Is ‘The Bitch’ a type of play? Very much so. This story yearns for an adaptation, and it might happen if an open and ingenious enough person reads it and feels its bark or voice as an invitation for casting of a role of roles.
The Bitch
Miss, I know it’s none of my business that you’re by yourself on this bench, in the park, your face all wrinkled. You’re moving away.
DOG BARK
Nice doggy. Poodle? It is looking at me lovingly and growling. It knows me from somewhere, here I am assailed by a new thought.
– Fifi, I will kick you, Fifi tear her apart, down to her tendons, veins and arteries, we must reach her heart. The bite of your Fifi, so generous…Miss Ana, may I call you Ana, mmm?…you’re stepping away. Don.t Listen to me speak so unfortunate, alone, thankful for Your ear, don’t toss me away so easily. Might we get a bit more informal? Per tu… Flee, if you think me insane. You turn your head. Lemme sit down. One cigarette stub, nothing more. I want to embrace it with my teeth, tell you something and leave. You no longer resist, Ana. You are finally responding to my words by turning your head. I am an ungrateful dog. Ah well. At least I feel full now that I can sit next to you without obtrusion, even lie down and be with you in this way. Whenever so I desire.
You don’t think that we started this off in the best way possible? You, me, an abandoned bench and Fifi. Only solitude can make you put up with an insane person. Solitude and insanity.For I am insane. This is not mere circumstance, a particular one, of insanity. Many a bench puts up with an insane person, the streetcar bars hang the retards that hang themselves atop them and brush their sweat against the travellers. We are the rapists of our life pillars. Where do I start now? In what order should I tell you of myself? Of you? When there are so many topics you would like to hear? Well, let’s start somewhere…
THE GIRL GETS UP, TAKES HER DOG WITH HER.
HE IS BY HIMSELF.
If you put yourself in my position, you will see that all of this is quite a normal reaction. I link things up in the moment. You are to me the only woman on all of these benches where various Fifis are lined up to whom I want to entrust my case. The brain would think that I am the only one for you too. Why is it frightening then to have trust in a stranger? I beg the Stranger to listen to me. He is our representative when troubles ensue. Why is it frightening to sit still on a bench next to a man, who…who…
RETCHING.
ANOTHER GIRL WITH A DOG SITS ON THE BENCH.
You must be under pressure too and have a lot of suitors on the bench. It is hard to keep all that plastic and those boards under control. Imagine them shoving close to each other, one, two, three. The bench would crack. I hope we settled this now.
HE TURNS TO THE GIRL.
I do not want to approach other girls, on other benches. I am not polyamorous nor do I want to get into three-or-four benches, and then not know where to go first. You can change the bench if you still had some prejudices. You are always the same to me. Perfect. No objections.
THE GIRL GETS UP FROM THE BENCH AND TAKES THE DOG WITH HER.
Let me bug you about myself a bit. Let me explain a bit, about how I wound up on the park bench.
THE NEXT GIRL TAKES PLACE ON THE BENCH WITH A NEARLY IDENTICAL DOG.
I got a divorce six or seven minutes ago. Don’t look at me funnily, don’t bite that hand of yours, angel. For I am no longer aware of what the minute is, let alone the date. It isn’t something I really need to etch into my memory. I don’t complain, I had a harmonious marriage. No kids. A fireplace. The mother-in-law was a good knitter, I had a print store and a gift shop. Still, one day, with everything between being a perfect system, the talking in the house simply died. Each to their own wall, grabbing a piece and warming their hands. The eyes of my mother-in-law were observing the needlepoint and got stuck there forever. I no longer drank coffee with my wife, and I won’t even go into dinner.
ARMS OUTSPREAD.
Nobody was commenting on the movie anymore!
CRIES.
THE GIRL LISTENS TO HIM GIVING HIM FULL ATTENTION.
If you were to ask my ex-wife, we never argued once even during madness, or ovulation, or upon arrival of bills, let alone gifts and the packaging of the morning coffee, if you were to ask…who is to be blamed for the divorce, she would probably say: Him. He is to blame. Peter. You asking me? You asking?
-I’m asking.
-Thank you, Ana.I will say: Pipi is to blame…
-Pipi?
