Chapter 22
For Rai, the next night and morning were a torture. Not for the reasons she had become used to: cold and rain and hunger and loneliness and fear and whatever else she suffered on the street. Certainly they still afflicted her, but fear for Z erased everything. How badly was he hurt? Had he lost much blood? Where was he? Was someone taking care of him? She could barely believe the ferocity of her worry. The noble anger she had felt, in which she thought she had found meaning, had dissolved in a sea of guilt and pity.
The letter — or “manifesto,” as she had come to call it in her confused inner monologue — thrilled her. It proved he was doing something more interesting than just blowing shit up. He was creating a road map to freedom, and posting his quotes to mark the way for other people. For her, too. If only she could find him, help him, tweak his ideas to make them work better, cut out the worst violence…
She needed to share it with Mike.
This time, she waited for him, sitting in exactly the place where she knew he would come — except, of course, when she paced the bleachers or stood on tip-toe, hoping to see him approach from Columbus Circle. Anxiety didn’t allow her to read; waiting was interminable.
Finally, around one in the afternoon, when the growls of her stomach had reached epic proportions, Mike appeared along the path. She ran toward him.
Before he could even sigh in relief that it was not a mugger, Rai exploded, “I’ve figured it out!”
“ ‘It’?”
“What this all means!”
“ ‘This all’?” Mike managed an amused grin to leaven his obvious confusion.
“With Z! What he’s trying to do.”
“I am sorry. I do not understand. Z makes excuses for the bombs, yes? And you make arguments against them.”
“It’s a lot more than that. It’s like, Z’s always doing more than I think he is. I dunno what all the time, but he’s deep. Sometimes. I think.” She realized that she was not helping her argument, so she returned to the point she wanted to make. “Look, so I’ve been trying to put all the quotes together, find out what they mean.”
“I believed you knew that–”
“Yeah, yeah, I thought they were all about justifying violence, but there’s gotta be more to it. ‘Cause any time I show up to write a quote, the cops are there. And they’re after me. Hard. I mean, not just like trying to catch some graffiti punk, but real hard.”
“This is because they want to catch the bomber, no?”
“But I’m not the bomber. That’s stupid. No. This is like censorship. They’re afraid of the words. Like afraid that people are gonna read ‘em and… and I dunno. Rebel or something. I didn’t know why they were so scared of two little kids marking up the walls, but now I got it figured out.”
“I still do not–”
“Don’t ya wanna know what the secret is?”
“I do not even know that there is a secret.”
“C’mon, Mike. Doncha believe me?”
Mike smiled tolerantly, realizing that he would have to play along with the game. “What is the secret, dear Helen?”
“Freedom! No wonder they’re so fucking scared. Z’s gonna tell people howta be free, and that’s gotta scare the shit outta the cops.”
“Why? I am confused.”
“You’re from Russia and you don’t get it? C’mon, Mike, it’s obvious. Cops want control. That’s what they’re all about. And right now they got a great gig. All the stupid Muggles think they’re free, right? ‘Cause the government tells ‘em so, ‘cause nobody’s sending them to the Gulag. But they’re just prisoners of their stuff and their jobs and their morals and shit. So the cops just hafta worry about a coupla deviants and crackheads. Other’n that, they got control just like they want.”
“But in America the police seldom tell me what to do.”
“It’s not just the cops, Mike. They’re just like the fist of the system. They whack anybody who goes outta line. The real power’s in the… I dunno where the real power is, but it’s somewhere. Like corporations or some shit, but mixed up with the government. And commercials. Z knows all this stuff. I never really paid much attention.”
“I see…” With supreme self control, Mike did not allow his irony to move beyond his eyes.
“But whoever it is, they wanna control us. Make us buy cokes and jeans and cars and Calvin Klein underwear–”
“I notice that you smell of–”
“Yeah, but I stole it. They’re not getting anything from me.”
“I thought you worried about freedom. Not profits. Does the advertisement not make you wear that scent?”
Rai stopped her planned response in mid-word. “Huh. Never thought of it like that. Maybe I better find another scent.”
Mike grinned. “But you were saying–”
“The perfume just proves my point. If I can’t be free of Calvin Klein, who the fuck can? I mean, besides like the Unibomber. So like they’re all trying to control us, and Z’s figured out a way for people to be free.”
