What else there but meandering like cattle from one bar to the next, out one door and in through another? Often I couldn't help but wonder what the point was. I could imagine the fun one might have had doing it of one's own free will, as I'd done initially, but enough was enough.

"Kinderton!" I barked assertively. He ignored me, humming something to himself. They might have been words, or a commerical jingle left over from the old days of hedonism or just a general stagnant mumble. What difference did it really make? He wasn't listening.

"Kinderton! How many more of these fucking places do we have to go through?" I shouted, my will to drink suddenly shattered. "What is the point of all this?" (This, I whispered to myself sotto voce) but he heard me anyway and stopped, spun on his heel and faced me.

"Marsaw, need I remind you that it was your idea initially to go out and have some drinks?"

"Kinderton, that was daaaaays ago. A few drinks I suggested, not an ocean of drinks I would float along on in a rubber raft with a can of beer in my hand. Don't you think we're taking this too far?"

(And yes, by this point I'd begun to suspect that Kinderton was behind all of this somehow, all the strange coincidences were not at all rather they were fabrications of Kinderton's mind which I'd somehow gotten dragged in to. That was my theory at the moment anyway.)

Kinderton pulled out two chairs from the shadows and set them down between us. "Have a seat, Marsaw." Solemn, hmmm. Kinderton wearing a mask of inutterable profanities.

We both sat down and faced each other. Kinderton shouted out for a pitcher of Margueritas and when I gave him a quizzical look because he was constantly ordering strange drinks which required straws, he shouted again: "And a dozen shots of Tequila..." Kinderton leaned down towards me. "Happy now, Marsaw?"

We sat wordlessly whilst waiting for the drinks to be served. A man wearing no shirt and in fact, nothing but a pair of chaps, scurried towards us with a heavy tray and only just managed to plop it down on the table before spilling it completely and cruelly. His brow was sweating. He was nearly hypervenitlating. He twitched in front of us for a few lingering seconds more and then tapped his right fingers on the table top and twirled off back towards the bar.

We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.

We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.

We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.

There was no music in the background, no DJ, no band, no jukebox, no humming. Just human chatter. Insect chatter. I could see it clearly, a bar full of Praying Mantis' drinking grasshoppers and twitching their spiked forelegs, articulating their prothoraxis'. No wonder there was no music. They were dressed in matching pieces of beach clothes. When a beach ball bounced in it was immediately burst by the first Praying Mantis to try to grab it with a spiked foreleg. Pop! That sent them all askitter. It unnerved them. But eventually they returned to their grasshoppers and calmed.

"I sense that you are beginning to resent me a little bit Marsaw, as though you somehow held me to blame for your situation." Kinderton had suddenly exhaled. Perhaps it was the burst beach ball which prompted him to speak.

"Well? Is it just chance?"

Kinderton held up a finger and bowed his head.

"You have to remember Marsaw that I was the one who found you out there, stumbling, lost, knowing nothing of yourself. Remember that I've taken you only as a guide. I am not leading you. If your thirst for drink was really abated, the door you opened would have taken you directly back outside. It is yourself who is keeping these doors opening to the next bar. Not me."

"Well, let's just try it now then..." I stood up. Kinderton stood up..

"Ok Marsaw, let's go..."

We walked purposefully, with me in the lead, towards the stairs leading to the front door. We mounted the stairs one by one, dripping with anticipation. I pushed open the swinging front doors, holding my breath, expecting the best.

We walked down the steps, one by one into a place called "The Pipe and Slippers", a fading wallpaper, cigarette-stained carpeting, dour lighting sort of place which opressed you from the first step in.

*****

You could feel the heaviness of boredom and resignation in the air like a black bean soup.

"Has every single person in here already surrendered?" I asked through the side of my mouth at Kinderton but Kinderton was no longer at my side. I stopped. I looked behind me. For the first time I wondered what would happen if I pushed the doors back open from the bar I'd come from. Would I return to that bar or would I simply disappear? Or maybe that was the trick to getting out!

I scurried back to the door and pushed it again.

I fell into a revolving door which had no exit but back into the foyer of "The Pipe and Slippers".

Ten heads turned simultaneously again at my arrival. I must have missed it the first time. They held my gaze for a second and then bowed their heads toward their pints again.

I thought I could hear Boz Scaggs coming from the juke box. Boz Scaggs. I shook my head.

