“I have been re-reading some of your poems in ‘The
Galilean’ and really enjoying them. I
love the one ‘The Eternal Present’ about God living outside of time. I also
enjoy the ones about the saints, especially St. Catherine…” Gail Weber, Editor /Owner, “Exploring
Tosca” A Minnesota Art & Cultural Magazine May, 2015
Anthills of Lima
By Dennis
L. Siluk, Dr. H.c.
Andean Scholar, and Poet Laureate
in Junín and Pasco, and the Mantaro Valley Region of Peru
“You are a good student of human nature and you express it
well.”
—Janet French (2-25-2016)
Chapter One (the wife)
Evening
was coming on in the
city of Lima, noisy as always at hour. All the sounds of Lima echoing through
the air, with the end of daylight. Nippon walked down the steep widen street in
San Juan Miraflores, flanked by little shops and eateries, and tall concrete
walls, alone. Talking to himself incisively —as often he did. He had left his wife and two young boys to go
shopping, she took the small Chevy truck they owned, as he took his late
afternoon walk around the neighborhood, and around Cherry Park, where his house
paralleled the park that paralleled the Church.
It was close to the time he figured she’d be back and so he was on his
way back to the house.
However disagreeable Nippon was, in some ways
he had his bright side; that is to say: Nippon lived cautiously and there might
be something in that.
He noticed the many people on the boulevards, coming and going, passing
him—not one smile on anyone’s face.
“Have
they all lost hope,” he
murmured to himself. A statement, more than a question.
Walking on he came to a corner coated
with grime and dirt, dust flying about, garbage piled high across the street.
He looked behind him, there stood the large statue of the Virgin Mary, the very
one the mayor had refurbished when they widened the road. Nippon stomped his
feet to get the dust and dirt off his sandals. He pushed his straw hat back
looking to see if any cars were coming. His wife always reminding him to look
before he leaped, he was to a certain degree careless.
—Nippon heard a crash! He tugged at his
collar on his shirt tightly, a policeman ran by “Excuse
me,” he blasted out, as if
in high gear, wanting Nippon to get out of his way, further down the sidewalk
the policeman again reeked his voice at another pedestrian to get out of his
way. Now Nippon could hear sirens, an ambulance was approaching. He looked down
the street, he had appeared to have come out of a dream. “Oh!”
he exclaimed. The automobile that was crashed into, was not a car, but his
wife’s Chevy truck, so it appeared; could it really be he pondered. But there
was much more in the scene than that, —the other car, a man staggered out of
the other car—the car that hit the truck—drunker than a skunk. Nippon told himself, “It doesn’t do to rush to conclusions,” and approached the two vehicles noticing the
police officer that had just past him, having a thick mustache like John L.
Sullivan, and so forth, he was very recognizable, he was now pacing the
accident sight, keeping bystanders at a distance as the medics took charge; the
officer passed Nippon with a look of annoyance.
He surveyed the scene, reassured
himself: it was his wife’s truck, he approached the officer even closer,
amenable. Now he was sure it was his
truck (although no actual
sense of death had yet penetrated his mind). The
police officer looked at him, he looked perplexed, and then after a short
silence, the officer asked, “Yes, can
I help you?”
“I rather think so,” replied Nippon, then paused, as if in some
sort of striking eldritch vigil.
“Yes,”
replied the officer, awaiting for some kind of validation to why he was still
standing there, undeclared.
The scene, turned to the medics as they
pulled out the three dead bodies from the truck, as the policeman had forgotten
for the moment about Nippon.
Nippon pulled off his hat as if to see
everything clearer, the officer walked quickly to attend the medics. After a
moment, Nippon gave the medics an odd nod, having approached right behind the
police officer. A nod that seemed approving of some thought that had crossed
his mind; said one of the three medics:
“Do you know any of the deceased?”
“Yes!” answered
Nippon.
To the police officer, this stranger was beguiling,
as if living in a world of abstractions, thinking he was simply a candidate of
curiosity. But he said nothing, and helped cover the three bodies with a
plastic covering.
The drunk driver’s hands were shaking as
he sat on the curb as if awaiting to be arrested, but no one paid him any
attention, not even the newly arrived police officers.
“Well,” said the medic, “who are they?
