Saturday 17 October 2015
Wednesday 14 October 2015
Hanging On In Quiet...
She comes
home from the office, feeling like a rag that has been wrung out. The key,
slippery in her hands with sweat, won’t go into the lock until she makes
several attempts. She suppresses the urge to simply batter at the barrier in
frustration.
Flopping down on her chair, she kicks off
her shoes. Literally kicks them off, the cheap footwear sailing across the
room, the leather scuffed and dull though she polished them only this morning. At
least she thinks it was this morning. It was that kind of day.
Every day now seems to be that kind of day.
The floor is gritty under the soles of her
feet. She hasn’t vacuumed today. Maybe she didn’t vacuum yesterday either. She’s
almost certain that she did it on Sunday. But Sunday was three days ago.
“At least I changed the sheets, dammit,”
she mutters, aloud, glaring at the bed as though daring it to contradict her. “You
can’t say I didn’t do that.” The bed seems to look back passive-aggressively. She can’t remember when she last shared it
with anybody.
Oh
yes, you can, her mind whispers, you can if you want to.
The hell with it, she decides. There’s no point
remembering the things that used to be.
Her eyes go to the cabinet under the telly.
She can feel the dark brown liquid
burning the back of her throat, and the urge to walk over and open the cabinet
is so strong she begins rising from the chair without even thinking about it.
Steady, her mind orders. Hold on.
You aren’t an alcoholic. You don’t drink just like that. Go and have a bath, change,
and then, if you still want to drink, we’ll think about it.
If she still wants to drink? That’s a laugh. The bottle is still half
full, though, and that’s something. She hasn’t emptied it yet.
The mobile, on the table by her hand,
rings. She already knows who it is without even looking. “Yeah. Hi.”
“You coming out tonight?” The voice on the
other hand, offensively cheery. “We’re all getting together. Dinner, maybe a
movie.”
“No,” she says automatically. “I’m
exhausted and near broke and...”
“Come on. It’ll cheer you up. And don’t
worry about the expense. It’s my treat.”
Well, what the hell. At least it’ll beat
sitting on the bed all evening, sipping alcohol from the glass and staring at
the telly, not taking in a thing that’s on the screen – as though any of that
crap matters anyway. It’s maybe even worth listening her vacuous friends
talking about vacations and bitching about their bosses. She can tune them out.
She’s become something of an expert at
tuning things out.
“Have you fainted or something?” the voice
on the mobile asks. “Are you there?”
“Yeah,” she says, and pushes herself all
the way out of the chair. “Yeah, I’m there.”
*******************************************
Much
later, she lies in bed in the orange lounge suit she’d been given as a gift on
her last birthday. “It’ll suit you fine when you’re in Guantanamo Bay,” they’d
said, laughing. She’d laughed, too, and sworn to herself never to touch it
again. And then she’d discovered it made a perfect pair of pyjamas.
The evening had been pretty much a washout,
but then she’d expected nothing else. She rubs her neck and shoulders, kneading
the muscles, trying to make them relax. The telly is on, some advertisement
trying to sell her a credit card. It about sums up the day: something she doesn’t
want and doesn’t need, thrust in her face.
Longingly, she looks at the cabinet again,
and shakes her head. She’s already had a drink, two drinks, or was it maybe
even three. No more for tonight. She isn’t an alcoholic, not even halfway
there.
The phone rings again. “Hi,” the voice
says. “You were pretty glum all evening. Something wrong?”
She sits up and holds the phone to her ear.
“No, I’m fine,” she says. “I enjoyed myself, really.”
“Good. So you’re on for tomorrow evening,
as well?” There is a brief pause. “You didn’t forget, did you?”
She looks down her body at her feet. The
toenail polish is chipped and flaking.
“I’ll be there,” she says.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2015
Tuesday 13 October 2015
The Ocean Sky
“I see,” von Höllenteufel said, looking up from his newspaper, “that
some fool is going to try and make another record balloon ascent.”
I paused in the act of pouring out a glass
of juice and glanced at him. Von Höllenteufel spoke only rarely, and when he
did, it was usually in generalities. I’d never heard this particular note in
his voice before.
“Why do you say ‘some fool’, Herr Doktor Professor?”
I asked. “Don’t you think he’ll succeed?”
“Oh, he’ll succeed in getting up there, I
have no doubt.” Von Höllenteufel rattled his newspaper for emphasis. “But
whether he’ll get down again, that is what I am not so sure about.”
