Swimming in the Volcano (68 page)

When he was with them, he invoked his status as a fellow Virginian, started there with a quote from Henry Adams: “It's always the good people who do the most harm in the world.” Adams had said that about Robert E. Lee. Wasn't that a first-rate motto for the century that had been assigned for safekeeping to America? They could engrave it in Roman lettering, bold-edged serifs, over the entrance to their agency. We're not the people you think we are, they said. And isn't it funny, Wilson said, that I'm not whoever you think I am either. Now what did this mean? Why were they having this tea party? What was their point, what did they care about, they had no feeling one way or another about St. Catherine, a nigger among nations, an obscure place, strategically nullified and invisible to their eyes, so what were they after? St. Catherine!? they scoffed—Guy, the Army Corps of Engineers keeps grader blades
in stock
big enough to scrape pissants right off the map, no more trouble than bread crumbs off a tablecloth. They hadn't rushed down here when it was all about Sally—they came for him alone, this
shit
, an uncontrollable element, and only after Archibol raised a stink about him on the floor of the UN.

When he asked his own questions they said,
interesting, worth some thought
.

“What are good intentions, and how much do they count?”

Another one, just as sticky, was, “What were my intentions?” Like asking if wishes were fishes.

He had a pet set of answers too, he kept them to himself; the questions they might have fit seemed separated and lost:

Liberté, égalité, fraternité
(revolution's Holy Trinity, the best of all possible answers, countless applications, reusable, universally appreciated, came with a money-back guarantee).

Us
v.
Us
(an anagogicist's wet dream). They thought he was a charlatan, they thought he was real, they thought he was a mastermind, they thought he was a dope.

Drugs as electrochemical poetry, the cantos of the metabolism
(handy tools of the metaphysic for the New Man and New Woman).

Drugs as revolutionary discipline, as war
. To tell the truth, he knew the question to this answer. Bobby Fernandez was in Panama to arrange the transshipment of eight kilos of heroin to New York. Small beginnings, a shift in operations from one hemisphere to another. Let the colossus die a happy death.

Tell us again, they said, who are you? Mitchell was confused about this. They had the resources, the networks, they seemed to know a considerable amount more about who he was than he did. He wanted to master the data, the process, the logic, the inferences, but he had been converted to their point of view without knowing it, and then he wanted everything to be smaller, less complex, filed.

What happened?
the friends of golf kept asking.
You can tell us, really
. They didn't browbeat, that wasn't their style. They were his friends, the occasion called for cooperation. Sometimes they would say, Let's be straight with one another; sometimes they would ignite with exclamatory curses, but not often. He felt listless under the officious sincerity of their interrogation. (Business first, with due and solemn respect for the seriousness of the matter, but afterward, casual talk, a mutual exchange of insights and ideas, et cetera. We're here to talk freely, the linksmen emphasized.) He was without defense, neither the person he wanted to be nor the one they seemed to require.

He was twenty-six years old, an agricultural economist serving in an advisory capacity to an agrarian reform program on an island named St. Catherine in the Lesser Antilles. His answers were circular, he had no clear idea how you got from point A to point B or C, how you started out assuming the shape of a lost self and ended up being that agent of a conspiracy that didn't exist, the co-instigator, with a phantom, of a phantom uprising. When an army fights, he told them, it's given the name of one man, and when a make-believe army fights, it's still given the name of one man. Isaac Knowles, Jack Nasty, whatever, what's the difference?

What did you want to happen?
they asked, not meaning to antagonize him. They wanted him to be more ingratiating, perhaps, in support of his gullibility. Did he have fantasies of power, was he glory-grubbing, hunting for a place in history? But those were roles given to kings and assassins; the rest of us were the pages history wrote upon. We were the blank pages of history, waiting to be inscribed, invented, only we never were. What happened was he couldn't forgive, requital had assumed that shape of the lost self, he had interceded on his own behalf. Meaning, this was not an ideology at work. It was only a human heart, fallible and bleeding.

