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THE DANCING DEAD

Penelope was all a-flutter, like a little bat Tom wasn&039;t the only one to notice He overheard one of the waiters call her Signorina Pipistrella Perhaps it hat they called all dead women behind their backs If so, it was unwise Like bats, the dead had big, sensitive ears He knew Penelope could segue froe on the spin of a coin

They were under the Baths of Caracalla, searching out some new cabaret Penelope had heard wondrous whispers of a coloured singing group from America, the Kool-Tones She was one of those Europeans who valued American exports for their vitality and brashness Toory of Ah he didn&039;t care to think of hi he wanted was to traipse through a city thousands of years older than New York in search of so in Harleround, its entrance a the rearity, and took pains to distance the ironic co the Taj Mahal into a h he&039;d never seen it, Toh without cocktail waitresses dressed as Frenchcontortionists Popular taste had never been good He&039;d heard froly old that classical Rome had been a hideous riot of bad taste, hastly paint Busts which now seeinally looked like deood table near the stage, talking and laughing loudly enough to drown out the struggling Kool-Tones as they did their worst to &039;Blue Moon&039; Penelope jabbered to everybody but Toh under her wrap her clawed hand was hooked around his elbow It was as if she were clinging to him for support, or to remind herself that one toy was still hers alone He wondered if she were old enough toif her heart were punctured by silver Probably not She was one of those Victorians She&039;d dwindle to a ragged skeleton isps of white hair And -down, Penelope had run on the edge of hysteria, under a co and ers and parasites from the palazzo and various bolt-holes around the city, and was leading them on yet another expedition &039;Da man at the table except for another American, a yard-wide, corn-fed Kansas quarterback named Kent He had won a body-beautiful contest back hoht to Rome to appear as Ercole in Dino de Laurentiis&039;s onauts It had just been announced that Sylvia Koscina was to replace Malenka in the role of Medea Kent&039;s hair was dyed a blue-black that would register as lustrous on fillasses, which didn&039;t disguise eyes that missed little

Penelope&039;s dead friends were thethinly on the desperate disillusion he&039;d picked up in the First World War; Irena Dubrovna, a catty little Serbian frail who kept lish avant garde painter Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, sporting a beret and a foot-long cigarette holder; Nico Otzak, a strange, breathy Gered; an extre 700-year-old Count; and an obscene little hunchback who corunts

Froht-eyed newlydead American couple, the Adda copies of fashions set by the writers Clare Quilty and Vivian Darkbloom, the husband in an offensive pinstripe suit and the wife a clinging silk shroud Their faces hited-up, their hair dyed black Mr Addams had made his money in railways and munitions, and treated his wife and himself to death and resurrection as a retires

After the Kool-Tones had finished, with &039;Flying Saucers Rock &039;n&039; Roll&039;, the Kit Kat Klub offered the once-in-a-lifeti of the stately Bianca Castafiore, the &039;Milanese Nightingale&039;, and the &039;beat poet&039; Max Brock, a Yank in a false beard The poet began free-associating run-together words, many inappropriate for mixed company, while the diva screeched wordlessly behind hian:

A sad serenade of Sisyphean solicitude,

Strangling the strange seraphie

Gorging itself on gross guppies of Grecian goo,

Hu Henry Harry Herman Herbert Hoover

Haruspex of horribility, holocaust of human heartburn,

While in the icebox, it is the children&039;s hour

La Castafiore hit a high note thattheir fangs and ja the perfor out your present of igneous rocks

Max Brock paused, aghast that he had accidentally produced a rhy rhetorical questions into the audience like hand grenades

&039;What&039;s the taste of purple? When&039;s the colour of February? What&039;s on second? Why did the bat cross the moon? What&039;s the thirty-nine steps? Who is the Mother of Tears?&039;

Soruntled patron, but like an angry serpent from hell

Max Brock turned his back on the audience La Castafiore shrieked a trill Glasses exploded all around the club Shards and blood spattered over the table

&039;Cool, e!&039;

Irena laughed like a kitten and Nico looked at the girl as if she were dinner Penderel reatest poet of an age that couldn&039;t, by very definition, produce even a good poet

&039;You say he&039;s great, but not good?&039; asked Mr Addale &039;That seereat, and utterly dreadful This is the age of dreadful Don&039;t you agree Mr Hancock?&039;

&039;Not half,&039; said the English painter, as taking napkins out of his ears and ht not have heard the question &039;I should cocoa That bloke&039;s got a fla nerve&039;

&039;I like that in ain her cheeks to make a black bow of her mouth

&039;Who is your favourite poet, Mr Kent?&039; Penelope asked, cruelly

&039;Walt Whitman,&039; he replied

&039;Very Herculean,&039; she commented, tartly

Tonised a puritan-Aht think themselves romantic or decadent Like this onauts, says he hasn&039;t written poetry since he turned,&039; said Kent &039;He claims creativity dries up when you become a vampire&039;

&039;In my case, that&039;s not true,&039; said Penderel &039;I was a enius is iressively &039;I&039;ative, you know It&039;s all I can drink&039;

&039;No offence,&039; said Kent, &039;but I&039;ve met so few of you Va Gaol" after he turned,&039; said Mrs Addaood&039;

Penelope&039;s eyes narrowed She didn&039;t care for talk of Wilde Even doubly dead, he was an embarrassment

&039;Dali is a vampire,&039; Nico said

&039;Never liked him,&039; Hancock moaned &039;All those bowler hats&039;

&039;But Picasso is a warm man,&039; put in Kent &039;And T S Eliot, Thoenstein, William Faulkner None of them turned Yet they&039;re the century&039;s best&039;

&039;Their careers have ended, or will end,&039; said Mrs Addae, to embrace a darkness within It must be a spur to creativity Since I turned vampire, I have been far better able to express atroyd&039; Having risen frorave, she was determined to dress the part Alhted by black pearls Her low-cut, floor-length dress had trails like octopus tentacles Her pallor was artificially heightened, with strategic dabs of violet shadow