The Weight of Rain By William Foster

I

It had been raining for hours. The water clung to the pavement in puddles, reflecting the dull glow of the streetlamps over my head. The city, for all its vastness, was desolate and vague. A few stray figures darted out from doorways, collars turned up, hats drawn low, but they did not matter. Nothing mattered except the sound of my own footsteps and the thoughts that battered in around me like the rain itself.

I could not return home, not yet. Not with this rain weighing upon me. I told myself I was walking to clear my mind, to think, but the truth was I did not want to be alone with my own reflection in the mirror. There are certain things a man cannot bear to look at directly. And tonight, for the first time, I had been made to see myself. For when I looked, I saw horns, a tail and the fear in my eyes was not unknown to many of this world.

It was absurd. The ease of how it all crumbles. A few words, a glance, the briefest pause before she left the room, and my entire world had shifted. It had not been a quarrel, if it had been, I could have endured it. No, worse than that. She had merely asked a question.

‘Do you even understand?’

That was all.

I had laughed at first, not mockingly, but with genuine confusion. Understand what?

She had not repeated herself; she had no need; my laughter was enough. She had only waited, studying me, and in that silence, something unspoken had passed between us. It was in the way she looked at me, not in anger, nor in sorrow, and I thought it was disgust but no it was in quiet exhaustion. That was the worst part of it all. I could have withstood her anger. I could have refuted her sorrow. But her exhaustion, exhaustion required no defence, no argument. It was simply there, the evidence of a lifetime weighed and found weighing.

And so she had left, and I had sat there, unable to move, my mind running through every conversation, every word, every moment when I had believed myself good, and realizing, suddenly, how little that belief had ever meant.

I was not a monster. I had never struck anyone, had never screamed, had never committed the terrible violence’s one reads about in newspapers. But is there not a quieter cruelty? A cruelty of indifference, of dismissal, of believing that kindness absolves a man of the ways in which he benefits from the suffering of others. I had been good to women, yes. But always on my terms. Always with the silent expectation that my goodness should be rewarded, that they should be grateful for the simple act of being treated as human.

Had I ever truly listened? Had I ever truly seen them?

The thought sent a sharp sickness through me, and I pressed forward into the rain, as if I could walk myself out of this revelation.

II

I turned a corner and found myself on a quieter street. Here, the buildings were older, the windows dark. The kind of street where forgotten things settled. I had not meant to come this way, but I did not turn back. I had no destination, only movement.

Ahead, beneath the awning of a closed shop, a figure sat hunched against the cold. An old man, wrapped in a tattered coat, smoking the last embers of a cigarette. He watched me with weary amusement as I approached.

‘Late night, is it?’ he rasped.

I nodded. ‘It seems so.’

‘Ah,’ he said, exhaling a curl of smoke. ‘Another man walking off his sins.’

I nearly laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘Is it so obvious?’

‘You all walk the same in the end,’ he said, tapping ash from his burnt-out cigarette onto the wet pavement. ‘Head down, shoulders heavy. You’ve just discovered something, haven’t you? Something you can’t quite put back.’

I hesitated. Was it so obvious. ‘Perhaps.’

The old man studied me for a moment or several. ‘Go on, then,’ he said, gesturing for me to sit with his cigarette. ‘Let’s hear it.’

I did not know why I obeyed. Perhaps it was the rain, or the lateness of the hour, or simply the fact that I could not bear the damnable silence any longer.

‘I thought I was a good man,’ I said quietly. I thought I was kind. And now I realize that my kindness was nothing more than another way for me to imprison, to colonize.’

The old man let out a dry chuckle. ‘Ah. That one.’

I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve seen your kind before,’ he said. ‘The men who wake up one day and realize they were never as good as they believed. You think you’re the first? The first man to wonder if he’s been blind his whole life?’

III

I bristled. ‘I never said’

‘But you feel it, don’t you?’ he interrupted. ‘The weight of rain. The shame. You’re asking yourself if every smile, every conversation, every kindness was just a different way of making yourself comfortable and left them squirming.’

I swallowed hard. ‘Yes. Yes, it was.’

The old man nodded, as if I had merely confirmed something he already found. ‘And now you want to know what to do with it?’

I exhaled, my breath curling in the damp air. ‘Yes.’

For a moment, he said nothing. Then he flicked his cigarette into a puddle and looked up at me. ‘You carry it.’

‘Carry it?’

‘You think there’s another choice?’ He shrugged. ‘You want forgiveness? Who are you asking it from? You think she’s waiting for you to say the right thing, to prove you’ve changed? No, lad. She’s gone. She’s done waiting.’

I felt something tighten in my chest.

The old man continued. ‘You carry it. And you don’t ask for it to be lifted. You don’t ask for absolution. You live with it, every day, and you let it change you.’

The rain poured harder now, drumming against the awning, against the ends of my feet.

I shook my head. ‘And if it never goes away?’

‘Good,’ the old man smiled grimly, ‘if that’s the price of finally seeing. The price of finally knowing where the devil truly lies in this damned place. For he always has and always will be there in the hearts of you men. Then good.’

For a long moment, I said nothing. Then, finally, I nodded. I was not satisfied, I had not found peace, but I knew he was right.

I turned away from the old man, stepped back into the downpour, and walked into the night. Truly an awful sight.