The Devil's Advocate

by Taylor Caldwell

  “No,” said Andrew Durant. His voice was stronger now. “I don’t want my children to live under The Democracy. I prefer them to die.” He added, with profound bitterness: “They ought not to have been born. But I hoped that when they were still young, all of you, all you murderers and torturers and liars and tyrants, would have been killed. If the time hasn’t come yet, then I, my wife and children, prefer to die when you order it, than to live.”

  Again the Magistrate regarded him with a long silence. Then he stood up, and the Guards came to attention, and the bloated-faced generals, who rose with him. He went to the windows, and imperatively motioned Andrew and Christian to come forward. Andrew tried to stand up, but his legs refused to help him. The Guards dragged him to his feet, and wrenched Christian up from his chair.

  The Magistrate pulled aside the rich blue draperies, and the Guards thrust Durant and Christian to the big windows. There was a small courtyard outside, lit by the moon and blinding floodlights. Eight men, sagging, half-conscious, had been bound to stakes, eight men who had spoken under torture, eight men who were Minute Men, and Andrew’s friends. Twelve feet from them stood eight Guards in khaki, with upraised guns. An officer stood near by. The room was not underground at all, but soundproof.

  Andrew looked once, and then turned to Christian, and received again that strong smile of courage. Then Andrew turned to the window again. The officer raised his hand, the guns roared, and the men roped to the stakes died. Clouds of smoke spiralled up to the very windows. Andrew sickened, but his swollen lips came together tightly. He prayed for the souls of those who had been weak. He felt no anger against them. It was just that some men had a threshold beyond which fortitude could not rise, no matter what their resolution. Every man had his price, and it was not necessarily money or bribes or offers of mercy. Sometimes too much sensitiveness, too much tiredness, too much hopelessness, made them betray. The hideousness of living, itself, could break a man’s spirit where even torture could not. The curtains dropped with a silken heaviness and shut out the sight of the courtyard.

  The Magistrate sat down without comment. The Guards threw Christian and Durant into their chairs again. The Magistrate rested his chin in his palm and looked at the two prisoners seriously. His eyes seemed to pierce them, study them, weigh them. After a long time he seemed satisfied. He smoothed his painted hair delicately.

  “James Christian, professor of history, student of philosophy. You are a quiet man, Christian, and a young man. As I told you before, we have your wife and children in custody, too. You have said that it does not matter, and that you are willing to die. Durant: I warn you and your friend that neither of you shall die as easily as this. You know that, don’t you? Before you die, you’ll see your wives and children die, also, and it won’t be quickly. You are prepared for all this?”

  “Yes,” said Durant, in a low voice.

  “Yes,” said Christian, a little louder.

  The Magistrate turned to the Guards. “Clean them up at once. We don’t want them to die before we make them talk. Give them fresh clothes, and some food and some whisky or coffee. Have them ready for me in half an hour.”

  It was ten o’clock, and a warmth and sweetness hung in the damp air, even here in this great city, for a wind blew in from the sea. But New York, at ten o’clock, had become quite silent, for it was against the law for private vehicles to be on the streets after that hour, not only for the ostensible purpose of “preserving our national resources of oil, gasoline and rubber,” but for the real purpose of keeping any “subversives” from gathering together in secret places. Public vehicles were permitted to run once an hour on the main thoroughfares, such as Fifth Avenue, Broadway and the Avenue of President Roosevelt, once known as Sixth Avenue and then the Avenue of the Americas. (It was a misdemeanor to call the street by either of its two former names, particularly the Avenue of the Americas, for Washington, at that very hour, was solemnly attempting to decide which South American country would be the next Enemy, in the fifth World War.) However, even the few public vehicles permitted to run had a uniformed Country Guard on board to intimidate, by scowl or by the tentative swinging of a club, any bold soul who might be tempted to strike up a conversation with his neighbor. Casual conversations might be ambiguous, and loaded with treachery. For this reason, too, no conversations even between husband and wife were permitted in a foreign language which the Guard could not understand. So it was that public transportation was conducted in a muffled silence, even in the subways.

  A long black automobile, its glass bubble-roof shrouded in black curtains, waited at the door of the large and darkened building on Forty-second Street. It was almost invisible there, for, to “conserve power in the present emergency,” few street lamps were permitted to burn precious electricity. Far down the street, Fifth Avenue was only a pallid sprinkling of lights, misty in the spring atmosphere.

  Andrew Durant and James Christian had been repaired physically, and each had been given a clean shirt. But no attempt had been made to splint Andrew’s arm, and he understood that this was not necessary. This was his last night of life. However, one of the Guards did, and roughly, lift the hand of the broken arm and thrust it into Andrew’s pocket. During this, Andrew almost fainted again. He was pushed into a chair and he was given a glass of some peculiar but very clear red liquid, which looked like wine. He drank it, numbly, and discovered it was not wine at all. It had a curious but not unpleasant taste, and it pricked on his swollen tongue. He decided it was not alcohol, even though he almost immediately felt a strong warmth spreading from his stomach to every nerve in his body. He looked up to see James Christian also drinking a glass of this fluid. Poison? Probably not, thought Andrew, somberly wishing it were.

