A Momentary Lapse of Reason -05
A Novella
5. 出类拔萃[i]
(chū lèi bá cuì)
“Outstanding!”
Outside it was a Rhapsody on a windy night,[ii] but inside her room Maggie jumped for joy at Kit’s promise that for the moment he was cured. Of whatever is he had wrong with him. This was at 12 o’clock and she could see along the reaches of the street held in a lunar synthesis. [iii] She almost wanted to whisper in your incantations and dissolve the floors of memory.[iv]
She continued: “Can I meet you tonight?”
Over the telephone, she heard: “Half past one.”[v]
She thought and she realized that the streetlamps sputtered, the street plans muttered.[vi] And she twisted like a crooked pin.[vii] And thus there was a hesitation in her voice and deep within her in her mind.
But then she said: “Yes to my mountain flower “[viii] and then thinking and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes[ix]. She did not believe that she said that to him it was a voice that was different from what she had ever used in the past, in the future, and she could not believe that she had uttered it in the oh-so very present.
She was world-wide at the experience and waited for him to reply to what to her was an unabashedly sign of deep lust.
But there was no reply at all.[x]
“Hello.”
Then there came from over the phone: “ I’m still here, but I do not know what you said.”
“It is from an English novel called Ulysses.”
“What does it mean?”
At this point she was furious. How could he not understand what was being subtexted in the text? on what planet did he study language, literature, poetry, and the expression of the young woman to her hoped-for young man? It was to laugh bitterly.
I did not hear Jesus speak to me, and I don’t even believe he exists except in my memory which plays me false.
The spattered wall changed many colors from the lights on the cars and the occasional truck. She wondered what the trucks brought so late at night and then realized they were probably there for the next day. Just as virgins do, the street vendor needs to be ready for the next day’s deliverance. Unfortunately. this virgin was urgent and no one there was ready to service. This is odd because when she did not want to engage in the act it seemed that many people were forcing her to perform.
She rolled around and started counting the seconds but lost track and went to sleep.
But she woke up again gathered her jacket and clear raincoat and went out into the night to seek Kit And perhaps try to explain this need that she felt but did not have yet the words for.
On Haiphong Rd. - a compact busy street north of Hankow Apartments and South of the city green space, with its trees and white towers for entertaining the pocket, she looked up and saw the clouds digesting a meal of drizzle to let it forth when the time came. She wanted there to be a dawn, a dawn that would explain why so much pain is ladled out to the ones who deserve it the least. Then she set her eyes to the east and went to Nathan Rd. with its garish neon pointing to differing shopping malls to expend what one does not have but hopes to have tomorrow. And in this hard light from the neon, her clear raincoat lit up while her eyes dazzled taking in everything and exposing nothing. She punched the sidewalk with its rain-puddled escarpments. But yet did not understand the question that she was seeking. This is because the question did not have an exact answer just as the chess puzzle is the answer until you look for it.
It was time for her to go to that place where she hoped Kit would be present and perhaps by that point an illumination of what she was trying to say would come to her. But the phasing was still in the utter East far from her grasp. The people were draining from the streets to go inside and yield to the pleasures of the night. She wished she could join them. She wanted a specific man to do what she did not know all of the Wii percussions but would gladly sign on the board for the ride wherever it might go. To Park Lane Shopper’s Boulevard and beyond. She hoped she would find a clue to unlock this mysterious longing, but her heart seemed to doubt it. She shrugged her shoulders and did not know how to respond to this inner darkness.
She turned onto a narrow street that had no lights to guide the way. No one cast is shadow on the pavement and she began to feel as if it was her lot to be alone. And in that loneliness, she would sit by the stoop and recall what it was to be young and alive.
It was half past three, the lamp sputtered, the lamp muttered in the dark. And yet the lamp calmed as if a reflection of the moon.[xi] She winks with people I, and she smiles into the corners. And Maggie held in her hand a paper rose. Different from the one before at least in her memory but perhaps it was the last twist of the knife.[xii]
She was alone and even the other people had dried like the rain.
And then she went back to her parent’s house. There she was abused mercilessly, relentlessly, and sadistically. And she did not even mind. Because it was a comfort to knowing that she was deeply hated to be used for love, in every sort of way but the agape. Which meant it was not love at all.
[i] Fill the bill.
[ii] Reference to T.S. Eliot, “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” Title.
[iii] Reference to T.S. Eliot, “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” 1.1-3
[iv] Reference to T.S. Eliot, “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” 1.4-5
[v] Reference to T.S. Eliot, “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” 1.16
[vi] Reference to T.S. Eliot, “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” 1.17-18
[vii] Reference to T.S. Eliot, “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” 1.23
[viii] Reference to James Joyce the last line of Ulysses.
[ix] Reference to James Joyce the last line of Ulysses.
[x] Genesis, “No Reply at All”
[xi] Reference to T.S. Eliot, “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,
[xii] Reference to T.S. Eliot, “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”, 1.69