The Dark Backward

by D. W. Buffa

  “In other words, you want dinner.” He sighed as the look in his eyes became more mischievous. “And then, when dinner is over, you’ll tell me that I need my rest and send me off to my room alone.” Summer gave his arm a squeeze and became serious.

  “How is the trial going?”

  “Awful. I haven’t done anything right. I’m trying not to think about it.”

  She could tell he meant it, though she could not quite believe that things could be as bad as that. They walked in silence for a while, down the street and around the corner to the breakwater and the view of San Francisco across the bay.

  “It was a good idea to meet here and then go into the city together. You were right about the ride. It brought back a lot of memories, seeing the city from the bay. I remembered – the line suddenly came into my head – that quote from Robert Louis Stevenson: ‘That City of Gold to which adventurers congregated out of all the winds of heaven.’ The winds of heaven - that sums it all up; everything, not just the city, but my life, this case, the way that things come together here that couldn’t happen anywhere else.” He chuckled under his breath. “I’m not making any sense, am I?” He stopped walking and looked right at her. “It does make sense, but only if you’re here. That’s the point. It’s that line – winds of heaven. When you live here, when you’ve lived your life here, you’re used to the strange, the exotic, the kind of mysteries that hint at their existence only long enough to make you think they’re real. The things that happen here aren’t dry as dust and all logical; the things that happen here don’t all make sense. That’s the reason everyone dreams of coming here and no one dreams of leaving.”

  Summer laughed. “This trial is making you poetic.”

  “Which is another way of saying this trial is making me insane. But never mind that now - where would you like to go for dinner?”

  They walked a little farther and then crossed the street to a small Italian restaurant they had visited before. Nearly everyone was dressed in casual clothing.

  “I didn’t have time to change,” he explained, though Summer had not said anything about it. He ordered a bottle of wine and told the waiter they wanted to take their time before they ordered dinner. “Its’ Friday,” he said when the waiter left, “and there’s nothing I have to do. I have the weekend free.”

  “In the middle of a trial?”

  “Sure, why not? There’s nothing more I can do. It’s been two weeks, two weeks of listening to witnesses say the same thing: that Adam did what the prosecution says he did and that what he did was, on any understanding, unforgivable. All I can do is try to catch the inconsistency, the contradiction, the implied assumption in what they say. It wasn’t too bad at the beginning. Captain Johansen, the one who discovered the island, helped when he said that Adam wasn’t there. Not that I have any idea where he may have been, you understand; but it raised a question, or might have if the next witness, the High Commissioner, hadn’t been so certain that Adam was the one he saw and the one he heard confess. That was the end of any small chance I might have had to argue that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to prove that Adam did it.”

  The waiter poured the wine. Darnell looked at it as if he had been waiting all day for the chance to drink, but as soon as he took a sip, he put down the glass.

  “That isn’t the mystery: that he did what they say he did. It never was. The mystery is why he did it and why he won’t talk about it, why he won’t tell me anything. But he expects me to tell him everything,” he added with a rueful, puzzled glance.

  Summer had learned enough about Adam to guess at what had been left unsaid.

  “And about more than just the trial, I imagine.”

  Darnell threw up his hands, the antic measure of his own frustration. He had never seen anything like it, the way that Adam could at times seem indifferent to the trial that might lead to his death, but intensely interested in learning more about the mundane details of other people’s lives.

  “There was a witness, beginning of the week, a cultural anthropologist from Berkeley, a man supposed to be a specialist on the island peoples of the South Pacific. He was a specialist, all right: someone who has spent his life learning more and more about less and less. He was a throwaway, a witness whose only contribution was to make it seem that everyone who knows anything thinks the prosecution is right: that there isn’t any set of circumstances – ‘no known belief system in the South Pacific’ is how he put it – that would have permitted relations between a brother and his sister or approved of infanticide. Adam wasn’t interested in any of that. He wanted to know about his credentials, what it meant to have a Ph.d, what a modern university did. He talks me into things and I’m not even aware of it until I realize later what he’s done. That day, after trial, I drove him over to Berkeley and showed him around. Do you know, I can’t remember ever doing a thing like that for someone I was defending, certainly not while the trial was going on. And yet, when he asked me if we could, it didn’t occur to me to say no.”

  Summer’s eyes lit up in that way she had when something suddenly came to her.

  “Rousseau!” She said it as if it explained itself; as if, should Darnell have any doubt about her meaning, he had only to look more closely into how she was looking at him. “Rousseau,” she repeated. “You remember, the ‘noble savage,’ man as he was, or could have been, outside all the burdens of civilization. Man in his grand simplicity, fearless, compassionate, born with great intelligence but with no greater ambition than to enjoy all the pleasures of existence, of being alive. I’ve been trying to think what Adam reminded me of, the way you describe him, and just now I remembered. It’s been years since I read Rousseau, probably not since I was in college.”