Can we reach their relatives to tell them of this tragedy, sir…?” speaking to Nippon.
Nippon
showed no pity, compassion, sympathy, no sorrow or for that matter, any
discomfort, simply answering with:
“Of course,” and an undesirable
expression, of: “I’m the husband
and the father.”
Chapter Two (the drunk)
Now you could hear the ambulance clanging down
the street. Nippon had opened the window of the truck to cool himself, found
the keys, and the truck was runnable, yet somewhat discomforted with the rock
and rolling of the automobile’s motor clanging and choking and per near dying
out, but he resided but a few blocks away, so he figured he’d drive home, have
the truck repaired come the weekend. The police officer standing dumfounded,
watching it all, the one with the great turned-up mustache that his friends
called J. L., for short. At the same
time it appeared the drunk had run down the street, was halfway to where Nippon
lived, and J.L., just shook his head aimlessly, and started to write out his
report (although seemingly having
a propensity for more rhetoric but lost in the thick of things.)
The truck was clanking, and the
transmission was making noise along with the clogging of the motor’s
carburetor, but it ran, and that is what mattered to Nippon, and in unholy
silence, he promptly stepped on the accelerator, to give it more gas, —as it
too was sticking to the floor, and then popped back up to where it belonged;
whereupon, the gears to the transmission connected after a short pause, and
thus, the truck picked up speed faster than he had anticipated, then came a
second phase of conflict, a crazy scene took place, the drunk—an emaciated old
man—stood in the middle of the road, as
if preferring contact with the truck waving his hands, to which he might have
seen it as a beast from his alcoholic trimmers, for he yelled “Come on beast!” (As with a venturesome spirit).
Then followed abjurations by the police,
in the far-off distance watching everything, hearing the screams by the drunk!
As the truck run over him as if he was a sack of potatoes: then came a moment
of pure taciturn: a silent cold pause.
When the police arrived to the scene J.
L., greeted Nippon again, but with a faltering smile, “Oh,”
he commented, “I do hope
it was not on purpose you run this poor drunk over! This Unfortunate soul;
don’t you have any compassion?”
Said
Nippon, “Would it do any
good?” (and thought, had he taken the drunk to detox, or jail and did his job,
he’d not be dead…, but held that back.)
Other than that, Nippon gazed in silence
at J.L., and simply said, “He
jumped in front of my truck; I think?”
“It didn’t look like that to me,” said J.L., “it
looked to me as if he was in your way and you just plowed over him like a
tilling machine.”
Then there was a rush of worthless words by
the three police officers, and another call for an ambulance.
Only one factor changed, the drunk was no longer the criminal and that
was due to Nippon. He looked at the body with a bleak unresponsiveness, steady
gaze, then at his truck, said “Can I leave?” to the remaining officers, who shook their heads right to left,
and as he got into the truck, talking to himself, as often as he did,
whispered, “One tires of pity when it’s useless.” But all
three heard, and wrote it down in their report.
In front of his house, sitting in his
truck, Nippon felt it, —he knew there would be a sequence of questions
forthcoming, renewed again and again. For him, he thought only of the
abstraction, of the unendurable burden of the funeral and court, or pretrial
days ahead, because of the drunk. This would make his tasks frustrating, his
book harder to write, and therefore he was not glad of it.
The abstractions of these two events, if indeed they were, constituted
his whole life to be. Now his world, his life was to be topsy-turvy,
unscheduled, to be lived without a plan, as if to be a dry goods dealer without
dry goods, he would later on take all these thoughts to his bed with him...
(To Nippon the strict and secluded life was like a religion, he had no
regret about contradicting himself, —not so unusual for a Peruvian. He believed
God existed, otherwise there’d be no need for priests, and the reason God
didn’t show up in person is because it caused such a raucous, an irritation
which took place incessantly in the souls of evil men, —and there were more
evil men than good men on earth: the ones whose sinful lives were so deeply
rooted in a diabolical lifestyle, thus, God’s appearance would simply stop
their hearts from beating, or per near thicken their breathing to a
suffocation, —having remembered those far-off days when Abraham and Moses
walked the Earth; hence, Nippon—for such
men—he felt saintliness was combined with habits, bad customs, traditions,
routines. And the good seeds had to grow one way or the other amongst the
weeds, like it or not! It was like being tested under fire, like Mark Twain
wrote: a virtue is no virtue until tested under fire. He believed Evil delays
its hand and takes breathe when they are harvesting their weeds, but in the
sight, or word, or name of God or Jesus Christ, like a sleepwalker, the devil
and his demon hightail it backwards. Like being awaken by some early morning
streetcars or trains: these demonic beings, they will fan-out in every other
direction holding their arm’s full length like flying bats caught in a plague.)
