Chapter XVII: World of Darkness
The phone rang. Mitkin, alone in his apartment, picked it up. The line went dead. It rang again immediately. Mitkin let it ring this time. Again and again, it rang echoing through Mitkin’s apartment. He picked it up one more time.
“Hello.”
Silence.
“Hello, who is this?” said Mitkin.
“You did it.”
“Who is this?”
Again silence, and then Mitkin heard lips part on the other end of the phone. “Yep, yep, you did it.”
“Taughtauer?”
“The kids told me you acted like a real rebel, a real piece of work. They told me they believed in you. But what I want to know is, do you believe in you?”
Mitkin screwed up his eyes and looked around the room. “I just did what was right. I was overcome with, Taughtauer, this is you right?” Mitkin was hesitant because this voice was sweeter and more melodious than Taughtauer’s.
“Go to the zoo,” said the voice. “I’ll meet you there in two hours. Meet by the bats. Don’t be late. Noon. No later.”
“I won’t go unless you tell me who you are.”
“You know who I am.” The phone clicked dead.
Mitkin looked into the receiver and mused. “You know who I am?” He searched his memory, “Yep, yep…” It has to be Taughtauer. He looked around the room and found the clock. The second hand moved sluggishly over the hour hand while outside the sun shone bright and the quiet of a mid-morning workday infused Mitkin with a sense of purpose. He should be at work. He said aloud, “They said he would call, it was him. Had to be.” He moved through his apartment looking for a shirt. “But why the zoo?” A wrinkled pullover peeked out at him from the shelving in his closet. “I’ll go, why not? I haven’t been to the zoo for a while anyway. Had to be him besides. Had to be.” He laced on a pair of sneakers and stuffed two subway tokens in his front pocket. “Why not?” He crept out the front door, patting his pockets and checking twice to make sure he had his keys. He shut the door behind him and the words lock it came to mind.
It wasn’t until he got to the street that he remembered his book. He stood still debating a return. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds and a kind breeze blew through the building-framed block, and a pleasant, life-affirming sensation moved through his body. He remembered the words of Thoreau, “Follow the impulse of the vernal woods, all that comes from her will be true.” He beamed and stepped into the street and crossed against traffic quickly, skipping toward the subway stop and his train north to the Bronx.
Mitkin had broken new ground. In four years of living in the city, he had never taken the subway without a book to read. He cherished the reading he did on the subway and pitied the people who sat stone-faced and weather-beaten, and without a book. “They,” he would say to himself, “are wasting their lives away.” But now, absent a book, he was one of those he once pitied. For the first time in his life he sat looking up, looking out, and it was upon the faces of passengers on the subway that he looked. So many faces. He journeyed from one to another—a tall Slavic woman with tired jowls and a heavy frown bouncing slightly in her seat as the train rolled. She stared out the window and Mitkin imagined her with her grandchildren, laughing. “Her face was beautiful when it laughed,” he thought. A slight, brown-skinned man in his fifties sat across from Mitkin. Deliberately, unabashedly, he dug in his nose. Then he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew unembarrassed. Mitkin smirked. “Even he must love, even he,” thought Mitkin. And he imagined him smiling, too.
Up and down the train, Mitkin wandered with his eyes. A diverse mosaic sat in that car and each one was like him, alive, breathing, sucking up the gift of air and life and living, and each, like him, deserved more than what this train and this life was offering. He remembered again the vernal woods, and in his soul he measured the tremors of emotion he identified as love. “This is love!” He chastised himself, “I’ve been so stupid for so long, but now, now I know. This is love!” A great irrational, untamed joy swelled in Mitkin, just as it had the day before. These people were like his students, they were the culmination of creation, the noble beasts of nature and heirs to the world and no matter what had come before each of them, and him too, all were now magical, special, tender, beloved creatures and Mitkin loved them. “I am free to love them,” he thought, “I am free to love all of it now!”
