The Glutton (Short Story)

Today the menu is slightly different—no more dog-eared zillion numbered checks, no more spick-and-span A4 papers, and no more crumbled cigarettes packets. What we eat today is not the Egyptian papyrus we stole from Österreichische Nationalbibliothek last week. What we eat today is real cash—sweet American dollars, tasty euros, and even exotic drachms, dirhams, and riyals.

Today we can say: what a feast!

Isn’t that what you would say if you had no more food? Perhaps, but the glutton over there, shoehorned between the arms of a leather armchair doesn’t share the same concern. He even glances with disdain at your casual clothes behind the destitute-proof window of the five-starred restaurant you just happened to come across it while he guzzles his morning French café au lait and a large pie, you can’t affiliate to any particular world cuisine, which is eventually unfit for your stomach consumption.

You would spit on him, file a complaint against him, or even drag his fat ass in court for social misfit or crime against humanity if you had the power to.

But it’s only a mindless act of bravado you can never do in reality because the glutton is invincible. He knows the recipe of power; he contributed in making it. And neither your daydreaming nor your wholehearted prayers can dislodge his corpulent body from the armchair.

His family is in power, too; his father owns the restaurant, his mother the pavement around the restaurant, and his brothers the streets leading to the restaurant.

So you realize you are standing on his private pavement; you debase yourself and kowtow to his mighty self; you smile wanly to beg a nod of approval you don’t remember of what. But, he just let out a fart you can’t smell, turn back to the waiter and ask for something else—in a split second he has already forgotten you.

You look away and hope you die before eating paper.