The privilege, p.12
The Privilege, page 12
“Change the date, tell everyone that Alexis deTocqueville was alive and living in France, you could start a war inside the American university. It would take all day to list the names he would be called, all of them variations on the same theme: that Tocqueville did not believe in democracy. The shame of it is that no one, before or since, has ever discussed with more intelligence how to save democracy from itself.” He picked up his copy and handed it to me. “Read it, even though, as I happen to know, you have read it before. It’s one of those rare books you learn more from each time you work your way through it.”
I was always interested in what Albert Craven told me, and always surprised by how many different things he knew, but I wanted to know more about Lucas Fairweather and what might have been the reason why James Michael Redfield had chosen him for his latest victim.
“I don’t know. It obviously has to do with his position. But what, exactly? If I had to guess, it would be that he sees it - the murder and the trial - as a way to expose the mindlessness of higher education in this country. That’s why….”
“Why what?” I asked. “What were you going to say?”
Craven became quite serious. He did not want to talk about it. He bit his lip and looked off to the side, amused at his own reluctance to say out loud what he was thinking for fear it might call down the vengeance of the gods and be made true. He bent toward me as if we were two conspirators who could not afford to be overheard.
“Remember what I told you before, when you asked if anyone immediately came to mind as someone who might be blamed?”
“Alan Boe, philosophy professor. How could I forget? You said you would come to court every day, just to watch.”
“I got a call last night, someone at the university. He told me the police were interviewing several people and Boe is one of them. The terrible thing is that it makes perfect sense. I don’t mean that he would have done it. But if you wanted someone the direct opposite of Lucas Fairweather, the direct opposite in every important regard, no one else is even close. They had diametrically different ideas about what a university is supposed to be; and in terms of how they lived, what they thought important, it is night and day. Fairweather was being paid more than a million a year, had a free house, a car and driver, a golf course membership. Boe made considerably less than a tenth that amount, and from what I’ve been told gave most of it away. He didn’t live in that ‘ten thousand fold poverty’ that Socrates claimed, but close enough. Socrates! That is what it would be: a second trial of Socrates,” said Craven, the smile on his mouth broader and more emphatic with each word. “The difference is that Socrates represented himself, and Boe - if it was to be Boe - would have you.”
“Which is about as far from Socrates as you could get,” I remarked, as I got up from my chair.
“Perhaps; but remember: Socrates lost and was condemned to death, and you always win.”
Craven’s glass and steel desk was in the corner of his large office. There were bookshelves on the wall behind him and on the wall to his left as he sat facing me. There was a gray marble fireplace on the long wall on his right, with a sofa and two easy chairs in front. Thick oriental rugs were scattered over the floor. There were pictures everywhere, paintings done by artists he had known, and photographs, dozens of them, tracing in a kind of random fashion the history of the city: the destruction from the earthquake of 1906, the Golden Gate Bridge under construction in 1937. Everything of importance that had ever happened, everyone who had played an important part in the city’s life, could be found in the photographs that marched from a point low to the floor to a point near the ceiling. If you looked at them closely, if you took the time to stand on your tip toes, or bend down to your knees, you would find, on most of them, the signature of the photographer or the once famous person whose face had been captured forever on film. Albert Craven had known everyone, and everyone had known him. People gave him things and thought themselves honored when he accepted.
“Someone I know, an author who writes the kind of serious novels not that many people read anymore, wrote a novel about Machiavelli. He told me he stayed as close as possible to the historical record. There is a line near the beginning that could be said about Alan Boe. The young Machiavelli is at home. There is a knock on the door. Angelo Ambrogini, known throughout the world as Poliziano, has come to tell him that Lorenzo de Medici - Lorenzo the Magnificent - the ruler of Florence, wants to see him. Machiavelli, who is telling the story, describes Poliziano, ‘as ugly as Socrates and nearly as wise.’ That may be the best description of Alan Boe ever written.
“That would paint a picture of its own: the contrast, the extreme difference, between them. You would notice both of them in a crowd. Boe because he looks like nothing you have ever seen; Fairweather because he looked like a fashion model for the kind of clothing worn by wealthy middle-aged men. Beauty and the beast, if Fairweather had been a woman. Poor Boe! The more I talk about it, the more certain I feel that Redfield has chosen him.”
The telephone rang. Craven picked it up and listened. He started to laugh, but quickly stopped.
“Yes. When I see him, I’ll tell him. I’m sure you’ll be able to reach him later today. Yes, absolutely; I’ll tell him you called and how grateful you are.”
He hung up and for a moment stared at the telephone. The grin on his face diminished and then disappeared.
“That was Rupert Kramer, calling to tell you that the museum just received the gift that was sent in your name. It is the largest single donation anyone has given the museum of modern art. I didn’t know you were such an admirer of post-impressionism.”
“Redfield! He told me he would donate that retainer to a good cause!”
