Chameleon (Days)

by Dean Serravalle

  ‘Do you miss your mother?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you miss your father?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you hate your mother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she couldn’t take care of me.’

  ‘Do you love your brother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want to take care of him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even if he eats more and you eat nothing.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who do you think I am?’

  ‘The Devil?’

  ‘Is the devil as generous?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you like pain?’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You smile when I hurt you.’

  ‘It feeds my stomach. I am not hungry afterwards.’

  ‘You will change the world.’

  No answer.

  ‘You will change the world.’

  “I didn’t know what that meant, what he meant. I assumed he asked the others the same questions, but now I don’t believe so. I think he asked us different questions. I think he was not human. He was a man all right, but one I couldn’t see in the ease in which he killed compassion. He seemed created from a story, from a fable. His face changed every day. It was never the same face.”

  The Messenger considers the irony in this statement because Kashif doesn’t seem aware he appears the same way to him. The more Kashif explains or relates his story, the more it sounds like an apprenticeship. The sky is cerulean blue again and the peaks on the mountains are artificial white, newly painted and outlined against their backdrop. Kashif doesn’t speak directly to him. He speaks to the sky, as if connecting it to a floating audience or one elevated in a theatre.

  “The other boys didn’t talk. I wondered why. They kept their mouths closed. They never conversed with one another, or with my brother and me. It was strange to me, to see boys, around fifty of us, not conversing. I assumed they were told not to speak, or they were afraid to be punished for it. One day, a boy attacked us in the wood shed that we slept in. All of us slept separately, in tiny, wood sheds. He jumped on my brother and I strangled him until he couldn’t breathe. When his life expired, his mouth gaped open and I realized he didn’t possess a tongue. It had been carved out, expertly.

  “I didn’t let my brother see. If he saw, the very sight of this boy’s blackened mouth would horrify him. Instead, I dragged the body out but I didn’t want to hide it. I wanted to show it off to the Military Man. So I left him in the middle of the camp. Although I couldn’t see him anywhere, I knew the Military Man would approve.

  “Days and months passed and the numbers dwindled in the camp. More and more boys disappeared. We exercised. The Military Man fed us well. He allowed only my brother and I to stay in the wooden shed together. No other boys were allowed to bunk. I assumed we were the only blood brothers.

  “One day, everyone disappeared entirely. No boys, no Military Man. Just my brother and I abandoned in the camp. We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know where to go. So we stayed and waited. We waited to be told what to do. No one came for three days. We didn’t eat. We didn’t enter the compound of the camp. We were too wary of it being a trick. We craved food and for the first time, I thought about eating my own brother. The thought crossed my mind and I fought it over and over again. After the third night, everyone reappeared again. The remaining tongue-less boys and the Military Man. He was quiet to us for an entire week. He didn’t say a word and I wondered if he had lost his tongue as well. I wondered if we would be next in this army of tongueless soldiers.

  “We continued to train our bodies physically, but not military training. It resembled the exercises animals performed to keep their instincts sharp. We climbed trees, practiced balance on branches, fell from those branches in an attempt to land softly, like a cat. When The Military Man resumed his instruction to the camp, he taught us how to use our teeth. He said our teeth were strong in their roots. That they could bite through anything, even the bark of a cedar. So we broke bark with our teeth. We hunted with our teeth.

  “The Military Man released a possum in the camp area and we had to hunt it down with our teeth, kill it with our teeth, and then deliver it to him with our teeth. I won every battle. My brother didn’t even try. Others tried to bite me while I hunted but I withstood them every time. And the Military Man appreciated my victories. He could see how I outsmarted the others. How I lured my prey expertly, waiting for the others to draw him in my direction, until I pounced on it myself.

  “The others soon relented to my dominance over them. They kept disappearing, one by one, as if shipped off to other parts of the world in a package. I never asked about them. I knew questions would bother the Military Man. I knew they would make him go away. After a while, I waited for him like a boy expects his father coming home from work in the evening.

  “Before long, it was only my brother and I left in the camp. He had also strengthened. He didn’t cry anymore at night. His nightmares subsided. The look in his eye was cold and icy and no longer soft and childlike. I would catch him staring at me now like he didn’t recognize me anymore. I couldn’t see myself but I assumed I had changed to him as well. I had become someone different, like the Military Man, except I hadn’t learned how to control it yet like him.

  “We ate and became strong, but we spoke less and in whispers. Our actions spoke for us. The Military Man didn’t test us against each other, for obviously, I would win, although he did train us both. We hunted birds in the trees like cats. For weeks we practiced this impossible exercise. At the beginning, I was never close, but each day, I came closer and closer to entrapping one. My brother never progressed in this exercise. He was always too slow, or ever too obvious. Or maybe he never believed he could do it. But I did. I knew I could accomplish this impossible challenge. It would make me undisputed, even to the Military Man.

