SoC 2:4

Somewhere Over The Threshold

 

A white door opens. A tall bald man collapses his umbrella and walks through the threshold. He enters a hall painted a dark enamel blue. The blue brings to mind blue whales. He imagines one rolling, immense, on the surf. It makes the blood rush up to his eyes so he shuts them briefly. He takes a deep breath and steps over a black silk cushion lying in the middle of the floor. Judging from the long white hairs webbing the silk, it belongs to a cat or another small animal, though he didn’t see this animal on his only other visit several weeks before, and did not notice the cushion, nor did he see a pet about the place. He pokes the cushion with his umbrella, sprinkling water drops upon it that bead up then trickle off the pillow in thin streams, some liquid clinging to the long white hairs. The man rubs his damp furrowed forehead with his hand and shakes more drops over the pillow. He sees a tarnished canister of hammered brass pushed close to the wall and with a natural reflex plunges the umbrella into it. His teeth gleam like yellow glass in the blue gloom of the hall.

He hears something then, a soft sound, a whisper. He freezes and cocks his ears. He fears nothing, but sometimes finds himself unsure of this; sometimes little pricks of doubt tickle him when facing the unknown. How get around it? Clench your teeth. Close your eyes for a moment. Think brave thoughts. Self-talk works only if no one else listens, and since he can’t be sure that someone isn’t kneeling at the end of the hall, keenly attentive, he dismisses this option outright. No, he closes his eyes, and fills his lungs with the dead floral air of the hall. If he has to he will fight. He will fight to the death, make no mistake. Despite self-doubts he carries a truncheon of resentment around with him, unafraid to club detractors when they come around.

He opens his eyes and moves his feet, clad in black leather half-boots that he thinks look very cool. He paid a fortune for them. When he wears them for more than a couple of hours his feet bleed profusely, but he loves the boots and wears them as often as his feet permit, praying that in time they will expand enough to stop destroying the toes especially. Right now his feet feel numb, so much for that; and walking, though not easy, hurts less than when the feet are not numb. That being said, the numbness grants him an affected, clopping gate; to ambulate any distance, even a short one, he must pick up his leg from the hip and fling it forward. Up, and forward. Up, and forward. Sometimes upon impact the ankle turns and this hurts. He bites his lip as he flings his legs forward, one at a time, and progresses through the hall, toward its end, where perhaps someone loiters or waits for him in ambush.

An animal? It’s a cat sitting there, a deep blue cat with green eyes, nonplused by the intrusion, the clopping gate, the baldness. Only that morning he shaved his head completely clean, after suffering clownish pattern-baldness for a decade. In the end his hair looked like a pair of steel wool horns and rather than pay a barber to clean him up he purchased an electric clipper and did the job himself. He freezes again. He thinks he hears another sound but silence envelops his stillness. He holds his breath—one count, two counts, three—but feeling lightheaded stops this and continues to breathe normally, through his nose, though a slight congestion amplifies his efforts loudly and annoyingly enough for him to switch to his mouth, which open now dries like paint. Less is more, he reminds himself, less is more. But what does that mean to him? It means that he hates himself for overreaching at times, for making the big gesture, or saying the big thing, when smallness is required, modesty. Modesty? But what does modesty have to do with it? Less is more.

He moves. His legs tire after a few steps. The end of the hall seems remote. He forgets it being this long, this exhausting. Maybe he has picked a bad time to come, the wrong time. The wrong time. Perhaps that explains everything. He checks his chronometer, pushing the glow-button. Ha, only ten o’clock. Early still. Ten o’clock. But now it dawns on him that he doesn’t know if it’s ten o’clock in the morning or ten o’clock in the evening. He forgets the last meal he ate. He strokes his temple and probes his memory banks. That’s one of the problems. The drugs shoot his memory full of holes. The drugs. He has no choice but to take them. He doesn’t even know what they are but they help him cope with his rage and his visions. No one has ever bought his chronicles of these visions wholesale. Their authenticity always comes into question. White-cloaked men and women with steely spectacles and aluminum clipboards write down the descriptions as he enunciates them, grandiose tableaus of winged dragons and spiraling stairs and elfish beings wearing green scalloped garments and speaking to him mentally, for their mouths never move. Whatever, he’s here now, connected to this moment, to this progression through the blue hall.

At last the end of the hall appears, narrow, black-framed, leading to a room lit with racks of votive candles. The blue cat glares at him with its green eyes as he crosses the threshold into the candlelight and soft scents of the room. He has been there before, he reckons, for in the haze of his mind he recalls some details: heavy crimson curtains, the great oak table, the metalwork chairs, the suit of armor in the corner, the stuffed ostrich. Yes, he recalls these things, and in the soft candlelight, they come to life for him again, connect to the images in his mind, no longer mere fancies or vague hallucinations, and anchor him to the present. To the present. This is it, he thinks. It feels so nice.

