SELECTED PROSE
by
Graham Stack
KIDNAPPED (STOCKHOLM SYNDROME)
A stranger had entered the house where he was kept. A swarthy burly man with fierce black beard and fierce black eyes, in traditional dress, who now sat with his keepers at the table, the three jabbering together in Arabic. He could not take his eyes of the newcomer.
A stranger! A stranger spelt danger. A cruel force emanated from him, a menace. That of the unknown. But also the fascination of the unknown, caused him to gaze upon the stranger as if hypnotised. Who was the mystery man, and what role did he play in the organisation? Why had he come? The beautiful lady and the usual guy received him well, accorded him respect. What significance did he have for his own situation? Had he come to take him? Fear gripped him, but the fascination held him where he was.
Then he saw the telephone they had carelessly left lying on the floor, and immediately forgot about the stranger. Five feet off from him, the telephone, with all its promise and magic. He focused all his attention on it. They had given him a chance. If only he could get himself over there, everything could take care of itself. But those five feet constituted an almost insuperable obstacle in his present condition. He gazed at the telephone, at the dial pad with the keys, and the receiver perched tantalisingly on the cradle. All he had to do was knock the cradle from the receiver, and press the keys. The telephone summoned him to it.
He struggled to set himself in motion, pulling himself forward on his forearms, dragging his useless legs behind him. Wriggling on his belly, he propelled himself slowly, painfully, towards his target. After every exertion, he lifted his head again and fixed his eyes on the goal, to have it draw him on, to tap into its magnetic attraction. Halfway there, and he soiled himself, and his genitals and arse were encased in warmth and weight. He mostly could not care less, let the keepers deal with it, but this time he derived a perverse satisfaction from his output, his added body, the fact that he had produced something.
He had dragged himself to within a foot of the telephone, when it rang.
“Brrrrrr-brrrrrrr. Brrrrrrr-brrrrrrrr. Brrrrrr-brrrrrrrr. Brrrrrrrr-brrrrrrr. Brrrrrrrr-rrrrrrr.”
He froze in his tracks. Wonder and fright mixed at the shrill eruption. It came from the phone, but jarred in his head and resounded all around. His plans were thrown into disarray, he could only wait to see what would happen next, propping himself up on his elbows, jaw dropped, eyes fixed on the noisy apparatus. The ringing enthralled him.
He heard laughter behind him. Then the beautiful lady swooped down on the phone, snatching it out of his reach, and lifting the receiver. She spoke in fits and starts; he understood nothing of what she said, except for one recurrent word he made out: Mohammed. But the mere sound of her voice soothed and calmed his nerves, and for a moment he felt robbed of all purpose, deprived of his will, lulled into submission.
Then she handed the receiver to the bearded man.
The stranger! He stood before him now, towering over him, bellowing down the line.
What right had he to the telephone? Why had the lady so easily ceded it to him? Who was he? What force was his? What authority? Fear and awe made him recoil from the sight. The newcomer troubled him deeply.
Deprived of the telephone, his next idea was to seize the baby. He knew exactly where to look for it. Through the portal opening on the neighbouring room.
He dragged himself towards it. No-one hindered him; all he had to overcome was his own crippling weakness. His useless legs, his splayed body. Behind him he heard the bellowing stranger. Before him the portal, and then he was there and at it, and the baby suddenly before him. Dark as the parents. He tried to lay hands on it, snatching at it, but he could not get a grip. Propped on one elbow, his free hand slipped from the baby like water off a duck’s back. The baby seemed to be wrapped in some invisible protective bubble which he could not penetrate. Impregnable behind its field, it smiled at him and kissed him coldly over and over again, and parried, parodied his clutches with little gestures of its chubby, brown and tiny hands.
The woman swept up the baby in her arms and changed its diapers.
Then the frightening newcomer slammed down the receiver on the telephone, and placed it back on the floor, close beside him, tantalising him, and departed from his field of vision.
The telephone! He dragged himself towards it again. The promise of the key pad quickened his resolve. He redoubled his efforts; the window of opportunity would be all too brief. He only had to sweep the receiver to the floor and hit the keys. He was almost there, he was reaching out, when something seized roughly his useless legs, and drew him abruptly back from the set, and then released him again. He struggled again towards his goal, and the rough treatment was repeated. On release he again dragged himself forwards, only now it was fear of the force behind him that drove him onwards.
He knew what that force was.
It was playing with him, laughing at his helplessness, and his futile persistence.
Bellowing with laughter behind him. He could not look round.
He reached the telephone set in panic, and then great hands seized his body and hoisted him up, his legs dancing below him. He smelt a strange smell. Then the hands swivelled him and he found himself face to face with the demonic newcomer. In the giant’s grasp. The bellow of his voice and the black madness of the beard and eyes. The stench of the stranger’s laughter.
