Mouroir

Notes

1

Flap — long-tailed widow-bird, sakabula; common name for Black prisoner.

2

Abajo la gusanera!

3

Note: In the Congo it is the custom among the Bakongo, the Badindo (or Babwende) the Basundi, Babembe and Bateke to make effigies of the ancestors which are kept in memory of the dead or sometimes buried with them; also rougher carved fetish figures intended as concentration points (lightning conductors as it were) for the spirit forces of evil and sickness. These fetishes often have cavities in the bellies — sometimes covered by mirrors — where magical things are deposited as “medicine”. One of the most common kinds of fetish is covered with nails hammered home by the priest.

4

“She has found a mare’s nest and is laughing over the eggs.” Gogol, Dead Souls.

5

“In the old days women did not smoke.” Ibid.

6

The real Dr Foroek (1919-?), also known as Galp Northangle, was the obscure but very unorthodox chess master of whom Alekhine said: “He was the most upsetting opponent it was ever my misfortune to be pitted against.”

7

“. . one of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had declared that mirrors and copulation are abominable, because they increase the number of men.” The Anglo-American Cyclopedia.