October Light (23 page)

Santisillia said, “You were mistaken about your Mr. Nit, it seems.” He turned his gentle smile toward Peter Wagner.

Peter Wagner nodded, closed his hands tight on the wood of the bunk frame and stretched his legs out, then lowered his feet slowly to the metal again.

Then the lean Negro was at the door. “Comin fine,” he said.

Santisillia's smile was distant. He was thinking. He came out of it for a moment to say, “This is Dancer.” The lean man bowed and came in a step. Santisillia's mind returned to whatever it was working on. The lean man, Dancer, watched him and occasionally glanced at Peter Wagner or Captain Fist. The lean man, too, Peter Wagner saw, was hypertense; a veritable walking bomb. It was curious that people so frightening should be afraid. Finally, Santisillia grinned. He'd showed no real sign that he was unsure of himself, for all his nervousness; no sign that, in secret, he had feared that Peter Wagner or, more likely, Captain Fist, might possess some advantage he couldn't penetrate; but now suddenly—no doubt having mentally bolted every door from which attack might come—he'd decided to be confident, expansive. “I've been telling our friends they were wrong,” he told Dancer. “Wrong from the beginning!”

Dancer grinned. He was black as a coal except for the fluorescent green of his T-shirt. He came suddenly alive, as if stepping out on stage. Loose-hipped, graceful, he went over to the wash-stand then back to the door, as if for sheer pleasure in his ease of movement, delight at the swing of the rifle in his arm. It was all so smooth, so animal, you could see it had been carefully rehearsed. His left hand groped out, long-fingered, to touch things as he passed, and sometimes he tipped his dark glasses up to see more clearly. “They been wrong from the beginning, f'the beginning of time,” he said happily, all rolling-eyed darkie. He delivered the line with magnificent style, perfect timing. Peter Wagner watched him in sudden alarm. He was far cleverer than he'd pretended. Dancer continued, theatrical eyebrows lifted: “They thought all our peoples was half-wit dumb sub-humans!”

Santisillia smiled, just a touch aloof. He knew it all by heart; nevertheless, he watched on with critical interest.

“They walked on our necks with they high-f'lutin words and they cibilization, and they believed it so much we believed it ourselves! But that's over. Done with!”

“Right on!” Santisillia said, widening his eyes in self-mockery, and chuckled.

“The oppressed peoples of the world has arisen, because they tine has come, the tine of rebolution, and the tine of rebolution is Reality and Troof! I said
Reality and Troof!”
He swung the muzzle of the rifle at them, Santisillia smiling, enjoying the show, though he was part of it—no longer enjoying it as once he had, perhaps; in his heart of hearts perhaps sick of the thing—but enjoying at least the art of it. Dancer bent down to shake his fist under Peter Wagner's nose. He was smiling with teeth as big as moons, the lenses of his sunglasses like a double vision of the sun's eclipse, and his theatrical joy was so fierce, apocalyptic, that Peter Wagner's chest went light and, suspending disbelief, he had the brief conviction that everything Dancer said was exactly so.

“Rebolution!” Dancer yelled. He pitched his voice higher, up and up, like a bright yellow frisby. “Understand what I said? And because you're about to go down to the hell that the white man's made up to make the black man tremble, I'm goin tell you the terrible facts, the truth that sets me free, understand—and the truth that's goin up Chuck's ass: You was wrong from the beginning, wrong about the whole fuckin universe, man, because
I
am the universe, and my brothers and sisters! I am reality and
we
reality and you the transient white debils that shall be exorcized! Hosannah! Reality is change, you understand? And you are a cibilization of tombstones and cathedrals and faggoty min-u-ets. Harpsichords! You are stiffness, understand what I'm telling you? I'm the dialectical method, man. I am the essential nature of bein, existence, ineluctable
modality,
Jack. I create! Creation and destruction, baby! I am the Everlasting News!” He waved the rifle in one hand and made noises with his mouth.
Tch-tch-tch-tch.
He ducked and stood looking up, smiling joyfully, aiming the rifle at the corner of the ceiling like a child picking off an imaginary cop. It was as if, through the dark glasses, he was seeing a vision, or acting, splendidly, a character who saw one. He froze in that position, half crouched, supremely impressive though absurd.

