Carnivorous

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Carnivorous

What will They do ?

I am the last one remaining. I can feel them waiting, I do not know what they are waiting for.

It could be that the parmigiano has not arrived; They hate to attack without any parmigiano.

Sometimes they do it, my last buddy told me that he had seen them using Gruyère during the battle of Paris. It sounds a bit unlikely; my buddy was always a great one for looking at the funny side. It was a few minutes before they would attack and my buddy went round the trenches distributing bottles of ketchup, telling each one of them that this was the new secret weapon Headquarters had devised, guarantied to keep them at bay. Some of the buddies were so stupid that they tried it, it only seemed to increase their frenzy and make them even more carnivorous.

I am the last one remaining so far as I can see, and I wish to go down in style, so while I was waiting I prepared a plate of spaghetti alla arabiata, wondering if they would appreciate the full taste of the joke, sorry, a very poor joke, but is it Boswell who said that the knowledge of one's imminent death does give a tremendous appetite?.

Will they know that I am the grand-father of Helene, if they even have any knowledge inside their coils?

Soon they will attack, I have not yet made up my mind whether I will resist of just let them do it.

But I will be the last one in style.

Is it quite fitting to have as last meal spaghetti alla arabiata even if I fear that the humour of it will be totally lost on them.

Remains the most important, what music?

There has never been any doubt in my mind that the last notes that my ears would hear would be by Bach and I have tergiversated a long time, but I felt that it would be appropriate to leave this world with Goldberg.

But which one?

Some years ago I would have no doubt that I wanted to be accompanied by the Glenn Gould last recording, then, possibly out of them sense of pride, of snobbishness, I may choose to down listening to Nicholayeva. Once again the humour will be totally lost on them, hearing these sounds they do not understand, guessing of some extra terrestrial beauty behind them, never guessing that at the piano is sitting a very fat lady with the hands of a kolkhozes woman who should be shovelling snows on the roads, not playing Bach.

When Alan was trapped in the Music Hall attack, they put all the speakers on full volume. Some had wanted the ninth, some wanted to die in the arms of Maria Callas, then they agreed on the Passion.

You know, I do not know, but soon I will know, Alan told me that something strange happened that day. They let them advance, and when they were just a hundred yards away they turned on the speakers at full volume and it cannot be believed as they are not humans, they do not have any ears, they cannot understand harmony, they cannot understand pain, they cannot understand love, yet Alan claims that they stopped in their attack and seemed frozen on the spot, as if confronted by a truth that they were seeking for yet would never find.

The attack continued but without the frenzy and without the carnivorous frenzy we were used to. It is as if they had become reluctant, that they felt that they were destroying the only life that made sense to their own.

I am the last one remaining, I am laying the table very carefully, I am not very fond of Chianti, probably because I never had the money to buy the good bottles, but that one is a Barollo I have had for so long, it will be the only fitting wine to accompany the last meal; I remember that big discussion I had with Alan, I had wanted the best of the most beautiful crystal glass, Alan told me that it was to dishonour a Barollo by drinking it in the kind of ultra chic glasses only used by the bored jet set, that a Barollo should be drunk in a poorly washed mustard glass. At that time I had laughed at him, today I have found a stained mustard glass, I have just cleaned it up a little, I have put it on the table, the Barollo is opened, I hope the attack does tack place in the coming hour, the Barollo was made for the gust eyes buds of men, not for the decaying air that turns in into a vinegar.

I am the grand father of Helene.

It all had started with Helene.

Helene and Emma are my two daughters; well technically speaking they are my grand daughters.

That day my daughter Sarah called on the phone, she was not afraid but she could not understand;

She was having lunch with the children, and it is pointless at that age to prepare anything else but noodles, preferably with all the dressings in the world as long as the dressing is colourful, sticky, contained in a bottle likely to spill most of it on the napkin and on the floor.

The children were enjoying their spaghettis, not bothering about such trivialities as spoons or forks or rolling them around the fork but just working hard on getting as much as possible of it into their mouth even if it appeared to us that most of it seemed to end its life half on the carped and half in the mouth of the dog Dick who really enjoyed these children dinners and half in the mouth of the children. Did they engulf the spaghettis because they liked them or because they were in such a hurry to get to the ice-cream stage?