SIGH.
That is how it came to pass. Fate? Possibly.
‘How so?’
A SIGH LATER, NEARLY A SECOND LONG She feels how a tear rolls down his face which, again, leaves the female listener across from them in a seemingly emotionally moved state. It appeared as if both the lady and the dog were listening carefully, while he struggled with his breath which he caught again in order to continue the tale, struggling with evidently lived pain and fear.
– It was all but smoke. Ash.Dark powder. Kind of like when you breathe in something indescribably nasty. The word Divorce has its own life, its own pulse. It has a cold air about it. Like if you were mid-Siberia. Nobody around.
PUTS HANDS ON KNEES.
– Okay, let me be brief, miss because I could go on like this like Dostoyevski, meaning, unendingly.
He turned towards her in confidentiality and hopeful, but came to realize that the bench was empty. He nodded in acknowledging the realization. Still, her departure cannot prevent him from continuing the story. A female conspiracy was put into action against him which culminated in a divorce, so the pile of dames and Fifi that are running from some singles’ benches out there in parks around town was nothing to him. Still it was getting dark, and the cold wind was slapping his cheeks. Glum, he was silent, for a man who’s alone does not speak, he merely lifts his hands in the air to drive a nail or two in his own coffin of solitude. We sink into silence as if it were the ocean. Only after we give ourselves up to dark thoughts does salvation come, a new chance which slides and stumbles amid the benches and park trees. A broad or two slide next to it, sailing along in the dim night, thick-thighs and scantily clad torsos all around. The pieces made up a woman spotting a cheap, bleached hair who held in her hand a worn-out knife and a cracked mirror.
– I shall tell you, I shall tell you all…utter it, my head bowed, as a perjurer and a profligate, the wrecker of the idyllic – the woman was looking at him in wonderment, and her eyes, cold and uncompromising, slid off of the glassy catafalque of the mirror which gave with its shine shadow to all of her wrinkles hidden by the night. She is telling a tale, giving birth to subplots, plots, her face moistened by cottony tears which wet the silent paper upon which he somehow writes and is getting angry before the cheat of life that she took his home, with a sudden, inappropriate silence.
– It all died, dear Lady. The shifty woman shrunk the man to the size of Tom Thumb. What she did to me, I am not too clear on even today. – The woman with bleached hair bowed her head towards him a bit, barely controlling the laughter concealed behind two rows of her overly huge teeth, snug and tightened into her corset which leaves nothing to the imagination, feeling that some sort of evil blood is flowing through this mad man’s veins, mad man who could be a killer, a kidnapper or merely a simple worn-out and pathetic basic life form without a penny to his name.
He continues his story, observing the soil at his feet not providing him with answers. He stomped on the broken bottle glass which was suddenly there, he gets even darker and retreats into the coat which reminded him of the coldness of the moment, as he spoke, as he was complaining to the mistress of the Night, the vampiress with eyeshadow on her lips and rouge round her eyes. He grabbed her bare forearm and squeezing her nickel, he looked at her as if he will growl at her at any moment. This is how he won her over to listen to him, his face was strengthened with peace, and his eyes shined and lips moved in tiny tremors as if he were sucking on a succulent udders of an overly giving (generous, in the mood) cow.
– After the conversation died down, I would remain all by myself with the king-size bed and the fridge, a television set partway to death and nothing else besides all that! The mother-in-law, of course, picked up her needlepoints with swearing and mewling and departed the three-roomed home demonstrably, she even denounced the kitchen. A hundred square meters, my fair lady, and all of THAT in the house.
– That?
– Oil sketches, San Vincenzo and Nature Morta done in needlepoint. She left it all there.
– And the wife?
– Left on a short trip, with Pipi, of course. Her animal mask.A bitch twin. Actually, I have this notion that this is all Pipi’s fault.
– It cannot be!
artist: Sofia Bonati
I know the nature of doubt. The whirlwind of trickery contains an endless number of smaller whirlpools of seemingly irrelevant events. Upon it all, I was willing and able to face her mother’s will who suggested that I was the worst man, one of devastating actions. Seemingly unnoticeably, she used potatoes instead of a fan. She stuck she-butterflies in slight potatoes in order to wave their wings in front of her shifty face. And my Anna, she was a sort of she-Oedipus…whatever the term for women is for that.
