You may have seen me. That is, if you ever look up into the airy spaces. Few do. Some look straight ahead into the distance, unseeing, sure of their path; some look down, watching out for things not to tread in; others glance sideways at pretty girls as they pass. Just occasionally a flawless morning or an irrepressible carefree mood will set the stroller’s eye a-wandering, and I may be taken in as one of several irritations on an otherwise symmetrical arrangement of planes and curves. Or the gaze may even rest on me for a moment, and the beholder wonder idly – such curiosity evaporates instantly – who I am supposed to be. Next time you pass St Paul’s on the south side, do look up. You will see five statues in various unlikely poses above a phoenix that perpetually does whatever a phoenix is supposed to do. I am the one on the right.
Nonsense, you say. Whoever heard of a sentient statue? Well, one could cite the famous Commendatore, but he is only a dramatic device, albeit a good one. A neat bit of fiction, nothing more. The nature of yours truly is quite another matter. So already there’s one thing less to trouble your sleep: you needn’t worry that I’m going to creak into movement and come to drag you down to hell. I don’t do tricks, either.
But here I feel a little clarification may be required. I don’t want you to think that all statues have a secret life. Far from it. Take my four companions up here, for example; they are not as I. They are statues, pure and simple. Oh, no doubt they are worthy fellows in their way, creditable effigies; but they haven’t a thought between them. Mind you, I suppose that if you do bother to consider us, you will think Simon – he’s the one at the other end – a likelier vessel for thought than I, as he stands and gazes wisely and wistfully at the top of your head. I merely sit and stare vacuously with blind, time-eroded eyes in the general direction of Fleet Street. For the record – just in case you’re the sort of person who feels happier knowing such things – my name is Matthias, or perhaps I should say that is the name of the saint whose stone representation I inhabit. Or am. I’m not sure which.
By now you may have dismissed what I’m trying to tell you out of hand. If so, all I can say is: that is your right and your folly. Farewell! Or rather: begone! (I could say worse; I have a prodigious vocabulary of invective accumulated over the years.) If, however, you are still with me – and I suppose that, logically, you must be – let me first of all congratulate you on your wisdom or idle curiosity, then reward you by telling you a little about how I came to be here. You have, of course, heard of reincarnation. I am not talking about the old lady’s little Joey soaring free over the outback the next time round, or about the Belsen butcher getting his just deserts, or about any other hazy, karmic notions, though for all I know, such things may happen. No, I am talking about how it really is.
When my turn came round again (my most recent impending regeneration, I mean), I decided I would avoid at all costs yet another pointless repetition of the whole sorry, messy business that is human life. I was simply not prepared to face all those crushed aspirations, mucky emotions, and, worst of all, the ghastly, never-ending learning process that begins at the breast, is thought complete at twenty, suffers intermittent thromboses over the next half-century and achieves its glorious disintegration on the death-bed, much to the relief of the student, who has been inattentive at best. Oh, come off it! you say. It’s not that bad. We all have our ups and downs; while there’s life there’s hope; etcetera, etcetera, etcetera – you name it, there are plenty of the little gems. No, believe me, I’ve been through it often enough. I know. I knew then. It just wasn’t on.
So I looked for a loophole. No, such a thing is not a purely mortal prerogative. I began to read the small print (that is, in fact, a meaningless thing to say, since no print of any sort is to be found there, but I thought a petty, legalistic metaphor might appeal to you, might make me seem almost human, eh?). What, after all, was the principal requirement? That ‘the subject should adopt a human (or animal) form.’ Eureka! There was my key. So simple! Yet I won’t shun praise if you consider it appropriate; after all, who else has ever bothered – or even thought – to look for an escape clause? No, don’t tell me you wouldn’t know if they had. As far as I know, I’m still unique. Credit where credit’s due.
Having found the key, I began to muse upon its possibilities. All that was required was imagination, and I had plenty of that. (One day you will also learn that modesty is pointless.) It didn’t take long to find something suitable. I won’t go into the reasoning behind my choice – it probably won’t interest you, and besides, I’m sure I must have forgotten some of it; suffice it to say that the stone had much to recommend it. After all, it was fairly new at the time; everything that was anything went on around it; best of all, it fulfilled admirably my chiefest desire: not to have to do anything. In retrospect I would say that its only real drawback was that it was to prove somewhat … permanent.
Now that the subject of time has been touched on (only obliquely, though, because I do like to maintain some sort of flow), I think a few more words on reincarnation might not come altogether amiss, since I wouldn’t wish you to continue to struggle along under the weight of the commoner misconceptions. If you’re going to stay with me, you might as well know where you are. Oh, by the way, while I think of it again – time. Good old time. Well, you see, it’s not at all how you imagine it to be; even the most inventive theories are pretty wide of the mark, and they are often the nearest. I just thought I ought to point it out. So that you won’t think I’m holding anything back. All right? Good. Now, where was I? Oh yes.
This reincarnation business isn’t a continuous process, you know. I mean, we don’t keep popping off and popping up again. We’re kept in store, so to speak – a sort of suspended animation in the most literal of senses – until we are needed again. Aha! say you cynics who have stayed on for the hell of it. Who are ‘we’? Why don’t the mysterious ‘we’ take advantage of all that accumulated experience and become supermen? Ah, alas, alas, alackaday! If only … if only … Well, the long and the short of it is that we just don’t get any better. In any sense of the word. At least, it may happen that one appearance has more to be said for it than the previous one, but that is merely fortuitous. There is certainly no progression. I know I don’t get any better; I get worse. I don’t know what happens to the saints – if they exist. I suppose they’re not allowed another go in case they balls it up.
