The President Shop, page 8
Diogen came in and sat on Mona’s bed, next to Rosa. Rosa hid the diary behind her back. This had become his room too now that Robinson had occupied his; a mattress had been packed in for Diogen. The walls of Mona’s room were a patchwork of posters of hair metal bands: men with perms and leather jackets and Vaselined lips. Some sported electric guitars with sharp, wild edges. Lots of stickers, from when Mona was little: bits of Snow White scattered, several dwarves, in pieces, a tiny foot, a nose, a beard.
Rosa checked the time. There was another half an hour before Mona returned.
“Ruben has some big news to announce at your party. He’s been invited to the President’s boat, on a three-week tour of the islands,” Rosa said.
Diogen looked up. “Really? With the President himself?”
Rosa nodded. She opened Mona’s drawer and pointed to the cigarettes and the letter. “She’s infatuated with a girl.”
Chapter 21
THE DAY ROBINSON had invited Mona to be the first witness to the greatness of The Invention, the machine consumed so much power that the entire apartment, together with several others on the floors above and below them, short-circuited, and it took electricians three days to get the system working again. So Mona had not seen into the future. After Diogen had found the notices for a visit to the Museum of the Future hung all over town, The Invention was moved to the shelter, where Mona now spent time whenever she got a chance.
There had been a shelter Cleaning Action the previous week, and she had participated. This had given her the opportunity to surprise herself with her ability for deviant behavior—one of the keys, which only the adults were in possession of, had been left unattended. So she took it and went to make two copies of it for herself, replacing the original key without anyone noticing. She told the old man who cut the keys that they were for the community locker. She had gone out of the neighborhood to prevent the possibility of being recognized and having to answer uncomfortable questions. Watching him, she remembered the President’s original calling as a key cutter, which she had seen pictures of all her life in the President Shop. The large iron wheel scraped the metal and promised the opening of a door that for Mona held a place where she could spend undisturbed hours; the tree was no longer right, it was too exposed. And there were too many kids around. She intended to offer the second key to Clarice, as a way of offering a secret to her. Maybe you can write there, she’d tell her. She wanted to show Clarice that she was different, that she dared do things that others didn’t. They could smoke there, and talk. It would be cool.
“Shelters against atomic or hydrogen bombs are nothing but coffins and tombs prepared in advance,” Diogen shouted at Ruben, after the Cleaning Action had finished. “The minister said so himself, I don’t know if you bother to listen.”
“Well, you can stay outside if there is an explosion, brother, you’re quite welcome!”
During the Cleaning Action, one of the neighbors had spoken of a rumor that a shelter had been made just for the President and his inner circle, a long tunnel dug into a nearby mountain. It was speculated that it was ten kilometers long, had all the newest radio technology, an area for tanks and weapons, even a place to keep two airplanes, should the President need to make a quick escape.
“Apparently, there is a luxury area for the President and his wife, with a four-poster bed and a record player. They even have all the President’s records lined up. His favorite is Miles Davis.”
“Nonsense!” said Ruben. “Why do people listen to all this nonsense? Miles Davis! The President never speaks of this kind of thing.”
But, at night, when covered by the cloak of sleep, Ruben dreamed of the President’s bunker, its mouth hidden in a rock face, opening onto a tall, cavernous hall behind a sealed heavy door, as if to an underground castle. Ruben, for some reason dressed in an astronaut’s suit, levitated through the long neon-lit corridors, from one room to another. There were various rooms, of various sizes, containing only red telephones and relief maps of the country hanging on the walls; there were rooms with small televisions, the President’s face delivering a speech that Ruben knew; another room with television screens, a white flurry of snow on them. An enormous space with a single airplane in it. A kitchen with a food taster, a man responsible for monitoring both the quality and vitality of the President’s food; he was, as a real servant of the Nation, ready to die first, were the President’s food poisoned. But in reality, he was simply getting more rotund. This man, Ruben knew, had been picked from reality, since Ruben was aware of the existence of such a person in the President’s inner circle. And then Ruben walked into the President’s private quarters, finding the President’s wife sprawled out in a four-poster bed in a cream-colored negligee, her hair in a dark beehive, listening to Miles Davis. The President wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and the wife, upon seeing Ruben, sat up lazily, her legs and shoulders bare, and said to Ruben in a voice as soft as honey: “Get out of that moon suit and come to bed.” Ruben, delighted, obeyed.
