The Cast Stone (43 page)

“I don't know about that.” Benji rubbed his chin. “If we ignore the Americans they will just do whatever they want with no one to say they shouldn't. I think we should at least speak against tyranny.”

“And what are you going to say?”

“How about, ‘Go Home'.”

“And do you think they will?”

“Maybe if enough of us shouted it.”

“I doubt it.” Ben settled into the conversation, prepared for a long, patient explanation. “If you and all your friends and all their friends start shouting at the Americans, all that will happen is that they will become more resolved to stay and show you they can't be pushed around. You will only escalate the conflict.”

Benji sat and waited for the obvious more that was to come.

Ben continued. “When you fight someone, you make that someone stronger, conflict always does that. And, it is not the natural state of being. We are not always in a state of for-and-against. That's just a simple pattern of thinking. The world doesn't divide itself into dichotomies, left, right — good, evil — us, them — black, white.”

“Well, I appreciate that everything isn't black and white, there are grey areas.”

Ben cut Benji off. “No, not grey. That is still applying the principles of black and white, just mashing the two together. When people speak of the grey area, they are still caught in the dichotomy of opposing forces. There is more than black and white, a whole rainbow of choices. We have to be careful not to get stuck in these ideas”

Ben paused, thought through what he needed to say “We get stuck in ideas that out of oppositional forces we will arrive at truth. Look what happens when we apply that idea to anything; to law, to education, to religion. All we end up with is more conflict.”

“But law works, don't you think? Two sides bring their dispute to a judge who decides based on the arguments put forward. It sure beats trial by combat.”

“See, that's the thing. We've all been taught to believe that law works. It doesn't. The dispute isn't resolved by the judge. The judge just picks a winner and a loser, and it's a winner-take-all situation. Disputes are almost never only between two people, the whole community is affected by the conflict at some level, even if it is only an experience of rising tension. Law says there are always two sides to a story. Well, there are a whole lot more than two sides to anything, I don't know about everyone else, but my world is multi-dimensional.”

Benji felt stung, as though the words were aimed at him. “What do you mean, you don't know about everyone else. Of course we aren't two-dimensional.”

“But I don't know that.” Ben spoke softer. “I don't know what others experience. I only have my own experiences to trust.”

Rosie hoped Ben would get those ideas across to Benji; she was about to offer a prayer, a little something to those entities that were her constant companions, something to the effect of “give Ben the words he needs.” But she thought better of it, it was best to let Ben find his own words, find his own way through to his son. Prayer was for important things, like health and happiness. It was always good practice to let the universe conspire to do whatever it was the universe conspired to do. It would give Ben what he wanted, the same as it perpetually gave her what she needed. Now if only Ben could show his son how to walk in the balance of all things. She threaded another half-dozen beads, shook them down to the leather, and continued her creation, glass, leather and thread; and good thoughts — these moccasins needed to have good thoughts put into them so that her granddaughter wouldn't trip.

Ben reached across the table and picked up the red-and-white book from in front of Benji. “This isn't so bad, I like the comparison between Christianity and Stalinism and Hitler, but it doesn't really get us anywhere. Attacking Christianity doesn't increase our understanding of where we are.” He put it back down; “When you finish it maybe you would like something written without the confusion of philosophy. I can't remember who it was, someone once said that rationality was the flatulence around reason.” And with that he went over to his little library of three bookshelves against the back wall where he kept only those treasures that were too important to abandon when he left academia. He searched for a few seconds before he found what he was looking for, returned and set the thin volume at Benji's elbow.

Late in the evening, after Rosie went home and after the supper dishes were done, when Elsie and Benji were alone momentarily, when the warmth of the log walls absorbed her words, Elsie asked, “So what was that book your dad gave you this afternoon?”

“Oh that. You know, I was sure he was going to give me something by Nietzsche.” Benji went and got the book and brought it to her. “He said to read it after I finished Bertrand Russell, so I'm kinda skimming along to get it done.”

Elsie examined the cover, “Doris Lessing,
Prisons We
Choose to Live Inside
. I think I would like to read this.” She turned it over to read the back jacket.

Monica cried. It was more than that her eyes watered from being burned; she lay in her bed, covers over her head and her face buried deeply into a pillow and cried. She was by herself; Abe left hours ago. He assured her, promised her that her sight would come back. “It's just severe welder's flash, hurts like hell for a few days, but you'll be all right. Just stay in the dark and I will be back now and then to check on you.”

She hugged the pillow her face was buried into; squeezed hard, pulled it to her breast and let her tears pour. The worst part about being blind wasn't the pain, it wasn't even the fear; the fear that someone or something unseen was going to attack and you were defenceless in a world of white light. No, the worst part about being blind was this strange form of loneliness, unable to see people, forced to live inside of your head, alone.

