The Righteous Men (2006) (17 page)

‘But let’s sharpen the dilemma. What if the man we are discussing
is not necessarily a killer, but if he stays alive, one way or another,
innocent people will die? What should we do then? Can we hurt such a man? Can
we kill him?’

‘This is the sort of question our sages discuss at great length. Sometimes
our Talmudical debates can seem to be obsessed with detail, even trivia: how
many cubits in length should an oven be, that kind of thing. But the heart of
our study is reserved for what you would call ethical dilemmas. I have thought
about this particular one in great depth. And I have reached a conclusion that,
in fairness, I think I ought to disclose to you. I believe that it is
permissable to inflict pain and even death on a man who may not himself be a killer
— but whose suffering or death would save lives. I think there is no
other way of understanding our sources. That is what they are telling us.

‘To get to the point, Mr Mitchell, if I conclude that you are, in
effect, a
rodef
, and that to end your life would save others, I would
not hesitate to see that it ended. Perhaps you need a moment to reflect on
that.’

The pressure came a half-second later, as if, once again, the Rebbe had
given his silent cue. The cold bit deep, still shocking. Will counted, to get
himself through. Usually he was lifted out after around fifteen seconds under.
Now he counted sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.

He flexed his shoulders, to give his captors a signal that it was time to
let him breathe. They pressed down harder. Will began to struggle. Twenty,
twenty-one, twenty-two.

Was this the meaning of the Rebbe’s little lecture? Something not
abstract or complex, despite the convoluted exposition, but rather simple: we
are now going to kill you.

Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two. Will’s legs were kicking, as if they
belonged to someone else. His body was panicking, sent into a survival reflex.
Did not the movies always show this, as the murderer smothered his victim with
a pillow, or tightened a stocking around her neck, the legs moving in an involuntary
dance?

Forty, forty-one. Or was it fifty? Will had lost count. His head seemed to
flood with dull colour, like the patterns you detect under your eyelids just
before sleep. He wanted to weep for the wife he was about to leave behind and
wondered if it was possible to weep underwater. Thought itself grew faint.

At last they let go, but Will did not burst out of the water with the
gasping energy of before. Now the men had to pull him out, letting him collapse
onto the ground. He lay there, his chest rising and falling fast but as if
unconnected to the rest of him. He heard distant breathing and could not be certain
if it was his own.

Slowly he felt his ears unblock and strength return to his arms and legs. He
stayed slumped on the ground, unable to face hauling his body upright. If they
wanted him to sit to attention, they would have to drag him up themselves.

Lying there, he detected a change, another person in the group around him.
There was new activity, whispered exchanges. The new member of the circle
seemed to be breathing heavily, as if he had just been running. He could hear
the Rebbe’s voice, though he seemed to be distracted, his voice aimed
downwards, as if he was looking at something, reading.

‘Mr Mitchell, Moshe Menachem, who was with us a few moments ago, has
just completed an errand.’
Redbeard
. ‘He ran from here to
Shimon Shmuel’s house. He has returned with a wallet. Your wallet.’

They had rummaged through his bag; now it was surely over. His wallet would
give him away. What was in there?

No business cards; he was too low down the food chain at the
Times
to
have any. No credit cards either; he kept those in a separate wallet, zipped
into a pocket of its own in his bag. He had left them in there, calculating
that even if Sara Leah could not resist a peek at his belongings, she would hesitate
before doing a full probe.

What else was in there? Tons of cab receipts, but anything with his name on
it? He had kept all the hotel bills and credit card slips from the Northwest in
a separate envelope, for a later expenses claim. Maybe he would be OK. Maybe he
would get away with it.

Take the blindfold off. Let go of his hands. Lead him back into the Bet
HaMidrash.’ Will could feel the confusion in his own adrenal gland: was
this a cue to produce yet more adrenalin, ready for the ordeal to come or, at
last, a sign that the danger was receding? Was this good news or bad news?