He awoke with a start, his heart thumping, and to his great shock and self disgust, he was aroused by a desire as powerful as a nuclear reactor. Rosa was asleep. He dared not wake her or try to make love to her. He thought it would be dishonest, given what he had just dreamed, though, of course, he knew he could not be held responsible for his dreams. He got up, went downstairs in his bathrobe, took the key to the shelter, and descended the stairs. There, he unlocked the safe, took out the golden bust of the President, and started to clean it with the special cloth, trying to set his thoughts straight and remove the lascivious images of the voluptuous President’s wife that kept flashing before his eyes.
Chapter 22
ROSA HAD MANY rituals. She woke at exactly the same time every day, washed her face and hands and her body, wiping each part with a warm flannel cloth, her armpits, under her breasts, between her legs, her legs, feet, and then she put cream on her skin and brushed her hair. She made coffee, prepared breakfast for everyone. She opened up the shop. And on Thursday mornings, for she had chosen this day as the first day she left the house after baby Yasen died, she went into the woods. No matter the weather. Yasen was born three years after Mona, a strong baby, eyes like blue marbles, a mouth as soft as the inside of a cloud. Rosa still wondered what had happened. He’d looked perfectly healthy. But one day, he simply did not wake up. His life sucked out of him overnight. In his crib, unmoving. Rosa had seen death, all kinds of death, had caused death, had been at the brink of death, but she had never experienced such short life, which just the day before had felt so forcefully evident in the tiny grip of its fist, the ferocity of its cry, she had never seen such life just disappear. There had always been a cause: war, hunger, savagery, disease, old age, accidents. But what was this? God’s will? The wheel of Fortune? Bad luck?
After Yasen’s death, Rosa spent a month in bed. There was nowhere she could go, no one she could talk to, nothing she could do. Ruben was devastated, and could do no more than hug his wife and weep. It was Diogen who helped her.
After the month in bed, Diogen went into her room and said, “Rosa, this cannot go on. You have to get up. You have another child. She needs you. You’ve been through the war, you know how to fight.” Diogen said whatever he could think of, hoping it might stir the light in her soul. “I am taking you to the forest.”
He dragged her out of bed, took a warm flannel cloth and wiped her body. Face, breasts, between her legs, legs, feet. Every morning. It was as if she was being embalmed, or had returned to being an infant herself. Rosa surrendered to the process, felt herself removed from her body, like the flannel was wiping a wooden board that was somehow now meant to be her body. There was no sensitivity to her skin, no tickles, no pain, no sensuality. Then Diogen would put her in the car and drive out of town, to the mountain where the forest changed from short, shrubby trees to tall birches and oaks and beeches, and the shade was comfortable and the light dappled and golden. The forest emerged onto a deep canyon with a sparkling river below, and at the top of the mountain was a bench and a shrine to a goddess who was said to bridge life and the afterlife and where people went and left mementos for their deceased loved ones. Diogen knew that Rosa would at least be stirred by the forest, and it was true that when she entered the woods Rosa felt as if some of her had returned, that she had caught a glimpse of a way out from the deep grief that had entombed her soul. Every day she and Diogen would go up to the top, and she would sit at the shrine, which was on a fresh water spring, and weep for her boy, thus suspended, Rosa, Comrade Rosa, the great huntress and warrior, between life and death, between the soil and the sky. And no amount of war, she thought, of that collective battle of life against death, was equal to this, a grief that was unique to her. Ruben had dedicated himself to work, closed himself up in the shop, talked to no one of his loss. Rosa wept and prayed to the goddess that her son would be in a safe place, and her heart healed, slowly, as much as it could.
Mona got her mother back, and Rosa sometimes took the girl up with her, but mostly she went alone. She preferred the woods and the shrine to the graveyard, the emerging water from the spring giving Rosa some sense of a continuation of life, of a nurturing liquid coming from beyond, from the Earth’s very core, coming out and going back beyond, and only in that way could Rosa fathom the mystery of the randomness of life and death and an order beyond the grasp of the human mind.
