Black Heart, page 11
He was breathing hard, his chest constricted and he made himself turn and walk away on stiff legs. Out on the streets, he called 911 from a pay phone and gave them all the information Then he went home, turning in along his front walk, going pas1 the tattered grass that needed attention, to finally lie down ana
sleep beside his wife.
*
104
'Kill me.'
Tracy stood stock still watching the man in front of him. Bright white bars of light slanted in through the long windows, touching each of them slightly.
'I should not have to tell you again.'
It was very still in the room. Tracy could hear the sound of his own breathing but not that of the man facing him. He dug his toes into the nap of the mat beneath his bare feet.
'You do not believe you can do it.'
'No'
The sensei's eyes glittered darkly 'What makes you hesitate
then.'
Tracy said nothing.
Higure, the sensei, parted his lips. 'The nature of what we do here hardly requires conscious thought .. that gets in the way of what the body must perform ... without thought.' Higure regarded Tracy T am not telling you anything new."
Tracy's body had begun quivering as particular muscles began to react to the stress of the situation.
'Surely,' the sensei said, 'you would obey a command from Jinsoku.' His eyes were guarded, careful in their surveillance In a moment, he had seen what he was looking for and he made his formal bow, requiring Tracy to do the same thus ending their two hours together on the mats
'Tea, I think, is called for.'
Tracy followed him into a back room, towelled himself off.
It was not until they were both seated on the tatami mats, drinking the frothy light green tea, so bitter it set the teeth on edge that anything else was said
Higure carefully put down his tiny handleless cup. 'We must get to the bottom. You know that' Tracy nodded briefly and the old man seemed satisfied.
'Can you tell me,' he said slowly, 'why you went to war in the first place.'
I didn't go to war,' Tracy said quickly
'No, of course not. Pardon me.'
The silence built itself around them; the world had faded into *e distance of long-ago.
105
'I went to escape,' Tracy said after a time.
But already Higure was shaking his head back and forth. 'Ni0 Listen to your heartbeat ... listen to your pulse. You went because you wanted to go. You '
'No!' It was almost a kid shout and the walls seemed to
tremble.
'You wanted to kill.'
Tracy was wide-eyed. 'How can you say that?'
'How can you deny it? It is your nature.'
Tracy got up, turned away. There was a small window that looked out onto a tiny back garden. Out there a chipmunk clung to the scaly bark of a maple tree as if for dear life. In a moment it had vanished, safe at home.
'Perhaps you believe it to be evil.'
'Of course it's evil.'
'Why?' Higure said.
Tracy's voice was strangled. 'The war.'
'It was your duty -'
'Don't you understand?' he said whirling to face his sensei. 'I
enjoyed it.'
At last Higure rose; he did so without the least effort. 'And
after all this time you're still haunted.'
Tracy watched him warily. He knew this was one man from
whom the truth could not be hidden. He had ^egun to sweat
profusely. 'It comes and goes,' he said at last. 'Well,' Higure said quietly, 'something comes.' 'Yes.' It was a broken whisper. 'It's begun all over again. The
call-up.'
Higure was close now; his face was shadowed, out of the lice
of light. 'They want you again.'
'That's it.'
'And what will you do?'
Tracy closed his eyes for a moment. His heart was hammering. 'I want to do it... a friend is involved.'
'You feel a duty.'
'Yes.'
'And so you should.' His eyes narrowed slightly.
'There was murder," Tracy said. His fists were clenched hi1
106
rrns rigid. 'I can feel it though I don't know how or by vvhorn-'
'Trust that,' Higure said. 'We both are aware of your strengths.'
'There will be more murder.' Silence, for a long time, unspooling. 'I think I'm talking about myself.'
'I know you are.' And Higure reached out, took Tracy gently by the arm. 'Your journey is not done yet. Do what you must and be accepting of it. You must learn to trust yourself again as you once did in the jungles of Cambodia.' He broke the contact. 'Trust yourself as I trust you.'
He set himself, bowed formally. 'Now,' he said, 'come and kill me.'
Lauren sat slumped over on a slat-seated wooden bench. Sunlight filtered in over her left shoulder from the high, smallpaned translucent windows. Her hands trembled.
She wore a leotard, woollen legwarmers over white tights and a pair of Capezio point shoes. Her auburn hair was twisted into a long braid, curled in a tight circle on the top of her head.
Fascinated, she watched her hands tremble. From several yards away Martin Vlasky shot her a penetrating glance even as he said to one of a pair of new dancers practising the entree from A pas de deux he had created more than fifty years ago. 'No, no, dear. You are grimacing.' He stepped forward, righting the exaggerated tilt of her head. 'Don't act dance. That is what you do: dance. Your technique is your art." He meant this for the cavalier as well. 'Don't be afraid of your technique. Through it, you must find the timing for the entire pas de deux. That is essential, yes?'
