by Marco Vassi
She heated up a dish of rice and eggplant left over from two days earlier, and as we dipped into the steaming food we both understood that this would probably be our last meal together. We continued to pretend that this was just another evening, though; for, in effect, that’s all it was. The emotions were ripcords inside me, and I staggered from moments of crushing loss to giggling euphoria, all within seconds.
We had two bowls of Häagen-Dazs ice cream, and enjoyed them shamelessly, the luxurious seduction of that wet cold flavor temporarily dispelling all other moods and purposes. And then we watched a cast of international stars romp through John Huston’s camp on Casino Royale.
After all the passion and rationalization, that is the way the affair ended, with two people stupidly watching television, their faces turned toward the screen like flowers toward the sun, their eyes liquid with guilt; afraid to let one another know their pain, their fear; unable to comfort one another in the face of the great tragedy—the murder of the child.
We walked woodenly through our lines for the rest of the evening, as though we were rehearsing, doing blocking, not actually living the real scene. And then we lay down to sleep.
I had one brief glimpse of the truth of our condition, and then a vast blackness closed over me, as though I were being encased in a huge concrete vault, the thickness of which was the entire breadth of the physical universe. I was ultimately trapped in the toils of existence and in panic my mind raced to the outermost limits of what I could know. All the accumulation of history unrolled before my consciousness, and I perceived that my consciousness was nothing but that accumulation, a dustball of arbitrary structures. As I tripped into sleep I could hear laughter coming from the spaces beyond my prison.
The night was a pool of frightful dreams into which I peered as though through water. Lucinda swam in and out of the field, and I was never sure whether I was seeing the actual woman lying next to me or the crystallization of a dream. At one moment we held on to each other with all the fullness and freshness of people who have nothing to hold back from one another, as it had once been. And again I sat up, soaked in sweat, and gasped at the speed of time.
Events were out of my grasp. They always had been, but now I didn’t even have the illusion of control.
The content of the dreams shifted and refused to stay in focus. But over all was the impression of being beaten with an iron rod, with slow methodical strokes, a punishment that would never stop, no matter whether I slept or woke, day or night. Inside me, always, the club would continue to crush my bones, bruise my flesh.
At six o’clock I got up and walked around. Somewhere behind the dull glow which suffused the sulphurous air outside the window, the sun was shining. I looked over at Lucinda. Her face was wrinkled in pain. I lay back down and fell asleep.
And then Lucinda was shaking me awake.
“You won’t be able to visit me today,” she said.
“What?”
“I’ll be in isolation.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t you know how they’re going to do it?” Her eyes were wide and seeing. “They’re going to put me in a room with three other women and stick a needle into my arm and let the salt water drip into my bloodstream for ten or twelve hours until the baby suffocates and dies and I begin to abort. And then they’ll catch him in a metal pail.”
Hysteria cut through her voice like the whine of a buzzsaw. I was paralyzed. I watched her look at me, waiting. And then she backed out of the room. It took an eternity. I screamed inside my head. But I couldn’t break the spell. I fell back unconscious.
I woke up at ten. There was a note on the kitchen table.
I had written you a long nasty letter—jealous and bitter—but why end it that way —
I am sorry about the baby—deeply and forever sorry and sad—I’ve felt it move and loved it cause it was ours —
I will miss you—five months is a long time—some of it was very good —
I’ll be at my mother’s apartment for a few days—call if you want —
Thanks for staying around yesterday—it helped.
I read it five times, looking at the handwriting, the color of the ink, the texture of the paper. I tried to feel something. It seemed to me that I should be feeling something.
I scratched around the refrigerator for breakfast, and a rising tide of separateness flooded my soul. For a brief time another human being had crashed through the texture of my alienation and I had felt her as real as myself. Now I was alone again. I was afraid to look at the seconds as they passed.
We began as nomads, we end as monads.
We join the ants and roaches and bees in great unthinking patterns of culture. Or shall we destroy it all? And to whom will it matter?
The hunt is done. We have caught ourselves. Like photographs taken with a flash bulb unawares.
I carefully washed all the dishes and slowly packed what few things I had. I dressed and went into the bathroom. My face in the mirror surprised me, for I looked so normal.
Except for the eyes. Which stared back without question, without wonder, without quarter.
I pissed into the urinal, thinking about what I would do next. It was impossible to stay, and there was no place to go. I flushed the tank with a deliberate twist of the wrist, and watched the yellow water swirl into the base of the bowl on its way to the pipes, into the bowels of the building, under the city street, into the river, and to the wounded and vengeful ocean beyond.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 1993 by Marco Vassi
ISBN 978-1-4976-3279-0
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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