At noon that day, Ernest turned on the flat set. Gretchen sat with him on the couch, still a little groggy from the drugs that had gotten her through the previous day’s crises. “I’m glad I didn’t go out there yesterday, then,” she said. “If it did this to you, I’m glad I stayed here. You turned into some kind of absolute animal. I don’t believe it could have been as bad as you make it sound. The Representatives wouldn’t let it. But people like you took the chance to act out your childish aggressions. What did you do? Hit people? Throw rocks through windows? Scream dirty words?”
“No,” said Ernest slowly. “Mostly I learned a lot about the way people really are. I didn’t learn as much about myself as I did about, oh, you and other people. I acted pretty much like I thought I would. I was scared, and I acted scared. But I didn’t act mean.”
“I’ll bet you did,” said Gretchen. “You were so busy slamming old men and women against the sides of buildings, you didn’t have the time to get your tokens. You were gone for nearly twelve hours yesterday. Do you realize that? Twelve hours! I could have gone door to door in all of Fort Greene in that much time.”
He looked at her for several seconds. “The point is,” he said finally, “you didn’t. You were reverting to the womb up here, while I was out getting my face beat in. In the second place, everybody else in the city was out in the streets with me. And to top it all off, what makes you so sure there was a token booth in Fort Greene? They might not have had one anywhere in Brooklyn.”
“I think we’re going to die because of you,” she said quietly.
“Are there any more beers?”
“No. We’re going to die, and you want a beer.”
“Shut up about it already,” he said. “They’re going to tell us something now. All I want to know is when it’s going to happen. If we have time, there’ll be ways of getting tokens. Just let me listen.”
The network was running a pre-recorded tape of a morning quiz show. The contestants looked vapid, the announcer cheerfully bored, the questions pointless, and the prizes undesirable. “Look at this stuff,” said Ernest. “Is this the kind of thing you watch when I’m at work?”
“I don’t watch this one,” said Gretchen sullenly. “I watch Orient Express Challenge. Sometimes they have good people on.”
“That’s what I mean. When I’m at work, you sit here in front of the television and do nothing.”
“I learn things from the questions.”
“You learn things,” said Ernest with contempt. “How much did it help you yesterday? Do you think your terrific knowledge is going to help you stay alive now?”
“You couldn’t do any better,” she said.
Ernest turned back to the set. He saw the contestants waving goodbye, gleefully smiling into the camera. He wondered if they were so overwhelmingly happy with their fates, or just glad that the stupid show was over. “I wonder how they did yesterday in the streets,” he thought. “Maybe they were too busy admiring their newly won service for eight to go out. I wonder what they’re doing right now.”
There were no commercials; instead, a network announcer appeared and smiled at the audience. “As you probably know,” he said, “the Representatives have scheduled a major policy statement for twelve o’clock. Unlike most press conferences, no printed summary of what the Representatives will say has been distributed. The reason for this is open to conjecture, but the management of this network feels the responsibility to warn its viewers not to leap to unfortunate conclusions. There will be an analysis of the Representatives’ words following their broadcast, which will be aired live from the Representative Council Building in the Caribbean.”
The screen went blank for a few seconds. Then a voice announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, Their Democratic Dignities, the Representatives of the peoples of Earth.”
The scene was the library of the Council building. The six men sat in a semicircle of captain’s chairs before a mantled fireplace. Some of them held partially filled glasses, others smoked. They seemed relaxed and, of course, confident.
“That’s the first time in a long time I’ve seen all six of them together,” said Ernest.
“You know, they look a lot alike,” said Gretchen.
The six men chatted among themselves, apparently unaware that the television cameras were sending their images around the planet. It was possible that almost every person in the world was watching now; they were all waiting to hear the final details of the great disaster, which would either certainly kill them or, in the case of the lucky few, estrange them from every particle of familiar life.
One of the Representatives rose from his chair. The cameramen immediately swung around to him; he didn’t notice them, but casually took his glass to a bar and refilled it with liquor. Another Representative was whispering in the ear of a third, and when he finished, both men laughed loudly. The third Representative turned to pass the joke along to a fourth. The second Representative said something that wasn’t picked up by the microphones, got up, and left the room. The first Representative looked at the cameras and nodded. “We’ll get started as soon as Bill gets back,” he said. Then he resumed his conversation. After a while, the missing Representative returned and took his seat.
The camera closed in on the Representative of North America. He smiled pleasantly. “As you are no doubt aware,” he said, “a bulletin issued by our offices reported that the entire world was endangered by an unspecified though total form of annihilation. I believe that Ed, here, would like to say a few words about the current status of that situation.”
“Thank you, Tom. The circumstances have simplified somewhat. I’m sure that our viewers will be gratified to learn that there is no longer any danger of any sort of worldwide cataclysm.” He paused to sip from his glass.
“At least, as far as we can tell now,” said one of the others, laughing. “We don’t want to affect the insurance companies.”
“Right, Chuck,” said Ed. “But what I meant was rather that the entire story of the disaster was untrue, that it was total fabrication from the very beginning.”
Ernest was bewildered. He said nothing. He couldn’t tell if Gretchen said anything.
