Monday, May 17, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
No Evil Part 2
Part 1
Stepping inside the tent, Andrei has the sensation of crawling inside an enormous kaleidoscope. Glittering butterfly-acrobats drift to and fro carrying colorful streamers; throngs of disfigured mortals rummage through gilded oaken chests like fevered hallucinations. Exotic monsters from alien shores mingle with man and man-beast alike in a spectacle of glamored biology.
"Theo told me you've got a bone to pick with Popa," said a startlingly corpulent mustachioed man wearing muddy slacks, suspenders but no shirt. Andrei had not noticed him a moment earlier. "Makes no difference to me, long as you've got the money. Better hand it over now, too, bub. Once Popa gets a hand on you you'll be out like that deadbeat Zoltan."
That deadbeat Zoltan rests blissfully, enjoying one of the long periods of heedless tranquility which are so frequent in his life. From an early age, Zoltan learned to live in brief sprints, interspersed with heroic naps. Growing up in the Ukraine he spent most of his time searching for comfortable places in which to lie down and rest, a difficult task in the small wooden farmhouse shared with his mother, grandfather, four brothers, two sisters, and six cousins. He developed a virtuosic ability to wake at a moment's notice: to bolt to his feet and grab a broom in feigned obeisance to his mother's shrieking orders or evade a salvo of rotting oranges launched by rivalrous kin. So exhausting are these snap reflexes that Zoltan spends almost all of his unsupervised time conserving energy with sloth-like efficiency.
Which is how he has spent the better part of this particular warm summer morning, snoring behind a stack of powder kegs in full costume, leather goggles strapped over his eyes. Zoltan the Human Cannonball is primed for action.
Popa is bored. And hungry. Hungry, warm in tent. Itchy-sticky.
"Sir I must say I am glad for the challenge," Andrei said confidently as he removed his hat. "Where is the unfortunate creature?"
"I'm looking at him. Waheee!" The fat man laughs like a donkey whines. "But if you're meanin' the monkey, he's back in wardrobe, getting ready. Wa-waheee!"
The jeers are like waves crashing against stalwart Andrei's mountainous ego. For he is not a fool. He knows well that the arm of human ingenuity is longer than the arm of bestial violence.
Andrei traces his intellectual lineage back to the great minds of the Enlightenment: Descartes and Locke. A train of thought which began with those geniuses who dared to claim, "God wants us to think" continued to the Galapagos where Darwin dared to say, "God weeds out the unfit" and made its final stop, by Andrei's reckoning, in the steam engines which carried him across the Atlantic to the steel mill in Pennsylvania where every day he goes to pray, in his own fashion, to the God-given human intellect which makes Man master of the elements.
Andrei melts and molds steel into the implements of ascendancy. His sweat and labor is a testament to God and to Mankind that he is fit; that of the natural world, his race is exalted. Sometimes Andrei offers this testament in other ways as well. At 19 he became a celebrity in his village for killing a wolf. The people of the town wanted the wolf dead because it had been taking goats in the night. Andrei wanted it dead to prove a point.
Stepping inside the tent, Andrei has the sensation of crawling inside an enormous kaleidoscope. Glittering butterfly-acrobats drift to and fro carrying colorful streamers; throngs of disfigured mortals rummage through gilded oaken chests like fevered hallucinations. Exotic monsters from alien shores mingle with man and man-beast alike in a spectacle of glamored biology.
"Theo told me you've got a bone to pick with Popa," said a startlingly corpulent mustachioed man wearing muddy slacks, suspenders but no shirt. Andrei had not noticed him a moment earlier. "Makes no difference to me, long as you've got the money. Better hand it over now, too, bub. Once Popa gets a hand on you you'll be out like that deadbeat Zoltan."
That deadbeat Zoltan rests blissfully, enjoying one of the long periods of heedless tranquility which are so frequent in his life. From an early age, Zoltan learned to live in brief sprints, interspersed with heroic naps. Growing up in the Ukraine he spent most of his time searching for comfortable places in which to lie down and rest, a difficult task in the small wooden farmhouse shared with his mother, grandfather, four brothers, two sisters, and six cousins. He developed a virtuosic ability to wake at a moment's notice: to bolt to his feet and grab a broom in feigned obeisance to his mother's shrieking orders or evade a salvo of rotting oranges launched by rivalrous kin. So exhausting are these snap reflexes that Zoltan spends almost all of his unsupervised time conserving energy with sloth-like efficiency.
Which is how he has spent the better part of this particular warm summer morning, snoring behind a stack of powder kegs in full costume, leather goggles strapped over his eyes. Zoltan the Human Cannonball is primed for action.
