The Daredevils (6 page)

“Thank you, Pastor Tom. For what faults do you have the greatest indulgence? What is your principal fault?”

“I have the greatest possible indulgence for all faults. My own principal fault? I think the best illustration is to be found in the proud ease with which I answered your question.”

Instead of politely acknowledging his brother-in-law's wisdom and humility, he turned to his little brothers.

“I sure shut you two up, didn't I.”

They had long since ceased to smile and were now silently gauging Charles and Mother.

“Yes, Charles,” said Mother, “you certainly did. Was that your goal? To cause your brothers to stop laughing and begin to worry about you? Or were you playing to Amelia, hoping she would say something careless about your own mental health that would confirm you delightfully in your new role of theater visionary. Your board wants you to produce a play by Henry James, a play by Shakespeare, and a play by August Strindberg. They would like to see you do it with a small ensenble and the plays in constantly rotating repertory. They would like you to bring to bear current ideas in design. They would like to see charming, interesting shows, and they would like to see the house at capacity every night, as they rightly are concerned about viability in the long term. I would never have even so much as spoken Sir Edwin's
name much less invited him here had I known how vulnerable you were to spiritual imbalance.”

“Mother's answer stands like a druidess invisibly behind her actual speech, as per usual. ‘Spiritual imbalance'?”

“Sadness,” said Father, “is the fault for which I have the least indulgence. The Stoics forebade it and I—well, you know this already. You'll have to pardon an old man who has used up all the brains he had and is limping along as best he can without any.”

Charles gave nobody the chance to laugh. Father was playing at seeming as weak and old as he actually was. As far as Charles was concerned, he was demonstrating how he could not be replaced: not swiftly, not easily, not at all.

“Father, what is your principal fault?”

“That I think I have none!” Father laughed loudly and longly, allowing everybody but Charles and Mother to join in. “No, no, my greatest fault is that I am old. I gave my life to San Francisco and have nothing left.”

“Excepting San Francisco herself, of course,” said Pastor Tom.

Father smiled but shook his head. He still looked like a gunfighter losing at cards.

“I put one Jew behind bars,” he said. “Other men rebuilt the city.”

“One Jew, perhaps,” said Mother. “But you must admit an important Jew.”

“Boss Ruef was not important. He was a sitting duck. He was a bagman.”

“Sitting duck,” said Gus.

“Bagman,” said Tony.

“For your father, boys,” said Father, “and your father's friends.”

“Oh, Father, please,” Mother moaned deeply, gorgeously, “
shut up
.”

“The Regenerators,” said Tony.

“That's right,” said Father. “And remember, when you ask a Jew how things are going, across the street or around the world, and no matter what may in fact be going on, he will say, ‘For the Jews, not so good.' My point being that anybody could have done what I did, and that I don't really deserve the name ‘Regenerator.' I speak in all humility and bearing foremost in mind what Pastor Tom said earlier.”

“But Father!” shouted Gus.

“You took a bullet!” Tony continued his brother's complaint.

“In a court of law!” finished Gus.

“Twice,” said Amelia. “Don't forget Arizona just because you hadn't yet been born, my lads!”

And Charles said: “What would you like to be? What is your favorite quality in a man? What is your favorite quality in a woman? What is your favorite occupation? What is your present state of mind?”

Nobody replied. Everybody looked at their plates. Someone sighed. The twins began to eat again. Soon everybody had taken at least a forkful and appeared to be musing rather than resentful.

“
Your
present state of mind,” said Mother. “What about that? I would say it's horribly and gratuitously antagonistic. Why is that?”

“Not antagonistic. Humorless. These are important questions. You see there is nothing ‘polite' about them. I intend to ask the actors who have survived the second round of auditions these very questions. Those brave enough to answer thoughtfully and honestly I will invite to be part of my ensemble. And for every show we do, there will be a second unspoken and invisible performance going on at the same time. The audience will see and applaud the unreal play, completely innocent of the knowledge that the real play cannot be seen without destruction of the unreal.”

