Lost
Hello, long lost friend,
I cannot remember how long ago I spoke to you (apologies for not using divine capitalizing of my words if I speak about or to you but I simply have no feeling of hierarchy, even when a holy hierarchy, in my system of speech, writing, or thinking), and therefore doubt if you remember me, or, for that matter, care to listen to me at all.
What have we done to what you in whichever way have created.
Now that I mention creation, a colleague of mine honestly believes that Earth as we know it suddenly, as if with a snap of your sacred fingers, was there. No big bang and gradual emergence of stars, solar systems, and planets, but Boom!, without further ado, there is Earth in the universe. Can you imagine? Ha! But, blessed are the ignorant, I'd say. Frankly, I do know that you, or better Matthew in your name, wrote differently: blessed are the poor of spirit, referring to the modest of mind, rather than the ignorant. So, admittedly, it is I who thinks that the ignorant are blessed, and, taking it a step further, should be forgiven for the silly ideas that erupt from their simple minds. Do you know that there are - in this era - masses who claim that Earth is flat? Another Ha! You must be heavily disappointed in the way the human race has evolved.
Furthermore, not only my colleague but much of humanity, and surely its majority, is pretty ignorant if not plain stupid if you ask me (you don't ask me but I'll go on telling you anyway). For, once again, look what we have done with your world, the world that you - probably - destined to be ours.
My parents, may they rest in peace in your kingdom of heaven or vibrate blissfully in the quantum dance in which their ashes were taken up, are the real blessed not to have lived in these times. My parents were of the worrisome kind, afraid of the invisible and, as was proven to me through my disobedience, non-existent dangers that they imagined were hidden in dark street corners, behind bushes and scrapwood, in the use of the tiniest drop of alcohol, and even in the eloquence of people that crossed our family's path and whose motives were not completely clear to them. For my parents, in their fright, to see this world, our world, on fire would have smitten them down in despair and depression.
It is true, we're burning up the place. Assuming your omniscience, you are no doubt aware of what our obsessive materialism and uncontrolled desire for wealth have done to our climate. I have little hope that we will be able to, literally, turn the tide. It is no longer, if it ever was, in your hands but in our hands but alas, we woke up too late. And we? "We" still being a minority, an intellectual elite that Plato may have envisioned as those destined to form the government that knows best for the people they govern. In our times, my old friend, this elite seems to be as ignorant as the people they govern. As if waking up from mind-numbing hibernation, all that these 'elites' do now, I am sorry to say, is too little too late.
Was it only that, that what we did to the climate, you might maybe think that it is part of evolution, an evolution that would, be it not very naturally, extinguish one of the many living species that you, possibly, planned to inhabit Earth. We are no more than the rat, the rainword, the lamb, the owl, or the lion. At least, I sincerely hope that you did not - despite that whole Adam and Eve story over which fabrication I assume you did not have any control - see us, humans, as the crown of creation. And if you did, well, then I can only pity you deeply for what our so-called world leaders display in shortsightedness, greed, lust for power, and incapability to leave principles of religion behind in order to overcome conflicts and to prevent bloodshed over borders of countries, for example.
If you had a plan, I am sure this was not it. Currently, and I guarantee you it is not fed by my parents' fears, I am depressed over and disappointed in my fellow men and me. I thought we'd know better, I'd thought we'd do better by now. But we don't. We are far from being the poor of mind Matthew envisioned (modest, humble, and clear of mind), and you maybe hoped for.
I have no power to change things for the better, save spread little ripples of kindness in the small universe of family, colleagues, and friends I live in. But in the back of my mind I know, that also is too little too late. Deep in my heart, I think, and yes, fear that we are lost.
Humanity has nothing to be proud of.
I am truly sorry to not have written on a more cheerful note.
Your friend,
Milton
move around, there
please, take me, there
but enter that holiness with care
do touch, but touch tender,
that dark myriad of nerves,
and let me tighten my grip,
let me hold you firm, and wet and warm,
push your throbbing flesh,
and push now, a bit more
and when you'r there, slide slowly
where pleasure meets pain
then, move around, there, and make me moan
To the wind
The door is open still,
though moving on the wind.
Who left the house, will she return?
