The Tyrant's Novel (12 page)

I was bleeding somewhat by the time he wiped my wrist with yet another square of lint, but not so widely that he would ruin the contours of the curiously raised wounds. The alcohol stung, of course.

He said, Well done! You get the rest of the marks when the novel is delivered. But you are now a tribal Piedmontese, at least of child status. And my word is my bond to me, and vice versa, and cannot be extracted from you even by torture, or by bribe. You and I are in this secret. But so too is Matt McBrien, who will be your mentor. Mr. McBrien has been briefed to a certain extent by my principal personal assistant, a kinsman. He knows there is to be some writing done for me, over a month, and that he is to give you every assistance. But McBrien is no kinsman. I know you are of course a good friend of Andrew Kennedy's. But he is not to know of this. For his own protection, you understand.

Again he emitted the small, half-choking stutter of laughter. He said, The orderlies will put antibiotic powder on those, but best not to cover them too tightly in the first day, or they'll look like a mere imitation of the real thing.

He cleaned his dagger again and put it away, then rose. The matter was settled. I had my task.

God guide your hand, he said.

He rang a bell. The door opened and I was taken out into the corridor. Looking over my shoulder I saw the figure of Great Uncle returning to his spartan bedroom.

Back in the corridors, my wound was sprinkled with antibiotic powder and loosely bound with lint, and my clothes were given back to me.

Dressed normally, I was taken to the waiting room where McBrien remained. He was alone, studying a dossier someone had obviously given him. Instructions for minding me.

How did it go? he muttered. McBrien's eyes were drawn to the injury Great Uncle had inflicted. What happened to your wrist? It's bleeding.

The administrative officer whom we had met in the corridor an age ago arrived and we were led again to the front door and blindfolded by Lieutenant Chaddock and his men. I sat in a daze as we drove, although Chaddock once asked me, How is he? The Man of Men?

I said, He speaks very softly, and Chaddock laughed.

Excuse me, sir. But the wrist. Do you have . . .

Yes, I said.

Put there? By the man himself?

Yes.

Chaddock whistled. Give the world, myself! Congratulations, Mr. Sheriff.

Thank you, Lieutenant.

McBrien asked if he and I could be let off at a particular café, and Lieutenant Chaddock said, Sure. We'll wait for you.

McBrien took me to a private room, where drinks were served. He led me to a booth, asking no further questions, and ordered us both a double Scotch.

When the drinks had been brought McBrien told me the President's principal private secretary had filled him in on the details of the task.

Damn me, McBrien said jovially, if it doesn't all depend on you now, Alan. The big task. A novel. I don't want to know all the details! I don't know what it's for, but I know it has to be done. I'm just to supervise you and supply you with what could be needed. I promise that will be done with a light touch.

What if I do this preposterous thing? I asked him. He could shoot me then, and be secure.

Except, by the look of your wrist, you're on the way to becoming his kinsman. He doesn't shoot kinsmen unless they really screw up. And your kinsmanship makes me confident about myself.

He shot one of his son-in-laws, for God's sake!

But that was for doing unauthorized deals with the Swiss,
and
the fellow was a wife beater,
and
he'd tried to defect. Look, Alan, we'll do it one way or another. Even if I have to write half the thing myself. Our man doesn't want more than about, say, two hundred and fifty print pages. Fewer even. That's about eighty to eighty-five thousand words, tops. That's less than three thousand a day.

I told him he had a strange mind. That he should be selling garden hoses by the length. I drank the double Scotch in two gulps and laughed. Could you do it if it were you? I asked him.

But you have a book nearly written anyhow, he said. You told me at Andrew's place. You can edit that. It will serve our masters. The private secretary said our man would be pleased with something that had the flavor of your short stories. It can be real work. It doesn't need to be as monochrome as a TV soapie.

That book is gone, I told him. I destroyed that book. I destroyed printouts and files and floppies and threw my old laptop in the river. It's gone.

That's a bit extreme, Alan!

It was a creature of my marriage, McBrien, and my marriage has been destroyed.

Did you tell Great Uncle that? That you threw the thing away?

I told him I burned the pages and sent the laptop and tapes away with the garbage.

