About a week ago, I grabbed my camera, a small lapel mic, and a spare battery as I left my house. It had always been a bit of a dream of mine to speak to strangers and learn their life stories. I found something so intriguing about the hidden stories within the crowds around me. I wanted to record those stories and share them on the internet. The curiosity clawed at me, begging to be let out. On a sunday I had off, I set out to fulfill said dream with what little equipment I had.
I took the train into my local city. The ride was about an hour long. The train rattled along the tracks as I was basked in the blue-green tinted light from the windows. I hugged my equipment with a hopeful naivety. When the train pulled into the station, I was the first off. I was practically running out of the station and into the streets.
I stepped out full of hope and excitement. The day was warm and bright. Well, as I tried to find candidates, I found that people weren’t too fond of laying their life out in front of me, and especially not in front of a camera. Most people said they were busy, some said they just weren’t comfortable with it. I wonder what would have happened if I just gave up. If I just turned down a corner a little farther away, I never would have met him.
Him. He was sitting in front of a closed storefront without a sign, cup, or hat to collect money from those who pitied him. He just sat and watched the people pass. He was haggard and wore little more than rags layered over rags. Beneath the layers of tattered coats, his skin was cracked and wrinkled. Dirt worked its way into every fold in his leathery skin. His ethnicity was wholly untraceable and ambiguous. You could stare at him for an hour, come to a conclusion on his background, and then have the decision shaken when you turned your gaze back upon him. His hair was long, black, and thick with grease.
There was some unidentifiable factor about him that drew me in. He seemed to be marked with an air of intrigue and, as I would find out, long carried misery. When I approached him, he kept his head to the pavement. Despite the lack of proof to back it up, I was struck with the feeling that he was watching me. If not with his eyes, then by some other sense of his. “Excuse me, sir?” I said to him with poorly covered anxiety. “Would you mind being interviewed on camera? I’d like to know your story. It could be any story of yours. I’m very interested in learning about your life, and maybe even sharing it with others.”
He raised his head and I was pierced by his gaze for the first time. His eyes were hard to describe. They were the deepest and most experienced eyes I had ever seen. If the eyes are a window into the soul, a glance through these windows reveals generations of clutter. I was taken off-guard when he spoke. His voice was hoarse and sounded as if it hadn’t been used in a very long time. His accent was about as impossible to identify as his ethnic background. His words were imprinted with a bias towards a language that had either been lost or had died. He told me that he was willing to be interviewed in exchange for a meal.
I bought him food from the nearest fast-food joint and ran back to his corner. When he lifted his head to watch my return, those eyes contained no expectancy and no emotion. He just watched as I presented him with what I’d bought for him. He ate silently with his bare hands as I set up my equipment. He ate slowly and carefully. I clipped the microphone to one of his tattered coats and started the interview.
“Good morning, how are you today?” I started off. Despite my preparation, I was pretty unprepared to actually conduct the interview.
“Good morning.” Was all he said in return.
“What’s your name, and how old are you?”
“I forgot my name a long time ago, and you wouldn’t believe me if I told you my age.”
I was taken aback, letting out a bit of an anxious laugh. “Okay, well, where are you from? Did you grow up in the city, out of state, or in another country?”
I don’t think I’ve heard a laugh like his before. He choked on every breath. “I don’t keep track of what it’s called nowadays. It’s changed a lot over my life.”
If I’m being honest, I was starting to get kind of annoyed with him. He just wasn’t giving me any real answers. “Well, would you like to tell me your story? How you got here and what led up to that.”
He paused for a moment, coughed, and spoke. “My clearest and oldest memory is probably my most substantial one. It was a long time ago, but I killed my brother. He had been getting on my nerves for a long time, so I struck him over the head with a stone while we worked. His cries were so terrible. He had never felt such pain before.” I think he noticed my disposition change once he said this. “Don’t worry,” he said in an attempt to soothe me, “I have been duly punished a thousand fold.
