DOGEN.
Adults are Stories for Kids:
The settlement was so small that it was difficult to find even if you
had been there before. There were hardly any houses and these were more patched
up than original constructions, built on top of the remains of what must have
been a simple coastal village next to a stream.
Anything minimally useful had been utilised to resolve structural problems,
and Kalani had made a hobby out of repairing things and leaving a colourful signature
on her work. She had learnt basic mechanics more due to distrust than
curiosity, and to read out of pure love, how to use a bath in order to check
empirically what seemed fascinating at a theoretical level, a little history,
numbers and letters for practical reasons, and to be surrounded by people
because reality had taken over. Almost one hundred and fifty people lived
there, devoting their time to study, livestock farming and the most elementary
kind of survival. Thus, within two weeks of her arrival, the girl had set up a
small network of bartering and favours.
At night, the village enjoyed electric light, shielded by the valleys
and mountains that surrounded it, although most of the energy was used in the
manufacture of ammunition, as this guaranteed that the inhabitants had
something to offer the outside world. In turn, the outside world could choose
how to acquire its ammunition and, above all, whether to risk coming and taking
the bullets themselves. Lastly, the lighthouse, though its light was
permanently off, stood high above a cove, collecting all there was to know as
if it were a library, thus guaranteeing that the villagers had something to
offer to themselves.
Kalani had spent three years in that place, ignoring almost everything
and living a life which became increasingly more bizarre: hardly anyone wanted
to kill her ever, they only got cross with her. Yet to tell the truth, she
would have given her all for the settlement: they had books and hot water. It
was the kind of place in which everybody knew each other and hung out their
washing wherever they wanted.
That summer’s day, the girl
woke up mid-morning which, in her lazy terms, was extremely early.
She then got into trouble.
“What have you done to your face, Kalani?” exclaimed Rhys, one of the
village doctors, alarmed, hurrying to the fridge and stumbling in his
drowsiness.
“I fell on a good right hook,” she answered. “If you don’t believe me, I
have other punchy excuses...”
The health centre was the third largest building in the village after
the lighthouse-library and the factory, and the second best-tended place after
the hydroelectric generators in the river.
“No reports?” he
enquired in a voice that dragged itself through his exhaustion while he applied
a little ice on the swelling. “Hold this against it with the cloth” he said in
a slightly lower voice, his words thick as unrefined oil.
“No reports, if possible” said Kalani.
They sat down on two chairs.
“I need a favour,” he began.
“Do you want me to undress and cover myself in yogurt?” asked the girl
mischievously. “It’s a little exotic, but I accept if you can get hold of the
yoghurt.”
“Kalani, focus that distillery about to explode that you have for a
brain a little, please!” his weariness was not up to her acid humour.
“Sorry, a serious matter, go on.” Kalani pushed her own words aside.
“We have to go to the city.”
“What for?” she asked, willing and resolute.
He stood up with an effort and looked through the glass door that
separated them from the next room in which a patient was lying on a stretcher;
the doctor maintained an eloquent silence.
“I need simeprevir, or alternatively, interferon and ribavirin.” he told
her. Kalani looked at him in askance. “They are medicines for the treatment of
Hepatitis C, for Shannon; it can derive in cryoglobulinemia, hepatocarcinoma or
leukytoclastic vasculitis”.
Kalani nodded as if she had completely understood everything that he was
saying, leaving only a glimmer of irony as… well, it was a serious matter.
“And we hardly have the means to diagnose or treat anything. The
medicines are on the list we made of the inventory in cold storage, were you
here then?”
Kalami nodded again.
“I hope they are still there. I don’t even want to think
what will happen when the medical reserves run out.” he admitted, overwhelmed
by the idea.
“Shannon is… you know that he lost his brother as a result of the
accident with your revolver.”
“Yes… Steve will be ostracised for sure.”
“Adele is very stern with stupidity and that kid seems to feed
exclusively on his own idiocy” he declared, while leafing through some medical
notes.
“The truth is that it’s one of the few things about
which I fully agree with Adele: stupidity never works in one’s favour, it’s
plain to see” cautioned Kalani, unable to let go of her macabre thoughts. “Who
will be going?” she asked with curiosity.
“You, Audrey and I.”
“When are we leaving? Only the three of us? I would
prefer it if someone else came too… Doctor Pistachio III would come for sure,
and we will have to find at least one car.”
“Tomorrow morning.” he said.