  When the two young men were brought back into the enormous warm office of the Magistrate, they found Arthur Carlson there alone except for his two Picked Guards. He nodded at the prisoners, as if satisfied. He glanced at one of the Guards and said, briefly: “Dickson and Tyre have been called?” When assured by one of the saluting Guards that the men mentioned were waiting in the hall outside, the Magistrate nodded again. Then he looked at Durant and Christian.

  “This is your final opportunity,” he said, in his kind and indifferent voice. “Has either of you changed your mind?”

  They did not answer him, but they stared at him with hatred. The liquid they had drunk had given them some strange courage and assurance.

  “Well, then,” remarked the Magistrate, as if with regret, “I must take you away. The windows of my car are not covered. Look your last at the city, for, I am afraid, neither of you shall ever see it again.”

  Christian spoke, then: “We don’t want to see it again, so long as you, The Democracy, are in power. You, all of you, have made this country so foul and bestial, and have so degraded it almost beyond hope, that it is impossible for a decent man to live in it. We know the suicide figures, Arthur Carlson. We know that at least eight thousand American people kill themselves monthly, not in prisons, and not under actual threat of your State Police and Guards, but quietly, in their own homes, because your kind has made the whole world, and not only America, too horrible to bear.”

  The Magistrate was amused. “Yes, weaklings,” he said. “Not fit for the brave new life we have established, where each has according to his needs, and each must work for his country.” He added, sternly: “If I hadn’t known you for a traitor before, Christian, I’d know it now. Your revolutionary Minute Men would destroy our war effort overnight and make us defenseless against our enemies.”

  “What ‘enemies’?” asked Durant, with passionate contempt. “We conquered Russia in the third World War, and even if she’s smashed and has retreated behind her ruined cities, and even if she’s still malignant—like you—she’s no threat to us any longer. We can’t, any longer, build up Germany and Britain so we can fight them again, as we did in the fourth World War. They haven’t the strength for it now. Who’s next, on the list of ‘enemies’? Brazil, A
rgentina, Chile? How long do you think it will take until we have armed them so that we can fight them? Yes, we always have a ‘war effort’! Tyrants are perpetuated by war. I understand politics and economics, too.”

  “And how long,” asked Christian wearily, “are the American people going to be able to arm and then fight ‘enemies’? How long can they stand this?”

  “For a long time, I believe,” said the Magistrate, smiling. “How long do you think, for instance?”

  Neither of the prisoners answered him, so he replied to his own question, musingly: “They’ve stood it for fifty-three years, without any particular complaint. There was some slight agitation about ten years ago when we annexed Canada and Mexico, but that died down within a month. With our assistance. No, the American people have never complained about war, for the very simple reason that they, like all other peoples, enjoy it, even if it has deprived them of what they used to call their ‘liberties.’ Give a nation war and she’ll be only too happy to surrender the sentimentality of freedom. You know your history, don’t you?”

  The two huge Guards at the door listened impassively, gazing straight ahead as though of iron and not of flesh and blood.

  History, thought Christian. The history of the tyrants is always more vivid than the history of the saints and the heroes and the men of good will. The tale of a soldier is always more interesting than the tale of a martyr. Men prefer to read of the crimes of a murderer rather than the deeds of a virtuous man. Was there something fatally wrong, fatally evil, at the very center of the human soul, something so monstrous that it can never be torn out or prayed away? Who heard the name of Christ these days? Was this, and all the agony and despair and torment in the world of today, the result of that awful flaw in the human spirit?

  A sick hopelessness came to James Christian, then.

  “I see you’re thinking,” said Magistrate Carlson. “I like intelligent men, even if they are enemies of America, and traitors to their people. If you’d not become corrupted and twisted in your thinking you could have gone far with us, Christian.”

  “Far into hell,” said Andrew Durant.

  Christian glanced at him quickly, and smiled. Only a few left in America. But those few could become mighty. How could he have forgotten all those thousands of men and women all over America, who, in thousands of hidden places, were speaking nightly to the confused and desperate and lost and enslaved? They were very often found, these dedicated people, and murdered, but where one fell ten more sprang up as if from the ground itself! He and Durant would die, probably within an hour, just as the other eight had died. But eighty would take their places. And eighty times eighty, tens of thousands of times over, until America was free again.

  “I think my car is waiting,” said the Magistrate courteously. He pointed to the door, and one of the Guards opened it. Durant and Christian, exhausted and silent, passed through it. There was a long white hall outside, barren and cold, and at every ten feet a Guard stood, wooden and sightless, with a gun in his hand. There were two other men, also, not in uniform, but armed. The prisoners looked at them dully. They appeared to be of the Magistrate’s kind, urbane, quiet and aristocratic. They were aware of the prisoners, but in the manner of gentlemen aware of mongrels. But they smiled and bowed as Arthur Carlson stepped into the hall, and they moved into place beside Durant and Christian with an air of distaste.

  They all marched down the hall. Durant’s broken arm had become one long anguish of fire. He clenched his teeth. He had withstood the torture in the cells of this building. It would be ironic if he should suddenly begin to scream about his arm. Christian’s shoulder brushed his left shoulder comfortingly, and all at once the pain was easier to bear.