  “There’s no question Adam is all of that,” said Darnell. He was not quite satisfied; the picture was not complete. “But civilization – that’s where it goes wrong. I don’t think he’s savage in any sense; I don’t believe for a minute that he just sort of fell out of the trees, that he lived some primitive existence. You remember what he said about his education, the things he learned, including, for God’s sake, higher mathematics and irrational numbers. Not civilized? I think he could have gone into any classroom that day I took him to Berkeley and understood anything they were teaching. But don’t ask me how. I’ve spent weeks now listening to testimony about that island and the two or three hundred people who live there and it simply doesn’t make sense. Something is missing. They have no books, no records – there is nothing written down – and yet the clothes they wear, the tools they use, to say nothing of the things Adam was taught, are only possible at a much higher stage of development.”

  The more he spoke, the more involved he became in the very mystery he had been trying so hard to forget. One thought led not just to another, but to a myriad of possibilities, all of them plausible, logical explanations, but only if you first divorced yourself from reality.

  “I even started to wonder whether instead of one undiscovered island there might be two. He told me, remember, that he had been made an exile, punished for something he shouldn’t have done. Of course he wouldn’t tell me any more than that, not the crime he supposedly committed or who had the authority to decide what should happen because of it. Though, come to think of it….”

  Darnell narrowed his eyes, as he concentrated on what Adam had told him in his office, or rather one of the questions he had asked about the trial. His eyes snapped open.

  “He asked me why we had this complicated and elaborate procedure, why we spent all this time asking questions before deciding whether someone was fit to serve as a juror. But he only asked that question because he had a point of reference, something with which to compare it. He asked why we didn’t simply choose one of the wisest – that was the word he used – wisest people to decide everything. He didn’t say ‘chief’ or ‘elders’ or any of the other things that if you didn’t know him you would expect some Pacific islander, a native member of a tribe, to say.”

&
nbsp; Darnell moved his glass off to the side and leaned forward on his elbows. Summer held her glass steady, taking only an occasional drink. She did not need to say anything to encourage him to go on.

  “That suggests a degree of civilization superior to our own, if you want my honest opinion. But the question then of course is where was it, this place where only wise men rule and the higher mathematics is taught by word of mouth? It’s clear it isn’t that island where Adam was found placing the body of that dead baby on a funeral pyre. And then, remember, Adam wasn’t there a year earlier when the island was first discovered. Captain Johansen was sure of it. Adam wasn’t on the island, but he had to be somewhere; he hadn’t just vanished into thin air. He had been sent into exile for something he had done before. But where? There had to be a second island, somewhere he could go. But when you think about it, that doesn’t make any sense either. He lives on the island, then he’s banished; but the life he describes, the things he learned – that couldn’t have happened there. And if he did live on the island and was sent into exile – he said he could never go back – what was he doing there?”

  Darnell slapped his forehead and with a bleak expression stared into the middle distance. Summer tried to help.

  “You could still be right about a second island. What if there was a second one and that was where this other, higher civilization was? Wouldn’t that fit? Then Adam would have been exiled to this island where he was found.” She thought about what she had said and realized what was wrong. “Except that Adam said he lived there, and it seems to be a point of honor with him never to say anything unless he can tell the truth. And besides,” she added as an afterthought, “if there was a second island, how would he have gotten from one to the other?”

  Darnell picked up his menu, glanced at it with impatience and set it down again. Scratching his head, he marveled at something he had heard.

  “He stays, you know, with the Hammersmiths. They did it as a favor to me, though now they seem to think that I’ve done them one. I think they’re both in love with him, the way they talk about the things he does. They take him everywhere - museums, galleries, concerts – and to hear them tell it, two people who have spent their lives on the boards of those places, he has an eye that takes in everything and doesn’t forget any of it. Endless curiosity – that’s what they say about him. It doesn’t surprise me, of course, given what I’ve seen him do. Henry Hammersmith actually said to me that if he didn’t know Adam had come from an island, he’d almost be willing to believe that he was a visitor from another planet! Henry Hammersmith, the most practical, sober man I know; hard, realistic, proud of what he’s got and of the work it took to get it; and he talks about Adam with all the excitement you might expect from some half-crazed archeologist who had just discovered the lost tomb of Solomon. It’s unbelievable the effect that boy has on anyone who comes in contact with him. Even that witch…,” he said as he started to laugh.

  Summer gave him a droll look.

  “Well,” he said without apology, “she is, you know.”

  “That’s what you keep telling me, and it isn’t just because she’s the prosecutor in the case. You’ve spoken highly of other prosecutors you’ve faced. But this one has really managed to get under your skin, hasn’t she?”

  He started to deny it, but under Summer’s watchful eye, he was forced to admit that she might not be entirely wrong.

  “Perhaps she has, a little.”

  “Because you think she’s winning?”

  “Think she’s winning? I know she’s winning. More to the point, I know I’m losing. I’ve been losing since the day we started.”

  The restaurant gradually filled up and those waiting for a table congregated at the bar. Darnell signaled the waiter and while Summer glanced at the menu, poured her another glass.

