Showing posts with label Apricot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Apricot. Show all posts

Sunday 21 August 2022

The Longing for Fathers


  
I and My Kind inherited a utopia 
built on Human Suffering. 

Mine is NOT any 
World You Know.

Overman

[Borg operating room]
(The entity originally Picard is being augmented. 
He gets a prosthetic forearm with attachments, 
and his skin turns white. 
A single tear rolls from his eye.)





Real Policemen, of course,
Don’t DO This
they go around 
in pairs.

— Kim Newman,
Commentary Track,
Exorcist III : LEGION






Robocop :
Aim for Me.



Submission to 
a Loving Authority.












It's okay not to know 
what you want. 

No, I know what I want. 
I know EXACTLY what 
I want right now. 

What's that? 

It's BAD

It's okay. 

I want someone to tell me 
What to Wear in The Morning. 

[HE LAUGHS] 
Okay, well, I think there 
are people who can —

No, I want someone to tell me 
what to wear every morning. 

I want someone to 
tell me what to eat, 
what to like, what to hate
what to rage about
what to listen to
what band to like
what to buy tickets for
what to joke about
what not to joke about. 

I want someone to tell me 
what to believe in
who to vote for
and who to love
and how to tell them. 

I just think I want 
someone to tell me 
How to Live My Life, Father, because 
so far I think I've been 
getting it wrong

And I know that's why people 
want people like you in their lives. Because you just tell them 
How to Do It. 

You just tell them 
What to Do, and 
What They'll Get 
out of the end of it. 

And even though I don't believe 
your bullshit
and I know that scientifically,
nothing I do 
makes any difference 
in the end anyway, 
I'm still scared! 
Why am I still so scared?! 

So just tell me 
what to do. 
Just fucking tell me 
what to do, Father! 

Kneel

What

Kneel
Just kneel.

















"Almost all of The Book was based on stories my friends told me and stunts we pulled together. The rest was just a matter of looking for the themes, the topics that brought people together in Excited Conversations.

The Longing for Fathers 

was a theme I heard a lot.


The Resentment of Lifestyle Standards imposed by Advertising was another.


The Goal all along was to write a novel based on Being with People and Listening to Them. That's why so much of Fight Club was written In Publicat parties, in bars, at the gym, at work."




-- Palahniuk 


….Yes, it was a Day of Mourning 
for the families of 113 people 
known dead at this hour, 
among them, 
Two former United States Presidents 
who had retired in the Santa Barbara area.
A Day of Mourning for Our Country.

Police Union representatives and OCP continue negotiations today in hopes of averting a citywide Strike by Policescheduled to begin Tomorrow at Midnight.
Justin Ballard-Watkins has more :

‘They're still On Duty, 
but what about Tomorrow?’

That's The Question we put to people in the crime-plagued 
Lexington area —


“They're Public Servants.
They got Job Security.
They're not supposed to strike.

“It's a Free Society
except there ain't nothin' Free,
'cause there's No Guarantees, you know?

You're on Your Own.
It's The Law of The Jungle."



Be very careful.
Excuse me, please.
They must be remodeling.
Hiya, Barbara.

Listen, I'm here to see Dick Jones.
But when I'm done,
I've got some free time.
Maybe you could fit me in.

He's expecting you, Mr. Boddicker.
You can keep The Gum.

This looks good.

Get a measurement on that.
Bring a hammer, too.

Hey, Dickie boy. How's Tricks?

That Thing is Still Alive.
I don't know what you're talking about.


The Police Officer who arrested you, 
The one you spilled your guts to.


Hey. Take a look at My Face, Dick.
He was Trying to Kill Me.

He's a Cyborg, You Idiot.
He recorded every word you said.
His Memory's Admissible as Evidence.
You involved me.
You're gonna have to Kill It.

Listen, Chief.
Your Company built the fucking thing.
Now I gotta deal with it?
I don't have time for this bullshit.

