Redemption

By Sam Vaknin

My grandfather sat on a divan, back stiff and eyes tight-shut, when the 
news arrived. At the age of seventy, his body still preserved the 
womanizer's tensile, proud, virility. He died his hair jet black. Original Moroccan
music, wistful and lusty, the desert's guttural refrain, poured forth 
from a patinated gramophone. The yearning tarred his cheeks with bloodied 
brush, a capillary network that poured into his sockets.

Now, facing him distraught, my father was reciting gingerly the 
information about his little sister, confessing abject failure as the clan's 
firstborn. His elder sister died in youth but even had she lived she wouldn't have
qualified to supervise the brood due to her gender. It was my father's 
role to oversee his younger siblings, especially the females, the thus 
preserve the honor of his kinfolk.

Being a melancholy and guarded man, he blamed them for conspiring 
against him. He envied them instead of loving. He kept strict ledgers of help
received and given. He felt deprived, begrudging their successes. They
drifted apart and my father turned into unwelcome recluse, visited only 
by my tyrannical grandfather. On such occasions, my father was again a
battered, chided, frightened child.

That day, with manifest obsequiousness, he served the patriarch with 
tea and home-made pastry arranged on brightly illustrated tin trays. My grandpa
muttered balefully, as was his wont, and sank his dentures into the 
steamy dough, not bothering to thank him.

As dusk gave way to night, my father fetched the grouser's embroidered
slippers and gently placed his venous, chalky feet on a dilapidated 
stool. He wrapped them in a blanket. Thus shoed and well-ensconced, the old 
man fell asleep.

These loving gestures - my father's whole repertoire - were taken by my
grandpa as his due, a pillar of the hierarchy that let him beat his 
toddler son and send him, in eerie pre-dawn hours, to shoulder bursting 
wineskins. This is the order of the world: one generation serves another and elder
brothers rule their womenfolk.

"Whore" - my grandpa sneered. His voice subdued, only his face conveyed 
his crimson wrath. My father nodded his assent and sat opposed, sighing in
weariness and resignation.

"Whose is it, do we know?" - my grandpa probed at last. My father 
snuffed the ornamental music and shrugged uncertainly. My grandpa rubbed his
reddened eyelids and then slumped.

"We need to find him and arrange a wedding" - he ruled. My father 
winced, propelled by the incisive diction into the grimy alleys of his 
childhood, the wine tide and ebbing in the pelt containers, the origin of his 
recurrent nightmares, nocturnal shrieks, sweaty relief when nestled in my 
mother's arms, his brow soaked, his heart in wild percussion.

"Today it's different, Abuya" - my father mumbled, using the Moroccan
epithet. My grandpa whipped him with a withering glower.

"I will depart tomorrow" - my father whispered - "But I don't wish to 
talk to her."

"Don't do it" - consented grandpa, his eyes still shut, waving a steady 
hand in the general direction of the decimated music - "Just salvage our 
dignity and hers."

The next day, father packed his crumbling cardboard suitcase, the one 
he used when he fled Morocco, a disillusioned adolescent. He neatly folded 
in some underwear and faded-blue construction worker's sleeveless 
garments. On top he placed a rusting razor and other necessaries.

I watched him from the porch, he waning, a child size figure, going to 
the Negev, the heartless desert, to restore through a defiled sister the
family's blemished honor. He stood there, leaning on the shed, 
patiently awaiting the tardy transport. The bus digested him with eager exhalation.

He has been away for four days and three nights. The fine dust of 
distant places has settled in his stubble. He wiped his soles on the entrance 
rug, removed soiled clothes and gave them to my mother. He slipped into his 
tunic and his thongs, uttering in barely audible relief, then sank into an armchair.

My mother served up scolding tea in dainty cups. He sipped it 
absent-minded, dipping a sesame cracker in the minty liquid. Having reposed, he sighed 
and stretched his limbs. He never said a word about the trip.

A few months passed before his sister called. She phoned during the 
day, attempting to avoid my father, who was at work. My mother spoke to her,
receiver in abraded hand like hot potato.

We were all invited to her forthcoming wedding. She was to marry a 
Northern, elder man of means. He will adopt the child, she added. Still enamored 
with her elusive lover, she admitted, it wasn't the hideous affair we made 
it out to be. These days and nights (too short) of lust and passion in the
wasteland have yielded her a daughter, a flesh memento of her paramour.

