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My Tired Father

Page 2

by Gellu Naum


  I waved my hat as the guests left But they were far away in the room with the Pompeian pictures

  A coach awaited me in front of the house I had to visit the forest

  A half-hour's walk could do me nothing but good for I was soaked and frozen but I went into the watchman's cottage and left him my little bottle of rum and my provisions for the road

  A messenger on horseback came to meet me

  Some women passed by They stopped a moment greeted me then went on their way Their faces seemed very familiar

  Afterward I visited the swamps The watchman explained everything and his stories made a deep impression on me Pardon me for talking like this to you he used to say And perhaps that he was right The nine tubes produced nine tones The second tone was obtained by shortening the first tube by half

  To make the third tone the second tube also had to be shortened by half For the rest one manipulated small black sticks

  When I explored the grottoes a blinding light overwhelmed me and I regrouped

  Then I had at most an allegorical sense but even that was sustained more by force of habit

  I traveled through a symmetrical garden In its center next to the fountain were a pendulum and a chair From there I looked at the landscape and I said It seems to me that I've already come this way but the color prevents my recognizing the surroundings

  In that inexhaustible region there was a kind of signature on the sand if you will and I deciphered it with a complete lack of external senses

  I did some enthusiastic reading in Malmo but not being able to put up with the climate I had to leave There I met Catherine Mahoney a young actress a real star (she lifted her eyes to the sky) My pohems enchanted her she adored me and her family kicked her out of the house

  She listened with true devotion with complete abandon to each word I spoke and never offered her own opinion

  All her deepest inclinations and especially her predilection for silence brought up in a strange way the ease with which this frail and gracious creature could penetrate any word whatever and transform herself into that word

  A few constant signs warned us of other sometimes accessible meanings

  I listened to how the exaltation I knew so well reflected in her voice but she brusquely interrupted herself as if she were awake and put her hand on the boat's railing and on my hand

  What made understanding more difficult was the permanent solicitation of ambiguity

  At a certain moment that I would be tempted to place toward evening I grabbed a ladder I leaned it against the wall and I got ready to climb up to her

  That's when I received that blow between my neck and shoulders

  At her age girls sleep peacefully but I had seen her suddenly wake up get out of bed and go out She went as far as the gate There she sat down on a rock and started to cry

  She put on her most beautiful dress When she saw her father she no longer feared him she had the strength to stop obeying him Making a gesture with her hand she whispered to him only in passing I'm saying farewell for the third and last time

  I sprayed her face with water in an effort to wash off the mud I took care always to have my back to the embankment I untied the stone I took the shell out of her mouth I took her in my arms carried her to the car and put her down between the front seats

  Borrowing a bicycle I was going to tell the driver that I had arrived then I hid beneath the sandy shoals in the muddy water

  While the parents crowded in a circle with a contented look congratulated themselves on their partially articulated speech

  The watchman somberly flapped his wings and pointed out some obscure thing in the north

  Upon her return to a small island she gave birth to a daughter The little one came into the world so unexpectedly we were forced to put up at a castle Mother and child found shelter there but her heart was broken (she wiped her eyes with her index finger)

  After the ceremony there was a dinner during which I chose a name I improvised something about it then I asked that they take the chairs from the room so we could dance

  Someone went behind the house to check on a water drop Maybe it was inherited or a recurrence of the rhythmical phenomenon

  The old winged author of food

  The conversation remained fixed in the bones

  Certainly there was a physical resemblance but it could well have been just a simple coincidence

  A month later I encountered a pedestrian who whistled as he approached us I heard his whistling before I saw him Still whistling he passed Catherine and continued on his way

  A few days later I spotted another pedestrian a small man walking behind Catherine without anyone hearing his footsteps I had the impression she hadn't noticed him that's why I told her Let him go by We walked three abreast and Catherine Mahoney was at the side of the road

  From time to time Iran into two individuals always the same ones who wore around their faces a kind of white collarette If I looked up I saw only the sky

  A rather curious detail When I went into the room I always found it full of cotton batting and broken tiles The windows and the door were always shut tight

  Compelled to leave on the first morning train I examined the ground under the window of the room and found no traces

  Someone was saying that all these things were due to a magnetic force unleashed either by the peculiar nature of the terrain or of Catherine Mahoney's body

  Recently I had succeeded in endorsing her prototypical character and in confirming the similitude linking her to the sands technique

  I had invented a velvet-lined solar system Its poles generally pointed in the same direction but with a little more vertical inclination

  Afterward I moved up to a narrow orange margin with a white corner

  We had been together for more than ten years an unusual thing if one takes into account the brief existence of the others

