The Revival

by Chris Weitz

  “You sound funny,” says another little slavemonger, which is rather rich, given that he sounds like the arse end of a clarinet played through the nostril. But now is not the time to be undiplomatic.

  “I’m from Jersey,” I say, a response that, I have been told, will cover any sort of irregularity.

  And indeed, it works. The creeps would rather pretend to be sophisticated than venture to quiz me on, say, the popular pastimes and landmarks of New Jerseyans, which, judging only from my exposure to The Sopranos, largely involve dumping bodies and eating mozzarella.

  “How’re those Jersey girls?” asks one kid.

  “See for yourself,” I say. I take Donna’s chin in my hand and tilt her face upward. I can’t tell if the micro-glance of hatred she gives me is genuine or playacting. If it’s the latter, she’s doing it well. But she must understand that I’m just trying to put on a convincing front. Perhaps it’s my facility with lying that puts her in mind of past peccadilloes.

  The bearded boys take a look at her, up and down, male gazes unfettered by any social constraint.

  “How much?” says one. “We’ll take her off your hands.”

  “Mmmm, I think I’ll trust the full price-setting power of the market.”

  “How about we rent her for an hour?”

  Even I, smooth and supple liar that I am, feel my bile rise and find myself at a pause.

  “Thanks,” I say. “But I’d like to keep the merchandise in prime condition, and you fellows look a bit rough.”

  They laugh, the closest one holds up his hand for a fist bump, and, to my eternal shame, I comply. I have a brief mental image of his hand, in a graphically rendered version of the imaginary follow-through, exploding in a fine red mist.

  “Go on in, chief,” he says.

  Donna and I head up the stairs. She turns to me and says, sotto voce, “I’m going to fucking kill all of them.”

  I’m a bit taken aback; this is not the Donna who sat next to me on Dr. Maule’s couch and elucidated the distinction between back-formation and folk etymology.

  “Do you mean kill, in the sense that people used to mean it, as in you really hate them, or do you mean kill kill?”

  She looks at me and leaves no doubt.

  I open the door for her—even if I weren’t a gentleman, there’s the fact that her hands are zip-tied behind her back. We find ourselves in a big lobby, wall-to-wall marble, real nineteenth-century American inferiority complex–grade expense and bombast. Another creep with his feet up behind what used to be the ticket booth. Discounts for students and senior citizens, etc.

  Beardy looks at us glassy-eyed, presumably due to whatever superpowered Stash he’s smoking, which also stinks up the place. Barely rousing himself from his seat long enough to ogle Donna, he waves us through.

  We walk into an anteroom, past huddled fighters still asleep from the previous night’s revels. They all wear those same beards, the detached extension pieces and outright panto-level fakes sometimes laid beside them like shed clothing.

  Then, revealed through a tall arch, we enter a fairly magnificent atrium, churchy in its way, and there before us is a brontosaurus (or apatosaurus for all you dino snobs) and, as though caught in midstride, dear old T. rex, everyone’s favorite vicious carnivore.

  How I used to love him. Fierce and brutal and utterly unconcerned with anything but his own appetites, just like me as a little boy. Meat-eaters were always my favorite, since I was required to be vegetarian. I delighted in nature programs on the old Zenith back at the family house (more like a compound really) in Kolkata. Mama thought I had an empathetic regard for animals that bespoke a deep and burgeoning spirituality. I did not tell her the real reason I loved the programs. It was a reimagining of the social contract. Snacking on the neighbors, getting rid of your sister, commanding the attention of all the ladies… All these possibilities appealed to a five-year-old solipsist.

  There’s commotion from afar, filtered and echoed through brick-floored chambers. Then a voice yells what sounds like “Feeding time!”

  Surely that can’t be it?

  “Did you just hear that?” I ask Donna.

  Donna deigns to speak to me. “Yes.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Feeding time.” Then, “Let’s go see.”

  “Feeling a bit peckish myself,” I say.

