The Divers' Game

by Jesse Ball

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Ogias’ Day

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Row House

  1: The Day of the Infanta

  2: The Divers’ Game

  Letter

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Jesse Ball

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Ogias’ Day

  I heard a song once: at the moment of my despair someone was singing on the other side of the fence, a young voice, a voice that could hardly have known what it was singing, what the words meant, or who they were meant for.

  1

  Lethe! If we look for her, if we run up the stairs, cast open her door, and look in her bed, she is not there. If we dash down the steps, turn a corner, pass her befuddled father (who cannot see us), and go to the little table that she loves so well, the one by the window, she is not there! She is not there! A plate and some crumbs, an empty glass. Out we go into the street, and up ahead—can it be?—we see her, beneath linden trees, swaying as a child does, because the morning sways, because when it is the morning, isn’t everything swaying? It is only the old who are stiff, who can no longer feel the world’s slight breath.

  Lethe! She is looking at her feet as she walks, watching them—how unpredictable they are, are they hers?—and thinking—what will she do today? Her feet move beneath, and we with them, and suddenly we have reached the train. Nimbly up the steps she goes, the train doors open, and there is a place for her, between two men who stare straight ahead, as if into nothing. They are not alone. The train is full of such as they. Lethe takes her place among them. She looks straight ahead, but her mind is humming. This is a trip she takes each morning, and meanwhile, always meanwhile, she is elsewhere.

  The doors close, the train shoves forward, and over the loudspeaker comes a voice she has heard a thousand times. Instinctively, she grasps the gray rubber device on her belt and straightens up. She stares ahead, chin up, almost proudly. A deep and reassuring voice, the ever familiar voice, one she has heard her whole life, it shudders the speakers and everyone in the car chants softly:

  A citizen

  For the life of him

  Or her or he or she

  That keeps a mask

  On the belt or arm

  Need never fear the streets.

  If trouble comes

  Like quad scum—

  Your mask put on!

  Your mask put on!

  The gas shall flow

  A cloud to grow

  And lay them low

  The lowest at our feet.

  A chorus of horns plays, and the car is quiet again. It travels on, ever forward. That is the direction of society: forward. All those who try to send it back are ground beneath the wheels. Hasn’t it always been so?

  At every station, the joyful chorus peals. When you are so used to saying something—isn’t it a kind of gladness to let it roll unexamined from your lips? They stood in that tincture, a thin gladness to be sure—you could never touch it, or really feel it, until the train doors opened at the center exchange, and out the passengers poured, so many—you would never think the train could hold so many. They were not in wild colors, these citizens, although of course they wore the latest fashions. And each, to the last, bore a finely made mask upon the hip. Have you ever seen so many gas masks in one place? And every one nicely worn from use, every one the tool of an expert. It was a kind of modern-day Sparta, wouldn’t you say that? Wouldn’t you agree?

  And today, it was the day before Ogias’ Day. There hadn’t been an Ogias’ Day, not for fifty years. So no one knew how it would go.

  LETHE MANAGED HER WAY DOWN THE STAIRS FROM THE platform, and ducked under a rail to take a shortcut along a green bank to a side street that ran out hurriedly from the rail exchange. This was the way to her school, for she was grown now, sixteen or seventeen, and could take her place at a college, where she would be taught everything a person might want to know, everything about anything. Lethe was the kind of clever that doesn’t say much. She was liked and praised and left alone. Her future was assured. But today she was late to school, only just late, and ran in the front door through a sort of absence—the throng had passed through three moments before. She could almost feel them there, a wild mass of arms and legs, of shoving and nearness. One, two, three—and then she!

  Into the classroom, and she sought for Lois. In her mind in the door she saw Lois, imagined her in some chair, with a free space beside her. Then, into the lecture hall, and Lois was there, just as she had seen it, just as Lois always was, beckoning with a thin arm, an arm that looked almost precisely like Lethe’s. I could not tell them apart, though they were not sisters. Have you ever met someone and felt they were some reflection of you? Have you felt reflected? Lethe and Lois sat and held hands beneath the desks, identical in gray skirts and dry yellow sweaters, bare at the shoulder. The light at the podium flickered on, and their lecturer, Mandred, was there. His old eyes raked the room, and he smiled slightly.

  And shall we begin?

  YOU ALL REMEMBER WE WERE SPEAKING LAST WEEK about the circumstances that led to the transformation of our society. The famous influx of refugees—so many they could not help but change us. We were forced by them to change. Everyone remembers the lesson? How did we change?

  That’s right, the Firstmost Proposal. This was the subject of our test last week. Can someone tell me the substance of the Firstmost Proposal? You?

  That’s wrong. It’s not entirely right, and what we say is, what is entirely right is right, everything else is wrong. The Firstmost Proposal, I remind you, was made by Eavan Garing. A minor elected official at the time, he would later be chancellor. He said, we can welcome them, as long as we can tell them apart. As long as we can tell them apart. Many of them, wherever they were from, they had red hats, a kind of long knit hat, a red hat, no one remembers why, and so Garing said, This will be their symbol. We’ll tattoo the red hat on their cheeks, and then we’ll know who is who. Then we can welcome them.

