“You mean there was life in every breath? Burrr…I have a weird feeling about all of this…you going over the top to suck up to the tree. Yeah. You do know that bestiality is still frowned on? Because I’m pretty sure it would fall under that. Poor tree...”
“Sexual union is the one thing you took from that?”
“If you call fucking a tree sexual union, then yes. It’s one of the drawbacks of youth; overpowering virility. Don’t blame me.”
“I agree with you that there’s an unfathomable taboo surrounding lovemaking, menstruation, and childbirth—how else would we be here?”
Sono frowned in bewilderment. “Hah?”
“But don’t dress your romantic side up merely to put people off. Don’t be so cruel to it. Nurture it.”
“I’m not…I’m not being cruel; it likes it rough.”
The disappointment that veiled Edgar’s face ever so slightly had an even more delicate strain of compassion in its gauzy midst.
“What if you’d seen something entirely different? What if you’d seen yourself?”
“Well…seeing myself would’ve been disturbing. As a girl?”
“Why are you so stuck on girl boy?”
“I didn’t know I was stuck…”
“Why does it matter?”
“Why it matters? You wouldn’t ask that if you were a woman. Ask Aunt Yanda. You’d know…”
“Perhaps. Because you see me as a man.”
Sono squinted slightly, and then rolled his eyes around frivolously before freezing them abruptly. “Yeah. I do.” He nodded emphatically with the beginnings of a smile rousing his mouth. “What else?”
“Where do one end and another begin? And I don’t mean simply boy girl. Those two are only the extremes of a grand expanse, arbitrary extremes…myopic extremes.”
With a slight tilt of his head, Sono scrutinized his grandpa.
“Is this some half-assed ploy to try and dazzle me by throwing around as many extremes as possible? Preventing any progress by helicoptering your own piss around…”
“No. No, quite the opposite.”
“Well, you’re not doing too well…”
Edgar smiled benevolently. Sono swallowed firmly and averted his eyes.
“If I decide what I see, what if I didn’t see anything?” Sono asked.
“You didn’t?”
“You said I was god, so then I can make away with things…”
“That’s just ignorant.”
“Why? You said I decide.”
“Yes, you decide what you see. But that doesn’t mean all things cease to be if you desire so. Nothing ceases to be, because it can’t step out of the circle. There is nothing to step out of the circle. You can only change the way you see things. Your response. At least to some extent…”
Sono stared blankly at his grandpa. “I’m confused…I think I need an emergency lobotomy. Nothing else will help. Get your plastic spoon shaman!”
Edgar patted the top of Sono’s head which he had lowered for him to operate on.
“Objects become fixed when you look at them. Before that, they’re everywhere, and nowhere. They’re everything, and nothing. You create the objects you focus on. Isn’t that amazing?”
Sono flicked his head up abruptly. “That didn’t help at all.”
“Hmm…I’ll try again. Because our sight is not absolute, the objects we observe can’t be absolute either. Nothing is. Not even emptiness is empty.” Edgar shrugged his shoulders. “Empty of what? But that doesn’t necessarily mean that one is wrong and the other is right. No. Who’s to say? It’s all relative.”
Sono pried open his eyes with his fingers and then stared rabidly at his grandpa. “It’s all relative? You could go on forever like that; it’s all relative. That’s the most fatalistic answer ever. But it doesn’t work—all right, maybe for you, because you’ve spent your entire life cooped up under that topsy-turvy hair.”
“And you haven’t?”
He removed his fingers keeping his eyes dry. “No, I live over there, in the city.” Sono pointed with a rigid index finger toward the horizon. “Look; society. Civilization. That’s where I wash and comb this impressive crown. You’ve imprisoned yourself, Grandpa...”
Edgar wrinkled his already creased chin further by manhandling his bottom lip.
“Where do you think all of that is? The people, the buildings.”
“Where it is?”
Edgar made a broad sweep with his hand. “All of this. Where is it?”
“Like coordinates? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Where are we now?”
