A Day and a Night and a Day: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

back everything’s acquired a new throb, as if the room’s asking him, incredulously: Don’t you get it? He realizes that as lately as five seconds ago part of him was still thinking of somehow getting himself out of here. You don’t believe in the soul until you feel it straining to escape the body. Of the philosophical crowd at Harry’s only ex-Catholic Selina skulkingly admitted to Dualism. All those hours of relished argument, cigarettes, booze, reefers, The Doors interminably on the jukebox. Into this life we’re born, into this world we’re thrown. Existential bombast, but true. He remembers the moment he knew she wanted him, was going to have him. With a touch of erotic shame he grasped that the white slave mistress germ was in there for both of them but since they owned up to it in all but words it didn’t matter. In his heart he knew she wouldn’t have done it if he’d been pure black and this excited him, pulled for the first time on his European blood, said it could be of use. How do you describe yourself, Afro-Italian? I don’t describe myself. I just show up. She’d said: Don’t pretend you’re not working it, those green eyes. Nothing radiates like aguy’s happiness with his physical self. It’s okay, don’t sweat it. Half the girls at Harry’s go weak at the knees when you come in. She had a way of flattering him that maintained her wryly above him. It was one of her personae, the girl of jaded omniscience, a line of self-satire. Like most beautiful brainy women she felt compelled to mock the ludicrousness of her advantage. He was so crazy about her he didn’t know where to start. It took effort to be cool. She was used to guys seeing her as an unearned gift. He was determined to receive her as an entitlement. But after they went to bed together strategy, for either of them, went out the window.
    Harper leafs through the sheets in one of the manila folders. Augustus looks at the two guards. They’re smoking and chuckling over a deck of porn playing cards. According to an article he read somewhere young men in the west have stopped ejaculating inside their women, feel unfulfilled if they don’t direct their semen onto the face or breasts. The Devil may not exist but if he did this would be the sort of triumphal curlicue he’d go in for, a cheeky twist in the struggle to invert life. Get laid before the job , Augustus had been advised in Barcelona. When your finger’s on the trigger you don’t want to be distracted by thoughts of what you might have done one last time . So he’d made the appointment with “Inés”—and been delivered into the irony of reawoken tenderness. They’d had sex missionary style and been brought into awkward intimacy when their eyes met. He had no illusions she got any pleasure out of the act but there had been moments when they’d been revealed to each other as people. What had he seen in her? A tension that was her controlling her fear lest he do violence to her. Beyond that sadness for the younger self she’d betrayed. Beyond that the faintest trace of species benevolence, a concession that connectionwith each other, however blighted or fleeting, is all we have. He’d left her apartment building knowing his focus had suffered—and within twenty paces found himself smoothly abducted by Harper’s people. It occurs to him that she, Inés, was the last representative from the world he’ll never see again.
    â€œLet’s start with the Barcelona cell,” Harper says. “I’ll give you the profiles, you tell me everything you know about them.”
    â€œWillingly,” Augustus says.
    â€œThis is the easy part. I need everything you’ve got on these guys.”
    Of the twelve names and faces in Harper’s folder Augustus knows eight and can provide details of four planned actions in the next six to twelve months. Meeting