A Fraction of the Whole

by Steve Toltz

  I rubbed my head. I felt an existential migraine coming on, a real blinder.

  I went out and walked along the dark road into the town. With his newfound celebrity, Terry had given the criminal world a face. With this book, Harry and I would be giving it a brain. It felt good to be a part of something bigger than myself. The lights from the town were flicking off, one by one. I could see the silhouette of the prison on the hill. It loomed large and grotesque, like an enormous stone head of some long-dead god eroding on a cliff. I spoke out loud: “Why shouldn’t I do what I want? What’s stopping me?”

  I felt a lump in my throat the size of a fist. It was the first time I’d ever questioned myself so rigorously, and it seemed as if the questions were being articulated by someone older than myself.

  I continued to speak out loud: “People trust too much in themselves. What they take for truth, they let rule their lives, and if I set out to find a way to live so I will be in control of my life, then I actually lose control, because the thing I have decided on, my truth, becomes the ruler and I become its servant. And how can I be free to evolve if I’m submitting myself to a ruler, any ruler, even if that ruler is me?”

  I was scared by my own words, because their implications were beginning to sink in. “Lawlessness, aimlessness, chaos, confusion, contusion,” I said to no one, to the night. I was talking myself in circles. My head throbbed. I was thinking the kind of thoughts that caused throbbing.

  All of a sudden, with blinding clarity, I knew that Harry was a genius. A prophet, maybe even a martyr- that would be decided later, depending on the nature of his death. He was innovating. That’s why Harry chose me to bring his asinine tablets down from the mountain. He was showing me the way. By example, he was showing me that it doesn’t take a god to innovate, create, invert, destroy, crush, and inspire; a man can do the job just as well, and in his own good time. Not in six days, like You-Know-Who. It needn’t be a rush job. And even if, at the end of my toils, I wound up inspiring only hatred or indifference, I knew then and there it was my duty to try, because this was my awakening, and that’s what an awakening is all about: getting up. There’s no use having an awakening and then hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep.

  These were big thoughts, really obese. I found a half-smoked cigarette on the ground. I picked it up. It felt strong in my hand, like an Olympic torch. I lit it and walked around town. It was cold. I stamped my feet and held my hands under my armpits to keep warm. This book of Harry’s was the first small step in a nameless revolution that was taking place, and I had been chosen because of the excellence of my mind. I wanted to praise myself without guilt. I wanted to kiss my own brain. I felt thousands of years old. I felt older than soil. I was overcome with the strength and power of words and ideas. I thought about my first father, father number one, back in Poland, and I thought about his insanity: dying for a god. What a stupid reason to die: for a god, a lousy god! I shouted loudly to a tree, “I want to die because I am a creature with a sell-by date! I want to die because I am a man and that’s what men do; they crumble, decay, disappear!” I walked on, cursing my father’s blind stupidity. I screamed, “To die for an idea! To take a bullet for a deity! What an idiot!”

  Our town had streetlamps only on the main street- the roads leading into and out of it were left to the mercy of the moon and the stars, and when there were neither it was black through and through. The trees rattled in the wind that blew from the west. I walked to a house and sat on the veranda and waited. For what? Not what: who. I was at Caroline’s house. I realized suddenly that romantics are dickheads. There’s nothing wonderful or interesting about unrequited love. I think it’s shitty, just plain shitty. To love someone who doesn’t return your affections might be exciting in books, but in life it’s unbearably boring. I’ll tell you what’s exciting: sweaty, passionate nights. But sitting on the veranda outside the home of a sleeping woman who isn’t dreaming about you is slow moving and just plain sad.