Chapter 23
DEAR CITIZEN,
As an exemplary citizen of our Nation, you are cordially invited to spend three weeks traveling around the country’s islands with the President, aboard his ship, The Blue Dolphin. During this time, we will be engaged in hearing lectures from the President, and understanding the future concerns that face us. We will examine how to keep our nation strong.
Ruben put the letter down. This was more than he had ever dared dream of, though dream of it he did, occasionally. The Blue Dolphin! Three weeks! He did not know what to do with himself. Today he was desperate again, having to announce this news at the party for Diogen, who seemed determined to ruin everything Ruben stood for, everything the President stood for. Ruben had called a military commander he knew, and told him that he should not relieve Diogen of his army service any longer, under any circumstances. He had a twinge of doubt as he was saying this into the telephone and the commander kept repeating “yes” in a tinny voice, with Ruben feeling that the commander was doing something else as they talked and possibly not really listening, but Ruben felt that his hesitation was mere weakness on his own part, and that really what Diogen needed was a year of enforced discipline, which Ruben had obviously failed to give him, possibly because Ruben felt he was on the brink of weakness and peril himself quite often, his heart giving way when he knew reason should prevail. Goals! Ruben had read a book called The Psychology of Success and tried to implement the title in his life.
“What kind of success are we talking about here?” Rosa had asked when she saw him reading the book.
“The success of truth above lies, of order over chaos. A person must be focused on his goals, must be passionate about how they live their life and always keep focused. All this you see around you, none of this would have been possible without focus. Yours, mine, the President’s, all of the people involved.”
If Diogen had been around when this was discussed, he would’ve hissed, “For you success is a pathology.”
Ruben felt that Diogen could not be left to go around wandering in the unfocused state that he seemed to live in, like a bug bobbing inside a ball of gelatin, upon the waters of the world, and the gelatin would soon solidify, in Ruben’s opinion, and Diogen would become one of those insects trapped inside amber or glass, God forbid. Ruben shook himself to get rid of the thought. He needs to be removed from there with a sharp shock and a pair of precise tweezers, he thought.
“He’s unfocused, you see, that’s the real problem,” he told the commander. “He needs the iron hand of the military service.” Ruben had shouted the last part.
“Yes,” said the commander.
“The military has the best tools for making a man out of him,” he roared into the telephone receiver.
“Yes,” said the commander. “We will do our best, as we do with all our young men. Only, you know, sometimes these guys really don’t want to be there, or they are really unfit. Last week one cut himself with glass, all over. He smashed a glass and took the pieces and cut himself. He’d done it once before and then he did it again. We had to release him. They’ll do all sorts nowadays to get out. Times are changing, the spirit of protecting the country isn’t as strong as it once was.”
Ruben gulped and took a breath to say something, then stopped.
“I don’t know what material your brother is made of,” said the commander, still talking as if out of a tin.
Ruben could not release the image of this career military man sitting in a small sardine tin, with a micro telephone in his hand, and the thought was distracting. Ruben struggled to concentrate on what he was saying.
“But basically, the iron hand of the military service either makes you or breaks you.”
Ruben had heard of this young man the commander mentioned, and several other such cases. It was a year; it was tough. Up at the crack of dawn, and every possible kind of discipline imagined was exercised upon them, plus the kind of rough treatment that went with the service. Ruben had enjoyed it, and yes, he had served in the days when being in the military was considered an honor, not only considered an honor, it was experienced as an honor. But as the commander said, things were changing. Chaos was seeping into order, Ruben felt, and the straight line that he had walked in order to get to where he was now standing—moreover, where he would be standing soon aboard The Blue Dolphin—was all thanks to that straight line of order, the clear values that were projected to the nation, that every individual, had they followed it, could count on to lead them to a warm hearth, a happy family, a clear mind.
