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By Jun Terra
The mother’s story
“Yes, Mr. Detective. I saw him before I went
to bed last night. These past few days my son had been anxious to go
to sleep earlier than usual. The hollow of his head is still on the
pillow. If you feel it - I hope I am not just imagining it - it is
still warm. He cannot be far. But where is he? Oh my dear son, where
can he be?
“Never in the last nineteen years has this
happened. I came in to his room this morning as per usual to give
him his breakfast and he was not there. I thought at first he was in
his bathroom. When I came back after an hour to check whether he had
had his breakfast, I saw the food had not been touched. He was not
in his bathroom either. I did not panic. I looked around the house,
although it would be unusual for him to be going elsewhere.
“He loved staying in his room. He could not
have gone far. You see, Mr. detective, my son hardly ever leaves his
room because it is difficult and painful for him to walk any
distance. He had polio when he was very young and his left leg
became emaciated and shorter than the right. He has to walk on
crutches. He could never get used to it. In fact he positively hates
it.
“If he went out of the house I doubt if he
would have gone beyond our garden. But he was not there either. He
has two pairs of crutches, and both of them are here. His
wheelchair, look, is neatly folded by his bed. I hate to think the
worst, but I fear he may have been abducted. Oh god, I hope not. But
by whom? He had no enemies.
“Then I asked the neighbours if they saw him
at all. None of them did. Not that he would venture out of our yard
without his wheelchair or our chauffeur who would drive him around.
Oh my dear child, how could he just vanish like this, without a
trace? He would have told the maid where he would go as he normally
does. He would not play a joke like this, if this were a joke. But
I’d rather his disappearance were a joke than for real.
“No, Mr. detective there was really nothing
unusual. Last night. He was in good humour as is his wont. He was
always even tempered. I gave him his dinner rather earlier than
usual and we had a chat. I told him the news about his sister in
America who is on the family way and will soon have her own son. We
looked at photographs of the two of them when they were children. We
had a laugh together about some silly things, about his sister who
nursed him until she went to America.
“He was at his table getting ready to do some
writing when I left his room. Then his cousin Antonio arrived. My
son is a poet, and if I may say so myself, a very good one. I am not
saying this just because I am his mother. Although which mother
would not be proud of a talented son like him. His friends have
recited his poems at town fiestas. He has had some of them published
in magazines. Let me show you the magazines. Here, look.
“I really cannot think of anything unusual,
Mr. detective. Let’s see. Well, for the past week or so, he had
been sleeping more than usual. It is something I was thankful for
because sometimes he reads and does writing until the very late
hours past midnight. But he always wakes up early and is sprightly.
He has been sleeping more often and longer than usual. But what does
it have to do with his disappearance? Anyway, despite the new-found
sleeping habit, I noticed he was still somnolent. But apart from
this I cannot really think of anything unusual. My son is a person
of habit - I suppose he cannot help but be because of his condition.
His mobility is terribly limited so he has trained himself to
achieve things with the minimum of physical exertion.
“Perhaps that is why he loves reading and
listening to music. Perhaps that is why he is a poet. And he also
plays the flute and the guitar. I believe the world he inhabits in
his mind is a world free of suffering as you can glean from his
poems and feel in the music that he sometimes spontaneously
composes. Although I am not much of a reader myself, and therefore
not too receptive to the mysterious power of words, when my son
reads me his poems or when he plays his tunes, I often get a glimpse
of a more beautiful world he seems to yearn for and which he seems
to want me to share.
“You see, Mr. detective, when my son was a
little boy and began noticing his disability, he was at first
embarrassed to play with other children. But he soon overcame this
without my coaxing. Some children can be cruel and they teased him.
But he soon won them over because he would tell them fantastic
stories he himself invented. Even as a child, my son was a voracious
reader, and his other sister, a public school teacher brought home
books for him to read. He would weave stories that charmed the other
children and even the bullies fell under his spell. I must say there
is nothing that gentleness cannot subdue. He was loved by his
playmates. In fact, one of his former tormentors who also happened
to be his own cousin, Antonio, became his best friend. He has been
his closest friend and confidant since childhood.
