Heirlooms of the Broken Hearted

Joseph eked out his twilight days in a street, where poverty and the gutter met in the dismal rooms and the tiny turrets of the invisible; he pottered about amid the clustered heirlooms of the broken hearted. His house embraced the hungry hill, fearful, as if it might slide down its steeps into an abyss, which might perhaps lie below that world. Days of love affairs and success were long eclipsed in his universe and these were filed in the hard disc of his memory under the access file called 'bitter'.
His unshaven stubble, hedge-hugged his lunar countenance, which was framed by long straggling snow-hair that stretched beyond his bony shoulders. He looked out upon the world of disillusionments through the lenses of weary and streetwise eyes.
By day, he hugged the happiness of the horizontal, sleeping the night before away between sheets of tinted stain. He fled like a tattered outlaw of the badlands from the posses of reality in dreams of what might have been. There the sheriffs of success and fulfillment dare not ride to torment him. There he retreated from his nightly skirmishes with being and becoming.
By night, he kissed and caressed his true love and mortal enemy. It was a love-hate relationship that carried him on transports of illusion into the peeping hours. Here, that sorcerer called 'reality' dispelled the mirages of the social desert and he found himself banished to realms of melancholia on the stagger homewards.
Old Porter, the collared penguin of the lounge bar, was the world to him now. He petted those long-tall glasses as he sailed on seas of the light fantastic in the glass galleys of Old Porter's fleet. These were rented out in binges by the short compassion of his social welfare cheques. Then, in some unknown gutter, where oblivion met the night underneath an alcoholic moon, he would relinquish his fluid intake. It flowed in a froth, which carried the mire and paper wrappers of the day towards the congealing sewer. Later, he would fall into the dungeon of the kitchenette. It was beauty-boarded and paint-peeled. Here, the couch dined upon his sordid coins in the gap between the cushions. On then, he went to dreams of what might have been. Sleep was a journey into long reveries of 'if only'. He lay in its oblivion all the next day and into the cloak of twilight. Then, he would awake in anxious droughts to seek a tryst with Old Porter once more.
The house was small and the three rooms were of bachelor neatness but the world of possibilities outside the door seemed smaller still. Once he had seen a great vista. It was in those prime times when he glowed with pink and his spirits soared in the glory of the wide world's beauty. Then, the world had been wide and the heart that beat within him was wider still, infinite in the breadth and depth and height of the love he felt for life's potentialities.
Now, he struggled to his feet, the ones that had borne him through forty years' feastings with Old Porter. He fried a forlorn egg in old grease with a couple of white-fingered sausages. Upon the speckled geography of the pan the motley company sizzled. They tanned as the ring of gas poured forth its heat in a blue frenzy of fire.
For a moment, a strange fantasy made a foray across the realm of his mind. The russet sausages appeared like grazing cattle on the speckles of the pan and the hardening egg was a desert island in a creation story. It rose to a yellow tableland, an atoll in an ocean of spitting primordial grease. Images flowed across him, sparking memories and strange associations. These were secreted in the dark tangle of his unconscious. Now, they touched his frozen feelings in a way, that was almost intangible. It was as if a feather had brushed his face, for less than the splitting of a moment.
A tear took form in his eyes as he called to mind that sepia tint which was engraved in the lens of his recollection. He recalled the girl who had borne him on wings of love from the gap of oblivion to the high turrets of birth. He watched through tear-shard slits on that morn in late November, with the churchyard slipping beneath a wintry pall, at the old cassock that had prayed her into eternity. Ice and inward rain would relate how he had never cried on that saddest day of all.
Presently, the doorknocker rapped out its signal and he turned the flickering flame to a yellow humility beneath the topography of the pan.
It was Eddie. Joseph gazed from his dilapidated portal at Eddie who was holding a cigarette in his mouth. The smoke trailed skywards in a grey haze. It made zigzags in the morning breeze. Ever the town jester, Eddie was a permanent item on the streets and corners where he sought for ports of call. This was a safe house, an oasis, far from the foolish streets, where, in inane banters, he whiled away the unemployed hours. Fate had dealt him the joker by way of a birth when lack of oxygen had consigned him to life in the shadows beyond the edges of the everyday.
Now, Big Eddie lounged upon the couch, cat-like in his ease. His simple words echoed through the room in foolish encores. On the wall, above the solid fuel burner, three sepia images stared into the dungeonette. Six eyes followed Big Eddie as he shuffled the deck of his comfortableness on the couch. Those eyes penetrated the veneer of his innocence, until he began to believe that they could tell his thoughts, before he could even begin to think them.
Eddie inhabited those fringes that lag upon the frontiers of civility in the social tundra of life. He strode beneath the derision and hilarity of the crowd. But, somewhere deep inside, beyond the mound of stones that the throng had cast at him, a fountain of sweetness gushed between the jagged rocks of stigma. More than any other, Big Eddie desired to be loved by one of those long-tressed beings called women. He lived on dreams of her and her coming. He thought he glimpsed her somewhere in the morn-mists of future, where dreams came true, where reality could be forgotten. These were the days, when he could talk of little else, whilst the listeners nodded knowingly. They shook their heads as they tittered in the condescension of the confident. Their certitude was that his expectation would never be. The younger ones laughed through pearly teeth, which were braced against the hint of imperfection.
