To most passengers on
the ferryboats sailing by, Gibraltar was nothing but an unproportionally giant
rock denying the local inhabitants the required space for agricultural
activities and residential ambitions. It was a mere sign that the crossing
reached its final point and that they had to get ready to land. To the
remaining passengers, it was simply a natural statue that stirred their
curiosity, making them lengthen their necks to see what was beyond.
To the illegal
immigrants rowing along from North Africa on board large plastic speedboats,
the lonely mountain through the thick patches of fog looked so very different.
It appeared rather like the mumpy head of a giant creature stuck in deep
waters between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, seeming to live
only to see the latest groups of African immigrants drown the way he had done,
a long time before.
Yet, to the
Gibraltarians who used to open their windows every morning and stand up in
their balconies to make sure that they were safe with Gibraltar still there in
the guard, the presence of the mountain showed that another round of life was
announced. However, those who missed that morning chance usually had their
excuse: having given a wonderful party the day before while still feeling the
difficulty of accepting that another day had so quickly come and that the sun
was already in the sky and that balcony over there belonged to that category.
It was the last balcony
to let the new morning’s fresh air come in when its windows were finally flung
wide open. Then, there were the curtains knotted very sleepily wide apart
allowing the loud music played inside to drift out with the appearance of a couple
of faces showing in the foreground against the crowd dancing in the lounge deep
in the background. The balcony door, at last, allowed its shutters to part,
making room for the couple to invade the space, dancing. The young lady had her
right hand in the young man’s while she kept her left behind her back to hold a
parcel.
The young man stopped
dancing. He insisted on seeing his partner join him with both her hands in his.
After a short hesitation, she showed him her left hand and gave him the parcel.
She seemed to like the hasty way he unfastened it before even thanking her. He
seized the book inside and seemed so surprised. His mouth was set wide open as
if in readiness to devour the gift itself. Then, he started dancing at the end
of the balcony, brandishing what seemed to be the dearest present he had ever
been given: Kafka's Metamorphosis. The young lady joined him. She
insisted on hearing him read, in her presence, the dedication she had written
on the first page of the book:
To My Only Love,
Wishing You the Life
You Are Dreaming of.
Magically
Yours!
Mary.
She was quite pleased to
see his pupils widen and his smile broaden as he read the dedication. She
kissed him, reminding him that her birthday would be celebrated in the
following day:
'I'm dying to see what
you'll bring me as a present on such a dear occasion!'
‘What do you expect me
to bring you, darling?’ Chris said. ‘A gold pen? A gold ring? Or a golden
poem?’
Mary
smiled broadly and said:
‘If you want to meet my
expectation, rewrite that Metamorphosis between your hands!’ Mary said,
quite confident in Chris’s fulfilment of her request. ‘I want you to develop
your creative skills and move from an aspiring author into a published one.’
Chris laughed out loud
and promised to do it that very evening before even going to bed. They burst
out laughing, throwing their heads back while holding each other's hands. Chris
felt that the last song in the album was about to end and that nobody among the
guests in the lounge inside would dare change the disc. He dragged Mary away
from the balcony, dancing to no music. In the lounge, he reached out to slide a
new disc in the drive. Then, he pumped up the volume and set the guests dancing
on tectonic rhythms, reggae improvisations, rock and roll music… He felt happy
to see all the dancers yielding to his musical choices: raving when rocking,
fluttering when dancing reggae, and swirling when freehand glowsticking…
At midday, a comic
figure suggested spending a second day at Chris's and moving collectively on
the third day in a formal procession to Mary's birthday party since the guests
would be the same. The guests laughed out loud while Chris hastened to the CD player
and pumped up the volume to drown out any further proposals that might eat up
the time he would devote to Mary’s book that night. He anticipated all the
guests by setting the door wide open, finding excuses for those who have
domestic commitments to fulfil. He
hugged them warmly one after the other, thanking them wholeheartedly for having
reacted positively to his invitation and shared his joy and happiness.
