Sparta

by Roxana Robinson

  During the day he was tired, and he seldom left the apartment. He felt safest in the bedroom, the curtains pulled as far as they’d go across the windows. The living room had no curtains, and Conrad didn’t go in there until after dark. When he did, he didn’t turn on the lights, only the TV. A lighted room at night was a target—a perfectly illuminated target, like a little lighted box in a shooting range.

  The only time Conrad had to get dressed and leave was on Thursday morning, when Mrs. Menendez came in to clean the apartment. Then he took his computer and went out, nodding at the Russian as he crossed the gleaming lobby. The Russian stared at him with animosity, his black eyes slitted, his body swollen beneath the scarlet and brass. He seemed to think he’d been hired to threaten and intimidate. Fuck the Russian, thought Conrad.

  On Thursday mornings he went out to a coffee shop, where he stayed playing Sudoku and reading blogs until Mrs. Menendez was gone, at noon. He read the news: Petraeus had taken over the command in Iraq. Bush had announced a surge of twenty thousand U.S. troops. Iraqi civilian deaths in 2006 had topped thirty-four thousand. That fact, the civilian deaths, made Conrad feel very strange. It was a large number. It was the bombs. A captain had been caught on video, talking on his cell phone and saying exultantly, “I just killed half the population of north Ramadi! Fuck the red tape!” He had just ordered a five-hundred-pound bomb. It was the bombs and the artillery. They were turning civilians into pink mist. He thought of the spatters on the wall.

  He didn’t much like the news. Just seeing the word ‘Iraq’ made his chest tighten. He was now reading it on his computer instead of buying a paper. Somehow it was less serious on the screen. He could slide his eyes over an article without ever really entering the text.

  At the end of the morning Conrad went to a little market nearby and stocked up: tuna fish, cereal, bread, eggs. When Mrs. Menendez had gone, he went back to the apartment, double-locked the doors, and then took off his shoes and pants and got back into bed, kicking off the heavy quilted bedspread Mrs. Menendez had carefully laid over the sheets and blanket.

  * * *

  Tools, process, opportunity.

  The big windows in the bedroom opened only a few inches. He’d noticed that on the first day. Being up here had made him think of the people in the towers, the ones who jumped. He’d imagined it, standing in the kicked-out frame, shattered glass around the edges, ninety stories of nothing wheeling in the air below. Manhattan spread out beneath you. Taking a long last breath and then, fists clenched, stepping out into space, the wind rushing past your eyes, your ears, funneling up your pants, ballooning your shirt, taking away your breath. Choosing the only thing that was still left: the manner in which to die.

  The long, clean plunge. The silence and bright air. You would never be so alone as during the fall. That would be the deepest solitude of your life. You would be in your own kingdom, in charge of your own world, the blood moving in your veins, the heart hammering loyally in your chest, the thoughts still springing into your mind, light and electric. Your mind would be racing, alive, knowing what would happen within seconds, but not knowing. As long as you were in the air, your world was continuing, smooth and vital, your body and mind still efficient until the end. And during that time, the long fall, you would be unassailable, unreachable. You would be utterly pure, only yourself. In the air. You would be alone in the air. There would be an absence of pain. There would be exultation, no pain. Then it would all be over.

  He thought of the fall because the air was right outside his wall. But the windows wouldn’t open far enough, and he wasn’t going to smash up Go-Go’s place.

  He could get a gun, that would be better. The familiar presence in his hands, the shape and weight of it. His rifle had become like a phantom limb: often, when he was on the street and something startled him, he found himself reaching for it where it should have been hanging, slung over his shoulder. He felt a thudding moment of panic when it wasn’t there. The rifle, your best friend.

  Would you hear the shot?

  Anderson knew.

  * * *

  Conrad wanted to be through with it all. He wanted to be rid of the things that kept recurring in his mind. He never wanted to see these things again. The spatters on the wall. The children. Carleton, Kuchnik, Olivera. Fucking Anderson. How could he stop this endless avalanche within his mind?