“Last night Antonio was here and I left them
talking and laughing. Where is Antonio? He lives five houses away on
the same street as ours. He works as a paramedic at the San Roque
hospital nearby and comes home around seven. He comes almost daily
to visit my son after dinner. He should be here shortly.”
The friend’s story
“Sir, this is really strange. As aunt Elsa
must have told you, he could not go far because of his disability.
As for being abducted, I cannot see any reason for it, nor think of
anyone who might do it. Abduction, by whom? By ghosts? I am only
joking, just to emphasise the absurdity of the thought. I do not
believe in ghosts myself.
“But this is serious if he has gone for this
long, what, twelve hours? He would never be away for this long
without telling aunt Elsa or the maid. And where would he go? He
didn’t ask the chauffeur to take him anywhere today, as you
already know.
“This is serious. You know, he had been
telling me things. I had to swear to absolute secrecy. Not to
breathe a word to anyone. But as this situation is serious, I must
break my silence. I hope when he turns up or when we find him he
understands why I did so. Well, if what I am going to tell would be
of any help in finding him, I shall be happy, even if he considers
it a betrayal of confidence.
“Over the past week or so, he had been having
recurring dreams. Let me tell you. “
The first encounter:
“Was it a Saturday or Friday last week when I
came to visit him. Friday it was. He played the flute, I remember it
well, “La Fille aux Cheveux du Lin” by Debussy. Debussy is a
French composer, sir. He seemed lost in the music. Then he played a
melody I had never heard him play before. It was so haunting I got
goose pimples listening to it. ‘Is that a new piece you have just
learned?’ I asked. He nodded and continued playing.
“There was a twinkle in his eyes. I felt he
was dying to tell me something, but was hesitant. Then I said in my
own brusque way: ‘What is the good news, tell me?’ He just
smiled and continued playing. When he finished the piece, he sighed
and put the flute down, and looked at me and smiled more at himself
than at me and sighed again. Knowing my cousin as I do, i cajoled
him, tried to change the subject, then suddenly went back to it in
the middle of other things to try to catch him unawares and waited
patiently.
“It is a little game of subterfuge we usually
play. ‘Can I trust you?’ he finally said, knowing how intrigued
I was already. I knew he was going to tell me sooner or later.
‘Why ask me such a question?’ I said in a mock-hurt tone.
‘Have I ever betrayed your trust?’ He smiled again, and this
time he grinned in readiness to tell me, then he said: ‘Promise me
you will never repeat what I am going to tell you, not to anyone,
not to mama nor the chauffeur. Promise me or I won’t talk.’ I
swore like children do and crossed my heart and hoped to die if I
ever broke my promise.
“He had this dream about a woman of unearthly
beauty in the middle of an open field. She looked like the blessed
Virgin Mary one sees on little playing cards or estampitas,
distributed to children at catechism classes. She had a distant look
and an enigmatic smile like Leonardo’s Gioconda, Mona Lisa, you
know, sir, of the song hit. She looked straight at him, neither
smiling nor frowning. She had this gaze that went through and beyond
him. It must have been shortly after noon for the sun was still up
and there were no shadows. It was hot, unbearably so, that made
walking more difficult for him. He reckoned it must have been the
height of summer as the earth was dry and cracked. You could not
tell the difference between the various grasses and weeds as they
had all abandoned their leaves and stems and retreated into their
roots, the better to conserve their remaining sap until the next
rain. They had been reduced to clumps of root desperately clenched
over balls of hardening clod.
“There was a bamboo grove in the distance on a
higher ground. It was an isolated island of greenery in the middle
of miles of surrounding parched fields. Its pebbly base was
scattered with broken rocks and boulders washed down by cascades
during the rainy season. She walked slowly towards a bamboo grove,
silently, without effort as though she was floating. She would stop
and look at him again beckoning him to follow. He followed. But in
order to reach the grove he had to traverse a dry field rent and
patterned with deep fissures with crumbly edges. He finds it
difficult enough to walk with crutches on even ground, let alone a
field full of obstacles, where his crutches could slip into the
cracks or stumble over tussocks scattered about. But follow he did
as though mesmerised and pushed on by curiosity, a trait he’s
always had.
