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Sam Knowles, political exile adrift in Paris, has bought his plane ticket home. But the day before he leaves, after saying goodbye to a few characters in the building where he lives, he meets with Alexandre Bakelunde, an Australian actor on a weird mission. There seem to be people out to kill the movie star. The two hide out in the hotel room of a fellow Aussie, a writer intent upon inventing a new school of literature.

Chapter 23

Knowles left it to fate. Or what he called fate, a species of chance – anything but destiny. That was too hazy, heavy, too inescapable – too Germanic. They were in France, where the word impossible did not exist. Whatever happened next was dependent on Bakelunde remembering their encounter and making time for Knowles in his busy schedule. Knowles had the plane ticket back to the States on Sunday evening. Did the film star need him? He must have known what his family was up to.

Saturday was slipping away like the last days before long trips always do. He had business to take care of, a close friend or two he wanted to see in the evening. A short visit to Clarisse to pay the rent a few months in advance and, yes, watch mutely, without giving anything away, as the money lay on the table under her gaze. The kitchen table? He’d never been inside her and Henri’s apartment but guessed it was the pick of the lot, with rooms facing courtyard and street. Their bedroom, what was it like? Henri was an old biker and Clarisse something of an artist so he imagined a turbulent mess behind closed shutters, everything in piles, dirty sheets. If Clarisse was still drawing, there would be smudges on the drinking glasses or a pencil half-under the pillow, maybe the bed was strewn with crumbs after they stretched out to watch a film. There were overgrown plants in the rooms facing the courtyard and the entire apartment was lazy with the mismatched bric-a-brac landlords collect from every tenant who strays into their orbit.

He wanted to say goodbye to Hervé if he could find him. Their meetings cheered Knowles. Always fortifies you to know someone else is in the soup, even if it’s a different pot.

Knowles spread the bills, laying them across his working desk out with a croupier’s flourish. He stared at the money. He couldn’t bear to part with any of it even if he knew he had to give Clarisse and Roland well over a grand for three months’ rent: July, late like always and then surprise her with August and September. He wanted to see her face, to see what changes it provoked. That would be some small revenge for perennially teetering on the edge of insolvency. It was a grand gesture, akin to giving his status away. He lectured himself that he shouldn’t indulge in anything like that but knew he wouldn’t be able to resist.

Knowles went down the corridor to see if Hervé was in. He knocked once – no response. He waited and was about to give it a second go, a little louder this time, when he heard a small scratching noise. Knowles leaned closer. At first, he thought it was mice, their tiny claws scraping the floor as they ran a relay back and forth. It kept on, faster than slower. Well, there must be plenty for the little pests to chew on in the room Hervé used to store his things. But there was another sound, barely perceptible, like someone pressing a wheezy old bellows. Hervé had left the windows open, and the blinds were moving back and forth. That was it. Sure. His wife had left him so where else did he have to sleep? Knowles listened, his head leaning against the door, a smile on his lips, waiting for the words, for a groan or a cry. The narrow cot Hervé had in there was tipping back and forth. The springs were sagging, the shoe repairman was with a silent one, a refined lady, a long-time client who needed her old heels patched up quickly. All work done on premises in 20 minutes! No cries, no chants, no slaps – the man was a regular methodical hole puncher – just the aura of sex, waves of glimmering heat off a quick one a few blocks from the cordonnerie. Knowles had arrived after the seduction, in time for the famous old rhythmical mechanical, the wellsprings of life. How often do we get to listen to others having sex ? Knowles let his head lean on the door as July sweat rolled down his forehead and he suppressed the urge to roar with laughter. It was fine, it could go on forever, just like that, an endlessly subtle grating full of variations, pauses, deep breaths, bodies turning wordlessly on the cot. He had to listen closely, the silence was a bit odd given how famously verbal the French are but Knowles could wait for the fireworks. Maybe they were old lovers who’d already said everything there was to say.

He could have left. He stayed there leaning on the door and listening to gentle cries, like a cat when you stroke its ear. The bed made its little rasping noise. Their exclamations barely rose above a whisper.

Someone was on the stairs. Knowles straightened up as they walked by, pulled himself together and headed down to Clarisse’s, his coat full of money and good omens.

 

He counted it again quickly and laid the full sum in the middle of the table. No flourishes, no grand waves of sudden wealth, no braggadocio. With his version of a businessman’s air, Sam explained that he had things to resolve in the States, he’d be there for a while and not knowing precisely when he’d return – he was coming back, bah oui, Paris was home – thought he’d better pay everything in advance, this being one way to repay her kindness. Her kindness in what, Clarisse asked, leaning forward and shuffling the money with quick hands. In renting him the battered old apartment, he said, at decent price, for putting up with his lateness etc., adding whatever civilités came to mind. He’s joking, she decided. Clarisse folded the money and slipped it beneath the table, into her purse. Knowles couldn’t repress a smile. Madame, Knowles bet, was quite fond of her pognons, those discreetly wadded bills that arrived from nowhere, untraceable, and prone to be spent any way she pleased. She must have a few arrangements like that scattered around the building.      

Clarisse believed Knowles had come into an inheritance. She’d long suspected something on this order. Now he could enjoy life without worrying about some rosy future that never came. His legal status was screamingly obvious and functioned as the unspoken premise of their relationship: He wouldn’t have taken the apartment otherwise. Her belief about his new-found wealth rested on little more than the old adage that people with money never talk about it. That, and something in his body language, his cool detachment, the easy way he parted with a considerable sum.

How he and Clarisse ended up in bed, her bed, was a lingering mystery to Knowles, the only thing he was sure of, being that he didn’t initiate it, while Clarisse Roland was certain her attraction to Knowles had nothing to do with his new-found confidence or his better situation. The perfume of body heat, his air of diffidence, as if it didn’t matter to him where they sat as long as they kept talking, as well as her sense that there was another man behind the tightly controlled mannerisms, it all became an irresistible game. She decided to torture Knowles after months of stray, ineffectual glances.

They were in her bedroom, Knowles hovering on the edge of the mattress while she lay curled on the far side, vulnerable yet open, both talking in low voices as if someone were nearby, each one waiting for the other to make the first move. An hour later he was climbing the two flights to his place.

-Out! Get out! My husband will be back at any moment, Clarisse growled in a panic that was maybe real and maybe not and may have been nothing more than her desire to pretend she hadn’t taken the fatal step. She couldn’t bear Knowles just now. Well, so there it was, he thought – mari means they’re married, doesn’t it? They’re traditional enough to get hitched, as if that mattered. Knowles put his clothes on at a leisurely pace and let himself out, taking the stairs to his apartment in a dream, testing each step to make sure it was real. There’s an old Zen story about a neophyte crossing paths with a master, the younger man gamely sauntering up to the elder and asking, what’s happening? To which the master replied, Everything – all the time.

 

                                                                     #

The phone was ringing. Alexander Bakelunde on the line. He was intrigued by Knowles’ idea of a walking interview, no holds barred as he ambled around the unfamiliar town. They could allude to his being an actor but that wasn’t determinate, was it? He’d talk and express his opinions freely. Could Knowles publish it in France ? That would be the best. Where did Knowles live? This was a different Bakelunde from the pushy tyro of the night before. Knowles gave him the address and Bakelunde said he’d be there at three. Knowles stood there listening to Bachelunde, agreeing with everything the actor said without giving it any thought. His body was swimming in all the pleasurable sensations that linger after a rousing fuck. With Clarisse it was all dark clouds and thunder, the strange sense that she was trapped in her apartment and they had to go through with it… The actor wanted publicity, did he? The back page of Libé was always hungry for fresh exotics.  

Alex Bakelunde arrived at Cité Monthiers five minutes early. Giving Knowles the once over, he began walking around the place like he owned it. As far as the interview was concerned, he forgot he ever mentioned it. He stood in the empty room in the middle of the apartment.

-Is that the way you use it? For pacing, thrashing things out? Brilliant. A blank space right in the middle. Every home should have one. Pretty ramshackle, he said, nodding at the high ceilings, the peeling paint and the stains on the plank floor. -A portrait of me in Paris? Sure, why not? Shake the branches and see if anything falls. There’s something else I want to talk to you about, he said, leaning against the wall where the alcove and the empty room met. -I want to introduce you to someone, maybe someone you already know. Is there a phone around here?

-Someone I know? What was Bakelunde up to? Was he one of those tiresome people always angling to turn an acquaintance to their advantage? Knowles’ desk was a mess once again as he unearthed the cumbersome old phone with its second receiver on back. You could see the gears turning with people like that, but Knowles couldn’t see Bakelunde’s. He assumed the actor meant Chalmers Manville in Australia, in which case the jig was up. He set the phone down in the middle of the desk.      

-You have international?

-It’s a fixe. Call anywhere you like.

Bakelunde reached for the phone and stopped, glancing at Knowles.

-One of the old models.

-That’s right, Knowles said. Complete with a second earpiece in back. Property of the State.

-I’ve seen one before. In a museum.

-That’s right. Or in an old film. I’m not sure why it wasn’t chucked but it works. Where to, by the way? 

-Australia.

-Late over there, isn’t it? Knowles could see that life around Bakelunde was always going to be sur le vif – on one’s toes.

-He’ll pick up.

Bachelunde dialed the number from memory and put his hand over the receiver. -His name is Eddie Trafalgar but it might as well be Frankie Fountainebleau. He’s really just Jones, born in Canberra, and I doubt they were Joneses when the family queued up for entry. I sometimes call him that just to annoy. He’s late of Flox & Co. Talent, Sydney, shown the door due to certain financial irregularities, now operating out of a highrise in one of the better districts. Care to guess who made that possible? We’re thick as thieves. I’m here because of him and he’s there because of me. Two oceans seem a safe distance.

Guttural noises of someone clearing their throat and spitting came flying out from the other end of the line. Bakelunde took charge. -Hello, Eddie… Eddie, how are you? Yes, it’s me, Ed. Sorry to disturb at this hour. Yeah, I’m in Paris. Where else would I be? No invites to Monaco yet… Everything’s fine, production just getting under way. I’ve got the day off… Stop being a grandmother, Eddie, we need to talk. I’m here with a man, a friendly fellow. I think you know him. His name is Knowles. Sam Knowles. A very unassuming gent, a quiet one who, once you’ve been introduced, you hardly remember a thing about him. Remarkable quality, wouldn’t you say? Perfect for a spy. I believe he’s in your employ? I believe you’re keeping an eye on me by means of this fellow, yes? … Come on, Eddie, no need to protest like that. Spend your fifteen percent any way you please. It just seems to indicate a certain lack of trust, Ed. I’m not a product, I’m a human being who can very well handle my own business here in Europe. Like to speak to him? He’s here and I’d like both of you to know I know. Talk to him, Eddie… You doth protest too much, old man.

Bakelunde handed the phone to Knowles and reached for the receiver in back.

-Wallo. Who is this, please?

-Sam Knowles. A friend of your client.

-Is that so?  

Knowles listened to Trafalgar and answered his questions. Trafalgar seemed as mystified as Knowles, who’d never heard his voice before.

-Well, he likes to pick up strays, that’s all I can say, Trafalgar rasped. -You know your way around Paris? You live there? That’s probably it. Put Alex back on the line.

This time it was Bakelunde who was quiet, while Trafalgar emitted a long stream of denials, assertions and confidences. Knowles had no idea if Trafalgar was who Bakelunde said he was.

-Eddie, there’s something else on the agenda. About our film here in Paris.

-Yeah? Trafalgar replied with thinly disguised reluctance.

-I think we’re in quicksand. Not sure but I get that feeling. The actors are telling me things. Finances are shaky. A delay right now I can’t account for. Everyone is assembled and we’re suddenly on hiatus. The line-producer announced new funding, but where is it? Meanwhile they are or maybe aren’t paying my hotel bill. So let’s be prepared to open the spigots. I know, I know, it sounded grand but maybe it’s a busted flush, Eddie, one of the great could-have-beens. What? Why? No, Eddie, I’m not coming home, tail between my legs and all that jazz. No chance in hell. Come on, Eddie – would you?

And with that, Bakelunde hung up the phone without so much as a goodbye.    

-Punchy character that fellow. Did you really think I was checking on you? Knowles asked. What exactly does your agent think you’re up to?

-I don’t think Eddie Trafalgar has a fair clue in hell. But he’s an agent with time and money on his hands, so why not? If it’s not you, it’s somebody else. I’m his first client to escape the penal colony and he’s probably gnawing on contracts that I’m going to bolt and he’ll lose me. And you know what? A European agent isn’t a bad idea. When you turned up, I had you pegged for a spy, someone to keep Trafalgar abreast.

Knowles watched over Bachlunde’s shoulder as the actor scanned the papers strewn across the desk and the theatre announcements on the wall.

