Nowhere (21 page)

He shrugged. “I don’t know what to say beyond ‘There it is.’ ”

“Are they not condemned by the mere fact of their birth? Is a person responsible for the color of the hair with which he was born?”

The priest stared at me. “No, of course not, but he certainly is for that which he retains as an adult.”

“What does that mean?”

“Most of us are
born
with fair hair,” he said resentfully. “Our parents dye it throughout childhood and then when we become adults we either continue the practice ourselves, if we have any self-respect, or go rotten and allow it to return to what it was, which gives a moral weakling a further excuse to make nothing of himself. Nobody expects anything of the fairhaired, you see. It’s a self-fulfilling kind of thing.”

If this was true, then the argument of Olga and the other liberationists was necessarily compromised, but now the negative side of my basic sense of priests came into play: were they not professional defenders of whichever status was quo, provided it included them?

“The Blonds, then, deserve what they get?”

“I’d put it another way,” said he. “They get what they give every evidence of wanting.”

“Thank you, Father. I’ve profited by our little talk. By the way, in your current job do you still take confessions?”

“Of course. People nowadays call them in on the telephone, thereby being able better to conceal their identities and at the same time allowing us to transmit their remarks on the radio.”

“You don’t mean the confessions are broadcast?”

“Yes, indeed, and the program is perennially the most popular. The excitement is in what each show will bring. No one knows. They’re not rigged or edited in any way, but go on as they come over the phone. You might get twenty or more innocuous ones or nothing more than impure thoughts before a really filthy story comes along. You never can tell.”

“By ‘filthy’ you mean...?”

“Do you think I would repeat such smut aloud?” he asked indignantly.

“I haven’t heard television mentioned since I got here,” I said.

“The radio engineers are working on it,” said the priest. “But it’ll be a while before it gets to be more than a novelty.”

I thanked him again and left. On the main floor I encountered the nun again. She was directing the traffic of children and adults on their return to the auditorium, but left off for a moment to ask me, though I was foreigner, to serve again as monitor for the next picture, which starred someone named John Boles, but I expressed my regrets and departed from the building.

No sooner had I stepped into the street than two men moved against me, one from either side, and in a pincer-play conducted me to the curb, against which a long black automobile that might have been a vintage Mercedes suddenly swooped in from nowhere. The rear door was flung open and I was pushed inside, one man climbing in after, and the other going around to enter from the opposite door. My captors were of a similar height and weight and wore identical black suits.

This sequence had occurred too swiftly for me as yet to have reacted, pondering as I had been, at the moment of capture, on the educational system of Saint Sebastian, but I was ready by the time the car started to roll.

“How dare you?” I demanded first of one man, and then turned and repeated it to the other. Their being dressed identically was taxing: I found I had to guard against the tendency to repeat to either whatever I had said to the other, though they were separated only by the width of my person. Only by the rigid application of self-discipline was I able to establish a style in which the first part of any utterance was addressed to the man on my left and the second to him on the right. As for example, what I said next.

“Who are you?” Turn. “And where are you taking me?”

The questions were answered with twin silences. The car was being driven by a man with thickset shoulders and a neck that was as wide as that part of his head I could see before it vanished into his hat. The car was moving too swiftly for me to attempt an escape from it while it was in motion; therefore I persisted in my attempts at conversation, this time taking a more leisurely tack.

“Do you know”—turn—“this is the only car I’ve seen on the streets”—turn—“other than that of Mr. McCoy, the expatriate American journalist”—turn—“whom you may”—turn—“know, given”—turn—“the small size of this country.”

Neither of them acknowledged any of this, and soon the car entered a courtyard and pulled up before a gloomy-looking stone building of fortresslike construction: those few windows it had were narrow and barred. The two men hustled me into its grim dark interior, along several tunneled corridors ever grimmer and darker, and finally into a room that was grimmest, and darkest, of all, illuminated at the moment only by whatever light could penetrate the slit-window high on the wall, though a lamp with a mesh-covered reflector hung from the ceiling directly over the single piece of furniture in the room, a stark straightbacked chair.

