The Sunlight Dialogues (10 page)

“It’s a question of point of view,” the bearded prisoner explained. He would be sitting with his big white hands on his knees, that burnt, hairy face looking up at the ceiling, infinitely sad. He sounded now incredibly like one of those lawyers summing up, tyrannical and grandiose. “It’s not pure madness to maintain that Society is rotten—rotten beyond all hope of redemption. Not at all! I don’t hold with that view, naturally, but it’s not pure madness, I give you my official word. Take a place like Watts, for instance. The evil of the ghetto is clear enough, yes?—and Los Angeles is maybe the richest city in the world. Average income of four hundred dollars a day, I read somewhere. They could do something—churches, Chamber of Commerce, businesses—but do they? Not till it explodes. And what does a city like Los Angeles do then? There are two possibilities. (Correct me if I’m wrong.) Go in with tommyguns, kill a few men, put the rioters down, place Watts under martial law. Or fiddle around—second alternative—let the fires die slowly, arrange for what’s called Serious Talks. What comes of all this? If martial law stops the riot, the result is a return to the old evil, no change of any significance. Why? Because responsible officials are responsible to voters, and mostly the people of places like Watts don’t vote. On the other hand, if you use Serious Talks, those Serious Talkers talk on and on, the way Serious Talkers always do, and the population keeps climbing in Watts and the responsible officials get busier and busier with the problem of houses that slide down hills, and pretty soon another explosion, more stores on fire.
Burn, baby, burn,
as the spade people say. If you happen to be a responsible citizen who feels a modicum of Christian concern for his unfortunate brothers, you try to mobilize public sentiment, you write letters, make phonecalls, talk to your fellow Elks. Result? Your wife divorces you on the grounds that you’re a nut, inattentive, also impotent. Which you are, it may be. Your boss discovers you’re not as efficient as a machine he can get. Your church slides into the persuasion that you’re out to block the Bishops’ Fund. In short, you are given good reasons for pulling your head in. Also, of course, you inevitably pick up some friends you could manage without: to wit, queers, neurotic ladies, Jewish psychiatrists, Muslim boys, and young Presbyterian assistant ministers. Those who hold this position (which I do not hold) would argue that the responsible citizen necessarily gives up. The situation is hopeless, and as a reasonable man the responsible citizen becomes indifferent. All the available options disgust him, from Ayn Rand to CORE to the Birch Society. He learns to punch the button and collect his check. In the exceptional case of the man who refuses to renounce his human dignity (as the newspapers call it), well, for him, gentlemen and friends, the outlook is by no means bright. He becomes, unwittingly, a Hell’s Angel of sorts, a rebellious lunatic defying the society he lives in. There’s a difference, of course. The Hell’s Angel holds up no model in opposition to the society he hates. The Just Man defies society in the name of a dead cause. He is somewhat more confused than the Hell’s Angel (this position would hold), but he does not recognize his confusion. In other words, in nontechnical terminology, he’s crazy. Ah! As I say, I do not myself hold this opinion—or any other. I am the strawberry eater, the skylight smasher—in a word, King Solomon’s cod. Meanwhile, let it be mournfully added, Watts—for all the failures of high-minded Christian citizens of the master race, or machine guns, or Talk—Watts takes care of itself, from inside, for no known reason. The people become proud, it may be. Or they overflow with foolish, sentimental emotion, and they
improve
the damn place! Life has no shame.”

A long silence.

“This is called Capitalism,” he said. “A deadly sickness of taste.”

Abruptly, again almost before he knew what he was thinking, Clumly strode down the hall to get the cell keys.

CLUMLY:
You’re an intelligent man. What was your purpose, writing
love
on a busy highway?

PRISONER:
The world needs more love.—Don’t you think so, brother?

CLUMLY:
Is that any way to get it?

PRISONER:
When the spirit say paint …

CLUMLY:
Stop talking gibberish. Listen, I’ll tell you something. I don’t ask these questions out of idle curiosity. I’m interested. I feel friendly toward you, generally speaking. Also, of course—

PRISONER:
It’s your job.

CLUMLY:
Correct. You spoke of the Hell’s Angels. Are you—

PRISONER:
Certainly not.

CLUMLY:
Maybe we’re getting somewhere, finally.

PRISONER:
Nonsense.

CLUMLY:
Do you come from California?

PRISONER:
I come from the Lord of Hosts.

CLUMLY:
Don’t do that. Answer my question.

PRISONER:
I’ve forgotten what it was.

CLUMLY
(patiently): Do you come from California?

PRISONER:
Why do you keep pacing? Sit down. You make me nervous.

CLUMLY:
I’ll decide when it’s time to sit down.

PRISONER:
No you won’t. You’ll put it off till the last minute and then you’ll fall on your ass. I had an uncle did that. It was terrible.

CLUMLY:
Just answer the questions. Cigar?

PRISONER:
Thank you. With pleasure. Why do you shake so?

CLUMLY:
You’ll shake the same way when you’re sixty-four.

PRISONER:
Bad for the system, no question about it. Does it worry you much? Worries the little woman, I’ll bet! Good cigar, though. There are always compensations!

CLUMLY:
Where do you live?

PRISONER:
Big old house on LaCrosse, with a blind woman. (Pause.)

CLUMLY:
What in hell are you up to? How did you find that out?

PRISONER:
Startling, isn’t it.

CLUMLY:
Shut up.

PRISONER:
Take it easy! I used to be a fortune teller. Learned lots of tricks. Are you sick of her—the blind woman?

CLUMLY:
Of course not. Stop that!

PRISONER:
Sorry.

CLUMLY:
What do you do? Is it true that you’re a college man, a student?

