Transcript

The Emerald · I Believe

0:29
SPEAKER_01: There is the Leviathan.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: He moves in the deep in the playground of God.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: He waits for his food in its season.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: God asks, can you draw him out with a fish hook?
0:44
SPEAKER_01: Put a cord through his nose?
0:46
SPEAKER_01: Make a covenant with him?
0:51
SPEAKER_02: The Zippo.
0:52
SPEAKER_02: He ran his thumb across the worn edges, took it out of his pocket.
0:57
SPEAKER_02: But I'm getting ahead of myself.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: I'm Joel Douglas, and I believe in America.
1:14
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for joining me.
1:23
SPEAKER_02: Act 1.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: The Affair.
1:25
SPEAKER_02: Copenhagen, Spring 1945, three weeks after the Germans left.
1:32
SPEAKER_02: You could still smell it.
1:34
SPEAKER_02: Smoke, petrol, something sour underneath.
1:36
SPEAKER_02: The city was learning how to breathe again.
1:39
SPEAKER_02: Nobody knew what to do with their hands.
1:41
SPEAKER_02: She was 23, blonde, thin in a way that made people look away.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: She'd spent four years learning to be invisible, how to walk past soldiers without being seen, to keep her face empty, make herself small enough to survive.
1:55
SPEAKER_02: He was American, a sergeant from Kansas.
1:58
SPEAKER_02: People thought all of Kansas was flat, but not where he was from.
2:02
SPEAKER_02: Huge houses on the river bluffs, oak trees.
2:05
SPEAKER_02: Nearly every year someone drowned.
2:07
SPEAKER_02: They jumped off the bridge, knowing they could swim out of the great river.
2:11
SPEAKER_02: They could not.
2:12
SPEAKER_02: He had a wide smile and big hands, and he talked too loud for any room he was in.
2:19
SPEAKER_02: They met in Glasshall in Tivoli, a Danish jazz club, defiant of German rule to the end.
2:25
SPEAKER_02: Jazz was Allied music.
2:27
SPEAKER_02: The Nazis despised it.
2:29
SPEAKER_02: She was drinking alone.
2:30
SPEAKER_02: She knew she shouldn't, but the Germans were gone, and she didn't feel afraid.
2:34
SPEAKER_02: He sat down across from her without asking.
2:38
SPEAKER_02: You speak English?
2:40
SPEAKER_02: A little.
2:41
SPEAKER_02: More than a little, I think.
2:43
SPEAKER_02: She didn't smile, but she didn't leave.
2:46
SPEAKER_02: She touched her hair.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: By June, the city remembered what it was.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: The canals turned silver in the long light.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: Sun sat on the water like a thin sheet of metal.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: The sun only pretended to set, hovering just below the horizon, turning the sky the colour of bruised peaches over slate roofs and church spires.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: People sat outside again, chairs scraped on cobblestone.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Glasses clinked.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: Bicycles hummed past in steady lines.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: They drank beer in Nihon, watched the boats.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: She laughed too loud.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: Heard herself.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: Didn't stop.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: She showed him the city.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: The parts the Germans hadn't touched and the parts they had.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: Street corners, the paint still new, shop windows, fresh glass that didn't quite match the old panes.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: The gardens, gates open again, lights coming on one by one.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: The fountains running with joy.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: Shopkeepers repainting their signs with careful strokes, making the letters bold again.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: They walked along the lakes at dusk.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: The air cooled and smelled of water and grass.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: Swans drifted in the half-dark white shapes sliding over black glass.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: He threw bread.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: She told him not to, said it made them aggressive.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: He did it anyway, and she didn't mind.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: A couple passed, arms linked, moving slow like they had nowhere they had to be.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: One night, he put his arm around her.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: She let him.
4:37
SPEAKER_02: She had a room with a window that faced the harbor.
4:40
SPEAKER_02: The city was broken.
4:41
SPEAKER_02: They were alive.