“Since that day,” he continued, “I have been marked. Not a physical mark,” he cackled as he saw my eyes search him, “I’m marked by misery. The very fabric of the world around me drags me in such a way that I cannot die, but I cannot exactly live. I wander. I am manifestly incapable of working. Nobody accepts me to work, and I can never seem to grip any kind of tool without it slipping out of my hands. I used to be a great farmhand when I still had my brother, y’know. I haven’t touched soil since.”
“You wander?”
“I’ve never been to the same place twice. I walk to some town or city and I beg until somebody speaks to me. Once that seal is broken, I leave and I don’t come back. I’ll leave once we’re done with this interview.”
“Where have you been?”
“Everywhere.”
“Everywhere?”
“I’ve had a lot of time to roam the Earth.” He shook his coats and layers of dust leapt up and floated down onto the pavement. “So much time.”
“How long? Don’t say I won’t believe you.”
“I haven’t counted. Time doesn’t mean much to me anymore. There is today and there is tomorrow. Seasons pass and locations change. I lost track a long time ago. I just can’t seem to die. Just as I can’t work the land, I can’t work a weapon. Whoever I meet, wherever I go, fate’s tapestry corrects itself so that I never die. I am fed when I must be fed, I drink when I must drink, and I have never caught any kind of sickness.”
I kept pressing him about his age, but he just told me to drop it. Beyond the unbelievability of it, the information seemed too personal and too delicate to give away to a stranger like me. I moved on, asking him “Well, with so much traveling, do you have any interesting anecdotes?”
“Well,” he began, “once a man tried to rob me. It was the first time this had happened to me. It was fairly early in my penance for my brother. I genuinely had nothing to my name save my clothes. The same is true throughout my life. He was irate and started swinging a knife at me. I guess this is the first time that I really understood the nature of my punishment. Every slash missed me. The assault ended when a slash missed and the blade sunk into his own side. I don’t know what happened after that. That’s been pretty consistent. Whenever I’m in serious mortal danger, some brush of disgusting luck leaves me intact. Every gun leveled against me has jammed. Every assailant’s attacks have landed only on themselves. The strings of fate tug at them to prevent my death.”
“Would you say you’re divinely protected?” He shuddered a bit when I asked him that.
“Absolutely not. I am cursed. Cursed to wander. Cursed to observe from afar. Cursed to live. Cursed to be unable to form any kind of lasting personal bond. Do you have any idea what that does to a man?”
“I can’t say I do.”
“I have had a single friend in my life. It was some dog I fed in some town I’ve since forgotten. He followed me as I wandered. He was a sickly thing, but I really was quite fond of him. He was killed in the streets by some evil kids who wanted to watch me cry. I’m cursed to bring harm to those around me. I’ve watched the world around me rise, fall, change, live, die, and breathe as I stood distinctly separate and alone.
“Quite some time into my sentence, I just found a comfortable place in the wilderness and laid there. I couldn’t tell you how long I just laid there. I watched the clouds and the stars and I thought about it all. I’ve never regretted something more than I regret killing my brother. He got off lucky, if you ask me. Punishment was so new back then. My life feels like a trial run for hell. Eternal life and eternal death aren’t so dissimilar.”
I had no idea how to respond to this guy. This was so far from what I wanted to get out of the interview. I thought I could find someone with fun anecdotes from their early days, a tragic twist in their life, and a heartwarming message to keep trying your best. This just sucked, plain and simple. I resolved to just ask one more question and leave. “Do you have anything you want to tell whoever may be watching and listening to your story?”
He thought for some time. “Appreciate death while you still have it.”
I thanked him for his time, packed away my equipment, and walked away. He turned his weathered eyes back to the pavement as I walked away. I couldn’t really put my emotions together. Every thought of mine just seemed to sprint off in an odd direction. The train ride back home was spent in the absence of thought. I scrapped the video when I got home. I just couldn’t bring myself to revisit the footage. The only reason I’m writing about it here is so I can just get it off my chest. Appreciate death while you still have it.