From out of the City

by John Kelly

  – the silent scholars passing through metal detectors and funnelling into the cool of the courtyard. Trinity College Dublin. Coláiste na Tríonóide, Collegium Sacrosanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin.

  Schroeder gazes up at the blackened facade and tugs at his beard. Taylor Copland addresses him via the rear-view mirror.

  – Your name is Professor Rafferty. That’s all you need to remember.

  At the barrier, looking dead ahead, she flashes a pass and a jarhead in Ray-Bans waves her through without a word. The car moves slowly across the cobbles of Parliament Square and then diagonally, still at a crawl, toward the Narrows and the lawns, all concreted over, and then through yet another barrier which rises and falls at the discretion of heavily armed men. Her magic pass is waved again and, after taking the merest squint at Schroeder in the back, another soldier nods.

  – You have a good day, he says.

  Taylor Copland parks the car, opens the door for Schroeder and leads him towards a corner block.

  – Professor Rafferty. Prof Raff to your students. You got it?

  – I got it. Although I’ve no idea what I’ve got it for.

  – Just try to look intelligent.

  – I look like a fucking idiot.

  – Will you please just walk like a professor.

  The entire block seems deserted. No shouts in the stairwell, no whistling caretakers and no slamming doors – just the crack of Taylor’s shoes ricocheting around the walls. On a third-floor corridor they approach a door. On the door is Schroeder’s new name. Prof C. Rafferty.

  – This is you, says Taylor Copland.

  The room smells of leather and damp wood. Apple smells and dried books and, through the window, Schroeder can see a thousand rooftops – slate-grey Dublin the same as it ever was. On the wall there’s a portrait of Wolfe Tone in the uniform of a French officer.

  – If only that man had succeeded, he says, you wouldn’t be here at all. We’d all be living like decent Frenchmen by now.

  – If I’m not mistaken, Professor Rafferty, that man cut his own throat. Please, take a seat.

  Schroeder sits. Taylor Copland exits and then returns a moment later with a man who is obviously security. Crew-cut, clean-shaven and expressionless, his shoulders set in a navy-blue suit. Ignoring Schroeder completely, he glances around the room, nods to Taylor Copland and leaves. Taylor Copland then stands in silence with her back to the door and Schroeder looks up at Tone again, admiring the nose, the ponytail, the epaulettes.

  – The French are on the sea, says the Shan Van Vocht.

  And then there’s a gentle knock and Taylor turns, opens the door and leaves. Schroeder peers up from the desk. Into the room, in jeans and a hoodie, walks Princess King.

  – Good morning, she says. Thank you very much for coming.

  Schroeder hears himself gulp. He stands up, stumbling slightly, and the first thing that comes out of his mouth is something about being sorry for her loss. She thanks him with swift efficiency and suggests that they both take a seat. And so they sit, the President’s daughter and the assassin’s childhood pal, face-to-face across Professor Rafferty’s ancient pockmarked desk. A slight cough and she begins.

  – I apologise for the fact that you’ve had to alter your appearance so drastically, she says, but it was essential if we were ever to meet like this. Prof Raff is my tutor and this seemed like the only way. For the two of us to meet alone, that is. I hope you understand. Actually you look just like him.

  – So where’s the real one?

  – Moscow. A symposium.

  – Don’t tell me. Sectarianism in the Short Story?

  – Something like that.

  She is even more beautiful than Schroeder remembers. The hood frames her face and makes a holy picture of her. Bereavement seems to agree with her.

  – Actually we met before, says Schroeder. Briefly.

  – I know. You were very kind.

  – I’m surprised you remember.

  – Mr Schroeder, we don’t have much time so let me get right to it. Your friend did not kill my father. I thought you should know. And I thought you should hear it from me.

  – People keep telling me that.

  – Well, it’s true.

  – Look, to be honest I didn’t really know the guy at all.

  Princess King takes off her hood and begins to play with the toggles. Her eyes are green. Piercing.