-Your French is good, Bakelunde said idly, apropos of nothing.

-Passable. Knowles watched Bakelunde’s lips moving as he slowly read a postcard and poster invitations to events, his eyes squinting with painful effort. Dyslexic, Knowles concluded, or borderline. Perfect profession for someone like that but how does he learn his lines? So, what was he going to tell Bakelunde? He wasn’t sure he was going to tell him anything. He was too intrigued. The actor demanded attention – he brought his dramas with him. Knowles didn’t feel like calling it a day.

The two men were only a few feet apart when Bakelunde spun around. -So who do you work for? If not Trafalagar, who?

-Good question. Knowles smoothed the hair on the top of his head, paused for effect and stared directly in Bakelunde’s wide-open, cool green eyes. -Strictly independent. No contracts with anyone, not even a detective really. But interested. That’s the truth. Now it’s my turn. Who would be checking up on you? Second choice says it’s your family. If not your employer then your family or your wife if you have one. Correct? Who are they?  

-No, no, they wouldn’t be interested in my life in Paris. Bakelunde seemed a little uncertain of his own statement. -I’m orphaned you see. Not exactly written out but politely excused. As long as the havoc I cause doesn’t disturb them.

-Go on.

-I can get away with everything short of murder.

-They’re wealthy, are they?

-Enough. You weren’t brought up –

-Rich? No. Strivers, bosom of the middle class. I gather the air is different up there.

-They’re rich, they have everything, and they live in fear. Fear of losing everything overnight, fear it might disappear while they’re asleep. Fear someone will come for it, claim it, saying it was stolen and doesn’t really belong to the secretive Bakelundes. So, therefore, they must accumulate more, to reassure themselves, and they must be eternally on guard. Not the life I wanted to lead. I took their money up to a tender age and walked. So no, I don’t think they’re after me, or even interested.

-Even if they thought any publicity was bad?    

-I’m a long way from Australia. If I have a bit of fun, it’s local news in a lingo Australia can’t fathom.

-What happens if I turn on the ancient model here and type in ‘Bakelunde, Australia’?

-You’d get me with a line at the end saying that I am the son of Rebecca and David of the notoriously reclusive Bakelundes of Upton Hills. They’re very careful about things like that.

Talking about his family put Bakelunde on his back foot. He became reticent, guarded and let Knowles get away with the flimsiest of excuses. The air inside the apartment was stifling.

-You don’t have to believe a word I say. I’m not a detective. Just a writer, a curious type. I don’t completely buy your family story. From what you say, I think they’re interested. Why I don’t know. Where’s the money come from?  

-I couldn’t say. For an instant, Knowles noticed, Bakelunde was fidgeting. -This place of yours is stuffy as hell. What say we get a beer? I’m on a small mission of mercy this afternoon. You can come. Might interest you. Another writer. The guy who wrote the film you saw last night. He’s here in Paris working on the follow-up. Apparently. he’s in bad shape, coked out, refusing to write the sequel. I’m going to see if I can cheer him up. Come with me if you want, Bakelunde added as if he didn’t care either way. -The guy’s probably bent out of shape by now. Knowles watched as Bakelunde transformed before his eyes, once again playing the movie star, the man people deferred to without knowing why – all because he gave good camera, as the saying goes.

The two men charged off, Bakelunde in the lead, enjoying his untrammeled freedom in Paris, Knowles, watching Alexander from behind and marveling at his ease, his belligerent child-like openness, couldn’t help thinking of him as gifted beyond all measure: a talented actor on the rise, from a wealthy, mysterious family, possessor of a brusque glamour women somehow couldn’t resist. He said anything off the top of his head and turned any corner he liked – who was going to stop him? They’d headed downhill, out of the French quartier and into a small district full of bright lobbies in renovated buildings, where the company names were all baby talk in the bright logos of the start-ups. Knowles stopped him. -Any clue where you’re headed? Bakelunde replied, -None. Does it matter? They made their way across the Ninth to Moncey and Chaptal on the bare shoulders of a July afternoon. If this were a film, shot from above, Knowles thought, we’re bounders rambling around an abandoned city. They walked down the middle of the steep, clustered streets where life had closed its shutters and retreated indoors. Near Pigalle they gave up and fell on the bench in a shade facing the merry-go-round at Place Ventura. The decorative gondolas and painted horses were abandoned. Paris was at a standstill. A dark-skinned gypsy stood in front of a crêperie sawing on a violin.

Vintimille wasn’t far away, not even a ten-minute walk, but the heat set them back, the streets were like walking on hot coals. Crawling along Victor Massé in the shadows under the awnings, Bakelunde and Knowles barely noticed the shuttered stores as the actor drawled a picture of the man they were going to visit.

-Greene came out of nowhere with a mean little book Sydney hated so much it became a hit. Published it himself – no one else would. A few actual living people, pillars of society, took offense, they weren’t used to the unflattering depictions. The book sold so Trafalgar took a chance, putting together money from people who don’t precisely get on with the nouveaus. The film took off. It suited the public mood. Doesn’t happen every day.

A driver far away revved a van up rue Pigalle and pulled over, the humming engine turning into a turbine roar as the sound bounced off the walls of the narrow street. The rest of the world had come to a halt. The men searched for a bar. They’d never make it to Vintimille without a little help.

-You saw the film. Know anything about Sydney? No plot, just snapshot x-rays of the city’s characters, the old crowd being pushed aside by new money. Came out a few months ago and took off like a rocket. One of the cable companies offered him a hundred grand for the next big thing and he grabbed it. Now he’s in Paris, tourist visa about to expire. Hasn’t written a line. Has the money and can’t work. Strange bunch, writers. Laughing all the time and telling anyone who’ll listen, ‘The jig is up. No worries.’ No place open around here for a quick one?

The two men dawdled across Pigalle, Knowles listening intently to Bakelunde as he went on about the writer when the small white van suddenly careened out of nowhere. It revved again and bore down on the intersection. Bakelunde jumped but Knowles gestured not to worry, certain the van was going to slow and let them pass. It kept coming and at the last second swerving, aimed directly, sending the two men sprawling onto the curb. A crowd of onlookers gathered while the van disappeared in the roundabout a block away. The two got up slowly. Knowles had had a close shave with a wall of hot air but was otherwise unscathed, Bakelunde’s forearm had a raw tattoo. A second later and they’d be cripples.

-You think he took his hands off the wheel for a second? Bakelunde asked, as if the whole thing were a joke. -It’s been known to happen.

-I don’t think so, Knowles replied, brushing himself off and glancing down the street to see if any more surprises were coming. The inside of his jacket was damp with sweat. -That was a little too perfect. He stared at Bakelunde with all the attention and guile of a dog panting for instructions. -No, Kemosabe. Someone wants you out of the way.

                                                                  #

The man at the front desk of the Vintimille had his head down, fast asleep. Bakelunde shook his shoulder.  

-Hartley Greene? The Australian? He still here?

-The writer. Who shall I say is calling?

-Alex Bakelunde. Don’t call. We want to surprise him. The deskman sat up straight.

-Hotel rules, sir. No worries – he never picks up. You’ll have to climb – the elevator is out.

Out of breath after the second flight, they paused on the landing so Bakelunde could go on with the story.  

-We got in each other’s hair a few times on set, he leapt out of the cheap seats yelping I should play the scene as written and when I told him it wasn’t possible, cinema isn’t made up of words, he should stay at home and count his money if he has any, the penurious scribbler threw a fit that his precious novel was being traduced, calling me Great Lord Ozzie Over The Top in a loud voice until I ran him off the set. Someone filmed that little imbroglio I’m sure. The movie’s made a nice pile of dough so it’s all bygones, hatchets buried. At least I think they were. We’ll see soon enough. Tread softly – he’s a real piece of work.

-You’ve got to clean that arm, Knowles said, either unimpressed by cinema stories or exhausted.

Hartley Greene, frazzled, exhausted from wrestling with his “New Idea,” leaned in the doorway, shaking with something between delight and terror, surprised by the appearance of Alexander Bakelunde, his bête noir, in the hall of the Vintimille. -Well, well, well. Bakelunde looked like providence itself, with a six pack of cold ones under his arm. Greene, not completely sure that Bakelunde wasn’t a figure of his imagination, led the way through his room to the narrow balcony and gave the actor a full-dress inspection. He set two chairs facing the narrow balcony and prepared himself for a barrage of questions.

-I was just having it out with your ghost the other day, right here in this room. I was sure it was you. Uncanny, no? A phantom double. That anything you know about? Greene rolled a cigarette carelessly, letting curly threads spread across his lap.

Bakelunde kicked his moccasins off and wrapped a wet towel around his forearm. He watched Greene, his old antagonist, his slumped shoulders, fidgeting fingers, his tendency to chew his lips when he became agitated, constantly flicking his head to throw his hair back. Unchanged. Bakelunde let the silence linger. Greene was a good sort, ineffectual but decent. He didn’t want to scare the man, and he didn’t want to talk about what had just happened on the street. Greene was in fragile shape. The silence continued while the two men sipped their beer.  

Greene finally gave in. -So, what are you doing in Paris?

-I’m with the sisters of Charity now, Bakelunde said languidly. -International division. Saving the world, one writer at a time. Hartley Greene leered back, and Alex softened a little.

-Decent part in a small film. Trafalgar got me out of Australia for which I should be eternally grateful. And you?

Greene gestured toward the desk behind them.

-Working. How’d you know I was here?

-People talk, Hartley. Paddy Ashland told me you been on the horn with him about the film. He mentioned the hotel in passing.

The two men stretched across the balcony of Hartley Greene’s fourth floor room with a view of the Paris rooftops, shooting the breeze and rehashing old quarrels, while Sam pushed a chair into the corner a short distance away. Greene pestered him for details on the film, by which he meant whether people were still buying tickets. To Bakelunde it seemed a pleasant way of passing the afternoon after what had just happened. Greene didn’t comment on his rumpled suit or the bruise on his forearm. Bakelunde was adept at directing attention elsewhere. Greene was oblivious.

-I don’t know how he got my number! Greene threw his head back, guffawing and showing off his decaying teeth. -I slipped out of Sydney without a soul knowing. You can see how that turned out.  

-Not so bad, mate. You’re set up in Paris, writing the sequel to Canoe.  

The writer snorted. The match was on.          

-Why would I do that? You think I came to Paris to repeat myself? Harbour Canoe2, the sequel in which the writer excoriates a new town with a wry grin? Will that be my grand tour of Australasia? Alterno-boy vs. the Hypocrites? All because gullible Americans from cable have touched down on Planet Oz to throw dollars at anything with a pen in its hand? Greene stretched out in the chair, his feet pressing through the wrought iron balustrade. He was on a roll. -I’d better take advantage while I can, is that it? I’m out, I’m free. Lived on nothing for years before I got lucky. I took what they offered but I never agreed to become a product booster. Nothing personal but it would be better if we drowned our little mutual creation. Maybe we begin the next film with the guy’s last bubbles rising to the surface. Who killed Philip Sanders in The Harbour Canoe? I’m working on other things. I’ll figure out something for Sydney later. His words sounded conciliatory, but his body language and delivery said he couldn’t care less.

-A damned irresponsible position to take, Bakelunde drawled while staring at the skyline. -Have it your way.

-You think so? I made it to France with bread in pocket while the world burns at an ever-accelerating pace. Seems pretty well thought out and responsible to me. You come from money; you’ve never had a worry in the world. Everyone knows the Bakelundes. You’re an actor because it’s an almighty lark. He stood up, heading to the dark recesses of the room.

–Moi? I was penniless for years, he called over his shoulder for the whole world to hear.

He came back clutching a half-gone bottle of vodka.    

The two men’s voices rose as they got into it, having it out without worrying whether anyone behind shutters was listening in.

-You can’t do that. A lot of people are depending on you, the film crew, the actors, the public you never knew you had. You’re Australia’s success du scandale. And what are you doing precisely now? Leaning back, Bachelunde’s fingers slipped between the covers of a small pile of books stacked precariously close to the corner of the desk, ruffling the pages. -Do you have any idea what will happen if you abscond? They’ll never forgive you. You won’t work in films for years. Well?

-Oh la di dah. Do you think I set out to work in film? Is it my sworn duty to write Canoe 2 and 3 and insult a whole new set of dignitaries? That’s what got their attention. Not the style, literary despite my best efforts, but the fact that my little vignettes named names, ever so slightly camouflaged. They’re coming after me with lawsuits, did you know that? Will the Bakelundes give me refuge on one of their private islands if I go back? I’m happy where I am, I’m on the way to a new kind of writing, whereupon Greene, dropping avant-garde French writers’ names left and right, launched into an impenetrable discussion of his new book. Bakelunde seemed unfazed and impervious to every insult Greene lobbed at his family. Their discussion went on until Greene folded, saying he’d consider it, but only because he was tired of being browbeaten.    

