The Work Is Innocent

by Rafael Yglesias

  “You mean like out of a Western?” Richard asked him.

  Mark nodded at him excitedly. “It’s heavy.”

  After his purchase, Leo strode through the store carrying the rifle in its pouch and a few boxes of bullets in his other hand. Richard was both nervous and pleased by this dangerous flair of Leo’s, but nobody even turned his head in the store. Out in the parking lot, Leo and Mark held a conference over the best way the gun could be concealed in his duffel bag. When they had placed clothes and books so that there was no bulge, Leo grabbed Richard by the elbow and squeezed. “You understand, of course, that Mother mustn’t know anything about this?”

  “I hardly know anything about this.”

  “I mean she mustn’t know that I’ve bought a gun.”

  “What about Dad?”

  This was apparently a close question because Leo made a face. “Let’s get in the car,” he said.

  Leo’s face continued its calculations and he didn’t answer Richard until they were out on the open highway, with the wind blowing hair over Richard’s face. Leo spoke loudly to top the wind’s noise. “You see I have to register this with the town. The guy at the store registered it but a similar thing has to be done with the local town. Do you know who’s the person who handles that?”

  “I can’t be sure but probably Mr. Snow. He’s the tax man.”

  “I don’t think it would be him, man.”

  He always contradicts me. “He’s the guy who we register the car with and pay taxes on the house. That’s his job. Town clerk.”

  “Well anyway, I’ll need Aaron for that. ’Cause I said I was a resident and I’ll need Aaron to prove it.”

  “Why didn’t you say you were a resident of New York?”

  Leo was contemptuous of that remark. He shook his head. “No, man. That would fuck everything up.”

  “Well, I can’t advise ya unless I know what you’re tryin’ to do. I mean you don’t have to tell me, but—”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s right.” He shifted so that he faced Richard. Leo lowered his voice. “See, it’s not legal to have a rifle in New York.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I don’t think that’s true, Leo,” Mark said.

  “It is, man. I’ve checked it out. Anyway, I don’t want them to know. If it’s registered here they’ll never get it together to find out.”

  “If you use it they will.” Richard was horrified.

  “I don’t mean if I use it.” Leo laughed.

  “That’s heavy,” Mark said, laughing with him.

  Leo reached out and grabbed Richard’s knee. He lowered his voice and spoke out of the side of his mouth, whispering, “See, man, the pigs have been busting in lately and icing people. And then they justify it because there were guns inside.”

  “Oh, I get it. Okay.” He smiled at Leo. “That’s cool. I thought you thought you could use the gun and they wouldn’t be able to trace it.”

  “I’ll be underground when I use it.” Leo said it casually, as if it were merely an obvious practical solution to an awkward problem. He’s going underground? He might. Richard needed the correction. He was scared by Leo’s seriousness, but with a sibling’s inability to imagine a brother acting with independence and energy, he decided it was a bluff.

  Their parents came out to greet them when they reached home. “So,” Aaron said, and nodded wisely at them, “went out exploring, eh? Isn’t it good, Betty, to have these strapping young fellows about—”

  Betty’s eyes narrowed with amusement. “Strapping!”

  “—getting up first thing—”

  “And leaving the dishes.” Betty went off into peals of laughter and said, “Don’t be silly,” when Richard, abashed, apologized for his neglect.

  “What are you forgiving them for, Betty? Pretty sexist behavior if you ask me.”

  “Look who’s talking,” she said to her husband, and Leo joined in, pointing his finger at Aaron and saying, “She fixed your wagon.”

  Aaron grabbed Louise, who was uninvolved and looked worried, and hugged her to his side. “Isn’t it terrible how they treat their father?” He looked at Mark. “Oh, the poor fellow. Here I am behaving like a doting old man—”

  “And you don’t know what to do with yourself, right?” Betty said to Mark. She was gleeful and reminded Richard of Nana. “Let’s go in the house.”

