Kikarun, er hat ayn pintel affen nas!
That’s what they said, the
boys and girls next door, the religious ones, with their peyot flying
and their tsitsit hanging out.
Look, he has a point on his nose.
That was me, with my blue dot on the side of my nose.
I don’t know why it
fascinated them. You could hardly see
it. I never thought about it unless
people pointed it out, like those religious kids.
How did it get there? Nobody else had one. None of the boys in my class or the gang that
played games on the street. It didn’t
matter to them.
Not even my parents talked
about it, or other relatives, like grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts or the
close friends of my parents who were just like members of the family. They had other funny stories about when I was
a baby and a toddler. But nothing about
my blue dot, the mysterious pintel affen nas.
Though nobody talked about, I
somehow knew why it was there.
I fell and almost poked my
eye out, if the point of the blue pencil had just been a half inch higher and
to the left slightly.
Surely, someone must have
noticed, if I cried out in pain. My
mother, all alone, since my father had departed for the war, would have
panicked or called a doctor. The next
day or so someone surely would have given me a warning to be careful about such
things.
But only those religious
children next door, with their melodious chant, kikaru, kikarun, they
sang, er hat a pintel affen nas.
The Fatal Brew
I was studying for the end of
term exams. I propped myself up on the
bed with three pillows, leaned over my books, read and occasionally scribbled
notes on a large yellow legal pad, the kind I loved to use. From time to time, I dipped the pen into the
water-glass on the desk beside the bed.
On the other wise, the bed was empty, as my room-mate had gone home for
the long weekend Thanksgiving holiday. I
had stayed behind to put in extra hours of study.
Almost no one else was left
in the dormitories, both male and female.
Anyone who might have changed his or her mind, well, they were out of
luck. The blizzard had come, and now the
little village where the college nestled in its valley, was closed off from the
outside world.
I was able to concentrate
completely, barely looking up as I dipped my pen into the water, shook it dry,
and drew in some other colour ink. I
liked to vary the colours as I scribbled my notes. No particular scheme for different themes or
approaches. Just to rbeak the page
up. Dip, shake, and draw in red or green
or black. Hour after hour. Page after page.
Then I knew I was beyond
drowsy. My eyes could hardly stay open. My brain seemed heavy and thick. It was surely time for sleep.
I changed into pyjamas,
glanced over the notes, and took a sip of water.
And another sip and lay down
ready for sleep.
But suddenly my eyes opened. What had I done? I had emptied the glass on the desk, the
mixture of various inks. It must have
been poison, though there had been no particular odour or taste. A whole glassful of ink.
Instead of panicking or
crying out for help, I relaxed. No use
fighting what was inevitable. If this
was to be my end, then so be it.
Alone, isolated, out of reach
of any aid, I lay back, closed my eyes, and waited for the final sleep to come
over me.
‘Twas a Dark and Gloomy Night
The snow had been falling all
day. More than falling, it had swept across
the road horizontally, occasionally from the side but often directly at us,
with the windscreen wipers barely able to carve out a space through which to
see. My father insisted on driving, even
though he no more experience of such conditions than I.
He drove cautiously, slowly
onwards, at 70 mph and then 65 mph and now 60 mph while around us, from either
side, other vehicles and heavy trucks hurtled forward to pass our car. They may have been familiar with these
highways and driven through blizzards before, but still it was crazy,
especially when the darker it became the more blinding headlights streaked up
to us and then went by, making our car shudder with the pressure.
We were somewhere in Ohio and
heading towards Missouri. It was late
October and this was an early storm, unexpected, not warned in the AAA triptik
maps we had received two days before.
The wind howled. The snow fell. The traffic kept coming at us and passing us,
all out of the darkness. It seemed a
long time since there was any road signs, any indication of where we were and
how far we might have to go to find a motel for the night or a café for a
little hot food and a rest at least.
Neither of us said
anything. The tension, however, was
palpable. And the hours dragged by. It would not be long, too, before we would
need to find a gas station and fill up.
At the beginning of the trip
I asked to share the driving but my father said no: he wouldn’t feel safe. An insult, but he was my father. I was only twenty-two. He was taking me to Saint Louis to return to
my first year of graduate school. He
insisted on driving me all the way, so he could see where I lived, meet my friends,
and look around the university. My
mother was still too ill and weak to travel.
Occasionally we would see a
car or a small truck stuck in the drifts on the side of the road. Then my father would slow down even
more. We had been driving all day, with
one brief stop for gas and lunch. We
were now going at 50 mph, even 45 mph or less, and still traffic would zoom
towards us or pass us, honking their horns.
The headlights provided
nothing better than a few feet of vision.
The snow was more like long needles or arrows of ice. We were inching along. Crawling.
Then we stopped altogether.
Nothing could be seen at all. A
white darkness all around. We sat and
waited for something to happen.
Eventually the night passed.
At the End of Time
In the movies, the elevator
shudders, the cable breaks, and the car begins to fall: then the screen goes
red.
On the radio, someone shouts,
Stop! there is the sound of squealing breaks, then Whopp! and everything goes
silent. After a while, you can hear the
murmuring of policemen and ambulance drivers.
Then silence again.
In the distance, there is a
rumbling and a roar. I feel a bump. My mind goes blank.
An Afternoon in LAX: A Good Way to Waste an Afternoon
The notices on the flight
board turn and turn, and the latest news is that my flight will be delayed at
least another hour. That means two hours
to waste.
I walk down the long corridor
again, stand next to the left luggage with its row on row of boxes to rent, each with a key waiting to
receive enough coins to give you some relief from carrying your luggage. I lean against the wall.
Someone waves. It is a middle-aged woman behind a counter
marked Travellers Friend. I walk up to
her. She smiles. She tells me there is a bus that goes all
around the airport, stopping at each airline’s building. You can waste an hour or so, and you can sit
down too. Good chance to look
around.
What the heck, I think.
I get in the bus and sleepily
look at the travellers who get on and off, who stand with their luggage, who
check their watches. The bus goes on,
stops, and then moves around.
In the distance I hear
sirens.
The sounds get louder.
We come around to the place
where I first got on. There is a commotion. Fire engines, police cars, ambulances. Crowds of people standing across the road
watching.
The left luggage compartments
are twisted and black are blackened. The
desk where the Travellers Friend desk stood has broken into several pieces and
is charred. The woman is not there.
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