Totentanz (Part 3)

9. The Portrait Of A Lady

Everything was in fast-forward motion, as if it were controlled by a huge remote control by a god-know-who. Could be recollect any memory of his way back from the hospital? Any bumps and hitches had his attention? Something autonomic had taken over his body, propelling him forward but just like a machine, there’s no thinking.

The fast-forward only stopped when he was back to his home, after managing to beg or to put it a more evasive term, persuade his daughter to send him back from the hospital. He was glad that he still had chance to break free from the draconian nurses and cemetery-like hospital.

Back to his house, the first thing he did was to inhale the scent of his house. 2 weeks in the hospital made it such a long time that even a faint scent of his room nearly brought tears to his eyes. Sitting up straight on the wheel chair, he lost his usual agility but at least, he was not bedridden, a fact which he cherished as much as his life.

There’s a family portrait hung on the wall of the living room. It’s so huge that it nearly cover the whole wall and some of his visitors ever commented that the portrait was more pressing than the wall. Pressing? He was wondering what’s more ‘pressing’ than the wall, which was an eyesore due to the poor interior design of this apartment.

“Oh, just forget about the portrait,” he wondered since the portrait had become so irritating. Before being admitted to the hospital, every morning, when he was going out for breakfast, he would stop in front of the pictures and savour any detail he might have missed in his previous visit to the pictures. It seemed in every ‘visit’, a term coiled by him, there would be a fresh surprise awaiting him.

Two days before the operation, he spotted a mole, which he never knew existed, on top of his cheekbone. There it’s, not very obvious, but apparent enough to stir his curiosity. Was that an omen? Was he destined to be paralyzed? One day before he spotted the mole, he found out there were exactly three lines of wrinkles on his meticulously-tailored tuxedo.

Portrait inspection used to be his daily routine, but not today. He was in no mood to entertain the ridiculous portrait. Neither could he explain the dissatisfaction brewing inside him. Hence, he put his blame on the strenuous operation and the haunting atmosphere of the hospital.

Sitting on the cozy couch now, he felt a sudden affiliation to the handle of the couch. He placed his palms on the wooden handles and summoned all his strength to his palms. Slowly and cautiously, he used his arms to support his whole body up from the couch. Panting, he was excited nonetheless. There’s a message behind this, certainly there’s one and he didn’t need much time to figure it up.

He could stand up again. The strength, which was once draining away from him had found the way back to his body. There’s no doubt that he could walk again. Amidst the euphoria, he ignored his daughter calling from the kitchen. “This is my world, this is my world,” he muttered.

Then everything was set in fast-forward motion again. Somehow, he was carried back to his bed by his son-in-law without any awareness. He couldn’t recall any detail of his ‘exodus’ from the living room back to his own room. Perhaps, that was the sign of his recovery. “I could walk as fast as this, it’s not over,” he could hardly swallow his exuberance. But, he was too lethargic and he dozed off soon he was put back to his bed.

He woke up 2 hours later. As phantasmagoric as it felt, the nap he just was laced with incongruous juxtapositions. Visions, intertwined with contradictions danced like a baroness in his dream, as gracefully as it seemed. After this nap, he discovered not only his visions had been altered, but also his five senses had been enhanced.

His apartment was on the twelfth floor, but he could hear distinct chattering of the children playing in the playground of the park. Terrified by his newly found ability, he forced himself up, hands on the frame of the window. He could barely raise himself up from the bed but that’s sufficient for him to get a full view on everything outside of the window.

Then, he saw something bizarre with his own eyes, with eyesight newly enhanced. There were no children playing in the playground. Instead, he witnessed some other things that looked very familiar like he had just visited one by one. “I need brainstorming,” he surmised. And he outlined what he saw into ten parts:

1. There’s an ice-cream vendor with lilac colour umbrella. A boy was standing under the umbrella, extending his hands warmly to a couple, presumably his parents.
2. A man was lying on the bed, with heavy bandages wrapping around his head. A lady was holding his hands and wailing heartily. The boy was looking straight into his mum as if he were searching for something he didn’t even know.
3. 98 people were at a cemetery. The two who were visible was the boy and the wailing lady. She was hollering like a beast while the coffin was lowered into the crypt. Confusions broke out, like an earthquake when the lady pointed her finger to the boy and shoulder, “It’s your crime we have to shoulder the punishment.”
4. In a lavishly designed mansion, the lady was holding a bottle with label ‘malathion’. She shut the door of her room and poured the content of that bottle into her small mouth.
5. The boy was standing at the doorway, gingerly, he pushed open the door. He didn’t scream when he saw a body lying lifelessly on the ground and bubbles were oozing out from its mouth like boiling water. A faint smile was hanging on his face.
6. The boy was now a teenager. He was in his room, writing some kinds of notes. The handwriting was nearly illegible but everybody could tell it was repetition of ‘crime and punishment’.
7. A man was standing by the window, looking down from his apartment. Before this, he had arranged all the furniture and cleaned all the corners of the house until the hose was sparkling clean. Then, without any hesitation, he mounted the window frame and pushed open the grill. With the same faint smile on his face, he leaped into the glorious evening sun.
8. A man was making love to his wife in a small room. Amid the ferocious love-making and gusty groaning, his wife said, ‘it’s not your crime’.
9. That man was at the same cemetery again. Despite the heavy rain, both of knees were anchored in the moist soil. People could no longer distinguish whether the moist on his face was tears or the rain. The tolling of a bell could be heard from a distant church.

