Oedipus Square Near the Palace

Oedipus Square Near the Palace
      by Dougler Reima

"My adoptive parents changed my name when they found that the authorities were after them and now I am forced to live with this false identity in order to protect them. I've told you some of this before. Why do I protect those who attempt to force on me what I do not wish? Simply, I love them. When I discovered that these were not my parents, Maryanne being not my mother but my nurse, and Philip not my father but my trustee, I disbelieved my ears and decided to go to some office, some officials, to determine the truth of the rumours. Let me tell you, since we are fellow travellers on this awkward road and so you will understand its import, my story as I recollect it. Could you reach me my cup? I forget where I set it down. Thank you! You are so good to me! May God grant you comfort and joy and long life!
        I adored my parents. I was eighteen at the time my troubles began. We--myself along with my parents, brothers and sisters, as well as the extended family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and godparents--gathered in Oedipus Square for Mayday celebrations, nineteen seventy-three, to give our thanks to God, of course, but simultaneously to send Antonia on her way. The wedding had brought many together. When the revels had got well underway, and during supper hour when most had gathered in the hall there around the board, a drunk called out suddenly in a loud voice for everyone to hear his toast. He slurred out a speech I've spent my life trying to forget. 
        'You, Eddy, you think that you're so fine! Living in comfort and wealth, with parents dotting on you their a handsome prince. But . . . these are not your mother and father!'
        The room hushed. I said nothing. I leapt up to challenge him but instead hurried from the hall. Later I confronted my parents. Ivory, thank you. Yes, I, am comfortable. Are you weary of this tale? No? Well, they assured me that the man was speaking foolishness and had no sense of things, that he was witless and that I must not give the slightest credence to the matter. I experienced great relief and believed them. I did, at least, believe them in word. My heart smarted with doubt and eventually I sent a servant to discover the truth at the Vroix. There my fate was sealed. He returned. I listened. I fell ill. I left home. The rest is a long, long story so fell and deep that you will hardly credit it. I had to remain apparently well and sane in order to survive. But really, inside I burned with fear for my future. You know of that yourself, Ivory, I have long gathered from the stories you tell me of your own wild upbringing. Your understanding of the ways of insanity makes my confession possible. 
        How does one live with the sort of prediction my servant brought back? How can one ever again trust oneself in the company of woman or man when it has been told to one by the gods that one will kill the very people one lives most, one by an act of physical violence, the other by one of infamy?
        I fled! Maryanne was not going to become my wife! Of that I felt certain. Though I loved her, I did so with utter purity of heart and mind! She was my mother! And as for Philip, nothing could have induced me to take up arms against that reverent head! So, I did what I had to do. O the cleverness of the gods, Ivory! O the depths of my horror! O the tyranny of youthful hope! I began a life on the road, as I am--irony of ironies--living on the road again all these many year hence. And do you know that I could not die? I think you have already guessed that, Ivory, have you not? That I wished to die then, many years ago? You knew because you have seen it in my eyes, seen that I have visited death and returned with a surfeit of it on my being. Death written on me.
        I had hardly left home when I encountered a group of soldiers on a narrow way. I stood to one side to let them pass. They ignored me and strode by. But one of them, an old, white-haired man, as he passed, turned and pushed me aside, raising his oaken cudgel to strike me. Enraged, suddenly, I wrested away his stave and swung it in an instant at his own head. I hit him harder than I intended, I think, though I have had second thoughts about that since.
        Nevertheless, he fell to the ground and eight soldiers rushed at me with swords in their hands. I still had the dead man's staff and with it I flailed about me. Before one could have said "Robinson Crusoe" all of them but one lay lifeless, the byway littered with their bodies. I had never felt fear, don't get me wrong. I wanted to die! I fervently wished that I had then been killed! But fate had other things in store for pitiful me. As you will hear, death was not my youthful destiny. Thirty years later I am still alive and well and, my blindness excepted, as capable as ever. I believe that I could still inflict similar devastation if need required. My strength remains undiminished over the years. Is that not remarkable, Ivory?
        The rest of my story will have to wait for another occasion. Tomorrow night maybe I will continue it. Do you know where I should relieve myself? Help me to a spot and then I will try to sleep, I think. I am the author of my own destruction, and I know it all. I congratulate myself not on my history but on my knowing. My knowing what I endured and what I must still endure before my long flight is done. You are not my mother are you, Ivory?