After reconnecting to the central mainframe, he navigated to the entry on the Soho Stone. It read:
Origin: Earth (dead), c. 17th-22nd century A.D. (local time). Description: Fragment of presumed larger structure composed of limestone and clay being overlayed with the following symbols:
the only gold is the setting sun
all else amounts to none
coins clatter in a purse
as the rich man with distinction passes by
decomposing in the rattling hearse
[The above is obscured by a large X and several irregular lines, below which the symbols continue:]
i fucking love my wife and daughters
[The above is underlined.]
Significance: One of three surviving physical artifacts from its planet of origin. Creator: Unknown.
Although Pix had long ago memorized the entire central mainframe entry about the Soho Stone, he still enjoyed viewing its submissions. It kept his scholarly spirits up. He turned now to the only remaining information in his research he was sure succeeded the entry which he hypothesized described the creation of the Soho Stone.
I got home so late last night it was early. I thought everyone would be asleep, but my wife and daughters were all up. They were sitting in the living room together and hadn’t noticed me come in. The sun was just beginning to rise, filling the room with a gorgeous light, and they were talking, all three of them, whispering: about what I don’t know and it didn’t matter. The words didn’t matter. These words don’t matter. Because what I heard then, I’ll never forget. It was a sound. Pure, simple, and beautiful. It was the hum.