You Can See It In His Eyes

There was a picture of him on the mantelpiece. It was old and black and white, and was in a silver frame.

’That’s me,’ Bob said, ’when I was a kid.’

To be honest, it didn’t look like him. It was a baby in the picture, but that could have been anyone. The thought crossed my mind that maybe he had stolen this picture. But how sad would that have been?

Maybe slipping some photograph of a baby into his pocket when he was round at a mate’s house so that he could pass it off as his own. Maybe doing it to prove he was human and had the same background as the rest of us. Maybe doing it to get girls to feel he was cute, and so get them into bed.

There were three of us in the room. Me, Bob, and Jane. It was a Wednesday. I remember that much. It was cloudy. It was cold.

I looked again at the photo. Some kind of wicker work chair was behind the kid, and some edge of some ornament was to the left. It was a head and shoulders shot only – the kid, about six months old, was looking at something behind the photographer’s shoulder. I looked at the innocent eyes. The innocent eyes looked back at me.

Bob said it was time to make a cup of tea. He checked if we both wanted sugar, and left for the kitchen.

As soon as he was out of the way, I turned to Jane. ’Who’d have thought he could look so innocent?’ I said with a smile. ’Who’d have thought he would turn out the way he did, and do the things he does, when he looked so innocent?’

Jane snorted with disgust. ’That photo doesn’t look innocent at all,’ she said. ’He looks evil there, even as a kid. You can see it in his eyes. It’s there. Look at it.’

I looked again at the photo. Her word ’evil’ was still reverberating round my head as I looked into the baby’s eyes, and you know, a strange thing happened. I could see an evil there. An evil behind the two dark eyes in the old faded black and white photograph.

I looked back at her. Needed a moment to think. This was strange. A moment ago I had been convinced of the baby’s innocent eyes. Now it was evil. But the photograph was the same in both cases. It hadn’t changed.

Jane looked back at me.

’See what I mean?’ she said. ’He’s always been bad. I don’t trust him.’

I closed my eyes, told myself that the baby was innocent and loving and knew nothing of the twisted world it had come into, and looked back at the photograph. Stared into the baby’s eyes.

And a pair of soft innocent defenceless eyes stared back at me. Vulnerable. Soft as dough. So the eyes had changed. There was no harm there, no intention. No calculating selfishness, no deviousness, it was an innocent being trapped in an innocent moment as the shutter clicked.

Then I closed my eyes again. Told myself that the baby was born evil, that it had a twisted mind, that it was desperate to impose it’s own dark will on the world when it was old enough.

I opened my eyes and sure enough I could see it. The hard darkness in the eyes. I could feel the cruelty. I could taste the mercilessness of it.

I had a fear of what it could be capable of when it grew up.

So these feelings were there, but only because I could tell myself they were there. Whatever I believed about the photo, I could see it, regardless of what I believed was true or not.

There was a mirror to my left on the wall. I was amazed by this, so I looked at my own eyes, my own face in the mirror. And my own face looked back at me. As I stared into myself, I invented a story, the first one I could think of – I pretended to myself I was a courageous fire-fighter who had saved the lives of ten people from a burning building.

I knew it wasn’t true and I’ve got to say I don’t go round thinking of myself as a hero, but for the sake of the experiment I forced myself to believe it. Really believed it.

And do you know what, I could see it in the face. My face looked like a hero’s face. I don’t mean I suddenly had the macho physique of some six foot two bloke with a square jaw and a full face. I don’t mean that at all.

What I mean is that in my diminutive frame, and my small face, I could see a spirit of courage there. It was a spiritual thing, a pulse, an emotion behind the eyes, behind the skin. The eyes looked resolute, calm, the lips looked concerned, considerate of human nature, the cheeks were the calm cheeks of this new guy who had no problem risking his own life to save the lives of strangers.

The face was looking back at me and I could hear my head saying, ’Yes, you can trust him. He’s good, he looks the type. You can see it in his eyes. He’s a decent guy, he cares about people.’

Then I closed my eyes and pretended I was thoroughly evil. I pretended I was someone who didn’t care about morality – someone who saw morality as just a tedious hindrance to his own career satisfaction.

I forced myself to believe I was an officer in a Nazi death camp, that I killed prisoners on a daily basis and what’s more I enjoyed the opportunity to do it.

I opened my eyes, looked into my own face, and sure enough, I could see it. The face of evil looking back at me, the cold stare of a selfish set of eyes boring back into me, and the voice in my head this time said, ’Of course he’s evil, he is without any moral self-control at all. He is evil, he looks the type. You can see it in his eyes. Has it taken you so long to see this?’

I looked away from the mirror. I had to think this out. Whatever I believed, I could see. I only had to believe something, and I could see it reflected back.

I looked around the room – the beige sofa, the small coffee table, the television set, the roses on the wallpaper. I told myself that the room belonged to a serial killer responsible for the deaths of twelve women. Believed it and felt it. Sure enough I could taste it in the fabrics of the sofa as it looked back at me, feel it in the glass of the television screen, taste the sensation of it in the carpet. The wallpaper looked back at me soaked in misery.

The room was saying, ’Yes, this room belongs to a serial killer, all the furnishings are disgusted with our owner, we have to share our lives with this disgusting piece of trash and we are sickened by it.’

And then I told myself that the room belonged to a doctor, a dedicated doctor who worked all the hours God sent caring for terminally ill children in the local hospital, who was desperate to give them whatever care he could in their short lives, and to cure them wherever it was possible.

And the room changed again, and the fabrics were brighter and warmer and you could feel them breathe clearer and the wallpaper seemed prettier, lighter, and the shapes and the carpet chorused back, ’Yes, we care for our owner, we want to make him happy, to give him rest when he comes home exhausted after doing his best to give rest to others.’

I couldn’t believe this. Whatever I believed I could see reflected back to me.

I said to Jane, ’How can we know anything about the world outside our heads? Are we just locked inside our minds, and see whatever our minds believe?’

If I could convince myself to see whatever I believed in my own face, then how much easier it would be to see anything I wanted in the faces of people I knew nothing about.

[end of extract]

Copyright © Paul Badger 2008

~ by Paul Badger on 25 April, 2008.