Those Who Knew

by Idra Novey

  The plan I had in mind, S, was for her to let me into the building somehow in the evening, for me to be the one who took the risk of being caught on his computer. But your namesake said it would be far easier for her to go through his emails herself when he was on his lunch break. I told her I couldn’t put her in that position.

  Yet once again, S, my role was to safely sit alone and wait. And agonize. Sara wanted to risk going on his computer on his lunch break a second time and try once more to find an email linking him even obliquely to Maria P. But Simon and I convinced her not to push her luck. I told her that, in the long human history of homicidal politicians, how many ever go to trial? The political class almost never goes down for anything but kickbacks and shit lakes.

  Your namesake promised she would not risk going anywhere near his computer again and I hope she means it. She promised me and Simon she’s just going to stay on, in his office, feigning loyalty for another month or two, until our stealth collaboration seeps into the underhistory of this island where the most subversive acts have always transpired.

  And maybe your namesake’s lone search for Maria P.’s name didn’t uncover any email trace because there isn’t one to find. Maybe Maria’s admiring glances in Victor’s direction during his speeches had nothing to do with her death. Maybe, like your intrepid namesake, when Victor repeatedly placed his hand on her back, Maria mentioned a boyfriend, or a knife in her pocket, or whatever occurred to her to fend him off.

  Earnings for the Day

  Emotionally, S, an all-out bonanza.

  Side Business

  Suspended for drastic action.

  Today’s Only Purpose

  Free knowledge, for anyone who wants to come and get it.

  I’m giving away everything in Conspiracy today, S. I can’t just sit here like it’s any other afternoon. This may be the only sliver from the pie of justice I’m going to get.

  I put a sign out front already:

  FREE FOOD

  FOR THE MIND

  You know there is nothing, S, that lures people up a steep road like the promise of free food. I want every book once buried in these hills to find its way back into the hands of the people who haul themselves up these damn stairwells every day. As for the eager northerners with their bulging wallets, they’ll just have to browse for some other kind of book-shaped souvenir.

  * * *

  Freddy heard a knock outside and assumed it was at his neighbor’s door. He couldn’t imagine anyone bothering him this early in the morning. Off at the other end of the apartment, in the kitchen, half-asleep and still in his pajamas, he was polishing off some stale cake and considering his Socratic nature. He’d only slept a few hours, devoting most of the night to finishing his new play. It was set on an island, though not necessarily his own, and involved a generation of playwrights who all adopted Socrates as a pen name, making it impossible to identify which of them was behind any given play. He’d written biographies for all the playwrights to recite as monologues, each one full of Socrates trivia mixed in with their anonymous confessions of moral failure, dilemmas when they’d failed to heed what Socrates had called his daimon, or inner oracle.

  At around four in the morning, Freddy had realized these anonymous confessions were the heart of the play and threw out the rest of it. He added whips for all the cast members to flagellate themselves with over their moral shortcomings, their lashings getting increasingly dramatic until they verged on sexual. After writing the last scene, closing the curtain with the entire cast still writhing on the floor, he’d felt far too frenzied to sleep. Instead, he’d scribbled another Scene to Be Incinerated.

  At the long wooden counter of his kitchen, feeling as fuzzed-over as the moldy loaf of bread he’d thrown out last night, Freddy wished he hadn’t switched to another scene about Victor and had just gone to bed. He could never stage a show defaming his brother, let alone one that implied Victor was a potential murderer.

  From the front of his apartment, he heard the knocking again and hoped his neighbor would answer his door soon.

  He shoved another forkful of stale cake into his mouth and coughed when some of the morsels stuck to the lining of his throat. He poured a glass of water, gulped it down, and felt queasy. He’d eaten almost half of the same stale cake last night during his writing frenzy. What he needed was to ingest something fresh, a piece of fruit, but he hadn’t bought any. Produce had become so expensive on the island. It was outrageous, and Victor’s beloved TJP, for all they carried on about marginally decreasing poverty since Cato, were doing nothing about inflation. Whether Marie Antoinette had actually said it or not, the suggestion that the poor should just subsist on cake had proved rather prescient. Cheap cake was indeed the most filling, if bloating, solution for a man with little in his wallet beyond scribbled notes and pictures of his nephew.

  But oh, how he enjoyed the sight of Edgar’s little earnest face tucked there into his uppermost slot. His inner daimon never posed any opposition when he decided to go on a Sunday to see his nephew. It was only after he came home that the whisper began in his mind, Just ask him, Freddy, just step in front of your brother and ask him. Or are you too much of a coward to hear the answer?

  With a sigh, Freddy risked another bite of cake, immediately chasing it with water this time. Facing the coffee machine, he debated whether to make a pot or go back to sleep, waited for his inner daimon to weigh in, but received no guidance.

  It was then, while standing in front of the empty coffee pot, his mind foggy and philosophical, that Freddy heard what sounded like someone calling his name. Someone calling it in the demanding, possessive tone Victor used with him when they were children, a tone that claimed to know him more honestly than anyone.

