jurisprudent
06-13-2010, 05:22 AM
You have seen the evening, when it slowly starts to creep, it is around six o’clock and its get cooler, the sun is not so heavenly bright, and you can walk home, amidst the heat, while you feel the oncoming dark and hot night. Sticky night. Lighted globes, flickering images, glittering walls of brightness showered on the streets. People meet, part and meet again. Figures lose their weight, lose out of sight, and sometimes appear again, transformed, transfixed, transcendent. The day dies out, the dust and dirt is cleared in the air, and the new feeling starts to lurch in the doorways, under the carpets, away from the twinkle of last sunrays. Then you can feel the vibe of the feet and the bodies, the slight scent of steam and heat and sweat, the breaths of the multitude, the sighs of the many smiling lips searching in the dusk. This is the pulse we love to seek, to feel, and it beats, as a second heart, as a big strong pump of night blood sending shocking kicks into the brain and the feet; and we get up, Lazaruses of the evening lights, and walk the streets to the beacons of night sparks.
Almost seven, we sit in the car, he is smoking a cigar, in his new blue shirt, with his strong hands round the steering wheel, waiting for her call. It is time to go out. The day has been tedious, boring, filled with worries to the brim, and the neck aches for a drink to stifle the insecurities and bring us on the paths of joy. I sit motionless, looking through a pair of glasses how the trees tremble in the last minutes of heat. It is time, he says, high time she got ready and we got on the road. Just two kilometers away, in the summer garden of the bar, we are going to drink, and laugh, and spend the coming night. The shades will be creeping around us, under the wide umbrella, and the music will be on, loud and energetic, so we will drink under the beats of the steady electric rhythm, as we always do. When she comes.
Half past seven, he starts to get nervous, the night is coming with a cool swift waves of air, the branches of the trees shake instantly, and we start calling her. No answer. He is angry, leaves the car and goes into the white three storey building where she lives. I sit alone, in the warm car, and dream of the beats. Then he calls me, and I have to run up the stairs, the door is opened, and I see her body, on the bed, in her night gown, with black hairs spilt on the blanket and the pillow, her eyes closed and motionless. No blood around, nothing. The window is open, the night air is coming in our faces. Something is wrong. He touches her wrist, the beat of her pulse is silent, almost dead, so he calls for an ambulance, we hurry around her body in the meantime, waiting for the medics. They come with a stretcher, and get the body onto it. The body is still breathing they say, but is comatose. We drive behind the ambulance, the evening streets are full of cars hurrying to catch the beat of the night, and we have to be slow and careful. But he is angry and nervous and irritant. He shouts and talks loudly, swearing again and again. I say – calm down, she is going to the hospital, and will be alright. But he cannot talk or think calmly. We rush into the hall of the hospital, the stringent smell of neutral medicine-like whiteness wafts around, and we follow the stretcher until we are forbidden entry into the emergency room. Come on, I say, sit down and wait, just sit and wait, nothing more. God, I say, you cannot do anything now. We both remember last February when she overdosed on pills and she fainted in a club where they were dancing, and then we took her to the hospital, and finally she was okay. Everything will be okay in the end. I walk down the corridor, where a child awaits the mother. The mother’s face is bruised, she has been beaten, severely, and now she walks hand in hand with the child, a little boy, and they disappear behind the corner. I go back to the foyer, the night is down upon the city, but he is still so nervous and wild and I say to him – you know her habits, you know what she does, and what always happens, now calm down and stop worrying. But he is entranced. First, he says he will kill her. Then – beat her to death. Later, he says he loves her, he wants her. In the end, he hits a coca cola machine and I stare at his big body in a blue shirt walking up and down in the lighted foyer. The other people look at him in disbelief and wonder. The door of the emergency room opens and we go straight in, she is lying there, her face is pale, white, and the doctor says she will probably survive the overdose, but nothing can be completely certain at that point. It is not her first time, right, he asks, and we say, no, maybe her third or fourth. Tranquilants, painkillers, drugs of all sorts, and she keeps taking them. Addiction – no, she just likes some excitement when we go out, you know, the night and all, we have to have fun. It is not a game, the doctor says, but we are now a bit relieved, yes, we are now okay, because she will get well soon. Go home, he says, and come back in the morning, maybe she will be awake.
