“Goddamn it, I am not religious!” Bob said loudly, “I don’t subscribe to any particular church! I have a belief system, that’s it! A belief system!”
“Which you talk about all the time.”
Bob looked flabbergasted. “Like hell I do! You’re the one who started this conversation! What I believe is the foundation of my life, okay. But I don’t talk about it or even think about it any more than I talk and think about the foundation of my house.”
Doug was glaring at him steadily. We have got to end this conversation, Bob thought. I can’t afford to enrage this man; he’s holding all the cards.
“So what you’re saying in a nutshell is that I’m responsible for every lousy, fucking thing that’s happened in my life,” Doug said.
“Doug, we are all responsible for what happens in our lives,” Bob replied.
“Which means that what you’ve done is right and what I’ve done is wrong!”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Doug.” Bob looked at him almost pleadingly. “Nothing is that simple. You know that.”
“You’re saying that my life is all fucked up because of me, not because of anyone else!” Doug suddenly raged.
“Well, what the hell do you want me to say, that everybody in your life is at fault, that nothing you’ve done has anything to do with anything? Be honest with yourself, for God’s sake.”
“So says Mr. Perfect,” Doug snapped.
“Oh, goddamn it, Doug! Nobody’s further from perfection than me! I try, that’s all! The same as you! The same as everyone! We try, we try!”
Doug didn’t reply. His face hard and implacable, he poked randomly at the fire coals with a twig. What the hell is he thinking? Bob wondered. And what the hell am I doing out here all alone with him?
8:29 PM
It had been at least an hour since they’d spoken. Bob had kept trying to think of something to talk about that would lighten the mood of the evening. He couldn’t think of anything. Finally, he’d muttered, “G’night” and got up to enter the tent. Doug didn’t respond.
Bob zipped up his sleeping bag and got inside. Oh, shit, I forgot to brush my teeth, he thought. He opened his water bottle, rinsed out his mouth, and spit the water onto the ground. Very sanitary, his mind commented. Oh, shut up, he answered it.
After a while—he couldn’t tell how long it was—Doug crawled into the tent beside him and zipped himself into his sleeping bag, exhaled heavily, then fell silent. Bob closed his eyes. What’s it going to be like tomorrow? he wondered. And the day after. How far were they from Doug’s cabin anyway? The prospect of two to three more days like today made him more than disturbed, it made him apprehensive. Doug obviously had undercurrents in his personality he’d never known about. How could he have? Their relationship had been, he realized, very shallow, very superficial. He was starting to see the inner workings of Doug’s mind now and what he was seeing did not reassure him about the remainder of the hike.
He was almost asleep when Doug spoke, his voice making Bob’s legs twitch in surprise.
“You think there are evil people?” Doug asked.
Bob opened his eyes, blinking. He had no idea what to reply. “What d’ya mean?” he mumbled.
“What I said,” Doug responded, his voice tightening. “Are there evil people?”
“Well—” Bob tried to gather thoughts together. “You mean… pure evil?”
“Can evil be pure?” Doug said. Was he challenging? Goading? Bob couldn’t tell.
“I mean… evil without any cause,” he said.
“Now I don’t know what you mean,” Doug said.
“I mean… someone—we call evil—when there seems to be no explanation for that evil. No cause, no background.”
“Are there people like that?” Doug asked.
Why is he asking these questions? Bob wondered. Why had he—out of nowhere, it seemed—brought up the subject of evil?
“Well… no, I don’t think so,” he said. “I… suppose it’s possible. But if you look into the background of what people call evil, you usually find a good cause.”
“A good cause?” Doug was challenging now.
“I mean an understandable cause.” He hoped that if they got into a nonconflicting discussion, it might end the tension between them.
“I saw a documentary on cable a while back,” he continued. “It was called Evil. The narrator said that there were at least twelve different definitions of evil so there was no way to know which one of them was the real one. It’s a value judgment, nothing more.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Doug asked, sounding irritated.
Don’t give it back in kind, Bob told himself. Stay cool.
“It means… it’s a matter of opinion. It’s more a label than a definitive identification. By and large, all the absolutist judgments about who’s evil and who isn’t come from laws and courts, politicians, religious figures. They declare that someone—or something—is evil and the majority of the people buy it. They’ve been brainwashed.”
“So what do you think evil is?” Doug asked. “What have you been brainwashed to think?”
“Well, I hope it isn’t having been brainwashed. I hope it’s a rational decision on my part.”
“Which is—?” Doug demanded.
“Which is that pain and suffering, deliberately inflicted for no acceptable reason, is evil.”
“That’s it?” Was that disdainful smile on Doug’s face again? “Pain and suffering inflicted for no reason, that’s evil?”
“That’s my opinion, anyway,” Bob said.
“Well, my opinion is that someday—I’m convinced of it—evil people will all be explained away in terms of heredity and environment, period. The word ‘evil’ will be scrapped. ‘Evil’ people will all be called dysfunctional people, nothing more.”
“Possible,” Bob said. “An interesting notion, anyway.”
“Tell me this—” Doug started. Bob was relieved to hear that Doug sounded interested now, not just scornful. “Why are evil people more interesting than good people?”
“Good question,” Bob answered. “I don’t really know. Except that they arouse more dark reactions in people than good people do. They… how shall I put it… stir up… activate whatever deep-seated, negative emotions people have. And those emotions are more… colorful, you might say. More intriguing.”
“Damn right,” Doug said. “I’ve played good guys and bad guys in films and on television. Guess who audiences always—always—find more interesting?”
“Well, of course,” Bob said. “Who do audiences find more interesting? Hamlet or Richard the Third? Romeo or Macbeth? Othello or Iago?”
“No contest,” Doug agreed. He was really into the discussion now, Bob saw—and thank God for that. “I played Iago in a little theater once and I’ll tell you, he was the one the audience responded to, not that—goddamn moonstruck Moor.”
Bob heard Doug moving and glanced around, seeing Doug’s dark shadow raised on one elbow. He was really into it—and definitely thank God for it. Maybe they could spend the remaining days in stimulating discussions and avoid the other stuff, the friction-laden stuff.
“Audiences like to call these people ‘evil,’” Doug went on, “but they enjoy the hell out of watching them. They relish all their monstrous deeds but convince themselves that those ‘evil’ people are different from them—even though they’re not. They’re all hypocrites, pretending to be above the villains they love to watch. And they’re not.”