{"id":1115,"date":"2017-10-02T04:43:49","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T04:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/noodles-and-lunar-fruit"},"modified":"2019-09-02T04:28:32","modified_gmt":"2019-09-02T04:28:32","slug":"noodles-and-lunar-fruit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2017\/10\/02\/noodles-and-lunar-fruit\/","title":{"rendered":"Noodles and Lunar Fruit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editorial notes<\/strong>:
\nOne of Shai’s special skills was writing short stories in a style used by famous authors. The two short stories below are a reflection of these attempts. The first written in the writing style of the American-British novelist and screenwriter, Raymond Chandler[I]<\/sup><\/a> and the second in the writing style of Jorge Luis Borges.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Instant Noodles with Egg by Raymond Chandler<\/h3>\n

The night was unremarkable and pointless, which matched his days now that he found himself once again amongst the rank of bachelors with a failed marriage behind them. The fridge smelled of rancid takeaway, and a bottle of ketchup leered at him from its isolation on the central shelf. He opened cupboard after cupboard, none of them ever used \u2013 not in hope, but needing to pass the seconds and minutes until he could pass out on the couch.<\/p>\n

From the other room, the television reported crime and rain. He could read between the lines \u2013 subtext the kids with glasses and books called it \u2013 the gutters were dirty and would stay that way, and the mayor was corrupt but would be only getting worse. Good for business, technically, except that he had been evicted from his office, and had sold his phone to buy tonight\u2019s bottle of Irish. What\u2019s the point of a phone if the only people to call him were voices from the grave, berating him for not saving them, crying to tell of the hellish fires that now burned their souls. No, he already knew what he\u2019d done, he didn\u2019t need anyone to remind him.<\/p>\n

He filled a saucepan with water (500ml \u2013 1000ml) from the tap, always placing a bet silently as to whether the water company had cut him off, yet. There was water, but he lost the silent bet. Didn\u2019t matter, tomorrow he would double-or-nothing it; it was a sure-win strategy, except in every other part of his life.<\/p>\n

As he lit the gas stove with Club Kitten matches and placed the saucepan on top (until boiling), there was a knock at the door. Late night knocks were commonplace in this part of town. Probably some kid asking to use his phone, whilst his older brother and company waited out of sight with knives and a taste in clothing that became skinnier every year. He didn\u2019t move to answer; last time he\u2019d ended up in the police station, where he would have been charged with assault of a minor, except for Officer Montogomery who still owed him for private investigating<\/em> his wife last summer.<\/p>\n

That had been an ill-fated job. He\u2019d followed the man\u2019s wife, hoping to catch her with a younger, dumber piece of meat, an old story with an older punchline. Instead, he\u2019d found her with a woman; his own wife. Which made it an old story with a new punchline, but between the surprise and twisting snake that was his gut, hadn\u2019t felt like laughing.<\/p>\n

The water was freezing out of the tap (optional: pre-boil water in the kettle) and would take a while to heat up. There was another knock, and he realized that if the kids had knives again, they could be his ticket out of town. He took a swig from the bottle, taking it with him as he walked to the door.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t no kid at the door. A red-headed broad with stunning earrings that didn\u2019t insult the face between them; obviously with no sense of direction or personal safety. \u201cWhaddaya want?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat about a stubbly jowl with food stains and smelling like an illegal distillery, that doesn\u2019t frown at me like I\u2019ve done something to hurt it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSorry, this is the last face we\u2019ve got in stock.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened to all the faces that don\u2019t scare children and churchgoers?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, those, we ordered them but they never came. Look, lady, much as I love talking to a woman who knows how to stand on two legs, I got dinner cooking and I don\u2019t want it to burn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m Cyndia and I need to hire a private investigator to retrieve a stolen item.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHmm. That ain\u2019t your name, but I couldn\u2019t care less who you are, I don\u2019t retrieve. I follow, I snap a few frame-ables, and then I collect my voucher for the bottle shop.\u201d He paused, collecting drunk thoughts into brief self-awareness. \u201cAnyway, how\u2019d you find this place. Even if I was listed, this isn\u2019t exactly the sort of place with a street number.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was an understatement. He had built a shack on top of some old tenements, syphoning his electricity from his better-to-do\u2019s. Robin Hood for the modern age. Why should he pay his hard-earned dollars to the slimeballs who\u2019d won the lottery for the electricity monopoly by being second cousins to the Governor’s wife? He didn\u2019t give a damn about economics and politics,\u00a0 but the rotting stench of power that made love like incestual pharaoh’s, that he didn\u2019t much like.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t you recognize me? My name is Cynthia\u2026 Your wife\u2026 I mean, your ex-wife\u2019s sister. Sandy\u2019s sister!\u201d<\/p>\n

