THE TELL-TALE EYE

In the honour of  Edgar Allan Poe:

Inspired by "The Tell-Tale Heart"

"Three months and eight nights ago, I heard a shriek.  It was just  about midnight.  I sprang up in the bed and tried to listen to the noises  that might come afterwards.  First, I suspected that a bird might have  flown through the open window, and I even thought I heard the noise of  flapping wings.  But, then, I remembered we kept all the house?s windows  and doors closed and locked.  Then, I heard some other noises coming from  his mother's room, and I thought that a thief might have come to rob the  house.  Frightened, and desperate I was.  I worried that the thief might  hurt her, and I rushed to her room, to offer the thief all the gold I had,  to beg the thief not to hurt her. When I reached the room, there was no  thief.  There never was.  I found his mother, dying in her bed:  she was  tortured.  Her eyes were not in her face.  Instead, there were two empty  wells.  No, they were not empty wells:  they were two springs of boiling  blood.  The blood was all over her face, her body, and her bed."  He is  looking at this terrible scene again, I can say.  With bulging eyes, he  stares at an imaginary point in the wall behind me while I am trying to  stay calm, moving from this buttock to the other in my large chair.  It  is beyond my ability, however, to cope with the horror that penetrates  under my skin, the horror of the unknown, the fear of the undefined.  "What did you do when you found her?"  I ask him, whispering, and  I do not know why I should whisper.

"?It can?t be, it can't be, I cried,  screamed, and cried.   It was not fair, I thought.  How could gods - if there were any -  let this happen?  Where was justice?"  He pounds his fist on my table.   I straighten my back.  He is looking at my eyes, and I pretend that  I am taking notes, looking down on my notebook.  He continues: "Why  should someone be tortured, murdered, or sacrificed only because of  possessing something that he or she did not choose to have?  Why should  she - who was a part of me - die?"  his voice is rising.  "Why should  she not only die, but be murdered?  And why should she not only be  murdered, but be murdered by her son?  Where was justice, where was  any sense in this heartrending incident?  It can't be, it can?t be.?"   Shaking his head, he sighs and, after a few moments of silence, he  finishes his statements, "I am tired now.  If you?ll excuse me,  I would rather be alone."   "Of course," I say and turn off the tape recorder.  Then, I call the  mental hospital's security, and ask them to send someone to take him  to his room.  Meanwhile, I watch him stealthily:  he, Mr. Williams,  has tilted his head backwards, facing the ceiling.  His eyes are closed.

In the evening, while driving back home from the hospital, I think  about Mr. Williams? case.  "There is something strange about this man,  something puzzling,"  Sally McMorphy, my colleague, told me while she  was handing Mr. Williams? file to me.  I remember the report in his file  that I read the same day - a week ago.  According to the report, five  years ago, he went to the police and confessed to a murder, saying that  he had killed an old man.  The detailed description of his act convinced  the police that he had, in fact, killed somebody, and, although the police  could not find the body of the victim, they kept him in custody for three  months.  Lack of evidence, finally, compelled the police to release him,  but he remained under surveillance for a few more months.  Today, before  I met him for the first time, I came across another paper.  The manager  of the apartment in which Mr. Williams lived told the police - in this  paper - that after he was released, he spent a few months in his apartment  alone and rarely left the building.  The police investigations and their  surveillance end almost here - about a year after his confession to the  murder.  Who was the old man?  Why did Mr. Williams claim he had killed an  old man?  Who was the other man who killed the woman?  I must find out  more about Mr. Williams.  Probably the complete reports of the case in  the police station can help me. I am at a red light, waiting for the green color to appear.  Behind  the steering wheel, I feel like a private investigator, a detective,  who lacks some key information to solve the mystery, to find the murderer.   I think of the curious urge that drives me to describe Mr. Williams in  professional terms, to classify his case by comparing him to other patients  and people.  I go straight through the intersection when the light turns  green, and try to forget about Mr. Williams.

