Tag: Mr Nothing

The poet was cursing the misery of his life. The small hermitage
in the centre of a large city that he now shared with Mr. Nothing
and Platocrates witnessed many of his misfortunes. Once conceived
by chance, he was always a child of unrequited love, but did not seem
to notice that maybe it had something to do with the unwise choice
of objects of his affection. At least that was what Mr. Nothing thought.
Perhaps his brethren could understand that, in fact, the poet was fond of
the misery of his life.

As he wandered through the shouting streets of Friday night,
Mr. Nothing wondered if it was worth trading his tinnitus
for the promise of fun at McNasty’s, as the name itself was
not particularly appealing, and the noise on the spot made it
hard to hear his own thoughts, let alone have any conversation.
And then there was the curse of many such establishments: karaoke.
So, after an hour or so, excusing himself with a headache, he left.
At home, he made flatbread and tried to imagine a Man of a sort
willing to invent the fly.

Upset Mr. Nothing tried to remember the last time he had tied
the Windsor knot. The blue shirts hung neatly in the wardrobe,
waiting for the moment he would return to his previous routine.

He used to laugh at himself a lot, joking that old people always
tie the Windsor knot. Now he was just shaking his head irritably
at unconvincing glances of all those struggling to persuade him

that a regular nine-to-five was not just a sentiment of the past.
In the end, even an oldish office Casanova would eventually forget
the taste of a cup of mean coffee and the occasional five to seven.

Hearing the moped passing down the street,
Mr. Nothing thought about that morning
when, instead of the usual glass of cognac,
he had ordered a glass of water, and as he waited
for the train, he had listened to the stratagems
coming from the table right behind. Unfortunately,
he had nothing to be fond of, and even the sound
of the accordion played skilfully in the underpass
did not make him shudder, as it usually did.
At home, he spent his time opening and closing
the curtains and taking care to replace an empty
tissue box with a new one. At work, he paid attention
to the use of words like “certainly” and “of course.”
And he was actually at peace with such a life,
somehow avoiding many of its predicaments.
Only, he could no longer stand that glass of cognac,
served with the rest of the day.

“In a week, you will be forty-seven.” As he listened
to the first gusts of Storm Malik, the poet wondered where
their names might have come from, but at these words,
he looked at the three volumes with wrinkled pages
barely salvaged from the flood that stood on the shelf
by the window. The Diary by their favourite expat,
with an essay Against the Poets. And when he pondered
the right answer, Mr. Nothing said, “But don’t worry,
you still have two years ahead of you.”

He was probably a little more articulated than most of his peers,
and at that point, too deprived of any further illusions to stand
the excess of their attention without even a single bitter note.
But once he had descended behind the wall of sarcasm, he never
really managed to free himself from a certain stiffness of disposition.

It was not until years later, when Mr. Nothing admitted to the poet
that there was something intimately familiar about that somewhat
long glance, which, he regretted, was lost in a too late realisation.
But even his disappointment was marked with a hint of irony:
“At least we were spared the cold words ‘yours’ and ‘mine’.”

As lofty as it might sound, the prolonged wait to meet destiny
made Mr. Nothing sometimes forget the taint in his chest.
But then a twinge or a waiting list reminder brings him to heel.

If only he could stay a little longer, with all the time to devote
to the Greek of Alexandria, a great lover of ancient history
and young men in secret moments of the forbidden sublime.

But perhaps it is still not too late to at least help the poet
repair his constantly rickety typewriter and mock the seagulls
on the promenade with the increasingly silent Platocrates.

The old business card used as a bookmark
told Mr. Nothing the last time he had attempted
to read the sesquipedalian first-fruits of the poet,
which he now looked at with some disbelief
as he accidentally fumbled that handcrafted volume
from under a pile of papers in his desk drawer.

He barely remembered that, now nameless, face
with incredibly long hair, that had made these lines
come into existence. But although the poet would never
admit it, Mr. Nothing knew that despite his passionate
disputes with Platocrates on the nature of feelings,
he was still as clueless as then, and just as frantic.