Russell Banks - Lost Memory of Skin

K: Okay. So why don’t you just cut out by yourself? Leave your family here. Go to Jamaica or someplace, change your name. Shave your beard and get a haircut. If you lost a lot of weight nobody’d recognize you, man. Even your wife when she came and visited you there once in a while. If you really are an ex-spy and all, you oughta know how to disappear. Even in the digital world.

P: If I fled alone, it would put Gloria and the children in great danger, especially if they knew where I was. To get to me these people would go after my family. My parents would be in danger too. It’s the reason I broke off all contact with my parents in the first place. It was to protect them. I suppose it was also to let me more freely become who and what I wanted to be, regardless of who and what I said I was. That was a long time ago. It’s only in recent years that I began to think I could become the same as who and what I said I was. (long pause) I forgot that I was still being watched. And that I was expendable. And because of the life I built here in Calusa, I had become a danger to them.

K: Are you sure you’re not like paranoid or something, Professor?

P: (chuckles) I wish I were!

K: Here’s a question. Maybe my last, unless you still have stuff you want to add. Why tell me all this? Why don’t you just talk to the camera by yourself and then download it onto your computer and burn it onto a DVD and drop it into the mail to the wife? If that’s what you’re planning to do anyhow. Besides, if you’re not nutso paranoid and what you’re telling me is true, then I’m in trouble too, just for sitting here listening to this shit. If they’re watching you, they’re watching me now. What’re you thinking, I’m expendable too? Are you sure this place doesn’t have hidden cameras and microphones?

P: Don’t worry, I do an electronic sweep of the house every few days. As for your last question, why tell you all this? There’s a very simple answer. I trust you, Kid. I do. For decades I’ve trusted no one but myself. But I trust you. After I burn a DVD of this interview and erase the original from my computer, I trust you to keep the DVD in your possession until my body is found. It’ll be in the papers and on TV, so you’ll know about it. I trust you then to deliver the DVD to Gloria and no one else and never to say a word about it to anyone for the rest of your life. I don’t trust anyone other than you to do that. No one. I don’t even trust the postal service. Besides, I can’t mail the DVD myself if I’m dead. It has to be hand delivered. By you. I trust you to do that. I’ve studied your character closely these last few days. Also, you are probably the only human being I know personally who is not being watched.

K: C’mon, I got a GPS beeper on my ankle. I’m being watched closer than you. I don’t know, man. If you’re telling me the truth about all this and you’re not just fucked-up in the head or playing some kind of weird college professor’s game with me to prove how much smarter than me you are, like with that treasure map game, then I’ll end up with some very dangerous information on my hands that these guys would like to eliminate. Which would make them want to eliminate me. That DVD is like Captain Kydd’s treasure, man. If anybody thought I figured out where X marks the spot, they’d torture me for it and then kill me.

P: Don’t worry, Kid. That map’s a fake.

K: Yeah, well, I thought it was, anyhow. Why’d you try to make me think it was real? That wasn’t cool, y’ know.

P: I apologize, Kid. I was testing you. I knew you were honest, but I wasn’t sure if you were imaginative.

K: So I passed the test?

P: With flying colors.

K: First test I ever passed. Is this what happens when you pass a test? Okay, forget it. Here’s something else I just thought of. What if this whole super-secret spy agencies story is just a cover story? What if you’re not an ex-spy, which can’t be proved anyhow one way or the other, so it doesn’t matter, and you’re really just some old ex-chomo, and you’re about to get busted for something you actually did to a kid or maybe several kids way back before you were a professor and married with kids of your own and so forth, and you know it’s gonna hit the papers and TV? What if you’re planning to kill yourself first, so you don’t have to go through all that and do time and end up living under the Causeway with an electronic anklet like the other sex offenders, and you’ve got me making this interview with you so it’ll look like it was really homicide, not suicide, at least to your wife and your kids, and you weren’t really guilty of sexually abusing kids? What about that, Professor? The camera’s still on, isn’t it?

P: Yes, it’s running. Hm-m-m. Maybe you’re more imaginative than I thought. Well, yes, Kid, you’re right, you may never know for sure if I’m telling you the truth. But will it make any difference to you? Will you refuse to keep the DVD in your possession and deliver it to Gloria when my body is found and my death is declared a suicide?

K: Depends.

P: On what?

K: On what’s in it for me.

P: Ah! You mean money, I assume. I hope not Captain Kydd’s treasure. I’m not a rich man, you know. And when my death is ruled a suicide, my wife won’t be able to collect on my life insurance policy.

K: Maybe that’s what you want this interview for! So your wife can use it to show that you didn’t kill yourself, you were knocked off by some super-spies from Russia or someplace. So she can collect on your insurance.

P: They’d never go for it. She’d have to take the insurance company to court, and if indeed I am telling the truth, that would put her and the children in grave danger. You don’t want that on your hands, do you? Just tell me what you want in payment for delivering the DVD to Gloria after my body is found and for never revealing the DVD or its contents to anyone else.

K: I don’t wanna talk about it in front of the camera.

P: Understandable. Pretty much everything I wanted Gloria to hear has been said already. Except that I truly love her and the children. I need to say that. And I am not guilty of the heinous acts that I will soon be accused of.

K: Are you ashamed, though? Like you asked me when you were interviewing me about brandi18.

P: Ashamed? Of what?

K: You know, of spying and shit. Being an informant and a mole and a double agent. All that.

P: No, I’m not ashamed. And I don’t feel guilty for all those years of deceit and betrayal, secrecy and lies. That was the nature of the world then and now, and those are the rules of the game that runs the world. And once you know that, you either play the game or it plays you. I only regret that I stopped playing the game. Now it’s playing me. Except for this one last move. ..

K: Maybe we should shut off the camera and discuss my fee.

P: Fair enough.

THE UNBLINKING EYE OF THE HURRICANE swerves east of Calusa and crosses over the Barriers and out to sea. Then the second half of the storm pounces. The wind speed jacks up to eighty and ninety miles an hour and gusts start to reach a hundred and above. Torrential rain floods the streets of the Professor’s neighborhood and surrounding yards. At the edge of the neighborhood a tall live oak tree is uprooted and falls against a utility pole, blowing out the transformer and shutting down the electricity for a dozen blocks, including the Professor’s.

The Professor breaks out a bundle of candles and several hurricane lamps and lights up the living room. He hands a candle to the Kid, picks up a hurricane lamp for himself, and tells the Kid to follow him. And bring your bags, he adds. He waddles back to his study at the far end of the house, his flickering lamp casting a wedge of lemony light against the walls and ceiling as he goes. The reenergized wind slaps relentlessly at the sides of the darkened house.