a rational man

by J S Hollis

  clara laughed. she came over to the table and began to rub at the same pink line cecil had been playing with. when she looked up, she saw that cecil was looking at her with the same squint he had used on the rain. “dont be silly,” she said.

  “clara. im serious. perhaps you should see someone.”

  clara normally ignored cecils suggestions that everything wasnt quite as rosy as she liked to pretend. but this time she showed a rare glint of anger. the transformation of her face from laughter to frown was immediate, like she was still practising emotions. “maybe i dont want to change me,” she said.

  “what do you do it all for then?”

  “you know what i am doing it for. at least, i thought you knew.” claras eyes began to well up. she looked back at the recipe, rice n spice stuffed pumpkin, and for a moment appeared to have regained control, but then the tears came and her face ran with them. “im so sorry, cecil,” she said. she sat at the table and began to take long and deliberate breaths, a stress reduction technique she had used for as long as S could remember.

  cecil touched her shoulder and his pupils dilated. he looked at her curiously for a few moments like a bird inspecting an unknown object and then got up. he opened a drawer and its wood lining blotted the white tableau. he selected the santoku knife and then moved towards clara. her hands fell down by her side.

  S still didnt expect what was coming. if not for cecils next action, his parents conversation would have been cut out from the infinite reel of history. instead it became evidence, a prelude, a cause. he flinched when the blade passed across claras throat but it was not as bad as he had imagined it. he couldnt hear the slashing of the artery or claras last gurgle. he couldnt feel claras final thoughts. he couldnt smell cecils hand, the suffocating lavender soap he obsessively washed them with. watching the Event, just watching it, was grim but not shocking. his parents lost their human qualities in that moment. they became two particles smashing together and neither of them seemed to raise an eyebrow.

  it wasnt a murder of passion or jealousy. it was too robotic. but was it cold hearted? cecil was a serious man but he had compassion. was he reacting to claras tears? there had to be an explanation. either he had known exactly what he was doing and it was for a good, sensible reason or he had no idea what he was doing at all.

  S continued to watch as the blood dripped onto the limestone floor. cecil held clara as the artery pumped, the fountain gradually retreating and then he gently placed her head on the table and sat down at the other end. he sat there for twenty-one minutes, looking outside. the knife was left on the table and his hands returned to their sphinx position. cecil only moved when his lawyer called.

  S watched the Event again and again until he could play it in his head. the scene failed to satisfy his curiosity. he needed to understand. he was sure that if he could work out why cecil had killed clara, he would never need to discover another thing. he could just sit back and watch the world go by.

  entry 15

  headaches

  S reviewed his table of cecils possible motives.

  * * *

  motivation (in order of probability)

  comments

  to save mum from depression

  dads consistent argument and the least opposed to my view of his personality before the Event. by most accounts (friends, family, colleagues, loose aquaintances), dad was a thoughtful and kind man. even, possibly, the type of person who could establish a good (as in logically sound and positive) reason for killing someone without really accounting for the public reaction. there is some (but not enough) evidence that mum was depressed: escapist behaviour, tense relationship with dad, a refusal to speak about her feelings. on the whole, psychologists agree that there were signs of depression (but there are contrasting views). the depression argument is suspiciously convenient. why not discuss it? perhaps because public pressure exacerbates mental illness, especially utku syndrome. mums condition may have been made worse if she declared her depression in public. but would dad have rejected that option on her behalf?

  jealousy of mums

  relationship with

  tom

  mum definitely liked tom. everyone thought so. whether or not platonic, dad (as a man) would have been jealous. tom was good looking, younger, successful, spontaneous. mum and dad had been ignoring each other. dads career was on the downturn. his relationship was fraying. i was just about to leave home. dad may have felt he was losing mum and losing everything he had created. like directing a film for fifty years and then finding out the producers have other ideas for the ending. but is this fear or frustration enough? dad was always a moral man. he could be stubborn but no one could find an example of him being aggressive or even spiteful since he was a toddler (with the exception of some sexually explicit text messages). he was attritional. he never had tantrums. his method of disobedience was intellectual. a quick murder was not his style. but maybe in his mind it wasnt quick. he may have been planning it ever since tom arrived on the scene. but why not execute the crime more subtly? off the side of the cliff as the judge suggested. mum was not averse to rock climbing. or was the blatant approach part of dads bluff?

  temporary

  insanity caused

  by concussion

  a few days before the murder banged his head during a squash game. he headbutted the wall chasing for a backhand return and suffered from minor concussion. medical data showed no other psychological issues. brain damage can account for changes to personality. neurologists said the emotionless conduct of the crime was consistent with brain damage. but such damage should still be visible and it isnt. minor concussion was unlikely to transform dad into a psychopath. it could have been a catalyst though. if the idea of killing mum was already in dads mind, the bump may have reduced his resistance to that idea. his internal logic may have been upset. but dad has never said he did not know what he was doing. he has taken responsibility for his action. this would seem to rule out insanity unless he rationalised his action after the Event.

