His Right Mind

By Anthony Van

To say that Kam was disturbed was an understatement. He acted like a spy and gathered meaningless data unsure what his mission was. When prolonged contact with a church youth group, the lingering words of a text on a wall, and a sudden violent confrontation brought about lucidity and order to the chaos of his mind, Kam’s purpose became clear. He had a mission to fulfil. He was determined to rectify his failed assassination attempt of the hard-line leader of the communist republic.
Gradually skills instilled by years of training as a member of the secret police, returned. His haunted existence in Australia was left behind as he managed to create false identities and return to his homeland. Though the plan was clear in his mind, circumstances conspired to impede a course of action founded on vengeance. Somehow, wherever he turned he encountered the message of peace. It wasn’t the revolution he was looking for. Peace would revolutionise his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthony Van
• Release date: Aug 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005237936

Anthony Van

What does a retired teacher do? Especially a teacher with a hyperactive imagination and ingrained work habits. Well this one writes. And being a Christian, each novel I have written necessarily is pieced together from a Christian perspective.I have a broad range of interests which include science and technology, mathematics, travel, sports and the interrelationship of people. Much of what intrigues me about people is that some pursue truth with the determination of a bloodhound while others almost ignore existential ideas and while away their short time spent on earth being distracted by people or pleasures or possessions or power.Writing is a hobby. It allows me to research and self educate, and it also permits me to refine my perspectives of concepts existential and theological.

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His Right Mind

Published by Anthony Van at Smashwords

Copyright Anthony Van 2019

2nd Edition 2022

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favourite authorised retailer. Thank you for your support.

Chapter 1

Elusive memories; a face, a place murky as an unresolved shadow, and he even imagined a fragment of a conversation murmured indistinctly. Beleaguered, erratic and confused; Kamil’s state of mind could be stalled in one of these cul-de-sacs but usually alternated between the three.

He walked slowly around the block. It wasn’t part of his patrol route in the building but the dull, chilly, echoing halls of the old pillared building depressed him. Jakob, his supervisor, didn’t seem to mind his absences. ‘Don’t get lost,’ he would say, or ‘keep out of trouble’. If anything, Kamil’s wanderings were a relief to him. He wouldn’t have to endure the absurd questions and ludicrous ramblings of the damaged young man. He wouldn’t have to face the inferred accusation that the glorious socialist system had done this to an otherwise whole specimen of manhood.

There was an element of pity for him among the staff. They had heard the rumours that he was a product of special treatment from the secret police. It was written in his file. All were aware that it was a euphemism for torture. His brain had been scrambled. Sometimes you could tell he was disturbed; he would have a glazed expression. He wasn’t there. Occasionally he looked unremarkable, an average physique, pleasing face, the same as many young men in their late twenties. Other times he would fix you with a cold, hard stare and you imagined some heinous brutality he was planning. It would make you believe in demon possession.

Most consul staff called him Kamil. The employees at a nearby café thought he was delusional but they went along with his cloak and dagger façade. They called him Kam and felt sorry for him. He often sat on a window seat, watching the traffic and brooding about some imagined international conspiracy.

On this day he was more reclusive. This time he moved to the back. The cold blast of the southerly wind had assaulted his senses. A memory. An ornate bridge stabbed brief images before his eyes like some subliminal message. He was crazy, he’d been driven crazy, or the world was crazy; he didn’t know which.

His coffee was delivered by Virginia. Her name tag said Ginny but he always said thank you Virginia. She noted he was far off, unreceptive. The rattle of the cup and saucer initiated an ejaculation from him.

They should have killed me. The words came from somewhere deep within. It was hard to say if he was even aware that he said them.

What did you say, Kam? her voice was kind. He appeared to wake up and shook his head as if to say ‘I didn’t say anything.’ Only then noticing the drink before him.

Thank you Virginia, he said dully.

She looked at his scowling expression and lank dark hair splayed across his forehead. He was more troubled than usual. Maybe the others were right, mental illness, perhaps schizophrenia.

He sipped his coffee. He stared. When he’d finished his drink, he stood and scanned the café. The leather jacket was necessary to fend off the bracing winds. Kamil’s hand padded his left hand side. His gun was holstered over his left side. The weapon itself evoked murky hints of an obliterated past. It wasn’t loaded. An instinctive sense kept reminding him of the fact, and he could only assume that it was the weight that raised the alarm. Why an empty magazine clip could be so jarring was a mystery. His meandering thoughts seldom remained on a topic long enough for a concern to become ingrained. But this was different. Sensory input was constant and he was unable to shake the contradiction of what he knew the case should be. When he had completed his examination, he stepped out of the café and looked around again. No one was going to shoot him. Kamil started walking, slowly at first and then at pace, and again he patted the holstered weapon.

