Collage of Dualism
-Piva None-
‘Sometimes I feel the past and the future are pressing against us so much; there is not time to live the present’
-Julia Flyte, Brideshead Revisited-
A STUDY OF:
The Chronicles of Atlantis
Table of Contents.
Introduction 4 – 5
Case Study 1 6 – 25
Case Study 2 26 – 135
Case Study 3 136 – 139
‘Nothing comes from busy nothingness’
-Shakespeare /Jane Austen-
DEMOGRAPHIC OF ATLANTIS: The Beginning
Global warming at its height of temperature, the ice from the north and south poles melt gradually drowning the whole world except for a stretch of islands along the Equator. Survivors assembled themselves on those islands and a society was forged out of the sheer reliance the local community and the foreigners had on each other. Akin to all historical tales, the foreigners were hired to lend their expertise in the functioning of facilities and the governing of these islands which were known as Atlantis. Eventually, life imitated art; the story of the camel and the Arab found itself manifested in this incongruous quilted society. However, such a situation was inevitable, for when a courteous culture dabbles with the unforgivable reckless wild side of civilisation, it is clear it is too polite in its outraged resistance to dominate the sheer overbearingness of King Samson’s believers. Hence, the simmering frustration on both sides would eventually blow off the tops of their pots and the fundamental lethal result would be the ungracious rebirth of Babylonian excessiveness in practicing the 7 deadly sins in all their possible forms that one cannot separate from their entanglements one without the other. Society being society beautifully dissipates the myth of Pandora’s Box from its lingering existence. In the actual living reality, there is no hope. In everyone there is the inextricable yin and yang; each one their own worst enemies committing injustices against their own existence. People are definitely to ignorantly repeat cardinal sins because of the principles they hold on to and their reasoning of what they do or do not do, because to each one of them, it is their whole hearted belief that they are doing the right thing. What is the righteous path when the one person they hurt is their own self in the criticism of the outside world? Why are the 7 deadly sins deadly when they are part of what makes humans human? What is the value of human dignity if the self’s wants and desires are not satisfied?
The society of Atlantis may be the last surviving society thriving against the external forces overseeing their doomed existences, but they cannot unshackle the invisible fetters binding them to the dictated ascetics of living a contrived framework of unharmonious melody. Maudlin it is but its people made the best of the resources they, sometimes against their will, came in contact with, resulting in hilariously dark comedies to an ethnographer but to them were indeed a great need to survive the great emptiness they had to bear day in and day out. (Especially if their staple food was seafood, though it would be heavenly manna for doctors!)
People are not people without others around them. So, the other chink in the armour is the gracious unpleasantness of everyone seemingly knowing everyone; their vulturous desires to first peck at their dying victim and then hungrily devour the remains of the corpses laid bare.
What a society!
Case Study 1:
Mr. Magus and Ms. Curvilicious Councillor’s Rabbit-proof Fence
‘Why
then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or
bad,
but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.’
-Hamlet-
She would wear a black sexy number with a slit up to the top of her thigh. When she walks swaying her hips surreptitiously, a generous portion of flesh is revealed as instantly as it is concealed under the black smooth silkiness of her outfit. She glides towards him with eyes filled with an unknown hunger for him. His heart in its fragile state pounds against his chest, deafening his ears but not blinding his view of this tall dark voluptuous creature advancing towards him. His body tenses itself and is upright to attention as she stands over him. She smiles seductively at him, her eyes steady on him. His mouth is dry and he is overwhelmed with desire but he could not bring himself to move less the spell is broken. She slides in between his legs, parting them. Her knee gently grazes his inner thigh as she leans in on him, her hands on his shoulders gently caressing them to make him feel more relaxed. He closed his eyes as his senses were electrified as her hands moved to the back of his neck, down his chest, unbuttoning his shirt. He clasps her waist tightly and roughly pulls her closer to him. She chuckles and sexily straddles him. He is fired up inside. She kisses his forehead, then his cheek and nibbles at his ear. It was unbearable for him. He brushes his lips at her breasts. She whispers in his ear as she brushes her lips over it, ‘I have been waiting for a moment like this for God knows how long.’ And he pulls her as they fall into bed together. The knight had his steed riding all night long and the maiden in distress collapsed from satisfaction more than from exhaustion in his arms under sheets found entangled at their feet under the blinding rays of the next morning’s sun.
***
As he walked towards the counseling offices, he could not help hide a smile in memory of the experience the night before. He knew it was a one off activity but it still did not fail to fill his senses with a kick. It was a night to remember conjured partly from his day dreaming and partly from the spontaneity of the moment. The youngsters in rehab were not only a pretty picture in his eyes but their grudging ‘Good morning’ greetings were music to his ears. The chaos in the office was a welcoming order for him that he bellowed a cheerful ‘Good day’ to everyone and thanked those who inquired ‘Why are you smiling so idiotically on this gloomy morning?’
He approached the door which read :
‘Ms. Curvilicious
Councillor of Youthful Absurdities
He straightened his tie and ran his fingers through his hair to give himself the look he presumed she would like on him. The brief moment he stood there meddling with his tie from a mere reflection on the glass door, he could hear papers shuffling about and her speaking over the phone. Being a woman, she could do more things at once compared to a man. Last night was a testament to that!
He cleared his throat with such defiant confidence and knocked over-enthusiastically.
‘Come in!’
As he entered the orderly cluttered tiny office of hers, he found her on the phone which was wedged between her shoulder and her neck whilst her hands were frantically sifting through a pile of papers. Her eyes unmistakably lit up and she motioned him with her overoccupied hands to come in. He shut the door silently behind him and took a seat in front of her. She hung up and heaved a sigh,
‘Grief! Why did you come now when I have tons of work to do?!’
