Yellow leaves coloured cobblestones behind a stone
wall. The open shutters on a building facing the cobblestones resembled
listening ears. The cobblestones glowed as parting celestial vapours revealed
blue immensity.
“You must be
petrified,” a joking woman asked Eugenio, “being with so many women?”
He was with
nineteen, waiting to enter the building to see an exhibition.
“Men are less
interested in culture,” another woman said.
“They prefer
football,” another one added, heads rocking in agreement.
*
The black-and-white photographs of
early-twentieth-century Paris revealed the city’s compositional delicacy, each
photograph a harmonious unit in an exquisite whole.
The women
chattered before the photographs, fighting to win the Battle of Insight, Paris
before the twentieth century really arrived irrelevant in comparison to
acknowledgement.
Morning mists
softened the photographed facades. The infinite shades, Eugenio realised,
between black and white yields dramatic depths.
Parisian
shopwindows indicated the entrepreneurial skill behind the marketing of craft
in a world made by men.
The fifty-three
men Eugenio counted in the gallery admired those infinite shades between black
and white. Some gay; but gay men don’t count. Some short; short men count even
less. Some plump and bald. Can plump, bald men be men?
Many of those
men were carrying expensive cameras. Although “less interested in culture,” and
maybe not being “men,” they faced the infinite shades. The women often faced
each other.
Later, under
gold leaves and black branches, that intensified each other, this symbolising
for Eugenio the gallery’s events, he watched the women’s gesticulations and
their eyes’ whites whitening when believing they had hit some nail’s head with
perspicacity’s hammer.
“Excuse me,”
Eugenio said.
Sixteen went
quiet. Someone insisted the three others stop talking, a passing car droning
into silence.
“A question,”
Eugenio said.
The silence
emphasised the rustling of leaves from a gust of breeze that swept across the
neocortex-convolution cobblestones. The women, with white-eyed wonderment,
stared surprised, the quietude so vast it seemed to hit the whites, greys,
blacks, and blues above, bouncing off them, reverberating, booming, hushing,
swishing, silence, too, having infinite shades.
“How many people
were inside when we entered?” Eugenio asked.
Two of the
nineteen recalled uniform nodding in agreement. One worried: A rash
generalisation?
The penetrating
silence seemed to prise open their mouths, yielding striking ignorance.
That expression,
Eugenio thought, precedes the trip towards empiricism.
“No idea,” one
said. “Why?”
“Fifty-three,”
Eugenio replied. “How many were men?”
“Maybe half?”
another asked.
“Why would half
have been men if men prefer football?” Eugenio asked.
“Maybe they were
with women?” another one asked.
Possibility
murmurs wafted from their mouths. French-style palaces designed by men lined
the street. The voluptuous wrought iron topping the wall beside them was also
designed by men.
“They were with
each other,” Eugenio replied.
“You mean?” a
twosome member began. “You sure?”
“Shall we wait
and see who leaves?” Eugenio asked.
Two men left the
gallery. Their black-framed glasses suggested intellect. They were deep in
conversation. Camera bags hung from their shoulders.
“There were no
women when we went in?” one of the women asked.
“None,” Eugenio
replied. “All fifty-three were men.”
Eugenio had to
be either a liar, a misogynist or stupid. So they didn’t wait to see who left
the gallery.
*
But ridiculous belief isn’t the preserve of any group
or sex. Inspired by unjustified superiority, it eases difficulties. Freedom
means eliminating difficulties. We even create heaven–and illusions of clarity
that create satisfying identities. Surely this can’t be reality? we
cry.
*
The tavern sold
craft beers that ranged from yellow to dark brown to black, like, Eugenio
thought, belief. Some people preferred soft yellows, others hard, dark brown.
Black outlooks also existed. Froths decorated those colours that tasted nicely,
like accuracy, our common hope.
“People are so
stupid,” Rob said.
He was facing
Eugenio.
“They’re
oblivious,” Rob continued, “that immigration stimulates economies.”
“Is it
intellect,” Eugenio proposed, “or emotional disturbance?”
“Stupidity,” Rob
replied. “They believe the rubbish in the press.”
“Belief,”
Eugenio replied, “helps them confuse their xenophobic narrow-mindedness with
cultural superiority. You’re assuming reality interests them. Reality obstructs
xenophobes from justifying their bitterness.”
“So Cameron
underestimated that bitterness?” Brian asked.
He was beside
Rob.
“Cameron and his
cohorts,” Eugenio replied, “manipulated that bitterness.”
“So why did he
offer a referendum?” Brian asked.
