At the bottom of his magic chest lay booklets with titillating tales of sizzling sex and awesome drug lords. I waited for his visits with the impatience of an inmate. He was the idol of my budding willfulness and nascent freedom. I resented our forced estrangement.
And so began my mutiny. Lured by the siren songs of far-flung lands, of sexual liberation, and of equality, I traveled to my grandma's home, an uninvited guest. My uncle, whose name now we could not pronounce, was there. We strolled the windswept promenade of Beer-Sheba, kicking some skeletal branches as we talked. He treated me as an adult.
Then it was time to return. My father, aware of my encounter, regarded it as treason, another broken link in the crumbling chain of his existence. To him, I was a co-conspirator. I shamed him publicly. He felt humiliated in his own abode. He didn't say a thing, but not long after, he signed me over to the army as a minor. My mother tremblingly co-signed and mutely pleaded with my father to recant.
But he would not. Immersed in hurt, he just imploded, blankly staring at the television screen. He took to leaping anxiously with every phone ring, instructing us in panic to respond. He didn't want to talk to anyone, he promised.
When I enlisted, he accompanied me to the draft board. Evading any contact, he occupied a tiny, torturous wooden stool. He didn't budge for hours and didn't say a word and didn't kiss farewell, departing with a mere "goodbye". I watched him from the bus' window as he receded , stooped, into a public park. He collapsed onto a bench and waved away the pigeons that badgered him for breadcrumbs. Finally, he let one near and kicked her with his shoe. They scattered.
I didn't visit, not even on vacations. I found father-substitutes, adopted other families as home. At times, I would remember him, a tiny, lonely figure, on a garden bench, surrounded by the birds.
One day, my service in the army nearly over, my mother called and said: "Your father wants you here."
At once I felt like burdened with premonitory sadness, with the belated anguish of this certain moment. She told me that my uncle died in shipwreck.
"His cousin was with him to the end. He clung on to a plank all night, till dawn. He fought the waves and floated. And then they heard him mutter: what's the point and saw him letting go and sinking under. They say he drowned tranquil and composed."
I alighted from the belching bus before it reached my parents', traversing accustomed pathways, touching childhood trees, pausing in front of the boarded cinema house, a fading poster knocking about its peeling side. A titian cloud of falling leaves engulfed it all. The sea roared at a distance as if from memory.
I knocked, my father opened. We contemplated one another, vaguely familiar. Alarming corpulence and evil hoary streaks. Time etched its brown ravines in sagging flesh, the skin a flayed protection. He spread his arms and hugged me. I cautiously accepted and dryly kissed his stubble.
He ushered me inside and sat me by my brothers. I greeted them in silence. My father helped my mother serve refreshments, peeled almonds and solid confitures. We sulked in mounting discomfort.
Sighing, my father rose and climbed the spiral staircase to his room. He soon returned, clad in his best attire, his synagogue and festive uniform, the suit he wore in my Bar-Mitzvah.
Like birds after the storm the house was filled with curled rabbis. Flaunting their garb, grimly conferring with my father, they eyed the table critically.
"There's more!" - my mother hastened - "There's food, after you finish."
"Are these all your children?" - they demanded and my father, blushing, soon admitted that my sister wants no part in the impending ceremony. They nodded sympathetically. They linked their talliths (prayer shawls) into a huppah (wedding canopy) and ordered us to squat beneath it.
They blessed the house, its inhabitants and future monotonously. My father's face illuminated, his eyes aglow. He handed each rabbi and each cantor a folded envelope from an overflowing pocket in his vest and poured them Araq to warm their hoarsely throats. They gulped the fiery libations, chanting their invocations as they swallowed.
With marked anticipation they assumed the better seats around the table and plunged into my mother's dishes. She waited on them deferentially. Burping aloud, the food devoured, they broke into a vigorous recital of pious hymns.
Night fell and my father entered the guest room and settled by my bed. He drew the covers to my chin and straightened wrinkled corners.
"We blessed the house," - he said - "to fend off a disaster."
I asked him what he was afraid of. He told me that he cursed his brother to die young and now that he did, my father was anxious.
"You loved him very much" - I said and he averted his face.
Waves clashed with undulating ripples to deafening effect.
"There will be a storm tonight" - my dad said finally.
"I guess so" - I agreed - "Good night. I am bushed, I need to rise and shine early, back to the army."
I turned around to face to the naked wall.
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Author Bio
Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East, as well as many other books and ebooks about topics in psychology, relationships, philosophy, economics, international affairs, and award-winning short fiction.
He is the Editor-in-Chief of Global Politician and served as a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, eBookWeb , and Bellaonline, and as a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent. He was the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.
Visit Sam's Web site at http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com
A Short Story about Shame
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