The Comedy is Finished

12

Trying to distract himself, Larry Crosfield sat in his bedroom and wrote in his notebook, the most recent in a series of notebooks he’d kept over the years. He wrote:

The dreadful paradox, of course, is the absolute necessity to do evil in order to bring about good. To make the world a better place, one must be worthy. To be worthy, one must strive for sainthood (in the non-clerical sense of total commitment to unattainable but appropriate ideals), and yet the lethargic and static forces of Society are so powerful that it requires, specifically requires, extra-social acts in order to promote change. One must do evil while knowing it to be evil and at the same time one must strive for sainthood. This paradox—

No. Larry couldn’t go on, he couldn’t stand it any longer. It was after nine o’clock, news broadcasts blared from radios throughout the house, cold-eyed furious Mark was standing guard over Davis and wouldn’t let anybody in the room with him, and neither Peter nor anybody else seemed capable of doing anything about it.

But something had to be done. Putting away the notebook, Larry went out to the living room, found Peter pacing back and forth there amid the radio noise, and forced himself into the other man’s awareness by standing directly in his path. Peter gave him a distracted irritable look, and Larry said, “Peter, listen to me.”

Peter turned away. “Why?”

Following, Larry said, “What if they don’t apologize?”

“They will.”

“But what if they don’t? Are you really going to let Davis die, with his medicine right here?”

“The ball’s in their court.” Peter was steadily, compulsively, stroking his cheeks, his face seeming more gaunt than usual, and he wouldn’t meet Larry’s eye. “They’ll have to come through.”

“But what if they don’t?”

“They will.”

“Give me a time limit,” Larry insisted. “Peter, what time do we give it up and let Davis have his medicine? Ten o’clock?”

“No.”

“When, then? Ten-thirty?”

“Larry,” Peter said, pressing his cheeks with the backs of his fingers, “Larry, I can’t set a time on it. They have to come through, that’s all. If we back down, how can we negotiate later?”

“If we let Davis die, what do we negotiate with later?”

Peter violently shook his head, as though being attacked by bees. Desperately he said, “We have to stand by our promise, we have to, that’s all. Mark’s right.”

“You’re afraid of Mark.”

“I agree with Mark!” Peter yelled, but he wouldn’t meet Larry’s eye. And he wouldn’t set a time limit. He would do nothing, in fact, but pace the floor, stroking his cheeks and staring at the walls and refusing to be a leader.

Through the glass wall Larry could see Joyce and Liz out beside the pool; Liz in a yellow dashiki and dark glasses lay on a chaise longue, while Joyce in jeans and an orange T-shirt sat rather tensely on a pool chair beside her. If leadership couldn’t function under present conditions, perhaps democracy could. Of if not democracy, precisely, then some sort of pressure group. Larry knew that Mark would not listen to either himself or Joyce, but if he could get Liz to join them, might not all three together have some effect? Abandoning Peter, Larry slid open one of the glass doors and went out to the pool, where a portable radio spoke of life on Earth: Jew versus Arab, Greek versus Turk, Christian versus Muslim, Catholic versus Protestant, white versus black.

Joyce smiled wanly over Liz’s unmoving body. “How are you, Larry?”

“Terribly worried about Davis,” Larry told her. “Peter’s just simply abdicated his leadership function.” Pulling another chair over by the two women, he sat down and said, “If the three of us went to Mark, our combined weight might make him see some sense.”

But Joyce shook her head, with the same wan smile. “Don’t count Liz,” she said. “She’s tripping. I’m her buddy.”

“She’s what?” Looking down at Liz, seeing now the unnatural stillness of the face behind the large-lensed dark glasses, seeing the blotchy redness of the usually tanned skin, Larry said, “My God. We’re all going crazy.” It had been two or three years since any of them had dropped acid; that had been a phase, like open sex, like hop, like the sixties themselves. Larry hadn’t even known there was acid left in anybody’s possession.

“It’s a strain,” Joyce said. “It’s a strain on all of us.”

“We’re going crazy. We can’t stand it anymore, and we’re going crazy.”

Larry believed that to be literally true. In the past they had planned attacks, bombings, incursions, and the planning had been good, the acts themselves had been well performed and effective. This time, the planning, the act of kidnapping, all had been just as good and just as efficient as ever. But now they were into a different kind of scene, a waiting scene, an ongoing set-piece involving one specific human life, and they were all breaking down.

We can’t hack it anymore, Larry thought, and looked out over the Valley, the crawling sun-bleached lifeless deadly Valley, glittering with smog like a fever victim. Thousands and thousands of people lived on that floor, in little white-pink-coral boxes, breathing the sharp glittery air, driving back and forth like ants under the dead sun. How could they be helped? How could they be saved? “Nobody can do anything,” Larry said.

Joyce said, “Don’t give up, Larry. Please. I need your strength.”

Larry looked at her in surprise. “My strength?” And seeing her earnest eyes, her soft face, her trust in him, he thought without pleasure: I suppose in truth I do love her. If only we had lived in better times. We were meant for quiet lives, both of us, calm perhaps boring lives, ordinary lives. In a way, Joyce and I have both sacrificed more than Peter or Mark or Liz, all of whom in any era would have been impelled to some sort of extravagance. We have given up our ordinariness for a cause. We have been caught by the flow of history and swept far from shore, far from shore.

