Subtle Bodies Read online

  “And you know what? I bet they love it. The government loves it that you put on big walks and demonstrations, as big as hell, and you know why? Why is because it keeps up the lie that you can do something about it, that the government can be touched in its heart. And wars don’t lose you elections, either. When the draft was on it was a little bit different, but not now. And don’t forget they lie. And you can’t prove it’s a lie until thirty years later a scholar might and by then nobody cares.

  “Okay, so all that is under the heading on one side called Wasting Your Time. So now, come to the heading of killing as a good idea or not. Wait, first just to remind you … the reason Finland never went communist in 1918 to 1920 is because the government had a pogrom against the communists living there, thousands of them, trade unions, schools, everything, the White Terror, they called that massacre, and today Finland is a sturdy good little democracy, a place you could live in by choice, and they manufacture the piece-of-shit phone I use.

  “So here is what it is …”

  Ned said, “Soon you’ll let me respond!”

  Joris said, “I shall! As God is my witness, your voice shall sound! But here is what it is. These people we are supposed to go over and kill?—we helped them be stupid. We subsidized their insane religion all over south Asia, us, we gave guns to the Wahabis, and money. We don’t like what we made but somebody has to kill it and in my opinion it’s the least we can do.”

  Ned said, “May I …?”

  “Not yet. You want to know how hopeless these fucking people are? The Shia believe the secret imam is going to pop up once he sees they are fighting hard enough and creating enough fire and bloodshed in the Christian world. And the Sunnis, those geniuses, believe the same thing will happen if they create enough hell, except, and you won’t believe this but it’s true, for them it’s not some ghost imam coming back, it’s the fucking Virgin Mary! So not only do these primitive assholes think they are going to get a permanent bacchanal with completely inexperienced women in paradise if they complete their jihad by getting themselves killed, they are also helping to deliver the whole wide world into the lap of Allah Himself. Sorry, these morons have to be managed.”

  “Killed by us, you mean.”

  “It’s worth a try!”

  Ned said, “Are you through?”

  Joris said, “I’m never through. And by the way we have the perfect warrior assholes to do it. The officer corps is full of Christians who have their own version of the end of the world. All that has to happen is the Israelis win a big battle in a place called Megiddo, something that might easily happen, it’s right there on the map and there are plenty of Arabs around there. Then, of course, Jesus comes. And then what?

  “I’m talking about people you can’t reach by normal means, Ned. You can’t make a deal. The Israelis have a doctrine. I forget what you call it, they send teams out into villages, the West Bank or wherever, and they kill the leaders showing up, and the next generation of weapons-makers, like they did with Gerald Bull who was going to build the world’s largest cannon for the Iraqis and fire shells the size of Volkswagens into Israeli cities. So they sent a team to kill him. They got him in Beirut. You have to. Was that a bad idea, Ned? You won’t like this, but this is what I say. Especially with people who think getting themselves killed so they can go to paradise is a really good idea. What I say is that a time comes when you have to kill them in large enough numbers so it interferes with their assumption that they can keep putting up mosques and proselytizing and having enough of them to look forward to covering all the patches of the earth’s surface that Islamics lay claim to, Dar al-Harb, which is anywhere they’re not in control of yet, look up irredentism why don’t you? It’s insane. And I’m saying it may be the fastest and most sparing of overall life, like Bentham, in the long run … it’ll lead to the least overall killing, if you get it done now.”

  Ned could feel Joris getting happier as he pitched himself deeper into his argument. His mode had changed as he’d progressed, he was intentionally roughing up an old friend, taking a chance of alienating him. What was happening to Joris was the return from the grave of the old style of outrageous, absurdly insulting argument. One thing they had amused themselves with during the NYU years was visiting the representatives of the fossil left, all of whom had some sort of decaying perch in Manhattan, some loft, some basement. They had seen invective as an art form, and as entertainment.

