miles gloriosus
I’m suddenly being woken up by a series of loud thumping, hammering sounds. I can feel the walls and the floor vibrating.
Damned old houses.
Sometimes you can feel the walls shaking if someone slams the door in the flat below. But this is something else. Here it goes again.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The noises are coming from outside the house. Probably some sledge-hammer or other tool, a minor earthquake or a house being pulled down somewhere in the neighborhood.
I look at the alarm clock and get up.
7:15. Would’ve had to get up in fifteen minutes anyway.
The shutters, which are drawn in the whole flat, block most of the incoming sunlight, so the bedroom’s left in a sticky semi-dark.
Still being a little sleepy I stumble towards the kitchen and switch on the coffee machine which rewards my effort with the satisfactory sound of water running through the coffee filter.
I open the door to the bathroom. The shower spits out a slim stream of brown, rusty-looking water, then ceases to emit any water at all.
Okay, seem to be some works at the water pipes.
Thank God I always put the water in the machine the day before, otherwise this day would’ve been ruined from the start.
So I just drag a comb across my head, use some deodorant and head for the bedroom again. I fumble for my wedding ring and get dressed, not bothering to turn on the lights or to pull up the shutters.
In the kitchen I realize the coffee’s still too hot to drink and decide to go on my daily ten-minutes morning walk to get the newspaper.
I put on my shoes – no need for a coat as it is late summer –, take my keys and reach for my wallet on the drawer but touch only wood.
Where... oh, yes. Must’ve left it in the car. Happens about every second day.
I remember my wife telling me that the best thing about the business trip she had to go on was not having to tell me that I probably forgot my wallet in the car if I couldn’t find it.
Have to get it from the car then.
I close the door behind me and make my way down the stairs, accompanied by another interval of thumping noises.
5th floor and no elevator; by now I’ve already become an expert in high-speed stair-climbing and –descending.
I check for mail – nothing – step out of the house – and freeze.
The house on the other side of the street is reduced to a tiny clump of smoking ash and bricks. There are several fires in my immediate eyesight, there are thick clots of smoke everywhere. I can’t believe I didn’t hear the battery of shrilling car alarms before.
The air hisses and I look to the sky. Are these rockets?
Suddenly I hear the loud thumping noise again. I look down the street and a parking car far away explodes in a ball of fire.
Is there artillery shooting at the city? What on God’s green earth is going on here?
Panicking, I run back into the house, slam the door behind me, run into my flat and turn on the TV. What is going on? Such a sudden outbreak of a war, the channels must be flooded with news about this like 9/11.
But on the first channel there’s a latino soap opera.
On the second a Matlock rerun.
Third channel some morning show.
What the heck?
Alright. Alright. CNN.
Difficulties concerning the negotiations of the ceasefire in the middle-east.
Well, this isn’t the middle east, what about what’s happening here?
Iraq about to reinforce police squads.
No, not either.
Ok, Ok, NBC. Nothing. CNBC. Nothing. Sky News. Nothing. BBC. Nothing.
I start zapping furiously but I can’t find anything about it.
I throw the remote against the wall. This can’t be!
Damn. I could use a cigarette. Never should’ve quit smoking in the first place.
Maybe there’s something on the radio.
Well, I meant besides Johnny Cash singing about Ghost Riders In The Sky, this awful Sweet song with sirens blaring at the beginning and the P.Diddy song from the Godzilla OST.
Then news. Just local murders or accidents, national politics, taxes and budgets, crisis in countries I don’t even know how to spell, traffic warnings.
I really can’t think of any explanation for all of this.
I’m gonna call the police, because they sure must have noticed something is wrong in this city.
Busy signal. What else.
I go into the kitchen and drink my coffee. Pitch black this time. I empty cup after cup while permanently holding the phone to my ear.
Then the line goes dead.
Fridge isn’t humming anymore, either.
I try turning on the oven but nothing.
Power failure.
