A Once Superman

The years passed, and his skin creased more, his lips almost ceased to be and his hair became nothing more than a spider’s web at most when it caught the light, but his eyes never dimmed their colour; they were full of life, when he was surely near to death – nearing it faster every second. Tomasz, too, had grown. He was taller, wiser, more garrulous and more lethargic than before, but no less innocent. A nice choirboy, the girls fawned over him, lambs to the slaughter with an all-consuming lust, while he hid himself behind mildew-scented paperbacks, peeling and torn from the library.
But it was in the tenth autumn that Tomasz and Ernest had been together when the latter began to fail. First his seventy seven-year-old mind began to wither a little, as the leaves outside shrivelled; and then his balance became poor, with Tomasz often finding his aged guardian in a heap on the floor, having toppled over – far less gracefully than the manner in which a Spinning Jenny falls from the tree, with his body making a less attractive floor than the carpet of cinnamon leaves that the trees provided for the streets. As the sky dressed itself in winter’s cold, clouded coat, he became bedridden, with Tomasz attending to his every need; continuous bowls of soup came, cups of tea with honey and lemon like Divyanshi used to make, as though he was suffering from a mild cold, and not the Grim Reaper’s grasp.
And then, he was nearing the end. All the bowls of minestrone in the world could not warm his pallid face, now; all the honey that the fat bees from their first summer could not reinvigorate his weakening resolve to live. Every day, every hour, every minute, Tomasz knew that he was dying – he was dying – he was dying. Until one day, with skeletal finger, Ernest beckoned him forth – towards the creak-prone bed, adorned with roses and curlicues at the base end. carved into the rosewood – and, in rasps that came in gasps and shudders, he gave his story to the boy, this deathwish being more profound than a will.
“Boy – I never told you what happened – what I did – in my youth. You may not believe me. It is... unbelievable. I never figured out the logistics, myself. But, what’s done is done, and you are closer to my heart than my own pericardum, so I’ll tell you. If you don’t believe me – well, you’ll think of me as a liar. I’ll go to my grave, a liar in your eyes. But what’s the use of thinking of my life as a mystery forever more...?” He punctuated his speech with a chorus of coughs and splutters. “Well, boy, I’ll begin...
“Back in the day – I was about twenty-seven, I suppose – or perhaps twenty eight? I can’t remember – I was going about my business, fixing cars – I was a mechanic, back then, you see – when suddenly, there was a God-awful pain in my head, and I went from a garage in Brixton to being God-knows-where in London, but I was suspended in mid-air somehow, under a tower block, and this Indian woman was falling into my arms...”
“Divyanshi?”
“Well, I only found out her name later, but yes. I caught her, flew her down to the ground, but it wasn’t really me doing it – I wasn’t in control of myself. I wasn’t even sure how she’d ended up in midair, but the glassy shrapnel on the floor suggested that she’d fallen out of it – though it later turned out that she’d been pushed by some vile racist who didn’t appreciate her telling him that his bank account was totally empty. But I found myself returning through the skies to Brixton, still in my greasy overalls, and it was like nothing had happened, except that she was alive and I had some kind of super powers. They emerged about once a month, when I’d find myself saving a life or fending off a madman – or, commonly, both together. The headache would come and I’d be there. I did it for about fifteen years, before I began to take anti-psychotics to stop them. I’ve been taking them for the last thirty years. So, what do you think?”
Tomasz knew that his guardian would never lie to him – particularly not on his deathbed – and so he accepted his story as truth, queerness and all. His understanding comforted the half-corpse, who squeezed his charge’s hand with the last vestiges of his strength.
“What happened with you and Divyanshi?” the boy asked, as his eyes rested on the tiny bejewelled elephants on the windowsill that had been collecting dust since her death, a good twenty years previously.
“She searched for me – her Superman – and found me, a normal bloke, in the garage. It disappointed her that I was so average, but I charmed her eventually. It went on from there – she fascinated me with her ethnicity, I fascinated her with my perceived superpowers, we fell in love, got married, didn’t have kids – it would have ruined us, I think.”
“Was she your Lois Lane? And were you like the comic-strip Superman?”
“Lois Lane? No, she was never Lois Lane – she was too vampish for that. I never knew until I met her that Indian women were so enticing, though having met her family I can say that it may have just been her. Her name means part of divine power – ironic, I suppose...” His face cracked into the last grin, his skin crumbling into a web of bunched up, old skin, his eyes fading, memories no longer repressed in them. “I was never Superman. They tried to build me up as him, but I was a common boy from Dartford. I was never super in any way...”
“Well, you’ve been a super carer for me!” exclaimed the boy, intensely, and with the serene smile beginning to droop, the eyelids beginning to wilt and the breathing more and more staggered, slow contractions, drifting away into heaven, Tomasz feared that his last statement had been one of pessimism, until a whisper as shallow as the wind came. It could not have come from his mouth, unless he was a ventriloquist; for his mouth did not move a muscle, it must have come from his heart or Tomasz’s fantasy. The words, though he could not be sure, sounded something like the three words that all humans long for – I love you ¬¬¬– and having heard the last inhalation, Tomasz let go of the hand’s limp grip. A body lay in the bed of a once great man. Death did him injustice – he looked frail and insignificant.
The only living member of the house wandered over to the window. Trees. People. Music. A blackening sky, an icy chill, raindrops as though the sky was crying. He opened the window, to defumigate the mortuary of a bedroom, and an erratic droplet floated through, landing on one of Divyanshi’s elephants. It had fallen on one of the elephant’s eyes, and now the elephant was crying. Comforted that the man and his wife were united in the room together, he closed the door, and walked downstairs with a loose sense of freedom. He ate the remnants of a bowl of minestrone soup, and put on a Superman video. It was a fitting tribute, somehow.