He was taken aback and was speechless before he said,
‘Well you could have not ask me to come in,’ raising his eyebrows.
‘Well I couldn’t possibly send the person who knocked away without knowing who it was!’
‘You could have just done this,’ as he gestured chasing someone away, ‘instead of this,’ as he demonstrated the gesture of inviting someone in.
‘Well, how could I! You would think me rude!’
‘Yes, especially after last night!!’ he raised his voice.
‘Shhhh!!!’ she frantically gestured him to lower his voice as she whispered hoarsely to him, ‘Not so loud!! Walls have ears especially these ones,’ pointing towards the walls of her office as she continued, ‘They are as thin as cardboards!! A brisk wind would be enough to bring them down!’ she nearly went off the subject in a tangent if Magus had not said,
‘Well, then what have you to say about yourself?’ he folded his hands across his chest.
‘What do you mean?’ she leaned back in her chair.
‘You can’t just pretend last night didn’t happen!’
‘I know….but it’s hard…’she fiddled with her fingers.
‘What do you mean it is hard?’
‘People will talk and I have a reputation to keep!’
‘What reputation!’ he jest.
She glared at him and he bowed his head like a chided child.
‘Look, we’re both married….’
‘My wife doesn’t care…’
‘I have two children…’
‘It’s only for fun…’
‘My husband….’
‘Well he doesn’t seem to be giving you much fun from the looks of things,’ he smiled mentally recalling her performance the steamy night before.
She gave him a look which could have devoured him in an instant.
‘Alright,’ he held up his hands giving in to her.
‘It was a one night thing, try to understand…,’ but before she could continue the phone rang.
She sighed dismally looking at the phone, she held a finger gesturing him to give her a minute whilst she answered the persistent phone. He leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands together in his laps as he tilted his head looking at her admiringly.
‘Hello!’ she answered blushing despite herself in response to Magus’s caressing gaze. Goosebumps irritably emerged at the unintentional bidding of raging female hormones. She almost missed the absurd news she received when she caught the word ‘Rabbits’ on the other end,
‘What?! Rampant Rabbits, you say?!’ she almost slid off her chair because of her butterry melting composure.
Magus looked at her with his mouth wide open, daring himself if what he was hearing was right. She looked at him with a worried frown on her pretty flawlessly made up face. Her red-painted lips pursed in a straight line. All he could think of was to take her in his arms, sit her on the table, and kiss away the worry off her face. Before his imagination could pick up a roaring speed, he heard her say in a stern voice,
“Right, I will get down to it,’ and hung the phone up.
She recomposed herself into her business-like manner indicating she was about to put this big cat out as she had a mission to accomplish. It reeled his mind with more mundane ideas of devouring her, but he managed to say,
‘Oh what rabbits?’
‘Rampant ones. Apparently our rehab is infested with them. Some clever numb skulls have been breeding these creatures for their own amusements. From one addiction to another….’
‘Huh? What addiction has caught on now that you are holding these creatures unjustly accountable for?’
‘Rampantness!!!’ she flung her hands up in exasperation as she got up from her seat and paced the room,
‘I mean these kids are as it is trying to recover from their obsession with their alter-egos. And now they are faced with another addiction rabbits are prone to infect most people with – sheer rampantness!!!’ she clucked frustratingly like a mother hen, pacing up and down whilst Magus watched her, head darting right to left and vice versa as though in a tennis match, trying to grasp her rapid spurt of words.
Suddenly, her office door opened quietly and in hopped a cute, cuddly, fur ball of a cotton-white rabbit. It hopped once, its mouth twitching and its ears trembling whilst its eyes filled with fear as the unfortunate creature observed the suddenly all-too-quiet but foreboding room with caution. It was as though they were trapped in that moment of inward dynamite explosion; a period when it is a vacuum where all the external energies are absorbed into the explosive and everything is at a stand-still as well as silent – time freeze- before it is all shattered not an instant too soon in a deafening outward explosion. Unfortunately, oblivious Magus as usual was instantly captivated with the forbidden fruit (the story of his life, one would guess),
‘Hey little bunny, where did you come from?’ and leant forward to stroke it. Just then, a keen listener would have heard a surreptitiously click in the air somewhere. The dynamite was activated.
A shrill scream pierced Magus’s ears, almost toppling him ungraciously from his chair. He recovered his seating just in time and was rubbing his ears raw red when he saw the indescribable fury (incomparable to the wrath of hell because he was not yet dead; the worst possible hell to be in was the one he was living now!) written all over his Curvilicious’s face. His fragile heart beat vigourously against his rib cage, and cold sweat broke out all over his body. Meanwhile, Curvilicious’s eyes were as wide as her tea cup’s saucer, and the corners of her mouth were twitching slightly. She was on the verge to explode into verbal hysterics. Magus shut his eyes tight and almost crouched under the table if he had not been such a giant in height, not including the diameter of his pot belly!
‘GET IT OUT OF HERE!!!’ she bellowed in a ‘Fi Fie Foe’ manner. Magus shot up from his chair and, like a bull in the china shop, instantly begun chasing the now clearly frightened bunny all over the room in order to catch it. It somehow found its way to Curvilicious’s feet who swiftly picked the fur ball up, opened her office door and flung it out.
“I’m sure there is something against ill-treating animals in the recent declaration of animals’ rights!’ Magus humoured but clamped his mouth shut when he saw her back stiffened.