Suit yourself, Clarence.
But Delta City begins construction 
in two months.
That's 2 Million Workers 
living in Trailers.
That means drugs, gambling, prostitution.
Virgin Territory for 
The Man who knows 
how to open up new markets.
One Man could Control it AllClarence.


I guess we're gonna 
be Friends after all, Richard.

Destroy It.

Gonna need some major firepower.
You got access to military weaponry?

We practically are The Military.


The Policeman :
Did You bring The Gun?

Partner :
The Precinct was deserted.
Half The Force didn't 
Show up for Work Today.
Everyone else Walks Out at Midnight.
I guess We're on Strike.

I wasn't sure What You Needed.
I sort of grabbed things.

Your Gun.
You asked for this?

(She produces from her bags several jars of pureed Orange & Apricot-Flavoured RoboCop Baby-Food.)

Partner :
I Brought You 
Some Food.

The Policeman :
No, Thank You --
I'm not hungry.

You may not like 
What You're Going to See.


Using the pit-mechanic's power-drill,
he begins to methodically 
unscrew and then remove 
his plate-armoured facial visor, 
one long retaining-screw at a time,
until finally --

Partner :
It's really Good to See You Again, Murphy.

The Policeman :
Murphy, had a Wife and Son --
What happened to them?

Partner :
....after The Funeral, 
she moved away.

The Policeman :
Where Did They Go?

Partner :
She Thought You were Dead.
....She started-over again.

The Policeman :
I can Feel Them.
But I can't Remember Them.

……Leave Me alone.


Thursday 18 November 2021

The Shining





It’s a Fortress of Solitude.



HALLORAN :
 It won't take you long to get the hang of it.

WENDY, Darling :
 This is The Kitchen, huh?

HALLORAN :
 This is it.
 How do you like it, Danny? 
Is it big enough for you?

DANNY, Champion of The World :
 It's the biggest place I ever seen.
[ Didn't answer The Question. ]

WENDY, Darling :
 This whole place is such 
an enormous maze --

 I feel as though I'll have to leave 
a trail of breadcrumbs 
every time I come in.

HALLORAN :
 Don't let it get you down.
 lt's BIG, but it ain't nothing 
but A Kitchen.
 A lot of this stuff you'll 
never have to touch.

WENDY, Darling :
I wouldn't know what to do with it if I did.

HALLORAN :
 One thing for sure, you don't have to worry about Food.
 You could eat here for a year and never 
have the same menu twice.

 Right here is our walk-in freezer.
 This is where we keep
all of Our Meat.

 You got rib roasts
ten-pound bags of hamburger.
 We got turkeys, 
we got chickens
sirloin steaks, 
two dozen pork roast
and legs of Lamb

You Like Lamb, Doc?

Dan shakes his head.

HALLORAN :
 You don't? What's your 
favourite food, then?


DANNY, Champion of The World :
 French fries and ketchup.
[ Ah! A Wise Child! ]

HALLORAN :
I think we can manage that too, Doc.
 Come along. Watch your step.


WENDY, Darling :
How'd you know we call him 'Doc'?

HALLORAN :
Beg your pardon?

WENDY, Darling :
You called Danny "Doc" twice.

HALLORAN :
I did?

WENDY, Darling :
 We call him 'Doc' sometimes, like 
in the Bugs Bunny cartoons.
 But how did you know?

HALLORAN :
 I guess I must have heard 
you call him that.

WENDY, Darling :
 It's possible. But I don't remember
calling him that since 
we've been with you.

HALLORAN :
 Anyway, he looks like a Doc, don't he?
Nyah! What's up, Doc?
[ That ain't no kind of Answer, Dick, and You know it..!! ]
 Now, this is The Storeroom.....
 In here is where we keep all the dried goods and the canned goods.

 We got canned fruits and vegetables. . .

 . . .canned fish and meats, hot and cold cereals.

 Post Toasties, Corn Flakes, Sugar Puffs. . .

 . . .Rice Krispies, oatmeal, Wheatena and Cream of Wheat.