. . .
Nippon got thinking of
his life—indulging in a calculated confession with his conscience and
subconscious, crisscrossing with those alternate voices, —sitting still, still
in the front seat of his truck for hours in front of his house: pondering on
friendships and love, truths, and etcetera.
He
wasn’t like everyone else he told himself, he didn’t need to learn how to live,
he had learned it all at birth, like Adam, in the Garden of Eden, such was his
life his way, he knew everything he needed to know at birth, he was in harmony
with the universe: silent, free, capable, easy going, just with justice, gifted,
and although satisfied with, nothing was enough to be gratified with. Plus, he even leaned at birth the secret of
the creatures and of their world of fatigue: they were fulfilled without
understanding.
As for friends and relatives, they were
another thing. It is their duty to love you, along with their connections, but
of course that is rather another matter. I can’t find the right word or
words he would have used, perhaps 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, looking in his rearview mirror as car
headlights passed him, 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 love, and 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, and then comes the show.
He did
not forget once he had a friend a good friend, it was during the war in
Vietnam, 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!” And so he repeated to himself and to acquaintances as he felt necessary:
‘—as for friends, it is rather
another matter: friendships are seldom lasting, emanating out of smoke, and
more often than not drifting back into smoke.’ He concluded.
‘Matter
of fact, if I killed myself who would feel punished? That is when I realized I
had no friends left; and if I had had a friend left, I wouldn’t feel any better
off, and I’d probably miss his reaction, and if so, I’d have lost the goat and
the rope. Like the drunk, his case ceased to be when he ceased to be… That’s all. When my wife died she freed
herself from me. It is better not to look at it that way but now you find out
what is not life.
‘There
is another part to this ideological puzzle or labyrinth I live in, sanity and
insanity is bound up very closely with things at the very rim of reality for
me. Call it my decadent philosophy, like
Baudelaire’s poetry or Rembrandt’s art, in both cases and in my case likewise
it is what unlocks one’s inmost genius.
Perhaps my eccentric philosophy conjured up by life itself, exterior or
interior, who’s to say, from outside or inside my head, who’s to say, whatever
the case may be, is carved in stone, not merely a morbid fungous, but precise
like geometry, with many angles. Imaginably accrued long ago in the
mythological fabled Mu or Lemuria, the unmentionable, and genetically
transferred to me, by some primeval means. Life and death is all one to me.
Perhaps I came from the shoot, the scion of the Great Zimbabwe’s most primal
grovelers. That does that mean? It means that what it may.’
Part
II
Chapter
One (the writer)
The following days had
ended gloomily, the whole following month was in truth gloomy, but he had
finalized the funeral arrangements, completed his novel, and sent it to an
independent publisher, one, one calls: ‘Print on Demand’ figuring Mark Twain
did it, and so did Jack London, why not him, even if the ‘Writers Club of the
Nation’ and the ‘National Writers Committee’ frowned on self-published books,
as did ‘The National Book Awards,’ he’d do it all the same. And once the book
was published, he sent four-copies of his book to ‘The National Novel Awards,’
in Paris.
Then he went for his weekly dramatic sermon by the Chief of Police, who
read out the police reports, of the three police officers concerning his
family, and the drunk, and his lack of empathy, compassion, indifference. And
he told the Chief of Police, he was sorry for the death of Mr. Blackwell, and
it was a tragedy his family were taken so suddenly “…but
what is sorry, when you are dead?” Was his leading comment.
The chief was searching for intent, and could only find indifference;
the death of Mr. Blackwell was grim at best, to call it murder or manslaughter,
but he was trying hard to make a case of it.
It would appear Nippon’s case had reached
a wider range, where he had to go see a specialist concerning frozen anger, and
take an anger management course, court ordered, although he did, and he asked: “…who’s
angry?” But the court deemed it necessary, and that held presentence. And
so he listened to the lectures and then the next step was to see a
psychologist, to probe the remote laxity of his emotions.