She is, for instance, bothered by doubt of me having an affair, and suddenly she would stop with the doubt and look at the mother-in-law. She would chew on her mouthfuls and smirking on the other side, the swollen side. In her own home she put on the mask of vengeance since the marriage of her daughter to an older printer was a motive born out of pure lust of her naïve little Annie.
– Annie, you need a powerful man of Antique build. Just like the one whose muscles I stabbed here on my needlepoint.
However, she and her doubt became one. A stone of crude profile rolling and gathering various bits and bobs. But this was far before…before…
WEEPS. CONTINUES AFTER A FEW SECONDS WITH A CALMER VOICE.
She went silent on one particular day in May, the 14th to be exact, after I have been outside of the house, for I have complicated my own life with freelance work, the earnings of which I wanted to use to buy her that piano she so desperately wanted. And more oil paintings, that Vincenzo for instance. That morning, hung over from work and sunken from the anguish, with sunken cheekbones from leaning them on the wrist of my weary hand, with my head like a lid of a burnt saucepan, I called her in my love for that phenomenon of a woman we love, a phenomenon for she has a hold of us by the cosiest place in our heads where crushed husbands separated from their needs due to her more and more prominent headaches, and also faithful and honest, are collecting all sorts of cockroaches and ossicles…
– You killed our marriage – she explained and then it was all over with.
If I did, in fact, kill it, it was due to vast and enormous love.
– Oh, pish-posh!
The harlot rises and drags the cracked mirror along with her. She leaves the divorced man be. He is yelling at her, interrupted in his story yet again.
– Of course, all you want is money. More money, and then you will understand. You’re not going anywhere, because I have to finish what I started. Only the Harlot of the night can understand me. Want an ax in your head? No, that would be too violent, right?
She was flailing with the night where her butchery voice pierced the heavens. She escaped under the sight of an ax which was looking at her inquisitively, seeking for a spot where it could drive its blade and lay bare any hidden molars under her hair.
– Yes… – he sighed. – Still, I need no one. I will listen to myself.
He sat this way as if he were waiting for someone or something, surrounded by thick foliage which loomed over him like threatening Titans, baroque rhetoric which cut open the silence of the night in the form of a whisper, he was sad but talkative and clever.
However, he did not remain all by himself. He felt the presence of a young poodle which, with its bloodshot eyes and presence, lit up to him the entire bench scene along with its gigantic trees that stretched its tentacles from the windy side of the park above the head of the divorced man. Before him, she growled angrily, with a sound created by lightning which gives shade to the stormy sky using its flashes of rage and wrath. The bark of the tiny Fifi, a multiple cloned poodle, was swallowing the silence, and its mane was lined with silvery lines of the aristocratic litter that was her skin. Oh how beautiful this Dame is.
The woolly hat on her head was undergoing piloerection and took on the shape of a well-coiffed hairstyle that Anna loved. Fifi’s eyes, painfully empathetic, gave away the female Dandy which was assessing the sufferer, only to jump into his lap and take off another chunk of meat. She growled silently but pleased.
– A bit slim, but still gracious. You will understand, little Fifi. You, oh pleasant comfort, wife with the bark of consolation, temperamental slicker with a button-nose. Coquette of humans, warm, come to my lap, Fifi, you realized, unlike your Mistress, that I did not poison her dog which was a present from her mother, her little Pipi. I did not, and even if I did, it was not out of jealousy, but the flesh, it was the toxic flesh, and she could not control her hunger. She bit me and poisoned herself.
I am full of cyanide, for I am alone and unloved. Pipi did, however, have some of your facial features, oh you coquette bitch. I laughed aloud after I had entered the apartment as if I were entering a bat cave, but it was not laughter that a happy being stretched out due to joy, it was desperation, it was torture. Even now I grin, but bareheaded and alone, I keep hiccoughing and do vomit on occasion, right here in this tiny nylon bag. Fifi, want some? No? She has criteria.
The dog jumped onto the bench and climbed into the divorcee’s lap.