  After the birth I moved to another house

  As a professional in various bands I had studied the tuba the electric bass and musical instruction

  Before an excited crowd I noticed that my hair had turned gray

  I played saxophone clarinet and flute

  I played saxophone and clarinet I was the youngest

  I played saxophone oboe and French horn

  I played trumpet fliigelhorn and piano I had received a scholarship

  I asserted that we were witnessing a slow and general atrophy

  I manifested myself by closing my eyes and opening them but in the most frequented rooms I stamped my feet and snapped my fingers

  The space between the walls had been filled with earth

  One of us (the drummer) would say nothing One fine day he declared to the horror of everyone present I don't know what's the matter sometimes I feel utterly alone

  He turned to the others and said It's absolutely necessary that I phone home

  Which lived under the waters of the sea

  (The notes in question belonged to the translator Dr. Abend now employed by the Sprachen und Deltmescher Institut of Hamburg who was capable of rectifying all the tendentious interpretations made of them)

  Then came lead and copper

  Compressed in action

  Sitting in the center a young man was running and (pallas) Below two over the body of one

  The paint applied to the body shone In three times the great solitude

  We finished our dressing with accessories alien in principle to male attire which stressed even more the picturesque character of the waist

  Catherine Mahoney moaned softly in the room She was very young with her hair undone and she stroked her forehead in an unconscious gesture

  My angel she said and with arms outstretched moved toward the window

  At our approach she would move farther away

  She experience the heroic aggressiveness of children

  She had had the luck to witness several births of this type

  The eye with which she saw was not a human eye Bec
ause what's more while breathing

  She had youth on her side (upper-right photo)

  A copy did not correspond to her absolutely simultaneous remembrance

  At a given moment she covered my whole visual field she had the complexion of a two-year-old girl (in the middle of the corridor the carpet had a wet spot)

  Over there it rained through the ceiling

  Up above in less tense regions

  Her pale face leaned too far over the keys

  Thanks to certain exceptional qualities she was the only one who produced no errors since if for any reason she turned invisible in one part she could easily be seen in another

  Actually she knew nothing of contemplation but connected remote facts and gave them a forceful precision

  She had a big perfected tripod She would take walks with it clumsily adjusting its position She used field glasses to discern in the bushes on the riverbank the scattered gray bodies of our giants

  A disk impregnated with revitalizing substances applied to each breast morning or night made them grow or shrink as she wished with an extraordinary rapidity

  She preferred to place her hair between two glass plates after carefully removing the adjacent earth She would never let it dry quickly

  I lifted her off the sidewalk with just one hand I put a wooden lid 35 cm in diameter on her After turning her over I filled the intermediary space with water and thus I carried her in complete safety as if in a hatbox

  Wake up I said and I'll be grateful

  I used stearine candles that I let drip

  I took her to the hut where she found herself four hours later

  The room seemed inexplicably changed The walls trembled slightly and silently The still-intact door kept opening and closing rhythmically We were sad because we had no friends only brothers

  The next day after breakfast we visited the rug maker's

  At times we realized we were behaving like naive people but preferred to act according to our own estimation

  After constructing a sort of access ladder to both ends

  When we meditated on this subject a light would strike us blind

  Almost one and a half years later one evening around ten o'clock while my father my sister and Catherine Mahoney were talking in the dining room they heard the piano playing in the living room Intrigued Catherine took a lamp and went into the living room where she clearly saw the keys moving by themselves

  Eight days later a letter arrived from out of town telling us of the death of an old uncle and the piano started to play again

  That same evening Catherine heard strange inexplicable noises in her room Urgently summoned I agreed to spend the night with her

  In the middle of the night while I was reading my favorite paper The Cap Times she said to me If I die before you as seems likely I declare and affirm that I will warn you in time (at that moment we were on the balcony)

  I live near the barracks I replied and I'll often see you go by on your business I'll call you Maloy

  (An orphan I had lived somewhere in the country One hard winter the ditch in front of the house had frozen solid)

  The excerpts showed that something very important was going on in the realm of the senses

  She had blue eyes wore jewelry a gray lace blouse and an exaggeratedly long skirt She divided her time between her real family (when her son was left a widower she took the children) and an imaginary one

  It seemed necessary to her to show others a tragic and racked mask forever hostile to pleasure Practicing the fall she preferred to keep silent

  She sometimes deflowered the beautiful feeling called love (You know that there's pohetry and you know that it's not only beastly etc) and said It's better to show that life is not merely a series of pornographic catastrophes

  At the limit of the feeling (this one) there was the life (that one) we detested

  In the evenings she contemplated one of the paintings Her reality belonged uniquely to this alternative

