Thief


	He rolled the empty beer can between his palms. The
glittering roll of metal reflected the pale light entering the
apartment through the bay windows. It was getting late, you
could tell by the purple outlines. Taroon was watching me now,
following my eyes. He smiled �Remember when we were small and
Nani would tell us stories after dinner. She'd start exactly
after she washed the dishes; drying everything with her
tattered, white sari. I can still remember the paisley design on
it. The little flowers here and there along the edge.� He
enveloped himself with little finger movements and rumbling
laughter. �And you would always bug her about why she only wore
white saris, even though she never answered. And then you
finally got her that green one, man that was one ugly sari. I
can understand why she never wore that.�
        I smiled to show that I did remember, but what my smile
didn't show was that though I was in my thirties, it still
didn�t make sense that she wore plain saris every day. Why she
never wore green or even yellow ones? Why had she been afraid
of color?
	Taroon's smile was swallowed into his face and he looked
down at the beer can. His voice was now charged, �Nani would
talk to us till it got dark outside. God, the stories she could
make up, hunting and tigers. And even when she was sad, there
were always good endings. They always got the man-eater; they
always got the bastard. Some Engraji would come with his
polished boots and gleaming gun, and not leave till he did.
	�Did you ever wonder if she maybe wanted to tell us
about what happens to woman who can�t pay her dowry? How she was
beaten and then taken to the police station to be raped? How she
watched her own children starve? How maybe she wished everyday
that she would die first? But no, Nani always had a dead tiger
for us. And she always stopped when it got dark outside. I think
she was fearful of what she might say. I guess she thought like
father, knowledge is a splendid thing, but it is dangerous for
children. There was no point in telling us the unhappiness that
would come to us later.�
	But, I think something deep and watchful inside me knew
when the stories were about to end. The moment that Nani would
get up and fire the lamps, remembering whom she was talking to
and she wouldn't say any more. And as the light would fill the
room, I would always be filled with darkness. I knew that
everyday I had moved a little closer to the blackness outside.
The blackness outside is what Nani would never talk about, it
was where she came from. It was what she had endured, and she
knew if she talked any more, she would tell us what had happened
to her, and we would know too much, too soon, about what was
going to happen to us.
       Taroon looked up at me; there were tears rolling down his
face. They looked like blood in the receding light. �Why didn't
she ever teach us that we�d be husbands too, hey, maybe even
work with the police? Huh? Why never mention what we'd have to
face? Why did it have to come upon us like a thief one day? Why
did we always get the same damn tigers? Cause there�s nothing to
fucking hunt in my jungle. I�m the one they keep in a dark
little office, and in that small room I am the prey. 
Even when I leave there are only dead, hard people outside 
whose eyes move me to the side of the road. And you ask me why
I �Drink, drink and drink!� and I say, because I have nothing
else to hold.�
       He looked outside. �And there's no change, no brave
hunter who will come along and fix everything. Nothing.� He
crawled up on the couch and folded his knees like a knife,
pushing his face down. And while he cried, I watched the smooth
baldness on the top of his head. �And you�ve just got to keep 
on going; holding on; because it�s too easy to let go man, so 
easy to lose. And you can�t fight it with a gun, no you can�t
squeeze with your hands, cause it always finds a way to slip 
out. It crawls its way back to you, this big bad thing. You
can�t argue with it because it doesn�t talk, it just sits there
in some little waiting room inside your head knowing you�ll
return.�
	He crushed the beer can between his palms and the metal
lay there, shiny like a knife. �You feel dirty, like you can�t
let anybody look into your eyes. You watch people go by from
your window, and feel the darkness inside you and how it shuts
you right where you stand. You hold your breath cause you can�t
even stand your own stink, and listen to your heartbeat,
cause it all hurts like shit, it hurts!
       �And hey, there�s no one who can touch it, cause if you
can�t do it yourself, if you don�t know how to make yourself,
who can? Because at the core of it all, at the very center of
you, where everything is tied into a little parcel around your
soul, you think you deserve it. You have made it that big that
bad, cause it�s got to be. And it�s not a cry for help: it�s
gone way past that. Maybe sometimes you wish they�d know, that
they�d feel it, but you both know they can never touch it.
Because it needs to stay there at least while things are this
way, at least for now. But one day you wake up and it�s too
late. The thing has taken over. It�s branched out through your
veins, and it controls the way your body looks; the way you
walk. When you unwind the damn thing, all you have is bits of
string and wire; there�s nothing left inside. It has fucking
wiped out who you were, who you were protecting and hiding. It
has become someone else, someone who doesn�t even like you.
        �And I�m telling you, I think I�m there, I�m about ready
to quit.� With that he stood up, the length of him an
exclamation, and it struck me that he last thing he�d do, the
last thing we�re taught to do, was give up.






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