Calvin Baker - Grace

“Why would I ever do such a thing?”

“I still have an assignment for you.”

“Not interested.”

“There was a village razed last week, by the guerrillas you were following in a past life. Everyone was left for murdered. Except the killers went about things in too much of a hurry, you know how mass murderers are, they have no eye for detail, so they never quite manage to kill us all. In the morning there were several people alive who had hidden away in the fields, including one young man who witnessed everything. He was shot, hacked, and thrown into the grave with the others, but bless him he was still alive. When the soldiers had gone, he crawled from beneath all the dead over him in the grave, and later walked five miles, through the night, until daybreak, when he appeared at the medical tent of a refugee camp. He was so bloody with machete cuts, and stricken with absolute fear that the white vest who first saw him thought he was a ghost. But he was alive.”

“Who was behind it?”

“I thought you might go and find out what’s going on.”

“Oh damn it, Bea, I can’t,” I told her.

“I’ll pay hazard rates.”

“It’s not compensation enough.”

“Compensation? Since when is that the first thing on your mind?”

“It is what you get to make you forget you are on the losing side of the war. I’m sorry, Bea, but even your highest rates won’t make me forget.”

“You’ve gotten cynical, my dear.”

“Yes, I went into my first war when I was twenty-eight. I was thirty-five when I came out, and by God, I was cynical.”

“It is just a phase you’re going through.”

“That part of my life is over.”

“Someone has to bear witness.”

“Yes, and it is someone else’s turn. Listen.” I held the phone aloft.

“What am I supposed to be hearing?”

“The sound of quiet. Of quietude.”

“I hear it, honey, but I’m not sure you do. Go on, though, have fun in your new country. Have as much fun as you can bear, and for as long as you can stand it. You deserve that much. Call me when it wears thin, and you’re ready to do something meaningful again.”

“I may have found a different meaning, Bea.”

“Yes. I know. You’ll get your fill of it.”

“It may take a while.”

“However long it takes you will tire of it, because your standards are too high. At least they used to be. You used to have such beautiful standards, you know that? Too beautiful. Now you’re disappointed with the world, because it did not live up to them and prepare something better for us all. So you’re burned out, and hard of sight for a spell. You got burned bad is all, and it may take a while to recover. Is that it, honey?”

“Sounds like you know.”

“I do know, and it is also fine if you never go back. But one day, I think, at least it is my hope for you, you’ll see how perfect the world is again, even with all its lousy standards, and even if it is full of brutality it forces us to know without succumbing. It’s still a perfect place, and you’re perfect, and Bill, you remember him? That pompous nitwit? He’s perfect too. And Jen, who has no self-esteem even though she is just perfect. Steve is a hopeless lush, and he’s perfect. Joe is a sanctimonious boor; Jane is a prude and a snob; Mary had two abortions, and Gil is such an unhappy bastard he has something malignant to say about every man he knows, and every woman not in love with him; and because he is brilliant does not excuse it, but because they are all perfect human beings does. Phil would do whatever he thought he could get away with, if he thought no one was looking, would just rip your throat clear from your neck if it would help him get ahead. Simon thinks the problem with the whole world is he doesn’t run it, and boy if he isn’t just the answer to a problem none us know we have, poor thing. Leah has nothing at all she believes in, and not a friend left, because she hit on all their husbands. That’s just how it goes, and they are all still perfect.”

“Things here are pretty perfect, too.”

“Got it. I’ll call you with the next one. Tell me, who do you think I should assign this one to?”

“How about that kid who wrote that piece about the death penalty?”

“He’s too green for this one, dear.”

“Only because he hasn’t been seasoned by the fire yet, Bea. Give him the assignment and, when he comes back there won’t be a part of him still green. He’ll be baptized by fire, by darkness, by the hellacious heat that consumes the darkness. He’ll go and he’ll come back just glowing where the green was burned off, because he’s been so near the fire and not goddamn in it. Ask him then if he’s sure he wants to pour his life out in it.”

“Just make sure you don’t let it consume too much of you,” Bea cautioned. “The space in your heart for deep living. People kill, and they are the demons, and others do what they can to stop it, and those are the angels, unless they fall. But everyone, angel or demon, suffers, and a demon is only an angel turned upside down who refuses to be righted. Look at any revolution for proof.

“If the angel does not first understand the demon in herself, she will never understand evil, and so it will happen again and again because we do not see the suffering in others, all others, even still not fully our own. That is what dooms us. Be an angel for me, dear, and trust in that. Even when you doubt the rest. And, yes, the angels too suffer. They suffer more than anyone because they suffer for everyone, which is why they fear, and why they fall sometimes, and why they are angels to begin.”

“I just want to enjoy myself now and live my life, like any other human being.”

“Have fun on your holiday, dear,” Bea sighed, giving up when she saw it was hopeless with me. “Enjoy being in love, which is the gateway to the spirit, and enjoy the end of your first youth, and all the fine rooms, and the fine things in the fine rooms, and all the fine people there are. Call me when you reach the last room, and you are feeling beautiful again on the inside, and you want to know what’s next, because you are sick to the gills with beautiful wine and what all. Call me when you can laugh at yourself and the rest of it, too. I will take you to lunch, and we’ll talk about what matters, and have the most beautiful time. Promise me?”

“You’re the angel, Bea, and a real friend.”

“Off you go. Enjoy Candy Mountain. I hope you eat the whole rotten thing, if that’s what you want, and no bellyache.”

“Ciao bella.”

“Ciao bello.”

As I hung up, Sylvie asked who I had been talking to.

“An old friend.”

“It sounded like work.”

“My old editor.”

“You love her. What does she want?”

“Nothing. She dialed by mistake, trying to reach someone else.”

“I don’t buy it.”

“She offered me an assignment.”

“Where?”

“Gabindi.”

“I’ve never been anywhere in Africa. If you took the assignment we could make a trip of it.”

“I have friends in Nairobi I’d like to see, and a safari might be nice.”

“Safaris aren’t in Africa. They’re in parks.”

“All the same it would still be grand to go to one of them. You don’t have to do it for me, though. But if you decide on the assignment, because it has a meaning for you, I would love to see the elephants. I mean, wouldn’t it be absolute bliss to see them so magnificent in the wild, before there are none left.”

“I will think about it.”

“Don’t do it for me, as I said. But if there is part of you that wants to do it for your own reasons, I could meet you and we could visit friends and make a special time of it.”