  Did this work?

  Yes, it worked, the refugees were admitted, and they were told apart. What else did it mean? What else did the red hat mean?

  That’s right: They shall have red hats so you may know them, and they shall therefore have no legal standing as persons. It was the kindest thing that could be done, to admit them, because they had nowhere to go, but they were different than we are, and that fact couldn’t be forgotten.

  So then they were among us, and bore their red hats, but there was trouble. Who remembers what the trouble was?

  Yes, they had no safety; they were not persons, anything could be done to them. Certain low elements, citizens to be sure, but low elements, well, they were taking advantage. It was causing trouble. It wasn’t any good to see, especially not within the nation. And of course this made others become partisan. Some were actually sympathetic to the newcomers. Groups were organized, a kind of vigilante militia, to protect them, to protect the refugees from other citizens. Do you recall the names of any of them? This was material from a previous class. Someone should know it.

  That’s right, Lambert Ma. He was among the first. He murdered several citizens before he was arrested and executed. There was a good deal of blood shed, the blood of full citizens, as well as a great deal of attrition among the refugee group. Their population declined measurably at this time. But it did not go away.

  What happened then?

  Yes, the government suppressed these partisans, in effect supporting which position?

  That anything could be done to those without rights. There is a philosophical position that came into vogue, it is
what we call in philosophy an awakening, a large-scale shift in belief: that things done to those beneath are not properly violence. It was a new definition of violence, and helped to create a vibrant morality, one that infuses our nation to this day. Our morality is what we do. Do you all understand that? But if what we do ceases to be violence, let us say it is the same, but it is no longer violence: then we are not violent; we are no longer doers of violence.

  Nonetheless we have hearts, we are a good and fair society. It was clear the refugees could not simply live amongst us without trouble. So someone thought of the first quad, the very first quadrant. The government at that time surveyed areas that they called quadrants, outside of each city, and within the quadrants, these who had no rights, the refugees—how did it go? Did they have rights? It was a new kind of land, one that had never existed before, a new designation. Did they have rights there?

  No, that’s correct, they did not gain rights within their quadrants, no, the quadrants were surrounded by walls, as they are today, with guards, to see that there could be no organized revolt. But the guards don’t keep anyone in place. Anyone can pass in and out, as you know, but within the walls, and here is the point—this is why there was suddenly safety, a kind of safety: within those walls, no one had any rights, not even a citizen. This was deemed precivilized space.

  And so those with the red hats, they have come to be known, vulgarly, as quads. And they may come out and take jobs in the nation, but they may remain within their quadrants if they like. The government provides them with food and clothing there, so they need not even work. And we as citizens, we who compose the nation, we may go where we like, even into the quads, but if something were to happen to us in a quadrant, what would it mean? If I went into a quad and someone murdered me, what would it mean?

  That’s right—it would mean nothing. It would have happened within precivilized space. There is no rule of law there. Of course, the guards can go in and effect searches, seizures, but that is a different matter, a military matter. In any case, let me ask you, how is this order preserved—how do the citizens stay safe? Why is it that we can master the quads when they come out into the nation, however many they are, whatever their intentions? What is our tool? What is it?

  He held up his mask, the mask that hung on his belt. It was an old-style mask, the one that is often shown on posters.

  Yes, yes, the gas. That was also Garing’s idea. Four colors of gas, each with a use, and the citizens protected, always protected from the gas. You have all lived your whole life in the comfort of the gas—with the freedom it affords you. You have walked down avenues beside running gas lines, every ten feet a junction head posted. You have been raised with the drills: don the mask, run to the pavement marked K. You know the beautiful feeling of safety. You understand the gas. Still, it was not so simple at first. There were many who stood against it.

  Today though we are speaking not about the Firstmost Proposal, not about the gas, but about the Secondmost Proposal. Does anyone know it?

  LETHE KNEW WHAT THE FIRSTMOST PROPOSAL WAS. She knew what the gas was, even some of its chemistry. Her father was a scientist. She knew the Secondmost Proposal, the basic history of the nation. But Lois beside her knew none of it. They had been raised rather differently. And so whereas Lois leaned forward, eager to hear what the Secondmost Proposal was, Lethe tapped an ankle nervously against the chair and drew whirligig circles on a sheet of paper. None were perfect. She thought about the thick rim of the wood desk and pressed her thumb against it. There was a sharp edge, and she found it, and played with it, pressing her arm there, a pressure just before she would be cut. Have you played this game as a child? Do you play it still? To test every sensation of the body? Lethe pressed and gritted her teeth.

  Lois on the other hand watched Mandred, and her expression was soft, lunar—distant but welcoming. She enjoyed her classes and was good at them but had never known a thing beforehand, the way Lethe did. Perhaps it could be said she was better than Lethe at learning things she didn’t know.

  What was he saying?

  Mandred was saying that it had once been true that criminals were sent to places called prisons. Prison, how would that be spelled? One s or two? Lois perked up her ears.

