Читать книгу ALCHEMIES OF THE HEART - David Dorian - Страница 17

The Whipping Post

Around 4:00 am, the village of Rye, New York, looked like a deserted hamlet with its fossilized streets where time had petrified. The land where the hamlet of Rye was built was purchased from the Mohegan Indians by settlers from Long Island. There was nothing remarkable about that town. Perhaps the most revealing feature was the public post where, long time ago, slaves were bound to be whipped. It was located on the village green close to Christ’s Church. Thomas Ricket was appointed as the town “public whipper.” In 1682 it was a misdemeanor, punishable by flogging, for more than four slaves to meet together. It was reduced to three around 1730. I didn’t know the secret history of that town when I bought my house. I was thinking of moving to another town when I found out that all the hamlets of Westchester County had their own “whipper.”

An eerie breeze was blowing. The night air was glistening. It was scented by the abundant foliage, spiced by the luxuriant lilac bushes my wife had planted in the front yard. My breathing was effortless. I could feel my lungs expanding, sucking in that lush air.

Were there signs of the approaching atrocities, foreshadowings of future calamities? There was no cue, no premonition that the blooming garden of our lives would be decimated by the approaching storm. No hints the gods were offended. No seismograph of the soul would have registered the tremors that were to disassemble our felicitous existence. The lives of all the participants of this play were coming to an intersection, a crossroad that would disorient the most seasoned navigator. Yet how predestined it all seemed.

I was back in the solid geometry of our bedroom. In the massage spa, I had survived an arson to my ordered life, yet I had not pulverized the idols of the hearth. The world didn’t cave in. My cat, Miou, greeted me with a languorous yawn. I slipped under the covers and curled into bed. Eons came and went while I hovered over the suburbs of sleep. I couldn’t fade into that blessed state of unconsciousness. I drifted like a kite tethered to reality only by the memory of her. My joy spiraled into rapture at the anticipation of the next encounter.

The first rays of Sunday molested the sheer curtains, ravished the bedsheets, exposing my fading dissolution. Reality’s hold was de rigueur once again. I drowned in the immense solitude of that compulsively ordered room. My chest reverberated from echoes of a distant bell.

I wondered, lying in the unbearable softness of the comforter, slashed by stalactites of guilt whether I could find a sanctuary in my house. The train of thought, once having left the station, became a runaway locomotive. The room responded with soft sighs of anticipation. Sedition simmered in my heart.

Things I thought as absolute were changing. From a particular optic, nothing shattering had occurred except my unbearable presence in the world. The body I was occupying, although healing physically, was morally less than its former glory. I was a monster hybrid suddenly grafted to an unknown stem. Unrecognized sap flowed in me. What blossoms would bloom from such a graft?

I walked down the stairs to the basement where my wife had installed a mini-gym. I turned on my Samsung 65 Class Slim Curved 4K Ultra HD LED Smart TV with built-in WiFi and mounted my Schwinn AD6 Airdyne cycling machine. The TV spokesperson was commenting about the new dating trends. Dating websites were attracting college students, housewives, and women in middle management. College students in need of cash were flashing photoshopped photographs of their bodies offering companionships for men for a gratuity. The cost of tuition, books, living accommodations was enormous. Financially stressed undergraduate coeds found a pragmatic solution to their economic distress. Girls from Ivy League colleges were interviewed by reporters. Many housewives registered to those websites anonymously, photographs on request. Dulled by the routine nature of their married lives, they spiced up their afternoons with a little dalliance with men dulled by the routine nature of their married lives. Like in Bunuel’s Belle de Jour, they performed sex in the afternoon for a negotiable fee. The narrator addressed the prevalence of single professional women in banking, law, teaching, advertising, insurance, etc. who indulged in special arrangements. They’d didn’t want a “serious relationship,” preferring to hook up with appropriate strangers. The menu du jour was polygyny and polyandry. The analyst then reported the new popularity of polyamory clubs, sex clubs, wife swapping, etc.

My legs were hurting like crazy from the strenuous artificial biking. I fell asleep on the faux-leather couch. Time passed unrecorded. When I woke up, my cervical vertebrae were hurting a lot. The television was still on, featuring a documentary, When Fish Attack, showing many assaults on preys by sharks, barracudas, swordfish, eels, rays, sea snakes, etc.