Korrogly’s delight stemmed not from his realization that in a way Lemos had been innocent – innocence was not a word he could apply to the gemcutter – but from a new comprehension of the intricate subtlety with which Griaule had acted; it spoke to him, it commanded him, it instructed him in a kind of law that he had neglected throughout his entire life. The law of self-determination. It was the only kind, he saw, that could produce justice. If he wanted justice, he would have to effect it, not the system, not the courts, and that was something he was well-equipped to do. He was amazed that he had not come to this conclusion before, but then he supposed that until this moment he had been too confused, too involved with the complexities of the case, to think of taking direct action. And perhaps he had not been ready to act, perhaps his motivation had been insufficient.
Well, he was motivated now.
Mirielle.
It might be that she was unsalvageable, that she had gone too far into perversity ever to emerge from it; but for a moment in his arms she had again been the woman he had loved. It had not been fraudulent. The least he could do was to deliver her from the man who had dominated her and seduced her into iniquity. That he would be also serving justice only made the act sweeter.
He strolled out of the museum and stood on the steps gazing over the shadowed lavender water toward Ayler Point. He knew exactly how he would proceed. Lemos himself had given him the key to successful action in his words concerning Zemaille.
‘Mardo was a weak man with power,’ he had said. ‘Such men are easy to maneuver.’
And of course Lemos was no different.
He was rife with weakness. His investments, Mirielle, his crimes, his false sense of control. That last, that was his greatest weakness. He was enamored of his own power, he believed his judgments to be infallible and he would never believe that Korrogly could be other than as he perceived him; he would think that the lawyer would either do nothing or seek redress through the courts; he would not suspect that Korrogly might move against him in the way that he had moved against Zemaille. Zemaille had probably thought the same of him.
Korrogly smiled, understanding how marvelously complex was this chain of consecutive illuminations, of one man after another being induced to take decisive action. He stepped briskly down the steps and out onto Biscaya Boulevard, heading for The Blind Lady and a glass of beer, for a bout of peaceful contemplation, of deciding his future and Lemos’ fate. By the time he had walked a block he had already come up with the beginnings of a plan.
But then he was brought up short by a disturbing thought.
What if he was obeying Griaule’s will in all this, what if The Father of Stones had had an effect upon him? What if instead of taking his destiny in hand, he was merely obeying Griaule’s wishes, serving as an element in some dire scheme? What if he was by dismissing ordinary means and moral tactics taking a chance on becoming a monster like Lemos, one who would in the end be cut down by yet another of Griaule’s pawns? There was no way of telling. His sudden determination to act might be laid to a long inner process of deliberation, it might be the result of years of failed idealism; the resolution of the Lemos case could have been the weight that caused the final caving-in of his unsound moral structure.
He stood for a long moment considering these things, knowing that he might never come to the end of considering them, but searching for some rationalization that would allow him to put aside such concerns, to cease his analysis and questioning of events, and he found that this had become for him a matter of choice; it was as if the decision to act had freed him from an old snare, from the hampering spell of his ideals, and introduced him into a new and – though less moral – much more effective magic. What did he care who was in control, who was pulling the strings? Sooner or later a man had to stop thinking and start being, to leave off fretting over the vicissitudes and intricacies of life, and begin to live. There was no certainty, no secure path, no absolutely moral one. You did the best you could for yourself and those you cared about, and hoped that this would be a sufficiently broad spectrum of concern to keep your soul in healthy condition. If not . . . well, there was no use in fretting over the prospect. Why trouble yourself with guilt in a world in which everyone was guilty?
