Immobility

….Frustration @ the immobility. —Did the Reprobate actually manage to decipher that, regardless of the cursive and shorthand too? Almost impossible to believe, though the man did give every indication. Squinting, bending. Bending again. With one eye the squint was a given of course. (The turned could not possibly offer anything.) Could it have been intelligible? In the moment it was impossible to deny the man—journal turned out and angled for him in order make it easier, so that he didn’t need to bend around the shoulder as well. Something like unavoidably showing teacher in school when he stopped beside your desk. Reprobate stopped regularly by the table and not infrequently peered to examine the writing in particular. The particular reading never interested him much; only occasionally would he enquire what was in the paper. A couple of times Reprobate had explicitly asked what it was that was being written. There was something about that corner, the assortment of people there that had gripped the writer, Reprobate surmised. Rather bewildering that; difficult for the man to comprehend. Told he has been the subject of some of the writing brought no real response from Reprobate, hardly a flicker. When he was questioned on any matter the man answered carefully, dutifully and with deliberation. A year or two ago Reprobate had given his view that all men searched for god; that was their chief endeavor, however they approached the quest and however unlikely it appeared from the outside. This afternoon after lunch abashment before a reader like that, a severe, perfect arbiter might not be putting matters too strongly. After his close perusal Reprobate had given a perfectly appropriate HA! in response, having pointed directly at the particular line, touching the very paper. Soon after this dismissal the man made off. Frustration @ the immobility…. Not a grunt, a clear, loud Ha! that might have gone with the thought bubble, You have got to be joking. What in the heck are you on about?... The alcohol strongly given off. The man picked up his “medicine” early, going past the Carpmael house before 9. At least a few weeks ago that was the case. After the return from Johor Reprobate had told of the recent police raid at Al Wadi, the back-rowers, a half dozen or so men, had been taken away in cuffs. Squatting on the tables; caught with the mushrooms perhaps and perhaps more too. Word was the owner Hussein had called them. Strange, from Reprobate’s side there would be nothing held against the man. You expected Reprobate to pay out at big shot Hussein. On the contrary, hearing that the man, the owner Hussein, who had seemingly called the cops onto the Reprobate’s own crew, hearing the suggestion that the man was a meanie, money-obsessed and nothing else, Reprobate responded on the contrary that Hussein was alright, there was generosity in the man’s charity; Hussein had given liberally to the mosques and foundations…. Whose side was this guy on?... Immobility. The sense was not so heavily sunken as one found it in Pessoa’s pages; certainly nothing like the deep doldrums of the Portuguese at his most bleak. But still, a stagnant period just now and a will to pull up stumps, move on, trial another location away from the equator. Try somewhere on the fringe of the Balkans perhaps, when Montenegro could not be confronted directly. (Not the new, contemporary Montenegro; certainly not the coastal tourist strip.) Yet there was a reluctance to leave this place, this corner and this people. Could Thessaloniki or Trieste—Athens, Rome or Venice could be discounted—offer anything to compare with this open display on the equator, the striving and seeking despite all the bulldozing, the pigeon-holing and award-winning architecture, the fixing, manipulation and sloganeering? Could you beat that? It needed to be investigated. Venturing further afield in the same region was the other option, though another distinct culture and language dissuaded there. (Pessoa of course saw no reason whatever to move from Rua dos Douradores; that quarter of Lisbon of the time was more than sufficiently tolerable to Fernando, clearly.)