I wouldn’t be writing this if Peter Callaghan
hadn’t died in front of me in the street. One
moment he was strolling towards me in his slow, self-confident gait,
the ambulatory equivalent of a southern drawl; and the next moment he
was stretched out at my feet, his body twitching and twisting as if
wracked by an invisible torment. He made no sound, so far as I could
hear, but I saw his mouth open in a silent scream, and his
eyes screw themselves into narrow slits. Then people began crowding
round, the police arrived, followed by an ambulance, and he was carted
off, first to hospital, and thence, as it transpired, to the
morgue.
Although I knew him well by sight, he had never told me
anything about himself beyond his first name: Peter. So it was not
until the next day, while listening to the morning news, that I learned
something about him. He turned out to be a back bench politician from a
rural area, adored by his constituents, but thoroughly disliked
elsewhere on account of his extreme views, and his refusal to
toe the party line. According to the radio commentary, he had been
suspected of communist leanings because of his support for universal
state subsidies, and of being a fascist because he had spoken in favour
of Northern Ireland, Quebec separatism and the break-up of
the European Community. Apparently, he was wealthy, which to his
detractors made him corrupt; and rabidly anti-feminist, which made him
politically incorrect. In short, he was an embarrassment, a nuisance.
In the world at large, he had lots of enemies; and although the
post-mortem had not yet been conducted, the nature and suddenness of
his death led police to suspect etc., etc.
Whatever the truth about Peter Callaghan’s view of things, he
was unfailingly pleasant to me. He seemed to understand that I, too, am
a nuisance to my fellows; and he always stopped to buy a box of
chocolates from me whenever he caught sight of me hawking my wares in
the street. He would take a box from the open bag at my feet, thrust a
five-dollar bill into the purse round my waist, and then chat for a
minute or two about the weather, or the price of food, or some other
inconsequential matter. The chocolates were three dollars a box, but he
insisted on paying five . He was like that; at least with me.
Now that I think back upon it, I see his generosity towards me as an
act of solidarity from someone who was an irritant by profession to one
who was an irritant because God had willed him thus. So when he
collapsed in front of me, I felt stricken myself; for although I hardly
knew him, I thought of him as my friend. He was of the few
happily able to ignore my clumsiness, my slurred speech and incompetent
limbs and address me as if I stood, and spoke and thought like everyone
else............
The Chocolate Man, published by Cormorant Press, Canada, 1995.
