Anamnesis by Zorina Alliata (ebook reader ink txt) 📕

the floor; he had learned the timing and the intensity, the direction and the speed of particles around him; he had trained himself to count the nanoseconds and the millimeters of all movements.

There were four large screens in front of him; with a delicate maneuver of the electronic machineries at his desk, Officer Kampf could get a view almost anywhere on the floors below him. But he suspected that the images were made up; there was a glow of mystique to them. It was hard to believe that all that drama was unfolding down there; that people were spending hours arguing about strategies and campaigns; that some were crying in the bathrooms, that others were touching hands in the corners; that, like rats in a cruel labyrinth, they would pass one another without seeing each other, without understanding each other. Their world seemed so clear to Officer Kampf, and yet they blindly stumbled on all obstacles and hit all walls in their chaotic, irresponsible moves.

Nobody ever came to the highest floor of the building; there was nothing there but the large conference room 30-004, which was never used. The elevators didn’t run that high either, so he was even refused the entertainment of tormenting some lost yuppie who would mistakenly end up on his floor. To get to the thirtieth floor, one had to have special security clearance for the executive stairs; as far as Officer Kampf could tell, he was he only one holding such clearance.

Every morning, while slowly but determinedly stepping on each stair, 30 floors up, Officer Kampf thought about his age, his Ph.D.s and his salary. He did not think about it in anger; some ten years ago he had abandoned any scrap of feeling and chose to not feel anymore. It hadn't been a hard decision – it came naturally after he had finished his second Ph.D.; there was nothing more he wanted or cared to know about life, people, love or loss. He had let it go, all of it, easily and smoothly. He had stepped out of life's path and modestly, silently, he had moved into limbo.

And yet, in the last couple of weeks, Officer Kampf forgot to switch his buttons on the left-side monitor. The same image stood there for days and days. When he arrived in the morning, he was surprised to see it still there; he set to change it, but then mysteriously forgot about it by the time he left home. The image, black-and-white, with that electronic outer glow to it, displayed itself blatantly, unapologetically. Furthermore, it had started to follow him home.

Officer Kampf could not help watching it. He did not think of anything in particular while staring at it; or while dreaming it at night; or when it popped in his mind uninvited, as he was driving his old Toyota through Silver Spring. He could not remember when he first saw it, or what was so special about it that it would stay with him for so long. It was nothing more than a cubicle and an employee, one of the thousands Officer Kampf had monitored since he was working for the Company.

Even through the raw eye of the old camera, the employee looked young and beautiful; even through the gray static and even beyond the rough pixels, the man appeared so perfectly and evenly built that he didn’t seem real; and yet, to Officer Kampf, the young man stood as the one worthy person he had seen in a long time.

Officer Kampf had taken to spending his day standing two steps behind his usual post; coincidentally, it offered a better angle to watch the left-side monitor. Every so often, his eyes would linger a bit as the young man made small moves – drinking coffee, moving papers around. He had a routine of his own and Officer Kampf took it upon himself, as innocent amusement, to figure it out. There were three coffee breaks a day, at 9:00 AM, 11:30 AM and 3:00 PM. There was small chatter with a lady friend, whom for some reason Officer Kampf detested already. There was the morning reading of the Wall Street Journal, and then the confused and bored face after turning the last page. There was a lunch break, many times with the same lady friend. Otherwise, the young man would type into the computer all day, in the same position; occasionally, he would touch his short hair with his long, white fingers. Or he would flex his muscles when suddenly turning around. Or raise his blue, lovely eyes right into the camera and by pure coincidence look straight at Officer Kampf - like an invitation, like a prayer, like an offering.

That Friday evening, Officer Kampf noticed that the young man was sad; he stayed late and his beautiful eyes were wrinkled with unpleasant thoughts. Officer Kampf looked with a shade of interest but also with disappointment: was this young man to be thrown into the swirl of life, was he to be sucked alive into the likes of passion and suffering? Was he to become yet another insignificant drama in the forgettable history of the insignificant people? Officer Kampf could have guessed that the lady friend – first name Anna, last name Ionescu, employee ID: 13350 -- is somehow involved; for all he knew, she seemed like trouble.

Whatever it was, Officer Kampf understood that it was of the utmost importance; he felt the young man’s angst and pain and he even had an urge to help him, to tell him what he had learned about the world; to comfort him with chosen words, long, winding words he used to speak ages ago; to explain everything – from creation to murder, from dreams to realities; to rest his hand on the young man’s shoulder, in a touch of human love and care.

