The Rapist (13 page)

“And how do you see yourself responding to that situation?”

That’s easy. “The same as always. I can’t do anything about it, so whatever happens, happens. I’ll just go my way and react to my surroundings, and someday I’ll trigger something that will send me to yet another state. It just goes on and on until God, or whoever, gets tired of the game and makes me into a grain of sand or a speck of newsprint or whatever He chooses. I’m not involved with any of those decisions as far as I can see. My job is just to be another ant on the ant farm and amuse Him. If I was like the other ants and couldn’t see His Plan, I’d be concerned about staying forever on the farm and serving His pleasure, but I know better. I’d just as soon be out of it altogether. Going through fourteen levels of ant farms doesn’t interest me, but I have no choice. It’s all one and the same.”

“What about humanity? Aren’t you concerned with your fellow humans?”

I look at him. Is he serious?

“My fellow humans? You mean those creatures whose only aim in existence is to gobble up more and more of our natural resources? Or feed their massive egos in the name of ‘knowledge’?
That
humanity? You’re joking, right?”

He looks away for a second and then back. His smile is still planted on his face.

“What about love?”

“Ha! That’s the biggest fraud of all. You’re talking about glands. Organisms controlled by glands. It’s all too silly to waste time arguing about.”

He sits silently for a moment and then says, “Logic appears all-important to you. What if your reasoning is all wet, and there is a Hell to contend with?”

He thinks he’s tricked me, backed me into a corner, but I’m ready for him.

“I don’t think Hell exists, old man. I think men created Hell to frighten other men. It’s not logical. And, if there is a God, then He must be logical.”

“Why do you say Hell isn’t logical?”

“How could a perfect God create something imperfect? How could a pure God create sin? How could He even conceive of it? Has He no control? If He has no control then He isn’t very powerful is He? And therefore, not to be feared.”

I’m wasting my breath, but there is nothing else to do it seems, so I go on.

“On earth, we are taught by all religions that you have to be good and pure and suffer humility and debase yourself at His feet and reach the very depths of suffering before He affords His grace and thereby ‘saves’ you. What this proposes is that you go through Hell on earth to gain Heaven. Or you can make earth bearable and, in doing, gain Hell. Neither is logical. And I don’t even want to get into the concept of Original Sin. That’s a bad cartoon.”

For the first time the old man looks sad. His smile has disappeared for the first time, and his hoary head looks whiter and older.

“Your words discourage me,” he says. “Could it be that God has been misinterpreted by man?”

I laugh. “Well, if He was, don’t you think it’s His own fault? If He’s capable of making mistakes in His designs then can He be God?”

Sober is the way I’d describe the old man’s face at this point.

“I think, Truman, that your ‘logic’ has misguided you. I think that you will learn that. I hope you do. I don’t think you would really be happy to be a grain of sand or a speck of newsprint. I think that what you really are is simply angry. And that is puzzling. No one has ever harmed you, to my knowledge.”

“You think me one of those mindless organisms that spends their life reacting to stimuli? My mother hit me so I hit my wife and kids? My mother kissed me so I kiss my wife and kids? That kind of mindless moron? I am a piece of clay to be molded, my shape determined by other fingers? I have no mind, no powers of reason? You give man the same abilities as God? We can shape others as God supposedly shapes us? Does God give away His powers so easily? To such lumps as most men are? Not a very worthy recipient, but then He created us, didn’t He?”

I set him straight. “What has been done to me or what has not been done to me has nothing to do with what I am.” I am aware I am speaking in a loud tone, my voice rough and edged. “I’m an individual, a unique individual, and I have created myself. I have provided all the definitions in my life, set all the standards, all the behavior patterns, all the thought processes, and I am Me!” My voice rises to fill the universe, echoing, bouncing off the firmament. “I am not a ‘product’; I am a Man , and I am not your piece of pottery clay. If you are God, you can overpower me, enslave me, use me in any way You will; direct me to go here, or there; You can kill me, You can prolong my life here, You can place obstacles in my path, You can remove them; You can do all of this and more but the one thing You cannot do, now or ever—You cannot control my mind or the way I choose to use it.” I stop, short of breath and devoid, suddenly, of emotion. Surprise sweeps over me. I have talked to this old man as if he were God himself. And then I don’t care. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if he is God. It doesn’t matter if he is only a crazy old man on a mountaintop. It doesn’t matter if he is simply a dreamed-up apparition. The truth, my truth, isn’t dependent upon anyone save myself.

He speaks.

“Why did you slay your father?”

“Go away,” I say. “Why do you torment me? I didn’t kill my father. I loved my father. I went to his funeral. It was lovely, beautiful. He was good to me. He called me his ‘little soldier’. Why do you say such a thing?” His words are a lie. I don’t understand his purpose. My fingers are damp and like icicles. I want to wake up. I have the power to wake up, I know I do, but I can’t.

“Don’t you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“You stabbed him with a butcher knife. You cut off his penis and stabbed him many, many times. While he lay sleeping beside your mother. He was naked and snoring. Your mother woke and saw you, and together you buried him in the back yard. Your mother told the authorities he had run off and that was that.”

“I couldn’t have done that,” I say. What is he talking about? I loved my father. It was my mother I detested, all those wet kisses and the incessant rocking and cuddling. Confusion sweeps over me. I can feel the world spinning on its axis. My head is throbbing, and I feel dizzy, disoriented.

I look and the old man is gone. I am seated on my bunk, and I have prison denims on. I am wide awake. I look down at the left pocket of my shirt to see if my number is there. 49028. I mouth the numbers silently, forming each one with my lips.
Four. Nine. Oh. Two. Eight.
I am back. It’s over. Just a dream. A dream of lies. My father died in a car crash when I was nine. It was my mother who was evil. All of that suffocating love. I hear the turnkey approach and know what he is going to say even before he reaches my cell. “Three o’clock, Pinter. You’ve got three and a half hours to go,” and then he is gone, and I’m not sure he was really there.

