The Voice

The Voice(Valentin Mitev) The Voice

I’m old. My head’s white like a snow-covered pumpkin left out in the back yard. My face wrinkled a long time ago. Stretch the skin and you’ll have enough to cover two faces. My eyes have grown weak. Using them’s like squinting through smoked glass. My hearing embarrasses me, too. It’s driving my friends spare. They have to repeat everything they say.

Can’t be helped! My dotage is gathering speed. The clock that counts what time nature allotted me is inexorably ticking away what’s left. That’s one perniciously good clock! Never breaks down. Never loses time. Just clicks away.

Fears of contagion with the bad luck of inmates make me give hospitals a wide berth. I don’t go to funerals. I know that’s selfish. I could be centre-stage in one tomorrow! After all, it’s people that make events, both happy and sad. It’s they who offer assistance, it’s they who lift spirits. It’s they who shed a tear for you. But my tormented soul won’t allow me to go for fear that the guy with the scythe is lurking around every corner…

Not that I have any complaints. I like my life such as it is. I breathe easily on my outings in the park. I enjoy the birdsong, the rustling of leaves. I then set off down some street. Streets are rushed and nervy places. Full of people. Cross people who push and shove. Cars and horns. Noise. Mayhem. Still, that’s the way I like it. Puts me in the pulse of things. Makes me sense movement, the simmer of life. I enjoy and delight. What else is there to enjoy? I’ve not drunk any alcohol in years. I don’t smoke. It’s not that I can’t. I’m not even convinced cigarettes are bad for you, if kept down to a few. The wife’s the reason. She’s forever making faces at me. Don’t do this! Such and such is bad for you! Have your soup before it goes cold! Stop stuffing yourself like a pig! Well, it all takes its toll. You try having someone bark instructions at you fifty years on end. Don’t drink! Don’t smoke! Stop looking at her next door! Mind you, that’s where I stop listening. Not looking, though.

When I glimpse Maria next door, I can’t remember my name. I can’t remember my wife or my mother-in-law. Yes, she’s still living. God has a habit of forgetting. So I follow his example, forget restrictions and lose myself in hopes of glimpsing Maria’s large, round, freely swinging, er… discreditations. I know you’ll work out I’m referring to breasts. So why call them discreditations? Well, you might be right. They might be breasts. Nice, womanly, juicy and lofty. But for me they are discreditations. Like those hidden ones my wife pulls out during long, convoluted arguments. She always calls me a dirty old man in those. Dirty old man! I know your dirty looks! Forever chatting up that divorced woman! Whispering something in her ear and making her bend over laughing. And the other one? The floozy, I call her. All made up, swaying her hips. No sooner have you let her pass than you’ve stuck your eyes on her arse. Think I’m blind? What will people say? “What eyes are you on about?,” say I. “After all, I’m practically blind… Besides, that’s where it ends.”

Not that we argue often. And to be honest, I also start my share of arguments. I even raise my voice. Just for the hell of it. Either to vent long-harboured spleen, or just to be heard. Whatever a man might be, if his voice doesn’t make itself heard once in a while, forget him! Talking of voices reminds me. Let me tell you about it. About my voice. About that pallid stranger that’s distinct, that tortures me and that makes me conceal it in company. Not that I’m embarrassed of it. Plenty of things are plenty more embarrassing. Take for instance my wife returning from the shops a few days ago. With a suitcase in her hand, instead of shopping bags. What the hell..? Don’t tell me you’ve spent our pensions on this! So what if I did, barks she. All good stuff! Diapers! Reduced! What do we need diapers for? Our granddaughter’s long grown up!
She only put the suitcase in my wardrobe! With my stuff…
But I diverge.
I know it’s hard to credit, but I can’t work out what’s happened to my voice. The thing I speak with, the thing I laugh with. The thing I cry with and express tenderness with. You see, it’s dragging behind all my other organs in the wearing out stakes. It’s failing to join in their headlong race down the slope of bodily erosion. Quite the reverse! It seems to get younger by the day, ever prouder and taken with youthful enthusiasm.

