The Tyrant's Novel (21 page)

Oh, I asked, is there no propaganda in American soap operas?

Well, yes, I admit, the soap opera can be a vehicle for prevailing attitudes and even for prevailing hysteria. But, if I dare say so, you didn't quite answer the question.

I thought this interview was to be sensitive?

Everything in it is up for revision at your wish, Alan, she reminded me. I said that and I meant it.

I think that I can put it like this, I told her. That my wife was not entirely happy with the direction some of the programming had taken. But then you have to realize that we have been subject to these terrible sanctions, which do not affect me directly because I'm one of the privileged. But they affect many ordinary people ruinously. The city is in ruins because of them, and the people live among the ruins, among the busted pipes, and the broken taps, the shattered curbs, the whole sad landscape. It's understandable enough that under those circumstances drama would be enlisted in an attempt, however naïve it might seem to the outsider, to help the people.

I can see that, conceded Louise quite graciously.

My wife suffered from acute migraines. If there had been replacements for the CT scan machine in city hospitals, her problem might have been picked up earlier. But of course, the policy of the West in taking hardly any of our oil means that even for the privileged, whom I've confessed to being—even for us, there is no adequate imaging service.

But isn't it also true that the government makes the most of the sanctions, using them as an excuse for corruption?

Corruption? I asked. She was turning into the woman of the cocktail party again. I wouldn't know about that, but surely you're not arguing that one evil justifies another? Indeed, if what you say were true, it would add to the reasons for ending sanctions.

She switched off briefly. Very good answer, Mr. Sheriff.

A very safe answer, I told her.

She smiled.

No one requires that someone of your talent should offer up his life for a radio station in Texas—mind you, syndicated through half the nation, including Washington.

Then she switched on and resumed. Let's talk now about your book of short stories, which the
New York Times
called “a huge event. The emergence of a new Salinger!”

In answer I found it easiest to talk about the famous production of
The Women of Summer Island.

She asked, How did you feel as a private soldier in a war largely about stretches of river and sandbanks and little rocky outcrops and oil wells?

Do they fight about better things than that in the West? I inquired. Wasn't World War I about rivers and mud and outcrops?

Okay, taking all that as read, how did you feel about the war?

I explained that our soldiers were not as anxious to be killed as some of the other side seemed to be—it was a cultural difference. Because the other side had a very profound tradition of fundamentalism, they sent youths forward wearing purple bandannas to shatter themselves to meat on minefields. Again, the same thing happened in European wars, with the Russians. Hadn't these things happened, in effect, at the battle of the Somme?

What made you willing to fight for
that
particular country down there in the south, then?

I was conscripted. In any case, Louise, that area was part of our state from ancient times, and defined as such from the very first monarchy. Troops on the other side obviously believed the opposite.

Now she raised the issue that some of my compatriots, notably Peter Collins, had gone to other countries. Was I ever tempted? I raised my eyebrows at that, and she bowed her head and smiled in a way that said, Do your best with it.

Before my wife's death, I told her, I had felt bound to my community because they were, insofar as I have written anything, my brothers and sisters
and
my material. I'd had a curious vanity: to see how things turned out, and to be here when they turned out as they did. After my wife's death, I was bound here by the fact that it was
this
earth which accommodated her body.

At last she turned off her machine. Gosh, she said. She looked at me, full gaze. Everything you said about staying. You actually mean it. She seemed, in a peculiar way, moved.

I shrugged. Yes, I confirmed, checking what my real soul would have been had I not been under Great Uncle's edict. Yes.

I went so far as to grin at her. I think I mean it. Especially about Sarah's burial place. I definitely mean that.

She said, You'd lose that, that clarity, in the States. That would be the price.

Perhaps, I told her. By the way, I hope I've made up for my gaucheries, both those long past and those committed at Andrew's.

There were no gaucheries, she insisted.

No, I said. I've been one of those mourners who think their grief exempts them from normal courtesy. I've been a pain in the arse, haven't I, McBrien?

