The Comedy is Finished

22

The TV set was switched on half an hour early, by Joyce, but no one watched it, though it was one of those monsters with the huge six-foot screen, like a movie screen, dominating the living room. But they were all too involved with their own problems to watch non-essential television. Mark could be seen through the glass doors, prowling back and forth out there on the beach, brooding at the sand and ignoring the Pacific’s huge sunset. Liz did her brooding curled up in an Eames chair near the fireplace, her back to both the view and the TV. Larry had locked himself into the bedroom with Koo, Joyce was in the kitchen fretfully and compulsively preparing food no one wanted—cups of coffee, pots of soup, plates of sandwiches cut into triangles with the crusts meticulously removed—and Peter and Ginger were bickering together. “This is very bad of you,” Ginger kept saying. “Very bad. Very bad.” His monkey cheerfulness was gone, as though it had never been, replaced by a fidgety snapping, like a neurotic lapdog. Even his face was now the pinched countenance of a Lhasa Apso or Yorkie. “It’s just too bad of you, Peter.”

“There wasn’t any choice,” Peter said, for the hundredth time. He knew he had to placate Ginger somehow, but it was all so difficult. His cheeks burned and stabbed, he kept swallowing blood, and for the first time in years he was blinking. The very symptom he had so long ago conquered by gnawing his cheeks had now returned, completely out of his control. Following Ginger from room to room, prowling with him, trying to smooth things over, he ground his cheeks while his eyelids blink-blink-blinked, and through it all he just kept talking: “I knew they’d be back, and I was right. We got Davis out of there just in time.”

“To bring him here. Oh, Peter, this is so bad of you. After all you said, about keeping me out.”

“What else could I do? We can’t drive the goddamn man around in the car forever. Did you want me to kill him?”

Ginger, walking down the hallway toward the kitchen with Peter in his wake, abruptly stopped and turned back, so that Peter nearly bumped into him. “Don’t talk to me about killing,” Ginger said. “Don’t talk to me about killing.”

“That’s what Mark wanted to do,” Peter said, bitterness in his voice. Things weren’t working out. If he’d only walked in on Mark and Davis a few minutes later the problem would have been solved, taken out of Peter’s hands. That Mark had been about to murder Davis Peter had no doubt, though he hadn’t talked about it with either of them, nor did he intend to. He could not himself have ordered Davis killed simply for the convenience of it, but he would have been very pleased—among other reactions—if the decision had been made for him. As to why Mark was so determined to murder Davis, or why Davis on his side was so determined to have conversations with the man thirsting for his death, Peter had no idea what either of them was about, and in truth he felt scant curiosity. His main interest was in himself, and his attention to the outside world waxed or waned as the world impinged on his own desires or needs.

Ginger, with his discontented lapdog face, turned away and continued on to the kitchen, Peter trailing. In the kitchen, Joyce turned from stirring a pot of soup to say, with a chipper kind of lunatic normalcy, “You ought to eat. Both of you.”

“Save something for tomorrow,” Ginger told her irritably, then turned to Peter again, saying, “Or will you be out of here by tomorrow?”

“To go where? Ginger, where else is there?”

“Oh, it’ll all be over by tomorrow,” Joyce said brightly. “You wait and see.”

“We’ll wait,” Ginger said meaningfully, with a glance up at the kitchen clock: seven oh five. “And after we hear what the FBI has to say, then we will see. In the meantime, young woman, kindly stop treating my kitchen as your personal chuck wagon. No one wants all those ditzy little sandwiches. What’s in that pot?”

“Scotch broth.”

“No no, the one behind it, with the lid.”

“Pea soup,” Joyce said, with a first hint of defensiveness. She and the others—except Peter, of course—were all meeting Ginger for the first time. She added, “Not everybody likes Scotch broth.”

“Not everybody likes their larder wasted by a hysterical female,” Ginger told her. “Are you menstruating?”

“What? No, I—No.”

“Then you have no excuse.” Turning to Peter, Ginger said, “Have you control over no one? Nothing?” Then he shrugged with nervous anger and left the room.

Peter tarried long enough to grate at Joyce, in a harsh whisper, “No more food! Stop it now!” Then, ignoring her wide-eyed uncomprehending gaze, he hurried after Ginger, back toward the living room.

