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  He saw her as she walked out of her interview with Goodman. She couldn’t tell him anything because her personal instructor was right beside her, but her glowing face told him everything. Now all A. had to do was pass the interview with Goodman—and they would both be out of there. Which of them would reach the train station first? Which would be the one to carve his or her destination on the bench? But would there even be a bench? A. was suddenly filled with anxiety. His dream had been not only to leave the institution but to leave it and live with Nadia. What if, because of some tiny hole in their plan, they missed each other? After all, neither of them would know the other’s new name, and if neither of them managed to leave their future city, they might never meet again.

  “What are you thinking about?” Goodman asked.

  “My life. The future waiting for me outside,” A. whispered, and immediately added, obsequiously, “and how much I owe this institution, especially you, for bringing me to this moment.”

  “You sound as if you’ve finished your business here and you’re already waving a white handkerchief at me from the train window,” Goodman said, twisting his face into an ugly smile. “As someone who failed the exam nineteen times, that’s a bit arrogant on your part, don’t you think?”

  “This time I passed,” A. stammered, “I’m sure of it.”

  “You’re sure of it,” Goodman interrupted, “but I, unfortunately, am a bit less sure.”

  “This time all the answers were correct,” A. persisted.

  “Ah,” Goodman said patronizingly, “I don’t doubt that, either. But an exam is not judged only by the right answers written on the page. Concealed behind the factual answer is intention and character, and with regard to those, I’m afraid you still have much work left to do.”

  A. stood there, stunned. He searched his feverish brain for an irrefutable claim that would make Goodman change his mind, but the only thing that came out of his mouth was, “I hate you.”

  “That’s fine,” Goodman said, nodding, and immediately pressed the intercom button and asked for A.’s personal instructor to come and take him back to his room. “It’s good that you hate me. That’s part of your development. I don’t do what I do to be loved.”

  “I hate you,” A. repeated, feeling the rage rise inside him, “you may think you’re a good person, but you’re arrogant and evil. Every night before I go to sleep, I close my eyes and imagine myself getting up in the morning and finding out that you’re dead.”

  “That’s perfectly all right,” Goodman said, “the punishments I give you, the hatred you have for me, they are all part of the process that is supposed to prepare you for a greater purpose. And affection for me or gratitude is not part of that purpose.”

  THE ESCAPE

  It took four security guards to pull A. off Goodman. After the short, violent struggle with them, A. came away with a black eye, a huge bruise on his forehead, and two broken fingers on his left hand, but not only that. He also came away with a security guard’s identification tag, which he managed to tear off him as they fought and hide in his pocket without anyone noticing.

  That night, A. pretended to be asleep, and at one in the morning, silently climbed out of bed. With the stolen tag, he knew that he could get out of the wing where the orphans were housed. West of that wing was the guest wing, where the orphans were forbidden to enter, and past that was the exit gate. A. had never walked through that gate, but he was sure that the security guard’s identification tag would open it for him. And if it didn’t, he would climb over it, dig under it, or pass right through it; he would do anything he needed to get out of there.

  A. proceeded along the corridor that led to the guest wing and, using the identification tag, opened the heavy iron door. This wing was where the secret donors stayed when they came on periodic visits for updates on their protégés’ progress. A. had always pictured that wing as a sort of luxury hotel with a huge dining hall and hanging chandeliers, but now it looked completely different. Its main corridor resembled a corridor in an office building, and every door along it led to a room that looked like a stage set: one looked like a military bunker; another like an elementary school classroom; and the third had a fancy swimming pool with a naked corpse floating in the middle of it.

  A. lit his way with an old flashlight he found in the room designed to be a bunker, and focused the light on the corpse’s face. It looked like a pulpy mass of flesh and blood now, but A. recognized it immediately: he jumped into the water and embraced Nadia’s naked corpse. He was crushed. Devastated. Completely destroyed. This escape was supposed to take him outside to the better life he wanted more than anything, but now, all at once, that desire had been snuffed out. Without Nadia at his side, he had no desire for anything anymore. He heard someone flush a toilet and raised his head. A short, skinny redheaded man in a bathing suit came out of the men’s dressing room. He saw A. and immediately began to shout in French, and in seconds, the room filled with security guards. The redhead told them something in a hoarse voice and pointed to A. and the corpse. The guards jumped into the water and tried to separate A. and Nadia, but A. refused to let her go. His last memory was of the strong smell of the chlorine and blood, and then darkness.

