Free
by John McGroarty
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: A couple of strong ones.
Description: Amidst the present turmoil of the eurozone, a financial wizard meets his fate.
_____________________________________________________________________
Francis Lamont was a type of wizard. Yes, that’s what he was. No doubt about it. That’s how to describe him. A modern type of wizard. A wizard for our times. The new axis of the world. One of the gods around whom the earth now spins. He could buy and sell them, bear and bull them, trick and fool them, fry and spell those who were not as agile in the arcane arts of financial wizardry as he. Francis Lamont, that’s La Mont by the way, lived in that marshy, swampy city on the Seine, the new high temple of Europe. We say lived, but perhaps inhabited, or resided, or simply filled a hole, a crack in space-time, would be a better description. For Francis Lamont could have occupied his moment in space-time anywhere. In a hut on some wasteland in the outskirts of Moscow, in Timbuktu, on the Moon. He dwelled in an immense town house in the European Quarter, in a post-modern baronial spread of over eight hundred square metres. He lived alone and from his solitude spawned a financial empire which wormed its little fingers into every orifice of the globe. His mansion was bare for despite his, let’s not be shy, billions, that’s billions, Francis Lamont was the worst kind of miser. A spendthrift of medieval proportions. Perhaps the harvest would fail, his flowering gardens of banknotes would wither and die, be struck down by a pestilence. Be blown off into the cybernothingness from which they had come. He was now in his seventies, that is, he thought he was in his seventies, for he was no longer sure. His forties, his fifties, and then his sixties had slipped by as he sat in front of his computer screens, his fingers battering down on the keys, like some money-making Mozart banging out the music of the age. Eine grosse Geldmusik. His brain faster than the computers’ central nervous systems sending some shares up to heaven and others down into hell and the flotsam to his bank accounts in the snowy Swiss Alps or to the vaults of the Mediterranean minor monarchy of the Grimaldis. Francis Lamont did not only live one day each day, in twenty-four hours he would live many. At three o’clock when it was starry in the northerly night he was awake for the Hong Kong markets opening and he would then sit in front of his screens watching the figures dance and flicker in Yen and in Dollars and in Euros and in Pounds as the earth slowly tilted towards daytime in Europe. At eleven he would eat and snooze on his bunk till three when the world opened up in the far west of the Americas. At ten he would switch off all his terminals, eat a light repast, and lie down to sleep. He let his feeling of safety in the soft glade of greenbacks cocoon him and slowly rock him into a profound, dreamless, sleep. He had trained himself not to think about anything and this he had been able to extend even to his dreams. He hadn’t been out of his titanic townhouse for twenty years. He hadn’t thought or dreamed of a woman in all that time. He had become a sensorially, sexually, deprived great Renaissance money man of our time. But once it had not been so. Francis Lamont had once been a real human being. He took the sun. He lived only one day at a time. He cried for the injustices of the world and the disappointments of the many. A vivacious life-loving baby boomer with a solid faith in the future. And he had loved. The prosaic Louise Black had become the sonorously pleasing Louise Lamont in 1968. She had borne him two children and they had been happy for many years. Louise was a revolutionary fired with the fuel of the post-war dream, and an unshakable belief that the future would see the fulfilment of the promise of mankind. She was reared on a mixture of the paradisiacal futuristics of the scientific republic of H G Wells and George Bernard Shaw, on the liberation of the proletariat of Marx and Engels and the non-conformity of Thoreau. On the bringing of reason and love to the affairs of man. Yes, my friend, reason and love. The future was hers. And so, then, was it Francis Lamont’s. But one dry day in October 1980, Francis Lamont discovered something about himself. Something that had been buried so deep that he hadn’t even suspected that it was there. Had forgotten. He discovered that day in October that he was a coward. A coward who could not love. Could not bring love to the affairs of mankind. Could not even bring it to himself. He and Louise were in Berlin for a conference, for she was a campaigning journalist then and he a high-flying