Happy Valentine's Day

Summer, 2008. Susan Vicker was making a last minute revision of the questions she had prepared last night. Two sets of files lay on her desk.

She had joined ‘La Dorris Rehabilitation Center for Juvenile Delinquents’, as a therapeutic counselor in December 2006. She was a key member of the ‘Talk to rehab’ team, and was busy trying to get into the skin of her profession. So far, she liked it . She has been making progress. She wanted to leave her past life behind. The work became her salvation.

Topping her schedule today , was an interview with Mark Rimer, a 19 year old on probation, since August 2006. Mark had committed a crime. On 14^th February, 2006, he had opened fire on inmates of the Spastic Society Residential in central Dorris, killing 15 people, and wounding several others. This was her third round with Mark.

Mark was dot punctual.

“ Hello, how are you?”

She could never be innovative in greetings and introductions.

‘Just fine, had a flu attack l-ll-ast week”

‘ Sorry to hear that. Are you sure you want to do it today? We can schedule a Friday 9.30, if you want.’

‘ Its ok. I was looking forward to it actually.’

‘Mark, I know you have gone through this, like, around, 50 times, but protocol requires me to keep a personal record. Just for verification, I will read from the files that I have with me. You are free to contradict me at any point you want.’

‘ You left your apartment 9 30 in the morning, and headed towards Magdale High school. You told Ben Sommers, your basket ball buddy, that you are going to meet Martha Neir by the school gate at noon. Since the last two weeks, you had left Martha four notes in her mailbox, concealing your identity. One of the letters was a poem written in blood.

“ Martha was about to get a transfer. . She would leave Dorris that Friday afternoon
Friday class was the only place where I could have seen her”

‘ I want you to tell me what was going through your mind that week.’

‘ I was wanting to get to her. I thought I will propose her on the Valentine’s.'

'I,.. I couldn’t make up my mind on what to say to her. I was thinking about that when I left home. Then as I was crossing the street, I was stopped’

‘ Is it all right, if I turn the tape on, at this moment?

‘Sure, miss vicker.’

In February, 2006 the city council had planned a novel program to celebrate Valentine’s day. It would organize a procession of spastics, who would tour the city , with flowers in their hands. The procession would start from Byron Road and go down Magdale high, down to the outskirts. Mark was stopped by that procession.

It is precisely at this point that his story diverged completely from all official reports and documents for that day. There was a procession , but it consisted of hardly 30 people in all. There was a minor jam in traffic, at the crossing of Byron and Ledglase, but it hardly lasted for more than five minutes.

“ There was this huge crowd, miss vicker, and they were making noise. There were dumb and deaf and crooked people. Ugly scum all around”

‘ Do you hate ugly people mark? Do you hate the sick?’

“ No miss susan. I always get along with them, I get along with them better than anyone else. I have a way with them. When we visited the old age home from school last summer, those old guys were smiling at me. It was only me that some of the old women talked to. I don’t know why. When I went to the hospital to see my cousin at the surgery ward , some of the patients there waved at me, as if they know who I am”

Susan didn’t believe it all, but he knew Mark had a knack of getting along with a certain category of people. He was not always cracking jokes, or smiling, but the inmates loved to have him around.

‘ you must have a very friendly disposition , Mark’

Mark continued.

“ mama used to celebrate my birthday on 25^th of December. Though I was born a day in advance. She had the morning for Jesus , and the evening for me. She used to say that I will grow up and look after the poor and the needy. That I looked like jesus’

Susan was running though her mind , the contents of a little notebook found on Mark’s bedroom bookshelf after his arrest. It was titled “The hate-book”. Not a single entry was a complete sentence. Words , broken phrases.

“ Rich people, cream, hypocrisy, big cars. White robes. Prayer Speeches. Tall buildings, towers, schools,…”. The list went on

‘Why were you stopped Mark?’