He sees, observes, sits, does nothing.
One squall will shut the door.
Voices, even hands, were raised,
echoes rang against speachless walls.
Remaining: the muffled sound of hearts,
beating in anger, now not in unison.
The dog first fled the house,
then she.
Leaving is not fleeing,
he has to say.
He who is sitting there still,
is fleeing in not following.
He took her keys,
closed the shields,
shut the garden gate,
but left the door to the wind.
I am a lion
The deer was jumping in panic over crapwood and bushes, and through high clums of wild grass before I got her with my claws. My first blow made her stagger, just a bit but it was enough. I accelarated and drove my nails through her skin until the warm and bittersweet smell of her blood reached my nostrils. I jumped her and she sank through her knees. Bending over her head, I ripped off a strip of flesh of her neck. The beast shrieked, eyes wide in terror. I roared into the vast pale-blue sky, fully aware I was no human anynmore or never had been. My heart was pounding in my chest.
I opened my eyes. The alarm on my phone was ringing; a melody in crescendo. Underneath the curtains a pale stripe of light was creeping into the room. My heart calmed and I sighed, reaching for the small bedside table top. I stumbled upon the knob of the drawer, felt higher, stamped some fingermarks on my glasses, and even higher I found my iPhone and held it close to my face. Without my contacts or glasses, I was nearly blind. I swiped right: silence.
Over my head I felt the light but still chilly stream of air from the ventilation flap in the window. Have to get out, I thought and rose, swinging back the white cover — filled with warm and luxurious goose down — over the bedframe. In the nude I got on my feet, stumbled shivering into the open kitchen of my living room, prepared coffee, then went back into the bathroom where I put on the shower. While washing myself under the quickly warming and steaming water, I peed. I showered in less than four minutes.
Standing before the mirror, dry again, glasses put aside, lenses put in and shaving, I envisioned the day that lay before me. I imagined the route I had to go: through the heather of Barringer Fields while the sun would be rising in my rearview mirror, classical music playing from the radio. How many years now I had driven this route in the earliest morning. Seven, maybe eight? Almost eight, I thought.
Some people at work came to my mind's eye. Stella, the busty redhead receptionist with her cheeky smile. She savored to call out my full name by way of morning salutation; "Well, good morning to you David Aron Ehrenberg ... And how are you today?" She would give me a cheeky look from under her brows, the lips full and curled upwards, maybe just a bit apart, moist, shining like velvet, her irises green, her pupils dark and deep, the skin of her face and neck and the amount of chest she allowed herself to show, pale around all of her freckles. I would smile, make a joke, leaning on the counter. Boris the bellboy, at the elevator. Thin, gray eyes, short cut chesnut-colored hair, silent and seemingly stuck in his own solipsistic world, never making eye contact — no-one had ever heard him speak — but nonetheless knowing flawless where every single employee had to go. Seeing me he would press 21, the top floor button.
All of the nameless faces in the elevator, people from other companies, form departments I should know but didn´t, not even after all this years. Bill, who came in seconds after me, then rushed to elevator, and then, Bill being ready to wrench himself in, Boris the bellboy spotted him and let the doors softly slide open. Alway almost the same conversation.
"Just made it," he would say, panting, the cheeks reddened. He was a sharped dressed man. Suits in beautiful blue, gray or even ochre and sometimes he wore his pink-striped camel colored wool Paul Smit suit. Slick shirts, fancy shoes, great tan, white teeth and maybe he had gotten his ass bleached too. Oftentimes I thought he'd be more in place than me, on 21st. I had also seen the results of his work. Impressive, harsh and rightful confronting but meticulous and precise. Too bad he was such an arrogant basterd.
"Excellent," I would answer, looking at him with a smile, my suitcase in front of my crotch.
"So, my friend, David my man, here we are, ready for one more day of glory," and he gave me no more than a look from the corners of his eyes, stared at the dull gray of the stainless steel elevator door, his figure a mere blurry mirror image. And then, it went like this.
"Here we are indeed," I said, although I wasn't too sure about any glory to come. Someone at the back sighed audibly. Bill turned his head to the woman, raising his brows.
"Screw her," he said under his voice, his mouth so near to my ear that I could feel his warm, damp breath.