On these occasions he had not strand from touching his listeners
vigorous nerves with what he called ‘Truth’ saying at one point: “These
manifestations of public pity you want to see come out of me, I am not like
you, a man of overate appetites for sympathy, fiery temperaments, who
wholeheartedly must mind, and find some hidden devil in me because you find any
tears in my eyes.”
Said Dr. Sterling, “There
wasn’t a large attendances at the service of your family and you showed up
late.”
“Is that a statement or a question?” asked Nippon.
“A Question.” said the doctor of psychology.
He now recognized the enormity of what had come upon him, —he couldn’t
help feeling being a specimen for obvious reasons, to him it was a rhetorical
question, and he remained silent on it.
At that point, Nippon accepted the fact, He must be guilty of murder
because of his unresponsiveness, according to the police and the medical
clinics and the judges, and it was becoming epidemic. But even with this, he
felt no obligation to try and appease them—now or later—by showing emotions he
did not have, or express empathy he knew not how to, he’d have to let them
become alarmed as they were; in short, he was not playing the game of fabrication,
because he didn’t know how to; if that was a crime, then he was guilty as
charged.
By and large, Nippon had induced in their minds, a curious form of
thought, and a fever to fight his: coldness, his lack of sympathy, or interest,
his indifference, (his rebelliousness to be less like them, and show more
compassion, less resistance,) for they called it by many names: even, impartiality, and
objectivity.
The
psychologist asked, “With no wife and no children what will you do now?”
“Buy a
dog,” said Nippon, “when I get angry he can’t talk back, plus I get the last word, and as
you readily know, there is to every point a counterpoint, and the dog, he
doesn’t know that.”
Doctor Sterling looked at Nippon puzzled trying to
give empathy but as he said inside his head: ‘Nothing on earth matters to him, how can I produce
any empathy with that…’ he pondered in his mind this several times. It was hard to believe. He noticed when
Nippon started to disassociate and daydream his eyes were as if out of strange
worlds, they would dilate until the light irises went nearly out of sight,
leaving two mystical black pits, with a gradation of dark shadows, in that
strange chalk-like face, none of which he could guess; for the most part, he
had gone still as if he was played out.
It was
clear to the psychologist, no two people had the same scale of sensitiveness
and responses, and many had from their background, stored-up mental
associations, and no one responded exactly the same to any extraordinary
happening, but Nippon had something that could not naturally be explained, it
was as if his ways, in a very strange way, half-hypnotized the doctor, —to be
psychologically precise, something beyond Nippon, that you don’t see at all,
something that is lost in antiquity, and forgotten in the abysses the primeval.
Chapter
Two (death
and punishment)
On awaking the next morning, he understood why the
psychologist and Chief of Police looked cross at him, he hadn’t thought of this
at the time, —it only struck him now, Death! Death scared them, it was a fear: they
were trying to escape from this atmosphere, a growing panic, and he, with more
skill and persistence, accepted it with greater success. Could this be it, he
pondered? ‘They all saw a perseverance
in me, inevitably I pointed out—in a manner of speaking—all the ill-drawn
interpretations of life and death being no more than what it is. Perhaps they
had good intentions, but when it came too practically, nil. And here opportunity
arose to show God their repugnance for death, and they did. They would never
concede this point of course. They live in a world where they had to have
consolers, who assured them that the present state of things were as they
should be, —and treating death as ordinariness, like a lion or ape might, was passing
an inconvenience to them to face death head on. Did not these fruitless people
thoroughly worn out God’s patients? I mean, he sent his Son to deliver us was
this not good enough, thus, there was life after death? Was God’s angelic faces
blank to them, only dusty records from a church?” To
Nippon, it was a hit of bitterness they all had against God—that they held—for
putting them in a predicament of death, when He could have wiped out the experience
all together. To Nippon, it was against God’s direct command—they like he had
to face death, and so meaninglessness even to death is what Nippon showed? God
forbid, a flat effect did all this, yet his subliminal-mind, said nothing.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he told himself, “in both
cases it wasn’t my fault, I’ll see D. Nelson my old high school friend, the
Governor, and he’ll help me!”
