"I met my new mother three days later. Father gave me a strange look when I shook hands with him, but he didn't say anything."
"What did you feel after you had killed your mother?" asked Dr. Paul.
"I wished I'd used a shotgun."
* * * * *
They dined simply: salad, potatoes, cheese, and fruit. There were candles on the table. Throughout the meal they talked about memories, mutual friends, food, and wine, but rarely about the future. From time to time, in unguarded moments, Fitzduane perceived a flash of sadness in Christina's eyes. Mostly she projected warmth, tenderness, and a deep, caring affection. He realized that Guido, despite his pain and approaching death, was quietly content.
They talked about the recent riots in Zurich and the youth movement.
"Consider me confused," said Fitzduane. "Apart from no unemployment, virtually no inflation, and the highest standard of living of any European nation, what other problems haven't you got? Who exactly is rioting, and what are they breaking windows about?"
"They are not just breaking windows," said Guido. "Thousands of young people also paraded through the streets of Zurich stark naked."
Fitzduane grinned.
"It's very difficult to say precisely what they are protesting about," continued Guido. "Basically, it's a rather ill-defined reaction against much of the Swiss system by a certain percentage of Swiss youth. Whatever the merits of this country, there is no denying that there is tremendous social pressure to conform. Most of the rules make sense by themselves. Put them all together, and you have a free Western democracy without a lot of freedom — or at least that is what they say."
"It sounds not unlike the 1968 protests in France."
"There are similarities," said Guido, "but 1968 was much more organized and structured. There were leaders like Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and specific demands made. This is much more anarchistic and aimless. There are few precise demands. There is no one to negotiate with. The authorities don't know who to talk to or what to do, so they respond with overreaction and the riot police: clubs, tear gas, and water cannon instead of thought."
"Is the youth movement throughout Switzerland?" asked Fitzduane.
"In various forms it is throughout Europe," said Guido. "Here in Switzerland I think many of the youth are concerned, but only a small percentage riot, and that is concentrated in the cities."
"Bern, too?"
"A little," said Guido, "but not so much. The Bernese have their own ways of doing things. They don't like confrontation. I think, perhaps, the authorities in Bern are handling it better."
"I thought you were suggesting that the Bernese were a little stupid," Fitzduane, recalling an earlier remark by Guido.
"Slow; I didn't say they weren't smart. But I'd like to show you something." He smiled, then stood up and went over to a closet and removed a bulky object. He placed the assault rifle on the dining room table against a backdrop of cheese and empty wine bottles. The weapon glistened dully in the candlelight. The bipod was in place.
"The SG-57," said Fitzduane. "Caliber 7.5 millimeter, magazine capacity twenty-four rounds, self-loading or fully automatic, effective range up to four hundred and fifty meters. No dinner table is complete without one."
"Always the weapons expert," said Guido.
Fitzduane shrugged.
"About six hundred thousand Swiss homes contain one of these rifles," said Guido, "together with a sealed container of twenty-four rounds of ammunition. Just about every male between the ages of twenty and fifty is in the army. Over six hundred and fifty thousand men can be fully mobilized within hours. We are prepared to fight to stay at peace. The army is the one major social organization that binds the Swiss together."
"Supposing you don't want to join?"
"Provided you are in good health," said Guido, "at twenty years of age, in you go. If you refuse, it's prison for six months or so — and afterward there can be problems in getting a federal job, and other penalties. But there are more important things to know about the army. It's not just an experience common to all Swiss males between the ages of twenty and fifty. It is also one of the main meeting grounds of the power elite.
"You start off in the army as an ordinary soldier. You do your seventeen weeks of basic training and then you return to civilian life with your uniform and rifle — until next year, when you do a couple of week's refresher course, and so on, until you are fifty.
"However, the best of the recruits are invited to become corporals and then officers, and later, conceivably, they end of on the general staff. There are about fifty thousand officers, and only two thousand of these are general staff — and it is officers of the general staff who dominate the power structure in this country. The higher you go in the Swiss Army, they more time you have to put in away from your civilian job. We call it ‘paying your grade.’ That's especially difficult for an ordinary worker or a self-employed businessman. As a result, the general staff and, to a lesser extent, the officer corps as a whole are dominated by senior executives of the large banks, industrial corporations, and the government."
"In Eisenhower's phrase, ‘the military-industrial complex,’" said Fitzduane.
"He was talking about America," said Guido, "and collusion between the military and big business. Here it is not just collusion. The senior army officers and the senior corporate executives are the same people. They don't just make the weapons; they buy them and use them."
"But only for practice," said Fitzduane.
"That's the good part."
Later, when the exhausted Guido had retired, Christina showed Fitzduane to his room. By the window there was a huge potted plant that was making a serious attempt to reach up and strangle the light bulb.
"It's doing well," Christina said proudly. "It came from England in a milk bottle."
"A two-meter-high milk bottle?" said Fitzduane.
"It grew since then."
"What's it called?"
"It's a papyrus," said Christina. "The same thing that's at the head of your bed."
"Jesus!" exclaimed Fitzduane. "How fast do these things grow?"
* * * * *
Kadar did not speak. He was remembering.
He wondered if he should have felt remorse. In truth he hadn't felt much of anything immediately after the event except an overwhelming feeling of fatigue mixed with a quiet satisfaction that he had been able to do it. He had passed the test. He had an inner strength possessed by few people. He was born to control.
He tried not to remember how he had felt one day later. From the time he had woken he had been unable to stop shaking, and the spasms had continued for most of that day. "Classic reaction to shock," the doctor had said sympathetically. Kadar had lain there in quiet despair while his body betrayed him. In later years he had undergone training in a variety of Eastern combat disciplines to fuse his mental and physical strength, and the post-action shock had not manifested itself again. Very occasionally he wondered if such stress symptoms were nonetheless there, but in a more insidious, invisible way, like the hairline cracks of metal fatigue in an aircraft.