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Hotel du Commerce

By Paul Mirabile

Paris 1970s. From Public Domain

In 1974, the modest, starless Hotel du Commerce, at 14, Rue[1] Sainte Geneviève, in Paris became my home for over six months, and its owner, Madame Marie, my adopted mother.

A young, aspiring journalist, I was sent to Paris by the editor of a worthless monthly magazine in Palermo, Sicily, to write an article on the monuments of Paris. I took up my long residence at the Hotel du Commerce for two reasons: it was very cheap — that is, ten francs a day — and conveniently located in the centre of the city, only a ten minute walk to the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Madame Marie, ninety kilos of joy and laughter, rented me a room on the fifth floor (without a lift) with two other residents: Caban across from me and Paco at the end of the corridor. The rooms had neither attached toilets – there was one for each floor — nor showers (none). Like all residents and tourists, we washed from the washbasin in our rooms. My little window looked out on to the red-tiled rooftop of a Russian bookshop.

To tell the truth I never wrote that article on the monuments of Paris. What a boring subject! On the other hand, my stay at Madame Marie’s hotel afforded me enough material to write a book — a sketch of her and her residents, their trades, joys and sorrows … their  uncelebrated destinies. My editor would have probably sacked me for this ‘breach of contract’, but as luck would have it, his magazine went out of business before my return to Palermo.

I shall never know why Madame Marie took such a liking to me. Everyday, she would invite me for coffee and a chat. We would even watch television in the evenings in her sitting-room which separated the tiny kitchen from the reception. From there she kept an alert eye on the comings and goings of everyone. She was a jolly old woman, and this, despite the loss of her husband at an early age, and the terrible events that occurred in her hotel during the Algerian war in the fifties and sixties[2]. She was indeed fat, but quick-witted with plenty of pluck. She had rolls of flesh rumbling under her eye-catching flower-dotted red robe.

“You know, I was a young girl during the Second World War. I hid some French Resistance fighters in my parents’ house in the Alps. The Germans who hunted down the French fighters couldn’t scare me with their rifles and threats. I sent them packing whenever they pounded at our door!” she would repeat proudly when I was alone with her. When her husband died, she was left on her own to manage the hotel, and in the 50’s that was no asset. Deserters, police informers, merciless OAS members[3] and their equally ruthless adversaries, the FNL[4]  all came and went causing rows, arrests, even murders. The plucky Madame Marie handled it all with her sang-froid and flair for compromise.

“My sixth-sense got me through that lot,” she would laugh, her jowls shaking. By the 1970’s, however, things had calmed down in Paris. The lodgers were mostly Japanese and American tourists with a sprinkling of North Europeans. No more brawls, police raids or murders. Madame Marie spoke no foreign language but she understood everything that she needed to understand. She had hired an old woman to clean the rooms. The sprightly widow had learned how to say in English, after having knocked on the lodger’s door at eight in the morning: “You stay or you go?” It was enough to get her point across.

Madame Marie disliked the police. She flared at their scent even before they stepped through the front door in incognito on the trail of someone except on one occasion. I shall let her narrate that exceptional episode: “How that flic[5] fooled me I’ll never forget. Dressed like a hippy, long hair, a torn knapsack, he took a room in the courtyard. He spent two weeks here and never said a word. He got in no later than eight o’clock at night. I thought he played the guitar on the metro[6] for money. Then one day, dozens of police stormed through the front door into the courtyard. I was in the sitting-room and rushed out the back door of the kitchen to see what all the hullabaloo was about. The door of one of my clients was wide open, a young bloke who used to play the guitar on the metro; he had been handcuffed by the ‘hippy’ and was being walked out. I couldn’t believe it. It was like a film. When everything settled down, a police officer came over to me and politely explained that my lodger was a notorious drug-dealer and had been under surveillance for weeks by the ‘hippy’. He apologised for the inconvenience and paid the rent for both the dealer (who hadn’t paid me) and the hippy-policeman.” Madame Marie sighed. “He’s the only flic who ever fooled me.” And she laughed her usual jolly laugh.

She got up to make some more coffee for at that moment Caban and Bebert came in for a chat, both a bit tipsy from their usual drinking bouts before, during and after work. Then Bebette made her appearance, the prostitute to whom Madame Marie ‘lent’ one of the courtyard rooms every now and then to exercise her profession. Madame Marie had no moral qualms about such professions. Everyone had to earn a living … Close behind sailed in an elderly woman whose name I no longer recall. Madame Marie considered the woman to be her best friend. She would sit in front of the television and shout insults at the politicians whom she disliked, much to the displeasure of the others, especially Bebert, who would shower her with mocking abuse. When things got too rowdy Madame Marie would shout them all down or threaten to turn them out if they didn’t settle down.

Madame Marie was at times brusque but fair. She liked Caban, the former butcher and now factory worker hailing from southern France, shy and lonely, drunk by mid-morning. He had been living in Hotel du Commerce since the late sixties. She was fond too, of Bebert, the chimney-sweep, a small, taciturn, melancholic chap straight out of Dicken’s David Copperfield, drunk before ten in the morning. He constantly coughed. His clothes were impregnated with soot and cigarette smoke. Bebert hardly spoke at the table, smoking like a chimney, drinking his coffee whilst Caban smiled and winced at the others’ ridiculous jokes and jibes. Day after day and night after night that sitting-room typified for me – and for the others, I suppose — a sanctuary of friendship and convivial exchange. Oftentimes, I read myself into a page of Balzac’s novel Le Père Goriot [7].

The other two residents rarely joined at that cheery table. One of them, Bolot, stayed in a room in the courtyard. He was a former German soldier who joined the French Foreign Legion after his capture during World War II. The other was called Paco, a Republican Spaniard, who escaped Franco’s persecutions after the Spanish Civil War[8].

I got to know them all, save Bebert. We had no time to get really acquainted. “Poor Bebert,” Madame Marie would sigh. One evening as we sat watching a film Bebert knocked at her kitchen door, then staggered in towards us, blood streaming from his mouth, drenching his night-shirt. His face was ghost white. He kept murmuring, “Madame Marie … Madame Marie,” through clenched, blood-filled teeth. The chimney-sweep appeared lost in a daze. Madame Marie quickly took him by the shoulders, laid him on the sofa then trotted off to get the police. They arrived quickly (the station was two doors away). An ambulance shortly followed. Bebert was placed carefully on a stretcher and carried out.

We never saw Bebert again nor had any news of him. Madame Marie presumed that he had died of a haemorrhage from too much smoking, drinking and chimney soot. She had his room cleaned and fumigated. His belongings amounted to a pair of torn slippers, two shirts and trousers and two used razor blades. On the other hand, she gasped at the hundreds of empty packs of cigarettes. Bebert’s world had been compressed into a nebulous routine of cigarette and alcohol fumes and chimney soot. A bleak, Dickensian world to say the least.

Poor Bebert. He had been living at Hotel du Commerce for eleven years. A fellow without a family, friends … known to no one. He practiced a trade that was gradually dying out. No one ever asked for him at the reception — never a phone call. He was the unknown toiler whose burial stone carries no name because he had no money for a headstone. He was probably buried in the fosse commune[9].

Caban, whom I knew much better than Bebert, fared no better. His salary flowed away upon the torrent of fumes of cigarettes and drink, or as Madame Marie put it coarsely: “He pissed it all against a wall!” Too much gambling, too. So his wife left him, after that, his sixteen-year-old daughter. They were never to be heard from again. Caban was soft-spoken, very shy. Quite frankly, I never saw Caban sober, except at six in the morning before catching the bus to work at the wine-bottling factory. He had asked the foreman, Mister Tomas, to have me hired on for the summer since many of the workers had gone off on holiday. In the café whilst waiting for the morning bus, he began his inglorious day with coffee and a few shots of cognac. He continued his indulging all through the working day on the first floor of the factory where he drank the last dregs of wine from the bottles that were to be washed. By five o’clock he was completely sloshed! Mister Tomas kept him on out of pity. Besides, Caban was inoffensive. Madame Marie even told me he had saved a girl from drowning in the Seine River in Paris. But let Madame Marie tell this very true tale: “He was walking along the banks of the Seine after work when he heard the screams and splashings below him. Caban was a strong swimmer at that time, so he took off his shoes, dived in and grabbed the girl in the water. In a few minutes he had brought her back to the banks safe and sound where a crowd of people had gathered, applauding him. The young girl cried and cried but was unhurt. And you know, her father was the owner of the France-Soir daily newspaper. So, to thank Caban, he gave him a certain sum of money and offered him the France-Soir freeeveryday for the rest of his life. All he had to do was give his name at the news-stands.”

“Does Caban read the France-Soir? I never see him reading a newspaper,” I asked naively.

She laughed. “No, Caban never reads. He never had much instruction.”

I became quite friendly with Caban since we worked together at the factory, although he would constantly upbraid me for not joining him in his ritualised morning concoction. I insisted that I never drink. He would snicker and shrug his bony shoulders. “All men drink!” he slurred. That of course was a subject of conjecture which, and this goes without saying, I never pursued with him.

One day whilst I translated for Madame Marie at the reception, I mentioned that I hadn’t seen Caban for more than a week. Neither had she. Mister Tomas had telephoned, too. Caban never missed a day at work … never. She told me to go upstairs and knock at his door. Which I did for several minutes. Silence. When I returned without news of him she immediately dawdled out to the police station. She was back in no time with two policemen. I accompanied them upstairs. They pounded at the door then kicked it open. There knelt Caban over his bed, his face black as coal. The stench in his room made us gag. I hurried down to tell Madame Marie. And as we stood in the reception, the ambulance arrived and four men, escorted by the police, placed Caban’s frail, limp body into a plastic bag and dragged it down the steps, one by one : thump … thump … thump …  Madame Marie started to cry. I covered my ears …

Poor Caban had been dead for over a week, due no doubt to a blood clot of the brain. Madame Marie never forgot those thumps on the flight of stairs. Nothing was said of his death in the newspapers, even in the tabloids. Like Bebert, he succumbed to a companionless death, without flowers or prayers. Without sorrow or tears … He too was probably buried in a fosse commune. He had no bank account. The police found six Francs in his pocket … Six more than in Bebert’s …

Paco, the Spanish refugee, had been living in Hotel du Commerce for seven years. His lack of good French isolated him from the Paris scene, so he took refuge in the clusters of Hispanic scenes that peppered the Parisian streets, especially the taverns where flamenco music could be heard on Rue Moufftard, only a fifteen-minute walk from our hotel.

Since I speak Spanish quite well, I had on many occasions accompanied Paco to these musical haunts of his, where the paella was copious, the sangria flowed like water, the music, if not excellent, loud enough to forget one’s trials and tribulations of the day. Above all, it was cheap …

Paco drank heavily, rum and coke or sangria, but never behaved uncivilly. His deep, black eyes bore into mine whenever he spoke of his luckless past: “My older brother was killed in the war against Franco. I escaped via the Pyrenees leaving behind my parents. Since 1940, I’ve been living in France, working in factories or in the fields. And you know, I still don’t have my French papers. I have no identity! I can’t go back to Spain because of Franco[10], so I must stay here unloading lorries at the Halle Market or washing dishes in grotty gargotes [11].” Paco clapped to the sound of tapping feet and to the rhythmic chords of a furious guitar. “Every now and then I repair the toilets at the hotel which are constantly clogged up.” He snapped his fingers, ordered tapas[12], spoke to his friends in the language of his parents.

The fiery Spaniard would introduce me to his Spanish artist friends, all of them sullen, sad figures whose love of Spain had evaporated into hazy fumes of sangria, nostalgia, gaudy flamenco music, tasteless tapas and brief love affairs. As to Paco, he appeared to be a loner, an ill-starred chap lost in a huge city of lost souls, of crowds so busy that their business took no heed of such a shadowy figure, fugitive and fleeting, drifting from tapas to tapas, sangria to sangria.

Paco hated Paris, but it proved the only place for a stateless refugee to avoid police roundups. For Paco, Hotel du Commerce symbolised a haven for marginals, the homeless and stateless. “Madame Marie is my guardian angel,” he would croak. “My very fat guardian angel” as he clapped and stamped to the riotous music. “The police will never find me … never!” he boasted raising his glass to Madame Marie’s health.

He was wrong. One hot September week, Paco couldn’t be found in the hotel. Madame Marie suspected foul play. Two days later the police arrived, informing her that a certain Paco Fuentes had been apprehended without papers. He had been extradited to his country of origin. His belongings? He had none, like Bebert and Caban. The little he did possess were thrown into a bag and out into a rubbish bin. Poor Paco — would he ever find his parents?

On my many jaunts through Spain, after Franco’s death, I tried to locate Paco Fuentes, but it was like finding a needle in a haystack as the expression goes. Here, however, I must thank the excellent Spaniard, for it was he who introduced me to the world of flamenco.

Bolot kept very much to himself. Unlike the other residents he never drank nor smoked. You didn’t want to muck about with Bolot — a massive fellow, indeed. But then again who would muck about with a former French Foreign Legion soldier?

Yet, Bolot’s aloofness and reserved demeanour attracted many people to him. He had that sort of winning smile, and since he spoke very good French, albeit with a heavy German accent, he befriended those who came into contact with him. Moreover, he shared a passion for stamp-collecting. That was Bolot’s raison d’être[13]! His collection had become very well known to both specialists and amateurs. I would accompany him to the Flea Market on Sundays and there he would trade stamps with the best of stamp-collectors. Stamps from the Soviet Union, China, India, Cuba, several African states, Turkey and Libya. Bolot didn’t need the money, his pension as a soldier was comfortable enough. He simply enjoyed the thrills.

One day as we strolled back to the metro as he towered above me, Bolot acknowledged his good luck: “I volunteered for the army at seventeen, an enthusiastic patriot. Was captured by the French after two days of combat and given a choice: prison or the Foreign Legion. I chose the second, changed my nationality and name.”

“What was your German name?” He smiled but left the question unanswered.

“So I fought for the French. A traitor to my homeland. Call me what you like, I couldn’t sit out the war in a prison for years and years. You know, I never went back to Germany. When I quit the Legion I received my pension and came straight to Paris, the City of Lights.”

“To do what?”

“To sell stamps!” Bolot laughed. “No, I worked as a mechanic in factories until retiring.”

I got to know Bolot as well as Caban since all three of us worked at the same wine-bottling factory in the summer of 1974. He left earlier than me because of a fight between him and an obnoxious individual who abhorred Germans, even though Bolot had acquired French nationality long ago. Bolot refused to fight him, despite the other’s punches, which the former Legionnaire dodged or blocked with considerable ease. If Bolot had really fought, he would have killed him. Mister Tomas broke up the squabble, sacked the young rowdy on the spot and apologised to Bolot. Bolot exercised the noble art of self-restraint.

