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••• The International Writers Magazine - Dreamscapes Fiction

Staring Contest • Russell Helms Intellectual sparing one blink at a time ...

The two contestants, although I had read their minor works, struck me as just being old men. Being six, anyone over twelve struck me as old. My parents struck me as old, of course, but they were not farfetched people. Dad liked chocolate ice cream. Mom liked strawberry. Both chewed only half a piece of gum at a time, which still infuriates me. He designed the interiors of passenger trains, she illustrated children’s books, and both held a riveting interest in illuminated texts printed prior to 1501, incunabula as they are called.
            When I was four, there is the vague memory of the fire at the circus. I remember the haze and a sharp smell of burning tires and singed camel hair. Mother, father, and I escaped unharmed, and I recall being so taken with the adventure that afterward in pre-school I drew fat clowns with little conflagrations erupting here and there on their polkadot bodies.
            At five, I sang along with Captain Jack, a law enforcement version of Bozo the Clown, with such dedication and fervor that my parents signed me up for one of the live Saturday morning shows. No video remains that I know of, but there is a single faded photo. In it, I’m standing and waving a plastic nightstick, towering over the good boys and girls with a look of violent rapture.
            At age seven, I broke both arms falling from a switchback on a steep trail in Oregon. In my eighth year, I developed allergies to cats. Halfway through my ninth year, following a minor traffic accident in Prague—when my father walked in front of a moped—I witnessed firsthand the shock and glory of the nude female body. The catalog continues: lost in a labyrinthine network of catacombs in Rome; eating half a coconut pie on a pool raft in Macedonia; watching a man cough blood at a TB sanitarium on Sakhalin Island. All memorable events courtesy of my down-to-earth and incunabula-loving parents, but none as curious as the staring contest between the taciturn philosopher Sartre and the self-effacing metaphysical fictionist Borges.
            The staring contest (and that is precisely what it was) we learned about at the snappy University of St. Gallen, revered by my parents for its proximity to the famous Abbey Library of St. Gall and its devastating collection of printed medieval texts. As the story goes, my father was in the midst of a decade-long rapture with a circa tenth-century manuscript of fear and lore set in the Glagolitic alphabet. A folio from said manuscript resided at the Abbey.
            Being the not-farfetched people they were, my parents merely stumbled into the staring contest. This would have been 1969, my sixth year as I mentioned earlier, and Sartre would have been 64 and Borges 69. It was mother who learned first of the event between “Jorge” and “Jean Paul” from an invitation card found on a reading table in the University of St. Gallen library.
            The contest was to take place in the Abbey Library of St. Gall located in the center of the city along the Klosterhof, where among other deliciosos resided the Codex Sangallensis 18, an uncial manuscript of the New Testament dated to the ninth century AD. After checking our persons at the main entrance, we sauntered into a two-story hall, the ceiling covered in frescoes and gilded knobbie-wobbies towering over a patterned parquet floor. The smell of vellum, my father said, was magnificent. Mother actually cried, gazing at the rare books behind sparkling glass. I stood apart, examining one of the special display cases housing a folio of the Codex Marianus, on loan from the Russian State Library in Moscow. Just beyond was a table with a pitcher of water, two glasses, a small silver bell. A small crowd already gathered.
            Mother, who was lithe as balsa wood with burnished brown hair, wore a tidy red dress with a gathered waist and black belt. Father wore his usual corduroys and a light wool sweater. Outside, everything was green, green, green, with a bright welcoming sun looking down on the city. Me, I was just me, a pinched brow I’d been told, sprayed with freckles like mother. I was wearing a hideous pair of maroon shoes with buckles.
            The contest was scheduled for 10:30 and there was an air of excitement in the crowd, most wearing turtlenecks and smart dresses with students in jeans and colorful sweaters. A few old professor-types with long beards stood about with hands behind their backs. Mother and father had weaseled their way to the inner circle, and I slid among the bodies soon joining them.
            There was a stir and a few on the outside began clapping, and the crowd parted. A tall thin gentleman wearing a linen blazer and horn-rimmed glasses preceded two older men, who I presumed were Sartre and Borges. Borges was first. I knew that he was blind, and he was being gently led by a woman with Asian features. My parents began clapping, and then so did I. I suddenly realized I had to pee, but I didn’t want to miss anything. A staring contest no less.
            Borges was as tall as father, about six feet, and wore a radiant blue suit with what seemed a fancy tie. His hair was graying, going on white, and I noticed most his droopy right eye. A slight smile lingered on his lips, as if he had already won. I wondered about the fairness of a blind man in a staring contest. Sartre was surprisingly short. His dark hair was neatly combed back, and he sported a black suit with a black tie. He wore black-framed glasses, a mole on his right cheek. He seemed all business and kept looking up at the painted ceiling as if it was his first visit.
            After the applause settled and each had taken places opposite one another with the table between them, the tall thin gentleman cleared his throat and spoke. He announced this was the third in a series of staring contests, the last being a victory of historian Peter Laslett over novelist Mikhail Sholokhov, the battle having taken a mere ninety seconds, ending when Sholokhov sneezed. He then announced the rules, which were just as I expected. The two were to stare at one another without blinking. The first to blink was the loser. He then introduced the two, noting that Sartre had refused his Nobel Prize and that Borges was most certainly next in line. He then asked if the two would like to comment on the occasion, gesturing first to Borges. His companion tugged his sleeve.
            Borges spoke only a sentence in Spanish, which I did not understand, but later learned from mother was something akin to “Man creates man in his own image, using only his imagination and dreams,” a possible reference to his story “The Circular Ruins,” which father had memorized. Next was Sartre, and he too was brief, speaking in French. I had hoped that he would say “Hell is other people,” but his line was more or less “Let’s get it on,” which created a titter in the audience and once explained to Borges, brought a smile to his face. The contest would begin and end with the ringing of the bell.
            The tall thin gentleman then leaned over and gave the bell a quick rattle. The contest was on. I couldn’t help but dart my eyes back and forth between the two solemn faces, looking for the blink. Borges had narrowed his eyes, his right eye nearly closed. However, Sartre seemed to have widened his, taking on the appearance of a bird with large pupils. The crowd remained silent. A complete absence of sound ensued, with all of those books looking on. I imagined that the books were holding their breath and soon realized that it was I who was not breathing.
            I glanced at my Cartier watch and noted that a minute had passed. The two men resolutely held their ground, staring not at each other, but in each’s general direction. The woman with Borges fidgeted, a look of alarm on her face. I glanced up at mother, and it was as if she were watching a beheading, a frosted look of horror that someone would have to lose. After two minutes, both men shuffled their feet. Borges touched his nose. My mind wandered, thinking of the sun on the Acropolis and of a milk candy I’d had there. For some reason, I shoved my hands in my pockets.
            And damnation! The bell tinkled at three minutes and forty seconds. I had missed the blink and first looked to father, but he had forgotten me I think, and it was him who began the applause. There was a stirring of bodies, and before you know it, Borges and Sartre were headed back down the long hall, no doubt to have a pint at a local pub or to perhaps catch an aeroplane.

© Russell Helms - Jan 3rd 2025
Chattanooga

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