“A Confession” by Mark Cecil Stevens, page 3
The warmth that the boots provided for me was more than a relief to my sore feet. Though the pulsing of my chilblains abated first, the heat swelled and rose throughout my body; an ease settled in my chest and a fuzzy intoxication filled my head. I struggle even now to understand, let alone describe the feeling, and I find no better description for it than love. The boots loved me with a tender affection that I had not known since Mrs. Csikine had passed away and I had found myself on the street. And for my part, I felt such emotions for them that I find it outside my capacity to describe them to you. Suffice it to say that I loved them more than any other thing that I had, in my short life, possessed. And, if I am honest with myself, I might add that I loved them a good deal more than most of the people that I knew as well.
Of course, as with any love, there was a cost. The cost of this love was a hatred the depth and breadth of which I had never sensed before. This hatred stung my eyes and smelled acrid on the air in my face. It surrounded but did not invade my thoughts except for the realization that the boots, my precious boots, hated my father. From the moment I put them on they tried to convince me to share in this feeling. That is why I started to follow him.
I sense your skepticism--I can see it in your face. You wonder how I could know that it was the boots that contained this disdain. And you think that I will blame them for what I did. Let me first address my communications with them. I'm not crazy--it's not as if the boots spoke to me or visited my dreams. And though I spoke to them, mostly in defense of my father, I could only sense their response. No matter, though, their feeling toward him never changed.
As an example, let me offer this occurrence. I had undertaken a program of quietly following my father in order to clear the stain from his name. To be certain, he gave me little of redeeming value, but my argument against the boots was that they only sought his condemnation. On that day my father pulled an old man fresh from the shops off the street, and on the pretext that the man's bags were filled with contraband, he seized the groceries. After the man had skittered off, my father sat down with some fawning little adjutant and made a picnic of the loot. A pair of strong-arm thieves, the boots contended. But look at how they share, I countered. True, the bounty was split in my father's favor, according to some consensual calculus, but as his assistant opened a bottle of Tokay, father placed his hand on the younger man's shoulder in a gesture that approached tenderness. The boots were unmoved.
There were times when it seemed a fruitless task, this sifting through the minutes of my father's day looking for qualities to-- well, looking for qualities. A soldier's life is as filled with mundane detail as our own-- naps, toilet, meals and any number of moments that had the only benefit of stilling the otherwise incessant accusations of the boots. But there were other moments where I found myself holding my tongue. There were other massacres, executed without precision or regularity. Their savagery was shocking. And seeing them through to their conclusion was disheartening. When the last cry stilled, the soldiers turned, impassive, and cleaned the bank. At those moments the boots deafened me with their recriminations and I had no answer.
But the worst times of all for me were the times when he went to visit little Agnes, his whore. I watched him practice his debaucheries on her from the small balcony outside her window. I don't want you to think that I was excited by her or their congress. I see the smirk at the edge of your lips. But let me assure you, I was sickened to the pit of my guts. It was the only time that I felt tempted to leave off the pursuit and give in to the boots. I wish now that I had, at least for more than a moment. On the one instance that I let him go on from her without me, I did not linger to see her. I was held in place when she turned to the window. At first I thought that she had spotted me, her eyes were so intent on the glass, and I was afraid to move. But it became clear by the look in her eye, empty of recognition but pregnant with reflection, that she did not see me at all, that she was intent only on herself. I was privy to something that I had never seen before in another person—the way that she viewed herself. And that self-image brought a sadness into her eyes that made me want to comfort her, though I did not dare to reach for her. Instead I sat on the balcony, stock-still, and I tried to love her. I tried to love her because my father, or any other man that I can imagine came into that little boudoir, did not.
I chided myself for remaining aloof on that night and I wondered even what defect I suffered from that held me, frightened, on the outside when I wanted to go in to her. That shortcoming became clear on my father’s next visit. As he knelt and practiced his lusts on her she erred in calling him by his given name, without even using his military rank as he preferred. A dark mood passed across his face, and though he did not stop his pulsing, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and produced a short length of knotted silk. He raised two little red welts on the small of her back that implored me just as her ruddy eyes had as she looked at her reflection. When my father climbed off of her, she rose and they narrowed and accused me as I sat and watched her weep on the bed. I was ashamed, but what was I to do? He was a soldier and I was just a sneak thief in a dead man’s fancy boots.
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