He saw Diana as a perfect model of a decent, moral, and enduring woman. He thought Jacob was a winner among them to have a wife like her, a woman who had helped him to endure his suffering with the same love that she had helped him to enjoy his happiness. Suddenly after thirty years of using women, he felt he was falling in love with what Diana stood for. To him, Rosa was another user like him. He loved Rosa just as he had loved other women he had been with. He had thought that one could love many women at the same time, share their joy and sorrow, and never betray them to others. But all the happenings from yesterday evening to now, almost dawn, made him to change his mind. One needed only one woman like Diana.
Nothingness was his life now. It had been hard for him to come to that conclusion, but he was there finally; to accept the great annihilation in his life. Emptiness was now the other end of the rope, his life. Everything, big or small, became a prolonged nonentity for him at that moment.
Small but significant things in that house now were overwhelmed by irrelevant ones. Tim thought who cared what Thui had done when she knew what would become of her, nothing! How could Ed criticize his wife or be angry at her while he, himself, had done worse. Therefore he knew Thui's life would not change since anytime Ed would say something to her, she had something worse to tell back to him. He thought what had Rosa done if she really was in Thui's place. He realized with shock that she would not be any different than Thui. He knew Rosa as much as he knew himself.
"Rosa, you could be worse than Thui if you had her situation!" Tim murmured, suddenly discovering that he was telling the truth.
Rosa was shocked by that sudden comment. She felt that her secrets, too, soon be revealed.
"I don't believe what you just said. I thought we had so much in common." Rosa snapped at Tim. Jacob, her newly found father seemed very upset by Tim's remark, even though deep inside he agreed with him. But it was Tim, who again said:
"That is true. We do have many things in common; we both are users to the point of being abusers. We hide our faces under the mask of educators." Tim's voice was muffled. Then he continued:
"The fact is that things could not be any worse between us as it is now. I've come to know you and myself tonight. I am sure you disagree with me; but despite your opinion, I don't think I would ever be able to find the belief I've lost, or to refine the depth of misery which I'm struggling for many months now. I'm done, so are you; and that is the end of it!"
An unexplainable silence followed after what Tim said. Everyone wondered what was his suffering besides his son's death, and why he said that he came to know himself tonight! Nonetheless, Rosa, who knew for fact that her turn to tell her secrets was imminent, while trying to hide her emotion, said:
I don't understand you. I don't know what you're talking about. You're acting as though you're dying. If you have something more to say, why don't you?"
Tim started a cigarette, and asked Diana if he could have a glass of water. Diana brought him a big glass of water with ice. He drank half of the water, and then looked at people with vehemence; and he turned to Rosa and said:
"You think I'm talking like a dying man, maybe I'm dying, maybe I'm not. In this world if someone wants to understand how everything works, he must die once or get close to dying. This is just a simple rule. I don't think any of you disagree with me."
The darkness everyone felt in his heart seemed deepened as the night was passing and dawn was not much behind. But the darkness was only a pretense, only a faint justification, for everyone by now knew that Tim's secret would be the most shocking, the worst of all. Nonetheless, they all knew that for now Rosa was the one he was after. They all were prepared to hear more in this dreadful party.
"I remember my father." Tim began: " I can still see him. He was a great manipulator, but I still love him more than my alive mother, even though he is dead for a long time. He used to move his big head while his face was covered with sweat, and stare into my eyes to blackmail me, to make me cover his secrets that I'd learned from my mother. I complied because that was the only way I could get his fatherly love which was sweet and delightful. Blackmailing came so natural to him. When he was in that mood, his voice became low, appealing, and persuasive. But he did not have to blackmail me because my mother knew it. She had learned it on her own; but she didn't do anything about it because she needed my father's financial support. Then I learned that there were many form of prostitution, my mother's was one kind of it. The funny thing was that my father didn't know that in reality it was me who was blackmailing him. He didn't know that my mother knew; and I didn't tell him that she knew. It was a game with three players and we all learned to play our roles very well.
"Why am I telling you this story? I just want you to know the condition I was raised in. Having learned these things as a child, when I married Nancy, you know that story, and after what she did to me, it all reinforced my opinion of life in this world. That is why now I am wiser, and I know my destiny. I want to change. Tonight, I'm a changed man, a different person.
"All my life, up to this point, has been only a hurried instant, almost trivial race. I think every life is a drama; in my case, the drama of my life has just begun."
To Be Continued
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