The girl she could not be more than nineteen inclined her head in silent agreement but she looked shaken nonetheless. Martin sighed inwardly. It always happened this way with the newcomers. You had to press all their preconceptions out of them in order to forge the vessel of pure expression. He turned his head away slightly as he signalled the pair to begin the entree Bother time. His thoughts were with Lauren. What was it, he wondered, that caused her so much pain that it interfered with
107
her work? For as long as Martin had known her - five years no^ in the impossibly compressed time signature of ballet life - sk had lived for only one thing: the dance. That was as it shou],]
be.
But now, ever since her fall, the injury to her hip, her attitu
He felt concern deep in his heart as a father will for a saddened daughter. It was not only of Lauren's unique gift he was thinking. He knew he held a special fondness for her though his company had seven prima ballerinas and he was publicly known for discouraging the star treatment other ballet ensembles used. He had created more than one ballet primarily for Lauren and he did not want to lose her.
Lauren, unaware of the master's scrutiny, was fighting to hold back the tears she felt welling up behind her mascaraed eyes. She clamped her teeth shut and whispered silently to herself. You will not cry. You will not cry.
It had taken more will power than she had believed she possessed to walk into Tracy's office and see him again. To say what she had said to him. She had no idea what kind of a front she had put up, only recognized the inner trembling, the sickening rollovers of her stomach that had still not quite ceased.
She got up and put in four shaky hours of practice that she found she had no memory of when she returned home to her; small, highceilinged apartment on Seventy-sixth Street just waij
of Broadway.
She flopped down on her bed belly first without taking off her clothes. For a long time she thought of nothing, allowing the warm childlike feeling of the mattress pressed all along her front to suffuse her. For those moments she felt safe and
secure.
But there was really no security for her here now. If she couM not work she was through. What else could she do in life I"1'- dance? The answer to that was simple and terrifying: Nothing
108
She turned her face into the pillow, balling a corner of it up
ainst her cheek Oh, God, what was she going to do?
'For Christ's sake, Adele, you can't allow this'
Lauren could still hear her father's voice drifting into her f Offi the living room It was late at night and her parents had ssurned she had long ago drifted off to sleep She was six
'Ballet I mean - what the hell1 It's not logical; it's not practical It makes no goddamned sense1'
'It's what she wants,' Lauren's mother said calmly 'It's what she'll have '
'But how d'you know she's any good?1
'I know it as surely as I know I love you '
'But, Hell, Adele, you know what that training's like She'll have to give up being a kid She'll have to give up everything '
'If you want to be great,' Adele Marshall said, 'you have to sacrifice for it It's a fact of life And she has more discipline than Bobby will ever have '
'Bobby's only four-and-a-half'
'And sometimes he acts like he's two,' Adele said 'That won't change, you'll see He's immature, Lauren's got every right to tease him He's got to toughen up '
Lauren's father had not replied to that She heard a taut crinkle of the newspaper and then the crisp clip-clop of her mother's high heels along the wood parquet of the hall She dived back under the covers, closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep
She heard the small creak of the partially open door swinging wider on its hinges, the faint rustle of her mother's skirts as she came across the thick pile carpeting
She felt the bed give slightly as her mother sat on the edge, stroked her side with the flat of her hand, crooning, 'You, you, you', as if it were some sort of magical incantation
Lauren blinked and she was back in her own small apartment " was a studio in a dingy building She could have afforded a large sunny one-bedroom apartment if she had accepted the
Money her mother wanted to give her on making the company hve years ago But she did not want that And, although she Pocketed the ten-dollar bills her father sneaked her when they
109
came to visit, she never took a penny from her mother. She'dicj not know why nor did she want to know. But maybe, she thought now, it had something to do with that magical incantation; maybe she had taken enough already.
Kim dealt almost exclusively in emotionalism. That was hov he conducted a session of articulated interrogation; it was how he went out on a mission; it was the only way he could bring them back the dead meat they required of him. He was high and low like a manic depressive. It seemed odd in a man who should have been quite even-tempered. Perhaps it had something to do
with the scar.
Looking at the Vietnamese now, on their way to the Governor's brownstone, Tracey thought of that. Once, just before, Kim had been betrayed. Starting across the Cambodian border on a vital mission of assassination, he had been ambushed by the Khmer Rouge. They knew about him; knew how much blood
he himself had shed.
They had no cause to keep him alive - but they did. Perhaps he had become such an object of hate to them that they could not bear to part with him so soon; perhaps they meant to make an object lesson of him. Whatever the case, they did not execute
him as was their wont.
They bound him, staked him to the earth in the middle of their seminomadic encampment and cut him. It was nothing systematic, nothing professional; merely a slash here or there at erratic intervals when they thought about it or were not otherwise occupied. They stabbed him in the thigh or the arm, rending his black cotton clothes.
For Kim that was far more humiliating than being subjected to articulated interrogation. At least then he would have been up against a professional with whom he could match wits, feel a bit of pride. The Khmer Rouge stripped him ot pride and therefore of his manhood. Kim was a warrior anil they treated him as if he were an animal not even worth spitting
on
on.