They were fascinated by his relationship with Johanna Woods Fernandez and thought they could make something out of it.
Did you love her?
they persisted.
Do you love her?

It was hot in the room where they had talked; the painkillers he was taking had made his head swim. There was always another
her
popping in and out of the dialogues,
her
, the one he had forsaken, and he sometimes confused the two, thinking the her they were asking about, the one he might love, was America. They said Johnnie and he thought they meant America.

Cocktails in hand, they had sat down on the veranda right at sunset: a soapy talc of pinks and plums, a sudden sneeze of scarlet and then gone. Tillman asked to hear the story on Davidius; was it true that Mitchell would be covering the fellow's bar tab until further notice. Sore subject, not much of a story either, but Mitchell told. They were releasing Davidius by the time he got down to the station, yesterday morning. No hearing had been scheduled before the magistrate after all. Apparently the inspector regarded both apologies and explanations as superfluities, and didn't bother with them. The attitude was outlandish but what do you do. The incident was a bewildering embarrassment, not to mention accident and mistake of justice. He had hurried back out the door after Davidius, calling his name to no avail. Davidius' only reaction was to cast a brief, glazed look over his shoulder that even in its brevity erased any claim this white man was making on his affairs. Mitchell had steeled himself for resentment but not apathy. Have it your way, he thought, throwing out his hands in frustration and walking back to the jitney stop to join the queue into town.

“I don't think he actually made the connection. He didn't know who I was.”

“You'd have to be female, I think.”

“I feel lousy about it but in a sense we were both victims of the police.”

“Look at it this way—ultimately it has nothing to do with you.”

He told Tillman don't let on at the bar. Let Davidius think, lucky stars. He didn't know what else to do. False arrest was not a concept in places like St. Catherine.

Johnnie had called them to the table for appetizers—conch seviche, white marlin fritters with a garlicky cilantro, tomato and onion sauce, a vegetable pâté from a tin with soda crackers that were not stale—unaccustomed joy for stoic palates. In response to praise she protested it was easier than they imagined, once you hunted
down ingredients. She'd probably get fat again, she fretted, living here, and Adrian said, Liar, you were never fat and won't be, the way you burn through things. There was a shine in Johnnie's butternut eyes, she had ascended the ladder of her happiness. She excused herself and came back carrying the fish, a cookie sheet for a platter layered with a bed of steamed banana leaves, the glistening beast garnished with a halo of hibiscus flowers arranged red white red white, its jaws and tail overhanging the ends.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful
, Tillman hailed. Johnnie's face had beamed, this was everybody's idea of a triumph, and Mitchell deboned the monster with a butter knife and spatula, its fragrance lifting into his face, startlingly familiar, redolent of warming fires. Everyone held out their plates and let the first bite sit revered in their mouths before swallowing.

Let's stop for a minute and savor this, Tillman had said, how lovely it all is.

There were side dishes of blanched chard sprinkled with fruit vinegar and a bowl of black beans. Johnnie was transported, flush, saying Eat the flowers too, they're good for you. The cottage being without an oven, they had badgered her to reveal her secret—it was simple, so obvious, but undeniably clever. Mr. Quiddley's coal pits had reminded her of luaus; when she first saw them she told herself,
heat source
. The old fart grumbled she'd “bust his science” but they put their heads together and figured out how to do it without damaging the draft. They ate like well-behaved hogs, annihilating the fish, then Johnnie knocked them senseless with dessert, pomegranate seeds marinated in orange liqueur, served in teacups swimming in ruby light. A fresh breeze slipped in silkily through the veranda windows; around the room shadows crawled out from shadows and everyone said,
God!
and
Goddamn!
, and Mitchell had thought, someone has to be blessed and tonight it looks like us.

