most other people don’t have any idea, then they got to 11
call you crazy. But only because they’re jealous.”
12
Extine loved me after that. She was a big physical girl, 13
just like her mare. All she wanted was to gallop and romp 14
up and down the hot trails around the Hamptons.
15
She liked my company because I didn’t think there was 16
anything wrong with her obsession with horses. As a mat-17
ter of fact I liked her because everything about her came 18
down to horses. And a horse was an animal, like a deer.
19
Byron and Jodie took Extine and me to a cabin in woods 20
connected to a property that was either theirs or a friend’s.
21
It was a large place, and soon after dinner the big blond 22
horsewoman and I wandered off to a secluded part of the 23
residence.
24
That night we kissed a lot, but she didn’t want to have 25
sex. Extine was engaged to a guy named Sanderson who 26
wouldn’t mind if she kissed somebody, but he’d draw the S 27
line at intercourse.
R 28
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I didn’t care. My inner thighs were in deep pain. I was 2
sure that I was bleeding on the inside. I fell asleep midkiss 3
and didn’t wake up until noon the next day. My new 4
friends were all gone, leaving me miles away from any-5
where without a car. I spent most of the afternoon walk-6
ing down paths in an abandoned apple orchard, trying to 7
find a way down to the road.
8
It was a hot day and I had to remove my sweater and 9
top shirt. I was still in pain and limping, very thirsty too, 10
I remember, and slightly panicked that I might die out 11
there in the woods. The dirt of the path was bone-dry.
12
The blossoms of the apples had begun their transforma-13
tion to fruit. For a long time I hadn’t thought about my 14
prisoner, but on that desolate walk he came back to me.
15
A white man, maybe, who didn’t know one thing about 16
his past. Pure evil in the way of business. A thief and a 17
killer by his own admission. Why did he want to be 18
caged, anyway? He never really answered my question.
19
I thought that maybe I should disappear to Aspen or 20
Hawaii. Maybe I should let the white man go and take his 21
money and vanish.
22
I made it to a back road and finally got a ride to Curry’s.
23
There I sat and drank until closing time. When they 24
kicked me out, I slept in my car and rose with the sun 25
stabbing my eyes.
26
27 S
■
■
■
28 R
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He could have been dead for all that I knew. But the deal 1
was ninety-six hours, and I cracked the hatch on the second.
2
The air in there was musty. I snapped on the light, and An-3
niston Bennet rose to his feet. He was bare chested but wore 4
his bright-blue bottoms. Thick black hairs sprouted from 5
his jaw, and there were gray bags under his eyes.
6
“Morning, Mr. Bennet,” I said. “You ready to get outta 7
here?”
8
His eyes, I noticed, were black, not blue. The absence 9
of his contact lenses seemed to be saying something that I 10
wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
11
“I screamed for a whole day after you dropped that 12
door,” he said. “I kept it up like a chant. Must be pretty 13
soundproof. After that didn’t work I sharpened that can 14
opener you left on the floor outside the cage. Then I 15
made a slingshot out of the elastic in my other pair of 16
pants. I was going to wait until you walked in and then I 17
was going to shoot you dead.”
18
I felt a drop of sweat as it went down past my left ear.
19
“But then I had to wait too long for you to come back, 20
and the blood lust drained away.” He sat in his red chair.
21
“It’s dark in here, you know. Black, actually, and the air 22
gets thick when you don’t open the door.”
23
He passed the fingertips of both hands lightly over his 24
eyebrows, then looked up at me. “You made me think 25
about the things I came here to pay for. You made me 26
wonder about the life that I thought I could repent. Lit-S 27
R 28
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tle Malo from northern Uganda. A small chest of dia-2
monds in Rwanda. There were tens of thousands there.
3
But Malika, I think her name was Malika, was just one.
4
“You know, I’ve walked past death so many times that 5
you’d think I’d somehow end up dead like that, but I 6
haven’t. Maybe I went a little crazy. I know a man in Con-7
necticut who is willing to kill anyone anywhere in Africa 8
or South America. He says he won’t kill in this country or 9
Europe, but life down south is open season for him. I 10
know a man in the kidney business and another one who 11
deals only in hearts.”
