From Peinlich by Mattis Manzel
Chapter 11 from the novel "Peinlich" ("Embarrassing") published by the Ammann Publishing House, Zurich, 1995, and republished as eBook in August 2002 (© Mattis Manzel)
Translation by Michael S. McGlinn
11.) Carlo's Life
Carlo was small and translucent. His form, that of an upturned
pear. To one side, a membrane projected from him, reaching from his summit down
to the point of his greatest circumference. He was able to wiggle this membrane
in a wave-motion. Further down, it became a little tail called Axolyte. Besides
this, four flagellum grew forth from Carlo's circumference. These were
similar to Axolyte, but were considerably longer and, moreover, were moveable.
When Carlo would row with his flagellum, send swirling pulses down his membrane
and make wiggling movements with his body, he was able to move himself about
in the surrounding fluid. That he thereby rotated along his vertical axle was
a family trait.
Carlo belonged to the genus of Protozoon's and was a flagellant. His full name
was Carlo di Trichomonas vaginalis. It filled him with pride that the name of
the place, which he inhabited, was included therein.
Between the periods of menstrual bleeding, Carlo would wander along the whole
length of Mona's vagina. Even during his youth, this stretch had been a trial
of his stamina. By wandering, he would prove to himself that he was not yet
ready for the scrap heap. While underway, he would ruminate over past experiences
or contemplate philosophical problems. Often, his heart would take simple delight,
enjoying the hustle and bustle of his homeland. Here he was greeted by a hoard
of Mycobacterium smegmates; there he took pleasure in the sight of a row of
baby Peptostreptococcus's who, fastened onto one another like a string of pearls,
danced in a playful, hopping ring. Yes, while wandering, sensuality and discipline
fell into wonderful accord.
With measured strokes, Carlo rowed past a cube-shaped offspring from the family
of poxviruses. Respectfully, it interrupted the dissection of a Döderlein
Bacillus and rattled the molecule chains in polite recognition. Everyone sensed
that it was better to greet Carlo and to allow him to pass unmolested than to
eat him.
Carlo was no king or emperor, nor was he a chief. The microcosm, which he inhabited,
did not require men of such offices. He was neither citizen nor dictator, and
he was nobody's property, if one allowed the exception of his hostess to whom,
in a certain sense, everything belonged: the cells; the slime; the monthly floods
of blood; the little piece of underwear which occasionally glimmered between
the Labia minora at the furthest point of his elongated environs. Everything
that was, belonged to Mona.
It had been difficult for Carlo to develop an idea of the play of forces in
his homeland. It had taken a long time before he had found a way of seeing things,
which afforded him tranquility, confidence and inner peace. The less it was
tried to disrupt his world, the more stable was its disorder and the less the
suffering of those who lived there. Every aggression disturbed the healthy chaos.
Whether that entailed high-spirited Torulopsis glabrata settling in the urine
tube and releasing countless spores there, or whether Mona washed herself between
her legs, it all amounted to much the same thing.
At present it was a fairly contemplative time in Mona's vagina. While one was
devouring the next, the marauder was being phagocytosised by a third, whose
cell wall was, in turn, being bored through by a fourth. While one gorged, others
suffered poverty and hunger. There was cell splitting, subjugation, Volksfest
and epidemics, all on a massive scale. But in comparison with that, which Carlo
had already twice endured, it was peaceful.
He reached the edge, the warming vaginal epithelial. This was as far as he had
planned to go. The stretch, which lay behind him, had tired him. Wrapping his
body in his flagellum, he settled down to rest.
Shortly after separation from the Trichomonade, by whose cell division he came
into being, the first antibiotic war had already broken over Carlo. That time,
he hid himself between two connective tissue cells and prepared to sit it out.
It was long after Mona had given up the treatment that, hungry and exhausted
and hardly able to move a single flagellum, he crept from his hideout. His homeland
had become a massive graveyard of the single-celled. The survivors were despondent,
many ravaged and dying agonizing deaths. The few who remained developed wretchedly.
Only slowly did the blasted remnants of Mona's once blooming vaginal flora regain
their strength. Little Carlo's soul had been crushed before it could unfold.
