Con Man Cometh

Written by Sam Vaknin



Swathed in luminosity, we stir with measured competence our amber
drinks in long-stemmed glasses. You are weighing my offer and I am
waiting for your answer with hushed endurance. The armchairs are soft,
the lobby is luxurious, as befits five-star hotels. I am not tense. I
have anticipated your response even before I made my move.



Soon, temples sheathed in perspiration, you use the outfit's
thick paper napkins to wipe it off. Loosen your tie. Pretend to be
immersed in calculations. You express strident dissatisfaction and I
feign recoil, as though intimidated by your loudness. Withdrawing to my
second line of defense, I surrender to your simulated
wrath.


The signs are here, the gestures, the infinitesimal movements
that you cannot control. I lurk. I know that definite look, that
imperceptible twitch, the inevitability of your
surrender.


I am a con man and you are my victim. The swindle is
unfolding here and now, in this very atrium, amid all the extravagance.
I am selling your soul and collecting the change. I am sharpened, like
a raw nerve firing impulses to you, receiving yours, an
electrical-chemical dialog, consisting of your smelly sweat, my scented
exudation. I permeate your cracks. I broker an alliance with your
fears, your pains, defense compensatory mechanisms.


I know you.


I've got to meld us into one. As dusk gives way to night, you
trust me as you do yourself, for now I am nothing less than you. Having
adopted your particular gesticulation, I nod approvingly with every
mention of your family. You do not like me. You sense the danger. Your
nostrils flare. Your eyes amok. Your hands so restless. You know me for
a bilker, you realize I'll break your heart. I know you comprehend we
both are choiceless.


It's not about money. Emotions are at stake. I share your
depths of loneliness and pain. Sitting opposed, I see the child in you,
the adolescent. I discern the pleading sparkle in your eyes, your
shoulders stooping in the very second you've decided to succumb. I am
hurting for what I do to you. My only consolation is the inexorability
of nature - mine and yours, this world's (in which we find ourselves
and not of our choice). Still, we are here, you know.


I empathize with you without speech or motion. Your solitary
sadness, the anguish, and your fears. I am your only friend, monopolist
of your invisible cries, your inner hemorrhage of salty tears, the
tissued scar that has become your being. Like me, the product of
uncounted blows (which you sometimes crave).


Being abused is being understood, having some meaning,
forming a narrative. Without it, your life is nothing but an anecdotal
stream of randomness. I deal the final, overwhelming coup-de-grace that
will transform the torn sheets of your biography into a plot. It isn't
everyday one meets a cheat. Such confident encounters can render
everything explained. Don't give it up. It is a gift of life, not to be
frivolously dispensed with. It is a test of worthiness.


I think you qualify and I am the structure and the target
you've been searching for and here I am.


Now we are bound by money and by blood. In our common veins
flows the same alliance that dilates our pupils. We hail from one
beginning. We separated only to unite, at once, in this hotel, this
late, and you exclaim: "I need to trust you like I do not trust a
soul". You beseech me not to betray your faith. Perhaps not so
explicitly, but both your eyes are moist, reflecting your
vulnerability.


I gravely radiate my utter guarantee of splendid outcomes. No
hint of treason here. Concurrently I am plotting your emotional demise.
At your request, not mine. It is an act of amity, to rid you of the
very cause of your infirmity. I am the instrument of your delivery and
liberation. I will deprive you of your ability to feel, to trust, and
to believe. When we diverge, I will have molded you anew - much less
susceptible, much more immune, the essence of
resilience.


It is my gift to you and you are surely grateful in advance.
Thus, when you demand my fealty, you say: "Do not forget our verbal
understanding".


And when I vow my loyalty, I answer: "I shall not forget to
stab you in the back."


And now, to the transaction. I study you. I train you to
ignore my presence and argue with yourself with the utmost sincerity. I
teach you not to resent your weaknesses.


So, you admit to them and I record all your confessions to be
used against you to your benefit. Denuded of defenses, I leave you
wounded by embezzlement, a cold, contemptible exposure. And, in the
meantime, it's only warmth and safety, the intimacy of empathy, the
propinquity of mutual understanding.


I only ask of you one thing: the fullest trust, a willingness
to yield. I remember having seen the following in an art house movie,
it was a test: to fall, spread-eagled from a high embankment and to
believe that I am there to catch you and break your lethal
plunge.


I am telling you I'll be there, yet you know I won't. Your
caving in is none of my concern. I only undertook to bring you to the
brink and I fulfilled this promise. It's up to you to climb it, it's up
to you to tumble. I must not halt your crash, you have to recompose. It
is my contribution to the transformation that metastasized in you long
before we met.


But you are not yet at the stage of internalizing these
veracities. You still naively link feigned geniality to constancy,
intimacy and confidence in me and in my deeds, proximity and full
disclosure. You are so terrified and mutilated, you come devalued. You
cost me merely a whiskey tumbler and a compendium of ordinary words.
One tear enough to alter your allegiances. You are malleable to the
point of having no identity.


You crave my touch and my affection. I crave your information
and unbridled faith. "Here is my friendship and my caring, my
tenderness and amity, here is a hug. I am your parent and your shrink,
your buddy and your family." - so go the words of this inaudible dialog
- "Give me your utter, blind, trust but limit it to one point only:
your money or your life."


I need to know about your funds, the riddles of your
boardroom, commercial secrets, your skeletons, some intimate detail, a
fear, resurgent hatred, the envy that consumes. I don't presume to be
your confidant. Our sharing is confined to the pecuniary. I lull you
into the relief that comes with much reduced demands. But you are an
experienced businessman! You surely recognize my tactics and employ
them, too!


