Norman Rush - Subtle Bodies

Ned could feel Joris getting happier as he pitched himself deeper into his argument. His mode had changed as he’d progressed, he was intentionally roughing up an old friend, taking a chance of alienating him. What was happening to Joris was the return from the grave of the old style of outrageous, absurdly insulting argument. One thing they had amused themselves with during the NYU years was visiting the representatives of the fossil left, all of whom had some sort of decaying perch in Manhattan, some loft, some basement. They had seen invective as an art form, and as entertainment.

Joris wouldn’t stop. “Now the last thing. War is insane from the standpoint of the big democracies because it competes with fixing everything that’s important, the environment, the bridges, the hundreds-of-years-old water mains. We have to stop spending on war if we’re going to survive as a First World country. And you’re not trying to stop some kind of all-out war that’s going to solve anything. It’s going to be half-assed because we don’t fight wars of extermination anymore, I will say that for us …”

Ned broke in. “That’s refreshing.”

Joris said, “I’m almost through! Anyway, bankruptcy is what I was getting at. This war will do for us what losing two world wars did for the French, made them into the most diplomatic nation on earth! — and got them out of Africa so fast it was a blur.”

Ned said, “I can’t argue sitting down.” He stood up. “Okay, let me rescue you, my friend. But point of order, first. You can’t keep calling Muslims Islamics .”

“Why not?”

“It doesn’t exist, that’s a reason.”

“It does now.”

“Is Christianityics a noun? If you say it, you’ll look stupid. Same with Islamics. But Islamic is an adjective, and so would Christianic be. Feel free to invent it.” Ned was sorry he’d brought it up.

Joris said, “Okay, but before you start just realize I wasn’t advocating anything …”

Ned said, “Oh but man you are advocating something, and I’ll tell you what that is. Let me tell you the state of the world we’re going to get with this Anglo-Saxon Invasion. For sure, Number One, we will get the Shia majority taking over after we bust up Hussein’s Sunni minority dictatorship . And then we get the lucky Shia hooking up with their brothers in Iran … and big surprise putting together the second and third largest oil reserves in the world! And in the meantime the Iranians are getting the bomb so voilà presto a Shia co-prosperity sphere like the Japanese wanted in Asia … Okay so we the U.S. we go ahead and Number Two we use our superior technology because we haven’t got enough infantry to go in and fight man to man so we use munitions we know will kill a lot of innocent Islamics, to use your term, and I do mean innocent because a lot of them will be people who are genuine opponents of the crazies, not to mention Christianics and tiny children, so in the course of winning quote unquote we end up with more Muslims hating us than ever before. Isn’t that smart, Joris? We will kill lots and lots of collaterals. And Iraq can’t do anything about it because they don’t have the bomb, like Iran may, who knows?

“Three, anybody who hasn’t got the bomb is going to go nuts getting it so they can feel safe and sound like North Korea. Four , whatever happened to the idea of getting bin Laden first , before bombing anybody? Bin Laden, who doesn’t even live in Iraq. Five , you know it’s going to turn out to be bullshit about Hussein’s nuclear program, right? Lie to me and say you believe it. Say it! Six. Man you are establishing the preventive war precedent for anybody who wants to use it when they get powerful enough and mad enough. Seven, is this Seven? Anyway, I’m almost through. Seven, and I guess you can say this is still in the making, but depleted uranium is in all our weapons so the debris from all our wars from now on will go on inflicting suffering far into the future. Killing from now into the future through the bloodstreams of people who were our enemies but whose children have by a turn of the wheel become our friends. That doesn’t bother you? The future —where our descendants will live? Yours , at least, and if I’m lucky, I’ll have one or so myself.”

Joris said, “Okay, so a prudentialist argument, bravo.”

But now, Ned was not through. “So Eight. And this is an add-on, and I’m just about to shut up. But do you remember when Bush One egged on the southern Shia to rise up against Saddam and then let him slaughter them from the air because our no-fly zone didn’t cover his helicopters? That wasn’t an oversight, it was a plan … it reduced the power of the Shia to mess up our plan for replacing Saddam Hussein with the general of our choice.

“ Joris! You can’t be for the war. If we’re not against this war — not even a war, an invasion —we’re nothing. And whatever else we’re for is nothing, if we don’t do what we can now against this.”

Ned felt an old fantasy revenge daydream show up again. The prior stars in it had been Nixon and Pol Pot and LBJ. Now it was George W. Bush. Wars end. An invisible refrigerator repository hangs over the head of the victor president. The repository is full of body parts. Anyplace the conqueror goes limbs and parts rain down on him. It would be irregular. Sometimes for a while nothing would fall. The president would begin to feel safe. But he would be wrong and the stinking bloody arms and legs and heads and feet would fall on him again. Jokes in particular would be a trigger. George Bush would never be able to tell a joke anywhere without a severed hand falling on his podium, or plate, or lap. The president stops smiling.

Ned thanked god because Joris was motioning for the pen. He felt light on his feet, as light on his feet as a two-legged marshmallow, which was a line from one of their ancient subway platform games, Absurd Similes.

Joris signed, smiling.

Nina was up and dressed. She was inspecting the breakfast he’d contrived for her, which was nested in cloth napkins, in a straw basket. It consisted of warm buttered toast, two hard-boiled eggs, salt and pepper shakers, an orange, a mayonnaise jar of black coffee, and silverware.

Ned said, “Gruen beat me to the yogurt but don’t despair, I have a contact for you. Her name is Nadine Rose and she’s very nice, and when I asked her for it and she had to deny me she said, ‘I shall put it upon my list.’ And those eggs were about to be deviled, but I seized them. And Nadine Rose is the person to go to for cravings. It’s all arranged.”

Nina sat down on the foot of the bed and began peeling one of the eggs. She said, “Thank you so much! This is perfect. The coffee is still warm, even! But what if I don’t have any more cravings, oh my God.”

Ned said, “Let’s not think about that. By the way, Gruen and Joris have both signed the petition.”

“That is more important to me than this egg ! Your friends are coming through. But did you know Aristotle said, ‘Oh my friends, there are no friends.’ ” Ned looked distressed.

Nina said, “Don’t look that way. I’m sure he was just being apocryphal.”

Ned was staring at her.

Nina said, “You know that was a joke, don’t you? Or do you think I’m really dumb?” She thought, I know what’s making him nervous, which was when we were all talking about death and I said Everybody you know’s father is dead. Which no one would think was wrong if they knew I knew it was wrong myself, but he’s nervous that they don’t know … and then when I said This I’m no good at all at …