(no subject)
This has not been properly checked for spelling and grammar yet, I will do it later. For now, a short story which I am obviously trying to gain some sort of praise for.
It’s been said that with the invention of every new mode of communication, there is always a flurry of excitement when someone begins to believe he is using it to communicate with the dead. There is no better example of this than my uncle. A heavy-set man who would come home drunk to his very breath and then claim vehemently that he was no such thing. The very same man who once sold life insurance to an entire retirement home, all the while neglecting to mention the void upon death. The latter, and numerous other acts, were only completely realised after his departure. With the opening in mind, my uncle, having lived a more than averagely impoverished life, bought his first telephone at the age of 38. He was no stranger to the device and would make no secret of his owning one, often calling up at what can only be called ‘ungodly hours’ to intensely inquire as to your health and whether you wanted life insurance.
After a few years of late-night calls and early morning ringing my uncle stopped phoning altogether. Contact remained in place with regular visits from my uncle to ours or ours to his. We would all sit around a large dining room table where we would consume whatever my mother had made for us that night. Being her brother, his joining us never left a sore taste in anybody’s mouth (though my mother’s food was the brother of no-one). He was an animated diner, both in talk and method, often finishing long before others and delaying them through conversation from finishing their own portion.
He could talk of most things at length, though few of his ideas have stuck with me. I remember his elaborate plans should nuclear war surprise us all, his homebuilt bunker (never built) and how his vast knowledge of farming machinery would be of great help (again, he had no such knowledge). I once asked why he never phoned anymore, something which my parents discouraged me from doing so, they much preferred the new system, and being met with a secretive silence from my uncle. I did not push the matter further.
Not until a few months went by, that is. But I did not ask him, I asked her, my aunt. A timid woman, thin in posture, who would, if you let her, talk about Julie Andrews with such vigour.
“Aunt,” I began, “How come my uncle doesn’t phone us anymore? He used to phone regularly at infrequent hours and now our phone is muted.”
My aunt looked resigned and answered, “Oh, he phones. Just he does not phone you. Nor anybody for that matter.”
I admit to being saddened by this. I enjoyed hearing my uncle’s increasingly excited voice down the phone and often copied his enthusiasm. Who could he be phoning? I asked her this question.
“Do not worry yourself about it. It isn’t anybody; our phone has been broken for a while.”
I dropped the matter, satisfied with my aunt’s answers.
Nevertheless, two weeks after the above conversation I asked my uncle who he dials nowadays. He, again, went silent but I asked again. This time, broken by my questioning, he laughed and told me to follow him to his private study. It was a short walk and shortly after we were standing by a desk, upon which sat the only phone in the house. With a small key I assume he kept on his person, he unlocked the drawers and brought forth volume upon volume of notebooks, pads, manuscripts, transcripts and books. Intricately written on each was the name of some historical figure. Borges, Stravinsky, Wilkes-Booth and Stanshall were the main three featured repeatedly on many tomes, and though there were others my memory fails me as to who they were. I asked what was going on.
My uncle was energetic once more, “You’ll not believe what I’ve discovered. It is the answer to your question and to many, no, any others! I was awake late one night, watching the BBC and decided to phone your very house about a question that had entered my head. I picked up the phone only to hear another voice talking.”
“That’s no more than a crossed line, uncle!”
“Exactly what I thought! But it wasn’t, it was so much more. No matter how many times I hung up, clicked and dialled the voice remained, always on the other side of the line. So I spoke to the other person to try to discover some mutual solution that would free our lines. After much consternation we gave up and ended up talking. At some stage I must’ve made a reference of some sort to JFK because the man’s voice rose.
‘“JFK?”’ He said, ‘“John F Kennedy?”
‘“Yes,” I said, following up with ,”Why?’
‘”I shot the man!”
“Of course, I didn’t believe him. It was a ridiculous claim. I laughed it off and asked him to explain. He simply went on, in great detail, about the day of the assassination and his role. He talked about his own background, family, the exact gun he used and finally, his name. Lee Harvey-Oswald. I was astounded, I could no longer speak. I put the phone down on its hook immediately and tried to sleep.”
“Was it really him?” I asked my uncle.
“There’s more,” he replied and carried on, “the next morning I put off going to the phone for as long as I could until my curiosity forced me to pick it up. There was no Harvey-Oswald but there was another voice. After that conversation there was another, after that, another. The results you can see within these books filled with notes and diagrams which explain each person’s life along with their contribution to history! Truly remarkable stuff.”