I was pushed violently towards the chair and told to sit upon it. The overhead light was switched on. The bulb was more powerful than I expected; I sat in a cone of intense light, and the heat of it was comforting, for the men soon left the room. How long I sat there I could not say, but finally the door opened and in came a person I could hardly see: he remained in the shadows beyond the circle of light.

Suddenly he said in a harsh tone, “You’ve been frequenting a Blond.”

“I’m a tourist.”

“You’re an American agent.”

“May I ask who
you
are?”

“The State Security Service of Saint Sebastian.”

I suspected my best move would be to tell the literal truth, up to a point. “By chance I encountered the stewardess of the airplane that brought me here. ‘Frequenting’ is scarcely the word for my distant and brief acquaintance with her.”

“You did not fuck her? Blond females are nymphomaniacs.” He came closer, but I still could not see him except in outline. “Oh, you fucked her,” said he, “or vice versa.”

I took the courage to say, “I’m not going to speak to anyone I can’t see.” After a delay he slowly moved into the edge of the light, and I saw that he was—or had been, for his hair was now dark, and his accent had been lost—the rickshaw-puller known as Helmut.

“Was it not you who took me to the fireworks factory?”

“I was giving you enough rope,” said he. “You see, it has been my conviction from the first that you came to our country with a favorable bias towards the Blonds. I was putting you to the test, and of course you failed—or rather, I should say you succeeded beautifully in confirming my theory.”

“Why would I be favorably disposed to them when it was they who blew up my home in New York?”

He smiled sardonically. “Because cultured Americans adore those who abuse them in what is represented as a good cause.”

“I assure you I am still happily enmired in the Me Generation,” I cried with false enthusiasm. “I’m a monster of self-interest and have been denounced as such by a series of do-gooder women, for I am often attracted to social activists, if they have long legs and nice breasts.” I was trying for a joke here, but without undue conviction that I would succeed. My lack of faith was appropriately rewarded: Helmut threatened to connect electrodes to my testicles and send a powerful current through them.

“You don’t seem to understand,” said he. “You’re in the hands of the dreaded security police. You are dead to the outside world when you’re in here, and vice versa. We can wash your brain like a handkerchief, flushing away your memories, hopes, ideals, and...” He searched for a word, did not find it, and murmuringly repeated “ideals.” Aha! I thought, there’s his usable weakness, a poor command of terms, but he soon confounded me by saying quickly, “And principles, values, convictions, and if I’ve left anything out with regard to the superego, you can be sure it will wash away as quickly as the rest.”

“And you think my government will sit idly by while this is going on?”

“Certainly not,” said he. “They’ll launch nuclear missiles at us.” His grin was unfunny. “Why, you poor schmuck!” he said, pretending to more compassion than he felt.

I decided to counterattack, though naturally in an extremely subtle way. “I think you’re better-looking with blond hair.”

He scowled. “Why should I care what you think?”

“I only just discovered that all Sebastianers are born blond.”

His expression changed to one that might have been called uneasy. “That’s common knowledge. We’re all in the same boat to start with. Those who are content to stay there deserve to drown. Not much is asked, after all: just a little dye, but you see they’re too lazy even for that.”

“Not everyone is cut out to be blond all his life,” I said, cunningly perverting his point, “but I think you could do it to advantage.”

“Dammit,” said Helmut.

“It’s the shape of your jaw.” I suggested a square with my fingers and thumbs.

I had got to him! He hung his head for a moment. “You might be right, but it’s the political thing, you see. Were it simply aesthetics...” He showed a regretful pout.

“To be sure,” I went on, “fair hair doesn’t stay all that light on the adult head. So-called blond men usually have a head of dirty brown, if not snot-green.”

He raised his chin further than required. “As you saw me with the rickshaw, that’s entirely natural.” He pointed at his scalp. “
This
is the dye-job.”

“Then indeed you have beautiful hair.”

He peered narrowly at me. “Are you a bugger after all?”

It was the “after all” that caught my interest. “Certainly not. I assume the concierge assured you of that truth. Does he not work for you?”

