Voices (part one)

It all began when I found and bought a box full of reels of audiotape at a rummage sale. I was telling my old mate Gill about it, he'd come round with a bottle of vino, and a book on Surrealism he'd been talking about for a couple of days. Gill and I go back a long way – teenagers in the sixties. Both crazy about music – played in a rock band in the seventies, him on drums, me on bass, we still play at his place sometimes; just for fun –and we're both mad about all kinds of books... Oh, and we both go do-lally at the antics of politicians... We sat in my front room sipping his wine, pleased with and enthusiastically listening to one of the reels on my old Aki Tape recorder. It was a collection of rather obscure sixties' music – Rhythm And Blues, Mo-town, and such. 'Yeah, twenty five quid the lot... he wanted thirty five... I played it cool, and said, twenty. The guy said, no, at first. Then he looked at the tapes again, did a little reassessment of his wares, which I sussed he knew little about, then said ''twenty five'', and I said, ''done!''' 'Yeah,' Gill laughed, 'good buy, you don't see them that often these days.' 'There's sixteen of the buggers – if they're all as good as this...,' I frothed. 'They're in perfect condition; worth a lot more than twenty five quid, even if all the others turn out to be empty. I'm glad I kept my old Aki.' We began going through the others, looking at the labels on the box covers, which were marked only by letters and numbers; some kind of coded filing system, indiscernible to us. The cover of the one we were listening to was marked M. No.5 (M. notes A1). Well, we didn't have any notes... 'The M could be music,' said Gill 'Yeah, right,' I agreed. They all carried the symbol M, but two. These two were labelled: S.C.A1 (s.c. notes A1), and S.C. A2. (s.c. notes A2). This made no sense to either of us. After listening to the first reel, we decided to play the first of the two marked with S.C. Just see to what was on them... As we sat back and listened, we were a little surprised not to hear music, but a voice; a young man's voice... that said: 'This is an archive recording of a series of stories told by the members and guests of the Story Club. A club formed in nineteen sixty-eight by a loose group of people who enjoy and value the telling of stories. 'We put no restrictions – other than technical -- on our narrators. 'Some of the stories are original, some are not. Some are fiction, and some are not. We hold the distinction to be immaterial...' Gill and I exchanged grins of acknowledgement and anticipation. There was a slight pause, then the voice simply stated the date: 'First of May Nineteen-sixty-Nine.' Then, a second, gruffer voice, introduced himself as: 'David Green, a founding member of the Story Club'. He then stated that the following story was true, and he had read it in an American Newspaper, and it was called 'Pet Bite'. He then told a story that began with a man, who after waiting in the Casual Department of a New York hospital took his turn to be seen by the doctor with a very large wound above the elbow of his left arm. The man told the doctor it was a dog bite. The doctor was rather taken aback by the size of it. The man told him, it was a very large dog; a Great Dane. Unbeknown to the man, it is a doctor's duty in New York to report all attacks by dogs to the police, which he got the nurse to do, while he treated the man, who needed fifty stitches. Before the doctor was finished stitching, a couple of cops turned up. They were also shocked by the seriousness of the wound, and asked a lot of questions, about his dog. They explained to the man, that the city had rules about keeping dangerous dogs, and that large dogs must be muzzled. The man told them, that it had all been an accident, because he was teasing his dog, Blake, with a piece of meat, and it had never happened before, and that he always muzzled him when they went out. The Police then insisted that they drive him home, and take a look at the dog, and fill out a report. ..The man seemed put out, and was very quiet all way to his apartment, where he suddenly told the police he had been lying to them. He told them he wanted to come clean. He didn't, in fact have a dog... He then told them what he had, was a tiger! A fully grown Bengal tiger! 'What in your apartment?' they cried. 'No, but at first yes...' He'd bought the tiger when it was a kitten – he actually used that word – three years ago. They became friends; he loved Blake! But as he got bigger, he also got rougher and rougher – and some times he could get quite wound up in play. The man became very wary of his cat, but he couldn't bring himself to send his 'buddy' off to some cage in a zoo... a prison! So he had the idea of renting the apartment next door; to get some distance from him. Every day he would bring three four chickens for Blake. But Blake seemed to be getting even wilder as they spent less and less time together. Over the last few weeks Blake had really begun to frighten him. So he started now only to open the door to feed him, but then only enough to throw the food inside. But today, has he was putting the food in, Blake must have been waiting for him... and he bit the hand that fed him! He'd got the man's arm in his jaws. After a brief panic and wrestle, he had managed to get loose by forcing the door shut on Blake's mouth! So the conclusion was that the police had to call in an animal rescue squad, who drilled a large enough circle in the door, for a marksman to shoot Blake with a tranquilliser dart, before hauling him off to the zoo. And thus it was, for the next four hours Gill and I listened to story after story. Sometimes spellbound. There were all kinds of voices telling all kinds of stories. Some were funny, crazy, sad, touching, happy, nostalgic, strange. Some were no more than expanded jokes. Some were memoirs. Some were portraits of friends, wives, husbands. Some were confessions; as if the telling might act as some kind of penance and redemption. A very old sounding voice told his story of being part of a gang as a boy in World War Two, who – not knowing any better – had and risked being shot as a looter, while robbing shops and houses during the blitz. One man told of a hilarious and disastrous visit to a brothel in Amsterdam as a teenager. A woman told a very sad tear-jerking story of her horrible life with an abusive husband. 'Because,' as she said, 'you men should bloody-well hear it!' Well, it was the seventies. A strange one was the guy who took L.S.D. He was alone in his apartment. During the trip he became convinced he had found the meaning of life – yeah, right, as you do! So he wrote it down and put it in an envelope, then forgot about it, and got on with his trip. The next morning he opened the envelope only to read: ''THE SMELL OF TURPINTINE PREVAILS...'' Some stories were adventurous. One man told how at aged thirteen he had stowed away on a trawler bound for a three week fishing trip to Iceland. They didn't find him for a week. A very strange story was another confession by a voice, which said he was so ashamed that he hadn't told this story to anyone since it happened... As teenagers, he and a friend, while hiking on the Yorkshire Moors, had come across an old well; your stereotypical well; with a wall around it, but without a bucket. As kids do, they began dropping pebbles down it to see how deep it was, but they heard nothing. So they hunted ever bigger stones. But still they heard nothing. They then noticed a very large heavy stone, about a metre in diameter. It had a chain attached to it that disappeared in the long grass and over a hill. They began pulling the chain in, but it seemed unending; they got bored and tired. Then, just for the hell of it, they decided to throw the stone down the well. They struggled with it, but by rolling it they got it over to the well. Then he succeeded in lifting it onto the wall, before letting it fall down into the darkness. To their utter shock and horror they quickly, very quickly realised that the other end of the chain was, in fact, attached to a goat that had been peacefully grazing over that hill... This sudden end left Gill and I opened-mouthed-speechless! 'But of all the stories, there was one, which really stood out from the others, although we later discovered the story is not original. We listen to it several times over the next days. It was a story which seemed unique in its content, and its telling, and Gill and I felt it must be related here in full. The story teller does not introduce himself in the way the others do, nor does he give the story a title. In a deep dark voice, with a slight northern accent, that seems to hang in the air, he begins by giving the date: nineteen-seventy-three, and then: 'My name is not important – call me Ishmael... 'There are names that set fire to the mind. Names and lives lived – legends. And one such legend is Leonardo. A legend in his lifetime, and who now seems immortal to us. That single name – common in his own time – is enough now for us to know we are talking of non-other than Leonardo da Vinci...

Link to part 2  https://www.abctales.com/story/chris-whitley/voices-part-two