The Triumph of Evil Read online

  Heidigger had said that James was to be killed in hot weather. Detroit lay hot under the July sun, hotter still in August. The city maintained an uneasy calm. Policemen muttered to themselves but kept a light rein in black neighborhoods. Polish machinists in Hamtramck cursed the black mayor and thanked God for the autonomy that made their enclave a suburban island inside the Detroit sea. The lid might be shaky but the lid remained on, and Dorn looked at a black man’s photograph and sought a way to keep the lid in place.

  He considered near-misses. He thought of running a gunman and tipping the runner to the police at the last second. He thought of putting a bullet in an arm or leg, canonizing James with partial martyrdom. But even a close attempt on the mayor might spark a black riot, while anything less than success would go down badly with Heidigger.

  Often he awoke with the conviction that he had dreamed of James and the nagging suspicion that his dream had held an answer. But he could never remember these dreams.

  One afternoon, elaborately casual, she said, “There’s a sort of party tonight. Not too many people. About a dozen kids or so.”

  He kept his feelings off his face, out of his voice. “You ought to go,” he said. “You can’t spend all your time with an old man.”

  “You’re not an old man. I think you just say that so I’ll tell you you’re not.”

  “Oh? How old is your father?”

  “Oh, come on, Miles.”

  “You once told me. Fifty? I am fifty-four.”

  “You’ve never met my father.”

  But he had, once, although of course he had not told her. Once in New York, between sieges at the microfilm viewer, he had walked a few blocks to the firm that manufactured beads for dressmakers. On some pretext he got himself shown into the man’s office, then let it develop that it was another Howard Perry he was looking for. Jocelyn’s father was sleek, balding, with pouches under his eyes and a bitter look about the mouth. It had pleased Dorn, later, to examine his own reflection in a mirror and to remark that he looked younger and more fit than Perry.

  “You think I should go?”

  “But certainly.”

  “They invited both of us, Miles. What’s the matter—did you think we were a secret?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Well, my friends know that you and I are a thing.”

  “A thing?”

  “Lovers.”

  He realized that it had not even occurred to him to wonder whether her friends knew this. When she was with him it was as if she ceased to exist apart from him. No, he corrected himself, it was more that what they shared, what they were to each other, had no points of reference to the rest of the world.

  “I thought maybe you’d like to go.”

  “Why don’t you go without me? I would be out of place, don’t you think?”

  “Well, it’s a couples thing,” she said, not pressing. “I wouldn’t go alone, that wouldn’t be cool. But it’s not important.”

  “You would like me to go with you?”

  “Only, you know, if you want.”

  “Why not?”

  There were six couples at the downtown apartment when he and Jocelyn arrived. Two more students came ten minutes later. Dorn smiled through introductions but made no attempt to remember names. He sat cross-legged on a cushion on the floor and accepted a glass of too-sweet wine. He listened in on various conversations, ranging in topic from politics to music. His eyes wandered around the large, sparsely-furnished room. Several posters caught his eye. One was a list of instructions on proper behavior in the event of a nuclear attack. It told the reader to curl himself up in a ball and place his head down between his legs. “Now kiss your ass good-bye,” it concluded. Another showed a Nazi flag, a black swastika stark on a red field. Above it, English words were written in German Gothic type: “It’s your flag; love it or leave it.”

  He finished his wine and began to circulate around the room, moving from one knot of people to another, joining passively but easily in a variety of conversations. He observed the boys and girls with interest, not attempting to distinguish one individual from another but wanting merely to develop a collective impression of them. Surface aspects—beards, long hair, dress—clouded his view at first. Like James’s blackness, he thought. But familiarity taught one to see past the surface, to gaze through it.

  He turned once to find Jocelyn at his elbow. “Having a good time?”

  “Yes. I’m enjoying myself.”

  “Are you? I was afraid you wouldn’t. But I wanted you to meet my friends.”

  He was refilling his wineglass when a voice said, “Mr. Dorn?” He turned to look at one of the boys, taller than he, cleanshaven, hair to his shoulders. The boy had an arm around a very short girl. Nevertheless, Dorn knew instantly that this boy had slept with Jocelyn.

  “Miles,” he corrected, smiling gently. “I’d sooner feel no more ancient than I absolutely must.”

  “Jocelyn tells me you’re opposed to revolutionary violence.”

  “That’s true.”

  “I suppose you take the position that violence never solved anything.”

  “Not at all. It’s often a solution. Sometimes a final solution, as someone once called it.”

  “Then you oppose it for humanitarian reasons?”

  The patronizing assurance of the young. “That is reason enough, wouldn’t you say? But it is also beside the point. You needn’t tell me about omelets and broken eggs. I might agree with you, I might not. I oppose violence because of its effects.”

  “Which are?”

  “Violence in return. Action equals reaction, a law of physics. Except that in politics the reaction is often greater than the action. Rocks bring bullets.”

