[Morthoron]

WAITING FOR GONDOR

(A pastiche of Beckett's absurdist two-act play juxtaposed with an abandoned Ingmar Bergman script whittled down to a single page of narrative for the sake of relieving the inveterate boredom related to plays – and wordy absurdist plays in particular - what with their parroting on about personal and public paradigms and parameters, whilst nihilistically relating human foibles in a stream-of-consciousness manner without moral or satisfying climax. So, get out your clove cigarettes and absinthe, don your Che Guevera t-shirt and put a volume of Camus or Sartre on your archetypical, upper-middle-class, bourgeois coffee table milled from recycled barn board, and recite after me: Stately, plump Buck Mulligan…Stately, plump Buck Mulligan…Stately, plump Buck Mulligan…Stately, plump Buck Mulligan…)

Erkenbrand dismounted gingerly from his steed and slumped onto a low mound of grass that jutted from the side of the rutted road. He grunted. Sluggishly, he attempted to pull off his boot and remove the insidious stone that had bitten into his arch for the last several leagues. But the boot was as immovable as he was exhausted. He made one last half-hearted attempt but was defeated before he even started.

"Such is life," he muttered tonelessly. "Life is such."

"I am of like mind," said Erestor, who had walked with his lame steed from the far side of the tumbling field. "But we Elves have fought the long defeat for the last three ages. We fought valiantly. We died with our boots on. But now the shoe seems to be on the other foot."

Erkenbrand simply shrugged off the irony. He should have been surprised at the sight of an Elf in the middle of Rohan, but he was just too tired. "I am glad to see Elves this far south once again; I thought you were gone forever."

"Forever?" Erestor laughed a bit. "A few years, a decade, a century: these seem an eternity to you Mannish-folk."

Erkenbrand caught the haughty undertones of the Elf's words. "But Prince Imrahil down in Dol Amroth claims to have Elven ancestors."

"Not bloody likely," Erestor grunted with his usual Noldorin disdain. "He is a nobody. A petty prince. Imrahil's mythic forebear couldn't even get a whiff of that perfumed personage."

Erkenbrand was taken aback at the Elf's profane brusqueness. "So much for vaunted Elvish courtesy."

Erestor shrugged and sat next to the man of Rohan on the raised bit of turf. "Don't believe the hype," the Elf grumbled. "It is merely a device we Elves use to maintain a social advantage over you miserable Aftercomers."

Erkenbrand raised an eyebrow. He shifted the toes in his boot but the stubborn stone was lodged indelibly between sole and skin. He grimaced. Erestor noticed the man's discomfort but ignored it. Or perhaps he was amused by it. It could be that this precise moment was a microcosm of history itself, and the Firstborn at last refused to aid the Usurper. Erestor the rebel.

"Oh, would you lay off the stilted inner dialogue and help me?" Erkenbrand grumbled.

"Help you what?"

"Help me take off this boot!"

"Does it pain you?"

"Does it pain me? Who else but an effete Elf would utter such a phrase!"

"Does it hurt the precious?" Erestor hissed in return.

"Yes, it hurts. Dash it all!"

"Live with pain; it will make you stronger."

"Is that an Elvish saying?"

"No, but it is appropriate in this instance."

Erkenbrand was not amused. He leaned again toward his stubborn footwear: a boot as bold as his brash Dunlender servants - and just about as useless. He didn't want to show any weakness to the Elf, but he had ridden for many an hour and even the Horse Lords of Rohan knew well the exhaustion of mounted travel. Evidently, Elves did not. Erestor sighed in exasperation, rose without a hint of exertion, grabbed Erkenbrand's boot by the heel and casually slid it from the man's swollen foot. The recalcitrant rock rolled out onto the rutted road.

"There. All better?" Erestor smirked and then muttered, "So much for the Gift of Men."

"What do you mean by that?" Erkenbrand growled, quite tired of the Elf's pomposity.

"Nothing, nothing," Erestor said distractedly. "I just find it rather odd that Middle-earth shall be ruled by your" – and here he paused with a sour frown as if it were an effort to maintain a sense of decorum - "your…race."

"Well, you high 'n' mighty folk have left us a pish-poor inheritance, to be sure," Erkenbrand laughed. "And what do you Elves know of Man's destiny in any case?"

"What do I know of Man's destiny?" Erestor pursed his lips. "I could tell you more of cabbages than mortal kings. But it matters not. Soon the Elves shall be leaving these shores."

"Leaving? Where are you off to?"