  Freddy fixed his eyes on the cake crumbs speckling the counter as he heard the voice shout his name again, demanding he open up, followed by a banging sound that indisputably came from his kitchen window. On the other side of the dirty glass was his brother’s furious face.

  Open the door, Freddy! That bitch kicked me out! Victor shouted with the scowl that had become one of his increasingly permanent features. Freddy lowered his gaze once more to the dull shine of his butter knife on the counter, the hard crumbs of his breakfast.

  Come on, wake up. Just open the fucking door, Victor ordered, and Freddy obeyed with the slow-footed silence of a man convinced he has no other option. He made his way to the other end of his cramped, cluttered home and granted entry to his brother.

  * * *

  Prostrate on Freddy’s malodorous sofa, Victor listened in the dark for his brother’s snores to begin. Even as a boy, Freddy had snored uproariously. Lying on the upper bunk bed, Victor had grown accustomed to the rumbling beneath him. Freddy had always been beneath him, shorter, rounder, younger, weaker. Victor was not the brother who came for help. He was the one who gave it, who’d become the most admired person in the family. Just last week, another senator had advised that as soon as he was elected to his second term he should start thinking about his campaign for president.

  Uncomfortable, Victor flipped over on the couch toward the cushions but they smelled too strongly of cigarettes and mold. With disgust, he flipped back over, but that meant facing the crude cardboard cutout of Socrates that his brother had made—such an insane, pretentious thing to hang in a living room.

  Victor couldn’t see how he could stay here another night. This scandal couldn’t last. He had Sara telling reporters that the central blame really lay with his father-in-law. He hadn’t taken calls from anyone all day but Sara, who clearly believed in him more than his traitorous soon-to-be ex-wife. He’d have to give Cristina the apartment. But now he’d be able to sleep openly again with whomever he wanted. Maybe even Sara, who had rejected his advances, but she hadn’t mentioned her boyfriend in weeks.

  At the thought of Sara handling his calls, of his hand moving over her breasts under her shirt, Victor lowered his right han
d into his boxers beneath the flimsy sheet his brother had offered him, which also smelled. He still couldn’t hear any snores from the bedroom but he hadn’t slept under the same roof as Freddy in, what, fifteen years? For all he knew, his brother no longer snored and had fallen right to sleep, feeling no obligation to stay up worrying about his older brother being publicly betrayed by such a vile, disloyal wife.

  Victor tugged at his penis harder, causing the slack skin of his gut to quiver against the back of his hand. He’d get past this. Of course he would. He’d come out on top. At the thought, he began to sweat. No, this humiliating moment could not belong to him. He was not a man yanking off on his brother’s nasty bachelor couch.

  He heard a creak come from his brother’s room but disregarded it. Freddy was just turning in his bed. But then he heard his brother’s distinctive shuffling step and Victor flipped over to hide his erection against the cushions. I’m trying to sleep, he said to the outline of his brother in the doorway.

  I want you to tell me, Freddy said.

  Tell you what? Victor asked. I already told you everything that wasn’t in the paper.

  I’m not talking about that, Freddy said. I want to know what happened to Maria P.

  SCENES TO BE INCINERATED

  (WORK IN PROGRESS BY ANONYMOUS)

  SET

  Empty stage, single dim light.

  Front stage, in ill-fitting underwear, the senator sits in a folding chair.

  Well above his head hangs a reelection sign:

  REELECT A CANDIDATE OF DECISIVE ACTION

  Stage left, also in worn, unfortunate underwear, stands the senator’s brother.

  Both men should be unfit.

  If possible, their guts should expand over their waistbands in an unsightly, middle-aged manner.

  SENATOR’S BROTHER

  You don’t even have to answer.

  Just nod.

  It won’t leave this room.

  I’ll go to bed and won’t ever bring it up again.

  SENATOR

  There’s nothing to tell you, just go to sleep.

  SENATOR’S BROTHER

  But were you there?

  Did you maybe see her, that night?

  The senator says nothing.

  Above his head, the campaign sign lowers slightly.

  SENATOR’S BROTHER

  Okay, all right.

  So you saw her on Trinity that night.

  She was at the Minnow drinking with her friends.

  Which is always packed with students.

  Anyone who’s not a student looks out of place there.

  And a senator definitely can’t be seen doing shots with college kids.

  Or sleeping with them, right?

  A pause.

  So maybe you wouldn’t have wanted to meet her there.

  Maybe you asked her to walk up the hill to meet you?

  Is that possible?

  Above the senator’s head, the sign lowers a little more.

  SENATOR’S BROTHER

  Okay, so you’re waiting for her up the hill above the Minnow.

  There’s nothing open, right?

  Just closed stores with their gates down.

  And it’s dark because Trinity has never had enough streetlights.

  Because this port has never had enough of anything.

  And maybe Maria isn’t on time.

  Maybe she made you wait, and you’re fuming when she arrives?

