Subject is said actor. Subject considering. Subject answers to new name. Subject repeats new biography in its entirety numerous times as if it was his own. Subject able to answer questions about new biography, elaborate on details. Subject at ease in conversation. Subject calm. Subject calm.
Subject addressed by C with Subject’s real name. No response from Subject. No recognition of that name.
Subject cleaned and dressed and removed from apartment, deposited suitable distance from premises.
Observation ended at 4:35 A.M . Observation ended at 5 A.M . Photographs developed. Recording reviewed.
* * *
Now on nights when there was no observation, Henry still drove into the city. He went to the apartments and opened the panel in the wall of the unused room in the south apartment where Clarke believed he spoke privately to his Dictaphone. Henry removed the small recorder he had hidden there and listened to Clarke’s observations.
On the tapes, Clarke talked about how the project had gone far beyond what he had predicted. He spoke in an impassioned rush, describing the look in the johns’ eyes after they were drugged and questioned, or, more importantly, the lack, the absence of a look. The men removed of all history, all motivation. The drug had emptied them, left nothing but clothes, skin, bone.
Ego-death. Ego-death. Clarke’s voice on the recording repeating the term, as if sounding an alarm.
Henry erased the tapes after listening to them. He went to a coffee shop or an automat or a newsstand. He walked down to the Embarcaderoand looked for men he recognized, men from the other room, not sure what he would do if he saw one. Imagining himself pulled into an alley and beaten with a bottle, sliced with a knife. Walking the streets by the wharf with the waves battering the docks and waiting for this to happen.
He sat in coffee shops and listened to conversations, the waitresses behind the counter and the one or two other occupied booths. His teeth had begun bothering him, sensitive on the upper right, so he let his coffee cool in the cup before he took a sip and then only on the other side of his mouth. He waited for a man he would recognize to walk in the door. He imagined sitting in a booth across from one of those men and calling the man by his real name, the name they had taken from him. He imagined the man’s response, all the possible responses, the endless potentialities. The man grabbing the ketchup bottle, cracking it on the edge of table, jabbing the ragged remains into Henry’s chest. He imagined sitting in a booth across from Private John Stone, Private Jacob Weiner. He imagined asking for their forgiveness and the soldiers giving no response, reaching across the table for cigarettes, covering their mouths as they coughed.
One morning he came home to find that Hannah had removed all of the postcards from her bedroom wall. At breakfast he asked her about this and she said that she no longer wanted the information secondhand. She didn’t know who had taken those pictures. Even the most basic of images, trees standing in a park, players at a baseball game, were suspect. They still harbored a sliver of doubt. She wanted Henry to take photographs. She wanted to see what he saw when he was in the city. Something he had seen that he brought to her, she knew she could believe.
At a newsstand he stood under the awning, out of the midnight drizzle. Steam rising from the sidewalks, worms uncurling on the cement. Long racks, stag magazines, detective and science-fiction paperbacks. The newsstand attendant sat on a stool at the far end, picking his teeth with a match. Henry looked at the covers. Climax magazine. Frolic . Fury . True Photo-rama . He opened the magazines and looked at the photographs, the staging, the posed bodies. Seeing nothing real, nothing that shocked or frightened him.
A noise from the side, a pulsing hum, the sound Thomas made when he was observing something from his tracks. Henry turned
Subject addressed by C with Subject’s real name. No response from Subject. No recognition of that name.
Subject cleaned and dressed and removed from apartment, deposited suitable distance from premises.
Observation ended at 4:35 A.M . Observation ended at 5 A.M . Photographs developed. Recording reviewed.
* * *
Now on nights when there was no observation, Henry still drove into the city. He went to the apartments and opened the panel in the wall of the unused room in the south apartment where Clarke believed he spoke privately to his Dictaphone. Henry removed the small recorder he had hidden there and listened to Clarke’s observations.
On the tapes, Clarke talked about how the project had gone far beyond what he had predicted. He spoke in an impassioned rush, describing the look in the johns’ eyes after they were drugged and questioned, or, more importantly, the lack, the absence of a look. The men removed of all history, all motivation. The drug had emptied them, left nothing but clothes, skin, bone.
Ego-death. Ego-death. Clarke’s voice on the recording repeating the term, as if sounding an alarm.
Henry erased the tapes after listening to them. He went to a coffee shop or an automat or a newsstand. He walked down to the Embarcaderoand looked for men he recognized, men from the other room, not sure what he would do if he saw one. Imagining himself pulled into an alley and beaten with a bottle, sliced with a knife. Walking the streets by the wharf with the waves battering the docks and waiting for this to happen.
He sat in coffee shops and listened to conversations, the waitresses behind the counter and the one or two other occupied booths. His teeth had begun bothering him, sensitive on the upper right, so he let his coffee cool in the cup before he took a sip and then only on the other side of his mouth. He waited for a man he would recognize to walk in the door. He imagined sitting in a booth across from one of those men and calling the man by his real name, the name they had taken from him. He imagined the man’s response, all the possible responses, the endless potentialities. The man grabbing the ketchup bottle, cracking it on the edge of table, jabbing the ragged remains into Henry’s chest. He imagined sitting in a booth across from Private John Stone, Private Jacob Weiner. He imagined asking for their forgiveness and the soldiers giving no response, reaching across the table for cigarettes, covering their mouths as they coughed.
One morning he came home to find that Hannah had removed all of the postcards from her bedroom wall. At breakfast he asked her about this and she said that she no longer wanted the information secondhand. She didn’t know who had taken those pictures. Even the most basic of images, trees standing in a park, players at a baseball game, were suspect. They still harbored a sliver of doubt. She wanted Henry to take photographs. She wanted to see what he saw when he was in the city. Something he had seen that he brought to her, she knew she could believe.
At a newsstand he stood under the awning, out of the midnight drizzle. Steam rising from the sidewalks, worms uncurling on the cement. Long racks, stag magazines, detective and science-fiction paperbacks. The newsstand attendant sat on a stool at the far end, picking his teeth with a match. Henry looked at the covers. Climax magazine. Frolic . Fury . True Photo-rama . He opened the magazines and looked at the photographs, the staging, the posed bodies. Seeing nothing real, nothing that shocked or frightened him.
A noise from the side, a pulsing hum, the sound Thomas made when he was observing something from his tracks. Henry turned
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