Friday, July the 9th, 2004

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The Tale of Gaspard

Gaspard worked for the Gas Board. In appearance, he resembled the man dressed in red raising his left arm in Hieronymus Bosch's painting The Ship of Fools. (Incidentally, while we are—briefly—on the subject of art, you may or may not know that the famous foot from the credit sequence of Monty Python's Flying Circus was taken from Angelo Bronzino's Allegory : Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time.) Gaspard was both dutiful and dismaying. An air of glumness hovered o'er him; to some, it was a visible aura. Flies and other tiny annoying things with wings seemed to follow him around. Had he the wit, Gaspard could have made himself useful to the world's entomologists, but he was diffident as well as being dutiful and dismaying. His Gas Board desk was a sorry piece of office furniture, rickety and fragile. Gaspard sat at it for many, many hours each day, to no apparent purpose. There is a story by John Cheever which ends with the question: “Oh, what can you do with a man like that?” The same can be asked of Gaspard, for there is something almost inhuman in his dullness. Let us whisk him away, then, and place him in the icy wastes of Northern Canada, sitting on a felled log, surrounded by frisky reindeer, sipping from his flask of piping hot broth, as stars sparkle in the clear night sky. A voice booms from the heavens: “Gaspard! Gaspard!” He is stricken with terror, yet he knows this is the most important thing that has ever happened to him, so he reaches into the pocket of his anorak and takes out a little notepad and a biro. Irritatingly, just as he is about to jot down whatever supernatural commands he is to be given, the voice falls silent, and the only sound is that of a pitiless Arctic gale roaring in his ears. We shall leave him there, as he drinks the last of his broth, and though he remains ignorant of his destiny, we can rest assured that Gaspard is soon to become the Stipendiary Vizier of Cack and know aught but wassail and glee for all eternity, for he is immortal, and he is magnificent.