Myrna nodded.
And then Clara had it. Headlines. Television images of jostling photographers, trying to get a picture of the little man in the neat suit, being led into court.
How different real monsters were from the film kind.
John Fleming was famous indeed.
Ruth closed the last page of the script and laid a blue-veined hand on the stack of paper.
Then, making up her mind, she lit the logs in the hearth and held the script over it until her thin skin sizzled. But she couldn’t do it.
“Stay here,” she commanded Rosa, who watched from her flannel nest.
Finding a small shovel, Ruth went outside, and sinking to her knees she hacked at the earth. Cutting away at the grass. Digging deeper, fighting the ground for every inch, as though it knew her intention and was resisting. But Ruth didn’t give up. If she could have dug down to the bedrock, she would have. Finally she was deep enough for her purpose.
Picking up the script, Ruth placed it in the hole. Then she covered it up, shoving the dirt in with her hands. Sitting back on her heels, kneeling under the night sky, she wondered if she should say something. A thin prayer. A curse?
“And now it is now,” she whispered, quoting her own poem over the fresh-turned earth.
And the dark thing is here,
and after all it is nothing new;
it is only a memory, after alclass="underline"
She got to her feet and stared down and thought about what she’d done. And what he’d done.
A memory of a fear.
Perhaps she should say something to Armand. But maybe it would be all right. Maybe it would stay buried.
Ruth went inside, locking the door behind her.
CHAPTER 4
“I’m thinking of quitting the play,” said Gabri.
The breakfast rush at the bistro was over and his guests at the B and B had left after the weekend. Now he sat in a comfortable armchair in the bay window of Myrna’s New and Used Bookstore. Myrna sat across from him in her own chair, unmistakable because it had taken on, over the years, her ample form. Beside her, on the floor, was a stack of books to be priced and put on shelves.
From the outside they might have looked like mannequins in a window display, except for their grim expressions.
“I’ve decided to quit,” said Myrna.
“Are we doing the right thing?” Gabri asked. “It’s so close to opening night, and if we pull out I don’t know what Antoinette will do.”
“What she should have done all along,” came Clara’s voice from the body of the store. She’d been browsing the “New Arrivals” shelf. Though “new” was a relative term. “She’ll pull the play.”
“That was banned, you know,” Myrna said to Clara when she saw what book Clara was holding. Fahrenheit 451.
“Was it also burned?” asked Clara, joining them. “Maybe that’s what hellfire’s made of. Burning books. I wonder if they’d appreciate the irony.”
“I doubt it,” said Myrna. “But are we doing the same thing?”
“We’re not burning the play,” said Gabri. “We’re just refusing to support it. Conscientious objectors.”
“Look, if we’re going to do this, we have to face the truth of what we’re doing and why,” said Myrna. “We’re demanding that a play not be produced not because it contains anything vile, but because we don’t like the man who wrote it.”
“You make it sound like a personality conflict,” said Gabri. “It’s not that we don’t like John Fleming, it’s because of what he did.”
“Knock, knock,” came a familiar voice at the door to the bookstore.
They looked up to see Reine-Marie, Armand and Henri.
“We were out for a walk and saw you in the window,” said Armand.
“Are we interrupting?” Reine-Marie asked, looking at their faces.
“No,” said Clara. “You can guess what we’re talking about.”
Reine-Marie nodded. “The same thing we were talking about. The play.”
“The goddamned play,” said Myrna. “I’m going to quit and Antoinette’s going to have a fit. I feel like such a shit.”
“Did you realize that all rhymed?” asked Gabri. “Quit, fit, shit. Like a Shakespearean sonnet.”
“You feel you’re letting down a friend,” said Reine-Marie.
“Partly, but I run a bookstore,” said Myrna, looking at the row upon row of books, lining the walls and creating corridors in the open space. “So many of them were banned and burned. That one,” she pointed to the Fahrenheit 451 Clara still had in her hands. “To Kill a Mockingbird. The Adventures of Huck Finn. Even The Diary of Anne Frank. All banned by people who believed they were in the right. Could we be wrong?”
“You’re not banning it,” said Clara. “He’s allowed to write and you’re allowed to pull your support.”
“But it comes to the same thing. If Gabri and I pull out and tell the others, it’ll ruin the production. And you know what? I want it to. Once she knew who’d written the play, Antoinette should never have produced it. Right, Armand?”
“Right.”
If they were expecting a hesitation, some anguish over the answer, they were disappointed. His answer was quick and unequivocal.
Armand Gamache was in absolutely no doubt. This was a play that should never have seen the light of day. Just as its author should never again see the light of day.
“But other killers have written books, plays even,” said Myrna.
“John Fleming is different,” said Clara. “We all know it.”
“You’re an artist,” said Reine-Marie. “Do you think a work should be judged by its creator? Or should it stand on its own?”
Clara gave a huge sigh. “I know the right answer to that. And I know how I feel. Would I want a painting by Jeffrey Dahmer, or to serve a meal from the Stalin family cookbook? No.”
“That’s not the issue,” said Gabri. “It’s about options, letting people make their own choices. Maybe Antoinette should produce it, and let people decide if they’ll go or not.”
“Are you having second thoughts about quitting?” asked Myrna.
“Hell no,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere near that play again. The play was written by a shit and there’s shit all over it. Fair or not, that’s just the way it is.”
“Look at Wagner,” said Reine-Marie. “He’s so associated with the Nazis and the Holocaust that his music, however brilliant, is spoiled for many.”
“It doesn’t help that Wagner was also a raging anti-Semite,” said Gabri.
“But is that a reason not to perform music that is sublime?” asked Reine-Marie.
“Reason has very little to do with this,” said Myrna. “I’m the first to admit I’d lose every debate over whether Fleming’s play should be banned. Intellectually I know he has a right to write it, and any company has a right to produce it. I just don’t want to be a part of it. I can’t defend my feelings, they just are.”
“I go back to the question,” said Reine-Marie. “Should the creation be judged by its creator? Does it matter?”
“It matters,” said Gamache. “Sometimes censorship is justified.”
They looked at him, surprised by his certainty. Even Reine-Marie was taken aback.
“But, Armand, you’ve always championed free speech, even when it’s used against you.”
“There’re exceptions in a free society,” said Armand. “There are always exceptions.” And John Fleming, he knew, was exceptional.
“Is the play about the murders?” Clara asked.
“No,” admitted Gabri. “It’s actually quite funny. It’s about a guy who keeps winning the lottery and squandering the chances he’s been given. He keeps ending up at the same rooming house, with the same people.”