Rick Moody - The Diviners

“That’s exactly what we —”

Tyrone raises his hand, knowing that in this group, if in no other, he can command attention.

“And then I thought that maybe I could change the world by making art, you know, and I started in doing just that. I would take a book and I would mark out all the words except for the few words that represented a secret code, a code assuring that certain systems were in place, big impenetrable systems. I would open these codes for the reader, and I did this obsessively, all night long sometimes. I would do these things, I would do violence to books, and open them up, you know, so that people could see what was really written inside, and when this didn’t change the world, I started, well, I guess I started to get a little desperate, I started making collages, and then videos of collages, mismatched words and books and pictures, all those seductions in the world; I would stay up for nights at a time, and I wouldn’t go out, I’d believe that I had worked out important artistic statements, and when I didn’t make any money at it, as I always thought I would, I got a smaller apartment, still, you know, holding on to this idea that I could change the world, even if I had to economize. And then I got another smaller apartment, always so I could keep the studio where my work was stored, and then I didn’t have enough money for the studio, so I had to get this bike messenger’s job. And that was a blow. At first I said I wouldn’t do it for long, you know, because I had this other important responsibility, but then a couple years went by and I wasn’t young the way I was young anymore, and I was a guy who had this job where I could run free in the city, and eventually these patterns emerged, and I would ride in the city, between all these addresses, all these corporations or agencies or law firms, whatever, and that started to seem like that was the art, that was changing the world in a way. I was making patterns, just like I was trying to write something or draw something; I was going where the addresses told me to go, and I was sort of like the elements, and so I started not going to the studio as much, and the world wasn’t getting changed by me at all. Gradually, it was sort of like the world was a place that had almost no traces of me in it. I was the messenger; I was the person who made it possible for meaning to happen. A word, or a tape recording, or a compact disc with some information on it, these were never meaningful on their own because they didn’t go from one person to another. They were never complete until they were transmitted by me, so I was a thing that was always missing. I was the completion of the circuit, a device for meanings to get made, but in this way I’d stopped meaning anything at all, myself, I was just a guy a split second between when a letter got written and when it got read. I was the time between meanings, a time that grows shorter and shorter the longer you live, until it seems to be going backward, and all of this meant I had not changed the world, and it meant that I had done some good by not changing the world, by deciding to leave it as it was.”

When he finishes his disquisition, there is stupefaction in the crumbling interior of the kitchen, a stupefaction among the revolutionaries. A werewolf bays at something on the television screen across the room.

“But your brother said —”

“Never mind what my brother said.”

“But what about the woman in New York?” Hal asks.

“Why is it a good thing if I hit a woman on the sidewalk with a brick? Which I did not do. Why is that a good thing for me to have done that from your point of view? Did you ever hit anyone in the head? Do you know what head injuries are like?”

Glenn arises from his stool, from his knife sharpening, and he comes to the uncomfortable folding chair where Tyrone sits. “We’re willing to do what needs to be done.”

“You know what’s going to happen if you get convicted of arson?”

“We’re not going to get caught,” Hal says.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, before I leave, which is maybe what I’m going to do here in a second, and that is that I was actually talking to, uh, to Samantha Lee, the woman, the victim, on the phone at the moment that she was hit, the woman, the victim. She was on the phone, and I was talking to her from the studio, at the moment she was —”

He didn’t realize it, until this dusk, in this safe house, somewhere in the suburbs of Massachusetts, the momentousness of what happened. He fled the city of New York because, as a messenger, transit was his skill, because that is what he did. He fled the scene and he prepared for the worst, which is the lot of the black man, and then the worst came to pass, which is also arguably the lot of the black man, followed by further and further examples of the worst. All of this. Yet now it seems that there is a miserly portion of redemption available to him, and this redemption is in the fact that he meant to say something kind to this woman, Samantha Lee, he had called to do so in the first place, to say something kindly to this woman, who believed in what Tyrone had once done, as an artist, and this is what he meant to say, “I am in the studio tonight” because of you, because of you, because of you, but the line went dead, and now, in front of a bunch of teenagers, he feels the unmistakable import of that moment.

And that is when Eduardo returns.

Eduardo turns off the television. Flings house keys onto the kitchen table.

There is silence in the room.

“Tonight is Monday, and this is the night that I’ve set aside for further loyalty tests,” Eduardo begins. “As you know, I’ve designed loyalty tests for each of you, to make sure you’re up to the revolutionary actions ahead. I’ve just returned, in fact, from making sure that our other comrade, Max, who is presently operating as a double agent, is functioning effectively and that his cover has not been compromised in the first phase of the loyalty tests, in which he gave up his own brother to the movement. He seems fine, except for the fact that his mother says he is grounded for the rest of the semester.

“I can also tell the Minister of Information that news of his case has now reached the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His parents are aware of the situation and they have contacted the out-of-state police.

“Now, what we have scheduled tonight is the next phase of the loyalty tests. Revolutionary brothers and sisters, I have to bring the Minister of Information up to speed and so I must revisit ground covered earlier, and my apologies. We speak again of the ancient surgery of trepanation and of the use of the ancient surgery as a treatment for maladies of the mind. I think we have spoken of its use for depressed skull fractures, most of these resulting from battles where slingshots and rock throwing were common, and we have spoken of its use in situations where demon possession was the diagnosis, also with seizure and epilepsy, but have we spoken of its use with respect to migraine? Yes, the ancient surgery was used as a cure for migraine because migraines were considered a kind of demon possession. And what was the result of the ancient surgery, my revolutionary brothers and sisters? The result was increased feelings of well-being and peacefulness, greater alertness, and increased sexual feeling. This is the truth about the ancient surgery, that it has a very modern capacity, and that is for increased feelings of well-being.

“I hesitate to give you the proof, my revolutionary brothers and sisters, because I’m guessing that you just won’t believe it’s as simple as this, but it is, and this is where loyalty comes into it, my brothers. So now if you could just step forward here and feel this part of my skull.”

There’s no getting around this phrenological obsessiveness of Eduardo’s, and Tyrone watches the kids step forward to where the older man is seated, by the oven, which is set at broil to help with the heating problem. Eduardo bows before the teens, in order to present the crown of his head.