Shutting the door behind her, she was breathing heavily that Magus almost thought she was hyperventilating. Dusting her hands together, she stomped to her desk and plopped into her chair. She picked up the pen and began tapping it on the desk impatiently. She was silent for what seemed like a century to Magus. When she finally spoke, it was in absolute seriousness and conviction,
‘I need your help to solve this blitthering rabbit problem.’
‘Well, there is our rabbit control team. Get them and they will sort this blithering rabbits out,’ he humoured her.
‘Stop patronizing me, Magus! We all know how useless these rabbit control fellas are. They were no good the last time we got them to work for us. We managed to lose our 10kg carrot we were saving for the annual vegetable fair. Eventually, we had to poison these rabbits and throw them corpses into the sea!!!’
Yes, he recalled that incident. It was a disastorous moment for the rabbits but a triumphant one for all Atlanteans for eventually the vegetable fare managed to go on as planned and everyone had their fair share of vegetables for the next few months. It may have affected the doctors’ businesses badly as they thrived on the serious cases of the digestive tract, but as long as everyone stroked their inner self, congratulating themselves on their luck of getting what they want, who cares about doctors. So, they have been rabbit free since then…..until now.
‘If we managed to exterminate all the rabbits the last time, then how are we infested with them again?’ Magus contemplated aloud.
‘It must be those darn kids!!’ she had her hands on her hips now, tapping her feet clearly vexed by this case.
‘One of them must have managed to smuggle a pair….a pair is enough to breed a colony of health hazardous bunnies!’
‘Alright, calm down my dear….I am sure with my brilliance and your fastidious nature we will be able to come up with a rabbit proof idea,’ Magus consoled her, adding under his breath ‘Hopefully one which does not require any bunny-life threatening methodologies!’
‘Oh would you?’ she suddenly switched her demeanor to a 180 degree, imploring him with such delicacy that his heart melted with devotion towards her and how his senses were electrified when she added coyly, ‘I will repay you in kind…I promise.’
***
They deliberated all night and brainstormed all day. The nights were long and steamy, while the days were unbearably filled with sexual tension between them. The sheer fact of being in close approximations of physique almost touching yet untouchable due to restraints against conspicuous office romances (in this case not just a mere office romance but a full-blown reluctant thrilling extramarital affair!) tightened the winding sheets between them to an extreme tautness you could cut with a knife! So when night fell on them, they fell into each other’s arms with such passionate abandonment that all rabbit proof devices planned and brainstormed earlier in the day were deliberately thrown out of the hotel window to start anew again the next day.
The facts of their lives were simple yet complicated. She had two children with a man she could stay away from for months, sleeping in separate bedrooms with her children. It is understandable although how unfathomable it may seem – based on two points of view.
To a local ethnographer, it is understood a practical arranged marriage rarely consummates the much needed passionate, long-lasting flame between two strangers who refer to each other as husband and wife overnight, naturally especially when children come along innocently demanding the mother’s time and energy. The father dutifully smothers himself with his work because he firmly and obsequiously believes in the man’s responsibility to provide a comfortable life for his family but most importantly to own materialism to embody the shameless inflation of his ego. Children, on the other hand, are there to define both parents’ achievements. The children are tags to not only to sterialise their parents’ matrimonial bliss but also are catalysts for the two to remain together regardless their differences, hence both parents blinding themselves to the missing piece in their lives till it is too late when their obligatory bundles of joy leave home. Both parents are then left to their own devices to relearn the stranger they married and has transformed over the years which seemed to have lapsed their memories. The fear which grips both parents would be the very wedge driving them apart if not for the gracious presence of friends and daily mundane chores. These two reluctant companions will resign to an uncertain life together because of the fatigue life has beset upon them. The crust of the matter is they have each other and they are selfishly contented with that because although everyone dies alone, no one wants to spend their last years of their lives in singular solitariness. No individual is that greatly independent. There must be someone who must know one is dead. At any rate, the compunction of abandonment at the advance years of one’s life would be an ordeal; aging couples might as well poison each other and get life over and done with.
In Curvy’s case, however, the missing piece was the fiery passion which enriches the knowledge of one spouse of the other; knowledge which channels itself at a touch of the finger to tentalise the senses of the other of a ‘secret’ only they both share and know of each other. Flattery is a must, for if one does not look upon their companion in the same yearning hunger as when the first time their eyes met – the marital bed will lay made but never unmade for the inhabitants have been led astray ensnared within the thorns of roses of another bed. It is not him, not her, not them - but it is just as it is. Therefore, it is only natural mother sleeps with children and father on his own. Yet, at the same time there is a foreboding possibility either one will be flattered easily by a third party; indeed two is nothing but three is a company. Wilde is intolerably as wise as his personality.
To a foreign ethnographer, unfortunately, their deductions would naturally be expected out of sheer ignorance and detached detachment revealing lightly if marital bliss is not consummated in the same bed therefore there is definitely something amidst and a marriage is not a happy one. This would culminate in each spouse easily cunningly led astray by sheer flattery especially the female species who purr at every stroke received. If this is the case, divorce papers should be signed to release them of their imprisonment which is not even their doing. No one can be coerced into marriage out of their own free will. This is where foreign onlookers reveal their estrangement from the local customs and way of life; this is where their foreignness has never been so glaring. Society’s cultural antics are not something locals can divorce from freely even if they are presented with a deserving opportunity to step up from their familiar grounds to prove themselves worthy of all they have worked so hard for; an enviable opportunity which no one can blame them for receiving but which they will be too humble to accept or too afraid to think themselves above the rest to go against their familiar landscape.
