Squonk

It was raining, and I was walking home from work when I saw him. His face was placid and his eyes were focused on mine. On the other side of the street, my pace slowed. Our gazes locked as harried pedestrians jostled past me. He looked away, and I quickly turned to face forward, breathing heavily. For a moment the rain had stopped, the wind had slowed, and time seemed to forget itself as my father and I exchanged glances. Now that I had snapped back, the sounds of traffic and the crowd around me were magnified, and the constant torrent of rain and breath-taking wind overwhelmed me.

The people around me pushed past, and I ducked into an alley to catch my breath and clear my head. A frustration gripped me, just as it had so many years ago, when I had last seen his face. He had been scowling then, his rude mouth turned down as he stared harshly at my mother, who was sobbing on the couch, hurt by another of his biting insults. Then he had turned to me and shouted.

“You’re no son, you’re no son of mine!”

The words caught in my head and repeated as if in refrain. In his glare I could see him blaming me, blaming me for what had happened to them. I left the contemptible apartment that night for the last time. The moment was fixed in my memory, and though today his expression was different than he had that night so many years ago, the familiar drain of energy stopped my feet. Could I keep running away? Ducking into an alley, I leaned against the rough brick wall of an apartment building and turned my face to feel the cool beat of rain on my face.


A year after I saw my father on the street, I got a call from an old friend of his. My mother had suffered a stroke and the doctors feared she would not survive. I went to visit her in the hospital one day when I was sure my father would not be there. A nurse escorted me to a private room, and left me alone with my mother. With hesitation I approached her bedside and squeezed her hand. I looked at the floor, unnerved by the alien expression on her face, the asymmetrical features of a typical stroke victim. When she spoke, I jumped. Her voice echoed harshly off the sterile medical equipment and the blank, white walls.

One eye rested on me, and the other was half closed, unable to respond. Her wrinkled features drooped to one side, the side that had been immobilized by the attack.

“I never asked you,” she began with a croak, slurring the sounds together, “...what it was like to own a real house.” “...what it was like to be free.”

Her eye closed and she sighed deeply, as if speaking made her weak. I felt my face grow hot. I had almost forgotten what she sounded like. Tears I had never had before blurred my vision and I blinked to clean my eyes of their burning sensation.

“It’s good, Mom. It’s good.” I felt like an imposter as I left the room, finally moved by her condition.


The funeral was held graveside. My stomach turned every time I moved my eyes to another painful aspect of the scene before me. And I never once looked at my father. He was standing directly opposite me, on the other side of the coffin.

The priest finished speaking and three men came forward to turn the cranks of the crude machine that lowered my mother’s body into the open ground. I was frozen in place, my head bowed and my eyes red; sick of the over-fragrant flowers my aunt had placed atop the mahogany coffin. One of the men looked aside at me, then turned his head to the other side. Instinctively, I glanced up to follow his gaze. My father stared back at me. We were the only two left of the original funeral procession, and we watched each other. Then he turned and headed up a grassy slope that defined the center of the graveyard. I had to run to catch up with him, and when I did, he ignored me. But I persisted and stepped in front of him, blocking his path.
He paused, eyes defiantly set over my shoulder at the gravestones that covered the land before him. Seconds went by, only seconds, but I could see before me nearly everything I had ever done to him, and everything he had ever done to me. I was caught up in the flood of memories when he turned his icy gaze to my face. I held my breath, and for a brief moment, we stared. Then the same cruel sneer I remembered too well crept over his sharp face. The words he had spoken to me all those years ago suddenly echoed again in my mind. I understood what he meant. They rang inside my head as he turned his back and walked away, back down the slope.

I believe there's more to life than being successful in the materialistic meaning of the word. It seems to me that a very distinctive Western culture has developed and begun to undermine other traditional cultures and values. I personally feel entrenched in the ideal of American consumerism. I have multiple material possessions—when I went to Peru last summer, I went crazy with buying things because of the very low offering prices. I obsessed over buying presents for everyone back home, and when we ended up traveling to tourist cities I spent nearly all my time searching for alpaca sweaters and other less than meaningful gifts. It was the trip of a lifetime and I spent about the whole time thinking about souvenirs. When I came back to North Carolina, no one cared about the stories I had about haggling in the little shops.

It really does frustrate me that I live in a society that places such emphasis on consumerism. I feel that a side effect of this value is unhappiness. Possessions are prized far more than personal relationships, spirituality, and knowledge, for the most part. Money can be measured, and a person can be judged based on their clothes, house(s), jobs, and friends, who are judged using the same system of measurement. It's pretty pathetic when the celebrity who makes millions of dollars on pitiful excuses for movies, blows the money on a mansion in California, and parties all the time, gives nothing back to society except a bad role-model.

In my opinion gift-giving is a way for people to focus on themselves rather than others—it was (and is) used as a way to replace intangible things, such as lost parents or friends, love, and broken promises. The best presents are instead either extremely practical or useful or very meaningful to either the giver or the receiver. I think that most people recognize this, but not many know how to give gifts like that. There's the saying "it's the thought that counts," but seriously, most people don't put any thought into gifts they buy for others; At least not any affectionate thought.

I worked in a Hallmark store for a year and after a while it became extremely apparent that none of the people who came in to get cards ever wrote anything other than the word "love", a comma, and their name on the inside of the card, and then perhaps the name of the recipient on the outside. It's almost rude. Quite often when customers couldn't find the perfect card, I would suggest that they pick a nice blank one and write a message inside it. Not once did any of them take my advice. We also sold a huge number of worthless knickknacks in there. To see people buy them with the expectation that the poor soul receiving the useless item would actually like it, was almost more than I could take, other than seeing women spending hours in the store and walking out with near on a hundred dollars of merchandise (which was horrendously overpriced). I always worked with at least one other person, who was always female, and I can't even recall the number of times I ranted about my problems with the capitalist society and how much I hated working in retail. However, being hypocritical, I joined them in crowding around a calculator to see how much our 30% would take off on our frequent purchases of equally useless merchandise.

