Then we are all smoke and drifting. We are creatures of another world’s midnight visions, moving through a life as illogical as any dream, and as realistic. We exist only in a stranger’s slumber, and our death is his awaking, smiling at the mad, tangled plot his sleep conceived.
It seemed to Blank that since meeting Celia Montfort his existence had taken on the quality of a dream, the vaporous quality of a dream shot through with wild, bright flashes. His life had become all variables and, just before falling asleep to his own disordered dream, he wondered if AMROK II, properly programmed, might print out the meaning in a microsecond, as something of enormous consequence.
“No, no,” Celia Montfort said intently, leaning forward into the candlelight. “Evil isn’t just an absence of good. It’s not just omission; it’s commission, an action. You can’t call that man evil just because he lets people starve to put his country’s meager resources into heavy industry. That was a political and economic decision. Perhaps he is right, perhaps not. Those things don’t interest me. But I think you’re wrong to call him evil. Evil is really a kind of religion. I think he’s just a well-meaning fool. But evil he’s not. Evil implies intelligence and a deliberate intent. Don’t you agree, Daniel?”
She turned suddenly to him. His hand shook, and he spilled a few drops of red wine. They dripped onto the unpressed linen tablecloth, spreading out like clots of thick blood.
“Well…” he said slowly.
She was having a dinner party: Blank, the Mortons, and Anthony Montfort seated around an enormous, candle-lighted dining table that could easily have accommodated twice their number in a chilly and cavernous dining hall. The meal, bland and without surprises, had been served by Valenter and a heavy, middle-aged woman with a perceptible black mustache.
The dishes were being removed, they were finishing a dusty beaujolais, and their conversation had turned to the current visit to Washington of the dictator of a new African nation, a man who wore white-piped vests and a shoulder holster.
“No, Samuel,” Celia shook her head, “he is not an evil man. You use that word loosely. He’s just a bungler. Greedy perhaps. Or out for revenge on his enemies. But greed and revenge are grubby motives. True evil has a kind of nobility, as all faiths do. Faith implies total surrender, a giving up of reason.”
“Who was evil?” Florence Morton asked.
“Hitler?” Samuel Morton asked.
Celia Montfort looked slowly around the table. “You don’t understand,” she said softly. “I’m not talking about evil for the sake of ambition. I’m talking about evil for the sake of evil. Not Hitler-no. I mean saints of evil-men and women who see a vision and follow it. Just as Christian saints perceived a vision of good and followed that. I don’t believe there have been any modern saints, of good or evil. But the possibility exists. In all of us.”
“I understand,” Anthony Montfort said loudly, and they all turned in surprise to look at him.
“To do evil because it’s fun,” the boy said.
“Yes, Tony,” his sister said gently, smiling at him. “Because it’s fun. Let’s have coffee in the study. There’s a fire there.”
In the upstairs room the naked bulb burned in the air: a dusty moon. There was a smell of low tide and crawling things. Once he heard a faint shout of laughter, and Daniel Blank wondered if it was Tony laughing, and why he laughed.
They lay unclothed and stared at each other through the dark sunglasses she had provided. He stared-but did she? He could not tell. But blind eyes faced his blind eyes, discs of black against white skin. He felt the shivery bliss again. It was the mystery.
Her mouth opened slowly. Her long tongue slid out, lay flaccid between dry lips. Were her eyes closed? Was she looking at the wall? He peered closer, and behind the dark glass saw a far-off gleam. One of her hands wormed between her thighs, and a tiny bubble of spittle appeared in the corner of her mouth. He heard her breathing.
He pressed to her. She moved away and began to murmur. He understood some of what she said, but much was riddled. “What is it? What is it?” he wanted to cry, but did not because he feared it might be less than he hoped. So he was silent, listened to her murmur, felt her fingertips pluck at his quick skin.
The black covers over her eyes became holes, pits that went through flesh, bone, cot, floor, building, earth, and finally out into the far, dark reaches. He floated down those empty corridors, her naked hands pulling him along.
Her murmur never ceased. She circled and circled, spiraling in, but never named what she wanted. He wondered if there was a word for it, for then he could believe it existed. If it had no name, no word to label it, then it was an absolute reality beyond his apprehension, as infinite as the darkness through which he sped, tugged along by her hungry hands.
“We’ve found out all about her!” Florence Morton laughed.
“Well…not all, but some!” Samuel Morton laughed.
They had appeared at Daniel’s door, late at night, wearing matching costumes of blue suede jeans and fringed jackets. It was difficult to believe them husband and wife; they were sexless twins, with their bony bodies, bird features, helmets of oiled hair.
He invited them in for a drink. The Mortons sat on the couch close together and held hands.
“How did you find out?” he asked curiously.
“We know everything!” Florence said.
“Our spies were everywhere!” Samuel said.
Daniel Blank smiled. It was almost true.
“Lots of money there,” Flo said. “Her grandfather on her mother’s side. Oil and steel. Plenty of loot. But her father had the family. He didn’t inherit much but good looks. They said he was the handsomest man of his generation in America. They called him ‘Beau Montfort’ at Princeton. But he never did graduate. Kicked out for knocking up-someone. Who was it, Samovel?”
“A dean’s wife or a scullery maid-someone like that. Anyway, this was in the late Twenties. Then he married all that oil and steel. He made a big contribution to Roosevelt’s campaign fund and thought he might be ambassador to London, Paris or Rome. But FDR had more sense than that. He named Montfort a ‘roving representative’ and got him away from Washington. That was smart. The Montforts loved it. They drank and fucked up a storm. The talk of Europe. Celia was born in Lausanne. But then things went sour. Her parents got in with the Nazis, and daddy sent home glowing reports about what a splendid, kindly gentleman Hitler was. Naturally, Roosevelt dumped him. Then, from what we can learn, they just bummed around in high style.”
“What about Celia?” Daniel asked. “Is Tony really her brother?”
They looked at him in astonishment.
“You wondered?” Flo asked.
“You guessed?” Sam asked.
“We didn’t get it straight,” she acknowledged. “No one really knows.”
“Everyone guesses,” Sam offered. “But it’s just gossip. No one knows.”
“But Tony could be her son,” Flo nodded.
“The ages are right,” Sam nodded. “But she’s never been married. That anyone knows about.”
“There are rumors.”
“She’s a strange woman.”
“And who is Valenter?”
“What’s his relationship to her?”
“And to Tony?”
“And where does she go when she goes away?”
“And comes back bruised? What is she doing?”
“Why don’t her parents want her in Europe?”
“What’s with her?”
“Who is she?”
“I don’t care,” Daniel Blank whispered. “I love her.”
He worked late in his office on Halloween night. He had a salad and black coffee sent up from the commissary. As he ate, he went over the final draft of the prospectus he was scheduled to present to the Production Board on the following day: his plan to have AMROK II determine the ratio between advertising and editorial pages in every Javis-Bircham magazine.