Those lovely blue eyes

Author: C. Suresh

Author Introduction: Erstwhile engineer and MBA from IIM-Bangalore and worked for IFFCO in the area of fertilizer subsidies. Currently a 'gentleman of leisure' as a friend puts it. Trekker, Lover of books and music. Desultory blogger in 2009, non-blogger through 2010-2011, and furious blogger since February 2012. I blog at Life is Like This mostly on humor, travel, treks and occasional fiction.

The Story:

It was that pair of lovely blue eyes, again! Glistening with tears that did not conceal the deep hurt that lay behind them! The eyes that had tormented me in my sleep for many days! The eyes, that I had thought I was free of for many weeks now, had come back to haunt my sleep again.

I tossed and turned in my pallet tormented by guilt that I knew no reason for feeling. Why should a hooker’s eyes pierce my soul with guilt? A hooker who I loved; a hooker who had professed love for me and a hooker who had betrayed me! A hooker who had cared so little for me that she had given me the worst disease mankind has ever known!

Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome! A word she could not even know but a disease that she could acquire and pass on. And I, Bruce Tracy - the erstwhile wunderkind of the world of investments, was now on death row awaiting execution for her murder. But what did imminent death mean but a release to someone who had nothing else to look forward to but a long and painful slide to oblivion?

In the tormented realm of half-sleep I could imagine the wonder and disgust of the people who had known me in my past if they only knew where I was today. Immured within these dark walls, in an atmosphere stinking of urine and feces and surrounded by the dregs of humanity, I would appear a very unlikely candidate for the bright young executive juggling funds for millionaires. But all that was in the long-distant past.

One mistake was all it took when you played brashly with millions! One mistake had brought all my dreams crashing down; had caused friends of yesterday to turn their backs on me; had my dewy-eyed girlfriend spew contempt; had shattered my self-confidence and left my sense of self-worth in tatters. The long spiral down laced with alcohol and drugs had laid me low in the gutter till this whore had taken me in. How I had loved and trusted her then!

My mind shied away from exploring my feelings for her any further. Sleep had completely departed and I swung my feet down and sat up. Why was I feeling all this so strongly now when, for so long, I had been quite content to await my scheduled execution? Was it the conversation that I had overheard in the exercise yard yesterday?

* * *

“The Brawler is pissed with you, you b******!”

 “Ain’t got a choice, have I? Steve called in sick and Iron-Ass put me in here with the walking dead”, said the guard.

“Dontcha know how Billy loves his mother, you mother-f****er? Word has come that she’s sick and Billy gotta go to her. Mess this up, asshole, and your life ain’t worth rat’s piss.”

“Trust me!”

“Tomorrow night is the time! You oughta have let the Brawler know some way”

“It’s all laid on. The getaway car will be on the road near where the tunnel opens.”

“Shh! You got shit for brains, man, shouting it all over the place”, muttered the trusty, looking around with apprehensive eyes.

He saw me leaning against the wall looking incuriously at the soccer game in progress. No one else was in ear-shot.

“It’s only the Scholar – and he ain’t close enough to listen” said the guard ingratiatingly. There must have been something about the acoustics of that area, since even their whispers carried clearly to me.

“Awright! Cannya trust the driver?”

“It’s my son! He will be there before midnight tomorrow”

“He better be!”

The menace in the words was unmistakable. I could see the guard tremble visibly as the trusty walked away.

* * *

Billy – The Brawler! How I had hungered to avenge myself on him. That hulking ugly brute of a boxer had filled my nights with fear and fury for almost all the days I had spent as an under-trial in this prison. Had I not been sentenced to death and segregated from the rest of the prison population, I’d probably have killed him or died trying. So! He was planning an escape! Now I had my chance to avenge myself.

I was surprised at the vehemence of my thoughts. Less than forty-eight hours from death and here I was hungering for revenge. For the past few weeks, I had assumed that I was resigned to death and indifferent to the emotional storms that comprise life. I had declined any attempts to appeal my sentence and counted the days to my death placidly.

Now, all of a sudden, the haunting eyes were back in my dreams and my hunger for revenge burned as hot as ever. It seemed like I had not accepted my fate and moved on but had merely been caught in one moment of apathy like a fly in amber due to lack of choice. The first opportunity of revenge that arose had broken through my fugue and my emotions had got the better of me.

Billy! The man, who had destroyed my fragile self-respect in one uncaring brutal act, was now at my mercy. One word from me and his plans of escape would evaporate like a dewdrop in the desert sun.