"Elizabeth, hello, I'm home."
"Hello darling, I'll be with you in a moment."  Her voice comes from  the bathroom.  She must have arrived a few minutes ago.  She is a  workaholic.  I go and throw myself on the couch, untying my necktie.   I realize that I am still thinking about Mr. Williams and what he said  about the woman whose eyes were two springs of blood.  I ask myself how  anyone - no matter how crazy he or she is - could torture someone like  this, or even imagine such a thing.  Who is this woman?  His mother.   Whose mother is this person?  There is - in Mr. Williams' file - no  references to this woman - not a single sign.  He said the man, whoever  he is, killed the woman three months and some days ago.  How on earth  could he have witnessed such a scene?  He was in the hospital at that time.   In fact, he has been in the mental hospital for almost eleven months.   I think about Sally?s report.  She, being a reputable psychologist, could  have been more specific, more accurate, about her diagnosis:   "Mr. Williams suffers from a personality disorder - schizophrenia."   Of course, she adds that further examinations are necessary to reach  a conclusive opinion.  Before her, two more psychologists examined him  and noticed traces of paranoia, mania, agoraphobia, and so on.  Traces!   It is ridiculous.   Elizabeth comes out of the bathroom, drying her long blond hair with the  towel.  She kisses me, and goes to the bedroom.  She dances as she walks,  and I can see the movement of every muscle through the long, orange towel  that barely covers her beautiful body.  I wish I could see - as clearly as  I can see her body through the towel -  the complications of Mr. Williams'  mind through his skull.
   "What?s wrong, Tom?  Why don't you undress?  You must be tired, eh?   What was new in the hospital today?"  Her voice comes from the bedroom,  and I know she is in front of the mirror, combing her hair.  "I had a  wonderful day.  You remember Johnny Benson's case, don't you?  The man  who killed his wife last year?  The jury found him guilty.  Isn't that  great?  A first degree murder case, and guess who got most of the credit?"
  "You?"

"Me," she says as she comes out of the bedroom, towards me, and kisses  me again.  We eat our dinner in silence, sitting behind the table, facing  each other.  I do not talk about my patients - not at home anyway - but  I ask her some questions about the case she has won today.  She watches  the news on television, perhaps to hear her name.  I go to bed.  I am  tired, but I cannot sleep.  Elizabeth comes to the bed.  We make love.   She falls asleep.  And I am still thinking about Mr. Williams, and about  what I should do with this odd man.  The next morning, I drive to the hospital and rush towards my office  in the third floor.
"Hello, Dr. Anderson," Julia, my secretary, greets me.   I go to my office and review Mr. Williams' file again.  Three medical  reports, a summary of his criminal records, the hospital papers that  indicate the date of his hospitalization and the expenses that have been  and should be covered by Mr. Williams through his personal account, and  copies of his prescriptions signed by different doctors.  There is a  three-year gap in the file:  from the police's last report - the interview  with the manager of Mr. Williams? apartment - almost four years ago to the  time of his hospitalization.  He was brought to the hospital about eleven  months ago by a man - his name David Green - who claims to be Mr.  Williams' family servant.  This man probably could provide some helpful  information, a good family background, a valuable link to Mr. Williams'  mysterious personality.  I call Julia and ask her to find Mr. Green.  I  also call the security and ask them to bring Mr. Williams to my office.   Although I did not find him aggressive and I am certain that he will not  hurt me, I am a little nervous.
                                                                                                                                                                            
Someone is knocking at the door:
"Dr. Anderson?"  The voice behind  the door asks.  "Come in, please."  The security guard opens the door and  guides Mr. Williams into my office.  "Thank you George.  Please close the  door behind you," I tell the security guard, showing the chair to Mr.  Williams.  He sits on the chair silently.  His face does not indicate  any sign of life.  Instead, I see a kind of strong apathy.  I look at  him patiently.  "How do you feel today, Mr. Williams?"  I turn on  the tape recorder.
"As always."  His answer, though it is brief, encourages me to  continue, and I know - from yesterday?s session - if he starts talking,  he will not stop until he gets tired.  "Mr. Williams, may I ask you  to tell me more about the woman you spoke of yesterday.  Who was she?   Your wife?"
"She was the woman I loved."  He seems unwilling to talk.
   "Yesterday, you said that you found her dead in her room.  What  happened next?"

"She was not dead, not when I found her.   It was she who calmed me down, and before she died, with her last words,  she asked me - in a trembling voice - to forgive him, since he was her  son, whom she had loved and whom she would continue to love even after her  death.  I promised her.  She died in my arms.  With her died a part of me.   I made him bury his mother that night.  While digging the hard, cold  ground, he asked me not watch him.  And I watched him not."  He stops for  a minute, rubs his left hand with his right hand, and drops his head down.

