Chapter Seventy-Six
Gangakanta chased after Eli La Paiva when he spotted the all-knowing one leaving the lunchroom after breakfast.
“Senhor! Senhor, forgive me, but I must ask you something!”
La Paiva’s fist curled, but did not yet strike.
“Senhor!” Gangakanta had reached him, and stood there panting pathetically.
“Yes, yes, what is it?!” He’d felt the need to preserve the common structure of conversation, although all his questions were, in reality, rhetorical.
“I had a dream, last night, of a great war! A war which will sweep away whole cities, whole peoples, and every social convention we know! Tell me, please, I beg of you—is it true?”
La Paiva did not comment on the homoerotic impulses he clearly saw buried beneath Gangakanta’s fetish for theatrics. “You refer to Earth, specifically?” he asked, knowing full well the answer.
“Earth, yes!”
La Paiva shrugged. “Of course. Many times. I would have thought that would be obvious—no, actually, I realise that it was not.”
“But is all not to end, soon, anyway? The universe—God—is the curtain not about to fall on all of it?”
“Don’t be such an ass,” La Paiva dismissed him, and walked away.
Gangakanta stood, wondering. “No,” he told himself. “No, I don’t believe him. He, too, will be blown into nothingness by the squall of a cosmic breath—impersonal, yet reeking with apocalyptic halitosis. He, too, will wisp away, like vapour off a lake. I’m sure of it.”