by Hades
©2016 by S.N.
All Rights Reserved
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To my dear Bunny,
Whose perfection
forever I reverence
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Part 1
The Transient
As the moments darkened and changed to night, no change occurred, no rescue appeared. Instead, I walked (the same as in the morning), just an empty person with neither a job nor hope for recovery. Like this I walked as a zombie, as the hours fell quickly into the night. Early or late, it mattered not, for the hours passed by as flies: buzzing but not catching my attention.
Could I be losing my mind, I thought, or at least some grip on reality? Was I being dragged into some altered state of consciousness: not caring as I used to, not feeling ill, nor pain for the present and not even caring about changing any of it. Was there some ounce of rationality left inside? At least the possibility of sane thought still existed, since I had self-analyzed the possibility of madness. No crazy person would do that. It proved, if only in theory, that one is not truly crazy if one suspects it. Of course, the opposite was equally a possibility. Did not the mad possess some wit of rational? Is there no chance that madness comes after the thought; contemplated right before the moment of lunacy, when sanity begins to escape? Right unto that last moment when indeed insanity takes over... And I could have been suffering from it, that very moment. The probability of it deserved some serious consideration, so I bent my mind upon it for some time before deciding that the first theory was more than likely to be correct and that I was not insane. This resolution calmed me (at least from that concern) and left me feeling satisfied as to my state of mind.
It was not a star-filled night. The clouds covered most of the sky, so I could not admire the twinkling dance this time. I wondered what effect the stars would have made on me that night. On the night I had gotten drunk, they had made me feel as though I were a “nothing” in a universe of “everything,” but now it was so dark. It was as though there was no light and everything had fallen off the face of the planet. The ocean, the birds, and the trees – they had all gone to sleep for me. I was left in a world where everyone and everything had gone away. For a moment I believed it and panicked from the loneliness. There was nothing left, as though the universe had taken everything from me. But then there was movement again and all the other things came back. The sea began to roar, the sky was there, still covered in gray clouds; except there were no people. Life was still gone! I was so lonely. They had all gone. Everywhere, the houses were empty, but it was dark and the island went to sleep early. Of course there was no one, but even so, it made the “all alone” seep in. Again I thought I was going mad, but it left when I saw someone.
At last, a person! Ahead, at some paces, a man staggered to me. He didn’t see me, but I saw him. It was a good sight, for I was tired from the loneliness and far from the central part of town where I might have found someone and where the lights from the pubs still shined. What a lucky sight, I thought. He must have come from a bar... As I got closer, the scent of a familiar drunkard hit, like the heavy cologne from a young teen. The drunk approached me and commenced the outpouring of his grief. Since I didn’t leave, he gained confidence and poured out his soul. He began by saying how bad the world was to him and continued onward in a series of cutoff-stories that made no sense (but to him they were all well formulated). He rambled on, as a drunk does, and I soon became his mentor, listening carefully to his despondency.
It was well with me. It took me from myself. I began to feel for this drowning man. His corruption was a thing of pity and yet the things he said made sense. The world had hurt him and had dejected his ideas. Who else would listen to the man? I had to. The things he said were positive, although the world had shunned him.
If he had been given a chance, things would be better. He was no worse than the professor, as he put it, although I disagreed when he said they both deserved to lie in the same gutter. And yet the blame was in the right place. The world, or this island, had made him the way he was. Perhaps it was partially his own fault and he could have done something about it, but how could he fight when no one wanted him anymore. Everywhere, he was shunned, so who could he turn to? I was listening, but I didn’t belong to this place, and yet the ideas he spoke were universal.
All over the world, everyone did the same to the destitute. And where was the help they all promised? It was nowhere. I had to do something about it. I had to help this man. Maybe someone would listen and he could be helped, otherwise how could we help ourselves? If no one did anything, he would remain a burden on society; he would be left an outcast. If they all pushed while he groped for help, he would always remain as a canker to the throat of our species. There he would eat at our society and leave us as a people that never evolve beyond its own problems. And he would be the one to suffer and deal with the pain; left helpless and left alone as before.
We had to do something; otherwise we would never advance into a better race. I had to tell someone to help this man. There had to be someone who would listen. I took him and made him come with me, assuring him that things would get better and that he would be fine.
“We are going to get you some help,” I said and kept him comforted. His groveling words continued but they bounced from my skin. I was focused on a bigger issue that he could not see now.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s right.” I answered, to whatever he said without paying attention, as he kept up the complaining babble. But all in good faith, to keep him occupied, so that I could take him somewhere where they would give him help. I wondered if in such a place, as this island, one could find Alcoholics Anonymous. Probably not. Someone would have to take care of him instead. It was the island’s duty. It was the burden of their social order and the responsibility had to be taken by someone.