  “So you believe that confrontations have to stay peaceful. That’s a good theory, but how do you explain it to Jon Yerkes when a pig’s bullet takes his hand off? Or what do you say to the Panthers when the cops come through the door with their guns blasting away? Don’t shoot back? Just stand there and get killed?”

  The boy had raised his voice, and others were beginning to circle around, hanging on the dialogue. There was a subtle manhood test here, Dorn decided. The boy talked of politics, but it was their mutual relationship with Jocelyn that was the conversation’s raison d’etre. Dorn’s impulse was to give ground.

  Instead, he said, “You misunderstand me. You make a greater distinction than I between violent and nonviolent political action. I think either is a mistake.”

  “Oh, man, I don’t buy that. Take a look around you. This country is on the way to a revolution.”

  “So it seems.”

  “And it damn well needs one. You can’t reform the system. It’s gone beyond that point.” He went into an indictment of the country’s ills, making no points that had not occurred to Dorn and few with which he was inclined to disagree. He paused for breath, then looked down at Dorn again, setting his jaw. “The revolution’s coming,” he said. “Everything we do makes it come just that much faster.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Even the acts that bring reaction. Every time a student is clubbed or bayoneted or shot, ten more students stop being liberals and turn into radicals. Every time the other side makes a move, our side grows stronger.”

  “I agree.”

  “Then you’ve lost me, man. If you’ve got a point, I don’t know where you’re hiding it.”

  Dorn put down his wineglass. “Everything you do provokes a reaction,” he said carefully, “and every reaction strengthens the left. I think that this is beyond dispute. Every day the left grows and every day the right grows. There is a line of Yeats. ‘Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.’ This happens, it is happening now, even as we talk. Every day more people take a side, one side or the other. Every day more people find a centrist position untenable.”

  “That’s my point.”

  “And mine,” Dorn said, softly, smiling, “mine is that as soon as you succeed in forcing matters t
o a crisis, you guarantee that you lose. Because there are more of them than there are of you. Many more of them. Every day brings the left closer to its maximum strength of perhaps twenty-five percent of the population. Every day brings the right closer to a maximum of perhaps seventy-five percent of the population.”

  “I don’t know where you get your figures—”

  “Out of the air. But I would be surprised if the gulf is not even wider than I’ve postulated it.”

  “We have the blacks, we have the students, we have more and more of the liberals, we have the poor whites—”

  “The poor whites? I think not.”

  “But we will. Sooner or later the poor whites and the white working class are going to see where their best interests lie.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Huh?”

  “Their interests lie in keeping blacks in a subservient position. I do not find it remarkable that they have already figured this out. What I find remarkable is that anyone seriously expects them to decide otherwise.”

  They argued this point. Dorn yielded with smiles and soft words. The discussion slowed.

  “Anyway,” the boy said, “I don’t see the point of talking in terms of numbers. I don’t buy your numbers, but I think they’re irrelevant. The revolution isn’t going to come about through an election. Maybe democracy is outmoded to begin with. You can’t call this fucking country a democracy.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Man, when you look what’s going down—”

  “Every stable government in the history of the world has been a democracy.”

  The boy’s hands turned to fists. He said, “I think that’s the most outrageous statement I’ve ever heard.”

  “That’s because you haven’t heard the rest of it. Every stable government has been a democracy in that it has ruled with the implicit support of the majority of its population. The form of government has been immaterial. Feudalism, monarchy, parliamentary system, fascist or communist dictatorship.”

  “Then by your standards Nazi Germany was a democracy.”

  “And by yours as well,” Dorn said mildly. “Hitler won an election, you know.”

  Back at his house she said, “I should have warned you about Jerry. But you sort of made an idiot out of him, didn’t you?”

  “Not really. And he’s not an idiot. But when people tell each other the same things over a long period of time, they become unused to questioning their beliefs. I see things from a different perspective, and one he couldn’t easily categorize.”

  “I wonder how much you meant of what you said.”

  “Do you? All of it.”

  “But then—”

  “Yes?”

  “Then what do we do? What is the right thing for people in our position to do?”

  “Survive.”

  “Just survive?”

  “Survive. Stay out of politics, stay out of jail. Stay alive.”

  Her face was troubled. “Now I sound like Jerry, but Christ, Miles, you grew up in Europe, you saw your own country overrun by Nazis. Is that what you would have told a Jew in Germany? Survive?”

  “It is what I would have told anyone in Germany, Jew or not. At one time I would have advised strengthening the Weimar Republic so that Hitler could not occur. After that I would have said, ‘Go, leave the country.’”

  “Survive.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know if I’ve got all of this together. We should stop fighting. We should just survive. We should shave and cut our hair and get straight jobs and look like everybody else. Is that it?”

  He reached out a hand, stroked her hair. “Don’t cut your hair,” he said, smiling. “And please don’t shave.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Then I shall be serious. No, that is not what I think. I think you are very special, you young people. I think your life-style is very special. I think you should go on growing your hair and your beards and finding yourselves in communes and listening to your music. Read. Think. Grow. Discover. And wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For more of you to be born. For more of them to die. The future does belong to you, you know. If you don’t try to make it come too soon.”