“Get down again? But surely modern
ballooning is pretty safe, isn’t it?”
“You think so, do you?” Von Höllenteufel
looked at me with contempt. “Do you have the slightest idea what lies in the
sky up there? Do they?”
“You mean, air currents and storms and so
on and so forth? I suppose they can be dangerous to a balloon, but...”
“I do not mean air currents and storms.”
The big man slapped the table for emphasis. “That’s nothing at all. The fools!”
He seemed genuinely angry, the scar on his
cheek twitching with emotion. I looked around to see if anyone else had
noticed. But on this rainy afternoon, the clubhouse room was almost empty. Only
the two of us sat near the radiator, while winter rain beat on the windows and
washed the grey street. And then I remembered something someone had told me
once about him.
“Doktor Professor,” I said, “weren’t you,
once, a balloonist? And didn’t you try
for a height record?”
Von Höllenteufel nodded slowly. The flush
of anger left his face, and he looked only upset and worried. “I did,” he said.
“And that is why I know exactly what I am talking about.”
I remembered something else I’d heard. “And
it was after that attempt that you swore off ballooning and never went up
again, is that right?”
“That is correct.” Von Höllenteufel
hesitated. “Let me ask you something. You have contacts, right? Contacts in the
media? People you can trust?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so.” It was my turn
to hesitate. “Why, Herr Doktor Professor?”
“Because if I tell you the story of what
happened when I went up that time, you will contact the media people and try to
have them call this record attempt off – that’s what I want. Will you?”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “It depends on
what you’ve got to tell me, of course.”
“All right.” Von Höllenteufel carefully
folded and put down his newspaper, polished his spectacles, and sat back.
“Listen, then, and remember that everything I’m going to tell you is nothing
less than the truth.”
**********************************************************************
I still remember exactly (von Höllenteufel
said) my feelings as I strapped myself into the capsule that day. It was
not yet dawn, and the new day was a faint flush in the east. Though dressed in
a heavy flight suit and helmet, I was shivering; with excitement, not with cold
or fear.
The balloon in which I was about to make
the attempt was of my own design. The envelope, of plastic-coated paper, was
strong enough to withstand a knife, yet light enough so that a man could carry
it without effort. The gondola comprised a capsule of high-strength metal
alloy, consisting of a frame and a seat with a harness to strap myself in. I
had attempted to save weight in every way I possibly could. Comfort was not a
factor in this flight, altitude was.
In front of me, mounted on a bar that swung
to lock into place, was a pod with the simple instruments I would need: a
compass, so I could tell the direction; a ground speed indicator, so I could
have a rough idea how far I’d come from my launching point; a clock, so I’d
know how long I’d been aloft; a small thermometer, and, most important of all,
an altimeter, to measure the altitude I reached. I was determined to go higher
than anyone else had before in a balloon; higher, I hoped, than anyone might
ever go again.
This flight had been the culmination of
years, decades, of effort. I’d been fascinated by balloons since I’d been a
schoolboy, and in college I’d studied aeronautics with one aim in mind only; to
know as much about balloons as I could, to become the world’s greatest expert
in the field if possible. I had joined a ballooning club early on, and as I
grew more experienced, I became convinced that there was only one thing really
worth doing. Others could have the endurance and long distance records; I’d go
for height.
Of course, to do this, I’d need a special
kind of balloon, one specifically made for altitude. I designed it myself, and,
with the help of the inheritance I got from my parents, I constructed it. After
several test flights, I was ready for the big day at last. As I strapped in my
parachute, an unfortunate but necessary additional weight and precaution, my
fellow balloon club members pumped the translucent envelope full of hydrogen
gas. It would of course have to be a hydrogen balloon; helium was too heavy,
and I couldn’t even think of taking up the additional weight of a hot-air
burner and cylinders. That I had to take an oxygen cylinder and mask up with me
was already more weight than I could really afford, but like the parachute, it
was a necessity.
My friend Oskar, who had been almost as
fascinated by my project as I, and had helped in every way he could, checked me
over one last time, testing the buckles of my harness and my parachute. “Are
you quite sure you won’t take a radio?” he asked for the sixth or seventh time,
as he helped strap me into the seat and locked the bar into place.
“I told you,” I replied once again, “I
can’t afford the additional weight. And any radio I could take up wouldn’t have
much in the way of range anyway.”