That first job really exposed me to the world—I learned what people really do with their time and money, which Western society finds so precious. I won't try to blame capitalism on America, because the economic system started far too long ago to account for. But materialism has become so prevalent in many people born today, and I feel that anything in the world that is more important and innately satisfying to people will be lost in the influx of consumerism worldwide.

Recently, my research on the Mbuti pygmy tribe of the Ituri rainforest in the Congo made me realize, through some very moving passages in a National Geographic article, just how unhappy the majority of Westerners are with their lives. The author, who spent some time in the rainforest itself, said "I was impressed with how happy and comfortable the Pygmies are in the forest. Sometimes I would hear one of them tell a story, and the others would start laughing so hard that they would have to hold each other up. By my estimate they are a lot more content than Western culture because they don't care about acquiring and maintaining material possessions. They live off the forest and take only what they need. Hopefully, we can let that survive." Indeed. I take the most pleasure in knowledge and learning. To me, the most important thing in life is learning—in my passions there seems to be a thread of the communication of information. I would write or make films (not the Hollywood kind, the Indies and documentaries that tell stories about real people or create a real-life story in a creative way), or maybe become a politician and try to change things in the world by studying issues and history in detail.

I envy the people who ignore the societal pressures to conform and be successful in the material meaning of the word. I'm stuck in the rut of pushing myself to follow inane orders from equally crazy teachers in a high school that is based on a very specific set of values and teaching/learning goals. My parents emphasize the importance of getting my applications into the admissions offices in time (I haven't started yet), and since I'm already focusing on schoolwork, the stress builds and builds. Mary, my psycho-therapist, has been telling me how the ability to function in this fast-paced society is necessary to survival. I can just see myself in ten years, with a perfectly good college degree, working in a boring sit-down office job for some dysfunctional company that just perpetuates this crazy consumer culture. If I'm lucky, I'll have lost all these beliefs about capitalism and Western society because then I'll be focused on the money I make, the car I have, and the house I can afford. I'll aspire to something that can be measured, and even if it all comes back to haunt me, I can just put up that mind-block and ignore the absurdity of it all. Just like everyone else.

I remember a certain book that we had in the bookshelf back when I was in elementary school—a large paperback entitled "What Every 3^rd Grader Should Know." There was a collection of stories focusing on Greek and Roman mythology. I read that book nearly cover to cover, fascinated by the completely different take on what children of a certain age should be learning. To me, that book was a fountain of fascinating information.

There's a point where the mundane information in textbooks that almost require rote memorization becomes background work, something that loses appeal despite any interest you might have in the subjects. It's the sheer amount of work, the balancing of seven classes at once in varying degrees of difficulty, that causes many high school students to snap. There are two extremes: one of utter indifference and near hatred of having to learn in the first place, and one of complete craving for more information that one has a hope of actually retaining in the overstuffed mind. I have fallen into the second category. I can find history and literary analysis and foreign languages all intriguing, but I also find myself reading every article in the Discover and Newsweek magazines, perusing the daily paper for interesting headlines, and even searching for, and saving on my hard drive, the Democratic Party platform.

Academics have taken center-stage in my life. I go outside less and less often, lie around the house reading for English, research for projects online, and organize and reorganize my increasingly messy backpack. I believe I'm an intellectual person, and I certainly enjoy many academic subjects, but sometimes I find the strict educational institution to be too stressful.

I want to go to college for the experience, for the classes and professors, and for the degree. But most of all, I want to go to college to do what I've never done before. I want to find something about which I feel truly passionate. I want to grow as a person, emotionally, mentally, and socially. I want to have the opportunity to become whoever I wish myself to be.

Swarthmore seems to me to be everything I need in a college, and a place where even I, strange as I am, will find a niche in which I can prosper and learn. There's a certain magic to learning, a breathtaking feeling that says, "I don't have to stop here."

I see higher education as a route in life that is meant to foster the inquisitive and talented mind, to raise the next generation to as high as it wants to go, and to create an atmosphere in which the young and old alike can grow together, symbiotically and because of one another. This is what knowledge is: it's the thrill of reading a book and traveling to the world the author has created; it's the analysis of one's own thoughts and life and the insights it creates; it's the imagination and hope it takes to pursue a dream. But it's always, always the curiosity to ask "Why?"

Kilroy jumped up from his stool and ran to the chalkboard, nearly knocking over Dr. Sone in his hurry. Furiously, he wrote the end of a complicated equation with the last nub of chalk clutched tightly in his hand. As he stepped back from his work, the two other colleagues crowded him, staring at the white writing. Dr. Sone ignored them all and continued to mold a metallic polymer, kneading it with her hands and staring into space. A small smile crept over her delicate features as she heard the breathing of the students behind her grow hushed and ragged.

“See! There! There!” exclaimed Kilroy, too excited to say more than one word at a time. The young man to his left started dancing.

“Kilroy, my boy, you’ve solved it! You’ve completed the last calculation!” he shouted, as he hugged the grinning Kilroy.

The splendor of it all lay in the meaning behind the strange markings on the green board. It was the last step in the mathematical and physical planning behind the creation of robotic body armor. The idea was still in the works, but the three graduate students and their advisor, Dr. Sone, were making significant progress in the physics behind the outer shell of such technology.

The year was 2123, but life was not so different than it had been for the last century. Technology had continued to boom and the number of corporations all over the world grew, though some were specific in maintaining a monopoly. Modren Technologies was just one of at least fifty international organizations that had gained funding from large corporations in order to conduct research and eventually produce new types of technological advancements. To save money, the organizations hired graduate students as interns, and used them in all departments. Kilroy was one of three students from the prestigious MIT University, all of whom were chosen by their mathematic brilliance and intuitive foresight, who worked in Quad 19 sector 5 designing the exterior of what Modren Technologies hoped would be the world’s greatest robotic advancement since the invention of the first computer nearly two hundred years ago.

