3Souls: Chapter XXX
The Final Chapter - Baptism by Fire
The radio prattled on and Mitkin turned to survey his apartment. It was clean, very clean, and spartan. Nothing was left but his little foam mattress, his radio and a telephone. Through the window poured the sun’s heavy rays, deep warm evening rays lush like wet rivulets on polished hardwood. A great largeness swept the place, and it swept through his mind, too. With his jacket still crooked on his shoulders and his socks still dangling off his heels he began to laud his life.
“Finally the fool is vindicated. Free.” He smiled broadly, dropped his wrinkled jacket and walked to the window where he snuggled up comfortably on the sill. Below, New York bustled, people came and went. A day-shifter with a lunch box shuffled past a night-shifter in a blue, mass transit uniform. A crying child met his parents on the stoop of a day care center and two idle teens slouched on a craggy service entrance stoop, savoring a single, cheap, ember-tipped cigarette. Mitkin wanted to shout out to them all like a prophet from ancient days, “Prepare yourselves people. Tomorrow is truly a new day!” He wished he could fly and set out over the city, into its dark alleyways, announcing the coming revolution with a clarion call of hope. He laughed at his own sentimentality, but he did not despise it now, he loved it. He loved that he could think this way, could imagine himself flying and announcing something joyous and wonderful, and he loved that he could be absolutely idealistic and not have to prove one word of anything. He loved that he had only to know in his own soul. He laughed so hard sitting there in the window that he began to cry. The tears streamed down a ruddy, resonant face.
“I was dead, it’s amazing, I was dead, a pitiful person, a heap. One man dies and just like that, I go into the shithole, dead, but not quite, not totally, alive just enough to know it and hate it. Damn my father’s religion was weak, so weak, so simple and ridiculously weak. But now it’s clear. Clear.” He looked across the street and saw an old man perched in a window, wearing a white fisherman’s hat and smoking a cigar. Mitkin waved. The man waved back.
“He’ll be in the grave soon,” thought Mitkin. “And that’s how it should be. Life is meaningless without death, it’s all connected, one giving meaning to the other.” His tears ran. “I don’t fear death! Courage is the thing… it’s uncontaminated, strong, life-giving. A god, I want to be courageous! Nothing else matters, and now I have, we have,” he balled a friendly fist and pounded it on his knee. “We are perfect today. Hell yes!” he yelled out.
The old man looked at him.
“Hey, old man,” he waved, “today we did it. We willed it! That’s it, we wanted it and it is ours.” He pumped a fist. “You can change the world, you can,” he screamed.
The man worked a confused smile and said something in Spanish.
Mitkin laughed and turned back inside, nearly drunk with joy. “Just do it, man, that’s right. Just overthrow the goddamned New York City Board of Education!”
From the corner of his eye he saw Raphaella. She was crossing the street with Dana, holding her hand. The wind blew Raphaella’s thick hair, and her cotton sundress flittered behind her like the train of a wedding dress. Her gait was elegant as always, and she was beautiful.
He sighed to himself. “Look at this. I have to share.” He got up, but then sat back down immediately. “If only she would have followed me.” He watched them come up the block. “We were in love, but now,” he sighed, “too far apart. It’s a waste.” He leaned out the window and shook his head. “God, I’d love to see her face when she finds out about Livingston Street. I’d love to see her when she finally puts two and two together and realizes it’s me. What will she do? She’ll be impressed, yes. She’ll wonder how, she’ll admire me, my devotion. That’s what she loves, devotion. She’s devoted too. She’s in love, like me. Damn, I would love to see her face. Damn.”
The front door clicked open below and the steps groaned as Raphaella and Dana made their way up the stairs. As if unable to control himself, he flew on the balls of his feet to his front door where he stuck his eye into the peephole. He breathed heavily but as silently as he could.
“Mitchell?” She had stopped in front of his door. “Is that you?”
In the peephole he saw her face, stretched round, distorted.
“Mitchell, are you there?”
He remained still, frozen by a wicked mix of admiration and disdain. Then out of his heart came a soft, bleating groan—it was loneliness and he desperately wanted her to knock on the door. She stared into the peephole. He stared back, glimpsing cloudily all that had made her so important to him; her hopeful green eyes and the winsome upturn of her thick lips, her manacled hair that spoke of an innocent recklessness, the perfect sorrow of her brow, all of it, in front of him, just on the other side of the distortion of the peephole.
“Mitchell?”
He stiffened with a hateful resolve to hide his self-pity. Lifeless, he waited for her to go, and for the loathing to pass.
She took Dana’s hand. “Come on, honey. Up we go.” Mitkin watched them ascend until they passed out of view. He turned and sucked his teeth.
“She’s a waste anyway, stick to the mission, she’d only find something to ridicule, something wrong with the process. But that’s just the problem with this world, isn’t it? Too much upside-down morality, too much weakness, feeble people who can’t stand up and fight. Sheep. Sheep, all of them sheep. The kind of person we must eliminate.”
With heavy strides he marched into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It was nearly empty. He pulled a lone Guinness from the door and then dug out a half-wrapped piece of cheese. He looked for a knife to cut the hard, dark corners off the unexposed center. All he could find was a meat cleaver and it fell indiscriminately. A tough, ropy ball of cheese was all that was left as he flung the stiff corners out the window.
As he chewed the phone rang.
“Mitchell, have you heard? It’s happening right down there in New York, some kind of revolution. Are you safe?”
Mitkin leered behind the phone. “I’m fine, Mother.”
“It sounds like the Sixties, Son. I lived through that time remember, angry groups trying to start trouble. They say these are Puerto Ricans.” She paused and then, as if to herself, said, “Your father would have been so interested.”
“Is that the only reason you called, Mother?”
“Well, yes, sort of. You know we haven’t spoken in nearly two months. I’m back and forth so much and you’re so involved in teaching and everything, and, how’s that working out? Are you still enjoying it? What class is it, the one you’re teaching?” She spoke in a high voice as if rushing to make herself known to her wayward son.
“I’m teaching biology,” said Mitkin, frowning into the phone. “Biology, Mother.”
“And all goes well? It seems like you were really enjoying it last time we talked. I was glad to see you had some solid distractions after Martin’s, well...”
Mitkin waited. She continued to fumble through less than fully formed thoughts.
“...and soon you’ll be back in school, I would guess. I think about you and your dreams every day, Son. I want you to achieve everything you put your mind to. You can do anything in this world, Mitchell. You’re so bright. I just worry about you, you’ve gotten so, so... serious.” She paused. “Life is to be enjoyed, like your father enjoyed it.”
“Yes, Mother, just like Father enjoyed it.” He rolled his eyes and thought to himself how his father had spent his whole life trying to do what he would accomplish in one day. “How sorry,” he thought, “how ironic.”
