The Rapist (9 page)

“I know what it is you truly want… ”

Without warning, he raised his arm above his head and smote the table that separated us. The hair in his nostrils flared like a flower opening her petals. “Enough!” he shouted.

My voice was low and confident when I spoke. “You seek understanding. You have a great fear that I am right in the way I view existence, and if that is true then you are a farce and your life with it. A great sweat boils in your brain at the possibility, waiting in dread for a proof that will show you to have been a lie, hoping that my words or actions will trip me up and make me the charlatan, not you. You are doomed to disappointment, and in that lies your hell, and it is that which you fear. You pretend love and compassion for all creatures and claim that is the basis for your interest, knowing in your secret black soul that such feelings are a fabrication of a restless humanity, never attainable simply because there is no such thing. I am Truth, the only truth you have darted to encounter.”

And you are looking out of hell, not into it when your eyes lock with mine.

I saw an unholy light flare in his eyes and knew he’d received my thought. A look of pure horror passed over his features, and then he shook his head briefly, violently, as if to shake away what had just passed between us.

He just sat there, a lump in his chair, struck dumb by my eloquence. He wants a game, I thought; I’ll give him such a game as he’ll wish he’d never entered the fray.

“See? Your upper lip gleams with moisture. Ha-ha! Let us go on. I have cast my plug and you see it. Part of you is in fear and part is mesmerized. I am a different kind of fisherman than you know. You will recognize me at the end, but it will be too late. You are too dense to see it. My bait is out there, swirling against the current; I do not retrieve it. It is not my way. I will allow you to execute me, as I say, but it will be done in such a time as I decree, not you, and that is all I’ll say about that. Remember our conversation, sir. One day you will remember this and know.”

That was the terminus of our conversation. I stood up, and still he said nothing, only sat there, shaking his head side to side. I was taken away, escorted by the guard he summoned with a button on his desk, feeling triumphant, but in a strange way, as if I had just been engaging in a one-sided conversation with the Mad Hatter.

After I was pronounced guilty at my trial, they led me back to my cell to await sentencing. Where I was raped by another inmate on the thirteenth day of my imprisonment.

Do you suppose my attacker to now be in the cell next to mine awaiting the same fate as I? No, he is not. I mentioned to my jailers at New Haven what had transpired, but to no avail. The general reaction was laughter and the follow-up was the comment that what “goes ’round, comes ’round” sort of theory, that I had gotten my just deserts as it were.

The rape itself was unimportant. I felt nothing during it other than wishing he’d speed it up. Oh, a brief thought flashed through my mind questioning my manhood for submitting, but I attributed that to childhood conditioning and passed it on. The man, a burly rustic with missing molars, threatened my life with a razor blade ingeniously fashioned into a weapon by melting a toothbrush handle and affixing the blade thusly to it, but I didn’t submit out of fear for my life. Prolonging my existence by a few weeks or months by trading for passive submission seemed like a poor bargain, but the pain and agony of a slit throat seemed a poorer one, so I selected what to my mind was the lesser of two bad choices. Everything considered, it wasn’t that terrible of an experience. I certainly don’t know why people get upset about it and want to take people’s lives for it and castrate them and boil them in oil and so on. As I say, I recall impatience as the chief emotion; I just wished to hell he’d hurry things along.

There was another feeling: Hatred. Not for the physical act of rape—that was no more significant than the rubbing together of elbows. No, what was despicable was that he was socially beneath me and performed an act upon my person without my permission. I would have felt an equal repugnance at his rushing up and grasping my hand with the intention of shaking it. If he had been above me in station, as I was to Miss Carlyle, the deed would have been innocuous, but he was decidedly inferior and therefore, his action unconscionable.

It hurt, certainly, but then so does a fishhook in the thumb, and of the two the former offers the lesser discomfort, and the fact remains that the memory fades as any tender feeling does, after ejaculation.

I tried to compare this experience to when I was the aggressor, but it doesn’t translate. One was male to female, superior to inferior, and the other involved inferior to superior, male to male, making it akin to comparing the infamous apples and oranges.