Sarah was calling me because she could not understand. Someone had called at the door, she had gone to answer the call as she always does but when she arrived at the door, she just found on the doorstep some kind of ugly mess as if Dick had been vomiting the noodles had had eaten, but that could not be because Dick was with the girls and it could not be some kind of sick joke because the neighbours children were so kind and friendly, of course it could be a new burglar trick even if she could not understand how that one would work.

Sarah went back to the dining room and found Helene weeping and crying and shouting between hiccups “that they were naughty and never again would she want that again” and when Sarah pushed gently away Helene's hand from her face, she found that all around her mouth she was full of marks, as if she had been bitten by some kind of bug, but which but, and how could it happen so fast, and this did not look like any bug bite to Sarah, so she washed and sterilized as much as she could, then she called me to have my advise and I gave here the only sensible advise I could give, to go to the Urgencies even if that meant that she would probably be making a fool of herself as they would tell her that it was an allergic reaction to the peculiar blending of ketchup and mayonnaise and strawberry jam which apparently Helen considered as the only acceptable dressing to spaghettis.

So Sarah had gone to the Urgencies with both girls, leaving Dick alone in the house, well knowing that this evening she would not have tog et tired cleaning up the plates, disk was sure to take care of this tedious and boring part of the house jobs.

When she arrived at the urgencies, she was expecting to get the usual sign telling them that if they were lucky they would se a doctor within 4 hours, but as soon as they reached the urgency entrance door they were grabbed by these frightful decontamination staff you see in Science fiction films and rushed to a corridor she had never hear of.

They had arrived in a military looking areas, everybody was carrying these frightening decontamination suites and she really intended to write a sharp note about it to the authorities, what effect did they expect this to have on children, but really she had little time to think about the letter, so many questions were hurled at them, they must also have been testing her for precocious dementia as they kept demanding that she describes the meal point par point, mouthful per mouthful, ingredient by ingredient.

At that point Sarah did what any sensible woman and mother would do, she went hysterical. Tow coffee cups with a lot of sugar later, they continued the questions.

They must also have been overstrained, but then she realized that she has fallen into one of these exercises they carry our for your student doctors, the poor little things apparently had not had time to learn the contamination questionnaire list and her particular idiot was asking her time and time again if she had had noodles, and when she tiredly agreed that “yes she had had noodles, or rather her daughters had had noodles” hoping that this would content him, he started demanding to know what brand of noodles it was and how they had been prepared. Was she as a respectable mother going to admit that as dressing she used ketchup with strawberry jam and occasionally some crushed cashew nuts?

They were released to hours later, the girls had been checked and rechecked, some wound cream had been put on Helene, and as if this exercise had not been tiring enough they demander that she brought back to her house in a military Humvee, which of course delighted the youngsters, one of their dream becoming a reality, but she tried again and again to point out to the troopers how stupid all this was and that she was as patriotic as any other, that she fully understood the value of training but could he please explain how she was to get her car back to the house if she was brought back in a military vehicle and the only answer she could get was “Orders Madam”, please get in.

The children wanted a siren but the trooper told them that military vehicles did not have sirens, well this was what she understood as the man, or was it a woman, was still carrying the decontamination suite.

Well, as she expected, when the neighbours saw her arriving in a humvee, they all stepped outside their houses but as soon as they saw the decontamination suite they all rushed in again and closed everything. They were probably all already hanging on the phone, the more enterprising ones calling the local papers.

I suppose it is routine in such cases that Sarah's handbag had been left at the urgencies and that they could not enter into the house and for once even the backdoor and windows were closed.

The army man (or was it a woman) appeared to call someone, and soon they did not have one humvee but two humvee and the second one was no better than the first one as the driver was also wearing a decontamination suite;

Well thought Sarah, if you have to experience something crazy, why not do it fully, she by now not have been surprised to see skydiver wearing decontamination suites fall on her house.

The key was found and everything went on as in series, the girls sere so delighted, she could not enter, the army man (or was it a woman) was to enter and the second man (or was it a woman) was standing by the porch looking very alert.