My mother listened stone-faced. "We cannot come," - she said, her voice
aloof - "my husband won't allow it." But we all wish her happiness in
newfound matrimony. In the very last second, as she was replacing the
handset in its cradle, she whispered, maybe to herself: "Take care of 
you and of the little one."

She subsided on the stool, next to the phone, and scrutinized the blank 
wall opposite her. I busily pretended not to notice her tearful countenance.

When my father came back from his excruciating work on the scaffolds, 
my mother laid the table. They dined silently, as usual. When he finished, 
she cleared the dishes, placing them in lukewarm water. "Your little sister
called" - she told him - "She is inviting us to her wedding up north. 
She is marrying a wealthy man rather older than herself, so all's well that 
ends well. At least she won't be destitute."

"None of my concern" - interjected my father gruffly, heavily rising 
from the chair.

The following day he traveled south, to meet my grandpa. He then 
proceeded to see his other brothers and his sisters. That over, he returned, 
called in sick and remained at home for weeks.

When his youngest sibling, my uncle, came to visit, my father embraced 
him warmly. He loved them all but only this Benjamin reciprocated. My 
father pampered him and listened attentively to his seafaring tales, echoes of
distant places, among the glasses of scented Araq, a powerful absinthe. 
They munched on sour carrots dipped in oil.

At last, my father raised the subject. Retreating to our chambers, we 
left them there to thrash the matter out through the night. Their voices 
drifted, raised and then restrained. My father shrilly argued but his brother
countered self-convinced. He packed and left in the early hours of the
morning.

My father entered our room, defeated, and tucked us in unnecessarily. 
He turned off all the lights, a distended, dismal shadow, and surveyed us, 
his beefy shoulder propped against the doorframe.

My mother instructed us severely:

"If daddy's youngest brother calls, don't answer. Nor he neither his 
wayward sister are part of our family. Your father excommunicated them forever 
and cursed their lineage. They have disgraced us. Now they are perfect strangers."

I liked my uncle - boyish and outgoing, hair long, and smooth, and 
often brushed and dried, his clothes the latest fashion from abroad. He was a
seaman. His visits smelled of outlying cities and sinful women 
thin-clad in bustling ports. He carried stacks of foreign bills stashed in his socks 
and bought my mother foreign, costly fragrances (she buried them among her
lingerie until they all evaporated).

At the bottom of his magic chest lay booklets with titillating tales of
sizzling sex and awesome drug lords. I waited for his visits with the
impatience of an inmate. He was the idol of my budding willfulness and
nascent freedom. I resented our forced estrangement.

And so began my mutiny. Lured by the siren songs of far-flung lands, of
sexual liberation, and of equality, I traveled to my grandma's home, an
uninvited guest. My uncle, whose name now we could not pronounce, was 
there. We strolled the windswept promenade of Beer-Sheba, kicking some 
skeletal branches as we talked. He treated me as an adult.

Then it was time to return. My father, aware of my encounter, regarded 
it as treason, another broken link in the crumbling chain of his existence. 
To him, I was a co-conspirator. I shamed him publicly. He felt humiliated 
in his own abode. He didn't say a thing, but not long after, he signed me 
over to the army as a minor. My mother tremblingly co-signed and mutely 
pleaded with my father to recant.

But he would not. Immersed in hurt, he just imploded, blankly staring 
at the television screen. He took to leaping anxiously with every phone ring,
instructing us in panic to respond. He didn't want to talk to anyone, 
he promised.

When I enlisted, he accompanied me to the draft board. Evading any 
contact, he occupied a tiny, torturous wooden stool. He didn't budge for hours 
and didn't say a word and didn't kiss farewell, departing with a mere 
"goodbye". I watched him from the bus' window as he receded , stooped, into a 
public park. He collapsed onto a bench and waved away the pigeons that 
badgered him for breadcrumbs. Finally, he let one near and kicked her with his shoe. 
They scattered.

I didn't visit, not even on vacations. I found father-substitutes, 
adopted other families as home. At times, I would remember him, a tiny, lonely
figure, on a garden bench, surrounded by the birds.