  Joris wouldn’t stop. “Now the last thing. War is insane from the standpoint of the big democracies because it competes with fixing everything that’s important, the environment, the bridges, the hundreds-of-years-old water mains. We have to stop spending on war if we’re going to survive as a First World country. And you’re not trying to stop some kind of all-out war that’s going to solve anything. It’s going to be half-assed because we don’t fight wars of extermination anymore, I will say that for us …”

  Ned broke in. “That’s refreshing.”

  Joris said, “I’m almost through! Anyway, bankruptcy is what I was getting at. This war will do for us what losing two world wars did for the French, made them into the most diplomatic nation on earth!—and got them out of Africa so fast it was a blur.”

  Ned said, “I can’t argue sitting down.” He stood up. “Okay, let me rescue you, my friend. But point of order, first. You can’t keep calling Muslims Islamics.”

  “Why not?”

  “It doesn’t exist, that’s a reason.”

  “It does now.”

  “Is Christianityics a noun? If you say it, you’ll look stupid. Same with Islamics. But Islamic is an adjective, and so would Christianic be. Feel free to invent it.” Ned was sorry he’d brought it up.

  Joris said, “Okay, but before you start just realize I wasn’t advocating anything …”

  Ned said, “Oh but man you are advocating something, and I’ll tell you what that is. Let me tell you the state of the world we’re going to get with this Anglo-Saxon Invasion. For sure, Number One, we will get the Shia majority taking over after we bust up Hussein’s Sunni minority dictatorship. And then we get the lucky Shia hooking up with their brothers in Iran … and big surprise putting together the second and third largest oil reserves in the world! And in the meantime the Iranians are getting the bomb so voilà presto a Shia co-prosperity sphere like the Japanese wanted in Asia … Okay so we the U.S. we go ahead and Number Two we use our superior technology because we haven’t got enough infantry to go in and fight man to man so we use munitions we know will kill a lot of innocent Islamics, to use your term, and I do mean innocent because a lot of them will be people who are genuine opponents of the crazies, not to mention Christianics and tiny children, so in the course of winning quote unquote we end up with more Muslims hating us than ever before. Isn’t that smart, Joris? We will kill lots and lots of collaterals. And Iraq can’t do anything about it because they don’t have the bomb, like Iran may, who knows?

  “Three, anybody who hasn’t got the bomb is going to go nuts getting it so they can feel safe and sound like North Korea. Four, whatever happened to the idea of getting bin Laden first, before bombing anybody? Bin Laden, who doesn’t even live in Iraq. Five, you know it’s going to turn out to be bullshit about Hussein’s nuclear program, right? Lie to me and say you believe it. Say it! Six. Man you are establishing the preventive war precedent for anybody who wants to use it when they get powerful enough and mad enough. Seven, is this Seven? Anyway, I’m almost through. Seven, and I guess you can say this is still in the making, but depleted uranium is in all our weapons so the debris from all our wars from now on will go on inflicting suffering far into the future. Killing from now into the future through the bloodstreams of people who were our enemies but whose children have by a turn of the wheel become our friends. That doesn’t bother you? The future—where our descendants will live? Yours, at least, and if I’m lucky, I’ll have one or so myself.”

  Joris said, “Okay, so a prudentialist argument, bravo.”

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p; But now, Ned was not through. “So Eight. And this is an add-on, and I’m just about to shut up. But do you remember when Bush One egged on the southern Shia to rise up against Saddam and then let him slaughter them from the air because our no-fly zone didn’t cover his helicopters? That wasn’t an oversight, it was a plan … it reduced the power of the Shia to mess up our plan for replacing Saddam Hussein with the general of our choice.

  “Joris! You can’t be for the war. If we’re not against this war—not even a war, an invasion—we’re nothing. And whatever else we’re for is nothing, if we don’t do what we can now against this.”

  Ned felt an old fantasy revenge daydream show up again. The prior stars in it had been Nixon and Pol Pot and LBJ. Now it was George W. Bush. Wars end. An invisible refrigerator repository hangs over the head of the victor president. The repository is full of body parts. Anyplace the conqueror goes limbs and parts rain down on him. It would be irregular. Sometimes for a while nothing would fall. The president would begin to feel safe. But he would be wrong and the stinking bloody arms and legs and heads and feet would fall on him again. Jokes in particular would be a trigger. George Bush would never be able to tell a joke anywhere without a severed hand falling on his podium, or plate, or lap. The president stops smiling.