The ground moved around him as he looked at his options: throw up or invite the girl inside as he worked out what he felt for Sandy. If anything. He instinctively put his hand to his chest, as if checking whether that useless four-chambered muscle had grown back. It hadn\u2019t. In this town, you didn\u2019t get anything for free, not even if it was yours by birth. He\u2019d probably need to sleep with or pay a fair few psychoanalysts if he ever wanted to feel love again. Which might be a blessing. This wasn\u2019t a town for loving (ha, that should be its motto \u2013 no, it should be his, <\/em>\u201cnot made for love\u201d).<\/p>\n

The water was boiling nicely, so he ripped open a packet of noodles (Mi-Goreng 1xpacket), threw the brittle cake in, and turned down the flame. Cynthia, or whatever she wanted him to call her, had followed him inside and was using her little finger to move his paltry belongings from side to side as if expecting there to be another room beneath them. There wasn\u2019t much to move. The dust, a few old CD\u2019s from his Europop days, a box of newspaper cuttings (mostly murders and abductions, it helped him sleep knowing that he wasn\u2019t the worst of humanity\u2019s poor lot), a broken pair of glasses for driving, a fly swat (a housewarming gift he\u2019d bought himself when he\u2019d made the move from married to squatting), and various items of clothing molded to furniture, floor, and whatever lay underneath the pile in the corner.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou expected the Ritz?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEver heard of asbestos?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I use it to cure my hayfever. Too much pollen in this part of town, you know.\u201d He hadn\u2019t seen a leaf in four months, let alone flowers. Anyway, there wasn\u2019t any asbestos up here. Buildings were too cheap to install insulation. She must mean the dust, or maybe she meant that he was killing himself, which made him look at her closer. He didn\u2019t trust any woman that cared for him, meant that she was either psychotic or wanting money or both.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you squinting at?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou got any eggs?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh\u201d. (Optional, after 2 minutes of boiling noodles, can drain the majority of liquid, and crack the egg into noodles. Continue to cook over a flame until egg is cooked. Then add flavouring as desired).<\/p>\n

He took another swig from the bottle. He was half-way down, which gave him another thirty minutes max before he lost his feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t got all night. Whaddaya want?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou,\u201d she said as she pushed him into the couch.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when he woke up, feeling by thirds embarrassed, excited, and hungover. Outside the city kept hustling, looking for the day\u2019s fix to make its self-loathing go away. But the dice were all weighted, the clerks always shortchanged, and the house not only won, it ruled victorious, glorious, and righteous. But it was the only game in town, so if he wasn\u2019t going to tie a rope to a ceiling that was sure to snigger as it dropped him, he might as well join the rest of Pied Piper\u2019s rats playing. Who knew, maybe today wasn\u2019t going to be exactly like every single other day of his life\u2026<\/p>\n

There was still noodles left-over. It tasted like garbage soaked in cat piss, but he\u2019d gotten rid of the cat, so he wasn\u2019t worried. (Can keep overnight in a refrigerator, but best served fresh).<\/p>\n

Recipe of Fruits by Jorge Luis Borges<\/h3>\n

Before the borders were closed, every summer I would pack the children into a car to visit my ailing uncle Serbino. The children would spend the week searching for Axis skeletons and their downed planes, while I and my mother\u2019s brother would talk about the species of fungi growing on his skin, which he jested \u201cnow resemble the latest paintings from Paris\u201d. It was only after he died that I realized how much more there was to my uncle. As I cleaned out his house, to be sold for debt (his and mine), I discovered a library in boxes.<\/p>\n

Every book is a mystery, and a box full of books is a nest of mysteries full of unhatched eggs. Before the title is read, before the style is tested against the mind\u2019s palate, before genre and cross-reference are possible, a book is like a ghost from centuries past, so ephemeral it cannot be seen, or heard, or otherwise sensed or detected. In theory, the nature of the book before the first glance and ghost may be known, but only to gods and French demons. For mortals like myself, each book\u2019s discovery was like a virginity which I enjoyed carefully, capturing memories I would recollect in my twilight years. The first few boxes were filled with scientific books on architecture and city planning, and I soon grew weary and hungry.<\/p>\n

It was after I returned from the kitchen with a summer plum (1 plum, medium) that I found my first treasure. Every child knows that treasures may be found in any place which was closed off from them. It is a rare treat for the adult who gains new freedoms for explorations, and doesn\u2019t forget childhood lore. And it was the rarest of treats, for I found the most incredible monographs from the University of Buenos Aires on the priestly rites of the Aztec kingdoms. I immediately knew that the copies before me were sole survivors since their contents were astounding and would have been known to me if publicly recorded.<\/p>\n

