Farewell, Indolence

They were sitting in a circle, faces down, hands clasped, legs crossed or open. They were immersed in a reddish darkness which could only be found in an etching by an absent-minded Dutch master. They were chanting something, but no sound was coming out from their mouths. They were praying, most probably to a nameless, suburban god with a suntan. From a distance, it looked like they were all dead. But that’s not entirely right.

I had been coming to these meetings for quite some time now. It was the only time in the week when I got out of my house. I had a faint suspicion that it’s true for most of the people here. The suspicion was not baseless. The behavior patterns of all the members of this group were supposed to be the same. They were bound by a similar propensity, an identical attitude towards life, a universal agenda. They were all slackers, non-doers, indolent hacks.

A slacker is not a person who refuses to work. He/she even refuses to refuse. This is the example of an actless act – an act which is opposed to the very notion of acting, and hence a pinnacle of contradictory self-effacement. The members of the slackers’ group wanted to get effaced so much that they didn’t make any effort to get effaced. Consequently, they didn’t get effaced and ended up at a place like this. Irony is a five-letter word with a vicious sense of humor.

The group had a fancy name – Farewell, Indolence. The comma between the two words added to its decadent grandeur. I came to know about it from a friend of a friend. At first, he was reluctant to share this knowledge. I lent him some of my old stamp-books. (Once I used to be one of those stamp-collectors who are aware of the existence of a country named Helvetia.) He owned a record store which had an excellent collection of dead cockroaches. Most of these cockroaches died a natural death – a feat quite unheard of in the world of cockroaches.

To kill all the confusions in the beginning, the objective of the group was not to encourage slacking. Rather the opposite. Modeled after the Alcoholics Anonymous, this was meant to help the slackers recover from the waywardness of picking nose at the time of a national disaster. It was planned and established in the early nineteen-nineties, almost immediately after the fall of the Soviet Russia. I didn’t think there could be any connection, but then, historical narratives don’t mind commonsense.

The group was headed by a man in his late forties. He was called The Instructor. It was difficult to guess his nationality. His was a face of an old warrior who had seen his soldiers’ bodies being eaten by wolves and done nothing but raising a toast to the insignificance of life. There were some rumors. His wife was murdered by a hotheaded circus clown with a kitchen knife and he forgave him for cleaning the knife impeccably after the murder. I didn’t believe the story. It was an unlikely image: a circus clown cleaning his murder weapon beside the dead body of a woman. Clowns are famous for their apathy to water.

The meetings were usually held on Fridays. A Friday is that day of the week when a slacker finds himself or herself really confused. Is it a workday or the beginning of the weekend holiday? It is the twilight zone of indeterminate action. Should we stop work and look beyond the desks to the horizon of sheer worklessness for two whole days? But that will be going with the flow. Everyone at the office does that. We are different from everybody by doing exactly the opposite – by not doing what they are doing. Should we then keep on gazing at the computer screen until our eyes come out of the sockets? But can we stomp on our ideology and be a slave to the capitalist machine like that? We were clueless. Whoever chose Friday as the day of the meeting was really cunning. We used to be the most vulnerable on that day. It was the day when they almost made us work.

I still remember my first day at the meeting. I went with my sponsor, the owner of the record store, the keeper of dead cockroaches. We entered the room. Nobody waved. Nobody asked us to sit. There was no furniture in the room except a few chairs. I sat at the farthest corner, although it was not that far. Who would bother dragging the chairs farther than the closest? So we were close. Actually closer.

The Instructor muttered something. I guessed he was asking my name. “I am Iman,” and I added, “I am a slacker.”

“We don’t call ourselves slackers,” the Instructor’s voice struggled through one hundred years of grogginess, “we are just lazy.”

I couldn’t follow, “What do you mean? We are too lazy to call ourselves slackers? That’s really impressive.”

The man was capable of anger but he knew how to keep it to himself – by imagining himself carrying a beautiful vase to the funeral of his mistress’s cat. (This imagery has too many layers, like the basement of Jorge Luis Borges. First, you have to imagine a mistress, then her cat, then its death, then its funeral and all the arrangements – catering and booking the hall, etc. – then buying a vase, and finally carrying it to the funeral. But one needs to stop at this point. Once you imagine yourself actually reaching the door of the hall, you may become aware of the futility of it all. You may then burst out in anger which will undo all your previous efforts at nonchalance and bring you back to square one where you will be still in the arms of your mistress when the cat jumps in and you kick it out of the window.) He only smiled at my ignorance, “No. We are lazy by default. Slacking is not a choice for us. We are programmed that way.”

“Who programmed us?” I was fearless that day. I thought the discussion would take a theological turn, but instead people started pouring in their inputs on how to download porn without having to click the mouse. A new software just came out. I didn’t have anything to complain. This sort of knowledge is priceless.

I was not a slacker though. I didn’t have a job, but writers weren’t supposed to. Yes, I enjoyed my drinks, but who wouldn’t? I even jumped from a three-storied building, but survived somehow. I think I bounced on a pile of clichés lying under my window. Anyway, I went to the meetings to meet girls.

Think about it. It is a brilliant plan. Who would be a more noncommittal yet passionate lover than a recovering slacker? On one hand, she doesn’t want to put any effort and, on the other, she wants to embrace life and find the meaning of her existence. Some contradictions work as a springboard for sex. It is one of those.  

