The world spun around me.
“Here’s what we propose,” he said, addressing the others. To my horror, they didn’t all look equally terrified as I was. Not nearly. They were altogether too composed. Cameron/Ignatius, to his credit, looked vaguely ill. Gavin/Ford’s face was beaming, smiling a wretchedly happy grin. There was a lunatic gleam in Valentine Michael Smith’s eye that I did not care for. If Emily had ever once shown an unwillingness to participate, it had long since departed. In its place, unmitigated merriment. This, from the woman who threatened to leave our group if we so much as pranked Munroe.
“We must treat Mr. Purvis here with the respect and courtesy we give any proposed montag,” Aubrey said. “Both sides of the issue must have their say. I will serve as the prosecution, while brother Yossarian has bravely offered to act as counsel for the defendant. The devil’s own advocate, if you will. We will present our cases, leaving it for you to judge. The ’tag’s ultimate fate lies in the hands of yon impartial jury.”
“Solid plan,” said Burt/Gandalf. “I can’t believe this, but I’m in, all the way. But, what if we find him innocent? Do we let him go? Aren’t we all, well, fucked?”
“Not at all, brother Gandalf, I assure you. As you see, the ’tag, like justice herself, is blindfolded. Your identities are assured to remain anonymous. Should the defendant be found not guilty, only myself, Kilgore, Offred, and Yossarian will take the fall for our actions. We are prepared to accept this eventuality. Isn’t that right?” Danae and Warren nodded keenly. I shrugged noncommittally. “And, should the ’tag be found guilty for his crimes —” Aubrey reached into his pocket, drawing out two books and displaying the jackets aloft for our perusal. My heart sank as I read the titles. Oh shit. A faded copy of Word Made Flesh by Jack O’Connell, and Clive Barker’s The Books of Blood Vols. 1–3. “His punishment shall fit the crime. We will turn him into something he hates more than anything else. We will carve him up into literature.”
“Oh, that’s perfect,” Queequeg squealed. “We’ll slice him up like bacon!”
“A book of blood, yeah,” Scout Finch squeaked. “Wherever he’ll be opened, he’ll be red.”
“That’s goddamned poetic,” Lady Fuchsia snorted in jubilation.
The Monkeys were nodding, capering, clapping their paws in agreement. Danae’s eyes were alight with joy and bloodlust. Warren managed to re-ignite the pyre, and the Monkeys whooped with glee. On the ground, Munroe returned to life again, emitting a muted keen that could have been a scream of terror.
Watching him lie there, supplicant to our whims, oh, Eric, wasn’t there a part of me that was gladdened by his situation? Seeing him squirm in terror, at the mercy of our cabal; could I admit to myself that a not very small portion of my conscience was rejoicing, singing hosannas, ecstatic at the vision of the mighty destroyer of all things good cowering at my feet? You bet I could. I wanted payback. Revenge. Ralph Emerson’s recoil of nature, that’s what I yearned for. I wanted Munroe dead. I wanted to slice him, dice him, burn his remnants, and piss on the ashes.
“Yossarian?” Aubrey asked, startling me from my bloodlust fantasy. “Shall we begin the trial, counsellor?”
I mentally sliced Munroe’s throat one last time for good measure, then brought myself to look at Aubrey. The wind had picked up, angrily slamming itself into his side. His locks fought nonsensically amongst themselves. Let’s just butcher the pig, I thought, drink his blood and dance in his gore.
Law school, however, was equally present in my soul. A respect for due process, even under conditions such as these. You don’t sucker student loans for thirty thousand without picking up a few bad habits along the way. “You bet,” I said. Aubrey smiled a full-wattage grin of love across to me. I smiled back, imagining Aubrey’s trachea exposed by my bare hands as I ripped out his throat.
“Brothers and sisters,” Aubrey began. He crouched beside Munroe, pulling him up into a sitting position. He put a comradely arm around his shoulders. “I present to you, the defendant, Munroe Purvis. I ask that you not let your emotions be unduly swayed by the more pitiful aspects of his current condition. A man is determined by his actions, not his image. Let us instead examine those deeds, a list so heinous to the beliefs of anyone with a lick of common sense that you will have no choice but to find Munroe Purvis guilty. Mr. Purvis has, through direct action and with malice of forethought, single-handedly lowered the expectations and quality of life for untold millions of his viewers.” The Monkeys whispered excitedly. “He is scum of the highest order!” A snowball flew past me, striking Munroe dead centre of his face, knocking him flat.