-You write it and I’ll make it a hit, Bakelunde said without a trace of bluster. Greene faced Bakelunde while he rolled a new cigarette. His eyes were like pinpricks, and he was growing more furious by the instant. He’d opened his door to a real demon, exactly what he’d come to Paris to escape. -We can all use a hit from time to time, the actor went on, low key. -You’re enjoying this, being in Europe, aren’t you? Doing wonders for you, right? Well then. The actor had sussed out just how hungry his opponent was for success, but Greene wasn’t ready to give in. He shot up from his chair and searched for something on his desk. It was his turn to attack.

-How’s the family doing? Still moldering away with their millions?

-I don’t know. None of my business, mate.

-Oh come on. They’re only among the wealthiest in Australia. Where does the money come from?

-Wise investments. So I’ve been led to believe. I don’t see any of it, or very much of them.

-You’re not curious? About the money? About who they were before they landed in Australia?

Bakelunde deflected the questions, unsure of what possible use a loose nut like Greene could be to him. -Tabula rasa. Wash up in Oz and all sins are forgiven. Forgotten. White skin? You’re in.

Greene didn’t believe Bakelunde, but he had no way of knowing. His conception of the rich was confined to things he read, happenstance and chance encounters, like the politico, not precisely rich but on his way, that he’d written about in Canoe. He had no first-hand acquaintance with the system, unlike Alex who, growing up, was used to Prime Ministers and titans of industry stopping by for dinner and staying late. Greene wanted to pry Bakelunde open on the subject but didn’t have a clue how.

-I won’t bring up your family again if you’ll stop resurrecting that loon from Canoe. Or any of them, he added grandly. We’re free men, in Europe. Paris. A beautiful surprise that six months ago I could never have imagined. A toast, Greene burbled as he poured out the last of a pricey vodka with a snowy scene engraved on the label.

-Sure, Bakelunde said, raising his glass. -But let me get this off my chest. Do anything you like. You should do anything you like, the actor said, buoyant and generous. -Give them the script or story you want but give them something. Bakelunde felt a bit like a mogul at that moment, and he sensed how corrupt it was to give advice. He was about to go on when Greene cut him off.  

-Cheers and fuck every single one of ’em, he said, raising his glass.

-Precisely but give them something. They paid you? He joined Greene at the desk, looking over his shoulder.

-A hefty portion up front, Greene drawled absentmindedly.

-Well done. If you need more –

Greene jumped, gesturing at the surroundings and cackling. -Look around. Anything in this room that leads you to believe I’m burning through a hundred grand?

-How about a party tonight? You could use a little fresh air, Greene, Bakelunde said, teetering comically over the bed and falling, his face drooping with boredom. He had no interest in Greene’s room, preferring to stare through the curtains to a scene far away, where afternoon breezes rode to town on the back of the swells. One hand rested on the hotel phone on the night table.

Later, when he was planning his next move, Bakelunde took advantage of Greene’s distraction to slip a piece of paper under the book at the bottom of the pile on the writer’s desk. Written when he was in the water closet washing his arm and folded in half, the shaky handwritten note said, ‘If anything happens to me, Greene, my family is responsible. Even better material for your next book. Alex’ 

-Boys I’m off, he said. Shaking hands with a non-plussed Greene he said, -Great to see you again. Glad we cleared the air a bit and turning to Knowles, -Talk before eight? He was halfway out the door when he paused before either man could react. -You’ll let me know if you need anything, Bakelunde said, flicking his fingers and disappearing down the hall. He was gone before the writer could tell him again that he didn’t need anything except a breakthrough. Knowles hadn’t reacted quickly enough. Standing up, he straightened his clothes and headed for the door.

-Hold on, Hartley Greene said. -I didn’t even catch your name, did I? Who and what are you and what are you about? How do you know Alex? he said as he folded himself onto his chair with his legs crossed and one elbow on his knee like an ornamental sea creature who stirs the sand every time it crawls across the ocean floor. -I thought you were part of his entourage. Do you want to smoke? We can. And humming to himself he pulled a thumb-size wad of green hash out of his pocket.

-How do you like that? Wants to throw money at me. Knows I don’t need it. Want to hear the funny thing? I had more or less the exact conversation which just transpired with Bakelunde’s ghost a day ago, right here in this room. I thought he was here and I defended myself from the assault. Uncanny, no? He finished rolling and licked the papers. He had no idea he was repeating himself. -Care to join? Who are you, anyway?

Knowles sketched his biography in approximate strokes, more left out than in. He spoke of the journalism with Dufrêne as if it were still on-going.

-So, you’re a writer, really, a real writer? The full-time variety?

-No.

-And you live here in Paris? Greene was being polite. He was still recovering from Bakelunde’s surprise appearance in the flesh. -Decent fellow all in all. Canoe has done extraordinarily well, a complete surprise to everybody in Oz. Made on the cheap, quick turnaround, unlikely hit from the first weekend. Bakelunde’s over the top. And here he is in Paris.

Greene stood up and ferreting around behind the overturned sofa, returned to his chair with a second bottle of vodka.

-I hide it there – from myself. He tipped the sheeny liquid from the bottle into two dirty glasses sitting on the desk. -These film people, you have to lie to them all the time. Such perfect lives, everything to order – their favorite bottled water is written into the contract, a pleasure, I think it’s fair to say, most of the world has never known nor ever will. You couldn’t ask for more. Always jetting here and there. A bunch of absolute and complete dickheads. They want Harbor Canoe II, and they want it straightaway and I’m not going to give it to them. Let them think I’m fucked up beyond belief. Good. Then they’ll apply their tender mercies. He took a healthy slug from his glass. -The machine was ready to pounce. I slipped away in time. Better they think I’ve gone off the rails over here in France. Everybody else does, don’t they? France is a crack-up machine for wayward westerners. It’ll buy me some time. Greene warmed to his subject. -Ever written any fiction?

-Nothing I’d haul out in public, Knowles demurred. Greene was obviously loaded on something that came before his current apero. It remained to be seen if he could learn anything of use about Bakelunde.

-Well but you write.

-I destroy what I’ve written. I’ve got a pile I’m going through. I hunt for ideas and toss the pages over my shoulder. How long have you known Alex?

Greene wanted to talk, and Knowles, quiet, observant Knowles was the perfect foil. A writer too, after a fashion. Greene had kicked around the Australian scene, published a few novels that went nowhere and then somehow struck gold with a book he wrote after he’d given up. A heave, he called it. He was in bad shape, he said. He’d been out late at a party the night before. Seeing Knowles all ears, Greene resumed striding between the desk and the window, coughing in between phrases and occasionally losing his balance.

-Not so long. A marriage of convenience. We have nothing in common and if the script for Harbor Canoe hadn’t fallen in his lap, we’d have passed our two lives amicably on parallel tracks headed to entirely different destinations. He’s OK – Greene broke stride to cup his fist and take in a long hit – a pleasure to watch on screen, a decent guy considering how stinking rich his family is – I can’t let him know any of that.

-Tell me about the family. I’m interested.

Greene waved him off. -What is there to tell? Fabulously wealthy and no one, I certainly don’t, knows from where. They seemed to have washed up on Australia’s shores après guerre with gold lining their coats. Greene strode off to the corner of the room, where he kicked the curtains open and leaned against the wall. -Their existence is a highly guarded secret, they are not written about or discussed, they maintain, one may imagine, direct access to the men who run the continent behind the scenes, and they’ve never once done a single thing to make humanity happy, or if they have, they paid their lawyer to squelch that, too, because their greatest fear is that someone may somehow get past security to knock on their door and ask for something, if only a cup of sugar which means they’d have to rouse the servants. A tawdry affair, having servants but what can you do? Alex Bakelunde is, so far as anyone knows, the kink in the genes and the first one to find his way out of the family labyrinth. He enjoys himself and pulls a long face when the family comes up in interviews. I can’t tell you any more than that, I’m just mongering what everyone else claims is true.

Greene fell silent as the air began to fill with clouds of burnt resin. He threw the last window open and resumed pacing the narrow space.      

-I’m almost there with a new book. Almost there… Everything seems different from here – from Paris. Can’t write the way I did before. Bear with me. Want more? He held the smoking stick out to Knowles, who waved him off. His whole arm was shaking. -The psychology of the individual is exhausted. No one is interested or thinks it will change a thing. Only 19th century readers cling to it, in books they can’t remember they read a month later. No more character, no more alienation, no easy resolutions. Greene came to an abrupt halt, saying he had to go to the toilet in the hall. He reappeared a minute later.

-Bit of old French there. Small tub in the bathroom proper but the toilet’s in the hall. We share our shit. He paused. -I’m not in the best shape, I woke up late and was just getting on track when you arrived. A Kurdish ritual of some kind, the whole community present. They discuss politics, chew the fat and then some guys in the corner are blowing weird sounding horns, playing a melody only goats can hear and the crowd is swaying in the middle of a conversation. Like instantly. Next thing you know the men are barechested, dancing around the women, serenading one after the other in a circle. Everything in a group, completely tribal. The man dances a controlled frenzy. He moves towards the woman, arms and knees thrust out. With each movement he makes towards her she withdraws in the same measure. Then she, forward, towards him – he moves away. Their hips are moving in concert. They submerge their identities in abandon. The men are like Assyrian reliefs, their hair piled in knots on their heads. I couldn’t tell one from another. The whole thing is traditional, nothing improvised.

Knowles prodded him. Didn’t Greene know more about the Bakelundes? It was the first time in months Knowles had been around another writer. He wondered what Greene’s idea was, what this new fiction he was talking about was. It didn’t take much to get the Australian going. Success had crept up on him when he least expected it and now innumerable suppressed plots and plans rose to the surface.

-What I think is that Connected Men, the men of our time, have killed the Man of Character and thrown his body out to sea, where he will be nibbled on by urchins and anemones until he washes up a thousand years hence, to be exhibited in the Museum of Once Was. Everything is too fast for him now. He’s easy prey. Man is a thicket of possibilities. Only his character, his reticent, tradition-bound, inherited character holds him back. The world is information now. Does that work? It’s all around us. How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking? You see it, don’t you? No one wants to be an individual anymore, they want to download the same programs everyone else has so they can interface and say the same thing the guy sitting next to them on the train is saying.  

Greene doubled over, coughing until his lungs were almost up his throat.

-So we can be done with character once and for all especially since there is less and less of it to go around. All those books, all the films: endless depictions of nearly identical characters. Messmen. Mundane Joe and his complexes – his brood. The novel is done with character. Now it can move between people, in and out of bodies, listening to the voices of a wandering flower seller, barmen, concierges if there are any left, the diplomat gliding by in his limo. The ones who escaped. I’ve even got a name for this school of writing: psychosynthesis. The body consciousness of everybody. No one cares about psychology anymore and only sick people want to know why anyone does things. Sensitive bourgeois girls with mental hang-ups (who get jiggy at parties and regret it for days after), doctors, detective types, professors, handsome fellows who inherit the estate: out with all of them. Greene began pacing the length of his long desk, dragging his fingers along the tabletop and knocking books to the floor.

Best not to tell him about Simon, Knowles reflected. Claude Simon was a good one to read for modern French lit but it would only spoil things for Greene if he thought another writer had got there fifty years ago. He wants to strip away absolutely everything that makes fiction interesting, doesn’t he? Knowles mulled as he watched the man barging back and forth across the room, waving his arms, and thinking out loud. -So that’s how I look, Knowles mused, when I’m pacing the floor. Nobody sees me then. He was fascinated by Greene’s back. Fifty percent of the time that’s what we see – someone’s back as they walk away.

-I’ve got to go further… I’ve got to get past the frigging Canoe, the character sketch. I’ve a horror of becoming a comedy writer. Greene stared at the floor.

He’s interested in the wandering souls, isn’t he? Knowles thought. The incomplete ones, the ones without strong definition. That’s the fault with Greene’s argument – he’s plunged into the weeds, the netherworld. Anything goes down there.

Greene must have been reading Knowles’ mind. He stared at the street through parted curtains.

-Have you heard that strolling violin player? From Rajasthan I think. Passes under my window at all hours. At least I think he does. I may be hallucinating. He turned around to face Knowles, who was standing now and about to clear out.  

-So, what about tragedy? Hartley Greene said out of nowhere. -What’s that? What does that mean now? How does it work? Can we reimagine tragedy in a world full of massmen? That’s what I want to figure out. The shape of it? I don’t really know what tragedy is. It’s inexorable, implacable, relentless – that’s the way they describe it on the back of old paperbacks. It isn’t a spy story, I know that much, it isn’t another little horror show of suffering and degradation either. I need something grander than how this one decides to kill his wife or how she decides to betray her husband while he’s out making business deals… I’m in way over my head. He stopped pacing and stood there with his hands on his hips, laughing out loud. -And I’m expecting you to rescue me. Greene stared at Knowles, who’d sat down again and ended up sprawling across the bed, just like Bakelunde an hour before. It was a good show but the Australian’s phrases had pricked Knowles, as if someone were pushing sharp needles into his face. The intense heat and the fumes from Greene’s joint had dulled Knowles’ ability to concentrate, and yet there she was, Clarisse, gesturing to him. He sat up and concentrated on the writer’s question.