Was bound to happen sometime in this kind of situation. Probably some circuit line’s been hit. The building is shaken again, but this time I recognise the sounds: detonations.
I go over to the flat of the Clarkesons, my next door neighbors, and ring the bell, hoping that they know something. The Clarkesons are a 65 to 70-year old couple and seem pretty nice, quiet people, though at times a bit weird. A couple of times I saw them sitting on the balcony with telescopes, speaking in some kind of walkie talkie.
Someone’s looking through the spyhole and from behind the door I hear a feminine, old voice, slightly squeaky:
‘Who’s there?’
‘This is Miles Harvey from next door. I just wondered if you knew what’s happening out there?’
Silence.
The door stays closed. I hear the shuffle of feet behind the door. Probably her husband now standing by her side.
I clear my throat. ‘Sorry ?’
‘There’s a war outside.’ This time the voice is male. It sounds a bit defensive.
‘Do you know why?’ I ask ‘Or why there’s nothing on the news?’
Silence.
I continue: ‘Do you know the power’s broken? I tried calling the police but the line was busy all the time. What do you plan to do?’
After a minute of silence the man speaks again. This time his voice is even more hostile and almost as high and creaky as his wife's:
‘We’re staying indoors! And we’re not going to answer any other questions.’
To say I’m a little baffled and confused at the moment would be quite an understatement.
But I get a grip on myself again and start talking:
‘Alright, there’s just one last thing. I wanted to ask for a favour.’
This is answered by silence.
‘Could I borrow one of your telescopes?’
I’m sitting on my balcony with my thermal coffee pot, searching the city with a telescope.
The city means:
An accomodation of walls of smoke, fire, large loose piles of bricks, formerly known as houses, fragments of all kinds of things, and still intact houses and cars covered by thick layers of dust.
I don’t want to think about how many bodies are buried under all of this.
Nobody on the street except – streetcars and buses.
This is insane.
The artillery bombardment is wandering regularly from area to area, supported by air strikes.
Even with the telescope I cannot see where the artillery battery is standing, probably because it is placed somewhere behind the hills.
The main station is a mess. Burning train wrecks, destroyed arrays. Half of the main building has collapsed, cars are crushed by steel girders and a thick trail of smoke curls up to the sky.
The bombardment has already reached and left the outer parts of the city, and now drifts towards my own position again, like some sort of pendulum swinging back.
I open the door to get back inside. My plan is to empty at least half a bottle of Tullamore Dew to throw all the fear and nervousness out of my head like a drunken cowboy out of the swinging saloon doors. Something suddenly crosses my mind which on a fMRT-brain-scan would probably look like a big flashing danger sign.
Oh God! My wife!
She’s coming back from her business trip with the train today. If nobody knows what’s going on here, the train will arrive and be torn to shreds and pieces by the artillery before it even fully stopped.
Godtripledamnit, I can’t let that happen. I circle frantically through the living room.
I have to do something. But what? I have to phone her, tell her not to come. Bugger, Phone’s broken. What else?
A phone booth. I have to get to the next phone booth and pray it’s connected to a different circuit than this one and call her.
Without thinking twice I race down the stairs. In the middle of the stairs, everything suddenly freezes, and George Washington appears directly in front of me and gives me the finger.
I don’t have any change. I don’t have money at all.
I knock at the door of the Kaufman apartment
‘Hello? Anybody there? Hello?’
Nothing. Just my own voice echoing through the stairwell. No sounds from the inside.
Next apartment. The Kowalskis. This time I ring the doorbell. More civilised. Ten seconds, fifteen, twenty. No reaction. Another ring. Nothing. I try looking through the spyhole, but see only shadows.
Third apartment. I don’t even look at the name tag anymore. I ring and knock. Nothing.
‘Hello? Anybody there? Hello?’
I could swear I hear somebody behind the door.
‘Hello? This is Miles Harvey, I’m terribly sorry but could you be so kind as to lend me some change? I have to make a phone call and the phone’s dead, so…’
I can hear hushed voiced from behind the door.