  temporary

  insanity caused

  by stress

  dad carried out the murder as if he were swatting a fly. it was emotionless – almost habitual. implying insanity or cold logic rather than passion. if insanity was not caused physiologically, it was potentially brought on through the development of a psychological disorder. the medical data suggests dad was stressed. his blood pressure spiked just before he resigned. he was sweating more than usual and sleeping less. his facial fidgeting increased just before the murder. this is unsurprising. he had just lost the job he had spent his life working towards. his political career had become an uphill struggle and his relationships were suffering. in the face of this stress, he was unable to turn to the skills that he had always relied on: reason, patience and hard work. perhaps he felt impelled to do something radical. but why kill mum? there were other options. political options. was he trying to prove something? stress is not a sufficient reason. but it may have been relevant in combination with another motive. by clouding dads judgement, it may have led him to conclude that the murder was the right thing to do in light of mums depression.

  to escape

  expectations by

  being sent to jail

  this motive has been supported by opponents of W. killing mum so he could be sent to jail seems far fetched. yes, dad escaped the expectations of society but now his freedom is limited in other ways. he also could have achieved the same aim through other means. dad has always been ambivalent towards the high expectations of society. he often expected a lot of other people and told them so (including me). more likely he wanted to protect mum from these expectations. his mental health may have been undermined by W (recent research continues to support the argument that W has undermined mental health) but this isnt a motive.

  to stop TTT

 
dad was opposed to TTT. the day of the Event, he resigned over the issue, so he clearly cared about it (although if he knew he was going to commit a murder later that day, maybe he resigned because he had nothing to lose). but dad is pretty smart most of the time. and if it is hard to see how the murder would have stopped the use of TTT (as opposed to encouraging it), then why would dad have thought this? unless it was a far more strategic approach, and he thought the pulpit of the cell would provide him with a better opportunity to campaign against TTT.

  to challenge me

  this has the benefit of having happened. i certainly have been challenged by the Event. and i know mum and dad were always worried that i wouldnt achieve my potential. seems a bit extreme, as they could have challenged me in other ways.

  caught up in the

  history of murders

  and murderers in

  pentonville

  dad knew a lot about the history of pentonville. politicians tend to scrub up on the history of their area. he used to point out where the prison used to be (across the road from our place and replaced by rows of windowless tower blocks in the modern style). he knew about the murderers who had been executed there and buried nearby. brueling, bywater, crippen, geraghly, heath, jacoby, jenkins, koenig, kuehne, mertins, palme-goltz, schmittendorf. “they removed the prison,” dad said, “but they left the bodies.” we moved into our house soon after the pentonville redevelopment. some more spiritually minded watchers have suggested that the murderous genes rotted into the water supply and infected dad with their sentiments. they say he had no power over the supernatural.

  mum was using

  mind games to

  further her work

  as a spy. dad was

  hired to stop her

  certain left wing commentators are convinced there are powerful people who live outside of W, who they call “the unseen”. they argue that mullangi worked with spy agencies to create this exception and that both mum and dad worked for the unseen. there are, it seems, different factions within the unseen. mums faction was trying to use mind games to control peoples minds. dads faction was trying to stop her and that was why he killed her. there is no good evidence for this theory. no one has disappeared from W (other than during very short technical glitches) and there have been no reliable sightings of the unseen outside of W. believers in the unseen cite the lack of evidence as the evidence for their beliefs. nothing can prove that the unseen dont exist. there would be some weight behind the existence of the unseen if no one had ever looked for them. but billions of eyes trawl W everyday and they have found nothing. whether or not the unseen exist, i have not found a point at which they could have communicated with mum or dad (of course the unseen are clever like that. they wait until the person is alone and then replace their W image with a virtual person …).

