Read Online The Resuscitation of a Hanged Man by Denis Johnson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Denis Johnson
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and plopped in a white pill from a bottle he kept in a leather box beneath the table. As he sent the train on its way now, it gave out puffs of white smoke; also, he pushed a button that made it whistle.
Although English knew it was his sacred duty as Sands’s hireling to resent him, he saw that his boss was no monster. Just like his train, Sands checked through a set world, one circumscribed by the scratchy records of his radio station, and the dull shimmer of the backdrop curtain in his studio, and his demented wife’s dusting and polishing of totally false memories—“We don’t have any children,” he told English at one point. “That picture is one of my nephew. He lives in the Philippines”—and it was Sands’s job to step out of this zone now and then only to bear witness to adultery or to ascertain that missing persons were truly and forever lost. “Bishop Andrew,” he said, “has never visited me. I don’t know where she gets her ideas. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
This was too intimate for English. The threat of a sudden unmasking, of revelations so embarrassing he couldn’t stand them, got him onto the subject he’d been afraid to raise. “Mr. Sands. Don’t you ever wonder about what we do?”
Sands glanced at him and then was reabsorbed by his train.
“I mean—I heard you talking about God, and”—English was nervous, couldn’t get his thoughts straight—“how does that tie in with the nature of our work, is what I’m asking about.”
“It’s a tough job,” Sands said, turning off his train.
“I feel bad about spying around on Marla Baker,” English said.
“It’s a very difficult business.”
These sideways answers made English feel weak. “Do you have any idea what kind of information I’m gathering here? I mean, for what purpose? Is it legal stuff? Is it a divorce thing, or what?”
“Judgments as to the kinds of information are things we just don’t make. What use the client makes of it, whether these things are good or bad—well, your best bet is to stop following that line of thought. Stop thinking. Look at it this way. We deal in information. Any great involvement in what we’re passing along would be like the mailman opening your letters for his own amusement. Try and see yourself in a role like the mailman’s.”
“This woman’s sexual preference is going to be used against her.”
“That’s a fair assumption.”
“You want to be a part of that?”
“Things are occurring. You’re recording those things and listening to those things, and passing the information along.”
“Well, the information I’m passing along to you right now is, I think this woman’s sex life is going to be used against her.”
“I’ve already stated I’m cognizant of that.” To English he seemed so dry. He was like paper. His skin, everything.
But Sands wasn’t just a case of personal emptiness, English could see that. He had some inner power to be mild, it showed in the way he dealt with Grace. He accepted her blandly and totally. English saw how you could love somebody like that. After a number of years none of the usual things would matter. It was hard to come up with a judgment against one or two activities of an electric train enthusiast who knew how to love without hope.
And so his disappointment in himself, for abetting Sands in his spy life, couldn’t be too firm or entire. He didn’t know what to think.
That night, after he’d said goodbye and gone home and done nothing for a while, English sat down in the overstuffed chair with a loose-leaf notebook and a pen. Opening the notebook to the middle, he wrote across the top line of the page
You don’t know me
and looked at those words for a while. He began to write again, stopped writing, leapt up, rifled his top drawers, and found an envelope and two aging, brittle stamps. Then he sat down and finished the note he’d started.
You don’t know me, therefore I don’t feel a need to
Although English knew it was his sacred duty as Sands’s hireling to resent him, he saw that his boss was no monster. Just like his train, Sands checked through a set world, one circumscribed by the scratchy records of his radio station, and the dull shimmer of the backdrop curtain in his studio, and his demented wife’s dusting and polishing of totally false memories—“We don’t have any children,” he told English at one point. “That picture is one of my nephew. He lives in the Philippines”—and it was Sands’s job to step out of this zone now and then only to bear witness to adultery or to ascertain that missing persons were truly and forever lost. “Bishop Andrew,” he said, “has never visited me. I don’t know where she gets her ideas. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
This was too intimate for English. The threat of a sudden unmasking, of revelations so embarrassing he couldn’t stand them, got him onto the subject he’d been afraid to raise. “Mr. Sands. Don’t you ever wonder about what we do?”
Sands glanced at him and then was reabsorbed by his train.
“I mean—I heard you talking about God, and”—English was nervous, couldn’t get his thoughts straight—“how does that tie in with the nature of our work, is what I’m asking about.”
“It’s a tough job,” Sands said, turning off his train.
“I feel bad about spying around on Marla Baker,” English said.
“It’s a very difficult business.”
These sideways answers made English feel weak. “Do you have any idea what kind of information I’m gathering here? I mean, for what purpose? Is it legal stuff? Is it a divorce thing, or what?”
“Judgments as to the kinds of information are things we just don’t make. What use the client makes of it, whether these things are good or bad—well, your best bet is to stop following that line of thought. Stop thinking. Look at it this way. We deal in information. Any great involvement in what we’re passing along would be like the mailman opening your letters for his own amusement. Try and see yourself in a role like the mailman’s.”
“This woman’s sexual preference is going to be used against her.”
“That’s a fair assumption.”
“You want to be a part of that?”
“Things are occurring. You’re recording those things and listening to those things, and passing the information along.”
“Well, the information I’m passing along to you right now is, I think this woman’s sex life is going to be used against her.”
“I’ve already stated I’m cognizant of that.” To English he seemed so dry. He was like paper. His skin, everything.
But Sands wasn’t just a case of personal emptiness, English could see that. He had some inner power to be mild, it showed in the way he dealt with Grace. He accepted her blandly and totally. English saw how you could love somebody like that. After a number of years none of the usual things would matter. It was hard to come up with a judgment against one or two activities of an electric train enthusiast who knew how to love without hope.
And so his disappointment in himself, for abetting Sands in his spy life, couldn’t be too firm or entire. He didn’t know what to think.
That night, after he’d said goodbye and gone home and done nothing for a while, English sat down in the overstuffed chair with a loose-leaf notebook and a pen. Opening the notebook to the middle, he wrote across the top line of the page
You don’t know me
and looked at those words for a while. He began to write again, stopped writing, leapt up, rifled his top drawers, and found an envelope and two aging, brittle stamps. Then he sat down and finished the note he’d started.
You don’t know me, therefore I don’t feel a need to
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