“And you never looked to see how much it was? I’m not sure you shouldn’t have kept it. I have a feeling he means to keep you rather occupied. Yes, I know: you told him you weren’t willing to represent him anymore. Redfield is probably a murderer; he is certainly a genius. You’re too much a part of this plan of his - whatever it turns out to be - to let you decide when you get to stop.”
Another week went by and there was still no arrest, no one charged with the murder of Lucas Fairweather, but there was a new story, or rather a new rumor, about why he might have been killed. He had not resigned his position with the government to become chancellor of the University of California; he had been forced to leave. Had he not been a close friend of the president, he would have left in disgrace after having been caught having sex with a certain congressman’s wife on the table in the secretary’s private dining room. What one person in Washington knows, everyone eventually knows, and what was only whispered while Fairweather was alive became the kind of thing everyone was all too eager to talk about once he was dead. Fairweather, it was now concluded with the confidence of final wisdom, had been a notorious womanizer who had not been beyond physical coercion to get what he wanted. The usual stages of grief were upended and set aside. Anger and resentment took the place of acceptance, and Lucas Fairweather became a victim in only the technical sense. Had he not been murdered, he might have been lynched. When the police finally made an arrest, the immediate assumption was that the killer must have had a good reason. Alan Boe thought he must have had a good reason as well, if only he could remember what it was.
“Bishop George Berkeley - curious coincidence, the name. Not coincidental at all, as it turns out. Berkeley was named after him, but not because of his metaphysics. It was because he wrote the line, ‘Westward the course of empire takes its way.’ Did you ever read him? - We don’t know, that is to say, we can’t prove that we are really awake, that we’re not dreaming. They say I killed - murdered, that sounds more interesting than killed - the chancellor. I don’t remember doing that, but perhaps I did - when I was awake, and I’m dreaming now; or, of course, the other way round. But - I’m sorry, Mr. Antonelli - I couldn’t resist. Don’t worry about Bishop Berkeley. No one has in a very long time. It isn’t very serious stuff. We may not be able to prove we’re not dreaming, but that is hardly relevant to what we as human beings have to do, is it?”
‘As ugly as Socrates and nearly as wise.’ The quotation Albert Craven had used from someone’s novel about Machiavelli leaped into my mind and before I knew it a smile shot across my face. I had never met Boe before, and I felt as if there had never been a time when I had not known him. It was not that we had anything in common; I had every reason to think that we did not. Strange as it must seem, that was the reason I felt this way. He was, quite simply, an impossibility, so different from anyone I had ever met that I wondered for a moment whether I might have created him myself, a figment of my own delusion.
“You for some reason seem not to find me astonishingly good looking, Mr. Antonelli. Don’t worry about this. I live with disappointment. There are advantages in a face like mine. It keeps the attention of an audience. It has a mesmerizing effect on college students. They wonder if my bulging eyes will suddenly leave my face altogether, jump across the room to see them closer, penetrate the outer layer of their pretended indifference and discover all their young uncertainties. And my ears!” he exclaimed, with the eagerness of an earnest child. “I can hear what you haven’t yet started to say. My rather large, misshapen nose - well, enough of that. Tell me a little about yourself. You don’t have to tell me it was inevitable that we would meet. I know that already.”
“You know that…?”
We were sitting in a small, square, windowless room where lawyers could confer with their clients who were in custody. Boe was wearing the standard short sleeve v-neck shirt and matching draw string pants. Both were too large. He was short, perhaps five foot eight, with broad shoulders and the kind of arms and hands you would have expected to see on a truck driver or longshoreman. His fingers, however, were not calloused, but smooth and almost perfectly flat from the first knuckle to the tips, as if they were, all ten of them, pressing against a hard surface.
“That it was inevitable that we would meet - here, in this grim place; now - this day, this moment. The proof is simple: we’re here!”
He threw out his hands and stared at me with eyes the like of which I had never seen, eyes that seemed to reveal a new, and different, depth the longer he looked at you, as infinite in their meaning as two facing mirrors. He pulled his index finger over his mouth and the tip of his nose. His eyes flashed open.
“Have you ever wondered about this? About all the things that had to have happened, not just in our lifetimes, but in the history of the world, to make this one simple thing possible? Easy example: if Columbus had not discovered America, neither you nor I would exist; a million - more than a million - chance occurrences, and all of them, when you look at it retroactively, necessary. Necessary, that is to say, if this thing we call history - history with a capital H - has a meaning. Have you read Hegel, Mr. Antonelli?”
The question, his question, seemed to amuse him. Pushing back from the metal table he lowered his chin over his crossed arms. He looked at me, smiling, as he waited for my answer. I felt like a student in a college class again: I had sense that what I was being asked had some tremendous significance and I did not have the slightest idea what it might be. I actually felt myself gulp.
“No, I haven’t…read Hegel, I mean.”
He was magic. He made it seem as if that was the most intelligent answer anyone could have given, that it was more than he could have hoped for. I felt, in that moment, enormously proud and started to laugh at my own confusion.