Left all alone with a
heavy task to fulfill, Chris felt fatigue deep inside. He had spent two days,
serving his friends and enjoying his birthday party. He sat down behind his
desk, opposite the big mirror covering the wall from right to left. He took Kafka’s
Metamorphosis and started reading it with eyes half-closed. He was
deadly tired but he had at the same time a duty to fulfil the reward which
would be so precious: A broad smile on his beloved's face. However, the book
between his hands turned out to be too crazy to summarize or rewrite while
sleep between his eyelids proved too stubborn to resist.
Chris opened a notepad,
took a pen out of the drawer, and started writing sleepily. To write, he had
often driven himself drunk, believing that his creative self would never reveal
itself in the presence of his conscious self. Now, he was involved in a different
experience, redeeming his creative self just by drowning himself in half sleep.
Having blackened a dozen
pages, he stopped to feel the electric vibration left from the party still
running around his brain. He lifted his eyes to the wall opposite him and was
pleased to see that electric vibration taking the form of an aura around his
head in the giant mirror. The vibration in his head grew more intense and the
aura before him in the mirror seemed to grow more and more distorted. He made a
great effort to keep his sleepy eyes open but only to make sure that the
distortion taking place in the mirror in front of him was not in the aura zone
but in the facial one and he woke up.
Was that the effect of
sleep?
Was that a newly
detected defect in the gigantic mirror on the wall?
Chris remembered so very
well the time when he had that mirror nailed, before his eyes, on the wall. He
had tried it, along with his friends until the mirror proved innocent of all
weaknesses. He could still remember how he had stood in front of the mirror
with someone to be compared to either in the foreground or in the background,
on the left or the right…
At that time, he made
sure that the rhythmic throb on his face matched awkwardly the growing
deformation reflected in the mirror before him. While his right hand pointed to
the mirror sarcastically, his left hand felt his body yielding to the
metamorphosis that had chosen him out of all the living beings.
Friday evening was the
time he loved best but not when he had health problems as the doctors were on
weekend leave, ambulances away and pharmacies closed. He pulled out the desk
drawer, took out a pocketbook, and started searching for a general practitioner's
telephone number:
‘Who’s speaking?’ The
voice asked.
‘Doctor, I’m sorry for
the inconvenience but I’m in trouble. I’m in a really big trouble, doctor. I
suffer something I have never been through before. Something like a
metamorphosis!’
‘Can you talk about it a
little?’
‘A distortion around my
face, doctor.’
'Mumps, probably!' The
doctor exclaimed. 'That's a contagious infection with a life duration extending
between two and three weeks. Serious complications might include deafness,
sterility among men, and infertility among women. The initial symptoms of infection
can be the loss of appetite, fever, and headache...'
The doctor stopped
abruptly but was heard across the receiver to be searching through a voluminous
book. Then, he carried on:
‘But don’t worry! Mumps
are quite common here in Gibraltar because of the densely populated city area
that provides bigger chances for this virus to survive.’
‘Can I rely on you to
pay me a home visit as I can’t go out with such a distorted face?’ Chris
implored.
‘Where do you live?’ The
doctor asked.
‘Governor’s Street, half
a mile away from your office.’
'That's OK. I'll see you
tomorrow morning around ten a.m. In the meanwhile, stay at home and have some
rest. Bye!'
Chris found it a good
opportunity to spend the night reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis while
writing his own. He read a couple of pages and stopped to meditate over them.
Sometimes, he closed his eyes as if to enjoy both metamorphoses: the one he was
reading and the other he was experiencing. The idea of summarising the novel
gave him some kind of enthusiasm to finish his task before going to bed. Yet,
when he got deeper, he found his summary futile. So very futile. He shifted to
writing his impressions on the events of the novel, praising the aspects that
seemed original to him and criticising the remaining. Again, he found that too
far from being a creative work and he shifted to meditating his situation. At
that time, so many common points between his condition and that of Gregor
Samsa, the main protagonist in Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, became
visible to his eyes. Then, he stopped writing about Samsa's transformation to
concentrate on his own.
In the mirror opposite
him, his face seemed to be a real hot piece of fat and he started shaping it
the way he pleased. He pulled his cheeks down and his face turned triangular
and he liked it. He took his mobile phone, raised it as high as he could, and
got a selfie. He put down his phone and
shaped his face rectangular. He found it so very funny. He took another selfie
and started comparing the first one with the second. He found them both crazy.