The first typewritten thesis was a translation from the diary of a Spanish naturalist. The man\u2019s wife had fallen ill in the old country, so he had sent for her, believing that the jungle held the cure to her wasting. The diary is a tragedy, which is not unusual. What is unusual, is that in searching for a fabled purple flower, the man encountered some two dozen medicine men who initiated him into scraps from their ancient traditions. A poultice to cure boredom on hot days. A song to bring rain in exactly one year\u2019s time. Signs to be made with the hands and feet for drawing constellations in stars in a lake\u2019s reflections. But more captivating than any of these wondrous feats, a recipe for a prickly fruit consisting of that sole ingredient, eaten raw.<\/p>\n

At first, I thought it a prank, for the indigenous took revenge sometimes with innocuous jokes. Except that that the next document described an art which baffled the conquistadors, to which the Sun God\u2019s people devoted their greatest and wisest. The nature of the art was not clear at first, since the essay I was reading was a rebuttal of a review of a book which, insofar as I could find, had been published only in Germany before the war, and every copy burned because the author\u2019s name sounded Jewish (though in truth, the man was a faithful protestant).<\/p>\n

The greatest empire of the South American continent, had discovered the aesthetic of nostalgia. Every fourteen years the greatest olfactory wielding memorialists would carefully craft a faint scent in the room, to recall running home from school when bullied, waiting in the shade of a tree for a lover, a freshly dug toilet too close to a running stream. Their constructions were not chosen by whims or fancies. Each recipe<\/em> \u2013 I choose the word as the closest translation from German \u2013 was a reproduction of a specific and singular moment.<\/p>\n

A necessary condition of the contest was that the scent has been experienced originally by another soul, so that confirmation may be tested for authenticity.<\/p>\n

All these strange and fabulous exotica excited my appetite for life, which had worn thin ever since the children and left with their mother. But even they were nothing, compared to what fate hid behind the twisting of time\u2019s unfolding.<\/p>\n

By this time I had resurrected the art of nostalgia and constructed dozens of simulcra smells from my childhood, marriage, and adventures abroad. It would have been unfair to the respect owed the Aztecs if I did not admit a certain flair and intuition for the craft.<\/p>\n

The volcano had erupted without warning, enclothing countless villages across the ancient Amazon, over 3000 years ago. The explosion had been so abrupt, as to remove the mountain from the landscape, except for an elevation which shows itself as a darker green when flying over in a one-seater. The catastrophe to life from this geological stutter was a boon to archaeologists, pre-historians, anthropologists, virologists (especially those researching an Aztec outbreak whose description resembles that of the black plague), and Professor Frederik Suskind at the University of Buenos Aires.<\/p>\n

The Professor had written many polemics criticizing the validity of my uncle\u2019s documents, and many more insulting the genius of my nostalgia smells. Suskind is unable to imagine that there may be more under the sun than Kant, Hegel and Goethe, and believed that a tradition for recreating smells is so obviously flawed that it would have self-annulled by weight of internal fallacies. Proof for this flaw, so Suskind attempted to gloat in the letter which informed the General Society (whose newspaper I collected, but to which I was not a member) that what he had claimed all along had finally, albeit inevitably, been proven insufficient clarity for even the most dull minds judgment.<\/p>\n

I had bristled at the array of barbs and taunts, made worse by the black-and-white reproduced photographs, introduction, methods, results, discussion. There was no denying the matter, a scent had been found occurring in double. The scent was that of a fisherman walking to the river before dawn for the first time since rebuilding his hut from a fire which had stolen with it half the village. More specifically, the scent was from the tears in a beard to which he was not accustomed to grow.<\/p>\n

No one could deny the scent \u2013 and this was the charlatan professor\u2019s que de gras \u2013 since it had been preserved perfectly in balls of pottery, with a full description authenticated by no less than three village chiefs, one messenger belonging to the palace, and (strange to the western ear) the man\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n

And no one could deny the double \u2013 this being the quack\u2019s Macbethean greed, which was sure to meet an equally nightmarish end when discovered to be a Nazi by the university\u2019s chancellor \u2013 since I myself had made it! The matter was as troubling as it was embarrassing, and I did what I had done so often in the past decade when feeling an existential worry, opening the library of crates inherited from an uncle. It was then that I made a discovery which made everything in my life until that point meaningless in comparison.<\/p>\n