“Tomorrow I’m meant to be going to the woods to lay
traps… and to cut the corn.” she added uncertainly, “but someone else can do it
if we are getting the drugs. I will ask Cole if he wants to come!” exclaimed
the girl, enthusiastically.
“Kalani…” The reproachful tone got lost somewhere before the last
syllable.
“He is black!” she answered, stretching out her arms and smiling
confidently. “He will make our expedition more diverse.”
“I am sure that that is discriminatory.”
“Oh no! You found me out! Come on, what the fuck, I am also against it:
all discrimination seems to be the same. He can’t come because he’s black?”
“Is there any rule that you haven’t yet broken?”
“Come on!” she exclaimed indignantly, “The rules and I started very
young!”
“Kalani…” Just saying her name seemed like a sermon.
“I’ll counter-attack as I am getting bored: I’m pretty sure you haven’t
slept for at least two days!” she said, indicating the bags under his eyes –she
felt reality crawling through his mind with great difficulty– “and that has
damaged your intellectual capabilities. Have you seen how well I speak? Helping
people is great and all that, and if we don’t do it, we can’t survive, but you
should be the first on your list, like Radha and Carmen.” Kalani was referring
to the other two doctors.
“Carmen has a fixation for hypodermic needles that escapes me…”
“Wonderful. Do you want to know what I think?”
“Ummm… no.” said Rhys.
“That you can’t save the fucking world, you shouldn’t even try, it’s
selfish, it’s…inhuman. Just do what you
have to do: try to make people kick the bucket less with you than without you!”
she said, her hand leaning against the doorframe. “If you don’t sleep, you
can’t come with us,” she warned, while making signs that she was going to dance
or leave, which where Kalani was concerned, basically meant the same thing.
“Why… why selfish?” he asked,
puzzled.
“Because,” she stopped there, in the doorway, to give herself time to carefully
consider what she was going to say, “if you really think about it, if you assume
someone else’s responsibility, you deny that person the space to be himself and
to develop; what’s more, the way we treat others is a reflection of how we
treat ourselves… well, not always. So
one could think that you are covering their needs because you are needy, that
sounds good, doesn’t it? Give me a lolly, go on!” she said with a quick shrug
and a smile.
“If I wasn’t a slave to my needs, I would have to be responsible, and I
prefer to be indebted to my cynicism than to my morals.”
“There’s no keeping you from your needs, is there?” teased Kalani.
“Get lost!”
“Shit! And what about my lolly?”
The room opened out onto the balcony, it was simple and spacious; a bed,
a low table, cushions lying about everywhere, dust dancing in the sunbeams,
clothes all over the floor and two rucksacks leaning against the wall. The
walls were covered in drawings and messages mainly from different hands. Most
of them were about love. There were also various games of noughts and crosses
with a clear win to the noughts. The window let in the afternoon sunlight; the
stairs led down to the ground floor.
“Come on mate, I only deal in worthless things” insisted Kalani,
sporting an enormous bruise below her lip. “The best things in life are free!
Make love, dance, enjoy a good steak, watch the sunset, bite a dog…”
“Yes, but Kalani, seriously, using your own jargon: your face is in a
state” said Cole, looking at her with his barely thirteen years from the
balcony and his dreadlocks –she roared with laughter– “and sometimes you do shady
business with people that are not sure whether five is more or less than four
even when counting on their fingers. Don’t you think it could be dangerous?”
“For them, of course: I certainly know how to count and what’s more I
have awesome psychic powers.”
“It’s not very sensible to go broadcasting it.”
“I can be extremely subtle, Cole” she assured him, with a teasing
superiority. “Would you know if I was manipulating you to wonder if I was
manipulating you?” He fell into her trap.
“You see?” said Kalani with a triumphant smile. Cole roared with
laughter. “Your mind is mine, screw you!”
“I don’t know whether
your humour is ingenious or stupid.” he admitted.
“Stupid,” declared the girl,
“I don’t like to leave anyone unhappy. Returning to poor Steve,…” Kalani sighed
with a nostalgia full of indulgence, “don’t worry, my cheek has faced up to
him”.
“Nah… that’s not funny”
Cole grumbled, approaching her.
“You’re right, it would
have been funnier if it had been someone else’s cheek”.
He couldn’t help laughing.
“Adolescents…” remarked
the boy with a snort, as if that word explained all the complexities of the
situation.
“Go on,” she said,
naked on the bed.
