The Only Café

by Linden MacIntyre

  He put the gun down, picked up the pen.

  It was time to write about himself.

  He wrote: Karantina, Damour, Tel al-Zaatar, Sabra-Shatila. Historical compression. But if you have been there for all of it…

  Damour was under siege before they went to Karantina. Or was it? His family was dead, murdered by their enemies, before he went to Karantina. Or were they? What if Karantina really was the provocation so neatly described in the official historical compression? He was part of it, the crime that caused the deaths of his mother, sister, brother-in-law, infant niece, their relatives and neighbours in Damour, that gave birth to the atrocities of Tel al-Zaatar, that deepened Damour’s agony, that spawned the slaughter at Sabra and Shatila. But he, and everyone around him, had been provoked. By something. Sometime. Somewhere.

  He put the pen aside, stared longingly at the silent gun. Who would care? Really? Who would mourn?

  Nobody.

  Cyril, Aggie? Hardly. Draycor, Brawly, even Kennedy would welcome it. Ari? Ari especially would celebrate. Lois? No. No, no, no. And he remembered their unborn child.

  Karantina. He was cold, huddled in the crowded truck, feeling the painful dampness of the January night. But in particular he remembered the unprecedented fear. All prior sensations that were variants of fear—fright, apprehension, jitters—replaced by the despair that floods the consciousness when self-control is gone, when you have become an incidental part of something large and incomprehensible.

  He remembered with particular clarity the sounds of the truck: the flap of canvas around him and his two dozen companions, the straining motor, labouring in the lower gears, the creaking groans as it clambered over broken ground. The other trucks. And APCs. Range Rovers. The clanking tanks. And then the silence. The darkened figures marshalling in units. Murmuring voices. The clatter of weapons being readied. From inside the camp, dogs barking, a child screaming.

  A gunshot. From somewhere.

  Then people running crouched toward the awakening encampment. Firing wildly into darkness, into shapes. One desperately endless fusillade. Singing whispers in the air. Whump of rockets. Sudden shooting flame and dancing shadows.

  Pierre lies flat, face down in dirt that smells like sewage, lost in the confusion, the AK-47 in his outstretched hands. He should be firing it, but where? There is nothing visible to shoot at, but they are shooting anyway. Everyone, it seems, but him. Someone in the camp is wildly, desperately shooting back. The air is full of hissing bullets, full of shouts. Screams of women, children. The dogs have gone insane, howling, barking, yelping. He feels, for the first time, the hysteria of battle.

  A startling hand on his shoulder and Elias and Bashir are there, crouched beside him. “Get up,” Elias shouts. “Stay with us. Do what we do.”

  And he does. That long night. And on many, many long days and nights thereafter. He does what everybody did until he no longer could.

  In the daylight he stands, listening as the young commander, Dany, tells a television journalist in his flawless educated English that the operation was for everybody’s benefit. The unfortunate refugees were on private property, interfering with the nation’s commerce. But it was for their good too. It was no way to live. They will all be better off.

  Yes, casualties. Regrettable. Panicky irrational resistance by the terrorists who have infiltrated the civilian poor. It is a necessary response by the government of Lebanon. Perhaps, yes, disproportionate. But time will tell.

  And Pierre is somehow, like the television journalist, reassured.

  Karantina. Fifteen hundred dead. Karantina is a massacre. But he remembered living people, in the thousands, pathetic living people being herded into buses, loaded onto trucks. And he remembered wishing they were all dead. Every miserable one of them. It would be doing everyone a favour, even them, to end their wretched lives. Expunge their wretchedness. He remembers the throbbing hatred he had for them, not for what they’d done—he had no idea what they, as individuals, had done—but for who they were collectively. They provoked in him feelings that he loathed. He hated them for making him feel hatred. And he felt hatred because he hated feeling fear, hated feeling the contempt he had for them and, consequently, for himself.

