Peter Baltensperger ~ D.C. Weiser

Deux Contes

 

 

Peter Baltensperger

For Some Final Thoughts

 

It wasn’t that Mortimer wasn’t capable of connecting with women, he did that often enough, and quite successfully so. He was very charming, handsome and rich, and outgoing to a fault. Women were his main interest in life, and many of them were immediately drawn to him, butterflies to honey, moths to bright lights. It was just that he could never make the connections last for any length of time, no matter how hard he tried. Whenever he met a woman he was attracted to and who lived up to his standards – intelligent, beautiful, successful – he always felt a strong tie between them right away. He could practically see the solid steel wire holding them to each other, wrapping itself around them like a string around an expensive roast, fusing them into one.

 

His problem was that he could never get the wires to last, regardless of how strong and permanent he thought they were. Some of them simply snapped, usually for no particular reason, some already the very next morning, some after a day or two. The ones that lasted longer than that always began to fray at some point and deteriorated until they couldn’t even have held a cloud together anymore. Some of those he managed to make last over several days, only a few over a number of weeks, but hardly any for more than perhaps a couple of months.

 

It wasn’t that he didn’t try hard enough, especially with the woman who lasted longer than just a few days. He took them to exclusive restaurants and regaled them with delectable dinners and rare wines. He took them to sunny islands to parade them around in their bikinis and bought them exquisite evening gowns. He took them on luxury cruises and spoiled them in any way he could. He even flew them to exotic countries and bought them whatever they desired. They didn’t even have to ask. They just had to admire something or make a casual comment, and whatever it was became theirs.

 

Yet the relationships still didn’t last, the wires always snapped or wore through, and he found himself alone, having to start the whole process all over again. He sometimes wondered if he was just trying too hard, although the women always seemed to enjoy what he was doing for them and with them. At other times, and that was much worse, he asked himself if perhaps he just didn’t want a lasting relationship, perhaps because he was afraid of failing, because he couldn’t handle the responsibility, or because he just liked to be by himself between various short-term affairs. It bothered him to no end that he couldn’t come to any conclusions, or devise any solutions to his perpetual dilemma. He was used to being successful and couldn’t understand why he didn’t succeed in his favorite field.

 

He was mulling all this over in his mind when one sunny afternoon he decided to take his sleek sports car for a ride across the countryside, just by himself and to try and clear his mind. He was driving along a secondary highway watching the landscape go by, the farm houses and the fields and the swathes of forested land, his speakers revved up and thoroughly enjoying himself. He even sang along at the top of his voice with some of his favorite songs.

 

Mainly, he thought hard about himself and the women he had known and the wires he had strung and had lost and why all his relationships always ended the way they did. He wasn’t really expecting to come up with any answers on a drive through the country, and he didn’t, but some thoughts were starting to crystallize in his mind. He was even beginning to think that he just might, someday, come up with a satisfactory solution.

 

He was so absorbed in his ruminations he never saw the pickup truck barreling down a side road towards the highway, a police car with screaming sirens in hot pursuit. He didn’t hear the sirens, either, with the speakers being turned all the way up. He was driving along quite happily, an empty road stretching out in front of him, no other traffic anywhere, no worries or concerns. He was in the middle of the intersection when the truck came charging through the stop sign and rammed straight into him. He felt his car fly through the air, flip over a couple of times, and wrap itself around a hydro pole on the other side. Then everything went blank.

 

The next thing he knew he was lying on a cold, hard operating table somewhere, surrounded by doctors and nurses reaching into his body with gloved hands, muttering to each other through their masks. He couldn’t feel anything and could barely see them, the overhead lights were so dim and getting dimmer and dimmer all the time. For a moment, he had the distinct impression that they were harvesting his organs, but he dismissed the thought immediately. Everything was just very perplexing, all the instruments and the machinery and the blue hospital uniforms all around him, fingers poking at him, his body at their mercy.

 

He detached himself from his disturbing surroundings and thought about how nice it would be to have a caring woman at his side right about then, especially one of those who stayed for a while. And then she was right there, emerging from among the doctors and nurses and coming towards him, tall and beautiful and smiling, an angel of security in a world of confusion. A solid steel wire connected her to him and she was reaching out to him with her hand. She was just about to take his hand into hers in a gesture of comfort and care when the wire suddenly snapped as it so often did and the lights went out. A profound darkness closed around his body and his troubled mind.

