Read Online The Wanderer by Timothy J. Jarvis - Free Book Online

ex-soldier who, convinced his testicles had been possessed by an ancient demon in the Iraqi desert, masturbated compulsively to rid himself of ‘cursed seed’; a woman who felt she was harried by an evil horde of miniature squirrels; and an old man, a former ventriloquist, who said his dummy had come to life one night on stage and turned against him, that he’d been forced to dismember it to save himself. These tales, in particular the latter, intrigued me at first, but, over time, I realized they were mere delusions.
    I, though, had, I was sure, been afforded a glimpse of some cankerous truth about the world. My certainty of this led me to regard those who came to visit me as fools. I was incensed by their complaisant prattle. Most of my friends were repulsed by my disdainful, nasty manner and didn’t return after their first few visits. Rachel suffered my anger and derision for some months, coming to see me often, no matter how badly I treated her. In the end, though, she also found it too much. I can still recall our final conversation, a painful and poignant memory.
    We were sitting, side by side, on the Institute lawn. It was a clear day, the wind coming off the sea a little chilly, but the sun’s rays warm, a caress. I was staring off into the distance; Rachel was looking at me with concern, stroking my arm.
    I pushed her away, roughly.
    ‘I didn’t ask you to come here again,’ I said, not even turning to look at her. ‘Why won’t you leave me alone?’
    ‘Why are you being so cruel?’ she replied, gnawing on her fingernails. ‘I’m trying to help you.’
    ‘I’m trying to help you,’ I mimicked. ‘Stop biting your nails. It’s pathetic.’
    She began crying, silently. Her indrawn breaths seemed to rack her.
    (I can’t be sure, even with so much hindsight, why I drove her away; my motives are murky to me. I know I still felt a great deal for her then. But I’d grown wary and bitter.)
    Her sobs ceased, she seemed to calm.
    ‘Don’t you want me there for you when you’re well again?’
    I turned to her. She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her right hand, gave me a piercing look, grinned, a cold grin that haunts me still. I shrugged.
    ‘Well,’ she said.
    And that was the last word to pass between us. She stood, walked away, left me sitting there on the lawn. I saw her only once more, a year or so later, walking down Tottenham Court Road. She was laughing, hand in hand with a man a few years older, who looked to dote on her. I ducked into a shop and watched them go by through the window.
    I scarcely treated my family any better than I did Rachel, but they stuck by me.
    During my time at the Institute, I strove to remain distant from the other inmates – I couldn’t be sure who I could trust. But even the most leery may blunder into the toils of friendship, and so it was with me; there was one whose company I fell into often: Colin Elton, middle-aged, a former lecturer in Medieval History at a red-brick university. He’d suffered a breakdown when research he’d been engaged in for many years was copied and published by a trusted colleague. Few believed Colin’s claim, he was thought resentful, his reputation was ruined, the thesis was forever linked with the plagiarist’s name. It had to do with the way the Black Death spread its contagion; it was abstruse, and I couldn’t quite grasp it.
    Colin’s was a fascinating mind, and we had many long conversations ranging over divers subjects. The Middle Ages were, of course, his particular area of interest, but he could discourse on everything from architecture to the Eleatic paradoxes. In truth, our chats were less dialogues, more lectures:for the most part, I was attentive merely, just from time to time prompting him with queries (then I knew little; now, now I wish I knew less). Colin was generally quite well, but so afraid of his ideas being thieved, he was mute with most people. I don’t know why he chose to trust me.
    One