Ill-Acquired Fate

The room was a wardrobe for past glories. The thin, balding middle-aged man had surrounded his study with framed diplomas, certificates and pictures that reminded him of the honourable words used to describe his character in the past. The bookshelves of his study were filled to the brim with books by authors he admired. Amid these great works of literature, he had hidden his own writings.

At the time of arranging the shelves in this order, he had thought the catalogue to be his private Pantheon. There he was, the respected author, amongst his own idols. His own publications were now treated with minor regard, but the Pantheon he had arranged reminded him of better days. More importantly, the plaques occupying his wall played a flourish for his success each time his eyes chose to pay attention.

This was his great room; reminiscent of his quiet, studious character, and a testimonial of the value kind hearts had chosen to grant his life over the years. Such was the room where the great author Alfred Selwyn Worthing now wept. There were more than just tears running down his face and scuffled beard. There were also loud wailing cries and a rapidly running nose. What was the cause of his tears? It varied from day to day. This time around, it was because of a spilled cup of tea.

The stain seemed ever so large. Would it ever rub off the red rug? It was so ugly and brown. What could poor Alfred do? He had tried to use his handkerchief to wipe the spillage away, but it had seemed useless. Now he could only stare at the tainted rug, cry and hope for some magic to mend his mistakes.

It was not the mere stain that made him weep so. Alfred S. Worthing was notorious for his clumsiness. He regularly knocked over things like bottles of wine, plates of food, and fragile artefacts. He was used to his oafish habits. Why the tears? In his mind he heard the obvious truth: “Alfred S. Worthing fails again”.

He felt a failure upon his chest every day, and any minor incident could throw him to fits of rage or pails of tears. The weight on his chest was at its heaviest in this room, his study. Yet he spent all his time in this room. He did not wish to seek the weight of failure. Rather, he believed that spending enough time in the shrine for his successes might remind him that there was a shred of human decency within his middle-aged, already forgotten life.

It was incredibly hard to discover, this shred of goodness. There was no one in his life worth mentioning. His wife left him years ago. His children were estranged from their reclusive father. He had no friends, and felt awkward in social circumstances. He was overcome by a need to be witty and entertaining and often tried to compensate for his timidity by drinking a few glasses of whiskey, and subsequently falling asleep within an hour, no matter of the liveliness of the party. He was fundamentally alone. A few years before, he found solace in writing. Now he hated every single verse he wrote. His topics were tired, his expressions and poetic devices overly familiar. After abandoning verse, the poet began drinking a few bottles of wine per day. Drinking soon wore out any mild interest it initially produced. He then experienced a brief spell of masturbating feverishly on a daily basis. This resulted to feelings of extraordinary guilt. Alfred S. Worthing could not bear the sight of himself as such a filthy old man. What man in his forties spends more time caressing himself than a hormonal boarding school boy? Soon he consciously abandoned this embarrassing carnal pastime. He found himself disinterested with everything except caressing the plaques of better days in his study; an activity obstructed by, as with now, an unexpected minor mishap like spilt tea.

“Alfred S. Worthing fails again”. He said it aloud now. In this sentence was the collected contempt for tea, the colour of the carpet, the stale air of the room, the events of last week, his relationship life, his creative works, his childhood and his littleness in the world.

It is difficult to imagine a man so angry, yet so passive. Alfred S. Worthing felt inside him nothing but sorrow and loathing for his days, yet there was no fury about him. His anger was but a looming cloud; an oppressive presence, yet it never developed to a storm.

“Alfred S. Worthing fails again”. This time he pronounced the words with loathing. His eyes gazed around his room, perhaps in a hidden attempt to seek out solace from his past glories. He longed to feel the sense of appreciation the diplomas and awards of his wall represented. Now, he looked at each plaque and framed speech, and felt no pride. These awards were decades old, and had been awarded to several, equally or even more deserving individuals since. Alfred S. Worthing was just another name in the list. A name that was incredibly easy to ignore. His great glories bore no permanence. They made little impact. Far from achievement, they seemed to now represent yet another face of failure.

He thought of a particular award. In the ceremony where he was presented with the honour, a friend of his conducted a speech regarding Alfred’s achievements. In this speech, Alfred S. Worthing was called a “poet and philosopher with a grand heart”. How touched had he been by these words on that day! Now he knew better. His friend was flattering, but wrong. His poetry was poor, and far from profound. He thought of no philosophical thoughts. His heart, he felt, held nothing grand. In his mind, Alfred S. Worthing asked: ‘What grand is there about a heart that thinks only of itself?

Asking this question made him pause. He looked around the flattering awards on his walls. They all represented some impressive, charismatic intellectual man. They belonged someone with a booming voice and an eager smile; someone who corresponded with the world. How ill fitting they were for a man crying over spilt tea. He felt as if he had decorated the wall with stolen certificates. None represented him as he truly was. He felt incredibly guilty for them. He had cheated the committees that awarded him. He had cheated the friend who prepared that praising speech of him. He had cheated his public. This room hosted all that was note-worthy of his life. And the conceited, crying mess of a man deserved none of it.

“This is a room of ill-acquired fate”, he said, and began his childish weeping again.

By JPV

Copyright June 2006