One day, my service in the army nearly over, my mother called and said:
"Your father wants you here."

At once I felt like burdened with premonitory sadness, with the belated
anguish of this certain moment. She told me that my uncle died in 
shipwreck.

"His cousin was with him to the end. He clung on to a plank all night, 
till dawn. He fought the waves and floated. And then they heard him mutter:
what's the point and saw him letting go and sinking under. They say he
drowned tranquil and composed."

I alighted from the belching bus before it reached my parents', 
traversing accustomed pathways, touching childhood trees, pausing in front of the
boarded cinema house, a fading poster knocking about its peeling side. 
A titian cloud of falling leaves engulfed it all. The sea roared at a 
distance as if from memory.

I knocked, my father opened. We contemplated one another, vaguely 
familiar. Alarming corpulence and evil hoary streaks. Time etched its brown 
ravines in sagging flesh, the skin a flayed protection. He spread his arms and 
hugged me. I cautiously accepted and dryly kissed his stubble.

He ushered me inside and sat me by my brothers. I greeted them in 
silence. My father helped my mother serve refreshments, peeled almonds and solid
confitures. We sulked in mounting discomfort.

Sighing, my father rose and climbed the spiral staircase to his room. 
He soon returned, clad in his best attire, his synagogue and festive 
uniform, the suit he wore in my Bar-Mitzvah.

Like birds after the storm the house was filled with curled rabbis.
Flaunting their garb, grimly conferring with my father, they eyed the 
table critically.

"There's more!" - my mother hastened - "There's food, after you 
finish."

"Are these all your children?" - they demanded and my father, blushing, 
soon admitted that my sister wants no part in the impending ceremony. They 
nodded sympathetically. They linked their talliths (prayer shawls) into a 
huppah (wedding canopy) and ordered us to squat beneath it.

They blessed the house, its inhabitants and future monotonously. My 
father's face illuminated, his eyes aglow. He handed each rabbi and each cantor 
a folded envelope from an overflowing pocket in his vest and poured them 
Araq to warm their hoarsely throats. They gulped the fiery libations, 
chanting their invocations as they swallowed.

With marked anticipation they assumed the better seats around the table 
and plunged into my mother's dishes. She waited on them deferentially. 
Burping aloud, the food devoured, they broke into a vigorous recital of pious 
hymns.

Night fell and my father entered the guest room and settled by my bed. 
He drew the covers to my chin and straightened wrinkled corners.

"We blessed the house," - he said - "to fend off a disaster."

I asked him what he was afraid of. He told me that he cursed his 
brother to die young and now that he did, my father was anxious.

"You loved him very much" - I said and he averted his face.

Waves clashed with undulating ripples to deafening effect.

"There will be a storm tonight" - my dad said finally.

"I guess so" - I agreed - "Good night. I am bushed, I need to rise and 
shine early, back to the army."

I turned around to face to the naked wall.

======================

The Butterflies are Laughing

By Sam Vaknin

My parents' home, it is dusk time, and I am climbing to the attic. I 
settleon my childhood's sofa, whose unraveled corners reveal its faded and 
lumpy stuffing. The wooden armrests are dark and bear the scratchy marks of 
little hands. I contemplate these blemishes, set bright against the deep, 
brown planks, and am reminded of my past. A light ray meanders diagonally 
across the carpet. The air is Flemish. The fitting light, the shades, the atmosphere.

There is a watercolor on an easel of a thickset forest with towering 
and murky trees. A carriage frozen in a clearing, a burly driver, looking
towards nowhere, as though there's nothing left to see. No light, no
shadows, just a black-singed mass of foliage and an incandescent, 
sallow horse.

My little brother lies bleeding on the rug. Two gory rivulets, two 
injured wrists, delineate a perfect circle. They cross his ashen palms and 
waxen,twitching fingers. It may be a call for help but I have been hard of hearing.

I crouch beside him and inspect the wounds. They are shallow but 
profuse. Red pain has broken past his skin, his face is wrinkled. I wipe him 
gently, trying not to hurt.

He stares at me, eyes of a gammy colt awaiting the delivering shot. He
radiates the kind of gloom that spans the room and makes me giddy. I 
cower to my heels, then squat beside him, caressing his silent scream. My 
palms are warm.

