However, in one inessential respect Adelle is a fiction: her name is not Adelle, nor was she born by the shores of the infamous Bitter Lake, nor yet by those of Love Canal, but by a toxic waste dump of lesser notoriety. These and some few other small details and proper names have been changed in order to protect the innocent and baffle pursuit. So if you have been thinking of playing detective, forget it. There is no Nymphomania, no Aghora Panthis Meditation Center, no option to purchase ten thousand depositary receipts. Anything that might look like a clue is, in fact, a red herring. Why, even Amberwell’s name might be something else than Amberwell. Yet you wouldn’t for all that, deny that he and his kind exist, would you? Or that it’s possibly for anyone so resolved to step up behind his or her selected Amberwell, tap him on the shoulder, and say, “Come with me, sir. I am making a citizen’s arrest.”?
In fact, however, Amberwell’s name is Amberwell, and he is, or was, an executive for Unitask. My tracks are well enough covered that in that crucial particular I can be candid and boast openly of my accomplishment. There he is. Behold the son of a bitch. Think what he’s done, and ask yourself if you aren’t really a little pleased that he got a bit of what he gave.
Stop me before I preach more.
February 10
Just as I tapped the last piece of the puzzle in place and Neuschwanstein stood complete, it came to me, the word I’d been looking for, the answer to Amberwell’s riddle: imagination. That was what he lacked, the missing element of his mental makeup that allowed him to assist Unitask in creating its great national anti-lottery, where a winning ticket will buy you and your family a lifetime supply of dioxin right in your own backyard. Unitask’s victims don’t exist for Amberwell because they live in hick towns like Bitter Lake or Love Canal, while he, and the fifty or sixty human beings whose faces he can recognize and who may, on that account, be real to him, all live in the posher suburbs that Unitask has not yet got round to devastating (from the Latin, devastare, to lay waste).
That, from the carefully blinkered view of Big Business is the danger of imagination—i.e., of books and movies—that it gives names to that legion of victims who were otherwise only rolling freight. Names and faces, addresses, personal histories, inner lives, and voices that can rise off a printed page and say, “Don’t kill us. O great Unitask. We’re real, we’re alive, we exist. If you prick us we bleed. If you tickle us we laugh. If you poison us we die.”
The problem has always been getting someone like Amberwell to listen. And I appear to have solved that problem.
February 11
Such weather. As though winter meant to make up for all her mildness till now with one sockdolager blizzard. We’d had fair warning and didn’t have to show. Notwithstanding which exemption I headed in to the office, made myself visible at two meetings, lunched with my boss, and then, at three P.M., just as the snowfall had escalated from impressive to awesome, I taxied to the “Discrete, Sumptuous, Comfortable Chamber of Fantasy” of the “Notorious” Mademoiselle X. (I quote from her two-column ad in the back pages of a weekly tabloid paper.)
Mademoiselle appeared at the door of the Chamber of Fantasy attired in a black spandex body stocking and thigh-high boots with stiletto heels. She touched my chest with her riding crop. “You must be Mr. Amberwell.”
I smiled sheepishly by way of confirmation. Then, realizing my smile would be invisible behind my Phantom of the Opera domino-cum-veil, I said, “I am he.”
She made a sweeping gesture with her riding crop. “Entrez, Monsieur, dans ma chambre du mal et du volupté.”
“Merci, Mademoiselle.”
From my briefcase I took out the cassette recorder, and from its file folder the script I’d spent yesterday evening preparing.
Mademoiselle X’s fee, five $20 bills, was paperclipped to the script.
“Won’t you make yourself more comfortable, Mr. Amberwell?”
“Thank you,” I said, and removed my hat.
She unclipped the money, made a neat bundle of it, and slipped it becomingly into the top of her boots. “And you are certain you do not desire to do anything else while you are here, but only . . . ?”
“Just for you to record the script as it is written, Mademoiselle, that’s all. Perhaps if you read it through once to yourself, to see that it presents no problems. Then when you’re ready, so is my recorder.”