"Bill, behave," I responded in a whisper, but then I gave him a brotherly smile. I hated myself for that. But I knew and worked with Bill and the woman, I glanced at her, I didn't know her. She too was in a suit. Nice. Dark long hairs, dark brown tan, hazel eyes that gave me an icy look. I nodded to her, in an apology. She looked the other way, as in disbelief.
"I never do, you know that," he said, louder now. In the corner of my eye the woman shook her head, then stared at the floor.
"But tell me, what's on your agenda today? " he continued, feigning ignorance. Now I sighed, remembering what I already knew.
"A meeting with...," I looked around, bit my tongue, figuratively speaking, "... with Mark."
I hated the CEO with whom I had — as the CFO — to work together on a daily basis. I limited my 'meetings' with him to short exchanges of communication on the doorstep of his room that was so large that I had to raise my voice, which annoyed him terribly, much to my pleasure. Or I emailed him, or texted him as he liked to document every contact he had with whomever and he didn't know how to archive his text messages to his computer. He was almost 64 and I suspected him of having, but hiding, beginning dementia. Maybe he was getting deaf as well. His decisions got more whimsical by the day. He was old-fashioned, I thought.
He had been in the army when he was young and — as he couldn't stop telling — had volunteered to the Seventh US Airforce that had preluded the end of the Vietnam War with a brutal airstrike operation that destroyed most of Hanoi City. Mark suggested that he had been part of this operation, but his wife, Heather, who left him at his sixtieth birthday, had once told me in an intimate moment that none of that was true, that Mark had confessed to her to have been so nervous at the time, that he had been vomitting, sick to the stomach, in the days before they would drop their deadly loads in the city. The leading officer had kept Mark on the ground. I never knew what to believe. It was not like Mark to admit such a thing, but neither was he much of a hero. In the company he based most of his decisions on the input of others, which is logical in a way for a man in his position, but then made them the culprits when a new policy he had administered met too much resistance. The last years however, his decisions had become more and more eratic.
Mark thought we were friends. I never did. It is true, we've known each other for nearly a decade now, we worked together in two separate companies in the US after he came back from what he called his — indeed, always spoken capitalized — Tour Through Europe. But friends, no, never. I liked Heather, not Mark, and what Mark never knew and now most certainly never will know anything about, is the liaison I had with Heather. I smiled.
"What about?" Bill asked. Bill damn well knew what the meeting was about. He had delivered reports that clearly indicated we — as a company — were doing bad and had to cut down costs somewhere. All that would get to see these reports would instantly understand that severe staff reductions were inevitable. Hence, Bill had given me a call before sending his latest reviews into the organization. "You might want to discuss this with Mark first," he had said to me. I was not surprised of the results.
"You know," I said, therefore. The woman in the corner — when the fuck would she be leaving the elevator, I thought — seemed to be listening. But I, we, we didn't say a thing.
"Righto...," and he looked at his toes. "Well, good luck then." and he left the elevator. I looked back, she was still there and apart from Boris we were the only two left.
"Do I know ...," I began. The door slid open.
"No, you don't," and she stuck out her hand. I gestured to the doors and glanced at Boris who didn't like to wait. Once we were outside, in the hallway to what seemed to be 'our' floor noe, I shook her hand with a question mark on my face.
"Susanna de Ferrante. I am the new assistant to Alison McKernan, the CCO." Then she blushed, "You know who that is, of course." I nodded and introduced myself.
"Why did you respond like you did on what my colleague said?"
"Because of his remark of another day of glory, I thought how can a man be so full of himself..." She paused, then continued, looking past me, "But I realize now he is probably a colleague of mine. I am too impulsive at times." I smiled, not knowing exactly why.
"Well, don't worry, he is stuck up, I can tell you." She laughed, shifting her weight from one leg to the other and back again, swaying a bit.
"Anyway," I looked around, saw colleagues walking around, some others already sitting in their cubicle. A bit further away, the coffee maker were people had gathered. Stella was behind the reception desk, watching me, maybe missing our morning routine. When she caught my eye she winked, kept staring at me for a while with her full lips, then went back to work. "...anyway. I wish you good luck here. I have to go on." I waited, pointed to Stella, "That's Stella, she'll take you to Alison, no doubt." She thanked me and went off. I watched her, and her bum, round, shaking a bit below her hips. I thought I was disgusting.