economist adjunct to the World Bank. There had been a Saturday morning meeting and Francis had been approached by some men bearing gifts. Trouble was brewing all over the world and many needed the favours and contacts that Francis could provide to move their business along. A little grease in the eyes to make them swivel off beam. A little oil in the necks to make the heads turn the other slippery way. Guns for butter for little old Francis. The bank account was already open. Already full. All he had to do was nod his head. It took him a little over forty minutes. Forty, just forty, for his soul. Later he met Louise and the children on the lion’s bridge in the Tiergarten as if nothing had happened. As if he were as before. As if he were not the lowest, yes, the lowest, of cowards. As they strolled through the leaves of early Autumn and the children rushed through the trees whooping, Francis suddenly stopped. There in front of him there was a huge multitude of people destroying the woods. Thousands and thousands of men and women and little children with axes and knives slashing and chopping down the trees, scavenging for firewood. They all stopped and looked at Francis for a moment and then carried on with their work. Francis stood still and watched. What is it, Francis, what can you see? Francis? What is it? You’re scaring me. Francis? It is abject, wretched, he said, and the vision disappeared. It was after that that the dreams came. All the tortured forms that filled his nights. The gaunt hunger-stricken faces. All the pleading voices. All the laments and unanswered prayers. And the man in his dreams who spoke to him in German. Das ist die Welt, he said, liebe sie alle. Francis couldn’t love them all. He was a coward. He slowly withdrew. From Louise, from life, from himself. He couldn’t love. Couldn’t love. At forty he was dried out and adrift in a tunnel of lovelessness. In a tunnel of fear. But still the tortuous dreams continued. Explosions. Half buried body parts and beautiful young women dancing with bloody corpses and skeletons. Stick children and bloated babies. Francis was going mad in his dreams. And madder still in his waking hours. Louise left him. He was taken into a lunatic asylum. And yet the dreams and the visions would not abate. The full horror of the history of man played itself out in the slumbering hours of Francis Lamont. The man in his dreams spoke to him in tongues he did not know. Jeered at him. Laughed at his wretchedness. At his abjectness. Then he spoke in English. Love them! Love them all!! Love, you fucking cunt!! LOVE THEM ALL. On the fortieth night there was a calm in the dream world of Francis. The man took him by the hand and quietly led him up a long flight of hard stone steps into a vast shadowed house of stone. Granite. Freezing cold. A rocky tomb of an abode. Here you shall not dream, he said, here you shall not think. Here you shall not see the Sun. He then showed him his little bed in the corner and made Francis lie down. When Francis lay down, the rock turned soft and cushioned his body. Francis slept. Slept in his dreams. It was true, he did not dream and when he awoke he saw the man looking at him with a sad expression on his face. There was another next to him. He had long dark hair that fell down his back and a hard sharp moustachioed face. They were speaking in a language that Francis did not understand. Then the other man turned to Francis and said in German, du bist ein Nagetier, eine Ratte. They started to laugh and then the man said in English, now you are mine, now you shall love something else. Komm mit mir. Francis took the man’s hand and he showed him the computers and the dark swivel chair from which Francis would make his billions. Francis sat down and all the screens lit up. He recoiled. There on the screens were all the horrible dreams that he had had but speeded up. They slowly faded to be replaced by charts and illuminated tables of statistics and numbers. Jetzt bist du kein Nagetier, du bist ein Zauberer, said the man, ein Zauberer, aber du bist nicht frei. And so Francis’s bewitchment began. An armed bewitchment. A haunting armed to the teeth that would armour his bank accounts over the next thirty years. That would disperse the fear and the horror of the world from his dreams. Sometimes the man from his dreams would appear to laugh, to mock. Now you are Europe, he would say, now you are Civilization. Zauberer. The first crack in the haunting came with age. Francis was overwhelmed one day with a desire to know his age. His own age. The year he was born. When he began. Amid the figures and the charts of his fortune Francis needed to know his own ratios and his own percentages, the profit margin of his own being. He phoned his lawyer. Philip, he said, I need you to tell me when I was born. Philip checked his files. 