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Lifting your two eyelids with the effort of ant-like slits, you are reborn in the land of clocks. By choosing the toys that, in the cruel moment of awakening, find themselves in the slashing field of our pupils, you choose your interpretation of the world. I vote for the faded photograph of Shoavinne, struggling to hold a slipping silver saucepan.
Lips curling in the recesses of a smile, an unstoppable delight in the everyday, even in grasping the pan, creates the illusion that opening your eyes was the proper chimney of roulette alternatives. I sipped the photo across from the bed, amidst swirling glasses smelling of rotten apples, creating my own applied art. Chatting with the private sun is the howling desire of those who adhere to cultural norms. But the privilege is mine. The rest are to gather their belongings and leave immediately.
As I punch my ticket, allowing me to settle into my place on this side of the sink, freeing me from the yoke of plumbing pipes and tainted water, or perhaps binding me, giving me flesh and shoving consciousness into my ear—homosexuals would know this best—as I punch it, I try to form my first dozen or so conclusions while lying down. That morning, the morning I saw those contemplating eyes, I began by remembering Corporal Targabagne, who sentenced novices to coloring national emblems for minor offenses and suspected me for over two months of raping a nurse who worked as a volunteer in our barracks. The tin cup he only put down when he shit, which we scribbled on his face with pink, indelible marker, was a kind of symbol of the loss of authority in our eyes, as the hard, male shell succumbed to irreversible feminization. Furious bayonet pokes at mannequins will not earn respect for the generals who impose spotty martial law.
Morning reflections are a grinding oddity, openly beating the drum of condensed knowledge, spewing forth thoughts whose interconnectedness reminds me of the broken rungs of the monkey bars on the gymnasium walls. I remember my puppy years, when my loins, inspired by pillow plans, spun a spiderweb of dreamlike graces throughout entire lessons.
After noticing that the sounds of the keys are scarring all the skies, and that finding a chariot in a spectacle box seems no more extraordinary than the constant dryness of the mouth, the natural alarm clock of us cursed by the state monopoly industry, after noticing that the clamoring conclusions behave like secretaries of a military commission, sending abused conscripts to other rooms from which they return to their original place, after such an observation I rise from the floor to fill my bitter cup with another day, probably named by the microscopes as the inevitable consequence of my illness.
The decision to go to Belvederre is made on the level below. Gorillas don't consciously befriend humans; it's a long process, still unavailable for statistical analysis. First, they allow a distance of five meters to be reduced, provided they aren't surrounded by a tight group using noisy camera flashes. After a period difficult to count, dependent on many factors, they cautiously approach closer and tentatively study human habits. The process of familiarization is insidious, a cancer whose symptoms become apparent when treatment is too late.
Only when I finally leave the basement, where I've managed to sleep undisturbed for over a decade, do I once again realize it's gone, that it's not today, that I'll be drinking again today and resting tomorrow. On the stairwell, the thought of returning without a visit to the Belvedere (I'm kidding myself that it's just about visiting Madame Monisse) is illogical, like cutting off a bedsheet game on a cool summer evening before the finish line. And then I remember that I know this path, that I've been here more times than I've been to the bathtub, that my entire life boils down to this path, and that I couldn't possibly stray any further, to the pet shop where, many years ago, I used to spend my time passionately observing the habits of spiders and scorpions. Always drunk.
The final steps, freeing me from the stairwell's embrace, trigger a sudden onslaught of sounds and images. Despite winding my watch daily, moving through the neon jungle is an exotic dance along the balustrade of a concrete building. Even the sounds of gunfire, bomb blasts, and the shrieks of terrified greenhorns are more harmonious to me than the dark recesses, tainted by rows of blinding streetlights, furiously barking dogs, and demonic children's laughter. But soon I turn the corner and see the Belvedere.
The bright lights immediately attract attention, shimmering in the distance. Glittering in the distance with the glow of a mirage. I've often wondered if this isn't some hostile maneuver, if it isn't a carefully worked intelligence agency trying to lure me in to torture a confession. A perversion of former servicemen, but no insect caught in a pitcher plant escapes its trap.
