Project for a Revolution in New York Page 12

  Then, after a silence, broken only occasionally by the sound of the papers he is glancing through, he continues:

  “Let’s see, your name is Laura Goldstücker, you are the daughter of Emmanuel Goldstücker who …”

  “No, not the daughter: the niece,” Laura says.

  “The daughter,” Morgan says, “it’s written here on the first page of the file. Don’t start twisting the words.”

  “The niece,” Laura says. “My father was killed in Cambodia, during the thirty-day war. It must say so there, somewhere, in the report.”

  Morgan, who seems irritated, has bent over the table and consulted various typed and manuscript documents. He finally straightens up, holding in one hand a rectangle of heavy yellow paper, a kind of printed form which he waves in front of himself like a criminal lawyer: “Here we are!” he thunders. “Your uncle adopted you the following year.”

  “No,” Laura says, “I refused.”

  “You were five years old,” the doctor says, “how could you have refused? It was impossible, and you’re impeding the interrogation. If we get into details of this kind, we’ll never finish. So I repeat: you are the (adopted) daughter of Emmanuel Goldstücker, known as MAG, president of Johnson Limited, who is two months late in his assessments. For this reason, you have been sentenced to death this very morning.”

  “All right,” Laura says, “is it a ransom you want? How much?”

  “You fail to understand me: I said that you have been sentenced to death. Such sentences are without appeal. Tomorrow, a little souvenir of your existence will be sent to your uncle-father, and our cashier will visit his residence that very evening. If he does not pay then and there, this time, his pretty red-haired whore, Joan Robeson, will be eliminated, but by means of much more complicated and cruel tortures which our clerk, Ben-Saïd, is at this very moment drawing up the list, in order to add it to the bailiff’s summons. If that doesn’t convince MAG, this document will serve in any case, on the following day, for the torture.”

  “What!” Laura exclaims, outraged. “They begin with me, and keep that whore in reserve! Just what I thought; the old idiot cares more about her than me. All I count for is to find out how serious your threats are concerning that precious little doll of his … But that’s not how it’s going to work out!”

  “Yes it is,” the surgeon says. “According to the report, that’s just how it’s going to work out. Moreover, it’s quite likely that old Goldstücker cares more about his young mistress than about a child like you, who has never given him anything but trouble, though that is hardly the only motive which has led us to take action in this matter. Joan, as has been said, belongs to our organization; we therefore prefer to sacrifice her only as a last resort, after having tried every other means of recovering the money.”

  “But if she belongs to your organization,” Laura says, “she actually runs no risk whatever.”

  “Quite the contrary,” the surgeon says, “just think a minute: if we seem to be controlling her, Goldstücker will suspect something; and nothing in the world must permit him to discover the role she’s been playing there for almost six months now. She must then, if that is how matters turn out, suffer the hideous fate Ben-Saïd is preparing for her. Since he is secretly in love with her, the program will doubtless be quite an interesting one.”

  “But what proof will there be?”

  “There will be the report. You’re forgetting that everything is set down there quite exactly, and that no tampering with the truth is permitted.”

  “All of which will leave a lot of deaths on your conscience,” Laura says without much hope of convincing her executioner by such insipid arguments.

  “Crime is indispensable to the revolution,” the doctor recites. “Rape, murder, arson are the three metaphoric acts which will free the blacks, the impoverished proletariat, and the intellectual workers from their slavery, and at the same time the bourgeoisie from its sexual complexes.”

  “The bourgeoisie will be freed, too?”

  “Naturally. And by avoiding all mass killings, so that the number of deaths (which for the most part, moreover, will be inflicted upon the female sex, always more numerous)—the number of deaths will seem quite low with regard to the work done.”

  “But why the tortures?”

  “For four main reasons. First, it is a more convincing way of obtaining large sums from the humanist bankers. Second, the future society must have its martyrs. What would Christianity have done without Saint Agatha or Saint Blandine and the lovely illustrations of their torments? Third, there are the films, from which we also derive important revenue, quite out of proportion to the investments in spotlight lenses, cameras, color film, and sound equipment. Foreign television pays very well for good productions … For example, if we turn you over to the rats, as the sentence provides, and the shots are properly set up from beginning to end, with close-ups of the details and expressive cuts to your face, we have a German buyer who is willing to spend two hundred thousand dollars! In order to obtain their final agreement, we have had to give them first a complete scenario as well as a dozen photographs of you, six of which will be stark naked from different angles, which have necessitated the secret installation of several automatic cameras in your bathroom.”

  “Is it for an erotic program?”

  “No, not necessarily. There is also the series of ‘Educational Individual Crimes’ which tries to effect a general catharsis of the unacknowledged desires of contemporary society. Do you understand the word ‘catharsis’?”

  “Certainly! Do you think I’m an idiot?”

  “Sorry … And then there are also the films kept in reserve for later, by speculators in the bull market of history. You can imagine the value represented, for any university offering the doctorate in historical sciences, by optico-aural recordings of the execution of Robespierre, Joan of Arc, or even Abraham Lincoln, though much less spectacular than most of our productions.”