1940. On the twenty-fifth of June. That was the first fact of the being of Francis Lamont. He hung up and went into the bathroom. He looked at his old man self in the mirror. When he sat back down at his computers he typed the following sentence on a search engine: I want to be free. There were four hundred and sixty four million results, but no answers. Francis went over and lay down on his bed, I want to be free, he said. I want to be free. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them the man from his dreams was standing over him. He leant down and took Francis’s hand and led him back to his screens. Look, he said softly, there are two little boys I want you to save. Look. On the screen there was a little boy lying in a hospital bed. His mother was stroking his head. The boy was screaming. Twisted in pain. Look, said the man from Francis’s dreams, look at the baby’s back. Francis focused. There was a raw fungal growth covering part of the child’s back. Like a huge monstrous septic pool eating into the boy’s back. Into his flesh. It seemed as if it were on fire, in sulphurous flames. Francis shook his head. The mothers of Fallujah say that Allah should show no forgiveness. No mercy. I cannot save this child, said Francis. Yes, Francis. First you must give everything you have back. Give it to the victims. All of your money, this house. Everything. And then you must be a different type of wizard. Cast different spells. Healing ones. Conjure up other treasures. Heal all of the children and then you will be free. Francis closed his eyes and tried not to think about anything. He sat for twenty minutes and when he opened his eyes there was a message on the screen. Du bist keine Ratte. Francis acted fast. He picked up his phone and started to give orders to his solicitors. He transferred shares and stock options. Cancelled accounts and dropped debt reclamation procedures. He worked for three days like this. By the night of the third day Francis was a poor man. Even the house was sold. The profits placed in the account of a charity. Francis lay down on his bed and slept. He dreamt of a Christmas he had had when his children were small. His beautiful wife and his beautiful children. And there in the corner of his dream was that man again. He smiled at Francis. Merry Christmas, he said. Now we are going to save that other little boy, come, come. Francis followed him out of the living room and down the hall. They entered another room with an old black and white TV. The man turned it on. There was a close up of a little boy in a bow tie with tousled hair. Do you know who this little boy is? How old were you there, Francis? Four? Five? Do you know where you are? The screen shot widened and the little boy could be seen sitting in a pew in a church. It’s my mother’s funeral. What happened to your mother, Francis? She, Francis stopped. He couldn’t speak. She had a cerebral haemorrhage. She was too slight for this world. Too delicate. Too delicate a flower. Francis swallowed hard. What happened to your father? Where is your father? Francis couldn’t think. Think, Francis, think. He couldn’t imagine his father in little pieces. Blown into nothing. Into oblivion. Blown out of the sky by the missiles of war. Cry, Francis. Be afraid. They loved. They believed, Francis. They loved you. They loved everything. The future was theirs. They lived on the edge of the future. On the edge of tomorrow. They lived, said the man in Francis’s dream, for you. For all of us. The man turned off the TV. He pulled Francis to his feet. I want to be free. You will be soon, I promise. The man led Francis up a long flight of steps and through a skylight up onto the roof. They love you Francis. I want to be free. You will be when you have faith, Francis. When you have faith. They were on the edge of the roof. It was night and Francis couldn’t see anything, only some dim lights far off. Do it, Francis, said the man. Have faith. They are waiting for you. The whole world is waiting for you. Francis moved towards the centre of the roof and then turned. They are waiting for you; they have always been waiting for you. Francis started to run towards the man. Yes, Francis, come, come, yes, have faith, they love you, they’re waiting. Francis picked up speed and kept running faster and faster and didn’t stop until he reached the future, the future that was his, the future that was theirs, the future that had been promised us all.
Swearwords: A couple of strong ones.
Description: Amidst the present turmoil of the eurozone, a financial wizard meets his fate.