“Adolescents” he began,
“are not the children referred to in stories and journals, nor are adults what
they are supposed to be, they take refuge in the space that they deny to the world,
the control they have is born from the same illusion that obliges them to
contemplate an imperfect reality. It’s only a theory, give me a couple of years
and I’ll verify it for you”.
“You idiot, dude.” she
answered, joining in his laughter. “Do you have to explain all your thoughts in
such a poetic way for them to be understood?” she joked, wiggling her hands
expressively, “or am I an idiot and nobody has told me? Come on, don’t be an
asshole and tell me the truth. Is there anything you like doing apart from
listening to yourself?” she asked with her mouth open and a bovine expression, only
because it was an expression she wore sometimes.
“I suppose there must
be something…” answered Cole hesitantly, moving his hand vaguely. “I like you, and
Tania and her cake-trafficking and her belly, which is now pregnant; I like freckly
Shaun because he moves better than he looks, and the Emily who wears socks,” –all
of them were teenagers around the same age as Kalani– “and I like books and
interesting conversations. It’s a
difficult question. But you…” –Kalani could see herself inside Cole’s mind,
shining out– “It’s more than that, listen, the other day I was thinking about
you: when you learnt to read, you told me that people read whole words whereas
you read syllables: “it wears me out”, you said. My question is: did you cheat when learning
to read, with the help of your powers, white girl? The results are incredible in someone of your
age.”
“Let’s see… If I could teleport myself, to get to a place which I had
never seen, it would be… somewhere between stupid and dangerous, wouldn’t it?”
“Wait a minute, is this some kind of revenge for my poetic figures of
speech?”
“Yes” confirmed Kalani with a smile that overflowed into the word. “And
if you consider yourself so intelligent, think of a metaphor about your
stupidity.”
“Okay, okay…” he gave in, putting up his hands, then raised an eyebrow
to add “Technical draw?”
“You should be so lucky. And now, clever boy, come here.” Kalani invaded
the bed.
“You bully!”
“How can it be so big bearing in mind the amount you talk?” she
wondered, her pupils reflecting her desire.
“Don’t you like it, Ka? I’ve only got it in this size…”
“Cole, man,” she said, drawing closer to him and taking hold of his hand
while laughing, “We are going to do something that I know it is very difficult
for both of us, but we are going to shut up and we are going to quietly shag
for a couple of hours, I repeat: quietly,
and groaning and so on” she added with an unconcerned shrug, “and then you are
going to tell me why Emily traffics cakes and I didn’t know about it”.
“It’s Tania that traffics cakes” he clarified.
“I have been with Emily-socks, she does it really well. And she’s
jealous that we are together: you are very sought-after” she told him kissing
and hugging him.
After a few rather busy moments with the summer on their lips, the
conversation tried to get back on track:
“But Tania gives you cake afterwards” indicated Cole.
“I am beginning to suspect…”
“… that this being silent is not working shit” muttered Cole, imitating
Kalani’s way of grumbling.
“Can you read my mind too, black boy? Because I have thought about what
I am going to make for Audrey when she comes for dinner and I need your
help.” Calm gave way to an explosion of
energy. “The other day I discovered what the best thing is about being one of the
ugliest girls in the whole village!”
“What?”
“That no-one expects any good of me!” she exclaimed laughing. “On your
knees!” The explosion of energy vanished, giving way to a quiet
enthusiasm. “Although you should know I
like my face, I have a rabbit face: big teeth that are incapable of coming with
me when I shut my mouth, yum, yum, charming chubby cheeks, punky hair and then
there’s my big blue eyes.
“Can’t you focus on one thing for any longer than thirty seconds?”
“Can you...? Oooh…! Yes I can…”
Audrey looked through the glass as she took off her hood and noisily
took a bite out of a tart, green, apple. She could hear the steps of Jerry and
Tiara patrolling along the exterior walkway, a little further down.
She spat as she saw Kalani between some houses, running naked behind a
pack of dogs, among which was Boatswain, her Newfoundland, which the girl had
decided to call Doctor Pistachio III.
She followed him dancing and jumping, shouting and barking. Boatswain,
who right from the start had accepted his nickname with resignation, happily
approached Kalani who hugged him. The dog then zigzagged until finding a stick,
which he dropped at the girl’s feet and began to charge back and forth at it
until she picked it up and threw it for him.
Although the top floor of the lighthouse did not officially serve as a
library, its shelves were full of books, so many that there was not room for
them all, and some volumes were piled up on the floor. Other than that, the
room only contained a threadbare rug, a sofa, two chairs and a plain well-worn
desk.