And I did alright. The first girl I met didn’t have any apartment of her own. She was sleeping on a couch of her boyfriend’s cousin. The boyfriend was sleeping with the cousin. So it would have been a little awkward if she had invited me to that place. My place was out of question. She had a car. She drove it to a deserted amusement park. We had sex under a signboard that read “Don’t be fooled by his hand gestures.” I had some difficulty getting an erection, but I couldn’t bring myself to use my hands.

I never saw her again. Somebody told me she had kicked the boyfriend out and been living with the cousin since. Good for her, I thought to myself, and good for her hands.

I had a couple of flings more. I was preparing to retire, but the universe meddled. She entered the room at around six o’clock in the afternoon and it turned into an evening. 

She was not beautiful in the conventional sense. None of them are. She wore the same dress every time I saw her. When I got to know her more intimately, I asked why. She had a specific dress for each day in the week. On Fridays, she wore a pair of jeans and a black tee. On Sundays, she wore nothing and stayed home. I never met her on a Sunday.

On the first day, she sat three chairs away from me. I was then sharing my life story with the group. These story-telling sessions were usually short. There were no heroic tales of beating up thugs or inspirational accounts of surviving cancer. Only routine descriptions of daily activities. For most of us, it was waking up late, having brunch, watching reality TV, clearing bowels, fidgeting with our own sex organs, and going to sleep.

I glanced at her from the corner of my left eye. I was talking about how I brushed my teeth every morning. I brushed them so slow that most of them became older than me. Nobody laughed at the joke. (It had a reference to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, though absolutely wrong.) She moved a little in her seat. Perhaps she found me unbearably intelligent. I stopped abruptly and the Instructor solemnly announced a coffee break. Nobody made any movement. Nobody ever did. Except me this time. And her.

These coffee breaks were mandatory by some regulation, but since nobody ever bothered to get up, there was no arrangement in the room. We went out to the street silently, followed by a unanimous gaze, garnished with curiosity, jealousy, and compassion, all in equal dosage.

We didn’t talk. I was as shy as a wrinkled, un-blown balloon, wanting to be inflated with quips and charisma, and failing. She was plainly uninterested. We drank our coffee with small portions of milk and sugar. The silence, however, was overcompensating. When we came back to the cave, our friends had started chanting our anthem. It was a soundless song, without any music or lyric. We were told at the very beginning that we had to come up with our own mantras. Once again, nobody really cared.

Very soon she and I became close. Our friendship was built on the strong foundation of disinterest to each other and, of course, to the cause of the group. Once we tried to find out how similar we were. The result was hilariously singular: apart from our lack of willingness to share, we had nothing to share. 

We started having sex. It happened so naturally that I became suspicious of her existence. Did she really exist or was I just masturbating? And I became sure only when she was murdered.

She was killed in her sleep. I don’t want to go into details as that will bring me under suspicion. Yes, I was next to her when she died. But was I there when she was killed? The police didn’t get the fine point. They locked me up and made a strong case out of it. Nobody from my group came to visit me in the jail. I didn’t expect them to come – that would have been too embarrassing. All my life I had wanted to avoid sentimentality and dog bite.

Surprisingly, I noticed some of them at the court. I refused to have the court-appointed lawyer. The man was too clean-shaven for taste. Also I wanted to show how articulate I was. On the contrary, the prosecutor was in a hurry. He spoke so fast that I couldn’t even catch the name of the deceased. (I never knew her name. She never told me.) One of her neighbors testified that she heard us having a quarrel the night before. “Is that true?” The prosecutor asked me. “How could it be? We were not married. I didn’t even know her name.” I said. Nobody laughed.

When I got up to argue my case, somebody shouted fire. The whole courtroom became empty like the soul of a life insurance agent. Well, I am a little wrong. Six of us were still there: the four members of my group, the judge, and I. I knew why I was there (my legs were chained), why my friends were there (they were slackers), but what the hell was the judge doing there? Was he impervious to fire? Was his commitment to justice so strong that it could form a shield and protect him from possible third degree burns? “You don’t have to worry about me. I am fine. I have a fever today. My body temperature is already high. A little fire can’t do shit to me,” my daze broke as the judge spoke with a strange authority. “Now proceed with your case, if you have any.”

“I do your honor,” I said expertly, mimicking one of the villains of my favorite TV show. “I can’t kill the deceased as I have a specific condition. I am a slacker like the rest of the people in the audience. A slacker can’t even leave the courtroom when there is fire. How can we kill somebody? Do I look like a person who will go to such a great length to achieve something, anything? And for what? Just to win an argument? This is simply preposterous.”

“Are you finished?” The judge seemed unmoved, and still un-burnt. 

“Yes, your honor. And oh, another thing. I really liked her.”

“That’s beside the point. Let us focus on something provable,” the judge smiled a little. “I have heard that you are not actually a slacker. You joined that group…what’s its name…Farewell Something to fuck women. Is that true?”

Amazed as I was by the sheer profanity of the truth, I couldn’t reply at once. I looked at my friends for support, but they didn’t look back. Their eyes had already melted in heat. Even if there wasn’t any fire, they wouldn’t have come in my support. They never did. They sat there like four statues of ash and scorched bone. Silent and burnt out.

