Libra

by Don DeLillo

  She had both pictures folded inside her shoe.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” he said into the phone. “You have friends to help you.”

  It was painful seeing him in this state. Not just the bruises and scratches. This was a man who appears in a dream, a distorted figure in some darkness outside ordinary night.

  She thought of the mild face of the boy she’d married, the unexpected American who asked her to dance. The face was almost plump then, rosy with cold, and the hair neatly parted, the clothes pressed. He was even cleaner than she was, very clean coming to bed, clean in every habit.

  Then the worker in Texas and Louisiana, sometimes grease-spattered, losing weight, losing hair, dog-weary, suffering nosebleeds in his sleep, refusing to change his clothes.

  Now this vision, this man with a beak nose and dark eyes, one brow swollen, clothes too big for him. This specter with gray skin. She looked at the lumpy Adam’s apple, the prominent nose. His cheeks were sunk under the bones, leaving this nose, this bird beak.

  He had to be guilty, she thought, to look so bad.

  He told her not to cry. His voice was gentle and sad. He told her they were taping every word.

  So she could not tell him about the pictures in her shoe. Or about the other thing she’d discovered after the police had left last night. This was his wedding ring in a demitasse cup on the bedroom bureau. He’d left it behind with the money, early Friday morning.

  The money, the photographs, the wedding ring.

  Three times he’d asked her to live with him in Dallas. She said no, no, no.

  He told her now to buy shoes for June. Don’t worry, he said. And kiss the babies for me.

  The guards got him out of the chair and he walked backwards to the door, watching her until he was gone.

  Home, Aunt Valya would be putting up sauerkraut, polishing copper, busy with the usual things, going with Uncle Ilya to visit the Andrianovs, a life without sudden turns and interruptions, and waiting for the first heavy snows.

  She didn’t even know about the policeman. She didn’t know about Governor Connally. No one told her until later in the day that Lee was accused of wounding one of them and cold-bloodedly killing the other.

  They led him back to the cell. He took off his clothes and gave them to the guard. He ate a lunch of beans, boiled potatoes and some kind of meat.

  Nothing about this place bewildered him or set him to wondering what would happen next. The reporters did not surprise him, uproar in the halls. The lawmen asked the obvious questions and even when he failed to anticipate what they’d ask, it was still everyday obvious stuff. The cell was the same room he’d known all his life. Sitting in his underwear on a wooden bunk. A sink with a dripping tap. Nothing new here. He was ready to take it day by day, growing into the role as it developed. He didn’t fear a thing. There was strength for him here. Everything about this place and situation was set up to make him stronger.

  Even his appetite was back. This was the first meal he could really dig into. There was coffee in a mug. He drank it slowly. He thought. He listened to the guards talk softly in the narrow hall.

  There was a third way he could play it. He could tell them he was the lone gunman. He did it on his own, the only one. It was the culmination of a life of struggle. He did it to protest the anti-Castro aims of the government, to advance the Marxist cause into the heart of the American empire. He had no help. It was his plan, his weapon. Three shots. All struck home. He was an expert shot with a rifle.

  Saturday night. David Ferrie was driving in circles through the city of Galveston, Texas. His monkey fur was askew on his head. His mind had reached the stage of hysteroid extremes.

  When the President was shot he was in a federal courtroom in New Orleans, where Carmine Latta’s tax evasion case was being decided in the old man’s favor.

  When Leon was picked up by the police he was in his apartment packing for the trip to Galveston. He had his old Eastern captain’s hat, gold-braided, that he was putting in an overnight bag. He heard the capture on the radio.

  This was cause for panic. He gave in to it at once. Ferrie believed panic was an animal action of the body to ensure that the species survives. It was far older than logic. He kept on packing, only faster, and hurried down to his car.

  He drove in circles around New Orleans for hours, listening to news reports. Then he filled the tank and headed west through a black storm, one of those sky bursts full of slanting coastal fury, and seven hours later he was in Houston.