  I waited for Caroline to awaken and come out onto the veranda and wrap her arms around me. I thought the power of my mind was so strong I could will her from her slumber and draw her to the window. I would tell her my ideas and she would finally know who I was. I thought I was as good as my mind and she would be bowled over by both; I forgot entirely about my body and my face, which were not so hot. I stepped up to the front window and saw my reflection and changed my mind. I stepped away and walked back home. This was my awakening, Jasper! Harry, poor Harry, he was enormously important for me: an unfettered mind. Up until I met him, all the minds I knew were fettered, shockingly fettered. The freedom of Harry’s mind was exhilarating. It was a mind absolutely true to itself, that ran on its own steam. I’d never before encountered a timeless mind, impervious to the influence of its surroundings.

  I went home and sifted through Harry’s notes some more. They were impossibly silly! This book, his handbook for criminals, it was an aberration. It shouldn’t exist. It couldn’t exist. That’s why I had to help him bring it to life. I had to! I divided the book into two major sections: Crime and Punishment. Then within these sections I made chapters, an index, and added footnotes, just like in a real textbook. I was completely faithful to Harry’s notes. Every now and then as I typed I’d come across a passage and I’d laugh out loud, a huge belly laugh. It was wonderful! His words were stupendous! They bored right into my brain.

  On Home Break-ins

  Once inside, be fast and methodical. Wear gloves and keep them on. Never take them off under any circumstances. You’d be surprised at how many burglars remove their gloves in order to pick their nose. I cannot stress this strongly enough: Don’t leave fingerprints anywhere! Not even in your nose!

  I typed it all up, word for word. I didn’t leave anything out. I did the whole thing without sleep. There was electricity running through me. I couldn’t turn it off. Here’s another one I remember:

  On Bribery

  When bribing officers of the law, a common technique is to drop the money on the floor in front of the officer in question and say in a casual voice, “Did you drop that?” This is risky because of the possibility of the officer saying, “Yes I did. Cheers,” and arresting you after he’s pocketed the money. While no bribery ploy is guaranteed, I recommend just coming out and saying, “So. You take bribes or what?” This way, if he doesn’t, and charges you with attempting to bribe an officer, you can defend yourself by explaining that you never actually offered a bribe, which you didn’t; you were inquiring about the honesty of the person arresting you and were simply on the lookout for hypocrisy.

  His logic was infallible. Even the chapter headings made me whirl with joy:

  Motiveless Crimes: Why?

  Armed Robbery: Laughing All the Way from the Bank

  Crime and Fashion: Balaclavas Are Always In

  The Police and You: How to Spot a Crooked Cop by His Shoes

  The chapter titled “Pickpocketing: An Intimate Crime” had a line in it that said, “If you have to unzip it, it’s not a pocket. Remove your hand immediately!” Can you argue with that? No, you can’t. I can remember some of the other chapter headings. There was

  Assault: Bruising Your Enemies

  Blame: Framing Your Friends

  Manslaughter: Oops!

  Escaping Custody: Walk, Don’t Run

  Love: The Real Informer

  Crimes of Passion: Hot-Headed Murder

  Crimes of Perversion: For Lovers Only

  It was an exhaustive tome. He’d left nothing out. No crime was too small, as was covered in Chapter 13: “Misdemeanors and Other Nonprofit Crimes: Jaywalking, Loitering, Graffiti, Littering, Joyriding, and Public Nudity.” When Harry said this was to be the definitive work, he wasn’t kidding!

  I left the house at dawn, buzzing with speculation. Would Harry ever get this crazy book published? Who would publish it? How would the public react?

  When I stepped outside, I noticed a campfire smoking in the cold morning and, beside it, four
sleeping reporters camped out under the trees. When did they get there? A shiver ran through me. Their presence meant one of only three things: either Terry had committed another crime or he’d been arrested or he was dead. I wanted to shake them awake and ask them which it was, but I didn’t dare, not when I was on my way over to Harry’s- a lesser fugitive, sure, but a fugitive all the same. I let the reporters have their sleep, wished them all nightmares, and walked to the bus stop.

  I heard footsteps behind me. I grimaced, expecting police or a gaggle of reporters. It was neither. It was my mother in her beige nightgown and bare feet. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in decades. She must have sneaked past the reporters too.

