The Collector

The collector was a coal miner in a small mining town. He was a respected foreman and pillar of his crumbling community, but he was always alone. In fact he had always been alone. Then, suddenly, on his 55th birthday, he couldn’t mine anymore. Instead he set out to do something he couldn’t even comprehend. There was no apparent reason for his turn, but from then on he set out to collect the tears of everyone he’d known in little jars that he kept arranged on shelves in his small house.

He wasn’t sure why this imperative had come over him, though he had a feeling all the time like he was being watched. It was as if he didn’t have a choice to be a tear collector after decades chipping coal out of a cold dark hole. It’s haunting, he’d say to anyone who would listen, like someone’s right here and I cannot speak and it cannot speak. It demands that I save the tears of those who have felt, or they will have meant nothing. I must feel. My life has been without it till now.

As you might expect, all around town people started talking about him, but they didn’t want to gossip and they didn’t want to judge him. They pitied him, sad as he seemed to be, but they had mixed feelings too. They’d never heard of anybody collecting other people’s tears. It was beyond their comprehension. They would say the collector looked like he’d seen a ghost or God or something beyond the category that anybody could conceivably know. A little boy sitting on a purple park bench once noticed the collector and asked why he wanted to collect tears. He holds a glowing lollipop, his mother told him.

I don’t believe that, the boy said. Candy is not sad. Or is it? Others would say the collector looked frightened of his own shadow, that he was helpless and paralyzed by creeping insanity and so they pitied him more. And that’s when the stories about him started, whether they pitied him or not. They’d say he was crazy or ill or possessed by spirits. They said he was incurably lonely and so they had to see to it that he was going to make it. He was all alone, yes, and always had been, yes, but he seemed content with that until he’d turned to collecting; they thought the least they could do was oblige because they could feel the pain he was in and they knew from what he had said that he couldn’t feel the pain of others or, really, any feeling at all. Not that it made him mean or bad or anything, but maybe now, they thought, he had had an awakening and they would support him if he was in need.

For the collector, this was finally his way to feel the feelings of others, but he had always stuck out a little bit. The people in town remembered the mysterious circumstances of his arrival all those years ago. He had just shown up in his teens and started working in the mines. He had no history and he’d never told them hardly a detail about his past other than he was from somewhere else and he’d rather not talk about it because there wasn’t much to tell. Back then they found his phrasing strange but ignorable, since he was quiet and soft-spoken, affable and agreeable, and working most of the time. When he started collecting tears, however, things got more complicated.

When others would walk by his place in the evening, the lights would be out as early as dinnertime, as if no one was there at all. No one thought to ask him why, and of course he never said. One woman who had a habit of walking right after nightfall said she could sometimes see shadows moving behind the curtains of the collector’s house and they had the shapes of ovals and spheres and tumbling triangles, darting and turning all around. It’s just what I see each night, she said. I’m not trying to look and I can’t explain it.

So when the collector started talking about collecting everybody’s tears, the people of the town had mixed feelings but, again, they knew what they had to do after his abrupt retirement from the mines. The first day after, the collector came out to the town square. He looked like he’d been wandering in the desert for years. His clothes were ragged and his hair was tangled and brushed to one side of his head like he’d clumped it in his fingers and pressed it over his pate. His eyes darted around to each person as if he recognized them from a previous life but not this one taking place right before his eyes. He had a frantic but non-threatening energy.

Dear friends, I have come here for one reason today. I wish you to make a donation. I need you to help me. I need you to donate to me all the tears that you have. Nothing less will do.

What do you want?! an insolent shopkeeper yelled. We might not have everything you need since we haven’t cried yet today! Everyone laughed uncomfortably, like the collector was kidding when they knew he was not. He remained silent, expressionless.

Two boys, each riding bicycles in circles around him, shouted something cruel, a wicked joke about the real reason he wanted everybody’s tears. Their mothers looked on, disapproving of their otherwise perfect young gentlemen. Then the entire town square lost their grip on decency and erupted in laughter. They felt bad in the moment, laughing as they did, but, oddly, the collector laughed along with them this time, like he was in on the joke. And it wasn’t like he was trying to save face, or at least it didn’t seem that way. And when the laughter of the crowd died down, the collector was still laughing, much to everyone’s confusion.

It sounds mad, I know, he said, beaming but candid. But it’s what I must do.

They’d seen in movies how when lonely people laugh uncontrollably it means something bad is going to happen, though his laughter seemed to them as if it was full of joy, as if he really was sharing their light mockery as a kind of delight. But as the night fell and the square emptied out, the collector remained, silent and no longer laughing. It seemed he didn’t know what to do next since he wasn’t sure anybody would bring them their tears. He was only staring at his hands and shaking his head. One of the sensitive children brought a tuft of hay for him, and so the collector slept right there in the middle of the square that night.

The next morning when the square filled again, he was still there, sleeping. When he awoke at midday they asked him why he had come and what he wanted. He told them again how he needed their tears, yes their tears, just as they already knew from the other times he’d asked. And they told him they already knew that and how they were confused as to the meaning of all this.

I don’t have the faintest idea myself, he said, sheepishly, his eyes resting on each person, one by one. But it’s what I must do.

Are you sure you’re not just bored, a fellow former miner said. People collect things when they’re bored. His wife elbowed him in the ribs and he shrugged as if to say what else am I supposed to say?

