The Revelations by Erik Hoel (some good books to read TXT) 📗

he would die and die young, all from flecks of red against an embroidered handkerchief. The whole of the human body only contains around four quarts of blood. Calculating out the loss, Kierk estimated he’d be dead in less than thirty minutes. He felt immensely nauseous, all things surging, and knew he was swallowing incredible amounts of the stuff, but if he vomited he would almost certainly tear the artery further and then he would surely die. So from the ambulance to the hospital, where a panicked ER doctor sat with his knees straddling Kierk’s chest and with a metallic instrument shoved down Kierk’s throat trying to pinch off the spurting artery, to the wheeling blurring room that was rapidly being prepared for surgery, Kierk’s entire will was bent to a single aspect, an iron thought: Do. Not. Vomit.

Lying on the table in the white room, clinging to consciousness as anesthesia had pumped through him, Kierk had heard clearly and loudly a man’s direct but gentle voice address him. It spoke as if from inside his skull—Don’t worry, remembering how to die is just like riding a bike. You’ll be fine. It’s just been a while since you’ve done this.

After waking up in the hospital with his throat re-cauterized, no one could say if it would ever reopen. Even now he can feel it, the raw spot in the back of his throat, a ticking biological time bomb. He thinks—at least Keats, by the time he was my age . . . It is my name which will truly be writ in water.

Standing outside the glass box of steam, one would see only his hands moving up and to the sides, as if seeking a way out, as if exploring the contours of this trap, the trap laid for him by passion and ontology—that his impossible muse existed only within the strictures of an environment he hated. To be cursed is to be drawn to something that vexes you to madness.

After some interminable time he manages to stand and turn off the shower. He doesn’t towel himself off but merely returns dripping wet to his bed and lies under the covers, his hair plastered to his forehead, naked and wet as if just birthed. Under the damp covers, he begins to slap himself in the face. Again and again the sound of flesh striking flesh. Tortured breathing from the rumpled mess as hands, one after another, hit with blinding speed at his cheeks, his eyes, his forehead—“I hate you. You weak, pathetic—I—Hate you—You are nothing—Stupid—Stupid—Stupid.” Over and over until his face aches and his hands burn and then, right at the climax of it, he pauses and his hand curls into a fist. He eyes it for a moment. A brief thought—this is ridiculous. And then in punishment for the detached irony of its tone he punches himself right in his eye as hard as he possibly can. The impact sets everything to white and yellow for a moment and he curls up, cursing, burning. He lets out a few sobs, buries his head in the pillows, groans. He stays there. The tension in him slowly unwinds, ebbing away along with the pain. Eventually he enters a state which is half dreaming, half waking, and there, amid the changing languages and settings, the props and actors, he is not himself, and he can watch the stirrings of memories play across a screen not his own . . .

Wisconsin in winter was a whole planet removed from the sun, a frozen globe of thought. Kierk was a riding phantom blowing past the dead Midwestern cornfields at 100 miles per hour in the night. Already drunk, he’d been swilling beer for the entire ride, the interior of his falling-apart car lit only by the dashboard, opening bottles between his knees, the grain silos blurring past. Kierk had felt irreducible, violently American, and young.

On Kierk’s arrival outside the huge house Antonio Moretti came out and greeted Kierk with a welcoming handshake, taking the bottle of wine Kierk bought and giving a small frown at the label. The modern house was made entirely of glass with walls that unfolded into the surrounding nature during summer. Impressive square footage. There was a garage with a hanging kayak in it, a projector screen for interviewing postdoctoral applicants for the lab, a CD collection that took up a wall, a fireplace, a sauna, a Jacuzzi, an outdoor brick oven, a small shooting range, a barn with the ass-end of an SUV protruding, a liquor cabinet that stretched across shelves, and a wall-to-wall glass atrium filled with trees and plants. Antonio Moretti himself was unnaturally tall, and bald, and always impeccably dressed. European and old-world cultured with an MD in psychiatry, he was like a benign Hannibal Lecter.

That night Antonio brought him upstairs alone, and they talked next to bookshelves which spanned the entire length of the study . . .

“And did you read his autobiography?”

“Yes, one of the best.”

“You are young. Did you read Schopenhauer—”

“No, I never did. Excerpts though. The world knot. After all that’s what we’re trying to do. Untangle the world knot.”

“You never read him?”

“This is a beautiful house, by the way, I can see—”

“Thank you. More cognac?”

“No, no, thanks, I’m good. I’m still working on this one. Oh hey, is that Will Durant?”

“Yes, I read all of it.”

“All of it?”

“Yes, all eleven volumes. Yourself?”

“I read, ah, the Egyptian one, I remember that. Ancient hieroglyphs, so interesting, a language no one could understand but it was all around them. Like something aliens would write in.”

“I called you away from the others to talk, man to man.”

“Oh, okay.”

“You read literature, Kierk? You write? Do you chase many girls?”

“I’m not sure—”

“Because you’re distracted easily. You would rather talk about problems than publish. The papers must be published. Carthage must be destroyed. It has not even been invaded.”

“It’s taking . . . It’s taking longer than I thought.”

“Carthago delenda est.”

“Every time I go to write all