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| It's Christmas Day, a cold, bright frosty morning, I'm lying in my crib.
A little blue donkey is hanging over the side. I can hear my mother's
voice from downstairs, cups and saucers being placed for breakfast, my
grandfather's voice too. Suddenly I hear my father laughing; then I hear a
clicking sound coming from the end of my crib and there's a face in the
woolen blankets, a man's face reminding me of Mr. Hodges who was the
postmaster from Tolgeen Road. The face was sinister. Not frightening, but
sinister. And I recognized it as something that was wicked, even evil but
somehow the spirit of wickedness. He introduced himself to me as somebody I
might have known from another time; now he was just reminding me he was there.
A very knowing, wicked smile. Large teeth with all the gums showing and bright
yellow eyes. I can remember the frostiness of the morning, the smell of distemper,
an unmade bed in another corner of the room. I stared back at the clicking teeth.
Then I could hear more voices from below and my father was coming upstairs, and
the face at the end of the crib gradually faded into the blankets as if to say,
"We'll meet again one day . . ." All these years I have had the memory of that devil's face alive in me. He has been my companion but I've made friends with him. It's almost as if we struck a bargain that bright morning years ago. It became more or less clear to me when I was living in Los Angeles. The bargain was that if I were smart enough to find my way out of the maze, I would be finally spared all the ravages of Hell. What I have done all my life is keep moving, keep ahead of the game. I have never let anyone in close, just kept dodging and weaving. That's what I've done; I've presented a front of warmth and friendliness, but inside I have always felt empty; no compassion, just carelessness all my life; the booze and the drunkenness for fifteen years. It was, on that winter's day in 1975, as if God came along and picked me up, dusted me down and said, "Stop analyzing, stop drinking, because you cannot do that any more and get on with your life and live it and have some fun with it." That was the turning point. - Preface to Anthony Hopkins - The Authorized Biography by Quentin Falk |
