Free Gazooka by Gwyn Thomas Page B

the shadow. He rose on tiptoe to deliver the stroke of death to the grave-ripe beast which only he could see. The bandsmen, few of whom had heard Festus’ talk from the beginning, were confused as never before and they thought that Festus’ mind, without question one of the most sensitive in the division, had now been submitted to one aggravation too many and had broken loose from its last hinge. Some pointed end of revelation had jabbed Festus on to a high apocalyptic peak. All around him on the stage walked every privation and mishap that had ever driven him into his tight and terrifying corner of self-awareness, one last rubbed nerve between himself and the relief of a frank lunacy. ‘What can be the flavour on the tongue of death, daft death?’ he had shouted. ‘What was that again?’ asked a few of the bandsmen in the front row, and they started to fidget a bit as they got a glimpse of death as an articulate but loutish imbecile met casually in a lightless lane. Three committee men of the Institute, who were sitting in the back row, reminded Festus that questions of the raking, rattling sort he had just put to the matadors had to be reserved for the smaller, quieter rooms.
    Then Festus, overcome by the beauty and mental nakedness of the moment, had broken down and was led weeping off the platform. Gomer Gough and Uncle Edwin were sent for from the Reading Room and were told of what had been going on. They got hold of four bandsmen, lined them up on the stage and told them to run through ‘I’m One of the Nuts of Barcelona’ twice. It took that and a short statement from Gomer Gough on the dangers of emotionalism to get the matadors back into mental motion.
    Festus even then had not quite shot his bolt. Up on the practice ground he made a last effort to give an authentic Sevillian edge to what he thought the rather clomping approach of Cynlais’ boys.
    â€˜The day of straightforward marching is done,’ he said. ‘In these carnivals we have the seed of a great popular ballet. You see into what ruin you run if you stick to the stolid conventions that have governed the carnivals so far. The Sons of Dixie marched with the dour determination of iron collared serfs and what did it get them. Half an acre of bunions and a threat of police court prosecution from Goronwy Mayer for dragging the paraphernalia of death into a context of gross buffoonery. No, what we want is a leap of imagination.’
    He got his leap. It was built around the moment of truth.
    At the end of the theme tune the band would stop dead and every gazooka would blow a long, loud, low note. That was supposed to be the final defiance of the bull. Then the matadors all stood on tiptoe and held their gazookas as if for the thrust of extinction. This manoeuvre was looked on with astonishment by all the supporters who watched the band re hearse up on the moorland. Either the matadors were a naturally flat-footed lot, or they held their gazookas too low, or they did not realise how tall a bull can be, but their posture was ambiguous and created a lot of unfavourable talk among those supporters who were anxious to keep the goodwill of the chapels.
    Two days before the Trecelyn carnival we were walking down the hillside with Cynlais. About twenty yards behind us Festus Phelps was talking fast and passionately to half a dozen matadors who still did not know what he was supposed to be getting at. Of these voters there were four who had never been able to stand on tiptoe without a feeling of crucial absurdity, and they were telling Festus that after two efforts to rise like that and deal with the bull they would never again have the nervous calm to find the right note when the band struck up again with ‘Barcelona’.
    â€˜That notion of stopping and lunging with the gazookas is going to play hell with the marching,’ said Cynlais Coleman. ‘I think that that Festus Phelps the Fancy has just been sent