  EASING OUR WAY TOWARD THE sounds, we come to a big vaulted room, like a giant lung, with a high glass-paneled ceiling emitting sour blue light. There are panes missing in the glass, making for a surreal scene: There’s a life-size blue whale suspended from the rafters, and snow falls down around it. The whale is maybe a hundred feet long, its massive frame taking up the length of the chamber while its underslung jaw is tilted down and facing us.

  Along the walls, big picture windows are lined with rows of what look like giant aquarium tanks. At one time, they must have been illuminated, but now they are dark and foreboding.

  Rab and I approach the nearest one, his hand on my wrist. We’re trying to keep up the pretense that he’s going to sell me. Where his flesh touches mine, I feel a buzz, though I can’t tell if it’s one of annoyance or attraction. My emotional compass has gone all haywire, pinging around love and hate like a needle at the North Pole.

  I see a pod of dolphins frozen in midswim through waves of Plexiglas water. Tuna flee, and seagulls hang in the air above, hoping for scraps. A cocktail-colored sunset is painted behind them. It must have been a pretty striking diorama at some point, but now the solid surface of the ocean is scattered with debris, and one of the birds hangs awkwardly from its invisible moorings.

  I’m looking at the faux setting sun when I see movement in the back of the display.

  There’s something huddled against the far corner, hiding from the light. As I peer further, my eyes adjust, and I see—

  “Oh God,” says Rab.

  It’s a cluster of girls, half naked, huddled together for warmth like a clutch of tree frogs. Their eyes, the pinballing eyes of prey, peer out from grimy faces. I try to recognize somebody from the tribe, but it’s too dark, the faces too frightened and gaunt to make out in the dark.

  A slop of garbage falls from a jagged square hole in the ceiling above the display. It plops onto the surface of the ocean, tumbling off the static dolphins.

  And the girls scramble forward to eat.

  Boy’s voice: “I love feeding time.” I turn to see a boy in taped-together glasses. He’s talking to Rab, occasionally flashing a look at my chest. “It’s the only thing that really makes them come out and give you a good look at them.” He’s bearded up like the rest but surprisingly jolly.

  Rab: “Doesn’t look too healthy for them.”

  Boy: “Well, honestly, who’s eating well these days?” He sidles up to the case and peers in at the girls. He taps at the window.

  Then he looks sidelong at me, I guess taking my look of disgust for concern.

  Boy: “Oh, don’t worry. Sale’s on Sunday. You won’t have to spend long in there. Not a nice one like you.”

  I look to Rab.

  Me: “Him too.”

  Rab nods. The boy looks confused.

  Boy: “What does she mean?”

  Rab: “Can you tell me something?” He points at the crescent, cross, and star hanging over the boy’s belly. “That stuff. The symbols. What do they mean? You’ll have to forgive my ignorance. I’ve come all the way from New Jersey.”

  Boy (chuckles): “Oh, that. That’s the Fundaments.”

  Rab: “How so?”

  Boy: “That’s what we believe in here. The Fundaments. See, we’ve spent too much time hating on each other for our beliefs. We realized we need to recognize the deep similarities in all the major world religions.”

  Rab: “Peace, love thy neighbor, charity, all that?”

  Boy: “No, not that. I mean the primacy of the masculine gender.”

  Rab: “Oh.”

  There’s a hole in my gut that I want to fill up wit
h violence.

  Boy: “What did peace and love and charity do for us?”

  Rab: “I thought they gave life meaning.”

  Boy: “Nah. They made us weak. That’s how we got here.”

  Rab: “I thought we got here because somebody released a killer virus.”

  Boy: “Yes, but why? Because we didn’t eliminate our enemies. If we had, there would have been nobody to release the virus on or to release the virus on us. With the Fundaments, we’ve united all peoples.”

  Rab: “Except the people you haven’t united.”

  The kid shrugs.

  Boy: “Give us time.” He makes a looking-at-his-watch gesture, although he doesn’t have a watch. “Well, gotta go. But you’ll see me again. I’ll definitely be in the market for this one.”

  He means me.

  I definitely hope we meet again.

  Rab: “Thanks.”

  As he saunters off, I follow the boy with my eyes and see him join another cluster of bearded thugs.

