Budapest

I stood near the abutment of the cobalt green bridge, leaning forward against the unsteady railings, staring up with the winter wind brushing my free locks of hair. Perhaps I felt a bit cold, I don’t quite remember. My gaze took a gently curved trajectory and gently landed on the phthalo turquoise statue scarred by grey. So beautiful, I wondered, the lifted palm leaf, the as-if undulating pleats, the lightly elevated chin of a woman immortalized and immobilized on the perch of the hill on the other side of the river, so beautiful, I wondered. I didn’t know who she was, I didn’t know what she represented, I didn’t know her story, not yet, but I thought she was beautiful. Beautiful so precisely and peculiarly and particularly. It was that moment, that moment when I saw her for the first time, when I decided that I wanted to write a story about Budapest, and make her central to the plot. Something must have happened that moment, some inexplicable connection between me and her must have burgeoned. Did I fall in love? When did I first learn that she was called the freedom or liberty statue? When did I first learn that she was commissioned by the communist party and was the last remaining communist statue in Budapest? When did I first learn that the name of the model based on whom she was constructed was Erzsebet Gaal, who died in poverty and despair and disgust for her own but other petrified body forever bisecting the flowing wind? I don’t quite remember, but gradually, during the shaping and reshaping of the story, during the adding and deleting of paragraphs, during the reclaiming and retreating of ideas, I learned. So.

I want to write a story about Budapest. A detective story, perhaps or preferably, a detective story set in the time of the communist regime, where the main character is a secret police officer a bit confused about his own ideology, and the plot is intertwined with the history, the landmarks, the hidden spots of this city. What kind of story would it be? Well, maybe first ask what kind of city is Budapest? Couples hold hands on the street here and kiss in coffee shops (sounds generic), older women dye their hair in different shades of red, and graffiti, graffiti, graffiti. But if I were to describe Budapest in precise and concise terms, I’d say it’s a city that’s tastefully poor — the best kind of aesthetics, in my opinion, discoloring and discolored beige and pastel colors everywhere. (Speaking of pastel colors, I like the juxtaposition of pastel red and pastel green. Red and green supposedly form the most dramatic contrast out of nature, but pastel on the other hand tones everything down, so what are the colors trying to say then? It’s a bit ambiguous, a bit ironic, but there is so much beauty in ironies sometimes, although one time I told an American friend that America was the most ironic country I had ever been to, not meant as a compliment; he replied yeah, we are number one in irony, that’s great. His tone full of irony (Paris, Texas; Florence, Alabama; Spain, South Dakota). The same friend also said they built those architectures believing that the world was enchanted. That stuck with me, I’ll come back to it. Anyway, digression. Let’s get back to the story.)

Let’s begin with the story then. But first, let’s familiarize ourselves with the city, the stage, the backdrop against which the story occurs, or occurred. Before constructing the plot, let’s talk a walk first. Let’s begin with a walk. A walk from the center of the old town all the way to district 19, where my home is. Let’s begin from there. 

Shall we? 

Okay. 

Ready. 

I'm in the old town of the city of Budapest. An early spring day. The sun is low and cold. But oh, look at that beautiful silvery ferris wheel, I want to hop in for a ride over there before I go. 

Is that fine? 

Sorry… It won't take long!