“Objection!” I yelled out. Worried looks passed through the group. “Drawing conclusions without facts placed in evidence! Unfair characterization of the defendant!”
“Sustained,” Danae said. “Stick to the facts, Don Quixote. And Hagar, dear, let’s hold off on the snowballs?”
“Sorry,” Hagar said. “Couldn’t help myself.” A few snickers escaped from the group.
“My apologies, your honours,” Aubrey said, lobbing an evil look my way. What, I was supposed to go easy on him? I suspected the judges of bias, but held off on that accusation. “Let us examine the evidence. I am sure the facts will speak for themselves.
“Mr. Purvis has, in addition to his monthly club picks, released thirty-two works of fiction in the last year, all published by his vanity company MuPu Incorporated. Due entirely to his constant and tireless promotion of these works through his television program, these novels have each vaulted themselves to the top of every major bestseller list there is.
“Fact. Agnes Coleman’s My Baby, My Love has sold more copies than the last novels of Philip Roth, Thomas Keneally, and Carol Shields combined.” Smart, that, using a local hero to engender feelings of resentment toward the accused. Not that much was needed anyway, but I thought it was a nice touch.
“Fact,” he continued. “Mr. Purvis’s recommendations are routinely challenged and condemned for their utter lack of even the basic tenets of quality storytelling. ‘Utter trash, unredeemed even by choice of font,’ says Harold Bloom in his review of Patricia Yellow’s A Dime or Two for Your Thoughts. ‘Indescribably awful, a wellspring of gagging bile that chokes you into unconsciousness,’ Russell Banks designates Douglas MacDonald’s Jesus Rides Shotgun . Margaret Atwood denounces Ian Falk’s Shame on All of You as ‘a failure on every level, even if charitably viewed as intentional parody.’
“Fact. Not only has the accused failed in every conceivable way to recognize and promote anyone with even the merest hint of talent, Mr. Purvis has gone so far as to denounce not only those who oppose him, but also to dismiss any book that he feels may strike the general population as challenging or incisive, and thereby of no value to his followers. He calls John Irving a hack. Of Mice and Men is too long by half. To Kill a Mockingbird made him sad and uncomfortable. He has labelled anyone not on his approved reading list as the product of overrated liberal agenda filth.
“Fact. Mr. Purvis is not only responsible for the publication of some of the most appalling shit —”
“Objection!”
“Overruled!” said Hagar Shipley, squawking with laughter. They were enjoying themselves immensely.
“— the most appalling shit to ever be printed, he has of late begun threatening to reissue novels whose copyrights have long since expired, rewriting them through careful study of the reactions of test audiences so as to appeal to today’s less discerning, shorter attention span viewer. Bleak House updated into a less bleak pamphlet! Gulliver’s Travels , minus the satire and the Lilliputians, to save time! Moby Dick in one hundred and fifty pages, fourteen point font, double-spaced, ‘re-imagined and set right’ through the pen of the author of The House I Done Built! And the whale loses! Ahab gets his revenge, and sails away to further adventures. Test readers found the original ending depressing. The possibility of a sequel was deemed an uplifting and therefore more appropriate replacement.” Queequeg wailed in protest. “
Of all his crimes, this is perhaps the most heinous of all, the equivalent of dance remixes by those incapable of writing something new!”
He launched a well-placed kick into Munroe’s mid-section, sinking his foot painfully into Munroe’s layers of protective fat. Judge Lyra overruled my objection. “Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, I present to you Munroe Purvis. Millionaire. Talk-show host. Spokesman. Vanity publisher. Fraud. Criminal. I put it to you, there can only be one possible decision when faced with the magnitude of his sins.
“I call now for a decision of guilty. The world must be cleansed of the cancer that is Munroe. Do not let his crimes go un-punished.”
