As They Did Battery to the Spheres Intend
By Michael Buozis
From my paternal great-grandfather’s journal. Translated from the Lithuanian by Martynas Jodis of the Latvian Society of Philadelphia, March 2010.[1]
August 14, 1891. Klaipėda (Memel).
My father, who spends all of his time with a bottle of vodka in a room lined with dark brown wood panels on the fifth floor of our building, had not spoken a word to me since I quit school two years ago to work in a fish smokehouse[2] in the western section of the city. He didn’t hear when my mother told him his laziness had caused me to quit school and go to work. ‘But the boy has a great mind!’ My father only screams at my mother. He never speaks to her.
I don’t know why my father thinks I have a great mind. I can read well and have memorized a few Psalms from his Bible, but I have no patience for anything more. I am quiet, and I think this fools people into thinking I am contemplative. It has certainly fooled my father. Still, he does not refuse the herring I bring home from the smokehouse, though he eats it alone in his room.
A week ago, he called me into his room. He keeps a velvet pillow on a wooden bench beside his bed. His name is embroidered in golden thread on this pillow. August. He asked me to sit on it. I have never been allowed to sit on this pillow before. I have seen each of my six sisters[3] sit on it. I have seen them sit on his knee as well, though I can not remember him ever letting me touch him.
‘I have made an important discovery.’ He didn’t look at me when he spoke. He looked out a dirty window and turned an old brass telescope over in his hands. I heard the glass lens shaking in the tube. His old leather chair creaked when he leaned toward the window. The wooden frames of the windows are the same dark brown as the walls. I don’t know how he could ever have afforded such things: the telescope, the chair, the pillow, the windows and walls[4].
‘Astronomy, the study of the stars and planets, every celestial body, I have proven, is based on gravely inaccurate findings, arrived at with faulty tools and measurements.’ I did not speak. I had not spoken to him in years. He shifted again in the leather chair and crossed his legs. The dark suit he wore made his body disappear against the walls, so I saw only his face and hands. I did not move, though the pillow under me was uncomfortable and firm, harder than the wooden bench. The stuffing inside the pillow wanted to push me off.
‘Every astronomer, from the very first, from Ptolemy himself[5], has granted the smallest bits of dust and dirt with the grandest of fantastical identities.’ He looked at my feet, and I stood up before him. The lanterns in the street went out, but I could see the moonlight on his high forehead, the wrinkles there like pig fat, though he is a trim man.
‘Look through this telescope, through this window here.’ He pointed to an especially dirty window and handed me the brass telescope. It was heavy in my hands. I looked through the telescope and through the window. When I turned the lens to focus, I saw a whole layer of spots spinning, refracted into a galaxy of million-armed stars. They moved against a static background of other more distant spots. The lens and the window were both dirty, and I could not see anything beyond the spots and the blanket of night outside.
‘You see. The great astronomers have been identifying the dust on their telescopes and the bird shit on their windows. They’ve been telling us these are planets and stars, bigger than a million earths, bigger than Russia.’ I handed him the telescope. He looked to me for approval, a sign to tell him I understood. The pig’s fat on his forehead began to glisten.
‘You see.’ I did not nod, but bent down to sit back on the pillow. He wagged a finger at me, before I sat. I left him alone and ate herring from the smokehouse with my mother and six sisters at our family table.
[1] I paid Jodis a pittance, since he doesn’t speak Lithuanian. He claimed, however, to recognize enough of the words in the manuscript to write a reasonable translation. Though I’m not sure I believe him, the price was such that I do not have the right to question his work.
[2] My grandfather, the only son of my great-grandfather, must have continued in this profession, as he listed Fish Smoker as his occupation on the birth certificate of his only son, my father, at King’s County Hospital in 1959. I am also an only son.
[3] My father has four sisters. His father had five. I have only one, though I know my mother may have had a miscarriage, and at least one abortion.
[4] I have wondered the same thing myself. I have no record of my father’s family before this document. The telescope especially seems an odd possession for someone with seven children, living in a large apartment building, but I think an explanation can be ventured. Though my great-great-grandfather may have expressed distaste at his son’s chosen profession, he certainly would not have been above, at earlier times in his life, frequenting the same canteens as fishermen from the Baltic Sea. One of these fishermen may have bartered his way out of a drinking debt owed to my great-great-grandfather, and paid him with the gift of an old brass nautical telescope.
[5] We know Ptolemy in fact was not nearly the first astronomer. Men had been looking into the sky with their unaided eyes, unimpaired by dirty windows or the light pollution of cities for millennia before. But my great-great-grandfather brings up an interesting point about perspective. How do we know the night sky isn’t merely some sort of dark mantle pin-pierced a million times to let the light of a candle through to us? Science explains all, but all knowledge is undoubtedly tenuous. Just as I can not fully trust Mr. Jodis’s translation, I can not utterly discount my great-great-grandfather’s wild assertions.
- - -
Michael Buozis lives in Philadelphia. His stories have appeared in Able To..., The Benefactor, The Foundling Review, Foliate Oak, Unheard Magazine and Bartleby Snopes.
