A story about Jacob's adventures through his own disturbed thoughts and memories and through his search for the secret rivers of London and his own associated mythologised fantasies based on stories told to him by his father when he was a little boy.

I've also written a short film script based on this part of the novel.
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What happens to a baby’s body as it freezes on a barren hillside? What happens as its vital organs just stop?

Or may be it screams itself to death? Ruptures the lungs with the incredible force!

Do the toes twitch? Frantically? Does anybody hear? Do they shut their ears?

How long does it take for a baby to disappear? For the ants to take away every tiny little piece of baby! Fragments of flesh on their backs, kuli-fashion! Just the carcase! Exposed! On the barren hillside!

Windswept!

How long does it take for all those tiny bones, all those unfused parts to scatter? Across the landscape! How long for the worms to pull the teeth? How long to take them down to their summer hideaways? How long?

Or is it chewed to pieces by a wild dog or a savage cat? Or ripped apart by an eagle’s beak?

And what about the candles that fall? And the straw that burns leaving its dark signature across once cold earth. Did anybody watch as the bones burned? Were they pink or were they black? Or were the flames so hot, so, so, so hot that they turned them really white?

And did the fat explode fragments high into the night sky?

What happens when a baby burns?

Why did I not burn? …Just a little.

Or have to hack off the toes? The toes that died of frostbite!

What happened to the real Jacob? The one they took away? What happened to the boy without the demon eyes! The one to rival cousin Eddie! The one that mother would have adored! She would have loved him! But instead she got me. And she knew my little secret. She knew even before I knew. And even very young, even before I myself had learnt of my little secret, I could see it in her eyes and the straightness of her mouth. I could see it in the curvature of her hands and the way she stood over me. I could see it in her neat black handbag, and her polished black shoes and immaculately pressed dresses. And in her hair that never moved. Her perfume. Her rouge. Her perfectly striped lawn that cancerously scarred most of the garden! And in her blank world without stories! And most of all, in her constant dripping of verbal acid! On everything I did! And everything I didn’t! And everything I said! And everything I wanted. I could see there was something enormous. I could see there was a secret! A secret unspoken. A secret I may or may never know.

Pepe thinks I’m always too hard on myself. He thinks mother just resented having a baby, and so took it out on me. But, I don’t think that’s true. She wanted cousin Eddie. May be he’s the real Jacob? And she adored Martha when she came along much later. Martha, with the pretty smile and the golden hair. Martha, oh so, so normal! Whatever happened to little Martha? With the pretty smile. With the golden hair. With the normal eyes. And the normal thoughts inside her head. Whatever happened to her? I never was allowed to touch her. To play with her. I never could hide the dirt below my skin. I never could hide them. I never could from my mother.

NO! It’s not true what Pepe said! Mother had no problems with babies. Just me. She could see what dad refused to see. Or may be just like me. Just like the way I tried so hard to purify myself. So hard to cleanse myself of the inevitable. A whole lifetime spent. A whole lifetime of scratching the surface. And then scratching the wound. And then scratching beneath the surface of the wound. May be my dad’s method of purification were his gentle words. Never ever underestimate! Never underestimate the power of gentle words! They enslave you! Better than any bullet! And he told such fantastical stories. Stories of what seemed in my naïve innocence to be of mythological beasts with special powers, and giant extinct birds from New Zealand, and tiny elephants and hippos running around Cyprus with enormous dormice. And he told me about the secret rivers of London. Secret rivers they covered up and tarmac’d over. Secret rivers where I imagined lived blind secret river fish and strange creatures with no names. I loved those stories! And I sat often with chin on knuckles, wide-eyed, enthralled, following his every word, and every movement of his hands and the light in his eyes. I listened often. Often that is, until one day. The day I burned him alive.

I still have the stench of burning flesh inside my nostrils. And I still hear the baby screaming its last breath. And the deformed shell of a burnt-out car. And the deformed shell of a burnt-out human. From the moment I wake up, even while I’m still in bed, until my eyes close again at the end of the night. While I’m drinking coffee or eating lunch. Whenever I pick up a knife or just pick up a pen. And whenever I get a good idea and even when I don’t. No matter what I read or the music I listen to. And even when I paint or just look at my hands and try to peal off the blood permanently encrusted on my fingertips. I hear and I smell and I see and I feel the burning and the freezing and the screaming. I close my eyes, and they’re there. I open them wide, and they’re still there. Like my very own shadow! The shadow inside my head!



---Jib, Jan 2001, the words and ideas came to me while lying in bed early in the morning at home in London.