“I hope that our constituents don’t believe that we went to such lengths merely for our own amusement,” said Tom.
“Our reasons are our own,” said one of the others, “and we don’t think it wise to explain them fully just now.”
“Whatever they are, they must be pretty important to cause all this,” said Gretchen.
“Shut up,” said Ernest.
“At least it sounds like we’re not all going to die,” she said.
“Shut up!”
“… felt that this would present a convenient and relatively painless way to thin out the population, for one thing,” the Representative continued.
“Sort of enforced natural selection,” said Chuck.
“Right,” said Tom. “As the years go by, and as our civilization learns more and more about the problems involved with maintaining a fair and just society, it is possible that we may lose sight of some of the very qualities which have brought us to this level. Some well-known sociologists have hinted that this is happening already. We have become a world of complacent idlers, in an environment that is becoming ever more crowded and unable to sustain our desire for relaxation.”
“Look at them, why don’t you?” said Ernest. “I work six days a week.” He felt very much like he had the day before, unable to sort the essential details from the overlay of grotesque fancy. Could he still be out on the street somewhere, enveloped in a cold, awful idea? He stared at the flat set, for the moment incapable of assimilating their words. He recalled flashes of yesterday’s terror, and he heard what the Representatives were saying; he just couldn’t reconcile them.
“And that reminds me,” said another Representative. “We’re still counting on you people being upset enough about this to riot tonight. That was part of the original scenario.”
The s
ix Representatives talked for nearly half an hour more. Ernest watched in stunned and outraged silence. He didn’t want to believe it; it must be their insane idea of a joke. His wife sat with him, and for the most part was thankful that she was not, after all, going to die. At last, Ernest got up and turned off the flat set.
“It still seems ridiculous,” Gretchen said. “I mean, isn’t that going a little too far?”
Ernest searched around in a drawer, finally finding his small revolver. “I don’t know,” he said. “You can’t really have an opinion.”
Gretchen noticed the gun. “What are you going to do?” she asked nervously. “Just because they expect you to go out…”
Ernest shot her three times. “You’re certainly not in any position to criticize the government,” he said. He went into the nursery and looked down at Stevie, his infant son. He took out his wallet and found a twenty-dollar bill. He folded it and tucked it into Stevie’s little fist. Then he went back out into the room and locked and chained the front door.
“You don’t have the right to that kind of talk. They’re the only ones who have all the facts.” He stared back at the darkened television. “They know what they’re doing,” he said, just before he shot himself.
Meanwhile 7
The short night passed. Ernst drank; his thoughts became more incoherent and his voice more strident, but there was no one at all to observe him. He sang to himself, and thought sadly about the past, and, though he gestured energetically to M. Gargotier, even that patient audience remained silent. Finally, driven further into his own solitude, he drew out his dangerous thoughts. He reviewed his life, as he did every night; he took each incident in order, or at least in the special order that this particular night demanded. The events of the day, considered with his customary drunken objectivity. A trivial today, he thought, a handful of smoke.
It was late. Only the bright, lonely lights of the amusement quarter still pierced the darkness. The evening’s celebrants had straggled back up the avenue, past the Café de la Fée Blanche; now there was only Ernst and the nervous, sleepy proprietor. When was the last time Ernst had seen Gretchen? He recalled the characteristic thrill he got whenever he saw his wife’s familiar shape, recognized her comfortable pace. What crime had he committed, that he was left to decay alone? Had he grown old? He examined the backs of his hands, the rough, yellowed skin where the brown spots merged into a fog. He tried to focus on the knife ridges of tendon and vein. No, he decided, he wasn’t old. It wasn’t that.
Ernst listened. It had been a while since Kebap had last sauntered past with his vicious words and his degenerate notions. It was so like the city, that one as young as the boy could already possess the moral character of a Danish chieftain. There were no sounds now. The festivals in the other quarters of the city had long ago come to an end. The pigeons did not stir; there wasn’t even the amazed flutter of their sluggish wings, lifting the birds away from some imagined danger, settling them back asleep before their mottled claws touched the ground again. Ernst sighed. No pigeons. They wouldn’t move even if he threw his table among their sculpted flock.
There was no Kebap, no Czerny, no Ieneth. There was only Ernst, and the darkness.
“This is the time for art,” said Ernst. “There can’t be such silence anywhere else in the world, except perhaps at the frozen ends. And even there, why, you have whales and bears splashing into the black water. The sun never sinks, does it? There’s always some daylight; or else I have it wrong, and it is dark all the time. In any event, there will be creatures of one sort or another to disturb the stillness. Here I am, the one creature. And I have decided that it is a grand misuse of silence to sit here and drink only. The night is this city’s single resource. Well, that and disease.”
He tried to stand, to gesture broadly and include the entire city in a momentary act of drama, but he lost his balance and sat heavily again in his chair. “This is the time for art,” he muttered. “I shall make of the city either a living statue or a very boring play. But nevertheless, whichever, I shall present it before the restless audiences of my former home. Then won’t I be welcomed back! I’ll let the others worry about what to do with these meanest of people, these most malodorous of buildings, and all this sand. I’ll drop it all down in the middle of Lausanne, I think, and let the proper officials attempt to deal with it. I shall get my praise, they shall get another city. And then there won’t be a single person on the entire breast of Africa. We should always, I believe, hold one continent in reserve. Oh, I don’t care what I think.”