Mark had disintegrated, he was nothing and nobody. All his thoughts splintered into shards and disconnected fragments, like those waves out there breaking on the black rocks. He was the junked remains of himself, a disposable artifact used up and thrown away, a shell, drained and purposeless. Years and years ago the key had been inserted, twisted and twisted, winding him tight and ever tighter, setting him to march forward through life, a robot patricide with but one function, one millisecond of true blazing purpose; when he would hold his father’s life between his hands, and end it.

The moment had come, he had activated himself, he had shone like the sun in his flash of life, and now he was burned out, his potential all in the past; he had nothing, he was nothing. He was as incapable of murdering the same victim a second time as if he had not been interrupted. He was a patricide, the decision had been all, the performance merely its outward effect. That Mark continued to breathe, to move through life, to experience time, was a frustrating anomaly. Certainly he could no longer react, not to events nor to other human beings. The makework of existence was finished; nothing touched him now.

“Maa-ark! Maa-ark!”

On the cantilevered deck of the house, silhouetted by the glowing stonewalled living room behind her, Joyce was waving, bobbing up on tiptoe. Mark saw her without curiosity, and continued his plodding walk through the sand.

“Mark! It’s about to begin! The show’s coming on!”

His left had made a full-armed broad down-sweeping gesture of rejection: Go away. Leave me alone. He did not look up again.

Someone swiveled the Eames chair to face the huge television screen. Liz frowned, grabbing the rudimentary chair-arms as it swung, but said nothing. From above and behind her, Peter’s voice said, “Watch the program, Liz. Take an interest.”

But she didn’t take an interest, that was just it. Tripping had been a disaster, a terrible mistake. She’d had great difficulty coming back, and even now was still subject to brief visual phenomena, light flashes, shifts in the color spectrum, quick dissolving and immediate reconstructions of solid objects like that stone wall behind the free-standing television screen. Otherwise her mind no longer floated, but she had returned freighted with the cruel discoveries of the journey; though not discoveries exactly, having existed in her mind all along, kept out of sight because they were both true and unbearable.

That she had gone too far, that’s what it came down to. Not in this trip alone, but always, completely in her life. For the sake of passions of the moment—political, personal, social passions—she had acted in ways that kept her from ever coming back. America had calmed from the excesses of the sixties, was putting its house in order, returning to normal life; but for Liz there was no return, there would never again be a normal life. She had gone too far, back when it had seemed that the sixties would last forever. To this degree she had been right: for her, the sixties were forever. She was imprisoned in that time more securely than the government, if it ever did get its hands on her, could possibly imprison her.

Sometimes she almost envied Frances, six years dead, out of it when it was still fresh. Let federal warrants be out for Frances Steffalo; after six years in Lake Erie water, weighted and silent and sinking into the scum, she would not be found, would not be paraded before the shallow giggling media as Eric had been, as so many had been. “Not me,” she said, not aloud, merely mouthing the words, staring sightless at the TV screen.

Eric had been everything. Eric had taught her what her body was for, what her brain was for, what the world was for. “It isn’t hard to change society,” he used to say, with his easy bright intelligent grin. “Society changes all the time, whether we help it along or not. Capitalism is an aberration, a mistaken turn away from feudalism—it would have been so much easier to go directly to collectivism then, simply remove the landlord class and permit the masses to absorb the land they already occupied. All right, an aberration. But it’s coming to an end, and unless somebody gives the whole rolling mass a shove in a new direction we’ll simply go right back to feudalism under another name, with General Motors and Chase Manhattan instead of the kingdom of this and the duchy of that. We have to push on it, that’s all, deflect it a little. We may not even see the effect in our lifetime. Not everybody can be Martin Luther. Columbus died having no idea how much he’d changed the world.”

Change the world. Eric changed me, and then he went away, his work unfinished. If he’d even been killed, if he’d died along with Paul and the others, it would be easier to forgive. What did it matter that he had abandoned her unwillingly, only because he’d been captured and put in jail? He had swept her beyond the point of no return, that was all that mattered, and then he had gone away.