  He knew none of this was acceptable, knew it wasn’t the right way to proceed. He wanted it all to be over. It was now only two weeks.

  * * *

  Ollie wrote:

  So, what do you think about coming up to see me? You haven’t even seen the famous place, have you? I have some friends, amazingly, and it would be fun to take you around. We could hang out. It would be good. Yah. O.

  Conrad wrote back:

  Sounds good. I don’t have a car, though. Now that I’m in New York there’s no point. Yah. C.

  Ollie wrote:

  Also amazingly, there are ways to get here without a car. There is a train, and I can pick you up. There is a really cool concert at the end of the month, which I think you’d like. Well, two concerts. You know Botstein is a famous conductor, so we have classical and contemporary concerts here. We cater to all tastes. The one I’m thinking of is the 29th. And I have a girlfriend, Anna.

  Conrad wrote back:

  The girlfriend! Now I do have to come up. I don’t think the 29th will work, but I’ll let you know about another date. What’s she like? Any photos you are willing to share?

  Ollie sent a picture: of course, all eighteen-year-old girls were hot, they just didn’t know it. Anna had a round face and sleepy blue eyes, long pale lashes, light Nordic hair, and white, white skin.

  Conrad wrote:

  Dude! She is Class A! Excellent taste. Is she by any chance a Mandarin scholar?

  Ollie wrote back:

  I transferred out of that class. I hated it. I’m taking the Age of the Classics instead.

  That stopped Conrad.

  He remembered the carol singing on Christmas Eve, when Ollie had turned to him, realizing that Conrad had stopped. He remembered how it felt, seeing Ollie’s trust. Like a long blade that had been slipped deep inside him, which he felt only when he moved. He didn’t want Ollie watching him. He didn’t want his brother depending on him for anything.

  Sometimes Lydia was straight-on direct.

  Dear Con, I want you to know that I’m troubled by whatever you’re going through. Please know that you can tell me about it, whatever it is. Whatever it is. Whatever it is, we are on your side. Please don’t turn away from us. We love you. M.

  He wrote, Thanks, Mom.

  * * *

  In the second week Claire texted him to say that she was coming over.

  “Don’t answer,” she wrote. “I’m leaving now. I’m bringing food. Just let me in when I get there.”

  He didn’t even see the text until just before she arrived. When he opened the door, she stood there smiling, holding the white bags, as she had when she’d come to Jenny’s. This time the sight of her made his chest feel tight.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Delivery,” she said. “Indian, this time.” She was smiling at him, but carefully. She was watching his eyes.

  He stepped back. “Hey,” he said. “Come on in.” He couldn’t bring himself to say I’m glad you’re here, the way he had last time. He could hardly speak at all.

  She slipped past him, inside. “Who’s that guy downstairs?” She turned to face him. “The awful doorman? Is he KGB?” she whispered, her eyes bright, her cheeks pink with cold. She wore a long black quilted coat that muffled her body.

  Conrad nodded. “His assignment is to watch us. He’ll be outside the door right now.” The thought was horrible.

  “Well, I’m not giving him dinner,” said Claire. “Where shall I put these?” Without waiting, she went into the kitchen and set down the bags. She came back to take off her coat and her red scarf. “Nice place!” she said, nodding. “Go-Go�
�s doing well.”

  “Yeah.” Conrad nodded.

  “Can I see the rest?”

  “If you have thirty-eight seconds,” Conrad said. “Come on.”

  In the bedroom she walked to the windows and pulled back the curtains, opening them onto the nighttime landscape. The sky was deep purple-black, velvety, pierced with gleaming points of light.

  “Some view,” she said. “Gorgeous.”

  Conrad said nothing, and she turned to look at him.

  “You don’t love it, do you,” she said.

  He shook his head.

  “Too what? Too high?”

  “Something like that,” he said.

  She pulled the curtains closed again. “Too bad they don’t close all the way.” She turned back to the room. “Let’s eat.”

  They sat in the living room.

  “So, what’s up with you?” Conrad asked.