He continued in his elation until the train stopped for the final time. Mitkin had missed his stop but he did not care. Together with his new brothers and sisters, Mitkin disembarked dreamily, no rush in his step, no care for what would come next. He wandered along the platform and casually made his way out. By the time he reached the exit, he was the last one in the station. He peered into the dark tunnel down the tracks and shouted “Hello!” in a long melodious greeting to anyone who might care. He made one last pirouette, a little bunny hop of joy, and headed up the stairs toward the street. A transit worker, selling tokens from behind three-inch bulletproof glass, frowned when Mitkin greeted her, wide-eyed and smiling. The clock behind her read 11:48.
The zoo was big. The land on which the zoo was built was still forest, some of the oldest forested land in North America. Much of it had been preserved and worked into the landscape of the zoo itself. Thick, rich, green oaks lined the path that led Mitkin to the entrance. The sting of the sun disappeared behind the fat trunks of the aging trees. The path beneath his feet was that welcoming pin-gravel that kids love to kick and slide on, those little rocks adults associate with parks and places of natural refuge. These sentiments mixed easily with Mitkin’s already magical mood and carried him airily between the two large stone gates that guarded the entrance to the Bronx Zoo. He paid quickly and noticed there were no lines.
“What time is it, sir?” Mitkin asked the teller.
“Ten after twelve.”
Mitkin nodded and went inside. The path diverged and became many paths. He stopped and read various wooden placards, each carved to an arrow-point like kitsch road markers from some imperial playground, and searched for the one that would lead him to the bats, to the World of Darkness. He spun once around in vain, and then, there it was, the bat house marker. He passed a giant pool of water crowned with boulders of artificial granite on which lolled three giant bull seals. Mitkin stopped and watched as one crept toward the water. It pulled itself with its flippers, and in the flippers Mitkin saw malformed hands and imagined the seal as a handicapped human. “Amazing,” thought Mitkin. Then the seal slipped into the water and was transformed into an entirely new creature. He was fast and sleek, a greasy flash of black lightning. He sailed in circles underwater, swam on his side and occasionally surfaced with a whinny and a spray. Like this, the seal was anything but handicapped and Mitkin reveled in nature’s perfection.
Down the path he encountered other animal environs. He crossed a bridge under which sat the grassland habitat of big cats. A pack of four female lions huddled together under a tree. The biggest one, its coat a shiny and golden brown, yawned mightily, displaying an insouciance that Mitkin associated with profound contentment. He went further down the path and deeper into the park, leaving all the sounds of the city behind. A giant ostrich poked its head in and out of a healthy mulberry bush. Nothing moved hurriedly here. He passed a grizzly bear sleeping on a rock. An impala and some of its smaller gazelle cousins strolled easily between two small ponds, their hinds powerfully propelling their spindly legs lightly along the ground. The slow, rich wail of a crane sounded in the distance. Mitkin came to a fork in the path and to his left, rising from a slight knoll, stood the World of Darkness, and outside, perched comfortably on a railing was Taughtauer. He was smoking a cigarette. Mitkin started to wave, but a green pickup truck filled with zoo workmen came barreling along, honking him off the path. He jumped to safety with a start while Taughtauer watched it all with cool reserve, dragging on a cigarette and then flicking it to the ground. He smashed the butt with the ball of his foot and without a glance, ducked into the cave building.
“Did he see me?” thought Mitkin. Not moving, he waited for the man to poke his head out and wave him in. “It was Taughtauer, wasn’t it?” After another moment, he moved forward up the path, toward the World of Darkness, propelled by curiosity.
In the dark he called out, “Taughtauer, where are you?” Slowly Mitkin’s eyes adjusted to the artificial darkness and he began to see large glass encasements of mini-forests holding various nocturnal species. He skulked past one that housed a giant fruit bat. “Taughtauer?” He continued on what seemed like the main corridor, stopping in front of a case filled with four-legged rat-like creatures for which he did not know the name. The fattest of them slid along the bottom and into a hole near the back. Mitkin looked behind himself and saw the thick image of a man. He turned and started toward it. “Taughtauer, it’s Mitchell. Are you hiding from me?”
