“What is it?”
“You must take no films,” I say. “You must take no portraits, no moving portraits.” My grasp of idiom is insecure or at least it does not have the fluidity which Scop himself has developed but it will do, it will do, my purposes at least are made clear to him in the sudden shifting of his features. “You must put the camera, put the gear away,” I say, “and you must leave here at once.”
“Leave here?”
“It’s the only way,” I say, “if you are here you are going to be implicated. Believe me,” I say passionately, finding a level of feeling that I have never entertained in these exercises before, “Nothing, nothing will come out of your portraits but shame, disaster, the confirmation of breakdown. All that will be seen in them is the worst, the very worst that we all have become and your name will be a curse, it will even to this day be cursed among all those whom—”
The old man is backing away from me. Onlookers are staring which is exactly counter to the instructions; I was supposed to attract no attention whatsoever, I was supposed to be as inconspicuous as possible in order that I might float underneath the waters of circumstance. “Please,” I say to Zapruder, “I am completely sincere, I mean this, you must not take motions, you cannot do it, if this were not serious I would not ask you,” and his mouth begins to move although rather in distress or comprehension it is impossible to say, perhaps both, there are bodies between the two of us filtering contact and I press through them heedless, warned not to use force or the special devices with which I am implanted except in the case of the most dire emergency I still find myself attempting to be reasonable. “Don’t you have any consideration for your heirs?” I say, “your name will be reviled; they will be persecuted through all the generations,” and of course ambiguity has quite passed from his face by this time, it is quite apparent what the nature of his response is and it is only futility which drives me forward, hurtling forms now adding a real ugliness; I think that in a little while I might be apprehended. “Fool!” I say to him, “fool, coward, liar, cheat!” and his little pouch banging against his forearm, his little eyes clouded with tears or regret Zapruder, completely humiliated, turns to run, this will not work either, nothing will work and something must have happened to my timing, to my control of the instance because here is Scop, he is already at Dealey, bounding from the little hollow where he has hidden the converter, his face dull and murky with the effects of passage but the heaviness already beginning to lift as he sprints toward us. Disorientation is quite brief but disquieting to see; perhaps we really were not meant to travel through time. Scop comes toward me, his uneven, pounding stride easily clearing the grass and now the crowd’s attention has shifted toward him, it was never that much upon me anyway; no one really was paying any attention. It is hard and harder yet to realize this, to realize that despite the illusion of consequentiality, vast forces, manipulations, the fate of the universe hanging at stake and so on and so forth very few people pay any credence to these events and indeed for all the effect we are having upon the common lives of those surrounding us . . . well, for all the effect that we are having we might as well be shouting and pounding within dim narrow cubicles at some far remove.
Scop closes upon me. His hands clamp upon my wrist. The odors of his breath, the upheaval of his body pressed against mine reminds me of other times, other places in which we mingled differently but I cannot remind him of these even though the sentiment is overwhelming. Nor can I remind him that this has all happened before; that we have been at Grassy Knoll a hundred times and will be here a hundred times again, that what we are undoing is in itself merely another stop-action frame in the endlessly unreeling Zapruder of our future. “Come with me,” he says and begins to push me toward the converter. He hits me on the jaw. “Come with me now.”
The abduction has begun. A hundred times he has hurtled me over these slopes, at least as many I have heard the tumult of the motorcade in the distance, seen the fast faces of the crowd pouring past me as heedless of them we hurtled toward our destination. A hundred times this blow has failed to stun me, sending me only as it were to a more solemn level of consciousness, a heightened attention as the single mindedness of his intent, the desperation of his determinism came through to me as it never had in bed. “Please,” I say, “it makes no difference,” but he is excited, pulls me harshly. “Please don’t do this,” I say but he refuses to listen, nothing new here, he has never listened but I go through this over and again not accepting perhaps the simple message of repetition: that it will always be the same. Nothing will change and we will cycle through this over and again to the same conclusion. Nevertheless, if just once, if one time we could break through the pattern—
“Into the converter,” he shrieks, “get in quickly you bitch or I’ll murder you, I’ll really do it you know, you’d better not defy me,” and I cannot even breathe cooperation with him; he wants to hear assent as little as resistance. Nothing to do but to keep up with him which I do in my stumbling and misdirected way. “Inside,” he says as we duck behind trees, as I see the squat grey oval in which we have traveled so many times. He batters me in the small of the back, I stagger, a plate opens, I sprawl inside. He is over me, raving, pulling the hatch shut with a clang and then he throws the switches. I feel the lurch of passage. It it hard to believe that this it all happening again; there is a feeling of novelty to it, each time new and terrible although to the same conclusion but I must do what I can, must accept the fact that we seem to be in cycle and deal with that. Passage begins. He moans and natters over me. I know that he will wait until we reach his cubicle until the attack begins and yet I feel now as before that it is all he can do, all that both of us can do to restrain from having at one another in the enclosure like beasts.
