Lights Out in the Reptile House (24 page)

They fired off some live ammunition near the center this afternoon. My ears are still buzzing.…

Will you write? You never tell me about yourself, though I suppose I don't ask as much as I could. I often wonder who you're with at some point in the day, and who you're friendly with in general. You never talked about that. Who you like best, for instance. Have you met anyone new? Are you mostly alone? Are all those questions stupid at this point?

Leda

The image of the young man would not go away from Karel. He saw the young man's face on the window glass during the whole trip back to the Assessment Center. He didn't speak to Kehr until they'd arrived and gone inside. The heat had let up a little and they sat in the patio off the dining room. The patio was littered with broken red and white ceramic tiles that crunched and skittered when they moved their feet.

“Thanks for the letter,” Karel said.

“It came while we were gone,” Kehr said. He looked at his watch.

“Lucky the people you know going back and forth are willing to carry those letters,” Karel said.

“Yes it is,” Kehr said. “Luck follows me around.”

Gnats had settled into Karel's drink. “I couldn't sleep last night,” he said. “Thinking about that guy.”

“Weakness is kicked in the teeth in this world,” Kehr said. “Which is a shame.”

Two men at the next table were explaining a long-handled metal instrument to a third man, who had trouble catching on.

“What'd he do?” Karel asked. “Did he do anything? Aren't things like the bedframe against the law?”

The laws were iron, Kehr said. And some people were outside the law's protection.

In the far corner of the courtyard two children were sitting on a square of cloth on the pavement and playing with rubber balls and a toy lizard. A haggard man in a prisoner's shirt was watching them.

“Some of our officers occasionally have to bring their children,” Kehr explained. “I've seen days when it was like a school around here.”

“There are no rules?” Karel asked faintly. “Anybody can do anything? Downstairs?”

Not at all, Kehr said. In fact, they were cleaning up the system. That had been a big source of tension. He looked over at the children. The prisoner was pointing out to one a ball that had rolled away. Karel should have seen the conditions and methods at the Ministry of Social Welfare: Kehr had thought he could not watch such things. Much different from the sort of things Karel had seen. Another order of intensity altogether.

He saw Karel's expression and tried to explain. By “excesses” he meant for the most part acts carried out individually, for personal goals. There'd been for example what they'd considered too much individual initiative on the part of operatives at night in the prisoners' cells. Especially the women's cells. This for the most part had had to stop. This was why: no one really minded what was being done as long as it was continually clear that it was being done at the instructions of the state. Because once people were clear on that, it was just a matter of finding out the rules and playing by them.

Karel looked shocked.

Please, Kehr said. This wasn't news. Everybody knew. He surveyed his glass, which was also dotted with gnats. He said there was an argument that those who restrained their cruelty did so only because theirs was weak enough to be restrained, but that, he thought, oversimplified the situation. The political man at arms had to be a model of correctness in dress, deportment, and behavior. Otherwise where was his authority in ideological reorientation? Those who understood that had nothing but distaste for the rabid types who behaved as if they were dressed in horns and pelts. The good torturer lacked the capacity for hatred. Pain was administered the way power was to be exercised: dispassionately, from on high.

They left the patio and headed to the prisoner assessment room again. Kehr said that one could get to the point where what he did made extraordinary wine or fragrances possible, made contemplation possible, made sleep possible.

The young man was carried onto the bedframe. The man in the apron returned and did not seem to be in as pleasant a mood this time. Two prisoners set up bright lights on tripods and a third took photographs. The man in the apron introduced innovations: a horseshoe-shaped electric prod applied simultaneously to the ears and teeth that they called “the telephone,” and a small electrified metal rectangle with legs that sparked and hopped erratically around the young man's back and that they called “the spider.” While they worked the lights created a double image behind them of their shadows gigantified on the walls.

Afterward the young man passed out and nothing could be done with him. He was carried to the infirmary.

Kehr sat Karel down behind the lattice screen and told him it was time they examined what had been going on here. He asked if Karel had any questions. Karel asked again despite himself why they hadn't asked the young man any.

He was not ready to speak, Kehr said. With experience you understood that. Softening up was required before it was even worth the bother.

Karel wanted to know how they knew someone was telling the truth. Kehr explained that a specific tone appeared in the voice in that situation, and that again, training and experience allowed one to recognize that tone. Subjects under that sort of stress invented the most farfetched things. One woman he'd been associated with had sent over fifty people to prison, and none of them as far as he knew had provided anything yet, or seemed likely to.

The special methods were indispensable to the cause of truth; with each application another layer of deceit was stripped away, until the last truth was told, finally, in the last extremity.

Why was he here? Karel wanted to know. What did they want from him?

It was becoming clearer and clearer to the Civil Guard, Kehr said, that to do its job with maximum efficiency it would need to recruit more heavily among nonmembers of the Party, to systematically build a core of people who were not Party members or known supporters. They'd allow for greater flexibility in operations. That would do two things: it would create a more omniscient intelligence service, and it would create the impression of a more omniscient intelligence service.

And they wanted to Karel to do that?

Among other things, Kehr said. An example: there was a certain protest organization, of families that had had family members disappear. It had been particularly hard to penetrate. Kehr had proposed months ago that one of their female operatives be accompanied to the meetings by a young boy posing as her son to give her greater credibility. It could even be arranged to have the son save the day during a faked police intervention and thereby cement his position within the group.

There'd also be paperwork around the centers, more routine activities—release orders, transfer orders, final disposal orders—all such things that needed to be done and that there was always so little time for.

Karel sat upright. “I wouldn't do that,” he said. “I couldn't do that.”