  “When I accomplished the feat finally, I had never felt so surreal to myself. I crept up on a bird sitting on a branch. Without thinking, my instincts calculated the rush of my attack on a narrow branch, knowing full well, I would risk falling in this attempt. That was it. I was never prepared to fall for the attack. Mind you, the both of us did when we tried. But before trying, I had never accepted the fall as being part of the attack. So on this early morning, while the bird fluttered its wings on the branch, I moved stealth-like on all fours until I smacked it with my hand. In the process, I fell from the high branch but not without grabbing the stunned bird in my hand first. I adjusted my body during the fall and rolled over onto my side with the balance of a cat, the bird in my hand, whose spasms attempted to escape the violent grip of my squeezing grasp. The Military Man saw the bird squirming there, losing strength. He didn’t have to tell me what to do. My brother seemed to know what I was about to do, so I crushed it some more before I placed it entirely in my mouth.”

  The Messenger believes himself to be the little brother in this scene, for some reason. He sees himself in that character’s role, watching his brother become a virtual animal before him, and then hunting down an innocent bird, before eating it in a more violent conclusion. As Kashif is lost in the story, The Messenger is captivated by his face. In waves, like a body of water conducted by weather systems, it flattens out peacefully at times, before it ripples with a jolt of wind. Kashif doesn’t see himself now, in the same way he didn’t see himself then. It is all about the change, The Messenger thinks, and Kashif is once again transforming into his former self, the one hidden by all of his disguises, the version he never wanted his daughter to see. Or so The Messenger assumes.

  “Did you kill him?” The Messenger asks.

  “Who?”

  The question stuns Kashif out of his trance.

  “Your brother? He must have been the last test, the one th
at completes the metamorphosis.”

  “Yes. After I became a predator, the Military Man didn’t even have to ask me to. I strangled him in his sleep, while he slept. He didn’t wake. Maybe in his dreams he expected me to kill him in this peace. I knew it was coming. My instincts informed me I would find the Military Man outside our wood shed the next morning, holding a rifle with one bullet lodged in the canister. I understood he would hand me the gun, so my instincts beat him to the punch. But there was still one more lesson to learn.”

  Kashif turns from The Messenger and away from the mountains, as if to look around the corner of his man-made garden. The white goat has sauntered away, as if afraid of this plot point in the story.

  “A predator doesn’t kill for sport. A predator kills to eat,” The Messenger translates Kashif’s look.

  “I haven’t seen the Military Man since. He disappeared for good after having trained me.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I lived a life of instinct, that’s what I did.”

  The Messenger is surprised to find he is no longer hungry for meat. He understands now why he will never crave it again.

  DAY 22

  The Messenger finds himself in the cavern again. This time, he is fishing alongside Kashif.

  “Now that I know the true story, we must make up a fictional one that is believable in its narrative perspective,” suggests The Messenger.

  Kashif nods. He doesn’t eat the fish that hook on his line. And there are many that do. He unhooks them and places them gently in the water. The Messenger finds it difficult to catch one. Kashif never offers him one to eat.

  “The stories must co-relate. You were trained to live a life of instinct. You created groups that sold terror. And then you disappeared after finding your daughter. How did you find her?”

  “Her mother.”

  Kashif treats the fishing exercise like a yoga ritual. It is fluid and he breathes out loud with every cast. After a while, he stands up, places the rod next to the stool and walks in the direction of the backstage area at the top of the stone stairs.

  “We have to make costumes now.”

  The Messenger follows him up the stairs. Behind another easel, Kashif rolls out a sewing machine.

  “Help me with the fabric.”

  The Messenger is led to another area with stacked rolls of fabric sparkling with embedded metallic accents. He walks over to one and feels its clean smoothness.

  “Silk. The finest,” Kashif explains. “I think we should wear dark blue.”

  “Dark blue?”

  “Yes. For our meeting.”

  “With whom?”

  “You will see. Help me with the roll.”

  The Messenger grabs one end and Kashif lifts the other. Kashif then transforms into a tailor. He removes a measuring tape from his pocket.

  “Stand with your legs apart.”

  After taking his measurements without writing anything down, Kashif goes to work with scissors. He doesn’t ask for help. He is busy and he doesn’t want to be disturbed.

  “Do you need any help?”

  “With what?”

  “With what you are doing?”

  “No, it will not take me long. And then we will hike up the mountain.”

  “Hike?”

  “Yes. You can prepare your statement to the network there, the one where you will reveal me.”

  “We don’t have the story yet. Where you have been for the past fifteen years.”

  “We will discuss it on the hike.”

  “What are you making?”

  “A suit. It will fit you like another layer of skin.”

  Kashif buries his head as close as he can get his eye to the pumping needle, which is manually controlled by his foot. He tests its ability to puncture. The Messenger walks away to observe the easels in more detail. They depict caricatures in costume. Kashif is an artist, a fashion sketch artist emerging from his own designs. The attention to detail is both imaginative and precise. On another wall are landscapes and scenes. Memories. Some of them are violent. Others are long perspectives on wars.

  “I paint my memories,” Kashif speaks without breaking his concentration.

  “They reconcile my sins.”