When I left for grape-picking at the end of September, then on to Italy and Sicily, it was Bolot who helped me repair the broken spokes of my bicycle. Outside Hotel du Commerce, Madame Marie and Bolot wished me the best of luck, inviting me back whenever it suited me. There would always be a spare room for me she insisted. I cycled out of Paris in the direction of Burgundy. I had spent six months at Hotel du Commerce …

After a month of grape-picking I returned to Palermo only to discover that the magazine had failed due to lack of interest … and funds. Relieved, I went to Madrid to begin a career as a flamenco guitarist. Time passed quickly. Or as Madame Marie would philosophically say: “It’s not time that passes but us!”  Exhausted from so much playing in studios and taverns, I decided to take a break and travel to France and visit Hotel du Commerce.

It was under new ownership. The manager, an Italian, informed me that Madame Marie had died years ago from dementia after a spell in a nursing home. How everything had changed: the reception room had been refurbished and Madame Marie’s Balzacian sitting-room had become a dining-room for guests. The once starless hotel had become a three-star hotel.

I stayed two nights and paid sixty euros a night! In the seventies, I paid the equivalent of one and a half euros! True, all the rooms had been painted in bright, cheery colours, fitted out with toilets and showers. But sixty euros? Besides, I like a hotel that is lived in, not just slept in …

With the death of Madame Marie, a whole era had come to a close. Hotel du Commerce had decidedly conformed to the standards of kitsch. There were no more residents, only tourists. All the single rooms on the fifth floor had become large rooms suitable for modern travelling couples. Gone were the days and nights round Madame Marie’s convivial table, her coffees and conversation. Those colourful figures who had imprinted their existence there, whose joys and sorrows had been shared by Madame Marie and myself, no longer painted those refurbished walls simply because the epoch ignored the very existence of such figures.

Indeed, who during those two nights reminisced the glittering epoch of Madame Marie’s Hotel du Commerce? Who even imagined her singular story and those of her likeable, touching residents? No one. No one, perhaps, except me, who vouched to safeguard those memories. Memories of the anonymous whose faces will never be seen on photos, nor names ever printed in books.

[1]        ‘Street’.

[2]        1954-1962.

[3]        ‘Secret Army Organisation’ founded in 1954 that fought against those forces who wished to prevent the independance of Algeria.

[4]        ‘The National Liberation Front’, also founded in 1954 whose militants fought for the independance of Algeria.

[5]        Jargon in French for ‘policeman.

[6]        ‘Underground’ or ‘subway’.

[7]        ‘Father Goriot’ written in 1834. Translated into English by Ellen Marriage.

[8]        1936-1939.

[9]        ‘Communal grave’.

[10]      General Francesco Franco died in 1975, and with his death, King Juan Carlos proclamed Spain a democratic nation.

[11]      French jargon for ‘cheap, unsavoury restaurants’.

[12]      Spanish appetisers.

[13] French: Reason for being

.

Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

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Categories
Poetry

Rain by Paul Mirabile

From Public Domain
RAIN


The rain fell forty days and forty nights,
Flooding forests, meadows and dells;
How hard it fell, dimming the daylight
While I, at my window, experienced peculiar delights.

For forty days and forty nights, a water-logged world sang
Hymns to the low, black clouds of cascading downpours,
Tear-filled verses rang poignant pleadings.

Yet, without respite, the rains fell and all seemed hopelessly lost,
As the deluge drowned out the chantings, poured forth its wrath.
The voices rose higher and higher vexing the Source. 

At last one cloudless morning the tambourining droplets ceased,
Amok rivers, streams and brooks began to recede;
All agog people rushed to celebrate the Event with a grand feast
I, indolently, shut my shutters, rather indifferent to say the least.

Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Stories

The Useless Idler

By Paul Mirabile

Alhambra Palace, Spain. From Public Domain

No one knew his name nor wished to know it. Only his face attracted those who came into contact with him. So it was said. A face whose huge, glowing eyes were turned both inwards and outwards, simultaneously. A face whose florid complexion, cheery and unfurrowed, bespoke a life of leisure, albeit not one of procrastination; a life of ease, but not sloth. In short, a life of early, unfought for independence.

I met my nameless stranger one fine autumn day in the Andalucian town of Granada, Spain, where he had been residing for several months, visiting the Alhambra Palace every day during those months. We had met in a small, non-distinct eatery, and he was very willing to converse with anyone who had leisure to tete a tete. We fell into lively conversation. Taken aback by his daily visits to the remarkable Palace, I enquired why he spent so many hours there.

“The Palace was built as a sign of religious, political and cultural power,” he began, munching energetically on his paella of rabbit. “But since 1492, that sign has been condemned to utter uselessness, reduced to a mere tourist attraction, however noteworthy. It has become completely useless since its mediaeval abandonment  because it’s been drained of its original value.” Here he paused, I imagine, for me to intercede. I didn’t …

“You see, this is what attracts me most to the Alhambra; its utter uselessness for our world today. I do not consider mass tourism as an instrument of usefulness.” I kept silent to goad him on, for the turn of conversation piqued my curiosity.  “The Alhambra epitomises all that I have spent my own life experiencing, consciously: the pleasures of uselessness.”

“Is uselessness a pleasure?” I nettled with a sunny smile.

“That depends upon whom it has been bestowed, sir. That depends for whom it has benefitted. The circumstances of my life and will to understand and decipher them, have conspired to draw me now into and outside of myself. My own self has become as useless as the objects that I set my eyes on each and every day as I saunter through the streets, gardens or palaces of wherever I happen to be. I have realised that such an absorption into social uselessness, and thus distance from social use, has constituted my raison d’être. And there lies the pleasure: this mode of existence is a project of life; a pure project of pleasurable uselessness to society and to myself.” His face, alit with integrity, bent low to attack the chorizos cooked in white wine sauce.

“When did you begin experimenting your project?” I asked, sipping my sangria.

“I would formulate it differently: When did uselessness experiment me!” he mumbled, his mouth full of chorizo. “It all began in Africa some thirty or forty years back, during my youthful days wandering through the Sahara desert en route to Timbucktoo. The Blue Men of the Sahara appeared absolutely useless to anyone or anything that we Europeans would call useful.”

“Such as?”

“Well, a roof over one’s head, a shower every hour, a steady, well-paid job, a car and such things … what we Europeans would term as useful, conditioned to adhere to the philosophy of infinite progress; to infinite social and political usefulness. All the Blue Men seemed to require were a few hours of sleep, food, water and the desire to procreate. Needs that all mankind need so as to account for our very presence on Earth. I lived in the desert for over a year, and little by little discovered that this lifestyle suited a possibility of existence, a life not of a desert-nomad mind you, but one of a useless idler, which as time went by, proved possible, be it in the cities of Europe and Asia or in their countryside towns and villages.”

“As I understand it, social success has no meaning for you at all?”

“Not at all. Success only invites humiliation or cruel jealousy, and the pursuit of wealth is a path marked by ruthlessness. I earn my living simply to eat, to dress according to the climate, to have a roof over my head when needed.”

“But a roof over one’s head could be expensive…” I intervened.

“I spend most of my nights out under the stars when the weather is warm. With the coming of winter, I seek refuge in Catholic missions, poor men’s shelters or in the numerous Salvation Army shelters. Any asylum that will not turn me down. As far as any permanent residence, I have taken up lodgings in the homes of generous people for a meagre fee, or have laboured on farms for my food and bed. Do not confuse uselessness with doing nothing. I’m no couch potato; I have done many things, but they do not fit into our social machine of imposed well-being. My life may appear negative to those who hold me in contempt, but my usefulness is as useful to mankind as it is to myself. Don’t forget what one Belgium writer once wrote: ‘It is thanks to a certain number of men who seem useless that there will always be a certain number of useful men.’”

“Who wrote that?”

“I forgot. But what difference does it make?” He wiped his mouth delicately, smacking his lips. He proceeded: “I imagine you probably believe me to be a social parasite or a social zero as Balzac once wrote, useless even as a human being. But read Friedrich Nietzsche on this point,” and he quoted: “’The value of a human being does not lie in his usefulnes; for it would continue to exist even if there were nobody to whom he could be useful.’”

“Quite an imposing thought,” I acknowledged, sitting back. “But you must admit that you have been useful to the kind people who hire you on or who lodge you, even for a small fee.”

He snorted: “Perhaps. But I cannot speak on their behalf, only mine.” I noted that he wiggled out of that one quite ingeniously. His face shone with a strange light. An aura of mystery gradually covered it like a gossamer veil. The light suddenly went out.

“I’m sure your effort to separate yourself from the social body must be a terrible struggle,” I pursued without irony. “I believe that to be estranged from the social body is commensurate with  being estranged from one’s own self. Am I right in assuming this?” 

“Perhaps, but not from the individuals of those societies. I am not a misantrope. This being said, solitude, fasts and meditation have prepared me for outer trials and tribulations, which I believe, without vanity, to have overcome.” He began picking his teeth with a very long fingernail.

“And God?” I rebounded, eyeing him steadily. His lips broke into an artful grin.

“He has been my only Friend since the beginning, sir. And why is that? Because we have been useless to each other since our initial communion.” He stood, evidently undesirous to develop this rather paradoxical statement. I let it drop …

We slipped outside and my nameless companion suggested that we have a quick jaunt through the ‘Arab Market’ in Zacaten. Indeed, the weather was warm, that Autumn weather which I have always found so stimulating in Granada; Granada, perched high in her mountainous refuge like an eagle in her lofty nest. My strolling companion strolled into my reverie.

“Look at the sky, a bluish turquoise which reminds me so much of the domes of the mosques in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. That turquoise which solicits silence and contemplation.”

“So you’ve visited Uzbekistan?”

“More than visited, my friend. I lived there for five years studying under the spiritual guidance of the Nakishbendi Brotherhood, a Sunna movement founded by the Shah Nakishbend, and which has survived the anti-religious crusade of the Soviet Union. With those kind and learned monks I learnt the virtues and powers of silence, contemplation, discipline, simplicity and periodical talks.”

“In what language did you speak to them?” I ventured, a bit intrigued by this singular experience.

“In Uzbek, of course!” he responded dryly. “I also learned to read Arabic.”

“But are silence and talks not contradictory?”

“Not at all, sir. Clusters of roses certainly grow silently, but good soil, air and pure water are needed for their basic growth. If accompanied by a soft, melodious voice, they grow better. Roses heed to that voice as silence heeds to constructive talks. It was during the alternating passages of silence and talks that our spiritual guides opened our eyes and senses to the uselessness of worldly matters, and since then, this uselessness has become my second nature, even my first! Mind you, this discovery has nothing to do either with self-love or atomistic individualism. As I said, I have relations with people, albeit brief; and although I keep aloof from community aggregation and national gatherings, I have never spend my life gloating in an ivory tower. No sir, I live for wanderlust not social or individual hubris! The lust for wandering … And when one wanders one cannot but converge with people, learn from them. This does not necessarily mean that I derive an extraordinary pleasure from communicating with them. To tell the truth, I prefer my own company, if I may say so …”

“But you surely feel a responsibility towards others?” I pursued, more and more fascinated by this nameless chap, who by now had led me into a marvellous little garden out of whose spouting fountain splashed tinkling sprays here and there.

“Responsibility?” he chortled, as we sat down enjoying the perfumed scents of honeysuckles and roses. “Responsibility is only towards oneself. My words or gestures will be felt by others. Would you harm or humiliate your fellow man? Uselessness does not mean selfishness or egoism. In fact, it disciplines you to an awareness of others, an awareness those who whole-heartedly believe in social relevance will never come to understand for they must belong to a community, club or ideology in order to give pride and reason to their usefulness. They discredit the experience of uselessness. Don’t get me wrong, I do not live in a fantasy world like those who tout infinite progress or community spirit. These are abstract schemas for me. My Way is to strive to overcome anger, hate and jealousy within my own sphere of existence. This entails peeling away the veils that dim the lucidity of reality; my reality of being useless to the devastating machine of the useful well-being of mankind.”

“I would then conclude that your manner of living may be called cynical or indifferent?”

He was mortified by my question. “Cynical? A cynic questions then condemns derisively the circumstances that emerge before him or her; I neither question nor condemn. I simply carry on from place to place, experimenting novel circumstances, accepting them as if they had always been mine. Indifference? Well, if you mean stepping back and out of the world’s commerce, and not to take either that commerce or oneself seriously, then I am indifferent. The crisis of many individuals today is that they take themselves much too seriously, much more seriously than the seriousness of their work or vocations. And when this self-seriousness is struck down or dethroned a dreadful sense of uselessness seizes them, causing depression, or worse, suicide. My uselessness to myself and to others is more serious than myself. I am in the world but not of it!”

As we sat in silence, I gradually felt myself transported to another dimension of time and space. Scenes of my own life flashed before my eyes, lively colourful scenes and gloomy ones. I could not resolve whether this nameless fellow fascinated or revolted me. My own life had been ensnared in a web of social irresponsibility and imposed representations. I had become one of the many cogs in the slow and steady vast social wheel that turns and churns, and I sensed that mine had become worn-out and useless. I had so yearned to be of some use to society … But now? Yes, now? How could I restore my previous enthusiasm that had long been abandoned? I had to admit, though, that this man’s experiments heightened my ardour to … to do what? Was he sent to me like some mentor? He suddenly stood and bid me a good day with a whimsical smile, as though he had been reading my thoughts.

Before leaving, however, he said: “Tomorrow I shall have a walk in the gardens of the Alhambra. Please join me, I’m sure we have much to discuss. Meanwhile, let silence be your companion until that walk.” And he disappeared into the milling crowd.

Waking early the next morning, I resolved to meet my new and somewhat eccentric companion at the beginning of the long avenue that leads to the Gate of Justice. An avenue lined with sentinels of cypress and other trees, within whose morning freshness ran a warren of narrow paths.

We met at precisely eight o’clock. With a sort of fraternal benevolence, he took my arm and we strolled upwards past the Gate of Justice, the pompous palace of King Carlos the Fifth, paid our tickets and entered the palace proper, almost religiously, under the storied vaulted corridors, by the pencilled ornaments and tiled walls of arabesque blue, over the smooth, shiny marbled floors.

“Have you read Washington Irving?” he asked in a quavering voice, as if not to disturb the mediaeval palace denizens.

“Yes, a marvellous story-teller and keen observer,” I replied softly.

“You know he led a life of ridiculous usefulness until sojourning within the walls of this soporific fairyland. Gradually Irving fell under the pleasant and industrious spell of uselessness.”

I stopped walking.

“How so? That’s contradictory!”

“Is it?” he beamed, smiling that wide, wicked, whimsical smile. “Yet so it was. He learnt through daily experience that this whole palace of enchantment lies under the layers of absolute uselessness. Layers and layers of poetry, conversation, lyrical jousts and insignificant gestures which disappeared as quickly as they were conceived. Nothing! Nothing remains of that imagined uselessness. And that is precisely why he wrote his Tales of the Alhambra[1] ; it was out of the need to express his useless life within these lyrical stones.”

My sauntering companion fell silent. Only our footfalls could be heard weaving in and out of the slender colonnades, intermingling with the chanting fountains. The blue ceramic shone on the walls like a mirror reflecting the azure …

“I see your point, I think. Before dusk, at times I watch the sun glide from East to West over the Palace walls, the dark greys slipping into ochre reds, soon to be daubed, as the sun sets, by the overglow tones of chestnut, roan and dun.”