And Curvy was a consenting victim to her society’s stringent writings on the wall. Additionally, her growing children fore warns her of her responsibilities as a mother and a wife. Her husband was willing to look after her although she was working to define herself an independent woman when in fact she was shackled to the fetters of a wife contracted under traditional marriages. This situation created a conflict within her. She was struggling to surface herself an individual living on her terms but she was also trapped in a marriage where she finds herself obeisance towards her role as a married woman respecting her husband as the man of the house. She wanted to be heard and she was. Nonetheless, it was frustrating to have an understanding husband who at the same time did not understand his wife’s vain need for constant attention to herself for in his insensitive eyes looms the rhetoric: aren’t they married to one another and have children whom they both love dearly? Is there inevitably more to this? His contentment towards her devotion to him blinded him to her needs as a woman and an individual. They were both thrown into this thing called marriage together before they could figure out what it was they were getting themselves into emotionally although theoretically it all seemed practicably easy. At any rate, it was all a futile battle of wits because they were married and should make do with what they have. However, it did not stop her from yearning for something more to give her the confidence and the knowledge that she was a successful individual besides the traditional role playing mother and wife. And she found it in besotted Magus.
Magus on the other hand, was a foreign man who loved women of any shape and size as long as they complemented his masculinity. In Curvy, he found not only an alluring beauty but also a woman with depth and substance. She completed him in a way his wife could not – his wife who was more of a best friend to him these days, who filled him with juicy and meaty gossips, who just did not feed his ego like she did the first time he laid eyes on her.
***
‘Rabbit proof fence,’ he suddenly shouted in the midst of illicit tangles of sweaty sheets.
‘Huh?!’ she propped herself up on the bed.
‘Yes! That is what we should put up!’
‘Oh really?!’
‘Yes, I have an idea of how to go round this….’he began to get into the technical aspects of this sudden idea.
She glared at him but Magus, being Magus, was caught in the oblivion of his stream of thoughts which even her luscious naked body under sheets were insufficient a distraction to her surprised disappointment. She sighed and gave in to his wicked incantation of building a rabbit proof fence. She had to admit grudgingly that it was actually quite a brilliant idea. For once, their nightly deliberations did bear fruition and it was about time too. Her neglected children and her trusting husband have been nagging at the back of her mind ever since her rendezvousing with Magus liquefied itself into her daily routine. In other words, she could not do away without her daily Magus dose for it gave her the profound confidence she has been seeking for all this while. However, it culminated into repercussions with her husband for he made her skin crawl just at the sight of him and her imbecilic children filled her with a dreadful self-contemptuous guilt that she takes it out on her maid and over-indulges them to her husband’s displeasure. Ultimately, she knew deep down the end of this tangible figment of a utopian escapade of hers was hovering about but when it was going to pounce on her she was not sure but she knew it was not the cup of bitterness she wanted to taste. Unfortunately, she had to for the sake of her family.
Mene, Mene.
***
It was actually simpler materialized than it was calculated to be. With the help of the resentful but mercenary rabbit exterminators, picket fence-like structures were jammed firmly into the ground compounding the rehab centre. It was in just the nick of time because at every nook and cranny was a distinct sign of the fur-balls presence; a mere fluffy white fur on the ground, or the lingering echo of the sight of what presumably seemed like a bunny’s tail every time one turned around nudged instinctively by a slight tingling of the nerve alerting the synapses a bunny was present. Some inhabitants have suffered severe nightmares of rampant rabbits coupling and multiplying shamelessly, waking the former up in a state of needing the constant supply of medication to calm their hormone levels down to the required level. Their alter egos now have not only an additional euphoria but also one of which the inhabitants envy them for. The mounting frustration due to this conjures a state of emergency amidst the rehab centre. So, the proposal of putting up the fence could not have come at a better timing. The only problem now was to get the rabbits out of the rehab’s compound onto the other side of the fence.
Carrots and all kinds of green leafy vegetation were scattered strategically all over the compound for a whole month with everyone on site working round to clock to ensure the rabbits picked the bait which will then lure these ‘diseased’ creatures onto the other side of the fence. The number of rabbits declined almost drastically, leaving one or two odd cases of rampantness by the end of the month.
During this duration of a month, Magus and Curvilicious affair stymied due to not only the ungodly hours’ shifts they had to take but also a morality attack on the latter. She was experiencing difficulties in answering questions her husband has been asking a lot lately. Her distraction and her non-committal interaction with all those around her especially with her children were disgracefully steering her off course the original navigation of her life, away from what was important to her. So, instead of giving her a hard time about it, her husband decided to take her against her will for a trip to Far Away island. Magus did not look upon this favourably for he feared he was to lose her to falling in love with her husband, if not all over again, then for the first time.
***
The fortnight before their trip, Curvilicious received the unfortunate good news she was being promoted to Assistant Project Manager of the rehab centre. She was overwhelmed with elation. Bursting with exuberance and pride, she rang to inform Magus as he was the first person who came into her head, but as soon as she spoke to him, its ramification was an echoing depth of hollowness in her ulcerous stomach. A sharp rush of guilt flooded her refined morale and inflated her capillaries with warm blood of sainthood. She suddenly ended the conversation abruptly excusing herself lamely on account of a truck load of work she had to trawl through before the next day’s strings of redundant meetings after meetings of nothingness. Magus glanced at his phone in disbelief as though it had snapped at his ear like a crocodile.
