She looked around the room. No one raised a hand. Pens were busy scribbling in notebooks. Aha, I thought, Dr. Konig was that almost extinct genre of academic, The Lecturer. She stood at the front of the room and talked, and the kids took down what they were able. I must confess, The Lecturer was my favorite sort of professor. I always loathed the seminars and discussion groups in which certain students were encouraged to bore the hell out of the rest of us with their opinions and insights. I always wondered how the insights of a nineteen-year-old could possibly be superior to those of a forty-year-old who has a Ph.D. in the subject and has been thinking about it for twenty years. I paid my money to hear what the professor thought, not what my classmates thought. I was glad to see that Tonia brooked none of this class participation nonsense.
Strangely enough, her teaching methods seemed agreeable to the students. I sighed. Those awful days of the seventies were gone for good, I hoped. Students seemed to have returned to some degree of sanity.
“By using the term technique, I mean the overall method of conducting the struggle,” Tonia continued. “Is the technique one of protest, demonstration, or so on. And by nonviolent action, I mean the specific method of protest, demonstration, noncooperation in which the actionists, without employing physical violence, refuse to do things which they are required to do, or do things which they are forbidden to do.
“Nonviolent action is a generic term. It includes the large class of phenomena variously called nonviolent resistance, Satyagraha, passive resistance, positive action, and nonviolent direct action. While it is not violent, it is action, and not inaction. Passivity, cowardice, and submission must be surmounted if it is to be used—it demands commitment, high moral fibre, and intelligence.”
She looked directly at me, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I blushed. She made me feel small and inadequate. For only a moment. Then I was madder than hell.
“Nonviolent action is a means of conducting conflict and waging struggles and should not be equated with purely verbal dissent or solely psychological influence. It is not pacifism. It is not an escapist approach to the problem of violence, for it can be used against opponents relying on violent sanctions.” She paused and looked around, but her glance did not include me this time. There were no questions. I found, to my surprise, that I wanted her to continue.
“Now, let’s get specific,” she said. “There is a very wide range of methods of nonviolent action. At least one hundred and twenty-five have been identified. They tend to fall into three classes—nonviolent protest, non-cooperation, and nonviolent intervention. Nonviolent protest is usually symbolic—marches, pilgrimages, picketing, vigils, public meetings, distribution of protest literature, and so on. Non-cooperation is a little more serious, and more likely to present the opponent with difficulties in maintaining the normal efficiency and operation of his system. Methods of non-cooperation include strikes, economic boycotts and embargoes, boycotts of elections, civil disobedience, and even mutiny. Nonviolent intervention challenges the opponent more directly, and assuming that fearlessness and discipline are maintained, relatively small numbers may have a disproportionately large impact. These include sit-ins, fasts, reverse strikes, nonviolent obstruction, nonviolent invasion, and parallel government.”
“But of course,” she continued, “selection of the method to be used must be done with care. The type of issue involved, the nature of the opponent—his aims and strengths, the type of counteraction he is likely to use, the depth of feeling in the general populace for the issue, and the degree of repression the actionists are likely to face. Just as in a military battle weapons are carefully selected, so also in nonviolent action the choice of specific methods is very important.”
Despite my ire, I was impressed. I had dismissed her as a pantywaist go-limp-and-get-arrested type. Evidently I had been wrong. She sounded tough. But what she was talking about was theory. Wasn’t it?
“And that brings me to your assignment,” she told the class. “In recent history there have been dozens of cases of nonviolent action. Successful nonviolent action.” She looked around and smiled. “Find them.”
The class heaved a collective groan. Hands flew up. Tonia held up her own hand to ward off questions. “The University has an excellent microfilm library. Its newspaper file is quite complete. I suggest you divide yourselves into groups and proceed from there. That’s all for today.”
I tried to put aside my irritation at Tonia’s comments regarding commitment, high moral fibre, and intelligence. After all, what did I care what she thought of me? The students left in a rush, presumably to zero in on all that microfilm, and I hurried to catch Tonia at the doorway. She looked at me wearily.
“Do we really have to do this?”
“I do,” I told her. “I thought we hashed all that out last night.” No response. “If you like, I can trail three paces behind like Prince Philip.”
“Oh come on,” she snapped. “And stop playing the fool.”
“I can’t promise anything so rash,” I told her cheerfully. “We no-moral-fibre types are like that.”
She shook her head and strode out into the April sunshine, me at her elbow.
“I was interested in what you had to say about nonviolent action,” I told her seriously, thinking to try to patch up our differences.
“Please,” she said frostily. “Don’t insult yourself by trying to make polite conversation on a subject so clearly foreign to you.”
The question I had been about to ask concerning the Hungarian revolution froze on my lips. To hell with you, Konig, I decided. And I was angry at myself for having given her an opening through which to shoot another dart at me. Well, that’s what you get for seeking enlightenment, Caitlin. Better stick to what you do best—being a thug.