While bacteria, fungi and viruses are considered plants he, as a protozoa, represented
a hybrid being between plant and animal. Ceaselessly, Carlo believed that he
could sense his own uniqueness. The vast majority of microbes were unable to
move around under their own power. Carlo grew up and soon his girth excelled
than that of even a white blood corpuscle. On an evolutionary scale, he felt
himself closer to more complex organisms such as Mona, than to the creatures
of his own approximate size.
The experience of war during his youth had shaken his very being. He felt humiliated
as Mona had ignored his uniqueness, and equated him with the other creatures
of his world. Only too happily would Carlo have forgiven her for, in the depths
of his cell core, he loved her. Unfortunately, he was unsure how he should make
Mona's acquaintance. If only there was some way to attract her attention. Surely
then she would also have shown him more respect. Maybe she would even have become
his girlfriend? But Mona was too big and Carlo was too small.
Following the second antibiotic war, as Carlo looked out shame-facedly over
countless, obliterated microorganisms, it dawned on him that he ought to at
least try to love all creatures. One shouldn't blame him for this: after all,
Carlo was only a Trichomonade. The attempt to make this look convincing was
the most he could have done. So, following brief reflection, Carlo simply pretended
to love all creatures. This was a clever move from him. He would not have survived
a third antibiotic treatment.
To have understood that one ought to love, is entirely different from loving.
Carlo hadn't loved the creatures of his world between the wars, and he didn't
after. On the contrary, he despised them - it was a deep compulsion in him.
The ground for this seemed to Carlo to lie in the fact that he felt himself
subjugated in Mona's vagina. But then, wasn't it only natural that a Trichomonas
vaginalis might be murdered at any time by its hostess? No, deemed Carlo: his
psyche ought surely to be designed to resist this. But it obviously wasn't.
So, gradually, the obsession with an innate inaptitude for existence began to
burrow into him. Something evil had taken possession of him and would plague
him to the day he died. Carlo saw the proof for this in the contempt, which
he felt for his fellow creatures.
After the suffering of the second defeat an aura of silent wisdom and discrete
grandeur descended. Aristocracy was in, nobility en vogue. The image Carlo had
projected until now had outlived its usefulness. He slipped an all-embracing
indifference over his mental outlook, and created the charisma of a regent or
statesman for himself, knowing this to be equally well-loved among bacteria,
viruses and fungi alike. Of course, Carlo was neither regent nor statesman,
but he gave the impression of standing nonchalant astride the common folk. The
common folk loved that someone put himself above them. Wherever Carlo appeared,
admiration would spread. If one might dare to ask him for advice, he would emit
ambiguous aphorisms as answers, quite as if the questioner was overstretching
his goodness and interrupting him from immensely important and earnest thoughts.
Had it become known what was really going on inside him, he would have been
roasted and served, main course, for supper. Not that his ruminations were in
any way bad, wrong, malignant or a menace to society. They were merely superfluous.
Carlo, however, never said what he thought.
Henceforth, Carlo purported to be convinced that the danger of an apocalypse,
of much greater proportions than the previous wars, was a knowledge firmly anchored
in both his own cell core and in those of his fellow creatures. When one moderated
one's requirements; when one thereby upheld the natural borders; when one would
nourish oneself and multiply measuredly; and when one avoided undue stimulation
of Mona's mucous membranes: then the likelihood of a renewed Götterdämmerung
by antibiotics was low. Even the youth, having themselves never experienced
the terrors of war, ought to have grasped this. Everyone remain tranquil and
prudent and be an example to others.
To all appearances, Carlo lived on worthless molecules, which he absorbed through
his cell wall. Imagining himself to be unobserved, however, his Cytosstoma would
gape open and he would guzzle a tasty microbe. The memory of the hunger during
his early and middle years ran deep. It constantly urged him to stock up a reserve
against coming times. Because of this, Carlo permitted himself far more than
would have been necessary. He was long past an unhealthy corpulence. Carlo found
himself fat and insatiable. His guilty conscience plagued him incessantly. He
then sought and found, in the peaceful acceptance with which he was received,
proof that he was a creature worthy of love. His conduct and the path his life
had taken to this point seemed finally to have been justified. Carlo believed
that the way people treated him must have something to do with how he was. But,
as previously mentioned, he was only a Trichomonade.