  “Where are you going at this hour of the morning? Are you going to see Terry?”

  “No, Mum, I don’t know where he is.”

  She gripped me by the arm. I saw something terrible in her eyes. They looked like they’d been crying, draining her body of salt and other essential minerals. Her illness was taking its toll. She was already thinner, already old. She said somberly, “There’s been another attack. It was on the radio. This time another cricketer- they found him with his head bashed in and a cricket ball stuffed in his mouth. They’re saying your brother did it. Why, why are they saying he did it?”

  “Because he probably did it.”

  She slapped me hard across the face. “Don’t say that! It’s a lie! Find Terry and tell him to go to the police. If he hides, it just makes him look guilty.”

  The bus came while she was still babbling hysterically. “And if you can’t find Terry, then for God’s sake, find that double!”

  I stepped onto the bus and found a seat. As it drove off, I looked out the window at my mother. She rested one hand against a tree while picking gravel off the soles of her feet with the other.

  I arrived at Harry’s to see him glaring at me through the front window. As I entered, I resisted a powerful urge to hug him.

  “What are you doing here?” Harry shouted in my face. “I was hoping I wouldn’t see you until you finished! You’ve changed your mind, haven’t you? Fucker! Traitor! You’ve had an attack of conscience! Why don’t you get out of here and go join a monastery, you bloody hypocrite!”

  Resisting a smile, I pulled the manuscript from the brown satchel and waved it in his face. His eyes widened.

  “Is this…”

  My smile couldn’t contain itself any longer. I let it explode.

  “So quick?”

  “I had great words to work with.”

  Harry dived for the manuscript and flicked through it excitedly. When he reached the end, he turned back to the front page. I stood there awhile before realizing that he was going to read the thing to the end. I went into the backyard, which was drenched in sunlight. The pool was now an enormous fetid swamp. The lawn was overgrown with weeds. The metal frames of the banana chairs were brown with rust. I stretched out on one and looked up at the sky. Clouds shaped like pregnant bellies were floating through it. My lids closed and I drifted languidly into sleep. Before I got there, in the half dreamworld, I thought I saw Terry hiding out in one of the clouds. I saw him pull the soft fluffy veil over his face whenever a plane sailed by. Then I fell asleep.

  I woke sweating. The sun was sitting on me. Blinking through the bright light, I could see the silhouette of Harry’s head. It seemed enormous. When he leaned into the shadows, I saw him beaming at me. He sat on the edge of my banana chair and locked me in a tight embrace, covering me in kisses. He even kissed me on the mouth, which was revolting, but I took it in the spirit it was given.

  “You’ve done me a wonderful service, Martin. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”

  “There was another attack,” I said.

  “Yeah, heard it on the radio. Stupid bugger.”

  “Any word from him? Any idea where he might be?”

  Harry shook his head sadly. “He’s become a true-blue celebrity. He can’t avoid the coppers too much longer. Famous faces make lousy fugitives.”

  “Do you think, if they catch up with him, he’ll go quietly?”

  “Not bloody likely,” he said, picking up his manuscript and stroking it as though it were a thigh. “Come on. Let’s go make some noise of our own.”

  ***

  Finding a publisher wasn’t going to be easy, and not only because of the risky content. Harry was a fugitive. If we went to a publisher with Harry’s name plastered all over the manuscript, we might get more than a simple rejection. It was possible one of the publishers might call the police. A double rejection! After much arguing, I managed to persuade Harry that we should keep his identity secret until the last possible minute- right up to the moment of printing we’d withhold the author’s name. But Harry still wanted to come along to choose the publishing house most worthy of his tome. It seemed impossible. He was a wanted man- not in Terry’s league, but police don’t forget to look for escaped criminals just because the press isn’t in love with them. On top of that, Harry’s leg had gotten so bad he could hardly walk. Unfortunately, nothing I could say would dissuade him from personally guiding his legacy into print. It was all too vital to leave in my inexperienced hands.