This was what Ruben’s thoughts went over and over again, first doubt then certainty, then doubt again, especially at night, severe doubt, avalanches of doubt at night, when the bruised darkness descended upon the world and his sleeping wife produced breathing sounds that were deep and safe and she was elsewhere and Ruben felt alone in their matrimonial bed, and the President’s picture would somehow start to glow in the dark, his teeth would shine, the whites of his eyes, his smile, and only that would calm Ruben and usher him into the warm embrace of sleep. In the morning he was steady in certainty again, at least for a while, if he had not had one of his dreams, nightmares rather, of eating live bugs, cockroaches, or crickets, of lifting the struggling insect to his mouth, feeling part delighted part horrified, and crunching into the soft center of the body through the crust of the bug’s protective shield, and as he chewed and swallowed, the wiggly legs of the creature would tickle his insides and Ruben would wake up with a start, reaching to Rosa, but finding her gone. Lately, she was often gone from bed, and Ruben would put his head on her pillow and breathe in and try to regain that balance of certainty. Is it Diogen I am crunching, he would wonder, before washing away those thoughts with a cold shower.
Rosa woke at dawn, to watch the edge of night and day. She wondered how Diogen would survive the army. One never knows with him, she thought. He could still somehow get out of it. Though she knew that Ruben had called the commander. She had thought about removing the pack of cigarettes from Mona’s drawer, thus subtly letting her know that she had seen them and taken them away, but was giving her a chance to improve herself. But then Diogen had said that Mona would just hide them somewhere else and at least this way she would be able to monitor what was happening with Mona without pushing her away. She had started having the same dreams that she’d had after Mona was born, of losing her, of leaving her in a shop and forgetting about her and coming home and realizing she had left her, and she would wake up startled, the bedroom a cold dark cave around her. Sometimes she dreamed of the boy, of his little body while he was still alive and his breath warm and his muscles full of life, and then sometimes that dream would go further, to when she picked him up from the cot, that morning, and she would find herself surrounded by bears in a cave, and it was wartime again, and Rosa would wake with a start, soaked with sweat. She would get up and go look at Mona sleeping, her dreams fading away slowly. She would study her daughter, who was now a mystery, a process, her thoughts and activities hidden from Rosa. She watched her for a while, listened to her breathe, her hair an auburn filigree upon her face. Rosa always heard Diogen wake up, for Diogen always woke at dawn and took a brisk walk to the river, where he practiced some movements he had devised for himself, part dance, part martial arts, part cardio. He had a large, purple book of yoga positions called Yoga Every Day that Mira, the town hippie, had brought from the capital, and which Diogen had borrowed. He chose some yoga positions and mixed them in with karate strikes, and several dance moves. He decided to do this routine at his secret river spot because he needed more space than was available in the flat, especially since losing his room to Robinson, plus the moves involved jumping and grunting and even something akin to a chant. He also believed that breathing in the clear morning air was optimal for getting the maximum benefit from any exercise. Mona found him one day staring at a lit candle and upon asking him what he was doing, heard something about the third eye and opening that by sitting and focusing on the candle’s flame. He told her to try it. Mona had sat down and stared until her eyes watered, but she felt no third eye opening.
Diogen practiced his movements in solitude because there he was shielded from the curiosity of others. He had learned to be careful about exposing his differences to the world when some boys, upon seeing him sing and dance by himself in the street, as Diogen was prone to doing as a boy, losing a sense of where he was, showered him with rocks and curses and he ran and ran as far and fast as he could. This is how he found the hidden spot by the river; the boys had chased him, and when he turned the corner behind the large mosque down the gravel path, he ran into the bushes that seemed to encase him, like a catacomb. He sat there and could see the boys looking for him, but they seemed blind when they faced the bushes. The only other person to have found the hidden spot without guidance was a young man who’d said his name was the Roma word for “lament.” Diogen was surprised to find someone in his secret spot, but the young man immediately said, “Hey, I also like to hide, I hope you don’t mind me joining you.” He said he could find the perfect place to hide within five minutes of entering any town and that this was pretty much one of the few perfect hiding spots in town. Diogen sat next to him. Lament was semi supine, one leg resting on the other, smoking and chewing a piece of straw simultaneously. He produced a bottle of homemade plum brandy. The two of them drank from it. Diogen felt like he was drinking petrol, but he also enjoyed the burning in his chest that seemed to extinguish the other burning, the burning of his heart, for he had just had an argument with Ruben about one thing or another, and the flame of his anger was being devoured by ethanol fire.