  The professor droned on:

  The Secondmost Proposal, yes, well, it did not immediately follow the first; it was years later, but it was the Secondmost because it was also made by Garing. He realized that the quads were working so well, we might expand them. Why should we send criminals, by the thousand and million, to penitentiaries, prisons, and jails when we could simply join them to the quad population? And so it was done. This problem that had troubled the nation for hundreds of years, done away with in a moment. The prisons were disbanded. Every prisoner was branded with the red hat, and every prisoner had the right thumb taken, so that the difference would be obvious, always obvious. For consistency, those in the quads also had to have their thumbs taken. This was the cause of a great deal of unrest, but of course it was easily suppressed. They cannot stand against the gas.

  Mandred pressed a button on the podium, and a screen rolled down behind him.

  Now we will watch the thumb-taking procedure—one that goes on even now, in this very city.

  He went and sat in the first row, and the light on the podium dimmed to nothing. Numbers appeared on the screen, counting down, and an image came, of a facility from above, a long, narrow black building, with a track outside, like a fairground. In the lines of tracks stood thousands of people. It was a film of that first day, and no one in that line knew what was going to happen. But everyone in the classroom knew. There was an expectation, like a spasm of joy. How much we like to be distinguished from those who are not our equals.

  Meanwhile, Lethe had left the class. She went out and sat by a tree. The day wasn’t cold at all; it was warm, and the sun was mocking the clouds, going in and out of them. The shadows on the ground moved this way and that, as if in response. A boy joined her there. She recognized him from somewhere, a long athletic type with a thin mouth. What was his name? Gerard?

  Hey Lethe.

  She nodded.

  You in Mandred’s.

  She nodded.

  He’s a drunk, did you know that?

  Shook her head.

  Yeah, his wife died last year. Since then (the boy mimed a person with a bottle).

  Why did she die?

  Dunno.

  They sat there for a few minutes, and trucks came and went on the avenue by the school.

  Gerard stood up.

  I think, I think it was. Someone told me she gassed herself. She didn’t want to live, and when Mandred found her, all he could do was hit the bottle from then on. He’s a drunk.

  Gerard laughed.

  Well, bye.

  He went inside, and Lethe sat a little longer. She thought about what it would mean to feel the gas, and shivered. She imagined it wouldn’t feel like anything at all, and she was right, partly. She thought about being alone in a room and feeling that extinguishing wildness that wants to end life. People are coming to help you, but they are on the stair, they are even behind the door, but there is not time to open it, for you have opened the canister, you have breathed the gas—like a wing’s flap your life has extended and elapsed, and it cannot be taken back.

  INSIDE, LOIS WAS JOINED BY LETHE. THE FILM WAS proceeding at the minimum speed of illusion. They held hands again, and watched. Who could say what it was like to watch such a film? The girls’ eyes were full of it—the surface of the eyes received it all, admitted it all: a menagerie of trembling light as men in white uniforms—they looked like dairy workers or men at the butcher’s counter—caught and held down all kinds of people, every kind of person, men, women, boys, girls, people of every color, shape, size. The thumb-taking room seemed very clean and bare. It was a kind of theater. There was always one person to be held down, and many people to do it, so it worked out as it should, even though every single person resisted. It
was almost comical. A door would pop open. The next one would come into the room, would stiffen, try to raise their arms, then their arms would be taken, they would break free, be grabbed again, forced down into something like a stocks, and then there was no more resistance. There was no sound, so if there was shrieking, it is lost to history. The film was long, and they watched it all, watched thumb after thumb be taken, watched cheek after cheek be branded. When there were farms, it was like this—the slaughter of the animals. They would be led to slaughter. But here no one was slaughtered, just changed a little. There was one boy in particular. Lois saw him and felt he looked like her brother. She didn’t have a brother, but she’d always wanted one, and here in the film, here he was. She watched them hold him down and take his thumb. It was a slender, dark thumb and could easily have been hers. His face was pressed down by the branding iron, and it happened, a strange thing happened—many of those who were branded, the expression of their pain was a kind of grin. Why was that? Why were they all grinning in this horrible way? She tried it on her face, the same grin, and saw that Lethe beside her, she was grinning too.

  The film was at its conclusion, and a gray blackness flickered where it had been.

  YOU MUST FEEL, SAID MANDRED, RISING, WHETHER you do or not, you must try to feel that this work is a good work, however hard it is to do. You never want to be the sort of person who flinches from the work that is hard. Even if someone else does it for you, you must realize how hard it is, and how beautiful it is, how right, that it is done, and done well.

  We are speaking of a pile of thumbs that could fill a stadium. They did not get there by themselves. That’s why I wanted you to see this. Tomorrow we will have a test on the Secondmost Proposal. You will read the assigned material, and I will ask you, in the test, to quote parts at length, so be prepared. That is all for now. Thank you.

  The lights came on, and suddenly everyone could see one another. They had all seen this grisly sight, all felt separated, alone in the face of it, but then with the lights on, they could see one another, familiarly, happily. Although they were not, it was almost as though they rubbed against one another all at once like cats, a happiness born from sameness, and in that spirit they poured out of the lecture hall.