The situation remained unchanged for the next two weeks. Magus’s spirits were dwindling down the drain whilst Curvilicious was riding high on cloud nine where her career was of undesired concerned to all her loved ones but her. The ludicrous elation of the promotion which had over-brimmed her senses tilted the balance she had managed to retain all throughout her career at the rehab. Not only was her office staff neglected but so were her patients who subliminally resigned to a constant catatonic state for they could not seem to get their schizophrenic state, if not in order, then at least into a manageable chaotic one. Apparently, the further you climb up the scale of your career the more staccato you are from the people you have worked so closely with and whose work you have been involved in that you were once it. Eventually, the essence of the job inevitably eludes you and all you are left is only with a framework of functions but not the internal workings of it. To have an idea of a procedure is not the same as working it.
***
‘You’re working too hard,’ her husband blurted out as soon as she got out of the shower in their hotel room in Far Away land.
He was facing the window overlooking a scenic picture of nature at its height of natural beauty. There was a vast lake of deep blue landscaping the lush green hills, winking sparkles under the piercing sunlight amidst its calm exterior. The sun could be seen struggling with its seemingly golden rays against the thick, grey barriers of the wispy darkling clouds which were trying their best to forcefully tuck in the rays so as to not offensively illuminate a bleak scene in empathy towards the inhabitants of their scene. The struggle between light and grey culminated into a melancholic weather despite the surreptitious beauty winking mischievously at all corners of the scene; one is not sure which was the victim and which was the victimizer.
She had the bath robe thrown on carelessly over her wet self. She was drying her drenched hair but stopped mid-way when her husband spoke. She slowly gave her hair a last dry and walked towards the dressing table. She sat herself carefully down on the chair in front of the mirror. She looked at her reflection for a long time till all that was left was her and herself whilst everything else, including her husband liquefied into nothing but shadows in the background. She tried to reconnect with herself. She looked for the woman she really was and she suddenly felt alone trapped with the guilt she had entrapped herself with within the deep fragile fortress of her being. The recent events at work played in her mind and the feelings she felt were things she knew she had to feel regardless how much she refused to accept. These subliminal feelings emerged from nowhere or somewhere within she was unaware of, and she was forced to allow them to overwhelm her whilst she waited for them to pass. She cupped her face. Her hands moved on their own, stroking under her chin and then her throat, finally massaging the base of her neck. Her body suddenly felt limp, as though she had been swimming several laps across the lake. Her heart wrenched in agony but she could not cry. Her husband had come up behind her unknowingly. He put his hand on his dear wife’s shoulder. She sucked her breath in as he took his seat next to her. She slowly turned to face him but could not meet his eyes.
‘You need to slow down before you lose sight of the important things in your life,’ he said to her softly.
‘But it is my job, I thought you understood….’ she started hoarsely.
‘Yes, but not if it is making you detached from what is familiar to you. The girls yearn for your attention and are in need of their mother as they are growing up rapidly as days go by. They are confused as to how to be with you because one minute you’re over-indulging them, and then snapping at them the next…they are on egg-shells where you’re concerned,’ he held her hand, ‘and they shouldn’t be…you’re their mother.’
She bit her lip and held her head with her other hand. She could not bear looking at him.
‘And we don’t talk anymore,’ he added softly but the injured tone was distinct which made her turn to him sharply with frightened eyes.
‘We do…we just don’t have anything to talk about,’ she attempted weakly.
‘That’s because every evening, you’re back too late and too exhausted to talk…it’s all written on your face so I don’t push it for I don’t want you thinking me inconsiderate,’ he sighed and touched her face, gently coaxing her to look at him. When she did, her lips trembled and her eyes welled up with tears.
‘The fact is, my dear wife, I miss you,’ he held her face tenderly with both his hands, ‘I love you,’ and drew himself closer to her, who spoke shakily and barely audibly,
‘But you never show it…’
‘Because, I regretfully have to admit this, we’re married and I think it’s understood we love each other,’ he sighed as he stroked her wet hair clear off her forehead,
‘I love you, and you’re the one I want to go home to everyday. I apologise if I don’t say or show it often but I take us and our love for granted since we are married. And yes, the little things you may change in your looks,’ he said this tactfully with reference to her latest hair crisis where straightening it frightened him his wife was getting her attentions from somewhere else and he feared the Greek unfamiliarness in her will crudely infiltrate their so-far-non-eventful marriage bliss, ‘does scare me a little for I may not recognize the woman I married, the woman whom I fall in love with more and more each day,’ he stroked her wet cheeks. She was embraced in the halo of his confession of his love and she felt at home once again. She put her arms around him, and he held her tightly. Tears fell shamelessly down her cheek as her mind reeled with thoughts of her sexy nights with Magus which now filled her with a sickening thud in the pit of her stomach. As she laid in her husband’s arms with renewed love and replenished security, Curvy knew what had to be done. It was going to be a bumpy ride but she was prepared to face the consequences.
***
She lay quietly in bed that night. Her head reeled retrospectively. She had stroked her husband’s face with genuine affection, tears streaming as though they had been held in too long in a reservoir bursting with a threshold which years of suppression supplied more than sufficient for a woman’s need to express salty reprieve. Although his heartfelt confession was heart wrenching, she was shamefully sickened by its sentimentality especially since it emasculated the masculinity of his gender, the only thing bearable she could tolerate in him. And here he was, dropping his guard and handing over the reins to her. If once she could not care for him, now she just found him repugnant.
