But in these cases, / We still have judgment here, that we but teach / Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return / To plague the inventor.
Then continued. In the direction he had already, and for some time, been bound.
BUT THAT WAS STILL several months away. In the meantime, Alden continued to shuffle pages back and forth between the incoming and outgoing piles on his desk, and after a while his nervousness dissipated so that he no longer got them confused, or jumped like a cat, or tapped at his cigarette until its bright end glowed as sharp and fine as a knife. Indeed, after only a few weeks he no longer needed to pretend that he was neutral in every way—he became so. His life began to stretch out before him, as behind, in the same regulated and more or less comfortable way that it does for any salaried man. Even the small discomforts of the day—the early rising, the treacherous commute, the excessive boredom of the late morning and early afternoon, during which time itself (sagging between the taut ends of the day) seemed to enter into an entirely different measure all its own—began to hold for him a certain pleasure, which could be owed, in all probability, simply to the fact of their being so recognizable. He knew that he could absolutely count on each day to occur nearly exactly as it had the day before, and the day prior to that, and so on. But after only a brief respite, in which he recognized and appreciated that this was so, he suddenly became restless again, and resumed his anxious tapping.
Perhaps the natural nervousness of his constitution demanded something upon which to fix itself—something to lend context to the persistent disquiet of both his body and mind. Because he now had nothing of the sort, he began to invent circumstances of his own; in a word, he became paranoid. So much so that he began to walk several blocks in the opposite direction before turning and doubling back in the way that he actually intended to go—even when he was going somewhere, as he nearly always was, as simple and innocuous as the corner grocery, or to the Nancy house in Kalorama, where he still visited—though less frequently. Li’l Nancy was up and walking around by then, going to practices but sitting out games, and growing a little fatter and a little more restless himself. More and more Alden began to see the way that his friend was just exactly like his old man, after all, and that was how it happened. If you didn’t use up all the energy you had inside you when you were young—it hardly seemed to matter in what direction—it just sort of turned sour inside you, as it was doing just then inside of Li’l Nancy. So that when you think about it, and if it hadn’t have killed him, it was almost a shame that the war didn’t come sooner for him. But anyway, as the fall wore on, Alden saw less and less of Li’l Nancy and finally he didn’t see him at all—or anyone outside of the fellows in the office, and from time to time the members of his family, when such sightings were in no other way possible to avoid. His only real pleasure was his once- or twice-weekly stroll around the Mall with the Indian. Sometimes he wouldn’t even listen to what the Indian said. He would hear only the rhythm of his voice, the energy and insistence of it; let it enter his veins, and as it did, make silent prayers to himself that he would not allow his own energies to be mis- or falsely directed—to be burned up or used up or allowed to fester, at least for long, in some stinking office somewhere.
FINALLY, WHEN HE COULD bear it no longer, he confronted the professor. He was certain that by now he had “paid his dues,” and therefore demanded he be immediately reassigned to some more active duty. He thought of Biggs, whom he had not seen since well before the riots. He—Alden was sure—had never been put through such a lengthy or exacting trial.
I can understand your feelings, the professor replied, rubbing his chin. It is, of course, natural that a young man like yourself would feel that his … talents and energies … were being wasted in an occupation that has none of the direct and obvious recompenses that he might, or that any of us indeed, might wish. I, also, you see—the professor continued—am sometimes of the mind-set that there might be a more direct and … expedient … method of achieving our ends, but there are those who, for reasons it is neither necessary nor indeed even advisable for me to be privy to, see it differently. I am, after all—like you—only taking orders.
THE NEXT DAY, ALDEN met the Indian as usual, and told him what the professor had said. After hearing him out, the Indian had nodded grimly and agreed.
Patience, he said, was the most difficult but also the most necessary thing. As for the hunter, he said. The early shot always misses its mark. You have to wait what feels always one beat too long.
That day, as on every other, the Indian had appeared, as if by accident, alongside Alden as he made his way from the office at the end of the day toward the Mall. Sometimes he managed to get nearly halfway up the street and even around the corner before the Indian appeared, and sometimes he did not appear at all, but at least once or twice a week at first, and then more frequently as the weeks progressed, he did. Alden was never even sure from what direction he came, when he did, or what he did when he did not come, or during the rest of his day. Often he would wonder about it, the mysterious alchemy of the Indian’s profession, but he could never bring himself to ask directly—the materials with which the Indian worked too “sensitive,” perhaps, even for words. Oftener still, he would find his mind wandering back to what Sutton had said that day, sometime before the riots. How her head had bent toward his, her features taut with concern: Alden. He’s killed a man.
His own response—He must have had his reasons—would quiver within him in reply. But it was not a statement; it was a question.
Finally, one he steeled himself to ask.
When he had done so, the Indian was silent for a while. Then, without slowing or in any way altering his pace, he pointed off into the distance.
Do you see that? he asked Alden.
Alden was not even entirely sure if it was something in the near or the far distance toward which he was being asked to direct his gaze.
No, he said. What?
