TENTATIVE TITLE: Convolutions of Ecstasy

John went to the theater, his face sullen, eyes gray as the hide of vermin. He settled into the seat
and watched as the sea of people unfolded, poured onto the sinewy vermillion seats, their faces
straining to make all sorts of profound expressions: a slight crunch on one's jaw here; a rising of
the brows to form mountains; the muscle-pulling movement of mouth-ends to form a smile—he
noted it all. As much as he could.
They were a sort of sustenance for him, people, and the way they moved. He studied them, tried
to examine them, so that he could learn something from them.
But he hated the theater.
Why did he go here? He himself did not know. He was not fit for such an elite setting. He was fit
for the pub and the pub only, a drunkard like him.
His heart burned for the familiar grazing of that liquid churning through the insides of his mouth,
brushing his gums, tracing his esophagus and mixing with his stomach acids. He found himself
breathing harder. He tried to calm down.
A hand pressed his. "Did you wait long?"
He turned. That turn of his head was the pinnacle of his craft: he could pretend. Just like those
actors. In fact, better than them. With him, all those expressions of mouth-frothing cravings just
—vanished.
On the exterior, at least.
But when do we ever show our interiors to other people, John thought, and bare ourselves to the
grittiest, nastiest sections? When have we ever pulled the veils from the reality of "I"? Never. So,
why should I now?
"No, Rebeccah," he said, smiling. He knew it was charming; both the smile and the name-saying.
"I haven't. And even if I did, I wouldn't complain, seeing you like that."
The woman blushed, her pale cheeks coloring a freshly-cut rose. Her hair, woven into all those
strange spells and assortments only a woman knew, was a glossy black. Bewitching.
She sat down, occasionally glancing at him and whispering things to his ear. She was nervous—
her quivering breath said so. It was like the soft purr of a kettle minutes after it had been heated,
not too cold, not too soft, a warmth like a balmy summer day.
From sideways glances, John noted the way her small jaw curved slenderly to her neck and how
her skin travelled from that white roadway of phantasies and illusions to her collarbone which,
shivering as she spoke, gave way to the upper portion of her breasts.
The play started. The Importance of being Earnest. John had never thought anything that high of
it. He had read it, once. But that was long ago, when he was nothing more than a young man
impressed by the classics. He dabbled in the arts, roughly ran his hands over the books, not
keeping in mind that they deserved to be touched, fondled, brushed, slowly known, like the inner
workings of oneself. But he kept to his judgment—it was downright bad. Instinct, you might say.
The lights crackled. Footsteps thundered. Their shoulders leaned on each other as they walked
down the street.
The lamps were severe amber lights whose heads drooped. Stores shuttered to a close. Cars sped
to and fro, disappeared, as if pulled from the roads by some unseen hand.
John's chest clenched. He didn't know why. But as they walked closer to Rebeccah's house,
towards that one thing he couldn't bring himself to do, he felt himself more breathless than
before.
Was it stupid, doing this? Was he repeating his previous mistakes again? Right. Maybe. Of
course. But why do it over and over again? Why risk everything he was to try and lose himself in
another person? Why dilute John and lose himself in Mary, Joakim, Janeth, Cecilia...?
The door slammed. He felt his hands caressing her cheeks. He wasn't thinking. He tried not to
think. He tried pushing all those thoughts—but they wouldn’t budge. They seized his body
instead: they beat his heart and clamped his chest, so that both forces raged at a strength he
barely stood; his head fevered, shook, whirled; his hands shivered, legs quaked, tongue fervently
tried to lose itself in another.
His body was fighting against him.
John removed his suit, his shirt. Would she know him? Really know him? He looked at her: she
was stupid, too stupid to know that he had been playing her for the whole three months they had
been together. Perhaps not played. But examining, vivisecting, knowing. He knew her already
but did she him? No, not even close.
Rage took him. He flung her to the couch, seized her neck and flung himself ever more to her
lips. She bit harder. Pressed herself to him. Tried also to lose herself in him—and joyfully,
unknowingly, stupidly, dumbly, weakly.
John couldn't take it. He stood up, aroused, head spinning, muttered an excuse, snatched his
clothes, then ran into the night, panting.
Horns shrieked, wheels burnt, mouths muttered. His feet ran, one in front of the other. Nothing
appeared real to him. The lights blinded him. The darkness blinded him.
He stumbled...he had been stumbling through most of his life. He hated it. He hated himself. He
couldn't bring himself to have sex.
There always was that drop of the stomach when he faced the idea of defiling himself by
descending to meet a woman who could not fathom him. Women were usually the ones to do
that. They could know themselves and so know men all-too-easily. But he, John, he was
different, abhorrently different.
His head spun. He turned to his right. He was in front of the bar.
John woke to the barman screeching at him to pack himself up and leave. He fixed his dress; it
smelt like puke.
"How many lies you tell yesterday, Jack," the barman asked.
Morgan, John thought, I think that's his name.
"What do you...mean?" John staggered. "I don't tell lies, Morgan."
"Of course, that was wrong of me. You live lies, Jack." The barman wiped a glass. John had
guessed correctly but what was this fool trying to say. "Maybe you should ease up on the
alcohol, you know. It'll kill you one day, drinking eight glasses in one sitting. I've been through
it. Not pretty."
John almost smiled. "Thanks," he said, feigning gratefulness. "I want to but I just can't seem to. I
think I'll die before helping myself. Like those singers."
"Only thing is," Morgan said, smiling, "you have a crappy voice."

John woke to the slanting of dawn through the rippling glass of the windows: a clear, harsh
sunlight.
Forehead flooded with folds, he stood, walked over to the bathroom and made for his toilette.
His last good suit, as he took it off, stabbed him with a smell like vomit meshed with the less-
pungent smell of gin and beer.
He tried to piece everything together: what happened in Rebeccah's house; how he sprinted
through the streets, staggering like a possessed woman; how his feet, not his mind, no, but his
feet—how they took him to the dim lights of the pub, all-too-familiar to his gray eyes.
The story fell apart then. He tried rearranging it. He himself fell apart.
There were small bruises on parts of his body colored a dusk-like purple. He first noticed them
when his consciousness flickered and his left shoulders hit the wall. Soreness stung him.
As the clock ticked nine, he left the apartment in search of the bar. The pub, really, the pub, that
was all he'd ever need, that was all he'd ever want. Humans couldn't sustain him after all—drinks
will then.
For the first time, as his feet dragged over the filthy streets, he noticed the drabness of it all: a
filthy coat of gray all over the town and the peoples; the straight lines of the skyscrapers as they,
saberlike, curved into the desolate sky, untouchable, frigid, unfeeling; and the hooting cars that
always roused an anxiety within him, a sense of fright that, perhaps, emerged from our ancestor's
fear of the giant, hair-tingling beasts that roamed the wildernesses and the deserts.
He'd never drive. But then again, he didn't have the money for that. Nor did he have the ability
to. There was no use talking about not doing it because he didn't have any choice but to not do it.
"I'm the same as those filthy rabbits," he muttered. "Lambs made for the joyous slaughter of the
beasts of prey. I'll say I'm good because I'm not driving a car but that's not true: I pretend I'm
virtuous because I can't do anything but not drive a car. My weakness is my virtue. Conversely,
my virtue is weakness and that only. How Christian! Very Christian, indeed! Slaves. Like all of
these people. Like this world itself. What a load of rubbish! Senseless. Everything is senseless."
He trudged forward, keeping up his stately gait. If he had anything he could be proud of, it was
the way he walked, the way he talled over the people, the way his head flirted with the skies,
how it stayed in the clouds, while everybody else's was bent over staring at the pavements,
dazed, confused, lifeless. At least he could pretend that there was—some—life to him.
Rebeccah came to mind. John's face crinkled; his speed quickened and he made his way to the
bar.
