The Unravelled Frames

by Ariel Pytrell

  One day I observed helplessly as the woman disposed of everything that had been her husband’s (I don’t know why I know these things). She packed in horrendous black bags ties, suits, tools. She burned letters and photos, and poured into the toilet the contents of the aged liquor bottles that the old husband used to collect on his trips around the world. The woman, acompanied by the Director of the production company, carried out these actions with a kind of viciousness shown in her face, deformed like an injured Gorgon, a sweaty Maenad, as though that coven of detachment had linked her to an occult, demonic religious cult which held her as their goddess. Her formerly soft features had changed into severe expressive lines. Her expression was stamped with the inner conviction of dominance, a kind of savage animal impunity which ignores the night. She didn’t even play the transverse flute any more. There were no more sweet melodies in the house, nor would she permit guitar playing, keyboard or chello. According to her, it would contaminate the sublime music which only she could hear through the IPod earbuds.

  It was evident the three first residents bothered her. But she couldn’t get rid of them, since she had ceased to go to work, so she depended on the rent payments. She needed to put up with them, although she had also decided to organize life at the house according to her own needs. I became increasingly impatient, for I was a privileged witness to everything that happened in that home, where my participation had been denied. I would see the young folks suffer and by a strange feeling I felt that I, too, suffered from an inconceivable pain.

  And, finally it happened. It was one night.

  Both a feared and expected night. Thousands of streets below. Above, the litany of nocturnal drowsiness. I awoke to the sudden light in the room of the first resident when he opened the door. With his long, sleepy shadow, he went to the kitchen, took out the jar of cold water, served himself and began to drink. Then, her first groan was heard. Afterward, another. And still another, and another once more. They were howls of extravagant pleasure, as though a volcano had begun erupting. A name was heard, in E flat major, suspended in full paroxysm.

  The young resident could not take any more. He began to tremble and the glass slipped from his hand. The liquid remainder was insufficient to muffle the loud bang of the glass in the middle of the night floor. A sharp fragment injured his foot, which began to bleed. The howling ceased, perhaps expectant, anxious over the scandalous glass shattering on the floor.

  Almost immediately, the youngest resident came out of his room also half asleep. He did not see the glass on the kitchen floor, nor could he avoid a sharp shard incrusting itself in the sole of his foot. He also began to bleed. Simultaneously the young lady appeared in the kitchen, visibly worried and managed to prevent the little boy, who held her hand, from also being injured. When she was sure the child would not move from that spot, she went to the bathroom medicine cabinet and began to assist her brother first and then the first resident, barely older than her.

  At that moment, abruptly, the door of the ancient room opened with a bang, impatiently and disgustedly. The blow made the boy jump and from the threshold of the door, began to cry. The Director of the music production company came out of the old room in houseshoes, bare chested, which permitted observation of blue tattoos under his dark body hair. The man began to yell and threaten, She, the woman, also came out of the room with her pupils dilated and drops of sweat on her hair, her neck, her upper lip, below her nose.

  The boy was crying, the man was shouting and threatening the older resident who couldn’t move due to the bleeding wound. The younger resident tried to intervene in defense of his companion. . The girl began to sob silently as she bandaged the foot of the tall youth who used to play the chello.

  And then I could not tolerate more of this disproportionate coven. I felt this internal force that struggled to break me into a thousand pieces. I understood by this action that I had come to a dangerous limit. And I understood with this same act that I had been the former owner.

  He, the former owner made an inconceivable effort to make them aware of his presence. In one sudden movement, he shook the chair where the case of the transverse flute rested. The case fell to one side, somehow the clattering marked the end of the nightime shouts, children crying, shards and nocturnal violence. All, at the same time, looked to where he was seated. At last they could see him!