“STOP TALKING LIKE THAT!” sang Mother radiantly.

Pastor Tom nodded.

Amelia had tears in her eyes.

“The population, the audience, without question wants to hear its own story. They want to tell it and they want to hear it. They want us to know what it is without them telling us, assuming we have the same story they do, and will tell it. We are all San Franciscans, we are all Americans, and so on. There is great trust in these names. But they have in truth failed to remember accurately what has happened. They have lost the power of accurate memory. We all have. If in fact we ever had it. But particularly within the confines of this ruined city we are merely branded automatons.”

“But the city is no longer ruined, Charles,” said Amelia, walking her tone perfectly along the line between perplexity and helpfulness.

“Have it your way,” said Charles. “I would think, though, that you of all people, you and Tom, would know that all the cities of the pleasure planet are ruined, that there are many who actually like wholesale destruction for its own sake, that is to say, someone honestly if hideously committed to, how shall I say . . . to change. ‘Thou (the human being) are that which is not. I am that I am. If thou perceivest this truth in any soul, never shall the enemy deceive thee; thou shall escape all his snares.' Can anybody tell me who said that? No? Saint Catherine of Siena. My theater will be a rough and immediate theater, but it will above all be a holy theater. A holy theater in an empty space.”

“Empty space: of that there can be no doubt!” said Mother. As for holiness, I think rather ‘spitefulness' or ‘mean-spiritedness' is the word you are looking for.”

“No, ‘holiness' is the word.”

“Boring,” said Mother. “Boring, mean-spirited theater in an empty space.”

“Well,” said Charles mock-amiably, “I sure hope not. But people will be bored no matter what you do.”

“Wrong side of bed, Chick?” asked Father.

“No,” said Charles. “I levitated.”

“You know I don't care for sarcasm,” said Father, smiling, “especially from my sons.”

“You have been taking jabs at everybody here,” said Mother. “You have hurt everybody here with your nonsense. Can you please tell us why you have embarked on such a course? I want to blame Sir Edwin because I am surprised and disappointed at what a stinking drunkard and fraud he is, but you cannot be so easily—”

“—and swiftly replaced?”

“—excused.”

“I am rehearsing my life.”

“I asked you once before,” said Mother quietly. Then she really let go with everything her extraordinary voice had to give: “
STOP TALKING LIKE THAT!
”

Because she had sung it, Charles applauded, briefly, politely. And said, “Father, if I hurt your feelings with what I said about destruction and change, please forgive me. It wasn't meant to hurt you or even refer to you. Everything I know about the world I've learned from you and I am grateful for every last bit of it.”

“Of course I forgive you,” said Father.

“The sarcasm is a weakness I hope I can learn to do without.”

“I'd rather you were sarcastic,” said Mother, “than humorless.”

Amelia wiped her eyes and smiled. Tom nodded. The twins veiled their interest somewhat successfully. Mother glared and trembled, so finely that it could not be seen by the others save the strange rigidity. Socially Darwinian Christians, thought Charles, laboring for the glory of a Socially Darwinian Jesus Christ and the Socially Darwinian Regeneration of Socially Darwinian San Francisco when—and this was the kicker—they didn't know the first thing about Darwin! Everything was an accident. Father paid lip service to the idea when he said everything that was lost could easily and swiftly replaced, but he didn't understand what he was saying. If he did, he would save his numerous foes the trouble and shoot himself in the head.