You've been a monumental pain in the exact center of the cosmic anus, affirmed McBrien.

We smiled at each other.

When I say I enjoyed her company, I mean just that. For an hour or so I had been lifted back into larger questions, into my life before Sarah died and before the task descended upon me. Everyone knows that the hunger for contact sometimes becomes greater than the hunger for love itself, and I had fraternally enjoyed the discussion I had had with this woman arisen both from our ancient river—as dark-eyed women of mythology did—and from Houston, Texas.

I would love to know why you are so protected, she murmured, as she packed up her gear.

Protected?

Well, you have Mr. McBrien, my classmate from the university, to make your tea. And the Overguard. And then, the older woman who sits on the bench along the river looking at the apartment door while pretending to read a novel—I bet she's part of the setup too.

Louise James raised both her hands. Fear not, I don't want to be told now. But perhaps, one day, one day . . .

McBrien frowned. Older woman?

Yes, said Louise James. But it doesn't matter, please!

My apartment was at the back of the building, and lacked a view of the riverside park. Mrs. Douglas's flat faced the river, however.

I suggested, Perhaps you could point her out, if we can find the right window.

McBrien and I led Louise downstairs, and I knocked on Mrs. Douglas's door.

Opening it, she blinked, of course, seeing the strangers, and having grown in mistrust of me since I began to receive special care from the Overguard.

Mr. Sheriff, she said.

I'm sorry to intrude on you, Mrs. Douglas. I wondered if I could make use of your living room window, just to look at something?

She uttered a cold “Certainly!” as she admitted the three of us grudgingly. We stood like uncertain guests by a table on which there was a great deal of cut glass—it always seemed to me that china and cut glass were a comfort to women, stable elements in a world of flux, of limbs exposed on ramparts. I felt an impulse to tell Mrs. Douglas that I too felt as if my tyrannized limbs had been hung on ramparts, but that was somewhat excessive, and she would not have understood.

I won't be a moment, I assured her, and I walked across the floor and looked out through the curtains of the front window. It was Mrs. Carter, seated on a bench along the riverbank, watching the entrance of my building.

Who is it? asked McBrien.

The mother of an army friend of mine. I turned back from the pane and looked meaningfully at McBrien. Mrs. Carter. Remember her?

McBrien said, We'll tell the boys to get rid of her.

No, I insisted. Look, she's harmless.

He frowned and shook his head, casting his eyes ceilingward. Louise James, of course, was mystified but too discreet to inquire.

I told McBrien, Tell them to tolerate her, but keep an eye out.

A day later, as I came back from breakfast, I saw Mrs. Carter by the white Toyota, offering coffee from a thermos to the Overguard. It was so strange to see her in that mode, cozying up to my guards. I knew then that she would be troublesome. But, one hoped, as a mere nuisance rather than a cataclysm.

From
SOME USEFUL PLOT POINTS FROM THE LIFE OF HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT-FOR-LIFE
,
NATIONAL CHIEFTAIN
,
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
,
AND GREAT UNCLE OF THE PEOPLE
.

3. As he reached adolescence, the future President-for-Life developed an innocent affection for his cousin Susan, but he also began to participate with his male cousin Adrian in street marches protesting against the slavish regimes of the day, which were nothing more than clients of London and Washington. Because of his involvement in
these national activities, when he applied for military college at the age of sixteen, he was refused admission. . . .

This two-dimensional tale wearied and distressed me, and I felt bound to put it aside and take tea. Irony is the lifeblood of good writing, and there was a melancholy lack of irony in this document. How I wanted to be back with the comfort of subtitling American and British films. It was then, in sudden insight, for the first time I imagined Sarah's survival—
really
imagined it, that is, like a scene from a film, from
On the Waterfront,
except more really. No Eva Marie Saint. Sarah. I could see her, by my desk, with her steadfast frown, her positive presence going along with the negative presence of my trashy novel. It was as if, for a moment, I had created a pattern in all the chaotic iron filings of this miserable existence. I imagined her repeating her slogan: You must not serve.