4:42
SPEAKER_02: Enough reason for anything.
4:43
SPEAKER_02: He talked a lot.
4:45
SPEAKER_02: She learned this about him early.
4:47
SPEAKER_02: He talked like he didn't know the precious silence.
4:49
SPEAKER_02: It was something to be filled, like the world would forget him if he stopped making noise.
4:54
SPEAKER_02: He talked about the war, his unit, the things they'd seen, friends he'd lost, Kansas, the bluffs, the river, the fields, the sky that stretched out forever.
5:05
SPEAKER_02: He talked about what he was going to do when he got home.
5:08
SPEAKER_02: Big plans, big dreams, like he had a key to the future.
5:13
SPEAKER_02: She listened.
5:14
SPEAKER_02: He was kind, happy, funny.
5:17
SPEAKER_02: She didn't talk about the occupation, didn't talk about her father, who'd been taken in 43 and never came back.
5:23
SPEAKER_02: Her father had believed in things agreements, treaties, the League of Nations.
5:28
SPEAKER_02: He'd been wrong.
5:30
SPEAKER_02: She didn't talk about what she'd done to survive.
5:32
SPEAKER_02: The humiliations, decisions no one should have to make at 19.
5:36
SPEAKER_02: Some things you don't say, not even to the man in your bed.
5:40
SPEAKER_02: One night she showed him the emerald.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: She kept it in a box beneath a loose floorboard.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: Her grandmother had given it to her before the war, before everything.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: It was small, cloudy, the color of ice under green water.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: She had hidden it from the German searches, always worried she would lose it.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: Family?
6:05
SPEAKER_00: he asked, holding it up to the light.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: My great-great-grandmother's.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: He turned it over in his palm, squinted at it like estimating its value.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: Then he handed it back.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: Nice, he said.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: Reached for a cigarette, a lucky strike, lit it with his zippo, black crackle metal, rounded on the edges, where the color of the rubbed metal shone through.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: She watched him light it.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: He glanced towards the window, still talking.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: He had already forgotten the stone in her hand.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: She put it back in the box, back under the floor, didn't say anything.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: He had a pocket full of stones.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: She'd seen them.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: He was twenty four years old, and he'd already had someone's lifetime.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: Her emerald was cloudy, sentimental, not worth much.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: He didn't want it.
7:08
SPEAKER_02: He shipped out in September.
7:10
SPEAKER_02: They stood at the dock.
7:11
SPEAKER_02: He held her hands, looked into her eyes, said what he thought were the right things men say.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: I'll write, I'll come back.
7:18
SPEAKER_02: This isn't the end.
7:20
SPEAKER_02: She nodded.
7:21
SPEAKER_02: She didn't believe him.
7:23
SPEAKER_02: But it cost her nothing to let him say it, and it seemed to cost him something, so she let him.
7:28
SPEAKER_02: Keep that emerald safe, he said, smiling like it was a joke.
7:33
SPEAKER_02: I will.
7:34
SPEAKER_02: He kissed her, walked up the gangway, didn't look back.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: The letters came for a while.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: November, December.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: A long one in January that talked about home, snow, missing her.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: Then February.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: Nothing again in March.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: She didn't write to ask why, she already knew.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: She wasn't the kind of woman he'd marry.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: She'd known it that first night in the club, and every night in the room with the window.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: She was what happened during the war.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: She had loved him anyway.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: She went to the floorboard.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: The emerald was there, where it had always been, where it hadn't always been.
8:22
SPEAKER_02: A flashback.
8:23
SPEAKER_02: The stone in her palm, cloudy green, cold.
8:27
SPEAKER_02: Her grandmother's hands had held it, her mother's, hers, not only hers.
8:32
SPEAKER_02: She remembered the day they came, spring, nineteen forty-one.
8:37
SPEAKER_02: Germans had searched her room.
8:39
SPEAKER_02: They knew about the emerald.
