Shiva and Other Stories (8 page)

Reparations

B
ROWN TELLS ME THAT HE IS SICK OF IT:
sick of it, sick of it, do you understand? “Vengeance is mine, saith the
Lord
,” he points out. “Here is a distinct admonition mistaken as a threat. The task of recense,
He
is saying, is
His
, not ours. You cannot repair the sin by slaying the sinner.” Nonetheless the famous Gerald P__ sighs. He does his work sadly but well. Here a dead racketeer, over there, beneath the riverbed, a drowned chieftain; in the Secaucus flatland the dismembered torso of he who had been chief procurer of the east—it is said. Do not ask what lies in Manwah, near the state line. At a rally in Pennsylvania just the other day, friends, M- had the top of his head rise from his skull like the lid of a hot pot; his brains subsequently appeared; in due course he toppled over. Gerald P__’s signature to be sure. The assailant has not been found. Warnings have been issued. Massive funeral services were held for M- in which the assassin was mentioned in hushed and respectful tones. Although Brown will not admit to this, or anything else—he is sly on the specifics as befits a man of circumstance—he must take a certain pride in his work.

Gerald P__, Gerald P__, an honorable working name. “You
should
be proud,” I say to him. I am, after all, not only his confidant but his oldest and closest friend. “If you did not assume the dreadful burden of these reparations, who would? Truly it can be said that you order and adjust the world; without your acts of fiery balance it would be overcome by evil. Take pleasure in your work; all of us find parts of our duty distasteful but in the end your job offers more satisfactions than are found by many of us. You should be happy: such beautiful work on M-. One hundred thousand at an outdoor rally and you did it so cleanly, faded away so abruptly that if he hadn’t died on the spot no one would have even noticed.”

Gerald shakes his head, blushes, looks away. Small dimples of embarrassment appear in his cheeks. It may be true that he despises his work but on the other hand, without praise where would he be? How can he
not
take pride in what they call a job well done? He has struggled too richly to walk away from this easily.

* * *

Disguised as Gerald P__ once more, Brown considers his next move. He receives assignments in code in a post office box on the far side of town; as far as he knows he has never had contact with the ultimate employer. Cash arrives once a month rain or shine. As P__, in full assassin’s gear, Brown sits in the passenger seat of his old Skylark parked outside a warehouse waiting for the target to emerge. Rain comes down heavily, obscuring his view; the subject is already two hours overdue. Gerald should stow his gear and wait for another day but seizures of reluctance have already cost him two good possibilities: today is the terminal date of his assignment. He knows that there will be angry chatter in that post office box if he does not take care of this. Cowardice, no less than a sense of honor, will, however, drive him. His employer is obviously an angry man; he does not want to plumb the depths of unspoken rage. Never has Brown—or at least has Gerald—failed to carry through an assignment even though there have been recent close calls. Years of sad and dedicated work could go up in smoke if he does not take care of this baby smuggler and he does not want to fail on assignment. A dignified resignation is one thing, all right, but to quit in the field would definitely be another. Gerald P__ shrugs and strokes the carbine. Unnoticed by all, I whisper encouragement; the words penetrating his heart, penetrate mine.

* * *

The baby smuggler is no fool. Working on the fringes of legality for years makes paranoia as much a part of the working equipment as unmarked bills. Furthermore, certain informants, who cannot be named, so confidential are they, have alerted him to the fact. Gerald P__ is on the stalk. The baby smuggler has heard of him. Many people have heard of Gerald; an assassin of such efficacy acquires, whether necessarily or not, a subterranean reputation. On a night of such inclemency, with light and shadows prowling ominously in the glitter, our victim would be a fool to go to his car. He has decided to stay until dawn in his offices, drinking black coffee from a thermos and making big plans for the future. As a treat he will browse through photo albums containing pictures of women he has wronged, men he has cheated, children whose lives he has destroyed. The baby smuggler is one of those who obtains physical pleasure and release from the contemplation and performance of evil. He is not to be condemned for that: Brown once achieved similar pleasure and release from the practice of good until he came to understand that flesh was all; motive, circumstance, and that all dialectic was rationalization. This insight, Brown later concluded, destroyed his life. Similar affliction has not beset the baby smuggler who is not so highly internalized. He sits eating a sandwich and glancing through the photo album balanced on his knee. Even though P__ may be outside he is at relative peace. This is more than can be said for Brown, even though he performs good and the baby smuggler evil.

