Monument Maker, page 70
Strange Angels—choristers.
Strange Dwarves—choristers.
Stranger in Khartoum Who Talks of Prophecy—chorister.
Stray Drunk from the Night Before in Grez-sur-Loing—chorister.
Julius Streicher—Nazi Party member and founder of the virulently antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer. Executed by hanging at Nuremberg Prison on 16 October 1946. His last words are reputed to be “Adele, my dear wife.”
Stressed Waiters at the Bar in Bourron-Marlotte—choristers.
August Strindberg—Swedish playwright, occultist, resident of the Hotel Chevillon in Grez-sur-Loing long ago now in the past, one hell of a man. Author of the classics Inferno and From an Occult Diary.
Dr. Strindberg—doctor at a mental home in Wuppertal who employed Frater Jim as an orderly.
Dr. Strindberg’s Pretty Wife—Frater Jim’s lover, mother of his son.
Hildegard von Strophe—aka Penny Apostrophe aka Penny Apo’strophe aka Penny von Strophe, artist, stripper, ceramicist, lover of Maximilian Rehberg and Pierre Melville, co-founder of the Church of the Stone of First Witness, named after the woman who was as soft as a feather on the breath of God.
Simeon Stylites—extravagant Syrian monasticist who sat on top of a pillar for thirty-seven years.
Suffocating Mother—chorister.
Sufi Master from Garnethill—gives the gift of ejaculating with no hands (in secret).
Sufis—practitioners of Qutub meditation.
Sunbather in a Bikini on the Opposite Bank of the River in Grez-sur-Loing—chorister.
Sun Ra—it’s after the end of the world, don’t you know that yet?
Sun Watchers—believe that women experience the caress of the sun much more vividly and sensuously than men. Therefore, the solar current is more easily transfused throughout the woman’s body. Deaf women, blind women, mute women, paralytics, the socially ostracised, the incomplete, these women are favoured amongst the Sun Watchers as being more adapted to bathing in the sun’s rays through forfeiting the traditional roles of women.
Super-Cute Alto with a Wide Face—chorister.
The Surgeon—Januist.
Clarissa Sutherland—project editor.
The Swallows of Summer—choristers.
Swans—in return.
Miss Sweden—perfectly unfazed old dear who facilitates The Grey Wolf’s new job as a history teacher in Mr. Scotia’s school after he traverses time.
Miss Sweden’s Husband in the Army—dead now, but it meant that she understood these kinds of top-secret assignations and was willing to admit that the “boys upstairs,” as she referred to them, were up to more than anyone ever imagined.
Miss Sweden’s Mum and Dad on Their First Awkward Date—in a bedsit in Kirklee Circus, in Glasgow.
Juliette Swedenborg—uncanny French war artist, could have painted Hitler’s room in the Führerbunker, only someone beat her to it.
Tall Karo Man with a Semi-Automatic Pistol—chorister.
Thomas Tallis—composer of the classic Spem In Alium Nunquam Habui aka Hopelessly Devoted To You. Great architect of the empty music.
Taxi Driver with no English—hopeless.
Taxidermist from Bethnal Green—chorister.
Team of Assistants on an Experiment in Time Travel—choristers.
Terrified Landlords and Restaurateurs in Athens—choristers.
That Writer Who Walked Off into the Snow—probably Robert Walser.
Three Boys Goading Each Other to Jump Off a Bridge—choristers.
Three Crippled Brothers—vengeful cripples, choristers.
Three Dumb Shepherds—God hates shepherds, believe me.
Three Giggling Japanese Girls Launching a Canoe into the Water—choristers.
Three Great Tzaddikim—witness to the doe that passed through three iterations of water.
Three Men and a Woman in Nothing but Underwear and Shoes—choristers.
Three People in the Garden—choristers.
Three Wise Men—wise enough to attend the birth of the Christ child in time.
Tiny Girl in a Red Swimming Costume Turning Cartwheels on the Opposite Shore—chorister.
Token Bob—Scotia’s pen pal, fellow hobbyist, subterranean, co-founder of the revived Church of the Stone of First Witness aka The SIRK, co-organiser of the Burntisland Conference alongside The Flashlight, partner, so the rumour went, of The Pink Panzer. Homeland security.
J.R.R. Tolkien—author of the classic The Silmarillion.
Tomnado—bassist with Helpless Clairvoyants.
