After the First Death (3 page)

Silence fell in the small room as Artkin completed his recitation. Miro looked out at the sleepy street below. Main Street. Hallowell, Massachusetts. United States of America. So far from his homeland. But we have no homeland, Artkin always said, and this was true. Still, Miro was gripped by a clutch of lonesomeness that was so intense his stomach lurched and he turned from the window. He wished this small cramped room that smelled of urine and grease and gun oil contained at least a television set. For diversion at moments like this, sudden moments when homesickness came without warning.

“We are forever homesick,” Artkin had once said in a rare moment of tenderness, “because our land does not exist anymore, gobbled up and occupied by others.”

“What is your name?”

“Miro.”

“No, your real name.”

“Miro Shantas.”

“No, not this name, not this fake name you have taken. But your real one.”

“I have not taken a fake name. My name is Miro Shantas.”

“Look, this is not an exercise. I am not testing you. I wish for you to say your real name.”

Miro slitted his eyes, studying Artkin, trying to determine if Artkin were really serious about his name or whether he was playing some kind of game. He had to admit that Artkin’s face was dark and intense, his eyes brooding; there was nothing playful in his attitude. Miro looked away, toward the jukebox where someone was studying the selections. The restaurant was small; barely a restaurant, more like a quick-lunch diner, a place for truck drivers, transients. Like us, Artkin said. We never stay, and where we linger even for a moment, we must never rest or let down.

Miro’s coffee was cold as he sipped it. He wished the fellow at the jukebox would slip in the coin and start the music. Something by the Bee Gees, maybe. Or Elvis.

“So,” Artkin said, patient, waiting, the most patient man in the world. “Tell me your real name.”

Miro decided to make his own test, play his own game, for once.

“But you know my real name,” Miro said.

“If I knew it, would I ask you to say it?” Artkin said.

“Yes,” Miro said.

“And why would I ask you something that I already know?”

“Because you are Artkin and anything is possible with you.”

Artkin did not really smile, but the angles of his face
altered. Something danced in his eyes, not anything resembling laughter but a lightness. He wondered how old Artkin was. Thirty? Forty? It was impossible to tell. Sometimes in the early morning, before dawn, waiting in a car somewhere—like that time in Philadelphia when they could not return to the room because of the police—Artkin’s flesh would look pale and gray, his eyes like burned-out lamps. He would look one hundred years old, a thousand. Other times, outlining one of his plans or waiting for that moment when action would begin, he seemed youthful, ageless, eyes lit up by an inner source. But these moments came and went swiftly. Most of the time, he was Artkin: emotionless, a machine capable of sudden startling deeds. Now, the light still danced in his eyes, and Miro realized that Artkin was enjoying himself. A rare moment.

“If you know me so well, then you must know that when I ask your real name, I expect you to tell me,” Artkin said. His hands were on the table—and what remained of his fingers. The middle fingers of his left hand were stubs of varying lengths, the result of a bomb that had detonated too soon. “It’s good you are right-handed,” Miro had said once, watching Artkin deftly manipulating a knife with his right hand. Artkin had replied: “I was left-handed.”

My real name, Miro thought now. He had not thought of his real name for such a long time that he had to dig back into his memory for it. Do not simply forget your name but bury it, the instructor had said. Bury it so that it never betrays you. Choose a name that is unlike your own or even the place of your origin. You must carry nothing with you that may betray you and that includes your name most of all.

Miro wondered: What is Artkin’s real name?

The waitress approached, a thin girl of eighteen or so with a terrible complexion, her face like the surface of the moon.

“Anything else?” she asked, pencil poised to total their check.

“That will be all, Myra,” Artkin said.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“I said, ‘That will be all, Myra.’ ”

“My name’s not Myra,” the girl said.

Artkin smiled at her. “Of course it isn’t,” he said. But his voice suggested the opposite, his voice and his smile. They hinted wickedly of deep secrets.

“Well, it isn’t,” she said. “My name’s Bonnie. And not a nickname either. I was baptized Bonnie although the priest didn’t like it because there’s no Saint Bonnie.”

“Please give us the check, Myra,” Artkin said, voice cold now, uninterested.