Peace for the peaceful is always there.

* * *

Brown got into the business of reparations on a fluke. Originally he had been a philosophy major only half a thesis short of his doctorate when he had quit suddenly to become a trumpeter in a local band. A series of strange and unintimated coincidences had led him to Hollywood and New York, a profitable career as a studio musician until, in his mid thirties, intonation fled and he was left with awesome techniques that could produce music of only the foulest kind. Despairing, Brown sought counseling, psychiatry, the love of many others but, although he had interesting experiences, none of them returned his ear and soon enough the money ran out. At about this time the Network was seeking a replacement in northeastern sector for Michael B•, whose trigger finger had become spavined with age, and because Brown seemed to be the kind of man who might make a worthy successor—high intelligence, broken spirit, generalized rage, angst and the like—he had been scouted carefully for months before the approach was made in a cafeteria. At the time Brown had been reduced to life in a furnished room and evenings out alone in cafeterias, his latest (and penultimate) mistress having thrown him to the winds. Brown was amenable to recruitment which was carried through with all of the Network’s characteristic finesse. Soon enough he was given his post office box and a statement of principles. He had been in the business for almost four years before he felt the first faint whisper of scruple.

* * *

That scruple had joined him when Brown had been obliged to kill a concrete manufacturer who loved his family warmly and well but who had adultered his products deliberately and had caused a pedestrian bridge to collapse, bearing several innocents to their death. This, however, is not part of our narrative and cannot be further discussed. The origin of scruple, Brown has come to understand, is as irrelevant as is philosophy to motive:
when it is time it is time
is his aphorism and for Brown and Gerald P__ it has been time for a while now. It is merely an issue of whether he can be propped up through a few last assignments until a suitable replacement is found. (The Network is still scouting; needless to say possibilities are screened very carefully. A mistake would be fatal.) In this dull and dangerous period it has become my duty as his oldest and closest friend to jolly him through the depressions, keep his carbine up, keep him on the stalk and, although I am well paid for this, I like to think that I would work for free, not only because I love Brown but because I have come to love Gerald, the assumed identity, the specter of revenge of my dreams and western civilization, who has done—let us face this squarely—a brutal and splendid job of righting wrongs. “Come now,” I say to him therefore in the Skylark, “be of good cheer. This rain will not last forever. Soon enough he will come ricky-racketing down those splendidly dangerous stairs and a single shot will do the trick. If you miss the shock would topple him.”

“I don’t know,” Brown says. He
is
Brown at this moment; more and more he lapses into the shabby persona of a tone-deaf trumpeter. They will have to replace him; I can no longer deny his collapse. “What right do I have to make that judgment? Who am I to say that this deserves death, that that is permitted to live? Vengeance is
mine
, saith—”

“Ah, yes,” I say hurriedly. I do not want to go through
that
once more. “But you were never religious and besides these decisions have been made for you. They are out of your hands, having been given by excellent superiors who are surely in a position to know this as they know everything, Gerald.”

“My name is Brown, not Gerald,” he says, looking indifferently at the carbine. “I wish that you at least would call me by my name. I can’t deal with this double-life nonsense anymore. It’s childish.”

I sigh. And sigh again. “Whatever you say, Brown. At least admit that this new religiosity is mere cover, cheap posturing. The truth is that you’ve lost your nerve.”

If I expect this to hit him to the bone I am quite disappointed. “Of
course
I’ve lost my nerve,” Gerald says, looking at me disarmingly. “Any feeling man would. Just how much self-confrontation do you think
any
of us can take? I’ve learned to love to kill.”