I ring again, but to the same result.
One floor down. Another apartment, another try.
A ring. Waiting. A knock. Waiting. The pitter-patter of feet behind the door.
‘Hello?’ again. ‘Listen, this is urgent, I have to call my wife to prevent her from getting into the city and get herself killed, so could you please lend me some money?’
Again. Movements behind the door. Retreating, then coming towards the door again.
Somebody pushes a sheet of paper from under the door to me. Something’s written on it:
go away
Great.
I try all the other apartments in the house. Nobody answers the door. Not even the Clarkesons.
I shout trough the stairwell. This must be ‘Hello?!” number mc² * 100. ‘This is serious! My wife’s gonna die if you don’t help me. Help me, please! Hello?!’
But after the echo of my own voice dies, there is only silence.
Bloody hell.
Thankfully I think of my wallet in the car. Off to the car then.
I step outside and in the middle of a war zone.
This must be what the people of Pompeji must have felt like, seeing their city be buried under tons of ash and dust.
The noise of the artillery is almost deafening now, it must be pretty close. No wonder so many soldiers in the first world war couldn’t sleep at night locked up in trenches and bunkers, a staccato of shells raining down on them.
My car’s parked two blocks away. Darn traffic situation. But I can make it. Ducked I start running, always holding close to the houses, not seeing a single soul. I can hear the bombardment getting closer.
A loud noise and suddenly splinters hit my face, I look backwards and see a big cloud of smoke and dust building up behind me. I keep running. The dust whirls behind me like a sandstorm wanting to swallow me. I’m panting, my heart is a boxer taking one-two, one-two combinations, holding on to the ropes, nearly falling out of the ring. There, the ring bell, I throw myself into the narrow alley on the left and shield my nose and mouth with my shirt, while the dust rushes past me like a tornado.
Minutes pass until the dust slowly settles to the ground. I leave the alley and turn into the street my car stands. Wrong.
Right: where my car stood.
There’s a big hole filled with muddy brown water in front of me. It must be the result of the artillery, it probably hit a water pipe which filled the hole. The hole’s not at the exact point where my car stood, so I guess it somehow slid in there.
Oh my. Means I have to go in there to – yeah – fish for my wallet. Jesus and his twin brother in hell. This can’t be.
Better go home to get my trunks. And a pair of diving goggles. And a water-proof flashlight.
I hope that there is something like water-proof flashlights.
I trot home. At the moment it’s relatively quiet, but I’m so pissed off, I don’t care if I’m going to be hit or not. Speaking of pissed: I pray to god lying on the beach and dictating to his three secretaries that it was only a water pipe that has been hit, not a sewage pipe, too.
Then something crosses my mind: there’s a surfing store next street. It’s closed but I think the stuff’s still there. No wonder it’s closed, why open up a surf store 200 kilometres away from the next place you could surf?
Arriving, I see the windows are broken and everything inside is covered by a thick layer of dust. The layer on what’s left of the windows makes it almost impossible to see through. I step inside, broken glass creaking under my soles.
So what do we have here? After several minutes I discover a scuba suit, a diving-mask, several flashlights in different colors, a snorkel, a big sports bag, a towel and an oxygen cylinder along with apparatus.
I put on the scuba suit and stuff my clothes and everything else in the sports bag, fill it up with energy bars, isotonic drinks, a small harpoon and three signal pistols, because, you never know.
I wipe the dust from a man-sized mirror and look at me. Boy, do I look stupid.
It’s almost quiet while I go back, wearing a stupid-looking scuba suit and carrying an ass-heavy sports bag. The bombardments must have reached some outer parts again. I wonder how long it will take until this whole city is nothing more than a big heap of rubble.
I spend at least twenty minutes studying the manual, then put on the diving-mask, the snorkel, the oxygen apparatus, and turn up the oxygen.
In movies you always see the divers falling backwards from the boats; I don’t have a clue why they do this, and also don’t see any possibility to do this here, so I take my keys in one hand, the flashlight in the other and just jump in.