“Excuse me?” replied a voice, not Taughtauer’s.
“Sorry.”
Mitkin continued down the dark alleyway and began to doubt his mission. “Was it really him?” And then he felt a hand on his arm. “Taughtauer?”
“Do you like the bats?” came a voice.
“Is that you?”
“Of course it is, Mitch. Didn’t you see me out in front, I mean that is why you came in, right?”
“Sure, but what’s with the hide and seek?”
“I’ve been here the whole time, Mitch. I’ve been waiting right here the whole time.” There was a pause. “It’s hard to see in here you know.”
“Yes, but it’s not hard to hear. I yelled your name twice. What’s with the games? And what’s with the smoking? That’s banned in the zoo.” Mitkin pulled his arm away.
“Banned in the zoo?” Taughtauer laughed. “Yeah, sorry. Whatever. And I wasn’t playing games, Mitch. No more games, Mitch. The games are over now.”
Mitkin stood still and looked hard into the darkness trying to get a clear view of the man with whom he spoke. “Did you call me this morning?”
“Yep.”
“You sounded funny on the phone. Are you sure that you called me this morning?”
“Mitch, you’re acting skittish. Of course I called you this morning. I set this whole thing up. Everything is going just as we planned. Now, do you like the bats or not?” Taughtauer moved closer to the bat box, and in the glow of the case Mitkin could see the sharp lines of a face he knew. “Do you like the way they hang, upside down, inverted like that?”
“I like the seals better,” said Mitkin sharply.
“To each his own I guess.”
Mitkin looked around for the man he mistakenly took for Taughtauer but he could see nothing. It seemed that they were alone. Taughtauer continued his silent stare, a damp heat hanging in the air. “I like it here,” he said. “I like how things scurry around.”
“Is that why we’re meeting here?”
“Well, sure why not. I figure two men, both unemployed, both single, both with a lot on their minds might find a little solace among the mighty creatures of this world. The only problem is, Mitch, when you get right down to it, these animals aren’t so mighty in these cages. In fact, they’re really pretty pathetic.” He rapped on the glass enclosure. “They aren’t mighty at all are they, Mitch?” Taughtauer turned to Mitkin. “It’s kind of like the kids at school, isn’t it?”
Mitkin remembered the sign outside the school sitting crooked and halfway off its moorings. WHEN WE DO. WHEN WE DON’T. He stretched out his hand and felt the glass that imprisoned Taughtauer’s fruit bat.
“Wouldn’t you like to let him out, Mitch?”
With his fingers still going over the glass, Mitkin did not respond. Taughtauer waited patiently. After another few moments, Mitkin nodded.
“Good, then let’s do it.” Taughtauer took Mitkin by the shoulder and together they walked toward the exit, and as they did the light from outside blinded Mitkin. With his eyes adjusted, they sat down on a bench and Taughtauer pulled off his backpack, producing a finely bound black book. He opened it and inside Mitkin saw pages and pages of handwritten notes. Taughtauer flipped through it and found the page he wanted. He tapped it with his forefinger and slid closer, exposing the book for Mitkin to see.
“We have three months. In that time we have to consolidate our support in these schools. If we don’t get these schools then I’m afraid we won’t get the turnover we need in the smaller schools. I need you to work in these schools, Mitch.” He ran his finger over the list.
“Get them?” asked Mitkin. “To do what?”
“Maybe I should start from the beginning, yep. See Mitch, it’s like this.” Taughtauer closed the book and leaned back on the bench resting his head against the brick wall. “We believe that every student consigned to half-ass education inherently understands his consignment. My kids all confirm this, but not every kid can really articulate it. See, they can’t all verbalize the implications of their consignment. Am I losing you?”
This was not difficult to understand, and expression on Mitkin’s face betrayed his annoyance.
