It's amazing how...

...in every story (so far) in J.J. Steinfeld's Anton Chekhov was Never in Charlottetown* I have found at least one moment with which I can identify. It's not that identifying with something you read is a new experience for me but that the general content of these stories are so outlandish and foreign to me that I would never expect to really "get" any of it on that deeper level. It's like when someone explains some concept to you - that you ordinarily would find difficult or lofty - with an analogy involving something that you are extremely familiar with. It's that moment where something clicks and you can only say, "Ahh..." What a great feeling to have a world of understanding opened to you like a welcoming door flung wide.

Anyways, from "Executions and the Memory of Executions," I found this:
"I will not open my eyes. I trust my senses more when my eyes are closed. Pretending to be asleep" (122). (The narrator goes on to say, "Or dead. Or numb. Sometimes I really am numb," but, knowing the context, I'll say it doesn't apply to me so much as the first part.)


This entire story, impressively different from each one that has preceded it, reminds me of the James Bond played by Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (2006) -- well I mean the narrator reminds me of him, anyways. If only I could post the entire story WITHOUT needing to type 6 or 7 pages out myself. I'd do it, but it speaks too loudly to my obsessive tendencies that I choose to refrain. This narrator is not quite as arrogant as Bond or seemingly as reckless but he does talk of how he "used to look forward to being apprehended and interrogated" which does sound something like being full of one's self. I am reminded, of course, of that climactic torture scene, esp when I read something like this:

"In my youthful exuberance, when I first started making my reputation, I could withstand any type of pain, what would be unbearable to others. What a prodigy I was then. I reached the highest classification in my unit earlier than any person had before me. The faultless sense of smell. The imitative skills. The endurance. The ability to concentrate undera ll conditions, pure concentration; the three fools around me would call it mystic or spiritual, but it was an intense, total effort of the mind over the body. I used to look forward to being apprehended and interrogate, even though I never admitted this to my superiors..." (125).

You know, Bond is certainly reckless but he does still live his life much in the same way I'd guess any man with peacock confidence, a license to kill, a flaming libido and no place to go would do. Bond, generally enjoys himself. This guy, however, he's more indifferent than reckless. The actions can look the same but the mental status of the person might be a little different. He says, "As I grew older and matured I passed from fearing death to imagining ways of dying, and eventually to an indifference to death, my death, the deaths of others - strangers, friends lovers, I ceased to make distinctions" (121).

I was reminded also, of how Bond was slipped some deadly something in a drink (the details are faint right now) and when he realized what was happening to him, rushed to his car and some how miraculously, magically saved his own life. It was like he stabbed an Epi-Pen in his chest or defibrillated himself. It was something intense and ridickle, I'm sure - I just don't have the memory. THe point is, he should have died but he was fortunately trained to deal with the situation, resilient enough to hang on until the last moment and LUCKY that someone else came to help him after he passed out. "I remember what my first supervisor showed me when I orginally came to work under his jurisdiction, something he had written as a young man and was still most proud of as he approached retirement: 'I have stood in front of countless firing squads; I have felt around my neck a hundred slip-nooses tied by a hundred hands; I have btiten into capsules containing the strongest poisons ...' It took me years to understand what he had meant, the feelings behind teh words, his complete lack of cynicism or unease with life. 'The ways to kill a personare innumerable; the ways to die are all the same.' I wrote that five years ago, during one of my imprisonments..." (122).

As cheap as this will sound, now, in the context of the above, I must say that this particular passage minded me of something my mum said about 200 years ago when I was 12 or 13. I asked her what some offensive smell was and she told me it was a dead mouse. (Dramatic pause) Then she continued, "You never forget the smell of death." It was just as weird and borderline ominous as it sounds. It also happens to be true.
"'Kill him now,' the high-pitched voice says, stabbing me in the chest with his finger.
"I'm not frightened. I know that th ehigh-pitched voice said what he did only to scare me. They won't kill me, not these three, not right now. They do not have the voices of executioners. Once you hear such a voice you never forget it. Corpses you can forget or grow hardened to, but not the voice of an executioner" (125).

*Wolfeville, Nova Scotia: Gaspereau Press, 2000. 121-128.