PRISONER:
I run a business. Big desk, time cards, things like that. I worry a lot, worry myself sick. Makes me do weird things, if I may speak in confidence. Strictest confidence. Or whatever the expression is. There are certain people who know secrets about me, but I’m not yet sure who they are. I find it difficult to trust people. Sometimes I think—I can trust you, I hope?—sometimes I think of doing downright deranged things. Shall I tell you?

CLUMLY:
What is this?

PRISONER
(intensely): I have thoughts of spying on my boss, listening outside his window. It’s insane, I know. I resist it, naturally. Nevertheless, sometimes the desire comes over me and—Christ! What’s this world coming to, I wonder? Do bosses talk to their wives, do you think? Do they get phonecalls, perhaps? (Pause.) A man could crouch there in the dark outside the window, in the shrubbery, say …

CLUMLY:
What do you want? Look, I don’t want any trouble from you. I want straight answers to straight questions.

PRISONER:
Negative.

CLUMLY
(wildly): You sit listening, don’t you! You sit in there and strain your ears to hear every word I say!

PRISONER:
It’s because you’re my friend.

(Pause.)

Psst! (A whisper): Are you interested in metaphysics?

CLUMLY:
See here—

PRISONER:
I’ve known men would give their souls for metaphysics. (Laughs.) I know a man in Philadelphia killed by lightning in pursuit of metaphysics. I admire him for it. I’d have done the same myself, and the country be damned. (Laughs more softly.)

CLUMLY:
Metaphysics! Lord!

Chief Clumly shuddered, reversed the tape, found the beginning of the examination, and carefully erased it twice. Very well. So people were talking about him, even in front of the prisoners. Well, no surprise. When he left the station (it was now almost ten) he noticed that the light was on in the Mayor’s office in the City Hall down the street. He paused, scowling, his hand around his mouth, then turned back and went up the police station steps.

“Figlow, you seen Miller tonight?”

“He’s been off since six, Chief.”

Clumly nodded, studied the stump of his cigar, then went out again. “Funny business,” he said. The darkness around him was warm as a blanket.

Metaphysics.

He hunted a long time before he located the paper—on the porch, right in front of the door. He let himself in and locked the door behind him, as usual, then waited in the darkness of the livingroom. She didn’t call to him, and a light pain of fear began to build up in his chest. The house was absolutely still, and in the yard outside not a leaf was stirring. “Hello!” Clumly called.

He groped toward the kitchen, his nerves jangling, and said again, more loudly, “Hello?” He could smell her wine. His heart shook violently as he snapped on the light, but there was no one. He opened the pantry door and pulled the lightstring there, half-expecting to find she’d hanged herself. But again there was nothing. He leaned on the doorframe, gathering his wits.

He found her, three minutes later, asleep in the bed; or possibly, he thought for some reason, she was only pretending to be asleep. Her sewing was in her hands. He stood for a long time looking at her in the dim light thrown from the wall lamp in the hallway behind him, his shadow falling over her waist and hips. He was amazed at how worried he’d been at the thought that something had happened to her. And he was amazed at the joy—it was more than relief-flooding through him now as he looked down at the sly old woman lying almost motionless, only the bony chest stirring as she breathed very slowly in and out, fallen like a scrawny chicken on its back.

We’re going to get through this thing, you and I, Chief Clumly thought. Whatever the bearded man was plotting—or Miller and Kozlowski and Figlow and the Mayor—Chief of Police Fred Clumly was not afraid.

He squared his jaw in the darkness. Metaphysics. Mad as a hatter—no doubt of it. And yet it was odd how the question had affected him. He could not recall off-hand what Metaphysics was—it was one of those things he’d probably understood once, long ago, had come across, say, in the days when he used to read whatever people offered him to pass the time with on the ship; or it was one of those words you heard and dismissed, knowing your limits, or knowing the thing was probably just air, an occupation for idle minds—like the words the Mayor’s man Wittaker used at times, “interaction target,” or something like that, and “socio-economic construct.” He used them constantly, as naturally as he breathed, a little like a lunatic using words with all normal sense drained out of them. Except, when he thought about it, when Wittaker used those words of his, Clumly would turn off his mind for a moment, annoyed. The prisoner’s word had a different effect: it had given a queer sort of jolt to his heart.
Yes!
Clumly had thought. There it was. Whatever it meant, spiritualistic trash for old ladies or the roaring secret of life and death, for a minute there Clumly had believed he wanted to know.
Better watch that man,
he thought. He came wide awake. What the devil had he meant by that?
Psst! Interested in—

But all was still. All was well. The room silent and comfortable, haunted by no turbulence but the breath of his nostrils and the nostrils of his wife. The house silent. The street. Nevertheless, he had a terrible sense of things in motion, secret powers at work in the ancient plaster walls, devouring and building, and forces growing and restive in the trees, the very earth itself succinct with spirit. He had an image, culled from some old book, perhaps, or a sermon he’d heard—an image of his house taken over by owls and ravens and cormorants and bitterns, and strange shapes dancing in his cellar. And in his livingroom, thorns and brambles. He listened to his heartbeat going
choof, kuh-choof,
and he could not get to sleep. “Dear Lord,” he said, and fell silent.

Unbeknownst to Clumly or anyone else, three boys in the alley by the post office were letting the air out of people’s tires with an ice pick. Elsewhere—beside the Tonawanda—a woman was digging a grave for her illegitimate child three hours old. Jim Hume was chasing his cows back through the fence some hunter had cut. There was no moon.

II

When the Exorcist
Shall Go
to the House
of
the Patient …

His diademe of dyamans droppede adoun;

     
His weyes were a-wayward wroliche wrout;
Tynt was his tresor, tente, tour, & toun.