Hitler, Fitzgerald and the story of our time

Hitler, Fitzgerald and the story of our time

It is raining outside, the streets filled with puddles, everything is quite vague from the view here. I am sitting beside the window and peering through the roar of rain. The vendors and commuters keep on doing their everyday chores amidst the rain as if nothing is more important than what they are doing now. As the sporadic wind picks up, the people have two main functions to achieve – hold their clothes against the wind and protect their head against the stream of beads of rain flying towards them from every direction with umbrellas. Some people give up moving on and begin searching for a place to take refuge as the torrent of rain is marching from the sky.

I have been watching these people since the early morning – the time it started raining. It is my hobby to savor the picturesque view of the rain in urban areas. The population on the streets and roads would gradually dwindle to a fourth of its former one or less than that as the rain persists. What adds more liveliness and colors to this nature-born scenery is a cup of coffee and a thought to think of. I am holding my second cup of coffee for this morning. The problem with the coffee is it is too sweet and I am reluctant to put more coffee powder in it as though the aura of happiness I enjoy now would vanish if I put more coffee powder. As for the thought, my mind is running through thousands of memories – from the day I first went to school screaming, trying to escape from my mother who held me tightly and dragging me to school, to my last ex-girlfriend. Nothing jumps out of my memories is worth thinking or perhaps I just want to leave myself empty. That not being in the process of thinking is like a room without its main features such as the wall and the floor.

Not until one sight struck me do I not have anything to figure out. The old man with a can of coconut oil is moving slowly on the street. He is a vendor who uses this street every day. I bought some coconut oil from him once or twice. There are winkles in his face and most parts of his lungyi and shirt are drenched with water. One of his hands holds the umbrella and the other clasps the oil can. I have seen him several times before but I never felt something strange from him. He is just the ordinary vendor walking through the labyrinth of streets to sell his coconut oil and I am just the customer. Nothing is peculiar. It seems to me, now, that he is much a familiar figure to me. He seems like more than sixty and keeps on struggling for survival on his own. As the sight flies towards me and through my retina it is sent to my brain, a series of inexplicable combination of feelings formed into waves passes through and they crushed against my interior being. I cannot tell what kind of feeling it is. It is neither the reminiscence of the past nor the prospect for the future – it is something of the present I dwell in.

I am entangled with the thought for a very long time even after the old man get out of my sight as if he is my relief from my irksome nightmare.

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“Since I was young, the video games and computer games have been my favorite pastime”, I said to her. She nodded.

“You know, my brothers used to play video games. I used to try to play with them. But they didn’t allow me to play with them. They said these are not girl’s stuff.” She grimaced as she told me her childhood memories.

“Anyway, they are nice brothers, just protecting their little sister from getting addicted to video games, aren’t they? “

“I don’t think so. They are selfish brothers. Why did you like playing games?” she said. There were only two colors in her eyes, absolute white and absolute black. Her eyes were big, large and lustrous and I was proud to have their visit on my face as she was talking.

“I don’t know. Maybe one thing I like about video game or computer game is that you can choose whether you save your progress or not. If you don’t think you didn’t do your mission well, you can choose ‘No’. Life doesn’t provide that service to us. Maybe that’s why I am happier to have a battle in the virtual world than in the real world.”

“You are funny. Yeah, our life is poor”, she said. She gave me the smile that rooted in the innermost parts and blossomed into the surface of her lips and cheeks.

I did not say anything and she did not say anything or perhaps there was nothing we could talk and we just looked at each other. It was a while before I eyed the outside. There were not much students outside, just a few going to their classes or heading to canteen to create their comfort zone away from boring lessons. The dry leaves from tree, after leaving their home, were swaying in the dry air as if taking as much time as they could to avoid landing on the ground. The cold air of January reached our small classroom as the wind blew. The air was alarmingly cold as it touched us; I tried to bury my cold finger in my jacket. Even my whole body was squeezed into the jacket. The sun was trying to push through the fog and it seemed that the sun started to defeat the fog. The temperature was commencing to rebuild the normal day for people. Yangoners were not accustomed to the cold winter normally. As what we call the global climate change triggered the peculiar conditions in our world, all the climates in the regions of the world were turned upside down –including the freezing winter visiting Yangon temporarily. Burning the dried leaves was the only method to clean the campus. The aroma of burning leaves wafted through the air, the smoke from burning leaves could be seen through window. Until the bell for second period rang and the tutor got into the class, did I not talk anything. I did not do anything other than glancing idly. The weather was dull – making everyone in the room immobilized.

