John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

There were those in Batavia who would gladly have listened to him later, would eagerly have searched out, if it weren’t too late, as much as could be known of the Sunlight Man’s thought, hunting down the secrets of his interwoven innocence and violence. But in the jail, at least in the beginning, he had no real audience but Clumly, as he knew. The truth was simple, at that time. First, he smelled. Second, he was an outrageously self-centered, tiresome man, however talented in his odd, unsettling way. No doubt deep down he had two or three of the usual human virtues, but it was not the business of the police to notice either virtues or defects, now that he was jailed. Their business was to keep him in his cell, feed him, and, with professional indifference, see that he stayed alive. As for his fellow prisoners, they had no time for either genius or madness. All three of his fellow prisoners had been in jail before and might have been expected to endure their confinement with some resignation; but two, the Indians, were in serious trouble, and the third, though he knew he would be found not guilty (although he was guilty), had reasons of his own for gloom.

The Sunlight Man seemed to have no sense of how the others felt. He’d never been in jail before, he said, and he apparently believed himself set apart by nature from the others — as if by that perhaps unjust and unwarranted, meaningless brand, like the mark of Cain — so that his punishment was more cruel than theirs, downright absurd, in fact. When the guard shoved him in and closed the door the Sunlight Man leaped back at the bars and clung to them, mouth gaping. Bearded, peering out with those small, close-set, wounded eyes burning deep in the ashes of his face, he looked like some pirate’s minor crewman marooned for half a century, still outraged but deeply befuddled now, near despair. The Indians to his left sat unmoving on their pallets merely looking at him. The middle-aged man to his right had his back turned.

“Guard!” the Sunlight Man howled. The echo boomed at him from all around and he cringed, gorillalike, looking over his shoulder. The Indians said nothing. He gripped the bars tightly and his plump fists went white. He stood silent a moment, like a timid child, returning the calm stare of the Indians, then he began once more to howl for the guard.

At last one of the Indians said, “You get him, you’ll wish you didn’t, mister.”

The Sunlight Man considered it, still watching for the guard, then turned his head once more to look at the Indians. They were young, teen-agers, the older one lean and muscular, with a short, flat forehead and a thin mouth. The younger one was fat, as apelike as the Sunlight Man himself, but cleaner, with downward slanting, unfocused eyes that seemed never fully opened. The two Indians were like Mutt and Jeff, like a pine tree and a mound of earth, like contrasted endocrinological types in a high-school biology book. When the new prisoner was finished looking at them, grimly and suspiciously, or so it seemed at the moment, he smiled suddenly, like a wicked child, and opened his hands like a Jewish tailor.

“But you see,” he said, “I have his billfold.” It hung, incontrovertible as a flat-iron, between the thumb and first finger of the man’s left hand.

The Indians stared and even the humpbacked thief turned to look, and, after a silence, they all began to laugh.

When the guard came, the new prisoner handed him the billfold humbly, as if sheepishly, and explained, showing his large, perfect teeth, “Practice.”

The guard said nothing. He pocketed the billfold without even checking to see that whatever money he’d had was still inside (he regretted that later, though nothing was missing), and he held out his hand again. His face was dark red, whether with rage or embarrassment you could not have guessed. Chief of Police Clumly and Captain Sangirgonio — Miller — stood watching from the hallway, with their arms folded, Clumly looking panicky and mildly outraged, pale eyes bulging, Miller grinning broadly, one eyebrow cocked. The bearded prisoner put his fingers to his lips studying the guard’s outstretched, patient hand, then nodded thoughtfully and produced from the empty air, as it seemed, a wristwatch, a pack of Kools, a pencil, and a fifty-cent piece. The guard stuffed them all in his pocket without glancing at them, bit his lips together, and turned to stalk between Clumly and Miller and away down the hall.

“He’s good, you know that?” Miller said.

Clumly said, “There’ll be a file on that man. You mark my words.”

Miller grinned. “Fifty bucks says you’re wrong, Chief. That’s no pick-pocket there.” He rubbed his hands. “We caught us a magician.”

“Negative,” Clumly said. “What’s a magician doing defacing a public thoroughfare?”

Miller turned mock-solemn. “You’re right, Chief. That’s the work of a pick-pocket.”

Clumly scowled his disgust and went back to his office. Miller nodded admiration and farewell, and the bearded prisoner bowed from the waist, like a Chinaman, fingertips together, his fire-blasted face like a large baked apple wrinkled and dry with age. When Miller was gone, the new prisoner went to the back of his cell, demonically pleased with himself, and sat down.

He’d won them all, that moment — both the police and his fellow prisoners — and so, by some inevitable logic of his character, he had to destroy the effect. He said to both Indians, as though they weren’t worth addressing singly, “What did they arrest you for?” He managed to make it sound thoroughly unfriendly, as though he wanted to know for his own safety. When the older one answered, the bearded prisoner closed his eyes and seemed to pay no attention — though he heard, all right, they would find out later.

The younger one said, “Why they got you here?”

He leered. “Because I’m mad, friend.” He stood up, threw out his arms, tipped back his head, and lifted his thick right leg straight out to the side so that the toe of his shoe hung, perfectly motionless, four inches beyond the fingers of his right hand. The baggy suitcoat opened, revealing a dirty white shirt and no tie. It was then that he began his infuriating prattle.

“Jesus God,” the older of the Indians said.

Even after the light went off, a little before midnight, the Sunlight Man went on jabbering, playing madman. As far as the other prisoners knew, he did not sleep a wink all night, though for a while he was quiet. In the morning they saw him squatting on the floor, wringing his hands, his head drawn in between his fat, hunched shoulders, small lips pursed. He was studying some tiny white stones on the floor. How he had smuggled them in no one knew. He was tricky all right. After a long time he gathered them up and shook them in one hand like dice and sprinkled them out again, and again sat studying them. The thief, Walter Boyle, pretended not to notice, but the Indians bent close to the bars.

“What you doing?” the fat younger one said.

The Sunlight Man raised one finger to his lips, commanding silence, and went on studying the stones. At last, shaking his head sadly, he gathered up the stones a last time and closed them in his fist. When the fist opened again, the stones were gone. He stood up and buttoned his suitcoat. “Casting the spots,” he said. “A mysterious business.”

“What?” the older Indian said.

Once more the Sunlight Man raised one finger to his lips, and this time he winked. “Sh!” he said. “They’re listening!”

After breakfast he began to talk again, and now it was worse than before. He was like a spoiled child insisting on attention — winking, leering, ranting, pretending to weep.

The younger Indian said suddenly, “Hey, shut up, will you?”