  In silence, they emerged into the street, where six Picked Guards were on duty near the door. The warm wet air struck the faces of the prisoners, and suddenly everything that had taken place was less dreadful than this scent of freedom. Men who are about to die, thought Durant, should never be allowed to see the sun or feel the air or look at a moon like this. It makes their suffering the more intense.

  A Guard opened the door of the long black car, and one of the strangers who had waited for the Magistrate entered. Christian and Durant followed. A seat was pulled down and the other stranger sat in it. They held their guns in their hands. In the front seat sat a stiff, uniformed driver, and a Guard. The Magistrate was seated between them. The car rolled down Forty-second Street to Fifth Avenue in the silence of the muted city.

  The two Picked Guards stood alone in the office of the Magistrate. They heard doors closing, and they knew they were alone. It would be midnight before they were relieved. The larger of the two shifted a foot restlessly. He did not know the other Guard even by name, but his movement caught the other’s eyes. He fixed it upon his fellow, just slightly turning his head. The first Guard moved his gun, as if it had grown somewhat heavy. The other watched him alertly. The first man moved his gun to his left arm, and sighed, glancing hopefully at the gilt clock on the fireplace. Then, very casually, with the index finger of his right hand he scratched his right ear. The other man continued to watch him, and now his eyes sharpened.

  The first Guard yawned elaborately, studied the clock for another moment, muttered: “Only a minute.” He paused, then went on: “You just watch the clock and it moves only a minute!” The second Guard smiled briefly. He, too, shifted his gun to his left arm. He scratched his ear as the other had done. He scrutinized his finger thoughtfully. The first Guard watched him as he had been watched by the other. “Only a minute,” said the second Guard, and he lifted his right finger up and out.

  “But time runs out, minute by minute,” said the first Guard. “We’ll be relieved at midnight.”

  They looked at each other and smiled. They shifted their guns to the prescribed position and stared before them, not speaking again. But they were not Neanderthal men, now.

  Because of the wars, there had never been enough money during the past twenty years to repair the streets, or to erect new buildings except Government ones. Consequently, Fifth Avenue was a pock-marked mass of large and small craters, filled, now, with water from the recent rain. These black mirrors reflected the wan and feeble light of the occasional street lamps and shattered fragments of the moon. The proud shops and theatres of two decades ago had degenerated into formless heaps of decay, for there were no luxury goods any longer and few people, even “those most overcome with despair, would attend The Democracy theatres which droned endless indoctrination on the stages in the guise of “plays.” (Government employees, and they were multitudinous, were “encouraged” to attend regularly, but even these could not support a depraved theatre.) The great moving picture houses displayed a few pale lights, but Hollywood had long ago become part of the Department of New Education, and the products offered to the people were so devoid of all laughter, all artistry, all human interest, that they squealed and shouted and blazed the prescribed sentimentalities to empty seats.

  The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Radio City, and many other magnificent buildings of New York had been converted to Government use. All other buildings looked blindly at the moon like huge, dead monuments, so that the Government towers among them resembled spires of light. Behind their windows the thousands of evil ants plotted and toiled sleeplessly, their faces fixed and fanatical, their hands busy with files and telephones and mountainous heaps of paper. From their countless offices gushed new “directives,” new restrictions, new oppressions and new cruelties, hour after hour, like some sinister and poisonous stream.

  The Magistrate’s car rolled very carefully up Fifth Avenue, for the treacherous, water-filled craters could easily destroy a hasty tire or wheel or break even the best of springs. Only an occasional bus could be seen, dimly lighted, with the cowering passengers huddled in their seats. There was a soundlessness in this city which had been full of sound. It had been silenced as if by a marauding plague. There were some people moving on the sidewalks, but the
y, too, were almost speechless. Their footsteps shuffled on the broken walks and echoed like a hopeless army in retreat. The dark windows which they passed reflected their silence masses as ghosts might have been reflected, featureless and amorphous and unreal.

  Andrew Durant, watching them grimly through the windows of the car, saw that, as the clotted groups passed under any revealing light however pale, each man or woman was careful to bend his head and compose his features into the proper expression of these days: docility and submission. Some of the people moistened lips and set them into obedient patterns. Some of them appeared to be shrinking into their shabby clothing, as If to escape censorious eyes. They trudged on, no one exchanging a word with his neighbor, carefully stepping over broken curbs, hurrying, here and there, like animals looking for shelter.

  Perhaps it was his knowledge that he was soon to die that made Andrew look at the people so sharply and with such sudden detestation. Those older men and women, those men and women of fifty and over: what had made them betray America when they were young? In the days when America had still been a free nation, their parents must have taught them the long traditions of freedom and pride in their country. Their teachers must have taught them, and their ministers, their rabbis, their priests. The flag must have meant something to them, once. The Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence: surely there were some among them who remembered! Why had they, then, allowed the Constitution to become outlawed? Why had they averted their eyes when its Articles, one by one, had been eaten away by the rats? Had there not been a single hour when they had revolted like men in their hearts, and had raised their voices in protest? Had there not been one brave soul among them, one virile soul, one American soul?