The Story of Isaac

by Randy Rosenthal

All right, I'll tell you, I haven't always been the most innocent fellow. I've had my fingers and tongue in dirty places. Under one of these depraved spells is where this story begins, in Vesterbro, when I saw Isaac walking on the other side of the street. We each knew the other did not live in Vesterbro - like me, Isaac lived in the student dorms in the working class neighborhood of Amager - so we each knew exactly what the other was doing in Vesterbro. Everyone knows why someone goes to Vesterbro: to get a prostitute.

Perhaps it was loneliness rather than depravity that drove me out of my hole of a room. I'd like to think that. I had been living in Copenhagen for about a month. My girlfriend was set to join me in another week. Until then, I was alone, and bored. And maybe horny. I was also out of hash. But rather than go directly to Christiania to buy some more, for some reason I stayed on the bus until reaching the teal oxidized turrets of the city center. A few blocks from the neon lights of the Radhuespladsen I drank a few Guinness at an Irish pub. But the clientele was older and didn't mingle.

Feeling even more lonely, I walked around the clean streets of four-story multi-colored apartment buildings, quintessentially Scandinavian, and realized I was in Vesterbro. Piqued, I slowed my pace, made a few circles around the neighborhood of sex shops and neon red lights, lamenting the fact that I wasn't in Amsterdam, where the girls are visible through windows. I found myself entering one of the doors.

Pretending like I was lost, I asked if I had entered a hotel. The older woman eyed me, saying, as if lecturing me, No, this is a brothel.

Oh. Well, in that case, what kind of girls do you have? I asked.

Nice girls. Danish girls.

I said, Okay, and she led me into a backroom. I stood there, alone, the lights low. A frazzled, dark haired, late thirty-something woman walked in, wearing only a bra and panties, her face blank. If I was more mature I would have noticed that the woman was once beautiful. But she only appeared old. Before she could do or say anything, I told her, Sorry, I'm in the wrong place.

I put my head down, not wanting to meet anyone's eyes, and quickly walked out of the room. A few blocks away I saw Isaac, walking on the other side of the street.

Isaac and I had met three weeks earlier, when we began our intensive Danish language course. He had thick, dark hair, a wry smile, and narrow eyes. He spoke very bad, broken Danish that made everyone laugh. What I mean is that he would imitate Danish, hitting the appropriate tones and timbers, but be speaking absolute gibberish.

When I saw him in Vesterbro, and he saw me, he smiled guiltily as I crossed the street toward him. He was wearing a black and gray argyle sweater that I hadn't seen on him before.

Soooo. What are you doing here? he asked ironically.

I asked him the same question.

Oh, just walking around, he smiled, just walking around.

Yeah, it's a good neighborhood for walking, I agreed, also smiling ironically.

You get one? he asked.

No. Not really. You?

I didn't not get one, he said.

What else we talked about isn't clear, though I probably wasn't stoned then, even if I had gotten high earlier; I smoked so much during the years between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five that nothing in my memory is definite.

You want to go to Christiania? I must have asked, and Isaac must have agreed. We most likely walked there, since I don't recall taking a bus, though while on the bridge I do remember thinking we were in a banal fairytale, what with the city's church spires poking into the blue dusk, the sky still glowing even though it was around eleven at night, reflecting the electric blue in the water.

Then my memory skips from the bridge to us sitting at a table in that illegal village within the city, where hash and grass and mushrooms were sold out in the cobbled-stoned streets like produce. I must have purchased a pre-rolled spliff because I don't remember rolling one. We were smoking and drinking Tuborgs, Isaac telling me about his life back in California, passing the huge, conical joint back and forth, looking at a wall mural of green gnomes, fairies, and dragons, and then he suddenly starts smiling mischievously. And then he started laughing, and laughing harder, cracking up, and said he's too stoned to smoke anymore, and I was surprised, since there was a lot of spliff left to smoke. And I thought: the light-weight.

I got up to relieve myself, but when I opened the bathroom door I found a toilet of shit floating in ruby red liquid.

Spooked, I slowly backed out, thinking, somebody is not doing so well.

Next, we were standing in a bar, or what passes for a bar in Christiania, ordering more Tuborgs. Most of the tables were taken by Arab men playing backgammon. I noticed there are bikers dressed in dirty leathers, or dirty denim on denim, shady looking fellows with red eyes the size of slits. They could be dangerous, I thought to myself.

