About a certain return

Part 5

– Oh, you are impossible! Why are you twisting and tossing like this, cause I can't sleep! For half an hour you're turning from one side to the other! What time is it...? Oh, and what a rough day I had today at work! Please, if you can't sleep, go and take a sleeping pill! Oh, what a criminal!

What was wrong with me? A nightmare maybe or maybe not, actually I couldn't fall asleep! "And it's two o'clock in the morning. Rather than taking sleeping pills, I'd better have a coffee at Nelu", I said to myself. Down in the street there is a coffee bar opened around the clock where those who suffer from sleeplessness gather. I got in, "ding-dong", oh how this sheet rings above my head! I made faces and went like this to the bar.

– Nelu, where is Nelu?

– It's me Gina.

– Gina? I don't...

Gina was a young woman that I didn't know; she got in front of me over the counter. It's true that I couldn't see her very well.

– What do you want?

– What do you have to offer?

– Alcohol, drugs, sex...

There was a choice indeed...

– Let's take it with the beginning...

– Grog...

Gina mixes quickly three drinks: Hell fire...

– Oh! Ah! Aaahhh! Strong! Ah-ah! What did you put in it?

– Professional secret.

I could hear the radio... A band melody and the high voice of a chap "... And the Cunkatan area population was known by the fact that consumed whatever moved and even moves. Look what menu offered me one of the most popular restaurants: Rat with Chestnuts and Duck, Roast Rat with Lemon, Sliced Rat Muscle with Worms. Actually the menu list included 30 different dishes of rats, bats, worms, and also Flamed Rat with Sherry along with more common dishes as Hot Flavoured Maggots, Sliced Adder with Melon or Snake with Celery. And during the six month when it was opened, the customers broke into hour after hour at the restaurant called Jialou... In this folder it's shown why the dead body worms represent the healthiest food for the 70's. There it says that they are rich in 16 aminoacids, the vitamins E, D and calcium. Their inclusion into you daily meals revitalize the male sexual activity, cures the untimely ageing, takes back to normal the blood pressure and reduces the throat fluid..."

– This world is full of filthy things... I believe that these are also cannibals... said a man with a cap and spectacles, with a distant look as he was talking to himself.

By coincidence, the chap from the radio that inspired him just said: Right now I take in hand the book of Hari Martin "Eatable, Mysteries about food and culture", printed by Simon & Son two years ago, I'm scanning it and I got to the chapter about "The Populations' Food" and about "The Ritual Meal" of the savages from Botan's caves. It is really about cannibalism. Martin's sources is the testimony of a man who lived such an horror, Straton J.P. in the 5th century AD and left a document later also used by the anthropologist Avram S. in an interesting writing " The Man Eater". Later, Aurelius D., the well-known sociologist, put forward the idea of the barter between civilizations, suggesting the meat import from the savage tribes... The way Stranton JP speaks about these barbarian customs is giving us the shivers, but, isn't it only the repulsion for alien rituals, induced by our principles and laws. It's a theme to think about. Look how this unsurpassed annalist describes the contraction of a convention between two clans, Crane and Arore, neighbouring somewhere in the far south. The contraction is made following an old custom, the chopping of a slave in a particular way. From the top of the head to the midriff a cut in made lengthwise, -a very precise cut in half- then the body is cut, with great accuracy following the first incision, the offer being immobilised by four strong men. One half will be cast in the river by the Crane king messenger, and the other by the ambassador of Arore. After this, the treaty will be considered as irrevocable. It seems that the slave that would next be slaughtered wasn't afraid at all. He was driving comfort from the belief that he will be able in another life to pay back to his executioners with the same cruelty ..."