THE SUPERFLUOUS ONES

      

Prologue

"Out of life's school of war. — What does not destroy me makes me stronger ."                                                   —Friedrich Nietzsche

It happened on an exceptionally hot day in the middle of Summer.  I was not there to see it, but I remember the blistering heat very well.  Even at eight in the morning, when I had gone out to get the paper, the weather had been very warm for that early in the morning.  It would be blistering by noon.

Hot weather always brings a sense of foreboding to my mind.  I am convinced that nothing good can ever happen in the heat; that torrid days bring out the worst in people, making them even more petulant, lazy, and irresponsible than usual.  Yet for all my superstitious premonitions, nothing could have prepared us for what actually did happen.  Oh, to be sure, we all felt a dim sense of dread, what with all the meddling by the authorities and the blistering callousness and single-minded vengefulness of Detective Ensign. And, of course, all those rumors about corruption in the county Sheriff's department only increased our anxiety.

Still, it came as an immense shock to us all.  We had never expected it.  Nor could we quite believe it when it happened.  It seemed impalpable and unreal, like a bad dream upon waking.  And the oppressive heat only added to this feeling if impalpability, intensifying its dreamlike quality, eerie and oddly disturbing.  It induced a kind of stupor that made everything seem distant, as if one's senses had been muffled by fogged glass.  You felt as if you were half-asleep but could not rouse yourself, despite the glaring daylight which assaulted your eyes and the shouting and slamming of doors in the apartment below which racked your ears. 

Some mornings it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that your arousal from sleep has been a dreadful mistake and that you would have been better off if you had never woken at all.  That was how I felt on the morning in question.  My life appeared to me as one long and terrible mistake, full of misery and despair.  Only when sleeping had I ever been happy.  Awake, I had drawn my breath in pain.

That morning has been indelibly etched upon my memory ever since.  Unlike most memories which exist mummified in some wispy bloodless abstraction, this one retains its living warmth and cold horror.  I merely have to recall it to experience it; nor is it as a pale memory that it invades my sentience, but as a living reality, vivid and overwhelming.  I perceive the recollection of that morning's oppressive heat, not simply as an idea in my head, but as a sensation throughout my entire body.  Even the event itself, though I had not been there to see it, becomes real to me.  I can hear the manic chirping of the birds outside the house, feel the isolation of the street and the sinister atmosphere of withdrawal which prevailed along the entire sloping avenue — as if everyone in the neighborhood knew in the depths of their souls the outrage that was about to take place and because of the shame of it had hidden themselves deep in their houses behind shut drapes and closed blinds.  Despite the revelry of the birds, the whole street seemed shrouded in a thick cloak of silence.  The air just sat there, frozen into abject stillness by the heat.  Not a leaf stirred in the breathless atmosphere.  Even the occasional spider web stretched from limb to limb remained as rigid as an icicle. 

And then, out of depths of the oppressive tranquility, one hears the distant grinding of an old car.  Down at the bottom of the long, sloping street one can see, through the vision-distorting waves of heat rising from the blackish-gray asphalt, a thoroughly archaic station wagon with disfigured bumpers and bare wheels, clothed merely in faded red paint peeling off its rust-eaten sides like so much sun-burnt skin.  Clumsily, it navigates the corner and commences its slow, painful climb up the rising asphalt, gasping and coughing and sputtering at the treacherous incline as it passes thirsty lawns and gaping concrete driveways whitewashed by the sun's fiery brilliance and bulky two-story houses covered with dry flammable shingles and sided with paper walls smeared with beige stucco trimmed in brick.  Towards the end of the street, the panting senile vehicle, slowing to a crawl, pulls into one of the driveways and rattles and retches itself into silence.  The door of the car creaking open, out of the vehicle emerges the striking figure of a young man tall in stature and athletic in build, with shining blue eyes, blonde hair streaked with gold, a high broad forehead with charismatic eyebrows, and a handsomely congenial and winsome face.  Nor is it merely the handsomeness of the face which is striking, but its expression as well.  There is defiance in his bearing, and also a mellow sort of confidence so at ease with itself that it feels no need to attract attention, but merely basks in its own good-natured self-complacency.  And above and beyond all this, both including and summing it up, is the unmistakable aura of naturalness in thought and expression and deed which radiates from his entire body like the sun radiates light.  Every muscle in his face, every motion of his body, attests to it.  There is even something a little solipsistic about it.  Looking upon him, you would almost conclude that he did not believe anyone but himself existed.  It was unsettling, this naturalness of his.  It was even, in a way, unnatural. It made him seem so unworldly and larger than life — and so out of place in an age which simply will not tolerate any manifestation of genuine, unaffected superiority. 

I know for a fact that he was especially cheerful that morning.  An enormous burden had been lifted from his heart — or so he thought.  Slamming the door of his car with a boisterous flourish, he walked across the driveway to the concrete walk leading into a vegetation choked courtyard.  A mellow smile and dreamy eyes indicate that his thoughts are elsewhere — and happily so.  Reaching the front door, he pauses momentarily to fill his lungs with the hot morning air.  Then he presses the latch on the door and leans forward.

