Vengeance

         

        Vengeance


 
   Allan Billet was born into a military family in the capital city of one of the northern provinces. His father was a general, now retired. His grandfather, great grandfather and great great grandfather had all been high army officers, the later a Marshal. Three of his uncles were generals still on the active list. Allan, however, did not pursue a military career. A year in cadets, at the age of thirteen, made him decide it was not for him.

   Instead, to the astonishment of all the male members of his family and most of the women, he became an actor. True to his eccentric, contrary character, rather than pursuing the heights and glory to be had in classic lead roles or become a romantic matinee idol, Allan became a character actor. He was talented and a disciplined worker so over a period of ten years, by the time he was thirty, he built a reputation of one of the great character actors of his time. Seasoned lovers of theater would attend plays many times over to watch both the sheer magnetism of his portrayals and his mastery of technique. After a performance, theater students, overwhelmed, filled with emotion, barged into his dressing room and, grasping his hands, covered them with tears and kisses.

   Every season Allan would choose a role or two played on the stages of the national capital but he preferred the northern provinces. He turned down many offers of year round contracts in what most people considered the ‘big time’. His family thought this typical of his perverse distain of success and, at many family gatherings, he was called to task by aging aunts and stiff Brigadiers who explained to him in exasperated tones that if he insisted on disgracing the family with a career in acting that at least he could do it in a grand and magnificent manner. Allan, however, although he listened and replied with impeccable politeness, paid no attention. They knew nothing about theater and even less about acting so in such matters he kept his own council.

   Allan had two brothers born a year apart, ten years younger than himself. Some would say Allan lacked family feeling but this was not true. Although his relations with his father were somewhat strained, up until his mother died at the age of fifty, she and he were very close and with his brothers he had always maintained a warm relationship, much like a kindly uncle might have with his favourite nephews. This was welcomed enthusiastically by the boys, as they were referred to in the family circle, for their father was an older, somewhat stiff man, who spent most of their childhoods off on distant military campaigns. In their early twenties both boys were attending the military academy in the provincial capital. During the season they regularly went to see their older brother on the stage and he had them weekly to dinner.

   The boys were impressed with the sophistication of the guests at Allan’s dinners, especially the actresses who were, of course, very different from the girls of family they met at the occasional highly chaperoned event put on at the Academy. Among their fellow cadets, that two of their own actually sat down and ate with the actresses they ogled from the cheap seats in the rear of the theater was close to unbelievable. For their part the actresses were charmed by Allan’s handsome young brothers, allowed them minor flirtations and conferred upon them, in the small society of their fellow cadets, the incomparable cachet of occasionally sending them flowers, (which they redirected from ardent admirers), notes in their own handwriting scented with the most expensive perfumes and painted boxes containing a dozen tickets to the most sought after performances.    

   This went on for two seasons until the boys were in their third and final year respectively at the academy. Then a terrible thing happened.

   One of Allan’s uncles, a Brigadier, was arrested for conspiracy against the government. The fact that the conspiracy did not exist and that even if it did, his uncle, strictly non political, would not have had anything to do with it, did not matter in the least. The New Man was establishing his authority and, as usual, this was done in the language of blood and violence. The uncle was tortured horribly for two weeks and then shot through the head. The Strats (secret police) claimed to have extracted from him a confession implicating certain ‘conspiratorial elements’ in the military academy. With no warning, no possibility of family influence being brought to bear, Allan’s two brothers were arrested, along with ten others, beaten, tortured and summarily executed. One day these high spirited young men were laughing and eating at his table and then three days latter their bruised and battered corpses were lying in their coffins.

   At first Allan was hit with a sense of unreality which threatened to overwhelm him. He sat on a sofa in his apartment for two days barely moving, rising only to go to the bathroom and occasionally pace the carpet in the dining room. He was thinking of canceling the rest of the season and going up to his father’s house in the mountains. On the third day he actually picked up the phone to begin making the arrangements but then he put it down again. He suddenly became filled with the most terrible rage. Walking over to the china cabinet he opened it and took out the contents, one cup, one saucer, one plate at a time, and smashed them to pieces on the floor. Then he very coolly walked back to the phone and used it to inform the theater that he would be acting that night and for the rest of the season. When his aunts, uncles and father came into town he refused to see them. He did not attend the funeral.