  He drove in circles around Houston. At 4:30 A.M. he checked into a place called the Alamotel. He was in no mood for patriotic puns. He spoke Spanish to the desk clerk, went to his room and made a series of calls to people in New Orleans, friends, lovers, clergy. He sought comfort in these calls and spoke Spanish even to those who didn’t know a word.

  He was afraid Leon would give the police his name.

  He was afraid Leon would be killed.

  He was afraid Leon, alive or dead, had his library card in his wallet. He seemed to recall letting Leon use his card once.

  In the morning he bought newspapers and coffee and sat in the car listening to the radio. He felt his life trembling on the edge of the news reporter’s tongue. He drove to a skating rink and made more calls. Banister wouldn’t talk to him. Latta was at a sit-down. He called teenage boys he’d taught to fly. The skating-rink organ produced a sound that made him think of total death. He went out to the car.

  Something about the time of year depressed him deeply. Overcast skies and cutting wind, leaves falling, dusk falling, dark too soon, night flying down before you’re ready. It’s a terror. It’s a bareness of the soul. He hears the rustle of nuns. Here comes winter in the bone. We’ve set it loose on the land. There must be some song or poem, some folk magic we can use to ease this fear. Skelly Bone Pete. Here it is in the landscape and sky. We’ve set it loose. We’ve opened up the ground and here it is. He took Interstate 45 south. He didn’t want them to kill Leon. He felt a saturating sense of death, a dread in the soft filling of his bones, the suckable part, approaching Galveston now.

  He drove in circles around Galveston. The plane was probably still at the airport. He thought he might fly it out of here, a Piper Aztec, and make the escape to Mexico without the assassin. It didn’t seem the least bit crazy. It seemed a ritual suited to the event.

  The event was total death. Only a ritual could save him from succumbing.

  He checked into a place called the Driftwood Motel. He spoke Spanish on the phone.

  What was he doing in Galveston? Wasn’t he here to fly the plane? The idea of flight had drawn him. He was a flyer, a master of the element of air. He was prepared to submit to death if it came at the end of a flight across the shining gulf, on some scoured brown flat in Mexico, remote, in fierce heat, with mountains trembling in the haze. These were the rules he insisted on. Mexico is a place where they understand the dignity of rules for dying.

  He reached Banister on the phone. Guy told him something was in the works, a chancy plan, a long shot. David Ferrie decided to get a good night’s sleep and head back to New Orleans in the morning.

  There were wreaths and flower clusters arrayed on the lawns of Dealey Plaza, marks of sadness and farewell, and Jack Ruby drove through the streets at midnight, soaking up atmosphere and emotion. He looped through the plaza half a dozen times. He drove past seven or eight clubs to see who was open. It made him angry in that patriotic way of clenching your jaw tight when you see your fellow citizens profiteering from the heartbreak of others, conniving to be the only ones open on a weekend of national pain. All day he’d watched TV at various points in his circuit of downtown Dallas. This death was everywhere. Pictures of the grieving family. Re-enactments at the scene of the murder. This was an event that had the possibility of being bigger in history than Jesus, he thought. So much impact and reaction. It was almost as though they were re-enacting the crucifixion of Jesus. God help the Jews. Empty soda bottles r
olled around his feet.

  He drove home and started pulling things out of the refrigerator to eat. He felt a compulsion to stuff the body against despair. He wanted to handle food, to cook it and smell it, watch animal blood spurting in the pan. Take back muscle and blood. Take back gristle. He needed chewy meat and seltzer water fizzing in his teeth. It adds a little reserve to my strength of will.

  He spent ten minutes making a sandwich but didn’t have the heart to eat it. He went into the living room and picked up a newspaper to make sure his ads looked okay—the notices that his clubs were closed. George was hulked on the sofa in Jack’s old robe, a beer can sweating in his hand.

  Jack called his brother Earl in Detroit.