“We’re here. Just outside your home, which I won’t call by its rightful name…” Sono slowly mouthed the words leprosy fields.
“It’s all created in your head. It’s all inside; all of it. You create the concrete in your head. But the inside is not really the inside, that’s the kicker.”
Though Sono for once comprehended his ramblings rather lucidly, or at least that the word concrete didn’t allude to the jagged landscape, he still felt drawn toward it. He caught himself staring at the concrete pieces with a taut frown and floating cheeks.
As novel thoughts by the dozen overtook his mind, his uninviting expression loosened with every new blink.
“All right. The bottom line is, I’m the romantic fool, because that’s what you’re saying, right? And you? You’re the genius recluse?”
“It wasn’t meant as an affront. Not at all.” Edgar shook his head emphatically. “Did I in any way plant her inside your head?”
“Well, you’re a lot sneakier than you give yourself credit for grandpa...a lot sneakier. You’re probably working an angle right now.”
“You’re being unwisely paranoid Sono. You know…” A faint twitch scurried across the top of his grandpa’s cheek. “I gotta go.”
“Go where? Inside?” Sono asked listlessly, watching him rise. Very hesitantly, Edgar brought himself to his feet, and then kneaded his unbalanced midsection with both hands. After making a quick peace sign, he started off toward his home.
“Come on, where are you going? You can’t sweep this under the rug…you don’t have one!”
Noticing that his route would not bring him to the arched entryway, Sono realized the peace sign’s actual meaning. His legs were kept unusually tight, stiffening his stride. The peace sign was actually the number two.
“Are you serious? Peace my ass! Great timing...”
“Always pick up when nature calls!”
With Sono’s eyes attached like a squashed bug to his flip-flops, Edgar picked up the pace and hobbled hastily behind the dome he called home, out of his sight.
The toilet was no more than a hole in the ground behind his home, a seemingly bottomless one, since he’d not once during all the years he’d lived there cleaned it, nor had it ever overflowed; or so he claimed at least. Sono didn’t like to use it, partly because it felt like he was on display. Even if he defecated into an aged plastic box lined with a garbage bag, whose disposal was far more graphic than what his grandpa had set up, he was used to the confines of a bathroom, often with his flashlight as only companion. The vast eye of the concrete unnerved him. If Edgar would put up a partition or something, perhaps he’d reconsider.
Though the view behind his home didn’t vary much from the front of it, there was one major difference; a large hole in the ground, namely, an Olympic-size swimming pool. On all four sides, as well as the bottom, it was lined with pristine white tiles, a substitute sky below ground level. It wasn’t just pristine, it was twinkling. Therefore, it looked utterly misplaced, with nothing but a domed structure to offset the concrete rubble everywhere around it, the pool was like a porcelain figurine dropped among heaps of gravel.
Edgar had fixed it up himself, telling Sono of how he spent years down there, before he was even born, arduously splitting the chunks of concrete covering the entire bottom into manageable pieces. Once all of the debris was out, he spent close to a year washing
it, scrubbing and polishing it into perfection.
It was a refuge, albeit an incredibly small one, for the displaced spirits of the poisoned seas. According to Edgar, they roamed the planet aimlessly in the millions, if not billions, forced from their homes, while the seas increased their contents of chemicals and other hazardous substances, marking their return farther and farther in time. Though nowhere near home, it would feel less hostile than the space above sea level.
Three
Edgar’s mouth was suddenly pulled apart, with thin saliva strings bridging his contorted lips, before he stooped sideways and then brought a caring hand to his caved chest.
“What’s wrong?” Sono put his hand on the side of his grandpa’s shoulder immediately and leaned forward. “Is it your heart?”
He feared the worst. Putting the other hand on him as well, he squeezed both of his gaunt shoulders firmly and thrust his face up close to his, jiggling the pull tab necklace that seemed to weigh him down.
“Grandpa? Quit fucking around!”
“Thverm vale.” Edgar pushed out gravely through his saggy lips. “Thonic voom.”
