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The Kahverengi Sampler:
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About this Excerpt:
Comprising the first two chapters, this excerpt presents a distinct first-person voice. He is philosophically inclined, and unreserved about the fact that his telling of the story is his own account. Given his involvement in the story—his brother is the decedent—this candor is a cloak of sorts for how the mystery will come to a resolution.
A Sample from the Unpublished Manuscript...
For now, we'll jump straight into the text; please have a read. I'm rather uncertain about describing the story as this is a work-in-progress, and I feel it's a much better idea to provide the raw article, giving you a sense of the tone and voice. Enjoy.
Chapter 1: The Victim's Portents (page 1 of 4)
When they departed she claimed a dire mistake. First she gave him a tan-hide leather book, and then she gave him a passionate kiss. Now, he was surely dead for accepting the book. And she was surely wrong for letting her red pleasure turned to a soft pill rule his sensation of their final encounter.
I believe how couples kiss as they depart intones the time they are next to spend in relation to one another. If, for instance, the two intend to meet once again, then a passionate kiss confirms their anticipation of the next encounter. And if, on the contrary, the two do not intend to meet again, a firm, kind goodbye confirms their mutual respect while acknowledging the close of relations. Broken intentions are pardoned. For if not tragic, broken intentions are simple misfortune for those who do not expect their lives to wander away from a moment and one last, tasty kiss.
Between this couple there was no mutual intent to see one another again. She had no wish to see the tan-hide leather book she had given my brother. Therefore, her kiss was malicious. And I cannot imagine the wonder of intent that seeded my brother's mind with anticipation in that moment.
The book is a very comfortable size with a rectangular area little bigger than an open hand, and of an incongruous dimension little more than a square. A tan-hide leather cover is saddle worn and wraps the book with an overlapping flap that has not curled, but lies thin against its tight brood of content. Without stitches, the flap closes the book flat in a voluntary posture, clasping itself to its own bosom. Just a clip fastens the tan-hide leather in place, like skin that pulls just enough over bone.
Beneath the soft leather is a rigid cover that, front and back, is imbued with the form of slate. The spine is fixed with the security of vertebrae, as if bone really does bind the pages and the book can feel when it is touched. Slate and spine join without cohesive structure, yet fix together with the air of tendons present somewhere within its skin. The pages that peek from under the eaves of leather are perfectly cut; they look solid inside.
The book is a tight package yet to be unwrapped, and it is so comfortable to carry as a handbag. I cannot stop talking about the book so long as it is tucked under my wing. And I feel my gate hastened, and that I have been given a job yet unaccomplished when I carry it. An urge originating within these pages—imperceptibly bound as one slightly yellowed slab the color of concrete—coerces me to speed ahead! The book makes acceleration feel natural to me, and I do indulge this natural direction in life.
To be human, I know, is to deny that which is natural in favor of temperance. I speak of humanity apart from the natural inclinations of the animal. A human shows kindness in the face of hostility, comprehension under the pressure of chaos, and intelligence in the wake of madness. The rest of us revel in the pleasure of doing as we feel. For we, the animals, doing is not ever as important as feeling. And the benefit of doing, regardless of the beneficiary, is not ever as strong a motive for what we do as is the feeling of what we do.
So I understand, in spite of a maddening feast of events, that the woman who gave my brother this tan-hide leather book was acting in a natural way. Yet, her kiss—that malicious kiss—was a mistake. A kiss was her own desire, that she condemned him with the deliberate sweetness of a kiss.
In life, no inheritance is so condemning as mystery. Debt would have brought me greater happiness and greater assurance of a solvent mind. However, my course is studded with uncertainty—mental aggravation that stems a bleeding of red confusion so that I may hold it delicately and sip from its blossom that viral nectar. This metaphor I use is so dear I have recently broken the stem from every fluted glass in my cabinet. And, yet, these glasses found little use for themselves even as whole, original articles.
I prefer an unassuming liquor glass similar to those left on aged wooden bars at the close of an evening when light shuts down and cash machines lock themselves up. A glass of this type lies close to the grain, as if its brow is furrowed as it peers uneasily out from underneath the edge of its thick, rolled lip. The glass itself must be substantial, and it needs to pull within its lens the swirling, sometimes splintered wood upon which it sits as if emphasizing its heft with a willingness to hug its surface. Not ironically, when it is lifted, this perception of stability escapes. Sometimes, too, the glass is clouded.
Spirits are clear, and left within the wake of clouds is the dissolution of filtered sight, a liquor distilled from anise and raisin made new in the east of Europe. I am not imbued with wine as, in hedonistic tremble, are so many slaves of the Greek or Roman persuasion. I am a time sensitive soporific. It is not that I derive pleasure from decoding eighteen layers of alcoholic nuance; rakı derives me out of a thin layer of fluid scrutiny that causes self-examination to flood all thought with a question of being.
Bring me a book of rakı and a bottle of Heidegger! Actually—a book on existentialist forefathers—I don't need that, for I have been wrapped around the idea of a certain dasien since the world I daily encounter behested me with, as I alluded to, a bit of mystery. Now my only book is this tan-hide leather tablet of a thing that, in its coy avoidance of life, hugs the wooden surface of my desk like a drink.
I am going to tell you that my brother's death was worth-while after all. There are only two ways death can be so timely: first, if the things one does ought not to happen any longer, and second, if the things one makes others do ought not to happen any longer. It is a sordid picture—completely negative in construction—to say that absence can be better than substance. But I must also make you aware that terrific and autonomous acts are no worse than those that are incited. In other words, beware the trigger man, for he knows not what he does.
My brother was no puller of triggers, but he had to be found out like one, and it happened because of what I just prescribed—the things he incited others to do. The judgment of his complicity in this endeavor is circumspect, I'll admit—and for the sake of being his brother I'll even be grateful—but the inevitability of his action would seem equally insidious to you if the whole story were revealed.
And that, I suppose, is where Mr. S. K. Murchison enters into my life. I have theories, certainly, but he has had action, and much more so than I know about. What I know comprises the final stages of my brother's life, a time when our knowledge of the way things work in the world—our daily evolving ontology—stuttered to a halt and remained in suspension as events struck at the foundation of our beliefs to such an extent that we could not make them comply with reality. Of course, if one drinks so much as I, and spends an equal measure thinking upon the lone act of drinking, then perhaps some of the larger issues are bound to lack the attention they deserve.