Before figuring out the tenth part, as if struck by thunderbolt, his whole body went stiff. “I know what this is!” The visions no longer seemed strange to him with every pieces of puzzle came together in the right orientation.

“No!” he howled dejectedly.


10. The Heart Of Darkness

“Let me guess, the ten pictures or visions, they all are in metallic black colour right? You don’t have to answer me and I know you won’t. Why black? Why metallic? Story of darkness, maybe… There are many parts you yourself can’t possibly expound right? Pardon me for my haughtiness, you seem uncertain with your own story. Firstly, why the guy had to shoulder the punishment for the crime he never committed? Unlike my story, there are causes and effects. Nobody ran from the responsibilities. I think you try too hard to give this story a splendid ending but you fail ultimately. Tell me, are you trying to reconstruct a irreversible destructive ending? There are no ways, let’s stop those illusions…you are talking about life! Not something you can toy with.

When the darkness slowly encroaches in your story, you must be aware of that. Instead, you try to dispel the glowing darkness and build a whole new make-believe world. How naïve and how amateur you are as a story teller…”

I listened quietly to his forceful comments. At certain points of his comments, I wished I could stop him but I refrained myself from doing that. Perhaps, because deep down inside me, I knew perfectly that he was right. But when my weaknesses were exposed in such unscrupulous way, it’s hard for me to control my fury anymore.

He fell silent suddenly. Instinctively, I turned to my back and to my dismay, the ‘stalker’ was back, it was just outside of the plaza. It was slowly approaching me and I didn’t even have much time to consider my options before I sprinted to the exit of the plaza.

As I scrambled to the exit for life, I still could hear, “You are a lousy story-teller!”


11. Atonement

He was now flying, without wings and wind. As he plunged down to the hard concrete ground, he rearranged all the visions. Satisfied now, because he had finally freed himself from the agony, the agony of the boy, the teenager and the man who always perceived this world as a shallow and closed globe. Once he was airborne, surprisingly, he became blind.

On a spur of moment, he was panicked. This wasn’t his choice, to die blindly. He wanted to see, wanted to observe, wanted to expound everything image he received. But soon as he passed by the eleventh floor, he was relieved to know that he hadn’t gone entirely oblivious. Although his eyes no longer functioned, a new system had replaced it and made his eyesight, which he once found indispensable obsolete and redundant.

Without gravity, he could no longer cogitate. New systems, new molecules, new memories had systematically fused into his body seamlessly but he had lost the ability to analyze. Before he reached tenth floor, he realized he had become a photocopier, who always received information faster than processed it. This mere idea saddened but he was relieved.

By the window of the tenth floor, he could ‘see’ a happy family, sitting down by a round table and praying together. How felicitous they were! How joyful this kind of life must be! This again punctured his ego even though he couldn’t care less now because he’s gaining speed now.

As he passed by each floor, he received new information but he hardly processed any of them. And then he also missed out few floors like eighth floor and fifth floor carelessly. Praying silently in his heart now, he wished this would be the last free fall he would ever have. Now, he was just one second away from the bone-cracking moment. But before plunging to the ground, he promised himself he would recollect what he noticed during his free-fall.

The windows of second, third, seventh and eighth floor were not opened. The residents of fourth and ninth floor were catching ‘Prison Break’ on the television. A middle-aged man whom he never knew was reading ‘Moby Dick’ by the window of tenth floor. Why closed windows? Why ‘Prison Break’? Why ‘Moby Dick?

He never had an opportunity to figure out the reasons just before the imminent collisions because his mind was already preoccupied by a book placed on a table by the window of his own apartment.

He mumbled, “Atonement,” just before a blood-curdling scream silenced everything in motion.


12. Totentanz

I ran out from the plaza, anticipating the collisions with the ‘stalker’ but to my utter amazement, it’s not there. Not only it’s no longer there, the street wasn’t there as well. I turned to my back and the plaza had vaporized already as well as Mr Average.

They were all gone! No lamppost, no ‘malice’, no ‘stalker’, no ‘crime and punishment’… The only thing I could see from my position was a bandwagon. It just stood there, empty but finely decorated. I approached the bandwagon cautiously, worrying the sly ‘stalker’ could strike me at anytime.

But as I edged closer to the bandwagon, my worries slowly degenerated into some sort of void but the emptiness was soon refilled by the excitement. The excitement was almost cult-like and it attracted me like a big magnet with unholy strength. The closer I was to the odd bandwagon, the stronger the attraction, of course I meant psychologically.

And then, I heard Totentanz once again.

I jumped on the bandwagon and without any warning, it set into motion. Fought or fled? I decided to stay for a while without letting my gut down. As the bandwagon moved, stably, forward to a place I couldn’t see using my own naked eyes. Somehow, the flawless piano solo conveyed something to me, ‘just rest, my son,’ and so I fall asleep. It’s a peaceful slumbering. Neither nightmares nor any worry intruded my tranquility and so when I was awake, I couldn’t recall how long had I been out. But when I woke up, I found out ‘Totentanz’ was no longer reverberating.

All I could hear was the distant chanting.
Procession of death,
Preceded by hallucinations,
Starts where it ends.

Fragments of stories,
No longer sound,
Buried deep into consciousness.

O, Holy Spirit at Pentecost,
O, Unholy Apparition of Beelzebub,
Gather and debate.

Where it goes,
Where it ends,
Totentanz shall rule.


Sihan 13/03/08