“Maybe,” Eugenio
replied, “he wanted to lose it?”
“What?” Rob
asked.
“Do you think,”
Eugenio began, “he wanted to win?”
Cameron had
declared himself a remainer.
“Why would
someone who avoids tax want to win a referendum that would have kept Britain in
an institution that wants to eliminate tax havens?” Eugenio asked. “Did he ever
mention real problems, like Northern Ireland, before the referendum?”
“I can’t
remember,” Rob said.
“Northern
Ireland appeared as an issue after the referendum,” Eugenio said. “And there
was no mention by the press of Brits being kicked out of Europe or the
difficulties of exporting goods to the continent.”
Brian believed
Cameron had been “naĂŻve” in offering the referendum. Everyone else on the
table, except Eugenio, had agreed. An ex-British Prime Minister from an elite
family, with access to privileged information, had been “naĂŻve.”
“What’s your
point?” Rob asked.
“I’ve already
said it,” Eugenio replied. “He wanted Britain out of the EU.”
“Why didn’t he
just say that?” Rob asked.
“Because Merkel
made him agree that financial transparency should take place across Europe,”
Eugenio replied. “That is, eliminate tax havens. Where do you think he and his
social class have got their money?”
Rob’s chin rose,
struck by an uppercut of disbelief.
“You’re saying,”
Rob said, “it was a conspiracy?”
Eugenio called
Rob an “anti-conspiracy theorist.”
“A cover up,”
Eugenio replied. “That’s humanity’s story–one cover up after another.”
“How do you know
Cameron has got his money in tax havens?” Brian asked.
He wanted to
trap Eugenio into saying: “I don’t know for sure.”
“I know one of
Cameron’s cousins,” Eugenio replied. “Guess what we spoke about when we met?”
“How did you
meet this cousin?” Brian asked.
“During a wine
tasting,” Eugenio replied. “So what do you think we spoke about?”
That silence
Eugenio had “heard” so often thickened, giving sounds a cracking roundness.
“Tax havens,”
Brian said, drolly.
“And what else?”
Eugenio asked.
“Brexit?” Brian
pondered, ruefully.
“She’s also got
her money in the Isle of Man,” Eugenio said.
Rob was disbelieving
because he suffered from a rare affliction called “too nice.” His psychology
hid from him the magnitude of human corruption. He had excessive faith in
humanity. His probity, he believed, had to be universal. It just had to be. How
could members of a hallowed institution like The Commons be tax-evading
criminals? People of Rob’s ilk couldn’t be so bad. Such tendencies weren’t
British.
“Britain,”
Eugenio said, “is the world’s most corrupt country.”
“What?!” Rob
snorted. “What about Afghanistan or India–and hundreds of others.”
“Chickenfeed by
comparison,” Eugenio replied. “Do you think every rich bastard on earth has got
their money in Afghanistan?”
The silence
whiplashed above the auditory spectrum.
“Why do you
think that you didn’t know that every rich bastard on this planet has got money
in British tax havens?” Eugenio asked.
“How do you know
that?” Brian asked.
He still hoped
to expose Eugenio’s “unfounded speculation.”
“I worked for
twenty years in taxation in Britain,” Eugenio replied. “That’s how I know. I
made the rich richer.”
Brian should
have been grateful for receiving enlightenment. But virtue often sinks in the
mud of dubious chance.
“So,” Eugenio
asked, “what’s the answer to my question?”
“What’s the
answer?” Brian asked.
Brian sought a
chink in Eugenio’s argument. He had been so pleased with himself when saying
that “Cameron was naĂŻve,” people having nodded like puppets manipulated by
their intellectual deity.
“Because the
world’s media mongrels have got their money in British tax havens as well. They
wanted Britain out of the EU.”
“They all wanted
to destroy Britain?” Rob asked.
“That,” Eugenio
replied, “is infinitely less important to them than people finding out the
reality.”
“What reality?”
Brian asked.
He needed that
chink.
“British
politicians receive piles of cash from companies to either change or not change
legislation,” Eugenio explained. “The invoices are raised from tax havens where
politicians have shelf companies; its legal because, of course, politicians
make the rules. Shall I continue?”
Because this
savagely compromised Rob’s vision of universal values, the so-called values of
his clan, Eugenio’s ideas resembled personal attacks. Surely decent people were
in power? There were–but not many.
A woman on Rob’s
right said: “La Vanguardia claimed that there is enough money in The
Isle of Man to pay for the salaries of thirty-four million nurses in Spain.
That refers specifically to unpaid tax.”