    Allan went about his preparations in the same way he prepared for a new role – with a cool determined energy and an obsession for detail. In disguise, one so masterful, so totally convincing, even his most intimate friends would have failed to recognize him, he rented a small house in the old section of town. He put out to the neighbours that he was a salesman of agricultural products who spent most of his time touring the rural areas. The windows were covered with heavy green curtains and behind them he installed the necessities of his enterprise – make up kits stolen from the theater, bags of clothing, boots, canes, umbrellas, and behind a section of wainscoting which he removed with great care, a sawed off, double barreled shotgun. Then, again in the disguise, he began to spend an evening a week at the bar where the Strats drank in their off hours (and sometimes in their on), a dank, dirty hole, off a back alley in the worst section of town. Here he put himself out as a retired security officer from the capital looking for a spot of companionship among his own kind. After some weeks of caution and suspicion the cliental eventually came to accept him for what he seemed to be – a rather stupid and harmless old sot in search of a bit of human company. They ceased to censor themselves in his presence and were soon telling stories as if he were not there, nodding in a confused, dimwitted way above his beer, in the corner.

   All six men were regulars at the bar.

   It took Allan five months before he was ready to act. Five months of great strain for the other nights of the week he was at the theater playing a series of very demanding roles. He kept up his after performance dinner parties on Saturday nights. He told all of his friends that it was a great shame that his brothers had to die but at the same time it was a great moral lesson for those thinking of involving themselves in activities injurious to the state. He took out a membership in the local Party. He even became the Chair of the Drama committee. A few old friends who had occasionally spoken cynically of the authorities at his table were no longer invited. A few new acquaintances, considered by many to be staid, boring and formulaic, were included, lowering the tone of conversation and creating an atmosphere of caution and lack of liveliness. Allan didn’t mind. The important actors, anxious to display their orthodoxy, never declined an invitation and the functionaries, pleased to be able to brag to their fellows of their wide acquaintance among brilliant and beautiful actresses, were very grateful. Allan made sure his new friends had the best seats in the house on opening nights. They in turn did for him the favours functionaries everywhere do as the small change of friendship and a display of their influence and power.

   One Tuesday night in mid December Allan’s character did not go on until half way through the second act. It was mid winter in a city of cold winters and there was not a soul in sight when Allan let himself out the back door of his rented house and started down the back lane. There were ridges of snow along the sides of the lane but down the center the plow had scraped a level path. Wielding his cane, on his feet a pair of hob nailed boots, he made his way quickly to a cross alley and disappeared into the maze of narrow alleys and lanes which comprised that section of the city. It was a clear dark night, the sky above, little affected by the city’s rationed light haze, was studded with a solstice measure of bright winter stars.  Occasionally he saw a huddled figure wrapped burly in great coat, scarf, oversized fur hat, scurrying along on some errand with the cold nipping at his heels but spoke to no one. When he came to a wide street he crossed and disappeared into short narrow alley between two brick buildings leading to a parking lot. In one corner of the lot there was a single light bulb behind a globe of frosted glass, but the bulb was low watt and did little but cast a weak light ending a few feet from the foot of the pole from which it hung. Allan already knew there was a certain van in the lot kitty corner to the light and made his way toward it.

    The van belonged to one of his new friends, a bureaucrat in the cultural organization. His friend was a drunk and it had been no great difficulty to remove the vehicle keys from his chain as he was snoring one night on Allan’s coach. His friend had not even mentioned the loss of the keys. Drunks are used to mysterious disappearances and he had an extra set at home. Before he let himself into the vehicle Allan wired a piece of cardboard onto the rear plate to cover the numbers. A very reliable van, it fired up after three or four cranks. He gave it exactly one minute to warm up and then drove it down the lane exiting the parking lot and turned onto a narrow side street. By the time he reached his destination the heater was blowing hot air and the windshield was free of frost. He parked in an alley across the street from the bar, in shadows beyond the streetlights, and waited.

