‘Observe their cohabiting customs,’ Gutkind’s great-grandfather wrote, ‘observe them as a scientist might observe the mating habits of white mice, and you will see that however far outside the swarm they wander to satisfy their appetites, for purposes of procreation they invariably regroup. They choose their mistresses and lovers from those for whom they feel neither respect nor compassion and their wives and husbands from their own ranks. As is often reported by innocents who encounter them without knowing by what rules they live, they can be companionable, amusing, even adorable, and in some circumstances, especially where reciprocal favours are looked for, munificent. But this to them is no more than play, the exercise of their undeniable powers and charm for the mere sadistic fun of it. Thereafter their loyalty is solely to each other. Let one of their number suffer and their vengefulness knows no limits; let one of their number perish and they will make the planet quake for it. To some, this is taken to be the proof of the steadfastness of their tribal life, the respect and affection they have been brought up, over many generations, to show to one another. But it is in fact a manifestation of a sense of superiority that values the life of anyone not belonging to their “tribe” at less than nothing. Only witness, in that country which they call their ancestral home (but which few of them except the most desperate appear to be in any hurry to repair to), a recent exchange of prisoners with one of their many enemies in which, for the sake of a single one of their own — just one — they willingly handed over in excess of seven hundred! The mathematics make a telling point. Never, in the history of humanity, has one people held all others in such contempt, or been more convinced that the world can, and will, be organised for their benefit alone. It has been said that were the earth to be laid waste, so long as not a single hair of one of theirs was harmed, they would connive in that destruction. That is not a justification for their destruction, though others argue persuasively for it. But it does invite us to ask how much longer we can tolerate their uncurbed presence.’
Gutkind so admired the adamantine and yet heartfelt quality of his great-grandfather’s prose that he was at a loss to understand why there had been no published collection of his articles or, come to that, why he had not cut a dash in parliamentary politics. Had his notorious social life taken up too much of his time, or were his words too prophetic for the age he lived in? Gutkind knew for himself what it was to be unappreciated and felt for his great-grandfather’s sorrows a scalding agony which there was no warrant to suppose Clarence Worthing ever felt himself.
Part of what Gutkind admired about Worthing’s work was its conscientious refinement of argument from one article to the next. The refusal of all talk of destruction with which one essay ended, for example, was picked up again in the next with an allusion to ‘self-destruction’, that being the course on which ‘the arrogant, the forward and the vain’, as he called them, appeared, paradoxically, to be hell-bent. ‘Some worm of divisiveness in their own souls has impelled them — throughout history, as though they knew history itself was against them — to the brink of self-destruction. Imaginatively, the story of their annihilation engrosses them; let them enjoy a period of peace and they conjure war, let them enjoy a period of regard and they conjure hate. They dream of their decimation as hungry men dream of banquets. What their heated brains cannot conceive, their inhuman behaviour invites. “Kill us, kill us! Prove us right!” Time and again they have been saved, not by their own resolution, but by the world taking them at their own low self-valuation and endeavouring to deliver them the consummation they devoutly wish. Only then are they able to come together as a people, mend their divisions, and celebrate their escape as one more proof of the divine protection to which their specialness entitles them. But it is a dangerous game and will backfire on them one day.’
Gutkind heard in this a personal plea by his great-grandfather, to one he had loved without reciprocation, to beware the dragon’s teeth she and hers had sowed. He even wondered if it was a coded message. A last-minute warning to her, perhaps, to escape (he had even used that word), to gather up her things and leave, or to go into hiding, before the first shots were fired.
How many messages of this sort, he asked himself, had been sent in this fashion. Not just by Clarence Worthing but by others who had lost their hearts to apparently charming and companionable men and women who proved, when things turned serious, to have been merely trifling with their affections and who, without once looking back, beat a speedy retreat to the bosoms of their own? How much ‘saving’, for the sake of brief but never to be forgotten embraces, had been going on? Like all theorists of betrayal and conspiracy, Gutkind was a hyperbolist. From the single example of his great-grandfather he extrapolated a whole underground of the hurt, scheming tirelessly, not to say paradoxically, to give another chance to those they knew — knew from their own experience — did not deserve it.
This seemed so plausible to the detective that he began to question whether WHAT HAPPENED had in the end claimed any victims at all. Had it remained an undescribed crime all these years because it was an unsolved crime, and had it been unsolved because it was uncommitted? That made a great deal of sense to him. It explained why the world was not the happier place it should have been, and no doubt would have been, had what was meant to happen happened.
In the early days of Gutkind’s courtship his wife-to-be had sent him a graphic letter, imprinted with her lipstick kisses, describing her desires. ‘Read and burn’, she wrote at the bottom.
Now that he understood these essays of his great-grandfather’s as personal missives to a woman he’d loved, he imagined him advising the same precaution. Read and burn.
But this didn’t take from the truth of Clarence Worthing’s analysis. If anything — since it was designed to win assent even from those it might have hurt, since it was intended to prepare, alert and warn, not rabble-rouse — it made the analysis more compelling. The empathetic Gutkind did figuratively as he was told. He read and burned.
ii
Tonight, he spread out a few more pages of the silver-tongued Clarence Worthing on the kitchen table, blowing on them reverently, a paragraph at a time, to keep them free of dust. How he admired the undeviating strength of his resolution, not compromised by passion but stiffened by it. How wonderful it must have been to know where the wrongness at the heart of life was to be located and what it looked like. Here were no abstractions; here was flesh and blood. His great-grandfather wrote as though the enemy were in the other room, perhaps falsely playing with his children as he wrote, perhaps seducing his wife as he had once been seduced himself. Gutkind felt that he could touch them. Put his arms around them, submit his cheek to their false kisses. He closed his eyes and believed that he could smell them. It was a kind of love. A hatred born of pure fascination. His noble-hearted ancestor had been their friend. He had allowed them into his heart. He had been betrayed by them. Gutkind felt his own heart swell. He almost swooned with this love which was indistinguishable from hate. He closed his eyes and made a perfect pink circle of his lips. Womanly, he felt. Kiss me!
But when he opened his eyes again there was no one there. Only Luther, rolling in the white dust. He felt as though that very dust obscured his vision, fell like a veil over his face, through which he could make out nothing distinct, no person or group of persons, just his own causeless dissatisfaction.