  “‘All things come to him who waits.’”

  “They do. Not as soon as he may wish. But they do.”

  Do they, Jocelyn? Or am I an old man making new mistakes? Presumptuous of me. Presumptuous of an assassin to warn against the fruits of violence. Of a terrorist to counsel patience.

  Perhaps it is too late. The tide swings their way, and perhaps it cannot be stopped. Perhaps one ought not to go gently. Perhaps one ought to die on one’s feet. Better far, I am told, than to live on one’s knees.

  But I am not altogether certain I believe that, Jocelyn.

  I like your friends, Jocelyn. I like the beauty of their open faces. I like their warmth. I like their easy humor and their ancient seriousness. I argued with one of them out of male foolishness, but I liked them all. And they seemed to like me.

  What would they think of me, I wonder, if they knew? And you, Jocelyn? If you knew?

  Until a morning late in August when she slipped out of the house after breakfast, leaving him at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. Off to buy some groceries, off to feed her cat. He looked out the window at the robins’ nest, empty now. Vertigo might as well live with them, he thought. She already kept things at the house. Some of her clothes were in his closet, some of her books on his shelves. Her radio was perched on his kitchen table. And yet, although she slept almost every night in his bed, she still had a room that was, in part, home to her. He wondered if he ought to say anything about the cat, or if that would center her life excessively upon him.

  The robins again. The more you loved them, the more you had to prepare them for flight. For life apart from you. And the more it tore you to do so.

  Something made him switch on the radio. Music, a song she liked and he did not, came as an unwelcome reminder of the gulf between them. He reached to change the station, but the record ended and a newscast came on.

  And so he heard, sitting there alone, sitting in his kitchen with her radio playing. He heard that racial warfare still raged openly in the streets of Detroit, with no sign of abatement, after an ambush the night before in which gunfire had claimed the lives of Mayor Walter Isaac James, his wife, and two of their five children.

  He put his head on the table and wept.

  He held the photo in his hands and stared at the blackness, past the blackness, deep into the face.

  Walter Isaac James. First-term mayor of Detroit. Black. Economic and social moderate. Foreign policy views unstated. Enjoys near-total support of black constituency plus strong support of white power structure, professionals, intellectuals. Relationship improving with white working class. Efficient administrator … .

  I tried, Mr. James. I said, this man shall live. This man’s life is worthwhile, he shall live. And so I waited, and stalled, and created the appearance of preparation. And a pair of beer-drinking ex-marines decided that the crippling of William Roy Guthrie could not go unavenged.

  …. Termination ideally to be as dramatic as possible. Perhaps family could be included … .

  Oh, it was dramatic, Mr. James. The mayoral limousine caught in cross fire. And part of your family indeed included. A wife. Two children. And the people burning the city down and killing one another.

  Forgive me, Mr. James. For shirking my duty.

  A long-distance telephone conversation:

  “Congratulations. You have outdone yourself. The results exceed all expectations.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What about your tools, though? They’ve been picked up. I hope you cleaned them before you put them away.”

  “Completely.”

  “You’re quite certain? Those vessels will leak under pressure, you know.”

  “A vessel cannot spill what it does not contain.”

  “Such
ships could be sunk, if you wanted. As a sort of insurance policy.”

  “No need.”

  “As you prefer. There was some concern, incidentally, over the time factor.”

  “The arrangements demanded careful handling.”

  “So I suggested to the critical voices. And my judgment was vindicated, for which my own thanks, by the way. Everyone is more than pleased.”

  “I’m gratified.”

  “Good! Oh, you can forget Case Five, if you wish. It’s been officially downgraded in importance.”

  “I’ve already begun.”

  “Let it go, if there’s the slightest risk.”

  “No risk at all. And I’d rather clean the slate.”

  “Perfectionist.”

  “Let us merely say craftsman.” “As you will.”

  TWELVE

  The policeman said, “I’m trying to think, a drugstore at this hour. There’s an all-night place near the Thirtieth Street station. You have a car?”

  “No, I flew in just a few hours ago.”

  “Because it’s a long walk, and you might have a time getting a cab.”

  “I thought they would have aspirin at the hotel desk.”

  “If it’s just an aspirin, there’s a White Tower three, four blocks down on Market. It’s just a coffee place but they generally have a bottle of aspirin around.”

  “We have White Towers in Indianapolis,” Dorn said.

  “That where you’re from? That’s Rhodine’s state, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess he’s a cinch for reelection.”

  “He’s very popular.”

  “He’s getting to be pretty popular here in Philadelphia, too. A lot of people are starting to listen to what he has to say.”

  “Your own mayor is popular, isn’t he?”

  “What, O’Dowd?” The policeman frowned. “My position, I’m not supposed to have anything to say about the mayor.”

  “It’s a free country.”

  “A lot freer these days if you don’t happen to be a cop.” He swung his nightstick absently against the palm of his hand. “Put it this way, if they held an election tomorrow O’Dowd wouldn’t stand a chance.”