  Laura, who had, in fact, noticed the poorly concealed cameras in the walls of her private apartments, especially in the bedroom, the dressing room and the bathroom, but who supposed at the time that she was dealing with a mere voyeur, her uncle for instance, had done her best for eight days to assume, facing the cameras, the most suggestive poses and expressions. She now regrets having been so obliging. It is always a mistake to try and do a favor for people without making them pay for it. She says, in order to gain a little more time:

  “You referred to four reasons. But you’ve only mentioned three.”

  “Well, of course, there is the pleasure, too, which we mustn’t overlook either … But all this talking isn’t getting us on with the job. I’d like to send you out to the drugstore to buy me a rare roast-beef sandwich and a cocaine cocktail. Only I’m afraid you’d lose your way in the dark corridors and then I’d never see you again. So let’s get on with it: How old are you?”

  “Thirteen and a half … But one last word: if I answer all your questions, what will your buyer for German television say? Don’t you run the risk of a suit for breach of contract?”

  “How naive you are!” the doctor exclaims, with a hearty laugh. “I can always decide that you haven’t answered correctly. I’m the only judge. And in any case, there are questions which are so curious that I strongly doubt your discovering a suitable answer to them; not to mention the fact that the list of questions is never closed for good … All right … the capital of Maryland … how many seconds in a day … what do girls dream of … what do the windows overlook … you have already answered all that … Ah, here’s something else: where did you first meet young W?”

  “At the beach, this summer.”

  “When did you decide on this business with Ben-Saïd?”

  “The man in the yellow overcoat?”

  “Yes, of course—don’t play dumb.”

  “Right then, when we saw him get into the car. At least that’s what I thought, since he was actually in on it, you say. In any case, we’
d been working on that line since the beginning of the week, and he wasn’t the first one we’d taken to the last stop.”

  “What went on there?”

  “Oh, nothing much: we had some fun scaring them and we took their money to buy tapes.”

  “Untouched?”

  The child gave a shrill, unconvincing schoolgirl’s laugh, then controlled herself at once: “No, it’s no advantage to have them untouched, as you call it. For the same price you can get them with things recorded on them that you can always erase, if you don’t like it.”

  “What kind of things do you look for?”

  “Exciting things.”

  “Be more specific.”

  “Groans, sighs, muffled screams, things like that … Or steps climbing up an iron staircase, a pane of glass being broken, an iron latch creaking, and heavy footsteps coming closer down the corridor toward my room, whose door turns slowly on its hinges while I hide my face in the sheets. And then I feel the weight of the body coming down on top of me … That’s the moment I start screaming. ‘Keep still, you little fool,’ he whispers, ‘or I’ll really hurt you,’ and so on.”

  “You have used the word ‘retake’ two or three times in your narrative. What is its precise role?”

  “The word all by itself?”

  “Yes, between periods, whereas your sentences are for the most part correctly constructed, though sometimes a little loose.”

  “It seems quite clear to me. It means you continue something that had been interrupted for some reason … But you don’t need to compliment me on my grammar—I’ll talk.”

  “What kind of reason?”

  “The reason, you old phony, that you can’t tell everything at the same time, so that there always comes a moment when a story breaks in half, turns back or jumps ahead, or begins splitting up; then you say ‘retake’ so that people can tell where they are.”

  “Don’t get upset,” the doctor says in a low voice, sounding even more exhausted. “I understood. But you had to say it, so that it can appear in the report.”

  “Why bother?”

  “Don’t imagine that this report is made to be read by just linguists. Where were we?”

  “The rape scene.”

  “Oh yes … Why do you need to steal a few dollars to buy these tapes, when you have all the money you want at home?”

  “Money from the family isn’t real money. It’s fresh and smooth and has no smell, except the smell of printer’s ink. The bills are brand new, as if they’d printed them themselves. The money you earn is all wrinkled, with little tears in it, and a little thickened by dirt; it feels good to the touch, and it has a good smell when you take it out of your pocket and put it down on the counter of a pornographic bookstore in Times Square.”

  “But you don’t earn it, you steal it!”

  “Stealing is a kind of earning, so is begging, or carrying dope, or doing things with nasty old men. It’s all with the same money, the real kind, the money that’s been used, that’s dirty and smells good, like Havana cigars, French perfume, race horses, old cigarette lighters, and underwear before you wash it.”

  “No personal digressions, please. Go on with the story of what happens at the last subway stop.”

  “We get off, as usual, W holding hands with Ben-Saïd, who thinks he’s stumbled over a safe little piece of trade he’ll give five dollars to for spending a queer half-hour with him in some out of the way place. M and I follow about twenty yards behind, to keep an eye on things. I remember that in the station corridors, there was the big poster for the new Johnson detergent.”

  “The one of the girl covered with her own blood, in the middle of the rug in a modern living room furnished in white vinyl?”

  “Yes, that’s the one. Should I describe the arrangement of the body? The knives, the cords, and all the rest?”

  “No, you’ve already done that about ten times. Just the text.”