Oskar looked up at the envelope, which was
now a billowing lighter patch against the pre-dawn sky. The capsule surged,
straining against the ropes holding it down. He nodded. “Well, let’s hope there
isn’t any emergency.”
“Why should there be?” I asked. “The
weather forecast is perfect, there’s next to no wind, the balloon is in
excellent shape, I’m as fit as I’ll ever be, and we aren’t anywhere near the
sea or something. Stop worrying, it never does any good.”
“You’re probably right,” he said, sighing,
and handed me the map on a clipboard he’d been carrying. “Ready?”
I nodded. The ropes fell away, and with a
lurch the balloon rose into the air.
It’s impossible, for anyone who’s never
been up in a balloon, to imagine the thoughts that go through one’s mind as one
makes an ascent like mine. As the ground fell away below, the sky to the east
brightened dramatically as I rose above the line of the horizon. Then, with a
flash, the rays of the still-hidden sun turned the balloon’s envelope into a huge
teardrop of gold. I imagined that Oskar, who would undoubtedly be following me
through binoculars, would be able to see it too.
The silence, in a balloon, can’t be
imagined. Not only is there no engine noise; since a balloon moves exactly as
fast as the wind, there is not even the rustle of a breeze. The slightest sound
below, the crowing of a cock as the sun rose, might be clearly heard, if one
were flying low, with ballast bags tied on; but I was rising straight up, and
so quickly that long before the sun painted the roofs of the town I was wrapped
in silence.
As the balloon rose, the capsule turned
slowly, spinning in a great circle taking in the horizon. I wasn’t very high
yet, but it was already distinctly colder, despite the sun. I was glad of my
heavy gloves and boots, and of the thick flying suit. The sky was clear, except
where, very high above and well to the north, a few strands of cirrus lay like
ripples on the sand of a beach. It was going to be a great day, I thought; the
perfect day for my attempt. I felt like laughing.
The earth underneath fell away into a flat
sheet of brown and green. I had to concentrate on the instruments, plotting my
position on the map with the help of the compass and the speed indicator.
According to the readings, I must have encountered an unexpected stream of
wind, for I was further south than I expected. Not that I could do much about
it; and, as I rose further, I must have passed through the wind stream, for I
no longer drifted south according to the instruments.
I began to imagine, with a sudden rush of
regret, what I might do once my flight was over. I’d absolutely no doubt at all
that I’d achieve the record I was aiming for; but then what? It was all I’d dreamt
of for years, an obsession that had shaped my life, that had even precluded
serious relationships. More than one young lady had told me that they might
have liked me but for the fact that I had only time for one thing, balloons. I
hadn’t cared particularly, for what was a transient love affair compared to my
name in the record books, to stand for the ages?
Well, then, today would be the culmination
of all that effort; and once it was over, what then? Would I even ever want to
get aloft again, knowing that I’d already done all that I’d set out to do?
I must have fallen into a brown study as I
ruminated on this, mechanically checking the instruments, because I was
surprised when I suddenly discovered that I was being forced to draw in
increasingly deep breaths. The air had
become thin, so I strapped on the oxygen mask and turned the valve on the
cylinder. I’d been forced to skimp on that, too, to save weight; so I had only
one cylinder, and had to make it last as long as I could.
From
a balloon, at that height, the world looks like an ocean. Far below, the land
is a green-brown smudge spread in all directions, interrupted on the horizon by
the rising reef of a mountain range. The sea of air, pressing down on all this,
deepens from a light blue near the horizon to a darker hue above, until
overhead it’s an aquamarine, interrupted only by ruffles and flurries of cloud
like the spume of waves breaking on the surface.
I’d just done checking the instruments
again, and was plotting my position on the map, when a shadow fell over the
paper for an instant, and whisked away again.
I did not, at first, even notice it. It
wasn’t much of a shadow, merely a momentary darkening of the sunlight, gone
almost at once. When it came again, larger and longer this time, I thought to
myself that it was just some of the cirrus cloud I’d noticed earlier, passing
overhead.
And then I frowned as I recalled something.
The cirrus I’d noticed had been well to the north, and since launching I’d
drifted to the south; so what exactly had cast the shadow? Abandoning the
plotting for the moment, I looked up.
High above me bulged the familiar teardrop
shape of the translucent envelope. Something
shimmered in the light beside it, something so faint that I thought for a
moment I was just seeing those specks which float in our eyes. Then the balloon rotated slightly, and the
thing came into clearer view.