"Goodmorning David, " said Elsa, my secretary, when I came into my office. She had a desk inside my office, since some time now. Before she was outside, as a shield for unwanted visitors that actually didn't exist. I had my door open all the time and no visitor, except Mark maybe, was unwanted. One day I decided to call facilities and ordered them to place her desk in my office, it was spacious enough. Mark had witnessed this.
"Are you fucking her?" Mark commented. I wanted to slap him in the face real hard.
"Jesus-fucking-Christ," I responded instead. I looked him in the eyes, hard and cold, "How on earth can you live with yourself." He chuckled.
"They are all bitches. You know that. Whores." He flipped through the papers on my desk, and I repressed the urge to hit his fingers with my ruler. "So, you are fucking her, " he concluded. But he didn't dare look me in the eyes.
"I will leave my door open, so that you can see us doing it, you prick." I shook my head. "And stop touching my papers." He laughed and then went off when Elsa came in, "You be gentle to him, be gentle," and he laughed even more.
"Jesus," Elsa said.
"Good morning Elsea, how are you." I look at her, with a smile. She looked back at me, a vague smile, she is frowning, her eyes seem to be sunken into thoughts. "What?" I ask.
"It's Mark. He phoned from the car."
"Come again? You're telling me he'll be in early?"
"Exactly. He wants to have that meeting with you as soon as he comes in." She pauses. "David, it sounds like trouble." She lifts her hand up from her keyboard, "I just don't know." I nodded, feeling the muscles of my face tightening. "Shall I pour you one?"
"Yes please. You are an angel, and don't worry, will you?" I went to my seat.
From my case I took Bill's report, flipped through the pages, towards the conclusion. I sighed. That moment Elsa was at my desk with my mug.
"More trouble?" She was dressed in a dark red blouse, on a black skirt. She had a simple necklace with some sweat water pears attached to the lower quarter of it. The pearls where shaded light-orange, more than pink. Elsa's skin started to wrinkle and the collars of her blouses had gotten higher over the years. She was fifty-six. But she was pretty slim, and good looking, her dark blonde hairs mostly in a bun, light make-up. She was as slender and tiny above as she was below. She was single again, as she had lost her husband in a car accident some years ago now. They never got kids as he was infertile and they didn't like the thought of having to raise the fruit that was partly from someone else's loins. There was a chair opposite my desk, for guests, people, colleagues who wanted to speak to me. I looked up at her.
"Come sit."
"Oh boy, that bad."
I told her about the report. That cutting down on staff would be inevitable. That I would try to save her position—I needed an assistant after all—but could not give any guarantees. She took it well.
"Don't you worry. I know you will do your best for me. And if not ..." She didn't finish her sentence.
"Then I will find you something else, Elsa, for sure," I said. The truth was I had no idea if that would be possible at all. When you were over fifty, you held on to the job you had as getting other work, as an applicant competing with all the young and cheap, was an exercise that was know to be fruitless.
"So, you're meeting with Mark is about that?"
"It is indeed. Seems this time I am the bringer of bad tidings."
"Figures are figures, nothing you can do about that. Am just wondering ... who has gotten us into this mess." I felt shame when she said that. I could not hide behind Mark's incompetence. I had been there too, the whole ride long. Then Mark came rushing in. He pointed at the meeting table.
"Right here. Elisa, bring my some coffee."
"Elsa," she corrected him and poured him one, full to the edge. She knew too that Mark had lost his steady hand.
"Put it over there," he gestured. He bent over to the mug and loudly slurped down the first centimeter of his coffee. He then looked triumphant to Elsa. Watching her for a while. He turned to me, pointing at her. Elsa looked up, raising her brows.
"This is why she shouldn't be in your office." Elsa was rolling her eyes.
"Ella, I am sorry hun, you have to go. I have ..."
"You go nowhere," I interrupted him. "We'll go to your office, alright?"
"Jesus. You are weak, you know that? You are just plain weak." He took his mug.