Kilroy was overwhelmed with the social encounters his friends exposed him to later that afternoon. They had all gone to an O₂ & N₂O bar, where Kilroy had slipped away after the first hour. He returned home, somehow feeling upset, despite his success with the crucial equation. The smell of the three-room apartment was still remiscent of new-base type Clorox the cleaning-assistant liked to use. He could never remember the name. Sitting down in his favorite chair, his nose twitched at the heavy fragrance of citric acid. He was reminded of the physical and chemical properties of the substance, which helpfully blocked out the hollow feeling in his chest.

The room was cold, and the dome-like window that extended out into the street was covered with frost. Kilroy sighed, realizing that he could hear himself breathing in the dead silence of the apartment. He fingered the metallic model in the pocket of his windbreaker. He took it out to examine its features. Dr. Sone was a genius at sculpture, though it was a talent that she could never allow her colleagues to know about. Besides, her models of robotic creations were not considered particularly artistic, though Kilroy thought the expression on this tiny robot’s face was fantastic. She was used for her mathematical talent at Modren Technologies.

Kilroy sighed. Just the way he and his fellow grad students were used because they did not have to be paid. The government covered student expenses because of the aggressive Stotti campaign that placed enormous emphasis on learning. Kilroy supposed that this was a great benefit to him, but it also left him out in the cold when he decided finally to get his degree. Holding his head in his hands, he turned his thoughts to the calculations he and his colleagues had been working on.

They were standing in a circle around the head manager for this particular phase of construction. Kilroy had been there since 0600, when the call for the meeting had first gone out. It was 0636 now, and it looked like everyone had arrived. The middle-aged woman, Rosine, in the center of the circle of engineers, technicians, mechanics, and mathematics began to speak. The speech was dull; merely a status report that she was required to give everyone once the organization proceeded to another step in the creation process.

A small man beside Kilroy murmured the catch phrase of Modren Technologies simultaneous with the head manager; “That’s what we’re here for; advancing technologies since 2002.”

The team dispersed to their separate wings of the building to await their next assignments. The minds behind Modren Technology didn’t like everyone to know exactly what their new project was, so all they ever knew was what their individual job was. Except the mechanics. It was their task to assemble the final product, and he identified them by the soft excitement that covered their face. They wore superior smiles as they lingered together when the rest of the team left the conference room. Kilroy hung back as well, pretending to want to ask the manager a question, but he overestimated her attention to mere mathematicians. She ignored him and led the four mechanics into a side room that had escaped Kilroy’s notice. He ducked behind a cart of scrap metal, hoping to hide, but a sub-manager called Ganix was watching him.

“Kilroy?” the older man asked curiously, as if he couldn’t quite believe who was crouching behind the cart. Kilroy sighed.

“Yes, sir?” he answered respectfully, already planning how to bluff his way out. Unfortunately, his mind was preoccupied on the line of technicians leaving the room through double doors at the far end of the conference room. He barely heard Ganix’s next words, “...we’ll need it.”

Kilroy snapped back to reality and hastily agreed to whatever the man had said. He hoped it was something better than going to the superiors.

“You’re a lad. Now, just take this cart through those doors and down that hall. There’s no one to follow anymore, but just turn left at the Bunt corner, and then walk past the yellow force field until you reach the third security checkpoint. Tell Teddy the password and he’ll lead you to a hidden door three levels down. Now, hurry, because Rosine will need those materials soon.” Ganix patted Kilroy on the back, who had found the instructions slightly confusing.

“The security in here is batty,” he muttered to himself as he pushed the cart of metal—parts, he guessed they were—through the double doors. Just as he was wondering which way to turn—for he was now facing the other wall of a long corridor—the blank wall before him began to move. A door opened. Rosine yelled at Kilroy to get inside with the cart.

Happy to escape the spatial directions, Kilroy retreated to a corner of the laboratory room. In the center was medical type equipment, an operating table, and three very serious looking mechanics. It appeared they were waiting anxiously for someone to enter the room through a side door, one that led outside the building. Kilroy looked around the room, growing more and more amazed at the primitive technological machines that lay covered in dust along the edges of the huge room.

Real sunlight diffused through the room as the side door opened and three men entered. Kilroy realized what the room was—a storage building. He wondered if perhaps this was what the original Modren Technologies building had been built off of. The sudden light disappeared, and Kilroy could make out the faces of the men who had entered. Two were large and forboding, apparently security guards, and the other stood between them, small and pathetic. It was a homeless man. In fact, Kilroy was familiar with the man, from passing his makeshift home in the park nearly a dozen times every week. Everyone was supposed to be provided for under the government nowadays, but either people slipped through the cracks or the administration wasn’t as effective as it made itself out to be.

The mechanics began to talk amongst themselves as the guards led the slow-moving man to a fancy machine. Kilroy watched in fascination as the man was hooked up to the medical equipment and apparently tested. Footsteps approached him, and Kilroy jumped, only to see Ganix again. He was staring at the procedure when he said, “Do you know what this is, boy?”

Kilroy shook his head and answered, “No,” with a sort of breathless and wondering air. They kept their eye on the homeless man as the other technicians started moving around again, preparing equipment and moving the operating table. The poor victim looked inhuman, entirely dirty and with an expression of resignation on his face. Kilroy was struck by the scene before him, and a code of ethics so little followed in that technological world.

“Are...are they going to use him in an experiment?” he asked the older man, trying to keep his voice level and quiet. Ganix shook his head.

“Not any experiment. The experiment, Kilroy. That man there is going to be incorporated into Modren’s newest advance, a technology that we are only able to create thanks to your formula!” His voice still hushed, the man was extremely excited, and Kilroy began to feel sick. The technicians took the arms of the homeless man and led him over to the operating table. The man’s eyes were hollow and as he turned his face to the shadows, where Kilroy stood, the young man was racked with a horrid feeling of responsibility.