"So you forgave him?" I encourage him to continue.
"How could I forgive him?" he raises his head.  "I was too sad, too  distracted, too destroyed to think of revenge then.  Why did I promise  her to do so?  She had loved him, and she never wronged him.  Now, she  was dead!  Dead!  Just like those who were dead for centuries, she was  gone.  Like those who had never been born, she had no sign of life,  whatsoever.  Gone for good!  Dead forever!  I had loved her with all  my heart, with all my soul.  Yes, I loved her, not because she stayed  with me all the time, not because she understood me, needed me, or  loved me, not because she was beautiful, attractive, intelligent, caring -  though she was all that.  No, nothing of the kind.  I loved her deeply  because of her eye!  The blue eye!  A window to the heart!  The eye I  loved could see inside me without looking at me; the eye that could hear  the cries of the soul; the eye that could smell the sorrow of the spirit;  the eye that could touch the pain of the heart; the eye that could see  the unseeable and understand and accept reality and what is beyond; the  eye that could boldly show her true feelings and offer some reason, some  encouragement to live on, to endure the anguish of life; and finally the  eye that saw those hands that took it out of its place and yet continued  to look at the ruthless murderer with passion, with mercy, with love."
   He pauses.  I can see the tears accumulating in his eyes.  In the silence,  he is, perhaps, thinking of a mysterious woman while I am trying to unfold  the story of this man who seems so miserable.
   "Why did he kill her?  He must have had a good reason to kill his  own mother, Mr. Williams, don?t you think so?"  I ask him in a sympathetic  tone, and at the same time, I am thinking of Freud?s theories and the  Oedipus complex.
   "Why did he kill her?  At first, it seemed a mystery to me.  He loved  her too, but killing her perhaps was not an indication of his love for her,  not even in his nonsense world.  I then thought of the torture she had  gone through, and I discovered his motive:  the eye, her eye.  I remembered  all the complaints he had made about her eye:  ?you couldn?t have seen me  doing this or doing that because your eyes were closed,?  he had said many  times to her, and, each time, I had silenced him, saying that sight and  insight are given rise to by the heart and not by the eye.  But he never  understood.  Oh, the forces of nature, how blind you were!   Now, the only thing that I could think of was revenge.  The only thing  that could possibly appease my thirst for a bit of justice, for a little  of fairness, was revenge.  The only thing, the last thing I needed,  wanted, and was restless to perform was revenge.  Revenge, only revenge,  nothing more and nothing less."  He is still sitting on his chair,  but his words, like molten stones out of a volcano, explode out of his  mouth through his teeth that seem to be tightly closed.  I need some air.
  I rise and go towards the window.  I open it and gasp for some fresh air.  He does not seem to care.  The tape recorder has stopped.  I see him from the corner of my eye.  He does not seem to be in this room at all.   "Revenge," he breaks the silence, contemplating.  "During the three  months since he killed his mother," he goes on as I change the cassette  in the tape recorder, "every night, about midnight, I went to his room  to kill him, to put an end to his horrible life of madness and grief.   But I could not.  Every time just before the decisive moment of sticking  the sharp knife into his heart, I saw him open his eyes, staring straight  at my eye, which was full of warm tears.  With tears in the eye, I could  not see him as a murderer, as an enemy.  I saw a child, a victim, who  needed someone, a caring person perhaps.  But, whenever I returned to my  room, I just saw her face - bloody -  and I promised myself to finish my  work.  No, I could not.  I failed every night for three months, and I  gave up.  I had a more important promise to keep, a promise that I had  made out of my love and not out of my fury.  I preferred his destiny,  and of course, mine,  going on, as ruthlessly and inevitably as it had  gone before in the past.  I surrendered."  By the window, I stand and  watch him.  Who is this man and in what kind of a horrible world has he  lived?  I look out from the open window.  The willow trees, with their  droopy branches, in the parking lot of the hospital, shiver from the  cool, autumnal wind.  He seems tired.  I am tired too.  I turn off the  tape recorder, and call the hospital?s security. When he is taken to his room, I sit on my chair, trying to organize my  thoughts.  I must find whether these people are real or just the products  of a sick mind.  The place to start is the police station.  In order to  access the file, I need legal permission.  I call Julia and ask her to go  after this task immediately.  I also ask her about Mr. Green.  She is  still looking for his address.  I emphasize that it is very important to  find this man.