He continued in the same vein for a few months while news of his discovery, now made public to myself, spread quickly. Within two months he was making an appearance on Richard & Judy to discuss his findings and to promote his upcoming biographies of historic figures onto the Book Club list. It was when he was down for the recording that my aunt got a phone call from the public library.
BELOW IS A TRANSCIPT OF THE ORIGINAL BROADCAST THAT TOOK PLACE ON **/**/** ON THE RICHARD & JUDY TELEVISION PROGRAMME.
RICHARD - Well, yes, let’s see what’s next shall we?
JUDY - We’ll be talking to the man responsible for making an engine that runs on water, um, thus solving the world’s petrol problems.
RICHARD - That’s right, we’ll be asking him what films he likes.
JUDY - But first, a man who speaks to the dea..
RICHARD - I’ll do this bit, erm, well, he speaks to the dead through his telephone. Nobody knows how but he can. He’s written biographies of the people he speaks to, more about them later. Um, also, if you have any questions got on the, phone as we’ll be opening the lines for him later.
JUDY - Yes.
RICHARD - And here he is.
UNCLE - Hello Richard, Judy.
RICHARD & JUDY TOGETHER - Hello.
RICHARD - Now, how did this happen?
Here my uncle retold what I have told you above. After a few minutes they go to the phones.
RICHARD - So, to the phones. On line one we have a surprise for you, your own wife.
UNCLE - Ah, put her on then!
AUNT - Hello dear..I got..
UNCLE - Hello.
AUNT - Yes, erm, I got a phone call from the library this morning about some overdue books.
UNCLE - We’ll talk about this later. Heh, who’s next Richard?
AUNT - No dear, this is important. They say you took out some books on Jorge Louis Borges, whoever that is, and that Vivian Stanshall, and they haven’t taken them back for weeks. You haven’t even got them renewed. And I noticed when watching that he’s one of the people you’ve written about and got thinking maybe they’re connected somehow?
UNCLE - Who’s next on the line Richard?
RICHARD - No, um, let’s hear her some more.
UNCLE - I don’t think that’s wise.
My uncle never made it onto the Book Club list; his publisher’s dropped his books immediately and my aunt got a job on the show. She left him soon after and is now a producer for Channel 4. My uncle was not so successful. After being exposed his publishers abandoned him and the UK press gave him everything they had. His face, previously well-known anyway, became recognisable to every person he met and each time they brandished him a liar.
My uncle began phoning us soon after with more of the same requests as before. But he no longer writes us letters.
It’s been said that with the invention of every new mode of communication, there is always a flurry of excitement when someone begins to believe he is using it to communicate with the dead. There is no better example of this than my uncle. A heavy-set man who would come home drunk to his very breath and then claim vehemently that he was no such thing. The very same man who once sold life insurance to an entire retirement home, all the while neglecting to mention the void upon death. The latter, and numerous other acts, were only completely realised after his departure. With the opening in mind, my uncle, having lived a more than averagely impoverished life, bought his first telephone at the age of 38. He was no stranger to the device and would make no secret of his owning one, often calling up at what can only be called ‘ungodly hours’ to intensely inquire as to your health and whether you wanted life insurance.
After a few years of late-night calls and early morning ringing my uncle stopped phoning altogether. Contact remained in place with regular visits from my uncle to ours or ours to his. We would all sit around a large dining room table where we would consume whatever my mother had made for us that night. Being her brother, his joining us never left a sore taste in anybody’s mouth (though my mother’s food was the brother of no-one). He was an animated diner, both in talk and method, often finishing long before others and delaying them through conversation from finishing their own portion.
He could talk of most things at length, though few of his ideas have stuck with me. I remember his elaborate plans should nuclear war surprise us all, his homebuilt bunker (never built) and how his vast knowledge of farming machinery would be of great help (again, he had no such knowledge). I once asked why he never phoned anymore, something which my parents discouraged me from doing so, they much preferred the new system, and being met with a secretive silence from my uncle. I did not push the matter further.
Not until a few months went by, that is. But I did not ask him, I asked her, my aunt. A timid woman, thin in posture, who would, if you let her, talk about Julie Andrews with such vigour.
“Aunt,” I began, “How come my uncle doesn’t phone us anymore? He used to phone regularly at infrequent hours and now our phone is muted.”
My aunt looked resigned and answered, “Oh, he phones. Just he does not phone you. Nor anybody for that matter.”
I admit to being saddened by this. I enjoyed hearing my uncle’s increasingly excited voice down the phone and often copied his enthusiasm. Who could he be phoning? I asked her this question.
“Do not worry yourself about it. It isn’t anybody; our phone has been broken for a while.”
I dropped the matter, satisfied with my aunt’s answers.