He could feel hands fussing behind his head and then an increase in light as
the sodden cloth covering his eyes was removed. Instinctively he shook off the
drops as he opened his eyes. He was outside, in a small area surrounded by a wooden
fence — the kind of space large buildings use to keep their trash. There
were a few pipes and, at his feet, the glint of water. He barely had a chance
to look, his two handlers were already turning him away. But he guessed that
this was the housing for some kind of outdoor storage tank, a big vat used to
collect rainwater.

Now he was heading through a door and back inside, though something told
Will this was not the way they had come out. It seemed to be quieter for one
thing, away from the crowds. Will guessed that this was a separate building, perhaps
a house adjoining the synagogue.

Inside it did not look that different: the same functional floors and rabbit
warren of classrooms and offices. With Redbeard, Moshe Menachem, and the
Israeli flanking him, they headed into one of them and Will heard the door shut
behind him.

‘Let him sit down. Untie his hands and give him a towel. And find a
dry shirt.’

The Rebbe’s voice; still behind him. The blindfold was off, but
clearly Will was not going to see everything.

‘OK, we should begin again.’

Will braced himself.

‘We need to have a talk, Mr Monroe.’

I
t was the end of an
exhausting week; Luis Tavares could feel the fatigue spreading through his
joints. Even so, he would climb one more level: there were other people to see.

Some money had just come in. He could see that all around him. Suddenly this
street was paved, the asphalt fresh enough to smell. Kids were buzzing around a
TV set, visible through the open, doorless entrance to a shack. Luis smiled:
his pestering of the authorities had worked. Either that or someone had bribed
the power company to connect this row of huts to the city grid. Or a few people
had clubbed together to find a cowboy electrician who would do it for a few
reais.

Luis felt a familiar spasm of ambivalence. He knew he was meant to advocate
respect for the law and condemn all forms of theft. Yet he could not help but
admire these outlaws, these entrepreneurs of the favelas, who did whatever it
took to provide for their communities. He applauded their determination to
provide a stretch of road or desks for a classroom.

Could he condemn them for breaking the law? What kind of pastor would deny
people who had next to nothing the little that makes life bearable?

He wanted to rest, but he knew he would not. Even the briefest pause made
Luis feel guilty. He felt guilt when he awoke: how much more work could he have
done if he had not slept? He felt guilt when he ate: how many more people could
he have helped in that half hour he had spent feeding his face? And in Favela
Santa Marta there was never any shortage of people needing help. The poverty
was unstoppable, insatiable, like waves on a beach. And Luis Tavares was the
local Canute — standing on the shore, raging at the sea.

He continued upward, heading for the view he knew would stun him, even after
all these years. From that vantage point, he would be able to see both the city
and the ocean, stretching out ahead. On nights like this, he liked to gaze at
the glittering carpet of light, the sparkle of other favelas in the distance.
Best of all, he was close to the sight that had made Rio de Janeiro famous: the
giant statue of Jesus Christ, watching over the city, the country and, as far
as Luis was concerned, the whole world.

As he climbed, the pastor noted for the thousandth time how the housing
deteriorated with the altitude. At the bottom of the hill, there were homes
that were recognizable as homes.

The structures were solid; they had walls, a roof and glass in the windows.
Some had running water, a phone line and satellite TV. But as you moved up the
hillside, such sights became rarer. The places he passed now barely qualified
even as shelters. They were thrown together, perhaps a wall made of rusty
steel, a sheet of corrugated plastic serving as a roof.

The door was a gap; the window a hole. They were jammed together, one
leaning on the other like a house of cards. This was one of the main
shantytowns near Rio’s wealthy beach district and it was abject.

He had been here for twenty-seven years, ever since he first graduated from
divinity school. Baptist clergy were always meant to see some searing
deprivation early in their career, but not all became transfixed by it as he
had. He would not learn its lessons and move on. He would stay and fight it, no
matter how unequal the struggle. He knew poverty on this scale was like a
garden weed: you might banish it today, but it would be back tomorrow.