Taughtauer continued, “I forget, Mitch, you’re a smart guy, sure. So the most articulate ones become the most angry and make the best martyrs. Basically, my kids are the ones who will kick some ass. Look at Elrod. Elrod hates the school system, but before he came to us, he thought his hate was for others, for individuals. But, of course, it wasn’t. Individuals are good and pure like you told me. No, what Elrod hates is the system that the slave masters create: parents, policemen, teachers and administrators. We weave an ugly web Mitch, and Elrod is pissed. He’s pissed because he lacks freedom and yet he knows he’s meant to be free. Tom Jefferson and his cronies knew this, just look at all their rhetoric. The problem is they didn’t go far enough, Mitch. Sometimes, when I feel generous, I think of Tom and the boys as the Founding Fathers of the true revolution, the earliest voices for absolute individuality and the underground architects of a movement to destroy all authority, the king being only the first to fall, see. I think that maybe they saw it all, they saw perfect individual freedom, anarchy, Mitch, and they desired it, and to achieve it they created a manifesto—the United States Constitution. Wouldn’t that be brilliant?” He clapped his hands together like an excited child. “Brilliant! But I don’t think they were up to all that, not quite courageous enough, really.” Taughtauer sat up. “Look, Elrod understands that authority thwarts who he is. He has been shown the truth and our job is to show others the same thing.”
“Sounds like you want me to brainwash them.”
Taughtauer slumped on the bench. “Aw, Mitch. Do you, or don’t you think that mankind has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?” Taughtauer put his hands out quizzically.
“I think we do,” chirped Mitkin.
“Then how can restoring liberty be brainwashing? It seems to me they’ve already been brainwashed the other way, to believe in slavery.” Taughtauer turned to Mitkin. “This isn’t rocket-fucking-science, Mitch. But let me put it to you another way. You believed your father when he told you about the world, right? You never doubted that man was a great machine destined for the dunghill, right? Then your daddy died, and by dying he taught you the truth. And now you say, ‘Darn, we are more than just machines. My father was wrong.’ And you’re right. Man is more! He is freedom. You, Mr. Mitchell, were living a lie. Elrod, Mr. Mitchell, was living a lie. Students who submit to authority are living a lie. Leaving people ignorant is cruel, Mitch. As educators, we must try to make people free, and aware. Am I making myself clear?”
Mitkin heard these words and they did make sense to him. He had been deluded, but now it seemed the only real thing was death. Wasn’t death all there was in the end? He put the question to Taughtauer.
“Death is real,” said Taughtauer lightly. “But the legacy of one’s life is what lives on, it’s what counts. We should live for liberty and create heaven right here on earth. You can achieve heaven right here, Mitch, by being who you are. I mean, watch these kids! They have it together. You’ll see them and then you’ll know. Forget the fairy tale heaven, it isn’t somewhere else, out there, waiting. It’s right now, right here, inside. Hell too, right now. And what’s hell, Mitch? Hell is the life of those people who accept a bogus version of who they are. They are never fulfilled because they don’t even know what that means. Slaves to authority live in hell. Masters of its destruction live in heaven.”
Since his youth, Mitkin had always loved to hear his father string words together. It enthralled him. Like a guard dog, he would sit and bark for his father whenever he argued a point with a friend or gave a lecture to his mother. The silky sounds of a great orator were like chocolate for Mitkin, and he would have made a good wunderkind in earlier times.
“How do you know so much about me?” Mitkin asked.
“I do my homework.”
“Yeah, but why me?”
“Your father’s genes and especially your father’s balls. I admired him.” Taughtauer began to go through his book.
Mitkin stammered, “I did too, I mean, I don’t believe the things he taught me as a child.”
“I know you don’t, Mitch, but I also know you loved him very much and he loved you. Mitch, do you know how long all of our plans have been in the works?”
“How long?”
“Your father knew about our plans when he still worked full-time for Science Now.”
Mitkin said slowly, “Science Now? That was—”
“Twelve years ago, yep. He knew about what we wanted to do.”
Ashen, Mitkin turned to Taughtauer. “My father knew you planned to burn down the Board of Education?”