 You got a dozen jugs of black molasses.

 We got boxes of dried milk. . .

 How'd you like some ice cream, Doc?

 . . .Sociables, finger rolls. . .

 . . .and kinds of what have you.

 We've got dried peaches, dried apricots. . .

 . . .dried raisins and dried prunes.

 You know, you got to keep regular if you want to be happy.

 -How're you getting on? -Fine.

 Can we borrow Mrs. Torrance? We're on our way to the basement.

 l promise we won't keep her very long.

HALLORAN
 No problem. I was just getting to the ice cream.
 You like ice cream, Doc?


 I thought so.
 You mind if I give Danny some ice cream?

 -Not at all. -We don't mind.

 -Good. -Sound good to you, Doc?

 Okay, you behave yourself.

HALLORAN
 What kind of ice cream do you like?

DANNY, Champion of The World :
 Chocolate.

HALLORAN
 Chocolate it shall be. 
Come on, Son.

 lt's amazing, all this activity today.

 The guests and some staff left yesterday, but the. . .

 . . .last day's always hectic.

 Everybody wants to be on their way as early as possible.
 By tonight, you'll never know anybody was ever here.

 Just like a ghost ship, huh?

 Do you know how I knew 
your name was Doc?

 You know what I'm talking about, don't you?

 I can remember when I was a little boy
my grandmother and I could hold conversations. . .
entirely without ever opening our mouths.

 She called it "Shining. "

 And for a long time I thought it was just 
the two of us that had "The Shine" to us.

 Like you probably thought 
you was the only one.

 But there are other folks. . .
though mostly 
they don't know it, 
or don't believe it.

 How long have you been able to do it?
 Why don't you want to talk about it?

DANNY, Champion of The World :
 I'm not supposed to.

 Who says you ain't supposed to?

DANNY, Champion of The World :
 Tony.

 Who's Tony?

DANNY, Champion of The World :
 Tony's the little boy 
that lives in my mouth.

 Is Tony the one that tells you things?
 How does he tell you things?

DANNY, Champion of The World :
 It's like I go to sleep 
and he shows me things.

 But when I wake up, 
I can't remember everything.

 Does your mom and dad know about Tony?

 Do they know he tells you things?

 Tony told me never to tell them.

 Has Tony ever told you anything about this place?

 About the Overlook Hotel?

 I don't know.

 Now think real hard, Doc.

 Think.

DANNY, Champion of The World :
 Is there something bad here?

 You know, Doc, when something happens. . . 
it can leave a trace of itself behind.
 Say, like. . . if someone burns toast.

 Maybe things that happen leave other kind of traces behind.
 Not things that anyone can notice.
 But things that people who shine can see.
 Just like they can see things that haven't happened yet. . .
sometimes they can see things that happened a long time ago.

 I think a lot of things happened right here 
in this particular hotel over the years.
 And not all of them was Good.

DANNY, Champion of The World :
 What about Room 237?

 Room 237?

DANNY, Champion of The World :
 You're scared of Room 237 ain't you?

 No, I ain't.

DANNY, Champion of The World :
 Mr. Hallorann, 
What is in Room 237?

 Nothing.
 There ain't nothing in Room 237.
 But you ain't got no business going in there anyway.
 So stay out.
 You understand? Stay out!

 Good morning, hon.
 Your breakfast is ready.

 What time is it?

 lt's about  : .

 Jesus!

 I guess we've been staying up too late.

 I know it.

 I made them just the way you like them, sunny-side up.

 Nice.

 It's really pretty outside.

 How about taking me for a walk after you finish your breakfast?

 I suppose I ought to try to do some writing first.

 Any ideas yet?

 Lots of ideas.
 No good ones.

 Something will come.
 It's just a matter of settling into 
the habit of writing every day.
 That's all it is.

All right.

And you're going to lose.
 And l'm going to get you. 
You'd better run fast!
 Look out!

 I'm coming in close.

 Loser has to keep America clean.
 Keep America clean.