"Let me finish this." Over the table he looked out the window. We were close to the city border, after which Barringer Fields began. Even from this distance and height you could see the heather was blooming. A misty purple glow lay over all of the fields.
He took another coffee in his own office, snapping his fingers to his secretary, Manuela, a beautiful Brazilian woman in her mid-twenties. There were rumors about them. He looked at her when she was leaving his office, his eyes staring down, his mouth a bit open.
"I read Bill's report," he said. I cursed Bill, who had given Mark a head start. Opening a drawer he flipped through the files and took out a folder, opening it on his desk. He went through the pages.
"I don't agree. I think this report is rubbish. Fake. Not true." He looked at me pushing his lower lip forward, sitting bent forward with his arms resting on his thighs, his hands folded together as in a prayer. I was afraid of this. Agreeing with the conclusions of the report would equal admitting his failure. He had ignored my warnings and ordered heedless investments of which the costly purchase of Taylor&Blackstone was both the most recent and improvident example. This, he, had brought the company in its current position and at a point where only drastic measures could prevent its downfall.
"You want to bring this company down?" I looked at him, my lips pressed together in a thin line, my fists clenched in my lap. He could not see my hands but he noticed my lips.
"Your emotions, see, that is what fucks things up for you. Yes," he nodded, "that's why you'll never be in full control, why you'll always be in second place. Ugh." He looked at me, then leaned back and took a cigar form the box on his table. He had gone to a meeting in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, with his secretary — "I need her as an intepreter," he had said — and Manuela had bought him a box of Angelina's, because they had the name of a woman.
My eye fell on the ashtray that was on the table. It was cube-shaped Venetian glass in beautiful shades of blue, its corner sharp. Manuela had forgotten to empty it, the day before. I rose from my chair. He looked at me, following my movements.
"To weak you say? Too polite too, you figure?" While I emptied the ashtray in the bin behind his desk, I felt its weight. Maybe two pounds, maybe a little less.
I saw his eyes widen when I swung my arm straigth in the air. His cigar tumbled from his fingers to the floor while his other hand clenched the lighter that tight that his knuckles turned white. Too late, too slow to shout he just cringed before the first blow cracked his skull. I panted, observing how he still managed to rise from his chair. Pointing at me he tried to speak but produced only a meaningless stutter. After the second blow he fell to the floor. He still was breathing, irregularly. There was little blood. With the first blow a corner of the cube had hit him right in the center of his skull. It was fractured and open. A small stream of blood was seeping out of it. The second blow was with a flat side of the ashtray and had bruised the back of his head; I saw how a network of bursted veins was spreading under his skin. I was sure he was going to die, but I wondered if that would happen soon. He was lying face down on the carpet.
I sighed and listened. No sound came through the oak doors of his office. I examined my clothes. On the sleeve of my shirt, close to that of my jacket, was a small spot of blood. I checked all the rest of my clothes. All was neat. I rolled Mark on his side with his cheek now resging on the floor, his eyes gazing at the panoramic vista of the city. Beautiful, I thought when I looked in the distance. I looked down on him. This way his skull, already cracked, was most vulnerable and I hoped things would not get too messy. I rolled up the legs of my trousers, one could never know. I stamped him his on the head with my right foot — my right leg is my strongest as I am right-handed — three times and then he spasmed, a ruttle of air escaping from his lungs. I looked. The few pink bubbles on his lips popped, one after the other. I had silenced him.
He was dehumanized. His face, although not terribly harmed was no longer his but of the monster he was. A monster fallen prey to his beta male, the one who had been in his shadow far too long. I wiped off my shoe at his side, and let it rest there for a while. In the window I could see my reflection and through that was the skyline of the business center and in the distance the purple of the fields. I was standing proud on my victim. But my face, was that me?
I turned to the phone, dialed Elsa's number.
"Mark?"
"No, it's me."
"Oh. Okay?"
"Listen, I'll give you a full account of the meeting later today, ok? But ... cancel my meetings for the rest of the day but for now ... I am out for a meeting with ... the Union."
"Got it." She wanted to say something more but I had already had hung up.
I walked around the body, looking behind me until the reddish footprint of my right foot had faded completely. I pulled down the legs of my pants and drew the sleeve of my jacket over that of my shirt.
