Issue #96

Empires Rise and Fall, An Evening in der Legion Hall, and A Short Trip to Nowhere

by Salvatore Difalco

Empires Rise and Fall

The tiny couple by the brandy cask at the end of the bar dance like there is no tomorrow. A neck-bearded fiddler on a low stool and a man banging a veneered wooden box with his palms perform an old ditty. I remove my cap and scratch my head. It has been a long day. I ask the burly barkeep for two fingers of spirits.

"Preference?" he says, studying me with the tops of his eyes.

"Surprise me."

He glances at me and nods.

It goes like that sometimes. You let the universe or one of its capable agents handle the decisions, at least the ones that don't matter. The left side of the barkeep's face bears the very detailed tattoo of a woman's face. How many excruciating hours did that take? I want to ask him about it, but I have not lost my mind yet, at least not completely.

"What are you doing here?" the barkeep asks me.

"I'm taking a break from the war."

He looks at my uniform, his eyes pausing at each coruscating brass button.

"Why is the kit green?" he asks.

I have no answer for him. Perhaps it is green for reasons of camouflage. Or for reasons of a strategic or morale rationale to which I am not privy.

"Are we winning the war?" the barkeep inquires.

"Depends who you ask."

"I'm asking you."

"I know the horse of darkness is riding fast to the east."

The barkeep frowns, flips a rag off his shoulder and wipes the bar.

The music stops and the tiny couple bow to each other and return to a miniature table positioned by a jar of pickled eggs. Hard to tell how old they are. Could be any age, really. I sip my drink. Rum on ice. Naught soothes the soul as religion and rum. I eyeball the barkeep. He smiles. I smile. I glance at the couple, now seated and sipping beer from tiny steins. They turn their wee faces to me and also smile.

***

An Evening in der Legion Hall

Bridge chairs deserve high praise, particularly those lacquered black. Ditto bridge tables. The joint is crowded tonight. Schumann plays over the speakers, Fantasiestücke Op. 12. I hear with my ear horn. It emanates from my left ear—my right ear for all intents and purposes absent in toto, a merganser hunting mishap—tubular, then conical, all flexible metal, an alloy I cannot bring to mind under the current conditions. Suffice it to say not a single note escapes my left ear, not a single sly remark or soto voce slur. I use my right hand, a prosthetic of bamboo and leather, to hold the cards dealt to me by Wilder Kiefer, who hosts a titanium plate in his skull. What happened to his hair I cannot say and do not wish to embarrass him by asking, but analogies to algae or a fungal condition would not miss the mark. Fehlende Nase, the third of our trio and a double leg amputee, keeps imagining garlic burning. As the kitchen has been closed since World War II, there is no possibility of actual garlic burning. I wonder if it is an indication of an ailing heart. Or is that burning toast? If you smell burning toast, you are likely doomed. We are likely doomed anyway, but who is not? Wilder deals the ancient cards, possibly relics of the Hapsburg Empire. Thick and coated with a gummy blue patina, the cards stick to the fingers. Eyes lidded, Fehlende puffs on his silver-tipped cigarette with sensuous intensity. I stopped smoking many years ago, with the removal of all my teeth, loosened from a bout of scurvy, but I enjoy the smell of tobacco. I lean over to him. "Blow some smoke in my face," I say. He obliges. My eyelids flutter and nostrils flare as I inhale the fragrant smoke. Wilder tells me to play a card. I have forgotten what game we are playing. I do not wish to ask what it is. I play the Ace of Swords. Both Wilder and Fehlende glance at me as though I am bleeding from a ghastly head wound. "I should have played another card," I say. "My apologies. I slept little last night." Wilder bobs his head. The bobbing reminds one of George Clooney, who bobs his head perhaps more effectively than any actor in history. That is not to say Wilder resembles Clooney in any other way. Wilder says something that escapes my hearing horn. "Repeat that," I say. He curtly tells me to play another card. I squeeze the Queen of Cups from my hand and slap it down. Wilder leaps on it with the King of Cups. His face twists with ugly prepotence. Fehlende adjusts himself, that is to say he adjusts his stumps, which tend to fall asleep when he sits in place too long. He refuses prosthetic legs as he believes he lacks the will and discipline to master walking with them. I must respect that point of view. Losing an arm is one thing, losing both legs presents worries of an existential nature. He prefers to creak around in a vintage wooden wheelchair handed down to him from his grandfather, Helmut, who lost a leg hunting boar in the old country. Wilder informs me I am throwing away the game. Were I to tell him I did not know what game we were playing, he might react violently. He has been known to throw a tantrum over less. Instead, I take the inevitable loss like a good soldier, and congratulate Wilder and Fehlende for crushing me. Wilder reminds me that he in fact won the game. Fehlende came in a close second, but I played poorly. What more can I tell you about myself and my erstwhile comrades? I think you can fill in many of the blanks, but perhaps that is not desired by the contemporary reader. In which case, all I can say is my prosthetic has started to smell a little and I need to get home to the dead wife.

