Quartet for the End of Time (22 page)

Once or twice a week, just as he exited the office at five o'clock, he would be met by the Indian, and the two of them would stroll through the Mall.

It is only a matter of time, the Indian would reassure Alden on these occasions. Patience—and time.

And the professor. He feels this way, too? Alden would ask—though he knew what the answer would be.

The big Indian would nod solemnly, and, aware of Alden's real purpose, add in sympathy: What we need to establish is trust, first of all. You must understand, of course, the importance of that.

But they did not always speak this way. As the weeks and then the months passed, they conversed with increasing ease. More and more, the Indian began to share with Alden from his seemingly inexhaustible stores of knowledge. He had, for instance, an incredible head for languages (he spoke Choctaw, Russian, and a spattering of French), politics (he kept up on all sides and knew the capitals and leaders of countries Alden had never heard of), and poetry (he was a passionate reader, with a particular memory for Shakespeare). He would often pause, hold up his hand—as if receiving a signal from a distant planet—and recite for his young companion a stanza or two from
Macbeth
or
Richard III
. His voice would change as he did so, quivering with a slight lisp, and favoring his
r
's in a way that was incomprehensible to Alden until, later, he heard the radio recordings of these productions, and therefore firsthand the accents of the British actors whose lilt the Indian imitated with precision—a way of speaking that was altogether alien to anything he had ever heard. At
any rate, a far cry from the accents of those one or two Brits to whom he had so far been introduced—by his father, of course—who, when invited into his father's study, had extended their clammy hands and said a how-do-you-do in a way that sounded as though they were holding marbles in their mouths (a cure, he had once heard, for stuttering), so that he forever afterward associated the British with that unfortunate speech impediment—something that went hand in hand, so to speak, with manual perspiration.

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well / It were done quickly
, the Indian would say, his hand aloft and his voice hovering above the
r
's, so that it seemed for a moment the words themselves were suspended above them—even causing Alden, on a few occasions, to glance up, as though he actually expected something to descend.

If th' assassination / Could trammel up the consequence, and catch / With his surcease success; that but this blow / Might be the be-all and the end-all here, / But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, / We'd jump the life to come.

And then they would. The words would descend upon them, all at once. They had been sent off as all words are, one by one, as though not even intended for one another, and then, at some point in the middle distance as he and the Indian continued to walk along, unsuspecting, they would align and fall together, with a great blow. They would knock themselves against their teeth and into their hearts so that it was always with the solemnity of beaten men, who know that they are beaten—who give in, at last, to final blows—that they walked on after the Indian had finished speaking. The night would seem, then, unnaturally quiet and there was nothing to say until, when they were almost at their customary stopping place at the far end of the Mall—from which point Alden would make a left and continue on toward his father's house, and the Indian would continue straight ahead, toward where Aida and the child would be waiting for him—toward the one lamp that Alden knew for a fact would be lit for him there—the Indian would turn and speak again, for a final time. In mid-autumn, the Mall was still filled with pedestrians; though it would be getting late, car-riages
and automobiles would still be barking and rattling their way along the adjacent streets, and from time to time they would hear a shout or the high, long laugh of a girl, but still they would be plunged together in a silence that was in itself complete, uninterrupted by these or any other sounds. It was this silence more than anything else they shared, and which, as the months progressed and the weather became cold and the Mall was plunged into actual silence, and even the ducks had flown, became even more profound, so that not even the ruffle of the feathers on the backs of the birds as they shuddered the water from their backs (that sudden, almost interior flutter, like blood rushing in the vein) disturbed it.

But, always, just before they parted, the Indian would raise his hand as though speaking an oath and leave Alden with some final, parting words. Something different every time, but always—equally—it would ring out as though he had spoken it a thousand times. As it did on what would be the final occasion that the two of them parted, when the Indian lifted his hand and recited these words:

But in these cases, / We still have judgment here, that we but teach / Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return / To plague the inventor.

Then continued. In the direction he had already, and for some time, been bound.

B
UT THAT WAS STILL
several months away. In the meantime, Alden continued to shuffle pages back and forth between the incoming and outgoing piles on his desk, and after a while his nervousness dissipated so that he no longer got them confused, or jumped like a cat, or tapped at his cigarette until its bright end glowed as sharp and fine as a knife. Indeed, after only a few weeks he no longer needed to pretend that he was neutral in every way—he became so. His life began to stretch out before him, as behind, in the same regulated and more or less comfortable way that it does for any salaried man. Even the small discomforts of the day—the early rising, the treacherous commute, the excessive boredom of the late morning and early afternoon, during which time itself (sagging between the taut ends of the day) seemed to enter into an entirely different measure
all its own—began to hold for him a certain pleasure, which could be owed, in all probability, simply to the fact of their being so recognizable. He knew that he could absolutely count on each day to occur nearly exactly as it had the day before, and the day prior to that, and so on. But after only a brief respite, in which he recognized and appreciated that this was so, he suddenly became restless again, and resumed his anxious tapping.