I arrived to the bar itself, a typical semi-circle wherein the bar man was trapped with his towel of damp and mold and his sardonic grin.

I examined the taps to see what was available while the bar man allowed his face to morph into a brow of scepticism. I was miffed. The beer was shit. I wasn't surprised, I told myself quietly. I will not express my displeasure.

The bar man wasn't fooled.

"You're lucky that you're not in a red neck bar in Alabama or some place. There even Budweiser would be treated as some sort of suspicious intelekshall beer. Water with a trace of alcohol in it. Tasteless. Nothing foreign in it. You know? But here you are with the opportunity to drink some fine British lager. Now what'll it be?"

"What about bottled beer? I hate drinking out of bottles because good beer is not served in bottles very often but if it might net me the rare good beer, why I think I'd make an exception this time..."

The bar man wasn't impressed. He sighed and threw his dish rag over his shoulder for emphasis of his displeasure.

"We're all out of bottles, mate."

"I see." It was an extraordinarily aggressive conversation. From the bar man's end anyway. Belligerent. "Well in that case, Oyed lurv a pint of cider mate."

I fiddled with a tooth pick and wondered what I was doing. I was on auto pilot but I was wondering why and when I would want to come out of auto pilot and steer myself.

"So you really don't recognise me then?" the bar man slurred, slapping the pint of cider in front of me. It splashed outwards as if a frog had just lept into it. Maybe he'd actually slammed it down in front of me. It was not easy to say. Besides, I was already on my back foot from being accused of having failed to recognise him.

"What, do you mean have I been in here before? No. I don't think so. Do you sometimes work somewhere else? Perhaps we know each other from somewhere in the good old knee slapping days?"

"You'll see, Kinderton." He muttered, turning his back to me. "You'll see."

I turned to my cider and lifted it up to my lips. There is no world here. I am dreaming. If I tell myself this often enough perhaps I can allow myself to believe it. No one in this place was particularly chatty. They barely spoke even among themselves. One of them farted loudly and giggled to himself with pride. He tapped the arms of his mates. "Did you see? Did you see?"

Kinderton was suddenly standing beside me puffing on a cigar.

"So how are you getting on with the lads then?"

"Smashingly, Kinderton. The bar man seems on the verge of wanting to punch me in the face and thinks that I'm supposed ot know him from somewhere."

"You mean Barry?"

"Barry?"

"Barry, think about it..." He signaled for a snifter of Rumplemintz and opened a newspaper written in Cyrillic.

Barry Butterfield. He was burning crosses somewhere. No, They were flashlights. Dozens of flashlights waving up and down as they pushed through the foliage. They were looking for something. A lost child? No. An elephant? No.

They are looking for a field of butter. I was watching them in a hot air balloon, hovering over the clearing which awaited them.

Barry Butterfield led them out and they stood in the clearing and laughed to themselves joyously.

Suddenly from the wood came a Humvee hurtling headlights blaring, foot-to-the-floor speed, music pounding madly from enormous speakers and before anyone could break their fascination with the suddenness and inexplicability of what was happening, the Humvee rolled right over Barry Butterfield, squashed him right into the ground like a muffin and continued hurtling forward until it plunged back into the wood on the other side.

I am driving over small trees, steering around the larger ones as often as possible?

Did I really do that? Did I just run Barry Butterfield down?

I howled with laughter. The music was shouting out of the radio and I was shouting the occasional word or hook line I knew and in one hand the steering wheel, the other a bottle of cheap wine.

Barry Butterfield.

But if that was him, the bar man, well, he didn't seem that bad off. He didn't have a limp, he didn't flinch when an insect buzzed near his head. He didn't have any hideously visible scars and he wasn't bleeding from anywhere that I could see.

"Holy hockey sticks, Batman," I said, turning suddenly to Kinderton and gently easing his newspaper from down around his face. "How come did he...survive? I mean, he looks fine."

"Listen chum, I am not the ghost of Christmas past. I am not standing here reading about oil shortages and brown outs so I can make you relive your ugliest pasts. I've got real concerns about some of these wars, Out there. So whatever you've dreamed up in your little head, well it's just your imagination playing tricks on you. You're probably just not drinking fast enough."

"So is that Barry Butterfield or not?"

"Barry Butterfield is dead. That's not him. That's his replacement. But his replacement has Barry Butterfield's memories to keep him company from an otherwise empty history."