_____________________________________________________________________
Francis Lamont was a type of wizard. Yes, that’s what he was. No doubt about it. That’s how to describe him. A modern type of wizard. A wizard for our times. The new axis of the world. One of the gods around whom the earth now spins. He could buy and sell them, bear and bull them, trick and fool them, fry and spell those who were not as agile in the arcane arts of financial wizardry as he. Francis Lamont, that’s La Mont by the way, lived in that marshy, swampy city on the Seine, the new high temple of Europe. We say lived, but perhaps inhabited, or resided, or simply filled a hole, a crack in space-time, would be a better description. For Francis Lamont could have occupied his moment in space-time anywhere. In a hut on some wasteland in the outskirts of Moscow, in Timbuktu, on the Moon. He dwelled in an immense town house in the European Quarter, in a post-modern baronial spread of over eight hundred square metres. He lived alone and from his solitude spawned a financial empire which wormed its little fingers into every orifice of the globe. His mansion was bare for despite his, let’s not be shy, billions, that’s billions, Francis Lamont was the worst kind of miser. A spendthrift of medieval proportions. Perhaps the harvest would fail, his flowering gardens of banknotes would wither and die, be struck down by a pestilence. Be blown off into the cybernothingness from which they had come. He was now in his seventies, that is, he thought he was in his seventies, for he was no longer sure. His forties, his fifties, and then his sixties had slipped by as he sat in front of his computer screens, his fingers battering down on the keys, like some money-making Mozart banging out the music of the age. Eine grosse Geldmusik. His brain faster than the computers’ central nervous systems sending some shares up to heaven and others down into hell and the flotsam to his bank accounts in the snowy Swiss Alps or to the vaults of the Mediterranean minor monarchy of the Grimaldis. Francis Lamont did not only live one day each day, in twenty-four hours he would live many. At three o’clock when it was starry in the northerly night he was awake for the Hong Kong markets opening and he would then sit in front of his screens watching the figures dance and flicker in Yen and in Dollars and in Euros and in Pounds as the earth slowly tilted towards daytime in Europe. At eleven he would eat and snooze on his bunk till three when the world opened up in the far west of the Americas. At ten he would switch off all his terminals, eat a light repast, and lie down to sleep. He let his feeling of safety in the soft glade of greenbacks cocoon him and slowly rock him into a profound, dreamless, sleep. He had trained himself not to think about anything and this he had been able to extend even to his dreams. He hadn’t been out of his titanic townhouse for twenty years. He hadn’t thought or dreamed of a woman in all that time. He had become a sensorially, sexually, deprived great Renaissance money man of our time. But once it had not been so. Francis Lamont had once been a real human being. He took the sun. He lived only one day at a time. He cried for the injustices of the world and the disappointments of the many. A vivacious life-loving baby boomer with a solid faith in the future. And he had loved. The prosaic Louise Black had become the sonorously pleasing Louise Lamont in 1968. She had borne him two children and they had been happy for many years. Louise was a revolutionary fired with the fuel of the post-war dream, and an unshakable belief that the future would see the fulfilment of the promise of mankind. She was reared on a mixture of the paradisiacal futuristics of the scientific republic of H G Wells and George Bernard Shaw, on the liberation of the proletariat of Marx and Engels and the non-conformity of Thoreau. On the bringing of reason and love to the affairs of man. Yes, my friend, reason and love. The future was hers. And so, then, was it Francis Lamont’s. But one dry day in October 1980, Francis Lamont discovered something about himself. Something that had been buried so deep that he hadn’t even suspected that it was there. Had forgotten. He discovered that day in October that he was a coward. A coward who could not love. Could not bring love to the affairs of mankind. Could not even bring it to himself. He and Louise were in Berlin for a conference, for she was a campaigning journalist then and he a high-flying economist adjunct to the World Bank. There had been a Saturday morning meeting and Francis had been approached by some men bearing gifts. Trouble was brewing all