Source: Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima by Penderecki
Zebo and the World Spirit
“Trusted for pain, trusted for life.”
Arli Aspirin slogan
Zebo’s fight against the growing consumerization of society begins in a drugstore with him staring at two packs of aspirin and wondering which one to buy. One is generic and one is the brand he came for—the one he’s seen on TV: Arli Aspirin. The Arli of the ads in which the profile of a woman is chalked on a board, and an aspirin is seen flowing from mouth to stomach, and the chalked head fills out and transforms into the face of a lady who turns and smiles ‘Thanks Arli!’ as across her forehead the Arli logo appears—first, like the pale outlines of a tattoo, then more opaquely as a separate but bonding presence of smile and face and aspirin and brand, all cohering as an offscreen voice pronounces ‘It’s ok, it’s Arli’.
And so, on staring at the two packs of Aspirin, generic and Arli, the choice can hardly be clearer, and it’s only Zebo’s limit of on-hand cash which causes pause. Mouthwash is also on his list, and the non-Arli aspirin being three times cheaper than the Arli (but so no doubt being utterly ineffective at eliciting that headache-free smile—oh Arli l, l, lady!) tempts him only because it will allow him to make his two purchases rather than one. But, but… who is this non-Arli shit for? Poor people who want to pretend? Like it gives them some kind of status, buying a drug, any drug? Dammit, he knows he’ll be kicking himself later when all he has is the non-brand and takes it hoping against hope… again, the headache-free smile—sure, it’s just an ad, but it so syncs with feelings and expectations and reliefs. He trusts it. What else is there to say?
Musings over, he’s ready to buy the Arli, but just as he goes to pick off the shelf his favoured brand rather than the whatever-the-hell-it-is that also just happens to have ‘aspirin’ written on it, but with no guarantee whatsoever it will be of the same, or even remotely near, quality or character as Arli, ARLI aspirin (l, l, lady…), just at that moment a shop clerk sidles up next to him, and he asks without thinking, the question jumping from him, ‘What’s the difference between Arli aspirin and this aspirin?’
The clerk replies quickly and unambiguously, ‘Arli is brand, and this one’s generic’. And, on noticing the nonplussed look on Zebo’s face, adds with a supercilious smirk, ‘There, is, no, difference. aspirin, is, aspirin’, to which Zebo can manage no reply but ‘Oh…’ because the verbal volley that’s being smashed into him is being smashed from an entirely unexpected direction, and it takes him five more minutes of painful cogitations on the reliability of this information so confidently imparted to buy the fucking generic aspirin. And he forgets the mouthwash. Totally forgets it. Which kind of defeats his purpose. But only in a minor way. Much more significantly, a window to the world and its workings has been irrevocably opened.
Zebo’s explorations of this opening dispel so much naivete that continued social functioning is supported only by a thin and fragile thread of self. And this thread, he discovers, is produced by and entangled with a nascent centre, a centre he calls ‘the World Spirit’ (for want of a better word—and that is a better word than ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’ or any of that religious guff, which he has found through extensive research, not to mention much personal experience, to be as phony as Arli-brand aspirin). And this World Spirit grows in him, shielding him from the torments of commercial life, providing him sanctuary, sublime states of mind, and the most wonderful of dreams. Such dreams! Where the intensity of emotion bursts through every pore, and, on awakening, he lies grasping at the fading glimmerings in awe of his reveries and with an airy optimism for more.
§
Brett, who is participant A, is not in the mood to shove into his face the several dozen pies he has to to be competitive here, but he must. He has signed up for the thing and will, out of duty, go through with it. The thing. The trial. Parade before us the condemned… to eat. Ha! The punishment is puking! Haha… And Kelsi is watching, which makes it worse. They won’t be together much longer. He hasn’t told her. He will have to. Not yet. Why? Goo of his insides, soft mess held together by a crumbling crust. He’s here, he’s there. Always the damned choosing. After the break-up he’ll regret and want her back, sure. But everything is stale. Maybe everything has to be stale… The bread of his mind is stale. The body, the bread. Four years. They know each other inside out, and what else is there? You get one… shot. There’s so much else… Every day, he’s reminded of what else. Is no one aware of time, of opportunity?
He pulls on his bib, which shouts in large red letters, ‘Brett!’, and he looks around. The other participants preparing, bibs on, bibs off, one guy waving his bib in the air like a flag—no reason, just waving—some practicing moves, bantering, signaling to the audience, family, friends, supporters. All more relaxed than him. Smiling. Kidding around. No one appreciates time or opportunity. No one.
‘Yeah, A–ONE man… Do it! Just doooo it!’
Kelsi looking more relaxed. See? He could be as miserable as hell and she wouldn’t notice or, even if she did, feel it was her duty to pretend she didn’t, to lift them both. But if you knew, girl, if you knew, be a different story, eh? Very different. And soon the time is coming, and he stares at the pile of pies on the table before him, the table that stretches twenty participants long, his pile a massive mountain among mountains, a fortress among fortresses, to be overcome with the brute force of consumption. To the victor, the spoils! To the losers… the spoiled. Ha! He inhales deeply, readying himself for the shout of ‘Go!’