"Come on, up, Nose," a voice cracked through the rotten, gray-beaten walls of the bar. "Come
on! Sing us a song, lads, a gay and jovial one, if there ever was such a song here!"
It was Morgan’s voice. That bastard who saw through his pretense, who, as it were, was keen
like those spies and eagles. Yes, he thought of him like that, somebody whose intentions were
unknown: a symbol of kindness or destruction. He hated both either way.
John didn't want anybody destroying the image he had created, that night image of a brilliant,
well-fulfilled man—he didn't want that image to crash down. Not now, at any rate. So, he stowed
himself away into a corner.
"I'll bear it," he said, to himself. "I'll bear the shivers that come. I don't think I can but I'll do it.
Right, I'll force it, force it, force it to happen. Like those—"
The table yanked as a mug of creamy beer landed. He looked up. It was Morgan.
"Thanks," John said, reaching for the mug. He drank a quarter of it. "But why'd you give me
one?"
"It's on the house," Morgan chuckled. "I would have noticed you trembling from a half-mile
away. And I know people like you: they get their fix first thing in the morning, last thing in the
middle of the night. In between, you're normal. You pretend to be, at least."
The mug was empty before Morgan finished. It hit the table.
"Don't pretend to know me." John had said it in a whisper. But Morgan only smiled, waiting for
him to go on. "I'm sorry. What I meant was my situation isn't something you can take to be even
remotely normal. Thanks for the drink anyway."
He made up to leave but Morgan took him by the wrist, rather forcibly. "I get it. You're an
alcoholic and, right now, you're fooling yourself. Here." The barman gave him a small amulet,
with two As engraved on it. "They have meetings by the center of town, away from all this
foolery near the edge. Don't be smug; give it a chance. It'll be of some help, I promise."
John snatched it, thanked the man, and emerged into the grating light just striking noon.
Summer. A harsh and bitter summer. Sweat trickled from his forehead, traced his nose and upper
lip, reached his mouth: bitter.
Rebeccah's tongue had been sweeter.
Shaking, he made for another bar he knew. It was cleaner but, somehow, less familiar and,
therefore, less comely to him. There was just that something about all clean things: they tire you
out. Something about living wisely, living godly, living philosophically, inspired a wretched
hatred in him.
"That's all bull and crap," he muttered. His face lit up. He chuckled. "If there's anything a
philosopher should be, it's to be unclean, unwise, unprudent. He'd have to risk himself, you
know, trudge through the mire, swim in it, and drown himself in it. Then, die. Because a true
philosopher would sacrifice even himself, yes, even the thing he—thinks—is the best. All
philosophers are vain, everyone is vain. We love through vanity. Put pleasantly: we love
ourselves. To coat our words in honey: we love ideations, projections, pathetic constructions of
character that we fool ourselves with. And the person we love, too. Yes. I should be a
philosopher. A philosopher. But I hate them. But it's attractive..."
He lost count of time and distance pleasuring himself in the thought of living a philosophical life.
Rather hypocritical, he thought, but, of course, if I were to become a thinker, yes, one of the
thinkers, I would have to be hypocritical. And what is hypocrisy if not a philosopher's vices?
Even virtues?
John arrived at the bar. He fingered his pockets. Just enough money.
He stopped at the door; his stomach fell: he had forgotten to pay Morgan for the drink. Fury
enveloped his being. The man was probably pitying him, thinking he didn't have enough money
to pay for his drinks. But he did have money, he just thought...He thought that thought! A
thought that somebody would be kind to him! He was pitied!
John shivered in fear. Then, as he stared at the assortments of lithe bottles labelled in seductive
labels of black, white, red, his face changed, the frown frivolously removed. He was a slave to
alcohol. Yes, a slave to it. He hated to be a slave—that was why he'd gotten rid of the faith.
A slave he was, however. He had wasted money on seven drinks before he kicked himself out of
the bar and its variegated lights.
The world spun. But that was always the case. Whether he was sober or statue-face drunk, his
world spun. He'd turn on the television and the screen, flickering, made his heart beat quicker,
burn, burn, burn, as if he were a wild beast and only a wild beast.
Women. Sex. Cigarettes. Drink. Sports. Everything and everything just to numb him, to take out
the filth in him and sit that atop the throne of his mind.
A slave, an animal. No, something worse: modern man.

John slumped through the streets, vaguely aware of what was happening around him. That was
the best thing about alcohol. You forgot and you forgot. If alcohol could be said to have a virtue,
it was that it made you forget everything: from the silliest promises when you were a kid to the
embarrassing skit that was your adulthood. More than that, however, it numbed you to the
meaninglessness of the world.
"That," he whispered, "may be the greatest thing ever created. Even if it were for propaganda or
for subduing the population, you can't doubt its brilliance. What do we use intellect for, anyway?
Calculations, a bunch of arithmetic, made-up colors and hues, numbers and letters to satisfy our
egos? To hell with that, all of that!" He stumbled, fell onto the pavement. He picked himself up,
licked the back of his hand and smelled the motor-oil-like pang of alcohol. "Nothing like spicy
rum rammed down your throat, tinkering with your brain to dumb you down. That's better, isn't
it? Dumbing us down was a great idea. Because the world is vapid and stupid, who would care
about actually living in it? Stupid Existentialists. They really thought! They really thought! A
simple vanity," he uttered. "A simple vanity."
The thought of Scriptures flitted through his mind. He jumped, walked quicker.
He reached his apartment just as the clock was about to strike two in the afternoon. Already, the
sun simmered the place: golden dust specks whirled about, some sticking to the surface of the
sparse furniture; some, like whiteheads, stuck out from the ecru-gray walls. Heat stuck to his
skin, a lascivious kiss.
John lay down on the couch, looked at the ceiling, resumed his thoughts interrupted by that one
thing: "If anything, the postmodernists were closer to the truth...But, then again, they were
stupid, too. Just another idiotic movement by even more idiots. They were either cynical or
ignorant: if sense-experience was the greatest truth, then that meant that there was a universal
truth, embedded somewhere in the fallacies of those pathetic immoralists. We eat, we drink, we
breathe...we have sex. Sex. A great thing, sex. But it's all you ever hear about now. Sex when
selling cars; sex when selling liquor; sex when selling anything and everything. Probably why
we're all inebriated with thoughts of sex all the time. But where was I?"
He forgot. And he didn't want to remember. An hour or later, he'd have to pick himself up,
shuffle off to scrounge some monies from his family and work a crappy post-job in the middle of
the night. Monday. He hated Mondays.
He had taken a liking to Saturdays and Sundays, however. Not because of the rest, no, nothing
like that. He wanted the perfume of the weekends. The taste of a Something deeply ingrained in
those two words: perhaps a luxurious outing, an escape, yes, that was it. An escape. That was
clear to him---all people had on their minds was escape: and that escape was their weekends.
They lived their lives for two mere days. A day and a third if you counted sleep. But then again,
there was work too...Wait, no, there isn't work during those days.
So...So...why was he bothering with these things, anyway? Why was he working out questions
that didn't need answering? Why was he trying to examine things that didn't need examining?
Especially a guy like him, a worthless bum who doesn't contribute to society at all.
"But I hate dirt!" he suddenly shouted. "I hate dirt so much I'm not going to touch it. I won't
justify myself to you---even if it's me who's asking. I won't justify myself."
Glasses tinkled, as if shouting assent. The floorboards creaked as he put his weight on it. He lay
on the floor, looked at the ceiling, looked out the window, looked at the furniture, looked at the
ceiling. There was nothing else to do but to look. He could not control his faculties at all---he
could not control himself.
A sudden urge to rape pervaded his body. Rape. What would that feel like? He tried to conjure it:
how he might come across a woman, naked, in the streets; how he'd finger her, touch her, look at
her as one looks at a dead wolverine; how he'd enter and thrust himself into her and how she'd
moan then because she'd like it, because he was not like the other fools that had had sex with her,
because there was something to him: a look, a feature, a characteristic, that one could not receive
from those other, dull weaklings that suffused society.
