Captains in Captivity

She came to see him in the safehouse to interface without biography or autobiography. I am, she told him, the only one here who cares whether you continue to live. I care, he said, but it was formulaic. His propensity, not a precondition. The ground beneath his feet smelled of everything other men’s feet had ever ground into it. It was blank for all horrors, all aftermaths. A fly dazzled in a sunbeam through the windowpane. Like water, he seemed to say, & she agreed with him. I would like water, he repeated. She pretended not to hear him, because that was the sort of slippage that could save him & suddenly she was not against it. He could continue to live if he could continue to mean himself or anything as poorly as he had just then.