Now he screamed and could not stop screaming.
His keepers moved in on him to tranquillise.
A door had slammed and the stranger was gone. His keepers, now left to themselves, had started to make out. The usual guy was clutching the lady’s beautiful head and covering her beautiful mouth with his. It disturbed him deeply to see this, to see her assaulted in this manner, and a cry welled up in him. But then their embrace disbanded, and the beautiful lady, bowing down, started to fellate the guy, and he smiled to see it and lost interest.
The telephone! The path to it was free, if very long. But he felt new strength flood threw him and started on his way over the floor.
Half way there, arms tiring, he suddenly gained a new awareness of his legs. He sensed they had some life in them, that he could employ them somehow to speed his progress. He had to get his arse in the air, that was, it seemed to him, the key, and then take it from there.
He managed it with a sudden burst of energy. He heaved his arse high off the ground, so that he was now resting on knees and elbows, then he lifted up his head to prop himself up on his hands. If he could only summon up the necessary coordination, he should now be able to crawl like a baby.
His coordination failed him. He found he could crawl – but the exigencies of keeping balance in the new and precarious posture caused him to push off from his hands, to counterbalance against collapsing forwards on his face. This in turn meant that, when he started to move his legs in something approximating to a baby crawl, he inadvertently found himself going backwards, retreating from his goal. Lest he lose all the ground he had thus far gained, he reverted to his previous posture.
But the new life his legs had displayed bolstered his fortitude. He inched towards the telephone, his whole body working to traverse the floor. No one impeded him. He heard from behind him groan on groan, and they meant nothing to him.
He reached the telephone and threw himself upon it. He dislodged the receiver from cradle, and it clattered satisfyingly to the floor. The keypad was finally his. In a great gurgle of excitement, he pressed one key after another.
“Beep… beep… boop… beep… beep… boop… boop… beep… boop… boop… beep… beep… beep… boop… beep… beep… boop… boop… beep… boop… boop… beep… beep… beep… boop… beep… beep… boop… boop… beep… boop… boop… beep…”
His work was done.
He turned to his keepers, to show them he had triumphed, to share with them the scale of his triumph.
But the smile on his face vanished as he beheld them, and his triumph ceded to despair.
For the beautiful lady had rucked up her upper garments to expose her ample breasts, which she lifted in her hands for the guy to thrust between them.
Something in him snapped at the sight of those breasts.
All other meaning in the world was nullified. His own independent existence faltered.
He was overwhelmed by a longing and a hunger surging up inside him. As if he was deprived of the most precious thing in life, condemned to wither away, to dry up and die. He felt himself infinitely distant from all he most desired and loved. Withdrawn from the centre and sense of his world. Lost and alone, cast out, starved of what he needed to live.
Hungry.
His hunger screamed out of him and rocketed and ricocheted through the room.
The guy shot his load over the lady’s breasts and fell back laughing as the screams shook the air.
“You’d better give him it fast,” the guy said in Arabic.
She swept him up in her hands dizzyingly and held him to her spangled breast.
When he saw the nipple proffered he lost all control over himself. He took it blissfully, obliviously. Reality retreated.
He sucked, and the sweet warmth filled his mouth and poured down his throat and then flooded through every cell in his body. He dissolved in it, in love, as if fusing with its source. He gulped and gulped, a fish battling up to its spawning ground, leaping and leaping against the rapids, frenetically swilling down the exhausting draught of happiness. Then reaching slower waters, he swam on with slower strokes, forging onwards upstream, instinct his only intelligence. Slower and slower, further and further, and then finally he re-attained his point of origin, the river’s tranquil source. He had returned. His hunger stilled, he ceased to drink, his breathing slowed to a quiver, his eyes sealed shut, and his body slackened and crumpled inert. Once again he floated peacefully among the deep and nourishing pools of darkness. Once again he slept.
© Graham Stack
Reproduced with permission
STALKER
It was stalking, but he could not help himself. He was on his way to where he might count on seeing Jane. The wild hope lured him: That this time it would happen, contact would be established, she would elude him no more. Once the spark had leapt, there would be no looking back. Once he had got hold of her.
The lecture theatre was three quarters full when he arrived. Conversation filled the air, and ignored his entry. He took an unobtrusive seat at the rear. From there he might survey the public, but instead scribbled notes in a jotter. He wanted make a coincidence of any encounter, and refrained from looking out for her. Coincidence would be his unlikely alibi.
He enjoyed the lecture. He enjoyed it because she was there listening in too. It was her topic. She was sharing it with him. They were together. Later they could discuss it, so he paid close attention. He made notes. He did not look around. He was there for the lecture. Coincidentally so was she.