The tutor said “Ok, class. Let’s do some group work. I will form you guys into seven groups…….,” and my mind went blur. I took the wrong schedule in the morning, I realized. She was the tutor I didn’t even want to sit in her teaching time. I looked around, everybody got to their feet as she told.

I wake up, my shirt damp with sweat and my head suffering from headache as usual. I am very sick of this nightmare, it has been happening repeatedly in my life. Every time it is the same – I was taken back to the university, in the cold weather, talking to my female friend the same dialogue as it happened many times before, gazing idly, the tutor gave us lessons and I realized I had looked at the wrong schedule, and I was woken with giant beads of perspiration excreting from my skin.

I gulp down a glass of cold water and sit down. Secondly, I open my poetry book randomly in which I have been writing poems for years. Both reading poems and writing poems are my emotional outlets and they are the tools with which I overcame in the harshest points of my life. One verse of a poem says:

“I’d rather go beyond

  Than go before

  Of the perplexity of my destiny

  Or the melancholy of my life. ”

I look up the date it was written. It says 27^th December. I don’t remember exactly why I wrote that verse or what its meaning is. I am not even sure if I wrote it because my friends used to write poems in my poetry book. I say the verse silently again. The words slip through my lips as if they become the visible creatures. I say the verse or hymn– till I lose the connection with the outer world – utterly. And I fall asleep again.

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 “I am extremely annoyed with it. I don’t know why but it keeps on coming to me again and again.”

The psychiatrist listens to me as she jots down on a piece of paper. A clock on the wall says it is 3:30.

“When did that nightmare start?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, it is not a nightmare. It just frequently comes to me when I fall asleep –so frequently that I feel very annoyed and I am even frightened to sleep. It started, maybe, one and a half year ago.”

“So, how many times did you have this same dream?”

“I don’t know. It just so happens when I sleep.”

 “Think it much as you can, how that girl, your female friend, has influenced your life? I mean if you ever loved her? Or is she an important part in your life?”

I cannot reply it for a moment. I have to go through my memories of my university. Nothing of my memories comes out of.  

“No, I don’t remember. My memory is a blur when I think about her. I forget almost everything.”

She stops staring at the sheet of paper she is writing down and looks at me.

“You forgot everything? Do you have amnesia?” the psychiatrist asks me.

“No, I don’t know if I have amnesia. I remember some days of my university, some friends which I totally recall but I cannot recall the others including that girl as if I have never met with them. It’s a blur when I think about them. I know I had some friends but I don’t even remember their names or their appearances.”

“So how do you know she is your friend?”

“According to my diary”

“I see. Do you have contact with old friends from your university?”

“No, not at all.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t see them.”

“Are you lonely in these days? “

“I am used to loneliness. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“You should meet someone and talk”, she suggests and continues, “Are the dreams always the same? Do you find some differences in your dreams about that girl?”

“No, they are exactly the same.”

“Other people, things and setting?

“I must say they are the same too. It is like watching a film again and again. At the first time, I was happy to have reunion with my university experience that I cannot find in my memory then.”

 “Alright, this is the last question. Do you want to find her in your life now?”

Her abrupt question wakes my mind. I have no answer for that. I haven’t thought whether I should find her and talk to her.

“Maybe I want to find her if I have a chance.”

The psychiatrist puts her pen down and looks at me. She flashes a smile to me. She gives me some suggestions to get rid of the haunting dream.

“Ok, it will take a lot of time to resolve it but we can do it eventually. Please come to me next Tuesday.”

I leave the psychiatrist. This is the first time I visit her. I have not seen any psychiatrist as I believed it’d not be a psychological problem.

It is a pleasant evening when I go for a walk. The sun is about to sink in; the lamp light mingling with the sunlight radiates the pavement eloquently, running buses are full of tired crowds heading to their homes, the puddles, the signs of the recent angry rain are everywhere, the road is teeming with people. There are a lot of vendors and hawkers on the pavement as if a night market. I choose the small Chinese restaurant for my meal. There are people, smoke released from cigarettes and the clatter of dishes. While waiting, someone calls my name and greets me.

“Hey, how are you?”

“Yeah, I am fine. I haven’t seen you for ages. How you doing?”

“Fine”, he said.

He orders something and seats beside me. His appearance has changed a lot. It took me several seconds to remember him. He is a poet and he and some of us wrote poems and discussed about poetry on the campus. We were very crazy about poetry then.

“So, what do you do?”

“Me? Technically, I don’t have a job”, I say.

“Oh, that’s the problem everyone is facing nowadays. You are not the only one who is unemployed.”

“I heard that you decided to be a professional poet.”

“Yes, I did. I have made this decision foolishly. It is not realistic.”

He said, his eyes reflecting a faint of disappointment.

