Novel Explosives

715 Pages·2016·5.57 MB·English

by  Jim Gauer

ZEROGRAM PRESS
An imprint of GREEN INTEGER
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First Edition 2016
Copyright ?2016 by Jim Gauer
All rights reserved
Cover design: Miladinka Milic
Book design: Pablo Capra
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Gauer, Jim, 1960-author.
Title: Novel explosives : a novel in 3 parts/by Jim Gauer.
Description: First edition.1 Los Angeles : Zerogram Press, 2016. 1"The
events in the novel take place over the course of a single week,
April 13 through April 20, 2009."
Identifiers: LCCN 2016011346
Subjects: LCSH: Identity(Psychology)-Fiction.1 Experimental fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3607.A9645 N68 20161 DDC 813/.6-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016011346
ISBN: 978-1-55713-436-3(hardcover)
ISBN: 978-1-55713-433-2(paperback)
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
The events in the novel take place over the course of
a single week, April 13 through Ap ril 20, 2009.
The characters in the novel are fictitious, and any
resemblance to individuals, real or fictitious, is deliberate .
To Meredith
"To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life."
LUDWIG WITIGENSTEIN
Philosophical Investigations
PART I
PART I
I
The story of how I came to live in Guanajuato, Guanaj uato,
is a fa scinating one, fa scinating. It is not, however, it should
be noted, right up fro nt, a story th at I am in any way well-
equipped to tell, in the sense, in the very real sense, in th e I'm sorry
to be the one to break this to you sense, that I myself have no idea
how I came to live in Guanajuato . In some such sense of th e word,
I fo und myself one day, living in Guanajuato, as though I'd picked
up a curious object while walking a mountain trail, with no con-
ception whatsoever of how I'd come to be living here, apparently
some time ago, no recollection of whatever chain of events I was
myself at th e end of, and no sense at all of having led a prior life.
I certainly had a prior life; I am, afte r all, in all probability, some-
where in my mid-fifties, and no one comes to be living somewh ere
in his mid-fifties without having had a prior life; it takes ti me in
any case to become of a certain age , time in wh ich eve nts would
no doubt have taken place, even if one can't recall them, and these
events would have made up what amounts to my prior life, so I
had no doubt th at I had one, whatever it had amounted to . The
fine lines and wrinkles that appear on one's fa ce, with th e passage
of time and exposure to sunlight and the gradual accumulation of
certain habitual fa cial expressions, don't just appear out of nowhere
one day, and assume th eir positions around the downturned mouth,
or th e worry-furrowed eyebrow, or the scrutinizing eyes; I had no
doubt th at time, and the pressure of events, and the long narrative
chain of time-sensitive circumstance, had produced th ese lines and
NOVEL EXPLOSIVES
wrinkles I could read on my own fa ce, even ifI myself was unable
to recreate th em. Somewhere along the way, however, the narrative
chain had come unlinked, the chain of cause and effect by wh ich
one set of circumstances gives rise to the next set of circumstances.
I mys elf was a link that was both the end of one chain, one I had
no recollection of, and th e beginning of another chain, of whatever
would happen next. While I don't doubt fo r a moment that my story
must be a fa scinating one, I, to put it bluntly, do not know a word of
it; I fo und myself one day, like finding a link of anchor chain in the
mountains of central Mexico, and not only was th is chain link me,
but I had no way on earth of explaining how I'd come to be here;
as fa r as I could tell, as I stood th ere trailside, I might as well have
appeared out of th in mountain air.
I woke up one morning in a room, as it would soon turn out, in
a small hotel, with no clue at all as to my identity or whereabouts.
I showered, shaved, dressed, using clothing I fo und lying in a com-
fo rtable-looking chair, went down to what was recognizably a hotel
lobby, and was told by the desk clerk, a man almost certainly of In-
dian and perhaps Spanish descent, that the town I was in was called
Guanajuato. I looked around the room, at its warm terracotta floor-
ing tiles, covered with blue, yellow, magenta, purple, and white wo-
ven rugs , at its rough-hewn wooden seating, its paintings, of wildly
colored myth ic birds, hung somewhat erratically on whitewashed
plaster walls, its glassed-in display cases of hand-painted ceramic
plates, its front door fa cing a narrow cobblestone street, a street I al-
most certainly must have walked upon previously, and fo und noth-
ing at all that I recognized, nothing that served to trigger even the
fa intest of memories, of drinking too late, say, at a local bar, of a
wild night of revelry, of buying one too many rounds fo r newfound
companions who were enjoying my company, of discovering to my
amazement th e lateness of the hour, my state of inebriation, my
need fo r a good night's sleep, and having to seek therefore shel-
ter from the cool air of the night. Nothing, as th ey say, came back
to me. There was nothing whatsoever here in th is room, however
warm and authentic it appeared to be wh en I looked around at the
room's belongings , which reminded me of anything of a personal
nature; as fa r as personal reminders go, th e room might as well have
been empty. The room itself, however, fa r from being empty, held