Unforgiven

by Gabriel Archer



  UNFORGIVEN

  by

  Gabriel Archer & Jack Canaan

  Copyright©2012 MetaFic, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  I’m listening to Metallica’s The Unforgiven. Sometimes I feel they wrote the song just for me. My iPod’s cranked up to drown out -- no, just to drown the world. I’m even singing along, loud enough to hear my own words. The passengers stuck with me on the D train inbound to Manhattan don’t hide their anger well. New Yorkers never do. All they hear is white noise from my earphones and bits and pieces of the song that I moo out.

  See, the thing is, everything in this world runs on a comparative. Once you’ve banged a coked-up super-model, the girls on your block begin to look like sour lemons. Once you’ve eaten in Red Lobster, the road to McDonalds is lost forever. And once you’ve been judged by God, man’s opinion becomes irrelevant.

  Like this fellow sitting across from me: Italian designer suit, slick shoes, and even slicker hair. He looks like a stockbroker or a lawyer or something else equally enviable. He’s got a winning attitude and a drive for success, probably coupled with a slight coke addiction. My poor impersonation of James Hetfield is ruining his morning. He can’t focus on his Wall Street Journal. For a moment I wonder, does he have a brother? He glowers at me, tying to pin me with a gaze that’s disapproving and exasperated at the same time.

  I stare him in the eyes, and he looks away. The song fades off, except that it’s set on repeat, looped over and over again, kind of like history.

  The train stops and, after a few overcrowded streets, I find myself at my destination. It’s one of those Gothic coffee shops. I don’t mean that it’s got medieval European architecture, I mean it’s where unemployed teenagers with black fingernails and dog collars gather to waste their time. They want to be vampires? Congratulations, they are to their parents.

  I find myself almost at home here, a little less uncomfortable than usual. Maybe because in essence I’m the father of the movement. These kids think God is cruel and society is an evil invention where individualism is sacrificed for conformity? I find them all a little presumptuous, because I am the only one who truly knows how cruel God is. The thing on my forehead is burning again.

  The success of the coffee shop hinges on looking as dissimilar to other corporate coffee chains as possible. Conforming to unconformity is the key. I stand behind the counter, serving coffee all day. It’s relatively simple. They want it bitter and black, just like their lives. I always laugh at that. When I got this job a year ago, my boss said it might be hard. No, building the Pyramids was hard, the First Crusade was hard - this is nothing. Then he said it might be a bit embarrassing to serve others. No, The Fourth Crusade was embarrassing, French warfare in WWII was embarrassing - this is nothing.

  On my breaks I smoke cigarettes (praying for lung cancer) and flip through the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s my Bible. Priests, orthodox Jews, devout... whatever, carry the real thing in their shirt pockets over their hearts. I see them reading from it in trains. It’s usually a pocket Bible. It’s an American thing, everything on the go, even prayers. Well, I’m in the Bible, though I’ve never wanted to be, but I’m not in the Guinness B of WR, though I’ve always wanted to be. Irony, huh?

  “Can I get a glass of water?” some girl asks me. Pink hair – how original.

  “Regular or diet?” I ask. She almost smiles. Almost, but not quite. That’s why I love these little emo freaks.

  Every day I send out letters to Guinness. I claim that I’m eligible for at least two world records: I’m the oldest living man; and the first homicide/fratricide. In the beginning, they actually humored me, asked me to provide a birth certificate or at least a drivers license. The Bible is my birth certificate. Ask the Jews, they’ve kept good records of it. Now the Guinness people stopped responding. But I’m thinking that soon I’ll be eligible for a third title - the man most rejected by the Guinness Book of World Records.

  “What’s the difference between those coffees?” a punk with five eyebrow-rings inquires politely, pointing to our chalk menu.

  “The first one is made with fifty percent more love,” I reply without even looking at whatever it is he’s pointing at. The kid frowns, flips me the bird and walks away, mumbling something about me being a jerk. Jerk? No. Attila the Hun was a jerk, that knight that invented chivalry was a jerk - I’m nothing. As the guy vanishes through the door, taking his hipster mustache and faded-to-look-old satchel with him, I wonder if he has a brother. I used to have a brother.

