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. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I needed to do what any normal woman would do under the circumstances. I needed to call a girlfriend. I picked up the phone and dialed. Benny answered on the first ring. "Hello?" she said. "Hello, Benny," I said, my voice breaking like glass. "Daphne, is that you?" she said. "Oh Benny," I wailed. "It's Darius, isn't it," she said. "I'll kill that son of a bitch," she raged. "Come on, sugar, tell me what he did this time!" Chapter 9 Walking east rain, light rain falling& rain, or is it love? "Collage in November" by Irving Stettner I told Benny everything: the makeup sex the other night, The breakup after it, the first makeup sex tonight and then the second makeup sex followed by the fight when Darius left, slamming the door behind him. The telephone receiver was hot from pressing against my ear for a good hour. Benny listened while I rattled on, sometimes repeating myself, trying to convey Darius's every word. Benny kept quiet except to exclaim, "What a jerk!" and, "All men are such pigs," about ninety nine times. Finally I felt drained. I wasn't mad anymore; I felt as if my heart were breaking. Dawn was coming, I still had to walk Jade, and after that I hoped I'd be able to fall asleep. I was ready to hang up, but to my surprise Benny wasn't. My best bud had let me talk it out before she finally gave me her two cents. "Daphy, I surely wish I could run right up there with a plate of fried chicken and a bowl of potato salad. It's what my Mama back in Branson always recommended for helping folks in trouble. And if she just heard how low you're a feeling, she'd add a big helping of banana puddin' too. But you know, honey, Darius has a point." "What are you talking about? How can you say that?" "Now don't get your knickers in a twist. All I'm saying is he's broken and you want to fix him. But you can't. He has to heal from the inside out. Sugar, it's one of those things you just can't make happen 'cause you want it to. He may come around by and by, but on his time, not yours. Aw, shoot, I'm guessing you didn't want to hear that." I didn't answer right away. Then I said, "It's hard to hear what you're saying. But you're probably right. I just have a bad feeling that by and by will never come because something really bad is going to happen first." And so it was with a heavy step that I took Jade out onto the empty streets. I turned up my collar against the cold and shoved the hand not holding Jade's leash deep into a pocket. It didn't take long for the other hand to be stiff and hurting when the icy temperatures closed a tight fist around mine. Among the dark apartment house windows, one or two glowed yellow as a few people awoke before the sunrise. I imagined them moving with slippered feet, filling the coffeemaker, and then softly entering the bathroom to turn on the shower. One of the loneliest of times is right before morning, when silence lies like a shroud on the land, muffling everything in grayness. My dog and I walked quietly along the cement sidewalks, stepped off the curbs onto black asphalt, and crossed the deserted street whether the light was green or red. In a little while the noises of the day would start again: honking horns and radios blaring as people burst out of their front doors to face the morning. By then I'd be settling in for my day's sleep. Humans walked by light. I walked by darkness. Now, solitary and sad, I tugged on Jade's leash and turned her around. I told her we needed to go back home. She agreeably changed her direction, yet when we started back up the block I heard a little drum tap tap tapping. It was a pleasant sound, almost a happy one. Well, the unusual isde rigueur in New York City, and I figured some half stoned musician was practicing at four thirty a.m. But with every step I took the sound of the little drum seemed to tap louder: rat a tat, rat a tat, a staccato that I finally decided was coming up from the ground. Suddenly I thought I could feel the earth turning on its axis beneath my feet, the buildings seemed to go cockeyed on their foundations, and the setting moon was spinning crazily in the sky. Jade had stopped in her tracks, lifted up her muzzle and let out a howl that chilled my blood. That's when I saw the owl sitting in the middle of the sidewalk right in front of me. It was a small thing, and it blinked its yellow eyes slowly. I'm superstitious. Owls are bad omens, and as I watched, it started to twirl around until the spin became a blur and the owl turned into Don Manuel. Jade barked and lunged at him so fast I almost lost hold of the leash. Don Manuel just smiled and raised himself up about eight feet in the air out of her reach and hung there suspended. "You have found the men who have the susto?" he asked. "I think so," I said to his face which was now floating above me like the Cheshire cat's smile. "But you have not found the answer," he said. "I don't know the question," I replied. "The question is 'What is killing those people?'" he said, starting to fade away. "So whatis the answer?" I yelled upward as he became more and more transparent. "The sickness of fear," he replied in a voice as thin as the air where he had been. "Susto& " Then all was quiet, and an owl's feather came floating gently earthward. It landed at my feet. Jade came over and sniffed it. I picked it up and put it in my coat pocket before we turned for home. Back in the apartment, with the sun not far below the horizon, fatigue was beginning to overtake me, but what the shape shifter had said was wriggling around in my brain and starting to crystallize into an idea. I didn't know exactly how susto and fear were related, but I knew fear itself was both primal and deadly. All the great modern psychologists had written about fear, from the angst and existential dread of Soren Kierkegaard to the theories concerning fear and the formation of personality of Sigmund Freud, Karl Jung, and Ernest Becker. For New Yorkers today, and probably for all Americans, differing degrees of fear, from a low level anxiety to the outright terror of panic attacks, have become constant if unwelcome companions. Joie de vivre has fled and been replaced by watchful eyes and nervous mannerisms, nightmares and stress disorders. I knew, we all knew, that over the past few years, fear had become the worm at the core of this city. Thinking about this, it dawned on me that the shaman's voice was not that of a Western philosopher. To understand him I had to look to a different mindset, a different world view. I walked into my library and reached up to remove a book by Krishnamurti from the shelf. Born in 1895 in Andhra Pradesh, India, Jiddu Krishnamurti had been found as a teenager by members of the Theosophical Society and adopted by a lady named Annie Besant [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I needed to do what any normal woman would do under the circumstances. I needed to call a girlfriend. I picked up the phone and dialed. Benny answered on the first ring. "Hello?" she said. "Hello, Benny," I said, my voice breaking like glass. "Daphne, is that you?" she said. "Oh Benny," I wailed. "It's Darius, isn't it," she said. "I'll kill that son of a bitch," she raged. "Come on, sugar, tell me what he did this time!" Chapter 9 Walking east rain, light rain falling& rain, or is it love? "Collage in November" by Irving Stettner I told Benny everything: the makeup sex the other night, The breakup after it, the first makeup sex tonight and then the second makeup sex followed by the fight when Darius left, slamming the door behind him. The telephone receiver was hot from pressing against my ear for a good hour. Benny listened while I rattled on, sometimes repeating myself, trying to convey Darius's every word. Benny kept quiet except to exclaim, "What a jerk!" and, "All men are such pigs," about ninety nine times. Finally I felt drained. I wasn't mad anymore; I felt as if my heart were breaking. Dawn was coming, I still had to walk Jade, and after that I hoped I'd be able to fall asleep. I was ready to hang up, but to my surprise Benny wasn't. My best bud had let me talk it out before she finally gave me her two cents. "Daphy, I surely wish I could run right up there with a plate of fried chicken and a bowl of potato salad. It's what my Mama back in Branson always recommended for helping folks in trouble. And if she just heard how low you're a feeling, she'd add a big helping of banana puddin' too. But you know, honey, Darius has a point." "What are you talking about? How can you say that?" "Now don't get your knickers in a twist. All I'm saying is he's broken and you want to fix him. But you can't. He has to heal from the inside out. Sugar, it's one of those things you just can't make happen 'cause you want it to. He may come around by and by, but on his time, not yours. Aw, shoot, I'm guessing you didn't want to hear that." I didn't answer right away. Then I said, "It's hard to hear what you're saying. But you're probably right. I just have a bad feeling that by and by will never come because something really bad is going to happen first." And so it was with a heavy step that I took Jade out onto the empty streets. I turned up my collar against the cold and shoved the hand not holding Jade's leash deep into a pocket. It didn't take long for the other hand to be stiff and hurting when the icy temperatures closed a tight fist around mine. Among the dark apartment house windows, one or two glowed yellow as a few people awoke before the sunrise. I imagined them moving with slippered feet, filling the coffeemaker, and then softly entering the bathroom to turn on the shower. One of the loneliest of times is right before morning, when silence lies like a shroud on the land, muffling everything in grayness. My dog and I walked quietly along the cement sidewalks, stepped off the curbs onto black asphalt, and crossed the deserted street whether the light was green or red. In a little while the noises of the day would start again: honking horns and radios blaring as people burst out of their front doors to face the morning. By then I'd be settling in for my day's sleep. Humans walked by light. I walked by darkness. Now, solitary and sad, I tugged on Jade's leash and turned her around. I told her we needed to go back home. She agreeably changed her direction, yet when we started back up the block I heard a little drum tap tap tapping. It was a pleasant sound, almost a happy one. Well, the unusual isde rigueur in New York City, and I figured some half stoned musician was practicing at four thirty a.m. But with every step I took the sound of the little drum seemed to tap louder: rat a tat, rat a tat, a staccato that I finally decided was coming up from the ground. Suddenly I thought I could feel the earth turning on its axis beneath my feet, the buildings seemed to go cockeyed on their foundations, and the setting moon was spinning crazily in the sky. Jade had stopped in her tracks, lifted up her muzzle and let out a howl that chilled my blood. That's when I saw the owl sitting in the middle of the sidewalk right in front of me. It was a small thing, and it blinked its yellow eyes slowly. I'm superstitious. Owls are bad omens, and as I watched, it started to twirl around until the spin became a blur and the owl turned into Don Manuel. Jade barked and lunged at him so fast I almost lost hold of the leash. Don Manuel just smiled and raised himself up about eight feet in the air out of her reach and hung there suspended. "You have found the men who have the susto?" he asked. "I think so," I said to his face which was now floating above me like the Cheshire cat's smile. "But you have not found the answer," he said. "I don't know the question," I replied. "The question is 'What is killing those people?'" he said, starting to fade away. "So whatis the answer?" I yelled upward as he became more and more transparent. "The sickness of fear," he replied in a voice as thin as the air where he had been. "Susto& " Then all was quiet, and an owl's feather came floating gently earthward. It landed at my feet. Jade came over and sniffed it. I picked it up and put it in my coat pocket before we turned for home. Back in the apartment, with the sun not far below the horizon, fatigue was beginning to overtake me, but what the shape shifter had said was wriggling around in my brain and starting to crystallize into an idea. I didn't know exactly how susto and fear were related, but I knew fear itself was both primal and deadly. All the great modern psychologists had written about fear, from the angst and existential dread of Soren Kierkegaard to the theories concerning fear and the formation of personality of Sigmund Freud, Karl Jung, and Ernest Becker. For New Yorkers today, and probably for all Americans, differing degrees of fear, from a low level anxiety to the outright terror of panic attacks, have become constant if unwelcome companions. Joie de vivre has fled and been replaced by watchful eyes and nervous mannerisms, nightmares and stress disorders. I knew, we all knew, that over the past few years, fear had become the worm at the core of this city. Thinking about this, it dawned on me that the shaman's voice was not that of a Western philosopher. To understand him I had to look to a different mindset, a different world view. I walked into my library and reached up to remove a book by Krishnamurti from the shelf. Born in 1895 in Andhra Pradesh, India, Jiddu Krishnamurti had been found as a teenager by members of the Theosophical Society and adopted by a lady named Annie Besant [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]