“And he will tell it in these graffiti.”
“Exactly.”
Mike sat for a while, thinking. Though Rai wanted to interrupt to show him the manifesto, she realized that she had already been too rude, so she let him think. “I do not understand. Perhaps I just miss it because you talk so fast, but why do the police want me to buy Calvin Klein?”
“You don’t see? It’s obvious.”
“Please. Explain.”
“It’s like…” Rai couldn’t figure out exactly how to describe the police’s motivation. “You don’t see it? Don’t be blind.” She wanted Mike to speak again, but he just sat there, waiting for an explanation. “It’s like, it’s… it’s all the same thing. Calvin Klein and the government and–”
“But they are not the same.”
Rai had become frustrated. “Calvin pays taxes, right? That’s how the government runs. So they want everybody to make as much money as they can so they can take lotsa taxes and pay the cops big salaries.” Rai realized she had not even convinced herself.
“But if–”
“Hold on. There’s something else. If everybody’s buying lotsa shit, then they’re like cows. Happy, bored, boring. And cows don’t rebel. So the cops don’t hafta deal with lotsa people like me and Z.” She liked that argument better.
“You are not throwing bombs.”
“No… But I’m like fucking with their heads. They gotta hate that.”
“Of course…” Mike still looked somewhat credulous. “But Helen. You say your friend will speak of freedom. Yet of all of the words you tell me, they are all of war, yes? The Aristotle, the Heraclitus, ‘the ends justify the means.’ But now you talk of freedom.”
“I was messed up about the whole thing, too. It didn’t make any sense. But then…” She proudly pulled the manifesto from her pack and handed it to Mike. “Check this out. It shows it’s not just about violence.”
As Mike read, Rai leapt down the bleachers and paced along the first base path, distracting the first baseman, who allowed a routine ground ball through his legs. Curious what Mike would think, she did not even notice the error. Finally, when Mike looked up from the papers, she bounded back up the bleacher. “Whaddaya think?”
Mike looked unsure how he should respond. Finally he said, “The style. It is… interesting.”
“Yeah. Kinda like Nietzsche on crack, huh? Keeps ya flippin’ the pages.”
“Yes…”
“And way erudite, huh? All those quotes. Like, I didn’t even know he read Pliny. And who’s this Tertullian guy?”
“Though the quotes do not really connect…”
“Whaddabout the freedom stuff? Isn’t that hot?”
“The ashes of civilization. Yes, I suppose that is hot…”
“C’mon, Mike. Don’t be sarcastic. Whaddaya think? Freedom. Like, absolute freedom. To do whatever you want like that?”
“Whatever you want? Come, Helen. Even the freest of men cannot fly to the moon. And you could not, I think, chose to live in a culture where men buy and sell women as slaves. Because of who you are certain options are closed. Freedom is never absolute.”
“But that sucks. I mean, why can’t I decide to go and be a slave or a concubine or something? Just ‘cause I don’t want to? But that ‘I don’t want’ is a fucking wall. It keeps me from being free. So maybe I just gotta go and do what I know I don’t wanna do. That’d be free, huh?”
“I believe you confuse ‘free’ and ‘chance.’ A die may fall on one of six sides, but it is not free, because it does not chose.”
“And it can only land on one to six. Not seventeen or blue or Burkina Faso.”
“Yes.” Mike laughed. “But more important is that the die cannot chose, yes? Freedom demands consciousness.”
“And consciousness means ‘I want’ means ‘who I am’ means that all options are not open. So freedom isn’t fucking possible.”
“Absolute freedom? Perhaps not. But more or less freedom, certainly. I may not have absolute freedom here, but is better than in Russia, and much better than under Brezhnev.”
“But that sucks.”
“For me, is wonderful.” Mike waited again, as if searching for a way to return to the subject they had abandoned. “But this letter. I think… I believe that it is… disturbing.” His voice shifted into the serious tone that Rai so disliked. “And I admit that I worry that you like it so much.”
“It’s awesome! Like, anything for freedom. That’s what it’s all about.”
“I believe that you have read wrong. He does not say that he will gain freedom by violence. He says that freedom is violence. This is very different.”
“But–”
“It is also not something that you like. You want him to stop the bombs, and yet here, you love how he justifies them.”