  It was distracting, having her there. He was half irritated and half grateful. Partly he wanted to listen to her chatter, and partly he wanted to drift in his own silent current.

  “Kind of a great story from work,” she said. She scraped rice onto her plate from one of the little boxes. “A client brought in a set of French plates. Neoclassical, eighteenth-century. Rare and valuable. So we give him a contract and he signs, and we put them in a sale. We advertise, and someone calls to ask about them. He wants to know who consigned them.” Claire waved her hand. “Of course, we don’t give out that information. Then he says they’re his plates, he gave them to a friend to keep while he was moving.”

  “Ah,” Conrad said, nodding. “Plot thickens. What is the wily Yvette’s response?”

  “We withdraw them from the sale and tell Weiss, the consignor, there’s an issue with provenance. Can he tell us how he came to own them? Weiss says an aunt left him the contents of her house, the plates were in it.”

  Conrad nodded. He had mixed the rice and chicken on his plate, and it looked like Iraqi food.

  Claire was laughing as she talked. “Then we ask the guy who called us, Cardozo, to come in. He has a look at them. ‘Yes,’ Cardozo says, ‘they’re definitely mine. I gave them to Weiss when I was moving.’”

  The story was a long one: it seemed both guys were liars.

  She went on, explaining. Weiss finally admitted to taking something from Cardozo, but not the plates. Then Weiss changed his story. Then the police became involved.

  Conrad shook his head, smiling at her. When he realized she had finished, he said, “Amazing.”

  “What are you thinking?” Claire asked after a moment.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Thinking of your story.”

  Once, in Ramadi, they’d been on the street and second squad had taken fire from an upstairs window. It was in April during the jihad attacks. Conrad could see the window, and he told Morales to lob a grenade into it. Morales threw it right into the window. When it blew up, someone went over the wall and kicked open the metal gate, and they’d all gone in. The squad spread out in teams to clear the building. Conrad went up with Morales.

  The upstairs room, where the shooters had been, was filled with rubble and covered with dust. Two bodies lay on the floor near the window, young, bearded men wearing black jeans and T-shirts. They lay in that disjointed way, arms and legs flung out, heads aslant. Blood pooled around them. On their arms were tourniquets. It was the first time Conrad had seen this. The muj used intravenous amphetamines, so they never got tired. They had no sense of fear: it turned them into super-warriors.

  One man lay with his face to the floor, but the other stared straight up, eyes open in a dead stare. His jaw was covered in blood. His arm, circled by the tourniquet, was swollen and discolored. On a table were bowls of food. They’d been eating just before this. It gave him a strange feeling, that they could be doing something so ordinary and human before they tried to kill his men. Downstairs, Jackson, from second squad, called him into a back room, to see what they’d found. Big iron hooks hung from the ceiling, like the ones in a butcher shop. The walls were splattered with red. A video camera lay on a table: they had used this to make torture videos.

  “So,” Claire said, watching him. “You’re not going to tell me, are you.”

  “No,” Conrad said.

  “You know, we can’t really have a conversation like this,” Claire said. “This is like taking a walk together and suddenly one of us falls down a hole.”

  “Yeah,” Conrad said. “But I can’t really help it. All of a sudden the ground is gone. And you know something? I don’t like it any more than you do.”

  “So we’ll talk about something else.” She frowned, trying to spear something in the slippery sauce. “I brought some movies. And I’m going to spend the night.”

  “Clairey,” he said, “don’t do this to me.”

  “Don’t do this to me,” she said.

  “You don’t know how this makes me feel,” he said. “I feel like such a fucking loser.”

  She stood up and leaned over the table. Her hair fell forward in wings. “You’re not a loser. You’re not a loser. You’re just in trouble. Come on, Con. Please.” She began to cry.

  “Claire,” he said, but he didn’t know how to go on.

  She spent the night, which he’d known would happen. There was no sex. His body was mute and distant, empty and unresponsive, as though he were on drugs. In bed he held Claire and kissed her hair and apologized.