‘ Those spastic people wouldn’t let me go. They filled the streets and started giving flowers to me. They were smiling I couldn’t make my way through. They were saying ‘happy valentine’s s day’. On other days, believe me ,miss susan ,I could have joined the fun, but then I did not want all this. I wanted to be with Martha. You have her picture, you know how beautiful she is. And there I was, trapped in all this ugliness. I wanted to cry out. Stammering people, pimpled faces,.. and they were all embracing me. It was as if it was me and me all around. I was facing a huge crowd of myself and I so hated that.”

Susan couldn’t figure out the reason for this self loathing. He was himself not handicapped in any way, except for the occasional stammer.

She had checked Mark’s schoolwork. Bizarre would be an understatement. Spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, followed by a brilliant essay out of nowhere, then again a round of sloppy work. Mark was encouraged to write by the rehab team. It is one thing that he had continued diligently over the probation period.

“ And then, some of them lifted me up. There were people all around me as far as my eyes could see. There was no way I could get past those dirty chunk. It started thinning out, after a while, though. But it was almost evening then. I knew Martha had gone. I don’t know, who had brought in all these people, to stop me from going to Martha.”

“ We have all your medical records , but let me ask you once again Mark , did you ever have any hallucinations of any kind? Do you hear voices, that others can’t hear?'

‘No, miss susan.’

‘ Did you recognize any person you saw in the morning, among the people you killed?

‘ I didn’t look carefully… I went in and started shooting, but I knew there wasn’t enough of them.’

Susan turned the tape off.

‘ How is your writing going?”

‘I have taken a break. Because of the flu’ .A smile.

Susan had seen the evolution of Marks’ writing It started with mushy love stories, then some violent ones. A period of porn followed. Now they are mostly short pieces on nature, some fairy tales, and one or two science articles . Susan wondered about the intricacies and sophistication in the disguise madness weaves for itself

‘ Let me ask you a personal question Mark.. What made you like Neir?’

‘ I don’t know, ..she was a good speaker, I liked her when she spoke on the annual debate the last semester, before she went away. When she lost at games, she didn’t cry or blame her team. She had a good figure, and she was what you call analytical. Don’t know if it is the right word. . And she was also sad. I like girls who are mysteriously sad, in their eyes’

‘ What are your career plans?’

‘I will be a writer’

‘That’s fantastic. Heard from the warden that you fetched for some novels. Who is your favorite author?’

‘None that catches my fancy’

‘You are better?’

‘ I have an edge over them’

‘ But they are all famous authors. Don’t you think there is something in them that makes them famous? Why do you think you have an edge?’

Mark’s voice was clear now. And it was perfect English.

‘ Because I am the proprietor of a land called pain. It’s as if, one day, I paid a huge price for the land , and now I own the entire territory. The other authors just play on the field. But it is only me who knows the nerves that run underground. Just like the doc who knows which veins to press when you have a headache. I can tap on any one of them and start a convulsion. I can play on them and make them cry out any music I like. “

Ego. But the metaphor was nice. Maybe borrowed.

‘ Don’t you write any poems now?’

She also wanted to ask him about his hate book entries. They had access to all his written work, but she wondered if a mental notebook wasn’t slowly getting filled.

‘ No, I just cant write them good enough”.

Susan looked at the watch. It was almost 10. She was about to leave, when the suggestion came.

“ Miss Vicker, I was wondering if we could go for a coffee. I wanted to talk to you about the termination appeal. I have been improving, haven’t I?“

“ Sure”

As they walked through the corridor, Susan found herself deep in thought. Before she came for the interview, she had been handed a note, found in one of the common restrooms. The guards who monitor the rehab cells also submitted reports on the scribbling they find on the restroom walls and toilets. Most of them are sexual abuses aimed at the warden, and the counselors, -the usual frustrations of adolescence. This note was different.

"Woman, I see you come and go
You cut me up in two
My heart waits like a block of ice,
For a ‘hello how are you’.
The blood then flows, the tongue then rolls
I see the passion rise,
Madness cures by sadness-drops
From your mystery eyes”

Susan knew it was written with a red sketch pen. Some of the letters were intentionally blotted to create a fake impression of blood. At the end of this silly high school poem, she had encountered her own sad eyes, beautifully and passionately drawn.