There's something terrifying about this place, something like a crow screeching over the body of a hanged man, boring into the beam embedded in my eye. The wailing voices of this shop ignite my unquestionable delight, admiring the lovers' hats falling with joy, but I truly hear a sinister note within them. As if some terrible power lurked behind those warm neon lights and elegant vestibule. Some perceive this in the nocturnal forest, convinced that the forest is a hostile creature, possessed by an evil spirit, intent on slyly sucking the life juice from them.
I like the forest at night; it's quiet then, and you can hear every crack, but I see such a gnashing demon in "Belvederre."
This effect vanishes with the sight of milkmaids in bathrobes contemplating the vacuum cleaners in hotel rooms, embossed on the shop sign. Then an elegant, richly appointed interior appears, and from within comes the strains of an old radio, which the youngest saleswoman, Madame Monisse, always carries with her, tossing wrinkled orange peels behind her. Pleasant cleanliness or pure pleasure?
Walking through the doors of my cathedral, I allow the paranoia-violating sense of impending orgasm to grow, piercing through all my fears. And no one looks at me with contempt anymore, no one turns their gaze on the street toward the trash bin; from every shelf, overwhelming treasure chests peer at me, twisting my cynical distance from the world into an empathetic smile. Once again, I grin in an ironic smile whose full meaning only I can guess. The circle is complete.
Gazing at the shelves is relaxing, sometimes far too relaxing, as Madame Monisse asks in a helpful tone if I can get you anything, flexing her feline back behind the counter. Seeing her dignified, almost aristocratic movements, yet devoid of a hint of haughtiness, I form (oh my god!) optimistic conclusions about reality. Children will receive colorful bouquets of dragées from the hands of women whose every twitch of support can drag all thoughts with it, yet who are working for a good cause. Pretending their perceptions ignore the situations in which I was once forced to shamefully steal yeast rolls.
Madame Monisse knows what I mean.
I make my way out onto the street, my steps clattering against the pavement, a liter of rubbing alcohol held in a transparent mesh bag, two days' fuel, not counting mornings. The strangler slides from my chest, interrupting the cruel and slow condemnation of me to torment.
I try not to look back then. Because when I look back, my piano-playing friends are leaving the living room, and I see the same demon again, laughing in my face and boasting about winning the battle with the beggar.
That day, I stopped, as usual, by the rosebushes, the magical gypsy territory where I introduce the first drops of spirit into my bloodstream. The red hue of this place is completely at odds with the surrounding green plants and brings a certain fairytale element to this gray landscape, an element intensified by the organic chemistry transformation that determines my actions. I often wondered if something unusual would happen to me through that bush once I had the cap back on and turned toward the stairwell. But it wasn't until yesterday, when I choked on too much of the burning beverage, that he caught us all observing the oddities in the city's event library.
Next to a tangle of falling leaves by a wooden bench, a young couple was leafleting with a touch of boredom, advertising electronic dictionaries. The boy's misplaced eyes and mischievous haircut reminded me deceptively of a captured deer, whose laughter scoured the area like a spy. In his deerlike villainy, he was out of place on the bench, a frowning watchmaker's error, but the girl, with that peculiar way she held a piece of paper, had a sparkle that immediately drew me toward the old willow tree.
I approached them, pretending to be thrown by a causal accident of choosing a route, a roll of the dice unrelated to my will. Scratching my shaggy boot on the rough ground, I glanced there casually and saw eyes. Contemplative.
I'd seen them before, yes!
I know who had eyes like that, and suddenly I felt Siberian shivers flowing through my country. Cold shivers, every now and then turning into sub-desert waves, drenching everything with beads of sweat. For a dozen or so seconds, my heart pounded the cups with all its might; I felt like a vicious drum under a bad drummer.
They watched with curiosity, pointing at me; they were clearly drawn to attractions like the reflections of a tramp in the middle of the yard. Undersized calves, probably still watching adventure romances with happy endings, gorging on popcorn in movie theater seats and giggling amidst the tickling. But then our eyes met, and I felt I couldn't simply walk away and let her speculate, that I had to fulfill the promise I'd made by looking at her longer than was written in the cave of behavior.