"West. Over the Sundering Sea. To Elvenhome."

"Pffft!" Erkenbrand spat. "It's not like you've been a bloody part of this world anyway."

"Beg pardon?"

"You Elves. You're like madly eccentric neighbors holed up in moldering mansions for countless years. Safe but insecure behind high iron gates. Weird, decrepit folk, mooning over past glories."

Erestor rolled his eyes. "And Men?" he laughed corrosively. "You know not where you are going, and you know not where you have been. You and your ilk are like little lap dogs chasing their tails. Thank Eru you lack the ability of the hound to lick its own private parts; otherwise, your race would be extinct."

Erkenbrand cursed and his face turned red. But Erestor merely laughed. "Forgive me. Please, forgive me, man of Rohan," the Elf said cheerfully. "We are allies; or, at least, we are both enemies of the One Enemy. And an enemy of my enemy is –"

"-- is a friend?" Erkenbrand interrupted as he slowly unclenched his fists. "We Rohirrim have just such a saying."

"Most likely borrowed from the Elves," Erestor winked.

Now Erkenbrand laughed. "Then let us lay aside insult and misunderstanding and be on our way," he said as he slipped his boot back on.

"Hold!" Erestor answered, surveying the area with the visual acuity of the Elves. Seemingly satisfied, he added, "No sense in leaving. We might as well wait here."

"Wait? Wait for whom?"

"Wait for Gondor."

"Do you think they'll come?"

"Certainly," Erestor said with a certain certainty.

There was a very long silence. Gondor, it seems, was running late.

"Ummm," Erekenbrand hummed dumbly. "What shall we do while we wait?"

"How about a nice game of chess?" Erestor asked.

That would be fine," Erkenbrand nodded. "Do you have a set, Ingmar?"

"Yes, I have one in my saddle bag," the Elf replied. "And it is Erestor, not Ingmar."

The Elf laid the board on a boulder on the beach as the susurration of the surf sighed while sadly sidling up and down the sand.

"Alliteration is a hidebound byword for the Old Guard," The harlequin dwarf croaked as he brushed sand from his parti-colored pantaloons. "It is the sad gibbering pronouncement of the global cultural narrative." He then moved a pawn forward two spaces (but he never actually used the word pawn – to him, it was 'proletarian worker held in thrall by bloody monarchists').

The old fishwife aggressively brought out her knight. "Lor', 'ere ye go agin'," she spat, "rejectin' classic forms 'o' lit'rature fer yer post-modern caterwaulin'. 'Oil take th' 'literation 'o' Beowulf o'er Joyce's pale imertations, truth t' tell. Gimme Blake or Shakespeare any ol' day – it's blokes loike Borges 'n' Burroughs what gets me 'ackles up."

The Harlequin dwarf's motley cap tinkled merrily as he loomed over the chessboard, but the jester was not pleased by the fishwife's harangue. He glowered. With a wave of his mock scepter, his bauble, he signaled to the one-eyed undertaker, who blew a futile horn, took his place behind the shrew, and waited. It is what funeral directors do best: wait, patiently. The Harlequin moved another 'proletarian worker held in thrall by bloody monarchists' up a space to guard his brother worker.

"All I'm sayin'," the fishwife muttered, peering uneasily over her shoulder at the silent, vulturine man of the dismal trade, "is ye bloody well can't abandon four 'unnert year of lit'rary accomplishments merely by loudly proclaimin' th' failure 'o' language and Man's unability of escapin' 'is condition." She then slyly baited the Harlequin with a pawn prone at the center of the board.

The bells flopping from the three folds of the Harlequin's headgear jangled with the unnerving minimalism of a Phillip Glass composition. Barely able to contain his glee, he quickly took the fishwife's pawn and said, "Only a buffoon would have made that move."

The fishwife laughed aloud and took the Harlequin's pawn with her knight. "Tatterdemalion!" she squealed with delight. "You even babble in post-modern self-referential irony!"

Standing ankle-deep in the surf, a mime wept silently.

"Mister Frodo, Mister Frodo," Sam said nervously as he jostled his master awake. "It's getting near dawn. P'raps we'd best get on our way."

"Oh Sam, I had the oddest dream," Frodo grumpled as he yawned and stretched. "It was an absurdist nightmare with Rohirrim, Elves, jesters, fishwives, one-eyed undertakers, mimes and the music of Phillip Glass."

"I prefer John Cage or Zappa, personally," Sam grunted in disapproval.