Nippon got thinking of his life—indulging in his
calculated confession with his conscience and subconscious, crisscrossing with those
alternate voices, —sitting still in that truck for hours, — he deliberated on
his esteem, his liberation, his immunity to judgment, or to be judged. In many
ways life held a silence, a deafening, an ache he told himself, feeling as if he
lived in a primeval woods not a modern day city, with heavy threats, and pigheadedness
in the hearts of many, if not snobbery, as he presupposed the Cro-Magnon man
might have felt had he had time to visit Lima, in his space and time for a
month or year or decade: surely he’d feel lodged in, as in the iron works of
the Eiffel Tower, unable to free himself. But he had to live among what he
called, ‘The antes’ the human ants, but never having understood them, life in
the big city was moldy to him.
Thus
he got thinking, pondering on: Lima: his, friendships, his nature, truths,
mythomaina, and etcetera.
He
wasn’t like everyone else, he didn’t need to learn how to live, such was his
way, he had learned it all at birth, like Adam, in the Garden of Eden, such was
his life, he knew everything he needed to know at birth, he was in harmony with
the universe: silent, talkative, free, capable, tireless, easy going, just with
justice, gifted and satisfied with nothing. He liked music and dance when he
was young, and at times intoxication. He even leaned at birth the secret of the
creatures and of their world of fatigue, they were satisfied without
understanding.
Friends were another thing. It is their duty, a loved one’s duty: say a
relatives, friend, or alike, they had a duty to love you, along with their
connections, but of course that is rather another matter. I can’t find the
right word, he used, but he told me once he had a friend, it was during war,
1971, he got shell-shocked, couldn’t talk for a week, had to be taken out of
Vietnam and sent to Japan for recovery, when he had got home from the war, he
called him up, and his friend said, “Don’t bother to call again, it only reminds me of
that frightful day!” Perhaps the word he adopted thereafter, the one I can’t seem to find is
friendships are unavailing, or in vain,
or pointless; be that as it may, he had
learned only in death do we give admiration due to the beloved, and only for an
hour or two. “We love the dead,” he spoke out loud in his truck’s front seat, looking at the door of his
house. Then got thinking again: we love the dead because there are no
obligations to them any longer. That’s man, he has many faces, he loves to receive
love, and he returns love when he gets loved, he loves when someone is lovable,
but when he or she is not, it’s another story, and it is seldom unconditional.
With tragedy, love awakens, now for the show.
As for
man in general, what does he do but read newspapers, magazines, watch sports on
television, news, drink beer, fornicate. He does all this to exhaustion; and
travel the world out of a mythomaina. And killing, killing people for
liquidation, like the little flesh eating fish in the Amazon, whom leave only
man’s skeleton when finished.
And as
far as Lima went to him it was simply: sidewalks, crossings, an ocean on one
side, and mountains on the other sides, all hemmed in by fog, day in and day
out; a train that packed you in like sardines, little and big shops everywhere,
if you dared to eat in them you had to bring your pills along to cleanse your
inners; everyone like everyone else. A city of neon, alcohol, drugs, all
emanating like smoke, people like funeral ducks drifting, somnambulists, for
all they cared they could be in Bali or Java, or on the moon.
# 3-21-2016
Part of the story “Anthills of Lima”
