Koko

3

The night before he flew to Singapore, Michael dreamed that he was walking at night along a mountain trail toward a group of uniformed men sitting around a small fire. When he gets nearer, he sees that they are ghosts, not men – flames show dimly through the bodies in front of the fire. The ghosts turn to watch him approach. Their uniforms are ragged and stiff with dirt. In his dream Michael simply assumes that he had served with these men. Then one of the ghosts, Melvin O. Elvan, stands and steps forward. Don’t mess with Underhill, Elvan says. The world is full of hurt.

On the same night, Tina Pumo dreams that he is lying on his bed while Maggie Lah paces around the bedroom. (In real life, Maggie disappeared again as soon as his face had begun to heal.) You can’t win a catastrophe, Maggie says. You just have to try to keep your head above water. Consider the elephant, his grace and gravity, his innate nobility. Burn down the restaurant and start over.

11 Koko

The shutters of the bungalow were closed against the heat. A film of condensation lay over the pink stucco walls, and the air in the room was warm, moist, and pink dark. There was a strong, dark brown smell of excrement. The man in the first of the two heavy chairs now and then grunted and stirred, or pushed his arms against the ropes. The woman did not move, because the woman was dead. Koko was invisible, but the man followed him with his eyes. When you knew you were going to die, you could see the invisible.

If you were in a village, say –

If the smoke from the cookfire wavered and rose straight into the air again. If the chicken lifted one foot and froze. If the sow cocked her head. If you saw these things. If you saw a leaf shaking, if you saw dust hovering –

Then you might see the vein jumping in Koko’s neck. You might see Koko leaning against a hootch, the vein jumping in his neck.

This is one thing Koko knew: there are always empty places. In cities where people sleep on the pavement, in cities so crowded people take shifts in bed, cities so crowded no one single person is ever truly quiet. In these cities especially there are always hollow realms, eternal places, places forgotten. Rich people leave the empty places behind, or the city itself leaves them behind.

The rich people move everything out and forget, and at night eternity quietly breaks in with Koko.

His father had been sitting in one of the two heavy chairs the rich people had left behind. We use everything, his father said. We waste no part of the animal.

We do not waste the chairs.

There was one memory he had seen in the cave, and in memory no part of the animal is wasted.

This is one thing Koko knew: they thought the chairs weren’t good enough for them. Wherever they went had better chairs.

The woman didn’t count, Roberto Ortiz had just brought her along. There weren’t even enough cards for the ones that counted, much less the ones they brought along. When they answered the letters they were supposed to come alone, but the ones like Roberto Ortiz thought where they were going was nothing, who they were going to see was nobody, and it would all be over in ten minutes…They never thought about the cards, no one had leaned over them at night and said: We waste no part of the animal. The woman was half-Indian, half-Chinese, something like that, maybe just a Eurasian, someone Roberto Ortiz had picked up, someone Roberto Ortiz was planning to fuck the way Pumo the Puma fucked the whore Dawn Cucchio in Sydney, Australia, just someone dead in a chair, just someone who wouldn’t even get a card.

In his right jacket pocket he had all five Rearing Elephant cards, all the regimental cards he had left, with the names written lightly, penciled lightly, on four of them. Beevers, Poole, Pumo, Linklater. These were for when he went to America.

In his left jacket pocket he had an ordinary pack of Orchid Boy playing cards, made in Taiwan.

When he had opened the door wearing the big Tim Underhill smile, the hey baby how’s it shakin’ smile, and seen the woman standing next to Roberto Ortiz wearing her own hello don’t mind me! smile, he had understood why there were two chairs.

In the cave there had been no chairs, no chairs for the lords of the earth. The cave made Koko shake, his father and the devil made him shake.

‘Of course it’s okay,’ he had said. ‘There’s not much here, but you have a chair apiece, so come in and sit you down, sit you down, don’t mind that the place is so bare, we’re making changes all the time, I don’t actually work here…’

Oh, I pray here.

But they took the chairs anyhow. Yes, Mr Roberto Ortiz had brought all his documentation, he brought it out, smiling, just beginning to look curious, beginning to notice the dust. The emptiness.

When Koko took the documents from the man’s hand, he switched on the invisibility switch.

It was the same letter for all of them.

