Hunger (After the fall)
Por qué una negra noche se acumula en la boca? (Pablo Neruda)
“Another beer?” the barmaid asks.
The man doesn’t answer; he just looks at her. Moments later a glass of beer is placed in front of him. He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry; he stares into space. This is a man of deep and lonely silence. I observe him, equally unhurried, and unashamed. I invent stories that belong to him. Here’s a guy whose dog has been crushed under the wheels of an ice-cream van. His wife has left him for a Member of the European Parliament. When he wanted to fuck a hooker he saw his daughter behind one of the windows in the red light district.
The man is starting to take on sheer mythological proportions. (Finally he takes that first sip. His face shows recognition: that’s how it tasted alright. It doesn’t seem to be a feast of recognition but he does take another sip.)
These stories are not enough though. Stories are easy. He’s just been fired; yesterday his doctor told him he has cancer; his antisocial downstairs neighbour has won the lottery; his football team has lost for the third consecutive week. No, stories aren’t satisfactory right now. My book lies open on the bar, unread. I haven’t touched my beer for quite a while. This, of course, is a far more interesting game.
Old muscles wake up - for a moment paranoia rises: have they finally found me? But no, after all these years, that’s too absurd to even contemplate. But still… No.
I down the beer. One more or would it be safer to leave? Another beer, I decide. Paranoia rules - but I won’t let it rule me. The barmaid brings me another beer. I don’t know her but then, I haven’t been in this pub, in this town, for years. So she could have been working here for ages, for all I know. The whole city looks new and strange to me. It’s just me, of course: I’m getting old.
Tired of introspection I decide to watch the man some more. He has just ordered another glass of beer, and a cheap bourbon. He’s still using sign-language: he hasn’t spoken a single word since he sat down at the other end of the bar. I look at the barmaid. She smiles at me: a careful smile. I nod. Her smile is now a bit more spontaneous. It says: ‘Some customers are weird.’ I smile back: ‘Honey, you haven’t got a clue.’
Youth. The young have no idea - and then you have people who want to go back there: turn back the clock. I suppress feelings of shivering, sickening panic. An abyss of time opens… Enough!
I order a glass of proper whiskey and tell the barmaid she can remove the beer glass that’s still half full. We talk a bit. I wrap myself in her innocence, her warmth. I drink her like I’d drink the whiskey she just brought me. She staggers, her eyes locked to the void. I take a sip of the burning, yellow brew. I close my eyes: careful now, careful. She is much too young, too innocent. She didn’t call me and she doesn’t need me. Don’t waste your energy; read your book, drink your whiskey - watch the man at the other side of the bar. Discipline is all; and knowledge comes with time. Clichés, clichés - but still so true - and I obey. I listen to my own advise. I cast my eyes on the man.
The barmaid starts to polish the glasses. She has already forgotten what happened only moments ago. Behind me the billiard balls move in endless patterns. Sometimes they meet and go off course. Metaphysics or whiskey? I sincerely hope it is the whiskey. The last thing I need is a contemplative mind. Life is too long for such nonsense. I order another whiskey and a cheese sandwich. That’s how you chase away useless thought: a cheese sandwich with lots of mustard.
More people enter the bar. It’s just turned six ‘o clock. The clothes shop across the street has just closed. Its three piece suit personnel has arrived for a beer or something stronger, before they’ll have to return to their heavily mortgaged houses, where food and hopefully their wives are waiting.
The man still sits on his bar stool, in a grey and silent cloud. I could dig deeper, to see what’s really going on inside. It isn’t that hard to read people - but why bother? Most of the time the façade is more interesting and leaves more choices.
The man drinks beer and more cheap bourbon. He goes to the toilet twice. After two hours of solitary and silent drinking he asks for the bill. (Another mime performance: two hands that play ‘paper & pen’.) He puts on his coat and walks out of the bar. I pay my bill and follow him outside, unhurried. I’m still not really hungry and besides, I’ve got all the time in the world.
Outside the neon light awaits. A veil of rain has been hung in between the houses. The neon light caresses each drop of rain, welcomes the approaching night. Shadows of flesh move through the streets; their thoughts, like the drops of water, like the neon, are almost visible, projected against the grey sky: ‘Home, home, home.’
The city is not a citadel, no stone barricade against the armies of light or darkness. The city is like the naked flesh, the tacid, slow blood that waits.
The man walks through the streets, his head bowed as in silent prayer. Some moments he’s caught in the wet and sizzling light of passing cars but mostly he is already part of the gathering night. I follow. I feel the hunger rise, like the wings that we once had. Before we fell. The many thousands who kept silent, like I, when the light called us home.
Those wings, ah, the power, the rushing blood sound of them. Till the light found us and left us here; our wings but memories of raw and ruined shoulder stumps. Hunger the only thing remaining.
Angels.
The man walks on, head bowed. I open up. He stumbles, rights himself, walks on. Now I know his stories, what dreams are left to him. He is mine. I, we, never come before we are needed; we only come when we are called. We are the water that closes over the exhausted and surrendering, drowning sailor. We are the hunger, not the hunter.
Who did you think we were? Did you think the light created us for your stories? We were like those drops of water, caught in the neon light, before you came to be. Caught between the flesh and the light, we couldn’t make a choice. Extacy, stasis and metastasis. So simple these bloody bits that once were wings. So simple, so unsought this fall.
Angels.
We are not your stories - yet we are caught in tales. You sing of us, you pray to us; you tell your children of us, before they go to sleep.
The man now leans against a tree; two meters further is the bus stop. He is one bus, some fifteen minutes away from home. A neon-lit poster behind plexi-glass shows a beach, some palm trees and two smiling tourists. Ah yes, dreams surround us; there are stories everywhere. Everything is caught inside the night, a nose length removed from the light. The man closes his eyes. I open mine. I drink.
Angels.
And what happens if we stop resembling your stories? When the child dies in its sleep? When the night never ends? Do you stop singing; do the prayers end? Or are new stories born? Of monsters, devils and demons?
We were ever and only meant to dance in the light; to be songs, carried on our feathers of light. Now we are dressed in your stories. Since the fall we are but bloody shades of what we once were - but we still can serve the light and the dark. Who calls us in despair will always find us. We are hunger but we serve you.
Again I take on the colour of humanity. Invisible to those who call themselves the servants of light; those who still hunt us. I close my eyes: I seek for their eyes, their weight - but no, it’s just me and the night. There are no other presences. A cab stops. I get in.
“Not a good night for walking.” the cabbie says.
“You’re right.” I say.
I name the address of yet another bar. The driver thinks of his wife and the children who are in bed by now. He worries about the amount of money he has in the bank. He wonders how it would be to pick up one of the hookers that wait for customers under the streetlamps.
Full and tired as I am, it takes a while before I can shut out his thoughts. Then it’s quiet again inside my head. I’m just the wheels, sizzling through the streets, the neon caressing the drops of rain. I am the man, the body we are leaving further and further behind us. For a short, sweet moment I am not the hunger, not a servant.
“There we are.” the cabbie says.
“There we are.” I confirm.
He gives me his calling card, for future use. Before he drives off he raises his hand. I smile, wave back and then walk into the pub.
“Nasty weather.” the barkeeper says; “What will it be?”
“A whiskey please.”
I wait.