Then, I listen to the cassettes, rewind them a few times here and there,  and review my notes.  Mr. Williams talks about the eye, one eye, the  blue eye.  Is this the all-knowing eye of the parents?  The man kills  his mother because she possesses the eye that "she did not choose to  have," Mr. Williams believes.  And who is the man?  Is this Mr. Williams'  son?  If so, why doesn?t he say my son?  "Three months and eight nights  ago," he says.  Interesting!  Not three months and eight days ago, but  nights.  As if "the sun never shone in his life."

In the following three days, I check the police files.  In his  confession, he mentioned that he had killed the old man because he had  "a vulture eye, a blue eye."  He also confessed to dismembering the old  man:  "I cut off the head and the arms and the legs."  I read in Inspector Casey's report that the police searched Mr. Williams' house and all the  surrounding areas, but they could not find any sign of the body.  Casey  added that Williams was a wealthy man whose parents had died years ago  in their home country.  He also wrote that Mr. Williams lived in an old  house in the suburb, he never got married, he had no known relatives, and  the only single soul he knew in this country was his servant, David Green.   Another police officer reported that after he was released, he lived in  an apartment, and rarely went out.  He did not talk to his neighbors or the  manager or anybody else in the area.

I spend the weekend at home, listening to Mr. Williams? voice and reading his file and my notes again and again.  A question sticks in my  mind and I could not think of anything else:  Why?  Why does this man  confess to a murder he has not committed?  Who is the old man whom he  once claimed he had killed?  What about the woman?  Who is she?  Why does  he create an imaginary woman and why doesn?t he let this woman live even  in his imagination?  I refer to Freud's books and think of id, ego, and  super ego.  I think this is a great theory about personality - dividing  it into three separate, three distinct forces.  Human beings are the  products of the coexistence of these three forces - an everlasting  conflict.  What a brilliant idea!  I wonder if I can apply this theory  in Mr. Williams' case.

Elizabeth, fortunately, is spending the weekend with her parents  in Australia.  I am alone in the house, and I think how easily I am haunted  by Mr. Williams and his story.  I am a little confused too.  I do not  know how I should treat him, and, worse than that, I do not know how  I should feel about him.

"After he killed his mother, he became nervous, very, very dreadfully  nervous, and his senses had been, and were becoming more and more acute,"   Mr. Williams begins in a very low voice.  "He claimed, and I believed  him, that he could hear everything, even the sound of my heartbeat.   This frightened me.  I knew that he loved me, and that he had no desire  for my gold.  But, as the time passed, I also found that he hated my eye.   I suspected it, since he never attempted to look at me in the eye, and  whenever my eye captured his look in his eyes, he turned pale - so pale -  as if he had been dead."  He pauses for a minute.  Meanwhile, I am looking  at his eyes, thinking about the eye and its symbolic meaning that Mr.  Williams repeats again and again.  "I knew that he killed his mother  for he could not bear her look on him," he continues, "and I also knew  that he found that my eye resembled his mother's.  But I did not care.   For me, without her, life was finished.  What worried me was his disease  which was pushing him out of his world, out of my world, to an unknown  place where one could get lost, to the realm of not-knowing good from  bad and right from wrong, to the realm of madness perhaps.  After I gave  up the idea of revenge, I felt that he had made up his mind to kill me  in order to get rid of my eye, of which he was very much afraid."

"How old were you then?"  I ask him politely, looking at the clock on  the wall of my office and checking my wrist watch for the correct time.   I notice that there is a discrepancy between the two.