12
“Is he black?” I asked.
13
“Who?”
14
“The assassin.”
15
“Yes. Yes, he is. But that doesn’t matter. He could be a 16
white man. The fact is that he has become an individual, 17
a man who takes actions solely from his own decision.
18
Just like me, he is what he makes of himself. Maybe one 19
day he’ll fall apart too, but that won’t matter either. You 20
can never take back your life.”
21
I didn’t believe Bennet. His sorrow and self-pity, I 22
thought, were a trick somehow. The only thing I couldn’t 23
figure was what he had to gain by fooling me now.
24
“Are you ready to go?” I asked.
25
“No.”
26
“What you mean, no? You want another four days in 27 S
the hole?”
28 R
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He clasped his hands in front of his face as if in prayer 1
and said, “I haven’t done anything else wrong.”
2
“What do you want from me, Mr. Bennet?”
3
“One time I walked into a room in Amsterdam wearing 4
a polo shirt and khaki pants and changed the future of a 5
nation” was his reply. “I once gave a nine-month-old in-6
&nb
sp; fant as a present to a man’s dog. The man wanted to see if 7
the myth of wolves raising men could be true. I walked 8
through a city of the dead, in Rwanda, guarded by soldiers 9
who were paid in dollars. Everywhere men and women 10
had lain for so long that their bones had softened and they 11
had become deflated bags of maggots. I retrieved enough 12
money in diamonds to rebuild a nation, but instead I took 13
those jewels and put them in a titanium box in the Alps.
14
“I’m still a bookkeeper behind enemy lines. Do you 15
understand that, Mr. Dodd-Blakey?”
16
“No, I don’t.”
17
“What did you do while I was down here?”
18
“I learned to ride horses and I got drunk and I got laid.”
19
“Did you hear me screaming?”
20
“Sometimes. Not much though. You sounded like a 21
moose who got stuck in some briar about a mile or so 22
from here.”
23
“Did you worry that I might die?”
24
“Some.”
25
“Did you worry that I might kill you for treating me 26
like that?”
S 27
R 28
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“No,” I lied.
2
“Have you ever watched a child being murdered, Mr.
3
Blakey?”
4
I shook my head and squinted.
5
“I once made ten million dollars because I was willing 6
to deliver one million to a man hiding from the commu-7
nists in Nicaragua. That’s the American way.” He laughed.
8
“Why are you here, Mr. Knosos?”
9
“Last summer I had a deal fall through.”
10
I had gotten up to the gate and now I was shaking, too 11
afraid to go further.
12
“You know,” I said, “I don’t think I need to know this.”
13
“Let me stay a little bit longer, Charles,” Anniston Ben-14
net said. “You can take away the books and just feed me 15
bread and water if you want. You can keep the lights off 16
all the time, but please don’t ask me to leave here.”
17
“Are you crazy?”
18
“No. No, I’m not crazy at all. As a matter of fact I’m 19
very sane. That’s because I stopped for a minute and 20
looked around and saw what it was that I was doing. All 21
of a sudden I realized what was happening, what I had 22
done was so, so . . .”
23
“. . . evil,” I said, thinking that I was finishing his 24
thought. “You realized that you were evil?”
25
Bennet was rubbing his fingers along the rough surface 26
of his chin, considering my words.
27 S
“No, and yes. What had happened was evil. The child 28 R
torn apart and half devoured by a dog in the night.
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The Man in My Basement
Procuring a heart or a kidney for a man who I might need 1
as a business contact one day. The act is evil.” Bennet’s 2
face contorted to grapple with the concept he was ex-3
plaining. “Yes. And my actions were also evil, criminal.
4
But it was not me; it was the world around me. Not me 5
but the commerce and the language of our world.” He 6
scooted up to the edge of his plastic chair and held his 7
hands out separately, pinching the fingers together. “Death 8
and starvation are integral parts of our language system, 9
our form of communication. Do what I say or else. Do 10
your job or you’re fired. These words carry consequence. To 11
avoid pain we comply. Or we don’t and then we die. Our 12
logic is evil, so the smartest and the most successful are 13
devils. Like me. I am a good citizen and the worst demon.