* * *

Events muddle, accelerate. It is perhaps best to handle this difficult material through transition, whisk, whisk. Sequentiality is too painful. Also predictable. After a suitable lapse of time the baby smuggler does indeed emerge from his offices. Perhaps it is on the next evening, perhaps it is several weeks later (when his informants have wrongly advised the dogs have been called off). He sways on stairs, adjusts lapels, breathes deeply and begins his descent. The first shot goes wide of the left temple by many feet and the baby smuggler sways in astonishment, saves himself from toppling by gripping a pole and then begins to shriek. The next shot is even more embarrassing, slashing into brick a yard from his head. He shrieks, gathers himself into an urgent fetal ball, propels himself in the direction from which he has come and the third shot can be seen only as obeisance to form—it is below the fleeing target by a man’s height. The baby smuggler forces the door open, staggers inside. In the dreadful quiet I say to Gerald, “That was quite unnecessary. Quite shocking really to be so deliberately inept. Whatever your feelings, you do have a job. You have responsibilities.”

“I tried,” says Gerald P__. Sullenly, I would say. “He was agile. These things happen.”

“They are not supposed to happen.”

“You are dooming me by my competence, by my unusual luck.”

“You had no luck trying to stay in E-flat,” I remind him. I am chilled and disgusted. I will have to report failure and the baby smuggler deserved death as much as any victim. A case can be made for the concrete manufacturer, even the politician is known to have had a generous thought, a loving mistress, but for the baby smuggler a clean death was the only epitaph. “You will pay for this,” I say. “I am simply warning you as your oldest and closest friend:
I
wouldn’t exact the penalty but someone will. I am sorry for you, Gerald.”

“My name is Brown,” Gerald P__ says determinedly and breaks down the carbine, turns it to litter on the floor of the Skylark. I look at him with disgust. A fallen saint is no saint at all: a fallen saint is a clown.

* * *

Brown (no longer Gerald P__; the epaulet of his pseudonym has been stripped from him with the key to his post office box) is brought before the delegate committee for a hearing. It is my duty, per custom, to defend him but I have little enough to say. “Thirteen successful assignments,” I say, “should mitigate one abysmal failure.” It is the best I can do. “Consider who freed us from B-. Consider the hero who exploded W- from the planet. Have some compassion for the mighty rifle that sprang loose X-, who as we only know should have died in his cradle or at his mother’s bosom. Remember the great shot that tore off M-’s skull in the stadium, that was no small accomplishment and what a shot!” No use, of course. These cases all have precedent; the hearings are
pro forma.
“Perhaps you would like to say a few words,” I advise Brown. “I can do nothing more.”

He shakes his head, picks up his trumpet and plays the opening notes of the bass-baritone aria of the last part of Handel’s
Messiah.
The trumpet shall sound and so forth. Somehow in this difficult time he has recovered his ear. The notes are purifying, exalting, even the committee sheds a tear. “Consider that,” I say, hard put to make a point. “Shall I essay a shaky metaphor and say that our Angel Gabriel has returned to his instrument of choice?” The committee squints. “I didn’t think so,” I agree. Brown laughs, plays a high D. The eaves shake.

“I can do nothing more,” I say. “Defense is a hard business.”

The committee nods sympathetically and pronounces sentence. It is the usual, of course. “I must say in closing,” it offers, “that thirteen successes only make failure more dreadful. The first crime may be the most heinous. It usually is.”

“It is not my first crime,” Brown says mildly. “It would have been my fourteenth.” He fingers a valve and begins the
Gloria
from the Bach B Minor Mass. The committee and I listen with pleasure. If nothing else, Brown’s recovered gifts must give humility. Anything, then, should be possible. “A single person cannot clean up the world,” Brown says, behind the trumpet. “No one can clean up the world. One can only enact one’s desires.” He stands, looking quite impressive for all his new seediness: Brown is trying a martyr’s persona. “If you are
quite
ready,” he says.

Dolefully, committee and I watch as he is led away. He had all the makings and was great in his time. But the makings and the moment are never enough. Life teaches us plenty.

* * *

The baby smuggler, having been approached and primed, is ready for his first assignment. He has accepted it with eagerness; even as he wipes damp palms on denim waiting for the party to appear, he knows he will not fail. The carbine is comforting. When they come into view he will lead the shot and so on. Having taken the honored name of P__ to continue his work, he feels he has paid sufficient homage to form and there is nothing else he need do. He owes them nothing.