8:40
SPEAKER_02: They just came in, moved her aside.
8:43
SPEAKER_02: Later that week, two Americans on the stairs.
8:46
SPEAKER_02: Their uniforms didn't fit the narrow turn.
8:49
SPEAKER_02: They were polite, professional.
8:51
SPEAKER_02: They spoke English to each other, slow Danish to her.
8:55
SPEAKER_02: For safekeeping, ma'am, just until things settled down.
8:58
SPEAKER_02: She was nineteen.
9:00
SPEAKER_02: The occupation was a year old.
9:02
SPEAKER_02: Her father was still alive then.
9:04
SPEAKER_02: He still believed in agreements.
9:05
SPEAKER_02: He told her to cooperate.
9:07
SPEAKER_02: He said the Americans were friends.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: She handed it over.
9:10
SPEAKER_02: They wrapped it in cloth, carried her grandmother's stone down the stairs and out into a street full of German soldiers.
9:17
SPEAKER_02: The Germans didn't stop them.
9:19
SPEAKER_02: Americans were still neutral then.
9:22
SPEAKER_02: She said thank you.
9:24
SPEAKER_02: Standing in the doorway, thank you to the men taking her inheritance because she could not keep it.
9:29
SPEAKER_02: Four years.
9:31
SPEAKER_02: The emerald spent the war in a vault in Washington, safe, dry, far from the Germans, far from the Danes, who couldn't stop them.
9:40
SPEAKER_02: She spent the war in Copenhagen, learning to be invisible, learning where to look and where not to look.
9:46
SPEAKER_02: Her father was taken in 43.
9:48
SPEAKER_02: She didn't think about the emerald that night, or the night after.
9:53
SPEAKER_02: Later, she did.
9:55
SPEAKER_02: A small green stone, what it might have bought, passage, a bribe to the right man at the right time.
10:01
SPEAKER_02: She told herself there was no chance.
10:03
SPEAKER_02: The stone couldn't have saved her father, she would never know.
10:07
SPEAKER_02: They gave it back in the summer of forty five, a note on American paper about Danish American friendship.
10:13
SPEAKER_02: They handed her the cloth like a gift.
10:16
SPEAKER_02: We kept it safe for you.
10:17
SPEAKER_02: She knew they were right to take it.
10:19
SPEAKER_02: That was the part she couldn't forgive.
10:21
SPEAKER_02: She said thank you again.
10:24
SPEAKER_02: Smiled.
10:25
SPEAKER_02: That night she put it under the floorboard, didn't look at it for months, until she showed it to him.
10:31
SPEAKER_02: The man in her bed.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: Once he was not vast.
10:38
SPEAKER_01: Once he was small.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: He swam among other creatures.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: He learned hunger.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: He learned taking.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: Act two, The Vault, Copenhagen, April 1949, in a palace room full of signatures and glassware.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: Four years since the war ended, the city had rebuilt itself, stone by stone, street by street, pretended the scars weren't there.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: He came back with a delegation.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: American money rebuilding Europe.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: He was one of the men who decided where it went, defense contracts, airfields, ports.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: The stones from his pocket had bought his first contract.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: The contracts bought everything else.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't a sergeant anymore.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: He wore a suit now, good wool, Italian shoes.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: He'd learned to shake hands like a man who expected his calls returned.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: They met at Christiansborg Palace.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: Twelve of them sent someone.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: They would build a museum, they called it a vault.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere to protect what mattered.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: A symbol that civilization still meant something.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: He didn't expect to see her.
12:04
SPEAKER_02: She was standing by the window when he walked in, blonde, older.
12:08
SPEAKER_02: The softness of girlhood gone.
12:10
SPEAKER_02: She was talking to a Belgian, something about transit routes.
12:13
SPEAKER_02: She held herself like a woman who belonged in the room.
12:16
SPEAKER_02: He stopped.