Even so, he refused to feel that what he had done here was futile. There
were dose to ten thousand people crammed on this hillside, each one of them a
soul created in the image of God. If even one had a meal he would otherwise not
have eaten, or slept under a roof rather than in a tiny, fetid alleyway - there
was no room for anything so grand as a street — then Luis’s entire
life’s work would have been justified. That was how he saw it, at any
rate.

He felt frustrated that he was not engaged in that kind of activity this
evening: the direct business of care — ladling out soup to a hungry
woman, draping a blanket over a shivering child — where a change is made
every second. No, his task tonight was to gather evidence for a report he had
been asked to submit to a government department.

That they even wanted to see a report counted as an achievement, the result
of nine months of Luis’s lobbying.

Government — federal, state and municipal — had given up on
places like Santa Marta years ago. They did not visit them, they did not police
them. They were no-go areas where the writ of the state did not run. So if
people wanted something - a hospital, say, or a yard where the kids could play
football — they either organized it themselves or they had to harangue
and nag government until it finally paid attention.

Which is where Luis came in. He had become Santa Marta’s advocate, lobbying
the state bureaucracy one week, a foreign charity the next, demanding they do
something for the people of the favela, for the kids who grew up sidestepping
sewage in the alleys or scavenging food from the trash mountains nearby. His
favourite tool was shame. He would ask people to look at Lagoa, the
neighbourhood just over the hill which was proud to be one of the wealthiest
districts in Latin America. Then he would show them a Santa Marta child who ate
less in a week than a Lagoa chihuahua nibbled in a day.

Tonight he was gathering testimony, talking to residents of one of the
favela’s toughest stretches. They would explain to him why they needed a
clinic, what it should provide and where it should be, and he would pass that
information on to officialdom as part of his submission. These days Luis even used
a video camera, ensuring that the people of the favelas could speak for
themselves.

Now he was at the first address, not that there were any numbers on this or
any other house. He went inside and was surprised to see several unfamiliar
faces: all young men.

Perhaps Dona Zezinha was not around.

‘Should I wait?’ he asked of one of the group. But there was no
reply. ‘Is this your home?’ he said to another, a wolf faced boy
who seemed nervous, avoiding Luis’s gaze. Finally, ‘What’s
going on?’

As if to answer the pastor’s question, the wolf-boy produced a gun.
Luis’s instant thought was that the weapon looked vaguely comic; it was
too large for the lad’s hand. But then the gun was aimed at him. Before
he had a chance to realize he was going to die, the bullet had torn his heart
wide open.

Luis Tavares died with a look of surprise rather than terror on his face. If
anything, it was his killers who looked scared.

They hurriedly covered the corpse with a blanket, just as they were told,
then ran through the streets, agitated, rushing to meet the man who had ordered
this job done. They took the money from him quickly, their eyes feverish. They
did not listen as he thanked them. They barely heard him as he praised them for
doing the Lord’s work.

‘I
see that we have both
made a mistake here. Your mistake is that you have lied to me and lied
consistently, even under immense pressure. Under the circumstances, I now
understand that and even find it admirable.’ Will could hardly hear the
words over the sound of his own heart throbbing. He was scared, much more
terrified than he had been outside. The Rebbe had discovered the truth.
Something in the wallet had betrayed him, doubtless one loose credit card
receipt or a long-forgotten Blockbuster membership card. God only knew what
pain lay in store for him now.

‘You are here to look for your wife.’

‘Yes.’ Will could hear the exhaustion in his own voice. And the
anguish.

‘I understand that, and I hope that I would do the same in your
position. I am sure Moshe Menachem and Tzvi Yehuda agree.’ Now both the
thugs had names. ‘It is a duty for all husbands to provide for and
protect their wives. That is the nature of the marriage commitment.