to no fewer than two houses and four cars that he called his very own. He also laid claim to three wives but, as polygamy was, and continues to be, frowned upon in some official circles, he prudently never made a point of bragging too loudly about it to every stranger who crossed his threshold with the intention of buying humus, onions or the occasional lox bagel. And he quite obviously earned more than enough money in his small fiefdom to easily afford not only three-fold matrimony but also regular visits–at least once every year–overseas to that part of his family that was still living somewhere near faraway Odessa or Sevastopol.
Was he thinking global acting local, too, when he worked selling pickles and samovars and baloney and bagels, saving for a lifetime of pussy galore and holiday excursions to the Black Sea?
Was that what it was all about? Was this a reasonable or even feasible solution in this day and age? The deli fellow was an expatriate, just like he was. He was pretty much the same generation, the same heritage and almost even the same spot on the map. The geography and the biographies were superficially nearly congruent and, then again, they weren’t. Try as he might, Niklas never managed to figure out why this was so.
No wonder he was so damned confused. Something in his life had to change for the better soon.
And thus motivated, he decided to solve his problems in the most practical manner that availed itself to him. He elected to turn to God for inner guidance. But in order to do this, he knew that he needed to find good interlocutors.
“Seek and thou shall find,” it says the Bible.
And in the course of an erratic and largely drunken sojourn he actually did one day get lucky: he for once chanced upon an angel and he actually managed to realize it. She was the freshly widowed Jacqueline Lester, Charles’ mother. She was the new twist in his utterly limited sobriety. If he had ever once found himself caught in a rare flash of brief but honest introspection, Niklas Vladimir Bratislav would have certainly had to concede that, if they hadn’t subsequently married, he would very likely be dead as a doorknob by now, afloat face-down in a deep sea of Hundred.Proof.
So everything seemed to be working out OK for him.
This was evidence enough that God must be up there somewhere watching out for him after all, he surmised.
Charles was eleven years four months sixteen days old on the morning that the family locked the front door behind them for the last time and deposited the keys in the mailbox as agreed with the new owners about to move into what had been their home. The brief tinny-sounding rattle and clatter of the key ring hitting the metal floor of the letter box rang like the stunted chime of a cracked bell in Charles’ ear as they left behind their home and existence in New England and together set off on the journey to what would ostensibly be the better life.
As the proceeds from the sale of the house were largely consumed by the outstanding mortgage, they embarked on their journey on that morning with little more than what had remained of Jacqueline’s depleted savings and the small amount of luggage which they were able to carry with them as they traveled. The family was prodded onward by Niklas, in search of himself and what he felt would be their worthy and rightful place in this harsh and unjust worldmonde.Planet. With all bonds now severed, he was at long last in control, viewing himself as a captain of sorts, as being finally endowed with an authority befitting but thus-far unknown to him, doggedly determined that they were going to find this place within this better society he had envisioned and which had been promised him.
He would see this adventure through to the end, even if it turned out to be the last thing they ever did together.
But this time was different. This time, he was dead certain that he would get it right. Their new home to which they were headed would be a just and equal society whose humble denizens were–by virtue of believing in the same God and belonging once more firmly and irrevocably to the same nation–incapable of even the most petty transgressions against their fellow citizens and believers, against nature and, most importantly, against the sacred word as spoken by God.
Niklas’ cherished values would once again be intact.
There would be no more of that post-modern crap.scheiss about diversity, choice or tolerance. Life was once again going to be simple, all about instinct and faith and trust.
And life would finally be just, its rules once more predictable and easily understandable. The way it ought to be, the way he had longed for it to be ever since his departure from Gyurgyan.
They were going to succeed at establishing themselves in an intact society, one that could rightfully declare itself to be safe from the countless distractions and ideological quagmires that plagued the many legions of simple, working people. People who, through no failings of their own, suddenly found themselves struggling or even completely mired down in the travails of a modern life few of them were able to understand.
And there was no mistaking that there was an infinitely long list of distractions to be found in the ever-increasing number of so-called open societies.
But in Niklas’ eyes, he could recognize only one grand underlying purpose behind all of this socialist empowerment and pussy activism that supposedly served to advance the kind of liberal agendas that defined modern life but also constantly undermined his core values: it was all a vicious conspiracy to mask the incessant trivialization and commercialization of daily life.
Their new safe haven would be in the midst of a God-fearing society that embodied nearly Anabaptist notions of community. It would be a safe and secure society to live and work in. It would be one that took great pride in not being meekly submissive to the great number of temptations that steer honest, hardy men and their faithful women astray daily through loud and egocentric demands for ever more involvement in an endless welter of purportedly democratic empowerment. Their new home was going to be a place where fighting back was not only acceptable behavior but actually noble and desirable.
Their new home was going to be a thoroughly homogenous society whose ideals promised to remain easily accessible to him and everyone else. Niklas was convinced that this place was going to be as close to Shangri-La as he would likely ever come in his lifetime.
And life in such a society would surely be a leisurely affair compared to what he had experienced thus far, not unlike that of those renowned Maytag.Men who sit around in the telly.tube all day, every day, waiting patiently, but ultimately in vain, for something to finally break down.
He was going to belong. He would even submit to foot-washing rituals if that would be the price he was going to have to pay for the cherished opportunity to finally live the better life.
It was going to be utterly unlike the rotten rest of this worldmonde.Planet, where collective identity had dwindled rapidly, evaporating in the course of only a few short years. This development had forced everyone and everything to seek refuge in exclusive membership in one or more of an exploding number of ever smaller denominations, as more and more specialized groups engaged in an increasingly public and progressively more secular battle for the general recognition of rights specific only to their own causes. In such an atmosphere, several of Niklas’ friends had convinced him, it was easily apparent that God’s voice was waning precipitously. Indeed, it had almost ceased to be heard at all. Instead, everyone was today claiming some obscure kind of democratic empowerment. Everyone was busily blowing their own trumpet, wanting their particular agenda to be heard first.
There were PTAs and NGOs and bricklayers’ guilds. Deadbeat dads.
Presbyterian Lumberjacks and Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.
There were teachers’ unions and the hearing-impaired.
Automobilists and ecologists and milieuterrorists.
Heteros and Homos and Metas and Metros and everyone else who was lost somewhere in between.
There was serendipity and Scientology and singularity.
Apostasy was rampant everywhere. Everywhere he looked, people were denouncing the faith or on the run from something or someone.
Things had gotten so bad that there were even people united to save humanity from