The Indian dropped his hand, but continued to gaze steadily ahead. Into the far distance—Alden was sure of at least that much now. Toward some place, just beyond the line of the horizon, made indistinct by a heavy bank of cloud.
There are many things—the Indian said, after a moment or two had passed, again in silence—one cannot see. It is only a fool who imagines it’s because they’re not there.
But to answer Alden’s question, he continued. The man at the bar that night had once—he said—been a friend. But then (here the Indian paused, in order to more carefully choose his words)—he’d had (the “ friend,” that is, not the Indian) a sudden change of heart. Had turned against the Union, even helped break up the Harlan strike in May of ’31. Had fought against his own men, the Indian said. And for what? Nothing more—he supposed—than the promise of a steady check.
A man’s got to choose, the Indian continued sadly. There’s never going to be for him any more than one side.
Something about the way he said these final words—Alden could later not put his finger on it—frightened him. Caused him, whenever he thought back on it, a quick, involuntary shudder; his heart, for some reason, turned cold with dread.
Then, toward the end of November—the twenty-second of that month, to be exact; it was easy to remember the date only because of what followed after—the economist Raymond Robins, a well-known party member who had mysteriously disappeared nearly two months before, suddenly reemerged; discovered in a North Carolina boardinghouse under an assumed name. One moment he had been on his way to Washington where he had an appointment with the President, and the next— All he could later recall was a sudden darkness, descending.
Two months later an emissary from Washington unpacked a series of photographs and documents from his briefcase and passed them over the counter to a bemused Mr. Rogers, from Whittier, North Carolina, who had agreed to meet with him briefly over lunch. Mr. Rogers shuffled disinterestedly through the photographs, then returned them to his companion, who continued to stare at him over
the tops of his frosted glasses, blinking almost compulsively—a habit that undermined his otherwise (though he was a man of rather diminutive proportions) commanding presence and authoritative glare.
Know the man?
Why—no, Mr. Rogers had said apologetically. I am afraid I have wasted your time.
Later it was reported that as he spoke, he glanced nervously left, then right, as though subconsciously—
No? asked the deputy, blinking twice. Once again, he pushed the photographs toward Mr. Rogers. Nothing at all—he said—familiar about the fellow? This fellow—here. In the photograph. Nothing at all?
Here the deputy paused again, smoothing his mustache, which looked as though it had been brushed sharply against the grain. He looked hard at Mr. Rogers, who was now beginning to sweat—his face growing red with a confusion that was, even to himself, becoming more and more difficult to explain.
No! Mr. Rogers said again. His hands flew to his face—a dead give-away, as any observer of human beings in compromising situations well knows. With one hand he adjusted his eyeglasses, and with the other he relieved a phantom scratch beneath his left ear.
No, I can with some confidence declare— he said. But here his voice faltered and he failed to complete the sentence.
Mr. Robins, the deputy said. Mr. Robins, Mr. Robins. Blink, blink. Raymond, he said. Come, now. It’s all right. Everything will be all right now, Mr. Robins. Come home.
So that was how, in the second-to-last week of November 1932, Raymond Robins was returned to New York and the care of his wife, where—after only a brief stay at a well-appointed sanatorium outside the city—he regained his senses fairly quickly and was reestablished in his usual role in politics and society.
ON THE AFTERNOON THAT Raymond Robins returned from the dead, the Indian and Alden walked together and mulled the story over, turning it this way and then that. Perhaps, they considered, the real R. Robins had not returned at all—still holed up in some other out-of-the-way town somewhere, or else, having become more of a pain in Hoover’s backside than everyone already supposed (he had, over the past months, become increasingly vocal about his disappointment in the government’s continued refusal to recognize the Soviet Union), he had been hauled off somewhere to be otherwise disposed.
It is of some interest to note, on account of what happened next, that the Indian had a curious look on his face as the case was discussed. That, after a while, he became thoughtful and said that it did not seem to him to be, as it had seemed at first glance, a story of resurrection— but of death; he just wasn’t sure whose. It could be Robins’s, he reasoned. Perhaps a doppelgänger had been unearthed somewhere to replace him. That Mr. Rogers had been a real, honest-to-goodness businessman quietly going about his own life in Whittier, North Carolina, only to be surprised one day by the image of R. Robins, to whom he did bear an uncanny resemblance but of whom he—not a political fellow—had never until that moment even heard, let alone known. That Mr. Rogers’s hand had thus fluttered to his face not in feigned but in genuine confusion, whose dartings, left to right, of the eye had not revealed any subconscious doubts or fears, any panic at having been finally routed out, exposed … That, instead, everything was quite on the surface. That he was merely attempting to make sense of, and simultaneously searching desperately for some way out of, the bizarre predicament within which he had found himself. Perhaps, the “sanatorium” toward which “R. Robins” was at this moment, thanks to the loving direction of his wife, bound was really only a metaphor—the Indian suggested—for a state-of-the-art reeducation center that would include various different levels of “motivations” for the new “R. Robins” to comply with the constructed story of who he was and why, and what he would do next—which was, of course, the most interesting part of the story. No matter if the current R. Robins was “real” or not, it was certainly interesting to ponder what was at stake now in his being R. Robins in a way that no one, no doubt even R. Robins himself, had ever thought to ponder before, and it was just as they were beginning to ponder this that the Indian set off on a story of his own, after mentioning in passing that he did not believe that any one of us had any real or final right to the body that was his own.
