“But then some of you,” she continues, her obvious amusement mixed with a healthy dose of scorn, “you latch on to pieces of our religions and treat them as if they were the answers to all of your problems. Our monks spend all of their lives studying the precepts of our beliefs, from the time they’re children until they’re old men. And then you self-styled ‘gurus’ come along, and you think you understand everything.”
She pauses, stretches. Retrieving a pack of cigarettes from a shirt pocket, she shakes out a single cigarette and strikes a match. In the quick, bright glow, Sunshine catches a sharper glimpse of Nathan’s face. He’s calm. He’s attentive. As always.
Shaking out the match, the woman throws it carelessly to the floor, where it continues to burn. For a horrifying moment, Sunshine has a vision of the house catching fire. Once again, for the second time in a week, she and Jill will be trapped in a house that’s burning down around them. But the match sputters and dies, leaving Sunshine free to return from her imaginary horror to her immediate one.
“Our religions are much older than yours,” the woman continues, after taking one long drag on the cigarette and setting it down on the edge of the table. “They’re very complex, very rich in tradition and ritual. But you Americans don’t have the time to study and absorb these things. You want everything now. You want it in a form that’s easy to digest, like pabulum. If it takes you more than five minutes to understand something, you lose interest. So people like you take our cultural heritage and shrink it down to bite-sized chunks and package it like breakfast cereal. The wisdom of the ages in three easy lessons. And you sell your brand of instant enlightenment to the bored children of the rich, who buy it like they buy their drugs. Anything to escape from their pointless reality.” She pauses for another drag on her cigarette and slouches back in her chair.
“And what of your drug?” Nathan asks. “What of the drug affected by the bored and wealthy children of your country?”
His tone is relaxed but mischievous. Sunshine thrills to it. Closing her eyes, she bathes in the soothing magic of his voice, barely discerning the words, just letting the serenity of his voice wash over her in waves.
“Surely, you’re not speaking of cigarettes?” The woman is puzzled. “A vice, to be sure, but a relatively harmless addiction, don’t you think?”
“I do not speak of cigarettes,” Nathan says. “I speak of this adventure that you people euphemistically refer to as ‘revolution.’ Are you, yourself, not addicted to the thrill of violence?”
“You’re talking nonsense,” the woman snorts, but the defensive tone in her voice is unmistakable. “Do you think we enjoy living like hunted animals? We fight because we must, not because we enjoy it. We fight for the poor, for the oppressed people of Qen Phon. For the children who have never tasted of freedom.”
“And yet you, yourself, are certainly not poor,” Nathan points out, reasonably. “Nor are many of the others. You are mostly from middle-class backgrounds, am I right? Many of you were educated in the United States, yes? Which is certainly a luxury that is not available to the poor, oppressed people of Qen Phon. You play at revolution because it gives some meaning to your boring, middle-class lives. Americans have their drugs, and you have yours. You have simply chosen different methods of escaping from realities that are too drab to face.”
“I’m not going to sit here and listen to this bullshit.” The woman slams her palms down on the frail table, rattling it and sending the lit cigarette skittering to the floor. Sunshine flinches with the sudden noise and gasps when she sees the cigarette glowing on the floorboards. It’s like a nightmare that won’t go away. Please go out, she begs, concentrating as if she can extinguish it through the sheer force of her will. And like the match before it, the cigarette slowly sputters and dies.
“You’re a fine one to talk about our motives,” the woman says angrily, pointing an accusing finger at Nathan. “My heart is pure. I do what I do for my people. For my country. But you, you sell out your own people for money! You dare to question my ideals? You sell us two American athletes for three hundred thousand dollars, and you have the nerve to criticize me?” She laughs bitterly. “What a joke,” she says. “What a sad joke.”