He dragged his ears backward, pulled his chin forward, and erected his nose. He
took his mobile phone, framed a self-portrait, and immortalised the new shape
in a third selfie.
He stopped for a while
to think about an impossible shape for his face and was happy to find that an
oval would suit him best. Once changed, he could not recognise himself. Without
thinking of a selfie, he hastened to try another facial form: the oblique one.
At that time, he heard a knock and he had to hurry away to the door and press
his nose against the door pane to see who was out there. He was astonished to
find that morning light was already brighter outside, and, a few inches away,
the general practitioner, with his right fist clenched tightly, knocked very
hard on the door. Chris, aware that the photochromic pane kept him invisible,
stopped there, behind the door pane, watching the doctor shouting out almost in
his face:
‘Chris, I’m the doctor.
Open the door!’
A strange idea came to
his mind right away: not to open the door. He felt sorry for having contacted
the doctor the day before but how to repair that mistake? Chris seemed to like
his new state and he grew quickly used to it.
‘Excuse me, sir. Can you
help?’ The doctor asked a passer-by. ‘Your neighbour's wire phone rings but
nobody answers. The knock is on the door and, again, nobody seems to be
inside.’
The passer-by shrugged
his shoulders and went away. The doctor needed badly an answer to his question
and he had to ask that old man who was easily dragged along to Chris’s
doorstep, introducing himself as Jude Blackbird and John found himself forced
to do the same:
‘I’m a general
practitioner coming to pay Chris a home visit.’
Jude
blinked with surprise and stepped nearer:
‘Chris’s my neighbour.
He had such a noisy day yesterday. There were so many people around him and
there was so much fuss in here. I was deeply asleep when something like a
gunshot was heard in his flat!’
‘A gunshot?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps,
it was something else. I was deep asleep.’
‘Can it be a criminal
act, a murder crime?’
Jude tried a newer
demonstration:
‘Doctor, the lights
inside the flat seem to be still on, Chris’s wire phone is on and he answers
neither the knocks on his door nor the calls on his mobile phone. This means a
lot to me but, to you, does it mean anything?’
The doctor stepped back
and frowned:
‘Do you mean he’s
dead?!’ The doctor exclaimed. ‘But we had a phone talk right after the party
was over!’
‘When did you last talk
to him?’ Jude inquired.
‘Yesterday evening.’
answered the doctor.
‘What was your talk about?’
‘His health.’
Jude shrugged his
shoulders stepped rightward, out of the door frame, and disappeared.
Left alone on the
doorstep, the doctor stuck his nose against the door pane. The reflection of
the daylight on the pane prevented him from seeing through. However, he kind of
saw another face sticking his nose against the opposite part of the pane and he
wondered audibly:
‘People say that
nobody’s in here. Shall I inform the authorities and help the dead man inside?’
He took out his mobile
phone, dialed Chris's number, and got ready to listen to the long ringing tone
that would end with the robotic advice to dial that number later as nobody
answered. Yet, this time, the automatic response, was faster than ever announcing
that his interlocutor's line was busy and advising him to have another try
later.
John clenched his fist
and knocked hard on the door. He would not stop unless a voice so neat and near
answered the knock:
‘Coming!’
The voice was so clear
that John almost jumped back in astonishment:
‘Chris, are you there?’
The door opened slowly.
An oblique face, quite bigger than what natural heads were born to be like,
leaned out of the doorway to welcome the doctor in.
‘I apologise for having
made you wait for such a long time. I had a phone call. I was talking to the
tattooist, trying to fix an appointment this afternoon.’
The doctor did not seem
to find it a good excuse but said nothing. He sat on the nearest sofa in the
lounge while Chris stood opposite, with his back to the wall.
‘Can you come closer!’
The doctor said.
Chris came along and sat
on the sofa, next to the doctor who started examining his face with his
fingers:
‘Your case seems quite
different from what I guessed yesterday.’ The doctor said. ‘But it has so many
things in common with mumps. So, if you want me to give you a prescription and
a medical certificate that’ll allow you a logical period of rest, I can do it
with pleasure.’
'Medicines and rest,
doctor, I'll need them later. For the time being, I don't think I'll need any.