 Danny, you win.
 Let's take the rest of this walking.

 Give me your hand.
Isn't it beautiful?

 Dead end.

 We made it.

 Isn't it beautiful?
 It's so pretty.
 I didn't think it was this big. 
Did you?

 Hi, hon.
 How's it going?

 Fine.

 Get a lot written today?
 The weather forecast said it's going to snow tonight.

 What The Fuck do you want me to do about it?

 Come on, hon.
 Don't be so grouchy.

 I'm not. . . being grouchy.
 I just want to finish my work.

 Okay. I understand.
 I'll come back later with a couple of sandwiches.
 Maybe you'll let me read something then.

 Wendy. . .
let me explain something to you.

 When you come in and interrupt, you're breaking my concentration.

 You're distracting me
and it will then take time to get back to where I was.

 Understand?

 Fine.

 We're making a new rule:
 Whenever I'm in here
and you hear me typing,
or whatever the fuck you hear me doing in here
when I'm in here, that means 
I am working.

 That means 
Don't Come In.

 Do you think you can handle that?

 Fine.
 Why don't you start right now 
and get the fuck out of here?


Superman :
I’m just like EVERYBODY ELSE.

Except MY Eyes don’t just 
ABSORB radiation 
like yours do, 
they EMIT all kinds.”



Thursday 10 December 2020

Maintain Propriety



FROM THE DE-BRIEFING OF RAKO BEY, LEADER OF THE VOLUNTEER FORCE TO QUELLEZA, TAKEN 10 OCTOBER   

Q. And what led you to the house in the first place? 

A. Nothing, sir. Grodd was related to the blind man who lived there, but then he is related to most of the village. Nothing led us there, Colonel. It was Fate. 

Q. Maintain propriety.



Vlora shuddered. The room seemed colder. Who would have the need or even think of the need to conceal the telltale vaccination other than a formidable enemy agent on a mission of power and unthinkable menace? 

Vlora brooded on the blind man’s eerie report and the perfectly flawed Albanian dentistry; on the strangled dog in the wood and the spectral, unsettling Selca Decani. 

If the Prisoner wasn’t a foreign agent, Vlora concluded, then he must be a devil. “Or both,” he murmured. 

He’d once heard of such a legendary agent from Hell. That night Vlora slept with the demons. Then events took a turn that was wholly confounding. 

Early on the morning of April 3rd, cutting short his visit to an ailing father, there returned to Tirana from Beijing at Vlora’s urgent and imperative summons, a tall, gaunt Chinese Army medical officer, Major Liu Ng Tsu, a drug-hypnosis interrogation expert assigned as an adviser to Central Security. 

On the third and the fourth, Vlora briefed him and allowed him to study the written record. 

On the fifth there was action. The Prisoner, kept sleepless for thirty-six hours and deprived of water for twenty-four, was placed on his back atop a gurney cart, strapped down with leather restraints, and wheeled to a narrow, white-tiled room. 

Immaculately clean and brightly lit by surgical spotlights affixed to the ceiling, this was the so-called “Magic Room.” 
 
Here tricks could be played on top of tricks. First Sodium Pentothal was injected. 
 
After that the hypnosis began and the illusions: “Your hand is beginning to feel very warm,” recalcitrant subjects had often been told; this to convince them they had entered the hypnotic state and that further attempts at resistance were useless, when in fact the subject’s hand was responding to the current from a hidden diathermy machine. 
 
Or concealed holographic projectors were invoked: 
“Do you see the solid wall there in front of you?” 
 
“Yes.”

“Look through it. You’ll see roses that are floating in midair.” 
 
These were the games. When they were done, methamphetamine was injected to create an irresistible, driving urge to pour out speech, ideas, and memories, giving the subject no time to think; and then there sometimes came forth, at the end of it all, a bruised and slurry thing called Truth. 

“Come, begin! What’s the problem?” 
 
