Sequence

Three tragic scenes from the life of a boy unable to connect with others.

‘Every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.’

―Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia.

ONE: THE SERPENT

‘Put your finger in it.’

‘No.’

‘Go ahead, son.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘It won’t hurt you, Andrew — I promise.’

I believe that promise. I trust him. For what father would offer his offspring a serpent? That is how the scissors seems to my six-year-old self — a double-headed hydra with scimitar jaws. But it will not hurt me. He will not hurt me. The serpent is deadly, but he has charmed it inert so that I might lay my finger on its fangs.

I smile at him — a shy, anxious smile — still afraid but full of faith, full of love. I put the full length of my appendage in the scissors’ open maw.

‘Never do that again!’ His shout is like a clap of thunder, a force of nature, an act of god. ‘That’s very foolish!’

I jerk my finger off the scissors as if bitten by its blades, the serpent not dead and inert but dangerous and alive. I am crushed. Confused. Mortally wounded. Something deep inside me shrivels up and dies. ‘But you promised…’

‘Never put your finger into scissors!’ My father is so angry at me now, so disappointed, so incredulous at my stupidity, my naivety. His face is screwed up in disgust and disbelief. ‘I could have cut it off!’

I could have cut it off.

I look at my forefinger, now limp and inward-curling, mere moments ago so straight and proud, thrusting deep into the opening forged by my father. In my mind I see it on the kitchen countertop, amputated from the little hand routinely burrowed deep inside my father’s clenched fist, holding on for dear life despite his masculine protest to pull out, to retract, to be a real boy.

I let go now. I will never put my faith in him again, much less anything else. But already I am become Pinocchio, a hollow child, for a real boy’s father keeps him safe, teaches him to trust, makes him a man. My Geppetto lacks this skill. Has warped the wood of his creation.

The shrivelled place inside me stirs. It is my consciousness, transformed, no longer dead but sullied in resurrection. It hungers for the security that seemed so certain a mere minute earlier. Somehow, it still trusts. Still believes others are innately good.

The sting of the scorpion will teach it otherwise.