ICEBERG

A Pilgrim’s Tale

I live in a wilderness where nothing is real. In fact, this wilderness is surreal, as much like an aluminum Christmas tree, as a Nativity Scene with Snow White and an array of garden gnomes under an ornamental golden cedar. This is the Lowlands. My adopted home dances on oaken stilts above a boggy marshland as a cultural fragment several times removed from nature. Relentlessly sculpted by the hand of rational man, the land was drained, cut, harvested, filled in, plowed and polished even before it became a late Renaissance touristic gem. Today, it is a diamond glittering on the hand of a rich, barren woman.

As I walk the ubiquitous concrete tiles, I feel nothing of the spirit of the land. Only the sky remains more or less unchanged. I often look to the rushing clouds, to bold displays and subtle glories of light and wonder what others saw once upon a time, when men were but small warring creatures in this great delta landscape. Now, even the trees seem fake, artfully placed as a scenic element on our human stage, where dumbfounded birds and irrelevant insects play out their obscure lives.

I suddenly feel my chest tighten in the grip of an emotion caught between rage and panic. Why don’t these creatures leave? The epiphany comes as I notice young ferns struggling to life in cracks along the sides of the canals. They remain for the same reason I remain -- this is Paradise.

... to the Assassin

1

The lights suddenly dimmed, the curtain rose, the audience hushed and I was there again, centre stage, creeping between the parked cars -- Fiat Di Christiani, midnight blue ... Honda Civic, bronze with rust marks ... pine air fresheners in both. With my attention focused on the turbulent passing of the storm, still nervously eyeing the entrance to the nearby alley, still listening to the fading hoots and cries echoing down through the maze of tight brick walls, my foot slipped. There was alot of oil spilt here. In fact, the sidewalk had become a black pool, its slick, polished surface reflecting pins of light from the clear night sky … these, the lights of my celestial garden. Across this same glassy surface, however, the waxing moon delicately traced two faces pressed against this firmament at my feet.

Corpses littered my garden. In the whir of the city night, the haloed pair looked cold and forgotten. Bending lower, unwilling to take my eyes off the dark slit between the buildings where they disappeared, I saw ripples distort the play of stars across the oily pond. My gently probing finger broke the surface; sticky and still warm, I had never seen so much blood. With calm fascination, born from shock and repulsion, I watched as more ripples spread out from a weak, bubbly hiss emitted from a severed throat.

One of the men was still alive.

God knows why I bent down to close the wound on his throat, pressing his clean jacket against the deep gash that oozed more blood out onto the brick pavement. The single slate-blue eye that looked up at me was not yet the lifeless stare of his friend, who lay behind him unseen; the dead man gazed up into the street light with wide brown eyes that were both sightless and calm, while his lover screamed out in silent Cyclopean terror, pinching his face with anguish and confusion. With his throat slit, there would be no cry or moan from his breathless mouth.

Stay calm or you’ll loose more blood, I told him. Your friend already walks in the garden, I told him. You have to put pressure on your neck because I can’t stay, I told him. Be patient, help is on the way ... taking his hand and placing it over the wound, I rose to better see a group of people coming out of a nearby restaurant. They had started to head this way. They would know what to do. They would help. Tears couldn’t save this man’s life, but good Samaritans could. The party could not walk by or cross the street and ignore what had happened here. There were seven people, with too many egos and consciences present to permit indifference, even in the city. A single slate-blue eye fluttered again, watching me from beyond the veil of horror ... and then the memory faded.

Flash!

I gasped for air as if I had forgotten to breathe. I had been sitting, watching another sunset from behind the safety of single-paned glass. And now, for a moment, the glass, the trees, the rooftops and a darkening sky reappeared ... like a drowning man coming up for his last gasp before sinking down deep into the watery blue, I wondered, looking at the horizon glow with brilliant strokes of dusk colour. A shiver raced up my spine. My neck bristled. Another one? I asked in panic, letting my lungs heave for another quick breath, before the twilight folded and my vision melted like wax once again.

Bands of blue-white light slashed the purity of the white wall. French cigarettes. Wilted tulips. Old floorboards. Distant clanging and ringing of the trams. I was on his bed with his tongue pressed against my cheek, hot and wet and slightly trembling as he ran it up to my pounding temple. Through the sound of rushing blood in my ears, I could barely hear his words. What? Where was his hand now? Did he just run it down my thigh, or was it on my chest? My ass? I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Embraced in the heat of his naked body, my attention focused on the cold, distinct line of a knife. The chill of metal usurped either his lapping tongue or groping hand, his wide behaired chest or legs, or locked arm. There was only the blade pressing against my throat. Held in a clenched fist, every time his heart pounded I felt the keen edge jerk. Agony: had I seen it coming? He whispered something harshly into my ear. Hot spittle and his sweet breath pushed garbled words ... what the hell was he saying?

