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DORA KNOWS MORE

by Marwin Vos

Short story

When I returned to the city, when the trees put their foliage on full display and small animals emerged from their burrows and nests for us to greet each other, I found accommodation in the homeless hotel, a providential change from the panopticon of twinkling stars***

We met at the agreed time. You had just finished work, and exchanged your uniform for other heroic facts.

Tell me, which feeling dominates when you’ve been trashed?

Strong emotions and a theory that doesn’t dissuade you. Later, when you become entangled in the riches of hermeneutics and narcotics, you forget it might have taught you something.

Dora’s knowledge had paralysed me, but couldn’t prevent progress, you say, generations have succeeded generations in the city, and the number of mutations, too, knows no boundaries.

Everyone was friendly and strangely transparent, but I was used to that. You handed out remedies and feelings for everyone’s small scleroses, you say, how elegant and sick I was, the supply is inexhaustible.

If they note an aversion in you, it creates a desire to subject you to it.

My attention was drawn by the curves of the ear. There was breathing, whispering perhaps, and when I entered, I felt hard and soft leaves and mosses receiving me. I was willing, moving gracefully and neurotically, wondering about Dora’s cough.

There was much more, but this is how it started. You said you understood: when you walk past the rooms, it sounds obtrusive.

Dora’s cough came suddenly, she didn’t utter another word, she stopped talking. It had become impossible to say anything after the hotel manager entered with the stout guest and they had started playing their lachrymose tricks. I never believed  him, but although I did believe her, I was the only one. No one in town believed her anymore.

So far, things were clear to me. If you hear a whisper, you’re fairly close.

I saw the remains of wings shine through parts of limbs, the green of leaves reaching for the sky clasped between fingertips. At other times, the floor of the room was full of cats, tomcats stretching out on their backs, playfully, friskily rolling onto their sides, black and white, but mostly black.

I didn’t want to say so, but they were pictures of something decidedly different, the thing you were talking about wasn’t visible. They just wanted me to come along, they were waiting for me, but I had seen something else that needed my attention.

It’s okay to be a little messy. Does it confuse you if I speak to you this confidentially? Knowing the appropriate distance and approach is something I’m struggling with.

Small shocks make up the foundation of the monotony of evolution. I became addicted to them, it’s easy to exploit us.

Keep the stone in mind, and do the opposite.

Nature and animals other than humans are increasingly common in cities, that’s why I’m taking the liberty of telling you a little story about the eroticism of trees or an erotischer Begegnung during a recent trip.

I knew it would be a risky enterprise due to the expected lack of warm and hot words and other clichés and prejudices, but I did consider it an adventure.

Ah, the branches blossom like foaming synapses, their flashing tips connecting with the neural twigs within me. The milk white background is so plain, so lacking in depth that the lines appear to tear the air like a silent explosion.

You can explain and say we needed to believe that exploitation gave her feelings of lust.

Wasn’t it a mistake wanting to receive and share without making a distinction?

You check your leverage by embracing the filth, by entering this horrifying thing she chose for you, the common rhetoric of violence and means necessary to exceed limits, aided by planning and being in love.

I’m looking for a tame intermezzo that needs me, a main road or stone, while at almost every point there are side roads, decisions and bifurcations. I long for monotony and evolutionary calm. When does disgust turn into desire, when into addiction? Does it always need action or does it fade away otherwise?

There are many more tree bodies available in a forest or park. Who would have thought that the long period of loneliness and abandonment creates such heart-warming networks?

The lines and features of the surface of the stone are like a landscape, the lines scrunched up and stretched into a messy rose. More breath is needed, Dora says. I listen carefully.

In general, proximity to someone or something is a first requirement, they say, and the most difficult one. Hence all those jumps and shocks, the energy that’s needed for this, the activity that’s required. The heat this new knowledge generates, this desire for more is unstoppable.

What do you see in your beloved’s eyes? What feeling does it give you? What is it about her? And what does she discern in your undirected gaze?

I cried when I saw cut-off limbs in the eyes of the tree.

I leave the organisation carrying bandages flapping in the wind. Shall I say that the banners were swinging indigo blue from the entrails? That the half-open, half-closed organs were a relief? They indicate a path that could be followed, this is one of the rules of the art.

Once I’m outside and the cough is no longer audible, I wind my way to a new equilibrium, looking for a tree that will reconnect me with Dora. Unfolding my ear, ochre and blue seep into the hollows narrow and wide. There she goes.

 

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Published in Extra Extra No 12
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