  An instant with no reaction, but then, the newcomer took off a house shoe and threw it into the air. The old owner moved quickly – he felt much more agile now that he had overcome the inertia of immobility- and managed to avoid the blow. With a shout, she, who had been his wife, appeared with a broom and began chasing him around the room. The boy ceased crying and began to laugh. The old owner dodged the blows from the broom as best he could as he approached, always approaching and asked why his ex wife wanted to kill him. He crossed the glass shards, passed firstly by the tall resident, and then by the younger one and his sister.

  They all saw him at last cross the kitchen and try to save his life, now that he was visible. He saw a possible escape through the half-open window which opened on the balcony with the plants and, without thinking he moved in that direction. At that moment, the end of the broom hit one of his legs which detached from his body and remained throbbing with a clear liquid where the woman had smashed it. Then he could see the rest of his own body reflected in the cheap aluminum of the window as he desperately reached the small saving opening. He spread his useless wings and plunged into the void beyond the area of the plants.

  The freefall seemed endless to him due to the lightness of his insect’s body. He was certain, once he reached the street the transformation back to himself would begin. And he knew he would return. He was fully certain he would return. He would return to rescue the three residents who were trapped in the house where he had not had a place. And as he fell, he thought he heard some voices which he knew very well. And he thought for the first time: “I’m more alive now than ever. The air sustains me.”

  | SEVEN AND EIGHT |

  The great feat has been to love these earthly beings benignly and not to see them as food, although hunger had us all corraled. Four years have passed since we forcibly landed after a long interstellar voyage. Not having eaten since then, we have tolerated it well, although we might sometimes “clarify evenings,” if you can understand that.

  We are scientists from beyond this solar system, accustomed to mathematical thinking, the way effort must be calculated. My townspeople regularly complained: “We also live in a physical body.” But we are more than a physical body, I some time found myself responding to them as my intestines would rumble down there as a counterpoint to my people’s viscera. And we would watch, walking down these attractive streets, this huge quantity of food in clothing.

  We could not find what we had come looking for. The great mission had, admitted-ly, failed. In spite of the fact we had generated antibodies and managed to establish bodily equilibrium through osmosis, every two of three times our nervous systems failed due to hunger.

  If our stay on this planet seemed to be eternal, we needed to adapt ourselves as residents, absorb them, change ourselves into them. For some time, the thought had occurred to me that, for many, it could be a fallacy: if the first man on earth could be conceived of as the last simian who has mutated and become insane, what are we, superior beings, waiting for to massacre them for their own renewal? But immediately other thoughts often arose: “C’mon! I ought to clean eye'n heart!” We cannot expect much when hunger reaches our reason. After all, one seeks survival, so...

  The last thought has survived over the rest: “Let’s brighten the slaughter!” And so I encouraged the toothsome slaughter, which did not take long, sufficient for us to eat these humans which at the end disgusted us so much with their airs of vanity and destructiveness. Above all the destructiveness.

  | THE EMOTION PILL |

  Most diseases are cured

  by the same things as caused them.

  HIPPO
CRATES, On sacred Disease

  That night we left for the first time after the interview. By then, although it was quite premature, the tragedy had managed to astonish me. Later the memory returned and that memory exercise which strives to reinvent past instances (someone once told me that legends knit themselves into the same place as the most truthful memories). Later on, the irrefutable certainty of grief: the official story is doomed to be vulgar, superficial, efficient.

  I believe he was forty-three years old. That occasion was the first on which we saw each other for the last time. It was unnecessary to weave a labyrinth, because labyrinths only retain their charm when they are inhabited by Minotaurs. It is known that, in nameless and unattractive times, the only thing that lasts is the nearly formal and archaeological merchandise of the recount.

  Ricardo Muro, with his sad, tired eyes, supported by the grey centre of each iris, talked to me only what he was expert to talk about: performing arts. He spoke about drama, but I saw in his eyes a defeated Minotaur, trapped in that meandering grey labyrinth with a pain in his side because he had been beaten down by a thousand Ariadnes.