He opens his mouth to speak but stops, his tongue clinging to his lower teeth like a slug. The racks of candles tremble like trays of liquid flame, causing his eyes to water and his vision to blur. He dries the eyes with his sleeve and blinks until they normalize. Now he sneezes violently. Once, twice. The room resounds. He shakes his head. He blocks one nostril and blows stuff out the other, then switches. He frowns at the armor, knowing no one mans it. He looks at the ostrich, beak agape, eyes sweetly lashed, and wonders how it met its end. He stares at his hands. The fingernails need trimming, the palms look like pouches or sacs of red cream. He has never liked his hands. The fingers lack flesh, and the thumbs appear dislocated. Also, he regrets not having veins on the back of his hands like most people, most men anyway. His head aches. He slaps his temples. The sting lingers long after the blows, but grumbling helps nothing. On to business.

He wonders about that. His choppy flow of thoughts, however, militates against a clearer impression of what that business is exactly; maybe something on his person gives a hint. He searches through the pockets of his pants, his jacket, and his shirt and finds but some loose change and a yellow book of matches with nothing written on it, not even a manufacturer’s label. Strange. And yet he does not smoke. He quit the filthy habit long ago and yet now, reminded of the years and years of smoking, yearns for a cigarette. It hurts to think too much and he feels that this is happening, that he is overtaxing his brain. He has to be careful. He spits on the floor to get the bad taste out of his mouth but this does nothing. He blows into his hand and sniffs the sour milk of his breath with revulsion. That explains why the lady at the diner cringed when he asked for a coffee to go. Then she reared her head and squalled like a gull. Had he known he would have spoken into his hand and saved her the indignity.

What he really craves is a beer. A nice frosty mug of lager, some kind of lager, yes. He can’t remember the last time he drank one. What’s wrong with him? Sometimes you get so caught up in the business of life you forget to stop and suck back a beer, relax a spell, take it easy for a few minutes, live in the moment with nothing on your mind, nothing compelling you to move from point A to point B, nothing distracting you from a crisp draught of bliss. A long time ago he worked with this Sicilian man named Charlie in construction who told him that where there is death there is hope. He never quite understood what Charlie meant by that, and he had spent many hours thinking about it, never satisfied with what his mind contrived from the statement. You mustn’t get trammeled by trifles, he thinks, smiling at the precious phrase. He has a way with words, he feels, though no one has ever confirmed this. Truth is, he has always wanted to be a poet, yet life permits only few at a time, true poets that is. After reading some of the great poets he knows that his talents lay elsewhere, that in order to write worthy poems you have to be daemonic and he knows he is not.

Now he has to stop and think for a moment, draw out of himself what latent process or set of procedures reside in his depths, in his blue grottoes. But flawed thoughts surface instead of helpful ones, ugly, clumsy thoughts staggering forth like little fish-faced men with broken ankles. Ineptitude amuses us in cartoons or comic films but in real life it deflates the spirit like a rusty pin pricking a balloon. He gnashes his teeth and debates what to do next, whether to comb the place, find other rooms, though he remembers none, or closets, or nooks, perhaps a bathroom, he needs to use one, or whether to stay put and look inside himself further, dig deeper, tune in to the inner music of his being and let it sing to him in limpid notes, easily comprehensible and readily translatable into thought.

For thinking makes us different from everything else, he reckons. Nothing around us buckles and hums with thought, animate or not, never mind dolphins, apes, and dogs, who have yet to write down their thoughts or speak them fluently, who have yet to invent machines or fly to the moon or compose symphonies or rap tunes, never mind the squeaks and squeals, the grunting and chest-pounding, the baying, the unintelligent groaning of the other beings. Thought remains the province of human beings, as far as he knows, but he has to admit that this is not entirely clearcut to him. What if flowers feel and think, perhaps not as we do but in their own way? Ferns? Rocks? For trees certainly seem animate, thoughtful, pensive, lugubrious, sometimes shivering with delight, or fear in the event of fire, no friend of trees. What is all this? Just noise in the mind.

He paid a steep price for his deficiencies, finding himself quite often short of words, short of thoughts, limited and constrained to the point of despair. But that being said, when his mother wrote him off way back, she thought he would die shortly after he left the family home, die. You’ll wind up in the gutter! she screamed, flailing at him with her grey fists, her grey hair flying like mop strands. Dead as a dog in the gutter! But he did not wind up in the gutter. He did not die. Not that he can be accused of living a robust life, no. He has reservations about many things, many things. His head hurts a great deal and he moves around with no destination and little idea of what to do or where to go from moment to moment, yet moment to moment he continues moving and somehow makes progress, yes he does, and continues, and plans to continue insofar as he can, whereas his mother, purple with cancer and various other sicknesses, died alone in her bed, unmourned and missed by no one. So much for his mother. His father never entered the picture, so much for his father.

