The Three Sisters (40 page)

Bars were open and busy as long as the law would allow. Some bars stayed open despite the fines, figuring the additional profits would more than offset any penalties. Restaurants were crowded with people indulging themselves in expensive
haute cuisine
or enjoying tongue-tingling delicacies in the privacy of their own room. The only people who complained were the waiters and waitresses who rarely saw any of the liberal tips which the visitors were rumored to be giving. Room service was kept busy during the night sending up everything needed at a party, including food. To accommodate the celebrants’ needs, men and women from all over the nation traveled to D.C. to participate in the fun and enjoy the profit-sharing opportunities which the wealthy offered to anyone who caught their eye. Profits procured varied with the proportions of
the person.

With indulging oneself the principle concern of our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. became a new Babel with the Washington Monument the new tower and center of attraction. A line a tenth of a mile long greeted its doors each morning upon opening, and despite the cold, tourists had to be turned away daily at midnight when the Monument closed. Its hours had been extended to accommodate the increased interest in the Father of Our Nation and to ensure the success of the Festivities. The number of guards guarding the tower was increased to avoid any incidents like the one which had gotten our heroines into trouble.
None occurred.

One reason why the Festivities received less protest than would have been expected was the government’s success at getting all elements of society to participate in the event. The Supreme Court originated the crucifixion, the politicians soon supported it, the private sector profited from it, and individuals were invited to celebrate the three’s demise. Democracy brought to perfection. With few alienated by the powers that be, the Festivities’ dwindling number of opponents had a very small base from which to
organize protests.

Some conservatives, however, protested against the Festivities because of its possible implications for the future. They maintained that the nation was being shortsighted in ignoring the long-term effects of the Festivities. The crucifixions and the economic growth of
1979
had increased President Carter’s standing in the polls making his re-election in
1980
almost certain, but America could neither afford four more years of his inefficient handling of the Office of the Presidency, they argued, nor could the military survive four more years of Carter’s miniscule military budgets which took up about half as much of GNP as the defense budgets of the
1950
s and
1960
s. His military budgets were receiving only token expansion, and if this continued until
1984
, the United States would be left almost defenseless against Soviet domination. Instead of stopping the Soviets, the government was persecuting three women.

Furthermore, the intervention of the Supreme Court in the three sisters’ case and subsequent executive-judicial-congressional cooperation upset the checks and balances needed for a democracy to work. The supplemental appropriations bill had widened the government deficit even more, weakening the American economy just when it was starting to grow,
et cetera.

Like a boulder rolling down a hill, however, the Festivities could not be stopped by anyone, so plans to involve people in the crucifixion were initiated to ensure that even America’s allies supported the Festivities. Each nation was invited to the crucifixion to signal their commitment to “usurping the terrorist menace which threatens to destroy peace in the world.” Some heads of state came (usually from countries seeking foreign aid), but more often, delegations of government officials were sent to represent
each nation.

Most delegations were quite enthusiastic about attending the Festivities, for here was one international get-together which might actually prove interesting. The Law of the Sea conferences had reached levels of ennui undreamt of by even the most loyal government bureaucrats.

By December
24
, fifty-three delegations and heads of state had presented themselves and joined the president in hailing the three’s imminent demise as a victory of “governmental prerogative” (the newest catchword) over the “anarchical and senseless actions
of terrorists.”

One benefactor of the Festivities was, quite naturally, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Parts. Though Victor had tried to avoid the ostentatious publicity which might attract those unlucky enough not to number among the nation’s wealthy and elites, the Center had received so much publicity during the trial that Victor’s staff had to turn customers away from its doors every night. Even though new Kennedy Centers were opened in Los Angeles, London, and Berlin, demand for the Kennedy Center greatly exceeded its supply. Consequently, the Center twice raised its prices to rid the Center of the common riff-raff who invited themselves to join the nation’s elites for whom the Kennedy Center had originally been designed. Attendance at the Center fell as a result of the price increase, but with inelastic demand predominating, the rise in revenues was more than sufficient to guarantee greater profits for
its owner.

Victor Virga was rarely seen at the Kennedy Center despite its astounding success. Not only was he preoccupied with Virnovak Enterprises, but he was intimately involved with the planning of the Festivities by the government and by the media. When Victor was questioned about his association with those who had condemned the three sisters (“It was as if Jerry Ford had coordinated Richard Nixon’s trial and conviction,” commented K), he excused himself by assuring reporters that he was only doing his work to ensure that the memory of his three employees survived their bodies, an explanation which no one believed.

Victor’s unswerving dedication to creating a fun-filled Festivities Day for the nation only confirmed Coito’s belief that Victor cared for money and power more than people, especially ones who were soon to die. Victor angered the three the most when one day he promised, “Girls, great idea. Think I figured how to save you three. Can’t give you details, of course. Only
17 
percent chance of succeeding too. At least there’s a chance though. Tell you later if I can.”

By then Victor’s credibility with the three was almost non-existent. After the failure of his previous plans and the undivided dedication which he paid to the Festivities, the three sacrificial sisters concluded that Victor had no plan at all. He had mentioned his final solution solely to placate the three. Despite earnest attempts, Coito never got to interrogate Victor on his newest plan, for the few visits which he paid them were too short to conduct a hearing into his activities. Father Novak, of course, they
never saw.