  That night I had visited him in my role as a journalist, regarding his role as an actor in the play where he was the protagonist. I remember how irritated I was in receiving the assignment. I was much more interested in social justice than in the pretentious affectation of a stale art. Nevertheless, I thought it more prudent to honor my intellect, follow my professional ethics and comply with the editorial assignment.

  I entered the room near the end of the presentation when Othello, played by Ricardo Muro, had already sacrificed his Desdemona, and Emilia found out about the fatal ending of her mistress. Shortly thereafter, the discovery of Othello, this truth which pierces the soul; then the self-inmolation of the Moor of Venice. Then the music. Fade to black. And yet, the void and a stupor which only gains expression through bravos and clapping hands - an obscene synthesis of human impotence.

  In the book The Mask in the Orchestra, Ricardo Muro states his opinión about what is, to him, a virtuoso performance. Perhaps well-written, although certainly poorly “translated,” the author bases full comprehension on insanity. As he himself says, “to understand is to perceive as the madman.” And, like the madman, he acquires his own equilibrium within the vertigo of dissolving himself, the main point of solipsism. And he concludes: “That extreme egoism, by dissolving the performer’s personality into the role, is the most convincing act of generosity, the most moving exercise of true altruism.”

  During that first interview, once the play was over, we talked about these things. But I could perceive a different voice, other weeping that sailed a foreign sea, nearly irrational, nearly emotional.

  Four or five days later, when the interview had already been published, the phone rang in the editing room. Ricardo (well, now it’s ok to speak familiarly since we related quickly) with his deep, warm voice, with drum beats in the background, with this strange, oxymoronic harmony he thanked me for my understanding and the affection I had included in the interview. I confess that his call brought back the memory of his presence (It is remarkable how often we journalists and historians allow things to fall into daily oblivion) and there was something in his voice which alarmed me, now that I did not have before me his grey eyes like languid stills.

  Then, as a metaphore for his gaze, I found refuge in a cord. That cord that emerged from the void and which linked to my ear, a kind of deaf labyrinth, destiny of voices and shades and of silences. Ricardo wanted to see me.

  I put off that interview many times. I claimed too much work, or scheduling conflicts. Nevertheless, something in his call pulled me, something friendly while at the same time desperate. Despite my rational coolness, my mind rejected my own discourtesy. With a certain misgiving, I agreed. Somehow, I knew that someting linked us.

  Ricardo Muro, the actor, nervously scratched the tip of his nose at the precise moment the shutter, perceptive and journalistic, snatched the expression and imortalized the futility of the moment. Ricardo Muro asked for my discretion and told me he hadn’t wanted me to have come with the photographer. I couldn’t understand it back then (and now I regret it) but Ricardo Muro, the man, had something extremely important to tell me which would shake up public opinion. And of such extraordinary import that a certain level of prudence was required.

  It seemed I was the right person to receive the message and to publicize it at its time. And what was revealed was so very extraordinary that he invited me to meet again on another occasion. The meeting would take place at his home.

  I did not show up on the agreed date. Curiosity mixed with inner vertigo at confronting something that I would not be able to control. I thought about mental illness (psychopathy? paranoia?). I convinced myself that I had to let some time go by. Days passed- months. One day, an invitation to his birthday party arrived. I think it was his forty second. I thought that would be the occasion to approach the mystery surrounding this case. I attended.

  The reception was in the ballroom of the Ibarguren Hotel on Arenales street. Those invited were all celebrities from show business. I acknowledge that my disgust tends to negate my profesional objectivity (after all, I was not a gossip columnist). That’s why I conceived a cynical, scathing premise for the report. The music, perfunctary, somewhat simplistic, nearly corny and kitsch tried to form the basis for a superficial evening, by all appearances hypocritical.

  The crude laughter of the men in their smoking jackets was worse than that of sweaty stevedores at high noon. The facile, unnatural poses of the vulgar rich, ignorant of etiquette, seeking to carry the label of nobility has always repelled me at the fraud.

