Solace in Denouements

To say the noise on Adelaide Avenue was excessive would be the
equivalent of dubbing Hiroshima a minor explosion. Indeed, if you were
in the communal garden of Forster's, one of the several greying
high-rise apartment blocks that uniformly lined the area's roads, you
would be hard-pressed not to believe that you were in the thick of the
great mushroom cloud itself. Dust was everywhere, inescapable in every
breath; the air had become foggy so that one could only see what was
immediately next to him. Amid this clutter of grainy images were
screams of crowds of people, cheering forth the spectacle before them,
parents trying to stop the odd dissonant note let out by a crying
child. If you did not know the place well, you'd be sure to have
stepped in the middle of a war zone, but this, after all, was just
Adelaide Avenue, a normal, indistinct suburb, just like the ones that
neighboured it and the cacophony of noise and darkness was simply the
result of a family fireworks display, badly done, it has to be said,
because one's eyes really had to strain above the murky smoke that
boxed them in all directions, to catch a fleeting glimpse of the
display above. Most of the time the best "view" of the display was
watching how the shade of the smoke contorted and changed as each bomb
went off. Orange, purple, green, red? However, on the upper floors of
these apartment blocks, the full spectacle could be envisaged as the
fireworks painted the sky in all shades of magical luminescence, as if
it were a canvas, albeit one used for surrealistic art, so quick and
random were the directions of these multi-coloured brush strokes,
different colours emerging from a seemingly never-ending palette.
Surreal was the key word here, or ordered surrealism, for it was only
once a year, on New Year's Eve, that this middle-class suburb let its
hair down, and when it did, the collapse was spectacular, its sheer
tenacity only accentuated by its contrast with the usual mundane day to
day life style that these simple people led. It was a tangent to a
perfectly straight line, a black cloud on a clear blue sky? punctuated
by the endless celebrations of the crowds, screaming, chortling,
rioting mad. It would be a safe bet that, at times, the crowd itself
drowned out the fireworks and even on the upper floors of these
apartment blocks, it was as if one was guiding the take off of a
jumbo-jet. The omnipresent noise fell on everyone, like a black
blanket, blocking their every sense, so that when three gunshots, in
quick succession were made in one of the aforementioned apartment
blocks, you'd have been better off getting a deaf man to notice. Hours
earlier Lindsay glanced at her husband, as she often did to pass the
time whilst the breakfast was cooking. Unlike the food, warming
smoothly and gradually, directly on course to full roast, her husband
was a bundle of ideas, barely trapped in a weak exoskeleton of a body.
If one took one glance at him, Conrad would seem a dwarfish chap,
dressed neatly in a tie-dyed suit. Just an average man, a paradigm for
normality. But if one paid closer inspection to his complexion, his
quirks did not only reveal themselves, but rather landed like
sledgehammers on one's mind. To put it mildly, he was a man bursting at
the seams, utterly and charmingly incapable of a slow, soft, quiet
voice? always aggressive in how he presented himself. Even on the most
minute of matters, as when his wife asked him if he wanted some coffee,
Conrad treated it with the utmost importance, passion seeming to surge
through his veins as if tidal waves were spilling over the Thames
barrier itself, determined to succeed in his aims, no matter how
trivial they would be. So, when this particular question was asked that
afternoon, he threw down his newspaper, clenched his right hand into a
fist, out of which protruded a stern finger, imploring Lindsay to set
the jug by his side at the table. At the same time, his voice, gruff
and throaty, earnestly said the same thing. He was an animated man, out
of place in an inanimate environment, where bored housewives went about
their duty, going out to shop, coming back to shop, day after day
whilst he was expected to attend his office, regular board meetings at
regular times, have business lunches, eating from a menu that remained
constant throughout the working year. And he was expected to live this
life indefinitely, and that is precisely what got on his nerves. For a
man so different, so lively, full of a sense of his sincere lack of
"joie de vivre", such sterile surroundings presented themselves
forthwith as more of a prison, from which he dearly wanted to escape.