* * *

When I had been diagnosed with AIDS and, almost immediately after, been arrested for the murder of my girlfriend I had sunk into apathetic indifference. Death was, anyway, a stone’s throw away and it had not mattered to me that it would come by execution rather than by a long-drawn process of illness. I thought that I might as well live the rest of my days in prison instead of the rat-infested tenement that I had shared with Violet.

It was Billy who shattered my sense of relative security in one brutal hour in the prison showers. I was chivvied along with the rest of the naked, sweaty, hairy and stinking mass of humanity into the showers and had just stood under the icy water for a second when there was a rush of men behind me and someone rabbit-punched me.

I fell to the floor and, at once, there was a hand pressing my face into the grime on the floor. Fingernails pierced my hands and legs as I was spread-eagled. Rough fingers dug into buttocks and spread them. Then there was the pain and the burning and the pounding as my anus was penetrated.

All the physical pain was insignificant compared to the bitter bile of humiliation and the impotent raging of inexpressible fury that burnt my being. It is difficult to express the utter shame that engulfs your soul when your body is violated and you are helpless. I felt soiled and, for days after, I could hardly see myself in the mirror for fear that I would see my shame branded on my face.

“Enough man! We don’t want to kill him” said a voice.

“He is walking dead, anyway!” said another.

“What?” roared a gravelly voice close to my ear.

Suddenly the pressure on my body was off me and I was being lifted up. For the first time I saw my molester. He was a monster of a man with a flattened nose, a cauliflower ear and brutal piggish eyes.

“What do you mean – walking dead?” he said.

One of the others said nervously, “He is in for Murder one, Billy! Word is he is almost certain to get the chop”

“Asshole! Why didntcha tell me before? Let’s get the hell outa here”

I scrubbed myself over and over again as though the soap would wash the shame away. The pain and weakness in my body and the dizziness in my head was such that I would have probably laid myself down in the showers and curled up but for a brutal whack on my back.

“Get going, you scum”

Every single step and every small act was an ordeal but, somehow, I dressed up and went on to the dining hall, picked up my meal and staggered to a table and slumped on the seat. As I was squirming uncomfortably to find a position that would lessen the pain, a couple of jerks came over to the table where I was seated.

One of them smirked at me and said, “So, how’s the day, girl?”

I was too far gone in pain and exhaustion to even feel a spark of anger and uncaringly bent to my plate.

Suddenly, a presence loomed in front of me and someone said, “Bugger off!” There was a clatter of plates and a patter of feet rapidly making their way away.

“You are under Billy’s protection, now” said the man. I raised my head and saw one of the others who had held me down in the showers.

“Why?” I asked apprehensively. My last few years had been with the scum of the world and I knew enough to know that being under someone’s protection in prison could mean that you were his paramour while there.

“Not that, Scholar! Billy is gay, alright, but he don’t want no truck with you walking dead.”

“Yeah! Right!” I muttered.

He lingered on as though waiting for something and then slowly moved away. Like he expected me to be grateful to Billy after all that had happened in the morning!

I had met this sort of sudden respect for the near-dead before. It was as though they either thought that death was something catching or that the near-dead would shortly be whispering tales about them in the ears of the Maker.

For the rest of the period as an under-trial I took far less interest in the progress of my own trial and far more in trying to come up with a way to get my back on Billy. Whether we were in the showers or the dining hall or the exercise yard, he always had his three cellmates tagging along like shadows and I could see no way of getting to him to shove a knife in his back.

Then my trial came to an end and I was sentenced to death. As one of the walking dead - officially now - I was shifted to the death row and segregated from the rest with no chance to get at Billy.

* * *

The clatter of a plate interrupted my reverie. I looked up to see the guard of yesterday’s conversation outside the cell.

“I need to talk to you”

“I got no time for scumbags”

“You got some for this one, pig! I need to talk about tonight and Billy. Come to my cell after you are done”

 “Awright” he mumbled fearfully and walked on.

It was an hour before he sidled into my cell wringing his hands and face white with apprehension.

“Whaddya want with me, Scholar?”

“I want to meet Billy ASAP”

“More than my job is worth, Scholar! I gotta wife and kids”, he whined.

“You don’t want your son in jail for abetting an escape, do you?” I was merciless. “Billy is on cleaning duty, right? Get him here with his mop and pail to clean up”

“I’ll try my best, Scholar”

“Try doesn’t cut it. Get him”

He slunk out like a whipped dog.

