The Year of Broken Glass (34 page)

While Jeremy was living in Benin, building schoolhouses and irrigation systems and mud cook-ovens in the poorest of poor people's homes, he'd lost his closest friend at the time—a young African man who was his neighbour and as Jeremy tells it now, his “dark doppelganger”—to a kerosene house fire. When he was at Stanford he and his new best friend, now his partner and president of B Light Social Enterprises, brainstormed on Jeremy's desire to rid the poor, rural world of kerosene lighting, and they eventually came up with the B Light (as in, “Let there be light”) Suntorch, a little plastic lantern filled with LED lights, topped with a small solar panel and equipped with another auxiliary panel to be mounted outside the owner's home or on their roof. For ten bucks, or six months' kerosene costs, they offered the peasants of the world a safe, clean, environmentally friendly way to light their lives. It was ingenious, and the timing couldn't have been better. Over the years it has made Jeremy a reasonably wealthy man, which is why this cellphone he's given me presents such a dilemma now.

Miriam was one of the first people Jeremy went to for money with his idea, and just as she had with me, she tactfully pawned him off on Arnault. Which, at first, was a match made in heaven. Arnault invested, and took a keen interest in Jeremy and his endeavour. This was reciprocated by Jeremy's interest in Arnault's Churchwardian ideas, his obsession with all things Mu. Jeremy became as curious about and involved in Arnault's Children of Mu as Arnault did in the momentous fortunes of B Light and in the triple-bottom-line world of social enterprise and First World altruism which was the legacy given to Jeremy by his parents. At a certain point it seemed Arnault was always headed overseas to see Jeremy, or else off to some conference on the Naacal that Jeremy would also be attending.

Arnault, I think, was so tickled pink by Jeremy's success, and by the validation his interest in the Children of Mu offered, that he failed to see him for what he was: an ambitious, self-congratulatory, self-driven young man with an angel's tongue and a head full of devil's ideas. It has been to his own detriment that he's done so, and thus far to my gain, though I'm not sure where my best interests now lie. There's that old saying, it takes a rat to sniff out a rat, and Jeremy and I are in many ways of the same ilk. We both see the angles and play them all to our own best advantage.

He came to me shortly after he and Arnault had their falling-out. They'd both been first-hand audience to the Sohqui myth tablets found in the Marquesas and had contributed together to the efforts to decipher the symbols that were their text. It was in the aftermath of that deciphering that their friendship fell apart. They became polarized in their ideas of how to respond to this new, potentially world-altering prophecy. Arnault felt, as is plain to see, that in discovering the tablets they'd been entrusted by the same power that cast the curse to see now to its proper undoing. He felt it was clear that humans had done their penance, that enough of us had come to see our wrongs clearly, and that we were now being offered a miraculous means of redemption. I didn't know, nor could I guess, what other view Jeremy could possibly have on the subject until he showed up at the boat a few months after Arnault informed me of his withdrawal from the group of investors supporting B Light and of Jeremy's expulsion from the Children of Mu.

He came at night, alone, and from the moment he stepped into the cabin I knew his visit was of the secretive kind. I almost immediately asked him to leave, not wanting to get caught up in anything which might lead to the kind of situation I'm in now, standing at the bow of this boat as it cuts quickly through black water beneath a bright full moon, trying to decide which is the lesser of two evils, to give up the chance for money or for love, though it may be, if I play things properly, that I can still find a way to come out of this with both.

Jeremy cut to the chase at that meeting before I had much of a chance to decide whether I wanted to hear him out or not. He offered me this phone and said there could very well come a time when I might have information he required, and that if I were to use the phone to share that information with him I would be greatly rewarded. He slid the phone across the galley table toward me as he said this, then picked up my pack of cigarettes beside it, took one out, and lit up. A clear gesture of dominance. I had a mind to snap the little rich prick in half right then and there. But any man of my class will understand when I say that, hate the money men as we may, they're the hand that feeds us, and breaking that hand only ever leads to one's own hunger. Better to polish the rings on each finger, take what crumbs are offered, and learn to turn the anger elsewhere, inward if it must be, because a little of that eating at the insides is a lot better than the body eating itself for lack of nourishment. I took the phone, but first I had to ask.