  And now, more than three decades later, he knew that by the end of that chaotic year of sieges and street-battles, destruction and mass murder, the fear would give way to an emotional numbness and a mental clarity—the objective attention to detail that distinguished the work of the bureaucrat, the soldier. He learned how hatred eventually consumes itself, becomes indifference, like smoke.

  But on that first night, on that cold lurching drive from Jounieh to Karantina, he was dangerously distracted by his feelings—the grief, the doubt, the uncertainty. He was reminded of a recurrent nightmare: he is walking onto a brightly lit stage, conscious of a vast crowd of spectators. He is carrying a violin and must perform a complicated solo but staring out into the mass of human shapes and shadows, he remembers that he has never played a violin before.

  In the days and weeks and months ahead he was sustained by hatred, and he became a competent performer, a professional. And he discovered the peculiar sense of freedom that came from being part of something larger and more important than oneself, a small part of a vast and orchestrated project, the paradoxical freedom of captivity.

  That day marked the birth of hatred in Pierre, and it was only slightly mitigated by the departing buses and trucks, hauling the traumatized survivors to—somewhere, some other squalid place. And by the bulldozers and loaders, and dump trucks that within a day or two obliterated the evidence that anyone had ever lived in Karantina, or that so many of them died there.

  Pierre slept, face resting on his forearm. When he woke there was a spot of drool on his shirt sleeve. He checked his wristwatch. Nine forty-five. He stood stiffly. His body ached. He almost lost his balance walking to the door. Supported himself for a moment against the frame.

  It was already hot, the sun shimmering halfway up the blue bowl of the sky. A perfect day for the water. The kind of day that Angus Beaton found to be acceptable for being on a boat. He welcomed the prospect of Beaton’s company, another person’s demons, the comforting perspective they’d deliver.

  He left the cab and climbed to the top of the wharf. Stood, hands on hips, staring toward the little travel trailer for signs of life. But the truck was gone.

  Then his phone was ringing. He pulled it from his pocket. It was a number that he vaguely recognized—the boardroom speaker-phone. He let it ring through to voicemail, then climbed back down into the boat and waited.

  “Call back on this number ASAP.” The message was from Ethan. Pierre could hear that there were others in the room.

  He dialled.

  Ethan picked up. “I’m going to put you on speaker,” he said. His voice was tight, another sign that he was not alone. “How are things out there?”

  “Fine,” Pierre said, and waited.

  “There you are,” said Kennedy. “Say hello and then I’ll tell you who we have here.”

  “Hi, all,” said Pierre. He could hear the murmuring replies.

  “You know everybody,” Kennedy said and listed them. And when he heard Brawley’s name, heard the hearty shout-out from the boss, he understood where this was going.

  “I’m going to let Mr. Brawley do the talking,” Kennedy said.

  Pierre could picture him. It was early there. Brawley’s white shirt, starched and shimmering, would be unsullied. Necktie loose. Bespoke suit jacket hanging on the back of his chair. He’d be in his usual position at the end of the long oval table.

  Pierre picked up the gun as Brawley enthusiastically talked about the weather in Toronto. The Blue Jays. New season starting. Great prospects. Pierre aimed the gun out the door. At some point during the long night he’d loaded it.

  He toyed with the idea of firing off a round. Wake them up. He smiled at the thought but resisted it, not knowing where the bullet would end up. Someone else’s bo
at.

  And he thought again of Bashir. How long had they been together? Six years, and yet he’d been surprised. The last person in the world that he would have expected to take such an exit, funny, philosophical Bashir. He should have seen it coming, but Bashir just walked around a corner without saying anything to anyone.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yes, yes. You were saying?”

  “Look, Pierre. I’m going to cut right to the purpose of this call and then we can have a longer discussion about what comes next. Okay? What I have to say brings me no joy. No joy at all. But there has to be a parting of the ways here, Pierre. We’ve weighed all our options…”

  Pierre asked his boss to spell it out, out of a subtle creeping malice: “What are you trying to tell me?”

