The Dark Backward

by D. W. Buffa

  “The defense calls Captain Eric Johansen,” announced Darnell, eager to get started.

  Captain Johansen was not certain why he had been called to testify a second time, but he seemed almost glad to see Darnell. Within a few moments of taking the stand, the awkward reserve he felt in the presence of a crowd of strangers had disappeared.

  “It’s good to see you again, Captain Johansen.”

  “And you, sir.”

  “I wanted, now that I have the chance to put on evidence for the defense, to ask you a few more questions about the island and what you found when you first discovered it.”

  “Any question you ask, Mr. Darnell, I’ll do my best to answer it.”

  “I’ve gone back over the transcript of the testimony you gave when you were called as a witness for the prosecution. At the very end, when I was asking you questions on cross-examination, you said that though you had become familiar with the two or three hundred people living there, you hadn’t seen the defendant. Since you gave that testimony, have you had any reason to change your mind? Has anything happened to make you think that you might have seen him there after all?”

  “No, I’m sure I didn’t see him there.” Johansen looked past Darnell to the counsel table. “That isn’t a face you’d be likely to forget.”

  “So he wasn’t there then, but we know,” said Darnell, glancing at the jury, “that he was there some months later when the High Commissioner, Leland Phipps, first arrived. Very good. But let me ask you, Captain Johansen – as you look at him today, is there a sufficient resemblance to those you did see on the island to make you believe that he’s from the same stock; for lack of a better phrase, a member of the same tribe? In other words, if you didn’t know that he had later been found on the same island, living in that same village, would you be able to identify him as one of them?”

  There was not the slightest hesitation. Johansen was emphatic.

  “No question. I’ve been all over the South Seas, and the people on that island have a distinctive look. It’s more than the high cheekbones with their peculiar slant; more than the blue-gray eyes with their clear intelligence. It’s the fluid movement, the noble bearing – It may be a strange way of putting things, but I’ve never seen people who seemed more alive. They seem to take in at a glance what the rest of us might study for years and still not understand.” A shy smile crept across the captain’s weathered face. “Sorry if that seems excessive, but it’s what I came to feel.”

  “No need to be sorry for anything, Captain Johansen; we’re only looking for the truth. But that leads me to the next thing I wanted to ask you: Where could these people have come from? You testified – and I believe these were your exact words – that there were certain mysteries you couldn’t solve, among them how they made certain of the things they used.”

  “Yes, that’s correct. There were signs all around of a different, a higher, civilization, but what it was, or where it was, or even when it was, I have no idea.”

  “But you did have an idea that these people, the ones you found in the village, were part of some older, more advanced, civilization?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you testified that these people were friendly, peaceful; that there was nothing violent or barbarous about them?”

  “Yes, I did; that’s correct.”

  “Which suggests a tradition, a settled way of life, rules, habits – laws, does it not?”

  “If by that you mean: Were they orderly, did everyone know what they were supposed to do and did everyone treat everyone else with respect? –Yes, absolutely.”

  Darnell stared down at the floor, as if pondering the significance of this. The pause grew into a silence and the silence became profound. Finally, but not before the silence was about to become uncomfortable, Darnell raised his eyes.

  “The kind of habit that takes generations to instill, a way of life that doesn’t need a written law to teach the difference between what is expected and what will not be tolerated. But tell us this, Captain Johansen: Do we know anything more than that? Do we know, for example, whether under their moral code there are circumstances under which it is permissible, and perhaps even mandatory, to allow a newborn child to die?”

  “No, I’m afraid I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “In other words, Captain Johansen, as far as you can testify as a witness for the prosecution, what the defendant did – whatever we may think of it here, in this country – may very well be exactly what he was supposed to do under the law he had a duty to obey?”

  “I can’t disagree with anything you’ve said. I know nothing about their laws.”

  With a glance at Hillary Clark, Darnell remarked sharply, “And apparently neither does anyone else.” He turned quickly back to the witness. “You said something odd, when you first testified. You said you had the feeling that the people on that island had been expecting you; not you in particular, but expecting someone to come.”

  “I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there was something….Maybe it was nothing, but they were often talking among themselves, and while I couldn’t understand what they said, I had the sense they were discussing what they ought to do. There was one man in particular, – he seemed to be their leader –, he kept pointing to the mountain, where I think they believe their gods dwell, as if the answer would come from there. Perhaps there is something in their religion – many religions have it: a promise that someone will come, along with a warning that, when someone does, they have to be sure it’s the one they expect. I’m sorry, Mr. Darnell; I’m afraid all I have is supposition, nothing specific.”

  “I suspect you’re closer to the truth than you know, Captain Johansen. Just one or two more questions, if you wouldn’t mind. The island wasn’t on any map, and there wasn’t supposed to be an island where you found it. When you first approached it, was it perhaps surrounded by a thick, impenetrable fog, or did anything else prevent you from seeing it?”