Getting up out of bed was an effort, his mind brought up the exhausted
comments of the authorities. Their
badgering. “In war,”
he chattered out loud “…you force yourself never to think of the
problematic day. You cease looking to the future and keep your eyes fixed,
dodging the predicament of being exiled. Ready to fight at any moment, knowing
you will be ill rewarded, no matter what. It makes one drift through life,
rather than live it; and you throw those old family pictures away, as if they
are dream shadows.”
As he sat on the edge of his bed adjusting, his mind’s mind was telling
his conscious: ‘In war
there is no normal times, and we are less disposed to compromise. Death is
around the corner lurking. It puts a rare unmerited distress on people. Which with the psychologist and police are
quite indignant to.’
Frustration for Nippon had now become a watered state of affairs. He
felt alone and abandoned, but told himself, he must remain as in war,
battle-conscious. He told himself, mentally, each one of us live in a world of
solitude and each of us had to bear the agony of his or her own issues and
troubles, and bear them alone. If one of us tried to unburden ourselves, it
would simply be a deeper wound. It would
be like trying to eat without thumbs; plus, —his absurdness and un-talkative
manner had pushed the authorities to harbor resentments, but he told himself:
you are who you are.
Part
III
Chapter
One (The
Governor)
In the Governor’s waiting room Nippon noticed how
enormous it was, the ceiling twenty-feet in height, decorative; there were
several people waiting, of them a few
peasants, or common folk, and among them a few well-dressed men, more neatly put together. Seemingly all
well-aged men, like himself. A uniform person, that looked like a soldier stood
leaning on the wall by a door, next to another office apparently, a guard.
With a quick survey of the enormous room, he noticed one of the
commoners, had yellowish smoked stained teeth, another a loose jacket on that
showed his potbelly, and trousers among the common folk. And the well-dressed, with tailored suites. A
secretary sat behind a wooden desk next to the door that led into another
adjoining office.
He walked up to her, made his request, verbally, and handed her a piece
of paper to be handed to the Governor, saying in an uppity tone, “The
Governor, Mr. D. Nelson, he and I are old friends from High School, in
Huancayo, let him know I’m here I’m sure he’ll want to see me right away, and
for goodness sake, don’t forget to give him my note, please!”
Replied the secretary, a plain looking middle-aged woman, with an
arrogance equal to Nippon’s indifference, and absurdness, yet a little weak
with some insecurities, commented in a sweet low tone, “I’ll
tell his personal secretary, she’s in the room behind me, where the soldier is
and the Governor is in the room behind her! It may take a while, do you wish to
wait?”
“Very well,” responded Nippon, with an illogicality to his voice, as being annoyed, and not
answering her question directly, feeling she didn’t take him serious, but she tried
to put on a sweet smile all the same, with her rounded rosy like cheeks, he
convinced himself, and that was good for something, if not a tinge of common
courtesy.
Everyone in the large room was quiet, and
superficially sat with little to no movement. The eyes of a few followed Nippon
as he picked up a magazine, next to a sofa chair he found vacant; there lying
on an end-table was the magazine.
Reading the culture part of the magazine, which he often turned to in
all public literature available in such sittings, he came upon a short article
on his book, it read, “Unknown author’s first book, ‘The Disgorged’ to be awarded the
‘The International Novel Award’ in Paris, next month, the book being a
self-published novel of the superficiality of the now and new generation, of
the not so common person.” And then
it expressed how the National and International writers associations were annoyed with
the selection, overlooking all their participating writers, which amounted to
over ten-thousand.
His action was predictable, and perceptible, giving two gawking elder
common men, a smiling side-glance, and no more than that. One of the two had sad eyes, hollow checks,
perhaps in his 90s, just there to annoy the secretary, having nothing else to
do in life perhaps: and who kept a composure as if to look and to be looked
upon as superior, or that of having at one time, a well-established name,
thought Nippon.
“How long have you been waiting,” asked Nippon?
The elder man lifted his hands from resting on his knees, both hands
showing all ten-fingers.
“Ten minutes,” commented Nippon.
“No,” said the elder man, “Ten days!”
Thinking the guy was kidding, he asked the fellow next to him, “And you,
how long have you been waiting?”
“If you add the weekends, two weeks!” he
replied.