“So what's the deal?” I'd said to him, lighting myself a smoke as well, so that we were both sitting together in the cloud of our making, reluctant confidants, co-conspirators now against the man who'd given me the best living I'd ever managed, and Jeremy the chance to build the company of his dreams and grow rich in doing so. “What could you possibly have against Arnault's preparations? Why wouldn't you want to help the prophesy be fulfilled if the float is found?”

“
When
the float is found,” he'd said in reply. “Not if. It will be found. The tablets are very clear. It will be found soon.” I was less sure of his and Arnault's convictions then than I am now, after all that has happened since Anna's husband found the float, but I wasn't interested in that argument then, I wanted an answer to my question, so I just flicked my ash into the tray between us and sat back, conceding the point, and he continued.

“I've seen all kinds of horrors in my life. Piles of bodies five feet high lining the streets. I had a friend in Kigali who watched his uncle disembowel his entire family, his pregnant sister—my friend's mother—included, because they were Tutsi sympathizers and he was Interahamwe. In Calcutta I knew a girl who was forced to suck off the landlord as part of her family's rent every Friday. She was fifteen when I knew her and had been living like that since she could remember.”

“I know,” I said. “I've seen my share of such things.”

“I know what you've seen, Figgs. You've seen bars and brothels in rough port towns full of fifteen-year-old whores and men with nothing but hate in their eyes. You've seen some violence and some poverty. You've lived and worked with mates who couldn't kick the smack and were walking wraiths. But have you ever seen a father cut his son's arm off at the elbow while soldiers half his age rape his wife and his daughter? There is no limit to the vileness of humanity when it's driven in desperation beyond sanity. If we see these kinds of things in our wealthy world it's only rarely, if ever. They're freak episodes, not the endemic symptoms of poverty. We've had the assistance of our technologies so long, we don't even realize the half of what's in our nature, what we'd be like, were like, without it. Those people doing those things, that's what we are, given the impetus, given lesser conditions than you or I are accustomed to. We take for granted the superiority of our reason in the West, and that doesn't come without some legitimacy, but I'll tell you this much. Take the buffer our technologies have given us from our own selves and from nature away, and we're back to the baseness of every other species. It's all about survival, and the people I've known in my life, and I've known both the richest and the poorest, they're all the same. It's their circumstances that differ. And what makes those circumstances different is access to wealth and technology.”

“What does that have to do with not wanting to see the prophesy fulfilled?”

“The tablets say that there will be brought upon the earth a great shift, a sea change, as a result of the Sohqui extinction. It is Arnault's belief that fulfillment of the cursed fisherman's quest, the shattering of the float, is the only rightful outcome. But nowhere in the tablets does it say that this must occur, or even that it should. As our technologies have become more advanced and ubiquitous, so has the abundance of the natural, non-human world been diminished. There is no question of this. But there's also been a great diminishment in human suffering. We've built a society here in the West where a majority of people can live long, reasonably healthy and happy lives if they so choose, relatively free of tyranny, scarcity, discomfort and disease. It is thousands of years of our ancestors' toil and struggle and suffering upon which we stand with that choice. Arnault subscribes to a Garden-of-Eden environmentalism, and in so doing he makes much of all that's been lost and little of what we've gained, all the while living with all those comforts and conveniences as a wealthy man in the safety and plenty of the First World, as if it's all just a matter of course. What do you think will happen if the float is broken and cast into the Mauna Kea? Do you think the Sohqui will reappear and with all their magic bring about a fundamental change in who we are? There is ample evidence of war and vulgarity and oppression amongst the Naacal. It was them who fished the Sohqui to extinction. They were no different than us Figgs. They were us.”