When I closed the door behind me Manuela looked at me asking. She was doing her nails, the laptop on her desk was wizzing.
"Your laptop," I said, pointing, "You need a new one. It's getting hot, right?"
"Yes sir, it is, it's old," she sighed.
"Let me go to facilities, and I'll get you something new, alright?" She was straightening her back and smiled.
"Well, thank you!"
"O, and about Mark...," I held out a warning finger, "He'll be on the phone for a long time with his wife, better not disturb him, okay?" She looked up, her eyes big, and she swallowed.
"Right, I won't." I left her behind reassured but I didn't go to facilities ofcourse. I went for the 20th floor walking past Stella. I winked at her.
"Apologies, Stella dear, you no doubt noted I was held up this morning?"
"Yes, I missed our little morning chat," she pouted, "Will you make it up for it someday soon?" I smiled, showing my teeth.
"I will, I will," I bowed my head into her direction and went to the elevator.
"20," I said to Boris and he just nodded. When the doors openend Bill was just passing by.
"Could you just leave the elevator for a a second?" I asked Boris, who looked at me in astonishment and opened his mouth to protest but remained silent.
"Please? Get out for just for a few floors? I'll send it back to you, promise," I said giving him my friendliest smile. In dismay Boris left the elevator while I kept it open.
"Bill!" Bill halted, turned his head.
"My man! How did it ...," he started, but I interupted him.
"Come in, come in," I gestured, welcoming him into the elevator. Bill came in and I pushed 18, it didn't matter. As soon as the elevator started moving, I pushed the emergency brake. With a light shock it halted.
"What ...," he began but before he could finish his sentence I punched him hard in the middle of his beautiful face, hooked him under his chin and when he curved back I kicked him in his crotch hard with the point of my right shoe. He grunted and sunk to the floor. He lay on his side and he tried to get up, putting his hands to the side of his shoulders. I kicked him in the stomach. He fell back, trying to speak. I didn't hesitate and stamped him on his head. Thrice.
I released the emergency button and when the doors opened I pressed 21. While the doors were closing behind me I went out and walked to the stairs.
On the ground floor the receptionist was making a call. I looked the other way, pulling down my sleeve, and went through the revolving door, pacing but not running to the car park. When I drove out I saw two police cars parking in front of the building, cops hurrying in.
I wondered where to go. Taking hold of the steering wheel, my sleeve had popped out again from under my jacket. The blood stain had darkened and was looking at me like an angry eye. I looked at my face in the mirror. My eyes were sunken deep into my skull, my face was pale, bags had emerged under eyes, my pupils were opened wide, my lips were colored crimson, full of blood. My muscles felt strong and warm.
I drove off to Barringer Fields.
At the end of the trackway was this small lake surrounded by waving reeds and behind it the forest border. At my side, as an opening in the band of reed, was a small sandy beach, maybe man-made, for tourists. The engine of my Chrysler was purring. I looked at the black surface of the water that rippled in the wind. I pushed the power button and the engine stopped. I looked around, to the scenery, then in the car. I opened the glove compartment. There was just the user manual of my car, I never had had a gun. At my feet I saw the emergence hammer in its holder. I considered jamming the buckle of my safety belt.
I started the car again. On the passenger seat was the key, its only function was to open and close the door. I closed the doors, opened my window, threw out the key, closed the window again and while I was speeding forward, I thought, I am lion, I am not a man.
I opened my mouth and I roared.
soon, we said
in beaming light
of August sun
on her flower bike
I saw her
her face and traits
and all the muscles there
went from questionmark
through frown and calm
to smile
and suns burst out
in both her eyes
and all this joy
she aimed at me
she came to halt
tiptoe-touching
the cobblestone street
her legs slightly spread
she kissed me on a cheek
(my hand was going slowly for her breast)
and then
the other cheek
(her hand was groping down my jeans)
and I kissed her one
(already we were lying naked on our bed of stone)
and then the other cheek
(and for a moment
all on the terrace rose
when she received me
with a shriek)
soon, we said,
we shall meet again
and then
she mounted
her flowerbike
I turned and watched
how her hand
chucked her dress
neatly under her behind
Far away from her
Pale now her skin
against the deep black soil
wherein she rests.
