a squeeze
“First, a gentleman’s dress; linen, an item of jewellery, slightly scuffed but expensive boots. Then, proficiency in a foreign language, an interest in classical music, a knowledge of wine, and most urgently; a healthy disdain for all things contemporary. Some awareness of philosophy, of course…”
This being how our writer summarised his morality during periods of happiness.
But it was different when he arrived home tired, unfocused, or busy, these the conditions which frustrate the calmness of certain oversensitive persons. Then he would put down his moral compendium, perhaps as other men in the same condition will leave their luggage or coat somewhere obscure and thereafter forget having done so. It was not liberation, but a feeling of loneliness familiar to great sinners. It was grief because he lost the person he imagined himself to be, and could not accept who he was. Our writer felt imprisoned between two images, as if he did not exist.
“For what is despair if not to know and be alone in knowing one’s own vileness?” a maid of his household once heard him mutter, “How can I go into the world in good conscience? I say love but what I mean is I cannot be alone. I call it beauty but what I mean is I cannot accept that I am like everybody else. I say life when I mean the image of living… deception! All ends in deception!”
And so it was on this particular night; these same thoughts becoming, in the fog of exhaustion and drink, no more than a dull ache, a sad familiarity with the true nature of his soul. But for whatever reason this time, lying there with his legs over the edge of the bed and his fingers interlaced behind his head, some new and important truth manifested herself like the sun.
“Now that would be honesty!” he yelped, jumping up and hurrying over to his desk. His hand trembled as he rummaged through the various drawers until he found the revolver.
“It’s all I can do to redeem myself!” he whispered.
He put the gun in his mouth.
Someone entered the room and our writer spun around in a panic. Frida the bloodhound, the one the children always conspired to let inside when their father did not come to kiss them, ran over and brushed our writer’s knee. The shot rang out.
He did not know how to use a gun. His finger had accidentally squeezed the trigger.
Frida cried out but before she could dart this way and that as dying animals do, our writer grabbed hold of her and embraced her.
“Oh dear!” he cried, “No… please, my G-d!”
Frida tried to free herself but soon stopped struggling. Her body was still.
Next to his knee lay the unfired pellet. The shot had not touched her. The gun had not been properly loaded.
“It must have slid out before I pressed…” he muttered in bewilderment.
And as our writer rejoiced and kissed Frida’s face and paws, as his late wife Natasha often had done, notes of Schuman’s Sonata floated over the house, and the scent of pumpkin soup carried and reminded him of her, the countryside, and his childhood.
I met our writer for lunch yesterday. He still drinks, but he has the most beautiful smile.