  He called his sister Eva here in Dallas to talk for the third or fourth time about what happened. Eva began to weep. She was totally broken up. He handed the phone to George because he wanted his roommate to hear his sister weep. It was a broken hacking sob. Authentic. Jack and Eva wept and George stood with the phone planted on the left side of his head, looking impressed.

  Jack went to bed. He stared at the ceiling in the dark. Every time a truck passed on Thornton Freeway it made a noise like paper ripping. The phone rang and he went into the living room and picked it up. He listened about twenty seconds. Then he put on his clothes and drove to the Carousel.

  He went up the narrow stairs and turned on the lights. The dogs started barking in the back room. He sat in his office running his hand through his hair. He needed a scalp treatment fast.

  He heard the footsteps. Then Jack Karlinsky walked into the office. He looked a little tired. He wore an open-collar shirt and his neck was stretched and ridged. He looked old at this hour, unprepared. He brushed some dog hair off the sofa and sat down.

  “It’s terrible, what’s happening to this city, Jack. Every hour brings new words of grief abroad and wonderment how this could happen. Already the Europeans are talking this is conspiracy. What do we expect? They have their centuries of daggers in the back, frame-ups and poisons. This is adverse thinking. It builds up a pressure which is bad for the city, bad for us all.”

  “When I think of my father coming out of some Polish village.”

  “Polish village, exactly.”

  “To the carpenters’ union in Chicago.”

  “To raise a boy who grows up owning a business, Jack. This is what we want to defend. What is the first thing people say about this tragedy? What does my mother say, eighty-eight years old, in a nursing home? She calls me on the phone. Do I have to tell you what she says? ‘Thank God this Oswald isn’t a Jew.’ ”

  “Thank God.”

  “Am I right? How many people are saying the exact same thing these last two days? ‘Thank God this Oswald isn’t a Jew.’ ”

  “ ‘Whatever he is, at least we know he’s not a Jew.’ ”

  “Am I right? These are the things people say.”

  “When I think of my father,” Jack Ruby said.

  “Of course. This is what I say.”

  “Always drinking, drinking. Out of work for years. My mother talked Yiddish to the day she died. She couldn’t write her name in English.”

  “This is exactly the situation we find ourselves today. I’m saying there are things that need protection.”

  “I’m a great believer in you have to stand up for your natural values.”

  “Don’t hide who you are.”

  “Don’t hide. Don’t run.”

  “This is a subject I talked to Carmine only today. I’ve been talking to Carmine direct. He made reference to he was anxious about Oswald. It makes the whole country look bad, all this talk on a level of conspiracy. I’ll tell you what people want. They want this Oswald to vanish. That’s how you close the book on loose talk. People want him off the map, Jack. He’s a nuisance to behold.”

  “It’s a tide of emotion where anything can happen.”

  “It’s a wave. You feel it in the streets. It carries everyone along. We’re involved one way or another whether we like it or not. Look at the ad that ran in the paper with a thick black border. Signed with a Jewish name. People notice things like that. They file it away. There’s a lot of extreme feelings that attach themselves to Jews.”

  “I personally feel I’ve been dropped in a pool of shit.”

  Jack Karlinsky nodded.

  “Let me tell you something right straight out. The man who gets Oswald, people will say that’s the bravest man in America. And it’s just a matter of time before somebody clips him. They’re saying reports of mob action any time. The people want a blank space where he’s standing. This act, they’ll build a monument, whoever does it. It’s the shortest road to hero I ever saw.”

  “You talk to Carmine.”

  “Carmine mentioned your name. From Tony Push. They know about you, Jack, in New Orleans.”

  “I did some things in the Cuba days.”

  “In other words this Oswald is an aggravation. He knows some little iffy things. He has some names he’s playing around in his mind. Carmine wants to clear the air.”

  “I was over at headquarters, dropping in this afternoon. There’s talk they’re moving him to the county jail.”