Perhaps the natural nervousness of his constitution demanded something upon which to fix itself—something to lend context to the persistent disquiet of both his body and mind. Because he now had nothing of the sort, he began to invent circumstances of his own; in a word, he became paranoid. So much so that he began to walk several blocks in the opposite direction before turning and doubling back in the way that he actually intended to go—even when he was going somewhere, as he nearly always was, as simple and innocuous as the corner grocery, or to the Nancy house in Kalorama, where he still visited—though less frequently. Li'l Nancy was up and walking around by then, going to practices but sitting out games, and growing a little fatter and a little more restless himself. More and more Alden began to see the way that his friend was just exactly like his old man, after all, and that was how it happened. If you didn't use up all the energy you had inside you when you were young—it hardly seemed to matter in what direction—it just sort of turned sour inside you, as it was doing just then inside of Li'l Nancy. So that when you think about it, and if it hadn't have killed him, it was almost a shame that the war didn't come sooner for him. But anyway, as the fall wore on, Alden saw less and less of Li'l Nancy and finally he didn't see him at all—or anyone outside of the fellows in the office, and from time to time the members of his family, when such sightings were in no other way possible to avoid. His only real pleasure was his once- or twice-weekly stroll around the Mall with the Indian. Sometimes he wouldn't even listen to what the Indian said. He would hear only the rhythm of his voice, the energy and insistence of it; let it enter his veins, and as it did, make silent prayers to himself that he would not allow his own energies to be
mis- or falsely directed—to be burned up or used up or allowed to fester, at least for long, in some stinking office somewhere.

F
INALLY
,
WHEN HE COULD
bear it no longer, he confronted the professor. He was certain that by now he had “paid his dues,” and therefore demanded he be immediately reassigned to some more active duty. He thought of Biggs, whom he had not seen since well before the riots. He—Alden was sure—had never been put through such a lengthy or exacting trial.

I can understand your feelings, the professor replied, rubbing his chin. It is, of course, natural that a young man like yourself would feel that his … talents and energies … were being wasted in an occupation that has none of the direct and obvious recompenses that he might, or that any of us indeed, might wish. I, also, you see—the professor continued—am sometimes of the mind-set that there might be a more direct and … expedient … method of achieving our ends, but there are those who, for reasons it is neither necessary nor indeed even advisable for me to be privy to, see it differently. I am, after all—like you—only taking orders.

T
HE NEXT DAY
, A
LDEN
met the Indian as usual, and told him what the professor had said. After hearing him out, the Indian had nodded grimly and agreed.

Patience, he said, was the most difficult but also the most necessary thing. As for the hunter, he said. The early shot always misses its mark. You have to wait what feels always one beat too long.

That day, as on every other, the Indian had appeared, as if by accident, alongside Alden as he made his way from the office at the end of the day toward the Mall. Sometimes he managed to get nearly halfway up the street and even around the corner before the Indian appeared, and sometimes he did not appear at all, but at least once or twice a week at first, and then more frequently as the weeks progressed, he did. Alden was never even sure from what direction he came, when he did, or what he did when he did not come, or during the rest of his day.
Often he would wonder about it, the mysterious alchemy of the Indian's profession, but he could never bring himself to ask directly—the materials with which the Indian worked too “sensitive,” perhaps, even for words. Oftener still, he would find his mind wandering back to what Sutton had said that day, sometime before the riots. How her head had bent toward his, her features taut with concern:
Alden. He's killed a man.

His own response—
He must have had his reasons—
would quiver within him in reply. But it was not a statement; it was a question.

Finally, one he steeled himself to ask.

When he had done so, the Indian was silent for a while. Then, without slowing or in any way altering his pace, he pointed off into the distance.

Do you see that? he asked Alden.

Alden was not even entirely sure if it was something in the near or the far distance toward which he was being asked to direct his gaze.

No, he said. What?

The Indian dropped his hand, but continued to gaze steadily ahead. Into the far distance—Alden was sure of at least that much now. Toward some place, just beyond the line of the horizon, made indistinct by a heavy bank of cloud.

There are many things—the Indian said, after a moment or two had passed, again in silence—one cannot see. It is only a fool who imagines it's because they're not there.

But to answer Alden's question, he continued. The man at the bar that night had once—he said—been a friend. But then (here the Indian paused, in order to more carefully choose his words)—he'd had (the “
friend
,” that is, not the Indian) a sudden change of heart. Had turned against the Union, even helped break up the Harlan strike in May of '31. Had fought against his own men, the Indian said. And for what? Nothing more—he supposed—than the promise of a steady check.

A man's got to choose, the Indian continued sadly. There's never going to be for him any more than one side.

Something about the way he said these final words—Alden could
later not put his finger on it—frightened him. Caused him, whenever he thought back on it, a quick, involuntary shudder; his heart, for some reason, turned cold with dread.

Then, toward the end of November—the twenty-second of that month, to be exact; it was easy to remember the date only because of what followed after—the economist Raymond Robins, a well-known party member who had mysteriously disappeared nearly two months before, suddenly reemerged; discovered in a North Carolina boardinghouse under an assumed name. One moment he had been on his way to Washington where he had an appointment with the President, and the next— All he could later recall was a sudden darkness, descending.

Two months later an emissary from Washington unpacked a series of photographs and documents from his briefcase and passed them over the counter to a bemused Mr. Rogers, from Whittier, North Carolina, who had agreed to meet with him briefly over lunch. Mr. Rogers shuffled disinterestedly through the photographs, then returned them to his companion, who continued to stare at him over the tops of his frosted glasses, blinking almost compulsively—a habit that undermined his otherwise (though he was a man of rather diminutive proportions) commanding presence and authoritative glare.

Know the man?

Why—no, Mr. Rogers had said apologetically. I am afraid I have wasted your time.

Later it was reported that as he spoke, he
glanced nervously
left, then right, as though
subconsciously
—

No? asked the deputy, blinking twice. Once again, he pushed the photographs toward Mr. Rogers. Nothing at all—he said—
familiar
about the fellow? This fellow—here. In the photograph. Nothing
at all
?

Here the deputy paused again, smoothing his mustache, which looked as though it had been brushed sharply against the grain. He looked hard at Mr. Rogers, who was now
beginning to sweat—
his face growing red with a confusion that was, even to himself, becoming
more and more difficult to explain.