Dear (name),

I have decided that it is no longer possible for me to remain silent about the truth of the events which occurred in the I Corps village of Ia Thuc in 1968. Justice must finally be done. You will understand that I myself cannot be the one to bring the truth of these events to the world’s eyes and ears. I was a participant in them, and have besides turned my horror at these events to account in works of fiction. As a representative, past or present, of the world press, as one who visited the scene of a great unknown crime and saw it at first-hand, would you care to discuss this matter further? I myself have no interest whatever in the profits that might be made from publishing the true story of Ia Thuc. You may write to me at (address) if you are interested in coming East to pursue this matter. I ask only, for reasons of my own security, that you refrain from discussing this matter with, or even mentioning it to, anyone until we have had an initial meeting, that you make no notes or diary entries pertaining to myself or Ia Thuc until we meet, and that you come to our first meeting with the following proofs of identity: a) passport, and b) copies of all stories and articles you wrote or to which you contributed, concerning the American action in the I Corps village of Ia Thuc. In my opinion, you will find our meeting more than worth-while.

Yours sincerely,

Timothy Underhill

Koko liked Roberto Ortiz. He liked him very much. I thought I could just show you my passports and drop off my material, he said, Miss Balandran and I had planned to see Lola, it’s getting late for a meeting now, Miss Balandran particularly wanted me to see Lola, it’s a form of entertainment well known in this city, could you come around to my hotel tomorrow for lunch, you’ll have time to look over the material in the file…

Do you know Lola?

No.

Koko liked his smooth olive skin, his glossy hair, and his confident smile. He had the whitest shirt, the glossiest tie, the bluest blazer. He had Miss Balandran, who had long golden legs and dimples and knew about the local culture. He had been going to drop something off and arrange a meeting on his own ground, as the Frenchmen had done.

But the Frenchmen only had each other, they did not have Miss Balandran smiling so prettily, urging him so quietly, so sexily, to agree.

‘Of course,’ Koko said, ‘you must do as your beautiful escort says, you must see all the sights, just stop in for a second, have a drink and let me take an initial look at what you’ve brought…’

Roberto Ortiz never noticed that Miss Balandran flushed when Koko said ‘escort.’

Two passports?

They were sitting in the chairs, smiling up at him with such confidence, such assurance, their clothes so beautiful and their manners so good, knowing that in minutes they would be on their way to the nightclub, to their dinner and their drinks, their pleasures.

‘Dual citizenship,’ Ortiz said, glancing slyly at Miss Balandran. ‘I am Honduran as well as American. You’ll see all the Spanish-language publications in the file, besides the ones you’re familiar with.’

‘Very interesting,’ Koko said. ‘Very interesting, indeed. I’ll just be back in a moment with your drinks, and we can toast the success of our venture as well as your night out on the town.’

He went behind the chairs into the kitchen and turned the cold tap on and off, banged a cabinet closed.

‘I wanted to say how much I’ve enjoyed your books,’ Roberto Ortiz called from the living room.

On the counter beside the sink were a hammer, a cleaver, an automatic pistol, a new roll of strapping tape, and a small brown paper bag. Koko picked up the hammer and the pistol.

‘I think The Divided Man is my favorite,’ Roberto Ortiz called out.

Koko put the pistol in his coat pocket and hefted the hammer. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

They were just sitting in the chairs, looking forward. He came gliding out of the kitchen and he was invisible, he made no noise. They were just waiting for their drinks. He came up behind Roberto Ortiz and he raised his arm and Miss Balandran didn’t even know he was there until she heard the squashy sound of the hammer hitting Roberto Ortiz’s head.

‘Quiet,’ he said. Roberto Ortiz collapsed into himself, unconscious but not dead. A snail trail of blood crawled out of his nose.

Koko dropped the hammer and quickly moved between the chairs.

Miss Balandran gripped the arms of her chair and stared at him with dinner plate eyes.

‘You’re pretty,’ Koko said, and took the pistol from his pocket and shot her in the stomach.

Pain and fear took people in different directions. Anything having to do with eternity made them show you their real selves. No part of the animal was wasted. Remembrance, the whole thing they had been, just sort of took over. Koko figured the girl would get up and come for him, move a couple of steps before she realized half her guts were still back in the chair. She looked like one hell of a fighter, like a scrapper. But she couldn’t even get out of the chair – it never even crossed her mind to get out of the chair. It took her a long time even to move her hands off the arms of the chair, and then she didn’t want to look down. She shit herself, like Lieutenant Beans Beevers, down in Dragon Valley. Her feet went out, and she started shaking her head. She looked about five years old all of a sudden.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Koko said, and shot her in the chest. The noise hurt his ears – it really bounced off those stucco walls. The girl had sort of melted back into the chair, and Koko had the feeling that the sound killed her before the second bullet did.