-I could write a book set in Paris –

-Why on earth would you do that? You’ve just barely landed.

-Even better. It’s fresh – to me anyway, Greene said, propping himself on the writing table. -Imagine that – fresh Paris. Novels are just angles and optics anyway. Take my word for it, I’ve written ten of them. Where were we?    

-Tragedy, Knowles muttered as he rubbed his eyes and peered through his hands, wondering how it was that a few phrases had so powerfully evoked Madame Roland and a story he had no idea existed but which seemed to him now quite real, -As essentially defined for our age of, as you say, mass mutations, as either when bad things happen to good people unexpectedly, such as our old pals the Nazis appearing in your living room in jackboots or when a man, a woman, cannot restrain themselves from their bad habits, when they put so much toot up their nose they combust and thus, a tragedy, a tragedy of possibility we could say, of how much better they could have been if they could only have resisted beating their wife, living a life of crime or simply squandering their talents, none of which measures up to the Greeks, whose sense was that tragedy is character in collision with fate, a mystery that plays havoc with our good intentions and insists we are not who we say we are. Knowles droned on, unable to shake the sensation that unknown to himself he was thinking something completely different from what he imagined he was thinking at any instant, and that this lambent plane of thought responded to whatever passed within hearing range, in this case the obvious fact that something was happening close to him he had been entirely ignorant of and that Monsieur Roland’s appearance on the roof proved it : who was watching whom ? Were they both busy playing around? Knowles was their plaything, eager to be sacrificed in their tragicomedy. Wasn’t that it? Knowles cast it aside for an instant. -So, yes, agree with you there, we don’t produce tragedies. We prefer hard-luck stories with happy endings, live and learn. Is that what you meant?

The writer, standing, stared down at Knowles. -Ha! That’s interesting. A little discombobulated but interesting. This is what I think. Tragedy is passion, that forbidden word. We have plans – not passions. Catastrophes and concerns – not defiance. Either we’re afraid of character or it’s useless in present circumstances. Tragedy is the inevitable. I’m just working my way into it.  

Knowles closed his eyes and plunged into images of Clarisse, as if the entire nexus had been laying in wait for him, ready to spring once the trap door opened. He was now convinced that every one of Clarisse Roland’s visits had been an attempt to ensnare him in her plans. He’d been set up, he was being set up and it would likely continue into the foreseeable future: he was the fall guy for the death of Monsieur Roland. That was the motivation behind their many meetings, that explained her coquetry. He had to move before the old man was dead and he was implicated. Something was happening around him he could not explain. Did Clarisse intend to have old man Roland kill him in a fit of jealousy, and then seize the property after he tottered off to jail? She’d be a free woman then.

-I lost you somewhere after the Kurdish dancers, Knowles said.

– I need a murder here in Paris.

-You do? A murder in Paris?

-Is it so hard to understand? I’ve had a success, a surprise success for a writer no one took seriously. And then I escaped. Escaped to a place where no one knows me. But my success is back there, in a place where they are preparing to welcome me with open arms into the great and grand money machine, where I will become a Writer capital W on a weekly salary. I’ve got to strike before the offer does. Once I’ve got the idea I write quickly, I can bash it out in ten days. Did for Canoe. And why shouldn’t it take place in Paris? That tells them I’ve got bigger things in the hopper and Paris, that puts me on the map internationally. You know the city. Tell me something, anything, give me a line.

And so Knowles described what he now perceived to be a slow moving conspiracy, a collision of people ignorant of exactly what they were doing while being pulled in to a vortex. It was based on real estate and hence not personal in the sense of annoying Greene’s dreaded character phobia. The young art student who married an older man for security and relinquished her dreams, who finds a younger man, whom she does not love but who is easy to manipulate. She will, in the trial of regaining her freedom, play the two men off each other, making one jealous and leading the other into a compromising situation he will never be able to explain to anyone’s satisfaction. So much the better if he is without papers and falls behind on rent. Either he will be killed by the jealous husband, or it will appear that the husband dies at his hand. Isn’t that the way it worked? And she would walk away from the crime because she had been the object of desire and therefore innocent. The immigrant walked freely into the trap. There she was, a woman about to regain her lost freedom before it was too late, trapped between two men. It rang all the zeitgeist bells. Knowles outlined the basic plot to the astonished Greene, who listened to him with a defiant pose, as if he were daring the writer who crumpled paper to come up with something and ended by listening to Knowles’ last lines slumped in the chair with fingers tapping his mouth.

Clarisse could arrange a separation from Mr. Roland, couldn’t she? Knowles asked himself while he droned on to Hartley Greene. She most certainly could arrange one and, in all likelihood, she would walk away with absolutely nothing but her memories. But with husband out of the way, she inherited the apartments in the building and lived as she pleased.    

-Where the hell are you getting this from? Greene broke in.

-Just making it up as I go, Knowles deadpanned. But I’m a sitting duck if any of it turns out to be true. I’ll have to move and quickly. He decided to turn the conversation around to Bakelunde. Greene surely knew more than he was letting on. There must be rumors, hints, legends. Was Manville Eddie Trafalgar? No similarity in their voices. Two controls operating out of Australia made matters more puzzling. There was something lurking there, too, but Knowles was too preoccupied to see it.  

 

Sam Knowles gave in to pacing reluctantly. It was his only way to understand where things stood. At that moment his apartment, denuded of doors, seemed to be full of them and he was trapped inside. But if he moved, maybe he could find a way out. What was behind that one? (Bakelunde’s family.) He couldn’t say, he hadn’t done any real research on it. That one (the mysterious writer)? Another: why had Bakelunde fled like that? Or that one (the murderous van)? The driver had yelled something as he flew past, hadn’t he? What was it? He could see the man’s mouth moving but had no success in putting the words together. But that wasn’t the question. It was the violent tenor of the man’s words. Was he talking to him, Sam Knowles, or Bakelunde or just shouting something like, Get the fuck out of my way? Murderous heat bends people in strange ways. And: Did Knowles believe what he’d said to Bakelunde, that someone wanted him out of the picture? He continued pacing, which he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, didn’t really help anything. He should practice standing still.

The phone rang and Knowles leapt. Bakelunde was on the other end. He skipped the preliminaries. -Want to join us for that party tonight? were the first words out of his mouth.

-Should be an adventure. I’ll bring Hartley.

Bakelunde gave him a rough idea where the party was, somewhere on the other side of the river, close to the Orsay. -All right, let’s meet at the foot of the column in Vendôme in a few hours. What time is it now? Knowles pushed their meeting back, he disliked getting to parties where everyone was sober and making the usual polite introductions, with all the pointed questions he’d have to answer evasively. -You can’t miss it. Straight downhill from where you are, turn left at Opera. Ragged old barrel cannon jabbing the sky, he told the actor. -Napoleon’s in a toga marooned on top. 

Hometown: San Francisco, CA

Current town: Olympia, WA

What are you working on now?

I am completing a novella called Escaping, a novel which explores entrapments of language and meditates on an impossible desire that is ignited by such entrapments: the desire to escape relation. The characters are teachers, artists, administrators, youth, family members, poets, and finally a hermit. I’m playing around with hearing language “out of place” in this book, as a way of witnessing and becoming more awake to the primacy of unspoken rules, habitual “language games” at work in every discursive setting, in every relationship. The arc of the book finds the four main characters “escaping” in one way or another by the end. I’m also writing essays and talks, and composing curriculum for teaching. This week I have been writing up the results of a day-long workshop on interdisciplinary collaboration at Evergreen State College, where we nearly always teach on teams comprised of people from different fields.

Care to share a moment, a person or a story from your past that made you want to become a writer?

Like many writers, I was a bookworm as a child, often preferring to read, over playing outside. I loved reading so much that I didn’t think there was anyone more interesting or powerful than an author. I had the feeling that to be a writer was to be a kind of deity. Turns out it is the opposite of that! 🙂 I read Dostoyevsky with particular fervor as a teenager. I was fully absorbed and awed by “the classics” with their elaborate plots and complexly layered sentences.

If you could change one thing about publishing what would it be?

I have a friend who is so well supported as an artist in France, that the government even paid for his family to have a vacation because it’s healthy for them! It sounds improbable, but it’s still the case that there are states that support artists. If there was one thing I would change about publishing it would be that there was robust governmental support at federal and state levels for artist infrastructures, including publishing, and stipends for artists so that one could live and work full time as an artist, instead of having to hold multiple jobs while trying to foster your work. One has to sort of escape into it, or escape out of it, find a way against all odds. In Principle of Unrest Brian Massumi shares a concept he calls “surplus value of life.” In contradistinction to “surplus value” surplus value of life is qualitative. This concept is a way to value, or revalue, that which cannot be monetized. He writes that “Anywhere a non-monetized surplus-value of life is generated there has occurred what I term . . . an escape to the immanent limit. Escapes can be deviations, perversions, hijacking, hackings. They come in many varieties.” It’s strange that we have to use the language of economics to practice valuing what doesn’t count in capitalism. For example, in ecology the vocabulary of economics is often used to put a value on that which is priceless, in the hopes that by naming these entities in the language of economics, at last their “value” will register, be recognized, so we have terms like “natural capital” which cut apart what are continua, innumerable entanglements and symbioses that characterize this biosphere, reduced to prices.

What kind of writing excites you?

I am excited by writing that functions at once as art and philosophy, and that works carefully and in an unexpected way at the level of the sentence. I am excited by writing that jokes compassionately and writing that I am on the very edge of understanding, that oscillates in and out of clarity, and that can’t be exhausted in a single reading or even multiple readings, and that takes formal chances. I like writing that is in conversation with many different kinds of worlds, texts, arts, experiences, and approaches to the page. But of course, one doesn’t always read to be excited. Sometimes one reads to be informed, or to be bored, and that’s also very necessary.

What advice do you have for writers just starting out?

Once I had the good fortune to be in a “master class” with Grace Paley. I’ll pass on this great piece of advice she gave: if you’re having trouble writing well, write badly on purpose. Take workshops so you can be in conversations about writing, so you can hone your criticality and broaden your sense of what’s possible, so you can make friends to compete with and admire. Workshops are good, despite rumors to the contrary. It’s a shop where you can get accustomed to the fact that writing is work: the workshop. You don’t have to do too many of them but at least do a few. It’s where you will start to get a feel for the tools of the trade. It’s salutary to be in spaces where things are unfinished and in process, open and on trial. Publish other people, write about their work, foster what you care about, cultivate worlds for writing, don’t be cowed by received spaces, be they the long-running reading series in your town or the industrial trade fair. You too can start a series, publish a journal, or organize a conference. If you take responsibility for the editorial and curatorial process, publishing will be demystified. Your life as a writer will not be quite so confusing because you’ll understand better the various parts of the process. Check out collective and community arts based editorial projects such as Encyclopedia Project Vol.3, L-Z which (full disclosure) I coedited.

April 27, 1994

Dear S,

When I was fourteen I had a pet catapillar that I took everywhere, it sitting on my shoulder. I watched over it for months making sure it was ok, feeding and watering it. One day it climbed into a glass of water and swam. I was pleased to learn it liked being in the water. In a tall glass. It left a thin skin see-through like a squid. For months it was a catapillar sitting on my shirt then it turned into a beautiful butterfly. A yellow monarch—it flew around. I had it cupped in my hands while walking outside where there was green grass and a little sidewalk. The butterfly flew out of my hands and landed with other butterflies on the grass. There were blue pink yellow and green butterflies like a cluster of rhododendrons floating in the air. A thousand small pansy-like butterflies flew around me. A man came along and picked a bunch of butterflies off of the green grass. I said: give back my butterfly. He said how do we know which one is yours? I answered him with a kick to his throat under his jaw at which he fell back dropping all of the butterflies. They flew up into a treetop.

Love, S

*

Dear Solveig,

I have to concentrate on staying in the present. Right now. The importance of making earnest drawings. Though funny things are happening nowadays, too. I hope your work in Germany is going well.  I am inside a house that is heated by a small wood stove. Behind my head is a picture window as well as to my left. Outside is a lake three feet away from here. Lake Bottom in the countryside. It is night now so everything is black shadows  and stars so far away. Everything is quiet. When I think of the outhouse, I feel like the opposite of a Beverly Hillbilly. Heather Locklear’s new season is starting tonight, and I left my TV with friends. I had a dream that Heather and I kissed and fucked.  I had a dream  about Lake Bottom last week, which was why I took my friends offer to stay here. I also miss watching the Canadian TV show about a vampire who has become a police detective to repay his debt to society. Lesbian vampires, pagans, and other witchy women make appearances on that show.