  Louise demurred. She had to read. Richard was disappointed that she didn’t join in on one of his favorites: a family lunch. But it was dismaying after all. Leo kept Aaron and Betty busy describing good places to see, and Richard was bored by it. Leo hardly listened to their answers until he abruptly asked Aaron if he could speak to him. Aaron was surprised. He looked a little amused by it, but Betty glanced at Leo with a wide-eyed look that Richard understood to be serious worry.

  Betty started a conversation with Mark that Richard couldn’t listen to. He spotted Aaron and Leo on the lawn. His father’s expression had taken on the grave demeanor that accompanied any treatment of equality. Richard was surprised he hadn’t just laughed at Leo and returned to announce, “My dear, our son, who has been unable to make a dental appointment for six years, wants to go underground.” Richard looked at Betty, somehow convinced that she must have guessed what was going on, and found her saying, “Well, you can’t bring up Yevtushenko in that sense. You realize that he’s practically a CIA agent.” She tilted her head as she always had when softening the blow of revealing someone’s ignorance. Richard saw Aaron go off toward the car and Leo return to the house.

  Betty heard the car start and said to Leo as he was coming in, “Where’s he going?”

  Leo paused for a moment. “You really think everything around here is your business, don’t you?” He walked over to her and pretended roughness. He put his hands on both sides of her head and kissed her resoundingly on the forehead.

  “My God,” she said when free, “I think you’ve scrambled my brains.”

  “You’ve completely destroyed any chance of serious conversation.” Richard was pleased to have said this and it did seem to right matters.

  “That’s right,” Betty said. “I was trying to straighten out Mark about literature and politics.”

  “Oh, God,” Leo said. “Not that discussion.”

  “Isn’t it awful,” Betty said. She laughed. “I’ve been having this discussion for thirty years.” She brushed the table thoughtfully. “But don’t you realize that we learned how wrong it was to adopt that attitude in the Communist Party. I remember how foolish they were about Mike Gold. They broke his heart.”

  “I mean,” Mark said. “I’m no Stalinist. I don’t say that Solzhenitsyn is wrong about the Soviet Union.”

  “You’re not saying that?”

  “Well, I mean, in specifics, no. But the effect in the United States is to play into the hands of the pigs. It just becomes anti-Communist propaganda.”

  “I don’t think he’s so accurate,” Leo said.

  “Mark or Solzhenitsyn?” Richard asked, but nobody enjoyed the remark. Richard hurried on. “What isn’t he accurate about?”

  “Well, I mean that comic-book portrait of Stalin—”

  “That is a silly part,” Betty conceded.

  “Is it?” Richard said. “Is it sillier than Tolstoy’s portraits of Tsar Alexander or Napoleon?” Leo made a face and Richard’s voice rose, cracking and hurried. “Come on. You can’t tell me that any great novelist did better. Balzac on Napoleon? Or Fouché? They’re all romanticized.”

  “That’s absurd,” Leo said.

  “Anyway, that’s not the point,” Betty said, worried by an impending scene between the two brothers. “Take One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. You don’t think that’s distorted?”

  Leo shrugged. He looked oppressed, as if the argument was contemptible. Richard was enraged by his attitude. “I don’t know,” Leo said. “How can we know? But it doesn’t matter because he gives no analysis of why it has happened, and the effect is—”


  “Oh, Leo—” Betty said desperately.

  “The effect is one of, on the one hand, making people feel that it is the result of socialism and, on the other hand, of being totally defeatist. He never says that there’s anything that can be done about it.”

  “That’s not true,” Richard yelled, but his mother held their attention by repeating three times, “Leo, that’s wrong.”

  Leo, aggrieved, said, “How is it wrong, huh?”

  Again Richard started a sentence, “The whole point of The First Circle—”

  “The ending of The First Circle,” Betty said, nodding at Richard. “Those men decide to die in Siberia rather than go on helping Stalin’s experiments.”

  “That’s defeatist!”

  “What are you talking about—” Richard talked to the ceiling. He was only glanced at and shushed like a barking dog.

  “If you are going to broaden that word, which I really don’t think you understand”—Betty closed her eyes and sharpened her tone when Leo groaned at this—”to include any act that involves death, then Che is defeatist.”

