Chapter 2 – Mappaemundi is a map for sinners, not for navigators.
When the telephone’s alarm started ringing like a crazy rooster, M knew that it was time to get out of the bed and prepare for the work. But once he opens his eyes, he realized that he is neither in his house nor sleeping in a bed. He is in his office, on his beloved chair and in front of his large computer screen. The light coming from the ceiling was not effective any more due to the daylight outside. The arrival of twilight hit him in the office, witnessing his hardwork and determination for success or the opposite, his laziness and sluggishness due to the failure of his persistance against sleep. He could not say which adjectives should be used to describe his night because he did not know how much job he has done and how much more to go. He tries to move his body slightly towards the table so that he can get some support from it to stand up but the accumulated pain at his back does not let him move. “Damn” he curses, while trying to hold his back with one hand and hold the chair’s side-arm with his other hand.
This wasn’t the first time he spent his night in the office, among the stock exchange rates, empty coffee mugs, dozing computer hard-drives and a list of the things he wanted to finish yesterday. His loose necktie seems having a race with his untucked shirt and of course his online customers in USA or Europe were now sleeping without noticing his sacrifice. He stares at the computer screen in order to figure out where he stopped before falling into sleep but he can see only the blackness which is as strong as the sunlight. For a second, he thinks if there is also a way to measure the darkness without considering its inverse relationship with light. The dark he sees when he closes his eyes before sleeping and the dark he gets when he turns off the light in the office cannot be the same. Darkness can be inspirational for some people. It can be scary for those who cannot rely on their other senses as much as they trust their eyes. It can be like a vacuum, ready to suck the entire light of the universe together with everything inside. He mumbles the words “dark, darker and the darkest”, remembers MM’s sparkling dark eyes in the moon light and realizes that dark can illuminate light if it is loved and appreciated.
His second attempt works well despite his reluctance to go anywhere. The force he exerts through his body pushes the chair back and without letting the pain intervene, he stands up.The staff will be coming to the office within an hour so he has to get out of here as soon as possible. He probably looks like a homeless man now sleeping on the streets, begging for the next meal. Is there a mirror in the office? Why should there be one? This is where he makes money by negotiating with international customers and convincing them to buy stocks from Vietnamese market. This is where he writes his economic reports and dreams his quick rise in the ladder. Mirrors will show this place smaller and uglier. Mirror will double the rush and will show the place more chaotic than it really is.
He walks towards the window to see the city, the one which never sleeps but just takes short naps. From the seventh floor of the building, people look like ants running for the benefit of the colony although he knows that everyone runs for their own behoof in this city. The motorbikes are honking to make sure that someone on the road will notice their existence. Honking here is not a warning; it is like breathing, an indispensable part of driving. He remembers the days he used to drive his father’s motorbike in the city, the days his mother used to say “You will be a great man, a great leader and everyone will respect you.” He did not know what it takes to be a great man but the idea sounded plausible, almost imaginable for a little boy. A few motorbike drivers were waiting at the corner of the junction for customers. At this rush hour, they can find a lot of people who need to go quick. It is not because they need to rush, it is the speed of the city that makes people rush, like a gravitational field created by the mass of a heavenly object. There is no choice for earth other than spinning around the sun. It is the path, the rule, the flux, the dharma imposed on us…
He turns his back to window and tucks his shirt in. After taking his necktie off his neck, he looks for his shoes for a while. They are under the table, like two children abandoned at a safe place for the comfort of their parents. Outside, the sun is not in baking mode yet so it is not hard to walk on the streets. He decides to take a walk even though he has not done it for long time. His home is not so far and it is nice to see people running around, to witness the city waking up. Most of the shops are already open, pavements are full of middle-aged people, drinking their iced-black coffees and watching the flow of the traffic as if a miracle will happen and save them from their misery or at least from the bitter taste of the coffee. Taxi drivers in front of hotels and business buildings seem tired of waiting for customers all night, some sleep on their front seat, their feet are dangling out the window like a piece of fabric swinging on a bride’s car. He sees one driver cleaning the vomit in his car while cursing the drunken foreign passenger. Another driver laughes at him from a safe distance and asks him if he managed to charge the foreigner double for the shit he caused. “It wasn’t he, it was a she” the driver shouts back. M walks through and cannot hear the rest of the conversation.