  Rab: “Let’s get out of here.”

  Me: “Not yet. I haven’t seen our people.”

  Rab: “Does it matter? Look how many of them there are.” He nods up toward the gallery above, where I can see more and more of the slavers, all of them sporting guns. “These people are psychos. And armed. And more than we can handle.”

  I want to hate him for being a coward, but the truth is that he’s right. If we’re going to crack this place, we need some major firepower. But I’m not in the mood to agree with him.

  Me: “What else is new?” I walk along the rows of cases. In one, a sperm whale fights a giant squid. In another, a walrus family perches on a drift of ice.

  Then I stop. I walk slowly up to the filthy pane of glass.

  One of the naked figures inside looks up and stops eating. She crawls over to the glass.

  The girl’s voice through the glass is gravelly, scarred. It’s Carolyn. From my tribe. Her beautiful hair is matted, her cheeks sunken. Her sweet voice is broken.

  Carolyn: “Donna! Donna!”

  I shake my head, telling her to be quiet. But she doesn’t stop. She cries and slams her palms against the glass.

  Carolyn: “They got you, too. Oh, they got you, too. Oh, Donna.”

  I look around… The sound is echoing through the hall. Some of the slavers look up.

  I’m crying now, trying to hold my body erect and proud, to show the girls inside that I’m not beaten. I try to whisper to her through the glass.

  Me: “No. I have a plan. We’re coming back. We’re coming back.”

  Finally, Carolyn stops hitting the glass and turns to scrabble for food with the others. I don’t know if she understood me.

  The slavers are drifting over toward us, thumbing their safeties.

  Rab grabs ahold of my arm and drags me out of the gallery.

  Once they see him manhandling me, their suspicions are put to rest. And my tears, as it turns out, complete the disguise. The slavers smile indulgently at me, as if these things, these curious phenomena, the emotions of others, were the inconveniences of the trade.

  KATH AND I WAIT BEHIND the park wall. The Thrill Kill Twins are throwing snowballs by the trees. I feel a strange urge to join them.

  I remember being that age, just a few years ago, when you could go either way, kid or adult, even oscillate between the two many times in the course of a day. I think about the harmless violence of a snowball fight and wonder what the appeal can be when people are lobbing actual rocks at one another. Absently, my hands make a snowball, cupping the powder, forming the sphere. I dig down too deep, and the snowball gets dirty.

  “Not too late to leave,” says Kath. She’s been observing me.

  “Leave for where?”

  “The island. You remember, on the Annie? Those little outposts on the Sound… those messed-up vegetables they were growing?”

  “They looked messed-up because they were grown by hand, not by some automated industry.”

  “Well, they tasted good,” she says. “And that chicken… and the good wine…”

  “Yeah,” I say. I remember. A moment of almost freedom.

  “We could go,” says Kath. “Just you and me. Go and work on one of those farms. We can live.”

  Live. Not just survive.

  I turn to her. “I couldn’t leave the others.”

  “You mean you couldn’t leave her.” She says that without any rancor.

  I don’t say anything to that.

  “But you could,” she says. “Don’t you see it?”

  She waits for me to finish the thought. What don’t I see?

  She helps. “Rab. Her and Rab.”

  And I know that it’s true. I know it.

  Can I hold that against Donna? No. But that doesn’t keep me from feeling a deep scoring in my chest, a pain like being hungrier than I’ve ever been. Like nothing will ever be okay again.

  “If you and I leave, she’ll be all right. She’ll have Rab. What if you stay and she goes with Rab? Do you want to be left holding the bag? Better to go now.”

  “The girls from my tribe—”

  “There’s no way, Jefferson. The slavers are too strong. What are we? Six people, low on ammo, half starving. Can’t happen.”

  She looks away. Then looks back.

  “And I love you,” she says. “There’s that.”

  I look at Kath now, her blue eyes shining out of the grime. I feel like I’m holding her heart in my hand; I can feel all the scars and spikes.

  “You might be right,” I say. “Maybe she’s gone. Maybe it should be you and me.”

  She frowns. “There’s a ‘but’ coming.”