'It won't be long now. I can feel it in my bones.' Eddie spoke as his face scrunched in anticipation. The eyes on the wall stared at him and he maneuvered in his seat in order to outflank the three voyeurs hanging there with inert stoicism.
'What won't be long now'? Joseph enquired. He was aware that his pork and egg feast was blackening towards the inedible. He raced to shut off the gas and the flickers of heat retreated into the holes of the gas ring.
'She's coming to me soon. Not long now. She'll be worth the wait', Eddie enthused. He rocked forward as a quiver of excitement pleasured him. Joseph retrieved the remnants of his breakfast from the pan. He scraped the cindered sausages with a steak knife, that had long ago reached a pensionable age but yet remained unretired.
'She's coming all right, haha she's coming. I can feel it in my bones, I can tell'.
The food was beyond salvage and Joseph reluctantly spilled the blistered rations into a plastic bag, which hung on a nail in the door. Turning around he looked at Eddie with a sense of menace. He fumed with ire and fire.
'Look, there's no one coming. You can wait until eternity plus one and no one will come. It's all a dream, a fantasy. And the more you talk about it the more they laugh at you.'
Eddie was silent. But his heart screamed into the voids and vacuums of his soul with an implacable 'no'. All his life he had invested in the Bank of Innocence waiting for the dividend of that golden tressed one. But, in a moment he decided that the interest due was far too low. And the fountain of his sweetness fizzled out and dried up. In a flurry of emotion he changed his account to the Bank of Cunning. Here, sweet and sour were recorded in other ledgers that were hidden away in vaults inaccessible to the world. Cunning would make his life worthwhile. Revenge would be his and after the triumph the awaited one would come.
'You're right,' Eddie lied. His voice was sugared and it disarmed the anger of the other. A squall attacked the window and rivulets of rain cut tracks down through the grime of the glass. In the gap of conversation silence made an uneasy peace.
'You're dead right', Eddie said again. 'I'm only fooling myself. She's not coming at all.'
'So long as you know that', Joseph replied. He felt easier now that Eddie was being reasonable.
'You're dead right', Eddie said smoothly.
'Isn't that what real friends are for ' to be honest with you?'
'Yep, you're dead right', Eddie lied again.
Then a small envelope dropped through the mystery of the letterbox and swished onto the floor of the hall.
'It's the post', Eddie said.
'Who'd be sending me letters?', Joseph asked.
He retrieved the white letter and his heart quickened when he saw the stamp.
'Magyar Posta, it's from her', he said. His face flushed into a shepherd's sunset.
'Who is it?', Eddie enquired. He spoke through knotted lips and through a fog of cigarette fumes.
'It must be from Valentina.' Joseph spoke the words and a sense of awe enveloped him. He released the contents from its cover tearing the paper in his haste.
'What does it say?', Eddie enquired. He removed the cigarette from the crevices of his mouth and flicked the drooping ash into a bucket. Joseph read quickly; his hand shook and a tremour of excitement ignited him.
'She's coming, she's coming', he said.
'Who's coming?'
'Valentina Shareiko. I met her in a computer chat room in an Internet café.'
'Oh!' Eddie said. His face blanched in shock. He tried to cover his speech with an air of nonchalance and disinterest. Joseph read the letter again, unsure that he had got the message the first time. Then he cupped his head between his hands as the letter shimmered between his nervous fingers.
'She's coming she's coming. Tonight at half eight, she'll be here.'
'Half eight ' oh!' Eddie mumbled a reply.
'Let's have a quick drink to celebrate', Joseph enthused. He crouched low searching for a depleted bottle of brandy. Eddie rose slowly from the couch; he scowled at the six eyes watching him from the safety of the wall. As he grabbed the cindered steak knife he incinerated the remnants of conscience in a crematorium of envy. He heard the squish of steel cutting through tissue. The knife dined on the rare meat of Joseph's back and he fell to the floor quivering.
'You're dead ' right', Eddie screamed.
Joseph's body shivered on the bald floor. His movements sputtered to a halt in a final paroxysm and he lay still and pale and cadaverous. A red ooze trickled from his lips as the rain assaulted the window again.
Eddie stared out the window. His thinking re-approached the practicalities of the situation. He removed the sepia tints from the wall and stuffed them into the round hole of the solid fuel burner. The shattered heirlooms crackled into flame as the sleepy embers rose to consume their nourishment. Eddie felt pleasured by his cunning. He stood in the kitchen and surveyed his newly won empire.
He got to work with speed. Taking Joseph by the hands he dragged the body through the yard and dumped it in the outdoor toilet. He propped the ashen face against the bowl and the body stretched forward until its feet met the slatted remnants of the door. Then, he threw a sheet of blue plastic over the body, making sure to cover the face, and slammed and bolted the door tightly. He found a hammer and some nails and began to seal Joseph into his tomb. Sleet and rain fell in icy bursts. The big raindrops danced jigs on the hard yard. In his fever the hammer hit his thumb and he flung the tool against the toilet door in disgust. He cursed loudly and danced from shoe to shoe as he attempted to placate the pain.