As he hugged her tightly with his arms clasping her like they would never let her go when he had found her again, she inched gently from his hold so as to not wake him. She wanted to breathe freely without having him physically restricting even her reflexive actions. As it was she did everything with a conscience he had hold of. The last thing she wanted was him latching unto her tangibly. She turned to her side and curled into a prawn. She wept for herself, her children, her husband, and for the lust she harbored for Magus, but mainly for the farce marriage had turned out the be: a glorious ceremony uniting two people embarking on the journey to save, if not specific, then just the human race from extinction.
***
Familiarity settles into the compliancy that things are as they have always been and are indefinitely predictable to unravel according to a known and expected sequence. This familiarity stems steeply from the culture one is born in and pampered with. It reflects like a mirror of who one is. One is too comfortable in the plush familiarity and is securely shackled to the fetters of culture, hence is sensitive to the slightest paradigm shift in their lives. The subtle changes in glances, tone of voice, and work schedules are the culminative result of a prolonged suffering in suppressing feelings; whiffs of smoking discontent torrid against the backdrop of comfort and familiarity.
These sudden changes began to flare as rapidly as wild fire amidst the anarchy of dented egos in the bedroom and a used-to-be orderly household. Only then, one is shaken out of the reverie one has been drunk with.
***
He did not understand what she was on about her work, her freedom, her right to her life apart from just being a mother and a wife. Why now? Why the constant need for attention? What does she mean she is an independent woman? Isn’t she allowed to work even though married with children and her sole purpose should be just that? She is my wife and the mother of our children, why does she need to work? I can provide for her plenteously. Doesn’t she know I’m risking my face in they eyes of our society and our families in allowing her to work? No, not just my face, but my name too! Has she forgotten in marrying me she has agreed to wear my name? The name says it all! She is mine and has to arrange her life around me. What would people think? I’m incapable of controlling my wife and keeping my household in order? Why doesn’t she allow me to be the man I’m supposed to be, to run my duties and my responsibilities as I should as a man of the house? Why can’t she just give me that when I have withstood all of her strong willed decisions: going away for weeks for work purposes, employing a maid to cook meals and look after children, dressing in drabs when at home when she could at least make herself up for me once a while? Where is the respect at least for my presence as the man of the household? I did not ask for this marriage as much as she. I had lost my footing as a man of my own listening to my parents’ advice and plea to marry one of their choice. At least grant me credit for such a sacrifice upon my manhood. No! I will not be treated as a door mat! She will have to look at me as a woman should, but I will have to take measures less forceful than what is necessary. I will have to play the pathetic victim. Fire can only be doused with water.
***
Union in the word is not the reality it intends to conceptualise. He may view her as a responsibility to uphold his name but how did marriage give him the right to own her? A name is merely a name, it does not alter the fact she is still a red-blooded female with needs and desires, although it took a foreigner (Yes, a white man who saw the cracks and took advantage to ‘mend’ but in ‘mending’ he created a new woman and dominated as the better man) to revive her feminine senses. Sometimes, familiarity blinds one to the real nature of things and people.
***
They had not succumbed to the expected cliché of the drama or the novel of their life: to make mad love to one another in utter abandonment for lost time and space between them. Instead, they laid in each other’s arms in silence to allow their love to find its way seeping through their pores and bloodstream so that every movement, word, glance, smile and gesture reassured them of their love for another. Eventually, they fell asleep next to one another, heads touching.
She watched her husband and sighed. True. She had married him partly because she liked him enough to consider a life with him even if only after a few brief dates commencing their introduction to each other by their families, and also partly to respect the love and expectations of her family for her to marry since her age was on the verge of an expiring as a bride’s. And after a couple of years with him, she felt secured with him as her husband for he had all the virtues and prospects a good husband was supposed to possess, and now as a doting father. With him life was….comfortable with a touch of grimace - secured and the real thing. However, apart from the difficulty he had coping with his work and her climb up the ladder of her profession, there was something missing in him which she yearned for.
Excitement. It is such a word which she would not even have thought of a vocabulary in the context of marriage or in any other firmly established relationship. She missed out on all the tricks of love and fun. Her strict concentration on her studies and on being the very epitome of a good girl stole from her the youth of love - or was it suppressed only to be awakened with the reality of a stable marriage bed and the realisation of it in her vicarious experiences extracted from conversations she has with acquaintances and the shocking surprise she should receive such attentions from another man with relish as a cat licking cream of its paws. Yes. She lapped it all up with such a vigorous hunger that her ego was inflated and now she was just insatiable.
***
The more Magus tried to see Curvy, the more difficult it was. The spell cast upon her staff was iron clad for they were firm in talking to him randomly about mundane issues of rabbits drowning off shore and near-to-extinction-turtles laying their soft shelled eggs which unfortunately cooked themselves hard-boiled amidst the scorching particles of sand. He would go away with his tail between his legs and his bored wife is left with the brunt of a bear with a sore-head. A tough cookie as she was, to get his mind off this heartbreak, his wife would fill him in on the neighbours and their daily happenings to which he could only react punctuating certain points with the right expressions without actually understanding the content of her stories. Frustrated and exasperated, his wife still will stand by her man needless to say whatever his faults are. He was her husband and that is who she has chosen to be with; her mistake so she will live with it (or him).
***
Curvy felt her heart break whenever she saw her staff turn Magus away but she knew deep down this was the right thing to do for her own well-being. She cannot be distracted due to her strengths because sometimes, the more powerful one is, one has to be more humble to ‘get’ the people one is working with and the people who simply loves one for existing. She knew the frailty of humans was that they fell, and they got up again. So, she will get over Magus whether she liked it or not because that is what the nature of the human heart and feelings are like. She was naïve or blind for at the back of her mind, discontent was knocking on her to let it in and return her the right to live as she saw fit especially if she knew the secret to juggling duplicity.
