Literature break open thread: Excerpt from "The Persistence Of Memory"

So hey, everyone. My first post featuring my fiction went over so well, and as I'm trying to ignore the ankle-biting from the usual suspects on all sides, and because dammit we need a break, here's some more for you.

The Persistence of Memory is something I began working on a couple of months ago, trying to make sense of where I find myself on the lines of the plague. I'm not sure where it's going, but I like where it is at the moment.

Enjoy, and comments are welcome, bad or good.

***

It seems we have a death-wish.

The ancient East isn’t building hecatombs.

The parvenu West dances with Death.

The East keeps Death waiting on the threshold, not allowing it in, looking at it with a jaundiced eye. We know the measure of you, and you have no dominion here.

The West invites in Death. It makes Death comfortable by the fire. It gives it a blanket, and lets it pet the dog. It makes it a good meal, in which the entire household engages. And then it follows Death out the door. Is it Bergman’s dance of death, or Allen’s? The sacred, or the idiotic?

No culture is immune from Death’s dance. But the West seems beholden to death. Death is something both fearful and alluring.

Stay home and be a good citizen. A good neighbor. A good human being. Or risk death for a momentary frisson. A drink at a bar. A night out on the town. An illicit assignation.

Stadia are filled to the brim in the ancient East, all the spectators wearing masks.

Athletes play with piped-in sound in the West, like old sitcom soundtracks to tell you when to laugh and cheer.

Jesus, Prince of Peace and Life, isn’t King. Death is king. If you ain’t dyin’, you ain’t tryin’.

We will kindly stop for Death.

***

When I go see Mamá, I wear a mask. I don’t kiss her. I don’t hug her. I wave to her from six feet away.

She’s old. I don’t know how much longer I’ll have with her.

The virus is killing her. She’s not infected. But she’s slipping away, not being able to go out, not being able to have visitors. Age welcomes the assist from death.

Will I see her in the After Time? Will she recognize us? Will one of us carelessly infect her?

She and Papá fled one country because it was given over to death. And now, in their place of refuge, their refuge has welcomed death. My freedom, my liberty, my rights, etc. They trump your rights, they overtake your needs. They’re greater than my mother’s.

Every time I go to see her, she asks me what I’m doing.

“I’m working for public health.”

“But aren’t you a librarian?”

“Yes, but the libraries are closed.”

“Why?”

“The virus.”

“Oh yes, the virus.”

She pauses.

“Mijo, what virus?”

“The coronavirus, Mamá.”

“Ay, si, el coronavirus.”

We face each other in silence.

“This year has been awful, mijo.”

“Si, Mamá, it has.”

“And what is it that you’re doing now?”

She’s drowning, not waving.