Unjust Desserts

Clive delicately set the tea strainer on the saucer. He stared abstractedly at the intricate floral patterns on the cup. It was a piece from the 18^th-century Meissen royal porcelain manufacture; it had been in his family for five generations. Its finely wrought fluted sides looked incongruous against the drab, dull wood of the rickety table.

            Clive held his face in his hands, the cords of his neck taut, his hair unkempt. He hadn't slept for thirty hours. Since he had taken the room at the Belltown Hotel, he probably hadn't slept more than thirty hours altogether.

He didn't know if it was the heavy, stale air whose rankness permeated the room, or the intermittent raucous scuffling of the drunks in the streets in the deep hours of the night, or just the utter sense of waste and gloom, found in the stained curtains, the cracked ceiling, the very cells of the place—no matter, sleep, when it was had, was an unnourishing, diminishing thing.

            He stared at his grimy fingernails, a deformed smile creasing his features. He remembered the manicure he had received in Athens—it had cost a hundred dollars, and he had given the shy and smiling young woman a two-hundred-dollar tip. Two hundred, a thousand, what difference could it have made? His family had been shipbuilders in Seattle since 1844; his great-great-grandfather was the largest landowner the area had ever known; senators and congressmen ever graced his table, which knew only plenty.

            Clive's table at present was a different matter altogether. No silk cloth, no filigreed silver, no toothsome repast—just splintered, begrimed wood on a dirty linoleum floor in a one-room dwelling in a seedy hotel in his hometown, a town that had spoken the name Twillweave with a reverence bordering on awe for nearly one hundred and fifty years. Until now.

            Now there was Clive Twillweave, Oxford graduate, collector of fine cars and Persian rugs, star of the Seattle social column, living in this dingy room, eating out of cans, staring dazedly out of his spattered third-story window.

            A wracking cough quaked through Clive's body. He thought he had caught the cold on the horrid, stormy night a week ago, when he had wandered out to the harbor to see one of the sailboats that he had owned. It had been one of his family's treasures, a fifty-foot palace of speed and grace that his father, with considerable pride, had presented to Clive one year ago. A year ago! A year ago I was a prince, thought Clive. Now I'm no more than an animal.

He almost leaped out of his chair when he heard the knock on the door. He had not spoken to anyone for at least a week—only his immediate family and his ex-wife knew where he stayed, and they hadn’t had any contact with him for months. He moved to the door as though a hundred-pound weight was clamped to his neck.

            It was Julia, his sister, the only family member who had acted with sympathy and decency towards him at the time of his trouble. She came tearfully into the room, carrying something in a paper sack.

            "Hello, uh, hello, I mean hi, Clive! Hi, how are you?" She drew back suddenly, a look of fear pulsing on her soft features. "Clive! You look terrible! Are you ok?" She started to cry.

            Clive was starting to cry himself. It had been so long since someone he knew had expressed concern for him.

            "Julie, Julie, it's so nice to see you. God, it's nice. Good God, I'm a mess! I'm sorry sweetie, it just seems that I don't care a lot about how I look or anything much these days. How are Mom and Dad?"

            She grimaced and shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing is any different. They don't know I'm here. I'm not supposed to visit you, talk about you, or even think about you. But I miss you so much! Are, are things, you know, are things any different?" She looked away, tugging at her long brown hair. 

            He grinned, eyes dull. "Oh, you mean about my problem?" He laughed a brittle little laugh. "No, no, I still have my little problem. In fact, I was thinking of applying to work in a pet store so that I wouldn't have to go out for lunch—clever, eh? So, what's in the sack? "

            She turned a brilliant red. Saying nothing, she handed him the bag and walked to the window, breathing heavily. He opened the sack and looked in. He withdrew by the tail a small dead snake. He stared at it a moment, and then dropped it back into the sack.

            "Julie, babe, I appreciate that you are trying to help me sustain my miserable little life, especially knowing how little you can stomach this kind of business, but details, details—I can only eat them live! Awful as it sounds, it's just the way it is. Live, sweetheart. I'm sorry."

"But Clivey, Clivey, I've been talking to this psychoanalyst for weeks now. He says if someone who really cares tries to gradually acquaint you with a normal diet, it just might bring you back. I figured if you began with some dead snakes, you might start to become comfortable with just the idea of meat, dead meat, in a general sense. And then you might begin to eat, well, normal food. "

            He laughed heartily, and then abruptly stopped. His voice took a harsh tone. "What are you saying, normal food? I have no need for normal food! You know what happened in the Garden—you know! It was the serpent, tempting an innocent woman, just like you! The serpent cannot be conquered unless he is consumed! And I must keep consuming him until there is no more sin! 

Julie, can't you see? A dead snake is just a dead snake. I have to eat them live, live, when the malevolence is within them, while Satan's spirit abides. I'll know when it's time to return to normal food, don't you worry. Thanks, though, really. You're a darling."

            She approached him and threw her arms around him, weeping. Then she turned and rushed to the door, and in a moment, she was gone.

            He pulled the shade on the window. He positioned the lamp in front of the huge print of Christ, an image of the Son of God trodding a serpent to death under His foot, a transcendent look of satisfaction on His face. Clive took the cover off of the cage at the bottom of his bed and withdrew a small live snake. He dangled it above his face, looking into its insensate reptile eyes.

            "Do this in remembrance of Me, do this in remembrance of Me," he chanted, and then he slowly brought the serpent's head to his lips.