Her daily walks round the rehab site would automatically take her to the rabbit-proof fence. Not only did it put the rabbits out, but it was the beginning of the end of her rampant relationship with Magus. At this thought, she smiled wistfully and walked on into her known oblivion. Suddenly, the thread was twitched as it struck her in a bolt of shock out of the comma she was ensconced in at that particular instant. She whirled round in the direction of the fence. She frowned. Just because the fence put out unwanted temptation, she was secured in this knowledge that she was blind to what was taking place under her nose.
Only a few days ago, she was walking to the car park with her hand shading her delicate eyes from the glare of the setting sun. She had glanced in careless languor in the direction of the football field drinking in the remains of the day at work against the rosy hued sky . There was something out of place in that picture like the Mona Lisa which she could not put a finger to mainly out of mental fatigue. Now, looking back she realized what it was: Rabbits hopping about on the field!!
If the rabbits were kept at bay on the other side of the fence, then the only way they could have got onto the premises was if some smart Alec inmate smuggled the furballs in. She saw the significance in the insignificance of the episode. While walking the fence of propriety, she would still be able to carry on with her rendezvous with Magus. As long as scandal was absent to the naked eye of an average onlooker, then everything else was pure conjecture on the part of the gossipmongers who would still spin a yarn out of merely an exchange of greetings. She sighed with content and walked on, almost skipping.
As she left the fence, little did she know its import cast a net further than just what she opined she had astutely perceived. It was also the fence which knew the distinction between being within a society and knowing its rules without actually being aware of them, and being on the onset viewing this rot logically but detached from the very ties that bound the locals to their niche. It is a fence of a great divide invisible to the very society it is contains.
Case Study 2:
The Solitary Reaper
‘But where was little Pearl? If still alive, she must now have been in the flush and bloom of early womanhood. None knew – nor never learned, with the fullness of perfect certainty- whether her wild, rich nature had been subdued, and made capable of a woman’s gentle happiness.’
(Hawthorne, N. The Scarlet Letter: XXIV Conclusion)
Her head throbbed with her silent screams. She screamed and screamed. Neither her body nor her mouth moved. Panic bundled itself in her throat, almost asphyxiating her. Her nerves willed her adamant hand to reach out to her parents as she stood watching them helplessly from the naturally muddy banks of the crystal clear pond. The unwillingness of her limbs riveted her to her present spot, forcing her to a dismal attentiveness to the serene scene across the pond. An indelible scene, a scene which will haunt her for the rest of her life regardless of how ordinary and natural it may have seemed to the forest, or to the nosy onlookers who conveniently were hidden amidst the sublimity of their green niche. The fine hairs at the back of her neck and along her chubby toddler arms tingled with the static sensitiveness of being scrutinized under the eyes of what ever whatever life there was lurking in the forest; their voices, their presence – only she, little Pearl, could feel. Their gentle echoes float surreally to her on a zephyr which kisses her cheeks with such refreshing lightness, gradually suffusing her whole existence into a shroud of regeneration. Her acceptance of their welcoming embrace bears Pearl the gift of hearing mangled whispers in her head with such clarity that she once wondered if there were more than one of her in her head or in her frame for that matter. Her senses sharpened; a slight tremor in the ground would instantly jar her to stealth alertness. Hester understandably misconstrued this as her daughter’s isolated restlessness as a result of the unnatural life Pearl was inevitable to lead as a compunction for her parents’ sin; not only the living embodiment of their sin but also their singular atonement of what they could have been. Pearl suffers this, for the child pays for the sin of her parents.
Her parents. Across the pond, they were a hallowed pair amidst the deceiving colours of the forest. Although young, or just her imposing analysis of a mature mind on a childhood scene – she could not decide- she remembered feelings of jealousy searing through her like poison in her veins.
Her childhood bubble was pricked. It had always been her mother and her, but now, probably to do with her reflection in the pond which treacherously reflected flecks of the man her mother was with, there will always be a third presence in their degenerated life together. Their heads almost touching, the aureole encasing them held Pearl back with invisible fetters. Although how much her curiosity needled her uncomfortably, Pearl could not bring herself to break the spell they hand bound her in. She screamed inwardly. She longed unbearably to be part of that scene, the serene love which her parents shared for one another. She wanted to be loved by them both, more so by her mother than him. Jealousy and yearning mixed itself into a concoction clogging her heart and mind. In her frustrated retaliation, she began to hum to herself a very familiar verse of blankness which silenced the forest and the voices in her head to a standstill. The leaves on the trees trembled in their fragility and her veins throbbed with a foreboding for her to stop her humming. Her feelings of unrest were lullabyed to a non-existing pulse in her temples and her wrists. She felt herself enervated channelling her childish viciousness into incantations she hypnotically believed in; verses, summoning anticipated malevolence, she instinctively knew were of a power beyond her infantile maturity. Pearl’s eyelids drooped though her mind was awakened with renewed zeal at this momentous discovery. In her catatonic state, voices of far-off ages filled her senses, infusing them unconsciously with unknown knowledge which will guide her in her trials and tribulations as she advances in her maturity older than her age.
‘Pearl! Pearl!’ - the insistent alarm blared through her active mind, jolting her out of her stupor comma and her body animated itself whilst her mind unwound to the speed her limbs required. Without thinking, she whirled round to the point of the voice projection. It was her mother, glowing, beckoning her to be part of their seemingly ecclesiastical sinful reunion. Pearl smiled, tilted her head, and took in the two people in a deep optimistic breath. Suddenly, as she gently exhaled, all went pitch black.
