Thursday, June the 2nd, 2005

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How I Plunged Into the Bottomless Viper-pit of Gaar

For too many years to count I travelled the world visiting bottomless viper-pits. I studied them, sketched them, photographed them, and wrote up lengthy and detailed descriptions of each and every one. My patience is almost inhuman, and it needed to be, because sooner or later some well-meaning numbskull would ask, in relation to this or that bottomless viper-pit, “Tell me, Professor Bindweed, if the viper-pit is bottomless, where in heaven's name are the vipers?” And each time I would sigh, and give my interlocutor a look of saintly forebearance, and reply, “On ledges, of course, from very near the top and then at intervals of a few feet all the way down!” For in my experience this was invariably the case, from the bottomless viper-pit of O'Houlihan's Wharf to the bottomless viper-pit of San Christoboole.

Then, one day, armed only with the shreds of a map and a flask of brackish water, I came upon the bottomless viper-pit of Gaar. One thing you must understand is that I had been at this work for so long that very little surprised me anymore. So please do not think I am exaggerating when I say that I was thunderstruck, bedazzled, giddy and incredulous, for I was all those things and more. The amazing thing about the bottomless viper-pit of Gaar was that it had been turned into a sort of tourist attraction. A fence had been placed around it, gigantic gaudy signs flashed on and off, and fairground music blared out of stacks of loudspeakers. To exploit one of the remotest bottomless viper-pits in the world for commercial gain seemed wrong to me, and, suddenly drained of my inhuman patience, I marched up to the person standing behind the counter of the ticket booth.

I ranted and raved at him for at least five minutes, shouting my head off and flailing my arms, and do you know what? He took absolutely no notice of me. This enraged me even further, and I was about to give him a clean, decent sock on the jaw when I heard running footsteps behind me and a withered voice croaking “Wait! Wait!” I turned to see an unkempt beanpole of a fellow hastening towards me. He slowed up, wheezing, and staggered the last few steps.

“Don't harm the lad, please, sir. He's a good worker, takes the cash and hands out the tickets. His name is Tommy. He's a deaf, dumb and blind kid, sure plays a mean pinball.” I looked back at the urchin and, sure enough, he bore a striking resemblance to Roger Daltrey circa 1969. I harrumphed.

“Would you be wanting to buy a ticket then, sir?” asked the beanpole.

I think my reply, a speech based on a lecture I had given at the Bottomless Viper-Pit Club Of Helsinki a decade ago, took about an hour to deliver. I am not sure how much of what I said got through to the lanky ingrate. I do know that he sat down on a nearby tuffet as exhaustion set in, that Tommy packed up and went home, that I inserted some new rhetorical tricks into my tirade, that clouds scudded across the sun and that the sun itself set before I had finished. My listener had now fallen into a deep sleep asprawl his tuffet. Ignoring him, I clambered over the wicket gate that the pinball wizard had locked before he left, and approached the bottomless viper-pit of Gaar with mounting excitement. It was dark and I had no torch, but I picked my way carefully towards the edge of the bottomless viper-pit. I laughed aloud with glee as I heard the familiar hiss of countless pit-vipers. The years seemed to fall away, and I felt again that tingle of unalloyed happiness that I experienced when, as a spindly twelve-year-old, I had accompanied my father to the bottomless viper-pit of Shoeburyness, my very first bottomless viper-pit. A knot of nostalgia tightened in my stomach. I put my hand up to my hat, and doffed it. It was my father's hat, the one he had given to me on that very day, the same hat which he had brandished to ward off a particularly malevolent pit-viper that was about to sink its fangs into my heart.

I doffed my father's hat, and I plunged into the bottomless viper-pit of Gaar.