‘All I got is one rope,’ Koko said. ‘See?’

He got down on his knees and put his arms between Roberto Ortiz’s twisted-up feet to pull the rope out from under the chair.

Roberto Ortiz didn’t as much as groan the whole time Koko was tying him up. When the rope tightened over his chest and clamped his arms, he pushed out a little air that smelled like mouthwash. A red knot the size of a baseball had flowered on the side of his head, and a trickle of blood matted the hair behind the knot in a way that reminded Koko of a road on a map.

From the shelf in the kitchen he fetched the cleaver, the roll of strapping tape, and the brown paper bag. Koko tossed the cleaver on the floor and took a new washcloth out of the bag. He pinched Roberto Ortiz’s nose between his forefinger and thumb, pulled up, and stuffed the washcloth into Ortiz’s mouth. Then he peeled off a length of the tape and wound it three times around the bottom half of Ortiz’s face, sealing in the washcloth.

Koko took both sets of cards out of his pockets and sat cross-legged on the floor. He placed the cards beside him and rested the handle of the cleaver on his thigh. He watched Ortiz’s eyes, waiting for him to wake up.

If you thought there were good parts, if you were a person who thought about the good parts, this was the good part now, coming up.

Ortiz had webby little wrinkles next to his eyes, and they looked dirty, full of dirt, because his skin was that olive color. He had just washed his hair, and it was thick and shiny black, with the sort of waves in it that looked like real waves, one after the other. You thought he was handsome, until you noticed his boxer’s dented little blob of a nose.

Ortiz finally opened his eyes. Give him this much, he got the whole situation right away and tried to jump forward. The ropes caught him short before he even got started, and he wrestled with them for a second before he got that too. He just gave up, sat back and looked from side to side – tried to take everything in. He stopped when he saw Miss Balandran melted into her chair and he really looked at her and then he looked straight at Koko and tried to get out of the chair again but kept on staring at Koko when he realized he couldn’t.

‘Here you are with me, Roberto Ortiz,’ Koko said. He picked up the regimental cards and held the good old Rearing Elephant out toward Ortiz. ‘Recognize this emblem?’

Ortiz shook his head, and Koko could see pain floating in his eyes.

‘You have to tell me the truth about everything,’ Koko said. ‘Don’t go out on a lie, try to remember everything, don’t waste pieces of your own brain. Come on, look at it.’

He saw how Roberto Ortiz was concentrating. The awakening of some little cell way back in his head flared in his eyes.

‘I thought you’d remember,’ Koko said. ‘You showed up with the rest of the hyenas, you must have seen it somewhere. You walked all around, you probably worried about getting your spit-shine boots all dirty – you were there, Roberto. I asked you here because I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to ask you some important questions.’

Roberto Ortiz groaned through the washcloth and tape. He issued a plea with his big soft brown eyes.

‘You won’t have to talk. Just nod your head.’

If you saw a leaf shaking.

If the chicken froze on one foot.

If you saw these things, no part of the animal was wasted.

‘The Elephant stands for the 24th Infantry, right?’

Ortiz nodded.

‘And would you agree that the elephant embodies these traits – nobility, grace, gravity, patience, perseverance, power and reserve in times of peace, power and wrath in times of war?’

Ortiz looked confused, but nodded.

‘And in your opinion, did an atrocity take place in the I Corps village of Ia Thuc?’

Ortiz hesitated, then nodded again.

Koko was not in a darkened room in a pink stucco bungalow on the fringe of a tropical city, but on a frozen tundra under a sky of high hard blue. A constant wind skirled and rippled the thin layer of snow over a layer of ice hundreds of yards deep. Far off to the west sat a range of glaciers like broken teeth. God’s hand hung hugely in the air, pointing at him.

Koko jumped up and rapped the butt of his pistol against the knot on Ortiz’s head. Just like a cartoon, Ortiz’s eyes floated up into his head. His whole body went loose. Koko sat down and waited for him to wake up again.

When Ortiz’s eyelids fluttered, Koko slapped him hard, and Ortiz jerked his head up and stared wildly at him, all attention again.

‘Wrong answer,’ Koko said. ‘Even the court-martials, unfair as they were, couldn’t say there was any atrocity. It was an act of God. A literal act of God. Do you know what that means?’

