INTERMISSION
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THE NOVEL WILL RESUME SHORTLY.
Nothing left but wine, red, red wine.
Ein Erzählung
von
Michael James Szymczyk
Location: Deep within a wine cellar
Day 23: I can’t believe what I just did. It’s starting
to get cold, really cold. Like air which is ice, seeping
through my pores, freezing my blood so that when I shake,
I shatter.
I don’t know why I write. No one will ever read
this; no one is left but me.
Why am I still alive? Of what remains, just me and
this wine, this red, red wine.
Twenty-three days ago the bombs fell. The news
had reported it about thirty minutes before. I was at the
grocery store. There was panic, great panic. The hopeless
kind, where people run, but don’t know where they run to.
So they run into each other.
It was like war.
I had managed to get into my 1973 Chevy Camaro, and threw some music on. I found myself passively relaxed in this storm where people splattered on the ground like fat rain drops before my wide-open eyes.
There have been times in the last twenty-three days
where I have gone back in my mind the events that lead to
this. I just never expected it to happen
Nuclear war.
Who does?
It was like a game of chess, only if you had the pieces
no one would make the move. Well mad souls do exist
in this world and someone must have forgotten about that.
And somewhere in Asia the first missile flew, and then so
did ours.
The first radio report was something about a disaster
on the West Coast. San Francisco, gone, melted within
a storm of subatomic particles. Then there were reports
of…that was when everything became hectic. I was in the
Grocery Store then…but it’s too cold to write.
Day 26: I’m getting hungry. I haven’t eaten in days.
Just drinking, drinking this red, red wine.
I feel drunk. The light from the flashlight is dim,
extremely dim. The batteries have to be changed. If only I
felt like moving to change them.
I can’t move.
Why?
Because there’s no longer any purpose in moving.
Day 27: I ate a can of Beef Noodles a little while ago. It
was cold like everything else. In a way I almost wished that
I could wrap as many blankets around those little noodles
as I could, to keep them warm, they were my only company
except for this wine, this red, red wine. I had felt while
eating them, a strange compulsion to just start staring at
them. So I did. I don’t know how long, but I kept staring at
them till they started staring back.
Day 28: I have declared to this world that no longer
exists a new god, the Noodle God. If you play with yourself,
he will come. Earlier, I opened up a new can of Mr. Noodles
and did what He bided me to do. I smothered them all over
my cold naked body, and as I shivered I sang, a song of
flowers melting in the breeze of Hiroshima. I have found
myself in singing and eating.
I eventually realized that I am going insane. Is it
the radiation? I changed the batteries to the flashlight. The
fresh light however was no sunlight. My frame of mind
was still…The flashlight turned off and in the darkness I
cried.
Day 30: Seven hundred and eighty-nine bottles of
wine on the wall, seven hundred and eighty-nine bottles of
wine, take one down; swish it down, seven hundred and
eighty eight bottles of wine on the wall…
This little cellar. To think, when I had bought the
house, the paranoid owner who built it had installed a
bomb shelter. And to think that I took everything out, the
generator, the radio, the television, the magazines and had
made it into a wine cellar.
Ah, well at least I had left the stock of Beefaronis.
Adieu.
Day 31: The other day I took a razor blade and cut
my toe off to see if I was still alive.
Day 32: This morning, or evening, who knows
which is which anymore, I cried.
Then I asked myself why I was crying.
And in the darkness I heard myself reply,
“You’re crying because your foot hurts.”
“Oh!”…Looking at my foot now.
Shining the flashlight on the pool of blood, I lay bare
against the ground. I am no longer cold. I take my hand
and, smearing it with my blood, begin caressing my body
with it. I make a pattern here, a pattern there. I am the
greatest artist in the world because I am the only one left in
the world.
Day 33: A thought occurred to me the other day.
Maybe I should go outside.
Day 34: I am getting sick of Beef Noodles, and I’m also
getting sick of wine. I think I have gangrene on my foot, but
it could also be shit. I’m not sure because I don’t move. It
also kind of feels good to pee all over myself. It’s all that’s
left of those sweet gentle memories of warm showers.
There is no point to any of this. There never was.
There never will be. So why?
I like to pretend I’m a flower. In a way we all are,
we’re sperm, we’re seeds, we’re saplings, then babies that
grow, bloom only to become…dead. Leaving our pollen
behind as if it mattered. After all they too, and those
afterwards, will share the same fate.
But I guess this is all useless reasoning.
I stand up and my god, my head spins.
But my foot doesn’t hurt. Even though I know, I
know it should.
Beefaronis, wine, they just won’t cut it anymore. I
need something else, something new; a device that will get
me through.
Day 34: The other day I limped up the stairs and
opened the door. Everything was a wasteland, gone, where
the ceiling of my house had been was now replaced by sky.
A dark, dark sky. The sun shined no more. I felt like giving
up right then, but…all these bottles of wine, red, red wine.
Day 35: I’m still alive. Maybe it’s this red wine,
or the Beefaro…stop it. Stop it. Stop it. You’re deluding
yourself. There is no noodle god. Get a grip on yourself.
But why?
I don’t know, just do it.
But why?
But why?
But why?
…
In the silence, in the darkness of solitude, our
thoughts become the monster that torments us like little
children in the night.
I cannot tell myself this is a nightmare. O heaven
high above me, how I wish…wish I were crazy, safe in some
asylum, in a straightjacket…how I wish this were all made
up like a terrible dream…all to be awoken from with the
swallowing of a little red and green pill.
But it is happening and no matter how hard I scratch
and bite my flesh I will not wake up.
Silence.
Wer ist das? (The sound of breath, it takes me a
minute to realize that it is mine own). Strange, but even
then I do not know who that is.
Day 36: There is no gangrene on my foot. I washed
it off with red wine. My whole body in fact. I feel cleaner
than I ever have in my whole life. I took a toothpick and
picked my toe off the ground. After staring at it for a few
minutes I decided to eat it. Against my expectations, it did
not taste like cheese.
Day 37: At first I thought the noise was my
imagination. But the noise continued. It was coming from
upstairs, from the blast door. A strange scratching noise. It
continued indefinitely.
The other day I had found a pack of bottled water,
dated from the twentieth century. It was over eighty years old. Didn’t taste too bad though. It’s been a day now since I’ve drank that wine, that red, red wine. My head hurts, but it is clear.
Why am I still alive?
A couple of hours ago I got up. As I stood up the
blood rushed to my head. I grew dizzy, spots covered my
vision, and I almost fell over. Recuperating, I made myself
up the stairs and opened the blast door.
Rats…
Lots of them. At least ten. As I opened the door two
of them rushed in.
It felt good to realize that I was not the only thing left
to experience this hell. But at the same time, I felt terrible in
that I was the only thing left that was aware this was hell,
and also that something much worse than an inferno was all
there was to look forward to: a hangover.
Day 38: Two days without wine and one hell of a
hangover. My foot felt like a disease. I wanted to cut the
rest of it off.
I had spent the great majority of the day tracking
down the two rats. At first I figured, live and let live. But
when I awoke to the pain of biting on the now open flesh
wound where my toe had been, my screams of agony
made me realize these rats must go. It was either them or
myself.
For the first time in my life I was happy.
In a way…
No, no…don’t let your thoughts go there.