Exhausted and driven, impatient, consumed, Vlora glared in consternation at Tsu, who was standing across from him at the gurney. Leaning down to inject the Pentothal, he had inexplicably hesitated: the syringe held poised in midair, he stood motionless, studying the Prisoner’s face. 
 
Vlora looked worried. “What is it?


“What’s wrong?” 

Tsu shook his head, remained still, then said, “Nothing.” 

He bent lower and administered the injection. 

“For a moment I thought I might have seen this man before.” 

A polygraph expert shuffled into the room. Short and middle-aged with close-set eyes, he wore a threadbare suit several sizes too large so that the trousers bagged in folds at his feet. 

“I’m here,” he muttered sourly in greeting. 
 
Pulled away from his breakfast, sullen and begrudging, he noisily unfolded a metal table and chair and banged each of them down near the head of the gurney. After setting his polygraph machine on the table, he wired the Prisoner to the device, then settled into the chair looking wounded and abused. Snuffling, he slipped on his earphones and nodded, as he murmured in a tone of patient suffering, “I’m ready.” 
 
“If you will help us just a little, you may drink this.” Tsu held a frost-covered glass of iced water to the Prisoner’s cheek. 

“Fresh water from a spring,” he told the Prisoner amiably. “If you obey my next command you may drink it. All right? Nothing onerous. Just open your eyes.” 
 
Vlora shook his head. “This will not work,” he said. “It won’t work.” 
 
Staring intently at the Prisoner’s face, an incredible and chilling suspicion had just occurred to him concerning the enigma’s identity. The Prisoner opened his eyes. Vlora took a quick step back from the gurney. Propping up the Prisoner’s head with his hand, Tsu held the water to his lips with the other. “Just a sip or two for now,” he cautioned gently. 
 
Then he made a quiet promise: “More later.” 

The Prisoner spoke. He said, “Thank you.” 

Startled, Vlora flinched while Tsu met his look of amazement with a smile. 
 
And so began the series of steps and events that would lead to the belief that the Prisoner had weakened, an impression that would finally come to be viewed, when the annals of the “Magic Room” were completed, as surely its most incredible and lethal illusion. 
 
All of the early moves were routine: the lights were dimmed down to a ghostly murk, the usual “road hypnosis” begun: the application of a steady, repetitive rhythm, in this instance an illuminated metronome blade which the Prisoner watched as it tocked back and forth. 
 
Such had always been shown to be highly effective against the desire not to be hypnotized and to retain one’s alertness of will. Then the favorite tricks of the room were invoked, and when persuaded that the spell had at last taken hold, Tsu followed by injecting the methamphetamine in a larger than usual dosage — 6.4 milligrams per kilogram of body weight — needed for introverted neurotics. 
 
And then, in an ordinary, nondescript voice, and with flawless inflection of the language of the north, the Prisoner not only spoke but also answered all queries. It might have been better for his captors had he not. 
 
Under questioning, the Prisoner repeated his claim to be Selca Decani, the peddler of cheese and the lover of Morna Altamori, explaining that, in fact, he had never died but had simply vanished, fled away to the West, the reports of his death a deliberate fiction contrived to protect Decani’s family from certain harassment by The State. His return to Albania had been prompted by his fear of the imminent death of his ailing mother. 
 
This, fundamentally, was Story Number One. There were others. Enemy agents of the deadlier class had been known to use drugs and hypnosis defensively with nefarious “pentothal blocks” so that the subject, under torture or if questioned by this method, would repeat a hypnotically programmed recitation. 
 
In the event that his questioners probed even deeper by attacking the block with more drugs and hypnosis, underneath the first story they might turn up a second, which, just as the first, had been scripted and implanted. 
 
A third such block had been found, it was rumored, in a rare if not mythical number of cases. Thus everything seemed to be running to form, every paranoid fear and suspicion confirmed when, under much deeper interrogation, the Prisoner’s story drastically changed. While retaining the carpentry of the first it differed in subtle but significant ways. 
 