Sono winced slightly, but remained with his hands on the shoulders of his grandpa, heaving from his laborious breathing.
“What? Does it hurt?”
With his head perfectly still, Edgar rolled his eyes upward. His left pupil was the size of a needle prick, granting his gray iris an unearthly mass, while his right pupil had swelled so much that it overtook the iris entirely, leaving only a faint gray halo behind. Sono looked back and forth between his left and his right eye, stunned by the disparity of his vision, on one side an almost tangible, unfurling bulk, and on the other a condensed, gleaming abyss. Even though nothing but the size of the pupils had changed, he didn’t know what he was witnessing.
“Grandpa? Are you all right? Say something.”
His grandpa took a deep breath, rousing his entire body. “I’m fine. Did you feel it?”
Sono straightened himself and removed his hands, still clutching a mismatched resolve.
“I haven’t felt it this strong…before…must be close.”
Edgar swiveled his head around deftly, searching the ceiling for something. Sono looked up as well, at the vaulted ceiling above them, but all he saw was the unsightly smoke diverter and bland concrete around it.
“Feel what?”
His grandpa was smiling; though battered and weary, it was a smile nonetheless.
“Majestic.”
“Grandpa? Look at me; what are you talking about?”
“The sea. Have you seen it?”
Sono stared sternly into the aged soul trying its best to hide behind the dazzlingly glazed eyes, now back to usual size. “On video.”
“Have you seen it lately?”
Sono shook his head to a question he really didn’t understand, but his grandpa didn’t seem interested anyhow, continuing his aerial search. “So you’re all right?”
Edgar brought his head down with an accompanying frown. “Stop worrying,” he said firmly and licked his lips before once again looking up at the ceiling. “There are spirits all around us Sono. They live among us, inside us. They’re everywhere. Have you ever felt them? Or heard them?”
Edgar, leaning forward slightly, gave his own thigh a controlled pat, as if standing by to catch its evanescent reverberations.
“It’s fascinating. The sea is an outstanding being. It’s still the oldest and even the biggest life form on earth. A creature just like us, and what a creature. What a creature…have you ever listened?”
Sono didn’t really know where to look; at the ceiling, his grandpa’s face or his thigh? His eyes skipped about erratically. “Listened to what?”
“Just listened.”
Sono now kept his eyes on his grandpa’s, precariously moored to the storm rumbling in the confines of his vivacious eyes.
“No...”
The amplified feeling of concern, like so many times before, was dragged through the dust, scraping up a feeling of resentment ingrained in his flesh, inevitably prodded by the exasperation his grandpa’s cavalcade of outlandish remarks brought about.
While Edgar swept the domed gray ceiling with an amorous gaze, giving ample opportunity for silence to entrench itself, perhaps because of his resentment being tinged with melancholy, or that he left his eyes to float freely across his grandpa’s shoulders and torso, Sono realized something very peculiar; it had been the first time he had felt his grandpa’s flesh in a very long time, apart from fleeting touches. Even though it was draped with an oversized, dust-bitten skin, the few muscles left on his gaunt frame were spirited. Sono smiled at his own soppiness, and then drew a deep breath.
“Did you ask about my heart?”
“Uh…” Orienting himself first and foremost, Sono then had to think hard. “Yeah, I did…I was worried. You still have the original old sack hanging there.”
“Barely. Come see for yourself how precariously it’s hanging.”
Sono didn’t move a muscle.
“Are your nipples doorknobs? I’m still quite fond of you, Grandpa, so I’ll pass on splitting open your chest.”
Edgar brought his own hand up to his chest, to caress it. “I can feel it deteriorating. It’s bad.”
“Showoff…you’re gonna outlive us all,” Sono remarked tenderly.
“No, and I’m not gonna go around looking for an upgrade, or even a fresh one. When it fails, so will I.”