Though Germany had declared the North Atlantic a war zone, Father and Mother left the next week for New York, where they boarded a ship that took them to Iceland. For the fly-fishing, Father had said, in no mood to talk to Charles about anything serious, or anything at all, really, even though he said he had forgiven him.
For the salmon.
Indeed it was possible they were going for the salmon and the sea trout. There was a joke in there somewhere about brown trout and German submarines, but no one felt like making the effort. Charles had fished with flies a great deal when they had lived in Paris but summered in Scotland—not to mention golden days camping with Andrew and Alexander and even Father on the rivers of northern California—and if he could not help but continue to remember it as a pleasant pastime, indeed as golden, he could no longer find the time or rather the inclination to find
the time to go fishing. Strangely, he could no longer even imagine himself standing in a river making a cast. He could see such a picture—could not help but do so, but it wasn't himself he was seeing: it was a kind of photograph of Charles Minot, someone he had once known but lost touch with.
An old friend,
if he could be said, as the quaint old saying had it,
to have had any friends.
A character he had played, more likely, the idea of which still made him nervous, alert, ready for performance. He knew he ought to examine that inability to truly imagine himself fishing, but chose not to—or rather, he could admit it, was afraid of it—as it appeared to have something to do with wishing to fish in the dark. The dazzling dark of the Sufis, the dark light of the Gnostics, he thought. Was that a good, true image, from Zoroaster's Good Mind? Or was it a bad image, from the Destructive Mind of a Person of the Lie? What he believed, secretly and more deeply than he thought possible, was that in the pitiful understanding of men,
universal darkness
was called
celestial light.

Because they were afraid of the dark.

Because they were Bronze Age bullies and nitwits who worshipped the sun.

The Devil lives in darkness because he hates the light? Demons crouch in dark corners? He begged to differ: the Devil lived in merciless light, light that showed through bodies, that exposed everything to everybody, that extended into space, a line, a bit of geometry that winked out once it left a man's weak and suffering mind and entered the super-abundant emptiness of the heaven he could not imagine, could not perceive, but which he would come into, be born into, just as he had been born into life and light.

He had seen this light at work: it had destroyed Little Joe. He was crouching in the dark and he was not a demon and the light had destroyed him.

He could quote Tennyson, if anybody wanted to get tough with him:

         
“Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

         
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

         
Forever and ever when I move.”

Heaven was dark.

Heaven was a dark theater.

A dark theater, the lights of which picked out Evil.

The mounted policemen began cantering toward the little platform stage that the antiwar people had erected. The crowd, entirely pro-war as far as Charles could tell, was either unwilling or unable to disperse. People, mostly young men and boys, ran here and there and shouted. Charles thought he heard screaming as well. Distant screaming, which was hard to be sure of. In all likelihood it was feigned screaming, coming from behind and below him in the brand-new theater that Mother and Father had built for him—it was nearly impossible for them not to, if you understood that it was simply a consequence of rebuilding the city—exactly where the old theater had stood. He stayed with his arms spread and his hands on the handles of the French windows as if he had just flung them open and was going address the nation, until the crowds, dispersing and gathering and dispersing, were gone. Everybody seemed to be laughing, no matter what they were doing: getting smacked with a baton across the back of the head, watching someone else get smacked with a baton across the back of the head,
smacking someone with a baton across the back of the head.
It made no sense. Mounted policemen had made their way through group after group, but it had seemed like a carnival. He had heard screaming, he was sure of it, but had seen no one lying in a pool of blood, within a circle of strangers. The sun was setting, and in the deep clear twilight some fireworks were being discharged somewhere near; they rose and shone as if they were not only on fire but gave off a kind of glossy, lacquered light—everything looked that way, buildings, people, earth, sky—but he could not tell if they were the fireworks of patriots or of radicals. It was a carnival, and its theme had been the war in Europe. No. It made no sense. People would not be celebrating carnage and horror. Perhaps it was not supposed to make sense . . .? Why did he wish anything to make sense? He of all people! He went back down the stairs and into the
theater and stood at the railing of the little balcony. The stage was now full of people. His people. “Friends.” They were arranged in small groups and engaged in discussions. Some of these conversations were calculated, their subjects free of apparent context or even forthrightly nonsensical, their objectives contrived and variable, delivered with courtly animation from angelically bright faces—this was a vision of hell. The other conversations were conducted in dusty darkness, or at least away from the pools of light, by nearly immobile and featureless figures, and this was heaven.