“It’s not entirely true,” my voice trembled as I spoke. I had started to feel the heat. The end was near and the music had stopped.

“I have a test for you. We give everybody a fair chance to prove his innocence. And you will get yours. By the count of three, your chains will be gone. You will be a free man. If you still keep standing here, it will be proven that you are a slacker. And you will be acquitted of the murder. But if you try to run away, you will prove yourself a fraud, a non-slacker, a man with a movement.”

I couldn’t hear the countdown. The flames were blowing into my ears, caressing my earlobes, licking them, tickling, titillating, eating them. The world in front of my eyes was turning brighter by second. I rubbed my chest. A moist piece of skin came off and got stuck to my palm.

I tried to move my legs. Shouldn’t I run out and get myself admitted to a hospital? I could see the distorted face of the judge, disappearing amid smoke and bewilderment, perhaps mockingly smiling at my inability to decide. I was not feeling any pain. Only disappointment. A little sad perhaps. The second chapter of my unfinished novel needed a rewrite. If only I was a little more industrious…. Then I remembered: what’s the point?

The ambulance came late. They had a tough time bringing us out. We took a long time to move, even fried to death.         

      

  

The Last Nail

The moment he laid his eyes on the umbrella, he felt a little uneasy in the stomach. It was a ladies’ umbrella, small and printed, Japanese or Chinese, yellowish on the outside with small crimson dots, and it opened with a single click. The hand that was holding it was naked and lonely, but he hardly paid any attention. He was enamored, charmed, smitten by the umbrella, by the self-assuring ease, with which it blossomed into its dotted fullness. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and thought of his analyst’s face. He had an appointment today, which he couldn’t afford to miss. He stared at his watch. He had time.

The analyst was a lively man in his forties. Unusually jovial for his profession. Like every time, he welcomed him with a bloated smile. He sat on the couch, the doctor on a chair next to it. The doctor spoke first.

“Is it still raining outside?”

He nodded affirmative. The analyst continued.

“That’s a nice looking umbrella. Can I see it? Where did you get this?”

“From the streets.”

His reply was curt and ambiguous. The doctor didn’t seem to bother though. He was ogling the umbrella from various angles.  

“You know, I have always thought about buying stuff off the streets. But who has time?”

The man looked at his watch once again. Another gift from the streets. The analyst, being a professional, read the sign wrong.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to charge you for the chit-chat.”

He was relieved. The doctor was as clueless as the butcher’s favorite cow. He lay on the couch and closed his eyes. The doctor put the umbrella on a table behind him and set the time on his watch. The session started. 

“So how are you feeling lately?”

“Not bad.”

“Please elaborate.”

“There is nothing to elaborate.”

“Okay. Let me rephrase. How are you feeling about your condition?”

He didn’t reply immediately. Should he tell him now? A couple of minutes passed by. The room patiently waited for an answer.

“I have something to confess,” he said at last, his voice all dry and humorless.

“I am listening.”

“The umbrella, I picked it up at the grocer’s.”

“They sell it at the grocer’s now?”

“I didn’t buy it.”

“Is this the grocer’s umbrella?”

“No. It belonged to a girl.”

The analyst wasn’t taken aback by this confession. He was extraordinarily composed, perhaps a little bored. It was fairly routine for him to hear such tales and feign interest. He clipped his nails while the patient with closed eyes narrated his story.

“I saw her on the bus. She was holding the umbrella like a proud mother. The rain had started already. We got down from the bus. She opened it and started walking. I couldn’t resist following her, given my condition. She stopped at the grocer’s to buy some colored pencils. She might be an artist, I conjectured. She was paying the grocer and they had a fight over the changes. I just took the advantage of her carelessness.”

“Nobody saw you taking the umbrella?”

“I don’t give them any chance.”

The doctor was finished with his clipping. He put the clipper on the table and blew the remains of the nails off his shirt.

“To tell you the truth, I can understand why you were so moved by the umbrella. It’s exquisite. Having said that, I must remind you that it was wrong to take somebody else’s property without telling her. You must return it.”

“But I don’t have her address.”

The analyst was not entirely happy with the shape of his nails. He was thinking about having another go with the clipper. He casually proposed a suggestion.

“Perhaps it’s written on the umbrella.”   

“Written on the umbrella?” The man opened his eyes, so the analyst had to stop fidgeting with the clipper. “Who writes his address on the umbrella? That’s stupid.”

“Stupidity is not something to be underestimated,” the doctor remarked with an air of self-consciousness. He was a little embarrassed. The patient might have noticed his preoccupation with his fingertips. So he took recourse to the triteness of roundabout wisdom, “Stupidity is like a blunt pillar. You don’t like it when you see it, but it gives your house a strength of character.”

“Stupidity gives my house a strength of character?”

“Not stupidity. The blunt pillar. Never mind. Let’s focus on your condition. Are you taking those pills that I gave you?”

“Yes, about that,” the man closed his eyes again and the doctor reached for his clipper, “I don’t think they suit me.”

“Really? What happened?”

“They gave me headache.”

“Okay. Alright. The doses may be wrong. We shall see to that. What about your dreams?”

“What about them?”

“Do you have them?”

The analyst never had any problem with his left fingernails. He was a righty himself; his right hand moved like a recently oiled machine. He got his left nails beautifully clipped, round and shapely, with a pink glow underneath – a sign of health and post-marital bliss. What he really couldn’t manage were the right ones. They always looked hectic and underdone. But then, it was not very wise to go over the top with a zeal for perfection and start bleeding.  

