The Ghost Apple (31 page)

At this time, or perhaps later, the secretary noticed a wet area on the front of his—that is, the secretary’s own—trousers. Struggling to focus his eyes, and making full use of his still-reliable sense of smell, he determined that it was not urine, as he had expected, but only coffee. It was also interesting to see that steam was rising from his lap, which was an indication that the coffee was boiling hot. He felt no pain.

Ginnie Hampton, professor and chair of philosophy, was inclined to wonder if the situation on St. Renard was not more serious than the acting president would have had us believe. She apologized if her concerns seemed “hysterical,” but she had read an article suggesting that conditions on Big Anna® plantations were actually quite frightful.

The acting president nodded gravely and responded as follows: “It would be improper to assert that all the narratives of whippings and mutilations that have been told here at Tripoli are absolutely false, but allowance must be made for the exaggeration so seldom disjoined from a description, and in general terms we may be sure that the treatment of laborers on St. Renard is mild and indulgent.”

He added that we ought to pay no attention to “the perverted and exaggerated statements of the islanders themselves, who are particularly artful and dexterous at misrepresentations of this nature.”

Francis Amundsen, sycophant and professor of English, tipped over in his chair and fell heavily to the floor. The acting president paused momentarily, and Professor Hampton took advantage of this pause to ask whether we had any information about our students in the Field Studies Program. She assumed they were “perfectly safe,” but it was just as well to make sure.

The acting president responded by saying that the students displayed “few indications of being deeply affected with their fate.” The truth was that “from being divided into watches, and plentifully fed with syrup and ripe canes, they preserved their health remarkably well.”

This was probably not the response that Professor Hampton had expected—indeed, for anyone not overcome with dispassion, it was cause for alarm—and she was perhaps justified in asking what he meant by “their fate.” But the acting president declined to elaborate. He said that he would answer that question with another question, as follows:

“How much is a single human life worth?”

No doubt this question was supposed to be rhetorical, but Lincoln Harcourt, professor of economics, who was no more troubled than the secretary by the grim implications of this reply, immediately undertook to answer it.

The simplest solution, he explained, would be to quantify a particular attribute like earning potential or the capacity to do physical labor. Provided that some scale of value were determined beforehand, one could then rank people according to their economic importance. But the virtue of such an approach was only relative or comparative, and it would not enable one to compare people from different environments. Alternatively, one might attempt to compute the integral value of all the expenses—e.g., food, education, clothing, housing—associated with the production of a given human person. But no—and here Professor Harcourt tittered and slapped his forehead—this was, again, only good for comparative purposes. Perhaps one could calculate some “absolute value” like the energy content of the body—a value which could be expressed in joules or calories, according to preference, just as one would express the energy content of a snack product. According to this model, however, the largest people would prove the most valuable—a potentially objectionable outcome.

He concluded by saying, “It’s probably best to go back to the basics. A person is worth whatever another person is willing to pay to get him.”

The secretary, who had been following the discussion closely for several minutes, must have allowed his attention to wander, or perhaps the foregoing had been a dream or hallucination. When he came to himself, the acting president was speaking once again, and speaking loudly. His theme was Big Anna® and the island of St. Renard. Several times he referred to himself as “president of the Ocean Sea.”

Peering myopically around the room and looking, as it were, for clues, the secretary spotted a tarnished salver of white tablets on a table by the door. They seemed to glow and pulsate, a source of brilliant light in that atmosphere of gloom. He knew intuitively that these were Malpraxalin® tablets, for which he had lately developed a substantial need. How he had failed to notice them when he’d entered the room, he will never know. He now rose and began to stagger forward, realizing as he did so that he had gotten up too fast: Darkness, thicker or of a different quality than the darkness that now enveloped him at all times, descended quickly.

When the secretary regained consciousness, he was prostrate on the gray carpet, with what he hoped was only blood—and not, for instance, a liquefied portion of brain matter—leaking from his nose. Surely his collapse was a misfortune, but it was not a misfortune that it would have been profitable to dwell upon. Therefore he began to crawl forward on his hands and knees. From that position, he spied the unconscious form of Professor Amundsen stretched out beneath the table.

The secretary will never know how long this journey took—perhaps moments, perhaps days—but when he had finally managed to knock the dish of Malpraxalin® to the ground and force a few tablets into his mouth, he felt much better. That is to say, he felt much different.

The acting president was now making excuses for those Big Anna® executives who were stationed on St. Renard and who, “in some small way,” had overstepped their authority and contributed to the atmosphere of confusion and disorder. But it was important not to get bogged down in individual cases. The critical thing was the long-term viability of the system. What could be done to strengthen the plantation complex on St. Renard?

In the first place, new legislation was called for. One suggestion that had gotten a lot of support in Big Anna® boardrooms was some form of “pass law” requiring laborers to obtain written permission from their employers whenever they left their plantations. Anyone, even a tourist, would be able to challenge a laborer and demand to see his or her pass, and if that laborer could not produce it, he or she would have to spend a night in jail. Laborers would thus be accountable to their employers at all times.

Professor Harcourt suddenly appeared before the secretary, who was now sitting beneath the table and whose first instinct was to bleat in a threatening manner and strike out with his fists. Professor Harcourt took no notice of this. He was not wearing shoes—a telltale sign—and his skin was bright yellow, like a lemon. He scooped some Malpraxalin® tablets into his mouth, began to chew with gusto, and walked unsteadily from the room.

And now, at long last and after who knew what extraordinary trials, William Brees, former or perhaps—who could say?—still current dean of students, made his return to Tripoli College. He materialized in the doorway like a man risen from the dead, a tall and crooked figure with watery eyes.

