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41. Lookie! Lookie! Lookie! Here Comes Cookie!
41. Lookie! Lookie! Lookie! Here Comes Cookie!
Next day, Sanya does manual labor. Her concept of the labor is to share unpleasant tasks. She does it because she feels no one should be made to feel that such labor is only for the unintelligent, lower classes. Besides, it is healthy exercise. Labor depends on being able-bodied so the old and anyone weak or ill is excepted. Teenage draft makes up for insufficient volunteers. All able body persons up to 55 are expected to donate 1 day a month and many give more in accord with “from each according” here being according to ability and preference.
Sanya and Kimi do Kitchen Police (KP) supervised by a big, gruff, thick-armed, white-aproned Cook whose real name is buried in the past. The bleary-eyed KP crew assembles in the eating room at a chilly 3AM and starts to wipe tables, scrub floors, clean dishware, peel potatoes, carry water and continue chores that will serve the bright-eyed breakfast eaters at 5. The KPers get their eats just before the breakfast line forms and, after, they serve food onto tray of incoming morning hospital worker and do other chores.
Sanya and Kimi do Kitchen Police (KP) supervised by a big, gruff, thick-armed, white-aproned Cook whose real name is buried in the past. The bleary-eyed KP crew assembles in the eating room at a chilly 3
This is repeated at lunch, supper and midnight snack. At the next 3 AM a new 24-hour crew replaces the old. Grueling, unpleasant work, it corrects the snobbery and misunderstanding of lower class labor found in the intellectual or among the so called upper class. Cook is a hard master and assigns Sanya to the heaviest, most unpleasant chore – scrubbing floor and cleaning toilet. And she rags her with constant criticism. “Damn Cook's hide,” Sanya mutters to Kimi after being publicly taken down for her slipshod WC, “She has it against me because I cannot cure her back pain.” Then to herself she visibly stops the irritable tone and switching says aloud “Three cheers for Cook! She's boss in kitchen and obviously chose you, dearie, because you do the cleanest floors and best WC's. And she holds you to higher standard - a compliment.”
Kimi, not used to hearing someone talk to self, makes a quizzical face. Sanya notices and explains “Sorry, my bad habit. You see I am really two of me: one the first you heard is a selfish little girl spoiled by rich parents and low tolerance for frustration; the other, the hospital's eminent Direktor, a high and mighty personage; impossibly stuffy. Both are me and I balance one off against other. I don't suppose you know the psychological condition, Splitting, which is an illness where two or more disparate types inhabit one brain. We have such in the hospital and I use what I call talk-to-yourself therapy. In sessions, I stimulate the patient to ventilate and get each to speak at length and to record what they say. Then, after several weeks the patient and I sort out the conflicting personas and give names to each. Usually they are opposites, each emotionally tearing apart the brain they share, but once the patient gets aware of each persona as an individual and understands it, she can begin to intrude into its monologs and regain control of her personality. That is cure. Such a patient becomes the most fascinating and creative to be with because the tension of her opposing personas, once in harness, produces high-touch creative energy.”
They scrub the floor after sweeping it clear of loose grime and debris; then they water mop, let it dry and do floor polishing on their knees. The wood floorboards are glisteningly clean when Cook comes by and says “It'll do. Y'may sit an’have yer eats now.”
Kimi, sweat-soaked and muscles aching from unused-to heavy work, eats with a bubbling sense of physical and mental happiness. Her muscle ache has an element of pleasure, her skin is tingling and if the proper detection instrument were available it would have been seen to glow with the aura of being where you are supposed to be and doing what you ought to do.
Kimi, sweat-soaked and muscles aching from unused-to heavy work, eats with a bubbling sense of physical and mental happiness. Her muscle ache has an element of pleasure, her skin is tingling and if the proper detection instrument were available it would have been seen to glow with the aura of being where you are supposed to be and doing what you ought to do.
42. War's Effects
Meanwhile people are starting to starve as the American air & sea blockade tightens. Spotter B-29s fly every day, too high for fighter intercept or anti-aircraft tracer. On Pacific islands – Iwo-Jima , Saipan , Tinian – youths throw away their lives uselessly while the Emperor in his well-bunkered palace puts into effect the first stage in plan for his survival after defeat.
Kimi bulges; she can no longer see her tips of toes upright. Inside her, the new life no longer is satisfied with faint twitching, it boldly pokes where it has not poked before as if saying “Hey! Don't forget me!”
“Give our pregnant sister two helpings breakfast,” says Sanya to the food-ladling ladies who serve the steaming bowls of clear soup and the heaping cupfuls of clean-cooked white rice speckled with surface pieces of dried red salmon
And the bombing gets closer.
Kimi bulges; she can no longer see her tips of toes upright. Inside her, the new life no longer is satisfied with faint twitching, it boldly pokes where it has not poked before as if saying “Hey! Don't forget me!”
“Give our pregnant sister two helpings breakfast,” says Sanya to the food-ladling ladies who serve the steaming bowls of clear soup and the heaping cupfuls of clean-cooked white rice speckled with surface pieces of dried red salmon
And the bombing gets closer.
To read on now, click 11.43 Air Raid Drill - Warning of Things to Come
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