“Who doesn’t?”

“Sorry? What did you say?”

“Everybody has dreams.”

“Right. What’s yours?”

The man closed his eyes even more tightly. He was trying to remember something, or maybe, his eyes were twitching.

“I dreamt a hairpin the other night.”

“What kind of hairpin?”

“What kind of…I don’t know. How many kinds are there? Never got a chance to see that many.”

“What about the ones your mother used?”

By now the analyst was convinced that some people would never have the aesthetic privilege – the sense of fulfillment – of having perfectly shaped right fingernails. Some people were born with asthma, some with a grand piano to play on, and some with poorly working left hands, nervous and shaky while flipping a coin or unhooking a bra.

“My mother had short hair. She never used them.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

The doctor had finally resigned: to hell with fingernails, to hell with analysis. The time was running out, but not as fast as to his liking. He never liked this man. He never liked anybody. Why did he get into this profession anyway? Did his mother have short hair too?

“There is nothing to be sorry about.”

“What was your childhood like?”

“Haven’t I told you already?”

“Yes, you have. But some experiences must be shared repetitively.”

The doctor didn’t conceal his yawn. The patient’s eyes were still closed.

“Look, my childhood wasn’t much different from yours, or from anybody else’s. That I have turned into a kleptomaniac is a shock to my family.”

“Perhaps the shock had come before you turned into…well, I think we should not use the k-word…before you kind of  acquired this condition.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something happened. Something so terrible that you want to forget it. But you can’t. So you give up everything associated with it. Things that belong to you. And you take away things that belong to others. You substitute your things by those that are not yours. The desire to substitute is a very strong emotion.”

The man wanted to open his eyes and sit up. Instead he thought of photosynthesis. All food he ever ate came from the trees. The thought irritated him, for no apparent reason.

“What do you think?” The analyst asked, looking at the top of his left shoe. There was some mud on it. Dry mud.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember anything.”

“Were you always interested in umbrellas?”

“What’s there to be interested about?”

“Still you lifted one of those today, didn’t you? There must be something. Try to remember.”

“I’m sorry. Nothing comes to mind.”

“How many umbrellas have you lost?”

“I could never…”

The man took a pause to remember. He was trying very hard. He almost pictured himself in despair; despair that falls upon all mortal souls; the hopelessness of leaving something behind, something of importance, something dear and precious; the despair of losing that something; forgetting.

But ultimately he couldn’t, “…lose an umbrella.”

“Are you kidding? Everybody loses them. They are meant to be lost.”

“I never had any.”

“You never had any umbrella? And you live in a tropical country!”

“What can I say? I didn’t have to.”

“I think we are getting somewhere with this. Why didn’t you have to?”

“I had a raincoat.”

The weather outside must have calmed down, the doctor thought to himself. His face remained dispassionate, but he was fuming within. He was not exactly offended by the casual, almost jocular, reply to his seemingly earnest enquiry. He was not angry at anyone in particular. His rage, cold and serpentine, rational yet capable of any damage internal, was directed towards an idea. The whole idea of childhood: its memories, smells, and grudges; its benign criminality; its customary pettiness; its lack of solitude; its cruel sense of justice.

“You had a raincoat since you were a child?”

“Yes, I did.”

“So it was a pretty normal childhood.”

“I told you.”

“Do you know how my childhood was?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It was normal too.”

Both the doctor and the patient realized they were standing in front of a mirror, standing in front of each other.

“Tell me about the girl.”

“Which girl?”

“The girl with the umbrella.”

“I haven’t noticed her properly. I was looking at the umbrella.”

“Is there any difference?”

Suddenly, the alarm in the analyst’s watch went off. The time was up. The man opened his eyes finally, and sat up. The doctor had come back to his natural grinning self. He reclined on his chair, lit a cigarette, and puffed out a lot of smoke. Half his face was clouded in it. The other half was mildly sweating. His voice too bore a tinge of fatigue.        

“Sorry I didn’t offer you one.”

“It’s okay. I rarely smoke. Anyway, I should go now.”

“What do you think of today’s session?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”   

“I think it went well. You are coming out of your shell. That’s good.”  

“Is that so?”

“Oh yes. You are almost ready to probe deeper into the causes of your condition.”

The analyst butted the half-burnt cigarette in an empty coffee mug. The mug had something written on it: perhaps a quote from a poem; not a brilliant one, of course. The man now stood up, all set to leave the room. He picked up the umbrella from the table and motioned towards the door.

“Are you taking the umbrella with you?”

The man turned to the quizzing face of the analyst, “Shouldn’t I?”

“What do you want to do with it?”

“I guess I’ll try to return it.”

“Why don’t you leave it here? I’ll do it myself.”

“How? You don’t know the girl.”

“Neither do you.”  

It sounded like a game of tennis. Words bounced over the net of distrust and dropped on the ground of manipulation. Both players abided by the rules of the game, which did not permit hostility or impatience. They didn’t move from their respective positions, the doctor from his chair, still reclining, and the man from his direction towards the door, although now frozen in a moment of contemplation.

“But I have seen her,” he said at last. What else could he have said? 

“That hardly qualifies.”