I'm going to a party this evening. To be frank, I think that my new shape fits
the conditions and expectations of the party I am invited to!'
The doctor, astonished,
looked up and down at Chris and kept silent for a while. At last, he overcame
his reserve:
‘Are you serious?’
Chris tried to laugh out
but his distorted face prevented him. He used his hands to reframe his face the
way he did to smoothen or customize a piece of hot piece of fat.
Astonished, the doctor
inquired:
'So, you're going to
dance and jump the way people do on such delirious occasions!'
‘I don’t know, doctor.
I’m sure I will surprise people there but without exposing my health to any
risk?’
'Can you tell me the
reason why you've decided to act that way?'
‘Well, it’s so simple,
doctor. It’s love!’
The doctor smiled
reluctantly, trying to keep the conversation going the way it should:
‘Modern doctors aren’t
interested in the big achievements taking place in the field of psychology.
Just a few of them are. I confess that I am one of those very few doctors who
link physical health to the psychological one.’ The doctor stopped to think about
the right way to make himself clear. Then, he carried on: ‘You may have thought
a lot about metamorphosis or seen a horror film about that and wished
subconsciously to follow the same path!’
Chris did not say a
word. The doctor continued:
The subconscious mind is
a great force. Suffice it to give him a command and he will fulfil it!'
The doctor stopped,
waiting for a comment but heard nothing. He carried on, then:
‘This way, we may have
to act on the same basis by using a counter-command.’
This time, the doctor
stopped for a longer time, looking at Chris right in the eyes:
‘Chris, I’ve been
talking to you for such a long time and you answered none of my questions
although you seemed to be speaking!’
Chris, finally, said:
'The birthday party I'm
going to need a gift, a special gift, and I know what my baby loves it to be
like. I believe that I have that gift in me, now. What she loves best as a
birthday present is this new distortion that you're persuading me to cure!'
The doctor, amazed,
inquired:
‘Is it love or
self-destruction?’
'When you love somebody,
everything seems to be alike. When you fall in love, you can never see the
dualities that you are usually acquainted with in your daily life. When you
fall in love, all those dualities that you spend your daytime defending melt away.'
Chris stopped for a while, looking vaguely away. ', when you fall in love,
everything melts away and you can hardly see anyone further than the one you
love. It is just as if you zoom your whole vision on your beloved. At the same
time, you can hear nobody but her voice while all the other voices sound very
far away. When you fall in love, the universe can accommodate only two people
who have to do what each other pleases.’
The doctor, trying to
keep serious, asked:
‘Is it love or
hypnosis?’
‘I told you, doctor,
that when you’re in love, no dualities are allowed. There is only love. That’s
it!’
The doctor seized, with
both hands, the edges of the sofa, ready to leave:
‘So, I’m just intruding
on a love affair!’
Trying to apologise,
Chris said:
‘No. It’s me who asked
for your help and, yes, I will need medicines and rest but, perhaps, from
tomorrow on!’
He showed the doctor to
his desk. He helped him sit down and withdrew to the extreme corner of the
lounge, waiting for the doctor to regain his temper. The doctor took his time
behind Chris' desk, rubbed his temple with his forefinger, and started prescribing:
‘Look, I’ll give you
some antibiotics and a seven-day rest. During this time, you will have to enjoy
the maximum rest: watch TV, read books and magazines, surf on the net but
particularly in bed. Relax! Is it clear?’
Chris nodded. The
doctor, feeling at last satisfied, stood up and headed for the door when he
remembered to offer a second help:
‘Shall I give you a
drive and get you to the party you’re invited to?’
Chris apologised again:
‘I’ve called a tattoo
artist home! I still have another job to do here before going out, doctor.’
Then, he stretched his hand out for a shake: ‘Thank you for everything, doctor.
It’s very kind of you to have paid me a home visit!’
The doctor reminded him
of the rest he would need and the times he should be taking the medicines
prescribed and went downstairs.
Chris strolled back to
the bathroom and stopped next to the mirror, humming a tune:
Knock, knock, knockin' on Heaven's
door
Knock, knock, knockin' on Heaven's door...