It wasn’t as if he needed it, but diplomatic credentials allowed him to carry the Makarov nine millimetre. Jakob had explained on several occasions that he was not to carry a loaded gun. The words he used were callous. He remembered.

Kamil, you know…you are not right in the head. We cannot risk having a cowboy in the streets, hah. That was his repeated mocking taunt: ‘no cowboys hey Kamil?’

He skirted the blue haze around office workers standing outside having a break. He did smoke but he hated it. It surprised him that he was in the minority; he differed from the other consul staff who enjoyed several cigarettes a day. For some reason it was abhorrent to him. But one part of him wanted to fit in and be less peculiar by smoking, so he forced himself to be sociable. And he told himself that it was necessary for his tough-guy image.

Another quirk in his personality was the irrepressible urge to exercise. He ran around the fitness track that circled the botanic gardens every morning without fail. Weather was no impediment. He ran in his regulation consul tracksuit with the empty gun strapped under his tee shirt. When he first arrived, he had started with it over his tee shirt but the dismay of other runners when he removed his tracksuit top put an end to that.

Kamil was oblivious to the inconsistencies in his personality. In truth, he was so muddled that he rarely examined his motives or behaviours. The gaping black holes in his memory made completing his day to day commitments his primary task.

***

His life was one of randomness. This was a random occasion. The security work shift was over for the day. He was walking, as was his custom, around the block. Kamil stopped at the entry to the underground station. A train journey suddenly became an imperative. It didn’t matter where. He needed to gather logistics, understand the lay of the land and work out options for escape; these were some of the undefined, involuntary principles that governed his actions.

This trip took him northeast into the foothills. It was like many previous train rides. He got out at the end of the line. It was a sleepy community surrounded by eucalypt trees and bushland. After relieving himself at the station washrooms he scouted the small strip of shops. Kamil settled in for a coffee at a bake house opposite the station carpark and some distance away from the station. This was the last place to survey on this line. He wrote notes on a note pad. It was numbered notepad eighteen. His jotted angled script catalogued inane details such as the number of cars in the parking lot, the frequency of train arrivals—it didn’t occur to him that he could consult a timetable—the local police station being nearby and the fact that the post office had a café. It seemed important when he wrote the information but it was meaningless when he looked at it again later.

The return trip had him speculating. Would anyone miss him if he took his own life? Why do people speak of families and he had none? What was his childhood? In many ways he felt like a child trying to make sense of the world.

This was a foreign land. He was a foreigner. His homeland of Czechoslovakia was a countryside beyond fogged up windows. It was a blur. He recalled asking Jakob, where was he born. Some days Jakob would groan; some days he would tell him. What did he tell him? The name had gone. Why did he remember that he was a Czech? Because he worked in the Czech consulate. He understood them when they used the Slovak tongue. Sometimes he would join in and they would laugh. They said he spoke nonsense regardless of what language he used.

***

The routine of work, strolling along half a dozen halls, getting Karla, the receptionist, to smile at his quirky antics, standing sentinel-like outside the main entrance and imagining how he would repel a violent raid by armed gunmen; each day was almost indistinguishable from the previous. It didn’t register that he had no ambitions and there was no hopeful future, no plan, only the present drudge to endure.

Sundays were always a day off. Kamil was usually in a mild panic. Leaving his small apartment for a run and then showering and having breakfast dealt with the first few hours; and then he had to improvise. A walk by the river or through the gardens was a favourite option. Grocery shopping every fortnight was a necessity, and then there were the train rides. Kamil had, of late, been slowly checking off the stations on the train line going east. It was one of the longer connections.

He would always hesitate. This was the one thing that was customary and unpredictable at the same time. Each new station presented the thrill and horror of the unexpected, the unknown, a fantasy challenge that would prove his mettle.

On this day he would disembark at an outer suburban centre. It was a junction of two extensions going east and southeast. Lunch was first item on the agenda. His usual fare was a hot meat pie with tomato sauce. In the early spring sunshine he found a pleasant spot to eat. It was a small park along the main highway that had a clock tower. He sat on an old World War I field gun. Sundays were generally quiet in the outer towns but this was a mid-sized hub so there were many people to observe, to suspect of plotting against his imagined mission.

Kamil walked the length of the shopping strip west, down the south side and then all the way to the other extent of the commercial strip on the northern side. Crossing there, he whiled away the time in a park by a lake watching families enjoy the early warmth of spring. Children played on equipment and small groups sauntered around the encircling path. With the afternoon almost gone he made his way back for a meal of fish and chips.