Speaking, communicating with our fellows, is a wonder of nature, don’t you agree? Speech informs, educates, incites. Speech tells us what goes on in the world. Speech tells us what weather’s going to be. Speech tells us whether its carrier is smart or dumb. Speech tells us when its carrier has fallen victim to lowly cravings yet again. And speech now emits itself from me in its purest and freshest form. I open my mouth and it just flies away. It soars and dives like a lark. At times, it grows deep. Other times, it grows flippant or mimics. It even acquires a slightly grating, sexy intonation, the rogue. Has a strange effect on the unfamiliar ladies who call me up ever more often. They call me. Don’t know where they got my number. Just hope they don’t get the wife answering. That’s all I need… Not that you can blame me for anything. ‘Phone rings, I answer. A few words later, the female voice at the other end grows quiet, almost out of breath. The second sentence brings interest, shy enquiries about my marital status. And while that dullard, my brain, gets into gear, my voice is away. Showing off, chatting up sweetly. Arranging dates and saying things that… It’s enough to make you go red in the face! What if the woman sees me? Not my woman. My woman and me have long since fused into an integral entity. No, I mean the woman at the other end of the ‘phone. What if she learns about the diapers? Probably have a fit…

I can’t work my voice out. What sound, what energy! What reserves of decisiveness and daring in the face of all-enveloping boredom and ennui! First, I enjoyed it, then I envied it, then I despised it, and ultimately grew to hate it a bit. Tried stopping it. Even drank ice-cold water, hoping to make it hoarse and go away.

In the end, I gave up. Decided to lend it an ear. Write it down, even. It’s on about literature of late. It’s making me thing. It’s making me conjure up fantasies and turn base stories into wonders... Go figure! I blink and scratch my head while my voice cajoles me. It teaches me how to write prose. It chatters away, driving me spare. Finally, I took several sheets of paper and a biro. I wrote almost a whole week. Then a second one. No food, no sleep. Must have been inevitable. My wife got scared and ran off somewhere. Fatigue felled me and I lie in my bed, turning this way and that, unaware of anything.

She brought not a doctor, but an editor.
Still, he did give me a good examination, all over. Then he turned his attention to the sheets I’d covered with my leggy handwriting. Took one, read it, moved onto another, returned to the first one. Then pulled out a pair of horned-rim specs and forgot all about me.
Can’t remember how long he read. Must have been all day. Could have been all night, too. I was being spoon-fed meanwhile. He’d occasionally stop and dart a glance at me before changing sheets. At the end, he seemed angry. He smacked the table and opened up. Where have I been all my life? On another planet? He even diagnosed me. My state was due to vocational misadventure. Where had I kept my talent all this time? How could I have failed to spot it? How could I misspend my whole life? How could I, frankly, waste my life?

“What now?,” asked I, blinking, “What do you prescribe?
“Get up and get writing! Invent stories and send them to me. I’ll publish them in the magazine. Let all comers read them. You’ll grow famous.”
He left. I stretched out and stared at the ceiling. Fame? At my time of life?

Something changed this last week. The stress or the fatigue hit my voice. First, it grew hoarse and old. Then, it started stammering and mumbling. Ultimately, it took to making just the odd remark.
I panicked. Irritation gave way to pity. My voice went to join its cohorts. Still, it wasn’t for nothing! I got a chance. I worked out how to make up for lost time. And again thanks to the voice. The voice spoke reason. Went to the mirror. Hadn’t looked into it a long time. No change. White hair, wrinkles. Not a hint of glimmer in the eye, and the hair is growing ever thinner…

A minute passed and something began burgeoning in my throat. My lips moved slowly. I expected an incantation to come out. But there was no voice. Instead, thick white smoke appeared. As the room filled with it, the mirror turned into a door. It opened to reveal a baby’s room. Clean, ordered and fresh…

I’m learning to speak. It’s hard. I’m still a baby. I’m determined to make something of my new life. This time around, I’d rather submit to crucifixion than waste a talent.