“But they weren't, because they didn't have our technologies. You misunderstand Arnault. He believes in our advancements as much as anyone. And he believes that if we're given another chance, if the abundance of the world is restored, this time we'll have the foresight and the tools, the technologies, to use it and care for it properly.”

“Right. And we'll all do it together, in cooperation. One big family of brotherly love. And what do you think, Figgs? Do you think we'll all just calmly share that renewed abundance?”

“I don't know, Jeremy. This isn't about what I think.”

“Yes it is. It's about what every one of us thinks, or perhaps doesn't think. It's about when and how we don't think, or that point at which our thinking changes from the kind we are engaged in here to the kind that's hard-wired to survival. We're a complicated animal, but that's all. If Arnault's renewal were to come to fruition its only real outcome would be to postpone the inevitable, and in so doing proliferate and prolong the kinds of human suffering I've seen. We are right now coming to the fullness of our waxing as the animal world is waning. It's only natural. And as we're able to rely less and less on the non-human world for our survival, we've been forced to develop and proliferate our technologies to take its place, and we've had to cooperate in doing so. It is our common connection, our reliance upon the tools of our making, and therefore upon each other, that will bring us closer and closer to the end of suffering.”

“What about the Nazis? Their barbarism was only enhanced by technology. What about nukes and chemical warfare? So we've acquired the means to spill off our aggression elsewhere. Folks send their sons and daughters overseas to do the dirty work nowadays so they can stay home and quietly hate their neighbours. What's the difference?”

“I think you know what the difference is. Of course there will always be war. But it will be contained and restrained because we eventually won't have the resources for it. As the natural world dies, we'll be forced more and more to focus on our own collective survival. And this will in turn force us away from our tribalisms and nationalisms, toward a new ethos of cooperation because our self-interest will dictate it as such. The Nazis were like a bunch of five-year-old boys playing with loaded rifles. They'd come from the farm into the throes of modernity. They were out of sync, of two worlds. The further we move away from our agrarian past, the more comfortable we become with technology, the more control we attain. It's evolution, Figgs. We'll never be free of its growing pains. We're not going to arrive suddenly or eventually at some state of enlightenment. But we're learning with each generation's advancements, and to wind the clock back, to take away the impetus of scarcity that is right now accelerating our mutual development, that will only lead to the prolonging of war and poverty as we know it.”

“And you're certain of this, are you?” I stared into him as I said this, searching for any sign of doubt or falsity; of any ulterior motive at play, but I couldn't detect any. I've seen all kinds of crooks and deceivers, and Jeremy Gibbon's not one of them. As calculated and cold as his ideas are, there is a genuineness about him, even an earnestness. He placed his burnt-out cigarette in the tray and slid the cellphone to my far edge of the table, standing as he did so. “I'll give you $500,000 if the information you supply leads the float to me or me to the float. It's that simple. I haven't the time or the inclination to seek out the float the way that Arnault does, and it is futile for me to try to duplicate the coverage the Children of Mu has. So I'll let them locate it for me. And if you want the money, you'll help me do this.”

“And if I don't?”

“Then you don't. And that's your choice. You know I'm good for the money. And you should also rest assured that any violence which may arise as a result of all this will only be dictated by that which Arnault and his men may escalate it to in resistance. I have no intention of bringing harm to anyone. That being so, the men I have contracted to take care of this for me have their way of handling such things, and I will not be with them when the situation arises, so it will be out of my hands. If Arnault were a wiser man he would see the wisdom in what we have discussed. I'm of the mind that humanity should not be made victim to his stupidity, and if that stupidity brings about some casualties in the course of all this it will be greatly sad, but the casualties and the sadness that will result if he is allowed to do what he proposes to is a million times greater. I'll do whatever it takes to keep that from happening. Do you understand, Figgs?”