Green rhododendrons dry next to the floor lamp, next to an icon with ornate decoration surrounding Mary. An abstract painting in yellow and white, joyful colors, is on another wall. Behind me is a painted photograph from the thirties. Lulu the cat runs down the Dogon ritual stairs that lead to the loft bed. I got my first phone call here, from Cypress in Ohio. Cypress is a student of Chinese medicine which includes the study of herbs. I asked her about making Echinacea tinctures. Echinacea grows in the garden here. Aunt Violet said she planted Echinacea because the deer do not eat the purple cone flower.

Cypress asked if I have seen any deer. I haven’t, but I did hear a big sound from outside. So I locked the door which made that farm dyke Cypress laugh. I told her, What if a deer walked on two feet, wore clothes, came up to the door and started speaking in English? What would I do? 

Cypress laughed again, then read to me from Susun Weed’s book, “You do not have to wash the plant except to wash the soil off of the roots. It takes six weeks to soak the plant in 100% proof vodka.” 

Absolut Echinacea. 

I heard another sound outside and remembered last week when I was first here at a party, someone took a flashlight to the overhanging section of the roof to reveal a tiny sleeping bat, hanging upside down. I don’t have to be afraid of a little bat.  

I see pictures sometimes like a screen over my vision. I can tell it’s just a picture over what I physically see in front of me. Once in a while, I’ll see a picture of a box of Good & Plenty, the licorice candy, when something nice is happening. 

Yours truly, Swann

*

Dear Solveig, 

It’s now a week after I’ve arrived. Something has shifted. I feel more at home outside at night. I went outside to look up at the stars. The beauty in front of me has seeped in. I’ve become more porous, less of an atmosphere unto myself. On the porch, flying by me in the doorway then towards the light, was a Luna moth, one of those supernatural creatures, with wings as big as my hands. Then a flat bat creature flew by too, perhaps to say hello. I shivered, a little scared.

Aunt Violet mentioned that she thought this was not the kind of Echinacea with healing properties. A flower was in front of me while I looked it up in the botanical encyclopedia which said it is the healing kind, red-purple petals and a porcupine center.

Last night I went to the city to pick up some mail. I stopped by a tattoo show at the Drawing Center and ran into Richard who mentioned that someone else noted that he and I look like brother and sister. His theory is that we had a past life together as children in a harem with different mothers. Then I saw my ex Alice with a butch dyke who later gave me her card that had two different names next to two different cities. 

I ran into Billy and pushed him into the ladies room and then up against a wall, he cried ‘help’ but all the women ignored him. I said, You’re free to go. He said, I don’t really want to go. He said he’d heard I play a mean electric guitar. Fran was dressed the same as usual. Fran’s look is neat, with an 80s emotional distance. I ran into Helen of the Deadly Nightshades. She looked glamorous with sunglasses. James is silver. I met up with my ex band member Irena. Now she’s in Crackersnatch. Snatch is a nice word as is purse and Lora is starting a zine called Fairies Suitcase.

Driving back to the countryside I felt joy at the solitude ahead. Back to the country. Mary Daly said, “I’m here to put cunt back into the country.”

Solvieg, I’m not used to living out an old Bowie song. Is anyone awake now to call at one a.m. with no long distance? I look across the lake above the trees and see a search light funneling over the tree tops as if from a vantage point in the sky and the crickets seem orchestrated to sound like electronic machines like a spaceship. I run back inside quite nervous and not interested in finding out what it really is. No Lulu the cat you cannot go outside now! I am truly scared. It is one am Sunday night.  It’s a spotlight, but for what? Is the spotlight from a helicopter that searches for a murderer? I thought about whether or not I believe in UFOs. Had already dismissed it. Other times, I really believe they exist. Yet other times I think that it’s other people who kidnap and abuse the abducted. But at this moment I do not want to find out. I’m too frightened to go outside. I will assume it is a private airplane, something I’ve never seen at night. The lake acoustics breaks up the sound in a new way. It’s a good sign that the cat is not scared. Though perhaps the aliens have a way of calling cats to happily go outside. 

The next morning, I phoned Violet and found out there is an airplane landing strip a few miles away from Lake Bottom. Wish you were here. 

Love, Swann

*

Dear Solvieg, 

I walked in the door of my apartment building away from the noise and heat of the avenue. I inhaled the calm and cool air, with the cooler floors and walls, a refreshed feeling that made me feel you around me, my desire soothed by these moments.

This morning, Lulu and I were sleeping in the front room with sheer pink curtains that veiled the fire escape and sky. Lulu jumped at a bird that stood on the fire escape and cast a shadow on the curtain. She smashed into the window and pulled the curtain down to the floor. She dove into the curtain a few times until she noticed the bird was still outside. She gave up, sat on top of the pile of curtains, and looked amused. 

North 11th Street has a special nature view of that comet every time the sky is clear at dusk.

I miss you and your perfect behind. I look forward to your return when I will kiss every one of your long fingertips and everywhere else. 

Love as Always, Swann

*

Dear Solveig,

Faye was outside in the woodshed, an open shed with spiderwebs and bees. This was her lion’s lair. Now back in the city she hides in the wooden shelves; it fulfills a primitive desire in her. I wait for the rain that’s you to wet my lips and sooth my heart.

Meanwhile, back in the city, South Asian music played on the radio all weekend. Some good Bangladesh wild happy chanting is on now. I’m taping it. Mateo had his birthday party in a city garden with plum, fig, and pecan trees. I was surprised. 

We talk about people who’ve died. Someone young died of food poisoning. I have started to understand reincarnation lately. If I might live again I can relax a little, not feel so much pressure if I don’t get things done. Last night I dreamt about a kid who had several nipples like a cat. The next day on Billy’s roof, I met the kid from my dream. She was in a baby pool. She conjured two gray doves that landed next to the pool and walked towards her. The most inspiring thing was how certain she was that she’d been reincarnated and that we are so lucky to be here, alive. Also, she said that we were both witches in many of our past lives. 

Ellen told me about an old man, an artist, who almost died. He stepped out of the fabric of existence where all these souls were pressed against the fabric longing to be born. The souls like all the sexiness going on. 

The other day at dusk on Billy’s roof, I noticed a firefly. I love fireflies. They glow in the dark. I addressed that firefly as it flew and lingered in front of my face. Billy said it’s responding to your love. Allen Watts was on the radio later talking about rapports with insects, who respond to feelings around them.

The next day I was in Billy’s shop. A young woman tried on a sheer white dress with red flowers printed on three levels. She needed it for a performance, where she planned to wear a beebeard. What’s a beebeard we asked. She told us it’s when you put a queen bee on your neck and the rest of the bees surround the queen and form a bee beard. That night I was at Ned’s restaurant when he told me Nan had lice. He had to use a special comb to get the eggs out. He looked haggard when telling me this.

In my dream last night a skeleton hugged me from behind. 

I got up realizing that I didn’t shut the screen on the window, so all kinds of creatures had flew in. A rabbit, a turtle, two gray doves, beetles, flies, a miniature poodle named Lambchop, and a blue and gold butterfly named Ava. But no signs of you. When will you come home?

Love Always, Swann

Commitment—one of those Jello-y concepts, the meaning of which seems plain as day until the day you might be asked to write about it. It sounds churchy, parental, and applying to business, legality, or marriage. I’m guessing that my first exposure to the word, or notion, as a child would probably have had something to do with being admonished to keep your promises. As an adult, it seems as if it might be nearly an Eleventh Commandment—Thou shalt honor thy commitments, or Thou shalt not go back on thy word. Like all the Commandments, it’s a thing that wouldn’t exist if people weren’t constantly violating it. If today’s political ridiculousness isn’t a good example of such violations, I don’t know what is. 

But we fuck up our commitments because we’re human, riddled with foibles, and so often ruled by weakness and various ignoble urges. I liken commitment to the aforementioned Jello because commitment is one of those concepts that’s wiggly—a congealed salad, studded with morsels of morality and expectation, appealing to the high-minded few, but feared by the trepidatious many. And some of those supposedly delectable embedded nubs may be changes, the scary Maraschino cherries that is life, able to destroy commitment if we indulge. And most of us do, because we’re basically five-year-olds who want the cherries—we want what we want. After all, 98.6 of our DNA is the same as that of chimps. Admittedly, some changes are not our fault—we don’t expect Tina Turner to have honored her marital commitment to Ike, right? She didn’t have the deal that Tammy had—“Stand By Your Man,” or Dolly—“The secret to staying married is, don’t get divorced.” The wiggly problem with commitment is that it’s not a respecter of life changes. Shit happens.

The subject brings to my mind two of my favorite literary characters, Bartleby and Oblomov, (the latter such a favorite that I’ve named a character in my recent novel after his creator, Ivan Goncharov—and he’s also appropriate subject matter for my beloved KGB  readers). These are two guys who have had to make a commitment, knowing that they really weren’t up to it. Or did they know? Bartleby assumes his job as a scrivener, but something happens—is it mental illness? Incompetence? Ennui? Exhaustion? Rebellion about unfair working conditions? Or just exercising a wish to be master of his own universe, repeating the maddening “I prefer not to” in the face of his commitment? And poor Oblomov, mostly languishing in bed, unable, or unwilling, to get up and attend to the affairs of his estate at Oblomovka, which badly declines from his neglect. What’s his problem? Protesting the terrible situation of his serfs, or the relentless burden of noblesse oblige? Depression? Disease? Laziness? Or perhaps he’s an early victim of our modern affliction, The Malaise, so well presented to us by Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Walker Percy. But then, on the other hand, maybe Bartleby and Oblomov are examples of the most committed humans of all—those who see themselves as superfluous, believing that nothing they can do in their lives will make any difference in a crazy world, so are deeply committed to not bothering? Jesus god—I don’t know. You tell me. 

I could go on about commitment, but I prefer not to. I admit to being very attracted to Bartlebyism and Oblomovism, whatever the causes—I don’t want to get out of bed many days, especially these days, and I often disregard my commitments, like loading and unloading the dishwasher, or meeting writing deadlines. In fact, I see that my commitment to writing this little piece is two days overdue. Oh, well. Perhaps the world will be a better place if I just make another martini, perhaps smoke a cigarette, lie on the sofa and watch some more of Ken Burns’ Country Music…Maybe I’ll send this, maybe not…Will it matter? Do I care?  Sigh. “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!” 

Editing

Some years ago I got into an online argument about the work of the editor. How does an editor find, support, and publish great writing? A kind critic, who then became an angry critic, wanted to attribute the success of a series of books that I edited to the strength of my “personal taste.” But my experience was the opposite. I’d discovered that, to the degree that I could silence—or even work directly against—my personal taste, I came under the spell of great writing. When a piece of writing bothered me, seemed persistently “wrong,” and made me unquiet with its existence, I knew I should pay closer attention. I tried to love it, and then I published it. On the other hand, when writing delighted or pleased me I would become suspicious. Granted, the compass here remained personal, but it’s significant that it was useful only in this inverted way. A skilled editor should not publish what simply delights her. Great writing is something else, something to which our tastes or pleasure can blind us. Great writing is indefensible, while taste points us toward that which we’re ready to defend or have cultivated reasons for. Great writing needs no reasons nor defenses—it simply demands to be loved.

A good editor is someone who loves what she reads. There’s no question of taste, no expert intervention, and no technique for making the writer’s work “better,” per se. Editing is reading with love, kind of the opposite of taste-making, with all of its measured discernment. Editing involves reading every day, paying attention, and devotion—as with raising children. Don’t listen to the experts. Editing has more in common with farming or the family doctor than it has with, say, agribusiness or Big Pharma. While these latter technologies pursue improvements in food and human health through expert interventions, the former pair lives with and loves food and people on a daily basis. Editors live with and love writing. Our interventions are contextual and various. We improve writing by paying attention to it every day and speaking back to it with respect. Love is not a highlight reel, nor some ascending sequence of pleasures and rewards, as it is sometimes depicted. Love is quarrelsome, tedious, often irksome, and full of surprises. I’ll go further and say that love is a quality of regard different from affection or admiration; I mean love in the sense that Hannah Arendt attributed to St. Augustine: “I want you to be.” In practice, it is the commitment to engage one’s subjectivity with the words the writer chooses as completely as possible. To hold and not withhold. Reading should be steady, searching (“the long, sullen hours,” as Patrick O’Brian said), and indifferent to pleasure. Again, think of children. They’re often beastly. We observe the Hippocratic oath, “first do no harm.” The work delights us because we are delighted by it.