“No!” he yelled before he could think. Everyone in the room froze, and Ganix’s grin faded. He backed further into the shadows and left Kilroy alone to be the focus of attention when every eye in the room turned to look at him. The head manager stood aside, her mouth screwed up angrily. Kilroy turned to her to plead his case.

“You can’t do this; it’s wrong,” his voice echoed in the empty rafters that extended far into shadow above.

“He volunteered,” answered Rosine tightly, clearly lying. Kilroy felt desperate, so he groped for an alternative.

“Do you really want someone inexperienced in the field of robotics to take on such an important assignment?” He had begun to beg, and surprised himself at his sympathy towards the homeless man he didn’t even know personally.

Rosine twisted her frown into a grimace, “And what would you, a veteran technician, suggest we do?” Her silky voice dripped with icy sarcasm. Kilroy’s knees nearly gave out, as he realized what she was suggesting. But another glance at the homeless man convinced him to dare.

“I’ll do it.” A collective gasp covered the silence that followed his statement. Though Kilroy had to force the words from his throat, they flowed off his tongue easily. Behind him, Ganix gaped in surprise at the foolish boy. He gasped, “Do you know what you’re agreeing to, Kilroy?” This saved the technicians from having to ask his name, and nearly caused Kilroy to fall down. No, he had no idea to what he had just agreed, but it was all the more reason to save the homeless man from that fate. His heart beating through his Modren uniform, he thought how easy it would be to just run away, run back through that door and give up playing the hero. But he said nothing.

She sat on the side of a crude road, drawing in the dust with her fingers. Sometimes she would look up from the pictures to watch down the road with an intense stare. The sun was still low in the sky that morning when she took a break from watching the dust to glance again down the road. This time she could make out a lone figure approaching from far off. Halfway from the horizon to where she was sitting, her brother had walked a far distance within her sight as she had been drawing pictures in the dust. Slightly put off by this, she sat still for a moment, reveling in her waiting frustration until she could not ignore how close he was. She stood up and ran the remaining distance between them, legs pumping with excitement.

Cathan had been walking all that morning and felt somewhat cheated out of a day, realizing that he had been far closer than he had imagined to his childhood home. A smile had dominated his face since the moment he saw his little sister Ailill sitting far in the distance, probably only an ell away from their home. When she began to run towards him, he felt everything come pouring out of his mind, everything about his whole trip that he was storing in his head. Before he knelt to meet Ailill, a solitary tear traveled down the young cheek, in solitary rebellion to his actions. She came barreling into him, a tiny ball of reserved energy, and hid her damp face against his shoulder. Upon feeling her small body against his, trembling in what could only be small sobs, Cathan could not help but feel all his strength disappear for a moment as he allowed himself to agree with her relief. He recovered quickly, not wanting his return to be inhibited by grief of any sort, and picked his sister up to carry her the rest of the way home.

The familiar weight wiped its eyes and as soon as the breeze revived it, was squirming to be let down from its brother’s arms. Seeing the cottage clearly now, he set the excited girl down and stood to watch as she ran with the same fervor towards home, eager, no doubt, to announce her brother’s arrival before he could. The second he reached the door it flung open and his mother collapsed into his arms with hysterical sobs. Behind her stood his father who was grinning ear to ear, his eyes clear and bright in their familiar way. Cathan patted his mother on the back as she gasped her astonishment at seeing him home at long last, all the time aware of that nagging feeling in the back of his mind that reminded him of his past wish to never see his family again.

He had left home with no intention of ever returning, furious at his parents for his isolated upbringing and wishing to experience the rest of the world as it was and hoping that he would find something amazing that would make him forget about home and going back. But what he had found had the opposite effect on him. He yearned for home even while fascinated by the local customs of other towns and heard rumors of lands even more distant where he could find adventure and riches. Now his mother was ushering him to the table and pouring him a bowl of hot broth and he was outwardly agreeing to tell them all of his travels and all the while wondering whether he ought to speak of the allure the outside world had on him, even now.

Sitting across from him in their usual way, the two of his parents together still had that uneasy effect on him and he bowed his head to drink the broth, aware of the two pairs of eyes watching him without rest. When he reached a point in his meal, he paused eating and first told his parents that his heart had changed during travels and now he felt remorse for having left so hastily for the world but after it all did not regret the decision. His parents were silent receptors in a way they felt was encouraging, but their combined gaze Cathan found to be intrusive and demanding, halting his words at inconvenient times and causing him to stutter when under any other circumstances he could have spoken fluently and with passion. He told them of his wanders to the high cliffs where the ocean met bare rock and the towns where very drunk men explained the mystery of life to one another. He told of the strange customs he encountered in some towns and the monasteries that produced great works of art though it was rumored the world was under a dark influence back on the continent. He spoke of the stories he heard from numerous peddlers about foreign lands and the trades he saw and some of which he learned a bit. Reaching into his bag he produced a fipple flute, which he handed to Ailill and who took off running with it, abusing its high pitched notes but fortunately going outside with it to practice. When he had finished telling the stories, he returned to the soup, which had grown cold but was tasty nonetheless.

That night he could not fall asleep with the usual ease he had after a full day of traveling. Getting up quietly, he left the house and walked for some distance down the abandoned road. When the horizon was level and clear on all sides he lay down on his back in the grass. Now this felt familiar too, for while traveling he had slept outside most nights, sometimes unable to find shelter for the night or unable to pass up the beautiful weather. Gazing up into the heavens, he was struck by how clear the night sky was of clouds and rooftops and mountains and trees. He felt he could see for miles across the land and for millenniums in the heavens. He lay between reality and a dream for a long while, oblivious to the sounds of small animals and insects in the field around him, engaged in battles of universal proportion within his mind.