over the world and many needed the favours and contacts that Francis could provide to move their business along. A little grease in the eyes to make them swivel off beam. A little oil in the necks to make the heads turn the other slippery way. Guns for butter for little old Francis. The bank account was already open. Already full. All he had to do was nod his head. It took him a little over forty minutes. Forty, just forty, for his soul. Later he met Louise and the children on the lion’s bridge in the Tiergarten as if nothing had happened. As if he were as before. As if he were not the lowest, yes, the lowest, of cowards. As they strolled through the leaves of early Autumn and the children rushed through the trees whooping, Francis suddenly stopped. There in front of him there was a huge multitude of people destroying the woods. Thousands and thousands of men and women and little children with axes and knives slashing and chopping down the trees, scavenging for firewood. They all stopped and looked at Francis for a moment and then carried on with their work. Francis stood still and watched. What is it, Francis, what can you see? Francis? What is it? You’re scaring me. Francis? It is abject, wretched, he said, and the vision disappeared. It was after that that the dreams came. All the tortured forms that filled his nights. The gaunt hunger-stricken faces. All the pleading voices. All the laments and unanswered prayers. And the man in his dreams who spoke to him in German. Das ist die Welt, he said, liebe sie alle. Francis couldn’t love them all. He was a coward. He slowly withdrew. From Louise, from life, from himself. He couldn’t love. Couldn’t love. At forty he was dried out and adrift in a tunnel of lovelessness. In a tunnel of fear. But still the tortuous dreams continued. Explosions. Half buried body parts and beautiful young women dancing with bloody corpses and skeletons. Stick children and bloated babies. Francis was going mad in his dreams. And madder still in his waking hours. Louise left him. He was taken into a lunatic asylum. And yet the dreams and the visions would not abate. The full horror of the history of man played itself out in the slumbering hours of Francis Lamont. The man in his dreams spoke to him in tongues he did not know. Jeered at him. Laughed at his wretchedness. At his abjectness. Then he spoke in English. Love them! Love them all!! Love, you fucking cunt!! LOVE THEM ALL. On the fortieth night there was a calm in the dream world of Francis. The man took him by the hand and quietly led him up a long flight of hard stone steps into a vast shadowed house of stone. Granite. Freezing cold. A rocky tomb of an abode. Here you shall not dream, he said, here you shall not think. Here you shall not see the Sun. He then showed him his little bed in the corner and made Francis lie down. When Francis lay down, the rock turned soft and cushioned his body. Francis slept. Slept in his dreams. It was true, he did not dream and when he awoke he saw the man looking at him with a sad expression on his face. There was another next to him. He had long dark hair that fell down his back and a hard sharp moustachioed face. They were speaking in a language that Francis did not understand. Then the other man turned to Francis and said in German, du bist ein Nagetier, eine Ratte. They started to laugh and then the man said in English, now you are mine, now you shall love something else. Komm mit mir. Francis took the man’s hand and he showed him the computers and the dark swivel chair from which Francis would make his billions. Francis sat down and all the screens lit up. He recoiled. There on the screens were all the horrible dreams that he had had but speeded up. They slowly faded to be replaced by charts and illuminated tables of statistics and numbers. Jetzt bist du kein Nagetier, du bist ein Zauberer, said the man, ein Zauberer, aber du bist nicht frei. And so Francis’s bewitchment began. An armed bewitchment. A haunting armed to the teeth that would armour his bank accounts over the next thirty years. That would disperse the fear and the horror of the world from his dreams. Sometimes the man from his dreams would appear to laugh, to mock. Now you are Europe, he would say, now you are Civilization. Zauberer. The first crack in the haunting came with age. Francis was overwhelmed one day with a desire to know his age. His own age. The year he was born. When he began. Amid the figures and the charts of his fortune Francis needed to know his own ratios and his own percentages, the profit margin of his own being. He phoned his lawyer. Philip, he said, I need you to tell me when I was born. Philip checked his files. 