The three women who had made the Festivities possible were making the most of their final days in jail despite the limitations placed upon them by their confinement. Coito’s “last request,” repeated at every interview, was to travel around the world for a week accompanied by seven men of her choice. Though this request was refused, no one denied that it was exactly what Coito needed. Nevertheless, Coito was neither allowed to leave the air force base nor to enjoy entaticous entertainments in the privacy of her own cell.

Throughout November and early December, Coito granted interviews to dozens of people with whom she shared her bitter cynicism whether the interviewer were sympathetic to her protests or not. Because of K’s claustrophobic confinement on the military base (by December she had been there seven months — longer than she had spent in the convent), only by speaking her mind did she feel free.

Throughout her life, Coito had always felt confined— by religious rules, peer pressure, parental admonitions, societal strictures, personal commitments, the economy’s demands upon her to earn her living, or her own imprisonment in a convent or on the air force base. In time she had learned to adjust herself to the confining pressures of life, but she had never succeeded in making the rules and regulations disappear. As she saw it, her whole life had been a fight to free herself and to change the world around her, to destroy both in her mind and in the minds of others the rigid rules which encroached upon her self-evident right to do whatever she pleased, and to follow as few of the mores society imposed upon its members
as possible.

For most of her life, Coito had walked a tightrope between fulfilling her own desires and meeting the nation’s legal niceties, but she had gone too far when she had had her orgy at the Washington Monument. The Supreme Court had tried Coito, and she had responded by turning her anger outward and attacking others with her cynicism. But when her sentence had been pronounced and K had found that her cynicism no longer served her, she turned bitter.

As long as K had been able to put the blame for her predicament and misfortunes on someone else, she had kept her
amour propre
, but as the certainty of her punishment grew, Coito began to have doubts. She began to wonder what she had accomplished with her sarcasm and caustic comments. She even began to question the value of rebelling for rebellion’s sake or being cynical for cynicism’s sake, and once these foundations of her
Weltanschauung
were shaken, there was nothing left to sustain the handful of beliefs she
still held.

Two weeks before the Festivities were to take place, Coito’s self-confidence collapsed into an unfathomable despair which she was barely able to hide from others with her perfunctory cynical attacks. “I made Russians seem like optimists by comparison,” confided K. Even attacking others’ beliefs suddenly seemed pointless, and worse than this, there seemed to be no way of regaining her self-confidence.

Coito had realized that all her efforts to change society through her actions or with her cynicism and ideas had failed, for like any cynic, her efforts had been expended upon destroying the ideas which others admired instead of creating something which others could believe in. Dissenting opinions, not constructive development had been her preoccupation in life. Her wit had always been so useful and pointed that she had rarely found any reason to question her own ways and ideas. Only with death approaching her did Coito see that she had little to show for her life on earth. “Cynicism is the opiate of the intellectuals,”
K concluded.

Perhaps she had gotten others to question their own ideas or be more suspect of anything they encountered, but K had substituted no
Weltanschauung
of her own to replace the ideas she had discredited. Until mid-December, she had given little thought to the ultimate purpose of her own ideas or existence. She had always considered the reason for the existence of the universe to be unknowable. The first cause is by definition an oxymoron beyond the ken of humans. Even if existence were nothing more than anarchy and randomness, it was one’s personal existence where order could be created to give meaning to one’s life before it came to
an end.

Coito had enjoyed life, had always been able to surmount life’s problems with her wit or subterfuge, had never gone needy, and had never faced any life crisis, until now, which had forced her to consider the reason for her thoughts and actions. But now she realized that cynicism for cynicism’s sake had profited her little, and it became even more disheartening when she realized the impossibility of resolving the questions which plagued her.

To expect that Coito could discover a new and acceptable means of understanding the world in the two weeks which remained before her crucifixion was absurd. All her life, the systematic theories of Catholicism, America’s social mores, political and economic systems, artistic and academic movements, and other organized ways of understanding or dealing with the world had been imposed upon her. None of them had ever impressed her for long, and whatever organizational qualities these systems had were based on some artificial correlation of ideas which could be believed in only as long as she was willing to ignore or belittle contradictory facts which could shatter the structure of beliefs she adhered to at any one time. But even as Coito realized these facts, she could feel no comfort in her discoveries for she knew that Hume and a thousand others had found the same to be true long before she had been born. So how was she
any different?

Yet Coito had tried to be different, to be original. Like a guerilla, K had fought a war of attrition against all organized systems and had tried to champion the new and different over the old and accepted. The unique, the exception to the rule, had always stood out in K’s mind and interested her more than the commonplace. But pursuing a thousand disparate ideas could produce nothing but eclecticism. After all, it is quite difficult if not impossible to make a coherent theory out of the exceptions to others’ systems
of thought.

Then Coito began to wonder why there should be any systems of thought at all. She once again felt that it was others’ attempts to impose order upon human existence, when what little order that did exist was internal rather than external, which had led to her own rebellion and present despair. “The real world can never approach the ideal which humans want to impose upon it,” she told Theodora. “One can only impose order on one’s own existence, and even that is difficult
to do.”

Coito had often thought that had she been told from the beginning that truth would forever be multifaceted and that mankind would forever attempt to get around the ideal which it subscribed to, her rebellion would not have been as great, and she might have concentrated more on creating than destroying. But it was too late to change
that now.