Joseph Tosh—of Calderbank. One of the first British troops into Berlin, where he found the enemy gone. Worked at the Organon factory in Chapelhall. Lost his young bride, Isa Forsyth, to kidney failure at the age of only thirty-two. After the war travelled across Europe using his free rail pass in order to attend the Passion play in Oberammergau. Died at the age of sixty-four from a heart attack. Beloved memories.
The Tower—the whole edifice of personality when it becomes like a suit of armour that protects you from reality, from the fullness of experience of the world, from speaking your secret name.
Trader of Small Phalluses and Marital Toys—chorister.
Tragic Young Spouses—choristers.
Hugh Trevor-Roper—author of the classic The Last Days of Hitler.
Truants—choristers.
J.M.W. Turner—English Romantic painter.
Tina Turner—not Dionne Warwick.
Tutankhamen—boy king at the nebula.
Two Guys Stroking Each Other’s Arms on a Bench—choristers.
Two Madmen on Wheelchairs in the Park—choristers.
Two Muscular Young Men Bringing a Coffin Down a Thin Flight of Stone Stairs Between Two Buildings—choristers.
Two Old Bedouins Who Keep Using the Word Thahab for Gold—choristers.
Two Old Women—choristers.
Two Police Officers by a River in Africa—first witness.
Two Secretaries—choristers.
Two Sisters from the Art School Who Had an Orgy with Maximilian Rehberg and Who Smoked Cigarettes in Their Pussies and Made Sounds Like Owls—choristers.
Two Soldiers Walking Slowly Along a Dust Track Near the Marshes—choristers.
Uncle Stephen—by Forrest Reid.
The Unicorn—aka Y____.
Unknown Body Come Down a River in Africa—Genesis by Pierre Melville.
Unknown Members of the Public—choristers.
Unknown Serving Girl—spat in the face by Biraggo Fonte.
Unnamed Ambulanceman—chorister.
Unnamed Men in an Italian Prisoner-of-War Camp—choristers.
Unnamed Representative of the British Government—SIRK.
Unnamed Witness to the Siege of Khartoum—chorister.
Raoul Vaneigem—another tedious leftie.
Vendor Selling Battered Flower Petals Fried in Oil During the Siege of Khartoum—chorister.
Bonnie Ventura—wife of Frank, writer of tearful letters.
Frank Ventura—disappeared during the liberation of Greece, reappeared in dreams, never returned.
Paul Verlaine—mad poet shot by Rimbaud.
Village Toughs—choristers.
Mr. Visconti—chorister.
Mrs. Visconti—chorister.
Donald Visconti—Januist.
Donald Visconti’s Cruel Uncle—chorister.
George Visconti—Donald Visconti’s childhood tortoise.
Mariella Visconti—wife of Donald Visconti, lover of Frater Jim, Januist?
Robert de Visée—singer, instrumentalist and composer at the court of the French kings Louis XIV and Louis XV. Chorister.
Voices Calling from Windows in Grez-sur-Loing—choristers.
Voodoo Priests—choristers.
W____—Futurist, Januist, Donald Visconti’s first collaborator.
Richard Wagner—German composer overly concerned with his bud Nietzsche’s intemperate wanking.
Waldenses—live in an unheated shed in the garden of your mother all the better to feel the kiss of his mouth.
Warrior Monks—choristers.
Dionne Warwick—not Tina Turner.
Washington—chorister.
Danny Watson—Hildegard von Strophe’s poet boyfriend with his sexy unbuttoned shirt, hot boy in a council house to a soundtrack of the Stranglers, before Maximilian Rehberg calls him a crap poof with dreadlocks and steals her from him right under his eyes.
Waxwork Lesbians—choristers.
Wet Dogs—choristers.
Erhard Wetzel—worked for the Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg as “Judenreferent” and wrote the infamous “gas chamber” letter which provides the earliest paper trail to the formulation of the Final Solution. Sentenced to house arrest for twenty-five years, he was pardoned, his prison sentence was reduced and he was eventually released. Died on 24 December 1975 of, we can only assume, natural causes.
White Dog Lying in the Sun and Yawning in Blissful Boredom and with Great Skill—chorister.
White-Haired Man Who Runs the Boulangerie in Grez-sur-Loing
chorister.
White Marble—every day is marked with a white stone.
White Poodle That Looks Crazy Thrown into the Water by Its Owner Swimming Back to Shore in a Terror—chorister.
White Teenager with Dreadlocks—chorister whose name is God’s Own Singer of Songs.