The dark hairs
frame her face,
her eyes are closed in peace,
the corners of her mouth
arching down in mildest sorrow,
her children playing at her feet.
Thus I look down at her,
with burning eyes,
still leaning on the spade,
the wood, barely colder
than my hand.
Someone bumps me, in the side,
I weep, please,
may this pass me by.
When first lumps fall,
dull and much too loud,
close to her groin,
the hairs grown back,
a shiver ripples through her skin
as in a sigh.
I cover her, spade after spade,
but spare her face,
I will not let her go.
Then birds alight in silence
in distant trees,
and nowhere is a sound,
all air is still.
I turn away.
With eyes blind
to what is left of light inside of me,
they lead me far away from her.
Big White Void
I actually did try to prevent myself being submerged into it by clasping my hands to the desk, the knuckles all white, my fingernails leaving the eight small curves — four to the left and the other four a bit more than a feet to the right — which my wife found in the soft pinewood of the desktop after I was gone. She found my seat empty and still warm when she put her hand on the seating in a gesture of both worry and tenderness. As it had been a fresh although bright autumn day, the window was closed. The sheet of paper lay pristine on the desk with on its right the black fountain pen — its cap beside it — she had given me for my birthday, years ago. No engraving, we weren't like that. The inkpot was at the left, placed on the light blue ink-smudged cloth. I hadn't even opened it yet. All was untouched.
She went downstairs, checking all the doors, which were locked, opened the back door and stepped into the garden where the cold had become almost biting. There was no movement, no sound. She stood there in doubt but then, with a shiver, returned to the house. All the keys were on the rack, he could not have closed the door from the outside, he had vanished, she thought.
The void was like a mist. The edges of the paper started to blur, like when you stare at an object for too long. My hands, first resting calmly on the desk, started to cramp, as it were, as soon as this mist coming up from it reached me, cold and damp at first. Shivers were running down my spine but not so much of the cold but more because, at a certain point, I lost sight of all details. There was only this impermeable white-gray. There was no sound and when the cold had gone there was no temperature, no feeling, not the usual gravitational pull, nothing. I had no weight but neither was I floating weightlessly in ... wherever I was.
I would have thought I had died if not a bright yellow light shone through all, evaporated the mist and gave me a soothing warmth on my skin. Sparkling green meadows stretched out around me for miles and miles. Small birds flew over me in flocks, their wings black against the clear blue sky, fluttering fast. Standing still, looking around, my joints felt strong and young and I started to run, just like that. I felt the grass and the soft ground beneath it under the soles of my feet, the wind on my skin, my muscles flexing. I was dreaming, for sure.
Then this house, that I entered and not before I opened the door to the hallway — with its small red-brown tiles — memories came back to me and there I was as a little boy on my knees with this tiny toy rocket that I threw on the floor with its metal tip, making its small charge explode with a bang echoing in the hallway. There was the claying of ashtrays and cups with my dad and sisters in the dim evening light and there was the soft whiz of the flames of the coal stove. There was the bull broken free, trampling the flower beds of our front garden, so carefully planted by my mother. The animals we saw being born came by; the foals and deer on their fragile legs, the calves that were pulled out of the cow with all of the force of the farmer's strong muscled arms. There was the village idiot who chased me with a knife but turned out to be harmless as a dove.
Back in the hallway once more, I went up the stairs to see the bedrooms. I recall having been in the study, looking for my birthday present which I found before they were given to me. Everybody angry. Especially my dad, but he didn't give me a beating. It was my birthday after all. The bedrooms of my sisters, had I ever been in there? I recognized my own bedroom, overlooking the large back garden, the little park next to it, and the woods behind it in the distance.
Evening, the sky orange-lit from the fire to Bernies Bar that was burned out flat to the ground. I sat on my knees, leaning on the windowsill, and saw only the orange light, moving against the dark of night because of the flickering flames below. Three times a fire truck passed, with howling sirens and red-blue lights. My eyes were wide with excitement.
All rooms so far were empty, cobwebs hanging motionless from the walls and ceilings.
I opened another room, a large double bed with a mattress only. In the corner next to the bed, a chair. On it an old man, bald on top, a thin white beard, well-kept. His glasses ... it was my dad. He looked up to me as if awaking from a dream.