“When he reached the edge of the high ground
where the bamboo grove towered, he had to negotiate the stones and
the boulders. He was afraid his crutches might slip over the smooth
rounded stones but surprisingly they did not. However, he still had
to go over the boulders. How to climb over them? He had to crawl
over them holding his crutches. He inched his way by pushing his
body upward while using the crutches as wedges. Another surprise, he
did not find it as difficult as he expected. Was it his single
mindedness that made him forget the effort? He wondered why his body
did not get marked from the effort of pushing over the boulders that
were not exactly smooth? These were the questions he asked himself.
“In the meantime the lady had entered an
opening in the greenery. He paused and took a deep breath before
following her. He could hear the bamboo grove making sounds. He
thought wandering breezes trapped inside and trying to find their
way out made the leaves and the long pliable end stems that held
them rub against one another so that they made a continuous hissing,
or whooshing sound, now loud, now soft. As he listened more closely,
the hiss broke down into various tones and pitches in perfect
harmony and in the most appealing sequences, as in the Pythagorean
arithmetical ratios. Pythagorean? Oh, I am sorry, I should explain.
Pythagoras was a philosopher of ancient Greece who is credited with,
among other things the discovery that notes in harmonious
relationships can be produced by plucking strings whose lengths are
in particular ratios with one another. To put it simply,
Combinations of tones or sounds that are pleasing or beautiful to
our human ears come in particular ratios. Anyway let us not allow
this point to sidetrack our story.
“The bamboo grove resembled a choir singing
unobtrusively for no one, at first. My cousin did not take long to
attune himself to its song. Then he felt the bamboo grove was
singing to him, welcoming him with its song.
“He proceeded to enter the grove. It was
darkish inside. When his eyes got accustomed to the level of light,
he began to see details. There was a central clearing and winding
path underneath groups of mature and young bamboo. Taut threads of
light pierced through the thick tangle of leaves. She stood beneath
a cluster of towering bamboos, perfectly still. Everything became
still as he stepped into the clearing, as though he was expected.
The breeze stopped as did the music. She was not smiling. She just
looked at him, waiting. He felt an elation he had never felt before
and walked closer towards her. When he was about seven paces away
from her, the breeze started to blow again making the leaves and the
tops of the bamboos sway and make sounds like fervent music. Birds
that must have been nestling among the stems flew off and punctuated
the sound of the bamboos with their own cries. Just as he was about
to speak to the lady, he woke up, his head still swimming with the
music of the bamboo grove.
“He felt so happy. When I arrived, he was
playing the music he remembered from his dream. Yes sir, he said it
was the melody that the bamboo grove sang. Let me whistle the tune
to you. “
The second encounter:
“On Saturday evening when I visited him after
work, he could not wait to tell me that he dreamt again of the same
woman. There was a mixture of joy and apprehension in his voice.
“‘It is strange,’ he said, ‘When you
left yesterday evening, I kept playing the music I heard in my
dream. I could not stop. As it was late I did not want to disturb
anyone in the house with such a melancholy although beautiful music.
I forced myself to put the flute away, but the music kept playing in
my mind’s ear. I tried to divert myself by reading as I always did
in the quiet of the night. I started reading one of the most
intractable of literatures, Giuseppe Peano’s Lessons in the
Analysis of Infinitessimals not because I was interested in it, but
because I wanted to clear my mind of yesterday’s dream. As soon as
I started reading, my eyelids drooped and I got drowsy. I went to
bed reluctantly.
“‘No sooner had I lain down when my dream
started. I was still conscious. It was like entering a dark cinema
after the film had started and you had not yet got accustomed to the
darkness, so you stumbled around looking for your seat. I was awake
or half-awake and I remember trying to find a comfortable position
in bed when the dream started unrolling,’ he continued. “
“In the dream, he found himself in the middle
of total darkness. He could hear himself breathing with difficulty.
He could smell sulphur, or something like rotten eggs. Then suddenly
there was an explosion, a huge bang, followed by several flashes of
lightning across the sky.
“He could now see where he was. A volcano in
the distance started spewing fire lighting up miles of the
surrounding area. He was in a desolate landscape he could not
identify. It was unusually barren although it was not a desert.
There were trees standing singly and at great distances from one
another so that they did not obscure the view of the volcano.