An unfamiliar restlessness disturbed him. He couldn’t put it into words but the meaningless treadmill of his life was like a mould infestation of his brain. It tainted his thoughts and fouled every aspect of his morose existence. He stood outside the station unwilling to return back to another week of his personal brand of undefined madness.

Kamil, absurdly, stood and watched his train depart while knowing that inevitably he would catch the next one and make the return journey.

Hi…would you like a free coffee?

Kamil spun around, shocked that someone could have snuck up on him. There stood two young men, more like boys really, and they smiled at him.

Sorry? was all he could manage.

The fairer of the two repeated the invitation.

We’re having a coffee shop at our church…free coffees, raisin toast…it’s very relaxed.

What do I have to do?

Nothing…just come along…enjoy yourself. The other added, clearly gaining confidence.

Kamil was uncertain. He looked at his watch and then fixed, what was meant to be, an intimidating stare at the youths. I have to take the train to Richmond.

They were undaunted. We can drive you there after if you like, offered the first youth. The other looked at him quickly as if uncertain whether that was a good idea.

This was different. It was radical, a change to his routine. It was off the train line. It was an unknown. The idea of a threat didn’t arise. Recklessly, Kamil said yes. The three walked to a popular make sedan. The two introduced themselves as Terry and Jeremy. Jeremy drove, Terry twisted himself around in the front seat to face Kamil and quizzed him. Kamil was determined to be cagey. Yes, he lived in the city. He worked at a consulate. No, he had no family in Australia. He didn’t want to say that he had no recollection of any family. When it was clear the details of his life were humdrum, his desire to impress prevailed.

Kamil began weaving a story of intrigue. He was an operative for his government. His role was highly confidential. Conspiracies abounded and it was his job to deal with any threat. He left it at that. It didn’t occur to him that sharing the tale undermined the contention that he was a covert agent. In the front seat eyes rolled and eyebrows raised but he didn’t notice.

The suburban church was a newer, brick block variety. Young people flooded the doorway. Kamil and his two hosts weaved their way through, past the auditorium and into a dimly lit hall decked out with card tables. The smell of raisin toast came from an adjoining kitchen. A small band was tuning up, teen girls and boys were filing in laughing, talking and finding tables to sit at.

Terry had led them to a table farthest away from the musicians and he and Kamil sat. Jeremy appeared to have organisational responsibilities and, on his way, got one of several youth table waiters to come and take hot drink orders from their table.

Almost straight away Terry assaulted him with questions about what he thought about Jesus Christ. Songs of faith and stories about how lives had been changed by belief in Jesus punctuated the steady stream of arguments for the case of the conflict between human evil and God’s grace. Kamil’s responses were mostly unintelligible or disconnected with the context of the conversation. He would say things like ‘God is very important to my country’, and then contrast it with ‘intelligent people no longer believe in God’.

By the time Terry, and intermittently some other leaders, realised that he was non-compos-mentis most of the evening had passed. Kamil happily indulged in further rounds of free coffee and toast. To him the night was a huge success. He was the star of the show. People talked to him as if he was significant. He had schooled them with his dazzling logic and on top of that he was waited on by kind youths and some pretty girls, and they were all friendly. Added to that Terry and his girlfriend drove him all the way to the end of his street in Richmond. It was like he had been introduced to a long lost family, though he didn’t really understand what they were all about.

***

Kamil’s upbeat mood, resulting from his encounter with people who didn’t ignore him or ridicule him, soon spiralled down to more typical misery as he stalked the halls and carried out the other menial tasks assigned to him. It was then that he decided to repeat the train trip on the next Sunday and again join in the coffee shop.

Sure enough, he again met up with Jeremy and Terry and enjoyed a similar night of coffees and attention from young people. It was a mark of his arrested mental development that he imagined they were his peers. The words on the wall text were starting to become familiar even if the numerous claims being voiced by these Christians didn’t penetrate. The idea that God so loved the world that he gave his only son, and that belief in him meant not perishing but having everlasting life seemed fanciful and far-fetched. However, they were the words that lingered in his thoughts as he was driven home.

The news that there would be no more coffee shops for a few weeks was disappointing but Terry said evening church services followed by suppers were still on. Kamil arranged to be picked up at the station so he could attend.

That next Sunday the pickup proceeded as expected. The service was totally foreign to the disoriented Czech. A young speaker talked about wages and gifts, about things you earned and things that were for free. He said regardless of how good we thought we were or how bad we thought we were, the ultimate and only thing people could earn in this life was death. He said that, however, God wanted to change that. He wanted us to accept a gift. God won’t make us take it. It’s up to us to receive it. That gift is everlasting life in his kingdom. The speaker described it as the most precious gift that ever was offered—His Son taking our punishment—and yet many people said ‘no thanks’.

