The Man in My Basement

sick on the magnitude of what I had done. When they 19

released me, I had to be hospitalized. I gashed my own 20

thigh with a bayonet so that no one would realize how 21

precarious my mind had become.

22

“As bad as that time in prison was, I wanted to go 23

back — to face the evil and accept the accusations in my 24

own mind. That’s why I came here. I had no idea that 25

you’d do the dictator one better by turning out the lights.

26

“I came here hoping to make a statement to myself. To 27 S

isolate and punish the part of me who sees the evil. The 28 R

only real way to be punished is to recognize and pay for 218

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The Man in My Basement

your deeds. But when I was in that darkness, hating you, 1

I saw everything all over again. I remembered checking 2

the situation in Rwanda every day for over a year. We 3

knew it was going to blow up down there. And then I 4

remembered walking along the streets of the dead. In 5

the darkness here, I can almost feel them. My own 6

body odors are reminiscent of the smell of death. I could 7

understand how the sweat and gasses become stronger 8

when you die and then they leak out of you. And it’s so 9

dark and your heart is still beating, but death might be 10

like that.

11

“I could not have stopped the massacre of the people 12

there. I could not have changed the history set in motion 13

centuries ago. And if I tried I would have lost all my 14

power. I would have become like an ant under the foot of 15

another man like me.”

16

“I still don’t get it, Mr. Bennet. Why here? Why me?”

17

“At first it was just a joke. Not a joke on you, Charles. I 18

like you. You have a lot of potential. I chose you so that 19

Anniston Bennet, the whitest white man that I could 20

think up, would be jailed by a black man who really was 21

a blue blood in American history. But then, when I got to 22

know more about you, it seemed that you were my oppo-23

site in many more ways. You have done very little with 24

your life, haven’t you? No profession, no job. You have 25

never completed one project. You’ve never made a woman 26

pregnant or voted, as far as I can tell. You quit school.

S 27

“Your whole life could be called a failure. Every second R 28

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Walter Mosley