Ten Days in the Hills

by Jane Smiley

  “Strong emotions reduce blood flow in the frontal lobe,” said Paul, “so, if something is arousing fear and anger in you, or just adrenaline, even something imprinted rather than present, you’re less able to control your impulses and more likely to act. I see that all the time.”

  “Do we understand Rwanda now?” said Zoe. “Or mutually assured destruction?”

  “No,” said Delphine, decisively.

  “Or the Iraq war?” said Elena.

  “Or Genghis Khan?” said Simon.

  “Maybe Genghis Khan,” said Paul. “In the sense that when society is predicated on hierarchy and fear, people imprint cruel acts as they’re growing up, and perform them when they get the chance. Defeating an enemy would unleash an orgy of rape and killing.”

  “So what?” said Isabel, irritably. “Here we are, we watched that movie, we talked about it. Now we understand. What difference does it make?”

  “None that I see,” said Charlie.

  “And don’t agree with me. I find it offensive.”

  Everyone laughed again, but Isabel scowled.

  “I don’t feel very welcome here,” said Charlie.

  Everyone stopped what he or she was doing. Cassie stopped picking up the wineglasses. Delphine stopped straightening pillows. Isabel stopped scowling. Elena stopped stroking the side of Max’s head above his ear. Zoe stopped smiling at Simon. Simon took his hand out of his jeans pocket and sat up. Max stopped looking at Elena. Stoney stopped pressing buttons on the DVD player. When the disc drawer buzzed open, he didn’t pick up the disc. Paul himself stopped digging his fingers into his beard, without meaning to stop. The evident observation Paul felt hanging in the air was that indeed Charlie wasn’t welcome, and that, furthermore, he had invited himself to California for his own reasons. But Elena said, “I’m sorry you think that.”

  Simon said, “Yeah, it’s me who isn’t welcome. Mom’s been trying to get rid of me all week.”

  “Yes, I have,” said Elena. “But only for your own good.”

  Charlie said, “You’re sorry I don’t feel welcome, but that doesn’t mean I’m welcome.”

  “Hey, Chaz…” said Max. His tone was cautioning but friendly. It took him a moment to go on. In that moment, Paul decided once again that family life was, in general, something to be avoided, except as an occasion for exercising patience.

  Max opened his mouth to continue, but Zoe interrupted him and said, “None of us is welcome, Charlie. Max prefers to be alone. But just because we all imposed ourselves doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it.” She smiled charmingly. Paul could tell she was making an effort. Or, rather, she was exercising her skills of voice and expression.

  “I’m not talking about Max,” said Charlie. “I’m referring to general hostility here.”

  Max smiled and did not try to say anything.

  “In my opinion,” said Simon, “the hostility is only from Mom. Nobody else really—”

  “Simon!” exclaimed Elena.

  “Well, you called him, as I remember, a ‘soulless, heartless dolt’ and a ‘blind, deaf, and dumb ignoramus.’”

  Paul saw Zoe bite her lips, then straighten her face. She casually pushed back her hair and tossed her head. Truly, every single one of her gestures was graceful and photogenic.

  Isabel said, “I don’t think Charlie is very welcome. I don’t think he should be. He doesn’t agree with us on anything. I mean, we could just make up our minds not to talk about it, the way most families do, or he could not come visit when there’s a war on, but why should we pretend that we accept his ideas when we don’t? It’s better to be honest.” She said this with a low-voiced intensity that Paul found a little surprising.

  “You aren’t even open to any arguments,” said Charlie, but to Elena, not Isabel. “You’ve all made up your minds ahead of time. The President himself can’t get a hearing in this house. You all pat yourselves on the back about how open-minded you are, but you aren’t open-minded at all. Yesterday morning I had the TV on for five minutes, and when the President came on to say something, Elena put her hands over her ears and started humming.”

  “I hate the sound of his voice,” said Elena. “That’s all.”

  “Doesn’t that seem crazy to you?” said Charlie. He turned suddenly to Stoney. He said, “You strike me as fairly normal. You get out in the world. Doesn’t what she did seem crazy to you?”

  “It seems extra passionate to me,” said Stoney. “And a little funny. But I can see it.”

