When people look at him, talk to him, interact with him in any way, Ifram Blest is always surprised to realize that he does not read them at all.
Often, he feels that such a lack of comprehension on his part is a result of his illness, which has turned him into an alienated, excessively introspective man. But he knows, on a deeper level, that that isn´t the case.
Children often show naturally that they have a sort of psychic perception of each other´s inner lives and imagination. That is possibly due to the fact that their memories are still vastly unoccuppied by recollectios of ewxperiences which would make them dissimilar. They are all waiting for life to happen. And, as life happens, their minds begin to dwell on personal interpretations of what occurs to them, and little by little the distance between each other grows, until they become adults, and can no longer see what makes them beings of the same species.
But the moment, pleasnt ot painful or indifferent, is of no import in the end.
The mind of Ifram Blest lingers mostly in eternity. That is to say, while his body deteriorates day after day, imposing myriad symptoms and evidence of ongoing collapse, his mind constantly absents itself from time and flies over a veritable ocean of events, instances and moods that, although faded from immediate reality, constitute the truth of life.
From a window of an apartment high up near ths sun, his mother, as she appears in his memory before she grew sick, waves her hand at him, with a beautiful smile on her face. And who cares if his mother, in the end, hadn´t been so good to him? What really matters, will always matter, is that she could smile at him like that.
It was the same with everybody else, his father, a long time dead but breathing seeply into his dreams, into his mouth everytime he spoke. With his sisters, whom he never saw any more, but who were there in the corners of his world looking at him as he moved into his own immateriality. And the women he had been intimate with. And of course his son, whose eyes contained the calm and fury, and the colours, of a sea of yore.
That everyone hailed from that same sea and that the blood inside us flows from and back to it, he knew beyond a doubt. But then, what caused the cold distance, the misunderstanding, the vast nothingness between people?
A frozen morning begins and the city looks hard, and from no where in it comes any sign of warmth or compassion. People begin to fill the streets and go about their routine with a sort of forlorn tenacity. No body really wants to be there, to do what they do.
At a little coffee shop, Ifram Blest drinks his first coffee of the day. He reads the news on the small screen in the middle of his table. He must read fast, as the lines appear and disappear quickly. The screen, that particular one, is blue, and the letters are yellow. Everybody inside the café is avoiding to look at anyone else. Exchanging glances is lewd a thing to do. Looking at someone more than fleetingly and aloofly is an invasion of space.
Ifram Blest enjoys a far away memory of the days when people used to smoke and there were drunks in the corners. Now everyone must exercisce control over themselves, and physicality in general has to be disguised with the proper behaviour.There is an irony in that, beyond the rigorous manners required of every citizen for the sake of equilibrium and at least superficial harmony, a lot of people like himself are dying silently, of illnesses still as primitive as in the days of old, and of a sadness equally profound and primieval.
And the news are full of horror. He reads that the remains of a murdered man have been found along a stretch of railway tracks, cut in pieces neatly wrapped in plastic and spread at intervals of twenty feet or so from one another.
Ifram Blest feels the beginnings of nausea rising from his guts. But he is hardly surprised, because he knew about this atrocity. Some days before, as he lay half asleep in his dialysis bed, he had had glimpses of a dark figure walking by the railway tracks, in heavy rain, placing those bloody plastic bags on the ground carefully, as if he was concerned with the creation of a geometrical pattern. Of course, he had told the doctor about that vision, or dream, as he was supposed to do with all he experienced while on treatment.

