Stephen Poleskie
H
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e and I watch from the pricey perch of our four-star
box seats as the grainy intaglio of the city vanishes before the phosphorescent
darkness of evening, a whirring and ring-ding-dinging escalating up from the
streets below. Nonstop the motorbikes and scooters circle, their two-stroked
voices screaming through mufflers long gone—or perhaps gutted—their vanished
baffles aching the way amputated limbs still ache. An undecipherable roar of
panic shouts up from the hallucinating square, parti-colored insects gone
berserk, invading the soul of the city, any city, it is all the same at night
when you want to sleep; which I did, but he did not.
I
don’t remember that there were so many motorbikes in this city. He remembers
the sound from Veracruz ,
where we had gone together, and where he and I had eaten fresh oranges from a
stand on the Zocalo. But then he and I had never been in this city before. He
cannot recall that this place contained such a tall building as the one we are
in now, and I do not remember that it was a hotel. “The tallest buildings, the
skyscrapers, are usually stuck up to be office buildings,” I remark.
“Corporate symbols,” he adds, “usually in some
odd post-modern design, perhaps an open checkbook, the pages peeled back, leering
down on the rest of the city.”
Please allow me to introduce myself. He is
Johnny and I am John. We both were christened John but he chose to become
“Johnny” back when world leaders were known by names like Tony and Bill. That
was then. Can you imagine Angela Merkel today going by the name “Angie.”
He
and I pass our time observing the whirling traffic, as it is not yet the hour
to be doing anything else. The road around the square—actually a circle—is
parted with tractor-trailers which seem so tiny from our vantage point,
intermingled with a squadron of cars appearing much smaller. Even the biggest
of them, those that carry mighty names like “Navigator” and “Explorer,” appear
small from up here. The sleepless mopeds are the smallest, even smaller than
the people astride them. “A man should not be larger than his mount; it is
against the natural order of things,” a famous artist who rode a Triumph
motorcycle, but who painted monks on donkeys, once confided to me in all
seriousness.
Why are
there so few motorcycle riders circling the square? he and I wonder. Where are the
Hondas that we had ridden in our pinch-penny youth? Gone like our youth? The
motorcycles passing below us now are mostly Harley-Davidsons, not
transportation but modern folklore, an image ridden by wannabe outlaws—in
reality bankers and stockbrokers on their way to an endless chain of Hard Rock
Cafes.
Little
by little the Mardi Gras curious arrive from far and wide to inhabit the
square, a traveling carnival of unfortunates, who no one pays much attention to
but each other. In the midst of a disorder that makes the square tremble, everyone
performs their own act—and everyone is their own audience. The crowd floats,
undulates, teenaged girls with naked bellies, and almost naked breasts, snorting
their way through the pathless tract. Leaning over the railing of our hotel balcony,
he and I watch as below life ebbs and flows in a great and eccentric spasm of
frenzy. On one corner a circuit of applause opens up as a grinning homunculus
displays his more than full-sized penis while peeing on a lamppost, someone's
dancing daughter daintily dodging the splatter.
“Show
us your tits!” The call comes up from
the street to a group of young ladies disporting on a balcony below us.
“First
show us your cocks!” the girls echo back.
A
deal is struck and on the count of three: One, Two, Three! both sides reveal
their attributes to much applauding and cheering from the passersby.
There
is a party going on behind us. A festive gathering has gathered in our room,
there are so many people we do not know, yet they keep coming. I don’t have a
room but a suite. I am here alone, so why do I have a suite? I do not like
parties—he does. He is not alone. He is with me. Is this his suite? His party?
“Hello!
How are you?” a man wearing the frock and collar of a priest asks. The priest, wearing
a sash of red, a cardinal perhaps, has been holding up the frivolity in a
corner of the room.
At
this moment I don’t know how I am, but he answers for me, “I am fine . . . Your
Eminence.” Then he asks what I did not really care to know: “And how are you?”
“By the grace of God I am fine, and may He
bless you too my son,” the red-sashed soul saver says adding, “it is good to see
you again. We haven’t been together for such a long time . . . since you were
an altar boy. I believe we have some catching up to do.” He smiles, pressing my
hand with his ringed finger, and turns away.
“Bless
me Father for I have sinned. . . .” we spout after his fleeing form, not sure why,
perhaps out of habit, for we by our beliefs are not sinners.
“You
must feel sorry for your sins, my son, do penance . . . mortification of the
flesh, and all that. But there is no
time for it now . . . let’s get together tomorrow,” the priest shouts over his
shoulder, his black robe flowing him back to the party.
A
woman with the face of a spider appears; although I admit to never having seen
a spider’s face close up. She asks him or me where the drinks are.