“Why not?”

“You said you hadn’t noticed her properly. You were looking at the umbrella.”

“And you said there wasn’t any difference.”

“I didn’t say that. I just asked a question.”

Suddenly the patient was overwhelmed by a strange feeling, a combination of serenity and restlessness, serenity of ignorance and restlessness of knowledge, a feeling he was once familiar with, especially when he was preparing for his law exam some ten-fifteen years back. The feeling left him all of a sudden, although he didn’t sit for the test. It left him for good and never came back until this very moment. He smiled at the doctor, first time today, first time ever, and decided to end the matter once and for all.

“Okay. You may keep it.”

“What?”

“The umbrella. You are right. You should keep the umbrella.”

“What shall I do with it?”

“I don’t know. Give it to her.”

“Whom? Give it to whom?”

“To whom it belongs.”

“How shall I know?”

“Oh, you will. You will.”

When he came out of the clinic, the rain had actually stopped. The air was heavy with moisture and tropical glum. He gazed at the public, people passing by, all in a hurry, anonymous, eternally bored. His steps, cautious and little, didn’t match theirs. They were going home, he a police station.      

He was sitting face to face with the inspector, a bald, efficient man in his forties. The inspector was rolling a cigarette. He coughed to draw his attention.

“What?”

 “How long do I have to wait?”

“I’m rolling a cigarette, can’t you see?”

“Why are you doing that? It’s useless.”

“I’m trying to quit.”

“Come on.”

“No, seriously. It takes a lot of time and labor to roll these buggers. I just hope one day I’ll get bored and quit.”

“That’s a lot of optimism.”

“Optimism is the essence of life.”

“Optimism is an excuse for denial. Now let’s talk.”

“Yeah, let me light this first,” the inspector took out a lighter from his pocket and clicked it. It didn’t work. He clicked it again. Nothing happened. Not even a flicker.

“Do you have a light?”

“I rarely smoke and I have very little time to waste.”

“Okay, okay. So how did it go?”

“Splendid.”

“Did you get it?”

“Yes, I did.”

 “That’s wonderful. That’s great. He didn’t suspect, did he?”

“I don’t give them a chance.”

“That’s right. You are great at what you do. Congratulations. But why are you looking so depressed? Is there any problem?”

“Problem? No. Not really.”

“You look a little off today. Let me tell you, you have done a great job. Really.”

“I have lost something.”

The inspector couldn’t speak for a while. He looked pale; his face lost almost all the colors; his breathing became irregular. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out at first. And when he started talking, he could barely form a sentence.

“That’s…how could you…I mean…you have already lost it?”

“What? No. That’s not what I have lost. In fact, I didn’t lose it. I gave it away.”

“Well then, what did you give away?”

The man waved his hand, “Doesn’t matter. Let’s talk about the case. Do you think this will help?”

“Are you kidding? This is the most definitive evidence we have against him. The murder weapon. What else do you need?”

“I thought the case might not be that strong.”

“That was before. Now we have the thing. Can I see it now?”

The man smiled, second time today, this time with a little shyness of an amateur magician performing for the first time not before a mirror, but an expert audience. He slowly put his hand in his pocket and paused for a moment, and then brought out a small object, a slender piece of steel, whose sharpness could be perceived from across the table.

“Nice blade, huh? Who would have thought it could be used to kill people?”

“One person did, evidently.”

“It’s not a laughing matter. He killed five women with this. Can you believe that? He is a total psycho, that bastard.”

“Yes. He is a psychiatrist.”

“Can I have a look? Oh my god, look at this. So small but so effective. A nail clipper. A fucking nail clipper.” 

The policeman held the clipper up in the air like a miniature sword. It shined menacingly in the dim light of the tungsten bulb hanging over their heads.

 “So how are things going at the lab?” The man asked, looking away from the clipper.

“Nothing new. I told you about the piece of nail we got on the body of the last victim. There must be some remnants, some nail dust or something on this clipper. If they match – I’m sure they will – we have our case.”

“The doctor is obsessed with nails. He was constantly clipping his nails when I was lying on the couch.”

“Oh yes, your session. I’m sorry. You have to find another shrink now.”

“I better be going. I have another appointment.”

“What? With a lady friend?”

“I don’t divulge personal information to policemen.”

“Okay, Mr. Detective. Hope to see you soon. We may have another favor to ask.”

“Anytime. See you.”

“Wait,” the inspector stood up from his chair, “don’t you have an umbrella? The rain has started once again.”

“I don’t like umbrellas. I’m more of a raincoat guy.”

He left the police station in a hurry. The streets were almost empty and nice to walk on, without bumping into strangers and having to apologize. He was happy. Even the rain could not kill his spirit. He felt like having a smoke after a long day’s work. He went under a shade and lit a cigarette with the inspector’s lighter.

It worked perfectly.

The Garage

The garage had no smell. And the owner himself was clueless.

“It’s not that I like the smell. But, you know, it’s your identity. People come to know of a garage by its smell. They lose respect, if it doesn’t smell. And I lose my business.”

“How did this happen?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It was always like this.”

“Okay. Can you see my car?”

The topic made a glorious return after he was finished with my car.

“The damage was no biggie. You have to leave it here for a while. I’ll check on the brakes as well. Doesn’t seem right. And your left back-light is not working. Should I change it too?”