“No more than thirty paces away was the lady
in his previous dream. She looked at him then started walking
towards the volcano. She stopped and looked at him again, seemingly
urging him to follow. He was already switched on to the routine and
followed her.
“As she walked, the volcano erupted more
violently. An immense column of fire and smoke rose up from its
belly, throwing up rocks, sand and boulders. He shivered from fear,
and a wind stirred up by the distant explosion. She continued
walking, slowly to allow him keep up with her.
“The volcano kept on ejecting fire and ash,
re-darkening the sky it had just lit up, and making the air thick
and heavy. He heard subterranean rumbles. They sounded like enormous
engines crushing the rocky foundations of the earth itself. Then the
ground shook and quaked underneath him and started breaking up.
Islands separated by deep fissures and gullies began forming. She
walked on. Urged by a mysterious force if not folly, he followed,
jumping over fissures and potholes, using his crutches as propellers
to throw himself forward. The air was now heavy with ash, and the
stench was unbearable, but as long as he continued to look at her
and follow, he did not suffocate. Clouds of superheated gas swept
down in circular waves provoking a fire storm.
“He looked at the volcano. Its slopes were
splitting, oozing liquid fire. Streams of molten magma rolled down
the slopes like fudge or treacle taking anything in its path.
Boulders recently spewed out by the volcano were swept down by thick
lava streams flowing like waves piling and crashing on top of the
other, turning and tumbling down relentlessly. And even as it
reached level ground at the base of the volcano it flowed like a
swollen river of fire. The few trees in the distance, even if
untouched directly by the volcano’s fire ignited spontaneously
from the heat generated around. Then they were swept by waves of
molten orange, yellow and red rock. The slopes collapsed and the
land around sank.
“The lava flows that looked slow and ponderous
from afar were suddenly upon them. The lady continued walking
towards the volcano. He was afraid for her because she was directly
on the path of a big flow and she did not have time to move away to
save herself. Meanwhile he was transfixed. He could not move from
where he was standing. As happens only in dreams, the lava flow on
her path parted and as she walked on, rolled and keeled over like
dough on either side.
“Then she stopped and looked at him. He
followed her towards the volcano. They were now in the middle of a
hot, fiery sludge, as the two parted wings of the lava flow rejoined
and closed behind them. Her face reflected the fire. She seemed at
times to become a component, the very core of fire itself. He
shivered with fear, but he overcame this as he continued to follow
her. He felt a great burning sensation. He looked at her, then at
his feet. They did not sink into the embers and cinders left behind
by the molten fire. They felt hot, but not unpleasantly so. His
crutches did not burn either. His desire to reach her was now
stronger than any pain or fear he might have felt earlier. He went
leaping over smoking fissures whose boundaries kept moving, using
his crutches like a catapult to throw himself forward and over.
“She stood on the other side of a great
caldera with churning yellow and red sulphurous mud, waiting for him
to join her. He was no longer afraid. He firmly stuck his crutches
on to the ground, swung his body like a pendulum and gave it a push
with a strength he thought he never had before. He went flying, or
so he felt, over the boiling cauldron. While sailing in the air he
pointed his crutches forward in readiness for the landing. He was
ready for the worst. He was afraid that his wooden crutches would
either break, or his arms would be torn off by the force of his
weight on the crutches upon landing. Either way, he prepared his
mind to experiencing great pain. To his surprise, he landed softly
and sweetly as a feather
“As soon as he reached ground the lady started
walking again. The volcano exploded more violently than ever. The
earth trembled and shook making everything look out of focus
simultaneously. To make myself clearer, it is like watching a film
that has jumped out of its sprockets. The frames are on the wrong
speed so that all the images within shake, are blurred or are out of
focus completely in sync with one another.
“Waves of visible winds churned like giant
twisters in the sky. He had no other desire but to reach her. At
seven paces away he woke up. Throughout this dream, his breathing
and heartbeat coincided with a constant rumble, quite different from
that of the volcano, coming deeper from the earth. He woke up
gasping for breath, sweating, the image of the lady burning in his
mind, more brightly than the volcanic eruptions. He was deeply
disturbed by the dream. But the abiding image of the lady pacified
him amidst the violent occurrences in his dream. “
To be continued
JUN TERRA
juntrr@yahoo.co.uk
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