“I said my name’s not Myra,” she muttered as she totaled up the bill.

“Myra’s a nice name. It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Artkin said.

Her face reddened, accentuating the acne, the pimples and small scabs. Artkin could do that to people, intimidate them, draw them into conversations they did not want to be drawn into, force them into confrontations.

“Think about it, Myra. How old were you when you were baptized? Two weeks, two months? Do you remember being baptized with the name Bonnie? Of course not. It’s what people have told you. Have you ever seen your birth certificate? Not the thing they give you when you go to City Hall for a copy, but the original? The one that says your name is Myra. You’ve never seen it, have you? But that doesn’t mean it does not exist. You have never seen me before but I exist. I
have existed all this time. I might have been there when you were baptized. Myra.”

She stood there for a moment, the check in her hand, hesitant, doubtful, her eyes wary, and Miro knew that this was what Artkin had worked to do: create this split second of doubt and hesitation. He knew that he had reached his mark, drawn blood. Then the moment vanished. The girl flung the check on the table.

“You’re nuts,” she said, and turned away, shaking her head at all the strange people loose in the world.

Artkin looked at Miro. He smiled. As much of a smile as he ever allowed himself.

Miro leaned across the table toward him and almost upset his cup and saucer.

“My name,” he said, slowly and distinctly, “is Miro. Miro Shantas. My real and only name.”

Music burst from the jukebox, a song Miro didn’t recognize but it was loud and upbeat, disco, the kind of music Artkin despised.

Again Artkin’s face altered, and this time there was almost admiration in his eyes. “I salute you, Miro Shantas,” he said.

Artkin seldom gave praise. Miro felt a flush of warmth as he basked in that praise, content suddenly. He let himself be carried by the music.

The next morning, they waited in the brown and beige van at the intersection of Water Street and Vinton Avenue. The bus was late, but this did not disturb Artkin or Miro or the others. Artkin had studied the situation for weeks. He knew the bus schedule was erratic, depending on how long the bus had to wait at the home of each child. There was no central gathering point for the children; they were picked up individually at their homes. Some streaked out to the bus, others
dallied. They were young: all under six, babies, really. The bus took them to a day camp near a placid pond in Hallowell, where they frolicked and swam and did all the things children did, until late in the afternoon. There were sixteen children. Artkin said he was prepared to kill at least two of them. Perhaps more, depending.

Miro stood at the back of the van, watching the morning activity on Water Street. There was not much activity. A boy rode by on a bicycle trying to balance a fishing line across the handlebars. A dog sniffed at some bushes and then lifted his leg and urinated. Miro did not know what kind of dog or what kind of bushes. He watched the dog go off. He considered all the things he did not know, how his schooling had been intense and narrow, with no diversions, no time to identify flowers and bushes. Besides, the bushes and trees and other growths in his homeland—ah, but he had no homeland—were different. Just as the people were different. And the food. In the matter of food, Miro felt himself a traitor; he was enchanted by American food, hamburgers and hot dogs and potato chips. He watched the television commercials for McDonald’s and Burger King and others with pleasure. He told no one about these small pleasures. Anyway, who was there to tell?

Miro glanced at his watch: almost nine. They were waiting for the orange bus to pull up and then for a blond, plump child to dash from the house to the bus. The last child. Miro was impatient. He wanted to act. He thought how long he had waited for this moment, the long rehearsal that had been his entire life about to be over.

Artkin said: “They are always late. With children, you must play it loose and be patient.”

No one commented. Artkin was in the passenger seat;
actually there were no seats, they had been removed to provide room for the four of them plus the equipment. Stroll, the black, was in the driver’s position, hands loose on the steering wheel. He drove a car or any vehicle as if he were conducting a symphony. Miro had seen him careen through the streets of Brooklyn after the post office explosion as if he were on holiday, without a care in the world. He was usually silent and sullen and came alive only when there was driving to be done. The other man was Antibbe, heavy, middle-aged, at least forty. His grimace could be like thunder rumbling, his frown an earthquake. He lumbered through life like a freight car on the loose, shouldering his way through exits and entrances. He seldom spoke and when he did, his words came out in hoarse grunts.