"I do not know.  After her death, time lost its importance for me,"   he answers, and my endeavor to connect him with the man who killed the  woman ends up in vain.   "Please continue."
"He was never kinder to me than during the whole week before the night  he came to my room to kill me."  I move on my chair, and I notice I am  sitting there with my arms crossed on my chest.  "I knew he had planned  to kill me," he goes on.  "Every night, about midnight, I watched how he  turned the latch of my door and -opened it.  Having made an opening  sufficient for his head, he put in a dark lantern closed so that no  light shone out.  I watched how slyly he thrust in his head, how slowly  he moved it.  Obviously he did not want to disturb my sleep.  It took  him an hour to place his head within the opening so far that he could  see me lying upon my bed.  Then, he undid the lantern cautiously, very  cautiously, so that a single thin ray fell on my eye:  it was not me  he needed to see; it was the eye - the damned eye - that he ventured,  while I was sleeping, to take a look upon every night about midnight  for a whole week.  He could not see my eye, because the room was dark.   Still,  I kept the eye almost closed, because I did not intend to vex  or to satisfy him.  He watched me, assuming perhaps that I was sleeping,  whereas I was sympathetically watching him, thinking of his disease, his  pathetic act, and his woeful destiny.  Every morning, when the day broke,  he came boldly in my room, and spoke courageously to me, calling me by  name in a hearty tone, inquiring how I had passed the night.  Hah!"  He  drops his head, and the room sinks in a terrifying silence.

"I asked myself a thousand times was it the eye that provoked him,  that brought him to my room every night about midnight?  Was it its color  that angered him?  Why had the eye found such significance for him that  it compelled him to act like a maniac?  Was he afraid of the eye?  Did he  need to overcome his fear?  Did he find a secret hidden in the eye?  Or  did he have a secret that he feared the eye could see through him and  reveal?  Was he trying to solve the mystery of the eye?  What did he see  in the eye except love and sympathy?  What more did he want to see that  the eye lacked or failed to show?  I did not know, and I did not want  to know."  He asks the questions for which I have been trying to find  answers myself.  The tape recorder has stopped recording and  I do not  know when.  I change the cassette, hoping that he continues.  He does.

"Now, it was his turn.  He had come to my room every night, about midnight.   It was the eighth night when I certainly knew that he had made up his mind to take my eye out, just as he had his mother?s.  I was ready,  prepared completely, to give him my eye.  The dreadful silence of the  old house at the eighth night was bothering me, until I heard someone  chuckle.  I moved on my bed.  I was frightened to death; although I  expected it!  The room was as black as pitch.  I was sitting on my bed  with sharp ears.  After a while, I heard another sound:  someone was  unfastening the latch of the door.  "Who?s there?" I asked.  There came  no answer.  It was him, I knew.  Death is strange and remains strange  forever, I thought.  I was terrified and could not help it.  I groaned.   Then, I tried to comfort myself by saying that it was nothing but the  wind in the chimney, or merely a cricket that had made a single chirp, or  only a mouse crossing the floor.  No comfort came through these  suppositions.  I could feel the black shadow of death all around me.   My heart was beating quickly, very quickly and loudly, like a drum,  and its noise was deafening me.  I noticed a narrow beam of light  coming through the door.  It was him!  I did not see him; but I was  sure that it was he who was watching the eye that he hated that much.   My hour had come!  I did not know how long a time had passed when  he suddenly threw open the lantern, and insanely leaped into the room,  yelling.  Inadvertently, I shrieked once - only once.  ?I hate your  eyes,? he repeated many times.  Before I could respond, he dragged me  to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over me....  I died!  Yet my eye  could still see.  I saw, in the mirror, the eye of the mad man?s mother  in the face of  the old man, and  there was no mad man at all.  I wept,  and my eye was reflected in every drop of the tears I shed."  He drops  his head.  I cannot see his eyes, but I am sure he is crying.

After all, I did not need Mr. Green to close this case.  Now, I know  he is both of them, the old man and the man who kills his mother.  Even  the mother is him.  Not as separate as id, ego, and super ego, but  distinct enough.  I feel good because every thing has found its proper  place in my mind.  A conclusive opinion!  Now, Mr. Williams is defined.   He can be treated.

"Mr. Williams, you must be tired.  I ask George to come and take  you to your room in a minute," I tell him as I stand up.  He does not  answer.  His head is still down, resting on his chest.  "Mr. Williams,  are you O. K.?"  No response.  "Mr. Williams," I repeat and repeat.   He does not move.  I raise his head.  He is dead, and his eyes are dry.

The day after he died - probably for the second time in his life -  sitting in my office, I think that, in the end, he, at least, told his  story.  I wonder whether I will find someone to listen to my story when  the time comes.