Chapter 153 - Interlude part 5

"Mass for Four Voices" ended with a mechanical clatter, and silence rushed to fill my apartment. Self-loathing propelled me from my seat. I put my forehead against the door, my eyes shut. I heard the chime of the elevator at the end of the corridor, the swish of its doors parting. Lukas stepped inside and pressed the button for the lobby. In the apartment below, my erudite French neighbors were enjoying a late supper. I could hear them speaking, their voices genteel and proper. Henri, the retired banker, complimented his wife on the waterzooie. His wife, Josette, replied demurely, "Merci, j'ai juste fait." The scraping of their silver set my teeth on edge. Anxiously tapping a toe, Lukas Jaeger descended in the elevator cab, gliding smoothly past their suite to the ground floor.

I paced around my apartment then, trying to ignore the voices in my head. They shouted condemnations: You have made a pact with the devil, Gon! You have fallen!

If I believed in the Christian hell, I would have trembled.

The condemnations swelled in volume, growing louder and louder until it seemed my skull would split in two.

I put my palms over my ears, though I knew it was a futile gesture.

Thirty thousand years, and I have never purposely committed an evil act!

Trying to defend myself, to silence the thundering critics.

I have done evil. Oh, yes! This curse has compelled me to do unspeakable things. My crimes are innumerable. But never on purpose, never with such cold-blooded calculation.

You will unleash a monster on this world, the voices accused.

"I know," I whispered. "I'm sorry."

So this is what damnation feels like, I thought.

I have never understood the Christian concept of damnation. My people worshipped their ancestors. We did not believe our mistakes clung to us like a stain, that they pursued us into the afterlife, where some stern and judgmental deity punished us for our shortcomings. It seemed rather hypocritical for a god to create flawed beings, then discipline them for the way He had made them, wouldn't you say? Yet, releasing the rapist and murderer had left me feeling sullied, unclean. I was horrified by my own ruthlessness. I would have prayed for forgiveness if I believed in the god of the Hebrews. Not even my ancestors, I feared, could forgive such a terrible transgression!

I ran to my phonograph player and stacked up my favorite recordings. I tried to distract myself by working on my memoirs. As Puccini's "Tosca" thundered in my apartment, my fingers flew over the keys of my laptop computer, but the thread of my narrative was hopelessly snarled with guilt and self-recrimination. I erased more than I wrote, and finally abandoned my efforts in frustration.

I tried to persuade myself to pursue the villain, to hunt him down and kill him, as I should have done the moment I saw him. He could not have gone far. It would be a simple task to track him down, especially at this time of night, when the streets were so deserted. I would take him quickly. Yes, that is what I would do! Snatch him at speed so that the impact rendered him unconscious. He would not even know that I had reneged on our contract.

Now! Before it's too late! Hunt him! Kill him!

But I did not do it. Instead, I cleaned his bedchamber. (Yes, I do my own housekeeping!) I stripped his stinking sheets, put fresh linens on his mattress. I vacuumed the carpet, disposed of the chain with which I'd bound him.

As I tucked in his fitted sheet, I discovered a spoon that he'd been sharpening. It was hidden beneath his mattress. Naughty boy, I thought, examining the shiv, and for some reason the whole situation struck me as being fantastically hilarious. Standing there beside his bed, sharpened spoon in hand, I began to laugh.

A shiv! It was so ridiculous!

I did not even notice it missing from whatever dinner tray he'd stolen it from.

I found the scrape marks on the frame of his bed where he'd been sharpening his makeshift weapon. He must have been doing it while I slept during the day. He was nothing if not persistent, I thought, still smiling in amusement.

I threw the spoon into the waste bin atop the coiled chain and empty food containers, then exited his room.

His room…

You should not think of him as a guest, I chastised myself. He is a tool, nothing more.

A means to an end.