Chapter Five
We were halfway across the park when I saw him coming. He was on roller skates and had one of those Sony Walkmans stuck on his ears. Weaving along the walkway in a world of his own, he managed nonetheless to avoid the few pedestrians in his path. But his seemingly artless zigs and zags bothered me. My antennae started to bristle. I looked around for somewhere to go, but the ground on either side of the flagstone path was soggy at best, and muddy at worst. I started to lead Tonia off the path, but she pulled away from me.
“What on earth are you doing?” she asked indignantly.
The skater turned on a dime, and he and Tonia went down on the soggy ground in a tangle of arms and legs, Tonia on the bottom. There were very few people around, I noted as I took a handful of hair, another of jacket, and pulled him off her.
“Whaddya doing?” he screamed. With surprising agility he squirmed away, but I heaved him face down in the mud and put my boot on the back of his neck.
“Awfully clumsy, aren’t you?” I said, and stomped a little. He bucked, trying to lever himself up, so I knelt on his back and yanked on his hair again. He yelped, but stopped bucking. “Keep your hands where I can see them. So what’s your name?”
“Fuck off,” he said heatedly.
Ah, the verbal bankruptcy of the young. Fuck, it seemed, was the only epithet they knew.
“Well, Mr. Off,” I replied, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet, “I think I’ll just extract a few dollars from you to pay for my friend’s drycleaning.” I couldn’t have cared less about the money—what I wanted was to get a look at his identification. I flipped his wallet open, extracted his driver’s license, student ID card, athletic pass, and a ten dollar bill, and threw the wallet into the bushes. All pieces of identification bore the names James Harrington. His driver’s license said that he lived at 1074 Redfern Street. I threw the rest of his ID after the wallet. “Listen, you, I’m going to get up now.” I looked over and saw that Tonia was now on her feet. Good. She looked a little dazed, and the back of her clothes were pretty muddy, but she seemed all right. “My friend and I are going to walk away. You are going to give us a few minutes, then you will retrieve your wallet from the bushes and skate off
. In the other direction. Understand?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said indignantly. “I don’t know what you’re so steamed about. It was just an accident.”
“Mmmhmm,” I said, getting off him.
I took Tonia’s arm and walked her out of the park. I looked back once and saw James Harrington scrabbling in the bushes. When I looked back again, he was nowhere in sight.
“Are you okay?” I asked Tonia.
She nodded. “He just knocked the wind out of me. Don’t you think you overreacted, though? It did seem like an accident.”
I shrugged. “It’s possible, I suppose. But that kid had to do a turn Baryshnikov would be proud of in order to hit you.”
She looked at me in surprise. “To hit me? But why?” Then comprehension dawned. “You don’t think...”
“Maybe.”
“Oh. But he’s gone!” she said in frustration, looking around. “Now we’ll never find out.”
I smiled. “Oh yes we will. I got a look at his driver’s license. I may even have a little chat with him later today. Don’t worry. If he knows anything, he’ll tell me.”
She bristled. “You seem very sure of yourself.”
“Well, let’s just say I’m persuasive.”
She looked at me suspiciously.
“Would you like to go somewhere and have a drink?” I suggested. She was looking a little white, I thought.
“Actually, yes,” she said. “Maybe even a double.”
Tonia finished off half of her double Scotch in one swallow. I was impressed. A serious drinker. “I want to know something about you,” she asked me curiously.
“Oh? What?” I couldn’t imagine what she could possibly find of interest about me, except whether I had dropped out of kindergarten or elementary school. My stock, I sensed, was not high with Tonia.
“How did you know to do what you did?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Back there in the park. With that boy.”
I took a careful swallow of my own Scotch, followed by a deep breath. “Practice.” As I expected, she frowned.
“Practice,” she repeated. She thought this over for a moment, then looked up at me. “Do you have to do a lot of that kind of thing?”
“You mean being nasty? Intimidating people?”
She nodded.
“Sometimes. Especially when people don’t immediately tell me what I want to know. Extracting information is just a learned skill, after all.” Why did I have the feeling that we were going to reprise last night’s conversation? I knew already that she didn’t like what I did. But she had agreed to accept it. Why couldn’t she just let things lie?
“So you think of what you do as a skill?”
I took another sip of Scotch. “Of course. Instincts alone aren’t good enough. The fine art of persuasion takes a long time to learn. Although it’s probably a skill, not an art. Persuading people to do what you want takes a lot of trial and error to find out what methods work best. To find the things that people respond to. And then, you practice the methods.” I shrugged. “That’s it.”
“You make it sound so easy,” she said critically, “but we both know it can’t be that easy. You’re talking about using whatever methods the situation calls for to...persuade people. That’s not persuasion. That’s coercion. In some cases, violent coercion.”
“That’s right.”
She finished her drink in silence.
I wanted to say something in my own defense, but nothing clever occurred to me. Well, if she wanted to think of me as a thug, she could go ahead and do that. I hadn’t noticed her ask me not to use violent coercion on hers and Val’s behalf, though. My crap detector vibrated. Did I detect a double standard here?
