Asymmetry - Lisa Halliday Page 0,36

officials stood by, watching impassively. The villagers were hushed, apprehensive. Then the guards heaved the prisoner into the water. The prisoner sank. Bubbles rose in his stead. The officials watched for a moment before signaling to the guards to pull him out. The villagers cheered.

Was this fair and impartial justice? They thought so. . . .

Despite her mood, which was restless and premenstrual, Alice enjoyed the film. It reminded her of social studies and in the end did not really ask of her very much—only that she not take her civil liberties for granted, and when had she ever done that? With the credits rolling behind him, Willoughby mounted his wooden box again and, like a magician demonstrating the integrity of his materials, held up a sample summons and instructed everyone to tear off a perforated portion that would have to be handed in. “Not this piece,” he said at least twice, once to each side of the room. “This one.” But each time either his knuckles or his pointing hand had obstructed Alice’s line of vision, so that when it came time for her to turn her own piece in the officer receiving it tutted direly and said, handing it back, “This is the wrong piece.”

“Oh, sorry. What should I do?”

Seizing the summons again, the clerk removed a Scotch-tape dispenser from her desk, taped the pieces together and thrust them back. “Sit down.” Then, shaking her head, and already gesturing to the next person in line, she added, “Very poor.”

At 10:35, Clerk Willoughby began reading names.

“Patrick Dwyer.”

“José Cardozo.”

“Bonnie Slotnick.”

“Hermann Walz.”

“Rafael Moreno.”

“Helen Pincus.”

“Lauren Unger.”

“Marcel Lewinski.”

“Sarah Smith.”

In front of Alice, the man whose Muslim uncle did not like music for its animalistic passions was reading The Economist. Alice took out her Discman, untangled its cord, and pressed PLAY.

“Bruce Beck.”

“Argentina Cabrera.”

“Donna Krauss.”

“Mary-Ann Travaglione.”

“Laura Barth.”

“Caroline Koo.”

“William Bialosky.”

“Craig Koestler.”

“Clara Pierce.”

It was a Janáek CD, whose first track she listened to three times, and with each playing felt herself less, rather than more, capable of comprehending its complexity. But violence? Lust? A low-grade, objectless lust seemed to be her default state; perhaps music, like alcohol, could give it a reckless vector . . .

“Alma Castro.”

“Sheri Bloomberg.”

“Jordan Levi.”

“Sabrina Truong.”

“Timothy O’Halloran.”

“Patrick Philpott.”

“Ryan McGillicuddy.”

“Adrian Sanchez.”

“Angela Ng.”

A little after four those whose names had not been called were dismissed with orders to return in the morning. Alice went back to the pub where she’d spent her lunch hour and ordered a glass of wine, followed by a second glass of wine, then laid her money down next to a section of newspaper containing the headline Baghdad Bomb Kills Up to 27, Most Children, and at the first subway stop she came to descended unsteadily underground. It was rush hour now, and instead of changing via the long airless stampede at Times Square she got out at Fifty-Seventh Street and decided to walk. Her eyes felt overexposed and she wove a faint zigzag down the block, as if unaccustomed to the third dimension. A rumbling blast from a sidewalk grate suggested an underworld riled by her escape. Overhead, the forest of glass and steel swayed vertiginously against the sky. A man following close behind her whistled tunelessly, the sound thin and snatched away from them by the great static city din that was like two giant seashells against the ears: the undulating drone of wind and wheels rushing to make the light, taxis honking, buses groaning and sighing, hoses spraying the pavement, crates being stacked and van doors trundling shut. Wooden heels. A pan flute. Petitioners’ spurious salutations. It was eighty-three degrees, but many of the stores had propped open their doors—you could almost see the expensive air gusting out and withering on the street—from which truncated melodies blared like a radio set to scan: Muzak Bach, Muzak Beatles, “Ipanema,” Billy Joel, Joni Mitchell, “What a Wonderful World.” Even from the entrance to the 1/9 there seemed to emanate the muffled bebop of a swing band. . . . But then Alice passed the stairs down into the ground and still the music became louder and clearer, and developed a kind of height, a floating-up quality, the unique reverberation of brass and drums in the open air. Then she saw the dancers.

It was as if a present-day Rigoletto had overflowed the stage of the opera house and spilled out into the square. Under a wide white sky the sea of bouncing arms and swinging hips rocked metronomically; every now and again a limb was flung with such enthusiasm it looked