Lights Out in the Reptile House

by Jim Shepard

  In the square a band was playing, sweating in the heat. The music was nervous and worn out and the band members played number after number with their eyes on the ground, their fingers working the stops. The heat staggered drifting mongrels and cats. In a cleared field he saw hawks and sparrows panting and standing beside each other in the shadows of fenceposts, on a truce because of the heat. Their wings slanted downward and trembled in the dirt. Beyond them through a window in the cool shade of a whitewashed room a woman with Leda’s hair and eyes served something from a shallow bowl with the smooth silence of a painting come to life.

  He worried that he’d gotten no letters from her and asked about the mail situation at the post office. The clerk informed him in a harassed voice that he wouldn’t predict that anything got anywhere in any amount of time. He asked Kehr if he’d heard anything and Kehr said no and added that he was not holding his breath waiting for a note of thanks from the Schieles.

  He tried to ration his time with the journals. He discovered with a shock that he had a rival:

  Where is your smoothness? Why have you left? Now, when others pass their hands through my hair I resent it. Dark boy, I’m hypnotized by your black eyes. So much is happening all at once! You’re four years older, four years smarter, four years better, four years worse, four years more experienced. Am I aiming too high? Oh, I want you to be happy.

  The next three passages said nothing more on the subject, as if he’d hallucinated it. He was flipping frantically ahead when Kehr appeared in his room and announced that they needed the journals right away for a while, he’d get them back, there was no need to get all excited, he was going to have to call Stasik if Karel continued to make a fuss, and no, it couldn’t wait.

  Karel came downstairs early the next morning and moped around the kitchen inefficiently gathering what he needed to start breakfast. Kehr eyed him from his chair. Karel asked if he was finished with the journals yet and Kehr said as if he hadn’t heard, “Do you think you’d like to do what I do someday?”

  “I don’t even know what you do,” Karel said. He scooped the coffee with extra vehemence and it slopped onto the floor.

  Kehr shrugged. “Fair enough,” he said. “Today you come with me.”

  Kehr drove. Stasik stayed at the house. They went out of town by the southern route. Karel saw where he and Leda had walked, where she’d leaned close to see the horned lizard. The morning was already hot. He rode with his hands on his thighs, watching the sun pinwheel off the metal on the dashboard. He was rarely in cars and enjoyed the speed, though he thought this one’s ride was bumpy.

  They drove through stands of creosote and shadscale that seemed like brittle clouds of thin branches lining the road. He tried not to think about the dark boy in Leda’s journal and got angrier and more frustrated as he did.

  They were going to a Prisoner Assessment Center. In the Guard you called them PACs. This one was a converted animal hospital.

  It was a low white building with corrugated tin roofing and a central metal gate leading to a courtyard. The front had been a circular drive with a rock garden, and all that was left was a single exhausted desert sage and a small salt-bush. Cars and trucks were parked everywhere.

  They were checked through the gate by a slovenly guard in an army uniform who gave all his attention to a cat leashed to a ring on the wall. The inner courtyard was being hosed down.

  Kehr gave a little tour. On the first floor there were offices, a dining room, staff lounge, kitchen, and bathrooms. On the lower floors, prisoner assessment rooms, the infirmary, and holding cells. These centers were new and were all a little makeshift but were being modernized. They’d been mandated and funded by the Statute for the Process of National Reorganization. The statute turned over responsibility in the cases of actual and potential enemies of the state to the intelligence-gathering services. Both the Civil Guard and the Security Service operated within these centers, and not always harmoniously.

  But first they’d eat. Kehr took him to the dining room, set up cafeteria-style, and they sat under an overhead fan and ate Skewered Variety Meats, mostly lamb hearts and kidneys. A few officers waved hello or exchanged a little banter. No one seemed surprised at Karel’s presence.