We while the time. His frothy exhalations, my measured air inhaled, our
lungs entwined in the proliferating density. The volumes of my 
childhood mob the shelves, their bindings blue and rigid.

I look at him and tell him it's alright, he shouldn't worry. A mere
nineteen, he gives me a senescent smile and nods in frailty. He grasps 
it all, too much. Shortly, I may have to lift him in my arms and set him 
on the couch. We are not alone. Echoes of people downstairs. I can't tell who.
Mother, our sister, Nomi perhaps. Someone arrives and sparks excited 
speech and lengthy silences.

I descend the steps, some hasty greetings, I stuff a roll of coarse, 
green toilet paper in my pants. Back to the horror, to frisk around the 
crimson wreckage. I wipe my brother wrathfully from floor and carpet and from 
couch, reducing him to a ubiquity of chestnut stains. I am not content. He is
writhing on the inlay, attempting tears. It's futile, I know. We both 
forgot the art of crying, except from torn veins.

The light is waning. The brown blinds incarcerate my brother behind
penumbral bars. His bony hands and scrawny body in stark relief. It is 
the first time that I observe him truly. He is lanky but his face 
unchanged. I was no child when he was born but he is still my little brother.

He is resting now, eyes shut, our lengthy lashes - both mine and his -
attached to fluttering lids. Birds trapped in quivering arteries flap 
at histhroat. He is sobbing still but I avert my gaze, afraid to hug him. We
oscillate, like two charged particles, my little brother and myself. 
His arms by his side and my arms by his side, divergent. I thrust into mybulging pocket a ball 
of ruby paper.

There is a clock in here that ticks the seconds. They used to sound 
longer.It was another time. The hemorrhage stopped. A mournful lace of plasma 
on his sinewed wrists. It must have hurt, the old corroded blade, no 
flesh, just coated skeleton. To saw the bones till blood. To hack the skin, to
spread it like a rusty butterfly, dismantling slithery vessels. I move 
to occupy the wooden ladder back, near the escritoire that I received as 
gift on the occasion of my first year in school.

He nods affirmative when asked if he can rise. I hold him under hairy, 
damp armpits. I confront him, seated on my grandma's rocking chair, a 
cushion clad in Moroccan equine embroidery on my knees. I gently hold his hand 
and he recoils. I didn't hurt him, though.

I wait for him to break, his hand in mine. Thus clenched, our palms 
devoidof strength, we face a question and a promise, the fear of pain and of
commitment. We dwell on trust.

He unfists and bleeds anew. I use the paper ball to soak it up. It's
dripping. I gallop down the spiral staircase and collect another roll,
adhesive bandages, and dressing. Into my pocket and, speechlessly, I 
climb back. He is sitting there, a Pharaonic scribe, wrists resting on his 
knees, palms lotus flowers, but upturned. His gifted painter's fingers are 
quenched in blood.

I mop and dab, swab and discard, apply some pressure and erase. My 
brotheris calling me in sanguineous tongue and I deface it, incapable of listening,unwilling to 
respond.

I bind him and I dress and he opens his eyes and gapes at the white
butterflies that sprouted on his joints. He feels them tenderly, astonished by this sudden 
red-white beauty.

I count his pulse and he gives in to my pseudo-professional mannerisms. 
His pulse is regular. He hasn't lost a lot of blood, therefore.

He tells me he is OK now and asks for water. All of a sudden, I 
remember. One day, he was a toddler, could hardly walk, I led him back from the
clinic. He gave blood and was weeping bitterly. A giant cotton swab was
thrust into his elbow pit and he folded him arm, holding onto it tightly.

One jerky movement, it fell and he stood there, gawking at the soiled 
lump and whimpering. He was so tiny that I hugged him and wiped the tears 
from his plump cheeks.

I improvised a story about "Adhesa Cottonball", the cotton monster, who
forever wishes to return to the soil, her abode. His eyes cleared and 
hegiggled nervously. This sound - his chuckle - is in my ears, obscuring 
allreal-life acoustics.

He gulps down the water silently, his eyes a distant blackness, where 
no onetreads but he, his forest, among the trees, perhaps this carriage and 
itsattending coachman. Where does he want to go, I wander?