At no particularly special time he opened his eyes wide and took a very deep and long breath from the night air. The moon was in another part of the sky now, and Cathan wondered that its crescent shape might now be fuller than it had been when he was walking. Laying still and silent for innumerable more minutes, he focused meditatively on the sounds he heard there and the feeling of the grass beneath him and the breezes that passed above him and the light scent that he finally distinguished at the end. And he opened his eyes unwillingly breaking the delicate connection he had forged with the nature around him. Feeling robbed he sat up, aware suddenly that dawn was fast approaching, and fearing that his mother, finding that he was not in bed, might worry. He started back, walking at a pace slightly more than leisurely, thinking that it would be a huge mistake to let either of his parents feel worried about him while he was visiting. For while lying in the field a ways from home, he realized that wandering would always be in his heart, as would a longing for something familiar, though far stronger. There was nothing for it but to leave again. He had greeted this idea with warmth and the more he now thought of where he could go, the more excited he became to finally be going there. He reached his parents house just before dawn, and peering through an open window was shocked to see his mother already awake. But when he walked in, she beamed at him and praised his “new habit” of rising early for a breath of fresh air.

When finally the rest of the family rose for breakfast, the guilt in Cathan’s throat was threatening to choke him. There was no conversation as they ate their last meal together. Ailill was playing with her flute rather than eating, and nicely filling up the space with meaningless noise rather than awkward silence. Perhaps it was by his expression or either by his mannerisms that his father had picked up on his intent to leave, but anyhow he had told his wife at some point before the meal, and now both acted cold towards Cathan. He felt trapped in an callous situation, but his desire to leave was never stronger. He almost felt a pull from another direction as he offered to clean up. Ailill was running outside with her flute, now able to play a few more notes and put them together into a tune. It was mindless and filled Cathan’s head as he tried to ignore his parents sitting at the table and whispering to each other about their son.

When the plates were clean, Cathan called his sister into the room with a resigned feeling of agony. Seating his family across from him, he told them without distractions that he received an offer from an important man in another town and wanted to head in that direction to see if there was any opportunity in it. It was a lie of course, but he couldn’t bear to tell his parents to their face that he wanted the exact same thing he had wanted so long ago. The goodbyes were tedious, for he spent most of it with Ailill, for she had started crying and did not appear to be recovering despite multiple hugs. His father had held out his hand to shake and his mother had given him a less than warm embrace. Cathan was beyond all of them already.

He disappeared in that early morning haze where the air hangs over the land like translucent low-lying clouds. Upon reaching the edge of the cliff where the expanse of water below reached out to the corners of the horizon, he stood back against the less traveled road. As he watched the sun’s reflection off the lightly rippling waves, a breeze rose up from the road behind and blew out to sea and he knew that he was dead to them.

In the old days, there was a town of noble standing and high regard, and in the center atop a hill, there sat a large stone castle. The king lived—so it was said—on a high gold throne in a grand tower inside the castle, and to reach the room was impossible. The people of the town lived in discontent under the rule, and unhappily went through each day growing more quiet and more obedient, until the town was nearly silent, colorless, and frozen.

One day, a courageous man decided that he had had enough of living in the shadow of this unfeeling ruler, and decided he would speak to the king about the general discontent. As he passed through the streets he was met with confused stares and sometimes hopeful glances from the oppressed and afraid townspeople. The courageous man strode purposefully to the base of the castle’s outer stone wall just as the sun disappeared from the sky. Grey and cold, the wall extended to what seemed to be the very heavens of the earth, and upon following its vertical line back to the ground, the man noticed a very small and crooked old woman standing at the great threshold of the castle. She stood before two large doors embossed with gold patterns, and as he approached her, thinking she the gate-keeper, the woman held out a hand to stop him. Her wrinkled hand pointed towards a smaller door, more hidden within the stone wall and somewhat more foreboding. The stars began to emerge in the sky, and with their light and the light of the moon, the courageous man found the handle of the door and opened it without a second thought. If this door was the only way to see the king, then he would have to go through it.

The tiny door in the stone wall led to a long maze. It was enclosed in what felt like a cave, and he could keep no track of time in the darkness. Sometimes the man was forced to stop, invisible hands holding him back from deciding which way to turn, and after what felt like eternities standing at crossroads, he found himself again at the base of a large door. This one was also very fancy and the design intricate, so much so that he felt he would in no way be allowed to pass through, no matter the time he had already spent in the impossible maze. After pacing for quite a long time, the courageous man noticed a door in the wall beside the large one, as before. It too was very small and he had to crawl on hands and knees to fit through this time. He felt emboldened in the moment he passed through the door—but the feeling left him as he found himself inside a small glass cage. He was suspended high over the town, and appearance of the new day’s sun soon betrayed his imprisonment to the now hopeless townspeople. The small door had disappeared; the wall near which his legs rested was smooth and transparent.

As the sun climbed higher in the sky, the man tried to get out of the cage in vain, all the time becoming more and more aware of the people, , watching him from far below the castle. As day wore on, the man grew less and less alert—it seemed he needed to neither eat nor drink—and by evening he had become lethargic, his mind slow and his limbs limp and useless. As evening approached the man felt himself grow older and older, and soon he could no longer see the people in the town through the walls of his cage. He began to only see his own reflection, which had become wrinkled and aged in time.

The glass did not make an infinite cage for the man—just for that one day, and when the sun went down the townspeople could no longer see inside the glass cage to see if the man was still trapped inside. It mattered not, for he died and the imprint his face and tortured body left on the glass remained, though few townspeople were awake as the sun came up that next day and shone enough light for those on the ground to see the now empty cage disappear.

The story was passed down through generations, and though a tragic and hopeless one, it was continued in the telling for as long as the castle sat menacing and ominous atop the hill.