“Yep, yep, old Mitch. He knew. And I’ve got one more for you. He recommended that I use you to do it, how do you think I know so much about you, Mitch? Why do you think you wound up teaching at South Bronx? Put it together now, come on.” Mitkin felt nauseous. He blinked his eyes very hard and turned his head away from Taughtauer, trying to avoid his gray eyes. He could not respond. “He knew,” continued Taughtauer. “He was as sick and tired of all the bureaucratic bullshit as I was. After all, it was the school board that spent, or should I say, stole his money year after year. Yep, Mitch, your father knew. He’d be proud of you right now.”
It didn’t make sense. His father wasn’t a subversive, he wasn’t like Taughtauer. Taughtauer appeared devious and edgy, a charlatan. Mitkin’s father respected authority, he wasn’t some half-baked anarchist.
“I think you are lying,” said Mitkin.
“Mitch, why would I tell you something like this? I have nothing to gain from it. You’re already here, you’ve already decided to join the movement. Telling you this would just jeopardize my plans, right?”
A rivulet of tepid, rusty water ran out a drainpipe that jutted from the World of Darkness. It trickled over the cemented ground and against Mitkin’s heel and then around his shoes and toward a patch of grass a few feet beyond them both. “Bat bowels,” thought Mitkin, as he raised his foot and let out a mild curse. On a little patch of green grass, he wiped his shoe clean. Taughtauer stayed on the bench. “Mitch, it’s like this. Do you, or do you not, believe in changing the school system?”
“It’s not like that! It’s just not so easy,” Mitkin yelled from just off the path. “You’re talking about killing people and now you’re telling me that my dad was talking about it too?” He looked around and lowered his voice again, almost to a whisper. “I mean, what the hell is going on here?”
But he knew he could answer his own question.
Mitkin neared Taughtauer on the bench. “What makes me want to believe you?”
“Because you’re a genius,” said Taughtauer. “Stop questioning yourself. You’re here because you recognize what millions of Americans don’t. We are all living in delusion. There is no salvation in things, only action. You realize this. You’re here! Shit, Mitchy, you’re here because you realize the truth! Stop feeling for the brakes, let go man. Your father served you well.”
It was a hard thing to understand, but Mitkin was weak and tired, too tired to fight and too weak to believe otherwise. He had been a depressed wreck for six months and now he was that same wreck, but without a job. The only sanguine moments in his life had come during deeds of insurrection. Meeting here was one such act and quitting in Borly’s face was another. He still believed that his father was wrong about human life and truth, but he saw now that he still loved his father and still cared about his legacy.
“Come on, Mitch, walk with me,” said Taughtauer finally. Mitkin thought about these things as they meandered through the zoo. They walked slowly and for a long time, quietly. It was unlike Taughtauer to be so still, almost stone-like, but his effort was working as Mitkin began to trust him. Mitkin glanced at Taughtauer several times and saw a forsaken man, a man rejected by society. He was not loved by the school board, he was not loved by school administrators, he was not loved by any women, at least not the women with whom he worked at school, and as far as Mitkin could tell he lacked the love of a family. He was alone in the world except for his kids, his students, and walking on that path, thinking many thoughts Mitkin, managed to imagine an ebullient Taughtauer just as he had imagined the joy-filled subway car. Every conjured vision of joy placed Taughtauer among his students. Mitkin settled inside.
“Why aren’t you married?” he asked.
“Oh Mitch, not women, come on.”
“Seriously. Why not?”
“Look at me, Mitch.” Taughtauer stopped and waved his hand like a wand over his body.
“And?” said Mitkin.
“If you were a woman? This package?” He waved his hand again, “You gotta be pretty hungry to want some of this. Am I lying?”
“Are you gay?” Mitchell asked stone-faced. Taughtauer laughed and resumed a stroll.
“No, not gay, not gay, Mitch. Just ugly.”
“So that’s it. Ugly. That explains everything?”