“Your father loved his work. And he loved the schools and learning, and you, too. He would never have thought of doing what they are doing there today. It’s so sad that people hate so much that they can ruin lives for the sake of, well, whatever it is they claim as, well, whatever. It’s just a waste.”
“The system is a waste, Mother. To try and change it, how is that a waste? Tell me please.”
“Well there are other ways to fix it, Son.”
“Like…” He waited. “Like, Mother?”
She stammered, “Like your father did.”
Mitkin shook his head coarsely. “He didn’t do anything. If he had we wouldn’t need a revolution, I mean, what do you think? That these kids like to take guns and shoot people and go to jail just to make a statement? It’s not like they’re earning rewards, a new car or a big bank account. Nothing has gotten better for them.”
There loomed a pent-up silence.
Mitkin continued, “But, Father knew all of this anyway. Trust me, he knew. He had all kinds of ideas like this stacked away in his head and on notepads, all over the place. He was closer to revolution than you think Mother.”
“Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because, it’s true,” he said spitting disgust. “Because this was his idea.”
A spattering laugh could be heard on the other end of the phone. It went on and on. Mitkin fumed.
“Are you laughing at me, Mother? Are you laughing at me?”
“Mitchell, your father could never have planned what’s going on there. He was a scientist, honey, not a revolutionary. Please don’t think he’d ever be involved with hostages and guns. There’s too much danger in it for Martin.” She chuckled again. “He was not like you, Mitchell. You’re more tense.”
Mitkin went blank with rage. His mother was in the Keys, or Palm Springs maybe, on a cruise ship, or at a steakhouse with friends, eating, gobbling, comfort-seeking and never thinking hard about the world and its cruelties. She had never known them.
“Look, I have to go, Mother. Don’t call me here tonight.” He hung up.
Speckled sunlight faded into a flat, low, cloudy gray. The capacious room grew darker, colder, more impersonal, and the empty walls and hard barren floors were suddenly too still. His mother’s voice rained inside the room.
And the radio kept on in Mitkin’s pale hand:
It is now the police’s contention that somewhere between fifteen and twenty students occupy the building and most of them, they say, have guns. From where we are, Vin, across the street on top of a nearby building, some of the students can be seen passing in front of a stairwell window, carefully, as if knowingly under surveillance. It is an odd and really very terrifying scene down here Vin, and still, no definitive word on what the rebels want in exchange for their hostages, one of which remains Edwin Romero, the Public School Chancellor. Back to you, Vincent.
“Twenty?” Mitkin said to himself. “Good going, Ed. They won’t try anything if they think twenty.” Mitkin listened closely. A deep, rehearsed voice came on:
One thing is clear, some angry students have taken deliberate action to force some sort of change in our school system. Another thing, too, is clear. These are sophisticated students, not just street thugs. It looks like we have some very artistic young people here, kids who want to make a stand for the rights of African-American and Puerto Rican young people.
Another voice chimed over the rehearsed one. This voice was scratchy and female:
A part of me says, ‘Hey, good for them,’ like it’s all a big class project. Wouldn’t that be a great class project, Chuck? Abduct the Chancellor, teach him a lesson, test him, tie him up…
Laughs and a third voice peeled in, this one an Italian-American sing-song affair:
I think what all of New York City wants to know right now is, who is da mastermind? Is it simply some angry Puerto Rican kids, brown knife-wielders, Latin Kings with guns who decided to go out like Clint Eastwood, or is this the work of some evil, raving genius, a crackpot no doubt but one with real chutzpah, brains. A cult leader type, Doctor Moreau maybe, who has brainwashed regular old kids, kids with loving mothers at home, into doing something they will in the end regret? And all on the eve of the first day of school! What do you think? You, the people of Gotham, the mothers and fathers of school kids? Call us now at...
“Idiots,” muttered Mitkin.
In the distance a police siren wailed, and Mitchell fluttered inside. He was a fugitive and it was only a matter of time before someone put it all together and his name surfaced as an accomplice. “Just not until tomorrow night,” he said aloud in his empty apartment. “Nobody takes me until tomorrow night.” The siren came closer and Mitkin craned to see from which direction. Then it was under him, the pitch unbearable and whirling from all directions at once. He slipped quickly off the ledge and down to his knees. His eyes peeked over the sill and out the window. The siren wailed beneath him, then forward, and then it was gone, down the block, hurtling through the crowded Harlem streets. Crazed, Mitkin popped up and watched. He waved.
“Tomorrow officer, sir, see you tomorrow!”
He smiled at his own bravado. From fear to courage, to loneliness, to an arrogant nonchalance and back again, that was how he went. He pictured the recent past, Taughtauer standing before him, one hand on Mitkin’s shoulder: “You are made unlike anyone I have ever met, Mitchell. I would even venture to say that you are like no one in the whole world, no one now, no one ever.” He bobbed a little and nodded affirmatively. In one enormous untamed moment he saw himself dying in a raging fire, surrounded by dead girls and boys, alone but for their memory, eyes beaming, heart pounding, teeth flashing under a vigilant grin. He saw millions watching him and admiring him, loving him and each changing within, each converted.
The doorbell broke in. It went off in loud spurts as if someone were in danger out on the stoop. He walked to his front door and listened. The buzz continued. No one was supposed to visit him today, nobody. Every martyr had clear directives—stay inside and out of the way, raise no suspicion and do not make unnecessary contact with anyone. The only one with license to change these orders was Mitkin himself. He stiffened. Another manic buzz electrified the room and then another, but this time the bell was much quieter, more distant. It came from upstairs; in fact, it came from within Raphaella’s apartment. Mitkin listened to the buzzer scream on, then off, on then off, just as it had in his apartment. Then he heard it below, from Seever’s apartment, and then again in his own. He looked out the peephole into the hall and saw nothing. He ran and hung his head out the window. Nothing. Then the buzz was back again, first his apartment and then hers above, and then below, in Seever’s. Like a cornered animal, Mitkin searched his room for some suggestion.
A spoke from a flatiron bed stood in the corner and Mitkin hurried to grab it. After one more look in the peephole, he opened his front door, inch by inch. At the foot of the stairs he saw a shadow. It was cast from a little ceiling lamp in the foyer between the front door and the building’s second door, the entrance inside. Mitkin crept on. The shadow of a powerful man swayed to and fro. Mitkin strained, but could not see his face. He saw sneakers, big, black high-top sneakers. The door rattled violently.
“Come on!” came a cry.
Mitkin lurched and the iron cut his palm.
“Mitkin, what the hell are you doing, I can see you, man… It’s me, Seever. I gotta get in and lay down...”
Dread sloughed off him. He sighed and lilted toward the door and as he went he heard a door open above. Little light footsteps. Looking up he saw Raphaella’s hair dangling down, her sculpted face like a prize inside.