In the jungle, silence is full of everything familiar. The high-pitched squeaks of rats, the mating songs of parrots and frogs, the deep grunts of okapi and silver-back gorillas, the low cries of wildcats, the shrill shrieks of peacocks, the soft vibrations caused by the traipsing of water buffalo and treks of river hogs; each sound makes up the ever-present music of the rainforest.

The dying sun fades alone, for the thick, deep canopy shields the children of the forest from the change into night. Pure gold light filters down through each level of the tree crowns above, shedding an eerie gold light in every corner of the clearing. The change is hardly noticed by the small people who sit at the forest floor, surrounded by half-dome huts of saplings and mongongo leaves. They are enraptured by a story one of the women is telling, and at points they burst into raucous laughter and at times have to hold each other up. And still the citric light illuminates the monstrous trees and leads the eye to guess what lies between the rays of light. Gradually the light disappears and darkness sets in. But a fire is already glowing at the center of the circle. The omnipresence of eyes peering through the trees is so familiar to be unworthy of attention. Duikers dive into bushes to hide from the traveling red river hogs, and fruit bats fly overhead, pollinating the forest.

Breaking the humid cloud that surrounds the village, the wind passes the sweating brows of the men in the Mayi-Mayi militia, who standing just outside the clearing. They are yet unseen by the people within the circle of huts, the people of a pygmy tribe called the Mbuti. They are small, around four and one half feet tall, speak in a chattering foreign tongue, wear little clothing, and use handmade tools. The women are naked to the hip, and one carries a small infant wrapped in a bark cloth. The children jostle each other as they listen to the story. Relatively peaceful, these hunters and gatherers live in the most mysterious of worlds; the dark center of the Ituri Rainforest in the Congo. Amid an increasingly technological and consolidating world, the Mbuti have kept their unique traditional culture alive for multiple generations, though they encounter many hardships regarding the destruction of their jungle home and external pressure to abandon their way of life. These Mbuti have been targeted by the Mayi-Mayi Congolese militia for extermination.

A burly soldier moves to the forefront of the awaiting ambush, and lifts a hard-won revolver to eye-level. He shoots once, killing one of the Mbuti men, and the camp comes to life. The soldiers emerge from behind the maze of vines and trees to meet the few hunters who run forward to fend off the attack. The strong ones are quickly cut down with a variety of weapons and the women and children who do not fight against their attackers fall from the barrage of bullets from a machine gun. Enormous emergent trees surround the clearing, standing as silent witnesses to the blood bath at their feet.

Dead bodies litter the forest floor, some slumped over others, each fallen in an unnatural position. Around the fire, which still sits burning amongst all the chaos, lie half a dozen bodies of gunned down women. They lie in a sea of blood, the crimson liquid surreal beneath the light of the fire. Along their bodies are random bullet-holes, spotting their dark skin with black holes that will never have a chance to heal. Nearly all of the bodies lie on their backs, eyes staring coldly into the canopy a hundred feet above.

The Mayi-Mayi stand back, weapons in hand, as the last Mbuti falls; a tough young woman who had been fighting one of the soldiers inside a hut. She lies half in and half out of the hut; a drab bark cloth poses the door directly over her stomach, where it is clear she is very pregnant. In the center of her chest blood has begun to spread from a bullet wound, but now that she is dead, it has stopped.

The chief general of the Mayi-Mayi turns to the light-skinned official, a broad, victorious smile enhancing the sharpness of his features. He wears formidable dreadlocks as he would a crown or cape, and in his moment of splendor looks far wilder than the dead, painted Pygmies at his feet.

"Are you surprised with our efficiency?" the general asks the official, who stands a distance away from the soldiers. He wears a disgusted expression as he shifts a dead Mbuti onto its stomach. With his boot, he presses on the shoulder, and the dark body sinks further into the mud of the former water pool. Cocking his head to the side, he turns to look at the general.

"Though I am glad to see them dead—the stubborn beasts—I find your method of disposal lacking."

The general remains silent, familiar with the official's love of his own voice.

"We need total extermination. You are here to destroy these people, general."

Just as the general opens his mouth to argue, a shriek in an unfamiliar tongue reaches his ears from a nearby hut. A small Mbuti child emerges, face streaked with tears and large eyes round with fear and rage. Little legs and arms flailing, the child charges towards the general, and brandishes an already bloody machete. The steps falter, and the general reacts quickly, pulling a spear out of the ground by his side and pointing it towards the less than dangerous enemy. The child stumbles on the last pace, and falls forward as the general jabs the spear, impaling the child through the chest. Staggering backwards, the child's body falls halfway to the ground, lifeless as the spear point sinks into the thick mud.

The feet remain on the ground, but the child's torso is now parallel with the ground, the butt of the spear pointing towards the sky. The blank eyes stare into the forest canopy, and the neck lets the head hang limply. The general reaches his hand into the pockets of his uniform and pulls out an amber bottle of liquid, of which he carefully pours half the contents over the body. He strides deliberately towards the original Mbuti fire surrounded by the dead, and removes a single large branch, burning at the end. The shadow dance changes, and suddenly the entire clearing is covered with ominous light patterns. The general ignores the change, holding the branch and flame to the flesh of the Mbuti child. The fire takes immediately and the smell of burning flesh fills the clearing as the child becomes an unnatural blaze in the center of the slaughter. The general turns away from his work, scouring the area with shrewd eyes.

"No, no! Leave the bodies where they are," he shouts to two young soldiers kneeling at the corner of the village, at the foot of a mass of dead pygmies. "What you have heard is not true." He turns to the official to emphasize his next words. "We are not cannibals. Not this militia."

The other man smiles sardonically as he watches the two soldiers return to their place in line as the general turns back to the forest, shouting orders.

As the soldiers stumble back into the forest, failing to avoid the low-hanging vines and tripping on the occasional brush decorating the ground, the light-skinned official hangs back. The official stares at the burning body as the general also returns to the cover of the forest. Then he follows.