Rosa checked the time. There was another half an hour before Mona returned.
“Ruben has some big news to announce at your party. He’s been invited to the President’s boat, on a three-week tour of the islands,” Rosa said.
Diogen looked up. “Really? With the President himself?”
Rosa nodded. She opened Mona’s drawer and pointed to the cigarettes and the letter. “She’s infatuated with a girl.”
Chapter 21
THE DAY ROBINSON had invited Mona to be the first witness to the greatness of The Invention, the machine consumed so much power that the entire apartment, together with several others on the floors above and below them, short-circuited, and it took electricians three days to get the system working again. So Mona had not seen into the future. After Diogen had found the notices for a visit to the Museum of the Future hung all over town, The Invention was moved to the shelter, where Mona now spent time whenever she got a chance.
There had been a shelter Cleaning Action the previous week, and she had participated. This had given her the opportunity to surprise herself with her ability for deviant behavior—one of the keys, which only the adults were in possession of, had been left unattended. So she took it and went to make two copies of it for herself, replacing the original key without anyone noticing. She told the old man who cut the keys that they were for the community locker. She had gone out of the neighborhood to prevent the possibility of being recognized and having to answer uncomfortable questions. Watching him, she remembered the President’s original calling as a key cutter, which she had seen pictures of all her life in the President Shop. The large iron wheel scraped the metal and promised the opening of a door that for Mona held a place where she could spend undisturbed hours; the tree was no longer right, it was too exposed. And there were too many kids around. She intended to offer the second key to Clarice, as a way of offering a secret to her. Maybe you can write there, she’d tell her. She wanted to show Clarice that she was different, that she dared do things that others didn’t. They could smoke there, and talk. It would be cool.
“Shelters against atomic or hydrogen bombs are nothing but coffins and tombs prepared in advance,” Diogen shouted at Ruben, after the Cleaning Action had finished. “The minister said so himself, I don’t know if you bother to listen.”
“Well, you can stay outside if there is an explosion, brother, you’re quite welcome!”
During the Cleaning Action, one of the neighbors had spoken of a rumor that a shelter had been made just for the President and his inner circle, a long tunnel dug into a nearby mountain. It was speculated that it was ten kilometers long, had all the newest radio technology, an area for tanks and weapons, even a place to keep two airplanes, should the President need to make a quick escape.
“Apparently, there is a luxury area for the President and his wife, with a four-poster bed and a record player. They even have all the President’s records lined up. His favorite is Miles Davis.”
“Nonsense!” said Ruben. “Why do people listen to all this nonsense? Miles Davis! The President never speaks of this kind of thing.”
But, at night, when covered by the cloak of sleep, Ruben dreamed of the President’s bunker, its mouth hidden in a rock face, opening onto a tall, cavernous hall behind a sealed heavy door, as if to an underground castle. Ruben, for some reason dressed in an astronaut’s suit, levitated through the long neon-lit corridors, from one room to another. There were various rooms, of various sizes, containing only red telephones and relief maps of the country hanging on the walls; there were rooms with small televisions, the President’s face delivering a speech that Ruben knew; another room with television screens, a white flurry of snow on them. An enormous space with a single airplane in it. A kitchen with a food taster, a man responsible for monitoring both the quality and vitality of the President’s food; he was, as a real servant of the Nation, ready to die first, were the President’s food poisoned. But in reality, he was simply getting more rotund. This man, Ruben knew, had been picked from reality, since Ruben was aware of the existence of such a person in the President’s inner circle. And then Ruben walked into the President’s private quarters, finding the President’s wife sprawled out in a four-poster bed in a cream-colored negligee, her hair in a dark beehive, listening to Miles Davis. The President wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and the wife, upon seeing Ruben, sat up lazily, her legs and shoulders bare, and said to Ruben in a voice as soft as honey: “Get out of that moon suit and come to bed.” Ruben, delighted, obeyed.