  “No, no.” Leo bounced his right leg up and down nervously. “I’m saying it’s defeatist because it’s put in romantic terms. You go off passively, martyred, refusing to co-operate. That’s not struggle. That’s not what Che—”

  “You’re just being a fool.” Richard was amazed he had said it. For the first time his voice was confident and unhurried. But the effect frightened him. Leo had jumped up.

  “Look, I’m not going in for this. You two can just go on making up your little theories.” Richard watched him leave and for a moment was sorry. His mother looked at Mark with embarrassment, but when she turned to him, he saw that she was upset.

  “Now please do me a favor, Mom,” Richard said. It was pouring out of him. “Don’t make me feel bad. He said I was absurd. I said he was a fool.”

  “I’m not angry at you,” she said quickly. She convinced him. “I was sorry he was so upset by it. That’s all.”

  “Okay,” he said, ready to go on, but he felt tears along with the words and that scared him into silence.

  Richard was apprehensive of Leo from then on, sure that a resolution of their spat would come at dinner. But there was the usual exchange of literary gossip, followed by Leo’s enthusiastic questions about gardening and the local people. Everyone had forgotten the argument—Aaron and Louise weren’t aware there had been one—except for Richard.

  His father, once they had settled in the living room, tried to extract information about what the Movement was doing, but Mark and Leo evaded all his questions and confirmed Richard’s fear that Leo planned to join many of his friends in the underground. The prospect made him timid and uneasy. It would mean Leo’s death. Eventually.

  He started thinking of how he would react and found himself on the lawn surrounded by reporters, making a proud speech. He was jolted out of it by shame at such egotism. He looked around as if he had just peed. How absurd, he thought, if I’m heartless, it’s no use being embarrassed.

  The next day, after lunch, Mark and Leo said they were going for a walk in the woods. Richard went along. They stopped in a clearing and Leo cut off a branch to whittle. Mark produced the throwing knives and stood fifteen feet away from a young skinny pine. “If you hit it,” Richard said, meaning to be friendly, “you might chop it down.”

  Mark smiled without taking his eyes off the tree. He held himself carefully and balanced the knife on his fingertips, gestured twice toward the tree, and finally snapped his wrist, releasing it. He missed everything.

  Richard tried to suppress a laugh. But Mark took the failure well. He laughed and said, “Not very impressive.”

  “Try a bigger tree,” Richard said, no longer awed by this revolutionary training. He looked at the knives lying on the ground and he couldn’t resist a romantic act. He picked one up and, spotting a larch, he turned to face it. He had planned to prepare the throw carefully, but was too embarrassed by Mark’s observation to wait. He released it without calculation.

  “All right! Check it out!” Richard skipped happily toward the tree. His knife had notched a small square of bark off and remained embedded in the wood. He was surprised by the milky sap that oozed out over the tip of the blade. He couldn’t pull the knife out of the tree and he called Mark over to help.

  Mark pulled it out without complimenting Richard on his accuracy. Richard considered that a grave sin and it rankled all day. Mark continued throwing with little success. Richard felt an airy contempt for his lack of skill and he waited until he judged that Mark’s disappointment had peaked before he threw again. The thud of the blade hitting and the vibration of the handle while it settled into the wood were perfect re-creations of the Hollywood ideal. Leo said, “Good, Richie. How are you doing it?”

  “I don’t know. I just keep thinking of the Buddhist thing. You know, aim without aiming.” That sounded foolish, Richard thought, and his embarrassment was mixed with his pleasure at Leo’s notice of his skill.

  “I know,” Mark said. “That’s my problem. I’m too self-conscious.”

  “What do you mean?” Leo asked. He picked up a knife.

  “You know,” Richard said, glad that Mark had understood him. “It has to be a part of you. I mean that sounds silly, but. You can’t worry that it’s going to work. Just let it go.”

  “Yeah, well,” Leo said, not concealing his amusement. “I mean like which end do you hold?”

  A discussion of Richard’s and Mark’s methods removed any chance of success. For an hour they failed to land a blade in the tree and then began to miss everything, eventually losing a knife in the forest’s undergrowth.

