For forty days and nights after Apu’s return, the Golden house was in mourning, off limits, its curtains drawn at noon as well as midnight, its shutters shuttered, and if anyone came and went they did so as ethereally as ghosts. Nero vanished from view. It was my guess that Petya had moved back in and maybe Lett the therapist was there also, but that was just speculation. Petya Golden did not visit his brother’s coffin while it stood in the great room of the Golden house, did not forgive him, never spoke his name again, and never asked what happened to Ubah’s body, was there a grave he could visit, he never asked. Some wounds do not heal. The folk in the Gardens got on with their lives and respected the withdrawal of the wounded house from their little world. I didn’t go there though my desire to see the little fellow Vespasian was as strong as ever. Once I thought about contacting Vasilisa to plead for some time with him but I knew the blunt response I would get, and held my tongue. It was a busy time for me anyway; Suchitra and I had our hands full. In that political season we were drawn into the world of political videos, for women’s groups in particular, defending Planned Parenthood, attacking the Republican insensitivity to women’s issues. We were becoming famous; that year our videos swept the Pollie awards for political ads, in particular for a piece in which a child victim of sex trafficking told her story. Suchitra—her professional name shortened to Suchi Roy for ease of pronunciation—was becoming a bit of a media star, and I was happy to be her helpmate. So I turned away from death and toward life. But life had become noisy and even alarming that year. Beyond the closed world of the Gardens, things were getting very strange.
To step outside that enchanted—and now tragic—cocoon was to discover that America had left reality behind and entered the comic-book universe; D.C., Suchitra said, was under attack by DC. It was the year of the Joker in Gotham and beyond. The Caped Crusader was nowhere to be seen—it was not an age of heroes—but his archrival in the purple frock coat and striped pantaloons was ubiquitous, clearly delighted to have the stage to himself and hogging the limelight with evident delight. He had seen off the Suicide Squad, his feeble competition, but he permitted a few of his inferiors to think of themselves as future members of a Joker administration. The Penguin, the Riddler, Two-Face and Poison Ivy lined up behind the Joker in packed arenas, swaying like doo-wop backing singers while their leader spoke of the unrivaled beauty of white skin and red lips to adoring audiences wearing green fright wigs and chanting in unison, Ha! Ha! Ha!
The origins of the Joker were disputed, the man himself seemed to enjoy allowing contradictory versions to fight for air space, but on one fact everyone, passionate supporters and bitter antagonists, was agreed: he was utterly and certifiably insane. What was astonishing, what made this an election year like no other, was that people backed him because he was insane, not in spite of it. What would have disqualified any other candidate made him his followers’ hero. Sikh taxi drivers and rodeo cowboys, rabid alt-right blondes and black brain surgeons agreed, we love his craziness, no milquetoast euphemisms from him, he shoots straight from the hip, says whatever he fucking wants to say, robs whatever bank he’s in the mood to rob, kills whoever he feels like killing, he’s our guy. The black bat-knight has flown! It’s a new day, and it’s going to be a scream! All hail the United States of Joker! U.S.J.! U.S.J.! U.S.J.!
It was a year of two bubbles. In one of those bubbles, the Joker shrieked and the laugh-track crowds laughed right on cue. In that bubble the climate was not changing and the end of the Arctic icecap was just a new real estate opportunity. In that bubble, gun murderers were exercising their constitutional rights but the parents of murdered children were un-American. In that bubble, if its inhabitants were victorious, the president of the neighboring country to the south which was sending rapists and killers to America would be forced to pay for a wall dividing the two nations to keep the killers and rapists south of the border where they belonged; and crime would end; and the country’s enemies would be defeated instantly and overwhelmingly; and mass deportations would be a good thing; and women reporters would be seen to be unreliable because they had blood coming out of their whatevers; and the parents of dead war heroes would be revealed to be working for radical Islam; and international treaties would not have to be honored; and Russia would be a friend and that would have nothing whatsoever to do with the Russian oligarchs propping up the Joker’s shady enterprises; and the meanings of things would change; multiple bankruptcies would be understood to prove great business expertise; and three and a half thousand lawsuits against you would be understood to prove business acumen; and stiffing your contractors would prove your tough-guy business attitude; and a crooked university would prove your commitment to education; and while the Second Amendment would be sacred the First would not be; so those who criticized the leader would suffer consequences; and African Americans would go along with it all because what the hell did they have to lose. In that bubble knowledge was ignorance, up was down, and the right person to hold the nuclear codes in his hand was the green-haired white-skinned red-slash-mouthed giggler who asked a military briefing team four times why using nuclear weapons was so bad. In that bubble, razor-tipped playing cards were funny, and lapel flowers that sprayed acid into people’s faces were funny, and wishing you could have sex with your daughter was funny, and sarcasm was funny even when what was called sarcasm was not sarcastic, and lying was funny, and hatred was funny, and bigotry was funny, and bullying was funny, and the date was, or almost was, or might soon be, if the jokes worked out as they should, nineteen eighty-four.