It’s that simple, like growing flowers. Who would ever think a cracked dry seed could bloom into a glorious flower? Not the impatient consumer of beauty, the ones dazzled by color and skeptical of small, dry things. But, if planted in the right soil and given love (and water) over sufficient time, the unpromising seed rewards us by emerging into the world as a beautiful bloom. The same is true of writing. The writer will give countless seeds to the editor and together they read and work and love and wait. Their love, like water, produces this transformation into beauty. Or maybe the seed is barren and it’s thrown away, mulch for the ground that will feed other seeds.

Every writer is capable of producing both greatness and trash. An editor helps them by reading and loving whatever they write, and—through contextual and various interventions over time—helping the work to become great. Some work is improved by throwing it away. But most writing will become great if enough time and love are given, first by an attentive editor, and then by the readers whose task it is to make great writing great. Proprietary myths of authorship (the same ones that justify paying some writers and not paying others) may lead us to think that great writing is made by great writers while poor writing comes from the lousy ones, but this is not true. Every writer produces both. Making writing “great” is the work of loving readers, beginning with the editor. Just as beauty blooms in the eye of the beholder, writing read by loving eyes becomes great. If our time seems afflicted by an absence of great writing, the fault is with readers (editors first of all) unwilling or unable to give time and love. For great writing to thrive readers must be capable of love (in many ways the opposite of having good taste, or any taste at all).

 

The Fellow Travelers series

I founded the Fellow Travelers series with Patricia No and Antonia Pinter in 2012. They ran the Publication Studio in Portland, Oregon, which I had founded with Patricia three years earlier. For most of its short history, the Fellow Travelers imprint was run solely by Patricia and Antonia, and the impressive list of titles as well as any future we might hope to build on it are evidence of their intelligence and hard work. PS Portland was the first studio in what is now a group of eleven on four continents, a horizontally networked “global” publisher comprising this set of hyper-local, cottage artisans. Each studio makes sturdy, perfect-bound books by hand and sells them to interested readers, one-at-a-time. In this way 90% of their investment is labor, and most of the rest is cheap machinery and supplies. There are no “print runs,” no warehousing, and minimal upfront costs. Poor people can do this. So far, the studios have published over three hundred original titles by writers and artists they admire. These include novels (by Luisa Valenzuela, Joon Oluchi Lee, Kevin Killian, Shelley Marlow, Siegfried Kracauer, Douglas Milliken, etc.), nonfiction (by Dodie Bellamy, Walter Benjamin, Claire L. Evans, Arthur Jafa, Travis Jeppesen, Ryann Bosetti, and others), poetry (by Dolores Dorantes, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Christine Shan Shan Hou, Sam Lohmann, Jessica Higgins, and others), and artist’s books (by Dan Graham, Nancy Shaver, Ari Marcopoulus, Shawn Records, Victoria Haven, B. Wurtz, Chto Delat, David Horvitz, and many others), in several languages.

In 2012, after it became clear that the model of one-at-a-time production could work and support a variety of small, idiosyncratic studios, Patricia, Antonia, and I chose to create a dedicated imprint publishing great literature in a modest, generic format that could become recognizable in the myriad, motley places where Publication Studio did business. This is the Fellow Travelers series. 

Our goal was to finesse the market into projecting non-popular books into the popular imagination, so we looked to Maurice Girodias’s brilliant Traveller’s Companion books of the 1950s and ’60s. Under the broader umbrella of his already-established Olympia Press, Girodias used the Traveller’s Companion imprint as a way to publish work forbidden by censors in Anglophone countries. By printing in Paris, they could circulate the censored work to English-speaking travelers who would take the books back home with them. Plenty did. Great new work, including Lolita, The Naked Lunch, and Jean Genet’s A Thief’s Journal, swept out of France and deep into the reading publics of the UK, America, and elsewhere. In the same way, we hope that the books we publish—which fail to clear the profit-making metrics of conventional print-run publishers—will ultimately find their ways deep into the very markets that excluded them. By printing and selling one book at a time, we’re able to publish any title that has at least one reader, and then grow its public from there.

While “Fellow Travelers” sounds a playful echo to the Traveller’s Companion, its actual roots are more personal. In the U.S. in the 1950s a witch-hunt against suspected Communists, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, extended its terror immeasurably into the American left by attacking a new category of suspicion for those who—like my parents—pursued anti-war and civil rights activism (without necessarily any connection to the Communist Party or Marxist ideologies). Their activism made them “Fellow Travelers,” we were told, and as guilty as the Communists. My parents’ best instincts and principles, the things they did that mattered most in the world, made them Fellow Travelers. And so, I have always worn that badge proudly.

The Traveller’s Companion series cover design (which is shared by the Fellow Travelers series) was itself an homage to the deeper history of pornographic publishing. Since at least the 19th century, purveyors of erotic literature have used the plain wrappers of “scientific research” to finesse their erotic contents past the eyes of censors. “The Journal of Orgies and Deviance,” “The Adult: The Journal of Sex,” and “The Atlantic Library series” all moved briskly across jurisdictional borders bearing only words on their covers, usually just the title and the author names (if the authors had names). The Traveller’s Companion cover is an almost exact replica of the Atlantic Library series covers. In turn, and in homage, the Fellow Travelers series deploys this same traditional design.

The Traveller’s Companion series, with its distinctive green covers, announced that state-based censorship could not stem the vitality of literature. The Fellow Travelers series, with its distinctively red covers, announces that even that most punishing force of our time— the so-called “free market”—cannot squelch the range and power of the literary imagination. Because we sell our books to one reader at a time, our economy, based on reading (not shopping, per se), can succeed so long as there’s one reader who wants to read (with love, we hope).

In 2016 Patricia and Antonia closed the Portland studio and handed the management of the Fellow Travelers series over to the network of studios, and in 2018 the studios handed it back to me. There are seven titles in the Fellow Travelers series so far: Golden Brothers by STS; Spreadeagle by Kevin Killian; Prick Queasy by Ronald Palmer; The Wolves by Jason R Jimenez; All Fall by Travis Jeppesen; Two Augusts In a Row In a Row by Shelley Marlow; and From Sleepwalking to Sleepwalking by Bertie Marshall. Forthcoming titles include new books by Rebecca Brown, Roberto Tejada, Breka Blakeslee, and Bruno George. The work we’re presenting in this issue of KGB Bar Lit includes the four future Fellow Travelers, and new writing from five prior Fellow Travelers authors (Kevin Killian, Jason R Jimenez, Ron Palmer, Shelley Marlow, and Bertie Marshall). 

The glib answer to “what do the Fellow Travelers books all have in common?” would be “they’re all great writing.” Which is true, in part. We have no seasons, no inventory to juggle, and no other time pressures. The books can develop in an editorial process like the one above, and be published when they’re great. The only force moving them out into the world is the force of our work together. As for other commonalities, the Fellow Travelers seem to be in love, queer, fond of others, and bookish. Their stories transpire mostly in the 21st century, but not exclusively. The future concerns them, and it looks compelling strange, if too-heavily policed. Gender is fluid, cats abound, and there’s magic (also food, pop music, children, and the ruins of the 20th century). Genre and form are as fluid as gender. I’ll stop summarizing and leave it at that. You can read, and I hope love, this great writing yourself.

As a child, the teachers in primary school taught us the slogan, “as Children of the Revolution, Stalin loves and protects us.” We all repeated it every morning after the national anthem.

Before that, as a toddler, I had stopped speaking gibberish and began to pronounce words. My father sat at the dinner table in our home wearing his overalls. He worked as a carpenter and drank straight out of a more-than-half-empty bottle of vodka.

“Stop Stalin dead,” I said.

“I heard that!” he said.

I felt a sting on my head. The next thing I can remember, I hung upside down in the chicken coop by a rope tied by my feet in the cold.

“Daddy!” I said.

He stood there for what seemed forever while steel wire held me suspended in the air. He left and came back with a cup of probably vodka. After I stopped crying, he untied my legs, and took me down.

“To denounce the Great Leader is a horrible crime and must be punished,” he said.

I believed him from that day on. I felt grateful for my father teaching me lessons that way. Whenever he searched for reasons to discipline me, he often found them. My childhood hardened me, toughened me up for what I would eventually do.

I knew Stalin personally although I never met him in person. His image adorned everyone’s wall. His eyes peered into the soul. Everyone knew and loved him. All the prominent newscasters on the radio and newspapers told us of the wonderful things he did. He enjoyed smoking tobacco and drinking like me. I always imagined him having a glass full of vodka and a smoke with me as I gazed at his picture in front of my dining room table. Stalin’s genius guided the progress of our Great Nation.

When I first learned from the newspaper, the Pravda, that sinister forces plotted against our Glorious Leader, I felt sick to my stomach. What could I do to help? The need for decisive action started after the assassination of Sergey Kirov, Stalin’s dear friend, by conspirators in high ranks of the government. I also read about the job opportunities in the interrogation department of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, known by the acronym, NKVD. This agency protected the Revolution from spies and saboteurs. I submitted my application and got hired in a day. My new career choice pleased me because I hated my job as a custodian at the health clinic. They ignored my criminal record of assaulting a man while I was drunk outside a bar—I probably should have put it on my resume. I got the opportunity to protect the Revolution in the exciting counter-espionage field.

The man who previously filled my position, Dimitri Malenkov, went missing along with most of the “Old Guard” NKVD personnel. These people were all associated with the conspirators who killed Kirov. The rest of them confessed to espionage and high treason. They all died, even that pornography obsessed Yagoda, the previous head of the agency. The old boss confessed to charges of treason and murder publicly in the “Trial of Twenty-One” along with twenty other counterrevolutionaries. The Soviet Supreme Court ordered them to be shot like rabid dogs. His replacement as chief, comrade Nikolai Yezhov, searched his old boss’s house and found thousands of nude photos of women. I listened to the trial on the radio when the Ministry of Information broadcast it to the whole country. These proceedings served as a shining example of the Soviet justice system that I felt glad to be a part of.

I worked in the Lubyanka, a trapezoid-shaped building built around courtyards with thick green walls and deep cellars. It was once the headquarters of the All-Russia Insurance Company before the Revolution. Columns and arches decorated the exterior around each window. Parquet floors with rectangular designs came under my boots when I went through the main entrance each day. This building of bourgeois origin’s ceilings had decorative murals of nymphs playing and dancing on the edge of a forest. Administrative offices on the floors above the basement provided the space for all the employees doing the paperwork.

The basement depths held a labyrinthian expanse of cells. Its thick cement walls stifled the groans and cries of our interrogated prisoners. No natural light penetrated here. The halls reeked of disinfectant and the rooms were overheated. A strong lamp with the switch outside the cell lit up the prisoner’s enclosure above a small table for questioning. Prisoners subsisted on black bread that was stored in a small pantry on the first floor.

A spiral staircase connected to a cellar for us to put a revolver to the back of the neck of the executed. The chamber had a heat lamp and a desk at the center and a blue tarpaulin floor. It was the chief source of the smell of disinfectant since the place needed to be cleaned after every use. Custodians would come and wipe the floors with mops.  

Throughout my tenure as an employee there, we always followed a strict protocol. A troika of officers in the field would decide the charges the soon-to-be prisoners faced. Once at the Lubyanka, they were seen by an inspector in the reception area and documented, fingerprinted, and then cavity searched. We dragged them down the stairs in their underwear and put them in a cell.  My coworkers and I would interrogate them until they gave up and confessed. In the rare case they would not give up, the prisoners would be brought down deeper on the quiet floor where the guards talked to each other with clicks of the tongue and sent back up to us at least once a day. This way, the rooms of our floor were always full of new prisoners. They signed a white paper listing their charges to make their confessions official. Sometimes the note got red with blood. After these procedures, a judge reviewed their cases to determine the best course of action to deal with them.

It took me only a few interrogations to recognize the innocence of most of the prisoners. Kicking someone on the floor or punching a man in the face did not always bring the truth out of them. The lucky ones went to the Gulag while the rest died by execution. I noticed, as time went by, more and more people came through inspection and into the cellars. My work hours increased from fifty to a hundred hours a week. Our job became more demanding since we now needed a staggering twenty people to confess per shift to meet our quotas.

What could justify this grand commitment? Think of cancer. To treat cancer, a doctor may have to amputate an arm or a leg. Espionage and other crimes against the state were like a malignant tumor. If the doctor did nothing, the diseased tissue would spread through the body and kill the patient. We acted as the doctors treating the body of the Soviet Union. We may remove more tissue than what was afflicted by killing extra people, but how else can we be sure to rid the Soviet Union of the infection? We, as the Children of the Revolution, had a sworn duty to ensure Stalin’s vision of a new Socialist Utopia came true. 

Those sinister forces existed everywhere. I read about them every day in the Pravda before I left for work. The newspaper dedicated at least a page to report on spies and saboteurs.  It provided countless editorials praising our heroic work in thwarting the anti-revolutionary forces.