“Really,” said Nippon, with an insincere look.
“But you know the Governor so perhaps you’ll get in like those
well-dressed men sitting across from us, they’ll only have to wait a short while.” Said the
man who had been waiting two weeks.
After five hours of waiting, Nippon went back up to the secretary, “Are you
not going to bring my request into the private secretary to give to the
Governor?”
She replied with indignity, “Sir, I can only go in there once a day at
4:00 p.m., lest I lose my job” (and the time was now 3:55 p.m.)
“Very well,” said Nippon, “And what time does the Governor leave?”
She hesitated, “Around 3:00 p.m.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this,” asked Nippon.
“Well,” said the secretary, “I did ask you if you wanted to leave the
note…” and she babbled on with words unrecognizable. Then abruptly said,
“He knew you were here,” she pointed to a camera overlooking the
whole room, so as if for him to select whom he would talk to and not talk to.
And since it was Friday, she commented, “He comes in early on Mondays!”
With her delicate hands she shut down her computer, and left the large
room with the few common folk still sitting in their chairs.
Nobody bothered to look at her enquiringly. Nippon grabbed the magazine, to finish
reading, and the guard confronted him on the consequences of theft should he
leave with it, and so he dropped the magazine onto the end-table where he found
it.
As he grabbed a cabby, to take him home, his truck now in the shop being
fixed, he gloated ‘I can just see their faces, what an extraordinary feat, and here
a self-published author gets the golden egg, and all their ambition down the
drain, those arrogant writing committees! Stick that Pulitzer in your ear! Or
you know where else!’
Chapter
Two (The
Writers Club)
At the writer’s
club, the Committee President, a stocky sort of fellow, in his early fifties
who owned a bookstore, a man of medium built who had won at one time the ‘G.A.
Birch Medal’ for horror, when he learned of the award being given to a
self-published writer of no renown, commented to the committee of about two
dozen writers, gasping, with his heavy torso, and his steel-rimmed spectacles
fogging up, “How dare Paris do this to us!”
He spoke with a powerful voice with an emotional conveyance, which
carried a great distance in the Committee Gallery, all present were acclaimed
writers of some sort, if not a novelist, short story writer, or writer of
essays, or poet, if not, a journalist
for sure.
He laminated his phrase clear and emphatically with hard tones, “Calamity
has come upon us brothers and sisters: a person of no acclaim, a self-published
author has won the prestigious Paris Award, what can we do, and we must do
something?”
Said one of the many voices, “Maybe he deserves it?”
Responded the Committee President, “How can that be?”
“Perhaps the Paris Awards Committee, are actually qualified to judge
writings, and novels of quality, as you know, most institutions are not, —their
judges are hired writers who have failed in that profession, and took up the
trade of critic, or judge, to judge others. And yet they themselves have been
judged inadequate.”
“I’m sure,” said the president, “this Nippon will love you for your comments, but we may become
an endangered species should we not do something about it!
In essence, the message that got across to the writers club was
clear: this could not be allowed, something must be done. Lest this become a
plague liken to the Plague of Egypt, all the nobodies of the world, submitting their manuscripts to
scourge history. In that there was only
so much room, and it didn’t allow for such invaders.
Said that outspoken voice again, “Is it not true God brings down the proud
hearted, and lays low those who harden themselves?”
But it was too late for axioms, the president with his downpour of
verbal ferocity and his striking words intensified in the long silence and a
drumming for action, in all but one writer, took place.
Chapter
Three (Nippon’s Suspicion)
Nippon, his mind
three-quarters dead, after three months of the police and his neighbors stalking
him, the dogs in the park seemingly with pointed ears whenever he went across
the street to Cherry Park, all looked too suspicious; circumstances caused him
to fall under a spell of day-dreaming, more so than normal. As for his gawking
neighbors, and hideous phone calls of mockery and insults, it only brought more
disarray to his life: to him they were no more than gibbering idiots, holding
onto some baited hook, the police was dangling, with a sign attached saying:
“He is guilty!” Therefore, he must be. Where was their sympathy for his family,
it all went down the drain, with the drunk: why? Because he didn’t look sad?
Who’s to say? Nothing save, suspicion had snared him.
“Why don’t they ask serious questions…?” (He paused, thought) then
mumbled onto himself “yes, a tragedy, but no more than that?”