Still, you are both seduced and tempted, though on condition
of maintaining "independent thinking". Well, almost independent. There
is a tiny crack in your cerebral armor and I am there to thrust right
through it. I am ready to habituate you. "I am in full control" - you'd
say - "So, where's the threat?" And, truly, there is
none.


There's only certainty. The certitude I offer you throughout
our game. Sometimes I even venture: "I am a crook to be avoided". You
listen with your occidental manners, head tilted obliquely, and when I
am finished warning you, you say: "But where the danger lies? My trust
in you is limited!" Indeed - but it is there!


I lurk, awaiting your capitulation, inhabiting the margins,
the twilight zone twixt greed and paranoia. I am a viral premonition,
invading avaricious membranes, preaching a gospel of death and
resurrection. Your death, your rising from the dead. Assuming the
contours of my host, I abandon you deformed in
dissolution.


There's no respite, not even for a day. You are addicted to
my nagging, to my penetrating gaze, instinctive sympathy, you're
haunted. I don't let go. You are engulfed, cocooned, I am a soul mate
of eerie insight, unselfish acumen. I vitiate myself for your minutest
needs. I thrive on servitude. I leave no doubt that my self-love is
exceeded only by my love for you.


I am useful and you are a user. I am available and you avail
yourself. But haven't you heard that there are no free lunches? My
restaurant is classy, the prices most exorbitant, the invoices
accumulate with every smile, with every word of reassurance, with every
anxious inquiry as to your health, with every sacrifice I make, however
insubstantial.


I keep accounts in my unstated books and you rely on me for
every double entry. The voices I instill in you: "He gives so of
himself though largely unrewarded". You feel ashamed, compelled to
compensate. A seed of Trojan guilt. I harp on it by mentioning others
who deprived me. I count on you to do the rest. There's nothing more
potent than egotistic love combined with raging culpability. You are
mine to do with as I wish, it is your wish that I embody and
possess.


The vise is tightened. Now it's time to ponder whether to
feed on you at once or scavenge. You are already dying and in your
mental carcass I am grown, an alien. Invoking your immunity, as I am
wont to do, will further make you ill and conflict will erupt between
your white cells and your black, the twin abodes of your awakened
feelings.


You hope against all odds that I am a soul-mate. How does it
feel, the solitude? Few days with me - and you cannot recall! But I
cannot remember how it feels to be together. I cannot waive my
loneliness, my staunch companion. When I am with you, it prospers. And
you must pay for that.


I have no choice but to abscond with your possessions, lest I
remain bereft. With utmost ethics, I keep you well-informed of these
dynamics and you acknowledge my fragility which makes you desirous to
salve my wounds.


But I maintain the benefit of your surprise, the flowing
motion. Always at an advantage over you, the interchangeable. I, on the
other hand, cannot be replaced, as far as you're concerned. You are a
loyal subject of your psychic state while I am a denizen of the eternal
hunting grounds. No limits there, nor boundaries, only the nostrils
quivering at the game, the surging musculature, the body fluids, the
scent of decadence.


Sometime, the prey becomes the predator, but only for a
while. Admittedly, it's possible and you might turn the tables. But you
don't want to. You crave so to be hunted. The orgiastic moment of my
proverbial bullets penetrating willing flesh, the rape, the violation,
the metaphoric blood and love, you are no longer satisfied with
compromises.


You want to die having experienced this eruption once. For
what is life without such infringement if not mere ripening concluding
in decay. What sets us, Man, apart from beast is our ability to
self-deceive and swindle others. The rogue's advantage over quarry is
his capacity to have his lies transmuted till you believe them
true.


I trek the unpaved pathways between my truth and your
delusions. What am I, fiend or angel? A weak, disintegrating apparition
- or a triumphant growth? I am devoid of conscience in my own
reflection. It is a cause for mirth. My complex is binary: to fight or
flight, I'm well or ill, it should have been this way or I was led
astray.


I am the blinding murkiness that never sets, not even when I
sleep. It overwhelms me, too, but also renders me farsighted. It taught
me my survival: strike ere you are struck, abandon ere you're trashed,
control ere you are subjugated.


So what do you say to it now? I told you everything and
haven't said a word. You knew it all before. You grasp how dire my need
is for your blood, your hurt, the traumatic coma that will follow. They
say one's death bequeaths another's life. It is the most profound
destination, to will existence to your pining
duplicate.


I am plump and short, my face is uncontrived and smiling.
When I am serious, I am told, I am like a battered and deserted child
and this provokes in you an ancient cuddling instinct. When I am
proximate, your body and your soul are unrestrained. I watch you kindly
and the artificial lighting of this magnific vestibule bounces off my
glasses.


My eyes are cradled in blackened pouches of withered skin. I
draw your gaze by sighing sadly and rubbing them with weary hands. You
incline our body, gulp the piquant libation, and sign the document.
Then, leaning back, you shut exhausted eyes. There is no doubt: you
realize your error.


It's not too late. The document lies there, it's ready for
the tearing. But you refrain. You will not do it.


"Another drink?" - You ask


I smile, my chubby cheeks and wire glasses
sparkle.


"No, thanks" - I say.



==============================


Short Fiction in English and Hebrew


http://gorgelink.org/vaknin/


http://samvak.tripod.com/sipurim.html


http://www.suite101.com/files/topics/6514/files/worksinenglish.zip


Poetry of Healing and Abuse


http://samvak.tripod.com/contents.html