This time the Prisoner admitted that Selca Decani indeed was dead, and that he himself was named Sabri Melcani and had years ago fled to Yugoslavia, and from there moved on to Greece, to escape a murder charge that had arisen from his actions in the course of pursuing a blood feud: hearing that the man he thought he’d killed had recovered and was happily walking the earth, Melcani felt compelled — “by the sting of conscience,” he said — to return and try again. 
 
This, in essence, was Story Number Two which, if left at that, might not have proved so upsetting, except that there were also Story Three, Story Four, and Story Five, while Story Six, to the fury and utter consternation of all, was a faithful repetition of Story Number One, thus announcing — provided the Prisoner could live through the added injections of the dangerous drugs — the prospect of an endless and fruitless cycle. 
 
Which was not, as it happened, the most appalling thing at all. This honor was reserved for the polygraph machine. It corroborated all of the Prisoner’s stories. 
 
At this juncture it was difficult to know where to turn, and so the natural direction, by default, and to the immense relief of anyone harboring a longing for the familiar, was directly and immediately into chaos as, desperate, Vlora embraced a new tactic that was neither in his nature nor his power to control. From beginning to end the scenario was Tsu’s. It began very calmly. In fact, rather pleasantly. 
 
The Prisoner was taken to comfortable quarters where, after receiving medical attention, for seven days he was able to bathe, given food and drink and clean clothes, and was permitted to sleep in a downy bed undisturbed until he naturally awakened. In the meantime, Major Tsu had given strict instructions that no one in contact with the Prisoner was ever to speak while in his presence, either to him or to anyone else. On day eight, a Monday, action resumed. The Prisoner was escorted by four armed guards to the room with the T-shaped table where Vlora alone sat waiting for him. The black velvet drapes had been drawn aside from the great high windows along the east wall so that sunlight shattered down in smoky columns, trapping particles of dust and fear in their swirl. 
 
The Prisoner was placed near the bottom of the table by two of the guards, all of whom then exited the room and left him standing alone at the bottom of the T with his head bowed down and his hands held clasped in front of him as if gripped by invisible manacles. Music played softly through speakers in the walls and all the windows stood open so that one could hear traffic from the street far below. Now and then a child’s shout or silly laugh floated up. 
 
“So here we are,” began Vlora in an ordinary way. “New surroundings are refreshing at times, a great tonic; they can pry us from our ruts, our fixed habits of thinking. By the way, do sit down if you like. Please be comfortable. Really. Never mind, then. Just as you wish. 
 
Incidentally, is the music to your liking? We can change it. Should I change it? It is Strauss. Very well, then, we shall leave it. 
 
In the meantime, let me tell you what is happening here. 
First, we thank you for those fascinating stories that you told us. 
 
I myself am a lover and avid admirer of any great work of the imagination. I’ve translated many of them into Albanian: Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and his Hamlet and Othello. Also Lady Inger of Ostrat by Ibsen. Don Quixote. 
Do you find that surprising? Yes, I did the work personally, it was when I was a teacher at college. They awarded me the “Partisan Star.” 
Well, never mind. I’ve been garrulous. 
Why is it that we always feel this gnawing necessity to justify ourselves to every stranger that we meet? 
Do you know what I’m talking about? Perhaps not. 
 
Well, that’s enough of that now. Back to business. Listen here, I want to tell you what we’ve come to. All right? We want to have a new relationship with you. The old one, you’ll admit, was unrewarding.” 
 
Vlora gestured down the length of the table to a tan wicker basket that was crammed with fresh fruit. “Incidentally, try an apricot,” he offered. “They’re in season.” 
 
Into the room now strode three torturers, all brutes of powerful build, including “Laugher,” who led them in. He was gripping a briefcase made of shining blue leather and the arm of a club-footed ten-year-old boy who was dressed in the olive drab denim of a prisoner. The boy’s hands had been tied in front of him and his arms were trussed to his sides. 
 
