The Outcasts (22 page)

“Fair enough,” the major said softly. “This is none of your business, but you almost make me wish that it were.”

Morrison flung up his hands and turned away. He heard the major's footsteps retreating, and after a time he turned back to watch him.

“Come on,” Tall Boy said to Ramesh. “We go down there and send them off.”

“Very good,” Ramesh said, and they scampered to the file of tanks, jabbering all the way.

“You liar,” Philips said, sitting again. “Only to build and not to preach!”

A burst of machine-gun fire silenced him; startled, they half rose. “They are just checking their guns,” Philips said, and another burst followed, and a third. “I hope Ramesh and Tall Boy keep out of the way.”

“Wouldn't do to kill anybody,” Morrison said sulenly.

“Oh, shut up,” Philips said. “If you really feel that way, go and stop them. There is dynamite at the bridge. Go blow it up.”

“You're out of your mind.”

“No, no. Go. Go and do it. If it means so much.”

“They'd come in helicopters,” Morrison said.

“But then it would not be your fault.”

“Oh, go to hell,” Morrison said. “I'm no good at this. All I know is I built a bridge and he's my first customer.” Another burst of fire, and then a series; eight, Morrison thought, and realized that he had been counting.

“You are a fool.” There was anger in Philips's voice, and Morrison's anger rose to answer; but he listened. “Every time you use a telephone, or a car, or push a button anywhere, you are profiting by the death of men. Or that crane, that marvelous crane that Tall Boy loves. Your whole bloody civilization is built on the bones of serfs, slaves, discards. But now that you have it all, you adore the untutored savage and come to me and the major with your wholesome sermons. Oh, the righteous!” He was still angry, his head forward and his small eyes bright; he was like a bear. “You must go to the cinema some time in the capital. Watch one of your war films, or a western, and see what happens when the good man kills the bad man.”

“Cheers and hisses,” Morrison said.

“No. They laugh. They laugh loudly. But they do not laugh at your rich man's comedies. Oh no. They notice the Rolls-Royce or the little red sports car. They notice the washing machine and the telephone and the piano, and the lift like a French drawing room. And they are very serious when they see all that. And how would you like to have your gall bladder out with no anesthesia?”

Startled, Morrison swallowed some of his drink and said, “Not at all. What's that got to do with anything?”

“I am telling you that you live by technology, and you care not a damn for the men who died perfecting ether. Were you vaccinated when you came here?”

“Of course.”

“There you are then. In the early days three hundred people died here from vaccinations. One and a half million did not, and are free of the smallpox.”

“Oh hell,” Morrison exploded. “Your fancy arguments from college. We're talking about
people
. Friends. People I gave my word to.”

“Your word. They never believed you. They would never believe any white man.”

“But they would believe the black man who is going in there with tanks.”

Philips shrugged wearily. He slumped and was no longer a bear. “You do not know that anything bad will happen.”

“No. It's all right as long as I don't know. I can always apologize later if necessary.” His bones ached. He remembered the morning, and the hot climb up the hill, and the sun beating down on the granite, and his beautiful bridge in the distance.

“You are like a small boy,” Philips said sleepily. “You live by stories and films and fairy tales. The preachers tell you that if you do not kill you will not die, and so forth. You need villains and heroes, and happy endings, or sad endings if they are inspiring enough. So now you want a grand climax. Morrison against a squadron of tanks. Well, there are no grand climaxes. No supreme sacrifices. No floods, fires, or satisfying massacres. There is only a lot of useless misery and death that we have to live with. And work. There is plenty of work to be done, and you cannot hold up the work because you feel rotten about Hiroshima.”

“Leave me alone about Hiroshima,” Morrison said.