  – Do you believe in coincidence? she asks. In real life I mean.

  – Well yes, in that it exists. So yes, I suppose so. Fate no, but coincidence yes. Sure.

  – Have you ever heard of Edwin Booth?

  Schroeder shakes his head.

  – There were three brothers – Edwin, Junius Brutus Junior and John Wilkes – and they all starred together in a production of Julius Caesar. Then, three weeks after the end of that run, John Wilkes turned up at another theatre and shot Abraham Lincoln.

  – I’m not sure that’s a coincidence, exactly.

  – No. But this next part is. Just a few months before Lincoln was shot, Edwin Booth pulled a young man from the path of an oncoming train at a Jersey City railway station. The man was Robert Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln’s son.

  – Well I guess that really is a coincidence, yes.

  – And if you made it up, nobody would believe you, right?

  Schroeder strokes the marble smoothness of his head and shrugs.

  – Ms King, I still don’t understand why I’m here.

  Princess puts her hood back up and goes over to the window.

  – There are people who think my father’s administration was run by the Devil. I mean literally by the Devil. That it was all some sort of Satanic cult. And fair enough, I suppose. Some of those people he was in bed with would kick off a war without a second thought. I mean there were people who came to dinner who made me physically ill. Do you believe in the Devil, Mr Schroeder?

  – No. But I know a man who does.

  – I’d like to meet him.

  – No you wouldn’t. He’s a very rude bartender. You can probably see the place from here.

  – I don’t imagine I’ll ever meet him then. My social life is somewhat limited.

  – Well, you’re not missing much.

  Princess smiles but the smile soon drops away again.

  – My father wasn’t a bad man, Mr Schroeder. He certainly wasn’t a killer. Not by nature anyway. Sure, he made the decisions, but in the end, and to his credit in a way, he couldn’t actually live with them. The drink. The pills. We all know about that. I guess you could say he was a man very much violated by experience.

  – I really am sorry about what happened. It must be tough for you. This whole thing.

  – Thank you.

  – I don’t suppose you get a lot of sympathy.

  – No, I don’t. But you know it would be a great mistake to assume that my father’s politics and mine were the same. We were not the same person. We were father and daughter and that’s all. I loved him as a father because he was a good father. Although after a while, he sort of stopped being my dad and became something else. And it wasn’t about power either, it was more the attention. He liked that a lot. And once he became Vice-President and then President he was sort of carried through life like a groom at a wedding. And he liked that too. I lost him somewhere in there. And he lost himself. I’m telling you this, Mr Schroeder, because you were kind to me that day when we met in the tutorial. I appreciated the way you spoke to me. And I liked your book too.

  – You read it? I’m very sorry to hear that. It didn’t make a lot of sense in places.

  – Well, yes. In places. And perhaps the tone was a little seedy for my taste but yes, I thought it was good. And you seemed to me to be devoted to the truth – whatever that may be.

  She stares up at Wolfe Tone and bites her thumb.

  – Look, Mr Schroeder, I know who killed my father. I was there when it happened.

  – They said
you weren’t there.

  – Oh, I was there alright.

  – Are you sure you should be telling me this?

  Princess sits down, and once again down comes the hood. Then another little cough to clear the way.

  – My father was not a well man, she says. He drank. People know that. But the truth is that he was often depressed. And I mean extremely depressed. And this, as you will appreciate, is something which had to be handled with the utmost secrecy. I mean, he was Commander-in-Chief after all. Not good for morale, or indeed global security, to have the most powerful man on the planet crying into his pillow, is it? And so they watched him as closely as any human being has ever been watched. His pills were counted out for him, belts and ties were taken off him and he was never once allowed anywhere near a weapon. There was always the fear that, just once, he might get around his own security and do something stupid. Something unthinkable.

  – Look, Ms King, I think you’re getting into areas here that I really don’t need to know about. And I’d really rather you didn’t.

