Читать книгу Malchus - Charles William Johns - Страница 7

I leave at around five o’clock, before my father returns home from work. I walk back the same way, across the common. It is evening now, the sun has set. I walk as if I were slushing through the paint of Wheatfield with Crows. I cannot return to the garage (that is-my garage). ‘It’ is in there. Red chalk and dust is still in the air from when it happened. And only one lock has been fastened. It would only take a homeless man or a drunk to stumble by, see that it is only half locked, prize it open . . . I couldn’t even bare the thought of seeing his reaction-Christ Almighty! It is really only a small lock, no better than a cheap bike lock. And drunk men always sleep in the lots opposite mine. Well where should I go?! What should I do?! I cannot even go to the university, the fashion department. I spent too many nights up in that room, brooding, and it’s all on camera! If men cannot master their own thoughts then these cameras will! I tell you, it is ironic and absurd. Yesterday I was walking down Steep Hill and I became aware of the many cameras attached to the corners of buildings that were surveying me. My free and easy movements were re-oriented by the realization of these looming eyes. I was darting from one side of the road to the other, pathetically pirouetting down the hill. These cameras, from wanting to survey my every move, in-fact determined them! “How has this game helped anyone?” I shout to one of the cameras, looking upward as if I were talking to a Diplodocus. It was only then, with this visceral address, that the camera face turned away. Did I beat it, did I stare it down, or, did it reject me? They do not know my sin. They do not even know what blood is. They just turn their heads about like children or dogs in perennial distraction. However, in the end there is no innate difference between things. In death we are all revealed as the same-nothing.

I dare not even speak to anyone, for danger that I might suddenly spill the whole truth out. But what a wonderful truth it is! A truth that could heal others. But one must hide miracles for fear of being burnt at the stake, crucified. Men have invested too much of their time moulding the world into edible chunks for me to go and ruin such banality with the impossible! For it is true that, the more deeply a man expresses himself and his predicament, the more unreadable he becomes, the more misunderstood he is, the more bizarre he seems, the more reason he should be ‘dealt with’. Truth has a funny way of attaching itself to a person (for fear of being abused and mocked by the masses) and I will stay faithful to its secret. Yes, truths have secrets just like lies. Do not forget that there is always a universe of consequences surrounding the event of a truth. A truth hard to swallow, a truth that cannot be monopolized upon. What an unthinkable amount of consequences for this little beauty of a truth I have stumbled upon.

Like Job before me, I know that in my torment there is a sovereign virtue. I simply must not blurt it out like a child who thinks he is a comedian. So I cannot go anywhere. I cannot go home (to my garage . . . where ‘it’ lies), nor the university (where there is ample tables and chairs for studying, free water and electric heating) because they have their eyes on me. I am stranded because of this truth. All of a sudden I felt drowsy and irritable. It was still hot out even though the sun had settled amongst the trees bordering the golf course in the distance. I decided to continue what I was doing before I arrived at my fathers, and so entered the nearest pub.

I could not think of ever being redeemed for my actions. I could not see where one goes after such a crime either. There was some solace in accepting this however. I may have to sink into a new life, push myself to the bottom like an anchor, settle here in this strange world beyond good and evil, beyond aspiration and ego, beyond the living. But this is the place where most of us dwell on a day to day basis.

I looked at the bar lady and tapped one of the beer bumps with my forefinger. I took too long to collect the precise change and instead decided to give her what I had, covered in sweat, turning my wallet inside out, looking for more coins. I heard a final coin drop from out of my wallet onto the bar. It was a small key that unlocked one of the padlocks to the garage. I felt immediately cautious. I was ready to kill her if she were to so much as glance at it for more than a few seconds. I placed it quickly back in my wallet and noticed she had left a pile of change on the bar for me. She was already serving another customer and there was my pint.

I sat on one of the tables outside and soon felt my sanctity abused by two women, who had just stepped out into the beer garden, raping the world with their laughter, running their fingers through their hair, playing with themselves, turning the universe into something deceitful, pernicious. I was extremely attracted to them. After sitting for a while I got out my notebook and started writing . . .