One minute I was standing there talking to Isaac, and then next minute he's caught me from falling over. Like we are in a movie, an old movie set in a foreign country, Isaac was holding me up, looking worried, his brow all furrowed and everything. I stood. He let me go. I told him I'm fine, but I had tunnel vision. I recall sinking backwards. Next thing I knew I was on the floor.

I must have fainted, blacked-out, I think, because Isaac was kneeling over me, calling my name, trying to get me up before someone sees, but he's far down the tunnel.

I came to. He helped me outside and to a table. We didn't talk for several moments.

You all right? Isaac asked after a minute.

Yeah. Just spacey.

This happen to you often?

Sometimes, I said. It's happened before. I've done a lot of drugs. It could be that.

Or maybe you didn't eat well today.

Or maybe I didn't. I can't remember what I ate.

We talked, he asking me questions as if he wanted to keep me present and not faint on him again, small talk, and when I realized he's doing this I tell him I'm sorry, sorry for bringing him out and then fainting on him, causing him to catch me and then revive me. I felt stupid for thinking Isaac was a light-weight when we were smoking. He said it's fine, don't worry about it, though I could tell he was worried about me, or maybe worried about something else, because once I came around some more and asked him questions, he let on that he was in a bit of trouble. But he didn't tell me this right off, of course. First I said to him, Isaac, you're a good guy.

Nah, he said modestly, I just caught you.

No, man, I can tell. You're a good person.

That wry smile gleamed across his face, and then disappeared before he said, I'm not that good. I've done some things.

Yeah, right, I said. You probably hardly had bad thoughts.

I've had some bad thoughts, he said, deadpan.


Like what?

And then he told me about his bit of trouble. He met Katia, the Polish girl, at a bar a few weeks earlier, after we had arrived for our study abroad program. They dated a couple times, slept together, and then she told him she's pregnant. They only forgot to use a condom once, so, he thought, She's lying. Or, that the father could be someone else, and she's trying to have her baby with an American passport. He'd heard about those kinds of Polish girls. And she's Catholic, so, of course, she told him she's having it. So, he said he doesn't believe her and after some arguing she started shouting at him. He shouted back and next thing they're yelling at each other, he accusing her of sleeping around, basically being a slut, and she accusing him of coming too quickly and having a small dick.

So, I smacked her, Isaac told me.

Then he said: I didn't think about it. I just did it. It just happened. I smacked her and we stopped shouting at each other. Her hand went to her face, like an actress. She stared at me and it was like time slowed to a stop, and I had all the choice in the world at that moment.

And then Isaac told me how he felt like he could do whatever he wanted. He didn't have to allow himself to get sucked into a life he didn't want. He didn't have to be the father to this Polish woman's child. She didn't have to be a mother. There didn't have to be a child. She didn't have to be pregnant.

And it could have been that I had just fainted and was feeling woozy, but as I remember Isaac telling me this the scene around us became darker, as if the lights were turned off everywhere except for on our faces. I asked him what he meant.

I mean, he told me, it occurred to me that just like I could make the baby, I could unmake the baby.

He was speaking in a halting voice, unsure of how much he should reveal.

In that frozen moment I thought, hey, it's already started, I already started it. I already smacked her. I crossed the line. Now I can punch her in her stomach.

He stared at me.

Real hard, he said.

I raised my eyebrows.

I can push her around. Down some stairs.

Isaac, were you . . .?

There's always the hangar. There are a bunch of ways.

Isaac had his wry smile as he spoke, but I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, since in that demented light his smile seemed twisted.

When was this? I asked him.

This was last night, he said.

So what'd you do? I asked him, imagining the worst. Blood on his hands.

I didn't do anything, he said. He looked at me like anything else would have been out of the question. I didn't do any of those things, he said. All those thoughts vanished. I just left.

That was probably a good thing, I said.

Yeah. Yeah. But, man, I can't explain that feeling I had when thinking those thoughts. It was like, I don't know. I wasn't myself. There was some other voice in my mind, some other force, making me think bad thoughts, like I was possessed by evil, he said, then stared at me with narrowed eyes.

Evil? What's evil? I asked, thinking about the toilet bowl of red shit. Evil doesn't mean anything to me, I told him.

I used to feel the same, he said, I don't know what evil is. But I've felt an evil feeling.

He drank his Tuborg. We turned to see where a shout had come from.

In Buddhism, he told me, there's Mara, the Evil One. Mara is the personification of the evil in our own mind. But in Hinduism, there's no evil. And in Judaism, evil is just the lowest form of good.

What, I asked him, are you a religious studies major?

