by Mark Lisac
“And the revenge?”
“If I’d wanted revenge on Frank Jeffries I would have taken it long ago. That doesn’t mean I didn’t admire him once. I didn’t after I’d grown up.”
Becker decided to leave it at that. He looked into the muddy swirl at the bottom of his coffee cup. He looked around the cafeteria, all brown wood and beige fabric, the walls covered with a similar beige paint, innocuous strips of wallpaper and some of the endless store of landscape paintings constantly going in and out of the government’s art warehouse. The paintings invariably showed mountains or empty prairies. Each one looked like the cry of a painter saying, “Here. Here is what this place is really like. The way I see it is real.” And maybe some of them did capture some essential aspect. But there were so many of them, so many paintings that what the artist hoped was unique got ground down into the generic and hackneyed.
“Do you manage me?” he asked.
She pursed her lips and looked at him with the same blank expression. He thought she looked tired. “I’ve been under the impression that you’ve been managing me.”
He felt the weight of the brown and beige surroundings, all the decoration and furniture in the room calculated to be unnoticed but coming together in an oppressive artificial unity, a relentless vision of mute acceptance.
“If I ever did, I apologize,” he said.
“Hypothetical apology accepted, on the premise that I needed one.... Now let’s move on.”
“To what?”
“You’re going to be minister of Energy. That will make you one of the most important men in the government. You will be one of the few faces that people recognize from being on television regularly. That will give you a certain power of persuasion, a weight beyond being merely a cabinet minister.”
“A television star. A face that people will remember as long as the sponsor is satisfied with the ratings. Until they’re bored.”
“It’s the world we live in now, John. More the one that you grew up in than I. My family’s world was the land. Things last longer out there. Still, here I am in the capital, wife of a cabinet minister about to become a much more important member of cabinet. You will have somewhat more influence than before. I’ll have marginally more influence on the symphony board. And who knows? Maybe you will have enough influence to support regulations that keep sour gas plants from being built right next to some of the ranches down south. The families have kept the land pretty much as it was a hundred years ago. You can ride out on the grass and see exactly what people saw when hardly anything was there except deer and elk and a few grizzlies.”
He studied the varnished top of the small wooden table. The sheen had worn dull over the years, but the varnish, polyurethane he assumed, had been applied so thickly that it would still protect the wood for years. He looked at her medium-brown hair, carefully cut, held neatly in place by some means about which he never inquired.
He said, “How did you get Morehead to arrange to get rid of Jeffries so fast?”
“I didn’t have to persuade him, if that’s what you mean. He was a football player. He knows that players who underperform or might embarrass the team should be cut. Professional sports are a bit like ranching that way. Emotion is good, even necessary. Sentiment leads to mistakes.”
Becker considered that. He glanced up at the round clock on the wall. “I’ll have to be getting up to the office,” he said.
“I hope you enjoy the new surroundings. Will you be home for dinner?”
“Yes, probably about 6:30. I was thinking. We haven’t been out for an evening walk in a long time. I should take the dogs out after supper. It will be easier with just the three of them. Would you like to go too?”
“Yes, I’d like that.”
26.
RABANI FELT WEARY. THE TWO FILES ON HIS DESK BULGED with details. Lifting the top of the folder on either one seemed like it would take too much effort. The papers inside the folders seemed crammed with the thousands of words and with the freight carried by the words: irritations that people had let drive them half-wild, carefully hedged representations of fact, citing of precedents, suitably disguised ill will, muted bursts of outraged innocence—all presented in a voice of reason.
He decided to leave them for next day, not even take them home. He took his grey wool overcoat from the small closet built in beside the oak bookshelves, walked down the carpeted hall that felt like an airlock keeping out the chaotic world, told Julia he was gone for the day, and walked out onto the street. His head quickly felt cold in the moderate wind. It crossed his mind that he should buy a woolen peaked cap, one that would go well with his coat.
A panhandler with a deeply creased face and a damaged, bloodshot eye looked in Rabani’s direction but he slightly shook his head; he did not want to encourage people to hang around the entrance to the office building with their hands out. He walked slowly along the grey sidewalks, peering occasionally at store windows with early Christmas sale displays. In mid-afternoon there were few other pedestrians. Diesel buses roared by him regularly. He turned up the quieter street leading to the camera shop, looking into Sunrise Coffee and seeing only two strangers talking across a table with coffee cups and empty plates.
The street looked windblown as usual. The recently planted line of green ash trees between the sidewalk and the curb looked like stubborn hope. He walked, the only human figure on the entire block, to the aging storefront. He pushed the door open and heard the tinkle of the bell announce his arrival.
Ostroski came out from the back after several seconds. His usual sardonic smile was missing. He eyed Rabani warily, like a driver sizing up a cop who had pulled him over for a reason that wasn’t clear.
“Must be dull days at the law office,” he said. “It’s only a little after three. Or are you doing your own bill collecting these days?”
“Tying up loose ends.”
He let the comment hang as he surveyed the shelves. He saw names like Pentax, Canon, Leica, Olympus, even Kodak, and an old Royal typewriter. He saw Kodachrome and Ilford film boxes, and other small boxes that he thought probably held some kinds of lens filters, and two old leather camera cases.