  Exhausted by the stress of the day, The Messenger manages to sit down against the cavern wall. He falls asleep and is woken by the smell of new fabric run through the marriage of thread and electricity.

  Kashif is now dressed in a new power suit, a bone white shirt and a golden tie. He is preparing his tie as if for an interview.

  “Try yours on.”

  The Messenger sees his suit on another stool with a freshly pressed shirt on top and a silver tie.

  “I don’t have time to stitch buttons, so you will have to use those.”

  A handful of pearls rest in a pile on top of the shirt. They look like teeth, or ivory pieces, bone chunks, but they are perfect spheres.

  “I had some left over from another costume.”

  The Messenger dresses in his suit and finds a place next to Kashif in the mirror. They are of similar height. The Messenger’s hair has grown longer and lighter on this journey, while Kashif is completely bald with no traces of stubble or a former hairline.

  “What about shoes?”

  “I have some.”

  “You made the shoes too?”

  “No, I have saved many gifts.”

  Kashif leaves the mirror and The Messenger is surprised to find how well the suit becomes him. He can’t remember the last time he wore a suit to look this formal. Perhaps his wedding. Or his son’s baptism.

  “You are size ten, no?”

  Kashif places brand new shoes from the box in front of The Messenger’s feet.

  “I have many more if you don’t prefer these.”

  The Messenger nods to assure Kashif they are fine.

  Kashif is satisfied enough to return the sewing machine to its storage place. The fabric roll is cleanly tied together and ready to be stored as well.

  There is a sketch drawing on one of the easels. It depicts Kashif and The Messenger standing in front of a mirror with their suits. The Messenger is amazed by how Kashif makes his visions come to life so easily, so quickly.

  “We will hike in these suits?”

  “No. I have suit bags for them. We will hike in the proper attire. We will use the suits once we are brought before the council.”

  “The council?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will not ask.”

  The Messenger realizes he doesn’t need to know everything before he does it with Kashif. Kashif’s instincts are trustworthy to The Messenger. He believes in them. He is able to live within their protection, as long as he doesn’t cross the line to become an enemy of them.

  Kashif waves The Messenger into an elongated change room, which resembles a perfectly carved box from stone. He removes hiking boots and other costumes. Kashif decides to wear a cloak and turban. He offers The Messenger neutral, camouflage attire, as one would find on a reporter freelancing in dangerous war zones.

  “You will interview me once we arrive at the mountain, away from here. I do not want to endanger the people of this village or risk exposing the hospital. They will expect me to have hid like a prophet in a cave, on the mountain. You will be my agent. You will represent me to the network. I will not speak to anyone directly, except through you. This will keep you safe from harm. We will discuss my story further when we reach the mountain.”

  Kashif prepares some more provisions, some warmer clothes, makeup vials, instruments to apply them expertly, and he finds the oldest bag in the closet to stuff them into. He pulls out a lead box from which he removes a tiny, lock and key box. There are needles and narrow flasks inside. He closes it shut and stuffs it into the bag, as well as a phone.

 
“We must take Gibran with us.”

  “The goat?”

  “Yes. Who will feed him?”

  When they reach the surface again, Kashif cuts the goat loose and it follows him like a dog without distraction or the dependence on a leash. The Messenger once again is amazed by the goat’s obedience.

  Kashif places the bag on the goat’s back and ties it securely around its belly. The goat waits like a donkey and looks Kashif in the eye until he is finished, as if trying to please him. Without saying a word, Kashif walks away from the stone abode and the goat tiptoes in his master’s footsteps.

  The Messenger follows from a distance knowing it isn’t time yet to learn more.

  DAY 23

  “This Kashif is quite the character, if I do say so myself,” The Man gloats as if assuming responsibility for Kashif’s evolving creation. I am eating lunch alone at school. My lunch period extends into my prep period and I wait until the first lunch period is over to gain this quiet time to think to myself.

  “He is the story now,” I say. I lose interest in my lunch now that I know The Man is in the room expecting my attention. I worry sometimes that I am speaking aloud to him. I wouldn’t want anyone to enter the staff room and overhear a conversation I am having with myself. It is only now that I consider the fact I may be having a nervous breakdown. All of the symptoms are there. I crave sleep more than I ever have in my life, and yet when it is time to sleep, I can’t. When I do eventually fall asleep, I wake up at the same times every morning, 2:11AM and 4:17AM. It makes me feel like my body is controlling my mind, or my ability to control it.

  I am only free when I am teaching or writing. I suppose these distractions afford me an escape from over-thinking about previous conversations. Perhaps they tame my fruitless searches for higher meaning, which only seem to bury me deeper into myself.

  I look for places to be alone but I fear being absolutely alone, physically and mentally, for various reasons. My panic attacks, the ones that haunted me as a child and teenager, have returned with greater intensity. Every time I wake in the night I am out of breath. I can’t stop thinking of losing everything, of another tragic event happening to me, how I am inviting such an event by over-thinking it—how I may deserve it in the end.