12:17
SPEAKER_02: She turned, mid-sentence as if she felt it.
12:20
SPEAKER_02: Their eyes met.
12:22
SPEAKER_02: Four years, no letters, no explanation, just silence, and now.
12:28
SPEAKER_02: Her face in a window across a room full of diplomats.
12:32
SPEAKER_02: She excused herself from the Belgian, walked toward him, unhurried, like she'd known he would come sooner or later.
12:40
SPEAKER_02: You came back, she said.
12:42
SPEAKER_02: He tried to smile, the old smile.
12:45
SPEAKER_02: I told you I would.
12:47
SPEAKER_02: She looked at him.
12:48
SPEAKER_02: Just looked.
12:50
SPEAKER_02: Yes, she said.
12:52
SPEAKER_02: You did.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: They talked, small talk.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: He asked about her work.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: She was part of the Danish delegation.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: Her family had influence, old connections, a name that opened doors even after an occupation.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: She asked about his defence, contracts, building things.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: You've done well, she said.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: I got lucky.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: You got rich.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: He laughed.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: She didn't.
13:25
SPEAKER_02: She reached for her glass.
13:27
SPEAKER_02: Water, not wine.
13:29
SPEAKER_02: The light from the window caught her hand.
13:31
SPEAKER_02: A ring.
13:32
SPEAKER_02: Gold.
13:33
SPEAKER_02: Simple.
13:34
SPEAKER_02: The way the sunshine gleamed from it.
13:37
SPEAKER_02: He looked at it too long, blinked.
13:40
SPEAKER_02: Married, he said.
13:41
SPEAKER_02: Not a question.
13:43
SPEAKER_02: Three years.
13:45
SPEAKER_02: Kids?
13:45
SPEAKER_02: Two boys.
13:47
SPEAKER_02: He nodded.
13:48
SPEAKER_02: He didn't know what to say.
13:50
SPEAKER_02: He wanted to ask, does he know about me?
13:52
SPEAKER_02: About Copenhagen?
13:53
SPEAKER_02: About the room with the window and the emerald under the floor?
13:56
SPEAKER_02: He didn't ask.
13:58
SPEAKER_02: Instead he said, he's a lucky man.
14:01
SPEAKER_02: She looked at him.
14:02
SPEAKER_02: That same look from the bar in 1945.
14:05
SPEAKER_02: Yes, she said.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: He is.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: The ceremony was brief, twelve of them signed.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: Simple language.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: What we place here we protect together.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: No one takes, no one sells, no one walks away.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: The document sat on the table.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: They raised their glasses.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: They believed it.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: That afternoon.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Every one of them.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: He signed with a fountain pen.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: Blue ink.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: His name large, confident.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: She signed after him.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: Small letters.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: Neat.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: He watched her write her name.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: The ring caught the light again.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: He thought about the emerald, the cloudy stone he'd handed back without looking.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: That green.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: That cold.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: That far north.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: He knew she still had it.
15:02
SPEAKER_02: Afterward there was champagne, handshakes, the murmur of diplomats pretending the world was safe.
15:08
SPEAKER_02: Someone lifted a camera.
15:09
SPEAKER_02: They held their glasses up and didn't move.
15:12
SPEAKER_02: She stood across the room, holding a glass she hadn't touched.
15:15
SPEAKER_02: He was talking to someone, a minister or a general.
15:19
SPEAKER_02: He didn't remember.
15:20
SPEAKER_02: He kept watching her.
15:21
SPEAKER_02: She didn't look at him.
15:23
SPEAKER_02: Then she did.
15:24
SPEAKER_02: Their eyes met.
15:26
SPEAKER_02: Just for a moment.
15:27
SPEAKER_02: The way they had in Tivoli, in the jazz club, in the room with the window.
15:32
SPEAKER_02: She looked away.
15:33
SPEAKER_02: He didn't.