And I said, But I have to.

Death is better.

But the McBriens, I replied. And the McBriens' baby.

Death is preferable. You must not serve.

I tried to get out, I told the vacant air. I tried that.

An entire dialogue was in progress. I uttered the last sentence aloud. The adored wraith was gone.

Was it true that in Great Uncle's prison, politically sensitive assassinations were achieved by injecting a bubble of air into a vein, or else an overdose of insulin, which is said not to be traceable even by a pathologist? I wondered how I could research this question. And then I despised the thought. Research. As Sarah would have said, Determined people find a way.

I had tried my little stunt, I had tried to find my way out, but a comfortable one and one which allowed even in the act the chance of stepping back from the brink.

I can't imagine what my death will be like after it's happened, I said to an empty room. It was the abiding problem of my life.

I returned to
USEFUL PLOT POINTS
.

When the monarchy fell in 1958, the future President was amongst those who led heroic Nationals into the Sunrise Palace.

Translation: He ran a gang of thugs who hacked the twenty-three-year-old king to death, dismembered the king's uncle, McCloud, and hanged his remains in front of the Ministry for War as McCloud had done with the senior rebels of Uncle Richard Stark's adventure in 1941. The prime minister got away and headed for Scarpdale dressed as a woman, but Great Uncle's gang of boys had been amongst those who tracked him down in the outer suburbs, killed him, drove vehicles across his body, buried him, and, not satisfied, disinterred him, applied their
chardri
s, and ran through the streets displaying fingers, toes, fragments of scalp.

After the first President, Robert Dunstan, despite earlier promises to the people, made a further secret deal with the British, the future President-for-Life again led a band of patriots whose job was to oppose the new and treacherous president's Minutemen. The future President-for-Life and his uncle Stark tracked a Scarpdale presidential informer to the outer suburbs of the capital and had no compunction in shooting him dead. They were detained in the Palace of Disappearance, Wolfmount Prison, but let go for lack of proof. In prison the future President acquired a sense of the hardihood needed by ordinary citizens in their struggle for a genuine nation, in their losses from the war, in their want and neediness. Released, the future President-for-Life was involved with other young men in an attack on the motorcade of the treacherous President Dunstan. A number of the young conspirators were on the pavement along the route of the presidential procession, armed with weapons provided by people of similar mind in the officer corps. The future President-for-Life took up a position in a nearby building to provide covering fire for his operatives on the ground.

Translation: Even the Fusion Party and the officer corps didn't think he was up to the primary job of performing the assassination, and gave him the number-two job of creating confusion in the wake of the shooting.

When the presidential motorcade came along, some of the younger members of the assassination group panicked and fired prematurely.

Translation: And the future President joined in the general panic.

A number of officials fell, but the false President was merely wounded. In covering the withdrawal of the assassination party, the future President-for-Life was injured, but skillfully evaded capture.

All that was true, though what it had to do with my (his) proposed book, I could not guess.

So the “plot points” continued, following Great Uncle into exile, where he was separated from Susan Stark, his cousin, to whom he became betrothed in absentia. Loneliness, deprivation of love, plotting—even talking to the CIA—all in exile, in Egypt.

The return occurred only when Uncle Stark and his old friend, one General Ian Baker, helped in those days by the CIA, brought a crucial number of tanks and an essential wing of Hawker Hunter aircraft to bear on the presidential palace. The treacherous president was shot against the wall of the Palace of Government. So the future President-for-Life came home and married, and Uncle Stark's influence got him a post on the bureau of the new President, Ian Baker, in which (according to popular rumor) he imitated his idol, Stalin—a rough and only partially educated boy from the country, despised by the intelligentsia of the Fusion Party, and given a special portfolio in relation to farmers' affairs. He also molded the gangs he had led as a youth into the Office of Reconciliation, whose military wing would become, after Ian Baker died, the potent Overguard.