I showed up to the warm Lubyanka basement early for work that Moscow winter morning. I had just finished drinking a few mouthfuls of vodka from my flask to loosen myself up for a long day’s work. I brought a small container for a single shift or, in this case, three for the double I worked that day. The breakroom’s pale-yellow walls, wooden floor, large dining room table with glasses, and sink provided us NKVD agents with a place to take a break from our stressful jobs to drink vodka with our cigarettes and socialize. The room’s old-fashioned ornamental light with stained red glass hung over me. I wished the department supplied us with liquor. We all had to bring our own. Just about everyone drank in the breakroom. The cloud of tobacco smoke in the air that accumulated at the end of the morning shift often muddled my view of the white ornate ceiling and dimmed the light.

Sometimes, the monotony got to me. An endless supply of prisoners needed our persuasion to confess. I divided the prisoners into two groups: the cooperators and the defiant ones. Sure, I might run into those cooperators that sign the white sheet the minute they see the dark green Lubyanka basement most of the time. However, the defiant ones who refused to confess unless you bludgeoned them with your fists came at least once a shift. They might even spit or bleed on my dry-cleaned uniform. Both types had one thing in common: they all signed the confession slip.

I put my flask back in my uniform jacket and waited for my partner, Lavrentiy Ivanov. He always came in right on time. He worked longer hours than I did and rarely ever imbibed. I never saw him drunk. He tirelessly beat and questioned prisoners with an incredible fanatical devotion. Whenever I needed a break to relax and lighten the mood in the breakroom, he wanted to interrogate another prisoner. Whatever the situation, I could always light up a Troika cigarette and take a sip of vodka on the job, so I did not care. The day went faster after I drank a pint.

I watched the grandfather clock strike eight in the morning in the breakroom. Lavrentiy came in as he always did. He walked right in front of where I sat.

“Ready for another hard day’s work, Igor?” he said.

“I sure am.”

“Ok, we’ve got to see twenty prisoners from cell block A this shift. Our jobs are important, try not to get in a stupor this afternoon.”

We got to the first ten prisoners one by one, all cooperators, and made quick progress on the quota that morning. I wanted to go to the breakroom to see the rest of the guys, but I knew Lavrentiy had his heart so set on a promotion to lieutenant that he would have us interrogate every last inhabitant of the Soviet Union on our shift if he could. We visited the eleventh prisoner in his cell. The man wore blue overalls. He had the look of fear in his eyes as he sat across the table.

“I’ll sign anything you want. I’ve heard about this place,” The prisoner said.

“You, Dimitri, confess fully to the charges of attempted sabotage? Put your signature here,” Lavrentiy said and pushed the slip to the prisoner. The condemned signed the document and gave it back.

“We need the names of ten of your friends or acquaintances and any other details you can provide about them. Please write them here,” I said. 

I passed him a sheet of paper and a pencil. He sat there scratching his head as he wrote them down and passed the paper back. Our prisoner wrote ten names in neat handwriting on the paper and circled the name, “Marien Balagula.”

We had strict orders to get the names of at least ten other people from every prisoner. These unfortunate comrades or deserving criminals would get arrested the following day or even later the same day. If the incriminated person could not come up with these names, we would arrest all his or her neighbors. If an agent found an address book while searching their home with the required number of names in it, we had no need to interrogate them for it. If anyone worked as a spy or saboteur then, odds were, their closest friends did also. We had to be careful. Quotas had to be met.

“Why is one circled?” I asked.

“He will be difficult,” Dimitri said.

“Why?” Lavrentiy said.

“I grew up with him. He never started fights, but other kids would beat him up. He would usually lose but never gave up until he was knocked unconscious. You guys might have a hard time with him. After he broke someone’s nose, he gave up fighting completely. Marien used to be a fall-over drunk until our Stalin became leader. He told me he stopped because he wanted to better serve the Great Genius—to be a good, useful Communist,” Dimitri said.

“We are grateful for your information but based on your crimes you will probably be sent to hard labor for ten years,” Lavrentiy said.

“That is better than getting put in an unmarked grave, I guess,” Dimitri said.

We left the cell and locked the door behind us.

“Easy day,” Lavrentiy said.

I took a long swallow from my third flask.

“Yes, more like him and we will fill up all the Gulags and run out of bullets,” I said.

I remembered the morning clearly, but that afternoon my memory got fragmented. I recollect talking to a prisoner about the whereabouts of a probable spy ring—but forgot the topic of the conversation in mid-sentence. My partner took over on my behalf and asked the person we questioned the name of the organization he talked about. He said he worked for the East India Company after I recall him telling us he had acted alone. We both knew he just made that up, so Lavrentiy knocked the desk over and kicked him square in the face. When prisoners lied to us, and they did frequently, my partner responded with violent rage. Although he never really cared when I did not tell the truth to him about how much I drank anytime he asked. The proceeds of the rest of the interrogation remain a mystery to me.

A great deal of time passed during which I have no recollection. I regained cognizance as we walked the halls towards the next prisoner’s cell. As we paced the halls, I took a drink and Lavrentiy gave me a bad look.

“You usually knock the prisoner to the floor when you punch them in the face. You did not do that in the last interrogation,” he said.

“It’s nothing,” I said.

“Do you love Stalin?”

“Of course.”

“Show him that you do—stop getting so drunk on the job. More than half this department is inebriated by noon.”

The next moment I can recall, a prisoner’s hand lay extended in front of me on the table. I grabbed it and stuck my lit cigarette into it.  The prisoner cringed and tried to pull his hand back.

“Igor—Igor—he is a cooperator Igor—he gave us everything we need,” Lavrentiy said.

I let him go. Next thing I knew, we stood in front of a cell at the end of block C.

“Prisoner number thirty-eight on our list, Marien Balagula. Charged with high treason, aiding the enemy, subterfuge, sabotage, and inciting a revolt. He will go to the cellar for sure,” Lavrentiy said.

I ran out of vodka. My mind came back, and I usually remembered when I got to the last drop. Running out angered me. I wanted to make this prisoner suffer.

We opened the door and sat down with Marien.

“Stalin is with me, I won’t con—” our prisoner said.

I got up and punched him from across the table. His chair flipped backwards, and he fell off it to the floor.

“I’m sorry—you were speaking?” I asked.

“Our Wise Leader will punish you for doing this to an innocent man,” Marien said. 

Our prisoner stood up with his fist clenched.

“He’s not going to help you, scumbag,” I said.

“The Gardener of Human Happiness watches over all of us,” Marien said.

“You are a traitor, charged with high treason. The reward for that is death. Give in and we’ll make it easy and painless,” I said.

“This is just a terrible mistake; the Brilliant Genius of Humanity will fix everything,” Marien said. “You are the people betraying our Leader. You may be NKVD agents, but I am a truth teller—a vicar of Stalin—telling people about the wondrous things the Master Planner of Communism is doing! I let anyone know who will listen about the Savior of the Russian People. My neighbor, Vladimir, couldn’t read. He didn’t even have a radio—and I enlightened him about our Glorious Leader! Now he believes as the many I’ve shown do.”

I threw another punch at Marien’s face. He grabbed my fist in mid-air, turned around to my side, and twisted me around the table in an armlock. I stood hunched over as he applied pressure on my hand. A stinging pain went up my appendage. I looked at the floor.

“This is mine—come any closer and I’ll break it,” Marien said.

Lavrentiy grabbed the prisoner’s hands and tore them off me. I regained control of my appendage. We threw Marien to the floor. Lavrentiy and I spent an exhausting half hour kicking him. This prisoner’s interrogation marked the first time in a while I ever broke a sweat beating a defiant one. I needed the exercise after all these easy interrogations, but both my legs throbbed after the encounter. My body had to stay strong to protect the Revolution and serve Stalin.

“There is much more from where that came from—I promise you. Going to confess?” Lavrentiy said.

Our prisoner lay there on the floor, motionless, and bleeding from the nose and mouth.

“Not to these ridiculous charges or anything! You people don’t deserve to be State Security agents!” Marien said.

We went to the break room. Geliy, an older interrogator, sat in an armchair smoking a cigarette and drinking a tumbler of what looked like whiskey.

“Hey comrades! I never see you guys here,” Geliy said.

“Probably because we are busy working.” Lavrentiy said.

“Very funny—” Geliy said.

“Is that what I think it is? English, Irish?” I said.

“English; aged twenty years—cost me a lot of rubles on the black market. Want some?” Geliy said.

He knew my next question. I not only wanted to taste it, I needed to drink to unsettle my nerves. 

“Of course,” I said.

He handed me the bottle. I poured myself a tumbler full of it and gulped it down. The whiskey tasted like sweet wood. I liked it, lit up a cigarette, and smoked with him.

“That stuff is great,” I said.

“We are here because we are having trouble with a strongly defiant one,” Lavrentiy said.

“Oh, those. I like them. I can have a go at him,” Geliy said.

“No! He’s ours! We are fully capable of getting him to confess,” Lavrentiy said.

“Charges that would lead to execution?” Geliy said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, you could always sign the confession for him. They keep the slip but will not check its authenticity,” Geliy said.

“That’s forgery. That is just wrong, and I am no criminal,” Lavrentiy said. “We should check the handbook on how to deal with this problem.”

I grabbed the manual on top of the bookshelf next to me.

“Get to the chapter on nonlethal alternatives to kicking and punching. Please read it aloud,” Lavrentiy said.

Under the chapter 10 subsection xii heading, “Alternative Interrogation Methods” went as follows:

If beating a prisoner fails to produce the desired results, it means the interrogator must try new methods of extracting the truth out of them. The first one to attempt is a mock execution. Devalue the prisoner and blindfold him or her. Bring him or her to a cold room and tell the captive that they will be shot if they move. They can be left blindfolded for hours without the personnel necessary to—

“That’s it. We could do that and leave him in a cellar to get other confessions,” Lavrentiy said. 

Executions never occurred anywhere except the kill room, but we got a large black blindfold, rifles, and a wooden wash bucket out of the supply cabinet and went to Marien’s cell. He sat there on the ground, twiddling his thumbs next to the chair in his underwear.

“Have you come to release me?” Marien said.

“No, you worthless piece of excrement. Fighting us is useless and you are not leaving here alive,” Lavrentiy said.

“You are going to another room. Stand on the bucket, and if you move, we will shoot you,” I said.

“Stalin will protect me,” Marien said.

We brought him into a chilly concrete room near the staircase, tied a handkerchief around his head, and turned him to face the wall. I lit up a cigarette as both of us watched him stand.

I finished smoking, and we sneaked out to interrogate other prisoners. We came back a half hour later to see our prisoner pacing back and forth with his blindfold off.

“I knew I was not going to be executed. The Dear Father saved me,” Marien said.

I took my partner aside. Both of us were frustrated and tired after the long day.

“We had better ask the boss for the extension before we clock out,” I said.

 “He is unusually difficult,” Lavrentiy said. “I mean, there are people yelling at us and fighting us for days, but no one is foolish enough to believe Stalin protects them here. Even the people trying to fake their devotion to Stalin break down after the first day.”

Lavrentiy filled out the paperwork and I went upstairs to get the approval on the interrogation’s extension. The clerk took it for processing. I went back down to get my jacket and smoke in the breakroom. In mid-cigarette, a young courier in a neat NKVD uniform came in and asked for my name and gave me a quick notice for indefinite approval. This happened often enough, but I noted the speed at which the request came back at us.

***                    

We finished most of our rounds and stood in front of Marien’s steel-reinforced cell door. Lavrentiy kicked it to wake him up and we busted inside. Our prisoner sat in wait in the corner of the cell curled up. Lavrentiy held his hands up and put brass knuckles on each of his fingers.

“It’s time to answer our questions,” I said.

“There’s no need for any,” Marien said.

“Sure there is,” I said.

Lavrentiy got down and punched the prisoner in the face.

“Tell us what Stalin’s birthday is,” I said.

Marien had a nosebleed. He wiped the drips of blood coming onto his lip. He continued to sit there.

“It’s the eighteenth of December 1878,” Marien said.

My partner punched the prisoner again.

“Correct, but do you know what time?” I asked.

“No one does,” Marien said.

I kicked the prisoner across the face with my boot. He lay across the floor.

“What is Stalin’s favorite book?” I asked.

“The Knight in Panther Skin by—” Marien said.

Lavrentiy jumped on and put his knees on top of the prisoner’s shoulders. He decked him across the face.

“By—by Shota Rustavel. Just one of them,” Marien said.

“You are lying and not just about yourself but about your personal work with the capitalist spy ring,” I said.

“No! No! No—I am not,” Marien said.

“I am talking about the forces you conspired with,” I said.

“You two think you are serving Stalin, the Leader of All Progressive Mankind, but you are not—instead, you are leading the Proletariat over a cliff,” Marien said.