CHAPTER VI
THE BURNING, THE BURNING: So I go before them and they ask what is going wrong. Why is there no progress? Why does the same thing seem to be happening over and again? Is there no way out of this? Their patience is not unlimited they point out and if there is no real progress they will have to take sterner and more desperate measures, measures which will certainly be cataclysmic and will involve much suffering, torture and death. Not only that but I will be taken off the assignment with all that is implied. No longer will I be eligible for privileges, never again will I be able to participate in the place of honors during the Games. Have I no shame? they wish to know. What is happening? Cannot I even give them an explanation of what is going on?
To all of this I say very little. There is really nothing to be said. What can I say? All my life, I feel as I stand before them in these rooms, watching their faces as dull and blank as board far above me, all of my life I have in one sense or another been appearing before committees of the elders and demanded to justify my tasks, my existence. I can no longer go through these rites. It would be easy for me to point out that I was drafted for these ceremonies, did not volunteer and that it was with very little hope that I was sent on my way. Only later on were their expectations, probably based upon the vast amount of activity between Scop and myself. In the viewers it must have looked, from the frenetic tone of our relationship, as if I was making progress. But I was making no progress whatsoever. I try to point this out to them in a desultory fashion but there is little enthusiasm in my arguments nor much attention in their response. I cannot say that I blame them. Over and over again we have gone through this; at a certain point weariness must set in. There is a time to give up, to admit that nothing can be done, no changes effected but they seem to be incapable of this and so, in a way, do I. We must go on and on, posturing against one another through all the confrontations which are ordained and at the end . . . at the very end of it there will be absolutely nothing, no more than it is now. I try to explain this too, there is nothing which I would hold back, but their attention is intermittent.
When I am done, it does not take long but the subjective feeling of passage is very intense and I am calling of course on all the other times that I have been in this room, there is a long, dim silence during which they grumble at one another and re-adjust their positions. The pause goes on so long that I think that I am finished and will be permitted to leave but as I edge myself out of the booth, moving toward the exits, I am retained by a shout from one of them and return to the chair with the feeling that all gestures and efforts will return me once again to this moment: sealed within this interview. “We do not think that you are performing satisfactorily,” he says to me. “This is not what you were sent for.”
“I did the best that I could.”
“Your best is not sufficient. This man is extremely dangerous; he must be blocked. You know the consequences.”
I do. I do know the consequences. I have heard them outlined again and again and emotional response has been squeezed out; I no longer feel that these remonstrations, much less my tasks, are consequential. Perhaps this has been the real difficulty, the true cause of my failure. But I do not say any of this. There must come a time, there must come a time to all of us, even Scop, when the premises of a situation are accepted and no longer battled, when one is sealed within the limitations of role. I cannot say this to them of course. There is really nothing that I can say to them. I sit in solemn silence in the dull dark dock and the moments ooze by and they can see from the expression of my face if not my failure to talk that I will no longer try to excuse myself. Finally the leader leans all the way over, looks all the way down and says very gently, “What do you propose to do?”
I shrug. I cannot say that I propose to do nothing because that is not exactly the truth. There is another truth but I cannot get close to it. “Tell me child,” he says and there is a tone of emotional connection in his voice which comes very close to moving me. “This is not easy for any of us you know. We are aware of your pain; we have our own. We are merely trying to do the best that we can and that means a severity.”
“Leave me alone,” I say. Lights wink among the shadows above; the ceiling seems to be broken and through little chinks I can see the sky if I desired. Everything is falling apart; the great hall is in poor repair. Deterioration accelerates and there is absolutely nothing to be done about it; we must face the fact that the devices of the civilization no longer work for us. “Leave me alone and let me do what I must.”
“But if you cannot affect him—”
“I am trying. No one can affect him; you asked me to do this because you thought that I might be able to make a difference. At least let me work in my own way.”
“But,” he says, “but you are making no progress—”
“Let me judge that.”
“This cannot go on indefinitely. The tension increases, the time-cycle can be abused only so many times before there is an overwhelming expansion-and-dilation—”
They know nothing of technology. They know nothing of technology whatsoever and yet they will invoke its jargon for the purpose of reproof, this being one of the oldest devises of their repression. I cannot tell them this either of course. In a sense I can tell them nothing. “I will do what I can,” I say, “I will not abuse the constructs if I feel that progress is not being made.”
“I do not understand this,” an elderly member from the side says, leaning his ruined, misshapen head toward the amplifiers. “I do not know what you are talking about. All of this nonsense. The past cannot be changed. The past is simply and finally the past. The present which we occupy can only become the future never a different present. I think this is ridiculous. It—”
Two other members, coming from their seats in abrupt but uncoordinated gestures—all of them are quite old, none of them limber—come to his side and drag him away from the speaker. He fights them, limbs flailing helplessly and gives out little squeaks of anguish which do not seem to move the others as they press him against his chair. There is a long, hollow silence while he is held rigid, pressure to his wrists and then the elder says, “We will forget this.”
