Stillness & Shadows, John Gardner [the first e reader txt] 📗

He reached out sharply toward Ira Katz, gesturing with his glass, spilling whiskey. “That’s just bad luck, though, that’s the thing—the ones that get killed and the ones that happen not to, the poor dumb bastards that die or have children and never think. It’s the detective we have to watch. He’s the one to think about. The others can be as passionate as they want to—good luck to ’em! But the detective, he’s got to be objective, scientific. No commitments. He’s like a man from outside Time. That’s his secret. Maybe he’s a foreigner, like Hercule Poirot. Maybe he gets stoned on cocaine, like Sherlock Holmes.”

Ira Katz was studying him from deep in his chair, for all the world like Holmes making cunning deductions. “Craine,” he said suddenly, “what are you driving at?” Again he glanced toward the bedroom door.

“Sherlock Holmes,” Craine said, and waved his glass. “Hercule Poirot!”

“I know,” Ira Katz said. “That part I’m hearing.”

Craine sat perfectly still for a moment, his insides overtaken by a curious trembling. Again, for an instant, he’d gotten a flash of the beautiful young woman who was following him. “We’re talking about the man who solves the mystery,” he said. A tear escaped onto his cheek, and quickly, furtively, he wiped it away. “We’re talking about the solitary hunter, cold-blooded as the moon!”

Ira Katz studied him. “Is that what you want to be?” he asked. He spoke too gently, like a psychiatrist.

“As I told you,” Craine said crossly, with dignity, “I never get murder cases. We’re talking theoretically.”

The young man nodded. For a long moment he stared at something just above and behind Craine’s head. At last he dropped his gaze to meet Craine’s and cleared his throat. “I’ll tell you how it seems to me,” he said, and colored slightly. It seemed for an instant that the clocks ticked more softly. Ira Katz looked above Craine’s head again. “It seems to me that the man who’s a lover is more likely to make a good detective than the man who’s not. That’s my impression, anyway, or my impression at this moment.” His smile was, again, apologetic. “We all know the disadvantages. He gets over involved, he’s not objective, he runs a risk of missing things—those are the arguments. But I don’t know. I’m not sure. The detective who’s involved—not just with the woman, if it’s a woman that’s in danger, as in the usual plot, but with everyone, everything—I think that’s the man I’d put my money on. If I were to make up a new kind of detective—a new and different kind of Ellery Queen or Dr. Fell or Perry Mason—I’d use—I don’t know—maybe an Indian guru, some man like Swami Muktinanda—you’ve heard of him? I’d choose a man half crazy with empathetic love for all the universe. Someone who needs an assistant to keep him from walking into freight trains or falling down in trances—some merry-hearted lunatic who understands the language of goats and trees.” He looked at Craine and grinned. “My novels wouldn’t have much suspense, I admit. The minute the detective meets the killer, that’s that, no more mystery. ‘Ah!’ he’d say, ‘so it’s you!’ Big smile from both parties. And my novels might not have much in the way of emotional catharsis, either. My detective would never turn the murderer in, he’d simply cure him by a beatific look, or maybe confirm his existence for what it was, as he would a cobra’s, and send him on his way. But then—” He gestured vaguely, smiling, letting it go. After a moment his expression clouded and, glancing down at his glass, he said, “Or then again I might choose just the opposite, some rolling-eyed, half-crazy paranoid. They too have their involvement—involvement of a kind, anyway. They can be wonderfully shrewd.” Craine’s mind flashed an image of Dr. Tummelty talking of the woman who walks down the street unconsciously scanning. Craine leaned forward, raising his glass to object, but Ira Katz, looking over his head again, seemed not to notice.

“I’ll tell you the problem with existentialists,” he said seriously. His voice became teacherish, as if he’d said this many times and had a good deal invested in it. “They begin with the assumption that we’re free—‘existence precedes essence’ and all that. The trouble is, it’s not true. You remember Jean-Paul Sartre’s image, the man who stands on a cliff looking down. He feels dizzy, a little nausea. That’s the experience of freedom, Sartre claims—the man’s sense that he could throw himself into the abyss if he chose to. The trouble is, most people don’t—they step back. If we were really free, about fifty percent of us would jump.”

“But surely that’s just fear, Mr. Katz,” Craine broke in. “If they dared to face up to their freedom and act—” His voice came out unexpectedly loud. It wasn’t so much the whiskey outrunning him as the speed with which Ira Katz hurried from thought to thought, dropping names, queer images —the man on the cliff—as if Craine should have heard of them a hundred times, which perhaps he had; he was too foggy to remember. “The mere fact that we don’t jump, even if we’re miserable,” Craine began.

“But we don’t, you see. That’s the point.” He spoke patiently, as to a child. “Being mammals, and sentient, we’re aware that it might hurt, landing on those big jagged rocks down below. We obey the age-old law of mammals, the law that precedes our particular existence: Try not to get hurt. It seems to me that our proper business should be to try to figure out what the secret laws are for sentient mammals—what hurts us and what doesn’t, physically, psychologically, spiritually.” He flashed a smile, too quick and neat, a smile he’d used in lectures. “We should work at discovering what values are built into us. Learn to survive—learn what makes us fit. The existentialists point us in the opposite direction, that’s what’s wrong with them. They encourage us to