He fretted with his clothing for a few moments, fumbling in drunken incompetence with the buttons of his shirt. He gave up at last. “It is the time for art, as I said. Now I must make good on that claim, or else these gentle folk will be right in calling me an idiot. The concept of presenting this city as a work of art, a serious offering, had a certain amusement, but not enough of enchantment to carry the idea beyond whimsy. So, instead, I shall recite the final chapter of my fine trilogy of novels. The third volume, you may recall, is entitled, The Suprina of the Maze. It concerns the Suprine of Carbba, Wreylan III, who lived about the time of the Protestant Reformation, and his wife, the mysterious Queen Without A Name. The Suprina has been identified on many occasions by students of political history, but each such ‘authoritative account’ differs, and it is unlikely that we shall ever know her true background.”
Ernst looked up suddenly, as if he had heard a woman calling his name. He closed his eyes tightly and continued. “This enigmatic Suprina,” he said, “is a very important character in the trilogy. At least I shall make her so, even though she does not appear until the final book. She has certain powers, almost supernatural. And at the same time, she is possessed of an evil nature that battles with her conscience. Frequently, the reader will stop his progress through the volume to wonder at the complications of her personality. She is to be loved and hated; I do not wish the reader to form but a single attitude toward her. That is for Friedlos, my protagonist. He will come riding across the vast wooded miles, leaving behind in the second volume the bleak, gelid corpse of Marie, lying stiff upon the westward marches of Breulandy. Friedlos will pass through Poland, I suppose, in order to hear from the president there a tale of the Queen Without A Name. I must consider how best to get Friedlos from Breulandy to Poland. Perhaps a rapid transition: ‘A few weeks later, still aggrieved by the death of his second love, Friedlos crossed the somber limits of Poland.’ Bien. Then, off he starts for Carbba, intrigued by the president’s secondhand information. Ah, Friedlos, you are so much like your creator that I may blush to put my name on the book’s spine.”
Ernst dug in his pockets, looking for his outline again. He could not find it, and shrugged carelessly. “Gretchen, will you ever learn that it is you he seeks? I have put you on a throne, Gretchen. I have made you Suprina of all Carbba, but I have given you the tortured understanding that drove me from my own life.”
He longed to see Steven, his son. It had been years; that, too, wasn’t fair. Governments and powers must have their way; but certainly it wouldn’t upset their dynastic realms to allow the fulfilling of one man’s sentiments. How old was the boy now? Old enough to have children of his own? Perhaps, amazingly, grandchildren for Ernst? Steven might have a son; he might be named Ernest, after his funny (old) grandfather.
“How unusual it would be, to bounce a grandchild upon this palsied knee,” he thought. “I doubt if ever a grandchild has been fondled in all the history of this city. Surely Kebap could not, in the first place, accurately identify his own grandparents. And would they be anxious to claim him? He is, after all, somewhat of an objectionable person. And he has had only nine years to develop so remarkably offensive a manner. It is an accomplishment and, all emotional considerations aside, one must give the wretch his due.
“There is something about him, though, that obsesses me. If there were not, I should without hesitation perform some kind of permanent injury to him, to induce him to le
ave my peace unspoiled. I detect an affinity; I cannot dispute the possibility that I, myself, may be the lad’s own father. What a droll entertainment that would be. I shall have to explore the thing with him tomorrow. Indeed, the more I consider it, the better the idea becomes. I hope I can remember it.”
He heard the rattling of M. Gargotier drawing the steel gate across the door and windows of the small café. The sound was loud and harsh, and it made Ernst feel peculiarly abandoned, as it did every night. Suddenly, he was aware that he sat alone in a neglected city, a colony despised by the rest of the world, alone on the insane edge of Africa, and no one cared. He heard the click of a switch, and knew that the Fée Blanche’s own sad strings of lights had been extinguished. He heard M. Gargotier’s slow, heavy steps.
“M. Weinraub?” said the proprietor softly. “I will go now. It is nearly dawn. Everything is locked now. Maybe you should go, too, eh?” Ernst nodded, staring across the avenue. The proprietor made some meaningless grunt and hurried home, down the street.
The last of the bourbon went down Ernst’s throat. Its abrupt end shocked him. So soon? He remembered M. Gargotier’s last words, and tears formed in the corners of his eyes. He struggled to order his thoughts.
“Is that the bourbon? I need some more bourbon,” he said aloud. There was an unnatural cracked quality to his voice that worried him. Perhaps he was contracting some disgusting rot of the city. “There had better be some more bourbon,” he thought. “It isn’t a matter of courtesy any longer. I require a certain quantity of the stuff to proceed through this. Gretchen would get it for me. I seem to be lost, of course. I cannot find Gretchen anywhere. Steven would get it for me, but I haven’t seen Steven in years. One would think that someone in my position would command a bit more discipline.”
Relatives Page 21
