Project Itoh - Genocidal Organ

“Uh, thank you, I think …” I managed to say.

“No,” Lucius said bluntly. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m neither praising nor condemning US foreign policy. I’m just calling it like I see it. After all, who says Enlightenment is always a good thing? What might seem like progress to one person might be a self-righteous imposition of values to another.”

I didn’t really know what to say to this man. Was he really just a club owner? I decided to ask him straight up.

Lucius laughed. “Am I ‘just’ a club owner? I guess so, in the sense that Eric Hoffer was ‘just’ a longshoreman, or your dear friend Kafka was ‘just’ a petty bureaucrat. The Japanese have a saying that all honest trades are equally honorable. And I think it was Joseph Conrad who said that thought is no respecter of persons.”

“Lucius, what are you two talking about?” I turned around—Lucia was back.

“Not much. Just how freedom is a currency we spend, and how war is Enlightenment …”

“Just the usual idle chitchat then?” Lucia laughed.

Lucius smiled. “Actually, there aren’t too many people who I can talk to like Mr. Bishop here. Sadly, though, I’m going to have to call it a day and retire to the office. My stevedoring duties call, as it were. But it was interesting talking to you, Mr. Bishop, and I do hope you’ll come by again sometime so we can pick up where we left off.”

“I’d like that,” I said.

Lucia and I watched Lucius as he disappeared into the back office.

What was it about the disappearing figure that made me feel nervous?

3

“Well, you weren’t wrong when you described him as being the introspective sort,” I said to Lucia after Lucius had left. “He struck me as being more the Gallic philosopher than the stereotypical Czech businessman.” I took another sip of my Budvar.

“I told you so. He keeps you entertained, though, doesn’t he?”

“It can’t be easy to make a success of a club like this, though?”

“Maybe not. But as long as there are people who remember what life was like before the surveillance crackdown, and as long as there are youths who don’t remember, but who still feel clamped down on and claustrophobic without being quite able to explain why, there will always be a need for places like this. It’s just a case of supply and demand.”

“So the people who are here now are the people who demand their freedom—is that what you’re saying?” I asked.

“A taste of it, at least. Take me—I’m scared of terrorists, why wouldn’t I be? I’m glad of the war on terror, as they call it, and the fact that our society is now organized enough to nip potential threats in the bud. In that sense, I suppose I might be different from those boys and girls on the dance floor. But that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes want a breather, a time-out. Just once in a while, it’s nice to be able to relax and spend time in a place where nobody knows what you’re eating, what you’re drinking, who you’re dancing with, for how long …”

Me time. In the truest sense of the phrase. That was what Lucia got from this place.

A place where nothing is observed, nothing recorded, and anything goes.

And Lucia wanted to share it with me.

“It was very kind of you to bring me with you to this place,” I said. “Thank you.”

“It’s nothing. It just felt like the right thing to do. I’m not sure why,” Lucia mumbled, staring at her beer glass.

“To talk about John?” I asked, as I placed my own glass down on the counter.

“Maybe. I’m not religious. I have no priest to talk to. And I don’t believe in counseling.”

“I know what you mean. I’m the same.”

Lucia’s eyes glinted with the faintest hint of a smile. “Poor little me, huh? No sympathetic priest to pour my heart out to, and I’m not in the habit of keeping a journal to sort out my thoughts.”

“Maybe you should write a book? They’re all the rage, aren’t they, confessional memoirs. A coming-of-age story or something.”

“I just don’t seem to have the talent or the inclination for it. Pretty pathetic, I know, considering I studied language.”

“Well, I guess that leaves just one option. You’ll have to tell me all about it.”

Lucia’s eyes flicked away from mine and toward the abyss that threatened to pull in the dancers. It was as if she longed to be sucked down into that bottomless pit herself.

“I was in bed with him when Sarajevo disappeared.” So began Lucia’s story.

Her voice was completely different from that point on. A thin whisper. Really, I shouldn’t have been able to hear her without bringing my ear right up to her lips. The music should have drowned her out. And yet, somehow, I could hear every one of her words with absolute clarity.

“John’s wife had gone to visit her sister in Sarajevo, taking their daughter with her. John and I were making the most of that precious time together without them. Cambridge was our oyster. It was a time when we didn’t have to worry, when John wasn’t constantly looking over his shoulder. It was such a lovely time. I was happy. So happy that I couldn’t even bring myself to feel the slightest bit guilty at what we were doing. Every spare moment I had, I spent with him.”

Then Lucia paused and bit down hard on her lip. An act of self-flagellation to punish herself?

“I remember it clearly. We had just made love, and I had gone for a shower. I emerged clean and fresh to find John frozen stiff, glued to the nanolayer projection. The front page was showing an update flashing across the top. Sarajevo had been hit by a nuclear bomb. He was watching the linked video clip.

“I was terrified. I just stood there, still wrapped in my towel. He, too, was paralyzed, just watching the same clip over and over again. The anchorwoman in the clip was just reading out information as it was transmitted to her, and the subpage below the clip was saturated with constant updates, links to new clips. John made no effort to look at any of them. He wasn’t interested in finding out any new information. He was stunned enough by what he had already seen, and all he could do was keep his eyes glued to that.”

Lucia stopped to take a sip of her beer. Her voice was calm and disinterested; it was as if she were talking about events that had happened to somebody else. I almost expected her to start the next part of her story with something along the lines of “once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a woman called Lucia Sukrova.” But when she continued, it was about how John Paul flew to Sarajevo.

“I wanted to go with him, but even I had some sense of shame—it would hardly do for a mistress to accompany her lover as he traveled to discover the fate of his wife and daughter. Had John and I been in bed laughing when the bomb exploded? Was he inside me when his wife and only child were obliterated from this earth? I didn’t know what to do, what I could do. I had no idea how I was going to act, how I was meant to act, when he returned from Sarajevo. The worst part of it was that I still loved John, with all my heart. I ached for him as soon as he got on that flight. I needed to feel his body wrapped around mine again. And I wanted to mortify the part of myself that had these unbearably selfish feelings.

“In the end, I didn’t need to worry about what to say to him when he came back. He just silently returned, dropped out of school, and went away somewhere. I didn’t try and look for him. I was afraid of seeing him again. After all, he had become the living embodiment of my own terrible sin. And I didn’t have the confidence or the strength to face the consequences of my own actions.”