  We went out the following day. With his limp and scraggly beard, he looked like a castaway. I suggested he shave and make himself more presentable, but he insisted that authors always look unfit for society so it was actually to our benefit that he looked like shit. He threw on an old coat despite the hot sun and hid a sawed-off shotgun in the inside pocket. I didn’t say anything. “Let’s go then, eh.” I offered my services as a human crutch and he put all his weight on me, apologizing profusely. It felt like I was lugging a dead body.

  The first publisher’s building looked like it would cost you just to enter it, and inside, the lobby was full of mirrors that proved you were a slob. We made our way up to the twentieth floor, sharing the elevator with two suits that had men trapped inside them. The publisher’s offices hogged the whole floor. The top of the receptionist’s head asked if we had an appointment. What little of her face we could see was smiling cruelly as we fumbled a no. “Well, he’s too busy to see you today,” she said in a non-negotiable voice. Harry went into his thing.

  “See here. This is one of those opportunities you’ll be kicking yourself about. Just like the publisher who rejected that famous book which went on to sell a gazillion copies. What was the name of that book, Martin? You know, the one that got rejected and went on to sell a gazillion copies?”

  I didn’t know but thought I’d better play along. I joined in by naming the best seller of all time.

  “The Bible, King James edition.”

  “Yes, by God, that was it. The Bible! The receptionist wouldn’t let the apostle through, even though he had a gold mine in his hands.”

  “Oh for God’s sake,” the receptionist said, sighing. She glanced down at her appointment book. “He has an appointment at the end of the day, and if that runs short, you can see him for five minutes before he goes home.”

  “Good enough, kind lady,” Harry said, winking. I helped him to a chair in the waiting room.

  We waited.

  Harry was shivering and his hands were hiding deep inside his coat, which made me nervous, knowing what else was in there. His teeth were clenched together as if someone had asked him to smile for a photo twelve hours earlier and hadn’t taken it yet.

  “Are you OK?” I asked him.

  I could tell his paranoia was firing on all circuits. His eyes circled the room while his neck swung his head from doorway to hallway. Around lunchtime I noticed that Harry had his fingers in his ears. When I asked him about it, he muttered something about a noise. I couldn’t hear anything. A split second later there was a loud bang. I craned my head and through one of the doorways saw a young man kicking the life out of a photocopier machine. I looked at Harry incredulously, and remembered again that when Terry and I had first gone to the prison to meet him, Harry had mentioned something about telepathy being highl
y developed in the minds of career criminals. Long-term paranoia earns people a certain level of ESP, he had said, or something to that effect. Was it true? I hadn’t taken him seriously then, but now? I didn’t know what to think. I scrutinized Harry’s face. He nodded at me with an almost imperceptible smugness.

  At five minutes to five we were ushered into the publisher’s office. Everything about it made you feel small and unimportant. It was spacious and quiet and air-conditioned and newly carpeted, and instead of a window there was a wall of glass you couldn’t open and jump out of, even if you wanted to; at best you could press your face against it and dream of falling. The publisher looked as if someone had told him if he smiled he’d lose everything he had ever worked for.

  “You’ve written a book. I publish books. You think that means we’re a match made in heaven. It doesn’t. I have to be bowled over by whatever you’ve got, and I don’t fall easily,” he said.

  Harry demanded that the publisher take a quick look while we waited. The publisher laughed without smiling. Harry tossed in the line about missing golden opportunities that went straight to the man’s heart, the one in his back pocket. He picked up the manuscript and browsed through it, clicking his tongue as if he were calling his dog. He stood and walked to the glass wall and read it while leaning against it. I worried the glass would crack and send him tumbling into the street. After a minute he threw the manuscript at us as if it were making his hands dirty.

  “Is this a joke?”

  “I assure you it’s not.”

  “To publish this would be suicide. You’re instructing people how to break the law.”

  “Why is he telling me what my book is about?” Harry asked me.