John's eyes flickered open. He was aroused, again, but could not have sex. He remembered how
he could have had it with Rebeccah. With all those previous girls—rich, poor, virgins, whores.
He shook his head. For all intents and purposes, that was over. A mere joke, a trifle, a chance
that he wasted. He wanted to take it back now, to seize it and waste it. What boundless potential!
And he fashioned Rebeccah then, according to his image. He recreated the scenery and had sex
with her on her couch. He memorized it all like a play, a farce, a drama that a master playwright
would have made: her every intake of breath; his seizing of her neck; the flash of wild love in her
eyes; his frothing mouth; her shaking legs; his tightened abdomen; her; him; her; him---he lost
himself on contrived scenarios but they felt real to him, was real, to a degree.
There was something in the very nature of memories themselves that were contrived: they were
stories that used facts. Facts were secondary to them; narratives were much more important.
Indeed, there are no facts without narratives. Strings of facts attached together to support a
presupposition; an assortment of facts that one could use to reify his prejudice, to build up a
cartilage, a bone, an organism, of course. No argument is not made up of carefully meddled-with,
sifted-through, and curated facts.
He fixated on strong facts, facts that presented themselves before him: the crunch of the couch
when she was flung there; the unconsciousness that seized him when he stood on top of her; how
her face rippled in ecstasy, in fright, in a mad love, those two mixed together; how his hands,
ropelike, clutched her neck as his lips twisted in fury.
He imagined.
Suddenly, he ceased. He lay there, feeling the intoxication that flooded one whenever the
uncontrollable sex drive filled the body and left the limbs convulsing. Or no, not convulsing, but
locked, tightened, manacled as if one was a prisoner.
"A slave!" John started. His legs had fallen asleep; he fell onto his face. "A slave once again,
again, again. I hate this! I hate myself! I'll kill myself, I'll kill myself, I'll kill myself." He started
weeping. "No, I couldn't do that. I wouldn't be able to do that. Jumping off a cliff, ingesting
poison, none of those things...I'd be too frightened. But is a prisoner's fright worth more than his
inherent worthlessness? Why should it matter that I am frightened more than that I am a stupid
insect which needs to be done with, murdered, killed off, a stupid bug that needs zapping and
poisoning? I shall be dead and the world a much better place! Rebeccah shall hear of it and she
shall rejoice!"
John planned the suicide. And yet he stayed.
He lived, trudged through the evening-lit streets and lunged for the clean, uncomely bar, drunk
himself to stupidity with beer and hurled himself to the post office, where he was greeted by
equally-drunk men, all of whom were old. He looked just like them.

That was the last thing that he could ever tolerate---he looked like them. The rabble.
John had hated them as soon as he owned a copy of Zur Genealogie der Moral. He had hated
their clumsy waddling through life: a sniff of the cigar which brought dooziness, sleepiness,
forgetfulness, a removing of memories, knowledge and wisdom that, perhaps, was never there in
the first place; an endless feast, indeed, that taking-in, that consumption---consuming,
consuming, consuming; devouring, devouring, devouring; wolfing, wolfing, wolfing---that was
common to the rabble and their silliness; and, finally, more strikingly, their dizzingly
exaggerated eyes which, now and then, looked like the night---dreamt-up, everything was almost
illusory to them. They looked like his glassy eyes.
They did not live life; they could not affirm life. The whole of their lives was spent on negating
it. Not with thought, they were too stupid for that. Not with words for the herd was much too
inarticulate, their lips were made of butter, slipping and sliding, whenever any mention was
made of life. Even the best of us, at times.
But in actions. In their lives themselves, negation was sharply obvious. A horrible thought! He
had been negating life in actions. A hypocrisy. A ridiculous hypocrisy. He had laughed it off
before. But he couldn't now. There was something, an urge, a splitting Something that tried to
assert itself upon him. And he could not shrug it off as he had back then, he could not waste that
feeling anymore.
John panted. His heart leapt like a tornado. His ears were bombarded with shrill sounds.
Were they imaginary? Perhaps they were. But they were real to him. All-too-real. Too real. Real.
Real. Real.
"I hate reality! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!" He stamped the floorboards; they shrieked. He
continued hitting his feet against the wood. "Anything that approaches that betraying canvas,
reality, anything that even licks it, touches it, is near it---all of that is corrupt. Life is corrupt and,
therefore, irredeemable. Not because there is no meaning to things but because there are too
many meanings to things that I cannot take track of them all! Too much! Too much! Too much
to ask for people! Too much to ask for the human to be saved! It should all be blown to
smithereens, every human shot, tortured, murdered, and the last, living one, the last insect,
vermin, vermin, insect, he ought to shoot himself and praise the Lord! Because that is the great
conclusion: only then can there be true meaninglessness! Only then can life be justified! Only
when the last of us has his head blown off by the acrid pang of sulfur, by a silver bullet, only
then will reality be truly meaningless and beautiful! No more men to perceive them! No more
men to name, categorize, no more men to be conscious, no more conscience! I say! Everything to
dust!"
He planned on starting with himself.

The bridge was a long drop from the tenebrous waves of the sea below and there were shrieks as
the storm ripped through the sky as a diver's hands part the waves and makes his way through
them. Thunder rippled, the drums of a eulogy.
John's knees shivered. He was by the beams, looking down. Nobody was around him; nobody
would notice.
"A long drop," John muttered. "It's a long drop. I won't survive, I think. If I drop down, none of
those miraculous things will happen to me. Madness to think of it that way, madness to conjure
up such an illusion."
But he had thought of it that way, he had conjured up illusions. And this made him furious.
He scrambled onto the red beams, the drops of rain shivering his limbs. Cold wrapped around
him indomitably as flames wrap around those who suffer in hell.
"Jesus Christ," he whispered. He caught himself immediately.
He slipped and he fell down.

------

"Only harsh lights." John shook. "I saw harsh lights then. And my eyes were fragile during those
times, taking that damage. I thought I’d be blind or, at least, be left with some deformity. Strange
that I didn’t. Strange that I won't."
"Strange," Morgan said. "It's miraculous!"
John shied from the word. "Miraculous," he repeated. "Perhaps. But I still can't accept it yet."
"Even after that?"
"It's a suicide gone wrong, Morgan," he said.
"And nothing more," Morgan challenged.
John looked around, speculating. He had seen the same thing when he fell as he was seeing now:
the dilapidated limbs of the bar, creaking and withering as the owner refused to refurnish it;
accompanying that vision, the horrible pang of gin and beer, reminiscent of bloated oil; the
grating lights, amber, ivory, white.
"Perhaps something more," John said, relenting. "Maybe a chance for self-realization. The Self
trying to erupt from me."
Morgan chuckled. "You never want to take a chance on religion, do you?"
"You're a barman. Why are you asking me about this," John said. "You haven't read much but
you're keen, witty, an intellectual, if you'll forgive me that word. (It's both a compliment and an
insult for me) You seem to know something, maybe not that deep, not yet, at least. But
something."
"Only instinct, my friend," Morgan said. "Instinct."
But John believed otherwise. He believed there was something more inside his friend: a
psychologist perhaps, a few nauseating words away from discoveries many people could only
dream of; a philosopher, perhaps, one with a vigor that was all-too-foreign to modern men; or,
perhaps, just a hermit, just a man, just that: instinct.
He hoped for one of the former two, hoped for a companion.
"I'm visiting a Church, anyway," he said. "Care to come?"
"I'm sorry, Jack. I have some things to take care of. Family out there in the country needs me:
father's dying; mother's sick, weeping."
"Ah," John said, slightly disappointed. "I see. Take care, Morgan. I give you my best wishes."

It was three years since he was released from the hospital. He had been sober for the length of
that time, and so, stayed away from the bar, only occasionally stopping by to chat with Morgan.
