Darwin's Ghosts

by Ariel Dorfman

  Downey smiled at this outburst. “And here I am, thinking you wanted to celebrate the sesquicentenary in one of the places that Columbus encountered, that he mentioned as Puerto Grande in his Third Voyage—where he partook of baked fish and huitas, a sort of rabbit with the tail of a rat.”

  “You didn’t answer me,” Cam insisted. “You can’t just kidnap people here. Now we’re in America, damn it!”

  “Yes and no,” said Downey.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re under American jurisdiction, that’s true, but with none of the guarantees accruing to a US citizen.”

  “Where are we?”

  The plane had cruised to a stop and the hatch now opened. Outside we glimpsed a military jeep speeding toward us. I saw it veer suddenly to avoid running over an iguana, and then screech to a halt next to some stairs that were being rolled toward us.

  “Where are we?” Downey stood up and once again smiled. “At a Naval base, outside the territorial United States. Welcome, my dear Fitzroy, welcome, Mrs. Foster, to Guantánamo.”

  TEN

  “Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast.”

  —Goethe, Faust

  Guantánamo!

  They could do, Downey explained, anything to us here. Not that they intended to—on the contrary, we were his guests and would soon meet some other prominent hosts, come especially to celebrate our arrival and the wonderful discoveries that lay in the near and far future. He recounted their names and titles as we mounted the jeep and headed off to the other side of the bay, where a large building loomed: Phillip Clarke, the CEO of Pharma2001, along with a couple of his German acolytes, the secretary of defense himself, the subdirector of the Center for Disease Control—to which soon would be added the words “and Prevention,” Downey assured us, as soon as Congress voted on the new designation—a fundamental step forward for the funding of his own project. And as we were on the subject of funding, two bankers would be in the auditorium, whose names he preferred not to reveal, as well as a high operations officer from the Central Intelligence Agency. And an eminence, Professor Saltmacher, in charge of Biosafety and Toxins at the National Security Agency. Several scientists and Nobel Prize–winning economists, whose names, though I didn’t catch them, seemed to suitably impress Cam. And, of course, the academic world was also in attendance, through a member of the Board of Visitors of the National Defense University who was, at the same time, here to represent the Project for the New American Century. And, of course, Admiral Peabody, who would be our primary host.

  I interrupted Downey, pointing at a large barbed-wire compound behind which dozens of black people, half naked, were grouped, watching us go by, cheering our jeep as if it were a presidential cavalcade.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, that’s Camp Bulkeley. Haitian refugees, rescued on the high seas by our Navy—fleeing their country after the recent coup d’état. The United States can’t let them reach our shores and can’t let them die in the ocean, so here they are till things settle down in their own land or we find some place that will accept them, though who knows who’d want the poor devils. I’ve been sending them extra food rations—maybe that’s why they’re waving to us. ”

  And then he kept on salivating about the renowned men who would be there for my presentation, as he called it, but I had lost all interest in his preening, couldn’t escape the image of those men and women pressed against the railings, eyes boring into mine like black candles under the same sun that had seen Columbus go ashore on an island like this one five hundred years ago.

  At about this very time of day. He had waited for dawn because the night of October 11 lights had been sighted—lights like eyes in the darkness, like a wax candle rising and falling—he had waited and ordered the crew to sing the Salve and called the island San Salvador and the trees were very green and there was water and fruits of diverse kinds. And he leaped on the shore and was soon received by the inhabitants of that island, who brought parrots and other goods. The natives were well made and handsome. And they were naked.

  Five hundred years had gone by and everything had changed and nothing had changed.

  I looked at Cam to gauge if she was feeling my sadness but she seemed to be animated by the same sparkle of cheerful buoyancy that had gripped her since we had been assaulted just outside the Straits of Magellan, since we had first met, if you came to think of it, in that swimming pool so long ago it seemed to have happened in another lifetime.

  My despondency only grew when we met Admiral Thomas Peabody, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Another admiral, I thought, another man of the sea, greeting us effusively and with who knows what venomous second thoughts in his head, like that other admiral, Almirante Cristóbal Colón, back then greeting the natives, the Arawaks soon to be kidnapped and exterminated and enslaved—not one left anymore on any of these Caribbean islands.

