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Copyrighted October 2004 txh 548 095
The Library Of Congress United States - Copyright Office
Washington Dc All rights reserved to txh 548 095
�There is no reason to be sad at this moment: all the premonitions which I�ve had for ten years are coming true. This is one of the saddest moments in the history of the human race. There is no sign of hope in the horizon. The whole world is involved in slaughter and bloodshed. I repeat---I am not sad.�
Henry Miller The Colossus of Maroussi
The death-drift of history
8,43
September 11 was a clear Autumn day, the type that New York books with the Almighty years in advance. Not having to cope with the weather like most part of the year, September 11 was a day on leave, so to speak. The symmetrical rows of buildings stretching on all sides exchanged their reflections in those first early hours, the metropolis, in its boast of steel, stone and glass, was welcoming the ant-like activity of men, cars and trains which in its apparent confusion obeyed to a vast organization where everyone and everything rushed to their place in the system. Supply and demand were gearing up in the market's tumultuous arena where frantic numbers and abstruse symbols would leave behind by the end of the day their usual array of losers and winners: the game the city played every day almost in a state of festivity was about to begin. I was home. Every now and then I watched CNBC waiting for the market to open. Things weren�t good. Dow Jones, Nasdaq, S&P, Russell 500, everything was down. Sioux had wanted to go to her office at the WTC. Although she was asked not to, she had continued to go until a replacement would be found... I was working on CV about my life. I was offered the position of head surgeon at La Santa Sierra, the institution at La Marina Del Rey where I had been working for over five years. The curriculum was just a bureaucratic headache. I wasn�t particularly interested in the offer, but on account of the losses suffered in the market Sioux had asked to consider the opportunity. We both knew we�d never return to California.
8,43
In that a bang was heard, or I thought I had heard a bang; or I didn�t hear any bang and only some heard a bang; or nobody heard any bang and it could have been some bizarre glitch of the transmission... I didn�t even raise my head absorbed as I was in unbury corpses from my past.
It was in a state of total absentmindedness when I gave a look to television, the camera had left the ticker and turned toward the city: a red spiral encircled the upper part of one of the Twins.
I raised my eyes and from the window and in the distance one of the towers of the World Trade Centre confirmed to be in flames. I went to the telescope on the balcony and, sure enough, it conveyed an image of stalactites of fire curling in and out of a hefty corolla of smoke. A tower in flames was not unusual, America had a long history of fires blasting its buildings and this one could easily be the beginning of a new pyrotechnical show that by evening will wind up with the usual victory of fire-fighters.
My first thought went to my wife Which one was the tower where she worked? The two edifices side by side were absolutely identical. Sioux had mentioned the South, but she herself wasn�t sure. We had deemed it an insignificant detail, one that now was no longer an insignificant detail. In any case a fire in the heart of New York would not cause too much of a problem. At the World Trade Centre there should be ways to confront a fire.
I gave her a call on my cellular.
�Is it yours?� first thing I asked,
�No, don�t worry. It�s the North.�
�What could have been?�
�No idea. Someone here has mentioned a plane.�
�A plane?�
�A small plane that lost its course. Apparently.�
�And it causes so much fire?� The fire was flexing its muscles.
�We will probably be asked to evacuate the building. Standard precaution.�
�Want me to come and fetch you?�
�No. There might be a lot of confusion. I ring you back and can have lunch in the Village.� The idea of having lunch together had become a precious one. Ever since she had gotten sick the adventure of discovering a new restaurant was often superseded by the pleasure of returning to an old one. A second later she called back. She wanted to find out how the CV was coming together. I had yet to write down my name. I scribbled down my wife�s name instead, one, two three times. Sioux. Sioux, Sioux�. couldn�t think of nothing else.