3:56am: Published in Prairie Winds
My short story "Knowledge and Illusion" was published this week in Prairie Winds, a literary journal published by Dakota Wesleyan University. The Journal looks like this:
Click to read "Knowledge and Illusion" on G.D.'s Fiction Page
And here is the story if you feel like reading:
© 2002 G.D. Peters
KNOWLEDGE AND ILLUSION
by
G.D. PETERS
Somewhere among the vast, uncharted landscape of the human anatomy is a gland so small it can not be found with lance and probe, surgeon or scalpel, but which houses the thinnest of fibers, a single nerve that is the sensor for all that is unseen, unspoken, unheard in the small, rich circle of ones circumstance and experience. This sensor acts as a filter, sifting the truth from what is true. And since everything that exists, by its very act of being, exists in a state of truth, whether tautology or falsehood, fact or fabrication, one thing for certain that can be known is that nothing can be known for certain. Everything, including knowledge, exists in its own state of illusion. Knowledge, therefore, is itself an illusion, a false and fleeting state of grace, supported by its greatest weaknessfallibilityand bolstered by its own, forever shifting, maze of mirrors. The frayed, haphazard edges of knowledge and illusion wreak a constant havoc on the frailty of the human condition.
Wilfredo Herodotus Boschetti, Knowledge and Illusion, 1759
"Pray look better, Sir those things yonder are no giants, but windmills."
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, 1605
*
Adriénne stands beneath a threatening gray sky, fingering the handle of an oversized valise and shifting her weight uneasily. From the corner of one eye she spies a movement, turns her head to see an inchworm gyrating frantically at the end of a slender thread. Her bearing shifts imperceptibly as she traces the silk ribbon to its source just above her, beneath a limb of the mulberry tree overhanging the sidewalk in front of Richards apartment.
What should you likes me to do? she says to Richard, nervously eyeing the worm.
Richard stands motionless, arms crossed and lips locked in a stoic grimace, as Adriénne wipes tears from her face with a crumpled tissue, leaving smudged rivulets trailing her cheeks which, a month earlier, he would have lovingly cleansed with pursed lips. Now he remains unmoved and unmoving, unable to formulate an answer.
I dont know, he finally manages, looking up to find her eyes upon him, narrowed and hostile. What do you want?
Adriénne watches the worm drop several inches and abruptly stop, twisting at the end of its silk. She is about to respond but, thinking better of it, remains silent.
When the two of them moved in they were like newlyweds. I was sitting here on the terrace (my fire escape), smoking a little cigar and watching as they unloaded the van and trundled their belongings to the third-floor rear, just up the steps from my own little flat. Him I instantly made for a New Yorker, not once did he look up to catch a new neighbor taking his leisure of an autumn afternoon. She, on the other hand, had looked not once but several times, and we had, in some secretive fashion, exchanged waves and covert glances. She made a game of not telling him I was there, waiting to see if he would look for himself. But I knew what she did not, that we New Yorkers never look up. And, he never did.
Anyway, you might have thought they were the happiest couple anywhere. I would have thought so myself if Vanessa and I had not actually been the happiest couple anywhere. But as there must be an upper limit placed on absolutes it was necessary to apportion some hierarchy to our relative states of beatitude, so I agreeably graded them down a step on the scale of infinite bliss, trusting they would find contentment in mediocrity.
As I watched these lovebirds carefully constructing their nest with bits of twigs and grass it occurred to me that perhaps a like fortune might soon grace my own peasant lot. And, coincidentally, in the midst of this fancy (as if precisely on cue) the enchanting figure of Vanessa appeared, coming toward me on the sidewalk down the block. Watching her walk was one of my greatest pleasures, as she had a childlike bounce to her step which never failed to captivate me. And though she had been living in New York several years she retained her outsiders idle curiosity, looking up as often as the greenest tourist off the boat. She did so even at this moment, spotting me on the fire escape and waving as she came (and I had only time enough to jump through the window and brush the taste of tobacco from my teeth before the buzzer rang and she was at my doorstep).
Hiiii, she smiled, stepping across the threshold and into my arms and a warm kiss. Oh, so you do miss me, she teased when I offered her a moments breath.
