Mantalo [Ongoing Series]

Oublié

Of what he could recall from his former life, Mantalo remembered the lab most vividly. At least, he thought it was a lab. He remembered those sterile white walls and aluminium treys, lined with peculiar looking instruments. How fondly he recollected those strange silver implements, which glittered so enticingly. The masked “doctors” who peopled this laboratory eventually grew weary of telling him not to touch. Instead, they’d adopted a sort of governed nonchalance. All the while, glancing over their paper-face masks, their strange red eyes glinting, waiting for the moment that he would inevitably prick his finger or shock himself. Then and only then would they wordlessly snatch back their tools. Their shrugged shoulders seemed to say “I told you so.”

You see, he’d had hands then, and fingers. The latter of which, like so many little boy’s, were often adorned in bandages. Still, they had been there, once.

He remembered watching old movies on an antiquated film projector with the head doctor. It was sort of his special treat for the child. The “film-strips”, as he called them, were ancient even then.

The doctor had said something or other about laser rot, and magnetics. He’d tried to explain how film, and tangible recording techniques had inevitably survived the digital media of the 20th century. Mantalo hadn’t understood a word of it.

He remembered their smell though, warm and musty, as each new offering emerged from its dust-laden canister. Those coiled black ribbons, cloaked in all the splendour of an artefact newly excavated. In truth, that’s what they had been he supposed. All of these films were in the doctors’ funny jumbled language, but the slapstick antics of these “Three Stooges” on screen needed no translation.

He grew to love their raucous banter, memorizing snippets of dialogue here and there and reciting it in voice to the soldiers as they passed by on their ceaseless patrol.

Which is the left side?

That's the left.

Which is the right?

The one that's left.

That's right.

 No that's left. That…rrrowwwf!

 

It was a deed that was rewarded with delighted chuckles and pats on the back.

In time, these men’s tongue became his own. While his language might have broadened, his taste in film remained decidedly low-brow. He was a little boy after all, or had been. Knowing his fondness for humour the doctor introduced him to musty old relics of the reel he called “Stand Up Comedies.” In these strange windows to the past, men and women stood jester upon a barren stage. A “microphone” in hand, they did nothing more or less than spool off one joke after another. It was magic. He was fast to add these jests to his every growing repertoire. He’ d had a particular fondness for the work of a man called Rodney Dangerfield.