  No, there was no fog at all. The air was crystal clear, visibility was unlimited. But there was something odd, a feeling, a strange sense of urgency when I first saw it, a speck on the horizon. It was as if something was reaching out across the sea, drawing me toward it, telling me I had to go, that I had….” Johansen paused, searching for a better way to describe what he had experienced, but he could not find one. “I’m afraid, Mr. Darnell, the more I learn the less I think I understand about that island. Everything about it is still a mystery to me.”

  The answer made Darnell begin to reconsider. After what Holderlin had told him, he had thought that the island must always have been hidden in a mist that shielded it from the occasional passing ship and the satellites that in recent years had begun to orbit high above the earth; but there was nothing like that when Johansen first arrived. The question was whether the difference between what Holderlin had experienced and what, forty years later, Johansen had seen had just been the workings of chance, the effect of nature and its ways, or part of some design that involved a feat of engineering atmospherics that could not be explained by modern physics.

  “Mr. Darnell, do you have another question?” asked Judge Pierce as he continued to stare in silence.

  “What? – Yes, of course. Forgive me, your Honor. Something the witness said made me think of something else.” But instead of asking another question, Darnell walked slowly to the counsel table and stood behind Adam. “When you left the island – I assume you were free to do so? No one tried to stop you?”

  “No, to the contrary – they helped me.”

  “Helped you?”

  “They helped get my boat safely away from shore. They gave me food and water. Far from wishing me any harm, they asked me to come back.”

  “Asked you to come back? I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. You said a moment ago that you didn’t speak their language, didn’t understand anything they said. So how could you know that they -”

  “They spoke mine. I don’t mean to suggest they were fl
uent in Norwegian, but in the few days I was there, they managed to pick up a few phrases. They encouraged me to talk and – don’t ask me how they did it – they started mimicking the sound, throwing it back and forth, like some children’s game. They would look at me with their eager, inquisitive eyes and with deft movements of their hands and arms encourage me to make some gesture of my own that would show them what the words were supposed to mean. Their apprehension was quick, immediate – once you did something, you didn’t need to do it twice.”

  “And so when they asked you to come back they used your language?”

  “Yes. And when they said it, they gestured toward the mountain; which meant, I guess, that they had received some sign that the gods approved.”

  “Thank you, Captain Johansen.” Darnell raised his eyes to the bench. “I have no further questions of the witness, your Honor.”

  Judge Pierce turned to Hillary Clark and asked if she wished to cross-examine the witness.

  “No, your Honor. I asked what I needed to when Captain Johansen was called earlier.”

  Judge Pierce excused the witness. Johansen nodded politely and started to get up.

  “There was one other thing,” he said, as he sank back onto the witness chair. You asked me whether the island was surrounded by fog. It wasn’t, when I first arrived; and there wasn’t any on the day I left. The weather was perfect, not a cloud anywhere, the kind of day you can almost see the curvature of the earth when you’re out at sea. I must have sailed five or six miles when I looked back to see the island one last time, but when I did, it wasn’t there. For an instant I had the strange feeling that it had never been there, that it didn’t exist, that everything that I had thought had happened had been the work of my own imagination, a dream from which I had just awakened. But then I realized that the island was still there, only now, because of some phenomenon I can’t explain, it was buried behind the densest fog I’d ever seen.”

  The next witness Darnell intended to call back to the stand, the High Commissioner, Leland Phipps, would not be available until the next day. Cautioning the jury against discussing the case among themselves, or with anyone else, Evelyn Pierce adjourned the proceedings until the morning. Darnell waited while the jury filed out of the box and the courtroom crowd began to disperse. Then he turned to Adam.

  “You were going to tell me why you were banished. It was because you wanted only to be with the girl, because the girl wanted only to be with you, wasn’t it? You wanted to spend your lives together, but no one is allowed to do that, are they? Everything belongs to everyone in that city of yours, and nothing belongs to anyone, isn’t that right?”

  Adam sat there, bold and magnificent, proud of what he had done, and prouder still of what he was, a man who obeyed no one but himself. There was no contrition, no regret; if it meant exile from the city and everything he knew, if it meant that he would sometimes feel all the anguish of a home-sick stranger, then so be it. That, at least, seemed to be the verdict in his now defiant eyes. The measured disposition, the balanced emotion, the remarkable equanimity bordering on indifference to whatever fate might have in store, all the characteristics with which Darnell had come to identify him, did not so much vanish as were superseded by the sense that this was someone who knew there was nothing he could not do and that the rules that governed other men could never govern him.

