Which they all had to do. One day, working a camp food line and seeing a distraught refugee’s face out of the corner of his eye, he understood that eventually everyone was post-traumatic, or even still mid-trauma. These people he served had been variously beaten, shot at, bombed, driven out of their homes, seen people killed; all had made desperate journeys to get here, sleeping on the ground, hungry. Now they were in a new place where possibly new things could happen, different things, good things. It was a matter of being patient, of focusing on the people right in front of your face. Possibly they could get past their traumas, eventually. You had to talk to people.
Frank seldom talked to anyone, but sometimes he did, and then he found himself babbling a little. But asking questions too, and listening to what people said to him. No matter how bad their English was, it was always better than his attempts at their language. They used English like a hammer to get their meaning across, they banged in nails of meaning. Strangely articulate and expressive sentences often emerged from them. Sometimes they sounded like Defoe’s characters. The situation has become urgently urgent, someone said to him one day. I blue the sky! one little girl exclaimed.
The news often disturbed him. Heat waves, terrorist attacks. All the militaries of the world were focused on counter-terrorism. There weren’t any state-on-state clashes serious enough to distract the militaries from trying to discover and root out terrorists. But with limited success, it seemed. A hydra-headed foe, someone called it. And to Frank it seemed different than it had when he was a child, when terrorists were universally abhorred. Now it felt different. Many attacks now were on carbon burners, especially those rich enough to burn it conspicuously. Car races and private jets. Yachts and container ships. So now the terrorists involved were perhaps saboteurs, or even resistance warriors, fighting for the Earth itself. Gaia’s Shock Troops, Children of Kali, Defenders of Mother Earth, Earth First, and so on. People read about their violent acts and the frequent resulting deaths, and shrugged. What did people expect? Who owned private jets anymore? There were blimps now that flew carbon negative, as the solar panels on their top sides collected more electricity than needed for the flight, so that they could microwave it down to receivers they passed over. Air travel could now also be power generation— so, a jet? No. If a few people got killed for flying, no one felt much sympathy. Fools conspicuously burning carbon, killed from out of the sky somehow? So what. Death from the sky had been the American way ever since Clinton and Bush and Obama, which was to say ever since it became technologically feasible. People were angry, people were scared. People were not fastidious. The world was trembling on the brink, something had to be done. The state monopoly on violence had probably been a good idea while it lasted, but no one could believe it would ever come back. Only in some better time. Meanwhile hunker down. Try to stay lucky. Don’t fly on private jets, or maybe any kind of jet. It was like eating beef; some things were just too dangerous to continue doing. When your veggie burger tasted just as good, while your beef package proclaimed Guaranteed Safe! with a liability waiver in small print at the bottom, you knew a different time had come.
One afternoon after he returned from the big camp in Winterthur, Mary Murphy came by. They crossed the street and sat down at a table in a café. Nice afternoon, still in the sun. Kafi fertig, its attractive little clash of bitternesses, clash of effects. This strange woman watching him. Life in prison not so bad. Indeed at the next table another pair of prisoners were sharing a spliff. The prison wardens approved of prisoners using cannabis, it kept them calmer. Wardens looked the other way even when it was smoked in the prison’s smoking yard, much less across the street. They were right about the calming effect, so it was just being sensible. And the Swiss were all about being sensible.
Frank said to Mary, “These attacks on carbon burners. There’s a lot of them now.”
“Yes.” She looked at her glass.
“Do you think some of them are done by your people?” he asked.
“No. We don’t do that kind of thing.”
She was never going to admit anything to him. She had no reason to. They had once or twice passed through certain elusive moments of closeness, starting even that very first night in her apartment, but now they seemed to have drifted apart and come to rest in something more distant, more formal. He didn’t know why she visited him anymore.
“Why do you visit me?” he asked.
“I like to see how you’re doing.” She paused, sipped her drink. “Also I like knowing where you are.”
“Ah yeah.”
“You seem calmer, but …”
“But what?”
“Not quite here. Not happy.”
He blew out a breath, a poof of dismissal. “I’m not.”
“It’s been a long time,” she said.
“Since when?”
“Since the bad things happened.”
He
