Enno (Part 4)

SHORT STORY MONDAY

This is the last segment, and a somewhat unkind conclusion. Next week: something different.

Enno
(Part Four)

It had been a long night. Together we ushered in the new year, drinking, singing, laughing. A purple ridge of clouds painted the horizon, awaiting the coming of dawn with a quiet patience. All above remained a crystal, chilled blue. The trees appeared decorated with powdered sugar and globs of white frosting. An unbroken blanket of fresh snow carpeted the hillside.

We drove carefully till at last we arrived at his apartment.

"Sit. You will stay for one more, won't you?"

"I've already had too many. Let me go now."

"It won't do. Open another beer. You know where they are."

I refused to take off my coat, holding my gloves in my left hand, unpocketed keys in my right.

"Oh go on, then. Look at you."

The day was already ruined. I knew that. But I was afraid that if I sat down I wouldn't get up.

"Have I ever told you the story about Jose Cordenio?" Here it was. Fresh bait. A new story, if I would stay.

He never admitted to loneliness. Never owned up to a human feeling at all on that score. To what great lengths he would go, however, in order to keep me around.

"Jose Cordenio the writer? Friend of de Unamuno and Bunuel?"

"The same," he said.

"When did you know Jose Cordenio?"

"After the war. In Zurich. A strange man."

"Spanish, right?"

"From Barcelona. Left his homeland when Franco came to power. Had a Jewish wife who was taken by the Nazis when he was in Paris. The war did him terrible."

And so it was that I removed my coat and remained with him for the duration of two more beers. I drove home in silence, accompanied by an image of Jose Cordenio painted in tragic hues across the canopy of my soul while the crisp, brilliant sun -- reflected with such brightness that my eyes were stabbed with it -- illumined my way.

Happy New Year.

•

Depressing above all is this: the feeling of futility associated with all my efforts to achieve something worthwhile. Is my labor in vain?

Now seated on the emerging threshold of a new year, I see the expanse of time uncoiling before me and I ask myself, What? Which? How do I determine what is worthwhile and what is futile? Is it for love or money that we pour ourselves out?

•

At certain times our conversations gave me the feeling that I was standing poised on the rim of a mammoth crater, a terrible cavern of the soul that had been left vacant through some diabolical and catastrophic event in a former era of this man's life. He gave me glimpses of it, in the way he held his head, the compressed line of his mouth, in his words, his mannerism, his stillness. Then there were the glimpses when the shutter of his eye flashed horizontally and I saw, with clarity, but for an instant, the terrain of his heart, the whole devastated landscape, my vantage point being the rim of this terrible hollow crater, immensely deep, wide.

I would never have asked him to speak of it, but it was evident the time had come when he raised the matter himself. Like all other topics we examined, he would begin falteringly at first, backing into it by accusing me of not being interested in yet another tale of his, chiding, almost childishly, my disinterest. When at last I would concede, he would put me off further still, until I was torn between begging and giving up. Crazymaker he.

Now here it was. He would tell of the scar which time had never healed. He would speak of it plainly. He would tell the story that had never been told. Together we would examine his sorrow.

•

"So what is the truth?"

"Oh. This again," I said.

"I want to know why you created me."

"I don't know. I had a need, I guess."

"And now you never visit me. You went away and haven't been back in more than a year."

"Life goes on. I have other friends now."

His hand ran up to the side of his head and over the top, mussing his hair. "Is it a woman?"

I stared at the floor, my palms flat against my thighs.

"I don't like the way this is ending," he said. His voice was soft, resigned.

"It's best," I said. "I wanted people to know you, but now... I have a life, too. I have to get on with things."

"Where will I go? What will I do?"

"Does it matter?" I said. "You've been captured on paper and you will live. That's more than I can say about my own life. You will be remembered. I will be forgotten. That's just how it is."

"Oh, you'll be remembered," he chided. "You get the byline."

"Get out of here," I screamed.

It sounds harsh, but it's a writer's right, isn't it? I created him. I had grown tired of him.

It could have ended differently. I didn't torture him or shoot him or hang him or have him suffer through a long illness. I suppose it was cruel to neglect him and I've been feeling crummy about it. At last, he's finished. No nursing home. No intensive care. No hospital bills.

I'm waiting for some other character now. Someone who smiles a lot, with a mouthful of nice teeth and a sense of humor. I'm a bit weary of heavy, complicated characters. Someone funny would be great. Or maybe a talking animal. Hopefully we'll get along. Writers tend to develop their characters better when they care about them.

