“The Nightmares of the Stork Marabu” by Welsh in brief
Roy Strang is in a coma, but his mind is full of memories. Some are more real – about the life of the Edinburgh outskirts – and passed down in a grotesquely vulgar, stagnant language. Others – the fantasy of hunting the African stork marabu – are told in the bright, imaginative language of an English gentleman. Both stories are fascinatingly interesting both in themselves and on their counterpoint – as a sharp contrast between real life, full of filth and violence, and invented – noble and sublime. The story of Roy Strang is a shocking trip to life and the wild activity of the consciousness of modern English lumpen. His hallucinatory desire to destroy a vulture – a stork of a marabou is in fact a desire to destroy the horrifying memories that led him to this state. This is a deadly funny cocktail of pathos, violence and ugly fun, which can create only Irwin Welch. By providing a dirty story with compassion and complexity, Welch creates a burning
We see three layers of the reality of consciousness in parallel: 1) superficial – a hospital, Roy in a coma, nurses give him injections, relatives come, they say something, Roy understands all this, but he does not care about them all, they only irritate him. He screams at them using profanity in his own imagination. 2) a deeper layer – memories of childhood 3) the deepest layer – the hunt in Africa for the stork Marabu, along with his fictional friend Sandy Jamieson. Even in this dream, Roy realizes that Sandy is “just a metaphor, a game of imagination,” that Sandy exists only in his head. However, Sandy occasionally gets out of his control, even events sometimes, but can not control – suddenly in the car with them is his girlfriend, the car suddenly turns into a flying ship…. Roy does not remember, how he and Sandy made friends, but he knows one thing: for some reason he “must destroy a winged predator, eating carrion, known as the Stork Marabu.” He wants to “kill this evil creature from the vastness of
Memories of childhood: “My family, among whom I grew up, is not a family, but a genetic catastrophe.” Most people live with the feeling that they are all right at home, but I was ashamed of my family from early childhood. communication with neighbor families that filled the hideous rabbit pen in which we lived. Shortland. Edinburgh. The five-story building blocks of the 60’s built, concrete coffins with long staircases, and around the cafe, or church, or mail, just the same cages. Elementary normality is what we did not have.
My old man is a clinical case: frostbitten on the whole head. Mametz – and worse. They were engaged a long time ago, but when it was time to get married, a mental disorder happened to her, that is, the first of a series of similar disorders. This happened to her periodically throughout her life, until she reached the present state, when it is no longer possible to say with certainty whether she is in a normal state or not. In short, in a psychiatric hospital she met an Italian orderly, with whom she escaped. A few years later I returned with two of my half-brothers, Tony and Bernard.
The old man was about to marry another. The wedding was already set when mother Vet reappeared. She told John that he was the only one she had always loved, and asked her to marry. In the end, they cemented the marriage ties. He took care of two Italian bambinoas. I was born about a year after the wedding, a year later my sister Kim appeared, and then Elgin – he suffered from autism.
Yes, a beautiful family is not about us. The “Strangovaya breed,” as our neighbors called us, had a morbidly lunatic physiognomy, and I also had big protruding ears – my heavy burden.
My father had a faithful shepherd Winston, forgive the monster, I was happy when he gave the ends. Very soon his place was taken by an even more ferocious beast of the same breed, who inherited the name of Winston. He almost got me bitten. I was about eight years old, and I watched a cartoon film about Superboy. I decided that Winston II, this is the Krypto-Superpès, and tied a towel to his collar to look like a raincoat, The enraged dog attacked me and tore my leg so that to this day I’m limping a little… Father was begging, he threatened that I would not tell anyone about it – I had to think up that I was attacked by stray dogs. I swore that I would take revenge on him. “
His father had a dream to go to South Africa, where he lived Gordon, his brother. South Africa seemed to everyone as a paradise on earth. But when they finally arrived there, Johannesburg turned out to be a gray and dull modern city. Roy was terribly disappointed, because he heard that J. is called the City of Gold. A good job was not found for my father – the South African dream did not come true. In addition, Uncle Gordon was a pedophile and constantly pestered Roy. Once they went together to ride, and in South Africa there was a time of political instability – and the terrorists put explosives in the car. Roy went out to look at the antelope, and my uncle started to start the car at that time. There was an explosion – and my uncle was gone. Well, Roy was not really upset. At this time the father got drunk, beat the taxi driver, and he was sentenced to 6 months in prison. Because of the sad event with his uncle, the authorities relaxed and released him ahead of schedule.
For Roy began a difficult time. Local hooligans stick to him, take away food. He decides to take revenge and rapes the girl of one of them. Brother Bernard – “fagot”, Roy does not like him. Virginity Roy loses under the guidance of his older brother Tony, an experienced ladies’ man.
After leaving the school, Roy got a job as a system analyst and began to bring money to the family. Roy belonged to the Kazuals, football hooligans, but nobody knew about it. “I liked my bad name.” They often fought.
One day Roy returned from work early and brought a bone for Winston, he filled it with six-inch nails. Going out with him, he saw a pack of dogs. Then Roy threw a bone to Winston. Grabbing her, he could not spit it out, a pack of dogs hammered on him and tore his face. The vet sewed it, but Winston remained crippled. Roy did not stop there and after some time killed him, thrusting Winston into the mouth of the fireworks.
Once at a party, Roy with friends Lexo, Dempse and Ozzy decided to properly “take one crumb.” Her name was Kirsty and she was all so proud and unapproachable that they decided to teach her a lesson and raped everything in turn. Roy first liked the idea, but then everything that happened was disgusting to him. However, he still took part. The girl reported to the police, there was a trial. But they presented everything as if she herself wanted it. They were found not guilty. Roy was aware of his guilt, nightmares began to torment him. He got a job in Manchester, but he could not hide from it either. He met Dorothy, a wonderful girl, but their relationship after a while went wrong.
Brother Tony and Sister Kim sleep together. Bernard has AIDS.
Kirsty came to Roy’s hospital and cut off his cock, pulled out the pipe from her throat, than killed him. Thus ended the life of Roy, who eventually realized that this is himself – the Stork Marabu. And in this nightmare, Jamieson points to the Stork and shoots…
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)