“All right,” Philips said. “I will even take that back. But you know, I could tell what you were thinking when you came here. Waiting for. Searching for. Adventure and romance and your heroes and villains. Monkeys and jaguars. Soldiers of fortune and tom-toms. God knows what. But it never happens that way. Heroes pick their noses and villains are kind to old women, and the dashing soldier of fortune has crab lice. Your beautiful carrion crows are only vultures after all, and their real beauty is that they save us from drowning in carrion. But that is not enough for you. You need bedtime stories and pretty pictures. Life is not enough for you because it is too sad and slow, garbled, indecisive. Lepers. Civil servants. Promises broken. Fist fights that peter out—that was no grand climax at Martha's, was it now. Women who are not beautiful and men who are not brave. Your marriage that was no marriage. That was not a tragedy. A sadness, yes. A mistake. But you had to make a tragedy of it, a bedtime story. And the war. I heard you brag that you had killed no one in the war. I have wanted to tell you these things for a long time, you know.”

“I wasn't bragging,” Morrison said glumly. The soldiers were in their tanks and the major was shouting orders. His voice was higher when he gave orders; a tenor, almost shrill.

“You were, my foolish friend. Saint Moe. No guilt for you. Only the blood-sickness to show yourself how pure you were. Guilt was only for the brutes who killed. Well, you owe them thanks. They lie awake and know they have killed.”

“They don't lie awake at all,” Morrison said. “They go bowling. They band together and wear funny hats and persecute professors.” The lead tank sputtered and roared, and then the others.

“But they killed for you, so you could stay pure in your cell and speculate about right and wrong and come down here and preach. Listen: whatever it is that made man out of turtles also made that war. And built this bridge. And invented ether. And there was killing every step of the way. A million years ago some species of primate probably got killed off that in the end would have been much smarter and nobler than you and I.”

“What do you want me to do then?” Morrison tried to sneer but could not. “Go kill somebody so I can belong? Forget about right and wrong and just stomp on anything that interferes with my work?”

“Oh, for God's sake!” Philips sprang to his feet, furious. “You sit there with money in the bank and worry about your conscience and your sex and your salvation, and pretty soon you are thinking of no one but yourself, and what kind of life is that? Here thousands of people die stupidly every day, but at least we do not make a way of life out of moaning and groaning, waiting for a revelation from God or the poets. We have tuberculosis and riots and blind children and bellies swollen with starch, and that is the meaning of life to us, that is what we work on, because we cannot afford the luxury of righteousness. We need sewers, not bush niggers. And least of all lords of the world to teach us how to deceive ourselves and live by pretty pictures! Just keep your garbage, your elegant and well-fed hypocrisies, and leave us alone!”

The tanks plunged forward, parallel, and thundered to the road; from the lead tank the major waved to them, and Morrison, despising himself, waved back. He and Philips stepped into the sunlight to watch them go. The lead tank swung south, and one by one the others clattered after it. They gleamed and racketed.

Morrison stared after them hopelessly, and his sadness became pain. “Christ, Philips!” he cried. “They have something! Something we need. They are themselves. With a dignity. They have an innocence!”

“Innocence is another name for ignorance,” Philips said brutally. “You want a private little reservoir of the primitive, that you can come and dabble your feet in when the going is rough. The great white father,” and that hurt, and Morrison turned away, “and buy their baskets for a penny apiece. They can survive as exhibits or as slaves,” Philips said harshly. “Is that what you want?”

“No,” Morrison said. “Is that all? Don't they mean anything? Even as—as reminders?”

“We need no such reminders,” Philips said coldly. “We are not children, to be reminded. And there is more dignity in one full belly, in one cured leper, in one kindergarten, then in all the murderous, superstitious noble savages who ever lived. If you cannot see that, then go home. Just go home. To your country where men cry when a dog dies.”

The last tank vanished around the far bend like a ratler's tail.

“And if you remember nothing else,” Philips said, “remember what the major said. Because it is the most important thing we have to say to you, and you refuse to listen. All of you,” and he said it slowly, as if he were suppressing a shudder, or a blow: “What matters here is not what is done, but that
we
do it.”

But Morrison barely heard him, because he had thought of something, and said with new excitement, with a sureness and even a bitter joy, “You're wrong, Philips. I should have done something. Anything. Blown the bridge.”

“Go home,” Philips said. Ramesh and Tall Boy ambled toward them, chatting and chuckling.

“No,” Morrison said with a kind of triumph. “Because one of those women may be carrying my son.”