Shortly after the first war, the young Carlo began to take off on extensive
journeys. He had criss-crossed his homeland from Mona's rear vaginal arch to
the absolute edge of her inner labial lips. Even back then he found himself
superior to the inconstantly formed Urea Plasmas; to the workshy Herpes Simplex
viruses; to the laughable Donovaniae Granulomates: actually to all the parasites
metabolizing in his beloved homeland. Carlo felt himself more highly developed
than these "plants" as he secretly dubbed them. He considered them,
and soon he knew their wishes and longings.
At that time it was only in his imagination that the world seemed beautiful.
Carlo wished it had been moulded from more sublime ideals. Everything chaotic
and weak, everything, which had uncontrolledly taken shape, disgusted him. To
him, reality seemed sick. He asked himself why such a thing as weakness even
existed and came to the conclusion that superior beings ought no longer to stand
for the existential claims of inferior ones. The existence of the weak was unjust.
Only the absolute and resounding triumph of the superior made true happiness
possible. Before this stood battle. Carlo decided to lead himself and his world
into victory: that is to say, into happiness. All creatures had to comply with
his visions. That, which he had been able to imagine, he felt able to realize.
His ideas meant more to him than anything else.
The widespread bitterness about the suffering of the first war served Carlo
as means to agitate Mona's vaginal population. He understood how to unleash
the rapture of the masses. Helpless, they were taken in by his phantasmagoria.
Following his rallying speeches, Carlo looked out over the hordes of microorganisms
and bathed in their jubilation. But secretly the masses feared him. Carlo knew
their fear. Once he had felt it himself. But infecting others ideologically
alleviated his suffering under the yoke of his own ideas. Only by putting them
into practice, did it become bearable for him to carry these ideas within himself.
Carlo gathered a gang of unscrupulous cronies around himself: a band of Neisseriae
gonorrhœae - aggressive, kidney-shaped diplococcus which would fasten together
in pairs, and who actually filled him with dread as, in their pure malevolence,
they tried to surpass one another - then a unconscionable band of Treponema
pallidum - mean, evil bacteria, formed like stretched out spirals and capable
of moving under their own power. Carlo made these creatures swear allegiance
to himself and, with their help, built up a police apparatus, which controlled
everything. Those who criticized or set themselves in opposition were dissolved
and ingested.
Until the second war and, under changed circumstances, also following it, Carlo
believed himself to be the only one who suffered from the prodigy of his own
powers of imagination. Above all, he believed himself to be alone with his deepest
and most hidden longings. Carlo saw these longings as a personal defect, wantonness:
how happily he would have lived a quiet and unremarkable life. He was ashamed
of this and feared ridicule. He was so afraid that he no longer dared to acknowledge
this most intimate desire.
It was Carlo's plan at that time, to break out of Mona's sexual tract
and, in an unprecedented field maneuver, to overthrow and occupy her body. Under
Carlo's masterful guidance, Mona's illustrious vaginal flora set themselves
to the task of spanning a bridge from the real world into the world of Carlo's
vision, and to traversing this most perilous of passages. They wanted her intestines,
her liver, her heart and her brain. They wanted to take them by storm, to finally
be noticed by her. The vaginal catastrophe could no longer be averted.
Up until the day before Mona was due to mount her second antibiotic attack,
Carlo could be heard screeching across the vaginal forecourt: "Do you want
the Total Infection?" And from the millions of Cystomas rang out the reply,
so loud that the vulva quaked: "Seep - Heil! Seep - Heil! Seep - Heil!"
And then they began to fester an epidemic; a yellowish, foaming emission of
breathtaking stench, so fearful that Mona was immediately convinced of being
seriously ill. She went directly to a doctor, he prescribed antibiotics and
the decline of Carlo's odious and mad obsession was sealed.
