A
Scent of Bitter Almonds
“Say a letter, Vlad!”
“R.”
“Wrong again! Come on, Vlad!
Concentrate! This game has tactics to make it easier, you know. Use them.”
“I’m sorry, Josh. It’s just
that I’m always a little absent-minded during the first few days of fasting.”
“Why do you fast then?”
“Because it is written in
the canons of the Orthodox Church that I must.”
“Well, I don’t believe that
anyone in your church would be happy if you die while doing your job, because
of absent-mindedness.”
“You know what, let’s just continue with the
game. F.”
“Wrong again. You have one
mistake left, Vlad.”
“T.”
“Nope. Game over.”
“Damn! So, what was the
word?”
“Why should I tell you? You
didn’t even guess a single letter! I think, I’m going to leave this word for
some other game in the future.”
“Oh, come on, Josh! You know
I hate it when my questions remain unanswered.”
“It’s interesting that you
brought this up, because isn’t the essence of religion that you remain ignorant
of the existence of God?”
“It’s not like this. The
Bible gives you all the answers that you need about God. All you have to do is
believe.”
“But what if these answers
are wrong?”
“They are divine truths,
Josh! They cannot be wrong! Ask any believer and he will tell you the same
thing.”
“Because they’re all stuffed
with the same religious bollocks. They never question anything, they don’t dare
to think on their own. They’re just hollow people, yearning for something to
cling to!”
“Are you calling me hollow,
Josh?”
“No...”
He was interrupted by the
police radio:
“Car 47. We had a photograph
by a pedestrian of a man dragging a dead dog behind his car. We traced the
car’s number and it belongs to a citizen called Don Bickle, living at 19 St.
Bernard Street. We want you to go there and see what he has to do with this
event. Over.”
I ignited the engine and
Josh confirmed that we were on our way.
“I’m sorry, Vlad.” Josh said
after several silent minutes. “I didn’t mean to call you hollow. It’s just that
I find religion distasteful. I tend to associate it with my father. He
committed many bad deeds and always tried to justify them by quoting passages
from the Bible and twisting the words in his favour.”
“Don’t worry, Josh! I’m not
mad at you. Anyway, what was your word?”
“Cyanide.”
We arrived at the address.
It was a bleak house with crumbling parget and a broken chimney. Dim light came
out of one of the stained windows.
As I stepped out of the car,
the contact with the morning air made me shiver. I followed Josh to the front
door and stopped a step behind him as he knocked on it. No one answered. He
knocked again. We heard the key spin in the keyhole and the hinges grinding
reluctantly against each other with a sound that never fails to make me cringe.
The door creaked back and revealed a slim man, dressed only in his stained
underwear. He held a plastic bottle in his hand and when he spoke his breath
reeked of alcohol:
“What?”
“Mr Bickle, I am Officer Josh Patterson and my
partner is Officer Vladimir Pustoy. Do you mind if we come in for a minute? We
have to ask you some questions.”
“Go fuck yourself!”
He bashed the door. Josh
looked at me, shrugged and kicked it near the lock. Two minutes later the
drunkard was subdued and lying face down upon the cracked floor, his hands
shackled tightly behind his back. Josh stayed with him while I searched the
house for evidence. I went straight for the cellar, because that’s where you
have the largest possibility of finding something. I opened its door and a
feeble howl reached my ears. I descended the stairs in a hurry and found the
light switch. The light revealed to me a disgusting sight.
I ran up the stairs and back
to Josh as fast as I could.
“He has dogs in his cellar.
They are locked in cages and on the verge of death.”
“Shit, really?” then he
turned at the killer. “You’re coming with us. You have some explaining to do.”
We spent the trip to the
police station in silence and it was only after we turned the degenerate over
to our colleagues there that I felt ready to speak about this situation.
“Oh, God, Josh! This man...
he... he killed a dog and almost did the same to another five and because this
is his first crime, he will probably get away with only a fine. He is a psycho,
there is no telling what he will do after he is released.”
“Forget it, Vlad! There’s
nothing that we, as policemen, can do about it. Anyway, our shift is over, I’m
going home. I can give you a lift, if you want.”
“No. I’m going to stay here
for a while. I want to ask this Bickle guy some questions.”
“You and your questions,
Vlad. Give it up, there’s no meaning in troubling yourself any further. Just
let it go, come with me.”
“I can’t, Josh! I have to
hear his side of the story. I have to do something about him, if not as a
policeman, then at least as a man.”
“See you later then.”
He traipsed away from me,
his head arched towards the ground.
Don Bickle was released two
hours later. He frowned when he saw me approaching him, but he did not try to run.
