a rational man

by J S Hollis

  “stanHOPE, stanHOPE, stanHOPE.”

  his ignorant heart accelerated at the sound of his name. this was cecils crowd. the car stopped at the crowds edge and told him to continue his journey on foot.

  S got out and the protestors turned to face him. messages beamed out from their shirts but the phrases became disjointed as the crowd shifted.

  they began to chant again, “free cecil, free us, free cecil, free us.” their arms beat the air.

  soon they had engulfed him and a small circle of people looked at him, unsure whether he was an invasive body, a cancer, or one of their own. “excuse me,” he said while bowing his shoulder into gaps, navigating his way towards the prison entrance.

  cecil was a giant, dwarfing the furniture and filling the long room with his dormant potential. he was dad.

  S felt guilty for forgetting him. he wished he hadnt come.

  they embraced before any words were spoken. S felt his fathers warm cheek against his. they lingered there. the prison officer caught Ss eye and then turned to face the floor. S pulled away from the embrace and sat down.

  cecil inspected S from above. he touched his face like he was looking for a flaw in the fabric. “are you well?” he asked.

  “im well,” S said.

  “you look pretty pale.”

  “cold outside.”

  “i see fame hasnt increased your fondness for the spoken word.”

  S formed an uncomfortable smile and watched cecil take his seat. cecils gaze returned and S couldnt hold the stare. his eyes diverted to the matted steel table.

  “so how have you been?” cecil asked.

  “fine, getting on with uni. you?”

  cecil looked around him, at the rehabilitation courses and health and safety warnings that scrolled down the walls, at the empty stalls and empty tables that pockmarked the room. he looked back at S. “id rather not be here,” he said.

  “the political stuff is going well though?”

  “i suppose so. viewing figures are good and some wealthy people have realised the error of their ways.”

  “you know some people think youre a political prisoner.”

  cecil laughed and then coughed. “maybe i am.”

  “i went to some protests.”

  “i saw. well done. but you stopped?”

  S rubbed the gap in his left eyebrow. “yeh, busy, you know.”

  they both knew it wasnt true. S couldnt stomach the protesters certainty.

  “im pleased you came to see me,” cecil said. “ive missed you.”

  S nodded.

  “what changed your mind? do you need something?”

  S was on the back foot. he had wanted to be subtle. talk about the pain of the programme. gain cecils sympathy. now he felt sorry for cecil. his chair scratched the floor. “no, i dont need anything,” he said. “i just, couldnt really remember …”

  “remember what?”

  “oh nothing, just i came, thats all.”

  “well, im pleased.” cecils eyes dropped for a moment, like he had remembered somewhere else he needed to be. he snapped out of it. “your programme, hows that going?”

  “going around in circles a bit.”

  “no surprises there.”

  S rubbed the surface of the table with both hands. it was cold and a little rough. “have you been reading my journal?”

  “no, i thought you might want a little privacy.”

  “privacy?”

  “you dont want your dad reading your every thought, do you?”

  “yeh, but then i wouldnt have written them down.”

  “was there something you wanted me to read?”

  S couldnt tell cecil what he had written. the words sounded silly and confused when given vocal form (“see, ive been having these headaches”). he sat up, his pulse thumping against his forehead.

  “actually, i do need something.”

  “sure, go ahead.”

  “so you know how, on the programme, we have spoken to everyone, looked at everything and so on. the only person we havent really spoken to is you and—”

  “sorry, son,” cecil said, “but im not doing interviews.”

  “yes, yes. i understand that. i want to do something different. something much better than that.” S planted his arms on the table. “i want to see your thoughts.”

  “see my thoughts?”

  “yes, so we can prove you are telling the truth.”

  cecil raised an eyebrow. “you want me to endorse the technology that i quit politics to oppose,” he said, “to prove my own mind to myself?”

  “exactly.”

  “i cant do that. id be a fraud. listen to the protestors.”

  S listened and could hear them chanting, “think, dont track.” he scavenged for his anger. he looked for it in his fathers eyes and saw nothing at all. only space. the eyes were not black or green or white. they were empty collectors of light. holes. they were lifeless. unlike cameras.

  “you wouldnt do it for me?”

  “it wont answer your questions anyway.”

  “thats fine, at least id know that.”

  “are you sure it wont send you spiralling in another direction?”

  S wasnt sure. uncertainty swirled round and round his mind like the rings of saturn. rings of debris, of thoughts constructed and pulled down in seconds, of wanting to be S and not the son of cecil, of the struggle not to wonder what other people were thinking of him, of wanting to be himself without a memory of his past, of wanting to be good but human, of his fragmented answers to unanswerable questions.

  “im sure,” S said.

  “do you really want to rob me of my only remaining freedom? and not just me, yourself and potentially the whole world?”

  “no, but what about my freedom?”

  “do you think your mother—“

  S slammed the table with his right hand.

  “you need to stay calm, mate,” the prisoner officer said.

  S raised his hand but his body remained tense. then he lowered his hand and gripped the front of the stool with two fists.

