My Tired Father

by Gellu Naum

  If they succeeded in getting out alive they would move back into the huts during the spring

  Then they dug together among the crevasses and free spaces of the dead trunks and their bark to catch the spiders and cockroaches hidden there

  They threw rocks at the pelican eggs they broke them and went down to consume their contents This constituted a classic and useful exercise

  They swallowed the smoke and then filled their mouths with water and spat it out in thin streams mixed with smoke Afterward they babbled incoherent words as they bragged

  Over there no river flowed even if the ditches and cavities in the ground collected stagnant water

  The soil was friable and composed mainly of reddish sand Trees were generally scarce Only in places where cities used to be did silent and shadowy groves still thrive

  Like the women the men had bodies covered with scars The old women often murdered the young ones Near the cataract I saw such an act with my own eyes

  Space was empty and chaotic For this reason I preferred it on a technical level

  On the contrary the purchase of shoes constituted a personal pleasure

  The wounded volunteers fraternized during sleep

  The horizon presented certain swellings The corridors or the windows (the panes also added certain indefinite obscurities) tried to cover themselves embarrassed by their ignorance of our intentions

  We passed from a zone of white constructions to a completely black landscape

  I had enough of so much Father

  In the second half the frontiers of certain wild territories appeared

  A few men repaired the road With my head thrown back I addressed one of them I knew he would not understand what I was telling him He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted Stay here

  A referee went toward the arena while telling an athlete to hurry up A second small athlete wearing a hood was huddled on the ground

  The motif of the running dog

  That was better for weak characters because it seemed a rather dangerous thing

  At the close of that period goals had been created

  Abandonment was no longer a contrast phenomenon

  The only meeting worth mentioning was with a woman a mother of three She threw herself on the porters in the middle of the line and forced them to drop their bags and run off but she received a mortal blow for her mad courage All the women encountered until then had had only one child This was the first to have had several

  She could retain within a cavity in her head an appreciable amount of water which allowed her to bury herself in the mud without dying

  She tried to keep standing rushed forward fell to her knees and sometimes leaned her forehead against not too large a tree and after trying to make sure no one was hidden behind it she began forcibly shaking it

  I tore my handkerchief in two and bandaged her knees

  On March 22 I rented three large comfortable furnished rooms located in a street on the edge of town However as evening came on I noticed that my apartment became colder and sadder

  At the beginning of April fire destroyed the building and an unidentified tenant perished in the flames Her room was on the fourth floor and at the last minute those who came to put out the fire saw at the white-painted window a woman in a desperate pose with arms outstretched hair undone

  A few days later Catherine Mahoney dreamed of a man seated at the table in her room and she described his face so precisely that everyone present identified me as the dreamed-of person

  On May 25 I was in the neighborhood pharmacy and I asked the pharmacist whether he remembered who had lived in the burned-out building thirty- five years ago He replied I remember perfectly well

  And he showed me a photo in which I was next to a big black dog called Raphael that was mine then

  Infantile adapted and thus hostile I remained standing

  The vocation's supremacy was constant and the pharmacist wore it over his trousers

  The fear of premeditation made him believe that Abend and I were one and the same person despite Abend's marriage to a local girl

  On his forehead he wore the dire sign of others' remorse

  From here to the miracle there remained but one step

  The anatomy of two English hairdressers

  Next to him there was also a surgeon specializing in the plague

  They were in possession of some indubitable rules (History and Melancholy)

  They successfully reconstituted the generating circle

  They used a coefficient of indirect references in which nature played no role whatsoever From that need of a personal ritual a loss of instinct resulted (Table you're going to bed I want to be held in your arms)

  That's why

  The obscenity of the prophets

  There were also other incidents and other reflections that suggested the decline of impulse and every morning they went for a carriage ride

  Inside himself each felt a mouse

  Some figures did not correspond to those forecast but met the necessary conditions

  The complicated ceremonies were to take place in the vicinity The abbot had been brought by the sand

  By dint of considerable effort long training and a certain amount of intelligence some tried to better their talent and technique

  For that they used the ovoid powders

  Only the exhausting and terribly boring result seemed important to them

  But what counted was the way the man called Abend had carried out a fantastic holdup Millions of lire were transported from the train station to the cemetery

  Naturally he had used the materials at hand (pellets buttons) but also things found by chance (twigs pebbles)

  Pushed down the corridor he kept his hat in his hand He was probably very pale for one of the girls dressed in white asked Are you always so pale I don't think so he replied but I played for a quarter of an hour on the curb in the cold

  Another looked at his hand and said The wedding ring Do you think it could go on the right hand Of course On the same finger

  A kind of hurricane tore off the roofs of all the houses in Bavaria

  A voice said He is innocent

  An almost perfect circle about 20 km in diameter stretched north and south and also contained some volcanic fields good for pasture

  With calm vehemence with active sadness Catherine evoked the errors of the day before

  She looked from outside at the herd and became again flesh of her flesh

  It's me she said and in this found a reason to persevere

  In the morning she brought out the ladder Just imagine the passersby applauded her

  I had long since grown indifferent

  I entered the open elevator with the look of a man convinced he was making a mistake I was quickly fastened they attached the hook to me and the others began to pull

  I had identified a strange crisis of paternal conscience

  I took a shortcut but that was in no way a heroic action and no one among us was influenced by its symbolic character