  “What has the man done to alienate you? He’s president! Max! When we talked about the election in the spring of 2000, and it was Bush, Gore, Bradley, and McCain, you liked McCain! You thought they were all about the same, and would be a relief from Clinton. You didn’t hate Bush!”

  “Well, I don’t think he seemed at the time to be what he turned out to be,” said Max in a judicious tone. “Now it turns out that he was talking one way to religious groups and another to the public at large—”

  “They all do that! Carter did that! I knew a guy who was an assistant to one of his Cabinet people. He said that, in every meeting, Carter was a first-class hard-ass, not at all like that bleeding heart he looked like on TV. And why shouldn’t he be? If he’d shown more of his hard-ass side, he would have been re-elected.”

  “Personally, I don’t hate the President to the degree where I can’t stand the sound of his voice. My opinion,” said Zoe, “is that he isn’t really the President. He’s the figurehead for Cheney and Rumsfeld. I saw a thing that said those two have been together for years, ever since Nixon, and they just took him up because they knew that they themselves could never get elected. That’s why he takes so many vacation days and goes to bed early and seems to get so much exercise. The country really isn’t his business.” Then she looked at Isabel and said, briskly, “I read the paper, Isabel.”

  “I didn’t say you don’t, Mom.”

  “You were thinking that.”

  “You don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  Isabel remained silent. After a moment she said, “I was thinking, ‘Oh, right.’” She cleared her throat. “But in fact I don’t disagree with you about who actually occupies the seat of power.” She said this rather stiffly.

  “What do you think, Mom?” said Zoe, turning to Delphine.

  “About what?” said Delphine.

  “About whether we’re acting hostile toward Charlie.”

  “I think Charlie should be encouraged to speak his piece,” said Delphine. She picked up one of the pillows she had plumped, placed it on her lap, and sat down on the couch. She folded her hands over the pillow.

  “You mean right now?” said Charlie.

  “Why not?” said Delphine.

  “It’s kind of late.”

  “It’s not even ten o’clock,” said Cassie.

  “Well, now I feel like I’ve been put on the spot.”

  “You have been,” said Max, “but you started it.”

  They all resumed their places. Those whose chairs had been turned more toward the movie screen turned them more toward Charlie. Max pressed a button, and the movie screen itself backed into the wall and shutters closed over it. It was a neat effect. Paul closed his eyes and tucked his feet under himself. He took some quiet floating breaths and then some slower, deeper reviving breaths, and this had the effect of orienting him away from this room and these people, whatever their conflicts. Zoe slipped her hand into his. Her hand was smooth and quiet. The lines in her palm, as he knew, shot across from side to side and top to bottom, deep, straight, and long, making a precise triangle that he had never seen in any other hand, but it probably had no significance. He pictured that triangle in his mind, and also her thumb and fingers folding over it, enclosing and protecting it.

  “Okay,” said Charlie, “okay. I will say my piece. God knows I’ve said it every night, lying in bed after one of these evenings of listening to what I consider pretty treasonous, or at least d
isloyal, chitchat from just about everyone here. Or maybe only disrespectful and irreverent, from some people, but it has made my blood boil a bit.” He cleared his throat. “You, for example, Elena—”

  “You can’t address her,” said Delphine. “You have to make your case on its own merits, not in contradiction to what other people are saying. If there’s a case to be made, then it has to stand on its own two feet.”

  “Well, I—”

  “I’m just warning you,” said Delphine. “You should think about it, because if everything you say starts with how you disagree with someone else, I’ll stop you, and then you’ll get interrupted a lot, and you’ll lose your train of thought. Those are the rules. I just made them up.” She smiled a rare smile, and it was pretty, Paul thought, and very like Zoe’s smile that was famous all over the world.

  “Want a drink?” said Simon. “A beer, maybe? I saw some Negro Modelo in the refrigerator.”

  Charlie nodded. Simon went to the refrigerator and took out four beers. He kept one for himself, passed one to Max, another to Charlie, and the last to Stoney. They looked good, thought Paul, though he hadn’t had a beer in five years. At the sight of them, Zoe got up and went to the refrigerator herself. She brought back two large bottles of Pellegrino and set them, with glasses, on the coffee table.