“Yes!” he whispered excitedly. “That is perfect uselessness. It serves absolutely no purpose to anyone … even to yourself. For, unlike Irving, who snapped his experiment in uselessness,  succumbing to the desire of writing it down for all and sundry to share, I presume that in your case you have no urgency to express any posthumous glory?”

I shook my head thoughtfully, then asked: “You don’t feel the desire to keep a diary?”

“Write? A diary? What for — to satisfy my blotted ego seeking a useful outlet? These are vain insinuations, my good friend. No, it is quite enough to feast my sovereign eyes, to feed my independent emotions on this marvellous honeycomb frostwork and these fine, mullioned windows[2]. These artifices are as useless as the ephemeral poetry and conversations that rang euphoniously within the hallowed halls and courts. And indeed, why should we, mere strangers to this mediaeval marvel, impose an artificial usefulness to it all? Why should we break into lyrical extravagances of the budding rose or the flight of the owl? Into flights of phantasy poeticising upon the Towers above us where verses of love spilled forth their honied fragrances into a void of mute forgetfulness? None of that for me, sir. Within these courts and gardens I have come to the inevitable conclusion that my Destiny lies in perfect uselessness; namely, in my refusal to reanimate the beauty or the ugliness that has crossed my path for the past fifty years in Asia, Europe, the Americas and Africa. I decline to spoil the uselessness of beauty and ugliness, to encumber my spirit and soul by searching for a ‘proper use’ for such human emotions and achievements.”

We had walked through the remarkable Court of Lions and were now entering the gardens of Lindaraxa, Sultan Boadil’s[3] wife. We sat down inhaling the gay scents of roses, oranges and lemons.

He sniffed the air, then murmured: ”A vague of indescribable awe was creeping over me,” here hepaused, lifting his eyes upwards: ”Everything began to be affected by the working of my mind, the whispers of the wind among the citron-trees beneath my window had something sinister…” My companion had chanted this broken sentence in a sort of drawn-out litany. “Yes, something sinister, indeed,” he ruminated to himself. “That point of inspiration led Irving from absolute uselessness to the search for putting uselessness to use. I enjoy reading Irving, but will never convert a ‘something sinister’ to a million-copy, world-wide read book.”

The sun rose higher and higher coating the pink tongues of dawn with a purplish blue. I turned to him: “Still, I cannot see how we as humans can escape from being useful Beings!” He looked at me, his facial features had suddenly hardened, or perhaps it was due to the effects of the shadows off the sun-lit fruit trees.

“Does my speaking to you now fulfil an emotional need? Was our conversation a psychological issue to such a profound hoarding of uselessness?” I asked.

He laughed so loud that a few puffy-eyed guards turned their heads in our direction. “Dear fellow, you have hardly understood our morning jaunt. We are simply idling our time away as uselessly as possible, as useless as a leaf dropping from that citron-tree, as a person who labours all his life to survive, a hermit in his remote cave, a desert-dweller, a traveller without name or record. How many of those intrepid souls took refuge in monasteries of the East and there left no trace of their earthly footfalls? They experienced true uselessness …”

“Even to God towards whom they must have addressed their prayers?” I enquired. He raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“That is neither for you nor me to answer, my friend.” He stood, shook my hand and left the gardens back through the Palace halls.

I felt a bit put out by his prompt and unexpected departure. It were as if he had abandoned me to unravel that last enigmatic thought of his. A silly feeling of course, but one that clung to me like the scents of the roses, oranges and lemons. My mind slowly became dull, my body numb. Had the nameless wanderer put me under a magical spell? The redolence and balminess of the gardens added to my discomfiture. At the same time, however, I understood that idleness is not a state or a condition which I could bear or champion as he does. I rose, heavily. Enough of this palatial beguiling and futile jaunting. That man, whoever he is, taught me a sound lesson: a person is born into our world to accomplish a particular use, one that is his or hers alone. There is no doubt in my mind about this.

I dragged myself from the gardens back to my hotel in the Old Market at Zacatin, an effort that enlisted all my emotional and physical strength.

I must confess that during the following days, in spite of my firm resolution towards usefulness, I idled my time away seeking out that nameless idler, tramping from street to street, garden to garden, restaurant to restaurant. Every morning I rose early and scoured the halls, courts and gardens of the Alhambra.

He had vanished into thin air, as the saying goes …

*

A few years later back in Amsterdam, my eye caught sight of a book entitled The Denizen of the Underworld : The Art of Uselessness. I bought it out of some urgent curiosity that I could and still not explain rationally. The first sentences read : ”I am without shame, without guilt, without bad conscious. I truly prefer my cave swimming with mermaids, dwarves labouring at the furnaces, fairies hunting out medicinal plants. Here I breathe the air of pure uselessness, shielded against the charm and seduction of use.”

The author of the book had an odd name — Vigilius de Silentio — a name that might have fitted the face of my nameless companion whom I had met so many years ago in Granada. On second thoughts, though, that name could have fitted any face.

To tell the truth, the book bored me to death …                   

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[1]        Washington Irving, edition Edilux, Granada, Spain.    

[2]        A vertical element made of wood or stone that divides a window in two. It is applied in Islamic and Armenian architecture.

[3]        The last Sultan of Muslim Spain, exiled to North Africa.

Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

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Categories
Poetry

Autumn of Life

By Paul Mirabile

Painting by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851); From Public Domain

I’ve performed upon many stages of the World

Have donned many masks,

Am today like a ship whose sails furled

Floats listlessly upon the horizonless seas of uncertainty.

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Passed are those days of fury and adventure,

Of desert crossings, mountain passes and oceanic swells ;

The hour has come to lie down and venture

Forth towards a novel existence of tolling kneels.

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All has become pensive, still and Silent

Amidst the glorious illumination of nightly bidding ;

Where vivid Dreams and Tales invent

An irrevocable identity, so unexpected, yet so fitting.

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Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Categories
Stories

Roberto Mendoza’s Memoirs of Admiral Don Christopher Columbus

A fiction by Paul Mirabile

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
From Public Domain

I, Roberto Mendoza, in this year 1550, ship’s boy on Christopher Columbus’ first and second voyages to the West Indies before my promotion to sailor on his third and fourth voyages, testify to the veracity of the eye witness events that I record for posterity. And in spite of their devastating raw truth, it is my troubled conscious that has conducted my hand, goaded my intelligence to write down these sorrowful facts. For facts they are, regardless of the prestige and boons that Columbus received from his protectors and admirers.

Where shall I begin? How do I burrow through the layers of unquestionable fame that has marked that name to reverberate with the clanking of the slave chains, the death rattles in the gold and silver mines, the gnashing of teeth, the hangings and dismemberments … the insensible apathy of the subjugation or submission of the Indian masses?

It has always appeared to my young eyes that Columbus’ achievements were enveloped in an aura of mystery or incomprehension. I may even add an aura of fantastic falsifications, mainly initiated and authorised by Columbus himself and his unquestioning gallants.

I knew him well, too well to be duped by those seductive charms of his, that subtle cunning, a mask donned whenever a fruitful occasion arose, yet under which lay a brutal, tyrannical individual bent on attaining his greatest ambition: wealth and glory, and this at any price. What was the little ditty that some fool invented for innocent children and naive adults to recite: “In fourteen ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue?” A ridiculous rime to recall that wretched year. Yes, I say that wretched year for it celebrated the Genoan hero’s glorious voyage.

During that fatal year of 1492, two other major events occurred in Spain which I believe to be in relation to Columbus’ conniving his way into Isabella’s confidence: the expulsion of the Jews to North Africa, Italy and Constantinople, and the capitulation of Granada, the last stronghold of the Muslims in Spain, to the Christian kings. Henceforth, Spain rid herself of those ‘impure’, centuries-laden ‘foreign’ plunderers. Did not Columbus write in his logbook (if we are to believe Bartolomé de Las Casas’s transcribed copy of it) that he was overjoyed by those two events: ”thus you (the Monarchs) have turned out all the Jews from your kingdoms and lordships”, and ”the royal banners have been placed on the towers of Alhambra”[1].

This being said, because of the expulsion and the reconquest, Columbus’ true birthplace had to be concealed, for any negotiation with Isabella or Ferdinand. This hero was not born in the city of spaghetti and banks, Genova, as commonly known. The darling of the Spanish monarchy was born in the land of the corsairs, in Calvi, a lovely port town in Northern Corsica, indeed conquered by the Genovans and governed by them during five centuries, but none the less born and bred far from the banks of Italy. Corsica, where for centuries Vandals, Ostrogoths, Greeks and Lombards, and ill-bred Aragonese and Genovans vied for domination, intermingling, integrating and assimilating.

Why would Columbus lie about his place of birth? Was it out of fear of a possible ‘corsair descent’? One that connoted piratry, pillage and other misdeeds [2]? Be that as it may, the rogue managed to cajole Queen Isabella into giving him enough maravedis[3] to undertake a voyage that would heighten the glory of the conquering Spanish Monarchy and the new-founded kingdom.

And that was how Admiral Don Christopher Columbus frayed his way to fame and fortune!

With the Queen’s glittering maravedis he commissioned three caravels : the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, the third of which he navigated himself, the other two by the Pinzón brothers. How I happened to be aboard the Santa Maria is a long story with which I shall not bore my readers.

So there he stood at the prow, mantled in a vaporous circle of pride and arrogance whilst we, his sea-faring companions, sweated away on deck or in the hold, were fed rotten food, furled and unfurled the sails without respite, hunted out the innumerable rats that ran amok below, withered under the insufferable heat of September. I myself almost fainted under the long, long hours of tedious work, boredom and especially fear; fear that we and our tiny caravel, surrounded by thousands of leagues of far from blue waters, would be food for the horrible undersea monsters that had swallowed many a brave crew and their vessels with yawning jaws and leathery tentacles. All of us were terrified, and the five weeks we spent crossing a swelling ocean towards the East, or so we all thought, triggered a feeling of panic, alienness and remorse. The admiral described the ocean like a river; I myself felt like a cork in a rainswept pond, jostled and jolted, no land in sight, our water and meat, taken aboard at the Canary Islands, foul-tasting, half-eaten by the enormous black rats.

Did the great Admiral not consult the stars? Eastward? There was nothing — only rolls and rolls of higher and higher walls of water battering the fragile sides of our vessels. And I, so young, asked myself time and time again, how did an incompetent sea-faring fellow like Columbus ever win the confidence of Isabella and Ferdinand ? Oh how I recall his bulky figure at the prow, oftentimes behind the helm, screaming orders or simply staring out into the watery vastitude, dreaming no doubt of gold … gold … and more gold … He had written the word ‘gold’ seventy-five times in his logbook during the first two weeks of our crossing!

How many of our poor sailors had been beaten for insubordination, had suffered the excruciating trial of keelhauling[4], one or two even hanged for attempting mutiny, so fearful were they of being devoured by sea monsters, dying of thirst or hunger or being bitten by the furry rats that thrived below in our beds of straw?

At long last I heard the cry “Land ahoy!” coming from the crow’s nest. Yes, we finally reached a cluster of islands that would be named Guanahani[5], Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic on the maps of future cartographers. It was on these islands that my first glimpses of a barbaric and despotic Columbus would not only be corroborated, but magnified to the heights of psychopathic insanity. For it became more and more evident to me that the Admiral, whom I considered in my youthful age as a hero, had no intentions of treating the indigenous peoples of these islands either as equals or with a soupçon of humane sympathy. He indeed judged them somewhat higher than animals, yet whose only human value was how much they would bring him as slaves sold in Spain, or how much gold and silver they would extract for him from the mines and rivers. All he saw in these peaceful peoples was the glitter of gold fastened to their noses and the rings of equal glitter hanging off their ears and arms. He saw gold everywhere, even gold stones shining in the rivers! He wrote in his logbook that gold grew in clusters and could be plucked off trees like fruit!

The way in which he ferreted information out of the Indians about gold deposits turned my stomach. His obsession with gold drove him into periodical frenzies during which time he would beat, even torture the poor indigenous man or woman who failed to locate the deposits. He spent his sweltering nights tossing and turning in bed, totally possessed by this maniacal craving.

But his brutality was not limited in this direction: The Spaniards or other Europeans who disobeyed  him or sought to outmanoeuvre him in the pursuit of power or riches were tracked down and hanged, accused of criminal acts. His barbarity knew no bounds, nor his slave-selling which began to enrich him immensely.

On our second and third voyages, which led us to the islands of Granada and Tobago, the abundance of gold extracted was tantamount to the number of Indians he enslaved for his own ‘household’ purposes, and those he sold into a slavery which by then had become a thriving, lucrative business. We navigated from island to island sowing the seeds of destruction as the stoic Admiral described their beauty, the exotic animals and birds, and especially the immense, awaiting riches buried under that beauty. How many of the indigenous he had killed when several tribes revolted against him, and how many committed suicide cannot be accurately tallied. I would learn much later that Las Casas put that tally at 1,500 Taion Arawaks.

Indeed, as time went by Columbus’ wrath found merciless outlets against Indians and Europeans alike as the settlements grew in economic and political importance. Indians who failed to extract enough gold from the mines had one of their arms cut off[6]. On many occasions he had rebellious Spaniards dismembered in public much to the outrage of the governors appointed to the settlements by the Spanish Monarchy.

The governors of these settlements began sending reports to the King and Queen relating the horrendous behaviour of Columbus, his obsession for power and riches, his masquerading as a ruling god-like figure over the ignorant natives. Testimonies piled higher and higher on the Queen’s pearl-inlaid writing-table, relating cases of rape, murder and mutilation.

On his return trip to Spain she immediately had him seized, chained and thrown into prison. She also expropriated all his extorted possessions, be they gold or land. There he rotted away for six weeks, so enraged was the Queen, betrayed by this ‘foreigner’. However, his brother Bartholomew, on his knees, pleaded tearfully in favour of his brother’s heart of gold, his innocence in all matters of governance, having been slandered by the governors and their lackeys who wrote defamatory reports to wreak vengeance upon a man whose glory and greatness surpassed theirs. The Queen hesitated. It was King Ferdinand who decided to have him released.

His release from prison had puffed up his ego, unlocked his megalomania.

Columbus’ fourth and last voyage, between 1502 and 1504 with four caravels, took us to Martinique, Honduras, Jamaica, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. I had been appointed a full-fledged sailor by then and relished the idea of accompanying the Admiral, jotting down all his actions, prudently of course, so that I would not to be arrested for bearing witness to his ruthlessness, perhaps even hanged as a traitor. The ‘civilising’ process undertaken by him included plundering, murdering, enslaving and mutilation. Amidst the unbridled violence and sadism, he posed as an evangelist, a disinterested zealot deeply desirous to convert the ‘savages’ into God-fearing Christians, into ‘civilised’ beings like himself.