“Who is it, Mitchell?” she asked.
“Seever,” said Mitkin, disgust in his voice.
Seever spilled into the hallway when Mitkin opened the door. He put one hand on Mitkin’s shoulder, the other on a bulky radiator. “Oh no way, look at this dust, hey.” He held his hand up. “Doesn’t anybody dust anymore?” He smiled incongruously. “Isn’t that your job, boss?”
“Where are your keys?”
“For the front door?”
Mitkin rolled his eyes.
“Right here are my keys,” slurred Seever. He fumbled with his pocket and produced a broken key chain. Mitkin took it from him and held it at eye level.
“What happened?”
“Some big guy at happy hour.” He faltered and then pointed at Mitkin. “Mitchell, you can’t let someone pick on you just because you’re from Wisconsin.”
“What? He didn’t like your accent?”
“How did you know?” Seever was puzzled. “How did you know he was making fun of me like that, wow.” He blinked and tried to focus. His stout strong fingers dug into Mitkin’s shoulder blade, his thumb into his collarbone. “He said I say O like an asshole. You should have heard how he said A. Caaaahr. Baaahr. What a Dick Tracy.” Seever’s head almost rolled off his neck. “I got a sore neck, Mitchell. Can you see a bruise? Hey?”
Raphaella approached Seever and examined his neck. “You’re bruised all over your neck and back, Andy. You should lie down.” Mitkin looked at Raphaella.
“Didn’t you hear him buzzing like a madman?”
She nodded and hoisted a handful of her hair. “We were washing, I came as quick as I could. Sorry.”
Seever dumped himself on the dusty radiator. It groaned under his heavy, muscular frame and Raphaella jumped forward to hold Seever steady. “Whoa there, you’re going to break that,” she said, but he didn’t hear her. His eyes fluttered and began to close. Raphaella repeated herself. “You need to lie down, Andy. Where is the spare set of keys?”
“Here they are, can you let me into my room?” Seever held up the same, mangled key chain. “I can’t get ‘em into the lock. I’ve been drinking a little, ya know.”
Raphaella glanced amicably at Mitkin but Mitkin did not return her amity. In fact, the whole scene was becoming irksome. He glared at the drunk.
“Raphie, have you spoken to David lately?” said Seever. “He loves you so much...” His words were slow and heavy. “I think you should think about living together again, heh? He still thinks you’re hot.” He nodded and there his chin stayed, on his chest. His eyes closed.
Mitkin sighed, gritted his teeth and looked at his wrist where there was no watch.
“Seven-fifteen,” said Raphaella, still holding Seever in place.
“What are you going to do?” said Mitkin. “I don’t really have time for all of this right now, just put him on the ground.” He pointed. She raised an eyebrow. “What about your apartment then,” he said. “He can sleep it off there.”
Raphaella nodded. Without explanation she got under one of Seever’s massive shoulders and motioned for Mitkin to do the same. Together they took a tiny step. All three fell to the ground. Raphaella laughed. Mitkin sighed.
“We can do it,” said Raphaella. “One, two, three...”
They managed to get him upright and climb one step before stopping. Hunched over they caught their breath and their balance and continued, step by step. They fell two more times before reaching the second floor landing. Mitkin’s door was wide open before them, just as he’d left it. Raphaella looked skeptically up toward her apartment.
Mitkin, too, looked up, and then at Raphaella who struggled to hold her half of the drunken Seever.
“Fine then, put him in my place. Drag him!” yelled Mitkin.
Raphaella moved quickly and they soon had Seever on the floor, on his side, a pillow under his head. Trying to be upbeat, Raphaella slapped her hands together, smiled and said, “Well, that’s a job well done.” She looked up and her face suddenly went still. Only her smile, curled so slightly at the corner, intimated the airy mood she’d brought into his apartment. “Wow,” she said, “this place sure is cleared out. Are you moving, Mitch?”
“No. Are you?”
She stared and waited.
“I just wanted more space I guess,” he said.
“I see that. Makes sense.” Silence. “I got rid of my TV, too.” Mitkin nodded. “Well, he should sleep just fine like that,” she said, her tone straight and smooth, her mood airy again. “If you need any help with him, let me know. He’s real drunk though, I can’t imagine he’d be up any time soon.” She turned to leave and took one more look at Mitkin. He still hadn’t made voluntary eye contact, and under the weight of her stare, his limbs weakened and his lips trembled slightly. As if illuminated by lightning through a black night, clipped images of him in handcuffs flanked by police and her watching it all on television, flashed in his mind. Clammy with sweat, he looked directly at Raphaella.
“He’ll be fine, just fine.”
Raphaella peered back. “Thanks.” She went upstairs.
Mitkin shut the door and cursed under his breath. “This is no good,” he thought. He looked at Seever. The puffy body lay crooked on the floor. The chest heaved up and down and the mouth hung open, globs of spittle ensconced in the corners where his lips met. The sight turned Mitkin’s stomach. “Absolutely empty,” said Mitkin. He scowled.
The radio reminded him that the siege had been underway for a few hours. Nothing had changed. The reporters prattled on with various hosts missing the mark and perverting the purity of the siege. During it all, Seever slept. By twenty after eight, Mitkin was hungry so he ordered Chinese and paid the man with a fifty. He ate sitting on the kitchen floor, knees curled up against his stomach, a long fork in hand. He gobbled but did not get full. Promise was his sustenance now, the promise of a greater, nobler conflict. He sat still, imagining.
The phone rang again. Mitkin picked it up as fast as he could, expecting Rutledge.
“Mitchell?”
Mitkin stayed silent.
“Mitchell, it’s your mother again. I’ve just had a terrible thought.”
Mitkin looked at Seever’s body and then around the room as if searching for an escape route.
“Mitchell, are you there?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Don’t be mad at me, honey. I just had to call you. I’ve had the most terrible thought.”
“Where are you, Mother?”
“With your uncle and his family, in Newport. Why?”
“What is it, Mother?”
“Mitchell, are you involved in this thing, this takeover? Something you said makes me afraid that you’re involved.”
Mitkin gripped the phone and saw his knuckles go white. “What did I say, Mother?”
“You said that Dad would have approved of this thing, and then you said we, you said we just now on the phone. We.”
He closed his eyes, and began to lie through a smooth voice. “Mother, please.” His whisper was kind. “Do you think Dad would really be in favor of something like this?”
“But you said he would.”
“I was angry. I’m not involved. Guns and knives? It’s just not me, Mother.” He heard what he thought was squeaky leather and a sigh. “Mother, are you there?”
“Just sitting down.”
“So don’t worry, okay?”