Take an interest? Yes. She did have an interest after all. She raised her eyes, finally, to gaze at the giant television screen, where the program was about to begin, where the government was about to announce whether or not they would release Eric Mallock. Let him go, you bastards, she willed at the screen. Let him go so I can kill him. And then myself. That last journey they would take together.

After the usual station identification the screen abruptly went black, and a male voice spoke: “Ladies and gentleman, the following is a special news event program for which Channel 11, Metromedia, has donated its time and facilities to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Channel 11 is honored by this opportunity for public service.”

The black screen then gave way to a view of the FBI man, Wiskiel, standing in front of a pale blue curtain; on the huge screen of the living room he was a powerful, intimidating presence. He stood silent and blinking a few seconds, apparently waiting for something, then all at once started to speak:

“I am Michael Wiskiel, Deputy Chief of Station, Los Angeles office of the FBI. I have been in charge of the Koo Davis investigation, and I am now addressing myself to his captors. You have demanded that I remain in charge, so I’m here, but I’m not the man who can answer your other demands. Deputy FBI Director Maurice St. Clair has flown out from Washington with the government response. I assure you I’m still in charge of the investigation even though Director St. Clair is the man who will talk to you in the course of this program.”

Having finished, Wiskiel stood where he was, gazing solemnly at the camera. Peter, laughing, said, “A television star is born.” But the evident tremble in his voice foiled his attempt to dispel the nervous gloom created by that overwhelming presence.

“I don’t like that TV,” Joyce said. “The picture’s too big.” Which was true.

“Quiet,” Peter said. He and Ginger were seated at opposite ends of the long beige suede sofa, while Joyce was curled on the fur rug at Peter’s feet.

On the screen, Wiskiel had been replaced at first by more blackness and now by a picture of a man seated at a desk. This was evidently a set, a suitable location already existent in some corner of Channel 11’s studios and employed now not for effect but convenience. The desk was wood and fairly ornate; the man behind it was seated on a padded swivel chair, and in the background were shelves filled with old-fashioned books, in sets. The man himself was probably in his late fifties, heavyset, with a red-complexioned rugged face gone to jowly fat. Sheets of typing paper, evidently a script, lay neatly squared on the green blotter before him, held at their edges by his blunt thick fingers. Looking up at the camera from time to time with small angry eyes, but speaking in a gravelly voice devoid of emotion, the man read the script:

“I am Deputy Director Maurice St. Clair of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The terms you have given us for the release of Koo Davis call for our release of ten so-called political prisoners. Let me say right now, at the outset, that Koo Davis is an American institution of whom all Americans are proud, and that the government of the United States and the Federal Bureau of Investigation will do anything within our power to see that no harm comes to Koo Davis, up to and including the agreement to any reasonable or possible ransom demands. We are not slamming the door. But I must also say that this initial demand is neither reasonable nor possible, and that we simply can’t meet it.”

There was a stir in the living room, but no one spoke. Joyce’s expression was shocked, Liz was taut, Ginger pained, and Peter affronted. But none of them made a sound.

“I promise you this is not a trick, or a ploy. We are prepared to negotiate in good faith. But, in order to do so, we’ll have to prove to you that our inability to meet this demand is not our fault, and we’ll have to make it clear to you what we can and cannot do. For this reason, I’m going to have to speak to you specifically about each of the ten individuals you have named. Even though you presumably already know these individuals, I will have to describe each one briefly; you will soon see why.”

“For the wider audience,” Ginger said; a kind of fatalistic humor in his voice. “Something very bad is about to happen, Peter.”

“Shut up,” Peter said.

On the screen, Deputy Director St. Clair had been replaced by a black-and-white photograph of a scruffy young man in a jacket. The picture was apparently a blow-up form an ordinary snapshot, with the graininess and grayness of such blow-ups. The young man, whose otherwise bland face was decorated by a wispy dark beard, squinted in sunlight; behind him farm buildings could be seen.

“Norm Cobberton,” said Joyce, at the same instant that Deputy Director St. Clair’s voice sounded again, speaking while the screen still showed the photograph:

“This is Norman Cobberton, thirty-four, currently serving twenty years to life at the Federal Correctional Facility at Danbury, Connecticut. Cobberton, in the late nineteen-sixties, engaged in union organizing activities among migrant farm workers in the plains states and the American southwest. His activities included such crimes as arson and other destruction of property, as well as the organizing of so-called goon squads to attack and intimidate non-striking workers.”