  Schroeder tries to focus on an abstract pattern of gouges in Professor Rafferty’s desk. He can make out what looks like the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon and the Hoover Dam. Then the canals of Mars. But when he lifts his eyes again she is staring right at him, her eyes now moist with tears.

  Princess exhales loud and hard and straightens up.

  – There were only a few times each day when my father was ever alone and that was when he went to the bathroom. As he left the dinner that night, he said he needed to go. Secret Service checked the room as they always do, and then they stepped aside and my father went in alone. He was the only person in the place who hadn’t been thoroughly searched. And get this for the Wild West, he had a pistol in his boot. In his fucking boot. An antique. A Deringer. A collector’s item. And here’s another coincidence for you. It was the same kind of gun that killed Abraham Lincoln.

  Schroeder reaches across the table and takes the hands of Princess King. She strokes the tops of his with her thumbs and her voice cracks at last.

  – Mr Schroeder, she says. These things are always inside jobs and what happened in Dublin was the ultimate inside job. Your friend didn’t shoot my father. My father shot himself.

  Schroeder’s hands are sweating now. The hands of Princess too.

  I have said many times that this is no thriller. My exact words were – this is no thriller or makey-up tale of suspense. Nor is it some titillating, investigative reconstruction of events which may or may not have happened. It is, rather, an honest and faithful record of breakage and distress at a time when dysfunction – personal, local, national, global, cosmic and whatever lies beyond that again, beyond even the farthest pricks of our increasingly desperate little probes – pervaded all. A time when everything was already broken and when, in many ways, the shooting of a President (the actual detail that is) was neither here nor there.

  But even so, we appear to have landed (for all my resistance to the undoubted thrills and spills of it) at some class of denouement. A resolution of a doubtful series of events. A twist. A surprise perhaps. Even a shock. But then, at the heel of the hunt, a denouement forgettable enough in its way. OK, so he killed himself? I get it. Any further business? An anticlimactic climax perhaps and one with, for all its drama, a short-lived pulse. But then as I’ve said, this has never been about the assassination of Richard Rutledge Barnes King nor its actual details, which are neither here nor there.

  – I don’t understand why you’re telling me this, says Schroeder.

  – I owe it to your friend. He was the D. A.

  – I don’t know what that is.

  – Not many do. Anytime my father went anywhere outside the White House there was always somebody in the vicinity known to the inner circle as the D. A. The Designated Assassin.

  – Designated?

  – Look, my father was basically on permanent suicide watch – a suicide which, if it ever happened, could never and would never, ever, be acknowledged. If anybody was going to kill a US President it certainly wasn’t going to be the President himself. So there always had to be someone present who would take the fall if my father tried anything and natural causes just wouldn’t fit the facts. And that’s what happened in Dublin. Too many people heard the shot. Too many people saw the blood.

  – So Claude was a patsy?

  – He was the D. A. He was brought into play.

  – But why was he even there in the first place?

  – He’d been invited. By no less than the President himself. At least he thought he’d been invited. Your friend was a fairly typical D.A. He’d been writing to the White House for a long time, so they had him in place should the need arise. And the need arose. When they opened the door of the cubicle and saw my father’s … condition … the plan went into action immediately. Your friend was asked if he would like to meet the President. He said yes of course he would, that he’d be honoured and, I’m very sorry to tell you this, Mr Schroeder, they took him away and shot him in the head. That way the assassin was dead too. He had turned the gun on himself, etc. etc. No loose ends.

  – Dead at the scene.

  – Dead at the scene. Look, Mr Schroeder, these people are a different species.

  Schroeder can’t seem to locate a single word in his head. He pulls his hands away, rubs his eyes, caresses the bumps of his head and then with his knees literally bouncing up and down, he attacks the old Protestant upholstery with his fingernails. Princess takes a deep breath, waits for him to stop, then continues.

  – Things are rotten, Mr Schroeder. I know they are. But we have to believe that the next guy will be a good guy. We make our own choices. We are not our fathers. None of us are. But you must never reveal that you spoke to me. That would be very bad for both of us. I’m sure you understand.