  Ned thanked god because Joris was motioning for the pen. He felt light on his feet, as light on his feet as a two-legged marshmallow, which was a line from one of their ancient subway platform games, Absurd Similes.

  Joris signed, smiling.

  32 Nina was up and dressed. She was inspecting the breakfast he’d contrived for her, which was nested in cloth napkins, in a straw basket. It consisted of warm buttered toast, two hard-boiled eggs, salt and pepper shakers, an orange, a mayonnaise jar of black coffee, and silverware.

  Ned said, “Gruen beat me to the yogurt but don’t despair, I have a contact for you. Her name is Nadine Rose and she’s very nice, and when I asked her for it and she had to deny me she said, ‘I shall put it upon my list.’ And those eggs were about to be deviled, but I seized them. And Nadine Rose is the person to go to for cravings. It’s all arranged.”

  Nina sat down on the foot of the bed and began peeling one of the eggs. She said, “Thank you so much! This is perfect. The coffee is still warm, even! But what if I don’t have any more cravings, oh my God.”

  Ned said, “Let’s not think about that. By the way, Gruen and Joris have both signed the petition.”

  “That is more important to me than this egg! Your friends are coming through. But did you know Aristotle said, ‘Oh my friends, there are no friends.’ ” Ned looked distressed.

  Nina said, “Don’t look that way. I’m sure he was just being apocryphal.”

  Ned was staring at her.

  Nina said, “You know that was a joke, don’t you? Or do you think I’m really dumb?” She thought, I know what’s making him nervous, which was when we were all talking about death and I said Everybody you know’s father is dead. Which no one would think was wrong if they knew I knew it was wrong myself, but he’s nervous that they don’t know … and then when I said This I’m no good at all at …

  “No, well, I knew.”

  “You’re so crazed on the subject of how I’m going to come across I can’t stand it.”

  He wanted to defend himself but for the moment couldn’t think of what to say.

  Nina said, “There’s something not on the surface between Joris and Iva. He can hardly look at her. And something happened in the hall last night that has something to do with it but I don’t know what.”

  Ned said, “You’re imagining things.”

  “I’m not, but nevermind. But anyway, don’t worry about me. Damn it! The only reason your ectoplasmic girlfriend never embarrassed you is because she never opened her mouth, as I understand it.”

  “But why ectoplasmic?”

  “Because in case you never noticed it, she looked exactly like one of those young woman forms or ghosts or whatever they were in Victorian photographs coming out of the medium’s ear, flat and white. That’s why. Or nostril.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  She slid out from under her breakfast and stood up and asked, “So how would you anarchists …”

  They had a conceit, or rather Nina had a conceit he went along with because he didn’t care. The conceit was that he was an anarchist pur sang, an absolutist like Bakunin, but crypto. It was all a canard based on an episode that meant nothing during the time he was running the Pacific Co-op and he had allowed a local of the Industrial Workers of the World, which still existed at that time in little nooks and crannies of the Bay Area political landscape, to distribute a recruiting appeal on the co-op premises. That was all. The treasurer of the local had vanished with the petty cash box. Nina knew the story because he’d told it to her, and he never knew when she was going to come up with some weird accusation based on it.

  He said, “I know you like to keep on about my supposed anarchism, but for a change you go ahead and come up with a better system of your own.”

  “Well under anarchism would the trains run on time?”

  After a pause, he said, “Trains? What trains?”

  All this had only been a diversion meant to distract him so she could get into the bathroom ahead of him. She laughed as she won the race.

  33 Ned was en route to the meeting-before-the-meeting, meaning a caucus of old-friends-only prior to sitting down with Iva, who was going to give them their orders on what to do or say or write for the eulogy spectacle. Elliot was descending a flight of stairs that led to the second floor, his cockpit office, and Iva’s quarters. Elliot was carrying a red-rope portfolio. Ned felt some kind of strength come into him, unexpectedly, and he thought that Elliot saw it. Elliot froze on the last step above the floor.