Inside the oblate compartment, performing subtle but highly involuntary movements, my body feels like an egg yoke enveloped by viscous cigarette-scented air, also if I drop now, I splatter. It would be audacious of someone to smoke inside a ferris wheel chamber (I suppose?), so more likely there was a smoker among the passengers of this unit in the previous round, who decided to take a sip of some tinted air while waiting for their turn and ended up carrying the invisible signature trace of flavors inside the confined space no bigger than the size of a big fat refrigerator. Ascending, I examine the ghost haunting my olfactory receptors; it’s bitter, rustic, a dark-colored topaz, certainly not the worst kind; many other scents remind one much more of sicknesses, like the obtuse sour scent emitted from the breaths and skin of someone with a slow metabolism, or the cloudy saccharine odor associated with diabetes, or the acrimoniously astringent smell marking obesity, or the damp, antibiotic blue-grey redolence of years experienced by an old man, or more generally just the careless multifarious malodors of a lack of hygiene — anyone who smells healthy certainly should consider themselves highly privileged, and compared to thus many, charred cigarettes stink heavenly. (What has just been said is all an atrocious lie, the ferris wheel compartment is in fact very well-ventilated, one can even stick out one’s arm if doing so is truly so desired; hence, no cigarette smell can escape from excoriation at the vantage point of the ferris wheel by the icy breezes from beyond. Should I tell the truth? Why do you need to lie in the first place? Well, because I want to bring up hypersensitivity, you’ll see why. Anyhow.) Budapest is below me, for the most part at least. I see a conglomerate of pale brown, old yellow, tired orange extending, expanding, expressing; the courtyards enclosed within the giant apparatuses are now revealed, looking like deep wells from above. The parliament glistens in the distance, replied by the basilica closer by. She’s there, too, the statue, far away and as always. It’s beautiful and it’s decided that the main character is a secret police officer of the soviet communist party, a true believer of communism, not ambitious but competent — maybe his strongest detective asset is indeed his hypersensitivity (there you go, it’s just I want to make it seem like the idea and development of the story are inspired and influenced by my immediate surroundings and responses to the stimuli, but it’s not true, not always, not exactly, not completely, not immaculately, should I be honest about it?), to smells, sounds, tastes, lights, textures, etc., that’s why he’s oftentimes able to uncover subtle leads. What would be a good name for him? Any specific name seems way too specific, mundane and uninteresting, maybe just a code name then, or maybe, just a title, and a number. Officer 091. Zero-nighty-one. I like the sound, and the meaning, zero is transparent, one is pure white, nine is a marred purple essentially black, the perfect combination for a secret police officer. Descending, what does he look like? Let’s see — he’s anything between slightly above the average height and tall-but-not-excessively, slender for the most part but with some under-exaggerated muscles sketched here and there, yet still barely visible, either the remainders of what once were or a reminder of the perhaps-forgotten possibility. His voice is a mixture of low bronze and potent Prussian blue, enameled by a hint of lilac for its confusing melancholy or sweetness, altogether tending to the opposite of stringy feline shrills, deep and deeper than expected for the physique containing or producing it. His face, his hair, his eyes, his hands, his smile, I don’t know, I’ll figure out later (don’t do this if you are writing a math paper, my kindest piece of advice, don’t plant the seed of agony), but maybe a word about his smile, for now, is that he rarely smiles — revealing emotions is one of the various numerous countless things he detests, but when he does, that is, when he reaches a fully expanded protracting smile arching his eyes as well, not a smirk — his smirks, especially the faint ones, are prim and arrogant, he becomes extremely feminine and childish, like a young wild strawberry in warm peach color who couldn’t be bothered to turn scarlet, or a shy convolvulus flower finally in bloom who’s no longer terrified to present its fragile pistil. Officer 091 is on a mission, what though? Inertia. Let me think. Swing back and forth in low air. I don’t know. A full stop. Not yet, at least.

Exiting the ferris wheel, I start walking officially, in the general direction of south, in the specific direction of home. Soon passing the enormous square gate, I find myself unmistakably inside the Jewish quarter, unmistakable only because of the gate, as among the lovely vintage clothing shops with variegated windows, kebab restaurants releasing spice-infused aromas, old bookstores selling new books, firewalls covered by graffiti, nothing seems too characteristically Jewish, at least to my unobservant eyes observing. But the branching and forking of the alleyways captivate me, infinite possibilities seem to be embedded in the web of intersections of the horizontal and the vertical, some slanted, some skewed, it’s okay. Just walking, at a crossing, at a crossing again, each one seems to strip my mind a little bit barer, until it starts to saunter — the garland-and-jungles, the rainbow-and-waterfalls, the fairytale-and-fuzzballs residing on both the left and the right, oh the unfathomable sadness and despair of stomaching the sheers of never roving upon them, the juicy grasses, the deep skies, the fantasies that lie on the path orthogonal to mine, the Cimmerian-descendent-owned tree hole exuding intoxicating sweet alcohol that tastes like the saliva of Venus and emitting musky wintry wisteria scent that strangles like a soothsayer’s poems, all for the customers’ indulgence with unlimited supply, charging for only the negligible favor of devouring ten milligrams of their light, just seven shallow stairs down the desultorily paved bumpy and stumpy pedestrian if I turn left, the contemporary cathedral in spiraling shape resembling a piece of overly absorbent overtwisted towel embroidered with mosaic in melancholy crimson and cunning aquamarine that is 366 meters tall with each meter representing a day of a year and the extra one, the one materialized via the attachment of the shiny gilt orb to the spire top, symbolizing the young god who spreads blessings between spread legs once every leap year divisible by 400 if I turn right, but one can only walk on one street, one needs to keep going straight, this isn’t my turn yet, and the willow tree ten steps forward is waving at me. But am I not free to turn, just right here? Left or right, why does it matter? Does it matter? Home is straight ahead, yet I have reached a standstill at the crossing, and scared, just a tiny bit. It’s strange, this fear, encapsulating the moment of pause, it’s like a mist, thin, light, moist, subtle, vague, penetrating, enveloping, disorienting, confining, questioning, questioning, questioning about something, what is it, this fear that is more biological, more profound, more ingrained than what the heart desires, the precarious capricious ephemeral provisional feeble timid ambiguous confused what-the-heart-desires. What does the heart desire, really? What’s hidden at the end of this, next, and every turn not meant to be taken? Why am I terrified to turn right here? Or perhaps terrified to grapple with the easy possibility of turning right here? The possibility with its shape traced out by the fear for its existence allowed and everything else that’s entailed, the possibility of turning just right here, or anywhere, or everywhere.