   For some time nobody came out and no one went in but this was not unusual. At this time, on such a cold night, those going to the bar were already there and yet it was early for anyone to go home. After an hour a single man made his way down the street and went in through the doors. There was a streetlight not far from the door but as well the bar had a bright light on either side of the doorway. Thus when two of the men Allan was looking for came out the door arm in arm he could see them clearly. They were both drunk, singing loudly. They staggered to the curb and came to a confused halt. Like two lugubrious drunks in a comedy they looked first one way down the street and then the other, perhaps searching for a taxi. Allan pulled slowly out of his alley. He turned into the street and pulling the van over onto the wrong side of the street, coming to a stop when he reached them. The men smiled at him drunkenly. Perhaps they thought he was going to ask directions. But instead Allan stuck his head out the open window on the driver’s side and asked “Do you remember Liam and Thomas, guys?”

   The two men instantly sobered. They both reached with their right hands into their coats but of course it was too late. The shotgun blasts hit them in the chest and they flew backwards as if they had been hit with a giant sledgehammer. Allan put the van in gear and drove off. Seven minutes later he parked the van back in its spot, removed the cardboard from the license plate and made his way to the theater.

   That night the man who rented the house with the green curtains disappeared, never to be seen again. When the police questioned the landlord, the signature on the rental agreement was indecipherable. He paid in cash one year in advance so the landlord hadn’t asked too many questions. Nobody in the neighbourhood knew the man by anything but his first name. Was he the same boozy old fool who drank at the police bar? That man had also disappeared, but it wasn’t unusual for barflies to suddenly make off for another town leaving behind a pack of lies and a sprinkling of small debts. When they talked amongst themselves in the bar they decided that the old guy was too far gone to pull off something like that. He could barely stay awake after an evening of drinking four beer! Still they were uneasy. It was just possible that he could have given someone else information. Unlikely but possible. Nobody could remember if they had ever heard his last name. Jock, his first, could apply to any of thousands. You could fill a fair sized town with aging men called Jock with grey beards and broken veins in their eyes and faces, who fell asleep in their bar chairs after four beer.

   Allan was about to be questioned by the Strats but bureaucrat friends interfered. Allan, worried about the possible implications went down to the Strat building and volunteered for an interview. A Major spoke with him very politely. There was really no necessity he told Allan. Friends had informed him that Allan was acting on the particular night that the police were interested in and even that inquiry, said the Major, was merely a formality. The Major joked that the police were slaves of their files and that this demanded that certain procedures be followed even when they knew very well that there was nothing in it. The forms had to be filled in so to speak. The Major was far too discrete to mention Allan’s brothers. As he was leaving Allan asked whether the Major would like to drop by one of his Saturday dinners. The Major would be delighted. He was a great fan of the theater. Unlike those in the lower ranks he was a cultured man and had a taste for higher things.

   Allan did nothing else for six months. Then he shot the third man where he sitting in a car across the street from a bar close to the theater, doing surveillance. He muffled the discharge with a homemade silencer. Afterwards he ran down a series of three back lanes, stuffed the plastic wrapped shotgun behind a garbage can, entered the utility door on the side of the theater, ran up three flights of stairs and walked on stage on cue eighteen minutes after he walked off. After the performance he picked up the gun and walked home with it under his coat. The Major was at the play. There was no police interview.

   That fall the final three men went duck hunting in the marshes west of the city. They never returned. The car they drove out in, belonging to one of the men, was found parked beside the cabin they rented. Inside the cabin were guns, equipment, clothes, etc. but the men themselves, or their bodies, were never found. Allan was visiting his father for the weekend, five hundred kilometers away in the mountains. A very expensive black market motorbike made the return trip, in the dark, in a little under eight hours. Then the motorbike disappeared beneath the water of the river close to his father’s house but no one looked for it because no one other than Allen knew it existed. The next morning Allan was at the breakfast table with two of his cousins who were visiting for a few days. They found their cousin well rested after what he claimed to be a good night’s sleep. He entertained them with cynical stories of the activities of some of his fellow actors. Allan was a master at telling these kinds of stories and his cousins were happy to find him in such an expansive mood.

   That Christmas he spent the holidays at his father’s house. The old man had a stroke in July and, although he had recovered somewhat, especially his speech and mental capacity, he was not expected to live long. He was bedridden on the third floor of the old brick house Allan had been brought up in. The woman who had been his wife’s maid years ago acted as his live in nurse. She was a cheerful, bustling woman who worked from six in the morning until ten at night yet never seemed the least bit hurried or flustered. She cooked the old man’s meals in a small kitchen down the hall from his bedroom and slept in the adjoining room in case he took a bad turn during the night.  