Nathan smiles. “What we do is of no importance,” he says, “as long as we are honest about why we do it. And I don’t mean honest to other people. I speak of honesty to one’s self. You snuff out the lives of human beings and justify it to yourselves by calling it ‘revolution,’ which somehow raises it above the status of petty crime. I have done what I have done for money, as you say. But I do not try to disguise my actions with flowery motives to make them seem more noble. It brings to mind the story…”
At first, Sunshine struggles to make sense out of what she’s just heard. Sell out your own people? What does that mean? Three hundred thousand dollars? What is she talking about?
But after a few seconds, the answer begins to work its way into her mind. She tries desperately to push it away. She castigates herself for even allowing such a horrible thought to come into her head. The stress of being kidnapped and then of finding Nathan here, it’s making me crazy. I must not think such thoughts. I must drive them away.
She closes her eyes and tries to meditate, chanting her mantra silently.
But her mantra will not come.
And the persistent thought refuses to be exorcised.
Nathan. He sold us out. Me and Jill. For money. For three hundred thousand dollars. Nathan sold us out. Nathan did it Nathan sold us out three hundred thousand dollars he did it Nathan did it he sold us out Nathan did it he did it NATHAN DID IT NATHAN SOLD US OUT NATHAN DID IT NATHAN DID IT NATHAN… NATHAN… NAAAATHAAAAAAANNNNNN…
And then her new mantra is screaming like a madman trapped in her brain. NAAAATHAAAN! NAAAAAATHAAAAAN!!!! NATHAN DID IT! NATHAN SOLD US OUT!!! She claps her hands over her ears, but it keeps coming, louder and louder, filling her brain, filling the hallway, filling the whole house…
NAAAAATHAAAAN! NATHAN DID IT!
And then, suddenly, there’s a horrible silence.
Her hands fall slowly from her ears. Her eyes open. And yet, for a few minutes longer, she neither sees nor hears.
Nathan. She whispers his name. The plaintive wail of a lost child. The longing cry of a devastated lover. Oh, Nathan, she moans. And then again, in heart-wrenching agony: Oh, Nathan!
How could you do this?
How could you?
Her knees buckle. She slides down the wall until she’s crouching on her heels. And that’s how she finds herself when awareness cautiously creeps back into her mind. As her head clears, she’s surprised to discover that she’s still looking through the crack in the door into the room. Her life has changed so dramatically in just a few, short seconds that it seems impossible that she could still be in the same location, either temporally or physically.
Nathan sits alone in the room, slouched back in his chair, his expression hidden in the low light, which has grown even dimmer – or perhaps, Sunshine thinks, my eyes aren’t working really well just now. Thank God he can’t see me, she thinks, numbly, invoking the deity for the first time in many years. Thank God for the darkness.
God. Nathan was my God, she thinks, bitterly. I worshipped him. I gave him my body. I gave him my soul. And he betrayed me. He sold me out. Like Judas.
Only this time, the master betrayed the disciple.
And for considerably more than a mere thirty pieces of silver.
“I have told you that blind faith in any human being is misplaced,” Nathan says. He speaks quietly, but the words pierce Sunshine’s heart like barbed arrows, and she jumps, nearly toppling over. “You have created me as the personification of your longings,” Nathan says, pleasantly. “And now you’re disappointed that I fail to measure up to your expectations, yes?”
How long has he known I was here? Sunshine wonders. I should have known he could see me. Or sense my presence. Even in the dark. With his powers…
Powers?
He doesn’t have any powers. He’s just a man. A sensitive and perceptive man, to be sure. But frail and weak.
And greedy.
Just like everybody else.
And I don’t want to talk to him right now. I just want him to go away. I don’t even want to think about him right now. Some other time. Later. When I’ve calmed down. When my heart isn’t pounding. When my mind isn’t racing. When I can think clearly again. But right now, I’ve got to…
Oh my God. Sammy’s going to be looking for me any minute now. If he isn’t already. I’ve got to pull myself together. For Jill. If I fall apart now, Akaso won’t want me, and he’ll send for Jill, and it’ll just kill her, I know it will. She acts tough, but she’s so fragile, just a child, really. She’s been protected from everything all of her life, something like this could cause so much emotional damage…
That’s it, Sunshine thinks, nodding silently. I’ll concentrate on what I’m doing for Jill. Taking the bullet for her, so to speak. I’ll think about my own problems later.