My brain is working overtime. My skull-domiciled well-oiled machine, 
whoseparts are in metallic shine, impeccable, unerring, impervious to pain.
Machines don't ache this brother, sprawled on the couch, his shoulders
stooping, in torn shirt and tattered trousers, my erstwhile clothes, 
hischest hirsute, his face adorned with budding beard and whiskers.

What story shall I tell him now to clear his eyes? How shall I make him
laugh again? What monster should I bury in the sand?

I tell him to pack few things and come with me. He acquiesces but still
won't budge. His twin wrist-butterflies are quite inert. He sighs as he
buttons his shirt and rolls unfastened sleeves to cover his abrasions. 
Whenhe gets up I see him as before: a gangling figure, an angular face, two
cavernous sockets, big brown mole. He drags his feet.

We both descend. Don't tell our parents, he begs, I promise not to. 
Enters his room and exits fast, carrying a small plastic bag with severed handles. A pair of 
worn jeans spill from the top to cover some half-deleted lettering.

We bid farewell and walk placidly to the car. He freezes on the back 
seat,still cradling his plastic treasure, gazing forward but seeing little.

Nomi is driving while I watch him through the windshield mirror. Hisinanimate stare, directed 
at the window, is deflected by transparence.Slumped on the imitation leather seat, he and his 
trousers bump from one side to another on the winding road.

He falls asleep this way, sack closely clutched, chin burrowing into 
his hollow torso. At times, he shakes his head in stiff refusal. He is very
adamant. Only his hands are calm, as though detached from his rebellious body.

Nomi is negotiating the parking and I touch his shoulder. He opens a 
pair of bleary eyes and looks at me like he used to when I was still his entire world. 
I touch once more
 and gently. When he was two years old , I left home for many years, never to be heard from.
 The hurt resides still in his eyes,that injury.

I touch a third time, thus pledging to remain, thus telling him my 
love. I study him at length and he does not divert his eyes.

Suddenly he smiles and dimples collect around his lips. He flings his 
hands high up and waves his red-white butterflies. He imitates their flight. 
He plucks their wings. He laughs and I respond by laughing and Nomi joins 
and the space of our car is filled with laughs and butterflies and butterflies and laughter.

Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory Bellaonline, and Suite101.
A Quick Review


    A week or so I received a copy of a new book of poetry by Les Wicks.  Les, if you are new to these pages, is a poet from Australia.  Actually that pales, he is the person who has turned me on to Australian poets and poetry.  If you google, you may read the interview I did with him a couple of years ago.  
     With that, his new book is entitled “STORIES OF THE FEET”, let me tell you something about this book; you may watch 'Lonely Planet' on Televsion, or watch some documentary on the Discovery Channel and think you know Australia.  Let me tell you  Les will introduce you to an Australia as exotic as any program you will find in the abovementioned channels and programs.  Les is your tour guide to the real Australia, a land of Emus and Kangaroos indeed, also a land of dead bodies covered in sheets, or cold nights thumbing rides along deserted highways.  He will teach you what you will see as you wait for the bus and he will introduce you to love in a wonderful way.  The book is divided into four segments, from North, to Town, from South to West he covers Australia and becomes through his words, our guide.  Some of the works will make you chuckle and he does give us some reference points, like the two ladies who used poison during the 50's, or the fact that they are swimming in July on Bondie Beach.  He will take us to the island of Tasmania and then to Broken Hill, the gateway to the Outback.    I must admit I was googling my way through this book, learning more about the locations he was writing about.  Another fabulous book, from a great poet.

Closing Words

    As always I want to thank all those who contributed to making this ezine the experience that it is.  I also want to let you know that I've set up my own blog, yeah like me and only a quarter of the planet.  If you want to read more about what I think about practically anything that passes through my brain you can go to The View from this Far South.  If what I say interests you, please leave a comment or two, or three.  
    I do want to remind you of the new email address: abovegroundtesting@yahoo.com.  I'm trying not to use the old pabear_7@yahoo since it's becoming filled with nothing but spam.  I do still check however please make the change in your mailbox.   I'm also thinking of changing the homepage if I can ever figure out how to do that sort of thing.

    Well, thanks for your time.  As always your work is welcomed and appreciated.  Keep writing, keep reading, allow your voice to find its unique style.

Abovegroundtesting