“It’s just that ever since your father’s death, you’ve been a different son. You’ve become very erratic, Mitchell. I’ve been thinking about the things you must be going through, but I still just can’t understand how you could be so angry, and so distant. Do you hate me, Mitchell? Do you hate your mother?”
It was difficult to keep his voice smooth and soft. Opposing emotions tore at him, scorn and pity, a remnant of love. “I don’t hate you, Mom.”
“Then why all this, this, odd behavior?”
“It’s not odd,” he snapped, but stopped. “It’s not odd. I’m growing up.”
“Then why did you get fired? Your father did wonders to get you that job. And what about your plans for medical school?”
His face grew small and his stomach tightened. “It’s not odd. Mother.”
“Well, it seems odd.”
“Not everything is what it seems.” Louder. “Not everything is simple. Shopping is not man’s destiny, you know. You’re the odd one, Mother. How can you watch a man wither and die and think nothing of it? Not look beyond yourself? Not investigate life? What have you learned about life in all your years? Didn’t Dad teach you anything about life, Mother?”
She gasped. He wiped his mouth and continued. “Before he died, he taught me to swallow life up whole and use it as fuel for ideas. He taught me that life was a game of investigation, that man’s intellect makes him free and special. But then he died and taught me the truth.” He took in a gulp of air. “Are you ready for what I really learned from Father, are you ready, Mother?” There was silence. “Nothing is quite what it seems. Life is an illusion, Mother, and the only thing that rescues us from complete annihilation is action, a will to power.”
His mother coughed timidly, and whined, “But he didn’t teach that at all.”
“His dead body did. Death exposed him.”
“Because of one thing? Because you saw one thing a different way, you act like this?”
“That one thing was everything,” he growled. “If you woke up one day and your breakfast looked like feces—wet, stinking fucking feces—what would you do, Mother? You’d eat it, and then continue to eat it day after day, like a machine?”
There was a long looping silence.
“I’ve changed my life, Mother, and now, I have a new father.”
She was crying. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m free.”
“But—”
“Do not call back tonight. Have fun in good ole Newport. I’ll call you tomorrow. Tomorrow. Wait until tomorrow.”
“Please, Son,” she screamed. “Tell me you’re not involved in this thing.”
“Hang up the phone,” he screamed, and they screamed at each other. “No, stop, hang it up… goodbye!” He tossed the receiver away and threw his head back. Little bleating words frantically spilled from the still-connected phone and he wished she had never called. With the care of an executioner lining up his axe blow, he placed the phone back on the hook. It rang only seconds later. In a high, egregious pitch it went on and on, ringing and ringing. He looked at Seever, still dead to the world, then, calmly, he walked to the phone, lifted the receiver and put it back down again. And when she called back, he did it again. And again. Finally it stopped and he returned to the kitchen.
There he met a new voice. It was a workingman’s bass with a Brooklyn brogue:
The fire looks like it started on the fourth floor, the same place where police told us the sounds of gunshots came from a couple of minutes ago. Our men are not allowed into the building until we know it’s safe, we start with that, their safety. As it goes right now, SWAT has not cleared us to put the whole thing out.
Mitkin leaned closer, his toes knuckling under, palms beginning to sweat. Another voice, this one loud and anxious:
We’ve got a SWAT rep right here, I believe a Mister Antonio Tolido. Mr. Tolido, can you tell us exactly what is going on inside?
Well I don’t know. What I can tell you is, well, someone has put fire to the place, and as far as I can tell that fire has enveloped all the floors above the fourth. Our men are trying to assess what to do next. Shots have been reported yet again.
This is truly a crisis.
Yes, it is. I haven’t seen anything like this in all my years with SWAT.
Can you confirm that the shooter or shooters are indeed children?
Sirens wailed in the background.
Again, I am not sure, though it does appear that the gunmen previously at the front entrance were young men, somewhere in their late teens. That is all I can say and to say more is to speculate.
Can we expect more information soon?
Again, I can only speculate.
Mitkin swiped the radio and it crashed to the floor. He ran to the phone.
“Terry?”
“Mitch, you’ve heard?”
“It’s way too early. What’s going on?”
“Something’s wrong, Mitch. Something’s really wrong.” Rutledge was raving.
“Stay where you are. Keep listening. Is Freeman still with you?”
“He’s right here.”
“Keep an eye on him. We must stay together. Whatever happens next, stay calm. We can still get through the night. Don’t panic Rutledge, don’t fuck this up now.” A voice wept in the background. “Keep an eye on Freeman.”
“But the place is on fire. Everybody’s going to die or get captured. Call it off, Mitch,” Rutledge clamored. “Call tomorrow off.”
“Calm down. As far as you know we are on for tomorrow, all of us. If plans change I’ll let you know. I’m calling Strand and Nin right now. Rev plans are on. Do you hear me? Rev plans are on.”
Rutledge was yelling at someone in his apartment.
“Rutledge!” cried Mitkin. “Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
Mitkin hung up the phone. He looked again at Seever and cursed. He dialed.
“Judy, it’s Mitchell.”
“Mitchell, everything’s off right? Call it all off. Please, now.”
“Not yet, Judy.” His voice was forceful.
“Not yet? When then, Mitch, the end of the month, Christmas maybe?” cried a sardonic Strand.
“We don’t even know if Taughtauer’s dead or alive.”
“He told me he’d call in case of a disaster, break silence, he told me that,” Strand said. Mitkin was surprised. “He said that, but he hasn’t called and now the building is burning down. It’s over, Mitch.”
“How do we know?” asked Mitkin.
“How do we know?” He could hear her heaving on the other end of the phone, an unpleasant breathing sound filled with fear and anger. “We know, Mitchell, because it’s on the goddamned television! Guess what, there’s no giant media conspiracy to nab us, to fake out the rev-roaches. Come on Mitchell, it’s over.”
“Wait.”
“For what? They’ll be after us soon. It only takes one martyr to spill the beans. I’m telling you, the minute I see one of ours in custody I’m done, I’m on my way out of town.”
“I thought you’d fight until the end?” Mitkin’s voice was filling with a seething sorrow.
“This is the end.”
Mitkin looked into a half-eaten box of lo mein. The peas and onions sat limply on the dark yellow noodles. Yep, feces. “It’s not the end!” he yelled. “It’s not over, you can’t just give up on the only thing that matters in life. Judy. Don’t be a coward.”
“So now I’m a coward?” she cried like a shot.
“You won’t be free on the run. Stay and fight. Judy, stay.”
The phone clicked dead. Mitkin turned in all directions and dialed furiously to Roger Nin.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Nin pleaded.
Mitkin said nothing.
“Let them go, Mitch, let everybody get out of here. I talked to Nicole and James just now. They actually want to hear it from you. They’re so good. Let them get out of town.”
“And go where?”