Is allowed. 

Is it? 

I’m free. 

Am I? 

I keep going straight, greeting the willow tree with a conservative nod, as this moment I’m not ready to utilize my power of being free, or rather to realize my potential of being free, or rather to verify my illusion of being free. Will I ever? Maybe I should let Officer 091 try this, let him chase after it, let him take the turn and turn again. Maybe this will be the story. Let him search for the “phantom of freedom”, the hidden culprit at the terminal culmination of all turns, altars, alters, all terms, autumns, all tomorrows, altogether, al-readymade, let him reveal her true face —

Stepping inside the synagogue, not the biggest one, the smaller one, the one much more abandoned, bombed and in ruin, in the courtyard, Officer 091 sees broken windows and shabby doors, fallen tree branches and wildflowers, dry animal excrements and dry animal carcasses, squirrel tails like dust-infested dusters, discolored tiger skins that can pass for zebra skins, antennas of antelopes, peacock feathers, pig heads, monkey legs. His search has taken him here. Rumor has it that some secret political organization has its headquarters here, which, as claimed by the officials, is responsible for flaming anti-communist propaganda as well as the recent death of an unidentified old woman in Buda (a lynch crime where the old wretch was beaten to death and hanged down from the neck of the freedom statue; when first discovered by a passerby on an exceptionally early ordinary morning in spring, the death scene was described by the poor fella who seems to fancy subpar poetry and suffers from alternatingly recurring nightmares and insomnia (possible comorbidities of fancying subpar poetry, both worsened subsequently after that morning) as carrying an aura of almost religiously perverted profanity, sublimely surreal, or surreally sublime, as if a concept, as if profound, as if abstract. One can't blame him, though, it's true. The dead body, sustained by a dirty hemp rope and completely naked, looked like a grotesque oversized pendant necklace made of stretchy and droopy purple slime wore by the statue, whose metal heart met the other’s rotting heart precisely and preciously; coagulated blood from the scratched bruises mixed with other types of obscure liquids typically excreted by a deformed deceased covered all over the twig-like body on which two flabby and exhausted dry-milk sachets were attached beneath the tethered neck; the wrinkles on the face knotted, braided and tangled like worms hovering and feasting on the two cleanly peeled lychee (or lynchee) eyes pressed halfway inside a piece of figureless clay; her umbilicus on the on-the-verge-of-bursting fluid-filled and bloodshot-webbed abdomen was morbidly deep, perfectly round, gleefully inviting — inviting one’s index finger to poke in, stir a bit, and out with sticky chocolate slash strawberry jam, suck and yummy; three disconcerting animal corpses were found in proximity of the scene, all without showing any signs of decay or explicit wounds suggestive of the cause of death, all shimmering mildly brown under the yielded morning sun, all too perfect and iridescent in comparison to the old woman, all retaining unapologetically still the visceral freshness belonging only to a newly dead or newlywed, a rabbit, a chicken, a goldfish, and nothing else, nothing except leaves, petals, their flocks and such, cared even remotely to associate itself with the ostentatious crime); the leader of the mysterious organization seems to be referred to among the inner circle of high politicians as the “phantom of freedom”. (Sounds a bit pretentious, no? Maybe, but I’ll go with it for now.) Officer 091’s search inside the synagogue turns out mostly fruitless, as no signs of recent human inhabitation can be plucked from the property despite all means of scrutinization, except for the easy discovery of the three nonconformists localized in the courtyard: a tiny eraser of a polar bear wearing a sheen green tuxedo, a soft clay keychain doll of a small angel with a big onion head, a cheap watch attached to a plastic band with silver and childish lenticular prints, consensually demonstrating their high artificiality having nothing whatsoever to do with the synagogue's bleak and aged atmosphere pried open and left ajar by their very own borderline anachronistic existence, and drastically contrasting the desiccated, mostly consumed chunks of sun-dried meat lying casually around. 

Three and three, curious. 

