Tours of the Black Clock

126

THIS EVENING THE OLD man comes to my room on the way back from the tower. We went to the tower this afternoon together. The guards escorted us through the winding streets and over the bridges; it was a long walk that tired Z profoundly. At the top of the tower he wheezed the whole time. I convinced the authorities it was a good idea; as the momentous occasion nears, I want him worn down. After a five minute dose of the sea and sky, we started back and had to stop in an empty cafe so he could rest. He speaks sometimes but I don’t understand what he says. When he talks to the soldiers they don’t seem to understand either. Yes my Leader this, yes my Leader that, that’s all the soldiers say to him in return. He holds no majesty for them at all; the kind of hysteria he inspired thirty years ago, there’s none of that. On the way back, when we come to my room, I surprise myself and suggest to the guards that he rest there for an hour or two. I heard there’s going to be a broadcast tonight, it seems a good idea to have him see it. For the momentous occasion I want him to be good and full of himself. So we go into my room and I sit on the bed and set him on the chair where I write, because I don’t want him falling asleep on me. I close the door and wait for the guards to drift away, or maybe doze themselves; then I pull out the TV. I turn it on and wait for the broadcast; any minute I expect we’ll see his face and hear some reassembled speech he gave a long time ago. I hope to fill him with his own glory in the way the photos in his room fill him with glory, but he only sits staring at the TV mute and uncognizant. The broadcast comes on, the picture of him from very young days, when everyone thought he was quite impressive, quite the thing; and he begins to speak; and then it goes blank again. And then, out of nowhere as has happened before, there’s that man in the sea diver suit, except this time he isn’t just floating under the sea. This time he seems to be walking across the bottom of the sea; a strange vessel sits in the background. There, on the bottom of the sea, he plants an American flag. This is what your war’s come to, I say to the old man, armies claiming victory on the bottom of the sea. They’re out there right now, at this moment, on the bottom of the Adriatic, planting flags and little plaques. Z stares at the scene in stupefaction. I turn off the TV and hide it away, and the guards take him back to his room.