Beside the cannon cast with a fico gesture
(thumb up yours, if you like, at the breech-end)
the eccentric guide told the women they'd
have children every time they touched
the thumb. 'I know this works', he said, 'I have
six children, and I will not touch again'. We sent
a text to let our friends who wanted children know.
He took us next to the railway lines encrusted
with molluscs and barnacles. 'One hundred
thousand people died constructing this', he said.
'The Dutch did not give food to men and women
who worked on it, so they died where they fell down'.
We made a memo to ourselves to check the facts.
And then the well. 'If naughty people got caught,
they were thrown in this', he told us. 'I cleaned
the rubbish out, and put the fish in'. He declared,
'I am a Buddhist, and I have not hurt a living
thing for seventeen years', then he squatted on
the cobblestones and crossed his feet, and said
'Om mani padme om' and made the flower mudra
like a Buddha, but we took a snap to check.
The courtyard next: he told us, 'this was where
there was what you call, echauffeur, scaffold, yes,
where Dutch men executioned people, with a
rope around the neck'. He made the motion, tied
an air knot. 'Then they kicked the chair out under
them, and aark caark, dead; they died', he said. We
made a note to check the noises strung up people make.