14
I realized it when a deal fell through. I failed and I had a 15
dream and in the dream, I had done the right thing —
16
failing.”
17
“And so you’re punishing yourself because you did 18
good?” I asked.
19
He laughed. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes yes.
20
I did the right thing and the whole world, my whole 21
world, fell apart. I realized that the fact of my failure was 22
good in one way. But even though thousands may have 23
been spared, that is not important. In order for man to 24
survive as a species, there has to be people like me. People 25
have to die for others to produce. The deaths are wrong, 26
but the continuation of the world is more important.”
S 27
“So then you have been doing the right things. So R 28
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1
there’s nothing wrong with you. And if that’s true then 2
why would you feel that you need to be punished?”
3
Bennet sat back in his chair with all the certainty and 4
fear of a despot awaiting his long-overdue execution.
5
“I was arrested once in Uganda. There was no trial; I 6
was just taken to prison. I was beaten and tortured” — he 7
leaned forward to indicate the scars on his shoulder —
8
“and then left to contemplate my sins in a small cell. Pain 9
is a part of life and I’ve always accepted the fact of death.
10
But the time I spent in that cell, though I hated it while I 11
was there, was like a gap in the thoroughfare that had 12
been my life. Like the road just stopped and then there 13
was a forest. A black forest, thick and dark, with no 14
promise at all.
15
“My life stopped in that cell. And my worst enemy was 16
everything that I knew. The blood work I’ve done. It was 17
the worst experience I ever had. As the days went by, I got 18
sick on the magnitude of what I had done. When they 19
released me, I had to be hospitalized. I gashed my own 20
thigh with a bayonet so that no one would realize how 21
precarious my mind had become.
22
“As bad as that time in prison was, I wanted to go 23
back — to face the evil and accept the accusations in my 24
own mind. That’s why I came here. I had no idea that 25
you’d do the dictator one better by turning out the lights.
26
“I came here hoping to make a statement to myself. To 27 S
isolate and punish the part of me who sees the evil. The 28 R
only real way to be punished is to recognize and pay for 218
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The Man in My Basement
your deeds. But when I was in that darkness, hating you, 1
I saw everything all over again. I remembered checking 2
the situation in Rwanda every day for over a year. We 3
knew it was going to blow up down there. And then I 4
remembered walking along the streets of the dead. In 5
the darkness here, I can almost feel them. My own 6
body odors are reminiscent of the smell of death. I could 7
understand how the sweat and gasses become stronger 8
when you die and then they leak out of you. And it’s so 9
dark and your heart is still beating, but death might be 10
like that.
11
“I could not have stopped the massacre of the people 12
there. I could not have changed the history set in motion 13
centuries ago. And if I tried I would have lost all my 14
power. I would have become like an ant under the foot of 15
another man like me.”
16
“I still don’t get it, Mr. Bennet. Why here? Why me?”
17
“At first it was just a joke. Not a joke on you, Charles. I 18
like you. You have a lot of potential. I chose you so that 19
Anniston Bennet, the whitest white man that I could 20
think up, would be jailed by a black man who really was 21
a blue blood in American history. But then, when I got to 22
know more about you, it seemed that you were my oppo-23
site in many more ways. You have done very little with 24
your life, haven’t you? No profession, no job. You have 25
never completed one project. You’ve never made a woman 26
pregnant or voted, as far as I can tell. You quit school.
S 27
“Your whole life could be called a failure. Every second R 28
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1
up until this moment has been wasted. But still you are 2
truly innocent while I, who have changed the course of 3
nations, am not worthy to call you friend.”
4
There was a fanatic tone to Bennet’s words. Because of 5
this I didn’t pay much attention, at that moment, to the 6
insults he gave me. Later on, after he was gone, I thought 7
about what he had said. There wasn’t much that I could 8
disagree with. He was evil and I was a failure; maybe that 9
was the difference between the good and bad people of 10
the world.
11
“Can I stay?” he asked again.
12
“What do you expect to get out of staying down here?”
13
“I just don’t want to leave yet, Warden. I need a little 14
The Man in My Basement Page 22