Funnily enough, he no more had that urge to uncork a bottle of wine and slip into a Dionysian
fest or just wallow in pity. He'd try to taste the gin and the beer but they tasted disgusting: like
motor oil.
He had visited five times in total. And in those five they discussed the same things: why he had
jumped off; how he descended; the unconscious consciousness that he was in; the floating
feeling admixed with the dazzling light, probably of the hospital's; and, most of all, the faith.
That faith.
To be sure, John had struggled with it, wrestled with it much in that span of time. He studied the
Bible like a monk, trying to dissect each and every line, viewing it the way it was supposed to be
viewed---"through the lens of sense-experience as highest truth," as he said---; he read Rilke
vociferously, paging through the poems again and again muttering them before he slept, because
he had seen something then, had glimpsed into the infinite; and how he spent his time away from
his office work! Chatting with priests, particularly of the Orthodox sect. Catholicism, with its
scandals, at least well-known scandals, reeked too much for him.
"But no more of that," he said, gripping his coat. He was in front of a Cathedral he had visited.
He did not remember what name; he did not care. It was built in that town sometime during the
17th century, someone had told him. "Yet why am I here? I'm drawn, too drawn. The Church is
like a seductress for me, a succubus who only wants my vigor, my mindlessness, my
affirmation---the wife of Christ is a temptress. And she succeeds. She has won over a quarter of
the human population for two millennia. She deserves respect. But devotion, no, how could there
be devotion to her. Devotion. Devotion. Ah! how lovely it does ring in the ear! How easy would
it be to give up oneself! How maddeningly easy---I know it too well! And I shall give up myself
painfully, completely, loosely---but happily, happily, happily. But perhaps not yet, I shall wrestle
with God a bit more: that is why we are called Israel, is it not? 'We who wrestle with God.' Yes."
He turned around. The gargoyles, in their fierce defense, stared at his back with ravenous teeth.
The grim lines of the Cathedral, slowly, disappeared, its dusk-purpled rim fading, fading, fading,
drowned by the contorting roofs, from which emerged pattering noises as rain slickered over and
went down the cobbled streets, flowed into the canals. Cars ricketed through the road, unfeeling,
frigid, metallic.
Bells rang as the inn-door opened.
"Well, lad," said the owner, "you're back early. Seen the Church yet? Pretty, ain't she?"
"Pretty as your daughter, sir," John said, smiling.
"Oh!" cried Julia. "A flirt, Father, a flirt our guest remains!"
Then, she skittered into the kitchen, readying the meals. A slight blush colored her pale face.
"A beauty my daughter remains, Mr. Farlowe," said the owner. "And I wouldn't be a Kilner if
she wasn't!"
John nodded. "You certainly wouldn't be." He jumped. "Is Mrs. Kilner here? I have something to
ask her about the Gardens north of town. Although it isn't necessary, it will certainly be useful."
"Ah! Don't be shy, boyo, that woman, when queried, sure as an egg comes from a chicken's
rump, likes to answer. Her lips just twiddle and twaddle—many times without her brain thinking.
But, well, she's out somewhere, hitched a ride with her cousin down south. Something about
seeing a newborn or other. She'll return somewhere between dinnertime and midnight, if that's
okay with you."
"Very," John replied. "Thank you."

It was about the edge of night when the sky held the moon and the stars in its palms and,
trembling, guided them across the western sky—it was that time when Mrs. Kilner arrived, her
ripe-apple face beaming as she laid eyes on John.
She shook his hand, her plump arms still shivering when it ended. "Terribly good evening to you,
sir! My husband's told me you were looking for me. What’s that? About the Gardens eh, well,
let’s sit you down and I’ll tell you something about those Gardens..."
And she described the way the Gardens felt of lemonade and wine under the cover of a
whirpooling summer sun; how the junipers sprouted from the hedges and twined like ropes, then,
as spring and its bird-calls approached, bloomed into a labyrinthine maze, not yet speculated by
any man, not yet pondered, not yet known. And the fountain there, crafted of porcelain, the lines
gliding here and there like a woman's soft body, the tears gushing to its top then streaming down,
a profusion of hushing and moaning; the sweet scent of marinated roses and ivies and hazels;
towering elms, cypresses, oaks...
"Like something out of a fantastic book, sir!" Mrs. Kilner yawned. "Ah, forgive me, it's been a
long ride."
"No, madam," replied John. "I should be the sorry one, what with my keeping you out of bed."
He looked at the clock. "Well! It's almost two hours past midnight. I knew it was a long chat but
two hours..."
"Oh, sorry, sir," Mrs. Kilner said, flustered, "I can run off my mouth sometimes, especially when
it's something as beautiful as the Gardens. It can be described by someone with a much worthier
tongue than mine, for a hundred pages mind, and yet, to me, it wouldn't be nearly enough."
John shook his head. "Not quite, Mrs. Kilner, you've been very helpful to me, I wouldn't think
anything sour of this pleasant chat. But I hope it lives up to its reputation, the Garden, I mean."
Mrs. Kilner smiled, as if pleased with the compliment. Then, she jumped. "I just remembered
something! Every now and then, some rumors say every day, a girl sits on one of the benches
there and reads a novel or a novelette, nobody’s quite sure. This might seem trivial but she's
exquisite, like a fruit that's just turned ripe. Whispers and rumors have gone a-floating that she's
married or some other, but I don't think so. What I meant to say is, Mr. Farlowe, the Gardens
might not pass your standards but that beauty may. Well, I might get on another tirade now and I
ought to stop before that. See you!"
With that, she skittered out of sight, the firelight shivering at the impact of the door.
John woke up at noon, something he was not used to. More often than not, he woke up by dawn
and walked. Normally two hours, but when stressed or anxious up to four. He could never betray
his inclination to lose himself in footstepping. It was his way of feeling one with the world.
Most of the time, he thought, people felt themselves as beings outside of Nature, devoid from it.
And a longing, a yearning, a nostalgic lingering, boils within them to return back to that
primordial state.
"And walking," John whispered, traipsing down the cobbled streets; "walking is one of the last
few sources of that inimitable feeling. No more outside Nature nor even in Nature. Of Nature, in
communion of the intensest degree with sublime beasts and crawling plants."
And that was largely the reason he considered visiting the Gardens right after travelling to the
Church. There he could saunter in the trammeled pathways, his mind wandering here and there,
contemplating this and that. And then, nothing, just walking, just the monotonous sounding of
his hushing soles and his grunts and breaths. The taste of sweat filling his lips along with the
jasmines, the lindens, asters, alders, lilacs, hawthorns, laburnums, weeds—all of them would
shiver as their smell-feet tiptoed on his tongue and wove a fine and new scent inside him, a
burgeoning of an amalgam into something else, another being.
He did not take a car up North for he felt that to ride a vehicle here in the countryside, what with
the thrushes hymning and the sorrels growing, would be a great sin against all its beauty, its
bareness, its nakedness.
His eyes widened.
"Ah," he said. "Perhaps that is the source of our long wanderings, our journeys towards
perfection, why it is that we can never be satiated, why we always have to ensure that nothing
goes out of control; perhaps that is the reason why perfection is always in our minds: because we
are trying to return. Back to Paradise, our Paradise Lost. And that is the song that our hearts sing
painfully, its melody broken, cracked, strained, like a guitar not in tune. Because we know, we
have experienced, we remember how we moved then like the animals—everything and nothing
appeared to shift. And how close we were back then to God..."
He ceased. He had sighted the tall hedges baked under the now-westering sun. It would be only a
few hours until the Gardens would close. It would be a shame if he arrived and then was forced
to leave not an hour after.
So, he hurried, his feet clatter-sliding down the slopes of the hills, crossing the shoulders of those
giant stomachs that rose from the ground inlayed with metallic grass. Thumping filled his ears.
Then, that humming of the breeze. A puddle of sweat formed on his back. On his tongue, the
tang of salt.