  * * *

  the table was the most concrete thing S had produced after months of working on a reasonable man?, the serialised programme on cecil. it smashed into his eyes like a blazing spotlight. he put his thumb and middle finger against his temples to draw out the headache. it didnt work. he plunged his fingers deeper so that his temples sung out in a more pleasurable pain.

  he couldnt focus on the table. he thought about the hand on his head. he didnt recall raising it or where it had been previously. maybe his life started then with him peering at the table. maybe he was placed on earth with his hand against his head and with some vague recollection of being there before. W could show his life from birth to now but the recording could have been fabricated to produce the sensation of Ss existence. it wasnt the first time he felt like someone had pressed play on his life. and it was impossible to prove that he had really been there before. but what would be the point of fabricating all of his previous existence?

  alternatively, he was in a sequel of his previous life. but if it was a sequel, it felt very disconnected from the original. a loose sequel. a spin off? the same character in a different programme. he had enjoyed the first one more, the family drama. the audience preferred the second programme, the whydunnit coming of age story that partly featured on a reasonable man?. it was the much darker option and S conceded that it was probably better for it. he felt bad for being so miserable about its success. should it matter that his life had to be severed to entertain millions of people? series one S would have said it mattered. each human life mattered. series two S was less convinced. why should he have any proprietary rights over his own life? it was luck that placed him in his body and everyone elses luck that placed them where they were. this was his sacrifice to the community. he should have felt good about it. wasnt that jesus point? sacrifice yourself for the benefit of the whole. but if that was correct, could clara complain about being murdered given the Events entertainment value?

  S swiped the table of motives away and looked up at the stars as they twinkled on his ceiling. the red tinge of one grabbed his attention. he touched it and its name appeared: antares. a ball of gas, light years from earth, had a name. S missed straightforward answers with stable meanings. his mind was wild with unsettled arguments and he worried that, like chess, they would reconfigure his cognitive functions. snap the wiring. twist it. cause headaches and tumours and insanity. how does a person deal with unanswerable questions? why hadnt school taught him how to deal with such uncertainties? there had always been answers at school. even to history and philosophy questions, there had been answers. he had been given examples of the best answers to past exam questions. the conclusion might have been a little bit of this and little of bit of that, but there was a correct amount of both.

  it was not surprising that he had headaches. he blamed his memories for them. they had become increasingly unreliable. take a reasonable man? for example. S couldnt remember why he agreed to investigate cecils motive. he had said that he was searching for understanding but had he really been that stupid? had he been trying to absolve cecil? was he lonely and jealous of cecils fame? had he been trying to prove that the search for a motive was futile? or was he just trying to come to terms with the huge rupture in his life that had been cut open by that kitchen knife?

  he was going backwards. although backwards from where? searching for the motive for the murder, he was now searching for the motive for the search. circles. circles were the only shape that made any sense. or maybe elipses. as he tried to get closer to the truth, he just span around it at a faster pace.

  cecils motive remained elusive. always somewhere at the periphery of Ss vision. S could move his eyes but there was always a foggy edge. he kept pulling back from the Event itself to take in more information. he listened as the presenter of a reasonable man? spoke to his family and friends, to psychologists and neurologists, to historians and cultural theorists. S spent days watching his parents lives, finding themes and then splicing them together for mass consumption. the mise en scène had expanded far beyond the kitchen. more colour, more depth, more characters. it was nauseating, like hitchcocks vertigo effect. zooming in while moving back.

  a reasonable man? had expanded far into the past, beyond the reaches of W and into the informational swirl of cecils formative years. S had listened to interviews with cecils friends, family, teachers, teammates and anyone else who featured in cecils childhood cast.

  * * *

  “He used to arrange his food, you know, like, divide up all the different ingredients, because it annoyed him to see them mix. Then he would eat them in order of preference, finishing with his favourite. I’d always eat my favourite bit first, so I would end up looking at his plate. Maybe we feared him a little. Perhaps we knew there was something wrong about someone so … precise.”

  * * *

  “Did I think he would kill someone then? No! Alice? Only in selfdefence. We all thought he’d become one of those do gooders and end up with a Nobel Prize or something. When we went out, Alice was always on the verge of a fight for b
utting in on some dispute. He must have gotten badly beaten up three or four times. Normally he was just defending some smaller kids against some bigger kids. Was there a bit of sadomasochism in there? Maybe. I think he really couldn’t pull himself away from injustice – it was an addiction of sorts.”

  * * *

  “Sure. There is always a kid you think might one day strangle his wife. At least, there was back then. The ones with slicked back hair and a look that zoned in on the space over your shoulder. I didn’t think it would be Alice though. There are those guys who are trying too hard to be nice. The ones you are suspicious of. Who go out of their way to thank the teachers and compliment you on some insignificant piece of clothing. “I really love your belt.” You would have met those types. Alice was always one of the good guys but I never felt it was anything other than totally genuine.”

  * * *

  “He was a beast on the pitch – he stood at centre back – watching gormlessly as you galloped towards him – static – you always felt you could fly past him – and then just as you inched past – wallop! – the tackle came and it felt like one of those balls – you know those ones you see on destruction sites – wrecking ball, right – had smashed through you – then you looked up and Alice was there, standing as stationary as before, looking at the ball, which was now going the other way. He was a good honest player – not a psychopath – a good guy.”