I wish to waste no more time discussing this. In the scheme of life, the incident matters very little. If you choose to view it as some sort of poetic or cosmic justice, then by all means do so, but leave me out of it, as I cannot subscribe to such an insane idea.

Such a philosophy reminds me of an incident in my teenaged years. A neighbor lad would go round and round the neighborhood shooting sparrows and other birds with his BB gun. Warnings from all the women on the block to the effect that someday he would “put somebody’s eye out,” failed utterly to deter him. One day, he was run over and smashed by a milk truck and these same women went about, clucking their tongues against the roofs of their mouths and saying in pious tones, “See? I said he would come to no good.” As if one led to the other. As if their God sat in Heaven, looking down on his ant farm from His super roost and upon espying such behavior yanked the pipe out of His mouth and shouted, “Damn it, that damn kid shot another one of my sparrows! I’ll fix him. I’ll send a milk truck around to squash him!” What kind of philosophy is this? Deity by Loony Tunes? This is the kind of hysteria you get when society begins to believe in the gods it has created. After a time, God begins to take on the worst qualities of humanity and to raise them to exalted new heights.

Here comes Mr. Timex with my coffee. It should help me to get to sleep. My metabolism is such that stimulants work in the opposite fashion. Coffee renders me drowsy.

Now that was quite pleasant. For once, he didn’t announce the infernal time. Probably forgot and when he realizes his omission will be back with his bulletin. And did you hear his words when he left? Always the same. “Have a nice day.” Ugh.

This coffee is execrable. I never took sugar or cream before coming here, but this stuff needs a disguise. What I would give for some good chicory
.

They brought a Catholic priest by last week to talk to me. What a boor. If I were stupid enough to belong to any religion, organized or no, that would be the last one I’d choose. All that bead twisting and mumbo-jumbo with the hands. I would think Catholicism to contribute greatly to the spread of arthritis. All that time on their knees, you know? Bad for the joints.

You didn’t think me capable of a joke, did you?

The time has passed pleasurably here in my cell. I prefer solitude and this life suits me. There are a minimum of distractions; before today, Mr. Timex’s visits were not as they are now, as the sands of the sea, and meals were brought to us, negating the need to visit the prison dining room, which they insist on calling a “chow hall” —I keep having a mental picture of rows of dogs sitting upright and eating Gravy Train from metal trays with Queen Anne silverware. Like Pythagoras
, I eat no beans, so my diet is diminished, but then I have never required much in the way of sustenance, having a marvelously efficient machine, so there is no hardship there.

I read from the limited selection; currently, I am on the Russian, particularly,
The Possessed.
My choice was prompted partly by my circumstance and partly by my warder. You will think this odd, but my literary tastes are quite eclectic. I jump about from Balzac to, say, Goyen, without missing a beat. I keep my life ordered, my pleasures diverse, and thus have led a structured but exciting life, not without some element of spice in the sauce.

I am allowed a walk twice daily in clement weather, accompanied usually by Chuck, one of the guards, or “hacks” as they are referred to by the inmates. My promenade is always the same. Out of the cell, north along the corridor past three other empty cells, through the big double doors (barred, as are all doors and windows), past a smallish open-air alcove, opposite of which stands a small green door, through another big double door, toward an outside ramp that leads to an open-air concrete exercise area, walled on all sides, measuring fifteen feet by twenty-five.
 I am giving an estimate; I have stepped it off and calculated the footage, but this seems accurate. We are still four floors above the ground here, and my exercise yard is the flat roof of the administration building. There is one place, when we pass through the first double doors, where the walk juts out a foot or so that is open, guarded only by an iron rail that stands waist-high. On my first walk I strolled over and peered down the side; it plunged five stories to the ground and resembled looking down an elevator shaft, the edges of the surrounding buildings creating a seventy-five foot long rectangular tube. I got only a cursory glance at it, as the guard clutched my arm and hustled me away from it, not being familiar with my personality at the time and fearing a suicide attempt. The guards talk about that danger at times and all agree it should be boarded up, but theirs is a prison mentality, just as much as the inmates’, and until someone higher up orders it done, it will remain as it is, I think.