“I read that
too,” Eugenio said. “There’s enough money in tax havens to eliminate poverty.
But the danger to the rich isn’t great enough for that to happen.”
“You mean social
revolution?” she asked.
She wanted to
learn, not save herself from having a belief exposed as absurd.
“That, too,”
Eugenio replied. “But what I really mean is that people just don’t want to
know. This saves the privileged from exposure. If people knew what I know–and
especially if they had the psychological capability of knowing that–the rich
wouldn’t be able to appear in public. But they can because the press protects
them, so what I know will remain largely hidden. They know people believe what
they read, like Cameron being naĂŻve, without understanding why such lies are
printed.”
Brian’s scornful
silence magnified before the amusement rippling across the woman’s face.
*
The church’s walls displayed angels, clouds, and
cherubs and friars performing miracles: fish multiplying on a lake’s edge
before a priest’s raised, fish-attracting palms; a man’s severed foot reuniting
with his leg; a blind man receiving sight, his left hand reaching towards a sun
that symbolised rebirth, the bandage once covering his eyes falling off. Men
with long beards and open arms, and curvaceous women in loose dresses, were
floating beside white clouds. Bearded kings, clutching staves, graced thrones
under winged hominids. Supernaturalism abounded, eternal annihilation
apparently impossible, the laws of physics dismissed.
The church was
full. People Eugenio knew were seated here and there to guarantee seats for a
free Bach concert after the service.
A little
surrealism never hurts, Eugenio quipped to himself.
A priest
appeared from a side door. His satin, pink ensemble fell from his neck to his
feet, a white cross sewn into the pink
from chest to stomach. The table before him supported candles in medieval
candelabra. Candle flames flickered when the priest moved as if a spirit filled
the nave. Everyone got up except Eugenio who rose as everyone else sat down. A
friend of Eugenio’s–Olivia–on seeing Eugenio’s disorientation placed a hand
over her mouth to hide her smile. Absurdity discomforted Eugenio. For the sake
of listening to Bach in a beautiful church he had to endure “unbelievable
belief.”
The priest
raised his hands towards anti-gravity cherubs who floated in a stratosphere of
flying hominids. Presumably, the priest could zing requests across fifteen
billion light years of space to a server of unimaginable dimensions. Latin left
his lips.
This beats the
Cyclops, Eugenio thought, for unreality.
Hamlet claimed
there were more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt in a rational man’s
philosophy. Great, Eugenio thought, now prove it.
The priest
seemed to be talking to ghosts. Is he, Eugenio thought, the only who sees
ghosts? Are the rest of us are blind? Or is it the other way around?
Again Eugenio
was the last to stand and sit. A person beside Olivia, suspecting that Olivia
was non-flock, sneered with disdainful eyes as Olivia’s titillated stomach
bounced. Repressing her hilarity, she lowered the hand that had hidden her
giggling face.
The real
churchgoers floated in facile goodness. Maybe, Eugenio thought, they’re so
afraid of imperfection that religion must crush the evil spirits of
self-knowledge? Church attendances halt self-analysis, while suggesting that
death is dead.
Bach created
relief from a gravity-free world of flying primates who mocked permanent
obliteration. Why does truth frighten some people and others not?
*
Olivia’s dentures, seemingly connected to the
electricity grid, flashed as Eugenio approached.
“Have you seen
the light?” she whispered.
Her eyes
gleamed. We love seeing our friends suffer from things that won’t affect them
for long.
“Somehow,”
Eugenio replied, “the light avoids me. I lurk in dark scepticism.”
Olivia had a big
laugh. Her throat and stomach put everything into it.
“Imagine,”
Eugenio said, “wearing fancy dress and speaking to a ceiling of fantasy
creatures. That only happens on earth. It’s too surreal for other places.”
Olivia spasmed
with laughter. She wiped tears from her eyes.
“Too bad,”
Eugenio added, “he wasn’t attached to ropes so they could pulley him up to the
ceiling.”
Olivia’s head
tilted up as she fired staccato guffaws into the cool, night air.
“The older I
get,” Eugenio continued, “the more I see absurdity. Apparently I’m a cynic for
recognising what is patently ridiculous or impossible to know.”
“But,” Olivia
asked, “don’t you think there’s a force?”
He admired her
sarcasm.
“Someone should
tell them,” Eugenio replied, “that, yes, there is. That’s why we’re not
floating in the stratosphere. Imagine giving an electromagnetism a beard and an
ethical disposition.”
“My God,” Olivia
said, sarcastically, “you’re such a cynic!”