She wondered if she might be crying for Betsy — probably not; Betsy was a traitor, a fake, a liar — if she was crying at all for Betsy, it was for the loss of a friend and that friend was lost before Betsy went into that house.

Perhaps she was crying for Ben, for the life companion, the husband that he had never become. She wasn't sure. She was filled with sorrow and despair that seemed to gurgle up from the deepest part of her soul as though she was mourning. She wondered if she was crying for a home, for a family, for Benji; all of those things that she had denied herself, given up for the resistance.

She sat up, sniffed loudly; wiped the wet away from her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. Her eyes burned, but not with the same intensity as before. She strained to see something through the white glare, anything; and was rewarded with the dim silhouette image of Abe standing silently in the doorway.

“
¿Señora,Quieres algo para desayunar?
”

Kay smiled back at the young, nicely tanned waiter. “
Yo no
hablo español,
” she did the best she could.

“Oh, Señora, I asked if you wanted breakfast with your coffee,” without any hint of an accent.

“I'll wait, my husband will be down in a few minutes.”

An easy wind came in from the Atlantic and brushed Kay's bare shoulders. Maybe she should have brought a shawl; yes a shawl would go nicely here at the sidewalk café. She could have sat inside, but it seemed that she had been inside all winter and when you are on vacation, well . . . you put up with a little chill in the morning. Here in Miramar, Argentina, it was summer, or rather late summer, early autumn. It wasn't cold, frozen Toronto where Kay and Stan Jolly kept their home, and it was definitely a lot warmer than mid-March on the Saskatchewan prairie and Kay's family's farm.

She liked it here. She could relax. The tension of home, the constant tension, the tension that was always there, so always there that it became normal and you didn't notice it, wasn't here. They left it behind, left the constant wariness; they stepped off the plane in the sunshine and it was no longer heavy on their minds, on their bodies, on their spirits. Here she was just a tourist, just a retired schoolteacher from Canada tourist, having a normal morning cup of coffee, at a normal outdoor restaurant, and Stan . . . well today he too would be the tourist. He would join a group of kayakers and explore the coast, a normal tourist thing to do, and Kay would maybe go down to the beach, more probably wander the streets looking into shops, not shopping, listen to people speaking Spanish just for the sound, have lunch somewhere, a nice sandwich, and later in the afternoon maybe a
yerbe mate.
She had become quite fond of the local drink, an infusion served in a gourd and drunk through a silver straw, and the known fact that it reduced cholesterol simply added to the pleasure. And it seemed to Kay that it helped with her arthritis, maybe she was imagining it, it might be the sunshine, or more probably it had to do with not living under constant stress; anyway the ache wasn't as intense as usual. It wasn't enough that she could go kayaking with her husband today, or mountain climbing with him last week, but it made life much more enjoyable.

A chair scraped and she looked up. “You finished posting?”

“It's done.” Stan put the computer bag on the sidewalk beside the chair before sitting. “You have my absolute undivided attention until noon.” He looked around for the waiter.

Kay touched his elbow across the table. “What was the result?”

He looked back toward her: “Inconclusive.”

“Come on Stan, was it or wasn't it?”

“I honestly don't know.”

“Well, what did you post?” she corrected herself, “what did That Jack post?”

“Only that the bolt from heaven was dropped on a house in Saskatoon. I didn't say anything about the barrel of yellowcake.”

“Why not?” Kay's tone changed, Stan could be frustrating at times.

“Because we don't know for sure.”

She stared at him for a long second, he was serious. She leaned forward, lowered her voice a little, “We know they dropped it on the house, we know there was a barrel of yellowcake uranium in the basement. Now, maybe no one has done any testing, but it seems only logical to me that Saskatoon is completely contaminated.”

“Okay, then let's examine what we know for sure. When the bolt hit the house it was pure plasma. Tungsten melts at 3,422 degrees celcius, and uranium melts at 3,027 degrees, so we can assume that all of the uranium was vapourized.”

Kay sat back. Stan had done his homework. She thought of something she had read not that long ago. “Remember Suzuki's
Sacred Balance
?”

Stan was looking for the waiter again, “Uh-huh.”

“Remember that bit about Shapley I think his name was?

“No.” Stan looked back at her.

“Well he said that if we calculate the amount of argon in a single breath, I can't remember how many atoms there are, but something like trillions and trillions and he calculated — and I do remember this — each breath we take has about four hundred thousand atoms that Gandhi once had in his lungs. And each breath we take has atoms that Jesus once had and atoms from Hitler and Stalin.”

Stan thought about it for a moment. “It's worse than that. Even if the uranium was vapourized on impact, it would only be vapour until it cooled down again.”