  After work I stop by a cyber café. I just don’t see enough coffee during the day. Ha, ha! I’m kidding, that’s not it. I come here to surf the net, to find reviews on my life and see if the critics/theologians came up with anything new. I type in my name and that of my brother. Nothing’s changed. It’s the same thing. I’ve been the Church’s poster-child for abstinence since its creation. I am the quintessence of jealousy. I am the father of bloodlust. The ungodly man. I am Cain.

  They just don’t get it. Even Moses didn’t get it when he wrote the Bible, and I really tried to explain it to him.

  Here’s what I told him: Able and I were the first two people born outside of the Garden of Eden. I worked my lands and Able grazed his flocks in accordance with the curse bestowed upon Dad. When we brought the sacrifices, God accepted my brother’s but not mine. The Bible says God respected Able’s sacrifice because he gave to the Lord the finest animals he had while I spared the best for myself. That might have been true. But I was never envious of my brother’s success. I loved my brother. I was his keeper. I realized my folly: shortchanging God. He wanted the best I had, something that was dearest to me. Able. He was irreplaceable to me. So I gave God the only thing I’ve ever loved. I sacrificed my kin.

  “Would you like another cup of coffee?” I know all the voices here, but this one’s new. “It’s Venezuelan, we just got it.”

  “How is it different from the previous one?”

  “It’s made with fifty percent more love,” the barista says and smiles. With a grin I turn to look at her. She’s kind of hot; Cleopatra sort of hot.

  I ask her out for some coffee, she agrees. We are the only two people in the coffee-shop not having any. Things are going good, not Golden Age of Athens good, not Renaissance good, but pleasant nonetheless. Since I don’t want to share much of myself, I let her do what girls like to do most: talk. She’s putting herself through school, something about filmmaking. She has a brother. I had a brother too once.

  And since neither she nor I are having coffee, we kind of found ourselves an island of tranquility in a sea of caffeine. High on stimulants, people rush around us like chickens without heads. They screamed at taxis and cursed at drivers. Boisterous laughs devoid of authenticity, theatrical dramas devoid of tears. Welcome to the Starbucks generation.

  We are the only two sane people in the world, just drifting through it all. Soon, she finds happiness in me. We talk. I mean really talk, mostly because I’m not rushing to get into her bed. This isn’t patience. Waiting ten years to sack Troy, that’s patience; waiting for the Second Coming, that’s patience; waiting for God to forgive you... I’m beginning to think that’s hopelessness.

  It really wasn’t fair what God did to me. Every legal system in the world, even before Rome, has laws, precedents, due process. How was I to know that murder was wrong? How was I to know it was a sin? I didn’t get a ‘special viewing’ of the Ten Commandments fifty centuries before they were finally released. Where was my court? Who was my advocate? The Snake? It’s unfair, like the prosecution of the Jews is unfair, like the occupation of Poland in 1939 is unfair, only the unfairness of my fate is exponentially worse. Religions teach that God’s love and mercy is eternal, that His patience is infinite.
Well, so is His spite.

  I had my share of women through the centuries. God knows I was never the one to pass up a good Roman orgy, or a Greek, or a Babylonian one, or... Anyway, for some reason she completed me in a way no one had since Able was alive. Prior to Amber, my life has been one eternal quest to find either God’s forgiveness or death - which in the end is the same thing. Cursed with immortality, cursed to always wander and never to find a place, I have lived with the stigma, God’s burning touch, on my forehead. But now, when she kissed above my brows, she soothed it, cooled it.

  I’m fired from my job. Apparently I broke the company’s unspoken rule about being too cheerful. They said I smiled a lot now and even smuggled in the ever-forbidden GAP catalog. But it’s not like I need money: I still have gold doubloons from the Rum trade. It was just something to pass the time.

  That’s the problem with immortality. Eventually you get tired of trying to kill yourself. Now, I only do it when they invent something new. Strapping myself to a cannon didn’t work, neither did swimming in napalm. I’m really looking forward to lasers and something a little more wicked than gamma radiation. After a few centuries you come to grips with the fact that you will live, and so, you do.

  Each society marvels at its own creativity, sophistication, and contribution to the world. In the end, they’re just fancy Xeroxes of each other, except the original is always so much clearer, so much crisper. So I passed from copy to copy, always marveling at my own contribution to the world – murder. I can’t say I was very creative. I used a plain old rock. However, the next generations invented nothing new. So they used metal, or explosives, or gas, but it was still plain old murder. No one can take that away from me, and so I keep sending copies of letters to Guinness Book of World Records. Copy of a copy.