It was near evening when John arrived at the gate. He was let in by the guards, reminded to leave
in about two hours.
To his disappointment, the Garden was a plain one. Not that it wasn't grand: it certainly was.
However, it lacked that Something he was looking for. Or perhaps he was being unreasonable—
yes, he was.
John stooped to look at the hazel-bushes and the elderberries and the poplars and the glittering
shine of the porcelain fountain and felt only an emptiness, a void, a sensation of lack that
pervaded him whenever he tried to find that. That?
His eyes widened, as if he saw a horror film unfold in a span of moments.
He realized then that he was expecting the same sensations from that Garden as seized him when
he threw himself off the bridge; that sensation of pure bliss and untouched grandness, of being
one with the world, mystica unio, as one might say. With pursed lips, he looked around.
Mignonettes beckoned him forth. Heathers danced. Primroses blushed.
He could not stay disappointed for long. For that was Nature, both destructive and constructive,
an eternal Life and Death not at odds with each other but caressing each other. This pain, he
thought, would not have been if I felt pleasure. And that cheered him a good deal.
A whole hour passed without him noticing.
The sun slanted through the hedges, peeking in intermittently, until an explosive dusk settled on
the horizon and, slowly, slowly, slowly, fell away from sight.
Thirty minutes until he would be leaving.
He decided then to take a short break before resuming his walk. Nothing flittered through his
mind and that was bliss. Temporary yet bliss just the same.
His gaze fell onto the pinions that glittered here and there: brown, black, blue, red, yellow, green,
all shades and hues that one could think of. And the leaves, how they shimmied there, ancient yet
premature, reflecting the last reaching-outs of the sun. He smiled.
"They're beautiful, aren't they,"
John nodded. "Quite."
Then, he jumped, looked to his left, where the voice came from, and gazed.
A smallish girl sat there, complexion like soothing-white curtains settled when a blistering day
enslaved everyone. Her tufts were a pale blond, here and there covering her eyes. Then she'd
shift them, settle them on her fay-like ears.
Her eyes glowed a blue glow. "I'm Margaret. Margaret Fawl."
John extended his hand; they shook. "John. John Farlowe."
For a moment, they did not speak again. It was only when John looked back at his watch and saw
that there was only fifteen minutes that he decided to continue conversation with the stranger.
"Are you visiting?" he asked.
"No."
"Ah, a resident from hereabouts?"
"Yes."
"Since when?"
"As long as I can remember."
John ceased to speak to her then for he felt that it would not go anywhere. Then, he noticed her
holding a copy of Rilke's Poems.
He smiled. "He's a brilliant poet, Rilke. There's nobody quite like him."
"Indeed," she said. "He's seen through things. That's why I stay here, all the time."
"What?"
Margaret blushed. "That's why I'm staying in the Gardens. Because I want to see what he's seen,
I want to reach across the earthly realm and—sniff—the Divine, the Infinite, something beyond
the borders of what we know and love, love and know."
"Ah," John said. He did not know what to say.
He did not know what he would feel about that articulation of the same problem he had had for
the past few weeks, months, years. He did not know that there would be another one like him,
another one of those lost souls stumbling through life, not quite sure which path to take—such a
one whom grief overtakes fully.
Margaret stood. "It's about time to leave. It's the first time I've talked to somebody besides a
polite greeting here and there. Perhaps I shall know you more, sometime soon, if it be willed."
He only nodded.
Her dainty back disappeared in the hedges.
John touched his cheeks—it boiled.
-----------
The next few weeks were the pouring-over of all emotion that, until then, had been stretched too
taut, strictly held, watched, thought-about. At least, to John's eyes.
To another's gaze, they were only phone calls where he chuckled much; letters---amazing
thought!---that he indulgently wrote, with a pleasant handwriting, neat and curving; and, more
than this, monthly (at certain occasions, weekly) visits to that countryside as a sort-of ecstatic
breath of air.
But to him. To him, they were the slow and callous creation of bridges over a vast sea, an attempt
to know another soul, to enter into a sphere completely devoid of him and, finally, to transcend
that differentiation, to traverse those roaring waves of the unknown and to be one.
But all the while, he chided himself: "Love another? Know another? Yet do I love and know
myself enough? Have I loved and known myself yet? I don't think so---or perhaps I haven't
watched yet. Am I trying to lose myself in her? Am I trying to drown out everything that I am,
was, and can be by being with her and liking her? Ah! can I love her when this time of dilly-
dallying is over and I can no more pretend that I am seeing only her goodness, her perfection, her
beauty---will her foibles be enough to dissipate my love for her?"
And yet! And yet all those thoughts and conflicts vanished into thin air when he walked the
countryside, turned only into heady clatterings about how he looked, how his hair brushed this
certain way, how his clothes were foiled, wrinkled or crumpled and how ugly he looked with this
combination of clothes. Was he too fat? too tall? too short? too skinny? too dressed-up? too
unfashionable?
But all these too were swept away by calmness and respite whenever he laid eyes on her: there
was something of the pond in her: a gentle stillness that took you in.
He watched her then, a solemn watching not unlike the way he used to watch during those far-off
years he used to study people in order to take advantage of them. But now, there was something
different, a touch of reverence, a hint of gratefulness, a pinch of admiration as he watched: how
her hair, the blooming layers of yellowish winter snow, trickled and flowed like water across her
face, going round her ears, then---stopping, by her neck; he noted also the way her mouth would
first twitch when she wanted to say something that she thought was too out-of-place, not in
conjunction, out of sync, perhaps, with our age, and how it might sound too poetic, too romantic,
too refined for our crude times---and how it would fall into a rhythmic opening and closing as
her tongue streamed the most beautiful fruits of speech, like the clear tintinnabulations of a silver
bell during the caress of twilight; most of all, however, was the way her eyes glimmered like
lightning bolts, sizzled like fireworks streaking across a dark sky and illumined everything: as if
each and every word, thought, act that she and John experienced was to her a new discovery, a
new world, a new infinity ready to be felt, then: let go.
Margaret was lovely. Her gait; her smile; her ideas; her jocund yet serious personality; the way
she glared when teased, and teased back with ferocious wit; the daintiness of her rough fingers;
the withering necklace she wore; the impossible way she twirled his hair and pressed against his
chest; the sensations of her breath against his neck; her lips against his, slowly, like a world
unfolding: at first, nebulous, unclear, cloudy, then, suddenly, clear, vibrant, lively; how her nose
reddened in winter; her laughter and gaiety during spring, when she lay down next to him in a
white dress, brushing the flowers; the way her throat moved as she drank draughts of dandelion
wine during summer; her gracious, nostalgic, wistful face as autumn, like a plague, descended
upon the world and fell all those things that once were living---and so much more.
He loved them all; hated them all, too, for he could not admit that he loved her, although the way
their lips touched was fire and water just the same: a destructive calm that seized him.
One day: it only took him one day in those twenty-two months of knowing each other to flush
everything down the bog. Like an architect too impressed with his masterpiece, he repented, for
how could he ever construct something as beautiful as, if not more than, this? Was this to be his
denouement? His end? Was this how it all would reach its conclusion: a fatal rapture that would
result in him losing himself? Losing himself? Had he attained himself yet? Was he whole enough
yet? Was he solitary enough? Hadn't he been losing those moments of infinitesimal lengths
where everything was to him pierced, pondered, speculated, where everything was to him
known, clear, orderly, where everything was to him lonely, painful, difficult---hadn't he been
making his life easier by using her as a means of escape?
Pained with his thoughts, John stood up and gazed at the burning sun as it died away in the
horizon. He had two days left to stay in the countryside this time; he had left his office job and
settled for a company looser with the rules so long as you produced results.
He'd watch himself then, and learn just how much of him was lost in her.
John woke up half an hour after six, did his toilette, and went out for a walk. His morning routine
had not changed that much: he was still fascinated with the nothingness one felt during walking.
