Kronk

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Armed with a half-litre bottle of British vodka, two plastic cups and the conviction that suicide would be an appropriate conclusion to his artistic non-career, Gabriel Crome sat on the steps of the Albert Memorial and felt sad.

He had said goodbye to all his favourite landmarks. The Albert Memorial, being the most hideous and therefore the most attractive, was the last.

It was always last; for Gabriel was subjected to his suicide kick with about the same degree of regularity that a healthy child-bearing woman is subjected to ovulation. He recognized the symptoms — headache, tension and a screaming desire to withdraw from the messy cycle of existence. One of these days, he told himself gloomily, the ovum of despair would really be fertilized by his wriggling death-wish. And darkness would lie upon the face of the shallow.

Meanwhile, there was the vodka, the ritual, the angst and the raven. He did not know whether the raven was a permanent squatter in the memorial, an incarnation of Prince Albert or the familiar spirit of all pseudo-suicides. He knew only that it was always there whenever he was and that the wisdom of its silence was only equalled by the wisdom of its utterances on the tragic pattern of existence.

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