Out of the gentleness of
a knock at the door, Chris could identify the tattooist's presence on his
doorstep. This time, he had to hurry along the corridor and welcome the
well-built man tattooed from forehead to ankles, wearing a psychedelic T-shirt
and a pair of cargo shorts. Chris welcomed the newcomer, who showed right away
visible care for the task he came for. He stepped in, went straight to the
table in the lounge, put his backpack down on it, took out the tools he would
need, and laid them carefully, one after the other, next to the backpack. Then,
he got a guidebook and gave it to Chris:
‘Here are the samples I
recommend but feel free to suggest other patterns if you have any!’
Chris scratched his
head, looking for his model out of hundreds of samples. To help him make up his
mind, the tattooist asked Chris about his sexual orientation. When he saw that
his question embarrassed Chris, the tattooist had to clarify the urge behind
his question and justify the goal he was targeting:
‘Tattoos refer directly
to your sexual identity and the tattooist’s function is to make that identity
visible to the public.’ When the tattooist observed that Chris was reassured,
he re-asked his former question but in a different mode: ‘Are you heterosexual?’
‘I am.’
‘That’s right. I’ll
tattoo the front part of your body, then.’
Examining Chris’s
appearance, the tattooist wondered aloud:
'Which one are we going
to work on: the neck, the chest, the belly, or the arms?' The tattooist asked,
taking the guidebook once again to show Chris the patterns susceptible to
reflect the latter's personality. 'These patterns are for heterosexuals. Choose
some out of them!' The tattooist stopped for a while to scroll down the page,
looking at the samples as if he had never seen them before. Then, he added:
'This pattern down here will suit your chest.'
On turning the page, he
pointed out to another one:
‘This one will suit you
on the neck!’
Then, a third one:
‘This will suit your
arms and forearms!’
Chris shook his head. He
slid his hand into his trouser pocket, and took out a piece of paper on which
his tattoo pattern showed very clearly:
'I want this to be
tattooed on the front part of my neck, chest, and the visible parts of my
forearms.'
The tattooist read the
text written on the piece of paper almost aloud:
‘Magically Yours!’
He looked at Chris and
wondered:
‘What does it mean?’
‘It means something very
private and I want it to be tattooed on my body!’ answered Chris with a grave
voice.
The tattooist closed his
guidebook and nodded. The tattooist kept quiet for a while as if expecting
further proposals. Chris, on the other side, did the same. Silence prevailed
for some time and Chris had to say something:
‘Do you think that
tattooing is a good idea, a beautiful one?’
‘An apparent tattoo is
like a fruit peeled out to tantalise a guest. It’s like a book dedicated to a
reader.’
Chris laughed heartily
at the idea of being converted into a fruit or a book while the tattooist
fumbled in his packsack to get more tools out. He checked his watercolours and
pencils. He sterilised his lining needle with alcohol water and loosened his large-sized
ink caps. Then, he asked Chris to take his shirt off, lie down on his back, and
keep his head down without paying heed to what the tattooist was doing.
At first, Chris followed
the tattooist's advice the way blind believers usually did. Afterward, the
electric buzz started hurting Chris's ear more than the tattoo machine did to
his body.
'Just a few minutes and
it's gone!' The tattooist whispered to console Chris. 'That's the price you'll
have to pay in exchange for a beautiful tattoo that'll mark you forever!'
That word had a tone of
something magic that made Chris endure the pain and keep quiet all along the
session until he saw the tattooist getting ready to leave. Then, he sat up,
tiptoed to the wardrobe, and picked out a brand-new T-shirt that would show his
newly tattooed patterns during the evening's party. He shone his shoes and came
back to the tattooist's side to show him out.
The tattooist was
surprised to see Chris getting ready to go out, careless of the rest that a
tattoo session normally required. He dared not inquire as the mobile phone rang
in Chris’s trouser pocket and diverted his attention:
‘Hello, Mary!’
‘Hello, darling!’
‘How’re the preparations
going?’
'Everything's all right.
Some of our friends are already here!'
‘That’s fine!’
‘I’m calling you to
remind you of the promise you made.’
‘I gave you my word,
babe!’
‘When are you going to
come, honey?’
‘Right now, darling.
I’ll be with you in a few minutes. I have just finished my metamorphosis!’
'Oh? I'm so very lucky
to be in love with a real Gregor Samsa!’