“Do you want to eat lunch?” I asked her. “There’s a great little natural food café not too far from here. In fact, we could walk.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I would like to eat something. Although the temptation is to sit here and have a few more Scotches.” She deftly extracted a couple of coins from her jacket pocket. No fumbling in handbags for her. “I think I’ll cancel my class and my office hours this afternoon,” she told me, fiddling with a dime. “You may find this quite laughable,” she said, frowning at me belligerently, “but I’m beginning to feel a little, well, apprehensive.”
“I don’t find that laughable at all. They—whoever they are—clearly mean you to be frightened.” I shrugged. “If I’d just been run down in the park, I might be frightened, too.”
She bent forward intently. “But you’re not, are you?”
I said nothing.
“Well, are you?”
“No.”
Malcolm was obviously pleased to see me, and when he saw who I had with me, his pleasure turned to delight. I made introductions, and he found Tonia and me a seat by the window.
“The soups are always good here,” I suggested.
Tonia nodded distractedly and when the waitress came to take our order we ordered black bean soup and whole grain bread. And tea.
Tonia tucked a stray wing of black hair behind her ear and looked at me. “This isn’t the sort of place I would have thought you’d like.”
I laughed a little. “The owners are my friends,” I told her. “I’m prepared to make a few compromises for the sake of friendship.”
She looked at me suspiciously, but the bean soup arrived just at that moment. We ate in silence.
I decided to go for the jugular. “I thought we’d decided last night to call a truce.”
She blinked quickly a few times, then looked down into her soup. “Yes. We did.”
“Well?”
She broke off a piece of her whole grain bread and nibbled on it thoughtfully. “I have to accept that what you do can achieve results,” she conceded. “But I don’t have to like it.”
“Or me.”
She shook her head. “Caitlin, you don’t fit into my ... world view. My system of beliefs. My theories.”
“Do I have to? Surely not everything fits.”
She looked at me steadily, blue eyes troubled. “Why shouldn’t everything fit? God, I’ve spent enough time developing these theories. And until I met you, things did pretty well mesh.”
I sighed. She had a problem. Because if she truly maintained that there was no place in conflict resolution for violence, she was in trouble. Her theories were about to be destroyed. Well, maybe I could give her a different perspective on her theories. At worst she could tell me to go to hell. I took a deep breath. “Perhaps you should look on this as professional development.”
“Don’t make foolish jokes,” she said, glowering.
“I’m not,” I protested. “Couldn’t you think of this as opportunity to test your theories? A field experiment?”
That produced a disdainful look. Undaunted, I forged on.
“Theories have to be compared to real life sometime, don’t they? And if they can’t explain events, then the theory has to be amended.” I shrugged. “That doesn’t seem like the destruction of a life’s work to me. It seems like common sense.”
She looked at me inscrutably, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
We finished our lunch, and I looked at my watch. “I have to go somewhere, and I want to know you’re safe.” I eyed her uncertainly. “Are you going to give me an argument about it?”
“No,” she said unexpectedly. “Where do you have in mind that’s safe?”
“Well, this place would do, but I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. So let’s pick someplace no one knows about. My place. I’d like you to come home with me and stay put until I get back.”
She considered this. “All right.”
I was reasonably sure no one followed us by the time I pulled into the driveway at my house. Tonia hefted her briefcase and followed me inside.
“Oh,” she said as I locked the front door and she went ahead into the living room.
I looked to see what the problem was, but she was just standing there in front of
my bookcase. “Something wrong?”
“No,” she answered absently, looking at the titles. “I was just startled to see so many books.”
Well, she did have a point. I guess I have every book I’ve ever bought—thousands by now. I’m particularly fond of science fiction, and one wall is stuffed with books by Bradley, Niven and Pournelle, Asimov, Brin, LeGuin, Cherryh, Russ, and so on. My back copies of Omni (I have the inaugural issue) and Analog reside there, too. And in the section beside science fiction is my Shakespeare collection. I have about a dozen sets of the Collected Works, five or six editions of only the plays, and the same number of the sonnets. Then there are about a hundred works of criticism. I can’t help it—I’m a Shakespeare buff.
Tonia took down one of my copies of the sonnets and leafed through it. “Do you know Sonnet One-Forty-Seven?” she asked me.
“Sure,” I replied. “It’s a problem for the critics. One of the Dark Lady sonnets, isn’t it?”
She looked at me curiously. “Dark Lady?”
“Yeah. Some woman who apparently spurned Will’s advances. Or was unfaithful. Or turned out to be a mere mortal. Although there’s controversy over whether or not there was even a woman at all. His fondness for his patron was well known.”
She replaced the book quickly and took down another. “Have you really read all this criticism?”
I smothered a smile. “Oh, well, not all of it. I’m working my way through the books slowly. You know, I read a little each night until I get tired of moving my lips.”
She glared at me. “You like to do that, don’t you?”
“Do what?” I inquired in feigned innocence.
“Perpetuate the image of the illiterate thug.” She snorted. “It gives you some sort of perverse satisfaction.”
I headed for the bedroom. “Yeah, that’s me. Perverse.”
She followed me and leaned against the door frame. “I think I’ve underestimated you. You’re clearly a very complicated person.” She looked a little sheepish. “Although you do make things difficult.”
The Always Anonymous Beast Page 5