Columbus returned to Spain a hero of piety, magnanimity, sanctity. The impostor even wrote two books : the Book of Privileges[7] in 1502, an indecent mass of statistics which enumerate all his accumulated rewards wrested from the Crown under which lay the beaten and mutilated bodies of the indigenous, and the Book of Prophecies[8] in 1505, a shameful scream of smut comprising hundreds of citations from the Bible, all of which spell out in his vapid style his Christian ‘mission’ in the New World, ever so charitable and lenient towards the ignorant, child-like ‘natives’ ; a mission, indeed, pure in spirit, rightful in act.

With Columbus’ death the unwarrantable fervour that he had kindled slowly shrivelled into ashes. I retired from sea-life and found work in the Custom’s Bureau, a most comfortable employment. Besides, I was disgusted by all the tales told about him by the sailors, especially their bawdy narratives about the native women in the New World. I wished to leave my sea-legs behind and tread more earthy paths. Furthermore, my new tasks gave me ample time to read the posthumous reports about Columbus[9], many of which belied the benignant deeds and bountiful achievements of the monarchial and New World idol. It was after these important readings that I decided to begin my memoirs …

The rogue’s Book of Prophecies created quite a stir amongst the aristocratic castes : Columbus’ fantasies of promoting Isabella and Ferdinand as heads of a new crusade to the Holy Lands to defeat the Muslims, and there spread Christianity kindled many a nostalgic and gun-ho heart. The monarchs, wary of the old Admiral’s apocalyptic inaccuracies and religious bigotry, never took him seriously. I wonder if they had even read his book …

None the less, Columbus certainly provided an excellent example for other freebooters to follow in the wake of his doughty adventures. The slave trade between the Old and the New World thrived as well as the gold and silver that flooded the Spanish markets. It is no mere metaphor that this period in Spain was called as El Siglo de Oro (The Golden Century).

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[1]          Bartolome de Las Casas (1484-1566) a Dominicain priest who spent forty years in Hispaniola (Haiti and the Domican Republic) transcribed an abstract of Columbus’ lost logbook. How accurate or truthful is this copy is difficult to assess. Journal of the First Voyage of Christopher Columbus (1492-1493), translated by Clements R. Markhma : London, Hakluyt Society, 1893, pp. 15-93

[2]          Corsica : Columbus’ Isle, Joseph Chiari, edition Barrie and Rockcliff, 1960.

[3]          Gold coins used in mediaeval Spain during the 11th and 14th centuries.

[4]          A maritime punishment by which the sailor is ‘hauled’ under the ‘keel’ of the ship with ropes.

[5]          As called by the Indians. Columbus called this island San Salvador. Today it is called Watling.

[6]          On this point see Howard Zinn, Christopher Columbus and Western Civilization, Open Magazine Pamphlet Series, 1992.

[7]          El Libro de Privilegios. The English edition : Book of Privileges, The Claiming of the New World, John W. Hessler, 2014.

[8]          El Libro de Profesías. The English edition : Book of Prophecies, Repertorium Columbianum, Blair Sullivan, 2004.

[9]         Columbus and Las Casas : Two Readings on the Legacy of Columbus (1542 (The Devastation of the Indians. A brief Account) and 1550 (In Defense of the Indians).

Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

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Categories
Stories

In the Shadows…

By Paul Mirabile

A Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers by Marc Chagall (1887-1985). From Public Domain

Tommy ordered a second pint of beer at the counter. The bar buzzed with the usual crowd, and a few groups of tourists, mostly from northern Europe, were beering it up as they did at home. Tommy had had a long day preparing breakfast and clearing the rooms at the Hotel Van Acker, Jan Willem Brouwersstraat, 14. Afterwards, he accompanied three Spanish tourists to the ‘high’ spots of Amsterdam: Anne Frank’s house, Vondel Park, the Rijks and Stedelijk museums, Rembrandthuis, Madame Tussauds, completing his tour at the ‘hot’ spot for all such tourists — the red light district. There he left the Spaniards, tired of having dragged them about the town while straining to understand their Spanish.

How long had he been at it ? Four … five years ? Who knows. Something in his mind had snapped. Oftentimes he suffered from bouts of amnesia or blackouts, a succession of synapse that triggered in him extreme panic, even paranoia. He felt an elbow nudge him lightly in the ribs: “ All right, mate?” asked a middle-aged man with long, blond, silken hair and ultramarine blue eyes.

Tommy eyed the man suspiciously. He had managed to squeeze himself in at the counter as imperceptibly as a ghost. “Yes, I’m all right. Why?”

“Oh, I just saw you staring into space as if you were in great thought or pain.” Tommy smiled leerily.

“No pain, just thinking small thoughts.” The other smiled. His teeth were very white. He reached over, took a few pinches of tobacco from a drinker’s pouch with unabashed effrontery and rolled himself a cigarette.

“Do you do that often?” Tommy enquired lamely.

“What?” the other asked puffing away dreamily.

“Pinch tobacco from people’s pouches.”

“Of course I do, it’s been my custom for ages,” answered the tobacco pincher with a whimsical gleam in his eyes. “What are you doing in Amsterdam, working I suppose?”

Tommy straightened up. “I work at the Hotel Van Acker doing odd jobs for the owner.”

“Ah, yes, Van Acker … Where they found that murdered dwarf.”

“He wasn’t murdered. He died of a heart attack.”

“The police never found the key to his room. That is strange. To die of a heart attack in a hotel room without the key.”

“So what?”

“Sounds a bit shadowy to me. But that’s all in the past. And who cares anyway, right ? What’s your name?”

“Tommy.”

“From?”

Tommy hesitated: “From Luton.”

“Luton?”

“It’s in Bedsfordshire.”

The pincher of tobacco nodded, rolling himself another cigarette. “I’ve seen you handing out leaflets or pamphlets in the streets.”

“That’s possible.”

“How’s the salary at Van Acker’s?”

“I get on. Van Acker gives me my meals and I sleep in the cellar room under the stairway.”

There was a very long silence — a silence so long that Tommy began to grow nervous. Finally, the man said: “Listen, I might have a job for you Tommy that will earn you enough money to live like a prince anywhere in the world for the rest of your life. One night ! Only one night, and you’ll become as rich as Crassus.”

“Who’s Crassus?” asked Tommy mistrustfully. The other laughed.

“The richest man in the Roman Empire. You see, my proposition deals with paintings; I’m an art collector.”

“Pictures? I like pictures. I take all my hotel tourists to the art museums.”

“Perfect. Here’s my address. Come by any time after eight at night. By the way, my name is Gustav.”

“Gustav … Gustav what?”

“Gustav Beekhot. I hope to see you soon, Tommy. Tot ziens[1]!” Gustav slapped Tommy on the shoulder and left the crowded bar, weaving through the mass of throbbing, bulky bodies like a shadow amidst a darkening, nameless stretch of land …

Five days later, after having wrestled with his thoughts, Tommy leaned his bicycle at the gate of a plank which led to Gustav’s house-boat on the Ruysdaelkade Canal. It was quite an impressive barge. He knocked at the door. Gustav, eyes a watery blue, opened the door and wished his visitor a hearty welcome ‘aboard’. “Just in time for dinner,” he said flippantly. When Tommy stepped in he couldn’t believe his eyes: they swept over a long ‘hold’ full of paintings of all sizes and colours, some hanging off the walls, others on easels, and still others scattered on the uncarpeted ‘bottom deck’, unfinished.

“You might open a museum here,” he suggested, strolling from painting to painting. “I like to look at pictures. When I accompany people to the Rijks or to the Rembrandthuis I always take my time to examine the pictures. The tourists just look at the title and at the name of the painter.”

“Yes, very few people really examine a painting.” Gustav placed two bowls of rice, shredded carrots and two pints of Heineken beer on a hackney table. “I for one prefer to paint them, buy or sell them, although I do often go to the museums for inspiration.”

“You sell your own pictures, then?” Gustav chuckled.

He gave Tommy a conspiratorial wink: “No, who would ever buy a Gustav Beekhot ? To tell you the truth I sell the ones I steal or have stolen from museums or from private collectors.” Tommy, who had sat down at the table dropped his fork. He stared at Gustav in disbelief. All that had been said with absolute aplomb. “Yes, Tommy my lad, sometimes I do buy them from contemporary Scandinavian painters living in poverty, but I prefer to steal them … It’s cheaper!”

“But … but how can you steal a picture from a museum?” questioned Tommy in alarm.

“It’s quite simple. It’s a question of know-how. Thievery is an art, my dear lad. And if you are willing, you will learn this art easily, and by doing so, earn a half a million dollars!”

Tommy jumped up. “No, please, let us eat, and I shall spell out all the niceties to you. There’s really nothing to it: a wiry, loose-limbed body like yours, will-power and the common sense to keep your mouth shut. And I do believe you possess all those aforesaid qualities. Am I correct?” Tommy remained voiceless. “Of course you possess them. But you doubt my word. Others too doubted, and today are living like kings in Tahiti, the Seychelles or in some Central American country.”

“A half a million dollars?” Tommy managed to stammer, sitting down slowly as Gustav glided between his paintings in a breezy, phantasmal gait to procure a bottle of Jenever in his kitchenette at the ‘prow’.

“Yes, Tommy. One night. One night only.” Tommy peered out the ‘porthole’, it had begun to drizzle. He watched as the drops gently fell upon the unruffled canal waters; they fell gently, rocking his host’s barge dreamily. He suddenly felt a seizure coming on. He strained to control it, the house-boat rocking … rocking so gently, like the drops of drizzle. Something snapped in his head; he shook it out. Gustav ate his rice and carrots as if he noticed nothing of the crisis that his visitor, and future accomplice, was suffering. He was smiling that engaging smile.

“What do I have to do?” came Tommy’s belated reply in spite of himself. He had asked that without being fully conscious of actually asking it.

Gustav stopped eating, sized him up, then thrust his taunt face forward. It had a ghostly white appearance to it: “Crawl through a very very narrow tunnel about two hundred metres long behind the Zadelhoff Café to the storage room of the Stedelijk museum. In that storage room you will find a painting by Marc Chagall, A Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers, which will be waiting for you to cut out of its frame with a razor blade. The nightwatchman has already put the painting exactly where you will pop up from the storage room hole.”

Gustav stood, went to a broken, plastic shelf over his wash-basin and picked up a razor-blade. “Look, this is how it should be done.” And the art dealer began to cut out a painting from its frame.  Tommy gasped. The other laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s one of my worst chefs-d’oeuvre …” Gustave then rolled up the canvas and placed it into a plastic cylinder. “There you have it my boy,” he beamed. “Sling the cylinder over your shoulder, drop down into the hole and crawl back through the tunnel where I shall be waiting for you.”

“But this tunnel … I can’t see …” Gustav put up a hand.

“The tunnel was dug during the second world war and used either to store ammunition by the local militia or as an escape route for Jews and communists.”

“How do you know all this?” Tommy asked incredulously.

“I studied history, and have many friends who deal in these particular matters.” There was a shrewd, impish twinkle in his host’s eyes.

Tommy seemed a bit sceptical about the whole operation. Gustav’s eyes were all alit, the glow of which stabbed at his distrustful heart. Gustav noted his guest’s wavering emotions. “My buyer will be in Amsterdam in five days,” he proceeded in a haunting undertone. “He’s arriving from Tampa, Florida and will be paying me one million three hundred thousand dollars for the painting. You will receive five-hundred thousand.”

He went to a drawer. “Here, this bank card will permit you to withdraw your share of the profits in any bank machine in the world. It’s a Swiss Banker’s card. But under no circumstances must you withdraw more than two thousand a day; bank administrators may become suspicious.”

“Where’s my bank?”

“That I cannot tell you,” Gustav answered sharply. “I suspect that you are mistrustful of me?” he chaffed.

“No, I’m not, but still …”

“No buts. The card is perfectly valid once the money has been deposited. And it will be after your mission has been completed. But I warn you Tommy, you must leave Amsterdam immediately before the museum authorities realise that the Chagall has been stolen. My buyer will leave on a morning flight back to Florida.”

At that moment Gustav poured out two glasses of Jenever, raised his and cried — ‘Godverdomme’ [2]! And with that coarse shout they both gulped down the divine nectar. Tommy felt a mounting tension in his chest, throat and jaw. Had he made a pact with a man whom he hardly knew ? He left at midnight, benumbed, as if he were a bit tight.

For two days Tommy struggled to control his taut emotions. To weigh the consequences of this incredible proposition. He could become immensely rich after a few hours of mental and physical toil, yet something irked him. It all seemed so unreal! He walked the streets of Amsterdam in the late afternoons, flicking matches into the air one after the other, watching the lit sticks glide gently to the street where the last lingering sparks sizzled out. He repeated aloud, “Tahiti, the Seychelles … I wonder where they are?” over and over again. He would take out the bank card and study it carefully. “It looks real to me,” he assured himself, albeit nervously.

On the fourth afternoon they met for tea at the Zadelhoff Café, after which Gustav took Tommy behind the café and showed him the sewer lid which led to the tunnel. Then they strolled over to the Stedelijk Museum, and whilst promenading through the halls of paintings Gustave cautiously pointed out the storage room where the Chagall had been stored for a future exhibition at another museum. All that day Tommy had admired the art collector’s professionalism and precision in elucidating the details of this very risky, but lucrative operation.

“Will-power, nerve and stamina, my lad,” Gustav kept repeating until he told Tommy to meet him that very night behind the Zadelhoff Café at one o’clock sharp. The buyer had booked a morning flight back to Florida. “One night ! Only one night, my friend. Don’t let us down … “ Tommy clenched his fists. He suddenly felt a surge of unwonted force, a force he had experienced many years ago before his unexpected arrival in Amsterdam. Gustav slapped him on the shoulder and glided away like a phantom in the reddening twilight …

A far away church-tower bell struck the hour of one. And so it happened, happened like a dream …

Gustav cut a spectral figure outlined against an ill-lit, moonless night as he waited impatiently for his accomplice. At that moment Tommy arrived, a trifle late. They both set immediately to work to open the heavy sewer lid. Once pried open, Tommy climbed down the rusty rungs, a torch in hand, the plastic cylinder slung over his shoulder. “The rats! The rats!” he called, looking up, his lithe body trembling.

“Rats ? The rats will scramble away when you train your torch-light on them,” Gustav shouted down in a weird, stilted voice. “Don’t talk nonsense ; just move on …”

And he slid the sewer lid over the hole. Tommy stopped. Darkness engulfed him. The boy panicked. — All alone! All alone! — he lisped to himself in fear. He nevertheless carried on down into the damp darkness training the light along the broken stone walls dripping with age. There, the opening of the tunnel! It was true. There was the tunnel … But so narrow … so terribly narrow …

Poor Tommy was hardly able to push himself into  the opening. He began to cry. He felt he had been buried alive in a toolless coffin. All alone! All alone! “Mummy!” escaped from his dry, chapped lips. Yet Tommy crawled on and on. The thought of a half million dollars flooded his inflamed brain. The brave boy elbowed a painstaking trail over root and rock, his torch-light cutting out a thin stream of blissful light that disappeared into a dark Nothingness. A Nothingness that frightened him, reminded him of vague scenes in some other life that he had once led, a former life of battling and crying out in a moonless, raging darkness …

His head struck stone. Yes, it was stone! The gallant Tommy had reached the museum storage hole. He straightened up with difficulty, touched the cold walls; a ladder had been provided for the Second World War escapees.