We were still in bed, lying naked on top of the white sheets with the moon illuminating us in its awful light. Through all the lingering scents, I could still smell the heady perfume of semen permeate the room. Sweat hung in dewy droplets of musk. I could still feel the weight of his lips on mine, his stubble tickling my neck ... and with surprising calm I knew he was going to kill me. Perhaps that was what lured me here in the first place? I thought bitterly, trying to look at him. A hissed command froze me. Laughing, he ran his free hand down my chest. Oh, I felt it now, the heat off his dry palm and thick forearm painful against my clammy skin. Between his knuckles, he squeezed and rolled my nipples slow and hard. Twisting them sharply, he began to tug. It was all so wrong ... I dared not flinch. Then, a full, flat palm, a lightly callused palm, swept over my ribs onto my stomach. Slowly, he circled lower as if to tease me. He stroked me like a lover might, a caress, a knowing brush of the hand that bespoke an intimate bond ... or was it the license one lavished on a whore? A cat playing his mouse before hunger changed the nature of the game …

Madness! This bastard hated humanity in a way that I could never have imagined! His hands lingered on my cock, while the knife remained fixed against my pounding throat. He squeezed. My sex hung limp while his remained hard, thrusting rhythmically up against the small of my back. He was wet. Now fondling me, thoughts of castration suddenly ballooned in my mind and only congested the terror that already threaten to explode. Why maim me and risk an outcry? When my balls shrank back from his touch, he growled. The steel jerked under the sudden pressure; either sweat or blood now trickled down my neck.

His stream of abusive words, lust-filled words, loving words burned hot in my ear. The savage hissed. The whore enticed. The lover confided. But after a time, when the tension seemed about to explode, the words softened and became unintelligible as his hand continued down in slow circles to my thighs ...

And I thought I was crazy?

Then he stopped.

Did I sense a lull in his violence? Was he remembering, or dreaming, or just lost in his own, private hell? Did he have to find the courage to drag that blade across my neck ... I could only imagine. However, when the pressure of the blade eased away from my neck, I was ready like a clock primed for the toll of twelve.

For the last few days, these images, these recorded events, played again and again, preventing me from even one quiet moment. There was the moon again, blossoming full and pale in the evening sky above the treetops. It was now early spring. Elsewhere in the city I could see it raining, but here the painted white trim around the windows blazed pink in the setting sun’s angry wash. All the world stretched beyond my window; a jet-stream tartan zigzagged across the heavens above the airport, the moon’s eye opened through the pale sky, and fat, dark buds on the poplar branches heralded the change of season. The world was alive and being watched by me through my own white-trimmed window. How many others watched from beyond the glass that contained and harboured little, curious lives? How many rooms were there, where other people puttered away their lives? Like me, living the empty life of an urban hermit, I thought numbly, trying to clear my head of the last bout of vivid, recurring dreams.

My crotch twitched. To my amazement I realized I had an erection. The lingering memory of Michael, his loving words, his body and finally the knife he pulled, still evoked something like lust in me. I couldn’t figure out why. Idly, I squeezed my cock, hoping to drive the lust away and yet, not wanting to forget the assassin either. How could I forget? He almost killed me! I must have been deluded, stoned, entranced, possessed by his cocktail of burning passions, our sweat, our cum ... my blood! That some part of my mind could find sensuality in that mind-numbing terror, worried me.

Worse still than the anger and disgust, was the shame I felt for even thinking that I might have loved him. I couldn’t begin to understand. Shivering, I glanced back up into the fading light to see that nothing had changed. Moon up, sun down and a horizon filled with speckled tree limbs, hydro-lines, rooftops, windows and still more windows ... pulling away from the glass, I dared not look down into the street’s traffic. There would be people milling on the sidewalks, of that I was sure. There were always people on the street, as there was always eyes lurking behind a window. I lived in Amsterdam, and no matter what I dreamed, the city always remained full of people, suspicious, gossiping, spying, deadly people. Did I really love him?

"You always dream the same dream, you know." The voice was back. Terrific, I thought, as if my mind wasn’t crowded enough as it is.

"I know. You don’t have to tell me again," I replied to no one, to someone who spoke from out my imagination.

"Oh, I do not mind, Thomas. I enjoy telling you. You know, sharing the simple pleasures of life with a good friend. I especially enjoy reminding you that you never dream of an empty city, but rather a city in which only you and that boy are again alone ..."

