A Clockwork Heart
The notes continued to appear, day after day after day. I actually preferred the nightmares - at least I could pretend they were drug-induced hallucinations or imagine that I was going mad. The stack of letters in the bottom drawer of my dresser - continual, tangible, irrefutable - reminded me that I was being judged every second of the day, even those times when I slept.
Danny's next message appeared in the post, tucked between Ivo's letter and a bill for the phone. I hid it from Isabel and read it alone in Ivo's room.
Camus' Meursault exhibited no grief at his mother's death, choosing instead to pass the time in sexual encounters and then a second-hand murder. Even when incarcerated, he found prison quite tolerable once he got used to the idea that he couldn't have sex or go where he wanted. He passed his days sleeping or recalling objects he once owned.
When sentenced to death for his crimes, Meursault expressed alarm and outrage. He maintained that no one had the right to judge him, that his personal anguish at the meaninglessness of existence exempted him from culpability. Meursault failed to comprehend that disregard for social conventions ultimately leads to isolation from or retaliation by one's peers.
I declared then and there that I would not read another note even if landed in my lap. But of course I did. And it did.
Danny's third communique came to me in the night, so that it lying beside me when I awoke.
The famous character George Wickham characterizes a common-place man in society. Such men are beyond selfish – displaying not only shallow emotions and superficial charm but the incapacity for love (manifest in their promiscuity), pathological lying and unreliability. Mr. Wickham's ending is a happy one – a loving and forgiving family readily supports his parasitic lifestyle and the opportunity to redeem his name. Few are so lucky.
I began to see what a soulless monster I was, a clockwork heart with a wind-up soul. I recognized the damage I had done to others – to Ivo and Isabel and Emily. And I understood that while I was only repeating the cycle of my own upbringing, I had no right. Like Wickham, I had been handed the opportunity to change and had rejected it.