“Anywhere. There will be dead people in there—you know that, Mitch. Taughtauer had every intention of killing people.”
“I thought you had the same intention, that’s what you said. Remember?”
“Life, Mitchell. It’s natural to want to live.”
“You’re all cowards.”
“No, Mitchell. No. Check your motives. The fire is enough now, we win with the fire. I’m telling them all that you called it off, Mitchell. Say it for yourself, say it and save the kids.”
Mitkin could not speak.
“Say it, Mitchell!”
Still he seized. The phone clicked off and but for the heaping body and stinking food, Mitkin was alone.
And then Seever sputtered. Mitkin ran and saw the burly blond roll slightly to one side. Fury fueled latent strength and he yanked him by the arm and dragged him into the hall. There, with his foot he shoved the big body onto the landing, all as Seever mumbled and bled from his mouth. Mitkin gave one last look and slammed the door.
Click.
Clack.
Cluck.
Bolted in, he raged. He charged from one end of the apartment to the other, tearing at whatever was left on the walls. But so little hung there, and he found himself digging his fingernails into the shoddy sheet rock. He careened into the bathroom and put his fist through the back window, thick panes falling in big pieces to the ground below. He stroked his hair and cried out with wild wide eyes. “They’ll be here soon.” He marched to the radio and listened.
It’s new, it’s ranch, it’s chicken! Burger King’s Chicken Ranch Sandwich only one dollar when you buy another at…
Raising the back of his hand he slapped the little battery-powered radio off the nightstand. The batteries belly-slid across the floor, the radio itself skidding along only inches behind. He stood up straight and flexed his hand. Blood rolled over a knuckle.
The phone rang. It rang and rang and Mitkin ignored it. Slowly, he lowered himself into an Indian style squat on the barren floor. His hands began to shake.
“This can’t be. It can’t be happening. Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day, not today.” On his hands and knees he fumbled for the radio and then the batteries. As if suffering from a nervous disorder, he struggled to shove the batteries back in their skinny little slots. Crimson blood kept dripping onto the radio. Shuddering, he dropped a battery and it rolled away, on its own, alone. He held his hands to his face and cried, “not yet!” before slumping against the wall.
On the floor he became dizzy, as if he were drunk. His head pounded and a gourd of pity exploded in his belly. He clutched his face, branding to it a bloody palm. Alarmed, he fingered the open gash, holding it hard to stop the bleeding and thought, “They’re coming.” He whipped a glance at the front door. “They’ll beat it down, in an hour, maybe less. And not just me.” He picked up the phone and dialed. A brusque voice answered.
“Yeah.”
“Is Phillip there?”
“Who’s this?”
Mitkin shrunk.
“Who the fuck is this?”
“I am looking for Phillip.”
“Well, you can tell Phillip I know where he went, and I know he deep in that fire shit and the dead people, and tell him that if I see him ‘round here he’s gonna get an ass whoopin’ before I send his black ass back to prison where he belongs. You hear me? Tell him that.”
Mitkin hung up.
“He is there,” thought Mitkin, “with Taughtauer. Everyone who matters is there.” Trying again he tracked down the battery and got the radio working. For the first time all night it spit out the truth:
Confirming what we suspected, the dead boy was with the terrorists and has been identified as a John Phillip Carr, of Brooklyn.
Mitkin saw Phillip’s face, clear and beautiful, and then all of the other students who had gone to fight that night. Each lay in the emergency room and he at their feet, in a chair, waiting for them to be revived by pumping nurses and frantic doctors but knowing they would not. They were cold, and still, and empty, and their inert bodies made no sense except that they were dead. He saw his father in his final moments. He saw Taughtauer too, a rotund, bloated heap under a hospital-green blanket, his big, bulging eyes and expressive mouth resting limp and torpid, unlike they’d ever been, ever. Mitkin got a strong sense that he was supposed to be proud of their struggle, but he was not. He felt nothing. Another deathbed.
We are now reporting that three bodies have been recovered, all of them on the same floor and all of them apparently members of the same movement. Which movement, however, remains a mystery. Apparently the command center for the terrorists has been overrun and taken by a SWAT team. In it are the bodies, again at least four. As for the city’s School Chancellor, Edwin Romero, his whereabouts are unknown. He, according to an unofficial count, is the only hostage still missing.
“I’ll go,” he murmured. He walked mechanically to the bedroom and began to sort clothes. “I’ll go to Canada.” He found his passport in a drawer. Rather than push the drawer back in, he pulled it out and let it fall in a heap to the ground. Then with his forearm, he calmly swept the top of the bureau clean, pushing without discretion, like a bulldozer into a landfill. A mirror splintered. A bottle of dusty cologne exploded. Oblivious, he stooped to examine a picture of his father which looked back at him from the hardwood, alongside a nail clipper and a faded receipt. His father sat in a boat, casting for fish in a deep blue lake. “There’s nothing down there,” he thought. “Nothing.”
He slouched slowly to the ground, buttocks slowly to flank. He pulled himself to himself, like a child at bedtime. There, his cheek to the floor, he noticed an old mousetrap tucked under a dusty radiator, the cheese bait still in it. He squinted at the trap, staring for a very, very long time.
At the end of an empty stare, he pulled himself along the ground toward the radiator. Stretching out an arm, he watched as his forefinger got closer and closer to the mousetrap. Without hesitation he pressed on the cheese and winced as the trap buckled and fell with a whir. A cold sizzle ran through his body but he did not scream, and he did not get up. With the trap stuck to his finger he rolled onto his back and there he examined it at his leisure. A swath of tattered skin had been torn from the top of his finger. Slowly, decidedly, he pulled his finger out of the steel trap, blood dripping onto his chest. At its deepest, the empty gash was bluish with resplendent rivulets of crimson blood. A hint of white, his bone, peeked out from beneath the carnage. Drip by drip, blood fell onto Mitkin’s belly. He watched it all and sniggered.
“I stay.”
He got up. He went straight out the front door, stepping over Seever and down the steps. He moved deftly through the two doors and into the mild evening air of early September. He walked through a hole in the fence that surrounded the property and began to peruse the refuse pile in the tiny backyard. The place was a jungle. For a long time, it had been overrun by weeds and abandoned furniture: a beat-up microwave, rotting lumber and old rusty hubcaps. When Mitkin’s father bought the property he planned to clean it up and use it to raise the rent, but he never did. Now his beloved son scrounged through it, head down, shoulders hunched, with a finger dripping blood, eyes afire. He pulled a piece of wood from underneath a pile and then another. He continued like this for about ten minutes until his foraging produced a bushel of old, ratty wood. Tucking it all under his arm, he walked back toward the front of the house. He returned for a soiled recliner and put it on his back. A horde of roaches scurried out and onto Mitkin’s neck. He did not flinch.