What, me? I joked. Hell, Im just trying to make a homely girl happy.
Ohhh, she said. See? And it worked! She lowered her purse as I helped her out of her sweater.
Can I take your blouse? I said.
Oh, new material!
Hey, Im syndicated.
No wonder, youre hilarious! she said as, from outside my door, we heard the sound of something large being bounced and hoisted up the steps. New neighbors?
Yeah, newlyweds, I think, I said. Imagine, we could have had a double wedding.
Ahh, she narrowed her eyes, always the jokester.
Like this.
We sat together on the sofa and listened to music, patching together the fabric of our covenant with soft lies and dirty kisses, all the while hearing the lifting and jouncing of our newlyweds chattel being pushed and lugged and dragged and driven to roost.
But I saw it coming, their trouble in paradise. Not right away, its true, but from a fair enough distance, and clear as a dark cloud shouldering its way through the warm tranquility of a perfect sky. In the beginning, though, we would hear them bouncing down the steps, laughing and talking, generally enjoying the hell out of their new life together on the upper west side. One time we heard them come halfway down the steps and stop. Vanessa pulled her lips from mine.
What happened? she asked.
Does my funny looking head now resemble a crystal ball?
Ohhh, always the prankster.
Well, dont let me stop you, I said, I know youre dying to look through the creep-hole.
She furrowed a brow, but rose nonetheless and tiptoed furtively toward the door. In a moment she was back beside me, a conspiratorial smile on her face.
Theyre kissing in the hallway, she whispered.
What! I gasped in mock rage and indignation. Right now? Here, before our very noses! What of the tabloids, the internet? A scandal in our midst; oh, the horror
Vanessa pushed me away, then reached her arms around my neck and pulled me back for another wave of kisses which I guzzled as the elixir of life itself. For our lovebirds upstairs, however, the climate was not long in changing. Of course Adriénne did not have the benefit of my perspective, but I am loathe to poke my nose where it does not belong, and here it did not. I therefore kept my own counsel and trusted that, like water seeking its own level, their union would settle in its proper place. Still, I was not blinded by my reticence, nor prevented from witnessing (simply because, like the referee in a prize fight, I was literally atop the action) every nuance of deception that crept its way into the lives of these good people. The first blow came late one evening as I returned home from work. I heard someone on the stairwell and turned to find Adriénne sitting at the top of the stairs, rocking herself as she wept into a pair of praying hands.
I reached out with a simple utterance of her name. Adriénne?
She started at this, looking down, and choked on her reply, struggling for composure.
Whats wrong? I asked, placing a foot on the first step in what I intended as an overture of solace. Her lovely blue eyes were puffed with worry and bloodshot-red, and I felt a pang of guilt affecting naiveté as I did, for two nights earlier Id seen Richard down the block, his arms draped intimately about the waist of another woman. I did not know if anything had happened between him and Adriénne, it was none of my business if it had. Yet there I stood feigning ignorance, and the longer I did so the greater, evidently, the strain on her resistance, for she finally burst into great spasms of tears, and once the dam broke it was no longer possible, merely with upraised foot, to hold forth some vague notion of comfort. I quickly climbed the steps, half-worried that Richard himself might appear on the landing (while at the same time practically hoping he would). I sat beside her and drew her close, caressing quivering shoulders, her rain of tears wetting my sleeve. I didnt speak, but merely waited, and when the fever had run its course she released a torrent of emotions.
I dont know what is wrong. This is something with Richard, but she says no, nothing is wrong.
Did something happen? I asked.
Yes, must be something is happen. She says no, but I know something is happen. I should like to ask but she says this is nothing. But hey, I am staying with Richard every long times, and knowing if something its little bit change like this, or little bit like this. So she is working late and
every night late, you know, coming late to work, and I should like to say why, and she tells to me listen, it is just working, you know. But I know is not just working, I mean we are spending two years in Czech Republic and Richard is working equal jobs, and never something to happens like this, you know, not in two years.
I was unable to offer any consolation, especially considering I was privy to Richards infidelities. I therefore held my tongue, pulled more firmly on her shoulder, and hoped that this would provide some comfort.