When a successful conversational initiation, unfinished by a disgusting end to the discussion or an awkward silence, seems impossible, you can always ask for a cigarette. The procedure of offering a cigarette and lighting it with someone else's lighter requires an exchange of a few words, which integrates the interlocutors regardless of their will, also presenting many details. Knowledge pays off later.
It was she who handed me the cigarette, her movements faster and more precise. The deer was overconfident, after all, stemming from the fact that he owned her body. He knew he was needed, and it gave him a sense of superiority.
This irritated me almost as much as my mustachioed uncle San Pedro, who, a dozen or so years ago, had told me to take out the empty bottles and get lost. The deer aroused an unquestionable feeling of antipathy, and it wasn't at all a result of envy for the contemplative eyes that still fascinated me with the force of a country gale. But I hid it under the tablecloth; no one would ever read the emotion in that face when the greatest thirst had been quenched.
Lighting my cigarette, she looked at me with solicitous despair, for a split second feeling all the delirium that had plagued my entrails for twenty-six years. Shoavinne rattled off empathy toward the beggars, and whenever she passed stinking mounds of meat, she even restrained her urge to go collecting acorns, raising her eyebrows in pity. Someone's pearls trampled on the floor were unbearable for the banknote-hating dancer.
I grabbed the cigarette and once again couldn't resist that absurd feeling I didn't want to acknowledge yet; it was too impossible; even putting it into words sounded idiotic. But I was already beginning to develop a certain timid premonition, a premonition that with each passing moment strengthened the gripping bands in my chest.
I recounted all those wild events, how Womtebegne drank urine instead of cheap orange soda at the museum, and how I'd killed a spider yesterday with a well-aimed flip-flop throw from two meters. Young people love to absorb nonsense and boast to their friends about their guests' collections. The girl listened with interest, but the stag was slowly growing impatient. He didn't understand anything, but he sensed the situation was spinning out of control.
And I was gathering more and more energy, inspired by my terrifying discovery in the can. And when I'd already told her about Hegomish masturbating while watching a lion copulate (he claimed that the idea of femininity was also present in females of other species), hearing her innocent laughter in my imagination, I decided to reveal my cards and see how much my delirious paranoia held true.
"And what's your name?" I blurted out suddenly, taking the question to a very casual tone.
"Carolinne," the sound of her own voice encouraged her a little, so she added after a moment with a hint of joy, "my parents wanted to name me Shoavinne, but Grandma said it was a name for a whore.
Let all the clocks be silent at a time like this, let the images weave, wailing over the frog's laughter. Weeping, like Aunt Wanda, who sensed that day that something had happened but couldn't get the details from anyone.
Could the girl in the wellies be my Shoavinne?
Breastfed in different diapers, drinking coffee with different people, but the same Shoavinne. With a collector's smile, contemplative eyes, and the same tone of voice. And the same nasty grandma in slippers, always smelling of other people's things.
You know, everything is a gigantic mathematical combination. The world is numbers, so many of them that the mere thought of their potential number makes my dick numb. However, some sequences of numbers repeat themselves, like the color green." A green toaster and a green chameleon, two numbers that share common elements despite their utter diversity. Many relationships can be discerned with the naked eye, but most of the mappings are revealed by chance.
The three cranes that have been jutting out across from my windows for a week now, irritating me with their Christian cross-like appearance, could represent the fate of pagan tribes systematically attacked by church hordes. Two shampoo bottles, one blue and the slightly taller red, represent the fate of Hector and Achilles, vying for the goddess's favor on Trojan soil. Looking at a maturing daughter, one can read the numbers whose traces are found in the belly of her mother, who played this role a few minutes earlier.
And if one knows by heart every gesture of a person who...
I kept my gaze fixed on her gleaming earrings, unable to force a single word from her parched face. The situation must have embarrassed her, because she quickly lowered her face and bit her lips in a sarcastic gesture. For the first time, I sensed the desire for this tramp to leave them alone. Perfectly visible, astonishing, like a patriotic song, sung by her timid, crepe-filled fingers and the quivering corners of her deer's cheeks.
