Two Stories and a Narrator

To be compared with Joseph Heller or his fictitious character in “The Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man” should not leave one with burns in heart. But to be called as a onetime wonder is not so heartening.

So I have decided to work on a story.

The first confusion is the setting of the story:
Setting 1: anywhere, but in a room with a newspaper
Setting 2: the house of a local spiritual healer

Then the build up:
Build up 1: the man is about to commit suicide, out of compulsion, because he knows his destiny is divinely fixed.
Build up 2: the spiritual healer is out of business. Rationalists have found out that the spirits that jump off from his fire torches in the rituals by the pond are actually tied-up frogs.

Following build up 1: The man works in a newspaper, is in love with a girl.
Following build up 2: And then, to his waiting hall, which used to be full in his glorious days, comes a young man

Plot 1: They met in the archives, first a smile, then nothing. Absence. More smiles. Exchanges. Palmistry—predicting past, present, future, number of children, number of rooms in the house-to-be etc.
Plot 2: The young man wants to meet the healer (called Thangal). His problem: This is the twenty fourth healer he is going to. He will have a deprived future, no girls, no money, and no dreams.

Plot 1: They get together; meet everyday—flats, TV, washing machine, microwave ovens, decided. Number of servants not yet fixed—should the same person wash clothes and dishes? Everything is just in his mind though!
Plot 2: He wants a past. Who can give a past?
Thangal cannot; he has been treating people to erase their pasts. In the process, the possessed shed away their too-protective-oh-sleep-in-my-bed-I-am-so-worried-of-you uncles by the ponds, and resurrected “Jesus-es” drowned into drowsy narrations of the spirits they saw as they breached the holy spaces of the ancestors and memories evaporated through the hums of their throats.

Plot 1: The girl doesn’t want a chain. She doesn’t want a flat with servants but would rather see more kitchens. No, she would rather be on TV, meet up a washing machine company boss, and doesn’t care about junk food anyways.
Plot 2: The past should not just be invented. It should explain his tragedy too. It should be a great story and should begin from the farthest end of the world. But where is the farthest end of the world?

Plot 1: Heartbreak. No more sex, but hanging out. No more hanging out but phone calls. No more phone calls, but memories.
Plot 2: Thangal doesn’t know about the farthest end of the world. Nor does the young man.

“America? Infidel! America can’t be. No such credits to a nation of the whites…Barbarians...barbarians, barbarians…”

That sound rings a bell.
A wall to keep away the barbarians, the wall of Dul Qarnain. The double-horned warrior.

“Young man, do you know about the Holy Book? You pray on Fridays? Let’s start from the Dul Qarnain—the one who travelled till the farthest end of the world, mounted on a horse; the one who travelled till he reached where the sun sets in murky waters. There he erected a wall to save the natives from the dangers outside, the giants of yajooj and majooj.”

The wall…the wall. Where is the great wall?

Plot 1: This plot needs more detailing about his belief in astrology, his jealousy, obsessions, insecurity and the acorn in his pants.
Plot 2: Should I start my past from a wall?

“No, you sleepy-eyed wayward, you begin it from the place.”
“The great wall. The wall in the land of the flat-nosed. China?!”
“Yes, China.”
“You been to school, you young ill-bred imbecile? Sold to Satan for fashion, you dragger-of-your -clothes on streets!”
“Yes, been to school.”
“Why did they build the wall?”
“Wall? The China wall?”
“Yes, you blockhead, the wall at the farthest end of the world.”
“China is at the end of the world?”
“Yes, you ignorant. Didn’t Prophet say, seek education even if it is from China. Yes, China, China is at the end of the world.”
“Now tell me, why did they build the wall?”
“For defence, that is what the teacher told us.”
“Defend whom?”
“Themselves.”
“No. You fool. You read history books written by those who slander me and the holy business of the Sacred Names. You revere the ones with Jewish beards; you deserve no future! The wall was built to defend us FROM the Chinese. They were the Barbarians and soon they will be conquered.”
“By the Americans?...Indians?”
“No, they will be conquered by warriors on horses, and a great eunuch.”
“Horses? Thangal, they don’t use horses in battles anymore.”
“My son-of-a-void, flag-bearer of dajjal the antichrist, you are in your past.”

May be I should just write the second story. That would explain why I don't have a past. The story of the wall is interesting. In a short time I will start writing it. I flung away the Heller novel. This artist will not have a portrait as an old man. The noose is tightened. All the stories have been told, the present as well as the past.

Shafeeq Valanchery

Notes:

1) Why does the story start from China?
This story is not stand-alone. It will be the prologue to a long piece which will climax with the arrival of the Mongols in China.
2) “The great eunuch”
The eunuch referred to is Zheng He, the admiral of the Chinese imperial navy. The story should end in the Thangal’s quarters in Kerala, and will take a route from Mongolia through China to Calicut.
3) The Dul Qarnain
The incident of the sun setting in what appeared to him as murky waters and the incident of the wall are both related to Dul Qarnain, but are temporally and geographically separate. According to historical erudition, Dul Qarnain’s wall is not connected to the Chinese wall at all (Dul Qarnain is now more or less accepted to be Cyrus the Persian warrior, by historians), but is a wall in Caucasia. However, popular memories do trace it to the Chinese wall.
4) Yajooj and Majooj
Gog and Magog. Popular narratives have them as giants tied deep beneath the Chinese wall. They are supposed to rise from there heralding the Final Day. In the context of Dul Qarnain, historians opine them to be the wild tribes of Central Asia who were known by different names: Scythians, Parthians, Tartars, Mongols, and Huns.