Whole Families Wading Through the Nile by Night—choristers.
The Widowed and the Wounded—choristers.
Wife of Man Carving a Wooden Madonna During the Invasion of Crete—chorister.
William the Conqueror—in Normandy, William the Conqueror and his wife built two abbeys in order that they could be reconciled with the Church after they married without the Pope’s consent: the Abbaye aux Hommes and the Abbaye aux Dames.
Henry Williamson—author of the classic Tarka the Otter. Tarka really was a terrific otter.
Witchy Lover—chorister.
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz—Polish artist, author, philosopher, that cold star of the inter-war period, painter of the classic Suicide-to-be Three Seconds Before Pulling the Trigger.
Woman in Nemours Hacking Off the Claws of a Poulette—chorister.
Woman Shouting at a Man with a Walking Stick During the Siege of Khartoum—chorister.
Woman Who Is Obsessed with Black GIs—specifically their presence, or not, at Normandy.
Woman with an Enormous Ass Smothering a Small-Limbed Boy chorister.
Woman with Short Blonde Hair Who Displayed Her Twat—chorister.
Women and Children Who Cross the Nile by Night—choristers.
Women Dressed as Sorceresses in the Forest Around Villiers-sous-Grez—choristers.
Women in the Great Rundown Theatres of Greece After the War
choristers.
Women of the Village—choristers.
Women with Facial Hair—choristers.
William Wordsworth—poet. Author of the classic “The Prelude.”
Would-Be Initiates—choristers.
Wretched Cellmates—choristers.
Wretched Derelict in Khartoum—chorister.
Wretched Group of Boys and Men Led to Their Death by a Convoy of Tanks and Motorcycles—choristers.
X____—Nazi Futurist.
Xstabeth—Gordon of Khartoum’s talking mouse made up of the stars aka Elizabeth of the Cross who has no time for tales.
Xstabeth—sexy star goddess.
Y____—Nazi Futurist aka The Unicorn.
Yacob Yacob—guitarist with Helpless Clairvoyants.
W.B. Yeats—we have come to give you metaphors for poetry.
Yezidis in Khartoum—choristers.
Young Black Man in a Training Session in the Woods in France—chorister.
Young Boy Believing Himself to Be a Forgotten Thought of God—chorister.
Young Boy in Oversized Yellow Armbands Leaping from the Bank—chorister.
Young Boy Limping into the Palace During the Siege of Khartoum—chorister.
Young Boys Leaping from Rickety Piers—choristers.
Young Bureaucrat—chorister.
Young Couple in Swimwear Kissing Keenly on the Beach in Burntisland—choristers.
Young French Kid Selling Hard Rock LPs from the Boot of His Car—one-time lover of Flower, once.
Young Girl Catching Her Shadow—chorister.
Young Girl in a Black Swimming Costume—chorister where God begins.
Young Girl on a Fold-out Bed at the Foot of a Row of Terrible Rusting Gas Tanks—chorister.
Young Girls—choristers.
Young Girls in Flesh-Pink Bikinis—choristers.
Young Girls Slipping Their Bikinis Down in Order to Avoid Tan Lines—choristers.
Young Girls Spread Out on Towels—choristers.
Young Man Fellating an Older Man Against a Wall with His Robes Pulled Up During the Siege of Khartoum—chorister.
Young Man Sat on a Wall Sketching in a Square in Athens—chorister.
Young Man with a Beard on a Rescue Ship from Malta—chorister.
Young Man with Sticky-Out Ears—chorister.
Young Mother and Baby Posing for the Camera—choristers.
Young People—choristers.
Young SA Man of High Rank—chorister.
Young Teen on the Timpani—who are these people?
Zeno of Elea—Greek philosopher who claimed nothing can be achieved ever except in the impossible mind of God.
Zeus—sky god, father, protector, spirit, air. Raped Leda in the guise of a swan, in return. Perfect foolishness.
Monument Maker was completed in Grez-sur-Loing in the summer of 2018 thanks to a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship awarded by Creative Scotland.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Keenan’s This Is Memorial Device won the Collyer Bristow Award for Debut Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2017 Gordon Burn Prize. His third novel, Xstabeth (Europa, 2022), was described as “feel[ing] like being cut open to the accompanying sound of ecstatic music” by Edna O’Brien. Monument Maker is his fourth novel. He lives in Glasgow, Scotland.
David Keenan, Monument Maker