I saw a lady as we approached the market that could definitely take the role of “savior” for this pour pathetic soul. She was a short, rounded, full-figured woman of about forty, standing four and a half feet tall. Her stature was standard on the isle for most middle-aged women. There was a rugged, but still motherly, look to her and that’s why I chose her. She was not like the sweet mom one imagines in a Betty Crocker commercial, but the more ruff and strict “bathe you quickly in a bucket of cold water after dinner,” kind of mother. M
y thoughts were ready to be poured out and I focused on what I’d say to her. I brought the man with me and approached her boldly. She was disturbed by the intrusion and backed off from us annoyed. The smell of the alcohol must have hit hard and put her on the offensive instantly. (Nobody likes a drunk to come near, especially when it’s dark and one’s all alone.)
“Nobody loves me,” was the first thing she heard. She answered with a gesture of disgust and was about to back away, when I interrupted.
“Oiga dama, this man needs of our help. Can you offer some assistance to him?”
She looked at me as though I were a quack and then stood for some seconds to look us over. We must have both appeared to her as drunkards, but I made it very clear to her that I was perfectly sober. The only one that needed any help was the man next to me, and that was why I had stopped her.
“There has to be something done to help this man.” I said, “I’m sure there are no public social service places here, so we must get together and help this man.”
“Why should I help him?” she answered, looking at me with another look as though I were a stupid man. “He looks like he’s already been helped by a jar of liquor.”
“But that’s my point miss, we can’t turn our backs on him; he is part of a larger problem that we must make better.”
“And why should I go out of my way to help this bum.”
“To better your culture! If we can get this man to change, then eventually he might contribute something back to you and everyone else some day.” It all made perfect sense to me, but why she stood there and listened to it all was a mystery. Looking back, I must have looked like a complete fool, standing there babbling about some philosophy I’d just come up with and trying to sell it to her.
“I’m not going to help a bum,” she said. “He’s there because he wants to be and as far as I know he’s better off dead. He’s worse than drain blockage. He’s a leech! And so are you!”
“No ma’am, how can we turn our backs to...” But she didn’t take the trouble to hear me out, because I was just nuts to her. She didn’t even let me finish my sentence, but walked away and left me speaking to the wind.
“You can go with him, I don’t care where, and do what you want. Why don’t you both go drink some more?”
With that she pushed us out of the way and was gone to do whatever she was going to do at that time of night. Actually, there were still a few people out, even though it was late for island standards.
They were all busy going about their own business, so when I stopped any of them, they all expressed the same type of feelings towards us as the lady had, wanting us to drop dead on the spot. That provoked great animosity inside me. They were all greedy boogers and were the most selfish people I had ever seen. The gentle and kind nature, that was so apparent when I had first arrived on the island (especially when they had all helped when Noelia was sick), had vanished. Now they were just selfish and cruel.
What a mean world, I thought; it shuns its inhabitants in a very haughty fashion. My determination was to do something about that, even if there was nothing self-evident to be done. The bum had already left me and gone his own way, but I decided to watch him and at the very least keep a look out on him. That way I could keep him from harm, as far as I could manage. It wasn’t as big a commitment as I’d hoped to find for him, but it was as much as I could handle. And considering my frame of mind, that was a lot.
At least watching him kept me from my own personal slump for a time, which was by far the most menacing thing I could encounter. I ran across Noelia the next day, without knowing how I got there. Somehow I inadvertently placed myself back on her porch.
Whether by my own unconsciousness, or my deep love for her, I know not; but I was not a pleasant man to deal with even so. I had probably not showered in days and smelled like a sewer, most likely having had some of the bum’s mouth-cologne spilled all over me. Not to mention my hair and clothes must have been a mess.
We spoke, but she wasn’t very attracted to me, I could tell, despite her fervent efforts to be kind. She brought some tea out for me (some maté), and gave my face a caress. It was pity mixed with love. She hoped I would snap out of whatever it was that was wrong with me soon and tried to speak to me about it. We took a walk to try and sort things out, and things began to look better, but I went back to my old ways almost right away. She was so kind, the kindest soul in the world, but despite her best efforts to make us a happy couple, I remained how I was, a bitter and unpleasant man. If it wasn’t for her, I would have turned into a crazy man from that moment on, but she kept me from that with her maté and all the nice words she said. We kept on talking, even though I was quite deranged about my job and life.
