Far Afield

XII

84 XII I wrestled all night with bad dreams. In one of them, there were far-off ringing telephones that I could not get to despite my bursting into room after empty room. In another, the image of a hideous and trussed up clown hovered and flew above me (he, too, was trying to communicate something). And in another, Sono was a yellow-jumpsuited bus driver who became increasingly angry when I could not manage the exact fare. I don’t recall the ending of this figment, only my stuffing bill after bill into the bus’s plastic meter box and her grimly shaking her head. Still, even in her choler I thought she looked enchanting. I awoke tired and nerve-frayed in thrown-about sheets, thinking immediately of a well-known saying I’d come across in a detective novel (and likewise from Orozco de Basca—Declaration #17): That beyond a certain point, all dangers are equal. The distance analogy was completely apt, I thought; I felt very much trapped in a crossfire zone, vulnerable to attack no matter which way I maneuvered. And yet to stand still would be to suffer the most damage of all. I moved stiffly from the disarrayed bed and pondered my options. After Rector Froines left, I’d spent several hours trying to invent a course of action that would somehow fulfill the demands of all those for whom I was now employed. That, of course, was sheer fantasizing brought on by my overwrought feelings of panic. But still out of nervous energy, I filled nearly three legal pads with notes and wasted an afternoon doing so. Scott Brown 85 After I finished, though, and had gloomily laid the scribblefilled ledgers next to each other on the floor, their arrangement suddenly reminded me of a swindle I had once seen on a card table in New York, one involving three coconut shells and a pistachio nut. This situation was very much like that shell game, I thought, only here it was the pea of reality that stayed in constant motion. I then began to consider the possibility of having only one set of plans but presenting them differently so they could appeal independently to Trevor, Stanley, and the rector. This immediately felt like a more efficient, and intriguing, prospect. Instead of requiring me to create three lines of logical action, which I would then have to maintain and develop, this strategy relied on the limitless ability of people to see things as optimistically as they wished, despite circumstances . Of everything, I reflected, that was an American trait. Emboldened, I began sketching out various ideas for a political campaign. And then it occurred to me that the best campaign might be no campaign at all. For what had hobbled Trevor in the past, I reflected, was not his style of campaign, but the fact that’d tried to wage one at all based on his ideas and proposals. Because he’d stood for something, he’d been able to be readily dismissed. Yet what if he were to have no ideas, I wondered, no beliefs beyond a simple cache of adages and slogans? What if he were to stand for absolutely nothing (beyond, of course, the standard calls to morality , civic duty, and punitive social policy), thus allowing voters to decide what they thought he stood for? It was a risky ploy—in the U. S., this sort of strategy only worked in the most important elections—but because this contest was only a few weeks off, there was a chance that it could succeed here before too many voters saw through it. The more I considered this approach, the more its simplicity and flexibility appealed to me. Here I calculated that a campaign that deployed the most inflated and equivocal of sentiments would play to Trevor’s patrician instincts of leadership, while at the same time make him a further muddle to voters already confused with choices. This Rector Froines would grasp instinctually and thus endorse; indeed, I felt confident that any strategy that relied on 86 Far Afield Trevor’s displaying a greater sense of himself in public would find immediate favor with the rector. I then considered the different matter of Stanley and Trevor. Here I recognized that I would have to rely greatly on my persuasive ability (which by now I was quite motivated to use) to convince...