  Cam, on the other hand, was delighted with Peabody.

  Not because he was jolly and rotund and received us as heroes, thanked us for so willingly serving our country, apologized for the abruptness of what he termed the “invitation.” But because she obviously perceived in him a possible ally—why? what flicker in his eyes justified such an assessment?—although she waited till Downey had hurried away to attend to preparations, waited for the door to close behind his receding footsteps, before pouncing, letting loose a wild purring animal inside her.

  “You know that all this is a hoax, Admiral.”

  “What’s a hoax?”

  “That my husband has this sickness that Dr. Downey has been selling. That his body contains the cure to it and the cure to God knows how many other ailments and problems. It’s a lie, smoke and mirrors.”

  Peabody held his ground. He had survived worse storms than one woman, no matter how bewitching. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but I’ve seen the photos, the damning evidence—and the results of Dr. Downey’s experiments. Not to mention his reputation. You have your credentials, but you’re not in line for a Nobel Prize, eh?”

  “What if the photos you have are a fraud, Photoshopped with a technique created, by the way, by my husband? What then?”

  “They’re not. They were snapped by two of our most reliable agents—and they fit into everything else about Mr. Foster’s life—and other proof amassed regarding other cases.”

  “If they are a fraud, what then?”

  For a second, a cloud passed over the admiral’s face. Then he recomposed his features, hardening them back into certainty.

  “Listen, Ernest Downey, he’s the first true genius I’ve ever met. A bit eccentric—and difficult to please when he’s in anger mode or overdrive, I’ll give you that. But fraud! I’ve gotten to know him quite well these last years, and more so while we were working to get this facility ready for your visit. You’re surprised? He anticipates everything, told me as soon as you recovered from your accident, Mrs. Foster, that you’d both be heading down to Tierra del Fuego. That’s when we started prepping Gitmo for your imminent arrival, the auditorium you’re about to see and the three labs with state of the art technology where Mr. Foster will be residing until the tests are completed—”

  “For how long?” I interceded.

  “For as long as it takes,” he answered. “But the point is, he doesn’t make mistakes—”

  “But he thought my husband and I were going to Europe, he sent the agents there . . .”

  “Let’s not quibble about tactics. Strategically—and that’s what matters in a war, not minor skirmishes and maneuvers—he always hits the nail on the head. He told us to investigate the genealogy of the victims we had found with the same syndrome exhibited by your husband, and he was right. His paradigm works! And the research is flawless! He wouldn’t convene some of the most powerful men in this country—and abroad—if he weren’t certain of his data. Those two photos are irrefutable. Now, I understand you want to protect your spouse, but the needs of the nation and humanity supersede individual rights,
so—”

  “If it’s a hoax, will you let us go?”

  Peabody was getting impatient, his civility about to turn sour. Why was Cam provoking him? We were at his mercy. I reached out to her arm, hoping to dissuade her. She shook me off.

  “I want your word of honor, Admiral, that you’ll let us go if Fitzroy proves useless to you. That you’ll immediately return us home so we can peacefully continue our lives.”

  The admiral sighed, won over by her passion, her stubbornness—not surprising, it had happened so often to me.

  “All right then. If Mr. Foster is useless to us, and you can prove that, then, yes, we’ll let you go. I trust you’ll accept my word of honor.”

  “What I’ll accept doesn’t matter. It’s whether you’ll stand by it that matters here.”

  “I will stand by my promise. But you’re in for a big disappointment.”

  And as if this were a signal, the intercom buzzed.

  “Here we go,” the admiral said. “Showtime.”

  He escorted us down several winding corridors until he reached a door, guarded by none other than Agent Wiggins. “Remember to keep Mr. Foster out of sight until Dr. Downey gives the go-ahead,” Peabody said—and before I could object, he had grabbed Cam by the elbow and moved away with her. Wiggins opened the door and, bowing to me, indicated that I was to enter.