But I digress (as they say), and by rather a long way. We shall now return to my account of how I got where I am today. In short, this is what happened: I had my idea, chose my site and filled in my application form (again, an image for your benefit alone). I may tell you that it did not meet with approval. But there was nothing that could be done about it; I had adhered to the letter of the law. Ho ho! I had pulled a fast one! (Our transatlantic friends have such interesting expressions. I should know; this spot has always been a magnet for tourists, well, perhaps not always, but at least since the Grand Tour.) However, a word (well, two, actually) to the would-be wise guy: don’t bother.
Anyway, for better or for worse, in due course I entered my stone. Became it. I will be it and it will be me until it no longer exists. I’m well past my first quarter-millennium by now. Somehow we have managed to survive it all, even despite some rather spectacular attempts to dislodge us/it/me a few years back. Very noisy and smoky it was, too. A direct hit was obviously too much to ask for. And now I’ve lost my unimpeded view. This building used to be the giant of the City; now it’s dwarfed by all these glass and steel monsters that have come forth and multiplied.
By the way, please don’t imagine that because of my present nature I am insensitive. I feel things, you know. Don’t tell me that I am straining your credulity too severely, not now we’ve come this far together. As a matter of fact, it was a surprise to me (to use a gross understatement); I was sure my chosen form would remove such problems. Now I am even more certain that it was a piece of deliberate cruelty, arranged out of spite. Noses, you know, put out of joint.
Why cruelty? you ask. Well, as I said, I feel things. Just as you do. The only difference is how I react; I can’t. If it freezes, I suffer exquisite torment. (I greatly deplore the current passion for clean buildings; I feel sure grime possesses certain insulating properties. I also regret the veneration of all things ancient – the desire to preserve at all costs – as I regret wise-guyery, arrogance and other sundry sins of the spirit. But all such regrets are just a little academic. Back to the point.) If my stone bakes, my mind gasps for air. You, on the other hand, would simply adjust the air conditioning or plop into a crowded pool. Oh, let us be quite clear about one thing: if you were to take a chip off my old block (I’d rather you didn’t) and subject it to the most rigorous scientific analysis, you would find nothing but best Portland. That’s the beauty/hideousness of the thing: it was all managed without skin, nerve-endings and whatnot. Of course, my immobility must have added that certain je ne sais quoi. And pigeons are no respecters of the human form.
Worse still (oh yes, there is worse), when I talk of feelings I do not refer simply to physical sensations. Sadly, I must admit to having fallen prey to one of the commonest human ailments: loneliness. I freely confess that in this particular instance I have only myself to blame. A miscalculation. You see, there the problem doesn’t arise. There one is not obliged to watch, day in, night out, the ordinary activities of ordinary people. Believe me, it’s one thing to moan about the dull routines of everyday life; it’s quite another to be unable to enjoy them, to have to watch, powerless to join in and discover once again whether it really is that bad. Next time I shall celebrate the ordinary. I shall cultivate an existence of unrelieved mediocrity and greyness. It’ll be lovely.
I suppose what I really miss is company of some sort, even though I’ve never been gregariously inclined, as far as I can remember. Not that I don’t like solitude – love it, if you must know; it’s just that I’d like to be able to choose when to come out of it. To put it simply, I’d like a bit of a chat every now and then. Whatever else can be said about them, these petrous boobies up here aren’t exactly hot on stimulating conversation.
We are disappointed, you say. Or perhaps disillusioned would be nearer. You have failed to deliver the goods.
What would you have me do? Give historical and biographical details of some of the other ‘me’s? What good would that do? How would you corroborate my testimony? I was never anybody famous. I was once, for example, a brothel-keeper in Paris – that was quite fun; I was once hanged for sheep-stealing, and might have been again, had I lived; instead I died of starvation, aged three years five months. And these are my most eventful lives. You can see why I had to try. I doubt very much whether you will find any independent evidence for any of my existences. I have never really merited attention. Until now, perhaps.
All right, then, say the more generous spirits among you, we’ll skip the hard-core facts, if you like. Just tell us this: how come you know and we don’t? Why do you know what you know?
I’m sorry to have to disappointment you. Really I am. Especially for the few of you who want to believe me. The answer is simply: I don’t know. Maybe it’s only given to some of us to understand – madmen, lemmings, me. The rest must be wiped clean before despatch, ready for all that accretion of colour, noise, smell. Of course, you might be a new one, though I doubt it. There are some.
What you really want to know (maybe you don’t, but I don’t care; I’m going to tell you anyway) is why I am bothering to address you. The answer is again simple: to jolt you out of your smugness. The smugness you carry like an aura about you as you stroll, dawdle, mince or sprint past down there, the smugness that is the backcloth for your every thought (what to have for dinner/whether you can afford that extra holiday/whether that itch could be symptomatic of something serious, after all/anything else), the smugness that circumscribes imagination.
Even if you believe any of what I’ve told you – and most of you will try not to – you still won’t believe that anything like it could happen to you. Will you? Eh? Well, answer me – I’m talking to you. I know at least one of you has seen me and heard me. But what are you going to do about it? Nothing. Ignore me. You will never dare mention any of this. Nobody would ever believe you.
Image: Picture of a Stonechat songbird who was partly the inspiration for this story sent to us by the author. This image is from https://www.songbird-survival.org.uk/songbirds/stonechat
Image: https://vanderkrogt.net/statues/object.php?record=gblo127#:~:text=Matthias%2C%20with%20halbert%20or%20spear,which%20he%20died%20(Wikipedia). 5 Stone Statues of apostles standing on the apex roof in the front of St Paul’s Cathedral, London against a blue sky with fluffy white clouds.
literally stories 