Meanwhile, in another starless or dreamless but not seamless anonymous night, in the crease of life, in the seep of time, I situate myself on the uncomfortable high stool and lean my back against the half-concrete, half-tiled, all-around graffitied wall, facing the tiny and round bar table unbelievably wobbly as if the night itself, in the same ruin, decades later, after it has been converted into the winding intestines of a manufactured pseudo paradise where one drinks, dances, chats or yells rather, gets high, etc., etc. It’s dark in here, it’s tropical in here, is it magical as well? The hanging plants, the sage branches, the marigolds, the authentic orchids and fake paper flowers held down from the ceiling of the roofed cortile by elongated hammocks look extra impish and elfin under the jelling neon lights, languorously swinging, almost seductive, amidst the blinking mirror balls, blurred by the fresh smogs just filtered through the lungs of dedicated smokers and glazed by their drunkenly burped out gastric gases, while fake diamonds, rubies and slivers of glass stabbed into upright plaster are trying vigorously to capture something ungraspable via reflection and trance; holding an eldritch smile, an elephantine retro rocking rabbit with a giraffe’s neck guards the entrance, the gatekeeper of the porous night. Time rolls like a floating gearwheel down the cesspit every piece of history pertaining to humans, whereas I take a sip of my non-alcoholic iced lemonade, what about a conversation? But with whom? —

Are you the phantom of freedom? Officer 091 asks.

Who are you even talking to? And regardless, even if I am, how could you just expect me to admit it? What kind of detective story is this? 

Now my turn, and I’ll ask this instead —

Who is the old woman? Does her name start with an E?  Is it a blessing or a curse to be connected with someone in such deep measure, to endure their beatings, to live their memories, to occupy their body? Where do I find such a person? Such a person who’s willing or destined to bear it all with me?

Lejana forever will be the two of you, just go home, the Argentine writer with tenderly disdainful eyes says, who appears to be sitting next to me (since when?) at the same bar table on another high stool, wobbly as well.

Are you the culprit? Officer 091 pops in again. (From where?) 

No. The writer says and gets back to his maté, no more words from him. (My apologies that Officer 091 now sounds a bit stupid as a character, I’ll fix it later. (Again, don’t do this if you are writing a math paper.))

Out of the Jewish quarter, I’m at the Astoria intersection, the no-longer red stars reflected inside Officer 091’s blue or brown or black irises are not in mine. I keep going, straight and forward, approaching Kálvin. So does Officer 091, turning and searching, as required. We each walk on our own solo path, not parallel, not intersecting, simply disjoint. Since when has Officer 091 been always on his own? A breezy thought stumbles upon me. Not at 6 years old, as he was seen at a picnic with his mother in the northern woods; not at 12, as he was taken to the congregation for the viewing of the military parade on the national day along with the entire class by his homeroom teacher (what’s his nationality, by the way? Russian? Estonian? Hungarian? Does it matter?); not at 20, as he enlisted in the army that year and lived a highly communal life, but I suppose from some point on, between then and now (what’s “now”?), there stops being any explicit evidence that he associates himself with another human being in any perceivable way. I walk past a bookstore, and looking into the windows from the street, I see the shadow of Officer 091 inside (his being somewhere else, turning and searching, under my own command). Roaming among the bookshelves (mirroring the turning and searching of his being), the shadow lets the arcane combinations of strange letters brush by his left cheek and curled-up eyelashes without lingering, until the delayed, much delayed in fact, realization that since some elapsed moment and onward he has then been looking at words that carry meanings to him, English or Russian words — he’s in the foreign language section, except that he doesn’t notice for quite some time. (So I suppose it’s implied that he doesn’t speak Hungarian? Okay, yeah, let’s say that Officer 091 is Russian or Estonian, not Hungarian at least; what takes him to Hungary, then? Who knows, one thing after another, I guess.) He takes a book from the shelf (Rain in the Doorway) and starts reading. He likes books because when he’s reading, he doesn’t need a reason to exist or to not be talking, even though nobody ever asks him why he isn’t talking, as his stern and detached facial expression is always just self-explanatory enough. On his childhood desk, there were always the thick brick-like volumes of Capital and the complete collection of Lenin Anthology, and perhaps many other books of the same clique; he never questioned who wrote those books or who put them there or who agreed with them or who didn’t. He simply read them unselectively and accepted them with the absorbing soul of a child, and just like that, they became his first language, a language he speaks without thinking, just about the same as anybody’s average first language, something he acquired along with solitude. That’s how he became a communist. 