The lecture concluded and questions were requested and provided from the audience, giving him a pretext for circumspection. He neither heard her girlish high school drawl, nor sighted her among the heads turning. She wasn’t one to stand out in a crowd. She kept her head down.
He was among the first to leave the lecture theatre. He stood waiting by the building exit, watching the throng issue into the foyer, eddying into groups, sorting into small lines by the cloakroom, disperse, and then filing out past him. There were a few girls he mistook for her, before he saw her coming from the cloakroom. She was donning the black heavy overcoat he knew, which wrapped in a bulky formality her youth and slightness, her seeming so young for her age, for all her academic credentials. Her straggly straw hair dropped over her face as she shrugged the coat over her shoulders, but when she straightened and looked up, he saw that it was not her after all. She looked at him questioningly, he turned away disconcerted. He had overplayed his hand; he wandered casually among those remaining, and then left. He was not disappointed. The golden goose still lived. It seemed she had not come, or he had missed her there. But he had felt near to her. He had felt so near to her.
He decided to write her an e-mail – he still had her address. He had never used it, afraid to alert her, to show his hand. He had treasured it for over a year. Now he wanted to drop her a line. He reasoned thus: a casual message would be its own alibi – his ease of approach, nothing doing, was the opposite of stalking. So he wrote and sent:
“Hi Jane, how’s it going? Hope you don’t mind me dropping in on you like this. I was checking through my address book – spent some time puzzling over ‘Janes Myth’ before the obvious hit me! Then I thought, I might as well write. So what’s up? Remember the great ginko tree on Potsdam Street? I pass it every day. I’m doing the same stuff as before, but have a new grant – from the veterans’ association. Not seen you around for a while, hope to bump into you again some day!
All the best,
Friederich”
A minute later, Jane, in Oregon, USA, dashed off a reply:
“Hi Fred!
Nice surprise! The Swiss whiz kid mails after an interval of years? Good to hear from you, a pity not sooner. What held you up? Afraid of a paternity suit? Don’t worry, little Fred’s one and a half now and getting on fine without you. If he asks I’ll tell him his father was a bastard.
Seriously now (I was kidding about the kid!!!) I was pissed that you disappeared like that – but I got over you quicker than my hangover.
Fred – you don’t need to apologise for writing – apologise for not writing.
I’m just a little bit confused about your current state of mind (amongst other things). I mean, have you gone environ-mental? What’s with you and the ginko tree all of a sudden? That was my and some other people’s big thing. I didn’t even know you knew about it. Nice one. Are you trying to tell me there’s a gentle caring you after all? Perhaps we should meet up sometime. Perhaps you’ve changed, asshole!
So you’re back in Berlin. I’ve not been there for a year or so now, since finishing the research. I thought you were set up for life in London. What’s with the grant then? Ah, it’s all so confusing. You’re playing mystery man again.
About me, since you ask (indirectly). I’m still faithful to my PhD, 24/7 in front of the computer writing, dumbed out. Had some offers for afterwards from ‘certain places on the East coast’.
So to cut a long story short – gotta get back to work.
Can’t say if I’ll be in Berlin at any point. But who knows, perhaps indeed we’ll bump again sometimeJ
Affectionately
Jane"
Jane paused before sending. She glanced back over the mail she had got, some things crossed her mind, she frowned, cancelled her reply, and then deleted the mail.
He googled her name relentlessly. He felt safe in doing so.
There were millions of hits on Jane Smith. He clicked around randomly. He narrowed down the search using additional terms and gained more manageable quantities. He searched till his eyes hurt. He pondered over promising hits. Could this relate to his ‘Jane Smith’? An office joke circulating in Oklahoma, a school newsletter from Zaire, a singer in Australia, a myriad of student lists, library catalogues, genealogies, mysterious message board postings from across the globe. The more oblique the reference, the less easy it was to rule out.
But he found not one single definite hit, and this was what he found most rewarding from his days of searching. The fact that she had an extremely low key internet presence. That was so in keeping with her forced unaffectedness. Her pretence at unassumingness. And so he found a trace of her character among the entirety of the million meaningless hits. He found something to feel close to.
He strolled on a sunny day along Potsdam Street and passed the ginko tree, its colourful trunk and jubilant arms, their silent roar. Further on, a group of American girls approached, and in the middle a blonde girl in sunglasses who reminded him of Jane. The awkward provincial drawl carried over to him. He realised he had never seen Jane in sun glasses. This girl had a quite different style of dress, a touch of European elegance instead of college come as you are, but he recognised the strong eyebrows reclining in the shade, and the small sharp teeth busy in the sun. Jane had matured. Got with it a little.