15:34
SPEAKER_02: He couldn't.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: No one remembers when he grew too large.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: No one remembers the first time.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: No one could stop him.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: Act three.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: The commitment.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Copenhagen.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: The winter after.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: When the vault is finally finished and the paint is still wet.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: Men in shirt sleeves carried crates through a side door.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: The air smelled like sawdust and cold stone.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: Someone tracked snow in.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: It melted into small dark puddles along the floor.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: She came back to see it done.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: Place her treasure.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: They moved the table from the palace, the chairs, hung a photograph on the wall.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: Twelve faces, young and certain.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Put it in a room in the back of the vault.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: The flag room.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: Fabric and thread.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: The original documents behind glass.
16:38
SPEAKER_02: He went into the vault first, the American.
16:41
SPEAKER_02: He carried a torch, bronze, heavy, cast from the same mold as the one in the harbor back home.
16:48
SPEAKER_02: Liberty, he said.
16:49
SPEAKER_02: Loud enough for everyone to hear.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: They gave him the center case, best glass, best light.
16:55
SPEAKER_02: He stood there a moment after they locked it, hand on the case, admiring.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: She went last, the emerald, wrapped in cloth.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Cloudy even under good light.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: A stone you could lose in a pocket if you weren't paying attention.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: A guard opened the case in the back corner.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: The hinges creaked.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: Small sound.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: She set the emerald down herself.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: The glass closed, the lock turned.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: She didn't look at him to see if he noticed.
17:30
SPEAKER_02: That night there was a party.
17:32
SPEAKER_02: Chandeliers and champagne.
17:34
SPEAKER_02: They congratulated themselves.
17:36
SPEAKER_02: He looked for her across the room.
17:38
SPEAKER_02: She wasn't there.
17:39
SPEAKER_02: Someone said she'd left early, her boys.
17:42
SPEAKER_02: He stood by the window, watched the rain streak the glass, finished his drink, set the glass down, and didn't look for her again.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: Later, he walked alone.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: The canals were black, cut by thin lines of light from the street lamps.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere a radio played jazz behind a curtain.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: The sound came and went as he passed.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: He stopped on a bridge, leaned on the stone rail.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: The water moved beneath him without hurry.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: It had seen Germans, it had seen Americans.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: He heard footsteps and didn't turn.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: A man beside him, a shadow.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: He rested his hands on the rail, like he belonged there, a plain face, grey coat.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: They stood in silence.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: Who keeps the keys?
18:36
SPEAKER_00: The man asked.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: He didn't answer.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: If you needed them, the man said.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: Quiet, like he already knew.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: Would they come?
18:48
SPEAKER_00: Would she?
18:50
SPEAKER_00: The man was gone.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: No name, no farewell, just footsteps fading over whetstone.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: He stayed on the bridge a long time.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: A stranger.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: A cold night.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: A man laughed under an awning.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: A cigarette burned down to his fingers.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: He looked back once.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: The bridge was empty.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't sure it had ever not been.
19:17
SPEAKER_02: Years passed.
19:19
SPEAKER_02: The vault got new locks, new rules written in language that looked like safety.
19:23
SPEAKER_02: He kept the question anyway.
19:25
SPEAKER_02: She raised her sons, watched them grow tall, watched them learn to shake hands and stand straight and look men in the eye.
19:33
SPEAKER_02: She didn't talk about the American, didn't talk about the room with the window.
19:38
SPEAKER_02: Then someone came for the torch.
19:41
SPEAKER_02: Men who hated what it meant, who wanted to melt it down, snuff it out, prove it was never real.
19:47
SPEAKER_02: They didn't get it.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: But they got close.
19:50
SPEAKER_02: Close enough to crack the glass, close enough to draw blood.
19:54
SPEAKER_02: He didn't call the others.
19:56
SPEAKER_02: They came the next morning, before he could ask.
