My companion told me he had found a place, an island in this place of filth where bodies rise up in the muck, and we smuggled ourselves onto it. It was built of slats of wood set upon pikes in the mud, which was visible between these slats. This platform was longer than it was wide, with three sides walled, the open one being one of the long sides, so that it was like a theater stage, this platform, but was ignored by the audience it opened toward, as they were a ways distant and occupied with plodding naked through that muck in which bodies would rise up. The two walls on the short sides were bare, and the other, long wall had a window along the entire length, about 1 1/2 ft. in height, at the top where the wall met the ceiling. The window was covered by a pale yellow curtain. On the cluttered platform there was a stove. Several kittens played in the open, inoperative oven, their presence, I thought, probably keeping roaches away. Over one of the burners, a young woman, Francine, charred the leg of a small dachshund-like dog, the remains of which lay on a wooden picnic table near her. On a bed behind the table, her mother gnawed on a similarly charred leg; thin, meatless, and covered with blackened, singed hairs. The father sat on a rocking chair, between the bed and the stove, contentedly smoking a pipe as he rocked. "It is good to be able to help your mother in this way," Francine stated. The father rocked and nodded. In a wooden milk crate were two other identical young dachshunds. One escaped the crate and went running around the platform. I tried to catch him, but Francine said, "He won't run away, there is nowhere for him to go." He played around the platform, apparently oblivious to his fate, until Francine called him back to his crate with an affectionate name. I wondered in what manner she slaughtered the dogs. I joined my companion and the father, who had lifted the curtain and were looking out. Unlike the other side, the dark muck through which bodies rose, the window looked out onto green grass and blue skies. There was a hill, very even and looking man-made, which ran, as far as we could see, around the perimeter of this place. Atop the hill ran a short barbed wire fence, which suggested armed guards on the other side. We closed the curtain, we men, thinking of escape. I went to the other end of the platform to talk to the other sister, Bernice. Like Francine, she was dressed in the ragged remains of a peasant's outfit, and wore a babushka. "Look at this," she said, and opened a door on the back wall, under the long window. From beneath a pile of rags she exposed a very large purple balloon, larger than herself. It's shape was that of two spheres, one large and one small, attached in a way that suggested a woman's figure, or an inflated condom. From the small end trailed long, dark green streamers. Bernice held the balloon outside of the door, and it drifted on the wind and over the man-made hill, attached to her hand, I supposed by a string. No shots rang out at it. She reeled it back in. "One day," she laughed, "I may ride this balloon to my freedom." "Why don't you?" I asked, amazed that she hadn't already, and thinking that if she wouldn't, I would. "The reason I stay," she said, "is because I am participating in a very important experiment." She pulled out a poster from beneath the rags. It showed the faces of three attractive women, but I could not read the language. "Right now," she continued, "I am part of a control group. Our cycles are carefully monitored, and we frequently are having measured our levels of hormones, acidity, etc. Eventually various chemicals will be introduced into us as a douche, and the doctors will see what they do. "Some of the women scream, and some of them die," she laughed inexplicably, and this angered me. "Why do you do this, when you could escape?" "These are very important experiments," she scolded, nodding toward the poster. "Just look at the quality of the graphics." She continued: "The women who are chosen are those with the features of the modern ideal." And proudly, conspiratorially, she added, "or those who can pass for that woman." Next she showed me some pictures of young girls with shovels on a trailer bed. "These photos are a reenactment of the young girls building the roads. See there: that is my daughter Celeste. I was one of the girls on the actual work project. You had to memorize the names of all of the men who worked on the roads, so that when they came toward you with their hats out in front of their groin, you could call them by name and they wouldn't bother you. Ai, so many names. But eventually, the hats were held closer and closer to their bodies, until, alas, they ceased to come after you at all." My companion, I noticed, had again raised the curtain and was looking out of the window. I looked past Bernice, through the open side of the platform, to where bodies continued to rise out of the muck. |
©1987 TOM HOSIER |
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