  “So,” Charlie said, “I’m making the case for the war—”

  “How anyone can—” said Elena, but Delphine looked her square in the face and said, “Shhh!”

  Elena put her hands over her lips.

  “Okay. I’m going to say even things that everyone knows to be true, just to register them. Then I’m going to say things that some people think are true and others don’t, and say how I feel about those things. And then I’m going to give my theory about how all those things fit together. Okay?”

  He looked around the room. Paul looked around the room. Everyone nodded.

  “Okay. Now, the first thing that everyone knows is that Saddam is a bad man and a tyrant, and Bush Senior should have gone ahead and gotten rid of him at the end of the Gulf War, when we had the advantage and most of the world was on our side. The Iraqi army seemed to be giving up. They backed out of Kuwait, they surrendered, and they threw away their weapons. But there was not a general belief that the coalition would hold if we attacked Saddam and tried to take over Iraq. The Republican Guard was supposed to be different from the regular Iraqi army. The allies hadn’t signed on for that, no one knew precisely what it would entail, and, frankly, Bush Senior wasn’t the kind of guy to push his luck. I view the end of the Gulf War as a ‘quit-while-you’re-ahead’ judgment call, and maybe Bush Senior made the wrong call. I think he thought that Saddam had gotten something of a whupping and he would watch his step thereafter. At the time, if they’d asked me, I would have said, ‘Go on and finish the job,’ but they didn’t ask me.

  “But Saddam didn’t watch his step. In my opinion, he learned the wrong lesson. He learned that we didn’t have what it took to go the whole way and take care of him, and he thought that he could pretty much do what he pleased if he kept it secret. And he was set on revenge. That’s how those people’s minds work, they can’t help themselves. They’ve got to get back at you if you’ve destroyed their honor and all. And Clinton and the UN did nothing to change his mind about that. He pushed and pushed, and those guys never really pushed back.”

  Elena squeaked, but said nothing. Charlie glanced at her.

  “Now, I’m not saying that 9/11 wouldn’t have happened if Al Gore had been elected. It might have or probably would have, but when Bush Junior was elected, that was like a red flag to a bull. Time to get back at the U.S., and specifically at the Bush family, and Saddam was looking for a way. We know he was trying to build nuclear weapons and trying to stockpile biological weapons. We know that. And as far as I’m concerned, the liberals dogged it on that score, because, with something much more iffy, like global warming, they want to take all kinds of precautions, no matter how expensive they are, but with those weapons of mass destruction, they say, ‘Well, let’s just see what happens.’ I mean, we know he’s got something. The Brits say so, and so do I think it’s the Italians. My own opinion is that it’s more likely to be germs of some kind, like the plague or anthrax, but whatever. The cautious thing is to take him out. It’s a surgical strike. You guys are making an incredibly big deal out of what I consider to be a surgical strike. And almost everyone in this country agrees with me, not with you. Liberals, too. There’s lots of reasons to do it, and very few to not do it.”

  Delphine cleared her throat. She said, “So—it’s basically a prudent step to take, that’s your thinking.”

  Charlie nodded emphatically, as if it were obvious that Delphine was agreeing with him, but Paul considered Delphine a tricky one. If he had been in the hot seat, he would have maintained a cooler demeanor. Delphine said, “So—if simple prudence is the important point, why is it such an emotional issue with you, making your blood boil and prompting you to use words like ‘treason’ and ‘traitor’ and all of that?”

  “Well, anytime the nation goes to war, you have to support it.”

  “Why? What difference does it make if I don’t support it?”

  “Well, the war effort is undermined.”

  “How? I’ve paid my taxes. The money I might owe is in the kitty. The soldiers are trained, the equipment is paid for. What difference does it make if I agree with it or not?”

  “It’s important not to aid and comfort the enemy.”

  “But you said yourself, it’s a surgical strike and an essentially prudent policy, completely different from an all-out war. The whole nation doesn’t have to gear up for a surgical strike. The whole nation didn’t gear up to intervene in Bosnia or Haiti.”