Inside, Eddie mopped up the blood from the frayed lino and the cupboard door. He eased himself into the couch and dined on nicotine and luscious thoughts. Time was in surplus supply. It would be two hours before Valentina knocked on the door ' his Valentina. His golden tressed one was coming. The dividends paid by the Bank of Cunning were good ' real good.
Eddie fiddled with the dials of the record player until it coughed with a low rumble. The needle made contact with the vinyl and the magical notes of Strauss waltzed into the room upon the scratches of time. At the peak of its volume Eddie sang along with the orchestra, his words out of synch and indecipherable. Grabbing the brandy bottle he plonked himself on the couch. He sang to an audience of invisible admirers watching him from the magic of the ether. And there she was, his Valentina, up at the front, rocking and loving her hero; her golden aura was an angelic halo, inviting and attractive and glorious.
The couch moulded itself around him as his head lounged on the cushion. His face oozed with pleasure, with sun-up glee. He swigged and slugged the brandy; its sweetness penetrated and satisfied him until his singing grew wilder. His body language spoke behaviours that got more gesticulated as the minutes dissolved into hours on the great ferris wheel of time. Someone banged on the wall in protest. Eddie discarded their anger into the rubbish bin of derision. The band played on and Eddie persevered with his backing vocals, oblivious to all things but the blueness of the Danube and the prospect of Hungarian goulash.
'She's coming, alright', he whispered. Then he laughed loud and long punctuating the episode of hilarity with a final guffaw.
Posing naked before the wardrobe mirror he turned and twisted and admired his masculine form. He bent his right elbow and his arm muscles swelled to a hard hillock. With his left hand he felt their tautness and he smiled broadly to himself. In the shower the tepid waters caressed him. The stain on his conscience gurgled through the plughole and disappeared into plumbers' oblivion.
'You're the boy', he said.
Eddie stepped from the shower, triumphant and victorious. The spoils of war were his. Now he would claim his princess, the fairy tale ending to his long fantasy. Briefly, he preened himself before the mirror again. He flicked his fringe in a gesture of deep satisfaction. The royal robes hung waiting in the wardrobe. Eddie was about the same height and build as his victim. A blue suit was chosen. He selected a green shirt and matching tie to accompany it. The mirror reflected the perfect pleasure of the hour.
'Ha! You're the boy', he said to the image of himself posing in the looking glass.
He found a shoebox packed with letters and mementos. Sifting through it he discovered a letter from his Valentina - and a photo.
'Wow!' he said. 'You're the boy.'
He tore a picture of Joseph and his mother into small pieces and said: 'Sucker.' The pieces scattered on the floor ' a confetti shower dedicated to the union of Prince Eddie and Princess Valentina. A pressed rose petal from Valentina to Joseph joined the confetti on the deck.
'You're the boy', he said again.
Back in the kitchen Eddie lounged on the couch and waited. Relaxed and satisfied he stared at the space where the six eyes had been. He drank deep of the wine of victory now that the fantasy had become real.
There was only a half hour to his glorious rendezvous. The clock chimed eight times and Eddie rubbed his hands in glee. A loud rap on the door startled and excited him.
'She's early', he whispered. 'My Valentina couldn't wait.'
He checked his hair and settled the shape of his suit with a shake of both hands. Satisfied, he ambled to the door and opened it.
Eddie stood rooted to the hall, the temperature of his mind turning to permafrost.
'No, no, she's mine, she's mine', he bellowed.
The faces of the two policemen transmuted to a puzzled look.
'We're investigating a report of a disturbance.' He heard the words but they were beyond his comprehension. His mind was a volcanic eruption, his heart a violent earthquake rocked by tremours.
'She's mine', he bawled. He lunged across the threshold. The duo in blue stepped aside and a neat trip sent Eddie sprawling across the road. He fell on his face, his wild momentum threw his coat over his head as coins scattered into the gutter. He watched in disbelief as a silver coin raced across the street; it pirouetted on its edge; it danced an unreal ballet before it clattered to the road, tails up. Eddie looked around. His nose and lips were smudged with corpuscular red. Back at the door the view was daubed with legal blue. The crackle of a walkie-talkie called for transport. A small crowd edged closer, attracted by the noise and the prospect of drama. The blare of an approaching siren sounded nearby. Somewhere a door opened and a sweet tenor voice echoed up the street singing an absurd finale to Eddie's dream.
'Machusla, Machusla, your sweet voice is calling.'
Eddie's legs were spread-eagled against the wall. He looked around and stared at the endless night beyond the world and the lights. The streetlights were silent sentries against the intrusion of the dark and sinister. They hung on their metallic stalks like neon daffodils that grew out of the concrete over the straggling streetscapes. Eddie watched them as he was driven away, locked in the limbs of the law. The Panda car turned the corner as a golden woman passed by on the footpath with a red rose in her hand.
'No, no, no', he screamed.
But his voice was lost beneath the wailing of the siren.

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