– My sweet little poisoned Pipi. After Annie left, I went downhill completely. I lost my job, my printing shop. I closed my little store even before that. I lost my car. My Fiat Punto bought four months before the divorce for ninethousandandfivehundred Deutsch marks. Everything, everything went down following her leaving, everything except Vincenzo. Oh how I remember it, Pipi! It was me who was carrying sacks of cement on my back, setting up wardrobes, because I swore that I would set wardrobes up on our wedding day. I swore on the ring and my sound mind. Why did she leave me? Did love irrelevant to our wedding vows not burn within her? She was as steady as the wind and as passionate as Aphrodite. Without a doubt, she found a better handyman…for her wardrobes.
– You killed our marriage the moment you poisoned Pipi. You could not stand me loving her more than you.
Hearing this word, I realized that the time for pleasantries was up. Her face was the face of an offended lover, her face was wild, red, measured only in her lip movement. – You killed my Pipi. – Her face was however as sensitive as a plank, a she-avenger of her sweetheart which…and this keeps me in turmoil. For I had wanted a Fifi of my own, I wanted her gentleness and mercy. Thus they declared me an abuser of female canines and the poisoner motivated by jealousy and unreturned canine love.
When the car goes downhill, the thread we hold in our hand cannot stop it.
The words Shipwreck of a Marriage, or perhaps Catastrophe are getting closer with a steady gallop, the broken cart is oftentimes covered with FREEDOM inscribed on it, you could definitely see in that pile of worm-eaten boards a few that were intact and that could be saved as compensation and consolation that pushes us to the surface. The horizon of new hope is banging widely against the rubble and darkness and stopping somewhere on the doorstep of the golden stars which dive into the heavens readying new surprises, well known to Cupid. Lovely, broken down cart squealing in pain, derelict in the muck where the vipers squirm, let them!
This is when Annie undertook that type of tyranny which spiteful souls wear like a vein ulcer, and it is the tyranny of silence. ‘Intolerance’ – I spoke with my own tongue.
Upon poisoning Pipi, she got the idea of her own poisoning, which she would use as a tool against me. In vain were all of my reassurances that Pipi and I did not cross over to that other side of respect which would break down the relationships we have barked up carefully over the years, all for Annie. The fact that I did not have a dog of my own, as an antipode, or a cat, was speaking for itself. It is possible that my flaunting before her cutesy barking at times caused revolt and doubt that I am doing something underhanded or at least plotting revenge, for our eyes (Pipi’s and mine) often clashed in olive-green shines which spoke: The time will come… I was pretending so well. I hated Pipi the same way I loved my Annie.
Why did I hate her? That mutt was whom she kept in her lap, that mutt in her bed, fidgeting against her comb working on her locks – that mutt, smug and arrogant it fumbled around with its fur turning its ass to me in the process and shaking off the bug powder onto me, with the dignity of the household pet, it would shake its hips spitefully entering the Mistress of the house’s bedroom. I had never seen a haughtier creature than that bitch, self-absorbed, self-sufficient, subordinating everything and everyone to her will. If I were to step into Annie’s room, she would growl at me, and that tongue, that smooth tongue would be lolled out in my face and I could clearly hear her say: Get lost. I had never heard her say this out loud because I am not insane…but her thoughts were telling me this, her eyes… within those pupils where wickedness spread, those were but tiny telltale signs sent by her eyes where a laughter of pleasure was splashing about, then tears of joy would trickle along with saliva and drool onto my trouser legs which she tore off with her teeth.
One lovely day, in the hallway, in front of my wife’s bedroom, I found Pipi’s corpse. I shrugged apathetically and muttered ‘At last’, like a ventriloquist. I wanted, with my own two hands, both firm and husbandly, those of the man of the house, to rashly burry the poodle’s locks of hair sprayed with Chanel into the treetop and to throw her away in a trashcan.
Annie found Pipi dead (‘she was scratching all night, using hope, faith and her love to me, her unconscious saviour, to revive the stimuli which would keep her alive’) getting out of bed and opening the door with a smile on her pale grey face welcoming the morning, when she was met by an extended red tongue and rolled up eyes. The rug on the floor and the soft meat intensify the memory of Lili, her previous dog that was poisoned (by pure accident and the fault of the cat called Lilith, which was confirmed without a doubt). Looking at her Lil Pipi, her eyes bore both madness and glow. At first, a time to rise, and now a time to descend.