Candlelight and lovelight are the same, aren't they? said Adrian. She had picked up a horrible rash from something on Cotton Island but was being more than brave about it. Johnnie had placed four votive candles laced with citronella in saucers and their illumination reflected up with a rich brush of sensuality, here in the latitudes of play. Tillman had brought along a joint so not only were they boozy, well advanced through a bottle of French brandy after two of chardonnay, but now they were stoned too, getting cross-eyed, loony, waggishly upping the erotic ante with bawdy teasing, already considerable given who they were and where they were, the Epicurean remains of a massive kingfish, picked over and its bones sucked, centered on the table. The radio was tuned to a Christian superstation in
St. Kitts—it was C & W hour, they were playing Marty Robbins' “Rosa's Cantina,” and the girls began to sing along.

The felicitous intimacy heated up, became Rabelaisian, how they got just this far no one could reconstruct, but now the most appropriate brandy-inspired next step seemed to be for Tillman to dare the women to expose their breasts. Up flashed Johnnie's tee shirt, Adrian's blouse,
oho!
now you see ‘em, now you don't.

“Would you look at how bloody proud they are.”

Next Johnnie dared the men to stand up straight like gentlemen and show their rear ends—no moons, no groaty assholes, just prime beef—and the fellows rose solemnly if not soberly, stood paired like brothers, rotated so their backs were turned and thereupon dropped their shorts. Adrian, they found out, could whistle like a doorman for a cab. They reordered themselves, sat down, then Mitchell double-dared, we want to see yours, the doctor here and me, and Adrian said, deadpan, No way, Jasper, the butt stops here,
here
escaping from her mouth with a soblike shriek of laughter and all four of them howled in unison, falling figuratively out of their chairs but dabbing literal tears from their eyes, and that set a timely brake on one of the evening's more dangerous trends.

“You can't count on the sexual revolution anymore, these days of the MBA.”

“Hasn't begun. Just getting started.”

“It snuck right by.”

“You should have been on Cotton Island.”

“We know better than to ask.”

“We know better than to tell.”

“Sin is a nutrient. Isn't there a daily recommended requirement?”

“Allowance. Recommended allowance.”

“All revolutions are passé.”

“The Khmer Rouge?”

“Africa.”

“Rhodesia. The so-called Marxist-dominated minority.”

“But they're killing everybody.”

“Right. The shits. Let's wipe ‘em out.”

“Exterminate the brutes.”

“All in favor say aye.”

“Everybody says time's speeded up but I think it's stuck.”

“I do too. What if our kids—”

“Who's having children?”

“What if the kids ten years from now still smoke ganj and listen to Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger?”

“Peter, Paul, and Mary.”

“Revert to Sinatra and martinis.”

“Marley rules. He's a living god. Possibly Christ.”

“Rock and roll will never die.”

“Isn't it time we made the backward leap to Rossini?”

“It's dead as a crapaud in the road. White tedium. Somebody bury it please.”

“Johnnie,” said Tillman, doing something odd with his face in an approximation of sincerity, “why don't you come up the ancestral hill and work for me?”

“Now?” she said innocently. Wine sloshed from her jar glass.

“He needs a new slave since I didn't work out.”

“Mitchell?”

“Great idea. Depends on you.”

“Pay stinks but there go your visa problems.”

“When?”

“Whenever you want. Next week. Start by toadying to my new cook. Then lay your magic fingers on my menu.”

“Or his throat.”

“This meal tonight. You must have taken classes.”

“Mitchell,” said Adrian, “can we decide about the volcano?”

“We're back to the weaker sex issue.”

“You wouldn't be saying that, Tillman, if you took the time to know me better.”

Adrian had been scanning her guidebook that morning and discovered Mount Soufrière. She read the paragraph of description and decided a volcano fit her requirement for a last unique adventure before she flew away; also, the location was right to accommodate Sally, who needed a lift up north to a windward village, but Sally wasn't free until Saturday, and in Mitchell's view the logistics were problematic.

“I don't think you realize what you're getting yourself into,” he said to her, repeating his earlier objection, to which Johnnie had remarked, Don't underestimate us girls, and then rhapsodized about a hike she had taken up Mauna Kea. You should never bypass something like this, was her argument—volcanoes providing a climber with such a mighty picture of Planet Earth as unfinished business.