“The rest will be child’s play,” he whispered in an echoless vacuum. Up he clambered excitedly. The hole seemed endlessly deep. Was that possible ? Ah, the floor tile … Finally. He pushed it open as easy as that. “Child’s play,” he sniggered as if speaking  to Gustav.

Tommy pulled himself out into a deep, deep darkness. A darkness he had never experienced before. He searched for the razor-blade in his trouser pocket, trained his torch …

A merciless neon light suddenly blinded him, absorbing all the darkness, save that which still lay heavy and hauntingly in his head. Four policemen stood pointing at him, laughing and laughing. A very stoutish, well-dressed man stepped out from the policemen and grabbed the boy by the scruff of the neck. “So this is the little twit that has been hiding out like a rat!” the man chidded in broken English. “Hiding in the storage pit, hey? Think you’d slip away from us? What on earth are you doing in here you scamp, playing hide and seek?” Tommy said nothing. Baffled, he had lost all contact with reality. “Deaf and dumb, hey? Let’s see.” One of the police officers struck the boy across the face.

“Please don’t,” he whimpered.

“There you are, he can speak after all, and with a British accent, too,” pursued the well-dressed man who happened to be the museum director. “So, why are you hiding here ? What are you doing in that pit? Look at the mess you’ve made.” Indeed, the storage hole was filled with empty cracker and potato chip bags that Tommy had been eating. “Were you drinking water from the lavatory tap ? Look at this floor, there’s water all over it.” He poked Tommy in the chest.

“I was sent to steal a picture … Marc Chagall …”

“Steal a painting ? A Marc Chagall ? How were you to get it out of the museum ? Are you masquerading as Honest Jack[3] ?” This was asked with biting irony.

“Through the tunnel back to the Zadelhoff café.”

“Oh, I see … a tunnel to the Zadelhoff café.” He turned to the policemen: “Is there a tunnel to the Zadelhoff café.” All the policemen laughed and laughed, pointing at the sulking boy whose filthy, ill-smelling clothes struck a grotesque contrast with the museum director’s well-tailored suit.

“And with a razor-blade cut it out of its frame,” Tommy hurriedly added.

“Where’s the razor-blade?” one of the policemen demanded, taking him by the arm. “Give it to me.” Tommy searched his pockets. He held out a safety-pin.

“No tunnel, no razor-blade,” broke in the museum director. “You’re either a liar or a raving lunatic.”

“But I crawled through it. Gustav Beekhof showed me the tunnel and told me to steal the picture when he invited me to his house-boat,” Tommy pleaded, tears flowing over the dark shadows of his wild, tired eyes.

“There is no tunnel you little liar!” screamed a policeman. “And who is this Gustav Beekhot? Where is his house-boat?”

Tommy racked his brains: “I don’t know the exact address but I can take you there.”

He was hustled out of the museum into the moonless night, bundled into a police van and off they sped through, along and over streets, canals and bridges … until …

“There, on the Ruysdaelkade Canal,” the boy shouted in triumph. “His house-boat is the second …” Tommy stared in horror: there was no house-boat ! A police officer pulled him out of the van and dragged him to the slip where the house-boat should have been docked. Tommy rubbed his red, stinging eyes : “But it was there … I …”

“Shut-up you impudent little runt!” the officer barked. “I’ll check.” He returned to the van.

A few minutes later, he returned. “There’s no house-boat registered in that slip, and we have no record of a Gustav Beekhof,” he stated stiffly, looking hard at Tommy. “You’re raving mad.” A bewildered Tommy stepped back, his thoughts running riot.

“No house-boat. No Gustav Beekhof,” fumed the police officer. “A little scamp of a thief, that’s what you are.” And he twisted Tommy’s ear until it turned beet-red. “What’s your name, boy?”

“My name ? My name is Outis,” he lisped, holding his smarting ear.

 “And your papers?”

“Papers ? I have no papers … I’m …”

“Shut-up!” the police officer stormed, turning red. He took Tommy by the shoulders and shook him so hard that his teeth chattered. All of a sudden something snapped in his brain. The boy was seized by a mounting tension which sent him spiralling into a dark nothingness that he had never before experienced — a nothingness where he drifted through a darkened, nameless stretch of land …

DOCTOR VAN DIJK’S REPORT

The patient who calls himself Outis, as recorded by the police, most probably English-born, was found hiding in the Stedelijk museum storage room for two days with, according to the patient, the intention of stealing Marc Chagall’s ‘A Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers‘, which the aforesaid patient claimed had been deposited in the room for that purpose. This claim was disclaimed by the museum director, Mister Aalbers who avowed that the painting hangs in its usual place in the museum. The patient being questioned by the police, maintained that he was put up to the supposed theft by a certain Gustav Beekhof who apparently does not exist, according to police records, nor does his place of residence: a house-boat on the Ruysdaelkade Canal. The patient was promised a half a million dollars for the theft, which, as he declared, was undertaken by crawling through a tunnel from behind the Zadelhoff Café to the museum storage room. The police confirm that this tunnel has never existed. Furthermore, when the patient showed the police his bank card with which he was to withdraw his share of the theft, it turned out to be a library card whose owner’s name and library location had been thoroughly effaced beyond deciphering.

The patient has fallen into a coma for several days now. There seems to be no doubt that he is suffering from an acute case of schizophrenia, caused perhaps by a sudden mental or physical traumatism that has created an imaginary parallel world through which the patient wanders in and out whenever jolted by an unsual event or encounter.

The patient thus will remain in our clinic under strict observation until he emerges from his unconscious state.

Chief Psychologist of the Psychotherapierpraktijk Overtoom     

Wilfrid Van Dijk, May 9th, 1975    

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[1]  ‘Good bye’ in Dutch.

[2] ‘God damn it’ in Dutch. A rather ‘informal’ interjection when making a toast amongst close friends.

[3] The notorious English robber John Jack (1702-1724). He was hanged for his daring thefts.

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Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

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Categories
Stories

The Ghosts of Hog’s Head

By Paul Mirabile

I had gone on a five-week walking tour of western Ireland when a very perplexing and unsettling event took place. I am not one to believe in the supernatural or in anything more ‘alien’ than, let us say, a snowstorm in May. Nevertheless, what I experienced at Hog’s Head[1] in 1973 shattered all those former positivistic convictions …

My Irish jaunts led me through the Ghaeltacht areas of western Ireland where the majority of the Irish population speak Gaelic. Armed with my trusty walking stick, I tramped over sheep-and horse-dotted meadows, espying every now and then a fleeing fox; trekked near the massive cliffs that plunged into the Atlantic, alive to the thunderous roar of the puffing holes[2]. I pointed my stick at the numerous sea-caves — home to the black-headed gull and the common tern, and above these arched bulky flying buttresses with brilliant sheen.

One particular morning while lodging at a farm near Hog’s Head, I set out very early on the famed loop road all around which spread a series of blanket bogs[3]. The excellent hostess of the farm, a spirited gaunt-faced middle-aged widow with a florid complexion, advised me to stay on the road, the bogs reputed to be dangerous, especially when the fog lay low and thick upon them. As the sun rose, and the fog with it, I pressed forward breathing the clean air of Ghaeltacht Ireland, lands so enchanting both to the eye and the ear. At times my ears caught the echoes of ancient harps, strumming bardic ranns[4] of dead warriors and poets. My Irish was getting better thanks to the communicative people and my constant reading of Irish poetry and children’s stories written in simplified Irish. So delighted was I that particular morning that I broke into an impromptu tune!

I reached a sharp bend in the road which led me around to the other side of a long, grassy hillock. There, at the foot of the hillock, through the recalcitrant wisps of mist, my eyes fell upon the ruins of a homestead. The stone walls remained more or less intact, but its roof had caved in. What astonished me most were the layers of lime that covered the ruins, mantled them like a blanket of soft snow. The lime aroused my curiosity more than the remoteness of the ruins themselves, so far from hamlet or village. I thought of inspecting them but the advisory from the hostess of the house caused me to baulk … I carried on round the bend reaching the farm towards late afternoon.

That night after supper, the hostess, my co-lodger– a young, taciturn man from Devonshire — and I sat comfortably near the sizzling, glowing fire of the hearth in the sitting-room. Aligned like a row of sentinels on guard duty stood a dozen alcohol bottles on the chimney-piece, in between which were snugged two framed photographs of her late husband, a good-looking man with steel-blue eyes. For five evenings now it had been our wont to take our after-supper brandy near the welcoming hearth, listening to the crackling of the logs, inhaling the perfumed scent of resin mixed with the hostess’s excellent brandy.

No longer able to contain my curiosity, I asked the good woman about those ruins and the layers of lime. She turned her eyes from the fire and gave a piercing glance in my direction! I involuntarily fell back into my armchair. She placed her glass on the three-legged table adjacent to her armchair stared at me.

“Did you go into them, lad?” she asked sternly.

“No … no … the bogs.” I stammered.

“Don’t you be going into them,” she followed up, lowering he voice. “Don’t you ever be going into them.” She pulled up her wicket chair closer to us, eyes aflame, face wan.

“Why not?” enquired the other lodger. The young man appeared a bit put out by the change of atmosphere from the usual casual and flippant ambiance. She answered him in a sort of fey chant: “Ruined stone walls, roofless. Former homestead of the famine-stricken. Mournful black tombs never to be laid low.” An eerie silence followed. She took a quick glance out the big bay window as if expecting someone … or something! The logs crackled. The fire glowed. I felt the hour was ripe for story-telling. Had she captured my thoughts? A broad smile spread across her taunt face, one that invited listeners to ready themselves as the curtain slowly rises on a stage already set.

“So I see that both of you would like to know why …”

“Yes. Why?” the other lodger sputtered, taking up his brandy glass.

“Yes, why. Why the lime? Why do those ruins need to be left intact?” I added.

The setting had now been perfectly set; I imagined a reincarnated Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley[5] about to embark on a most disquieting tale. And so she did  …

“I need not comment on the terrible Potato Famine that swept over Ireland in the 18th century[6], which caused a million deaths mostly because Irish farmers were forced to produce wheat and corn for export instead of potatoes to feed their families.” The hostess of the house looked sharply at the young man. He, slowly sank into his seat.

The Potato Blight (1847), painting by Daniel Macdonald (1821-1853)

“Do you lads know that one acre of potatoes can feed a family of four for a year?” We shook our ignorant heads. “Anyway, during that famine the Brits ladled out free soup only to those of us who agreed to Anglicise their Irish family names. No change, no soup! Many who refused, emigrated. The others died of starvation. Well, the parents of that poor family refused to Anglicise their names or emigrate. A family of six, three boys and one girl, all under ten years’ old, managed to scrape up some potatoes, but soon were eating the peels of them before they gave up their souls. First their dog, then the children, finally the parents (Here she made the sign of the cross). No one dared offer them food lest the Brits punish them either by a whipping or stopping their soup rations.

“My great grandfather wasn’t afraid of the Brits. One day he went by to help the family with his horse-drawn cart full of flour, corn and some vegetables. He thought to feed them, then ride them from their out-of-the-way homestead over to his farm near Waterville. He found the whole family lying on the only bed of the house, on their backs, the whole lot of them holding each other’s hands, eyes bulging out of their sockets staring into the void of death. Then it happened …”

“Happened?” I spurted out in spite of myself, taking a gulp of brandy.

“IT happened,” she repeated frigidly. “First he heard the horrible yowling of their dog, yet couldn’t really see the animal. The poor beast yowled and whined so much that he covered his ears. Then before his eyes they all rose from their death bed, all of them I say. They rose and floated up, and down on to the bare floor with outstretched hands and open, toothless mouths. They shuffled towards him, all of them huddled together, whining and crying, their cries rising above those of the dog’s! My great grandpa screamed and ran to the bedroom door, then ran for his life across the bogs to the cart. He jumped up to the seat, took up the reins but when he looked back at the homestead there was no one … No one!”

“No one?” squeaked the  young man who had been swallowing liberal amounts of the hostess’s brandy.

“No one. It was their ghosts that rose up before my great grandpa’s eyes…what we call in western Ireland appearances or the unquiet dead. You know, they dwell in the invisible world and will emerge at the presence of the living. The living must never disturb the sorrowful slumber of the unquiet dead. They gave up their ghost, their spirit, and if the intruder to their slumber looks upon them, it is their mortal coil that we see (and again the hostess made the sign of the cross), although they be only spirits or ghosts of themselves. That’s why we say they are no longer ‘living’, but do retain ‘life’ in them.”

“Life?” I echoed.

“Yes, life. Because those poor souls have to be saved and not lose themselves in the throes of limbo or Hell … “ And her eyes were ablaze like the blazing flames of the hearth. She went on in fiery tones: “They have been freed from the misery of the living; and because their souls have so suffered we spread lime over their famine-stricken corpses and doomed home so that nothing would trouble their soundless sleep. Nothing! So that no one dares trespass on their earthly hardship and misfortune. Their home has been preserved like a memorial for everyone to see and feel the tragedy of that period. So I’m telling you lads, let them rest wherever they be. You can see it from the roadside but don’t you be going in there.” She paused, lowering her head. “My poor great grandfather; I’m sure those hapless souls were pleading for salvation or heavenly mercy from the only person who dared venture into their damned dwelling.”

By that time I was sitting on the edge of my chair. I managed to state emphatically: “But ghosts don’t exist.”

Her eyes grew fiery: “No ghosts, my lad ? No ghosts you say ? Let me warn you never to set a foot in those ruins; that  homestead has been doomed. Don’t go in I say. The shock may turn your wavy blond hair grey in an instant.” She made the sign of the cross, threw a cursory glance out of the bay window then stared at me as if lost in thought. “You know lads I’ve seen them meself.”

Her story was growing thicker like the dense flames rising in the hearth …We sat still in anticipation.

“Yes, meself. I was too stupid or curious after listening to all the tales told about that wretched family. Told again and again by my family and neighbours …”

The young man asked abruptly: “You haven’t told us their name.”

Why he wished to know the name of that family was beyond me. The woman sighed, clearly annoyed at this interruption, and answered with overt irritation: “The Donnellans if that is so important to you, lad. A good Irish name if there ever was one.”

“And what is your good name?” I ventured with a faint smile, attempting to quell the compressed atmosphere of the sitting-room. 

“O’Casey, if that makes you happy to know,” she responded, now quite ruffled by our ‘irrelevant’ questions. “Now lads, may I proceed or is there something else that you both would like to know ?” There was not.