  “dont bring mum into this. just do this one thing for me,” S whispered. “you have a responsibility, youre my father, for loves sake. forget your inviolable beliefs for a second. your bloody ethics. just do this for me and ill never ask you why again.”

  “you are being selfish.”

  “selfish? this is a proper sacrifice. all you have ever sacrificed is something you like, for something you believe in. thats not a sacrifice, thats a choice. do something you dont believe in for a change. do it for someone else. do it for me, your son. take a risk on the possibility i might be right about something for once.”

  cecil didnt respond. his eyes looked down and his body twisted, diminishing its size, like a python coiled around a branch.

  S rested his elbows on the table, exhausted. he expected cecil to pounce but silence prevailed. S could hear it bouncing back and forth between him and cecil. it screeched. he had no words to break its reverberations. was cecil waiting for an apology? S watched his father. he would sooner have left the room than have said another word. he feared a word would kill one or both of them.

  the spring of a door handle. S looked up, surprised to see the world continued beyond the table. a young man entered the room, not much older than S. his hair fell down onto his shoulders in the cashkillers style. a style that Ss curls refused to follow. the young prisoner walked past their table with a heavy gait, teasing their silence.

  “alright, cecil,” he said.

  S saw cecil twitch his head in response and the young prisoner continue on and eventually slouch onto a stool at the other end of the room. he returned his gaze to cecil.

  cecil had begun to uncoil. he sat up, uncrossed his legs and let his hands fall onto
his thighs. his shadow crept across the table and his eyes locked onto S.

  “ok, ill do it,” he said.

  “ok,” S echoed back. he held back a smile but his cheeks remained taut, forming a smug grin. “and sorry for the outburst.”

  “get out of here before i change my mind.”

  “dont you want to chat?”

  “whats left to chat about?”

  S didnt answer. he was already worrying about the cost of his victory. he got up and pushed his stool under the table. he hugged cecil, who remained seated.

  “thank you, dad,” he said.

  “relax,” the technician said. “it will be less painful.”

  cecil released his left wrist from the clasp of his right hand and rolled his neck. his fingers began to play with themselves, pushing back his cuticles and clearing any unexpected formations at the top of his fingernails.

  “youll feel a prick,” the technician said. his hand oscillated. he peered down the barrel of the syringe at cecils neck and brought it in like he was docking a spaceship.

  S watched the technicians long blonde eyelashes brush the back of the plunger. they stroked the plastic and vibrated like the strings of a harp. he wanted to hear them play. ariadne used to pull her eyelashes out and show them to him. he couldnt look at them, lying dead on her fingertip. he had urged her to stop.

  “theyre silly,” she said, “like belly buttons. when you think about it, you would not have created humans with eyelashes and belly buttons.”

  “if you think about it,” S said, “you wouldnt have created humans at all.” he had been trying to sound impressive, disregarding a deeper explanation for his discomfort. the thought continued to irritate him though, an object out of its rightful place, out of context. it interfered with his expectations. he wanted to sweep it away.

  the beauty and mystery of the eyelash worried him. he had been waiting a while for the truth about cecil. TTT was heavily regulated and could only be used with a licence. three months had passed since cecil had agreed to his experiment. his confidence in thought tracking had waned. he was uncomfortable with the meaning of an eyelash on the backdrop of a fingerprint. all those neurons, a different dimension, terrified him.

  experiments with TTT had been in real time. it showed peoples thoughts as they went about their days. but how would it work retrospectively? could cecil control his conscious thoughts about the past? how would S know there were no further thoughts suppressed or repressed? were cecils memories really memories or his imagination? and even if they were his real memories, were they really true?

  the needle pierced cecils neck. S turned away and looked at the interviewer, who blankly observed each drop of fluid disappear into cecil. the interviewers smooth symmetrical face emanated indifference like an egyptian statue. S wished he could have been a carved rock, with the privilege of watching generations of human affairs pass by from a plinth.

  “is that my mind?” the speaker said. cecil was looking at the screen on the wall, which showed his view of the screen of the wall and infinite smaller screens. the words “is that my mind?” echoed as cecil repeatedly heard his thought from the speaker and processed it as a sound.

  the technician turned the sound down and apologised. “probably better if we listen to cecils mind through our ear aids,” he said.

  “what is your name?” the interviewer asked.

  “martin luther king,” cecils mind said, followed by a pulsing sound, like a vibrating sheet of metal.

  the interviewer looked at the technician.

  “i think its the sound of his amusement,” the technician said.

  the interviewer repeated the question.

  “cecil stanhope. i hope youve got better questions than that.”

  the interviewers face adjusted, not quite a smile but a signal that he was human. he asked if cecil could remember the murder.

  cecil closed his eyes and the screen transformed into an aurora. then partial images appeared of cecil in his kitchen with clara. they were incomplete, almost stencil drawings, with sudden buds of detail. clara and a table floated in a multicoloured space. the shade of claras body, sprung into an almond shaped face with an aggressively cleft chin and huge damp blue eyes.

  a drawer appeared. it opened. a large knife on top of a non descript pile of stainless steel. a hand colonised by freckles reached in and took it. the back of claras neck formed a dark parabola. the knife was at claras throat.

  cecils eyes opened and the screen showed S, the interviewer and the technician.