  ANGER AND VIRTUES

  A. woke up tied to a chair. He was in the first room he’d seen in the guest wing, the dusty military bunker where he found the flashlight. Goodman was standing beside him.

  “Someone killed N.,” he said in a choked voice.

  “I know,” Goodman said, nodding.

  “I think it was a redheaded man, short . . .” A. groaned.

  “It’s okay,” Goodman said, “she belonged to him.”

  “It’s not okay,” A. wailed, “she was murdered! You have to call the police . . .”

  “In order to be murdered, you first have to be a person,” Goodman said in a didactic tone, “and N. wasn’t a person.”

  “How dare you say that? N. was a wonderful person, a good woman . . .”

  “N. was a clone. She was a clone of Natalie Loreaux, the wife of the man who ordered her. Philippe, the short man you saw.” A. opened his mouth to speak, but air refused to enter his lungs. The room spun, and if he hadn’t been tied to his chair, he would certainly have fallen.

  “You have nothing to worry about,” Goodman said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “The real Nathalie Loreaux is still alive and waiting impatiently for her husband, Philippe, to come back from his short business trip to Switzerland. Now that Philippe has vented his anger on her clone, she will welcome back a much calmer and more loving husband. I can only assume that when Philippe gets home, he’ll appreciate Nathalie’s virtues a great deal more, and you and I both know that she has quite a few of those.”

  “But he killed her . . .” A. mumbled.

  “No,” Goodman corrected, “he destroyed a clone.”

  “She was a person . . .” A. insisted.

  “She looked like a person,” Goodman corrected him again, “just as you look like a person.”

  “I am a person!” A. shrieked. “I was born with elderness and was abandoned by my . . .”

  But the disdainful look in Goodman’s eyes kept him from completing his sentence. “Am I a clone, too?” A. asked, tears in his eyes, “Was I ordered by someone close to me who hates me?”

  “No,” Goodman said with a smile, “with you, it’s a bit more complicated.”

  “Complicated?” A. mumbled, and Goodman took a small mirror out of his pocket and held it in front of A.’s face. In the mirror, A. could see, along with the black eye and some dried blood under his left eyebrow, that his thick beard had been completely shaved off, leaving only a really small, squarish mustache under his nose, and his hair was combed to the side in a strange and ugly way. Now, as he looked into the mirror, A. saw for the first time that he was wearing a brown army uniform. “Your name, my dear A., is Adolf,” Goodman said,
“and your owner will be here any minute now.”

  TABULA RASA

  The old man with the beard gave A. a scrutinizing look. “You can move closer to him, Mr. Klein,” Goodman said. “He’s tied up, he can’t hurt you.”

  “I must admit that he really looks like him,” the old man whispered in a shaky voice.

  “He doesn’t just look like him,” Goodman corrected him, “he is him. One hundred percent Adolf Hitler. Not just the body, but also the mind: the same knowledge, the same temperament, the same talents. I want to show you something.” Goodman took a small tablet out of his leather bag and placed it in front of the old man. A. couldn’t see the screen, but he could hear his own voice coming from the computer. He heard himself scream at Goodman that he hated him and wished he would die.

  “Did you see?” Goodman said proudly. “Did you watch his hand movements? Now look at this.” A. suddenly heard his voice saying things he had never said, a speech about a strong Germany that would kneel before no one. Goodman stopped the film. “See?” he said to the old man. “They’re exactly the same. We took his mind, tabula rasa, and poured everything into it. We’ve been preparing him for this day from the minute he took his first breath.”

  Goodman took a gun and a knife from his bag and offered them both to the old man. “I didn’t know which you preferred,” he said, and shrugged. “Do whatever you want to him. I, with your permission, will wait right outside.”