Two men and a sheriff's deputy stood by the dining room table just to the left of the tile entryway.  He recognized the two men at a glance.  The first is Detective Sergeant Gerald Ensign, a middle-aged man of hefty, almost corpulent build who sported a reddish blonde walrus mustache upon his pasty, somewhat-dissipated face.  Despite the largeness of his features, his eyes are very small and beady and somehow strangely unreal and lusterless, as if made of glass.  His face appears particularly dyspeptic  this morning.  The pains of unknown and countless ailments, of various physical and perhaps even spiritual irritations, twist and ravage his face into all manners of grotesqueries.  A man of an imaginative temper might have seen a gargoyle or some other hideous monster in the otherwise drab and listless countenance.  The fellow certainly had the aura of psychopath about him.  Like an imaginary friend, it hung around his neck and whispered poison into his ear.  Alex, far more down to earth, saw only a feckless and impotent hatred animated by the pathological desire, so typical of men of Ensign's stamp, to humiliate and exalt over his betters.  The second man, Ensign's partner, Darren Cox, was a much younger man, slim and handsome but shifty-eyed and diffident in manner, as if embarrassed to be found in such horrid company.  As soon as Alex entered the house, Cox had hastily turned away, pretending to be preoccupied with the tacky chandelier made of imitation candles which hung over the dining room table. 

Alex could hardly have been pleased to find these two men, both of whom he despised, accompanied by a sheriff's deputy, waiting for him.  Yet he was in such a good mood, that he greeted them politely and even tried to joke with them lightheartedly.  A stand-up routine at a funeral could not have been more misplaced.  Alex realized in a flash that he had walked into something very serious.  A flash of terror passed through his heart.  So this is what things had come to.  They had come for him — just as they had warned him they would.  He had not believed them.  Well, let them do their worse.  He would not give them the satisfaction of seeing him laid low by their injustice.

One thing about Alex: whatever anxieties, fears, forebodings he felt within, he was complete master of his outward demeanor.  He had to extraordinary degree that power of not minding things that would have laid the rest of us utterly prostrate.  With him, it was a matter of pride, a matter of not showing your weakness to those who wished to lay you low.

"So what is this all about?" he asked with an almost offensive sang froid.  "Another round of twenty questions, or" — and here he glanced at the sheriff's deputy — "is it time for a bit of the rubber hose treatment."

Ensign started to speak, but he uttered not a syllable.  It was as if the words had struck in his throat.  For a brief second, a look of anger flashed across his face and he aggressively tried to retch out the frog which had seized his throat.  Even then, he could hardly force more than a hoarse whisper out of his mouth.

"We're here to wipe that sly grin off your face," he said at last.  He had tried to adopt a somewhat jocular or sardonic tone, but instead he sounded merely bitter and even a tad shrill.  "I've got a warrant here for your arrest.  We're taking you in, Alex.  The fun and games are over."

"We're here to take you in," he murmured to Alex.  And once more clearing his throat, he added,  "You are to come with us."

Alex had already known that this was coming.  He had known from the moment he entered the house.  But Ensign's affirmation of the fact filled him with a cold chill of terror.  He wanted to respond with carefree jest, but the words choked in his throat.  All he could muster was a few perfunctory words.

"Fine, let's do it," he said.

This was his lowest moment during the entire ordeal, perhaps the lowest moment in his life. But it was only a moment.  Within ten, fifteen seconds, he had gained control of himself again.  The jocular tone was gone.  The sly grin, as Ensign had boasted, had indeed been wiped from his face.  But Alex once again was in full command of himself.

"I suppose you'll want to cuff me." He held out his hands.

"No, from behind," ordered Ensign.

Alex shrugged. "Okay, very well."

The sheriff's deputy placed Alex's wrists in the handcuffs and thanked him for cooperating.  Cox seconded the deputy, adding: "It will make things easier for you."

"Oh, but I'm not thinking of myself," was Alex's reply.

They led Alex out the door.  Cox, before leaving the house, turned and looked up the flight of stairs to his right.  At the top of the stairs, leaning against the black rod-iron bannister with thick wood handrails, stood a young girl, about twenty years of age, with a slim enticing body and a face so lovely it made one's heartache just to look at it.  With a somewhat embarrassed air, thanked her for her cooperation and promised to call her when he got to the station.  "It's up to the lawyers now," he concluded.

She stared at him blankly, as mute as a stone.  He nodded uneasily and closed the door behind him, leaving the house in a kind of warm, dusky gloom.  The young woman, Alex's sister, remained leaning against the bannister for some time, staring uncomprehendingly into the dusky space in front of her.  Soon the birds stopped their manic chirping.  The droning of air conditioners, sounding like so many bees buzzing in a deep bass voice, could be heard through the walls of the house.

After a while she shook herself from the stupor which had taken possession of her and, coming down the stairs, went into kitchen.  Shoving some strands of her shining blonde hair out of her face with a trembling swipe of her right hand, she grabbed the phone and dialed.

"Oh, thank God!" she gasped after a pause.  "You're there!"  And taking a deep breath that sounded like a cry, she added, "You won't believe what just happened."  Then breaking into tears, she announced in a single, tormented gush:  "They've just arrested Alex!  Oh God, I don't know what I'm going to do?"


NEXT: Chapter 1.