  There was a long pause. Finally Brawley cleared his throat: “There’s no gentle way to say this. But we have to cut you loose, Pierre.”

  He squeezed the trigger. The windows rattled and a chip of creosote flipped off a timber piling on the wharf. Oops. He hadn’t realized there was a bullet in the chamber. For an instant he was mercifully deaf.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  “Sorry, I dropped something.”

  “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine. Where were we?”

  He could imagine the confused glances, startled eyes seeking clarity in other eyes that were equally perplexed. He could hear the thought: That was a gunshot. Fucking Arabs. Savages.

  The teleconference ended with a promise to get back to him with details of the plan for going forward, followed by a lot of expressions from around the table of respect, affection and concern. Pierre was unexpectedly touched, even knowing that the feelings were cheap and rootless. Still, it meant something to him that they’d risk the kind of insincerity that would bother them later, remind them of their acquiescence to hypocrisy. He suddenly felt sorry for all of them. Ethan Kennedy in particular.

  He waited fifteen minutes and decided that Beaton wasn’t going to show. Just as well. He untied his lines, tossed them down, clambered back on board and pushed his stern away, backed into the narrow channel of the little harbour. Idling, he eased his gearshift forward, felt the contented thrum of the machinery beneath his feet. He could hear the gentle wash against the hull. He looked back, watched the furrows widening behind. And then he was out on the soft swell, the infinity above him compromised only by some wispy cloud, perhaps a dissipated contrail.

  He set the autopilot directly westward, the throttle just past idle. Walked toward the stern, gun in one hand, cellphone in the other. Sat in the sunshine and waited for the call he knew would come.

  High above the boat there was a cloud of gannets soaring like confetti in the light breeze, dozens at a time plunging toward the prey that only they could see beneath the surface of the water, countless silent splashes marking their attacks.

  And suddenly the pilot whales returned, close enough that he could hear them gasp as they surfaced in rolling loops, indifferent to his presence. Larger, wiser mammals exploiting smaller, dumber creatures for survival. The raw reality of life.

  What would it be like, he wondered, to exist in a state of freedom from self-consciousness, spared the burden of reflective memory?

  The Draycor move to cut him loose was dictated by the company’s survival instinct but would be tempered by contemporary circumstances. In another time or place he’d simply have been eliminated. He’d witnessed it, participated in it, the termination of an individual who had become an inconvenience or a threat, rebellious or intransigent. Keep him quiet. They would want to keep him quiet by persuasion rather than coercion.

  Ethan was on a pay phone in a coffee shop. A security precaution. Pierre understood and was impressed. Leave no footprints.

  Ethan couldn’t speak at first. Pierre listened to the clatter and the voices, every voice asserting a separate consciousness, lives perhaps as compromised and complicated as his own. He felt oddly solid for the first time in what seemed like days.

  “So, Ethan.”

  “Jesus Christ. I don’t know what to say. How are you doing?”

  “I’m doing just fine. I know the drill. Okay?”

  “Just the same. You must…”

  “Just fill me in on what they said behind my back.”

  Ethan told him that Brawley had actually mentioned a recent massacre in Baghdad to explain why someone would have to take the fall for Puncak. He’d referred to the international outcry, how a singular event can redefine a larger mission. Diverse international objections and concerns about a mission in Iraq, Vietnam or a mining operation in Wherever—could harden into focused outrage because of one or two or eight or eighty deaths that happen in the glare of media attention. Never mind particulars. Never mind relevance.

  “For the media,” Brawley had declared, “controversy is pure gold and they’re constantly prospecting for it, turning over rocks, chipping away at promising outcrops, looking for the motherlode. And nothing, I mean nothing, gets a gold rush going like a massacre. Them and their goddamn metaphors.”

  Pierre struggled not to laugh.

  Mercifully, Brawley had continued, Draycor had been spared that misery, at least initially. But the chickens were definitely coming home to roost. There would have to be the appearance of accountability.