  Ned looked up at him and decided not to say I don’t like your altitude and decided not to be appeasing.

  Elliot looked over-groomed to Ned, as though he were on his way to a court appearance. He had a lustrous navy-blue tie on. It couldn’t be, but Ned thought he saw color in Elliot’s cheeks that looked like it might be some brilliant application of rouge. Ninjas with video cameras were everywhere, as usual. A TV makeup person might have done that to him.

  Ned uncapped his pen. He held out the petition clipboard with the pen balanced on the petitions and in danger of falling. He tilted the clipboard. Instinctively, Elliot reached for the pen.

  Ned said, “Aha, you see you have to sign this.” Elliot was unhappy.

  “No, I don’t. I told you no, it’s not necessary.”

  “Would you sign if I convinced you the invasion was in fact going to happen?”

  “It’s not.”

  “Make this deal with me. Give me a minute before we go in. Hear me out.”

  Elliot nodded. But proceeded toward the meeting room at a rapid and unfriendly pace. Ned stopped him.

  Ned said, “No, not while we walk.” It didn’t seem unreasonable from his standpoint.

  Ned said, “I know you’d sign if you thought the invasion were going to happen. And you’re wrong about it, it’s the plan. And forgive me, but I think your taking the position it’s not going to happen isn’t just laziness—I don’t think that. If you don’t want to appear in the list of signers that’s going to take up ten pages in the New York Times, say so and I’ll drop it. Maybe you have business reasons. But what I think is that you can’t stand to think about it, and a way of nullifying a gruesome possibility is to make yourself believe it’s not going to happen. I guess there’s enough uncertainty about everything that that’s an option. I do it myself. But this is real. The petitions go to Congress on Monday and you should sign for the same reason Pascal said you should be a Christian, because the Christians might be right about God and hell and everything so there was nothing to lose. If you stop the invasion, children who are alive and well today will keep breathing. Lots of them. The four of us have to be on the petition and you’re the only one who isn’t.” Elliot said as h
e signed, “I’m not reading it.”

  34 It was just one more thing she had to conquer disappointment over. She was walking an oval circuit in the annoying living room. She was partial to earth tones herself, but enough. The boys were sequestered, getting their marching orders for the eulogy part of the memorial service. She had been excluded in a nice way she couldn’t complain about. Somebody had dropped hints that it could get a little emotional in there, giving her the impression that she might be a hindrance to that, which had been enough. Let them, she thought. By all means let them have soft deep feelings together for a change, with no one watching, go.

  Truly all she wanted was observer status. Because she liked to see Ned in action in disputes or presentations. She had missed a big argument with Joris already. She would have liked to be a spectator for that. There was a definiteness in Ned that came out beautifully sometimes, depending. It was different than the knee-jerk obduracy that everybody mistook for toughmindedness. She couldn’t wait to see him stand and deliver at the memorial. She had faith. Suddenly, she had the answer to the question of why men with curly hair were treated in a certain way. It was because their hair analogically called up lambswool and lambs were lambs, not lions. She was not going to tell him.

  She would wait calmly until they were through. She seated herself at the far end of the sofa next to the basket of quarterlies. She thrust her hand into the heap and pulled out one of the periodicals at random, the Journal of the History of Childhood, still in its wrapper. No thanks, she thought. Disturb nothing, she commanded herself as though the living room was a crime scene, or were one. Either way. She tried to fit the Journal back into the stack at roughly the place it had come from.

  Outdoors it wasn’t enticing. The sky was gray. She felt like doodling. Secretly she was proud of her doodles, because they weren’t doodles. They were complete odd little pictures. She had the impulse to draw a figure in outline of a naked male giant with a flight of stairs running up to his anus and another flight of stairs running up to his mouth, but better not, because someone might chance by and casually ask her what she was drawing. Her doodles could be framed if anybody made frames small enough.