  THE FINAL SOLUTION

  The old man pointed the gun at A.’s forehead. “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this moment,” he said, “already in the ghetto, when I lost my parents and my brother, I swore to survive and take revenge on the person who murdered my family.”

  “Shoot,” A. urged him, “get it over with. I don’t have anything to live for anyway.”

  “This is not how it’s supposed to be,” the old man said angrily, “you’re supposed to cry now, to beg for your life.”

  “I’m also supposed to be the man responsible for the extermination of millions and not a clone created in a laboratory who never hurt a living soul,” A. replied, smiling crookedly. “I’m sorry, but a person who insists on avenging the dead eighty years after the fact has to make some compromises.”

  The old man’s hand began to shake. “You’re Hitler,” he cried, “you’re a cunning devil who, even now, in your last moments, keeps trying to play tricks . . .”

  “I’m Antoine,” A. whispered and closed his eyes. He pictured Nadia and himself on the top of that grassy hill, standing in front of matching easels, painting a sunset as red as blood. The metallic click of the gun being cocked sounded so far away now.

  CAR CONCENTRATE

  In the middle of my big, empty living room, between the scuffed leather couch and an ancient stereo I still use to play my scratched-up old blues albums, there sits a compressed metal block. It’s red with a white stripe running through it. And when the sunlight hits that block at just the right angle, the glare that comes off it honestly dazzles. The thing itself is not a table—despite the countless times I’ve set stuff on top. And there isn’t a person that drops by the house that doesn’t ask me about it. Every time, I come back with a different answer, depending on my mood, and depending on who’s asking.

  Sometimes I say, “It’s something from my father.” Sometimes, “It’s one hefty hunk of memory.” And sometimes, “It’s a ’68 Mustang convertible,” or “It’s shining red vengeance,” or even, “It’s the anchor that holds this whole house in place. If it wasn’t right there, everything would’ve floated up into the sky long ago.” And then, sometimes, all I say is: “It’s art.” Men always try to lift it and never succeed. Women mostly touch it tentatively with the back of their hands, as if taking the temperature of a sick kid. And if one of those women goes and touches it with the palm of her hand, if she runs her fingers along the side, and says something like “It’s cold” or “That feels nice,” I take it as a sign to try and get her in bed.

  That people always ask about my block of crumpled steel does me good. It always calms me to know that, in this confusing world of ours, there’s at least one thing it’s safe to expect. Also it saves me from a lot of other questions, like “So what do you do for a living?” or “How’d you get that gnarly scar under your eye?” or “How old are you, again?”

  I work in the cafeteria at Lincoln High School, the scar is from a car accident, and I’m forty-six years old. Not one of those facts is a secret. Nevertheless, I’d much prefer to be asked about my compact and compacted block. Because through it I inevitably arrive at any subject I want: from Robert Fucking Kennedy—who was murdered in the year that produced the crushed Mustang I keep in my living room—to the bullshit that is contemporary art. The block never fails to get me to those topics or to anything in between . . . right on up to how Dad would take me and my brother for a spin in the car whenever he’d show up to visit us at foster care. Or to how it took eight people to load that block into my truck, and how the shocks on the pickup nearly gave way under all that weight. I can also wend my way along that line of inquiry until it reaches my dear departed mother who died when I was a baby because my father was driving drunk in another car, gray in color and less cool all around, a car he straightaway upgraded to a Mustang with the insurance money that came his way. Everything really depends on where I want to turn up. A conversation is like a tunnel dug under the prison floor that you—patiently and painstakingly—scoop out with a spoon. It has one purpose: to get you away from where you are right now. And when you dig yourself a tunnel, there’s always a target on the other side: empathy that will lead to a fuck; male bonding that will mix most excellently with a bottle of whiskey; something that will reestablish your great value as a tenant to the landlord who’s come to raise the rent. Every tunnel has its own direction, but the spoon—at least in my case—is always the same spoon: a convertible red ’68 Mustang with white racing stripes that has been compacted down to the size of a minibar and sits in my living room.

