Read Online Under Radar by Michael Tolkin - Free Book Online Page B

would have raised a hand to let them draw comfort and hope from a confident gesture, but his arms were bound.
    The police lifted Tom and handed him up the hill to more Jamaicans, the poor men who wanted only towork, and even this unpaid labor answered their needs for effort with purpose. Tom gave himself to the men who lifted him, and let his body help them by now holding a leg stiff, now tilting his head away so a hand could better wrap around the back of his neck.
    Fog over everything. Too much pleasure in the obscurity of the day. This is what I asked for. This is what I came here to do. I have erased so much of my life that I am blind. There is only the rushing sound of the waterfalls, which could be just the sound of the blood in my ears. There is temperature, the afternoon heat, with a pledge of rain, with a thin slice of electricity in the taste of the air. There is gravity, because I am not floating away. But there is nothing to see.
    The police pushed Tom into the backseat of a car.
    â€œOpen your eyes, please, sir,” said one of them.
    Tom obliged. It made no difference. His eyes worked but to no purpose. All of his opinions, theories, and field notes, the murky half-toned ideas that float on the periphery of language, all of this rushed away from him, chased off the property by a barking horde of mistakes. He saw road and trees and the sea between the trees and past the road, and the romance and pity of the place meant nothing, either version of the island equally valid and equally pointless.
    At the Ocho Rios police station, they gave him dry clothing, a blue prison shirt and blue pants. He was put into a cell, alone.
    A new man came into his life, shining, dark, confident, with merry eyes, a man of patience and authority. “I am Captain Dekker of the police.”
    â€œTom Levy.”
    â€œWell, well, well, Mr. Levy. So you have a fight in the falls, and the man dies. You pushed him, and we have this on videotape. What were you thinking, Mr. Levy?”
    â€œI made a mistake.”
    â€œYes you did.”
    â€œNo. No, no, no, no, no. I should have killed the singer.”
    ...
    Seven months later, Tom Levy was in prison in Kingston, sentenced for the rest of his life.
    The trial was short, nine days. His parents sat behind him in the courtroom and paid his lawyer well, but Tom offered no defense.
    His family came for a last visit when the trial was over, Rosalie with the girls and his mother and father and his sister. He was allowed to hug them. No one could say anything that made sense. His mother and father, who had once been so specific, spoke to him in generic bromides. “Why, Tom, why?” But what else could they say? As he stood there, answering, “I don’t know,” not wanting to explain himself anymore, he stared at them and forgot what they looked like.
    His sister spoke to him privately. “You don’t know the damage that you’ve done. I couldn’t even tell you what I feel. The world has exhausted all analogies.”
    â€œYou could try.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIt might be a kindness. I need charity.”
    â€œNo. You need to say that you need charity. Charity, for you, Tom, is another bead in your chain of little strategies. I’ve been watching you since you were five. You, Tom, are an undercover agent.”
    â€œAnd who runs me?”
    â€œI did not call you a spy, because spies are powerless messengers, single-purpose demons or angels turned on and off as the need for them requires.”
    â€œUndercover with what agency of what government?”
    â€œThe world of crime. You’re an ambassador from the world of crime.”
    â€œUndercover agent or ambassador?”
    â€œDid I say ambassador?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThen, Tom, I’ll stay with both opinions, agent and ambassador together. The agent hides while the ambassador enters through the front door, and the agent leaves without turning his back. He can