BASEMENT COMMANDMENT. Bahram Zaimi
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p>BASEMENT COMMANDMENT
Bahram Zaimi
© Bahram Zaimi, 2019
ISBN 978-5-4496-1497-1
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
1
Seeds
She turned her face to the window. The tomatoes were ripe and crimson. She had planted the seeds in a rectangular flowerpot fitted wall to wall of her wide windowsill. The plant had overflown over the pot edge, rolled down, and reached the deep ledge, and then a free fall all the way down to the old hardwood floor in green and red. Hundreds of tomatoes having gripped thick green stems were covering the wall below the sill. The shower had not stopped on the floor, amplified in number and depth to flood broad in the living room.
She thought, “Wasn’t it yesterday that these colorful invaders were still on the windowsill? They have stealthily night crawled the hardwood, overcome the thick margin of the yellow carpet, flooding fast to my bare feet on the carpet as if aimed to sink me into waves of green and red. Three days, I planted the seeds just three days ago. Stranger than the rapid growth is the smell, not of the type of a vegetable. It goes down into my lungs to get into the soul, succumbing me to a devilish temptation of the wild. The aroma floats in the air of my apartment, I see souls dancing around me, sometimes in flesh. I bite; a wild taste of fresh kill, the red juice fills my mouth, overflows from sides of my lips, runs to my chin. I enjoy the dripping, red stains on the yellow carpet.”
She rubbed her feet over the sofa, the giggle went away, leaned nape of her neck on the back of the sofa and looked at the wall right across the leaving room. “Not all mysteries are pleasant. Who had painted this wall in white? As long as I can remember, five years ago when I could afford to rent this miserable apartment, everything was yellow, the color that I hate on the walls, floor, doorframes, ceiling even the old rag under my feet. I don’t think the greedy landlady have sneaked into my apartment to give the wall paint as a surprise gift to me. I don’t hate white, I fear it.”
She wanted to put her leg on the long sofa to stretch and then lay down and rest. There was another smell mixed with the aroma of the tomatoes which didn’t let her free from thoughts. Normally, she was able to ignore her problems, to jump over and forget her bad memories. This was a technique, which her eight psychotherapists had taught her in over eleven years. The plausible technique did not solve the problem, none the least she could waste her life without worrisome. She gave up the idea of resting on the sofa, with so many thoughts whirling and wandering around in her mind it was not possible.
She blamed, “It was his fault, the ninth one, or I should say the first psychoanalyst because of the method he chose for me after the failure of treatment of the eight psychotherapists. On the other hand, maybe not, I have mixed up. He had to change the trend completely. I guess he was right because I remember none of what the eight said, but word by word of the last.”
“Consciousness was your enemy for the last twelve years, it removes the problems to reach you to the comfort zone of routines because it cannot stay for long under the surge of inexplicable questions; let alone the benefits that it provides: financial support of Victim Support Organization and public pity on a presumed rape survivor by common assumption.”
“But I have been suffering for twelve years. I cannot remember anything; all I remember is blankness. I have spent these years in fear of something hidden behind a white flash.”
“Nothing is behind white, it is in the white.”
“Why do you always speak in codes?”
“It is the language of the subconscious and we must communicate with its wavelength. Words are associated with some rigid common sense notions, plausible but not genuine. On the other hand, signs and symbols can float in mind until shed light on a real thing.”
“I can never claim to understand the psychology in theory nor other scientific branches but you forced me to read, and I had studied for five months until the last two months that you have adopted a new method. Then I leaned back to this comfortable sofa and describe my nightmares, I saw you scribble something on your notebook. You have never told me about what your writings or your diagnosis. I was deadly curious to read the notebook waiting for a moment of your distraction. It happened a few days ago. While you were busy on the phone in the waiting room, I took it, paged, no words. Pages after pages were filled with strange signs and unfamiliar symbols. I paged the whole, even the blank ones until the last page, not a single word.”
“I was waiting for your curiosity to overpass the ethics. Which symbol did you find the most strange in your mind?”
“The one on the last page of your notebook, the one that I found after I paged all the blanks. I did not know what it was.”
“Words have no meaning; they just block our search for identity with a false satisfaction of understanding. Just look at them, each is a combination of meaningless letters. You put them in a row to make sentences and then narrate the combination loud; they would make a paradox in people’s mind. People falsely believe they have found an answer to the question of what is the purpose of life. Then they stupidly follow like slaves the narrator. The invention of words changed the direction of progress in the wrong way. We should have found ourselves in a wordless world. Now we live in an illusion that we know something. I confess that I am master of words; my job requires transforming the frightened people who caught a glimpse of the devils in the society to obedient zombies who work quietly, pay endless mortgages, stay in and accept the meaningless loop of social life. I have acquired quite a respectful career in that. There is something precious though dangerously wild down there in you. I would rather jeopardize my profession to release this wild thing to deal with the society, to find its own way, which is inherent in your biology. The strange symbol on the last page was of a woman inside a wolf.”
“You have dragged me out of darkness but left me at the border, one half in the darkness the other in the light. What if someday I wake up with a savage desire of my biology to kill all people of the goddamn Milwaukee?”
“Then it would be a good day when you wake up the next day and remember the last night massacre. You would get out the bed; break the window out the frame. The fresh air would replace the dampness. Inhale and enjoy listening to the chirping of free birds singing in snowfall.”
She wiggled on the sofa and leaned forward saying to herself, “And now the wall in front of me is all white.” She leaned forward, narrowed her eyes as if spotting something odd on the white wall. “What are those two nails stuck out on my wall? Who had hammered down them there?”
There were two nails aligned four feet apart, three feet below the ceiling. She stood on her feet, stepped forward, fixed her eyes on the nails, and placed her hand on the wall close to one of the nails. Could smell the paint, it was fresh. Raised her other hand, stretched her index finger to touch the nail but refrained, afraid if some frightening image might electrify into her brain.
She turned on her heel, leaned her side to the white wall faced to opposite direction of the window. “A kitchen with some second or maybe third-hand appliances: an oven, broken, a refrigerator, noisy rather than cold. A bedroom or shall I say a small windowless dog den in which hardly a single bed could fit. Who had condemned and sentenced me to this twelve-year misery? I have become twenty-two and my only job qualification is how to get a support allowance for the next month. Thank god, at least I could afford to buy a long sofa a month ago. It is not as comfortable as the natural leather one at the psychoanalyst’s office but at least my artificial cheap leather sofa fits me to sleep on it at nights.”
2
The Window
Frustrated with the discovery of her misery, she turned her body faced to the window, stared, the only one in her apartment; had never been opened for the last five years. She walked toward the window, barefooted on the stems on the floor,