  She had learned that one of her paintings made outside working hours was going to be shown at the art gallery which had opened that very day

  But the testimony was based rather on the assertion that she had heard a certain word spoken several times

  She watched over the canvas while waiting her turn The masterpiece was taken into the judging hall

  I saw the way she saw

  She was certainly the most capable and the only one who managed an office of studies in direct contact with

  She studied in a beehive form

  She looked for someone and suddenly cried out Abend while a pale thin girl whose hair had not been combed for a long time approached her kissed her hand and took the box she had kept on her knees throughout the trip

  I looked at an illustrated book and she at a piece of cardboard with a yellow tag

  After verifying the effect I gained certainties and remained in place for a moment or two

  The surface had the same consistency even though it seemed smoother and more convincing

  The fury of the sounds returned too

  Of course among her means there was a sort of prolongation (It's no longer necessary to underscore the importance of such a fact)

  A malefic hygiene In iron for example

  (Considering the impressive number of inhabitants it was not surprising that some of them got lost Recently someone had found two children he had fed them and had even made them a shelter for sleeping The children had become his friends but they remained distrustful in their interactions with others)

  One time the wheel went by there I and she who held me in her arms

  As we were speaking the young man who was courting her arrived He said he loved her for her sensitivity to light

  Since he was very young and timid she formed his ideal image Otherwise he had had only brief affairs

  When he visited us the first time we let him put his hands through the bars We plainly saw his mad ecstatic expression and the superior brilliance of his eyes

  He was truly attentive He fattened up his intelligence

  He had driven an automobile for the first time in 1916

  He raised one of the open extremities and formed an equilateral triangle by folding the outside edge Then he did the same thing with the other edge by folding it back and up

  He came out of individual sequestrations like men out of a tribe

  Since the fourth couple was no longer able to receive he soon found himself in a desperate situation and felt compelled to intervene

  Think about it he was completely alone on a island

  The light it's true was unequal but its subdivision had taken place In any case it could show us the contours of his bird-shaped shadow

  When the motor stopped in the middle of the water the adults' interest was also aroused

  There was an immense night in them

  They had gray skin and always moved in columns of three or four If I disturbed them they made an easily heard hissing noise A commander always marched at the head of the columns I had the impression that they orientated themselves in relation to a specific odor given off by the commander

  One morning after washing I inadvertently tossed a basinful of water into the road down which they had to come When they appeared they seemed confused and for an hour they rushed this way and that until they once again found the road

  They turned in place hissed and then circled the wet area at a great distance They seemed resolved but sometimes I saw them unexpectedly disperse seized by panic

  If they met a group of women the commander charged and began sticking them with his sword The others quickly grabbed the victims and fled with them toward the barracks

  I add that at the barracks entrance there were always heaps of bones

  I greeted the cortege but no one responded Near the end Catherine Mahoney warned me with a finger to her lips but made dizzy by her rhythmical swing I didn't notice the gesture

  Inserted into pipes and put under pressure we became s
omething else and there was no place for nostalgia

  We realized that it was an ocean The same thing also happened with

  Each received an impetus and thrust himself into his undefined inactive rotation

  Precision and perfection in execution We wanted to get the documentation in color

  We had no edges even when we met

  Remarkable facilities for a pleasant game

  When the ship was putting out to sea a group of women dressed in black waved handkerchiefs

  At night we would return with big fish

  We said that stigmata rule destiny

  While traversing those lands we found ourselves obliged to rob cemeteries and the gallows

  Under each one there were many relations

  Luckily the cold herbs were likewise brought from there

  A flattened being strove especially to give the explanation of its functionality

  She had fragile health She had been unbalanced for 24 years

  Instead of being exhausted after so many years of extenuating existence (also at)

  In the laboratory she meditated by means of some tubes curved several times and having the yellow color of straw or saffron

  She asked whether the privilege granted the iron prisoner was not out of place

  Around her neck she had a brown ring and under her lip an unintelligible floral motif below which were four points

  Between the smallest stones and the big calcareous shell-like or sedimentary stones he had placed a chair attached to a scales

  Two years later in order to escape the others' fate he had become a banknote engraver

  One of the secretaries the one who had read the papers stared into space while leaning against the door jamb

  The solar and lunar cycles took place with the most perfect regularity and the schemata of light polarization became easily predictable

  I had built several huts around my father for this reason he considered me his most valuable possession and treated me well Over there the members of my family worked ate and chatted while sharing the news of the day

  To escape the sun's torrid rays they dug in deep and buried themselves in the earth

  In winter they buried themselves again but once more they had enemies who would not leave them in peace and who would dig into the earth in order to eat them

 

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