He’s sitting back on a black leather recliner, trousered
legs out in front of him on a black leather foot rest, feet - in polished black
shoes - twitching (excitement? nerves? or simply irreparable damage to the
central nervous system?).
He wears a blue and white striped shirt buttoned to the neck
that covers his bloated belly, swollen from years of excess, mainly alcohol. He has both his elbows on the arm-rests of
his black leather chair, and moves his withered hand to his mouth every so
often to take a slow drag on his cigarette.
His jaundiced eyes are hidden by a pair of dark blue tea-shades sitting
on the bridge of his nose; his cheeks have inroads (again track marks of
excess), his lips are turned down, his whole countenance exuding a mixture of world-weariness
and disgust.
During our ten minutes together he has called me ‘a fucking
idiot’ (twice), ‘thick as three short planks’, ‘part of the analytical
division’ (he smiled thinly at that one, whatever it means to him) and thrown
in another few insults for good measure.
When he isn’t smoking or insulting me, he treats my questions as
arse-wipe, at best delivering grouchy monosyllabic replies, in between times
clicking his tongue, twitching his feet.
He’s the chairman of the awkward squad, and although he probably doesn’t
give a fuck what happens to me when I leave him, he’s enjoying me now – I am
his sport (and quite probably his only company, let alone sport, for today).
~
When our time together is almost up I ask him if he can
remove his tea-shades. ‘Fuck off’ he
sneers. There’s a short pause. Undeterred, and already quickly accustomed to
his vulgarity, I say I want to see his eyes.
He moves his hand towards his mouth again, and takes a drag, shooting
smoke out the side of his mouth.
‘What for?’, he says after a few seconds. Maybe, I think, I’ve got him interested at last. I say again I want to
see his eyes, what he really looks like.
Another pause, a longer one.
~
We’re miles away from anywhere out here on his range in the
back country. He’s only his horses, and his
carer as far as I can tell (outside of the farm-hands, farm manager and vet,
who I imagine have to deal with him on a weekly (?) basis). I asked his carer for a word or two about him
before we sat down to interview, she couldn’t offer anything; I took it that it
wasn’t she didn’t understand, more she hadn’t anything good to say about him.
His head is titled in my direction now, or it appears so, as
if he is trying to listen in to my thoughts; but silence has set in, and it’s
probably time I wrapped – in my profession quiet time is wasted time, however
brief our time has been talking.
Turning off the camera on the tripod behind me, I begin to
put away my things. His carer meanwhile
has appeared in the doorway, hovering anxiously, probably, or so I imagine,
awaiting the next volley of abuse or disdainful command. She’s actually quite a good-looking
middle-aged woman, perhaps in her mid-forties, with big doleful, but not
unattractive eyes, dark, smooth skin: it’s not how she ended up looking after him, I think to myself, but why she stays on; he’s had her, he said,
for six years – perhaps compassion in us all is innate, a somehow irrepressible human trait.
~
Once I’ve everything stowed and my kit bag zipped, I sling
it on my shoulder and turn to face him again.
He hasn’t moved, wisps of smoke rising from his cigarette, lost in a
moment, or several moments; he looks like vestige from the Gorgon tales, only
in modern drag, strangely effete (he would hate that word most likely).
As I go to shake his hand, he cocks his head a little,
and as I am taking my leave of him he says, in a low, throaty voice what I
think (or did I dream!?) was the answer to my hitherto unanswered question: ‘I’ve too many regrets’.
There’s a human being in there still, behind the shades, even if he refuses to
show, as self-aware (and, yes, pig-headed) as the rest of us - that’s the tragedy
of it.
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