   The first day his father said little. He fell asleep fifteen minutes after Allan entered the room.

   “Not one of his good days.” Irene told him when he came out of the room. “Some days are like that. He has little energy and sleeps most of the day. Other days he seems almost normal, other than the fact that he doesn’t get out of bed. Tomorrow he’ll be better no doubt.”

   The next day he was better. “You didn’t go to the funeral.” The old man said as he was crossing the floor.

   “No.” said Allan.

   “I can understand that. I was even thinking of not going myself. For a young man like yourself it would be much harder. An old man like me gets used to the idea of death even the death of his own sons.”

   This astonished Allan but he said nothing. For his father to say such a thing was completely out of character, or at least out of character for the face he had shown to Allan since he was a young boy. The old man was undergoing a sea change.

   “Did you visit the graves?”

  “Yes.”

  “ I put one on each side of her. I think she would have wanted that. The wife of an older man, if she has sons, loves her sons more intensely than she does her husband. This is only natural. Did you know that?”

   “I never thought of it but now that you say so it strikes me as true.”

   “I’ll lie at her head. If she were here and heard that she would laugh. “Why not at my feet?” she would ask.”

   Allan said nothing.

   “This makes you uncomfortable? I adored her and she respected me. This was the truth of it. No time left for lies. A man could be dealt a much harsher hand than the one I was dealt.”

   “I would beg to differ, Dad. I remember my childhood very accurately. Actors often use their childhood as an entry into a world of emotion usually closed to adults. I would say that she loved you but not in the way a young woman would love a young man. But still, she loved you.”

   “Perhaps you are right. Maybe I have become a little bitter. To lose a son is a hard thing. To lose two such promising boys is almost unbearable.”


   During the three week vacation Allan went up to see his father every morning. When they ran out of conversation Allan began reading the old man plays. One morning his father lay quietly with his eyes closed while Allan read an act of Lear. When he came to the end his father said. “I suppose it is necessary for Lear to be such an old idiot so that in the last part of the play he can wax tragic all over the moors, etc. If he were a sensible man he would not have divided his property between two such vipers, at least not before his death.”

   “It’s the language, Dad.”

   “I know. Shakespeare got drunk on language so he could make other people drunk as well. When you read it even I forget what an old fool Lear was and am swept away by the sheer ferocity and flow of the language. When it comes to the final act I can’t say I mind Cordelia being hung, however. One less overly virtuous self sacrificer in the world seems to me not such a bad thing.”

   Allan laughed.

   The old man smiled. “I know my taste disagrees with most of the critics but my favourite play is Richard III. He is so unremittingly evil. Iago is diluted somewhat by one’s irritation at the stupidity of his master. Most would smell Iago a mile off yet that dumbo Othello doesn’t notice a thing. He couldn’t have been much of a general if his judgment in men was so terribly lacking. Richard has the advantage of being the main character so the movement of his evil is the plot. The New Man is much like him. Power is everything and he will stop at nothing to achieve it. Psychopaths I suppose we would call them today. Yet Richard is still a very compelling character, perhaps because he is naked and honest about his motivations and he has wit and humour as well. It always seemed to me in that play Richard is the only real character. The rest seem dreary puppets and their deaths, even those of the young princes, do not affect us deeply for they seem to be merely a shadow show beside the magnificent, Luciferian evil of Richard. Of course he gets it in the end. All the bad guys get it in the end. The good guys get it in the end as well, of course.”

   Sometimes when he came in his father would be sleeping or at lying quietly with his eyes closed. One morning Allan got up from his chair and walked over to the window. The young gardener was clearing the snow from the path leading down to the river. His father always made arrangements for this path to be shoveled. It led down to a section of river ice cleared for skating. He stood silently and watched while the young man, with slow, deliberate movements, shoveled his way to the line of lilacs at the bottom of the yard and disappeared behind their dark, naked branches.

   “What’s down there?” his father asked from the bed.

   “Snow, Dad.”

   “And the young gardener?”

   “Yes. Him too.”