I never had much opportunity to hone my skills at reading juries, but a blind man would have seen the venom Munroe’s captors were spitting. Were they real monkeys, they would have thrown their feces at him. Shrieking, grunting, they pointed fingers and pulled hair in torment. They swung from the trees in anger. The tribe wanted blood, they craved a feast of skin and sinew. They would suck the marrow from Munroe’s bones, play the xylophone on his ribcage.
Aubrey looked to me, delighted. “Your move, counsellor.”
I rubbed my eyes with my palms, compressing the orbs to bounce fantastic colours off the insides of my eyelids, trying to settle my thoughts.
I could throw in the towel. Take a dive. Dine on roast pig, go home, throw up, and get on with my life. Maybe take out another loan, go for my Masters in Library and Information Sciences. Yeah, that’d be a piece of all right.
But he was a montag. The game had to play itself out. I thrust my chest out, threw on an intimidating cloak of Atticus Finch righteousness, faced the Supreme Court, and commenced oration on my client’s behalf.
“Is Munroe Purvis guilty? Yes.” Munroe moaned on the ground in disapproval. Sorry, asswipe, I thought, you should always work with your lawyer, not against them. You get out what you put in. “Munroe Purvis is clearly, unequivocally, unmistakably guilty of the crimes my esteemed colleague has presented you. He must be held responsible for some of the worst crimes put to paper since the hallowed days of Bulwer-Lytton himself. You don’t like him? Fair enough. I don’t like him. I look at him, and I see embodied in blubber every daily outrage in our newspapers. I see religious intolerance. I see bigotry. I see fear of the other. I see xenophobia, and warmongering, and deaths in the name of nebulous higher powers. I look at Munroe, and I see cultural terrorism yet to come on a scale I cannot comprehend. He has swiftly hijacked, subverted, and reduced our civilization to the lowest common denominator. I hate Munroe Purvis, and everything he has come to stand for.”
What was my point, again?
“Yet, let us not condemn him outright. Munroe, for all his faults, is only a symbol of something far, far worse. A rallying point for the marauding hordes. A flag, nothing more. It is easy to revile that which we do not understand. This is what he and others want. If we condemn without comprehension, we might as well subscribe to FOX News and get it over with. We must fight those instincts that advise us to kill without reason. If we arbitrarily punish this man without introspection, we prove ourselves to be no better than those we criticize for narrow-mindedness and intolerance. I ask you, I beg you, we must not fall victim to this mindset. The question therefore is not did he commit these crimes, but why .
“I put it to you, brothers and sisters, to dare yourselves to ask, why? Is Munroe really that superficial and thoughtless a person? Or does there exist deeper meaning to his actions? Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t.
“I ask you to look at the accused. Study him. And ask yourself, why? I submit there exists a profound significance to his actions. Like him or not, Munroe Purvis serves an important purpose. He has shown to us, has revealed to the world, that the forces of ignorance are far stronger than we care to realize. Each week, Munroe pulls aside the curtain to expose modes of thought and belief that until now we have been content to ignore as a tiny quotient of the whole. Munroe has performed a public service. He has become more than a person, he is now a symbol, and if we bring the symbol down, we risk lending credence to his beliefs. He has given face and voice to the enemy. He has provided tangible targets for our rage. Remove him, and you risk the removal of the most accessible avenue that exists to this shadowy subworld of bigotry and fear.
“If Munroe Purvis did not exist, we would have to invent him.”
I let the wind and snow assail my face for a minute. Munroe lay quiet, his whimpering long forgotten. The Monkeys crowded together, watching me.
“Don Quixote!” I yelled above the bluster. “Quixote! Offred! Kilgore! The rest of you! I submit that Munroe Purvis must be released! His crimes may be numerous and indefensible, but his value to our cause cannot be estimated!”
I bowed my head, exhausted. Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic as it sinks takes a lot out of a man. It was a lost cause, but some of the Monkeys looked uncertain. Valentine Michael Smith bit his lip apprehensively. Lady Fuchsia and Gandalf clasped hands in misery. I didn’t dare hope for a win, however. Lyra bared her teeth at me. Queequeg and Ignatius stared at Munroe’s body like it was beef on a spit. At best, the confusion might allow for a mistrial, but I didn’t think a hung jury was in the cards for me. Under the circumstances, such an outcome was pretty fucking unlikely. Perhaps a Hail Mary might be in order.