She ordered Pipi’s corpse brought to her with a coarse voice. She observed the dead rug with its red tongue out and kept silent. Pipi’s body had an entire carpet of dust on it. That arrogant little beast, that dirtied bride was now at long last effortlessly observing the world. Her eyes were dim plates enveloped in cortex. Her whites were gone in the darkness, extinguished, never to be resurrected. Her corpse was covered in crusty boils of unknown origin. Annie lifted her up with her satin gloved hands and screamed into the darkness of the open maw of her dead poodle.
– No, this isn’t true, you cannot be dead!
I laughed and gave myself away. The laughter of a monster on the other side of the glass which was separating us clashed with the past of all the sorrows of Annie. Namely, for Pipi’s death (as claimed by the cook as a witness) a cat-like beast with her eye out was responsible, a beast that was advancing towards the window glass where Pipi stood with her ass out observing the world. I don’t have to tell you that this window was in my wife’s bedroom.
After the mysterious death of Pipi (so, the one completely confirmed by eyewitness reports, the cat that looked like it belonged to Poe, one eye, furious to the core, offered Pipi her plate, and Pipi licked it clean) Annie did not eat for days, bed-ridden, with eyes that stared dully in the distance… and when she got up, she said:
– I want to have a coffee with my husband.
I squealed in pure joy, to which she gave me an intense stare. Still, I could not even fathom what kind of marital problems awaited me upon Pipi’s unexpected demise, may she rest in peace.
– She was bad for you anyway… – I consoled her. – She looked like all of those popular starlets with their fucked up heads. Except she was a bitch, of course.
The door to our home suddenly became heavier. Far too heavy. So did the table, and the doors, and windows, and the coffee which was getting cold. The fear that she would think I had anything to do with the…with the poisoning…you know? No, you most certainly would not even think that see I’m not some jealous husband, and jealous of dogs no less, those little bitches? No, I knew Annie’s temperament and fear of her accusing me was overtaking me and had its tongue out like a snake when twisting itself around a tree.
Everything was still peaceful, cosy around us. At the coffee drinking table, there was fruit in a miniature flowerpot, flowers of padded red hair, a tiny Cupid framed in glass, photos of Pipi. Taken by the glee with which she posed with Pipi on the photos and the aforementioned Cupid, she took small sips of coffee and shot me a few times with tiny flashes of her tinier eyes, like a hard-working questioner, with an indifferent face.
– They should all be killed.
– Who, honey? – I asked mercifully.
– Those cats with rabies.
– Oh, yes.
– Beat them to paste.
– Ah yes. – I could barely utter any words, as if I were not drinking coffee, but eating a heavy porridge of glue.
– Pipi gave my life sense, and now I need something to put me down and to sleep when the sense is gone – Annie said this and took a few chill pills.
– A shame that I don’t have a sniffer. Eh, what do I need it for, oral use is better. Twice oral, before and after coffee. Give me that silver teaspoon on the table. Those bloody cooks steal silverware. Ah well. I will crush it next time. I don’t like to swallow them whole. I always had the fear that they will get lodged into my oesophagus.
Tai Shan Schierenberg : 2008 Alter Ego
I was listening to her, pale, holding the teaspoon, obedient as a dog. What does she need it for? Annie is sucking on the pill and through her tongue rolls it somewhere down to the stomach where powder and blood will face off.
Every morning since then, since Pipi’s death, whether crushing the pill with teaspoons or not, a sad image kept repeating words or the word through the image carved the gradual druggedness of Annie deeper. Blessed, ready for family life and relaxing conversations we used to have – those of water, power, the vacuum cleaner, the gift store and the fiscal cash register – she was resting on a cloud of sorts known only to her where she was with her Pipi, where anger and rage and lust were nowhere around her. The Pillmania spirit had taken his hold of her.
As she closed her eyes, while I spoke of the public utility, they appeared as two female lovers glued together, one to another. She had little eyes like two sickles. Thus the two sickles are looking somewhere on the inside, like a moon in its crescent phase enjoying itself, silent as it sails across the night sky. A little arc is sailing across the sea which is getting tangled below him and takes on its reflection which is swimming in the dim light of our cafeteria, whose walls already took on the hue of the upcoming sunset.