By Michael Buozis
From my paternal great-grandfather’s journal. Translated from the Lithuanian by Martynas Jodis of the Latvian Society of Philadelphia, March 2010.[1]
August 14, 1891. Klaipėda (Memel).
My father, who spends all of his time with a bottle of vodka in a room lined with dark brown wood panels on the fifth floor of our building, had not spoken a word to me since I quit school two years ago to work in a fish smokehouse[2] in the western section of the city. He didn’t hear when my mother told him his laziness had caused me to quit school and go to work. ‘But the boy has a great mind!’ My father only screams at my mother. He never speaks to her.
I don’t know why my father thinks I have a great mind. I can read well and have memorized a few Psalms from his Bible, but I have no patience for anything more. I am quiet, and I think this fools people into thinking I am contemplative. It has certainly fooled my father. Still, he does not refuse the herring I bring home from the smokehouse, though he eats it alone in his room.
A week ago, he called me into his room. He keeps a velvet pillow on a wooden bench beside his bed. His name is embroidered in golden thread on this pillow. August. He asked me to sit on it. I have never been allowed to sit on this pillow before. I have seen each of my six sisters[3] sit on it. I have seen them sit on his knee as well, though I can not remember him ever letting me touch him.
‘I have made an important discovery.’ He didn’t look at me when he spoke. He looked out a dirty window and turned an old brass telescope over in his hands. I heard the glass lens shaking in the tube. His old leather chair creaked when he leaned toward the window. The wooden frames of the windows are the same dark brown as the walls. I don’t know how he could ever have afforded such things: the telescope, the chair, the pillow, the windows and walls[4].
‘Astronomy, the study of the stars and planets, every celestial body, I have proven, is based on gravely inaccurate findings, arrived at with faulty tools and measurements.’ I did not speak. I had not spoken to him in years. He shifted again in the leather chair and crossed his legs. The dark suit he wore made his body disappear against the walls, so I saw only his face and hands. I did not move, though the pillow under me was uncomfortable and firm, harder than the wooden bench. The stuffing inside the pillow wanted to push me off.
‘Every astronomer, from the very first, from Ptolemy himself[5], has granted the smallest bits of dust and dirt with the grandest of fantastical identities.’ He looked at my feet, and I stood up before him. The lanterns in the street went out, but I could see the moonlight on his high forehead, the wrinkles there like pig fat, though he is a trim man.
‘Look through this telescope, through this window here.’ He pointed to an especially dirty window and handed me the brass telescope. It was heavy in my hands. I looked through the telescope and through the window. When I turned the lens to focus, I saw a whole layer of spots spinning, refracted into a galaxy of million-armed stars. They moved against a static background of other more distant spots. The lens and the window were both dirty, and I could not see anything beyond the spots and the blanket of night outside.
‘You see. The great astronomers have been identifying the dust on their telescopes and the bird shit on their windows. They’ve been telling us these are planets and stars, bigger than a million earths, bigger than Russia.’ I handed him the telescope. He looked to me for approval, a sign to tell him I understood. The pig’s fat on his forehead began to glisten.
‘You see.’ I did not nod, but bent down to sit back on the pillow. He wagged a finger at me, before I sat. I left him alone and ate herring from the smokehouse with my mother and six sisters at our family table.
[1] I paid Jodis a pittance, since he doesn’t speak Lithuanian. He claimed, however, to recognize enough of the words in the manuscript to write a reasonable translation. Though I’m not sure I believe him, the price was such that I do not have the right to question his work.
[2] My grandfather, the only son of my great-grandfather, must have continued in this profession, as he listed Fish Smoker as his occupation on the birth certificate of his only son, my father, at King’s County Hospital in 1959. I am also an only son.
[3] My father has four sisters. His father had five. I have only one, though I know my mother may have had a miscarriage, and at least one abortion.
[4] I have wondered the same thing myself. I have no record of my father’s family before this document. The telescope especially seems an odd possession for someone with seven children, living in a large apartment building, but I think an explanation can be ventured. Though my great-great-grandfather may have expressed distaste at his son’s chosen profession, he certainly would not have been above, at earlier times in his life, frequenting the same canteens as fishermen from the Baltic Sea. One of these fishermen may have bartered his way out of a drinking debt owed to my great-great-grandfather, and paid him with the gift of an old brass nautical telescope.
[5] We know Ptolemy in fact was not nearly the first astronomer. Men had been looking into the sky with their unaided eyes, unimpaired by dirty windows or the light pollution of cities for millennia before. But my great-great-grandfather brings up an interesting point about perspective. How do we know the night sky isn’t merely some sort of dark mantle pin-pierced a million times to let the light of a candle through to us? Science explains all, but all knowledge is undoubtedly tenuous. Just as I can not fully trust Mr. Jodis’s translation, I can not utterly discount my great-great-grandfather’s wild assertions.
- - -
Michael Buozis lives in Philadelphia. His stories have appeared in Able To..., The Benefactor, The Foundling Review, Foliate Oak, Unheard Magazine and Bartleby Snopes.
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