  Maybe she arrives a little drunk?

  The campaign sign lowers further.

  Beneath it, the senator remains rigid.

  The lighting should be particularly shadowy here.

  His face stiff and withholding.

  SENATOR’S BROTHER

  All right. So.

  Pause.

  Maria arrives.

  You’re fuming.

  She’s a little drunk.

  Maybe she resents having to meet you and leave her friends.

  The novelty of sleeping with a senator is wearing off.

  Maybe she says this?

  Maybe a tension’s started over something else?

  Maybe it’s the reason you drove there to meet her?

  The sign lowers a fraction more.

  The senator might fidget here.

  He might adjust his ill-fitting underwear.

  SENATOR’S BROTHER

  Okay, so there’s been an argument before now.

  Does she make a threat?

  Maybe to tell everyone you’re sleeping with her?

  Maybe something even more damaging than that?

  The campaign sign swings slightly.

  A pause.

  The sign continues to lower gradually through the next questions, which come faster.

  SENATOR’S BROTHER

  Okay, so she’s threatened you.

  You’re panicking.

  And then what?

  Did you hear the bus before it reached the curve?

  Because we were taught to be vigilant, right?

  You can’t stop listening for the fucking vans.

  For someone coming up behind you.

  Do you do something to Maria then, there at the curb?

  The sign lowers until it conceals the senator’s mouth.

  It drops in front of his neck.

  The lights go out.

  III

  Two years later

  in a rapidly developing valley

  in the interior of the island

  * * *

  Six years after the death of Maria P., Cristina was driving through the valley with her son and saw a man ahead, holding up what looked like a dead goat for sale. Produce stands were stitched along the seams of roads all over the interior. Huts selling breads or cuts of livestock were not uncommon either. But a man standing under a tree hawking a whole slaughtered animal was unusual, and Cristina found herself unable to look away from him as they drove closer. After the divorce and her decision to move with Edgar to the valley, her father had bought her a silver Land Rover, and from her elevated seat within it, the man under the tree seemed to have his eyes fixed on her as well.

  She pressed her sandal down harder on the gas to speed past him, though it was really too tight a curve to accelerate. The slaughtered animal in the man’s arms was large and wrapped in newspaper, its death recent enough for its blood to still be soaking through the print. The man was holding it up by its legs, which looked to Cristina, as she drove closer, a bit too shapely for the ankles of a goat. They looked almost fleshy, female.

  She reached the curve, closing the distance between them. Through the windshield, she saw with horror that there were only two ankles protruding from the newspaper, not four, and they did not give way to hooves of any sort. Just above where the man was gripping the legs were the shapely feet of a woman.

  Suddenly a car horn blared, and Cristina looked up to find a pickup truck coming right at her. She was in the wrong lane. In her stupor, she had stopped turning the wheel. With a gasp, she jerked the car so violently her son cried out from the backseat.

  I’m so sorry. She glanced back at Edgar in the rearview mirror, then again at the man now behind them, still holding up the bloody newspaper over what had to be an animal. She willed her mind to see its hooves, nothing more than livestock intended to be sold and placed on a grill to feed a family.

  But even with the gap widening between her Land Rover and the man under the tree, what hung covered in bloody newspaper in his hands still looked too hairless and human. Too shapely.

  It’s all right, she declared to her son. We’re both fine, right? Nothing’s happened. Why don’t you tell me, my love, what you would like for dinner.

  She pressed more firmly on the gas as the road straightened, forcing her gaz
e to remain on the planted fields on either side of the car, the rows of plastic tarps over the valley’s legendary tomatoes. She waited for her son to respond but Edgar just stared back at her with his lips parted, his eyes wide in his small, startled face. Ahead of them, a clot of dark birds dispersed across the sky.

  * * *

  Each afternoon, Olga picked up her grandson and drove him home over the river known to everyone in the valley as the Maria. The boy wasn’t really her grandson, and on some official map of the interior, the river most likely had another designation.

  At the valley’s rehab center, Olga had asked the nurses why the river was called a woman’s name. But the nurses had all shrugged and said that’s just what it had always been, the muddy Maria. Here and there, the slow-moving heads of horses and cows bent and sipped from it. After school, children pitched their stones into the current. In the evening, the children turned into teenagers—smoking and groping each other under the cover of the bridges, flicking their beer cans and cigarettes into the Maria.

  On and on the muddy river went. Okay, Maria, here we come, Olga said now as they bumped over the planks of the bridge just after Cosmo’s school, swearing under her breath at the pain radiating from her hip with each rumble of the car. She’d irrevocably shattered her left hip when she fell coming up the steps to the Sublime. She hadn’t been drunk or high. She’d just slipped, stupidly, and found out in the hospital that she had severe osteoporosis. The municipal hospital near the port had botched the operation and she hadn’t been able to walk properly until a surgeon related to Lena’s boss at the Ministry of Education went back in and fixed things and got her into the rehab center in the valley.