The Geometer

When Hamsa Berlios awoke this morning, not much had changed. He had taken the precaution of putting a fresh box of chalk on his night stand, so that he could feel the giddiness of being able to use it liberally, and spare himself the frightening prospect of having to go outside and purchase more. Hamsa had figured out how to get out of bed comfortably over the past week or so- finally. Nothing is so geometric as getting out of bed. You don't even need to see a rectangle to feel the horror of your body being oriented in such a way- contorted as if following the contours of a box, but only partially the way round. He turned at an obtuse angle, to face a giddily threatening orientation of rhomboids that he had managed to construct out of his dresser and a broken end table he had found in the alley. This was the most pleasing orientation to wake up to so far. Soon he would grow bored of it, and have to hew something more like an isosceles triangle, or a comely pentagram. If anyone had made asymmetry a way of life, it was poor old Hamsa.
He followed the chalk outlines to the bathroom. The only rectangular objects that he had left unmolested were the top of the toilet, and the sink. He had removed the mirror and the medicine cabinet very, very carefully and installed a nice oval one instead, to trace the contour of his slightly roundish face. That was a dangerous rectangle, a very, very bad one, an awful rectangle that mocked his face- that tried to trap him in its sharp corners- that swung open at him to show him what? MORE rectangles? Empty like his head may have been if he weren't an educated man. What a dreadful, cruel, mocking object, the medicine cabinet; but to strike it would do no good either. It would just shatter and cut him, and then claim the floor! But he had managed some how. It was a great feat, the greatest to confront that thing, to feel ALL of its edges as cold as they could be. But thankfully the ordeal was all over with. He could look at himself safely, and confidently 'That's good, that's really good!' He would say to himself and smile without opening his mouth to see his teeth. How fortunate that there are at least two rectangles that I can cope with, that I can use, he would think to himself. All of the doorways had been altered with bits of scrap wood, or cardboard to make them appear ovular, like him. He had filled the corners of the room with sawdust, or dry concrete, or even salt, to round them out. It hadn't helped very much, so the piles in the corners kept building up, engulfing the feet of the furniture as well. He could scarcely bring himself to read anything, to concentrate that much on something so tyrannically rectangular was beyond his ability, like reading the phone book all the way through would be for a 'normal' person. He had virtually given up on reading, until one day when he found something written on a crumpled piece of paper.
It had been so long since he'd read anything, his eyes wept for lack of letters and his brain atrophied and became sentimental, self-defeatist. He carefully tore the edges off of the paper before letting himself read the words, which even then he accomplished with more than moderate pain. He called its writer, the Encyclopedian:



Before I knew I could talk,
I heard.

Hidden dialects, lost phrases, and angry letters
Soiled, tarnished, unbreathing.

Before I knew my voice,
I spoke.
Proofs, postulates and dead end theories
Railing against nature afraid the flowers would be right.

Echoes of winter yielding to the
Tendrils of an ever invading Spring

Which invarialbly lead back to
Summer’s silent hills, cast in shades of grey,
Shades of the setting sun.

In fabulous gradients,
fading from view

Like a Red paper napkin.


It hadn't crossed his mind in a long time what it was like to see objects such as signs, and screens, and tables, to be in restaurants. Going to a cafe was as foreign a notion as going to the moon! And a date? One might as well try and seduce a giant cock-roach! The only love he had left in his life was for all things ovular. Not necessarily because they were shaped like him, but because as far as he traversed their surfaces, he could never find an edge. Nothing sharp. They appeared to be the exact opposite of rectangles, yet they could still function in their stead. He had taken time to learn how to orient his body against parallelograms. He practiced a kind of body work which he often improvised if he felt his mind try to assemble rectangles where there were none. This is when he used the chalk he now was fondling to offset lines of extrapolation connecting corners had neglected to soften. He would boldly confront his logic like a defiant child to a friendly uncle capable of shocking cruelty and violence. If his life were to remain true and balanced, he had to offset all geometric logic. Triangles were a bad sign, but tolerable, like boa constrictors. He could occupy space, yes share space with them, but how rare they seemed to him to be in the world of men, appearing in natural arrangements.

The poem had inspired him to record all things NON rectangular. He still needed to see objects as they were, not as just shapes. That was simply an unfortunate bi-product of his condition. It doesn't really occur to a person how many rectangles they actually see in a single day, until you start to notice them, the same can be said of germs, and insects, and microbes I suppose. It sort of sets up on you one day, after getting on your nerves, the feeling of something hanging over your head, and a tickling sensation in your nose, your ears ring, your pupils dilate, it's really an awful feeling, not the MOST horrific of course, but bad enough, like bumping a bruise, or biting the inside of your cheek, or a static shock from an assertive door knob, over and over again. It was the first angle that sent the shock, quick, like a prick, but not oppressive. It was the entire arrangement all edges, sharp, perfect, un-collapsible, untouchable. What a primitive urge to flee from them he felt, what dread welled in his heart saved solely for that ubiquitous shape- The Rectangle.
It were as if the whole summation of the world of man and all the horrors he has wrought, and all the denial of his horrors and destructive appetites could be encapsulated simply in a pragmatic design so basic to comfortable life. An abomination, a form aborted by God, resurrected by man to do the devil's work, to let him come and go freely at leisure in plain sight, in signs, upon screens, against walls as shadows with no comfort in their coolness. A cutting board, a butcher's blade. A great stone for pressing a body. That is all they came down to for him. A great shape for pressing a body, for crushing a man's soft ovular form, that can then be washed clean and conveniently put back in it's proper place.