Little by little, he amassed a stocky pile of garbage near the building’s entrance. He did this and never stopped to look at his work or at the passersby who began to take notice. His head was always down. He then hinged open both front doors and began to bring in the refuse. When everything had been piled inside he shut the front door and went back upstairs to his apartment to retrieve his wallet. Stepping back out, over Seever, and then over his cache of debris, he walked like a soldier to the corner hardware store. He bought a giant bundle of heavy-duty utility cord, scissors, matches and a hefty can of gasoline. His bloody hand was all the talk, only Mitkin didn’t understand enough uptown Spanish to realize it, nor did he really care what anyone said or thought during these manic moments.
Returning to the three-story brownstone, he began to construct a barricade. He pushed the recliner behind the front door (which opened out), and with the utility cord tied a door stop, fastening one end of the cord to the first door and then looping a knot around the handle of the inside door (which opened in). Squeezing himself inside and pulling the cord tight, he wrapped more utility cord around the fat base of the oak banister and tied an ugly knot. When he tightened the slack on his creation the whole thing creaked and reminded him of a giant tug of war, the banister versus the doors. Quickly, he buttressed all of this with wooden door jams fixed hard under the inside door’s handle, a locking device he’d seen used effectively in many Manhattan apartments. The entire process took twenty minutes, but when it was finished Mitkin was assured of his fortress. He grabbed the gasoline and matches and weaved his way through the maze of cord and debris. He mounted the stairs. In front of his door, standing over Seever, he looked up and thought for a moment about Raphaella. Had she heard him? Would she get involved?
He toed Seever’s mid-section and saw that the big drunk was still asleep, or not moving at least. He hopped over him into his apartment looking back and muttering the word “fool” before slamming his door shut. He dialed 411.
“I want the Channel Seven newsroom.” The operator gave him the number and he dialed again.
The person on the other end spoke quickly and plainly, her voice disinterested and afar, her manner dismissive. Mitkin asked for a supervisor.
“He’s very busy, sir, you’ve called at a bad time.” She snapped some chewing gum between her teeth. “Can I take a message?”
Mitkin spoke flatly, “I am holding two hostages at 102 E. 103rd Street. I will kill one in ten minutes if I do not have the ear of every news crew in this city. I am a member of the Student Coalition, the same coalition that has taken Livingston Street and has killed the Chancellor. You have ten minutes.” He hung up the phone and called 911, repeating his message. Next he went to the bedroom and retrieved the pistol, and then to the kitchen for the butcher’s cleaver. The handles of each invited caress. They were thick, stout, smooth handles with finger notches that braced heavy steel and invoked power. With his hands at his side he stroked the handles with his thumbs, rubbing each up and down, back and forth, round and round. He held out his hands and felt the weight of his weapons, bobbing them twice like an equestrian preparing his reins. The steel of one chimed against the steel of the other. With his head down and his fists firm, he kicked open the door and hiked up the stairs. He pounded Raphaella’s door with the underside of his fist and the butt of the butcher’s cleaver. It shook violently as if against the gale of a hateful storm. Then gaining his wits, he tucked the gun into his waistband and slid the cleaver into his belt. He heard Raphaella move toward the door.
“Who is it?” she said anxiously.
“Mitchell.”
He imagined her leaning closer and then saw the little dim light go dark in the peephole. She opened the door, and like a tempest all at once he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her, head wrenched to her knees, down the stairs. They plunged headlong, nearly falling, skipping stairs two at a time, wildly on, forward. They leapt over the drunk Seever and into Mitkin’s apartment. A siren in the distance came wailing.
All the while Raphaella did not scream. At one point she said, “Why?” and at that he pressed the cold muzzle deep into her cheek. Inside his apartment, he let her go, pushed her forward, and pointed the gun at her.
“Sit down,” he screamed.
He took her by the arm before she could move, and with a heavy hand threw her onto the hardwood. He kept the muzzle of the gun trained on her head, close enough that she could smell the sweat in his armpits.
“Is Seever dead?” she asked.
“Seever? Fuck him. In fact,” he got up and opened the front door, “pull him in here now!” He pointed the gun at Seever and then at her. It trembled. Raphaella darted toward the door as Mitkin screamed, “Pull him!” With all of her might, she tugged at Seever. He groaned and she tugged again until finally the big body was in. The sirens were very loud now.
“They’ve come for you, Mitchell.”
“No,” he said, “I called them. It’s what is supposed to happen. It’s what I want to happen.”
“Why?”
“I’m in charge here, goddammit! You don’t care why, nobody cares why. Not one person on this earth cares why, not you, not anybody, there is no answer to why!”
The door rattled below.
“They won’t get in right away,” he said snatching the ball of utility cord and tying Raphaella’s hands tight to the chubby radiator post. He pulled on her arms to test the knot and she winced in pain. Next he tied Seever.
The sound of steel in motion from outside the back window snapped Mitkin to attention. “The fire escape!” he shouted, bolting toward the window. Raphaella watched as he fired a shot toward the ground.
“I’ll kill them!” he shouted out the window. “Don’t come this way! I’ll kill them!” Coming back inside, he locked the window and rushed back to the kitchen where he spoke quickly to his hostages.
“I won’t kill you if they listen to me.” And then, like a soldier he marched back to the front of the apartment. There he curled his head around and looked outside. Three police cars sat cockeyed in the street, their emergency lights dancing from building to building in the night, red and blue and glaring white, all of it oddly inviting, fantastic, fated. He fired a shot into the air and two policemen ducked behind their cars. “I don’t see a news crew,” he yelled. “Where are the talking heads?” A crackly voice shot back through a police bullhorn.
“Clear the streets. Get clear of the street.”
Mitkin watched as pedestrians ducked, too, some behind garbage cans, others in stairwells, one entirely beneath a car. He fired another shot and watched as still others did the same. A wild rush of adrenaline made him smile like a joker. Then, in a second, that joker’s smile turned wry, and he wheeled around, heading back into the foyer where Raphaella and Seever were bound. He fumbled in the kitchen for a piece of paper and a pen. He wrote furiously.
“What are you writing?” she asked.
“Not what am I writing, what am I willing. I’m willing the end, the one I’ve wanted all along.”
He stuffed the note into a drinking cup and stepped over his human haul toward the big bay window. Ducking down, he reached over the sill and dropped the cup, listening as it clipped a windowsill and banged its way to the concrete below. Next he was on the phone. Everything was done precisely and unencumbered, as if already there, in his head, planned and prepared and now, finally, at liberty to explode into the world just as he orchestrated. He spoke clearly.
“I said I want a news crew. If I don’t see a news crew in four minutes then I shoot the man from Wisconsin, his name is Andrew Seever. Then, well, then you’ll have to report that New York is a dangerous place for people from Wisconsin.” He simpered. “You now have three minutes.”
