Norman Rush - Subtle Bodies

Gruen had something green in his mouth. He had plucked mint leaves from a bush growing in the ruined garden.

Ned was encouraged by Gruen’s delay in replying, and said, “War isn’t the only way. If we can convince Bush that there is going to be so much unhappiness in this country, you’ll be surprised at how fast he comes up with, oh, boycotts, seizures of assets, blowing up the ports maybe, which I could go for, I suppose, but if there’s an invasion? How much blood is going to be spilled are you thinking? And for how long ? And one other thing. You want to sign this because I can tell you we are going to have millions of people in the streets, not thousands millions . Douglas would sign this petition but he’s dead.”

Gruen’s smile was a truly beautiful thing, it had to be said.

He signed.

Ned said, “Now for Joris. But first Nadine Rose.”

He had to get Joris out of the way. A Nadine Rose did exist, but her whereabouts were a mystery. No one in the kitchen at present had ever heard of yogurt, to judge by their mystified expressions when he used the word. Most of them had to be emergency hires who understandably felt no urgency to assist him in his quest. He wondered if he was signaling to them that he could safely be ignored. Ah well, he thought.

A glowing sun room lay ahead of him, down a dim corridor. He had walked through the sun room a couple of times. Ned was certain, for no good reason, that he would find Joris there.

Blinking, he entered the brightness. The air was tepid and humid. The room was solid glass on three sides. Thriving ferns stood in copper planters along the window walls, some growing so tall they would block the vista in places for anyone sitting down. He found Joris in an oversized rattan armchair, hunched over an enviable leatherbound notebook. The chairback fanned up and out so flamboyantly that from the rear Joris had been invisible. Ned sat down next to him in a matching chair. Joris closed the notebook. His feet were resting on a grisly thing Ned hoped was one of those ingenious resin replicas the Chinese produced in every branch of home décor. It was an elephant-foot ottoman with a metal cap on top. Joris looked at Ned with his eyebrows raised in question, but his attitude was friendly enough. He waved away Ned’s apology for interrupting. Ned gripped his clipboard. The elephant foot was real, he could tell. A musty smell in the immediate vicinity that he was surely imagining seemed to be emanating from the thing.

Joris put his hand on the block of petition forms. He said, “I know what you want and I wish I could make you happy and sign that. Also, your wife. She is nice as they come and I wish I could add to her happiness. I don’t know if you know that she asked me just lightly had you gotten hold of me yet with this petition to sign. Not asking me directly but putting a nice kind of pressure. I didn’t mind.”

An odd thing was that Ned felt himself looking forward to the contest that was coming. And if he could have sciencefictionally gotten Nina out of bed, into and out of the shower, dressed her and fed her, all in sixty seconds so that she could come and watch them fight, he would have done it.

Joris said, “But here’s what: they are going to do it , whatever you do. The government decides what it wants. The State sings the Song of the State. Brecht, I believe. The Congress is out of it. And war makes money for the happy few. War is like the prime interest rate, it is something the government takes care of. Or like the Geodetic Survey, it is something the government takes care of. The people don’t care. There’s no draft.

“And you know what? I bet they love it. The government loves it that you put on big walks and demonstrations, as big as hell, and you know why? Why is because it keeps up the lie that you can do something about it, that the government can be touched in its heart. And wars don’t lose you elections, either. When the draft was on it was a little bit different, but not now. And don’t forget they lie . And you can’t prove it’s a lie until thirty years later a scholar might and by then nobody cares.

“Okay, so all that is under the heading on one side called Wasting Your Time. So now, come to the heading of killing as a good idea or not. Wait, first just to remind you … the reason Finland never went communist in 1918 to 1920 is because the government had a pogrom against the communists living there, thousands of them, trade unions, schools, everything, the White Terror, they called that massacre, and today Finland is a sturdy good little democracy, a place you could live in by choice, and they manufacture the piece-of-shit phone I use.

“So here is what it is …”

Ned said, “Soon you’ll let me respond!”

Joris said, “I shall! As God is my witness, your voice shall sound! But here is what it is. These people we are supposed to go over and kill? — we helped them be stupid. We subsidized their insane religion all over south Asia, us, we gave guns to the Wahabis, and money. We don’t like what we made but somebody has to kill it and in my opinion it’s the least we can do.”

Ned said, “May I …?”

“ Not yet . You want to know how hopeless these fucking people are? The Shia believe the secret imam is going to pop up once he sees they are fighting hard enough and creating enough fire and bloodshed in the Christian world. And the Sunnis, those geniuses, believe the same thing will happen if they create enough hell, except, and you won’t believe this but it’s true, for them it’s not some ghost imam coming back, it’s the fucking Virgin Mary ! So not only do these primitive assholes think they are going to get a permanent bacchanal with completely inexperienced women in paradise if they complete their jihad by getting themselves killed, they are also helping to deliver the whole wide world into the lap of Allah Himself. Sorry, these morons have to be managed .”

“Killed by us, you mean.”

“It’s worth a try!”

Ned said, “Are you through?”

Joris said, “I’m never through. And by the way we have the perfect warrior assholes to do it. The officer corps is full of Christians who have their own version of the end of the world. All that has to happen is the Israelis win a big battle in a place called Megiddo, something that might easily happen, it’s right there on the map and there are plenty of Arabs around there. Then, of course, Jesus comes. And then what?

“I’m talking about people you can’t reach by normal means, Ned. You can’t make a deal. The Israelis have a doctrine. I forget what you call it, they send teams out into villages, the West Bank or wherever, and they kill the leaders showing up, and the next generation of weapons-makers, like they did with Gerald Bull who was going to build the world’s largest cannon for the Iraqis and fire shells the size of Volkswagens into Israeli cities. So they sent a team to kill him. They got him in Beirut. You have to. Was that a bad idea, Ned? You won’t like this, but this is what I say. Especially with people who think getting themselves killed so they can go to paradise is a really good idea . What I say is that a time comes when you have to kill them in large enough numbers so it interferes with their assumption that they can keep putting up mosques and proselytizing and having enough of them to look forward to covering all the patches of the earth’s surface that Islamics lay claim to, Dar al-Harb, which is anywhere they’re not in control of yet, look up irredentism why don’t you? It’s insane. And I’m saying it may be the fastest and most sparing of overall life, like Bentham, in the long run … it’ll lead to the least overall killing, if you get it done now.”