But what of his beautiful wife? And his family who had bled themselves
dry to squander every last penny so that their son could have a broad
education that would set (and did set) him up for such a pleasant
existence? Could he simple, like some rebellious protagonist in a
motion picture, just say "no" and leave? This was a question Conrad had
been pondering for some seven long, dreary years, always getting ready
to plunge himself into the deep end of adventure in some other place,
ready to shut the door behind him and let every inch of his body exude
that holy grail that all men seek, the sense of freedom of mind and
lifestyle. He always nearly made it on several occasions, just to have
a simple glance from his wife, or a reminder of the hardships others
had endured to give him these pleasant surroundings make him swivel
around re-enter his home, clutching all the things he was familiar with
close to his heart. He was a man of humility, but also one of curiosity
and it was always these two forces that waged war within his head, the
former always narrowly emerging victorious from a bloody battle, his
mind tired from the onslaught. Over the years, Conrad, sick or rather
bored with the disappointment of his life, just let these hopes, wild,
colourful thoughts drift away and accepted logic. He was a man,
constrained in a grey suit, to drive to his hospital everyday and see
his elderly patients, from whom instead of taking solace in the fact
that, alas, there did exist people who had less exciting lives than
him, he thought how he, in a few years, would end up in a place like
this, being administered medicines by some schmuck that he wouldn't
trust the paper-round with. But, at least, he had his Lindsay. She
didn't do much other than clean the dishes, or keep the house in
pristine condition, but what more could he ask, he kept on telling
himself? A woman with business on her mind, who wanted to try a day out
in commerce with the sharks? Her frail hands wouldn't stand a chance.
At least, whenever he saw her, she seemed to radiate happiness in the
most impossible way, in such a way that men will devote their lives to
studying but will still end with no conclusion. She made him so happy,
so much so, that, with her consent of course, for one should always be
sure with such matters, if anything ever happened to Conrad, his will
would ensure Lindsay's future financial, if not emotional, happiness
would be preserved. This indeed showed a huge labour of love on
Conrad's part, since he was a shrewd man who had worked hard for his
money and knew it. He was the kind of man who would never tip the
waiter, even at the pushiest restaurants, and who would always depend
his full change if he paid in bank notes, every single cent went
accounted for? it was all his. Lindsay was always asking for money, of
course, for what seemed like endless purchases. A redecorated kitchen,
a resurfaced patio? a child. Conrad, although he tried her best to
persuade her against such vanities, always submitted to her smile in
the end but the child was a matter that needed more than a quick shine
of her glisteningly white teeth, like pearls of the ocean, perfectly
shaped in every way, as if she had just stepped off a Hollywood
production set, Conrad used to murmur to himself. Conrad did not want a
son, or a daughter? as simple as that. Or at least he used to not want
to have a child, but as all women eventually get their ways, they did
start trying for a baby, but to Conrad's (dis)pleasure, such
tribulations were to no avail. When seeking medical help on the matter,
the doctors, in their spectral white coats, told them professionally,
with no sense of empathy whatsoever, that they were "incompatible".
This mattered not to Conrad, but secretly broke Lindsay's heart. Blame
it on how daughters are brought up, Conrad thought, with their Barbie
dolls and plastic babies, the examples set by their "mothers". They
were stuck in this tradition Lindsay knew well enough that her
inability to conceive with Conrad was nothing short of a failure. For a
few months, she hung her head low, and gradually the whole humiliating
experience was leaving her subconscious, or at least Conrad thought. He
had notice her act quite strangely lately. Indeed, the house was not
kept in it's usual glossy condition anymore, she was becoming, dare he
say it, "slack". Such drops in standards could easily be amended, but
what was more worrying was her habit of vomiting into the toilet bowl
every morning, and if this was not a sure sign of pregnancy, then what
else could it be? It was with these tandem thoughts that Conrad came to
confront his wife with at the breakfast table. "You seem to be
increasingly sick lately", he uttered the words slowly, putting
deliberate stress, achieved by putting a certain more "oomph" into his
voice, on what he deemed the important words, "sick" and
"increasingly". Lindsay swivelled her head round, her tidy mop of red
hair falling neatly around her shoulders. She had been waiting for this
day for a long time. She tried to hide her excitement, as she did not
want to give her husband the wrong impression or indeed make him
suspicious, as she said, "It? seems like, I know it's impossible? but
it seems like morning sickness to me." She was careful not to sound
forced, or aggressive (as she secretly wanted, as if to punish her
husband for why he had not brought up this matter earlier when the
signs were obvious enough!) as her whole future happiness, aspirations?