The pill mania made me feel sick. Unnoticeably sick, though, and the feeling of abandonment, as if I were a weak calf on some distant field, was too strong for the calf so forcefully weaned, grasping for breath and grazing somewhere far away where it will grow old and die. All in all, the coffee now tasted like bile, and I felt what it was like living in darkness by yourself, like a creature of the deep what has bright, electric lights for eyes.
Still, if only it remained like this, but she was quickly overtaken by insanity and rage. She left the pills, threw a coffee cup at me once while I was entering, telling me to go on then and get lost. This place was clearly one person too many now.
– But, I love you – I tried to play the dog love card which she appreciated so.
Annie put her hand where her heart should be.
– There is nothing here, do you understand? – her eyes glimmered, became frozen and emotionless. The neurotic laughter repelled and attracted doubt.
– What is happening to you, Annie, my Venus? Where did this come from? What does it all mean? How come you have no heart? Should I call the doctor?
– What doctor, fool? No doctor can re-heart me, for I do not feel. I do not love you. Do you understand me now? You simply annoy me because you suck.
– Why do you do this? What did I do wrong? – I flailed my hands while talking. – I will get you a new dog. Just don’t… My Venus. Will you not?
– A new dog? – her hands went over my face and she stared me directly into my eyes. I felt the coursing and the warmth.
– Besides, even if you did not love me, Annie… Screw love, right? We are after all merely husband and wife. We’re not lovers of Verona. Friendship is what matters.
– I’ll show you a new dog, Poisoner! – Ah, you really do keep spiting me. Would a pointer not calm you down?
The spite was really strong. No words, no sound, no letter. I waited. As Simonov says, wait for me, and I’ll come back! Wait in patience yet.
Suddenly, from her throat where it felt as if a ghost of late Pipi dwelled the little bitch growled, shoving her snout through her oesophagus squeezing out a barrage of hysterical punches at me.
– Dear, your coffee is getting cold. – My metamorphosis as an act of reconciliation and bravery was brimming with elegance, contrasted to her squeal and her arms which wrapped around my neck like two dark serpents twisted into a ball. Her arms, I noticed, were lengthy and long, mixed with air which drained matter, bone and blood from them. She was warming up, a vicious disease of fire had beaten her, and the roots of her arm hairs stank of burn. She slowly started turning into molten gold, her hair caught fire – in short, she was burning in rage right in front of me, and this is plausible, I’ve read about self-immolation as a reaction to extensive stress.
This is how I killed my wife, fried off the wings of a butterfly, because of the sin that was her oversized and somewhat impure love for Pipi. Her loves were kept safe, more accurately her touches of love only knew of that mane, that grey mane of Lady Pipi, Her highborn highness whose bones are now drying up in the shadowy wind. But, despite spontaneous combustion, other than the experts I could reference, I had no evidence that it was indeed me who did not kill her. A petrol canister in the shed, a few matches and a motive: poisoning the bitch. I was picturing it: fire comes with the poisoner, the lousy potion is smoking in the ashes, mixed in with it and the bones of the beloved animal. I fried her with my jealousy, she was all smoking and smoking away at long last, she was extinguishing herself, turning into ash and all ashen and powdery like that she dissolved right there, in front of my eyes. I went up and down the room with an unlit cigar in hand, frantically thinking – Should I tell them she fell asleep with her cigar lit? It used to happen to her. These things happen, inspector, my friend, hahaha.
– I did not burn my wife yesterday, because when I went home at five (during the self-immolation), my salesman asked me this. – Peter, how are you handling all of this? These people are nuts. Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing… – This I said somewhat dragging it out, all sticky-like as if I hadn’t eaten in a while and there was a potential bread piece stuck to the inside of my oesophagus. This reptile of a salesman, this schemer, could testify that at the moment of Annie’s death I was not only absent but also filled with kindly thoughts. I was still thinking of this possibility, and then I scooped up all of the ashes into one ashtray with two fish-lipped buds and with the pedantry of a concentrated actor I laid Annie’s remains onto the canopy bed. Here is where she lay prostrate with Pipi, the two of them, inseparable lovers, feeding each other caviar pate.