The thought aroused him unexpectedly and violently. A primal, deep lightening ripped through his abdomen, with heavenly pain. His longtime abstinent body awoke with no mercy and in a short moment regained its rank and importance in his life. Officer Kampf reached to the screen, craving the young man’s touch and closeness. Just as his fingers gently and eagerly followed the bodyline on the screen, the young man suddenly jumped off the chair and stuck his head close to the camera. “What’s your name?” Officer Kampf read on the mute lips. “What’s your name?”

In the miracle of being seen and felt through the impersonal camera, in the miracle of being addressed, of being acknowledged, Officer Kampf rose in a joyous, frustrated orgasm. It lingered in his flesh for seconds before sweetly disseminating through his whole body, in hot circles of divine glory. Incapable of thinking, Officer Kampf shut down the monitor in shame and love, to be dealt with later; inside his cube, Dante had fallen back into his chair, still not knowing the name of his cubicle neighbor.


CANTO II


Flowers shrug when I touch them. Trees bend in pain, in defense, when I reach for their fruit. I killed the entire grapevine in my grandparents’ garden when I was five by picking up its sweet, black grapes. I am the anti-matter to the earth’s flora; an unknown and therefore dangerous hybrid of human cells and inner Nature secrets, blended with ancient spells. I seem one of them and yet I do not grow and feel as they do.

I chose to live in sterile apartment buildings with a No Pets policy. I have a plastic plant in my living room and pictures of chickens in my kitchen. I’ve always liked animals but the fauna doesn’t like me any better either. When I was four, I took up the difficult but rewarding task of taking care of six small orphan chickens at my grandparents’ farm. They all died in separate, horrible accidents in less than a week. I suspect they have successfully managed to kill themselves out of my toxic love. They did not understand what I was and to them I must have been frightening as hell when I was petting them endlessly. It was probably as calming as it would be for a human being to be petted and loved by a dark, huge ghost they cannot relate to at any level.

Wise men spend years to become one with the Nature; I had to spend years to tear away from it. It was revealed to me the day I was born; the grass growing; the waves forming; the rain and the storm; I was one with them. I cried when the wind cried and I was hungry when the birds were. I screamed when giving birth and I died in struggles only to grow back, stronger. I was already dust before I had lived my first month on earth. There was no mask, no fairy tales, no beliefs in good and bad to protect me from Nature; I had to face it since the beginning.

My parents have conceived me in secrecy and fear, with the enlisted help of the village’s witch – my aunt Profira. She was the best of us when it came to slipping under the radar of life; her house, a mud cottage with one room and an atrium, was built in the shadows of the hills between Romania and Ukraine. She had found a narrow numeric pattern there – a closed eyelid upon a lazy patch of grass. Silently, she had built her house and brought her things in over the months. She rarely spoke; she awoke at night, old and scared, and checked the numbers to make sure the eye hadn't opened to see her. That she still had one more day to live, one more hour, one more minute. That Death had not reached that place just yet.

For nine months, my parents lived there in silence. The risks involved were large; over generations, my family had grown to be a thorn in the paw of natural law. Nature was on to us; we had become an unknown life form and therefore prone to be eliminated. It was not as if Nature was a conscious entity who hated us; Nature simply was, and any foreign corpuscle was to be attacked and subdued – for the survival of the greater organism.

Nobody is supposed to fool the numbers; there is only one Master of the numbers and he is one with Earth and the Universe. One cannot go on cheating on life because it simply doesn’t work for too long. One cannot have all the sweets and no bitterness; all light and no darkness; all love and no mistrust. Our ancestors simply have not negotiated the deal that way.

Having me was an act of defiance in a family that could hardly maintain its head count as it was. One more of us, especially one born into knowledge and truth, was an easy target. The danger was not that I was weak; the danger was that I could have been too strong. While my great-great-great-great uncle was an itch, I could have been a powerful cramp and therefore targeted for annihilation much faster. My parents though did what they had to do: produce an heir to give meaning to their lives and assure the continuity of the family through natural ways. They truly believed they could protect me and teach me all I needed to know. On the day of my birth, however, all hell broke loose.

It must have been the tension and anticipation in the house; my aunt cheerfully going about the business of preparing the holy water, the herbs and the spells for my arrival; my dad, knuckles white from pressure, holding my mom’s hand. It must have been the humanity, the tenderness, the normality they