The prisoner spit out blood to his side.

“I am keeping the Revolution alive and going until it can spread to Germany,” I said.

“You are undermining justice in our Great Nation,” Marien said.

“Give me a brass knuckle,” I said.

Lavrentiy took the weapon off one of his hands and gave it to me. I took a deep breath and grabbed the prisoner by the neck. The piece of metal gave weight to my fist and helped me bring down havoc on Marien’s ribs and nose. My hands got red stains on the outsides of them. 

*** 

I saw the custodian walking around the hall with pincer pliers and a ball-pein hammer on his belt. I got the man’s attention.

“I think we’re going to have to commandeer your tools, sir. A defiant prisoner awaits us,” I said.

“This is not approved by the manual,” Lavrentiy said.

“We should improvise. We could be inventing new methods and furthering the art of our occupations. Enough of the old grind,” I said.

“Fine. Everything up until now has been ineffective,” Lavrentiy said.

“How long?” the custodian said.

“Just for a few hours,” I said. “And we need rope.”

“There’s twine in the supply closet,” the custodian said.

We took the materials we needed and put them in a shoebox. I could hear Marien humming the tune to the Internationale as we approached his cell. I kicked the door and we came in. Our prisoner sat in the interrogation chair in front of the table, waiting for us.

“What hand do you write with, Marien?” I said.

“My right…” Marien said. “What’s that?”

“It’s a box of party favors,” I said.

“Party?” Marien said.

“Yes, and we’re all here to celebrate,” Lavrentiy said.

“It’s the day Lenin passed away and Stalin took leadership of our Great Nation,” I said.

“It’s already the twenty-fourth of January?” Marien said.

“Yes,” I said.

I opened the box and took the twine out.

“Stay in the chair while I secure you,” I said.

I tied the prisoner to the flimsy wood piece of furniture with the whole spool and put tight knots in the layers of twine without slack. Marien’s hands were free to be on the table.

“We are only doing Stalin’s bidding,” I said.

“You have the wrong man,” Marien said.

“You are lying to us about what you think—about who you are,” Lavrentiy said.

“I am Marien Balagula, a shoe factory worker. I stitch the soles to leather. I believe in the Dictatorship of the Proletariat led by Stalin. The Inspirer and Organizer of Victories is everywhere.”

“Stalin is not here,” Lavrentiy said.

“But he is transcendent,” Marien said.

I removed the top off from the box and took out the pliers. They had curved ends to them and looked like a semi-circle when I opened them. Lavrentiy got the hammer.

“Open up and don’t move or I’ll make this worse,” I said.

“This is insanity,” Marien said.

“This is the way things are, as Stalin willed it,” Lavrentiy said.

My partner raised the hammer and hit Marien on his left hand against the desk. I heard a bang. The prisoner cringed and took back his arms away from the table.

“Keep your left hand on the desk! Open up!” I said.

Marien did not lower his jaw. I jammed the metal instrument in his mouth, I went for his front teeth, and pulled hard to yank them out. Our prisoner flinched and the tool slipped off.

“Look at me. What is Louis Armstrong’s real name?” I asked.

“I don’t kn—” Marien said.

Lavrentiy delivered a blow to the center of Marien’s left hand with the round part of the hammer. Marien flailed his arm in pain.

“Don’t move,” I said. “Let’s put him on the floor.”

I hit him in the lips with the end of the pliers and broke a piece of his teeth off. I kicked him to the floor off the table. He sat on the chair across the ground.

“The Dear Father knows what you are doing is wrong,” Marien said.

“He is only aware of what he is told. He ordered us to do this,” Lavrentiy said.

“This is all just a test,” Marien said.

“Stalin pays me to do this. I love my job. Look at my Rolex. See how it shines,” Lavrentiy said.

My partner pulled down his sleeve and showed the prisoner his watch.

“The Great Genius works in mysterious ways that no one man can understand. He thinks hundreds of moves ahead at chess,” Marien said.

“This is the end of this game,” I said. “Open up.”

I jammed the pliers into Marien’s mouth and gripped his bottom front teeth with the pliers and put my foot on his head. I pulled with all my strength, up and down, until the two teeth were freed.

“You won’t need these when you’re dead,” I said.

“Stalin will punish you for what you do. He has a plan for me,” Marien said.

Blood dripped onto the floor from the condemned one’s mouth. The way the prisoner lay, shaking in pain; it had a ghastly beauty with the way the shadows came in from the lamp, like a gory surrealist painting about a dream-like object.                                                 

***

A few weeks went by and Marien got thin on the Lubyanka bread diet and continued to have an empty smile. Lavrentiy and I ran through the door to pay him a visit. The prisoner gave a grim look of desperation and futility across his face and greeted us with raised eyebrows and a deep frown. Marien crept up from the ground.

“Not happy to see us?” I said.

I lit up a cigarette and took out one of my flasks.

“Want to have smoke or a drink with me?” I asked.

“I don’t do that,” he said.

“At any time you want, I’ll stop what we’re doing and give you a few shots,” I said. “It’s good grain vodka.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Marien said.

“Or maybe I’ll pour it down your throat,” I said.

“He won’t like you if you don’t drink with him,” Lavrentiy said.

Marien had no response and stared into the ground. 

“Let’s see if your hand is still broken,” I said.

I put the cigarette in my mouth. I grabbed Marien’s left index finger and pulled it backward. The prisoner let out a shrill scream.

“Oh, it hasn’t healed yet,” I said.

Marien looked away from me, turning his face. I put my foot behind the prisoner’s feet and pushed him on the ground. The condemned one fell, and I stepped over him. I shoved the lit end of my cigarette onto his cheek. The spear of tobacco bunched up and stopped smoking.  Our prisoner recoiled. I littered the ground with the butt. Lavrentiy came around and kicked Marien in the head.

“Nothing really matters—there isn’t meaning to any of this. Give up already,” Lavrentiy said.

“The Mastermind of Socialism will help move civilization past capitalism, if you would let him,” Marien said.

“You are a blood sacrifice,” Lavrentiy said.

“The Wise Man of Steel would never have me bring false witness against myself,” Marien said.

“Stalin made an unfortunate mistake,” Lavrentiy said.

“There are no coincidences, only the will of the Father of Nations,” Marien said.

“Stop the suffering,” I said.

“I have devotion to the one and true Premier of the Soviet Union. I am not your target,” Marien said.

“You were brought in here by agents in the field,” Lavrentiy said.

“I was apprehended with two other men while I was helping a blind man with his groceries from the store across from my house,” Marien said. “Three NKVD agents came to me, said my name, and threw me to the ground. They handcuffed me and brought me here without telling me why I was arrested.”

“It’s senseless, isn’t it?” Lavrentiy said.

“There’s a reason I’m here to meet you all,” Marien said. “The Grand Architect of Progress will let me go once I have proven myself. He sees all that we cannot.”

“Stalin is just a man who hired us to kill you,” Lavrentiy said.

“The Great Benefactor has a design for the world,” Marien said.

***

One day on the way back from work one early morning, I walked past a banner of “Iron Felix” Dzerzhinsky hanging on the masonry above the subway stairs. The picture never really caught my eye until now. The man presided as head of the CHEKA, the organization that kept Soviet Russia intact during those early days of the Revolution. It eventually got replaced by the NKVD. What would he do?

I drank in my living room later that night looking at my picture of Stalin. The exhausting and frustrating times during the day I had trying to get Marien to sign the slip affected me. I grew fond of him and looked forward to my time with him. Since he was a meek man of gentle persuasion, I regarded him as one of the unlucky ones, undeserving of his fate. He fit the definition of a good Communist. He never gave up and argued with us at every turn, but no one ever held up believing Stalin would save them. 

I saw my hacksaw inside my utility closet behind my fishing gear.

***

I showed up to work early the next morning with the cutting instrument in a knapsack. Lavrentiy had arrived there earlier than me and sat at the desk in the breakroom surrounded by papers. I stood next to him, drinking from my flask.

“Marien has gained notoriety. Geliy and the others are talking to him outside of his cell. They are fascinated with him,” Lavrentiy said.

“He’s unbreakable. We could just wait until he starves to death.”

“That would be a betrayal of the justice system.” He gave me a half grin. “Worst of all, it would make us look bad to our superiors.”

“I think we’ve had him here since the beginning of January and now it’s the seventeenth of February.”

“We’ve had him for forty days.”

“Every defiant one we’ve had gave up in, at most, three days. If three days is a lifetime then forty days is an eternity.”

“It’s an embarrassment.”

“I have a lot of respect for him.”

“He’s the excess fat on a filet mignon that must be cut off.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for Marien’s arrest order.”

“Good. I brought this in.” 

I took out my hacksaw from the knapsack and put it on the table in front of him.

“Nice touch, though I doubt it’s an official method.” He picked up a paper and stared into it. His eyes lit up. “Here it is. Arrest authorized by none other than Iosif Vissarionovich Djugashvili himself!” 

Stalin was rumored to sometimes sign warrants, and the reasoning and circumstances around this habit drew foggy speculation.

“If this doesn’t break him then the Great Leader cannot help him regrow his legs.”

“We can use this. We need to stop the insulting remarks and show others we are capable. We’ve been trying to put him through enough pain to sign the paper but with no results.”

He folded the arrest order and put it in his pocket. We got up and walked to the front of Marien’s cell.  

“I’ll do the talking,” he said.

We opened the door and entered to see our prisoner standing there smiling.

“Hello, comrades Lavrentiy and Igor,” Marien said. He sniffled and probably smelled the vodka I took a sip of before coming in. “Igor, you should give your heart to Stalin—I hate to hear what Sosa is going to do to you two after he hears what you have done to me. He has great plans for me.”

“We came to talk about that,” Lavrentiy said.

We all sat down at the table.

“What about it?” Marien said.

“Well, we hate to tell you—Stalin signed your arrest order,” Lavrentiy said.

“I do not believe it. You are just playing tricks on me,” Marien said.

“Look at the order,” Lavrentiy said.

Marien took the paper and saw it. “That is… his signature—you are not lying to me.” His eyes widened. “In fountain pen….” 

The prisoner appeared devastated and took a deep breath. I could hear him failing to hold back sobs.

“Will you sign the paper now, please? We are both getting exhausted from trying to get you to confess to your crimes,” Lavrentiy said.

“We both worked long hours, Marien. I need to spend time with my family. We have other prisoners to interrogate. Think of what we have to go through,” I said.

“If it is Stalin’s will that I die, then I accept. He must know I will be a spy in the future,” Marien said.

Our prisoner signed the order. The man loved Stalin so much that he endured an aeon of torture and accepted his sentence only because our leader himself signed his arrest warrant. I, too, loved Stalin with all my heart but I could not imagine going through his situation and continuing to unconditionally feel the same way for the “Great Genius.” The tough lessons my father gave me came into my head. I never had these strange stirrings of emotion to my memory. I began to understand the prisoner and felt sorrow for his fate. Something like this could happen to me and our leader would not save me.

We submitted the signed confession to the inspector upstairs knowing what fate the judge would issue for our prisoner. The courier came back to the breakroom in less than five minutes and handed me the execution order bearing the red stamp underneath the judge’s signature. This mark meant death. I drank a whole flask to hide any emotional display. Lavrentiy sat there across the table from me looking satisfied as if he single-handedly foiled a plot to kill Stalin.

“You drank that fast. Come on, we must get Marien. He truly has been a tough safe to crack,” Lavrentiy said. “Can you do the honors?”

“… I will.” By doing Marien in, I could make sure he died as painless a death as possible. Lavrentiy never wanted to get his uniform bloody.

I went to the supply cabinet and got out my pistol. We opened the door to see Marien with his hands covering his face. 

“Alright, it is your time. Walk with us,” Lavrentiy said.

Our victim followed us down the cylindrical stairs with his head down into the kill room. Stalin did not seem like a god among mortal men. He signed the death warrant of a man who loved him more than life itself. I wondered how many people we condemned had similar situations. The whole nation worshipped him, and we did these things in his name. Those who did not carry the same harmonious tune eventually ended up here. Even those who chanted in key could have wound up here if they were unlucky enough. We were the leader’s attack dogs.

My stomach started to hurt. My eyes watered. I tried in vain to choke back tears. I wiped the ones that ran down my cheek away with my hands before my partner could see. I opened my last flask of vodka and guzzled it all right there.

“You done?” Lavrentiy said. “Let’s get this over with.”

I pushed Marien over the desk as he faced the piece of furniture and cocked back the hammer on the revolver with my arm. The prisoner looked back at me with the corner of his eye.

“Any last words?” I said. 

“I die still a patriot! For Stalin!” Marien said.

I aimed at the prisoner’s neck, pulled the trigger, and let my victim’s lifeless body fall to the floor.