And the jungle watches as each second comes and goes, and the omnipresent eyes gradually forget what they had seen as the clearing becomes part of the familiar again. The whistle of a tree hyrax transforms into a squeal and suddenly into the disconcerting scream of a child. As the cacophony fades, the crackle of flames in the flesh of the dead Mbuti fills the growing silence.

When she had first been thrown in the room, the fire had appeared an ominous and dangerous presence, and she hid from it in the opposite side of the room. Soon though, she could stand the chilling corner no longer and stumbled on weak legs towards the life the fire offered. The furnace grew seamlessly out of one of the otherwise barren walls. The flames it housed were perpetual; not a day went by that the fire did not burn bright and hot, heating the room to sometimes intense temperatures. But even now, when the flames happened to be at their hottest, the concrete floor of the room turned the toes of her feet blue and numb, despite her best efforts to warm them.

But it was a cruel existence. She endured long nights of hunger that quickly turned to starvation and desperate thirst. Her weak body began to eat itself from the inside out; her muscles disappeared and soon she lost even the strength to hold her body upright and keep her naked feet from touching the frigid ground.

It had been long since she had first been imprisoned in the room, she knew, though her sense of passing time had long faded away. None of her thoughts were coherent now, and she felt only the incessant hunger and thirst and all other human needs she had been deprived of. She slept when she wished, but despite the longer periods of time unconscious, it felt to her that she had still been imprisoned for ages. And she did not die, though she had neither food nor drink.

She knew death was inevitable, and gradually the drawn out waiting became more than she could bear. But she could do nothing, for fear kept her lying motionless before the fire, her eyes watching the demonic flames and creating slight hallucinations that danced before her, coming ever closer and increasing in intensity until she had to shut her eyes for fear that they might touch her. Yet she wished that they might, for she lacked the courage and strength to take her own life and end the suffering.

Her body lay outstretched before the great fireplace; eyes tired and shut, lips cracked and cheeks bruised. Folded over the emaciated chest, the arms and hands were limp and the ragged fingernails clawed into the simple fabric that embraced the skeletal figure. After observing her apparent physical state through a hidden window, the man unlocked the solitary door to the room and entered, his footsteps falling heavily on the concrete floor. She had been sleeping, but her body jerked in an unnatural fashion at the sound, shocked and upset. Her head fell back onto the concrete floor as soon as it had risen, for the muscles in her neck had become too feeble to hold up her head. Dots of light that often appeared before her eyes when staring into the fire now appeared behind her closed lids. She did not notice as the man strode across the room to where she lay.

He stood over her, and when she opened her eyes again and looked directly at her captor, he kicked her. The blow fell on her already frail ribs, which immediately snapped. She cringed, and he stuck her again, this time his foot landing right on her hand, effectively crushing it. This time she cried out hoarsely, and the cry was animal-like and screechy, reaching all corners of the room and bouncing off the blank walls to return to her ears many times over.

The man ignored her screams and whimpers, and left the room without glancing back to see the damage he had caused. It was all part of his experiment, this manipulation of the human body. All of the suffering was justified, for it was in the good interest of his patients. The man crossed the threshold from the experimental wing into the hospital main.

Vincent peered between the seat cushions of his couch; he had found his purpose in life. With a victorious screech, he ripped the yellowed recipe card from the clutches of the hungry sitting-apparatus. The delicate handwriting was in pencil, and while not smudged, was spidery enough that certain letters seemed to blend into the paper they were written on.

“How very inconvenient,” Victor said to himself, ignoring the echo of his words in the very empty double-wide. Turning the card sideways and placing it in the left-hand-side pocket of his tattered windbreaker, he walked the ten feet to the kitchen. Sometimes Victor felt frustrated with the size of his trailer, but other times he was content with it, especially on days when he got the cleaning bug. He looked around the trailer with disgust—on this particular day—as he paced the customary three times around the refrigerator, taking care to step on only the brown tiles. He had more trouble than usual, since all the tiles looked brown. Those crazy city officials had pointed out the filthiness of the floor last week and now he couldn’t seem to get the idea out of his head.

“Why am I thinking? I should be cooking!” he yelled to himself, hoping for once he would listen. Victor shook his head. Sometimes there was no telling yourself. He broke an egg over the rim of a cracked glass, and then peered at the yellowy-white liquid--eye-level with the aborted chicken fetus. He glanced down at the card and searched for the word “egg”. It wasn’t there.

“You idiot, Victor! There’s nothing like that written in these directions! Stupid!” and poked himself in the eye with his eggy hand. He proceeded to throw the glass and egg out of the window. Victor grumbled as he got down on the floor and searched through his plywood cabinets for a mixing bowl. The fifteen-minute quest produced a narrow flower pot, a ceramic ashtray, and a miniature Venus plaster statue. Then, after two seconds of rummaging through the cabinets in the kitchen itself, he came across a large mixing bowl. Victor began cooking.

“Okey, so bananas, I know I got bananas some’er in this house, just gotta find them.” He left the kitchen and went into his bedroom.“Yep, sometimes finding things in here is like trying to find--sheoot, that’s a long nail sticking out of them floor-boards, I oughta take it out sometime.” Victor went upstairs to find his trusty hammer that he used to carry on a string around his belt but stopped when he’d taken to wearing draw-string pants. Coming downstairs again, he noticed a bowl of bananas, and remembered the recipe he was trying to make.

“Lemme see, what kinda bananers am I gonna need? Oh well, this card just says bananas, so I guess these green ones will do, but I wonder if yellow ones would be better….” Victor decided it didn’t matter what color bananas he would need, because they would be baked anyway and things were always a different color when exposed to hundreds of degrees in the confines of a small metal box. “Gee, my granny sure is vague, she says to mush the bananas up, but she don’t say nothing ‘bout how to do it. I’ll just put them in the bowl and step on them like they’s do in Italia with the raisin-grapes.”