From there, Audrey could survey the whole settlement, precariously
rebuilt on top of the ruins: a vast and still largely uninhabited terrain. She
could also see the barbed-wire fencing in front of the stone walls, the meadows
and the wood, and in the distance, the mountains all around. The sea stretched
out endlessly behind her. She also had an excellent view of Adele, who could
herself, in a way, be considered a landscape: not a particularly relaxing one,
but she was quite a large woman, taking into account the amount of food
available. She had a surly face, almost constantly set in a frown, but with a
quick and bright look and wrinkles where a disbelieving smile began. She wore
an elegant but worn-out cowboy suit with sinuous borders, a tie and a hat,
although the latter now lay on the table.
“Kalani never does what she’s supposed to do,” declared Adele, without
attempting to hide her disapproval.
“If you make a rule, she will find a way to break it right in front of
you,” agreed Audrey.
“It’s natural that you should be friends” said her companion. “I don’t
mind the fact that she doesn’t go to school like everyone else, but how can she
sleep an average of ten hours a day?”
“The last time I asked her, she said that she has fun sleeping!”
Adele could not help her words sounding like a reproach:
“She is always playing, she never takes anything seriously and how old
is she? Fifteen? She could be having
children, like everyone else. What kind of adult is she?”
“Adults are stories for kids, Adele.
Here we have survived. If we can’t do what we like, now that we have
managed to keep breathing, what’s the point of living? Kalani doesn’t think we
are any different from the bandits that kill each other.”
“That girl is not normal” insisted Adele.
“That’s why… what would you do if you had her powers?”
“Something responsible, for a start.”
“Well, I’m glad she doesn’t take anything seriously.” Audrey’s smile was a quiet challenge.
“You are the same, you think that good and evil are no different”
replied Adele
“Well, one of the fundamental tragedies of mankind is that if you do
good, you run the risk of ending up doing evil and if you do evil, you run the
risk of ending up making a fortune.”
“But neither of you think that,” declared Adele.
“Of course not, good and evil are just words and the idea of a person amassing
a fortune is ridiculous. What’s more, we are not ambitious, we prefer to be
happy.
“Anyway, Kalani never stops defying me.”
“Her relationship with you is nothing personal: she would defy anyone
who told her what to do” said Audrey, nonchalantly. “She lives out of a
rucksack, her freedom is the only thing she has.” Adele remained thoughtful for a few moments
and Audrey gazed back out of the window.
“If the matter of the expedition has been cleared up, I am going to have
lunch with Rhys, and tomorrow we’ll go and get the medicines.”
“Do you think you’ll find them there?” enquired Adele without much
conviction. “It’s over a year since the
inventory was made and that was the last visit to the city.”
“What are the chances that someone has taken them?” answered Audrey.
“About fifty percent, possibly. What does Kalani think?”
“Kalani is a thief, she thinks that someone will have taken them, but we
have to try. For Shannon.”
“Tell me how much petrol you need.”
Kalani took a punch in the mouth.
A really hard one, one of those that makes a hollow sound and knocks
your tooth out, roots and all.
She felt the blood filling up the tissue beneath the skin of her lip,
she imagined the greenish-purple colour that the bruise would develop in a few
hours, then she returned to the present, feeling the root of the bone coming
away from the gum with a hot stabbing pain.
She spat out one of her lower incisors, red.
“Your friends are frightened,” she said steadily.
In reality, she too was frightened, not that much, because in the
settlement everything was a second rate danger, but the fear meant that the
mental rhythm of these idiotic kids who were holding her by the arms while
Steve was looking at her as if he were going to punch her again focussed her
brain.
The two boys stammered what from the context must have been an apology,
let her go and left.
Steve did not know what was going on but he could not waste time in
shouting at them to come back.
The asbestos shed where the school toilets were was not the best place
in the world to make a scene.
She smiled, a few moments more and the scenario would follow the rhythm
of her heart.
The truth is that a fearful mind, weakened by hunger or weariness, or
simply driven to despair in a fit of rage, was always easier to control; often
it was enough just to cast a doubt.
What’s more, Kalani had recently had a revelation: if her own mental
movement acquired a specific form –fear, for example– it was easier to shape
this same form in the minds of others.
It was like music, only the other way round, it was difficult to recall
a song while another one was playing. On the other hand, if the minds of others
were also beginning to acquire this form on their own, hardly even a nosebleed
was needed to end up shaping and activating it.