  They’d be talking today with a young man who’d been caught painting slogans over Party posters. He was probably no partisan but his activities were worth looking into. People like him thought, Kehr said, that the partisans and all opponents of the current government were like a runaway horse, leading its rider back home. His only question to such people, he said, was, where is home? Who in this country wanted a return to the old days of the Republic?

  Balls clacked in the next room, and Karel could see a billiard table. A woman passed it hooded and wearing shackles on her wrists and ankles. Two men were leading her. They were wearing shorts and bright yellow shirts.

  “Lot of people being talked to today,” Kehr said. He quartered a piece of kidney on his plate. “Very busy.”

  He asked if Karel wanted the dessert, a rice pudding with currants. Karel didn’t and Kehr said that that was on the whole a good move. They bused their trays and went down a corridor that turned every so often at right angles until Karel understood they were circling the first courtyard. They stopped at a staircase, and Kehr opened the door with a small key and headed down. The stairs were lit by a yellow light high on the wall, and they had to step over a coiled fire hose on the landing.

  Kehr asked him to wait opposite a holding cell and with another key went into the next room over. A small square peephole on the center of the door had been covered with black masking tape. Under the peephole there was a pale green poster entitled. “Regulations: Group Holding Cells, Prisoner Assessment Centers.” Karel read around in it waiting for Kehr to reappear.

  1: Individuals who discuss politics for the purposes of inciting rebellion, or make inflammatory speeches, or meet with others for that purpose, or form cliques, or loiter about, or collect true and untrue anecdotes for the purposes of spreading propaganda, or receive such anecdotes in writing, secrete them, pass them onto others, or attempt to smuggle them out of the cell and so the Prisoner Assessment Center, etc., by any means, or draft secret documents, will be considered to have committed an act of violence against the state and will be dealt with according to that consideration.

  2: Individuals who attack or insult a guard, who refuse to obey or incite others to do the same, who hoot, shout, taunt, spit, or make speeches, will be considered to have committed an act of violence against the state and will be dealt with according to that consideration.

  The door of the next room opened and Kehr signaled him in.

  A young man maybe ten years older than Karel was sitting at a bare metal table. His arms were tied tightly behind his back, and one side of his jaw was swollen as if he’d filled his cheek with nuts. He was blindfolded, and he turned his head slightly at Karel’s entrance.

  Kehr put his finger to his lips. “This is a colleague,” he said to the young man. “He’ll be sitting in.”

  The young man’s expression didn’t change.

  Kehr motioned for Karel to sit in the available chair. There was nothing on the walls, and the floor was smooth concrete. There was no other furniture.

  “Where’s my sister?” the young man asked. He had dark hair and a dark complexion.

  Kehr seemed to enjoy shifting slightly in his seat so that the young man’s blindfolded head would tip and turn experimentally to try to keep a fix on him. He told the young man his sister was being assessed in another part of the center and was doing quite well so far. The young man struggled and rocked in place and quieted down.

  Kehr asked a series of questions, sometimes repeating himself. He asked the young man where he’d gotten the paint, where he’d heard the slogans, who had originally given him the idea. The young man didn’t know, didn’t remember, had nothing to do with those things, and finally stopped talking altogether.

  Kehr after a moment said they
could go on to the next step, if that was what the young man preferred. The young man didn’t answer. Kehr leaned forward and slapped him hard on his swollen side. Karel recoiled. “Would you like to go on to the next step?” Kehr said. “Would you like to go on to the next step?” He slapped the young man again, back and forth, twice. Saliva sprayed out the second time. “Would you like to go on to the next step?” he said. “Would you like to go on to the next step?” He held his hand close to the young man’s cheek, so that the fingertips were just touching it. The young man shied away, turned his head violently.

  Kehr looked over at Karel, who was frozen in his chair. He expelled a breath through his nose and stood up. The young man’s face hung forward, ready for more blows.

  “Tomorrow we’ll go on to the next step,” Kehr said. “That may jog loose the occasional forgotten detail.”