19:59
SPEAKER_02: What we place here, we protect together.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: She didn't hesitate.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: She sent her sons, her kitchen, early morning, grey light through the window, coffee on the stove, gone bitter.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: No one had touched it.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Boys at the table, not boys anymore, men, her men, uniforms pressed, bags by the door.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: One of them kept adjusting a strap that didn't need adjusting.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: The other ate without tasting.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: She didn't cry, didn't make it about her.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: She reached across the table and flattened a wrinkle on a sleeve with two fingers.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Quick.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: She stood in the doorway until the sound of their boots faded to nothing.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: He didn't need them.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: Not really.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: He had enough men, enough money, enough guns, but she sent them anyway.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: For his torch, for the promise, for the name she had signed in small neat letters.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: The others came too for a while.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: Then they drifted.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: Other priorities, other problems.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: His torch was his problem now.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: She stayed.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: Her sons stayed.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: For eighteen years they stayed.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Some of them didn't come home.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: They thought they could build a cage for him.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: Twelve of them.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: Stone and iron and promises.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: The Leviathan watched.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: Patient.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: He learned to wait.
21:43
SPEAKER_02: Act four.
21:45
SPEAKER_02: The change.
21:47
SPEAKER_02: Years later, at receptions with marble floors and too much champagne, he found her by the window, the way he always used to.
21:56
SPEAKER_02: That emerald of yours, he said, like it had just Crossed his mind.
22:01
SPEAKER_02: She looked at him.
22:03
SPEAKER_02: It's not safe back there, in the corner like that.
22:06
SPEAKER_02: Anyone could take it.
22:08
SPEAKER_02: No one's going to take it.
22:10
SPEAKER_02: You don't know that.
22:12
SPEAKER_02: He set the glass down, looked past her.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: He started asking questions at meetings, dinners, in hallways where people pretended not to listen, acting like he had forgotten.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: That emerald of the far north.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: Whose is that again?
22:31
SPEAKER_00: She heard about it.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: She always heard about it.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: Then he sent his son.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: Just a visit, he said, friendly.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: The son walked through the vault with his hands in his pockets, lingered by her case, asked the guards questions they didn't know how to answer.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: She wasn't there.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: But she heard about that too.
22:56
SPEAKER_02: He started talking about wolves.
22:58
SPEAKER_02: The wolves are circling.
23:00
SPEAKER_02: If I don't take it they will, he told her.
23:02
SPEAKER_02: I've been seeing wolves my whole life.
23:05
SPEAKER_02: Not like these.
23:06
SPEAKER_02: You can't stop them.
23:07
SPEAKER_02: Not with what you have.
23:09
SPEAKER_02: I've protected it my whole life.
23:12
SPEAKER_02: Your security?
23:14
SPEAKER_02: He laughed.
23:14
SPEAKER_02: You know what you've got?
23:16
SPEAKER_02: Two dog sleds.
23:17
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
23:18
SPEAKER_02: Two dog sleds.
23:19
SPEAKER_02: People laughed with him.
23:21
SPEAKER_02: She heard about it.
23:22
SPEAKER_02: She thought about her sons.
23:24
SPEAKER_02: The ones who didn't come home.
23:25
SPEAKER_02: She didn't laugh.
23:26
SPEAKER_02: He named an envoy, made it official.
23:29
SPEAKER_02: A man in a suit who showed up with a leather briefcase and a pen that clicked when he smiled.
23:34
SPEAKER_02: He smiled a lot, used words like partnership, protection, mutual interest.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: He offered to buy it, named a price.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: More than a cloudy green stone could ever be worth.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: More than sentiment.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: More than memory.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: She refused.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: It's not for sale.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: Everything's for sale.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: I could keep it safe for you.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: Just until things settle down.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: She refused.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Things are settled.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: They're not.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: And you know it.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: He said, The wolves she refused.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: There are always wolves.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: He leaned forward.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: Same big hands, same confidence, older face.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: The vault isn't enough.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: You know that.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: I know that.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: I'm the only one willing to say it.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: She refused.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: It's not yours to take.