He awoke with a start, his heart thumping, and to his great shock and self disgust, he was aroused by a desire as powerful as a nuclear reactor. Rosa was asleep. He dared not wake her or try to make love to her. He thought it would be dishonest, given what he had just dreamed, though, of course, he knew he could not be held responsible for his dreams. He got up, went downstairs in his bathrobe, took the key to the shelter, and descended the stairs. There, he unlocked the safe, took out the golden bust of the President, and started to clean it with the special cloth, trying to set his thoughts straight and remove the lascivious images of the voluptuous President’s wife that kept flashing before his eyes.
Chapter 22
ROSA HAD MANY rituals. She woke at exactly the same time every day, washed her face and hands and her body, wiping each part with a warm flannel cloth, her armpits, under her breasts, between her legs, her legs, feet, and then she put cream on her skin and brushed her hair. She made coffee, prepared breakfast for everyone. She opened up the shop. And on Thursday mornings, for she had chosen this day as the first day she left the house after baby Yasen died, she went into the woods. No matter the weather. Yasen was born three years after Mona, a strong baby, eyes like blue marbles, a mouth as soft as the inside of a cloud. Rosa still wondered what had happened. He’d looked perfectly healthy. But one day, he simply did not wake up. His life sucked out of him overnight. In his crib, unmoving. Rosa had seen death, all kinds of death, had caused death, had been at the brink of death, but she had never experienced such short life, which just the day before had felt so forcefully evident in the tiny grip of its fist, the ferocity of its cry, she had never seen such life just disappear. There had always been a cause: war, hunger, savagery, disease, old age, accidents. But what was this? God’s will? The wheel of Fortune? Bad luck?
After Yasen’s death, Rosa spent a month in bed. There was nowhere she could go, no one she could talk to, nothing she could do. Ruben was devastated, and could do no more than hug his wife and weep. It was Diogen who helped her.
After the month in bed, Diogen went into her room and said, “Rosa, this cannot go on. You have to get up. You have another child. She needs you. You’ve been through the war, you know how to fight.” Diogen said whatever he could think of, hoping it might stir the light in her soul. “I am taking you to the forest.”
He dragged her out of bed, took a warm flannel cloth and wiped her body. Face, breasts, between her legs, legs, feet. Every morning. It was as if she was being embalmed, or had returned to being an infant herself. Rosa surrendered to the process, felt herself removed from her body, like the flannel was wiping a wooden board that was somehow now meant to be her body. There was no sensitivity to her skin, no tickles, no pain, no sensuality. Then Diogen would put her in the car and drive out of town, to the mountain where the forest changed from short, shrubby trees to tall birches and oaks and beeches, and the shade was comfortable and the light dappled and golden. The forest emerged onto a deep canyon with a sparkling river below, and at the top of the mountain was a bench and a shrine to a goddess who was said to bridge life and the afterlife and where people went and left mementos for their deceased loved ones. Diogen knew that Rosa would at least be stirred by the forest, and it was true that when she entered the woods Rosa felt as if some of her had returned, that she had caught a glimpse of a way out from the deep grief that had entombed her soul. Every day she and Diogen would go up to the top, and she would sit at the shrine, which was on a fresh water spring, and weep for her boy, thus suspended, Rosa, Comrade Rosa, the great huntress and warrior, between life and death, between the soil and the sky. And no amount of war, she thought, of that collective battle of life against death, was equal to this, a grief that was unique to her. Ruben had dedicated himself to work, closed himself up in the shop, talked to no one of his loss. Rosa wept and prayed to the goddess that her son would be in a safe place, and her heart healed, slowly, as much as it could.
Mona got her mother back, and Rosa sometimes took the girl up with her, but mostly she went alone. She preferred the woods and the shrine to the graveyard, the emerging water from the spring giving Rosa some sense of a continuation of life, of a nurturing liquid coming from beyond, from the Earth’s very core, coming out and going back beyond, and only in that way could Rosa fathom the mystery of the randomness of life and death and an order beyond the grasp of the human mind.