However, as he saw Margaret praying one time, even though he had not yet accepted the faith,
his fingers clasped at the end of his walk and he prayed. This time, desperately, hoping for any
clear sign to help him through his problem.
To his mind, there was nothing that morning.
At eight, he settled at the dining room of the inn. He was alone, as usual, for nobody quite visited
the inn during those hours---guests, more often than not, only stayed there for the night, leaving
at dawn; or were just the normal drunkards that snuck in a bit of ale before dipping into sleep.
John shivered a little bit thinking about them.
Sunlight slanted in through the cloudy glass, dappling the wood with golden blisters. Mr. and
Mrs. Kilner, already familiar with John's preferred meals, asked him if it would be the regular.
"No," John said. "I'll have a light one today."
"Oh," Mrs. Kilner exclaimed, "you're going somewhere, aren't ya? why don't you eat a bit
more?"
"I'm afraid I'm a bit too sick for that," he replied, smiling ironically.
"Well, if you insist,"
Mr. Kilner hummed. "Must be proposing to that lassie, he is!"
"Nothing," John stammered, "nothing of that sort, no." He chuckled. "Although that would be
nice some years from now, if it'll be."
"Boyo!" The innkeeper had almost said it in a chiding voice. "You can't leave everything to Fate
and destiny and all those childish things that are fit for someone like my daughter, you know---!"
A voice erupted, muffled, from the kitchen. "I can hear you, Dad! And no, I'm not childish still!"
"You have to," continued Mr. Kilner, not hearing, "clench everything and put down your foot!
She wouldn't know what you want otherwise. I's been watching you, you know, you almost
always don't know what it is you want!"
"Ah, shush, you old boor," Mrs. Kilner said. She served John's meal: goat stew. "A delicate lad
he is, and a delicate lad he will be. Things ought to be respected and left to themselves. You
water a plant then you leave it---you don't drown it with your care. And you certainly don't pluck
it and shout at it to grow."
"Not what I meant," Mr. Kilner said, frowning.
"I know, dearie," Mrs. Kilner said. It calmed her husband and he left them, attending to
somebody who had just arrived at the inn. She turned to John. "My boy, and I've always thought
of you as a son since the beginning, love is something you enjoy and hope for. It's something you
go into to forget yourself for just a tiny moment." This startled John since it was the opposite of
what he had been contemplating; but he made no show of it. "Of course, right after the youthly
rage settles in, you're all clear and rational and calm, but you long and yearn, yearn and long,
until you want to be with them. And that's the answer, you know: it's a game for both of you to
enjoy. Don't mettle yourself with a thousand questions, because I know you have that disease:
thinking too much is a disease that leads to catastrophes. Don't fall down it, I tell you, stop
thinking for a moment and trust. Love is faith, John, my dear friend, and only in that faith can
there ever be the one union worth fighting for." Mrs. Kilner smiled, laughed. "Well, I've gone on
and said too much, haven't I?"
"No!" John said: "No, in fact, I think it's been very helpful to me, madam. Thank you."
She made a curtsy of sorts, beamed, then strode away to the kitchen, quite proud of herself.
But John had stopped listening when she had told him to forget himself. Perhaps it was a slip, an
erroneous slide of the tongue and the thought, but it was enough to make him turn away from
everything that she said afterwards.
He finished the goat stew, thanked the Kilners, and went on to visit Margaret.

It was about to strike three o'clock in the afternoon when John arrived at the hamlet where
Margaret lived in.
A classy hamlet it was, despite its relatively esoteric location. Varnished wood streamed here and
there, many times with branches brushing against it. A sort-of harmony rose as the footsteps and
the twittering sinewed around each other, like the small vines that, rippling, twined like ropes
over, under, around itself and others.
The tresses stood tall; people flittered from doorstep-to-doorstep, greeting him; his boots hushed
on the grass.
The thought of their being alone in the cottage once more struck him, although they had chatted
many times before without anything happening. It was a small embarrassment given what Mr.
Kilner had said earlier. “I wonder why I should be bothered with that! It’s nothing more than a
small tease. But if they were here, what would they have said if I proposed?”
Margaret's parents died when she was naught but five years old. Later, she was adopted by her
aunt, who took her into the city and raised her there for the rest of her adolescence. Into her
twenties, she chose to stay in the small hamlet her parents had bought more than a decade ago.
At first, she said, cleaning it was harsh work: vines grew into the walls and, crooked, broke
through the wooden boards as if they were jailbreaking. Whiffs of dynamic rot streamlined
through this door and that, arming the place with a diabolical miasma that reminded one of bogs
and swamps. Animal dung stuck to the floors, walls, and ceiling.
But, given that she was intent on living inside the cottage, she pursued the cleaning and,
eventually, rid the house of the last deadly smell---which came from a rat that had died inside the
walls.
The next few weeks she spent decorating her now-empty home, introducing a beautiful ebony
bookcase that she made her neighbors carry. Photographs of her dead parents, dusted and wiped,
kissed the mantel above the whispering hearth. A rug; some cookery; a cluster of books; a
window; a telephone (which she rarely used except to talk to John)---only those things filled her
house.
It was a surprise then to see that she had bought a new vase: a slender vase whose curves seemed
to be stolen from sculptures of Athena herself: roses were a bright red against the blue
convulvuses that, convoluted, wove throughout the pottery.
John asked Margaret about it. "I never knew you were keen on those things."
"Those things," she repeated, smiling. "There's much to know about me, Jack. I'm afraid we don't
know each other that well...yet."
A spasm of shame ran down John's body. "Well," he coughed, "at any rate, how have you been
these few weeks? You haven't, I remember, returned that one letter I sent you."
"Ah," Margaret said. "I haven't, indeed." She murmured. "It's tiring, Jack, writing letters and
keeping up with all sorts of acquaintanceships. You know the reason I chose to live here was to
avoid those kinds of sentimentalities. I've been sick the past few weeks: not just a physical
sickness but a mental one; more, an emotional one. A burden weighs on my shoulders and I don't
know what it is. But I'm sorry I couldn't answer your letters, if they meant that much to you."
"No matter," he said. "It doesn't matter anyhow."
The hearth glowered just then, and a heat rose from it that produced a fear in John, a deep fear,
as if from the red-orange flames would emerge a blight, a demon, a sickness personified.
Why was she so dismissive, he thought. What about her had changed these past few weeks? Or
maybe he had only deluded himself about her. Yes, that seemed to be the case. At any rate, he
would keep up the conversation: rhythm, tempo, tune---all of them were laid at his feet, anyway.
"So," he said. His voice fell off---he did not know what to talk about. Hissing filled the room. He
jumped.
Margaret served tea. Then, she settled back on her seat. Her face looked expectant.
John scrambled for a tune. "I've heard that renovations are imminent on the Gardens now. I
thought the rumors were false but---?"
"They're true," Margaret interrupted. "They're changing the Garden, Jack. And how cruelly
they're going to do it! Not a miniscule change creeping day-by-day, or a small change now and
then, perhaps per week, to pretend they give a damn about the people who had been visiting that
place. No! They're rushing, those people, rushing to build...something! something in order to
replace the beautiful Gardens. I've long tried to ponder them, you know. I've long pondered the
fig tree and just when I was about to see it!" She sighed. "There goes my chance!"
And John recognized that it was true: he knew very little about her save the ways she moved,
danced, giggled, laughed, joked, made funny faces, hummed, sang---all of those exterior things
but never the way she thought, only what she said she thought; never what twisted, churned,
emerged from her mind—secrets he would never be able to discover, the holy grail that was
forever out of his hands. But was that the one thing, the most important thing?
Of course! he thought. What else could it be?
A suggestion flitted across his mind. He pushed it down.
John chuckled. "I haven't seen you this riled up since..."