  Richard was convinced by this childish and delightful adventure that Mark and Leo weren’t going underground. It was just cowboy fantasies. He got to like Mark but was disturbed that Mark treated him casually. He found himself waiting eagerly to be alone with him to talk. But his stomach fluttered nervously when they were, and he was afraid that he would be unable to break the paralyzing fear of humiliation. They were in the kitchen, the rest of the house asleep, Mark reading the Times. Richard had a sense of déjà vu, confusing Mark with John. Was this the beginning of a neurotic cycle? He was afraid of not earning older men’s respect and chased after them like a puppy. It disgusted him. I’m a latent homosexual. I have a shattered ego.

  He cleared his throat and said, “Leo didn’t pay much attention to it—” Mark looked up, startled. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “No, go ahead.”

  “You know, in the woods. Leo didn’t relate to what I was saying. About the Buddhist stuff. But you did.”

  “Oh yeah. That’s heavy stuff. I’ve really been into that. Have you read Castaneda?” Richard shook his head no. “Don Juan?” Mark described the book, telling Richard of the giant dog that plays with Castaneda while he is on Peyote. The idea that there were gods of drugs that came to either kill or help the taker frightened Richard, because if they existed, they surely meant to kill him.

  Richard learned something from Mark’s description of Castaneda’s books: Mark wanted to handle life with perfect control. He said that it was amazing to think of life noncompetitively. You allow things to master you rather than trying to master them. We make things difficult, he said, by putting our egos between our consciousness and our acts.

  “That’s really amazing that you say that,” Richard responded. He was sincere in his remarks but conscious of their formality. “Because I’ve been worried by my egotism”—he laughed to deprecate the contradiction—“but I decided it was a strength and not a weakness.”

  “Egotism?” Mark’s worried shifting of his eyes reminded Richard of Mark’s reactions to his jokes at breakfast.

  “Yeah,” Richard said. “I mean I realize that sounds adolescent but I’m not doing what I used to—trying to get over my embarrassment of feeling unappreciated by emphasizing my great opinion of myself. I just don’t believe in modesty. I think it’s streng
thening to admit that you think you’re great.”

  Mark seemed lost. “Well, I think you should feel good about yourself.”

  “I don’t mean just that,” Richard said. “I think ambition is a vital part of great acts.”

  “Oh no. I think that’s wrong. Geniuses aren’t aware of their genius.”

  “Oh, come on. Balzac, when he was fixing up his first study, had a bust of Napoleon, and he stuck a piece of paper under it. He had written on it, ‘What he did not achieve by the sword I shall achieve by the pen.’ ” Richard’s enjoyment of this quote returned to him. He laughed, he realized, the way Mark ought to have. Mark’s lack of appreciation made him uncomfortable. “I mean Tolstoy,” Richard continued, “considered himself grand enough to start a new religion, to maintain Shakespeare was a lousy playwright. They were all like that. And I can’t believe it’s a coincidence.”

  Mark smiled with gentle contempt. “Yeah, but everybody thinks he’s a genius. You’re not including the thousands of people who thought so and were totally forgotten.”

  “I agree with that. But then you’ll admit that, for a genius, their ego doesn’t get in the way of their acts.” Richard looked at him triumphantly.

  Mark shifted in his chair and when he spoke his voice lost its tone of distance. “I think there’s an organic process that a genius goes through that isn’t complicated by worrying over fame.”

  “Look, I love geniuses as much as the next guy, but I can show you a copy of the first page of the Père Goriot manuscript. Balzac has a flamboyant and large title, a crossed out paragraph, and the rest is scribblings of his optimistic estimates of how much money he expected to make on it. And that’s one of his most respected novels. It’s a classic. Do you think Edmund Wilson is a genius?” Mark nodded reluctantly. “Well, he describes getting up late at night to read the reviews of his books. Thomas Mann called writers charlatans because of all this. But I don’t think so. It’s just a middle-class attitude that there’s something refined and great about the personality of genius.”