Santisillia—smiling, dignified and weary—clapped. Dancer bowed from the waist. Santisillia said gently, like a kindly old teacher: “You see, it seems you were mistaken, Mr. Wagner. You thought Mr. Nit would refuse to fix the engines. We, on the other hand, inclined to think he would, because engines are your friend's eternity, as Dancer has explained. Your poor Mr. Nit is in a cultural trap, blinded and grasping inside his white man's bag. You're victims, it seems—though perhaps I'm mistaken—of unrealistic ideals, inflexible genres.”

“Commies,” Captain Fist hissed. His face bulged and writhed like woodsmoke.

“No, it's Henri Bergson,” Mr. Goodman whispered.

“All you say has a good deal of truth in it,” Peter Wagner said. He leaned forward a little. “All the same, technological superiority—”

“I know, I know,” Santisillia said, waving it away. “It's all so incredibly simplistic. But we're running out of time …”

It was true, Peter Wagner saw. Mr. Nit's five minutes to fix the engines must be up. Watching Santisillia's handsome face, feeling Jane's fear in the hand on his arm, Peter Wagner was of two minds, as if the lobes of his brain were disconnected. Why must they be enemies? Dancer and Santisillia were, heaven knows, no fools: he recognized with a leap of the heart, as when one sees an old friend, their morose ennui, their irritation with repetition. Yet in a matter of minutes, possibly just seconds … He gave his head a little jerk, driving out the wish that the conclusion might be nobler, the finale more dazzling—clearing his mind for the disgusting but necessary split-second action that was required of him by the plot. Below, if all was well, Mr. Nit would be seated on his high wooden stool, ready to bop the six eels on their noses. The charge would fly to the iron of the engines, up the metal bulkheads, across the metal decks. Dancer leaned on a bulkhead now, smoking a cigarette. Santisillia sat, feet planted squarely on the metal floor, machine gun resting in his lap. Peter Wagner sighed.

“I will say this,” Santisillia was saying. “I've enjoyed our conversation. And now, if you'll come out on deck with me—” He got to his feet.

Mr. Goodman leaned forward obediently, but Peter Wagner put his arm in front of him, blocking him. “Why?” he said.

“We must send you on your way, I'm afraid,” Santisillia said. He smiled, apologetic. “To dispose of you here, if we mean to use the boat afterward—” He shrugged.

“Do it later,” Peter Wagner said. His mind raced, obedient to his chest. “You're right about our problem, our technological inertia, our generic traditionalism. I do want to know if the boat will run.”

Santisillia smiled and shook his head. “I don't believe you,” he said, “but needless to say, you don't expect me to.” He put on his dark glasses, withdrawing from humanity like a visiting god. Softly, as if talking to himself, moving helplessly through old and familiar arguments, yet detached and indifferent, in a part of his mind—a professional killer with a deadly flaw, a weakness for language—he said, “How the foolish heart flails to live one moment longer! Mine too, you understand. But here we are, caught in these absurdities, creature against creature, victims of the world's most ancient rule. It would be pleasant, God knows, to be locked away safe from reality, like a doll in a toychest, a philosopher with his book. But here we are, for whatever reasons, guilty volunteers in the universal slaughter. What use to whine?” He brushed his hand across his forehead and compressed his lips. He continued: “I might have fled away to human goodness like the Eskimo, living in bare wastes where aggression has no use. So might you, of course. I might have crouched like an orphan in the safety of, for instance, a comfortable professorship. But for better or worse, as you see, I've made my choice. Not that I mean to defend myself. The bullet hole is no less red for my remorse. But we're familiar with the cunning of your Captain. Any slip we make will turn the tables in an instant. He's established the rules; we obey them.” He was silent a moment, as if interested in an answer from the audience. At last he said, “Get up.”

Peter Wagner closed his fingers on Jane's hand, pulling his arm free.

Perhaps it frightened her. “Please,” she cried out, helping Peter Wagner's plan without knowing it, “what's the difference, just a few more minutes?”

“What the hell,” Dancer said, weakening.

After a moment, Santisillia nodded. “All right. As you wish.” He smiled as if slightly amused by his own sententiousness, and the smile was the most charming, the most boyish he'd given them yet. He patted the tiger-striped scarf at his neck, then lifted his left foot, preparing to stamp, the signal to Mr. Nit. He was still smiling, but again suspicion crossed his face, some sixth sense that, however absurdly, Peter Wagner half wished the man would pay attention to. Santisillia was one of the artistocrats, a beautiful creature whom it seemed bestial to waste. He
would
be a king if this were Africa, or the world were sane. Peter Wagner tensed, balanced like a cat.

