Hunting Piero by Wendy MacIntyre

Author:Wendy MacIntyre
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781771871488
Publisher: Thistledown Press
Published: 2017-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

The Video

SHOT ON SOMEONE’S PHONE-CAMERA, THE video was shown every hour on the French national news program which Agnes watched obsessively in her hotel room. She found it poignant, verging on pitiable, to see Minnie in her chimpanzee mask, and Pinto, whose chow disguise was a smudge of russet, struggling to hold up the banner of Saint Francis. It was simply too large for two. Had Agnes been there, as she ought to have been, she could have helped Minnie hold it steady. She had let them down, and the result was this risible scene, so ripe for mockery, of the North American college kids who could not even manage the simple physical task of displaying their protest sign.

The camera then lurched to focus on Zebra’s doomed leap and caught him dangling a moment, his guy wire twisted on some impediment they had not anticipated — a guard rail or perhaps the metal base of the bench. They had been so opaquely arrogant in not studying the details of the amphitheatre’s interior beforehand. It was horrible to see Zeke trapped so, vulnerable and humiliated, but, at least at that instant, still alive. He flailed his arms and jerked his upper body, and then he fell, colliding with the seated mother and child. The camera swung to fix on Zeke hastily dropping the harness and racing off the down the steps. But it was the final image, which zeroed in on Zebra’s face, lead-white and tight, his mouth and nostrils like holes ripped in a stretched sheet, that made her feel she was impaled on a rusty spike.

She still could not wholly grasp that he was gone. Yet his harrowing expression in this last image told her, as clearly as if he’d spoken, that the Zeke she’d known was already extinct. He could never have recovered his guileless enthusiasm or his unsullied drive for the cause after this ignominious failure, which for all he knew might now encompass a child’s severe injury or death.

She could not help but question his craven irresponsibility in fleeing, but sought refuge in the rationalization that his failure had sucked him dry. He’d had no moist vital energy or moral fibre left in him. It was not a man who ran from the arena, but an automaton programmed to carry out its own destruction. Had he already decided on this course when she saw him at the Alyscamps? All that time he was pacing like a frenetic puppet, was he elaborating the contingency plan for his suicide? If he could not make Campbell the perfect ritual offering of a flawless demonstration, then he would give him his own death. Was that his line of thinking? Or could he simply not bear life any longer?

Her hands shook at the invasive image of Zebra poised on the edge of the black and white striped cliff. Did he hesitate at all? Or did the mess they’d made generate a fatal weight that pulled him down? The impact would have broken all his bones.

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