“I think this country is the worst country in the world for poets. No one gives a shit to your work”, he proceeds.

“I know. My skills in poetry were never more than an amateur’s. I don’t try to publish. So, I did not meet the same fate as you.”

He chuckles,

“Yeah, I was dumb enough to try it.”

“No, you weren’t. One day you will be successful, I am sure.”

The waiter brings the food and soups. We stopped conversing and eat them in haste. He wipes out his lips with tissue and asks me.

“Where are you going?” he says.

“I don’t know. Maybe home. You?”

“I don’t want to go home right now. I want to spend my time somewhere nocturnal. Do you want to come with me?”

I look at my watch. It is 8:30 p.m. There is an abundance of time for me to have night life that I had not had for ages.

“Sure. I want to have some life. Let’s go somewhere. It’d be fun.”

We board a taxi to the restaurant. It stands magnificently in the night with technicolor electric light decorated around the trees and shrubs in its compound. It seems, however, more of a discos club than a restaurant given that the discos light strew on the stage where a girl is singing and dancing and the light is provocatively dim everywhere.

The waiter approaches us. We order beers, whisky and some crisps. There are not many people.

“So, what did you do after graduation?” I said. 

“Well”, he said, “as you might hear, I immersed myself into the world of poetry and literature – I worked in vain in several magazines as an assistant editor –a shitty kind of job. Meanwhile, I contributed my poems to all the literary magazines and journals. Some of them were published, some not.”

“That’s terrific! I remembered almost all of us wanted to have such kind of life several years ago. Now you have that life. Congratulations!”

“No, this life is not something to be proud of, I finally realized. It is not walking-on-the-water.”

“How come?”

“Money matters. I am never financially independent of my parents. When the magazine I am working for ceases and gets out of business for financial reason, I have to search for another job.”

“I know literary magazines are not much perennial.”

“Yeah, they don’t hold much of public interest. The poets and novelists have a lot of difficulties to make a living. Now I am brooding all day about my future. Maybe I should give up my life as a poet and do something literally different.”

The drinks and the food are arrived. The girl on the stage finished her song and came down. The band tunes their instruments to adapt to the next song’s melody. There is uncomfortable silence between us. Neither of us wants to converse and we are occupied with our thoughts and drinking beer. We drink beer and see the girls wearing provocatively on the stage and that’s the things we are doing for an hour.

“Do you want some beer?” he breaks the silence calling the waiter for more beer.

“No. I think I should leave.”

 “I want to give you something. This is my poetry book I have published. It is not much of a commercial success. But it is a milestone for me.”

I take the book saying ‘thank you’.

“I will read your poems.”

“Yeah, please do.”

We leave the restaurant and heading to different direction –our homes. When I reach home, I feel really tired and peculiarly exhausted. When I fall asleep, I have the same dream in my sleep…………………………………………………………..

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I am very sweaty when I wake up. I put the poetry book on the table. I change my clothes and sit on the bed glancing through my diaries that were kept in a wooden box.

I suddenly want to read it and feel I will get all of my memories as soon as I read it as if something divine with which I wrote in the diary jumps out of it and there will be something miracle. I open one of the diaries and read. I read page by page and in the middle of reading I find one piece of paper stuck in my diary. There are a few sentences written: Hitler achieved all of this without war (and there are now some historians who state that had he died in 1938 before the mass executions began, he would have gone down in history as the greatest statesman in the history of the German people).

I cannot think of anything why I happened to write about Hitler in my past years. I am not interested in history and at school my history marks were lower than the average student. And I did not learn history in my university too. I cannot think of a reason I wrote that. Having no idea about it, I am about to let it go but I find a comment in the bottom of the page.

“Hitler is my hero no matter what other people thinks.”

I am really surprised. Why did I write that? The handwriting is clearly mine. Hitler is no more than a villain in the history of world to me. I don’t know much about him. It adds up a lot of further consideration to me. My mind goes numb. I stop reading and go outside for a brief walk.

I decide not to sleep in my bed or in my house tonight. I am in the small room with a hooker. She is lying on the bed, naked just looking at me with her little, rounded, lustrous eyes. She has an average height and beautiful breast. Her body is slim and her breasts are small. Her whole body is lying stiff as if expecting something fierce. Instead of peeling my clothes off, I sit beside her without looking at her. Not until she sits up behind me, do I not know how much time I have spent sitting idly.  

“What are you going to do?” she said.

I don’t look at her. I light a cigarette and take a very long puff of it.

“If you are not going to do anything, I will go. I don’t have much time for you.”

“How old are you?” I asked while she is picking her shirt on the chair to get dressed.

