The Train to Lo Wu - Jess Row [63]
Curt stepped out of the car and stared over William’s shoulder at me. He was tall, dressed in a tan leather coat, and his eyes were the palest blue I’d ever seen, like a cat’s eyes. I squeezed my arms tight around my chest; my ribs felt ready to crack.
This is Mr. Loo, William said. He’s going to get me a little loan. I’ll have it for Ronnie tomorrow. I swear.
That true?
I swallowed hard; my mouth tasted as if it were coated with dirt. I looked at Curt’s face, and his hands hanging open at his sides, and I thought, he’ll know. He’ll know if you’re lying. I shook my head slowly.
Get in the car, Curt said to William.
What? Why? I just said I was—
Curt grabbed William’s wrist and bent his arm back, took his shirt by the collar, and swung him around, banging him against the side of the car. William turned his head and stared at me. Call the police! he shouted. Call the police! The rear door swung open, as if by magic, and Curt pushed him inside and slammed it. Then he turned to me, and took out his wallet. Charlie, he said. Hey. Charlie. Here’s fifty bucks. He threw the bills in front of him, and they scattered on the sidewalk like loose napkins, bits of trash. Everything’s OK, he said. Get down on the ground. Don’t look up. Please. You understand me?
I understand, I said.
Then get down there. And count to a hundred.
I did what he said. I pressed my face to the sidewalk until the car rounded the corner, and then raised my head. There were no shouts, no sirens; only the echo of my own breathing. I stood up slowly, leaning forward, my hands on my knees. After a minute I broke into a run. I unlocked my bicycle and pedaled furiously away, taking a long, circling route. When I finally reached the Lucky Dragon I left the bicycle and chain at the back door.
I am a teacher of philosophy. My gods, if I have gods, are ancient, dry-lipped men, who stay awake in the small hours worrying over the substitution of one word for another. Yi, for example, which means righteousness. Ren, which means benevolence: the love of a father for his children, the love of one man for all men. I speak of these things in my seminars, and often my young students, who are the same age that I was in 1982, say, there are no exceptions. Kant was right. Mencius was right. I look at them and I think of myself lying in bed in the International House that night, rolling over and over, the sheet coiled around me like a rope. There was a telephone next to my bed, and a white sticker on the side that said EMERGENCY CALL 911. I could see William’s face, twisted in pain, and then I thought of my father, and how the police nearly beat him to death in 1968, when he dared to report the murder of his friend. I think of these things, and I look at my students and say, No. It’s not our job to decide.
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says, In some cases there is no praise, but there is pardon, whenever someone does a wrong actionbecause of conditions that no one would endure. Sometimes I take great comfort from this. Not because I feel guilty for saving my own life. No, because I know there are people who would say that William deserved to suffer, and that I was brave, like an action hero. Even my own daughters, I think, would look at me with new admiration: as if I were like Schwarzenegger, who always rolls away from the cliff, or turns so that the knife strikes the other man instead. This is why I like the word pardon. A pardon is a little space, an opening, where the world stands back and leaves you alone. It is the door I walk through every day when I open my eyes.
Here is my problem, again: I understand perfectly. But a pardon isn’t an explanation; it isn’t something to pass on to your children. A pardon is the opposite of a story.
The CD is finished: its fourth repetition. The sun pours through my windows, and the water of the harbor has turned a bright blue-green, the color of laundry soap. It strikes me, now, how foolish I am to think this way. Another man would be able to say, this is what I’ve learned from my life. And he