"Since I talked about Gist?" Margaret laughed. "That's true, that's true. Anger never fails to spark
within me like electricity whenever I talk about Gist. I could never forget the things he did to me,
you know, to make himself feel better and me worse." Her lips quivered, the soft trembling of
branches during winter. "And I hate that, Jack. I hate that. I hate having to feel this way. I hate
sadness, anger, pain; I only want those joyful things: pleasure, most of all, love, kindness. I want
every moment to tremble in ecstasy! the way the birds do, the way the leaves do, the way,
perhaps, angels do!"
"It isn't wrong to feel hurt," John said. "It's always occurred to me that pain was the lowest point
of the threshold that could be pointed at to say: "Compared to this, all joy, all love, all kindness,
all the things that make life worth living are blissful, valuable, good." Indeed," he said, staring at
her lake-blue eyes, "suffering is the one thing that makes joy much more meaningful."
"Then its value is in its pain? its being itself?" Margaret challenged. "That seems pretty stupid to
me. If we stopped suffering today, we'd be happier, no doubt about it. Isn't that the ultimate goal:
to eliminate all suffering altogether?"
John shook his head. "I wouldn't think so. I agree with your conclusion, however: pain is
valuable because it is pain, because it is suffering. I retract what I said earlier. Pain for itself.
Difficulty for itself. That, I think, is the way."
How many times had they had this conversation before? Perhaps that is the reason she had not
been able to discover what those fig trees meant, what they wished to say: because their beings
only erupted from the painful breaking through the rocks, the soil, the suffocated lands into air,
that wonderful invisibility.
"I've been thinking about that for a long time, Jack," Margaret said. "And though I believe in
Christianity with all my heart, I'm tortured. I don't know what to answer to that because I know it
to be wrong, fundamentally wrong, a premise so destructive that it's better left untouched. But I
want to touch it, I want to examine it, I want to reach in every crook and cranny of the
argument---even though propositions can only reach so far, I dare to argue in propositions. Why
suffering, Jack? Why callousness, indifference, evil? How is this world a creation of God? Was
this world created by a supposed good God or a malevolent one, a torturer, a demonic torturer,
whose very nature it was to create the most damning creatures he ever could---but morality was
accidental, something he had not foreseen, we humans were his greatest mistake. Is that God,
Jack?"
John stirred. He tasted the tea: bitter. "I'll listen to you, Margaret. I know you've been aching for
this. But you know, don't you? You know what might happen after this: that I won't come back
here anymore, that I won't spend summer afternoons with you anymore, that I won't gaze into
your eyes with the same gaiety anymore? Are you willing to risk it? All of it?"
Margaret nodded. "I'm prepared to risk all of that, Jack. You're dear to me, very dear, and I don't
know what I'll do without you. But I'll risk losing you in order to find the truth. In some sense,
that is all that I have been looking for: the truth. A will to truth. I can't seem to tolerate untruth. I
can't seem to be satisfied with the hurried explanations of bad apologists. Irrationality is all well
and good, but supposing God is rational, why irrationality? It haunts me, these questions, they
fill my brain, wander like loiterers in the plaza, and knife me to scramble for them. If I can
understand the people who are willing to wither their very soul in exchange for a few silvers, a
few nickels, a few tantalizing discoveries about the world---then I'll gladly sacrifice the one thing
that gives me joy: us."

John fingered the cover of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. His face grimaced: it was as if he had
smelled the stench, the stench of his own failure to live up to his mentor's teachings. He fell onto
the floorboards, rested his head on the couch and looked at the walls.
Years ago, they were empty. To a degree, they still were. But now, he could not look at them
without remembering the way he stared at them as, mesmerized, he yearned for Margaret.
Now that would be impossible. Now he was alone. Nothing could have ruined it but now
everything was ruined.
But it would all, like gears, rearrange itself back into flow, back into a movement that, snakelike,
traversed the whole of humanity's, nay the world's, bituminous output: this, too, shall pass into
oblivion.
John knew this: and yet he could not stop that rapid pounding of his heart inside his temples, nor
the heat that was so penetrating it might have burnt off his skin had it been tangible. He could
not. He could not. He felt powerless then. And anger welled up---drizzled, dissipated, died out
like a puny candle in an overwhelming darkness.
If misplaced fury would be his only fire, then he'd do away with that fire, no matter how much it
guided him to a well-worn path, not littered with weeds and unrotten bones, creeping roots and
snaking vines.
He'd accept all of the Unknown if that meant not blaming Margaret. For what should he blame
her for? Nothing, really. That was the truth of her and he could not accept that truth. He
sidestepped that last meeting, that touch, that glance, that curved and slender waist---for what?
Not for a story where she was morally leprotic, not where she was the wounds and the blisters in
an otherwise fair and dainty story---rather, he'd accept it all, try to be as factual, try to be as gray,
try not to mold anything and everything into narrative, story, or tale, because that is who he was:
a man who had told hideous stories all of his life and, for once, wanted to redeem that bad
storytelling.
"I did not love her," he muttered. "Not yet...A few more meetings, a few more conversations.
And then! And then, oh! how I would have said it! Not with that word where the tongue takes a
trip from the palette, settles down and leaves enunciation to the trilling of the lips. Love. That
word is callous, a word overused by ridiculous people who try to lose themselves in another.
Perhaps---Perhaps I could have told her, if I could only accept those questions, doubts, feelings,
if I were more patient and she a little more kind to my conscience---perhaps I could have told her
that I adored her. Not only her eyes, brows or lips: but in what those features of hers meant to
say. Yes, what they meant to explain: that violence within her, both unmeasurable destruction
and brilliant potential..."
John had been fingering the couch and, despite their inequal texture, despite the couch's
smoothened skin and Margaret's rough callouses, despite these things he remembered her:
vividly, clearly, sorrowfully. Wholeheartedly.

John took back to drinking. Along with it, he dabbled in cigarettes, drugs, and pornographically-
detailed vivisections of an insect's anatomy. Only one of those three things stuck: smoking.
It was something that calmed him down, smoking, and whenever he strode through the room, sat
down to scribble on his journal, he'd grab a cigar, light it up, and meditate on the happenstances
with the tendrils of smoke reddening his eyes.
He ate horribly. Everything he could see, he snatched, gobbled and downed. Whether it was the
half-slice of gelatin everybody left to be polite or the ramshackle arrangement of greased-up
ingredients they called a burger. This satisfied him as it dulled him and no more did he have that
physician-like acuity when thinking, no more that creeping through the veins of his mind with
light footsteps and careful fingers;---whenever he tried to think, his brain only farted in response.
He was stupid as a lamb now. And just as tender too.
John avoided Morgan as much as he could. But, at times, they passed by each other in the streets
and the latter would look at him and smile, with those steely eyes staring at him. Then, he'd
clench his fists but nod an emphatic nod with a small smile, as if to say: "Yes, I admit I've gone
on and made a fool out of myself again but that is no matter, since everything doesn't matter.
Since everything should bloody go and explode."
He forgot Church, he forgot God, he forgot love. He forgot everything that he once held onto.
Had he died during this time, one chronicling his fate may have been dismayed with the tragedy
of it all: the redeemed one had persisted on his vice. However, one would be mistaken for, in
doing this, he willingly extricates all the necessary impulses that had, for a long time, brooded
within his bowels, his loins. As one who compulsively does something out of mere habit may
suggest, it is not he who has a habit, but the habit that has him. And John found himself in that
position: the urge to cease, the urge to think, the urge to diverge from that which plagued him.
Perhaps it was God, perhaps it was Lucifer---who knows? A drive so suffused his body, a pang
of conscience so palpable to him that he, almost literally, convulsed whenever he tried to reach
for another drink, another plate, another numbing passion that he had.
Save smoking. That was his only vice, perhaps even virtue. The taste of the bits and pieces of
cigar satiated him, along with the clacking of the keys. He got into writing. He didn't know what.
Just writing. The solid click-clack instilled in him a wonder that he hadn't known since---since
that inexorable beauty captured him and took him to a dance that he could not forget.