Mademoiselle X gave me a discreet, ironic look, removed a cigarette from the box on the low glass table, and sat back on the sumptuous, comfortable goatskin-draped futon, script in hand, waiting, with eyebrows raised, for her cigarette to be lighted. Once the dignity of her profession had been accorded this due deference, she turned her attention to the script. Her silent reading was quite as dramatic as that which she consigned to tape. Her high forehead would crinkle into a threatening frown, her eyes widen with alarm, her lips curl into a smile of ridicule or complicity.
“This is very professional work, Mr. Amberwell,” she said, when she had finished reading. “Usually in this situation I am able to offer useful hints or suggestions. But this is a finished piece of work. It’s nicely paced, it builds well, and overall it’s thoroughly nasty. I hope for your sake, Mr. Amberwell, this script represents no more than a . . . fantasy. You would surely come to regret taking actions so . . . irreversible in their nature.”
I blushed all unseen. “Thank you for your compliments, Mademoiselle. Are you ready to record?”
She sighed. “Someday,” she said, “the women of our profession will get residuals for this sort of thing. D’accord, Mr. Amberwell, I am ready.”
“Oh, and Mademoiselle?”
“Yes, Mr. Amberwell?”
“Use an ordinary tone of voice, please. Nothing too theatrical. You should sound, ideally, like somebody’s mother.”
She leered. “Oh, Mr. Amberwell, you have been a very bad boy. You have torn your best clothes. You have skinned your knee. And I am afraid that for such behavior you must be severely punished. Comme ça?”
“Just so,” I assured her. “Ready?”
She stubbed out the cigarette, cleared her throat, held up the script, and nodded.
I pushed RECORD.
It looks like I won’t be getting home tonight, and maybe not tomorrow. The snow is coming down not in flakes but in truckloads. The train station was a madhouse. I was lucky to find a hotel room.
So, it’s a choice between “The Dukes of Hazzard,” a werewolf movie, and episode 6 of The Winds of War. Despite my lifelong affinity for werewolves and a growing world-war-weariness (was there ever a conclusion so foreordained?), I watched Wouk’s magnum opus. And he’s right, of course. You can’t let the Hitlers of the world walk all over you. You’ve got to draw a line. Gandhi’s nonviolence only works against an enemy with an operational conscience.
February 12
All the drama of the Great Blizzard of ’83 is over, even for Amberwell. Fortunately I’d left him in his straitjacket, not in the stricter confines of the chair. Except for the fright (he must have thought himself abandoned), he’s none the worse for wear. After a hosing down and a bite to eat and a few minutes off the earphones, he seemed almost his old self.
“I think it’s time,” I said, unfolding the metal chair and sitting down before Amberwell, who was in a kneeling position and shivering, as the beads of water from his cleansing trickled down his face and soaked through the canvas straitjacket, “for you and me to have a heart-to-heart talk about your conscience, Mr. Amberwell. How is it that you were able to go on doing exactly the same things that had already done so much harm even after the Bitter Lake trial had begun?”
“We felt that the standards the Government had set were too exacting. In fact, the E.P.A.’s new rulings tend to confirm our—”
I tromped lightly on the more sensitive of Amberwell’s big toes. “Not we, Mr. Amberwell. I’ve read the transcripts of the trial and I know Unitask’s position. It’s you, second person singular, that I want to hear from. People were coming down with kidn
ey and liver problems (which can be acutely painful), because of the poisons leeching into their drinking water. Their hair was falling out. Their children were stillborn. Don’t tell me it hasn’t been proven: all that is just sophistry. Where there’s a third-degree burn there’s fire.”
“What do you want me to say?” Amberwell asked sullenly, petulance overcoming fear.
“Not that you’re sorry, because I don’t suppose you were. Just the truth—what you actually felt and thought about the crimes you were committing.”
“I never thought what I was doing was a crime.”
“Do you think anything is a crime? Murder, for instance.”
“Yes, of course.”
“What about this—what I’m doing to you—is that a crime?”
Amberwell glowered but made no reply.