“19. Why? Do you think I am underage?”

“No. I just want to know.”

“Will you do what you are doing or do I have to leave?”

“I am not doing anything but please don’t leave. I need your company.”

She sits down in the chair, she is fully dressed now. She is charming as-a-matter-of-factly but her charm is buried under make-up and cosmetic she is wearing, since her profession demands.

“I need your company”, I repeated.

“I know. That’s why you paid me. And I am ready to entertain you but you did nothing.”

“No, I don’t mean that. I need someone who is beside me.”

 She is gazing at me.

“You look more beautiful in your clothes than without them. How do you think of me?” I said.

She laughs and says,

“I don’t know. You are just my customer who pays me to have sex and you own some of my hours tonight. But if you want me beside you all night you have to pay me more.”

“Ok, I will. You just stay and you don’t need to do anything”, I said.

I take a very long breath. I do not have any word to say. I get a book from my sack which I bring from home. She asks me what book it is.

“It is ‘The Beautiful and Damned’ by Fitzgerald. I love this book.”

“Fitzgerald? Who is he?”

“He is an American writer”, I said in brief, getting to reading.

“Do you read English novels? Can you?” She looks at the book and me surprisingly.

“Yes, I can.” I don’t look up from the book.

She does not say anything. Five minutes later, she is sleeping on the bed .It is 4 a.m. when I finally finish the book. This is the third time I read this book. I look at her. She is in her deep sleep. Her face resembles a familiar face of someone I know but I don’t know who it is. She said she is 19 years old. I know that is a lie. She must be more than twenty five because this is what everyone in this industry does –just to give their customer a satisfaction that they are having sex with a teenager or a virgin. She is sleeping in an enchanting way. I want to kiss her and it is solely independent of sexual desire. I kiss her on her forehead and that wakes her. She is half-sleep though.

“Hey, how is your book? Is it good?”

I don’t say anything. I just look at her.

“Have you read the book?” she asks.

“Yeah, it’s good. Well, I have to go.”

“Wait, you have to tell me what the book is about.”

“It’s just about the two couple who are nouveau riche.”

“Well, I want to listen about them. Tell me.”

“I don’t want to talk about the novel as it is completely fictional. I want to talk about mine.”

“Do you write stories?” she asks me.

I say yes and tell her my epic which is, except its true facts, a story – how long I have been tortured by the dream. She does not utter a word, listening carefully to me.

“This dream always seems to root inside my protagonist like a parasite. It sucks everything he has got. What is he supposed to do? This is how he lives his life,” I said, my voice tremble as I told her.

She is constantly solemn as she listens to me as if she is watching the film or reading a book.

“Well, it is interesting. What is the ending of your story?”

“I haven’t written it yet. Maybe the protagonist commits suicide just to get back to his normal life. Would it be a great tragedy?”

“No way. It’s just a dream. Everyone is dreaming. You don’t need to suicide to stop dreaming.”

She repeated, “Maybe, it’s just a dream. All you need to do is wake up. Let him wake up.”

I could not say anything for a minute. Then I stand up to leave. But I have changed my mind and my lips are on hers. I have brief intercourse with her. She is lovely in bed, too. In the while, I think t what it would be like to have sex with the girl in my dream, which actually I should not think or it’s impossible.

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I meet the psychologist in the next day. We have talked a great deal. It shows a little progress because I feel less irritated by the dream.

“You have to see it as it is. Sometimes, our feelings and perceptions are exaggerated, developed and finally hallucinated by ourselves,” she said before goodbyes.

On my way home I meet the coconut oil seller.

“Hi, how is your business?” I greet him.

“It’s fine. Do you want to buy some from me?”

“Not now. I don’t need it.”

“Call me if you need some. I am commuting your street every day.”

“Sure, I will.”

When I get home, I lock the door and get down reading my diaries. I want to discover the relationship of me and the girl in my dream. I found a spot that says the day we were friends. It is written the same as my dream –everything I said, my actions and words. I try searching more than that but I can’t. My eyes start aching and I give up searching for extra information about her in my diaries.

I leave my house just as I leave the hooker or the psychologist or the friends –not looking back. The girl in my dream would be just the production of my hallucination, I am not sure of it though. There’s no point to moan because I don’t have her. Or because she always stays inside me. Maybe you cannot have somebody if she is in the deepest parts of you.

I want to go away from my home now. I want to run away and merge with people or friends.

After that, I won’t go home because for sure there will be that dream waiting for me. Maybe it chases me everywhere I go but I just have to run away from it as if it’s my responsibility. For now, I am disappearing into the crow. Which somewhat makes me larger.

                                                                                                               

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