A shooting pain pierced her head. Although it was brief, it remained hanging
from her neurons in an acute, sustained echo in the form of an intense ache,
far too present for comfort.
In fact, she sensed that she should learn to calm down and flow through
her own mind in order to be more efficient. But she decided to leave her
thoughts for a rather less risky time and launched a question into the air:
“Don’t you like the revolver, Steve?”
Steve, who was a couple of years older than her, took a few steps
backwards, disconcerted. “It isn’t easy
to be an arms dealer, is it? And I clearly explained to you that the firing pin
was a little loose. I clearly explained that you shouldn’t load it with six
bullets. I clearly explained that this was why I was selling it a bit cheaper,
remember? Hell, I explained everything fucking marvellously to you! I even threw in some bullets in spite of the
fact that I don’t even like you, that’s what you would call winning customer
loyalty or something like that, but what kind of dickhead aims at his boyfriend
with a gun? It is a rhetorical question,
which means you don’t have to answer,” she clarified. Kalani loved using all
those words she had learnt. “Hand over my fucking revolver, you prick, the one
that Eddie and Ben just took off me,” she ordered patiently, “the other one is
yours and a deal is a deal.” He gave her the gun with a doubtful expression on
his face, which radiated no more intelligence than that of a particularly
resourceful pot of gladiolas.
“I’ll be kicked out,” he said defeatedly.
“If you’re lucky,” she reminded him, her eyes suddenly lighting up with
a decided glow. “I tell you what, I
won’t say anything if you give me the other revolver back. What do you
think? And you could, as really that
revolver isn’t contraband, it was mine, but I wanted to make myself out to be
more exciting,” she explained.
“Contraband stuff is difficult to get, generally it’s stupid to buy it
and you couldn’t afford it anyway,” she said, scratching her eyebrow. “Contraband.., it sounds good but I’m not so sure…
Supposedly it’s stuff that’s been in the hands of bandits or criminals, isn’t
it?” Kalani stopped her thoughts at that
point, she didn’t want to get side-tracked. “Well, that’s it: the revolver for
my silence. Tell me it’s not a fucking awesome deal!” She smiled animatedly. “We’ll tell the others
that you wanted to get rid of it because of the accident.
“Thanks…” he managed to say, without being sure of whether he should
think about anything in particular, while giving her the weapon. She certainly knew what to think: for
example, what happened to Eric, Steve’s boyfriend, was a stupid tragedy.
“Thanks for letting me live,” Steve managed to finish. Kalani was impressed
that the poor thing had appreciated the value of this latest transaction.
“Twice, I suppose, if you count this time, and you don’t even deserve
it.” She fingered the incipient bruise, which was beginning to swell up. “It’s
a pleasure doing business with you, believe me,” she said. “Remember that you
have come out on top… all things considered…”
She tried to comfort him with an unconvincing, friendly gesture and an
erratic look. “By the way, when they do exile you, come and see me: I have
provisions that you can pay for with things you won’t need.” And with that,
Kalani danced away.
She loved savouring the word exile,
probably due to the X, it gave it class. And the L, the L was good. And the
fact that it was not being applied to her was rather comforting too: to tell
the truth, she had always believed that one day, in spite of everything, she
would be kicked out of there.
“I only have one question, Ka. Why did you let Steve punch you?
“I felt guilty,” answered Kalani, “for the death of his boyfriend and
that: it was me that gave him the revolver, after all.” Her expression revealed
a certain sadness on remembering this; she had decided to avoid getting
involved in that kind of problem again.
“But later, I went to see Rhys so he could treat my face for the beating
they had given me and… I realised that I had made a mistake with my “I’m going
to save the world” and all that, and in the fact that I now have one less
tooth!” she added laughing, and then she became thoughtful for a few moments: she
raised her eyebrow and her tongue appeared from under her top lip. “The reality
is that we are free, Cole, right from the start. I am free even of myself. In
fact we are so free and have been so for such a long time that in retrospect, I
see myself as very young,” said Kalani, puzzled. He proffered a chuckle. “When all is said and done, that’s how
thoughts move: they go their own way and are absolutely fine. That’s why I
prefer to dance… And that you dance with me,” she ordered with a smile. “Listen, I almost forgot, will you come to
the city to get medicine?”
Adults are Stories for Kids by Marta Roussel Perla is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://parafernaliablablabla.blogspot.ie/.
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