Jim Shepard - Lights Out in the Reptile House

Kehr seemed to be pondering him. Finally he arched his eyebrows, as if he’d come to some conclusion. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world,” he said, standing up. “The unreasonable man adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on unreasonable men.” He crossed to the front of the table and leaned close to where Karel was sitting on the floor, and took Karel’s chin in his hand. Karel shrank back. “Later on, if you haven’t changed your mind, I’ll kill your friend, while you’re listening,” he said. “And then I’ll come here.” He drew his finger delicately across Karel’s belly. “I’ll open your stomach and play with your insides.”

Karel was breathing out as if getting ready to hold his breath. He said, “You’re trying to frighten me.”

“Yes, I am,” Kehr said. He stood up, and knocked on the door.

“Leave her alone,” Karel blurted as he was leaving. “Do whatever you want with me.”

That was very good, Kehr said offhandedly, on the way out. Those were admirable sentiments. He signaled something Karel couldn’t see to the man outside and shut the door behind him.

It was cold. There was a mattress on the floor but no blanket. He ran in place and waved his arms to keep warm but only succeeded in making himself sweaty and even colder. The peephole opened with a sliding sound and an eye appeared in it, blinking, to see what he was doing.

He felt better for the company. “What am I doing here?” he asked, and the peephole slid shut.

The floor was wet. He rolled the mattress into a tight tube to keep himself off the dampness, and half sat, half lay on it, but it was damp and cold and smelled and he couldn’t sleep. He stayed like that for long stretches thinking of nothing. He called and pounded on the walls but Leda didn’t seem to hear him. He held imaginary conversations with her in which he told her everything he’d done and she forgave him, forgave anything. He tried to imagine them back in the Golden Angel, but it seemed to have been shattered from within.

He heard shots and listened attentively for more, and then listened to the silence. He played a game of geography with Leda’s face. He began to be more aware of basic needs: to eat, to relieve himself, to sleep, to find the resting position that was the least painful. He lay on his side on the rolled mattress and resigned himself to being wet on that side. He thought about raisins with cinnamon, and the image was momentarily soothing.

He was dozing when the door rattled and opened and he jerked upright in alarm. The damaged part of his face throbbed with the movement and he felt some trouble completely closing his jaw. Someone was peering over him. He realized it was his father. He burst into tears and then stopped, angry with himself, and started rubbing his eyes. His father set the lantern down and reached over and patted his head and shoulder helplessly. “How are you?” he said. “How are they treating you?”

“They put me in prison,” Karel said. He sat up farther, shivering.

His father had brought a small blanket, and laid it on Karel’s lap. “What happened to your face?” he asked.

“Kehr hit me,” Karel said. “The soldiers who took me hit me.” He had to look away. He thought that this of everything was the worst; that before this moment maybe his father hadn’t known, maybe his father would’ve helped.

“They hit you?” his father said.

“Will you help me? Help us?” Karel asked, though he felt himself sliding hopelessly down the sentence as he asked it, knowing the answer.

“Of course,” his father said. “Kehr’ll listen to me. All you have to do is your part.”

“ My part? ” Karel wailed. “ My part? ”

His father made patting motions on the air, teetering in his crouch. “We’re talking about just confirming what we already have information on,” he said.

“I don’t know anything,” Karel cried.

His father nodded, and looked puzzled. “Kehr says you do,” he said.

Karel closed his eyes tightly and wanted everything different.

“Does it hurt a lot?” his father asked.

He didn’t answer.

“I can help you, but you’ve got to help me,” his father said. “Karel.”

Karel was crying silently, now, and refused to see his father anymore. He looked at the door.

“What position do you think I’m in?” his father asked. He got to his feet. “You think they’re happy with me about this?” He waited, but Karel would not look at him. “Who are you to judge me?” he finally said. He was angry again. “You know better than all these other people? You’re so sure what the right thing to do is? Which one of us is obeying the law here and which one of us isn’t? Who are you to judge me? ” he shouted.

Karel kept his face to the wall.

The peephole slid open. “Everything okay in there?” a voice asked.

Everything was fine, his father said. He waited for the peephole to close and then went over to the door. Nothing happened for a minute or two, and then he sighed, as if exhausted. “I’ve never known what to make of you,” he said. He sounded drained, and Karel felt acutely sorry for him. “I’ve never known how to get any support, any …” He sighed again. “… support out of you.”

Karel was quiet. He thought that all his anger at his father’s failures had turned inward. I never hated you, he wanted to say; I only always wanted to talk, I never learned how to talk. Why didn’t I ever inspire talk? And he thought he understood his father a little and pitied him, but was ashamed of him, and ashamed of himself. He was thinking all that when his father left.

The next day no one came to see him. He didn’t get any food and his joints ached from the dampness and when he banged on the door and said he had to go to the bathroom no one answered. He relieved himself in the corner and the cell stank from it.

Some food appeared the day after that, chick peas in a bowl with water, and he realized it had been brought in while he was asleep. The eye at the peephole apologized for the day before and said they’d forgotten.

That night he had another visitor, carried in on a pallet and left there. He couldn’t see who in the darkness. He stayed near the wall at first, wary.

“Hello, there,” Albert said. He raised an arm off the palette. Karel knelt beside him and Albert said, “They’re trying everything.”

“How are you?” Karel whispered. “Are you all right? What’d they do to you?”

“They want information,” Albert said. He swallowed audibly and Karel could not look at his body.

“They think I know something,” Karel said. “I keep telling them I don’t.”

Albert nodded as best he could. “My fault,” he said. “I should have let you know what was going on.” He sniffed at himself and swallowed.

“Got you mixed up in this,” he added.

Karel took his hand and was shaking with fear and pity. The fingernails were destroyed and the fingers lolled and rolled back against the palm.

“They did something to my eye,” Albert said. He took deeper breaths.

Karel got his father’s blanket and put it behind Albert’s head. He wanted to help and couldn’t. He wanted to ask questions and didn’t know where to begin. He was afraid of being here and afraid of being hurt and afraid for Leda, and afraid of dying as ignorant and stupid as he was. His mind raced around to no purpose and the words he had were crippled and inadequate and eluded his attempts to order them into sentences.

“I’ve exorcised Kehr,” Albert said, and he breathed more evenly. “He’s shown me the instruments and I’m still here. I’ve reduced him. I’ve made him ridiculous,” he said. “I believe in miracles.”