The Shaman: And other shadows (4 page)

We kept Modry stashed away down below, in the basement.

Family matter, my grand-dad would call it, spreading his arms open. “Nature’s oddities, my boy. Things that do belong to this world. We take care of our friend, sure thing. But, ya know, there’s many more like him.”

“Family matter, das right” my dad repeated as the old guy was about to kick the bucket, so that
his
turn had come to take care of Modry. “But one day it will be up to you, das why you ain’t gonna be afraid of him.”

My own imagination raged and rushed. I could hear Modry’s screams rising from beneath. He was hungry, our monster. He had plenty of teeth, maybe. I tried to draw his face, taking my inspiration from the rubber masks in horror movies. I never managed to find a color for his eyes, though, so I just left two large black ovals amidst green and blue scrawls. The colors of deep space,
the colors of the unknown space I walked upon
.

Father took those dirty sheets and smiled. He tossed them up in the air, forcing me to roll my eyes. That was his way to make light of it all. My own nightmares always landed in his pockets. Sunless, oxygenless red planets. Modry is one of us. There are many like him.

You needed really big pockets to store spaceships, giant reptiles, jaws ravaging buildings and people. Yet, despite all the pencils I’d go through, I could never glimpse even one small white triangle of paper sticking out of my dad’s tobacco colored jacket. Inside those few square inches of stitched fabric, he seemed to hold infinity. What about the rest of my nightmares,
whatever happened to them
?

Whenever I asked too many questions, father raised his forefinger to his upper lip, parting his thick moustache right in the middle. He then crouched on all four, putting his ear against the floor. He listened to the basement ceiling, the voice of Modry’s house.

It’s asleep now...

Father looked like an Indian shaman.

Family matter, family secret.

Upon turning twelve, I would meet Modry, just like father did, and his father before him and who knows how many more
monster master
generations way before all of us.

So I do remember well the first time I met Modry. The scene rolls through my mind shrouded in a yellowish glare. Everything was much bigger than it is now. What a strange director, memory is. Same sequences as always. The sharp smells of that special day, the sound of our footsteps as we climb down the stairs, father ahead of me. I follow him gliding on my toes, looking left and right into the maze of shadows. Father’s tall, lean body becoming a long blade, slicing across the walls at every single turn. I have no reflections, not even as my hair brushes against the light bulbs turned on.

Disturbed butterflies rise, turning into a black rain, grapes of holes. They do exist, rustling in the light, but I suspect I’m dreaming.
I’m not really here
. Then, silence, inside and out, all the way to the basement door. Father’s hands on the chain, light bouncing off steel, sparks. Modry’s moans,
beyond
, from his fifty square foot abyss,
locked
.

Sharp, dark sounds: the monster’s excitement almost resembles a train wreck, a trillion stones thrown off the tracks. Unstoppable. I can still hear them today, shot through the rifle of time. So many memories, so many triggers to pull.

“I’m gonna open the door now. You stay back and don’t make no noise. As it starts feeding, then I’ll let you get closer...”

Father’s words are drowned by the grinding of iron, the clicking of locks. As always, the light turns yellowish. Here comes the meat bucket, Modry’s dinner.

Twelve years, August 1979. The family matter is just one step away. Father reaches out to a piece of darkness. The bucket is gone.
That sound, that strange chewing sound
.

I’m standing on the threshold, so I can’t see clearly.

Finally, here comes the signal, and everything changes: “Quick, get your boots on! Watch it, don’t slip.”

The beams of memory become stronger and stronger. The senses sit back on comfortable chairs. The time machine fuselage is wet, slippery. The dense liquid stomped by the rubber soles, the blades and drafts of the underground summer, the worms stretching their muscles so to arc their backs, the earth disturbed.

I remember it all. Yet, I listen to something new every time. Twelve years, lying underneath a small clod of Planet Earth. Swallowed by an ancient swamp. Agro Pontino, a small burg. Mother sings in the dialect from Friuli, far north-east. The endless lines of eucalyptuses suck water.

“Whatcha waitin’ for? Get closer, slow.”

My small steps, father’s arm, some anthropomorphic creature clutching at the bucket.
That sound, that strange chewing sound
. Modry.

The monster’s body is small. It looks fragile, like me. A bright sphere pulsating on its belly button. Modry looks at me for a few seconds. A moment later, it starts guzzling pieces of meat down. The food swells Modry’s long neck, its skin tensing, shiny and dark. Its head, disproportioned, falls forward then, slowly, it sets itself back up. The little light down here decides to fall onto its mouth. Its reptilian tongue exploring the place, stretching all the way down to the toes of my booths. It is still hungry.

Modry collects a few fallen pieces of meat, floating in its
own
dense liquid.

“Dontcha move now, just let it be.”

Twelve years. I had met Modry. I’m all grown up now.

Mother is cooking my favourite dish. Twelve years, same house, same basement. The burg has gained two more buildings and a small supermarket. A few whores wander the loneliness of the country roads. Some conglomerate meat-packing plant has replaced the old chicken farming. The junior soccer field by the main square has two real goals, nets and all. The church has been repainted and the priest wears pants. All things considered, not a whole lot has changed.