The foot went down.
Boom.
A split second later Peter Wagner threw out both his arms and slammed them into the bellies of the
Indomitable's
crew, throwing them off balance on the wooden bunk. Their feet came up off the metal floor, and the same instant Santisillia raised the machine gun to fire, but too late. His face brightened like a dark cloud with lightning behind it.

“Aw, shit!”
Dancer said, like a frustrated child, and fell.

Captain Fist, working from some script of his own, had found a pistol somewhere and—suddenly tipped onto his back—was shooting straight up.

Jane stared, mouth wide open, at the blacks, then screamed.

~ ~ ~

Sally Abbott put the book down, indignant, then on second thought picked it up again, staring crossly at the next words, “Chapter 9,” not yet persuaded to read on. It was ridiculous, killing those blacks like that, when they'd only a minute ago been introduced. It was probably more or less true to life—“Them that has gets,” as the saying goes, even them that has relatively little, like the horrible Captain or her James. Nevertheless, she resented this turn for the worse things had taken—resented it partly, she would readily admit, because her own position in the scheme of things was like that of the people on the
Militant.
It was wrong for books to make fun of the oppressed, or to show them being beaten without a struggle. Of course it was mainly Peter Wagner's story, the age-old story of the man who in his heart of hearts takes no side. But even so …

She was extremely tired, though not sleepy. There was a barely perceptible ringing in her ears, and she had a curious sense of being terribly alone, as if hovering far out in space. It was long after midnight, and except for the dim lights glowing in her room, there was probably not a light on for miles and miles. Again her nephew Richard came into her mind, it was difficult to say why, except for this: at some point in her reading—she had no idea when—she had begun to give Peter Wagner her nephew's features. There was really no similarity between them, unless, perhaps, it was the fact that both of them were victims, and tragically weak.

If it hadn't been for his suicide, you might hardly have known it, in Richard's case. She, Sally Abbott, was probably the only relative who knew the whole story. She remembered his standing in her dining room one night, three or four years after Horace had died. Richard was in his twenties. She'd been toying at the time with the idea of starting her antique business, and on the dining-room table she had silver things laid out—a friend of Estelle's had sent her a small box of odds and ends from London: a silver teapot with a carved ivory handle, cut-glass salt shakers with silver tops, knives and forks, little spoons, a pen set, an ornate silver dish. She'd just finished polishing them when Richard arrived. She was planning a kind of experiment: see how much mark-up the trade would bear, then decide on whether or not to go into the business. She'd offered him a drink—he always accepted—and invited him to come in and see.

He stood bent at the waist, looking excitedly from object to object, his eyes lighted up as if she'd shown him a pirate's treasure. “Aunt Sally,” he'd said, “this is fantastic. Look! Is this really right?” He picked up a fork and the tag that had come with it. £1. “You can sell it for ten dollars easy—maybe twenty!”

She'd laughed. “We'll see,” she said.

He shook his head in disbelief, and the light from the chandelier flickered in his hair. “Boy,” he said, “I'd buy it myself!”

“How much?” she said.

He grinned. “Two pounds?”

“No siree!” she said, and laughed, “but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll fill your glass.”

“Done!” he said, and held it out to her. His hand was large, like James'.

Richard had been drinking too much in those days, and no wonder: the Flynn girl had thrown him over; and Sally had not fully approved of herself for offering him more. But she had no real choice. He was her guest, after all, and he was a grown man with a house of his own—he'd been living for some while in the house across the road and down the mountain from his father's. Even when he'd had a bit too much, he was never unpleasant or a careless driver. In the kitchen, fixing his Canadian Club and one for herself, she'd thought (it was bitterly ironic, as things turned out) how happy they all were, in spite of everything. She was used to her life as a widow now, in some ways even enjoying it, though the weight was always there. She was looking forward to this new adventure. Who could say? She might do well at it! She'd been annoyed that Richard had refused to go to college, but it seemed it had all been for the best, really. He was making good money at his stables job, and he was working for his father less and less. That was what mattered most to him, independence from his father, and heaven knew she couldn't blame him. Selfishly speaking, she'd been glad to have him near, able to drop in on her—and able to keep an eye on Ginny, who was then in her teens. She put away the ice-tray, closed the refrig, picked up the glasses, and started for the dining room. In the doorway, she stopped in her tracks.