  It was a projectionist’s booth, looking out onto an auditorium. Reading an issue of Hustler magazine sat a huge-bellied black man—oversized for such a small space, even more so now that Wiggins and I were squeezed in. “At last! The guest of honor,” he said, leaving the magazine open at a particularly pornographic photo of two naked women making out. “I’m Ensign S. Henson, go by the name of Sleazy Steve, but seeing as I’m in charge of making sure you look good under the spotlight and the cameras, all that stuff, you can call me plain and simple Sleazy.”

  I told him I would rather address him as Ensign Henson and he shrugged complacently and invited me to make myself comfortable—would I care for some reading material, he had a stray copy of Bound and Gagged and Screw Magazine and, if I cared for more sophisticated fare, some Playboys. I declined, more interested in the auditorium: a hundred seats, twenty-some filled with men in suits, looking up at a podium, behind which a giant screen glowed in the penumbra. The walls were cloaked in darkness, a mass of curtains covering what was behind them.

  I saw Admiral Peabody steering my wife into the auditorium. They stopped in front of the assembled men and he introduced them one by one. She seemed at ease, the only woman in the room, relaxed, flirtatious, joking. I felt a surge of jealousy until she looked up in my direction—guessing where I was—and then gifted me with a little wave of her hand, mouthed the words, Trust me, it’s going to be all right, before returning to some sleek oaf with silvered hair and rim glasses who must have been the rep of the Board of the National Defense University or some such nonsense.

  Cam and Peabody stood for a while, chatting with the other attendees, until the lights dimmed and everybody took their places, side by side, expectantly gazing at the podium where a bright beam of light announced the arrival of Ernest Downey—a spectacle engineered by Sleazy Steve who, as he fingered buttons, barely looked up from the photo of a petite Asian woman, full frontal and breasts budding.

  “My friends,” Downey said, “we are gathered to celebrate a breakthrough with tremendous implications for the world. Thanks to your support and the organizations you represent we are about to set forth on an odyssey that will revolutionize the way in which we comprehend and replicate our bodies and our history, influencing how we practice biomedicine and warfare, helping to avoid a potential apocalypse. Decoding visual memories embedded in our genetic makeup will allow us to recuperate a past apparently lost forever, with enormous commercial benefits as well as major consequences for our national security. You’ve been frank enough to admit, at one time or another, a residual skepticism regarding this enterprise. Those lingering doubts will now be laid to rest.”

  I was struck by how unruffled and rational Downey sounded. The frantic lunacy of our transcontinental night flight seemed to have drained away, depleted on my hapless ears. Aghast as I was by his procedures, and fearful, despite Cam’s reassurances, of what the impending experiments might mean for me, I couldn’t help being drawn into the serene vortex of his arguments, the conviction with which his speech was delivered. I looked at Cam’s face to see if she was equally mesmerized, but her left foot was nervously tapping the floor, a sure sign her mind was elsewhere. What could she be thinking of, scheming, strategizing?

  “You all know,” Downey continued, “that Operation Memory Redux derived from a personal tragedy. I do not wish to subject you, and definitely not myself, to the recollection of those sad circumstances. I do not intend to exhibit images of my little girl before and after being assaulted by the monster Krao. But you do need to see photos of other victims of this pestilence from the past, this alien invasion of innocent lives.”

  At Downey’s gesture, Sleazy Steve set aside his reading material and pressed a button. On the giant screen, a photo of a young mulatto boy in basketball garb appeared, eyes ecstatic as he hoisted a high school trophy.

  “Jedediah Grant,” Downey intoned. “At age thirteen.”

  He signaled again and Sleazy responded by making another photo materialize, with its all-too-familiar contours: the body still belonged to the boy we had previously seen but the round face was that of an African midget, eyes dancing merrily in skin as black as tar, teeth out-jutting and sharply filed as he grinned for the camera.