I’ve taken my rubber boots down in the basement, ready by the door. I’ve tossed drawings and nightmares long time ago. My own pockets have gotten bigger, also, swallowing questions and fears. I’ve uncovered father’s secret, parents’ alchemies, my son will be bombarded with emotions, more than enough to go through all of his color pencils. Miles of paper. So I finally call to him:

Modry must feed
.

I open the basement door. I slip on the dense liquid clinging to the floor. I fall down. I push on my elbows, trying to get up. I see the past, the present. The horrendous future. It’s a matter of a few instants.

Modry, sitting down, its head crooked on the side. Its distorted jaws trying to swallow a piece of meat that’s just too big. My son’s chest, still wrapped in his number 9 T-shirt. The rest of him, all the rest of him, is gone. Long gone.

Modry looks up at me for a moment, no eyelids, then it resumes feeding.

That sound, that strange chewing sound
.

West of the Île de la Cité. Theo continues to rummage in the trash. He works close to the carcass of the Pont Neuf. People who have killed themselves by jumping from that place always leave some small treasure on the banks. Olivier and Vincent are fishing in the Seine. They catch objects, stuff, with their small nets. Theo digs in the highest part of the broken structure, near the place from where the people jump in the water for their last journey. They call it “the way of the drift.”

Theo feels something hard under a few inches of the ground. He ends his digging with his hands. The hope slowly reveals itself under his nails. Maybe he found something to sell, to eat, to survive one day later.
Another battle won in Paris Sud 5?

No, it's just a fucking rosary; it isn't worth anything. Some jerk used it to pray to an annoyed god. The one who gave him the final kick in the ass to throw himself into the Seine.

Vincent shouts, "Hey! Look at this!"

They all look. His net has captured the hand of a woman, still well preserved, with a beautiful ring on a finger. A large green stone.

"We split as usual, right?"

Theo goes down on the shore. He's the big one, he decides for all of them.
Shit, this damn hand is too bloated. We have to cut the finger, the ring will never come off.

Two mutant rats emerge from the sewage of the Seine. They don't like the competition and they growl towards the kids. They don't weigh less than those humans.

"Theo, the gun! Hurry up!"

Olivier comes out of the water and warns. Two shots. The guy knows what to do. Blood splashes on the empty green bunch of criopack.
Damned fucking beasts!

The kids carry the ring to Mr. Delotte’s shop.
One hundred credits.
Not bad for a one day work. The fence, after having putting his analyzer in place, mumbles moving his large red mustache.

"The Pont Neuf, again?"

Three small heads go up and down, to say yes
.
Three empty stomachs grumbling, six smashed shoes: problems that will be solved soon. New shoes and something to eat, right away, thanks to that magic ring. Finally, if there is some more money, appointment in the Rue de Paradis, to the setilene doll shop where Uncle Vincent works. An electronics slut, used and reconditioned, that's what it takes for them. Fifty credits, six months guarantee, before the valves go fuck itself. Before Vincent uses the woman's four fingers hand, tied to his pants in a plastic bag, to have a wank.

"T
hrow off that shit, you're a lousy"

Theo tries to rip the bag to Vincent, who backs.

"Yes, but then we go to my uncle’s? We need a blonde one with extra boobs."

Theo sighs. It’s hard to command a group of fucking orphans: they are just like stray dogs.

"Okay, okay."

The youth in Paris South 5.

The woman's four fingers hand goes to waste, on the living carpet of the sidewalk, which is imperceptibly moving with the cockroaches.

Chopi picks up that piece of meat.
A line of life so short
, he thinks.

The Shaman is going back home. He closed his magic table earlier than usual, today one of the “wind kids” was missing. The bigger one, Olivier.

That hand with four antennas can broadcast memories: A missing girl, a man that runs through the alleys, photo. That skinny body. The hand of Axelle, of course...

Chopi throws the hand away. There is no one to recognize it, to bring it home. To bury it in a too big coffin.

A team of cockroaches is getting ready for the night’s work.

Lightning, the sky is pissed

Above: fractures, broken bones

chippings, corpses of sirens

impossible fishbones, the high tide of asphalt

rain, a dog that limps

the outskirts of Rome, the circus tent is sunk

a Purgatory appetizer

bittersweet

pineapple and dust on the tongue.

The polluted Venus is sleeping, deflated

disappeared flesh, pandemic bones

illusion of boobs, soft stuff

buttocks ghost without legs

evaporated lungs, the triumph of the ribs

panties stuffed with wind.

Two hundred dollars, for the whole night

for what now disappeared.

Venus is chewed

by the sharp morning, by my teeth

by the reality mower.

gasoline and sadness engines

blades and other fuels, double tanks.

The window, the rotting buildings behind

the sleeping cars cemetery

waiting for souls, drivers.

Ghost fingers run on the back

on the curves of scars

sparkling cracks

they are the copper pipes of pleasure

underground, underskin.

It's still her, she wakes up

whispering squeaky thoughts

she is without armor

She gets on her knees, waiting for my flesh

between the voids and the cracks

of her skeleton smile.

She takes me by and drags me to the black bed

she rides me, her orbits are lit: two blue holes

two sprays of light, two survivors

glimmers of outside.

The flesh is forgotten, useless:

the uterus subway, the generous glands

the byzantine buttocks and the skin of mango

stuff that I bought yesterday.

Two hundred dollars, for endless nights

for a black ring

for that closed room

narrow and immense

locked up by an old welder.