Chapter 23
DEAR CITIZEN,
As an exemplary citizen of our Nation, you are cordially invited to spend three weeks traveling around the country’s islands with the President, aboard his ship, The Blue Dolphin. During this time, we will be engaged in hearing lectures from the President, and understanding the future concerns that face us. We will examine how to keep our nation strong.
Ruben put the letter down. This was more than he had ever dared dream of, though dream of it he did, occasionally. The Blue Dolphin! Three weeks! He did not know what to do with himself. Today he was desperate again, having to announce this news at the party for Diogen, who seemed determined to ruin everything Ruben stood for, everything the President stood for. Ruben had called a military commander he knew, and told him that he should not relieve Diogen of his army service any longer, under any circumstances. He had a twinge of doubt as he was saying this into the telephone and the commander kept repeating “yes” in a tinny voice, with Ruben feeling that the commander was doing something else as they talked and possibly not really listening, but Ruben felt that his hesitation was mere weakness on his own part, and that really what Diogen needed was a year of enforced discipline, which Ruben had obviously failed to give him, possibly because Ruben felt he was on the brink of weakness and peril himself quite often, his heart giving way when he knew reason should prevail. Goals! Ruben had read a book called The Psychology of Success and tried to implement the title in his life.
“What kind of success are we talking about here?” Rosa had asked when she saw him reading the book.
“The success of truth above lies, of order over chaos. A person must be focused on his goals, must be passionate about how they live their life and always keep focused. All this you see around you, none of this would have been possible without focus. Yours, mine, the President’s, all of the people involved.”
If Diogen had been around when this was discussed, he would’ve hissed, “For you success is a pathology.”
Ruben felt that Diogen could not be left to go around wandering in the unfocused state that he seemed to live in, like a bug bobbing inside a ball of gelatin, upon the waters of the world, and the gelatin would soon solidify, in Ruben’s opinion, and Diogen would become one of those insects trapped inside amber or glass, God forbid. Ruben shook himself to get rid of the thought. He needs to be removed from there with a sharp shock and a pair of precise tweezers, he thought.
“He’s unfocused, you see, that’s the real problem,” he told the commander. “He needs the iron hand of the military service.” Ruben had shouted the last part.
“Yes,” said the commander.
“The military has the best tools for making a man out of him,” he roared into the telephone receiver.
“Yes,” said the commander. “We will do our best, as we do with all our young men. Only, you know, sometimes these guys really don’t want to be there, or they are really unfit. Last week one cut himself with glass, all over. He smashed a glass and took the pieces and cut himself. He’d done it once before and then he did it again. We had to release him. They’ll do all sorts nowadays to get out. Times are changing, the spirit of protecting the country isn’t as strong as it once was.”
Ruben gulped and took a breath to say something, then stopped.
“I don’t know what material your brother is made of,” said the commander, still talking as if out of a tin.
Ruben could not release the image of this career military man sitting in a small sardine tin, with a micro telephone in his hand, and the thought was distracting. Ruben struggled to concentrate on what he was saying.
“But basically, the iron hand of the military service either makes you or breaks you.”
Ruben had heard of this young man the commander mentioned, and several other such cases. It was a year; it was tough. Up at the crack of dawn, and every possible kind of discipline imagined was exercised upon them, plus the kind of rough treatment that went with the service. Ruben had enjoyed it, and yes, he had served in the days when being in the military was considered an honor, not only considered an honor, it was experienced as an honor. But as the commander said, things were changing. Chaos was seeping into order, Ruben felt, and the straight line that he had walked in order to get to where he was now standing—moreover, where he would be standing soon aboard The Blue Dolphin—was all thanks to that straight line of order, the clear values that were projected to the nation, that every individual, had they followed it, could count on to lead them to a warm hearth, a happy family, a clear mind.
