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Spectare’s Third Torment
Subsequent to a noted office lateness last week, Dr. Spectare dreams of arrest. For theft. Of a tart red Bulgar wine. The doctor, good, innocent, but not unacquainted with the lower ends of the market, the bum-ends of cheap plonk, filched, it seems, such stuff as fear is made of, from a small back-room store at work, work which has shuffled the vernacular of his memory, so that the case presents, bearded, ex-Merchant Navy, the bespectacled gaffer of The Claybrook Arms ( where he and Lise hung out, Lisa!) as his expressionless quotidian accuser. Spectare ( Dr.) so expert with computer, is a supermarket shelf and stockroom stacker ( where students worked ) and the face of helmeted law ( so young a boy in blue ) is donated by anon passed on the street. Yesterday. Where he once worked. The shame. The Friends of Spectare, who are all young ( in the dream ) i.e. old, selflessly fail to rally round. Round and round. Dr. Spectare sweats on his disordered bed then wakes feeling like some small creature of insignificance, a water-louse, for instance, on a hot dry day, or one in a series of nameless unnumbered murdered, crushed to infinity by his size 9 polished leathers treading erect and firm on the world.
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