  “what did it look like?” cecil asked.

  the technician showed cecil the images again.

  “that wasnt quite how i imagined it but it is almost right.”

  “you have to think of it as a translation.”

  the interviewer coughed and the attention returned to him. “can you remember why you did it?”

  “to save her,” the answer blared out in their ears. silence. a murmur. “keep staring, focus, next question.”

  the interviewer waited.

  “next question,” cecils mind said.

  the murmur remained. S braced for a scream. he could walk away and keep walking. the seat sucked onto him. the murmur concealed the truth. the studio behind the film set. he was terrified. “leave,” he wanted to shout at himself. why had he pursued the truth so relentlessly? the truth stabbed, like when eugene had told him he was boring and the words stung half a decade later, or when he realised his parents werent happy, or when he discovered that heaven was just something people had made up to make themselves feel better about death. curiosity had trumped fear.

  “why wont you let your mind speak for itself?” the interviewer asked.

  “i am,” cecil said.

  “there is a background noise.”

  “is there?”

  “dont you trust your own mind?”

  “do you?” cecil asked.

  “i have nothing to hide.”

  “dont you? never had a questionable dream about your sister, or thought about punching someone in the face, or hoped for yevgeny lebedyan to fail so you can take his slot, or been amused by the ugliness of a friends child, or been in love with someone other than your wife, or wondered whether there really is something suspicious about the jews, or been moments away from overriding a car and driving it at full speed the wrong way down the street.”

  “nothing. now please answer my question and this time dont try to control your thoughts. why did you kill clara?”

  “to save her. what else? blah blah blah blah blah blah. come on. is there anything more? the screen. the mirror. i need to … ow. couldnt take it anymore. thats not it. her face. the first time, is that how it looked? jealous. nope. she was a spy. seb looks … their eyes. what are they getting from me? in. out. in. out. in. out. regretting it now. my unconscious, can they get that too? do they know more than i could ever know? is there something? hello. in. out. in. out. it feels empty. i fucking hated her. i didnt mean that. i loved her. i really loved her. except for, no. in. out. in. out.”

  S needed a glass of water. he looked at the technician and the interviewer. they were biting their lips. a joke. entertainment. a laughing stock. his great idea, an echo chamber of lies. how could he have trusted a mind? a fucking mind. his own mind tricked him. his own mind was a regular femme fatale.

  S could hear a dozen endings disintegrate and beyond that, the laughter. a swarm of joy, gathering from the mouths of a million viewers. they could barely look at S, his body dangled over the red chair like he had fallen from the sky. a pathetic attempt at existence. they rubbed away the tears with damp index fingers, took glimpses and covered their faces when they saw him pull his nose. “did you see that?” they squeaked. “what a fool.” and this was it. they knew it. they would swallow up all the laughs, like they had swallowed up all life had to offer.
<
br />   he wanted to tell them it wasnt his fault. he didnt choose this path. he didnt choose his parents. he had no choice but yet they punished him for it. he wanted to gouge out their eyes and cut off their tongues. stuff them so full of humour, they choked on their selfsatisfaction.

  he could still have his own ending. there was the syringe on the table. he could stab cecil with it. that would save him from all the eyes and their glee. he would prefer their hatred. there would be nothing after that. no more pretending. he could be himself. just the syringe, plunged into cecils throat. the blood sprayed all over the interviewers statue face.

  Ss lips burst and the laugh spilled out, grating the back of his throat on its way. it took the other three in its path. they clasped at their faces and their stomachs, wrenching out the contortions. S tried to speak, “i, i, i,” he gurgled out before slipping off the chair to the sound of the others wailing. curled up on the floor, he focused on the darkness of his crotch while cecils mind rung in his ears like a passing train.

  when S opened his eyes, he saw the light above him glowing like the reflection of the moon on a motionless lake. drops of doubt pattered away in the distance of his mind but they were already growing feint. how could he have missed a thought so simple? in a world with nowhere to hide, it had remained hidden until revealed in a dream.

  S hadnt felt this way since he had finished school. he rubbed the cool duvet against his face and inhaled it, like a mother smelling the neck of her baby. the material felt more real, more luxurious.

  he was desperate to tell cecil he knew the truth. it would feel good. he understood why detectives always wanted to explain their reasoning to the killer before the cuffs fell. it was a game of realities, where losing meant more than letting someone off. it meant a missing page in a book. it meant nonsense. the winning detectives wanted to say “i understand”.

  S had to wait two long days for a visiting time. he tried to study for an essay on the influence of totalitarianism on film noir by watching fritz langs metropolis with tanya. but he zoned out for chunks of the film while he imagined his showdown with cecil.

  when he entered the prison, he found himself whistling a familiar but unplaceable tune. cecil looked at him strangely and then they hugged. for a moment, S felt a tinge of guilt, like he was about to stab cecil in the back. then they took their opposing seats and S became the detective again. he sat back and put his right ankle on his left knee. he wanted a cigarette. cecil sat straight, calm.