“Good! Now, I must have been about twelve or thirteen at the time when one day I gathered courage enough to enter the house of the dead. The smell of lime almost put me off, but I wanted to see for meself ! And see I did: There they lay on the death bed, covered in a smooth blanket of lime, holding hands. I imagine that the lime conserved their bodies. As I stared down at them, little by little my head throbbed and my ears went mute. Everything became so estranged in the world that surrounded me, so blurry, as if I were caught up in a morning mist. Then as God be my witness, voices rose from the death-bed like soft flakes of falling snow. Then they slowly rose from the bed and floated upwards, then downwards to the broken limed boards of the room, slipping out of their bleached mortal coils. The soft voices and the shrivelled bodies all drifted in the air huddled up to one another, drifting closer to me, those skeleton-like hands outstretched, tiny, toothless mouths wide open, chests sunken. Closer and closer they approached in mid-air. I cried out backing away to the doorless bedroom then ran out across the bogs to the road crying sidhes[7], banshees[8] until I got home, my clothes covered with mud. When my father found out about my whereabouts he gave me a proper whipping.”

The hostess collected her thoughts. “Don’t do anything foolish. Stay away from the dead. The dead are the dead, the living, the living.” She stood up and bid us a good night.

Was she being ironic? A good night after that tale? I glanced at my fellow lodger. His face was as white as a ghost’s, if I may say so. We both sat in silence, listening to the crackling of the fire slowly dying into soft glowing embers.

As I trudged up the creaking wooden steps to my room, I will say that her story really spooked me. My pragmatic education had taken quite a few blows, knocked off its pedestal of pedantry. Needless to say my sleep was hounded by queer, saturnine scenes difficult to decipher much less interpret.

It goes without saying that the next morning I felt as if I were in some sort of trance. Ambiguous thoughts wrestled within my confused mind. Our hostess had left for the day to Waterville, and the other lodger had not as yet been down for breakfast.

I remember that it was a rather chilly morning. The fog undulated in rhythmic wavelets over the bogs. I bent my direction towards the homestead walking briskly. As the mist gradually lifted, the ruins rose to my left. The mist, for some odd reason, lay stationary upon the forsaken stones like a shroud upon its corpse. Suddenly I heard the barking and whining of a dog whose echoes filled the misty bogs with rueful omens. I had never heard them on my previous promenades along the loop road. I stole a glance behind me: no one …

Whatever impelled me to cross those bogs to the ruins God only knows! But there I found myself at the threshold of the baneful interdiction. I stepped in, tip-toed towards the bedroom, the thick lime sticking to my walking boots. I tried to chip it off with my stick. Shards of roof tiles and chimney bricks lay scattered under a layer of foul-smelling lime. At that instant the wailings of the dog grew closer. They almost brought tears to my eyes. I felt a sudden helplessness due to this odious intrusion into their mirthless home.

My ears began to drum, pulsating and pulsating an uneven tempo, benumbing my senses, deadening my limbs. A terrible fatigue overwhelmed me. The whining and barking of the dog somewhere out over the bogs aroused such a sadness in me, an uncontrollable desire to cry. The poor beast whimpered and wailed like a baby. I eventually reached the master bedroom: there they lay, the six of them, hands locked together. Sound asleep ? No, their eyes stared up into the now descending mist; eyes without pupils, only the rims of the orbits, blackened by starvation. And as the mist descended soundlessly like falling snow upon the prostrate corpses, the little girl turned her head towards me, lethargically, mechanically like a toy doll, an arched smile spread across her bleached face, widening her bloodless lips. Patches of caked lime clung limply to her tattered clothes as she rose out of the bed like a feather, stood up and began to limp towards me, her tiny, dirty hands outstretched, her eyes … no … no eyes, only empty sockets peered steadily at me, approaching … approaching. I couldn’t move. I screamed but heard nothing. Screaming … screaming my voice summoned no echo, no one flew to my aid. She approached, that horrible smile now an ugly sneer deforming a fleshless face.

How I reached the bogs and over them I’ve never been able to recall. I saw myself running and running, my screams now pounding the misty morning. I splashed through the bogs like a maniac, wallowing in the low, dirty waters, my clothes and long, blond hair mud-splattered. My only salvation was the loop road, which I finally gained, panting like a tracked animal. I remember hearing the voice of the young man calling out to me, his long, lanky figure looming out of the mist like a phantom’s! He caught me in his arms as I screamed a terrible scream. He struggled to get me to my feet and whisked me away as best he could. I looked behind. There was no one.

And still, as the courageous fellow dragged me over the salutary road, I carried on screaming much to his dismay. He tried to calm me down as I tried to explain … No explanation was needed: He understood, frowned, and soon had me hustled off to the farm. It was only late in the evening that I began to regain my senses thanks to the steadfast care of my fellow lodger who plied me successively with tea, brandy and spurts of lively conversation whilst I lay prostrate on my bed.

Luckily the hostess had not as yet returned; she surely would have sensed something amiss and if she did find out about my misadventure would have certainly broken out into a storm of abuse. Contrary to what I expected, however, I slept like a top, waking quite fresh at six in the morning, although I had sensed someone slipping into my room twice or trice that night, most probably my fellow lodger checking on me.

The next morning at breakfast, I said nothing. Our hostess was much too busy to ply me with questions of my whereabouts yesterday, and the Englishman, sipping his tea gloomily, uttered not a word. He departed an hour after breakfast, peering at me from under a pair of reproachful brows which, I suppose, meant to upbraid me for my irresponsible actions in the realms of the supernatural. Before closing the door, though, he gave me a conspiratorial wink and an uneasy smile. I myself took leave of the good woman and her wonderful hospitality en route for Sligo, thanking her warmly for such insights into Irish lore. She looked at me funnily and wished me all the best of Irish luck.

Sauntering towards Waterville, my stick beating out a well-paced rhythm, I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks realising that I never found out the names of my fellow lodger or the hostess. Ah well, no one would hold it against me. Off I went on my wary way in the opposite direction of the accursed homestead not quite avid as last week for any new ‘adventure’ …

Here I now write, back in my cozy house-boat in Amsterdam, somewhat recoverred from that shocking encounter. Although my hair has not turned grey and the ghostly vision of that little girl from the homestead still haunts my sleep every now and then, a gruesome vision that I find impossible to come to grips with. Was it real or a figment of my imagination ? Dangling, wispy threads of the Irish hostess’s eerie yarn ? I’ll probably never seize the reality of that horrible moment

One day as I strolled along the canals on my way to the Stedelijk Museum and the Rembrandt House Museum, my usual haunts, and recently, havens to calm my overtaxed nerves, a book caught my interest in the window of the Scheltema book shop: Visions and Beliefs[9] in the West of Ireland by Lady Gregory[10]. I bought the 1970 Coole edition. Since that purchase, I have read five to ten pages every night, rereading them until the effects of those gleaned encounters with the supernatural banalise mine! A curious woman this Lady Gregory — she learnt Irish and orally collected the stories of banshees, sidhes and ghosts from the inhabitants of the Gaeltacht regions before writing them down and publishing them. She might be acclaimed the Jacob Grimm[11] of Ireland ! So inspiring are her accounts that I am also reading her Poets and Dreams and A Book of Saints and Wonders[12].

This being said, in spite of the many months that have passed since my encounter with the unquiet dead, and my readings of Lady Gregory, the image of that little girl has for ever left its indelible imprint on my mind and heart. Mind you, it no longer terrifies me, but I remain wary, none the less.

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[1] A hamlet located in Kerry County of western Ireland.

[2] Large circular holes located above sea-caves out of which water ‘puffs up’ when the ocean waters rush into the caves.

[3] Wild areas that cover the lowlands of western Ireland made up of decomposed plants.

[4] A stanza of Celtic poetry. It is of Irish origin.

[5] Mary Wollstonecraft (1797-1851) author of the Frankenstein story told before the hearth to her husband, Percy Byshe Shelley and to Lord Byron one stormy night.

[6] Potato Famine (1845-1852).

[7] Supernatural beings. The Irish word is pronounced ‘shee’.

[8]Supernatural creatures from the Other World.

[9] First edition 1903.

[10] Lady Gregory     (1852-1932). A remarkable woman who was one of the foremost literary founders of the Irish Republic by her stage works and translations.

[11] Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) A German philologist who collected folk tales from German peasants orally, then had them published, retaining their orthographic and dialectal traits.

[12]First Edition 1907

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Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

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Notes from Japan

A Golden Memory of Green Day in Japan

By Suzanne Kamata

At the end of April and the beginning of May, several Japanese holidays fall close together. This special time of year is called Golden Week. Often, a few work/school days fall between the holidays, however many people take advantage of the break and travel. I have a hard time remembering which days are which holidays, however I do remember that one of them is Midori-no-hi, or Green Day (which falls on the Showa Emperor’s birthday, May 4).

Not long after I graduated from college, I came to Japan to work as an assistant English teacher. I was assigned to a high school in Naruto, a city in Shikoku, southeast of Osaka, noted for its tasty seaweed and huge, natural whirlpools.

The principal of the high school was very friendly and often invited me to drink tea and chat with him, so I was none too surprised when he called me to his office one April afternoon. This, however, wouldn’t turn out to be a typical encounter.

The principal began to tell me about the annual Midori-no-hi (Green Day) ceremony. Each year, it’s held in a different prefecture, and that year it was Tokushima’s turn. The Emperor and Empress are always in attendance. Only a select group of people would be invited to attend the proceedings, the principal told me, and I had been chosen to participate.

How could I refuse? I imagined meeting the Emperor and Empress and telling them about my hometown in America. Maybe we’d sip green tea together from the locally-crafted pottery cups.

A full rehearsal was scheduled a couple of weeks in advance of the actual event. I boarded a bus at 5 a.m. along with a group of high school band members who would be performing during the ceremony.

As we approached the park settled in the mountains of Tokushima, I noticed that the formerly rough road had been paved. The roadside was lined with marigolds which had been freshly planted in anticipation of the imperial couple’s visit.

At the park, we all practiced our separate parts. Mine would be quite simple. Two other young women — a Brazilian of Japanese descent and an Australian who’d just arrived in the country — and I would be escorted to a spot in front of the Emperor and Empress. We would then bow, accept a sapling from the governor, and plant it in the ground with the help of boy scouts.

As the Emperor would be there and the entire ceremony would be broadcast on national television, everything had to be perfect. We practiced bowing many times with our backs straight and our hands primly layered.

Finally, Midori-no-hi arrived. The day was cloudy and occasional rain drops spotted my silk dress. Everyone hoped that the weather would not ruin the proceedings.

Marching bands, an orchestra, and a choir made up of students from various local high schools and colleges filled the morning with music. Instead of the sun, we had the bright brass of trombones, trumpets and cymbals.

Modern dancers in green leotards enacted the growth of trees. Later, expatriate children from Canada, France, Peru and other countries announced “I love green” in their native languages. This was followed by the release of hundreds of red, blue and yellow balloons into the grey sky. A hillside of aging local dignitaries were on hand to view the pageantry.

About mid-way through the ceremony, the Emperor and Empress arrived. They followed the red carpet laid out to the specially-constructed wooden dais, the Empress a few steps behind her husband as protocol demanded, to “Pomp and Circumstance”. The rustle of Japanese flags waved enthusiastically in the air threatened to drown out the orchestra.

After many solemn addresses and much bowing, the Emperor and Empress stepped down to “plant” trees. His Highness pushed some dirt around the base of a cedar sapling with a wooden hoe. His pink-suited consort did the same while balancing on high heels. The placement of the trees was only for show. Later, everything would be transplanted to a more suitable location.

At last, it was my turn. The other young women and I were led to the grass stage to the accompaniment of a harpist. I accepted my tree and buried its roots in the ground. The tree was a sudachi, which bears small green citrus fruit and is the official tree of Tokushima Prefecture.

The music and majesty of the occasion made me feel like I was doing something important on Earth. I was adding to the verdure of the world, enabling Nature. I felt a sense of awe.

When all of us were finished planting, we bowed in unison to the Emperor and Empress, then filed off the field. Afterwards, there was a mass-gardening session as all of the attendants on the hillside began planting prepared saplings.

I didn’t get to meet the royal couple after all. Although they passed by within a few meters of where I was standing, there were no handshakes, no pleasantries, not even any eye contact.

What I did get was a big bag of souvenirs — a cap, a small wooden folding chair, commemorative stamps, a flag, sudachi juice, and a book of photos so that I could always remember that misty day, that baby tree.

Sudachi tree
Sudachi fruit

Suzanne Kamata was born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.

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Stories

Pier Paolo’s Idyll

By Paul Mirabile

In order to build a new low-cost residential complex twenty kilometres to the West of Rome, hundreds of hectares of low-lying hills, orchards, several depopulated hamlets and unplanted vineyards had been cleared by an army of bulldozers, cranes and cheap labour with picks and shovels. In the 1960s, housing construction in Italy had mushroomed out in an erratic, rampaging spectacle beyond any public or private circumspection.

Pier Paolo and his middle-aged mother benefitted from one of these new, but hastily built residential flats on the tenth floor of a fifteen-storey tower. His father had abandoned the family four or five years ago, forcing the boy’s mother to work as a seamstress for the hundreds of residents of their tower. He himself had dropped out of school to work at a nearby wine factory in the industrial zone. Their meagre incomes paid the rent, permitted them to eat two or three meals a day and dress decently.

Everyday, Pier Paolo shuffled lazily to the factory at eight o’clock. To reach the small factory, he crossed an immense horizonless, treeless esplanade paved in the most banal ugly grey paving stones. What caught his attention, however, was a low rising stretch of grassy dirt mounds which ran for a lengthy distance along a high, barbed wire metal barrier which separated the dirt mounds from a rocky embankment leading downwards to a newly build avenue. These low dirt knolls, according to the season, blushed a poppy spring red, a leafy, autumnal brown, a wintry white then a lush, verdant green in the summer. On his off days, he would walk through the low hillocks from one point to the other. They covered an area of about twenty-five metres by ten metres. His constant crossings in this forgotten pile of dirt had traced footpaths in and around the knolls, the low bushes and over broken roots.

Pier Paolo enjoyed these pleasant promenades. Below, on one side, buzzed speeding vehicles. On the other, lay the empty, treeless esplanade where hardly a soul appeared, save a few workers, housewives pushing carts of food, flowers or trinkets to be sold in the neighbourhood market, one or two old school comrades and stray dogs. It was at that particular movement of contemplation that Pier Paolo experienced a tinge of excitement, a mounting commotion that would endorse and embolden his existence, would prompt his escape from the boring walls of a suffocating flat, the ugly concrete and metal of their block residence …

Returning from the factory one afternoon at the beginning of June, Pier Paolo walked briskly over the range of shaggy mounds of piled up dirt for an hour or so before finally deciding  upon a spot that would suit his adventure nicely. Hidden from the eyes of those who crossed the esplanade, a small concavity in the rim of a grassy hillock would afford him a place to sleep. He only needed to erect a make-shift lean-to, not to protect him from the rain — during the spring and summer months it never rained — but from the scorching heat. Yes, Pier Paolo resolved to live with nature on this diminutive tract of earth that had miraculously survived the building contractors’ bulldozers and cranes.

He hastened home to his mother who was busy sowing a marriage dress for her second storey neighbour. Pier Paolo excitedly explained his adventure. It would last through not only for the summer months, but also through autumn before the heavy rains set in. She listened passively, her mouth agape. Had her son gone completely daft? No, he appeared quite normal, even serious. He would rise with the rising sun, have his breakfast at the café near the factory, lunch at the factory canteen, and as to diner he would buy deli meats, olives, cheese and bread at the grocer’s.