  “Jedediah Grant, now age fifteen,” Downey said. “Invaded by Ota Benga, an African pygmy enticed to the St. Louis Fair in 1904 by a missionary and entrepreneur. Photographed by Jesse Tarbox Beals and displayed two years later in the monkey cage of the Bronx Zoo along with an orangutan. Puts a bullet through his heart in 1916, when, abandoned by those who had profited from his shows, he is unable to secure passage back to the Congo. Why Jedediah? His lineage, of course. On his mother’s side, a direct descendant of the photographer Tarbox Beals. On his father’s side, a bit more complicated. The second in command at the Bronx Zoo, responsible for the pygmy’s ordeal, was Madison Grant, a man later famous for having written a racist tract that inspired Adolf Hitler, warning of the threat to the Nordic race posed by inferior forms of humanity. Grant was supposed to have died childless. Not true. Ironically, he spawned an illegitimate child with a Negro striptease artist, and that son was Jedediah’s grandfather. By the time I received this information from the Pentagon, Jedediah had shot himself. A pity. The dead are useless to us.”

  Downey lifted a finger and again Sleazy lifted his own finger and pushed it down, again the screen was lit up, first with a white girl in a white dress—and then the same girl, this time with the enormous head of an elephant mounted on her shoulders.

  “Mary Fielding,” Downey said, “the great-great-granddaughter of Adam Forepaugh, a circus entrepreneur who brought the elephant Topsy from Africa in the 1870s. Topsy ended up at a Coney Island amusement park where, in 1902, she crushed a spectator who had burned her trunk with a hot cigar. The elephant was subsequently electrocuted by Thomas Edison’s company, a process filmed by Jacob Blair Smith who is—naturally!—an ancestor of poor Mary Fielding’s mother. Again, I was too late to save this child for science. She suspiciously died a few months after Topsy’s head invaded her photos. We lack proof that it was poison as her parents promptly had her cremated. A third death that left us with no live DNA, no blood or skin for sampling, no organs to X-ray or transplant. Just when we feel the danger of infiltration of our photographic system and even of our faces themselves may be growing, just when recent research indicates the possibility that this plague of natives and, worse still, the innumerable animals abused by our species could strike millions of victims. Regardless of their specific lineage. Your sons and daughters.”

  Downey paused for this to sink in.

  I saw Admiral Peabody lea
n over toward Cam and whisper something in her ear. She didn’t answer, turned to look up toward where she assumed I was watching, must have guessed I was desperate for reassurance. She nodded her head at me, smiling, and then let her smile vanish as soon as her eyes returned to Downey. If looks could kill.

  “The eventuality of an epidemic of biblical proportions, my friends, made it all the more imperative to find a living, breathing, vibrant specimen, someone who might illuminate our search, a missing link, so to speak. A while back we learned that there was indeed such a subject, an American citizen, no less.”

  And here another signal and Sleazy obeyed and this time it was me up there, the very photo that I had pinned up to remind me of what I innocently looked like before my visitor had come, the image snapped just before my fourteenth birthday. There was something obscene about being exposed like that for this audience of strangers, having them delve into my private life and strip me of the anonymity I had wasted so many hours protecting. I wanted to reach across the keyboard and press another button, but Sleazy’s large bulk dissuaded me—he’d only press the button again—and there was Wiggins breathing down my neck. Cam had half risen as if to place herself between those gaping men and the image of the boy she had loved enough to come back to save, but she must have thought better of it and collapsed into her seat—was she also giving up, did she now realize we had lost, that we were as orphaned and helpless as Henri and his fellows in that hall in Berlin while Virchow rattled off measurements and theories?

  “An American citizen,” Downey went on, with evident satisfaction, “giving us an advantage over our global rivals—though the Russians and the Chinese have less of a chance of winning this race anyway, lacking the sort of zoos and universal exhibitions of more developed and civilized lands. Recruiting such a valuable asset was made more taxing by the complete isolation in which he lived, hidden from the eyes and cameras of the world. In spite of courteous efforts to coax him out of retirement through approaches to his wife, herself a promising young researcher of the intersection of DNA and visual memory, no signs of willingness to cooperate were forthcoming. To justify using more aggressive means of persuasion we required indisputable, physical proof that he was indeed afflicted. Luckily, he made the mistake of traveling abroad where our agents managed, a few days ago, after pursuing our quarry halfway across the globe, to secure a couple of damning and definitive photos. Maestro!”