But he will not go home. No, he says, I will find the bastard who sells all that **** to her and I will beat him to death, I swear, he says, and we drive first to her flat, where we look for a clue. He finds her bag and thrusts it open, spilling all the content on the white blanket, while I sit and watch the accessories fall on the bed. Make up, a phone, a purse, a lipstick, a purple veil. He finds a small nylon bag with several pills in it, and a name on it, written with small letters. He takes her phonebook, neatly written pages with hundred of names and phone numbers, and searches. Then he shows me the name and next to it – the address of a club, Mosquito. I know it, a charming crowded place, with pale lights and loud music, and a cool garden. We get into the car, he is even angrier than before, he continues to swear and threaten, and I know we have to find the man, and he will beat that man, he beats all men who ever cross his way.
Mosquito is loud again, two floors, several waitresses going up and down, the garden is behind, people dance to the deafening sound, they are drunk or drugged or simply happy. We go to the barman, who stares at us with suspicious eyes. We tell him the name, and he shrugs his shoulders, he knows nothing of it. Then we move on, it is a dark room, hot and sweaty place, the limelight is red and some girls dance entranced under the steady beat. I look around, eyes and faces turn and twist, they cannot be held still, all is moving, fingers touching, lips pressing, the voices disappear and fade in the vague light. I go to the dj, put the piece of paper in front of him, he looks at it for a second, then points at a staircase behind the room. We go down, the music fades, then we feel vibrations, we have entered a new hall full of mirrors, lights - white, yellow, red, blue, are wildly mixing and crawling up the glass walls. The music is toned down, more monotonous, the tempo is slower but gets deeper in the brain, and we rush to the far end, where a man is sitting alone, he is the only man in the room, otherwise full of dancing girls. I throw a glance at them, their slim bodies weaving in the invisible sound waves, bouncing in the midst of the music milieu. The man is looking at a sheet of paper, we try to talk with him, but he cannot hear us. I make a sign, we walk outside into the garden and feel the fresh cooler wind in the night. I look at his face, big eyes, brown, bald head, 35 or so, and his body, very slim and neat, white shirt over his tanned skin. My friend starts shouting, he asks whether he knows her, whether he has ever sold her anything, they argue for a moment, and my friend hits him, he loses balance and falls to the ground, my friend hits him again, the music gets louder, a bunch of people stay aside looking at us, the man is lying on the ground, his nose bleeding, and the lights suddenly go out, then a joyful scream comes from inside, the girls are dancing to the beat, and a shriek comes, I look at my friend, he is bleeding, his stomach is bleeding, he falls to his knees, and I rush to him. He has blood in his mouth, bitter taste, I hold his big body, and he tries to jump over the other man, but he is holding a knife, the blade covered with blood. He looks for a second, his face is smeared with blood, and runs to the exit. I feel the sweat, the beat inside my head and outside, in the tremble of the air, and I shout – call an ambulance, quick. He is bleeding, he has three wounds, big wounds, and his blue shirt is soaked in blood. I hear the ambulance, the medics coming with a stretcher, they push me aside, and I rush after them, the sound is left behind me, the people stand and watch bewildered, while I walk down the street to the car. A second siren comes, a police car stops, I try to run to the car but they stop me. The policeman is rude, he pushes me away, I feel entrapped between him, the waves of beat and the bystanders. The blood is running fierce within my brain, I am sweating, maybe tears fill my eyes, and I try to speak, but the policeman pushes me into the car, he wants to talk with me.