  “Losing since the day we started,” he repeated once the waiter left. “And nothing I can think of is likely to stop the slide. I’ve lost before. It isn’t that. It’s the smug certainty that she’s right, this refusal to so much as consider the possibility that things aren’t always black and white or right and wrong, that there is such a thing as a moral dilemma, that what we insist is right may not always be right after all. This business about incest, for example.” Darnell reached for his glass, held it at eye-level watching the way the color changed as with each slight movement of his wrist the light hit it from a new direction. He kept watching, mesmerized, and the longer he watched the more subdued he became, until, finally, he seemed to have shifted mood altogether, become self-doubting and introspective. He put down the glass and looked at Summer.

  “Forget that it’s illegal, forget that everyone thinks it’s wrong - what’s the real reason that we feel such repugnance just at the mention of the world? Incest, the great taboo, what everyone would tell you is this terrible violation of something that even people without religion consider sacred. But tell me – why? Is it something we’re supposed to feel naturally, a part of the human condition, or is it just another one of the things we’ve been taught not to question?”

  Summer was not shocked, or even taken aback, by the question; but she was surprised, now that she thought about it, that she had no answer. It was wrong, immoral, a violation of the duty every parent owed a child, if you were talking about that kind of incest, and a mistake, a tragic error, a psychic wound that would likely never heal, when it happened between a brother and his sister.

  “It’s wrong. I’m not sure I can do any better than that. More wrong, in certain respects, than killing someone, don’t you think?” She searched his eyes, wanting to know what he really thought, not what he hoped to be able to use at trial. “There are exceptions, situations like self-defense, when killing someone isn’t wrong; but there aren’t any exceptions to this, are there, times when it would be all right?”

  “I would have agreed with that before this case, but now…I’m not so sure. I know it must sound ludicrous, but if you take the story of Adam and Eve seriously….”

  “The question you asked that witness. The papers were full of that. ‘The Adam and Eve defense,’ they called it. But you weren’t really serious were you? You don’t believe Genesis is an accurate historical account?”

  “The more interesting question might be why Genesis was written the way it was, because if you start with -”

  “Perhaps, but however you want to look at it, the most you could say is that it shows that incest happens, not that it is ever right. If Hillary Clark were as clever as you say, why hasn’t she brought up the most famous story about incest ever written, Oedipus, and used it to show how abhorrent it has always been thought to be?”

  Darnell’s eyes flashed with new interest.

  “Maybe I’m the one who should,” he mused aloud. “Bring that in to show that things like this happen as a tragic mistake. Oedipus didn’t know it was his mother, it was the last thing he wanted to do. Perhaps -”

  “That’s what happened here? Adam didn’t know?”

  “That’s the problem: Adam won’t tell me. But if he didn’t know she was his sister, he knows it now, and from the look he gets whenever she’s mentioned, I have to tell you that being with her is nothing he regrets.”

  Dinner was served and Darnell promised that he would say no more about Adam or the trial, though Summer would not have minded if he had. She knew that it was a promise he made at least as much for himself as for her. On this, more than any of his other trials, he seemed at times almost desperate to get away, to free his mind from the stark confusion that seemed to greet him everywhere he looked. She wished she could help him, but as she had come to learn in the time they had been together, close friends and companions in what they both knew were their twilight years, when Darnell was in a trial he was never more alone. He made an effort to keep up his end of the conversation, but as the evening wore on she found herself filling in the empty spaces while he lapsed into a silence, distant and remote. She laughed softly, and with affection, each time he came back
to himself and, as quickly as he could, caught the sense of what she was saying and with a cheerful grin tried to add a few words.

  It was almost dark when they left the restaurant and began to walk to where Summer had parked her car. The last few sailboats were coming back, floating like white-winged moths across the bay. Darnell stopped and pointed toward one of them.

  “That was the other thing Henry Hammersmith couldn’t get over. He owns a big one, a sailboat with a double mast, sails it whenever he has the chance. Last Sunday he took Adam out with him, and he said that Adam moved around that boat like a cat, like someone who had sailed all his life. But the strangest thing, the thing that Henry couldn’t get over, was the way that Adam almost seemed to be talking to the wind, telling it what to do.”

  Darnell took Summer’s hand and they walked slowly down the street, safe in the knowledge that whatever happened they had each other. Far in the distance, the lights on the Golden Gate cast a mystic, eerie glow on the fog that now covered both the city and the sea.

  Chapter Nine

  Science is the modern prejudice. Darnell could not remember where he had read it, but he was now more than ever convinced that it was true. Only what could be seen and touched, measured, weighed and analyzed, taken apart and put back together again, tested by some known hypothesis, could be granted the privilege of being knowable and only what was knowable could be said with any certainty to exist. After hours of testimony by another expert witness for the prosecution, William Darnell was ready to scream. He tapped his fingers on the counsel table and bit hard on his lip; he crossed one leg over the other and in violent short bursts kicked his foot. Evelyn Pierce, who hid her own boredom behind a perfect blank mask, noticed what Darnell was doing and could not suppress a smile.

  “Mr. Darnell, do you have a problem?”

  Darnell shot to his feet, grateful for the chance to stand, grateful for the chance to talk.