“Shelf Monkeys,” I began again. “Some of you may have heeded my words. Some may have already made up your minds. But my client stands, sorry, lies before you now at your mercy. He is powerless. Will you not allow him the opportunity to speak in his own defence?”
Aubrey considered this, while Raoul Duke and Ford loudly derided me. “Very well, Yossarian,” he said.
“Aw, fuck this shit!” yelled Scout.
“It does seem only fair, brothers and sisters. After all, we’ve never before had a montag that could speak for itself. Remove the gag.”
I helped Munroe up to a sitting position, tenderly working the tape from his mouth and scooping the ball out, loosening another flood of saliva and bile. Munroe panted heavily and began to blubber. “Why are you doing this? Who are you people?” Munroe the ineffectual wimp was looking for leniency.
I flicked my finger against his forehead, getting a satisfying whimper out of him for my troubles. “Knock it off, you’re not fooling anyone.” I put my hands on the sides of his head. “I don’t know if you have any hope here, but you just might,” I said softly in his ear. “This is your only chance, Munroe, don’t blow it.”
“Please,” he begged, “please don’t hurt me, please. I’ll pay you whatever you want, I won’t go to the police, I swear I do whatever you want, please!”
“Munroe Purvis,” Aubrey proclaimed, pulling his hood tight over his head. The Monkeys were crouched together behind him, swaying. “You sit before us charged with crimes against the humanities. Do you have anything to say in your own defence before we pass sentence?”
“What?” His head whipped around blindly, snot running down his chin, freezing to his moustache. “I don’t understand, what do they mean?” His wandering hands found my pants leg and tugged me to him. “Please, don’t hurt me, I’ll do anything you want.”
I yanked my leg away, leaving Munroe to sob into the ground. I wish I could lie and say I had been merciful. Make myself more sympathetic for the movie version. But I had no pity to offer. Munroe’s dog and pony show was all a sham, and knowing it only made him more pathetic. I looked down at him, and all I felt was an itchy disgust. I wanted him buried in a pit of lime.
He stilled himself, slowly comprehending his position. “All right,” he said. Again, the transformation was instantaneous. The snivelling little coward was gone. He pulled himself up to his knees. “All right, you fuckers, that is it.” The Monkeys shrank back in confusion. Even blindfolded, Munroe stared directly at us. “I don’t know what’s going on, really, but you all need to understand a few things. You’re nothing but a pack of losers. You sit at home and read, and pretend you’r
e better than everyone else, you’re so . . . special.” He spat a wad of blood, spraying my boots with a Pollock print. “You can all kiss my ass. You’re no better than me. You fuckers better run, now, because when I’m done with you, you’ll wish your fathers had never gotten drunk and raped your mothers. I am Munroe Purvis! I am worth sixty-five million dollars this year alone! Net! You pussies are going to rot in Hell, and I am going to laugh from Heaven above as you fry. Do your worst, you pissant little bookreading faggots. Assholes.”
I’ve got to hand it to him. Munroe has balls. Little sense, but big balls. Any hope he had for clemency, however, went swiftly down the toilet.
“Have you anything further to submit, Yossarian?” Aubrey asked.
“No, that should do it.”
“Shelf Monkeys, the montag has made its case.” Aubrey turned to face us each in turn. “We have heard the evidence. Have you reached a verdict?”
“Guilty!” Danae yelled. But it wasn’t Danae who spoke — it was Atwood’s Offred, taking her sweet revenge on the religious patriarchy that condemned her to a life of forced fertility.
“Guilty!” agreed Warren, now completely Kilgore Trout, unwashed and misunderstood, pissing out obscure near-genius science-fiction stories.
Guilty, guilty, guilty, spreading like a virus through the group.
“Guilty.” Lyra, saving the many worlds from the tyranny of an oppressive religious state.
“Guilty.” Valentine Michael Smith, frothing at the mouth, clearly finding nothing in Munroe worth grokking about.
“Guilty.” Scout Finch, all grown up and conveniently ignoring the lessons of Atticus.
“Guilty.” Hagar Shipley, old and crotchety and unapologetic.
Aubrey laid his gaze on me.“How say you, Yossarian?”
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