His search for the culprit has entered the bottleneck stage, as he has no clue how to crack the three-plus-three problem, that’s how he names the case (like a mathematician a recondite conjecture). He keeps on searching, which means turning, but the more turns he takes, the more turns present themselves in front of him, of course. In the city who has turned itself into an accomplice of the crime he meanders yet with the most sacred purpose and is lost. At some unidentifiable moment that without loss of generality can be taken to be this very moment, it doesn’t really matter, deep in his search, Officer 091 draws an uncanny parallel between chasing a culprit and chasing love, and it is at the tips of the hissing split tongue of this moment also where he makes contact for the first time with the revelation that perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps he’s unfree, and perhaps his very chasing is the most suggestive evidence in support of the speculation, as there is no freedom involved or allowed in attempting to follow the steps or paths taken by someone else, not knowing where they are and desperately insinuating where they might be or have been. Lonely, longing, loving, synonyms; yore, yearn, your, synonyms. Is he in love with someone? Yes, he must. With whom? Let’s see — 

Officer 091 stores his own history inside an enormous greek temple, just like the one I’m passing by this very second, although built not with stones but with memory flakes. Hunting deeper in his natural or not history museum, a back profile is gradually sketched out, belonging to his love, long lost or never granted, only a phantom, maybe. Nevertheless, he’s in love madly, and if one looks carefully, one sees weakly sparkling night stones made of phosphorescent sad green tears, here and there, lying on the confused backtracking paths getting lost in themselves in the labyrinth of the museum or of time, recording the singularities of the history of Officer 091, the ones pertaining to her, real or imagined:

Instead of meeting eyes, they both look down to feel each other’s close-by weight and twisting of spacetime, or perhaps it’s just him who looks down, but somehow he thinks that she, too (no confirmation, no evidence), under the wild apple tree on the outskirts of her hometown swallowed by farmers, festivals and fairs in late spring, just like us, although for us it’s late summer in the artificially cooled room in the shared strange town lacking warmth in every possible sense, or perhaps it’s just me who look down, but somehow I think that he, too, an unprovable claim.

Sitting in the darkened auditorium, they start kissing at the inauguration of the last movement of the last concerto of the last concert of June, the kiss lasts for as long as the music lasts, the violin is pronounced, the cello in pizzicato subdued and dancing around, the background of the stage is covered by pleated red curtains lightened by yellow; many giant mushrooms are erecting alongside him, erupting billions of pores, choking him, so he couldn’t breathe, or perhaps he feels ashamed to be breathing in perfection, just like us, a different us, although for us the kiss starts at the ending credits at the end of the movie in Cantonese, a quiet and sad piece of waltz, the background against the flowing letters indeed bright red but delivered in blue light, puny fungi growing and glowing in a dark humidity, and I couldn’t breathe, ashamed to be breathing in perfection. 

He follows her from the carefully constructed longest possible distance such that if anyone dares to step in between the two of them, they would suffer the stabbing judgment of social imprudence of either being too close to him or too close to her in an open space; it makes him feel safe, this perfect distance, both from the danger of losing a full and clear view of her back profile and from enduring the overwhelming sadness of being so close to her yet without any acknowledgment. Her back profile is short, thin but not bony; she ties her shoulder-length hair in a low ponytail, amplified with a nearly flamboyant blue floral scrunchie, and wears a polyester knee-length wrapped dress in pastel pink covered by tiny white flowers, always too early for the weather. He wants to raise his arm and reach her, as if she contains inside her something that’s supposed to be his. They are going upstairs under the tamed sun and to the same place. He has another minute before this tailing would have to end, a hopeless quest to begin with, just like me, on the early spring day, following the tall, thin and bony back profile, and within the allowed minute, I fill the distance between us, another us, with longings.

Traversing along the dimly-lit, maroon-walled corridors of the long or short, winding or straightforward, fragmented or continuous history, that of Officer 091, showcased or preserved inside the fragile yet protective glass chambers, one sees pains, pains, and pains. Pains only. It’s true. It doesn’t matter. Gentle tender pains wash over him like the cold and silent fountain water warmed by the sun and cooled by Pluto washes over the naked almond-white body of the beautiful greek boy possessing naïveté and pride in the name of marble, hidden at the crossing enlarged to a small square park of some two unknown backstreets behind the Kálvin station, nonstop, constant, forever, flowing and fluid. To him, happiness is sweet pain, sadness is mauve pain, content is musical pain, peace is translucent pain, he likes them, but not most of the other variations, such as when it boils or freezes, or becomes infested with evil algae and turns dark and foul, when it becomes thick and viscous and clogs. Longing is ambiguous misty pain. Love is pain itself deprived of verbs, nouns and adjectives, so is life, so is death. Where is she now? He wonders. Who is she now? He mumbles. Could it be that she? In any case. Keep going, keep searching, keep loving. Okay. Love shapes me, love morphs me, love carves me and polishes me like a statue. Love confines me, love restricts me, love polarizes me. Love gifts me and robs me. But I keep going, always, keep loving, because I don’t have a choice, and I’m okay.