  “The text says: ‘Yesterday, it was a tragedy … Today, a pinch of Johnson enzymic detergent and your carpet comes out like new.’ Above it, someone had written with a felt marker: ‘And tomorrow the revolution.’ When we got up into the open air, it was almost dark already. Ben-Saïd made no trouble about going to the empty lot.”

  “Which empty lot?”

  “The one we decided on, when we put all that jumble in order, or tried to. Things haven’t changed much since the last time … Now I suppose I have to give an exact description of the premises?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s a kind of rectangular field about twenty yards by thirty, with very high fences around it, the only reason they’re there is to put up big posters on them, there’s nothing valuable inside. Only one door lets you in, a very little one, so low that you have to bend down to get in, and it’s hard to find if you don’t know about it ahead of time, because it corresponds exactly to the fake door shown on a photographic poster I will discuss a little later, if I have time. This is a plastic-coated advertisement made to resist the weather for several months, and that’s been there as long as I can remember. Since it doesn’t seem likely that it was pasted by accident in such an exact place, or even that anyone managed to adjust it over a previous opening, we must assume that someone (M, maybe, I’ve never trusted him, or else, why not Ben-Saïd?) has made the opening in the boards with a jigsaw, after the poster was put up. In any case, people don’t imagine that a door printed on paper can actually open, and at the same time it’s convenient for the ones who do know, it makes it easy for them to find it without difficulty, even when you’ve taken too strong a dose.”

  Inside there’s very little vegetation: the ground is paved, the way the streets used to be, apparently. It seems like you’re in a courtyard or a little square of some ancient town which was in this neighborhood and which has disappeared. Moreover the whole neighborhood is in ruins, for miles, but these are, actually, the ruins of rather recent houses, which were just badly constructed. Most of them are still inhabited. The little secret door has a key, which looks like a key to a real door. I’m the one who keeps it, since I’m the one who found it … No, I don’t hide it under a removable floor board in my room; I always set it down, when I come in, on the marble table top, in the vestibule, beside the brass candlestick and the unopened envelope which is addressed to no one in the house, stuck by mistake in the mail slot, and which I should have given back to the postman I don’t know how long ago.

  But I’m coming back to this empty lot: it’s strewn with discarded objects, arranged as I shall describe later on, among the tall weeds that have sprouted here and there in the cracks of the paving stones. Some of this debris is so big that it could only have been left here before the fence was built, for instance, the big brass double bed, with its metal springs and a ripped mattress spilling out tufts of rotting horsehair. And there’s also a white Buick, a recent model in quite good condition, aside from the fact that it has neither wheels nor engine, and finally—and especially—a three-story iron staircase standing up in one of the corners, one of those skeletal fire escapes that city houses had at the beginning of the century, to save the inhabitants in case of fire. Now that I think of it, the bed could have been taken apart to get it through the little door, and then put back together inside. As for the giant staircase, it must have taken a huge truck and a crane, in any case, to get it here all in one piece; so it too could have been unloaded over the top of the fence. And the same crane could have taken care of the car too, which—door or no door—couldn’t have been driven inside anyway, without wheels or engine.

  With regard to the other objects abandoned in the vicinity, such problems do not come up. I list at random: a bicycle, a folding ironing-board, a jointed life-size female mannequin made out of pink plastic, still furnished with its auburn wig, doubtless coming from some department-store window, three movie cameras on cast-iron bases, a lot of television equipment, and a lot of other machinery even more nondescript and difficult to identify.

  But I’m get
ting back to W who is just now reaching this neighborhood with Ben-Saïd; in the twilight, they walk past the big gaudy posters covering the fence. Just as the boy, having leaned against the secret door, looks up and down to make sure that the street is really deserted, a sound of running suddenly pulls him up sharp: several people, the quick footsteps echoing in the silence of this dead neighborhood, seem to be converging on this one place; and now a hysterical couple appears around the corner of the next block (the blocks here are the same size as everywhere else, but they are not blocks of buildings actually constructed: demolitions, abandoned foundations, sheds, blind walls constitute most of the landscape, where there are only a few one- or two-story houses standing).

  W is careful not to reveal to these strangers, by some unguarded movement, the entrance to the empty lot, especially since other footsteps can be heard now, coming from the right and the left. He would prefer, moreover, not to be noticed himself; so he presses up against the big plastic-coated photograph without making a sound. Ben-Saïd, beside him, does the same. They watch the scene, which is suddenly lit up: the streetlamps have come on at the four corners of this block. This is probably the usual time, but for reasons unknown to the public, the ones at the other intersections remain unlighted.

  Far from being reassured by this sudden illumination, the couple seems even more disoriented. It is a young man and a very young girl, both dressed elegantly, as if they were leaving the theater or a party. The girl is in a long full, white dress, the boy in a black suit. Why are they walking in this wilderness? Has their car broken down? Or have they been kidnaped? They run a few more yards, but more uncertainly now, as if they were not sure of what was the best thing to do, the boy, a little ahead, trying to drag his companion with him, though she has turned around to look back. They do not speak a single word. Their faces are anxious; they feel they are being pursued, without even knowing from what direction the worst danger is coming. Soon they stand absolutely motionless.