"Son." He smiled but I could see he was tired, his back curved, his arms on the armrests, his hand gripping their ends.
"My son." He paused to push up his glasses. He coughed. Smiled again.
"Yes boy, this is how it is with an old man like me." The sound of his voice was somehow muffled as from a greater distance. He gestured, or tried to, to the bed.
"This is what it is ....," he repeated and then stared out of the window where the afternoon light was dimming.
"A few hours and it will be dark," he said, still looking at what had caught his interest outside, "everything dark and all gone. Times is endless but passes so quickly. Isn't that something odd." I wondered what I was doing here. He looked at me.
"How are you doing son? I really want to know," he said, lifting his head and giving me a solid look.
"I ...," I hesitated. I didn't know. No, I knew but was reluctant to tell, him. "I ... I am... It's that ...," I sighed and stared at the floor. My hands were cold and I was sweating on my back.
"Your book," he said, "I always hoped so much that you would write it, and I could have read it before I was gone."
"Well, I know and you said that but maybe you shouldn't have." I had raised my voice and immediately after I was blushing.
"I see." He paused, folding his hands in his lap, then looking out the window again. "Stupid cows, thinking to be a bull, jumping each other." His chair was cracking and from the corner of my eyes I saw how he tried to get up a little, his hands leaning heavily, somewhat wiggling, on the arms of the chair and stretching his neck, "Now they're being called in." There were sounds of mooing, bells ringing and the barking of a dog. Then he sat back again.
"I understand." He continued and nodded his head, "I'm sorry son, I really am but I thought ... you had such great imagination and ... what did that teacher say? You had the power of the word, that's what he said." I could not lift up my head to him but would he have reached out a hand I would have taken it, unable to stop my tears.
"You know yourself what is holding you back?" he said.
"No." I looked right at him with burning eyes, then looked the other way, shaking my head.
"How old are you now?"
"What?!"
"How old?"
"Fiftyfour."
"I see," I saw he was looking at me and maybe a smile was on his lips, "The power of the word. Man." He paused. "But I didn't really push you, did I? Maybe I should have, or maybe we should have talked about it, or talk at all. We didn't talk that much, did we." He waited to catch his breath. "But well, what do you know, as a parent. Nothing, I tell you." He was silent, his breathing quiet.
When I finally looked up at him he was gone, the chair empty and the window open. Threads of dust and spider webs were swaying softly on a breeze.
I got up from the bed and stepped to the window. Moving the cobwebs away with a hand I saw him go, slowly, through the meadows, with my mother — fierce as ever — at his side, her hand on the arm he had put through hers. I watched them until they were gone. I was tired and could not resist to lay myself on the bed for a while, just to close my eyes and to try not to think of anything at all. I only thought of my wife, Jocelyne, and then fell asleep.
She woke me up stroking my head. I opened my eyes and looked up at her, turning my head, and with a brief smile I closed my eyes again.
"Where were you?" She shook my shoulder, lightly.
"In my mind," I answered without hesitation, I looked at her face. Her lips curved in a smile and she frowned, all at the same time.
"In your mind."
"Yes." I paused and said, jokingly, "if you don't mind."
"Tell me in advance, next time you go in your mind, so I don't go looking for you and won't worry so much about you vanishing into thin air. Okay?"
"It befell me," I responded. That was true, I thought.
Jocelyne nodded, said, "I see."
"You talk like my father."
"I know," she said and she smiled.
"Was he there too?" I gave that one away.
"Yes, he was there too." I remembered our conversation.
"Did you guys talk?"
"Yes." I didn't feel like getting into that too much. I closed my eyes again.
"Well?" God, there was really no escape. I yielded.
"He started about my book again." She laughed.
"Again?" Then, serious and with calm, "Anthony, he is dead for ... sixteen years now..." She put her hand on my shoulder and I felt the warmth of her hand through my clothes. I sighed.
"I think I should give it up. You saw that white sheet, that big white void?" She didn't answer.
"Why don't you just write down what just happened." Her hand was still on my shoulder and I loved her so much. "I'd like to know."
"We'll see," I said to her and for a while, we sat together in silence.