Around and around he went, pacing and talking to himself and to Raphaella.
“The fire comes after I’m dead, really just as I’m dying, at the same time.” He took the container of gasoline in his hand and unknowingly knocked the matches off and to the ground. “Start it at the door, right here,” he mumbled. He splashed some of the clear liquid under the door and the whole apartment quickly filled with noxious fumes.
“Are we all going to die, Mitchell? Even Dana? Even little Dana?” said Raphaella.
“Not the plan! The plan is I die, but not before everyone in this city knows who we are and why we’ve done what we’ve done. They’ll know how deep in shit they all are, how incredibly bankrupt their whole system is and how there is no meaning in any of their little schemes, in any of their tiny lives, and in all of this...” he pointed wildly in a circle with the gun. “When they know, you go.”
“But for what, Mitchell?”
“Our will.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s everything.”
Seever moved. He rolled onto his back and unwittingly onto Mitkin’s little book of matches. There, with his hands tied behind him, he instinctively held the matchbook in his hand, clutching it because he had nothing else to clutch for. He opened his eyes and moaned again, trying to sit up. Because his arms had been tied he could not and so, confused, he shook his head and stared at Raphaella.
“What are you doing here? What’s with the—”
“Shut up, Seever,” Mitkin hissed.
“Mitkin?”
Mitkin moved close to Seever and with the muzzle of his pistol flicked the underside of Seever’s nose. “Yes, it’s Mitkin.”
“What’s going on now, hey?” He glanced at Raphaella for answers. “Raphaella, what’s going on with him?”
The phone rang.
“Mitchell Mitkin?” asked the deep voice.
“Who is this?”
“My name is Sergeant Wickus. I want to talk to you. I want to know what you want.”
“I want a news crew, now.”
“We have one here.”
“Where?”
Mitkin walked with the phone to the front of the building. With his back to the wall, he peered gingerly out the window and could see a van sporting a television logo. He moved sprightly out of the room. “Put them on the phone,” he said.
“I can’t do that. I need to know what else you want. I want to help you.”
“Then put them on the phone.”
A slice of silence was followed by a new voice. This voice was far less calm. “Hello, who is this?”
“This is Mitchell Mitkin. Who is this?”
“My name is Albert Tucker. I’m a reporter with Channel Seven.”
“The black one?”
“Yes.”
“Are you ready to write?”
“I’m recording.”
“Then record this: Today thousands of students are ready to change the NYC public school system by a sheer act of will. Record that they have lived with the thought of death and deception too long, and that they want to know something else, something they can call life, something that has meaning, something that rings of victory and smells like freedom and truth. Record that these students are ready to make something meaningful of their lives and they don’t give a damn what anybody thinks about it, they don’t give a damn if it’s all good, or right, or true. Write that they are tired of nothingness and a world gone mad. They have changed their lives today.”
“Who is in charge, are you in charge?”
“They are in charge.” Mitkin was speaking loudly.
“Just them?”
“What, you don’t believe it could be just them? Is that an impossibility, sir? Can’t kids have valid ideas, too?”
“Then who are you?”
“I am one of their servants. Someone, who like them, is tired of the emptiness.”
“Then which students are involved, who are the leaders?”
“All the students in the system are involved, every one of them knows the emptiness well. Not one student in this city is unaware of it, but I can assure you all of them are learning how to fill it. Action sir, this action is just the beginning. You’re lucky, you get to record it for posterity.”
“Where is the Chancellor?”
“He’s dead.”
“How many are at Livingston Street?”
“Thousands. Millions.”
Mitkin became aware of a sawing sound coming from the foyer. He jumped up and lunged toward the door, his eyes meeting Seever’s. Wild and flush-red, Seever’s fear-filled stare stopped Mitkin momentarily, long enough to notice Seever’s big hands out in front of him, free now, pulling hard at the front door. Mitkin fired his pistol. Seever, seemingly unhurt, kept pulling until the door opened and then tumbled out. Face first he went onto the stoop, his head hanging slightly over the top stair, his eyes now blank.
Mitkin rushed out after him only to sense movement over his left shoulder. He wheeled and saw Raphaella, standing untied, her palms up, her arms stretched toward him, entreating, soothing, freeing him, loving him. Instantaneously Mitkin visioned her martyrdom, their martyrdom, the validation of his cause, the perfection of their deaths in the same moment of time, an unforeseen blood pact that finally, perfectly consummated their relationship. Without thought and without consciousness, Mitkin fired twice. A sooty hole appeared on Raphaella’s forehead, and a dash of crimson just above her belly button. She teetered backward and crumpled to the ground.
Now, Mitkin stood still, mesmerized as blood pooled and crimson fingers crept through the foyer, into the kitchen and onto the smooth linoleum floor. There they made their way under the refrigerator and out of sight. A wisp of smoke travelled upwards, mirroring the rivulets of Raphaella’s blood and her blameless soul. He turned and looked at Seever who remained motionless in front of the door, carrying a bullet in his back. Like a grinding headache, reality crashed in and the sawing sound intensified below. Mitkin felt himself wobble and sway. The sounds of a little boy playing in the park came magically to him, carried from far away, laughter and quiet crying mixed sadly in a mist of memory that would stay with him forever, a reminder of what he had done this day. He listened to the little voice and in it, he heard his own.
“Mommy?” it said, a knock and then again, “Mommy, I’m afraid.” Into the darkness of his mind came a sliver of reality and the high soprano of a terrified girl. “Mommy? Mitchell? Is Mommy there?”
Dana’s bright eyes peeked around the door and into the blood-filled apartment. As Mitkin ran to shut the door, her innocent stare met his and she was suddenly ashen. He slammed the door before she could see her mother, or at least that was the thought he had in that eternal instant. Turning, he spotted the gas can and with a maniacal self-pity, fired into it. Gas spilled and sprayed all around him. From below he could hear more smashing, the sounds of breaking glass, and little Dana’s terrified murmur.
“They’ll rescue her in time,” he rationalized. “They’ll get her,” he mumbled. He rushed to find a match. From room to room he ran, searching every corner for fire. He slipped on Raphaella’s blood and fell to the ground as he entered the kitchen. His hands slithered forward and he dropped to his chest. Hurrying to get up he heard shouts from below and a giant crackling blast.
“Matches!” he screamed. “Fire!”
From his knees he twisted the knob on the stove in hopes of finding a spark, but the electric stove only stared back coldly.
It would be a while.
Slowing, he sat on the floor against the kitchen cabinet and surveyed his slaughter. It had come to this. In a void of resignation came together all of his failures and losses; his father’s death, the defeat of science, unrequited love and unrealized dreams. It was out of control now, he had created chaos, with no saving grace. Fighting off one final urge to weep, he put the gun to his temple, looked one more time at Raphaella, closed his eyes, and fired.
