Guilt

It was truly more than just a date on the calendar. I didn't knock at all. He had written a date on the living room wall in large, irregular letters, painted in red. He called them "teachings." It was as if he was afraid he might forget it. The red marker had dried out, as if he had emptied it to write those letters. January 17, 2011, New York.

My uncle, Richard. I remember his doorstep. I waited outside his door. I didn't knock. Not at all. There was a sticker that had long lost its shine. It read "The Lechers' Den." I wasn't sure if it was worth understanding. It was like something from another world. I knocked.

I knew his rules. He always waited. Exactly one minute and twenty-nine seconds. "Where? Where?" I counted slowly, almost mechanically, as if participating in some ritual I didn't understand. The door opened. I felt a metallic taste on my tongue. Wet.

My jaw hurt from the pressure on the pillow. Again. At dawn, I had been disturbed, murmuring in my sleep. As the paralysis in my muscles relaxed, I woke up without understanding what had happened. And now I am writing this text. What is the real reason? I can't explain it clearly. I have to write it, otherwise it will stay inside me. And things that stay inside you weigh you down. Many times, far too much.

One side of his face was in the darkness. The way he looked at me made me feel like he believed something was happening inside my mind. "If you are afraid, you had better be on your guard," he said. His voice was aged. Tired.

I went inside. I felt something strange before I even entered the room. Worn paper. Old coffee. A smell that wasn't easily forgotten. On your clothes. On your skin. I carried it on me for hours, like a parasite that wouldn't leave. The walls were full of papers. Stuck, stacked. Symbols, words, phrases. He called them "teachings." Something between faith and obsession.

He gave me a paper. I looked at it. It was almost empty. "The Awakened Man." I don't remember him saying anything else. He pointed to the void. Then he started spouting numbers. Disconnected. I told him to come and eat the soup I had brought. He spoke like an actor reciting lines. Without turning around, he said that the soup smelled wonderful.

I pitied him deeply. I felt a pinch inside me. Like something sharp suddenly shooting into my stomach. I turned abruptly.

"You have no protection here. You depend only on these. An apology isn't enough to change a life."

I wanted to shake him. To bring him back. But I didn't know where "back" was for him. Most of the time, I wanted to leave that place quickly. And yet, I stayed. He approached the window. There was an old photograph there. He loved it. He looked at it in a way I hadn't seen before. "Her voice became almighty." In my memory, her voice was different.

Sharp. Strong. Something that made you tense up. My mother used to say: "Her malice blackened her tongue." I believed it then. Now I couldn't trust anything. But he had changed her. He had purified her within him. He had transformed her into something else. Something beyond what she was. Perhaps because he couldn't bear to remember her as she really was.

I said his name again. "Come and eat." He looked at me. "I can't now," he said coldly. "I love." The word hung in the air. It didn't fit there. It had no place in there. Not the way he said it.

"Experience matters," he added after a while, "but it isn't everything. If you don't have a vision, you aren't living."

"And what is your vision?" I asked. His face changed. It darkened from within.

He exploded. "I want my years back!" he said. Something beyond anger filled his eyes. "You are our only hope to be saved..."

His hand remained raised. The street lamp's light hovered in the dust. A fly was constantly hitting the glass. A small, persistent sound. Then I saw it. Not anger. Nor indignation. Fear.

And I understood.

"The phrases, the teachings, the grand declarations were not revelations," he said.

A way to avoid seeing something else. Something he knew: guilt. Because guilt doesn't leave. You don't chase it away with words. He loved it. And at some point, you cover it up so much that it weighs heavily, you need a whole world—or a second world—to lift it.

He lowered his hand. He sighed. "There is no eraser," he said.

He had once told me: "If you deny a beggar, you deny God." And now he was that beggar. He said nothing. He didn't need to.

He looked at me.

"In order to eat the soup..."

He waited.

I gave him nothing. I just stood there.

Because then I realized he wasn't asking for a spoon.

He was asking for something I couldn't give him.

And he never asked again.