Popa is bored. And hungry. Hungry, warm in tent. Itchy-sticky.
"Sir I must say I am glad for the challenge," Andrei said confidently as he removed his hat. "Where is the unfortunate creature?"
"I'm looking at him. Waheee!" The fat man laughs like a donkey whines. "But if you're meanin' the monkey, he's back in wardrobe, getting ready. Wa-waheee!"
The jeers are like waves crashing against stalwart Andrei's mountainous ego. For he is not a fool. He knows well that the arm of human ingenuity is longer than the arm of bestial violence.
Andrei traces his intellectual lineage back to the great minds of the Enlightenment: Descartes and Locke. A train of thought which began with those geniuses who dared to claim, "God wants us to think" continued to the Galapagos where Darwin dared to say, "God weeds out the unfit" and made its final stop, by Andrei's reckoning, in the steam engines which carried him across the Atlantic to the steel mill in Pennsylvania where every day he goes to pray, in his own fashion, to the God-given human intellect which makes Man master of the elements.
Andrei melts and molds steel into the implements of ascendancy. His sweat and labor is a testament to God and to Mankind that he is fit; that of the natural world, his race is exalted. Sometimes Andrei offers this testament in other ways as well. At 19 he became a celebrity in his village for killing a wolf. The people of the town wanted the wolf dead because it had been taking goats in the night. Andrei wanted it dead to prove a point.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
No Evil, Part 1
Eyes with too much white in them stare out from under a vast brow, on which brown tufts of hair grow like a treeline on a frozen mountain. Not a handsome man but he has a strong back and a ready will. No enemies and few friends. He's learned to eat sour lemons. Not unhappy but never satisfied, he is a tired soul who wakes before dawn without knowing why.
Andrei Ilyko is his name, and he stands under a noontime sun in conversation with a dwarf. The dwarf lounges in a tiny chair made of tin, while a toucan perched on his shoulder pecks at almonds balanced around the brim of his dusty top hat.
"What's your problem, fella?" implores the dwarf. "I can't get you. You got an education, I can tell by the way you talk. You got a good job, too, down there at the steel mill. I bet you got an old lady sweet as mince pie waiting for ya in a house with apple trees in the backyard. Now what in the hell do you want to go and fight that monkey for? Why do you want to risk your life? He's just gonna clobber ya."
A cool breeze blows a cowlick free of the top of Andrei's carefully coiffed scalp.
"The beast's very presence is an insult. It is an aberration, an anachronism. His odor and his appearance offend me."
"Why? What did he ever do to you?"
Nostrils flaring, "If you have to ask, sir, then you would not understand even if the skies were to open and the Almighty himself descend to inscribe my sentiments in clay tablets," cheeks flushing, "with lightning bolts cast from his fingertips! If you'll excuse me."
Andrei pulls his coat in around him and strides past the miffed dwarf, dropping a nickel in his lap. As he parts the gaudy green and yellow flaps of the main circus tent, the dwarf makes this remark to the toucan:
"He's nuttier than a fruitcake."
But through the wind Andrei hears,
"Reminds me of Don Quixote."
and his heart is bolstered by the compliment.
Andrei Ilyko is his name, and he stands under a noontime sun in conversation with a dwarf. The dwarf lounges in a tiny chair made of tin, while a toucan perched on his shoulder pecks at almonds balanced around the brim of his dusty top hat.
"What's your problem, fella?" implores the dwarf. "I can't get you. You got an education, I can tell by the way you talk. You got a good job, too, down there at the steel mill. I bet you got an old lady sweet as mince pie waiting for ya in a house with apple trees in the backyard. Now what in the hell do you want to go and fight that monkey for? Why do you want to risk your life? He's just gonna clobber ya."
A cool breeze blows a cowlick free of the top of Andrei's carefully coiffed scalp.
"The beast's very presence is an insult. It is an aberration, an anachronism. His odor and his appearance offend me."
"Why? What did he ever do to you?"
Nostrils flaring, "If you have to ask, sir, then you would not understand even if the skies were to open and the Almighty himself descend to inscribe my sentiments in clay tablets," cheeks flushing, "with lightning bolts cast from his fingertips! If you'll excuse me."
Andrei pulls his coat in around him and strides past the miffed dwarf, dropping a nickel in his lap. As he parts the gaudy green and yellow flaps of the main circus tent, the dwarf makes this remark to the toucan:
"He's nuttier than a fruitcake."
But through the wind Andrei hears,
"Reminds me of Don Quixote."
and his heart is bolstered by the compliment.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)