Saïd Sayrafiezadeh - New American Stories

Across the length of track, the Judge was looking straight into Carr’s eye. His face was carved like a mask of a face.

Carr drove very gently along the road. He had found soft leather driving gloves on the dash and he had put them on and now he was driving gently. He negotiated one turn, then another. He was bringing Lubeck’s mother her son’s body. Such a thing he had never done, but he felt it was within him to do it.

Lubeck was stretched out in the backseat. Carr had wrapped his head in a sack. Other than that, he might have been asleep. One often, however, can take the sign of a bag over a person’s head to mean that something bad has either happened or will happen. So anyone observing the scene would not have to wonder for very long at the difficulties that were assailing young Carr as he drove gently on the twisting road back into town.

Over a small bridge and down by the harbor. Along an alley and stopped beside a huge oak. Then, to the door.

— Come out, he said. Come out.

They came out, many of them, a crowd of them, all down to the road where Lubeck was. Carr went gently away.

—

Do you know the surface of the stream? Do you know its depth? Do you see as fish see, that water is not one but many, that there are paths through it, just as through land, and that to pass along a stream is a matter well beyond the powers of any human being?

Carr was reading from a thin book. He was still near the harbor, on a bench. He felt that he could not leave without giving Brennan the letter. But he did not want to.

A little girl was there with a cygnet on a narrow leather leash. She drew near and looked at Carr. Carr looked at her.

— When it grows up, it will do its best to hurt you, he said. I know that much.

— Her name is Absinthe, said the girl. And I’m Jane Charon.

— Nice to meet you, Jane.

— Not so nice for me, said Jane stoutly. You say such horrible things.

— I saw a swan maul a child once, said Carr. The child had to be removed. To the hospital, I mean. The swan was beaten to death with a stick.

Jane covered the cygnet’s ears. You’ll have to imagine for yourself what that looked like. I don’t really know where a bird’s ears are.

— But, said Jane. If you were there, why didn’t you help the child?

— Sometimes, when you see something awful about to happen, although you are a good person and mean everything for the best, you hope still that the bad thing will happen. You watch and hope that the awful thing will happen and that you will see it. Then when it happens you are surprised and shocked and pretend that you didn’t want it to happen. But really you did. It was that way with me and the swan.

— So you were on the swan’s side? asked Jane.

— I guess so. Yes, that’s right.

— Well, that’s even worse. It’s all right for a person to pick a side, but once he’s on that side he should stay there. You ought to have helped the swan escape. You should have stopped them from killing it and helped it away. Or even helped it to maul the child, if you were really the swan’s friend. How could anyone ever trust you?

Jane gave Carr a stern look and continued on down the path. The cygnet nipped at him as it passed, but its beak got fouled up in Carr’s coat, and it missed.

— You can’t own a swan, anyway, Carr yelled. The Queen of England owns them all already.

And it was true. The Queen of England is the owner of all swans. It was decided a long time ago, and so it has always been.

—

The letter was in a cream-colored envelope. Francis Brennan, it said on the outside.

Carr gave the envelope to Brennan. He was standing on the stairs. Then he was handing the envelope to Brennan.

— What is this? said Brennan.

— They gave it to me. This morning, they gave it to me, for you. Brennan took the envelope reluctantly. He turned it over in his hand.

— Tell me how it happened, he said.

— He shot Lubeck, and then they gave me the envelope. That’s it.

— That’s it, said Brennan. He opened the envelope.

The floor of the room was wooden, and the boards ran for a very long way. Carr saw the board all the way to the wall and then back.

Brennan handed the opened letter back to Carr.

—

— What’s there to do? said Brennan.

He was a man of some principle, Brennan. He was studying for a doctorate in philosophy and believed in maintaining a certain decorum in one’s manner of life. Nevertheless, he had refused to go with Lubeck that morning, and now he was to go himself.

— You’ll go with me, won’t you? he said to Carr.

— I will, said Carr, feeling the massive unbowed hand of fate upon his shoulder.

A long pause, then:

— Was he a very good shot? asked Brennan.

— Rather not. They were pretty close, and firing and firing. He must have missed Lubeck six or seven times.

He did not say anything about how Lubeck had stopped firing. He felt it might make matters worse.

— Six or seven times, said Brennan to himself. Six or seven times. At how many paces?

— Paces? I don’t know about paces. It was about twenty feet, though closer when he shot him.

Brennan nodded.

— Twenty feet.

It mustn’t have seemed to Brennan that the Judge was a very good pistoleer. However, the fact of the matter is, it is not so easy to shoot someone with a gun, even when you want to. In the Great War, for instance, people were always shooting their guns in the air instead of at the enemy.

— I’m going to just be here, said Brennan.

— All right.

— I’ll just be here, all right?

— All right. And I’ll meet you here.

— Here’s fine.

So Carr left. Outside it was already dark and quite cold. Certain patches of air were colder than others, for there was no wind at all, none. He walked through these various patches and thought all the while of the soft cloth on which the pistols had been laid.

—

At that exact moment, the cloth was wrapped about both pistols in an intricate way so that the pistols were both protected from each other and from outside objects. The pistols had been taken apart, cleaned and oiled, and put back together. Now they sat in the trunk of the Judge’s automobile. The automobile was in the drive before the Judge’s house. The Judge was inside, sitting with his wife. She was pleading with him.

Carr could not sleep. He tried to read, but couldn’t make sense of anything. Then he thought, Perhaps if I sit at the table, which is bare, I will be able to think of something that will put me in a position to sleep.

Often, I think, when one can’t sleep it is because one is of a sudden required to come to a certain conclusion or think through a certain idea, and one is unable to do it. Only by sheer exhaustion, deception, or pharmaceuticals can one pass by.

He sat at the table.

The ancient Egyptians believed that there was a traveler, a god who was a traveler, who would come sometimes to your table. You would never know him. He would just come knocking at your door, begging a meal, and if you let him in and fed him, if you gave him a place to stay, and kindness, he would reward you by teaching you the language that cats speak, so that when you were dead you could listen and learn from them the passage to paradise.

Lubeck was never kind, thought Carr. If anyone ever came begging at his door, he did not let that person in.

—

Brennan was waiting on the steps when Carr arrived. Lubeck’s stepfather came out. He gave Brennan a key.

— There’s not much to know anyway, he said. It all just continues. Brennan stood up.