“Mitch, you’re alright. I figured we’d get along one day. Is this the day, Mitch?” Taughtauer gently slapped him on the back. They walked a few more feet and Taughtauer stopped again. “I love ideas, that’s all. I love the idea of my students being one-hundred percent happy. Happiness, that’s what I love. Like on the Fourth of July when their faces light up under the fireworks. That’s an idea I love with all my heart.” He was filling with energy. “Okay, so it’s a little cliché, but to me it’s the only idea in this world worth living for. So that’s what I do; I try to love.” He took a breath as if to continue, but he stopped. “You understand, don’t you?”
Mitkin nodded. “You’re in love.”
Taughtauer nodded and flashed a winsome smile. “Yep, yep. I’m in love. So are my friends.”
“You’ve got friends?” Mitkin asked.
“Yep, Mitch I’ve got friends. Boy, do I have friends.” Taughtauer opened his black book. Over their shoulders and behind a high chain link fence, a pair of monkeys chased each other. The little one screamed and excited the others. “These are the lists,” said Taughtauer, hunched over his book. “I’ve got pledges from over nine hundred teachers—nearly eight per high school.”
“Pledges to do what?”
“Support student centered administrations.” Taughtauer turned the page.
“But not to burn down Livingston Street?”
“That’s this list.” Taughtauer said as he showed him a much shorter list. “Here are the teacher martyrs, here are the most dedicated, and here,” he turned to yet another page, “I’ve got the student martyrs.” This list was short too. “Each of them has pledged, and I mean been baptized, to support the rebellion to the last. These are my bishops.” Information was detailed and included addresses, schools and a third entry entitled Dependability. Mitkin asked what this meant.
“Later,” said Taughtauer, briskly opening to another page. “This is what I have in mind for you. We need more priests by September. I’m confident that for every priest we recruit, we can get three deacons, and for every deacon at least four laypeople. We need more laity and that’s why you’re here.”
“Okay, what’s with the church names? It’s a little creepy, Ed.”
“I learned a long time ago to admire the Catholics, Mitch. They do what we all should, they shoot for the moon. People have it wrong about the Pope—they think he forces you to do something you don’t want to. Wrong. The Pope is just providing a way, a path to the idea, and then, if people believe in the idea, they follow the path. See, people are free to follow or not. People just don’t like to follow the rules because they don’t like the path—the path to the idea is a real thorny bitch. The idea itself, well that’s real nice. I mean, Jesus is real nice.”
“So why not be a Catholic?”
“Because I don’t believe in the Pope’s ideal. There’s no Jesus, no god-man. Nope. There is only the individual and his freedom. Freedom’s my ideal. When you put an outside god into it, you just stick authority in there, and authority, remember, is a tool for the rich and powerful.”
“Over the poor and powerless. Yeah, I know,” said Mitkin sardonically.
“Watch it, Mitch. Sarcasm is a faith-killer.”
Mitkin began but went silent.
“Good. Now. We need more laity, the ones that will be there when the revolution is in the balance. We need numbers, Mitch.”
It was easy, once there and listening, to get excited. Taughtauer had already arranged a substitute job for Mitkin in one of the key rebellion schools; money would be no problem. He had no treasured friendships, no girlfriends that might interfere with his subversive deeds; Raphaella had seen to this. His mother had moved, and she would not investigate. And of course, his father was dead. Death was at the center of the momentum pushing Mitkin toward Taughtauer. He knew it was coming, he knew death as giant locusts on the outskirts of town, leaping and seething and flattening, undaunted and indomitable and forever ready to devour everything, everywhere. And unlike most everyone else in the world, Mitkin could not put down or subvert the idea of death. It was always with him now, and perhaps it had always been, even in those moments he recalled as his childhood. Perhaps it was always death that moved him to act, become, think, create. Perhaps it was the specter of death that moved everything.
“So, Mitch,” said Taughtauer, “I want you to be a martyr. Will you be a martyr?”
“This is kind of crazy.”
“You said that already. Yes or no?”
Mitkin smiled lazily. He shook his head and then looked down at his feet as they passed indifferently along the pebble-strewn path. He turned and stared at Taughtauer and nodded. “Yeah. Yes, I’ll do it. Yeah.”
“Then,” Taughtauer clapped, “let’s go get you baptized.”