St. Clair himself reappeared on the screen, still reading his script: “Early this afternoon, Cobberton was interviewed at Danbury. This is his response.” St. Clair looked up at the screen, his stubborn eyes gazing without forgiveness at the audience for two or three seconds before the scene switched.

This setting was clearly institutional. In the background was a pale green wall with a barred window, through which rain obscured the outside world. At a wooden table, on an armless wooden chair, sat a man identifiable as the one in the photograph; but older, and clean shaven, and wearing wire-rimmed glasses. His left forearm rested on the table, his fingers poking and pulling at something invisible, and while he spoke his sad and rather tired eyes watched his moving fingers:

“I don’t know who those people are who kidnapped Koo Davis.” The echo of the hard-walled room made his words rather hard to understand. “I don’t say they’re wrong. Or right. Everybody does what they think best.” He looked up at the camera, then quickly down again. “What’s best for me is not to go. Even if it’s offered, I mean. I expect to be released in three years, I think I’ve learned a lot, and Americans have learned a lot, too. I intend to go back to the work I was doing before, but I believe this time it’ll be possible to work within the law. Within the system. Cesar Chavez, others, have shown us it can be done.”

An off-camera voice said, “You don’t want to go to Algeria?”

“I don’t want to leave the country, no.” Again Cobberton looked at the camera, his expression troubled but determined. “I don’t want to give up.”

“Traitor!” The word burst out of Peter, as though not of his own volition. “Toady! Coward! Traitor!”

Ginger slapped the sofa seat between them: “Be quiet.”

Another black-and-white photograph had appeared on the giant screen, this time showing a fat-faced young woman in her late twenties, with wildly unkempt hair and heavy dark-framed spectacles. The background was indistinct. St. Clair’s voice said, “This is Mary Martha DeLang, thirty-eight, currently serving an indeterminate sentence in a California state prison. A radical theorist, author of several books on left-wing social theory and revolutionary practice, she was convicted in 1971 of smuggling guns to revolutionary friends in a California prison. The friends, and two prison guards, were killed in the subsequent escape attempt. Miss DeLang was interviewed this afternoon.”

She appeared on the screen, older than the photo but still fat and still with the same unmanageable wild hair. Gazing intently to the right of the screen, apparently at her interviewer, she said, “I can work here. The book I’ve wanted to write all my life. I’m not an activist, that was an—aberration. Eventually I’ll be released, but certainly not before the book is finished. Nowhere else would I have the—opportunity—I have here. I won’t go.”

“They bribed her,” Peter said. “They paid her off.” But the others watched the screen, as though he hadn’t spoken.

St. Clair again, glancing up at the camera then down at his script: “Also on the list is Hugh Pendry, thirty-seven, in the Federal Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. Pendry’s activities included skyjacking, the planting of bombs in such public places as the American Express office in Mexico City, and direct involvement with guerilla groups in South and Central America. He was briefly with Che Guevara in Bolivia, but returned to Cuba before Guevara’s death. He is serving concurrent life sentences for attempted murder and other crimes. When informed this morning of the kidnappers’ demand for his release, he expressed the hope that the demand would be met. Hugh Pendry wishes to leave the United States for Algeria.”

“All right,” Peter said, rubbing his palms together, looking left and right. “All right.”

A picture of a thin-faced frightened-eyed black man flashed on the screen. St. Clair: “This is Fred Walpole, thirty-five, originally a leader in student demonstrations in the New York City area, later responsible for the fire-bombing of several banks in New York and other northeastern states, currently serving twenty years to life in the Green Haven Correctional Facility in upstate New York. Walpole refused to be filmed, but this afternoon he gave the following recorded statement.”

The picture on the screen remained the same. An anonymous voice, baritone with falsetto overlays, spoke: “I don’t wanna go anywhere. I come up for parole in four, four and a half years. When I get outa here, that’s it for me. From now on, I worry about me. I don’t know those people, I don’t want to know them, I got no connection with them. And I never had anything against Koo Davis.”

“That could be anybody,” Peter said. “It’s a fake.”

