“Then by your standards Nazi Germany was a democracy.”
“And by yours as well,” Dorn said mildly. “Hitler won an election, you know.”
Back at his house she said, “I should have warned you about Jerry. But you sort of made an idiot out of him, didn’t you?”
“Not really. And he’s not an idiot. But when people tell each other the same things over a long period of time, they become unused to questioning their beliefs. I see things from a different perspective, and one he couldn’t easily categorize.”
“I wonder how much you meant of what you said.”
“Do you? All of it.”
“But then—”
“Yes?”
“Then what do we do? What is the right thing for people in our position to do?”
“Survive.”
“Just survive?”
“Survive. Stay out of politics, stay out of jail. Stay alive.”
Her face was troubled. “Now I sound like Jerry, but Christ, Miles, you grew up in Europe, you saw your own country overrun by Nazis. Is that what you would have told a Jew in Germany? Survive?”
“It is what I would have told anyone in Germany, Jew or not. At one time I would have advised strengthening the Weimar Republic so that Hitler could not occur. After that I would have said, ‘Go, leave the country.’”
“Survive.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know if I’ve got all of this together. We should stop fighting. We should just survive. We should shave and cut our hair and get straight jobs and look like everybody else. Is that it?”
He reached out a hand, stroked her hair. “Don’t cut your hair,” he said, smiling. “And please don’t shave.”
“I’m serious.”
“Then I shall be serious. No, that is not what I think. I think you are very special, you young people. I think your life-style is very special. I think you should go on growing your hair and your beards and finding yourselves in communes and listening to your music. Read. Think. Grow. Discover. And wait.”
“For what?”
“For more of you to be born. For more of them to die. The future does belong to you, you know. If you don’t try to make it come too soon.”
“‘All things come to him who waits.’”
“They do. Not as soon as he may wish. But they do.”
Do they, Jocelyn? Or am I an old man making new mistakes? Presumptuous of me. Presumptuous of an assassin to warn against the fruits of violence. Of a terrorist to counsel patience.
Perhaps it is too late. The tide swings their way, and perhaps it cannot be stopped. Perhaps one ought not to go gently. Perhaps one ought to die on one’s feet. Better far, I am told, than to live on one’s knees.
But I am not altogether certain I believe that, Jocelyn.
I like your friends, Jocelyn. I like the beauty of their open faces. I like their warmth. I like their easy humor and their ancient seriousness. I argued with one of them out of male foolishness, but I liked them all. And they seemed to like me.
What would they think of me, I wonder, if they knew? And you, Jocelyn? If you knew?
Until a morning late in August when she slipped out of the house after breakfast, leaving him at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. Off to buy some groceries, off to feed her cat. He looked out the window at the robins’ nest, empty now. Vertigo might as well live with them, he thought. She already kept things at the house. Some of her clothes were in his closet, some of her books on his shelves. Her radio was perched on his kitchen table. And yet, although she slept almost every night in his bed, she still had a room that was, in part, home to her. He wondered if he ought to say anything about the cat, or if that would center her life excessively upon him.
The robins again. The more you loved them, the more you had to prepare them for flight. For life apart from you. And the more it tore you to do so.
Something made him switch on the radio. Music, a song she liked and he did not, came as an unwelcome reminder of the gulf between them. He reached to change the station, but the record ended and a newscast came on.
And so he heard, sitting there alone, sitting in his kitchen with her radio playing. He heard that racial warfare still raged openly in the streets of Detroit, with no sign of abatement, after an ambush the night before in which gunfire had claimed the lives of Mayor Walter Isaac James, his wife, and two of their five children.
He put his head on the table and wept.
He held the photo in his hands and stared at the blackness, past the blackness, deep into the face.
Walter Isaac James. First-term mayor of Detroit. Black. Economic and social moderate. Foreign policy views unstated. Enjoys near-total support of black constituency plus strong support of white power structure, professionals, intellectuals. Relationship improving with white working class. Efficient administrator...
I tried, Mr. James. I said, this man shall live. This man’s life is worthwhile, he shall live. And so I waited, and stalled, and created the appearance of preparation. And a pair of beer-drinking ex-marines decided that the crippling of William Roy Guthrie could not go unavenged.
... Termination ideally to be as dramatic as possible. Perhaps family could be included...
Oh, it was dramatic, Mr. James. The mayoral limousine caught in cross fire. And part of your family indeed included. A wife. Two children. And the people burning the city down and killing one another.
Forgive me, Mr. James. For shirking my duty.
A long-distance telephone conversation:
“Congratulations. You have outdone yourself. The results exceed all expectations.”
“Thank you.”
“What about your tools, though? They’ve been picked up. I hope you cleaned them before you put them away.”
“Completely.”
“You’re quite certain? Those vessels will leak under pressure, you know.”
“A vessel cannot spill what it does not contain.”
“Such ships could be sunk, if you wanted. As a sort of insurance policy.”
“No need.”
“As you prefer. There was some concern, incidentally, over the time factor.”
“The arrangements demanded careful handling.”
“So I suggested to the critical voices. And my judgment was vindicated, for which my own thanks, by the way. Everyone is more than pleased.”
“I’m gratified.”
“Good! Oh, you can forget Case Five, if you wish. It’s been officially downgraded in importance.”
“I’ve already begun.”
“Let it go, if there’s the slightest risk.”
“No risk at all. And I’d rather clean the slate.”
“Perfectionist.”
“Let us merely say craftsman.” “As you will.”
Twelve
The policeman said, “I’m trying to think, a drugstore at this hour. There’s an all-night place near the Thirtieth Street station. You have a car?”
“No, I flew in just a few hours ago.”
“Because it’s a long walk, and you might have a time getting a cab.”
“I thought they would have aspirin at the hotel desk.”
“If it’s just an aspirin, there’s a White Tower three, four blocks down on Market. It’s just a coffee place but they generally have a bottle of aspirin around.”
“We have White Towers in Indianapolis,” Dorn said.
“That where you’re from? That’s Rhodine’s state, isn’t it?”