Unlike The Hunched Cornish, there’s really not that much mystery to The Half Guinea; in fact, almost none at all.
In short, he was a Roman soldier who mocked Christ in His passion of the cross.
For this, God picked him out for punishment from among his fellow legionaries on duty in Jerusalem that day, damning him with a seemingly interminable life sentence, during which he was condemned to stew in his own miserable juices on an Earth that he would come to hate and want to leave, but be unable to. Likewise, the punishment would find him set constantly in the midst of humanity, whom he would come to despise and seek separation from, without ever succeeding.
The Half Guinea told me one time – as we sat drinking coffee in the Puzata Khata (Belly House) eatery in the main square of Kyiv’s Podil District (oh, some years after the war had started in southeastern Ukraine but had not yet arrived in Kyiv and the rest of the country) – that he knew he’d been damned when he wasn’t doing any dying, but all of his comrades had vanished long ago. And then the epoch, and his world, started to transform into a Christian one, “right before my eyes,” and he’d been stripped by Time itself of any meaning or purpose, as the old context, which had defined his life, turned to dust all around him and blew away, “much like The Ferret blew away in front of Kyiv’s main synagogue… and Steve Kowalski. Now, isn’t that a funny thing? Imagine… just imagine… But I had nothing to do with it…”
The Half Guinea said he didn’t care, and was happy to then get into a life of thuggery and crime, accumulating dark powers to himself over time.
So formidable is he today in those powers, he believes, that the sum of his capacities have become enough to test his strengths against The Hunched Cornish himself (said to be more evil than Hell), and with whom he has taken to toying, by putting him into hypnotic states, and the like, on the one hand, while, on the other, keeping his misery company over drinks and dinners in cafes and restaurants from time to time throughout world history, making sure to ignite his ire at every encounter, “because – why not?! Hey, Hunchie! Hunchie-Hunchie-Hunchie HAAAAA!!! By Jove, I just love that freak!”
The Half Guinea added that he enjoyed being given the extended opportunity of f—ing Black chicks throughout history all around the world, and admitted to being proud of having turned his seductions into a kind of high low art. “Camp is what it’s all about…”
“I just like it,” he further said. “I’ve always liked it. Don’t know why. Had an especially hot black mistress from northern Africa, almost married; could say still the best one… to this day. I even ended up giving her some of my land. And then it all just crumbled, right under my feet, and I lost track of it all (pun intended), because suddenly, there was nothing left to keep track of. My entire past – a forgotten country. A place I could barely remember, let alone return to again. I could never go home. Then, when it sunk in, I just started sort of roaming the world… and doing bad things… and then… doing a lot of them…”
When I asked The Half Guinea why he thought God chose to punish him, rather than any of the others, he replied, “Because we were all just doing our job. And the others, they thought they were right in doing what they did. You know, laughing, joking at His expense, saying nasty things… mocking… I knew that to be the case. I knew that to be true. I knew the men. I’d served with them for years. I knew them all very well. But me… I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway. That’s why it happened. That’s why God chose me… I hate to talk about it, hate to remember it. But you asked me. I won’t lie about it. Can’t.”
The Half Guinea left abruptly without clearing his tray from our table. But when I turned to see the quick shuffling of his green corduroys under shifting aspects of his cheap, three-quarter-length black leather jacket, I saw his meaty warrior’s hand reaching out to touch the shoulder of a Black girl, who’d started bobbing down the stairs.
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