“Yeah…” She found that the muscles in her face were moving in uncomfortable, unexpected ways. “Yeah.” She paused again, looking for a way to dig herself out of an uncomfortable rhetorical hole. “You’re right. What was I thinking? I mean, freedom’s cool and all that, but he’s got a pretty fucked up view, doesn’t he?”
“I believe yes.”
Rai looked pensive. “But y’know what else? He’s got it exactly wrong.” Her words came out more and more quickly, as they always did when she discovered a new idea. “Freedom’s not about doing whatever you want. The Muggles already have that. Well, more or less. Even if they’re not going around blowing stuff up. Sure, they’re free, but whadda they use their freedom for? To buy shit. To go to the beach. Is that freedom? You coulda done that in Russia.”
“Indeed. Though there was not so much to buy.”
“Whatever. When people have freedom, they just waste it.”
“Perhaps they like shopping.”
“And Z likes bombs. Who cares? Freedom’s pointless if you don’t fight for it. In Muggle-land there’s never really a chance that you’re gonna lose your freedom, so who really gives a shit? It’s like we all just get freedom as a gift, so everybody just throws it away. It’s different if you’ve gotta work for it. Like think about Tom Paine and those guys, the ones I had to learn about fifteen times in school even though we never even read one book by Dostoyevsky. I mean, they’re fighting. And struggling and suffering and all that, and finally they get the freedom they want. I mean, those people are free. These people” — she gestured at the apartment towers of the East Side — “are just monkeys with credit cards.”
“Or bombs.”
“Exactly. But monkeys don’t think. They want, and they eat, but they don’t think. Nothing means anything to a monkey. But when you’re suffering or oppressed, when you’re thinking ‘how can I be free?’ — that’s when it’s cool. Or like, when it means something to be free. So we gotta suffer. We gotta have somebody shit on us and oppress us if we’re gonna be free. Well, like meaningfully free.”
“And you always look for meaning.”
“Yeah. No wonder America’s so boring. We don’t have anybody to rebel against.”
“Bring on the Nazis.”
Though Mike had intended the words as a joke, they brought Rai up short. “Shit. That’s the problem, huh?”
“Yes. And if I may add a personal comment, life under communism was not very fun. Most days, it was not very meaningful, either. It was just frightening.”
“Yeah.” She thought again. “So maybe what we need are tyrants who aren’t very effective. Where you need to rebel and struggle and shit to be free, but it’s not so awful–”
“When does this happen?”
“I dunno.” She watched several pitches and several strikes. “This sucks, Mike. I mean, it’s such a hot theory, and then we get this shit.”
“How cruel that the world confuses beautiful theories.”
For a time, they sat and watched the game, Mike wearing a knowing smile, Rai’s thoughts thrown into turmoil by freedom and oppression, by Z’s manifesto, by hints of Mike’s life in Russia, by thoughts of her friend bleeding on the street. “Why’d I get so caught up in it?” she found herself asking aloud. “Here Z’s saying exactly what I hate, and I get off on it. What the fuck’s that all about?” She gazed over the field again, where the first baseman she had distracted had just wiffed at a wild pitch.
“Do you mean that question for me? Or for yourself?”
“Huh?” Rai had lost the train of the conversation in the brief pause. “I didn’t even tell you the best part. Best. Right. What the fuck am I saying? Z’s hurt. He’s gotta be. So, like, right before I got the manifesto, I’m walking along 46th, and guess what I see? Yeah. Bomb and quote, but this time there’s blood, too. Maybe you’re right and he’s going crazy and he’s hurt himself and he needs me and I don’t even know where he is.”
“You are a good friend, Helen. Perhaps too good a friend.”
“Hardly. Abandon him, diss him, compare his dick to a magic marker, force himself into killing himself with some fucking bomb just to get my attention? Fucking A. I gotta find him, Mike.” She leaned her head on her hands, then quickly picked it up. “And now he’s dying and I’m sitting in the sun talking to you. Fuck!” She jumped up and ran down the bleachers, stuffing the manifesto into her bag as she ran. She dashed toward Columbus circle, then stopped suddenly and walked back to the bleachers. From behind, she smiled ruefully, touched Mike’s hand, and said, “Thanks.” Then she ran off once again.