I lean to the left, the air in the police car is hot, I smell cheap food and cigarettes. The other policeman looks at my hands and says – nice palms. I look at my palms, soft and white, and I fear his voice and I say – yes, they are nice. He wants to tell him what happened. I start from us arriving in the club, then move on to the scene in the garden and my friend’s wounds. I describe the other man. The policemen stare at me, their eyes are fixed on my face and my body. Come with us, one of them say, and the car starts on through the night, with the warm air wafting alongside the smoke from the cigarette of one of them. The city is alight, bright, blinking and swirling images full of sparks. I want to light a cigarette but they would not allow me to. I am not arrested but they need my witness statement. We pass by the houses and the blocks of apartments, by the bars and discotheques, through alleyways of silence where I hear crickets and through areas of blasting sound, a wall of steady beat coming from the clubs. One of the policemen say – nobody’s safe now, all the freaks come out and go to bars for a couple of drinks or more. The other nods, no, the freaks can’t pay, can’t afford it. The both glance at me – what’s your job, they ask, and I say that I have an advertising agency. Adverts? TV and newspapers, big brands. Good money? More often than not, but we also have our bad times. Yes, they say. And you go out often, right? Of course. Yes, we are out every night, I do not have a girlfriend now, they smile, and I have to be out and on the run, you know. You’re 30? Exactly. The policeman asks, again, for my description of the man in the club. Then says – have you seen him before? No. Never. Do you often go to that bar? Mosquito – no, not before. Alright. He throws his cigarette away. The car stops, we walk onto the pavement and into the police station. It is quiet, then a shriek tears the silence and I ask about it but they shrug their shoulders – who knows, a drunkard, a widowed wife, a tramp, they all finally get here at dark. Here, in the hospital or… he does not continue. I sit in front of a heap of sheets of paper and start to write down my version of what happened. They are talking and smoking. One of them asks – how much does your shirt cost? A lot, I say, it is Italian design. Bought from Milan. Do you often go there? Not so much, I prefer France. France, one of them laughs, France. I finish the story and they have a look at it, then they both waive with hands – you can go away now, but we will talk with your friend too and we’ll probably call back.
I walk out, the night is fiery and without any fresh coolness now, very black and still, and I approach the beckoning streetlights shining from afar. A man jumps out of the darkness and steps in front of me, his body is twisted and he leans forward. Mate, he says, mate, do you want one, good stuff, cheap, and he shows it in his palm, dirty under the pale light of the far streetlights. I rush to the street, the voice of the man is somewhere behind, and I waive to a taxi. The car slowly stops next to me, a man chewing his gum looks from inside and asks – where to? The hospital, I say, and the car pulls forward. The driver is steadily looking at the deserted streets, it’s way past midnight, and he asks – are you ill? No, but a friend of mine is. Problems? Yes. He carries on driving in the stiff silence in the warm car, then asks, do you need a girl? And points at one woman standing beside the boulevard. No, I am in a hurry. Alright, but, if you need a girl, call me, and he puts a small card into my palm. I look at the number. Don’t worry, the police need not know about that, he grins and continues chewing his gum. The car abruptly stops, and I pay him, the lighted windows of the hospital are a minute away. I glance at the back seat of the taxi, the wet sticky space offered to midnight lovers and drunks and all that. That’s the job, says the driver when he recognises I am looking at the back seat, alright? And grins, chewing the gum. I nod and run out of the car.
The place in front of the hospital is deserted, well lit, a small island in the freakish night. I rush down the corridor, my steps echo, and reach a woman I start to ask – where, where, where. She looks into the list of patients, finds the name of my friend and tells me the room. He is in there, on the bed, pale, his big body motionless, and the door is locked, so I sit in front of the door and wait. Waiting. It is four, then comes five, at six I watch the sunrise behind the branches of the trees nearby. A doctor comes along, and I patiently wait outside. He’ll be alright, but lost much blood, so he is too weak to leave him on his own. A couple of internal cuts, but that’s normal for such wounds. Come back tomorrow. And have a good rest, you look awful. I go to the toilet and wash my face, it is pale and very tired, my eyes are closing, I need sleep. I have red stains on my shirt, on my trousers too, and I feel the sticky traces of sweat on my back. As I walk to the exit, I suddenly remember her and that she is somewhere around. I walk up and down the corridors until I find her room. The room is empty, I go back to the entrance and ask for her. No information. It is eight. Then I see the doctor with whom we talked when the ambulance brought her here. He nods. I am sorry. She could not make it this time.