Landscapes dissolve and compound in the osmosis of the absented and sad-tunes-suffused mind, one, two, three, and then countless buildings that are essentially formed by cubes of different colors, sizes, materials and dimensions — one, two, three, enter the peripheries. They built those architectures believing that the world was enchanted, the same American friend said, his words rise back up like a wisp of blue smoke at this moment, when I’m surrounded by products of intervals, and I come to realize that ah, they (a different “they” from the “they” referred to by my friend) didn’t build these buildings believing that the world was enchanted, quite the contrary, in fact, that’s why nothing is pointing high up wishing to channel something perhaps a bliss, perhaps divine; no fears, either, that’s why all the roofs are flat, all the windows drag, just horizontal and vertical 2-dimensional cubes, simply weathering squares. But the charm of the commy blocks lies, for me at least, in the eerie familiarity and nostalgia they stir inside me, the nostalgia smelling like the bewildering scent of a single lavender seed blended with thin tenderness that I preserve deep underneath, somewhere close to shame, preserve for the sake of preserving, just a single and just for it, it — my past, my childhood and adolescence, and something generalizes to the ideology itself, in a wistful, almost sad way. I realize that the world is big and small at the same time, and my world changes and repeats at different times, time and terra tangle indeed. Officer 091 has wandered off at the moment, and as for me, so many years after having left home, right now, nearing the outskirts of the city that acquiesces in my silent existence, I step inside neighborhoods that look like the ones I grew up in, thousands of miles away, knowing for the first time that they exist elsewhere, their aesthetics or the lack of aesthetics exists elsewhere. Not far from the cubes is a tremendous scruffy meat and produce market on its last legs hidden inside low, tiny and faceless bungalows wearing wooden sticks and plastic sheds and aligned intimately one after another along parallel lines (there used to be a market just like it right outside my childhood home, always so loud, so crowded, so gross, so disgusting, so unhygienic, so smelly, so lively, so lovely, and I’d get fried squid tentacles with charred fluffy white buns dipped in sweet barbecue sauce there for after-school snacks). Strips of meat hung down by sharp hooks look like some sort of obscene and obscure ornaments in front of the butcher’s waving knife; I used to wonder where all the blood went and how raw meat would taste like, would it be delicious? Meat, meat, meat, how can it shift between being appealing and disgusting so simply quickly melodramatically in the simple quick melodramatic dilation of irises, like sex, like humanity, maybe. Childhood seems so far away now, the mosquito net below yellow lights, the pink wallpaper with Winnie and the Pig chasing a kite, the convertible dining table holding stir-fried tomato and egg over rice, the cut-in-half earthworm, the crushed snail shell, the stolen red rose, the never-flowering (due to the incorrect, improper, inappropriate skinning of the outer brown layer of the bulb to reveal the delicate jade-like flesh by the smart-alecky father) winter daffodils, the beige couch shedding fake leather crumbs, the cockroaches that could never be rid of, the three dead pets, the three long lost tiny objects, my most precious treasures, all gone before I know the magic of music, but after I know the shape of colors. I still carry them, my past, my memories, and sprinkle them over something, somewhere, sometimes. 

Growing up, I never felt like anything was wrong, nothing particularly, nothing in particular, should I have? Should I have questioned when they asked me to wear a red scarf and raise my right arm and sing to the red flag and the giant photo of the man in a green tunic suit? Should I have questioned when they asked me to recite the passages on pages of doctrines and to believe in them? As I didn’t, as I did what they said, as a child. And somewhere, sometimes, something like this managed to stick in my head back then: 

The sailor relates that in Utopia neither money nor private property exists. There, scorn for gold and for superfluous consumption is encouraged, and no one dresses ostentatiously. Everybody gives the fruits of his work to the public stores and freely collects what he needs. The economy is planned. There is no hoarding, which is the son of fear, nor is hunger known. The people choose their prince and the people can depose him; they also elect the priests. The inhabitants of Utopia loathe war and its honors, although they fiercely defend their frontiers. They have a religion that does not offend reason and rejects useless mortifications and forcible conversions. The laws permit divorce but severely punish conjugal betrayals and oblige ever to work six hours a day. Work and rest are shared; the table is shared. The community takes charge of children while their parents are busy. Sick people get privileged treatment; euthanasia avoids long, painful agonies. Gardens and orchards occupy most of the space, and music is heard wherever one goes. (Utopia, Genesis, Memory of Fire, Eduardo Galeano.)

Something like this, except that this precise paragraph above I read only recently from a book about the history of Latin America. But back then I took it in, give or take the same message, I thought it was nice. Isn’t what’s described here also equity that we so desire and talk about? So what’s wrong? What’s so wrong? Is there something that really has to be wrong? But somewhere, somehow, something goes wrong. I know. As I'm wondering if it would be okay for me to say this, precisely this, this that’s being said right now, would they be upset and take me down, and I know the answer doesn’t matter, as I know that I'm even wondering means the line has already been crossed. 

