Norman Rush - Subtle Bodies

Someone had put an extension ladder up against a first-story overhang above a German restaurant. It looked safe enough. He wanted to be up there where he’d be able to see so much more. There were maybe twenty people on the overhang already, some shaking their signs at a TV truck that was trying to pierce the column at a cross street.

There was no obstacle to mounting the ladder, so he did. He stepped out onto the overhang. It was a fantasy of goodwill. The feeder streets were jammed with participants waiting to join the main body of the march. He shook hands with the other people on the roof. There were Japanese tourists among them, very shy. A black high school step dance group that was part of the march was drawing enormous cheers from the thick crowds along the sidewalks. We never get enough black people out, so we love the ones who do come, he thought. He cheered as hard as he could, himself.

I love every moment of my life that has brought me here, he thought. They were going to stop the fuckers. One of the Japanese had a transistor radio. What was happening here was happening across the world. BBC was saying ten to fifteen million in all the capitals, the greatest march numbers in fucking human history ever . Berlin, Paris, London, had already reported and the numbers had been astounding. He thought, Today we are treading on the corpse of this war.

People in the march were saluting as though the overhang were a reviewing stand. He wanted to shout something juvenile, like Every hand being raised in this march is grasping the hand of a person who will not die because of us. He wanted the march to suck the occupants out of every building as it passed, and leave them empty.

He thought, You can’t control everything. He couldn’t control Nina. She was with one of the Berkeley women’s groups. She was pregnant and he had briefly thought he could get her on one of the ludicrous but earnest floats that were part of the parade, but she had laughed at him. They had their cell phones and would find each other at Union Square. Being on a float was still being part of the march and he couldn’t see why it had been such a bad idea for her.

Everything was good. He had a rising feeling in his chest like nothing he had ever felt. The signs could use improvement. Some of Douglas’s inventions would have made good signs, like War Is the Continuation of Business as Usual by Any Means Necessary, and Strike When the Gorgon Blinks. They were too literary, but still.

Everything was good. Two exile Cuban anarchist groups that had been fighting forever were marching together under a common banner saying Frente Libertario. Go, old men! he wanted to shout. He knew some of them. Maybe one or two of them might notice him there. He waved violently. He went right to the parapet to try to signal his presence. Their eyesight might not be up to it. Racially, everything was okay and looking better. It had been Nina’s idea to contact the step dance teams in the black high schools. There was a huge contingent from McClymonds. He wanted to be everywhere in the march. Except with the drum groups, which were unbearably loud. He felt drunk with gratitude and the conviction of victory. He thought, You can’t control everything … but this we can control. There would be no war. In part because of them there would be no war in Iraq. A few new people had come onto the overhang and he was going to shake hands with them, too. There would be no war. He thought, No war, No invasion, No.

With deep gratitude to both my editor Ann Close and my agent Andrew Wylie, and with affection for both. And with thanks for the encouragement and astute suggestions supplied by early readers of this book — my beloved brothers Nick and Chris, Mona Simpson, Tom Hayes, Joshua Pashman, Leslie McGrath, Max Porter. My old friend Tom Disch would have been on this list, but for outrageous fortune.

Norman Rush is the author of three previous works of fiction: Whites , a collection of stories, and two novels, Mating and Mortals . His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review , and Best American Short Stories. Mating was the recipient of the National Book Award. Rush and his wife live in Rockland County, New York.