I watch a child approach. About three years of age. Her steps are uncertain. She is guided by her mother. The little hand is enclosed in the adult one.
I remember that feeling, the warmth and closeness of a child’s hand.
She looks up. Up at me. I see her face, the eyes wide with inexperience, and the wet lips catching the light with their spill of drool. She wants to stop. Please let her stop. But no. Her mama is in a hurry. The child is torn from her moment of wonder. Her arm wrenched upwards in an arc of irritation.
How long have I been here? More than four centuries? More than five? I lost count a long time ago. I used to anticipate the changes of climate but now the seasons are like days to me. That is what happens when you live as long as I have lived.
The singular beauty of a child. It is mostly the little ones who will wonder about me now. It is all part of my penance. I watch them craning to look up at me. I worry that their fragile necks might snap backwards, might kill their beautiful innocence while I observe, helpless to do anything to ease their departure from this tormented life. Occasionally, they will turn to the accompanying guardian and ask ‘Who?’ and ‘Why?’ Their companions might cast a glance in my direction and deliver a fairy tale or a guess. The children though, they walk on, looking skywards. They do not know fear. Yet.
The older ones pass me without a glance, their heads about level with the toes of my granite boots. Over the years, a number of people have actually spoken to me. Some were drunk, some were mad. Some were both, but there were some who genuinely wanted to know. Their questions were, of course, rhetorical. Historians I suppose, who cannot understand why there is no record of my creator or of my identity. Obviously, I remained wordless, although inside I screamed against the injustice of it all.
There are moments of delight, although they are rare indeed. Parade and protest days are to be enjoyed. Men climb up my back and very occasionally children are settled upon my shoulders to watch the spectacle. I have been draped in flags of several colours, representing clans and counties as brass bands have bragged their way past; missiles have been hurled over my head, dancing girls have kicked their heels and fights have exploded all within my eye line. There are times when coloured lights festoon the air around me.
I am kept informed by the conversations that go on around me, the roared headlines of the newspaper vendors. I have seen progress. This scant village green has become the central square of a bustling town. Buildings sprang from a well of sand, lime and water. Carts became cars. The people grew in height and girth. They changed colour. The early silence has given away to noise. Sometimes, it is music.
With every blink of my stone eye, prosperity arrives, chased soon after by poverty. But I have seen destruction too. Beauty replaced by vulgarity. Gentility usurped by incivility. The calm has been replaced by the storm. I am the eye of the storm. I have seen it all. I have even seen shame to match my own.
I welcome the prospect of rain (and am seldom disappointed) although the weather has taken its toll on my physique. Storms over the years have amputated first my fingers, then ears, then hands. No blood. At first I raged against the pain. Now, I welcome each new wound. At least it is an occurrence. I pray to hell for a tempest that might decapitate me. Finish it.
I hear everything. They do not know that I can hear. I imagine my responses. I curse my sight and my hearing. They are all I have, but I would be truly dead without them, instead of this half-life which I neither need nor want.
****
When I was a relevant man, one of my obsessions was the need to be clean. In those times, I bathed in the lake each night to rid myself of the stain of the day, raking my skin with branches, crushing petals with which to scent my hair. I took pride in my appearance. But now… layers of grime, oil, soot and dust. The stench of myself. And then the curse of the heavens. The leavings of filthy pigeons decorate my head, my shoulders. Rats scurry up my coattails and urinate in the spaces where my fingers used to be.
You would think that by now I would be used to it. That I would be resigned to the pain, the searing isolation, the yearning anticipation of the end. The Elders must have had evil in their souls to dream up such a punishment for me.
They kept me for ten months in the ice house while they decided my fate. I railed against it. I now long for its luxury of movement, of life, of communication. Ten months of arraignments, appeals, appearances at the assizes. The excitement. The vilification. Every neighbour denounced my betrayal, even the ones I had saved with my bottles and potions in my role as the apothecary. The villagers were revolted by me. It was not enough for them that I be sentenced to death. They said that death was too easy for me. And although I wished them to hell, I know they did not go there, because that is here, where I am. Still. Alone.
Petrification was my sentence. At least, part of my sentence. At the time I was relieved to have cheated death. I did not know then that immortality was built into the judgement. I did not believe the Elders’ condemnatory chants of ‘corporal damnation’. To be buried alive in a husk of stone should mean death within days, but the devil must have been consulted, for here I am. The process was vicious; starved for one full phase of the moon and then funnelled with concoctions that scorched me from the inside out. Filleted as I was, there would be no more need for food or water. And yet some sorcery keeps me sentient. My heart still beats, a metronome of misery.
In the beginning, I was careful to take orphan girls, or the daughters of pitiful parents. I thought that some may be glad to be relieved of their burden. The defilement and dispatch of their children became an addiction and an obsession; I would not stop myself, needed more and more, and soon there were few girls left. After I had used them for my pleasure, I threw their alabaster corpses into the estuary as the tide receded.
I suppose I grew careless. Bodies washed up on the shore. I did not think my neighbours had the wit to discover me; they were my inferiors. Yet they uncovered my darkness and exposed it, ironically using a simpleton foundling child as bait.
****
Nine days ago, men arrived with ladders of steel and measuring tools. They surrounded me, critiqued my condition. Dare I hope that I am due for cleaning? A decade ago, something similar happened. Using acids and flame, they left me stainless. It was a very good day. Perhaps the best of them. I thought for a moment that perhaps they might burn all the way through to my soul. That would have been some release. Perhaps tomorrow. Dare I hope?
****
My wife died of shame, they said. Lucky her. She was a beauty- if you like that sort of thing. Steady, faithful and clean, thank God, or I could not have endured her presence. The match was arranged by the Elders. She smiled all that day. I tolerated the festivities for the sake of decorum. She was very young, though not young enough. She was probably relieved that I left her alone after I was discovered.
****
And so to yesterday. The men came back with cutting tools. They erected a scaffolding frame around my granite carcass and shouted instructions at each other. One fat fellow wrapped a chain of weighted links around my neck. I could feel the warmth of his putrid breath on my chin. They graded the passing women in numbers from one to ten and spoke of them in terms of such crudity that I should have been revolted, but I did not care. Ecstasy took hold as I anticipated my ending. I could not see behind me but I could hear the tortured grinding screech of machinery. I imagined the wrecking ball poised and ready and anticipated it with an open heart. And then as dusk approached, they left with promises to return in the morning. I spend my last night contemplating the cessation of torment…
****
My wife said she loved me once. That was kind of her. I wished I could reciprocate, but maybe even then my heart was encased in stone. I couldn’t give her children, wouldn’t give her children. It would not have been appropriate under the circumstances. She begged me. I sent her to the farrier who happily obliged. I did not touch that child. They may say I am evil but I have scruples.
****
Today is a day that will forever stand out. It is hard to conceive that there will be no end for me. There was no wrecking ball. I was wrapped in fabric and tightly bound with rope. And as my head was about to be completely swathed, a final child passed. She looked up and asked the older boy, ‘Who’s he?’ And the boy replied in a mocking voice of menace, ‘He’s a monster!’ And the little girl screeched with laughter and ran a few steps before he caught her with a graceful sweep and landed her over his shoulder. The last thing I saw, before being hooded in hessian.
A crane lifted me from my plinth into this coffin lined with straw. I heard them say that I was going to a warehouse. And here I am. The agony of existence continues but this time in silence and in darkness. As they sealed this crate and my nightmare entered a new phase of horror, one of them remarked that nobody even knew who I was. And they laughed and left.
My punishment is just beginning. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am not sorry.