So I criticize it, whatever that’s in the name of communism, perhaps it doesn’t have to be this way, it doesn’t matter, I criticize it (what would Officer 091 say, what would he think of me?). But not just it, I criticize much more than just it. As politics is human and humanity enlarged to the point that every flaw and pore on the skin grows so enormous and turns into an abyss oozing sappy slimy pus submerging and fermenting the grandeurs of the homeless dead’s forever extending cities, nurturing and suckled bit by bit by the ivory-colored mites that swim and flourish within, and that becomes our entire reality — standing on the otherwise flat land, gazing down the abysses, or lakes really, enticed, aroused, and terrified, complaining or bombed into pieces all depending on geography, dreaming about, if not demanding, a future that somehow has to be utterly different, better, that is, and ritualistically precedented, as how it is has to be how it has always been and how it will always be — a definition, simultaneously, dreaming and hence forgetting our human shape, as it’s too large and we couldn’t see, remember once upon the time we also thought that the earth was flat, oh such lovely innocence. (Perhaps the inventor of communism’s biggest mistake is to have misjudged and overestimated humanity.) Politics is emotional. It’s sad, insanely. I can’t be a politician, as I don’t know how to dance around my emotions — they are my spines and poison, yes I’m a sea urchin. But let’s bless our character, our Officer 091, with such superpower. He’s secret police, for god’s sake, and I’m the god of his. A pro, a poker face, a born-natural, then. Let him dance around the emotions, wriggle and whirl, squirm and twirl, but never disoriented, the queen of the psychedelic floor, holding every ounce of self-awareness and control, like a corpse flower. And let me tell the story. It’s a story about pride and greed and inventing the forgetful unloving god or gods and the feuds revolving around the forgetful unloving god or gods and building walls and waging wars and oceans and guavas and bullies and traumas and albinolizing the vast northland and ebony blood fertilizing the vegetal south and flowerpotions yellowing daydreamers and little citizens paperworkalizing homogeneous slaughters and two sumos playing seesaw and a new sumo claiming a spot and the everlastingly dissipated galumphing mushroom blossoming into the most potent amulet always in danger of engendering an avalanche curse and ramshackle hypocrisies and lopsided adulations and hedonistic oblivions and ransacking permutations and angelic depravations and self-inflicted self-destructions. It’s our story, plus or minus a thousand thousand pages of bygone history, it’s our story. 

And somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, in our story, a blue floral scrunchie lies dirty in the gutter. 

But what’s the story, our story, even about? May I ask? And what’s freedom? Am I free? Do you think? What I’m asking is in the splendid procession of the opulent river of our story flushing down spacetime, scripts, skies, steppes, a debris stream, floating and flowing but am I free? As I know that Officer 091 isn’t, as he’s my marionette, as I pull the strings, as I’m his senses and limbs, as I define he isn’t by not saying he is. Yet I love him madly. Where has he gone, by the way? Is he really so lost in the city that he couldn’t find the way back? Oh wait, no, he’s listening, lurking in the background, he’s there, listening, all along, my unuttered monologue, and whispering —

Our story. But who am I inside “our story”? Who am I without my nationality? Who am I without my ideology? Who am I without my memory? Who am I without my physicality? And who are you? Officer 091 kneels down and picks up the blue floral scrunchie, fixated for a second. The final lead. 

