The Suffering of Being Kafka | Page 3

in the garden. A smile budded in my grandma's
honeyed eyes and spread into my grandfather's deep blue gaze.
The cart stood there for years, disintegrating inexorably beneath its

blackening shield. Its wheels, now rooted in the soil, it sank into the
mildewed ground, another, peculiarly shaped sapling. My grandpa
never adjusted the synthetic sheet that swathed it, nor did he dig out the
burgeoning wheels.
My grandpa was visiting a pharmacy, replenishing her medications,
when my grandma died. With the dignity of the indigent, he never
bargained, never raised his voice. Packed in small, white, paper bags,
he rushed the doses to his wife, limping and winded.
This time the house was shuttered doors and windows. My grandma
wouldn't respond to his increasingly desperate entreaties. He flung
himself against the entrance and found her sprawled on the floor, her
bloodied mouth ajar. As she fell, she must have hit her head against the
corner of a table. She was baking my grandfather his favourite pastries.
Her eyes were shut. My grandpa knew she died. He placed her
remedies on the floured and oiled table and changed into his best attire.
Kneeling beside her, he gently wiped clean my grandma's hands and
mouth and head and clothed her in her outdoors coat.
His business done, he lay besides her and, hugging her frail remains, he
shut his eyes.
My uncles and aunts found them, lying like that, embraced.
My grandparents' tiny home was government property and was
reclaimed. The sanitary engineers, revolted, removed from the garden
the worm-infested, rotting relic and the putrid sheet concealing it.
The next day, it was hauled by sturdy garbage collectors into a truck
and, with assorted other junk, incinerated.

Language of Black and Red
by Sam Vaknin
Eli and I sit on ladder-backs next to a luxurious roulette in a casino in
Spain. I can almost pick glitters from the heavy, lowered chandeliers. I
can practically touch the shiny wooden wheel. I can see the croupier's
manicured nails. Lithe young bellhops, clad in ornamental uniforms,
place trays on gypsum pillars next to our chairs. We fervently gulp the
champagne from the tall, prismatic glasses and nibble at the tiny
sandwiches.
We are that lucky that we dare not leave the table, not even to relieve
ourselves.

Piles of shiny square chips represent our exceptional streak of winnings.
The table supervisor looks very anxious. He shifts restlessly on his
elevated seat, hawk-eyeing everyone malevolently. Sure enough, he
doesn't like us. He clears all other players, letting us bet in splendid
isolation, facing each other.
Eli's upper lip and temples glisten. My armpits ooze the acrid smell of
manly perspiration. Easy to tell we are tense or apprehensive or both.
We evade each other's gaze. Our hands are shaking and the boys keep
pumping us with increasingly inebriating drinks. They want us under
the influence. They want us to cough up everything we have and then
some. We want to win. We want the casino broke. Our differences are
profoundly irreconcilable.
Eli is a quarter of a tough century my senior. His life-swept face is
haggard, straggly and raven eyebrows, lips cruel and eyes chillingly
penetrating. He finds his sense of humour irresistible. It often is.
My baby face is framed by the plastic quadrangles of my glasses. I
broadcast innocence and guile. The reactions I provoke are mixed.
Some sense my vulnerability and hasten to protect me. Others find my
haughty slyness loathsome. I guess I conjure my defencelessness to con
my victims.
It may prove unhealthy to lose our sponsors' money. These people are
charm itself and sheer delight - until you breach their pockets. They
tend to lose their fabled equanimity. They regard business losses as
hostile acts and the perpetrators as lethal enemies. So, they strike first,
giving you no chance to err, to apologise, to scrutinise.
We are piling on not be piled in. The dough is multiplying. What if we
lose? Eli says he has this thing going for him tonight, a wild card, from
nature, and he does not dream to stop even though we reek of the
casino's funds, even though two Spanish beauties resolutely scramble
over him and heavies in bursting suits forage around obtrusively.
Eli's protruding eyes fixated on the wheel, mesmerically attempting to
bring it to a favoured halt.
It smoothly winds down and Eli ignores my furious pestering: our
underwriters invested to test and implement a betting method I
developed. "I am offended" - I whisper, he ignores me. A febrile Eli
has bonded with the table and every number wins, especially his
choices.

"Twenty eight!" - he hisses, sidestepping the croupier to fetch his gains.
He sprawls on the green felt surface and lovingly enfolds the clacking
tokens. Reclining, eyes shut agloat, he savours his