"In each other’s arms ..." I said.

"Yes," the spectral voice agreed.

"With the knife still pressed ..."

"To your throat," he completed, "Yes."

"Thanks for reminding me," I sighed.

"You have not forgotten about the murder already, have you?" the voice inquired innocently in his thick, unidentifiable accent. Innocently? If there had been a body to that voice, months ago I would have wrapped my fingers around his ethereal neck. Without even acknowledging his question, I turned back to the window. There was no need to reply; he read my thoughts anyway.

Indeed, the last few days had been exceptionally stressing, especially with the waking dreams of the murder. Time healed, everyone said. It had healed the wounds of my flesh, except for the scars. And now, perhaps a week after witnessing the murder of at least one, maybe two men, I realized that time did not heal a dead man. Dreading another fruitless conversation with myself, I sought refuge in the sky. Sure, it was busy up there too, with stars and clouds and the vulgar presence of tinned people, jetting to beaches or safaris or friends or other congested cities. What could be so important that man took to the sky, thereby cluttering the heavens too? I consciously ignored economics; it appeared that the search for paradise resulted only in air traffic. Despite my mood, I envied the firmament’s ability to remain aloof with a certain celestial dignity. I enjoyed the sky’s limitlessness, even if it was limited by the view from my single-paned window.

Peripheral movement down on the street caused me to reach out automatically and check the lock. My windows had locks even though I was on the top floor of the building. For the last few days, a view through glass had been my only contact with the grumpy world grubbing down below. After checking the lock, I risked a glance into the darkening street, into the shadows of the city, into the den of thieves and murderers that patrolled it. After the murder, I seriously did not expect to leave my house ever again.

Damn! I slammed my fist against the wall and gritted my teeth, feeling the pain wash through me. Murder! The word penetrated the pain and I could see their faces in the pool of blood again. I was spending too much time in front of the window, I told myself. Drawing the blinds quickly, I turned off the lights, save the one by which I read, and headed to the kitchen. My hand hurt as I supped hastily on tinned lentil curry and rice. Randomly opening one of the many books lying about, my eyes could not focus on the words. Of course I knew I had to go out into the world again, but I needed some time to think things through.

"Your first premise for staying inside is as frail as you have become, you know," droned my conscience.

" What? That I hate people?"

"You do not hate people! You would die without people feeding you, clothing you, sheltering you, protecting you ... loving you! No man is alone, Thomas. You are just afraid of them!"

"Afraid? I’m terrified," I mumbled into the ringing truth of his words, "And they hate me." I was a slave to culture and its apparatus. I was a parasite within the very civilization that sustained me. I existed, not like a leaf on the tree, but as a passer-by who takes a nap in the proffered shade. Essentially, I saw urban life as a necessary evil. My ghost agreed, at least on this one point. A smaller town, my glib conscience never failed to remind me, would burn me at the stake or have me chased to the city limits covered in tar and feathers. The family, the tribe and even small communities did not tolerate those who refused to pull the same rope -- marry, work and die. On the other hand, I would die within days as a hermit in a real wilderness bereft of cultural amenities. Sometimes, despite my hostility to it, I also saw the city as an oasis -- desert, oasis, and its own mirage. The megalopolis might loath me, as I loathed it, but we needed each other. A big joke, an urban symbiosis, in which I was a passer-by who took the proffered shade, and that by doing so, gave the tree its meaning, a state of existence ...

"And the second astounding premise for this ‘shut-in’ game?" he whined.

"Leave me alone, Seir, would you?" I ran my hand over the thin, puckered scar on the left side of my neck, an irritating habit that never failed to remind me of the man who put it there. I had more than enough reasons to want to remain hidden from the world. This second premise, to which my inward speaking conscience referred, tied into the first: certain elements of the society I feared, those whose hatred of me I had grown to accept ... certain leaves on the tree ... certain passing shadows in the oasis of the city’s twilight mirage ... were trying to kill me.

"Imagined!"

"True!" I rebuked loudly.

Locked up in my house, I was safe from the outside world. I was comfortable in my own prison. He had failed to kill me then, but now, since I witnessed this recent murder, he might be back for me.

If it was really him I saw on the street.

"Probably not," I mumbled, already gritting my teeth in anticipation of my conscience’s undoubtedly heady reply. However, there was a long silence before he shocked me with heavy emotion straining his sad, hollow voice.

"And so it is written: a witness who will not see, a confessor who will not speak, an avenger who will not raise his hand, I am the king of fools."

end of chapter one