A Dead Man Cannot Carry a Sword

I am walking down the street. I should be happy. I have been lately. I have managed to go on, to pick myself up as they say. On my own, more or less, so I should be proud of myself. And I should be happy.

So why do I have this eerie feeling, this sense of unease, of something being not quite right. It is almost physical. I feel the air closing in on me, I feel a tightness in my chest. I must not focus on it. I must focus on the street, on the people, on the cars and the shop windows. I must keep my mind and body focused on a simple mundane objective: to reach the bar a mere 800 yards away, the bar where I am to meet my boyfriend. This is hard. The feeling of something malevolent hangs over me in the cool autumn air. A Damocles sword hovers above my head as I walk down the street. The man I have hated with all my might and with every fibre of my body, the man whom I have hated almost from the day he entered my life, the man who has haunted my days, the man whom I secretly accused of ruining my life and the life of three generations and an entire family, my family, this man is dead. This man has been dead for a long time now. For over a decade. He is dead and buried. I have nothing to fear. So why am I scared?

I drum these words into my brain, hoping it will process them and churn them out and I will be happy walking down the street. I can see cars queuing up in the Friday afterwork traffic jam. I can hear horns beeping, engines roaring, I can feel the drizzle on my skin. All this is real and so I know I am not having a nightmare. I am not losing my mind. I am walking down the street amongst hundreds of people and the bar is now only 700 yards down the road. I will reach the bar and sit down and smile at my boyfriend and the uneasiness will disappear. So I keep on walking, I am trying to keep the pace but the sense of something odd is still there and I feel it in my whole body now and my legs are shaking and I know I am slowing down. 600 yards to go. I am saying to myself: I can make it, I must make it. 

I must not be scared. I must not give in to fear. If I do, all the dark images I have worked so hard at pushing away at the very back of my mind will resurface and I might not be able to walk the 500 yards to the bar. I must keep on walking down the street. This terrifying, violent, psychotic man was ruling as a despot over us. Nobody managed to stand up to him and tell him to go away. Yet I did. I was 17 and I stood up to him and shouted at him and yelled at him so hard my throat was sore afterwards. I still remember the pain. This sword hanging over my head as I walk to the bar does not belong to him. He is dead. I didn’t go to his funeral because I had run away by that time but I know there was one. My mother went. Her friend went with her. They told me so. I even helped my mother clear up all his stuff later and I remember watching the flames burning everything that would burn. Watching the smoke go up. I was not even angry, I was not even feeling victorious, not even crying over the wasted years. The man we had to praise and flatter and serve and agree with was now revealed as what he had been all the time: in the grey smoke I could see his real self, a weak, flimsy man made of thin black smoke. He had been the one who was scared and worried and he had been hiding all this behind a terrible arrogance and an overflowing narcissism. In the end we even burnt his paintings. All of them. I was staring at the flames in the middle of the field at the back of the house, staring at the flames, staring at the smoke going up in the bright blue summer sky. That’s it. Gone up in smoke. 

Who were you to declare yourself superior to us all? It was your sheer physical violence and psychological aggressiveness that made us fall under your rule. Or run away in my case, the day I could. I remember I was scared to wish you dead because I was certain you could read my mind. I was walking down the street and these thoughts twirled in my head because of this sensation that something dreadful was about to happen. I knew it. It was a fact. Can you force facts out of reality the way you force thoughts out of your head? 

Only 400 yards to go now. Once inside the bar things will be ok. 

I felt this thing coming and it was harder and harder for me to walk and to breathe. I could not understand. This was stronger than me. I tried to breath deeply, consciously filling and emptying my lungs. 300 yards. Raise your head. Walk tall. 200 yards. You see, nothing is happening, everything is going on as usual, the drizzle turning into rain, more cars queuing up at the traffic lights. 100 yards. Breathe. In. Out. Walk. Tall. Focus on the bar, you can see its lights now it is getting darker. The breathing helped. The sight of the bar too and I was beginning to shake off that strange feeling. The tension was leaving my body - I was accepting this feeling as a warning. I was ready to take in whatever was coming. I looked up at the sky, it was dull and grey but the city lights were trying hard to brighten up the scene. 50 yards. 30. 20. 10. 5.

It hit me like a slap on the face. I even heard the metallic noise it made. I felt it on my cheek and I turned my head towards the doors of the bar. I wanted to scream. I needed to scream but no sound would come out of me. Like in a bad dream my body was frozen and my legs refused to move. There. Walking towards me, in a straight line, briskly and very determined, tall and strong, looking at me. Him! 3 yards. 2 yards. I did not so much push the door of the bar as let my whole body collapse into it. Someone noticed me and pulled it open from the other side. It opened wide just as he walked right past me. I did not touch him but I felt a freezing stream of ice-cold air envelop my whole body. He looked at me straight in the eyes as I stumbled into the bar. I knew the inside well so I turned right and went to the darkest, furthest corner behind the glass windows where I saw him continuing along the pavement past the bar. It was him. It was even the same coat. The same worn leather collar and the same ancient satchel.

I was frozen with fear and the comfy chair was a small vessel in the high seas. I was going to be sick. I sensed rather than saw my boyfriend coming towards me.

‘Are you all right? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!’

…

‘I have. I just have.’ 

As I said these words I realised this would be the ultimate test for our relationship. I hoped we could pass it. I had just realised that I needed him more than ever now.

‘I saw him.’

He sat down. He asked questions and I answered. Was he trying to assess my mental health? He wanted details and precisions. In the end he moved closer to me. 

‘But I don’t understand. Why are you so certain it’s him? It can’t be him. He’s been dead a long time now. Dead!’

His voice was louder now, he was speaking in a normal voice and was not whispering anymore. Maybe because he came to the conclusion that I was not insane after all. Maybe we’d passed the test already. He added:

‘A dead man cannot be walking down the streets. Do you think he is still alive somewhere? That someone else was killed that day? Did he survive? Does that make sense?’

I was silent.

‘Please! Speak to me!’ His voice softened and he touched my hands lightly. ‘Please try. You need to tell me. I want to help. I really do and I think I can too. Are you certain he died that day?’

‘Yes. Because …’ I said, hesitantly at first then more assertively. 

‘Because I pushed him off that cliff.’