   “Giving him the eye are you?”

   “Yes.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s the way you are.”

  “Yes. That’s the way I am.”

   “Always were that way, were you?”

   “As far back as I can remember.”

   “That’s what your mother said. People are born that way, like some people are born with blue eyes. Yet you were my first son and I found it hard to bear. Your mother was much wiser than me. In the army you judge. I have done too much judging, I’m afraid. Where does it lead you? – locked into the cold citadel of the self, raging, strangling on your own bile and hatred, that’s where.” The old man closed his eyes and remained silent for so long Allan rose and was about to leave but his father opened his eyes and looked at him.

   “Perhaps you would be able to forgive me.”

   “I forgave you a long time ago, Dad.’

   “That’s what your mother said. I thank you for that. It is a great comfort to me.” The old man closed his eyes and a few moments later he was softly snoring. Allan tip toed across the room and let himself out.


   That afternoon Allan propositioned the young gardener and he accepted. When he came into his father’s room the next morning the old man watched him cross the room. When he was seated in his chair he asked “Well?”

   “Well what?”

   “Did he go for it?”

   “Yes he did.”

    “I thought so.”

   “And why did you think so?”

  “Intuition. When you get old you notice more things than when you were young. Cosmic compensation perhaps. People in the mainstream of life, including myself when I was there, can be incredibly stupid about the most obvious things. I never really minded that you were gay you know. It was more a matter of social conformity. Army people are like that. The more normal you are the higher you go is the thinking I suppose.”

   “You went pretty high, Dad.”

   “General is not so high.”

   “High enough.”

   “Your mother wasn’t impressed. Whenever I was promoted she would say “O well. More expensive dinner plates!”

   Allan laughed.

   “She was a terrible cynic. The only thing she liked about my promotions was better seats at the opera. People today think women of her time catered to men in an obsequious way. In your mother’s case nothing could be farther from the truth. If my ego had depended on your mother for sustenance I would have been dead long ago. She was her own person. I think that’s why she agreed to marry me. She knew that an older man could get along fine without the slavered on feminine flattery some young man need. This does not mean that she was not warm and affectionate. It was just that she refused the traditional pattern of sentimental affection. You are like her  -  a warm, generous person, but in the midst of your warmth very realistic and clear seeing. She often said of all the boys you were the most like her.”

   Allan remembered what his mother had said to him when, at the age of fifteen, he told her he was gay. “Well dear,” she said, “That means we have yet another thing in common.”

   The old man closed his eyes and slept for a while. Allan read the book he brought with him. Outside the sun had reached its meridian, a mere ten fingers above the southern horizon. It had moved around the house since early morning and its light no longer came directly through the window but the reflection off the snow created on the panes a bright glow but a glow more lunar than solar. On the bureau beyond the old man’s bed an elaborate German clock ticked out a soothing mechanical tic toc. Allan could hear Irene preparing lunch in the kitchen. After fifteen minutes or so the old man opened his eyes. When he did so he was looking directly at Allan and the effect was a little unnerving as if his father had been dreaming him in his sleep and opened his eyes to coalesce the dream with the reality.

   “Tell me!” he said in a tone he had not used since Allan had arrived for his visit – the commanding, imperious tone of the father of his childhood. This bemused Allan more than intimidated him. He didn’t reply for a long time but his father was content to wait. The strangest thing was that he knew exactly what his father meant and he knew that his father knew that he knew. A great sadness descended upon him but its effect was cathartic rather than debilitating. He looked directly into the old man’s eyes and said. “I killed them. I avenged my brothers.”

   The old man took his eyes away and looked at the ceiling. “How did you find them?”

   “I am an actor. Human reality is malleable for me. I can disguise myself in such a way that even you would not have the slightest suspicion that I was other than who I decided to portray. It took me a year. I was very careful. I did not want to kill the wrong men not only for my sake but for the sake of my brothers. There were six.”

   “How?”

   “With a shotgun.”

   “Did you tell them?”

   “Yes. “Do you remember Liam and Thomas?” I asked them. Then I shot them.”

   “That’s the old way.” His father said.

   “Yes.”

   “Your mother’s grandfather. He would have done something like that.”

   “Yes.”

   “But now you will have to arrange for the rest of your life. If you dwell on this you will despair.”