‘Go!’
1 pie disappears into Brett’s face, then 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9…
Brett sucks down the tenth as Zebo stares through the crowd, disgust at the spectacle mixed with a definite touch of awe—the contestants take their eating seriously. Take Brett, weighty, but by no means obese, Brett (shaved head and round smooth face, face not unlike a pie you stuck two fingers in to make eyes and carved a crescent for a mouth), a dude who clearly has method to his madness. Planned and practiced. There’s real art to the way he scoops one pie from the table and shoves it between his oversized jaws, and there’s a keenness in his eyes, a definite system to the chewing and swallowing and reaching for the next comestible, all which evinces a strange admiration in Zebo. But then, again, the disgust.
Zebo sucks absently on the pinky of one hand while with the index of the other he presses a button on a device hidden in the pocket of his no-brand jeans. He cannot see the word ‘ARMED’ jump up on its small screen, but the high-pitched beep he hears clearly (though no one around seems to notice. Notice? What could they notice? They are screaming and shouting and encouraging and berating and laughing and cursing the pie eaters). The beep informs him that one more press will trigger the explosive. And as Brett reaches for the pie, the pie which Zebo had earlier marked with a bright pink hoop around the bottom, as Brett reaches in scooping motion for this pie, Zebo’s finger stiffens in readiness. This pie Brett scoops as he’s scooped all others, skillfully, nonchalantly, up and towards his mouth, and Zebo presses, presses hard as Brett bites, timing! timing! Down! And Brett’s head explodes in a shower of blood, brain, and bone that mattes the other competitors in gore and leaves nothing behind but a severed stalk of vertebrae and some shredded flesh petals thereon.
Timing!
After the briefest silence, the screaming begins and it’s the purest of screaming, a primitive shrieking as if those emitting the noises have been transported to an alternative universe where this is the only sound they are capable of, a sound resonating with a memory of Zebo’s of being near train tracks and a train suddenly screeching by, the sound going on for way longer than it should. And the scene screams on as Zebo retreats, slowly, carefully through the crowd. Oh, if they knew what he had done, they would surely rip him into as many pieces of flesh as lie strewn across the pie-eating table, leaving him no more presentable than the headless cadaver now in (bloodied and motionless) situ at said-same table with its stunned competitors and half-eaten pies and the puke of several pie eaters slowly pooling.
But, hey, Zebo is not insensitive to the agony he has caused. He is no sociopath. His act is to be seen in the wider context of the burden of being truly morally engaged, capable of choosing, really choosing. And it has been a process, a long process. Such transformations as his don’t come without costs. Much has had to be jettisoned, sacrifices have had to be made, and it’s a painful path that has brought him to the point where he can plant a miniature bomb in a pie and explosively disintegrate the head of the person eating it. Yes, a long process and one of sustained effort and dedication—the planning, the procuring, the waiting, the hiding, the design, the impact, the artistic flourish, a picture of the greater sin condensed into a headless corpse and the horrified faces of a line of pie eaters shocked from their skins—still chewing on their pies. A picture. A mirror. Know thyself!
So, it’s nothing selfish that drives him, certainly not the fame or notoriety. It’s not the idea of sitting down and watching the results of his action played out over and over onscreen. No, not that, not at all, no perverse pleasure at all. If anything, the overriding emotion is regret. Regret that the forces that be had not heeded his warnings, that the revolting scenes of waste, the defiled cornucopia of prurient consumption in a world of starvation and want, would lead to this. Had they listened? Of course not. Had they cared? At all? No. So, this.
Peace, peace settling. No doubt Brett who has literally lost his head over a pie did not deserve such punishment. Who would say he did? Not Zebo. But such punishment was yet necessary. Some sacrifice is needed or no progress can be made. And who will make a sacrifice of themselves? Now? In these times? No one. Not without help… Blessed be Brett in the arms of the World Spirit. May his loss lead to grace for all.
§
Zebo turns on the news and there is an interview with the girlfriend of Brett, hideously beheaded Brett, by-his-hand-bodily-destroyed Brett; broken, deceased, Brett. And the girlfriend is Kelsi, and she is dishevelled, talking of a lost future, of unbearable pain, tear-stricken, choked-up, make-up smeared, running—her face, pale and lost, now transforming in Zebo’s gaze into the round and blank face of a pie, save for two pastry-poked holes and a sliced crescent of mouth; and through these orifices flow the deep red innards of emotion, streaking crimson trails across the skin, before all flattens, flattens slowly to two dimensional signs of circles and stripes that quiver across the flickering screen before turning and filling out again, just as slowly, mournfully, into Kelsi’s grief torn features. Kelsi. Kelsi had loved him—love, pain, loss. She had seen it all explode. Everything is broken.
“Everything is already broken, Kelsi,” Zebo enunciates into the air. “It always has been. This is the only way. May the World Spirit be with you.”
Source: Zebo and the World Spirit from Lobe by Paul Buckle