***

A Short Trip to Nowhere

Shortly after a masked man snipped the zip ties from my hands and removed the burlap covering from my head, I found myself alone in a capacious empty warehouse. It took a few minutes to gather myself. Three things became immediately apparent: one, I had no idea where I was; two, I had no idea who had brought me there; and three, I had no idea why I had been brought there. I dusted off my trousers and walked to the exit doors. An alarm blared when I opened the door but fell silent when I closed it. I was on the waterfront, hard to say precisely where. My familiarity with it amounted to several bicycle rides, maybe a walk or two. Waterfronts as a rule project an air of menace. This one fit the script. The absence of any people spoke volumes. I found myself amongst several abandoned warehouses and storage sheds, crumbling brick smokestacks, and a rusted out quarter-ton truck. Mud smeared everything and in the waning evening light iridescent puddles trembled. A stench of petroleum and rotting fish hung heavily in the air. The lake water looked like grey sludge, barely liquid. I walked until I saw a path leading to a main road. My shoes squelched with mud. My wrists ached from the zip ties that one of the three masked men who accosted me in front of my bungalow had applied. Despite the paramilitary garb, they wore no identifying badges or labels, Unclear if they represented some form of authority. On the other hand, they didn't comport themselves like a street gang, which is to say they exhibited a modicum of discipline. What's strange is that not a word was spoken from the moment they grabbed me and threw me into a van to the moment they dumped me at the warehouse. Not a word. They said nothing about who they were, what agency or gang they represented, and why they were accosting me. They didn't even curse as they took me down. Not that I resisted. I did not resist. Nor did I curse. Nor did I ask any questions. For some reason, I elected not to speak, not to protest, not to ask who they were or what they wanted from me. I also didn't hear the men talking to each other. Trying to figure this out, I wondered if I'd recently committed an egregious faux pas, or if I owed people money, or if I'd insulted someone unawares. But none of these factors applied in my case. I lived a quiet life of semi-retirement. Divorced and childless, my net worth was negligible. I rented my tiny bungalow, leased my Honda Civic. I no longer gambled or consumed illegal drugs. Then I thought, this could be the Kafkaesque moment I had anticipated since reading The Trial. And while I should have been alarmed, I must admit part of me found it exciting: to walk as it were in the master's footsteps. Where would this situation lead? I even contemplated getting tortured and how I'd hold up. Given that I harbored few secrets, torture would have yielded nothing noteworthy, unless the aim of the torture was the torture itself, in which case I was guaranteed an experience I'd not soon forget, were I to emerge from it alive. I also thought about my friends and how they'd react to the story of my abduction—perhaps with incredulity or as one would a UFO account. In the van I had sniffed the burlap bag covering my head—an earthy whiff which may or may not have been potatoes. Did that tell me anything? Did these fellows live on a potato farm or were they big eaters of potatoes? I mentally catalogued other odours: gasoline and exhaust, a vaguely vinegarish scent, tobacco and a familiar cologne: Tabac Original. A blast from the past. So one or more of the abductors was roughly my age or of a hipster age wearing the cologne ironically. I tried piecing these fragments into some kind of profile or trackable narrative, but their randomness made this impossible. I started feeling fatigued and shut my eyes to rest them under the burlap bag. Soothed and rocked by the motion of the moving van, I fell into a deep sleep and as I'd been of late experiencing insomnia, it felt almost blissful. Then a rough nudge awoke me. I was walked into the aforementioned warehouse and left there. No explanations, no questions. No torture. The ordeal lasted maybe a couple of hours, tops. What was I to make of it? I pinched my thigh. I wasn't dreaming. I walked up to a main street, uncertain of myself. I didn't know whether to hail a police car or a taxi. I mean, I'd been kidnapped, but released after only hours unharmed. What would a police officer have made of it? He or she would have likely grown suspicious and ask questions I couldn't answer, which would have only led to more suspicion. I hailed a cab. The driver, wearing a rainbow knit cap, asked me where and I said my address. When he asked how my evening was going so far, I told him it could've been better. I didn't tell him how fucked up it had been, how pointless, and how completely devoid of significance. "Do you mind if I use you in a story?" I asked. "How so?" he said. "You'll be the ending," I said and he drove on without another word.