24:36
SPEAKER_02: She reinforced the case.
24:37
SPEAKER_02: New glass, new locks.
24:39
SPEAKER_02: The others saw it too.
24:40
SPEAKER_02: She didn't need to remind them.
24:42
SPEAKER_02: What we place here, we protect together, he kept pushing.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: We're going to do this, he said.
24:48
SPEAKER_02: Whether you like it or not.
24:50
SPEAKER_02: She looked at him.
24:51
SPEAKER_02: The man from the bar in Copenhagen.
24:54
SPEAKER_02: The man who'd handed back her emerald without looking.
24:57
SPEAKER_02: The man whose torch she'd protected for eighteen years.
25:00
SPEAKER_02: She thought about the boys who didn't come home.
25:03
SPEAKER_02: The easy way or the hard way, he said, but we're going to do it.
25:08
SPEAKER_02: He stared at her.
25:09
SPEAKER_02: She didn't look away.
25:11
SPEAKER_02: I am not for sale, she said.
25:13
SPEAKER_02: And neither is the emerald.
25:16
SPEAKER_02: She was ready for him to try to take the emerald.
25:19
SPEAKER_02: She had guards, glass.
25:20
SPEAKER_02: She had the others or some of them standing with her.
25:23
SPEAKER_02: She thought she knew what he wanted.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: God asks, will he make a covenant with you?
25:33
SPEAKER_01: Speak to you soft words, keep his promises?
25:36
SPEAKER_01: No.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: He grows hungry.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: He forgets the covenants he made when he was small.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: He sees what he wants.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: He takes what he sees.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: Even the Leviathan owes God a death.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: We all do.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: But not yet.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: Not tonight.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: The Leviathan does what he wants.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: Who can subdue the Leviathan?
26:04
SPEAKER_02: Act five.
26:05
SPEAKER_02: The night.
26:06
SPEAKER_02: Late, after closing, when the vault is quiet and the flag room is unlocked.
26:12
SPEAKER_02: He came in through the back.
26:14
SPEAKER_02: The old door, the one they never used anymore.
26:17
SPEAKER_02: He had a key.
26:18
SPEAKER_02: Of course he had a key.
26:19
SPEAKER_02: He'd paid for the locks.
26:21
SPEAKER_02: The guards were watching the emerald.
26:23
SPEAKER_02: The others were watching the emerald.
26:25
SPEAKER_02: Everyone was watching the emerald.
26:27
SPEAKER_02: He walked past the room with the emerald to the flagroom.
26:30
SPEAKER_02: A hallway no one guarded.
26:32
SPEAKER_02: Nobody ever guarded it.
26:33
SPEAKER_02: He walked slowly.
26:35
SPEAKER_02: No hurry.
26:36
SPEAKER_02: He had time.
26:37
SPEAKER_02: The door was unlocked.
26:38
SPEAKER_02: It was always unlocked.
26:40
SPEAKER_02: Who would steal flags?
26:42
SPEAKER_02: He stepped inside.
26:43
SPEAKER_02: It smelled like old cloth and paper.
26:46
SPEAKER_02: Twelve flags hung.
26:47
SPEAKER_02: The promise sat behind glass.
26:50
SPEAKER_02: The photograph watched from the wall.
26:53
SPEAKER_02: He stood in the center of the room, the place where they had laid the first stone, where they had believed.
26:59
SPEAKER_02: The curtains were old, the paper was dry, seventy years of certainty, boxed and filed and forgotten.
27:07
SPEAKER_02: He reached into his pocket, the zippo, black crackle metal, rounded edges, worn smooth.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: He'd carried it since the war, since Copenhagen, since the room with the window and the woman who'd shown him an emerald he didn't want.
27:22
SPEAKER_02: He ran his thumb across the worn edges, took it out of his pocket.