“Why not eat diner here with me?” his mother suggested in her soft, meek voice.

“Of course I’ll eat with you mummy, but only on weekends. I must live permanently in my new environment. I’m eighteen year’s old, and it will be an adventure to sleep out in such primitive and natural surroundings without neighbours’ screaming and shouting, loud parties until four in the morning, lifts breaking down all the time. I want to breathe fresh air, if that is all possible in this godforsaken dump.”

His mother flushed at these last words, but held her tongue, astonished at her son’s resolution. “You see mummy, I want to look up at the stars and not at the cracks in the ceiling of my room.” His mother nodded her head, thimble on her thumb, needle and thread between her index and middle finger. He was right, there were many cracks and fissures in the ceilings and walls of their ‘new’ flat ! Well, he did show ingenuity and imagination. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and besides, he wouldn’t be far from home …

So Pier Paolo packed a few belongings in his back-pack, rolled up his sleeping bag, kissed his mother on her wrinkled forehead and strolled to his ‘earthy paradise’ as he facetiously called his up-coming ‘residence’.

The first two weeks Pier Paolo did eat with his mother on Sundays and also gave her his clothes to be washed, cleaned and dried, made ready for work on the morrow. However, the following weekends he did his own washing at the launderette for a few lira, and ate sandwiches at his hilly home instead of with his mother. It certainly was not out of anything against her. He loved her very much. But Pier Paolo wished to be on his very own, especially on his off days and at night, lying on his sleeping bag outside the lean-to, observing the stars and the moon as they moved slowly across the universe. Up till then, no one had disturbed him. A stray dog did sniff about his installation on several occasions, but the animal seemed friendly, and Pier Paolo threw it some slices of salami and pepperoni. The only other ‘visitors’ to his comfortable solitude were the sparrows who gayly pecked at the crumbs of bread that he scattered for them just below his shelter.

Oh how after a hard day’s work at the factory he relished those calm, starry evenings, the light whir of vehicles below beyond the barbed-wire barrier, the absolute silence of the esplanade behind him! He really felt quite at home amongst the natural elements; the ants building their ant-hills, the bees doing their dance amidst the honeysuckles, the birds chirping in and out of the bushes. The poppies and daisies were in bloom, too. Alas, many of the grassy knolls and thorny footways had been littered with coke bottles and caps, beer cans or liquor bottles, yellowed magazine and newspaper pages, cigarette studs, all thrown there by returning workers from the industrial area or gangs of drunken adolescents. Pier Paolo, struggling through the prickly weeds, would clean the mess the best he could, but invariably the same lot or other litter-louts would fling whatever trash they had into his ‘paradise’ as if it were a huge rubbish bin. Did these individuals know that Pier Paolo had taken up residence in those piles of grassy mounds? Even if they did, nothing would have prevented them from tossing whatever they had into it, accompanied by drunken guffaws and mindless giggles.

The sea must not have been far off, or so he imagined. For at times he heard the whir of a winged seagull. He stood to catch sight of it, but only the blurry orange glow of the high rising tower lights far off at the end of the esplanade marked the sky. The towers resembled so many indistinct parapets of flickering light-bulbs which loomed ominously at the end of the soundless esplanade. That vastness of ugly emptiness had always frightened him, and at those times he would turn his back to this sinister, featureless urban landscape and dwell upon the images of faraway scenes that crossed his imagination. No, those electric lights would not chase away his stars …

One star-filled night, he envisaged pink and amber sands of a horizonless desert whose barkans[1] and chots[2] left him breathless; the heat of the sands made him sweat under the blazing hot sun in an azure sky of pure, unpolluted, untainted opal. In another vision, he pictured himself deep in a chain of snow-clad crested mountains, trekking with difficulty over ribbed glaciers and ice-laden passes, the blues of the mountains inviting him to penetrate ever deeper so as to discover the arcane entrance to the subterranean kingdom of the King of the World.

Pier Paolo’s imagination soared to new heights night after night following a hard day’s work. It were as if he had mounted a magic carpet which floated under rainbows, over wide forests and turquoise seas. These fantastic images slid him slowly into a deep, healthy sleep. He awoke refreshed and vigorous, ready for a hearty breakfast at the café and work. In fact, he had never worked as hard as he did now, loading the train cars with heavy cartons of wine, working rapidly at the conveyor belt packaging wine bottles.

Many of the workers admired the young Pier Paolo for his renewed energy, his replenished stamina and spirit. At the sound of the whistle, he showered, bought some prosciutto, pepperoni, provolone, olives, pistachios and bread from the grocer’s, then returned merrily to his shaggy-mounded home. His muscles ached, but gradually relaxed when the stars began to pop out forming clusters of scintillating comfort …

He saw himself on the Niger River somewhere in Mali, drifting in a canoe on the slow moving current, wild geese cackling on the wing, hippopotami bellowing and rumbling in the deep waters, camels grunting from the arid sand-filled shores. He drifted and drifted as the heat bore heavily upon him, lying upon sacks of corn, munching on dates, tomatoes and boiled fish …

A sudden barking! It was the stray dog. Pier Paolo shook himself out of his dreamy stupor, threw the poor scraggy creature a slice of pepperoni, then closed his weary eyes and slept soundly. Darkness crept over the hilly mounds, mantling their denizen in another tranquil night of peaceful repose.

Oddly enough, after having devoured the slice of pepperoni, the dog never returned to visit our grassy-mounded denizen. He had other visitors, however — a motley lot of out-of-schoolers who seemingly scented the presence of someone living amidst the abandoned lot, and who endeavoured to confirm it. It was a Saturday afternoon. Pier Paolo was busy reading an interesting detective story when suddenly he found himself encircled by three ragamuffin boys and two very buxom girls! They all sized him up, noses in the air as if sniffing the warm breeze of a July day.

“Who are you mate?” a skinny boy questioned with overt contempt. He appeared to be the ‘chief’ of the pack. Pier Paolo stood up. He was much taller than any of them and more broad-shouldered. The others held their ground, but one or two scraped the dirt with their worn-out shoes, biting their lips.

“I’m the king of these mounds. What of it?”

“The king?” guffawed the skinny chap out of the corner of his distorted mouth.

“Yea, the king,” repeated Pier Paolo, heightening his voice with an added tinge of condescension.

“Very well, king. Then what if we were to dethrone you and turn your monarchy into a democratic state?” The others sniggered at this show of rhetoric, albeit hesitantly.

“Go ahead, Mister Democrat!” responded the monarch, tightening his fists, smiling through clenched teeth. No one moved. The warm breeze made the democrats sway in their fixed positions like a herd of paper tigers.

“Ah, let it go,” interrupted one of the girls. “Let him rule over his trash-filled kingdom.” And she turned to leave, followed shortly by the other girl then the three boys, who exchanged menacing glances with Pier Paolo. The ‘chief’ bowed in affected reverence to the ‘king’ and mumbled something unintelligible. When they had reached the esplanade, Pier Paolo scoffed at this unexpected intrusion, crawled under his lean-to and went back to his afternoon reading …

The August heat dried all the perfumed poppies and dainty daisies that Pier Paolo had planted around his lean-to. The heat had become unbearable, driving through the palm-leaf roof of his make-shift shelter. It was holiday for most of the workers at the wine factory, but Pier Paolo volunteered to work the whole month, not only for higher wages, but for showering and the afternoon hot meals. He did visit his mom every now and then, but was living mostly on deli meats, olives, cheese, fruit and bread. Because of the heat, he showered every day and took his clothes to the launderette every two days. It’s true that this kind of a diet began to bore him, however, his solitary refuge had really become his royal paradise!

Every Saturday and Sunday, he roamed through his ‘kingdom’ searching the nooks and crannies for unusual objects: a broken tombstone dating from the seventeenth century judging from the Latin inscription, a yellow-paged book of verses by a poet unknown to him, several of which he managed to read but hardly understood. He discovered a rusted compass and magnifying-glass, half-buried in one of the weedy mounds. In a riot of dead roots he rummaged out a photo of a young girl dressed as if to go to church, all in white with a huge black crêpe de chine hat. He collected these treasures and put them in a box for safe-keeping. They represented objects reminiscent of some by-gone era.

One day he stumbled upon a huge footprint, much bigger than any print he had ever seen.

“A dinosaur?” he thought excitedly.

He scoured the knolls for any dinosaur bones but found none. Where did that enormous footprint come from? Pier Paolo grew somewhat apprehensive. His kingdom indeed enclosed a myriad mysteries. And this one drew him further before the advent of humankind …or so he thought.

One fine sunny morning, the black dog he had fed, suddenly appeared with a huge bone in its mouth. Pier Paolo threw it a few slices of salami he had been munching on but the dog shook its shaggy head and plodded off behind a knoll. He raised a quizzical eyebrow. Did the dog not like salami? Perhaps that bone was a dinosaur bone. He shrugged his shoulders sniffing the hot air.

During the month of August he hardly visited his mother. He hardly spoke to his colleagues at the factory. They eyed him nervously. The boy seemed so estranged, aloof with a distant look in his eyes. He would look straight through you and beyond, somewhere far, far away. His gait too had slackened. This being said, he carried out his tasks as usual.

He let his hair grow long, dishevelled. He grew a wispy beard, uncombed. His clothes, although clean, hung on him like a bag, and a bit bedraggled to boot as if he had slept in them. Which he always did, needless to say. All he yearned for was to return to his solitary retreat in the evening, lie down and stare at the emerging stars. They drew him upwards and outwards. The sun having set, the heat ceased to vex him. The crickets discontinued their August chorus. Other sounds, alien, rose to a high pitch in his head…the tinkling of camel bells across the sandy wavelets of the Gobi or the Sahara deserts. There he was again, riding atop a camel, a white, gleaming, silken turban wound about his head, his body protected by a satin djellaba. He had sailed the high seas for many moons before disembarking in this ocean of ergs[3] whose vibrant colours made his eyes squint. The cleanliness of such an expanse delighted him, such a contrast to the concrete ugliness and filth of all those horrid towers! As the ship disappeared over the rim of the watery horizon, he stood between the vastness of the desert and the sea, the first in front of him, the second behind, ready to penetrate unknown territories. Above, a translucent blue sky. The camels plodded onwards; a sudden crispy sound alerted him to a change in the landscape, the camels’ hooves now trudged over stetches of slaty black sands that the dried lava of a volcano eruption had deposited thousands and thousands of years ago. The camels trudged and trudged ; the crusty slaty sands crunched and crunched until Pier Paolo fell asleep …

Pier Paolo, after five weeks of not visiting his mother, spent a Sunday with her. So happy was she to see her son that the cheerful woman cooked him his favourite dish: eggplant parmigiana. She bought him the best provolone and caciocavallocheeses that she could afford, and served him a vintage Chianti wine. As a special treat for dessert, she fried him Sicilian sfince[4]. How he wolfed those delicious delicacies down! Pier Paolo hadn’t eaten such sweets for over three months. He had become so thin, his long hair and beard framed an emaciated face, whose bulging eyes bore a wild look. Yet he remained very polite, mild-mannered, even tender towards his loving mother throughout the afternoon. When he closed the door behind him, she held back her tears. Would she hold them back when his final hour came?

It was a warm September afternoon, 1975. Next to his lean-to, Pier Paolo sat reading a novel by Alberto Moravia, ‘Gli Indifferenti’[5], the 1929 edition. He sniffed the cool autumn air, admired the pleasant scents of the poppies and honeysuckles around which the bees were busily buzzing. From behind the mounds, he heard a few vehicles screech to a halt, followed by many coarse voices. The boy stood, walked over the mounds and noticed five or six men in ties and two policemen staring up at him. A big fat man, probably a building contractor by the look of his clothes, waved to him to come down. With overt disdain, he turned and returned to his novel. Shortly after, though, he found himself surrounded by these intruders to his privacy. He stood, miffed to the marrow!

“You’re trespassing, sirs. And encroaching on my afternoon reading.” This was stated with calm but obvious scorn. All the men laughed so loud that it brought a series of yowls from the stray dog, who had been observing the scene from atop the knoll where Pier Paolo had built his lean-to. It was showing its teeth, yet uttered not a growl.

“Clear out boy, you’ve had your fun for the summer. The neighbours are complaining about you. Anyway the city is about to level all this and pave it clean.” The fat man certainly gave himself airs, puffing out his chest.

Pier Paolo, with a thin smile, replied wearily: “What neighbours? No neighbour has ever said anything about my being here. They don’t even know I’m here.”

“Listen, don’t muck about with us. I’m telling you to push off or we’ll be forced to drag you off,” the other said in a offensive tone, his face turning a beet-red.

Pier Paolo clenched his fists: “This is my kingdom, fatty. I and only I decide when to leave!”

The dog yowled again. The fat contractor kicked down the lean-to in a spate of anger. Pier Paolo, taken aback by this display of uncalled for violence, lashed out at him with two or three well-placed blows to the face. ‘Fatty’ fell backwards to the ground, spitting out a tooth and much blood.

One of the policemen grasped Pier Paolo by the shoulder ; the young boy showing unusual strength knocked his arm away and struck the policeman’s jaw with his elbow, then continued to strike him in the ribs with a volley of punches. Just then from above, the dog leapt into the crowd barking hysterically. It fell onto one of the men biting into the neck. The dog had gone mad. The other policeman took out his pistol and shot it dead.

Pier Paolo, stunned by the gunshot and the dog lying limp next to his broken lean-to, flew into a rage and attacked the policeman, seething like an animal, gnashing his teeth. He struck blow after blow, uncontrollably. Now the rest of the men pounced on the boy beating him mercilessly to the ground, kicking him in the head. The policeman broke up the beating, handcuffed the half-unconscious Pier Paolo and dragged him off to the police car …

The badly beaten boy was taken to hospital. Upon his release, he was immediately arrested and charged for assault and battery on the two policemen and on two municipal civil servants. At the trial the accused, who had no defence, was sentenced to two years imprisonment and a 50.000 lira fine, which he refused to pay on the grounds that neither he nor his mother could afford such a sum. The judge slapped on another year of imprisonment.

Confined to stare at four concrete walls many hours a day, Pier Paolo gradually slipped out of the reality of his circumstances. He took no food nor spoke to anyone. He merely lay prostrate on his little cell bed like one awaiting death. No more wonderful images of deserts, mountains and seas crossed his benumbed mind.

Death stole upon Pier Paolo in violent spasms on the evening of the second of November, 1975. Apparently, he had starved himself to death.

His lonely mother sewed and sewed, no longer able to retain her tears. No neighbour came to comfort her; no religious authority to commiserate with her grief.

As to Pier Paolo’s kingdom or paradise, on one dreary November day, several bulldozers levelled the shaggy mounds. The area that had been his home now became an extension of the paved esplanade up to the barrier of the embankment.

[1] Crescent-shaped sand dunes.

[2] Large lake-like salt deposits.

[3] Large wavy dunes.