  “But. I have to do one small thing that’s right and honest, even if it kills me,” I say. “I have to try to get our people free. I can’t see any further than that right now.”

  She looks down. Nods. “I shouldn’t stay, then. This isn’t my tribe. And you don’t love me. So I don’t love you back. I should go.”

  But she doesn’t.

  I reach out and take her hand.

  There’s the sound of footsteps, muffled by snow, on the other side of the wall. We raise our guns and peer over. There’s Donna and Rab. Rab is leaning over Donna, cutting the zip ties that bind her hands. His hair hangs down and touches hers.

  Donna climbs over the wall, notices Kath and me sitting close together and the others paused midthrow. Her face is clouded with—what? Grief? Confusion?

  “So?” says Kath.

  “Too many of them,” says Donna. “There’s no way we can get them out of there unless we have more firepower.”

  “I could have told you that,” says Kath. She looks at me, reinforcing her point.

  “They have them behind glass,” says Donna. “Like animals. Naked. Starving.”

  “They’ll clean them up for the auction,” puts in Kath.

  “Whose side are you on, exactly?” asks Donna.

  “I told you a long time ago. Mine.”

  “So what happens next?” says Rab.

  Nobody has anything to say.

  “We follow whoever gets our people after they buy them,” I say.

  “And then what? We can’t do the same for all of them,” says Donna. “It’s all or nothing.”

  All or nothing.

  Finally, I say, “I know what we need to do.” Everyone looks to me.

  But it might be more dangerous than the museum.

  The twins race ahead of us up Central Park West, laughing and hollering.

  “Mommy! Look! Mommy! Look! I can run right over a car!” The girl does just that, jumping onto the back of a BMW, clomping right over it, springing to the car parked in front without touching the ground.

  “Cut that out!” shouts Kath. “If you break an ankle, I’m going to have to put you down.” She seems serious about it.

  “Aw, you’re zero fun!” shouts Abel, the boy.

  “I’m not here to be fun,” says Kath, curiously mom-ish annoyance on her face. She
’s been in a foul mood since we decided to head up to Harlem.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “I’m fine,” she says.

  I should know better. I always find myself asking a girl if she’s okay when she clearly isn’t, and then I fail to understand I’m fine for what it means, which is Leave me alone.

  I silently keep pace with her for a little while. Then I go ahead and say, “We never talked about what it was actually like in Uptown, did we?”

  “Nope,” she says. Strike two.

  “So—were there friends of yours that they made, you know, slaves?”

  “If by ‘slave,’ you mean someone over whom you have the power of life and death, who is required to do your bidding, then yes.”

  “What else would I mean?”

  “I used to have this discussion with Theo,” Kath says. “He kind of objected to the use of the term, in an American context, because it had its own specific resonance. I think that was how he put it. He said that to accuse the Uptowners of slavery was to devalue the term, since to him it referred to a carefully maintained economic and governmental system by which the United States as we knew it was brought into being. Whereas what my brother and the rest were doing in the Bazaar was nothing more than a bunch of armed psychotics indulging themselves.”

  “I’m not sure I see the difference.”

  “Well, he didn’t like that I thought I was in the same boat as his ancestors just because I got treated like shit, too. I told him he just didn’t want to care because it was a bunch of white chicks getting exploited.”

  “Sounds like you guys didn’t get along too well. Are you worried about seeing him?”

  Kath ponders the imminent possibility for a moment.

  “Actually,” she says, “we got on just fine. Just because we didn’t see eye to eye didn’t mean he stopped treating me like a person. I hope he hasn’t kicked the bucket.”

  “Wow,” I say. “Sentimental of you.” We walk a little farther, the middle-class conveniences of the Upper West Side starting to give way to bodegas and dorms of the old Columbia University precincts.

  I observe her a moment—her powder-blue eyes following the pranks of her little wards. Something has changed about her. I think back to long ago, under the ground, when we met—at gunpoint, then grappling. Somehow it ended in kissing. An impromptu bout of making out that was all the more surprising since I was convinced at the time that I was in love with Donna.