“I always travel for free,” she said, and came toward me with a smile.
For her, taking me to bed was like drinking a glass of water, but for me it was like going up on a roller coaster.
Afterward we ordered beer and fajitas and sat down to watch TV and talk. I liked her because she took everything seriously and wanted to know what I intended to ask Munk. “Could the idiot have really killed Ida as well? Why would he kill her?” she asked. They’d met in Berkeley and had continued seeing each other, and maybe she knew about Munk’s activities, maybe not everything, but it was likely that he’d have told her something. Or maybe she was helping him. She liked that idea more: the woman who carried the weapons. But then why wasn’t the FBI in the loop if they had so much information about her? And why had they dissociated Ida’s death from the other attacks? Who had influenced whom? Had he given her his radical thought, that capacity to advance beyond the limits? Or was it she who’d led him away from abstract environmentalism and foolish conservationism toward revolutionary violence?
“Mr. Munk has done more harm than good to the cause,” she said. That cause was the defense of nature. She thought he’d be packaged as crazy in the end, a little stray lunatic, an Oswald type, and problem solved. “Haven’t you noticed,” she said suddenly, “that artists—Alfred Hitchcock, Patricia Highsmith—have been replaced by psychiatrists as the experts on society’s souls? We’ve lost innocence,” she said. “We have a morbid need for security. Before, it was the Russians, and now? The danger lies within!… Look at Munk… a genius dedicated to making homemade bombs in the woods… Imagine what’s yet to come… all of us in my generation will be treated like juvenile delinquents or potential terrorists…” She was staring thoughtfully at the burning tip of her joint, sitting with her legs crossed, and suddenly gave a slight laugh and continued in her ceremonious little tone. “No, no, seriously, don’t you see? We’re surfing, we’re surfing and the sharks are circling below,” and she started to laugh again…
We went to bed intertwined, with the air-conditioning running on full. That hum was the first of the sounds that helped to keep me awake. Then there was the water in the pipes, and there were cries as well, and dogs barking in the distance, and voices too, disputes, gasps of love, and beneath it all the metallic voice of the television. Worse still, the light in the hallway was always on, and rays of light came in through the blinds, lighting the room with a white gleam. She slept curled up in a ball, pressed up against my body, and sometimes opened her eyes and took a little while to recognize me.
The next morning, waiting for her in the motel parking lot, was a lanky guy, tattooed with flowers and birds, with a headband over his parted hair, a Fu Manchu mustache, and leather clothes, and Nancy went on her way with him.
4
Sacramento is a flat and geometric city, the capital and administrative center of the state of California, and it reminded me of La Plata for its air of serenity and its streets organized by letters. It was one of those downtowns reserved for bureaucracy, abounding with offices and ministries. As soon as I arrived, I left my car in the parking lot of the first decent hotel I encountered. I changed clothes and headed in the direction of the state prison. In the streets I could see a movement of young people and environmentalist groups marching toward the city center. Girls and boys and old militant pacifists, feminist groups, gay and anti-war activists were moving in to support Munk in his right to defend himself and make himself heard. Voice for Munk, voice for Munk, they repeated, like a mantra or a litany. You could see graffiti with an image of his cabin in the woods and an inscription that had now been personalized: Munk for President. The anarchists considered him a prisoner of war, a hostage of capitalism.
In an office on the side of the jail, journalists, curious onlookers, lawyers, and tourists were gathered, for that was where you could request permission for visits. I had the letter from Parker with Menéndez’s seal of approval, and I showed my credentials and vaguely explained the meaning of my presence. “I hope to establish,” I told the burly policewoman who attended me, “whether Munk knew a Berkeley alumna, later a professor at a large East Coast university, because that information might prove useful in the trial.” I held out the photo of Ida and her markings in the Conrad book before the surprised face of the guard. The woman said she had to check, and she called a guy named Reynolds and said, speaking into a cell phone that looked tiny inside her hand, “yes, no, no, yes, no, yes, yes,” and then, lifting her face toward me, she informed me that I would very likely be able to see him tomorrow; I had to come first thing.
I went out to the street and approached the protesters’ gathering place in Capitol Park, about four hundred meters away from the prison. Police with helmets and shields had surrounded the park’s perimeter and weren’t letting anyone advance toward the jail, but they could enter the Plaza freely through a narrow passage between blue uniforms.
The leaders had organized the place very well and were making announcements through a megaphone, indicating where the Porta Potties were that they’d set up on one side, asking everyone to throw away their trash in the bins and not use any nonbiodegradable materials, and saying that anyone who wanted to speak could sign up by the makeshift stage in the middle of the