I sit on a bench in the hall, people come and pass by. I cannot hear their steps, or their voices. Then I go to the room where my friend lies, it now unlocked, and I can stand beside him while he is still not conscious or awake. A doctor passes by and says I must leave. I look at my friend’s pale face and locked lips, and I feel the rhythm of his breath, low and uniform. I slowly walk down to the main entrance, it is now nearly nine, and it is sunny outside. A man approaches me, with dark skin and plain clothes, and says, do you need blood, I give blood for money. I glance at him, he is still young, and I pat on his shoulder, slowly crossing the parking in front of the hospital, under the rays of the morning sun.
Almost seven, we sit in the car, he is smoking a cigar, in his new blue shirt, with his strong hands round the steering wheel, waiting for her call. It is time to go out. The day has been tedious, boring, filled with worries to the brim, and the neck aches for a drink to stifle the insecurities and bring us on the paths of joy. I sit motionless, looking through a pair of glasses how the trees tremble in the last minutes of heat. It is time, he says, high time she got ready and we got on the road. Just two kilometers away, in the summer garden of the bar, we are going to drink, and laugh, and spend the coming night. The shades will be creeping around us, under the wide umbrella, and the music will be on, loud and energetic, so we will drink under the beats of the steady electric rhythm, as we always do. When she comes.
Half past seven, he starts to get nervous, the night is coming with a cool swift waves of air, the branches of the trees shake instantly, and we start calling her. No answer. He is angry, leaves the car and goes into the white three storey building where she lives. I sit alone, in the warm car, and dream of the beats. Then he calls me, and I have to run up the stairs, the door is opened, and I see her body, on the bed, in her night gown, with black hairs spilt on the blanket and the pillow, her eyes closed and motionless. No blood around, nothing. The window is open, the night air is coming in our faces. Something is wrong. He touches her wrist, the beat of her pulse is silent, almost dead, so he calls for an ambulance, we hurry around her body in the meantime, waiting for the medics. They come with a stretcher, and get the body onto it. The body is still breathing they say, but is comatose. We drive behind the ambulance, the evening streets are full of cars hurrying to catch the beat of the night, and we have to be slow and careful. But he is angry and nervous and irritant. He shouts and talks loudly, swearing again and again. I say – calm down, she is going to the hospital, and will be alright. But he cannot talk or think calmly. We rush into the hall of the hospital, the stringent smell of neutral medicine-like whiteness wafts around, and we follow the stretcher until we are forbidden entry into the emergency room. Come on, I say, sit down and wait, just sit and wait, nothing more. God, I say, you cannot do anything now. We both remember last February when she overdosed on pills and she fainted in a club where they were dancing, and then we took her to the hospital, and finally she was okay. Everything will be okay in the end. I walk down the corridor, where a child awaits the mother. The mother’s face is bruised, she has been beaten, severely, and now she walks hand in hand with the child, a little boy, and they disappear behind the corner. I go back to the foyer, the night is down upon the city, but he is still so nervous and wild and I say to him – you know her habits, you know what she does, and what always happens, now calm down and stop worrying. But he is entranced. First, he says he will kill her. Then – beat her to death. Later, he says he loves her, he wants her. In the end, he hits a coca cola machine and I stare at his big body in a blue shirt walking up and down in the lighted foyer. The other people look at him in disbelief and wonder. The door of the emergency room opens and we go straight in, she is lying there, her face is pale, white, and the doctor says she will probably survive the overdose, but nothing can be completely certain at that point. It is not her first time, right, he asks, and we say, no, maybe her third or fourth. Tranquilants, painkillers, drugs of all sorts, and she keeps taking them. Addiction – no, she just likes some excitement when we go out, you know, the night and all, we have to have fun. It is not a game, the doctor says, but we are now a bit relieved, yes, we are now okay, because she will get well soon. Go home, he says, and come back in the morning, maybe she will be awake.