I’m all right now. I’ll call Mr. Timex back and have him fetch me a cup of that abominable coffee, and I’ll be fine. I’m fine already. If that was God, I think He will be disappointed if He thinks my dream has changed me, made me contrite. Ho, ho. I’m no fictitious Ebenezer Scrooge to be frightened by a ghost in a dream.

Turnkey!

Here he comes, as if he were waiting around the corner like a faithful butler. Heartwarming, isn’t it? Somewhat akin to vultures lying watch just off the dying cow, don’t you think?

Turnkey, I’d like some coffee if you’d please and two aspirins if you’d be so kind. Thank you.

He is obliging to a fault. On the one hand it makes him likable, on the other, despicable. What is it about our species that causes us to dislike the toady who only seeks to please and admire the tyrant who only seeks to crush beneath his heel? It is the strength we don’t possess that earns our respect, illogical beings that we are.

I’ll drink my coffee and cure my headache and lie down to sleep away my final three and a half hours. I shall sleep like an old man dozing in the sun, dreamless and toothless. When it is time to waken, I will take flight, and the adrenaline that flows will be the same as now, no more, no less. My pulse will be steady.

He died in exile; like all men, he was

given bad times in which to live.

—
Borges, Buenos Aires, 23 December, 1946

Chapter Three:

The Future

It is time. I hear their steps as they approach. When they offered eggs and bacon and toast and coffee earlier, I refused, wishing my body free of toxins, even though I craved the coffee especially. I had a laxative and purged myself thoroughly, even to the extent of blowing my nose and clearing my sinus passages until blood appeared on my handkerchief. I am pure in mind, body, and spirit, and am eager for this adventure. Won’t their eyes bulge when away I go!

They are at my cell door now. There are four: two burly guards, my warder-psychologist Lars, and a priest. I am surprised at the priest, and irritated, but I say nothing. I must not become agitated. He mumbles his Latin hocus-pocus, hands clasped piously, rheumy eyes brimming with fluid, and I laugh in his face. He crosses himself and looks nonplused, as if he is used to this from the condemned. I wonder if I am his usual parish. My warder is the one to exhibit his feelings, as I knew he would.

“Now, I shall see you sweat.”

I pay him no attention, just as I do the others. The two guards are twin condominiums. They should know better than fear a struggle from me, but I suppose it is policy. I shrug and leave my cell, a spring in my step. I’m eager, alive. The priest looks crushed. I suppose he expected me to fall upon my knees and beg for last rites or absolution or whatever Catholics do before being executed. I should have asked for a Jehovah’s Witness. I could have made one of them feel welcome for once.

I am out of my cell now (goodbye, cell; facilis  est descensus Averni). There is some Latin for you, priest! My guards flank me, Lars leads the way—confident man!—and my sad-sack priest wanders somewhere behind me, mumbling. I have forgotten him already. We progress to the great double-doors, Lars reaching for them, pulling them open toward us. Just beyond them and to my right is the green door where my rope awaits me (yes, that’s what I’ve decided on). To my left, the alcove. I step through the double doors, take one stride, and then bend quickly to my shoe as if to retie it. There are no shoelaces allowed on death row, as there are no belts or any other instruments that may be used in suicide; my guards know this, but they are simple, and the information escapes them as I have bet it would. They reach for me when I bend, but when they see it’s only my shoe I’m after they relax and straighten back up. I mutter, “Shoe’s untied,” bend, and at the same instant throw my body into the guard on my left, knocking him off-balance. In the same motion, I straighten and charge, like a linebacker coming off his two-point stance, and reach the retaining bar where I vault to the top, balancing for a long second as everyone looks at me in suspended silence. Their eyes are round; I have seen this, and I make my mind blank, clear the brain of all material… and let myself fall. I am free and in the air. I fall too fast; I am not floating. I panic and then right the panic. I force my mind back to the right state, and then I am aware of a slowing down of my rush. I am flying! I will settle softly to the ground, land on my feet, walk around the corner of the administration building to the exercise yard just in front of it, and take off from there into the air and over the thick gray walls. I will go quickly until I am out of range of their firearms; then I will come back, soaring lazily just out of range but still in sight, and then I will return to the front door of the administration building where I will land and calmly await them to recapture me and carry out my execution. They shall be forced to acknowledge that I really do not care what they do with me.

My plan works to perfection, just as I have imagined it. I settle softly on the concrete walk. A perfect landing! I crane my neck and look up. Above me, faces appear over the iron bar I have just left. There is Lars—he is first—then the priest and then my guards. They are all there. I wave to them. Their expressions don’t change. It is as if they don’t see me. I follow their eyes. They’re staring at something at my feet and paying me no attention. It doesn’t matter. I feel a sense of urgency. Soon they will think to sound the alarm, send guards to nab me. I walk quickly out of their sight, around the administration building and out onto the recreation yard. There are inmates all around, yet they do not acknowledge me. It must be obvious I am a new face, but years of conditioning prevent them from showing surprise. I shrug and walk to the center of the yard. I look back. It’s curious. There is still no sign of alarm. It’s been at least three or four minutes since I flew down to the ground and walked out here.

Then, I know why. Flying has become old hat to me, a normal thing. But for my warder and the others it must have seemed a wondrous miracle, an astounding and amazing scene. They’re in shock. I smile and begin my ascent. No one notices! I was standing next to a small group of prisoners when I lifted off the ground and they continued their conversation as though everything was the same. There is something puzzling here, but I don’t have time to figure it out. I must be on my way out of here. Any second now, my warder and the others will regain their senses and sound the alarm, and I’ll be nabbed.