Sono, pretending that his grandpa’s impromptu obituary had passed him by, had never heard of anyone either selling or owning an upgraded heart, or a fresh heart for that matter. He struggled to come up with something to say in the midst of his confusion, something neither asinine nor slighting, and quick. Did he actually think there were fresh hearts to replace the old ones with? “I guess it’s, uh, like everything else around here,” Sono offered fumblingly, his diplomatic ambitions slowing him down considerably. “The prices keep going up…but not the quality.”
“Prices went up again?”
On the same muddy path, his head between his knees, upside-down, laboriously wading through the smelly muck that by now reached up to his stomach, Sono simply kept going, unaware of the direction. He no longer had any idea what they were talking about anyway.
“Just a touch. A smidge. But I don’t want another scare, so I’ll keep the numbers to myself.”
“You’ll get constipated.”
“Yeah, I prefer that over a visit to your sinkhole throne…”
Edgar tapped him on the side of his head. “In here.”
“Oh. Nah, don’t worry; it’s already constipated. It keeps my brain cushioned if I fall, and best of all, it does so free of charge.”
Edgar looked at him questionably, and then tilted his head to the right at a severe angle, his cheek touching his shoulder. Sono found the sight very disquieting, a lopsidedness almost defying a human’s range of motion, and looked away.
Isolation did him little good at present.
“Have you heard the story of Dio the fool?” Edgar asked contemplatively.
Sono tilted his head back slightly, and inhaled as he watched his grandpa’s downcast gaze.
“No…but you’re gonna tell me anyway, aren’t you?”
“Don’t you want me to?”
“Aren’t you kind of giving away the whole story with the title?”
“What if it’s ironic?”
“What if it’s boring? Huh? How do you like your own medicine? Manners, Grandpa, manners. Don’t answer with a question.”
Edgar smiled widely, a rare benevolence buffed by the gleam in his narrowed eyes.
“All right, just start. The curtains are parting, and your one audience member is alive and listening.”
Sono parted his hands theatrically and then slumped down onto the grainy blend constituting the floor inside his grandpa’s home, smelling of smoke and aridity.
“A long time ago…there was a human being named Dio. One day he fou
nd himself on a different planet, a long, long way from home. Basically, he was as lost as you can get out there in space.”
Edgar pointed a cagey little index finger at the ceiling.
“Moo, says the alien.”
“Shush. Listen.”
Sono bent his ears toward him with the help of his hands, but Edgar didn’t look.
“It reminded him of Earth, except that the sky was riddled with objects he had never seen; strange celestial bodies that reminded him of a full moon, but they were visible in broad daylight and hundred times closer. He could almost jump from one to the other. Almost. Imagine jumping from planet to planet, like you do on the concrete.”
Edgar assumed a peculiar expression, something between amazement and deviousness, as if an extremely complex ruse had unfolded perfectly in his mind. His facial leaps were far more interesting at the moment than his story or the concrete. Sono was mesmerized by the minute shifts in his bleak face.
“After only hours of wandering around, he stumbled upon the inhabitants of the planet. Fortunately for him, the inhabitants were friendly, and though he didn’t understand a word they said, they understood each other surprisingly well with improvised sign language. They gave him water and some strange snacks, which restored his energy immediately. Now, structurally, they were not much different from himself. The only thing that really set them apart was that wherever he had hair, they had fur. A thick, golden fur. Think golden lion tamarins.”
Sono had no idea what he wanted him to think of. It sounded like an instrument.
“And all of them had beautiful, long manes, a perfect strip of luscious hair, starting at the top of their heads, and going all the way down their backs. Also, none of them wore any clothes.”
Sono nodded in feigned astonishment, because he could not shake the golden glimmer of the strange instruments lined up before him.
“They brought him to their village, which wasn’t far. It was a treeless field with about a hundred huts and a few larger structures. After a nice meal and an alcoholic beverage that softened him, he got a cot in the home of a family of five, the chief’s daughter and her family. Dio quickly settled in, his surrogate family feeling like his own. He hunted with his new village friends, slept alongside them in the wild, built huts with them, gathered tubers and giant eggs and participated in their traditional celebrations.”
Turn Page 5