Reflection, reverie - Carlo loved it. Now and then however, a tension would
overtake him for, convinced of being able to reflect on his world, he believed
he carried responsibility for it. Was it possible that his intellect was nothing
but a fancy of nature? Sometimes it seemed almost conceivable to him that he
might still have existed, even without an apparatus for conscious thought.
But how wonderful it was, to be well rested, and to look out over the challenging
prospect of a long trek. Carlo stretched his lashes and set out along the way.
First he passed by a graceful clump of fluff. Not far from this was a conglomeration
of lozenge-shaped Clostridia, busily splitting proteins. Noticing Carlo, they
interrupted their work and applauded him rapturously with their drumstick-like
spores. The aura of spiritual greatness and maturity made Carlo unassailable.
He was too small for Mona; he must have understood that. But was there really
no possibility to be her equal?
A helpless Haemophillius ducrei, which was just then being eaten by a Cytophagus,
crossed his path. Carlo assured himself that he wasn't being observed, and quickly
devoured both of them. Then, remembering that he considered himself a think-cell
and not an eat-cell, he instantly shamed himself for his unjust act.
The temple of his personality shone before his inner eye. Not through perception
and dreaming, not through power and victory, no, only by means of his intellect
would he be able to exalt himself to a being, which was Mona's equal. As he
prayed from the broad fundamental of his trials and experiences, his intellect
spanned out above him: a wonderful, high, gable ceiling, supported by intricate
pillars and adorned with figures. Yes, there was a God. This temple could only
be the gift of a God.
But whenever Carlo made it clear to himself that eventually he would have to
die, the elevated feeling which gripped him while reflecting on his personality
would disappear. Could he have spared himself all the trials and tribulations,
all the efforts and struggles? Was all this to be taken irretrievably from him?
Had all the suffering been for nothing? At this premonition of inadvertability,
Carlo's cellular fluids froze his Mitochondrion's. Every death is the
death of an idiot, he tried to laugh in the face of his terror. But before the
last breath left his body, his beloved intellect would have been torn from him.
None of the trusted figures, not the memory of a single pillar of his holy temple
would he be allowed to take with him. He would stupefy - Hung out to die - and
finally, unable to remember his own name, perish. Carlo didn't fear death. What
he feared was the cadence from that for which he held himself, to that which
he held for the dying.
As Carlo rowed along, a white blood corpuscle politely interrupted the encasing
of a Calymmato bacteria within its flabby cell plasma.
Wasn't there a basic discrepancy between existence as he could conceive of it
and the full potential of existence itself? Surely such ill ease with his own
existence could only have grown from a mistake in the adaptation of his soul
for reality? But what should his efforts be concentrated on if life was really
unordered, aimless and chaotic?
The sight of a group of joyous Lysteria brought Carlo out of his flow of thought.
Or did reality only become truth as one imagined it?
A section of Chlamydiae trachomates, which Carlo was rowing past, stood respectfully
to attention.
No, with steely resistance he braced himself against this inevitable fate. But
what could he hold on to when it came to dying? What power-giving quintessence
would be able to keep the slowly ebbing hour of his glory alive within him until
the final moment?
Carlo di Trichonomas vaginalis wobbled on towards Mona's uterus. He wobbled
and he rotated.
Perhaps the answer to all these questions was quite simple. Perhaps all that
was required was for him to pull himself out of this metaphysical swamp and
to return once more to his reveries. Maybe it was all so simple? Overflowing
with emotion, had Carlo been able to produce a tear for this renewed joy-in-life,
he would have cried it.
Just then, clad in a thick condom wall and coated with a stinking, poison-gas-like
spermicide, resplendent in every color and dragging everything with it; a gigantic,
a monstrous, a bellowing, a terror-raising, a pulsating P E N I S spread him
across the Epithelium. His lashes and a major part of his membrane were thereby
ripped off. The gigantic Lindworm raged, tore untethered hither and thither
and ground countless microbes to death. Just before Carlo's cell core
burst that which at this point still remained of him prayed to the holy idea
of an eternal being in the lulling surety of Mona's pussy.