“In the market for something?” Ostroski asked. “Lots of good used cameras here. They’ll do the job right. Taking photos can be a satisfying pastime. As for film, I’m partial to the Ilford black and white. The Kodachrome can’t be beat for slide film. But if you want colour prints, get in touch with an outfit called Seattle FilmWorks. They sell a film stock that’s really 35mm movie film. Instead of a negative it creates a positive image. They’ll give you a slide and a print both. High-quality stuff. Bright colours. Long lasting.”
Rabani looked at two famous prints on the wall that he knew to be the work of someone named Ansel Adams. One had a moon in it. The other had slim aspen trunks and one aspen fully out in leaf, all of them shining ghostly bright against a dark background. He took his time turning to Ostroski.
“Has Adela told you the immigration problem has been sorted out?”
“Yes. She’s relieved. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen her looking like a nervous wreck, even though she has plenty to worry about. She told me it didn’t matter so much about her but it would have been really bad for Roberto.”
“Did she also pass on that a deputy minister in the provincial government named Frank Jeffries was behind the whole business?”
“She mentioned that. I don’t know how he got involved like that, why he’d mess around with people’s lives, especially people he doesn’t know.”
“It’s a long story, although the kind you’d be interested in because he was obsessed about old photographs too. Particularly the kind you spirited out of the review room.”
“You’re telling me I’m responsible for that whole mess?”
“No, I’m telling you John Becker was not. I’d like to know what you’ve decided about giving him the picture, or pictures, of the shooting in Wisconsin.”
“I haven’t yet. Haven’
t decided that is. Maybe I should give it to him. He’s just a guy trying to get a handle on a lot of things in his life. I guess I caused him enough trouble. Besides, I know it’s too late for him to do anything to the Guardsman. My friend in Riverton tracked that guy down about five years ago. We decided not to make trouble for him. He had two kids. Besides, going after him would have made trouble for us too. A few days ago I got in touch with my friend and asked if he knew whether the guy was still around Riverton. He is. Most of the time in a wheelchair. He has one of those diseases that eat away at your internal wiring. It’s hereditary. Maybe that’s why he hated people enough to shoot them.”
Rabani kept a straight face. He had practised law enough to know he should probe every statement. “Is that the truth or are you just putting me off the track?”
The impish glint reappeared in Ostroski’s eyes. “You keep asking questions you’ll end up never believing anything,” he said.
“Yeah? Well try this question, Jack. Why do you keep telling me old secrets? It’s been like that since I took you on as a client. One revelation after another. They never end. It’s like peeling an onion. Except I have a feeling this onion has something at its core. And all the outer layers are a way to deflect attention. Or to give yourself something to talk about without talking about what’s really bothering you.”
“The only thing bothering me is my lawyer, who doesn’t know when the business he’s handled for me is over.”
Rabani leaned toward the counter, breathing in a scent of dust mixed with film chemicals and straightening up because he didn’t like it.
“You said an interesting thing the last time I was here. Something about people being responsible for what they don’t do as well as the actions they actually perform. You said things you don’t do can eat away at you as much as regret for things you’ve done. I know a little about that, Jack. I know what it’s like choosing not to be there for someone who needs you. I did that with my brother after he was hit by a car and suffered brain damage for the rest of his life. After a few years I smartened up and went back to him. But I’ve felt guilty ever since and last week I buried him after another accident.”
“So Adela told me. I’m sorry. Feel bad for you.”
“Thank you. I wanted you to understand that I know what you’re talking about. What I want to understand now is how you know about it.... How do you?”
For the first time since they had met, Rabani saw shock in Ostroski rather than the usual irritation or amusement. “How do you know, Jack?”
“You’re my lawyer. Were. All I have to tell you about is what’s landed me in trouble with the police or with someone who’s suing me. I haven’t been to confession since I was fourteen.”
“You’ve never given information to me easily. Now you come up with the story behind a highly sensitive photograph just like that? I don’t believe it, and I don’t believe that’s everything. Not after what you said about people finding that what they fail to do eats away at them. People are more alike than they think. I thought for years my clients could tell me a lot about people and maybe even about myself. This time I looked at myself and decided that what I saw told me a lot about you. How do you know, Jack? How do you know about not doing something you should have done and paying for it the rest of your life? And what does that have to do with the picture Becker is after?”
Ostroski stared at him without a twitch. Rabani kept on: “One thing I’ve learned through being a lawyer is that there’s almost always a reason for the things people do, even the things that don’t make sense. You see people talking to themselves on the street, you see them wearing garish clothes they think are normal, you see them do any of a thousand things, there’s usually a reason.”
Ostroski sighed and stood up. “I need a beer. You’re having one too, whether you want it or not.”
Clinking sounds angled out of the back room. Ostroski reappeared with a bottle in each hand and gave one to Rabani before sitting down. They each drank, the gesture an unspoken seal on an unspoken agreement. Ostroski began talking without preliminaries.