But he didn’t want to think about that. And in any event, he couldn’t keep his mind for long on anything but the one problem; he said, “What’s the matter with Mark, why does he have to be this way? He’s the one making everything impossible. What’s he doing down there?”

“Listening to the radio,” Joyce said. “Like the rest of us.”

“But why is he locked in, why won’t he let anybody else even see Davis?” Then, in a sudden decision, he said, “I’m going to see for myself,” and started to strip off his shirt.

“Don’t confront Mark, it won’t do any good. You’ll just make him worse.”

“I won’t confront him.” Larry stepped out of his trousers and shorts, shoes and socks, then, naked, went down the pool steps and swam across to the deep end, making as little disturbance in the water as possible. Above the window he inhaled deeply, then plunged.

The window; from an angle a cold clear shimmering sheet, from straight on a transparency. Larry’s arms and legs moved, fighting his body buoyancy, and he looked through the window into the dim-lit room.

It was like a picture in a dream, like some kind of fantastic television. It was as though Larry were tripping, rather than Liz; these shimmering shapes, this underwater quality, had been present sometimes in trips he’d taken before quitting acid, four or five years ago. Through a yard of water, through the twin thicknesses of the glass, was spread the diorama of the room; Koo Davis lying on the couch, twitching from time to time, his head occasionally turning fretfully on the pillow, his eyes closed or no more than slightly open, a sheet half covering him and leaving exposed his panting chest, while seated across from him, unmoving, waited Mark. Still, silent, Mark seemed relaxed in his chair, but he was gazing without pause at Koo Davis, staring at him as though the very appearance of the man contained the answer to some urgent question. The shifting water made vision uncertain, so that Larry couldn’t be certain of the expression on Mark’s face. It seemed bland and calm, yet intent; was that possible? The usual rage, coldness, unrelenting dissatisfaction, none of that seemed present now in Mark’s face, though it could merely be an ambiguity of the water that made him seem so tranquil. He would be listening to the radio in there, the same news, the same planet; but it seemed a planet far far away from the room.

Larry’s lungs were hurting, but the scene held him, the sick older man and the black-bearded young man together in tableau in their underwater cave. It seemed to Larry the scene somehow meant something, that it was both a question and an answer, and if he could comprehend what he was seeing he would understand everything. He fought to remain under the surface, while his lungs and chest and ears strained and his heart pounded, until he suddenly realized that what he was seeing, whether he understood it or not, was too private. He wasn’t supposed to know this. Afraid all at once that Mark would turn his head, see him, and never forgive this knowledge, Larry relaxed his arms and floated to the surface, then swam slowly back to the shallow end.

Liz was still in the chaise, the same as before, but Joyce had risen and was standing by the edge of the pool when Larry climbed out. She said, “He isn’t hurting him, is he?”

“He’s just watching him. Sitting there unmoving. Koo seems unconscious, but I suppose that’s best for him. But Mark just sits there.” Larry looked back down at the water, as though Mark lived down in those chlorinated blue depths. “There’s something weird about him. Weirder than usual.”

Joyce managed a laugh, and said, “I suppose you’re right, we all are going crazy a little bit, at least for—”

“Wait.”

Larry had heard the announcement begin, from the tinny portable radio on the tiles by Liz’s chaise. “The Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has asked all radio stations in this area to present the following taped statement at this time.” And then another voice came on, sounding strained and hurried:

“This is Michael Wiskiel of the Los Angeles office of the FBI. I have been involved on the FBI side in the Koo Davis kidnapping. Early this morning, we delivered to the kidnappers medicines necessary to keep Koo Davis alive. Although we had promised not to use this humanitarian act as an opportunity to capture the kidnappers, we felt that certain legal, moral, and medical considerations were more urgent than our promise, and so we inserted a form of tracking device in with the medicine, hoping to follow its transmission and rescue Koo Davis. Unfortunately, the kidnappers found the device and returned it to us with a taped message. Here is part of that tape.”

Now Mark’s cold angry voice pushed itself into the sunny day: “We’ll be listening to the radio news all morning. Until we hear an apology from you, Michael Wiskiel, in your own voice, Koo Davis gets no medicine.”

“Ah, Jesus,” Larry said.

The Michael Wiskiel voice had come back: “The most important consideration, of course, is Koo Davis’ health and safety. I certainly do apologize for my decision to use the tracking device, since it clearly has resulted in increased danger for Koo Davis. I not only apologize, I am voluntarily removing myself from further connection with this case. I can only hope this delay has not caused irretrievable harm to Koo Davis. I beg the kidnappers, please, to give Koo his medicine now.”

Peter had come out during the statement, looking both jubilant and relieved, and when it was over Larry turned on him, angrily saying, “Do you like that victory? Peter? He took it away from us, it’s a triumph for them. They broadcast as much of what Mark said as they wanted—and what a wonderful voice he has to play a villain!—and they made it sound as though it was their idea to turn over the medicine. Are you really pleased with that?”

“Be quiet, Larry,” Peter said. “They apologized, didn’t they? Let’s go downstairs and give the man his medicine.”