When you think about it, he said, we all live our lives out in borrowed bodies, do we not? And as Alden nodded, considering this in the philosophical light he believed it had been thrown, the Indian added that it did happen, quite literally sometimes—as it had, for example, in the case of Arthur Sinclair, whose body had been borrowed from a prison guard in the Siberian wilderness back in 1919. Arthur had told him about it himself, the Indian said. About how he had walked for three days on borrowed feet, too tired to guess the connection they had to another man, before he woke up one morning and they were his own.
Alden must have looked incredulous. Even at the best of times to speak of Arthur, of whom nothing more had been heard since the afternoon following the riots, made him uncomfortable—and now here was this absurd story, which the Indian recounted with a straight face, as though it were something he should actually believe.
Yes, the Indian said, nodding. It was true. He had not even had a chance to look the man whom he had borrowed those feet from in the eye—on account of being surrounded by such a powerful darkness. A darkness, perhaps—the Indian added, after a moment of reflection— not so very unlike the darkness R. Robins had known before he, too, was “raised up” into the body of another man.
Their pace had slowed—it had become as ponderous as the Indian’s tone. Alden waited for him to explain; for him to establish, somehow, what he had just said safely within the bounds of … a joke, or a metaphor for something, if that’s what it was.
When he did not, Alden hesitated.
Do you—? he began. But then again he paused. It was all too ridiculous even to warrant further inquiry. Still, something compelled him to ask. Believe that? he finished finally.
When the Indian did not reply, he added, Arthur’s story—what you just said.
The Indian’s step faltered. He glanced briefly toward his companion, and as he did so, Alden’s eyes slid, unconsciously, away. Something in the gaze disturbed him. He wondered what sort of information this subtle shift in his own gaze might have revealed, if there had been anyone present interested in its being so revealed—but then he saw very clearly that there had not. The look that he had, just a moment before, found too penetrating to bear, and from which he had averted his eyes, had not even been directed at him. He saw now that the Indian was in fact looking straight past him, toward some invisible point on the horizon—as if he were not even present at all.
Still, the sensation of that gaze—which had not even been directed at him—was one that he could always recall later, whenever he thought of the Indian—or of Arthur. And so vividly that he would almost feel it again—touching every hair on his head, and sending itself in ripples down his spine.
Shortly after that, they parted. As they had done on so many occasions before. Alden’s path veering to the left and the Indian’s continuing straight ahead, in the direction he’d been bound.
THE INDIAN MUST HAVE traversed the distance between the point at which their paths had finally diverged and the basement flat he shared with Aida and the child in record time. Alden was unfamiliar with the pace of the Indian, naturally, when he was not accompanying him, but there is no doubt that he walked at a rather quick step because, as Alden later calculated it, it took the Indian no more than forty-seven minutes after they had parted, at half-past five, to return home and get himself blown into so many unrecoverable parts.
The next day, the front page of the Post, as well as every other newspaper in the city, reported that the explosion occurred at exactly 6:17 p.m. That it had ripped through the building in which the Indian was found, reducing it—and two neighboring houses—to rubble, and killing not only the Indian, but two Polish sisters, and a stray dog that had reportedly been seen pacing the streets all day. The wife and child of the Indian (who’d
had, the newspaper confirmed, known Communist ties) had avoided the blast; the wife was, at that moment, being held for further questioning.
Alden tried hard to appreciate the fact that—at least—as the newspaper indicated, Aida and the child had survived, but—perhaps because this fact was weighted equally against the fact of the Indian’s death, and the deaths of a stray dog and two Polish sisters—he could not seem even to register the news. The details included in the account seemed, he reflected to himself, to create not a story at all, but only the effects of a distant constellation—each point equally suspended by and disconnected from the last. In this way, the Indian, John, existed in equally direct and abstract relation to the explosive materials that were later detected on the premises, and the time of day, 6:17 p.m., when these materials had apparently erupted—so that as Alden read over the article several times it became unclear to him if it was the materials or the time of day that had killed him. But there was one point in this constellation of facts as they assembled themselves before him on the page that stood out. He soon realized it was because it was not a fact at all. So closely did it resemble the rest of the points of the story according to which he had so far oriented himself, however, that he read the article through several times before he noticed it. The recovered materials did not seem, the article reported, to either “indicate or merit” the explosion that had, at 6:17 p.m. at the corner of Heckman and First, subsequently resulted, the known details of which the article then went on to explicitly state. The question—upon which, Alden realized, all the disparate points in the story were hung—was: What missing element had caused an explosion nearly three times the velocity of that indicated as a possibility by the materials retrieved at the scene of the crime?
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