"So is that how Barry Butterfield died? I ran him down in the middle of the night in clearing within a forest? In a Humvee?"

"Well, I think it was on a highway. I think he was walking down the highway humming to himself with a gas can in his hand, walking back to his car stranded on the side of the road. You want to see pictures of his family?" Kinderton reached behind to his back pocket.

"No, no, that's certainly not necessary."

"This is where you wanted to be, man. Sitting in here drinking. So drink. If you drink fast enough and long enough that little pinch of a memory you just had will float right back out of you as quickly as it entered."

I wasn't enjoying my cider any more. Or was I?

I took a few more sips, just to test if I was still enjoying it or not. Yes. I was still enjoying it. I slurped it up like a dog. "More cider!" I squeeled. Kinderton smiled to himself knowingly, putting the newpaper back up in front of his face.

*********

I must have done alot of things to repress. It was becoming a little clearer by the third pint of cider.

That must be how I lost my memory of who I am. It's all in here somewhere. It's just like that fucking door that I can't use to get outside.

I have a fourth and fifth cider and even Kinderton raised his eyebrows with the speed with which they were knocked back.

The Barry Butterfield replacement bar man did not warm to me. He stared at me quite often which only made me drink faster. He seemed to be waiting for any excuse he could muster to smack me in the side of the head, punch me in the face, kick me in the kidney.

"Look, I regret it but well, maybe it was meant to be. You know I heard this story about Peter standing there with a little checklist of death. It's probably on a spread sheet to make the searches for every man's death day a little easier and quicker. Alot of work to do every day. Alot of dying. Alot of killing. But the date and time is predestined. You see? I was only performing as an instrument of fate."

Kinderton held up his hand because the Barry Butterfield replacement bar man was suddenly clenched like a fist of righteousness and listing heavily in my direction.

"Marsaw, I think it'd be better if we moved on from here. It's clear you're getting nothing out of this. Jesus, the audacity! To suggest that you were only a vehicle of fate! I've been doing this for years Marsaw but I have to say, you've got some serious fucking problems. You may have forgotten them for now but they won't go away. Real fucking problems. Do you see where you are? It's a prison."

He took me by the elbow and we walked back through the front door again only this time it wasn't a revolving door and this time we just walked out, into a wood on a winding road and then suddenly we were in an Inn.

*********

(possible rejoindre notes)

The synoptic gap is some sort of river running through Croatia, outside of Zagreb.

Before we embark upon it there is a terrible evening storm, dark punctuated only by lightening.


Think of that place outside of Zagreb in the mountains and they will be eating cheese and drinking beer in a river side
Café waiting for the timetable of the boat wearing they will traverse through marsaw’s own memories
Picture first the place, the discussion how much is explained
Then picture the ferryman, the boat, the night, the rain, the grass, the trees (types of trees)
Look for this café you frequented outside of Zagreb for photos use names.

*****

It's dark but we're out of the clubs, or so I thought. We open the door into another room and from there, Kinderton suggests that we look for a seat outside for a change of scenery.

The room we enter is homespun, rustic, foreign. I don't recognise the language of any of the signs that dot the walls and the black and white framed photos have no meaning for me. I recognise nothing yet it feels homely, it feels as though there is something infinitley less desperate and inhospitable. I'm grateful to be here for the change.

There are a few old men sat around a table speaking a language I don't know. A pair are playing checkers. Another pair are playing chess. They are all eating cheese plates and drinking beer and smoking, laughing.

the room is carpeted with a big fireplace as though it is meant to be a place of warmth from the cold outdoors. To me it feels like warmth anyway, a home I don't recognise and don't know but a home nonetheless.

I want to stay inside but Kinderton is rather insistent that we go outdoors. You don't want to mix with these people, believe me, he says, nodding to the fat older woman with too much make up and a bad red hair dye, clearly the unfortunate wife of the proprietor.

She pours too large beers and motions for us to wait outside.

"We need to be out here to see when the ferry arrives," Kinderton explains as we head out.

"What ferry?"

"The ferry we will be taking to our next destination..."

The air swallows me immediately. I feel as though I had not breathed in fresh air in years and for all I know, I had been indoors for years. I didn't know where I was or what year this was.

Rain slashes across the desk with a heavy wind. Wooden wind chimes go crazy in the background.

"Is it a beer ferry?" I asked, squinching my eyes as though temporarily blinded by a sunset.

