Secrets- ??????? Chapter Four

Thui was a patient listener throughout the evening. She never argued or provided Tim an opportunity to attack her credibility. Now that Ed stopped telling his shameful story, she was not sure how she could continue to be the same person, especially when it came to her husband. Her frustration spun in her mind.

Diana started a cigarette and blew a circle of smoke to the ceiling. She also seemed disgusted.

Jacob, also disturbed, thought that the world of the jurists was not a world of facts, it was a world of deception and mockery.

Rosa, feeling sorry for Tim, regretted her own action which had brought her to that house. She could see that the world was divided, at least in that house, between honesty and deception, existence and nonentity.

However, Tim waited to see the impression of the others. He let their impatience grew. Then suddenly he opened the two upper buttons of his shirt, began fanning herself, took off his shoes, and nodded his head in disgust. In his eyes immediately appeared a derisive smile, a certain complication and entanglement.

He remembered how he had stared with terrible intensity at the sun. He recalled that he could not take his eyes from those burning rays, as though he wanted to blind himself intentionally. It had seemed to him that those rays were his new God, nature. He even wanted to be melted beneath those burning rays. His doubt and hatred against this new knowledge which was certain was repulsive. He had said to himself then that nothing was more terrible than this- relentless thought, death of his son. Yes, he had thought about that, yes, he had pictured it, he even had seen it in his dream, he even had created it in his mind how it would happen. But then standing under those incessant sun rays, he had known that it had happened, that his son had taken his life by hanging himself in his cell. He thought what if it was all lies, what if life was given back to Christopher; what an existence it would be, and it all would be his!

Standing under those burning rays, only ten days ago, he had tried to be his son. If life would given back to him, he would make every minute of it an eternity. He would evaluate every passing moment. Nevertheless, those thoughts had filled him with extreme anger that he would want to die all the same and very quickly.

Tears dried out in his eyes. He wanted to cry but no tears were coming down from his dry eyes. He gazed at those rays, stared at them, just might be the extremity of their heat would make the tears to flow, but nothing happened. Then he thought about God, the God of creation, of power, the invisible god, the God of destruction, the God of energy and inspiration, the God of lightness and darkness, the God, he was told, that without him was like being in darkness. He screamed: "Oh, great God, lighten my darkness." Then rage filled him out. He laughed hysterically and became more unbelieving than ever.

The severity of his grief, however seemed incomplete since he had no one to share this fury with. He had this stupefaction which always happened after the death of a loved one; it was so unrealistic for him to seize this emptiness and to believe in this death. He even laughed, a frantic laughter, thinking that his son had seen the gruesome mask of the death which had stood in front of him with menace. Drunk with grief, he shivered under those hot rays.

Now thinking about that image, that desperate moment of learning about his son's death, he recalled those rays again. He became confused of remembering, as though his son's life and memory of his death spreading over each other.

Then, ten days ago, he had heard a music, like a prolonged, vague cry, a melody which lingered, and in the silence of his grief, he had heard that the music was merging with the palpitating of his heart. That day was a dispiriting one. Things seemed to him were engulfed in a dark horizon; and then swimming dizzily beneath the burning rays of the sun. Sorrow interwove with his soul. He gave this sense of abstraction to the things that would never return.

A feeling of laziness which normally would come after an excruciating pain took over him. He sensed an interference of every accustomed movement. It was a sudden ending of this extended shaking.

It was just all the same. These people, even Rosa, did not know that his son had taken his life. He had a plan which did not include even Rosa, his girlfriend. Now was the time, after Ed had confessed to his kind of crime. Now it was time to bring the real hammer down and strike his head with it.

To Be Continued