***
I don’t like looking at him sitting there, not smug but not dead either, like my Raphaella. I don’t like to see him point out the scar, the place the bullet entered and where it grazed his skull. He is telling my story as his own, the only one I’ve ever wanted to truly tell. But this dislike is not hate or rage like it was only a week ago. This is something else, something different that brings me to tears. And I am crying all right, a stream of tears wets my face and he sees them, my first tears since that day. Suddenly, he gets up and leaves without a word and the door shuts behind him with a whoosh and I wonder where he has gone. I gather myself and wait. It’s not a short wait, either. I sense that he has left the visiting area altogether. I look up at Rocky who looks back kindly and says, “I’ll call.” I wipe my eyes one last time and then, on cue, Mitkin walks back through the visiting room doors.
Rocky nods and goes back to his crossword puzzle. I notice the size of his taut forearms as he holds the pen, and everything suddenly seems normal, just as it has been for the last week; normal except that Mitkin is carrying something, a picture it seems. His face is pale, as pale as I’ve ever seen it. He approaches the table and takes a seat, and then, with a slow hand slides the picture across the table, like an informant handing over precious documents or a wad of cash. The sound of paper sliding over wood is the last thing I think of before I realize that the picture is of Raphaella, alive, in white, her long hair wet and over her face, her head bowed meekly. I don’t recognize the picture, but I know what is happening. It is Raphaella’s baptism, the day she truly left me, and the day she cherished above all others.
“It’s all I have of her,” he says, softly. “It’s the only thing I’ve kept from then, from when I was with her.”
I nod, but I can’t entirely focus on the picture. It sits on the table between us, exactly in the middle, dividing us and uniting us at the same time. I look at him and feel a profound sorrow, one that is unlike any sorrow I’ve ever known because it comes with a hint of joy. A hint of joy! I feel it as if she had experienced it in me, as if she were with me now.
“Were you there?” he asks.
“No,” I reply, “I went to a film festival that weekend.”
“A film festival.” He just nods knowingly, continuing like that for more than a moment, content to just move his head up and down, slowly. Then, finally, he says, “I was there. I took the picture.”
“Did she invite you?”
“She did, but I told her I wouldn’t go, that I hated her because she wouldn’t love me.” I wait as he pauses. “But then I showed up, I just showed up with my camera and I didn’t really understand why. I watched it all from far away in the church, I don’t even know if she saw me. I was off in a corner, like a voyeur. Do you see? Do you get it now?”
I look at him suspiciously, as if he is hiding something from me. He stares back and continues.
“Day by day I died trying to get her to love me, to fill in for my father and love me as I wanted to be loved. That was how I was living back then, David. I was living for her. Up at The Cloisters I felt that she ended my life as it was, ended me, and my hopes for love. I was so lonely, so alone then and she was so beautiful, so wonderful and I felt we could make it together. But, of course, this would never happen. She wanted something else, something that I could never have understood without,” he pauses and looks right at me, “without there being a change, a renewal.” His eyes well up. “She gave it to me, David. She gave me love.” He stops, his eyes fill with embarrassment and regret but also a peace that goes beyond my understanding. “Selfish to the end, I was selfish right to the end and she knew it, standing there, her hands out, forgiving me, hoping for me, loving me. And I killed her.” That is too much to say. He begins to cry in earnest, the tears coming like torrents. “Don’t you see?” He wipes his cheeks with the back of his cuff.
I wait and then I ask, “Why the picture?”
Gently he picks the picture off the table and holds it like a placard in front of me. “I was there when she died to this world, but I refused to accept it, and this is that moment.” He shakes the picture for punctuation. “This is the moment that I knew I would kill her, and I keep it because it reminds me that I am a proud, proud, sad man.” I look right by him but not because I don’t understand, it’s more because I am in the process of understanding, sorting it out, making sense of it. I think he recognizes this as he continues. “She wanted what Christ wanted David, it’s crazy to think about, but your Raphaella wanted to save the world the same exact way Christ wanted to save the world. She wanted what He wanted, exactly how He wanted it. No difference.”
Could it have really been for this? I think to myself. “She’s all wet,” I say, pointing at the picture.
“She’d just come out of the font, out of the depths. She used to tell me that, tell me that the water was her tomb, and that it was in the tomb that she learned about life. Oh damn David, if only I’d had the ears to hear.” He begins to cry again.
His tears would have been the most hateful things ever only ten days ago, but now they are like perfection rolling down his cheeks. I understand so much and I say, “Dana taught you this, didn’t she?”
“She didn’t teach me, David, I learned it in flashes, brilliant flashes even on that terrible day at 103rd Street, with the police and Seever and poor little Dana, I learned it all then. But Dana made me aware of it, she held the wax paper and ran the crayon over my tomb. By loving the man who killed her mother, she raised the words and made me see why I am here, and you too.”
“Me too?” I ask.
“Raphaella has taken us both as lovers now David, and Dana too, all of us.” He looks around as if coming back from a faraway place, looking up at Rocky who is oblivious. “She has assumed all of us and made it as it should be, everything, just as it should be, because of her.” Incredibly, he smiles that ineffable smile.
I must admit that now, here, in this mud-brown hotel where I am holed up, writing this, this thing, I don’t totally understand that profoundly peaceful and wise smile of his. But I can say I didn’t flinch at it, I didn’t want to wipe it off his face. I only know that it was absurd and that I wanted it somehow, and that I am in the process of finding that smile every day, each morning, each night before bed. In a very cliché kind of way it haunts me, and follows me, and I wonder if I will ever fully understand it. Mitkin, of course, was baptized long ago in this prison in the same manner as Raphaella, and Dana too. I remain uninitiated, but I don’t think I am truly dead as if without knowledge. It’s only that I don’t get the smile yet, it hasn’t washed over me entirely, entombed me, and that is okay I think, okay if only for the moment.
Alone here, I have been leafing through the folder that I put together around the time of Raphaella’s death. It is filled with her letters to me, and her most precious items, things like her prayer rope, her favorite icon of St. Mary of Egypt, the business card her long-lost father gave to her mother, and her beloved art history book. In it, just today, I found a passage in a letter she wrote to me. It says that one day I will know the things that separate us, and then I will only have to choose. I think that day has come. I think that, at least now, I know what I must do, and why I have come into this prison, and why I have been given the gift of fatherhood. How difficult is the knowing though! In that same folder I found a little laminated copy of Raphie’s favorite Psalm, the one that was said at her baptism, and the one she loved to sing in the car on the way to Vespers during those last days before her death:
Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven, and whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth no sin, and in whose spirit there is no guile…
Thank you. I enjoyed the ride.