  – But why are you telling me all this?

  – I haven’t told you anything. I’m one of only about twenty people who know what really happened and they’re all fanatics – all loyal to the institution at all costs. They will never reveal anything. Ever. And neither will I.

  – So what is it you want from me?

  Princess King stands up and offers her hand.

  – I’m sorry for your loss of your friend. Goodbye, Mr Schroeder.

  Then she pulls up her hood, taps the door and it opens. She steps out and Taylor Copland steps in.

  – Let’s go, Mr Schroeder.

  In silence, Taylor drives Schroeder back to Hibernia Road. She pulls up at the corner and turns off the ignition.

  – You OK, Schroeder?

  Schroeder can’t get it out of his head. A large restroom in Dublin Castle. The room spacious and plush with blue tiles and a white panelled door centrally positioned. There are gilded mirrors and large white sinks with gilded fittings. There’s a line of cubicles of dark wood. President King enters smiling, but once inside the restroom his expression changes. He walks around, getting more and more agitated. He looks in a mirror. He produces a flask from his jacket and takes a long hard swig. He turns and looks to the cubicle. His expression darkens further. He approaches it slowly and enters. He closes the door and then silence. And then a gunshot and a red mist and King slumps forward, his falling body forcing open the cubicle door as he falls, face-first, onto the restroom floor. A small gun skitters across the floor as the President hits the ground. The secret servicemen burst into the room, weapons drawn, and it’s all motherfucker this and motherfucker that. Then the D. A. comes into play and Claude Butler is taken away and shot.

  – Why did she tell me all those things?

  – She didn’t tell you anything.

  – Oh fuck off! Are we done now?

  – Look Schroeder, Ms King wanted to speak with you. I facilitated the meet. It’s a meeting which never happened. So yes, I guess we’re done.

  – Schroeder shrugs.

  – You know, I really fancied that chanteuse.

  – You’re an interesting guy, Schroeder
, but you’re not that interesting. If you were a book I’m not sure I’d finish you.

  – So that’s it then? Mission accomplished? Whatever the fucking mission was? All of this Professor Rafferty stuff was just so you could smuggle me into Trinity so she could tell me stuff that she would immediately deny. I mean seriously? Is that it? I mean there’s bodies all over the fucking place and I’m sitting here looking like Arvo Pärt. What exactly was all of this about?

  – Ms King likes you, Schroeder. Don’t disappoint her.

  – What do you mean disappoint her? Disappoint her how? What exactly am I supposed to be doing?

  Taylor Copland hands Schroeder a yellow manila folder.

  – Ms King asked me to give you this.

  – What’s this?

  – I wouldn’t know.

  Inside is a typewritten manuscript. Two hundred pages. Or thereabouts.

  EIGHTEEN

  SIX MONTHS LATER and I’m seated at my kitchen table. Before me is a dark chocolate muffin speared through the crown by a burning red candle. Schroeder, still asleep, is forty years old today and I raise my mug in his honour. The Big Four-Oh people call it, winking at each other as if they’re about to enter some secret velvety room for a new kind of sex. As if landing at forty means something that only other forty year olds understand but must never disclose, some delicious new reward for the inductee, something too luscious, too ritualized, too specialized to even talk about aloud. But when Schroeder’s clock struck midnight last night, nothing wondrous happened at all and he found himself utterly alone. And with nobody, not even Taylor Copland, to call.

  The vodka teased like a kiosk stripper but sober now for half a year, he resisted well. He made another pot of coffee and sat up late, proofing his typewritten manuscript (now heading for two hundred and something pages) for the very last time, running the final red pen over his tale of extremophiles, assassinations and the inadequacies of men. No title yet but he’s thinking of Everything Is Broken. Or Catafalque. Or Dead at the Scene. Or maybe We All Know What Happened, which was once the opening line. A bigger question still is his pseudonym – last night he decided on Prosper something, as in St. Prosper of Aquitaine, a follower, as I could have told him, of Augustine of Hippo.