“Be honest, Mr. Amberwell. Otherwise I’ll feed you more pepper. I’ll push pins under your fingernails; we haven’t done that yet. I’ll drill your teeth like Lawrence Olivier drilled Dustin Hoffman’s in Marathon Man. Do you think what I’m doing to you is a crime?”
He took a deep breath and made his eyes meet mine. “Certainly. And you do too, you can’t deny it.”
“My ethical sense is not the issue, Mr. Amberwell. Why is it a crime?”
“Because . . . if you were caught you’d be arrested and put in jail.”
“But if I’m not caught, and not put in jail—as Unitask wasn’t and probably won’t be—then does it follow that this is not a crime?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What if I were an agent of the government, Mr. Amberwell? Suppose the F.B.I. were running another ABSCAM operation and decided that the only way to get the goods on Unitask was to put one of their executives through the wringer.”
“Our government wouldn’t do that.”
“No? Some would.”
The suggestion sank in. “Then . . . are you . . .”
“An F.B.I. agent? Sure, why not, if it’ll make you feel more at home.”
“Oh my god, I should have known.”
I had to laugh, and I could tell, from the furrowing of Amberwell’s brow, that his faith in the Justice Department was restored.
“Let’s approach this from a different angle, Mr. Amberwell. Have you ever read a book called The Scarlet Letter?”
He shook his head. “I don’t read many books.”
“Or The Retreat?”
He shook his head.
“How about I, the Jury?”
“That’s by Spillane, isn’t it? I read some of his stuff when I was a kid, so I might have read that one.”
So much for literature.
“Well, let’s consider just the word itself: guilt. Have you ever felt guilty for anything you’ve done Mr. Amberwell?”
“Certainly. I’m no saint.”
“For instance.”
“I’ve, uh, cheated on my wife from time to time.”
“And that made you feel guilty? Troubled? Perplexed?”
“Sure, all of that.”
“Not just worried you might get the clap?”
“That too, I guess.” He licked his upper lip, trying to think what it was I wanted him to say. “Maybe . . . maybe I don’t understand those terms the same way you do. I mean, they’re like words you read in the newspaper more than the ones you use in everyday life. For me anyhow.” He looked up at me with the eager-to-please but certain-to-fail look of a student being examined in a subject he’s never studied. Fearing the alternative, he was desperate to keep our little Socratic dialogue afloat, but the effort to try and speak in my language was as frustrating as if he’d been required to converse in Sanskrit (which is a long-term possibility worth considering; there must be instruction cassettes available somewhere).
“They didn’t have required courses in ethics when you were getting your M.B.A., did they, Mr. Amberwell?”
“No. I graduated a good while before Watergate.”
“Did you ever wonder, in the course of the Bitter Lake trial, whether you’d have acted differently if you had had such a course?”
“No. And I don’t think it would make that much difference. At least I don’t see any difference in the younger guys coming in, who’ve had to take that sort of stuff. I figure it’s like requiring courses in the history of music. It doesn’t really relate to the real world.”
“I don’t know about that, Mr. Amberwell. Isn’t this the real world?”
Amberwell did not at once agree to that proposition. But at last, with no prompting, but without looking up from the floor, he nodded his head.
“Are you beginning to understand why you’re being tortured, Mr. Amberwell?”
“To . . . uh . . . set an example, I suppose.”
“You suppose correctly. Now look up at my camera, Mr. Amberwell. I want a good clear picture of the original condition of your face, before we start tattooing.”
Amberwell looked up with abject terror. “No! No, you wouldn’t—”
“Smile,” I said, adjusting the focus for a close-up. “Then, while we’re getting you ready to set an example for other executives in the chemical industry, I’ll fill you in on the basic plot of The Scarlet Letter.”
It was at that moment of purely psychological strain that Amberwell achieved something like a primal scream. His back arched, his neck corded, his face became a mask of beet-red rage, and the sound he made as the flashcube popped was utterly inhuman, an elemental roar that filled the torture chamber to its acoustical brim, as a Berlioz finale fills a concert hall. A single time Amberwell screamed so, and then fell silent, his last hope spent.