  I had the right and the duty to put myself on the list of those who while appreciating practice go on to the study of problems and do not forget that after all

  In a more recent period I combined little colored papers

  I studied problems of detail for example the feeling of capillarity an error always applied very rigorously

  The humidity until then laborious but lacking precision declared itself clearly in our favor

  I had known King Phillip and I had obtained a document to this effect Added to this was the beginning of moral intimidation on the part of the others In fact they were biting their fingers

  I was implicated in labors of a Herculean nature

  If a case of force majeure prevented my being present at the deliberations I had to vote by mail

  I had an immense field of view and a practically unlimited feeling

  At the letter P I became a pohet once again I sat in my place as determined by the alp
habet and waited

  At the letter N I would say Neave me alone

  On that occasion I began preparing myself for a sedentary life and I dug an irrigation canal into which I diverted part of the water of a stream flowing nearby. After completing this job I went off at top speed toward the southwest

  I procreated in a mysterious manner then I tried to destroy or immortalize my progeny

  With eyes closed I read the eulogizing letters

  The portrait probably showed me admiring my bracelet

  The distinguishing sign was the forehead adorned with feathers

  My sister had contributed to the institution's development

  I never forgot the uncertainties of our pathetic practical spirit

  That had been long and hard work but it had ended well and it was certain that the event would take place

  The empty square room turned I drew a blue rectangle in the middle The sound of the cascade entered through wide-open windows That was one way of getting out

  The next day around four o'clock in the afternoon Catherine Mahoney had caught sight of Abend this time wearing a long cloak and a hat whose brim fell over his eyes

  She observed him attentively as he stopped by the roadside as if he meant to speak to the man trimming the bushes that grew in abundance there

  When Catherine approached Abend had already inexplicably disappeared and the man in question swore that no one had come that way in the last quarter of an hour

  Between 5 and 6 o'clock in the month of March I went back home Coming to a bend in the international highway I spotted a man in black walking along quietly in front of me After the bend that man vanished

  They did different things with the same means and reflected their roots in the water

  It was the most effective method and stimulated by their accomplishments they advanced irresistibly toward perfection

  Assembling and dispersing according to unpolished rules they were content with elegantly filming their wives on horseback

  They made love in an old-fashioned but charming way They poured a drop of water on the backs of their hands and right away the palms became velvety

  They tied their sandals with incredible elegance

  In their free time they drew and painted while developing their personalities and acquiring from the start a practical education in certain dynamic arts such as decoration advertising modeling etc Numerous abundantly illustrated textbooks allowed them to work as required and in full reliance on solid experience

  Protected by complete thermal isolation (the photograph below) they slept at a certain distance from one another

  Some had decided to start over from the beginning They had what is called a harelip

  They had generic names but practiced the gray ebullitions

  They opened the triangle in the middle of its longest side and made a square by bringing together the opposed extremities of the longest side

  The children came almost every day to share in the famous physical and intellectual discipline

  They gathered in cement nests haunted by an immense longing for solitude

  They organized in an eloquent way things we all knew quite well

  Fascinated by typhus they secretly took anatomy and natural science courses

  Two were seated face to face on folding chairs One had a scepter and was dressed in a short tunic and held a bow and arrow The younger one held a sleeping woman in his arms

  The compensator kept remarkable time

  No one picked up the wrappings anymore

  The coloring happened after they had wiped their surface in a circular motion with a well-tied ball of cloth

  Between each incursion they did not leave the barracks It seemed they lived down there in tiny rooms but in optimum conditions as to temperature

  Once I met them on a small wooded hill They had encircled the hill and begun their advance I was with Catherine and I climbed up a rock

  They began shooting and the bullets buried themselves in the rock I quickly bit the places struck by the bullets and then I leaped from the rock and fled

  Another time I made myself a bed of grass next to the barracks on perfectly flat and bare ground They found out and all night long I heard them munching and carrying off my grass

  They did this with the same energy all the next day and the following night as if quite indefatigable During the day for example they chewed all the grass beneath my pallet

  They were hypothetical potters such as rarely seen nowadays

  The advantage of their lost form consisted of the fact that it was no longer necessary to straighten out their knots

  In his capacity as president Abend (on the right wearing glasses) moderated his appetite At other times he pretended to listen but his statements contradicted his attitude

  Because all the elements expressed the error of a single gesture

  Some of them eulogized the fascinating attraction of that somber unknown land The prudent spoke of the future

  The earth inside had to be thrown out

  That fall Catherine's parents insisted that I leave Just after my departure she fell prey to a profound melancholy said not one word and refused to eat her secretions stopped Thus Catherine Mahoney died despite the advice and prayers of those close to her

  The next summer a group of friends quarreled The youngest one rebelled but not for long

  The son of an over-excited mother he stood out in early childhood because he loved dolls and would waste hours at a time in sewing shops enthusiastically collecting scraps

  Credulous and dutiful he wore an ample black frock coat

  Such a man could be crushed by disappointments but when he came back he seemed surrounded by a halo

  He drew leaves

  The opinion of white roses or a small hat on a chair

  The only allusions to his love life

  The basement of a large hotel or a gigantic airport I used these kinds of ingredients too

  It was an acid and maddening time

  Someone was asking What are you doing down there in the dark