  The eternal idiocy of the decafeinated women, nevertheless had not yet fully enraged me when I saw a balding man, perceptibly more rotund than I remembered, whose face retained the look of those grey, customarily wary eyes.

  It took me a while to recognise Ricardo Muro. Seriously, it took me a while to accept that this mass of humanity, this marvelous worldly species, which I was seeing approach me with an uneasy smile which brightened his visage was, indeed, that same Ricardo Muro, the actor, the man who had been so kind as to invite me to his birthday. He detected my uncertainty. And his chuckle was both warm and fríendly, for which I was grateful, and I rushed to beg his pardon. Immediately, as though in a theatrical scene, he asked me if I now trusted the necessity of speaking personally. He went ahead to tell me that he knew that he had an illness considered terminal but worst of all was the cause and collateral damage.

  My alarm would not even let me stammer out a word. And I think I even forgot my disgust at the total wastefulness of the atmosphere. Suddenly I felt I was in danger of fainting; a strange sensation I was never permitted before. But somehow, I perceived that I couldn’t control any situation. Everything seemed completely unfamiliar, unatainable, insane. I discretely retired to the restroom caught my breath and fixed my make-up, especially my cheeks and lips which felt dried out.

  When I returned, everyone was celebrating and singing the birthday song while Ricardo Muro, obese and sweaty, danced with a woman to the beat of the song in his honor. His movements were slow, very arrythmic, but firm, precise, arithmetical. Naturally I found myself admiring that man. I immediately began to wonder what type of illness he had. The production he starred in continued to be known as an incredible success. His fame and style were world-wide. He was generous in his interviews in contrast to the cynicism and elegance of his answers and commentaries. Ricardo Muro was himself a phenomenon, and I was there by choice or inheritance of this phenomenon which I stupidly resisted.

  I think the biggest surprise, the height of insanity of that night in which I think Ricardo turned forty-two, was when he introduced me to his wife, that redheaded lady with whom he had danced to the high-pitched song celebrating his birthday. The lady was tall, with pale, icy eyes that cut through you. Her permanent, fixed smile at the corners of her mouth made me think of a picture of David or the Pre-
Raphaelites. Ricardo noted my unease. He separated me from the group and calmed me down. He confessed that he didn’t know his illness was apparent. He begged me to forgive him (oh, how tactful) and said he would expect me at his home the next day to give me all the details of the issue.

  When I arrived at his residence, the cold, distant reception I imputed, perhaps by prejudice, to the presence of his wife, as cold and dry as he, (though probably less cordial). She immediately left the room, leaving us alone. Ricardo Muro got to the point without beating around the bush. He asked me what I knew of Sinapsolis AC-1000 and how willing I was to investigate. Of course, I told him I had no idea what he was talking about. I begged him to explain. It was then I heard the most unbelievable story I had ever had call to investigate in this profession. Ricardo Muro, the actor, the man, he of the grey, intricate labyrinthian eyes, now simply perceived, told me about this new medication which, at the insistence of his wife, was being tested on him and which I was chosen to have revealed under the most absolute discretion (it seems Ricardo had signed a non-disclosure contract).

  As this incredible tale unfolded I thought I detected a hint of bitterness and pain in his voice, a marvelous emotion, if I hadn’t known it had been mutilated; if I hadn‘t known of the huge effort, definitely inhuman, that Ricardo had to make, night after night, in order to create the emotion of his role, if I had not know he was condemned to take the Sinapsolis AC-1000 or, as he laconically told me, “the emotion pill” (and I would say, rather, the anti-emotion pill).

  Again, I confess the stupor that continued in the days that followed. I could hardly work because no assignment I was given to cover gained my interest like this tale of Ricardo Muro’s emotion pill. Not even professionalism was an antidote to my apathy toward other topics. Again, and again, a scene ran through my mind, somewhat reconstructed by my mind, which horrified me. In this fantasmagoric scene, which my mind repeated again and again like a theater presentation, I would see Ricardo Muro entering the house. ...