  “You’re a good man, Adam McCain,” Amber says and puts her head to my chest, listening to the drum-roll of my heart. I told her my name was Adam. In the last few centuries I’ve taken to using my patronymic. We’re just lying on the grass knoll of Central Park. People are jogging, bicycling, walking their dogs, playing catch, Gatorade, PowerAde, Coke, stimulants, exciters, caffeine. But we... we just lie there, watching the clouds lazily mount each other. I take mental notes.

  She said I was a good man. No, I’m not a good man. Abel was a good man, Jesus Christ was a good man, Ivan the Terrible was a descent man - I’m nothing. But my punishment is still cruel and unusual. It doesn’t fit the crime. The invisible brand on my brow is burning again. ‘Cain’s Stigma’ they used to call it. People always want to be touched by God. I was once, and I never want to feel anything like that again.

  Caffeine-less minutes turn into adrenaline-lacking hours and those to sugar-free days. I take it slow and easy. Not because I’m afraid to rush it, but because it’s so pleasant. I want our relationship to feel like an embarrassing moment, to feel like it lasts forever. If I have to spend infinity alone, maybe I can spend an eternity with Amber. Now, at times I forget Able, at times God’s curse - the divine migraine that He bestowed on me - doesn’t burn at all. At times I can swear I can see wrinkles and gray hair. Am I aging? Is this a fairytale? Did I just need a kiss from a princess?

  I think I love her more than anyone else, maybe even more than Able. I almost feel like a regular guy.

  I set aside the seventh day to be our special day. I light candles. There’s wine. I make her dinner. It’s a good one unlike the Last Supper, or Alexander’s the Great last poisoned meal. Amber is amazed when she sees the table. She didn’t know I could cook. She also doesn’t know I speak over eighty languages – unfortunately, most of them are dead. I take off her coat, I pull out a chair for her. The night progresses slowly, casually. We eat. We drink. We laugh. Able who?

  I take her in my arms and carry her to the bedroom. I have sprinkled the bed with rose petals - unoriginal but certainly tried and tested. I kiss her and steal her breath, spreading it along her body as I undress her. She’s shivering with anticipation. So am I. Who’s unforgiven?

  Then we get to know each other, in the biblical sense of the word. I’m on top. With every stroke we moan but never tear our eyes away from one another. She moans and writhes. She professes her love for me. She gasps and trembles and screams in ecstasy. My heart swells with eternal, infinite love. I’ve never sensed anything close to this. I’ve never had anything more precious than this moment. My forehead’s burning. Is it excitement or is God trying to tell me something?

  I look up. I want God to realize exactly what I have. Then I bring the rock down on her head. I want God to realize exactly what I’m willing to give up for his forgiveness. I bring the rock down again to make sure the sacrifice is complete. This time it has to work. I’ve given God the most precious thing I’ve ever had, even more precious than Able.

  Wiping off blood, I start praying the prayer of forgiveness. I speak it in my most favorite language, the same tongue my parents spoke, the language that preceded modern Hebrew and thousands of its variations. Once again, just like the first time, I’m naked and crying, talking to God, begging God. This is true repentance. It’s not Galileo before the Inquisition, it’s not fake witches repenting in Salem - this is for real.

  I’m listening to Metallica’s The Unforgiven. Sometimes I feel they wrote the song just for me. I sing the lyrics out loud. The denizens of Istanbul stare at me. They don’t speak English, and my rasping voice frightens the children. Turkey’s always been a good place to relax, like Rome under Nero or Sodom and Gomorra before the destruction. I especially loved Constantinople during the Byzantine period.

  Now that I think about it, perhaps I imagined something that wasn’t there with Amber. Maybe she wasn’t the most precious thing I could find to sacrifice to God; maybe I only thought she was. Again, like the countless thousands of others before her, Amber did not sate God’s hunger. And again I wander the Earth, my stigma burning, unforgiven. And it’s all so unfair.

  But this time it’s totally different. This guy I met here, we’ve really become best friends. Like Caesar and Mark Anthony, like George W. Bush and Tony Blair. This guy, I would die for him... if I could. I’ve never met a better person, someone so precious to me.

  I’m going to meet this fellow for a game of soccer.

  This guy, he’s like a brother to me.

  An Excerpt from

  ASHES OF HEROES

  Book One of the War of Regret Series

  By Gabriel Archer & Jack Canaan