He walks through one of the tall buildings and passes in front of a homeless man, wrapped in his dirty clothes and his nonchalant viewers. One of his arms is crooked like a broken branch of a tree, swinging freely. His other arm is holding a dirty bowl in which there are a few coins. His both legs look fine but somehow he bandaged them with dirty clothes to make sure that they make him look more miserable than what he really is. He wants to keep his eyes away from the poor man but somehow he feels he cannot do it. The more he tries not to touch his eyes with his stare, the more his stare gets stuck in the beggar’s sunken eyeholes. There, he sees nothing but hope for a few thousand dong or maybe a recognition, like a dog waits for the master’s stroking hand on its back. The eyes scare him as if he is afraid of falling inside the hole and will never be able to return.
He walks faster while dreaming that there will be no poor people in the society when he becomes a leader of the economy in this country. There will be no beggars, no crowded hospitals, no dirty streets… With his economic plans and educational targets, Vietnam will prosper in the next twenty years, will be open to international trade and of course will be a centre of attention, first in Asia and then in the whole world. It is all hard-work and determination. It is all about believing that knowledge can enlighten the world and can slowly change it. It is all about having a faith in love of people, in beauty of freedom and in economic reforms which eventually will change the entire country as they changed the neigboring countries during the last few decades. He had the faith; he had the power and determination. But he also had a broken heart from a recently ended relationship and this only was enough to darken everything in his life including his future plans. His hope in future sank like Titanic sank despite the fact that it was the most advanced ship ever built in that time. It does not matter if a man’s heart is made of steel or glass, when it hits a flower which cannot be owned, his heart shatters like a frozen rose, loses all its challenging face, becomes pieces of useless red petals equivalent to the blood-washed leaves… That is how he felt in the recent few weeks: useless… As useless as the mirrors attached to the motorbikes but turned towards each other so that they will not hit the cars or other motorbikes.
He passed another large building and turned left to short-cut his way to home. When he started his relationship with MM, he was rushing home after work so that he can spend time with her, cook together, watch movie together and make love like they have never made love in their lives before. Home was a target to hit, a shrine to touch and expect a divine miracles. After one year or so, things started to change. He got bored with the monotone-ness of their relationship, the predictability of the weekends, and mundane-ness of the evenings. Then home became the place to go when there is nowhere else to go. The reasons he created at the office to go home earlier tuned upside down as he needed reasons to go home late. Maybe he made a mistake in rushing a decision of living together or maybe he was not the right person for her. When both of them realized that there is no solution for their jammed relationship, the complaints replaced the sweet words. Then his late office hours started. He worked late because he believed that the oblivion created by the working environment was for him to ease his pain, to forget his prospective loss. It was interesting for him that he felt the loss before it comes even though it striked him like a flash flood.
One morning he woke up early as usual to go to work. He found MM sitting on a chair, next to bed, smoking a cigarette. From his sleepy eyes, he saw her like she was smoking her fingers, her own body, perhaps her own life but he did not say anything except for a suspicious “good morning!”. MM did not reply him, inhaled another big smog from her cigarette as if she wanted to suck the entire world and fill her lungs with the all the filth of the earth. After exhaling what she just inhaled, “I don’t love you any more.” she said. He did not know what to say so he waited for more like a climber hit by the avalanche but there is nothing he can do except for waiting for the flux to stop before he decides what to do. “I woke up this morning and found out that I don’t love you any more. I checked my heart and could not find you there except for a lot of sweet memories which are now causing pain only.” Then she grabbed her bag, put a forced smile on her face as a last gesture and walked towards the door. For M, the whole thing was like a dream. A dream that tells you that you are in a dream and when you wake up the bitter experience will end. When the door shut behind her and left nothing behind but the dead silence of the bedroom, he thought about her heart. Where was it? Was it where he found it at the first time, at the little café where their eyes locked into each other? Or was it already packed and carefully put in the bag she was carrying? Or maybe her heart was stolen by another man? He never thought about it before but somehow this thought first time descended to his mind now like a defiled revelation after a razor’s cut on the cheek during a morning shave. He jumped from the bed and run to the balcony to see her walking away. She was not on the streets; not on the pavements… He waited for a while but could not see her. She had disappeared like a fairy, leaving only tricky mental games which will keep him awake for the next few weeks.
To be continued...
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder