Bastard Freedom: Chapter 5

Joseph's test for people who he is connatural with was simple: only two words. Two words of his own devising, and if a woman gets it, she will bed him: Mein Flat. It was genius. He went out on a date once, and didn't even put the woman to his test: there was just nothing there, except this woman's tirade of hating men or some such shit. By the end of the evening his erection was dust. This woman was, of course, coming from the land of disco politics. She was an American: The land of the people who have become the drunken husband, who, having lost a game of pool at the pub, comes home and beats his wife.

"How was your day, darling? Did you overthrow that nasty man?"

"Wear your mask, bitch! And where's my taxes?!"

Marie's test, on the other hand, was rather wordy: "'I will speak, therefore, of a letter.' D, of course, but not that D." Being more complex, the rubrics are manifold: If a man looks puzzled, he is doomed to be relegated to an imaginative moron. If a man requires the second phrase, then he can be forgiven, (perhaps as a consolation she will French-kiss him in the evening). If a man gets the first line, the very quote itself, then she would have found her soulmate. 

He was proving to be elusive, however, not that she was actually looking. That will be our eternal problem, she thought, as he said on their way to karaoke, "If they only translated it as λόγος, baby, then the world would have been a better place."

Says the man of Mein Flat, she thought. If she can be allowed to say such things, then this was one of the many things she orgasmed to about him: he would demand purity of word and thought while playing with bastardizations of entire books only to see where your loyalties lie. He demands, after all, to be called by his father's Czech name, but writes using his mother's Irish one. His name, and hence his very being (for there is a special power to names), is where subtle and subterfuge etymologically connects: sub, in Latin, meaning "finely woven." In the beginning was the λόγος, and then everywhere it was weaponized, she mused, looking across at the man that is the master of this weapon. Good god, she was fallling in love. Or at the very least getting very wet. On the tram. 

She was no better, she thought, as her legal name was her ex-husband's last name; but she will always sign with her maiden name. If his bastard naming was his sword, then hers was a shield. 

She laughed at that. And more surprisingly, for laughter is far easier gotten than agreement, she found herself thinking about the word for word in Greek, and finally agreed with him, though for reasons he might find not so amusing later on. The Stalinization of the universe, when the Soviets manipulated photos, was indeed  λόγος being relegated to word. 

"My father is the result of centuries of that mistranslation. He is Czech, and if it weren't for the Russians invading our country, I wouldn't have been born. I owe the Russians that." He said, scribbling at his notebook. 

She risked a glance at his notebook: it was thin, near to the end, most pages filled with script so undecipherable so as to be rendered readable only by intution. It's as if it invites the brain to skip the serifs and terminals altogether and just read the signified underneath it. 

A man of indicherable words, she mused, as he continued, "I wish my father was like yours: a soldier. My father was, if I may be so irreverent, a buffoon. He tries so hard that you wonder why he tries at all."

They got off the tram, amidst people rushing home to their wives, their children, from games of pool at the pub. Being smaller and worlds slighter than he was, she was buffeted by the crowd for a while until he held her hand, steadying her footing, and they proceeded to walk towards the karaoke.

"But that's the thing, though: he was revered as a buffoon. He knew how to do things with his hands. It's his mind that doesn't." His thought was cut short - or was it, really? - when they came to the pub door.

They have arrived. Karaoke beckons.