I am now, after one night, like last night, when I felt evil, but different, much stronger, he said, his eyes narrowing more than they usually were. It was in I.V. You know I go to UCSB, right?

I nodded.

You've ever been to Isla Vista?

I've been to I.V. a couple times, I told him. I have a few friends that go to UCSB.

So, you know how on the weekend Del Playa is full of drunken people walking in the street, going from one house party to another?

So, Isaac told me this story from about seven months or maybe a year before:

It was a busy Friday night, the air cool and salty, and he and some friends were walking on DP. They had just been at one keg party for a few hours. It was about midnight. Early, but someone had already set a couch on fire. They walked past it, its flames blazing, the smoke thick, and all the sudden something strange happened to his mind. He had this urge to push his friend onto the burning couch, he told me. Like he wasn't himself, like he wasn't himself in his mind. Why would he be thinking to push his friend into the fire? He didn't know. But the urge intensified, possessing him, and all he could think about was pushing his friend into the flames. He was drunk, but that wasn't it. It was more like a darkness had crept over and covered everything.

Like a dark rain cloud.

Okay, I said.

I was going to push him into the fire, Isaac told me, just to do something wrong maybe. But something stayed my hand.

Isaac didn't really say that, I'm sure, but I can't help but think of the story of Isaac and Abraham, and how God 'stayed' Abraham's hand from sacrificing Isaac, and now I can't get that phrase from my memory when thinking of Isaac's story. I simply lost what he actually said. The rest I remember clearly.

Then we heard some shouting, he told me. It was coming from further down DP. We didn't think much of it at first, since there's a lot of drunken shouting in Isla Vista. But after a few seconds I realized it wasn't the usual drunken shouting. It was screaming. Screams of chaos, and death. You can just feel that, you know what I mean?

I think so, I told him.

So we turned our heads and here comes this dark car speeding up DP, plowing through the crowds, knocking people over, and everyone is running around screaming, trying to rush out of the way of the car, and then rushing back behind it to help the people who got hit. I saw it happening. But it wasn't real. One moment, they were people; the next, only bodies, dummies under a tire, falling with limbs out at unnatural angles, like they were weightless.

Then he told me that he and his friends were lucky that they saw the car coming from a few blocks away, because they were able to move off the street and into a yard. But even though they were safe, when the car drove past, Isaac said he didn't feel safe, he felt that darkness penetrate everywhere, squeezing his mind, and he was more frightened than he'd ever been before. When the car passed by Isaac looked into the window.

I started having a panic attack then, Isaac told me. Everyone thought it was because of what was happening, but it wasn't that. It was because I saw myself driving the car. That's what freaked me out. The driver turned and I saw it was me.

He took a long drink of his beer. And then another one.

Of course, I wasn't driving the car, he said.

What the hell happened? I asked.

It was this wacked kid. A sophomore loner who called himself the Angel of Death. He was this Christian guy and thought he needed to clean up the immorality happening in I.V. Like he was doing God's work by killing people.

He actually killed people?

Yeah, six people died. And many more were hurt pretty bad. It was terrible. The whole campus was mourning for a few months, shocked that something like this could happen, that someone could do such a thing.

That's crazy.

That's what I thought at first, Isaac told me. Crazy. Madness. But then once I could digest what had happened, and I'm still doing that, I knew it wasn't crazy. It was evil.

I don't know, I said. I don't buy it. The evil.

I guess you won't buy it until you've felt it, he told me, not challenging me, just informing me. It's not something easy to talk about, he said.

So, what is evil, do you think? I asked him.

I don't know. But I've been thinking about it ever since. I'm pretty sure evil isn't an action. I think evil is a feeling. Evil is a feeling, not an action.

We were quiet for a bit. Then Isaac asked if I felt any better.

I feel stoned, I told him. But much better.

I don't feel stoned at all anymore, he said. Maybe you should smoke less, he suggested.

Maybe, I said. So what are you going to do?

Probably get a falafel and then head back. You want to come?

No, I mean about the girl.

Oh. I don't know. I guess have the baby, he said.

And he did. I heard he moved to small town outside Warsaw after our semester was over, married the Polish girl, and is now the father of a nine-year-old girl.



Randy Rosenthal is the editor of The Coffin Factory, the magazine for people who love books. His work has been published in the Brooklyn Rail, Bookslut, the Daily Beast, KGB Bar Literary magazine, and the L magazine. He has a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the City College of New York and teaches English at Kingsborough College in Brooklyn.