“How much will it cost?”

“Come on. You’re my old customer. Actually, my only customer these days. Did I tell you about the smell?”

He inherited the garage from his uncle, who was a very rich man with a very small heart. Not metaphorically exactly. He did have a heart the size of a one year old kid. But he managed. He never married. “Most probably he never slept with anybody,” added the garage-owner with a lopsided chuckle. He lived till he was sixty-four. And then he met a girl.

“Women,” the owner shook his head in frustration, “are like refrigerators. They are hot outside and cold inside.”

I didn’t know what to say. It was not an original observation. Not even intelligent.  

“The girl – that bitch – was a swimming instructor. You know those types. Always running after money.”

“Running or swimming?”

“Ha-ha. You are funny.”

I was not. I knew it. The joke was one of my worst in years. But who would explain that to him?

“My uncle met her at a shopping mall. He went there to buy some magazines. I guess he jerked off to them. Sad, isn’t it? The woman saw him buy those filth and stalked him. Can you imagine? A woman stalking a sixty year old man? What is this country coming down to?”

I had no idea. I didn’t bother tell him though. Clearly he took me to be a wise soul. Why break this delusion? We all need them, the delusions. Especially when we are healing from carbuncle.

“She made a pretext to meet him. I don’t know how. Most probably she feigned a backache or something. My uncle was a great masseur. When he was in army, they used to call him ‘sloppy-hands’. His hands were always sloppy with massage oil.”

I couldn’t resist an interjection, “He was in army? With such small heart?”

“Exactly my point. They give jobs to everybody. Even people with a heart of a child. How can they win wars? Not that we have wars frequently. It’s quite peaceful these days. But still, they should reconsider their employment policies.”

Unlike some of the other garage owners, the man seemed to take his wars seriously.

“I got the news late at night. My wife woke me up. She got a call from my uncle’s doctor.”

He paused and wiped his face with his hands.

“His body was floating in the pool. He had this big swimming pool at his place. Obviously he didn’t swim. He couldn’t. You need a normal size heart to swim.”

‘”Why did he have the pool then?” 

“It belonged to the previous owner. Anyway, they thought it was a murder. His body was intact. But the heart was missing. As if somebody stripped it off from his chest. Like a badge.”

I tried to visualize the scene. Macabre. An old man floating on water with no heart. Sounds like a situation from a David Lynch film.

“They looked for the girl. Nobody could tell her whereabouts. She worked at the local laundry house. They didn’t have her address. Apart from the heart, nothing else was stolen. So the police gave up after a few weeks.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” I murmured.

“Oh, don’t worry. It did me good. I got the garage. True it doesn’t smell of Mobile or Petrol, but I like cars. I always did. Since when I was a kid. That’s why he bought this garage, I guess. He wanted to help me.”

“So he liked you?”

“I don’t know,” the garage-owner looked contemplative. “Maybe I reminded him of my father. He was an engineer. He fell from a bridge he designed himself. The railings had big gaps. He fell through them.”

Did anyone in his family die a natural death? Should I ask him how his mother died? Or that would be too personal? Did they have any pets? How did they die? Food poisoning perhaps. But isn’t food poisoning a natural cause of death for pets?

“What do you think?” his question broke my trance. “What happened to the heart?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“You are right. I do have a theory. I told my wife, but she doesn’t believe me. That’s natural. No wife should believe her husband. My mother believed my father, but then he had to cook the meals everyday. If there was a choice between cooking meals and being not trusted, I would love to be unfaithful.”

“What’s your theory?”

“I have thought about it over and over and tried to picture what could have happened that day. It was a sunny day.”

I interrupted, “How do you know it was a sunny day?”

“I don’t know. I just assumed. You can’t picture anything when it’s overcast. It would be too dark.”

“Right. Carry on.”

“It was a sunny day. A perfect day for a back massage. As I have told you, my uncle always carried his oil, towel, and everything one needs to massage the back of a woman…”

“You didn’t exactly tell me that. But it’s okay.”

“He started to massage her back. It had been ages since he touched a woman. Actually never. Her skin, pale and soft, gleaming in the sun like the naked blade of a serial killer. It was setting fire in his veins. His fingers put pressure on the right spots. The girl moaned in pleasure. It was magical.”

“I can imagine.”

“The girl turned over. My uncle was surprised. Didn’t she just say she had a back pain? Why is she turning over now? The girl asked him to massage her front as well. He didn’t waste any time. Now his hands were moving on her breasts – full and plump. The tips of his frail, deprived fingers touched her erect nipples. His palms brushed them gently, then slid along the cleavage, cupping the contours of her domes of desire.”

His words seemed to be picked up from a yellowish porn magazine specializing on tantric sex. I didn’t want to stay, but couldn’t move my legs. They were frozen in a bucket. He was looking at me, and looking beyond. The wall behind his head was grey. There was a calendar hanging on it. It was an old calendar, probably from a couple of years back. I noticed that the month of September had only one holiday. I couldn’t figure out what the occasion was.

“What do you think?”

“Sorry?”

The garage owner grinned, “You are like lost somewhere. Are you that gripped by the story?”

“Well,” I crossed my legs, “it’s a gripping story. What happens next?”

