Another one from the archives... Written in 1998. I just couldn't get the ending right at that time. The ending is as lame as it can ever get. Later, I decided not to tweak the story as I wanted to preserve my writing history. Read on...

A SELFISH SOUL

The bar had not moved an inch from Alexander Square after its inception there in 1936. Before that also people said, it had been there but not as a stone walled Grey building but as a small setup having only two to three benches and a cash counter. Let us not discuss about how those three objects expanded into this building because that is not the central idea of this story. The motive behind starting a story with the description of a bar is quite simple. There existed at least one incident in that bar enough dramatic to frame a story.

It was a stone walled Grey building measuring ten meters from the mud floor to the terrace. It was supposed to be a building with two floors but the first floor roof stood somewhere at 7.5 meters leaving practically nothing for the second floor which could not complain because it was just a floor and not a human being. Nevertheless the floor thought of taking revenge on the first floor by simply coming down twice in a span of thirty years but then it found out that actually this coming down business proved more lethal to itself than to the first floor. So for the last twenty years it stood there firmly without even glancing down at the first floor silently hearing the cacophony from below which was music to those who were well over two servings. This fact should go without saying because anybody who entered that bar would not have any faith in theories like "alcohol damages the liver" or "Only one peg a day, and your doctor is forever away".

Not quite far from the madding drunk crowd of this bar was a collection of paintings by the local artists who could not make big money on them because to make big money you must have some small money which the painters lacked and so they could not publicize their paintings which were not very inferior to those painted by Picasso. This collection was kept in an inner room of the bar and this hardly surprised anyone who knew Mr. Ebert, the man behind the bar now. He himself was an artist before joining this bar as a table cleaner. He painted many a masterpiece, which he could use only as pieces to clean the tables. He made a resolution one day and nobody knew what that resolution was. There were some wild guesses and bets about that resolution but he never told anybody what it was. Years later he became the owner of that bar and immediately after acquiring the liquor wealth he started an exhibition of paintings in a room specially cleaned for the purpose. He invited the poor artists to display the paintings there and he himself bought some paintings. The idea clicked though I could not say it clicked very well. There were some two to three transactions per month but always Ebert was one of those buyers. The guys drank and then entered the room, said hello to each and every painting and then came out. Whenever a man walked in, all the artists stood up praying God that he should be a valuable customer but God never listened to their prayers.

It was quite a day for Damn Speedster. He came from England as an orphan. The first man he met in this town was Father Durrington who could extract no other information from the little boy except that his name was Charles. Father Durrington took him to his house and became his father. Little Charles ran like hell in every dash he had participated and people called him Damn Speedster and he never repented being called so. It is not an exaggerated statement if I say nobody knew his real name except two people. The first was Mr. Durrington whose first name even Charles did not know. He called him Father Durrington and incidentally everyone there in the town called him Father Durrington because he had been the listener for many years to many confessions made by many drunkards in the only Church of England that town had. All these confessions usually had a remarkable similarity attached to them. All confessed that they broke the resolution they took under oath the previous afternoon, that they would never again touch the tempting spirit. Charles never went near that confession box. He had his quick dashes to make and rarely attended the church.

As told earlier, today Damn Speedster was the star of the day. He made L'shire people proud by outrunning W'shire guys. Quite an achievement it was because prior to Speedster's there was no notable victory of L'shire over W'shire. There were two researchers in Charles' town who went through all the old records and newspapers kept in the community library of the town to find at least one incident where the W'shire guys were outsmarted by the local heroes. They returned with bare hands. Considering all these, what Charles gave to the town today was not by any means an ordinary lift. Rewards kept on coming for Charles and he acquired enough wealth to sit and drink for the next one year. He wanted to start that one year right then because his girlfriend Martha left to San Francisco that evening exploring the possibility of some good work there. "Let oceans separate us, our hearts will not get exchanged once again" she said as a parting note to Charles and she was gone.

