A knee niggle…

… is his sole physical ailment. For no apparent reason, at any time, his right knee goes stiff. To say he suffers would be an exaggeration. Rather he is inconvenienced. Any discomfort quickly eased by a rough (self-administered) massage.

Nonetheless he did go to see a doctor who, despite being unsure of its cause, diagnosed a mild form of arthritis and gave Calculus some blunt advice: stop wearing clogs.

Calculus, less circumspect than the doctor, attributes the niggle in his knee to playing keep upsies in his youth with a heavy leather football. A skill, conscientiously honed, that won him admission to countless kickabouts in local parks.

On any Bentham Felicific the odd knee twinge seemed a price worth paying. The negligible pain of the present outweighed by those past pleasures accrued with a football and mates on lazy Sunday afternoons.

There are non-kommunards, hooked on dig-ether-al, who disbelieve Calculus. Having a dodgy knee, they think, is a ruse; a convenient fiction to disguise his true nature. In their book he is a cyborg senior, which explains his remarkable longevity. Another theory, equally barmy, is that the consumption of a large quantity and rich variety of drugs led Calculus to discover the elixir of life, thus enabling him to live outside time as a deity of the drop-outs.

– What rubbish, he says. I am King of the Drop-Ups!

Reason…

… is distinctly unfashionable. When it comes to explaining all manner of things and events, the mundane nowadays just will not do. The fantastical is to reign.

Cap of omniscient narrator

Having reached for it, i can furnish you with some plain if boring truths. The great age of Calculus is due to several factors: bathing in cold river water; good genes (his father and grandfather had both made centenarian bones), and freakishly kind fate when it came to avoiding accidents.

Good fortune

For someone of such advanced years, Calculus enjoys remarkably fine health. There had been little personal effort involved, Calculus never much exercising.

After so many years of vigorous smoking, can such luck last? How much more illness free life can he reasonably expect to enjoy?

He will not contemplate a personal smoking ban. Says everybody living long enough must one day succumb to decrepitude. Nicotine free lungs won’t prevent that. He speaks of his mortality with a strange detachment.

– Won’t be too long before I take a seat in hippy Valhalla. You are puppy fat with Time while I am emaciated. Leave my body under Wilders Tree for the vultures to feed upon.

Is he joking or issuing a heartfelt instruction?

– Yes and no and no and yes.

Calculus, king of the cryptic.

Vultures in his rib-cage is an unsettling thought. All the same i can see myself honouring his wish.

On skin (his) and beards (in general)

On his face the skin – on the parts exposed – has taken on a strange lacquer like pallor. It is a kindly face, wreathed in beedi smoke. Creased forehead, wrinkled cheeks; a labyrinth of derma wear and tear. Audenesque, says Martha, meaning it radiates intelligence. (Compensation for essentially ugly features.)

Before turning thirty, Calculus had already grown a concealer #, a great bushy beard to which he remains, to this very day, firmly attached!

# Josef A vocab.

Concealers…

… grown by Kommunards as an act of political defiance. since Josef A is known to detest facial hair. The state awards grants to aid people in the purchase of razors.

Tyrants opposing beards is not a new phenomenon. Louis XIV abolished beards early in his reign. In polite society the beard has gone in and out of fashion. At times regarded as a social misdemeanour. At other times, a social obligation.

Inveterate smilers…

… are offered free operations by Josef A if they have a medically proven nervous disposition to smile. Reconfiguration of facial muscles to prevent smiling or laughing. Inadvertently or not.

Brains and baldness

Calculus’ concealer closely resembles that of Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn’s, the beard that rampaged across the face of the Russian novelist in his autumnal years. You may look it up. Assuming e-browsers are continuing to reference famous dissidents. The beard comes attached to his face. As is usual with beards. The resemblance between Calculus and Solzhenitsyn does not end there; baldness afflicting them both.

Hair follicles…

… have wilted in the white heat of neural synapses snap snapping away. Brains in big heads (as in size) working with an unabated frenzy. Veritable factories of thinking! For there are certain people who cannot do anything but think, think and think again. Cognitive cog grinding compulsion. (CCGC)