Intense Curiosity

(A vignette, about delicious Peruvian apartment Gossip, 2009)


The tenants, and owners, especially the women folk had started gathering in little groups and stood gossiping by the front door (fenced in with an iron gate) that blocked entrance to the hallway of the apartment building. In the beginning it was occasionally—the voices of one of the women would rise sharp and distinct above the increasing influx of other voices that seemed to hum along like a muttering rain storm throughout the hallway, especially into the first of the four floors of the apartment building and in particular to and through apartment one, where stood the iron gate, between the street and the apartment hallway itself.
The old man that lived in the apartment with his younger Peruvian wife, whom the gossip and noise didn’t seem to bother her, it did surely bother the old poet though; equally, the children that came running up and down the stairway, bouncing their robber balls as if it was a playground, leaving the gate open “for the robbers,” the old poet would say, or “they’re too lazy to close it, why don’t the parents teach them etiquette?” complained the old man, ceased at times, but would start back up again, as if etiquette learned was soon lost to old customs. And there were men folk fighting with their women folk, in which came the screaming, and a few drunken parties, echoing throughout the hallway. And then the loud music came, where he couldn’t concentrate, it came from those apartments (and even from the little grocery store across the street), to the point it towered over his watching television, or even trying to sleep and listen to his soft kind of music, it was the neighbors again, always the neighbors (noise just pure noise, invading the privacy of others, without concern, he’d grumble).
“Stop it!” The old man would yell, confronting them, telling the kids “…you’re going to break your necks if you don’t!”

His sharp little eyes saw most everything, he’d look out his side window (into the hallway), turning back his curtain, by his writing table, the old man pale with age, turned, stood up from his easy chair, walked away—feeling these were his antagonists, his American-Irish temper burning.
His wife went quietly out to investigate, always stirring and asserting herself, and asking the tenants and owners of the apartments to be more quiet, respectful—some always resentful in that—as they said ‘…it is only simply human nature to gossip,’ whenever they could. The habitual silence, or quiet, her husband demanded was a mystery to the concerning and discontented lives of the other Peruvian families in the apartment building, not all but most of them— whom the poet felt, worshiped noise, for it apparently had not affected the attitudes of those others in the building, or if it did, they didn’t say so, perhaps immune to it, or used to it, or too fearful to confront this issues. Actually the gossip in the hallway encouraged others, visitors to think the same way, and they stood now with the gate open in-between the sidewalk that lead to the street, and even gossiped longer. Why they didn’t gossip in their apartments was beyond the Poet’s grasp, it seemed more sensible, more private.

And the old poet thought about this, about this part of human nature, he called it ‘Intense Curiosity,’ something that happens at the moment, without due course of thought, or perhaps it was just pure rudeness. In any case, he now had a desire, a determination to look into this wasteful past time. He even conjured up, a theory:

“Perhaps we become like little animals of the woods, that have been robbed of motherly and fatherly love, thus, this gossip and or intense curiosity to talk, just to talk, and talk on and on and on, and for the most part, say nothing of worthy value, is a hunger to make up for lost time (likened to chattering little birds, or little squirrels chewing nuts); like being starved to near death of food, at one time in ones life, and consequently, never forgetting it, and making sure in later years, it’s there, available for the taking, in abundance akin to keeping it in a storage room, like God keeps his thunder storms. Even perhaps, an impulsive reaction, one can’t stop. ”

This old poet of a foreign tongue, still lives among them, still hears the sounds and chattering of those strange voices in the hallway, and music, in the Juan Parra del Riego housing area, in Huancayo, Peru, where merchants, clerks, lawyers, teachers, and a few well-to-do, others—occupations live, and one American, and he feels secret antagonism toward himself—not due of course to any flow in his own character.


No: 531 (11-30-2009) SA