“Isn’t it
terrible,” Eugenio replied, “that cynics need that dreadful thing called
evidence? Why can’t they just be stupid and believe anything? You won’t believe
what happened to me yesterday.”
He told her
about the exhibition.
“You mean,”
Olivia said, “that there are hardly any memorable men?”
“It’s
incredible,” Eugenio said, “because it’s just simple statistics. How can you
arrive at a conclusion related to what is a statistical question without having
the slightest interest in statistics or observation?”
“Or,” she
replied, “in men? It’s beautiful being a superior victim.”
“Most men,”
Eugenio said, “aren’t beautiful enough to be remembered.”
He appreciated
that Olivia’s sarcasm came from justified anger. This, he thought, is the other
reaction besides discomfort that the rational have towards fact crushing.
“Get this,”
Eugenio remarked. “I was with Brian and Rob last Monday. Brian thinks Cameron
was naĂŻve in offering the Brexit referendum.”
Olivia stopped
walking.
“Weottt?!” she
said. “I can understand Rob believing that, but Brian?”
Eugenio was
amazed by how gobsmacked she looked.
“Brian believes
that?!” she asked.
“Yes,” Eugenio
replied. “That shows you how bad the anti-truth problem is.”
“My God,” she
said, not ironically.
They entered a
bar with people from their classical music group. Down-to-earth realism
abounded: A TV showing football. Legs of ham hanging from the ceiling in
unashamed demonstrations that people kill animals despite attempts to sanitise
reality.
We want, Eugenio
thought, to believe that only birth and regeneration exist without
deterioration and death.
“Too bad,”
someone called Adrian said, “that the church’s walls weren’t painted with
abortion scenes.”
Olivia rocked
with laughter. Adrian was another “cynic.”
“But,” Eugenio
said, “that would upset the Lord.”
“I wonder,”
Adrian said, “how they know that universe creators detest abortion.”
“Believing
anything,” Eugenio replied, “saves time and money on research.”
Olivia’s eyes
were awash with tears of joy.
“Olivia believes
they can tell women what to do,” Eugenio said. “Isn’t that right, Olivia?”
“Of course,”
Olivia replied. “Women need guidance from higher forces–like men. Why else are
we here?”
Everyone laughed
except a woman who said: “Please–I’m religious.”
She was young
and white-faced with black hair. The black, emphasising the white, made her
look innocently angelic.
“And?” Eugenio
asked.
Everyone faced
her. Did her “superior vision” allow the “uninformed” to speak?
The silence
resembled a soundless tsunami, sweeping across the ocean of human mindlessness,
to destroy obstacles to objectivity.
“And,” she said,
“I don’t appreciate your comments.”
“Are you telling
us what to say?” Olivia asked.
The woman became
frightened. They had belittled her self-ordained moral superiority.
“Believe
whatever you like,” Eugenio said, “but if you impose your ideas upon others
through politics then that exposes those ideas to analysis.”
This had never
occurred to her. She slunk into her seat like soapy water disappearing down a
drain.
*
Later, Olivia said: “That stupid woman thought we were
going to say: ‘Oh, so sorry, we shouldn’t express our opinions because you
confuse mythology with reality. How inconsiderate of us. Why don’t we just let
the church tell us what to think? It must be 1AD. I thought it was 2022. How
silly of me!’”
Eugenio
mortar-round chuckles struck the icy air. Vapour puffed like indignation from
their mouths. Neon lights glowed in a darkness of dead leaves and bare
branches. A wind wand made yellow pellets shower from twigs that resembled
black wiring against a dark-grey sky.
“We could really
advance,” Eugenio said, “if corruption didn’t exist and people could think.”
“We’d have to
become a different species,” Olivia replied.
“Absolutely,”
Eugenio said.
*
A different species, Eugenio thought. I feel like a
visitor from elsewhere. My discomfort before absurdity suggests I arrived from
outside the Solar System. I feel disquieted by what many people believe is
sacred. Religion confirms for politicians that believing thrives. They
manipulate people’s trust in institutions that provide a sense of cultural
superiority–that generate pride in assumed superior affiliations. They enhance
that pride by associating it with appealing visions of purported truth, for
hope outweighs objectivity in human imagination. People confusing mythology
with reality reduces standards of living, obstructing progress. We dislike
empiricism. Consequently, I will continue to be pasted with puerile labels.
About the author
Kim has worked for NGOs in Greece, Kosovo, Iraq, Palestine and Macedonia. He likes to take risks to get the experience required for writing. 188 of his stories have been accepted by 108 different magazines.