Arriving at a point that was midway along the table, Vlora’s son pushed the boy forward until he was captured, wincing and blinking, in a column of sunlight. 
 
“Well now, yes, we’re all here,” began Vlora. “Very well, then, let’s not waste any time. This boy is a Gypsy, deformed from birth. In addition to the problem with his foot he has a paralyzed arm, the left, which is numb and completely insensitive to pain. He is also retarded, a mental defective, as well as being dumb and unable to speak. 
 
He murdered his parents in their sleep, an understandable action but not his prerogative. One could argue he is better off dead. But we aren’t going to kill him. No, not for us to judge. 
 
We may not do anything at all to him, in fact. 
It’s really all up to you.” 
 
At a signal from Vlora, “Laugher” lifted the briefcase onto the table, snapped its locks, and withdrew from it a clear and colorless plastic bag at whose bottom was a drawstring made of leather. 
 
The boy’s eyes widened with fear and bewilderment as the bag was slipped over his head. Vlora glanced at his watch as if checking the time until his next appointment. 
 
“Suffocation is a horrible death,” he said casually. “Worse yet is to die in this manner many times; in fact over and over again without limit. Until you reveal your True Name and your mission, plus the data that is needed to verify both, we intend to repeatedly bring this boy to the brink of death by suffocation. His fate is in your hands. But do not feel any pressure. By all means, take your time. As I said to you before, you have suffered enough.” 
 
One torturer tightened the drawstring and knotted it. Another put his arms around the boy and held him still, so that he stayed within the compass of the column of light as he wildly thrashed, his eyes bulging in terror and his mouth gaping open in a soundless shriek while through the speakers rasped the lilts of The Blue Danube. 
 
“This is truly regrettable,” Vlora uttered sadly. “Yes, it is. It truly is. But the danger to thousands outweighs the pain of one.” 
 
He stood up, walked over to a door, and pulled it open. 
 
“Come!” he commanded into the shadows of a dimly lit ante-room, summoning Major Tsu and the creaking old doctor with the black valise. The doctor moved quickly to the nearest corner, while Tsu took Vlora’s seat at the table. “Major Tsu will take my place from here out,” announced Vlora. He was staring at the Prisoner with fatherly patience. 
 
“You have clearly grown too used to me. Yes. Much too comfortable. That’s very clear. Major Tsu will resharpen your interest. In the meantime, do not think that this boy is an actor. He is not. Should you doubt that, I now give you proof.” 
 
With a lift of his chin Vlora gestured toward the boy, and instantly “Laugher” plucked a knife from his pocket, unclasped it, and sliced off the screaming boy’s little finger, lazily tossing it onto the table in front of the Prisoner. 
 
It landed by the basket of fruit. 
 
The Interrogator glared at his son with fury. “Damn you!” he flung at him, seething. “Damn you!” 
 
Against his orders that the finger be cut from the boy’s numb hand, Vlora’s son had cut the finger from the hand that had feeling. Vlora turned and strode angrily out of the chamber, fleetingly assailed, as he was from time to time, by a stabbing flash of doubt that surcease from pain for thousands could ever be purchased with the torment of one. Vlora’s habit was to bludgeon and strangle such thoughts. This time he did not. 
 
What happened after that would be carefully analyzed but never quite understood; after all, the incontestable facts were so few: As he exited, Vlora had been hastily saluted by the two armed guards who were posted at the door. From there he had proceeded directly to his office, passing many other guards in the halls along the way. 
 
But after thirty-seven minutes Vlora suddenly decided to terminate Tsu’s experiment and, bursting from his office in search of a quarrel, he strode rapidly back to the questioning room. 

 
The two armed guards were not at their posts. 
 
Vlora found them inside, both of them stripped of their uniform and weapons. They were unconscious, concussed and drugged with hypnotics that had come from the doctor’s medical bag, while the old man himself, although not touched, had apparently suffered a fatal heart attack, and inasmuch as the boy was discovered alive, this meant that the number of those who had been killed totaled only four, not five as originally thought, and included a torturer who had died from a powerful blow with the heel of a hand that had instantaneously crushed his windpipe, and another whose spine had been broken by a single smash to the nape of his neck, while the back of Tsu’s skull had cracked wide open from the force of his body being slammed against a wall. 
 