I dont know what to do, she continued, I should like to talks to him but she doesnt want to talks. Meantime I am coming to States, to New York City, yeah? But at home I am study in one of best universities, you know, but I am giving up university. Sure, Richard says, hey, come to New York to lives with me, so I should like to be with him, yeah, so I am leaving university and come to New York, and I haff no friends, and now I haff no Richard, too. She continued to rock, pushing aside tears with her fingers.
Well, I said, but you have a job; must be you have some friends there?
Yes, but is only hostess jobs at little restaurant, and those waitress, they never talks to me, always.
As I held Adriénne I realized this was the first real conversation Id had with her, our prior contact consisting in hand waves, smiles, and brief hellos in the hallway. To me she had always been the beautiful young foreigner, her blond hair and tall, voluptuous figure tantalizing even for a man so firmly in the throes of love. I was finding now that behind the elegant, mysterious European was simply a sweet kid with an accent who got yanked in over her head. When I kissed her on the cheek and said good-night, offering empty, if optimistic, assurances, I found myself looking into the eyes of a child: frightened, lonely, and a long way from home. But there was nothing I could do about the inevitable heartache that, even now, was measuring its tender target.
Hey, I am crying all this time and not even to say sorry to you, Adriénne said, a hand on the doorknob, her face turned over one shoulder.
To me? I asked, turning from the stairwell.
You are not breaking up with girlfriend, too? I mean, because I am seeing her today on street, I should like to say hello but
Here she abruptly stopped.
Oh, I said. The other man?
She nodded gravely.
Its complicated, I said, nodding my own head as if I understood what I was talking about, which I did not, although I knew it the way one knows the taste inside ones mouth. I sank to the depths of my own apartment uncertain whether, for all my trouble, I had done any good, and feeling, rather, as if Id simply grappled the great boulder from Adriénnes shoulder and hefted it onto my own. Adriénnes life was beginning to unravel before her eyes (or, at any rate, mine) and I was left pondering not only her precarious future, and the vulnerable innocence of a stricken heart, but also the muddled state of my own affairs, for Vanessa had seemingly arrived at a crossroads, and I was worried about which path she would choose.
The truth of the matter is that Vanessa was a married woman. As for our being the happiest couple anywhere, this was an illusion, a maze of mirrors turning back on itself in rapid revolutions, throwing off a blinding light. Adriénne had seen Vanessa walking with her husband through the neighborhood. (I have had the same misfortune more than once.) Its true they are married, and living together in what I presume is a tidy apartment here in our pleasant community. I did not perpetrate our lie to appease some twisted appetite for intrigue, but because my love was stronger than my conscience. As I am the villain in this, I do not renounce my complicity, but plead instead the tenacity of loves embrace, no feeble grasp but vice-like, and formidable. That one becomes despicable under its spell is beyond ones control.
Who knows how these things happen; you certainly dont plan them. One minute youre talking across the bar to a customer, a woman whose beauty seems crafted to your particular sensibilities. She flirts a little but freely confesses, when finally you have broken down and invited her for an afternoon in the park, that she is married. Oh well, you offer, graciously surrendering to reality, so bring him along. And that, you later learn, is the note which strikes a harmonious chord within the music of her lovely soul. She returns several times, and when once more you venture to extend an invitation, this time for a movie (we can be friends and watch a movie, right? she posits), you have crossed a line you did not know was there and never saw. The next thing you know she is sitting beside you on the sofa three afternoons a week, and before you can prevent it the two of you have succumbed to the strongest of urges and fallen in love.
Well, but now there is the husband, and what began as an amorous tryst has developed into a full-scale love affair replete with the trappings of deceit, the sturm and dranganxiety and guiltthat is inevitable when good and well-meaning people fall prey to temptations of the heart. And what of the unsuspecting husband? Even after two years Vanessa swore he didnt have a clue. My own shortcomings aside, I couldnt help but wonder at the nature of that guys illusions. I didnt want to add to Vanessas already burgeoning stockpile of anxiety, but to be honest I was beginning to hope he would find out, to get it in the open and reach an honest resolution, if that word may be applied to this unhappy arrangement.