Charles entered the bar with a gloomy mind. His initial excitement did not sustain for a long time. Martha was everything Charles had apart from his very strong legs. He wanted to marry her after this Christmas but now it seemed quite impossible because Christmas was only two months away. "Let oceans separate us, our hearts will not get exchanged once again" he murmured at the waiter who took at least three steps backwards to be a bit safe. That waiter had seen people behaving in all possible manners after letting the tempting spirit go down their sore throats but Speedster baffled him very much with his unintended strange behavior. "Two 60 ml servings of the black spirit" Speedster announced. The waiter hurried away.

The bar was nearly full with all types of people. Charles shared his table with none. He wanted to be alone for reasons obvious. The reasons were so obvious that even Mr. Huffman, mayor of that town did not make an attempt to pull Charles into a typical bar conversation. Mr. Huffman was a gentleman with an eye for arts. Though he did not buy any of those poor artists' works he did inspect them with interest. He did not like those paintings for many reasons. "They lacked something, I am looking in them for" He said to Mr. Ebert many times though he himself was not so sure what that something was. Today Mr. Ebert hoped he would be able to find a painting with that something in it and quite coincidentally Mr. Huffman found something in one of the paintings. He stared at it for a long time raising some hopes in the artist who stood by the side of it eagerly awaiting Mr. Huffman's comment. The painting accurately portrayed a village which had only one light aglow after the sun was set. A better description of that would be a black canvass with a yellow spot in the middle.

Mr. Huffman turned to Mr. Ebert who was accompanying him and said, "Surely this is something but I am not sure whether this is that something I was speaking about" But he seemed to be yielding and then finally he declared he would take it. The young artist could not hide his excitement. He ran into the bar and shouted at the top of his voice that his painting had that something and Mr. Huffman decided to take it. The whole bar was silent for a moment. Then everyone started towards the paintings room to have a glance at the great painting which had that mysterious something Mr. Huffman could find in no other painting so far and unfortunately Cad Williams was one of them. By the time he reached the front door of that paintings room he was twice drunk and with the black spirit bottle he had in his hand he appeared very natural to reach the thrice drunk mark.

As soon as he entered the room he tumbled over a mosquito and nobody knew how he managed to tumble over such a tiny creature as a mosquito. But the result was very apparent and the much talked about painting stood there aghast with a big black spirit stain exactly on the spot which the artist used to paint the only light of the village. The situation changed drastically then. Mr. Huffman dropped the idea of buying that painting and the artist detested Cad Williams and his luck very much. Charles looked at the artist. He was staring at the painting with disbelief in his eyes. Mr. Ebert tapped on his shoulder and said "Sorry for that". Charles went to the artist, took the painting from his hand and inspected the spirit blot on it. The artist was puzzled at Damn Speedster. "This is the painting I’ve been looking for since the day I stepped into L’shire" said Charles to him, "Look how naturally it is portraying the amoebae. I will take it" and he gave all the money he had to the artist. The artist could not speak anything. Things were going beyond his head. Charles came out without speaking a word. He did not accept even the drink offered by Mr. Ebert.

Damn Speedster ran like a cheetah towards the Church of England. People didn't pay any attention to him because it was usual for them to see him running in the streets at all odd hours. It took Charles just over five minutes to reach the church. Straight went he to the confession box. Father Durrington entered the box and he was amazed to hear Charles talking in the confession box. "I would like to make a confession, Father" Charles told him, "I told a lie today. I didn't like the painting father but I told the artist that it was very good… and I bought it for a hefty amount. I didn't do it because I felt pity for the artist, Father. I did it for Martha" Charles paused for a moment. Father Durrington couldn't hide his curiosity "How is Martha connected to this episode?" he asked. Charles looked down and replied slowly "If the artist is just an artist I wouldn't have cared to buy that spoiled painting Father, but he is Martha's brother. And that is the only reason why I bought that painting. But now the whole town is talking about the kindheartedness of Damn Speedster… I don't like it, Father, I just don't deserve that." He didn't wait for Mr. Durrington to speak. He ran out of the church towards his house.

That evening Father Durrington found the painting left by Charles near the confession box. Generations later people remarked about a certain black painting hung to the walls of the Church of England with a disfigured image of a yellow light at its center.