But he will not go home. No, he says, I will find the bastard who sells all that **** to her and I will beat him to death, I swear, he says, and we drive first to her flat, where we look for a clue. He finds her bag and thrusts it open, spilling all the content on the white blanket, while I sit and watch the accessories fall on the bed. Make up, a phone, a purse, a lipstick, a purple veil. He finds a small nylon bag with several pills in it, and a name on it, written with small letters. He takes her phonebook, neatly written pages with hundred of names and phone numbers, and searches. Then he shows me the name and next to it – the address of a club, Mosquito. I know it, a charming crowded place, with pale lights and loud music, and a cool garden. We get into the car, he is even angrier than before, he continues to swear and threaten, and I know we have to find the man, and he will beat that man, he beats all men who ever cross his way.
Mosquito is loud again, two floors, several waitresses going up and down, the garden is behind, people dance to the deafening sound, they are drunk or drugged or simply happy. We go to the barman, who stares at us with suspicious eyes. We tell him the name, and he shrugs his shoulders, he knows nothing of it. Then we move on, it is a dark room, hot and sweaty place, the limelight is red and some girls dance entranced under the steady beat. I look around, eyes and faces turn and twist, they cannot be held still, all is moving, fingers touching, lips pressing, the voices disappear and fade in the vague light. I go to the dj, put the piece of paper in front of him, he looks at it for a second, then points at a staircase behind the room. We go down, the music fades, then we feel vibrations, we have entered a new hall full of mirrors, lights - white, yellow, red, blue, are wildly mixing and crawling up the glass walls. The music is toned down, more monotonous, the tempo is slower but gets deeper in the brain, and we rush to the far end, where a man is sitting alone, he is the only man in the room, otherwise full of dancing girls. I throw a glance at them, their slim bodies weaving in the invisible sound waves, bouncing in the midst of the music milieu. The man is looking at a sheet of paper, we try to talk with him, but he cannot hear us. I make a sign, we walk outside into the garden and feel the fresh cooler wind in the night. I look at his face, big eyes, brown, bald head, 35 or so, and his body, very slim and neat, white shirt over his tanned skin. My friend starts shouting, he asks whether he knows her, whether he has ever sold her anything, they argue for a moment, and my friend hits him, he loses balance and falls to the ground, my friend hits him again, the music gets louder, a bunch of people stay aside looking at us, the man is lying on the ground, his nose bleeding, and the lights suddenly go out, then a joyful scream comes from inside, the girls are dancing to the beat, and a shriek comes, I look at my friend, he is bleeding, his stomach is bleeding, he falls to his knees, and I rush to him. He has blood in his mouth, bitter taste, I hold his big body, and he tries to jump over the other man, but he is holding a knife, the blade covered with blood. He looks for a second, his face is smeared with blood, and runs to the exit. I feel the sweat, the beat inside my head and outside, in the tremble of the air, and I shout – call an ambulance, quick. He is bleeding, he has three wounds, big wounds, and his blue shirt is soaked in blood. I hear the ambulance, the medics coming with a stretcher, they push me aside, and I rush after them, the sound is left behind me, the people stand and watch bewildered, while I walk down the street to the car. A second siren comes, a police car stops, I try to run to the car but they stop me. The policeman is rude, he pushes me away, I feel entrapped between him, the waves of beat and the bystanders. The blood is running fierce within my brain, I am sweating, maybe tears fill my eyes, and I try to speak, but the policeman pushes me into the car, he wants to talk with me.