He looked sober and now that I could take a better look at him he did not
strike me as psychotic dog killer. Sadness was written all over his face and
his shoulders were hunched in a display of weakness.
“Mr Bickle, would you mind
if I walk you home? I have to ask you some questions.”
“You can come with me if you
want, I can’t stop you, but I won’t answer your questions.”
He turned his back to me and
set out towards his home.
“Why did you kill this dog,
Mr Bickle? What were you planning to do with the others? Why? What have they
done to you?”
He did not pay attention to
me at first, but I insisted and after a while he stopped and turned around. He
had tears in his eyes and when he spoke his voice trembled with contempt:
“So you want to know why I
killed this dog, heh, officer? All right then, since you asked so persistently,
I will treat you to my wondrous story. I bet it will give you lots of material
for gossip,” he fell silent, his eyes fixed at something distant. When he
continued, his voice was quiet and measured. “I lost my daughter six months
ago. She was killed by the same dogs that you found in my cellar. I know that
because three days ago, while I was strolling around, drunk, I found the polka
dot dress that she wore on the day she went missing, thorn and bloody in the
lair of these dogs. That’s why I caught them. I wanted to kill them, avenge the
death of my daughter and the consecutive separation with my wife. I was doing
the world a favour, but I see now that the world doesn’t appreciate such
favours. Soon everybody will look at me and see only a degenerate criminal.”
By the time he finished his
story we had reached his home. I grabbed his shoulders and looked him in the
eyes.
“I see your point, Mr
Bickle, but murder isn’t an answer. You have done a bad thing, but it’s not beyond
redemption. I cannot change the way people look at you, but I can at least help
you save your soul. I will come by your house tomorrow, we’ll go to church, you
will feel better after that.”
The next day I woke up at
five A.M., as usual, finished my morning routine and headed for Don Bickle’s
house. The morning air was exceptionally chilly and I had to wrap my hands
around me to keep warm. The sun was hidden behind thick clouds that hung low
above the uniform houses. I spent most of my journey in silence, occasionally
interrupted by the rumbling engines of hurried cars, emitting poisonous fumes
in the already polluted air.
The door to Don’s house was open. I entered
and found him lying on the table, an open bottle next to him. At first I
thought he was asleep, but then I noticed his cherry red skin colour. I went
closer and sensed a scent of bitter almond, the unmistakable smell of cyanide. He
had poisoned himself. In front of him I found a letter. I picked it up with
trembling fingers and read it.
‘There are
things in this life that are beyond redemption. No, I’m not talking about the recent
events, I’m talking about the death of my daughter, Sarah.
I remember the
day she died. My wife was working the night shift then and I had to go pick up Sarah
from school. I met a friend. He convinced me to go out for a drink. No, I let myself be convinced, I got drunk, I passed out, I forgot
about her, I abandoned her, I killed my little girl. It was not the
dogs, it was not my friend, it was not the world, it was me. Killing that dog, it made me realise that I am able to take
lives. And that is good, because I still have one more life to take before my
punishment is complete.
Sarah, this
last part is for you. I know I shall not see you. Where you are right now, that
is not a place for me, I am heading exactly in the opposite direction, but if
you can somehow read this letter, if it can somehow get to you, then I want you
to know:
You’
I left the letter back on
the table and lifted my hands to cover my face as tears started running down my
cheeks.
The police came, then the
press, then the neighbours. I heard them talking about him, they called him a
monster, they said that he deserved it. Soon the whole town was talking about
him – The Cruel Dog Killer. When I
tried to tell them his side of the story, they all refused to hear me. They
preferred a simple lie to the much more complicated truth that I was offering
them. This troubled me severely and that’s why I decided to go to church.
The gates made from solid
oak slid open before me and I entered the tabernacle. Pleasant smelling fumes
of burned incense were drifting around me. The light from the coloured windows
intertwined with the warm light of the candles and produced a new kind of light
that made the whole place feel arcane and serene. I passed a boy and a girl,
leaning together in front of an icon of Saint Virgin Mary, their heads bent
down in a silent supplication. I stopped before the icon of Jesus and
whispered:
“Father, who are in Heaven.
Blessed be thy name, hallowed be thy Kingdom. I have come to you in great
distress. I have glimpsed the naivety, the hollowness in the people. What is
worse, I have seen myself in them. I am losing my faith, Father. Am I going
mad? Is this a challenge, Father? Help me, answer me!”
In front of me, Jesus stood
still in his icon, his hand raised in a gesture that showed both a blessing and
a reprimand. There was no answer, no epiphany, only silence. And the quiet
prayers of the believers.
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