This was what Ruben’s thoughts went over and over again, first doubt then certainty, then doubt again, especially at night, severe doubt, avalanches of doubt at night, when the bruised darkness descended upon the world and his sleeping wife produced breathing sounds that were deep and safe and she was elsewhere and Ruben felt alone in their matrimonial bed, and the President’s picture would somehow start to glow in the dark, his teeth would shine, the whites of his eyes, his smile, and only that would calm Ruben and usher him into the warm embrace of sleep. In the morning he was steady in certainty again, at least for a while, if he had not had one of his dreams, nightmares rather, of eating live bugs, cockroaches, or crickets, of lifting the struggling insect to his mouth, feeling part delighted part horrified, and crunching into the soft center of the body through the crust of the bug’s protective shield, and as he chewed and swallowed, the wiggly legs of the creature would tickle his insides and Ruben would wake up with a start, reaching to Rosa, but finding her gone. Lately, she was often gone from bed, and Ruben would put his head on her pillow and breathe in and try to regain that balance of certainty. Is it Diogen I am crunching, he would wonder, before washing away those thoughts with a cold shower.
Rosa woke at dawn, to watch the edge of night and day. She wondered how Diogen would survive the army. One never knows with him, she thought. He could still somehow get out of it. Though she knew that Ruben had called the commander. She had thought about removing the pack of cigarettes from Mona’s drawer, thus subtly letting her know that she had seen them and taken them away, but was giving her a chance to improve herself. But then Diogen had said that Mona would just hide them somewhere else and at least this way she would be able to monitor what was happening with Mona without pushing her away. She had started having the same dreams that she’d had after Mona was born, of losing her, of leaving her in a shop and forgetting about her and coming home and realizing she had left her, and she would wake up startled, the bedroom a cold dark cave around her. Sometimes she dreamed of the boy, of his little body while he was still alive and his breath warm and his muscles full of life, and then sometimes that dream would go further, to when she picked him up from the cot, that morning, and she would find herself surrounded by bears in a cave, and it was wartime again, and Rosa would wake with a start, soaked with sweat. She would get up and go look at Mona sleeping, her dreams fading away slowly. She would study her daughter, who was now a mystery, a process, her thoughts and activities hidden from Rosa. She watched her for a while, listened to her breathe, her hair an auburn filigree upon her face. Rosa always heard Diogen wake up, for Diogen always woke at dawn and took a brisk walk to the river, where he practiced some movements he had devised for himself, part dance, part martial arts, part cardio. He had a large, purple book of yoga positions called Yoga Every Day that Mira, the town hippie, had brought from the capital, and which Diogen had borrowed. He chose some yoga positions and mixed them in with karate strikes, and several dance moves. He decided to do this routine at his secret river spot because he needed more space than was available in the flat, especially since losing his room to Robinson, plus the moves involved jumping and grunting and even something akin to a chant. He also believed that breathing in the clear morning air was optimal for getting the maximum benefit from any exercise. Mona found him one day staring at a lit candle and upon asking him what he was doing, heard something about the third eye and opening that by sitting and focusing on the candle’s flame. He told her to try it. Mona had sat down and stared until her eyes watered, but she felt no third eye opening.
Diogen practiced his movements in solitude because there he was shielded from the curiosity of others. He had learned to be careful about exposing his differences to the world when some boys, upon seeing him sing and dance by himself in the street, as Diogen was prone to doing as a boy, losing a sense of where he was, showered him with rocks and curses and he ran and ran as far and fast as he could. This is how he found the hidden spot by the river; the boys had chased him, and when he turned the corner behind the large mosque down the gravel path, he ran into the bushes that seemed to encase him, like a catacomb. He sat there and could see the boys looking for him, but they seemed blind when they faced the bushes. The only other person to have found the hidden spot without guidance was a young man who’d said his name was the Roma word for “lament.” Diogen was surprised to find someone in his secret spot, but the young man immediately said, “Hey, I also like to hide, I hope you don’t mind me joining you.” He said he could find the perfect place to hide within five minutes of entering any town and that this was pretty much one of the few perfect hiding spots in town. Diogen sat next to him. Lament was semi supine, one leg resting on the other, smoking and chewing a piece of straw simultaneously. He produced a bottle of homemade plum brandy. The two of them drank from it. Diogen felt like he was drinking petrol, but he also enjoyed the burning in his chest that seemed to extinguish the other burning, the burning of his heart, for he had just had an argument with Ruben about one thing or another, and the flame of his anger was being devoured by ethanol fire.