In the meantime... Enno... wherever you are.... I'm sorry. You're part of my past now. I needed to move forward.

THE END

An Unremembered History of the World

My story "An Unremembered History of the World" was written in the early days of the World Wide Web. It's aim, as in most fiction, was to tell a good story well told. It had a secondary aim as well. Because I was writing it for publishing on the Internet, I attempted to incorporate one of the unique features of the web, its ability to use hyperlinks to tell a story in a non-linear fashion.

It was a first effort, and the hyperlinks generally went to what one might call asides, the equivalent of footnotes. The following is one such aside, early on setting up the background for the story.

Unrecorded Histories

There are some who have proposed that it is sheer vanity for us to imagine our earth as the only heavenly body populated by creatures with intelligence and personality. I propose that it is equally vain to imagine that our history, the one recorded by our historians, the one we know as "recorded history", is the only valid history for mankind here on this earth.

To imagine life on other galaxies and to search for it are not unrelated. As is well known, steps have already been undertaken to find evidence in support of this hypothesis.

In regards to the latter notion, that there exists the possibility of an infinite series of parallel times... verification of this theory is a task whose path is less self-evident, obscured as it is by mists. And yet, we see glimpses of it, reflected here and there from the great minds who were not bound to earth by the pettiness that so smothers us. Goethe noted that his heart contained the capacity for all acts, from the most heinous to the sublime. Could he have been standing on the threshold of those infinite courses that sweep into other avenues of time, unseen, unknown and unremembered?

Bernard Yachtmann records instances where people have had glimpses of other histories, reiterating the conviction that time contains an infinite number of parallel streams, and in each there are alternative histories, of an infinite variety. While not every act leads to significant consequence, many acts do, and what if in an alternate history the consequences of those acts were indeed being played out. Likewise one can find similar references by Marconi, Hasjammer, and Brandt, and an exhaustive treatise along these lines by Don Luis de Nativo.

While at the University of Salamanca at the turn of the century, Don Luis de Nativo wrote extensively on this theme. Though his manuscripts remained mostly unpublished and were eventually lost, the man de Nativo is best remembered as an archetype of de Unamuno's "man of passion" as fleshed out in The Tragic Sense of Life, de Unamuno's master work. (I have been told that it was a chance meeting with Joseph Conrad which prompted de Nativo to pseudonymously publish his epic work El Mundo Gordo.)

In other words, to get right to my point: my proposition is not original. It has been well documented by others as a reasonable conjecture. No doubt it is my own insecurity that forces me to cite other, more significant voices, as if the testimony of my own experience will be insufficient.

Those of you who know me may recall that I often have unusual dreams. Oftentimes the dreams unfold as detailed stories. I recently dreamt a short skit which became a television commercial. I've had prophetic dreams, including a dream which showed me that my firstborn would be a son. I've also had dreams which I believe were gifts from God.

In September of 1984 I had a strange dream. As is my custom, I recorded the images of my dream, in as much detail possible, and its effect.

Two months later, while looking for a book by one author or another at one of our local used bookstores, I happened upon a small, Irish green, clothbound book called Flight of Gypsies. It was one of those moments when a decision carries weight, when you feel compelled to act irrationally. The price, eight-fifty, was higher than I would have expected, especially considering the broken binding and what appeared to be several loose and missing pages. Yet when I opened the book and randomly read about five sentences, I knew that I must have the book.

I'd no sooner gotten the book home than I regretted the decision. The volume was more or less a compendium of prophecies by various gypsy seers in England, from 1632 to 1785. The purpose, I could only surmise, was to assemble a record of prophetic utterances for verification purposes. For the most part, the sketchy accounts were repetitive and tedious and I soon found my self bored. There were prophecies about early deaths, unhappy marriages, deformed children, and blights on households to the third and fourth generations, utterances about flea infestations, curses of blindness and baldness, worms, contagion, and dementia. I put the book on a shelf in our garage.

The next day I found one of the pages lying on the floor next to my desk. With no intention of reading, I picked it up to deposit it in the trash when the name Thomas Olney caught my eye. Olney was the name of the man in my dream. To this man and his family I will need to return, in order to strengthen my arguments and make plain my case.

Not all dreams are stories, nor do all dreams reveal secrets about the nature of the universe -- though many reveal secrets about ourselves, and I am often quite impressed with the power of this magic mirror of our souls.

Nevertheless, that night I began a quest, the result being this which you now read, of our unremembered history.... one of many, I might add... and one which we may all, with longing, seek to gain again.... if not for ourselves, then for our heirs.

Short Story Monday is brought to you by Ennyman's Territory