everything relied on the man before her. "Well", he pushed back his
chair and raised his hand, in a blunt, direct gesture that told his
wife to stay seated, "It is silly to draw such conclusions from
observations, but instead, you should try a pregnancy test and we'll
check the outcome when I get back home, okay?" he said and then
bulldozed on, without waiting for his wife's answer, "I, I'm sorry I
can't stay longer but I must rush to work, it's going to be a long
day". And with that he tore out of the house, slammed the door, leaving
Lindsay sitting in the kitchen, listening to the sound of his red Chevy
pulling out of the driveway, the sound of the rumbling engine gradually
dieing down in the distance. To say that Conrad worked would be as
nonsensical as believing a Granny Smith to be an orange. The idea of
working should be tread on lightly here, as it is a phrase that
encompasses such a broad spectrum of both idiocy and genius that it
could be applied to every one of our mundane lives. The oft-neglected
housewife works by serving up something (delicious) to stop our Monday
morning stomachs grumbling in the manner of a sleep-deprived
narcoleptic. A baby, in a pram with toys, works, not only by moving its
unfortunate plastic subjects against each other and sound tracking the
debacle with random squeals, the baby's eyes also take in the imposing
world at large outside its cot, the everyday calamity of the Joe
Somebody's that walk in and out of the room, getting this and that,
reaching that deadline and still being too late. Its mind is involved
in a gradual accretion of life, and this learning curve must be
described as work. Even a child at a table, studiously clamouring over
his textbooks, cross-referencing fake facts to find a solution to a
problem that one will seldom encounter when all is said and done, after
the exam halls, the interview tongue lashings, the work, in a faceless
office as a deputy to a deputy of a branch district. Oh, but some
people achieve dreams, they say. But where is the joy in a pure dream
if it is realised in guilt. The sport stars and their illegal enhancing
drugs, the entrepreneur who switched his dim bulb for a luminescent
lamp in a Third World country where nobody would find out, the
politicians, who through handshakes and heritage, come to stand high on
a pedestal of amorality, whilst preaching to us what is right and what
is wrong. Dreams, they can ruin you if you try hard enough. For, what
is left when you have curbed so many corners on a track field that you
forget just exactly who you are, or whether you had the integrity in
the first place to achieve the impossible if only your you trusted your
heart more than your head. Because those imbeciles, on their podiums,
on their band-stands, with their smiles the size of watermelon sheaths
have been stupid enough to fool themselves that their ambitions have
been realised. Through such short cuts, the dream has been put up on
the firing range, and shot through relentlessly, it's vague outline
enough to comfort those who refuse to look closer and inspect the
vacuity of where moral fibre once existed. Oh, the joy of complacency.
But there are some, who really work, and this is not the work of a
housewife, baby, or politician? but there are those who have to
reinvent, pursue, act upon instinctively, those who work as if they are
deconstructing a bomb that could blow any minute. If they let go, they
could spiral into a collective oblivion, but if they succeed then they
are granted an eternally joyous life. They have made it of their own
accord, and are fit to enjoy the spoils of a deserved royal parade. One
can buy every smile, handshake, emotion (for everything is for sale,
nowadays), material possession but true completion, satisfaction is
untouchable, priceless and one has to actually work to get it. Not
labour, but actually work. In this respect, Conrad did not work, but
merely laboured his way to his monthly paycheck, whilst not disturbing
the water current. Conrad was a geriatric psychiatrist; diagnosing the
elderly with whatever impediment their brain had procured during its
exposure to daily life. In his profession, he outclassed all of his
peers, whether it be in his sheer knowledge, his intuitive nature, his
leading demeanour or just his outwardly friendly, grinning nature. He
was the life and soul of the party? of a mental institution enclosed by
four cemeteries, each one named after its own season, which was cruel
really, for the deceased, from the hospital or in the general area were
admitted to the cemetery corresponding to the season they died in and
not the one they were born in. It's no surprise that the Winter
cemetery had to be extended twofold, and so did the Summer field, where
many a debauched young-gentleman lay before his true time. The Autumn
cemetery was the middling ground that separated the overcrowded Winter
