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Malchus
Charles William Johns
Malchus
Copyright © 2017 Charles William Johns. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-1557-3
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-1559-7
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-1558-0
Manufactured in the U.S.A. March 6, 2017
for my father Robert David Johns
I
I am Malchus. I will put you in your place. At the expense of my actions you have yourselves a story, and if I am the protagonist I am also the antagonist. In fact I am mainly the jester, the fool, the drunken one. For your self-composed clear conscience, gentlemanly and naive, I have crucified myself. And far from literature being ‘evil’ it has become the law for me; it surveys me, keeps me in my place-the confession. So we both have our places, you and I, and far from wanting to be wrapped up in the story, I suggest you remain thoroughly out. Blood can spill from my hands to yours quite easily from a turn of the page (or from closing this book in disgust). The written word has a habit of unsticking itself from its page and gallivanting about as if it were your very own conscience.
Why is it that we return, again and again, to books, as if there were some insight to be gained, as if we could bypass experience, the consequence of experience, the consequence of actions and decisions in this very real world we attempt to shield ourselves from? It is as if we were naive enough to think that knowledge could be gained without a loss. Every emotion is a disturbance of some kind. The intricacies of loss is an art form and I am happy to have suffered so that you may enjoy the ‘pleasure of the text’.
Every sensation, every mode of enjoyment, is a mode of communication; one says “I like this”, or, “why did you sting me nettle?” But to who are we communicating with in these frivolous human scenarios? Perhaps to each other? Our inner-selves? God? And so the history of life becomes the history of a conversation, spanning miles and miles, echoing even further into caverns, catacombs, connecting burning stars to our stratosphere through the instrument of human perception, uniting insects rattling in bushes between the footsteps of a young man’s morning walk. In this sense everyone knows everyone, we have all spoken to each other in this life, we have all expressed something to everyone, and-for now-I become known; my little voice is heard over a blizzard of premature utterances. Very well. The entirety of human existence is one voice fighting over another.
II
I walk across the West Common, towards my father’s house. I had drunk just enough to transform the pervasive sirens of police cars into an indifferent whir. I label the sirens ‘city sounds’ and in doing so I can successfully compartmentalise the fear that such sirens bring. Once successfully compartmentalized I can proceed to shut down that particular part of the brain. I had drunk one less than my limit (I wanted to drink that last one, to resolve it) and so I could continue acting amicably; so I could act like myself before the incident.
There is nothing more guilt-invoking than a beautiful summers day. It is as if-in appearing that one day too late-it were teaching you a lesson; “look at what you could have basked and folicked in, if only you were a free man”. Instead the sun sticks to my skin and clothes, makes everything all too apparent. The sun is always the first to spot a criminal, it shines on me the most. It’s irritating obnoxious rays of transparent clarity also reflects itself inside the human being, in the bad conscience. That bad place inside of all of us (and most hidden from ourselves) transforms into a prism, cleansed out by the kaleidoscopic beatitude of natural light. This light, affirming itself as the ‘clear light of day’, that light which makes us hate what we have done in the night. This light, working itself into my pores, trying to clean me out!
One can get carried away in the night, it is almost advisable that one go down with the sun into an evening of confusion, where one cannot distinguish between feelings and forms, where one does not know who one is, who fools themselves into thinking that he is part of the night itself, an expression of it. When there is no clear light of day anything could happen, and you can blame it on the stars or the chugging of a freight train. Where one is standing there, half-drunk, wondering whether their desire can outreach their territory, whether it can soar above the small town that conditions them, whether it can reach beyond the train tracks, and you say to yourself “did a part of me leave with that passing train”? One may truly burn at night like a firefly but one must hide like an antique rug in an unused dusty spare room when the sun comes out, when the sun comes up to judge its denizens, spotting the dust particles that now appear dancing in mid-air from the archaic movement of trouble that came with the eventide. The sun ascends to witness a broken world, and the morning appears as if a group of guilty children saying that “it was not us”.
I walk as quickly as I can to my father’s house wishing I were a dog that could take the many subterranean, un-colonized trails that have escaped human sight. Several metres before I reach the front door and I hear a siren that pierces into my nervous system. I halt. The siren starts and stops as if it were intentionally trying to get my attention. Is this the siren that gets me? How do you know which siren is yours? Is it a siren that only you can hear? Is it that siren which is in sync with the beating of one’s heart? Are they the same thing? The moral alarm of the subjective heart mirrored by an automaton that thinks it is carrying out the word of God, the word of the State. The archaic heart deep within weeds and ancient ivory, tormented by the tower blocks of police sensibility.
I react, all at once. I am scarred. The fear, not on the surface of the heart but underneath somehow-the hearts underbelly. And the stomach, suddenly impregnated with fear as if it were a giant heart itself-a whale’s heart in pain-mourning. This is my siren. How do I know? It is oriented towards me, it knows my location, it is trying to catch me much like the sirens of the sea. And what does this encounter actually designate? When the internalised fear of being caught is apprehended by exteriority. What is this exact point where paranoia is affirmed by fate? It is so hard not to comply with fate, it is rather like trying to stop yourself from crying-“let it out, be caught, the worst is over”. Am I somehow safe then? No, I go to jail!
The police car drives past me. It was perhaps even an ambulance. I cannot know anything in this perpetual state of anxiety. I would rather let innocent victims die from severe wounds out on the pavement than see police cars and ambulances parade themselves around the streets I walk upon quietly.
I go round the back of the house. Underneath the plant pot on the table, just as my father had said, was the backdoor key. I let myself in and immediately grab the garage key which has been placed thoughtfully upon the kitchen windowsill. I muttered the words I told myself the following night; that it had been “at least forty eight hours since the incident, and if someone wanted to arrest me then they would have done it by now . . . and it would be good-possibly even healthy-for you to accept working for your father
