Jonas Rejman Blog

Eye to eye with a Demon

It was an inno­cent encounter, but it shook me to the bone. It is this kind of hor­ror, that hap­pens in bright day­light. At first, it does not you scare at all. It passes by and you feel noth­ing. But then it kicks in. It kicks your nuts and days later here I am, still think­ing about it …

“Excuse me, do you mind to give me 15 Czech Crowns?”

The ques­tion came out of nowhere.

I was wait­ing next to the orange wall of a ren­o­vated apart­ment build­ing in Vršovice, Prague. My edi­tor was descend­ing the five sto­ries down to open the door. My mind was going through the edit­ing task, that laid ahead and and I was not really pay­ing much atten­tion to my envi­ron­ment. The sound took me quite by sur­prise, it invaded my thoughts and pulled the high artis­tic inten­tions down to the harsh real­ity of the street.

I turned around and spot­ted a tiny blond woman in a sub­tle black dress. She might have been in her early fifties. She had huge glasses with low dioptrics. Her left hand was shak­ing a lit­tle bit — a move­ment she tried to sup­press as she noticed my gaze.

As in every met­ro­pol­i­tan city, you hear this ques­tion twice the hour when you walk through Prague. Mostly on tourist spots, from peo­ple, who have been liv­ing on the streets for a long time and are dressed accord­ingly. They often have an excuse, such as the need to make an urgent phone call or some other kind of emergency.

But this woman looked dif­fer­ent. She obvi­ously did pay atten­tion to her out­ward appear­ance, as much as she could. This caught my eye, because I would never expect some­one dressed like her, to ask this ques­tion. What was going on?

“What do you need it for?” — I shot back. Curi­ous about how cre­ative she would be.

“I would like to buy some wine.”

Boom! There it was. Pure and honest.

I looked into her eyes and saw how dig­nity just lost the bat­tle with the demon.

Now it all made sense: The light smell that sur­rounded her was the sweat of cheap wine. Her sud­den appear­ance came from a ²⁴⁄₇ bar next door, that I did not notice in my dreamy state of mind. She stood there, ask­ing for money to buy food for her demon. She could have been my mother. I tried not to judge her. Alone the fact, that she came up to me, bee­ing that hon­est must have been dev­as­tat­ing for her. And impres­sive to me. It was all there in her eyes and it took my breath.

I could not say a word any­more. I gave her half of what I had in my wal­let. She asked if I was liv­ing nearby, that she would give the money back another day. I asked her to accept it, with­out wor­ries and that she should drink one on me.

She walked away, but not back into the bar like I thought she would. Her shaky hands stored the money in a purse and I noticed how under­feed she was. And yet she looked like any­one else. An older lady in a black dress walk­ing down the street. Noth­ing spe­cial, noth­ing scary. Yet, the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of Lynch’s hor­ror in bright daylight.

This got me think­ing, of what I have done. I will not deny that I hate it being asked for money, for con­tri­bu­tions of any kind or for “good deeds” left and right, when I just walk down the street in whichever big city. Yes, these peo­ple annoy me, they annoy my sight, and some of them seem to be very pro­fes­sional at what they are doing.

I am hon­est here, because I would be a hyp­ocrite and a liar, if I would say oth­er­wise. I think, that I work hard myself, that what I have, I have earned. I do not want to carry the mis­ery of strangers on my shoul­ders. I do not want to be manip­u­lated into a feel­ing of guilt. I can­not solve those prob­lems, this I do not want to see them really. I do not want to feel respon­si­ble. I want to shout into their faces, “You have all your limbs, for Christ sake, how about get­ting up and try to get a job?”

Yeah, like it is that simple…

I know that the gov­ern­ment should take care of such prob­lems. I like to think that way. I also do not want to see that social prob­lems. I want to stay in my com­fort zone. I do not want to see other peo­ple, who were so much less for­tu­nate then myself. All I want, is to keep the right to com­plain about life, peo­ple, every­one and everything.

Of course, I have never been home­less. What do I know? But I know how it is not to have money. Our fam­ily fled from a com­mu­nist regime and had to start from zero in another coun­try after all. But not every­one has the abil­i­ties we had to work up to a bet­ter place.

So, what to do? I will not help a home­less per­son, or a beg­gar by giv­ing him money. This may solve his prob­lem for the day, but not for the next. It’s giv­ing a fish, rather than to teach how to fish. I also do not get my kick by giv­ing a dona­tion and then stay­ing in the illu­sion that I will “make a dif­fer­ence”, because that is bullshit.

I guess the most one can do, is to respect the dig­nity of the other. I was try­ing to behave this way with this woman. I gave her what she asked. I accepted her grat­i­tude, and that was it. Have I done it, because I felt guilty? Because I felt sorry for her?

I don’t think so, because every­thing hap­pened too quick. I think the rea­son was, that she was just being hon­est and I was impressed by the inter­nal strug­gle I saw in here eyes.

Maybe I was happy, not to have this prob­lem? Till this very moment I don’t know, if I feel good, or bad about it. All I am is con­fused, as this prob­lem is com­plex and seems to be over my head. How easy it is, to just go with the pre-​​judgment and sim­plify it to black and white!

What I know, though, is that I saw a demon. He looked at me through eyes he had pos­sessed. We looked at each other, and I blinked first and he was laugh­ing. He may still till now, as he scared the hell out of me and made me think.

Maybe this is all he wanted?