Even now, all these years later, I can’t
describe it adequately. It was almost totally transparent; I only saw it from
where the sun glinted, ever so faintly, off its surface, and where part of it
passed between me and the envelope, I could see the faintest stain in the air,
like the remnants of a whiff of smoke.
But I can tell you this: it was enormous. More and more of it came into
view, and I realised I was climbing up its side, the balloon brushing its
almost invisible and intangible surface. In basic form it was, as far as I
could see, like a colossal collection of
transparent soap bubbles, each of which was many times larger than my
balloon, under which trailed long tentacles like the arms of a jellyfish. It
was one of these tentacles which had case the shadow that had flicked over my
head and cast the shadow I’d noticed.
I was so amazed at what I was seeing that
I’d have rubbed my eyes if my hands hadn’t been covered by thick gloves. As it
was, I blinked several times, and then squeezed my eyes tightly shut.
The balloon lurched slightly. My eyes
flicked open. The glittering surface before me seemed not to be moving. Then
the balloon lurched again, and I looked at the altimeter. The needle, crawling
along the scale as it had been doing since I’d launched, moved slower and
slower, as though elastic bands were holding me down. And then it stopped.
I hung suspended in the air, held fast by
that titanic thing.
And then I realised that it was not alone.
Turning my head, I saw another to my right, drifting in my direction, directing
itself with slow pulsing contractions of its gigantic surface. Another was coming
from the left, exactly like a jellyfish propelling itself through the water. A
moment later, and they had come together all around me, and I was surrounded by
a million flickering rainbows.
In other circumstances, I suppose it would
have been beautiful beyond belief. But I had no sense of beauty; I was consumed
by a far more primal emotion: fear.
Not only did these impossible things exist,
not only had they trapped me, tens of thousands of metres above the ground;
they were aware. They were thinking. I felt their thoughts, like the heat of a banked fire. And the most
frightening thing about their thoughts wasn’t that they were curious about the
balloon, which they were; the frightening thing was they knew I was there, and
they were filled with a cold, implacable anger towards me.
Fumbling like fingers in a darkened room,
the tentacles came looking for me. Insubstantial as a brush of breeze, one
touched my knee, hesitated for a moment, and moved on. It probably couldn’t
feel me through the flight suit. But another came, trailing a gossamer tip
across my chest, which made me reflexively strain backwards as far as I could
in my confined seat. It felt the movement, and an instant later it had whipped
itself round me.
Seconds later, I found myself pulled half
out of the capsule, the oxygen mask ripped off my face, the tentacle round my
chest joined by another round my left arm. The bar with the instrument pod was
all that was holding me in place. The tentacles jerked impatiently, eager to
have me, and pulled hard against the restraint. I felt the agony on my lower
torso and hips as the straps and bar bit into me. At this rate they’d pull me
in two, unless...
My hands grasped at the emergency release
of my seat harness, and then at the bar. If I could use the momentum of their
pull to get me out of the capsule before they could hold me tight, then I might
still have a –
I must have blacked out for a few seconds,
because when I came to, I was falling through the air, the wind slamming past
my face like a wall. Between my feet, I saw the teardrop shape of my balloon,
and around it, something that shimmered and glittered, at the very edge of
visibility. I was falling head first, and as I watched, the balloon shrank to a
tiny white dot and vanished.
I don’t know how long I fell like that,
head first, down towards the ground. I felt a great sense of lassitude, as
though I should just let myself fall. Only little by little did the thought
come to me, that I had something to do. And it took even longer before my brain
finally came to the realisation that what I had to do was open my parachute.
And then I might have fallen for quite
another minute while my brain worked out, step by step, how I should manage the
feat of opening the parachute. Only when the line of the horizon had already
crept into the line of sight of my eyes did my hands finally fumble for my
ripcord. And as the parachute slammed open and jerked me the right way up, I
saw the ground rushing up only a short distance below; fields, with a village
in the distance. I had only enough time to prepare myself for the impact before
I struck. Falling over, I struck my helmeted head hard against the ground and
nearly knocked myself out.
As I lay on my back, looking up, far, very
far above, I seemed to see a speck of glitter.
And then it was gone.
******************************************************
“Nobody ever found my balloon again,” von Höllenteufel said. “I let it
be thought it had been caught in a high altitude wind stream and swept away,
and that I’d parachuted because I’d lost control. After all, you could hardly
blame me for not telling the truth. Who would have believed me? Would you?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again.