But I couldn't leave, not now, when, a dozen years after Shoavinne's murder, I saw that face again. Now I was certain, and her reaction confirmed my conviction. If a ragged man, reeking of alcohol, had begun to stare at Shoavinne in such a characteristic way, she would have been ashamed of such a set of keys.
Every flick of ash, every contortion of her face looked identical. Shy steps forward and apprehension of reality, simultaneously fascinated by every movement of a neighbor hanging laundry on a nearby balcony.
"I beg your pardon," the stag threw a lifeline, "I beg your pardon, but we'd rather be alone."
He made the face of a nun licking her cunt in a seaside shack.
"We wanted to discuss an important matter," he continued, groveling before me mercilessly.
He lied like a dog; there was no discussion, as his casual pose, which I'd seen at the very beginning, betrayed. Not even a grave digger with an important conversation planned would sit like that. He brazenly tried to get rid of me and made no effort to hide it. I was embarrassing him, a threat to his masculine position of authority. I posed a danger.
I pretended not to hear anything. I smiled at him equally brazenly; he noticed it immediately, then sat down on the bench next to them, feigning a certain weariness. Shoavinne instinctively pushed her breasts aside, increasing the distance by a few centimeters. I'd forgotten that hygiene was a mandatory requirement among others. Or perhaps it was simply a woman's fear of the unknown?
The deer was seething with nerves, but he sat on her other side, helpless for a moment. I felt then that this was the only chance that this would never happen again. It might not have been pleasant, but altruism is an empty concept. Seeing her shocked expression couldn't spoil the pleasure of something I'd dreamed of since that night, when blood trickled down the axe blade. I grabbed her pink jacket with energy and, with the speed of a squirming snake, pressed my lips to hers.
One moment. One touch of the mouth of an individual of the same species triggers a diverse storm of stimuli. I closed my eyes; it felt like I'd entered, like there was nothing else in the world, like only our two tongues leading a vulgar dance in sacred rhythm. She enveloped me in her wetness, writhing inside me in a supple stream, only to burst forth with the whine typical of the raped.
How amusing was the reaction of the antlered deer! What a subtle pleasure was the feeling of obvious superiority at the grotesque rise from the bench! And those nervous movements, betraying the loss of control over the unwritten obligation to react violently, and those pseudo-masculine cries trying to mask utter helplessness.
You know, of course, that he wasn't angry at her wrongdoing; shame and disgrace weren't of any interest to him in themselves. He was terrified only by the lack of authority resulting from the situation; she no longer considered him an impregnable haven of safety. I saw in her contemplative eyes the disappointment she experienced when I received no punishment, save for ridiculous insults that wouldn't have offended even the oldest librarian.
Her face squealed with the psychic deflowering of her lost ideal vision of their relationship. The raspberry emperor had suddenly transformed into a wicked swineherd, incapable of even striking a lewd pig with a stick.
Tearing apart the sacred veil irrevocably destroys the marital monument. I once saw such a couple, a brilliant beauty kissing under the stairwell door with a shaved lantern unworthy even of the taste of milk chocolate. The evening I accosted them in this manner was the last time they sang songs together. Funny how shared shame draws a barrier between homo sapiens with an indelible pencil.
He couldn't hit me, yet his empty head couldn't fathom beating an old man, even if he were a drunken scum attacking a defenseless child like a beast. I was finally perfectly aware of my actions.
They rose shyly. She stood unsteadily on her feet, as if about to fall. He tried to put his arm around her in a comforting manner, but she shook it off; any male touch must have disgusted her. Their muzzles, twisted in a grimace of suffering, bucked in all directions as they moved away from the bench. Steps that separated me from the savors of love. They glanced back, perhaps afraid I would try to pursue them. Utter idiocy.
It was over, but bathing in the spirit of the evening stars, amid the flickering shadows of mosquitoes dancing with hunger above my head, amid the feverish figures playfully jumping on the windowsill to the ticking of the clock, I recalled with pride my brave deed, saving a fawn from a stag's antler.
I can only hope that Shoavinne, another prisoner I've freed from behind phallic bars, will meet me before I start drowning in a pool of alcohol, before the fruit rots and I'm eaten alive by slimy worms. From the inside. But will I know that I'm me?
It's estimated that only one in a hundred turtles reaches adulthood.
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