When Tracy discovered his whereabouts, he infiltrated tbl Chet Khmau encampment, cut Kim's bonds and, throwing hii"
no
over his shoulder, carried him out into the twisting concealing shadows of the jungle
There had been no wound on the side of Kim's neck then By crying out constantly, Kim had forced Tracy to stop, put him down He asked for Tracy's knife 'to cut off some of these hanging rags I have for clothes' Taking it, he had gone a few feet away into thejungle Tracy turned, concentrated on enemy infiltration while he waited
Kim, the knife held blade inward with one hand, cocked his head to the right as far as he could The taste of bile was in his mouth like beaten brass, his saliva dried up He was a warrior and they had beaten him, those animal Cambodians His mind stank of hate
No one could know what indignities he had suffered, that loss efface would literally kill Kim The wounds he had suffered were only minor now that he had been saved As the days had progressed and without any kind of medical attention they would have turned septic, swelling, darkening as infection set in A slow lingering death by a thousand insignificant cuts That was what the Khmer Rouge had planned for him Kim could never forgive them for that It was too early yet to formulate the structure of his revenge, time would bring that to blossom like an exquisite flower turning its widening face into the sun
For now he must give evidence to Tracy and all those at Ban Me Thuot that he had been put through a gruelling, damaging mill, they must have no doubts that he had been treated like a warrior, had resisted like a warrior and, ultimately had triumphed as a warrior
He turned his eyes once on Tracy who was looking off into the distance, the back of his head towards Kim, he would not see, he could not know In that instant, much of the hatred Kim felt for his Cambodian captors fell on Tracy's shoulders He had been, after all, the one who was bringing Kim back, who had witnessed first-hand Kim's humiliation He was the one who had made Kim do now what he had to do and for that Kim could not, would not forgive him
He jerked his eyes away, staring into the middle distance at nothing more substantial than the shifting shadows of the night
in
Kim closed his eyes while opening his warrior's mind. He
thought of the days and nights of his capture, the slow wheel
of humiliation on which he had been crucified. Hate welled
inside him like pent-up water sluicing through a collapsing darn.
Without conscious thought, through the will of his warrior's
mind, his right hand blurred inward and the point of the knife
blade buried itself in his own flesh. Kim bit his lip at the hot slice
of pain, willed himself to move his hand, though it had gone
numb. Everything was numb, numb but moving inexorablyi
down and down, from just behind the left ear to the base of his
neck: a wound that would inevitably scar, a brand he would
always wear and, outwardly at least, feel pride in. A scar that
all at Ban Me Thuot would comment on, describing with just
a hint of awe what Kim the Vietnamese had suffered for his
white brothers. How he had come through his trial by fire like
the great warrior he was.
Kim shuddered heavily as he drew away the knife blade. Blood trickled down, hot and salty, from where he had bit into
his lower lip.
His eyes lit on Tracy again, afraid for the first time in his life. If Tracy had seen, if he should suspect. How could Kim ever live with that shame? The answer was simple; he could not. He would end his own life here, accomplishing what the Khmer Rouge could not, rather than suffer the non-privacy of his own
shameful act.
Kim did not want to die; he was not insane. Yet to him life could only be lived one rigid way, bound in the iron of honour, otherwise, it was not life at all, at least not the life of a warrior, merely existence such as the animals endure.
Carefully, Kim bent down, feeling an intense stab of vertigo as he did. Blood hot and wet streamed down the side of his neck. He ran the smeared blade again and again over the high foliage, ridding it of all the blood stains.
'Kim!' He started at Tracy's urgent whisper; blood swam in his head like a school of darting fish. 'We've got to get going' I hear the Khmer Rouge coming!'
'Yes,' Kim said through dry lips. He stood up and the world whirled around him, shadow and light breaking up into asy-
112
metric patterns With an audible gasp, he reached out wildly ^vith one hand, gripped the hairy bole of a tree, felt as if he were swinging from it like an ape
'Kim1' Tracy whispered 'There's no more time' They'll be here any moment1'
Gritting his teeth, Kim moved away from his anchor He tripped over an arching exposed root, almost smashed his front teeth Picked himself up, went, stumbling, to Tracy He felt the other's grip, strong and oddly reassunng and allowed himself to be half-carried through the jungle he knew so well Home and the admiring glances of the others Home a hero
What Kim could not know as that Tracy felt the other's blood on his fingers as he gripped Kim, guiding him through the arboreal night Kim's powerful self-discipline had already anaesthetized the new wound, otherwise he never would have been able to function He did not, therefore, feel Tracy's fingers exploring his flesh, was not aware of the discovery Tracy made, the correct conclusion he was forming in his mind about what had just transpired Thus Kim's dread secret was shared by another, a man he hated and who had come to hate him
Now as they went up the steps to the Governor's brownstone, showed their passes, signed by Captain Michael C Flaherty, to the patrolmen on duty Tracy looked again at that whitely livid scar and wondered at the other man How had he managed to bring Tracy here, to bring him back once again into the foundation's fold' Kim had struck at the vulnerable point, as always using emotionalism Holmgren was Tracy's key Kim knew it and so did Tracy but he was powerless to stop himself
