Bruno

Discussion ¬

1. 
   Pete Rogan

   April 16, 2016 at 6:55 pm | #

   The difference between bad thoughts and bad deeds is that our thoughts can punish us, but any repercussions they may have for us are entirely internal. We may ponder the badness of our wishes, we may speculate as to how bad we are, but it ends there. You can torture yourself in private and the world need not know anything about it.

   But bad deeds have consequences. They are no longer external, for they have affected the world, the people in it, and very likely their perception of us. The deed itself need not be major — reading forbidden journals left unlocked, exposing oneself to a blind man — but they have consequences regardless. In the case of the blind man, this is the legal definition of mopery: A crime that happens to someone who is unable to realize a crime took place. It is the slightest of consequences, not even a crime, but it happened in the real world and somebody else took note of it.

   Reading the journals, even if they were left exactly as she found them, would catapult Bruno’s conscience into a new realm of harm, one in which her own perception of the world, and of Judi, and of Dije, and (of course) herself would radically alter. She might or might not perceive Dije’s loyalty and honor, caught up in the monstrousness of the masquerade being perpetrated with all its inherent consequences, internal and not. It would be, in short, an act of self-mopery. Nothing would change but her own perception. And that is the crime.

   For a Bruno aware of Judi’s journey and Dije’s role in it would not be able to keep this knowledge to herself. It would bubble out of her, in glances, gestures, the failure to meet eyes on her. And that alone would alter the world around her, especially that of Judi and Dije. The old world would melt away, a new one start to reveal itself — but it is unformed until all those in the know act and react to the revelation.

   Bruno at some level comprehends this, though she does not know how devastating such knowledge would be to her personally. So she self-punishes, ironically very much the way Dije did, because she does not have the relief of telling the truth, should she learn it, nor the excuse that events were happening and she acted as she thought best, because these events are past, and their mere knowledge in her hands is proof she did not think of what would happen, and certainly not for the best. So she holds herself aloof. And the crisis seems to pass.

   But not for Judi, who will find the journals unlocked and wonder if they were read in her absence. She has a fine understanding of Bruno’s inner interlocutions but not of her capacity for prevarication. She would have to trust her existing instinct to decide whether Bruno is telling the truth or not, and regardless of the result, have to live with it. And she would have the additional burden of deciding whether or not to tell Dije the journals were left unlocked and unsupervised in Bruno’s presence. These are Judi’s crimes, not Bruno’s, but they have consequences just as great but no safe haven as Bruno has in willing herself not to read them. Suddenly we have an issue of trust, whether Bruno reads the journals or no, and it is Judi’s fault and all the consequences fall on her. Not a pleasant condition.

   You know, I’ve read all these before, nearly a decade ago, and I should know the fate of this indiscretion. I certainly could look it up and remove all doubt. But doubt is the very question at stake here, and not so easily dispelled in the tale. It would be a disservice to go back and read what happened — and what I might have said on that occasion, when it was all new and I had no such easy recourse. But this is the decision I take here now, and accept the consequences of not knowing until next week how it played out again. My own little contribution to the contemplation of doubt, crime, wrongfulness, and the consequences of the past.

   Though I will not get in the gutter. I’m already there. As are many of us, but I am face up, and looking up at the horse.