  Ethan said he had stood up for Pierre. Baghdad and Puncak, absurd. The circumstances were entirely different.

  “The circumstances,” Brawley had interrupted, “were irrelevant. What we have is eight dead people.”

  “Jesus Christ…”

  “Bear with me…this is NOT about fact or fairness. This is about optics. And Pierre, you’ve gotta believe me. I’m sick about this. But you know and I know, sometimes we gotta hold our noses and do what we gotta do for the larger enterprise. Are you with me on this?”

  Pierre did not reply.

  The pay-phone call, of course, was part of the larger strategy, which he recognized as Ethan was disclosing, in utter confidence, the details of the settlement that he would soon be offered: a generous financial package of money and shares, numbers to be finalized, but certainly in the seven, possibly even eight-figure range. The formal announcement of his departure would be crafted with Pierre’s participation.

  It was so familiar to him: first the conference call; now the personal touch—the poison pill dissolved in a cocktail of familiarity, friendship, generosity. He imagined that it had been discussed the day before, at a special Sunday caucus.

  “You’ll probably want someone from the outside to review the final settlement and the usual conditions…”

  “What usual conditions?”

  “Well. Basic confidentiality…”

  “Non-disclosure.”

  “You know the drill.” Ethan laughed. “I’m sure you’ve drafted your share of them…”

  “I’ll be thinking about it,” Pierre said.

  “Look, speaking as your friend, there shouldn’t be a lot to think about. Right?”

  “I hear you, Ethan. And thank you for this. It means a lot.”

  “Okay.” Long pause. “Let me know what you decide. I’m here to talk. When do you think you can come in?”

  “I’ll get back to you in a day or so.”

  “A day or so? Okay. But a heads-up…Communications and HR have the bit in their teeth. I’m trying to slow them down, but you know Brawley.”

  “Talk to you later, Ethan.” He stared at the BlackBerry for what felt like a long time. A tired expression was murmuring inside his head. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. So true, so clever the first time someone thought of it. He tried to remember a name that Ethan Kennedy had mentioned a day or so earlier. The name of the newspaper reporter in the city who came from here. Then he remembered and started scrolling back until he found the last email message from Margaret Rankin: Your personal perspective is vitally important to the story. Our mutual acquaintance, Sandy MacIsaac, spoke well of you. I’m anxious to f
ollow up.

  He was still staring at the BlackBerry when it chimed again. Lois.

  “Hi, sweetie,” he said.

  “What’s it like out there today?”

  “It’s lovely. I’m sitting in the sunshine, listening to you. You saw the doctor?”

  “Yes. She sent me for an ultrasound. I actually saw him.”

  “Him?”

  “I have a feeling.”

  “I’m hoping for a girl. Can we find out?”

  “Do we want to?”

  “I do.”

  “I’m envious of you, on the boat. It’s stinking hot here. The city is a mess. When are you coming home?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Are you following the news?”

  “Not as closely as I should. I’m trying to stay calm, lying down a lot. Moving slowly. I don’t want anything to go wrong.”

  “You’re feeling okay, though?”

  “Fat and lazy and apprehensive. But healthy. Sleep and lack of alcohol and I’m eating well, which might explain the fat.”

  “The fat, I’m sure, is in all the right places.”

  “And you? Still living the regimen?”

  “Best I can.” He didn’t tell her about the alcohol, the meat; he didn’t tell her about forgetting, frequently, about the wretched pills; he didn’t mention that he’d just ended his career.

  “Which reminds me,” she said. “I almost forgot…you’re to call the doctor’s office. There was a message.”

  “Which doctor?”

  “With the ‘Z’ name.”

  “Zlotta?”

  “I think. Anyway, they called.”

  “Okay.”

  “What do you think?”

  “No idea. But Lois? I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what’s important. Things will be different when I’m back. Okay? I can’t explain right now. But believe me.”

  “Oh, how I hope you mean that.”