and Summer resting places from the absolutely bare Spring plain, where
not a single headstone from the elderly ever touched, as if by some
conspiracy not to blight a field named after the season where
gardener's are in their prime and flowers bloom exponentially. You know
how these bored pensioners just love their gardens. But, back to
Conrad. He was the luminary in this institution, admired with vigilance
by all with too much time on their hands. Yet, of course, this was an
empty existence, mapped by four walls that whose parameters seemed to
get shorter by the decade, and Conrad knew this too well. The window of
opportunity was closing, and the life of possibilities seemed even more
far-fetched every time he turned his mind towards it. In this respect,
Conrad was a new breed, in that he was painfully aware of the
superficiality of the air he breathed, but was too resigned to his
prison box of family ties and indebted promises that there was nothing
he could do without losing something of vague importance. And so he
continued soullessly that day, like on any day of the year, poring over
blinding white paper, joining the dots effortlessly, looking over the
sheets at his fate, staring into thin air in front of him? a
straightjacket with a number stitched on it, a number that would soon
belong to somebody else if time had its way (and it always did). "And,
could you please repeat the following statement; 'No ifs, ands or
buts'?" It was patient 24. The last before "lunch". Wearing a tweed
coat much too big even for the pro wrestler this confused individual
claimed he was, and a white shirt with a dull hue that crumpled over
baggy red pyjama bottoms, "Robert Storm" (for, that was what he called
himself) took a deep breath. A cough spluttered, and you could tell his
mind was in total meltdown. "But if I would answer wrong and fail this
test, would there be no way of a bribe or at least a second chance?",
he let it out helplessly. This poor man was off his rockers, but there
was a certain charm in him, in how such a simple question had morphed
into a complex answer with all the right words, but still the wrong
sentiment. Therefore, a fail, and another couple of months under watch
and medication, which was sad, because if you saw his stooped shoulders
(a wrestler indeed!), befuddled expression and long, crooked fingers,
you knew that he wouldn't stand a chance outside his diagnosed
perimeters. His life had been saved in this hospital and it would be
here that it would be lost, back to square one, exactly where he
started before he took this troublesome detour from a well-made coffin.
But, his charm would definitely outlive him, that's for sure. And
whether that is a good or a bad thing is entirely subjective, but to
Conrad it scared him? that a man's life, his daily travails and doings
would simply be left to rot, the core vanquished whilst the
eccentricity, the ice dressing on the fruitfulness remained in the
hearts of others. Our hearts are made out of cheap string, and nobody
wants heavy baggage, after all. Lunch was the usual excruciating sore
of making pleasantries, and hearing these blissfully unaware colleagues
making the most pointless, ill-advised statements that they had the
power to make Conrad's stomach turn, his appetite lost, his "food" left
cold as his heart. It would be minutely enduring if the words thrown
weren't rehashed, or the sentiments reused infinitely until the
conversation was as predictable as the texture of a piece of plastic,
except that plastic was more substantial than this tasteless candyfloss
substitute. They spoke of the movies, music, and of course their
dreams, of which there was an endless pool to pull perfection from.
Most of all, however, they spoke of politics, which undoubtedly spoke
of its own accord to every man's inexcusable need to save the world, or
at least draw up a systematic that could make it run more smoothly.
That was the ultimate dream, but also the most mindless. Nature will
have its way, of course, just like with the dinosaurs and countless
parallel civilisations that we will come to represent, exemplify and
then follow into a cloud of ashes. And even if the meteors, and freak
accidents cannot be halted, then what of total world harmony? Please.
That is best left to our anorexic beauty pageant finalists to chew the
fat on, for at least they will keep that torch of hope alive. Any sane
person, however, will understand that we all live in a state of cabin
fever, stuck on the same overpopulated planet, consigned to the same
surroundings, we will all soon come to be sick of each other if we have
not already. If two men now think alike then they will be biting each
other's necks to have total control of the crow's nest in five years
time. But back to politics, of which there was too much to talk about.