“Naturally,” Helmut said. “Concierges are always police spies by tradition, as you very well know. Their mystique demands it.... Look, it’s kind of you to admire my hair, but that doesn’t alter the fact that we must force a confession out of you. I’m afraid that the means by which that will be done are extremely cruel. I say ‘I’m afraid’ merely to be courteous. Actually, I enjoy that phase of my job more than any other. I am that relatively rare person who is authorized to carry out his most outlandish fantasies in his everyday work.”

“You do this in support of the status quo?”

“No,” said Helmut. “I do it because I enjoy having the power to remove someone’s freedom and to bring him pain.”

“But you don’t want to see the prince deposed?”

He shrugged. “I couldn’t care less. My job is to ferret out dissenters and to frustrate their efforts. The means I employ represent my own interpretation of the work. I have infiltrated the liberation movement and can identify every one of its ringleaders. I could at any moment round all of them up and bring them here. But the fact is that, as you could see, they are a pack of harmless, ineffectual clowns here at home. Their bombs are used only in America. I would dearly like to torture them, enjoying the bringing of pain as I do, but alas! how can I do that when I already
know
all their secrets?”

“You can’t do it to me, either,” I said, rising from the chair. “Because before you can torture me, I confess!”

“Oh, no you don’t!” he cried. “You cannot.”

“But I have already done so, you see. Any torture you submit me to now would be contrary to the international standards of interrogation. You would reveal yourself as being a selfish sadist rather than a zealous investigator. Your authenticity would be shattered!”

Helmut threw his hands up. “All right, all right, you’ve made your point. But can’t we just talk, at least?”

I had him on the run now. “Perhaps, if you’ll just apologize for submitting me to this ordeal.”

He spoke impatiently. “Consider it done. But your responsibility hasn’t ended. What are you confessing
to?
”

“To being an American agent.”

“OK. Now confess what sort of mischief you had planned to wreak in this role.”

“None whatever. I’m on a fact-finding mission. But just a moment: Olga knew that. Why didn’t you, if you have infiltrated the movement?”

He looked sheepish. “Well, all right, so I miss a few things. I don’t get the rest I should, and I work darn hard, pulling that rickshaw, so I admit I catch a few winks whenever the opportunity offers itself. You don’t know how boring it is to listen to revolutionary rhetoric. Another thing that limits the effectiveness of this agency is the lack of a name that can be used easily and gracefully, like Gestapo or KGB. It’s awkward to pronounce the letter
S
five times in succession, and the term Five Esses, which we’ve tried to get people to use in recent years, simply doesn’t sound serious.”

I was still standing in the circle of light. “That’s your problem,” I said. “Having kept my end of the bargain, I’m leaving.”

He clasped my arm and pleaded, “Look here, old fellow, can’t you stay awhile? I could really use the company. You’re someone I can talk to. This is a very lonely job. We might drink a beer or two and play some cards. I’ll take you home for some of the best goulash you ever ate. Afterwards we’ll listen to my brother-in-law play the concertina. And, say, my wife has another sister who’s unmarried. You’ll like her. She’s—” He suggested, with cupped hands, a pair of enormous breasts, to carry which the woman would need a frame of the same kind.

He was about to resume when the door opened and one of the black-suited men came in.

“Sir,” he said, “the revolution has begun.”

“Of course it has,” Helmut said derisively. “Led by that ridiculous Olga, no doubt.”

“In fact, yes,” said the man.

“I don’t know why you’ve chosen this moment for your little joke, Stanislaus,” said Helmut. “It’s been a long day. Mr. Wren and I are going home now to a good dinner.”

“It’s not a joke, sir. The Blonds have taken the palace and captured the prince. Others are going around to all the government facilities. They’ll be here at any moment. What shall we do, sir? Surrender or fight?”

“Hold them off until I wash this dye out of my hair!” cried Helmut, dashing for the door.

I
ENCOUNTERED NO ONE
at all on my uncertain exit through the grim dark passageways of the building of the SSSSS (a name easier to write than to speak). When I finally emerged I had no idea of where I might be. However, when I rounded the first corner, I saw The Linden Street School at the end of the street. I had been only a block from where the security people had picked me up, and it was a short walk from there to the hotel.