  Janet works with me in the cafeteria. She’s always at the register, because management trusts her. But even there, she’s close enough to the food so that her hair smells like a bowl of minestrone. Janet’s a single mom, raising twins on her own. She’s a good mom, exactly how I love to imagine how my mother must have been. Sometimes, when I see Janet with her kids, I try to picture what would have happened if, in that crash, forty-five years back, my father was the one who’d died and my mother came out of it alive. What would have come out of me and my brother today? Would we find ourselves in different places, or would I still land in a cafeteria kitchen and would my brother still be locked up in the maximum-security wing of a New Jersey prison? What’s for sure is that I wouldn’t have a crushed Mustang planted on my living room floor.

  Janet may be the first woman to stay over at my place and not ask about the red block. After we have sex, I make us iced coffees. And while we’re drinking them, I try to insert my crushed-up Mustang into the conversation. I start out by resting my cup of coffee—brimming over with ice cubes—on the car. I wait for her to ask. When that doesn’t work, I try to ease her there by way of a story. I hesitate a little, wondering which story to tell. I could go with the one about how, when I first got the block home, it stank, and how I started to suspect that they’d somehow crushed up a dead cat inside. Or there’s the one where a couple of thieves break into the house and, finding nothing worth anything, try to make off with the cube. Apparently one of them really digs in there trying to lift it. And from the extremes of exertion, he herniates a disc in his spine. In the end, I settle on the story of my father. Something less funny and more personal. I tell her how I searched for him across all of Ohio, and how right when I discover he’s dead—and would you expect it to turn out any different—his last girlfriend mentions the car to me exactly as they’re towing it to the scrapyard. I tell her how I show up there five minutes too late, and because of that, the sole
possession I inherit from my father is not a breathtaking classic car but the hunk of crumpled steel now in my living room.

  “Did you love him?” Janet asks. She dips her finger in the iced coffee and licks it. Something about how she does that, I don’t know why, disgusts me. That’s what I’m thinking while I’m trying to dodge having to answer. I honestly don’t have a lot of feelings in regard to my father—and the few that I do have are uniformly negative. And wrestling with my father issues while we’re sipping iced coffees buck naked in the living room is as much of a turnoff as it sounds. But instead of answering, I propose that next time she comes to crash at my place for the weekend she should bring the twins along. “Are you sure?” she asks. Janet lives with her mother, and it’s no big deal to leave the kids with her mom and come on her own. “Absolutely,” I tell her, “it’ll be fun.” She doesn’t show it, but I can feel that she’s happy. And instead of talking about all the shit from my father that my brother and I had to eat before Dad did us a favor and disappeared from our lives, Janet and I fuck right there in the living room while she’s leaning on the crushed Mustang and I’m behind. The smarter choice.

  The twins are named David and Jonathan. Their father named them that. He thought the biblical reference was funny. Janet wasn’t too keen on the idea. It sounded a little gay to her, she says, but she gave in without a fight. After running around with them in her belly for nine months she thought it was nice to concede on that front, to give their baby daddy the feeling that the boys were also a little bit his. Not that it helped. It’s been more than five years since she last heard from him.

  They’re seven years old now and total sweetie pies. As soon as they arrive, they’re checking out the yard and they discover the crooked tree. They try to climb it and fall. Try and fall. They get all bruised and scratched up but don’t cry even once. I love kids who don’t cry. I was also like that. Afterward we play a little Frisbee in the yard, and Janet says that it’s hot and that it’d be better if we all go into the living room and drink something. I make us lemonade and set out the glasses on the Mustang. The twins say thanks before they take a sip. You can see that they’re well raised. David asks me about the Mustang and I tell him it’s car concentrate that I keep handy in case of emergency, you know, in case my pickup breaks down. “And what will you do then?” David asks, his giant brown eyes open their widest. “I’ll mix the Mustang concentrate with enough water, wait until it’s ready, and then I’ll drive it to work.” “And it won’t be wet?” inquires Jonathan, who’s listening to the conversation. “A little,” I say, “but still, better a wet car than going by foot.”