“Of course.”
“We will forget this nonsense. The assumptions upon which temporal rearrangements operate are quite clear and have long been established. You know the dangers.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Your time is very limited. If you do not begin to achieve satisfactory results quite shortly we are going to have to bring these experiments to an end. You know what will happen then.”
“Yes, I know what will happen then.”
“You have been warned,” the elder says rather dramatically. “Due warning has been given. You will have absolutely no one to blame but yourself. The consequences will be drastic and all of it will be your responsibility. You cannot evade the penalties.”
“Yes,” I say, “yes,” and it is quite enough, Scop’s patience and his is not the only that has been drained; I stand shakily by my chair feeling within me the strange and gathering light of anger and underneath that as they rise to file away, even the one who has shouted at me, now unconscious, lolling in their grasp, underneath that the burning: ah, the burning.
CHAPTER VII
THE ART OF PAIN: In happier times (did we ever have happier times?) Scop and I visit the museum together. Hand in hand we stroll by the exhibits in the outer hall, the animate and inanimate image of our past; the energized torso of Kennedy particularly compelling as we stand before it for a while, listening to him recite certain highlights of his career and collected speeches. The hall is deserted of course, it is always deserted, very few people in the sector we occupy have any interest whatsoever in the past and specialists have their separate facilities in the museum, little carels in which they exhibit the minutae and miniaturizations of the Golden Era, seeking esoterica which such as we can never understand. Scop is affectionate, memories of death and disaster seem to bring us closer together, open up a warmth in him previously unsuspected and as we stand before the film exhibit of the events at Dealey Plaza he leans against me, rubs his thumb in my palm, mutters little private obscenities into my ear which in less stricken circumstances might cause me to feel a sexual longing . . . but of course I cannot, unlike Scop I am made quite solemn by recollections of these terrible events. In fact if it were not for his immoderate obsession I would never come here.
The clips are old and somewhat strained but even through the cracks in the filter, the poor and wavering quality of the projector, the horror of the assassination comes through quite clearly. In black and white, in color, in reverse and in freeze-frame Kennedy dies over and again, the first bullet a fly bite at the side of the neck causing him to absently swat it away, the second the enormous reflexive sneeze that blows half his brain and all of his life away while his fingers absently pinch the spot of first entrance as if by holding that together he could deny the terrific impact. Without sound the films acquire a power which they could not possibly have had in the real, Dealey Plaza—I have been there by now many times—cannot compare at all with the representation of it caught in Zapruder’s fix. The miracle of art is that it can transform the hurried and aimless, give it a sense of purpose which it could not possibly have had without the framing of the artist . . . and Zapruder, for all of his limitations, is nothing if he is not an artist. Scop stands in the booth, pressing the buttons, running the scene of impact over and over while little lines of concentration appear and disappear around his eyes, his mouth pursed to solemn attention. I know that if he were to put out my hand to verify I would find him with an erection. I have found him so at other times. But even though he would enjoy this, even though—I am sure—every cell of his body leans toward, claims that shocking touch with which I would grasp and unload him, I stand perfectly still, do nothing whatsoever. There would be an impropriety about this which even in our bleak and painful age I could not possibly tolerate. There are limits to all human conduct. Not only that but seeing the films is exceedingly depressing; it reminds me of the rot of human life, the mortality of kings. “God,” Scop says. He is deeply moved. “God, that’s something.” He turns off the projector. In the dense spaces of the booth I become aware of an over-whelming putrescence which the odors of the projector had only masked. “Something’s got to be done about that,” he says, “that’s all there is to it.” In his voice I hear a determination that, perhaps, I have never sensed before.
“What are you talking about?”
“That,” he says. He must gesture but of course it is too dark to see. “This slaughter. We cannot exist in a world predicated upon slaughter.”
“I do not know what you mean.” There is no dissemblance in my tone. At the time to which I am referring I had no conception of his obsessive search for a “different” past; it was only much later that I became aware of the specific dimensions of his lunacy. At this time I was quite young, quite naive and emotionally involved with him in a way which could not continue but at the time seemed all-encompassing. “Please let’s go. It smells here.”
“It’s all clear to me now,” he says, “why did I never understand this before?” He reaches out, flicks on the projector once again: here is Zapruder frames 345etseq . stop action at the moment of the second impact. The film has been thoughtfully spliced to always start there; the custodians are quite aware of what the few onlookers who come here want to see. (The Games are much better on all counts.) “That’s where it went wrong.”
Dimly I sense the outlines of his purpose. “That’s ridiculous,” I say. “It all happened a long time ago. Maybe it never really happened at all.”