He walked the platform at the train station, as if in a coma state:
mumbling out loud as the train pulled away, “The truth ought to be welcome,” then
looking about, as if coming out of a day-dream, he speculated where he was, how
did he traverse the city unaware, it was for the most part a mirror of mystery,
perhaps never to be explained, and as he looked about, nightfall had fallen.
And as a result, his thoughts started wandering again, not paying any attention
to the people about him, that is to say, if anyone was following him, if any
shadows lurked about: “The investigation” he mumbled, “faint, salty, fishing…” it was all a psychic warning to him, to
escape: his body acquiring a chill. ((However, it is not the narrator’s
intention to ascribe this chill and give it more importance than it’s due,
doubtless, lest the impression gets exaggerated, but to give praiseworthy to
God that our body’s reactions to danger sometimes can act as a radar, if one
pays attention to it.)(Evil in the world always comes of ignorance, and at
times good intentions.)) At this point, Nippon was not in a state of
mind to call anything vice or virtue; the soul of the murderer is always
blind….
Chapter
Four ((The
Mongolian) (End Chapter))
With a drawn
knife, the hired killer, known in his field as, the Mongolian, stood ready
leaning alongside the City’s train depot, by San Juan de Miraflores. Nippon had stepped off the train, at the
metro, turned and went down the steps, to the next level, the street level,
hymning, and within a minute the hymning had died out. The Mongolian had
followed him, both disappearing within the short hallway between the two
floors. The killer did his duty (to an unquiet heart), he had plunged his knife into the flesh
of Nippon, he drew from him the most terrible shriek that ever sounded in a
human throat, (as his mind started to sway and shift back to when he was a young
boy, how he was, but it was too late, too far….)(his near black malign eyes
stared and mocked, like a man-serpent, darkness, it even held the Mongolian
like a magnet)) The Mongolian then dragged the body into deeper shadows of the stairway. Everything appeared quiet; hence, he
noiselessly crept into the faintly heard footsteps of the public, where eight
million voices collided, with two million automobiles, all being discharged and
scattered into the air.
Nippon’s Requiem
Strange he was Nippon, but that was the
way he was. In any case, since no one is attending his funeral it is up to the
narrator to give his elegy, his epitaph, what he has left behind for posterity
to ponder on, his story, and we all have one.
His
Arrogances, condescensions,oversensitive,
extraordinary gift to forget, to let go, this was Nippon; that is to say,
nether much mattered to him, mostly he gave superficial attention, a man more
of pretense, as things slid off his back like water off a duck’s wings. He was
like his own priest, he forgave all his offences, and what he could not forgive,
he forgot; put into a vault called oblivion. Hardhearted, closed hearted,
ungrateful and high-minded in some ways, this was in part his character. This
was his life, his way.
True
love was like writing one of the best one-hundred-novels, good luck. He was no nun and he always had his boat
ready for a quick escape. He loved but more out of sensuality, pleasure and
quest.
Self-satisfaction was more a virtue than a vice for Nippon, as jealousy
was posing, personified in that it was a show, notwithstanding the facts, that
what liberated him bound women.
If he
had modesty, and he did have some, it was in the act of sex. On the other hand
he knew women did not like to end on failure, if need be, they would attach
themselves like a jailer to his prisoner, this was his time to escape, and he
did just that, escape.
As you
may sense, I have been more outspoken on Nippon than I planned to be, in any
case, the truth of his nature, he was no hypocrite (most of the time). But this is my softheartedness speaking,
his softheartedness was simply an appearance, — afraid to lose some woman’s
affection, but if she left him go, he’d forget her without effort, so like all
of us, he needed to be loved, or perhaps just needed.
Be it
said, moreover, the weight of it, was a factor in all he did; death of a
person, his wife, his kids, the drunk, whomever, would have removed its
pressure (life’s pressure), —as to long for a death to take place—but to long for a death is to
take one’s own freedom away, thus, he did not extend to such a tragedy or
tragedies, he just did not become over sensitized to them: perchance,
desensitized to live with such misfortunes.
. . .
Written between 3-9-2016 & 3-25-2016/
by Dennis L. Siluk, Dr. H.c. © Copyright, 3-2016
“The Anthills of Lima”