Kehr nodded. He seemed undisturbed. “That I think is a common reaction,” he said. “But it's a little more complicated in your case. Take for example the prisoner who was sitting here yesterday recording the session. What he intuited some time ago was that there was nothing a man wouldn't do to save himself, and having saved himself, there was nothing he wouldn't do for increasingly trivial reasons, and that eventually he finds himself doing these things out of duty, out of habit, out of pleasure, or for no reason at all.”

Karel shuddered.

“Strange but true,” Kehr said.

“Are you going to torture me to make me do it?” Karel asked.

“I suppose I should be more frank with you,” Kehr said. “There is in my business what we call Involuntary Recruitment. This is carried out through private consultations between the operative and the subject, during which the subject is introduced to compromising actions and situations. At some point the recruit is asked to join the struggle. Should the recruit refuse, which is likely considering the reasons for which the recruit was chosen in the first place, it is then pointed out to the recruit that he or she is already inside the movement, and that he or she will be exposed to his or her friends—as well as the partisans, who unfailingly act very badly in such situations—if he or she does not co-operate.”

Karel was thunderstruck.

“But of course you have time to think about it,” Kehr said. “We should be going. I think someone will soon be using the room.”

Karel followed him on his rounds, in shock and feeling he had nowhere else to go. They dropped in on a woman who was being released as soon as she recovered fully, and Kehr asked if she'd write down for him her full name and address. “I like to keep in touch with my girls,” he said. He told Karel after they left the cell that he'd drop her a card every so often to see how she was doing. In the courtyard they passed a file of prisoners with sticks tied to their legs who were being taught to march. The partisans would not go away and this contrary political activity would not go away, Kehr remarked as they left the center. But we're not here to adjust to this world, he said. We're here to adjust
it
.

THE REPTILE HOUSE

The next night, while kehr and stasik were out, he heard a noise downstairs. He was in bed. The noise was weight somewhere on the floorboards; it was too large and too heavy for the ringtail. He went down the stairs expecting nearly anything. He passed the bathroom and could smell the ringtail's droppings on the tile. The house was still dark. Something moved over the bathroom sink, and he looked closer. There was a cough and a face bloomed in the dark mirror as he fumbled and scrabbled for the light switch. He got it and flipped it on and his father was behind him, reflected in the mirror, wearing the uniform of the Civil Guard.

“Surprise,” his father said.

“You,” Karel said. “You.”

“They have an animal living in the house?” his father said. He gave Karel a dubious look and sniffed around.

“How'd you get here?” Karel asked. “How long have you been here?” His father was exploring the living room, turning on lights. Karel was trembling. He asked if his father wanted something to eat or something.

His father told him not to bother, that he had eaten at the center before coming over. He sat on the sofa, still sniffing.

“How long can you stay?” Karel asked.

His father straightened the service cap on his belt. He had fewer stripes than Kehr and no antipartisan badge. Until tomorrow night, he said. They'd put a lot of work into the house, hadn't they? It looked good.

Yes, they had, Karel said. He sat in a chair across the room.

Had he helped? his father asked.

Karel nodded. Something skittered along the wallboard behind the couch.

“Is that the animal?” his father said.

They were both sitting in the chairs the same way, feet together, knees apart. Karel didn't say anything.

“They told me about it,” his father said.

Karel had his hands between his thighs. He was not going to cry in front of him.

“What a guy like him wants with a filthy little pack rat I don't know,” his father said. “Don't ask me.” He was uncomfortable around Karel but even so seemed more relaxed than usual, and happier with himself.

“What happened?” Karel said, his voice a little hoarse. “What happened to you?”

“Fell in with the wrong crowd?” his father tried, and then looked apologetic. He explained that that had been a joke. He concentrated. He'd been picked up by the Security Service. Remember he'd told Karel that morning that he might've gotten in trouble? He'd been shooting his mouth off. He'd been frustrated, he didn't have a pot to piss in, it was natural. Someone nearby, it'd turned out, worked for the Service. They'd had some talks with him, nothing rough, and then referred him to Kehr, who it turned out had been very interested in his abilities.

“Kehr was?” Karel asked. He didn't know who to believe anymore. “Why didn't you call or write?”

“I did,” his father said.

“
You know what I mean!
” Karel wailed.

“Okay, okay,” his father said. “I wanted to. I couldn't.”

“Why not?” Karel said. He was crying.

“They just thought it was better that way,” he said.

“I looked everywhere,” Karel said, sick. “You told me you'd never just leave like that.”

“I didn't,” his father said. “They took me away.”

Karel shook his head. He wiped his face with his hands. “And you joined the Civil Guard,” he said.

“I was told you knew all that,” his father said.

“I didn't hear it from
you
,” Karel said. The ringtail nibbled at the back of the couch. It sounded like someone scratching burlap.

“You think it's such a terrible thing?” his father said, peeved. “You remember what it was like before?”

Karel put his forefinger and thumb to his mouth and looked at the floor and said nothing.

“What should I be doing?” his father said. “You tell me. What should I be doing? Nothing? Should I be doing what you're doing?”

Karel put his hands over his eyes. “Kehr took me to the center,” he said. It was half lament, half accusation.

“I know that,” his father said, and Karel looked up. “I know what you've been doing. And let me fill you in on a little something, since you're so ashamed of your father: I never took part in any prisoner assessment sessions. The first time they asked
me
I refused.”

Karel gaped at him for a moment and then broke down.

He could see a blurry father sitting back on the couch, unimpressed. “Here I come back after how long and all you can do is blubber,” his father said.

“Why didn't you call me or write me?” Karel asked. “Why couldn't you have let me know you were there? Why couldn't you have looked out for me?”