CHAPTER 1: THE PAVILION IN THE CLOUDS
Clouds. Those magnificent, puffy tufts of fluffy stuff. Messengers of Storm. Harbingers of change. Shapeless and yet many different shapes at once. I feel a great attachment to these brilliant billows of white. Evanescent and fibrous though they may be.
Where does this great regard come from? Perhaps it is the grave disaster that is soon to befall me. The world always looks much nicer right before a catastrophe. I find great solace in watching the clouds roll by, knowing deep in my mind and the fibers of my being that nothing can ever ruin this. Not the horrific tragedies of life, not the fervent hatreds of Notares. They can never even touch this unassailable beauty. The clouds will abide, perhaps faster, perhaps slower, but it will abide. Even if I might not.
I always seem to sacrifice myself. And for what? For whom? Is it really for someone else’s benefit? Or simply for my own selfish vanity? I can never seem to sacrifice when it’s convenient for me. I can never give away my cake and eat it too. It’s ridiculously ineffectual.
People are always giving away posthumous awards to dead people. Frankly, I’d hate to only be appreciated once I died. Because exactly who needs incentives after they’re dead? Dead is the point at which literally no incentives in the whole universe can possibly motivate me to get out of bed in the morning. If I wanted to be the kind of person whose prime motivation came from plans that only unraveled after my demise, I would either have to be exceedingly extraordinary or deranged. Of which I am neither. I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my bedroom.
How I got into this predicament, I'll never know. Absolutely incredible. To be executed for a crime I never committed. Of course, aren’t all of us in the same boat? Aren’t we all ultimately executed for a crime we never committed?
The difference is that we all go eventually, but I go six o'clock tomorrow morning. I was supposed to go at five o'clock, but I have a smart lawyer. Got leniency.
I've a tremendous yearning to be young again. A boy.
I was born 5.06 stones, just above the minimum birth weight requirement. As mandated by the state in Section 6 of the Genetic Inferiority Bill, all babies weighing 5 stones or less are to be discarded. Of the unluckiest, I was the luckiest. I was neither kicking nor screaming when they pulled me out; maybe because I required less effort than my worth, they decided to keep me. My earliest memory was of many green and blue figures all staring at me. I grimaced at the intense florescent lights bouncing off their reflective uniforms. For my whole childhood, that would be the most attention or spotlight I had ever received.
When I was two cycles old, I first spoke with my father. I would lift my hands over my head and say very sweetly, “Dada, up.” His friends expressed surprise. Unlike my brothers and most other children, this baby was polite. “It’s not politeness,” my father told them. “He used to scream when he wanted to be picked up. So once I said to him, ‘Enriko, you don’t have to scream. Just say, “Daddy, up.” ‘Kids are smart. Right, Champ?”
So now I was up all right, at a giddy altitude, perched on Father’s shoulders and clutching his thinning hair. Life was better up here, far safer than crawling through a forest of legs. Somebody could step on you down there. You could get lost. I tightened my grip.
My own father, a handsome and generous man, seemed to always maintain the capacity to give. No one knew where his vast fortune came from. He was a crop farmer most of his life, until one day he just stopped. Others came in to do the labor and next thing we knew, they were working for him. In addition to our mid-year and snowtide estate, he owned a valuable piece of land.
True, it was a small piece, but he carried it with him wherever he went. It meant everything to him.
Neighbor: Hey Pierre! I would like to buy your land.
Pierre: This land is not for sale. Someday, I hope to build on it.
He was an idiot, but I loved him.
Such happy memories at our mid-year house where life and people were simple. Nestled amidst the Eastern Flat-Topped Hills, it lived in a world of its own. When weather permitted, I would just sit on the front porch and gaze at the lush greenery. All life benefitted from the frequent sunlight. Every day when I woke up, I’d look out the window and see the bright, infrared haze on the fields. I would talk with the family for hours. So many delightful people.
Uncle Nikolay, who was always cracking jokes. He couldn’t hold a single serious conversation to save his life. We had to stop bringing him to funerals. He had this big, freckled nose and wispy, white hair. His forehead wrinkled with laughter and his cheeks reddened with joviality. In all those years I spent with him, I envied and tried to emulate his congenial sense of humor. Oh, and his wonderful laugh.
Uncle Nikolay: Haaaaaahaaaaaahaaaaaaahaughhaughhaugh
hooush hgagi heehee hah aha haa...
Enriko: …
Uncle Nikolay: HAAAAAAHaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…
Enriko: …
Uncle Nikolay: HAAAAAAAH!
Like a hyena with lung cancer. Almighty, he was repulsive.
There were Grandpa and Grandma, all cantankerous and curmudgeonly. Their mouths both maintained a perpetual frown. It must’ve been a toll on their facial muscles. Although, one time I did make Grandpa grimace and that was the happiest I ever saw him. I could never tell what had made them that way. It seemed by nature. All I knew was they had been married for fifty cycles and still felt as deeply about one another as the day they met.
Then there was Mother, who made the most delicious blintzes in the world. In fact, she could prove it mathematically. She found it was the best use of her degree in differential geometry. It was a consuming passion. Luckily for me, she always liked having another pair of hands in the kitchen; I would hardly ever see her outside of it.
Of course, there was Old Werner, and his son, Young Werner. Young Werner's son was older than Old Werner. Nobody could figure out how that happened.
My two brothers, Niels and Julius, used to play amusing little games. Roughhousing was their favorite pastime. They were constantly wrestling in the front yard. However, it was never in malice or spite. They both loved each other and for them, fighting was bonding.
That may have been enough for them, but I had a completely different concept of myself as a child. While my brothers and the other boys played tag, I played dead. I found it very liberating.
I fantasized about what it was like to be dead. What would it feel like? Where would we go? I liked to think that, maybe, you get to live in a cloud house. And you got to pick whatever shape you wanted. You could take it anywhere you wanted as long as you remained in the sky. If Death was truly as stubborn and inevitable as they said, then that was where I wanted to go. After disembarking from the hearse, I would check in to the master suite of the pavilion in the clouds.
END OF CHAPTER