"Oh no. The beer ferry is for reprobates and pederasts. The boat is always getting sunk. Mysteriously, of course. No other boats but the beer boats sink. Somebody suggested that it might be secret torpedoes fired from the synapses but those alleging it have provided tiny microscopic hairs of evidence, nothing substantial enough to involve the Cadre of Beer Makers who undoubtedly dislike the imagery that has been tied to their ferry."

"So which ferry are we riding on then?"

"You'll see. Drink your beer as quickly as possible. It fends off the rain. Don't ask me why. I think I read this in a paperback." He shouted something in a gutteral whisper to the inside, presumably to the bar maid. He barks. Drool forms at the right corner of his lip like a fang.

We sit silently trying to imagine that the blowing rain was not spatternig us like an ignorant puppy.

******

The sensory experiences are overwhelming. And the repetition gets boring. I crave a drinkless hole somewhere in a desert. Just water. Outdoors in the dry heat not outdoors in driving rain.

Kinderton continually nags me about my beer as though I'm straining to break from the pack and carry the ball all the way into a dark crevice through which I can exit on the outside.

Nobody finds solace in all this drinking. They are mimicking life in a series of unending caverns lit by the fiery eyes of the angry drunks. The shadows are hunched shoulders, like a buzzard oversees management of the scene, They were furry tongued with drink, slouched, lost in thoughts. What thoughts? Who knows. Miserable thoughts, no doubt. You can't make faces of pure misery in that shape if you aren't thinking miserable thoughts.

And here they are, everywhere, shuffling into each other like zombies. Drunken, fucked up zombies who don't want to eat human flesh they want to drink alcohol. any kind, all the time, in any form. They prowl around in circles around bar and at times I imagine I can see that they have furry hind legs they are standing on beneath their clothing. Of course it could certainly be my imagination. No matter how much drinking dulls the senses.

The rain is too loud to hear the ferry approaching but it uses lights. There are strobe lights attached to the front of the ferry announcing the arrival. Battery operated strobe lights. And in the darkness, in the stench of the driving rain that filled my nostrils with disgust, I saw those strobe lights approaching.

I snuffed out a cigarette and found myself impulsively straightening my clothes. Kinderton smiled to himself, exhaling a bluish stream of

What else there but meandering like cattle from one bar to the next, out one door and in through another? Often I couldn't help but wonder what the point was. I could imagine the fun one might have had doing it of one's own free will, as I'd done initially, but enough was enough.

"Kinderton!" I barked assertively. He ignored me, humming something to himself. They might have been words, or a commerical jingle left over from the old days of hedonism or just a general stagnant mumble. What difference did it really make? He wasn't listening.

"Kinderton! How many more of these fucking places do we have to go through?" I shouted, my will to drink suddenly shattered. "What is the point of all this?" (This, I whispered to myself sotto voce) but he heard me anyway and stopped, spun on his heel and faced me.

"Marsaw, need I remind you that it was your idea initially to go out and have some drinks?"

"Kinderton, that was daaaaays ago. A few drinks I suggested, not an ocean of drinks I would float along on in a rubber raft with a can of beer in my hand. Don't you think we're taking this too far?"

(And yes, by this point I'd begun to suspect that Kinderton was behind all of this somehow, all the strange coincidences were not at all rather they were fabrications of Kinderton's mind which I'd somehow gotten dragged in to. That was my theory at the moment anyway.)

Kinderton pulled out two chairs from the shadows and set them down between us. "Have a seat, Marsaw." Solemn, hmmm. Kinderton wearing a mask of inutterable profanities.

We both sat down and faced each other. Kinderton shouted out for a pitcher of Margueritas and when I gave him a quizzical look because he was constantly ordering strange drinks which required straws, he shouted again: "And a dozen shots of Tequila..." Kinderton leaned down towards me. "Happy now, Marsaw?"

We sat wordlessly whilst waiting for the drinks to be served. A man wearing no shirt and in fact, nothing but a pair of chaps, scurried towards us with a heavy tray and only just managed to plop it down on the table before spilling it completely and cruelly. His brow was sweating. He was nearly hypervenitlating. He twitched in front of us for a few lingering seconds more and then tapped his right fingers on the table top and twirled off back towards the bar.

We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.

We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.

We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.