The other torturer, “Laugher,” Vlora’s son, greeted death without a noticeable change of expression except for his eyes, in which frozen forever was a faint odd glimmer of something that no one could properly identify, but more than anything resembled surprise. 
 
His neck had been broken. 
 
The two guards who survived could tell their questioners little. On hearing a “scratching sound” on the door, one said, he had entered the chamber alone, caught a glimpse of the Prisoner for “only a flash” before feeling his hands around his throat and being rendered immediately unconscious by “something, some pressure that he put on my nerves.” The other guard, who’d gone into the chamber moments later, related an identical encounter, as did four other guards on other floors. 
 
As to why the Prisoner had spared their lives, they could offer no opinion, nor could anyone else. There were searches, questionings, crime team reports, but in the end they illuminated nothing, and as night and whispers and paranoid terrors filled the mazes of The State Security Building, no heart there beat regularly. 
 
The Prisoner had escaped. 
 
Three days later, on the evening of Sunday, 17 May, and beginning at precisely forty minutes after sundown, seven young men came together in a straw-strewn barn in the high craggy village of Domni, just as they had gathered every Sunday before at precisely this time for hopeless months. 
 
Rough-hewn peasants in their early twenties, they spoke little and in guarded whispers lest the dreaded Sigurimi discover their presence. 
 
When they first began to meet they were excited by their mission, at their breath-holding peril in these secret watches, but the hammer of time had blunted their edge and they felt only tedium now, the grip of habit, as they huddled in darkness on the earthen barn floor and waited for a man who never came. “And so what do you think?” The husky whisper pierced the silence. 
 
“Do you think he’s been captured?” continued the speaker, a brawny smith from the village of Drishti. “Is he dead?” 
 
“I am happy to find you all well.” 
 
The men were startled. The voice was unfamiliar. Not one of theirs. They scrambled to their feet with sudden fear. This someone in the darkness, this stranger: Who was he? Where had he come from? They had seen and heard nothing: No creak of a door. No movement. No step. 
 
The young smith from Drishti recovered his poise. “God may have brought you here,” he ventured in a quietly probing, hopeful voice. 

He felt the pulsing of a vein in his temple as he added the words that could trigger The Password: “Tell us, did you come by the road less traveled?”


The Prisoner stepped forward and uttered the countersign: “‘All of creation waits with longing.’ ” 
 
The smith took in a quick little breath of realization. “The Bishop! It’s you! You have come!” 
 
The next moment the young men were kneeling all in a row on the earthen barn floor with their heads bowed down while the Prisoner moved swiftly and silently forward and, cupping his hands atop the head of the smith, began to recite with urgent speed a Catholic formula of prayer: “‘We ask you, All-Powerful Father . . .” he began.


The ritual completed in less than a minute, the Prisoner moved to the next of the men, laying on his hands and repeating the prayer until, by the end of the seventh repetition, his rich, firm voice had begun to quaver and his hands, lacking fingernails, to tremble, as he sank to his knees and wept convulsively while the newly made priests looked on. 
 
Standing, breathing above his desk in the haunted darkness of his office, Vlora inhaled the ghosts of flowers, withered and dry and dead in their glass; heard the crisp, rough click of the metal switch as he turned on the crooknecked khaki lamp and held under its beam the puzzling object, the mysterious token, whole and unmarked, found crammed into the mouth of his murdered son. It was a golden-skinned apricot. 
 
“Dimiter,” Vlora murmured numbly. It was the name of the agent from Hell. Would the code of the bessa take him even that far? 


The Prisoner stepped forward and uttered the countersign: “‘All of creation waits with longing.’ ” 

The smith took in a quick little breath of realization. “The Bishop! It’s you! You have come!”