Joyce, her voice and expression miserable, said, “No, it isn’t, Peter. I’m sorry, I’m dreadfully sorry, but you know it isn’t.”

“Shut your nasty little faces,” Ginger said, “or leave my house.”

The picture of Fred Walpole had now been replaced by a color photograph of a priest in front of a church; the priest, a slender black-haired youngish man in black gown and black-rimmed glasses, looked serious, sincere and not particularly intelligent. St. Clair’s voice was saying, “Louis Golding, forty-two, an ex-priest currently serving an indeterminate sentence in a Federal Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania for destruction of government property, was interviewed earlier today.”

Another institutional setting, another nervous man sitting at a wooden table with a barred window behind him. This man, however, looked almost nothing like the photograph of the priest; his dark hair was much thinner, his face was more drawn and lined, and his plain-rimmed glasses made it easier to see his level intelligent eyes. “I would certainly never leave the United States of America,” he said, with a passionate intensity only increased by the weakness of his voice. “I consider myself a missionary to America, as much as Pere Marquette or any of the other priests who came here three hundred years ago. This is still a barbarous nation. My work is here. When I am released, whenever that may be, it is in America that I must continue my mission.”

“Well, he’s stir crazy,” Peter said. “You can see that. Can’t you?” Needing a response, he reached out to pat Joyce’s head where she sat on the floor in front of him. “Can’t you?”

“Yes,” she said.

St. Clair was on the screen again, looking at his audience. He said, “It was two-thirteen Van Dyke.”

Joyce started, a sudden tremor through her entire body as though an electric charge had just thrummed through her. Peter, his hand still resting on her hair, frowned down at the top of her head, saying, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Ssshh, listen.”

St. Clair was reading his script, “The next person on the list, Abby Lancaster, thirty-three, a leader of rent strikes and anti-landlord demonstrations in New York City, also leader of a movement for free subways in New York City, now in a New York State Correctional Facility, convicted of arson, assault, destruction of public property, and other crimes. Miss Lancaster also refused to be filmed, and refused as well to allow a recording of her voice. Following our agreement not to show any picture of her on this broadcast, she made the following signed statement, in the presence of two witnesses who have personal knowledge of her identity. This is the statement: ‘I, Abby Lancaster, no longer believe violence can ever produce lasting good. I will become eligible for parole in ten months’ time. It is my hope to receive parole, and to continue the career in social work I misguidedly deviated from several years ago. I have no desire for further notoriety.’ That’s Miss Lancaster’s statement.”

Peter closed his eyes. The hand that had patted Joyce’s head rubbed his cheeks. Ginger watched him, eyes glinting.

Another photo appeared on the screen, a serious-looking young black man with an exaggerated afro. This seemed to have been cropped from some larger group photo, a graduation or team picture or some such thing. St. Clair’s voice said, “This is William Brown, thirty-three, currently serving a life sentence in the New Jersey State Prison at Rahway for murder in the first degree. Brown, originally a Black Panther, later joined one of the more militant offshoots of the Panthers and was convicted of murdering two Black Panther leaders in 1969. Other black militants had tried him in absentia in their own kangaroo court, found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to death. He turned himself in to the authorities for his own protection. When informed this afternoon of the prospect of leaving prison and going to Algeria, Brown stated that he would be agreeable.”

“All right,” Peter whispered, but he went on rubbing his cheeks.

Liz gasped as the next photograph appeared on the screen: a dark-haired, recklessly grinning, handsome young man. St. Clair’s voice said, “This is Eric Mallock, thirty-three, serving an indeterminate sentence in the Federal Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Kentucky. He was captured in 1972 when his bomb factory in Chicago exploded. He has been convicted of second-degree murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, assault, arson and other crimes. He was interviewed this afternoon at Lewisburg.”

Liz covered her eyes with a rigid hand, but at the sound of Mallock’s voice she lowered the hand and gazed unblinking at the screen.