 

 

Peter Baltensperger writes from Ontario, Canada.

 

 

 

D. C. Weiser

Holy Canoli

 

            It was a miracle. Father Panini said so himself; and he did not lie. He remembered the day that Benito Artale came to his office carrying a small pastry box in both hands. Benito was the best baker in the Kansas City, Missouri diocese; and pastries were considered far and wide to be his sublime specialty. The baker seemed ill at ease; in fact, he was pale as a sheet and trembling.

            “I have something to show you,” Benito said.

            “Sit down. What is it?”

            Benito set the box down and carefully removed the lid.

            The parish priest leaned forward and peered down into the box.

            “Jesu Christi!” the good man exclaimed. “Cover it up! Cover it up!” Father Panini sprang out of his chair, biting his knuckle, as the baker replaced the lid.

 

            News traveled quickly by arcane channels up the administrative hierarchy of Mother Church. Monsignor O’Kelley got the story from the parish priest. The Monsignor told Bishop Mulligan, from whom it reached the ears of Cardinal Guarneri.

            A colloquy of Cardinal, Bishop, Monsignor and priest peppered the baker with questions regarding the provenance, ingredients and recipe of his extraordinary creation. It was decided that the pastry should be flown at once to Rome for an audience with the Pope.

            When the box arrived at Leonardo da Vinci International Airport in Rome, it was picked up by papal assistant Carmelina Favazza, who was whisked away in a shiny black limousine. At the Vatican, Carmelina’s deliberate stride stole past guards and officials through a winding maze of halls and corridors, the pastry box held firmly before her. Finally, she arrived at her destination: the top floor of the Apostolic Palace. A guard gently received the box from her hands, dismissing the young woman with a nod. As she resumed her usual duties, Carmelina wondered what the sealed box contained.

            Inside the apartment, the guard placed the box on the table behind which Pope Dion sat. “Your Holiness,” the guard said, bowing to the Pontiff, and promptly left. Pope Dionysius II unwrapped the box and delicately removed the lid. What he beheld raised goose pimples and made the gray hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

            It was a chocolate-chip-and-cream-filled canoli, with a golden brown pastry shell, dusted with powdered sugar, about which there was something vaguely odd. When the canoli began to shudder and move, the Pope raised an eyebrow. But when it began to speak, it contorted unmistakably into a canoli shaped like the face of Jesus Christ!

            “Greetings from the MOST HIGH, Giuseppe!” the Canoli announced. “I AM the HOLY CANOLI!”

            “Tell me, Jesu,” the Pontiff began, “how is it that you are able to speak through the canoli, given that it has no organs of speech?”

            The dessert smiled. “I could tell you,” said the Holy Canoli. “But then—I’d have to kill you!” There was moment of uncomfortable silence, then the Canoli burst into guffaws. “I’m kidding!”

            The Pope choked back a nervous giggle.

            “I am Almighty God, Lord of Hosts, Jehovah, Yahveh, the Tetragrammaton,” the Canoli said in a stern tone. “I created the Universe, the Earth and the planets… I can speak through a burning bush, a cataract, a stone, or ANYTHING I LIKE!”

            The Pope was shaken by the vehemence of the Canoli’s outburst.

            “By the way, Giuseppe,” the Canoli asked, slyly suggestive, “how’s Cabiria?”

            That the Pope kept a mistress was shrouded in secrecy. The initial shock of the Holy Canoli’s revelation quickly subsided. ‘Of course, He knows everything,’ the Sovereign of the Vatican City State reasoned to himself. “Jesu,” the Pontiff said at last, “do you mind if I smoke?”

            The Holy Canoli said, “SMOKE ’EM IF YOU GOT ’EM!”

            The Pontiff took a cigarette from his pack of Dianas and set the pack beside the ashtray. He tamped the cigarette and lighted it with an expensive-looking table lighter. He inhaled deeply and let the soothing smoke fill his lungs.

            “How do I know,” the Vicar of Jesus Christ began, “that you are not an emissary of Satan—or Satan himself—trying to deceive me?”

            “Your niece—Giulietta—has Stage III bladder cancer, right?” the Holy Canoli said, rolling his eyes and rocking from side to side. “Her cancer is…GONE.”

