The Swimmer Read Online Free PDF Page B

public pool is too warm, but I still prefer it to the pool at Langley. When I surface for air every fourth stroke, I hear the shrill voices of a school class bouncing like radar waves between the chlorine-scented tile walls. Lap after lap. There was a time when I could have been a really good swimmer. The Olympics were an actual possibility, a goal within reach. But my motivation extended only to the University of Michigan and no further than that. I don’t regret it. I don’t regret anything.
    I know that so much of this is a lie. But reality is fragile; without the lie it threatens to crumble. The lie is what’s holding up the bridge. It’s what allows you to cross from one shore to the other. There is no truth.
    Still I requested the report before I left the office. I knew it would be classified at a higher level than I had access to. We’re never allowed to read about what concerns ourselves. And I knew that if I were allowed to see it, if I read it with my own eyes, it would certainly be a lie. But my request was refused. It was a relief. I don’t want to know when they’re lying to me.
    So now I’m sitting in this sad, dirty locker room, my legs trembling after hours in the pool. Paralyzing guilt is jolting through me like electricity. Swimming holds it at bay. The repetition and the habit hold it at bay. In the water, I’m temporarily safe. As soon as I stop, I hear the sound of the car ignition, see the image of a very small child under shards of glass, pieces of concrete.
    Later I drink Rusty Nails in front of the TV. My living room is bare. Some moving boxes are stacked in the corners. They contain nothing of value. I’m sitting on my new couch and watching a rerun of a baseball game I don’t care about. The apartment—a modern box, one of many, with a garage, conveniently close to the reassuring hum of the highway—smells faintly of paint and air-conditioning. The muscles in my arms feel tight. I swam six miles. Twice as far as I usually do.
    The baseball game is ending as I pour my third drink, and I switch over to Johnny Carson. I realize immediately that I don’t have the energy to listen to Richard Pryor’s Ronald Reagan jokes. They don’t interest me. They’re trite, they move too slowly.
    Everything is moving too slowly since I came back here. I’m a man for the field. Strategies, analysis, the eternal politics of Langley, Pentagon, DC, move too slowly. Give me another passport, another language, another life. Drop me in Damascus, in Beirut, in Cairo. I know how to make contacts, how to maintain them over a glass of sweet tea, whiskey, and cigars. I can make a tabouleh that will remind my guest of his childhood in Aleppo. Even when borders are hostile, I’ll have the best Lebanese wine on my balcony.
    And there, on the balcony, in the melancholy sweetness of sunset, with jasmine in the air and the buzz of diplomats, gangsters, and politicians inside at the dinner table, I’ll make a transaction that means someone other than me will die in the end. We are always playing for a draw. Our ideal is the status quo.
    They want us to meet with a therapist when we come back in nowadays. As if debriefing weren’t enough. Already on the first day, when our tans are still brilliant under the fluorescent lights in the midst of the phones, copiers, and telex machines. With bodies still aching from jet lag and a change of climate. With minds still full of Arabic, Russian, Portuguese. We have to sit through these mandatory sessions. Talking about our transition after months, years in another country, another culture, far away from taking the highway to work, Kentucky Fried Chicken on the way home, and the deadly boredom of a normal life.
    But when it comes to what they want us to talk about, we remain silent. How could we talk about what we do? What should I say? That I lived as an Arab businessman in Damascus, buying weapons, banal secrets, and shadowy influence with the taxpayers’ money, waiting for