“I was an infantry private in Korea. This was late in ’52. The war was getting close to the armistice but we didn’t know that. We never knew anything except what we could see in front of us. Not that another half-year in Korea could have been called a short time. We’re walking up a dirt road, keeping an eye on the hills around us. A corporal comes back down the road in a hurry. He says he’s going for a medic. A sniper’s hit a guy in his squad. He sees we’re carrying a machine gun and says he thinks the sniper is in a shack beside the road and a machine gun could probably take care of him. We move up fast, but being careful so we don’t get hit ourselves. Then we set up the .50-calibre. You know what a .50-calibre bullet can do? Even one of them?”
“I don’t know much about guns, Jack.”
“Be happy you don’t. One of those guns can turn trucks into wrecks. If someone is in the truck one of the slugs can take off an arm or a face. A Korean shack wasn’t going to protect any sniper. We’re looking for good cover but in a spot with a clear field of fire. We find a little rise and set up the gun.”
He paused, then went on: “I think I see movement beside the shack and it doesn’t look like someone wearing a uniform. Something about it looks like a woman. But I don’t say a thing. Not a thing. About half a minute later we’re ready. I think again about speaking up. But by that time I’m so worn down by the whole shitty experience, by Korea, I’m not volunteering comments let alone volunteering for patrols. The gun starts firing and blowing chunks off the shack. I hear what sound like a few short screams.
A dwarf runs out the front door. A dwarf in peasant clothes. He falls down right away. We move up carefully for a look. There’s no sniper. There probably was one but he’s taken off out the back way long ago. There’s no dwarf either. Just a little boy. We’ve just shot the hell out of a woman and three kids.”
He was staring at the countertop. Rabani thought he was seeing who knew what ghosts in the Formica pattern. He looked up at Rabani and said, “Shot them for nothing, in a war that meant nothing. And I could maybe have stopped it but didn’t. Because I did nothing. And there was no camera to fix that moment. It’s going to go on for eternity. My eternity anyway.” He ran out of words. Rabani said nothing, sure that whatever he found to say would be fatuous or somehow ignite anger.
They finished their beers in silence.
After awhile, Ostroski said, “You want to know why I wouldn’t give Becker that picture? I lived with my pain. Why shouldn’t he live with his? I told you, people think photographs capture memories forever. They only capture a moment. If you look at them long enough they make memories dissolve. I live with my memories, why shouldn’t he have to live with his?”
Rabani kept silent. A question was not likely the end of what someone had to say.
“Besides,” Ostroski went on, “it isn’t just what happened in Korea. It’s Gloria Sandring. Remember I told you about her? I don’t have pictures of her either, just what I remember about her. Becker is the sort of guy she found a lot more attractive than me. Another Chad Jenner. Maybe he doesn’t have big money but he has the looks and the smooth way about him. He has a position in society too, even if being a politician isn’t like owning some big business. Not that he needs to own anything. He married into that.”
Rabani took that as an opening. “Whatever you think of him, he’s not a careless rich boy. Can you see Chad Jenner ever obsessing about a friend who died in Vietnam or a shooting of a girl at an anti-war demonstration? Jenner probably never had a friend who got drafted. As for Becker’s marriage, from what I’ve seen it’s no bowl of cherries. A guy who’s devoted to his dogs the way he is? And marrying into the local aristocracy? You may think you’re joining something when you sign up for that. But you’re never really accepted. There’s always a limit. It’s like someone marrying the queen of England. You get a title, you get duties and recognition, you may even be regarded as royalty,
but you never become king.”
Ostroski blew out a breath that pushed out his lips. He looked up at the Ansel Adams print with a half-moon shining above a massive rock face.
He said, “This is a hell of a place, you know that? You come here and think someday you’ll belong but you find out that you’re living beside people who know something you don’t. You ever have the feeling that you’re in a strange place? Like it looks familiar but you’re not really sure and not sure how you fit in?”
“Not me personally. I know my brother felt like that,” Rabani said.
“Yeah? The people who feel like they belong, they live by some secret code. You have to figure out what it is, and then you have to accept it.”
“I don’t think it’s all that different from a lot of other places. Moving to another country is never easy. There’s always a local culture that isn’t written down anywhere. It’s more difficult to learn than the local language. It’s a different kind of language, built partly on behaviour and partly on memories.”
“Well, maybe they have a point at that. You hear people complain that foreigners come here and won’t leave their old quarrels behind. Some of them going back hundreds of years. You ever see one of the movies they made of A Christmas Carol? The ghost of Jacob Marley wandering the earth dragging chains behind him? Something like that.”
“You know, I worked a couple of summers on a garage building crew when I was going to law school. One of the crew leaders told me one day he’d been living on his own since he was seventeen. He said his father kicked him out of the house. His father told him he was old enough to live on his own and he should come by and visit now and then, like at Christmas. When this guy asked why, his father told him, ‘That’s what my old man gave me so that’s what you get.’ All sorts of people around you looking like they lead normal lives and an untold number are dragging old burdens around with them. If it isn’t family history, it’s national history. My family comes from Sicily. Countless invasions over thousands of years. All that blood and tumult. In the end the place became unique. A byword for crime and poverty, sure. Also a place where everything mixed together and became a new kind of life. You can have a good life there. But some of the people still have a tradition of vendettas.”
