Interpreting the Interpreter

    “If we don’t act, it may too late. You know what General Dropumoff used to say?”

    “No, I forget.”

    “He used to say if you don’t pretend to be the toughest kid on the block you are going to be forced to fight, when If you had acted out, you could just growl.”

    “Yes, a classic philosophy. Do you remember that joke he used to tell about two comrades, one a conservative, the other a liberal? They went into a bar and beat up a guy who couldn’t make up his mind if he was a liberal or conservative. While he was lying on the floor, the conservative guy was about to kick him when the liberal intervened. “You should never hit a man when he’s down,” he scolded. 

    “You are correct friend, what was I thinking, my apologizes. Everyone knows you should kick him; it is easier.

    “I don’t know if I’m still the kind of person who can treat people so badly.”

    “You can get that monster truck feeling back, I did.”

    There is something about power that changes people. Major Grupeleskov was not always so disrespectful of people. We grew up together. Grade school boot camp, military high school, occupation of third world countries, my major in college, we did it all. I rather enjoyed it back then, but I can’t help thinking I only did because I was expected to. Now, I get no pleasure in taking advantage of someone who is already weak and tired. If I had been allowed to remain a Christian I would have questioned my own actions, but so goes the water under the bridge, as Dropumoff used to say. 

    There comes a time when throwing life preservers, or even paper towels, depending upon the severity of the problem, is just not going to help. Sometimes it’s better to just let people drift down stream and disappear. It is far easier pretending to have a sense of humanity, when you don’t have to look at people. It’s not that I’m squeamish, I just happen to have a weak constitution. Just another reason we should be able to choose our own parents. Hopefully science will catch up to our morality and it will come to pass for me. I would then have a quantifiable reason for my quizziness and wouldn’t have to put up with the ridicule at our reunions.

    I hadn’t planned on losing my lust for dispensing pain and suffering, but a tooth ache got me to thinking. I had led a privileged life. Pain was a sensation I was not used to. Doctors, dentists, accountants, any manner of people stepped in to absorb any disadvantages I may experience. Being subjected to the lack of medicated foreclosure, caused me to realize that not only is our body capable of wrestling our mind for supremacy, but capable of losing.

    It is difficult when you are expected to carry yourself like a conquering hero, and you feel like, how do they say it, Little Miss Moffit. 

    “So, what you been up to these last twenty years? Has it really been twenty years. I lost track of you after you infiltrated that cartel outside of Jerusalem. I’ve bet you got stories to tell about that, but some other time, we’ve got business to attend to. You were always such a good story teller. I remember some of the tales about mayhem and torture you used to tell us on what we referred to then as camping trips, remember?”

    You lose something when you get older. Maybe it’s that you realize you don’t have much time left and you begin to consider the responsibility for the things you did, just in case any of that stuff the nuns were always talking about were true.  You can also go the other way, throw everything to the wind, strike out against people, the world. You no longer care; you believe this is all there is.

    Now they want me to come back for one more show. 

    I just don’t know. I started thinking, what has this guy ever done to me. If he dies, is it really going to make a difference to the world? I can’t see how it would, but then when Billy Gorbachev fell in front of the train…things did change. Not so much for Billy, but for me. I never realized what a selfish person I was. When I look back on it, it was my job to take advantage of people. Learn their weaknesses, use them against them, and for what? Money, it was always about the money. And now the money is gone and I’m left with the memories. All the memories stopping by to say hello, and their faces come too. The images gnawing at me like rabid wolves.

     I think I’ve changed. Nothing I do can make up for the things I’ve done, but I don’t have to keep doing them. Perhaps I’ll be forgiven. I’ve heard of people who’ve done worse things and were forgiven. Why and by who no one ever says, but the idea is intriguing. I don’t know that I’ve ever been forgiven for anything before. Wonder what that feels like.                  

    “We should go. He’ll be coming out soon. Best to just get it over with, collect our money, and be off. See you again in twenty years if I am lucky. Ready?”

    “I’m not doing it.”

    “What you mean you’re not doing it? You don’t have a choice. You told them we’d do it, and when you tell someone you’ll do something, you damn well do it. It’s the code. You haven’t forgotten the code have you?”

    It’s always about the code, the rules, always about something. I just don’t have the stomach for it anymore. 

    “You know what they’ll do to you, to us, if we don’t go through with it. You know those guys. They think you’re turning on them you become a threat, and they get rid of you. It’s that simple.”

    I no longer care. It is that simple. Look at Machu Picchu, their civilization, their culture; gone to tourists everyone. It makes one consider what a lonely drop of water we are to the sea. 

     Captain Grupeleskov is correct, however. If I don’t fulfill my contract I will end up like Billy Gorbachev, and what good would that do. My only other option is to disregard my newfound morality, dispose of Grupeleskov, and slip into anonymity. But then what? I will be back where I began.

    “Here he comes, ready?”

    “I don’t know…”

*

     Although it is not what I expected, there is a feeling of freedom that accompanies you as you leave life and its expectations behind. The view although slightly blurry, creates a celestial atmosphere that allows me to consider for the first time, that I have been here for such a short period of time, and yet have created so much chaos and damage.

    You will have to excuse me. I have to work on my admissions speech. I know from experience it is always best to be prepared, as you never know when it will be your turn to ask for forgiveness.