"So," Morgan said, "how long has it been since we've had a conversation?"
"I don't know," John said, shrugging his shoulders. He wore a necklace with a cross on it. He had
changed it for the Alcoholics Anonymous amulet. "Four, five months, if I'm correct." He smiled.
"Maybe my two years of returning to drinking's still tampering with my memory. Although that
might spell trouble for my career as a writer: forgetting words is not at all a pleasant problem."
They were inside John's house: newly-furnished, whitewashed still, empty save for the sparse
furniture that formed the backbone of what people might call a respectable house: windows, a
couch, a lightbulb, a small table, two chairs.
"That's a stupid joke," Morgan said, brows forming a solid line. The wrinkles eased. "At any rate,
you're fine, now, I hope. I wouldn't want to be talking to you when you're still recuperating."
"I'm fine," John said. "And maybe that's the only thing we'll ever hope to be. Never better since
that can be used only in comparison. Compared to that state, am I any better? How? Why? For
what reason...But I'm digressing from the main point."
John noticed something in Morgan's eyes that he had not noticed before; or, perhaps, noting it, he
couldn't admit to himself: a hint of disdain. He stirred the cup of coffee. "Why did you visit,
Morgan? What is it that interests you?"
Morgan looked surprised. Then, he frowned. "I thought you would have guessed."
"It isn't a very nice guess," John said, still stirring the coffee. Once ebony-dark, it had shifted into
a creamy tawn.
"You...you visited her, you said," Morgan staggered. "And I wanted to know what happened
then."
John's brows raised. "Well, for what?"
"Part curiosity," Morgan said. "Part worrying."
"It's simple," John said, gesticulating rather carelessly, "after I didn't show up to an agreed
meeting, after ignoring her for the past two years, after not sending her even a short letter that
recognized her existence---after such stupidity, I, with such grace, with such splendor, if I might
add, told myself to go back to that place, that place filled with memories. Neither good nor bad,
but memories just the same. For what? Why, because I was free. It didn't matter if I'd achieve
something, that wasn't the point of my adventure, my journey of finding freedom in the
irrational, as I called it. I'll spare you the long story: she wasn't there. She left, it seems, a year
ago. She might have told it in a letter---I couldn't know. I burned them all as soon as the mailman
handed them to me."
“But…but why?”
John shrugged. “I don’t know. Irrationality seized me; I gave in.”
“And did you at least weep,” Morgan asked, honestly.
“No,” John said. “I didn’t.”
"But I don't think," Morgan said, "that that's the best way to go about it. Mourning for your loss,
Jack, goddamn it, that's a crappy road to go down: your head swirls with all the things you
could've done, all the things you could've said, all the gazes, smooches, and embraces you
could've had—and you hate it, you hate yourself, because those things are painful, goddamn they
are. But it's necessary, Jack."
John smoked a cigar. As if from a place far away, the shivering crackle of the record hummed, a
low, sweet hum from one of those songs back two decades ago before all the madness, before all
the things creeping on John crept up and crumpled everything he knew to pieces, shriveled up
like an armadillo's back.
"She was different, Margaret, she was," he said, shaking his head. He tapped on the table, a sleek
mahogany that reminded him of the way her cheekbones curved, slenderly, then dropped sharply
to her lined jaws. "Never would know anybody like her, again. But I guess those things are the
same old things that we know, aren't they? It's always the same for everybody: the same loss, the
same pain, the same grief. But Margaret, Margaret, Margaret...I'll say it once, I'll say it three
times, everything I did was prudence, prudence, prudence mixed with stupidity, stupidity,
stupidity. It'll never be the same autumn, the same summer, the same winter, the same spring. I'll
be damned if I don't hear the cricket of a radio and hear her, you know, singing, feet tapping on
the floors like some ancient Egyptian dancer come here in the modern era, with our drab faces
and even drabber costumes. She was the type of woman you lost when you were young so you
would know loss for the rest of your life. I guess, Morgan, what I'm trying to say is, what I'm
trying to say is the thing I knew to be true but kept to myself, and took away from myself. Have
you done that?"
"Done what?"
"Tossed something away,” John said, mist in his eyes, “because you know you'll be stronger
when that thing fades away and is nothing but a memory. You ever done or felt that before?"
"I don't understand, Jack," Morgan said.
"Ah, well, you don't have to." John took a sip of coffee, exhaled. "I'm a lonesome man, Morgan,
and lonesome men have to do what lonesome men do: be alone. I didn't love her...Or I did...But
what I mean to say is that I couldn't love her, you know, couldn't pretend that I could love her.
Not yet."
"Jesus, Jack, enough with the riddles. What do you mean couldn't pretend to love her? You're
twenty summers and four!"
"And that's why! I can't love her because I'm too young. I'm still incomplete. I can't love. Others
can, by fooling themselves. Not me. Not me. What I want is something—possessive, you know. I
don't want the fueled sex, I don't want the entering her and thrusting myself into her. At least, not
just that. To possess her, Morgan, to possess a woman, you know what that's like?"
"I'm afraid not,"
"Well," John said, smirking. "I didn't think you would. Because you're a well-to-do man,
Morgan, an ordinary, well-to-do man with an ordinary life. There's a depth to me and I don't like
it."
"A depth," Morgan repeated, almost blandly. His shoulders heaved as he sighed. "First, you talk
in riddles then you say you’re better than me. Your life's a mess, Jack. And I'm cleaning it up."
"I thank you for that," John said, not minding the sharp tone. "But I don't mean something good
when I mean depth, Morgan. I want to be like you: well-to-do, everything neat, nice, and
naughty, at times. I would love that life! But I can't. Because something's wrong with me, you
know, very wrong with me. I want to be explored: I'm a labyrinth and I want to be searched,
extraordinarily searched, unpacked, known, for Christ's sake! Known! You know what know
means, Morgan? How difficult that is for somebody to know, and to know somebody like me—
well, that's a Herculean task! And that's an ordeal I wouldn't wish on anybody. That's why."
"That's why what," Morgan asked, stupidly.
"Well, that's why I wanted to be alone, to not dwell on it anymore. You saw wrong. I don't dwell
on it not because I can't handle it. I don't dwell on it because I'm afraid I'll regret my decision of
not giving that responsibility to someone else. I can't love, Morgan, at least the way you people
love. You're human. All-too-human. I'm...something else. I'm no longer human. I'm a corpse, a
rotting corpse, severely, severely, severely, I'm a lunatic, I think. I should be put in an asylum.
But I want to be loved, Morgan! I can't be like Rilke or Nietzsche! I can't bear that! I won't bear
that! I want to be traipsed, pondered, stared at, I want all those things that all complicated things
deserve: analysis. I want to be vivisected, known: every damned nook, cranny and crevice.
Everything that I know, she also has to know—in fact, everything that I don't know she must
know. That's my demand, Morgan, that's why I choose not to love her. Because I'll be
disappointed. I won't be fathomed; I won't be examined; I won't be known. Everything then, even
though I love her, even though she loves me, everything then would be nothing but follies,
foibles, freakishly absurd fables that would unfold in front of my face to my despair. Because I'll
settle then, Morgan, I won't leave. Why would I? Theoretically, I'll have everything that I'll ever
need: a wife, a house, a child. Everything in the box and the shed and the head, you know.
Everything! But it won't be everything. That'll all be nothing. All of that will be worthless if I
don't know myself or if I'm not known. What the hell am I, Morgan? What goddamn entity lives
inside me? What am I? What am I, Morgan, tell me!"
"Jack," Morgan whispered. "I can't help you. I can't help you."
He muttered the same words as he slipped on his coat, took his umbrella and sped off into the
spitting night.
John sat alone. The hearth flickered whiplike fire-tongues. He had lied once again, to his only
friend. A burden for himself alone. Something, almost heroically, that he’d settle by himself.