Was he surprised by the gruesome spectacle he saw before him? If he was, he gave no sign.

The acting president—or should one say the president of the Ocean Sea?—folded his hands and gave the dean an indulgent smile. No doubt encouraged by this sign of tolerance from one whom he may have regarded as an antagonist, the dean said he had some discouraging news for us. Were we ready to hear it?

He said: “Big Anna® has enslaved our students on St. Renard!”

To this there was no reaction. Indeed, it was hardly a shock. One felt it to be true just as one feels, at the end of an intricately plotted murder mystery, not astonishment at the identification of the killer but satisfaction at the final exclusion of alternatives.

“There’s no time to lose,” he said.

He was dressed for the tropics in soiled linen and wicker sandals. He was not an impressive figure, nor indeed one who could hope to inspire much outrage, whatever the news he’d come to report.

The acting president bared his improbable teeth and said nothing.

Dean Brees wanted to propose a boycott of all Big Anna® products, as well as a boycott of all other products known to have been produced by slave labor—shoes made in East Asian sweatshops, for instance. He moved that we establish the “Free Produce Association of Tripoli College,” which would set up an informational website through which one could purchase “free labor” alternatives to slave-produced goods. Could anyone, in good conscience and with an untroubled heart, continue buying Big Anna® products when they knew the real human cost? Could we make people understand that taking responsibility was not the same as accepting blame?

With this, the dean sat down and waited expectantly. There was something almost admirable about him, resolute and clearheaded as he was in this moment.

The acting president rose and thanked Dean Brees for his suggestions. In what seemed like a magnanimous gesture, he said that we could all applaud our colleague “for his tireless efforts on behalf of the downtrodden, etc.” Needless to say, there could be no question of boycotting Big Anna® products—we were ourselves a Big Anna® product—but that didn’t mean we couldn’t heed the spirit of Dean Brees’s remarks.

And that was all. The acting president simply pressed the meeting forward.

As for Professor Kabaka and the ALA, he said, Big Anna® Shock Troops™ had been dispatched and order had already been restored. The ALA was not a sophisticated fighting force, nor was it well supplied or well provisioned, and it had been a short campaign.

The bigger question was this: Was St. Renard, in the end, worth fighting for? Some Big Anna® executives had suggested that it was not, that it would be more sensible, in the long run, to move the bulk of the operation elsewhere. Given that we were better able to manage the disease environment than we’d been in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there was talk of reestablishing the plantation complex on São Tomé or the “fever coast” of West Africa.

The secretary waited to see how Dean Brees would respond to this, but the old man had subsided into a placid slumber. There were to be no more objections from that quarter.

The acting president reminded everyone that Big Anna® also owned the Pacific island of Moahu, although the soil there was poor and the island itself very remote.

He said many other things besides, but the secretary could not be bothered to listen. Although the evening was well advanced, there was still an hour of daylight remaining. Spring had come and summer was not far behind. Indeed, it suddenly occurred to him that another academic year was coming to an end. Fatigue had set in, as it always did at this time, and exhaustion told on all the faces, both real and imaginary, that he saw ranged about him.

It was true also that he found himself prey to melancholy reflections. Everyone was a year older, after all, and death closer than ever. But there was a certain satisfaction in all of this. It had been a year of great changes and upheavals, to be sure, but it would end as all years must end, and in that sense it would have the same unvarying rhythm. No doubt time would smooth the wrinkles, homogenize the texture, and render it indistinguishable in memory from the years that had preceded it and the years that would follow. The secretary was a geologist, after all, and he knew better than anyone that the wild dreams of men were no more than a brief tingling on the skin of the earth. All of it, in the end, would come to nothing.

So he lay back, staring up at the underside of the table, and idly pressed Malpraxalin® tablets between his teeth. The light upon the wall was golden, or so he imagined. He heard the acting president faintly, as if through a long cardboard tube:

“The grand argument,” he was saying, “against the continuation of the plantation system in general, is undoubtedly the terrible waste of life which it occasions, yet if we consider the alternatives . . .”

But the secretary had drifted off to sleep. And thus, no less surely than any other—though some questions were left unanswered, and some problems unsolved—the semester came to an end.

From: “Maggie Bell”

To: “William Brees”

Date: April 8, 2010, at 4:15 PM

Subject: RE: Checking In

 

Hi, Bill,

I wouldn't get too discouraged. You're not going to draw any water at that well. I think your idea of a website is very smart, and these days it's easy enough to publicize these things.

I told Chris, but I didn't tell my parents anything. And then do you know what happened? Chris told Mom and Dad he was gay. Dad said, “Shit!” Practically the only time I've ever heard him swear. Then he hugged him and said he loved him, simple as that. I was amazed. I guess Mom already knew. She said, “Thank God that's over with!”

I'm actually doing very well. You know how when you get back from camping, you can't get enough of the hot shower and the clean towels and the food all right there in the fridge, no sand in it, no bugs? That's how I feel. Because it was bad, yes, but it wasn't the end of the world. It wasn't as bad as it could have been. And now I'm here, just sitting here, and aren't I allowed to be mostly okay? Of course I am.

Nothing in my life has ever tasted as good as the piece of carrot cake I ate in your house the day we got back.

What am I supposed to make of it all? As soon as you get past the immediate context, the things people do and the reasons they have for doing them begin to seem outrageous. Human life becomes a sinister cartoon. But maybe the truth is that we just invent or impute these complex motives, and really the only motives that matter are fear and love. And how do you know that love isn't just a kind of fear? This doesn't seem like a very satisfactory lesson, does it?