There was no music in the background, no DJ, no band, no jukebox, no humming. Just human chatter. Insect chatter. I could see it clearly, a bar full of Praying Mantis' drinking grasshoppers and twitching their spiked forelegs, articulating their prothoraxis'. No wonder there was no music. They were dressed in matching pieces of beach clothes. When a beach ball bounced in it was immediately burst by the first Praying Mantis to try to grab it with a spiked foreleg. Pop! That sent them all askitter. It unnerved them. But eventually they returned to their grasshoppers and calmed.

"I sense that you are beginning to resent me a little bit Marsaw, as though you somehow held me to blame for your situation." Kinderton had suddenly exhaled. Perhaps it was the burst beach ball which prompted him to speak.

"Well? Is it just chance?"

Kinderton held up a finger and bowed his head.

"You have to remember Marsaw that I was the one who found you out there, stumbling, lost, knowing nothing of yourself. Remember that I've taken you only as a guide. I am not leading you. If your thirst for drink was really abated, the door you opened would have taken you directly back outside. It is yourself who is keeping these doors opening to the next bar. Not me."

"Well, let's just try it now then..." I stood up. Kinderton stood up..

"Ok Marsaw, let's go..."

We walked purposefully, with me in the lead, towards the stairs leading to the front door. We mounted the stairs one by one, dripping with anticipation. I pushed open the swinging front doors, holding my breath, expecting the best.

We walked down the steps, one by one into a place called "The Pipe and Slippers", a fading wallpaper, cigarette-stained carpeting, dour lighting sort of place which opressed you from the first step in.

*****

You could feel the heaviness of boredom and resignation in the air like a black bean soup.

"Has every single person in here already surrendered?" I asked through the side of my mouth at Kinderton but Kinderton was no longer at my side. I stopped. I looked behind me. For the first time I wondered what would happen if I pushed the doors back open from the bar I'd come from. Would I return to that bar or would I simply disappear? Or maybe that was the trick to getting out!

I scurried back to the door and pushed it again.

I fell into a revolving door which had no exit but back into the foyer of "The Pipe and Slippers".

Ten heads turned simultaneously again at my arrival. I must have missed it the first time. They held my gaze for a second and then bowed their heads toward their pints again.

I thought I could hear Boz Scaggs coming from the juke box. Boz Scaggs. I shook my head.

I arrived to the bar itself, a typical semi-circle wherein the bar man was trapped with his towel of damp and mold and his sardonic grin.

I examined the taps to see what was available while the bar man allowed his face to morph into a brow of scepticism. I was miffed. The beer was shit. I wasn't surprised, I told myself quietly. I will not express my displeasure.

The bar man wasn't fooled.

"You're lucky that you're not in a red neck bar in Alabama or some place. There even Budweiser would be treated as some sort of suspicious intelekshall beer. Water with a trace of alcohol in it. Tasteless. Nothing foreign in it. You know? But here you are with the opportunity to drink some fine British lager. Now what'll it be?"

"What about bottled beer? I hate drinking out of bottles because good beer is not served in bottles very often but if it might net me the rare good beer, why I think I'd make an exception this time..."

The bar man wasn't impressed. He sighed and threw his dish rag over his shoulder for emphasis of his displeasure.

"We're all out of bottles, mate."

"I see." It was an extraordinarily aggressive conversation. From the bar man's end anyway. Belligerent. "Well in that case, Oyed lurv a pint of cider mate."

I fiddled with a tooth pick and wondered what I was doing. I was on auto pilot but I was wondering why and when I would want to come out of auto pilot and steer myself.

"So you really don't recognise me then?" the bar man slurred, slapping the pint of cider in front of me. It splashed outwards as if a frog had just lept into it. Maybe he'd actually slammed it down in front of me. It was not easy to say. Besides, I was already on my back foot from being accused of having failed to recognise him.

"What, do you mean have I been in here before? No. I don't think so. Do you sometimes work somewhere else? Perhaps we know each other from somewhere in the good old knee slapping days?"

"You'll see, Kinderton." He muttered, turning his back to me. "You'll see."

I turned to my cider and lifted it up to my lips. There is no world here. I am dreaming. If I tell myself this often enough perhaps I can allow myself to believe it. No one in this place was particularly chatty. They barely spoke even among themselves. One of them farted loudly and giggled to himself with pride. He tapped the arms of his mates. "Did you see? Did you see?"

Kinderton was suddenly standing beside me puffing on a cigar.

"So how are you getting on with the lads then?"