  “I was about to say. It’s a procedure they have to follow in a felony case. This city, it’s screwy, the way certain affairs are handled in the legal arena. Commit a violent crime and there’s a good chance you’ll walk. This is a feature of the local climate. You know as well as I. Murder is easier to get exonerated than breaking and entering, Jack.”

  “It’s considered how people behave.”

  “Am I right? It’s considered settling things Old West-style. They have it ingrained in the way they think. You get a shvartzer kills another shvartzer in a gunfight, the case won’t even go to trial.”

  “Nobody cares enough to try a case like that.”

  “This is what I say. I’m saying. Popping a guy like Oswald, this is the same approach. Can you project a heavy sentence to take this guy out?”

  “People want to lose him.”

  “You’ll see total rejoice. As things now stand, Jack, what are you worth to the city of Dallas? You’re a Chicago guy to them. You’re an operator from the North. Worse, a Jew. You’re a Jew in the heart of the gentile machine. Who are we kidding here? You’re a strip-joint owner. Asses and tits. That’s what you mean to Dallas.”

  “Who are we kidding?”

  “Who are we kidding here?”

  “When I think of my mother.”

  “Exactly what I’m saying.”

  “My mother went crazy in a big way. I can’t describe the horror. I used to look in her eyes and there was nothing there that you could call a person. She screamed and raged. That was her life. My father hit her. He hit us. She hit us. She thought we were all shtupping each other. Brothers and sisters having constant sex. I never went to school. I fought. I delivered envelopes for Al Capone.”

  “I’m saying. This is my point. It builds up a pressure that’s bad for us all.”

  There was a short heavy silence.

  “ ‘Thank God he’s not a Jew.’ ”

  “ ‘Thank God whatever he is, at least he’s not a Jew.’ ”

  “Jack, I’m sure you hear the same thing in the street I’ve been hearing for almost two days. The man who kills that communist bastard is saving the city of Dallas from world shame. This is what they’re saying in the streets.”

  “What is Carmine saying?”

  “Good point. Because here you have an ally. Here you have protection and support. Carmine himself brought up the subject of the loan. I think you’ll be delighted with the terms.”

  “And for this?”

  “For this you undertake to rid the city.”

  “In other words.

  “Jack, you’re a floater all your life. This is a chance you put your fist around something solid. You want to end your life selling potato peelers in Piano, Texas? Build something. Make a name.”

  “So what you’re saying, Jack.”
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  “Take him off the calendar.”

  “Clip him.”

  “Turn him into a crowd,” Karlinsky said sadly.

  He unwrapped a cigar but didn’t light it. He looked old and drawn. He sat like a patient in a waiting room, preoccupied and tense, hunched forward on the sofa.

  “Carmine is offering that we completely forgive the loan. We make the loan, then we cancel the debt forever. Forty thousand dollars. Deliverable at the first convenience. It’s just a question how soon. We expect very soon. We don’t expect a major delay here.”

  “What about my clubs?”

  “We look after them in the meantime. I have every confidence you’ll see a rebirth. Think of the people who’ll want to say they paid a visit to the Carousel. Jack Ruby’s club, who took out Oswald.”

  “To see what kind of atmosphere.”

  “Out-of-towners in total droves. You own a gun, Jack?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Carmine is getting full cooperation from the boys in Dallas. They have people they render assistance in the police. The police are going to move Oswald out of the building via the basement. It is for some time after ten A.M. There are two ramps to the street.”

  “Main Street and Commerce.”

  “I’m saying, Jack. The ramps will be heavily guarded. The building entrances closed off. The accordion gate between the two parts of the building will be locked. The power will be off in the elevators except for the jail elevator, which they’ll use to bring Oswald down.”

  “I can probably walk right down a ramp.”

  “Wait. I’m saying.”

  “I’m a known face in the building.”

  “Not tomorrow you can’t walk down a ramp. They are letting in reporters with press cards and that’s it. A limited number, mainly picture-taking. This transfer is very delicate. They have extra men coming in. They’re determined it goes off without a hitch.”