"From "News from the Lost Continent

From "News from the Lost Continent" Michael S. Collins (bio) 6. The gossip in the marketplace, in schools (which the conqueror reopened), in pools, at recreation centers and offices (likewise reopened) pitted friend against friend—voices loud, contorted faces— debating just who the traitor might be. Some said Vikki da Sita, mayor of the capitol city, carrier of whispers from this embassy to that important ear, the great love Of half-a-dozen dignitaries, domestic and foreign. Some said it was that maniac mercenary, Solon Moi, inexplicably alive and out of jail, with clout to spare—seen drinking with the deadly men patrolling the streets, his hand out for crime's pay: a fat job where day after day, he'd court our beaten troops, and with a pen's quick stab, lead them astray in the lines of some new form. "Just sign here, darling," he'd coo. "We mean you no harm." Others nominated Ziggy Baba, the homegrown arms dealer: "His income's five times what it was when war fell, like a milkdrop, from the breast of the conqueror's Amazon mama. Baba earns a fortune in war and peace and every time zone— [End Page 264] he's the barnyard cock, treading our hen of a currency, pointing his prick at all the currencies." "But since there's no backside he won't kiss to keep his options open—would he go as far as risk reaches?—into uncut treason?" "Opportunity cost's his only guide. He'd never put all his chips on just one side—a little, though, to hedge his bets." At the least this "sage of assholes" knew—all said—the one whose guilt had proved so profitable. So suspicion fell on those in Baba's pay. "Satan in hell," people said, "never hurts for company; dirty money can really entertain. Half the senators are Baba's property. Their mouths are bought and paid for. They sued for war the way a whore, feeling a fat wallet, begs for more." Or there was Werner Naramura, the rocket scientist, earstwhile leader of the pocket nuclear program (the thing, rumor says, that sparked the war): "Look at him!— In the dim national river of blood and aches and wasted life, his cork heart still beats and bobs."—"Certainly he signed a contract written in foreign ink. See how the invader puts him every day, in the papers. Doesn't it make you think?" 7. And so the talk went on, spinning like a spider's guts, in its cocoon of sto- [End Page 265] ries, anyone whose floating life had raised his crimes and errors to history's unsafe core of whispers and gossip. Terror's lariat squeezed each heart, till newborns slick in the doctors' hands, their fists and mouths reaching for the breast of speech, just barely escaped suspicion. Heaped- up hates, unexpressed, leaked out in insinuation. The defeated made of all their terror a certain style, a coded metaphysics all reality was traded for. No one wanted nested mysteries: One horrid deed, one name, one culprit collecting fees became their grail— [End Page 266] the salve a wounded people craves. Trial and execution, a grave to shut defeat and traitor deep in the void together, out of thought forever, past leap of faith or reason: That's the gift all wanted— some monster whose deed would no longer haunt them and whose crime in retrospect would be foretold. 8. But time— the rate at which we grasp steeple and ditch, rhyme- word and touch, the clasp of all reality— had changed. Like insanity, the fall of the country crushed most paths between people. Keeping their own counsel in the new baleen of betrayal, the town [End Page 267] gadflies stayed home. The great carousers became monklike devoted folk and forswore their lovers. Morality reigned at last, like fear refined. The bit in the teeth of the multitude kept it cowed. It couldn't last. 9. In the Full Moon Restaurant and Bar a scarred veteran of the war told the tale of his time at the front lines and threw out his own theories of the traitor: "The lair of death

Ancient history · Cartography · Dozen · Fell · Political science · History · Law · Russia and Soviet political economy

• The Symbolic DNA of Terrorism

  Robert C Rowland, Kirsten Theye•Communication Monographs•2008

  Add to list