And I want you to stand down, he replied, as mildly as he could.
She frowned heavily, as did the four men with her. They looked like the demon faces on Kali’s necklace.
You don’t tell us what to do, she said. You’re like firangi now.
I am not, he said. You don’t know what I am. You know enough to ask to meet with me, I’ll give you that, but that’s all you know.
We see what’s happening. We brought you here to tell you to do more.
And I came when you asked, to tell you the time has come to change tactics. That’s a good thing, and it’s partly because of what you did. You were doing the needful, I know that.
We are still doing the needful, she said.
It’s a question of what’s needful now, he said.
We will decide that, she said.
He looked at each of them in turn. He felt how it could be more intimidating than anything one might say. It was almost like touching them; like an electric spark jumping the gap from mind to mind. A hard look; but he let them see him, too.
Listen, he told them. I understand you. I’ve helped you, I’ve helped work like yours all over the world. That’s why you asked me to meet with you. And it’s why I agreed to meet with you. I am putting myself in your hands here, to make you understand I am your ally. And to tell you that conditions have changed. Together we helped to change them. So now, if you keep killing the wicked ones, the criminals, now that all the worst of them are dead, then you become one of them.
The worst criminals are not dead, there are many more of them, she said fiercely.
They always find replacements, he said.
We do too.
I know that. I know your sacrifice.
Do you?
He stared at her. Again he shifted his stare one by one to the men with her. Faces to fear, faces to love. That burning desire.
He said slowly, This is Lakshmi’s city. I grew up here. I hope you know that. I grew up right here in this neighborhood, when it was far tougher than it is now.
You weren’t here in the heat wave, the woman said.
He stared at her, feeling a strain inside him that might break him apart. His whole life was cracking inside him. Trying to control that, he unsteadily said, I’ve done more to stop the next heat wave than anyone you have ever met. You’ve done your part, I’ve done mine. I was working for this neighborhood long before the heat wave struck, and I’ll keep doing that work for the rest of my life.
May you live ever so long, one of the men said.
That’s not the point, he said. My point is, I see things you can’t see from here, and I’m your ally, and I’m telling you, it’s time to change. The big criminals are dead or in jail, or in hiding and rendered powerless. So now if you keep killing, it’s just to kill. Even Kali didn’t kill just to kill, and certainly no human should. Children of Kali should listen to their mother.
We listen to her, but not you.
He said, I am Kali.
Suddenly he felt the enormous weight of that, the truth of it. They stared at him and saw it crushing him. The War for the Earth had lasted years, his hands were bloody to the elbows. For a moment he couldn’t speak; and there was nothing more to say.
79
The time approached when Frank was to be released from prison. Term served. It was hard to grasp, he didn’t know what to think of it. Years had passed but he wasn’t sure how. Part of him was still stuck outside himself, beyond life and its feelings. That was a relief in many ways— to be spared all the pain, the fear, the memories. Just cold sunlight on the corner terrace of a Zuri day. That he could spend four or five hours without a thought in his head— this was what the life here had given him. He didn’t know if he wanted to give that up. Dissociation? Serenity? He didn’t care what he called it. He wanted it.
Because something else had gone away too: he wasn’t afraid. As far as he could tell. And surely he would be able to tell, if it weren’t the case. He was a creature of habit now. Eat, walk, work, read, sleep. He was neither happy nor unhappy. He didn’t want anything. Well, that wasn’t quite true. He wanted to be free of fear. And he was interested to see more animals. And he wanted the people in the refugee camps to be released like he was going to be. These were all different kinds of wants, and some of them he could try to pursue, others were out of his power.
Every morning, he either took the prison van or the city trams and buses to refugee centers and helped clean the kitchens; or he walked the downtown, criss-crossing the Limmat on its many bridges and often ending up at one of the lakefront parks.
On this day he went into Grossmünster to have a look around. Say hello to the spirit of Zurich, so gray and austere. Like a big old concrete warehouse, immensely tall and almost completely empty. That this was their place of worship always struck him funny. Zwingli as some kind of zen monk, an advocate of nothingness. Purity of spirit. A devotional space reacting against the baroque church, the very idea of church. Did it reveal as much about the Swiss as it seemed to? Wasn’t the graceful Enlightenment church across the river a better image of what they were in modern times? Possibly so. He walked out, recrossed the river, passed the “Goethe slept here” sign, went into Peterskirche. No, this wasn’t it either. Smooth, tasteful, kitschy, alabaster; the Swiss weren’t like