"Smashingly, Kinderton. The bar man seems on the verge of wanting to punch me in the face and thinks that I'm supposed ot know him from somewhere."

"You mean Barry?"

"Barry?"

"Barry, think about it..." He signaled for a snifter of Rumplemintz and opened a newspaper written in Cyrillic.

Barry Butterfield. He was burning crosses somewhere. No, They were flashlights. Dozens of flashlights waving up and down as they pushed through the foliage. They were looking for something. A lost child? No. An elephant? No.

They are looking for a field of butter. I was watching them in a hot air balloon, hovering over the clearing which awaited them.

Barry Butterfield led them out and they stood in the clearing and laughed to themselves joyously.

Suddenly from the wood came a Humvee hurtling headlights blaring, foot-to-the-floor speed, music pounding madly from enormous speakers and before anyone could break their fascination with the suddenness and inexplicability of what was happening, the Humvee rolled right over Barry Butterfield, squashed him right into the ground like a muffin and continued hurtling forward until it plunged back into the wood on the other side.

I am driving over small trees, steering around the larger ones as often as possible?

Did I really do that? Did I just run Barry Butterfield down?

I howled with laughter. The music was shouting out of the radio and I was shouting the occasional word or hook line I knew and in one hand the steering wheel, the other a bottle of cheap wine.

Barry Butterfield.

But if that was him, the bar man, well, he didn't seem that bad off. He didn't have a limp, he didn't flinch when an insect buzzed near his head. He didn't have any hideously visible scars and he wasn't bleeding from anywhere that I could see.

"Holy hockey sticks, Batman," I said, turning suddenly to Kinderton and gently easing his newspaper from down around his face. "How come did he...survive? I mean, he looks fine."

"Listen chum, I am not the ghost of Christmas past. I am not standing here reading about oil shortages and brown outs so I can make you relive your ugliest pasts. I've got real concerns about some of these wars, Out there. So whatever you've dreamed up in your little head, well it's just your imagination playing tricks on you. You're probably just not drinking fast enough."

"So is that Barry Butterfield or not?"

"Barry Butterfield is dead. That's not him. That's his replacement. But his replacement has Barry Butterfield's memories to keep him company from an otherwise empty history."

"So is that how Barry Butterfield died? I ran him down in the middle of the night in clearing within a forest? In a Humvee?"

"Well, I think it was on a highway. I think he was walking down the highway humming to himself with a gas can in his hand, walking back to his car stranded on the side of the road. You want to see pictures of his family?" Kinderton reached behind to his back pocket.

"No, no, that's certainly not necessary."

"This is where you wanted to be, man. Sitting in here drinking. So drink. If you drink fast enough and long enough that little pinch of a memory you just had will float right back out of you as quickly as it entered."

I wasn't enjoying my cider any more. Or was I?

I took a few more sips, just to test if I was still enjoying it or not. Yes. I was still enjoying it. I slurped it up like a dog. "More cider!" I squeeled. Kinderton smiled to himself knowingly, putting the newpaper back up in front of his face.

*********

I must have done alot of things to repress. It was becoming a little clearer by the third pint of cider.

That must be how I lost my memory of who I am. It's all in here somewhere. It's just like that fucking door that I can't use to get outside.

I have a fourth and fifth cider and even Kinderton raised his eyebrows with the speed with which they were knocked back.

The Barry Butterfield replacement bar man did not warm to me. He stared at me quite often which only made me drink faster. He seemed to be waiting for any excuse he could muster to smack me in the side of the head, punch me in the face, kick me in the kidney.

"Look, I regret it but well, maybe it was meant to be. You know I heard this story about Peter standing there with a little checklist of death. It's probably on a spread sheet to make the searches for every man's death day a little easier and quicker. Alot of work to do every day. Alot of dying. Alot of killing. But the date and time is predestined. You see? I was only performing as an instrument of fate."

Kinderton held up his hand because the Barry Butterfield replacement bar man was suddenly clenched like a fist of righteousness and listing heavily in my direction.

"Marsaw, I think it'd be better if we moved on from here. It's clear you're getting nothing out of this. Jesus, the audacity! To suggest that you were only a vehicle of fate! I've been doing this for years Marsaw but I have to say, you've got some serious fucking problems. You may have forgotten them for now but they won't go away. Real fucking problems. Do you see where you are? It's a prison."

He took me by the elbow and we walked back through the front door again only this time it wasn't a revolving door and this time we just walked out, into a wood on a winding road and then suddenly we were in an Inn.