A cool draught filters through the room as though someone has opened a window, trembling the candle flames and whirling up dust devils on the dark parquet floor. The scent of burning wax fills his nostrils, quite pleasant really, reminding him of antique churches and beliefs. He once used religion to pillow his anguish, to smother it, but in the end could not decide from the various gods, so he abandoned religion and instead devoted himself to transcendental meditation. But he could never sit still long enough for the meditation to benefit him, so he gave up that too. He has considered yoga, but the idea of it offends him, he doesn’t know why.

He swings his head left and right but notices nothing out of the ordinary. He tries to catch a glimpse of the other rooms through the numerous doorways and thresholds, but they remain obscure to him, their goings on vague, their furniture unseen, and he has no memory of them from his previous visit. Indeed that visit takes on the aspect of a half-remembered dream. He fails to summon the details from his memory no matter how he probes and how he tries to mentally retrace his steps. No, it doesn’t come. None of it.

He steps toward the ostrich, eyeing its jeweled eyes, anxious to touch the feathers tufting on its muscular flanks. The yellow beak looks lacquered and the gape convinces one of nothing if it means to indicate awe or astonishment. Why the ostrich anyway? Was it hunted down by the owner of the building? By the tenant of the room? A man or woman with a rifle took down one of these silly birds. For what was God thinking when He conceived of the ostrich? This isn’t fun, all this mystery. He yearns for redoubtable monoliths, animate or not. A trip to Easter Island would do wonders for his spirits except for the mystery of the statues themselves. This would, over time, drive him off the cliff.

As it is, he decides to investigate the suit of armor, approaching it with some trepidation. Absolute certainty evades him, so he accepts the possibility that the armor will suddenly lift its pike and stick him in the guts with it. But when he gazes through the silvery visor the black emptiness behind it convinces him that it is nothing but a shell, nothing but metal plate and mail. It looks too small for him or he would try it on. He eyeballs it for a long time, imagining thundering robed steeds and jeweled shields and lances, lethal jousts and cheering crowds dressed anachronistically. It takes him away for a moment but then he returns and decides he might try on the armor anyway. He gives the room a quick scan—sees the blue cat sleeping by the threshold—and puts his hands on the knight’s shoulders. The cold metal makes his skin ache but he does not let this stop him. He has made his decision and nothing will subvert it. He lowers the armor to the floor and begins dismantling it.

He finds the armor chilly and snug but surprisingly light and flexible. Once he has most of it on his body, including the hammered chest-plate and clacking shoulder-flaps, and the cumbersome knee braces, he adjusts the crotch area, where a protective leather codpiece has become entangled with his testicles, causing him more discomfort than pain, though shortly after disentangling the works he has to sit down on the floor and rock to and fro until that delayed pain passes, the armor clattering as he does this. One can go berserk if one considers all the beastly little impediments and blockages to true felicity. True felicity: is it possible? Is it asking too much, to be felicitous? All he wants is a lock on one bloody thing in this life, a simple guarantee that one thing, just one, will work out okay, will go without a hitch, will smoothly fly, that one thing will not cause him physical pain, mental anguish, emotional distress, or spiritual dissolution.

Less is more, he remembers. Less is more. In full armor now, he steps back and forth on the floor and pretends to thrust a sword. He lacks a sword and the pike seems excessive. He doesn’t want to knock over any candles and start a fire, say. He would roast like a hind in that oven, he would. Still, despite these considerations, the armor gives him a sense of indestructibility that he likes and that he finds intoxicating. He wants to go out and run at someone, maybe spear them with the pike. That must have been very satisfying in olden times, running at someone and sticking them in the guts, then working the thing until the subject was eviscerated. One needed talent for such an operation. One needed to be cold-blooded as well, though the armor and the visor provided some degree of anonymity.

Emboldened by his costume, he charges the ostrich, hoping for what exactly it is unclear, and knocks it over. The beaked head snaps off the long neck and slides into a corner where it strikes the floorboards with a clop. This does not make him happy. He thrashes under the armor, buckling the chest-plate and bending the elbow shields. Now the armor feels constrictive and he struggles more as panic shoves in with him, screeching with its shrill white face and causing his knees to weaken. He collapses to the floor like a cashiered robot and screams so loud it hurts his own ears. Then he falls silent and still. One of the racks of burning candles has spilled to the floor, scattering its wax and flames, catching the edge of one of the crimson curtains and setting it ablaze with a terrific whoosh. Up it goes like a torch, spreading its flame to its brother curtain that whooshes downward like a red flare and then rolls back up with a black-edged, swirling ball of flames. What in the name of God, have I done? he wonders, trying to get up but unable due to the crumpled metal encasing his body. The more he tries to remove it the more it collapses and tightens on him, digging.