I went to work by train. It was cold, but not too cold, although not too warm either. I asked myself what keeps the people warm under this gale which caresses the skin as gently as a skeletal hand would, eternally un-warm, the icy liberators of the oesophagus. Confused and pondering, exactly like a man whose wife had just spontaneously combusted before his eyes, I was trudging along the street covered in snow. At least I seemed to think so. I was late getting my alibi because I wanted to be late (ah let them get me, I confess to everything, other than poisoning Pipi, that I did not do), bearing but one thought into oblivion akin to an Unfinished Fantasy. I wasn’t skilful enough to burn her completely, and then, as we know, feelings of the loved, burned being race. Annie could talk of the consequences of an earthquake in South America and, of course, the Great Pyramid.
The pyramid is aligned exactly according to the cardinal directions of the planet.
Annie, this thing is like coffee, muck on the mouth and teeth as it seems to me, that sweet residue, and it is never wrong. It gets between my fangs, making my front row teeth look like a black star.
Stop it, you moron! What residue, what coffee?! Science stuck its fingers into the eyes of the great mystery and is digging away at it. When I was young, I noticed mysteries all around us. Hand me the third eye. Here is what the PhD MA PR The hell says about it…
– The pyramid is in the centre of the aggregate mass of the Earth.
And coffee..
– Unbelievable!
She would then take her coffee in her (right) hand, and the UFO stories in her left, while she would put the Legendary Times Magazine pledgets on her moist forehead.
– I was wrong to marry you. Now I know. Pipi, bark, damn it. Pipi is laughing at the confusion of charlatans and astral readers, those imprisoned by common sense. Pipi has no sense, hence why she makes sense of everything. I think she is aware of the mystery and its resolution. These days I feel like she is trying to learn our language. But you could not understand this. Read on, Pipi:
Dead, and once alive Pipette: bow wow wowwoooowwooow!
PIPI – The angles of the pyramid divide the Nile delta region into two identical halves.
In the cup of coffee, there are the male and the female side. The river in the coffee is the sludge of Nile.
PIPI – The pyramid is the perfect geodetic swivel and directional point.
ME-TO-ANNIE-ONCE-WHEN-THE-BITCH-WAS-ALIVE;
Our marriage was going really well while there was coffee on the table. That’s it, perhaps, perhaps. You know the reason was also you buying plastic cups, and the sludge and residue lost on weight. In order for you not to think that my theories are completely wrong, understand that if the pyramid is a myth, our marriage is an anti-myth.
– If the basis of the pyramid’s surface is divided by twice the half of this monument, you get Pi=3.1416
DOUBLE THAT AND WE HAVE PIPI.
– The sum of the surface area of all four sides of the pyramid is equal to the square of its height.
To this, I had no response.
PIPI (victoriously) – bow wow wow
ANNIE –That’s it. Tell him. Long live Pipi. Bow wow wow
PIPI – Bow wow
ANNIE – Bow wow
The barking stopped.
I sat on a bench of the platform housing a decommissioned train (thus I knew that I’d missed at least one) and gleefully came to a conclusion that the snow wasn’t melting for a while, which meant that leaving tracks in the snow was an inevitability. I observed the railroad before me and thought how numerous children must have died during the South American earthquake. In the distance, I heard male voices, from what I could tell it might’ve been an argument regarding some unsold candlesticks.
– They argue so much, and they aren’t even married. Nothing is guaranteed to us nowadays, not-a-thing.
Gazing at the floating snowflakes, for a second, that very second I covered my face with the warm palm of my hand taken out of my coat pocket mere moments before. I did so because I wanted to feel warmth right then and there, I wanted to prevent another memory of the spontaneously combusted Annie leak from out my eyes and, most certainly, the memory of the divorce gained with a single thunder strike. With no paperwork nor complications. Under agreement – with fire. The sound announcing the train’s arrival was heard in the distance. The wind started blowing harder.