For the first time in prison I felt like I had some power and it felt good. I was savoring the idea of telling off Billy and watching his impotent rage when I told him that I was about to squeal on his escape plans. It was not enough for me to merely destroy his hopes – I wanted to see him squirm!

A sudden thought crossed my mind. Had I not got my revenge on Billy already? After all I was HIV positive and he had sodomized me! In the very act that birthed my desire for revenge, my revenge would also have been accomplished. It was very likely that he was infected too.

Why not join his escape plan and get out? That man outside, who I had considered safe from me, was no longer safe if I could get out. He, more than Billy, was a target for vengeance and only the fact that I had assumed him out of my reach had kept him off my mind.

I laughed bitterly and almost hysterically. It was ironic that the man who humiliated me was now going to be the reason why I could gain vengeance on that devil on earth – Vince Galliano!

* * *

It was impossible to think of Vince without remembering Violet. The Pimp and the Whore! Violet took me in on one snowy night upon seeing me shivering on the footpath outside her tenement. Hard-bitten though she normally was, she had these sudden queer impulses and, on that cold day, I was glad of being the recipient of her impulsive kindness.

What it was about me that made her keep me around I will never know. It is a fact that within a week, we were lovers and within the month everyone, including Vince knew me to be her boyfriend. Vince was indifferent to the whole matter as long as it did not interfere with business.

I must have I had about six months with Violet when my entire world came crashing down again. She had never tired of telling me how much she loved me. In the initial days, I had slept with her more for comfort and in gratitude but slowly I had come to love her as well. She was brassy, foul-mouthed, slovenly and amoral but there was this peculiar vulnerability about her that made me want to protect her. Above all, she had those lovely blue eyes which still reflected an innocence that was totally at odds with her coarse, ravaged and world-weary face.

At long last I thought I had found someone who cared for me without a thought for the use she could make of me. My complacency was abruptly shattered when I came back one day to see her sobbing into her hands.

“What’s the matter, honey?” I asked her.

“I am sorry, baby, I am so sorry”, she said embracing me and burying her face in my chest.

“What’s it?” I said irritably.

“I..I..I got AIDS”, she said. “I’ll never forgive my sorry ass if I have given it to you”

I thrust her away abruptly. Unreasoning anger and fear overwhelmed my mind.

“What the f***?:” I yelled. “You mean all the while you have been telling me how much you love me, you did not bother to check yourself up before sleeping with me? Even though you know what you do for a living?”

“I didn’t think….”

“You did not care, you mean, as long as you got what you wanted”

I started to go out of the house. As I was opening the door, she asked, “Where you going, Bruce?”

“To check if I got AIDS too.” A gust of fury blew through my mind. “If I have got it, I swear I will come back and kill you” I yelled and stormed down the stairs.

For three days after it was confirmed that I was indeed HIV positive I drowned my sorrows in various dives. At least, bleary-eyed and stinking of whisky and vomit I made my way to Violet’s pad for want of a place to call home.

Vince’s bully boys were outside the tenement as was his car. I waved at them and started up the stairs to the third floor. Just as I was climbing up the last flight of stairs, I could hear Vince’s voice through the thin plywood that served as the door.

“Since when d’ya think of them as men. They are just tricks, you c***, so you better get your ass out on the street. So, what if ya have AIDS?”

Violet’s voice was a soft murmur following which was the sound of a slap. By the time I reached the door, there was a sharp bump as if something had fallen and the Vince’s voice rose to a thin falsetto.

“I’ll teach you to raise a hand at me, b****”

I fumbled for the key when a shrill scream split the silence of the night. In near panic and range I groped with the key for the keyhole when another inhuman scream of pain drilled through my brain. By the time I had the door opened, there was a third scream which abruptly died down into a gurgle.

Vince came rushing out and I side-stepped him as he rushed past me and clattered down the stairs. I rushed in to find Violet lying down with a pleading look in her eyes that died as the light in them died. There was a horrid slash across her face, one more across her left breast and her throat was slit. Blood had spattered all over the room. The sickly-sweet smell of it abruptly caught my throat and I gagged, rushed to the bathroom and was sick.

A cold, murderous rage spawned in my brain and with an animal shriek I jumped up and ran to the door to destroy that devil of a pimp…and ran into the arms of the police.

There were witnesses enough to my threat to kill Violet; to the shrieks and to Vince having been on the other side of town in a poker game. Of course, even the rats in the tenement know enough not to hear anything to the detriment of the local Mafia Don’s nephew.

If ever there was someone I wanted to hurt and kill, it was Vince. He was safe, however, from the impotent rage of a jail-bird.