At this the collector paused, collecting his thoughts. He weighed whether boredom was really in fact his affliction. No, no, I must. I must collect all of your tears. It is my sole reason for living. And I must preserve them. It is my duty. It is my greatest purpose, my only purpose. I have never felt any emotions, and now I must. He looked blankly at the ground, and everyone else looked awkwardly around. They didn’t know whether to stay or go, so they reconvened as a group some fifty feet away to discuss the situation. He stared elsewhere, as if they weren’t there.

I don’t know. I feel bad for him, a bright young woman said. But how often does one really ever cry? Then there’s bottling of it, the jarring of it. None of this makes any sense but still, the town must come together. You might ask ‘what is he going to do with jars of tears?’ If you ask me, I worry more about what he’ll do without them. We need to gather our tears for him then. It’s decided. And if we don’t have any to share, we must feel for him and create the appearance that we have gathered them.

There were murmurs of approval but some skepticism too. You’re seriously considering doing this? the former miner spoke up again. Yes, I think we owe him something, another miner said, nodding toward the bright woman. He needs our help.

I don’t think we owe him anything if he’s deluding himself, said an aging firefighter, bobbing his eyebrows while making his case. But let’s help him anyway. Let’s be honest with ourselves too. At this point, I don’t think that what we give him has to actually be our own tears. As long as it is clear liquid, it should suffice. You know? Just fill some jars with water. He looked pleadingly at everyone, as if the bright woman hadn’t just proposed the same thing.

Shhhh....quiet. He’ll hear you, said another woman, looking back over her shoulder. The collector was still staring away, like it was the polite thing to do. The local pastor then spoke up, agreeing with the others. I think we at least owe him the courtesy of playing along, he said, to mutterings of support. It’s the Godly thing to do of course. But when they turned back around as a group to tell the collector what they had decided, they found him sleeping again, curled into a ball on his tuft of hay. He was speaking softly to himself, but there were no words they could make out.

Yet the next morning the collector awoke to dozens of jars. Everybody in town had brought one they’d filled with water and labeled Tears and set it next to him. When he woke, he bowed to them one by one, showing his deepest and sincerest gratitude, proclaiming he was grateful for all their tears, even if he lamented any excess of sorrow, any undue anguish they incurred in gathering so many tears so selflessly in a single night. And they assured him it was no problem at all.

At home he arranged each jar on his shelves, then sat down in his only chair and gazed at them, reflecting on the wonder of each one filled to the brim with the height of human feeling. He felt he had gained a measure of serenity, with all this feeling in front of him, but as the night wore on he tossed and turned and woke in a sweat. This wasn’t done yet. His collecting, he knew, had only just begun. He went back to the square the next day. He again thanked everyone for their jars, but he noted that this had to be ongoing. No collection could end, especially his.

Again, the group assembled as it had the day before to discuss what to do. And again, the collector stood nearby, gazing away. Some had lost some patience and said that he clearly needed help, that he should be placed in a sanatorium. They were willing to indulge this once, but not forever. But others objected, feeling they didn’t want to subject the collector, vulnerable as he was, to what amounted to imprisonment when he didn’t seem to be a threat to others or himself. No one knew what to do except continue filling small jars with water at home and placing them each day on the stoop of his house. So for the next two weeks that’s what they did. He thanked them each morning and so it went on.

But when he returned home one day after all those donations, something had changed. Until then, having the jars had given him a sense of peace. Then, as if in a flash tearing out of his depths, a passion screamed in him. How did he have the right to keep this record of humanity all too himself, he wondered. He stepped up to his shelves and now stared mournfully into each jar. No, he said, I have no right to these. This is not how one sets out to feel. I am betraying their kindness. I cannot let this go on.

When morning came, he woke up, took all the jars outside, one by one, and fiercely smashed them against the back wall of his house. In the end, all that was left was a big pile of jagged glass and a puddle, already evaporating. He left his house after that and greeted everyone once more in the square. He once more thanked each person for their contribution, but this time his message was different.

I just want to thank you, each of you, for your jars of water over these last couple of weeks. It has meant a lot, he said, a broad grin on his face. Without your consideration, without your compassion, I’m not sure what I’d have done.

Jars of water? they said, in a chorus of transparent denial. You must be mistaken. Those were our tears, the tears we shed for you. Those were our tears we gathered for your collection.

Please, now, you mustn’t say that, he said, a warm smile rising across his face. I know that you only gathered water in jars and labeled them ‘Tears’ and gave them to me each morning. Do you think I couldn’t hear you when you were talking to each other and I stood nearby? Yes, I would sit at home and stare into those jars and marvel at what they could have been, but I also knew what they already were. It made a great difference, but I don’t need to burden you further. Still I am moved by the feelings that moved you to help me.

Honestly, we didn’t think you could hear us, the firefighter said. You looked like you were in a daze. But still, why are you grateful if you knew that we weren’t really gathering our tears, but only water? Don’t you feel cheated? Betrayed? We only thought we were doing what was right. We only wanted to help. The collector smiled again, a little knowingness clear in the corners of his mouth. No, I thank you for that. You did as I asked.

But we didn’t, they said all together. We only faked the tears you asked of us. Everyone was confused and so they dispersed, leaving him standing once more in the middle of the square. He looked on at them as they made their way, beaming with gratitude.

Days later the collector died alone in his house. He left no will and only a short note concerning his burial. He asked that he be buried with the shards of glass from the jars piled behind his house. Just lay the shards of glass on the bottom of my casket, it read, and set my body gently on top. There I will rest forever. And, in accordance with his wishes, they buried him in a modest casket lined with the broken glass of the jars. Scraps of ‘Tears’ labels clung to him. The collector was buried in the early evening. It rained till dawn.