Being close to her that day both helped and made things worse. It reminded me of how my problems had started, but it was more than that now. I had begun to slip into some sort of pit of disembodied lunacy; and yet I did not care. I even realized it! But I did not give it the least bit of concern. And yet her voice kept me there, between limbo and our sane planet. I was a tightrope walker, an unskilled performer who cheated by holding somebody’s hand through the performance.
It was a sorry thing, at its best. Blindness had swallowed my eyes, tormenting me with simple matters while reality fled. I felt it, as the blood leaving through an open gash. It was apparent, but there was nothing to be done. It was as though I stood there gazing as something better left me, but was without the strength to keep it from going. Beside me was what was worth the pain and all the struggle. Beside me she was worth a thousand flights through oceans of strange lands. But I was unaware of the reality. I feigned beneath a blanket of poetic darkness and it made me dwell in isolation. I was shadowed by my anguish and blanketed by sadness, as a cloud covering in darkness. It was all I could do to keep my sanity, though she could have brought me through it, had I let her.
Yet things that matter, shatter. Dreams that are won are lost and never found again. When one reaches and accidentally finds the place one was looking for, it is hard to recognize. Instead is found the hole to escape. Something meaningless, but yet worth losing it all. The rest of life’s days, if they are granted, to search for the lost, but never again to recover it.
Thus the next day I spent without her. I should have called on her, but my feet took me elsewhere. It was curious that I crossed ways with the drunkard again. He was in his natural state: drunk.
Recognizing me, with a mind acute as an eagle’s, he came running, his memory intact from the night before. Don’t drunks get stupid as they drink? I thought. It was a thought to digest. I had talked to several drunkards during my life. Most of them had shown some form or other of rational thinking, even though the things they said were not of the most interesting subjects. But even the sewer sometimes has something meaningful to say. But who would care to listen to runoff sewage, with all its foul-mouth language, instead of one who’s sober. I guess that’s why most drunks go unheard.
One of these drunkards had been my uncle. Several years earlier, before his death, when I was a young man, my uncle and I had been close. Oftentimes, I had listened to all his insane conversations, although irregularly he’d stir my mind with a great ideal. But most of it was mixed with erroneous gibberish spilled from the recesses of a corroding alcoholic mind. He could have been a great man, for he was intellectually stirring and we developed a relationship closer than he had with any other member of my extended family (probably because I was the only one that took him seriously, or listened when he was drunk – which was always). But he wasted it all through his alcohol.
I stopped for a moment to think about that. I was a hypocrite for thinking that about my uncle. Was I not the next to follow down the cold dark destructive path of pity, if not by a different way? Maybe so. Maybe that’s why I was the only one who saw a real person inside him; an individual with feelings and with every right to hold some sort of association with society.
Now this drunkard in front of me, with his p
athetic ritual of life, reminded me of my uncle and how I had longed so desperately to help him while he was yet alive. Perhaps it struck on an old wound; one that had hurt deeply for years. When my uncle died, I felt a soul-wrenching pull that painted feelings of guilt across my chest. I had felt the cause of it for a long time. I had felt inadequate and for several years withdrew from getting close to anyone again. His death had inflicted me so with loneliness. Not only had he left, but I had abandoned him as well and that was the worse part of it all. A few months before his death, I had resolved to ignore his problem, as the rest of the family. Not because I didn’t love him any more, but because I had become exasperated.
So many years, I had tried. I’d talked him into quitting many times and gotten him to go to his AA meetings to get sober. I had always been the first to be at his feet, begging and pleading him to get detoxified. He had listened, but always to go back to the damn bottle, until the day I stopped trying. And then he seemed to only get worse.
I even began looking down on him, pitying him as the rest of the household did, treating him as though he were an unteachable dog. He tried with his statements: “Nobody loves me... Everybody hates me.” but I ignored... Perhaps the loss of my concern, even though my love for him had never died, was the final straw and his will to live surrendered. I do not think I was all to blame (for who can take all responsibility for another man’s life), but I cannot help to feel that if I had tried, or never stopped trying, he would have stayed alive.
Now there was this transient here, to remind me of the whole thing and to bring my guilt back into remission. Another Robert to save. He was my chance again, to make it all right. But there would be no Robert, only my own life crashing and burning now. There was no lift to give to another man’s soul when my own needed the most attention. But I did not care. Here was a soul and I would save it! “Yes!” I screamed, “Here is my chance.” And I recovered again my will that I’d lost long ago. Where it would take me would only be seen in the char and hell of tomorrow.