That alcove holds another fascination for me. The green door that stands on my right as I pass the doors is where the gallows are housed, and I am permitted to peek through the tiny barred opening whenever I please, to view the interior. It is a simple room, roughly thirty by forty feet in diameter by my guess, and there are three gallows, their ropes suspended from the ceiling directly over a stage. The ropes, at present, are attached to sandbags. I have already requested that my noose be the one to the left of center. My choice is a humorous one. The thief Christ forgave was to his right and I feel not that need. If I opt for the gallows over the firing squad (I am still vacillating between my options) I considered selecting the center gallows, but that would have given Lars grist for his attempts at psychological chess, so I will defer, although secretly, I have a preference for it if that is the way I must end. At the present time, I think I am leaning toward the gallows rather than the bullet.

Chuck, my guard at these times, is a likable, though simple man. He is mannered enough to call me “sir” and from time to time brings me treats his wife has baked. He knows I am fond of oven-baked bread, and his wife is an absolute genius at this sort of cookery. Somehow, he manages to get it to me while it is still warm, and the only obstacle to this delight being truly perfect is the absence of a cup of good chicory
 coffee.

One day, as we took our parade in the courtyard, the clouds opened up and a heavy rain erupted. This made Chuck nervous, as they are under orders to hasten us inside during such weather, the fear being we might catch pneumonia and thereby thwart the hangman (or riflemen). They are obsessive about this possibility. I pled with him to allow me the pleasures of the elements and he relented, even at the peril of losing his job should his superiors discover his laxity. This, however, endeared the man to me, and unbeknownst to him I have made him a codicil to my will, leaving him the princely sum of one hundred thousand dollars. The addendum is written in my own hand and secreted in my cell.

I was drenched in a second and it was marvelous. The temperature dropped to about forty-five degrees and was exhilarating. Even though Chuck had committed himself, and I could have remained out in the downpour for my allotted time, I took pity on him and volunteered to come in after only fifteen minutes. His relief was so visible and marked, I had to chuckle.

We went directly to the shower area where I stood under a scalding hot spray for a long time as Chuck looked on.

After, he did a thing that could easily have cost him his position. He walked me down to the prison dining room and got us both a cup of coffee and a Danish roll. The hall was deserted except for two or three convicts clad in white coveralls who were sweeping and mopping some distance from our table, cigarettes dangling from their lips.

“Truman,” he said, ladling spoonfuls of sugar into his cup. “Why did you do it? I mean, you’re not the usual kind of guy we get in here.”

I smiled at his question. Like all innocents, he categorized people, and when someone happened along who didn’t fit their box he was flustered.

“I was framed,” I said, playing.

“Shoot!” he laughed. “I read your file.”

“Okay,” I countered, “what do you think, then?”

“I think,” he started, and then paused, furrowing his brow into wavy lines, “that you’re some kind of genius that doesn’t belong anywhere. I’d say you’re like movies I’ve seen sometimes where the main guy has been miscast. Like a comedy that isn’t funny because the hero isn’t. I mean, the lines are funny, you can see that, but you don’t laugh because the actor doesn’t say them right. It’s like he’s in a different movie than the others.” He stopped again and took a deep breath, looking up obliquely at me. “That’s you. You’re in a different movie than the others.”

I know I showed my amazement. I couldn’t avoid it; he had caught me completely off balance. This simple prison guard had shown more depth of understanding, more sensitivity to the human condition, than all of the psychologists, behaviorists, and psychiatrists I’d encountered put together, with their framed degrees, lists of tomes read, conferences attended, and affected mannerisms of studying you over the tops of their glasses as they posed their insipid questions. In his straightforward way, he had cut through the subterfuge and claptrap and identified the truth. At that moment, I felt closer to that man than I had anyone at any point in my existence. It was then I decided to include him in my will.