  The young man swallowed, his face red, his expression intent and blank at the same time. Karel imagined him as Leda’s dark boy. Kehr indicated the door, as if being silent out of deference to the young man’s feelings, and followed Karel out.

  On the ride home Kehr explained to him the best methods of interrogation, which he said were no secret. The interrogator should repeat the same question many times, at unpredictable moments, and always as though it had never been asked before. Then it was just a matter of carefully clarifying the variations in the replies, and pointing out to the subject the apparent contradictions. Until the right reply, or the one suspected to exist, surfaced, he said. Everything else, including the use of force, was at least partially theater. The collared lizard lifting itself onto its hind legs, the horned lizard squirting blood from the corner of its eye, the basilisk spreading its hood. Did Karel follow what he meant?

  Karel rode home through the creosote feeling hot and cold together at the slapping, and his reaction to it, and said he did.

  Kehr brought an envelope upstairs to his room after dinner and flipped it to him on the bed. “Mail call,” he said.

  The envelope had Karel’s name and address on it, in Leda’s handwriting. There were no postmarks or stamps.

  “Hand-delivered,” Kehr said. “Some of our men shuttle between here and the capital and one of them was kind enough to do me a favor.” He smiled helpfully and nodded at the letter, as though Karel probably wanted to get at it. He left the room and shut the door behind him.

  The letter was in her handwriting as well.

  Dear Karel,

  How are you? How is the Reptile House? Have you heard anything from your father?

  I’m writing to thank you for your help in getting my family here: your house guest told me about your persistence with Albert concerning the travel passes. I didn’t believe him at first but he showed me the passes. Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you act so strange?

  It dawned on me (well, my mother helped it dawn on me) how mean I’d been to you that night, considering. What kind of impression could I have left you with? I can be so nasty and sure of myself sometimes. I hereby apologize. Do you accept a long-distance kiss and hug?

  We’re staying here with my aunt. We’ve got the whole third floor of her apartment and we need it!—Nicholas and David are in one room, Mother and I in another, and we have a little sitting room piled with boxes to go get away from people in. She’s happy enough to see us though Mother’s concerned about becoming independent as soon as possible and so am I. She’s hoping for a position as a housekeeper and is wearing out all my aunt’s friends looking for useful connections to wealthy families. I meanwhile was immediately signed up in the youth work study program in a nursery care center for mothers working in vital industries, which doesn’t pay much but allows discounts on food. I’m hopeful, but I don’t know what to expect from our boss, who has the brain of a chicken and considers herself a beauty. I start Monday.

  Otherwise, life in the city isn’t so much right now. You can smell the sea everywhere, though, and that is wonderful.

  Everyone seems meek and willing to go about their business. Nicholas and I have a game on streetcars where I try to make men blush by staring at them, because he said once that girls blush if men look at them long enough. I used to play a game like that with Elsie.

  People here follow the war news more closely than they do at home. You see little crowds around the kiosks all the time after announcements are posted. Even though there’s nothing new there, either.

  What else? All the big shots show off like idiots driving around in their requisitioned cars and occasionally bang into each other in the process. I think there are as many casualties here as on the front. Mostly we stand in line for everything (yesterday for a piece of cheese the size of your finger). Two days in a row the same married couple stood behind us and asked us where our Party pins were. We couldn’t stand them. When the wife got sick on the second day and started throwing up right there in line we started pinching each other so we wouldn’t burst out laughing.

  You’ll have to forgive me if this rambles. I’ve lost my journals so you’re in some ways standing in for them.

  Have you seen the new language rules for writing letters? You get them handed to you when you go to buy stamps. Euphemisms, and launderings of less pleasant and more precise words. All correspondence is supposed to be subject to them. Have you noticed there are no unpleasant words in this letter? Mother insisted, and I suppose she makes sense. Still, I worry daily that I’m becoming too sensible.…

  Do you miss me? I miss you. Though sometimes I think it’s good we’re apart, because I couldn’t take one person’s company for too long. Don’t misunderstand, but I think sometimes if you spend a lot of time with one person he or she might exert too great an influence on you. Have you ever felt like cutting adrift from everyone? I think I get very touchy when someone makes a lot of demands on me. As you must know yourself, there are hours of solitude that make up for the days you spend pining for someone.

