There but for The_ A Novel - Ali Smith [80]
The fact probably is, a man was sent to prison in France for slapping the face of the head of a person who had just been beheaded to see if the face was still alive after the head was cut off!
The fact probably is, too, that in Halifax you could be sent to the Halifax Gibbet if you stole thirteen and a half old pence, and Halifax is not very far from York, where there is a house where a lady lived who was pressed to death by big stones. Brooke knows this because she has visited the lady’s historic house where there is a museum.
But the fact is, how do you know anything is true? Duh, obviously, records and so on, but how do you know that the records are true? Things are not just true because the internet says they are. Really the phrase should be, not the fact is, but the fact seems to be.
The fact seems to be, someone tried to blow up this very Observatory right here in 1894! It is a fact, apparently, that he didn’t damage the Observatory but instead he just blew his own stomach out right here in this park! There was a hole where his stomach should be and one of his hands exploded off, when the bomb exploded in that very same hand he was holding it in, well, the moral of the story is, don’t hold bombs in your hand, duh obviously. In fact a two inch piece of bone from inside the hand was found near the Observatory wall after that man died but the Observatory itself was not damaged by it or anything. Brooke puts her hands where her own stomach is and feels for what she can’t see inside herself. The man was apparently still alive when the people found him, and he could still speak apparently. Doctor Doctor, I feel a little empty inside. Doctor Doctor I really need a hand. !!! No, but it will have been really horrible. That man, therefore, could have literally actually in reality basically reached his own hand through the hole in himself and out the other side (meaning the hand he still had, obviously, not the one that got exploded off). So that is what history is, people and places that disappear, or are beheaded, or get damaged or nearly do, and things and places and people that get tortured and burned and so on. But this does not mean that history is not the unseen things as well. As an example of this: from up here you can see some of Greenwich—but not all of it. You can’t see all the people who still don’t know what in fact in reality has happened, still waiting there outside for Mr. Garth to come out or not come out. They are invisible for the simple reason that the place and the people are behind the trees and buildings so you can’t see them from here. It is a matter of perspextive. You can’t see the theatre, or even its roof, where the man called Hugo who was there the first night Mr. Garth shut himself in is doing the monologue. A monologue is a play with just one person in it. The title of the actual play is Miles To Go Before I Sleep, because Miles is Mr. Garth’s first name, although all the people outside call him Milo. It is meant to be about Mr. Garth and what is happening inside the room.
(The man called Hugo was sitting there on the stage when the audience members came in and sat down. He sometimes waved to them and sometimes acted like they weren’t there. When the play began, you couldn’t tell that it had begun, and then suddenly it just had. He did a lot of talking to himself and to the audience about how he had shut himself in the room because he wanted to be an actor and be on TV and the Stage but he had Failed in his life. There was a lot of sitting in the play, and some standing up, and then sitting down again. He sat on the bed and spoke, and then he stood behind a chair and spoke, and then he sat on the chair and spoke, and then he sat down on the floor and spoke. There was a great deal of speaking. He had pretend long hair and a pretend long beard