Another institutional setting, but this time the man was seated on a metal folding chair in front of a tan tile wall. He sat bent forward, elbows on knees, eyes looking at a presumed interviewer to the camera’s left, hands gesturing between his knees as he spoke. His was recognizably the same face as before, but blurred by a smoothness of flesh; he’d apparently put on thirty or forty pounds since that earlier picture had been taken. The recklessness was gone from his mouth and eyes, and his hair was neater, more controlled. He said, “It’s hard for me now to understand myself as of several years ago. I made mistakes, criminal mistakes. The cause I was working for was not wrong, I think most Americans realize that now, but my methods were wrong. The desperation I felt, some of my friends felt, I don’t know if we were right, if change would have come about no matter what we did. All I know is, we all claimed we were prepared to pay the consequences; as for me, when the time came I found I wasn’t prepared to pay the consequences. My first few years here were very difficult. Now I feel differently. I don’t know what the future holds, I’m just living day by day. I’ve been very active in forming various prisoner programs here, I started a very successful bookkeeping course, I work on the prison newspaper. There’s still a lot to be done here, every-where—I suppose in Algeria, too. But not for me. If those are my friends out there—” and for the only time he glanced directly at the camera, his eyes and here-and-gone grin a quick faint echo of that former recklessness “—and I suppose they are—” he returned his gaze to the interviewer, the somber mask again firmly in place “—I appreciate their intentions, I wouldn’t presume to say whether they’re right or wrong, but I think they ought to go on without me.”

Liz closed her eyes and lowered her head, covering her face with her hand.

Mallock was followed by a black-and-white news photograph of an angry demonstration scene. The focus was on two uniformed policemen struggling with a stocky bushy-haired moustached man flailing about himself with a sign on a long stick. St. Clair’s voice said, “This is Howard Fenton, thirty-nine, convicted of tax evasion and related offenses. He is currently in the Federal Correctional Facility at Danbury Connecticut, where he was interviewed this afternoon.”

They were shown again the same room where the first prisoner, Cobberton, had been interviewed. The man sitting at the table this time was a somewhat older and thinner version of the man in the news photograph. His speech was rapid, the words jumbling together, his hands jittering in the air as he spoke: “I don’t know who these people are. They’re nothing to do with me. I’m nonviolent, that’s my whole point. The whole military establishment has to be dismantled. I will not pay taxes or obey any other federal law while this government continues to support a huge military machine. And I certainly won’t be tricked into leaving this country. I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole thing isn’t a scenario dreamed up by Army Intelligence. It would go right along with their paranoid view of life.”

Ginger laughed aloud. “Oh, what a cadre! What a formidable regiment of revolution!”

Now on the screen was a police mugshot, front and side views of a very tough-looking man. “Finally,” St. Clair’s voice said, “this is George Toll, forty-one, currently serving twenty years to life in the Texas State Prison at Huntsville, convicted of armed robbery and associated crimes. This is his third prison term for felony convictions.”

The screen showed St. Clair again, doggedly reading his script, sliding pages away off the blotter as he finished them: “When Toll was arrested for the crimes for which he is now serving his sentence, he claimed to be a Black Panther and to have robbed banks and other places to obtain money for the Panthers’ legitimate activities, such as their free lunch program in some ghetto schools. The Panthers, however, have consistently denied that Toll has ever had any relationship with them or that Toll has ever donated money to them. His previous felony convictions, also for armed robbery, did not include any claims to have been politically motivated. When informed of the present situation, Toll at once stated that he would be desirous of leaving prison and going to Algeria. However, forty-five minutes before this program began, the Algerian mission in Washington announced that, of the ten names on the original list, Algeria would accept nine, excluding George Toll.”

St. Clair lifted his head to gaze briefly and expressionlessly at the camera, then looked down again at his script: “Of the ten names on the list, only three are willing to accept the arrangement, and of the three only two are acceptable to the Algerian government. Given these realities, we are at a loss to know how to negotiate with you. You can’t want us to force these individuals out of the country if they don’t want to go. You have my personal word for it that none of these individuals has been pressured in any way. What you have seen and heard is their own honest response to the offer that was made them. We ask you not to blame us for this situation, and not to blame Koo Davis. You have our phone number. We are available at any time, day or night, for further discussion. We do not consider this a closed issue. We want Koo Davis back, and we want to emphasize that we are at all times willing to discuss terms.”

St. Clair’s heavy, bleak, angry face remained a few seconds longer on the screen, gazing out at the audience; on the screen in this room it was a huge brooding ominous presence. Then the picture faded to black and the announcer’s voice was heard: “This has been...”