I had missed ever reading the small pamphlet, which had been hidden underneath a flap in one of the boxes, and whose title warmed my eyes with tears, since I had not known life to bring anything desirable for some time: A Recipe for Memories from a Childhood Not One\u2019s Own, Including Fruit and Funerals and Dreams.<\/em><\/p>\n

And the first recipe: Eat one plum. Wait 14 years and smell fingers after a public disagreement, having not showered for one week, and subsisting on a substandard diet. If the plum cannot be detected, then the practitioner has failed in one of the previous instructions. This is the smell found naturally only in the King\u2019s innermost chamber. The recipe is forbidden without the Immortal ruler\u2019s commandment, the violation will result in insanity before a full moon.<\/p>\n

I smelled my fingers, gently, as if peeling layers of air, each to be detected and catalogued in turn. I closed my eyes, smelling a plum from many years ago, remembering the sharp pain of a fresh divorce, the scene melting and merging into another, seeing priests ripping a heart out of a man, a pyramid behind him, at the centre of which, without doors or windows, was a room filled with gold and a king driven to madness by immortality and unbounded wealth and gods who loved to hear their names cursed helplessly. As I opened my eyes, I knew without the smallest of doubts that the king still lived in his bedroom built inside a giant emerald sealed with gold. And I also knew that I had three weeks until the moon turned full and the curse\u2019s deadline transformed my life into delirium (which if I hurried I could share with the king).
\n

<\/div>\n[I]<\/sup><\/a> “Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression.” For further details see https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Raymond_Chandler<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editorial notes: One of Shai’s special skills was writing short stories in a style used by famous authors. The two short stories below are a reflection of these attempts. The first written in the writing style of the American-British novelist and screenwriter, Raymond Chandler[I] and the second in the writing style of Jorge Luis Borges. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[159,154,272,114],"tags":[248],"metadata":[171,101],"class_list":["post-1115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-google-drive","category-short-story","category-story","tag-borges","metadata-editors-footnotes","metadata-editor_notes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1706,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/10\/17\/the-writing-of-the-god\/","url_meta":{"origin":1115,"position":0},"title":"The Writing of the God","author":"Pala","date":"October 17, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: This is Shai's first dedicated write-up relating to Jorge Luis Borges. Borges is referenced in two earlier essays and between Jan 2010 and Nov 2017 is referenced by Shai 17 times. The Writing of the God\u00a0(Spanish:\u00a0La Escritura del Dios; also sometimes entitled\u00a0The God's Script) is a short story\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1761,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2011\/01\/29\/revelation-space-universe-br-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1115,"position":1},"title":"Revelation Space Universe (BR)","author":"Pala","date":"January 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The\u00a0mythology\u00a0and\u00a0history\u00a0shared by many of\u00a0Alastair Reynolds' books has been called the\u00a0Revelation Space Universe\u00a0(RSU). The world gets its name from the first book to feature it, namely\u00a0Revelation Space. RSU and space opera: Reynolds writes\u00a0space opera, which to me means stories that contrast the heroic\u00a0individuality\u00a0of the protagonist against the enormity of space. That\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1644,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2005\/07\/06\/the-father-thing-br-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1115,"position":2},"title":"The Father-Thing (BR)","author":"meanwhile","date":"July 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The Father-Thing\u00a0by Philip K Dick This is the third out of five volumes of PKD's collected short stories. The 25 stories written in the period somewhat over a year before the author's first published novel. My favourite in the collection would have to be 'The Hanging Stranger', in which a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2508,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2013\/04\/22\/babel-box\/","url_meta":{"origin":1115,"position":3},"title":"Babel Box","author":"Pala","date":"April 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a box which has the ability to transform the nature of a book placed within it, in such a way that the audience (what may be considered the direction to which the author intends their ideas) is changed to a new, specific, target. The box only changes the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2627,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2013\/10\/17\/thursday-october-17-2013\/","url_meta":{"origin":1115,"position":4},"title":"Thursday October 17, 2013","author":"Pala","date":"October 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: Early in August 2013, Shai joins a site called \u201c750 Words\u201d which encourages members to submit a daily post consisting of roughly 750 words, approximately three pages. The site explains its purpose as: \u201cThe idea is that if you can get in the habit of writing three pages\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1030,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2017\/07\/02\/idea-for-a-story\/","url_meta":{"origin":1115,"position":5},"title":"Idea for a story","author":"Pala","date":"July 2, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"A man receives a vision in the psych ward that causes him to perceive his own life in its terms. *foreshadowing* [The rest was added much later. That line was an idea I once had for a story about a man who is studying history and a crime that occurred\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/padotI-hZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1115"},{"taxonomy":"metadata","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/metadata?post=1115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}