Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

But no one knew.

Among the sane, I realized, there is no full knowing. If you’re sane, you ride without risk, for the risks are not real. And when it comes to pass, some sane asshole will shrug and say, “Oh, well.”

Events had their own track.

At noon we established radio contact. A half hour later a small gray pilot boat pulled alongside. There were guns and khaki uniforms.

Ned Rafferty touched my arm.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Just fine.”

“That’s good, then. Steady as she goes.” He squeezed my arm. “Clear sailing. Just us and the wild red yonder.”

We made Havana in time for a late lunch.

Afterward there was paperwork, then our hosts arranged for a bus that took us along a coastal highway, past poverty and palms and vast fields of sugarcane. The ride lasted four hours. We stopped once for water, once for fuel, but otherwise it was exactly as Rafferty predicted, clear sailing, just us and the wild red yonder.

For six days, which I marked off on a pocket calendar, we lazed away the time at an orientation compound situated beachside a few miles west of Sagua la Grande. It was an old plantation house that had been converted into a combined resort and training facility, with colorful flower beds and neatly tended grounds sloping to the sea. The rooms were spacious, the tennis courts lighted for night play. Plush, to be sure, but there was also menace. The watchtowers and barbed wire and armed cadres.

“Mix and match,” Tina said. “Half Che, half JFK. Two stars for originality.”

Then six relaxing days.

We devoted our mornings to the sun, swimming and snorkeling, idling. Tina built elegant sand castles; Ollie demolished them; Sarah snoozed behind sunglasses; Ned Rafferty taught me the elements of killer tennis, yelling encouragement as he fired cannon shots from point-blank range. A languorous time. Rum punch at sunset, dinner by lantern light in the villa’s pink-tiled courtyard, linen tablecloths and Russian wine and Swiss crystal. The service was cordial and efficient. Why? I’d sometimes wonder. Then I’d think: Why not? A holiday, I’d tell myself, but late at night I’d hear machine guns, or voices counting cadence, and on those occasions I’d find myself engaged in serious speculation.

No answers, though, just questions.

“Play it by ear,” Sarah advised. “Mouth shut, eyes open. That’s all I can say right now.”

It was no use pressing. I was afraid of the answers, no doubt, and I was also a little afraid of Sarah herself. She seemed cool and distant. Small, subtle things that added up to large, obvious things. The way she moved; her silences; a tactical precision to her love-making.

The hardness factor, too.

A power disequilibrium. She had it, I didn’t.

“You know something?” she said one evening. We were in bed, windows open, and there was the nighttime rustle of wind and ocean. “I was born for this, William.”

“This?” I said.

“Right here, right now. The whole decade. Like destiny or something. I honestly believe it couldn’t happen without me.” She made a pensive sound, then ran her tongue along my hipbone. “The cheerleading and the funeral home—all that—when I look back, I think, God, it was all planned , it was like a ladder up against a high wall, and I couldn’t see the top, but I started climbing, I had this incredible drive, I didn’t know why, I just had it, so I kept climbing, and here I am. It was planned for me.”

“Destiny,” I said.

She shrugged. “Laugh. It doesn’t bother me.”

“I’m not laughing. Wondering.”

“All I know is what I feel,” she said. “It’s in the stars, somehow. The DNA. I can’t explain it any better. This goddamn war. I hate it, I do hate it, but it’s what I’m here for. I hate it but I love it.”

She swiveled out of bed and went to an open window. For several minutes she simply stood there, framed by the future, whatever it was.

Then she sighed, squatted down, and pulled a pillowcase over her head.

“A long time ago,” she said, “I told you something. I want to be wanted . By you, by Interpol. Those handsome dudes on the FBI—doesn’t matter, just wanted. Do you see? I need that.”

“Of course.”

“Here, too. They want me.” She made a broad gesture with her arm. “What I’m trying to say is, I mean, I’m not the strongest person in the world. I get overwhelmed by all this. You know, this Red connection, Cuba and all that. I don’t know where it’s headed. Guns or jail. I’m committed, though, and it’s necessary, but sometimes I get the creeps, I get scared. You understand? Part of me wants to run away. Like to Rio, or anywhere. Have babies and clip coupons. Be your wife, maybe—something normal—anything.”

I smiled at the pillowcase.

“Except?”

“Yes,” she said. “Except there’s still that ladder I told you about.”

“And me?”

“You.”

“No grand destiny, Sarah. A guy on the run.”

“Agreed.”

“So where do I fit?”

She waited a moment. Outside, there were crickets and night birds.

“Difficult question,” she said. “There’s always Sweden or Hudson Bay, right? Hide your head. Cover your eyes and wish the war away.”

“I didn’t say—”

“William, listen to me. I love you, you know that, but sometimes—lots of times—I can’t help wondering about your backbone. All that bullshit about a dangerous world. The bombs are real, la-di-dah, but you don’t ever do anything, just crawl under your Ping-Pong table. That jellyfish attitude, I despise it. Despise, that’s the only word. I love you, but the despising makes it hard.”

Sarah turned and made her way toward the bed. She was attractive, I thought, in her chrome bracelet and white pillowcase.

For a few moments we lay still.

“Involvement,” she said. “In a day or two, I’m afraid, it’ll get very rough around here, and if you can’t hack it—”

“A warning?”

“No, just a statement. Love and war. Sooner or later you have to choose sides.”

Six splendid days.

On the seventh we were roused a half hour before dawn.

A bell, a shrill whistle. “Up, up!” someone yelled, and then another voice, much louder: “Haul ass!”

We assembled in the courtyard.

A single rank, stiff at attention. All around us were khakied soldiers with heavy boots and bad tempers. “Freeze!” someone shouted, and we froze.

Dream time, I decided.

I concentrated on the sounds. Across the courtyard, in shadows, a door slammed shut. There was the squeal of a bullhorn.

We stood with our backs to a tile wall.

At noon we were still there.

Near midnight Tina said, “Wow,” then smiled and collapsed. But infirmity was not allowed. After a moment one of the soldiers hoisted her back to a standing position. No explanations, just blood in the feet. Speech was prohibited. Eighteen hours, I thought, then later I thought: twenty hours. Mostly, though, I tried to keep from thinking. Don’t think, I’d think. Then I’d think: this world of ours. But I refused to think about it. A matter of moral posture. Shoulders square, spine stiff. I calculated the precise specifications of pain, quantifying things, squaring off the roots, letting the numbers pile up as a kind of insulation.

And then the zeros came. Blank time, nothing at all. When I looked up, it was full daylight.

Two men stood staring. They were dressed identically in combat fatigues, jungle boots, and black berets. Their skin, too, was black, and their eyes.

“Oooo, lookie,” one said, and smiled.

The other did not smile.

They surveyed us for a time, then the first man—the smiler—stepped forward and said, “Hi, there, kiddies. Welcome to camp.”