Look, Alan, I don't know how to say it. Please.
Please!
It's like Toby Garner's wall. It has to be done.

My greatest inventiveness will be dedicated from this point on, I told him, to managing to disappoint the old bastard while saving your bacon. Your suit, your house, your car, your career.

No. You're joking, aren't you? Let me get you another drink.

He began waving like a man drowning.

A waiter came, took the order, and went.

Don't tell me tales, Matt McBrien pleaded. I didn't know it had gone. Your novel . . .

Well, it's gone.

Utterly?

You could send a diver looking for my laptop. Though with the spring current, it's probably down near Summer City by now.

He absorbed this. Well, there's still time.

He grasped for a narrative concept. Why don't you just talk about an oil smuggler and his family? A barge captain? I could set up an interview with one.

Great Uncle mentioned oil bargemen, I said, suspicious that McBrien might have been primed by Great Uncle's office. But he wants someone who's smuggling oil for patriotism, and not for the money.

Well, you could find that patriotism is a motivation. It's a matter of emphasis.

A fictionalizing, story-conferencing light entered his eye. Listen, say a young kid gets involved with a member of an oil barge crew, and say the others mock his patriotism—he keeps on donating his wages to a kids' home. He wants every dollar to flow back into the economy. He's got at home an amputee brother from the war, and that's his motivation. And then maybe one of the tough guys, the skipper say, surprises him with some act of heroism, and he becomes aware that this hard-bitten man is operating from an unexpressed idealism as well.

I could barely contain my anger, but thank God the drinks arrived. Once the waiter had gone off, I said, I can see why you write such shitty novels.

I'm just trying to help you, Alan, to get that side of your brain working. As for my novels, fuck them. This is the job I always wanted. I want to grow to be as aged as Old Billy in it.

A thought had in the meantime struck me.

Do you think this is why Peter Collins cleared out? If Great Uncle asked him to do this and gave him three months, but he wouldn't do it on principle? And then Charlie McKay, his handler, vanishes.

We chewed on this. I don't think so, McBrien said conclusively.

There's nothing for it, Matt. You and Sonia will have to go. I'll stay here and take the medicine. I bet that barge captain of yours could get you onto a Russian freighter.

Yes, and as much as I paid him up front, he'd get double for telling the Overguard.

Well, you might just have to get your nifty suede shoes dirty walking through the mountains.

He said, Can't you understand, Alan? I have my career here. Why can't you just write the damned book? Have an early night! Get up and start! Let's have another drink now. A good night's sleep, and I'll call in on you at eight
A
.
M
. Again, any help you need. Only thing: I'm afraid you can't have a secretary. A secretary couldn't be trusted the way Great Uncle trusts us. I'll get a PC delivered to your place, or bring it with me tomorrow. It'll need its A-drive glued up, because Great Uncle's assistant told me there are to be no possibilities of copies.

Don't bother calling in, I warned McBrien. I'll be out at a restaurant having breakfast. I intend to spend my last thirty-one days in a leisurely manner.

Hell! said McBrien. He ground his brows against the heels of his hands.

On July 9, I did not awake as carefree as I had hoped. With the residual sting of Great Uncle's dagger still at my wrist, I was at once reminded of the weight the tyrant had placed on me. I managed to rise, but did not shave, and sat at a table sipping black tea and eating an apple. As promised, at eight o'clock McBrien was at the door, a new laptop and its cordage in his arms.

I'll install this for you at your desk, he offered. It has a surge protector and a capacity for internal backup. They say you can have voice-recognition software if you like, but it takes at least two weeks to work it into shape before you can start.

He set to work while I watched. The A-drive, where floppy disks were held, had a plate of metal fixed over it with minute tumblers, such as one saw on those fancy attaché cases with combination locks.

They've kept the code for opening the A-drive to themselves, McBrien told me, sorting out the cords and plugging in the surge protector.

Why are you speaking in whispers? I asked him. Is the apartment wired?

No. They don't do that as much as we citizens think. They're short of resources now, with the sanctions. I was also assured by the principal private secretary that the apartment would not be wired, anyway. That was Great Uncle's own demand. He thinks it's contrary to your dignity as an artist. By the way, Lieutenant Chaddock has been exalted to captain, and will command a day-and-night Overguard detachment, two vehicles, with responsibility for your person.