I lean to the left, the air in the police car is hot, I smell cheap food and cigarettes. The other policeman looks at my hands and says – nice palms. I look at my palms, soft and white, and I fear his voice and I say – yes, they are nice. He wants to tell him what happened. I start from us arriving in the club, then move on to the scene in the garden and my friend’s wounds. I describe the other man. The policemen stare at me, their eyes are fixed on my face and my body. Come with us, one of them say, and the car starts on through the night, with the warm air wafting alongside the smoke from the cigarette of one of them. The city is alight, bright, blinking and swirling images full of sparks. I want to light a cigarette but they would not allow me to. I am not arrested but they need my witness statement. We pass by the houses and the blocks of apartments, by the bars and discotheques, through alleyways of silence where I hear crickets and through areas of blasting sound, a wall of steady beat coming from the clubs. One of the policemen say – nobody’s safe now, all the freaks come out and go to bars for a couple of drinks or more. The other nods, no, the freaks can’t pay, can’t afford it. The both glance at me – what’s your job, they ask, and I say that I have an advertising agency. Adverts? TV and newspapers, big brands. Good money? More often than not, but we also have our bad times. Yes, they say. And you go out often, right? Of course. Yes, we are out every night, I do not have a girlfriend now, they smile, and I have to be out and on the run, you know. You’re 30? Exactly. The policeman asks, again, for my description of the man in the club. Then says – have you seen him before? No. Never. Do you often go to that bar? Mosquito – no, not before. Alright. He throws his cigarette away. The car stops, we walk onto the pavement and into the police station. It is quiet, then a shriek tears the silence and I ask about it but they shrug their shoulders – who knows, a drunkard, a widowed wife, a tramp, they all finally get here at dark. Here, in the hospital or… he does not continue. I sit in front of a heap of sheets of paper and start to write down my version of what happened. They are talking and smoking. One of them asks – how much does your shirt cost? A lot, I say, it is Italian design. Bought from Milan. Do you often go there? Not so much, I prefer France. France, one of them laughs, France. I finish the story and they have a look at it, then they both waive with hands – you can go away now, but we will talk with your friend too and we’ll probably call back.
I walk out, the night is fiery and without any fresh coolness now, very black and still, and I approach the beckoning streetlights shining from afar. A man jumps out of the darkness and steps in front of me, his body is twisted and he leans forward. Mate, he says, mate, do you want one, good stuff, cheap, and he shows it in his palm, dirty under the pale light of the far streetlights. I rush to the street, the voice of the man is somewhere behind, and I waive to a taxi. The car slowly stops next to me, a man chewing his gum looks from inside and asks – where to? The hospital, I say, and the car pulls forward. The driver is steadily looking at the deserted streets, it’s way past midnight, and he asks – are you ill? No, but a friend of mine is. Problems? Yes. He carries on driving in the stiff silence in the warm car, then asks, do you need a girl? And points at one woman standing beside the boulevard. No, I am in a hurry. Alright, but, if you need a girl, call me, and he puts a small card into my palm. I look at the number. Don’t worry, the police need not know about that, he grins and continues chewing his gum. The car abruptly stops, and I pay him, the lighted windows of the hospital are a minute away. I glance at the back seat of the taxi, the wet sticky space offered to midnight lovers and drunks and all that. That’s the job, says the driver when he recognises I am looking at the back seat, alright? And grins, chewing the gum. I nod and run out of the car.
The place in front of the hospital is deserted, well lit, a small island in the freakish night. I rush down the corridor, my steps echo, and reach a woman I start to ask – where, where, where. She looks into the list of patients, finds the name of my friend and tells me the room. He is in there, on the bed, pale, his big body motionless, and the door is locked, so I sit in front of the door and wait. Waiting. It is four, then comes five, at six I watch the sunrise behind the branches of the trees nearby. A doctor comes along, and I patiently wait outside. He’ll be alright, but lost much blood, so he is too weak to leave him on his own. A couple of internal cuts, but that’s normal for such wounds. Come back tomorrow. And have a good rest, you look awful. I go to the toilet and wash my face, it is pale and very tired, my eyes are closing, I need sleep. I have red stains on my shirt, on my trousers too, and I feel the sticky traces of sweat on my back. As I walk to the exit, I suddenly remember her and that she is somewhere around. I walk up and down the corridors until I find her room. The room is empty, I go back to the entrance and ask for her. No information. It is eight. Then I see the doctor with whom we talked when the ambulance brought her here. He nods. I am sorry. She could not make it this time.
I sit on a bench in the hall, people come and pass by. I cannot hear their steps, or their voices. Then I go to the room where my friend lies, it now unlocked, and I can stand beside him while he is still not conscious or awake. A doctor passes by and says I must leave. I look at my friend’s pale face and locked lips, and I feel the rhythm of his breath, low and uniform. I slowly walk down to the main entrance, it is now nearly nine, and it is sunny outside. A man approaches me, with dark skin and plain clothes, and says, do you need blood, I give blood for money. I glance at him, he is still young, and I pat on his shoulder, slowly crossing the parking in front of the hospital, under the rays of the morning sun.