Philips faced him, close and calm, barely contemptuous, and said icily, “Then the chances are one in three that he will be born. Syphilis is endemic in those villages. Did no one tell you that?”

Morrison only gaped; the sun stood still, the earth stood still, his very blood stood still. Waves of heat battered him, and stopped his breath. Then he was quite cold. Philips was far off, and the light undulated. “Ah, God,” he said, with sudden fire in his groin, sudden ice, and his legs trembling. “Ah, God.” And then sweat came, in rivers.

“Greetings,” Ramesh said. “My goodness, what a spectacle that was!”

“Lord Jesus,” Tall Boy said. “Those machines!”

“You should get out of the sun,” Ramesh said to Morrison. “You look dizzy. My, my. And pale.”

“Perhaps milord would like a stiff drink.” Philips grinned.

“Just get me to a doctor,” Morrison whispered. “Just get me out of here.”

12

“Positive.” The doctor was called Kirby and loved a joke. He was round and friendly, with gray hair and black skin, in a white shirt and shorts, and tennis shoes. His hands were sure, and he had trained at St. Thomas's in London. The white-tiled walls blushed a faint yellow in the moist morning light. “Congratulations. You're a father. Millions of bouncing baby spirochetes. The new world's gift to the old.”

Positive. Morrison sniffed: alcohol. None of this seemed to matter too much.

“We'll have you right as rain in a week,” Doctor Kirby said. “Modern science. You'll never be a Nietzsche. Maupassant. Gauguin.”

Morrison sat like a rotting pumpkin.

“Penicillin,” the doctor said. “Know what that means? A very very little penis. What you should have had two weeks ago.” Mirth erupted.

Morrison said nothing.

“Where did you pick this up? Do you know?”

“In the bush,” Morrison said.

“Oh,” said the doctor. “Tourist?”

Morrison winced as the needle sank home.

He walked in the capital. His office was perhaps a mile from his hotel. He walked both ways, and watched the sky: wisps of gray and yellow floated south and west, and merged to form small, dirty clouds: more each day, but no rain. The sky itself was hostile and oppressive. His shirt was a nuisance, always wet beneath the arms, sometimes soaked through in back. There seemed to be more dark shirts in the street, and more khaki. The people were quieter and more sullen, and there were more old women with hairy moles, and more cripples. He ate very little, and drank no alcohol. Alcohol was not forbidden but he required, consciously, not sure why, a small mortification of the flesh. And then he was not thinking, his mind had quit, and he shied from stimulation. His lids were always heavy. Isaacson said, “This is the government file. Contracts, bonds, and so forth.”

“Yes,” Morrison said. “I wish it would rain.”

“So do we all. The humidity is maddening. You seem quite worn out, if I may say so.”

“Yes,” Morrison said. He took a taxi once, twelve miles, to the breakwater and the sea-wall, and he sat for an hour sweltering in the haze, washed now and then by a sluggish, salty puff of air. He saw freighters pass, and a lugger, and he watched convicts in light blue shorts unloading baskets and barrels of fish. The convicts looked like convicts. Cutthroats. Then he rode back to town, and when it was time to pay the driver he stared at the bills in his hand, finding impossible the addition and subtraction of this strange currency. He almost wept at that moment, but even tears were denied him. He shouted at little Gordon one morning. The fried eggs were overcooked and cold and he shouted, “God damn it, Gordon.”

“Yes sir,” Gordon said, and removed the eggs. Morrison was violently ashamed. In the office he signed his name to assorted certificates, petitions, and quitclaims. He made a small package of his letters from Devoe and the carbon copies of his replies. His photographs proved impressive. He knew they were impressive but was not, himself, impressed. Some evenings he sat on a bench on the mall before his hotel and studied the limp flowers. He knew that he should say farewell to Mother Martha, and knew also that he would not. It had been a pleasure to know one woman to whom he could talk with openness and without defenses, but he knew that he would not go to see her. “Bush niggers,” she would say. “With all the nice ladies I got here. Lollie thought you were cute. I wish it would rain.” He must remember to settle his bill with Philips. He would keep his accounts straight if nothing else, and would owe no man money. Where I come from that is a sign of character, he thought with bitterness.