   “I know.”

   “I’m tired now and I have to think. Come back tomorrow.”

 

   When he came back in the morning his father was having breakfast. When he was finished Irene removed the tray and propped up the old man on his pillows. She chatted with the two men about the weather and then went off with the tray down the corridor into the kitchen. The old man reached out and took his son’s hand between his own. “Did you sleep with the gardener?”

   “Yes.”

   “Good. Perhaps you will become long term friends. Sexual friends.”

   “Perhaps.”

   “Your mother and I were sexual friends. It doesn’t really matter if it is a man or a woman. We are born desiring one or the other. Will he go with you?”

   “Maybe.”

   “Convince him to go with you. I’m afraid for you to be alone.”

    “I’m trying.”

   “Would it help if I leave him money?”

   “I don’t know.”

   “He would be independent. If he has no money he will grow weary of his dependence on you. Your mother had her own money. Her father, as traditional as he was about women, saw to that. Don’t ask him directly but sound him out.”

   “OK.”

   “The Buddhists would say you have committed a terrible sin and have created bad karma.”

   “True enough I suppose.”

   “No ‘I suppose.’”

   “True enough then.”

   “I know an old priest. Your mother used to talk to him. She told me when she complained that it was hard to live in a house filled with men he said to her. “Then you will have to become a man twelve hours a day.” Isn’t that a strange thing to say? I’m afraid he is a bit cracked but after a long life I have come to see that the cracked ones are most often right. Will you go see him?”

   “I am not religious, Dad.”

   “Neither is he, or at least so he says. I speak with him on the phone once a week. I’ll ask him to phone you. Go and see him for my sake. I don’t ask that you do anything but go and see him.”

   “OK.”


   The next day the priest phoned and Allan went to see him. He lived in a small cottage at the foot of a terraced hill. When he was seated at the kitchen table in front of a cup of tea, Allan could see no reason to beat around the bush.

   “I have killed a number of men in vengeance.”

   “Vengeance for what?”

   “They killed my brothers.”

   The old man looked at him curiously for a few minutes and then said. “In your city there is a place to sit. Do you feel inclined to sit?”

   “I’m not religious.”

   “Neither is sitting.”

   “There are statues.”

  “Not in this place. It’s just a bare room.”

   “Well….”

   “I will give you the address before you go. Sometimes sitting with others can be of benefit but you can sit on your own too. Do you know how?”

   “I have books.”

   “Try it and see. You might surprise yourself. Otherwise does your killing give you problems?”

   “Yes.”

  “What kind?’

   “The images play over in my mind.”

   “A short definition of karma. You could try letting them play through to the end. Do you have a hobby?”

   “Walking.”

   “Do it while walking. Don’t interfere with the images. Let them play through to the end. Just pay attention to your walking.”

   “OK.”

   Before he left the old man gave him an address in the city.

   When he arrived home he went up to see his father.

   “What did he say?”

   “He gave me sensible advice. And an address in the city where I can sit.”

   “Good. And the gardener?”

   “Will come with me to the city.”

   “Shall I leave him money?”

   “Enough for three years. He wants to go to the university.”

   “The lawyer is coming tonight. I’ll make the change. Come and see me in the morning. I’ll be going soon.”

 
    When Allan came into the room the next day his father lay stretched flat on the bed, his head supported by a folded up blanket. His eyes were closed but Allan could clearly sense that he was awake. When he was seated in the chair, without opening his eyes the old man said. “I have done with looking at the world now but I still like hearing it so I listen. The sound of your crossing the floor filled me with an exquisite joy but even that I must leave behind me now. You mother and brothers are waiting for me. Beside them are your bother’s killers. Your mother has already embraced them and sees them as her sad and silent sons. I will also embrace them and reconcile them with my sons, yourself included. They lived by violence and died by violence. They understand your killing has freed them from even more terrible sins and in turn given you a terrible sin you must free yourself from. Your mother will laugh when she sees how old I have become. “Old bones in a cheesecloth wrapping!” she will say. As for myself I will tell her. “Sarah how lucky we are to leave behind us such a loving and such a dutiful son!” The old man reached out and touched Allan’s hand, then rolled over on to his side, breathed a last breath, and died.