Shoes on the Danube Bank
Meditations on the nature and inevitability or war - from our upcoming novel
“The meaning of life is that it stops.”
― Franz Kafka
“What awaits men after death cannot be anticipated or imagined.”
― Heraclitus of Ephesus
“Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.”
― Elie Wiesel
There was a time, not so long ago, when we used to spend our summers in Budapest. At least a month or two, anyway. It was part of our annual migratory pattern, one that took us from the “fin del mundo,” down here in Buenos Aires, to the top of the world and back. Dear Wife, you see, is not well equipped (read: inclined) to endure winters. And so, not unlike the Arctic Tern, which travels 90,000 kilometers, pole to magnetic pole and back again, every year (and can eat and sleep while gliding!) we simply avoided them…
Our contention: It is humanly impossible to spend significant time in a city like Budapest and not feel inspired… to paint, to compose, to write… to create in any way available. Even when one is not in the act, as it were, we catch ourselves storing up anecdotes, filing away material for later use, stuffing the mental archive. The rich aromas wafting from the cafés along Franz Liszt terrace of a morning… the unbridled chatter emanating from the wine bars around District V. … the sun as it reflects off the timeless Danube, as it flows from the Black Forest in the west, to the Black sea in the east…
In today’s essay, we present an excerpt from our upcoming novel, Night Drew Her Sable Cloak – which is due out later this month (fret not, fellow flâneur… we’ll let you know exactly when you can secure your copy). Blurring the lines between fiction and non-fiction – which are, after all, but opposing parts of the same whole – we invite you to relive some memorable moments with us along the banks of the storied Danube, bisecting one of our favorite cities…
Night Drew Her Sable Cloak, Chapter XIII - Into The Abyss
By Joel Bowman
Some in the west say there is a process by which all things, at all times, are becoming their opposites. Writing two and a half millennia ago, Heraclitus employed the term enantiodromia, from the Greek (Romanized) enantios – opposite; and, dromos – running course. “Cold things warm,” he observed, “warm things cool. Wet things dry and parched things become sodden.” So too does day turn to night, just as darkness comes to light. And life, precious, vibrant life, in all its pain and love and glory, succumbs eventually to the nothingness of death. One is not necessarily apart from the other, rather a part of the whole. Harmony is to be found in “reflexive tension,” explained the clever old Ephesian, “like the bow and the lyre.” His was a philosophy dependent on the constancy of change, like the river into which the same man cannot step twice, both because the river has changed and so too the man.
Evie, of course, had her own take on the theory.
“There must be moments of transition,” she intoned, “when things overlap. Like gray areas, when something is both itself and its opposite.”
The afternoon sun was setting across the Danube, beyond Buda, casting its long summer light over the Fisherman’s Bastion (Halászbástya). Evie sat solemnly amid the iron shoes of the Cipők a Duna-parton memorial, a monument dedicated to the thousands of human beings who were lined up along the riverbanks during World War II, and coldly transported from the land of the living to the realm of the dead. She let her bare feet hang above the brown, lapping waters and continued her solemn contemplation.
“Pregnancy, for example, seems to me one of those stages, where the mother is both supporting life and tempting death at the same time. I mean, you don’t have to go back far before you start encountering some pretty horrific maternal mortality statistics. But even more than that, all living things are in the process of dying, decaying, atrophying. It’s part of the natural course, one side of the grand cosmic equilibrium. We are not… then, for a brief time, we are… then we are not again. Forever. It’s something we talk about all the time, you and I. It’s neither good nor bad. It’s just… what it is.”
I listened as I wandered between the empty, emptied, footwear. One hundred and twenty shoes lined up in uneven steps, hastily discarded by trembling limbs, all facing the same inevitable direction, ready to step into the same and ever-changing river. I tried to imagine the street sweeper, donning his work boots for the last time as he was marched, carbon steel barrel pressed between his shoulder blades, from his gloomy room in the nearby ghetto. I thought of the hopeful woman squeezing her toes into fashionable sling backs, purchased after months of thrift and discipline. Did she have in mind an interview? A dance? A first date? How could she have known she would one day step out of them and into a watery grave? Then a tiny pair of Mary Janes, size two or three, set a child’s arm-length from her mommy’s hollow flats. I imagined the little hands clasped so tightly, shivering in the cold, watching the light disappear behind the western bank. Life, then…not.
The palette overhead was changing from warm to cool. I turned at a pair of vacant kitten heels and made my way back towards Evie, who sat staring off into the distance.
“The mother is like a conduit, her body breaking apart as she feeds and fuels the next generation, transferring her vitality from her ancestral past, down through her present, and off into the future. Woman and child are not separate entities at this point, but parts of a whole. Not opposites, as in mirror images; more like opposing points on the same circumference.”
Evie buckled her own shoes and took my outstretched hand. The moon was in its place now, gathering far off stars under the diffused light. Later, at dinner, the subject came up again.
“You know,” I ventured, the afternoon’s iron laces still knotted around my mind, “he also wrote that ‘war was the father of all, king of all.’”
“Who? Heraclitus?”
“The very same.”
“Context?”
“Unsure. He supposed that war, ‘rendered some gods, others men,’ that ‘he makes some slaves, others free.’”
Evie rested her chin in the palm of her hand. Over her shoulder, the bells of Saint Stephen’s Basilica rang out under a lamenting slate sky. She waited until they finished before arresting her gaze from the heavens. “You know, I watched you by the river today, walking between those unfilled shoes. It’s so sad, what they did to all those poor people. War is a scourge, no doubt. I go down to that spot every time I’m here, to watch the waters pass under the bridges. To declaim against the seemingly unchanging nature of man, now and then, old and new.”
Her expression flooded with a profound longing, a desire to reach beyond her grasp.
“As for Heraclitus,” she went on, “I don’t know what he meant by that. Perhaps he was talking of an inner struggle, an internal conflict of some kind, like the way a person wrestles with his own mind. Some, if they are fortunate, find freedom therein; others madness…”
“Maybe, maybe.” I thought of those pitiful size twos, petrified in their penultimate step. My head rang, the timeless bells reverberating within. “Or maybe he was merely observing that war is part of the repeating cycle, a grim inevitability to which we are all condemned.”
Evie held my stare, as if balancing a thought on the tip of her consciousness. On the verge of articulation, toes dangling over the edge, she demurred. In place of words, she brought my fingers to her lips and held them there in her warm, vital breath.
Just before you go…
Your correspondent’s second novel, Night Drew Her Sable Cloak, is due out later this month. We’ll let you know the minute you can pre-order, so keep your skates handy!
A big thanks to all our voluntary proof readers who were kind enough to offer their eagle eyes and thoughtful feedback along the way. With some help from Lady Fortuna, we’ll have a few cover designs to choose from in the coming days. Almost there!
Finally, if you know someone who you think might enjoy our work, please do share it with them. This is a reader-supported project, which means we rely on word-of-mouth and the kindness of literary strangers in lieu of the push and pull of a corporate publishing Goliath.
Support independent authors (or at least this one) and share our work, here…
Until next time…
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
Buenos Aires, Argentina ~ March, 2023
Thanks, Joel. I shared your quote with six of my friends. You see, in our little book - not really a club - gathering, we often debate. Will,
we choose fiction or non? The “lines between fiction and non-fiction” are blurred. I appreciate your strolls. Enjoyed “Morris Alive.”