I got up and moved towards the coming train, towards the known silence. After a couple of steps I stood, hands in pockets, unruly gaze, I was looking at the train in the distance, yet closer every subsequent second. The howl of the locomotive cast me, yet again, for but a mere moment, into the memory of that one hour when Pipi was poisoned, and Annie caught fire, an hour where I decided to abandon my life, and after I had found an alibi, a proper replacement, to walk away from it. I felt dizzy.
The train was stopping at the platform. I turned back for a second, noticing people rushing with bags in hands and realized that mine were in my pockets. Everything I ever needed could fit within the contents of a coat pocket. I entered the train with an unnaturally clear desire, I wanted to stop feeling. Did that inevitably include me no longer existing as well?
This is how I found myself here. You can accurately guess that I did not board that train. I am waiting for them, to pick me up, to arrest me, toss me in the slammer and feed me pipi pates.
FIFI FROM THE BENCH: Bow!
My hungry little snorting sweety, shall we give in? Go back to them? Pipi, you had your vengeance. See. I underestimated you. I thought you were no more than an ordinary… mutt. I forgot that you were a bitch. I mean, it’s no familiarity, nor title. Titles are for those who moil, and also for vain monarchs. We will be desensitized, dear Pipi, towards everything from now on. You might help me better understand Annie, as well as the mystery of the pyramids, therefore I beg of you, Fifi, to do me the honour of becoming my wife, there. I will get you both a dress and a little hat. You see, Pipi, it’s not that bad being a lady with such a bitch around like you. We would be like the perfect pair of gloves. How did I miss that? I missed my wife, I missed the marriage, and here there is a glorious, clever bitch that knows how to listen. Yes, I am he who speaks, because everyone around me fell silent. All is dead. Other than the well-known spots, they never die.
PETTING THE DOG TRYING TO BITE HIM.
My wicked thing. Let’s go home, Annie is in that ashtray waiting. I might light a cigarette, with a cup of coffee. One would say I didn’t love her, but over her ashes, I will repent for all that I did, with marriage vows and the coffee-ritual. Who knows, maybe she went somewhere, I am ready for questioning, hell let them burry me even. I deserved it.
GRABS DOG’S LEASH AND GETS UP
I feel a bit tired, a bit virus-stricken too yeah…I didn’t bring my hat…Annie will love seeing you alive and not killed by me, She might rematerialize and revive our marriage out of sheer happiness and in all her thickness compared to the clay pigeons walking in the parks. Maybe I’m Annie? Hehe. My left arm hurts (the muscles of both the forearm and the upper ar,), it always hurt Annie…Now her spasms are at my disposal. New life, Pipi. I have enough willpower. I fear no God, let alone those lazy-asses the cops and paramedics, hehe. Mere mortals, the lot of them. Perhaps you could help him realize…like you did with me and the pyramid thing. There. Homeward…no rush. With one break the length of a short eternity…What do you say, Pipi? You don’t care? Huh? Thank you so much. And here I missed the Champion’s league to take you for a walk. I’m not complaining. I prefer this and want nothing in return. Maybe a kiss, if we get home anytime soon. At least to make it worth something…
Peroratio: Marco
TURNS TOWARDS THE POODLE
More? There will be more when we get home and I tell you what’s on my mind. Go on and grin. He who laughs last…Not talking? Angry? I had no attention to anger nor offend you. Not my thing. Not my MO. Of all feelings, I only know those that are nice and bring joy. If I went overboard or made a mistake somewhere, tell me and then gnaw me to death. How? Put your mouth to mine and don’t let me breathe. Then cast me to the cats to be eaten. Fin. No more Peter. And seek another companion, Perhaps you will find one if an old-timer is still walking this planet. Though, it will be tough.
POODLE: Bow wow wow
PETER: Bow wow wow
THEY TAKE OFF. SOMEWHERE.
..ele apertou a mão de Chekhov e continuou escrevendo, enquanto resmungava: “Deus sabe onde ele te levou, não vê que estou a terminar a minha tese de licenciatura? Se eu não a entregar a tempo, não me vou tornar médico. Volte para onde veio! O próprio Monge Negro enviou-o para interferir na minha carreira! Tenho de me pentear e calçar! “, disse o russo, tentando livrar-se do viajante do tempo. Na história, eles são Sholokhov e Turgenev. E deixe-me