My God! I said. What a fix! The neighbors will be delighted. Would you like some black tea?

Yes. Just a moment.

He switched the machine on and the screen lit and performed its function. See the symbol there? he said. That brings up your document program. But you know how to word process, don't you?

I told him of course. Sarah had taught me in the university library, and I'd had a word processor myself. Didn't he remember it was flowing down to the gulf?

Oh, I've got a little present for you, he told me. He reached into his breast pocket and extracted a bottle. Tommy Hilfiger cologne. For future visits to . . . to certain people.

I was—as frequently then—touched, yet uncertain. Do you think this will get me a job with the Whisperers?

He smiled. If that's your fancy. I got the last bottle in the markets. Let's have some tea then.

I put the cologne on the shelf above my desk. If the truth were told, I was grateful for his company. We went back to my favorite little living room table, where Sarah and I always drank tea. And then, when he'd finished, I told him, all jokes aside, to go and see a people smuggler.

If I could find one, what about my parents? asked McBrien with some spirit. And my brothers and sisters? Am I to get some damned people smuggler for them too?

He let that sink in. Well, Alan, we know now what our test will be. We get through this, and life is all gravy. I'll probably get an embassy post as cultural attaché in Rome or Paris or Moscow. You . . . the sky's the limit with you.

Thank you, I told him, feeling the drag of the unacceptable and unachievable task within me.

For a second he went pale at my apparent unbiddability. But he gathered all his energy. He had already decided, perhaps unconsciously, to go through this trial cheerily, to lift me on his gusts of optimism.

If you're not doing anything this morning, he said, then I have some places to take you. Research. On the way out of the city, we'll remind ourselves how some of our brothers and sisters really live under the sanctions.

Will we, sir? I asked in imitation of a schoolchild. As if I hadn't already been to the Beaumont side and the Eastside markets.

Then we'll talk to a barge captain at Ibis Bay. Should be back in time for a late lunch if we start now.

I think I want to get on with
On the Waterfront,
I told him.

He said ironically, That'd be a brilliant idea! Absolutely brilliant! Listen, if you're doing nothing in the next thirty days, you might as well come driving with me. Come on!

He had a black car with his own driver and there were no blindfolds for us today. And it was true that once we crossed the ridge of Beaumont and descended into the poorer townships in the southeast of the city, one became aware again of the fearful terms on which many of our fellow citizens lived. The West had come to an arrangement that they would take a billion of our barrels a year, but the money for them would not come directly to us but to the United Nations, which would then decide how to filter it through to ameliorate the condition of such suburbs as these, and hungry townships in the countryside. The last time I'd been here it had been to look at a rally, research for the book I had given over to Sarah, and all the speakers had complained of the indignity of this arrangement. One man had said, They make us not earners but beggars. By now though, there was probably more doubt in the ordinary people. In the hearts of the women who queued at the end of crumbling streets, drawing up risky water from the city's ancient and part-destroyed conduits, Great Uncle might be blamed with an equivalent sense of fury as was earlier directed against the U.N. sanctions.

From my last visit here I had learned of a popular illegal newspaper, produced by a young mother of the Beaumont townships. She complained that on the broad river ordinary people saw the parvenus to whom Great Uncle and the Overguard had entrusted both the smuggling of oil above the one-billion-barrel limit and a share as well of the U.N.'s largesse given in exchange for the modest legal quantity of our national output. This new class could be seen luxuriating at sunset on glittering cruise vessels. Rowboats on the river, manned by fathers and sons trying to catch a little protein for their shanty kitchens, were swamped by the cokehead skippers of cruisers. Busloads of the dispossessed lower middle class and workers, moving about the city, were likely to be overtaken by fast cars, with scant regard for pedestrians, driven by Sonny's ugly circle of friends. Situations of poverty and degradation unknown at the time Great Uncle's forces secured our borders, to the joy, at that time, of the West, were now appallingly commonplace. In Market Street, child prostitutes ran after McBrien's vehicle yelling, A dollar! A dollar! These offers were made within the potential hearing of parents. When I had been writing my book, someone told me, You can tell the child prostitutes. They're not as skinny as the others.