Suddenly everything’s dark and I feel so cold, it’s like the yeti is hugging me.
I turn on the flashlight, and I can see about twenty centimetres far. The hole’s probably several meters deep. I swim down and touch something – my car. I can’t really see anything, but I manage to open the door with my key and get in. I fumble for the glove compartment. I grab something that feels like a wet and water-soaked version of my wallet and make my way back up. I come up, put down the oxygen apparatus and gasp for air.
After several Minutes of wringing out my wallet and everything in it consisting of paper, I undress in the middle of the street, dry myself with the towel, and put on my clothes.
The hammering artillery is closer again. It sounds like a giant steel-legged Mecha-Godzilla stomping through the city, the earth shaking every time his feet hit the ground.
I check my change. Enough for twenty minutes.
There’s a phone booth near my regular newspaper-stand.
One hand in my pockets, the other carrying the sports bag I stroll along the sidewalk, strangely unafraid of the distant growling. The bag’s much more comfortable to carry now without the left behind oxygen. But my clothes are a clumped mess of sweat, dust and whatnot. Probably should have left on the scuba, but it would have felt too weird walking through a ruin-city in it, even if there’s no one who could see me.
Unfortunately the store’s closed, I would have loved to see what’s today’s headline.
Probably ‘God is in his heaven, everything is right with the world’.
Thanks to Him, the phone booth is still there. The glass has fallen out and it looks a bit worn out and as dusty and dirty as everything else in this city. But as I step in and pick up the receiver, hearing the creaking of broken glass under my shoes again, the tooting assures me that it’s still on line and working.
Holding the phone to my ear, I take out a piece of paper that looks like it has been left in the pockets of my pants when they were in the machine. But luckily the crumpled ink is still readable: Dolphin Hotel and the Phone number. I throw in some coins and dial.
After a couple of seconds the voice of an elderly woman answers the phone:
‘Dolphin Hotel Reception, what can I do for you?’
‘Hello, this is Miles Harvey speaking, could you please connect me to Mrs. Harvey?’
There’s a cracking sound, she seems to check something.
‘I’m sorry, but we don’t have anyone under that name.’
Damn.
‘Does that mean she already checked out?’
After several cracking sounds the woman answers again: ‘No, Mr. Harvey, I’m afraid we didn’t have a guest under that name this week’
I’m stunned, my heart and my mind are running a fast-paced race. What… Where could she be? Why didn’t she tell me? Did she lie to me? Is something wrong?
My mind wins on photo finish and gives me the answer:
Jack Reacher.
Men wan to be him, women want to be with him.
Ex-Military Investigator, six foot five inches tall, 220 lbs heavy, 50-inch-Chest and one hell of a guy. My wife would probably be married to him instead of me if he weren’t fictional.
‘Mr. Harvey?’
I remember how enthusiastic she was telling me of all the clever things mentioned in Lee Child’s Jack-Reacher-Thrillers and how he always checks in under the name of past Baseball players. And of the different approaches to search for names, chronological, alphabetical, etc. I even think she told me she would love to do it, too, some time.
But my wife doesn’t like baseball, she likes books. I try to evoke a mental image of our bookshelves.
It’s not too long ago she told me this, so if I assume she’s going alphabetically, she should be at the beginning of her mental list.
‘Mr. Harvey? Are you still there?’
I snap out of it.
‘Oh… what? Yes… yes… I’m still here… Please, could you do me a favour? Could you check if there is anyone under the name of Auster?’
Cracking.
‘Yes, Yes there is. Do you want to be connected?’
‘Yes, please, that would be nice. Thank you very much’
Cracking, fifteen seconds and someone answers the phone.
‘Hello?’ Thank God, it’s my wife.
‘Hel, hon, it’s me, Miles, listen it’s urgent.’