Her pulse quickened but she did not flinch. In fact, she was surprisingly well-composed. She held her hands out without expecting to be guided but she instinctively knew it was the right thing to do.
Without any warning, she found herself face to face with the dying frail figure of her father. He was clasping her hands whilst her mother and a few others looked on. She felt scrutinized, which made her skin crawl under the eyes of the law-makers. The grating upon her skin was unbearable. Looking into her father’s eyes she finally understood the pain and the heartache he had to endure as a punishment to love a love so unnatural. The translucent paleness of his skin revealed more of him than just mere maps of veins. Beneath his ecclesiastical veneer was a mere man who wanted to be loved by the very child who was his own; whose mother was his life and death literally as well as metaphorically - as the cliché would have it. Her features softened as she leaned towards her father’s face. Sufficiently loud for all those round him to witness, but genuinely his dying wish, he pleaded his daughter to kiss him like she did during all those surreptitious times in the eerie lush green forest. Much to his surprised relief, she kissed him gently on the lips. The cloud enshrouding him all this while was lifted or vapourised by the hallow-like illumination which replaced it. A pure glow of innocence broke through his prism frame, acknowledging his atonement for his past guilt and the atonal gift which the illicit affair bore. His brave public confession observed him forgiven by the very constitution which drove him to commit the unjustly claimed cardinal sin. Nonetheless, the mortal law-makers blindly failed to see, or intentionally overlooked, that the rejection of the most natural of human instincts is a crime in itself to an individual within such a strict religious-governed society. Fatalism was and still is played around with manifesting itself into a thin air construct convincing the masses of its existence only if belief is strong. Otherwise, it is all baseless human conviction of heaven, hell, and earth. However, to believe in the latter would leave one with nothing to hold onto in times of despair. When nothing can be done, nothing is believed into something. A regrettable flaw one has to live by for one is blind to the workings of a society one lives in. Detaching oneself to rationalize it all is conceived as blasphemous madness; unnaturally questioned about and dangerously different in as much as witchcraft was then.
Witchcraft. Witch. Her mother was deemed rightfully accused for being one. Now, as Pearl kissed her father and he shone in such disgraceful hallowed grace, all those present had no choice but to grudgingly bow their heads out of spiteful respect for he has been pardoned paradoxically. He exhaled his last breath with an unmistakable small smile of content tugging uncontrollably at the sides of his mouth as he slowly shut out the sight of the vampiric world. Pearl stood paralysed at her father’s side. Her mother beckoned her, pressuring a hand on Pearl’s shoulder, to leave but Pearl adamantly did not. She could still feel her father’s almost cold lips against hers, lingering with echoes of his odious propensity. He was a caitiff, she suddenly realized. He was too much of a man, just as he was as less of one.
Confusion was rife in her. Why. Her father conveniently confessed his sin. He should befittingly be given another chance at life. Or is it that he only confessed because he knew he was going to die and no further mortal action could inflict pain on and in him. Was he de facto selfish, inevitably abandoning the only woman he had claimed to love furtively deeply and his supposedly bundle of joy to the pack of wolves. And then, just when the latter was ready to accept him resignedly as her father, he dies on the only legitimate kiss she was willing to impart on his lifeless lips. Was there truth then in the strafe of circulating hearsays? Was she the devil’s child? Pearl’s face chiseled into a cold look, agonising her mother like a freezing hand over her heart. When Pearl finally stoically glanced at her mother, her gaze naturally fell on her mother’s glorious embroidered letter; a life enduring-stigma. It dawned upon Pearl, without her understanding it, young as she was, she was her mother’s only saving grace to remain rationally on the onset of the manmade rot called society.
A shrill whistle rang through the air as the colours of the scene grew painfully bright into hues of yellow mangled with orange. A black raven flew across her uncertain sight. As the waves of colours gracefully glazed the background, a black dot suddenly emerged out of nowhere, straight ahead. She squinted earnestly for a better look. The sinister dot gradually grew into a foreboding blob. Her heart raced and her breath quickened to a wheeze, squeezing the entire lung capacity she possessed to replenish the lack of oxygen received. Finally when she could make out a black hooded figure, she was numbed with fear to her toes and fingertips. Her mind ceased unwarningly to think whilst her eyes were glued to this hooded figure which loomed up close. It clearly held something behind its back. Deafening silence fell at a very high frequency hurting her ears. With a swift movement, the figure whipped out a glistening scythe, suspending it in the air before bringing it down in one swift movement unto her.
***
She heard herself scream. She bolted upright in bed, trembling and weeping. She rocked herself back and forth, arms hugging and squeezing herself to cease trembling uncontrollably. She bit her quivering lips with such vehement intensity that they bled. The overwhelming taste of salt and iron strangely comforted her and her convulsing frame gradually calmed to a mere quivering steadiness. She brushed off the frightened tears overflowing down her face and her nose tip. Hiccupping silently, she was suddenly hit by a warmth emanating from the left side of the bed. She turned slowly, sniffling. There he was. Breathing steadily, her husband slept soundly – the only sound of silence which fills the empty spaces within her and the walls of their home comfortably and securely-with his legs wrapped round a bolster and duvet thrown carelessly aside, revealing sickening white skin of blue tinge and lax elasticity, stretched across soft muscled thighs and strong calves, a result of a much coerced daily jogging routine. She cringed as her eyes took in the shameful revelation, and reached over to pull the duvet to cover it up but stopped short as she caught a glimpse of his revolting manhood: soft, crinkly, and flaccid, hidden modestly beneath the kind bolster.