“You see, here lies a problem. I am stuck between two alternatives – both equally possible. In the first situation, the woman encourages my uncle to have sex with her. Given his condition, he readily agrees. Then, in the course of the coitus, his heart explodes out of his body. The woman sees this and flees for life. The heart is broken into so many pieces that it eludes our scrutiny.”

“It is possible,” I nodded, but I wasn’t listening to the story anymore. My eyes were fixed on the calendar. What was I doing on the only holiday in September two-three years ago? How did I spend that precious day? Perhaps I did nothing. I just sat there and looked at the ceiling, thinking about death and Dostoevsky, and calculated how many pages of Brothers Karamazov I had skipped to finish it ahead of my friends. Why did we have that competition anyway?

“What’s the other situation?” I wanted to drive away the depressing memories.

“The second situation is a bit tricky. But not entirely incredible. These things happen. The girl is a heart-eater. She allures him and rips his heart out of his body and eats it. That’s all.”

“But how did the body get into the pool?”

“Well, in the first case, I think, they wanted to try something kinky. So they stepped into the pool to have water sex. Do you know about water sex? It’s having sex in water. Have you ever tried it?”

“No. I haven’t.”

“Ah, you should. It’s very good. I kind of had it once. With my girlfriend in school. She was rich. They had a sauna. We were frolicking in warm water. I just got to her shoulders, and then I had a premature ejaculation. What can I say? I was inexperienced.”

“I understand.”

“With my uncle, it was different. In stead of ejaculating semen, he managed to eject his heart.”

“That is unfortunate.”

“It should have freaked her like crazy! You are kissing somebody, you reach for his you-know-what, but wait, the shape doesn’t seem right. Oh no, it’s his heart! I mean, that’s a real downer.”

I couldn’t join him in his joviality. I was feeling nauseous. I was not mortified by the grotesquery of his mental picture, but by its sheer likelihood. This could actually have happened.

“I’m not sure about the other situation. But you should let your imagination run wild. And here is my explanation. After his heart being eaten up, my uncle becomes a zombie. He chases after the girl, but doesn’t have much luck. The girl is a champion swimmer. She jumps into the pool, and swims away. My uncle, alive or zombie, can’t swim. So he keeps floating on water until the police rescues him. By then he tires off and goes to sleep. Do you care for a smoke?”

I gently declined the offer by shaking my head. The garage owner leaned back and lit a cigarette. He looked relaxed and content. He must have thought that he gave out a majestic performance. And I couldn’t blame him.

“You don’t believe me, right?” he guessed something from my expression, or the absence of it.

“On the contrary,” I now stood up from the chair, “I believe you completely. Now can you show me the way to the toilet?”

After a while when I came back, the garage was empty. There was no sign of any man or any car. The garage owner had vanished from the face of the Earth, and so had been my car.

There might be two explanations of it. The man was a convicted felon and he broke out from prison. When I was in toilet, the police raided the joint, and he had to run away in my car. Or, my car was not a car actually, but an alien monster, which comes to life every ten years and eats everybody around. In my absence, the unfortunate garage owner gave in to its gluttonous advances. Once the car got the taste of human blood, it rushed towards the city with a murderous rage and a broken left backlight.

I blew my nose. Under the circumstances, the second alternative seemed more plausible. I walked up to the cash register and opened it. The man wasn’t lying; I was his only customer. Since I hadn’t paid yet, the register looked like the gaping mouth of a toothless shark.

And then I started to feel different. Something strange had happened. I turned back and took a deep breath. The smell had returned.

I smiled and positioned myself behind the counter. Soon everybody would get to know about this place and it would flourish like a disco pub in the Sahara. Perhaps people would desert the old town – who wants to live in a city devastated by a hungry automobile? – and settle down around here. I would be a rich man, and one day, I would tell this story to my grandchildren, sans the gory, pornographic details.

But first, I should find myself a copy of Brothers Karamazov and open page number twenty-nine. What’s better than reading Dostoevsky before starting a civilization?     

The Interrogation

The man was strangely handsome for a police detective.

We were standing on my terrace. The weather was usual. Sultry. Hot. Unbearable. The time was the evening. We started on the right foot, perhaps because no other foot was left. Both of us agreed that it had been a terrible idea to be born in a country where people sweat even in the evenings, even standing on the terrace. We lashed out at the whole world – everybody but ourselves – for contributing to the creation of Global Warming, and smoked to the demise of human sensibilities. Then he asked a bizarre question, which I must report now.

“Have you noticed how wonderful it is to live in the suburbs?” he asked with genuine curiosity.

“No, I didn’t. I am sorry.”        

I was taken aback by this peculiar observation. I was sure that anybody in his sanest mind would abhor living in the suburbs. The detective seemed a normal person. Why should he feel like this? I even asked him that.

“Why do you say that?”

“Forget it. I was thinking about something else. Can we move downstairs?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“These mosquitoes here…,” he slapped one of them to death.

I said nothing. Of course, the mosquitoes. They could outnumber the population of China. And they were relentless. They were colorblind too. But that was not a big deal. The detective was not in uniform.

We came down to my drawing room. It was particularly decorated for these occasions.

We settled ourselves to the comfort of the couch. The mosquito repellant was in mint condition.

“You got a nice place here,” he looked around, “you live alone?”

“Yes. I live here alone.”

“Your parents?”

“They are dead.”

“Oh! I am sorry,” he sounded sympathetic and suspicious at the same time. How can they do that? Do they have voice training at the police academy?