Nevertheless, two weeks after the above conversation I asked my uncle who he dials nowadays. He, again, went silent but I asked again. This time, broken by my questioning, he laughed and told me to follow him to his private study. It was a short walk and shortly after we were standing by a desk, upon which sat the only phone in the house. With a small key I assume he kept on his person, he unlocked the drawers and brought forth volume upon volume of notebooks, pads, manuscripts, transcripts and books. Intricately written on each was the name of some historical figure. Borges, Stravinsky, Wilkes-Booth and Stanshall were the main three featured repeatedly on many tomes, and though there were others my memory fails me as to who they were. I asked what was going on.
My uncle was energetic once more, “You’ll not believe what I’ve discovered. It is the answer to your question and to many, no, any others! I was awake late one night, watching the BBC and decided to phone your very house about a question that had entered my head. I picked up the phone only to hear another voice talking.”
“That’s no more than a crossed line, uncle!”
“Exactly what I thought! But it wasn’t, it was so much more. No matter how many times I hung up, clicked and dialled the voice remained, always on the other side of the line. So I spoke to the other person to try to discover some mutual solution that would free our lines. After much consternation we gave up and ended up talking. At some stage I must’ve made a reference of some sort to JFK because the man’s voice rose.
‘“JFK?”’ He said, ‘“John F Kennedy?”
‘“Yes,” I said, following up with ,”Why?’
‘”I shot the man!”
“Of course, I didn’t believe him. It was a ridiculous claim. I laughed it off and asked him to explain. He simply went on, in great detail, about the day of the assassination and his role. He talked about his own background, family, the exact gun he used and finally, his name. Lee Harvey-Oswald. I was astounded, I could no longer speak. I put the phone down on its hook immediately and tried to sleep.”
“Was it really him?” I asked my uncle.
“There’s more,” he replied and carried on, “the next morning I put off going to the phone for as long as I could until my curiosity forced me to pick it up. There was no Harvey-Oswald but there was another voice. After that conversation there was another, after that, another. The results you can see within these books filled with notes and diagrams which explain each person’s life along with their contribution to history! Truly remarkable stuff.”
He continued in the same vein for a few months while news of his discovery, now made public to myself, spread quickly. Within two months he was making an appearance on Richard & Judy to discuss his findings and to promote his upcoming biographies of historic figures onto the Book Club list. It was when he was down for the recording that my aunt got a phone call from the public library.
BELOW IS A TRANSCIPT OF THE ORIGINAL BROADCAST THAT TOOK PLACE ON **/**/** ON THE RICHARD & JUDY TELEVISION PROGRAMME.
RICHARD - Well, yes, let’s see what’s next shall we?
JUDY - We’ll be talking to the man responsible for making an engine that runs on water, um, thus solving the world’s petrol problems.
RICHARD - That’s right, we’ll be asking him what films he likes.
JUDY - But first, a man who speaks to the dea..
RICHARD - I’ll do this bit, erm, well, he speaks to the dead through his telephone. Nobody knows how but he can. He’s written biographies of the people he speaks to, more about them later. Um, also, if you have any questions got on the, phone as we’ll be opening the lines for him later.
JUDY - Yes.
RICHARD - And here he is.
UNCLE - Hello Richard, Judy.
RICHARD & JUDY TOGETHER - Hello.
RICHARD - Now, how did this happen?
Here my uncle retold what I have told you above. After a few minutes they go to the phones.
RICHARD - So, to the phones. On line one we have a surprise for you, your own wife.
UNCLE - Ah, put her on then!
AUNT - Hello dear..I got..
UNCLE - Hello.
AUNT - Yes, erm, I got a phone call from the library this morning about some overdue books.
UNCLE - We’ll talk about this later. Heh, who’s next Richard?
AUNT - No dear, this is important. They say you took out some books on Jorge Louis Borges, whoever that is, and that Vivian Stanshall, and they haven’t taken them back for weeks. You haven’t even got them renewed. And I noticed when watching that he’s one of the people you’ve written about and got thinking maybe they’re connected somehow?
UNCLE - Who’s next on the line Richard?
RICHARD - No, um, let’s hear her some more.
UNCLE - I don’t think that’s wise.
My uncle never made it onto the Book Club list; his publisher’s dropped his books immediately and my aunt got a job on the show. She left him soon after and is now a producer for Channel 4. My uncle was not so successful. After being exposed his publishers abandoned him and the UK press gave him everything they had. His face, previously well-known anyway, became recognisable to every person he met and each time they brandished him a liar.
My uncle began phoning us soon after with more of the same requests as before. But he no longer writes us letters.