With the bananas sitting vulnerably in the bowl on the floor, their peels quivering with fear, Victor raised his foot above the bowl. But he had a second thought. “Then my foot will be all messy with banana goo and that’s icky,” he said, frowning. So he sat down on the floor to think.

He got up a half hour later and picked up the bowl. “That’s it, I’ll chew the bananers and spit them out into the bowl. They’ll be all mushed then and then I don’t got to clean nothing ‘cause it’ll just be with my mouth….” He trailed off, lost in the splendor of his incredible idea. Victor wasn’t the least bit worried about bacteria or germs—he knew the temperature of the oven would kill them right away.

With his mouth full of banana, he opened the fridge and groped for the milk. He spit the chewed banana into the sink and poured milk on top. Upon finding the crusted bottle of vanilla in the spice cabinet, he turned back to the sink and yelled in surprise.

“Where’d the bananer go?” he wondered, and stuck his hand down the drain. It came up with a handful of yellowish-brown goop. “Ah, well,” he said. “This’ll do.” And he put the mixture in a drinking glass and turned to the oven.

Or, where the oven would have been if he had one. Victor sank to his knees. He didn’t have an oven. He curled up into a fetal position and rocked back and forth. O O, what had become of the meaning of his life—to fall like an unwanted egg onto his kitchen floor—he would never achieve this dream of being a great banana-muffin maker. He would never stand upon the cliffs of the South Carolina coast, watching for his cargo ships to bring him money in place of muffins.

“Shut up, Victor, you old crazy! You’re a Caroliner, born and bred, and we don’t like to talk like no no-good smart person. The only smarts you’re gonna get is when I hits your behind with a wooden switch for being all down and sad like that! So go find yourself something else!”

The next morning, he had the strength to get up off the filthy kitchen floor. He had been thinking about the next day and the rest of his life. Victor went over to the couch, ready for a new meaning.

When the next morning a miner found the body, all trace of evidence to deduce the cause of death was washed away. No bruises nor breaks in the skin could be found, and save for the water filling both lungs, the simple appearance of the body would have been miraculous. But the doctors who autopsied the body gave credit to the water that filled the lungs. The man had drowned, they agreed, and he was buried without ceremony deep in the woods, in an all but unmarked grave.

The event was forgotten for nearly four decades, until one day an American came into the isolated village inquiring about it. I traveled from house to house in search of someone to interview, someone I could interview. Either my Russian was faulty and I was confusing the word "man" with "pineapple", or, in truth, none wanted to have anything to do with me.

I finally found a man willing to speak with me. His name was Kolya Sokoll, the grandson of the miner who had originally found the body. He put up his hand at my first words, shook his head, and asked me to please turn off the camera. I present the exact transcript of his words from the tape recorder I used for the beginning of the interview:

Imagine for a moment--I don't know if you Americans can--that a story you have heard all your childhood is finally completed; and you are there to see the beginning.

Here I asked him if he meant "ending", but he just laughed and made a comment that included the words "Americans", "patience", and "no". I declined to comment, but I urged him to continue.

Yes, the beginning. It is not so strange if you consider it, that the beginning happens at the same time as the end, for the end of this story, the one you are asking me of, began with the end. Now, have patience, my friend, and you will understand it all in a little time.

He asked me to close my eyes and I obeyed, considering it a peculiar request but unwilling to jeopardize the interview. Kolya seemed tenative enough.

Now the wind is blowing and the night is cold. But still Dyeda and I leave the village. He takes me to the road to town, where there is a bridge. We stop on the bridge and then we hear a sound behind us...

In my mind's eye, I see the scene the Russian is setting before me. In response to his sparse description, my imagination infers the rest. The forest ends at the banks of the river, and an industrial bridge passes over the stormy unfrozen water, that flows and churns swiftly despite the temperature, which I know is far below freezing. Kolya and an old man, his dyeda, his grandfather, stand on the side of the bridge that sees the water come and pass beneath. The wind is indecisive, and Kolya's blonde hair blows both ways in the same moment. The old man squints up the river, staring intently at a point beyond the river's horizon, as if he can see something that escapes my eyes. A sharp noise sounds behind us, and Kolya and his Grandfather turn to see a man standing on the other side of the bridge. He is watching the water come from under the bridge and flow downstream with a noisy rush. But it is the wind that makes the sound we can now see; it blows the man's cloak against the side of the bridge, which the man is all but standing on. His position is reminiscient of a suicidal, and a quick glance at my Russian guide confirms this. Kolya looks worried and his face is set and etched into a frown. I am reminded of how very different humans from seperate cultures really are. Neither grandfather nor grandson speaks, to each other or to the man. He has not noticed them. He stares out into the river, and I can see the look in his eyes; it reminds me of the miners' a moment before. The miner puts a hand on his grandson's shoulder and then approaches the suicidal confidently.

"Will you jump?" he asks him. The man does not show any sign or surprise, and I can see that his gaze does not even waver for a second. He does not answer for a while, and again the difference of cultures is prevalent to me.

Then he says, "That is what I am contemplating, Comrade."

I find my attention wandering as the silence lengthens. I smile at the Russians' ability to stand out in the open with the harsh wind for this much time. I shiver as another gust comes, and this time so strong that the suicidal sways forward, leaning farther out past the bridge. Still he stares at the rushing water. I look down at it, and at once am convinced that it has turned black. Then the miner speaks.

"I already know that you will jump."

The suicidal moves. He swallows, and I can see the arm attached to the hand grasped on an extension rope waver. He mouths for a second, then forms the words.

"I know."

And he jumps. The river roars, the sound now much louder that my attention is been drawn to it. I approach the edge and look down. Even the splash is gone, and I can see nothing anywhere on the surface of the raging waters. The freezing wind stings my eyes and I open them.

It is growing dark, and the heavy clouds threaten to fall. I plead for them to hold on just a little longer, but they ignored me as they always have. I walk home alone in the rain.