What was most noticeable about the unfortunate man was the smallness of his face, off-centered on a strangely undersized head, itself wrongly proportioned to the lanky, long boned frame of his body. His thin, hunched, overly wide shoulders sloping down into slight listless arms, which lay, one unseen beneath the table, the other immobile beside a plate of food recently set by a waiter, who hesitating for a moment over his oddly misshapen customer, walked away, grimacing at the man's disturbing appearance and annoyed by his seeming indifferent rudeness. A lifetime of sideways glances from strangers hovered around the man, his badly assembled body, a hair shirt of shame given to him at birth, visible to all. He wore it, not as a supplicant but as an exile from the world, a persona non grata, fully aware that he was one of those 'touched by the cruel hand of fate,' so often spoken of, but of whom most preferred to know nothing.
His head, bowed as he gazed into his food, turned slowly towards a table nearby. A stubby, rotund man, to emphasize some point or other, was jabbing a finger at his companion, spluttering his fried breakfast across the table and sprinkling unwanted portions over his companion's French toast. Becoming aware that he was being watched, the fat man turned to retaliate with a smart ass remark, but, surprised by the strangeness of the face looking at him, pulled back and stared wide eyed at his friend. They both turned quickly to the window beside them in an attempt to hide the shock brought on by their neighbor's features, and the smirking laughter which fought to escape through their clenched teeth.
Returning to his waiting food, as though unaware of the reaction he had caused, the fellow picked up a fork and carefully broke his two-egg cheese and tomato omelet into tiny bite sized pieces.
When the last small division had been eaten he reached for a paper napkin, gently wiped his mouth and from under lowered eyes caught the waiter's attention. Again not seeming to notice the silence and averted stares of the diners in his area, as they watched his every move with callous fascination.
A loose strand of graying hair slipped over his right ear. Reaching up he carefully placed it back where it belonged.
Laying the bill in front of the silent man, the waiter concentrated his attention on the various posters positioned around the walls as though only at that moment had he become aware of them.
Placing the exact change on top of his check, and pushing a tip towards the server the man stood up, and moving awkwardly through the tables, all eyes following him, made his way out of the restaurant and into a freshly falling Sunday morning rain.
Walking, with a strange shuffling gait, he made his way towards the corner
traffic lights, indifferent to the wetness beginning to soak through his coat, seemingly oblivious to how quickly people stepped aside as he came towards them.
Standing on the curb, he waited as the lights changed from red to green and the white symbol giving him permission to cross appeared. He studied the small running figure until the lights again changed to red. A furrow formed between his brows as a puzzling thought came to his mind. Why, he pondered, recalling the coarse, boorish man, who, though he had laughed at him, could in conversation spew half eaten food over his friend, and find no fault in the vulgarity of the act?
With the screech of tires brought to a sudden stop, a large, black, custom built SUV slid onto the stop line before him, blocking the view of the advance lights at the other side of the road. Startled, brought back from the thought that had taken him, the man gasped in a mixture of surprise and horror as he looked into the vehicle that blocked his view. For one moment, before it roared off again, for one terrifying moment he had seen in the car's darkly tinted mirror like windows the reflection of a face - his face - brutally organized, amazingly grotesque .
Waves of shock tremored his body as his mind fought with itself like an unleashed demon. He had never before seen his face with such utter clarity! Like a terrible Halloween mask shoved into the face of a child terrified it, so did the face that had confronted him. But with the terror had also come a sickening nausea of awareness - unlike the child, he could not simply turn and run from the mask, the mask was his face!
He knew his deformity, he lived with it, and was aware that it shocked, but for the first time he had really seen the horror of it. Quasimodo, the Phantom of the Opera, the Elephant Boy he was all of them! An abomination! He wanted to claw away his body, his face, his whole being.
He had laughed when he heard the whispers of people who wondered why the earth didn't open beneath him and drop him straight into Hell! They never considered the fact that he was already in Hell!
Oh! Yes, there had been those who taught him not to let such thoughts enter his mind, they loved him, his parents and the doctors. No! They didn't love him, not the doctors.They studied him and they wrote about him and they taught him never to see his face, his deformed body as it was, the reality of what it was. They, in their foolish, cruelly misguided compassion believed he could hide his deformity from himself and therefore from the eyes of others!
People never shrank away from them! What did they know? Nothing! But he learned to know a lot of things. Oh, yes! When he went from his home he learned to always look down as he walked, see only the pavement beneath his feet. Very soon he learned that his strange shuffling gait was not something people did not see, but something they wished not to see. He also learned that people moved aside, away from him when he came near. He was something unpleasant, to be avoided. His very presence offensive!
Whatever defenses he had built up over the years were gone now, vanished as the averting eyes of everyone had for years wished he would. The sudden cruel pain of fully seeing so clearly what he had fought not to see, was despairing beyond measure. He cowered at what he envisioned lay ahead, seeing only endless darkness, a tunnel with no turning and no light at its end. The thin tenuous strength which had been his life line was gone, leaving him to an imagined world of unbearable aloneness. Tears of anger and self pity, hot as the fires he wished upon himself and those who, in unthinking and cruel compassion had built a wall of lies around him, who had falsely pretended to him and themselves it would be his bulwark against the world.
Layers of destructive emotions he had not allowed to surface came surging up from where they had lain, buried for a lifetime; confounding and confusing, throwing him into a maelstrom of doubt and despair.
There was no longer any street he needed to or wanted to cross, no longer any place where he could live a silent, lonely life, hide himself away; for he had seen what others saw - and he shared their disgust and their horror.He truly knew what everybody knew - he was a sad, ugly, tragic thing, a puppet come loose from the strings that had held him.
His head, turning it seemed, of itself, watched as the bus that would take him home came speeding towards where he stood. He began to raise his arm as though to signal it to stop, but instead, stepped into the street, and welcomed it.
Copyright © 2009 by Gordon Wales. All Rights Reserved.
The following bit of wisdom is taken from "The Winds of Sinhala", by Colin De Silva:
One of the most important things in life is to remember that people can only be themselves. You expect them to behave in a certain way. When they do not, your reaction - the hurt, the sorrow, the grief - is indeed the final product of their action. But it is still your own reaction. After all, the same behaviour can make one person laugh and another cry. You will never know whether people try as hard to make you happy as you would like them to, or whether they have tried at all, but you must not blame them for being what they are, merely because it is a disappointment to you.
It is love that enables us to accept people as they are. Love can emerge suddenly, or it can be the product of a relationship. Since its seemingly natural form is with blood ties, such as between parents and children, brothers and sister, we expect too much from these ties.
A man needs to be responsible for others in order to exist.
No comments:
Post a Comment