“It seems to me, Mr. Amberwell, that your soul is not yet prepared to pay the price that Kali-Ananda requires.”
“You [expletive deleted],” said Amberwell. “Why don’t you stop playing your [expletive deleted] games, and get this the [expletive deleted] over with.”
“Kali-Ananda would derive no satisfaction from your mere death, Mr. Amberwell. It’s atonement she’s after. Once your heart is fully in accord with hers, then you will ask to be allowed to serve her with your whole being. You will be a role model for other executives. And when you have been taken to our secret ashram and dedicated completely to the goddess’s worship, people will point to you with amazement and whisper, ‘Is that Amberwell?’ You will be a living legend. But I cannot say these things so well as Kali-Ananda herself can say them. She has taped a message for you, Mr. Amberwell. I will let Kali-Ananda explain to you, in her own voice, the nature and extent of your guilt—and how, with her help and mine, you can begin to seek expiation.” Though Amberwell struggled, he has become so weak that I had little difficulty securing him in the chair. I saw to it that by no amount of neck-twisting or shaking of his head could he dislodge the earphones. Then I inserted in the player the cassette that Mademoiselle X had recorded and left Amberwell alone, with one burning candle, to make the acquaintance of Kali-Ananda, whose joy is her wrath, whose kiss is a scourge, whose retribution is like the lightning that rends the oak.
February 13
Sunday, and the newspaper seems to tell of nothing but the misdeeds of the world’s ever-busy Amberwells:
Item: For ten years Ford has been manufacturing cars with a transmission defect that has caused “scores of deaths and injuries” a defect that Ford “could have corrected for 3 cents a vehicle.”
Item: Miss Rita Lavelle has been appointed to be Reagan’s ritual scapegoat in the impending scandals at E.P.A. “I can defend every action I have taken,” she is quoted as saying. (So can I, Miss Lavelle, so can I! I wish we might have a chance to defend our actions together someday in intimate surroundings.)
Item: All Mexico’s police are criminals. Ditto in Richmond, California.
Item: The Governor of Tennessee’s conviction for conspiracy, mail fraud, and extortion was overturned by an appeals court judge on the grounds of “faulty jury selection.”
Item: By a 3 to 2 margin, the American Bar Association has decided that a
lawyer is to be prohibited from exposing a crime he knows his client intends to commit, unless the crime intended is murder or bodily harm. (A statute certain to make the world of corporate crime even more “discreet, sumptuous, and comfortable” than it is now, but one that is patently unfair to torturers.)
While I renewed my sense of indignation at this ever-replenished source, Amberwell, downstairs, listened to Kali-Ananda’s laments, her accusations and revilings, her promise of redemption to the sinner who would embrace his punishment. Then, when the tape had automatically rewound itself, he listened again.
At eleven, when The Winds of War was over, and Pearl Harbor had been beautifully blasted to bits, I brought Amberwell his dinner of broccoli stalks, potato skins, and shredded salt codfish soaked in vermouth. He ate on his knees, in his straitjacket, snarfling up the mess vacuum-cleaner style.
“A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Amberwell,” I said, when his bowl had been licked clean down to the Purina Dog-Chow logo.
He regarded me dully, such a gaze as a retarded deaf-mute child might give to the talk show on view on his ward’s TV.
“Now, Mr. Amberwell, don’t be difficult.” I donned my comic Gestapo accent: “You know ve haf vays of making you talk.”
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I wasn’t thinking. My mind was blank.”
“Come, come, Mr. Amberwell. There’s no such thing as a blank mind. You’ve had a whole day to meditate on the counsels and instruction of our Spiritual Leader. Your mind must be quite full.”
“I was glad you turned the tape off for a while,” he said hollowly. “Her voice is . . . But I guess that’s your idea, to see if you can drive me crazy. And I guess you will if you keep at it.”
“You begin to sound resigned to your lot, Mr. Amberwell. Kali-Ananda will be pleased.”
“Yeah.” He smiled a smile that was a votive of offering to Kali’s black heart. “You give my love to Kali-Ananda. You do that.”
Foundations of Fear Page 59