*********

(possible rejoindre notes)

The synoptic gap is some sort of river running through Croatia, outside of Zagreb.

Before we embark upon it there is a terrible evening storm, dark punctuated only by lightening.


Think of that place outside of Zagreb in the mountains and they will be eating cheese and drinking beer in a river side
Café waiting for the timetable of the boat wearing they will traverse through marsaw’s own memories
Picture first the place, the discussion how much is explained
Then picture the ferryman, the boat, the night, the rain, the grass, the trees (types of trees)
Look for this café you frequented outside of Zagreb for photos use names.

*****

It's dark but we're out of the clubs, or so I thought. We open the door into another room and from there, Kinderton suggests that we look for a seat outside for a change of scenery.

The room we enter is homespun, rustic, foreign. I don't recognise the language of any of the signs that dot the walls and the black and white framed photos have no meaning for me. I recognise nothing yet it feels homely, it feels as though there is something infinitley less desperate and inhospitable. I'm grateful to be here for the change.

There are a few old men sat around a table speaking a language I don't know. A pair are playing checkers. Another pair are playing chess. They are all eating cheese plates and drinking beer and smoking, laughing.

the room is carpeted with a big fireplace as though it is meant to be a place of warmth from the cold outdoors. To me it feels like warmth anyway, a home I don't recognise and don't know but a home nonetheless.

I want to stay inside but Kinderton is rather insistent that we go outdoors. You don't want to mix with these people, believe me, he says, nodding to the fat older woman with too much make up and a bad red hair dye, clearly the unfortunate wife of the proprietor.

She pours too large beers and motions for us to wait outside.

"We need to be out here to see when the ferry arrives," Kinderton explains as we head out.

"What ferry?"

"The ferry we will be taking to our next destination..."

The air swallows me immediately. I feel as though I had not breathed in fresh air in years and for all I know, I had been indoors for years. I didn't know where I was or what year this was.

Rain slashes across the desk with a heavy wind. Wooden wind chimes go crazy in the background.

"Is it a beer ferry?" I asked, squinching my eyes as though temporarily blinded by a sunset.

"Oh no. The beer ferry is for reprobates and pederasts. The boat is always getting sunk. Mysteriously, of course. No other boats but the beer boats sink. Somebody suggested that it might be secret torpedoes fired from the synapses but those alleging it have provided tiny microscopic hairs of evidence, nothing substantial enough to involve the Cadre of Beer Makers who undoubtedly dislike the imagery that has been tied to their ferry."

"So which ferry are we riding on then?"

"You'll see. Drink your beer as quickly as possible. It fends off the rain. Don't ask me why. I think I read this in a paperback." He shouted something in a gutteral whisper to the inside, presumably to the bar maid. He barks. Drool forms at the right corner of his lip like a fang.

We sit silently trying to imagine that the blowing rain was not spatternig us like an ignorant puppy.

******

The sensory experiences are overwhelming. And the repetition gets boring. I crave a drinkless hole somewhere in a desert. Just water. Outdoors in the dry heat not outdoors in driving rain.

Kinderton continually nags me about my beer as though I'm straining to break from the pack and carry the ball all the way into a dark crevice through which I can exit on the outside.

Nobody finds solace in all this drinking. They are mimicking life in a series of unending caverns lit by the fiery eyes of the angry drunks. The shadows are hunched shoulders, like a buzzard oversees management of the scene, They were furry tongued with drink, slouched, lost in thoughts. What thoughts? Who knows. Miserable thoughts, no doubt. You can't make faces of pure misery in that shape if you aren't thinking miserable thoughts.

And here they are, everywhere, shuffling into each other like zombies. Drunken, fucked up zombies who don't want to eat human flesh they want to drink alcohol. any kind, all the time, in any form. They prowl around in circles around bar and at times I imagine I can see that they have furry hind legs they are standing on beneath their clothing. Of course it could certainly be my imagination. No matter how much drinking dulls the senses.

The rain is too loud to hear the ferry approaching but it uses lights. There are strobe lights attached to the front of the ferry announcing the arrival. Battery operated strobe lights. And in the darkness, in the stench of the driving rain that filled my nostrils with disgust, I saw those strobe lights approaching.

I snuffed out a cigarette and found myself impulsively straightening my clothes. Kinderton smiled to himself, exhaling a bluish stream of