John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“Wages of sin,” the bearded man said. “You understand what his sin is, Benson?”

The thief looked panicky for an instant, then turned away. After a while he too stretched out for sleep, and the bearded man stood with his head cocked, watching. He stood that way for a long time, a heavy-hearted tramplike figure in the dimness of the cellblock. For all the clowning he’d gone through tonight, he looked miserable. Without looking at what he was doing, he began to tie and magically untie knots in the farmer’s handkerchiefs he’d gotten from Salvador. What he really needed was some pigeons, he said to Nick. He talked on and on and once closed his hands and opened them again and looked up as if startled by a beating of hundreds of wings. The handkerchiefs were gone, and Nick really did see pigeons for a moment. The Sunlight Man batted the air, grieved and tired but charged with frantic energy. “Get away! Shoo! Jesus!” Feathers whirred like motors and a barndust smell bloomed through Nick’s memory. Then they were gone.

“You’re really something,” Nick said. When he glanced at Verne he was sitting with his arms around his knees, scowling, not sure what to think.

The guard came and switched off the last of the lights, all but the end one in the hall. After that it was quiet for a long time. Nick was almost asleep, troubled by vague dreams of creatures, when the talking began.

“Don’t be fooled by clever hands, sir,” the Sunlight Man said. He’d be lying with the back of his head on his hands, as he always lay. “Entertainment’s all very well, but the world is serious. It’s exceedingly amusing, when you think about it: nothing in life is as startling or shocking or mysterious as a good magician’s trick. That’s what makes stagecraft deadly. Listen closely, friend. You see great marvels performed on the stage — the lady sawed in half, the fat man supported by empty air, the Hindu vanishing with the folding of a cloth — and the subtlest of poisons drifts into your brain: you think the earth dead because the sky is full of spirits, you think the hall drab because the stage is adazzle with dimestore gilt. So King Lear rages, and the audience grows meek, and tomorrow, in the gray of old groceries, the housewife will weep for Cordelia and despair for herself. They weren’t fools, those old sages who called all art the Devil’s work. It eats the soul.”

Nick turned his head. He could make out only the outline of the high dome, the seared nose, the uncertain frizzle of beard.

“And yet one is an artist, of course. No harm in it, if one knows where one stands. Nevertheless, don’t be fooled by visions of pigeons or monstrous turtles or crimson snakes. Consider this drunk, Herr Robert. American Bund. That surprises you, perhaps? Goes to meetings, Wednesday nights — or would if he knew about them — puts on a black armband with a swastika, or would. And yet he’s a proper citizen, you know. They’ll release him in the morning. And you, on the other hand …”

He fell silent. Nick tried to think about it. But his body felt too wide awake, tingling with suspense. It was the kind of awakeness he’d felt just after the accident, when they were bending over the man and woman, shining their flashlights on their faces and legs, talking to them and sometimes shouting to one another across the rain-wet grass.

“It’s too bad,” the bearded man said pensively. “But then, of course, it’s natural. Society must protect itself from whatever it thinks to be threatening it, and to Society, you seem a threat. Pity, of course. You’re not much of a threat, God knows. But intelligence is not the world’s strong point.” He sighed. Nick’s brother rolled over, struggling in his sleep, and swore.

“The thief and the drunk,” the Sunlight Man said. “There’s society. You find that remarkable? Ah, son, I’ve seen how you spy on our thief, all envy. ‘A professional,’ you think. ‘A cool one,’ you say. ‘A mystery.’ Poor fool. It’s the glitter of the stage, the dazzling exception, mere artifice. He’s a robot. It’s our precious Mr. Benson who put you here, Mr. Benson who’ll be your judge and jury and, if all goes well, executioner. Are you so mad as to think you’ve been thrown in jail because you hurt somebody? Damaged some property? Ridiculous! Listen. You’re here because in the sheer ignorance of youth and defiance, with the sullenness of some sharp-eyed Injun, you disrupted prediction. I don’t praise you for it. I find you mildly disgusting, to tell the truth. But I’m older, and so I allow for that. I’m sorry to see you die.”

“Shut up,” he said suddenly. He lay with his eyes locked open in the dark.

To his surprise, the bearded man said nothing more, and as the minute of silence stretched on into two and then three he felt what he mistook at first for relief. But gradually he realized he was no longer revolted by the senseless talk. Even at first perhaps it hadn’t really been disgust he’d felt. The man’s talk made him feel the way the police made him feel, treating him like an animal, torturing him for nothing. He’d wanted to kill him, the same as he’d wanted to kill the police, and at the same time he’d felt beaten before he started, as if nothing he did to the bearded man could have any effect whatever. He wasn’t human. Except that that wasn’t right either. With the police he felt like shutting his eyes, making himself limp. With the bearded man he felt like watching more intently, eyes as wide as when he stood in a clearing with Ben Hodge’s rifle, hunting.

Before he knew he would speak, he said, “Why are you here? I mean what are you after?”

The man laughed quietly in the darkness. “A ball on an inclined plane,” he said.

Nick waited.

“We’re all victims of our foolishness, one way or another,” the bearded man said. “The inertia of psychological patterns.” He paused. “To descend to the tiresome particular, I found myself involved in an affair of the heart. With the wife of a colleague, a fellow Senator unfortunately — concerning whom I prefer to say no more. Lady’s honor, you know. I’ve explained to them, of course, that my problem is glandular, but being fundamentally sensible people they are disinclined to trust me.”

“I don’t believe you,” Nick said cautiously. “There never was any lady.”

“Ah well, your privilege.” He chuckled. “There are still vast areas of freedom. Actually, though, you’re right. I was lying. The brutal truth is, I killed a poor carry-out boy at the A&P. Backed over him while he was loading the trunk of my car. His name was Larry.” The man spoke more rapidly, patting something nervously. “It was an accident,” he said. “It could have happened to anyone. I simply forgot. I have a great deal on my mind — responsibilities, troubles, worries. I may be drafted at any time. The trucking firm I work for is unsound, my sister is pregnant, my housekeeper’s dissatisfied with her wages. And so it was a slip-up. My mind wandered. Dear God in Heaven, anyone could have done it. But poor Larry, pauvre petit, poor harmless victim!” He pounded on the wall. “He lived with his mother.”

Nick Slater closed his eyes.

“You believe me this time?” the bearded man asked mildly.

Nick said nothing. He felt weightless. The thing was different from teasing. He knew, without needing words for it, that there was a limit to teasing, a certain point, not quite predictable but nevertheless definite and final, beyond which teasing would not go. But there was no such point with the Sunlight Man: he could go on as long as the world endured. He didn’t care; that was the secret. Even murderers cared, had some remotely human feeling. The Sunlight Man was as indifferent as a freight train driving a cow from its track.