  “You knew about this,” he said.

  “Yeah, and it’s okay.” She curled up with her back to him, but close, tight against his body, so he would know she wasn’t angry. He’d taken a pill. He went to sleep, but during the night he woke up to the nightmare of the man chasing him through the streets, the man he’d shot in Ramadi. He heard the footsteps, the echoes from the high walls. He had no weapon.

  He woke up choking and calling out, his chest heaving. He didn’t know where he was. The room was small and claustrophobic, with a strange perpendicular streak of light.

  Someone put a hand on his sweaty chest.

  “You’re okay, Con,” she said.

  He nearly screamed. “That’s enough.” He yanked off the covers and threw himself out of bed. “Christ. Just don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.”

  He stood on the floor, his heart thundering. Everything in his system was shouting Go, go, go. There was nowhere for him to go, nothing for him to do. The room was silent around him. Claire knelt on the bed, her face grave.

  He stood still, his breathing quieting. There was nothing in the room. The curtains nearly met across the windows. In the gap was a bright strip of purple night. Outside was the distant swishing sound of traffic on the Drive. Shame began to fill him.

  “Christ,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Claire.”

  His body felt immobile, and he was stricken with shame and revulsion. He thought, I can’t do this anymore.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” Claire said.

  * * *

  Only fourteen more days. He could do that.

  He drew a calendar page, a grid showing the weeks and days, and Scotch-taped it to the tiled wall in the kitchen. Every morning when he came in, he crossed off a day so he could see the approach of the appointment.

  Nine days away, he got an email from Go-Go.

  Hey Conrad, how’s it going?

  He should have known from the salutation, the formal “Conrad,” instead of “Dawg,” that it was bad news.

  My co. is sending me back to NY for a week in February. I’ll be back on the 23rd. Hope that’s okay for you and you can find someplace else. Thanks you for holding down the fort. You can move back in when Im gone. Let’s get together when Im back. Go-Go.

  Conrad wrote him back:

  Hey Dawg, gotcha on the apt. I’ll be out by the 23rd. Thanks for the residency. We’ll hook up when you’re back. Conrad.

  It didn’t matter. He could go anywhere: Jenny’s, Claire’s, Katonah. Twenty-third. By then he’d be on the road to recovery.


  As the appointment drew nearer, Conrad became calmer. The end was within reach. He wrote encouraging messages to Molinos, still in Hit:

  Molinos: Hope things are going okay. I wish you’d take care of those pesky insurgents, keep them from blowing everyone the fuck up. I’m in New York. Nice here but I miss the MREs. Semper Fi. Farrell.

  Each night he counted the days.

  It was too much to expect the end of this, but he hoped for a lessening. He hoped for a kind of hope. He wouldn’t define it exactly. He wouldn’t use large words like redemption, or grace. He was hoping for something humbler, something small and private. He didn’t feel entitled to anything large. Certainly he didn’t feel entitled to religious help. His family went to the local Episcopal church in a loyal but intermittent way, but Conrad wasn’t religious. He didn’t take it seriously, the wafers and wine, the blood and flesh. He’d never felt any mysterious power from their pleasant local pastor. Since he’d never believed before, it wasn’t fair to ask now for favors. And whom would he ask?

  The words peace or forgiveness were not for him, he knew that. How could he ask forgiveness for something he’d done deliberately? And besides, the words carried with them some kind of taint, some softness he wouldn’t go near. Being hard, never asking for help, was the point. Needing peace or forgiveness implied weakness. There was the question of identity, and choice: you couldn’t simply stop being what you’d chosen to become. Because then what were you?

  He wouldn’t allow himself to name those things—peace, redemption, forgiveness—but he knew they were there. At moments he felt them, their balm. In another world, he’d cut himself off from it. He suspected the existence of a kind of bliss, one that might accompany a surrender he could not make, and this caused him a pure sense of sorrow. Loss. If he surrendered, if he asked forgiveness for all he had done, how great were the implications? How much wrong had he done?