The flames swirl loudly as the draught gusts in. I must get up, he thinks, and he turns himself to his belly and assumes a push-up position. But when he tries to push, his hands slip on the parquet tiles and he falls on his face with a squelch. He had lifted the visor to see better and thus left his nose exposed. Now it gushes like a fountain, spilling blood over the armor. Get a grip, he thinks, or you will roast. He flips to his back and tries to raise his torso. This succeeds only in bending the armor into his stomach, and lacerating his flesh with one of the torn metal edges. What pain! He screams again but blood fills his sinuses and his mouth and he finds himself choking on his own blood. The flames course through the room, seizing the headless ostrich and tossing it about before crisping it black. Then they sit on the metalwork chairs at the great oak table, as if conversing or finishing a fine meal with fiery Irish coffees, holding off the inevitable for a few beats. He watches with stupefaction as the flames lean to each other, roaring with hilarity.

This isn’t working. Whatever it is. The beached whale makes no bones about wanting to sleep when it hits the dune. What else does it want? Swimming twenty-four seven can get tiring. You never get used to harpoons and killer whales and sharks. Oh yeah, the sharks. And what about the tourists bobbing about in their white boats wanting what exactly? What the fuck do they want? Then they come ashore and look at the whale with pity in their eyes before prodding it and poking it and trying to roll it back into the sea where it left of its own volition. No one else rowed it to shore. Or is it only about hogging the beach? The sun burns the skin. The strong sun. The surfers want space to wind up. The whale takes up so much of the space. Hot sun. Before he came to the beach he felt he had to address a number of issues, but he lost the urge to do this once he caught sight of land.

So much for the mental whale. The flames meanwhile roar and lick our visitor’s limbs. He manages to remove some braces, not much else. Turned into charcoal, the great oak table crumbles into glowing embers. Blood continues gouting from his nose. What a mess. It’s almost comical. Then he thinks about the cat. Will it survive? Perhaps it wriggled off to another room, if there are other rooms, there must be.

With a tremendous heave he lifts himself off the floor and erects his trunk. Thick smoke chokes his lungs and burns his eyes and he waves his arms before him. The metal of the armor softens. He blows his nose and hunks of clotted blood spray from his nostrils. He steams like a kettle, white jets shooting from the joints and the neck. He stumbles about searching for a threshold, flopping his feet for the ankles have not healed during this time and he still ambulates in his unique though ineffectual fashion, nothing will change that even with the passage of years. He considers the plight of the whale, still stranded on the beach while people wearing woolly sweaters wet him with buckets of water. Insane what earnest people will do for attention. Camera crews assemble and shoot the touching moment, broadcasting it world wide. He finds the threshold at last and lurches for it.

But his armored feet clip one of the curling parquet tiles and send him headlong into the wall. He hits it like a torpedo and shoots through the chipboard, landing on the other side, in one of the other rooms he considered earlier. There is furniture in this room, couches and divans, and people sit in it leaning forward with their hands folded together, rocking slightly, their eyes like lamps. He stands up, his armor creaking and clacking, and brushes ashes off his crinkled chest-plate. The people look interchangeable though they are all different from one another. He feels nothing coming from them. He thinks of saying something but what?

One of the men stands up from a green silk divan and undoes his belt. He whips it onto the floor like a snake. What does this gesture signify? The others watch and seem to be waiting for a response to this action. If hostile, what will the man expect to achieve against a man in armor? He looks weak, feeble-minded perhaps. Children also occupy the couches and appear well-behaved despite their anemic faces. But it’s all in the eyes, the eyes tell him everything. He wants to say that he has nothing for them tonight, or this morning, for it might have been morning after all. But is he in hell, after all? He hasn’t considered that, and now that he does it makes sense.

Now the whale appears again in his mind’s eye, a great blue brute of a thing. What are they doing to it, the earnest ones? Rolling it out to sea. But he doesn’t want to go back, he refuses. They refuse to understand. They deserve to be shot dead, thinks the whale, perhaps, in another conception of the whale. Thought leads to progress; progress finds an exit waiting for a customer. First the green-eyed cat. Forgetting that it is evening the two creatures leave the premises intact.

One asks the other if they got paid for the gig. The other plays the sphinx, offers no reply. Inscrutable is as inscrutable does. We all play that game when it suits us, when we have nothing to say or too much to say. The armor surrenders to the elements in time, that is something worth mentioning. The armor, the armor, it was never about the armor, about being a knight, finding a place in the chess game. The cat, less astute, ponders several other mysteries. Answers come years later, after the cat has spent much time reflecting on the aforementioned matters.