  Anyway sometimes I think if we keep in touch it could be nice this way, with two people keeping each other company w/o promising to meet up at such and such a place or stay together forever. They travel the way they’re going together for a while, and then if their routes diverge they understand. But I suppose that’s mostly wishful thinking on my part. A lot of times everything takes a less pleasant and rational course, and there’s a lot of sadness and tiredness and inertia and hurt.…

  This whole letter will probably strike you as odd in the extreme. Maybe you’re sitting there thinking, Who is this person? Do you think about me? If you do, don’t just think about me as I am—think about me as I’d like to be. We don’t know each other well enough, I think, and I’m a lot to blame. Do you know what I’m thinking? Do you know what I’m thinking about? Will you write?

  Leda

  The next day they went through another set of double doors past the holding cells and interrogation room. They were going to what Kehr called a prisoner assessment room. On the way he showed Karel the punishment cells they called “the tubes.” He showed him the infirmary. He showed him some of the converted kennels. They passed a grating covering a small set of stairs leading to a subbasement. Somebody had taped a paper handwritten sign next to it that read Juvenile.

  The prisoner assessment room was a white room like the interrogation room, with cement floors and walls and a wooden lattice screen with small desks behind it. The overhead lights flickered and buzzed. The desk and chairs were undersized, as if they’d been taken from a grammar school. There was a long unpainted metal table with two chairs. There was a metal bedframe with shackles on its four corners, hooked up improbably to a field telephone. There was a mop and pail in the corner. There was a big wooden box like a toy chest beside it filled with instruments. There were no windows.

  “This is a torture room,” Karel said. He felt the way he had when giving Albert’s name, hyperaware, and he could feel his insides racing.

  “Torture is what we do here, yes,” Kehr said.

  Karel backed up a step. This was like a blank
wall. He’d imagined when he’d imagined anything at all dungeons and chains, fire and darkness. This was dirty, it was empty, it was ordinary. “I don’t want to be here,” he said. “I don’t want to see this. What are you going to do?”

  “It’s the next step for our young man from yesterday,” Kehr said. “It’s the next step for you.”

  “What’re you going to do?” Karel asked.

  Kehr sat in one of the chairs. His jacket bunched and creased, and he sat forward and straightened it. Karel put his hands behind his back and leaned his shoulders against the wall and did not look around, his stomach feeling emptied and urgent. He looked at the far wall near the ceiling, at a short row of iron grappling hooks. Below them there were fanlike patterns of scratchmarks on the concrete.

  The door opened. The young man from the day before came in escorted by two others. The young man was naked except for his underwear, which bagged in an oversized way like a diaper. He looked rapidly around the room and didn’t recognize Karel, but then, Karel remembered, he’d been blindfolded. Each of the other men had one of his arms.

  They brought him to the bedframe and made him lie on his stomach. The springs in the frame creaked and jangled. No one said anything, and Karel had the surreal sense that he was watching the reenactment of a horrible crime.

  The two men manacled the young man and shook the manacles to test them, and left. Kehr was still in his chair. He rubbed his eye with a fingertip and blinked. The young man lay spread-eagled where he was, gazing at a spot on the wall. The weight of his head was all on his chin, and he ground his molars. His jaw was still swollen. His toes curled and uncurled against the frame.

  Two other men came in. One was short with heavy glasses and wore a white apron. The apron had OP printed on its upper left corner.

  “This is someone we call Mr. Birthday,” Kehr said. The man in the apron smiled in acknowledgment. The other man was filthy and unshaven and looked like a prisoner himself and apparently didn’t rate an introduction.