  Charlie coughed, then exclaimed, “The difference is that we were attacked. I was there! I was in New Jersey that day! People I know saw the planes hit, and other people I know know people who were killed! It was the biggest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, and it was important to respond in kind! I am sure the government has information about Saddam’s hand in all of this. In fact, I think the war in Iraq is such a big deal that it is prima facie evidence that the administration has good reasons for doing it, reasons in addition to the announced ones, that are possibly too secret to make public. Why do it otherwise? Why take such a big risk? There is certainly more here than meets the eye, and at some point, you just have to trust your government to make the decisions they have to make, rather than second-guessing them all the time.” Paul thought Charlie seemed pleased at having stumbled on this line of reasoning. He reiterated it. “Spend billions of dollars and incur the wrath of dozens of countries and tens of millions of people for no good reason? I don’t think so. Why would experienced guys like Cheney and Rumsfeld take such a risk? It defies belief. So I don’t believe it. I believe that there is a whole fabric of evidence and reasons beyond what they’ve told the public that simply can’t be told at this point, but will emerge sometime later.”

  He took a deep breath. He seemed almost relaxed now, Paul thought. Elena simply had her head in her hands. Max was patting her on the shoulder. Isabel was biting her lip. The others seemed interested enough. When Zoe opened her mouth to speak, Delphine lifted her forefinger; Zoe didn’t say anything.

  Charlie went on: “And anyway, everything’s a risk. You look at the upside and you look at the downside. I’m sure they saw that the upside to all of this is really positive—allies, real allies in the heart of the Middle East, access to lots of good-quality petroleum fields, acknowledged dictator gotten rid of. Yes, it’s a gamble, but if, or when, it pays off, the payoff is enormous.” He grinned, having made his point.

  “I don’t know that it’s going that well,” Max said mildly.

  “For now,” said Charlie, “there are some unexpected things. How can that not be true? But, really, what big thing has gone wrong? That’s what gets me going around here. Inside this house, it’s all doom and gloom
and ‘I don’t want to watch the TV’ and ‘How could they do such a thing?’ But not every newspaper is as anti the war as the L.A. Times. If you read the Journal and even the New York Times, they both acknowledge the necessity of the war. And you can’t count on the New York Times ever to support a Republican administration, ever. You aren’t even going to believe the New York Times? Or Tony Blair? Blair was a great friend of Bill Clinton. He’s Labour! His leftist credentials are pretty good. Lots of people I would expect to be on your side are not on your side, and you know the reason for that? They accept the results of the 2000 election. They don’t hold out this unreasoning hatred and resentment about that. They aren’t blinded by what is basically water under the bridge. They are open to the idea that people who were once their opponents, or even enemies, can be right and can do the right and the wise thing. Yes, the election controversy poisoned American politics, but those who got left out don’t have to hold a grudge, and lots of people don’t, and they are clear-sighted enough to support the war. To see the potential benefits and to put the probable costs in perspective. What did Rumsfeld say in the paper yesterday, that the oil production is going to eventually, and fairly quickly, pay for the whole thing? Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I guess I am just instinctively for it. My gut says, do it, don’t go with the second thoughts and doubts.” He took a deep breath and looked around.

  Paul could tell he thought he had made a good case. And why not? thought Paul. Why not just accept that case and relax, and forget the whole thing? What was that quote, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”? That was the Iraq war for you, especially if you looked at it as Charlie did. Without even trying to, Paul felt himself settle more comfortably into his seat, lean more cozily against Zoe, especially since Simon had gotten up and crossed the room. Paul felt his breaths slow, and he hadn’t even realized that they were quick. Elena continued to hold her peace, and even Isabel didn’t bother to say anything. That was the sort of authority Delphine had. She was definitely a mysterious woman—maybe, Paul thought, the reincarnation of a long line of matriarchs and high priestesses. She had that businesslike air of someone who had tasks to perform, and whatever they were, even if they were as simple as taking care of Isabel or making mashed potatoes, she performed them with orderly expertise. Zoe never talked about her, except, once, to remark that Delphine never talked about herself. That she was tall, that she was black, that her grammar was perfect, that she had a slight, undefinable accent, that everyone in the family, including Max, treated her with formality, only added to her charisma.