There was more but Kamil had exceeded his normal intake in remembering that much. Nobody gave him gifts. He had to earn everything. Would he accept such a gift? The words of the text on the wall that his eyes were continuously drawn to irritated him. Surely no one loved him, no one gave him anything for free, except maybe these generous youths.

The supper was the best part. They actually appeared to enjoy his company, and while confused by his unpredictable responses and conflicting answers, they still accepted him. Perhaps telling them he was a Russian operative was the first thing that undermined his reliability. He regaled them with his fantasies of dangerous missions that had them smiling politely. He had no idea they had categorised him, in a more kindly manner than his workmates, as a teller of tall tales rather than the delusional unbalanced guard that his colleagues shunned.

***

That original Sunday night adventure, over time, became a benign routine. Young members of the church group talked to Kamil as a friend rather than merely an acquaintance, though he never was friendly. Their cogent responses to his random, sometimes scatterbrain, rebuttals slowly began to infect his thinking. Gradually, his emphatic rejection of everything ‘God-related’ morphed into a grudging acknowledgement that Jesus may have been a pivotal person in history. He began to see that the account of incarnate God living out kindness and compassion, and demonstrating divine power, then ending his ministry, seemingly ignominiously, only to triumph over death to validate his deity, was unlike any other religion. Its call for humility, love, service and surrender, though beyond his comprehension, had an almost mythical allure. His state of mind was such that the possibility of truth didn’t register.

The group made no demands to do or to be or to give; they only encouraged that he listen and learn. It was one of the few things that became coherent in Kamil’s mind—that they said God loved him. Had he been loved before? Did he know what love was? He had no memory, and yet the possibility tantalised him as if a lifeline had been thrown to him as he wallowed, half submerged, in the confusion of transient recollections and disjointed thoughts.

His early confusion was taken by them as his determination to undermine their faith and it had unforeseen repercussions. Ray, Terry’s brother, had given him a new testament so that he could assemble his arguments, but all it did was dismantle his confidence in atheism and challenge his pretence of being fearsome. All this time his habit of posturing as a dangerous agent hadn’t ceased. His need for approval and credibility was still great, so sometimes he would smoke with youngsters outside the building to establish his hard edge. And once he pulled out his hand gun when Terry was saying it wasn’t necessary to fabricate a sinister character as they would still have regard for him.

What would happen if I pulled the trigger? he asked. The appearance of the weapon shocked Terry and his girlfriend.

Terry replied, It might explode…I don’t think God has finished with me yet. The reply left Kamil with a glazed expression. These people didn’t react in the way he expected.

Once the story of his antics got around people became upset. It was only subsequent enquiries by parents that alleviated their concerns. They were informed by Jakob that the security man might be a touch eccentric but he wasn’t dangerous. The consulate told them Kamil was licensed to carry a weapon, however staff had ensured that it wasn’t loaded and he would be reprimanded for brandishing his firearm.

In addition to battling with the concept of love, another unexpected development was the emergence of short periods of lucidity. In those moments his status as an ostracised staff member by some, and a pariah in the eyes of others, was tenuously connected in his mind with some shameful expulsion or political exile from his home country. There were even ill-defined images of significant relationships in his past. Those flashes only served to aggravate him and churn up his emotions. It informed him that he had a history but it was all an obscure haze.

Perhaps, for two years Kamil attended the church on an irregular basis. Sometimes he missed out because of rostered duty. On other occasions the weight of his conscience, affected by words that burrowed into his inner core of evil imaginations and deceit, precluded him from even countenancing attending a service. On those times he resumed his rail itinerary, visiting successive stations in a mindless pursuit for novelty.

Being on a first name basis with people ten years his junior and maintaining a pretence of being a Russian spy was an incongruous social setting. It revealed an immature mindset, a personality stunted by a traumatic past. Kamil had no knowledge of what had occurred, but he suspected that some event, some horrible experience, was responsible for his particular psychopathic syndrome. It was something he sensed rather than deduced.

Chapter 2

His jumbled morass of consciousness all changed in one crucial encounter. Kamil had been driven back to Richmond, after a church service, by Glen and Mike, another two of the many leaders in the group, and he had started strolling down his street. He was mulling over the message about the God-man who was everything. He was fighting the intrusive, unusually clear awareness that Jesus was so significant in his thoughts, and it appalled him as an avowed atheist. Yet his every attempt to denigrate Jesus’ character failed hopelessly. The speaker quoted Jesus who said I am…the door, the bread of life, the living water, the good shepherd, the true vine and the way and the truth and the life.