Although Blest liked her, he didn´t really know what she actually thought of him. Occassionaly, while he was in bed getting treated, she would approach and delicately feel his ankles with her fingers. The contact sent a sort of electric wave across his body to his mind. He realised then with some apprehension that the gentle pressure she applied to his ankles was the only touch he had received in years from a woman´s hand. He wondered, in a state of vague confusion, if she felt anything beyond clinical curiosity when she touched him. Was she aware of the emotions he went through, as an ill person prostrated on a hospital bed, as she smoothly checked the lower part of his extremities for possible edemas?. He knew he was strong enough to be able to make love to her, but she probably wasn´t aware of that. She probably assumed he was useless. Her interest in him was of a humiliating sort: she didn´t have the time to regard him as an equal, as a person like herself, but only as a suffering victim whom it was her job to help.
"Your ankles aren´t swollen" she always said" but your skin is really dry. You should rub some Nivea cream on it occassionally"
Her main concern was to psychologically prepare him for an eventual transplant but she understood that, secretely, he wasn´t keen on the idea of getting a new organ. He was afraid of a possible mistake during the operation, of his body rejecting the graft and having to return to dialysis, twice as sick as before, and terrified of having to take drugs to supress his immune system for the rest of his life. In a very profound way, he felt that his immune system had always been excellent. He never really caught colds or other infections. And if he cut himself, he would stop bleeding fairly quickly. That they should annul his defenses in order to force his body to accept a new kidney, that that twisted form of quid pro quo, was at all neccesary if he wanted a chance at survival, seemed to reveal a sadistic streak in the fibre of life itself. It was maddening. And he wasn´t sure that it wasn´t better to accept death than to go through what he saw as a sad and bloody pantomime just to get a chance at a few extra lousy years in a world that had greatly lost its charm for him.
But then there was his child, his little boy whom he saw in dreams every night, and in reveries by day. The hope of being with him again eventually, unlikely as that seemed, prevented him from totally giving up on himself.
" I want to make sure you go into the operating room and free yourself from the machine" said Eve Lawe, looking at his head resting on the pillow as if she were a powerful, beautiful alien speaking to him from above, from a spaceship. And he thought,"I am not a poor sick child, you know? I could make love to you right here and now. It´s probably what I really need."
But she just felt sorry for him. And he said nothing.
Ifram Blest, spectrally thin, wrapped in his long dark coat, walked along the street toward the Red Cross building. Some of the patients recognized him and languidly waved at him. The snow fell in light flakes and it was cold. When Eve Lawe saw him, she went to meet him. She had a look between worried and perplexed.
"It´s not your turn, Ifram" she said "why are you here?"
"I couldn´t sleep, doctor. Just going for a walk"
"They have been calling about you. They want to talk to you." she told him "
" I thought so. Well, they know where to find me. I can´t very well get too far from the machine, can I?"
" We are putting a lot of effort and money to keep people like you alive. You owe it to the state to respect the protocol" She said.
" I haven´t broken the protocol. I just typed a meaningless question on my computer"
"There are names which we are trying to eradicate from memory. They simply inspire discord. Jack Kerouac is one."
"I don´t really give a shit about Jack Kerouac, doctor."
"You tell them that. When you see them. Which you will"
"I don´t care if they unplug me, doctor. It´s all a lie and I´m tired. Even that I am alive is a lie. Not really. I am only half here"
Her eyes were brown, with perhaps the vaguest tinge of green.
"Ifram, your typing that question on your PC is one thing. But they have other reasons for wanting to see you. They have been looking at your case for a while. They know about your visions"
" Why were they told about that?"
"It´s all in the medical records. Of course everything is specified there. And they have found similarities between the descriptions you gave us of what you saw, or dreamed, during dialysis, and the crimes..."
Every one had disappeared into the bulding and the ambulances were
leaving. The street was empty. Eve Lawe began to walk toward the entrance. It was the beginning of the night shift.
Ifram Blest would walk around all night long and go back to sleep at daybreak. The sky at times seemed filled with spiraling simbols of fire, but it was only the Flyers. There were no messages from any god.

THE PERIPHERAL MAN chapter 2

A feeling of nausea came over Ifram Blest as he was walking towards the

portion of street where the ambulances were parked. Acid lights

illuminated a crowd of slow moving, stunned beings who seemed

huddled together against the bitterly cold wind. He recognized many of

them. They were the night group, ready to enter the red Cross building

for their dialysis session. Many of them smoked cigarettes, ate cookies or

sucked on candies. They were of all ages, shapes and colours. Leading

them along toward the entrance of the building was doctor Eve Lawe.

She was a forty something year old woman whom Blest actually found

likeable in more ways than one. She was rather short, with a strong

body, a face which was neither pretty nor disagreable, but rather severe,

although intelligent and in a way expressive of a tender humanity. She

had straight reddish hair and wore eyeglasses. Of all the doctors he had

been forced to deal with since the onset of his disease, she was the only

one who didn´t seem stupid or arrogant to him. She didn´t just babble

from the authority of her office, but actually listened to patients and

endeavoured to communicate. She seemed quite aware of the suffering

Blest was going throug, no only physically, but also spiritually. And he

had to admit that if it hadn´t been for the fact that he was a sick man

and therefore in no position to expect a woman to feel attracted to him,

he would have unveiled to her the feelings of desire and warmth which

she inspired in him.

As he walked up to her, she gave him a short smile, a slightly ironic look.