Much later.
“Having your illusions shattered can be painful,” Nathan observes. He’s left his seat and he’s walked over to the door while Sunshine was lost in thought. Now he stands in the open doorway, just a few feet from where she sits in a heap on the floor. “But it’s an important step in your personal growth. You have learned all that I can teach you. And now I have taught you the ultimate lesson. Which is…” He pauses, expectantly.
“Which is,” Sunshine whispers, “that you can’t really teach me anything. That to really learn anything, I have to teach myself.” She closes her eyes. “That’s what you wanted me to say, isn’t it?” she asks, wearily.
“I want you to say whatever you want to say.”
Sunshine sighs and reopens her eyes. “Why did you do it?” she asks, more tired than accusing.
“It will require a great deal of money to rebuild the ashram,” Nathan says, matter-of-factly. “My flock cannot survive on spiritual fruit alone. These people gave me the money I needed, and in exchange, I arranged for you to be away from the security of the Olympic Village so that they could borrow you for a short time.”
“A woman was killed, you know,” Sunshine says, flatly. “How does that work into your equation?”
Nathan shrugs. “Nobody lives forever,” he says. “Life and death are merely two sides of the same coin. Without one, we can never know the other. You know this.”
“And what about me and Jill? They chased us through the streets, scared us half out of our wits. They drugged us and they dragged us off to God-knows-where. They’re going to rape us and probably kill us, for all I know. How much was that worth to you?”
Nathan actually smiles. “You are strong, Sunshine. You can accept whatever happens to you. You understand that, ultimately, one experience is the same as another.”
“But it’s not just me,” Sunshine hisses. Anger flashes in her eyes. “What about Jill? You have no right to do this to her! Don’t you understand? She’s not some kind of toy, some kind of doll you can just kick around. She’s a human being. She has feelings, and emotions, and… Oh, hell, what am I doing, wasting my time talking to you.” She starts to rise to her feet, unsteadily. Nathan extends a hand for assistance. Sunshine slaps it away and climbs to her feet by herself.
“I leave you with one last thought,” Nathan says, disregarding Sunshine’s outburst. “Do not…”
“I’m not interested in your thoughts. I have nothing but contempt for your thoughts.”
“Do not reject all that you have learned from me,” Nathan continues, “just because you reject me. You have much anger, and now you must decide whether it will control you or…”
Even Sunshine is surprised when she spits in Nathan’s face, perhaps more surprised than he is, because she gasps and draws back, while he continues speaking, unperturbed.
“… or whether you will channel your anger, harness it, allow it to convey you to new experiences and perceptions. The question is…”
And then she surprises herself again, slapping Nathan squarely in the face with all the force she can muster.
“The question is,” he continues, with no noticeable change in expression, “whether you will grow, or whether you will die. You stand at a fork in the road, and you no longer have a guide. Or, rather, you now recognize that the guide on whom you have depended is no longer someone on whom you can rely. Perhaps he never was. You must make your own decisions. You have always had to make your own decisions, but now you recognize that fact for the first time. You feel alone, abandoned. You wish to lash out, to inflict pain…”
“You bastard,” she says, her voice quavering with anger. “You smug, cold-blooded bastard.”
She feels the anger that wells up inside her, an amorphous mass of indignation that threatens to explode and overwhelm her. I’ve got to fight it, she thinks, desperately. I have to maintain my cool. For Jill.
Which means that I have to get away from Nathan. Right now. Or I won’t be able to control myself.
“I hate you,” she says, flatly, her voice hollow. “I despise you and everything you stand for. But I can’t think about that right now. I’ve got more important things to do. Goodbye, Nathan.” And she swings around on her heels and begins to walk swiftly back down the long corridor…
But she walks only a few steps away before she stops and turns back. Nathan stands there, expectantly, as if he knew, before she did, that she has more to say.
