Read Online Flagged Victor by Keith Hollihan - Free Book Online

telling. He earned the scars he’d always wanted, but he could not appreciate or accept the accomplishment they marked. The crew, on the other hand, was light about its guilt. The captain and the others sneaked away from the trial like thieves in the night while Jim remained behind to face the consequences of judgment alone. As a result, he came to bear a disproportionate weight of the blame and responsibility for what happened.
    It is the willing acceptance of this weight that interested Conrad, or his narrative stand-in, the famous Marlow. That sense of burden, that weight, is revealed over the next several hundred pages in Jim’s delicate, almost aesthetically refined sensibility. He told Marlow his story, exposing his shame, agonizing over every detail of his failing and every facet of his cowardice. He bore the punishment and the shunning of his fellow men. He tried to make a simple but honourable life for himself, incognito, in ports across the region, and so he lived as a wanderer, almost a monk, moving ever eastward into the obscure depths of the Orient whenever his true identity was discovered. He did this despite the fact that many were willing to forgive him. Indeed, some even admired him because his self-delusions had been so cruelly stripped and the remaining virtues were so exceedingly pure. But Jimcould never accept this forgiveness or admiration. It was intolerable to him.
    I wanted to believe that of myself as I travelled the same Far East, a region still replete with the exotic mysteries Conrad described. Like Jim, I watched sunsets off the sterns of ferries, and listened to the call to prayer on the glasslike sea. Like Jim, I experienced quick storms that seemed accusatory in their malevolence. Like Jim, I recovered from injuries in breezy hospital wards and spent endless hours in open-walled cafés, surrounded by expats but separate from them. I wanted to believe that I was in search of a new code. That I was learning the virtues of simplicity after a period of excess and delusion. That I had been tested by a cruel fate not entirely my own fault and that the harsh knowledge of my personal weaknesses had scarred me. That I was burdened by consequence and untethered by wreckage. That my character had been polished as a result. At the same time, proving that self-delusions are forever dangerous, I hoped that this mysterious past made me a more enticing encounter, a more desirable sex partner, a more cunning writer.
    Unlike Jim, however, I hadn’t faced my trial or borne any undue burden of justice, and I knew the truth of that even though I could tell a good story when I hinted at the particulars of my past in suitably disdainful but actually self-flattering ways. The vanity of unearned virtue was strong in me.
    Not all of childhood is so heavy or dark. In fact, if you’re lucky enough to escape abuse, hardly any of it is. As a result, you forget lessons easily. You don’t know who you really are, so you goon trying illusions and fantasies of the self, and sometimes they are very comfortable, and the world is tolerant enough to let you wear them for a while. I’m not sure if that’s the reprieve of youth or another manifestation of its cruelty.
    We roll forward a few years, from the night of the tree fort, and its unknowable consequences, to the summer before I began college. We move from age fourteen to age eighteen. That’s not so long to jump, though it seemed an eternity at the time. A similar span, say from thirty-nine to forty-three, would not feel nearly as significant. Though you round the hump of a fourth decade and enter middle age, you’re likely to have the same job, the same family, the same monthly mortgage payments, the same car. Your progression through that phase in your life is incremental or gradual even though it can pass in an eye blink. In contrast, the years between fourteen and eighteen are filled with abrupt disruptions, noticeable changes in your physical body, your outlook,