Ortiz shook his head. The pupils of his eyes looked blurry.

‘It doesn’t matter. I want to see if you remember certain names. Do you remember the name Tina Pumo, Pumo the Puma?’

Ortiz shook his head.

‘Michael Poole?’

Ortiz wearily shook his head again.

‘Conor Linklater?’

Another shake of the head.

‘Harry Beevers?’

Ortiz lifted his head, remembering, and nodded.

‘Yes. He talked to you, didn’t he? And he was pleased with himself. “Children can kill,” he said, didn’t he? “It doesn’t matter what you do to a killer.” And “The Elephant takes care of its own.” He said that, “The Elephant takes care of its own.” Right?’

Ortiz nodded.

‘You sure you don’t remember Tina Pumo?’

Ortiz shook his head.

‘You’re so fucking dumb, Roberto. You remember Harry Beevers, but you forget everybody else. All these people I have to find, have to track down…unless they come to me. Big joke! What do you think I should do after I find them?’

Ortiz cocked his head.

‘I mean, do you think I should talk to them? These people were my brothers. I could step outside of all this shit, I could say, I cleaned up my share of the cesspool, now it’s someone else’s turn, I could say that, I could start all over, let it be someone else’s responsibility. What’s your best opinion on that, Roberto Ortiz?’

Roberto Ortiz communicated by means of mental telepathy that Koko should now let it be someone else’s responsibility to clean up the cesspool.

‘It’s not that easy, Roberto. Poole was married when we were over there, for God’s sake! Don’t you think he told his wife about what happened? Pumo had Dawn Cucchio, don’t you think he has another girlfriend, or a wife, or both, right now? Lieutenant Beevers used to write to a woman named Pat Caldwell! You see how it never stops? That’s what eternity means, Roberto! It means Koko has to go on and on, cleaning up the world…making sure no part is wasted, that what travels from one ear to another ear is rooted out, nothing left over, nothing wasted…’

For a second he actually saw red – a vast sheet of blood washing over everything, carrying everything with it, houses and cows and the engines of trains, washing everything clean.

‘You know why I wanted you to bring copies of your articles?’

Ortiz shook his head.

Koko smiled. He reached out and picked the thick file of articles off the floor and opened it on his lap. ‘Here’s a good headline, Roberto. DID THIRTY CHILDREN DIE? I mean, is that yellow journalism, or what? You can really be proud of yourself Roberto. It’s right up there with BIGFOOT DEVOURS TIBETAN BABY. What’s your answer, anyhow? Did thirty children die?’

Ortiz did not move.

‘It’s cool if you don’t want to say. Satanic beings come in many forms, Roberto, in many, many forms.’ As he spoke, Koko took a pack of matches from his pocket and set the file alight. He fanned it in the air to keep the fire alive.

When the flames neared his fingers, Koko dropped the burning papers and kicked them apart. The small flames left greasy black scorches on the wooden floor.

‘I always liked the smell of fire,’ Koko said. ‘I always liked the smell of gunpowder. I always liked the smell of blood. They’re clean smells, you know?’

I always liked the smell of gunpowder.

I always liked the smell of blood.

He smiled at the little flames guttering out on the floor. ‘I like how you can even smell the dust burning.’ He turned his smile to Ortiz. ‘I wish my work was done. But at least I’ll have two pretty passports to use. And maybe when I’m done in the States, I’ll go to Honduras. That makes a lot of sense, I think. Maybe I’ll go there after I check out all these people I have to check out.’ He closed his eyes and rocked back and forth on the floor. ‘Work never leaves you alone, does it?’ He stopped rocking. ‘Would you like me to untie you now?’

Ortiz looked at him carefully, then nodded very slowly.

‘You’re so stupid,’ Koko said. He shook his head, smiling sadly, took up the automatic pistol, and pointed it at the middle of Roberto Ortiz’s chest. He looked directly into Ortiz’s eyes, then shook his head again, still smiling sadly, braced his wrist with his left hand, and fired.

Then he watched Roberto Ortiz die fighting and twitching and struggling to speak. Blood darkened the pretty blazer, ruined the pretty shirt and the luxurious necktie.

Eternity, jealous and alert, watched with Koko.

When it was done, Koko wrote his name on one of the Orchid Boy playing cards, grasped the cleaver, and pushed himself up off the floor to do the messy part of the job.