The Grinagog

THE GRINAGOG

I carried the book ‘Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard’ as precariously as possible. The tissue-paper ‘pages’ over each internal colour-plate made a sound as if a whispering recital of the words inside the book by a ghost of an erstwhile reader. Each of my jolting steps made the sound possess increasingly less subtle friction between sinewy foxing and flimsy interleaving.

I opened the door, scarcely daring to breathe in case the audible addition of asthma might tip the interference over the edge into noise. The inhabitant of the room still had a smile on his face from ear to ear, a feat he managed to maintain even in his sleep. The head on the pillow was otherwise at rest, with no perceptible wider-mouthed indulgence towards snoring to disfigure the smile. In fact, I wondered if he breathed at all when awake, assuming that his breath was, as now, so incredibly light during sleep.

A book brought as a gift for a man so soundly asleep seemed only slightly less pointless than bringing a brand new hat for a corpse. I imagined a clown doll or, rather, a clown puppet like Andy Pandy as being a more suitable present because I would be able to dangle it above his wide smiling face and playfully tickle the nose with the idly swinging feet, padded like paws. That would be more fitting than tickling him with my bare finger. What insinuations could be drawn if I did that? I dreaded to think that someone was watching me think about tickling him so directly...

Perhaps one quick tickle would not do any harm. I stretched out my finger in a tentative pointing – sweat beading my brows – my muscles a zither of nerves – and, oh, the book crashed to the floor as I fought back my inclination to tickle him where no man should ever be tickled...

His eyes opened wider than their earlier knotted prune-rind could have ever portended. They stared straight at me. They were nakedly vulnerable after so long asleep; each was spread-edged with the produce of a glistening yellow teardrop.

“I’ve brought you a book to read ... in case you wake up,” were the first words that came to my head, complete with convincing ellipsis. I managed to say them through a sudden chesty onset of curdled reflux. I had not imagined he would wake up in a million years. I had been told he suffered from chronic sleep-sickness, but nobody seemed sorry for him as he was evidently thriving on it, given the humour of his dreams. That was why every visitor was instructed to be as quiet as possible to allow the sickness its full spate of good health vis-a-vis his mental well-being. Waking only brought depressive worries, as I surely knew.

The smile had vanished. I was devastated, but I managed myself to fabricate a broad smile so as to entice back his - but with little success. Surely it was now time to tickle him for real, I thought, hoping that he was ticklish. However, still prone, he managed to mime the clumsy jigs of an invisible puppet hanging from his fingers. I felt he must have read my mind before he had woken up.

I picked up the book from the floor and bashfully showed him that it was all I had brought with me. By now, I was breathing stertorously and this misled him to think it was the book breathing. Exploiting his misreading, I waggled the book from side to side like a clown puppet, simultaneously coughing up some ventriloquills in audible ranks of squashed-insect print...

The smile returned, like the sun suddenly rising above the horizon of benighted Crampton Town. A smile so wide, it went beyond the ears, like a grin grinning.

He now tried to raise body as well as hands, showing every intention to tickle the tips of my pippins...

But, following due hiatus, he fell back upon his pillow into an even deeper sleep than before. The deepest sleep it s possible to imagine. I tore some tissue-papers from the book so as to house a huge knot of phlegm that I had just choked up – and then, almost dying with laughter, I squashed them in a scrunched-up ball on top of his bald head like a new hat.





(written today and first published here)