“You haven’t told me yet why you are here.”

“Haven’t I?” he sounded surprised.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Don’t be afraid. It’s just a routine enquiry.”

As if to assure me further, he stretched his arms and yawned.

“I don’t understand. What are you inquiring about?”

He folded his arms on his chest, “Don’t you feel cold?”

I observed him for a couple of seconds. He was trying to get at something. What was it?

“Would you like to have some whiskey?” I had to ask him.

“It seems you can read mind,” he grinned and looked into my eyes. I noticed that his left eye was smaller than the right one. Small details are as important as the Statue of Liberty.

“Ah, scotch! Wonderful. You have taste,” the detective smiled sipping on his drink.

I nodded in response. He might not be as vicious as suggested by the size of his left eye. I took a swig myself. The ice didn’t melt yet. My lips touched them. It felt cold.

“Where were you last Saturday evening?”

Have you ever played volleyball with professionals? Those gigantic people, who cannot but only look down upon you? Imagine you are standing in front of the net, and the tallest and the most virile of them serves a volley with full force, and to save your nose, you turn to your left, so the ball hits your right ear, and you can’t figure out for the next few days for whom the bell tolls. Well, the question hit me from that direction, and I was so unready. I tried to cough away my embarrassment, but it didn’t help.

“What do you mean?”

“Were you home that night?”

“Which night? Can you be more specific?”

The detective looked a little restless, “I don’t know how to be more specific. I am asking about last Saturday, you know, 24^th June? Do you remember anything?”

“Last Saturday was 24^th June? And nobody told me!”

The detective was unmoved. Perhaps his wife does all the laundry at home. So he knows how to keep a straight face even when his collars are rouged with foreign lipstick. 

“Why? What’s so special about the date?”

I thought about it. Am I in a jam? Or a pickle? Or any other mushy, grisly substance?

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“What should I tell you?”

“What’s so special about the date.”

“Yes. What is it?”

“Have I shown you my collection of records?” 

A little pause. Not more than four seconds.

“I think that’s a good idea,” he finally spoke.

We both took sighs of relief. The conversation was going nowhere. It was standing in the desert and looking for a pub, and after the American intervention, one can’t find them anymore. They have vanished like pimples of puberty.

The officer borrowed a couple of early Monks from my collection. He promised to return them as soon as possible. His wife had gone to her parents’ house. He was so bored that the other night he fell asleep while masturbating. The jazzy meanderings of Thelonious Monk might cure his allergy to cat food.

“You know what’s sad?” he said in his melancholic baritone, “I don’t even have a cat.”  

The Pick-up

“So how long are you staying in the city?”

I turned my head to the sad barkeep. A man in his forties, medium height, average looks, balding and perspiring at the same time. Do I know him? I tried to remember. Most probably yes. I had come to this bar before. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I had a fight with a fellow customer at this very counter. I thumped his head on it. His skull must have cracked. It made a bad sound. It was one of those sounds, which make you feel like screaming, but, ultimately, you don’t. You realize that any further sound will make the matters worse. So you close your eyes, and pray, perhaps. He was bleeding and licking his lips. Was he trying to reach for his own blood? I looked for the dry stains on the counter. There was nothing. Did they wash it off with soap, or was it some other bar?

The barkeep was still looking at me. All smiling and trying to be cordial. I concealed my irritation and replied, “Not very long.”

“It must be very lonely. Travelling like this? Eh?”

This time I didn’t answer. You have filled your quota, I muttered to myself. Don’t cross the line. He must have got the drift. Swiftly he scurried to another direction, caught up with some other guy, inquiring about weather. The people on the other side of the counters are way smarter than the rest of us. But they exude undaunted foolishness to please their customers. What is better – pretending to be stupid or smart? Most people come up with the right answer only when the pretension part is dropped. But that is the fun of any paradox. If you drop the twist, it becomes truth. And who gives a damn about truth?

I took out my pack of cigarettes. Smoking causes cancer, so they have decreed its banishment from the taverns. But in this part of the town, you are allowed to die in pain. Pretty considerate. I don’t smoke much, but it’s great to light a cig. Especially when you are drinking alone. It gives you a character, which you have to carry through the rest of your life.

Whether I was already drunk, or the matchsticks went moony, I didn't know. I couldn't light my cigarette. The barman saw it, but didn't move. He couldn't think up how I would react. He stuck to his pose at the other end of the counter, yakking with the dumbest of his clients and grinning like a happy giraffe. He did right. I would have been monumentally pissed. He would be the last person to light my fire.

A click. I felt alarmed. Warm. I turned. Once again. This time to my back.

And I saw her.

The first word that came to my mind was “tall”. She was taller than all the women I knew. She was even taller than her own shadow. An amazing feat considering the time of our rendezvous. Her long, slender right hand was holding a burning lighter. The flame was steady like the wings of a moth sitting on a wall. I pointed the stick to its direction. The bar was so silent that I could hear the paper burn.

The smoke that I exhaled was thick and blue. The environment became dense. She withdrew her lighter and smiled. I tried to make a meaning of it and failed.

“Care for one?” I finally spoke. 

“I don’t smoke.”

There was something in her voice, which only the bards of the ancient world could describe. The water froze and the ice melted at the same time. I looked in her eyes and stood up.