This government in particular was very clever indeed, in how it posed
itself on the same level as anybody with a deficiency of sorts. No sane
person could act the part of a man with missing limbs, or senses, so
the only real solution was to bring in genuine stuffed dolls for the
puppet master to parade around his adult Lego set. Therefore, on the
cabinet, no deficiency was left disused in a bid to cynically win the
hearts of all. You had the deaf Education minister, the blind Transport
minister and even the dumb Prime Minister, famed for his embarrassing
follies that won the admiration of many, not out of pity, but more out
of comradeship. With this blindfold of emotional relativity that the
puppet master skilfully administered to his clay voters, any bill could
be passed, any rule could be followed. And the other party? Well, they
could continue to denounce and argue all they wanted but a bill could
just as easily be passed ordering the general public not to listen to
them so they stood helplessly at the sidelines, standing as still as
the thick air that gathers over a dead body. Once a certain part won,
it was almost impossible to stand against them and be victorious,
unless a true miracle occurred. And this seldom happened, so that a
party's stay at the top could last more than a century even until a
freak of nature occur, a slip up on the puppet strings occurred to
swing the other way. But how could the public be fooled into thinking
such a regime was not dictatorial? Simple. The puppet master fathomed
several parties, each one exactly the same as the other but with enough
minute policy changes to fool the general public. No matter which
stuffed figurehead the public finally voted for, the outcome would be
the same, the public content with their democracy, and the puppet
master with his megalomania. Initially, in the ages of our aristocratic
cavemen, there had to be the first election, where the two main puppet
masters had to really battle it out against each other, but that birth
of our democracy, was also, ironically, its very demise. Conrad was
fortunate at least to be living in the time of one of these frequent
miracles, which differentiated him from those six feet under the ground
on which he stood. The hands that pulled the strings had, in a drunken
stupor of complacency, slipped up and left his subjects unattended to,
with no ties, but just absolute freedom, which bred havoc and big
problems. The Prime Minister, unaware of what to do, and feeling it his
duty as the "the most powerful man in the world", had decided to pass a
bill to destroy Hawaii by nuclear attack. The action was inexplicable,
but the Prime Minister had his reasons, if you could even call them
that. His explanation, televised and read from an idiot screen he set
up himself so that the words came in random order and so it was
apparent to the public he was speaking gibberish, was that when looking
at a map of the world, he loved the isolation of the United States, and
how rounded the country was, but was bothered by this little speck of
dust next to it. Unaware it was populated by those who voted him into
office in the first place, he wiped it out like a cleaning-crazy
housewife, demented on the symmetry of nonsense. This would have been
of no problem if the other parties the puppet master held onto had been
left unattended too, as they applauded the Prime Minister's move and
the indignation of the world reached boiling point, those true
adversaries left at the sidelines for so many years ready to step up to
the podium and take what was "rightfully theirs". The election was next
week and, for once, a landslide was expected from the underdogs, and it
was this that set the conversation alight around the lunch tables. But
no amount of miracle landslide election defeat could alter the basic
constraints of the dialect these people used. It was as if they were on
auto-pilot, continuing in the kind of monotone that could cause one to
mistake them for machines and the things they said were even worse- a
mish-mash of dull pleasantries and regurgitated gook they read in the
press that very morning. If these people picked up the wrong paper, and
I mean the wrong paper, like one published by a racist sect, then they
would mindlessly spout the information as if it was their own, not
realising the callousness of what they were saying. Every morning, on
every tube journey, they had to go programming, unless they felt like
playing mute and since almost everybody bought the same papers, these
lunch table discussions even made noughts and crosses games look
positively unpredictable. Predictability? the bane of Conrad's pleasant
existence, but yet it was everywhere he turned his head, every line of
sight leading to a seemingly pre-determined conclusion, as if the
voters themselves are just puppets playing out a production called
"Fate" in a grand theatre created by the Gods themselves. Every step
accounted for, everything timed to perfection, like clockwork and such
was the remainder of Conrad's day at work. "His bloodshot eyes bulged
out under his bald, glazed head and every time he spoke, it was as if
you could see the man's teeth rotting before your very eyes. This was
not a man in good physically health? his mental health being a totally
different matter altogether. But on the surface, the scabs across his
face, the bulging purple outer swellings that gave way to oozing pus,
his half-shaven orange beard like a bush of thorns whilst his baggy,
greying shirt did not reveal his skeletal appearance. His cheekbones
were essentially piercing out of the sides of his face, whilst his arms
seemed more like mutilated twigs than functioning limbs. But that
didn't stop him point. And he did point with vigour. His hand
outstretched, his finger protruding aggressively before all that was
before him? a black wall. In fact, the whole room was darkly lit, and
everything was, even the old windows, had been painted black for this
most auspicious of dying stars to shine in." Conrad wrote. For some,
the only coup on the strings that one is hinged precariously on is the
formation of your own. And so his hands danced across the paper, glided
above his character's head. He could make him sad, grotesque, evil. He
could do anything within this own private realm. And so we wrote and
gilded his every word with the hope that the existential worries, the
placid feelings would not pass by him but would gather up into
something huge, something that would make him forget the pregnancy, the
election, the sterility of a mundane existence. A tumultuous storm,
maybe. Hard lashings of rain, a flood across his heart. A story.