Miro felt for the warmth of the weapon against his chest, inside the jacket. The morning was hot: late August, although Miro was frequently confused about the seasons; too many of them in one brief year, not like his homeland. Looking out the rear window, he saw a young girl walking on the sidewalk, her arms swinging at her sides, black hair sparkling, her full white blouse bright in the sun. American girls: he could not become accustomed to their blunt sexuality, the clinging jeans, the tight sweaters, the frankness of their faces holding few secrets. In his homeland, sexuality was implied, hinted at, not exactly concealed but delicately veiled. He had been in the United States for almost three years and was still both fascinated and repelled by so much of what he saw. So much that was brazen, hectic, loud, raw, and coarse. But then suddenly tender. Like Presley’s music. He wished Artkin allowed him to take his transistor on operations.

Miro watched the girl coming nearer, nearer, involved in her own affairs, late for works perhaps, her
blouse moving pleasantly in the sunshine, not knowing the effect her body had on people. A year ago, Artkin, noticing Miro’s discomfort in the presence of females, said: “I will obtain one for you.” Miro had replied angrily: “Don’t bother.” He did not want Artkin or anyone procuring a female for him. He was not like those people who gathered in theaters where girls and women danced without clothes. He hated Times Square in New York City, where everything was cheap and loud. He could wait. But, wait for what? The law of averages would settle the question; he knew that he would be dead before he reached twenty or twenty-one. His brother had died at seventeen, in the Detroit confrontation.

The girl passed by, went out of his sight, and Miro resisted touching himself. He turned red-faced from the window and touched his gun in consolation.

“The bus comes,” Artkin said.

Miro heard the slow screech of brakes as the bus stopped farther up the street. He craned his neck to look through the windshield and saw the orange vehicle a hundred yards away. He glanced at his watch. They would overtake the bus in seven minutes on a deserted stretch of road outside the town. In another twenty minutes, they would be at the bridge. Fifteen and seven were twenty-two. Allow three minutes for unexpected events. (Always allow, Artkin said repeatedly.) So, within twenty-five minutes, I will have killed my first man. A man will have died because of me.

But it turned out not to be a man.

When they boarded the bus, the driver sitting behind the wheel was a girl. Blond, slender, wearing a dazzling yellow jersey. Long hair like straw; no, not straw, honey, syrup.

Miro had followed Artkin to the bus after Stroll had overtaken the vehicle, pulled the van up in front of it, and forced the driver to come to a halt. Artkin, Antibbe, and Miro had scrambled out of the van while Stroll remained at the wheel. Antibbe easily forced the door open with a crowbar and returned to the van. Artkin and Miro had climbed aboard. The takeover was completed within seconds, with no outcry from the children or the girl driver. She regarded them in shocked silence, mouth agape, eyes wide with disbelief. Miro crouched down beside her to remain out of sight of anyone passing on the highway while Artkin passed down the aisle, greeting the children, calling to them—
Hello, there.… It’s a nice day.… Aren’t you a pretty little girl?… Do you like candy, chocolate?
—all the while watching for any passing vehicles. He cajoled the children, diverted them, a master of that kind of thing, a superb actor. Miro envied him as he remained beside the girl. For the first time she noticed the gun in Miro’s hand. Her face registered revulsion, as if she had observed something obscene. And then fright overcame her: stronger than fright. Terror. She had run the course Miro had so often seen. Shock then revulsion then terror.

Artkin returned to the front of the bus and picked up a brown grocery bag he had dropped on entering. The bag contained chocolate candy, wrapped in tinfoil.

“Candy for everybody—everybody loves candy,” he called out brightly. Miro touched Artkin’s arm. Artkin paused. Miro saw the pulse leap in Artkin’s throat; it was dangerous to touch Artkin.

Miro raised himself up. “I thought you said the driver was a man.” His voice was a whisper but harsher than he intended.

“You are not supposed to think,” Artkin said, spitting
the words, pulling away, going down the aisle, distributing the candy among eager hands. The candy had been treated with a tranquilizer, a drug strong enough to render the children docile and passive within a few minutes. How else, Artkin had said, can we keep a bus full of children quiet? There was plenty of chocolate, as well as lollipops dipped in the drug in spare bags in the van.