SAECULUM
(A NOVEL)
SOL OCCAXUS (Sunset) Monday, 19 September, 2011
CREPUSCULUM (Evening Twilight)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
VESPER (Evening Dusk)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
CONCUBIUM (First Sleep – Coitus – Rest)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
INTEMPESTIUM (Midnight)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
GALLICINIUM (Cock Crow)
I.
II.
III.
MATUTINUM (Dawn Goddess)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
DILUCULUM (Dawn Twilight)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
SOLI ORTUS (Sunrise)
SOL OCCAXUS
SUNSET
Nam tempus per se non intelligitur, nisi per actus humanos
For time cannot be understood in itself, except in relation to human acts.
St. Isidore of Seville
(560 – 636 CE)
Etymologies V.xxxi.9
Not all dreams are like this, Michael thought, as he surfed in and out of the pipe of a wave-tunnel. The wall of the tunnel became a parabolic movie screen and the images that appeared to arc upwards to cascade over him did so with such frightening clarity, such proximity, that they dazzled perception and dispelled all suspicion of their reality. He tries to put out his hand to touch the wall, to steady himself…
…the image changes: on the tunnel wall he is a nine-year old boy again, standing naked, shivering and dripping wet, on the cold blue-black granite slate slabs of the kitchen yard to the rear of his childhood home. His father is talking, back over his shoulder to him, as he slowly tilts the rim of a tinker’s beaten bathtub. Michael is unable to make out what his father is saying over the noise of the cascading water and so, settles for watching the warm dirt-laden liquid as it waltzes and swirls down through the rusted grill cover of the outside drain. The released thermals of moist air are spiralling up into the cold January night air and, high above the two of them, the bright stars of Orion shimmer as they continue their hunt across the winter sky. His father stops talking, stands up suddenly and, with hands on hips, arches his back to look up at the constellation. He smiles wistfully, as if wishing Orion well, before looking back down. “In the beginning, Michael,” he whispers, while drying off the moisture with a coarse-woven towel. “There was, in the centre of our universe a huge whirlpool. This whirlpool led down into the deepest darkness and, like a swollen river trapping a drowning child in its current, it did everything in its power to suck in the light of the stars. But, near the edges of that swirl, near the edge of the sky, where the pull of the black current was least, just enough pulses of light escaped from the funnel to warm our world and favour our lives. Remember Michael, there is always a beginning and an end, and there is always darkness and light. Life is lived between the twilights, in the transit time between risings and settings. But, that can be one of our secrets.” He spoke earnestly, as he always did, to an adoring son…
The wave and dream evaporated as Michael became conscious. His father, who had been compelled by the financial and personal obligations of an unplanned but imminent child to abort his doctoral thesis and become a school teacher instead, always had a habit of talking down to him and filling the distance, and occasional void, between them, with words and ideas. Much later Michael had learnt that those ideas were generally borrowed and sometimes stolen and the sharing had involved him in the conspiracy. It had been a long time since he had dreamt about his father and now, as his mind cleared and the wave receded further, he wondered momentarily why that particular memory had surfaced. Perhaps it was all too obvious. That evening in the kitchen yard was the last time they had been alone together as his father committed suicide a week later, a day before his tenth birthday. A morbid fear of cancer and suffering his family had said. His mother had remained silent, as always.
Hers was a fear of happiness, Michael had always thought. The fugitive colours and sounds of the dream faded further as a far more tangible, harsh, mechanical noise kept intruding. As he struggled to determine where the sound was coming from he soon realised he had no clear perception of whether it was a foreground or background noise. He felt he was in a vacuum with no centre and no horizon.
Sheshhhhhhshup . . . . . . . . . . . . . sheshhhhhhshup –
Was it the sound, that had that woken him, he wondered. How long had he been asleep? Where was he? Unanswered questions posed in the confused twilight of waking moments.
Caught between nonsense and sense, between entrapment and escape, Michael felt groggy and un-refreshed but became increasingly alert to other noises in the vacuum. Like soft rhythmic hand-clapping, the sounds were sometimes fast and sometimes slow. What could they be? All of a sudden, he realised. They were footsteps . . . yes, they were footsteps he was certain, echoes of rubber-heeled shoes beating out their passage across a hard-surfaced floor. Where were they coming from? Again, Michael could not be sure.
Sheshhhhhhshup . . . . . . . . . . . . . sheshhhhhhshup –
He tried to reach out and switch off the monotony, but couldn’t. Elsewhere the clapping sounds changed their pitch, the rhythm slowed, then stopped.
“What’s his name?” A throaty whispering voice, suddenly asked.
Michael needed to see the speaker but couldn’t. He wasn’t even certain whether or not his eyelids were open. There was no real light, just a dense haze, yet there were moments when darker undefined shadows moved in and out of the cloud. He wanted to touch his eyes. Rubbing them would surely help, he thought. He tried to touch his eyes but nothing happened, no light came in! What’s happening to me? How long have I been like this? Where am I? He panicked in deafening silence. He felt no pain; in fact he had little feeling of any kind save an intermittent stretching sensation, somewhere in his chest, at least he thought it was his chest but again, it was proving difficult to orientate himself. In the surround, and he now realized completely synchronous with the stretching sensation, the repeating mechanical noise continued.
Sheshhhhhhshup . . . . . . . . . . . . . sheshhhhhhshup –
“According to his passport his name is Michael Mara,” a tired sounding woman, with a Caribbean accent said.
“Irish?” Another woman asked. A younger voice this time with a Scottish brogue.
“No. Well . . . Don’t know for sure. He had an American passport on him.”
“What happened to him? How long has he been here?”
My questions exactly! Michael screamed soundlessly. The voices and moving shadows were really close to him now.
“We’re not sure exactly! He was brought in three days ago and he’s been in a coma since,” the nearest shadow-voice answered, with West Indian fatalism.
Three days ago! Jesus! He shouted silently into the vacuum.
“Brought in from where?” the Scot asked.
“Heathrow. He apparently collapsed in the arrivals area.”
Heathrow! Collapsed. What’s happening to me? What happened to me?
Michael Mara forced himself to try and remember.
No comments:
Post a Comment