‘What is it, Darling?’ she asks sounding concerned (which of course, she has every darn right to if you ask me)
‘Hel, don’t come back here, I’m serious’
‘You’re making fun of me, aren’t you.’ she says in her you’re-so-cute-when-you’re-trying-to be-serious voice.
‘No, Hel, I’m being stone dead serious, dead-dead serious, you know, I’m talking ‘what’s worse than one dead baby in a trash can - one dead baby in four trash cans serious’, OK?.
Now listen, don’t take the train, stay in the hotel, don’t come here, there’s a war here’
‘A war? Come on. I know you’re trying to be funny but why did you have to pick a war? Maybe if you’d said there’s termites in the wall, or there’s been a train accident and you’ve been concerned about me, or a gas explosion, that probably would even have worked, but definitely not a war.’
Damn. Should have thought of that myself.
‘Heck, Hel, I know what you must be thinking, but I am serious, the whole city is a mess, everybody’s reacting total crazy like I was in a Kafka book or a stupid David Lynch-Movie, honestly, there’s dust everywhere, there’s artillery turning the whole city into a big heap of rubble, it’s like I’ve fallen into some kind of alternate reality or something, serious, love, please, please, I beg of you, don’t, in the name of all quantum fluctuations and ten-dimensional string waves shaping the pattern of reality, don’t come here!’
‘I have to admit you’re being pretty good for you standards, especially the thing with the baby and quantum physics, but the problem is, you know what a bad liar you are. So I’m afraid you’re not going to convince me.’
She sounds amused, and even giggles, definitely not the reaction I anticipated.
‘Look,’ she continues, still in her you’re-so-cute-voice, making me feel like a damn teenager.
‘Just to make you happy, I’m turning on the TV. If there really was such a war, it would be on the TV, wouldn’t it?’
‘Hel, that’s the point, there’s nothing about in on TV or on the Radio, nobody seems to know, that’s why I had to call and warn you’
This even sounds stupid to me, and I know it’s true. Then the artillery comes for my rescue, I never would have thought I’d be glad to hear it, but it comes closer, hammering and whistling, booming, blasting, buzzing, bumping, like New-Years-Eve’s fireworks, it sounds like angels singing to me.
‘Darling, turn off the TV with the war movie, you’re being silly’
Christ.
‘No, Helen, listen please, it’s not the TV, it’s-’
She interrupts me: ‘Give it up, the joke’s over, I’ll take the train today.’
Then the line goes dead, and the news stand explodes in a bursting ball of fire and dust. The shock wave overturns the phone booth and I knock my head on something and my lights go out.
I don’t know for how long I’ve been unconscious but when I wake up the blood on my forehead has already crusted. I dreamt of some kind of flying monster hunting me through deserted streets, waking up the very moment it almost got me. Unsteadily I crawl out of the now vertical phone booth, shards of glass cutting my hands. I get up, swaying a little. My clothes are now a mess of dirt, dust, sweat, little fragments of glass and blood and my aching head tells me that my next stop should be a drugstore. I search for my sports bag which by now almost looks as worn out, dust-smeared and tired as I do. I take out an energy drink, first wet my dusty and slightly torn lips, then down it in one go and throw the can away. I grab my bag and head for the next drugstore while my brain is working hard at searching for any advice that could be taken from the war movies I’ve seen, which unfortunately aren’t very much.
The only thing I know is I have to safe my wife. At the moment I don’t know how, but I know that I’ll try to safe her life no matter what, even if I have to walk through hell and back for it. A look to the sky and the once again faint echo of terror tells me, that this probably is exactly what I have to do.
Crap.
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Author's Comments
Second part of my most ambitious project to date. The three stories of this trilogie are meant to be deeply intertwined and reflecting various "parts" of the same reality, if this makes any sense to you. Again, it's probably hopelessly convoluted, rambling and self-important, but I really tried just to write a funny and somewhat absurd story with a main character who doesn't have any clue what's happening around him but still tries to keep his calm and somewhat ironic take on life. Miles gloriosus is Latin for "boastful soldier". The title, again, is meant ironically.
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