“Sometime, you might; but whatever you do, don’t try the Phenomenology. Not unless,” he laughed, “you find yourself, like me, at what may be the beginning of a life sentence.” His eyes shut halfway; he became as serious as if he were studying something on the printed page. “Hegel isn’t as difficult as everyone thinks; not as difficult as the Phenomenology is to read. If you’re interested, read his Philosophy of History. It is reasonably straightforward. Try to understand it this way. Hegel begins with a seemingly simply question: When we look back through history, beginning with the Greeks, then the Romans, then Christianity, and now the modern world, does anything make sense? All these revolutions and wars, all this carnage and violence, is it just a ‘tale told by an idiot signifying nothing but sound and fury,’ or was it all the necessary steps in a journey. Hegel insists it was all necessary, what had to happen before human beings could reach the point where they were truly free, where they were no longer slaves to custom and tradition, where they could finally understand that every individual - not just one man, or a few - had the right to determine the condition of his own existence. History, for Hegel, ends with him. Notice what happens. Everything before Hegel, all of history - the history that has meaning because it is the development of reason - has meaning, in the way we look at things today, because it is progressive, each generation building on what other generations built before. That means that history - everything before Hegel - is defective because, by definition, it is still on the way to completion. More than that, it means that only the present is in position to judge the past. The past is incapable of understanding itself. This means - and this is crucial - that thought itself is a prisoner of time. Thought is a function of the time and place the thought occurred. The works of Plato, the works of Aristotle, are nothing more than a reflection of ancient Greece and Athens.
“Hegel, you see, is the foundation of how we view history. Hegel is in every respect dead wrong. I know you aren’t here to discuss Hegel, or any of the other things I teach, but it sometimes helps to put things in context. This trial may end up being more about history than anything else.”
I opened my black leather briefcase and took out a yellow legal pad.
“You write with a fountain pen! The only thing better would be if you used a quill!,” cried Boe, with gleeful wonder. “Someone who still writes longhand. I would have hired you based on that fact alone. Hired you? I don’t even know what you charge. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s beyond my capacity to pay.”
He said this with a shrug of indifference. It did not matter what his defense might cost because he could not pay for it. It was my business if I thought this a problem. It was not any of his concern. I could stay, or I could leave, but though that seemed to be his attitude, I don’t think he believed that I would not handle his defense. Why would I let anything as unimportant as money stop me from the chance to spend more time with him? In anyone else it would have been sheer pretension, the boorish arrogance of a self-important fool; with Boe, it was a kind of reward, an acknowledgement that you were more serious about what you did than the money you might make from doing it.
I began, or tried to begin, at the beginning. I asked him what he had told the police.
“When you were arrested, did you tell the police anything, or did you tell them that you wanted a lawyer?”
He looked at me as if I were an errant child, one whose mistakes, however, he sympathized with and was willing to forgive.
“I told them everything they wanted to know; I answered every question. It only seemed fair. They answered all of mine.”
“All of yours? You asked them questions?”
“Yes, of course; how else does anyone learn anything?”
I put down my pen and leaned back in my chair. I forgot about the murder of Lucas Fairweather; I forgot about James Michael Redfield’s sinister manipulation; I forgot about everything except Alan Boe and his questioning by the police.
“I asked them - there were two detectives: Grayson and Huddleston - if they had ever thought about how much better things would be if the chief of police was gone. They confessed - they seemed to like the idea - that it had crossed their minds. And then I asked them if they had ever, even for just an instant, had the thought - the fugitive thought - that it would not be such a terrible thing to kill the chief themselves. They looked at each other, and, if they had not had the idea before, it did not seem like a bad idea now. That is when I made my confession.”
“Your confession?” I laughed, though I could not have explained why. “You confessed to the murder of…?”
“I confessed to having the same thought, having it more than once, almost every time I heard the chancellor speak in the faculty senate. I confessed to that. And because we were, the three of us, guilty of the thought, we should all go to prison together. Then I asked them another question: why, if they had the thought, had they never done it? This is a serious question. Why not murder someone? What holds us back? Is it the fear of getting caught, the fear of punishment; or is it a different kind of fear: the fear of what others will think of us, fear for our reputation? Or is it, finally, because we understand that this isn’t who we are, men who cannot control themselves, who have to resort to violence because we lack the intelligence - the reason - to do anything else?”
“What did they say to that?” I asked, amused, and utterly bewildered, by what this strange goggle-eyed apparition was telling me. “What was their answer.”
“They didn’t have an answer. They tried to make a joke of it. They said they were afraid that whoever took the chief’s place might be even worse. But, to their credit, they did not try to make a joke out of my question. They agreed it was an interesting question to ask. And so they asked me, if I had not killed the chancellor, what had stopped me. I told them the truth: Lucas Fairweather was not worth it. And then, of course - they were detectives after all - they asked me, if Fairweather was not worth it, who was? Who did I think worth murdering. I’m sure they felt compelled to ask this, to see if I thought murder was sometimes okay, because that would mean that despite my denials, I could have murdered the chancellor. I said there were of course people who should be murdered, and that I knew they were of the same opinion.”