I know you, yes it’s you, isn’t it? My god of creation. You are the culprit. As you say let’s kill her, and she dies, one way or another, sooner or later. You create her and kill her, as you will, however you will, just because you can, you are the sickening twilight usurping the color of every being and object. And you create me hence denying me everything I’m not — you don’t say I’m the blinding azure sea that is exactly the boiling ultramarine sky in which corals are rainbows and stars are pearls, a bird swims and a fish flies, so I’m not; you don’t say I’m the sweet sweaty swelteringly wet summer breeze or ardently white summer dream that is saturated with the grey smell of the impending rain that will soon put off the fire of the firefly who, flickering, just falls lithely on the firm limb of the olden tea tree whose height hasn’t yet been deprived, so I’m not; you don’t say I’m the silky milky vermicular larva of both a name-forsaken moth and a nameless fly, languishingly tunneling through and feeding inside the forest of corpse fauna so vernally bloody a burgundy green, lethargically thrusting like an almost flaccid quite placid precious little penis waiting to be wrapped around tightly by floss and thread, flexed then and fretted, so as to transform into a wide-winged buzzing black, so I’m not. You don’t give me a name, so I don’t have a name, just a title, and a number, Officer 091. I exist to the extent you describe me. You confine me within the meager pages you eagerly try to squeeze out. You are the phantom of freedom as you are the boundary within which freedom operates, a narrow one-way road. But I love you madly, as you make me declare it, you dictator, then and now, so I do, I love you madly, I say so as I see the back profile of Officer 091 emerging, he’s walking almost in desperation in front of me, for the first time so physically and vividly, no longer in the brim of my consciousness, but right there walking, in the same direction as home — my home, in the direction I’m already going, and I’m almost there, I’m almost home; he’s chasing after something, so I chase after him. The surroundings are evaporating around us, and replaced by a well-layered grey background with burnt sienna underneath, a becoming vignette of me chasing after him chasing after something, a phantom. I can’t see clearly, but I think I recognize her, the phantom, like an ectoplasm, veiled by mists and myths, she’s the freedom statue, yes. Beautiful as always, and the irony of the ivory of liberty being jailed on a crag, looking up but never back to her admirers or accusers, but beautiful nonetheless. Is she the culprit that he’s been chasing all along? The phantom of freedom, the freedom stature. Is she the culprit? After all, she hangs the corpse, very so literally. To her I hear him say gently I love you madly, not back to me. As he’ll never love me, as he’s unaware of me, as we don’t coexist in the same dimension, as he’s a concept and much more perfect than me, but I create him and I love him madly. Madly. Do I really? Will you face me? Turn around and face me, you bitch. Is there anything that truly belongs to me? This whole chasing-after-chasing-and-yet-chasing-chasing, did you make me? Should I hate you? For I know I’m nothing to you but a mere projection, the tiny yellow flower below the windowpane among a hundred other tiny yellow flowers, the one that stretches out five tiny shimmering petals on one of which, the one that looks like it’s missing, a tiny fleck of shadow dances on tiny tiptoes, is more real to you. But I’m nothing to you, just a transcendental transgressive translucent translational transfigured intellectual toy, a plaything that’s the product of a temporary whim or passion, and I’ll get old, soon enough, except I don’t age, not in your dimension, but perhaps one day you can just say I die, and I die, as you are the culprit. Or perhaps one day you’ll just disappear and never come back, and it’s just me forever and forgotten. Perhaps that day is really today. Face me, don’t go, don’t go! I have your blue scrunchie. Yes, stop right there, no further, wait for me. What are you doing? Are those your keys? Is that house your home already? Darkness, help me, hide the keyhole from her for a bit longer, I’m almost there; old door, hold on a moment, don’t open up just yet, don’t confiscate her from me behind your old voice, please. Officer 091 hastens his steps even more and I’m falling further and further behind in the hopeless pilgrimage of catching up with him, with his back profile and the freedom statue shrinking in my vision. Don’t go, don’t go, my voice swallowed by the grey, don’t go just because I have nothing more to say, just because I could not bring myself more to say, because it’s all and always in the silence never tolerated by whom—shush—what?—ever my love toils, foils, spoils, boils and distills, my love and longing for you shall never quell, a concept, a remembrance, an embodiment, an inquisition, an attempted perfection, the me after I peel, peel, and peel, a vestige, but most true and bones, a skeleton, and him, him, and him, the back profile I conjure, the reason I allow myself to keep breathing in and out, without the pisses and feces, without the mucus and farts, without the dead skins and dead thoughts I produce discretely or continuously, day after day, year after year, until — you, can you hear me? Can you hear my pains? Why am I only pained? Why do you want me to? I’m pained because you say so, but I can’t even let it show, because you also say that I’m a pro, a poker face, a born-natural. But what else have you allowed me to do? Where else do my pains go? Why do I exist? Why do you create me? I want you to love me, too. Please don’t go, please don’t leave me alone. Tell me more about me, I want to know. Tell me why too, that I want to know even more. And make me free. Make me free, I beg you, my god, my culprit, my love. Among the darkness, a deeper, darker darkness pierces through like a loud mouth widening, expanding, ready to gulp and devour its prey or accept its sacrifice, I enter. So dark, no longer grey, Officer 091 is nearly out of my view, yet still possessing the capability of shrinking, and just barely I see him stretching out his arm reaching for something, it could be for nothing but her, even though I could no longer see. Is he nearing her, is he losing her, is he nearing her and losing her at the same time? I don’t know, and at the point afar of the one-point perspective or the point missing from the one-point compactification of the landscape with a well-layered, once-grey-but-now-black background and nothing else, nothing more but myself, Officer 091 disappears in my vision, accompanied by the sound of a dry clasp. Has he reached her? I can’t tell, but I know I couldn’t reach him. And I’m home now, lock the door, the walk is over, so perhaps it’s time to actually write something down and see where it goes from there.  

*This story belongs to the manuscript.