1940. On the twenty-fifth of June. That was the first fact of the being of Francis Lamont. He hung up and went into the bathroom. He looked at his old man self in the mirror. When he sat back down at his computers he typed the following sentence on a search engine: I want to be free. There were four hundred and sixty four million results, but no answers. Francis went over and lay down on his bed, I want to be free, he said. I want to be free. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them the man from his dreams was standing over him. He leant down and took Francis’s hand and led him back to his screens. Look, he said softly, there are two little boys I want you to save. Look. On the screen there was a little boy lying in a hospital bed. His mother was stroking his head. The boy was screaming. Twisted in pain. Look, said the man from Francis’s dreams, look at the baby’s back. Francis focused. There was a raw fungal growth covering part of the child’s back. Like a huge monstrous septic pool eating into the boy’s back. Into his flesh. It seemed as if it were on fire, in sulphurous flames. Francis shook his head. The mothers of Fallujah say that Allah should show no forgiveness. No mercy. I cannot save this child, said Francis. Yes, Francis. First you must give everything you have back. Give it to the victims. All of your money, this house. Everything. And then you must be a different type of wizard. Cast different spells. Healing ones. Conjure up other treasures. Heal all of the children and then you will be free. Francis closed his eyes and tried not to think about anything. He sat for twenty minutes and when he opened his eyes there was a message on the screen. Du bist keine Ratte. Francis acted fast. He picked up his phone and started to give orders to his solicitors. He transferred shares and stock options. Cancelled accounts and dropped debt reclamation procedures. He worked for three days like this. By the night of the third day Francis was a poor man. Even the house was sold. The profits placed in the account of a charity. Francis lay down on his bed and slept. He dreamt of a Christmas he had had when his children were small. His beautiful wife and his beautiful children. And there in the corner of his dream was that man again. He smiled at Francis. Merry Christmas, he said. Now we are going to save that other little boy, come, come. Francis followed him out of the living room and down the hall. They entered another room with an old black and white TV. The man turned it on. There was a close up of a little boy in a bow tie with tousled hair. Do you know who this little boy is? How old were you there, Francis? Four? Five? Do you know where you are? The screen shot widened and the little boy could be seen sitting in a pew in a church. It’s my mother’s funeral. What happened to your mother, Francis? She, Francis stopped. He couldn’t speak. She had a cerebral haemorrhage. She was too slight for this world. Too delicate. Too delicate a flower. Francis swallowed hard. What happened to your father? Where is your father? Francis couldn’t think. Think, Francis, think. He couldn’t imagine his father in little pieces. Blown into nothing. Into oblivion. Blown out of the sky by the missiles of war. Cry, Francis. Be afraid. They loved. They believed, Francis. They loved you. They loved everything. The future was theirs. They lived on the edge of the future. On the edge of tomorrow. They lived, said the man in Francis’s dream, for you. For all of us. The man turned off the TV. He pulled Francis to his feet. I want to be free. You will be soon, I promise. The man led Francis up a long flight of steps and through a skylight up onto the roof. They love you Francis. I want to be free. You will be when you have faith, Francis. When you have faith. They were on the edge of the roof. It was night and Francis couldn’t see anything, only some dim lights far off. Do it, Francis, said the man. Have faith. They are waiting for you. The whole world is waiting for you. Francis moved towards the centre of the roof and then turned. They are waiting for you; they have always been waiting for you. Francis started to run towards the man. Yes, Francis, come, come, yes, have faith, they love you, they’re waiting. Francis picked up speed and kept running faster and faster and didn’t stop until he reached the future, the future that was his, the future that was theirs, the future that had been promised us all.
About the Author
John McGroarty was born in Glasgow and now lives in Barcelona, where he works as an English teacher. He has been writing short stories for many years. His acclaimed long short story Rainbow is a McStorytellers publication.