Adam Thirlwell - Lurid & Cute

— So maybe, said one of the women, — you should just stop talking, yeah?

To think that in this country there can be death squads and other torture organs! Not that in a way I disagree, since I can understand very well, from this long distance, the desire to put me on trial, but still — we had got so used to the idea that we would never have to face up precisely to what we had done. It seemed so beautiful, that kind of life. I never thought I would have to meet my enemies. And if this word enemy seems to you old-fashioned, if you are puffing out your cheeks or laughing like a putto, taking another bite of samosa and in triumph at my stupidity, I do think that’s unfair. The old words can maybe be useful. For here were people demanding that Hiro should stop talking, and one thing which is always true of Hiro in these moods is that he does not like to stop talking, especially when asked. Such misunderstandings perhaps happen all the time. To Hiro, he really was a person with so many intricate thoughts and opinions and tastes, he really did think that his love of green-tea ice cream was something that made him very rare, whereas to these people I understood that if they were seeing a human at all it was the most abstract version of a human, a person who simply does not understand what they are about, who is a problem for them and quite possibly needs to be eliminated — and to explain the one to the other would be almost superhumanly impossible. But well, not everything can be explained. Some things are spidery and private. There’s always this giant mismatch between the large interior and the small outside, and in fact sometimes I think the distance between the two is so gigantic that there’s no possible way of relating the one to the other. They are the pure incommensurate.

which becomes more violent

But at the same time, it turns out to be very easy to make someone very small, just as large as the largeness of their body and no more, as demonstrated by one of our adversaries, who stepped forward and placed a holdall on the ground. Then very gently, and I was impressed by the way she did this, how smoothly and how at ease, she then removed from this holdall a gun. She looked at us and it was the kind of look that says adios, compadre , in the very fact that the look is so blank it says nothing at all. The problem was that I saw no way of understanding what would be the way to take myself out of such a situation. I did not know what was wanted, whether money or attention or apology or promise to flee the country. I wanted to plead and offer anything at all. To think how angry she was! How angry someone must be with you to bring out a genuine gun — and that it was genuine I had no doubt, it was just something in the way that she was holding it, and I realised that this was a very useful knowledge for the future, if I had a future, and if that future involved me being confronted with a gun, which I hoped would not be true. Everything inside me was scrambled and in despair. No wonder I was admiring of Hiro’s courage! I knew that in some way there was a relation between his sprightliness and the pills that he had taken, but still, I don’t think it’s possible to reduce anything to anything: all behaviours in the end are a total mystery.

— We should totally calm down, said Hiro. — We should absolutely sit down and talk about this, maybe over coffee. Wouldn’t that be a better plan? I’m not meaning to impose, I’m just –

He gradually stopped speaking and I understood, because it’s difficult to maintain your poise in the absence of an understanding audience. To try to diminish such disquiet I tried to look around me at the natural beauty. It had rained so continuously that violent flora and fauna had emerged: new beetles, and savage kinds of kale. The last sunlight was making soft columns among the trees. I think I have no interest in natural beauty, or at least I didn’t then. My interest very strongly was in something my mother had once said to me, which was that I deserved everything that happened to me. She meant that I deserved all the good things and the prodigies, but I was wondering if also I did deserve this too, as punishment for all my million misdeeds. And if so me, then maybe Hiro deserved such violence as well. And yet what kind of violence, I did not know. A small animal was staring at me from a tree and a vast terror overtook me. I really did not want to die, out here, in terrible pain. I am used to telling my innermost feelings to people and having them respected, and so I did this now. For I really was not ready for death, to go down into the underworld, into the hall of two truths and weigh my life against a single feather. I know you are meant to be ready for death at any moment, but what does this really mean? Certainly I am not ready for death — with so many secrets to be discovered in my email, so many projects left unfinished and indecipherable in my notebooks. I had no wish to become a body, with around it crouched my nervous first responders.

— I’m afraid of you, I cried. — I’m really afraid.

For if you say such a thing, surely this is a signal that you mean no violence to anyone and deserve to be pitied? And also I did want to emphasise that even if they were murderous and like a firebrand from the ancient myths, I did not judge them, since I think it’s a basic principle that if you are inside a situation where you may have been to blame, you cannot blame the people you might have hurt if they want to take matters into their own hands, however objectively bad they may be.

— You see? said Hiro, in a gesture of amenable supplication.

And then they shot Hiro very gently. It was a brief moment but also irrevocable, about as small and irrevocable as the moment whenever the instrument known always as the bonjo acquired the new name of the banjo, and all previous musical history came softly and precisely into focus.

& placing our hero outside all his usual categories

Everything was creaturely and disintegrating and wet around me, like suddenly I was part of the natural world and that’s always a disturbing feeling. It was no longer just a history of some uptown hustle. Presumably thousands of miles away in a brown swamp somewhere on the outskirts of town a green crocodile was submerging its one good eye, and me I was crying very much without being able to stop it. Had you ever talked to me about gun violence, I think I would have said that the true guns would have been terrible items, complete with dazzling sounds. I expected flame and burning maw, but instead it was much softer. The gun flinched but her arm didn’t. Then after a very small pause, certain reds were slowly everywhere on Hiro’s sleeve and I did not know where to look or how to feel, except my feelings very strongly were occurring without my knowledge. I say knowledge but I mean control. I think they had shot Hiro in his outstretched arm but it was difficult to know. I was screaming many things inside my head but outside I was silent. Or possibly I managed something very small and meek, but righteous, like:

— It’s not right. It’s not right.

Or something roughly like that. I thought that then Hiro had scrambled away into the dark forest before realising he had simply lain himself down very simply on the floor. And I became very afraid. I think that fear has been one of the lessons I have learned from this season, and how you cannot find the way of being equal to it. It’s just the natural reaction when everything is sweet and there is no mischief in you, yet everything you do tends to create these ancient consequences, like you are in the amphitheatre with the wolves and the lemurs. For since this moment in the woods I have often dwelled on this finale. Never have I felt so single and alone, and suddenly I thought of our dog in the car underneath the salon towels and how he was alone, too, just as Candy was somewhere in the city and alone. When I used to wake up in the mornings, I would lie there and consider the fringe of light below the curtain. And I always knew that my mother would be in the house and everything was safe and that was always a relief. To know that safety was always possible was a lovely form of knowledge. And it occurred to me that in fact until this moment there had never been a point when my mother did not know where I was. This was the first moment where I was completely outside her orbit, and it was very sad. I mean, it was sad to discover how this sense of safety was just one more of my illusions, that in fact I was not exempt but like every other animal in the world I was killable , just like my dog was, too. It was really amazing and terrible. But still, I was trying to keep thinking because I had this instinct or superstition that if I was thinking then I would not be in danger, and the hyper was as ever my only mode, like thoughts were leafing from me and gathering at my feet, like pencil shavings. You always do whatever you want, said my mother. Always you do whatever you want and that is OK with me but it is going to upset other people, she said. I had always disagreed with her. I thought that instead you had to have some faith in people because otherwise why continue? I mean why continue in society at all? — and everyone in some way is in society, they can’t help it. Except that possibly right now I wasn’t.