“That’s what I thought,” von Höllenteufel
said, nodding. “I’m sure Oskar suspected I was holding something back, but he
never asked and I never told him. I thought I’d never have to say anything at
all. But then I didn’t know that some idiot would be stupid enough to try for
another of those height records.”
“I, uh,” I began. “Your account, it
seems...unlikely, surely? Are you saying that aliens from some other planet
live in our upper atmosphere? That would be...”
“Bah!” von Höllenteufel raised an imperious
hand. “Did I say anything about aliens? Never.”
“Then what are these...things...you say you
met?”
Von Höllenteufel stroked his chin while he
gazed at me for almost a minute. “I told you,” he said at last, “that the air,
from up in a balloon, looks like an ocean. In fact it is an ocean...an ocean of
gas, pressing down on the earth, and we’re bottom dwellers crawling along the
sea floor. That’s all we are.
“But oceans have currents, too, warm and
cold currents that flow like rivers through the body of the water, and which
rise and fall as they hit undersea mountain ranges and trenches in the sea
floor. And on land we have currents of warm air, which rise like mushrooms from
the heated land and the sun-warmed sea, up to the freezing heights far above,
where they cool and spread out, and, slowly, slowly, sink down again. Over
aeons, how many times have they made that journey? And how many times have they
carried up tiny organisms – bacteria, single-celled animals, or even more
complex creatures like spiders – up into those heights?
“And, given time enough, and time enough
they have had, who can possibly say what has evolved up there? Surface dwellers
of the ocean of air, like the surface dwellers of the oceans of water? Feeding,
perhaps, on the energy of the sunlight, warmed by the cosmic rays?
“And, given time enough, and time they have
had, how can we say they have not evolved thought, intelligence, feelings – and
the ability to anger, and to hate? The desire for revenge?”
“To hate?” I frowned. “But why would they hate? Revenge for what?”
“Think,” von Höllenteufel said. “Just think. All these ages, these giants have
floated above the earth, undisturbed, living their placid lives. All these
days, nothing touched them, nothing hurt them, they floated along serenely. But
then...suddenly...something came along, something that they could never have
imagined, something that they had no defence against. Can you tell me what that
was?”
I swallowed. “Aeroplanes.”
“Of course. Aeroplanes wouldn’t even notice their existence. They would slice
through them as though they weren’t there, scattering their substance to the
winds. Aeroplanes, monster machines from the depths, rising to their world,
with just one aim, they would think; to find them, and to destroy them. Of
course they’d seethe for revenge, but be unable to take it...until a very, very
high rising balloon blundered into their grasp, a raft drifting on the waves,
as it were.”
I looked out into the rain washed street,
suddenly unable to disbelieve. “But...” I said. “Doktor Professor, I can tell
the people you suggested about all this, but they won’t believe me. You know
this as well as I do.”
In the windowpane, I saw his reflection
nod. “I know.”
“And you still want me to tell them about
it.”
“Yes, for two reasons. In the first place,
they need to be warned about what lies up there, the danger they’re headed for.
And also...” in the reflection, his hands moved on the table, twisting the
newspaper. “And also,” he said, “these creatures, whatever they are, animals or
plants or something else altogether – they are, as I said, intelligent. And
they can communicate in some way, some way that even I could pick up. Surely if
we try, we can communicate back with them, make them understand that we mean
them no harm. Surely we can try and reach a modus vivendi between our two
species.”
“But since nobody will believe you, Doktor
Professor,” I said, turning back to him, “what do you propose to do?”
Von Höllenteufel sighed. “I’ve been up
there before. I’m the only one who knows anything at all about them.”
“You mean...”
“Yes,” he said. “I want to go up, too.”
Copyright B Purkayastha 2015
[Source] |
Two stand-alone panel comics
This one was done for the GoComics website for a strip featuring work by "fans" celebrating 65 years of the Peanuts comic strip. I'll be frank with you: I don't like Peanuts much. At best I find it adequate; more often, I find it highly depressing. But the one character I have a real soft spot for is Snoopy on his flying kennel, so that's what I drew:
As for the second, it's self-explanatory. The title? The Clean Up Crew.
You're welcome.
As for the second, it's self-explanatory. The title? The Clean Up Crew.
You're welcome.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)