  “Alethia belongs to me and to no one else. They didn’t banish me, I left. This man you say was once a visitor, he knows a great many things about how we live, but he doesn’t know that. They didn’t like it; they came after us, told me I had to come back. I refused, said they could kill me if they wanted, but the girl belonged to me and so long as I lived would never be with another. If the child had been born right, it would have been the way it should have been. We didn’t need anything but each other. But the child was not born right, and the others came, came to tell us what to do, and now we’re here and every day things get a little bleaker. I thought at first that they wouldn’t do this, call what we did a crime – call it murder; that they’d realize their mistake and let us go.” He peered deep into Darnell’s eyes, asking for a promise. “Whatever happens, you have to make sure she gets back. She isn’t strong the way I am; she can’t live anywhere but there. They’ll take her back in the city, if I don’t come back with her.”

  Adam had never asked Darnell for anything, except for the chance to see the girl, and Darnell had grown so attached to him that he could not think to do anything but to promise to do everything he could, should it come to that.

  “But it may not happen. There’s still a chance we might win this case, and you can go home free.”

  “It’s never how it ends that matters, its how you played your part,” replied Adam with a wisdom that astonished Darnell and that he knew he could not match.

  “Mr. Holderlin will be waiting at my office,” he said as he gathered up his papers. “He can’t wait to meet you.”

  Now that his secret was known, now that he could talk freely with Darnell, Adam’s observations became less restrained and more acute. A block from the office, he stood, transfixed, as a cable car packed with breathless tourists came grinding past and cars in all directions hurtled down the street. Men in expensive suits and women dressed to kill paraded by, while a street hustler asked for cash and two homeless men lay bent against a building sunk in an endless torpor.

  “There is one way of life in the city and it never changes; there seems to be as many ways of life here as people and nothing stays the same for very long. It’s colorful, exciting, the way you people live; but it’s not a life I’d recommend to anyone who wants to keep their sanity.”

  “You get used to it,” replied Darnell, wondering whether, on the whole, he did not think Adam right.

  They had barely walked through the door when Darnell heard Holderlin’s unmistakable voice speaking a language that not only did he not understand, but seemed completely different from any language he had ever heard. At the sound of it, Adam’s eyes lit up, but as he turned to see Holderlin something was said that caused his expression to change. Suddenly rigid and alert, he listened to what Holderlin was saying with what appeared to Darnell to be guarded hostility. They stood there, the two of them, one of them more than twice the age of the other, staring like two diplomats from rival powers.

  “What is it?” demanded Darnell. “What are you arguing about? What are you telling Adam that’s having this effect?”

  Holderlin broke into a broad smile. In the most friendly manner possible, he put his hand on Adam’s shoulder and in a far more gentle tone said something that seemed like assurance.

  “It’s my fault,” he explained to Darnell. “It’s been so long since I’ve used the language, so many things I’ve wanted to know about, I started asking questions about things I shouldn’t have.”

  Darnell looked at him with suspicion.

  “Things you shouldn’t have?”

  “I asked him why he thought he could ignore the law, why he thought he was more important than the city that had given him life. I told him that his father never would have done that.”

  “His father? How would you know – how would he know – who his father was?”

  “Because he looks just like him, the way his father looked –and he sounds just like him, the way his father sounded, too – when I knew him, the best friend I had on the island, forty years ago.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “The defense calls Leland Phipps.”

  The high commissioner was less than pleased about being called into court to testify a second time. Darnell seemed to enjoy his irritation. He leaned against the railing of the jury box.

  “You’re still the high commissioner for the Western Territories?” he asked, raising his eyebrows as if an affirmative answer would be a source of some astonishment.

  “Of course!” snapped Phipps.

  “You’ve held so many different positions, I wasn’t sure,” said Darnell.

  He
began to walk slowly in front of the jury box. He paused, scratched his head as if he had lost his train of thought, looked at the witness hoping he might help him out, remind him what he wanted to ask next, and then, realizing that it would not be any use, began to walk some more, while every moment Leland Phipps became more impatient. Finally, with a puzzled expression, Darnell stood still.

  “You testified, as a witness for the prosecution, that the reason you first visited the island was – and I think I can quote you exactly – ‘to see for myself, determine what had to be done.’ Isn’t that what you said?”

  “I believe so – or words to that effect.”

  Darnell returned to his position at the railing of the jury box. He glanced at one of the jurors in the second row, nodded as if they were now acquainted, and looked back at the witness.

  “And did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Determine what had to be done?”

  “I believe I testified that I did.”

  “No, I’m afraid that you didn’t.”

  “I think you’re wrong, Mr. Darnell.” Leland Phipps jutted out his chin. “I remember quite distinctly that I testified to the need for medicine, sanitation, the things – and I can quote myself exactly – ‘that modern science can provide.’”

  “I remember. You also said – and I believe it was in the same sentence – that ‘there would have to be some rules of governance.’ But none of that was because of what you found on the island; those were all the things you said you knew in advance the people there would need. You brought medicine and a team of physicians with you. You didn’t wait to determine with your own eyes if they were needed; you knew it – or thought you knew it – in advance, didn’t you?”

  “I really don’t understand the question. Yes, I brought medicine and doctors. I wasn’t going to wait to first see for myself what kind of diseases they might be carrying, what kind of help they might need.”