            The Pontiff’s mouth opened and closed involuntarily. “May I telephone to confirm that?”

            “Oh, ye of little faith!” the Canoli thundered. “You dare test your God?”

            Immediately a phone began ringing, even though there was no phone in the room. The Pope stared helplessly at the Canoli.

            “Answer it!” the Holy Canoli commanded.

            “How?” Giuseppe cried, baffled.

            “Say Hello.”

            “H-hello?”

            Giulietta’s voice replied, “Hello?”

            “This is Uncle Giuseppe. Has there been any change in your condition?”

            “I’m completely cured!” his niece exclaimed. “The Doctor just called to tell me. It is not in remission…there is no sign of the cancer. It’s totally gone!”

            “Mirabile dictu!” His Holiness exclaimed as the call ended.

            “Forgive me for doubting you but…this is extraordinary, you must admit, Jesu.”

            “Mustard seed, mustard seed,” the Canoli chanted, slightly irritated.

            “Jesu, what do you want of me?”

            The Holy Canoli stood up. “I am here to deliver a message.”

            “Yes? What message?”

            “We’re going to have a little chat about doctrine and faith.” The Holy Canoli proceeded to read Giuseppe the “riot act” on a number of subjects. “For starters, increasing contraception actually reduces abortion.”

            “It-it does?”

            “No question about it. Consult the 2002 Rand study conducted by Dr. Julie DaVanzo published in Family Health International 360. Family planning and contraception are mandatory as the planet’s population approaches nine billion. The safety of all life on Earth depends on it. Had you and Cabiria used some form of contraception, she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant and subsequently needed an abortion. Don’t be a hypocrite, Giuseppe.”

            The Pope’s mouth sagged, his brows furrowed.

            “Besides, I, the Lord of Hosts, am indubitably the greatest abortionist of all…I created the female menstrual cycle. All those quadrillions of eggs—potential life!—flushed away every month.” The Holy Canoli uttered a vast booming laugh. “GET SERIOUS!”

            “Now, about creationism, let me speak plainly: There is NO SUCH THING as ‘creation science.’ Never has been. Never will be.”

            The right eye of the Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province developed a tic.

            “Charles Darwin…He DA MAN, BRO!”

            The Successor of the Prince of Apostles’ mouth twitched once or twice at this.

            “Global Warming, however, is real and man-made, a by-product of the Industrial Revolution…”

            “Another thing you need to know—WRITE THIS DOWN! All primates and most mammals are bisexual, Bucko. I made them so I know these things. I made human beings in My Image and, trust me, I contain both male and female qualities. I even SAY SO in my bestseller, right there in Genesis 1: 27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Of course, it’s not deterministic marching orders. Environmental factors like family, culture and education all play a role in shaping individual outcomes. It simply means that each human being is endowed with a capacity for loving—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—members of the opposite sex and members of the same sex.”

            The Servant of the servants of God glumly twiddled his thumbs.

            “Are ya FEELIN’ ME, Giuseppe? I want you to shape up,” here the Holy Canoli took on a fierce demeanor. “Or else you and your overdressed boob squad and that authoritarian throwback to the Middle Ages you call Vatican City can be stripped of its sovereignty and wealth and turned into a Museum. Which is exactly what it—”

            Having heard enough, the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church lunged at the Canoli with both hands and, stuffing it into his mouth, devoured the pastry in three quick bites.

            “Delicioso!” Giuseppe exclaimed. “I must get the address of that pastry chef in Kansas City.”

            Refreshed from this gustatory interlude, a sudden overwhelming urge to see Cabiria seized His Holiness…

 

 

D. C. Weiser is former weekly columnist for The Kansas City Business Journal and book reviewer at NPR affiliate KCUR-FM in Kansas City, Missouri, where he has lived since 1981i. Novel excerpt "Tzytzyan Ysalane" won first prize for prose fiction at the 2004 Chicago Printers Row Book Fair. He had just finished writing a new interpretation of Bram Stoker's Dracula (for which he is actively seeking a publisher or agent).  Previously a member of Tallgrass Writers Guild (1999-2004), The Writers Place (2005-2008), and the Academy of American Poets (2014-2016), he focuses on the Westport Adult Writers Group. His background, credentials and recent publications at Linked In. Dennis is currently writing his third novel, a mystery set in 1879 Java against the backdrop of Dutch colonial exploitation.