But I could tell Vanessa was nearing a turning point, soon to choose one path or the other, if a man can be considered a path. I was hoping Vanessa was secure in her love for me, convinced I could provide in richness for her soul what he could only flail at with doting devotion and a deep pocket. Tensions in her household were multiplying, edges frayed with innuendo and indifference, and more than once she had settled beside me on the sofa and sighed with exasperation I cant take it anymore. Yet time and again she faltered, lacking, perhaps, in conviction what she had of abundance in desire. Yet, believing the strongest dam would not forestall the mightiest flood, I patiently awaited the event that would enrich my life immeasurably.
Adriénne, in the meantime, had been undergoing a crisis of a different disorder. I saw her a week later, and this time it was not necessary to climb the steps to find her, for she was sitting at the foot of the stairs, crying in front of my apartment, and looking worse, if possible, than before.
Hello, I said, kneeling beside her.
I am sorry to waiting for you, she said through captured breaths, but I has no one to talks to.
Do you want to come inside? I offered, and she immediately rose, as I unlocked the door, and followed me in.
I draped my jacket over a chair and grabbed a shot glass and the bottle of Jack from the kitchen, pouring off a legal shot and handing it to Adriénne, who had quietly settled on the sofa.
Here, I said, preparing to explain its medicinal value, when she snatched it up and downed it. I poured another and she began, haltingly, and through a steady accompaniment of tears, to unburden herself.
I dont know what is wrong with me, maybe I am bad persons, but always I should trying to be good.
I pulled a chair to the sofa and sat before her. She sipped at the shot and gathered herself with several deep sighs. Today is worst day of life for me, she went on. I tolds to you I come to States from my home, I haff no friends here, no one to talks to me, and only jobs is hostess in small restaurant. And yesterday Richard is telling to send me home.
Home, I said, you mean back to Czechoslovakia?
To Czech Republic, yes. She now downed the second shot as grief of a greater measure found its footing in her heart; she began trembling as if the temperature had dropped thirty degrees. Now she likes to breaking up.
But why? I asked, holding out the box of Kleenex, from which she gratefully plucked two blooms.
I dont know. I dont know what is happen to me. But I am having to works tonight at restaurant, so I am thinking, okay, so I have jobs. I mean, we live in same apartment, but I dont has to go home; with jobs I can find new apartment. But when I am coming to works
She began sobbing. I sat beside her on the sofa, once more offering an arm across her shoulders.
When I am coming to works manager is telling to send me home, she said.
You mean you got fired?
Yes, and every time I am trying to learn better, but manager says I am one months at restaurant and not learning computer, not learning foods menu, and English not every good.
I nodded my head.
And I am borrowing money from cousin to come here, and ticket home is not before January. I am leaving best university to come to States, I dont wants to go home no money for cousin and no jobs and no boyfriend, like run home to mother.
I understand.
But now I haff no stupid hostess jobs, how can find new apartment?
Hey, I countered, trying to sound upbeat, you are young and pretty, you can walk into any bar or restaurant and get a job. Are you kidding me, this is New York City, a beautiful girl like you, youll have a job before the end of the week, guaranteed.
She was skeptical, but I had been in the city long enough to know this was true. Though her heart was breaking, there would be opportunities for one such as her. From her purely personal perspective, however, I understood that things were not quite looking up for Adriénne. She had given up everything for what seemed more than everything, the dream of a lifetime, only to wake up one morning (yesterday morning, actually) and find it all lying in pieces.
Well, I dont blame myself for comforting a grief-stricken maiden in her time of crisis, but I cant shake the feeling her spell passed to me the moment I reached out to her with open arms. How could I feel otherwise? I left her at the foot of the steps with a rigorous hug and best wishes for a bright outcome, and bolted my door with the condescending taste of pity on my palate, sorry for her plight but happy it had not befallen me.