* * *

I had never understood why I felt such rage and desire for vengeance. Violet had callously used me for her purposes without caring for me and I, after knowing about my condition, had no particular desire to live. So, why should Vince evoke so much rage in me? Every time I had tried to think about it I had felt an unreasoning panic and despair. It was no different now.

Billy should be coming any time now. Abruptly, my entire plan for escape and vengeance against Vince seemed foolish. Even if I managed to make my way to Billy’s cell – which was the logical place for the tunnel to start – why should Billy not just knock me out and escape? Even if he did take me along what made me think that I could evade recapture and prove able to kill Vince? Billy was a dead man walking anyway. I felt melancholy and had almost decided to do nothing when a glimmer of an idea sparked in my mind.

Billy walked in.

“Whaddya want, Scholar?”

“Listen, Billy! You know what I can do to your escape plans.”

His hands clenched and he glared at me impotently.

“I need you to kill a man, Billy!”

“Don’t ask me that, man! I never done no murder”

“Your choice, Billy! I am a dead man tomorrow and I have only you to rely upon. Either you swear to me on your mother’s soul that you will kill him or I shall squeal the moment you go out that door”

There was a look of pleading in his eyes and his mouth opened and closed soundlessly.

“Billy! This guy always has at least twenty-five grand in his safe. You could beat the combination out of him easy. You will need the money for your mom. So, why don’t you just promise me? He just has two bully boys with him. You and your friends could handle them all”

After much hesitation, Billy agreed and swore as I had wanted. I gave him the directions to Vince’s apartment and he left.

* * *

It was a restless night for me. I knew that, even if I had been mistaken in Billy’s superstition about promises to a dying man and his love for his mother, he would go after the money. Vince was bound to threaten him with his uncle and even Billy’s pea-brain would realize that killing Vince was his only way to keep the mob off his back. I found myself in the surprising position of desperately wanting Billy to escape.

Sirens hooting and people running here and there in the morning heralded the success of the escape. My execution, however, could not be postponed. A harried Warden came to my cell to seek my last wishes and was surprised when I asked him to be able to watch TV.

Billy may not succeed, may not succeed today or may not succeed in time for me to get the news. I was still on tenterhooks wishing to see whether my plans had succeeded. While waiting nervously for the news I wanted, my mind wandered over to my days with Violet.

She had been much the same as she used to be before she met me when we first started sleeping together. Over the weeks, she had started taking pains to make her face – not the garish come-hither make-up she used for street-walking but the softer make-up that a girl adopts for her man. She could never really be clean – but her attempts to stop being slovenly and sudden tears when she failed were so endearing. As a cook, she was a disaster but she would never stop making dishes for me. The memory of the look of bright expectation on her face which turned to crumpled disappointment suddenly moved me now and I felt the prickling of tears in my eyes.

Abruptly, my mind was dragged to the news. “Is this the start of another gangland war? Mafia Don Galliano’s nephew was found sodomized, brutally tortured and battered to death with two other people..” The excited voice of the TV anchor receded to background murmur to me as a tremendous wave of satisfaction roared through my entire soul. Vince was dead and Billy’s goose was cooked. Whether the AIDS or the police or the mob got him was immaterial. I had succeeded beyond all dreams.

All the anger and hate in my being were wiped clean – and left me face to face with my guilt and shame. All that anger at Violet and fury at Vince was only a camouflage for my own guilt. Guilt that my accusation of callously passing on AIDS had lead to her confrontation with Vince and her death! Guilt that I had not been with her to protect her! And guilt that I may have been the one to give her AIDS and not the other way round! Had I not been a drug addict and given to indiscriminate use of needles? How was I sure that I did not pass on the HIV to Violet?

I realized that I had been in love with Violet all along and she had loved me more than I deserved. A love so sublime that, in the face of a sentence of death, her only thought had been about putting me in danger and not fear for herself! And I? I loved her with all the love that was there in me but all the love that I could lavish could not even rise to offer comfort to her in her time of need. It shamed me to see myself so clearly.

I grieved for Violet for the first time. All that I had to show for my life was Violet’s love for me. Somehow, at that time, it seemed enough to justify my life.

The warden came in with his cohorts to escort me to the execution chamber.

I was strapped to the seat. I closed my eyes.

Maybe there is a life hereafter

There was a needle prick.

Maybe I shall meet her again

There was fire in my veins.

Maybe I shall look into those lovely blue eyes. And wipe out the hurt.

Maybe.....