John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

Why act at all then? you may ask. Very good! Because action is life. That’s the importance of the twelfth tablet; the “actions” of the dead king among the dead. The question is not shall I act or not act, but how shall I act? Even indecision is an act, after all: a choice not to act in either of two alternative directions. Is all this clear?

CLUMLY: Clear enough.M

SUNLIGHT: Good. Good! Then we come to the crux.

Once one’s said it, that one must act, one must ask oneself, shall I act within the cultural order I do not believe in but with which I am engaged by ties of love or anyway ties of fellow-feeling, or shall I act within the cosmic order I do believe in, at least in principle, an order indifferent to man? And then again, shall I act by standing indecisive between the two orders — not striking out for the cosmic order because of my human commitment, not striking out for the cultural order because of my divine commitment? Which shall I renounce, my body — of which ethical intellect is a function — or my soul?

CLUMLY: This is all very long-winded, you know. And confusing.

SUNLIGHT: Pure chaos.

CLUMLY: Hard to follow, I mean.

SUNLIGHT: A veritable labyrinth!

(Pause.)

Listen.

I was once a famous French-horn player.

CLUMLY: That’s ridiculous!

SUNLIGHT: My word of honor! Have I ever lied to you? I graduated from the Eastman School of Music, studied with Arkady Yegudkin, first horn in the orchestra of Czar Nicholas. Fled Russia in 1918, on a railroad flatcar, with his wife. Played all over Europe. Famous for what’s known as the “smiling embouchure.” Affectionately called “the General” by his students. You can check. I’ll give you even more detail — I’m not unaware that my time is running out. I played first horn for seven years with the Dallas Symphony. It was there, by the way, that I first began to dabble in magic. Learned from the famous

Thurston. You’ve heard of him?

CLUMLY: Never.

SUNLIGHT: You’re difficult to reason with, you know that?

CLUMLY: I’m sorry.

SUNLIGHT: Well, to make a long story short, I fell in love. A dancing girl in her thirties … No, I remember now … An operatic singer.

CLUMLY: Good God.

SUNLIGHT: You’re distracting me.

CLUMLY: I’m sorry.

SUNLIGHT: NO, I’ll tell you the truth. She was a striptease dancer. I saw her first in an obscene movie, one of those things in obscenacolor. She was beautiful, truly breathtaking. Naked, of course. They had a Kodiak bear strapped to a table, muzzled …

CLUMLY (violently) : That’s enough! I’m an old man. I’m tired.

Open the door. Do you hear me? Kozlowski!

SUNLIGHT: Shut up. Sit down.

CLUMLY: I’m telling you—

SUNLIGHT: But that’s absurd. I’ve got the gun!

CLUMLY: Then shoot. (Shouting:) Kozlowski!!

SUNLIGHT (wearily): All right. Take it easy. I was lying. There was no bear.

CLUMLY: You make me sick.

SUNLIGHT: It’s because I’m a criminal.

(Silence.)

That stops you, doesn’t it.

(Silence.)

You think, “The waste of it!” (Pause.) But is it waste? Shall we be honest, Clumly? I’ll tell you a story that’s absolutely true. You’ll know it at once, no need whatever to check it. I was once a policeman.

CLUMLY: Stop it!

SUNLIGHT (patiently): I was once a policeman. I got old, out of touch. The plain truth — I knew it as well as I knew my own name-was that I was about to be fired, there was absolutely no hope. And then one day I arrested a kind of nut, a man with a beard. A sort of crazy idea came into my head. I could use him. I had a feeling in my bones that the man was destructive, somehow fundamentally evil — you know what I mean? No one believed me, but I knew. The man was dangerous — whether because of something he’d done already or because of something he was capable of doing, I couldn’t say. Nevertheless, I was never more sure of anything in my life. Besides, he was my only chance.

CLUMLY: You’re wrong!

SUNLIGHT: Not quite. I began to hound him, think of nothing but getting him and thus vindicating myself, clear myself with the Mayor — who was a fool anyway — and, more important, clear myself with my men. They were like sons to me. The thought that they might have to pityingly let me go was more than I could bear. I was proud, in short. Hubris of the specially deadly, Christian kind. And yet on the other hand, I was right: the man was evil. He hounded me as cruelly as I hounded him. It was his pride, it came to me. His incredible ego. A twisted kind of ego that wasted itself on idiotic, spectacular tricks. I pretended to myself that he was what they would call in those old-fashioned thrillers “a Fiend,” but I knew the truth all along. He was merely a queer duck, a crackpot philosopher who’d slipped out of the society he lived in and detested it for surviving without him, yet he couldn’t really act, blow it up, destroy it; too feeble. He made me his sounding board, tried to use me, as I used him, to save himself. I thought: “Nobody can save himself. Salvation has always come from outside — from prophets, from wives, from children.” And then I thought: “But he doesn’t know it.” And then I knew I had him. He could outsmart me, trick me, mock me until he was blue in the face. Finally he was the mouse, and I was the tiger. And then one night — we were talking about towers — he stupidly gave me the gun. I knew who he was, by that time, and I knew that, as far as the law was concerned, he was a thief, public enemy, accessory to a killer. I could be vindicated. What do you suppose I did?

(Silence.)

I said, what do you suppose I did?

(Long pause.)

CLUMLY: Tell me what to do.

SUNLIGHT: How can I? We’re friends. I’ve told you that all along. But the fact remains, you are a policeman. You have a wife to think of — and more. Your feeling for your men. And for yourself. I’m an accessory to three murders. Not to mention other crimes of a lesser nature. Plenty. If you act on the side of the universe — if you follow my halfwit metaphor — you’ll blink, turn your face away. If you act for humanity …

CLUMLY: I don’t understand.

SUNLIGHT: You’re supposed to ask, at this point, what I do if I act on the side of the universe, and what I do if I act for humanity.

CLUMLY: Go on.

SUNLIGHT: If I act for the universe, I may kill you. If I act for humanity, I kill you and then myself.

(Silence.)

CLUMLY: There must be a choice. There’s always a choice!

SUNLIGHT: If only we weren’t so stubborn.

CLUMLY: I’m willing to listen.

SUNLIGHT: But I am stubborn. (Pause. ) It’s time for my trick.

CLUMLY: Wait!

SUNLIGHT: Consider! I lie down in my casket. I close the lid.

CLUMLY: Wait! One more minute!

SUNLIGHT (muffled — inside the casket) : Hark! A trumpet! (Sound of a trumpet, muffled. An instant later, sound of an explosion.)

CLUMLY: Wait!

While the smoke still billowed from under the coffin lid, he leaped toward the casket and opened it. Inside he found nothing but his revolver. To his left, the door of the crypt swung open.

“You ok, Chief?” Kozlowski said.

Clumly turned slowly, squinting. He closed the casket lid and dropped the pistol in its holster. “God knows,” he said. “You saw him?”

Kozlowski shook his head.

Clumly put his hand to his nose and pursed his lips. Three murders the man had said. He couldn’t be counting the woman killed by the car wreck. Someone else must have been killed, then. My fault, he thought. That’s it. Enough! His knees went weak. After a moment Clumly said, “Let’s head for home, Kozlowski.”