[4] Made of ricotta, unbleached flour and unsalted butter, rolled into balls and fried. When cooled, sugar powder is sprinkled on them. They are generally eaten on Saint Joseph’s day in Sicily.

[5] Translated in English as ‘The Indifferent Ones’ or ‘The Time of Indifference’ by Alberto Moravia(1907-1990)

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Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Categories
Conversation

Rings on Her Fingers and Bells on Her Toes…

Ratnottama Sengupta in conversation with Sohini Roychowdhury, who uses dancing to build bridges across cultures

“Meet my daughter Sohini,” Uma Di was introducing the dancer who then lived in Madrid. And my first response was, “Why isn’t she in the movies?!”

Sohini Roy Chowdhury. Courtesy: Sohini Roy Chowdhury

Tall, fair, lissome, agile, Sohini Roychowdhury is the stuff beauty queens and show stoppers are made of. That wasn’t surprising: after all, Uma Roychowdhury herself is the picture of perfection in aesthetics.

It didn’t take me long to realise that, much like the well regarded sculptor’s bronzes, her daughter too was made of enduring stuff. One day she was teaching Bharatanatyam to French, Spanish, and Italian enthusiasts. The next day she was lecturing on mythology in New York. One day she was dancing to ‘Jai Ho![1]’ for the director of the Oscar winning Hollywood movie[2]. Another day she was delineating Durga in an Anthropology Museum…

None of these saw her run out of breath. Nor does she, ever, run out of time. When she’s not holding her fingers in a dance mudra, she is holding a metaphoric pen. This month she unveiled her second book, Dance of Goddess Kali. Yes, she has rings on her fingers and bells on her toes — and wherever she goes, there’s dance on the cards!

Here is what she had to say when I spoke to her:

The Dance of Kali follows Dancing with the Gods. How are the two books different?

Dancing With the Gods and The Dance of Kali are two distinct works, each focusing on different aspects of my artistic and spiritual journey. 

Conceived by Monideepa Mukherjee and Sutapa Sengupta, featuring photos from Sohinimoksha

Dancing With the Gods is a pictorial, coffee-table book stemming from my journey as a classical Indian dancer with a multinational dance troupe. Its vivid visuals showcase my onstage performances and behind-the-scenes moments. These are highlights of my career as a dancer, both solo and with Sohinimoksha World Dance and Communications[3]. 

This visually captivating book focuses on imagery and aesthetics. It offers glimpses into my artistic expression through dance, celebrates my journey around the world, and highlights my life-mantra of connecting civilisations through my craft. This tracing of Sohinimoksha’s journey is for a broader audience: Indian dance enthusiasts, art lovers, and individuals interested in my achievements. The aim is to inspire through visually compelling storytelling.

In contrast, The Dance of Kali is a treatise on the ethos of Goddess Kali and Shaktism. It delves into the deeper spiritual and philosophical aspects associated with the goddess, exploring Kali’s symbolism, mythology, and significance within the context of Shaktism, a Hindu tradition of worshiping the divine feminine energy. The tone of this work is contemplative, as it delves into the profound symbolism and the spiritual aspects associated with the Goddess. It incorporates scholarly research, analysis, and interpretations from various perspectives. Hopefully it offers readers a deeper understanding of Kali’s significance in Hindu spirituality.

May I point out here that The Dance of Kali is not a religious book. It is for readers with a specific interest in Hindu mythology, spirituality, or the myths and legends around the resident Goddess of Kolkata. Those seeking a deeper understanding of Kali’s symbolism and philosophical underpinnings within the context of Shaktism, will find this book dispels disrespectful misrepresentations and unfounded Western misconceptions  surrounding the images of Kali as a demonic goddess. 

To sum up: both the books reflect different facets of my artistic and spiritual journey. However, they differ significantly in their subject matter, focus, tone, and intended audience. One celebrates my achievements as a dancer through captivating visuals. The other is an academic tome exploring the profound symbolism and spirituality associated with Goddess Kali.

What prompted you, an international dancer, to pick such a rooted in mythology subject?

I have always had a personal affinity with or inclination towards Goddess Kali. Many artistes draw inspiration from their own beliefs, experiences, and cultural backgrounds when choosing subjects for their work. I am no different. For me the depiction of the Goddess is an opportunity for artistic exploration. Kali, with her complex symbolism and multifaceted persona, offers rich material for creative interpretation through the arts, be it dance, literature or visual arts. 

This book also celebrates India’s rich mythological heritage and the way it connects to other ancient cultures, in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Spain and France. Kali, with her global soul sisters Ishtar or Sara La Kali, holds significant cultural and religious importance, not just in Hinduism, but other cultures as well, particularly within the contexts of worshipping Mother Goddesses. I delve into Kali’s mythology and symbolism to honour this aspect of Indian life, and its universal resonance. 

Yes, Goddess Kali is rooted in Indian mythology. But the themes she embodies — feminine power, transformation, and liberation —transcend cultural boundaries. I hope this book will serve to explore universal themes of empowerment and spirituality. It also aims to provide a deeper understanding of Hindu mythology, and the symbolism associated with the Dark Goddess. Effectively I seek to promote intercultural dialogue and foster greater appreciation for diverse religious traditions. Most significantly, I hope to dispel the uneducated interpretations of Kali as a horrific, savage, demonic goddess. How often she is typecast as a symbol of evil — in popular Western films, books and even as Halloween costumes for disrespectful celebrities like Heidi Klum! 

I have witnessed your performance as Durga in an anthropology museum in Madrid. I have noted your commitment to meaningful, even profound themes in your endeavours. What has been your grooming in dance?

I started dancing at a young age under  renowned Bharatanatyam Guru, Thankamany Kutty. Later I learnt from Kalamandalam Venkitt in Kolkata. I received rigorous training in Bharatanatyam, the dance  that originated in the temples of Tamil Nadu. My dedication to classical art led me to delve deep into its nuances. I mastered intricate footwork, expressions, and storytelling techniques. Over the years, I refined my technique and expression through consistent practice and performance and came to embody the essence of Bharatanatyam.

Your father was a renowned sitarist living in Germany. Your mother is a reputed sculptor of Kolkata. Why did you, an only child, not take to any of these streams of creative expression?

Indeed I was born into a family of accomplished artists. My father, Pandit Subroto Roychowdhury was a renowned sitarist, and my mother, Uma Roychowdhury, is a reputed sculptor. But I chose a different path for myself. 

As an only child, I was exposed to various forms of creative expression. But my passion for dance was ignited after watching a riveting performance by Yamini Krishnamurthy when I was about four years old. While I deeply respect my family’s artistic legacy, I followed my own calling and embarked on a journey to carve my niche in the world of dance.

What are the values you have imbibed from them individually?

My father’s sitar schools in Germany have produced hundreds of students — including distinguished sitar players. From him I imbibed a profound appreciation for music and rhythm. I learned discipline, dedication, and the importance of perseverance in mastering an art form. From my sculptor mother I inherited a keen love for aesthetics and eye for details. I learned the importance of expressing emotions and stories through visual and performing arts. 

Together these values have steered me towards excellence and innovation in my journey as a dancer and communicator.

Mixed genre performance by Sohini Roychowdhury. Courtesy: Sohini Roy Chowdhury

You have lived in Moscow and Madrid. You are guest professor in far-flung Universities, in America and Columbia. You have danced Bharatanatyam and you have danced to Jai ho! at the premiere of Slumdog Millionaire. What have you gained through your international exposure?

My international exposure has enriched me both personally and professionally. Living in cultural environments as diverse as Moscow and Madrid have broadened my perspectives and deepened my understanding of global arts and communication. 

More than 2000 students have ‘graduated’ through my two dance schools in Spain — Casa Asia and Sohinimoksha Artes de la India. In Moscow, more than 80 Russian students performed with me on stage at the Embassy of India and Nehru Centre at the end of their course. As a guest professor in universities across Europe, USA and Latin America, teaching dance, Natyashastra [theory of dance] and Indology, I have not only shared my expertise — I have learnt from students, artistes and scholars from different backgrounds. 

Through my performances of Bharatanatyam, and collaborations with international artists, have bridged cultural divides. My dancing to Jai Ho! at the European premiere of Slumdog Millionaire showcased the universal appeal of Indian dance and music. It  highlighted its ability to connect with people across borders. Today I can confidently claim to have promoted cross-cultural exchange globally.

Coming from an aristocratic, old Calcutta background, what merit do you see in Bollywood dancing?

Despite coming from an aristocratic background rooted in old Calcutta, I recognise the merit in Bollywood dancing which has become a global phenomenon. Not surprising. For, characterised by vibrant energy, expressive movements, and fusion of multiple dance styles — from Salsa to Tango, Twist to ChaChaCha – Bollywood dancing holds mass appeal. It serves as a platform for artists to showcase their talents to diverse audiences and has contributed to the popularization of Indian culture worldwide. It is rooted in traditional Indian dance forms, yet embraces modern influences. And it reflects the evolving tastes of contemporary audiences. 

Since the 1960s, Bollywood has drawn inspiration from various musical traditions across the world. This imparted its films a rich tapestry of global influences. This fusion of world music and dance enriched the aesthetic of Bollywood — and in turn contributed to its cultural significance and global appeal.

In the 1960s, Indian cinema underwent a transformation with the emergence of filmmakers like Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor, who infused their films with elements of Western music and dance. The most iconic example of this is seen in the song Mera joota hai Japani [my shoes are Japanese] from Shree 420 (1955): here Raj Kapoor’s character sings about wearing Japanese shoes, English pantaloons, and Russian caps — all of which symbolised the growing influence of the West in post-colonial India. And yet, as the song stresses, at core these films are Hindustani — Indian.

Throughout the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, the industry witnessed the rise of dance and music directors who played a pivotal role in incorporating world music and dance forms into Hindi cinema. Composers like OP Nayyar, Shankar Jaikishan, SD Burman, C Ramachandran, Kalyanji Anandji, RD Burman, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, and Bappi Lahiri experimented with disparate musical styles. These ranged from rock-n-roll, rumba, flamenco to disco, reggae and jazz. This infused their compositions with international flavours. 

Similarly, choreographers Sohanlal,  PL Raj, Herman Benjamin, Suresh Bhatt, Saroj Khan, Chinni and Rekha Prakash, Shiamak Davar, Farah Khan, Remo D’Souza, Terence Lewis, Vaibhavi Merchant, and Prabhu Deva have blended Indian classical dance with Western styles. This has created the unique dance style that is now identified as Bollywood dancing. It has homogenised movements from hip-hop to salsa and contemporary dance.

Soon stars like Shammi Kapoor, Helen, Asha Parekh, Hema Malini, Rishi Kapoor, Mithun Chakraborty, Jeetendra, Govinda, Hrithik Roshan, Madhuri Dixit, and Sridevi became synonymous with Bollywood’s larger-than-life dance numbers. For, it showcased their versatility and flair for different dance steps. Embracing the twist and turn era of the ’60s to the disco craze of ’70s and the hip-hop-inspired moves of the 2000s, Bollywood stars captivated audiences with their energy and charisma.

Along with Western influences, Bollywood also drew from traditional Indian dances. Its choreography incorporated elements of Bharatanatyam, Kathak, and Odissi. Dance sequences like Dola Re Dola from Devdas (2002) and Pinga from Bajirao Mastani (2015) exemplify the fusion of classical and contemporary dances, blending intricate footwork with dynamic movements and expressions.

In recent years, Bollywood has continued to evolve, reflecting the changing tastes and preferences of global audiences. Directors, like Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Farah Khan, have pushed the boundaries of traditional filmmaking, creating visually stunning spectacles that showcase the diversity of world music and dance. Stars like Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, and Ranveer Singh have embraced this eclectic mix of styles, bringing their own unique interpretations to the screen.

Spanish, Bulgarian and other European dancers from my own troupe, Sohinimoksha World Dance, have performed specially choreographed fusion dance items set to popular Bollywood tracks. Kristina Veselinova danced to Mere Dholna from Bhool Bhulaiya; Violeta Perez and Lola Martin to Senorita! from Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and Maria Sanz on Padmavat’s Ghoomer on stages across India and the world. So I readily acknowledge the significance of Bollywood dance in preserving India’s cultural heritage while adapting to changing times.

Would you say our films are taking our dance traditions to votaries abroad? Just as Indian musicians of the 1960s had taken our ragas to the West?

In the 1960s, Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and other maestros played a crucial role in initiating the West in the rich notes of Indian classical music — and that had enriched the global cultural landscape. My own father, Pandit Subroto Roychowdhury, spent more than 40 years in Germany and other European countries, spreading and popularising Indian classical music through concerts and classes. Today Indian films, particularly Bollywood, are carrying forward this legacy. They are showcasing the wealth that is Indian dance — often fused with world dance influences. Just as our musicians shared the wealth of ragas with the West, Bollywood films are spreading the infectious exuberance of Indian dance to enthusiasts around the globe. This is fostering cultural exchange on an international scale. Small wonder that Bollywood is now acknowledged as India’s most potent soft power. 

What, in your opinion, is needed to make GenNext learn from our past traditions?

If we want GenNext to learn from our past traditions, we must provide them with comprehensive exposure to our rich cultural heritage. For this, we must integrate our arts and cultural practices into educational curricula. We must foster appreciation through interactive experiences — workshops, performances, cultural events. Additionally we must leverage modern technologies and platforms to disseminate information. Let’s make traditional arts more accessible and engaging for the young. Let’s cultivate mentorship programs and intergenerational exchanges. For, we must bridge the gap between past traditions and contemporary lifestyles, to ensure their relevance and continuity for the generations to come.

Sohini I have seen you at close quarters, as a mother, wife, daughter, and daughter-in-law even as you criss-cross the world for your dance. How do you still find time to write, which is such a demanding, reflective expression?

I am fortunate to be able to balance my roles as a mother, wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, and a performing artiste. My experience as much as my dedication to my craft honed my time-management skills. Despite crisscrossing the world for performances, lecture tours, and other professional commitments, I carve out time to write, for I recognise its significance as a reflective form of expression. 

To effectively manage my time, I set priorities, create schedules, and maximize productivity during the available windows of time. I designate specific periods for writing, be it early mornings, late evenings, or during travel downtime. I try to integrate writing into my daily routine, seizing moments of inspiration and reflection to jot down ideas or draft passages.

My passion for writing is a driving force — it motivates me to make time for it amidst my busy schedule. Writing provides a creative outlet for introspection, and intellectual exploration. It complements my artistic endeavours and enriches my personal and professional growth.

I am grateful for the support I receive from the network of my family, friends, and collaborators. They play a crucial role in facilitating my writing pursuits. My latest book, The Dance of Kali, was co-written with my son Rishi Dasgupta, an Economics MSc from the University of St Andrews, UK. 

However, at the end of the day, that I find time to write amidst my multifaceted life, reflects my passion for engaging in reflective expression. Because? It contributes to my holistic development as an artist and an individual.

[1] A song from the 2008 Bollywood movie, Slumdog Millionaire

[2] Danny Boyle

[3] A dance troop started by Sohini Roychowdhury with presence in Madrid, Berlin and Kolkata

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Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and write books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award. 

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