On Monday I waited to hear from Vanessa, hoping she would be calling with good news about our future. I was troubled when she did not call, but not worried, although when I did not hear from her on Tuesday I began to feel unsettled. Still, I did not want to call her and cast the first stone over calm waters. On Wednesday, finally, she did call, and came to see me in the afternoon as if nothing had happened, or so I thought.
She sat beside me on the sofa, acting for the world as if nothing had changed, but there was something in her bearing that betrayed a deeper burden. It seemed she had news for me that was not exactly pleasant. It was late afternoon, and we listened as an autumn wind rattled the branches outside my window. Vanessa sat quietly, regarding me with something large trapped behind her dark eyes. I watched, fearful, as it struggled to break free, feeling its regret, sensing an impulse to shed its restraints and smother me with truth or illusion, whichever might hurt me least.
I have something to tell you, she began.
It would appear.
Our eyes embraced. Im moving, she said.
Something shifted, then shifted again. And then fell.
Youre moving, as in you are moving? Or youre moving, as in you and he are moving?
She hung her head. Im sorry, she said.
Then everything that had been falling crashed with an inertia of finality. I looked below me and saw the ground spiraling away from far off in the distance, a vertigo twister which reeled off my guts in a suffocating vacuum of compromise and regret, while something inside my head seemed to watch from the top of a nearby cliff.
Ive been afraid to tell you for a month now.
My face went flush, feeling the pricks of a million tiny pins. Well, I finally managed, I dont know why? Why should it matter to me if youre living with him at this apartment or move with him to another? I could not tell whether I had succeeded in masking my devastation.
I dont know, she said, its just that we talked about my leaving him.
Yes, I said, we did. But I would have thought thatafter two years of thisif you were going to leave him you would have done it by now.
How odd it felt to be uttering these words, which sounded so logical and were so wholly untrue.
Im sorry, she repeated.
And so she was.
Well, and that was that.
I dont suppose, really, it should have come as a surprise. A man, after all, is not a path; a path is a path, along with whichever man is on it. But putting words and meanings to thoughts and fears unspoken seemed as a death sentence, and at that moment I felt the life draining from our time together like soapy water swirling from a sink. And that is where I stood after she had gone, my hands on the edge of a white porcelain bowl, my face wet with confusion and despair, watching as the last remnants of what seemed a perfect life trickled to the rim of oblivion, hovering momentarily as if offering one last, fleeting glimpse of what I had known, before plummeting into the great chasm of what once was but shall never be. I seemed separated from myself as I leaned over the abyss, watching my arms as if they were the arms of another, supporting my weight but asking why was this my weight, why me whose thoughts connected to those distant arms, why me who had to reach with dead limbs to dry a face that would never again truly come dry. For a brief moment I felt as though it would not matter whether I turned and reached with my disconnected arm for that towel or stood there, indefinitely, waiting for time to end.
*
An hour ago my buzzer rang, and I thoughtJesus, I dont want to talk to anyone right now. As I came toward the intercom I heard fingernails tapping lightly at the door. Adriénne was on the other side, cradling a plastic bag in her arms.
I have to leaves, now, she said, her big valise at her side.
Adriénne, where are you going? I asked her, but she only shrugged her shoulders. Those is for you, she said, handing me the bag.
Whats this?
Maybe you needs those, too? she said. Hey, but you dont has to find new apartments, yeah? She lifted her hand and squeezed my arm gently, a brave smile trembling past difficult tears. Then she turned and left, pulling her suitcase behind her on its wheels. I watched her going down the steps one last time, the suitcase bouncing and clanging like the day she moved in.
When she had gone I opened the bag to find a bottle of Jack Daniels, a small card tied around its neck with a ribbon. Thank You was printed on the front. Inside two words were penned in her own hand: my freend.
I sit beneath a brooding sky and watch Adriénne from my fire escape, wondering what will happen to her now. Richard stands with arms folded, a statue in mind and body. The inchworm drops several stages in rapid succession, moving only in one direction; but for Adriénne the possibilities are endless.
THE END
You can read the rest of my published fiction online at my Fiction Page, which contains all my published work, both short stories and novel excerpts.
Anyway, it's always a good day when a story is published, and even nicer when it happens on our great nation's birthday. Happy Independence Day to all.
G.D.