The Twenty-sixth night
The scene changes and we are in the middle of a Medieval market place. It is hot noisy and full of bustle as hawkers shout and announce their wares, traders raise their voices as they bargain and the buzz of men and women’s murmurs hums throughout the air. Sharp smelling spices cut through the stink of fish stalls, while roasting meats assail the nostrils with a smoky desire. The offer of sweet, sour, bitter, pungent, and salty tastes excites the tongues of the hungry and bright red and yellow silks flutter in the arms of merchants as they flaunt their shimmering cloth. Everywhere deals are being struck and bargains made. Cloth for spices, meat for fish, salt for iron, iron for silk; the metamorphosis of the caterpillar continued as its silk is turned to silver. A dog noses its way beneath the stalls, as it searches for scraps of food, it unexpectedly jumps and yelps; a sharp eyed boy has ambushed the dog and beats it with a stick. This is a place of sensual delight and embodied gratification, where the future is constructed as the tables of finance are built around the market trestles of transaction.
The nine push their way through the throngs of bargain hunters looking for an empty stall, they have decided to set up their own business. After much haggling they are finally given a place on the edge of the market, to their collective disgust all nine are classed as sellers of second hand goods and bric-à-brac. They have had a six foot long trestle table made to their exact requirements. The table has been hand crafted by carpenters, mortise and tenon jointed, sanded smooth and sealed with a rich dark varnish. Their stall is covered with a heavy duty blue and white striped cloth cover that is cut into arrow shapes as it forms a canopy over their heads. Marx has decided that they trade in rhubarb. He has a delicate stomach and can swear to rhubarb’s restorative abilities, he is also very aware of how exotic a West Yorkshire delicacy will be to Middle Eastern traders. Shakespeare is writing his sales pitch, he is determined to forge a brand identity that will help them gain some leverage against the tyranny of the old market traders, Hegel is still traumatised by God’s death and sits quietly at the back, Aristotle and Plato are happy to banter with the customers, while Nietzsche has gone with Christ, Ovid and Kant to penetrate the crowds and set up rumours of their stall by word of mouth and demonstration. Each carries a small supply of rhubarb which they eat with obvious delight and great enjoyment as they spread the good news of its arrival.
A great roar from the many mouths of the people rises as they banter and barter, while barkers and their dogs will bark and butchers brag of belly pork and bacon. Swirls of sound surround the stalls as salesmen sell their souls whilst capital accrues to those who want it most.
The crowds gradually quieten as they become aware that cutting through the market cacophony comes another sound, inhuman in its tone. A table from a market stall has stepped up to an adjoining loggia and is starting to address the people.
“I am a product of my own making, a brain in the wood-grain. My voice may sound of saws and hammered chisels but my heart is full and overflows with sap. Rejoice in the value of my commodification, praise be to the bodiless body, the phantom limb of our resurrection now casts off its former life. As a head of the table I salute you, with my ligneous tissue of xylem I will ignite the fire in your souls. I am your puppet to do with as you may, your captive wood spirit who only desires to please. As I look down upon you all, you may stand at the foot of the table but you are no slaves. I proclaim the new world of capital, I am the lignum vitae of the fetish! I am your freedom! Look down at your ankles and wrists, what are those chains that hold you? Chains of intellectual dogma, chains of philosophy and religion! I am here to break those chains, to free your hearts and give to you the joy of consumption.
You may think I am a mere understudy, that I have moved above my station. But you see these leaves upon my back, I carry them with pride. The sharp pink stems of rhubarb that I bear, a testament to courage; a testament to far off lands of cloudy skies and rain, of men and women of the soil who labour nights and days, to force the rhubarb harvest on and bring the fruit to bear. See my fare; is it not healthy and wholesome. A good tree bears good fruit and is this not good fruit? (43) Am I not therefore good?”
A small, what was unobtrusive, knob for a tiny table drawer has gradually been growing and increasing in length; this abnormal growth is now noticed by the audience. A small boy is the first to respond, “What’s that?” he shouts. He points hesitantly to the drawer's knob. The table ignores his question and continues to preach.
“Am I not your saviour? I bring forth unto you a gift of love, the panacea of your collective illness and the solution to your sorrows. I carry within me the child of economic miracles, an immaculate conception of desire, whose birth was prophesised by holy writ. It is said that all things which have been and are written about Me in the book of the Law of the ancient Prophets must be fulfilled. The new religion of capitalism will replace the old order of intellectual lies. I am a conduit for your souls, I will hold a mass séance of the table, an elevation of the spirit and a transfiguration of the commonwealth into individual profit.”
At this point Marx can stand it no longer he shouts insults at the table and begins to throw rotten tomatoes and cabbages. The others begin in join in, the masses as always eventually catch on and go with the flow. Soon a torrent of abuse and rotten fruit is landing on the table and it is gradually encompassed in a mound of stinking fetid vegetable matter. Invisible beneath the vegetable mountain, the table completes its metamorphosis into a pulpit, now intangible, tasteless, odourless and inaudible, it has become a supernatural entity. As it exits the scene, it leaves no trace behind, , except for the shadow of a silhouette that slips silently, unnoticed down the loggia steps.
43 Rhubarb is in fact a vegetable. The identity of rhubarb is however problematic, and in 1947 a US court ruled it was a fruit.
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