Sentence The Fivehundredandthirtysixth 

Little Levy Balquhidder played happily with Wee Toots Teitlebaum while their mothers, Rilla and Myra kissed and cuddled in the Conservatory (which, fortunately, was sheltered and not overlooked

by any other properties in the neighbourhood) but his mind wasn't really on it; his mind, or rather the spirit within, was remembering a night at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916 when he, that is, Laszlo Licinic, whom he was then, an enthusiastic painter, poet and founding member of Dada, performed his 'Sound Poem' Konkret: it was a performance piece in which, aided by a couple of other members of the group, and dressed like a truncated robot, roaring like a demagogue he crashed and 

 

banged and bellowed in a rhythm which made it sound as if a great machine was coming through the walls of the little studio theatre – in many ways it was the sound of the War which they were all opposed to, but, more than that, it was an attempt to go beyond language, into the most visceral of responses to the external world, to create through sound and image, the worst fears and horrors and nightmares that anyone could imagine; which was when the world went black: he thought the power must have been switched off, but could hear nothing either, he felt like he was floating in the void as he had – just a stiver, a consciousness without shape or form – before the Creator decided to create a Universe, a Universe of his own and people it with living creatures – His Own Creation! and when Laszlo next opened his eyes, he found himself in a small dingy room, surrounded by curious, anxious, maybe even belligerent faces – all of them strangers to him (it was only years later, when he was Pherson Dalwhinnie, making extensive use of the new Internet or World Wide Web as it was then known, that he discovered that Laszlo Licinic had disappeared after the attack on Cabaret Voltaire by a group of ultra-right nationalists, infuriated by their anti-war/unpatriotic sentiments, and that he – Licinic – had been shot by one Gunther Grebeling later to become a prominent member of the Thule Society, close confidant of Adolf Hitler and leading Nazi, putting his John Hancock to decrees of unparalleled ruthlessness, but who in 1916 was the husband of his then lover, Maria; Licinic's body

had disappeared in the melee following the bombing; what he did remember after everything went black, was finding himself in that room which was to become his home for a while) but he soon learned that they were Peter Lorre, Peter Boo, Roxy Davidova, Martin Elginbrod, Geli Raubal, Unity Mitford, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all!