Damn you, she thinks.
“No,” she says, shaking her head, “I don’t hate you. That would give you too much power over me. So I’m not going to hate you. I’m not going to think about you at all. Not now.”
Without waiting for a response, she turns and resumes her walk down the dark hallway.
And that’s when she hears the noises coming from around the corner at the end of the hall, from the direction of the small foyer. Oh no, she thinks, Sammy must have come out of Akaso’s room. He’s going to be really upset that I’m not there. I hope I haven’t blown the whole deal.
As she rounds the corner, she collides with someone who is scurrying around the corner in the opposite direction, knocking him clean off his feet.
“Oh, Jesus!” Sammy says, more frightened than hurt, as he scampers back to his feet. “Where were you?” he demands, accusingly. “You promised me you wouldn’t go anywhere.”
The guard, Sunshine notices, stands lounging against the wall, leaning lazily on his gun, smirking at Sammy’s mishap.
“I didn’t go anywhere,” Sunshine says. “I just wanted to stretch my legs for a minute. I was getting so bored waiting for you. What took you so long?”
Concentrate, she thinks. Concentrate on Jill. I’m doing this for Jill. I must be in complete control of myself. It’s like I’m in a play. I have to play my part, and I have to be convincing. I can’t think about my own problems. Not right now. I must be strong for Jill.
“Who were you talking to?” Sammy asks, peering around the corner.
Sunshine looks back over her shoulder. The corridor is empty. “Nobody,” she says. For some reason, it’s important that Sammy not know about her encounter with Nathan. “I was just singing.”
“It sounded like you were talking to somebody,” Sammy says suspiciously.
“I’m sorry I knocked you over,” Sunshine says solicitously, changing the subject. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“Oh, no, don’t be ridiculous. You just caught me off balance, is all.” Sammy glances at the guard, who looks away but makes no effort to hide his amusement.
That’s not good, Sunshine thinks, I’ve embarrassed Sammy in front of someone he’s trying to impress. But I guess it really doesn’t matter. By now, Akaso’s either accepted my plan or he’s rejected it. Being in Sammy’s good graces probably isn’t important anymore.
So she waits while Sammy brushes himself off, straightens up, and tries to regain at least a semblance of his wounded dignity. And finally, when he appar
ently feels sufficiently composed, he looks at her and speaks.
Here it comes, she thinks.
“Akaso Siko will see you now,” Sammy announces, as if he were admitting her to an audience with a distinguished world leader. “Will you follow me, please?”
“With pleasure,” Sunshine lies. He really looks up to Akaso, she thinks. How sad, having a terrorist as a role model.
But then again, she thinks bitterly, as she follows Sammy past the guard and through the foreboding doorway, I’m a fine one to talk about choosing the wrong role model, about following the wrong leader.
But I can’t think about that right now.
Right now, I have more immediate things to worry about.
Like how I’m going to convince Akaso Siko that I enjoy making love with him more than anything in the whole world when all I really want to do is crawl off into a dark corner and cry, and cry, and cry, and cry…
5.2.17: Tanami
Do I really want to watch this? he wonders.
And once again, for perhaps the tenth time in as many minutes, G.W. answers his own question by turning away from the two-way mirror through which he’s been peering into the interrogation room.
But as soon as he turns away, he thinks: Oh, hell, I have to watch. Whether I want to watch or not is irrelevant. Yes, it’s brutal. Yes, it’s revolting. But they’re doing it for Jill, damn it, and I can’t just turn away and pretend that I’m not part of it.
After all, if I insisted on it, they’d stop. We’ve already established that.
So even though I’m out here and they’re in there, I’m every bit as responsible for what’s going on as the bastards who are doing it.
I can’t be a hypocrite. They’re doing this for Jill, so they’re doing it for me. And even though I might not have the balls to do it myself, he admits, swallowing hard, I can’t pretend that I’m not a part of it.
If I look away, it’s like I’m trying to disassociate myself from it, like I wish they would stop.
Transition Page 76