Sarah tiredly wondered how you could look alert under a decontaminating suite, they really learned a lot at these army training centres;

Sarah felt contented, she did not tell them about Dick, she remembered the day the firemen came to wipe out a wasp net and Dick seeing them had understood that he had only one task in his life and he rushed at the fireman and bit his suite and all the air went out with a big “swoussh”. She wondered if army decontamination suites made swousssh or “plompppp”. She realized by then that she must be rather tired but the girls appeared to have the best moment of their life.

The first army man ( or was it a woman) came out, no he could not let her in, he whispered to his colleague, or does one say to her colleague, Sarah was getting so confused and now they were rolling out a body bag, a body bag, a rolling body bag, what did they roll out a body bag for, had they found a burglar and killed it, but then why was not the police here, and by now Sarah was beginning to agree with that young urgency doctors, there must have been something in the house, some gas leak she had not notice and she had gone bonkers;

They came out carrying the body bag, but this time the craziness was even increasing, the burglar's body looked like a dog's body.

Now everything seem to have calmed down, they were standing there, and Sarah did not even have the strength to ask an intelligent question, she had was passed the stage of intelligent questions. The only thing she could think of asking was if they thought that under the circumstances she could have a cigarette, she meant, with that gas leak, was it safe to light a cigarette and this time they really looked at her as if she had gone mad; of course, they were right, smoking a cigarette in full view of the neighbours and the children, she must have gone mad.

Probably if she had had a nice rest, say just one hour, say just half an hour while somebody was caring for the children, she would have recovered her sanity, but nobody gave her that rest this is why she was not so utterly surprised when the soldier came to her and said

“Would you kindly follow me Madame, the President would like to speak to you”.

And like a stupid idiot she followed as if it was in her habits to have a nice friendly daily chat with the President.

She soldier gave her the phone, you know one of these huge shoe boxes that the army appears to believe to be telephones, she took it, she looked at it, what was she supposed to do, which end did you put on your ear and anyway she neither wanted to put any end next or her ear or have another end next to her mouth, she now realized that she should have majored in a that subject about “advice about how to conduct small chat with the President”, so she took the phone and she said what probably she would remember to the end of her life, “is there anybody their?”

Apparently there was somebody there who even claimed to be the President.

The test of it became a bit confused

Apparently the President was telling her not to be worried, do Presidents really worry about how you are going to get back you car left in the one hour parking lot of the Urgencies? He told her that everything was being taken care of, which was nice as she expected that by now her car had been towed away from the illegal parking and she just was not sure she had five hundred dollars to pay for the fine, but she should have been concentrating bit more on what the President was saying as she must have missed part of the conversation, she could not really fully understand that bit about how the plane was already on its way to her and that everything was prepared for her stay with her daughters at Langley.

Now Langley, she was sure she knew something about it, but why would the President be calling her about if she had won a summer holiday prize and had she got everything wrong, of course these were not decontamination suites but suites carried by some Disneyland comedians, but what could Langley be, Lang-Bay, someplace in the Far East or in Thailand and did she win this because she had got all he questions right at the Urgency Emergency exercise dry run?

By now Sarah had given up, she was just mumbling, one of the comedians grabbed her gently by the shoulder and she and the daughters were ushered into one of these Luxury limousines you only see at the Oscar's and she turned to the comedian and told him that it was OK with her if he now wanted to take off his suite, and she asked if she was a spectator or if she had won some kind of prize and he just looked at her through the plastic as is she was some feeble minded elder in a geriatric ward; Well as much as she knew, maybe she was 99 years old and believing that the President was waiting for her and had sent a limousine.

OK people, let us have a bit of respect for Sarah's privacy and let us move on the Presidency Crisis Room.

Mr President, the last report we have is that the causality number is reaching the million but none appears to be fatal.

The cause?

Well Mr President, with all due respect, we have been running all these cases on the statistical programs we have and I am sorry to say that at present the computers are just given a totally silly answer and we are checking if in some way a virus could be liked to this outbreak of bites and rashes;

And what is this utterly silly answer

The computers Mr President, please understand that this is only preliminary and that we are sure that we shall very soon come up with a reasonable answer, the computer come up with only one world which does not make sense.

And that word?

I am sorry Mr President, the computer only prints

Noodles!