“The
drinks are in there.”
Did I
say that? How does he know the drinks are in there? We haven’t been in that
room yet; we have only been out here looking down.
“Where?”
“There.”
Did I
point, or just nod my head in a general direction?
“Oh! I’m
sorry . . . wrong room. . . .” the spider-faced lady says backing out and
turning to me. “There are two men going at it on a bed in that room.”
“Who
is going at it on a bed in where!?”
“They
are on a bed in there . . . be careful not to disturb them.”
“What
are they doing in my bed in my room?”
“Your
room is through there. . . .” Did she point, or just nod her head in a general
direction?
“But
that’s where the party is. . . .”
“What
a lovely view . . . you can see the
entire city,” the cardinal says returning with a cup of red wine in his hand. The
blood of our Lord Jesus?
“But
my room is in the back of the hotel,” I protest, “I have no view. . . .”
“Then
you are not in your room . . . you must
be down there.” his eminence says
pointing to the busybody street.
We
see a man in a dark blue jacket and pants riding a light blue moped. He is a
very tiny man on a very tiny moped. Why is the man weaving in and out of
traffic? “He is so small that he can
pass under trucks. Watch him cut in and out as the trucks slow for the traffic
light,” I say.
“Look!
The moped rider is there . . . all the way to the front . . . next to the first
truck,” he says pointing excitedly.
“Hello!
Are the drinks out here? . . .” a woman with the face of a painted weasel—although
I admit I have never seen a weasel with a painted face—asks, popping her head
through the door.
“No. The
drinks are in there.” I can’t remember if we pointed or merely nodded in a
general direction, but the weasel-faced woman does not go away.
‘What
are you watching? . . .”
“Look!
See that moped, the light blue one, he can pass under tractor-trailers . . .
watch him, there he goes!”
“I
just adore mopeds, but I would never ride on one . . . too dangerous,” the
weasel-faced woman says going back inside, trailing a scent of talcum powder and
liver pate.
“The
truck is accelerating . . . where is the moped?” Father Frivolity asks.
“Watch,
he will come out the other side . . . he always does.”
“I
don’t see him!”
“Keep
watching. . . .”
“The
truck is too fast . . . the moped can’t keep up . . . the rider and the moped will be crushed!”
“No,
he’ll come out the other side. . . .”
“Are
you sure? I don’t see him anymore,” the cardinal says turning away. “Where did
you say that the food was?”
“Back
in there Your Eminence.”
A
man, who had been conceived late in his mother’s life and who had therefore
lagged in growth, but who had, nevertheless, ridden his moped through the city’s
worst flood, and coldest winter, lies motionless on the street. As the senile
intemperance of fortune would have it, a tractor-trailer driver swerving to
avoid the dumped moped squashes the unseen body of the fallen rider, who is
further ground to pulp by two following trucks before anyone notices.
“Are the
drinks out here?” a lady with a face like a ladybug asks.
“No,
they are back in there,” I nod, but the dead rider can neither point nor
gesture with his head.
“Say
. . . aren’t you the guy who did that TV show?” the woman says, squinting at me
through her ladybug eyes.
“No,
he did the TV show.”
“That’s
funny. . . .”
“What’s
funny? The TV show? . . .”
“No .
. . that you both look so alike.”
Amidst
her senseless conversation time passed unnoticed, swallowing the whole empty
period. A diffuse whiteness filters up from the square overtaking me with
sleepiness. I turn in to turn in but find that my room is indeed occupied: “Excuse
me . . . what are you two doing on my bed in my room?”
“This
is not your room . . . your room is in there,” the man on top grunts, and
gestures with his head, not breaking his carnal cadence.
“But
the party is in there. . . .”
He
asks the people in bed if I could use their mirror for only a moment. He looks
in the mirror; the reflection I see is not my face. The face he sees is the
face of a woman. From that time on his, or her, world will be not worth living
in, at least not until this time next year.
Somewhere
a clock strikes midnight. As it is now Ash Wednesday, the music stops, and the
square empties of revelers. Hoping for enough miracles to become a saint, the
frivolous cardinal comes down to the street and brings the dead moped rider
back to life, who upon opening his eyes flies into a murderous rage at having
had his blissful state disturbed. He immediately rolls under another passing
tractor-trailer in an attempt to end his life once again, but it cleanly misses
him, and he lies face down on the street crying in disillusionment.
“Now
don’t get me wrong,” the resurrected moped rider sobs, pounding the pavement
with his fists, “I have no disrespect for the church; however, it is precisely
along these lines that all this got started.”
* * *
This story initially appeared in Other Writings Merida (Mexico)