He tried to catch her glance, but the sun glasses got in the way. He did not call her by name, or go over. He felt inhibited. Too much as if he was on the lookout for her. Especially after the email. He had to keep a low profile. He would scare her by approaching directly. Let the goose live.
He was overjoyed all the same. For having seen her by chance once, having come so close to her, the chances were he would see her again. If he kept his eyes open. Went to the right places. Stalked. And then, the next time, or the time after, coincidence would be kind to him. He would even mention having seen her.
© Graham Stack
Reproduced with permission
PARRICIDE
“Your hands have holes in them you could drive a truck through, Daddy. Just look at the state of you! Dead. You didn’t see that coming did you. Look of shock written on your face. Gunshot wounds to your body. And you were the person who always knew everything better. So sure of his infallibility. So proud of his judgement.
I warned you. I warned you, but you knew better. And then bang! Bang! That’s what you get for not taking me seriously.
You never listen to what I say. You discount every word. You put me down, and when I raise my voice you tell me to be quiet, and when I start shrieking, you say I am hysterical. Crazy. I shriek at you and all you say is ‘you’re crazy’.
But now you’re listening. You’re listening in real good, and you see Daddy, I am talking to you quietly and reasonably. No hysterics. Because you are finally listening.
Look at the mess you’re in, Daddy. If only you could see yourself. You never believed something like this would happen, did you? I warned you, but you didn’t take me seriously.
Now that you’re listening, there’s something important I want to tell you. So you just keep quiet, don’t interrupt, and don’t turn away. I want to tell you how wrong you have always been about me.
You are always sure that you are right. Your judgement infallible. When I married Jake, you said “I foresaw something like this.” “Of course, it’ll not last long.” When you saw me with my face smashed, you said ‘I told you so.’
When I threw in my job at the USC, you said “you’ve always been like that and always will be.”
When the photography thing took off, you just said ‘It’s nothing you can earn a living from or make yourself useful with’, but it was. It was, and you could never admit you were wrong. It might not be a living by your standards, but nor did I expect it to be. I got by. I had customers.
When I quit, you shrugged.
When I stole from you, all you said was ‘it’s not exactly the first time is it? You think we haven’t noticed.” But it was the first time. You didn’t even take the house keys from me afterwards.
I am a problem to you, and not a person. I’m your problem child.
You’re the man with the infallible judgement.
But you have been wrong about me all down the line.
I’ve been duping you all the time.
I did all these things because you expected them of me. Everything dumb I’ve done in my life, I did not because I thought it was a good move. But because it was what you expected of me. I always knew it was dumb. I just wanted to prove you wrong. You thought I did stupid things because I was stupid. But I did them just to spite you. I did dumb things to show I was one up on you. That you didn’t understand a thing about me.
You forced me to. Refusing to ever treat me as a person. Just a problem. Claiming you knew all I about me. I can say that to you now without even shrieking. You see I am not shrieking. I am calm. I am in control. Not crazy at all. And why, dear Daddy? Because you are finally listening. You are hearing me out. And you’ve been wrong all down the line. Fallible. So fallible you wrecked my life.
I am gloating now Dad. I know I shouldn’t but I can’t help it. It’ll pass. It’s just the shock of it all. You see, you got your comeuppance for not taking me seriously. For laughing me out. I warned you. If you had only taken me seriously, none of this would have happened. You would have moved a long time ago from this neighbourhood. But you laughed me out. I warned you. I warned you lots of times. This neighbourhood has gone to the dogs. Been taken over by the gangs. I know about these things. You might have given me credit for that. I told you it was going up in smoke. Drugs and guns. But you just said I was unhinged. In need of treatment. Hysterical. And to keep my voice down. I warned you lots, but you turned away. So sure of your judgement. This time you were proved wrong, by gunshot wounds. Now I am telling you were wrong every other time. Is that gloating? It’s just seizing the opportunity. You listening, and me explaining. Calmly. Quietly. No shrieking. Putting across my point of view.
I hope they catch the people who did this. I really do. I really sincerely do. I hope they catch them and even execute them. Because you were a defenceless old man. You didn’t even have a weapon – you said it was too dangerous having one – perhaps because of me. You were defenceless, afraid and helpless. Fallible. You tried to stop the bullets with your hands.
That’s about all I have to say. It’s been nice talking, Dad. Thanks for hearing me out. I know I can get on your nerves, but if you would listen more often to what I have to say, it would help a lot. You see, I am quite capable of explaining things calmly and quietly. If you consider that what I am saying might just make some sense. If you don’t write me off. If you treat me like an adult.
So Daddy, what do you say? Has the time come for us to start over?”
© Graham Stack
Reproduced with permission
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
LARS VON TRIER
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE - Hamlet
MOHAMMED
