The Clerck and the Manticore

Tuesday, December 9.

Today a new colleague, Bradshaw, showed up. He reeks of aftershave. As it was his first day I didn’t have the heart, but tomorrow I’ve got to tell him that I’m allergic.

The manager asked me for a full report on inventories for the East European region. Wants it for Friday. I don’t think I can do it, I don’t know how to tell him.

Tonight Eva looked strange. When I came back she had already got home before me, which hadn’t happened in years. I’m tired, she said, I haven’t prepared anything. Even this is strange. She never prepares anything; it is always me that cooks.

I was exhausted too. I had some tea and biscuits, but she didn’t even want that. In bed I started to look at my notes on inventories in East Europe, but collapsed immediately.

As soon as I closed my eyes I began to dream about it. Immense. It was drinking from a pool of blood. Levitating. Its lion’s legs didn’t touch the ground, because there was no ground, both floating in a black void. How can there be a puddle in a vacuum, I started to think, but it looked at me and I had to stop. Its eyes emanated a beam of light that reached my throat, choking me. I couldn’t talk, but I managed to ask without a sound: “Who are you? Why do you come back to haunt me?”

It began to spin around, becoming a globe of light and blood.

“I am the Manticore” it replied with a vibration that resonated inside my bones without passing through the space that separated us.

“What do you want?”

Its answer was a terrible laugh. I woke up, drenched in cold sweat.

Wednesday, December 10

I told Bradshaw that I am are allergic. Your problem, he said smiling.

I didn’t reply. I’ll just write a negative report on him. Not a good colleague, his illogic and imprecision irritate me. He lacks the humility needed to learn and always says got it even before I have finished my explanations. Idiot. I wonder whether he has protection from above. Maybe I’m the one who has to be careful.

I spent all day explaining the procedures. At this rate, I have no hopes of completing the report on inventories in Eastern Europe. Three days left and I haven’t even started.

Also tonight I found Eva at home. On the couch, in front of the television, eating fried chicken got from the fast food shop on the corner. It was the first time I’d seen her do this.

I bent down to greet her and saw her eyes. She had been crying.

I left you a little chicken in the microwave, she said without turning her eyes toward me.

I opened a beer and heated up the chicken. I don’t like stuff that’s been heated in the microwave. It is cooked from inside and doesn’t make that nice crust on the surface that I love in all foods. The result is an unnatural pulp, soft, disgusting, indigestible.

It’s the last time I eat crap like this, I said. I’d rather go to bed on an empty stomach.

A black night of restless dreams. I opened a door. The Manticore sat crouched on a throne of emeralds, under an immense vault of stars bright with a sinister and blinding luminosity.

Around it there was a rotating wheel, infinite in all directions. Without moving, I suddenly found myself close to it, then inside. I could see the details. It was made of all the galaxies of the universe, and within each galaxy planets, and within each planet all the beings who inhabited it, in an endless roundabout with neither high nor low, before nor after, from which I couldn’t tear away my eyes and that gave me a violent nausea.

The Manticore opened its mouth. Instead of a sound, an energy came out that reduced the wheel to fragments as if it were a broken glass, and I woke up.

Thursday, December 11

As I entered I found a note on my desk. The director wanted me in his office.

I thought that it was about the report, but he wanted to talk about something else. After proper training, in six months, Bradshaw would be head of our department. The director was counting on me, he said. From his expression I realized that the decision came from above him, so I didn’t say what I really thought of Bradshaw. I just pointed out that, unfortunately, the report would be late. Impossible, he replied thoughtfully. The meeting with the Moscow associates is scheduled for Friday night.

At home, I found Eva in bed. She hadn’t gone to work. A terrible headache, she said. I could see that she had been crying again. Get some rest, I said, and turned off the light. We do something together this weekend. She looks terrible.

I spent most of the night in the kitchen, bent over my notes, eating the remnants of some cheese that I found in the fridge. The keyboard got all greasy.

In bed at four in the morning, stomach pain, the report is going very badly. There is still a lot to do.

I was walking at night in a black meadow, under a black sky. The horizon opened like a curtain and again the Manticore appeared to me, its red lion’s body lying on an invisible ground, its human head, open mouthed, engaged in a song of deep, mournful trumpet notes.

For a moment I was simultaneously aware of its dark splendor and of my writhing sweaty body that lay in bed dreaming.

“Away, for you are not real,” I said then.

With one bound it was in front of me, so close that I could see only its enormous mouth, the triple rows of fangs, its inside which was a whole universe, in flames like the belly of a volcano.

“You see things backward. I am. I am more real than the idiocies that happen to you. More than yourself. I am the only real thing in your life.”

“You are my failed experiment,” I then heard its trumpet voice articulate, while it grabbed my head between its paws, its hot breath enveloping me like an abyss. “I made you in my own image, do you not see?” And only then did I become aware of my man’s head, my feline body, my serpent’s tail bristling with venomous spines the movement of which I could not control and so threatened to hit me at any moment.

“I created this reality for you, but you do not learn from what I prepared for your education. Soon I will have to destroy you.”

We both disappeared, and I awoke.

Friday, December 11

Headache, slept horribly. But I have to get up, finish the damn report by six.

I get up. Strong coffee, aspirin. I hear Eva in the bathroom, crying.

Why the fuck do I have to live this life?